The Best of Nancy Kress Read Online Free Page B

her, Anne knew, although she had not yet found out why. The woman was unsexed, like all of them, working on her books and machines all day, exercising naked with men who thus no more looked at their bodies than they would those of fellow soldiers in the roughest camp. So it pleased Anne to call Lambert a lady when she did not want to be one, as Anne was now so many things she had never wanted to be. “Anne Boleyn.” Who never smiled.
    “I will create you a Lady,” she said to Lambert. “I confer on you the rank of baroness. Who will gainsay me? I am the queen, and in this place there is no king.”
    And Mary Lambert had stared at her with the unsexed bad manners of a common drab.
    Anne knotted her thread and cut it with silver scissors. The gown was finished. She slipped it over her head and struggled with the buttons in the back, rather than call the stupid girl who was her servant. The girl could not even dress hair. Anne smoothed her hair herself, then looked critically at her reflection in the fine mirror they had brought her.
    For a woman a month and a half from childbed, she looked strong. They had put medicines in her food, they said. Her complexion, that creamy dark skin that seldom varied in color, was well set off by the amber velvet. She had often worn amber, or tawny. Her hair, loose since she had no headdress and did not know how to make one, streamed over her shoulders. Her hands, long and slim despite the tiny extra finger, carried a rose brought to her by Master Culhane. She toyed with the rose to show off the beautiful hands, and lifted her head high.
    She was going to have an audience with Her Holiness, a female pope. And she had a request to make.
     

     
    “She will ask, Your Holiness, to be told the future. Her future, the one Anne Boleyn experienced in her own time stream, after the point we took her hostage to ours. And the future of England.” Brill’s face had darkened; Lambert could see that he hated this. To forewarn his political rival that a hostage would complain about her treatment. A hostage , that person turned sacred object through the sacrifice of personal freedom to global peace. When Tullio Amaden Koyushi had been hostage from Mars Three to the Republic of China, he had told the Church official in charge of his case that he was not being allowed sufficient exercise. The resulting intersystem furor had lost the Republic of China two trade contracts, both important. There was no other way to maintain the necessary reverence for the hostage political system. The Church of the Holy Hostage was powerful because it must be, if the solar system was to stay at peace. Brill knew that.
    So did Her Holiness.
    She wore full state robes today, gorgeous with hundreds of tiny mirrors sent to her by the grateful across all worlds. Her head was newly shaved. Perfect, synthetic jewels glittered in her ears. Listening to Brill’s apology-in-advance, Her Holiness smiled. Lambert saw the smile, and even across the room she felt Brill’s polite, concealed frustration.
    “Then if this is so,” Her Holiness said, “why cannot Lady Anne Boleyn be told her future? Hers and England’s?”
    Lambert knew that the high priest already knew the answer. She wanted to make Brill say it.
    Brill said, “It is not thought wise, Your Holiness. If you remember, we did that once before.”
    “Ah, yes, your last hostage. I will see her, too, of course, on this visit. Has Queen Helen’s condition improved?”
    “No,” Brill said shortly.
    “And no therapeutic brain drugs or electronic treatments have helped? She still is insane from the shock of finding herself with us?”
    “Nothing has helped.”
    “You understand how reluctant I was to let you proceed with another time rescue at all,” Her Holiness said, and even Lambert stifled a gasp. The high priest did not make those determinations; only the All-World Forum could authorize or disallow a hostage-taking—across space or time. The Church of the Holy