Shadow Man

The White Watch House was built like any other mesnie hall, but on a much grander scale. Warreven leaned on the railing of the gallery that ran around three walls, looking out over the crowd below. They still filled the open area at the center of the hall, though the crowd around Aldess Donavie had thinned out a little. She looked grateful, if anything, though it was hard to tell beneath the drape of the white-and-silver shaal that covered her dark hair. Still, she was doubly alien here, a Stane only by marriage, Red Watch rather than White; it couldn’t be easy to perform the rituals of mourning and absolution without the comfort of her own clan’s ancestor tablets, her own kin to offer advice.

And that, Warreven thought, was just the sort of sentiment Aldess herself would never tolerate. She had gone into her marriage clear-eyed—eager, even—for the power of being married to the son of the Most Important Man, and if she regretted this miscarriage, it was largely because it put off the day that she confirmed her status by becoming the mother of his child. If she had looked worn-out when he had paid his formal regrets, the lines on her face suddenly stark, it was only the physical stress. This was her fourth miscarriage in nearly eighteen bioyears of marriage; she would have to be worrying about her ability to carry any child to term, wondering whether to seek off-world help. They had been at school together, years ago, and he remembered her ambitions: if she had to go off-world to find a way to consolidate her position, her rank within the most important of the Stane mesnies, she would do it without hesitation. At least Stane was rich enough to afford that intervention.

Warreven heard laughter from the north end of the hall, a familiar, rich sound intended to carry, and leaned forward a little against the railing. Temelathe Stane, Speaker for the Watch Council, and the Most Important Man on Hara in fact as well as in sour jokes, stood on the low dais, head thrown back, still laughing at something the man at his side had said. As Warreven watched, Temelathe clapped the stranger on the shoulder, said something, still grinning. The stranger smiled back—an off-worlder, almost certainly a representative of one of the out-system pharmaceutical companies that dominated Hara’s economy—and stepped away. Temelathe stood alone for an instant, hands on hips, legs spread wide, surveying the hall. Consciously or not, his pose echoed the Captain carved on the wall above him, and Warreven allowed himself a rather bitter smile. The massive carving—it was a famous work of art, commissioned a hundred years ago by Stane from his own Stiller clan, showing all seven of the spirits who mediated between God and man—had recently been repainted. The colors glowed in the sunlight that streamed in through the gallery windows and the wide-open doors, and there was no mistaking the resemblance between the Captain’s face and Temelathe’s broad bones. He had even pulled his gray hair into an old-fashioned knot at the nape of his neck, imitating the carving. Duredent Stiller, who had carved the piece, would be turning over in his grave if he could see it, Warreven thought. The rivalry between Stane and Stiller was old and deep, dating from before the first days of settlement, from the colony ship itself and the legendary animosity between Captain Stane and Chief Stiller; the fact that Stane had in effect won that ancient battle only made the situation worse. In the carving, the Heart-breaker turned her face away, smiling at Caritan crouching at her skirts, and Cousin-Jack, the spirit of the land, shaded his eyes to look into an invisible distance, but even Duredent had been unable to blunt the Captain’s authority. The rest of the spirits—Genevoe the Trickster, stolid Madansa of the Markets, even Agede, the keeper of the door between life and death—stood shoulder to shoulder with the Captain, their domains meaningless without the Captain’s strength to support them.

There was a movement in the crowd then, and a young man in the traditional tunic-and-trousers suit forced his way to the dais, said something quietly to Temelathe. The Most Important Man nodded, and then clapped his hands loudly. Heads turned all across the hall, conversation stopping instantly as people realized who was summoning their attention.

“Miri, mirrimi,” Temelathe called. “And our distinguished off-world visitors. If you haven’t yet paid your respects to my daughter-in-law, this is your last chance to do it.” He paused then, but no one moved. From his place in the balcony, Warreven saw Aldess lean sideways, murmuring something to another woman he didn’t recognize. Tendlathe, Temelathe’s only son and her husband, was nowhere in sight.

“The wheel has turned,” Temelathe went on, “and the doors have opened. We welcome the spirits who carry us as we carry them in our hearts.” He nodded to the young man beside him, who lifted a bell in a carved and painted frame. It was metal, forged from the salvage of the ship that had brought their ancestors to Hara, and its odd, resonant note carried weirdly in the stillness. It was answered by the shrilling of a whistle, and then the beat of drums. The people by the entrance gave way, clearing a path, and familiar figures danced in—two vieuvants, the old souls who served God and the spirits, moving as though carried on the heady rhythm. The first vieuvant was dressed as Agede, all in black, one eye blinded by a dark patch, the second as the Heart-breaker, her cheek scored with the three parallel lines that marked that spirit. She carried a new shaal, brilliant saffron silk embroidered with glittering glass beads and shells and even a scattering of metal, and spun it into the air as she twirled through her dance. All around the hall, people began clapping, picking up the rhythm of the drums.

Agede led her up the hall, three drummers following them, and then back down again, stopped at last in front of Aldess. She touched her lips in dutiful acknowledgment, lowering her shaal to her shoulder, and the vieuvant produced a bottle of sweetrum from under his tunic. He lifted it in salute, drank, then sprayed a second mouthful of the liquid over Aldess’s face and hair. She accepted the blessing without flinching and there were cheers and scattered, off-beat clapping from the onlookers. The second vieuvant spun forward then, skirts belling as she turned, dipped, and extended the length of saffron silk. Aldess touched her lips again, and took it, wrapped it in place of the other, over her head and shoulders. There were more cheers, and the vieuvants turned away, dancing back toward the doors, the drummers following at a respectful pace.

“What—exactly—was that all about?” a woman’s voice said quietly at his elbow. She had spoken franca, but the liquid off-world vowels were unmistakable, and Warreven was not surprised to see a woman in the drab coat of a pharmaceutical leaning on the rail beside him. He knew her slightly: Sera Ax Cyma, her name was; she was new to the planet, and they had had dealings in the traditional court where he was an advocate in a matter of trade. Those dealings had been settled with satisfaction for both sides, and he answered willingly enough.

“It’s the end of Aldess’s mourning. Agede—the Doorkeeper, he holds the doors of life and death—has released her, and the Heart-breaker is reblessing her marriage.”

“I guessed some of that,” Cyma said, and sounded faintly pleased with herself. “But why’d he spit the rum on her?”

“It’s a blessing,” Warreven said. “Traditional.” In the hall below, he could see Aldess discreetly wiping her face with one corner of her new shaal.

“I see. And the dancers—vieuvants—” She corrected herself hastily, and Warreven nodded. “They’re representing the spirits?”

“More or less,” Warreven began—he never quite knew how to explain the spirits to off-worlders—and felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Raven.”

There weren’t many people here, in the White Watch House, who would call him by his childhood nickname. He turned, already smiling, to see Tendlathe Stane beside him. “Ten. It’s good to see you. I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thanks.” Tendlathe looked at him, refusing to match the smile. “Father wants to talk to you.”

“Why?” Even as the word slipped out, Warreven regretted it, but knew better than to apologize.

Tendlathe shrugged. “I wouldn’t know,” he said, and tilted his head toward the off-worlder in unspoken warning.

Warreven sighed. Everyone knew that Tendlathe opposed the pharmaceuticals’ influence, but there was no point in being actively rude. He nodded to the woman. “If you’ll excuse me, mirrim?”

“Of course,” Cyma said, backing away, and sounded relieved to be clear of their conversation.

“So what does he want?” Warreven asked, and followed Tendlathe along the length of the gallery toward the stairs.

“I don’t really know,” Tendlathe answered. “He just said he wanted to be sure to talk to you before you left.”

Warreven made a sour face. A summons like that from the Most Important Man could mean almost anything, from a trade case—and the advocacy group was handling half a dozen right now, in both the off-world and the traditional courts—to some business between Stane and Stiller. He had acted as a go-between for Temelathe before…. He shook the thought away. There was no point in speculating; Temelathe would tell him soon enough.

Now that the main part of the ceremony was over, faitous had appeared in the main hall, carrying trays of food and braided feel-good and jugs of sweetrum. Warreven stopped to snag a cup of sweetrum from a passing woman, and Tendlathe looked over his shoulder, showing teeth in a not entirely friendly smile.

“Think you’ll need that?”

“You tell me,” Warreven answered, and this time Tendlathe did laugh.

“I told you, I don’t know what he wants. But—” He stopped abruptly, tried again. “Look, Raven, I haven’t seen you in ages. Can we get together after this? We can talk properly then, not like here.”

Warreven hesitated. There were a lot of reasons he hadn’t seen much of Tendlathe over the past eight or nine years. They had been at the Concord-sponsored boarding school in Rivers-edge together, and they had spent holidays together at Temelathe’s mesnie outside Gedesrede, along with half a dozen other children of Important Men and Women. They had come of different clans and Watches—collected, Warreven had realized very early, to improve Temelathe’s position as Speaker of the Watch Council—but for some reason Temelathe had taken a liking to him. When he had turned eighteen—human years, bioyears, not the longer calendar years—Temelathe had proposed a marriage between him and Tendlathe. It had been contingent on a change of Warreven’s legal gender, of course: a great honor, but an even greater sacrifice, given the patrilineal structure of both his own and Temelathe’s mesnies. Luckily, Tendlathe had been equally unenthusiastic about the proposal, and it had been relatively easy to decline. Though if he had not been the one to become the wife, Warreven admitted, it would have been a tempting offer. But now there was too much between them, not just politics, but the marriage that hadn’t happened as well as the one that had to make it simple to retrieve the old ease. He had waited too long, and Tendlathe looked away.

“It’s not that important.”

“What do you want, Ten?”

Tendlathe looked back at him. They were much of a size, both thin and slight, so similar in looks and coloring that when they were children strangers had usually assumed they were siblings, to their mutual disdain. Tendlathe had grown his beard as soon as he was able, but the narrow dark line, coupled with the long hair pulled back into a severe braid only seemed to emphasize the matching length of chin. “It’s Aldess,” he said at last. “I want to talk to someone who deals with the off-worlders regularly.”

So Aldess was thinking of going off-world for help with her next pregnancy, Warreven thought. It made sense: the Concord Worlds had better technology anyway, and they were used to dealing with these complications. He said, “All right, but I don’t know what I can tell you. When?”

“After this is over,” Tendlathe said. “Come by the house—our house, not here—I’ll give you dinner, if you’d like.”

“You don’t have to feed me,” Warreven said. “Besides, I have plans.” Something flickered in Tendlathe’s eyes, disappointment, maybe, or annoyance, and Warreven couldn’t quite repress a sense of satisfaction. And that, he knew, was ridiculous: he and Tendlathe had defined their relationship years before, and they had both ruled out anything more than friendship. He grinned, at himself this time, and said, “I’ll come by at the twentieth hour?”

Tendlathe nodded. They had reached the dais then, and he stopped a calculated distance from the Most Important Man. Before he could say anything, however, Temelathe turned to face them, waved one big hand in welcome.

“Raven! Come up here.” He turned to the man at his side, an off-worlder in the severely cut uniform of one of the Big Six. “This is Warreven… Stiller, the one I told you about. The one who might have been my daughter-in-law.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Warreven saw Tendlathe freeze for a fraction of a second, his handsome, bony face going absolutely still, and then he turned on his heel and stalked back through the crowd, heading toward the table where Aldess was holding court. Warreven allowed himself a sour smile and stepped up onto the dais. “That was a long time ago, my father. I decided against it, and so did Tendlathe. I remain a man, thank you.” He saw the off-worlder looking at him, saw the familiar movement of his eyes checking the shape of hips and shoulders and chest, looking for the indicators of true gender. “Legally, at any rate, which is what matters.”

The off-worlder’s eyes snapped away, fixing on something in the distance, over Temelathe’s shoulder, and Warreven was pleased to see a faint color rising under the man’s fair skin. If he’d been on Hara long enough to be doing business with the Most Important Man, he’d been there long enough to know better than to be so obvious about it. Harans might actually have the same five sexes as any other human beings, but law and custom admitted only two.

“And in the process,” Temelathe said, “you missed a chance to serve your clan and Watch. But, no matter.” He gestured again, drawing Warreven closer. “I want to introduce you to Ser Wile Kolbjorn, of Kerendach. The two of you may be doing business together.”

Kolbjorn held out his hand, the off-world greeting, and Warreven took it warily. He knew Kerendach, of course, any Stiller did: Kerendach was the largest of the Big Six, held most of Stiller’s harvest contracts. They paid the clan in metal and in concord dollars for the various products it gathered from land and sea; if anyone thought Kerendach could pay more, they were careful not to say it. Kerendach had Temelathe’s backing, and that meant there was no point in negotiating. Though why Temelathe thinks I’ll be doing business with them, Warreven thought, I don’t know. Unless they’ve been dabbling in trade. That was more than likely—the Big Six didn’t need the extra income, or the hassles with their own agencies, IDCA, the Interstellar Disease Control Agency, chief among them, that trade inevitably caused, but it was equally inevitable that low-paid clerks and shipping techs would take their chances at that game. “Mir Kolbjorn,” he said, and braced himself for whatever the approach would be.

To his surprise, however, Kolbjorn merely nodded, releasing his hand, and looked from him to Temelathe. “A pleasure meeting you, Mir Warreven. I’ll look forward to further acquaintance. Mir Temelathe, thank you. Please give my best wishes to your daughter-in-law.” His eyes flickered a little at that, darting toward Warreven, but he controlled himself instantly and turned away.

Warreven watched him go, tilted his head to one side. “And what was that all about, my father?”

Temelathe laughed, and flung a heavy arm across the other’s shoulders. “Insurance, my son, for both of you. Trade’s a nasty business, you should have more strings to your bow.”

“If you say so,” Warreven murmured, not bothering to hide his skepticism. Temelathe laughed again, and drew him down from the dais with him.

~

Fem: (Concord) human being possessing testes, XY chromosomes, some aspects of female genitalia but not possessing ovaries; %e, %er, %er, %erself

Mhyre Tatian

The room was artificially lit, and dim, the curtains and sunscreens drawn tight against the day’s fading light. The environ-mental system rumbled in the next room, churning cooled air into the three rooms of the apartment, and the apartment’s current owner listened with half an ear, judging the output. Nothing on Hara was ever quite cool enough—he had been born on one cold planet, had spent his childhood and adolescence on another—and he had reconfigured the room plan so that he slept next to the main cooling vent. It was noisy, but it meant that he could sleep—and it also meant that the current main room, which had been intended as the bedroom, was warmer than he liked. He looked around the table, wondering if he could afford to turn the system down another notch. His employer, New Antioch Pharmaceutical Design, was reasonably generous with its housing allowance, but cooling costs were always astronomical this time of year. Arsidy Shraga sat opposite him, frowning over his set-up pad, lights flickering under his fingers as he tried out three different configurations in quick succession. He looked hot and bothered, but then, he was losing this game, and losing badly. Eshe Isabon, on the other hand, was looking cooler than ever, smiling faintly as he studied the board. %e met his gaze, and %er smile widened for an instant, before %e shifted the next block of pieces into position. Shraga threw up his hands at that and blanked his pad.

“Shit, that finishes me. I’m out.”

“Tatian?” Isabon looked at him, eyebrows lifting.

Mhyre Tatian reached for the dice arrayed on the tabletop in front of him, palmed them without taking his eyes from the pattern of pieces, and selected two of the ten-sided dice. “I’ll go again. Once.”

Isabon smiled more openly. Shraga said, “Remember, the red one’s the tens.”

Tatian acknowledged that with a grin—among friends, it was almost acceptable to cheat a little at queens-road—and rolled the dice. The first, the brown, the single digits, bounced off Shraga’s random-number box and came up five. The red rolled farther, came to a stop above the cluster of blue lights that marked his own home camp, and showed a two.

“Oh, bad luck,” Isabon said, without sympathy.

Tatian made a show of studying the board, but he had needed at least forty to stay in the game. “I’m out.”

Isabon looking sideways, fingers busy on %er wrist pad as %e called up the bets and side bets. “You owe me ten-point-two cd, Tatya. Shraga, you owe me nineteen-nine, and you might as well make it twenty.”

“Like hell,” Shraga answered, his fingers busy on his own pad. “Nineteen-nine is right—or I’ll make it fifteen in metal.”

Tatian gave a rather sour laugh at that—he spent too much of his time making and assessing similar offers; Hara’s indigenes were desperate for metal—and Isabon shook %er head slowly.

“No, nineteen-nine—and in dollars, thank you.”

“Never play queens-road with a fem,” Shraga said, with mock bitterness, and reached into his pocket for his card.

“Never gamble with a fem,” Isabon corrected amiably, and mated his card to %er own. Lights flashed as the transfer went through, and Isabon freed the cards, offering Shraga’s to him with a flourish. “Thank you, ser. And yours, Tatya?”

“Ten-two, you said.” Tatian reached for his own card, pressed his thumb against the veri-lock, and quickly entered the transaction. Isabon took it and returned it a moment later with the green light flashing: transfer complete. Tatian switched it off and stuck it back into his pocket. “Anyone want anything else to drink?”

“I’ll take another beer,” Shraga said promptly, and Tatian suppressed a sigh. Beer—real beer, not the narcotic-spiked, fermented grain drink the indigenes called beer—was imported from off-world and correspondingly expensive. Still, there was no going back on the offer, and he went on into the apartment’s narrow kitchen.

“Isa?”

“Whatever I had before.”

“All right.” Tatian rummaged in the cold box, brought out three frosted bottles, Shraga’s beer and a bottle apiece of quatra for him and Isabon. Quatra was a local drink, one part sweetrum to three parts ruby melon juice; like all the local liquors, sweetrum was strong and rough, and not very consistent, but the sweetmelon juice cut the worst of the flavor. After a moment’s searching, he found a tray and filled a shallow bowl with the sour-sweet mixed-fruit relish. He added his last package of flatbread and carried the precariously balanced cargo out into the other room, setting it on the table beside the playing board.

“Did you hear the news? Aldess Donavie had another miscarriage. Today’s the whatever-they-call-it, the ceremony.”

Shraga winced visibly, and Tatian remembered too late that the other man had a partner and child at home on Cassandra. The same mutation that had produced the five sexes had increased the incidence of miscarriage; almost anyone who had successfully had a child would have lost another early in pregnancy.

“Tendlathe’s partner,” Isabon said, and grimaced. “Sorry, wife.”

Tatian nodded.

“I wonder what Temelathe is making of all that,” %e went on. “I mean, if the dynasty’s going to continue, he’s going to need a grandchild.”

“A grandson,” Tatian said. He still wasn’t completely used to the system, found himself insisting on the gendered words as if that would help him understand.

“Whatever.” Isabon reached for %er quarta and took a long swallow.

“It’s not really a dynasty,” Shraga said. “There must be somebody else in the clan who could take over, if Tendlathe and Aldess don’t have kids.”

“I can’t see Temelathe letting the position go to anyone out-side the direct line,” Isabon said. “In fact, I wonder if the indigenes would accept someone who wasn’t a direct descendant.”

“Do you mean of Temelathe, or of that Captain of theirs?” Tatian asked.

“Is there any difference?” Isabon grinned, and Tatian nodded.

“True enough. Still, I’m surprised they haven’t had kids by now.”

%e shrugged. “For my money, he looks like a herm—Tendlathe, I mean. Which would explain a lot.”

It was a common and constant rumor, circulating through the Nest and the off-world community on the average of once every four-and-a-half kilohours. “It doesn’t really matter,” Tatian said, and bit back the rest of the sentence. It doesn’t really matter what he is, as long as the indigenes say he’s male: that was stating the obvious, and in any case he was tired of dealing with the oddities of the Haran system. Let the Harans deal with it, he thought—no, let Temelathe deal with it. It’s his son and his dynasty: his problem, not ours.

“Another game?” Shraga asked, and reached for his beer. “Isa owes me a chance for revenge.”

“Sorry.” Isabon shook %er head, glancing sideways as %e triggered %er implants, calling up some display visible only to %erself. “I have to work tomorrow.”

“I thought you had tomorrow off,” Tatian said.

“I did,” Isabon answered. “But then I heard there’s a textile fair in the Ferryhead market. I’m curious to see what’s on offer.”

Tatian nodded, accepting the excuse, and switched off the queens-road board. The fields that shaped it and formed the playing pieces collapsed, and he began to roll the now-limp board into a tidy cylinder.

“How can you make money exporting that stuff?” Shraga asked, and reached for a wedge of flatbread. He broke off a manageable piece and dug it into the relish, then said indistinctly, “I mean, doesn’t mass alone eat up half your profits?”

Isabon gave another of %er austere smiles. %er company was small, but growing; in five years, Tatian thought, %e would probably pass NAPD on the gross-profit list. He was just glad %e didn’t run a rival pharmaceutical company.

“It would—it does, on the biggest pieces, the premade things, quilts, bodices, other clothing, and we don’t buy much of that. We only take the best for the art market. But the silk isn’t that massy, and it sells very well. The same goes for flaxen.”

“But—”

Isabon shook her head. “Sorry. Anything more is trade secrets.”

Shraga lifted his hands in instant apology, and Tatian slipped the dice and the random-box back into their cases. “Are you doing anything tomorrow, Shraga?” he asked, and the other man shrugged.

“I took the day, too. I’m going to sleep late, eat real food, play a few games of basieball, and then I’m going to watch a vidik on the big screen downstairs.”

“Want to hit the Glassmarket before the vidi-show starts?” Tatian asked. “There’s going to be drumming and a dance.”

“I don’t plan to leave the Nest tomorrow,” Shraga said. “That’s my idea of a holiday.” He set his beer aside—empty already, Tatian saw—and stood, stretching. “And, since I have such strenuous plans, I think I’d better get my beauty sleep. It was a good game, people.”

“See you next week?” Isabon asked, and Shraga shook his head.

“I’m off to the Estcote—three days in Estaern, and then four on the road, bouncing around the Delacoste mesnies. I’m free the week after, though.”

“That’s good for me,” Isabon said, and looked at Tatian.

He touched the input pad between the bones of his right wrist and flinched as a wave of static rose from the failing connection. Static danced in front of his eyes, but resolved itself almost instantly to the familiar scheduling grid. “I’m free then, too. It’s your turn to host, Shraga.”

“It would be,” the other man said, but grinned. “I’ll have a four-pack just for you, Tatya.”

Tatian laughed, acknowledging the offer, and touched the sequences that unlocked the main door. Shraga let himself out, waving, and Tatian closed down his implanted system, feeling another wave of cold static rise to break over his shoulder.

“You should get that seen to,” Isabon said.

“I will.” He didn’t add—he didn’t need to add—that it was hard to find technicians on Hara who were both competent and affordable. And the system was his own; NAPD would pay for the surgery, but not for replacement parts.

Isabon gave a knowing smile, and took another sip of %er quarta. “So, you’re spending an evening at the Glassmarket. Going with Prane Am?”

“We’re not seeing each other at the moment,” Tatian answered. And maybe not ever again, but that really wasn’t Isabon’s business.

“I’m sorry,” %e said. “I hadn’t heard.”

Tatian couldn’t help raising his eyebrows at that. Hara’s off-world community was small and intimately connected, practically incestuous.

Isabon shrugged. “People don’t gossip to me, Tatya. Nobody told me.”

%e left a silence more compelling than a question, and Tatian found himself filling it after all. “It was the usual thing. She thought I was going native, playing trade on her. And then I heard from Kaialis that she’s seeing some mem up at the port.”

“I thought she was man-straight,” Isabon said, startled.

“She was when we were dating.”

“I’m sorry.” There was another little silence, and then Isabon sighed and put aside %er empty bottle. “Kaialis isn’t the most reliable person around anyway. It may not be true.”

“I know.” Tatian managed a smile that was almost real. “I just don’t need my life to be this complicated right now.”

“Ah, the joys of the Midsummer contract,” Isabon said. “I don’t envy you druggists.”

“And I don’t envy you at the Quarter-days,” Tatian answered. He worked the door controls for %er —using the wall box, this time—and depressed the latch.

“See you in two weeks,” %e said, and the door slid shut again behind %er.

Left to himself, Tatian slid the rolled-up board and the boxes of dice and number generators into their place in the storage cells that filled the inner wall, and then gathered the empty bottles and fed them one by one to the apartment’s recycling system. He re-wrapped the flatbread, poured the relish back into its jar, and tucked them both away in the narrow cabinets. Then he went back out into the main room, and crossed to the single large window, dragging Isabon’s chair back into its proper place as he went. He unlatched the curtains and drew them back, so that only the sunscreen remained between him and the glass. He could feel the day’s heat radiating inward and released the screen as well. It slid up into its housing, and he had to look away for a moment before his eyes adjusted to the brilliance. His apartment faced east, over-looking the city of Bonemarche—his choice; the other option had been to face the starport, and he had known he would be homesick if he could see the shuttles leaving. He looked out between the two towers that made up the Nest, the Expatriate Housing Blocks One, Two, and Three, across the maze of low buildings tot he Harbor proper. The sky was white with haze, the red spire of the lighthouse at Blind Point all but lost in the milky radiance.

He had not particularly wanted to think about Prane Am, or Jons Kaialis’s gossip: it was bad enough to be falsely accused, but worse to think that Am might really be doing what she had charged him with. He slapped the window controls, lowering the sunscreen again, and turned to the media console as the fierce sunlight dimmed. Rather than risk the implant, he pulled out the little keypad, paged through the menus of his personal datastore until he found the file he wanted. He flicked the shadowscreen to retrieve it and reached for his bottle of quarta, settling himself on the couch opposite the display screen. Codes flickered, mere sparks of light, and then the main screen windowed. Lolya Masani, the Old Dame who had built NAPD, looked out at him, %er dark face drawn into a frown. Of course, it was rare to see Masani smile: he thought he had seen it twice, once when be hired him, and the second time when he had brought in the Uldamiani job against all odds.

“Welcome to Hara,” %e began, and Tatian braved the failing implant to speed-search the file. A progress bar appeared, going from green to red, and the face in the screen writhed soundlessly until he’d found the section he wanted.

“—two things that fuck up people on Hara,” Masani said, “and those are sex and drugs. Drugs—you know my policy. You play in the illegal marts, you’re out. I can’t afford what a run-in with Customs, or ColCom, or the IDCA would eventually cost me, and don’t kid yourself that you’d make enough to cover the fines. You want to fish in that pool, you do it outside of my company. That’s my final word on the matter.” %e drew breath then, and the fierce stare eased a little. “The only gray area I’m prepared to see is where new drugs are concerned. You find something interesting, you bring it in, develop a product, and I’ll back you to the hilt—as long as you file the proper papers, and keep me informed. I’m not averse to recreationals as long as I have lead time to get Legal to clear it. But make sure you keep me informed.”

There was more, but Tatian touched the implanted pad again, dragging the file forward a little farther.

“—sex,” Masani said, “and sex is likely to be the biggest problem. Now, everybody knows the facts about Hara. They were settled late, right at the end of the First Wave, and then when the First Wave collapsed, they were one of the colonies that got lost in the chaos. So by the time we reestablished contact, we’d pretty much resolved all the issues around hyperlumin-A, and they’d never even heard of the problem. Which means that, while they look normal enough, they only admit to two sexes. And that’s where the problem comes in. The indigenes don’t understand our expectations, and we don’t understand theirs. You can meet a perfectly normal-looking person of your personal preference—because, remember, they actually have five sexes, they are normal human beings that way—but if that person’s an indigene, they won’t know how to respond. And neither will you.”

Tatian lifted his bottle in silent toast. It had taken him most of the first year to learn to look not at bodies when he met an indigene but at the clothing that signified “real” gender.

“Now, if that were the only thing, I wouldn’t bother doing more than mentioning it,” Masani went on. “You’re all grown-ups now, and if you want to fuck things up for yourself, that’s your business. But I will not have my company involved in trade. Hara attracts a lot of players from the Concord Worlds. They’ve found a whole planet just as abnormal as they are, and they’re willing to pay for sex. They’ll pay the indigenes in metal, and anyone with a backcountry exploration permit for the use of it. This is illegal, and the IDCA runs patrols and spot checks and does everything it can to stop it, so you will get offers. People will try to buy your landing permits, your exploration permits, your housing vouchers, anything that will give them an excuse to go into the city. And I won’t have it. Anyone caught playing trade will be fired. No appeal. Do trade, and you’re out.”

%er face softened again. “This is not to say that I care what you do yourselves. As long as you’re not selling NAPD’s rights, you can screw what you like and in whatever combinations. One thing Hara has going for it is no native HIVs. I know you’re going to meet indigenes who are attractive and intelligent, and I know some of you are going to fall in love, and that’s fine. But I want you to remember a couple of things before you let yourself take this too seriously. Hara’s a funny world, with funny morals; you may find yourself doing things here that you’d never think of doing on any of the Concord Worlds. And the people are even stranger. So my advice to you is, whatever you do on Hara, don’t take it off-world with you.”

There was more but Tatian flicked the screen off again. Masani had been one of the people who had built NAPD’s Haran business in the first place, and %e clearly knew and loved the planet. And %e had been right about one thing: people felt free to do things on Hara that they would never dream of doing at home. Trade existed everywhere in the Concord Worlds, of course; in the Concord, it was more a matter of how much space each world allowed it, and how much the players were looked down on, how much they had to hide their tastes. The Concord was relatively rigid in its roles, its acceptable sexualities—it had to be, with the dozens of HIVs that circulated among the planets despite the IDCA’s best efforts at control…. But there were always people who didn’t fit in, always some desires that weren’t fulfilled. The biggest group were the ones who couldn’t quite accept the new roles that came with the five sexes, the ones who looked back to the good old days when there were only two genders, two roles, two complementary parts to play. Even if those days had never truly existed, it was still a compelling image to a certain minority, and in Hara, those people had found their sexual paradise. On Hara, players could always find someone of the sex they desired who was willing to play boy to their girl or girl to their boy, regardless of actual sex and without the complications of Concord society. In effect, Hara was a whole world that practiced boy/girl trade, and it was no wonder that even the most secure and normal people found themselves occasionally doing something outside their norms.

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.