How Long 'Til Black Future Month?

by N. K. Jemisin

  Beautiful, Jessaline thought, and marveled at herself. Her tastes had never leaned toward women like Eugenie, pampered and sheltered and shy. She generally preferred women like herself, who could be counted upon to know what they wanted and take decisive steps to get it. Yet in that moment, gazing upon this awkward, brilliant creature, Jessaline wanted nothing more than to be holding flowers instead of a fake package, and to have come for courting rather than her own selfish motives.

  Perhaps Eugenie felt the weight of her longing, for after a moment she wrinkled her nose and sat up. “Oh,” she said blearily, seeing Jessaline. “What is it, a delivery? Put it on the table there, please; I’ll fetch you a tip.” She got up, and Jessaline was amused to see that her bustle was askew.

  “Eugenie,” she said, and Eugenie whirled back as she recognized Jessaline’s voice. Her eyes flew wide.

  “What in heaven’s name—”

  “I haven’t much time,” she said, hastening forward. She took Eugenie’s hands in quick greeting, and resisted the urge to kiss her as well. “Have you been able to refine the plans?”

  “Oh—yes, yes, I think.” Eugenie pushed her glasses straight and gestured toward the papers that had served as her pillow. “This design should work, at least in theory. I was right; the vacuum-distillation mechanism was the key! Of course, I haven’t finished the prototype, because the damned glassmaker is trying to charge pirates’ rates—”

  Jessaline squeezed her hands, exhilarated. “Marvelous! Don’t worry; we shall test the design thoroughly before we put it into use. But now I must have the plans. Men are searching for me; I don’t dare stay in town much longer.”

  Eugenie nodded absently, then blinked again as her head cleared. She narrowed her eyes at Jessaline in sudden suspicion. “Wait,” she said. “You’re leaving town?”

  “Yes, of course,” Jessaline said, surprised. “This is what I came for, after all. I can’t just put something so important on the next dirigible packet—”

  The look of hurt that came over Eugenie’s face sent a needle straight into Jessaline’s heart. She realized, belatedly and with guilty dismay, what Eugenie must have been imagining all this time.

  “But … I thought …” Eugenie looked away suddenly, and bit her lower lip. “You might stay.”

  “Eugenie,” Jessaline began uncomfortably. “I … could never have remained here. This place … the way you live here …”

  “Yes, I know.” At once Eugenie’s voice hardened; she glared at Jessaline. “In your perfect, wonderful land, everyone is free to live as they please. It is the rest of us, then, the poor wretched folk you scorn and pity, who have no choice but to endure it. Perhaps we should never bother to love at all, then! That way, at least, when we are used and cast aside, it will at least be for material gain!”

  And with that, she slapped Jessaline smartly, and walked out. Stunned, Jessaline put a hand to her cheek and stared after her.

  “Trouble in paradise?” said a voice behind her, in a syrupy drawl.

  Jessaline whirled to find herself facing a six-shooter. And holding it, his face free of bootblack this time, was the young man who had invaded her quarters nearly two weeks before.

  “I heard you Haitians were unnatural,” he said, coming into the light, “but this? Not at all what I was expecting.”

  Not me, Jessaline realized, too late. They were watching Rillieux, not me! “Natural is in the eye of the beholder, as is beauty,” she snapped.

  “True. Speaking of beauty, though, you looked a damn sight finer before. What’s all this?” He sidled forward, poking with the gun at the padding ’round Jessaline’s middle. “So that’s it! But—” He raised the gun, to Jessaline’s fury, and poked at her breasts none-too-gently. “Ah, no padding here. Yes, I do remember you rightly.” He scowled. “I still can’t sit down thanks to you, woman. Maybe I ought to repay you that.”

  Jessaline raised her hands slowly, pulling off her lumpy headwrap so he could see her more clearly. “That’s ungentlemanly of you, I would say.”

  “Gentlemen need gentlewomen,” he said. “Your kind are hardly that, being good for only one thing. Well—that and lynching, I suppose. But we’ll save both for later, won’t we? After you’ve met my superior and told us everything that’s in your nappy little head. He’s partial to your variety. I, however, feel that if I must lower myself to baseness, better to do it with one bearing the fair blood of the French.”

  It took Jessaline a moment to understand through all his airs. But then she did, and shivered in purest rage. “You will not lay a finger upon Eugenie. I’ll snap them all off fir—”

  But before she could finish her threat, there was a scream and commotion from the house. The scream, amid all the chaos of shouting and running servants, she recognized at once: Eugenie.

  The noise startled the bootblack man as well. Fortunately he did not pull the trigger; he did start badly, however, half-turning to point the gun in the direction of Eugenie’s scream. Which was all the opening that Jessaline needed, as she drew her derringer from the wadded cloth of the headwrap and shot the man point-blank. The bootblack man cried out, clutching his chest and falling to the ground.

  The derringer was spent; it carried only a single bullet. Snatching up the bootblack man’s six-gun instead, Jessaline turned to sprint toward the Rillieux house—then froze for an instant in terrible indecision. Behind her, on Eugenie’s table, sat the plans for which she had spent the past three months of her life striving and stealing and sneaking. The methane extractor could be the salvation of her nation, the start of its brightest future.

  And in the house—

  Eugenie, she thought.

  And started running.

  In the parlor, Norbert Rillieux was frozen, paler than usual and trembling. Before him, holding Eugenie about the throat and with a gun to her head, was a white man whose face was so floridly familiar that Jessaline gasped. “Raymond Forstall?”

  He started badly as Jessaline rounded the door, and she froze as well, fearing to cause Eugenie’s death. Very slowly she set the six-gun on a nearby sideboard, pushed it so that it slid out of easy reach, and raised her hands to show that she was no threat. At this, Forstall relaxed.

  “So we meet again, my beauteous Negress,” he said, though there was anger in his smile. “I had hoped to make your acquaintance under more favorable circumstances. Alas.”

  “You are with the White Camellia?” He had seemed so gormless that day on Royal Street; not at all the sort Jessaline would associate with a murderous secret society.

  “I am indeed,” he said. “And you would have met the rest of us if my assistant had not clearly failed in his goal of taking you captive. Nevertheless, I, too, have a goal, and I ask again, sir, where are the plans?”

  Jessaline realized belatedly that this was directed at Norbert Rillieux. And he, too frightened to bluster, just shook his head. “I told you, I have built no such device! Ask this woman—she wanted it, and I refused her!”

  The methane extractor, Jessaline realized. Of course—they had known, probably via their own spies, that she was after it. Forstall had been tailing her the day he’d bumped into her, probably all the way to Rillieux’s house; she cursed herself for a fool for not realizing. But the White Camellias were mostly philosophers and bankers and lawyers, not the trained, proficient spies she’d been expecting to deal with. It had never occurred to her that an enemy would be so clumsy as to jostle and converse with his target in the course of surveillance.

  “It’s true,” Jessaline said, stalling desperately in hopes that some solution would present itself to her. “This man refused my request to build the device.”

  “Then why did you come back here?” Forstall asked, tightening his grip on Eugenie so that she gasped. “We had men watching the house servants, too. We intercepted orders for metal parts and rubber tubing, and I paid the glasssmith to delay an order for custom vacuum pipes—”

  “You did that?” To Jessaline’s horror,
Eugenie stiffened in Forstall’s grasp, trying to turn and glare at him in her affront. “I argued with that old fool for an hour!”

  “Eugenie, be still!” cried Norbert, which raised him high in Jessaline’s estimation; she had wanted to shout the same thing.

  “I will not—” Eugenie began to struggle, plainly furious. As Forstall cursed and tried to restrain her, Jessaline heard Eugenie’s protests continue. “—interference with my work—very idea—”

  Please, Holy Mother, Jessaline thought, taking a very careful step closer to the gun on the sideboard, don’t let him shoot her to shut her up.

  When Forstall finally thrust Eugenie aside—she fell against the bottle-strewn side table, nearly toppling it—and indeed raised the gun to shoot her, Jessaline blurted out, “Wait!”

  Both Forstall and Eugenie froze, now separated and facing each other, though Forstall’s gun was still pointed dead at Eugenie’s chest. “The plans are complete,” Jessaline said to him. “They are in the workshop out back.” With a hint of pride, she looked at Eugenie and added, “Eugenie has made it work.”

  “What?” said Rillieux, looking thunderstruck.

  “What?” Forstall stared at her, then Eugenie, and then anger filled his expression. “Clever indeed! And while I go out back to check if your story is true, you will make your escape with the plans already tucked into your clothes.”

  “I am not lying in this instance,” she said, “but if you like, we can all proceed to the garden and see. Or since I’m the one you seem to fear most—” She waggled her empty hands in mockery, hoping this would make him too angry to notice how much closer she was to the gun on the sideboard. His face reddened further with fury. “You could leave Eugenie and her brother here, and take me alone.”

  Eugenie caught her breath. “Jessaline, are you mad?”

  “Yes,” Jessaline said, and smiled, letting her heart live in her face for a moment. Eugenie’s mouth fell open, then softened into a small smile. Her glasses were still askew, Jessaline saw with a rush of fondness.

  Forstall rolled his eyes, but smiled. “A capital suggestion, I think. Then I can shoot you—”

  He got no further, for in the next instant Eugenie suddenly struck him in the head with a rum bottle.

  The bottle shattered on impact. Forstall cried out, half-stunned by the blow and the sting of rum in his eyes, but he managed to keep his grip on the gun, and keep it trained more or less on Eugenie. Jessaline thought she saw the muscles in his forearm flex to pull the trigger—

  —and then the six-gun was in her hand, its wooden grip warm and almost comforting as she blew a hole in Raymond Forstall’s rum-drenched head. Forstall uttered a horrid gurgling sound and fell to the floor.

  Before his body stopped twitching, Jessaline caught Eugenie’s hand. “Hurry!” She dragged the other woman out of the parlor. Norbert, again to his credit, started out of shock and trotted after them, for once silent as they moved through the house’s corridors toward the garden. The house was nearly deserted now, the servants having fled or found some place to hide that was safe from gunshots and madmen.

  “You must tell me which of the papers on your desk I can take,” Jessaline said as they trotted along, “and then you must make a decision.”

  “Wh-what decision?” Eugenie still sounded shaken.

  “Whether you will stay here, or whether you will come with me to Haiti.”

  “Haiti?” Norbert cried.

  “Haiti?” Eugenie asked, in wonder.

  “Haiti,” said Jessaline, and as they passed through the rear door and went into the garden, she stopped and turned to Eugenie. “With me.”

  Eugenie stared at her in such dawning amazement that Jessaline could no longer help herself. She caught Eugenie about the waist, pulled her near, and kissed her most soundly and improperly, right there in front of her brother. It was the sweetest, wildest kiss she had ever known in her life.

  When she pulled back, Norbert was standing at the edge of her vision with his mouth open, and Eugenie looked a bit faint. “Well,” Eugenie said, and fell silent, the whole affair having been a bit much for her.

  Jessaline grinned and let her go, then hurried forward to enter the workshop—and froze, horror shattering her good mood.

  The bootblack man was gone. Where his body had been lay Jessaline’s derringer and copious blood, trailing away … to Eugenie’s worktable, where the plans had been, and were no longer. The trail then led away, out the workshop’s rear door.

  “No,” she whispered, her fists clenching at her sides. “No, by God!” Everything she had worked for, gone. She had failed, both her mission and her people.

  “Very well,” Eugenie said after a moment. “Then I shall simply have to come with you.”

  The words penetrated Jessaline’s despair slowly. “What?”

  She touched Jessaline’s hand. “I will come with you. To Haiti. And I will build an even more efficient methane extractor for you there.”

  Jessaline turned to stare at her and found that she could not, for her eyes had filled with tears.

  “Wait—” Norbert caught his breath as understanding dawned. “Go to Haiti? Are you mad? I forbid—”

  “You had better come, too, Brother,” Eugenie said, turning to him, and Jessaline was struck breathless once more by the cool determination in her eyes. “The police will take their time about it, but they’ll come eventually, and a white man lies dead in our house. It doesn’t really matter whether you shot him or not; you know full well what they’ll decide.”

  And Norbert stiffened, for he did indeed know—probably better than Eugenie, Jessaline suspected—what his fate would be.

  Eugenie turned to Jessaline. “He can come, can’t he?” By which Jessaline knew it was a condition, not an option.

  “Of course he can,” she said at once. “I wouldn’t leave a dog to these people’s so-called justice. But it will not be the life you’re used to, either of you. Are you certain?”

  Eugenie smiled, and before Jessaline realized what was imminent, she had been pulled rather roughly into another kiss. Eugenie had been eating penuche again, she realized dimly, and then for a long perfect moment she thought of nothing but pecans and sweetness.

  When it was done, Eugenie searched Jessaline’s face and then smiled in satisfaction. “Perhaps we should go, Jessaline,” she said gently.

  “Ah. Yes. We should, yes.” Jessaline fought to compose herself; she glanced at Norbert and took a deep breath. “Fetch us a hansom cab while you still can, Monsieur Rillieux, and we’ll go down to the docks and take the next dirigible southbound.”

  The daze cleared from Norbert’s eyes as well; he nodded mutely and trotted off.

  In the silence that fell, Eugenie turned to Jessaline.

  “Marriage,” she said, “and a house together. I believe you mentioned that?”

  “Er,” said Jessaline, blinking. “Well, yes, I suppose, but I rather thought that first we would—”

  “Good,” Eugenie replied, “because I’m not fond of you keeping up this dangerous line of work. My inventions should certainly earn enough for the both of us, don’t you think?”

  “Um,” said Jessaline.

  “Yes. So there’s no reason for you to work when I can keep you in comfort for the rest of our days.” Taking Jessaline’s hands, she stepped closer, her eyes going soft again. “And I am so very much looking forward to those days, Jessaline.”

  “Yes,” said Jessaline, who had been wondering just which of her many sins had earned her this mad fortune. But as Eugenie’s warm breast pressed against hers, and the thick perfume of the magnolia trees wafted around them, and some clockwork contraption within the workshop ticked in time with her heart … Jessaline stopped worrying. And she wondered why she had ever bothered with plans and papers and gadgetry, because it was clear she had just stolen the greatest prize of all.

  Cloud Dragon Skies

  Long ago, our ancestors looked at the sky and saw gods. Their ancestor
s saw only stars. In the end, only the earth knew the truth.

  They came at the end of harvest season. I was in the field, picking hard little pods of okra with dirty fingers, when I heard my father’s voice on the wind. I got to my feet and saw, above the bobbing leaves, strangers standing in front of our house. Four of them, all wearing baggy white garments which enclosed them from head to toe. I was not alarmed. Because the sky-people were weak against our diseases—the Earth is so much wilder than their land—they always wrapped themselves thus. Even so, we kept our guard up. Who knew what new diseases they might have developed, up in the sky and surrounded by strangeness? Infected blankets. Germs as spears and arrows. Accept no gifts from them, the griots had warned, but of course, people are greedy.

  I walked through the fields to stand at my father’s side. He had no sons, my father, and no other daughters. His fields were productive, his sculptures and drawings prized by all, yet often he felt himself impoverished in the way that men do when they have too few copies of themselves underfoot. I saw the strangers look me over through the small windows which revealed their faces, and felt pleased to be assessed so seriously. I kept hold of my basket but stood tall, letting my posture speak for me. Harm him, trick him, and I shall know you are as evil as the stories say. Not for nothing was I still unmarried.

  “My daughter, Nahautu,” my father said to the strangers. He kept his voice neutral, and by this I knew he disliked them. “She, too, must agree to this.”

  The stranger who stood at the front of the group inclined his head. “My greetings, Nahautu,” he said. He spoke our tongue with a thick accent, and tortured the pronunciation of my name. “I and my companions have come from the sky-land. Do you know of it?”

  “The Humanicorp ring habitat beyond Mars,” I replied. I kept my voice as neutral as my father’s.

  “Yes, exactly,” the stranger replied, clearly surprised. “We are scientists—seekers of knowledge—come to study the changes in the sky. We have asked your father for his hospitality.” He nodded toward the back field, where our fishing cottage sat near the shore of the river, among the twisting cypress roots. “Your village elders told us you use that building only during autumn and winter; may we use it until then?”