Climate of Change (59 page)

“And our people mistreat yours horribly. I hate that. But we pretend it isn't so. That we treat you well.”

She laughed. “Good luck making that case!”

“Father wants to make it. To show that we settlers are not the bigots the British are. He might let me marry you, to prove how well we treat you people. It's a lie, but truth hardly matters in politics.”

That was something dramatically fresh and different. She needed to think about it. So she made time by distracting him with the second episode of sex. She kissed him and stroked him, wrapping her legs about him, and in due course had him worked up to another eruption within her. It wasn't as if he had any objection to her effort, whatever her reason.

“Oh, Rebel!” he gasped. “It's no lie that I love you!”

She needed to discuss this with her family. But first she had to get this quite clear. “George, would you marry me, if your father allowed it?”

“Yes! Oh, Rebel—”

“I have not said I would do it. I just want to know what the prospects are.”

“
Would
you do it?”

“If that were the way to save my family, yes I would.”

“Then I'll ask Father! To save your people, and to let me marry you.”

“Tell me what he says.” She kissed him again. “George, it seems unlikely that he will agree. Don't get your hope up.”

“There's nowhere else for my hope to be. I know that to you it's just another payment for a service. I'm willing, nay, eager to have you on that basis. Rebel, Rebel, if I married you, maybe in time you would come to love me. Please say it's possible.”

That much she could grant. “It's possible.”

“I'm so happy!”

“You're welcome.” She did fear that both of them were in for serious disappointment, for different reasons.

“But there's one thing.”

“Oh?”

“Father might make demands.”

“Fathers do,” she agreed wryly.

“You would have to dress like us, stay in town, and not see your people.”

“But you wouldn't tell if I sneaked out on occasion to see them.”

“I wouldn't,” he agreed. “But also—”

“What?”

He changed his mind. “Maybe not.”

She didn't like this. “What?” she repeated.

He fidgeted. “Your religion, for one thing. You would have to be Christian.”

“What is entailed?”

“Going to Church on Sundays. Believing in Jesus Christ our Savior. No more plant spirits and things.”

“I would have to profess belief in your god in the sky,” she said.

“Yes.”

He had not picked up on the distinction between professing belief and actually believing. She knew just enough of the British religion to know that it had all kinds of strictures that they routinely ignored, like not killing, or lusting after a neighbor's wife, or taking their lord's name in vain, so she wasn't concerned. She could be that kind of hypocrite when she needed to be. But she had the feeling that this was not the whole of his concern. “What else?”

“Maybe I'm being paranoid. No need to speak of it.”

So there was something, but he was extremely reluctant to express it. That was unusual, because she was the one to whom he expressed his deepest feelings most openly. She decided to let it pass. She would figure it out in due course. “No need,” she agreed.

They made love again, and this time she climaxed with him, powerfully. That pleased them both. Then she dressed and departed, so that he could go immediately to his father. She was not sure what would come of this, but it wasn't as if she had a choice. If this worked, they would survive. It was in the end that simple.

“So George will brace his father, who can save us,” Rebel concluded. “But I may have to marry him and separate from you, my family.”

“Oh, Rebel,” Craft said sympathetically.

“I would rather do that than have us all killed.”

“It's a point,” he agreed.

“So if I do that, Haven will have to marry Harbinger.”

There was a brief silence. Then Haven spoke. “Maybe we can manage that.”

So it was working out between them. “I will go in the morning to learn the decision,” Rebel said. “I may not return.”

“In that case you are mine tonight,” Harbinger said.

She was. He had impassioned sex with her, but she had the impression it wasn't love. For one thing, it was all his, with no concern for her experience. When he was done he fell right to sleep. He had become reconciled to the inevitable. At the moment he was merely proving that he still desired her, for the record, as it were. So it did seem time. It was best for all of them, and not just because it enabled their survival. Or that Harbinger and Haven were falling in love. Or that George truly loved Rebel, and had become a better lover than Harbinger. These were all details in a larger picture.

In the morning she dressed well and walked to town. She tapped on George's door. He was ready. “He wants to see you,” he said. “He's considering it.”

Probably to be sure she wasn't a dirty bare creature speaking pidgin English. She could reassure him on that score. “I will see him,” she agreed.

“Mother will dress you.”

“Mother?”

“Yes, dear.” It was an older woman, speaking from behind him. Rebel had not realized that he had company today. “You must be presentable.”

Mother had come prepared. She garbed Rebel in underwear, chemise, and an uncomfortably tight corset, overset by a full-length dress. Rebel's breathing was restricted, but she didn't complain. She had more important concerns than this. “Thank you,” she said faintly.

“You are a pretty one,” Mother remarked as she combed and arranged Rebel's hair and fastened it in place with a number of little pins. “And you speak well. That's good.”

“Thank you,” Rebel repeated.

“You will be expected to mix socially, smiling and impressing others with your manner. You will warmly endorse the treatment your people are receiving. Do you understand?”

“Oh, yes,” Rebel agreed. “I am a woman.” She did not add that this meant she knew how to lie. It wasn't necessary.

“My husband has his little ways,” the woman continued. “Accommodate them if you can, dear.”

“I will do whatever I am supposed to do.”

“Perhaps.”

Rebel realized that she was missing something, again. What was it that they would not speak of directly?

The last things were a hat and shoes. Both were heavy and hot. The shoes had heels that were higher than the toes, forcing her to balance uncomfortably on them. Rebel felt as if she were confined in a portable cage. She reminded herself yet again that this was necessary to save her people. It wasn't as though she were alone; Mother wore a similar outfit.

George brought up a coach drawn by a horse. Mother guided Rebel into it. They sat inside its cramped compartment as it clattered along the road. Was this really worth it?

“It is only for formal occasions, dear,” Mother said, evidently reading her expression. “At other times we wear comfortable clothing.”

“Formal? But I thought he just wanted to see me, to be sure I'm not a savage.”

“That too, dear.”

They arrived at the governor's mansion, which was a larger house. Mother held Rebel's elbow firmly as they stepped down out of the coach. That was just as well, because Rebel was in danger of losing her balance.

The governor met them in what Rebel thought might be the drawing
room, though she saw no drawings there. He was a hale man of some girth, with impressive sideburns, a daunting figure.

“Father, this is Rebel,” George said. “The woman I would like to marry.”

Rebel made a British curtsy. This was part of the language she had learned.

The governor looked Rebel over, and she realized he was seeing not the layers of clothing but the flesh beneath it. She had seen that kind of gaze before, many times. He was sizing her up as a sex object. Suddenly she understood what neither George nor his mother were speaking of directly. The man was a lecher, and he wanted a piece of her.

Well, if that were part of the price of saving her people, she could do it. Assuming George and his mother could handle it. It was an area she understood. The man would arrange private trysts with her, knowing that her barrenness eliminated most of the risk, and she would maintain his favor and the welfare of her people by obliging him. She would be discreet, never causing anyone embarrassment. In time—weeks, months, or years—his interest would move on to some newer, younger woman, and she would be free of him.

And he saw her understanding. “She'll do,” the man said. He gave her one more glance and turned away. She had been dismissed.

Just like that. She had been accepted in more than one capacity.

They returned to George's house. “Will he act to save my people?” Rebel asked.

“He has already done it,” Mother said as she helped extricate Rebel from the awful clothing. It was good to be able to breathe again! “The authorities have received a proclamation designating your range as a nature preserve. As long as your people stay within it, they can't be molested.”

Just like that, again. She would marry George, not even needing to dissolve her marriage to Harbinger, because native marriages were not recognized by the colonists.

“There are things we do not speak of,” Mother murmured. “We simply try to get along. Do you understand?”

Rebel gave her a straight look. “I do.” Then, realizing how badly she would need an ally in this arena, she asked, “May we be friends in spite of it?”

The woman gazed at her. Rebel was surprised to see a tear in her eye. “We are all in the same situation,” she said. “We must endure. We can do that better if we support each other.”

Rebel spread her arms. Mother stepped into them, now sobbing openly. They were not so much high colonist and low native, so much as two women in a difficult position. Yes, they would be friends.

Some Aborigines survived, but their autonomy was finished and they were no longer a significant independent force. They had to work as laborers and servants, governed by the rules of the white man. At one point, thousands of their babies were taken and raised as whites, another effort to extirpate their culture. Today there are relatively few full-blooded natives left; the majority are mixed breeds. Many have lost touch with their original culture, eating Western foods. Those who still do hunt typically use guns rather than clubs or spears.

Among survivors, problems are rampant. Twenty-six times as many Aborigines develop dementia as whites. Up to ten times as many have circulatory diseases such as hypertension and rheumatic heart disease. Three to four times as many have type-two diabetes and the death rate is seven to ten times that of whites. And so on, with kidney disease, cancer, respiratory diseases. Communicable diseases are worse: tenfold in tuberculosis, Hepatitis B and C, twenty-fold in Chlamydia, forty-fold in dysentery and syphilis, and seventy-fold in gonorrhea. Threefold in suicide, two-to threefold in infant mortality. These are attributed to poverty, poor education, substance abuse, poor access to health services, and exposure to violence or other types of abuse. In sum: they are at the bottom of the totem, and suffer for it.

This is unfortunately typical of the peoples displaced by “modern” man, whether in America, Africa, or Australia. Efforts are being made
today to redress some of the historic wrongs. But how can a vanished culture be renovated? An extinct language? A people whose numbers have been decimated, the survivors downtrodden? It seems that concern about justice comes only when the case is already lost. That's suspiciously convenient.