About Sisterland by Martina Devlin Page B

here?”
    “You mean a meet,” Unity corrected her.
    “They’re men, too.”
    “But these men are more valuable than most. There’s no higher calling, for a man.”
    “How long do they stay in matingplace?”
    “Depends on how well they score. If a meet is particularly virile, he may keep going for twenty years. Every year, he’s rotated between different establishments.”
    Twenty years! Poor Harper. “Why move the men about so much?”
    “What a lot of questions, sister. Your curiosity is highly unusual.”
    “I’m floundering, just a little. I didn’t manage to attend a Mating Board seminar, you see.” Constance tried another tack, remembering that discontented expression. “Sister, it seems a waste of your talents to have you superintending pages cleaning up the readying room. Don’t you have admin to do? Or aren’t there opportunities to upskill?”
    “Too right it’s a waste of my talents,” muttered Unity. “Thank you for noticing.” She looked over her shoulder, before lowering her voice. “Meets are rotated in case bonds develop between them and matingplace staff. It’s rare. And unnatural. But it has to be guarded against.” She cleared her throat, checking back over her shoulder again.
    “What happens after twenty rotations? Does he go home then?” asked Constance.
    “By that stage, a meet is judged to be past his peak.”
    “And he goes back to where he came from?”
    “Few last that long. Most are spent before then.”
    “Spent?”
    “They discontinue.”
    “What a life!”
    Unity raised her eyebrows. “It is an honour.”
    Constance collected herself. “Of course. They must be proud to serve Sisterland.”
    “Being selected for matingplace is a plum position. They do no manual work, and their health is constantly checked. They eat the finest quality supplies, and have exercise and recreation opportunities.”
    Before Constance could ask any more questions, a bell pinged.
    “Covenant time,” said Unity. She held out a hand to Constance, and they formed a circle with the pages. “ Not the self but the State, not me but US. To the greater good: to universal sisterhood .”
    As soon as they were finished, Unity said she was needed elsewhere. Constance decided to take another shower, since there seemed to be no shortage of hot water in the Tower – unlike in her twoser, rationed to thirty-five minutes a week per head. Users could eke it out over seven days, or save it up, as they chose.
    She luxuriated under the hot stream of water, giving herself permission not to think, or fret, or plan. Just to bask. Afterwards, stretched out on a pop-up, on top of a counterpane of quilted taffeta, she decided to treat this as a holiday – something she had read about, but never experienced. There were snacks in the cubicle if she felt hungry, an entscreen for programmes of Nine-approved educational value, and a dial for Sisterland’s music-only radio channels. Speech radio had been withdrawn some decades earlier.
    She leaned out of the pop-up and opened the door of a locker. Books – what a treat! Books were restricted because the Nine said there were too many unhealthy messages in them. Fiction was no longer published. However, edited histories showing the PS Era to be harmful were allowed – although Constance suspected they were sanitised accounts. Philosophy books were permitted, along with approved biographies and self-help manuals. And, of course, Beloved’s Pearls had never gone out of print. Collections of verse were virtually uncensored, as Silence had discovered – the red-pens hadn’t realised how poetry could be home to anarchic ideas. However, hardly any sisters understood how to read poetry. The few who picked up a collection were bewildered by it, because they read it only with their eyes.
    Constance lifted out a volume to browse through. It was a book of photographs without captions. She became engrossed in the black-and-white images of ruined properties, ranging from