Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 64

He added, "That is not how FBI agents dress."

Hafidha did a quick inventory. Cowboy boots gleaming. Distressed-velvet skirt a little wrinkled, no helping that, but draping nicely. Vintage ladies' suit jacket, blue raw silk with covered b.u.t.tons and asymmetrical lapels-best thing in her closet. No need to check her hair. It was cornrowed to top-of-ear height, then sprang free in natural curls to her shoulders. She'd done the purple streaks on Sat.u.r.day. All her earrings matched.

Yep, perfectly groomed, professional, and a credit to herself. Last week she'd only been two out of three. She'd needed a week to know if this fight was worth having. "Face it, not many of them could dress like this."

He raked his fingers through his own dense, barbered hair. "I'm asking for your help." Oh, h.e.l.l. That took the fun right out of it. "I get that. Look, Secret Service? I was navy- blue suit and hair sc.r.a.ped back and nice black flat-heeled shoes every d.a.m.ned day. I did it because I loved the job, and that's what the job demanded. That I leave me at home. "And look what that got me."

The line of his jaw changed, hardened. Teeth clenched, probably. Join the club, Doctor Reyes.

"Now you want me here, working for you. And you promise that n.o.body will give me s.h.i.t for what I am now. Well, this is what I am now. If you want the Real Me, you have to take the whole package."

"Or?"

"Or I find someone in the private sector to love and cherish the multifaceted wonder that is me." Maybe she could find a place in the private sector, maybe. One that wouldn't require a disguise harder to live behind than a navy-blue suit.

She saw something happen behind his eyes and added, "Or is this The Village, and I'm a number after all?"

"You mean, do I want you where I can keep an eye on you? Of course I do. But if I meant to lock you up, you would be already."

"So. What do we do?"

Reyes stared at her, his mouth working a little. "I guess," he said slowly, "I run interference for you, while you work miracles for me."

It took a second for it to register. "No dress code?"

"I wouldn't go that far. And neither would you."

She was weak with relief. My G.o.d, she'd wanted to stay. She hadn't known it until this moment. "Yes, sir. Very good, Capitaine."

"I think I prefer 'sir'."

"Of course you do." She smiled, stood, and crossed the room to the door. The cowboy boots made an authoritative noise even on the carpet. She loved that. "Oh, and I should warn you. I'm getting a tattoo."

Reyes laced his fingers together under his chin. "I already have one."

Her smile stretched beyond her control. She bowed from the waist and let herself out into the bullpen and her future.

The Ladies Quincy, Ma.s.sachusetts February 1797 Mrs. John Adams looked to her sewing. The sealed letter she ignored with such presence of intention rested on a round wooden table beside her as she tugged thread taut, knotted, and snipped it with the scissors hung on a ribbon around her neck.

She knew the round cramped handwriting that addressed the folded paper and the seal that closed it, and although she would not glance at it, she knew without lifting the seal what it contained. The postmark was Philadelphia, and the color of the wax was a signal long arranged.

She felt it as if it were no mere note, but the soft-spoken, ginger-haired author himself at her elbow, valiantly refraining from clearing his throat. It would be easier if he were here, Mrs. Adams thought, as she measured another length of thread.

It would have been easier to hear this news in person, from the Secretary of State's lips, in Mr. Jefferson's own gentle lisp.

But perhaps it was just that the news come in a letter. Letters of her own had started all this foolishness, after all. She had no one to blame but herself.

Quincy, Ma.s.sachusetts May 7, 1776 . . . I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies; for, whilst you are proclaiming peace and good-will to men, emanc.i.p.ating all nations, you insist upon retaining an absolute power over wives.

But you must remember that arbitrary power is like most other things which are very hard, very liable to be broken; and, notwithstanding all your wise laws and maxims, we have it in our power, not only to free ourselves, but to subdue our masters, and without violence, throw both your natural and legal authority at our feet ...

-Abigail Smith Adams, from a letter to John Adams Monticello February 5.96 Dear Madam It is with some trepidation that I take pen in hand to broach this subject, but as I have before me the example of you own courage in remonstrating with me on principles that you held dear, I can offer you no lesser respect. I will seem to make you a shocking proposition, dear Madam, but I must beg you hear me out in deference to the love I bear your husband and your self. I write to you as your friend and not in my capacity as Secretary of State.

The course of events might have followed rather differently had I remained in Paris with Mr. Franklin. But the example of that failed revolution lies before us-with all its madness of "la terreur n'est autre chose que la justice prompte, severe, inflexible"-and we have seen now what happens when the state falls to the mob and the coercion of monarchist neighbors. If our own fragile republic is to remain unified in the face of the British threat, factionalism and the monarchist tendencies of some must be laid by.

Having endured one war, I harbor now no desire ever to witness another.

You wrote to me with such pa.s.sion during the late convention of Philadelphia as to make me a convert to your cause of female emanc.i.p.ation, and of course my daughter Mary shared with me your correspondence to her. But although our labors to see suffrage extended to your gentle s.e.x have borne fruit, and with Mr. Adams' sometimes grudging a.s.sistance we have seen a bill of the inalienable rights of man included in the body of the const.i.tution, the position of your s.e.x may not be regarded as secure until we have demonstrated in practice as well as principle the gentle strength of your will.

And fear not, dear Madam, that I should in any wise reveal to Mr. Adams how directly your letters influenced me, as I know how dearly he opposed your efforts toward equality. Also, I profess myself in your sincere debt, for I know very well whose temperate persuasion brought Mr. Adams (and the Ma.s.sachusetts delegation with him) to support my proposed bill of rights. Ours was not so unlikely an alliance after all.

But there are those who are not so sanguine as to the benefit of our great accomplishment, and who hold suffrage for women and free discourse of the press as hazardous portals to sedition and revolution. It would be not amiss to demonstrate the resilience of our own State in the face the failures of France, and the threats from monarchist powers abroad who find in our n.o.ble experiment an incitement to their oppressed.

Let me speak plainly. In the interests of precedent, President Washington will not seek re-election to a third term. Mr. Adams, I do not doubt, plans to run again, and will not be contented with the vice-president's share this time, though you might know more of that than should I.

I shall make a bid for president as well-if I am not put out of place by Mr. Burr-and you may tell your husband you have it from me in the spirit of great friendship.

Simply put, my proposition is thus. Dear Madam, you are eloquent out of proportion to your s.e.x. It is my belief that to secure the position of your fair sisters in our young republic, and to demonstrate and ensure your power, you must run for President in opposition to your husband and myself.

Th: Jefferson Quincy, Ma.s.sachusetts February 1797 The needle tugged thread taut at the edge of the b.u.t.tonhole. Mrs. Adams lifted the strand to her lips and bit, forgetting her scissors until the pain of worn teeth reminded her. She set the shirt in her lap and stroked the fine linen. It would be her husband's inaugural shirt.

One way or another.

Oh, how they had argued. First she with Mr. Jefferson, that no wife should-publicly-offer her husband anything but support, no matter that she might speak her mind in private. But the Secretary of State had at length convinced her. Jefferson could be profoundly convincing, when he cared to, and having used that talent for her own ends Mrs. Adams knew the truth of it.

Another truth was that she owed him a tremendous debt, and his arguments were very tidy. John's Federalism was all very well, but the other major power in the Federalist party, Alexander Hamilton, given reign, would do no less that erode the rights that Jefferson had fought for, and that an emergent two-party system-Adams and the Federalists on one side, Jefferson and the Democratic-Republicans on the other-and in the end he convinced her.

And then Mrs. Adams and Mr. Jefferson had remonstrated more or less gently with Mr. Adams.

John had brought his own objections to bear. First, that there was no party for Mrs. Adams; second, that she and John would divide any Federalist vote, leaving the election to Mr. Jefferson and the Republicans.

Jefferson countered the first with the proclamation that he proposed a great experiment, which must prove whether a woman-in the perfect privacy of her ballot-would vote her s.e.x, or her husband's politics. "Perhaps a Women's Party will grow up to support Mrs. Adams. And John," Jefferson said, gangling elbows pressing his coat to his sides as he leaned forward, "do you doubt that any of us could manage the job?"

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all persons are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.-That to secure these rights, Governments are inst.i.tuted among People, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to inst.i.tute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

-Thomas Jefferson, declaration adopted July 4, 1776 Of course it had not all gone smoothly. But perhaps Mr. Jefferson had foreseen that as well. Fortunately for Mrs. Adams' peace of mind, she was not expected to campaign-it was considered gauche in a presidential election, which should be decided on the demonstrated abilities of the candidates-but that did not mean there were those who would not campaign for her.

And against her.

She ceased reading the papers. Nabby, her namesake and eldest daughter, kept track of the news and reported back as needful. "The revolutionary spirit has infected us," she told her mother, with her cheeks quite flushed. "Women march for you in Boston, Mama."

Mrs. Adams set aside her embroidery hoop and smoothed the tablecloth she was working over her knees. A strange courting excitement filled her, as if she were young and John were seeking her hand again, but she calmed her face and said, "A few women in Boston do not an election make."

Nabby bounced on the lip of her chair, unladylike. "Not a few. Upwards of a thousand, and many over their husband's protests. And the paper says they wear ribbon sashes embroidered with your name."

Philadelphia December 14.96 Dear Madam The college of electors have received the will of the men and women of their several states and in their turn cast their own votes. Here at the Capitol we have awaited the arrival of the certificates and the disposition of our fates with, I have no doubt, no less trepidation than you must have experienced at your pretty farm in Quincy. If there is no majority, it will go to the House of Representatives to decide, but I do not think that will be the case this time.

In your last letter, you intimated that if you should defeat your husband, you would step aside in his favor. That in the face of war between France and Britain, you felt it vital to show your support for him as his friend and helpmeet. While I applaud your devotion to felicity, you must not.

Had I been in France, had I not heeded your words, had the const.i.tution been differently written, we would not have found ourselves at this crossroads. But here we are, and here you are, and it is I think our inc.u.mbency to look unflinching forward to generations to come.

I do not know if Mr. Adams has written you already, either as your husband or in his capacity as vice president, but as I intimated, we have received the electoral certificates. The second president and vice president of the United States of American have been chosen, and it waits only a few weeks for that choice to be revealed.

Of course it will be some time before the official opening and tabulation of the votes in February, when we will know for certain who has won. But rumor flies on swifter wings than any post, and I have heard some tally of the number of women sent to serve among the electors, and the number of Federalists.

I may say with reasonable expectation of cert.i.tude that the second president of this republic will not bear the name of Jefferson.

As such, the letter informing you of the house's decision will be executed by my hand as secretary of state.

Not as secretary but as your friend, I will see it sent swiftly, and to your notice. And for whatever small kindness I may yet manage, Madam, I shall seal it with red wax for the mistress, or blue wax for the master of the house, that you may have advice of the contents.

Of course, I may offer no speculation now what that letter may contain. But again, I beg you, think on the republic and consider carefully whether you shall efface yourself, should the contest be decided in your favor. As I have taken up your argument for suffrage, I pray you carry on with the strength of your convictions if you are rewarded with the admiration of free women, and perhaps in some small regard the wisest of the men. The republic lies before us. Let us begin as we mean to go on.

You have called me persuasive. Allow me to persuade you now. Surely, your domestic harmony-and the great love and friendship between yourself and Mr. Adams-can withstand any eventuality.

What today we choose may echo.

Th: Jefferson Quincy, Ma.s.sachusetts February 1797 Abigail thrust her needle through the linen, and reached for her scissors again. She snipped, considered, and laid the shirt aside over the table, beside the letter.

After a moment, she stood shakily, and took up the envelope. Her thumb stroked the red wax seal.

"John," she called, walking firm of stride toward her husband's study, "a letter's come from Tom."

1 ("Terror is nothing other than prompt, severe, inflexible justice.") - Robespierre, 17 pluviose an II [May 2nd, 1794]

Shoggoths in Bloom "Well, now, Professor Harding," the fisherman says, as his Bluebird skips across Pen.o.bscot Bay, "I don't know about that. The jellies don't trouble with us, and we don't trouble with them."

He's not much older than forty, but wizened, his hands work-roughened and his face reminiscent of saddle-leather, in texture and in hue. Professor Harding's age, and Harding watches him with concealed interest as he works the Bluebird's engine. He might be a veteran of the Great War, as Harding is.

He doesn't mention it. It wouldn't establish camaraderie: they wouldn't have fought in the same units or watched their buddies die in the same trenches.

That's not the way it works, not with a Maine fisherman who would shake his head and not extend his hand to shake, and say, between pensive chaws on his tobacco, "Doctor Harding? Well, huh. I never met a colored professor before," and then shoot down all of Harding's attempts to open conversation about the near-riots provoked by a fantastical radio drama about an alien invasion of New York City less than a fortnight before.

Harding's own hands are folded tight under his armpits so the fisherman won't see them shaking. He's lucky to be here. Lucky anyone would take him out. Lucky to have his tenure-track position at Wilberforce, which he is risking right now.

The bay is as smooth as a mirror, the Bluebird's wake cutting it like a stroke of chalk across slate. In the peach-sorbet light of sunrise, a cl.u.s.ter of rocks glistens. The boulders themselves are black, bleak, sea-worn and ragged. But over them, the light refracts through a translucent layer of jelly, mounded six feet deep in places, glowing softly in the dawn. Rising above it, the stalks are evident as opaque silhouettes, each nodding under the weight of a fruiting body.

Harding catches his breath. It's beautiful. And deceptively still, for whatever the weather may be, beyond the calm of the bay, across the splintered gray Atlantic, farther than Harding-or anyone-can see, a storm is rising in Europe.

Harding's an educated man, well-read, and he's the grandson of Nathan Harding, the buffalo soldier. An African-born ex-slave who fought on both sides of the Civil War, when Grampa Harding was sent to serve in his master's place, he deserted, and lied, and stayed on with the Union army after.

Like his grandfather, Harding was a soldier. He's not a historian, but you don't have to be to see the signs of war.

"No contact at all?" he asks, readying his borrowed Leica camera.

"They clear out a few pots," the fisherman says, meaning lobster pots. "But they don't damage the pot. Just flow around it and digest the lobster inside. It's not convenient." He shrugs. It's not convenient, but it's not a threat either. These Yankees never say anything outright if they think you can puzzle it out from context.

"But you don't try to do something about the shoggoths?"

While adjusting the richness of the fuel mixture, the fisherman speaks without looking up. "What could we do to them? We can't hurt them. And lord knows, I wouldn't want to get one's ire up."

"Sounds like my department head," Harding says, leaning back against the gunwale, feeling like he's taking an enormous risk. But the fisherman just looks at him curiously, as if surprised the talking monkey has the ambition or the audacity to joke.

Or maybe Harding's just not funny. He sits in the bow with folded hands, and waits while the boat skips across the water.

The perfect sunrise strikes Harding as symbolic. It's taken him five years to get here-five years, or more like his entire life since the War. The seaswept rocks of the remote Maine coast are habitat to a panoply of colorful creatures. It's an opportunity, a little-studied maritime ecosystem. This is in part due to difficulty of access and in part due to the perils inherent in close contact with its rarest and most spectacular denizen: Oracupoda horibilis, the common surf shoggoth.

Which, after the fashion of common names, is neither common nor p.r.o.ne to linger in the surf. In fact, O. horibilis is never seen above the water except in the late autumn. Such authors as mention them a.s.sume the shoggoths heave themselves on remote coastal rocks to bloom and breed.

Reproduction is a possibility, but Harding isn't certain it's the right answer. But whatever they are doing, in this state, they are torpid, unresponsive. As long as their integument is not ruptured, releasing the gelatinous digestive acid within, they may be approached in safety.

A mature specimen of O. horibilis, at some fifteen to twenty feet in diameter and an estimated weight in excess of eight tons, is the largest of modern shoggoths. However, the admittedly fragmentary fossil record suggests the prehistoric shoggoth was a much larger beast. Although only two fossilized casts of prehistoric shoggoth tracks have been recovered, the oldest exemplar dates from the Precambrian period. The size of that single prehistoric specimen, of a species provisionally named Oracupoda antediluvius, suggests it was made an animal more than triple the size of the modern O. horibilis.

And that spectacular living fossil, the jeweled or common surf shoggoth, is half again the size of the only other known species-the black Adriatic shoggoth, O. dermadentata, which is even rarer and more limited in its range.

"There," Harding says, pointing to an outcrop of rock. The shoggoth or shoggoths-it is impossible to tell, from this distance, if it's one large individual or several merged midsize ones-on the rocks ahead glisten like jelly confections. The fisherman hesitates, but with a long almostsilent sigh, he brings the Bluebird around. Harding leans forward, looking for any sign of intersection, the flat plane where two shoggoths might be pressed up against one another. It ought to look like the rainbowed border between conjoined soap bubbles.

Now that the sun is higher, and at their backs-along with the vast reach of the Atlantic-Harding can see the animal's colors. Its body is a deep sea green, reminiscent of hunks of broken gla.s.s as sold at aquarium stores. The tendrils and k.n.o.bs and fruiting bodies covering its dorsal surface are indigo and violet. In the sunlight, they dazzle, but in the depths of the ocean the colors are perfect camouflage, tentacles waving like patches of algae and weed.

Unless you caught it moving, you'd never see the translucent, dappled monster before it engulfed you.

"Professor," the fisherman says. "Where do they come from?"

"I don't know," Harding answers. Salt spray itches in his close-cropped beard, but at least the beard keeps the sting of the wind off his cheeks. The leather jacket may not have been his best plan, but it too is warm. "That's what I'm here to find out."

Genus Oracupoda are unusual among animals of their size in several particulars. One is their lack of anything that could be described as a nervous system. The animal is as bereft of nerve nets, ganglia, axons, neurons, dendrites, and glial cells as an oak. This apparent contradiction- animals with even simplified nervous systems are either large and immobile or, if they are mobile, quite small, like a starfish-is not the only interesting thing about a shoggoth.

And it is that second thing that justifies Harding's visit. Because Oracupoda's other, lesser-known peculiarity is apparent functional immortality. Like the Maine lobster to whose fisheries they return to breed, shoggoths do not die of old age. It's unlikely that they would leave fossils, with their gelatinous bodies, but Harding does find it fascinating that to the best of his knowledge, no one had ever seen a dead shoggoth.

The fisherman brings the Bluebird around close to the rocks, and anchors her. There's artistry in it, even on a gla.s.s-smooth sea. Harding stands, balancing on the gunwale, and grits his teeth. He's come too far to hesitate, afraid.

Ironically, he's not afraid of the tons of venomous protoplasm he'll be standing next to. The shoggoths are quite safe in this state, dreaming their dreams-mating or otherwise.

As the image occurs to him, he berates himself for romanticism. The shoggoths are dormant. They don't have brains. It's silly to imagine them dreaming. And in any case, what he fears is the three feet of black-gla.s.s water he has to jump across, and the scramble up algae-slick rocks.

Wet rock glitters in between the strands of seaweed that coat the rocks in the intertidal zone. It's there that Harding must jump, for the shoggoth, in bloom, withdraws above the reach of the ocean. For the only phase of its life, it keeps its feet dry. And for the only time in its life, a man out of a diving helmet can get close to it.

Harding makes sure of his sample kit, his boots, his belt-knife. He gathers himself, glances over his shoulder at the fisherman-who offers a thumbs-up-and leaps from the Bluebird, aiming his Wellies at the forsaken spit of land.

It seems a kind of perversity for the shoggoths to bloom in November. When all the Northern world is girding itself for deep cold, the animals heave themselves from the depths to soak in the last failing rays of the sun and send forth bright flowers more appropriate to May.

The North Atlantic is icy and treacherous at the end of the year, and any sensible man does not venture its wrath. What Harding is attempting isn't glamour work, the sort of thing that brings in grant money-not in its initial stages. But Harding suspects that the shoggoths may have pharmacological uses. There's no telling what useful compounds might be isolated from their gelatinous flesh.

And that way lies tenure, and security, and a research budget. Just one long slippery leap away.

He lands, and catches, and though one boot skips on bladderwort he does not slide down the boulder into the sea. He clutches the rock, fingernails digging, clutching a handful of weeds. He does not fall.

He cranes his head back. It's low tide, and the shoggoth is some three feet above his head, its glistening rim reminding him of the calving edge of a glacier. It is as still as a glacier, too. If Harding didn't know better, he might think it inanimate.