Near + Far

by Cat Rambo

  "I am feeling much better," I said as he bowed and left. "I don't remember much of the night, though."

  She shrugged, flicking a hand in a dismissive gesture. "Chaos and shouting. You are better off without the memories."

  "I don't like gaps," I said.

  She paused for a moment before speaking. "Are there other gaps you object to?"

  "It seems as though the first fifty years of this planet's history are gaps," I said.

  She glanced over at the two girls. Without speaking they both went to the door and knelt beside it, listening for Stentor's return.

  Ilias's voice was low and urgent. "You do not know about the council that was overthrown?"

  I shook my head.

  "I thought you did," Ilias said. "I thought you knew what had been done and were coming to help them."

  "I don't understand."

  "When we first came to this planet, we did not have harems or customs for 'decent' women to follow," Ilias said. "The council was, in fact, through accident more than anything else, mainly women. We were not a society that ruled things out for one gender or another at that time. The council wanted peace for all the settlements overall, but they had children who were merchants and who preferred war because of the profits that might be made. They overthrew the council and set laws and traditions in place so women could no longer come to power, lest they speak of peace. Every woman was subjugated, forced to act as the slave of the men who had overthrown them, each one bowing down to her son, and the men who had served on the council were set to death for acting against the newly created 'tradition'."

  There was bitterness in her tone.

  "And that's how it's been for a hundred and fifty years? Haven't you tried to rebel?"

  "Rebel? Many times. Each time the ringleaders are killed. But we keep trying. We resist where we can."

  "Like killing the bearers of new technology. You poisoned me."

  "What would you do in my place?" she said. "We have so little we can do. We live in our poetry, our literature, trying to shape a revolution in couplets and tapestry needles. Even in your benighted time, you were not as wretched as we are."

  Silence stretched between us.

  "I don't think I can help much," I said. "Perhaps smuggle a few women offplanet."

  She shook her head. "We will not leave our world. We will change it back to what it once was."

  The girls stood, moving back to their places just before Stentor entered with a tray of cups and a steaming pitcher. He sat and read while we spoke of inconsequential things: the best treatment for headache, and the flavors of fish coming into season.

  When they left, I said to Stentor, "What is the little book that you read from?"

  "It is poetry that my mother's mother wrote," he said. He held it out to me and I leafed through it, looking at the spiky, alien script.

  "Will you read one to me?"

  He shook his head. "Some things are private." Taking the book back, he gathered the empty cups and pitcher and withdrew.

  I was furious to find my clothing gone and that I would have to wear one of the dresses for the presentation. Stentor claimed not to know where the jumpsuit had been sent to clean it, but promised to have it found by the time I returned.

  I dressed in the brown. I hated it. It reminded me of the dresses of my time, the absurdity of bustle and corset, and thick heavy fabric on hot New York days. Women learned the art of swooning so when they were felled by their garments they would land gracefully. The boots were heavy but warm, awkwardly heeled.

  I tottered on them in front of the eyes, explaining the advantages of the Institute. How our technology would allow them to harvest the best minds of their past, to bring them forward to enrich their culture.

  They exchanged glances. "How much would it cost to bring a group forward from a century and a half ago?"

  "An experienced agent could do it, depending on the size of the group, in a week or two," I said. "If you want to train your own people—which is the package we recommend to our customers—it will take them a week or so to get up to speed on the technicalities of timesnipping."

  "So for a group of eight, a week," one said. He was an unpleasantly oleaginous man, his black hair worn in an elaborate, fussy style. "And another week for their women."

  "Their women?" the General said.

  "They'll need the cores of their harems if they're to function as part of our social system."

  "But wouldn't that be dangerous?" another said. They started to lean together and argue but the General and the Mayor made gestures for silence before the General turned to me.

  "Madam, I have arranged for company for you, while we discuss our questions and come to a decision." He ushered me into a small antechamber, where Jorie sat waiting with khav and sweet biscuits.

  The two of us curled together. "They'll take hours," Jorie whispered into my ear. He kissed me, fumbling with the laces at my neck.

  Afterwards, we drank the cooling khav and ate the biscuits.

  "Do you have a harem?" I asked Jorie.

  "You cannot be a functioning member of society without one," he said. "Without it, you are haraf, a motherless man. The harafs serve as soldiers in the wars."

  "Is your harem very large?"

  "It is only one woman right now," he admitted. "Leandra. The two of you should meet. You would both enjoy it, I think."

  The General knocked at the door. At my invitation, he opened it and looked inside.

  "We wish to debate another night," he said to me. "You may as well return to your lodgings and rest. In the morning, I think we will have a substantial contract for you."

  "Perhaps Jorie might see me home," I said.

  The General shook his head. "No, it would not be seemly. I will take you in my car."

  Despite my disappointment, I appreciated the car's luxury.

  "Please thank Ilias for her kindness during my illness," I said to the General.

  He turned his attention back from the slick streets outside. "Ah, she has always been very kind. Did she bring you her fish tea? That always made me better when I was a child."

  "You knew your wife when you were a child?"

  "She was my mother then."

  I blinked, agape.

  "You have not done your homework," he said. "Our social structure is unique, I admit. I would have thought they'd include that in your reading."

  "I focused on the trade and history," I said.

  "Our harems have cores, which are our mothers. Only the oldest son may go on in that way; the rest are haraf."

  The air in the car was stifling. My stomach roiled as though the poison had been stirred up again.

  "I'm sorry, I don't feel well," I said.

  He patted my hand. "I understand. Sleep until we get there, if you prefer."

  I leaned my forehead against the window's cold glass and closed my eyes, my thoughts a dizzy whirl. The women, overthrown. Each son responsible for his mother's subjugation. Taking her into his harem—surely a position in name alone? Mothers, watching the next generation of leaders, knowing themselves helpless in the harem, the only space left to them. What would it be like, bearing a son here and knowing that he would be your eventual master?

  I did not see Ilias again until the morning of my departure. She came into the room and I sent Stentor for hot klah for the two of us. That gave me enough time to give her the sample timebelt from my kit, and tell her the basics of its use.

  "You'll want to take the council members unobtrusively. The originals will stay in the time line, but you'll have the copies," I said. "And at some point you'll have to tell them that they have counterparts, living in their sons' harems. I don't know how they'll react to that. But if anyone can help you plot a rebellion, they can."

  Her eyes were dark with tears. "Thank you."

  She hid the belt away before Stentor returned. We drank the klah together. She gave me the present she had brought: an intricate tapestry of rawrs, dancing or fighting, I could
n't tell which.

  "That reminds me of one of my grandmother's poems," Stentor said from where he sat. He opened the pages and read.

  "Monsters hatched within our breasts,

  Twine and tangle, rawrs devouring each others' hearts,

  Before turning to tear our own."

  He closed the book.

  "Gruesome," I said. I touched the tapestry's rough wool, brushing my fingers over brown and black and shaggy cream strands.

  I lifted my cup to Ilias.

  "May you live in interesting times," I said to her. "May you live in times as interesting as my own."

  Afternotes

  Victoria Woodhull is an actual historical figure, and she's an awesome one. Someday I'm going to write a historical fantasy about her. She was an advocate of free love, a spiritualist, and a fierce advocate of women's suffrage, becoming one of the first female stockbrokers and then the first woman to run for the office of President of the United States, with Frederick B. Douglass as her Vice President. (She lost.) She also appears in "On TwiceFar, As the Ships Come and Go," which predates this story.

  I'm hesitant to say much else about the story, lest I be forced to confess that to me on one level it boils down to an exploration of an expletive.

  The story originally appeared in Basement Stories, under the editorship of James Dent and Carol Kirkman.

  ANGRY ROSE'S LAMENT

  What has happened, I cannot change ... what will happen, I cannot decide. I am only responsible for the here and now. I will be honest in my dealings; I will acknowledge the pain I have caused. I can offer amends; I cannot demand that they be accepted. I can ask for forgiveness; I cannot demand that I be forgiven.

  —Litany for the Recovering

  All his life, Paul Rutter had hated dirt. He'd been raised in a decrepit Project by a foster mother, along with six other children. Those early years had left him memories of stained sheets, maggots in the sink, and grime you couldn't scrub away.

  It was the main reason he'd worked to become a Spacer. When he reached his first station, smelled the tang of recycled air and water, and saw a metal hallway corroded with the effluvium that humans inevitably deposit everywhere they touch, it was a vast disappointment. But better, even so, than the roots from which he'd come. And now his career, such as it was, had brought him back to a place as dirty as he'd ever seen.

  The main feature of Linko Port was grease. Greasy dirt, black as tar, lay underfoot, grinding under the boot heels of the Fleet soldiers keeping order. The smell of machinists' grease from the yard that maintained the ferries coming down from its counterpart satellite far above, circling in unison with the slime green moons, was heavy in the air. Grease and black grime coated the walls of the buildings, assembled from Alliance plastics and weatherworn native woods. Of the dozens of races using this common rendezvous point, all seemed shabby and grubby, particularly the humans.

  "Welcome to Linko. First assignment planet side in a while?" his attendant asked, thumbing through Paul's records.

  "How can you tell?"

  "It's in the walk. Spacers move their feet different, come down flatfooted like they're not used to the pull."

  Rutter grunted acknowledgement. "What do I need to carry here?" he asked.

  "Some form of ID; best not to leave your docco at home. No guns. Credit chits for tipping, if you plan on being out doing much. Your guild marque if you're dealing as a rep."

  "I'm rep to the Solins."

  The man's smile faded. "Yeah?" he said noncommittally. "For what company?"

  "Little outfit, doubt you've heard of it." Rutter preferred to keep his cards close to his chest. Besides, RecoveryCo's humble beginnings, compared to the larger corporations, were a little embarassing. No matter, he thought. They'd done well taking a small company and turning it into an active corp, capable of interstellar negotiations. The resources provided by Solin might be the company's big strike, help them struggle their way to a respectable third tier status as an all-out, multi-market corporation.

  "Not one of the Big Three? Thought CocaCorp would want a piece of that."

  Rutter had wondered that himself. By all accounts, Solin was a plum piece of real estate, the kind a big company like General M or Bushink would snatch up as an asset. Across the galaxies, they'd grabbed small systems every chance they got. Solin did have a native intelligent race to be wooed, but there was a surplus of impoverished races deep in debt to the Companies. Very few, the ones who knew to hire themselves savvy (and expensive) legal counsel, managed to keep themselves free.

  There was, Rutter figured, something out of the ordinary about Solin. Not out of the ordinary in a valuable way, but something tricky, something slippery or scandalous, some taint the Big Three wanted to avoid. He'd find out soon enough, he guessed.

  "What about hotels here?" he asked.

  "There's a few. Carnival's a bit swanker—most of the visiting dignitaries stay there. The regulars go for the Jewel or the Home House, which is the cleanest. Not so pricey. Only real difference is that the Jewel's closer to the bars. They're all on the main drag."

  The Home House quarters were simple but clean as promised. A holo on the wall offered him his choice of space-scape or uploading his own images. Unlike most, he didn't carry such amenities. He flipped through the settings on the bed and chose the firmest, then settled himself to look through the docco again.

  The Solins resembled nothing so much as giant wasps. Colored in dull reds and browns, they had the habits of hive insects, although the details were sketchy. Morgan had promised him more information soon, but when he checked his mail, it wasn't there yet. He fired off a reminder; Morgan was increasingly forgetful lately. "Slipped back?" he wondered, and sighed, rubbing his long fingers down the bridge of his nose.

  Going into the fresher to splash his tired eyes with cold water, he looked into the mirrored wall. He saw an unremarkable face, although older looking than his fifty years. Ten years of addiction to stardrift had left him there, crevices worn irreparably into his brow and the skin surrounding his mouth, broken veins lacing the sagging skin of his cheeks. But unlike most addicts, he'd broken free, formed a company with five of the men he'd met in Rehab. Now he wondered if that had been the smartest idea; 90% slipped back into the drift, although they'd all sworn they were part of the lucky 10%.

  He slipped into the Litany, murmuring it under his breath. "What has happened, I cannot change ... what will happen, I cannot decide. I am only responsible for the here and now." Muttering the familiar words, he went back to study the information he had.

  The Representative building lay on the outskirts of town, a blocky tower misshapen by the demands of accommodating hundreds of different species. Blue bubbles held the distinctive toxic atmosphere of the Anjelis, and a tank near the ground floor showed swirls of blue and green liquid. Windows were tinted in shades ranging from bloody rust to bilious chartreuse, filtering Linko's dull and watery sunlight into more palatable shades. Lucky me, Rutter thought. Solins and humans were capable of breathing the same atmosphere, although the compromise was unpleasant to both.

  The meeting room lay on the fifth floor. As he paused outside the airlock, a voice hailed him.

  "You rep Rutter?"

  He turned. A slight figure in Pilot's Guild green coveralls stood there. "Yes. Do you have some question?"

  "Just scoping you out," the woman said. She was small, dark-haired and olive-skinned. "I flew the initial mission exploring the Solin system. Look me up afterwards and I'll buy you a drink—I'm curious about your impressions." She flipped him an ID chip and turned.

  He closed his fingers over the chip, gazing after her, then turned and pressed his code into the airlock.

  Inside the room the air was unpleasantly acrid, stinging his nose with its vinegar reek. At one end of the room the Solin clung to the wall, watching him with its faceted eyes. A small table and chair had been placed in the middle of the room for his convenience.

  Up close, the impression of
a wasp diminished but the Solin still sported two sets of paired, pale rose wings. It was unexpectedly beautiful, a creature spun of crystal or sugar, edges sharp and defined as jewels, undulled by time or dirt. A stinger ending its abdomen dripped with a clear ichor that splattered on the floor. A small pool had collected beneath it. He wondered how long it had been waiting for him.

  Its eyes were equally beautiful. Malachite and lapis lazuli warred for the surface of the bulbous orbs, swirling and coalescing like gaseous clouds. Two business-like mandibles sat on either side of its tiny mouth. Segmented, they flexed at intervals as though impatient to be used.

  The voice emanating from the waxy collar around its thorax, though, was disconcertingly human, down to a slight, indefinable accent. "You are the Representative?"

  "Yes," he said, setting his docco tablet on the table between them.

  "I am called Kizel. You may begin recording," the Solin said.

  He raised an eyebrow. "You have no questions? You are aware what this contract will mean?"

  "Your company will offer certain amenities, payments, and legal agreements in return for rights to planetary resources within our solar system. This negotiation will be recorded, and when it is complete, which may be a lengthy process, the record will be published publicly. Our race will achieve legal status as a result of participating, and we will no longer be vulnerable to those who wish to exploit our planet."

  He nodded. "I'm impressed by your command of Galactic Custom. Not all races come to the bargaining table knowing how it is structured."

  Kizel buzzed, in irritation or amusement, he couldn't tell which.

  "We have accumulated necessary information," it said. "Assume that we have sufficient knowledge of humans that you do not need to explain each amenity."

  A worm of confusion crawled its way through his head. Most native races weren't even close to this savvy. He took out his list and began. "Item 1: In exchange for the right to extract 500 kilograms of aurium each solar year, one energy replicator unit, no older than one year from the signing of this contract ... "