Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction)

by Scott, Melissa

  To his surprise, however, Kolbjorn merely nodded, releasing his hand, and looked from him to Temelathe. "A pleasure meeting you, Mir Warreven. I'll look forward to further acquaintance. Mir Temelathe, thank you. Please give my best wishes to your daughter-in-law." His eyes flickered a little at that, darting toward Warreven, but he controlled himself instantly and turned away.

  Warreven watched him go, tilted his head to one side. "And what was that all about, my father?"

  Temelathe laughed, and flung a heavy arm across the other's shoulders. "Insurance, my son, for both of you. Trade's a nasty business, you should have more strings to your bow."

  "If you say so," Warreven murmured, not bothering to hide his skepticism. Temelathe laughed again, and drew him down from the dais with him.

  Fem: (Concord) human being possessing testes, XY chromosomes, some aspects of female genitalia but not possessing ovaries; %e, %er, %er, %erself

  Mhyre Tatian

  The room was artificially lit, and dim, the curtains and sunscreens drawn tight against the day's fading light. The environ-mental system rumbled in the next room, churning cooled air into the three rooms of the apartment, and the apartment's current owner listened with half an ear, judging the output. Nothing on Hara was ever quite cool enough--he had been born on one cold planet, had spent his childhood and adolescence on another--and he had reconfigured the room plan so that he slept next to the main cooling vent. It was noisy, but it meant that he could sleep--and it also meant that the current main room, which had been intended as the bedroom, was warmer than he liked. He looked around the table, wondering if he could afford to turn the system down another notch. His employer, New Antioch Pharmaceutical Design, was reasonably generous with its housing allowance, but cooling costs were always astronomical this time of year. Arsidy Shraga sat opposite him, frowning over his set-up pad, lights flickering under his fingers as he tried out three different configurations in quick succession. He looked hot and bothered, but then, he was losing this game, and losing badly. Eshe Isabon, on the other hand, was looking cooler than ever, smiling faintly as he studied the board. %e met his gaze, and %er smile widened for an instant, before %e shifted the next block of pieces into position. Shraga threw up his hands at that and blanked his pad.

  "Shit, that finishes me. I'm out."

  "Tatian?" Isabon looked at him, eyebrows lifting.

  Mhyre Tatian reached for the dice arrayed on the tabletop in front of him, palmed them without taking his eyes from the pattern of pieces, and selected two of the ten-sided dice. "I'll go again. Once."

  Isabon smiled more openly. Shraga said, "Remember, the red one's the tens."

  Tatian acknowledged that with a grin--among friends, it was almost acceptable to cheat a little at queens-road--and rolled the dice. The first, the brown, the single digits, bounced off Shraga's random-number box and came up five. The red rolled farther, came to a stop above the cluster of blue lights that marked his own home camp, and showed a two.

  "Oh, bad luck," Isabon said, without sympathy.

  Tatian made a show of studying the board, but he had needed at least forty to stay in the game. "I'm out."

  Isabon looking sideways, fingers busy on %er wrist pad as %e called up the bets and side bets. "You owe me ten-point-two cd, Tatya. Shraga, you owe me nineteen-nine, and you might as well make it twenty."

  "Like hell," Shraga answered, his fingers busy on his own pad. "Nineteen-nine is right--or I'll make it fifteen in metal."

  Tatian gave a rather sour laugh at that--he spent too much of his time making and assessing similar offers; Hara's indigenes were desperate for metal--and Isabon shook %er head slowly.

  "No, nineteen-nine--and in dollars, thank you."

  "Never play queens-road with a fem," Shraga said, with mock bitterness, and reached into his pocket for his card.

  "Never gamble with a fem," Isabon corrected amiably, and mated his card to %er own. Lights flashed as the transfer went through, and Isabon freed the cards, offering Shraga's to him with a flourish. "Thank you, ser. And yours, Tatya?"

  "Ten-two, you said." Tatian reached for his own card, pressed his thumb against the veri-lock, and quickly entered the transaction. Isabon took it and returned it a moment later with the green light flashing: transfer complete. Tatian switched it off and stuck it back into his pocket. "Anyone want anything else to drink?"

  "I'll take another beer," Shraga said promptly, and Tatian suppressed a sigh. Beer--real beer, not the narcotic-spiked, fermented grain drink the indigenes called beer--was imported from off-world and correspondingly expensive. Still, there was no going back on the offer, and he went on into the apartment's narrow kitchen.

  "Isa?"

  "Whatever I had before."

  "All right." Tatian rummaged in the cold box, brought out three frosted bottles, Shraga's beer and a bottle apiece of quatra for him and Isabon. Quatra was a local drink, one part sweetrum to three parts ruby melon juice; like all the local liquors, sweetrum was strong and rough, and not very consistent, but the sweetmelon juice cut the worst of the flavor. After a moment's searching, he found a tray and filled a shallow bowl with the sour-sweet mixed-fruit relish. He added his last package of flatbread and carried the precariously balanced cargo out into the other room, setting it on the table beside the playing board.

  "Did you hear the news? Aldess Donavie had another miscarriage. Today's the whatever-they-call-it, the ceremony."

  Shraga winced visibly, and Tatian remembered too late that the other man had a partner and child at home on Cassandra. The same mutation that had produced the five sexes had increased the incidence of miscarriage; almost anyone who had successfully had a child would have lost another early in pregnancy.

  "Tendlathe's partner," Isabon said, and grimaced. "Sorry, wife."

  Tatian nodded.

  "I wonder what Temelathe is making of all that," %e went on. "I mean, if the dynasty's going to continue, he's going to need a grandchild."

  "A grandson," Tatian said. He still wasn't completely used to the system, found himself insisting on the gendered words as if that would help him understand.

  "Whatever." Isabon reached for %er quarta and took a long swallow.

  "It's not really a dynasty," Shraga said. "There must be somebody else in the clan who could take over, if Tendlathe and Aldess don't have kids."

  "I can't see Temelathe letting the position go to anyone out-side the direct line," Isabon said. "In fact, I wonder if the indigenes would accept someone who wasn't a direct descendant."

  "Do you mean of Temelathe, or of that Captain of theirs?" Tatian asked.

  "Is there any difference?" Isabon grinned, and Tatian nodded.

  "True enough. Still, I'm surprised they haven't had kids by now."

  %e shrugged. "For my money, he looks like a herm--Tendlathe, I mean. Which would explain a lot."

  It was a common and constant rumor, circulating through the Nest and the off-world community on the average of once every four-and-a-half kilohours. "It doesn't really matter," Tatian said, and bit back the rest of the sentence. It doesn't really matter what he is, as long as the indigenes say he's male: that was stating the obvious, and in any case he was tired of dealing with the oddities of the Haran system. Let the Harans deal with it, he thought--no, let Temelathe deal with it. It's his son and his dynasty: his problem, not ours.

  "Another game?" Shraga asked, and reached for his beer. "Isa owes me a chance for revenge."

  "Sorry." Isabon shook %er head, glancing sideways as %e triggered %er implants, calling up some display visible only to %erself. "I have to work tomorrow."

  "I thought you had tomorrow off," Tatian said.

  "I did," Isabon answered. "But then I heard there's a textile fair in the Ferryhead market. I'm curious to see what's on offer."

  Tatian nodded, accepting the excuse, and switched off the queens-road board. The fields that shaped it and formed the playing pieces collapsed, and he began to roll the now-limp board into a tidy cylinder
.

  "How can you make money exporting that stuff?" Shraga asked, and reached for a wedge of flatbread. He broke off a manageable piece and dug it into the relish, then said indistinctly, "I mean, doesn't mass alone eat up half your profits?"

  Isabon gave another of %er austere smiles. %er company was small, but growing; in five years, Tatian thought, %e would probably pass NAPD on the gross-profit list. He was just glad %e didn't run a rival pharmaceutical company.

  "It would--it does, on the biggest pieces, the premade things, quilts, bodices, other clothing, and we don't buy much of that. We only take the best for the art market. But the silk isn't that massy, and it sells very well. The same goes for flaxen."

  "But--"

  Isabon shook her head. "Sorry. Anything more is trade secrets."

  Shraga lifted his hands in instant apology, and Tatian slipped the dice and the random-box back into their cases. "Are you doing anything tomorrow, Shraga?" he asked, and the other man shrugged.

  "I took the day, too. I'm going to sleep late, eat real food, play a few games of basieball, and then I'm going to watch a vidik on the big screen downstairs."

  "Want to hit the Glassmarket before the vidi-show starts?" Tatian asked. "There's going to be drumming and a dance."

  "I don't plan to leave the Nest tomorrow," Shraga said. "That's my idea of a holiday." He set his beer aside--empty already, Tatian saw--and stood, stretching. "And, since I have such strenuous plans, I think I'd better get my beauty sleep. It was a good game, people."

  "See you next week?" Isabon asked, and Shraga shook his head.

  "I'm off to the Estcote--three days in Estaern, and then four on the road, bouncing around the Delacoste mesnies. I'm free the week after, though."

  "That's good for me," Isabon said, and looked at Tatian.

  He touched the input pad between the bones of his right wrist and flinched as a wave of static rose from the failing connection. Static danced in front of his eyes, but resolved itself almost instantly to the familiar scheduling grid. "I'm free then, too. It's your turn to host, Shraga."

  "It would be," the other man said, but grinned. "I'll have a four-pack just for you, Tatya."

  Tatian laughed, acknowledging the offer, and touched the sequences that unlocked the main door. Shraga let himself out, waving, and Tatian closed down his implanted system, feeling another wave of cold static rise to break over his shoulder.

  "You should get that seen to," Isabon said.

  "I will." He didn't add--he didn't need to add--that it was hard to find technicians on Hara who were both competent and affordable. And the system was his own; NAPD would pay for the surgery, but not for replacement parts.

  Isabon gave a knowing smile, and took another sip of %er quarta. "So, you're spending an evening at the Glassmarket. Going with Prane Am?"

  "We're not seeing each other at the moment," Tatian answered. And maybe not ever again, but that really wasn't Isabon's business.

  "I'm sorry," %e said. "I hadn't heard."

  Tatian couldn't help raising his eyebrows at that. Hara's off-world community was small and intimately connected, practically incestuous.

  Isabon shrugged. "People don't gossip to me, Tatya. Nobody told me."

  %e left a silence more compelling than a question, and Tatian found himself filling it after all. "It was the usual thing. She thought I was going native, playing trade on her. And then I heard from Kaialis that she's seeing some mem up at the port."

  "I thought she was man-straight," Isabon said, startled.

  "She was when we were dating."

  "I'm sorry." There was another little silence, and then Isabon sighed and put aside %er empty bottle. "Kaialis isn't the most reliable person around anyway. It may not be true."

  "I know." Tatian managed a smile that was almost real. "I just don't need my life to be this complicated right now."

  "Ah, the joys of the Midsummer contract," Isabon said. "I don't envy you druggists."

  "And I don't envy you at the Quarter-days," Tatian answered. He worked the door controls for %er --using the wall box, this time--and depressed the latch.

  "See you in two weeks," %e said, and the door slid shut again behind %er.

  Left to himself, Tatian slid the rolled-up board and the boxes of dice and number generators into their place in the storage cells that filled the inner wall, and then gathered the empty bottles and fed them one by one to the apartment's recycling system. He re-wrapped the flatbread, poured the relish back into its jar, and tucked them both away in the narrow cabinets. Then he went back out into the main room, and crossed to the single large window, dragging Isabon's chair back into its proper place as he went. He unlatched the curtains and drew them back, so that only the sunscreen remained between him and the glass. He could feel the day's heat radiating inward and released the screen as well. It slid up into its housing, and he had to look away for a moment before his eyes adjusted to the brilliance. His apartment faced east, over-looking the city of Bonemarche--his choice; the other option had been to face the starport, and he had known he would be homesick if he could see the shuttles leaving. He looked out between the two towers that made up the Nest, the Expatriate Housing Blocks One, Two, and Three, across the maze of low buildings tot he Harbor proper. The sky was white with haze, the red spire of the lighthouse at Blind Point all but lost in the milky radiance.

  He had not particularly wanted to think about Prane Am, or Jons Kaialis's gossip: it was bad enough to be falsely accused, but worse to think that Am might really be doing what she had charged him with. He slapped the window controls, lowering the sunscreen again, and turned to the media console as the fierce sunlight dimmed. Rather than risk the implant, he pulled out the little keypad, paged through the menus of his personal datastore until he found the file he wanted. He flicked the shadowscreen to retrieve it and reached for his bottle of quarta, settling himself on the couch opposite the display screen. Codes flickered, mere sparks of light, and then the main screen windowed. Lolya Masani, the Old Dame who had built NAPD, looked out at him, %er dark face drawn into a frown. Of course, it was rare to see Masani smile: he thought he had seen it twice, once when be hired him, and the second time when he had brought in the Uldamiani job against all odds.

  "Welcome to Hara," %e began, and Tatian braved the failing implant to speed-search the file. A progress bar appeared, going from green to red, and the face in the screen writhed soundlessly until he'd found the section he wanted.

  "--two things that fuck up people on Hara," Masani said, "and those are sex and drugs. Drugs--you know my policy. You play in the illegal marts, you're out. I can't afford what a run-in with Customs, or ColCom, or the IDCA would eventually cost me, and don't kid yourself that you'd make enough to cover the fines. You want to fish in that pool, you do it outside of my company. That's my final word on the matter." %e drew breath then, and the fierce stare eased a little. "The only gray area I'm prepared to see is where new drugs are concerned. You find something interesting, you bring it in, develop a product, and I'll back you to the hilt--as long as you file the proper papers, and keep me informed. I'm not averse to recreationals as long as I have lead time to get Legal to clear it. But make sure you keep me informed."

  There was more, but Tatian touched the implanted pad again, dragging the file forward a little farther.

  "--sex," Masani said, "and sex is likely to be the biggest problem. Now, everybody knows the facts about Hara. They were settled late, right at the end of the First Wave, and then when the First Wave collapsed, they were one of the colonies that got lost in the chaos. So by the time we reestablished contact, we'd pretty much resolved all the issues around hyperlumin-A, and they'd never even heard of the problem. Which means that, while they look normal enough, they only admit to two sexes. And that's where the problem comes in. The indigenes don't understand our expectations, and we don't understand theirs. You can meet a perfectly normal-looking person of your personal preference--because, remember, they actually have five
sexes, they are normal human beings that way--but if that person's an indigene, they won't know how to respond. And neither will you."

  Tatian lifted his bottle in silent toast. It had taken him most of the first year to learn to look not at bodies when he met an indigene but at the clothing that signified "real" gender.

  "Now, if that were the only thing, I wouldn't bother doing more than mentioning it," Masani went on. "You're all grown-ups now, and if you want to fuck things up for yourself, that's your business. But I will not have my company involved in trade. Hara attracts a lot of players from the Concord Worlds. They've found a whole planet just as abnormal as they are, and they're willing to pay for sex. They'll pay the indigenes in metal, and anyone with a backcountry exploration permit for the use of it. This is illegal, and the IDCA runs patrols and spot checks and does everything it can to stop it, so you will get offers. People will try to buy your landing permits, your exploration permits, your housing vouchers, anything that will give them an excuse to go into the city. And I won't have it. Anyone caught playing trade will be fired. No appeal. Do trade, and you're out."

  %er face softened again. "This is not to say that I care what you do yourselves. As long as you're not selling NAPD's rights, you can screw what you like and in whatever combinations. One thing Hara has going for it is no native HIVs. I know you're going to meet indigenes who are attractive and intelligent, and I know some of you are going to fall in love, and that's fine. But I want you to remember a couple of things before you let yourself take this too seriously. Hara's a funny world, with funny morals; you may find yourself doing things here that you'd never think of doing on any of the Concord Worlds. And the people are even stranger. So my advice to you is, whatever you do on Hara, don't take it off-world with you."