Greg Egan - The Clockwork Rocket

Daria smoothed the picture away, and the conversation turned to more mundane matters. As the women recounted the day’s tribulations, Yalda picked up a little more about Tullia’s circle of friends. Daria taught medicine at the university, while Lidia worked in a dye factory and Antonia sold lamps in the markets.

“Anyone for six-dice?” Lidia suggested.

“Sure,” said Daria. The others agreed.

“I don’t know the rules,” Yalda confessed.

Lidia pulled a handful of small cubical dice from a pocket. “We each start with six of these; the sides are numbered one to three in red and in blue.” She gave one to Yalda to inspect. “You roll your dice, and your total is the sum of the blue faces minus the sum of the red. There are some simple rules which decide how many dice you should have, according to your total; if it’s not correct, you either have to get rid of some dice, or collect some from the bank. When you collect, you always take pairs and set them down with the same number showing, one red one blue, so your total is unchanged.

“Then, we take turns playing. The player can make any change to one of their own dice that they can balance with a corresponding change to another person’s. For example, I can turn my red three into a blue two by turning your blue three into a red two . Then both of us adjust our numbers of dice to fit our new totals, and on it goes.”

“How does someone win?” Yalda asked.

“Their total hits a gross, or they have the highest total after everyone has made six dozen moves.”

“Those rules about the numbers of dice—?”

“You’ll pick them up easily,” Lidia promised.

In fact, it took Yalda three games before she really knew what she was doing. Lidia won the first two, Daria the third.

After the fourth game, a win to Lidia again, Antonia made her apologies and rose to leave.

“My co thinks I’m taking a delivery,” she said. “But he knows they never come much later than this, so I’d better not push my luck.”

When Antonia had left, Yalda asked glumly, “How does anyone put up with that?” Whatever taunts and humiliations she’d suffered herself, at least she was nobody’s prisoner.

“Things are going to change,” Lidia said. “Once we get a few women on the City Council, we can start to work toward banning forced returns.”

“Women on the Council?” The idea struck Yalda as utterly fanciful. “Are there any women with that kind of money?”

Tullia pointed out a woman seated on the far side of the room. “ She owns the company that distributes grain throughout the city. She could easily afford to pay for a seat; the real issue is wearing down the men who are refusing to let her buy in.”

“We’ll live to see it happen,” Lidia declared confidently. “There are a dozen wealthy women in this city who are working toward the same agenda. First, legalize runaways. Second, legalize holin.”

“What’s holin?” This was the second time Lidia had mentioned it, but Yalda had never heard the word used anywhere else.

For a moment the whole group was silent, then Daria said, “I know you only met her tonight, Tullia, so I don’t blame you at all. But if an educated woman in Zeugma doesn’t know what holin is, what hope has anyone got out in the sticks?”

Yalda was bemused. “Lidia said it was a drug, but what does it treat? I’ve actually been quite healthy ever since I came to Zeugma; maybe that’s why I haven’t heard of it.”

“Holin inhibits reproduction,” Daria explained. “How old are you?”

“Twelve. I just turned twelve.”

“Then you need to be taking it.”

“But…” Yalda preferred to keep these matters private, but in the circumstances there was no point being coy. “I have no co,” she said. “I’m a solo. I’m not looking for a co-stead. And I’m strong enough to take care of myself, so I really don’t think I’m going to be abducted by some poor, deserted rich boy who’s desperate for heirs. So why would I need a drug that inhibits reproduction?”

Tullia said, “None of us have cos around—and holin gives very poor protection against triggering anyway. What it inhibits most effectively is spontaneous reproduction. The chance of that is quite small at your age, but it’s not zero. I’m two years shy of two dozen, myself; without holin I wouldn’t last another year.”

Yalda had never heard any of this before. She said, “My father always told me that if I didn’t find a co-stead, I’d go the way of men.”

“There’s no reason he would have known the truth,” Lidia said. “It’s not as if he would have been acquainted with any great number of women of Tullia’s age.”

“That’s true.” Yalda doubted there’d been a woman in her village more than four years past a dozen.

Daria added, “I’ve also heard claims that spontaneous reproduction is more likely in concentrated population centers. If you’d stayed at home then your father’s prediction might have come true, but in a city like Zeugma the odds are skewed against it.”

Yalda was beginning to feel disoriented. She had always imagined that she would eventually ease her father into accepting her belief that a solo was born to a different kind of destiny—and then that would be the end of the matter. He might still nag her occasionally, but she knew he would never have forced a co-stead on her. Now she had to think about ways of getting her hands on a drug that Zeugma’s Council deemed illegal—and taking that drug for the rest of her life.

Daria could see that this was making her anxious. “I can get you some holin,” she said. “It’s probably better that we don’t meet at the university, though. I’m giving a public lecture in the Variety Hall three nights from tonight; if you want to come along we can meet afterward.”

“Thank you.”

“The young lady’s had a shock,” Tullia said, “and I’m tutoring the laziest of my merchants’ sons tomorrow, so we should probably call it a night.”

They left Lidia and Daria still talking. Tullia walked with Yalda to the edge of the markets. “You really sleep down there? You should get an apartment.”

“I like sleeping in the ground,” Yalda replied. “And I don’t care about privacy; no one ever bothers me.”

“Fair enough,” Tullia conceded. “But you have something new to consider now.”

“What’s that?”

“Where exactly are you going to hide your holin?”

4

Yalda met Tullia outside the Variety Hall. Daria’s lecture, entitled “The Anatomy of the Beast”, was advertised with garishly colored posters showing a fearsome creature standing on a tree branch, one hand clasped around a hapless lizard, another outstretched toward a second, unsuccessfully fleeing meal. Infant care of the western shrub vole might not have been quite so enticing a subject to Zeugma’s moneyed classes.

Tullia harangued the ticket-seller into checking for a list of free admissions, and both their names turned out to be on it. “I should hope so!” she told Yalda as they moved from the ticket queue to the equally crowded one leading to the entrance. “I’ve paid for enough of Daria’s meals at the Solo to keep her in scalpels for the rest of her life.”

Once they’d entered the hall, Yalda saw that the stage had been decorated with a number of small but authentic-looking trees, augmented with a scaffolding of branches and twigs that served to heighten the impression of a dense forest canopy. As stagehands moved through the hall extinguishing the wall lamps, the crowd buzzed with anticipation, as if they expected a whole menagerie of nocturnal wildlife to reveal itself in this motley imitation jungle.