Ammonite

by Nicola Griffith

  They slid past each other like slippery same‑pole magnets, going in.

  And Marghe was standing before the cathedral that was Thenike’s body and all its systems, as Thenike stood before hers. She stepped inside.

  It stretched far over her head, a vast, echoing space. She wandered, laying a hand here, against the muscles sheathing the stomach, a hand there, between ribs. She stopped and looked in a side chapel where bronchioles narrowed to alveoli. She wandered on, noting cells and bones and connective tissue, glands and tubes. Ovaries.

  One ovary felt different from the other. Marghe stopped. She felt its heat, and something else, a bulge, a ripe readiness. The bulge swelled. Marghe watched, fascinated, as it split, opened, released its egg. Marghe followed the egg as waving cilia gentled it down the oviduct.

  Thenike was ovulating, and because Marghe knew their rhythms were matched, she knew that this would be happening in her body, too, and that Thenike would be watching. Marghe stepped closer, reached out cautiously. The electrum thread inside shimmered and sang, and the ovum almost… changed. Marghe withdrew her hand.

  The virus had altered everything. She saw how she could change the chromosomes, how she could rearrange the pairs of alleles on each one. If she reached in and touched this, enfolded that, the cell would begin to divide. And she could control it–she and Thenike could control it.

  Marghe felt the connecting tension as Thenike stood waiting.

  She could do it. She would do it; Thenike would match her.

  She reached out again, and the thrumming electrum strand that was the virus coiled and flexed and the cell divided. Marghe searched her memory of those long‑ago biology lessons: mitosis. But altered, tightly controlled and compressed by the snaking virus until it resembled a truncated meiosis. Chromosomes began their stately dance, pairing and parting, chromatids joining and breaking again at their chiasmata, each with slightly rearranged genetic material. But the chromatids did not then separate again and migrate to the cellular poles in a second anaphase; instead they replicated. This daughter would be diploid, able to have her own daughter.

  It was like watching beads on a string rearrange themselves. Gorgeous colors, intricate steps, every bead knowing just the right distance to travel. Precision choreography, again and again, as cells divided, normally now, and the one‑celled ova became two‑celled, four‑celled, eight‑celled.

  As they multiplied, Marghe felt the tight tension, the connection between these cells that would divide and multiply inside Thenike, and those that would grow inside her own body: fetuses. Fetuses that might one day be born as soestre.

  Marghe sat up in bed, the coverlet wrapped around her, watching Thenike coax the fire back to life. The candle, forgotten, had long since burned out. The only light was the dull red of the hearth, sending Thenike’s shadow high over the ceiling.

  She watched her lover in silence; words would have been too big, too solid, for what they had done together.

  Thenike added some dry sticks. The flames leapt, sending her shadow swaying and jumping over the walls. She examined her handiwork and added a log. “You could be a viajera. If you chose. You have the skill.”

  Marghe cradled her stomach with her right hand. She had done this. They had done this. She did not want to think about anything else. “They’ll be soestre,” she said. A new thought struck her. “How would I travel as a viajera with a baby?”

  Thenike turned to look over her shoulder. “We’d travel together. While they’re young, we’ll travel smaller distances at a time, and less often. And when we get there, we’ll stay longer. We’d be safe, together.”

  Marghe imagined the Nid‑Nodtossed by a storm, Thenike wrestling with the tiller, Marghe trying to reef the sail and stop both babies from being washed overboard.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “The future.” And Marghe knew then that she did want to be a viajera, a teacher and wanderer, a newsbearer, arbitrator, and traveler. “Wenn will be disappointed. I think she’d rather I stayed as a gardener.”

  “More useful to her way of thinking,” Thenike agreed.

  “I can’t sing.”

  “Not necessary.”

  “Teach me what to do.”

  “I have been doing.”

  When they woke up the next morning, they hugged each other tight, then let go.

  “Thenike, I need to get a message to Danner, at Port Central. Tell her where I am, what’s happening.” Now that she herself knew, finally, what she wanted, she owed it to them, to Danner and to Sara Hiam, to let them know the vaccine worked, that she had chosen to discontinue taking it; that she was going to stay here with Thenike and have a child.

  “It’s a long journey from here to there. Will it wait until the weather’s better, until we can send by herd bird?”

  “I should have sent word weeks ago.”

  “I’ll talk to Hilt.“

  Thenike pointed at the map on the wall of Rathell’s great room. “Hilt plans to leave for North Haven in the last third of this moon.” It was already the Moon of New Grass. Spring. “From there, her ship takes her south and east”–her fingernail swung out into the blue‑painted Eye of Ocean–“through the Summer Island channels. Then south and west, past the Gray Horn, out into Silverfish Deeps and on, down to Pebble Fleet. From there, she’ll be able to find a messenger willing to travel north and west up the Huipil and over the hills to your Port Central.”

  Marghe frowned, and studied the wide‑swinging route. “Why doesn’t she sail through here?” She pointed to a narrow channel between the largest of the Summer Islands. “Wouldn’t that cut more than a few days off the voyage?”

  “No ship could get through the Mouth of the Grave at this time of year.”

  “And there’s no other way to get the message to Danner?”

  Thenike shook her head. “The herd birds can only fly long distances when the air gets hot enough to lift them, let them glide.”

  “When will that be?”

  “Depends on the weather. Perhaps early during Lazy Moon. It would take… ten, fifteen days, maybe more, depending on who was herding where, and how much their birds were needed. If you’re in a hurry, sending a message with Hilt on her ship would be faster.”

  Marghe sighed, and accepted the situation. “How much can I say with a message knot?”

  ”What do you want to say?” Thenike took a cord and several different threads from a bundle that lay on a shelf.

  “That I stopped taking the vaccine. That I contracted the virus about a month later. That I’m here at Ollfoss, I’m well, and I’m pregnant.”

  Thenike knotted rapidly, weaving sometimes one color, sometimes several, into elegantly shaped knots. When she ran out of cord, she took up another, tied it to the first, and continued.

  “That’s it?” Marghe took the rope, ran the knots and colors through her fingers. “You’d better teach me to do that.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  DANNER, THOUGH SHE would not have admitted it to another soul, was enjoying herself.

  She stood on a slight rise, eight kilometers from what was left of the Port Central perimeter, and watched the four groups of Mirrors pacing off their marks, pausing a moment to wipe the sweat from their brows with wristbands, aiming, loosing the crossbow quarrels, and trudging back to check their accuracy. Now and again, the late spring breeze carried the dull chunkof quarrel hitting mark, then the drifting curses after a poor aim, or the crows of accuracy.

  Her Mirrors.

  She had thirty‑two of them down below on the plain, shooting with a mix of differently tipped quarrels–ceramic, plastic, sharpened wood–and competing on a team basis. They seemed to be enjoying it.

  Spring was spring on any world; soldiers got restless. Danner had talked to unit commanders, subs and higher: keep them busy, get their morale up. So here they were, being told only that they were testing the research of various specialists, Mirror and civilian, who were experimenting with the possibilities of
local materials. As she overheard one of them say: crossbows were crazy when you had state‑of‑the‑art firepower, but it beat standing pointless guard eight hours out of twenty‑four.

  Other specialists were busy, too. Botanists were roped in to select trees for their wood, and the geologists, dubious at first, were now happy to use their previously mothballed talents–one did not test‑drill and core‑mine around burnstone–to track likely deposits of clay and olla. They and the soil specialist were happily muttering about geest and marl, fuller’s earth and alluvium. Climatologists and ecologists were off with Ato Teng, surveying for possible resettlement sites. If Company abandoned them, they had to find a better place than Port Central, somewhere fertile and warm, with good access to trade routes. Somewhere defensible.

  Danner breathed the soft warm air of Jeep and smiled. Right now there were probably several reports waiting to be downloaded for her attention, but she was happy to stay here, just be. Be herself, Hannah Danner, feeling sunshine and an alien breeze on her face.

  South, just visible if she shaded her eyes with her hand and squinted against the sun, was the thready glint of the Huipil, the river that drained the Irern Swamplands. West was the Ho valley, its wide bottom sliding with the river in its slow‑moving middle phase; well over a thousand kilometers long, that river. East, half‑a‑day’s journey across the plain by sled–perhaps a week on foot–was the sea, Silverfish Deeps.

  She turned north. Representative Marguerite Angelica Taishan was somewhere up there. Danner compressed her lips. She would give a great deal to have Marghe in her office right now, alive and healthy, answering questions. So much depended upon the health of one woman. If the FN‑17 worked, then Company would simply vaccinate their employees and all the potential vacationers and real estate agents and miners who could turn Jeep from a financial embarrassment to a reasonable investment. Then all this surveying and crossbow practice and examination of local materials for possible practical use would be no more than an exercise in morale.

  North was the direction Danner faced every morning, unconsciously waiting for news.

  The wind died and the sun suddenly felt much stronger. Danner sighed. There was work to be done. Teng might have the preliminary site reports ready. Previous satellite surveys indicated several possibilities on the western bank of the Ho valley, both north and south. South would be better–warmer. Damn Marghe, Danner thought. She could have been useful, like that trata stuff, now. They could have used that to bargain some breeding animals from the locals, if she had stayed here instead of running off on a wild‑goose chase.

  Danner walked down the hill, moving slowly, wanting to savor the last few minutes of sunshine and fresh air before closing herself up in her office. A faint cry soared up the rise. She turned to look. A figure was jogging toward the Mirrors from the north. Past that she could see something, moving fast. Maybe a sled.

  Down below, the jogger reached the clump of Mirrors in the foreground. One dropped her crossbow, raised her wrist to her mouth. Danner’s wristcom beeped.

  “Commander, this is Sergeant Leap.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Commander, one of my Mirrors reports there’s a sled approaching from the north. Four occupants.”

  That would be Lu Wai and Letitia, with Day. But that made only three. “Four? You’re sure?”

  Danner watched as the tiny figures below conferred. “Yes ma’am. Four. That’s what the observer said.”

  In the distance, the sled suddenly slowed. Danner nodded to herself: Lu Wai was giving them a chance to prepare a reception committee. She was glad that the lieutenant had had the sense not to comm ahead the identity of her passengers; Danner would not be able to keep Day’s presence unofficial if Company got to hear of it. And they would hear of it if the spy was still monitoring communications. “Thank you, Sergeant. Select two officers, ones who look reasonably presentable if that’s possible, and detail them to meet me at the bottom of this hill. I want you to take the rest of your troop west two kilometers and continue weapons exercise. Out.”

  No point taking chances. Whoever that fourth passenger was, Danner wanted to know here, now, with only one or two witnesses.

  She wiped the sweat from her face, snapped her collar tight, and started deliberately down the hill. Whoever was in that sled might be important; it would not do to present a bad image.

  One of the officers waiting at the bottom of the hill was old to be still a private posted to off‑Earth duty. Danner compared the short gray hair and hard face with the files in her head and made a match: Pat Twissel. Two disciplinary hearings, one suspension. Made sergeant once, almost made it to lieutenant before that first hearing busted her back to private. Efficient, but adamantine. If an order fitted with Iwissel’s particular world‑view, then that order would be carried out flawlessly, tirelessly, brilliantly. If Twissel did not agree with what had to be done, she was never overtly disobedient, but things somehow kept going wrong. Willful, too independent for Company Security. Danner was tempted to dismiss her and just keep the younger officer, whose name she could not recall. But willfulness and independence were traits she might need sometime.

  They saluted. “Officers Twissel and Chauhan reporting as ordered, ma’am.”

  Twissel’s voice was surprisingly soft. Danner nodded approval of their tidy hair and tight collars.

  “Good turnout on short notice. But, Chauhan, see if you can get that muck off your left boot.”

  Chauhan blushed, which made her look startlingly young, and scrubbed hurriedly at the offending boot with a handful of grass.

  The whine of a sled going slower than it should cut through the slight hiss of the wind on grass.

  “There are four people on that sled,” Danner said conversationally. “Two are Sublieutenant Lu Wai and Technician Letitia Dogias. You may or may not recognize one or more of the others. If you do recognize them, you are not to display that recognition, or comment upon it, either now or to anyone else at any future time. Is that clear?”

  “Clear, ma’am,” Twissel said, and Danner hoped that whatever was going on under that gray hair was in her favor.

  “Chauhan?”

  “Oh. Clear, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Stay behind me. If either of our visitors requires assistance, you will render it without being asked.” The sled was just two hundred meters away. “When I have escorted the visitors to Port Central, you will wait for my debriefing, or that of Lieutenant Lu Wai. You may have to wait several hours. Clear?”

  “Unobtrusive assistance, don’t recognize anyone but Dogias and Lu Wai, wait for the lieutenant’s or your debriefing only, Yes, ma’am.”

  The sled grounded and began to power down. The hatch flipped up. The first out was Dogias, then a stocky woman with long hair going gray. She moved easily enough, but was looking around too much; tense. Day. Danner caught Twissel’s jerk of surprise from the corner of her eye.

  The third figure was slight, but jumped down to the grass easily and pushed back her hood. The slight woman looked around, saw Danner, held out her hands in welcome.

  “Hannah.”

  “T’orre Na.”

  “They tell me you’re commander, now.”

  “It’s been a long time.” Danner was smiling. “Too long.” She took the journeywoman’s hand. There were one or two new lines.on T’orre Na’s face, but not much else to show that five years had passed. “You look well.”

  “You look older. And worried. I have news that you must hear.”

  “As soon as I can. For now, welcome.” Danner squeezed T’orre Na’s hand, then let go. She turned to Day, bowed slightly in formal greeting. “Day, welcome.”

  Day looked older, thicker around the waist. “Commander.”

  “Call me Hannah, if you would; I have promised to relinquish my command over you. My thanks for coming.”

  Day did not relax. “Letitia said it was urgent, but I’d feel happier continuing this once we’re under cover. Not that I’m
very sure what it is you think I can do to help.”

  Trust is earned, Danner reminded herself. “Very well. We’ll take the sled.”

  They were in Danner’s mod. Day finished her coffee, poured more. “So, in the absence of the representative, you want me to be a sort of cultural interpreter.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But you say you already have trata with Cassil in Holme Valley. I don’t see why you need me.”

  “Holme Valley is a long way from here. There are locals closer that we should be dealing with. And you know what we want, you can understand our needs.”

  “I’m not sure I can anymore. Living out there for five years changes you.” She sipped at her coffee. It had been a long time since Danner had seen anyone savour coffee that way.“Besides, now that you have trata with Cassil, you’re more or less obliged to put things their way first. Coming to me is breach of protocol.”

  “That’s exactly the kind of information I need! Look, just say you’ll stay here for a few months, six months. In return I’ll–”

  “You’ll what? Agree not to throw me in the brig for going AWOL?”

  Danner kept her temper. “I believe I have already agreed that you will remain officially missing. You could walk out of here right now, and that would still be the case. I keep my promises, where possible.”

  “It’s that ‘where possible’ that bothers me. I know how it is to be a Mirror; if it becomes expedient to suddenly reopen my file and query my status, then you will. Oh, don’t get all righteously angry. You know it’s true.”

  Danner was angry, but saw no point in protesting Day’s statement. “Perhaps. But what I was about to say was that I would help you in any way I could. We have metal you could use for trade goods, or we could pass information on weather systems along to you at critical times. During the herd’s birthing season, for example.”

  They were silent. The air system hummed. “I need some sunshine,” Day said abruptly. “I don’t know how you stand it in this box without windows.” She stood up, then startled Danner by smiling–a brief, wry smile. “I know what’s wrong with me. It’s the coffee. I need to go for a walk. I’ll come back in an hour or two.” She paused. “You know, Danner, we might be able to work something out, but whatever we decide, you really should talk to T’orre Na first.”