The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 24

by Gardner Dozois

  “Technician,” Jaramillo said. “From the up and out.”

  “Really? So does he know anything about the Nordwald-Gruenbaum plan?”

  I spread my hands out flat, trying to look harmless. “Look, I only met the kid twice, or I guess three times, if you — ”

  That caused some consternation; I could hear sudden buzz of voices, in a language I didn’t recognize. I wasn’t sure how many of them there were, but it seemed like at least half a dozen. I desperately wished I could see them, but that would very likely be a fatal move. After a moment, Jaramillo said, his voice now flat and expressionless, “You know the heir of Nordwald-Gruenbaum? You met Carlos Fernando in person?”

  “I met him. I don’t know him. Not really.”

  “Who did you say you were again?”

  I went through my story, this time starting at the very beginning, explaining how we had been studying the ecology of Mars, how we had been summoned to Venus to meet the mysterious Carlos Fernando. From time to time I was interrupted to answer questions – what was my relationship with Leah Hamakawa? (I wished I knew.) Were we married? Engaged? (No. No.) What was Carlos Fernando’s relationship with Dr. Hamakawa? (I wished I knew.) Had Carlos Fernando ever mentioned his feelings about the independent cities? (No.) His plans? (No.) Why was Carlos Fernando interested in terraforming (I don’t know.) What was Carlos Fernando planning? (I don’t know.) Why did Carlos Fernando bring Hamakawa to Venus? (I wished I knew.) What was he planning? What was he planning? (I don’t know. I don’t know.)

  The more I talked, the more sketchy it seemed, even to me.

  There was silence when I had finished talking. Then, the first voice said, take him back to the manta.

  I was led back inside and put into a tiny space, and a door clanged shut behind me. After a while, when nobody answered my call, I reached up to the goggles. They popped free with no more than a light touch, and, looking at them, I was still unable to see how they attached. I was in a storage hold of some sort. The door was locked.

  I contemplated my situation, but I couldn’t see that I knew any more now than I had before, except that I now knew that not all of the Venus cities were content with the status quo, and some of them were willing to go to some lengths to change it. They had deliberately shot me down, apparently thinking that I was Leah – or possibly even hoping for Carlos Fernando? It was hard to think that he would have been out of the protection of his body-guards. Most likely, I decided, the bodyguards had been there, never letting him out of sight, ready to swoop in if needed, but while Carlos Fernando and Leah had soared up and around the city, I had left the sphere covered by the guards, and that was the opportunity the pirates in the manta had taken. They had seen the air kayak flying alone and shot it out of the sky, betting my life on their skill, that they could swoop in and snatch the falling pilot out of mid-air.

  They could have killed me, I realized.

  And all because they thought I knew something – or rather, that Leah Hamakawa knew something – about Carlos Fernando’s mysterious plan.

  What plan? He was a twelve-year-old kid, not even a teenager, barely more than an overgrown child! What kind of plan could a kid have?

  I examined the chamber I was in, this time looking more seriously at how it was constructed. All the joints were welded, with no obvious gaps, but the metal was light, probably an aluminum-lithium alloy. Possibly malleable, if I had the time, if I could find a place to pry at, if I could find something to pry with.

  If I did manage to escape, would I be able to pilot the manta out of its hanger in the dirigible? Maybe. I had no experience with lighter than air vehicles, though, and it would be a bad time to learn, especially if they decided that they wanted to shoot at me. And then I would be – where? A thousand miles from anywhere. Fifty million miles from anywhere I knew.

  I was still mulling this over when Esteban and Esteban returned.

  “Strap in,” Esteban Jaramillo told me. “Looks like we’re taking you home.”

  The trip back was more complicated than the trip out. It involved two or more transfers from vehicle to vehicle, during some of which I was again “requested” to wear the opaque goggles.

  We were alone in the embarking station of some sort of public transportation. For a moment, the two Estebans had allowed me to leave the goggles transparent. Wherever we were, it was unadorned, drab compared to the florid excess of Hypatia, where even the bus stations – did they have bus stations? – would have been covered with flourishes and artwork.

  Jaramillo turned to me and, for the first time, pulled off his goggles so he could look me directly in the eye. His eyes were dark, almost black, and very serious.

  “Look,” he said, “I know you don’t have any reason to like us. We’ve got our reasons, you have to believe that. We’re desperate. We know that his father had some secret projects going. We don’t know what they were, but we know he didn’t have any use for the free cities. We think the young Gruenwald has something planned. If you can get through to Carlos Fernando, we want to talk to him.”

  “If you get him,” Esteban Francisco said. “Push him out a window. We’ll catch him. Easy.” He was grinning with a broad smile, showing all his teeth, as if to say he wasn’t serious, but I wasn’t at all sure he was joking.

  “We don’t want to kill him. We just want to talk,” Esteban Jaramillo said. “Call us. Please. Call us.”

  And with that, he reached up and put his goggles back on. Then Francisco reached over and tapped my goggles into opacity, and everything was dark, and, with one on either side of me, we boarded the transport – bus? zeppelin? rocket?

  Finally I was led into a chamber and was told to wait for two full minutes before removing the goggles, and after that I was free to do as I liked.

  It was only after the footsteps had disappeared that it occurred to me to wonder how I was supposed to contact them, if I did have a reason to. It was too late to ask, though; I was alone, or seemed to be alone.

  Was I being watched to see if I would follow orders, I wondered? Two full minutes. I counted, trying not to rush the count. When I got to a hundred and twenty, I took a deep breath, and finger-tapped the goggles to transparency.

  When my eyes focused, I saw I was in a large disembarking lounge with genetically-engineered pink grass and sculptures of iron and of jade. I recognized it. It was the very same lounge at which we had arrived at Venus three days ago – was it only three? Or had another day gone by?

  I was back in Hypatia City.

  Once again I was surrounded and questioned. As with the rest of Carlos Fernando’s domain, the questioning room was lushly decorated with silk-covered chairs and elegant teak carvings, but it was clearly a holding chamber.

  The questioning was by four women, Carlos Fernando’s guards, and I had the feeling that they would not hesitate to tear me apart if they thought I was being less than candid with them. I told them what had happened, and at every step they asked questions, making suggestions as to what I could have done differently. Why had I taken my kayak so far away from any of the other fliers and out away from the city? Why had I allowed myself to be captured, without fighting? Why didn’t I demand to be returned and refuse to answer any questions? Why could I describe none of the rebels I’d met, except for two men who had – as far as they could tell from my descriptions – no distinctive features?

  At the end of their questioning, when I asked to see Carlos Fernando, they told me that this would not be possible.

  “You think I allowed myself to be shot down deliberately?” I said, addressing myself to the chief among the guards, a lean woman in scarlet silk.

  “We don’t know what to think, Mr. Tinkerman,” she said. “We don’t like to take chances.”

  “What now, then?”

  “We can arrange transport to the built worlds,” she said. “Or even to the Earth.”

  “I don’t plan to leave without Doctor Hamakawa,” I said.

  She shrugged. “At the moment
, that’s still your option, yes,” she said. “At the moment.”

  “How can I get in contact with Doctor Hamakawa?”

  She shrugged. “If Doctor Hamakawa wishes, I’m sure she will be able to contact you.”

  “And if I want to speak to her?”

  She shrugged. “You’re free to go now. If we need to talk to you, we can find you.”

  I had been wearing one of gray jumpsuits of the pirates when I’d been returned to Hypatia; the guard women had taken that away. Now they gave me a suit of spider’s-silk in a lavender brighter than the garb an expensive courtesan would wear in the built worlds surrounding Earth, more of an evening gown than a suit. It was nevertheless subdued compared to the day-to-day attire of Hypatia citizens, and I attracted no attention. I discovered that the google-eyed sunglasses had been neatly placed in a pocket at the knees of the garment. Apparently people on Venus keep their sunglasses at their knees. Convenient when you’re sitting, I supposed. They hadn’t been recognized as a parting gift from the pirates, or, more likely, had been considered so trivial as to not be worth confiscating. I was unreasonably pleased; I liked those glasses.

  I found the Singh habitat with no difficulty, and when I arrived, Epiphany and Truman Singh were there to welcome me and to give me the news.

  My kidnapping was already old news. More recent news was being discussed everywhere.

  Carlos Fernando Delacroix Ortega de la Jolla y Nordwald-Gruenbaum had given a visitor from the outer solar system, Doctor Leah Hamakawa – a person who (they had heard) had actually been born on Earth – a rock.

  And she had not handed it back to him.

  My head was swimming.

  “You’re saying that Carlos Fernando is proposing marriage? To Leah? That doesn’t make any sense. He’s a kid, for Jove’s sake. He’s not old enough.”

  Truman and Epiphany Singh looked at one another and smiled. “How old were you when we got married?” Truman asked her. “Twenty?”

  “I was almost twenty-one before you accepted my book and my rock,” she said.

  “So, in Earth years, what’s that?” he said. “Thirteen?”

  “A little over twelve,” she said. “About time I was married up, I’d say.”

  “Wait,” I said. “You said you were twelve years old when you got married?”

  “Earth years,” she said. “Yes, that’s about right.”

  “You married at twelve? And you had — ” I suddenly didn’t want to ask, and said, “Do all women on Venus marry so young?”

  “There are a lot of independent cities,” Truman said. “Some of them must have different customs, I suppose. But it’s the custom more or less everywhere I know.”

  “But that’s — ” I started to say, but couldn’t think of how to finish. Sick? Perverted? But then, there were once a lot of cultures on Earth that had child marriages.

  “We know the outer reaches have different customs,” Epiphany said. “Other regions do things differently. The way we do it works for us.”

  “A man typically marries up at age twenty-one or so,” Truman explained. “Say, twelve, thirteen years old, in Earth years. Maybe eleven. His wife will be about fifty or sixty – she’ll be his instructor, then, as he grows up. What’s that in Earth years – thirty? I know that in old Earth custom, both sides of a marriage are supposed to be the same age, but that’s completely silly, is it not? Who’s going to be the teacher, I should say?

  “And then, when he grows up, by the time he reaches sixty or so he’ll marry down, find a girl who’s about twenty or twenty-one, and he’ll serve as a teacher to her, I should say. And, in time, she’ll marry down when she’s sixty, and so on.”

  It seemed like a form of ritualized child abuse to me, but I thought it would be better not to say that aloud. Or, I thought, maybe I was reading too much into what he was saying. It was something like the medieval apprentice system. When he said teaching, maybe I was jumping to conclusions to think that he was talking about sex. Maybe they held off on the sex until the child grew up some. I thought I might be happier not knowing.

  “A marriage is braided like a rope,” Epiphany said. “Each element holds the next.”

  I looked from Truman to Epiphany and back. “You, too?” I asked Truman. “You were married when you were twelve?”

  “In Earth years, I was thirteen, when I married up Triolet,” he said. “Old. Best thing that ever happened to me. God, I needed somebody like her to straighten me out back then. And I needed somebody to teach me about sex, I should say, although I didn’t know it back then.”

  “And Triolet — ”

  “Oh, yes, and her husband before her, and before that. Our marriage goes back a hundred and ninety years, to when Raj Singh founded our family; we’re a long braid, I should say.”

  I could picture it now. Every male in the braid would have two wives, one twenty years older; one twenty years younger. And every female would have an older and a younger husband. The whole assembly would indeed be something you could think of as a braid, alternating down generations. The interpersonal dynamics must be terribly complicated. And then I suddenly remembered why we were having this discussion. “My god,” I said. “You’re serious about this. So you’re saying that Carlos Fernando isn’t just playing a game. He actually plans to marry Leah.”

  “Of course,” Epiphany said. “It’s a surprise, but then, I’m not at all surprised. It’s obviously what his Excellency was planning right from the beginning. He’s a devious one, he is.”

  “He wants to have sex with her.”

  She looked surprised. “Well, yes, of course. Wouldn’t you? If you were twenty – I mean, twelve years old? Sure you’re interested in sex. Weren’t you? It’s about time his Excellency had a teacher.” She paused a moment. “I wonder if she’s any good? Earth people – she probably never had a good teacher of her own.”

  That was a subject I didn’t want to pick up on. Our little fling on Mars seemed a long way away, and my whole body ached just thinking of it.

  “Sex, it’s all that young kids think of,” Truman cut in. “Sure. But for all that, I should say that sex is the least important part of a braid. A braid is a business, Mr. Tinkerman, you should know that. His Excellency Carlos Fernando is required to marry up into a good braid. The tradition, and the explicit terms of the inheritance, are both very clear. There are only about five braids on Venus that meet the standards of the trust, and he’s too closely related to half of them to be able to marry in. Everybody has been assuming he would marry the wife of the Telios Delacroix braid; she’s old enough to marry down now, and she’s not related to him closely enough to matter. His proposition to Doctor Hamakawa – yes, that has everybody talking.”

  I was willing to grasp at any chance. “You mean, his marriage needs to be approved? He can’t just marry anybody he likes?”

  Truman Singh shook his head. “Of course he can’t! I just told you. This is business as well as propagating the genes for the next thousand years. Most certainly he can’t marry just anybody.”

  “But I think he just outmaneuvered them all,” Epiphany added. “They thought they had him boxed in, didn’t they? But they never thought that he’d go find an outworlder.”

  “They?” I said. “Who’s they?”

  “They never thought to guard against that,” Epiphany continued.

  “But he can’t marry her, right?” I said. “For sure, she’s not of the right family. She’s not of any family. She’s an orphan, she told me that. The institute is her only family.”

  Truman shook his head. “I think Epiphany’s right,” he said. “He just may have outfoxed them, I should say. If she’s not of a family, doesn’t have the dozens or hundreds of braided connections that everybody here must have, that means they can’t find anything against her.”

  “Her scientific credentials – I bet they won’t be able to find a flaw there,” Epiphany said. “And, an orphan? That’s brilliant. Just brilliant. No family ties at all. I bet he k
new that. He worked hard to find just the right candidate, you can bet.” She shook her head, smiling. “And we all thought he’d be another layabout, like his father.”

  “This is awful,” I said. “I’ve got to do something.”

  “You? You’re far too old for Dr. Hayakawa.” Epiphany looked at me appraisingly. “A good looking man, though – if I were ten, fifteen years younger, I’d give you another look. I have cousins with girls the right age. You’re not married, you say?”

  Outside the Singh quarters in sector Carbon, the sun was breaking the horizon as the city blew into the daylit hemisphere.

  I hadn’t been sure whether Epiphany’s offer to find me a young girl had been genuine, but it was not what I needed, and I’d refused as politely as I could manage.

  I had gone outside to think, or as close to “outside” as the floating city allowed, where all the breathable gas was inside the myriad bubbles. But what could I do? If it was a technical problem, I would be able to solve it, but this was a human problem, and that had always been my weakness.

  From where I stood, I could walk to the edge of the world, the transparent gas envelope that held the breathable air in, and kept the carbon dioxide of the Venus atmosphere out. The sun was surrounded by a gauzy haze of thin high cloud, and encircled by a luminous golden halo, with mock suns flying in formation to the left and the right. The morning sunlight slanted across the cloudtops. My eyes hurt from the direct sun. I remembered the sun goggles in my knee pocket, and pulled them out. I pressed them onto my eyes, and tapped on the right side until the world was a comfortable dim.

  Floating in the air, in capital letters barely darker than the background, were the words LINK: READY.

  I turned my head, and the words shifted with my field of view, changing from dark letters to light depending on the background.

  A communications link was open? Certainly not a satellite relay; the glasses couldn’t have enough power to punch through to orbit. Did it mean the manta was hovering in the clouds below?

  “Hello, hello,” I said, talking to the air. “Testing. Testing?”