Stars: The Anthology

by Janis Ian

  The horse-man pulled himself to a halt and said, "I'll show you a raider. Stand up! Let me look at you!"

  I stood up on my tail. The horse-man was amazed. "What in hell are you?"

  "A mermaid." When he didn't seem to understand, I added, "A fish person."

  "I never heard of those."

  "Well, I never heard of horse-people."

  He shook his head and frowned. He had a broad face. He could have looked nice if he'd only stopped frowning and grimacing.

  "Yes, I'm a horse person. Do you know what that makes me in their eyes?"

  "A centaur?" I asked timidly.

  "No such luck," he said. "They said I was a freak horse, and they whipped me when I wouldn't pull their plow any faster. But not even that was the worst of it. Do you want to know what was?"

  "Please tell me," I said, although I really didn't want to know.

  "It was when they tried to mate me with a mare. Can you imagine the stupidity?"

  "It's difficult," I said.

  "I said to them, 'Bring me a horse woman like myself.' They said, 'There are no horse women. No female centaurs.' I said to them, 'How can that be? If you can create a male centaur, why not a female?' They said, 'Money ran out before Phil could get to it.' Can you imagine that?"

  "It was bad," I said. "Very bad." Because that is what I thought he wanted to hear, and I didn't want to get him angry.

  "Well, I got even when I got ahold of the Winchester." He had two arms growing out of his sides, and in one of them he held a rifle, and there was a bandolier of ammunition around his neck. "I don't like to spend too much time down here in the river. It's not my element. I'm going away now—back to the hills and mountains. That's the proper element for a centaur. Goodbye, fish woman."

  ~~~~~

  I don't want to remember the final part of journey down the river, but I have sworn to myself to tell everything.

  ~~~~~

  The river continued to widen, and it became even more shallow. I never imagined before that a river could run out of water, but this one did. Oh, you could see a little movement on the surface, but this was no more than an inch deep. Below that was mud, sand, and rock. Mostly mud where I was. I no longer looked like a girl or a mermaid. I was plastered with mud from head to tail. I must have looked like a statue of a mermaid, or an effigy of one.

  I thought I was near the sea when the mud became mostly sand and rock, and water started flowing again. I guess it had filtered itself through all that mud. But it was still pretty foul, and I tried to breathe as little as possible as soon as I was able to swim again.

  The river now narrowed suddenly, and turned into a channel. The sides were paved with cement, and now the water was rushing. It carried me along at a healthy clip, I can tell you. I was trying to keep my head above the surface so as not to have to taste that noxious water, and I kept dodging tree trunks and bodies.

  Then I heard a voice on the shore bellowing, "Hello there, fish girl!"

  I swam toward the shore. There was the centaur again, standing on the bank. I cautiously stopped thirty feet from him.

  "Hell, girl," he said. "I didn't come here to harm you."

  "Then why did you come?"

  "To warn you."

  "About what?"

  "Well, fish girl, I guess you were born unlucky. You've gotten yourself to the one place on the Carolina coast where you can't get through to the sea."

  "Why are you lying to me?" I shouted at him.

  "No lie! God's honest truth! Maybe you were too young to remember, about fifteen years ago, the big sea monster scare in these parts?"

  "No, I never heard of it."

  So he told me. I can't reproduce his words. I had to ask him to repeat parts of it over and over, and clarify other parts. But what he told me came to this:

  About fifteen years ago, there was a big invasion scare in these parts. Stories of weird underwater monsters coming up on the shore, dragging off men and women to their underwater lairs, storing them like alligators, to eat later, when they were ripe enough. Whether they believed it or not, the State government had to do something about it. So, with some Federal aid, they created a Zone of Interdiction. This part of the coast, for fifty miles in either direction, was barricaded and mined. Barbed wire, self-firing guns on watch towers, keyed to respond to movement. Other stuff.

  But the worst of it was, just downstream from where we were, there was the gigantic blockhouse. At first it had been a fortress, with weapons facing out to sea. But when no invasion came, it was changed into a sewage plant, and made to operate on the polluted river. Everything the river brought to it was chewed up and fumigated and sterilized. And through the plant was the only way to the sea!

  ~~~~~

  "Thanks for nothing," I told him. "Why did you go so far out of your way to tell me this?"

  "Well, fish girl, I thought I'd offer to take you another way. You can ride on my back. I'll find a safe way for you."

  "And why would you do that?" I was beginning to take a dim view of the motives of men. And something in this crazy horse-man frightened me and put me on my guard.

  "I thought we could team up," centaur said. "Two freaks without anywhere to go... I'd be good to you, fish girl. Come out of the water, get on my back."

  It was tempting, even though I found the centaur hateful. He had a crazy mind full of terrible thoughts. But I was in a desperate situation, and I needed help badly.

  But I remembered my brother had told me not to deviate. I didn't know quite what that meant, but I thought it meant just go on by myself.

  "No," I shouted, "I'm going on!"

  "Then you're a damn fool and to hell with you!" And with that the centaur wheeled and galloped away.

  ~~~~~

  And so I continued down the river, now a narrow rushing channel. I stayed near the surface so I could see what was coming up. The water was half solid with waste. Plants and dead animals floated in it.

  And then I saw, ahead of me, a gigantic concrete structure. It looked like a fortress. The river ran under it, and it was moving faster and faster. Where the water disappeared there was a dirty froth, and I could see that the water was running under the structure.

  As I approached, I saw that there was a huge steel cylinder in the middle of the factory, half in the water. It was toothed, and it was pulling flotsam from the river. As I approached, I could hear a mixture of terrible grinding noises and rolling sounds.

  I knew then a ghastly fear. I didn't want to be killed, and certainly not like that. As I came into the final stretch, I could see the rolling cylinder turning, reaching for me. I tried to swim away from it, but I could make hardly any progress against the current. I knew I was finished…

  And then I saw a bright light just above me. I blinked and resolved it into a tiny winged shape that seemed to be made of light. My brother!

  It was too loud to talk in the crashing and thundering and grinding of that giant cylinder. But I could hear a voice in my head, saying, "Hang on there, sis. Help is on the way. Swim to your right..."

  Somehow I managed to do that. The current seemed just as powerful.

  But suddenly I felt a strong hand grab my right wrist. I blinked and made out a shape—a merman—six or seven feet long—powerful-looking.

  Again, I couldn't hear him, but his thought was, "OK, mermaid, I've got you. Now swim with me. We'll get you out of this."

  My body didn't want to respond. I was experiencing the greatest fatigue I had ever known. But somehow I kept my tail working, and I made my way with the merman to the right bank.

  "It's a narrow channel," he thought. "Keep hold of my hand. I'll get you through."

  And we plunged then into the dark tunnel he had told me about, or dreamed at me.

  "Flatten yourself against the wall!"

  I did as he said. We passed through in a rush, going by way of this channel that the sea must have dug, bypassing the cylinder by inches. We continued, I don't know for how long. And then, all of a
sudden, we were in the ocean. I tasted salt water for the first time, coughed for a while, then became used to it.

  After a while he led me up to the surface. I lay there, resting. He said, "I am Hans. The Dreamer sent me. When you have rested, I will lead you to where we live."

  ~~~~~

  All of that was a long time ago. Hans is my mate now, and we have two little mermaid girls. Hans swam here all the way from Denmark, can you imagine? Looking for a mate and a better life, and he says he's found both with me.

  Once I went down to the freezing, crushing depths where the Dreamer lives. The Dreamer is huge and slow-moving. I didn't stay long, but he sent me friendly dreams after that.

  I think the Bible was wrong. We didn’t start with the Word, but with something more powerful. Before the Word there was the Dream. Everything good and bad follows from that.

  We people of the sea and air are not good fabricators. But we get things done when they are necessary to us. No, we don't want to invade and conquer the land. That's a fantasy on the part of the land-based humans, the large, brainy meat-eaters, who think they have something valuable to steal. We keep away from them. We keep to ourselves, in our own element, and year by year our numbers increase. We know that all life may vanish from this planet due to some unavoidable cataclysm. But we have always known that life ends.

  Maybe we can get somewhere else in dreams. The Dreamer is trying to teach us.

  Life ends, but the Dreaming goes on.

  (Back to TOC)

  Society’s Stepchild

  Susan R. Matthews

  When we’re older, things may change—

  but for now this is the way they must remain

  I say I can’t see you any more, baby,

  can’t see you any more

  No, I don’t want to see you any more, baby…

  ~ from Society's Child by Janis Ian

  The public-car dropped them off on the corner of the street. Walking arm-in-arm with Cilance to the little old-fashioned house Nebrunne stood silent for a moment, remembering childhood visits. "You’re going to love Aunt Marnissey," Nebrunne promised Cilance yet again.

  She loved him so much that it made her heart ache just to look at him. Understanding how uncomfortable he must feel to be in this unfamiliar place gave her so much anxiety she almost wished she’d never spoken to her aunt in the first place. There were things he might not know about her aunt, that might have reassured him—"I should have told you the whole story much earlier, Cilance. It’ll have to wait now, we’re here."

  This tree-shaded and white-paved suburb of Orachin was an older area of the city. Great-Aunt Marnissey lived in a neighborhood that had stayed almost purely Telchik, while the population of the city as a whole had blended with many different races of Dolgorukij—even Sarvaw—over the years since Aunt Marnissey had been Nebrunne’s age. The only Sarvaw people who lived here would normally expect to see were maintenance workers or casual laborers, and few enough of those.

  Elsewhere in the city a Sarvaw didn’t need to feel alone—there were plenty of dock-workers, freight handlers, food-service workers needed to run Orachin's industrial machine, and Sarvaw were well accepted where hard physical labor was to be done. Cilance wasn’t a dock-worker, though. Cilance was a medical technician. Nebrunne had met him at work.

  "Nebbie, my skin’s crawling," Cilance whispered, standing on the front step, waiting for an answer to Nebrunne’s signal at the door. "Are you sure she knows who I am?"

  There was no getting around the fact that Cilance was what some souls still called the wrong sort of Dolgorukij, especially the older folk. His Sarvaw heritage was there to see, the space between his eyes, the color of his hair, the complexion of his skin, the size of his hands relative to his body.

  "It’ll be all right," Nebrunne whispered. "Someone’s coming. Don’t worry. Just be yourself. She’ll love you."

  There were things about Great-Aunt Marnissey that made Nebrunne confident that the oldest surviving female member of her family would understand: but in light of family history there was no question but that Aunt Marnissey had to be consulted first, to bless the match.

  ~~~~~

  When the signal came at the door Marnissey was still upstairs in her bedroom plaiting a creamy-yellow blossom into her hair. Its fragrance was sweet in the air and evocative of dreams and romance. Yes, it was a courting-token, but what of that? Those were old practices, nowadays no more than a wink and a nod to things that no longer mattered; and she’d bought it herself. Camm hadn’t sent it to her. She’d saved the receipt in her accounts, in case her mother asked her any questions.

  She’d wanted to be the one to get the door. Now she tied her plait off hastily—leaving the hand’s-span tail undone, because after all that was the way one wore a courting-token—and snatched her jacket up from the back of the chair, rushing down the stairs, riding the hurry she was in over her uncertainties about the wisdom of what she was doing.

  Her mother was at the door. Marnissey could hear her. That was better than if it’d been her father, but bad enough. Well, her mother had to learn, didn’t she? This was a new age. Sarvaw were just as good as Telchik. They were all Dolgorukij under the skin. Prejudice had no place in the modern world.

  Marnissey’s mother was turning from the door with an expression of confusion and distress. "Wait here, you. Marnissey. Marnissey, there’s a—person—here to see you, you’re going out with him tonight?"

  Yes, she was, and her mother could stare white-faced at her courting-braid all she liked. It was just fashion, that was all. "Why not, Mam?" Marnissey said boldly, in the face of her mother’s shock. "It’s just the guest lecture. It’s Camm! You know about Camm, I’ve been talking about him for weeks." The door was half-open, her mother’s hand flat to the old-fashioned wooden edge of it. Intolerable. Marnissey called out to the man she knew was waiting on the step. "Come on in, Camm, I’m just finishing up here."

  But her mother pushed the door closed firmly. "You didn’t tell us enough about Camm, daughter. You should be ashamed. What if your father had answered the door?" Now, this made no sense; how was it her fault if her parents couldn’t behave decently to her friends? "And courting-flowers. We’ll talk about this later. You’d better be sure you’re home in good time. Go on with you."

  Shaking her head sadly over her mother’s insensitivity, Marnissey opened the door firmly enough to back her mother off, and went outside. If that was the way they were going to be about Camm, she wasn’t going to expose Camm to their rudeness by asking him in. Yes, they’d talk about this later; her parents were going to have to learn to accept things as they were, and Camm was her friend, her really much closer than just friend, even if he was Sarvaw.

  "I’m sorry about that," she shrugged. Camm was waiting patiently for her on the step, his hands in his pockets; she could smell his shaving-lotion. He looked her up and down and smiled; nodded—at the courting-flower in her hair, maybe?—and shrugged in his own turn. He was so beautiful. No, his features were not so fine or elegant as those of a Telchik Dolgorukij; but why should they be? She loved his nose for its weight, his cheekbones for their strength, the warmth of his dark eyes for their tenderness, the size of his hands for their gentleness. Yes, he was Sarvaw. Beautiful. "Parents. Let’s go?"

  "Got tickets," Camm said. "Up front, center. I’m a little worried, though. No question that Parmenter’s the champion, but lately I’ve heard some of her remarks about breaking down barriers, I’m not sure whether she’s trying to push too fast." He held out his arm for Marnissey as he spoke, and turned down the little walk-way between the house and the street. "Because, I mean, well, we’re talking about history that runs octaves deep. If we want to really communicate with people we’ve got to be a little sensitive to their insecurities, don’t you think?"

  Marnissey gave her beautiful friend Camm a little shove, loving the feel of the hard muscle of his upper arm under her hand. Sarvaw had been the victims for so long that it was part of their thin
king. There was so much healing to be done, there; but she had the strength for it, she knew she did. "I think we’d better hurry."

  The public-carrier ran on a restricted schedule in the evening. Camm preferred to walk when he could anyway, because of the way people treated him when he rode the public-carrier, especially when he rode the public-carrier with her. The lecture-hall for tonight’s event was within walking distance, yes, but it was still a good hike. "We’ll solve the rest of the Combine’s problems after the lecture, Camm. Come on."

  Arm in arm with Camm, Marnissey went happily down the hill to hear Parmenter speak about the issues surrounding the integration of Sarvaw more fully into the government and economy of the Dolgorukij Combine.

  ~~~~~

  The tea-shops had been full, after the lecture. Marnissey suspected that Camm was just as happy about that; not because he grudged the expense—even Camm had enough money to buy a flask of rhyti and a pastry or two—but because he hadn’t fit in well since he’d arrived at the city’s university to take an advanced degree in commercial law. Some tension was unavoidable, but he’d had little choice—no Sarvaw university offered any equivalent expertise in commercial law.

  He’d never shown her the slightest sign of bitterness. That had been one of the first things she’d noticed about him, one of the first things she’d come to love. He was so courageous and so understanding, five times the man of any of her Telchik peers.

  There was no getting around the fact that people she’d known all her life turned their backs on her when they saw her with Camm, and declined to wave her over to join a table where there were two vacant seats for fear she might actually expect Camm to come and sit down with them as though he were Telchik rather than Sarvaw. She could be strong, for Camm’s sake; she would be an example to them all. It wasn’t self-righteousness on her part: she would have loved him had he not been Sarvaw, so how could she love him less for being exactly who he was?

  Less time spent talking in the tea-shops meant more time to walk home with him, his arm around her shoulders, talking as they went. "Of course there’ll be issues," Camm warned. "Listen, Marnissey, it’s not just your parents, I’m sorry to say. I’ll have explaining to do at home as well."