The Essential is Invisible

"How are you?" Bianca asked.
Angela met Bianca's eyes in her reflection in the pond. "How am I?" Bianca's hand felt warm in her, the sun poured on them like honey, thick, golden.  She closed her eyes, closing out the inessentials. "I want a lamb, could you draw me one?"
"'Dessin-moi un mouton.'" Bianca quoted.  Her sister loved her Saint-Exupery, not quite to the point of obsession, but it could get annoying. "Sorry, no pencil or paper."
"Oh well." Angela laughed softly. "I wouldn't know what to feed one anyway."
"Yeah.  So, how are you?" Bianca repeated.
The sigh was almost angry. "You're going to keep asking, aren't you?"
"Until I get an answer." Bianca admitted. "I do want to know."
"Okay."
The silence stretched between them like the string between their hearts.
"Is that all?" Bianca cut the silence.
"Yes.  I'm okay."
"Then I guess it's time."
"Yes." Angela said, and sighed, this time sadly. "Time." The hand in hers chilled, slipped from hers.  She opened her eyes, alone by the pond, the sunlight faded, honey to lemon to silver to ashen. "I'll still think of you in a field of wheat." The ashen day surrounded her, like the days before, the days to come.
This, she knew, was what it was like, in the Lands of the Dead.

May 23, 2013

Vinca changed in a commode in the Trade Quarter into the clothes she'd worn when she first landed on Dinc, stuffing the kirtle and petticoats and all that into a ruck she'd grabbed when she bolted from the Bishop's Palace. She didn't know if she could do it. She loved Mavi, she was even getting fond of the brat, for all she still had to fight a reflexive flinch when he lurched at her, giggling and happy because the sun was shining. All things considered, he was a pretty good kid.

Mavi's mother, on the other hand, seemed to be taking every chance she could to make Vinca's life hell, pointing up her shortcomings, what she didn't know about Pachem ways, and how this woman, or that woman, or any Dincani born Pachem woman would be a better wife for him than a kafirlər who couldn't even name the damn tenets of the faith. Even Nesim knew more than that.

Her prospective sister in laws weren't much better. They meant well, for the most part, but every last one of them was Dincani, Pachem born, and bred, and raised taking the culture and the religion for granted because it was all they'd known and they'd grown up knowing it. So what if she didn't know which god was patron of nail clippings,  

May 14, 2013

First, she collected the identag from the bank box, holding it in her hand as she walked, the alien plastic warming as she moved through the city. Next, she changed in a women's commode on the edge ove the Trade Quarter, changing out her yayliq for an abaya and a jhundi covering her face.

A boutique catering to prostitutes was her next stop, a woman covered in cloth entered a dressing room, a woman in the cargo pants, shirt and vest, her hair in straggly braids left the coffee shop next door. Both proprieters knew her, knew the money she gave, and that she bothered them seldom, let her store the clothes that covered her modesty. She scrubbed at her head, feeling oddly naked with her head uncovered. The identag hung on a line inside her shirt, her rank markings turned on and itching. It always itched for a day or two if she turned it on, or off.

She walked differently, in the cargo pants, easier, knowing the rent money was in the left knee pocket. If anyone was following her, one change, or the other, or the drunkard's walk she took to the storage vaults was probably enough to loose them. She paid the year's rent for the space, thumbprinting the contract in silence. “Been incountry?” the rental agent was chatty this year, a different one than last year.

She gave him a look that used to make recruits suck their thumbs at night, flat, impersonal, slid the signed tablet back, waiting while he stuttered into silence, and gave her a printout of the contract. She glanced at it, folded it up, put it away, and walked past him to the storage areas.

A decade ago, she had rented a cargo pod sized space, with power feed, paying extra for an input only datafeed. What she kept there waited, passive, patient, taking in data and power.

She opened the door and slipped inside. There was only a red telltale within the vault, it swept over her, pausing at her rank marking. She turned and pulled a telescoping retinal reader to the eye over the marking. Between them, her identity was established to the satisfaction of what waited for her.

The lights came up, still dim, but the spectrum that matched sunlight outside, and the Ploughshare hexa-4E20-mark90 Combat Suit (dec.) raised itself to its metal knees, the uncustomized cranial unit swiveling its auditory pickups at her, its cameras focusing on her. Faded red mottling decorated the armor plating, and the points for the weapons mounts were slightly brighter metal. She stripped down in the unheated room and pulled on the sensornet suit, matching the pickup points to the sub-dermal implants, grunting a little as she pulled it shut. The sensornet had been last fitted to her anatomy two children ago, and even with almost daily exercise, her body hadn't remained same as it was then.

The Ploughshare's telltales began flickering green and red as the sensornet suit began feeding data to the onboard systems. The suit reported her general health (good), and she stretched, shaking the kinks out. The suit opened its torso, and walked into the thoracic cavity, fitting herself into the harness and feeds, pulling the head unit down and locking it into place. A moment of claustrophobia passed, and she began getting the feeds back from the Ploughshare as it gave her the distilled information from the past year. She discarded some data the system considered significant, agreed with some, chased other data to the limits of the system. The Ploughshare had only a low priority vampire tap to the info system. There wasn't much that she and the combat suit's AI disagreed on, it'd spend over half her life fitting itself to the way she thought, and over half her life training her to observe and sift data.

The suit's systems sent a request to send a passive drone outsystem, to report her alive-and-well to Tasker's Battalion, or failing that, to the Unit itself. It would re-set the retrieval countdown, auto marked as two system years back to the full term. She agreed, and a flyspeck dispensed itself, settling on where she'd left her clothes. The suit's systems tracked the device, reminded her to come to within a kilometer upwind of a spaceship, or half a kilometer downwind. The drone would infiltrate a ship open to the atmosphere, attach itself to an unobtrusive clean surface, wait until it reached a system with a suitable level of EM activity, then insert its message into the mailstream. Standard protocol for undercover reporting.

The thoracic shielding slid closed, and she was enclosed in the suit. She ran through the power up checklist, agreed that the left knee needed maintenance, but it was still working within safety parameters.

Next she stood the system up, the ceiling frighteningly close to the cameras for the cranial unit. Next, she began the recalibration procedure, moving through a slow water kata that allowed the suit to re-adjust to the neural impulses her body fed it.

Next, she ran a second set of maintenance checks on the suit, the left knee hydraulics she already knew about. The light filters, the assorted joints and systems. All in all, it was midmorning before she was done, the sensornet suit wet with sweat, her bladder damn near full to bursting, but the combat suit was tuned and maintained and back to spec.

Reluctantly she shut it down, stripped out of the sensornet and set it to autoclean, re-dressed, and left the vault. She missed the intimacy of the Ploughshare mark90, the feeds and the easy power that the gave her, but she didn't miss what it'd done, what she'd done. “See you next year, Big Beast.”

“See you next year, Little Death.” The Ploughshare's voice was her own, filtered and anonymized, made neutral of gender and emotion. Then all but the telltale turned off.

May 13, 2013

“But Mother Sariah and Father Nesim took Little Nesim to his village, didn't you meet at least them?” the pregnant put her hand to her mouth, she seemed to find humor in damn near anything.

“No.” Vinca decided they didn't need to know why she was avoiding Mavi at the time. She laced her hands, carefully making a basket of them, not a club. “I didn't start taking care of the child until after Harvest Tide.” She still had problems calling the Kedai brat Mavi's son, though it was getting easier. It helped that the kid seemed to love his foster father.

“And they took him out in mid-Harvest, so there was that chance. None of us?” Cap and braids raised an eyebrow. “Well, said quickly, Sister Karli has introduced herself, her husband is Bishop Neron Gallegas, he is rather important, I suppose. Our blooming sister – “ she waved a hand at the scarf and round face, “is Goodwife Cana Jeremiah, no relation, although her husband did choose Jeremiah when it came time to pick once he'd grown past his teener years. He's a bishop as well, Bishop Tano Jeremiah. We have seven Bishops in the immediate family, twelve pastors, and assorted clerks and other functionaries, and that doesn't include the Gallegas and Jeremiah cousins.”

Vinca's head spun a little. “How many of you are there?”

“In the Bishop's Palace, perhaps a hundred.” The eldest – Goodwife Mora gestured at the crowd in the room. Vinca spotted Mavi looking a bit frazzled, chasing Nesim as he toddled after a cluster of other children “There are only fifty more in Ilk Payiz, unless your daughter-in-law has had hers, Sister Vatusia.”

Cap and braids … Goodwife Vatusia – Gallegas? shook her head sadly. “Not yet, and the doctor has her on bed rest, the poor girl's going mad with inactivity.”

May 12, 2013

“So.” The eldest held her hands before her waist, looking down at Vinca. “You're the one our Mavi picked.” Her expression went ill with the abstract flowers spattering the cloth of her hijab.

“She's rather short.” Another one said. This one wore a cap, plain and black edged, with yellow white braids showing beneath it. She looked down her nose, too, standing the tallest of them by half a head, for all she leaned heavier on her cane than the Archbishop did.

“Are you sure she didn't pick Mavi out? He is considered rather a catch, being the Archbishop's son after all.”

The oldest dismissed the idea with a wave of her hand. “Have you ever tried to convince him to do something he didn't want to do?”

“Maybe she's pregnant?” This one wore a turban as ornately wrapped as the Archbishop's, though it looked to be a printed fabric, not a fancy weave.

Vinca began to feel a bit of sympathy for the rats the boz qu stalked. She bit the inside of her cheek until she tasted blood. These women were a part of Mavi's family. He'd be upset if she slaughtered them. At least the Pachem didn't consider private thoughts the sin that words or actions were.

“She'd not be here as his intended if she were pregnant.” Another one said. This one featured a scarf tied under her chin, emphasizing her round, friendly face. “She'd be here as a bride, Mother Sariah's approval bedamned.” She clasped her hands over her rounded stomach smugly.

A chorus of nodding heads followed that. “Mother Sariah does dote on her grandchildren.” Braids said.

The eldest looked at Vinca. “You're not pregnant, are you?”

“No.” Vinca resisted the urge to fold her arms. Goodwife Melton'd warned her it could be taken for aggression. She kept her arms loose at her side, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet, wishing she'd managed to talk Mavi into letting her wear her boots. The shoes were sturdy enough, but she doubted it'd heft a really good kick. “Are you?”

The pregnant one hid a giggle behind her hand. “Well struck. I think she drew blood on you, Sister Karli.”

The eldest sniffed. “Not much.” She extended one hand to Vinca. “I am Goodwife Karli Mora, my husband is young Mavi's eldest brother.” She said that as if she expected Vinca to know who that meant immediately.

Vinca didn't take it. “I haven't met any of Pastor Jeremiah's family.”

The hand fell. “None of them?”

May 11, 2013

The dozen or so women surrounded Mavi and Vinca when they came out of the Archbishop's study, Mavi's mother leaning on her husband's arm, both of them looking frail enough to blow over in a stiff wind. The Archbishop seemed to specialize in deceiving appearances, although she liked her prospective father-in-law. It took a strong man not to be stomped flat by a personality that forceful. She understood why Mavi'd taken the commoner name, when Grendel would make his tie to the Archbishop more obvious. “Oh dear.” Mavi stopped, his arm still around her shoulder.

“What's wrong.” She looked around for some new threat, but only saw a gathering of older women, converging on them. She looked up at him as his arm fell away. By now the women formed a rough circle around them, and the men in the room were moving away.

“I believe your son is looking for you, Young Brother,” the eldest of the women said, her hands clasped before her and her hair covered in a scarf that covered head and neck. She'd been told it was called a hijab, it looked itchy. Wrinkles etched her frown permanently around her mouth. “Why don't you go see to him?”

Mavi kissed Vinca on the forehead and patted her shoulder. “I'll make sure they have a place for you to sleep in the nursery while I'm gone,” and he slunk off, leaving her behind.

Vinka looked around the circle. They ranged in age from the eldest, she of the hijab and the permanent frown, to one who looked almost Mavi's age, with a scarf covering her head making her face look even rounder. Those were called yaliq, Vinca knew.

May 4, 2013

She was certainly going to try. From what she'd learned of Pachem ways, the sin was in the action of the sin, not the thought of it. So long as she kept to the thought, and not any kind of action. She followed Mavi into the ante room.

The Archbishop made her way to an imposing desk, seating herself behind it. “Close the door, Mavi.” The instant the door was closed, she turned on Vinca. “Explain yourself.” Vinca'd heard warmer tones from a drill instructor tearing recruits to shreds. “What is some ambitious qerib doing trying to pass herself off as my son's promised wife.”

“She doesn't have to.” Mavi put his hand on. “We are going to marry after HarvestTide, once she'd been affirmed as Pachem.”She was certainly going to try. From what she'd learned of Pachem ways, the sin was in the action of the sin, not the thought of it. So long as she kept to the thought, and not any kind of action. She followed Mavi into the ante room.

The Archbishop made her way to an imposing desk, seating herself behind it. “Close the door, Mavi.” The instant the door was closed, she turned on Vinca. “Explain yourself.” Vinca'd heard warmer tones from a drill instructor tearing recruits to shreds. “What is some ambitious qerib doing trying to pass herself off as my son's promised wife.”

“She doesn't have to.” Mavi put his hand on. “We are going to marry after HarvestTide, once she'd been affirmed as Pachem.”