Chapter Thirty
AVERY
I was not nervous in the way people expected.
I was nervous in the way I was always nervous: compressed, systematic, sorted into categories.
I'd been nervous about the artisanal salt redesign for three days.
I'd been nervous about Dean's pre-heat for months before I knew what to call it.
I was nervous about this the way I was nervous about every hard thing — which was to say, I'd checked my exit and confirmed there wasn't one, so I was going in.
Judge Osei-Kofi asked me to state my name and occupation for the record.
"Avery Yates," I said. "I'm a brand designer. I run a small firm."
"Ms. Yates, you're before this panel as the petitioning beta in a Mate Integration Recognition filing. Can you describe, in your own words, how your relationship with the other members of this pack began?"
She was giving me the room to start from the beginning. I recognized the gift of it.
"I met Dean Grant at a fundraiser for the advocacy center where he works," I said. "He was managing a pre-heat episode in a break room. I was there. I stayed because he needed someone to stay, not because I had specific knowledge of what I was doing or what it would mean."
I looked at Dean in the gallery. He was watching me with the warm steadiness that was exactly who he was.
"What happened after that?"
"We became friends. Close enough that he would come to my apartment when his pre-heat was difficult.
I learned over time that my presence had a stabilizing effect on his biology — that the symptoms were less severe, the duration shorter, the panic that comes with heat manageable in a way it wasn't otherwise.
" I paused. "I didn't ask for that to be true. It just was."
"Can you describe your relationship with Micah Kent and Isaac Price?"
"Different from Dean." I kept my voice level. "Micah and I met separately, before either of us knew the other was connected to anyone in the pack. He is essential to me. In a way I didn't expect to allow and don't regret."
"And Isaac Price?"
"Isaac is the person who named things. The things none of us were saying." I looked at Isaac in the gallery. "He sees the whole room."
A pause.
"Ms. Yates, opposing counsel has argued that the stabilizing effect you provide is not biologically irreplaceable — that artificial management programs can replicate the regulatory outcome. Can you respond to that?"
"I can." I looked at the panel. "The medical data in the record shows what artificial management produces versus what my presence produces. The numbers are different. But the numbers aren't actually the point."
"What is the point?"
"The point is that Dean manages. With the programs, he manages.
He is a functional, capable, highly effective person who manages his biology through the tools available to him.
" I paused. "What happens when I'm present isn't managing.
It's the absence of needing to manage. And I understand those might sound like the same thing, but I promise you they're not.
I've watched the difference for a year. Managing costs him something. The other thing gives something back."
The room was quiet.
"I can't tell you that's irreplaceable in the legal sense," I said. "Maybe it is and maybe it isn't. What I can tell you is that I'm asking this panel not to confuse what can be replicated with what should have to be."
Judge Osei-Kofi was looking at me.
"Ms. Yates," she said. "I have one more question, and it's not a legal question."
I waited.
"Why did you file this petition?"
I looked at her for a moment.
"Because someone named Clara Holt should have filed it thirty-two years ago," I said. "And she didn't, because the people around her let her believe she wasn't allowed to." A pause. "I'm allowed to. So I am."
The room held its breath.
Then the opposing counsel's assistant shifted in her chair, and someone in the gallery coughed, and the moment resolved back into process and the panel thanked me and I stepped down and walked back to the gallery and sat in the seat between Dean and Micah, and Micah's hand found mine and held it and I let it.
I'd done it.
I'd said the true thing.
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