The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women

by Alex Dally MacFarlane

  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?”

  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.

  “Looks like you’re good and covered,” Nance said. “For now, ’eh? Until you get that extra banner.” She winked.

  The doctor stayed for supper and still had enough daylight left to walk to the next waystation along the road. Elsta wrapped up a snack of fruit and cheese for her to take with her, and Nance thanked her very much. As soon as she was gone, Toma muttered.

  “Too many mouths to feed – and what happens when the next flood hits? The next typhoon? We lose everything and then there isn’t enough? We have enough as it is, more than enough. Wanting more, it’s asking for trouble. Getting greedy is what brought the disasters in the first place. It’s too much.”

  Everyone stayed quiet, letting him rant. This felt to Stella like an old argument, words repeated like the chorus of a song. Toma’s philosophy, expounded by habit. He didn’t need a response.

  Stella finished winding the skein of yarn and quietly excused herself, putting her things away and saying goodnight to everyone.

  Andi followed her out of the cottage soon after, and they walked together to their room.

  “So, do you want one?” Stella asked her.

  “A baby? I suppose I do. Someday. I mean, I assumed as well off as Barnard is I could have one if I wanted one. It’s a little odd, thinking about who I’d pick for the father. That’s the part I’m not sure about. What about you?”

  Besides being secretly, massively pleased that Andi hadn’t thought much about fathers … “I assumed I’d never get the chance. I don’t think I’d miss it if I didn’t.”

  “Enough other people who want ’em, right?”

  “Something like that.”

  They reached their room, changed into their nightclothes, washed up for bed. Ended up sitting on their beds, facing each other and talking. That first uncomfortable night seemed far away now.

  “Toma doesn’t seem to like the idea of another baby,” Stella prompted.

  “Terrified, I think,” she said. “Wanting too much gets people in trouble.”

  “But it only seems natural, to want as much as you can have.”

  Andi shook her head. “His grandparents remembered the old days. He heard stories from them about the disasters. All the people who died in the floods and plagues. He’s that close to it – might as well have lived through it himself. He thinks we’ll lose it all, that another great disaster will fall on us and destroy everything. It’s part of why he hates my telescope so much. It’s a sign of the old days when everything went rotten. But it won’t happen, doesn’t he see that?”

  Stella shrugged. “Those days aren’t so far gone, really. Look at what happened to Greentree.”

  “Oh – Stella, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that there’s not anything to it, just that …” She shrugged, unable to finish the thought.

  “It can’t happen here. I know.”

  Andi’s black hair fell around her face, framing her pensive expression. She stared into space. “I just wish he could see how good things are. We’ve earned a little extra, haven’t we?”

  Unexpected even to herself, Stella burst, “Can I kiss you?”

  In half a heartbeat Andi fell at her, holding Stella’s arms, and Stella clung back, and either her arms were hot or Andi’s hands were, and they met, lips to lips.

  One evening, Andi escaped the gathering in the common room and brought Stella with her. They left as the sun had almost set, leaving just enough light to follow the path to the observatory. They took candles inside shaded lanterns for the trip back to their cottage. At dusk, the windmills were ghostly skeletons lurking on the hillside.

  They waited for full dark, talking while Andi looked over her paperwork and prepared her notes. Andi asked about Greentree, and Stella explained that the aquifers had dried up in the drought. Households remained in the region because they’d always been there. Some survived, but they weren’t particularly successful. She told Andi how the green of the valleys near the coast had almost blinded her when she first arrived, and how all the rain had seemed like a miracle.

  Then it was time to unlatch the roof panels and look at the sky.

  “Don’t squint, just relax. Let the image come into focus,” Andi said, bending close to give directions to Stella, who was peering through the scope’s eyepiece. Truth be told, Stella was more aware of Andi’s hand resting lightly on her shoulder. She shifted closer.

  “You should be able to see it,” Andi said, straightening to look at the sky.

  “Okay … I think … oh! Is that it?” A disk had come into view, a pale, glowing light striped with orange, yellow, cream. Like someone had covered a very distant moon with melted butter.

  “Jupiter,” Andi said proudly.

  “But it’s just a star.”

  “Not up close it isn’t.”

  Not a disk, then, but a sphere. Another planet. “Amazing.”

  “Isn’t it? You ought to be able to see some of the moons as well – a couple of bright stars on either side?”

  “I think … yes, there they are.”

  After an hour, Stella began shivering in the night-time cold, and Andi put her arms around her, rubbing warmth into her back. In moments, they were kissing, and stumbled together to the desk by the shack’s wall, where Andi pushed her back across the surface and made love to her. Jupiter had swung out of view by the time they closed up the roof and stumbled off the hill.

  Another round of stor
ms came, shrouding the night-time sky, and they spent the evenings around the hearth with the others. Some of the light went out of Andi on those nights. She sat on a chair with a basket of mending at her feet, darning socks and shirts, head bent over her work. Lamplight turned her skin amber and made her hair shine like obsidian. But she didn’t talk. That may have been because Elsta and Toma talked over everyone, or Peri exclaimed over something the baby did, then everyone had to admire Bette.

  The day the latest round of rain broke and the heat of summer finally settled over the valley, Andi got another package from Griffith, and that light of discovery came back to her. Tonight, they’d rush off to the observatory after supper.

  Stella almost missed the cue to escape, helping Elsta with the dishes. When she was finished and drying her hands, Andi was at the door. Stella rushed in behind her. Then Toma brought out a basket, one of the ones as big as an embrace that they used to store just-washed wool in, and set it by Andi’s chair before the hearth. “Andi, get back here.”

  Her hand was on the door, one foot over the threshold, and Stella thought she might keep going, pretending that she hadn’t heard. But her hand clenched on the door frame, and she turned around.

  “We’ve got to get all this new wool processed, so you’ll stay in tonight to help.”

  “I can do that tomorrow. I’ll work double tomorrow—”

  “Now, Andi.”

  Stella stepped forward, hands reaching for the basket. “Toma, I can do that.”

  “No, you’re doing plenty already. Andi needs to do it.”

  “I’ll be done with the mending in a minute and can finish that in no time at all. Really, it’s all right.”

  He looked past her, to Andi. “You know the rules – household business first.”

  “The household business is done. This is makework!” she said. Toma held the basket out in reproof.

  Stella tried again. “But I like carding.” It sounded lame – no one liked carding.

  But Andi had surrendered, coming away from the door, shuffling toward her chair. “Stella, it’s all right. Not your argument.”

  “But—” The pleading in her gaze felt naked. She wanted to help; how could she help?

  Andi slumped in the chair without looking up. All Stella could do was sit in her own chair, with her knitting. She jabbed herself with the needle three times, from glancing up at Andi every other stitch.

  Toma sat before his workbench, looking pleased for nearly the first time since Stella had met him.

  Well after dark, Stella lay in her bed, stomach in knots. Andi was in the other bed and hadn’t said a word all evening.

  “Andi? Are you all right?” she whispered. She stared across the room, to the slope of the other woman, mounded her under blanket. The lump didn’t move, but didn’t look relaxed in sleep. But if she didn’t want to talk, Stella wouldn’t force her.

  “I’m okay,” Andi sighed, finally.

  “Anything I can do?”

  Another long pause, and Stella was sure she’d said too much. Then, “You’re a good person, Stella. Anyone ever told you that?”

  Stella crawled out from under her covers, crossed to Andi’s bed, climbed in with her. Andi pulled the covers up over them both, and the women held each other.

  Toma sent Andi on an errand, delivering a set of blankets to the next waystation and picking up messages to bring back. More makework. The task could just as easily have been done by the next wagon messenger to pass by. Andi told him as much, standing outside the work house the next morning.

  “Why wait when we can get the job done now?” Toma answered, hefting the backpack, stuffed to bursting with newly woven woolens, toward her.

  Stella was at her loom, and her hand on the shuttle paused as she listened. But Andi didn’t say anything else. Only glared at Toma a good long minute before taking up the pack. She’d be gone most of the day, hiking there and back.

  Which was the point, wasn’t it?

  Stella contrived to find jobs that kept Toma in sight, sorting and carding wool outside where he was working repairing a fence, when she should have been weaving. So she saw when Toma studied the hammer in his hand, looked up the hill, and started walking the path to Andi’s observatory.

  Stella dropped the basket of wool she was holding and ran.

  He was merely walking. Stella overtook him easily, at first. But after fifty yards of running, she slowed, clutching at a stitch in her side. Gasping for breath with burning lungs, she kept on, step after step, hauling herself up the hill, desperate to get there first.

  “Stella, go back. Don’t get in the middle of this.”

  Even if she could catch enough of her breath to speak, she didn’t know what she would say. He lengthened his stride, gaining on her. She got to the shed a bare few steps before him.

  The door didn’t have a lock; it had never needed one. Stella pressed herself across it and faced out, to Toma, marching closer. At least she had something to lean on for the moment.

  “Move aside, Stella. She’s got to grow up and get on with what’s important,” Toma said.

  “This is important.”

  He stopped, studied her. He gripped the handle of the hammer like it was a weapon. Her heart thudded. How angry was he?

  Toma considered, then said, “Stella. You’re here because I wanted to do Az a favor. I can change my mind. I can send a message to Nance and the committee that it just isn’t working out. I can do that.”

  Panic brought sudden tears to her eyes. He wouldn’t dare, he couldn’t, she’d proven herself already in just a few weeks, hadn’t she? The committee wouldn’t believe him, couldn’t listen to him. But she couldn’t be sure of that, could she?

  Best thing to do would be to step aside. He was head of the household; it was his call. She ought to do as he said, because her place here wasn’t secure. A month ago that might not have mattered, but now – she wanted to stay, she had to stay.

  And if she stepped aside, leaving Toma free to enter the shed, what would she tell Andi afterward?

  She swallowed the lump in her throat and found words. “I know disaster can still happen. I know the droughts and storms and plagues do still come and can take away everything. Better than anyone, I know. But we have to start building again sometime, yes? People like Andi have to start building, and we have to let them, even if it seems useless to the rest of us. Because it isn’t useless, it – it’s beautiful.”

  He stared at her for a long time. She thought maybe he was considering how to wrestle her away from the door. He was bigger than she was, and she wasn’t strong. It wouldn’t take much. But she’d fight.

  “You’re infatuated, that’s all,” he said.

  Maybe, not that it mattered.

  Then he said, “You’re not going to move away, are you?”

  Shaking her head, Stella flattened herself more firmly against the door.

  Toma’s grip on the hammer loosened, just a bit. “My grandparents – has Andi told you about my grandparents? They were children when the big fall came. They remembered what it was like. Mostly they talked about what they’d lost, all the things they had and didn’t now. And I thought, all those things they missed, that they wanted back – that was what caused the fall in the first place, wasn’t it? We don’t need it, any of it.”

  “Andi needs it. And it’s not hurting anything.” What else could she say? She had to say something that would make it all right. “Better things will come, or what’s the point?”

  A weird crooked smile turned Toma’s lips, and he shifted his grip on the hammer. Holding it by the head now, he let it dangle by his leg. “God, what a world,” he muttered. Stella still couldn’t tell if he was going to force her away from the door. She held her breath.

  Toma said, “Don’t tell Andi about this. All right?”

  She nodded. “All right.”

  Toma turned and started down the trail, a calm and steady pace. Like a man who’d just gone out for a walk.

 
Stella slid to the ground and sat on the grass by the wall until the old man was out of sight. Finally, after scrubbing the tears from her face, she followed him down, returning to the cottages and her work.

  Andi was home in time for supper, and the household ate together as usual. The woman was quiet and kept making quick glances at Toma, who avoided looking back at all. It was like she knew Toma had had a plan. Stella couldn’t say anything until they were alone.

  The night was clear, the moon was dark. Stella’d learned enough from Andi to know it was a good night for stargazing. As they were cleaning up after the meal, she touched Andi’s hand. “Let’s go to the observatory.”

  Andi glanced at Toma, and her lips pressed together, grim. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “I think it’ll be okay.”

  Andi clearly didn’t believe her, so Stella took her hand, and together they walked out of the cottage, then across the yard, past the work house, and to the trail that led up the hill to the observatory.

  And it was all right.

  INVISIBLE PLANETS

  Hao Jingfang

  Translated by Ken Liu

  “Tell me about the fascinating planets you’ve seen. But I don’t want to hear anything cruel or disgusting,” you say.

  Good. I nod and smile. Of course. No problem.

  CHICHI RAHA

  Chichi Raha is a fascinating place, its flowers and lakes unforgettable to all visitors. There, you cannot see a single inch of exposed soil because the land is covered by vegetation: the anua grass, as fine as silk thread; the kuqin tree, tall enough to scrape the clouds; and many varieties of unnameable, unimaginably strange fruits, exuding seductive aromas.

  The Chichi Rahans have never needed to worry about making a living. Their life expectancy is high, their metabolism is slow, and they have no natural enemies. They fill their bellies on a diet of various fruits and make their homes inside a type of tree with large, hollow trunks. The average diameter of these tubes is just wide enough to allow an adult Chichi Rahan to lie down comfortably. When the weather is good, the branches hang loosely, but when it rains, the branches rise so that the leaves form a canopy like an umbrella.