How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

by N. K. Jemisin

“Producing rum is a simple process with a messy result: this effluent, namely, and the gas it emits, which until lately was regarded as simply the unavoidable price to be paid for your pleasant afternoons. Whole swaths of countryside are afflicted with this smell now as a result. Not only is the stench offensive to men and beasts, we have also found it to be as powerful as any tincture or laudanum; over time it causes anything exposed to suffocate and die. Yet there are scientific papers coming from Europe which laud this gas’s potential as a fuel source. Captured properly, purified, and burned, it can power turbines, cook food, and more.” Jessaline turned and set the flask on Rillieux’s beverage stand, deliberately close to the square bottle of dark rum she had seen there. “We wish you to develop a process by which the usable gas—methane—may be extracted from the miasma you just smelled.”

  Rillieux stared at her for a moment, then at the flask. She could tell that he was intrigued, which meant that half her mission had been achieved already. Her superiors had spent a profligate amount of money requisitioning a set of those flasks from the German chemist who’d recently invented them, precisely with an eye toward impressing men like Rillieux, who looked down upon any science that did not show European roots.

  Yet as Rillieux gazed at the flask, Jessaline was dismayed to see a look of consternation, then irritation, cross his face.

  “I am an engineer, mademoiselle,” he said at last, “not a chemist.”

  “We have already worked out the chemical means by which it might be done,” Jessaline said quickly, her belly clenching in tension. “We would be happy to share that with you—”

  “And then what?” He scowled at her. “Who will put the patent on this process, hmm? And who will profit?” He turned away, beginning to pace, and Jessaline could see that he was working up a good head of steam, to her horror. “You have a comely face, Mademoiselle Dumonde, and it does not escape me that dusky women such as yourself once seduced my forefathers into the most base acts, for which those men atoned by at least raising their half-breed children honorably. If I were a white man hoping to once more profit from the labor of an honest Creole like myself—one already proven gullible—I would send a woman like you to do the tempting. To them, all of us are alike, even though I have the purest of French blood in my veins, and you might as well have come straight from the jungles of Africa!”

  He rounded on her at this, very nearly shouting, and if Jessaline had been one of the pampered, cowed women of this land, she might have stepped back in fear of unpleasantness. As it was, she did take a step—but to the side, closer to her brocade bag, within which was tucked a neat little derringer whose handle she could see from where she stood. Her mission had been to use Rillieux, not kill him, but she had no qualms about giving a man a flesh wound to remind him of the value of chivalry.

  Before matters could come to a head, however, the parlor door opened, making both Jessaline and Norbert Rillieux jump. The young woman who came in was clearly some kin of Rillieux’s; she had the same ocherine skin and loose-curled hair, the latter tucked into a graceful split chignon atop her head. Her eyes were softer, however, though that might have been an effect of the wire-rimmed spectacles perched atop her nose. She wore a simple gray dress, which had the unfortunate effect of emphasizing her natural pallor, and making her look rather plain.

  “Your pardon, Brother,” she said, confirming Jessaline’s guess. “I thought perhaps you and your guest might like refreshment?” In her hands was a silver tray of crisp square beignets dusted in sugar, sliced merliton with what looked like some sort of remoulade sauce, and tiny wedges of pecan penuche.

  At the sight of this girl, Norbert blanched and looked properly abashed. “Ah—er, yes, you’re right, thank you. Ah—” He glanced at Jessaline, his earlier irritation clearly warring with the ingrained desire to be a good host; manners won, and he quickly composed himself. “Forgive me. Will you take refreshment, before you leave?” The last part of that sentence came out harder than the rest. Jessaline got the message.

  “Thank you, yes,” she said, immediately moving to assist the young woman. As she moved her brocade bag, she noticed the young woman’s eyes, which were locked on the bag with a hint of alarm. Jessaline was struck at once with unease—had she noticed the derringer handle? Impossible to tell, since the young woman made no outcry of alarm, but that could have been just caution on her part. That one meeting of eyes had triggered an instant, instinctual assessment on Jessaline’s part; this Rillieux, at least, was nowhere near as myopic or bombastic as her brother.

  Indeed, as the young woman lifted her gaze after setting down the tray, Jessaline thought she saw a hint of challenge lurking behind those little round glasses, and above that perfectly pleasant smile.

  “Brother,” said the young woman, “won’t you introduce me? It’s so rare for you to have lady guests.”

  Norbert Rillieux went from blanching to blushing, and for an instant, Jessaline feared he would progress all the way to bluster. Fortunately he mastered the urge and said, a bit stiffly, “Mademoiselle Jessaline Dumonde, may I present to you my younger sister, Eugenie?”

  Jessaline bobbed a curtsy, which Mademoiselle Rillieux returned. “I’m pleased to meet you,” Jessaline said, meaning it, because I might have enjoyed shooting your brother to an unseemly degree, otherwise.

  It seemed Mademoiselle Rillieux’s thoughts ran in the same direction, because she smiled at Jessaline and said, “I hope my brother hasn’t been treating you to a display of his famous temper, Mademoiselle Dumonde. He deals better with his gadgets and vacuum tubes than people, I’m afraid.”

  Rillieux did bluster at this. “Eugenie, that’s hardly—”

  “Not at all,” Jessaline interjected smoothly. “We were discussing the finer points of chemistry, and your brother, being such a learned man, just made his point rather emphatically.”

  “Chemistry? Why, I adore chemistry!” At this, Mademoiselle Rillieux immediately brightened, speaking faster and breathlessly. “What matter, if I may ask? Please, may I sit in?”

  In that instant, Jessaline was struck by how lovely her eyes were, despite their uncertain coloring of browny-green. She had never preferred the looks of half-white folk, having grown up in a land where, thanks to the Revolution, darkness of skin was a point of pride. But as Mademoiselle Rillieux spoke of chemistry, something in her manner made her peculiar eyes sparkle, and Jessaline was forced to reassess her initial estimate of the girl’s looks. She was handsome, perhaps, rather than plain.

  “Eugenie is the only other member of my family to share my interest in the sciences,” Rillieux said, pride warming his voice. “She could not study in Paris as I did; the schools there do not admit women. Still, I made certain to send her all of my books as I finished with them, and she critiques all of my prototypes. It’s probably for the best that they wouldn’t admit her; I daresay she could give my old masters at the École Centrale a run for their money!”

  Jessaline blinked in surprise at this. Then it came to her; she had lost Rillieux’s trust already. But perhaps …

  Turning to the beverage stand, she picked up the flask of effluent. “I’m afraid I won’t be able to stay, Mademoiselle Rillieux—but before I go, perhaps you could give me your opinion of this?” She offered the flask.

  Norbert Rillieux, guessing her intent, scowled. But Eugenie took the flask before he could muster a protest, unstoppering it deftly and wafting the fumes toward her face rather than sniffing outright. “Faugh,” she said, grimacing. “Definitely hydrogen sulfide, and probably a number of other gases, too, if this is the product of some form of decay.” She stoppered the flask and examined the sludge in its bottom with a critical eye. “Interesting—I thought it was dirt, but this seems to be some more uniform substance. Something made this? What process could generate something so noxious?”

  “Rum distillation,” Jessaline said, stifling the urge to smile when Eugenie looked scandalized.

  “No wonder,” Eugenie said darkly, �
�given what the end product does to men’s souls.” She handed the flask back to Jessaline. “What of it?”

  So Jessaline was obliged to explain again. As she did, a curious thing happened; Eugenie’s eyes grew a bit glazed. She nodded, “mmm-hmming” now and again. “And as I mentioned to your brother,” Jessaline concluded, “we have already worked out the formula—”

  “The formula is child’s play,” Eugenie said, flicking her fingers absently. “And the extraction would be simple enough, if methane weren’t dangerously flammable. Explosive even, under certain conditions … which most attempts at extraction would inevitably create. Obviously any mechanical method would need to concern itself primarily with stabilizing the end products, not merely separating them. Freezing, perhaps, or—” She brightened. “Brother, perhaps we could try a refinement of the vacuum-distillation process you developed for—”

  “Yes, yes,” said Norbert, who had spent the past ten minutes looking from Jessaline to Eugenie and back, in visibly increasing consternation. “I’ll consider it. In the meantime, Mademoiselle Dumonde was actually leaving; I’m afraid we delay her.” He glared at Jessaline as Eugenie made a moue of dismay.

  “Quite right,” said Jessaline, smiling graciously at him; she put away the flask and tucked the bag over her arm, retrieving her hat from the back of the chair. She could afford to be gracious now, even though Norbert Rillieux had proven intractable. Better indeed to leave, and pursue the matter from an entirely different angle.

  And as Norbert escorted her to the parlor door with a hand rather too firm upon her elbow, Jessaline glanced back and smiled at Eugenie, who returned the smile with charming ruefulness and a shy little wave.

  Not just handsome, pretty, Jessaline decided at last. And that meant this new angle would be most enjoyable to pursue.

  There were, however, complications.

  Jessaline, pleased that she had succeeded in making contact with a Rillieux, if not the one she’d come for, treated herself to an evening out about the Vieux Carré. It was not the done thing for a lady of gentle breeding—as she was emulating—to stop in at any of the rollicking music halls she could hear down side streets, though she was intrigued. She could, however, sit in on one of the newfangled vaudevilles at the Playhouse, which she quite enjoyed though it was difficult to see the stage well from the rear balcony. Then, as nightfall finally brought a breath of cool relief from the day’s sweltering humidity, she returned to her room at the inn.

  From time spent on the harder streets of Port-au-Prince, it was Jessaline’s longtime habit to stand to one side of a door while she unlocked it, so that her shadow under the door would not alert anyone inside. This proved wise, as pushing open the door, she found herself facing a startled male figure, which froze in silhouette before the room’s picture window, near her traveling chest. They stared at one another for a breath, and then Jessaline’s wits returned; at once she dropped to one knee and in a single smooth sweep of her hand, brushed up her booted leg to palm a throwing knife.

  In the same instant the figure bolted, darting toward the open balcony window. Jessaline hissed out a curse in her own Kreyòl tongue, running into the room as he lunged through the window with an acrobat’s nimbleness, rolling to his feet and fetching up against the elaborately ironworked railing. Fearing to lose him, Jessaline flung the knife from within the room as she ran, praying it would strike, and heard the thunk as it struck flesh. The figure on her balcony stumbled, crying out—but she could not have hit a vital area, for he grasped the railing and pulled himself over it, dropping the short distance to the ground and out of sight.

  Jessaline scrambled through the window as best she could, hampered by her bustle and skirts. Just as she reached the railing, the figure finished picking himself up from the ground and turned to run. Jessaline got one good look at him in the moonlight, as he turned back to see if she pursued: a pinch-faced youth, clearly pale beneath the bootblack he’d smeared on his face and straw-colored hair to help himself hide in the dark. Then he was gone, running into the night, though he ran oddly and kept one of his hands clapped to his right buttock.

  Furious, Jessaline pounded the railing, though she knew better than to make an outcry. No one in this town would care that some affranchis woman had been robbed, and the constable would as likely arrest her for disturbing the peace.

  Going back into her room, she lit the lanterns and surveyed the damage. At once a chill passed down her spine. The chest held a number of valuables that any sensible thief would’ve taken: fine dresses; a cameo pendant with a face of carved obsidian; the brass gyroscope that an old lover, a dirigible navigator, had given her; a pearl-beaded purse containing twenty dollars. These, however, had all been shoved rudely aside, and to Jessaline’s horror, the chest’s false bottom had been lifted, revealing the compartment underneath. There was nothing here but a bundle of clothing and a larger pouch, containing a far more substantial sum—but that had not been taken either.

  But Jessaline knew what would have been in there if she had not taken them with her to see Rillieux: the scrolls which held the chemical formula for the methane extraction process, and the rudimentary designs for the mechanism to do so—the best her government’s scientists had been able to cobble together. These were even now at the bottom of her brocade bag.

  The bootblack boy had been no thief. Someone in this foul city knew who and what she was, and sought to thwart her mission.

  Carefully Jessaline replaced everything in the trunk, including the false bottom and money. She went downstairs and paid her bill, then hired a porter to carry her trunk to an inn two blocks over, where she rented a room without windows. She slept lightly that night, waking with every creak and thump of the place, and took comfort only from the solid security of the stiletto in her hand.

  The lovely thing about a town full of slaves, vagabonds, beggars, and blackguards was that it was blessedly easy to send a message in secret.

  Having waited a few days so as to let Norbert Rillieux’s anger cool—just in case—Jessaline then hired a child who was one of the innkeeper’s slaves. She purchased fresh fruit at the market and offered the child an apple to memorize her message. When he repeated it back to her word for word, she showed him a bunch of big blue-black grapes, and his eyes went wide. “Get word to Mademoiselle Eugenie without her brother knowing, and these are yours,” she said. “You’ll have to make sure to spit the seeds in the fire, though, or Master will know you’ve had a treat.”

  The boy grinned, and Jessaline saw that the warning had not been necessary. “Just you hold on to those, Miss Jessaline,” he said back, pointing with his chin at the grapes. “I’ll have ’em in a minute or three.” And indeed, within an hour’s time he returned, carrying a small folded square of cloth. “Miss Eugenie agrees to meet,” he said, “and sends this as a surety of her good faith.” He pronounced this last carefully, perfectly emulating the Creole woman’s tone.

  Pleased, Jessaline took the cloth and unfolded it to find a handkerchief of fine imported French linen, embroidered in one corner with a tiny perfect R. She held it to her nose and smelled a perfume like magnolia blossoms; the same scent had been about Eugenie the other day. She could not help smiling at the memory. The boy grinned, too, and ate a handful of the grapes at once, pocketing the seeds with a wink.

  “Gonna plant these near the city dump,” he said. “Maybe I’ll bring you wine one day!” And he ran off.

  So Jessaline found herself on another bright sweltering day at the convent of the Ursulines, where two gentlewomen might walk and exchange thoughts in peace without being seen or interrupted by curious others.

  “I have to admit,” said Eugenie, smiling sidelong at Jessaline as they strolled amid the nuns’ garden, “I was of two minds about whether to meet you.”

  “I suppose your brother must’ve given you an earful after I left.”

  “You might say so,” Eugenie said, in a dry tone that made Jessaline laugh. (One of the old nuns glowered at them
over a bed of herbs. Jessaline covered her mouth and waved apology.) “But that wasn’t what gave me pause. My brother has his ways, Mademoiselle Jessaline, and I do not always agree with him. He’s fond of forming opinions without full information, then proceeding as if they are proven fact.” She shrugged. “I, on the other hand, prefer to seek as much information as I can. I have made inquiries about you, you see.”

  “Oh? And what did you find?”

  “That you do not exist, as far as anyone in this town knows.” She spoke lightly, Jessaline noticed, but there was an edge to her words, too. Unease, perhaps. “You aren’t one of us, that much anyone can see; but you aren’t a freedwoman either, though the people at your old inn and the market seemed to think so.”

  At this, Jessaline blinked in surprise and unease of her own. She had not thought the girl would dig that deeply. “What makes you say that?”

  “For one, that pistol in your bag.”

  Jessaline froze for a pace before remembering to keep walking. “A lady alone in a strange, rough city would be wise to look to her own protection, don’t you think?”

  “True,” said Eugenie, “but I checked at the courthouse, too, and there are no records of a woman meeting your description having bought her way free anytime in the past thirty years, and I doubt you’re far past that age. For another, you hide it well, but your French has an odd sort of lilt; not at all like that of folk hereabouts. And for thirdly—this is a small town at heart, Mademoiselle Dumonde, despite its size. Every time some fortunate soul buys free, as they say, it’s the talk of the town. To put it bluntly, there’s no gossip about you, and there should have been.”

  They had reached a massive old willow tree which partially overhung the garden path. There was no way around it; the tree’s draping branches had made a proper curtain of things, nearly obscuring from sight the area about the trunk.

  The sensible thing to do would have been to turn around and walk back the way they’d come. But as Jessaline turned to meet Eugenie’s eyes, she suffered another of those curious epiphanies. Eugenie was smiling, sweet, but despite this, there was a hard look in her eyes, which reminded Jessaline fleetingly of Norbert. It was clear that she meant to have the truth from Jessaline, or Jessaline’s efforts to employ her would get short shrift.