“They like surprises and riddles.” I made a polite sound requesting attention and said, —There is one thing I will tell you about this gift: it belongs to all three mercantile classes. It is of no value, of finite value, and infinite value, all at once, and to all people.
—When considered as being of finite value, Uncle said, — how much is it worth in terms of Hartford stock?
—Exactly one hundred shares.
He rustled pleasantly at that and went to confer with the others.
“You’re pretty clever, Dick,” Rabbit said. “What, they don’t get to find out what the last thing is unless they accept?”
“That’s right. It’s done all the time; I was rather surprised that you didn’t do it.”
He shook his head. “I’ve only negotiated with !tang off-planet. They’ve always been pretty conventional.”
I didn’t ask him about all the fishing he had supposedly done here. Uncle came back and stood in front of us.
—There is unanimity. The land will go to Navarro’s tribe. Now what is the secret inducement, please? How can it be every class at once, to all people?
I paused to parse out the description in !tanglish. —Uncle, do you know of the Earth corporation, or tribe, Immortality Unlimited?
—No.
Lafitte made a strange noise. I went on. —This Immortality Unlimited provides a useful service to humans who are apprehensive about death. They offer the possibility of revival. A person who avails himself of this service is frozen solid as soon as possible after death. The tribe promises to keep the body frozen until such time as science discovers a way to revive it.
—The service is expensive. You pay the tribe one full share of Hartford stock. They invest it, and take for themselves one-tenth of the income, which is their profit. A small amount is used to keep the body frozen. If and when revival is possible, the person is thawed, and cured of whatever was killing him, and he will be comparatively wealthy.
—This has never been done with nonhumans before, but there is nothing forbidding it. Therefore I purchased a hundred “spaces” for !tang; I leave it to you to decide which hundred will benefit.
—You see, this is of no material value to any living person, because you must die to take advantage of it. However, it is also of finite worth, since each space costs one share of Hartford. It is also of infinite worth, because it offers life beyond death.
The entire Council applauded, a sound like a horde of locusts descending. Peter Rabbit made the noise for attention, and then he made it again, impolitely loud.
—This is all very interesting, and I do congratulate the Navarro for his cleverness. However, the bidding is not over.
There was a low, nervous whirring. “Better apologize first, Rabbit,” I whispered.
He bulled ahead. —Let me introduce a new mercantile class: negative value.
“Rabbit, don’t—”
—This is an object or service that one does not want to have. I will offer not to give it to you if you accept my terms rather than the Navarro’s.
—Many kilometers up the river there is a drum full of a very powerful poison. If I touch the button that opens it, all of the fish in the river, and for a great distance out to sea, will die. You will have to move or . . . He trailed off.
One by one, single arms snaked out, each holding a long sharp knife.
“Poison again, Rabbit? You’re getting predictable in your old age.”
“Dick,” he said hoarsely, “they’re completely nonviolent. Aren’t they?”
“Except in matters of trade.” Uncle was the last one to produce a knife. They moved toward us very slowly. “Unless you do something fast, I think you’re about to lose your feet.”
“My God! I thought that was just an expression.”
“I think you better start apologizing. Tell them it was a joke.”
—I die! He shouted, and they stopped advancing. —I, um . . .
—“You play a joke on your friends and it backfires,” I said in Greek.
Rapidly: — I play a joke on my good friend and it backfires. I, uh . . .
“Christ, Dick, help me.”
“Just tell the truth and embroider it a little. They know about negative value, but it’s an obscenity.”
—I was employed by . . . a tribe that did not understand mercantilism. They asked me, of all things, to introduce the terms of negative value into a trivial transaction. My friends know I must be joking and they laugh. They laugh so much they forget to eat. All die. O the embarrassment.
Uncle made a complicated pass with his knife and it disappeared into his haybale fur. All the other knives remained in evidence, and the !tang moved into a circle around us.
—This machine in your pocket, Uncle said, —it is part of the joke?
Lafitte pulled out a small gray box. —It is. Do you want it?
—Put it on the floor. The fun would be complete if you stayed here while the Navarro took one of your marvelous floaters up the river. How far would he have to go to find the rest of the joke?
—About twelve kilometers. On an island in midstream.
Uncle turned to me and exposed his arms briefly. —Would you help us with our fun?
The air outside was sweet and pure. I decided to wait a few hours, for light.
That was some years ago, but I still remember vividly going into the Council Building the next day. Uncle had divined that Peter Rabbit was getting hungry, and they’d filled him up with !tang bread. When I came in, he was amusing them with impersonations of various Earth vegetables. The effect on his metabolism was not permanent, but when he left Morocho III he was still having mild attacks of cabbageness.
By the time I retired from Hartford, Starlodge had finished its hotel and sports facility on the beach. I was the natural choice to manage it, of course, and though I was wealthy enough not to need employment, I took the job with enthusiasm.
I even tried to hire Lafitte as an assistant – people who can handle !tang are rare – but he had dropped out of sight. Instead, I found a young husband-and-wife team who have so much energy that I hardly have to work at all.
I’m not crazy enough to go out in the woods, hunting. But I do spend a bit of time fishing off the dock, usually with Uncle, who has also retired. Together we’re doing a book that I think will help our two cultures understand one another. The human version is called Hard Bargain.
NOVELLA
NEBULA AWARD WINNER »»
THE WOMEN OF NELL GWYNNE’S
Kage Baker
ONE:
In Which It Is Established That
In the city of Westminster, in the vicinity of Birdcage Walk, in the year of our Lord 1844 . . . There was once a private residence with a view of St. James’s Park. It was generally known, among the London tradesmen, that a respectable widow resided there, upon whom it was never necessary to call for overdue payment. Beggars knew she could be relied upon for charity, if they weren’t too importunate, and they were careful never to be so; for she was one of their own, in a manner of speaking, being as she was blind.
Now and again Mrs. Corvey could be observed, with her smoked goggles and walking stick, on the arm of her adolescent son Herbert, taking the pleasant air in the park. It was known that she had several daughters also, though the precise number was unclear, and that her younger sister was in residence there as well. There may even have been a pair of younger sisters, or perhaps there was an unmarried sister-in-law, and though the daughters had certainly left the schoolroom their governess seemed to have been retained.
In any other neighborhood, perhaps, there would have been some uncouth speculation about the inordinate number of females under one roof. The lady of the house by Birdcage Walk, however, retained her reputation for spotless respectability, largely because no gentlemen visitors were ever seen arriving or departing the premises, at any hour of the day or night whatsoever.
Gentlemen were unseen because they never went to the house near Birdcage Wal
k. They went instead to a certain private establishment known as Nell Gwynne’s, two streets away, which connected to Mrs. Corvey’s cellar by an underground passage and which was in the basement of a fairly exclusive dining establishment. The tradesmen never came near that place, needless to say. Had any one of them ever done so, he’d have been astonished to meet there Mrs. Corvey and her entire house hold, including Herbert, who under this separate roof was transformed, Harlequin-like, into Herbertina. The other ladies resident were likewise transformed from Ladies into Women, brandishing riding crops, birch rods, and other instruments of their profession.
Nell Gwynne’s clientele were often statesmen, who found the place convenient to Whitehall. They were not infrequently members of other exclusive clubs. Some were journalists. Some were notable persons in the sciences or the arts. All were desperately grateful to have been accorded membership at Nell Gwynne’s, for it was known – among the sort of gentlemen who know such things – that there was no use whining for a sponsor. Membership was by invitation only, and entirely at the discretion of the lady whose establishment it was.
Now and again, in the hushed and circumspect atmosphere of the Athenaeum (or the Carlton Club, or the Traveller’s Club) someone might imbibe enough port to wonder aloud just what it took to get an invitation from Mrs. Corvey.
The answer, though quite simple, was never guessed.
One had to know secrets.
Secrets were, in fact, the principal item retailed at Nell Gwynne’s, with entertainments of the flesh coming in a distant second. Secrets were teased out of sodden members of Parliament, coaxed from lustful cabinet ministers, extracted from talkative industrialists, and finessed from members of the Royal Society as well as the British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Information so acquired was not, as you might expect, sold to the highest bidder. It went directly across Whitehall and up past Scotland Yard, to an unimposing-looking brick edifice in Craig’s Court, wherein was housed Redking’s Club. Membership at Redking’s was composed equally of other MPs, ministers, industrialists, and Royal Society members, and a great many other clever fellows beside. However, there were many more clever fellows beneath Redking’s, for its secret cellars went down several storeys, and housed an organization known publicly – but to very few – as the Gentlemen’s Speculative Society.
In return for the secrets sent their way by Mrs. Corvey, the GSS underwrote her establishment, enabling all ladies present to live pleasantly when they were not engaged in the business of gathering intelligence. Indeed, once a year Nell Gwynne’s closed its premises when its residents went on holiday. The more poetical of the ladies preferred the Lake District, but Mrs. Corvey liked nothing better than a month at the seaside, so they generally ended up going to Torbay.
Life for the ladies of Nell Gwynne’s was, placed in the proper historical, societal, and economic context, quite tolerably nice.
Now and then it did have its challenges, however.
TWO:
In Which Our Heroine
Is A Witness To History
We will call her Lady Beatrice, since that was the name she chose for herself later.
Lady Beatrice’s Papa was a military man, shrewd and sober. Lady Beatrice’s Mamma was a gently bred primrose of a woman, demure, proper, perfectly genteel. She was somewhat pained to discover that the daughter she bore was rather more bold and direct than became a little girl.
Lady Beatrice, encountering a horrid great spider in the garden, would not scream and run. She would stamp on it. Lady Beatrice, on having her doll snatched away by a bullying cousin, would not weep and plead; she would take back her doll, even at the cost of pulled hair and torn lace. Lady Beatrice, upon falling down, would never lie there sobbing, waiting for an adult to comfort her. She would pick herself up and inspect her knees for damage. Only when the damage amounted to bloody painful scrapes would she perhaps cry, as she limped off to the ayah to be scolded and bandaged.
Lady Beatrice’s Mamma fretted, saying such brashness ill became a little lady. Lady Beatrice’s Papa said he was damned glad to have a child who never wept unless she was really hurt.
“My girl’s true as steel, ain’t she?” he said fondly. Whereupon Lady Beatrice’s Mamma would purse her lips and narrow her eyes.
Presently Lady Beatrice’s Mamma had another focus for her attention, however, for walking out in the cabbage patch one day she found a pair of twin baby girls, as like her and each other as it was possible to be. Lady Beatrice hadn’t thought there was a cabbage patch in the garden. She went out and searched diligently, and found not so much as a Brussels sprout, which fact she announced loudly at dinner that evening. Lady Beatrice’s Mamma turned scarlet. Lady Beatrice’s Papa roared with laughter.
Thereafter Lady Beatrice was allowed a most agreeable childhood, by her standards, Mamma being preoccupied with little Charlotte and Louise. She was given a pony, and was taught to ride by their Punjabi groom. She was given a bow and arrows and taught archery. She was taught her letters, and read as many books as she liked. When she asked for her own regimental uniform, Mamma told her such a thing was wicked, and retired with a fainting fit, but Papa gave her a little red coat on her next birthday.
The birthdays came and went. Just after Lady Beatrice turned seventeen, Lady Beatrice’s Grandmamma was taken ill, and so Lady Beatrice’s Mamma took the twins and went back to England for a visit. Lady Beatrice was uninterested in going, having several handsome young officers swooning for her at the time, and Mamma was quite content to leave her in India with Papa.
Grandmamma had been expected to die rather soon, but for some reason lingered, and Lady Beatrice’s Mamma found one reason after another to postpone returning. Lady Beatrice relished running Papa’s house by herself, especially presiding over dinners, where she bantered with all the handsome young officers and not a few of the old ones. One of them wrote poetry in praise of her gray eyes. Two others dueled on her account.
Then Papa’s regiment was ordered to Kabul.
Lady Beatrice was left alone with the servants for some months, bored beyond anything she had believed possible. One day word came that all the wives and children of the married officers were to be allowed to go to Kabul as well, as a way to keep up the troops’ morale. Lady Beatrice heard nothing directly from Papa, as it happened, but she went with all the other families. After two months of miserably difficult travel through all the red dust in the world, Lady Beatrice arrived in Kabul.
Papa was not pleased to see her. Papa was horrified. He sat her down and in few words explained how dangerous their situation was, how unlikely it was that the Afghanis would accept the British-backed ruler. He told her that rebellion was likely to break out any moment, and that the order to send for wives and children had been perfectly insane folly.
Lady Beatrice had proudly told Papa that she wasn’t afraid to stay in Kabul; after all, all her handsome suitors were there! Papa had given a bitter laugh and replied that he didn’t think it was safe now to send her home alone in any case.
So Lady Beatrice had stayed in Kabul, hosting Papa’s dinners for increasingly glum and uninterested young suitors. She remained there until the end, when Elphinstone negotiated the retreat of the British garrison, and was one of the doomed sixteen thousand who set off from Kabul for the Khyber Pass.
Lady Beatrice watched them die, one after another after another. They died of the January cold; they died when Ghilzai snipers picked them off, or rode down in bands and skirmished with the increasingly desperate army. Papa died in the Khoord Kabul gorge, during one such skirmish, and Lady Beatrice was carried away screaming by a Ghilzai tribesman.
Lady Beatrice was beaten and raped. She was left tied among the horses. In the night she tore through the rope with her teeth and crawled into the shelter where her captors slept. She took a knife and cut their throats, and did worse to the last one, because he woke and attempted to break her wrist. She swathed herself in their garments, stole a pair of
their boots. She stole their food. She took their horses, riding one and leading the others, and went down to find Papa’s body.
He was frozen stiff when she found him, so she had to give up any idea of tying him across the saddle and taking him away. Instead she buried him under a cairn of stones, and scratched his name and regiment on the topmost rock with the knife with which she had killed her rapists. Then Lady Beatrice rode away, weeping; but she felt no shame weeping, because she was really hurt.
All along the Khyber Pass she counted the British and Indian dead. On three separate occasions she rode across the body of one and then another and another of her handsome young suitors. Lady Beatrice looked like a gray-eyed specter, all her tears wept out, by the time she rode into Jellalabad.
No one quite knew what to do with her there. No one wanted to speak of what had happened, for, as one of the officers who had known her family explained, her father’s good name was at stake. Lady Beatrice remained with the garrison all through the siege of Jellalabad that followed, cooking for them and washing clothes. In April, just after the siege had been raised, she miscarried.
Her father’s friends saw to it that Lady Beatrice was escorted back to India. There she sold off the furniture, dismissed the servants, closed up the house, and bought herself passage to England.
Once she had arrived, it took Lady Beatrice several weeks to find Mamma and the twins. Grandmamma had died at last, and upon receiving word of the massacre in Afghanistan, Mamma had bought mourning and thrown herself upon the mercy of her older brother, a successful merchant. She and the twins were now living as dependents in his house hold.
Lady Beatrice arrived on their doorstep and was greeted by shrieks of horror. Apparently Lady Beatrice’s letters had gone astray in the mail. Her mother fainted dead away. Uncle Frederick’s wife came in and fainted dead away as well. Charlotte and Louise came running down to see what had happened and, while they did not faint, they screamed shrilly. Uncle Frederick came in and stared at her as though his eyes would burst from his face.
The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF Page 37