Clarkesworld Magazine - Issue 55

by E. Lily Yu;Erin M. Hartshorn;Brit Mandelo

  When it thawed, she would breed new foundresses among the village’s apricot trees. The letters she received indicated a great demand for them in the capital, particularly from army generals and the captains of scientific explorations. In years to come, the village of Yiwei would be known for its delicately inscribed maps, the legends almost too small to see, and not for its barley and oats, its velvet apricots and glassy pears.

  In the spring, the old beehive awoke to find the wasps gone, like a nightmare that evaporates by day. It was difficult to believe, but when not the slightest scrap of wasp paper could be found, the whole hive sang with delight. Even the queen, who had been coached from the pupa on the details of her client state and the conditions by which she ruled, and who had felt, perhaps, more sympathy for the wasps than she should have, cleared her throat and trilled once or twice. If she did not sing so loudly or so joyously as the rest, only a few noticed, and the winter had been a hard one, anyhow.

  The maps had vanished with the wasps. No more would be made. Those who had studied among the wasps began to draft memoranda and the first independent decrees of queen and council. To defend against future invasions, it was decided that a detachment of bees would fly the borders of their land and carry home reports of what they found.

  It was on one of these patrols that a small hive was discovered in the fork of an elm tree. Bees lay dead and brittle around it, no identifiable queen among them. Not a trace of honey remained in the storehouse; the dark wax of its walls had been gnawed to rags. Even the brood cells had been scraped clean. But in the last intact hexagons they found, curled and capped in wax, scrawled on page after page, words of revolution. They read in silence.

  Then —

  “Write,” one said to the other, and she did.

  About the Author

  E. Lily Yu is a student at Princeton University, where she dances, makes music, keeps bees, and rarely sleeps. Her work has recently appeared in The Kenyon Review Online, Jabberwocky 5, Electric Velocipede, and Goblin Fruit, with more stories coming from Podcastle and KROnline later this year.

  Matchmaker

  Erin M. Hartshorn

  “You’re not exactly what I expected when my mother said she’d found a shadchen.”

  Miss Berazazz could’ve been Jewish, sure. The first kurz had converted only a few years after the kurz and humans had encountered each other out in space. Everyone learned of the Acceptance in Hebrew school, even if no kurz attended synagogue locally.

  I stared around the pink ruffled room. Her yellow-green complexion seemed out of place. Bouquets of old-fashioned musk roses — one of the few Earth imports to do well here — were clustered everywhere, their aroma masking the natural body odors that made kurz and humans nauseated when near each other.

  There had been few kurz in my classes at school; most were home-schooled. I’d wanted to be friendly toward them, but they scurried away every time they saw me coming. I’d like to have found out if the green frills circling their otherwise bare heads were as soft as they looked, if that patch of orange scales on their throats hummed to the touch when they spoke. They didn’t seem to share the same level of curiosity about my dark curls and olive skin. Pity.

  Miss Berazazz winked her third eye at me. “You never met a shiksa who was a matchmaker before?”

  “If there were one within five star systems, I’m sure I’d have met her.”

  My mother wasn’t subtle about getting me married off. I still burned with the shame of my sixteenth-year party, when she had invited every unmarried male in the Spaceport. I don’t think I’d met even half a dozen of them before the talk turned to politics — specifically, the legality of sensor implants.

  Space pilots needed the extra input for safe flying. Other spacers might, too, but our world has a strong conservative bent. We didn’t want people who could afford the best technology to have an unfair advantage in the job market. Well, any more of one than they already had.

  I didn’t even get to express an opinion before tempers flared. The party became a brawl, troops were called in, and in the fracas, I was knocked into the fountain.

  Mother was upset because my dress was ruined.

  Five years had passed since then, and my mother was throwing everything she had into the effort of getting me married. “I don’t want you to be alone when I’m gone.” As though being alone were something to be afraid of. She had entirely too many hang-ups from that frontier planet she grew up on. Like the need to marry young. I wondered sometimes what she would have done if my father hadn’t come along, but he had and they’d married when she was just seventeen. Now she thought of me, her only child, as an old maid.

  “How old are you?” Miss Berazazz’s question fit so seamlessly into my thoughts that I didn’t realize at first she’d asked it.

  “Twenty-one.” I felt my ears heat up at the lie. They always blushed first, before my face. I amended my reply. “Twenty-one next week.”

  Her frill rippled in agreement as though she’d expected my answer. Mother probably gave her all the dirt on me. I shifted uneasily in my seat. What had they planned together?

  Miss Berazazz surprised me by standing up and leaving the room, moving backwards. “A teacher with a big heart and large ambitions. Even discounting your mother’s exaggeration, you are promising. Intelligent, caring. Come back when you are full of age. Your mother will not be party to this.”

  I sat there, befuddled. Mother had sent me here; surely she was already a party to it. And if I came back this early with nothing to tell her, she would assume I’d skipped the appointment completely.

  I hesitated at the door and watched the clouds scudding across the pale green sky. The school was on holiday, so I had no work there to catch up on. Maybe I could kill some time at the council chambers. Nothing like a good political debate to fill the afternoon.

  Just as well none of the boys at that long-ago party had asked my opinion on the question at hand. I would have told them. Not that any juvenile’s opinions mattered. In the long run, the council bowed to pressure from the spacers and allowed implants to be used on the job. Penalties were high, though, for personal use; use outside the space support complex was cause for deportation.

  Delaying my return home didn’t matter in the end. I paused to touch the mezuzah before I entered the house. Mother sat, waiting for me, back straight and stiff, on the chair in the foyer. I was to be questioned, and with the length of time I had been gone, she wouldn’t believe the truth. I told her a half-truth.

  “She says I’m . . . a difficult case. She needs time to find someone suitable.”

  Her eyes narrowed — enough for me to notice, but not enough to crease her perfect skin. “How much time?”

  “I’m to come back at the end of next week,” I said. Next week, after my birthday. Would she see the importance of that? I didn’t see how, as I didn’t understand it myself.

  “Very well. I’ll drive you there myself.”

  If her only worry was that I wouldn’t go — well, that made sense. I wasn’t even sure myself why I planned to go. Certainly not legal compulsion, nor the full weight of guilt that Mother had been bearing upon me for years. Curiosity, I suppose. You don’t have to be full-legal to enter a marriage contract, not even limited dalliance or child-bearing ones. What could the shadchen have in mind?

  I brought my attention back to Mother. “That’s not necessary. Really.”

  “We can discuss it later.” A crease in her upper lip was the only visible sign of her displeasure. She changed the subject. “You didn’t go see her looking like that, did you?”

  I glanced in the mirror over the hall table. My hair had been tossed a bit by the omnipresent wind, but otherwise I seemed presentable enough. “Why not? You chose this outfit for Ben’s swearing-in ceremony.”

  My cousin Ben was on the Spaceport council. He’d barely won the election for his district, even with Mother and Aunt Nomi calling on all their friends to exert pressure on his behalf. He’d been in
office a scant month now, so I was fairly confident the clothes hadn’t gone out of style just yet.

  Her hands flew up. “Why do I even bother?” She addressed the ceiling, as she had so often while I was growing up. Or maybe she was talking to my father’s ghost. I’d never had the nerve to ask. She looked back at me. “That was a political occasion, in support of family. This dress is completely out of place in a business meeting where you are trying to impress someone with your future prospects. You’ll have to have something more suitable next week. Yes, perhaps a visit to ReeAnn’s shop.” She frowned. “No, ReeAnn is working on the outfits for your party.” Another pointed birthday party. Wait — outfits? Plural? “We’ll have to use Kendra this time, I suppose. It’s really too bad you don’t have a cousin your age to borrow from.”

  As if that were my fault. She should take it up with Aunt Nomi who had, after all, been given a choice with Ben. Mother’s system rejected the sex selection drugs, but Aunt Nomi had an iron stomach. Personally, I was always amazed that the drugs had dared disagree with Mother. Not many things did.

  Certainly Kendra didn’t. Mother was already on the line to her. I couldn’t hear Kendra’s end of the conversation, but Mother’s tone spoke volumes. A few sentences, and anyone would agree with her out of self-preservation.

  My own levels of self-preservation were high enough that I never overtly disagreed with her. I simply didn’t voice opinions.

  Kendra made time for Mother. We would be at her shop tomorrow morning. My measurements could be sent to her — were, in fact, on file. Kendra would use them to ensure that everything we examined would be in my size. Mother didn’t really need me there — a hologram would do as well for color, style, and bearing — but she wanted me there. As I said, no overt disagreement. There went another day of my life.

  As it turned out, the day wasn’t a complete loss. Mother had a Hadassah meeting in the afternoon and had to rush off right after the fitting. If Mother wasn’t there on time, Elizabeth Holin would push through all of her own pet projects. I’d gone to a meeting once; it was amusing yet frightening to realize Mother wasn’t the only fiercely stubborn woman around. Their clashes were entertaining, but Mother expected me to back her up. I found it easier to not attend.

  Mother was very understanding when I said I had other commitments. I had already agreed to become an active member when I got married, a time that evidently neared. My anticipation knew no bounds.

  Mother left me at the door of Kendra’s shop. “I know you’re much too busy to accompany your poor old mother to her meetings. Don’t think anything of it.” For her, this was understanding.

  I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. My poor old mother played racquetball twice a week and frightened bullies in the street, and I pitied anyone who had the lapse of judgment necessary to call her “old” to her face.

  “I’ll be home a little late for dinner,” she continued. “You go ahead without me and I’ll find something when I get home.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” My lines slid out with the ease of long practice. “I wouldn’t think of starting without you. You go ahead, and we’ll eat when you get home.”

  After several more exchanges along the same lines, reinforced with her mention of rugelach should I need to nosh, she finally left, catching the A line toward Aunt Nomi’s house. I watched until she was out of sight before setting off in the opposite direction. I’d heard that the library had new copies of twentieth-century political speeches from Earth. I wish they had more kurzan material for comparison, but there wasn’t much demand for it.

  I had always wanted to go to Earth, to study politics at one of the real universities, in Cambridge or Melbourne or Shanghai. Even I knew that it was a hopeless dream, but I still studied everything I could get my hands on. A more realistic idea would be to have the chutzpah to run for office. All I had to do first was grow a backbone, move out, and survive the guilt. Realistic — right.

  When I got to the library, somebody else had already reserved the speeches, and the visuals room was occupied. I hadn’t expected that. After I joined Hadassah and began to organize charity functions of my choice, I intended to begin at the library, updating their site licenses and their tech so that more than one person could look at archived material at the same time. Very definitely tikkun olam.

  The librarian tried to be helpful. “Is there something else I can get you instead?”

  I tried to think of alternatives. I’d already read all their Hebrew-language archives, but not all the cultural information. Most of the material they had on the Shoah, though, I’d need the visuals room for, so that was out.

  The talk at council the previous day had been on farming and pollutants and which space company thought the Spaceport’s fees were too high now. One motion, quickly tabled, concerned some cross-breeding experiments. That might be interesting to follow; I asked for a simple genetics text. I’d look up the details of the bill later, after I got home.

  The mathematics and probabilities were as dull as I expected, but the history was fascinating. The text even had a chapter devoted to the eugenics attempts under the Third Reich. I thought of my many-times-great grandmother and her release from Dachau. I already knew this history, but I read with interest about the experiments in Earth’s twenty-first century to decrease activity of monoamine oxidases as well as to increase levels of the dopamine receptor associated with risk-taking behavior. Earth wanted space pilots and people willing to brave the far reaches of space. But risk takers don’t settle down, and so entire new families of drugs were born. The drug trade ramped up. The politicians should have seen that coming.

  “Seen what coming?”

  I hadn’t realized I’d spoken out loud. “Excuse me — ” I looked up.

  He smiled. The smile was so perfect, right down to the dimple in his left cheek, that it took me a moment to process the rest of his good looks — black hair, tan skin, grey eyes.

  “Wow.” I bit my lower lip. I knew I’d said that.

  “I didn’t mean to interrupt.” He put his left foot up on the table next to my chair and leaned on his knee. “I was waiting for a good moment. The librarian told me you wanted to use the visuals room.”

  I nodded. Behind him, the clock on the wall showed a quarter after six. Four hours! I’d lost track of time. Mother wouldn’t have been that long at Hadassah — not since she’d given up finding leads for marrying me off, anyway. I stood up. “I have to go.”

  “The room’s free now. I even asked the librarian to leave the vids keyed for you.” He pulled back but didn’t put his foot down.

  “I’m sorry.” He was looking at the speeches? Gorgeous and interested in the same things I was. If only I could stay. “I didn’t realize it had gotten so late. I have to meet . . . someone.”

  “Maybe I’ll see you another time, then.”

  “Maybe.” He hadn’t moved, and I had to push past him to drop the genetics book at the counter. “I’m in here a lot.”

  He probably hadn’t heard me and wouldn’t have cared if he had. Mother said I had my dad’s nose. I guess that could have been it, although I figured no one in his right mind would want her for a mother-in-law.

  As I’d expected, Mother acted worried when I got home. “I was afraid something had happened to you.”

  I walked past her to the kitchen. “Not this time,” I said. “I am hungry, though. I’ll just whip us up something, shall I?”

  Mother didn’t rise to the bait. If Mother didn’t want to feed a hungry child, perhaps she really was worried.

  “I expected you to be home when I arrived.”

  I stopped and turned. “I’m sorry. I should have signaled you.”

  Was she going to forgive me? Well, no, but she might let it go for now, to be dragged out later in one of her litanies of my failings as a daughter.

  “Yes, you should have.” She walked away. Over her shoulder, she said, “Don’t eat too much. There isn’t enough time for either Kendra or ReeAnn to alte
r your dresses.”

  No family meal, then. Fine. I grabbed a cheese sandwich and a glass of milk and curled up to think about the stranger in the library. I should have read the cross-breeding bill instead, but he was more compelling. Something about him shrieked outsider. Maybe a space captain, passing through. But then where were his implants? Ah, well, a gal could dream.

  And dream I did until the morning of my twenty-first birthday. Mostly. I did eventually read the bill.

  I’d assumed it would be a bill for funding at the college — some new strain of wheat with more fiber and vitamins, or livestock that would grow in a tank so we could put yet larger buildings on what was now grazing land. Scientists were always promising things like that and instead creating chickens that could lay striped eggs with yolks that glowed in the dark.

  This bill was different. It claimed to be “to protect the purity of the human and kurz races.” In an attachment — not part of the bill itself but clearly meant to influence its passage — one of the sponsors told a story of his father, whose genetic material had been stolen and used to impregnate a kurz female.

  The bill had lots of language in it about the protection of the two species and about how cross-breeds could serve as vectors for illnesses to spread from one to the other.

  It was a marvel of statesmanship. It had to be, to allow every artificial method of procreation, every drug, every choice we’d given ourselves about our children, yet disallow any hybrids. It stopped short of barring kurz procreation on a planet where there were humans, but not by much. The hints were there for anyone who’d studied politics and history. This was just the beginning.

  It stank worse than a roomful of kurz after a softball game.

  I still hadn’t decided what I could do about it. Ben was too busy to talk to me, although I left several messages at his office.

  Today, though, I wouldn’t worry about it. Today was the day I went back to see the shadchen, the day I accepted Mother’s wish to find me a husband. I really didn’t care. I had a job; I had ambitions. I even had a cause. I didn’t need a husband. It was my mother who wouldn’t give up.