The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  She tried to meet some of the hidden owner women through the owner men, and met a wall of politeness without a door, without a peephole. What a wonderful idea; we will certainly arrange a visit when the weather is better! I should be overwhelmed with the honor if the Envoy were to entertain Lady Mayoyo and my daughters, but my foolish, provincial girls are so unforgivably timid—I’m sure you understand. Oh, surely, surely, a tour of the inner gardens—but not at present, when the vines are not in flower! We must wait until the vines are in flower!

  There was nobody to talk to, nobody, until she met Batikam the Makil.

  It was an event: a touring troupe from Voe Deo. There wasn’t much going on in Gatay’s little mountain capital by way of entertainment, except for temple dancers—all men, of course—and the soppy fluff that passed as drama on the Werelian network. Solly had doggedly entered some of these wet pastels, hoping for a glimpse into the life “at home”; but she couldn’t stomach the swooning maidens who died of love while the stiffnecked jackass heroes, who all looked like the Major, died nobly in battle, and Tual the Merciful leaned out of the clouds smiling upon their deaths with her eyes slightly crossed and the whites showing, a sign of divinity. She had noticed that Werelian men never entered the network for drama. Now she knew why. But the receptions at the palace and the parties in her honor given by various lords and businessmen were pretty dull stuff: all men, always, because they wouldn’t have the slavegirls in while the Envoy was there; and she couldn’t flirt even with the nicest men, couldn’t remind them that they were men, since that would remind them that she was a woman not behaving like a lady. The fizz had definitely gone flat by the time the makil troupe came.

  She asked San, a reliable etiquette advisor, if it would be all right for her to attend the performance. He hemmed and hawed and finally, with more than usually oily delicacy, gave her to understand that it would be all right so long as she went dressed as a man. “Women, you know, don’t go in public. But sometimes, they want so much to see the entertainers, you know? Lady Amatay used to go with Lord Amatay, dressed in his clothes, every year; everybody knew, nobody said anything—you know. For you, such a great person, it would be all right. Nobody will say anything. Quite, quite all right. Of course, I come with you, the rega comes with you. Like friends, ha? You know, three good men friends going to the entertainment, ha? Ha?”

  Ha, ha, she said obediently. What fun!—But it was worth it, she thought, to see the makils.

  They were never on the network. Young girls at home were not to be exposed to their performances, some of which, San gravely informed her, were unseemly. They played only in theaters. Clowns, dancers, prostitutes, actors, musicians, the makils formed a kind of subclass, the only assets not personally owned. A talented slave boy bought by the Entertainment Corporation from his owner was thenceforth the property of the Corporation, which trained and looked after him the rest of his life.

  They walked to the theater, six or seven streets away. She had forgotten that the makils were all transvestites, indeed she did not remember it when she first saw them, a troop of tall slender dancers sweeping out onto the stage with the precision and power and grace of great birds wheeling, flocking, soaring. She watched unthinking, enthralled by their beauty, until suddenly the music changed and the clowns came in, black as night, black as owners, wearing fantastic trailing skirts, with fantastic jutting jewelled breasts, singing in tiny, swoony voices, “Oh do not rape me please kind Sir, no no, not now!” They’re men, they’re men! Solly realized then, already laughing helplessly. By the time Batikam finished his star turn, a marvelous dramatic monologue, she was a fan. “I want to meet him,” she said to San at a pause between acts. “The actor—Batikam.”

  San got the bland expression that signified he was thinking how it could be arranged and how to make a little money out of it. But the Major was on guard, as ever. Stiff as a stick, he barely turned his head to glance at San. And San’s expression began to alter.

  If her proposal was out of line, San would have signaled or said so. The Stuffed Major was simply controlling her, trying to keep her as tied down as one of “his” women. It was time to challenge him. She turned to him and stared straight at him. “Rega Teyeo,” she said, “I quite comprehend that you’re under orders to keep me in order. But if you give orders to San or to me, they must be spoken aloud, and they must be justified. I will not be managed by your winks or your whims.”

  There was a considerable pause, a truly delicious and rewarding pause. It was difficult to see if the Major’s expression changed; the dim theater light showed no detail in his blueblack face. But there was something frozen about his stillness that told her she’d stopped him. At last he said, “I’m charged to protect you, Envoy.”

  “Am I endangered by the makils? Is there impropriety in an Envoy of the Ekumen congratulating a great artist of Werel?”

  Again the frozen silence. “No,” he said.

  “Then I request you to accompany me when I go backstage after the performance to speak to Batikam.”

  One stiff nod. One stiff, stuffy, defeated nod. Score one! Solly thought, and sat back cheerfully to watch the lightpainters, the erotic dances, and the curiously touching little drama with which the evening ended. It was in archaic poetry, hard to understand, but the actors were so beautiful, their voices so tender that she found tears in her eyes and hardly knew why.

  “A pity the makils always draw on the Arkamye,” said San, with smug, pious disapproval. He was not a very highclass owner, in fact he owned no assets; but he was an owner, and a bigoted Tualite, and liked to remind himself of it. “Scenes from the Incarnations of Tual would be more befitting such an audience.”

  “I’m sure you agree, Rega,” she said, enjoying her own irony.

  “Not at all,” he said, with such toneless politeness that at first she did not realize what he had said; and then forgot the minor puzzle in the bustle of finding their way and gaining admittance to the backstage and to the performers’ dressingroom.

  When they realized who she was, the managers tried to clear all the other performers out, leaving her alone with Batikam (and San and the Major, of course); but she said no, no, no, these wonderful artists must not be disturbed, just let me talk a moment with Batikam. She stood there in the bustle of doffed costumes, half-naked people, smeared makeup, laughter, dissolving tension after the show, any backstage on any world, talking with the clever, intense man in elaborate archaic woman’s costume. They hit it off at once. “Can you come to my house?” she asked. “With pleasure,” Batikam said, and his eyes did not flick to San’s or the Major’s face: the first bondsman she had yet met who did not glance to her Guard or her Guide for permission to say or do anything, anything at all. She glanced at them only to see if they were shocked. San looked collusive, the Major looked rigid. “I’ll come in a little while,” Batikam said, “I must change.”

  They exchanged smiles, and she left. The fizz was back in the air. The huge stars hung clustered like grapes of fire. A moon tumbled over the icy peaks, another jigged like a lopsided lantern above the curlicue pinnacles of the palace. She strode along the dark street, enjoying the freedom of the male robe she wore and its warmth, making San trot to keep up; the Major, longlegged, kept pace with her. A high, trilling voice called, “Envoy!” and she turned with a smile, then swung round, seeing the Major grappling momentarily with someone in the shadow of a portico. He broke free, caught up to her without a word, seized her arm in an iron grip and dragged her into a run. “Let go!” she said, struggling; she did not want to use an aiji break on him, but nothing less was going to get her free.

  He pulled her nearly off balance with a sudden dodge into an alley; she ran with him, letting him keep hold on her arm. They came unexpectedly out into her street and to her gate, through it, into the house, which he unlocked with a word—how did he do that?—“What is all this?” she demanded, breaking away easily, holding her arm where his grip had bruised it.

  She saw,
outraged, the last flicker of an exhilarated smile on his face. Breathing hard, he asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “Hurt? Where you yanked me, yes—what do you think you were doing?”

  “Keeping the fellow away.”

  “What fellow?”

  He said nothing.

  “The one who called out? Maybe he wanted to talk to me!”

  After a moment the Major said, “Possibly. He was in the shadow. I thought he might be armed. I must go out and look for San Ubattat. Please keep the door locked until I come back.” He was out the door as he gave the order; it never occurred to him that she would not obey, and she did obey, raging. Did he think she couldn’t look after herself? that she needed him interfering in her life, kicking slaves around, “protecting” her? Maybe it was time he saw what an aiji fall looked like. He was strong and quick, but had no real training. This kind of amateur interference was intolerable, really intolerable; she must protest to the Embassy again.

  As soon as she let him back in with a nervous, shamefaced San in tow, she said, “You opened my door with a password. I was not informed that you had right of entrance day and night.”

  He was back to his military blankness. “Nomum,” he said.

  “You are not to do so again. You are not to seize hold of me ever again. I must tell you that if you do I will injure you. If something alarms you, tell me what it is and I will respond as I see fit. Now will you please go.”

  “With pleasure, mum,” he said, wheeled, and marched out.

  “Oh, Lady—Oh, Envoy,” San said, “that was a dangerous person, extremely dangerous people, I am so sorry, disgraceful,” and he babbled on. She finally got him to say who he thought it was, a religious dissident, one of the Old Believers who held to the original religion of Gatay and wanted to cast out or kill all foreigners and unbelievers. “A bondsman?” she asked with interest, and he was shocked—“Oh, no, no, a real person, a man—but most misguided, a fanatic, a heathen fanatic! Knifemen, they call themselves. But a man, Lady—Envoy, certainly a man!”

  The thought that she might think that an asset might touch her upset him as much as the attempted assault. If such it had been.

  As she considered it, she began to wonder if, since she had put the Major in his place at the theater, he had found an excuse to put her in her place by “protecting” her. Well, if he tried it again he’d find himself upside down against the opposite wall.

  “Rewe!” she called, and the bondswoman appeared instantly as always. “One of the actors is coming. Would you like to make us a little tea, something like that?” Rewe smiled, said, “Yes,” and vanished. There was a knock at the door. The Major opened it—he must be standing guard outside—and Batikam came in.

  It had not occurred to her that the makil would still be in women’s clothing, but it was how he dressed offstage too, not so magnificently, but with elegance, in the delicate, flowing materials and dark, subtle hues that the swoony ladies in the dramas wore. It gave considerable piquancy, she felt, to her own male costume. Batikam was not as handsome as the Major, who was a stunning-looking man till he opened his mouth; but the makil was magnetic, you had to look at him. He was a dark greyish brown, not the blueblack that the owners were so vain of (though there were plenty of black assets, too, Solly had noticed: of course, when every bondswoman was her owner’s sexual servant). Intense, vivid intelligence and sympathy shone in his face through the makil’s stardust-black makeup, as he looked around with a slow, lovely laugh at her, at San, and at the Major standing at the door. He laughed like a woman, a warm ripple, not the ha, ha of a man. He held out his hands to Solly, and she came forward and took them. “Thank you for coming, Batikam!” she said, and he said, “Thank you for asking me, Alien Envoy!”

  “San,” she said, “I think this is your cue?”

  Only indecision about what he ought to do could have slowed San down till she had to speak. He still hesitated a moment, then smiled with unction and said, “Yes, so sorry, a very good night to you, Envoy! Noon hour at the Office of Mines tomorrow, I believe?” Backing away, he backed right into the Major, who stood like a post in the doorway. She looked at the Major, ready to order him out without ceremony, how dare he shove back in!—and saw the expression on his face. For once his blank mask had cracked, and what was revealed was contempt. Incredulous, sickened contempt. As if he was obliged to watch someone eat a turd.

  “Get out,” she said. She turned her back on both of them. “Come on, Batikam; the only privacy I have is in here,” she said, and led the makil to her bedroom.

  * * *

  He was born where his fathers before him were born, in the old, cold house in the foothills above Noeha. His mother did not cry out as she bore him, since she was a soldier’s wife, and a soldier’s mother, now. He was named for his greatuncle, killed in the first Tribal Mutiny on Yeowe. He grew up in the stark discipline of a poor household of pure veot lineage. His father, when he was on leave, taught him the arts a soldier must know; when his father was on duty the old Asset-Sergeant Habbakam took over the lessons, which began at five in the morning, summer or winter, with worship, shortsword practice, and a cross-country run. His mother and grandmother taught him the other arts a man must know, beginning with good manners before he was two, and after his second birthday going on to history, poetry, and sitting still without talking.

  The child’s day was filled with lessons and fenced with disciplines; but a child’s day is long. There was room and time for freedom, the freedom of the farmyard and the open hills. There was the companionship of pets, foxdogs, running dogs, spotted cats, hunting cats, and the farm cattle and the greathorses; not much companionship otherwise. The family’s assets, other than Habbakam and the two housewomen, were serfs, sharecropping the stony foothill land that they and their owners had lived on forever. Their children were light-skinned, shy, already stooped to their lifelong work, ignorant of anything beyond their fields and hills. Sometimes they swam with Teyeo, summers, in the pools of the river. Sometimes he rounded up a couple of them to play soldiers with him. They stood awkward, uncouth, smirking when he shouted “Charge!” and rushed at the invisible enemy. “Follow me!” he cried shrilly, and they lumbered after him, firing their tree-branch guns at random, pow, pow. Mostly he went alone, riding his good mare Tasi or afoot with a hunting cat pacing by him.

  A few times a year visitors came to the estate, relatives or fellow-officers of Teyeo’s father, bringing their children and their housepeople. Teyeo silently and politely showed the child guests about, introduced them to the animals, took them on rides. Silently and politely, he and his cousin Gemat came to hate each other; at age fourteen they fought for an hour in a glade behind the house, punctiliously following the rules of wrestling, relentlessly hurting each other, getting bloodier and wearier and more desperate, until by unspoken consent they called it off and returned in silence to the house, where everyone was gathering for dinner. Everyone looked at them and said nothing. They washed up hurriedly, hurried to table. Gemat’s nose leaked blood all through the meal; Teyeo’s jaw was so sore he could not open it to eat. No one commented.

  Silently and politely, when they were both fifteen, Teyeo and Rega Toebawe’s daughter fell in love. On the last day of her visit they escaped by unspoken collusion and rode out side by side, rode for hours, too shy to talk. He had given her Tasi to ride. They dismounted to water and rest the horses in a wild valley of the hills. They sat near each other, not very near, by the side of the little quiet-running stream. “I love you,” Teyeo said. “I love you,” Emdu said, bending her shining black face down. They did not touch or look at each other. They rode back over the hills, joyous, silent.

  When he was sixteen Teyeo was sent to the Officers’ Academy in the capital of his province. There he continued to learn and practice the arts of war and the arts of peace. His province was the most rural in Voe Deo; its ways were conservative, and his training was in some ways anachronistic. He was of course taught the technologies of mod
ern warfare, becoming a first-rate pod pilot and an expert in telereconnaissance; but he was not taught the modern ways of thinking that accompanied the technologies in other schools. He learned the poetry and history of Voe Deo, not the history and politics of the Ekumen. The Alien presence on Werel remained remote, theoretical to him. His reality was the old reality of the veot class, whose men held themselves apart from all men not soldiers and in brotherhood with all soldiers, whether owners, assets, or enemies. As for women, Teyeo considered his rights over them absolute, binding him absolutely to responsible chivalry to women of his own class and protective, merciful treatment of bondswomen. He believed all foreigners to be basically hostile, untrustworthy heathens. He honored the Lady Tual, but worshipped the Lord Kamye. He expected no justice, looked for no reward, and valued above all competence, courage, and self-respect. In some respects he was utterly unsuited to the world he was to enter, in others well prepared for it, since he was to spend seven years on Yeowe fighting a war in which there was no justice, no reward, and never even an illusion of ultimate victory.

  Rank among veot officers was hereditary. Teyeo entered active service as a rega, the highest of the three veot ranks. No degree of ineptitude or distinction could lower or raise his status or his pay. Material ambition was no use to a veot. But honor and responsibility were to be earned, and he earned them quickly. He loved service, loved the life, knew he was good at it, intelligently obedient, effective in command; he had come out of the Academy with the highest recommendations, and being posted to the capital, drew notice as a promising officer as well as a likeable young man. At twenty-four he was absolutely fit, his body would do anything he asked of it. His austere upbringing had given him little taste for indulgence but an intense appreciation of pleasure, so the luxuries and entertainments of the capital were a discovery of delight to him. He was reserved and rather shy, but companionable and cheerful. A handsome young man, in with a set of other young men very like him, for a year he knew what it is to live a completely privileged life with complete enjoyment of it. The brilliant intensity of that enjoyment stood against the dark background of the war in Yeowe, the slave revolution on the colony planet, which had gone on all his lifetime, and was now intensifying. Without that background, he could not have been so happy. A whole life of games and diversions had no interest for him; and when his orders came, posted as a pilot and division commander to Yeowe, his happiness was pretty nearly complete.