The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 52

Truman and Epiphany Singh looked at one another and smiled. "How old were you when we got married?" Truman asked her. "Twenty?"

"I was almost twenty-one before you accepted my book and my rock," she said.

"So, in Earth years, what's that?" he said. "Thirteen?"

"A little over twelve," she said. "About time I was married up, I'd say."

"Wait," I said. "You said you were twelve years old when you got married?"

"Earth years," she said. "Yes, that's about right."

"You married at twelve? And you had-" I suddenly didn't want to ask, and said, "Do all women on Venus marry so young?"

"There are a lot of independent cities" Truman said. "Some of them must have different customs, I suppose. But it's the custom more or less everywhere I know."

"But that's-" I started to say, but couldn't think of how to finish. Sick? Perverted? But then, there were once a lot of cultures on Earth that had child marriages.

"We know the outer reaches have different customs," Epiphany said. "Other regions do things differently. The way we do it works for us."

"A man typically marries up at age twenty-one or so," Truman explained. "Say, twelve, thirteen years old, in Earth years. Maybe eleven. His wife will be about fifty or sixty-she'll be his instructor, then, as he grows up. What's that in Earth years-thirty? I know that in old Earth custom, both sides of a marriage are supposed to be the same age, but that's completely silly, is it not? Who's going to be the teacher, I should say?

"And then, when he grows up, by the time he reaches sixty or so he'll marry down, find a girl who's about twenty or twenty-one, and he'll serve as a teacher to her, I should say. And, in time, she'll marry down when she's sixty, and so on."

It seemed like a form of ritualized child abuse to me, but I thought it would be better not to say that aloud. Or, I thought, maybe I was reading too much into what he was saying. It was something like the medieval apprentice system. When he said teaching, maybe I was jumping to conclusions to think that he was talking about s.e.x. Maybe they held off on the s.e.x until the child grew up some. I thought I might be happier not knowing.

"A marriage is braided like a rope," Epiphany said. "Each element holds the next."

I looked from Truman to Epiphany and back. "You, too?" I asked Truman. "You were married when you were twelve?"

"In Earth years, I was thirteen, when I married up Triolet," he said. "Old. Best thing that ever happened to me. G.o.d, I needed somebody like her to straighten me out back then. And I needed somebody to teach me about s.e.x, I should say, although I didn't know it back then."

"And Triolet-"

"Oh, yes, and her husband before her, and before that. Our marriage goes back a hundred and ninety years, to when Raj Singh founded our family; we're a long braid, I should say."

I could picture it now. Every male in the braid would have two wives, one twenty years older; one twenty years younger. And every female would have an older and a younger husband. The whole a.s.sembly would indeed be something you could think of as a braid, alternating down generations. The interpersonal dynamics must be terribly complicated. And then I suddenly remembered why we were having this discussion. "My G.o.d," I said. "You're serious about this. So you're saying that Carlos Fernando isn't just playing a game. He actually plans to marry Leah."

"Of course," Epiphany said. "It's a surprise, but then, I'm not at all surprised. It's obviously what His Excellency was planning right from the beginning. He's a devious one, he is."

"He wants to have s.e.x with her."

She looked surprised. "Well, yes, of course. Wouldn't you? If you were twenty- I mean, twelve years old? Sure you're interested in s.e.x. Weren't you? It's about time His Excellency had a teacher." She paused a moment. "I wonder if she's any good? Earth people-she probably never had a good teacher of her own."

That was a subject I didn't want to pick up on. Our little fling on Mars seemed a long way away, and my whole body ached just thinking of it.

"s.e.x, it's all that young kids think of,"Truman cut in. "Sure. But for all that, I should say that s.e.x is the least important part of a braid. A braid is a business, Mr. Tinkerman, you should know that. His Excellency Carlos Fernando is required to marry up into a good braid. The tradition, and the explicit terms of the inheritance, are both very clear. There are only about five braids on Venus that meet the standards of the trust, and he's too closely related to half of them to be able to marry in. Everybody has been a.s.suming he would marry the wife of the Telios Delacroix braid; she's old enough to marry down now, and she's not related to him closely enough to matter. His proposition to Doctor Hamakawa-yes, that has everybody talking."

I was willing to grasp at any chance. "You mean, his marriage needs to be approved? He can't just marry anybody he likes?"

Truman Singh shook his head. "Of course he can't! I just told you. This is business as well as propagating the genes for the next thousand years. Most certainly he can't marry just anybody."

"But I think he just outmaneuvered them all,"Epiphany added."They thought they had him boxed in, didn't they? But they never thought that he'd go find an outworlder."

"They?" I said. "Who's they?"

"They never thought to guard against that," Epiphany continued.

"But he can't marry her, right?" I said. "For sure, she's not of the right family. She's not of any family. She's an orphan, she told me that. The inst.i.tute is her only family."

Truman shook his head."I think Epiphany's right,"he said."He just may have outfoxed them, I should say. If she's not of a family, doesn't have the dozens or hundreds of braided connections that everybody here must have, that means they can't find anything against her."

"Her scientific credentials-I bet they won't be able to find a flaw there." Epiphany said. "And, an orphan? That's brilliant. Just brilliant. No family ties at all. I bet he knew that. He worked hard to find just the right candidate, you can bet." She shook her head, smiling. "And we all thought he'd be another layabout, like his father."

"This is awful," I said. "I've got to do something."

"You? You're far too old for Dr. Hayakawa." Epiphany looked at me appraisingly."A good looking man, though-if I were ten, fifteen years younger, I'd give you another look. I have cousins with girls the right age. You're not married, you say?"

Outside the Singh quarters in sector Carbon, the sun was breaking the horizon as the city blew into the daylit hemisphere.

I hadn't been sure whether Epiphany's offer to find me a young girl had been genuine, but it was not what I needed, and I'd refused as politely as I could manage.

I had gone outside to think, or as close to"outside"as the floating city allowed, where all the breathable gas was inside the myriad bubbles. But what could I do? If it was a technical problem, I would be able to solve it, but this was a human problem, and that had always been my weakness.

From where I stood, I could walk to the edge of the world, the transparent gas envelope that held the breathable air in, and kept the carbon dioxide of the Venus atmosphere out. The sun was surrounded by a gauzy haze of thin high cloud, and encircled by a luminous golden halo, with mock suns flying in formation to the left and the right. The morning sunlight slanted across the cloudtops. My eyes hurt from the direct sun. I remembered the sun goggles in my knee pocket, and pulled them out. I pressed them onto my eyes, and tapped on the right side until the world was a comfortable dim.

Floating in the air, in capital letters barely darker than the background, were the words LINK: READY.

I turned my head, and the words s.h.i.+fted with my field of view, changing from dark letters to light depending on the background.

A communications link was open? Certainly not a satellite relay; the gla.s.ses couldn't have enough power to punch through to orbit. Did it mean the manta was hovering in the clouds below?

"h.e.l.lo, h.e.l.lo," I said, talking to the air. "Testing. Testing?"

Nothing.

Perhaps it wasn't audio. I tapped the right lens: dimmer, dimmer, dark; then back to full transparency. Maybe the other side? I tried tapping the left eye of the goggle, and a cursor appeared in my field of view.

With a little experimentation, I found that tapping allowed input in the form of Gandy-encoded text. It seemed to be a low bit-rate text only; the link power must be miniscule. But Gandy was a standard encoding, and I tapped out "CQ CQ."

Seek you, seek you.

The LINK: READY message changed to a light green, and in a moment the words changed to HERE.

WHO, I tapped.

MANTA 7, was the reply. NEWS?

CF PROPOSED LH, I tapped. !

KNOWN, came the reply. MORE?

NO.

OK. SIGNING OUT..

The LINK: READY message returned.

A com link, if I needed one. But I couldn't see how it helped me any.

I returned to examining the gas envelope. Where I stood was an enormous transparent pane, a square perhaps ten meters on an edge. I was standing near the bottom of the pane, where it ab.u.t.ted to the adjacent sheet with a joint of very thin carbon. I pressed on it, and felt it flex slightly. It couldn't be more than a millimeter thick; it would make sense to make the envelope no heavier than necessary. I tapped it with the heel of my hand, and could feel it vibrate; a resonant frequency of a few Hertz, I estimated. The engineering weak point would be the joint between panels: if the pane flexed enough, it would pop out from its mounting at the join.

Satisfied that I had solved at least one technical conundrum, I began to contemplate what Epiphany had said. Carlos Fernando was to have married the wife of the Telios Delacroix braid. Whoever she was, she might be relieved at discovering Carlos Fernando making other plans; she could well think the arranged marriage as much a trap as he apparently did. But still. Who was she, and what did she think of Carlos Fernando's new plan?

The guards had made it clear that I was not to communicate with Carlos Fernando or Leah, but had no instructions forbidding access to Braid Telios Delacroix.

The household seemed to be a carefully orchestrated chaos of children and adults of all ages, but now that I understood the Venus societal system a little, it made more sense. The wife of Telios Delacroix-once the wife-apparent of His Excellency Carlos Fernando-turned out to be a woman only a few years older than I was, with closely cropped gray hair. I realized I'd seen her before. At the banquet, she had been the woman sitting next to Carlos Fernando. She introduced herself as Miranda Telios Delacroix and introduced me to her up-husband, a stocky man perhaps sixty years old.

"We could use a young husband in this family," he told me. "Getting old, we are, and you can't count on children-they just go off and get married themselves."

There were two girls there, who Miranda Delacroix introduced as their two children. They were quiet, attempting to disappear into the background, smiling brightly but with their heads bowed to the ground, looking up at me through lowered eyelashes when they were brought out to be introduced. After the adults' attention had turned away from them, I noticed both of them surrept.i.tiously studying me. A day ago I wouldn't even have noticed.

"Now, either come and sit nicely and talk, or else go do your ch.o.r.es,"Miranda told them. "I'm sure the outworlder is quite bored with your buzzing in and out."

They both giggled and shook their heads and then disappeared into another room, although from time to time one or the other head would silently pop out to look at me, disappearing instantly if I turned my head to look We sat down at a low table that seemed to be made out of oak. Her husband brought in some coffee and then left us alone. The coffee was made in the Thai style, in a clear cup, in layers with thick sweet milk.

"So you are Doctor Hamakawa's friend," she said. "I've heard a lot about you. Do you mind my asking, what exactly is your relations.h.i.+p with Doctor Hamakawa?"

"I would like to see her," I said.

She frowned. "So?"

"And I can't."

She raised an eyebrow.

"He has these woman, these bodyguards-"

Miranda Delacroix laughed."Ah,I see! Oh,my little Carli is just too precious for words. I can't believe he's jealous. I do think that this time he's really infatuated." She tapped on the tabletop with her fingers for a moment, and I realized that the oak tabletop was another one of the embedded computer systems. "Goodness, Carli is not yet the owner of everything, and I don't see why you shouldn't see whomever you like. I've sent a message to Doctor Hamakawa that you would like to see her."

"Thank you."

She waved her hand.

It occurred to me that Carlos Fernando was about the same age as her daughters, perhaps even a cla.s.smate of theirs. She must have known him since he was a baby. It did seem a little unfair to him-if they were married, she would have all the advantage, and for a moment I understood his dilemma. Then something she had said struck me.

"He's not yet owner of everything, you said," I said. "I don't understand your customs, Mrs. Delacroix. Please enlighten me. What do you mean, yet?"

"Well, you know that he doesn't come into his majority until he's married," she said.

The picture was beginning to make sense. Carlos Fernando desperately wanted to control things, I thought. And he needed to be married to do it. "And once he's married?"

"Then he comes into his inheritance, of course," she said. "But since he'll be married, the braid will be in control of the fortune. You wouldn't want a twenty-one-year-old kid in charge of the entire Nordwald-Gruenbaum holdings? That would be ruinous. The first Nordwald knew that. That's why he married his son into the la Jolla braid. That's the way it's always been done."

"I see," I said. If Miranda Delacroix married Carlos Fernando, she-not he-would control the Nordwald-Gruenbaum fortune. She had the years of experience, she knew the politics, how the system worked. He would be the child in the relations.h.i.+p. He would always be the child in the relations.h.i.+p.

Miranda Delacroix had every reason to want to make sure that Leah Hamakawa didn't marry Carlos Fernando. She was my natural ally.

And also, she-and her husband-had every reason to want to kill Leah Hamakawa.

Suddenly the guards that followed Carlos Fernando seemed somewhat less of an affectation. Just how good were the bodyguards? And then I had another thought. Had she, or her husband, hired the pirates to shoot down my kayak? The pirates clearly had been after Leah, not me. They had known that Leah was flying a kayak; somebody must have been feeding them information. If it hadn't been her, then who?

I looked at her with new suspicions. She was looking back at me with a steady gaze. "Of course, if your Doctor Leah Hamakawa intends to accept the proposal, the two of them will be starting a new braid. She would nominally be the senior, of course, but I wonder-"

"But would she be allowed to?" I interrupted. "If she decided to marry Carlos Fernando, wouldn't somebody stop her?"

She laughed. "No, I'm afraid that little Carli made his plan well. He's the child of a Gruenbaum,all right.There's no legal grounds for the families to object; she may be an outworlder, but he's made an end run around all the possible objections."

"And you?"

"Do you think I have choices? If he decides to ask me for advice, I'll tell him it's not a good idea. But I'm halfway tempted to just see what he does."

And give up her chance to be the richest woman in the known universe? I had my doubts.

"Do you think you can talk her out of it?" she said. "Do you think you have something to offer her? As I understand it, you don't own anything. You're hired help, a gypsy of the solar system. Is there a single thing that Carli is offering her that you can match?"

"Companions.h.i.+p," I said. It sounded feeble, even to me.

"Companions.h.i.+p?" she echoed, sarcastically. "Is that all? I would have thought most outworlder men would have promised love. You are honest, at least, I'll give you that,"

"Yes, love," I said, miserable. "I'd offer her love."

"Love," she said. "Well, how about that. Yes, that's what outworlders marry for; I've read about it. You don't seem to know, do you? This isn't about love. It's not even about s.e.x, although there will be plenty of that, I can a.s.sure you, more than enough to turn my little Carlos inside out and make him think he's learning something about love.

"This is about business, Mr. Tinkerman. You don't seem to have noticed that. Not love, not s.e.x, not family. It's business."

Miranda Telios Delacroix's message had gotten through to Leah, and she called me up to her quarters. The women guards did not seem happy about this, but they had apparently been instructed to obey her direct orders, and two red-clad guardswomen led me to her quarters.

"What happened to you? What happened to your face?" she said, when she saw me.

I reached up and touched my face. It didn't hurt, but the acid burns had left behind red splotches and patches of peeling skin. I filled her in on the wreck of the kayak and the rescue, or kidnapping,by pirates. And then I told her about Carlos. "Take another look at that book he gave you. I don't know where he got it, and I don't want to guess what it cost, but I'll say it's a sure bet it's no facsimile."