Spring 2007 Read Online Free Page B

astoundingly well-informed–for Stormcrow, despite the
world’s many vicissitudes, owned a computer. She invoked her frail machine only
once a day, using sunlight and a sheet of black glass.
    That machine was and is our Station’s greatest marvel.
Its archives are vast. Even if her own past glories had vanished, Stormcrow
still possessed the virtual shadow of that lost world.
    They knew a great many fine things, back then. They
never did our world much good through the sophistical things that they knew,
but they learned astonishing skills: especially just toward the end. So: given
her strange means and assets, Stormcrow was a pillar of our community. I once
saw Stormcrow take a teenage girl, just a ragged, starving, wild-eyed, savage
girl from off the plains, and turn her into something like a
demi-goddess–but that story is not this one.
    We therefore return to Captain Kusak, a brusque man with
a simple need of some undivided female attention. Kusak’s gifted baby had
overwhelmed his wife. So Kusak’s male eye wandered: and Stormcrow took note of
this, and annexed Kusak. Captain Kusak was one of our best soldiers, an earnest
and capable man who had won the respect of his peers. When Stormcrow appeared
publicly on Kusak’s sturdy arm, it was as if she were annexing, not just him,
but our whole society.
    Being the creature she was, Stormcrow was quite
incapable of concealing this affair. Quite the opposite: she publicly doted on
Kusak. She walked with him openly, called him pet names, tempted him with
special delicacies, dressed him in past ways.… Stormcrow was clawing herself
from her world of screen-phantoms into the simpler, honest light of our present
day.
    Decent people were of course appalled by this. Appalled
and titillated. It does not reflect entirely well on us that we spoke so much
about the scandal. But we did.
    Baratiya seemed at first indifferent to developments.
The absence of her tactless husband allowed her to surrender completely to her
child-obsession. Baratiya favored everyone she knew with every scrap of news
about the child’s digestion and growth rates. However, even if the child of a
woman’s loins is a technical masterpiece, that is not the end of the world. Not
even raw apocalypse can end this world, which is something we hill folk
understand that our forebears did not.
    Blinded with motherly pride, Baratiya overlooked her
husband’s infatuation, but some eight lady friends took pains to fully explain
the situation to her. Proud Baratiya was not entirely lost to sense and reason.
She saw the truth plainly: she was in a war. A war between heritage and
possibility.
    When Kusak returned home to Baratiya, an event
increasingly rare, he was much too kind and considerate to her, and he spoke
far too much about incomprehensible things. He had seen visions in Stormcrow’s
ancient screens: ideas and concepts which were once of the utmost consequence,
but which no longer constitute the world. Baratiya could never compete with
Stormcrow in such arcane matters. Still, Baratiya understood her husband much
better than Kusak understood her. In fact, Baratiya knew Captain Kusak better
than Kusak knew anything.
    So she nerved herself for the fight.
    Certain consequential and outstanding people run our
Government. If they send a captain’s wife a nicely printed invitation to eat,
drink, dance, sing, and to “mingle with society,” then it behooves her to
attend.
    The singing and the dancing are veneers for the issue of
real consequence: the “mingling with society,” in other words, reproduction.
Our gentleman soldiers are frequently absent, guarding the caravans. Our ladies
are often widowed through illness and misfortune. Government regards our grimly
modest population, and Government does its duty.
    So, if the Palace sets-to in a public celebration, there
will reliably be pleasant music for a dance, special food, many
people–and many private rooms.
    “I can’t attend this fine ball at the