Heiresses of Russ 2013

by Tenea D. Johnson

“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 household 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, dream-like.

  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?”

  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 nighttime 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 storms came, shrouding the nighttime 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.