Heiresses of Russ 2013

by Tenea D. Johnson

  If I left…

  If I…left.

  I would never see Nor again.

  Galo would shatter the curse, would call us his sea army, would destroy the world.

  I would break my mother’s heart. My grandmother’s heart. I would destroy the world.

  Wouldn’t I?

  I spread my fingers across the cream sheets, counted them like I had when I was a child. One, two, three, four…I swallowed and pressed them harder against the bed, so hard I felt it creak beneath me as I stood up, as I held my hands together then, as if in prayer.

  I wasn’t sorry, and I wouldn’t say it. I turned, and I left the lighthouse, standing uncertain at the edge of the sand.

  “First, he’ll set fire to the world, burn the crops, bring diseases,” my mother had said, and I heard her voice in the wind now, the condemnation and damnation and all the stories she’d spun for me when I was little, the nightmares I had had each night feeding off her words. “He will laugh as man dies. He has no pity.”

  I had seen him weep.

  “They are monsters,” she’d told me over and over and over again, making me repeat it until my tongue was tired.

  Wasn’t I a monster, too?

  I rubbed my shoulders, and then I took a step forward. I felt the magic settle about me as I pulled, and then, before me, was Nor’s coracle, summoned by my spell, bobbing up and down at the edge of the water.

  I stood in the sand. I felt the tide come up and touch my bare feet, felt it run over my skin, so cold, I let out my breath in a hiss.

  I closed my eyes, balled my hands into fists, and stumbled into the boat, feeling my feet leave land for the first time in my life.

  I took the oar and clumsily pushed off from the sand, even as I began to hear the breaking behind me. I heard the scream of stone against stone and I did not look behind me, but saw the tall shadow of the lighthouse in the water as it began to sway, back and forth, back and forth, crumbling. The roar surrounded me as I began to paddle for shore, and the storm that had threatened for the night and morning began to hit as I felt the spell unravel, as the lighthouse fell down, as the net began to shatter.

  I paddled as the rain hit, paddled hard as the swells began to grow, tossing the coracle back and forth, filling it with water, and then emptying it in the same heartbeat. I gritted my teeth, and I paddled against the sea as the last wisps of the net unwound themselves, as I felt the net disappear entirely. The roar of the wind, the howl of the sea, surrounded me, and I wept in the salt water, in the rain water, my tears mingling with all the water, water everywhere.

  Somehow, eventually, I reached the shore. The sea creature peoples were gathered there, and they stared at me with open mouths as the boat pitched itself upon the sand. I fell as I climbed out, felt the solidity of sand and land beneath my hands and let out a great cry that was lost in the bellow of the people as they raised their heads up to the sky, to the great, gathered storm clouds, and let out a cry that dwarfed the music of the storm.

  And then, Nor was there.

  She came down the shore, her eyes wide, wild, and she helped me rise, her hands soft against my own. Tears streaked down her long nose, and when she kissed me, she tasted of salt. Galo came behind her. He was skeletal, almost unrecognizable, and he stared at me with haunted eyes.

  One by one, the sea peoples began to walk into the water.

  Galo was the first. He walked past me, limping, and when he entered the sea, the first bit of white foam touching his legs, he let out a cry, as if in pain. But then he sunk below the water, and was gone, something large and dark moving through the bay, just below the surface.

  I took Nor’s hand, and I kissed it. She stood, for a long moment, but it was not long enough, would never be long enough, when I remembered it, and she mouthed two words before she turned and entered the water with her brothers and sisters and an army of people who had never belonged here, going home.

  What she said was: “Thank you.”

  •

  Barnstormers

  Wendy N. Wagner

  The last knot of people waved goodbye at the edge of the makeshift airfield, grinning and clutching their autographs tight. Casey waved back until they were too small to see. Then she patted the side of the trailer, smiling up at the stowed mechs. The smile changed to a frown. Jolene had landed her mech with its grasping units—which Casey would always think of as hands—framing its cockpit, the opposable flexors set in an unmistakable “thumbs up” pose. The glass bubble of the cockpit stared down at Casey in bland mockery.

  A mech could take an artillery round to the chest, but if the hands were open, one rainstorm could should out the delicate joints of the grasping units. And since Casey had set the security features to maximum for the summer, the PEAV’s neural interface would only recognize Jolene’s brain patterns. If Jolene didn’t climb up in the rig and stow the damn thing properly, the PEAV would thumbs-up the world all night long.

  Casey spent several minutes cleaning up empty water bottles and popcorn boxes before fury ebbed enough to cross the field to the tent site. The glowing tip of Jolene’s joint served as a beacon, calling Casey through the evening gloom.

  Jolene lay on a sheet spread beside side of the tent, naked, smoking, staring up at the clouds sculling across the darkening sky. Casey threw herself down beside her. She knew this mood, an ugly hybrid of anger and depression. The moods had been infrequent when she and Jolie first started building the show, two chicks brought together by the VA Benefits Office waiting room and the same taste in beer. These days, the moods were as regular as popcorn sales.

  Casey pushed herself up on one elbow. “You could help clean, you know. We want to be able to use this field next summer.”

  Jolene inhaled and held the smoke deep inside her. She was still beautiful to Casey, despite the long white scar running up her hip, her ribs, into her armpit. Despite the strange square shape of her reconstructed collarbone and the white plastic socket jutting out of her chest, which allowed easy recharge of her replacement heart. Even broken, Jolene was the perfect shape of woman.

  Smoke trickled from her nose. “There won’t be a next summer.”

  “Jolie—”

  “No. I can’t do it anymore. Every day on the road, nights in a tent—I can’t take that anymore. I hurt. And watching all those assholes stare at me is like cutting out my heart all over again.”

  Meeting you every summer is like cutting out my heart again, Casey thought. But she didn’t say it. It wasn’t anything Jolene could understand. She fucked men, and women were invisible to her. Friendship sometimes seemed like a strong word for what she and Casey had; they were business partners, plain and simple. Co-workers.

  But she was going to have to convince Jolene to stick out the last of the season. Just for business. There was money to recoup, fields and big air shows already confirmed. Casey put on her sweetest expression.

  “It’s hard, I know. You’re a combat veteran with multiple decorations, not a vaudeville actress. But just think about all the joy you’re bringing these people. They’re tied to their farms, they can’t travel. Our show is the best thing they’ve seen since the Reconstruction began.” She sat up, smiling benignly. “You’re making a difference, Jolie.”

  Jolene sucked back half an inch of joint in one sharp inhalation. She shook her head while the smoke seared into her lungs. The combat docs on Mars had done the best they could, but even five follow-up surgeries had done nothing for Jolie’s chronic pain. She woke up screaming sometimes. Casey had rocked her to sleep more than she could count.

  Casey pressed on. Jolene’s face was hard and cold now, but tomorrow she’d feel different. She always did. “Just stay till Wichita. We’ve got a recruiter coming to the show. He’s got the first half of our summer paycheck.”

  “Recruiters. I can’t believe we’re helping the Air Force hire more grunts. These farm kids look up at our fancy machines and they think PEAVs are all pink smoke and synchronized dance. They forget
the damn things aren’t toys. They’re Power-Enhanced Armor-Vehicles. Armor, Casey.”

  Casey knew that if she didn’t stop Jolene now, she’d work herself up into a full-on screaming rage. The Air Force took her collarbone. The Air Force took her heart. The Air Force took her mother-fucking husband and she didn’t even get to bury his body. Casey had heard it a lot the last few weeks. She suspected something had happened to Jolene this winter, because for the first time, the bad shit could no longer be contained by medical marijuana and two hours a day in the cockpit, flying free.

  So she stole the joint from Jolene’s fingers and sucked down a long drag of it, letting the grin spread wide and crooked across her face. “Fuck that shit. Let’s go get drunk.”

  It was the right thing to say. The vitriol hung in Jolene’s eyes a second and then a smile appeared on her own face, growing dimples. “If they’ve got more than near-beer in this shit-hole town.”

  Casey pushed herself to her feet and offered Jolene her hand. “Only one way to find out.”

  •

  They walked into town. It would have taken too much effort to unhitch the mechs’ trailer from the truck, and with any luck they’d be in no shape to drive after a couple of hours. Town lay about a mile and a half down the gravel road. Once there’d been pavement, but there wasn’t enough oil left in the world to justify asphalt these days.

  Casey kept her arm around Jolene’s waist as they walked, but they didn’t talk. Casey let her mind play over the time before Reconstruction. She couldn’t remember it too well, she’d been so young. There was oil, and then there wasn’t. There were suburbs, and then there weren’t. As a kid, her parents had lived in a west coast city with a symphony and a dozen libraries and jobs that ran off computers. Her memories of her childhood were scattered and few, rattling around in a mental box that kept them smelling like Christmas and her mother’s perfume. They’d gone to the Nutcracker every year. She’d never forget the stiff velvet of the dresses her mother bought her to wear at the performances.

  But then, the Reconstruction. They’d been relocated to a government farm not that different from these ones. Casey wanted to pause and lean on a fence post beside the road, take a moment and study the crops. She’d learned how to test soil by placing it on her tongue, learning the mineral contents by their flavors. The neighbor had taught her how to fix tractors at the same time he taught her father.

  It was Jolene who stopped, staring at a red rag fluttering on the strand of barbed wire. “That’s where they’ll start tomorrow morning,” she murmured. “When they come out to finish checking the fence line.”

  She started walking again, faster, and Casey had to jog a step to catch up with her.

  “I spent a summer fixing fences,” Jolene muttered.

  “I thought you grew up in Chicago.”

  “They sent kids out to the farms every summer. ‘Everybody has to pitch in for the agricultural effort!’ ” She kicked a stone and they both watched it soar ahead of them. “Fucking hated that farm shit.”

  Casey would have answered, but a pickup truck roared past, the teenagers in the back whooping and catcalling as they shot by. Casey thought she recognized them from the air show, a knot of sullen kids who’d passed a joint in the back of the field. But that was what teenagers did out here, she knew—there was nothing else for them. Drugs, and fucking, and getting dirt under their nails. Less than one percent had a chance at college under Reconstructionist policy.

  She felt lucky then. She smiled at Jolene. “Aren’t you glad the GI Bill pays for school? I sure as hell wasn’t cut out to work on a farm.”

  Jolene gave her a sideways look. She was in her second year of graduate school, gearing up to write a thesis on particle physics. Casey knew Jolene looked down on Casey’s job teaching welding at a community college. She tried not to give a shit.

  They passed into the center of town. Neon lights called them from the end of the block: Coors. Budweiser. Miller. Casey hoped there was tequila. They passed a grocery store on their right and an electrical recharge shop on the left, the shop advertising automotive repair and the cheapest battery jumps in a two hundred mile radius. Casey made a note—the truck could use a charge if they were going to make it to the next town south. If she could convince Jolene they should go to the next town.

  The teenagers had parked their truck in front of the automotive shop, and their laughter sounded hard and bright as the two vets passed the place. A girl came out of the shop, so blond and tall that Casey caught herself looking back over her shoulder as she walked past. She was as pretty as Jolene, and that was saying something.

  Jolene tugged on Casey’s arm. “I see an Absolut sign in the window.”

  The prospect of hard liquor drove the girl out of Casey’s mind. She broke into a little jog and tugged open the door. She held it for Jolene, waving her in.

  Country music billowed out on a wash of warm air ripe with the funk of spilled beer. Casey hesitated, but Jolene was already inside, headed straight for the dimly lit bar. A couple of flickering fluorescent tubes lit up the taps and single shelf of hard liquor. The rest of the place hid itself in darkness.

  Jolene leaned over the bar to deliver her order. She’d worn her costume into town, the black shorts and white tanktop, revealing muscles still sculpted and strong. For a second Casey could imagine her on a Martian base, playing cards with the other aces in their wife-beaters, all ease and grins until their radio implants called them out to the flight deck. It hadn’t been like that on Luna. The Chinese had mostly given up on the moon by the time Casey signed up. The good stuff, the rare earth elements and metal ores, were all bound up on Mars and in the asteroid belt. Earth’s dirt was mostly played out, worth more for crops than minerals.

  She shook off the stupor of memory and surmise, hurrying to join Jolene while there was still a second shot glass on the table. She gave it a sniff. “What the hell is this shit?”

  Jolene grinned. “Grain liquor. Half the price of vodka and cut with ascorbic acid and salt. The bartender swears it tastes just like tequila with lime.”

  Casey knocked it back. Who was she to argue? She hadn’t seen a lime since she was ten years old.

  A man in a ball cap made his way out of the darkness. “Next round is on me. You ladies sure know how to put on a show.” Beside him, his buddy in a cowboy hat bobbed his head in agreement.

  “Thanks.” Casey knew it was her job to talk to him, to put on a smile.

  The bartender appeared with two more shot glasses, and Ball Cap slid one down to Jolene. He offered the second to Casey, his fingers touching hers. “And you’re a real nice-looking lady.” He leaned in a little closer. “At least when you’ve got that skull jack covered up. A man don’t like to be reminded his lady fought the Chinks.”

  Jolene knocked back her shot. “Thanks for the drinks. You gents play pool?” She caught the bartender’s eye. “Keep the shots coming to the pool table.”

  She looked back over her shoulder at Casey and the men, her pupils huge from dim light and THC. “Any of you got any change?”

  Casey rolled her eyes and hurried to catch up with Jolene, catching her elbow and pulling her ear into whispering distance. “Really? Pool? These guys are walking sacks of manure.”

  “Just trying to have fun,” Jolene cooed. She slipped her fingers into Casey’s hip pocket and worked free a quarter. “Look what I found!”

  “Just one game,” Casey warned. She didn’t like it when Jolene let her hormones think for her. Didn’t trust things to stay safe in this dirty corner of nowhere. She snatched the coin out of Jolene’s fingers and made her way to the pool table. It was dark enough in this corner of the room that Casey had to feel her way down the side of the table, fumbling her quarter into the slot. The single fluorescent bulb strung above the table flickered on, and the balls rattled down the chute.

  “Who’s ready to have their ass handed to them?” Jolene put on hand on her hip and studied the farm boys. “I’ve never lost a g
ame…on this planet anyway.”

  “Sounds like quite the claim.” Cowboy Hat leaned across her to reach the pool cues, but Jolene’s smile was fixed on Ball Cap.

  Casey thought of the way he’d pushed his fingers against hers when he passed her the shot glass, and she knew exactly what Jolene was doing. Every show, she said she hated to be watched, but out of the cockpit, Jolene hated it when anyone else got the attention. Casey shook her head as she racked up the balls.

  Ball Cap and Cowboy Hat exchanged glances.

  “May the best man win!” Ball Cap announced.

  The door to the bar slammed open and the kids from the red pickup truck piled inside. Their leader, a good-looking boy with his arm slung around the beautiful blond from the automotive station, muscled his way to the bar. Casey was disappointed to see the bartender pass them three cases of beer. But that was life in a small town, she remembered. It was easier to take the money and look the other way than deal with troubles that would you couldn’t walk away from.

  Or maybe it was just sympathy. Since the oil ran dry and the power got rationed, there wasn’t nearly enough for kids to do, and with the agricultural workers’ quotas, it wasn’t like these kids had futures to look forward to. Just dust, and wheat, and nights in a bar like this for the rest of their lives. A beer and a blond was the best that good-looking boy could expect from the world.

  When the bartender laid a row of shot glasses down on the pool table, Casey was the first to reach for one.

  •

  Casey and Jolie had a rule on the road: don’t fuck the rubes. Jolene had slipped up in four other towns, and every time she’d come out of it with bruises and cops breathing down their neck. One of those towns, C & J Air Show was still banned from performing. So when Jolene put Ball Cap’s hands on her hips and wiggled her ass against his thighs as she lined up her shot, Casey knew it was time to get out. They’d played three games of pool and the table was lined with shot glasses.

  “Soon as you finish this game, Jolie, we should wrap it up. Long drive tomorrow, remember?” Casey said it with a smile, but Jolene just shot her a glare.