That Inevitable Victorian Thing

by E. K. Johnston

  “Addie! Matthew!” A voice called loudly from the direction of the Callaghan house. Margaret breathed out so hard she almost whistled. “It’s nearly time for dinner!”

  Margaret wasted no time in wresting Addie out of her life jacket and into a towel. Helena and Matthew arrived, both still dripping. Helena caught her eye, clearly wondering what was wrong, but Margaret gave the tiniest shake of her head, and Helena didn’t press her.

  “Are you coming over for dinner?” Matthew said.

  Helena was tempted, but decided that she would rather spend the time figuring out what had Margaret so suddenly on edge.

  “Not tonight, I’m afraid,” she said.

  There was another bellow from the Callaghan house, this one unmistakably in Hiram’s voice, and detailing all manner of torture and suffering that would befall the children if they did not materialize for their dinner forthwith. Giggling, the pair raced off down the path. Helena and Margaret turned in towards the house, walking much more sedately.

  “What is it?” Helena said, as soon as they were inside the porch. It faced the lake, but there were so many trees that the view was mostly private.

  Speaking quietly, Margaret told her what Addie had said. Helena looked trouble when she was done.

  “You have to tell your Guard,” she said. “They can make sure this man is what he says he is.”

  “What if he isn’t?” Margaret asked. “What if he is some sort of paparazzi? I will have ruined your summer and August’s both, not to mention the goodwill of Mr. and Mrs. Callaghan.”

  To her surprise, Helena began to laugh. It wasn’t the delighted laugh from earlier in the afternoon, though, the one that had led to kissing. This had a harder edge to it, a sort of brittle discomfort that Margaret was reluctant to touch.

  “Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry. Of course. My anonymity isn’t the same as your—” Words failed her. “As what you’re going through, I mean. Helena, I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

  Helena took Margaret’s hands in hers. They were still cold from the lake, but Margaret would have held them forever if she had been allowed.

  “It’s not that,” Helena said. “Well, not that exactly, in any case. The summer has been more complicated than I ever could have imagined, and your complications have been the best parts of it.”

  “Thank you,” Margaret said. She grinned. “I think.”

  Helena leaned closer, and Margaret met her halfway. Helena’s mouth was definitely as warm as ever, and Margaret quite forgot that most of her midriff was bare until her hands slid down cool skin and rested against the top of Helena’s bathing suit. She almost pulled back, but Helena stepped towards her. Margaret would have been more than content to lose herself thus for quite some time, but out on the lake, the boat backfired, and the girls sprang apart as though they had been electrocuted.

  “Let’s go inside,” Helena said.

  Margaret linked their fingers together, furious with herself for her own cowardice, but also desperate to hold on to whatever secrecy they had left. It was only early June. It couldn’t end already.

  On the table in the great room, Margaret’s screen was blinking purple. The Archbishop had replied.

  The Computer cannot read your genes and match for love. It is that simple, and that complicated. In most things, the Royal Family leads the way, but when it comes to Computer matches, they are bound up in convention more than any of us. This is where the Computer has failed. There has been some leniency with the non-heir children (you will recall that Victoria-Elizabeth’s aunt married a woman with the Church’s full and enthusiastic approval), but when it comes to our future monarchs, we are more stringent.

  We must remember that they are human and royal both. We must find a way to balance duty and love. We must think of Queen Victoria I, who spent her young life in quiet rebellion, resisting all attempts to make her reliant and passive, and instead ascending the throne as a strong and independent ruler.

  We must find the Grace of God in our hearts, at the edge of what the Computer can tell us. We must remember that we grow.

  —Meditations on the Genetic Creed,

  the Archbishop of Canterbury

  CHAPTER

  26

  It was entirely possible, Helena decided, that she was never going to get out of the shower. She’d left her suit hanging on one of the wall hooks, and the water cascaded over her head and ran down her body, draining through the slats in the floor.

  Genetics aside, she liked her body. It had been slight and manageable her entire life. She hadn’t been sick often, though this was largely thanks to vaccinations, of course. Even cold viruses, pervasive beyond the reach of modern medicine, rarely affected her. She had never rounded out the way other girls her age had, but her mother was tall, and her father’s family was mostly willowy when it came to the women. When Helena had started to receive the standard STI preventatives at thirteen, they had included the hormonal treatments that kept women in the Empire from menstruating before it was practical to do so. There was no point in the mess, her mother had said while explaining the shots, much less the other symptoms. Helena had never had a poor reaction to the injections, so they had continued.

  Now, of course, everything was muddled. Helena was no longer sure which of the injections she needed, and what exactly they were doing to her body. Margaret had promised not to open the message on her tablet until Helena was ready, and hopefully it would clear some of that up. She pressed her hands against the skin of her belly and traced the hip bones that didn’t stick out as much as they might have. The message couldn’t help her sort out her feelings, though, not about her body and not about Margaret and August.

  The temperature of the water dropped a little, but Helena didn’t move out from under the stream of it. The sky above her was sunny and clear, the summer daylight hours ensuring she had quite some time before sunset. She would stay here in the dark, too, she thought, under the stars. When the hot water ran out, she’d just wait until she went numb. She’d drain the lake if she had to. It would be far, far simpler to just stay in the shower for the rest of her life.

  Except of course she couldn’t. The lock on the shower door wasn’t that good. It occurred to her that someone could also simply come over the walls. For the first time, she felt exposed. If Margaret’s identity were discovered, they’d have to put in a roof.

  Anger surged, replacing her self-pity with hotheaded defensiveness. Other people didn’t have the right to Margaret’s personal moments, just because she was a princess. She deserved the same treatment as anyone else. She deserved a friend who wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life hiding in the shower. Helena ducked her head one more time, and then turned off the water.

  When she stepped into the hallway, she heard the kettle whistling and knew that Margaret must be making tea. She went upstairs and dressed quickly, wrapping her hair up in a bun, and by the time she came back down, Margaret was at the table in the great room with a tray of cookies, some sliced apple, and two mugs.

  “Hot chocolate,” she said, smiling up at Helena as she came down the stairs.

  “Breaking out the big guns, I see,” Helena said, trying to sound lighthearted. She was not entirely sure she was successful.

  “I can only take so much tea,” Margaret said. “Are you ready?”

  Helena wasn’t entirely sure she was, but stalling wouldn’t get her anywhere, so she nodded and sat down.

  “Do you want to read it?” Margaret said. “I think he’s written it to you, rather than me.”

  “No,” Helena said. “I think you had better do it. I’m not sure why, but I feel better about it coming from you.”

  “All right,” Margaret said. “Give me a moment to skim it, and then I’ll summarize?”

  She phrased it as a question, and Helena nodded again. She tried eating a cookie while she waited, but it got stu
ck in her throat. Margaret’s eyes flew back and forth as she tracked the words across the screen, tapping here and there to highlight points to return to. She must have been an excellent student, Helena realized. She was certainly a fast reader.

  “All right,” Margaret said, scrolling back to the top. “The term is intersex, which makes sense now that I think about it. He says approximately one percent of the population exhibits intersex characteristics, which is high, really, given the percentages of the patients your mother deals with.”

  Helena nodded. Her mother’s patients mostly had mental variations, not physical ones, though occasionally there was some overlap.

  “The primary phenotypical differences are a lack of what he terms ‘traditionally female developments.’” Helena suppressed a snort, which made the corners of Margaret’s mouth turn up. “But often those are discreet enough that they go unnoticed until a genetic scan is done.”

  “Well, that is certainly true,” Helena said.

  Margaret was glad to hear a lack of bitterness in her voice. One in a hundred wasn’t so bad. Every schoolchild in the Empire had done the Punnett square for red hair at some point. Margaret well remembered learning that gene was turned on in 1 to 2 percent of the population. She felt Helena pause, and then plunge ahead. “Is there anything dangerous?”

  “There was, before we developed cancer inoculations,” Margaret said. “You still have testes, it seems, and if they got cancer you would be sick without knowing why. But that’s not an issue anymore.”

  Helena digested that, a swell of pity filling her for anyone who might have died because they didn’t know themselves well enough to know what was wrong. At least the Computer had spared her from that.

  “He adds,” Margaret said, a flush creeping up her neck, “that sex is possible for you, but that there are—”

  “Stop,” Helena said, raising one hand. “I’ll read that part on my own. When I’m ready to get the sex talk from the Archbishop of Canterbury.”

  Margaret dissolved into giggles. Helena burst into tears.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Margaret said, stifling her laughter. She reached across the table for Helena’s hand. “Oh, don’t cry. I’m sorry!”

  “It’s not that,” Helena said. “Laugh all you want, I swear. It’s just . . . I’m going to be all right. It’s normal. It’s in the Computer. It’s safe. I am going to be all right.”

  “You are,” Margaret said. Her thumb traced the fine lines of Helena’s palm. “And I know you have to figure out what to tell August, but I wanted you to know that I love you.”

  Helena stared at her. Margaret caught up to what she had said.

  “Oh,” she said. “I mean, I do, I do, but that’s not what I was trying to say.”

  “What were you trying to say?” Helena asked.

  “That you could come with me,” Margaret said. “To England. And be part of my court. I can start setting it up whenever I like, now that I’m old enough, and when I’m Queen of the Empire, you would be an advisor and a friend. You’re more than qualified, even if I didn’t love you. Which I do.”

  She raised her chin, as though afraid that Helena would crush all of her hopes at once. Helena took advantage of the position and kissed her, though with the table between them, it was a little awkward.

  “Don’t decide until you speak with August.” Margaret put a finger to Helena’s lips. “I know you love him, and he loves you.”

  “He wants a family. I can’t give him that.”

  “You, more than most people in the Empire, know that that is not true.”

  Helena sighed. Margaret was correct. Between adoption and the expected nieces and nephews that August’s sisters would produce, he would never lack for family.

  “I wanted a family.” It was the first time she had admitted it out loud. She sagged back into her chair. What was the point in all their advancements if someone wanted things they couldn’t have, and someone else had to have a thing they weren’t sure how to want? “I wanted a part of August that no one else had. Something that would tie us together and outlast us, becoming Callaghan first and foremost. I wanted to be a part of that.”

  “My mother and father got married very quickly, you know,” Margaret said. Of course, Helena did. Everyone knew it. The Queen’s intended husband had been killed in a shark attack off the Great Barrier Reef, and, in light of the King’s illness, the search for a replacement had been both frantic and a matter of the highest security. Victoria-Elizabeth and Edmund Claremont had been married, just, before the old King had died. “They didn’t love each other, but they understood their duties, and the first one was me. When I was five or so, before my sisters were born and I started school, I noticed that my parents weren’t like other people’s. Not just because my mother was Queen. There was something else.”

  Margaret drifted for a moment, lost in the memory. After a moment, Helena squeezed Margaret’s hand and her eyes focused again.

  “I asked my father,” she went on. “Imagine, a five-year-old grilling an ex-Commodore about whether he loved her mother.”

  Helena smiled. She could imagine it pretty easily.

  “And I don’t know how they did it, but they did,” Margaret said. “They spent more time with each other, with me, and with my sisters, when they were born. They stopped seeing each other as institutions and saw the people instead. And, well, you saw them at the debut ball. No one could doubt how they feel anymore.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Helena said.

  “You and August, you and I, we have connections and bonds,” Margaret said. “Some are old and some are newer, but each of them has merit. If you work at them and if they have space and time, each of them will grow into”—she paused for a moment—“into something remarkable. If you want.”

  “The stories always seem to leave out the part about how much work love is,” Helena said.

  “Lack of imagination, I guess,” Margaret said. “It’s much easier to just end on a high note. But the work is worthwhile, more than, I’d say.”

  “I just have to choose,” Helena said.

  “You have time, at least,” Margaret said. Her voice faltered. “And I need you to know that I will understand if you choose August. I will still be your friend.”

  “You will be my Queen,” Helena said. “And you will be so far away.”

  “We’ll figure something out,” Margaret said. “Do you really think Elizabeth is going to let the pair of us go just because she’s busy fishing off a small island in the Caribbean?”

  Helena made a show of considering it, which made Margaret laugh again. Feeling better than she had in days, Helena reached for one of the mugs. It was no longer steaming, but still warm enough to drive the rest of the chill from her body. She got about halfway through it, watching Margaret fish the marshmallows out with her fingers between sips, before a ruckus from the kitchen brought them to their feet, and had them running from the room.

  We forget, sometimes, that while the Computer was inspired by God, it was not made by God. It cannot see everything that God sees, and it cannot see everyone the way God sees them, nor the way they see themselves.

  The Computer is cold and methodical, and it has no heart and no brain but the one the programmer-monks built for it. It does not err in the absolute sense, I suppose, but it can easily be wrong in the human one.

  The Church of the Empire must remain vigilant that the Computer is not corrupted by those who would grant it too much power. That power could be used to deny happiness to people who are trans or two-spirited—both statuses recognized by the Church that the Computer is blind to—and many others as well.

  That must not happen.

  That must not happen.

  That must not happen.

  —Meditations on the Genetic Creed,

  the Archbishop of Canterbury

 
; CHAPTER

  27

  August caught the early train north, and managed to get a water taxi right to his own dock from the station. His talks in Toronto had gone well—at least as far as the general interests of Callaghan Ltd. were concerned. Admiral Highcastle had put him in contact with his deputies, and those officers had listened to August’s report seriously, despite his youth and what was probably his very clear desperation. They could not give him details, of course, due to the nature of military intervention, but August knew he had been heard and that actions would be taken. It pained him to see how easy it had been, once he had been recognized as an acquaintance of the Admiral. Now came the hard part: August had to talk to his father.

  So he stood on the dock, looking out at the lake, and marshalled his courage. It would have been better if he’d had a solution—not to the piracy, which would be dealt with; but to his own predicament—but he did not. The wooden planks beneath his feet creaked, someone else was here, and August turned around.

  “I went into your office to see if you had a blank ledger,” Murray said. “I know you like to write them by hand, same as me.”

  August braced himself. Whatever happened next, he deserved it.

  “I didn’t intend to snoop, of course,” his father continued. “You did a lousy job of hiding this.”

  In his hands was a waterproof bag of cash, the last payment August was planning to make, once he figured out how to do it. Murray’s face was inscrutable, and August’s heart raced.

  “Let’s go fishing,” said his father, and August was so confused that the Lightfoot was half unmoored before he shook himself into action. He climbed into the boat, and waited while his father untied the second rope, started the engine, and eased them back out of the boathouse onto the bright lake. August couldn’t help but notice that his father was a far better pilot than he was.