The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women

by Alex Dally MacFarlane

  Idris:You’d forgotten …

  Sadry: On whose land the mudflats were. So I shivered through that night, until the morning sun warmed me. I had no protection against it, so covered my face with all I had, which was mud. Then I waited for help.

  Idris: The next bit is my story …

  Sadry: [laughing] Tell it, then.

  Idris: The river had lately brought we Celats a fine young Lori, fresh-drowned. So in hopes of further luck, I scavenged in the mudflats again. The bush sticking up like a cage, I noticed that first. Next I saw a faint movement like a crab, a human hand, then eyes looking at me out of the mud. I had to use the pack Lori to drag her out, she was stuck so fast, half-dead as she was. And the bird too, the one that had brought her to me; I found that when I washed the mud from her robes.

  [She pulled from beneath her underobe a thong, pendant from it a love-charm fashioned from tiny feathers, white-gold-red. Sadry almost simultaneously revealed a duplicate charm. I wondered again at the mixture of toughness and sentimentality of the Highlanders, then at the strength of this pair, one to survive near death from drowning and then exposure, the other to save her … In my cosy north, teenage girls are babies, but these two had a life’s hard experience.]

  In the courtroom, they looked tiny, my quarry, against the black-clad might of the Highland Rule. The tribunal hearing this case consisted of a Judge from Chuch, the Suff capitol, a Northern Government representative, and the only empowered woman in sight, Conye of Westron. This Queen had been the subject of a classic study, so I knew her story well – but still boggled at the fact that this dignified old lady with the multiple tattooes had seven husbands.

  I bent towards Bel, sitting beside me in the public gallery. “Now she is like the Queen of a Hive!” I murmured.

  “Only because she outlived all her drones!” Bel replied.

  Around us, Suffeners commented too, court etiquette permitting this background buzz, along with eating and the nursing of babies or pets.

  “—I ain’t disrespecting new dead, but old Erewhon was mad to say no to Westron—”

  “—had a bellyful of the Rule, hadn’t he—”

  “—but risking all that House lore being lost—”

  “Excuse me,” said a male voice, from behind me. “You’re the anthropologist?”

  I turned to see a fellow Northerner, nervously holding out an ID. It read: Fowlds, journalist.

  “I’m normally posted in Chuch, so I can’t make head or tail of this mountain law,” he said.

  “And you’d like an interpreter? Meet Bel!”

  The Innkeeper grinned, speaking slowly and precisely:

  “The two girls in that dock are one party; the two men another. They tell their stories, and the judges decide who are to be believed.”

  “Ah,” he said. “And who is likely to be credible?”

  Around us Suffeners sucked sweets and eavesdropped happily.

  “Well,” said Bel, “on the one hand we have a House wealthy and respected, but eccentric – maybe to the point of having gone just too far. That’s Sadry of Erewhon, second generation Rule-breaker. On the other hand, Idye and Mors of Celat, a lesser House. Now they are Scavengers, but once Celat were mercenaries, hired trouble, before your North outlawed feuding.”

  It had been a condition of autonomy, I recalled, which had incidentally obviated the need to have a concentration of fighting men in the fortified Houses. And thus the need to create bonds between them, a prime function of the Rule?

  “But the other girl is Idris of Celat? What is she doing with Erewhon?”

  “That’s what the tribunal is trying to establish,” said Bel, as thunderous drumrolls sounded through the court, signalling the formal start of proceedings.

  Sadry: I knew that somebody found me, but merely thought I had crossed into downriver, this life revisited, with a ghost Lori carrying me on its back to a ghost House. Somebody washed me and bandaged my cuts – I asked her if she was an angel spirit, but she only laughed. I slept, ate buckwheat mush when it was spooned into my mouth, slept again. The next time I woke, the room seemed full of men, all staring at me.

  “Idris, do you know who she is?” said one, in a voice soft and smooth as a stroked cat.

  “How could I?” said the angel.

  “She looks like rotting bait,” said another, so big and hairy I thought him an ogre.

  “Idris, has she been instructing you how to treat her wounds?” asked the first.

  Mutinous silence. Of course I had, for sick as I was, I was still an Erewhon healer.

  “Only one way to find out!” said the third, twin of the second, but clearly the leader. He unwrapped the bandage on my right hand, to reveal the palm, which he inspected closely, picking at the scab with his nails.

  “Blue! The missing heir of Erewhon!”

  Big hands lifted the pallet, carrying it and me out the door and along the Intrigue space. Somewhere along the way my raw hand struck rough stonewall, and a red haze of pain washed over me. Even the jolt as the pallet met floor again, in a larger room, I barely noticed.

  “Where’s that girl? Idris?”

  “Here!” – but spoken as if through clenched teeth.

  “Get her good and better, and soon, okay?”

  And with that they left. The pain had cleared my head: now I could see that the angel crying as she re-bandaged my hand was only a girl my age, in a room too stuffed with Scavengers’ rubbish to be ghostly.

  “Which House is this?” I asked, after a while.

  “Celat.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Trouble.”

  “The thugs were Idye and Iain, my brothers; the smoothie Mors, Mediator of this House, and their lover.”

  “No Queen?” I asked, trying to recall what I knew of Celat.

  “This is her room.”

  Idris stared into my face, as if expecting a reaction. Something was wrong, I could tell that.

  She sighed, and added: “Our mother is years downriver.” Her words and tone were like a trail, down which I chased a hunting beast.

  “We’ve been too poor and disreputable for any marrying since.”

  The trail was warm now, and I guessed what I would find at the end of it would be unpleasant.

  “Until you came along,” Idris finished. “That’s why they moved the bed. Don’t you understand? They want you for Queen of Celat and Erewhon.”

  Indeed, an ogre with three male heads, ferocious game. I knew I had to fight it, or marry it, but how? More thinking aloud than anything else, I said:

  “I’d sooner marry you!”

  Idris: [triumphantly] And I said: Do you mean that? Do you really mean that?

  The hearing began with a reading of the various charges and counter-charges, then a series of witnesses appeared. I began to get a sense of Suff law, as the bare bones of the case, what was not disputed by either side, was established. But the mix of ritual and informality in the proceedings disconcerted me, as when Bel waved wildly at some witnesses, a married trio from Greym House. They waved back, before resuming their evidence: that they, being river fishers, had found a hat with blue ties in their net.

  “At least there’s no argument she fell in the water,” Fowlds commented.

  Mors of Celat rose and bowed at the judges. I thought him a personable young buck, not as loutish as Idye beside him, with a feline, glossy look – if you liked that sort of thing. An answer to a virgin’s prayers? Not from the look of black hatred that passed between him and the two girls.

  “Can he address the court? I mean, he’s an accused,” Fowlds murmured.

  Bel had gone rushing out of the gallery, leaving me to interpret as best I could.

  “As a Mediator Mors is privileged to argue points of law.”

  “They’re marriage counsellors, right?”

  “Among other things,” I said. “Things get fraught, you need someone like that. Otherwise you might end up like Nissa’s Erewhon.”

  “Oh, the case people keep on m
entioning,” he said.

  “They’re similar, that’s why.”

  “But wasn’t that a mass poisoning …” he began, but I shushed him as Mors began to speak.

  “I bring the attention of this court to the law of the Scavengers…”

  “Cheeky beggar!” somebody muttered.

  “Huh?” said Fowlds. I was feeling confused myself.

  “Er, I believe it’s basicallly finder’s keepers.”

  “But it’s not been applied to living humans since feuding days,” Bel finished, from behind my shoulder.

  “But there’s a precedent?”

  “Oh yes. Oh my!”

  Idris had leapt up, shouting:

  “I found Sadry, so she’s mine! Not yours, not anybody else’s.”

  Conye of Westron rose, and moving effortlessly despite her age, placed herself between the pair, her arms stretched out, invoking quiet.

  “Another Mediator,” said Bel. “She’ll adjourn the court now, and let people cool off. It’s getting late, so I guess they’ll call it a day.”

  “See you in court tomorrow, then,” said Fowlds. He bent towards me. “You’re an anthropologist, so is it true that these mountain guys are hot trots?”

  “Why don’t you find out?” I said.

  “Oh I will!” – and he wandered away.

  Bel said: “Come and meet a non-bee Queen.”

  Sadry: Idris’s brothers left us alone, but Mors would bring some small comfort, like fresh milk, sit on the end of the pallet, and talk, playing mediator.

  Idris: The thin part of the wedge.

  Sadry: The thick part being your brothers. I put no trust in him, but he was too engaging for me to keep sulking. It became a game, to talk and parry his flirtation. That way courtship lay, I knew.

  I asked: “What brought you to Celat?” and he looked rueful: “Love. Or a potion. Or perhaps both.”

  Idris: [sarcastic] “Men are such romantics.”

  Sadry: I said: “And you’ve stayed here?” – looking pointedly around the Scavengers’ mess.

  He said: “I mediate when Idye and Iain get into trouble.”

  “Like now?” I said.

  He sighed. “This wasn’t my idea. But as a challenge, I find it – seductive.”

  “As opposed to rape?”

  He said, lightly: “You know that is the last resort.”

  I must have gone white, for he added: “But that would mean I’d failed. And I’d hate that.”

  When he had gone, I said to Idris: “I suppose he’s not too bad.”

  On the wall hung the one precious thing I had seen in Celat, a Tech mirror. Idris abruptly lifted it down and set it on my chest, holding it with both hands, so all I could see was my scratched face.

  “You think, you really think pretty Mors courts you for love, when you look, as Idye charmingly said, like rotten bait!”

  “No,” I said, sobered. She touched my cheekbones.

  “I can see under the surface, but they can’t. That protects you for the moment. But when you heal …”

  I said: “Get word to my father!”

  She hesitated, before replying: “Mors came from the market with the news your father’s dead. Of sickness or worry, they say. And so Erewhon is vacant and everyone’s looking for you.”

  I cried at that, and she kissed away my tears. After a while I said: “Then we must get out of here all by ourselves.”

  The Queen proved to be the fisher-girl from Greym, whom we found, together with her husbands, in Bel’s private attic rooms. The trio were replete with honeycake and a keg of the weak Highland beer. Close to they seemed painfully young, in their mid-teens at most, the two obvious brothers and the girl touchingly in love with each other. Bel introduced them as Milas and Meren and Jossy, saying of the latter: “Pregnant, she tells me, but she won’t say by whom …”

  Jossy grinned with gap-toothed embarrassment. The boys were more forthcoming: “Aw, she’s just kiddin’ you, Cos.”

  Indeed, I thought, the Rule was strict regarding sexual access, precisely to prevent squabbles over paternity. Then I did a delayed doubletake at the last word spoken. Cos meant cousin …

  I stared at Bel. “I thought you were a Lowlander.”

  “Not always,” she said. “Once I could have been a Queen.”

  Milas coughed. “Aw, that’s old history now.”

  I was starting to catch on. “You walked out and down from Greym? Why?”

  Bel replied with a question. “You like men?” she said, looking at Jossy. “You like lots of sex with men?”

  Jossy giggled; the boys exchanged glances, tolerant of their eccentric relative.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Bel said. Then, more to me: “But if you don’t, then there’s no sense living in misery. I had a pretty young cousin, who would never question the Rule. So I gave my husbands to her.”

  “Our mam,” said the boys proudly.

  “These are her twins. I had no children, so I walked free.”

  She smiled at them, on her face the lines of a hard life, lived good-naturedly and without regret.

  “What did you do?” I asked.

  “Came down to the village and this Inn, where I asked for work as a kitchenhand, anything. And here I stayed, with Bel, who owned the Inn. When she went underground, I took her name and carried on the business.”

  She poured out more beer, and sliced the remaining cake. As she did, I noticed a tattoo extending from the palm of her hand to the wrist: an oval enclosing two stylized bees, under a gabled roof.

  “Two Queens in a House?” I asked softly, as she passed me the cake.

  “No,” she replied, “Two worker bees in their Inn.”

  I took her hand, to better examine the device, and then noticed the pigment of one bee was faded, and that it was drawn differently from the other. It also looked vaguely familiar – and I whistled softly as I recognized a birth marker, the bee of Westron modified into an emblem that was all Bel’s own.

  “With your bee-skills, I should have guessed you were born at Westron.”

  I released her hand.

  “As you’re a relative, I wonder if you might get me an interview with Queen Conye. She’s an interesting woman.”

  A guarded nod. Press on, I thought.

  “I’d like that,” I said. “Almost as much as I’d like to talk to Sadry and Idris.”

  “Easier said than done,” she said.

  “Well, yes.”

  “Conye’s cranky on me, for letting the House down.” She paused, and what she said next nearly floored me. “But I can get you into the lock-up.” She turned to the Greym three: “And you didn’t hear that, did you?”

  “No, Cos,” muttered one of the boys, and I began to realize the powers of this extraordinary woman.

  Sadry: “Erewhon’s symbol is a blue swirl, the river of life, for it is knowledge of illness that is the strength of our House, just as Dusse has botany, herbalism, and Westron the secret of mead.

  [I nodded, thinking that it was as if when setting up the Rule someone had determined that the precious Tech knowledge and goods be apportioned equally between Houses.]

  Sadry: In our cellars, cut deep into the mountainside, we hoard the artefacts of Tech medicine.

  Me: I heard you had a pharmacopeia.

  Sadry: Yes, a book of the coloured beads that the Tech people didn’t wear but ate, to keep themselves well. That we salvaged ourselves, other books the Scavengers bring us. Our oldest book, though, isn’t medical – it’s called Erewhon, but it’s not about my House, but a dream, a nowhere place. In this book things are reversed: the sick are criminals, and the criminals regarded as ill.

  Idris: Are we criminal, or ill?

  Bel: Both, probably, in the eyes of the men.

  Sadry: The book-Erewhon seemed strange, but not much stranger than the Rule. Or the way I would live in my home, with Idris, if the court permits us.

  [I thought, but did not say, that while Bel could live in the
Lowlands, a happy impossibility in Highland terms, two Queens in the same mountain House was probably intolerable for the Rule-followers. Sadry was Queen of Erewhon by inheritance, but if this case went against her she could end up Queen of Nowhere.]

  The Greym three had had a big, exciting day and they drooped like flowers with the dusk. Bel brought them blankets, letting them doze on her private floorspace. After she blew out the candles (Highland style, of rush and tallow), we two retired to the downstairs bar, where she ejected the last drinkers. Now we had the place to ourselves I wanted to interview this runaway Queen, but instead Bel went out. Alone, I stretched out on the hearthrug and watched the fire, thinking of the Houses and their troubles. As I lay there, unbidden came to mind the memory of an interview tape I had once heard, with an anonymous woman of Bulle.

  Bulle woman: The Rule is, share and share body alike in marriage. That’s why Queens seldom have a night to themselves once they wed. It’s best if you’re stolen by brothers, because they’re like beans in the pod, so you treat them the same. But if you’ve got one you like less, or one you love most … that means trouble. Poor silly Nissa!

  Interviewer: It was the lover that was the problem, wasn’t it?

  Bulle woman: His name was Yeny. I met him once, and wasn’t surprised that Bryn Erewhon was head over heels, why he brought him into the marriage. The trouble was Nissa fell for Yeny too, and she wanted him all for herself, like a Lowlander. The sensible thing would have been to let those two walk out and down, but Bryn was stubborn, I guess, like Erewhoners are. He called in a Mediator, but that didn’t work. So Nissa took the matters into her own hands.

  Slowly, imperceptibly, I slipped into dream-sleep, images appearing and disappearing before my slitted eyes. First I saw the blue sign of Erewhon, the river twisting into a figure of eight, an infinity symbol, then the self-devouring serpent I had admired at the tattooist’s. A log collapsed in the fireplace, and I opened and closed one eye, importing the flamescape into my dream, for now I flew above red mountains. Below my eagle-I were Houses, and I zoomed in and somehow through the thatch roof of Erewhon, to see Nissa (who looked amazingly like Sadry) zig-zagging through Intrigue. She went down a flight of stone steps to the courtyard where a Scavenger waited with goods for identification and sale: sheets of dirty foil, on one side covered with symmetrical white studs. The dream-watcher followed Nissa into the cellars, where she consulted a tattered book. When she came out again, she paid the Scavenger, and tucked the drugs into her underrobes.