by Anthology
She charmed the displaced. The hurt. The Shawnee. Ibo. Pawnee. Zulu, Beijing. No one in the large houses that bartered her off as she matured saw the roads to freedom she laid.
But never once an attack on her life traceable to an agent.
Every night Syndell made love to Claudette. It was that or grow mad seeing another mark on Arliyo.
They all grew old.
By Harriet’s forty-first birthday, after the Underground Rebellion led to the surrender by Lincoln to the Free Displaced Confederacy and all plantations burned—every single one after a long war that left a million dead and a million more likely under the scientific advances at Tubman’s command—every agent knew it was time to go home.
Instead of red, the herring had been gold. No matter.
If the United States of America had been allowed to continue unchecked the world would have likely ended in nineteen fourteen.
They returned to the pub. Syndell looked at Claudette two months after that.
My gods, we were married for 42 years.
“Remember that book,” he said to her. “Before we left. Nineteen Eighty-four. What’s that about?”
They were in his apartment. She laid a hand on his face. “It’s about love.”
A tear tracked down his face. “We were in hell, Claude. A whole life.”
“It fades.”
“What about Arliyo?” he said.
“In no more pain than the last guy we dumped off Dover,” she said.
“I’m done.”
“The Machine hasn’t decommissioned you,” said Claudette.
“What did we make a difference to? A machine trying to maintain its immortality?”
“You planning to walk?” she said, seeing him through memories of the man as her husband.
“Yeah.”
“Right then. I’ll pack up with you.”
“I don’t know where I’m going, luv,” said Syndell.
“Does it make a difference?” she said.
He looked at Claudette. Her skin was rosy, her freckles plentiful, her eyes forever warm. “You sure you’re coming with me?”
“Aye.”
“Then I guess it doesn’t matter.”
Arliyo found Syndell’s handwritten notes after his disappearance.
I hold these truths to be self-evident. That time is a bollocks. That the Difference Machine is a sham. That Claudette is better for me than I deserve.
The notes were turned over to the Machine, which read them with a sense of pride. Syndell was not the finest agent, but he could read a blueprint with the best of them. The Machine would have Arliyo, undisputedly the best, find him after enough positive aspects of his absence had presented themselves. For now, let the man walk. Let him think he was disappeared.
Leave the man his illusions till the Machine deemed him vital again.
Liz Colter
http://www.lizcolter.com/
The Ties That Bind, The Chains That Break(Short story)
by Liz Colter
First published in Galaxy's Edge Magazine (March, 2015), edited by Mike Resnick
My first view of Alawea is bittersweet, as always. The beauty is breath-taking, from thin, blue rivulets that stream down the mountain, to the city itself, which leans back against the mountain's rocky base as a ruler might lean into the high back of a throne. Spires rise as thin and fragile as a glass blower's straw above the sweep and curve of villas that cascade down the terraced levels. Alawea, the city of my birth and wellspring of my nightmares.
I don't return willingly but, like my parents, I am bi-gender and also a messenger. I go where I am sent. Though for many seasons I have lived in Zasna, serving the tetrarch of that city, if she bids me deliver a message to Alawea, then come I must.
The lowest level of the city is hidden behind the perimeter wall, and so it's the elegant middle and opulent upper terraces that expand and define as I approach. Closer still and the wall looms largest. It blocks all else until I reach the city gate, where metal bars sketch thick black lines through my view of the jumbled shacks and mud-caked cobbles beyond.
Alawea may be my birth-city, but it's the blighted Sabanach quarter, sprawling and stinking, that's my true childhood home. I hate it more than the poor quarters of other cities for that fact alone.
The gate guard takes in the delicate, fair skin of my face with its wisps of dark beard and sideburns, finger-joint long but sparse, like the crest-feathers of a green finn. Her eyes sweep lower to the flatness of my chest and the narrowness of my waist, and lower still, to the Y of my legs where they meet the saddle, no doubt wondering, like all do, what lies beneath the brown cloth of my breeches.
I need no identification other than that which I present to the world each day. She nods to a boy inside who swings the barred gate wide for me to enter. I gather my breath and nudge my mount forward beneath the heavy arch of stone and into the city. Muck spatters from my horse's hooves as I thread the narrow streets. Dung fires—and worse, the refuse burned within those fires—assail my nostrils after many days spent traveling under the canopy of open sky.
I suppose I should be grateful to the 14th Autarch, more than a century dead, who decreed that all messengers would be bi-genders, giving many, if not most of us, a profession. Perhaps I would be grateful if he'd also allowed us to climb out of the slums. Or if his incentive had been loftier than devising a means for bi-genders to access his palace to satisfy his well-known perversions.
Past the outer ring of beggar's camps and temporary shelters lies the interior of Sabanach, where many of the short, boxy shacks flaunt strips of bright cloth hanging across low roofs or along either side of the doorways. The extravagant use of cloth is not as wasteful as it seems; it transforms the bleakness into a riot of rich reds and bright yellows, deep blues and emerald greens. It proclaims the uniqueness of the inhabitants and shouts to all who pass by, "I have not been conquered."
That my parents still make their home here gives me the opportunity to remove the dirt of my travels in private before presenting myself to the tetrarch. A rare respite from performing the duty under the eyes of palace servants.
I stop before a squat hovel with faded strips of cloth lovingly stitched into a rainbow of familiar colors. The open door indicates that at least one of my parents is in residence. Horses are rare in Sabanach, but to steal a horse with the trappings of a messenger would be to steal from the messenger's master, which none would dare. I tie him without hesitation to the iron stake hammered to the left of the door.
My eyes fight for focus as I step over the threshold into the dim interior. Against the far wall of the single room a figure crouches on the dirt floor upon hands and knees, folding blankets at the foot of the sleeping pallet.
"Dallu?" It's been three seasons since I was here last and I say the name more to identify myself, knowing I'm silhouetted by the light at my back.
"Jerusha." Dallu drops the blankets and comes to embrace me. My co-parent's small breasts press against me, our cheeks rub roughly. I am bestowed a light kiss on the forehead. "You're here on business." Dallu holds me at arm's length to examine the brown breeches and shirt of a messenger that I wear.
I nod. "I thought to wash before going to the palace. I hope to visit afterward, but one never knows."
"Of course."
I strip off my dusty shirt and find a pitcher of water on the table and a cloth and bowl where I know they'll be stored.
"Where's Beldala?" The last two times I passed through Alawea my birth-parent was away, making it nearly seven seasons since we last saw each other.
"Gone."
Dallu's tone implies deeper meaning than one syllable should possess. Turning with the dripping cloth in my hand, I wait for more.
"Beldala left to deliver a message to Glendower. That was half a season ago."
"Half a season?" The water from the cloth plops drip by drip on the toe of my boot as the news sinks in. "To Glendower and back should take no more than a fortnight; a fortnig
ht and a half at most."
Dallu's voice drops to a hush so low, even standing two arm spans away I strain to hear the words. "I think Beldala left to look for the insurgent army."
"You believe the rumors?"
"Beldala did."
I hope more than I can say that Dallu's suspicion is true, but an attack on the road is far more likely. When the autarch decreed that bi-genders would be messengers the excuse used was that, being neither men nor women, we were safer from the violence men encounter on the road and the other sorts of brutality more often visited upon women. In truth, we're more vulnerable to both. Mono-genders, both men and women, prove their superiority to all but a fortunate few of us in a variety of ways. It happened to me often enough in these very alleys.
A hard knot in my belly forms around the fear for my birth-parent's safety. "What makes you think Beldala wasn't waylaid?"
"I tracked down the one who should have gone to Glendower," Dallu says. "The messenger was not ill as Beldala told me. The errand was traded and the trade requested as a favor."
I digest this in silence. The wet cloth, gone from cool to cold in my hand, pebbles my skin in gooseflesh as I touch it to the back of my neck and face, to the warm skin under my arms. Lastly, I lower my breeches and rinse the rest of the stink of twelve suns' travel from my body.
Dressed again, I nod for Dallu to follow me to the back of the room. Leaving the chair for my co-parent, I take the three-legged footstool Beldala fashioned when I was a child.
"I've heard that insurgents gather to the east of the Barrier Wall," I say, my voice low. "I've also heard they welcome bi-genders to fill their numbers."
"Fantasy," Dallu snorts. "Why would they accept us when no others do? I tried to convince Beldala that what people wish enough for they will invent."
"Or create," I say.
The rumors excite me and I wish I possessed the fortitude of my birth-parent, risking all to seek the truth. I think not only of the lot of bi-genders, but the starvation in our quarters while those above us feast. The torture of innocents on the merest suspicion. The quashing of the old religion for the new. It makes me feel as the great prairie cats held captive in the palaces must feel, pining for the plains where mates and prides roar their defiance and freedom. I want the rebels to be real, the freedom to be real, so that I might someday roar my own defiance.
"My tetrarch has seemed nervous of late," I say. "Perhaps when the tetrarch opens the message I carry I'll learn more. Maybe it holds proof we need."
"Do not say 'we!'"
Dallu's words are too loud and I look to the door, though I see no one lingering there.
"My mate left to chase dreams," my co-parent continues, standing so suddenly that the chair rocks twice before settling on four legs again. "I'll not lose a child to them as well."
The conversation is over and I have made a poor homecoming, but ideas, no more than seeds before, have taken deep root. What if I could someday leave the service and the hatred? Make a new life among equals?
"I don't wish you gone," Dallu says into the awkward silence, the words ironic in light of my thoughts, "but you should go. You'll be punished if it's found that you delayed delivering your message."
We both know this for truth. Dallu follows me from the dimness of the shack into the sharp, dusty sunlight.
"I hope to see you again before I leave," I say, pulling the reins loose and continuing to the rear of my mount to re-buckle the croup.
Despite a man, woman, and child walking toward us and three men close behind them, Dallu reaches out suddenly, taking me in a quick embrace. There's no law against public affection between bi-genders; like campfires in the high grasses of the prairie one simply knows better. Perhaps Dallu thinks I mean to go looking for the insurgents that very moment. As if I'd know where to start, or have the nerve to try.
The family comes level with us just as the heaviest of the three men behind them shouts a challenge. The father turns and the woman grips the shoulders of what I now see is a bi-gender child. My hands clench into fists reflexively; the taunt and the setting evoking old habits.
"They're new here." I hear sorrow in Dallu's voice and an anticipation of the inevitable.
Though not all bi-gender couples can reproduce, mono-genders have been giving birth to bi-genders more frequently in recent generations. When a high-born child shows the signs—at birth, or later, when puberty reveals the androgyny that external characteristics had not—the family is cast down to live among the lowest classes. The hatred visited upon those both high-born and bi-gender is fearsome.
The child presses close to the mother's body and the father steps in front of them. Memories of my own childhood howl as I watch. It was many years before I grew strong enough to dissuade individuals, old enough to discourage those younger than me, and before every detail of my body was common knowledge among the brutes of Sabanach.
The heavy fellow snatches at the child but the father loops his forearm under the man's and draws a large circle, leaving him surprised and open. The father kicks, first to the belly and then to the face. He is trained in military arts, then. A shame, for he is outnumbered and will suffer for it. We have, most of us, learned when there is a chance of fighting our way free and when there is not.
The mother, and even the child, struggle, scratch, do what they can to fend off the arms of the other two that snake past the father. The fight boils nearer and my horse shies, forcing Dallu and myself away from his rear and into the street. I tell Dallu to get inside. I will follow once I retie my horse.
Suddenly, I hear the unmistakable ricochet of thick bone breaking. The heavy man cradles one forearm in the other, bellowing his anger and pain. The older of the three, a feral-looking man, draws a knife that is half a sword and lunges for the father. Dallu steps closer, an impotent desire to help writ clear in eyes that are wide with concern.
"Get inside!" I hiss again. I grasp for Dallu's sleeve but miss.
The child wriggles from the mother's grip and lifts a broken cobble from the alley just as the father ducks under the attacker's arm. Before the child can throw, the father steps back to counterattack, stumbling over the child's shoes.
I refuse to believe this will go so far as killing. Thugs torment and abuse us—the lowest of the low—with impunity, but murder of any citizen is no mean thing. It would bring down the wrath of the soldiers. Many in Sabanach, participants or not, would suffer.
Dallu must see a different outcome. My co-parent grabs the collar of the off-balance father and pulls the man onto his ass. The knife's trajectory is unchanged and Dallu stands now where the father stood a moment before.
The blow is indeed lethal. An upward strike, sinking the long knife nearly to the hilt.
The feral man freezes like one of the stone statues in the palace gardens. It is Dallu who removes the blade by sliding lifelessly to the ground.
The alley suddenly erupts in pushing, jostling panic. My eyes are fixed on the still face of Dallu, and the last flicker of recognition in those brown eyes, as I kneel beside my co-parent. I don't see the cowards run.
Someone grips my shoulder hard.
"Get out of here," the father is saying to me, "before more people see you."
I hear the words but they wash over me like tepid water, eliciting no reaction.
"I'll help you carry him," he says.
I distantly register the arbitrary pronoun he uses for my co-parent. The man squats and slides his arms under Dallu's back, lacing them around the still and bloody chest. My mind and body are frozen in the moment of the knife strike, unwilling to move forward into the present.
"Soldiers will come soon," he repeats slowly.
When I move my joints are wooden, as if a puppeteer controls what I cannot. I lift Dallu's legs. The father gives me a look like I have done something praise-worthy. He shuffles back and indicates the open door with his head. "This one?"
I nod.
We set Dallu on the sleeping pallet in the far c
orner. I try to still the torrent of emotions threatening to burst from my chest by arranging Dallu's slack limbs. I brush the high, aristocratic cheekbones with my fingers. I wonder if the fact that Dallu once lived in the upper terraces somehow prompted this fatal rashness.
"What's your name?"
I'm shaken from my thoughts by the man's unexpected question. His wife and child stand behind him, mute with fear and shock.
"Jerusha," I reply, and close Dallu's eyes as gently as possible.
"Was he your father?"
Co-parent and father are a world apart, but I have no strength to teach this man his new language. He will learn it soon enough, if he lives so long. "Yes," I say, standing.
"I swear to you, on my name, Finagor of house Aruldon, I will do anything in my power to repay his sacrifice."
I want to snort at the man's belief that he possesses any power at all now that he is here among us.
Dallu's still body draws my eyes back to the corner. I am overwhelmed anew that I will never again feel my co-parent's embrace. The insurgents, if they exist, are right in seeking to tear the hierarchy apart. And if they don't exist, they should.
The hatred I carry for our lot in life pushes out at my ribs, making my hands shake and my head pound. My life-long fear angers me even more. Like a tether under too much strain, something breaks. I move so suddenly that Finagor steps back, and I storm outside like Abab confronting the Lashans.
The streets and alleys are as vacant as I have ever seen them. People have gone to hole like the small prairie animals before a great thunderstorm. I strip my saddlebags from the horse with a jerk.
Back inside, I pull open one flap and yank the purple velvet package from within. Opening that, I remove the cream-colored paper, folded twice and perfect in its squareness. In my anger the entire seal tears from the paper below the flap as I open the message I have borne these past many suns. The reading skills needed to carry out my duties are sufficient to understand the words written within.