The Y Chromosome

by Leona Gom

  Delacour nodded, rather unconvincingly, but she began vaguely brushing herself off, and Bowden, watching her coordination carefully, decided she was regaining her control. She fitted the weapon into Delacour’s hand. “I’m sure you won’t have to use it,” she said. “But just in case.”

  Delacour nodded dully again. “I wouldn’t even have thought of the stunner,” she said.

  “It was on the pack-list. I remembered seeing them put it in. Now I have to go after your horse. Wait right here. Okay?”

  “Yes. I’ll wait right here.”

  Bowden ran back to her horse and pulled herself on. The animal needed no urging to leap into a wild gallop. Feeling the great chest pumping under her, the wind and mane cutting at her face, Bowden felt for the first time the exhilaration of success: she hadn’t given in to fear and panic; Delacour was the one lying helpless in the underbrush, and she was the one who had known what to do. Finally she pulled back on the reins, slowed her horse to a canter, and began to shout the word the person at the Peace had told her.

  “Come,” she yelled, but it was as much a shout of triumph as it was a call for Delacour’s horse. “Come!” Her heart beat in strong, exultant thumps at her chest. It frightened her a little, this raw excitement — what had she done, after all, except point a stunner at an animal and pull the trigger? Was this how the males had felt, long ago, the hunters, the ones who killed, finally, just for sport?

  The horse did not come, but when she found it grazing at the side of the trail it made no move to resist capture. She picked up its reins and tied them to her saddle horn, and it trotted obligingly along behind her down the trail.

  But when they neared the place where they’d met the bear the horses caught its scent again, and it was all Bowden could do to keep them under control. Delacour’s horse reared, and then, realizing it couldn’t break free, planted its legs and refused to move. Bowden dragged it ahead one stiff step at a time, her own horse shaking its head in frantic disagreement, bouncing forward only with the greatest urging.

  What Bowden saw when they rounded the corner almost made her drop the reins. The bear was still where she’d left it, but there was something else on the trail — a supply truck. She’d known they would probably encounter one en route, but she’d expected to hear its noise well in advance; this one had the motor turned off as its driver and Delacour stood looking at the bear blocking its path.

  The horses continued to plunge and toss their heads, struggling for escape, so Bowden dismounted and tied them to a tree well back from the road, and then she walked over to join Delacour.

  “You did this, eh?” said the driver, an old, small-eyed person smelling of garlic, with a loud, annihilating voice. Her expression gave no hint of whether she approved or not.

  “Yes,” Bowden said nervously. “I was afraid it was going to attack.”

  The driver grunted, prodded at the bear with her boot. The lines above her mouth pulled tighter. “I don’t like bears,” she said.

  “Do you think I did any permanent damage? I hit it three times with the stunner.”

  “It was coming toward me,” Delacour added. “I’m sure I was in danger.”

  “You should close its eyes. So they don’t get dried out.” When Bowden and Delacour only looked at her uneasily, she sighed loudly, bent over, and pushed down the animal’s thick eyelids. The bear looked better that way, calm, asleep.

  “Can you get past?” Bowden asked, looking at the supply truck and the way the bear was blocking half the road.

  “I got by worse things on this road. One of these days they’ll bring the train up here and I won’t have to make this pissing trip anymore.”

  “But it must be interesting,” Delacour said, “being the one who can have a truck. Who can drive.”

  “Interesting? Merde. It’s the worst job there is.” She nudged the bear again. “Your horses won’t want to go by this thing, you know. You better take a big detour.”

  “I suppose so,” Bowden said.

  “Look — you want to see nice scenery there’s a better way to Fairview than this road — it’s all away from the river now. But you go back up a quarter kilometre and there’s a trail that goes south, along the river. It takes a few more hours, but if you want to see pretty country that’s where it is. Just watch out for the Isolists.”

  “Who?” Bowden asked.

  “The Isolists. They’re some religious group. Harmless enough — I’ve met some of them. But they want to be left alone. So we respect that. Rumour has it they’ve been inbred so long some of them aren’t, you know, quite right.”

  Bowden could feel Delacour’s interest quicken. No, she thought wearily.

  “Quite right?” Delacour asked.

  “Well — birth defects. You know.”

  “The doctors are supposed to prevent that.”

  The driver shrugged. “Maybe they don’t want it prevented. I don’t know. It’s none of my business. It’s just rumours. Well —” She clapped her hands onto her thighs so loudly it made Bowden jump. “I better go. I got frozen stuff in there.” And she began to walk back to her truck.

  “Thanks,” Delacour called after her.

  The driver raised her hand and then swung herself up into her truck without using the toe-holds. They watched as she started it up, a loud and ugly roar worse than any animal’s. Its four huge tires ground slowly forward, veered off the road and into the brush at the side as it passed the bear, then climbed back into its usual track. As it passed the horses they reared and whinnied in terror, as afraid of the machine as of the bear, and Bowden ran toward them to make sure they wouldn’t tear themselves loose.

  “Easy,” she said, “easy,” patting their sweaty necks. When the truck was past, its snuffling noise diminishing in the distance, they calmed a little, but their heads kept jerking up when she reached for their bridles, and their eyes rolled nervously at any movement. Delacour came up beside her.

  “Well,” she said. “That was quite an adventure.” She reached out her arms and folded them around Bowden. “You were wonderful,” she said. “I’m so proud of you.”

  It wasn’t quite the right word, proud, like a parent pleased with a child doing better than expected, but it would have to do. Yes, Bowden thought, it would do.

  Delacour drew back and held out her hand to Bowden. Bowden was surprised to see it still held the stunner. “Take it,” Delacour said, “before I shoot one of the horses with it or something.”

  “You’ve one, too, you know.” Bowden took the stunner and tucked it into her pack.

  “I’d never have thought to look for it, though.”

  “Are you feeling all right now? Do you hurt anywhere besides your leg?”

  Delacour shook her head. “I’m okay. Don’t worry.”

  “We should probably go, then. I don’t know how long the bear will be out.”

  “About what that driver said. About the alternate route. What do you think?”

  “We’re talking about kilometres out of the way, Delacour!”

  “But it was so lovely along the river — we can’t get lost if we just follow it. And we’ve our maps; they show all the trails. We’ll always know the road is straight to the north of us somewhere. We can cut back when we’re close to Fairview. Come on — we’re ahead of schedule, anyway.”

  Why was it so easy for Delacour? She could have been killed, yet here she was eager to take more chances. Well, all right, Bowden thought resolutely — I can be that way, too; I was the one who stopped the bear.

  “Okay. Let’s do it, then.”

  Delacour grinned. “Great,” she said. “Wonderful.” She untied her reins quickly and swung herself into the saddle, wincing as her bruised leg slapped into place, and turned her horse back the way they had come.

  Bowden had little choice but to follow. The horses skittered nervously at first,
as though they were walking on ice, but as the bear’s scent decreased they lowered their heads and resumed the light trot they preferred.

  It was easy to find the trail the driver had spoken of, and, without comment, Bowden followed Delacour in. Immediately she had misgivings. The trail was overgrown and narrow, not wide enough for them to ride two abreast, and the branches Delacour and her horse dragged forward came slapping back at her. She began to lag behind and then, worried, would urge her horse ahead until Delacour was in sight again. The denseness of the forest made her uneasy; she kept peering to the side expecting a bear to lunge at them any moment, and several times she reached into her pack for the reassuring feel of the stunner. Her horse picked up her nervousness and shied at any movement around them; when a partridge flew up from the underbrush to her right like a ragged piece of the forest breaking free, it frightened them both so much she almost fell.

  She was just about to shout at Delacour that this was ridiculous, that she wouldn’t go on, when they broke free of the forest onto the riverbank and were looking down the smooth parabolas of hills to the river flickering in the sun.

  “I’m glad we’re through that,” Bowden said. “I was getting welts from the branches.”

  Delacour dismounted stiffly, rubbing at her thigh and her buttocks. “I’m getting welts on my ass,” she said.

  Bowden swung herself down, too. The horses began rummaging through the grass. She wished she felt confident enough to take their bridles off and let them eat properly without the bits chafing their mouths, but she had had such trouble getting the bits in this morning that she decided it wasn’t worth the struggle. But she looked at them guiltily, imagining what it would be like to eat with a rod of metal clamped between her teeth.

  Delacour wandered to the edge of the bank, startling into flight a flock of small red-winged birds that erupted from behind a stand of white birch trees like a shower of sparks. She pointed at two thick grey stumps in the water, close to the south shore. “Those could be what’s left of bridge pylons,” she said. “According to the map there was an old road here once.”

  Bowden came over, shaded her eyes with her hand, and squinted to look. “It’s hard to imagine. A bridge. So far north.”

  “There’ll probably be a bridge there again someday. Fifty years ago the idea of a train to the Peace would have sounded absurd, too.”

  “I hope it never happens,” Bowden said, “I hope it never changes.”

  “Never changes? Of course it will change. It has to.”

  A sudden dense cloud of small flies swept up from the river like a piece of polka-dotted gauze and engulfed them, slamming into their eyes and ears, tangling in their hair. The horses snorted, jerking up and tossing their heads. Then just as suddenly the insects were gone.

  “Aagh,” Delacour said, spitting. “One in my mouth.”

  Bowden combed her fingers several times through her hair, but even so she continued to feel little tingles on her scalp that made her reach up and scratch.

  “That’s nature,” Delacour said. “Bears and flies.”

  Thinking of the bear made Bowden uneasy again, and she looked into the bush from which they’d come. “We better get going,” she said.

  They rode on. Delacour kept pointing at things for Bowden to see, then began some long explanation about the meanders in rivers. “Oh, yes,” Bowden would say, but her mind wandered off into anxious little whirlpools of her own as she watched the sun starting to lean into the west.

  About an hour later they reached a stream, which, although small, cut a sharp gully in front of them, and they had to head inland for half a kilometre before they found a place to cross. The horses strode into the water without hesitation, although in the deepest part it reached almost to their stomachs. Bowden cried out as she saw Delacour’s horse in front of her stumble and almost fall. All she could do was hang on to her reins and saddle horn and wait until it was over. As the horses bent to drink on the other shore, Delacour took out her map and located the stream.

  “Look here,” she said, holding out the map to Bowden, who was too far away to see anything but a scribble of lines, “just across the stream there’s a trail that will bring us out about five kilometres before Fairview — let’s take it.”

  Bowden nodded. Delacour trusted the map; Bowden trusted Delacour. The horses, who trusted no one, beat their wet tails on their riders’ legs and drank more water than they needed, just in case.

  The trail was just where Delacour expected to find it, and it was less overgrown and narrow than the one they had first taken away from the road, although they still had to go single file in spots. Sometimes they would break into a clearing that was rich with strawberries or saskatoon bushes, but although Delacour pleaded to stop Bowden kept eyeing the sun and insisted they go on.

  “Now what?” Delacour said suddenly, reining to a stop as they were halfway across one of the clearings.

  On the other side were two trails, one angling slightly west, the other north.

  “Oh, no,” Bowden moaned.

  Delacour was digging out her map, which was so crumpled by now she no longer tried to fold it along its original creases. “We may be here,” she said dubiously, pointing at a wrinkle. “Or here.”

  Bowden took a deep breath. “Which path should we take, then, do you think?”

  “I don’t suppose it matters,” Delacour said cheerfully, wadding up the map. “They both probably come out at the main road eventually.” She urged her horse forward. “Let’s take the westerly one. Okay?” She looked over her shoulder at Bowden, who only nodded and nudged her horse to follow.

  This trail seemed wider than the one they had just left, and that reassured Bowden at first, but after a few kilometres she noticed it seemed to veer farther westward, perhaps even southerly, and she confirmed it on her compass.

  “Well, do you want to go back?” Delacour asked, “take the other one?”

  “I don’t know,” she said miserably.

  They decided to try a few more kilometres to see if the southerly direction persisted, but when they stopped again, on a lightly wooded knoll, to confer, they were still indecisive — the trail was no longer going south, but neither was it going north. Delacour brought out her map again, but it was no help; they could have been anywhere.

  “Look,” Bowden said suddenly, pointing. “Smoke.”

  And there it was, a languid, grey curl of it sauntering skyward, a breeze tugging at it slightly near the top. It seemed to be ahead of them on the trail and somewhat to the south.

  “Is it Fairview, do you think?” Bowden asked. She felt greatly relieved.

  “I don’t think so. Fairview should be off to our right somewhere. It’s probably one of the Isolist farms.”

  “Who?”

  “You know. The driver told us about them.”

  “Oh. Yes. She said they were odd. That they didn’t like strangers.”

  “Well, we can head that way, anyway. They could give us directions. It might be interesting to meet them.”

  “They don’t like strangers. We’ve no right to bother them.”

  “They can give us directions, for heaven’s sake,” Delacour said.

  She kneed her horse forward, not waiting for Bowden’s reply, and Bowden’s horse, used to the pattern by now, followed obediently behind without waiting for the nudge from Bowden’s heels.

  When they descended from the knoll, they lost sight of the smoke, but the trail continued its westerly direction, so they knew the smoke was still somewhere ahead and off to the south. They found themselves looking more and more to their left for signs of habitation, the alterations in the landscape that only humans could make. But there was nothing, only the impervious forest, the trees holding out their greedy leaves to the sun to be filled. Once a small path angled off to the north and they considered taking it but decided not to.

&
nbsp; Eventually, discouraged, they stopped on a small rise and looked around, but the paring of smoke, which should have been almost straight to the south of them by now, seemed to have disappeared. Delacour dismounted, moaning and holding her bruised thigh. Bowden, after a minute, slid off her horse, too, and they stood there in silence, stretching and rubbing their tense muscles. Delacour took down her pack and pulled out a long-sleeved shirt, which she slipped on over her sleeveless one, and Bowden thought vaguely that she should do the same, that it would protect her from the sun and slap of branches, but it seemed too much trouble and too late in the day. She took a drink from her water pouch, flipped her horse’s reins around a branch, climbed up on a mound of rocks, and sat down, closing her eyes and letting the slight breeze paddling through the leaves above dip her face into light, shade, light, shade.

  And then she heard them.

  Not voices, not quite, but human sounds; she knew that instantly. She whirled to her right and there they were, in a meadow beneath her, where the rocks she was on formed a slight ravine. They were partly obscured by a patch of willows, but she could see them clearly enough to tell they were naked, and making love. One was on top of the other, and was broad-backed and blonde; of the other Bowden could only see a corona of black hair and her widely spread legs and chubby arms, which were wrapped across the back of the first. The one on top was making deep pushing movements with her pelvis onto the pelvis of the other, and Bowden watched, fascinated, wondering how this could be satisfying for either of them. They must be Isolists, she thought; obviously their mating rituals were different from hers. She knew she should stop watching, but she couldn’t pull her eyes away.

  “What’s wrong?” Delacour’s loud voice made her start, and she unfastened her gaze from the couple, who were too engrossed to have heard. As though she had to protect them, she simply shook her head and began cautiously to climb down. But Delacour, curious, was coming up to meet her, and before Bowden could draw her away she had reached the top and looked down. Bowden could hear her quick intake of breath.