She saw it two-thirds of the way down the table of contents: “The Treasure Fleet.”
After that, she got no sleep at all.
VIII MONSTROUS REGIMENTS
They broke fast in their suite, a sparely furnished room, in keeping with O’Haran aesthetic norms. The walls were bare, save for a single print: an orange circle on white. On the counter, a trickle of water burbled across a bowl of small pebbles and into the recirculator. A tree the size of Donovan’s palm grew there. Everything was shining chrome, black lacquer, muted colors. Compared to the dense, dark décor of Dancing Vrouw, the riotous intricacies of High Tara, or the haphazard eclecticism of Harpaloon, the room exuded serenity and peace.
Which was just as well, for the scarred man furnished none. Seldom chipper at breakfast, he grew nettlesome when he found his plans inexplicably awry. He expected plans to go awry. It was in their nature. But he at least expected the glitches to be explicable.
“What do you mean, you plan to keep going?” he asked.
The harper was drinking her usual breakfast of black coff, known locally as kohii. “Boldly Go isn’t that far down the Concourse,” she said over the cup. “It was her next stop, and you can’t go planetside there anyway. Why should it bother you?”
“It doesn’t bother me. Only, it’s foolish; and I hadn’t thought you a foolish woman. Beside, it’s outside the Ourobouros Circuit. What if you get in trouble? What will I tell Zorba?”
“Tell him I released you from your promise.”
Donovan grunted. “I don’t think it works that way.”
Billy Chins placed a plate of freshly baked biscuits on the table between them and backed away. “Biscuits pliis sahb?” he said, cringing slightly.
“Did you look at the files I sent you last night?” Méarana asked.
The scarred man scowled, wiped his chin with the back of his hand, and looked at the clock. He raised his eyebrows.
The harper relented. “All right, you need your beauty sleep more than most. Look at them, and then we’ll talk.”
“Do biscuits pliis sahb?” Billy asked again.
Donovan turned to him and said, “Will you sit down and be quiet, boy?”
Billy ducked. “Yes, sahb. Billy sit him down jildy.” He took a seat at the table and picked a biscuit from the platter, though he nibbled it with no great sign of appetite. Méarana opened her mouth to say something, but Billy turned beseeching eyes in her direction and so she said nothing.
“I need to get out,” she said abruptly, pushing herself from the table. “I need air and trees and brooks; or I need cities and bustle. Something beside hotel apartments and liner staterooms and recycled air and water and artificial miniature streams in a damned porcelain bowl!” She strode across the room to where her harp rested on one of the chairs.
The other two stared at her openmouthed. Donovan shuddered as the Fudir took control. “Alabaster,” he said, “is plenty outdoors. Ever see the Cliffside Montage? It’s out in the Prehensile Desert past Luriname. The prehumans carved the side of an entire butte into the most intricate shapes and figures. It’s the farthest of all their artifacts from the Rift.” He fell silent as it became clear Méarana was not listening.
He tried another tack. “Boldly Go isn’t safe. The matriarchs are always looking for fresh blood, and have been known to kidnap women touristas and ‘adopt’ them. Without a Circuit Station, you couldn’t call for help.”
“I can take care of myself,” she said, picking up the harp. She began to prowl the room, playing.
“Away, away on the Rigel Run [she sang]
And off through California.”
“What’s that you’re singing?” said Donovan.
“A song I’m working on about people who heaped together all their most precious treasures…
All we are and all we hope to be
Are outward bound, for hope can never die…
“and they set off to find a refuge from their oppressors in far-off California.
Our green, familiar world is fading into time…
“You said something like that yesterday. Time is distance; or distance, time. It’s just fragments of song for now. I can’t decide whether it is a goltraí, a sad song of exile and farewell…
So farewell to ye, all of ye, grand treasure fleet,
You carry our hopes far awa’.
We’ll hold ourselves true to ye, never submit…”
“Treasure fleet,” said the Fudir. “You’re building a song on Hugh’s teasing question?”
“California,” whispered Billy Chins.
Donovan turned to him. “Do you know what that means? California?”
But the khitmutgar shook his head. “No, is sounding nice. Californ-ya.” He rolled out the syllables. “What means it, the word?”
Méarana shrugged. “A place of hope, perhaps; which would make it a geantraí. It could be both, maybe. The sadness of exile followed by the triumph of hope.”
Donovan threw his napkin down on the table. “You live in a fool’s world, harper. I know what your hope is, what your ‘California’ is. But, hope dies! It must. Because it hurts too much while it lives.” And he strode out of the room and slammed the door to his sleeping quarters.
Billy ate another biscuit, stuffing the thing whole into his mouth, and chewing as he began to clear the table. On his way to the kitchenette, he paused and swallowed. “All bungim waintim?” he said open-faced to Méarana. “You pack him, the luggage?”
She nodded. “Last night.”
“Me, too. I come with. You Billy’s new memsahb.”
“Oh, Billy, you can’t help me on Boldly Go. They allow no men on the planet.”
“Maybe no help there. But maybe help…find ‘California.’ Is tramp freighter Reginão Luck pass through this week for Matriarchy. Big Board, him say so. They take him, the passengers, so Billy make book two berths.”
She looked toward the closed door. “I can’t…just walk out on him.”
“Why not?” Billy answered. “He would.”
Méarana put her harp in its case, strode quickly to her room, and fetched her bags. She returned to find Billy in the suite’s foyer with his own meager belongings. “I should buy you new clothes,” she told him. “The Kennel can’t object to that, can they?”
But the little man shook his head gravely. “Billy most objectionable man.”
They left quietly; but that night, on board the Reginão Luck, the harper sang no songs.
Traveling in the limited appointments of a tramp freighter throws one among a class of rough men and women, unaccustomed to the pampering of passengers. The harper’s presence meant an addition to their profit but they did not otherwise know what to do with her. There were no stewards.
Into the lack of service stepped Billy Chins. The Corner of Harpaloon had toughened him far more than his obsequiousness had made apparent. Out from under Donovan’s thumb, he came out of himself more. He could talk the talk that freighter crews understood, and a certain swagger began to inform his steps. He was still “mistress harp’s khansammy,” and while he never quite spoke with her as an equal, neither did he bow and scrape as he used to. He collected their meals in the freighter’s galley and served them to Méarana in her quarters, always ensuring that she had eaten before he did.
Throughout the brief transit to Boldly Go, Méarana could not shake the guilt for having abandoned the Fudir. Playing for the freighter crew lightened the melancholy and dark; but she could not quite find the joy, and she wondered if she had left a portion of her art behind her in the Hotel of the Summer Moon.
“It wasn’t right,” she told Billy the day they rendezvoused with the Freight Center in the high coopers of Boldly Go. “I spent years in the finding of him, and minutes in the leaving.”
But her servant only said, “Sometimes the search please better than the find.”
Bumboats did not drop down-system from the Freight Center, so Méarana and Billy had to wait two days for the regular
shuttle run to Stranger Station, the passenger terminal. Arriving at the complex, they found the usual transient hotel, shopping arcades, and other facilities. Boldly Go was an important nexus on Electric Avenue, with connections to Sumday, Gatmander, and Alabaster as well as Siggy O’Hara; and over the next few days, while they waited for the bumboat to drop, several liners and smaller ships entered Boldly Roads for rest stop, maintenance, or terminal activities, and several more passed through “on the fly,” dropping and picking up passengers and freight and squirting and receiving comm traffic. Although not as large as Jehovah or Old ‘Saken, the interchange at Boldly Go was a prize worth plucking. There had been a war with Foreganger twenty years since and no more than five had passed since Yves Whitefield’s mercenaries had briefly seized the transit points. Without an Ourobouros station, the Cooperating Matriarchs of Boldly Go relied on their own Amazon Joint Navy—which had fended off both attempts.
Boldly Go was not a popular destination, and the bumboat carried mostly locals on leave from jobs on Stranger Station. These kept to themselves, chatting in high-pitched, excited voices. The outlanders were a mixed bag: two news agency crews, a dame from Angletar in a blue, head-to-toe borke, an Alabastrine businessman in a flowing green-yellow-red striped dashki, a High Taran in fringed cloak and kilt.
The pilot, a thickset woman with close-cropped hair, viewed her outland passengers with obvious disdain. Méarana’s long, red hair came under her disapproving eye, as did the head-to-toe borke. But the pilot reserved her greatest disdain for Billy Chins and other men onboard.
“Once we reach Charming Moon,” she said, “you bikes are off my boat! We got a nice holding facility there for males. Got urinals and everything. Whatever your business with down below, you can telepresent. And no complaining about the time lag. Be happy we don’t make you do it up here, where you’d have to wait five hours just to trade hellos.”
“Well,” said the woman in the borke, “so would your people on the ground. The inconvenience works both ways.” This earned her a scowl from the pilot.
The Alabastrine spoke up. “Boot I’m to meet with high ooficials of Bannerhook Indoostrials, oover the impoortation oof…”
“Sure you are, hooter. If you’re important enough, someone will come up to Charming. Maybe take your fee personally.” Some of the locals tittered at this sally, though Méarana did not understand the humor.
The express boat was equipped with Ramage-built Judson 253 alfven engines, rated for in-system use. So even though Stranger Station was almost thirty-two units up, the crawl was only eight days. By grabbing the strings of space and pulling herself along, the boat could “borrow” some of the local speed of space and maintain a constant acceleration of two standard gees down to Hera Orbit, where she would flip and decelerate at the same rate, “paying back” into the fabric of space. Within the vessel, counter-grids kept the apparent gravity to just over a single gee.
Once the boat was underway, the passengers unstrapped and moved about the cabin. A few headed toward the café, others remained seated and donned virtch hats so they could immerse in games or plays. In the café, the news crew from Sumday set up a game of five-handed rombaute at one of the tables. Méarana sat at a table with Billy, ignoring the scandalized glances from the Bolders. Mixing the sexes at table!
The woman in the borke joined them, introducing herself as Dame Teffna bint Howard. Méarana sent Billy to the service bar to buy three winterberry blues. Shortly, a woman from the other news crew—Great Rock News on Alabaster—joined them as well. She had a White Carthusian with a twist and a small deck salad of chaffered lettuce and wet walnuts. “Do you mind if I sit here?” she asked, without awaiting an answer. She belonged to that class of people, Méarana surmised, who never imagined unwelcome.
She introduced herself as Jwana Novski. Typical of Westland Alabastrines, she was tall and lean, with coal-black skin, long thin nose, and blond hair—but she spoke without the characteristic “hoot.” When asked, she explained that news faces on her world strove for a general Gaelactic accent. “We’re quite aware that people in the older sectors don’t take us seriously because of our accent.”
The Angletar dame asked what had brought two off-world news teams to Boldly Go, and Jwana said that they were to cover the trial of a celebrated wildman named Teodorq Nagarajan. Succumbing to the wanderlust that his kind often suffered, he had worked his way into the Periphery on a trade ship and had made a name for himself on a number of frontier worlds with his antics. He had, apparently on a dare, gone down to Boldly Go, where he had been caught. “He is what we call a ‘hunk,’” said Jwana, making a fist with her right hand.
“But how could a man get down from Stranger Station?” asked Méarana. “Aren’t we screened before embarkation?”
Jwana bobbed her head toward Dame Teffna, as if to say How do we know what’s under the wool? But Méarana thought customs inspectors were not so dim that they would not look underneath!
“Oh,” said Jwana, “they can be bribed as easily as anywhere else. And if a man is hunk enough, they might even ‘solicit the bribe,’ if you know what I mean.”
The face for the other news team heard her and laughed. “If he took a bath first!”
Méarana glanced at the Angletar dame, but the woman’s eyes were hardly visible through the white grill across the eye-slot. “MO’ to the point,” said the dame in a silky contralto, “I heah that his, ah, vigah, might result in an extended sentence.”
Billy had returned by then with the drinks and sandwiches. “What strapim for man he go down?”
The Alabastrine pushed her chair a little away from the Terran. “I don’t understand your, um, accent.”
Méarana said, “Fou-Chang’s Gazetteer mentions that men are not allowed on the surface, but doesn’t say what happens if they go.”
“Oh, well,” said Dame Teffna, “there’s not much immigration to Boldly Go. So poor Teodorq will have to, ah, ‘contribute’ to their gene pool, as much as he can for as long as he can hold up.”
Billy Chins laughed. “Then why not plenty men more go down there jildy?” Jwana and the news face at the other table, who was playing dummy that hand, laughed as she rolled the dice.
“Saving only one thing,” said Dame Teffna from behind her screen. “When they finish with him, they cut his head off.”
The news faces and Billy stopped laughing.
“Surely, y’all knew that, dears,” said the dame. “It does take some of the edge off the humor.”
“Here,” said the news face from Sumday. “This is a flat of the man.
He was in Pish-Toy City on the Southern Scarp—that’s on Sumday—and he tried to rescue what he thought was a princess being abducted, and…Well, he got himself in the news back home, like everywhere else he’s been. Be a shame to shorten him.” She handed the flat to Jwana, who passed it on to Dame Teffna. “I’ve seen him. He was on Alabaster, too.” When the Angletaran sighed over the picture, Jwana leered. “I told you he was a hunk.”
Billy Chins blinked, and looked at Méarana before he handed the flat to her. “Billy Chins no like piksa men. Like piksa women.” But his eyes, the harper saw, were bright.
Méarana took the “piksa” from him and saw that it was a normal flat holo. It showed a very large man with raven, shoulder-length hair pulled back in a tail. He wore a sleeveless vest made of blue canvas. Both shoulders were intricately tattooed. He stood grinning on the top step of what Méarana thought an official building while police freed him of his bonds.
And around his neck hung a medallion in the same style as Méarana’s own.
“Billy,” Méarana told her servant. “Change of plans. This is a man I want to see.”
The news faces exchanged knowing looks and Jwana again made a fist with her right hand. “I like a woman,” she said, “who knows what she wants.”
Boldly Go’s single continent, known simply as The Mainland, rose from the One Great Sea just north of the equator. Elsewhere, scattered
strings of volcanic islands marked the submarine rifts of her oceanic plates. The official history was that she had been settled exclusively by women to begin with; but other accounts claimed a later Revolution; and still others a plague affecting only males. The survivors, they said, had made a virtue of their necessity.
Whatever the beginning, the end had been the same. Across the quadrant, men told themselves that the matriarchs did not really mean what they said, and the whole planet was just waiting for the right man to come along. They were invariably surprised to learn that, yes, the matriarchs really did mean it; and whether they had been waiting for the right man or no, he was not it.
For their part, the matriarchs maintained a corps of Amazons to keep the “bad ones” of the desert from troubling the settlements, and to caution their sister matriarchs. Alliances among “Nests” were quick, heartfelt, and abandoned on a moment’s bad faith. Still, the Sisters of the Corps, though they fought one another lustily when one matriarch offended another, maintained the Amazon Joint Navy, second to none in Lafrontera. K. P. Charakorthy, the famed “Pirate of the Blue Sun,” had learned this when his fleet had had come for booty and honor and had departed with neither. It had cost Boldly Go one city—J’lala on the Purcell River—and Charakorthy his entire fleet.
Charming Moon was one of three moderate-sized bodies that stirred the One Great Sea into unusual and irregular tides. The old Commonwealth seed ships that had salted this region of the Spiral Arm had found the Sea already pregnant. Certain chemical reactions almost always tossed off amino acids and eukaryotes and sundry other bits of living matter, although they seldom elaborated further. So Boldly Go was already terraformed and waiting when the Ramage settlers made their way there.
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