Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 22 Read online

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  Small Beer Press

  www.lcrw.net

  Copyright ©2008 by The Authors

  First published in US, 2008

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  NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

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  CONTENTS

  fiction

  Love Might Be Too Strong a Word

  Going to France

  American Dreamers

  Dear Aunt Gwenda

  Mike's Place

  The Camera & the Octopus

  Escape

  Away

  Vinegar and Brown Paper

  Self Story

  Snowdrops

  The Honeymoon Suite

  To a Child Who Is Still a FAQ

  To the Moon Alice

  Portfolio

  Dearest Cecily

  Who Was That Masked Writer?

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  Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet

  No. 22

  Cabal-lite-ites

  Gavin J. Grant

  Kelly Link

  Jedediah Berry

  Michael J. DeLuca

  With reading assistance from:

  Katherine Duckett

  Margaret Kinney

  Sara Majka

  Julia Botero

  Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, No.22

  June 2008 (The Forest for the Trees Issue). ISSN 1544-7782. Since 1996 LCRW has usually appeared in June and November from Small Beer Press, 150 Pleasant St., Easthampton, MA 01027 | [email protected] lcrw.net/lcrw $5 per single issue or $20/4. Contents © the authors. All rights reserved. Submissions, requests for guidelines, & all good things should be sent to the address above. No SASE: no reply. Printed by Paradise Copies, 21 Conz Street, Northampton, MA 8200;01060 413-585-0414

  fiction

  Charlie Anders Love Might Be Too Strong a Word

  Maureen F. McHugh Going to France

  Caleb Wilson American Dreamers

  David J. Schwartz Mike's Place

  Jeremie McKnight The Camera & the Octopus

  Cara Spindler Escape

  William Alexander Away

  Becca De La Rosa Vinegar and Brown Paper

  Carol Emshwiller Self Story

  Alex Dally MacFarlane Snowdrops

  Jodi Lynn Villers The Honeymoon Suite

  Miriam Allred To a Child Who Is Still a FAQ

  Mark Rigney Portfolio

  Kristine Dikeman Dearest Cecily

  nonfiction

  Gwenda Bond Dear Aunt Gwenda

  comics

  Abby Denson Snake Slayer

  Michael J. DeLuca The Freddie Mercury Challenge

  poetry

  Eileen Gunn To the Moon Alice

  cover Derek Ford

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Love Might Be Too Strong a Word

  Charlie Anders

  Here's how I remember it:

  A touch shocked me. I was reaching for a flash-seared bog-oyster, and then a fingertip, softer than I'd ever felt, brushed my knuckle. The softness startled me so much, it took me a moment to realize the hand had seven fingers, three more than mine.

  Be held a striped cloth in ber other hand. I came up with the correct pronoun by instinct, even before my mind took in the fact that a pilot was touching my hand. Holy shit, a pilot!

  I turned. Be smiled at me, mouth impossibly small, eyes panoramic and limpid. So beautiful I wanted to choke. “You dropped this,” be said. My bandana looked so foreign in ber fingers, I almost didn't recognize it.

  And then be tied it around my neck, so gently I couldn't help shivering. Those fingers!

  And then, it opened. Just a tiny dilation, but I almost had to lean against the cafeteria table. Everyone in the universe was watching. I knew, without reaching around, that there was a teeny wet spot on the small of my back.

  Until that moment, I'd barely ever thought about my harnt, the little hole just above my tailbone. It was just there. It had never opened on its own, much less gotten wet. And nobody had ever touched it, of course. And now, somehow it knew.

  My harnt closed again, but it didn't make as tight a seal as before. Or at least it felt restless. It was going to bother me. Right now, it was all I could think about.

  The pilot had finished tying my bandana, but kept looking at me. “You're so lovely,” be said to me. “What's your name?"

  "Mab.” I managed to avoid stammering. “Short for Mabirelle."

  Be smiled. “I'm Dot.” And then be bowed and left me to face the stares of my fellow dailys.

  * * * *

  Here's how they tell it:

  Ah love, mystery confounding! Oh lovers, your sighs the dark matter that limns our course. Who can understand the ways of love: ever cruel, ever bountiful? Not the boides, not the breeders, not even the spirers with their countless eyes and base-27 calculations!

  Dot lo Manaret, honored third-level pilot of the City, known for ber gallantry and aplomb, was never word-lost. Until the day be wandered down to the daily canteen and ber eyes fell on the surpassing loveliness of Mabirelle, most radiant of all the dailys. In that instant, Dot's heart fell into Mabirelle's pocket, and Dot's eyes, which had encompassed interstellar space, now had one vista only. Lost was Dot, lost forever, to the love of Mabirelle!

  A chasm wider than the Inner Axis separated these two lovers, one from the highest dar, the other from the lowest. Pity poor Dot and Mabirelle, their love against all society's norms, their furtive meetings stolen from the moments between their far-separate undertakings. Theirs must be a fleeting happiness, but how bright the afterimage!

  Love, why do you torment us so? Why must we pine, so far from our Cluster and from our new homeworld? Is happiness a mere whisper on the edge of daydreams? Why, love, why? But love, as ever, disdains to answer. Our tears must be question and answer both!

  * * * *

  Love! Love is all they ever talk about, and I've avoided it like the unshielded areas where the outringers work. The stupid, stupid courtship, the crappy poetry, the singing, the dreamliminals ... they consume our lives when we're not working, and usually even when we are. It's a miracle the City hasn't spun off course into an oort cloud long ago.

  But really, it's true. The City runs on love. It keeps us sane, more or less. Unlike the dark matter that flows into our massive converters, it's an infinitely renewable fuel. As to whether it pollutes, you probably already have your own opinions about that.

  Right after the bandanna incident, my sibs started treating me differently. “Mab, I heard be kissed you! That darling little mouth!” “Mab, isn't be beautiful? Oh, of course be's beautiful!” Sometimes they teased: “Mab's going to be a pilot's mate! Mab, what's your secret? Did you steal a holo-shield?” I know for a fact that a few of the other dailys have been with pilots, but furtively, in dark song-booths or under laundry decks.

  One daily even tried to sneak me a bubble of some noxious substance. I was supposed to squirt it onto my harnt to make it more pleasant to Dot when be manned me. As if I would ever let that happen.

  Because we clean the entire City, handle the waste units and supply the food, dailys go everywhere. The lower middle dars, the boides and the outringers romance us sometimes. The upper middle dars, occasionally. But no pilot had ever romanced a daily, as far as any of us remembered. Until now.

  I figured a f
ew days would pass, then the stupid talk would stop and the other dailys would go back to being my friends and letting me finger them in their bunks when nobody was looking.

  Then the poem showed up. Typical courtship crap: Dot tight-beamed it to my handle, but “forgot” to encrypt it. Which means everybody in the City saw it before I did. “No food can I taste, my course corrections go awry. I falter in everything, dreaming of your touch. Oh Mabirelle! Your Dot will die without you."

  In other words: “Woman to me, or I'll send the City a fraction off course, and we'll all die in starless space.” And that's supposed to be romantic!

  At that point, I was doomed. They all took turns reading it and squealing. My so-called best friend, Idra, kept hugging me and jumping up and down until I wanted to smack ym. “Mab, it's so beautiful! It's like something from a sugar-box holo!"

  "Oh yeah, it's great.” I didn't even try to sound excited.

  It's weird: I would have given anything for the other dailys to stop being ashamed of me. Even when they let me finger all their holes after lights-out, they wouldn't look at me. They were always trying to introduce me to some dashing boide so I could woman like everybody else. Ever since we left the Cluster, they kept trying to fix me. Now, for the first time, they were proud of me, and I wanted to die.

  I don't woman. I just don't.

  Oh, I have the involutary responses just like everybody else. When I meet a particularly stout outringer, my ruhr feels a little itchy. I make a habit of wearing a scarf when I clean the outringers’ quarters, so they won't see anything. But I just don't like the idea.

  A couple of days after the poem, Dot turned up again. Oh, be didn't come over and say hi like a normal person. Of course not. Instead be turned up in the cafeteria where we'd first met, perched on top of the air shaft on ber knees. Be had all fourteen fingers on a big flarinelle and was playing some dirge-y shanty while moaning about how ber heart was imploding for the love of me. Be wore an outfit with a million laces and buckles, maybe just to remind me just how clever ber fingers were.

  I wanted to turn and run back to the dailys’ hab areas, but my sibs all grabbed me and cried all over my favorite quicksuit. I had to stay and listen to the whole fucking thing. Dot couldn't sing to save ber life. After that, I was the dailys’ greatest romantic hero ever. When was I going to send a poem back? When would I acknowledge Dot's suffering?

  The next day, I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the boides’ segment. They always claim our knees and backs are genetically engineered to make us better scrubbers. They're filthy liars. Or at least it's not enough. I hate cleaning up after the boides, who track all sorts of crap from the power units. At least I don't have to clean the power units themselves, since my body isn't designed to withstand those forces the way the boides are.

  Anyway, I was crawling around trying to clean up some stuff that I didn't even want to think about. I heard some motion behind me, and scuttled around to see a boide staring at where my ass had just been.

  At first, I thought po wanted to sexually harrass me, which is what the boides usually want when I'm working. Dailys, like me, are pretty much the only dar the boides can man. They woman to the pilots, the outringers and the breeders. I've heard the boides can man the spirers, too, but it probably doesn't happen much.

  "I had a great love once,” the boide said. “And I let zm slip away, and I've never forgiven myself.” Oh great. Romantic advice. All of a sudden, I wished the boide would just grope me. I could tell po wanted to, from the matching bulges on either side of por hip bones. But no. “We're in space for countless decades, but in all that time you may only get one chance at a great love,” po said.

  "Just because you blew off some dumb breeder once, doesn't mean you get to give me advice.” I looked por over: a little less squat and greasy than most boides, but still a solid brick of muscle and radiation-resistant hide. But nimble, the way you have to be if you manipulate the City's power grid.

  "The breeders and the pilots are different from you and me,” po said. “They have higher concerns, loftier thoughts. When they train that light on us, it can feel like we're going to burn up. But it's the closest to real meaning, to glory, we can get."

  Normally, the boides treat us as if we're way beneath them. It's only in comparison to a pilot that po and I could become “we.” Or if po wanted to man me, we might be “we” for an hour or two. And po did want me, those twin bulges don't lie.

  "Thanks for the advice,” I said. “I feel loftier already."

  "Don't laugh it off. When love comes, you have to” blah blah blah. Po kept it up for the next hour or so, while I scrubbed and scraped. There are cleaning machines, of course, but they don't do such a great job with the really nasty stains. And the spirers are too busy doing “exalted” things to upgrade them.

  * * * *

  It went on like that. People giving me advice. Worse, the other dailys wouldn't let me touch them any more after lights out. “Mab, we let you touch us when there's nothing better around,” Idra told me while we waited to step into the bathing tubes. “But a pilot! I mean, don't you think you should save yourself?"

  "For what?” I asked, but then the tubes opened and we stepped in, to fall through a tunnel where water, and then supercompressed air, sprayed us. I've heard the pilots and spirers have baths.

  I could never get tired of seeing Idra naked, even though I've bathed with ym so many times now, and touched ym in yr bunk. Even though Idra drove me nuts with yr crushes and yr face-pastes and yr romance dreamliminals, y kept me sane. I didn't know what I'd do if I couldn't talk to Idra. Maybe I even loved ym. A little.

  We'd met back in the Cluster, when we were both training for this voyage. Idra and I had been grown for this mission, but we still had to train and prove ourselves. Basic safety stuff, mostly, since the City can't replace us if we get ourselves killed out here. Idra was the only other one, besides me, in our class who'd asked about other stuff, like how the City navigated and how the power grid worked (or failed to, sometimes).

  I'd started hanging out with Idra between classes, and we'd laugh at the silly questions some of the other dailys asked, about how to get face-paste in the City. I'd thought yr and I would always share everything, until the City launched and y fell in love for the first time, with an outringer. Ever since then, it was one crush after another, putting Idra in an elliptical orbit away from me and then back to me when it fell apart. I'd mostly gotten used to it.

  "You know,” I told Idra when we were dressing afterwards. “There are only two reasons people are so love crazy around here. Because the only children in the City are the dormant embryos in the breedpods, waiting for planetfall. And because it helps us forget we're stuck at the bottom of the heap forever."

  "If you talk to Dot like that, be'll drop you like a used snot-catcher,” Idra told me. Y had a warning look in yr eyes and mouth, but yr nose wrinkled the way it always did when I made ym laugh.

  "That's a good idea,” I said. “Maybe I'll try that."

  Actually, here was my problem. I wanted to say no to Dot, but be never gave me a chance. Be never even asked me if I wanted to pair-bond with ber, or go live in the Pilot Quarter, or whatever. Be just kept sending little crystal cameos, serenading me from a safe distance, paying other dailys to make little delicacies for me. (A pilot wouldn't know how to cook to save ber life.) Be never came close enough for me to respond.

  And yet, I was cruel. I was coy. I tormented Dot. Or so Dot claimed, and so the balladeers announced to the whole City. I was killing a pilot, one of only 500 in the whole City, with my coldness. Had anyone ever been as cruel as me? In the entire history of the City, and the Cluster before that? Speaking of which, I was famous enough now that my sibs back in the Cluster were going to hear about this.

  "I don't get it,” I told Idra. “What am I supposed to do anyway? When be threw all those bright catsilk bandannas down to me from the upper walkway, I tried to avoid catching them, but you guys grabbed them for me. How
am I supposed to respond?"

  "Write back,” Idra said. “Write a poem, or if you can't manage that, a regular letter. I'll tight-beam it for you. You don't even have to write it yourself, I'll write it for you."

  Oh, Idra. I never wanted to be you, but I always want to be with you. I certainly never wanted you to want to be me.

  "Can I write a letter asking ber to leave me alone?"

  "It'll just make ber try harder. Or maybe be'll go away permanently, throw berself into the boides’ radiation zone. You can't trifle with love, Mab. Love is the most powerful force in the universe. Love is unstoppable, unfathomable."

  "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Love. Got it."

  * * * *

  I have no idea how long Dot could have gone on courting me, showering me with tears from those massive eyes. I took the initiative. I sent Dot a message telling ber to meet me in one of the song-booths in the dailys’ quarter, where my sibs go to have furtive sex with other dars.

  Dot wrote back, a dozen sonnets filled with leaping jubilation that I would hear ber suit in person. But couldn't we meet someplace more romantic? Someplace more beautiful? There were some lovely little restaurants in the pilot quarter. (I knew that, since I'd worked in their kitchens.) Or we could sail a skimmer around the edge of the Outring, on dalfur cushions, with a flarinelle trio playing to us.

  "Sorry,” I wrote back. “You come to me, or no meeting."

  I booked a song-booth and paid for it myself. Instead of some schlocky flarinelle music, I ordered up a couple hours of the most raucous slash-and-grab, the stuff they're always threatening to ban. I got there early, so I'd be sitting with my feet up when Dot got there.

  I'll let you pretend you've never been inside a song-booth. Basically they're coffin-shaped, with a bench running lengthwise and a big screen overhead showing patterns or dumb holo-stories. Big speakers at either end. Unless you're really tall, you can just about sit on the bench if you scoot down, but eventually it becomes easier to lay on it lengthwise, which is what it's really there for. Nobody ever goes there to listen to music and watch pretty colors, unless they're really, really dumb.