Heart of Gold

by Sharon Shinn

  “Fortunately, Ariana Bayless is not so squeamish,” Pakt said dryly. “Chay, I am sure, is counting on it.”

  “You keep calling him ‘Chay,’ ” Varella said a little irritably. “Do you actually know him?”

  Colt was grinning. “It’s a gulden habit,” he said. “We have a very personal stake in our leader. We like to feel we could walk up to him any day and have a serious conversation with him, man to man.”

  Melina gave Varella a significant look. “Not woman to man, you’ll notice.”

  Colt gave an exaggerated shrug and spoke in an arrogant tone that was meant to annoy. “No gulden woman, no matter how schooled, would ever know as much as her husband, her brother, or her father.”

  “Whereas my husband, brother, and father, all sitting together in one room, pooling their limited intellectual resources, would never have the ability to make a worthwhile decision in Inrhio,” Melina said loftily.

  Pakt sent an amused sideways glance at Nolan. “Poor emasculated fools,” he said. “Letting their women cut them off at the balls.”

  Nolan smiled back a little uncertainly. He was clearly the outsider in this group, the only member of the team who did not come from a racial or sexual power base. In Inrhio, women controlled the wealth, the land, the succession—everything. Inheritances passed through the hands of the mother; she chose who her daughters would marry and bargained with her neighboring matriarchs for brides for her sons.

  In Geldricht, though, it was the men who had absolute power. The women were, as far as Nolan had been able to observe, shamefully abused and degraded. He could not imagine what honor accrued to a man who beat his wife or mistreated his children. Among the indigo, although the matriarchy controlled the pattern of life, men were cherished and valued. And children were considered a treasure past price.

  “Not emasculated,” Nolan said gallantly, “gratefully admitted to a wide circle of fascinating and elegant women.”

  The women cooed and clapped their hands; the men were loudly derisive. Melina patted him on the shoulder. “Does Leesa know what a sweet boy you are? Does she appreciate you?”

  Colt pointed at Nolan. “What’s to appreciate? He’s exactly as he was bred to be by you and all the rest of you women. He’s no different from any other downtrodden blueskin man I’ve ever met.”

  “Well, if you think that, you haven’t met that many indigo boys,” Varella murmured, and Melina added a heartfelt “so true.” Varella added, “Nolan is sweet, you know. A lot of the blueskins back in-country are—agreeable, let’s say—but there’s something special about Nolan. He means it when he says things like that.”

  “No one could mean it,” Colt informed her.

  Nolan turned to Pakt. “This happens to me all the time. People talk about me when I’m sitting right here.”

  “Doesn’t happen to me,” Pakt said with a grin. “I guess I’m a little harder to overlook.”

  “Harder to like,” Melina said.

  “But then, you don’t much like any man,” Pakt responded, “no matter what his color or attitude.”

  Melina laughed. For the past six months, she had been living with a female lover, a jahla girl, as the indigo called it. Varella, Nolan, and the other blueskins had treated the news with the mild, courteous interest they showed in the rotating love lives of all their fellow workers, but the guldmen had been repelled and outraged. Melina and Colt had had a huge fight about it, in fact, a screaming match that had made stupefied coworkers come running down the halls in time to see Melina hit Colt in the chest with her balled-up fist. To which Colt had replied with a slap across her face that sent her stumbling four feet back into the wall. Pakt had dashed between them before either could strike again, muscling Colt back toward the door, holding Melina off with one imperious hand.

  “You—will—not,” he had stated in the dead-cold fury they had all learned to fear, “move—or speak—either one of you!—until I say you may. Nolan! Clear everyone out of here. Shut the door behind you. You two. Sit. I said sit.”

  And that was all any of the rest of them had been privileged to witness, though they milled about in the halls for the next half hour, whispering over what they had overheard.

  It still astonished Nolan that anyone could care one way or the other if one woman chose to love another. Among the indigo, jahla girls were common; even married women often preferred the company of a jahla partner, relying on their husbands only for financial advantages, social connections, biological contributions to pregnancy, and, sometimes, companionship.

  On the other hand, Nolan was revolted at the male homosexuality he had heard of among the guldmen. The only proper object of love for a man or a woman, or so he had learned from the cradle, was a woman. For a man to love another man was unthinkable, gruesome, actually sickening. He did not know any homosexual guldmen, of course; he did not think he would be able to force himself to look such a man in the face.

  He might work up the nerve to ask Pakt about it some day. Pakt was the most broad-minded person Nolan had ever come across, male, female, blue, gold, or white. If Pakt could not explain society to him, no one could, for Pakt understood everything and everyone.

  Pakt had calmed down Colt and Melina on that violent day, though it had been weeks before the two were reconciled enough to speak civilly to each other. Even now there was an edge between them much of the time, a pointed banter that was not nearly as playful as the teasing that Pakt and Melina tossed to each other. Yes, Nolan was sure of it, one day Colt would explode, and there would be no telling how far that destructive blast would blow them all.

  “I like men,” Melina was saying now to Pakt. “Not you and Colt, of course, but some men. Nolan.”

  “Hiram,” Colt said with a sneer. Hiram was a small, nervous, and apologetic light-skinned indigo; he was difficult even for the other blueskins to love.

  “I can tolerate Hiram,” Melina said calmly. “There are men I like better. And I don’t only like indigo men, though I have to admit they make more sense to me than you two wild creatures.”

  Colt leaned forward. “Because we’re real men, and you can’t make us fit into your dainty little patterns,” he breathed.

  “Colt,” she said coolly, “have no fear. No one in the world would be fool enough to try to make you over. So relax. You are safe from me.”

  The others laughed. Colt drew back, looking annoyed. Before anyone else could speak, there was a shout from across the room.

  “Look! There he is! There he is!”

  The five of them bounded to their feet and ran to the window. A phalanx of bodies was exiting from the building and onto the street. It appeared to be a tight, human wall of security around one central figure, and it was difficult to make out anything of the ruler from this elevation and angle. Nolan got an impression of height and mass—a big man, this Chay Zanlan, bigger than Pakt, with thick shoulders and broad thighs—topped by a crown of fiery red hair. The gulden ruler was dressed in bright colors, as were his attendants, and their loose tunics snapped gaily around them as they strode by.

  Moments later, a second cadre of officials emerged. This time, they were all blueskins, dressed in black and white and wearing their formal clan colors in sashes and shawls. Ariana Bayless was in the center of the group, taller than all the other women and most of the men, her blue-black hair glinting like mica in the afternoon sun. She was speaking to one woman as she walked, reaching a hand out to another woman who offered her a briefcase, and gesturing impatiently to a man who trailed behind her, obviously trying to snare her attention. Newsman, Nolan thought. Asking how the conference went.

  “Well, things appear to be going smoothly enough,” Nolan commented.

  Only Pakt appeared to have overheard, for the guldman raised an eyebrow at him. “They haven’t killed each other yet, at any rate,” he said. “But there’s a lot of room left for trouble.”

/>   “What do you mean?”

  “How would you feel if you were negotiating for your sister’s life with Cerisa Daylen? Because Ariana Bayless comes from the same mold, and it’s not a friendly one.”

  “If she gave her word,” Nolan said slowly. He had not previously considered this; he’d had no cause to picture himself feinting with either the head of the Biolab or the mayor of the city. “She would honor it.”

  Pakt was nodding. “To the letter,” he said.

  “Well, then,” Nolan said, and shrugged. He turned back to the window, but the crowd had dispersed; there was nothing left to see.

  * * *

  * * *

  That turned out to be the last of the excitement for the day. Even the trip home on the Centrifuge that night was less eventful. As always, there was a big crowd at the North Zero gate, the stop closest to both the Complex and the entertainment district. Unlike this morning, however, commuters were not sharing ringcars with strangers, so the line moved slowly. Nolan had a long wait on the inside of the gate and stared unseeingly at the vast, curved walls of the Centrifuge unfolding to either side of him.

  Finally, a ringcar pulled up before him, and its driver left the vehicle. Nolan climbed into the small, spherical cocoon, all metal and glass on the outside, merely a bench and a set of hand controls inside. He pulled the rudder to the left, and the car glided into the entry lane, the middle of the three traffic levels. As soon as the lane above him cleared out, he pulled the rudder back and angled upward, increasing his speed with a squeeze of his hand. The great stone hallway of the Centrifuge unrolled before him, honey yellow, filled with a bee’s hive of scurrying shapes, curving to the left in a continuous unbroken circle. The gates flashed by on his right, and he skimmed along in the highest lane until he reached his own. Then he dropped to the middle level, pulled up at the gate, and exited onto the street. From there, he took a slow, lumbering bus to his own neighborhood.

  It was the fashionable district for indigo bachelors. Nearly everyone on the bus was dressed in clothes remarkably similar to Nolan’s, and they all lived in apartment buildings that he easily could have mistaken for his own. A few miles away were the expensive multistory houses where the Higher Hundred families lived when they were in the city, but for an unmarried blueskin man, this was the only acceptable place to live.

  There was a small pile of mail awaiting Nolan outside the door to his apartment. Bills; a letter from his mother; the fashion magazine he subscribed to, though he rarely read it. And a note from Leesa. He opened that first.

  As he read, he absently toyed with the medallion he wore, a disk stamped with Leesa’s clan device, which she had given him the day they became engaged. Her handwriting was large, looped, and lazy. Every time he read it, he imagined her speaking in her usual languid, unimpassioned tones, and he automatically slowed the pace at which he consumed her words.

  “Nolan: Is it as hot in the city as it is in-country? Today Bettahelia and I did nothing but sit on the porch drinking lemonade and watching the wind move the grass in the field. We didn’t even speak more than five sentences to each other, and she was with me the entire day. I think her visit has gone on too long, but I’ve been too fatigued to tell her so. Maybe she will leave by the end of the week.

  “Did I tell you I have business in the city in two weeks? Some boring investment trouble that mother wants me to see to personally. As long as I have to make the trip, though, I may as well stay a few days. With you, of course, unless there’s some sly bachelor reason you don’t want me in your quarters. Or if you can’t bother to clean them, then I’ll stay in a hotel. But of course I’d rather be with you.

  “Corzehia is planning to be in the city for the rest of the summer, so I’m going to write her, as well. She’s having some big party that I think we can go to. Otherwise, you’ll have to think of entertainments for me. I’ll try to be easy to amuse.

  “I’ll let you know when I’m to arrive. Put your lips to the paper right under my signature—that’s where I’ve left you a kiss. Analeesa”

  Nolan read the letter a second time, then dutifully pressed his mouth to Leesa’s name. She wrote him at least once a week, letters much like this one, with little information, light humor, and easy affection. He wrote her back at least as often, though sometimes he was at a loss as to what to say. She cared very little about his job, though she always assured him she was pleased to hear how well he was doing. When he had formulated the gulden antibiotics and had reported Cerisa’s praise, Leesa had sent him a finely embroidered shirt as a celebratory gift. And yet, he could scarcely give her a day-by-day account of his activities at the lab; she could not possibly understand his pursuit and attack of cells and tissues. So news about the lab was minimal.

  And he did not have much to tell her about his social life. A few times a week, he played curfball with men in the neighboring building, and sometimes they met to play cards or go for dinner. Now and then he lingered in the city after closing hours to attend the theater with Hiram or Melina. These events he could mention to Leesa, but he could hardly recount a stroke-by-stroke description of his curfball game or an item-by-item dissection of his meal. And she had no interest in the theater, so he rarely bothered to give her long reviews of these nights.

  And he had never mentioned the fact that he had, more than once, gone with his fellow employees to Pakt’s house for a meal and a convivial evening. It would not have occurred to Leesa that there were any circumstances under which an indigo man would have social dealings with a guldman—would walk into his house, sit at his table, eat his food. She could scarcely comprehend the fact that Nolan worked in harmony with half a dozen gulden men, and she had literally refused to acknowledge that a guldman could be his superior in the workplace. She would have disbelieved him if he had told her he had gone to Pakt’s house for dinner and enjoyed himself very much.

  Before he had come to the city, Nolan would have been just as shocked to think he could have enjoyed such an event. Before he had come to the city, Nolan had seen maybe a dozen gulden in his life, and he had always had to restrain himself from staring. It was not polite to gawk at someone strange, inferior, and unfortunate, his mother had drilled into him. The courteous thing to do would be to act as if you did not notice such a person’s defects, did not realize that his gold skin and fair hair doomed him to a life of misery and worthlessness. Treat any gulden you encounter (though there were not many in-country and almost none in the lush lands where the Higher Hundred had their estates) with the cheerful compassion you would give to a mute child, an injured dog, a feebleminded old man. And never let him realize how terribly sorry you feel for him.

  His mother, of course, was widely considered to be the most broad-minded of women. Most of the other indigo matriarchs—and their spouses—could not bring themselves to speak of the gulden with such tolerance. Although the ultimate gilder insult was used sparingly, virtually every other term of opprobrium was casually applied to members of the gulden race. A guldman was a thing to sometimes fear, always revile, and certainly avoid.

  So when Nolan came to the city, he was astonished. Not only did gulden walk the city streets as if they had every right to be there, they ate in blueskin restaurants and patronized blueskin shops, and no one questioned them as long as they had the cash to pay their way. They could be found in any profession, though they tended toward the more scientific and mechanical pursuits; they were engineers, chemists, architects. They were also lawyers, restaurateurs, political appointees—in short, they were everywhere.

  The albinos, too, were far more visible than they had ever been in Inrhio. In-country, the whitefolk routinely held menial positions—gardener, nursemaid, chauffeur—although the very high-caste indigo preferred to hire low-caste blueskins for those positions if they could. Nolan’s mother had often said a good albino housekeeper was worth any salary she wished to charge, and she would trust an albino man with any job a
round the house. But she had warned her children against trying to make friends with the whitefolk. They were trustworthy, but they were still foreign.

  But in the city it was a different story. The albinos kept mostly to themselves in small enclaves in the northern and western edges of the city. Here, however, they were not just domestic helpers but acute businessmen, running affluent shops that catered to the whims of guldmen and blueskins alike. They led tidy, quiet lives and mingled freely with the other two races, causing no dissension.

  Unlike the gulden, who—it seemed to Nolan—caused dissension everywhere. Sudden violence seemed to swirl around the gulden like a windswept aureole of danger. One man would kill another, suddenly, for no reason, in the middle of the street in the middle of the day. And, Nolan couldn’t count how many news stories he had heard of gulden children slaughtered in the women’s ghetto on the west edge of town. It was always some gulden male on a rampage, come to the city specifically for the purpose of hunting down this particular woman and her hapless clutch of children.

  Ariana Bayless had decided long ago that gulden crimes against gulden residents should be judged and punished by peers. So the city officials did little to curtail these acts of violence. Gulden men and gulden ways; that was no business of indigo lawmakers.

  None of it made any sense to Nolan. But he did not have to understand the gulden. He merely had to coexist with them, as civilly as possible, until his abbreviated life in the city was done. And then he would return in-country, marry Leesa, and live the life he had been destined for. And that, he was very sure, was a life that would hold no surprises.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kit stood at the balcony of the eleventh-story window and watched night unfold over the city. Even she had to admit that it was very picturesque, and she was not fond of the city. But the city, which was serious and workaday during daylight hours, took on a playful mood as night fell. The double row of white lights that outlined the Centrifuge made a great endless loop around the buildings; the multicolored lamps of the entertainment district fluttered like tossed glitter. The moving headlights of trolleys and trucks wove among the stationary beacons, and the undying flame on top of the Complex scrawled its brilliant, varied comments against the deepening black of the sky.