Califia's Daughters

by Leigh Richards

  She sat for half an hour atop the long, high ridge of gathered rubble that kept the Bay from the Road, sat and threw rocks and allowed the dogs to run after birds and the horse to crop at the stubby grass. It must have been beautiful once, she thought, when the Bay was alive, with tule rushes and seabirds and sailing boats. And oil spills and the haze of automobiles, she reminded herself. But before that, before the universities and their libraries filled with clean, proud students, even before gold’s siren call pulled in the miners’ thousands and the camp followers’ tens of thousands, back when Richard Henry Dana had spent his two years before the mast and sailed into the pristine Bay, looked with amused disdain at the dingy settlement around Mission Dolores, and left for his aristocratic home in Boston—then it must have been a glory.

  What would Dana have thought if told that two hundred years later the children reading his book in a remote one-roomed schoolhouse would be no more technologically advanced than he was? And for that matter, what about his mighty Boston? Was it still a city? Or had it, too, slipped back and become a dingy settlement with subhuman primates skulking in the debris? Boston was somewhere near Washington, if she remembered those long-ago geography drills, and as far as she knew that city still existed in some form or another, the nominal capital of what some might still call the United States. There had once been a President there. She wondered if there was today, if anyone bothered, and then she noticed that Tomas was venturing too near the water and whistled him back.

  It was all too remote to matter, Presidents and a theoretical, three-thousand-mile-wide nation. Meijing mattered. The world knew that history: nameless home to generation upon generation of fishing peoples, later named Yerba Buena by the Spanish fathers who built their adobe Mission of Sorrows, then known as San Francisco, under which name it was transformed first by gold, later by trade, only to have its high towers and busy streets abandoned in the panic of the Troubles, leaving behind the inhabitants of its most crowded sector. Meijing, now the greatest remaining city for a thousand miles in any direction.

  Meijing was not the seat of a great empire or military power, although her hold over the area was complete, her authority as yet uncontested. Meijing kept the peace, it was true, but only as a peripheral function to her main interest: trade. She had a port, the biggest, most reliable port along the whole West Coast short of Seattle, and through her wharves flowed a constant stream of goods, thick furs from the north and exotic foods from the warm south, scavenged Artifacts and recently manufactured machines, luxuries and essentials and the ten thousand things that kept the darkness at bay. She also controlled the only dependable north road, for the land east of the Bay was contaminated clear up to the foothills of the great mountain range. Common knowledge had it that the land was filled with monstrosities and barrenness and death, and certainly travelers desperate enough to chance it had not been known to return—although whether that was because the land was toxic, or because the Destroyers ruled there, no one could tell. Rumor had it that Meijing had launched airplanes out over the area, which had never been seen again. What the truth was, only Meijing knew, and Meijing with a secret made one of its stone Buddhas look garrulous. Like the ancient maps used to say, Here Be Monsters.

  Rumor was changing, though. The Travelers’ talk at Jamilla’s had included vague references to returning life, in the northern reaches of that land across the Bay, anyway. Time would tell. In the meantime, there was only Meijing, its road, its port, and its ferry.

  A large part of Meijing’s power was due to the chance of her location astride the only remaining north–south road, but Meijing’s greatest asset, the thing that her people nurtured and used and occasionally abused, lay in neither port nor road. Her strength and authority lay in her preservation of a hundred thousand facets of a civilization now dead, her hoarding within her walls the techniques and instruments produced by humanity at its technological peak, now lost to the rest of humankind. Her power was in her knowledge, and her knowledge was immense.

  People came to Meijing with their unfixable machines, their incurable illnesses and irreparable injuries, their unanswered questions and unverifiable theories, from all the reaches of the habitable world. The gadgets, illnesses, and questions were brought to Meijing’s walls, taken inside, and returned for collection at a specified later time, at a specified price. Few, very few outsiders were given leave to enter, most of those on a limited training program such as Dian’s mother had gone through. Meijing was inviolate, and the outside world knew little of what went on within her walls. Dian would be one of those privileged few, not through any virtue of her own but because she was the daughter of a woman who trained there and the friend of a woman actually born there. She would have to watch herself carefully, so as not to betray that trust. She looked down at the fuzzy head nestled to her chest and not for the first time was assailed by doubts as to the wisdom of her impulsive humanitarian action. Perhaps she should—she couldn’t abandon Willa now—what if in Meijing they—but surely they were too civilized to—

  Dian rose, distracted if not exactly soothed by her sojourn beside the waters, and put her troops back on the Road.

  Her second stop was to be at the workshop of a carpet weaver named Deirdre. Shortly after midday the tide of the traffic ebbed and began to turn, and where in the morning she had been caught up and pulled along by the northward flow, now the trickle of carts coming back from the city began to grow, until the wrong-minded types like herself were crowded to one side. About one o’clock she paused for a breather and a drink, and a strange thing happened: she was approached by a man.

  He came up to her as she leaned against the gatepost of the small café, a mug of beer in her hand and one eye on the animals to make sure they didn’t overfill their bellies at the water trough. He was a tall, cadaverous male with wild hair and a yellowed beard trailing down his chest in matted ropes, wearing the standard dust-colored robe and carrying the requisite staff. This one had neither sandals nor rucksack. He leaned over his staff, fixed her with a fanatic eye, and waited.

  Dian pulled back slightly and tried not to breathe in too much of his accompanying effluvium, and racked her brain for the ritual words. What the hell were you supposed to say? Mother had done this that time—oh, yes.

  “Greetings, Brother.”

  “I greet you, sister.”

  “Whence do you come, and where are you bound?”

  “I come from nowhere, I am bound toward salvation, for I move on a holy quest.” The words came out in a bored mumble, all the syllables strung together.

  “What seekest thou, Brother?”

  “I seek the forgiveness of mankind and offer myself up as a sacrifice to the living God.” These were the only variable words of the ritual but seemed no more his own than any of the others. He looked at her impatiently, and she finally dredged up the closing words.

  “It is a just cause, Brother, and may the Heavens bless it. Please permit me to offer you refreshment to strengthen you on your way.” He turned away before the word refreshment had left her mouth and was already standing at the café’s serving hatch. She leaned past him to put a copper in the woman’s hand, and when the Pilgrim gave a snort of incredulous disgust, dug a second one from her pocket. She drained her mug and left quickly. Granted, becoming a Pilgrim was one of the few options open to males who would or could not live under control, but they made her nervous. Even Crazy Isaiah, though relatively harmless, she found an uncomfortable reminder of the occasional inhumanity of modern life. To say nothing of the fact that Pilgrims on a holy quest had a distressing tendency to go berserk and kill themselves and others if they thought they were about to be taken captive. All in all, it was best to submit to buying the man a quick meal and get away from him.

  She found Deirdre’s carpet-weaving shop half an hour later in one of the largest of the eight-mile centers south of Meijing, hedged in on one side by a painfully gaudy building—covered in various oranges, yellows, greens, reds, and several pounds of
gold leaf—whose sign, visible a mile down the Road, declared it to be the Church of Understanding, and on the other by a tawdry cinema house whose advertisement of moovies, 3-D, and videos was almost obscured by photographs of polished-looking men in a variety of unlikely poses, all of whom seemed to have artificial teeth. She tore her eyes from this array of amazingly identical yet apparently distinct males and reined Simon to a halt.

  In her fascination with the cinema kings, she had not registered the vehicle in front of the shop, but now she did, a gleaming maroon and silver closed carriage pulled by a matched foursome of equally glossy black geldings. Tied alongside were six saddled horses, the entire equipage blocking a fair amount of the Road and looking out of place in front of the unassuming whitewashed shed whose small sign said only Weavers. Two armed women in unnecessarily ornate maroon and silver uniforms blocked the door of the shop. Dian dismounted slowly in front of the “moovies” shop and looped Simon’s reins to the post ring provided, studying as she did so the extraordinary photograph before her, that of a cinema king—a movie star!—threatening passersby with an unwieldy, thrusting black weapon. Most amazing of all was the movie star’s costume, which looked remarkably like human skin but bulged in an exaggeration of masculinity, veins popping, sweat gleaming, muscles writhing across his chest and shoulders. It was a clever enough joke, she supposed, then paused to reflect on the oddities of humor, that what former peoples had apparently thought highly amusing, from her point of view should only appear grotesque. She shook her head, told the dogs to stay on guard, and left her rifle on the saddle.

  The two uniformed guards immediately moved away from the building, bristling like a couple of strange dogs, their gun barrels down but very ready. Dian glanced up and down the road in hopes of seeing a Meijing guard, belt bristling with all those unidentifiable shapes, but there were only civilians. So she repeated her “stay” gesture to Culum and Tomas and, touching the firm little shape in the sling for confidence, walked up to the women. She stopped ten feet away.

  “I’m looking for Deirdre,” she said politely.

  “She’s busy,” the older one said curtly.

  “Yes, I thought that might be the case. Can you tell me how much longer before she’s free?”

  “No, I can’t.”

  “Can’t, or won’t? Ah, never mind. She is expecting me, I’m afraid, so if you would please just give her the message that Jamilla’s friend—”

  “No message. You’ll have to wait.” The woman had a lumpy face and small eyes that gave her a stupid, bitter expression. The younger one was tense, bony, and spoiling for a fight; for an instant Dian was tempted, but the warm burden that began to stir on her chest made her clamp down hard and keep the politeness in her voice.

  “Well, I’m really sorry, but this baby is going to start yelling her head off in about two minutes, and Deirdre is the only one who can do anything about it. It may disturb your employers, but that’s up to you.” She bared her teeth in a smile, and Willa obligingly let out a first, questioning bleat. To her apprehension Dian saw the younger one react, even more aggressively than she had anticipated. The woman’s hard, narrow face looked almost happy as the tip of her gun came up from the ground. Dian’s hand shot out to her side, palm down stiffly, and a sharp command rang out.

  “No!”

  The woman was startled by the unexpected movement and the command, which had not actually been directed at her. Dian continued more quietly.

  “Please don’t do that. My dogs really don’t like it when someone points a gun at me.”

  The two guards looked past Dian at the vision of three hundredweight of muscle and teeth, crouched quivering where Dian’s hand had frozen them as they moved apart and toward the women who threatened their mistress. She could see the women take in the eagerness, the shoulders huge with hackles, the yellow eyes locked on to prey, white teeth beneath the lips; both guards seemed suddenly less interested in dominating Dian. The tableau held for a long moment, all of them oblivious to the traffic and noise a few feet away, until it was broken by the shop door opening. A woman not much older than Dian, dressed in the maroon uniform and with a handgun strapped to her hip, stepped out and ran her eyes over them all, stopping on Culum.

  “What is going on?”

  “This woman was trying to get in—”

  “A woman with a baby and no gun? And you decided to push her around.”

  “No, we were just—”

  “I’ve warned you two before about this.”

  “But she—”

  “Shut up.” Quiet, light, and dangerous. “We’ll talk about it later.” She met first one set of eyes, then the other, and both fell away. She glanced at Dian. “There seems to have been a misunderstanding here. May I help you with something?”

  “It’s all right, no harm done. Yes, I need to speak with Deirdre. I have a baby she’s due to feed shortly. Do you know how much longer she’ll be occupied?”

  “They’re nearly finished. Perhaps five or ten minutes. Shall I tell her you’re here?”

  “Yes, please. Tell her it’s Jamilla’s friend.”

  “Just a minute.” She went in without looking at her two subordinates. They in turn studiously ignored Dian, who walked over to the dogs, smoothed their fur to gentle them, and sent them back to their positions near the horse. Willa stirred again, and Dian jiggled her.

  When the woman came back, her jaw was clenched and her mouth tight.

  “They want you to come in.”

  “Who is ‘they’?”

  “My, er, employers.”

  “And Deirdre?”

  “She’s with them. They want to see you, and the baby.” The idea appeared to make her unhappy; Dian thought she could guess why.

  “Ah. Menfolk?”

  “Yes. Three.”

  “I see.” Dian tried not to look amused at the impossible situation this woman had been put into. She turned to speak over her shoulder. “Culum, Tomas, guard. Willa, come and meet your new admirers.”

  Under different circumstances she might have helped the woman out, offered to disappear quietly or at least shed her weapons, but it amused her to pretend she did not see the consternation it caused when she walked in with a large, well-worn hunting knife on her belt and God knew what else hidden on her person, the guard knowing that there was nothing she could do to stop her. Even when they were inside, the woman was thwarted at doing her duty, for when she would have taken up a position just inside the door so as to keep an eye on the potentially hazardous Dian, the youngest of her charges waved her out with a flip of his bejeweled fingers. She protested in strangled tones, but the oldest one looked at her.

  “It’ll be all right, Brigit,” he said. “This woman isn’t about to murder us or kidnap us. Are you?” he asked Dian.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I already have more than enough to keep me occupied, without more worries.”

  “But, sir—” Brigit said without much hope.

  “You can wait outside the door, Brigit.” She left, shoulders rigid and an expression on her face that said this would not be the end of the matter, that she would see that her ultimate employers, the women whose menfolk these were, would know the details.

  The youngest of the men did not wait until the door closed to laugh derisively, arrogant in his ephemeral power. He was perhaps nineteen, a blonde with elaborately coiffed hair, wearing a sort of doublet and hose affair in brilliant green silk and velvet, his eyes painted black and green with makeup, a ring on every finger. The brown-haired man next to him, about thirty years old, wore more ordinary clothes, less flamboyant in blues and reds but of superb quality. He had faint pocks on his cheeks, and his nose and mouth were pinched as if to keep a bad smell from entering. He dismissed Dian from notice with impersonal distaste, his eyes on Willa as if she were some strange, misplaced, and faintly repulsive specimen of the natural world, a slug on his lettuce or a damp salamander in his shoe. A huge diamond on his left hand pulsed and sparkled in the bri
ght workshop, and Dian reflected that if Laine’s scavenged necklace had increased the Valley’s credit as much as it had, the jewelry in this room would probably buy the entire place, and half its people as well.

  The third man seemed positively plain in his brown jacket and trousers and a snowy white shirt. His hair was peppered with gray, his eyes dark, mustache neat. He was sitting next to a slim, brown-eyed woman who wore a simple long dress of some soft burnt-orange fabric with a drape like a painting. He glanced at Dian with polite interest, although as he took in Dian’s rough hair and rougher boots and the delicate head grizzling and rooting in her arms, his expression turned to amusement. The woman seemed lost and glanced around for some clue as to how she should respond. She half-stood to welcome Dian, sank down, plucked at the seams of her skirt, and smiled uncertainly.

  “You’re Jamilla’s friend?” she asked, in a voice that was less womanly than Susanna’s. “And the baby. Good. We, uh, we were just finishing up, if you’d like to—”

  “Let her sit down.” The oldest man’s suggestion was a command. The other two tucked their sleek, tidy feet under their chairs and shifted marginally away from Dian.

  The oldest man turned back to Deirdre to continue their interrupted discussion, which seemed to concern the colors of a carpet she was doing for him and its relationship with some existing furniture, particularly an ancient Chinese painted screen. They pushed through a great heap of multicolored threads on the table between them, extracting a few, discarding others. Deirdre was so distracted as to be fluttering, the man seemed determined to continue, the other two men started to talk about a horse race, Willa grew increasingly restive, and Dian tried to push away her irritation.