Scott Cleveland - Pale Boundaries

Her insight impressed him. For years the Family humored Den Tun’s eccentric methods and demands, riled at his actions when they crossed purposes. Dayuki put it in a context Hal understood, and the implications worried him. If Den Tun played the game this far ahead, what plots were already afoot, and how much could he damage the Family?

“What are your thoughts?” Hal asked

“Honor dictates that the Minzoku exist for the sake of the Onjin,” she said. “Our fate is your prerogative.”

“Rather contradictory philosophies,” Hal noted. “How did you come to work with him?”

Dayuki looked into her lap, suddenly introverted.

“Just curious,” Hal added quickly.

She looked up with a brief, uncertain smile. “Many know, but it is not spoken of.” She took a breath. “My village was raided by gaijin outlaws. My mother was just a girl, very pretty, and one of them—” She stopped, flustered. Hal found himself embarrassed at being taken into her confidence. Dayuki took another breath, cleared her throat, and continued:

“The man who sired me is buried in an unmarked mass grave. Each time I return home I spit on that place.” Dayuki looked up with renewed confidence. “The circumstances of my conception made me unlucky and I was cursed with height. No man wants a wife that towers over him. My family would have hidden me away, but my grandfather was wealthy and did not want my mother to be shamed by birthing an unsuitable daughter. He dowered me five times what was appropriate, but the intent was to save my mother’s honor, not mine.

“The poor men in the village made offers of marriage and my grandfather told me to choose, but I would not. I knew that my suitors only intended to hide me away and use the dowry to pay the bride price for another woman. I was too proud for that, but my grandfather threatened to choose for me.

“It was then that my great uncle arrived to visit. He told them I could be a great service to our people and I left with him.”

Hal nodded. “Den Tun is your great uncle.”

“Yes,” Dayuki said.

The main street was almost empty when they left, and noticeably colder. Dayuki got out a thick blanket with holes cut in one side for the reins, and urged the horse into a canter when they were out of the village. The combination of warmth, full stomach, and rhythmic clopping put Hal to sleep.

He woke when a wheel bounced over a rock, to find them back at the manhole shaft. Dayuki walked him back to his room. “Thank you for your company,” she said demurely.

“The pleasure was mine,” Hal replied. “I hope we can do it again.”

“Of course,” she said. “I am at your disposal, should you require anything.”

“Thank you. Good night, Dayuki.”

She smiled uncertainly, seemed about to say something, but changed her mind. “Good night.”

Terson woke, aware something was wrong by the absence of subtle body sounds beside him. Virene’s side of the bed was empty, but not yet cold. He got up and padded into the living room where his wife stood before the window in her nightshirt, hugging herself. She leaned back against him when he wrapped his arms around her.

“It’s beautiful up there,” she said, “but it looks cold, too. Unforgiving.”

“It’s all that,” Terson agreed. They lapsed into silence again until a shooting star flashed across the sky. A dull orange trail remained against the darkness for an instant before fading away. Virene squeezed his elbow.

“I’ll never look at one of those the same way again.”

“Still thinking about it?”

“All the time. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since we got back.”

“I didn’t know that,” Terson said. “Why didn’t you say something?”

“Worrying is silly.”

“Not silly,” Terson said. “Pointless. I could trip going down the stairs in the morning and break my neck just as easily.”

“Terson,” she sighed, “do you really think that’s what I want to hear right now?”

“Sorry; no,” he said. “Remember who you’re talking to.”

“Life would be much simpler if men would learn to read minds,” Virene said.

“Make do with what you’ve got,” Terson suggested. His wife did not pick up the banter. She moved his hands down to her belly and clasped her own over them.

“I want to get our contraception reversed,” she said. “I want to apply right away—today.”

“Isn’t this kind of sudden?”

“We might have to apply three or four times,” she explained. “I need a part of you to keep, if anything ever happens. I want it to be your baby.”

“You think they’ll actually let us reproduce?”

“It’s random,” she replied. “You know that.”

“Then how’d your parents manage to have so many kids?”

Virene turned toward him, resting her head against his chest. “They’re lucky,” she said, “and so am I.” She made love to him with purposeful intensity when they went back to bed. Terson obliged her willingly, though unable to match her ardor, and afterward held her until her breath fell into the rhythm of sleep.

Terson did not drop off so easily.

He felt the small, fan-shaped pattern of subcutaneous contraceptive implants on the inside of Virene’s upper arm that she’d carried since the onset of puberty. Terson possessed a set of his own: three thin, two-centimeter-long capsules identical to hers except for the chemical they leaked into his bloodstream. It was another small detail they’d neglected to mention when they shoved the papers at him for signatures. It didn’t seem significant at the time; a minor procedure far less invasive than a vasectomy and easily reversible, though the penalties for doing so without proper authorization were stiff. The penalties for unauthorized fertility were not foremost in his mind, anyway.

The implants were seen as a rite of passage to native Nivians, an acknowledgement of adulthood and sexual license, whether or not an individual chose to exercise that license. Nivians were surprisingly chaste in that regard compared to the wanton rutting that Boss Hanstead’s hired hands pursued on every trip into Windstone. The ubiquitous specter of mortality on Algran Asta seemed to spur the instinct to spread genetic material whereas the conditions on Nivia sought to suppress it.

Repression, it seemed to Terson, was the less desirable end of the continuum. He could not understand, at first, why small children were seen in public so rarely, or why those with them tried so obviously to insulate themselves from their neighbors. The sight of pregnant women or infants was unheard of, as if parenthood was some kind of stigma.

The reality was entirely the opposite, he now knew. Parenthood was highly valued but it was also dangerous. Terson likened it to carrying a jug of whisky through a crowd of thirsty drunks: everyone wanted it and a certain percentage was willing to do anything to take it or at the very least prevent others from having it.

Winning the reproductive lottery left the woman with two choices: safety or freedom. Most hid their condition from everyone, including friends and family, for as long as possible and cloistered themselves the moment secrecy failed, sacrificing careers and most outside contact until the child was old enough to enter school.

Terson didn’t want Virene limited to those choices and the fact that she would have to make them pointed out a grave Nivian hypocrisy: how could a society demand a standard of behavior from him that it could not enforce among its own people to prevent violence against its most vulnerable members?

His conscience would not permit him to leave her alone in such circumstances, without even the support of her damnable family, but he knew that she would not permit him to sacrifice his chosen profession on the alter of her wishes.