Alyx - Joanna Russ

by Unknown Author

  This is one of the first titles in a new science fiction series from The Women’s Press.

  The list will feature new titles by contemporary writers and reprints of classic works by well known authors. Our aim is to publish science fiction by women and about women; to present exciting and provocative feminist images of the future that will offer an alternative vision of science and technology, and challenge male domination of the science fiction tradition itself.

  Published in this series

  JOANNA RUSS

  The Adventures of Alyx

  The Female Man

  Extra (Ordinary) People

  SALLY MILLER GEARHART

  The Wanderground

  JANE PALMER

  The Planet Dweller

  NAOMI MITCHISON

  Memoirs of a Spacewoman

  SUZETTE HADEN ELGIN

  Native Tongue

  JEN GREEN & SARAH LEFANU, eds

  Despatches from the Frontiers of the Female Mind

  An Anthology of Original Stories

  First published in Great Britain by

  The Women's Press Limited 1985

  A member of the Namara Group

  124 Shoreditch High Street, London EI 6JE

  Copyright ©Joanna Russ 1983

  First published in the United States by

  Pocket Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc,

  New York, 1983.

  All rights reserved.

  “Bluestocking" first published as "The Adventuress" in Orbit 2, New York, Berkley Books, Copyright © 1967 by Damon Knight;

  “I Thought She Was Afeard Till She Stroked My Beard" first published as “I Gave Her Sack and Sherry” in Orbit 2, New York, Berkley Books, 1967, Copyright © 1967 by Damon Knight;

  “The Barbarian" from Orbit 3, New York, Berkley Books, 1968, Copyright © 1968 by Damon Knight;

  Picnic on Paradise. New York, Ace Books, 1968. Copyright © 1968 by Joanna Russ; and

  “The Second Inquisition” from Orbit 6, New York, Berkley Books, 1970, Copyright © 1970 by Damon Knight.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Russ, Joanna The adventures of Alyx.

  I. Title

  813'.54[F] PS3568.U763

  ISBN 0-7043-3972-2

  Reproduced, printed and bound in Great Britain by Hazell, Watson & Viney Ltd, Aylesbury, Bucks

  JOANNA RUSS

  Joanna Russ was born and grew up in New York City. Her stories began to be published in 1959, and in 1967 the first Alyx story, ‘The Adventuress’ (‘Bluestocking’ in this collection) appeared which marked a turning point in her career. ‘Long before I became a feminist in any explicit way,’ Russ remembers, ‘I had turned from writing love stories about women in which women were losers, and adventure stories about men in which the men were winners, to writing adventure stories about a woman in which the woman won. It was one of the hardest things I ever did in my life.’

  Joanna Russ is the Nebula and Hugo award-winning author of many short stories and novels, including The Female Man (The Women’s Press, 1985) Extra (Ordinary) People (The Women’s Press, 1985) And Chaos Died, The Two Of Them and We Who Are About To .... Her critical works include How To Suppress Women’s Writing (The Women’s Press, 1983), a survey of women writers and the literary tradition. She is associate professor of English at the University of Washington, Seattle.

  Bluestocking

  This is the tale of a voyage that is of interest only as it concerns the doings of one small, gray-eyed woman. Small women exist in plenty—so do those with gray eyes—but this woman was among the wisest of a sex that is surpassingly wise. There is no surprise in that (or should not be) for it is common knowledge that Woman was created fully a quarter of an hour before Man, and has kept that advantage to this very day. Indeed, legend has it that the first man, Leh, was fashioned from the sixth finger of the left hand of the first woman, Loh, and that is why women have only five fingers on the left hand. The lady with whom we concern ourselves in this story had all her six fingers, and what is more, they all worked.

  In the seventh year before the time of which we speak, this woman, a neat, level-browed, governessy person called Alyx, had come to the City of Ourdh as part of a religious delegation from the hills intended to convert the dissolute citizens to the ways of virtue and the one true God, a Bang tree of awful majesty. But Alyx, a young woman of an intellectual bent, had not been in Ourdh two months when she decided that the religion of Yp (as the hill god was called) was a disastrous piece of nonsense, and that deceiving a young woman in matters of such importance was a piece of thoughtlessness for which it would take some weeks of hard, concentrated thought to think up a proper reprisal. In due time the police chased Alyx’s coreligionists down the Street of Heaven and Hell and out the swamp gate to be bitten by the mosquitoes that lie in wait among the reeds, and Alyx—with a shrug of contempt— took up a modest living as pick-lock, a profession that gratified her sense of subtlety. It provided her with a living, a craft and a society. Much of the wealth of this richest and vilest of cities stuck to her fingers but most of it dropped off again, for she was not much awed by the things of this world. Going their legal or illegal ways in this seventh year after her arrival, citizens of Ourdh saw only a woman with short, black hair and a sprinkling of freckles across her milky nose; but Alyx had ambitions of becoming a Destiny. She was thirty (a dangerous time for men and women alike) when this story begins. Yp moved in his mysterious ways, Alyx entered the employ of the Lady Edarra, and Ourdh saw neither of them again—for a while.

  Alyx was walking with a friend down the Street of Conspicuous Display one sultry summer’s morning when she perceived a young woman, dressed like a jeweler’s tray and surmounted with a great coil of red hair, waving to her from the table of a wayside garden-terrace.

  “Wonderful are the ways of Yp,” she remarked, for although she no longer accorded that deity any respect, yet her habits of speech remained. “There sits a red-headed young woman of no more than seventeen years and with the best skin imaginable, and yet she powders her face.”

  “Wonderful indeed,” said her friend. Then he raised one finger and went his way, a discretion much admired in Ourdh. The young lady, who had been drumming her fingers on the tabletop and frowning like a fury, waved again and stamped one foot.

  “I want to talk to you,” she said sharply. “Can’t you hear me?”

  “I have six ears,” said Alyx, the courteous reply in such a situation. She sat down and the waiter handed her the bill of fare. “You are not listening to me,” said the lady.

  “I do not listen with my eyes,” said Alyx.

  “Those who do not listen with their eyes as well as their ears,” said the lady sharply, “can be made to regret it!”

  “Those,” said Alyx, “who on a fine summer’s morning threaten their fellow-creatures in any way, absurdly or otherwise, both mar the serenity of the day and break the peace of Yp, who,” she said, “is mighty.”

  “You are impossible!” cried the lady. “Impossible!” and she bounced up and down in her seat with rage, fixing her fierce brown eyes on Alyx. “Death!” she cried. “Death and bones!” and that was a ridiculous thing to say at eleven in the morning by the side of the most wealthy and luxurious street in Ourdh, for such a street is one of the pleasantest places in the world if you do not watch the beggars. The lady, insensible to all this bounty, jumped to her feet and glared at the little pick-lock; then, composing herself with an effort (she clenched both hands and gritted her teeth like a person in the worst throes of marsh fever), she said—calmly—

  “I want to leave Ourdh.”

  “Many do,” said Alyx, courteously.

  “I require a companion.”
>
  “A lady’s maid?” suggested Alyx. The lady jumped once in her seat as if her anger must have an outlet somehow; then she clenched her hands and gritted her teeth with doubled vigor.

  “I must have protection,” she snapped.

  “Ah?”

  “I’ll pay!” (This was almost a shriek.)

  “How?” said Alyx, who had her doubts.

  “None of your business,” said the lady.

  “If I’m to serve you, everything’s my business. Tell me. All right, how much?”

  The lady named a figure, reluctantly.

  “Not enough,” said Alyx. “Particularly not knowing how. Or why. And why protection? From whom? When?” The lady jumped to her feet. “By water?” continued Alyx imperturbably. “By land? On foot? How far? You must understand, little one—”

  “Little one!” cried the lady, her mouth dropping open. “Little one!”

  “If you and I are to do business—”

  “I’ll have you thrashed—” gasped the lady, out of breath, “I’ll have you so—”

  “And let the world know your plans?” said Alyx, leaning forward with one hand under her chin. The lady stared, and bit her lip, and backed up, and then she hastily grabbed her skirts as if they were sacks of potatoes and ran off, ribbons fluttering behind her. Wine-colored ribbons, thought Alyx, with red hair; that’s clever. She ordered brandy and filled her glass, peering curiously into it where the hot midmorning sun of Ourdh suffused into a winy glow, a sparkling, trembling, streaky mass of floating brightness. To (she said to herself with immense good humor) all the young ladies in the world. “And,” she added softly, “great quantities of money.”

  At night Ourdh is a suburb of the Pit, or that steamy, muddy bank where the gods kneel eternally, making man; though the lights of the city never show fairer than then. At night the rich wake up and the poor sink into a distressed sleep, and everyone takes to the flat, white-washed roofs. Under the light of gold lamps the wealthy converse, sliding across one another, silky but never vulgar; at night Ya, the courtesan with the gold breasts (very good for the jaded taste) and Garh the pirate, red-bearded, with his carefully cultivated stoop, and many many others, all ascend the broad, white steps to someone’s roof. Each step carries a lamp, each lamp sheds a blurry radiance on a tray, each tray is crowded with sticky, pleated, salt, sweet. . . Alyx ascended, dreaming of snow. She was there on business. Indeed the sky was overcast that night, but a downpour would not drive the guests indoors; a striped silk awning with gold fringes would be unrolled over their heads, and while the fringes became matted and wet and water spouted into the garden below, ladies would put out their hands (or their heads—but that took a "brave lady on account of the coiffure) outside the awning and squeal as they were soaked by the warm, mild, neutral rain of Ourdh. Thunder was another matter. Alyx remembered hill storms with gravel hissing down the gullies of streams and paths turned to cold mud. She met the dowager in charge and that ponderous lady said:

  “Here she is.”

  It was Edarra, sulky and seventeen, knotting a silk handkerchief in a wet wad in her hand and wearing a sparkling blue-and-green bib.

  “That’s the necklace,” said the dowager. “Don’t let it out of your sight.”

  “I see,” said Alyx, passing her hand over her eyes.

  When they were left alone, Edarra fastened her fierce eyes on Alyx and hissed, “Traitor!”

  “What for?” said Alyx.

  “Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!” shouted the girl. The nearest guests turned to listen and then turned away, bored.

  “You grow dull,” said Alyx, and she leaned lightly on the roof-rail to watch the company. There was the sound of angry stirrings and rustlings behind her. Then the girl said in a low voice (between her teeth), “Tonight someone is going to steal this necklace.”

  Alyx said nothing. Ya floated by with her metal breasts gleaming in the lamplight; behind her, Peng the jeweler.

  “I’ll get seven hundred ounces of gold for it!”

  “Ah?” said Alyx.

  “You’ve spoiled it,” snapped the girl. Together they watched the guests, red and green, silk on silk like oil on water, the high-crowned hats and earrings glistening, the bracelets sparkling like a school of underwater fish. Up came the dowager accompanied by a landlord of the richest and largest sort, a gentleman bridegroom who had buried three previous wives and would now have the privilege of burying the Lady Edarra—though to hear him tell it, the first had died of overeating, the second of drinking and the third of a complexion-cleanser she had brewed herself. Nothing questionable in that. He smiled and took Edarra’s upper arm between his thumb and finger. He said, “Well, little girl.” She stared at him. “Don’t be defiant,” he said. “You’re going to be rich.” The dowager bridled. “I mean—even richer,” he said with a smile. The mother and the bridegroom talked business for a few minutes, neither watching the girl; then they turned abruptly and disappeared into the mixing, moving company, some of whom were leaning over the rail screaming at those in the garden below, and some of whom were slipping and sitting down involuntarily in thirty-five pounds of cherries that had just been accidentally overturned onto the floor.

  “So that’s why you want to run away,” said Alyx. The Lady Edarra was staring straight ahead of her, big tears rolling silently down her cheeks. “Mind your business,” she said.

  “Mind yours,” said Alyx softly, “and do not insult me, for I get rather hard then.” She laughed and fingered the necklace, which was big and gaudy and made of stones the size of a thumb. “What would you do,” she said, “if I told you yes?”

  “You’re impossible!” said Edarra, looking up and sobbing. “Praised be Yp that I exist then,” said Alyx, “for I do ask you if your offer is open. Now that I see your necklace more plainly, I incline towards accepting it—whoever you hired was cheating you, by the way; you can get twice again as much—though that gentleman we saw just now has something to do with my decision.” She paused. “Well?”

  Edarra said nothing, her mouth open.

  “Well, speak!”

  “No,” said Edarra.

  “Mind you,” said Alyx wryly, “you still have to find someone to travel with, and I wouldn’t trust the man you hired—probably hired—for five minutes in a room with twenty other people. Make your choice. I’ll go with you as long and as far as you want, anywhere you want.”

  “Well,” said Edarra, “yes.”

  “Good,” said Alyx. “I’ll take two-thirds.”

  “No!” cried Edarra, scandalized.

  “Two-thirds,” said Alyx, shaking her head. “It has to be worth my while. Both the gentleman you hired to steal your necklace— and your mother—and your husband-to-be—and heaven alone knows who else—will be after us before the evening is out. Maybe. At any rate, I want to be safe when I come back.”

  “Will the money—?” said Edarra.

  “Money does all things,” said Alyx, “and I have long wanted to return to this city, this paradise, this—swamp!—with that which makes power! Come,” and she leapt onto the roof-rail and from there into the garden, landing feet first in the loam and mining a bed of strawberries. Edarra dropped beside her, all of a heap and panting.

  “Kill one, kill all, kill devil!” said Alyx gleefully. Edarra grabbed her arm. Taking the lady by the crook of her elbow, Alyx began to ran, while behind them the fashionable merriment of Ourdh (the guests were pouring wine down each other’s backs) grew fainter and fainter and finally died away.

  They sold the necklace at the waterfront shack that smelt of tar and sewage (Edarra grew ill and had to wait outside), and with the money Alyx bought two short swords, a dagger, a blanket, and a round cheese. She walked along the harbor carving pieces out of the cheese with the dagger and eating them off the point. Opposite a fishing boat, a square-sailed, slovenly tramp, she stopped and pointed with cheese and dagger both.

  “That’s ours,” said she. (For the harbor streets were very quiet.)<
br />
  “Oh, no!"

  “Yes,” said Alyx, “that mess,” and from the slimy timbers of the quay she leapt onto the deck. “It’s empty,” she said.

  “No,” said Edarra, “I won’t go,” and from the landward side of the city thunder rumbled and a few drops of rain fell in the darkness, warm, like the wind.

  “It’s going to rain,” said Alyx. “Get aboard.”

  “No,” said the girl. Alyx’s face appeared in the bow of the boat, a white spot scarcely distinguishable from the sky; she stood in the bow as the boat rocked to and fro in the wash of the tide. A light across the street, that shone in the window of a waterfront café, went out.

  “Oh!” gasped Edarra, terrified, “give me my money!” A leather bag fell in the dust at her feet. “I’m going back,” she said, “I’m never going to set foot in that thing. It’s disgusting. It’s not ladylike.”

  “No,” said Alyx.

  “It’s dirty!" cried Edarra. Without a word, Alyx disappeared into the darkness. Above, where the clouds bred from the marshes roofed the sky, the obscurity deepened and the sound of rain drumming on the roofs of the town advanced steadily, three streets away, then two... a sharp gust of wind blew bits of paper and the indefinable trash of the seaside upwards in an unseen spiral. Out over the sea Edarra could hear the universal sound of rain on water, like the shaking of dried peas in a sheet of paper but softer and more blurred, as acres of the surface of the sea dimpled with innumerable little pockmarks. . . .

  “I thought you’d come,” said Alyx. “Shall we begin?”

  Ourdh stretches several miles southward down the coast of the sea, finally dwindling to a string of little towns; at one of these they stopped and provided for themselves, laying in a store of food and a first-aid kit of dragon’s teeth and ginger root, for one never knows what may happen in a sea voyage. They also bought resin; Edarra was forced to caulk the ship under fear of being called soft and lazy, and she did it, although she did not speak. She did not speak at all. She boiled the fish over a fire laid in the brass firebox and fanned the smoke and choked, but she never said a word. She did what she was told in silence. Every day bitterer, she kicked the stove and scrubbed the floor, tearing her fingernails, wearing out her skirt; she swore to herself, but without a word, so that when one night she kicked Alyx with her foot, it was an occasion.