"Ever'body needs Miz Emily, Tom. There's folks sick all the time, sick er leg broke er shot. They got to have her, an' she's got to have me."
Miz Emily's breath wheezed before she spoke. "Pretty soon I seen I was going to need more, so I done it again. I missed Emma, too, and she'd been a great, great help to me. So I done, and here's Emmy that's been the same. She's a good girl through-and-through, Long Tom Bright. Don't you never forget it. She's me, too, just like my Emma was. Don't never forget that either."
She coughed. "Emmy . . . Emmy, honey, you come here. I'm going to do something I never done before, Emmy. Going to 'cause I got to. Hold out your sweet hand."
Emmy did, and Miz Emily laid a large key in it. A brass key, green with years. "That what you got's the key to the big cab'net I never did let you into." Miz Emily paused. "You open her up. Top shelf. A-ways in back."
She paused to breathe, the close air of her bedchamber whistling in her nostrils.
"Top shelf," Emmy repeated dutifully.
"In back, Emmy honey. It's a li'l blue bottle. The best medicine I got. Back corner."
She gasped for breath. "Tom. Long Tom. You hear all this?"
"Yes'm."
"You fetch it down for her. I don't want her standing on no chair."
Together they returned to the big front room, shutting the door quietly behind them. "That's her medicine-woman cab'net," Emmy whispered. "I never did open it before. She'd have me go 'way when she got somethin' out. I never did s'pose I'd hold this key."
The antique key turned smoothly in the lock; the highest shelf was high indeed, but not so high that Tom had difficulty in seeing the bottles and boxes that stood on it.
"Li'l blue bottle," Emmy told him. "Back in the corner's what she told. Way in back."
He found it and took it out. "No writin' on this one."
Emmy nodded. "Didn't want nobody that come stealin' to know what was in there, I guess. Them medicines . . . A body can't find 'em no more. Not nowhere."
"Out west, mebbe." Tom spoke mostly to himself. "Ain't so many lookin' out there."
Emmy took the bottle, and they returned to Miz Emily.
"Not so many lookin'," she said. "That's wise. You remember what all you said this day, Tom Bright. You, too, Emmy. Don't forget, nor let him forget."
Emmy nodded silently and returned the key.
"My medicine, Emmy? What I sent you for?"
Emmy handed her the blue bottle. A tear coursed down Emmy's cheek as she did, but neither of them commented on it.
No more did Tom, although he took a half step back.
"I'm weary with talking." Miz Emily coughed. "Only I got to talk more. I'll try to get it over quick."
Lean, blue-veined fingers drew the cork of the blue bottle. "I'm not going to tell you to do your duty, Emmy. You will, I know. Do your duty by Tom or whatever man you find. Do your duty by whatever children you get."
Emmy nodded vigorously. Hearing her stifled sobs, Tom laid his hand on her shoulder.
"There's a-many a man, Tom Bright, that never finds him a good woman. You got one here. Terrible young yet, but she'll get over that. There's no man that's as wise as a wise woman."
Tom nodded. "I've heard."
"She's not. Not yet. You got to be the steady one for now."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Build you a cabin when you've got that land. Make it li'l but solid. Won't be nobody but you to protect it, so it's got to be li'l. When there's more, you can make it bigger."
"Like you said, ma'am. That's the best, I know."
Nodding, as it seemed, wholly to herself. Miz Emily raised the blue bottle to her lips.
Emmy shrieked.
Miz Emily might not have heard her; Tom watched her swallow and fall back among her pillows.
Like a rabbit frozen by the serpent's eye, Tom saw the blue bottle roll slowly to the edge of the bed. The thump as it struck the floor freed him to kneel beside Emmy and—hesitantly, awkwardly—lay his rifle aside and put his arms around her.
So they remained as second after second ticked past, until someone began knocking on the door through which Tom had entered the house.
Emmy rose, wiping her eyes with the heels of both hands. "I'll see," she gasped. "Y-you stay right here."
He did, but listened through the half-open door of the bedchamber.
"You heard me cry out, Miz Ledbetter." The voice was Emmy's.
Tom could not hear the reply.
"She's tooken bad. Real bad. Asked me to fetch her medicine for her, which I done."
A woman's voice murmured, though Tom could not make out the words.
"You wait till she's better, Miz Ledbetter. She wouldn't want nobody to see her like she is now. Didn't want me to, even. Only you're gettin' soaked."
Nodding, Tom went to the bed and picked up Miz Emily's right arm. It was not yet stiff, but there was no pulse. He straightened her legs and crossed her arms on her chest.
When Emmy returned, he said, "She's gone. Reckon you knew 'fore me."
"My heart knowed." Emmy sighed. "I jus' kept sayin' no, no, no inside myself. Only my heart knowed soon's the bottle passed."
"Wasn't till that bottle fell that I did, Emmy." Tom looked for the blue bottle then, but he had kicked it under the bed.
"You didn't know her like me."
"I reckon not."
"I know the folks 'round here, too." Emmy sighed again. "They goin' to say I kilt her, Tom. They been prophesyin' it."
"You didn't."
"Don't matter now." Emmy shrugged. "It's what's said that does the work. Kill me for it, if they can."
"Have to kill me first," Tom told her.
"You sure, Tom?"
He nodded solemnly, and she embraced him, her smooth chestnut hair well below his chin.
When they parted at last he said, "We got to bury her, Emmy. Wouldn't be decent not to."
"Think you can wrap her up an' tie her tight, Tom?"
"Now?"
Emmy nodded. "Won't nobody see us carry her out back, 'cause of the rain. You want to eat 'fore we do it?"
He shook his head.
"Nor me, Tom. I'll feel better when she's been put under proper an' prayed over. Stew'll keep. It ain't but simmerin'. Where's the key?"
They found it among the bedclothes.
"Put it in her hand, Tom. She'd like it. Put it in there an' we'll tie her up."
Rolling the shriveled body in its blankets required no more than a minute. When it was done, Emmy carried in rags he tore to strips.
"Her bandages they was," Emmy murmured. "They're bandagin' her this day."
"She died for you," Tom told her.
"I died for me," Emmy corrected him.
He carried the long bundle like an infant in his arms when they left the house. Emmy, leading the way, bore the too-large spade with which she had dug Miz Emily's small garden that spring.
So it was that they passed through the clearing and into the trees, and at last entered another clearing, a place where no one lived. There, in the rain, Tom built a deep house for the dead woman, and laid her in it while Emmy wept, and heaped the sodden clay upon it.
Together they knelt and prayed aloud, their strong, young voices muted by the rain.
****
Back in the house that had been Miz Emily's, they hung their clothes before the fire and ate venison stew with home-baked bread. "Like seein' me like this?" Emmy asked.
He nodded, and she said, "Knew you would."
She smiled when her bowl was empty. "Don't have to wash no dishes. Been a long time since I've et an' didn't have to do up afterward. You got anything to take west 'cept your rifle an' what you got in your li'l pack?"
He shook his head.
"Have a look around. You see anything we might need, you take it." She went to the third cabinet, the one Tom knew he would never forget. Its door swung back, and she said, "I'll take from here. Much as I can carry, anyhow. I don't have much else."
"How'd you do t
hat? Git it open?"
"You think I locked it again?" She smiled. "You git dressed, hear? I'll git dressed, too. I see what you're thinkin', Tom, plain as pikestaff. I'm thinkin' the same, only they'll say I kilt her once they learn, an' we ain't got time."
****
Neither of them was slow, and they got a start of a day and more; but when the little food Tom had carried away—for there had been but little in the larder—was gone, he had to hunt.
Even so, almost a week passed before they heard the distant crack of a rifle and the deathly whisper of the bullet that showered them with twigs and leaves.
Tom ordered Emmy back (a distance that she took as one-and-a-half paces) and waited until he had a clear view of the head and shoulders of their nearest pursuer. His rifle spoke. That man's hands flew to his face, and he fell.
The shrill, cracked voice of an old woman sounded behind him while he was reloading: "You there, Pen Perry? Answer me! Slim Ledbetter? Speak up!"
There was a silence before someone called, "I'm here, Miz Em'ly."
"That man Tom shot—"
The old voice shook, and Tom himself turned back to look at Emmy.
"Through the head, is it?"
"Yes'm."
Another man said, "Ain't cold yet, Miz Em'ly."
"That don't matter. I can't help him. You bury him proper, hear? Get him under and go back where you belong."
There were no more shots. They had walked almost until dark when Tom said, "I been wonderin', Emmy. It ain't—only I hope you'll tell."
"How I talked like her?" Emmy giggled. "I been listenin' to her all my life. Be a shame to me if I couldn't sound the same."
He shook his head. "I seen that right off. 'Bout that blue bottle. You knew what 'twas."
"Not till I handed it over I didn't." The giggle was gone. "When I handed it over, I seen her eyes an' knew."
"Them medicines you got. The shiny li'l knives. I was wonderin' if you know how to use 'em."
"'Course I do!"
Soon after, her hand found his. "She was me, Tom. An' I'm her. You got to remember it."
****
Return to Top
Every Hole is Outlined by John Barnes
Illustrated by Laura Givens
The ship was at least fourteen thousand years old in slowtime and more than two thousand in eintime, but there were holes in its records and the oldest ones were in no-longer-accessible formats, so the ship estimated that it was more like eighteen thousand slowtime, three and a half thousand eintime. It had borne many names. Currently it was 9743, a name that translated easily for Approach Control no matter where the ship went in human space.
In the last two centuries of eintime, the ship's conversation with most ports had been wholly mathematical. Synminds chattered about physics and astronomy to get the ship into a berth, and about prices and quantities and addresses afterward, and the human crew had not learned a word of the local language, despite their efforts, except such guesses as that the first things people said probably were something like "hello," and the last things something like "good-bye," and in between, perhaps, they might pick up equivalents of "may I?" and "thank you."
This had little immediate impact on the ship's operation except that mathematical worlds had no entertainment, or at least none they would sell to the ship's library; the long-run concern was that the mathematical worlds tended to begin waving off all ships and not communicating at all, after a time, though strangely some of those dark worlds would sometimes begin to talk and call for ships again, after an interval of a few centuries slowtime.
But the problem for this evening meal was both shorter-run than procuring entertainment for the ship's library, and much longer run than the gradual darkening of the worlds. They needed a new crew member, and they were having a real supper tonight, with cooked food, wine, and gravity, to discuss how to get one.
9743 needed a crew of four to work it, when it needed working, which was only for system entries and system departures because the law of space required it, and for PPDs (the business and navigation sessions held whenever predicted prices at destination shifted enough to require considering a course change) because the crew were the stockholders and synminds were required to consult them. Normally they would work the ship for half a shift for PPDs, but sometimes traffic density close to a star was high enough to engage gammor restrictions for as much as a light-day out from the port, and then 9743 had to have crew in the opsball for more than one shift.
Therefore, for the very rare case of needing more than one shift, the ship usually carried eight people: Arthur and Phlox, who were married and were the captain and first mate; Debi and Yoko, the two physicist's mates, who shared a large compartment with Squire, who was the physicist; Peter, the astronomer, who was too autistic to sleep with anyone or even to talk much, but a good astronomer and good at sitting beside people and keeping them company; and Mtepic, the mathematician, whose wife Sudden Crow, the mathematician's mate, had died two years ago in eintime.
In slowtime it had been ten and a half years ago, but ship people have a saying that no one lives in slowtime. By "no one," they mean almost everyone.
Arthur and Phlox had thought that Mtepic might be too old for another wife, but he surprised them by saying he thought he might have another twenty years of eintime left and he didn't want to spend it alone.
There was actually only one possible conclusion. They would have to buy someone from a slave world. That was a bad thing, but not hopelessly bad—rather common in fact. Debi, Peter, Sudden Crow, and Arthur had all been slaves, and at least Debi and Arthur felt strongly that buying a slave into a free life, though morally questionable, was usually good for the slave.
The others had been adopted as infants, raised to age four or five on 9743, and then sent through slowtime on a training ship to rejoin the crew when they were adults. All seven of them, whether born slave or free, agreed that it was better to be raised as ship people right from the start.
But they had had no plans for coping when Sudden Crow had died at fifty-one, without warning, from weightless calcium heart atrophy and overweight. 9743 was at least two years eintime from anywhere with freeborn babies available. They would have had to acquire the baby, tend it till it was four or five years old—a long time for a cargo ship to put up with a child, for ship people don't like to be around other people very much, and children must have attention all the time.
It would constrain them for several voyages—first to a world with adoptable freeborns, then to a shorthaul pair (two inhabited star systems within six or seven light years of each other) with a training ship orbiting one of them. That shorthaul pair would need to be four to five years eintime away, between twenty-one and twenty-seven light years distance at the 98.2%c that 9743 usually traveled.
At the shorthaul pair 9743 would then have to hand the child over to the training ship, work a shorthaul shuttle back and forth, then return, rendezvous with the training ship, and pick up the former four year old as a trained teenage crew member. It would add up to decades of running badly off the isoprofit geodesic.
They could have afforded that, but the nearest shorthaul pair was Sol/Alfsentary, which was nearly five years eintime away from the nearest system that sold babies. This could all add up to as much as seventeen years eintime before the teenaged crew member came back aboard to keep Mtepic company.
Mtepic was eighty-one and if he died anytime soon, they would not have a mathematician at all. Phlox and Debi, both of whom had math as a secondary, would have to cover, and the whole ship would have to assume the risk of having rusty, less-capable mathematicians filling in.
Besides, the best isoprofit geodesic available for adopting and training a freeborn baby had miserable numbers—long hauls and low profits throughout. A slave would be better, surely. And it was not so bad for the slave, they all assured each other.
The slave market at Thogmarch, the main inhabited world in the Beytydry system, was only six light years away,
and their cargo would take only a small loss there, one that 9743 Corporation could easily absorb and infinitely cheaper than the costs of dealing with a depressed mathematician. The medical synmind was confident at 94.4% that Mtepic was depressed. Besides, Mtepic said he was, and thought it was because of the loneliness. The synmind concurred with 78.5% confidence that a new mathematician's apprentice would help lift Mtepic out of it, but the crew were all sure that estimate was low—medics hate to make predictions of any kind about enfleshed intelligences.
9743 had some spare mass to feed to the shielder, and they could safely boost up to 98.65%c and reach Thogmarch in a little less than an einyear. If they radioed now, the message would arrive at Thogmarch almost seven weeks before the ship itself did, so that they could have a buyers and sellers ready for cargo switch on arrival, and have dealers lined up to sell them an apprentice mathematician with the sort of personality that could learn to like ship life.
"And 9743 has never bought a slave who wasn't grateful for a chance to stay on after manumission," Arthur said, finishing his long, slow reprise, which had begun with the appetizers and was now finishing in the wine after dessert. "Life here compared to what they have dirtside is a lot better."
Arthur was fond of explaining things that everyone already knew, which was utterly typical. Captains are notorious for spending much time explaining unnecessarily.
Even ship people say so, and for them to say that is saying something, for ship people are all that way. They like to let the talk be slow and affectionate and thorough. They acquire a habit of listening to things they have heard many times before, and already know by heart, just to indulge the person who needs to speak; and, so that the ears of the others stay friendly, most of them learn not to talk very much except at formal occasions.
"Mostly," Peter said, startling them all because he spoke so infrequently, "We allow them some dignity and privacy." He meant the slaves, of course, though he might have meant anyone on the ship. "And by the time the first voyage is up they don't miss home, which anyway gets far enough into the past that it becomes hard to return to." He drank off a glass of the chilled white wine; they had turned on the gammors for an extra hour this week, to enjoy a sit down meal in the conference room, because this was a matter that needed some serious attention. At 98.1%c, with a course change imminent, a quarter g of acceleration for a few hours of sitting and talking would have little effect on anything. "I'm for," Peter said.
Jim Baen's Universe Volume 1 Number 3 October 2006 Page 5
