Califia's Daughters (25 page)

And Sonja. Dian was not much of one for prayer, but she hoped Someone was watching over the woman, keeping her from doing too much damage. Laine . . . Yes, she realized, I trust Laine. She irritates the hell out of me, but I know her, and she will make the right decisions. I was right to leave her.

Ah, but Isaac. Even more fervent were her wishes for protection over him. Which was funny, when she thought of it, because he was one of the strongest men she knew, and not only physically. Fragile, perhaps, but with Teddy there to need him, Isaac would stand firm.

She missed him—missed them all—but not as much as she had anticipated. He was too distant, and in sadness, Dian knew that she did not expect him to be there for her again when she returned. As a friend, yes, but possibly nothing more.

Was that why Robin reminded her of Isaac? Dian was not in the least attracted to the woman, but then, Isaac seemed to be shifting in her heart as well, from lover to something less intense. A brother, perhaps, as Robin was sister.

The warmth and the musings and the dull job proved too soporific. The knife slowed, jerked once or twice as she dragged herself back from the edge, then her hands were resting on the soft pile of shavings as she drifted away.

She only half-woke when Robin came in, hung her jacket on its hook, and walked into the kitchen to fix lunch. Watching her movements through sleep-clouded eyes, Dian's thoughts looped back to where they had been before she fell asleep: onto Isaac, onto Robin. Idly, she watched as Robin stretched to the shelf for a pair of mugs, as she took the bowl of greens from the sink, then came over to stir the venison stew; as Robin moved around the cabin, going about actions she performed a dozen times a day, Dian's gaze slowly sharpened, coming awake in a way it had not before. Her eyes locked onto the shape of the woman's shoulder; when Robin stood and turned toward the table, the throat that rose from the open neck of her shirt seemed to travel slowly past Dian's vision. Memory stirred, sensations from the time of fever: the feel of Robin's body, the power behind those lifting arms, the very smell of her when she came inside from a session cutting wood . . . Dian's breath caught, and she came upright, staring in fascination at the way Robin's spine and hips merged.

Robin turned to set a loaf of bread onto the table and glanced up into Dian's eyes. Time froze for an interminable instant, until Dian tore her gaze away and cast it toward the fire, a fire that was by no means close enough to account for the burn rising in her cheeks. Tomas, on the hearth rug with his head between his paws, cocked one bushy eyebrow at her. Dian sat stiffly and tried to breathe normally, but she heard Robin lay down the bread knife, then walk over to sit on the stool that functioned as a second chair.

“Go on, ask your question.” Robin's voice was calm as always, but was that an undertone of humor?

Dian looked up guiltily into Robin's face; she saw apprehension there, but also, yes, a degree of amusement. Dian opened her mouth, couldn't think what to say, and shut it again.

Robin's broad face relaxed into a wry grin. “I can see I don't need to wear my vest indoors anymore,” she said, and to Dian's amazement stood up to unbutton the plaid shirt and tug it out of the waistband of her trousers. Beneath it she wore a snugly fitting vest; this she also unbuttoned, removed, and tossed onto the kitchen table. With it went her breasts.

The Robin standing in front of Dian was now, without a doubt, not a she. This Robin was a stocky, smoothly muscled man, who stood scratching his ribs through a thin undershirt. What had once been a husky female voice was now that of a man, frankly laughing and saying, “Ah, Dian, your face is priceless. I really didn't know my sex change was so believable, but I was beginning to wonder.” He walked over and flicked the curtains shut across the two windows, then hung the padded vest on a hook between the deerskin jacket and the revolver.

“Jesus Christ!” Dian finally got out. “Why?”

“Why the act? Or why the act with you?” He smiled gently, shaking his head as if she were a disappointingly slow child. “Surely you can't imagine that a sane and healthy man would be allowed to live out by himself in the woods? I do have the occasional visitor, you know, especially during the summer. There's even one or two who know who I really am—one girl in the village you're heading for, in fact. She came across me in the woods without my shirt, stupid of me, and blackmailed me into teaching her everything I know about tracking. But if word got out that I wasn't just a crazy old woman living off by herself, I'd be locked away in some town in no time. I've had that. I would honestly rather be dead.” Even through her astonishment, Dian heard the lack of bitterness in Robin's voice and body, simply a matter-of-fact acceptance of the way things unfortunately were.

“But . . . how could you keep it up all this time? With me here, I mean? How could you stand it? You must have wanted to throw me out into the snow!”

“Well, no. Actually it was kind of fun.” He stood up and went back to the table, taking up the knife to slice the bread, paying close attention to the precision of the act. Dian heard surprise and a bit of wistfulness creep into his voice. “I found that I really enjoyed being a friend, being another woman who didn't make you feel uncomfortable when I put you in the bath or brushed your hair. I'm sorry, in a way, that you realized the truth, because now you're going to feel uncomfortable around me.”

And he was right. The thought of the routine intimacies he had performed on her body during the illness made Dian feel—uncomfortable was a vast understatement. Appalled, perhaps. Even more so, the realization that she was in a cabin, an isolated cabin, with someone who had been suddenly transformed into a strange man—the thought and her reaction to it confused her, flustered her, so that she plucked the first thing that came to mind and threw it out.

“Did my monthly period come while I was sick?” The thought was intolerable, she did not want to think about it, wanted to snatch back the question.

“No. And it won't for some time either.” Again that amusement beneath the calm voice—was he laughing at her discomfort? If so, this person's change of persona was not limited to the merely physical, but he did seem to be enjoying her confusion. She seized desperately onto a discussion—any discussion, to give her mind a chance to settle.

“Because of the injury, you mean, shock and blood loss. I remember the last time I was injured this bad, it took about six weeks for it to come back.”

“Oh, I think you'll find it takes somewhat longer this time,” he said, his voice muffled from where he was rummaging in the bin under the sink for an onion.

“Do you? How long, then?”

“I'd say about another eight lunar months.” His head reappeared, and Dian wondered how she could ever have mistaken those crinkling eyes for a woman's.

“Eight—but why?”

“Because, my dear, you're about seven weeks pregnant.”

Stunned as a bird against glass, Dian stared openmouthed at her companion for so long his amusement faded and began to be replaced by concern.

“It is all right, Dian. Babies are great.”

Seven weeks. Mid-October. When she and Isaac—and for a moment, her thoughts froze: Would the child have Asian folds over its eyes? Surely not. Oh, why hadn't she allowed the Meijing doctors to do the physical exams Ling had suggested?

“I'm sterile,” she protested numbly.

“I assure you, you are not sterile.” He was dead serious now, and starting to look worried.

She did not doubt him, not for a minute. Now that he had told her, her body shouted its agreement. She hadn't thought about her periods, and since the accident she had been too ill to notice the telltale signs of tender breasts and occasional queasiness, but now she could even feel the presence of another human being within her. And that knowledge contradicted everything she was.

She stood up and stumbled to the door, oblivious of the pain in her leg. Then Robin was by her side, supporting her. She would have fallen down the two front steps, one wood, the other raw stone, if he hadn't held on to her with hands that were both welcome and utterly repellent. She pushed away from him and walked out into the knee-deep snow, thinking of Isaac until the bright snow faded in her eyes and she collapsed.

She woke hours later, the cabin lit only by the fretful light of the fire, her bed warm and safe and her leg hurting abominably. She shifted to ease it, and Robin's voice came from nearby.

“If you need something for the pain I'll give it to you, but I'd rather not carry it on too long, because of the baby.”

“Pain isn't the only thing I'm going to have to put up with,” she said, a bit grimly.

“Is the baby not wanted, then?” he asked, without any trace of criticism.

“It's not that,” she said. She shifted again, and winced. “No, it's not that it's unwanted. It's just that, on top of everything else, it was a shock. Not even a bad shock, just a big one. And I'm not really feeling up to any more, please?”

“No more shocks today, no,” Robin promised. Silence filled the cabin, broken only by the fire and little huffs and whimpers from Tomas, dreaming by the fire.

“I left home sterile, and I'll return with one baby in my arms and another one in the works.” She shook her head. “Lord Almighty, as Kirsten would say.”

Robin stood up, smiling to himself a little sadly as he went to assemble dinner. She had taken both pieces of news well. This was a fine woman. If he'd known one like her twenty years ago he might never have moved out here. Not by himself, anyway. He hoped this man Isaac was a worthy partner for her.

         

If Dian had been told that she would be living in close proximity to a strange man and think nothing of it, she would have laughed in disbelief: she'd known so few adult males in her life—the number she'd lived with could be counted on her fingers—that a new one was not something she could simply overlook. That Robin was a man she did not doubt—she had met a few eunuchs, wandering as Pilgrims or sheltered inside Meijing, and Robin was not one of those. Yet as the days passed, she did indeed simply think less and less about it.

He was, in effect, the brother she had never known. Once she thought of him as such, their relationship fell into place, and she thought no more about it.

She did, after much deliberation, bring up the possibility that he might go back with her to the Valley. His vehemence was all she had expected.

“Absolutely not. I'll miss you when you leave, Dian, and I'm sure your family are all lovely people, but I can't be locked up. It makes me go crazy. Thanks anyway.”

“Robin, look, I wouldn't want to leave here either, if I were you. But, please, just think about it—think about three things. One, you wouldn't be locked up. There's a lot of space there, and nobody would force you to come in if you didn't want to. I give you my word. And two, down there, with Meijing's backing, what you call ‘dabbling' with herbs could go far. I've heard you grumbling about not being able to tell precisely what this leaf and that mold do—well, our healer would love to give you a microscope and glass dishes and books and anything else you need and let you get on with it. And third, to be realistic, you may be forced to make a move within the next few years anyway. Even if the radiation poisoning or whatever it is doesn't spread into this watershed, Queen Bess will. And you can't count on her missing the fact that you're a man living alone. You'll be inside one of her towns before you can blink.”

“Not for long,” he said grimly.

“Robin, please, think about it?”

His jaw worked as he stared out at the snow, and then nodded curtly. “I'll think about it. But I'll tell you now, I won't go. As you said, this is my home.” It was all she could do, and she let it go.

December wore on, and she began to venture further out into the woods, began to run the nearer trap lines herself, then all of them. The stack of rough-cured skins grew. They ate very well. And she was much taken aback one day when Robin asked how much longer she was thinking of putting off her trip to the village.

“Oh. Well, I don't know, I still don't have much stamina. . . .”

“Nonsense, you've been out for five hours today, and you're barely limping. You have plenty of stamina for four days on the horse and a couple miles' hike.” He looked more closely at her face. “You don't think I'm trying to push you out, do you? Hell, I'm not letting you go until I get my rabbit-skin blanket. I just thought, if you went fairly soon, maybe you could be back in time for Christmas dinner.”

“I AND MY FORCES SHALL TAKE THE
VANGUARD IN THIS BATTLE.”

T
WENTY-ONE

S
O
D
IAN SET OFF ON THE FINAL MILES OF HER JOURNEY,
five weeks late and with her troop diminished by one dog and a load of strength on the part of its leader. Simon was in great shape, and Tomas was ecstatic to be on the road again, but Dian's thigh did not like being in the saddle, and she was not looking forward to the demands of even this short trip. She did not look back at the cabin, since she would feel silly if Robin had already gone back inside, and even sillier if she found him standing on the porch to wave good-bye. She told herself firmly that everything would be fine; she'd be back in less than a week and they would stuff themselves to a stupor with Christmas cheer. And after that she would keep at him until he gave in and decided to give the Valley a try, and they would go south together, and she would be home long before Easter.

On the second day out from Robin's cabin, Dian became aware of a familiar itchy sensation, like the restless onset of a fever but accompanied by vivid images: the slaughtered Smithy village; an arrow flashing at her out of the snow; the back of Culum's lifeless neck. She had never put as much store in what Judith called her “Feelings” as others seemed to, but she did know that when she felt this way, something was wrong somewhere. She kept Tomas upwind of her and watched closely the ground on the other side, but the hours passed and she saw nothing, heard nothing. By noon on the third day, her skin was crawling and she twitched at every small and natural noise, and still nothing had happened.

She found a sheltered grove near a frozen stream and there she unsaddled Simon, feeding him and fastening a blanket over his back. She shared some dried meat with Tomas, broke the ice on the stream so the animals could get at water without too much difficulty, and left Tomas guarding the horse. He whined a protest; she repeated her order and limped briskly away.

Initially, she had intended to hike the last ten miles to the village, wary of the fox-faced Syl's reconnaissance skills. Now, however, she'd be lucky to manage five miles without having her leg seize up on her. She had brought snowshoes but only needed them from time to time when the drifts grew deep. Finally, at three in the afternoon, she caught her first whiff of wood fires, and she stopped to rest, eating handfuls of dried fruit and venison, drinking still-warm tea from the vacuum flask, and rubbing at the burning muscles in her thigh. The minute she stopped moving, the nerviness was back in force, urging her to hurry up, not to bother with doing this from hiding—what did it matter? Just walk up and say hello, let me see your secrets. . . .

But if she was going to do this, she should do it right, raw nerves or no. So she sat and twitched, every sense quivering, until dusk came and she could approach the town without being seen.

Movement was a relief, the distractions of purpose allowing her to push the feelings to one side, where they remained but did not get in the way. She could concentrate on her more immediate senses and finally peel the cover from whatever it was that Miriam and Isaac and the others had not told her.

The first thing she saw was an adolescent boy chopping wood. That would have been troubling enough by itself—Dian winced every time the heavy double-bitted ax flew down toward his fragile boot—but then a woman came out of the nearby house and, instead of taking the dangerous object away from him, she merely gathered up the split logs and went back inside.

Five minutes later, a heavily dressed person carrying a rifle came down the lane toward the wood-chopper. Dian's first reaction was of relief, that one of the village guards would now intervene with a scolding, but the guard merely greeted the boy, exchanged a few words, and went on.

Worse yet, the guard's voice had been far too low to belong to a woman.

And it went downhill from there.

When she'd first laid eyes on these people back in August, Dian's immediate reaction had been how eerily like one of Kirsten's tales they were, riding blithely through the hazards of the countryside with a couple of menfolk. That night in their village, watching and listening, her underlying reaction was precisely the same: who did these people think they were, residents of that safe haven Before, the twentieth century? Sure, boys wanted to flail away at frozen wood with razor-sharp axes and men wanted to be in the front lines with the guns, but how could that be permitted? Axes slipped, enemies shot back. Even small cuts turned septic, and the world Dian knew could not afford to lose even one man through carelessness, not when males died as fast as they did through the myriad diseases of infancy.

Yet here were men, carrying guns and acting as if the past fifty years had never happened. They even moved differently.

A scant half hour of this, and Dian had to retreat. Taking care to move only where others had trod the snow, she walked out of the village until she came across a rough shed filled with firewood. She was not hungry, but she made herself eat and drink, and when she had put together her thoughts, she returned for a more methodical survey of the village.

It was the dinner hour, and most of the houses were bright, warm beacons in the darkness. Most of them had men in residence, and a high number appeared to have only one wife. Miriam's claim of nearly a third male population was not too much of an exaggeration.

As with the Valley, houses staggered their dinner hours to accommodate the shifts for the night watch. Around seven o'clock, three heavily bundled figures carrying guns came down the road Dian had retreated up. One of them walked up to a house whose family had just finished their meal, knocked and entered, and came out two minutes later without the gun. On the guard's heels came a similarly bundled woman, calling good-byes into the house. She slung the rifle over her bulky shoulder and pulled on a pair of gloves. The day guard continued down the row of houses until she came to one where the windows showed a neatly set table and last-minute preparations in the kitchen.

A few minutes later, the solitary guard was joined by two others, and they went back the way the first three had come. Dian stayed where she was, among the branches of a yew tree, and sure enough, half an hour later the same ritual was repeated with the guards from the other side.

She could not be sure, but of the six guards, three had seemed to be men.

As she prepared to move her position, the door of the house opposite came slowly open, and out stepped a toddler: a boy child. He was lightly dressed and wore only soft leather slippers on his feet, but he clearly had a purpose, for he sat down to negotiate the three steps from the porch and set off down the muddy road.

A girl toddler would have been bad enough, but watching idly as a boy was swallowed by the dark was agony. It was all Dian could do not to go after him, but she really did not want to immerse herself in the lengthy process of making her presence known, especially with the sensations of impending disaster plucking at her skin. She watched the child closely, knowing someone would notice the open door in a moment, knowing the child was not about to wander off into the woods, but scarcely able to breathe while he was out there.

No one came. The open door continued to pour light and warmth into the night, the toddler stumped away down the deserted road, and Dian began to moan with tension. All right, she finally decided; give the kid until the last house before the road bends, and if they haven't spotted him, go after him.

The tiny figure closed in on the bend in the road; the bright happy houses on either side continued their nightly revelries; the house opposite poured its life out unknowing; and at last, one split second before Dian stepped out from the thick branches, she heard an exclamation from the hallway. A girl of about fifteen pulled the door fully open, revealing an entrance hallway with a braided rug and mirror. She peered out, then stepped back in and shouted over her shoulder. Turmoil erupted: women and men spilled into the hallway and out onto the porch, lights shifted through the dark rooms of the house, searching the upstairs rooms. The child was still there, squatting in the road, but in a minute he would not be.

Finally, the adults came out, three of them, pulling on coats and boots, holding lamps and lights, conferring and peering until Dian felt like shouting at them, “He's down there!”

And then a small sound came through the frigid air, and all three whirled in the child's direction. Two of them set off at a run, and Dian dropped her head into her hands, light-headed with relief. She barely heard them return, the child crying now at his cold feet, the adults torn between sympathy and recrimination.

How could they live like that?

And more immediate, how could the Valley risk the consequences of allowing that casual attitude so near? It was hard enough to soothe and distract the Valley's menfolk into safer paths; with this degree of freedom on their very doorstep, how long would it be before young Salvador pressed to join the guards, or twelve-year-old Harry ran away to the woods for a hunting trip? Before Peter refused to go to the caves in an emergency?

No wonder Miriam hadn't told them everything.

And Isaac . . . That little deception about archery skills was the least of it.

She'd seen enough to know what the problems were. Now she had to decide: were they dangerous enough to require an immediate ban? Or did fairness, and a recognition of the benefits these people would bring, require that she give them an ultimatum?

If she did that, if she stood up now and found Miriam and told her, “We'll let you come to us if you can find a way to keep our menfolk safe from your irresponsible attitudes,” what would these people do? Was it even possible to reshape the ingrained habits and attitudes of an entire village?

She didn't think so.

Everyone assumed that someday the viruses would lose their potency and men would slowly return to their previous numbers. Alongside this came the acceptance that menfolk would then take back some of their traditional authority; indeed, nearly every woman Dian knew secretly longed to see an adolescent boy freely testing his limits and wished to live among men who didn't have to watch their every step for the benefit of their community.

Which might explain why this village was a throwback in its social structure: its freakish numbers had not required them to accept the immense changes the rest of the world had been forced to make.

However, Dian did not think that the rest of the world was about to catch up to these numbers anytime soon. And inviting the attitudes of freedom could prove a contagion with disastrous results.

She stood among the dark branches, the cold eating into her bones as she tried to decide what to do: show herself and deny these people the Valley, or consult with Judith first and, if Judith agreed the risk was too great, then get a message to them some way—sending Sonja home would do it nicely.

She might have had an easier time deciding if she hadn't been so preoccupied with the ever-mounting prickly feeling running up and down her spine. It was hard to think rationally. But really, did she absolutely have to do this now? Could she think about it and come back? Talk about it with Robin, maybe?

The more she considered this scenario, the better she liked it. Robin was a man who cut wood and carried a gun, and although she was not entirely comfortable with either of those things and did not completely understand why he needed to be alone, she did trust him enough to be willing to talk this over with him.

As if to force her hand, two women came out of a house, attracted by the commotion of the rescued toddler; one of them was Miriam. The adults called back and forth, the child began to cry in earnest, and they all retreated into their houses. The doors closed, leaving the street deserted and Dian still silently in her place of hiding.

Yes, she seemed to have decided to think about this for a while.

One thing she would do before she left. She took from her pocket an object she had prepared back at Robin's, a carefully split walnut with a note inside, sealed shut and coated with wax, then bound all over with a length of thin wire coated in red plastic, salvage from an old telephone line. She chose a snowdrift she thought likely to last until spring, against one side of a picket fence, and dug down to bind the bright wire to the slat. It would be noticed the instant the snow receded. The note read simply:
Dian was here.

She dusted the snow back into place and stood back to admire her work. The revelation that the fox-faced Syl had spied on the Valley right under her nose had rankled for weeks. This should pay her back, if Dian decided not to return. And as she turned to pick her way back into the woods behind the houses, she suddenly realized where the tiny woman had picked up her competence in the woods. Syl was “the girl” who had blackmailed Robin into teaching her tracking skills. She smiled, imagining the woman's face when the brightly wired walnut message appeared in the spring.

Once away from fear of detection, however, her boots crunching softly through unbroken snow, Dian's smile faded. The incipient panic played at the ends of her nerves, building and flooding in tenfold; by the time she found Tomas and Simon in their makeshift shelter, she was near to running through the night forest. She also knew that the nameless threat concerned either Robin or Isaac. If Isaac, there was not a thing she could do, but Robin . . . Without pausing for food or sleep, she stripped off Simon's blanket and threw the saddle over his back, relying on moonlight, memory, and Tomas's senses to keep to the path.

It had taken her two and a half days to reach the village. On the return trip she was forced to lay over when the moon went in, when she realized she was getting lost, but in the gray predawn she was on the path again, unmindful of the threat of other travelers, pushing herself and her animals. They slid over the top of the last ridge just a bit after noon on the second day; Dian smelled it before she could see it.

Smoke lay heavy in the air. Tomas's hackles went up and she had to call him back to her side, where he paced, stiff-legged, a growl rumbling in his chest. She dismounted well back from the clearing, but she need not have worried; the intruders were long gone.