Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 3, July 2013 (6 page)

“Jing-lung,” I said, “would you still consider marrying me?”

He turned to me, disbelieving. “You already have a husband, and you’ve borne him a son. You can’t dissolve your marriage, not even as Crown Prince.”

“No, I cannot.” I removed my hand from his shoulder, and took his hand in mine. “I wish I could. But as Emperor, even as a woman, I am allowed additional consorts. There have been few female
wongdai
in the past, but it is not unprecedented. The Ming-ying Emperor had three.”

I could see the thoughts tumble around his head. He did not like the idea, I knew. I could feel the shake of uncertainty in the hand I held.

“Imperial Father might not like the idea, because he may remember what happened when we were young, but you are a decorated officer now and won many battles for our country. The western border is safe because of you.”

“Fourth Princess,” he said, his voice rattled and uneven. “Fourth Princess will always have my affection, but I do not think I could share you with another man.”

“I have done my duty to Yan-cheung,” I said. “If the child grows healthy and strong there will be no need for us to visit each other’s beds. Your family will no longer pressure you to marry, and the two of us…We might be able to have a child of our own.”

He withdrew his hand and stood. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I could. Only a poor man should have to share his woman with another. Even if you are Emperor…Is it selfish to want you just for myself?”

I shook my head as I looked down at the floor. “Before I met you, before I knew Imperial Father would even consider me as heir, I knew someday I would marry, and though a princess will be a wife and not a concubine, I was sure my husband would be a man of means so he would marry concubines in addition to me. For a noblewoman, this is what happens, and we do not expect otherwise. But how can it be that if a woman is
wongdai
she cannot do the same as the
wongdai
before her just because she is a woman and they were men?”

“May your servant be excused?” he asked. I could not bring myself to look at his face.

If I were free to divorce Yan-cheung, if he had been an awful man instead of a competent and loyal husband, I would. Once Imperial Father passed I would be
wongdai
and no one could question whom I chose to marry, and now Jing-lung was worthy.

“You may go,” I told him.

Before a year had passed, the western barbarians had returned, bringing a larger force of foreign allies with whom we rarely had reason to quarrel. Imperial Father now promoted Jing-lung to General of the West, and placed the entirety of the western forces at his disposal, as well as granting him use of the capital’s own soldiers to drive the barbarians all the way back to their own country, which he would then claim for the Kwanese Empire.

I knew this would be a long campaign, and instead of months it could be years before I saw Jing-lung again. Imperial Father made a grand show of him surveying his soldiers, knowing that the people must believe Jing-lung would win if they were to support the war through their taxes and their sons. And Jing-lung rode tall on his horse as though already master of a foreign land.

At the end of the inspection he rode up to where Imperial Father and I stood at the head of a retinue of geomancers. He dismounted and knelt. “Your soldiers are ready, Emperor.”

“Please rise,” said Imperial Father. “A finer force this country has not seen in generations. I look forward to hearing of your success.”

“I will not fail. You will leave this world with a larger empire than when you arrived.”

The Emperor nodded, pleased, and carefully climbed into his carriage to return to the palace. He would retire to his bedchambers once he returned. The outer courtyard was as far as he wished to go these days. I would channel the blessing for our army and see our soldiers off.

I reached into the long sleeve of my gown and removed a small box I had tucked within. “This is for you,” I said to Jing-lung, my voice quiet so only he would hear.

He opened it and saw that there was a single silk sachet inside where there was plainly room for two. It smelled of lilies, of the imperial garden, of the pond where we would watch the mandarin ducks, and as awe washed over his face I knew he could see me in his mind as well as his eyes.

“I made it,” I said, feeling very much a young girl again. “It is a funny thing for a Crown Prince to shut out maids from her quarters while she cuts and dries flowers from a pond, but there has been gossip enough in days past. If you breathe the scent of the flowers from the sachet you will be able to reach me. And I have its partner, so when you think of me, I will be able to see you as well.”

The sachets would only allow emotions, and not words, and in that way he could say no more to me that he could through the reports I knew he would send, but I would at least be able to let him know that I loved him, that I missed him, and I hoped he would feel the same.

His hand closed over the sachet and he tied it to his belt. The box he closed and returned to me.

“I will treasure it, Fourth Princess.” And he bowed.

If not for the people still in the courtyard, I would have told him the formality was not necessary. If not for the people in the courtyard, Jing-lung could have refused me.

“Will you wait?” I asked. “When I am Emperor, if I ask you…”

“What can a mandarin duck do when it is no longer part of a pair?” he asked, head still down. “Is it free? Can it find another?”

I did not know.

“You will go with the blessing of the Emperor,” I said, “and mine as well.”

I looked over my shoulder to the other geomancers, and as one twenty heads bowed in prayer. We called today to the White Tiger of the West, ferocious guardian and master of metal, to make our swords sharp, our arrows true, and our cannons sound. I asked him to protect the general who now led an army destined for his domain.

“Your sword, please,” I said.

He drew his sword, laid it flat across his upturned hands, and knelt before me. I touched it gently with the tips of my fingers and felt all the imperfections that had been worn into the blade that even meticulous care could not entirely erase. But the White Tiger could.

My prayers smoothed the nicks and scratches, the flaws that the eyes could not see and the fingers could not touch. I willed this sword healthy and strong, so that it would protect Jing-lung in the months and years to come. This was the blessing the Emperor would give his general if he were well. I was not Imperial Father, not as powerful as Imperial Father, but I prayed that my desire for Jing-lung’s safe return was enough to overcome all that.

One day, perhaps soon, I would be
wongdai
, and I wanted Jing-lung beside me.

After the army left, I went out to the imperial garden with my maids and sat in the pavilion by the pond where I could watch the ducks. Sek-fung lay beside me, snoring in her old age. One of my maids cooed and pointed at a new bird that I had not seen before. He circled the pond alone, and I wondered if he might try to join with one of the other pairs.

I picked up one of the cakes from the tray of sweets my maids had brought and broke it apart in my hands, much to their shock. When the duck swam near I threw the pieces before him, and he bobbed through the water, plucking the bits of cake in a series of quick gulps as he followed the trail of food to the walkway beside the pavilion where I was now waiting.

I held out my hand with a bit of cake upon it and the duck gobbled it from my palm.

“There’s no reason for either of us to be alone, is there?” I told him.

I felt the sachet tingle at my side and in my mind I saw Jing-lung riding out to the frontier. His thoughts were warm, and I smiled.

Original (First) Publication

Copyright © 2013 by Laurie Tom

********************************************

Barry Malzberg is the winner of the very first Campbell Memorial Award, a multiple Hugo and Nebula winner, and the author of more than 90 books. He is considered a master of “recursive” science fiction, which is to say science fiction about science fiction, of which “A Galaxy Called Rome” is a prime example.

--------------

A GALAXY CALLED ROME

by Barry N. Malzberg

I

This is not a novelette but a series of notes. The novelette cannot be truly written because it partakes of its time, which is distant and could be perceived only through the idiom and devices of that era.

Thus the piece, by virtue of these reasons and others too personal even for this variety of True Confession, is little more than a set of constructions toward something less substantial…and, like the author, it cannot be completed.

II

The novelette would lean heavily upon two articles by the late John Campbell, for thirty-three years the editor of
Astounding/Analog
, which were written shortly before his untimely death on July 11, 1971, and appeared as editorials in his magazine later that year, the second being perhaps the last piece which will ever bear his byline. They imagine a black galaxy which would result from the implosion of a neutron star, an implosion so mighty that gravitational forces unleashed would contain not only light itself but space and time; and
A Galaxy Called Rome
is his title, not mine, since he envisions a spacecraft that might be trapped within such a black galaxy and be unable to get out…because escape velocity would have to exceed the speed of light. All paths of travel would lead to this galaxy, then, none away.

A galaxy called Rome.

III

Conceive then of a faster-than-light spaceship which would tumble into the black galaxy and would be unable to leave. Tumbling would be easy, or at least inevitable, since one of the characteristics of the black galaxy would be its invisibility, and there the ship would be. The story would then pivot on the efforts of the crew to get out. The ship is named
Skipstone
. It was completed in 3892. Five hundred people died so that it might fly, but in this age life is held even more cheaply than it is today.

Left to my own devices, I might be less interested in the escape problem than that of adjustment. Light housekeeping in an anterior sector of the universe; submission to the elements, a fine, ironic literary despair. This is not science fiction however. Science fiction was created by Hugo Gernsback to show us the ways out of technological impasse. So be it.

IV

As interesting as the material was, I quailed even at this series of notes, let alone a polished, completed work. My personal life is my black hole, I felt like pointing out (who would listen?); my daughters provide more correct and sticky implosion than any neutron star, and the sound of the pulsars is as nothing to the music of the paddock area at Aqueduct racetrack in Ozone Park, Queens, on a clear summer Tuesday. “Enough of these breathtaking concepts, infinite distances, quasar leaps, binding messages amidst the arms of the spiral nebula,” I could have pointed out. “I know that there are those who find an ultimate truth there, but I am not one of them. I would rather dedicate the years of life remaining (my melodramatic streak) to an understanding of the agonies of this middle-class town in northern New Jersey; until I can deal with those, how can I comprehend Ridgefield Park, to say nothing of the extension of fission to include progressively heavier gases?” Indeed, I almost abided to this until it occurred to me that Ridgefield Park would forever be as mysterious as the stars and that one could not deny infinity merely to pursue a particular that would be impenetrable until the day of one’s death.

So I decided to try the novelette, at least as this series of notes, although with some trepidation, but trepidation did not unsettle me, nor did I grieve, for my life is merely a set of notes for a life, and Ridgefield Park merely a rough working model of Trenton, in which, nevertheless, several thousand people live who cannot discern their right hands from their left, and also much cattle.

V

It is 3895. The spacecraft
Skipstone
, on an exploratory flight through the major and minor galaxies surrounding the Milky Way, falls into the black galaxy of a neutron star and is lost forever.

The captain of this ship, the only living consciousness of it, is its commander, Lena Thomas. True, the hold of the ship carries five hundred and fifteen of the dead sealed in gelatinous fix who will absorb unshielded gamma rays. True, these rays will at some time in the future hasten their reconstitution. True, again, that another part of the hold contains the prostheses of seven skilled engineers, male and female, who could be switched on at only slight inconvenience and would provide Lena not only with answers to any technical problems which would arise but with companionship to while away the long and grave hours of the
Skipstone
’s flight.

Lena, however, does not use the prostheses, nor does she feel the necessity to. She is highly skilled and competent, at least in relation to the routine tasks of this testing flight, and she feels that to call for outside help would only be an admission of weakness, would be reported back to the Bureau and lessen her potential for promotion. (She is right; the Bureau has monitored every cubicle of this ship, both visually and biologically; she can see or do nothing which does not trace to a printout; they would not think well of her if she was dependent upon outside assistance.) Toward the embalmed she feels somewhat more.

Her condition rattling in the hold of the ship as it moves on tachyonic drive seems to approximate theirs; although they are deprived of consciousness, that quality seems to be almost irrelevant to the condition of hyperspace, and if there were any way that she could bridge their mystery, she might well address them. As it is, she must settle for imaginary dialogues and for long, quiescent periods when she will watch the monitors, watch the rainbow of hyperspace, the collision of the spectrum, and say nothing whatsoever.

Saying nothing will not do, however, and the fact is that Lena talks incessantly at times, if only to herself. This is good because the story should have much dialogue; dramatic incident is best impelled through straightforward characterization, and Lena’s compulsive need, now and then, to state her condition and its relation to the spaces she occupies will satisfy this need.

In her conversation, of course, she often addresses the embalmed.

“Consider,” she says to them, some of them dead eight hundred years, others dead weeks, all of them stacked in the hold in relation to their status in life and their ability to hoard assets to pay for the process that will return them their lives, “Consider what’s going on here,” pointing through the hold, the colors gleaming through the portholes onto her wrist, colors dancing in the air, her eyes quite full and maddened in this light, which does not indicate that she is mad but only that the condition of hyperspace itself is insane, the Michelson-Morley effect having a psychological as well as physical reality here. “Why it could be me dead and in the hold and all of you here in the dock watching the colors spin, it’s all the same, all the same faster than light,” and indeed the twisting and sliding effects of the tachyonic drive are such that at the moment of speech what Lena says is true.

The dead live; the living are dead, all slide and become jumbled together as she has noted; and were it not that their objective poles of consciousness were fixed by years of training and discipline, just as hers are transfixed by a different kind of training and discipline, she would press the levers to eject the dead one-by-one into the larger coffin of space, something which is indicated only as an emergency procedure under the gravest of terms and which would result in her removal from the Bureau immediately upon her return. The dead are precious cargo; they are, in essence, paying for the experiments and must be handled with the greatest delicacy. “I will handle you with the greatest delicacy,” Lena says in hyperspace, “and I will never let you go, little packages in my little prison,” and so on, singing and chanting as the ship moves on somewhat in excess of one million miles per second, always accelerating; and yet, except for the colors, the nausea, the disorienting swing, her own mounting insanity, the terms of this story, she might be in the IRT Lenox Avenue local at rush hour, moving slowly uptown as circles of illness move through the fainting car in the bowels of summer.

VI

She is twenty-eight years old. Almost two hundred years in the future, when man has established colonies on forty planets in the Milky Way, has fully populated the solar system, is working in the faster-than-light experiments as quickly as he can to move through other galaxies, the medical science of that day is not notably superior to that of our own, and the human lifespan has not been significantly extended, nor have the diseases of mankind which are now known as congenital been eradicated. Most of the embalmed were in their eighties or nineties; a few of them, the more recent deaths, were nearly a hundred, but the average lifespan still hangs somewhat short of eighty, and most of these have died from cancer, heart attacks, renal failure, cerebral blowout, and the like. There is some irony in the fact that man can have at least established a toehold in his galaxy, can have solved the mysteries of the FTL drive, and yet finds the fact of his own biology as stupefying as he has throughout history, but every sociologist understands that those who live in a culture are least qualified to criticize it (because they have fully assimilated the codes of the culture, even as to criticism), and Lena does not see this irony any more than the reader will have to in order to appreciate the deeper and more metaphysical irony of the story, which is this: that greater speed, greater space, greater progress, greater sensation has not resulted in any definable expansion of the limits of consciousness and personality and all that the FTL drive is to Lena is an increasing entrapment. It is important to understand that she is merely a technician; that although she is highly skilled and has been trained through the Bureau for many years for her job as pilot, she really does not need to possess the technical knowledge of any graduate scientists of our own time…that her job, which is essentially a probe-and-ferrying, could be done by an adolescent; and that all of her training has afforded her no protection against the boredom and depression of her assignment.

When she is done with this latest probe, she will return to Uranus and be granted a six-month leave. She is looking forward to that. She appreciates the opportunity. She is only twenty-eight, and she is tired of being sent with the dead to tumble through the spectrum for weeks at a time, and what she would very much like to be, at least for a while, is a young woman. She would like to be at peace. She would like to be loved. She would like to have sex.

VII

Something must be made of the element of sex in this story, if only because it deals with a female protagonist (where asepsis will not work); and in the tradition of modem literary science fiction, where some credence is given to the whole range of human needs and behaviors, it would be clumsy and amateurish to ignore the issue. Certainly the easy scenes can be written and to great effect: Lena masturbating as she stares through the porthole at the colored levels of hyperspace; Lena dreaming thickly of intercourse as she unconsciously massages her nipples, the ship plunging deeper and deeper (as she does not yet know) toward the Black Galaxy; the Black Galaxy itself as some ultimate vaginal symbol of absorption whose Freudian overcast will not be ignored in the imagery of this story…indeed, one can envision Lena stumbling toward the Evictors at the depths of her panic in the Black Galaxy to bring out one of the embalmed, her grim and necrophiliac fantasies as the body is slowly moved upwards on its glistening slab, the way that her eyes will look as she comes to consciousness and realizes what she has become…oh, this would be a very powerful scene indeed, almost anything to do with sex in space is powerful (one must also conjure with the effects of hyperspace upon the orgasm; would it be the orgasm which all of us know and love so well or something entirely different, perhaps detumescence, perhaps exaltation!), and I would face the issue squarely, if only I could, and in line with the very real need of the story to have powerful and effective dialogue.

“For God’s sake,” Lena would say at the end, the music of her entrapment squeezing her, coming over her, blotting her toward extinction, “for God’s sake, all we ever needed was a screw, that’s all that sent us out into space, that’s all that it ever meant to us, I’ve got to have it, got to have it, do you understand?” jamming her fingers in and out of her aqueous surfaces—

—But of course this would not work, at least in the story which I am trying to conceptualize. Space is aseptic; that is the secret of science fiction for forty-five years; it is not deceit or its adolescent audience or the publication codes which have deprived most of the literature of the range of human sexuality but the fact that in the clean and abysmal spaces between the stars sex, that demonstration of our perverse and irreplaceable humanity, would have no role at all. Not for nothing did the astronauts return to tell us their vision of otherworldliness, not for nothing did they stagger in their thick landing gear as they walked toward the colonels’ salute, not for nothing did all of those marriages, all of those wonderful kids undergo such terrible strains. There is simply no room for it. It does not fit. Lena would understand this. “I never thought of sex,” she would say, “never thought of it once, not even at the end when everything was around me and I was dancing.”