Shadow Man (Paragons of Queer Speculative Fiction) (4 page)

Like Prane Am, who had
called herself man-straight, a woman who liked men, but was now
seeing, maybe even sleeping with, a mem--if, of course, Jons Kaialis
had the story right. Tatian stared back out the window, at the
cityscape only partly obscured by the sun-screen, suddenly, violently
disgusted with it and himself and everything around him. There was
only one cure for that, as he knew perfectly well. He reached for the
keypad again, tied a secondary screen into the Nest's housekeeping
systems, and called up the schedules for the racquet courts. At least
two people at his rating were currently seeking partners, and he
hastily put his name into the system. A moment later, the screen
beeped, and offered him the chance to play Lefsin Morley if he could
get to the EHB Two courts in ten minutes. He pressed the accept
button, and headed for the door. The confirmation chimed as the door
closed behind him, and he grinned, anticipating losing his bad temper
in a simple, physical, game.

Man: (Concord) human
being possessing testes, XY chromosomes, some aspects of male
genitalia; he, his, him, himself.

Warreven

The library was cool, the night
breeze blowing in through the open windows. Warreven could smell the
ocean, the pungent smell of Ferryhead at low tide, could smell, too,
feelgood drifting in from the braziers in the compound itself. The
faitous
and
other workers at Stane house were celebrating Aldess's return to
normal life. He stretched his legs, feet digging into the thick
carpet. It was imported from off-world at God and the spirits alone
knew what expense--carpeting wasn't common on Hara, especially not
along the coast, where mildew was a constant problem--and the deep
wine-red color matched the strips of silk between and above the tall
bookcases. Tendlathe saw him looking, and grinned, reading the
thought.

"Yes, it cost a small
fortune. Father's idea." He gestured to the jug of wine that sat
next to a platter of fruit on one of the low tables. "Help
yourself, I remember you could always eat sweets."

Warreven smiled back,
acknowledging his weakness, and took one of the chunks of sourcane.
He turned it so that the fibers ran perpendicular to his fingers, and
bit carefully into the sour-sweet flesh. It had been soaked in
sweetrum, but the natural flavor was still there. The juice was as
sweet as the sweetrum, the plant itself sour, with a bitter-sharp
aftertaste that clung to the tongue. Tendlathe lifted the jug in
silent query, and Warreven nodded, waited while the other filled a
pair of tall glasses. He recognized the work--out of the Stiller
glassworks, sand from their miles of beachfront tinted with sea salts
and blowers' clays and the powders ground from half a dozen
plants--and wondered if Tendlathe was making a deliberate point, or
just using the best he had.

He hadn't seen
Tendlathe in a while, not up close, and took the chance to look
carefully again. They still looked much alike, though Warreven had
broadened through the hips and chest at puberty, while Tendlathe had
stayed slim as a reed; their skins were the still same shade of
golden brown, unmarked by the fierce sun. Tendlathe was still
dressing as traditionally as ever, in the
shirt-vest-and-loose-trousers suit that was popular in the
Stanelands, but the material was better than before, showing
off-world colors and an off-world eye for cut and form. Only the
jewelry remained the same, the wide etched-steel bracelets, cut from
the interior hull of the Captain's cabin before the hulk that had
been the colony ship broke up and fell flaming into Hara's seas,
and the matched steel hoops, each with a pendant square, faded blue
etched with lines of gold, which might have been part of the ship's
computer. Warreven touched his own bracelets--smaller, darker,
carved from the outer hull but still part of the ship--for
reassurance and thought again that Tendlathe was an extremely
handsome man. Not that there was anything between them beyond that
admiration: anything more had been put firmly out of bounds the day
he himself had refused to change legal gender. He accepted the glass
that Tendlathe held out to him and sipped the wine, nodding his
appreciation.

"This is nice."

"It's Delacoste,
they've planted a vineyard outside Estaern, with off-world
rootstock," Tendlathe answered. "They paid a near fortune for it,
mind you, and it has to be tended daily, but the result seems to be
worth it." He paused, looked away again, concentrating on setting
the jug of wine back in its place. "I'm sorry about Father, by
the way."

Warreven nodded. The
marriage was a sore point between them; he hadn't expected even
this oblique reference. "What's he up to, anyway, bringing all
that up again?"

"I wouldn't know."
Tendlathe's voice was cold, and Warreven sighed, accepting the
rebuff.

"So what did you
want, Ten?" he said, after a moment.

Tendlathe grinned,
exactly the expression, amused and slightly abashed, that he'd
always had when they'd both known he was speaking out of turn. "Like I
said, it's Aldess. She wants to go to an off-world
doctor, maybe even go off-world, see if they can help her carry to
term."

"It's not a bad
idea," Warreven said. "They probably can."

"I don't think she
should." Tendlathe took a deep breath. "I think it's dangerous,
and I want you to help me talk her out of it."

Warreven blinked. "Ten,
Aldess is never going to listen to me--she doesn't like me, she's
never liked me, and she doesn't listen to anybody once she's made
up her mind to something. Besides, I think it's probably a good
idea."

"It's dangerous,"
Tendlathe said again. "We're not really like them."

"The off-worlders
have been dealing with the problem for centuries," Warreven said. "It's
the same mutation that made the odd-bodied. Hyperlumin
causes miscarriages and intersexual births, everybody knows that. And
if anybody knows how to get around it, the off-worlders do--they're
still taking the stuff, you can't go FTL without it."

"I don't want her
going to them," Tendlathe said.

"God and the
spirits," Warreven began, and Tendlathe went on as though he hadn't
spoken.

"The
off-worlders--hyperlumin's their excuse, it justifies what they
are. But we're not like them. We're not the same."

"We're not that
different, either," Warreven answered. "You talk like they're
aliens or something."

"Well, they are,"
Tendlathe said. "In every way that really matters, they're
aliens. That's what Aldess and I have been arguing about, Raven,
that's why I want your help. We aren't like them, and we can't
afford to become like them. We're all that's left of what people,
human beings, are supposed to be, and if we change, that's lost
forever."

"Ten--" Warreven
broke off, shaking his head. "I agree with Aldess on this one. If
she wants to talk to the off-worlders, I think she should--if she
wants to go off-world, I think she should. It's stupid not to take
advantage of their skills."

Tendlathe sighed, shook
his head. He lifted the wine jug again, and Warreven held out his
glass automatically. "When we were back in school," Tendlathe
began, "remember the
vieuvant
's
daughter, Coldecine--they were Black Stanes from way up north in the
Stanelands, remember?"

Warreven nodded. He
remembered the girl, all right, a year younger than either of them,
but clever, so that she had been in most of their classes. She had
been striking at fifteen, long-necked, skin like polished wood, her
face already losing the roundness of childhood, fining down into the
serene planes of a statue. He hadn't thought of her in years,
wondered vaguely if she had retained that beauty.

"Remember when we
were studying the end of the First Wave?" Tendlathe went on, and
Warreven nodded again. "The off-worlder they hired in to teach
us--what was his name?"

"Sten something,"
Warreven said, wondering where this was leading. "Or something
Sten." The Donavies, Aldess their leader, had joked that he was a
blake sten
,
punning on the name and his nearly black skin: a stupid thing to
remember, after all these years.

"Colde's father
wouldn't let her come to those classes," Tend-lathe said. "Said
they might tell facts, but they weren't true, and he didn't want
his daughter having to say they were."

Warreven felt a chill
run down his spine, told himself it was only the night breeze on his
skin. The First Wave of Emigration had ended in 207, when people had
finally made the connection between hyperlumin--hyperlumin-A, he
corrected himself, remembering the classroom, the smell of
shaefler
outside the window and Sten-something's dry, accented
voice--and the increased rate of miscarriages and intersexual
births. FTL travel had ended almost overnight--no one had wanted to
risk the mutation, but it was impossible to travel through the jump
points without taking hyperlumin to suppress the FTL shock--and
hundreds of colonies had been virtually abandoned. Hara had been one
of those, a minor place, settled late, at the end of a particularly
unpleasant and ill-charted jump point. It had taken nearly four
hundred years for the Concord Worlds to find Hara again: too many
records had been lost as the old Federation split apart, each colony
slowly losing touch with its neighbors. Planets are big: most
colonies were well planned, well settled, and they survived; even
Hara, as mineral-poor as it was, had thrived. What was the loss of
technology, compared to the riches of the seas and jungles? But over
that time, the rate of intersexual births and of miscarriages had
remained just the same, something that could be ignored only as long
as Hara was out of touch with the rest of human-settled space. He
said, "It is true, Ten, and you know it. We're human, they're
human, we all come from the same stock, we've all been exposed to
hyperlumin. They just know how to handle it better."

"They've let it
take over," Tendlathe said. "And that's why we--why Hara can't
sign the Concord." He took a deep breath. "The point I was making
is, I think Colde's father was right. Kids shouldn't be taught
this, not the way we were--I think that's what ruined Haliday,
Raven, and it'll ruin you, too, if you're not careful. We need to
be very careful that we understand the difference between fact and
truth, and I'm not having a child of mine exposed to that."

Warreven stared at him
for a moment. They'd had this argument before, in one form or
another--it defined the basic difference between Traditionalists and
Modernists, and Warreven had been a Modernist from the day he'd
walked out on Temelathe's offer--but this was the most extreme
version he'd heard Tendlathe espouse. "Well, if you don't go to
the off-worlders, I doubt you'll have that problem."

"What do you mean?"
Tendlathe's face was tight and set behind the narrow beard.

Warreven sighed,
already regretting the words. "Just what I said. Aldess has had
four miscarriages already, not a live birth yet in, what, eighteen
bioyears? She's not stupid, she's never been stupid about this
sort of thing, and if she says she needs help from the off-worlders,
then I'd trust her."

"Then you won't
help me."

"I won't try to
talk her out of it," Warreven said.

"You never liked
her," Tendlathe said.

"No, I don't,"
Warreven answered, "but I think she's right."

"I might've known
you'd be jealous," Tendlathe said. He sounded remote, almost
thoughtful--
you would have
said calm
, Warreven thought,
except
for the grip of his hand on the arm of his chair that made his
knuckles stand out white against the gold of his skin
.

"I'm not jealous--"

"It was you who
turned me down."

Warreven took a deep
breath, no longer bothering to keep control of his temper. "I said
I wouldn't marry you, and I wouldn't change my sex. That's my
right, under law and custom, to say what I am, and I made my choice
to be a man. And I would still have slept with you. Then."

Something ugly writhed
across Tendlathe's face, and for an instant Warreven thought he'd
gone too far. He let his hand slide down the stem of the wineglass,
ready to smash it into an improvised dagger. It was a trick he'd
learned in the
wrangwys
bars and dance houses, never expected to use in Temelathe's
house--Then Tendlathe slammed his hand against the arm of his chair,
the sound very loud in the quiet space, and Warreven let himself
relax.

"I'm not wry-abed,"
Tendlathe said, through clenched teeth.

"Fine," Warreven
answered.
But I am
.
He let those words hang, unspoken, not needing to be spoken, set the
undamaged glass carefully on the table beside the half-full jug, and
pushed himself to his feet. "We both made choices, Ten. Live with
it."

Tendlathe looked away,
tight-lipped, said nothing. Warreven hesitated for a moment, wishing
there were something he could say that would bring back the old days,
said at last, "Good night." Tendlathe muttered something in
return. Warreven sighed, and turned away, letting himself out into
the cool dark of the garden.

Player: (Hara) an
off-worlder who is involved in trade, or who is willing to pay for
sexual favors; not a common term outside of Bonemarche arid
assimilated areas.

Trade: (Hara)
specifically, the semi-organized business of sex (paid for in money
or favors) between off-worlders and indigenes of either legal gender;
because these transactions take place outside the normal social
systems, and involve unusually large sums of money and/or metal as
inducement, an indigene in trade, whether a man or a woman, is not
necessarily considered to be a prostitute. By extension, the term
also covers indigenes and off-worlders who facilitate the buying and
selling of sexual favors, and the various permits that allow
off-worlders to stay on Hara.