thing.'
'But you're building rockets anyway,' I say.
'Because I don't want my daughter to grow up in a prison,' Liwen says, taking a sip of tea. She puts down the cup with a determined finality. 'Sooner or later, they will forget. And when they do, we'll be ready.'
To kill hundreds of billions, I think. But I don't say it. The truth is that I don't think this-the fear of the Consilium and the Republic-is likely, that the Amazon Women would carry with them whatever makes Hippolyta what it is, and spread it. I think the universe is much more likely to make Hippolyta like itself, sooner or later, than the other way around. If I didn't think that I wouldn't be here.
But I could be wrong.
I'm glad it's not my decision.
'Take off your veil,' Yueyin says, suddenly.
'What?'
'You're not Ezheler,' she says. 'You're not even a woman. I want to see who I'm talking to.'
It's not a simple as that, of course. I have to take off the burka, pulling my arms out of the sleeves and lifting fold after fold of cloth over my head. Even though I still have my blouse and trousers and boots, once the burka is completely off-a sad puddle of violet cloth on the couch next to me-I feel naked. I understand suddenly why the women of Hippolyta continue to wear hijab, why it was so horrifying when the men of the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century secular governments tried to abolish the veil by force.
I feel stripped.
And, what's more disarming, I feel like Sasha Rusalev again.
I see that Liwen is studying me, her gaze lingering on my hands, my face, my throat. There is nothing intimate or erotic about that look, only a kind of focused concentration, and in a flash I understand it for what it is: the careful, clinical attention of a naturalist, trying to record in her memory this one specimen of a species she will never see again.
Yueyin is studying me, as well.
'Younger than I thought,' she says. 'And handsome.' It sounds more like an indictment than a compliment. 'At first I thought you were here to live out some colonialist harem fantasy, but now I don't think so.' She pauses, and then asks: 'Gay?'
'Yes. And before you formulate your next hypothesis, I'm not here because I think Amazon Fever will make a woman of me, either.'
Yueyin shrugs. 'It does happen. Once since I came here, two or three other times in Eth Service records. Mystics who don't believe in gene therapy or reconstructive surgery. The Fever kills them just like any other man. But you're not a mystic, are you?'
Now it's my turn to shrug. 'I'm a natural philosopher, and I was trained in the Caliphate. Sometimes the line is hard to draw.'
'Let me guess,' Liwen says in her accented Arabic. 'You think you have a cure for Amazon Fever.'
'More or less,' I tell her.
'That also happens,' Yueyin says. 'Every decade or so the Republic will land an automated lab with a cage full of male gerbils, to test the latest medical miracle.'
'The Fever kills them, too,' Liwen says.
'That's because the Fever's not a medical problem,' I say. 'It's just a symptom of a causality violation effect.'
'You say that as if it meant something,' says Liwen.
'It does to me.' I take a sip of tea, and then as I set the cup down, an analogy comes to me. 'Look,' I say, pointing to the cup. 'The Consilium-the Phenomenological Service, I mean-they think the universe is like the water in this teacup. The leaves are Hippolyta's causal anomaly. And the Fever is what happens when you put them together-the Fever is the tea.'
'And the blockade is there to keep the tea from diffusing any further.' Liwen lifts her own teacup and swirling it around. 'You are here to take the leaves out.'
I start to answer, but Yueyin cuts me off.
She looks me in the eye. 'If you could cure the fever,' she says, 'you'd be destroying the basis of Hippolytan society. Not just the society, but the whole ecology. There's only one male organism on this planet, and he's sitting on my couch.'
'I said the Phenomenological Service thinks that way. I didn't say I do.'
'You're not with the PS?'
'I'm not with the Consilium at all. I'm sponsored by the London Caliphate's Irrationality Office, but for all practical purposes, I'm on my own.'
Yueyin looks skeptical. 'What are you here to do, then?'
I sigh. 'This is where the metaphors start to break down. Say the universe is a cup of water. Perhaps the anomaly is like a bundle of tea leaves-in which case the Fever, the diffusion, is irreversible. No one knows how to reverse entropy on that scale. And if it isn't contained, it will spread.
'On the other hand, perhaps the anomaly is like a pebble dropped in the cup. Perhaps the Fever is only a ripple on the surface of the water, dissipating the energy of the splash. When the energy is gone, so are the ripples.'
'In which case we're doomed anyway.' Yueyin says. 'But I don't believe it.'
'Tell me,' I say. 'Spontaneous fertility in the Ezheler lands-at the edge of the anomalous region-is it increasing, or declining?'
'There's no hard evidence either way,' says Yueyin, looking uncomfortable. 'Anecdotally-'
'Anecdotally, it's declining. Isn't it?'
She looks away. 'It might be.'
'Look,' I say. 'I'm not here to destroy your society. I'm here to liberate it. You said you don't want your daughter to grow up in a prison.'
Yueyin says, 'We don't want her to grow up to be some man's wife, either.'
I shake my head. 'This is not just about you. Hippolyta is one world. There's half a trillion women out there.' I wave an arm at the ceiling, trying to encompass the whole Polychronicon. 'Don't you think they deserve a chance to have what you have?'
In Liwen's face I see understanding dawn. 'You are not trying to eradicate Amazon Fever,' she says. 'You are trying to control it.'
'I still don't understand,' Yueyin says.
'I told you this was where the metaphors break down,' I say. 'I can't describe it with teacups.'
'Without teacups,' Liwen says.
'Without teacups?' I take a deep breath. 'I'm hoping to use a Caliphate mathematical technique to establish a metastable equilibrium that allows convex regions with real and virtual histories to coexist in four-dimensional space-time, while remaining both topologically distinct and contiguous in five-space.'
Yueyin rolls her eyes. 'Never mind what you're doing,' she says. 'What does it mean? To us?'
'It means, if I succeed, that your daughter will be able to choose how she wants to live. Your daughter'-I gesture outward again-'and everyone else's.'
'Why should we believe you?'
I shrug. 'Does it matter? I'll be out of your way tomorrow in any case. I'm going north, to Erethea.' I take a sip of tea. 'If you want to stop me, I'm sure it won't be difficult.'
Liwen says something to Yueyin in Tieshanese. Conversations in the Chinese languages always sound like arguments to me, but in Yueyin's reply I hear not just disagreement, but scorn-and yet, a sort of resignation.
She gets up, then, and goes upstairs.
'You can sleep on the couch tonight,' Liwen says. 'I will get you some sheets. The bath house is out back, if you want to clean up.'
'Thank you.'
'I am sorry about Yueyin,' she says as she tidies up the tea set. 'What you have to understand is that for her, it is not enough that on Hippolyta we, women, can live without men. That Hippolyta is a place where men cannot come is also important.' She glances at the piled cloth next to me and smiles. 'For Yueyin the Fever is the perfect hijab.'
