When the disc touched her skin, the cold sliced through her skull and made the roof of her mouth ache. It would monitor her actions and ensure no cheating occurred. The final trials for the prospective child-bearers differed every time, which didn’t stop people from trying to guarantee that their genes were the ones passed down.
Still waiting as the others received their disc, Lena bounced on her toes. The rituals. The endless rituals of ship life touched every act. Sometimes she wondered if an OCD strain had gotten in, all unnoticed, and infected every line. But it was really just a way to pass the time until the next generation took over and then the generation after that, all biding time until they reached Planetfall. Why did Phoebe want to bring a child into a life of endless waiting for a prize that never came?
The old woman slipped into the middle of the cluster, holding a raku pot. She sloshed water back and forth in the vessel, drawing circles in the air. “Strong, quick and smart. That’s what you need to be. Which of you says you are better than your grands?”
“Aye!” They shouted as one.
She flung the water ceiling-ward over the group of them. Lena bent back, arching so that her bib faced the ceiling as the water splashed off and spattered back on them. Her bib clung to her skin where the water dampened it. When she righted herself, the girl across and to the right—Marta—had not moved fast enough. Her bib was dry.
Weeping, she was pulled out of the group, leaving only eight. Lena had half a moment of wanting to give Marta her spot, of wanting to admit that she didn’t need a child. But Phoebe stood watching and the hope in her eyes staked Lena to the spot.
The old woman bade them all to turn and as dancers, they did. Some girls had spent their whole lives prepping for this moment, and it seemed that their only goal in life was to produce the next generation. If they were near Planetfall, the high holies might have overlooked Phoebe’s ailment, but not this far out. Near the front of the crowd, Phoebe had her arms wrapped about herself, chewing on the cupid’s bow of her lip the way she did when she was nervous.
Lena tried to smile, to reassure her.
Sorted by the amount of water caught, the prospectives were lined up at the mouth of the labyrinth. Lena stood third in line. The door snicked open, the girl in front stepped through into darkness and vanished before the door snicked closed again. Then the second girl. And then Lena.
The darkness was absolute at first. But as her eyes adjusted, she realized a faint glow came from the bib she wore. The water had a bio-luminescence to it. Lena stripped it off and held it in front of her, blocking her view of the bib itself with her hand so that faint glow did not blind her to the things it illuminated.
A narrow space, not much wider than arm-span, stretched beyond the range of the glow. Lena walked forward as quickly as she dared. Time mattered here. The hall twisted and turned, with no branches, but she kept resolutely forward not letting the turns slacken her pace.
A breeze stopped her. Turning, she felt the walls on either side but there was no crack or hint of an opening. Her hair stirred slightly across her back and Lena lifted her face. Cool air dusted her from above.
Lifting her feeble light, she saw a square in the ceiling, handholds visible, just out of reach. A ladder above them. She studied it, until she felt that she’d gauged the distance, then gripped the bib in her teeth. Blind now to what was above her, Lena jumped.
Palms slapped against the handholds, locking around them reflexively. Her body swung forward, carried by her momentum, and slammed against the edge of the opening. Grunting, Lena pulled herself up.
Hand over hand, she hauled up until her feet gained purchase and then began to climb, still blind.
The ladder curved backward, so she began to hang from it. Her left foot cramped as she flexed the toes trying for some traction on the rung. Between one hand hold and the next, light cut on.
Blinded by white, Lena shut her eyes. Tears leaked from under her lids. Two heartbeats were all she gave herself. Time mattered here. When she reopened her eyes, they stung and burned as they readjusted. Lena hung over a fathomless drop into the bowels of the ship. Ventilation ducts, pipes and service ladders lined the shaft until it reached the glowing core of the engine. The ladder she hung from ended abruptly in a wall.
The drop was impossible.
The grands would have had no reason to build the ship that way, not when every iota of space was needed for the generations. Projection then.
But what lay beneath the projection could be dangerous if she misjudged the jump. Lena wrapped her hand in her hair and pulled free some long strands. Dropping the three hairs, they drifted down to land a body length away, appearing to hover in midair.
Lena released her feet from the ladder and let them drop to touch a floor. She flexed her foot against the floor, which felt as though it were hard metal like the rest of the ship. Without letting go of the rungs Lena walked toward the wall where the ladder disappeared. Then she stopped dead.
Having a labyrinth in the ship made no sense if it was only used occasionally. Not when there were other ways of learning the same things about the women vying for reproduction rights. The disc, for instance, recorded her speed and reactions straight from her brain. If it could receive signals, could it also transmit?
“This whole thing is a projection, isn’t it?”Reaching back, Lena pulled the disk off her neck.
The room stuttered and faded around her.
She stood in a storeroom, four of the other girls stood behind her, eyes twitching as if they were deep in REM.
On the far side of the room, a door opened. Light shone in the next chamber. For a moment, Lena wanted to pull the disks off the other girls’ necks, but the door started to slide closed as a reminder that time mattered.
She dove through into Classroom A. The shock at finding herself in familiar surroundings almost confused her more than the darkness had. Calling up a mental image of the ship, she could see how the auditorium was only two corridors over from the block of classrooms.
One woman sat, a blank white mask covering her face with crisp neutrality. She held a Personal Screen unrolled in front of her. “Well done. “The mask distorted her voice, stripping it of identity.
“Am I finished?”
“No. Your scores are very good though, so you get the last part of the trial. One question.” She tapped the PS. “Why do you want a child?”
Lena stared at her. She did not want a child. Not for herself. She wanted a child for Phoebe. Phoebe who loved her. Phoebe for whom she would give anything to stay with. But that was not the answer they were looking for. “To be part of something larger. I want to contribute to the next generation.”
The woman looked down at her screen. “I’m so sorry.”
The door to the far side of the room opened, a silent escort. “What? Why not?”
“You hesitated.” She shook her head. “You don’t want a child, do you?”
Lena’s heart thumped. Time matters. “I don’t. No. But the woman I love does. Give the child my genes and her love. Please.” Her voice broke. “Oh please.”
“I’m so sorry.” The woman gestured to the door. “But we can’t pass on this trait. At Planetfall, a lack of the nurturing instinct would doom us.”
Lena stumbled into the hall and leaned against it as the door snicked shut. She rested her back against the wall and slid down to hide her face in her hands. If she hadn’t hesitated at the beginning. If she had spoken faster, the woman would have believed her.
The urge for a child, never present before, consumed her. This time, it mattered.
THE BRIDE REPLETE
Mary Robinette Kowal
When the matriarch announced that she was sending the sixteen members of Pimi’s small-family across the ocean to settle in Repp-Virja, Pimi thought it the end of her life. For though she had seen only seventeen full years, Pimi considered herself ready to fill her crop and begin the social rounds, seeking a mate. Her mother and the matriarch felt otherwi
se, though how they could expect her to find a mate in a strange, sideways land like the colonies was beyond Pimi’s understanding.
But Pimi packed her luggage and prepared to leave the warm underground rooms of their home. Before her small-family departed, the matriarch held a feast to fill everyone’s crop for the voyage. The gas lights gave a gentle glow to the Deep Hall. Four stations with each of the food families, nuts, fruit, dairy, and grain, stood in corners of the room. Like the two fingers on a hand, the nuts and dairy stood at one end of the room; the fruit and grain at the other end represented a hand’s two thumbs. Each a distinct group, but vital for grasping life.
Assigned to the fruit dishes, Pimi ate until her crop distended the spotted green and amber skin of her belly like a bride’s. She adjusted her tunic to show off her growing roundness.
Pimi’s older sister, Ero, hissed in amusement. “Are you readying yourself for a bridegroom?”
Pimi’s toes curled and gripped the ground in anger. “No.” Perhaps her crop was not so like a bride’s as she might wish; she still only rounded out to an adolescent’s half-orb, not burgeoning into the sleek sphere for which she longed.
“Good. My turn is next.” Ero adjusted the scarf around her head to show off as much of her fine smooth scalp as propriety would allow. The flat bone of her ear plates barely peeked from the edges of the scarf. She had widened the blue spots above her eyes with paint, enhancing the grace of their pattern. The spots lightened as they continued down her face, past her perfectly round black eyes, until they almost vanished around her nose so that her chin and neck were smooth, pale and nearly white.
Pimi’s own amber and green complexion was the more common, a thing of which Ero never failed to remind her. That, combined with her mannishly small stature, made her feel as if she would never find a mate.
Pimi glanced sideways at the engorged belly of their mother. As was natural, Mother would serve as the small-family’s replete for the journey. When full, her crop would hold enough to feed them sweetly flavored pap for the half-month voyage. She reclined on a couch accepting food from the hands of their deep-family. Pimi’s cousins, aunts, uncles and siblings wore their Fest Day tunics. Red and orange scarves lay over their scalps and fluttered about their shoulders like fire, as they carried dishes to Mother. Her long, slender limbs lay in beautiful contrast to her speckled blue belly, which ballooned onto the floor.
When Pimi became a bride, her crop would be that large.
On the seventh day of Planting Month, Pimi’s small-family boarded a Tep-Tep’s steamship bound for Repp-Virja. The captain lowered a special winch to bring Mother on board, as it was impossible for her to navigate the narrow plank spanning the gap between the dock and the steamship. On board, the ship’s crew ran about preparing the steamer for departure, their flat bellies illustrating the adage, “straight as a sailor’s crop.” From time to time, they darted into the shade where the vessel’s replete fed them lest they faint from hunger. Larger than any replete Pimi had ever seen, veins marbled his green and white skin.
Mother and the other passengers’ repletes took their places beside him. Each seemed like a child next to his vastness, though Pimi’s mother was quite the most attractive of the lot.
Around her, passengers scurried to stow their belongings. Winged irarad wheeled above the ship, chattering their excitement. Light shown through the thin skin of their wings, turning them into red stained glass. The ocean slapped against the wooden sides of the vessel, but the ship was massive enough that Pimi barely felt the motion. She stood at the railing waving at her deep-family members until long after they had become indistinguishable from the shoreline.
When she left the rail, her mother beckoned her over to the replete’s area. There, an attendant rubbed salve over the skin of a passenger’s replete. Another dozed, snoring softly.
“Speak, Pimi-min.” Mother’s crop billowed out into a beautiful blue orb. She held out her arm so Pimi could nestle beside her. “Why are you moping?”
Pimi snuggled against her mother, careful not to touch her crop without permission. “I do not mean to,” she said carefully.
“I will not apologize for taking you away from your deep-Family. It is needful for the status of our dynasty— You are needed if we are to establish a new branch of House Kejari in Repp-Virja. You are my natural daughter and I expect you to behave as such.” Mother tilted Pimi’s head back. “But I am sorry that you are sad.”
Pimi ducked her head away and played with the edge of her tunic. “Are there really savages in Repp-Virja?”
“No! Who told you that?”
“I saw them in Opperad’s play, The Vessel Laughed.”
“Truth, Pimi. You know the difference between fiction and fact.” She pulled her arm away. “Don’t say anything like that to Matriarch Imji. She’ll think the handmaid’s blight has got your brain.”
“I won’t embarrass you.”
The waves passed them by and Pimi thought for a moment that her mother would not answer, but she sighed. “No. No, I trust that you will not.”
Pimi saluted her and headed below deck, trying to sway with graceful majesty. Someday, her mother would see that for all her small stature, she was not newly-hatched.
As the Tep-Tep’s crew tied up the steamer at the dock in Repp-Virja, the sun beat down, trying to set Pimi’s red headscarf on fire. Irarad wheeled overhead here, as they had at home. Beyond the gliders and the ocean, everything else had changed.
Pimi stared at the white stone spires of Repp-Virja. In addition to the traditional burrow markers, fully-half of the spires seemed to have structures attached to them as if their homes were not safely below ground. Crowds of people swarmed past the waterfront. Flowing robes, the color of marble, cloaked the passers-by. Their headscarves twined around their heads, wrapping their scalps in snug layers of pale cloth. Pimi’s saffron tunic glared beacon-bright against the muted colors of Repp-Virja.
Ero gestured with her chin. “Would you look at that. The entire city is starving.”
Only a few of the robes bellied outward and not a single bare crop showed. When the robes swung open, they showed narrow waists, bound tightly with ribbon. Not savages, but strange as a dayfruit in Deep Winter.
Her mother, tall and commanding with blue freckles spattering her skin like rain, crossed in front of Pimi. A light silk truss bound the loose skin of her belly. “Do not gawk. I expect my children to make me proud, not to stare about like uncivilized provincials.”
By the time the carriage arrived at the matriarch’s cousin’s home, Pimi had become convinced that she should have begged the matriarch to let her stay in Arropp-Yraja.
Only the gas lights in Matriarch Imji’s home bore any resemblance to what Pimi expected from a Deep House. Tall narrow windows stood open in constant reminder that they were above ground. Sailor-thin servants filled the foyer with pallid silks, almost disappearing against the white walls. All of them had the same tight ribbons binding their waists that Pimi had seen on the streets. She did not see how they could do their work without fainting from hunger.
A woman swooped up the grand ramp, her waist bound so tightly that it curved inward. She dipped her head in a gesture of welcome. “Speak, Matriarch Kejari!”
Mother tilted her head back, indicating that she accepted the hospitality. “We thank you for your welcome, Matriarch Imji.”
Stifling a gasp, Pimi looked again at this woman and then around the foyer at the other people. Now she noticed the richness of the fabrics; these were not servants, but members of House Imaji, bound tightly as if they were bragging about their empty crops.
“The pleasure is ours.” Matriarch Imji’s intricately wound headscarf framed her face, showing off the deep blue spots on her brow and the gentle line of her neck. The speckling continued down her neck and arms. “This must be your family. So… exotic.” Her gaze darted down to their bellies, all proudly full to show their prosperity, and her lips twitched.
Pimi wanted to t
ug the fabric of her tunic over her belly to shield it from Matriarch Imji’s disdain, but it was cut to hang open. She tilted her head back in cordial greeting and waited to be bid to speak.
Matriarch Imji turned slightly away and raised her arm. A double-handful of boys and girls came at her call, each with the grotesque bindings constricting their waists. She paired one of Pimi’s family with each, until only Pimi, the youngest, was left. Matriarch Imji turned to the blue and amber boy remaining.
“Duurir, will you host Kejaridoti Pimi?”
“It would be my delight, Mother.” He inclined his head to Pimi. “Speak, Pimi. May I host you this evening?”
“I thank you for your welcome.” Her toes curled. He had called Matriarch Imji “Mother,” which meant he was her small-family son. The House of Imarja was reckoned as one of the great Dynasty Houses in Repp-Virja and Matriarch Imji had not passed her off to a mere nephew. She had asked her son, her natural son, to host Pimi.
Duurir scratched his chin. “Mother tells me you are from Aaropp-Yraarja.”
As if that were not obvious. Pimi looked down at the floor, the pollen-yellow of her tunic a blazing tribute to her foreign origin. “Yes, we’ve only just arrived…” Her voice trailed away. What an idiot. Of course they had just arrived.
Duurir drew Pimi to one of the tall windows. “Our deep-family came from Aaropp-Yraarja five generations ago but I have not been farther than the next state. How do you find Repp-Virja so far?”
Strange, disconcerting, too hot. “Beautiful. At home our houses are underground and do not have views as expansive.”
“Truth? Parts of our house are underground, in the old style, but few build that way now because the breezes help with Deep Summer heat.”
“At home, the snows of Deep Winter were of more concern.”
“We only get snow on the mountains.” Duurir pushed the curtain aside and leaned out the window. “You can just see the mountains from here.”
The Book of Apex: Volume 2 of Apex Magazine Page 22