Anne Leckie’s Ancillary Justice world returns with first-look at Radiant Star

In the city of Ooioiaa, there are of course several different consororities, but when one says “the Consorority” one means the Consorority of the Translocation. And the difference between the Translocationist consorors and the rest is clear and easily described (though not so easily explained): where every other consorority accepts members from anywhere (give or take—there are requirements and regulations) one must be born a member of the Consorority of the Translocation. They are, essentially, a single family.

Like many other families in the Chath Precinct of Ooioiaa, all the children are boys, whatever their personal inclinations. Unlike other families, on reaching adulthood those boys are sorted by the family’s matriarch into those who will become women, and hence consorors, and those who will become men. Though Ooioiaan boys may grow up to be any gender one may care to imagine, for the boys of the Consorority of the Translocation there are only those two options available. Potential consorors will display either business acumen or a tendency to the visions that are the mainstay of the Translocationists’ reputation and income. The rest—the men—become servants and minor household administrators. If there is no place for the men, they are sent out to be servants in other households—servants trained by the Consorority are highly sought after.

In the 3,008th year after the manifestation of the Radiant Star (the 1,024th since the founding of the Consorority itself), Zaved, a newly minted consoror, disappeared a mere two days after the ceremony that elevated her to womanhood. She left a note that read, Bored. Back whenever. This was not normal or even remotely acceptable behavior in a consoror, particularly one who held as much promise as Zaved had, but what could the consorors do? They had, perhaps, indulged her a bit too much when she had been a boy, but that had been expected; her gene mother was matriarch and it had been clear from Zaved’s infancy that she was destined for womanhood. There was at this point nothing to do but go about their daily business, and so the consorors did.

Five years later Zaved returned, walking in the Consorority’s front door with a cheap plastic bag full of trinkets from three different star systems; a trunk made of actual cherry wood; a wide, shining necklace of platinum set with pearls and olivine cabochons; and an obvious pregnancy.

The scandal of this—the matriarch of the consorors carefully plans each addition to the family and no one becomes pregnant unless she feels very strongly that she wishes to be, and even then she must obtain the matriarch’s approval—was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the cherry wood trunk proved to be stuffed full of cash in very high denominations. “This is only half of the payment,” Zaved said. “The rest comes on delivery. Which will be some years, because the client wants a servant specially trained by the Consorority and I couldn’t possibly promise any of our boys to some foreign atheist, but it was so much money! And I had such a lovely time. So anyway when this one”—she gestured to her swelling abdomen—“is born, we educate him with the others, and when he’s old enough, we just pack him up and send him off, and…” She gestured airily. “More money!” She frowned just the slightest bit. “Well, it will take a few years for him to get there, and a few years for the money to get here, but that hardly matters.”

So Jonr was born. Certainly there was no way for tiny Jonr to know, or even have the slightest suspicion, that he might not be exactly the same as any other infant in the nursery of the Consorority of the Translocation. His small bed was just as comfortable, his clothes and blankets just as warm and soft. His food was the same as the other babies and small children ate. He crawled in the same brightly colored play-space, chewed and drooled on the same toys. He was changed and bathed and tucked into bed when scheduled or needed, just like all the other infants. If you had asked the men who cared for the children, they would have told you with absolute sincerity (and no little indignation) that of course they treated all the children the same. There was no way Jonr could know that he was not, in reality, one of them.

He knew. Oh, the caretakers meant well. Or perhaps more precisely, they meant to mean well, which is not, in the end, the same thing. As he grew more and more aware of his surroundings and his simple understanding of the world increased, he became more and more certain of a division between himself and the other boys. Even after he learned to speak about the things surrounding him, he couldn’t find words to describe that division, but it was absolutely there. And the men who cared for the children absolutely could or would not speak of it—but Jonr saw it in the shape of their actions, the slight chill in their voices when they spoke to or of him, the smallest, barely perceptible edge of roughness in their handling of him.

It was, for him, just the way things were. He did not yet imagine that things might have been different, that there might be some reason for the division, let alone that it might be avoidable or reparable. So he did not ask why, and he was not surprised when the other dozen or so children, no less perceptive than Jonr, withdrew from him and left him to play alone in the corner of the room or the section of the garden farthest from them.

It will hardly surprise my readers to learn that, as the other boys grew in understanding, their perception of that division between them and Jonr only intensified. We’ve often heard it said that children can be so cruel, and it’s no doubt true. Of course, it’s also true that children can be astonishingly generous and kind. Who can say why children are cruel in one situation and kind in another? All I can tell you is, these children were less and less kind to Jonr as they grew. It may have been the uncertainty of their own futures, the importance to those futures of pleasing the adults around them. But for whatever reason, by the time Jonr and his age-mates reached their First Convictment—around eight years, as my Chath Chenala readers will know—Jonr had become the constant target of the other boys’ contempt. When he went for help to the men who cared for the children, he was told that if the other boys didn’t like him, it was his own doing. That he should behave less like a victim and so present a less-appealing target to his tormentors. That he should ignore their words and actions.

It was impossible to ignore their words and actions. So it will be hardly any surprise that he did his best to flee.