Stella shrugged. “Those days aren’t so far gone, really. Look at what happened to Greentree.”
“Oh—Stella, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that there’s not anything to it, just that . . .” She shrugged, unable to finish the thought.
“It can’t happen here. I know.”
Andi’s black hair fell around her face, framing her pensive expression. She stared into space. “I just wish he could see how good things are. We’ve earned a little extra, haven’t we?”
Unexpected even to herself, Stella burst, “Can I kiss you?”
In half a heartbeat Andi fell at her, holding Stella’s arms, and Stella clung back, and either her arms were hot or Andi’s hands were, and they met, lips to lips.
One evening, Andi escaped the gathering in the common room, and brought Stella with her. They left as the sun had almost set, leaving just enough light to follow the path to the observatory. They took candles inside shaded lanterns for the trip back to their cottage. At dusk, the windmills were ghostly skeletons lurking on the hillside.
They waited for full dark, talking while Andi looked over her paperwork and prepared her notes. Andi asked about Greentree, and Stella explained that the aquifers had dried up in the drought. Households remained in the region because they’d always been there. Some survived, but they weren’t particularly successful. She told Andi how the green of the valleys near the coast had almost blinded her when she first arrived, and how all the rain had seemed like a miracle.
Then it was time to unlatch the roof panels and look at the sky.
“Don’t squint, just relax. Let the image come into focus,” Andi said, bending close to give directions to Stella, who was peering through the scope’s eyepiece. Truth be told, Stella was more aware of Andi’s hand resting lightly on her shoulder. She shifted closer.
“You should be able to see it,” Andi said, straightening to look at the sky.
“Okay . . .I think . . .oh! Is that it?” A disk had come into view, a pale, glowing light striped with orange, yellow, cream. Like someone had covered a very distant moon with melted butter.
“Jupiter,” Andi said proudly.
“But it’s just a star.”
“Not up close it isn’t.”
Not a disk, then, but a sphere. Another planet. “Amazing.”
“Isn’t it? You ought to be able to see some of the moons as well—a couple of bright stars on either side?”
“I think . . .yes, there they are.”
After an hour, Stella began shivering in the nighttime cold, and Andi put her arms around her, rubbing warmth into her back. In moments, they were kissing, and stumbled together to the desk by the shack’s wall, where Andi pushed her back across the surface and made love to her. Jupiter had swung out of view by the time they closed up the roof and stumbled off the hill.
Another round of storms came, shrouding the nighttime sky, and they spent the evenings around the hearth with the others. Some of the light went out of Andi on those nights. She sat on a chair with a basket of mending at her feet, darning socks and shirts, head bent over her work. Lamplight turned her skin amber and made her hair shine like obsidian. But she didn’t talk. That may have been because Elsta and Toma talked over everyone, or Peri exclaimed over something the baby did, then everyone had to admire Bette.
The day the latest round of rain broke and the heat of summer finally settled over the valley, Andi got another package from Griffith, and that light of discovery came back to her. Tonight, they’d rush off to the observatory after supper.
Stella almost missed the cue to escape, helping Elsta with the dishes. When she was finished and drying her hands, Andi was at the door. Stella rushed in behind her. Then Toma brought out a basket, one of the ones as big as an embrace that they used to store just-washed wool in, and set it by Andi’s chair before the hearth. “Andi, get back here.”
Her hand was on the door, one foot over the threshold, and Stella thought she might keep going, pretending that she hadn’t heard. But her hand clenched on the door frame, and she turned around.
“We’ve got to get all this new wool processed, so you’ll stay in tonight to help.”
“I can do that tomorrow. I’ll work double tomorrow—”
“Now, Andi.”
Stella stepped forward, hands reaching for the basket. “Toma, I can do that.”
“No, you’re doing plenty already. Andi needs to do it.”
“I’ll be done with the mending in a minute and can finish that in no time at all. Really, it’s all right.”
He looked past her, to Andi. “You know the rules—household business first.”
“The household business is done. This is makework!” she said. Toma held the basket out in reproof.
Stella tried again. “But I like carding.” It sounded lame—no one liked carding.
But Andi had surrendered, coming away from the door, shuffling toward her chair. “Stella, it’s all right. Not your argument.”
“But—” The pleading in her gaze felt naked. She wanted to help, how could she help?
Andi slumped in the chair without looking up. All Stella could do was sit in her own chair, with her knitting. She jabbed herself with the needle three times, from glancing up at Andi every other stitch.
Toma sat before his workbench, looking pleased for nearly the first time since Stella had met him.
Well after dark, Stella lay in her bed, stomach in knots. Andi was in the other bed and hadn’t said a word all evening.
“Andi? Are you all right?” she whispered. She stared across the room, to the slope of the other woman, mounded her under blanket. The lump didn’t move, but didn’t look relaxed in sleep. But if she didn’t want to talk, Stella wouldn’t force her.
“I’m okay,” Andi sighed, finally.
“Anything I can do?”
Another long pause, and Stella was sure she’d said too much. Then, “You’re a good person, Stella. Anyone ever told you that?”
Stella crawled out from under her covers, crossed to Andi’s bed, climbed in with her. Andi pulled the covers up over them both, and the women held each other.
Toma sent Andi on an errand, delivering a set of blankets to the next waystation and picking up messages to bring back. More makework. The task could just have as easily been done by the next wagon messenger to pass by. Andi told him as much, standing outside the work house the next morning.
“Why wait when we can get the job done now?” Toma answered, hefting the backpack, stuffed to bursting with newly woven woolens, toward her.
Stella was at her loom, and her hand on the shuttle paused as she listened. But Andi didn’t say anything else. Only glared at Toma a good long minute before taking up the pack. She’d be gone most of the day, hiking there and back.
Which was the point, wasn’t it?
Stella contrived to find jobs that kept Toma in sight, sorting and carding wool outside where he was working repairing a fence, when she should have been weaving. So she saw when Toma studied the hammer in his hand, looked up the hill, and started walking the path to Andi’s observatory.
Stella dropped the basket of wool she was holding and ran.
He was merely walking. Stella overtook him easily, at first. But after fifty yards of running, she slowed, clutching at a stitch in her side. Gasping for breath with burning lungs, she kept on, step after step, hauling herself up the hill, desperate to get there first.
“Stella, go back, don’t get in the middle of this.”
Even if she could catch enough of her breath to speak, she didn’t know what she would say. He lengthened his stride, gaining on her. She got to the shed a bare few steps before him.
The door didn’t have a lock; it had never needed one. Stella pressed herself across it and faced out, to Toma, marching closer. At least she had something to lean on for the moment.
“Move aside, Stella. She’s got to grow up and get on with what’s important,” Toma said.
“This is important.”
He stopped, studied her. He gripped the handle of the hammer like it was a weapon. Her heart thudded. How angry was he?
Toma considered, then said, “Stella. You’re here because I wanted to do Az a favor. I can change my mind. I can send a message to Nance and the committee that it just isn’t working out. I can do that.”
Panic brought sudden tears to her eyes. He wouldn’t dare, he couldn’t, she’d proven herself already in just a few weeks, hadn’t she? The committee wouldn’t believe him, couldn’t listen to him. But she couldn’t be sure of that, could she?
Best thing to do would be to step aside. He was head of the household, it was his call. She ought to do as he said, because her place here wasn’t secure. A month ago that might not have mattered, but now—she wanted to stay, she had to stay.
And if she stepped aside, leaving Toma free to enter the shed, what would she tell Andi afterward?
She swallowed the lump in her throat and found words. “I know disaster can still happen. I know the droughts and storms and plagues do still come and can take away everything. Better than anyone, I know. But we have to start building again sometime, yes? People like Andi have to start building, and we have to let them, even if it seems useless to the rest of us. Because it isn’t useless, it—it’s beautiful.”
He stared at her for a long time. She thought maybe he was considering how to wrestle her away from the door. He was bigger than she was, and she wasn’t strong. It wouldn’t take much. But she’d fight.
“You’re infatuated, that’s all,” he said.
Maybe, not that it mattered.
Then he said, “You’re not going to move away, are you?”
Shaking her head, Stella flattened herself more firmly against the door.
Toma’s grip on the hammer loosened, just a bit. “My grandparents—has Andi told you about my grandparents? They were children when the big fall came. They remembered what it was like. Mostly they talked about what they’d lost, all the things they had and didn’t now. And I thought, all those things they missed, that they wanted back—that was what caused the fall in the first place, wasn’t it? We don’t need it, any of it.”
“Andi needs it. And it’s not hurting anything.” What else could she say, she had to say something that would make it all right. “Better things will come, or what’s the point?”
A weird crooked smile turned Toma’s lips, and he shifted his grip on the hammer. Holding it by the head now, he let it dangle by his leg. “God, what a world,” he muttered. Stella still couldn’t tell if he was going to force her away from the door. She held her breath.
Toma said, “Don’t tell Andi about this. All right?”
She nodded. “All right.”
Toma turned and started down the trail, a calm and steady pace. Like a man who’d just gone out for a walk.
Stella slid to the ground and sat on the grass by the wall until the old man was out of sight. Finally, after scrubbing the tears from her face, she followed him down, returning to the cottages and her work.
Andi was home in time for supper, and the household ate together as usual. The woman was quiet and kept making quick glances at Toma, who avoided looking back at all. It was like she knew Toma had had a plan. Stella couldn’t say anything until they were alone.
The night was clear, the moon was dark. Stella’d learned enough from Andi to know it was a good night for stargazing. As they were cleaning up after the meal, she touched Andi’s hand. “Let’s go to the observatory.”
Andi glanced at Toma, and her lips pressed together, grim. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I think it’ll be okay.”
Andi clearly didn’t believe her, so Stella took her hand, and together they walked out of the cottage, then across the yard, past the work house, and to the trail that led up the hill to the observatory.
And it was all right.
About the Author
Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of a series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio advice show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. The tenth novel in the series, Kitty Steals the Show, is due out in 2012. She's also written novels for young adults (Voices of Dragons, Steel), two stand-alone novels (Discord's Apple, After the Golden Age), and more than fifty short stories. She's been nominated for the Hugo Award for best short story, and is a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. After living the nomadic childhood of a typical Air Force brat, she's managed to put down roots in Colorado, where she lives with her fluffy attack dog and too many hobbies.
The Switch
Sarah Stanton
It starts out like this: halfway up a ladder looking at the stars. Xiao Zhu is behind me with the paint pots, whistling something tuneless to himself. I’ve got a brush in my hand and a delicate tracework of flowers in front of me; there’s a job to be done, and Lao Yang is waiting. But all I can think of is the stars.
We don’t see them that often, not the real ones. On the streets of Beijing you can see them every night, a glorious winking parade for the people who made them, but in the courtyards, the behind-spaces where we live and work and play, we just see clouds. Ever since I was a boy, there’s been a roof of smog over my head. And these days people think there’s something suspicious about stars. They’re for farmers and foreigners and dissidents, people who know how to find them and still want to. But they’re up there tonight, faint specks in the muck, and my hands go still as I stare.
Lao Yang coughs behind me. It’s a smoker’s cough, full of sound and fury, but it’s also a warning: there’s a job to be done. I turn my eyes to the roof beam, to the beautiful tracery of blossoms and leaves, and begin to fill in the green. Xiao Zhu begins to wander the courtyard, a young man’s amble, taking in the neat tiles and the potted pomegranate in one corner. Lao Yang just waits.
The paint takes shape under my brush as if it were a living thing. Red, green, blue, gold; it drifts across the wood and makes it real. When I have chased the last of the color into the corners, Lao Yang helps me down the ladder, and the three of us look up in silence at what we have done.
“It’s finished,” he says.
I nod.
“Three months’ work,” he says.
I nod again.
We walk out onto the street, sharing a steady silence between us. Xiao Zhu is already busy at the gate, stabbing at a small control panel with his slim fingers. We turn and look at the image of a house, the stone lions guarding its door, its roof beams painted like a sunrise. Above us, the false stars shine clear and unadorned.
Xiao Zhu hits the switch, and the hologram collapses. There is a quiet shimmer, and then nothing. The street remains unchanged.
Lao Yang smiles. “Let’s go home.”
It starts out like that, but that’s not where it started. It started fifteen years ago, when the hutongs disappeared. Those narrows alleys, pinpricked by public toilets and hawkers, the sights and the sounds and the pervasive smells, and on either side the courtyard houses, the heritage of Beijing. They were already vanishing by the close of the twentieth century, whole stretches of history being leveled to make way for apartments and poor quality condos. A lucky few were protected, turned into tourist traps and holiday homes. Gulou, Nanluoguxiang, Liulichang Jie: their names trip off our tongues like ancient mnemonics. But eventually, they too disappeared.
Lao Yang was forty when he saw the demolition sign go up above his door. He lived in a protected hutong, a heritage-listed area. When he went to register his protests with the local authorities, he was waylaid by plainclothes agents and beaten. That was the day the first hologram went up, in front of the place Lao Yang used to call home. Seen from the street, it looked like any other courtyard house, elegant and serene. From behind, it was a sick pile of rubble. He tells us over and over how he could put his hand through the mirage, how in that moment what he saw and what the world saw changed forever.
The next day, Lao Yang’s whole street was cloaked in hol
ograms. The usual smog had subsided into a pearly blue. The crude demolition notices had vanished from the doors, to be replaced by fresh coats of vermillion paint. Lao Yang looked at them and knew that there was rubble waiting behind. And the holograms spread, street after street, so fast you could see a workman in the morning and know your whole district would be gone in the afternoon. I was just a boy when it happened, but I remember the spread of blue skies and green leaves like it was Chinese New Year. I didn’t understand back then. All I knew was that the city was beautiful, and I never wanted to leave.
I understand now. People believe what they see. These government holograms, they make Beijing a dream town, a false perfection that follows you home and leaves you at the door. We don’t see the demolition, the shaky buildings, the squalor. There are clear skies every day even though it hurts to breathe. We are a city of flickering images, of fantasy, of fraud, and nobody objects because nobody sees anything to object to. There are stars above us at night. Who cares where they come from?
We troop out of the hutong in single file, Lao Yang, Xiao Zhu and me. We never talk much after a job: we have done something majestic, something monstrous, and the silence is almost holy. We make our way through the winding streets like an ant trail, left, right and left again, until we reach the main road, bustling with cars. Xiao Zhu flags a taxi and bargains the price down to something we can afford. He sits in the front and we sit in the back, while the driver putters us home.
I met Lao Yang three years ago in a dingy noodle shop which had looked much cleaner from the outside. We were sitting side by side, slurping our noodles like some triumphant symphony. I had a book propped up against the vinegar pot and was considering it thoughtfully as I chewed. Not that I’m an intellectual or anything; I’m a man who works with his hands. But I like books. There’s something honest about a printed page. You know what it is today, and you can make a fair guess at what it’s going to be tomorrow.
Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 Page 49
