by Emerson, Ru
"Chris can do that; ask him when there's time."
"If.” He sighed. “I'm sorry. I promised I wouldn't do that, didn't I?"
"I don't remember if you did or not, but I'd as soon you didn't.” Jennifer moved across the room and wrapped her arms around him, leaned her cheek against his shirt to listen to the deep, steady heartbeat. “I have enough doubts of my own without doubling the load, thank you."
"I'd never know it.” His arm went around her shoulders very briefly; he squeezed hard and let her go. “Aletto went downstairs; is that a good idea?” She nodded. “You're certain?"
She smiled and tugged the door open. “There's going to be food shortly; you need to eat. And I do know it's not a very good idea for the two of us to stay here much longer. I'm having a very hard time keeping my hands off you."
Dahven laughed quietly, followed her into the hall and pulled her close with a possessive arm across her shoulders as they walked toward the back stair. “You don't have to do that."
"What—keep my hands off you? If you recall, we're both sharing rooms with several other people. You might not care if someone walks in on you at a—call it personal moment. I care."
"Since you mention it—"
"And,” Jennifer overrode him, “since I don't know anything about Rhadazi personal relationships, I think it might be a good idea for me to find out what the ground rules are here.” She drew a steadying breath; this kind of conversation always had thrown her back home, and the fact that she cared deeply about the outcome this time only seemed to make it harder. “I—what I'm saying, I guess, is that we have to seriously talk."
He slowed, pulled back a little to look down at her. “Talk? Ground rules? Relationships?"
Jennifer stopped at the head of the stairs, glanced over her shoulder to make certain the hallway was still empty, and nodded. “All of that. Where I come from, until fairly recently, it was highly immoral and damned near criminal for women to sleep with men outside of marriage. Now it's not as terrible as that, at least as far as a woman's reputation is concerned, but now it's dangerous because there are diseases, and some can be fatal."
"You don't think I—” Dahven began rather huffily. She laid a hand across his lips.
"I think we need to talk.” She started down the stairs, bringing him perforce with her. “Believe this, please: I am absolutely not inferring anything personal about you. I'm not trying to insult you. Despite the fact that I'm here, this place and time, I'm a twentieth-century Los Angeles woman, and I'm being careful the way I've had to learn to be. I don't want to wind up pregnant or with something there's no cure for—the former is easy enough to prevent if you know how but the latter is a very real possibility. The chance of dying of casual sex has made most of us pretty choosey, and damned cautious. Beyond that, I sure as hell don't want to wind up burned at the stake or stuffed in a gunny sack and dumped in the river to drown because I fooled around without the piece of paper."
He was silent a moment, finally pulled her to a halt once again at the foot of the steps. “You do use the strangest words.” He touched the end of her nose. “And you've gone pink."
"Well, I'm sorry, it embarrasses me. That's partly cultural and partly my upbringing."
"Oh.” He leaned against the wall, paused to consider this. Jennifer became aware she was holding her breath and tried to let it out quietly. Her face felt red and she wondered if anything could possibly be worth the bother of bringing all this up. One of the reasons I never bothered dating much after I got into college, after all. Bet Birdy never had that kind of hang-up, she's so relaxed about things like this. Dahven shifted his shoulders and finally shrugged. “The Holmaddi might drown their women for—fooling around? What a phrase for it!” He considered this. “Well, they might do such a thing if they had the river for it. Rhadazi women by and large do as they please. Marriage—is that what you mean by piece of paper?” She nodded, detached herself from his arm and leaned back against the wall, arms folded. “Marriage is a contract used by the nobility, by and large, to seal transfer of property or hereditary rights. There are short-term contracts for those who wish them; there are also religious contracts but I know less about them, having never bothered with any of the numerous religions available in Sikkre's markets. The merchant class is a fairly recent thing, actually; the current Shesseran's grandfather began encouraging open markets and it's improved ever since."
"I know something about it; I spent a lot of time recently among the middle class in Bez."
"Well, they've also adapted to the idea of long-term marriage contracts—as a control for inheritance of property and wealth."
"It's the rule rather than the exception where I'm from—at least,” Jennifer qualified honestly, “the idea of life contracts; they seldom last so long in reality. Fooling around isn't considered proper."
"I think you must be trying to clarify things,” Dahven complained mildly. “I'm not certain you're making sense, though. Never mind, since we're both here."
"I agree. Go on."
"Since we are talking about me, it must be obvious to you that marriage is not requisite for a person of my class before casual—um, encounters. Fooling around. If you remember Father's reaction, you'll also have gathered that some people think it should be.” He studied his fingers. “Most Sikkreni women prefer not to become pregnant from fooling around. I wear a silver market preventive charm, an arm band—I wore one,” he corrected himself expressionlessly, but the light went out of his eyes. “Until my recent sea voyage, when it was taken from me. I can obtain another. I assure you,” he added even more expressionlessly, “that I have never given any of my women anything unwanted."
Jennifer took hold of his hands and gave them a shake, and when he looked at her, brought them to her lips. “You've covered the ground rules and answered my questions; that's all I wanted. Thanks.” He managed a smile but still looked slightly affronted. She sighed very faintly. “Dahven, honestly, I wasn't trying to insult you. If I were a Rhadazi, I'd probably have known all that; I wouldn't have had to ask.” He nodded. “Well, I'm not, and I'm a firm believer in safe sex, so I asked. So shoot me."
"Safe? That sounds very dull."
She laughed, wrapped an arm around his waist and drew him outside. “Oh, yeah? Dull, huh? We'll just see about that."
There were horses and several wagons in the courtyard, just beyond the inn's herb garden, but no people in sight. They could hear the buzz of conversation from the open windows of the common room.
It was nearly dark in the garden; a blue light hanging near the dutch door did little to improve visibility along the footpath. Dahven swept Jennifer's hair aside as they reached the stone step and kissed the back of her neck. She shivered and whispered, “I'll get you for that.” He laughed; she eluded his hand and stepped into the crowded kitchen.
Enardi had been propped up a little and watched the room through half-open eyes. Robyn and Aletto were a huddle near the unlit, enormous stone fireplace. Edrith, Lialla and one of the innkeep's several sons were sitting at one end of the long table, talking. Caro herself was nowhere in sight. Jennifer closed her eyes briefly; Chris was showing Niss how to moonwalk.
He stopped short as soon as he saw Jennifer. “Hey, you know what? Besides making dynamite sandwiches, the lovely lady has pulled down a ton of answers for me.” He turned back to Niss. “You try that for a little bit, all right? And then I'll help you if you need it. All right?"
"All right!” the girl replied with enthusiasm. “You know?"
Dahven chuckled, let himself down onto the end of the bench and pulled Jennifer onto his lap. Chris raised his eyebrows; she swatted at his near hand. “Cut it out, Chris, I don't need a den mother and we have all four feet on the floor."
"I don't think.” Chris settled on the corner of the table. Caro hurried in from the outer room, stopped short to stare at her youngest, shook her head and cast up her eyes, then went on through the dutch door to the outside kitchen. She came back moments lat
er, her eldest son following with a large kettle. An imperious gesture brought Niss into the common room behind her. Chris shook his head. “I feel kinda bad, watching them running around like that, you know? And just sitting in here. But she said they do it all the time without outside help, and like mom reminded me, it would be really major stupid to hang out in public and get spotted by the wrong people."
"Caro's right and so's Birdy, you stay put,” Jennifer ordered. “Tell me some of this stuff you've worked out."
"Well—she's English, you know?"
"I heard her talk; of course she's English."
"I mean, our English, like, the same world as us and not another alternate. Because as far as I can tell, everything seems to track right up until she popped through—1972, she said. Midsummer. Funny thing: As far as she and I could figure it, there wasn't any of this weird time-shift thing like that goofy wizard, whatsisname, was talking about. I'd really like to track that down, but—well, anyway.
"She and mom get on just great, you know? All this witch stuff—sorry, mom threatens me every time I call it that ‘cause she says witch is the natural earth and herbal lore, not fortune telling and other supernatural garbage."
"I know that; why are you telling me?” Jennifer asked. Chris shook his head.
"I'm just reminding myself so mom doesn't have to jump down my throat when I screw it up, you know? Anyway, Caro had I Ching coins, too, and she says she still does tea leaves, can you believe it? She said a bunch of them were playing around with Druid stuff, something about ley lines, Midsummer, some kind of thing out of an old book, and blam! the sky fell on her and she woke up here—well, in England but this world's England. Weird place, she says. Her trip was because of what they were fiddling with, apparently. Like, it was all that, she didn't get snagged on by an old bat like Merrida or whoever grabbed that wizard—Snake, right? I don't know if that would make it better or worse, knowing you'd done it to yourself. Well, anyway, she says there's magic in the here England, but it's not like the Rhadazi kinds: There's less of it, and it's more like what you'd expect of a parallel to our world.” He stared into space, marshalling his thoughts, shifted his weight, leaned forward momentarily to wink at Enardi, who gave him a rather wan smile in return. “Okay. I really was right about place, anyway. Remember I said I thought we had to have come down roughly where we left? Well, we did."
Jennifer stared at him in disbelief, finally shook her head. “No way, Chris. If this is Palmdale, what's the big saltwater pond out there?"
"Everything else tracks, Jen. Listen, okay? Apparently there are some other splits ‘way early on—climate and geology and like that. The river that comes down into Podhru is the same as the Colorado, except something shifted, earthquakes or just a different something. It empties in about where the Colorado would—what, it's around Baja, right?"
"Can't be."
"Sure it can. Because if you go on to the south side of the sea, the western end of it, there's the Baja Peninsula, and on down Mexico and Central America, and around the Cape down there you come out in the Atlantic and go on up the other coast and then on over to Europe."
"Doesn't make sense, Chris. There should be—what about Chumash Indians, Diggers—for that matter, what about the Hopi or the Navajo?"
"I don't know,” he replied in mild irritation. “For that kind of thing I think I need to find a Rhadazi local who's gone on history, or maybe some books. God,” he added gloomily. “You were going to work out reading lessons for me; bet you haven't had time to think about that either, have you?"
"We'll get to it, kid, promise."
"Yeah, terrific, if I live so long. Anyway, that stuff I don't know, and neither does she. The land masses and all that—Caro knows more about them because she decided after a couple of weeks or so that the new England wasn't exactly New and Improved—kind of like I'd feel, I guess, if we'd come out in something like Los Angeles, except outdated and not really. She said she wound up marrying some British ship's captain and eventually got here—goofy relationship if you ask me, he shows up every few years or something and she just goes on her way in between. Oh, well; his ship is a steamship, by the way."
"Steam. Really. So do you have dates?"
"More or less.” He scratched his head. “Not like, it's June fourteenth or something, or an exact year. It's strange, not really what I'd figured at all. I mean, it isn't just one split or two, it's all kinds of them."
Jennifer waited. “Well? Like?"
"Mmmm? Oh. I was just thinking how good that food she took through smells; I wonder when we get to eat. Um, for one thing, Isabella and her old man didn't win the war in Spain in 1492—the Moors did. Remember back a, long time ago, that oasis, when Aletto and I were comparing names, Cortez? There was a Cortez but it can't have been the same guy, do you think? Anyway, these guys here, the Rhadazi, their umpty-great-granddaddies were some of the refugees after the Moors overran Spain: I guess they're some Spanish, Portuguese, other types from that end of Europe. And until, like, twenty or thirty years ago, they were pretty damn well sealed off from the rest of the world, by their own choice—like the Chinese."
Jennifer considered this in silence for some moments. “It helps make sense out of one thing. If this is a nation of uprooted Europeans and they've been kept from outside contact. Everyone I've seen thus far has been white."
"Hey! You know?” Chris slapped one hand on the table. “For a guy from L.A., it's odd I didn't notice that myself. Some darker than others, but basically Caucasians, yeah. All the same—yeah, I guess if there had been Indians around here, after a few hundred years, would they blend in?"
"How would I know? I'm a lawyer, not a geneticist. I do know there are fairly dark types in southern Europe, and there might have been a few Jews; weren't there still Jews in Spain?"
"Ask me,” Chris said sourly. “But that's our Spain, not this one, you know? I don't know if there were any blacks in that end of the world in our world, either."
They both looked at Dahven, who'd been following the conversation with visible difficulty. “I truly don't understand what you're talking about,” he said. “Black men, though: I've seen one or two. On—on ship."
"Oh.” Chris shifted his feet and looked suddenly very uncomfortable. “Um, anyway. Pretty weird, all of it, don't you think?"
Caro Ellaway came back through the kitchen a short time later, the empty kettle in one hand. She paused on the threshold, looked around the room and nodded in satisfaction. “Colin's taking care of the commerce for me tonight, not that there's much. I could use a pair of strong arms to carry this pot back in here, once I've filled it."
Chris, who'd been sitting and talking with Enardi, leaped to his feet. “Volunteer right here, ma'am."
"Ma'am,” she scoffed, and tugged at the long hair on his neck. “You make me sound old; my mother was ma'am!” She picked up the kettle and stuffed the handle into his hands. “What, pray tell, was that strange thing you were teaching my daughter?"
"Dance,” Chris replied promptly.
"Mercy. If that's what's come of dance, then what's music like these days?"
Robyn sat up and shook her head. “You don't want to know.” Chris overrode her.
"Hey, funny you should ask. Once I get a little food in me, maybe we can show you."
The evening passed quickly and pleasantly. Enardi stayed awake long enough to eat a little and to serve as Chris's “backbeat,” using his palms against the wall. A noticeably self-conscious Edrith made what Robyn called “disgusting spitting noises.” Chris himself was fairly self-conscious about rapping for such a large and “adult” audience (as he called it; it was Jennifer's private opinion that Robyn was more of an inhibiting factor).
The Rhadazi—Aletto, Lialla, Dahven, Caro Ellaway's son and daughter—looked rather bewildered. “Emcee?” Aletto asked finally. “Deejay?"
"Never mind,” Robyn told him firmly. “There are no words."
Chris waved a hand. “The M.C. tells the story, the D.J.
makes the music behind him, usually out of other music, but since we're a little low-tech here, we're doing it this way.” Aletto continued to look at him in mild confusion, and Chris added: “Your music all has to be sung or played right now, you don't have any way to save it on a machine to play any time you want, right? That's what Eddie would do, if you had machines like that, he'd be laying down music behind my line of rap. Make better sense now?"
"A little,” Aletto admitted. “It's very different from Jen's music."
"Sure is,” Chris said. “She goes for that opera stuff."
"This—rap? You use it to tell a story?"
Chris shrugged. “This time I did; it felt like the easiest way to start. You know, figure out what you want to say, the rhymes come down for it pretty easy.” Robyn opened her mouth, closed it again and shook her head. “I swear, mom, it's like some of the early Dylan you used to listen to, it tells a story, always rhymes at the ends of the lines except there's no rules about how long the lines are. And a lot of rap is protest music, except instead of antiwar stuff, it's antipoverty and antidrug and stuff. I don't see how you can object to that."
"Well, I'm impressed,” Jennifer said. “But opera's narrative, too, you know."
"Opera's hairball,” Chris said flatly. “Far's the rap goes—well, it's a start. And I still think it's pretty hokey, but I'll get there."
"I don't doubt it."
"Yeah. Not in front of a bunch of grown-ups, though: I felt like the kid who gets hauled out to play the piano at family parties."
"Yeah?” Robyn demanded. “How would you know about things like that, kid? I never did that to you, and anyway, there's only me and Jen who could."
"Hey. I watch TV, I got friends who got stuck doing that. Major uncool, you know?” Robyn threw up her hands and sighed.
"It sounds quite complicated,” Caro said. “You must have been practicing for quite some time."
"Not really. After all, it's a fairly recent thing—well, it was,” Chris corrected himself gloomily. “Probably by now it's totally out and whatever's new—well, I'll never know, so who cares? But doing rap is like the Bojutsu, the martial arts stuff. That takes years to get really great at, but if you got nothing else to occupy your time—like TV and books and things—and if you need it, you get so you can use it.” He went over to settle next to Enardi and Edrith; the three went into a huddle. “We need some more lines, guys; you two gotta help."
