Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction

by A. M. Dellamonica

  “It’s a hell of a chance, but —” He handed me back the binoculars, and crossed the bridge to pick up the piece of mirror. “Tommy, does that window open?”

  “Yes.” I eased the catches back, and he held up his free hand.

  “Wait, not yet. Stefan, on my word, I want you to signal full power — I want Nereiade to think we’re trying to get away.”

  “They’ll hit us again,” Mab said.

  “That’s what I want.” Cullinane stooped to take another look at Nereiade, still keeping station as neatly as a Navy cutter.

  “What is that light?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t have a name,” Cullinane said. “It projects a special frequency of light that stuns the eyes and mind. Some hypnotists use it to put subjects into a trace, which is how I know about it, and why I thought of it when I heard the stories. But I’ve never seen it used on this scale.”

  “If they hit us again, we’ll all be under,” Mab pointed out, and Cullinane shook his head.

  “Trust me, Stefan.”

  Mab sighed. “I do.”

  “Full ahead.”

  “Full ahead aye,” Mab answered automatically, and reached across to move the lever of the engine room telegraph to full ahead. The warning bell sounded, kept sounding, and Cullinane nodded to me.

  “Open the window.”

  I slid back the heavy pane, and he raised the mirror, keeping it just below the opening. The bell stopped, the needle finally moving on the repeater, and the deck lurched under my feet as the engines came up to full power. The vibrations slowed as abruptly as they’d begun, and I saw figures moving on Nereiade’s bridge.

  “Get down!” Cullinane shouted, and in the same moment raised the mirror. I ducked, but not before I saw the light’s projector swing toward us, shutters opening. I could see the flash through my closed lids, but it was somehow behind me, and when I bobbed up again, the man at the light stood frozen, and there was no movement on Nereiade’s bridge.

  “You turned it back on them!”

  “So far.” Cullinane let the mirror slide to the deck. “We’re not out of the woods yet—”

  He stopped, and I lifted my axe, only to realize what he’d seen. Captain Turner was moving, shaking his head, the helmsman blinking to life beside him.

  “What the devil?”

  “Pirates,” Cullinane said. “As I warned you, sir. You and your men have been knocked out, and the pirates may still have the engine room—”

  “That’s her,” the helmsman said. “That’s Nereiade.”

  “She’s out of commission at the moment,” Cullinane said, and one of the speaking tubes whistled.

  Turner grabbed it from the bulkhead. “Bridge here.”

  “Captain! Thank God.” It was impossible to recognize the voice, and Turner frowned.

  “Identify yourself, man.”

  “It’s Martin, sir. We’ve just broken out of the forward crew’s quarters. I don’t know how we got there —”

  “Stow that for now.” Turner looked at Cullinane. “Can you hold the bridge? I intend to take back my ship.”

  “We can do that, sir,” Cullinane answered, and Turner turned back to the speaking tube.

  “Martin! Bring the men aft to D Deck, the crew stairs. If you meet anyone who isn’t crew or passenger, put them out of action.”

  “With pleasure, sir,” Martin answered, and Turner glanced again at Nereiade, now falling away to starboard under the pressure of wind and waves.

  “Do we have steering way, Mr. Mab?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Then hold her steady. We’ll take care of things from here.”

  I leaned against the bulkhead, not quite daring to put down the axe, though I let its head rest on the deck. “What about Nereiade?”

  “With luck, we’ll have a chance to take boats over,” Cullinane answered, but I could see she was already starting to drift away into the fog.

  Miss Davis gave a soft cry. “Max, we can’t just do nothing—”

  “What would you have me do, Lottie? We don’t even have control of our own engines yet.”

  She put her hand to her mouth, muffling her words. “I know. God, I do know.”

  After a moment, I held out my hand, and she took it, moving close so that we stood shoulder to shoulder against the bulkhead. “I’ll find her,” she whispered, after a moment. “I’ll find my little girl.”

  I put my arm around her shoulders, wishing I had something more I could do, and we settled ourselves to wait.

  It took Captain Turner a good hour to winkle the pirates out of the engine room, and then they damaged the condensers, so that we had to heave to for repairs. That lasted well into the night, and by then Nereiade was long gone. Miss Davis huddled dry-eyed in our cabin, a cup of coffee laced with brandy cooling in her hands, and I sat with her, silent, not knowing what to say. Cullinane came and went, sometimes with Mab, sometimes alone, and finally as the naiad clock struck midnight, they returned together, disheveled and, in Mab’s case, grease-stained, but with a certain air of satisfaction about them. I moved to mix them drinks, and Miss Davis fixed them with a stare.

  “Well?”

  “Nereiade’s well away,” Cullinane said bluntly. “Turner put out a general radio call, and the Diamond Shoals Light spotted her heading south.”

  “Damn it, Max!”

  “But there’s some good news.” Cullinane took a swallow of his drink, working his shoulders as though they were sore. “We have a name.”

  “The pirates talked,” Mab said, with a dark smile.

  Cullinane nodded. “Howell Hall, supposedly based in New Orleans. Mind you, it’s probably an alias, but it’s more than we had before. And—Lottie, when Nereiade was taken, Bella was spared. They don’t know why, maybe just because she was a child, but Hall had her taken onto the tender with him when they parted company with Nereiade, and presumably took her back to New Orleans with him.”

  Miss Davis wept then, hard and nearly silent, a storm that shook her like a giant hand. I put my arm around her, half afraid she’d push me away, but she clung closer, her head on my shoulder, until at least she could master herself and sit up again. “Oh, God, Max, are you sure?”

  “The men were sure,” Mab said, and Cullinane nodded again.

  “It’s still a long shot, but—better than nothing.”

  “Yes,” she said fiercely. “Yes, indeed. You’ll help me—keep helping me?”

  “You know I will,” Cullinane said.

  “Let me help, too,” I said. “I know a lot about my father’s work, and I’ve been around the waterfront all my life. I can be useful.”

  “It’s dangerous,” Cullinane said, but I wasn’t looking at him.

  “Are you sure you know what you’re asking?” Miss Davis said.

  “I’m sure.” I took her hand in both of mine. “Please.”

  She nodded slowly, and I heard Cullinane sigh. “All right. For now. When we get to New Orleans —”

  “I’ll be ready,” I said. “We’ll find her.”

  Miss Davis set her other hand on top of mine. “I believe we will.”

  THE GIRLS WERE spayed. That is the only word for it. Four sisters, the oldest five and the youngest barely two, with dirt-crusted fingers and baggy t-shirts, huddled next to a police van. They are identical in the way of twins; different sizes but, excepting perhaps some scars and birthmarks, their bodies are the same. The picture of them standing together next to the van is like a textbook illustration of early human development. And hidden under their shirts, carved low across the belly, the one scar they all share.

  None of the many news services that reported the story said that the girls had been spayed like bitches. In the articles, they were “subjected to hysterectomies,” or similar overly-clinical distortions. But the video of the police raid on the Charismatic Church of the Redeemer shows the Reverend Kenny Kendall’s eyes wheeling in their sunken sockets as he is led out in handcuffs. While there are no known vide
os of the sermons he delivered to his followers in their South Texas compound, if they were anything like the screeds on his website then he told his congregation that “a person in whom a seed has not been planted cannot have a soul, and so is not a person true, but an animal grown obscenely person-shaped.” It seems clear that what Reverend Kendall saw growing up and wearing out shoes in his perfect community were not little girls. They were vermin. Only a matter of years away from becoming a pestilence. What he had ordered done was a veterinary procedure.

  Interviewed in prison, Reverend Kendall explains. “It took a while to realize what we had, of course. What they were. I’d imagine it takes a while for everyone, you know. And how could we suspect? None of us knew what Candace had done.” Candace Montross, the girls’ mother and former member of Kendall’s congregation. “But once Johnnie had his accident, everyone knew it weren’t his seed showing in Candace. Then the truth came out, as it is wont to do.”

  Candace was taken to Camp Kendall (as locals in nearby Wharton call the church compound) by her parents at age eleven. At seventeen she ran away and hitchhiked to Houston, but found herself ill-equipped for independent living and called her parents to beg money. She was tracked down, taken back to the compound, and married to Johnnie Montross. Her oldest daughter was born nine months later. She’s now twenty-three and still legally married to Johnnie, fifteen years her senior and paraplegic since falling off a roof a year and a half ago. She’s also pregnant again, for the second time since Johnnie’s accident.

  “She whored herself in Houston, obviously, and caught it and brought it back with her. Couldn’t do anything to her directly with her parents right there in the pews, a man and a woman. But even they eventually came to understand it weren’t an abortion. They were as disgusted as anyone at the idea of Candace bearing more of those monsters. All with their own daughter’s face! What does it mean, I ask you, for the institution of motherhood, for all of us, if we let that sort of thing happen?”

  There are certainly monsters in this world. Sometimes they ask valuable questions. What does it mean, indeed?

  THE LIGHT SLANTING through the windows had dimmed to nothing while Tess typed. A moth landed on the screen of her huge new monitor, now the brightest thing in the room. She had spent years of her life submerged in her recliner, cup of coffee at hand, ancient heavy laptop balanced on her stomach. Judy had long offered to replace the battered machine, but Tess was attached. She liked how solid it was, the familiar heat of it, every well-earned scratch in the plastic. She’d swapped out the keyboard twice and the screen hinges once. No other laptop felt right to her. But when Tess finally started to show, Judy came home with a new TV stand, wireless keyboard, and that 30-inch beast of a monitor.

  “Your computer is a fetus panini press,” she said. “You can have it back in five months. Until then, it’s living on the stand.”

  Judy had developed a brooding concern for Tess’s physical wellbeing. Judy’s sister had quipped it was “typical Daddy anxiety,” but Tess knew it was also partly guilt over having won the donor argument. Judy’s position that they should use an unknown donor, that it was more important to control for all-too-common legal risks rather than astronomically unlikely medical ones, had eventually won Tess over. But in the aftermath of that victory, she had become overprotective of Tess’s health, solicitously interrogating every groan and sniffle. Tess had told her to knock it off, but it was kind of gratifying.

  So now Tess typed her articles on keys that felt fragile under her fingers. And the mug by her side was just milk with a splash of coffee for flavor. Her obstetrician had recommended that she quit coffee entirely. Something about her chronic borderline anemia. The first trimester was supposed to be bad enough all on its own, but she had a private theory that the worst of her troubles, from muscle aches to nausea, had really been due to caffeine withdrawal.

  Tess got up to turn on some lights and brush away the moth. The screen was radiating a haze of heat and she flushed with mild resentment. She leaned over the laptop to review her words. Tess guessed that her editor might complain about the “spayed like bitches” line. She moved to change it to something tamer, then stopped herself and left the line intact.

  It was her first time working for this editor. She had spent the last four years freelancing for the alternative press, building an audience writing articles for The Hiccup and Bentedge and The Stage Left. An audience that apparently included Lynette Robin, features editor for American Moment, who had contacted her out of the blue with a contract offer for a story on HCP. The police raid on Camp Kendall had gotten a lot of attention, and Lynette wanted to publish an overview article on what had befallen Candace and her daughters while the news was still hot. Tess had been reporting on the issue for long enough and was Texas-local; could she, Lynette had asked, meet an aggressive deadline for a feature story? If she could, the job was hers.

  Tess turned on networking, and all the new email alerts popped up in the corner of her screen. There was no sign of the message she was hoping for, the one from Candace Montross’s attorney saying that his client had finally consented to an interview. But right at the top of her inbox was Lynette, writing back about the outline proposal she’d requested Tess send.

  Outline looks good. Just a few things: I’m not sure about a whole section on the Chinese one-child policy. Not because it isn’t relevant, but just because American Moment has something of a mandate to focus on contemporary American culture. Maybe we could include a condensed version of that content as a sidebar? Or spin it into a followup article once we’ve built interest? Let me know what you think. Also, you need a section detailing the mechanisms of the disease. I know that sort of thing wasn’t necessary when you were writing for The Hiccup, but for much of our readership your article will be their introduction to this condition. I think it’s worth nailing down the specifics. Other than that, green light all the way. I’ve attached the travel reimbursement form, just fill in the blanks for your expenses. And start sending me copy when you have it. I’m excited about this one. — LR

  She was so hands-on. Cheerful about it, but still Tess bristled. She’d never been asked to submit in-progress copy before. The request felt invasive, like she was being asked to spread her closet out on the front lawn. The readership was worth it; an article for American Moment would get ten times as many readers as anything else she’d written. More, even. But the thought of several weeks of back-and-forth made her tired.

  Everything made her tired. She slapped her laptop closed, and the monitor spasmed through a handful of test screens before settling sullenly to black.

  Upstairs, in the glass and cherrywood cavern of their bedroom, Tess found Judy already in bed. She was propped up on a pile of pillows, reading glasses tight under her eyes, pallid in the wash of light from her bedside lamp and her tablet. When Tess came in, Judy gestured at a suitcase standing in the corner.

  “I packed your bag,” she said without looking up from her screen. “We’ll throw it in the car and I can take you straight to the airport from the party. Look through it. See if I forgot anything.”

  Tess dragged her fingertips over the rough nylon of the suitcase. She rocked it back on its wheels and pinched the black rubber trim. “Did you forget anything?”

  “No.”

  Tess abandoned the bag and wandered off toward her nightclothes. “What are you working on?”

  “Schools. Still schools. Not sure there’s a preschool in this city that’ll do. Three visits this week, and I’ve come away three different flavors of disappointed. I’m on the verge of deciding to just start my own.”

  Tuesday night, and already three more visits. “Do you know anything about how to run a school?” asked Tess, shrugging into her pajamas.

  “Nothing. Yet. But somewhere in this city there’s a brilliant educator who’s spent a decade banging her head against incompetent administration. She knows. Probably there’s a dozen of her. I’ll find them all and pick the best one. If I get s
tarted in the next six months, by the time Decaf is three we’ll own the best preschool in town.” She clicked off her tablet and dropped it on the charging mat by her bedside. “I think I’d do this one as a non-profit. I’ve been wanting to do a non-profit.”

  Tess got into bed and flopped over, buried her face in Judy’s hip. She felt Judy’s fingers comb across her scalp and inhaled an atmosphere of fabric softener and banana body wash. Judy always showered at night. Tess usually showered in the morning. “Suppose this was inevitable,” she mumbled toward the mattress.

  Judy had a habit of turning personal obstacles into entrepreneurial opportunities. Inspired by her own turbulent youth, her first company was a child access center, providing supervised exchanges and visitation for the children of violently estranged couples. When the private ambulance company for which her stepsister worked as an EMT collapsed under the weight of an embezzling scandal, Judy bought three of the vans in liquidation and founded a replacement, moving her sister behind a desk to handle the day-to-days. When she built her house, she’d worked with an architect willing to study up on sustainable building practices, then partnered with her on a consulting company for green renovations and remodels. Tess had profiled Judy after that company’s winning bid on a convention center renovation. “I like service industries,” Judy had explained to Tess in their first interview. “Business contexts change, but people are a constant.” The two of them met up later that week in a sushi bar, then again the very next night at a wild game restaurant Judy knew about in a 100-year-old log cabin. Tess moved in to Judy’s house when the lease on her apartment expired eight months later.

  “Did the editor write back?” asked Judy.

  “Yeah. I’ve got a fancy travel spreadsheet to fill out and everything. It’s all covered. Except for China.”

  “Were you planning on going to China?” She slipped her glasses to the tip of her nose and stared down at Tess over the rims. “You’re supposed to tell me before you go to China.”