The Clockwork Rocket

below. No one was huddled behind partitions, whispering seditiously; they were seated on the floor in small groups, clustered around lamps and dishes, talking and buzzing and chirping just like students in the university food hall.

One woman in a group of three turned toward them and called to Tullia. They approached, and Tullia made introductions.

“Daria, Antonia, Lidia: this is Yalda. We only met a few chimes ago, but she’s into the glorious mysteries of optics, so she must be worth knowing.”

“Please join us,” said Daria. There was a diagram of some kind displayed on her chest, though Yalda could make no immediate sense of it.

As they sat, Tullia asked about the picture.

“I was just talking about the western shrub vole,” Daria explained. “The young need care for half a year after birth, but they have no sterile caregivers; instead, one of each brood delays reproduction for a season. Children whose mother was an early reproducer are cared for by their late-reproducing aunt; those whose mother was a late reproducer—making their aunt the early reproducer—are cared for by that aunt’s late- reproducing child.”

Yalda could interpret the diagram, now; the lines sloping down across Daria’s chest represented the life of each vole, with dashed lines when they were so young as to need care, and annotations showing which relative provided it. “Some late reproducers look after two young, some four,” she noticed. “They all look after their sister’s children, but if their mother was an early reproducer they’re stuck with their aunt’s children as well. That’s hardly fair.”

Daria was amused. “And the early reproducers live half as long as the others—of course it’s not fair! But it’s worth learning about the full range of possibilities nature has invented, in the hope that one day we can steal the useful parts and assemble them into something better.”

Before Yalda could ask how anyone might steal a useful part of another species’ biology, Lidia said, “How about a drug that lets men reproduce? That would make a nice addition to holin!”

“I doubt that a drug alone could do that,” Daria replied. “Men aren’t likely to possess any kind of dormant capacity for childbirth, given that all our close relatives have sterile caregivers. Even when the young need more physical protection than education—so the caregivers tend to be quite large—the pattern is the same: reproduction or care, never both. The voles are an interesting exception, but they’re on a distant branch of the family tree.”

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.