The Mammoth Book of Best New SF 26 (Mammoth Books)

by Gardner Dozois

  She couldn’t sleep. She kept waiting for Andi to come back.

  Finally, she did. Stella started awake when the door opened with the smallest squeak—so she must have slept, at least a little. Cocooned under the covers, she clutched her pillow, blinking, uncertain for a moment where she was and what was happening. Everything felt wrong, but that was to be expected, so she lay still.

  Andi didn’t seem to notice that she was awake. She hung up her cloak on a peg by the door, sat on her bed while she peeled off shoes and clothes, which she left lying on the chest at the foot of her bed, and crawled under the covers without seeming to notice—or care—that Stella was there. The woman moved quickly—nervously, even? But when she pulled the covers over her, she lay still, asleep in moments. Stella had a suspicion that she’d had practice, falling asleep quickly in the last hours before dawn, before she’d be expected to rise and work.

  Stella supposed she would get a chance to finally talk to her new roommate soon enough, but she had no idea what she was going to say to her.

  The next day, the clouds had more than broken. No sign of them remained, and the sun blazed clear as it ever had in the desert, but on a world that was wet, green, and growing. The faint sprouts in the garden plots seem to have exploded into full growth, leaves uncurling. The angora in the hutches pressed twitching noses to the wire mesh of their cages, as if they could squeeze out to play in the meadow. Every shutter and window in the croft was opened to let in the sun.

  The work house was wide, clean, whitewashed inside and out. It smelled of lanolin, fiber and work. Lint floated in beams of sunlight. Two—now three—looms and a pair of spinning wheels sat facing each other, so the weavers and spinners could talk. Days would pass quickly here. The first passed quickly enough, and Stella finished it feeling tired and satisfied.

  Andi had spent the day at the wash tubs outside, cleaning a batch of wool, preparing it to card and spin in the next week or so. She’d still been asleep when Stella got up that morning, but must have woken up soon after. They still hadn’t talked. Not even “hello”. They kept missing each other, being in different places. Continually out of rhythm, like a pattern that wove crooked because you hadn’t counted the threads right. The more time passed without them speaking, the harder Stella found it to think of anything to say. She wanted to ask, Are you avoiding me?

  Stella had finished putting away her work and was headed for the common room, when she noticed Andi following the footpath away from the cottages, around the meadow and up the hill to the lonely shack. Her study, Elsta had called it. She walked at a steady pace, not quite running, but not lingering.

  After waiting until she was far enough ahead that she was not likely to look over her shoulder, Stella followed.

  The trail up the hill was a hike, and even walking slowly Stella was soon gasping for breath. But slowly and steadily she made progress. The path made a couple of switchbacks, and finally reached the crest of the hill and the tiny weathered shack planted there.

  As she suspected, the view was worth the climb. The whole of Barnard Croft’s valley was visible, as well as the next one over. The neighboring croft’s cottages were pale specks, and a thread of smoke climbed from one. The hills were soft, rounded, cut through with clefts like the folds in a length of fabric. Trees along the creek gave texture to the picture. The Long Road was a gray track painted around the green rise. The sky above stretched on, and on, blue touched by a faint haze. If she squinted, she thought she could see a line of gray on the far western horizon—the ocean, and the breeze in that direction had a touch of salt and wild. From this perspective, the croft rested in a shallow bowl that sat on the top of the world. She wondered how long it would take to walk around the entire valley, and decided she would like to try some sunny day.

  The shed seemed even smaller when she was standing next to it. Strangely, part of the roof was missing, folded back on hinges, letting in light. The walls were too high to see over, and the door was closed. Stella hesitated; she shouldn’t be here, she was invading. She had to share a room with this woman, she shouldn’t intrude. Then again—she had to share a room with this woman. She only wanted to talk. And if Andi didn’t like it, well . . .

  Stella knocked on the door before she could change her mind. Three quick, woodpecker-like raps.

  When the door swung out, she hopped back, managed not to fall over, and looked wide eyed to see Andi glaring at her.

  Then the expression softened, falling away to blank confusion. “Oh. Hi.”

  They stared at each other for a long moment. Andi leaned on the door, blocking the way; Stella still couldn’t see what was inside.

  “May I come in?” she finally asked, because Andi hadn’t closed the door on her.

  “Oh—sure.” The woman seemed to shake herself out of a daydream, and stepped back to open the door wide.

  The bulk of the tiny room was taken up by a device mounted on a tripod as tall as she was. A metallic cylinder, wide as a bucket, pointed to the ceiling. A giant tin can almost, except the outer case was painted gray, and it had latches, dials, levers, all manner of protrusions connected to it. Stella moved around it, studying it, reminding herself not to touch, however much the object beckoned.

  “It’s a telescope, isn’t it?” she asked, looking over to Andi. “An old one.”

  A smile dawned on Andi’s face, lighting her mahogany eyes. “It is—twelve-inch reflector. Century or so old, probably. Pride and joy.” Her finger traced up the tripod, stroking it like it was a favorite pet.

  Stella’s chest clenched at that smile, and she was glad now that she’d followed Andi here. She kept her voice calm. “Where’d you get it? You couldn’t have traded for it—”

  “Oh no, you can’t trade for something like this. What would you trade for it?” Meaning how many bales of wool, or bolts of cloth, or live alpacas, or cans full of fish from the coast was something like this worth? You couldn’t put a price on it. Some people would just give it away, because it had no real use, no matter how rare it was. Andi continued, “It was Pan’s, who ran the household before Toma. He was one of the ones who helped build up the network with the observatories, after the big fall. Then he left it all to me. He’d have left it to Toma, but he wasn’t interested.” She shrugged, as if unable to explain.

  “Then it actually works?”

  “Oh yes.” That smile shone again, and Stella would stay and talk all night, to keep that smile lit up. “I mean, not now, we’ll have to wait until dark, assuming the weather stays clear. With the roof open it’s almost a real observatory. See how we’ve fixed the seams?” She pointed to the edges, where the roof met the walls. Besides the hinges and latches that closed the roof in place, the seams had oilskin weatherproofing, to keep rain from seeping through the cracks. The design was clever. The building, then, was shelter for the equipment. The telescope never moved—the bottom points of the tripod were anchored with bricks.

  Beside the telescope there wasn’t much here: a tiny desk, a shelf filled with books, a bin holding a stack of papers, and a wooden box holding pencils. The leather pouch Andi had received yesterday was open, and packets of paper spread over the desk.

  “Is that what you got in the mail?”

  She bustled to the desk and shuffled through the pages. “Assignment from Griffith. It’s a whole new list of coordinates, now that summer’s almost here. The whole sky changes—what we see changes, at least—so I make observations and send the whole thing back.” The flush in her brown face deepened as she ducked away. “I know it doesn’t sound very interesting, we mostly just write down numbers and trade them back and forth—”

  “Oh no,” Stella said, shaking her head to emphasize. “It’s interesting. Unusual—”

  “And useless, Toma says.” The smile turned sad, and last night’s discussion became clear to Stella.

  “Nothing’s useless,” Stella said. “It’s like you said—you can’t just throw something like this away.” This wasn’t like a ho
usehold that couldn’t feed itself and had no choice but to break up.

  Three sharp rings of a distant brass bell sounded across the valley. Stella looked out the door, confused.

  “Elsta’s supper bell,” Andi explained. “She only uses it when we’ve all scattered.” She quickly straightened her papers, returned them to their pouch, and latched the roof back in place. Too late, Stella thought to help, reaching up to hold the panel of wood after Andi had already secured the last latch. Oh well. Maybe next time.

  Stella got a better look at Andi as they walked back to the croft. She was rough in the way of wind and rain, her dark hair curly, pulled back by a scrap of gray yarn that was unraveling. The collar of her shirt was untied, and her woven jacket had slipped off a shoulder. Stella resisted an urge to pull it back up, and to brush the lock of hair that had fallen out of the tie behind her ear.

  “So you’re really more of an astronomer than a weaver,” Stella said. She’d tried to sound encouraging, but Andi frowned.

  “Drives Toma crazy,” Andi said. “If there was a household of astronomers, I’d join. But astronomy doesn’t feed anyone, does it? Well, some of it does—meteorology, climatology, solar astronomy, maybe. But not what we’re doing. We don’t earn anyone a baby.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Astronomical observation. As much as we can, though it feels like reinventing the wheel sometimes. We’re not learning anything that people didn’t already know back in the day. We’re just—well, it feels like filling in the gaps until we get back to where we were. Tracking asteroids, marking supernovae, that sort of thing. Maybe we can’t do much with the data. But it might be useful someday.”

  “There, you see—it’s planning ahead. There’s use in that.”

  She sighed. “The committees mostly think it’s a waste of time. They can’t really complain, though, because we—those of us in the network—do our share and work extra to support the observatories. A bunch of us designate ration credits toward Griffith and Kitt Peak and Wilson—they’ve got the region’s big scopes—to keep staff there maintaining the equipment, to keep the solar power and windmills running. Toma always complains, says if I put my extra credits toward the household we could have a second baby. He says it could even be mine. But they’re my credits, and this is important. I earn the time I spend with the scope, and he can’t argue.” She said that as a declaration, then looked straight at Stella, who blushed. “They may have brought you here to make up for me.”

  Stella didn’t know what to say to that. She was too grateful to have a place at all, to consider that she may have been wanted.

  Awkwardly, Andi covered up the silence. “Well. I hope you like it here. That you don’t get too homesick, I mean.”

  The words felt like a warm blanket, soft and wooly. “Thanks.”

  “We can be kind of rowdy sometimes. Bette gets colicky, and you haven’t heard Wendy sing yet. Then there’s Jorge and Jon—they share a bed as well as a cottage, see, and can get pretty loud, though if you tease them about it they’ll deny it.”

  “I don’t mind rowdy. But I did almost expect to find a clandestine still in that shed.”

  Andi laughed. “I think Toma’d like a still better, because at least you can drink from it. Elsta does make a really good cider, though. If she ever put enough together to trade it would make up for all the credits I waste on the observatories.”

  As they came off the hill and approached the cluster of cottages, Andi asked, “Did you know that Stella means star in Latin?”

  “Yes, I did,” she answered.

  Work was work no matter where you were, and Stella settled into her work quickly. The folk of Barnard were nice, and Andi was easy to talk to. And cute. Stella found excuses to be in the same room with her, just to see that smile. She hadn’t expected this, coming to a new household. But she didn’t mind, not at all.

  Many households along the Long Road kept sheep, but the folk at Barnard did most of the spinning and weaving for trade. All the wool came to them. Barnard also produced a small quantity of specialty fibers from the alpaca and angora rabbits they kept. They were known for the quality of all their work, the smoothness of their yarns, the evenness of their weaving. Their work was sought after not just along the Long Road, but up and down the coast.

  Everyone spun, wove, and dyed. Everyone knew every step of working with wool. They either came here because they knew, or because they’d grown up here learning the trade, like Toma and Nik, like Bette would in her turn. As Andi had, as Stella found out. Andi was the baby that Toma and Elsta had earned together.

  Stella and Andi were at the looms, talking as they worked. The spring rains seem to have broken for good, and everyone else had taken their work outside. Wendy sat in the fresh air with her spinning wheel. A new batch of wool had arrived, and Toma and Jorge worked cleaning it. So Stella had a chance to ask questions in private.

  “Could you get a place at one of the observatories? How does that work?”

  Andi shook her head. “It wouldn’t work out. There’s three people at Kitt and two each at Griffith and Wilson, and they pick their successors. I’m better use to them here, working to send them credits.”

  “And you have your telescope, I suppose.”

  “The astronomers love my telescope,” she said. “They call my setup Barnard Observatory, as if it’s actually important. Isn’t it silly?”

  “Of course it isn’t.”

  Andi’s hands flashed, passing the shuttle across. She glanced up every now and then. Stella, for her part, let her hands move by habit, and watched Andi more than her own work. Outside, Wendy sang as she spun, in rhythm with the clipping hum of her wheel. Her voice was light, dreamlike.

  The next time Andi glanced up, she exclaimed, “How do you do that? You’re not even watching and it’s coming out beautiful.”

  Stella blinked at her work—not much to judge by, she thought. A foot or two of fabric curling over the breast beam, only just starting to wind onto the cloth beam. “I don’t know. It’s what I’m good at. Like you and the telescope.”

  “Nice of you to say so. But here, look at this—I’ve missed a row.” She sat back and started unpicking the last five minutes of her work. “I go too fast. My mind wanders.”

  “It happens to everyone,” Stella said.

  “Not you. I saw that shawl you did for Elsta.”

  “I’ve just gotten good at covering up the mistakes,” Stella said, winking.

  A week after her arrival, an agent from the regional committee came to visit. A stout, gray-haired, cheerful woman, she was the doctor who made regular rounds up and down the Long Road. She was scheduled to give Bette a round of vaccinations, but Stella suspected the woman was going to be checking on her as well, to make sure she was settling in and hadn’t disrupted the household too much.

  The doctor, Nance, sat with Bette on the floor, and the baby immediately started crying. Peri hovered, but Nance just smiled and cooed while lifting the baby’s arms and checking her ears, not seeming at all bothered.

  “How is the world treating you then, Toma?” Nance turned to Toma, who was sitting in his usual chair by the fire.

  His brow was creased with worry, though there didn’t seem to be anything wrong. “Fine, fine,” he said brusquely.

  Nance turned. “And Stella, are you doing well?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Stella said. She was winding yarn around Andi’s outstretched hands, to make a skein. This didn’t feel much like an inspection, but that only made her more nervous.

  “Very good. My, you’re a wiggler, aren’t you?” Bette’s crying had finally subsided to red-faced sniffling, but she continued to fling herself from Nance’s arms in an attempt to escape. After a round with a stethoscope, Nance let her go, and the baby crawled away, back to Peri.

  The doctor turned her full attention to Toma. “The committee wants to order more banners, they expect to award quite a few this summer. Will you have some ready?”

&nbs
p; Toma seemed startled. “Really? Are they sure?”

  Barnard supplied the red-and-green-patterned cloth used to make the banners awarded to households who’d been approved to have a baby. One of the things Nance had asked about when she first arrived was if anyone had tried bribing him for a length of the cloth over the last year. One of the reasons Barnard had the task of producing the banners—they were prosperous enough not to be vulnerable to bribes. Such attempts happened rarely, but did happen. Households had been broken up over such crimes.

  The banner the household had earned for Bette was pinned proudly to the wall above the mantel.

  Nance shrugged. “The region’s been stable for a couple of years. No quota arguments, most households supporting themselves, just enough surplus to get by without draining resources. We’re a healthy region, Toma. If we can support more children, we ought to. And you—with all these healthy young women you have, you might think of putting in for another baby.” The doctor beamed.

  Stella and Andi looked at each other and blushed. Another baby so soon after the first? Scandalous.

  Nance gathered up her kit. “Before I go, let me check all your birth control implants so we don’t have any mishaps, eh?”

  She started with Elsta and Toma and worked her way around the room.

  “Not that I could have a mishap,” Andi muttered to Stella. “They ought to make exceptions for someone like me who isn’t likely to get in that kind of trouble. Because of her preferences, you know?”

  “I know,” Stella said, blushing very hard now. “I’ve had that thought myself.”

  They stared at each other for a very long moment. Stella’s mouth had suddenly gone dry. She wanted to flee the room and stick her head in a bucket of cool water. Then again, she didn’t.

  When Nance came to her side to prod her arm, checking that the implant was in place, Stella hardly felt it.