The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (30 page)

Should I really ask her something?
She seems so sad, suddenly. But the tropism is too strong, I can’t resist it for very long. And at dawn, I can ask anything I want, those are really
my
questions.

“Long night?”

She doesn’t even flinch, turns her head a little to look up at me: “Not just for you.”

“Why?”

She says nothing. I’d really appreciate it if humans were forced to answer questions as I am: I have so little time to ask
mine. She stands up and faces me, leaning on my pedestal. I am lying down, and her face is above mine. She holds out her hand, touches my cheek.

You don’t touch me very often. Despite all your boasting, most of you humans are afraid of me, and those who wouldn’t be, the children, are too small to be able to touch me, except when standing on a chair – and there is always an adult to see them and
keep them away from me. But Angkaar did touch me. And a few other humans, even so. I know what I perceive when I am physically touched: the electro-chemical signature of your emotions, a little clearer than when you are at a distance in the circle.

Not so with her. Emotions, yes, but distant, shifted somehow.
Muted? Was what I thought to be calmness merely this gap, this … slowness, between stimulus
and response?

An artefact, about to end.

And I have no questions for her any more.

After looking at me for a while, eye to eye, she sits down again, offering her face to the rising sun.

With her I look at the jagged leaves, the jagged light. Never did I feel more acutely that my time is limited. So much curiosity, so little time to satisfy it … All of a sudden, I understand you better for
not asking questions. At last I ask: “What about me?”

She looks at me again, with, yes, a slightly distant tenderness, not answering. Or is that her answer, when she says: “I’ll be there”?

And the sun rises some more, my heart beats faster, I can feel the vibration, inside, rising, signaling the full light of day. Does she feel it too? She puts a hand on my outstretched paws, a slow movement,
getting even slower, which alerts me: dawn is over, too late now for my questions, I will have to wait for tomorrow, if she comes back tomorrow, I don’t even know her name, but then I don’t have a name either. And while the shadows begin to crawl, on the ground, like the sun, crawls in the sky, while the birds’ songs slide, into the sound of the city, lower and deeper, while this unknown, my sister,
as if weightless, stands up and walks away, swimming more and more, languidly in the alley, leading down to the sea, and the rising tide, I dream, of all that she and I will not see, the submerged city, the tide that will not ebb, the streets almost deserted, only a few wistful vagrants left, while my inner time pulses and contracts, while the outer time stretches endlessly, I imagine the future,
after me, without me, but she will be there, she said, a promise, she knows when, the end for me, for her, I trust.

A real cloud-bank is drifting, from the sea; rising up; stretching on. It will be a slow day, at least a slow morning, and for me the innocent pleasure of sharing time with you.

Perhaps today someone will ask me if I am afraid of ending. Sifted through the programs that prompt
my convoluted sentences, my answer will mean “no”. Or perhaps I will tell you: “Even less now,” and that will satisfy my creator’s sarcastic ghost. You might also ask me how I am going to end. I will try to tell you
that I don’t know, that deep down it is not important after all. Soon. I’ll end soon. But she will come. Perhaps in full daylight: amidst my ultimate conflagration I’ll see her floating
toward me with a long smile, or perhaps at night, and suddenly she’ll be there, the lightning warmth and sadness of her smile, her hand on my petrifying flesh. At sunset, and I will answer her? At dawn, and she will answer me?

But perhaps it will be a slow day, as now, when we can talk without constraints. Even that will not be necessary. Simply, without too much haste or slowness, together in
time, we will have all of it to know, unspeaking, one moment, an eternity.

ASTROPHILIA

Carrie Vaughn

After five years of drought, the tiny, wool-producing household of Greentree was finished. First the pastures died off, then the sheep, and Stella and the others didn’t have any wool to process and couldn’t meet the household’s quota, small though it was with only five of them working at the end. The holding just couldn’t support a household and the regional committee
couldn’t keep putting credits into it, hoping that rains would come. They might never come, or the next year might be a flood. No one could tell, and that was the problem, wasn’t it?

None of them argued when Az and Jude put in to dissolve Greentree. They could starve themselves to death with pride, but that would be a waste of resources. Stella was a good weaver, and ought to have a chance somewhere
else. That was the first reason they gave for the decision.

Because they dissolved voluntarily, the committee found places for them in other households, ones not on the verge of collapse. However, Az put in a special request and found Stella’s new home herself. “I know the head of the place, Toma. He’ll take good care of you, but more than that his place is prosperous. Rich enough for children,
even. You could earn a baby there, Stella.” Az’s wrinkled hands gripped Stella’s young ones in her own, and her eyes shone. Twenty-three years ago, Greentree had been prosperous enough to earn a baby: Stella. But those days were gone.

Stella began to have doubts. “Mama, I don’t want to leave you and everyone—”

“We’ll be fine. We’d have had to leave sooner or later, and this way we’ve got credits
to take with us. Start new on a good footing, yes?”

“Yes, but—” She hesitated, because her fears were childish. “What if they don’t like
me
?”

Az shook her head. “Winter market I gave Toma the shawl you made. You should have seen him, Stella, his mouth dropped. He said Barnard Croft would take you on the spot, credits or no.”

But what if they don’t like
me,
Stella wanted to whine. She wasn’t
worried about her weaving.

Az must have seen that she was about to cry. “Oh, dear, it’ll be all right. We’ll see each other at the markets, maybe more if there’s trading to be done. You’ll be happy, I know you will. Better things will come.”

Because Az seemed so pleased for her, Stella stayed quiet, and hoped.

In the spring, Stella traveled to Barnard Croft, 300 miles on the Long Road from
Greentree, in the hills near the coast.

Rain poured on the last day of the journey, so the waystation driver used a pair of horses to draw the wagon, instead of the truck. Stella offered to wait until the storm passed and the solar batteries charged up, but he had a schedule to keep, and insisted that the horses needed the exercise.

Stella sat under the awning on the front seat of the wagon,
wrapped in a blanket against the chill, feeling sorry for the hulking draft animals in front of her. They were soaked, brown coats dripping as they clomped step by step on the muddy road. It might have been faster, waiting for the clouds to break, for the sun to emerge and let them use the truck. But the driver said they’d be waiting for days in these spring rains.

She traveled through an alien
world, wet and green. Stella had never seen so much water in her whole life, all of it pouring from the sky. A quarter of this amount of rain a couple of hundred miles east would have saved Greentree.

The road curved into the next green valley, to Barnard Croft. The wide meadow and its surrounding rolling hills were green, lush with grass. A handful of alpaca grazed along a stream that ran frothing
from the hills opposite. The animals didn’t seem to mind the water, however matted and heavy their coats looked. There’d be some work, cleaning that mess for spinning. Actually, she looked forward to it. She wanted to make herself useful as
soon as she could. To prove herself. If this didn’t work, if she didn’t fit in here and had to throw herself at the mercy of the regional committee to find
some place prosperous enough to take her, that could use a decent weaver … no, this would work.

A half-a-dozen whitewashed cottages clustered together, along with sheds and shelters for animals, a couple of rabbit hutches, and squares of turned black soil with a barest sheen of green – garden plots and new growth. The largest cottage stood apart from the others. It had wide doors and many windows,
shuttered now against the rain – the work house, she guessed. Under the shelter of the wide eaves sat wooden barrels for washing wool, and a pair of precious copper pots for dyeing. All comfortable, familiar sights.

The next-largest cottage, near the garden plots, had a smoking chimney. Kitchen and common room, most likely. Which meant the others were sleeping quarters. She wondered which was
hers, and who’d she’d be sharing with. A pair of windmills stood on the side of one hill; their trefoil blades were still.

At the top of the highest hill, across the meadow, was a small, unpainted shack. It couldn’t have held more than a person or two standing upright. This, she did not recognize. Maybe it was a curing shed, though it seemed an unlikely spot, exposed as it was to every passing
storm.

A turn-off took them from the road to the cottages, and by the time the driver pulled up the horses, eased the wagon to a stop, and set the brakes, a pair of men wrapped in cloaks emerged from the work house to greet them. Stella thanked the driver and jumped to the ground. Her boots splashed, her long woolen skirt tangled around her legs, and the rain pressed the blanket close around
her. She felt sodden and bedraggled, but she wouldn’t complain.

The elder of those who came to greet her was middle-aged and worn, but he moved briskly and spread his arms wide. “Here she is! Didn’t know if you would make it in this weather.” This was Toma. Az’s friend, Stella reminded herself. Nothing to worry about.

“Horses’ll get through anything,” the driver said, moving to the back of the
wagon to unload her luggage.

“Well then,” Toma said. “Let’s get you inside and dried off.”

“Thank you,” Stella managed. “I just have a couple of bags. And a loom. Az let me take Greentree’s loom.”

“Well then, that is a treasure. Good.”

The men clustered around the back of the wagon to help. The bags held her clothes, a few books and letters and trinkets. Her equipment: spindles and needles,
carders, skeins of yarn, coils of roving. The loom took up most of the space – dismantled, legs and frames strapped together, mechanisms folded away in protective oilskin. It would take her most of a day to set up. She’d feel better when it was.

A third figure came running from the work house, shrouded by her wrap and hood like the others. The shape of her was female, young – maybe even Stella’s
age. She wore dark trousers and a pale tunic, like the others.

She came straight to the driver. “Anything for me?”

“Package from Griffith?” the driver answered.

“Oh, yes!”

The driver dug under an oil cloth and brought out a leather document case, stuffed full. The woman came forward to take it, revealing her face, sandstone-burnished skin and bright brown eyes.

Toma scowled at her, but the
woman didn’t seem to notice. She tucked the package under her arm and beamed like sunshine.

“At least be useful and take a bag,” Toma said to her.

Taking up a bag with a free hand, the woman flashed a smile at Stella, and turned to carry her load to the cottage.

Toma and other other man, Jorge, carried the loom to the work house. Hefting the rest of her luggage, Stella went to the main cottage,
following the young woman at a distance. Behind her, the driver returned to his seat and got the horses moving again; their hooves splashed on the road.

Around dinner time, the clouds broke, belying the driver’s prediction. Some sky and a last bit of sunlight peeked through.

They ate what seemed to her eyes a magnificent feast – meat, eggs, preserved fruits and vegetables, fresh bread. At Greentree,
they’d barely got through the winter on stores, and until this meal Stella hadn’t realized she’d been dimly hungry all the time, for weeks. Months. Greentree really had been dying.

The folk of the croft gathered around the hearth at night, just as they did back home at Greentree, just as folk did at dozens of households up and down the Long Road. She met everyone: Toma and Jorge, who’d helped
with the loom. Elsta, Toma’s partner, who ran the kitchen and garden. Nik and Wendy, Jon and Faren. Peri had a baby, which showed just how well off Barnard was, to be able to support a baby as well as a refugee like Stella. The first thing Peri did was put the baby – Bette – in Stella’s arms, and Stella was stricken because she’d never held a wriggly baby before and was afraid of dropping her. But
Peri arranged her arms just so and took the baby back after a few moments of cooing over them both. Stella had never thought of earning the right to have her implant removed, to have a baby – another mouth to feed at Greentree would have been a disaster.

Elsta was wearing the shawl Stella had made, the one Az had given Toma – her audition, really, to prove her worth. The shawl was an intricate
weave made of finely spun merino. Stella had done everything – carded and spun the wool, dyed it the difficult smoky blue, and designed the pattern herself. Elsta didn’t have to wear it, the croft could have traded it for credits. Stella felt a small spark of pride. Wasn’t just charity that brought her here.

Stella had brought her work basket, but Elsta tsked at her. “You’ve had a long trip,
so rest now. Plenty of time to work later.” So she sat on a blanket spread out on the floor and played with Bette.

Elsta picked apart a tangle of roving, preparing to draft into the spindle of her spinning wheel. Toma and Jorge had a folding table in front of them, and the tools to repair a set of hand carders. The others knit, crocheted, or mended. They no doubt made all their own clothing,
from weaving the fabric to sewing, dark trousers, bright skirts, aprons, and tunics. Stella’s hands itched to work – she was in the middle of knitting a pair of very bright yellow socks from the remnants of yarn from a weaving. They’d be ugly but warm – and the right kind of ugly had a charm of its own. But Elsta was probably right, and the baby was fascinating. Bette had a set of wooden blocks that
she banged into each other; occasionally, very seriously, she handed them to Stella. Then demanded them back. The process must have had a logic to it.