White Queen

by Gwyneth Jones

  Braemar winced. “Ouch: yes, I know what you mean, Me too. Johnny, I’m afraid my knowledge of physics and cosmology ended at—um—the Brit version of Junior High, about fifty years ago. I have the most kitchen-cookery understanding of modern solid state electronics, that’s my entire scientific baggage. Peenemünde’s ‘explanation’ was gibberish to me, and I’ll stand by that. I suspect she’s one of those superbeings whose right brain talks to nobody but God, and whose left-brain shuts down when she’s faced with ordinary mortals. Have you any idea what could have happened? In Junior High terms, please.”

  “Okay.” He screwed up his eyes and struggled. “Nothing is real. There’s the void. Reality keeps happening and unhappening all the time. She…. We had to disappear in Prussia, because of local point phase conservation. She caught us phasing. We were annihilated, like particles in a particle accelerator, but remade elsewhere instead of here.”

  “Can’t you do any better than that?”

  “Uh—no.”

  “I am smarter than I thought.”

  “God, it was horrible. I cannot see that experience catching on. Something’s going to have to be done. People won’t want to go to Betelgeuse, if they have to launder their souls on the way.”

  “If we were really in real Aleutia,” she said. “What really happened there? How is our visit recorded in that doctor’s log, if he keeps one? I think I will never know, I think I can’t know.” She shook her head. “But we’re overreacting. If consciousness, the self, has to be unpinned and reassembled, we’d be shallow fools to expect no disturbing kind of travel sickness. We’re a couple of savages, going berserk over the metaphysics of our first trip to heaven in the big silver bird. People will learn not to dwell on the culturally constructed meaning of what happens to the mind in FTL travel mode. Oh—”

  She picked up something from the chair beside her; the cockroach’s mobile home. “Some bad news. I hope you’re not going to be too upset. I’m afraid Robert didn’t make it.”

  Johnny opened the box. No visible damage, but the indestructible roach was perfectly dead.

  “Good grief. You didn’t slip him something?”

  “How could you? I didn’t like the thing, but I wouldn’t harm it.”

  Johnny started to laugh. For some reason the dead roach, failed 4-space traveler, was irresistibly funny.

  “There must be less roach-nature in either of us than we imagined, that’s all I can say.” He laughed, and groaned; he massaged his eyeballs. “I feel terrible. Physically, I mean. I kind of partly feel as if I’m still spread over the sum of all possibilities. It’s remarkably like a monstrous hangover. Studies will prove, I believe, that faster than light travel is extremely hard on the liver.”

  He dropped his hands. “You realize, we have to go back? The idea is unspeakably terrifying, and I don’t know if I believe it’s other than a hallucination: but we have to try.”

  “I know,” she said, somber-eyed.

  He stood up. “I’ll get you a drink. What would you like to drink? Shall we get drunk?”

  Johnny was at the bar. Braemar watched him, trying hard to regret that she had failed to set him free. The barmaid had a headbox propped by the cash register. She turned from one of her sneaked moments with the miniature screen, and pumped up the volume on the big one overhead.

  IN BY CHRISTMAS! yelled a quality tabloid.

  An insufferably cheery young male face dissolved into a turning geographical globe. The same character pranced beside it, diminutive now and making lewd play with a long pink pointer. The sedate elderly lady icon, his “partner,” who announced any serious news, popped up.

  “The World Government has just released this information. Within the next weeks a new party of visitors will materialize at Uji. They will be settling—”

  “Settling!” remarked someone in the bar, over loud.

  Johnny’s eyes locked with Braemar’s, a contact deeper than touch: no action at a distance. He came back to her and they began to kiss, a shocking display in this public place, by the standards of these times. No one protested. It was the festive season.

  November—2040

  11

  BELLING THE CAT

  i

  There had been the European tour, the Asian tour, the North Asian tour, the South American tour. The Aleutians had seen everything. They had done some wonderful things. They had cleaned up Karen city. The Kok river now held some of the purest, liveliest, fresh water in the world. They promised that they could help to clean up—maybe do away forever with the poison that seeped into the Pacific from Japan’s drowned reactors. But they, like their gadgets, remained sealed boxes.

  Dubbed “hox-tools” by SETI, a term borrowed from genetics, Aleutian gadgets were the potent symbol of Aleutia’s presence. Their function could be identified, through human analogy: camcorder, computer, food processor, musical instrument. Nobody had any idea how they worked. The lucky (or unfortunate) Karens were acting as the world’s guinea pigs. Aleutian artifacts were held in research facilities, in Africa and in the USSA, but there were serious problems about this work, violent protests, especially in the USSA. No one wanted to offend the all-powerful telepaths. An early analysis of the effluent from Uji, completed before Aleutian-fever really took hold, had only shown that the visitors were very good at cleaning up after themselves. It had revealed nothing. Meanwhile, the enclaves moved towards reality. Rajath was now talking about the imminent arrival of permanent settlers—or that’s what he seemed to be saying.

  Some of the original Uji-watchers formed a conspiracy.

  It was Ellen who suggested they might try to plant a bug in Uji manor. She argued that the telepaths couldn’t care less about “deadworld” surveillance. If the idea was proposed openly, they’d refuse because of the supernatural connotations. If a bug was planted on them, they wouldn’t find it because they didn’t care. If they did find it, they wouldn’t react strongly. It wouldn’t mean the same to them as the theft of a drop of blood.

  The Ruam Rudi office communicated with the talkers by audiophone and fax. It was hard work, especially when there was a tour to organize, but they got by. Rajath, Lugha and Clavel, at least, could all read English fluently by now. The poet-princess or the demon child would even produce an intelligible reply to a direct question sometimes. Since the day Sarah Brown died, no human had been inside the manor house, except perhaps for Kaoru: but the late Kaoru’s staff collected supplies and fan mail, and made deliveries to the helipad. The same team flew the Aleutians down to Bang Khen, when they came out on tour.

  Ellen decided to let Robin pilot her: she did not trust Kaoru’s servants, and nor did she wish to risk their lives. They arrived at Uji midafternoon on a still, dry day of parching heat: Thailand’s hot “winter” had already begun, here in the north. When the sound of the rotors stopped, she thought she could hear the river. The grove that hid Kaoru’s cottage blocked their view of the valley.

  Two dun-overalled figures had come to greet them. Rajath and Clavel; three of the nameless ambling along behind.

  “So much for the world where physical location doesn’t matter,” muttered Robin as they got down. “They’ll have us running up here with messages in cleft sticks, when we’re fully trained.”

  “Sssh!”

  “Home Sweet Home!” cried Rajath, shrugging and grinning. But his welcome seemed wary, even suspicious. Ellen steeled herself.

  “We thought we might as well make the maildrop ourselves, for once.”

  “It gets us out of the office,” added Robin, affably.

  They tried to spot changes, without seeming to stare. Kaoru’s security turned away a steady trickle of hopeful intruders from the enclave’s perimeter. That much they knew in Ruam Rudi: the Government of the World still had its shared access to some of Kaoru’s systems. But the Aleutians had been on their own for a long time. No one knew what they were doing.

  Officially, they only left Uji to go on tour. In reality, no one had any control over
their movements. They could come and go as they pleased.

  The humans handed over two sacks of freight mail, which the Aleutians accepted with mild interest. “And I brought you a present.” Ellen offered a jewel case to her old friend the pirate.

  “It’s only a funny little curio, it’s of no great value.”

  Ordinary citizens, school children, institutions, were always sending presents to Uji. Ellen, remembering the Aleutian delight in random personal adornment, had had a necklace made up, composed of large beads in the shape of brightly-colored Beattrix Potter rabbits, each about five centimeters high; spaced by smaller beads in the shape of lettuces, carrots and onions.

  “It’s Reverse Chinoiserie,” she explained. “European pop-culture manufactured for the Japanese market. Items like this were very popular in Tokyo, in the late twentieth century. They’re now highly collectible.”

  “How darling!” exclaimed the pirate, without enthusiasm.

  The poet princess peered over Rajath’s shoulder.

  “He’ll treasure it.”

  The pirate captain suppressed a nervous grin, and shrugged broadly.

  “You’ll stay for tea?”

  “Thank you, no. We have to get back. I hope you don’t mind accepting the necklace. It’s a personal gift, from me. I would be very flattered—”

  “I’m lovin’ it!” said Rajath.

  Heavy foliage rattled and shuddered as the tilt rotor rose. Ellen looked down, stung by nostalgia. Neither of them spoke for a while. There are billions, thought Robin, who believe the Aleutians are angels; or who ignore the Aleutians; or who try to use them for profit. They may be right. Everything may be fine. They’ll stay and become ordinary, Planet Aleutia will become a trading partner. They’ll leave and become a mysterious scar on world history. Maybe I’ll look back, one day, over a varied career, and know that here I learned how to work, how to pay attention to detail; how to drive myself. For now, the Aleutians are all there is. Time stops at Uji. His hermit was giving him some unexpected lessons. You could spend a lifetime in Brussels or Westminster, without finding out how it felt to risk your life, deliberately, for a political end.

  “Nothing to worry about.” said Ellen firmly. “They don’t believe our magic works.”

  “The World Government could put us up against the wall and shoot us, if they find out about those bunnies. We could be lynched by a terrified mob.”

  Back on the ground, Clavel said.

  Rajath was gingerly examining the necklace.

  For a while the balance of opinion had moved back to Clavel, and caution. But a few nights after that, when the moon was new again, Lugha and the “shuttle” took flight.

  ii

  Oh, we were scared! No one was going to grass up Brunhilde, but we were really scared!

  Braemar lay on the couch in her workroom, a blanket over her knees, watching the third act of Die Walkure. The warrior maidens trembled, at the sound of Daddy’s footstep on the stair. They would help Brunhilde as far as they dared, but they couldn’t support her action. No one wanted to share the blame. Daddy will punish. She could live with that. It was harder to deal with the Daddy in the heart, the small voice that sounds so like one’s own. She went down to the kitchen, where Johnny was working, at the housebox terminal. She watched him from the doorway: his shoulders bent, his serene profile. She had never seen Johnny in this mode before, communing with the keys and the screen. He looked very happy.

  “I’m going to Folkestone. I want to talk to Clem, I might as well do it in person: sometimes one gets better results, and I can’t help you here. I won’t be late.”

  Braemar had written to Buonarotti, freightmail. The Professor had replied, with dignity, by fax. She would be happy to meet again, for the purpose of the interview Ms. Wilson had requested, but Ms. Wilson must arrange a date with the Corporation’s Public Relations Office. Fair enough, naturally Buonarotti wasn’t going to do anything behind her employers’ backs. Meanwhile there were last minute hitches over the Aleutian settlement. Something was going on, new developments, people getting twitchy. There was still time for Johnny’s publicity stunt to take effect.

  Braemar drove to Folkestone, thinking of White Queen as a company of warrior maidens, supposedly shock troops, deeply timid in reality. They were feminine in gestalt, for they were the subordinate opinion, the party that’s always out of office, the weak partner in the Coalition. They were too frightened to be any use to Braemar. She got herself briefed by the one shieldmaid who could be of real use; and endured Clementina for a while. On her way home she pulled the car into a layby, leaned her head on her arms on the wheel, and reviewed what Clem had just been telling her: Clem’s unlovely voice, hammering in her memory.

  “These creatures are excellent Aristotelians. The body that gives birth is no more than a host, le serment: a mere pod.” And then again. “Their society must be ideally stable. Think of our little new science of nanotechnology. Imagine the world where human beings have been the chemical plants. Their physics is biochemistry. Their technology will consist of having learned how to dope these chemical plants, their own glandular systems. To develop different functions for the food-preparing response, the nest-materials shaping response and so on. Think of how our capitalist mechanical devices have mimicked hands, feet, jaws. Machines to do the work of a hundred hands, eh? The Aleutians have a million, a billion little machines, dripping from their skin. But do you imagine the person who weeps industrial processes skin rules the world? I don’t think so! In Aleutia there are hereditary servants, teachers, tin-openers, waste-disposers who will never revolt, whose self-image cannot be shifted by the revolutionary preacher. Almost as immoveable as ourselves!”

  The birthing body is a mere pod. What would the Aleutians think of earth’s women, when they understood human physiology? They’d think nothing, they wouldn’t be interested, so what? But those earthlings who favored Aristotle’s views would soon be busy, with the blessing of the Master Race. She recalled Clavel and Johnny in the Botanical Gardens in Fo. So alike, those two, the missionary and the journalist! Clavel had learned a lot from Johnny. And put it to use, damn her. Braemar’s blood ran cold, to think how those interviews had shaped the unequal meeting between Aleutia and humankind. It was all a game to Clavel. One couldn’t blame her. No harm meant, no conception of harm—

  She took out a document that she was preparing, for posterity.

  Aleutian society is feudal and cannot develop further. The species is divided not into two sexes but into an unknown number of broods. They recognize a psychological duality, or spectrum, which they have identified with our distinction between “masculine” and “feminine,” but their version has nothing to do with reproduction, and no substantial link with erotic/companionate pairing. Each individual has the ability to give birth; each body contains, potentially, the whole sum of the brood’s genetic variants. Lifetime experiences are incorporated into the genetic material of these potential individuals, through their habit of ingesting each other’s mobile cells. Reborn, an Aleutian will carry and may express the chemical “memories” of his past lives. They are immortals; they also evolve, although substantially the individual’s attributes remain the same.

  Children are identified at birth (we don’t know how) and discovered to be long lost princes, or long lost dishwashers. They are taught to “become themselves,” through intense, immersive study of records made by themselves, and others, from their previous lives. They are entitled to the recurrent person’s income, influence, status. They take on that person’s loyalties, dependents. Social mobility within a generation would be startling to Earth’s eyes, the sum of movement is nil.

  She never worked on this document at home, never committed it to data processing. She wrote in ink, on paper. Such a mass of her own
small and precise handwriting looked strange, like the product of an obscure hobby; like a needlepoint cushion. But there it was. One began to prepare for the worst. She returned the papers to their hiding place and sat staring.

  There was a star somewhere, no way of knowing how far away it was. Not a blue sun: most likely a yellow-white sun, class G2V; why not? It had an earthlike planet in a congenial orbit, and an atmosphere of nitrogen and oxygen. It had chemical mixtures that became fusions and began to grow, a phenomenon called life. There are only so many notes, as Humpty Dumpty said. This thing called life behaved much the same as on earth. But something was slewed. The difference of a hairsbreadth, a tendency for the bundles of chemicals to “consider themselves” (as Buonarotti would say) less as closed domains, more as regions of greater concentration in a big single bowl of life-soup. Constantly exchanging substance with their neighbors and, remotely, with every other blurred entity in the biosphere. Only the breadth of a hair, but by the time life on this other earth made things like humans, it made creatures extraordinarily familiar, but absolutely alien.

  They had the same pie. They cut it up on their own tangents to the lines that humans put there. Aleutians were a different answer to the same question (to put Buonarotti’s lecture in a nutshell). An answer that had to cover, and did cover, the same myriad heads of possibility. And came out, over all, with something that looked the same, and worked just as well.

  Only a little better.

  She thought about her fate in history: ridiculous but she couldn’t help it. People would find out about Anand, the domestic violence, the AIDS. They would say: Braemar Wilson identified the aliens, innocently “superior” beings, with the worthless man who made her feel powerless. Who turned her into a pariah. What she did was an act of personal revenge.

  She felt a rush of impotent rage against the imaginary pundits. They would reduce her to a stereotype. They would ignore the possibility that Braemar Wilson might be able to see as far into her own head as they did. That she might see and accept the emotional contamination, and still go on and do what had to be done…. She calmed herself.