The Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443

by Merrie Haskell

Merrie Haskell is scrupulous, yet given to hyperbole. She finds that this paradox of idiosyncrasies is more suited to an annoying minor character in a Victorian novel than a science fiction writer, but nevertheless, she forges on. Her fiction has appeared in Asimov's, Strange Horizons, as well as right here on Quantum Kiss (see The Roman and the Regency). Check out her website: MerrieHaskell.com.

Lydia put aside the curry comb and fetched a blanket for her horse.  "It is also convenient that I should have a horse to take care of, so I would not have to make any friends or become known to the local Society." She kissed Apple on the nose in gratitude.

Billy, the groom, returned then with Apple's mash, looking earnest and young; Lydia resisted the temptation to kiss him on the nose as well.

"Good afternoon, miss?" he said hopefully.

Lydia sighed. "Yes, Billy. Good afternoon."

She took an underground path to the sansrail stop. Since her arrival on Lockhart Prime, Lydia had discovered that she loathed the open sky; being raised in the close confines of Walton Station had given her a proper case of agoraphobia, one that she was able to ignore only when perched on Apple's back.

The underground route also happened to be the best way to avoid the reporters and her newfound fans, but she was not thinking of this as she walked.  She was thinking about the green roses, and Captain Amstall, who had almost certainly not sent them to her.

When the sansrail tram pulled in, she muttered, "Damn the green roses."

Aboard the tram, she damned them twice.

But she never got past thrice-damning them; when she entered the lobby of her building, the landlord rushed from his flat, waving glossy pamphlets and shouting about flowers. His urgency stole her voice while her mind leaped with bizarre questions like, "Did the sink leak?" and "Did the roses set the building on fire?"

"You must take care of the flowers, Miss Eager!"

"But---" said Lydia, "---the flowers were fine when I left the flat---"

"And I'm not accepting any more on your behalf!"

"Accepting---?"

"You can hire someone to sign for them! I have better things to do all day!"

"What are you talking about?"

"This!  These!" said her landlord, who dumped the untidy handful of pamphlets and papers into her arms. "I've more!" He disappeared into his flat and returned with a hand truck stacked hip-high with paper. He wheeled past, dialed the stairlift, and rose above her, glaring angrily when she didn't climb immediately after. Numbly, Lydia followed, and found the hallway lined with flowers -- thousands of them.

The bouquets, upon cursory examination, were congratulatory in regards to her first-day finish in the Olympiad. That made a certain sort of sense. It didn't quite, to her mind, explain the unusual quantity, and it certainly didn't explain things like the black and white checkerboard lilies that spelled "Lydia" intertwined with "Apple."

"You have to move them," the landlord said, waving open the door to her flat. "Violation of the fire code!" He dumped the pile of papers from his hand truck onto the floor.

"Wh -- what?"

"Two meters of clear walking space in all corridors! That's the fire code."

"Oh." A few brochures slipped from her hands, hitting the others with a slap.

The landlord tched. "And don't leave piles of those around, either!" he said, and stormed off.

Lydia stepped over the pile of papers left by the landlord, kicked the door shut on the flowers in the hall, and sank onto her sofa.  She decided to just breathe for a moment; when the moment passed, she plucked the first item off the pile and looked at it.

It was a thick invitation, tied with a silver ribbon and printed on cream-colored stock in vivid pink ink. It said, in the most ridiculous blinking font Lydia had seen since her agemates had passed around sweet sixteen and thrilling three-and-thirty invitations:

"Oh, no," Lydia moaned.

The next item, naturally, was a courting brochure. Full color. Fourteen different poses of the potential groom, standing variously with his brothers (also available), his parents, his dowry (modest stacks of gold coins and a few jewels), his dogs... Also included were summaries of his education, his work experience, his life expectancy, his gene survey, a list of famous ancestors, special skills, and at the bottom of the last page, a discreet list of references for past performances in sexual liaisons. Lydia flipped quickly back to the middle of the brochure.  She'd never read a courting brochure before, and now she stared at the health overview in horrified fascination.

And, at the top of each page, in a curly, masculine font, his name: Gerard Albion Rodriguez VIII.

Lydia shoved the whole stack under a sofa pillow and fled to her bed, where she burrowed beneath the covers and fell immediately asleep in what could only be called an enormous act of avoidance.

#

Some fifteen months earlier, Miss Lydia Eager of Walton Station celebrated her coming of age with the purchase of passage on a green-class freighter bound for Lockhart Prime.

The Lockhart Nexus held an Olympiad every eight standard years. This was not an unusual tradition among H. sapiens variants -- though strange radiations had largely not mutated the cellstuff of humans in Lydia's corner of the galaxy, and Lockhart Nexians weren't even variants yet by any strict definition. Neither were their horses; those remained as pure as Earth Standard Stock, and drew admirers and buyers alike from all over the quadrant, which in turn made the equestrian competitions of the Olympiad the one place where an impoverished horsemad gentlewoman could go to seek her fortune.

Though not socially crippling, it was an unconventional choice. Yet, Lydia had never consciously defied convention; simply, she became so absorbed in other things that when convention passed by, she failed to make eye contact. The fact that she had reached the age of forty without a single entry of elective surgery on her dossier spoke to this, for she had grown up during the third craze for discorrective eye surgery. Teens across the Lockhart Nexus spent the 2410s wearing squints and thick eye-warping spectacles, and scorning those who did not.  Lydia remained among the scorned.

Of course, by 2442, long after Lydia's agemates had given up on trying look unattractively attractive and had repaired their eyesight, horses had caught on with the higher classes. Prices for everything from horse feed to competition dress to the horses themselves inflated dramatically. For a girl like Lydia, mired by circumstance in a genteel poverty from which nothing short of kidnapping by Gypsies could free her, to have her passion catch on was a financial devastation. And Gypsies, alas for Lydia, had never migrated to that part of the galaxy.

Lydia had no choice but to leave home to seek greener pastures -- or at least less mortgaged ones.

Lydia announced her departure to her foster-parents during her birthday dinner, and paid for the assertion of her newly-gained independence with dyspepsia. While Annice, her foster-mother, spluttered, Robért, her foster-father, said, "You are be commended, Lydia, for your bravery; staking your meager fortune on this venture may yet give you a chance to increase it, so that you might someday re-establish the House of Eager."

"I do want to extend my entrée to children of my own someday," Lydia said earnestly.

Annice's worry wrinkles fell away, and a dreaming sheen came over her eyes. "Grandbabies," she murmured.  "Sweet cherubs, with Lydia's curls! And her freckles!"

Robért grunted. "Lydia, take care that you don't marry someone with the genes to override your freckles and curls. I couldn't bear the carping if you did."

This put an end to Annice's raptures over Lydia's unconceived offspring. A birthday cake was produced, the ritual song was sung, and candles were extinguished in the traditional manner. And Lydia knew, despite Robért's argumentation with Annice, that he was not on her side, for when he asked about her travel plans and learned that she had taken the single passenger accommodation on a green-class freighter, he did not offer to pay for an upgrade.

#

Lydia's voyage should have been entirely uneventful, with both her horse and groom safely stowed away in hyperborean sleep; and so it promised to be until Raoul, the supercargo, brought her first meal.

"It's not much," he said, setting a tray on her bed.  "We don't have any crew to look after passengers...  in fact, these are crew quarters, here; we were one short on the voyage."

"It's just fine. I'll rarely look around -- I brought two hundred and forty-eight novels. Now, while this service is delightful, Raoul, could you tell me the location of the dining hall for the future?"

"Captain says to tell you we'll deliver your dinner at eight of the clock every night. With breakfast at the other eight, and tea at four, and lunch at---"

"Impossible.  I am not taking every meal for eight months in this room by myself!"

Raoul gave the door a longing look. "I'll tell Captain Amstall of your objections," he said. "But you understand, I can't disobey orders."

"Of course. Though I don't quite see how it would be disobeying orders to tell me where the dining hall is.  Unless you're suggesting I just wander about and find it on my own."

"Er, no! No." Raoul told her where to find the dining room, then left before she extracted any further information that he did not wish to divulge.

#

Several times over the next few weeks, Lydia wished she had gone hyperborean with her horse. No matter how many novels she had, however, Lydia couldn't avoid attempting to make friends, as even the most anti-social of human beings requires companionship once or twice in eight months.

Her first trip to the dining hall was a disaster.  Captain Amstall, a glaring, glooming man with imposing eyebrows, excellent posture, and a curious habit of double-blinking, stared anyone down who dared to make conversation with Lydia.  Subsequent excursions never improved.

On the few occasions that Captain Amstall failed to appear for meals, Lydia found the crew still distant;  ostensibly they were being respectful of her class, age and rank. At best, Lydia could occasionally extract from one or another of them intense speeches on hull integrity and gravitational dynamics. But before things could ever get interesting, Captain Amstall would appear, shoo his people on to their work, and shoo Lydia back to her cabin, where she would read at least one more novel before heading out again to accost another unsuspecting crewmember.

Alas, but she read rather too fast for anyone's comfort.

#

Captain Amstall waited a full three months to knock on her door.

He had dressed up for the visit, she noted. His hair was combed forward into discrete points; he had donned high-topped boots (of unexpectedly good quality but sixteen years out of fashion) and brushed them to a gleaming perfection. His waistcoat sported new buttons and the signs of careful repair, and the sleeves of his linen shirt were a quarter-measure shorter than the sleeves of his workaday shirts. Lydia deduced that either he had owned this shirt since before his last growth spurt, or the cuffs had worn out and been turned under by a dexterous tailor.  Or perhaps, both.

These were signs of careful appearance-upkeeping, adding up to a big case of genteel poverty. It was so dreadfully easy to recognize the symptoms when one was sick with it too.

"Captain Amstall." Lydia gave her courtesy in recognition of his gentility.

He bowed, then stood stiffly in the doorway. "You travel with us all the way to the Nexus Prime, Miss Eager?"

Lydia smiled. "Please come in, Captain. May I offer you some tea?"

The captain blinked twice, that small stutter of a blink that so bemused Lydia, then entered her quarters, leaving the door open. Somewhat startled by this attention to ROY protocol, Lydia hesitated briefly, before she directed him to seat himself her chair-bed while she took the footstool-toilet. She pulled the writing desk down between them for a table.

Lydia poured her washwater allotment for the day into two cups and dropped in two tea-tabs, there being no method to do a proper tea aboard a green-class freighter. Their knees knocked together once, and Lydia's propriety alarm flashed gently across her field of vision. Captain Amstall scooted further back onto her chair-bed, and there were no further alarums.

"You are obviously a lady of Quality," Captain Amstall said, observing the creation of the improper tea.

"So I am," she said, serene in knowing this much was true. "Quality" was but a by-word for having entrée into the ROY classes.

"Yet you travel green-class with but one servant. Who is frozen."

"Billy assured me he would be more comfortable in hyperborean stasis.  And being Quality does not always equate to having money, Captain. As I'm sure you have reason to know."

He had it within his power not to look startled. His tea steamed, indicating that the tab had interacted fully with the water; he sipped cautiously. "I have seen your horse, Miss Eager," he said at last.

"Quality horseflesh does not always equate to money, either, Captain. I purchased my mare before the frenzy for horses began," Lydia said, barely restraining a giggle. She discovered that she enjoyed the resumption of the social dances, though perhaps it was due to space madness or loneliness.

"I have come to ask you to please take your meals for the remainder of the trip in your quarters," Captain Amstall said. "For the sake of your dignity, your house, and your reputation."

"No," Lydia said.

"No?"

Lydia's lips twitched.  Really, Amstall was an undiscovered treasure of comedy.  Between his entangling good manners and his clear desire to set her in her place, he was most diverting.

"No," she repeated.

"If you will not consider refraining for your own sake, perhaps you will consider for the sake of my crew.  They are uncomfortable in the presence of their social betters."

"If I make your crew uncomfortable," Lydia said, "it has nothing to do with Quality or money, but rather that you are stepping on their innate friendliness with your looming presence."

"They've no reason to converse with you."

"No reason but the desire to make a friend." Lydia kept her tone civil. "Do I interfere with the work?"

"Not yet."

"Do they distrust strangers---?"

"Rich ones. Of Quality," he added darkly.

Suddenly, everything made sense. Lydia straightened her shoulders. "No, Captain, it is you who distrusts rich strangers of Quality. And your crew, I think, has previously spent time with no members of the ROY classes besides yourself."

There was a pause.  A rather lengthy pause, Lydia decided.  "I have no rank beyond that of my freighter," the Captain said.

"Please do not dissemble." Lydia waggled dismissive fingers at him. "I've watched you at dinner for ninety-three separate meals now. Manners aside, you double-blink constantly. You've clearly had eye work done -- perhaps gave yourself an astigmatism and then had it corrected again later? But corrected by a surgeon of lesser ability than the one who did the damage, I think."

The Captain double-blinked, clearly startled, but came out with a simple: "So?"

"So. I could not afford discorrective surgery as well as a horse, Captain; you can guess how rich I was not."

"Your parents kept you on a tight budget."

"My fosterers did," she corrected. "Lest I burn through my entire portion before I reached my majority. Currently, I am too poor to get to Nexus Prime on anything but a green-class freighter, much less purchase entrée for any offspring -- or even to breed my horse.

She continued. "Your poverty struck about twenty years ago, by my calculations. And yet you had enough blunt at the end to purchase a green-class freighter. Not enough for red-class, or you didn't want to start off in debt. No more debt than your parents left you to cope with, anyway. Right?"

He was staring. Not with his mouth open, which reflected more on his manners training than the degree of his surprise.

"My dear captain! I'm not an idiot, for all that I'm horsemad and poor."

"Of course not, Miss Eager." He double-blinked. "You told me that you go to Nexus Prime to attend the Olympiad."

"To compete therein," Lydia said. "Even a lesser medal would establish me nicely in my own house, were I to practice economy."

"I..."

"Thought I was a parasitic socialite?"

He snapped his mouth shut.

Lydia smiled. "I'll stop bothering your crew, Captain, if you insist. But as you have no other passengers, and I will go certifiably insane if I'm to spend the next five months talking to myself, you will have to provide me with some sort of social opportunity."

This could be interpreted broadly, but she thought Captain Amstall was too much of a stick to infer innuendo.

"I am the Captain. I do not have time to befriend---"

"Then the crew and I shall have to socialize, after all."

"A woman of your breeding---"

"Breeding! Horses are bred, Captain. At best, the social class you would use to keep me isolated is a simple matter of enculturation and finance. An inheritance of ritual and prejudice."

She had offended him. He rose stiffly, bowed with a jerk, and said, "Socialize with whomever you like on this crew. But I will not be answerable for your good name or your reputation."

He left.

Lydia cleared up the tea, and then picked up her novel. The crew could wait until she was certain she would not encounter Captain Amstall again too soon.

#

After this, Lydia did manage to make a few close acquaintanceships with some of the crewmembers, as threatened; full-fledged friendships were resisted, for the memories of Captain Amstall's disapproval still hung like a cloud over meal-times and other interactions.

Lydia pieced together very little else about Captain Amstall's past, though she did learn from Raoul that the Captain expected this current voyage to pay off.

"Will he buy up to yellow-class, then?" Lydia asked.

This, the supercargo could not answer. "And you, miss?" Raoul asked. "What will you do with your many Olympic medals?"

"I'm thinking to set up a horse farm in a prairie state on one of the outer planets." She had been considering such a plan for some time, but had never yet said it aloud. She stared at Raoul, wondering if he could perceive the newness, the unspokenness of these words, but he just smiled.

"Sounds lovely, miss." His smile died away as Captain Amstall approached. "I should head back to work."

"No, stay," Amstall said. "I meant to join the conversation, not to kill it. I couldn't help but overhear, Miss Eager. Which outer planet were you considering?"

A nervous laugh escaped her lips, but she answered him seriously enough: she pointed out that she hadn't been to any outer systems at all, but she had heard good things about Mikia and Saludo. To her surprise, Captain Amstall launched into a description of both planets, occasionally deferring to Raoul for his impressions.

Noting her confusion, Raoul said, "We used to do a run past Saludo, Miss Eager. And Mikia is our drydock."

"Oh," Lydia said, and listened intently to the rest of their conversation. Amstall was working hard to draw Raoul out, she saw, and while there was a certain strained expression around his eyes -- as if the whole conversation were on some level very difficult for him -- he was more personable than she had ever seen him.

This was the first of several random encounters with Captain Amstall, during which many topics were pleasantly broached and discussed. But Amstall never again approached her while she was alone.

#

The night before disembarkation, Lydia sat down with her bank statements and sketched out her financial circumstances. Of the entire principle she had withdrawn from the Walton Station Bank on the day of her majority, a full half of it would be spent before the Olympiad's opening ceremonies. If she had left her portion untouched, and with no small measure of good luck in her investments, she might have lived out her days on Walton Station in a small flat, without horses or children, unable to afford the upkeep of a Society wardrobe. She could beg for continued lenience from her fosterers -- they loved her, of course -- but a small orange-class house such as theirs was beholden to provide for their natural children first, and she would have to become an alloparent to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There was no entrée to be had from them.

From her birth parents, there was simply nothing more to be had; they had lost the majority of their fortune in a bad venture, and her mother's house had been dissolved. It was all that Mariah Eager could do to discover enough ROY fosterers to house her ten children.

Lydia's vague, half-formed dream of a ranch on an outer planet was so far out of sight that she put it aside entirely. Now was the time of practicalities: Lydia had to win at least one bronze in the Olympiad in order to be able to keep Apple and to pay Billy for as long as Apple lived. All other considerations fell away before these. Apple was the love of her life, and Billy was the love of Apple's.

After a blurry night of accounting and fretting, Lydia was ready find a foul mood -- and a foul mood was found.

Before disembarking, Lydia paused in the doorway of her quarters, squandering a brief moment on regret for the friends she had not made on this voyage. The crew aside, Captain Amstall was a ROY gentleman possessed of an intriguing combination of handsome countenance, interesting life-circumstances, and fascinating dourness. That he had returned only disinterest discommoded her, and his failure to acknowledge her departure, were all she needed to grow grossly unpleasant to be around.

It was not a good day to be in a foul mood. She failed to make a gracious good-bye to Raoul, the supercargo. He might have looked upon her fondly for a warmer farewell, and thereafter considered her a friend of sorts, but this was not to be.

Her mood very nearly got her into trouble with the port authorities, who never were very inclined to stamp horse passports as quickly as human ones. And Billy and Apple, suffering from hyperborean-sleep disorientation, both wondered if they had done something to grieve their mistress; their reunion was not as pleasurable as Lydia had anticipated.

The foul mood did not materially affect Lydia's installation in a flat, or Apple and Billy's relocation to a stable across the street... but it did color the over-salty pub dinner that Lydia consumed alone that night, which sat in an indigestible lump in her stomach and gave her bad dreams afterwards.

But after a book, a bath, and an early bedtime, Lydia managed to put Captain Amstall and his freighter fully from her mind. Work is the best antidote for a vague disappointment, she decided.  The next morning, she began Apple's post-travel reconditioning and final training for the Olympiad.

#

Lydia did not think overmuch of Captain Amstall again until the morning of Lydia's first Olympic event. A knock at the door heralded the arrival of a large bouquet of green roses.

There was no card accompanying them.

She had no vase, so she laid the flowers in the kitchen sink after filling it with cool water. "Green roses," she muttered, staring at them while dressing for the day. "Green roses."

There was no such thing as a rare rose anymore; in the Days of Earth, when the ancient language of flowers had been invented, there'd been only red roses. And perhaps also white -- Lydia couldn't remember. Now, of course, roses grew in every shade the human eye could detect and some it couldn't, though red roses remained the most popular. Red meant passionate love; red was the greatest of the seven classes.

But green?

Green flowers were everything that plants had been working against for eons of evolution: a green flower, after all, was nothing more than a collection of interestingly shaped leaves. One occasionally saw green roses in the great houses, where an emphasis was placed on varying the flower arrangements daily. But, say you were walking down the street -- you might see a courtingboy carrying a bouquet, and that bouquet would invariably be composed of red roses. Or perhaps one of the non-class colors, like white, black or pink.  Certainly, no one ever courted with green roses.

Not that there was anyone courting her. That notion was as far-fetched as the very notion of sending anyone a bouquet of green roses.

They couldn't be from her fosterers; Robért and Annice wouldn't have sent roses, and they would have sent any flowers to Apple's stable, knowing that was where Lydia spent most of her time.

Why, the only person she associated with the color green at all was -- Captain Amstall of the green-class freighter.

Lydia braided her hair, muttering about the color green. She muttered all the way down to the Olympiad's stable where Billy and Apple now resided. She even muttered as she and Apple entered the course. It was only as Apple readied for the first jump that she subsided. Horse and rider entered a state of complete absence of thought, a state where pure motion was ascendant.

To Lydia's gratification, practice did make perfect, and Apple was as eager to please her rider as any horse ever was. They made it through the preliminary round with no faults.

They had been early in the jumping order and the first to make a clean round; while Lydia and Apple waited patiently together through their competitors' trips, Lydia allowed herself no opportunity to hope, or to think about hoping, or even to breathe as though she spoke a language that knew the word "hope."

Unbidden, the notion of green roses popped back into Lydia's mind. 

Lydia had left Walton Station before anyone could even think of enacting courtship rituals in her general direction -- not that she was courtship material, with her penny-portion. Though she'd had a few spontaneous sexual contracts, Lydia had managed to avoid most of the mischief of the heart just by being poor. There had been a crush on a music teacher -- that was almost a requirement of growing up orange-class, no matter what one's monetary situation -- but that was all the danger her heart had ever been near.

Given that being in love was not Lydia's natural state, and courtship not her natural worry, she found it surprising that the matter of the green roses occupied such a large part of her brain. She maintained just enough objectivity to realize that it was a convenient sore spot for her mind to return to, like a tongue returns to a canker sore, and that it kept her from throwing up during all this damned dreadful waiting under this damned dreadful open sky.

Lydia had not sussed out her competition before the event -- another convenient trick of her brain, which was wise to realize that she had a personality that spent more time fretting over known quantities than unknown ones. She now determined, somewhat against her will, that her main competition was probably the young man on the gray-purple Appaloosa, who had the look of a goer, and was the only horse that had tied Apple thus far.

Tied Apple thus far. Lydia blinked, then rechecked the scores. Apple and the Appaloosa-in-question were tied for first.

"Green roses, green roses," she chanted, trying to think about anything other than how very simple it would to screw everything up from this point forward.

The final rankings for the preliminaries posted; Apple and the gray-purple Appaloosa marched down the stadium side-by-side, the rest of the competitors following. The crowd roared sedate approval. Lights flashed. Roses were thrown.

None of the roses were green, Lydia noticed.

And Apple was tied for the gold.

#

After crawling into bed to avoid the courting brochures and the congratulatory bouquets, Lydia fell into a blissful sleep -- only to be woken a short time later by an urgent threnody that seemed to go on for hours. She sleepily fumbled the buttons of her console, and Annice's pleasant face filled the screen.

"Darling! Congratulations!"

"Foster-mother? Is this an ansible call? It must be costing you a fortune!"

"Entirely worth it! The gold, Lydia. The gold!"

"It's not won yet," Lydia said.

"Think of it, darling! If you win, you can afford to return to Walton Station and keep a house close to us! And shop the marriage market in style!"

Lydia knew as soon as the next words were out of her mouth that she should have just bitten through her tongue. "Technically, I'm already shopping. I had a huge stack of brochures when I got home."

Annice's hands flew to her throat. "Oh, Lydia! All on your own? Oh. I'm sending Kaspar to you immediately."

"What? No, that's not even a little bit nec---"

"There goes the timer!" Annice sang. "I love you, Lydia! Foster-father says knock 'em dead!"

She was gone. Lydia flopped back into bed, groaning.

The sun had not yet set, and Lydia didn't think she'd be able to go back to sleep. She checked the hall, and found that the rows of flowers had grown. There was a holographic note hanging in midair: "FIRE HAZARD!!" was written in bright yellow caution-letters, which tumbled like drunken bumblebees over the lush rows. Lydia found the note-projector, crushed it under her heel, and the letters faded away.

Next, she dragged all the arrangements and bouquets into her flat. The scent so overwhelmed her that she had to open a window in order to sleep, and she was awake again at first light.

She immediately dialed a local charity-disburser and donated the flowers to the hospitals and eldercare homes of the district.

"Wonderful!" the charity-worker on the other end of the connection chirped. "Oh, and may I say, I'm pulling for you in the jumping competition, Miss Eager!" The charity-worker had not quite closed the connection before turning to a co-worker and squealing, "Kendra! That was Lydia Eager!"

Lydia decided not to cry just then. It would be better if she saved up for later.

There was a knock at the door. She opened it, half-expecting another confrontation with her landlord.

"Kaspar!"

"I know," Kaspar said sympathetically, bending to kiss her cheek.

"Foster-mother wasted no time."

Kaspar smiled. "Did you think she was really going to let you get away without trying to secure a marriage?"

"Well..."

"Well." He surveyed the room. "You've made quite a splash. Look at those flowers. And that stack of brochures!"

"I can't bear to."

"Madame Annice would tell you this is what a courtingboy is for." He moved into the room to collect the cards off the flowers arrangements.

"She must have sent you red-class," Lydia said.

"Yes. A red-class rocket ship, no less."

"Hm." She watched him at his work for a moment. "It took me eight months to get here."

"Yes," he said.

"On a green-class ship," she said.

"Yes," he said.

"My cabin was barely bigger than the hygiene chamber over there."

"Yes, green-class is awful," he said, "And exactly what you deserved for running away from home." Kaspar stopped to look at the green roses in the sink. "No card?"

"No," Lydia said.

"Who are they from?"

"I don't know. There's no card."

"Hm," he said, and moved on, oblivious to her glares.

Finally, she coughed a little and asked, "Can I get you something to eat?"

"I doubt it," he said, looking at the lone cupboard in the tiny kitchen. "Why don't you just go about your hygiene rituals?"

"Why?" she asked, suspicious.

He held up the cream-colored card with the pink, flashing font. "It's off to the tea parties for us today."

"Kaspar. I am in the middle of an Olympic competition."

"Just for an hour."

She breathed deeply. "No. No wedding dress tea parties. They sound asinine. Insanely asinine."

His smile grew broader. "My dear. They are. But they're necessary. And I am your courtingboy: you can either accede to my few small requests, or you can be left to deal with all of this alone."

"What if I don't even wish to court?"

"How then will you get married?"

"Some other way," Lydia said, looking around at the flowers and the brochures. "Some way that's less like interior decorating and more like... love."

Kaspar looked horrified, but he recovered and took her hand. "Lydia," he said soothingly. "There's much more to the courting process than simply trading wealth for health or fame for beauty. I can find you someone. Someone you'll like. Someone who can give you a hundred horses for a hundred years."

Lydia chewed her lip. Kaspar had been courtingboy for three of her fosterers' natural-borns. Her foster-sibs all seemed happy -- but they were much older than she, and she hadn't paid that much attention to them once they left home.

"No one with discorrective eye surgery," she heard herself saying. "That represents to me all that's wrong with keeping up with Society. I want someone who was strong enough to say no."

"Or, like you, someone who was interested in other things?"

She flushed. She didn't realize that he knew her that well -- or that her fosterers did, since they had doubtless briefed Kaspar. "That's also fine."

"What if his parents just didn't let him get the surgery?" Kaspar asked.

"'What if,' indeed? That means he had the only sensible parents in all of ROY Society, and those genes are worth passing on."

Kaspar laughed. She went to attend to her hygiene, and wondered how she had agreed to let Kaspar stay on in the middle of the Olympiad.

When she finished, Kaspar had her fix her mark to a hundred and twenty-three thank-you cards. In the midst of the signing, the charity came to take away the flowers; when a worker made a grab for her green roses, however, Lydia stopped him.

"No," she said, "No, those are from a friend."

After the charity left, Kaspar asked, "How do you know they're from a friend if you don't know who they're from?"

"They came before the first day of the competition."

"Interesting," Kaspar said. He passed her three courting brochures. "Here. Fully half of your humble supplicants weren't savvy enough to discover you are from a dissolute house; they have been recycled. Or at least their brochures have been. These are the best of the rest, wealthy enough to offer you a house adoption and entrée for your children. If any of them catch your fancy, I can begin a correspondence on your behalf. "

She paged through the brochures. All the candidates had had discorrective eye surgery. She tossed them to the floor.

Kaspar picked up the brochures and smoothed the glossy covers. "Now, now... They all had recorrective surgery well before the others. That shows some intelligence."

Lydia grunted, in as unladylike manner as she could muster.

#

Kaspar guided Lydia through the hyperbaric doors of the Matsui Galleries and into the special hush of a wedding shop. Thirty-two mirrored nooks lined the long gallery; each nook contained a small runway flanked by plush velvet couches, and on these couches, sat women and their courtingboys, all dressed in bridal pastels. Lydia felt out of place in her workaday gray broadcloth and blue denim, but she had no better clothing on Nexus Prime but for her jumping attire.

A woman in mauve approached, murmuring an inquiry. Kaspar murmured in return.

"Right this way, Miss Eager," murmured the woman in mauve. "I am Aphrodite, your sartorial counselor."

"Thank you, Aphrodite," murmured Lydia. She'd had every intention of speaking normally, but found that she was simply unable to raise her voice. And her ears felt plugged. She yawned gapingly and rubbed at the muscles in her jaw, but to no effect.

"No yawning!" Kaspar bent down to hiss in her ear.

They were conducted to a mirrored nook and seated on blue couches. "Autumnal Cerulean," Aphrodite announced -- in a murmur, of course. "It complements your complexion perfectly."

"Oh," said Lydia.

Another woman in mauve wheeled up with a silver dolly of cakes and tea. A third mauve-clad murmurer brought out swathes of fabric.

"Courting dress cannot be left to the whims of one's laundry service," the third woman said. "One must have the complete wardrobe from the beginning."

Lydia stifled the sort of giggles one gets when one is praying for death.

"Coordination is vital," said Aphrodite. "Tell me, Kaspar, does Miss Eager's skin blush pink or red?"

Lydia could stifle herself no longer. A small trail of giggles burst out, sounding distant before they even left her mouth. Aphrodite tched and Lydia felt herself blushing.

"Please note that Miss Eager's complexion is class four with a roses-of-Damascus blush," Aphrodite announced, and the woman with the fabrics came forward to drape lengths across Lydia's shoulders and under her chin.

"Next!" Aphrodite snapped her fingers, Lydia's neck was released, and another swathe of fabric came in to strangle her. The second woman took notes as swathe followed swathe. Just before Lydia reached the screaming point, all three women retreated behind an Autumnal Cerulean curtain, and Kaspar poured tea.

"Why is everything so quiet?" Lydia asked. "If I screamed, would it even come out above a whisper?"

"One of the tricks of the wedding planning trade: a combination of white noise, subliminals, and localized air pressure."

"Kaspar," Lydia said, consulting her horologe with growing anxiety. "I have to finish the jumping competition tomorrow."

"You needn't, actually," he said. "Your courting score is so high right now, we could have you in a marriage contract before you enter the ring tomorrow."

"Er..."

"Think on it," he said, sitting back with a look of sedate smugness as the small runway came alive. Aphrodite slipped out from behind the curtain to narrate the fashion show that followed.

Lydia sighed and settled back into her couch. "I'm leaving in thirty minutes," she said darkly, setting her horologe's alarm. For the next half hour, Kaspar ordered any number of dresses and pants suits for her in shades of asthmatic blue and the exact pink of her blushes.

Only then was Lydia allowed to escape to the stables, where she fell on Apple's neck and breathed deeply of the horsey scent until sanity returned. She didn't have enough time to take Apple into the schooling ring, but she did walk the course for the next day before returning to her flat.

Her flat was largely flower-free upon her return, though Kaspar had purchased a vase for the green roses, which accompanied the perfect athlete's dinner he had prepared for her.

"I call it the Courting Trim Supper," Kaspar sniffed when she remarked on the food, "but you may think of it in terms of your athletic competition. If you wish."

She went for a walk after dinner, taking underground passages and building-to-building connectors so as not to see too much sky. She thought she walked randomly, and so she was surprised to find herself at the spaceport, staring at the list of ships in port. There were no freighters belonging to Captain Amstall. She turned away, disappointed.

On the tram back to her flat, she berated herself for feeling anything at all for a disagreeable man who'd tried to isolate her. Just because she found him delightfully contrary and frightfully handsome, appealingly somber and sexily dour... Oh, why hadn't she ever been in love with anyone other than the wretched music teacher? She felt that with any experience at all in the matters of the heart, she wouldn't be the least bit concerned with Captain Amstall, and wouldn't be wishing that the green roses had come from him.

She supposed she should just send him a message, something to wait in his box until his next trip to port. She understood that was how the declassé societies did things, in the murkier corners of the galaxy. Of course, those societies were so busy trying to conquer, subvert, or get along with various machine intelligences, that marriage wasn't something they bothered formalizing anymore, and children were born willy-nilly in a vain attempt for the embodied living to someday outnumber the uploaded dead.

Never marrying, that could be the key. She could just fall in love with someone and have a contractless relationship... Well, it would be fine, except that she wanted offspring, and this Lydia couldn't reconcile. She wanted to raise her own children.

Lydia wasn't certain when she had become a romantic, but she did know enough to blame it on all the novel-reading.

#

The next morning, Kaspar walked her to the stables and helped her change into her new riding coat -- black, with velvet cuffs the very pink of new scar tissue on a class four complexion. She knew, for she had matched the cuffs against a healed scrape she'd gotten on her elbow during training a few weeks before, one that she hadn't bothered to bring to a doctor's attention.

Kaspar took a lint brush to her both before and after she mounted Apple, leaving her feeling vaguely bruised and beleaguered like a dandruffy lapdog. Kaspar walked her to the competition ring; at the last moment, gave her a hypo cocktail of sweat gland suppressors -- and vasodilators to help with overheating while being unable to sweat. "I programmed your nanoregulators to clear out the drugs in a quarter of an hour or if your core temp reaches thirty-nine degrees," he said. "I can't do anything about the latter and neither can you -- but the weather is moderate, and you shouldn't overheat, so be sure to be out of the camera's eye by the time you start sweating."

"Of course. We wouldn't want to turn into a pumpkin before the press," Lydia said, bunching and unbunching the reins in her hands. Kaspar frowned, but said nothing more.

The sky above the jumping ring had never seemed so big or so empty since Lydia's arrival on Nexus Prime. Her heart painfully reminded her of its existence by starting up an uncontrollably irregular thudding. She rubbed a fist across her eyes. "For the gold, Apple!" she said in what she meant to be a cheery voice.

Apple tried her best, but she couldn't work through the confusion and hesitancy she sensed in her rider. They did not take the round without faults. The gray-purple Appaloosa did make a clean round, however, and so did a roan from Eire Station, and two other horses. Lydia and Apple dropped to fifth place and rode from the ring with nothing. Lydia was shaking so badly at the end that it took some time to remember how to care.

Lydia and Apple were eligible for three more competitions in the Olympiad, but now their chances of pulling even a bronze out of any of them seemed remote at best. Lydia left Apple to Billy and stormed back to her flat, where Kaspar was peevishly assembling another Courting Trim Dinner.

"This can't go on," Lydia said.

"Indeed it cannot," Kaspar said. "You've received not one bouquet of flowers since your performance this morning. I shouldn't be surprised if some courtingboys show up today and take back their brochures." His tone was ironical, but his expression remained deadly serious.

"Let them! This is all just a big waste of your time and my fosterers' money."

Kaspar doled soup into a bowl with care. "I work at Lady Annice's request," he said finally. "She has not summoned me home."

"Only because they've not gotten the results on Walton Station, yet."

"Fifth place in the Lockhart Olympiad is not quite as dire as you think. Certainly, you will not have the wide field of marriage prospects to choose from as you did before, but there will be men who find your talents and ambitions intriguing."

"Men who squinted all through their minority." She bit savagely into a spoonful of soup, jarring her teeth.

"This prejudice of yours does not work in your favor, Lydia!" In seeing his exasperation, Lydia felt a measure of triumph; but Kaspar seemed to sense that she was spoiling for a fight, and calmed.

"Look," he said, sedately plating a salad and placing it beside her soup. "I'm trying to help you. I'm trying to tell you that you can get everything you ever wanted, right here and right now, and you don't even have to go back to the Olympiad. You can have horses, as many as your heart desires, and you only have to give up one small, irrational prejudice." Next to the salad, he placed a sleek brochure.

Lydia slurped her soup, alternately fuming and trying not to cry. A few errant tears slipped across her cheeks and she choked.

"Why are you crying?" Kaspar asked, aghast.

"Because I'm angry," Lydia said.

"Well, be angry then, but don't cry!"

"Don't tell me how to be angry!"

Kaspar stepped back. "I'm going to leave you to calm down. I'll return in a bit." The door closed behind him.

Lydia sat for a long moment, staring at the cooling soup and the warming salad. She convinced the tears to stop and her heart to slow, but she couldn't make herself eat.

She still stared at her dinner when there came a knock at the door. Expecting Kaspar, Lydia dragged her feet to answer it.

It was Captain Amstall.

He was wearing the same shirt with turned-under sleeves that he'd worn when he'd come to her room all those months ago, and the same well-used but glossy boots. He was less handsome than she remembered -- his nose a bit bigger, his eyebrows a bit closer together -- and yet this realization, coupled with his sour frown, made him more real and more desirable.

He did not smile or offer his hand or a bow; he looked past her, towards her table that doubled as dinette and desk, saying, "I'm sorry. I've interrupted your dinner, I see."

"What? Oh, no, you interrupted my staring match with my dinner, you mean."

"Staring match? Who is winning?"

"Entropy, sadly."

He double-blinked.

"Er. I apologize. Captain Amstall, do come in."

In he came. She offered him the only chair in the flat, while she perched the sofa's edge. His eyes took in the environs: the small kitchen area with its single cupboard, the half-open door to the hygiene chamber, the narrow bed. The green roses in the vase. Did his eye pause on those roses? Did they linger at all?

Then he was done looking around, and stared at the carpet.

Lydia in turn stared at his downcast face, his lowered eyes. His forehead was nice, she decided; the hairline was high, the brow intelligent, and the skin just lined enough to give him character. She waited for him to address her.

And waited.

She shifted her feet restlessly. At that he looked up.

"Have you been well, Captain Amstall?" Lydia asked.

"I have."

"And how is Raoul?"

"Fine, fine. His wife was just delivered of their third child."

"Lovely. Tell him I wish them well."

"I will, if I see him."

"Oh?" Lydia asked, casting about somewhat wildly for things to say. "Is he not the supercargo of your freighter any longer?"

"He is the supercargo," Captain Amstall acknowledged, "but it is no longer my freighter."

This astonished her. "Why---?"

"I sold it yesterday," he said. "We just returned to port this week. Not to be gauche -- I do not wish to discuss money in your parlor -- but there is no longer any need for me to captain a freighter."

"I see," she said, though she did not see. What could be the purpose of his visit?

There was a knock at the door. Captain Amstall's forehead crinkled in dismay, but Lydia sighed relief. "Oh," she said, rising to answer, "That must be my courtingboy."

"Your courtingboy." He spoke in a distant voice, and it wasn't really a question.

Kaspar was there with his mouth open to say something to her -- but his dropped jaw shut when he saw Captain Amstall behind her. "How do you do," Kaspar said, in a way that indicated that he wanted no introduction.

An alarming wave of male posturing passed between them; Kaspar's eyes swept the Captain from foot to head, assessing, while the Captain's face turned as hard as the first time he'd caught her dining with the crew of his ship.

Captain Amstall slid one foot towards the open door. "I must be going," he said with a bow. "I stopped by condole with you on your loss today. I hope you win many medals, Miss Eager, but I will be proud to say that my ship carried you and your horse in any event. Best of luck."

And he was gone.

Lydia sank back to the sofa and regarded Kaspar with gimlet eyes.

"Why are you glaring at me?" Kaspar asked. "And why haven't you eaten your dinner? Did you even look at this brochure?"

"I'm not in the mood."

Kaspar's lips thinned to a pencil-drawn line. He marched over to the brochure and brought it back, holding it out for her inspection. "I may not have made this perfectly clear before," he said. "But if you show any interest at all, there is an offer on the line here."

She looked askance at the slim brochure, then snatched it out of his hand. "You know very well that you did not make it perfectly clear. I don't understand your courtingboy games, Kaspar, but I'll look this over tonight and let you know in the morning. I'm going to bed right now. So. Good night." She took the brochure into the small hygiene chamber, where she did her necessaries, then drew a bath.

While waiting for the tub to fill, she studied the brochure. It was glossy, yes, but much less ostentatious than the others she'd seen. The font was elegant, but not flashy. The name was no ridiculous iteration, either: simply Jayong Kim, the only son of an ancient Lockhartian family. The photos showed an attractive man in just three poses. The important statistics were all present, including an impressive percentage of charitable giving.

Lydia slid the brochure into her medicine chest, then slid her body into a seaweed bath.

She decided that she would not spend the evening thinking about anything at all. It took all the mental discipline she had, but she managed it.

#

Lydia rose from a restless doze at the third bell after midnight to wander down to the stables. Apple and Billy slept peacefully, and she kept a fond watch over them until dawn, when she went out to purchase an apple for Apple. When she returned, Billy was gone, probably to break his fast and find a hygiene chamber.

Lydia let the mare slobber apple chunks along her hand and wrist; the warm breath of the animal, the soft velvet of her muzzle interspersed with sharper, stiffer hairs, all reminded Lydia of her long, perplexing childhood. She'd loved her fosterers and had many fond, uneasy visits with her natural parents; she'd never lacked for food or comfort or education thanks to the bargain her mother had struck, and truly, the love of all four of her parents was never in doubt, though their strictures and judgments and rules felt a bit arbitrary. She had not gotten along well with her peers, but she wondered if most people thought that they did. Life had not been bad at all. Nevertheless, the only moments she'd ever felt -- not whole, not alive, but -- real were with horses.

And now she was here, on the brink of winning her dream of green pastures, or losing it forever. Or -- the third route -- she could marry into the security she had been trying to earn.

It didn't seem entirely like cheating.

She phoned Kaspar.

"When did the offer come in?" she asked without preamble.

Kaspar, it turned out, was not precisely awake, and he was bad at dissembling. "The one from Jayong Kim, you mean?"

"Have there been others?"

"Just twelve," he said.

"Were you going to tell me about them?"

"Only if they fit the criteria," he said, yawning.

"Yours or mine?"

"Mine."

"Have you been withholding those who fit my criteria?"

"Withholding, no, not technically -- there is a fellow who's never had discorrective eye surgery, but the contract he offers is for twenty children, uterine grown and vaginally delivered. Foolishness."

"Yes, thank you for not passing that one on," Lydia said dryly. "When did Jayong Kim's offer come in?"

"Last night. Seven days until it expires."

Lydia considered. "When did those other offers come in?"

"Most came in about an hour after I acknowledged receipt of the brochures."

"Seven days on them, too?"

"It's standard."

Lydia winched up her pride and asked, "Did Captain Amstall, who visited me yesterday... had you heard of him before?"

"No," Kaspar said. "Do you think he'll solicit for your hand in marriage? If so, it was very irregular of him to show up in person."

"I do not believe he'll solicit," Lydia said. "Nor do I know his intention in visiting last night. And, he's had discorrective surgery." She glanced at her horologe. "I must get into the practice ring, but you can initiate a courting interview with Jayong Kim."

"Very good," he said, quite correctly, but only on the surface of it.

#

After practice, Lydia left Billy and Apple to themselves, but could not bring herself to return to her flat. Kaspar would be there, doubtless with some inane demand on her time. And if he weren't -- there was brooding to be done.

She wandered the underground tunnels until she found an infokiosk. She gave up her thumbprint to perform a search on information she didn't really believe she wanted: the address of Captain Amstall's current lodging.

He was living in Rosehips Skyneedle, high in the red-class district.

Screwing her courage to the sticking point, Lydia bought a sansrail ticket and rode past the red-class hanging gardens and floating cafés. She did not dare look through either the windows or the skylights of the tram at the sights; the sun was too bright, the sky too periwinkle and limitless to make her think that she wouldn't just fall from the face of the planet into orbit because some foolish designer had left the roof off of the world.

When she arrived at Rosehips, the fretting began. How much money had Captain Amstall made, after all, that he could give up freighter-captaining and move in here? She stood at the foot of the marblanium skyneedle, looking up for a dizzying moment before agoraphobia drove her inside.

A surprisingly eager majordomo conducted her to Amstall's dwelling, murmuring something about admittance lists as he did so.  She was taken to a rooftop cottage picturesquely centered in a lush garden. The majordomo led the way from the stairwell hatch, knocked on the front door of the cottage, and withdrew.

No one answered. Lydia darted a glance skyward, then edged closer to the comforting bulk of the house. Still no one came to the door. She peered back at the hatch, but could not see the majordomo. The sun shone fiercely, and during her next skyward glance, she discerned the way the atmosphere seemed brighter, whiter near the sun, as though it thinned there from the star's radiation. She wondered, madly, against all she knew of physics, how much air was leaking out through that thin area.

Lydia dashed to a nearby weeping cherry tree and she lowered herself to sit beneath the branches to pant and clutch the trunk for dear life.

The cottage door opened. Captain Amstall stood on the threshold casting about him before coming to stand near the weeping cherry. He bent at the waist to say, "Miss Eager. What brings you here?"

"I wanted to ask you a question," she said. "Only now, I'm afraid, I'm having a bit of a panic."

"I see," he said. "Is there anything I can do to help with the panic?"

"Not at present," she said. "I'm doing pretty well now that I have this tree to hold onto."

Silence reigned between them. The Captain straightened up, but obviously felt that this was rude, so ended up lowering himself to the woodchips beside her.

At length she said, "I really only came to ask you," she said, "if you had sent me the green roses."

"I sent them, yes," the Captain said.

"Well, that clears that up."

"That's all you wanted to know?"

"Of course not," Lydia said. "But decorum begs that I not ask the next logical question."

The Captain barked a laugh. "I find it hard to believe that decorum really rules you, Miss Eager."

Lydia was affronted. She rose shakily to her feet, still clutching the tree trunk but forced into an undignified crouch by the branches. "If decorum did not rule me," she said angrily, "Decorum, or whatever you want to call it -- I should not be content to simply wait around for the right marriage contract to catch my eye."

"Should you not?"

Lydia cast about her for another likely looking tree, but unable to find one, she calculated how much a dash to the hatch would expose her to the sky. "If I lived in a society where females solicited for males -- well, how preferable that would be!" She realized she was rambling now, but the acute sense of agoraphobia would not retreat, and she was afraid, desperately, senselessly afraid, that she would be sucked off the face of the planet, out through that thin spot in the atmosphere.

"Not very preferable, I should think," Captain Amstall was saying. "Would women really want to be in competition with one another, as men are?"

"If you think we go through all the rituals we go through because we are not in competition with one another, you are sadly mistaken," she said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I’m going to need to take off my shirt and put it over my head, so I can walk to the hatch without panicking. Please turn your back."

As Captain Amstall perceived himself to be a gentleman, he did not permit this; instead, he supplied his own jacket for the mind-saving head-covering, and led Lydia by the hand through the small garden to the cottage. He brought her inside and plied her with tab-tea and store-bought cakes that she found incongruent with the red-class setting.

It did not take long to regain her equilibrium once under a roof again. Captain Amstall stood, lounging with effortless elegance and quietly sipping his tea for a long moment, before saying, "I understand the agoraphobia, for you were raised on Walton Station. What I cannot understand is how you'll relocate to a prairie with this acute fear of, well, the sky."

This statement took Lydia aback, in part because she did not remember revealing her secret daydream to Captain Amstall. Beyond this, however, was the realization that she had given up this dream with the arrival of Kaspar. And the further realization that Captain Amstall was exactly right in his assessment was enough to crumble her social mask: her mouth trembled, and two large tears leaked from her eyes into her tea. She sat staring at the drink for a long moment, willing no further tears to follow.

"Well," she said at last. "This is true. I thank you for making that connection for me, Captain." She stood up. "If I might borrow your jacket, I and my case of agoraphobia will now run to the hatch."

Captain Amstall frowned. "I thought you had another question."

"Several questions, actually, now that I'm here -- for example, why tab-tea when you live in a place such as this?"

"This is my sister's house; she has often shown me hospitality over the years."

"Ah."

"It's the usual story; the spinster brother living on the charity of the heir. You guessed most of it, though there was less debt than you suspected. I managed to win my own freighter in a fortuitous hand of cards."

Lydia's sudden rush of disappointment at this revelation was surprising to her, but she thought she hid it well. If that was Amstall's position, there was no chance that he was planning a courtship. He, like she, needed to marry into a house adoption.

Lydia cleared her throat. "But now you've given up freighting?"

He looked agitated, fiddling with the cup in his hand. "I have," he said. "I've enough money to pursue other interests."

"Such as?"

"That remains to be seen."

She considered this; considered him, as well. He did not seem inclined to suffer her regard with pleasure, and turned aside, presenting most of his back and an edge of his profile to her, while staring into his teacup for a time.

The silence stretched between them. Lydia nearly blurted out an offer for a brief, contractless sexual liaison. It would be her first proposition since reaching her majority, and she could not imagine broaching the subject without blushes and stammers. And then, rejection -- or worse -- acceptance.

She imagined him asking her terms. She would say, "One night standard," so as not to upset her fosterers by ruining a productive courting period with a lengthy sexual liaison. She imagined him requesting her sexual conduct chit. She imagined digging in her reticule and finding the chit lodged deeply in the lining and covered in lint. She imagined blowing it off and handing it to him. She imagined examining his chit and being horrified to find that he'd had twelve partners that year alone, or that he'd not had a partner in a decade. She imagined finding that his birth control was not up to date, or that hers was not. She struggled, but couldn't recall when her birth control expired next. Captain Amstall finally turned about, saying with some irritation, "The way you stare -- have I developed a large and fascinating hole in my head?"

Ask -- she urged herself. She blurted: "Why did you send me the green roses?"

"For luck. And to make an apology for the way I treated you on my freighter."

"Of course," she said. "That makes the most sense. It's what I should have guessed."

"And as a sort of courtship gesture, too," he added.

"Oh."

"Though I understand that you are now entertaining offers from a variety of scions of red-class families."

"No."

Captain Amstall quirked an eyebrow dubiously. "No? Was your courtingboy lying?"

"No," Lydia said. "He is entertaining offers. I'm not entertaining them."

"I see. Monsieur Kaspar was misinformed."

"No, not really. I told him to initiate a courting interview just this morning, you see. There is a contract on the table."

Captain Amstall appeared perplexed.

"I'm explaining this badly," Lydia said.

"Yes," he agreed.

"I should leave."

"No."

"Why not?"

"I want you to explain it properly," he said.

She stared at him for a long moment. "I don't know if I can. But let me tell you this much: I don't want a Society marriage."

"You don't have to have one."

"Well, I do if I want to raise my own children."

"So you do want children, then." He said this as though speaking to himself, turning away slightly so that she could not read the expression on his face.

"And I want horses."

"Obviously."

"I might be able to get those on my own."

"For what it's worth, I think it's likely," Captain Amstall said, turning back with a serious look.

"Thank you. Your faith astonishes me."

"Do you think your performance in the first round was a fluke, then?"

She thought back to that now-mythical first round, when she hadn't even thought about what she was doing -- when she'd been concentrating on the green roses. "Perhaps," she admitted. "I've always excelled as a horsewoman, but there's never been any prize worth having at the end. Until now."

"There was just as much at stake during the first round as there was in the second."

"Certainly. But I was thinking about green roses during the first round, and not about winning."

Captain Amstall's lips twitched. "I see."

"I should give it up," Lydia said, surprising herself. "I'm wasting so much money, staying in the Olympiad. I could marry, instead..."

Captain Amstall frowned. "I thought you owned a different sort of personality than that," he said. "This talk belies the persistence I witnessed aboard my freighter."

Lydia blushed a little, ashamed but also angry. How dare he develop such expectations of her?

Silence stretched between them. Stand up, Lydia urged herself. Kiss him. From there, things can sort themselves out.

Lydia stood. "I should be going," she said, smoothing her trousers down her thighs. "Suggestions on how I might maintain my dignity on the way to your hatch?"

He pulled an umbrella from the stand by the door, holding it over her on the walk to the hatch, allowing her to see no hint of periwinkle sky. His face was serious -- quiet and thinking, she decided, not dour at all -- and he said nothing as she started down the stairs.

He cleared his throat when she reached the landing. She turned back to look.

"The green roses. That's the only reason you came here today?"

"Yes, the only reason," she lied.

"Then it would be pointless to ask you for a liaison."

She blinked, and then climbed back up to stand beneath his umbrella again. "Not at all," she said. "One night, standard?"

"Certainly," he said, bending to kiss her. Her propriety alarm flashed furiously across her closed eyes until she pulled away and dug her sexual conduct chit out of her reticule; any ensuing awkwardness was quickly consumed by mutual desire.

#

"Where have you been?" Kaspar asked. "Never mind. I can tell by looking at you. Well, this is a right pickle. Get thee to the hygiene chamber, and stop looking so blissful. We've the meeting with Jayong Kim."

Lydia blushed, and hurried off to perform her rituals. When she came out, Kaspar flung a dress over her head, letting it waft down into perfect folds over her shoulders and hips.

"I've never had a dress that could do that," Lydia said.

"Have you ever even worn a dress before?"

Lydia stuck her tongue out at him.

"Stop that. Courting is a serious business," Kaspar said, and sprayed the scent of hot funnel cakes into her cleavage.

"I now smell like doughnuts. How serious can it be?"

"Men are deeply attracted to this smell."

"Look, all three of my secondary degrees are in biological sciences," she said. "So, I know: you can't fight pheromones with funnel cakes."

"I am a Registered Courtingboy. I have many resources."

Lydia squinted at him. "Biological enhancements are illegal in courtship."

"Cheating is beneath my dignity," Kaspar said. "At least, not until I lose ground. It's time to go."

Kaspar had hired a car. Lydia sighed with relief when she saw it, knowing she could handle the open sky above her for the time it took to jump into the car. However, Kaspar had unwittingly hired a car for one person.

"We don't have time to get another car. You'll have to sit on my lap," he said, climbing into the passenger cabin.

"Be careful not to snack on my cleavage," she said sourly, clambering in and plopping herself sideways across his knees. Her propriety alarm flashed a warning. She laughed. Gone were the days that courtingboys were all eunuchs, but Kaspar was hardly a threat. She temporarily recalibrated the alarm.

Kaspar shifted uncomfortably beneath her. "I understand perfectly well what you're saying, that the blueprint of our ideal genetic partner is hardcoded into our DNA. I have a philosophical doctorate in biopsychosexual evolution, you know."

"I didn't know."

"But you can fool the love-at-first-sight gene. Courtingboys are expert in tripping all sorts of responses men don't even know they have. For example, the fact that you've had a liaison today is actually working in our favor. You're glowing."

 "Thank you." She resisted the temptation to preen.

Kaspar sighed. "Driver," he said. "Please stop the car a block away from the Assembly Rooms. I don't want anyone to see us piled atop one another like this."

The thought of walking even a block under open sky triggered panic. "Driver," she said. "Won't you be waiting for us in an underground garage? Couldn't you just pull in there?"

Kaspar grumbled something that sounded like, "You always make things so complicated," but he didn't countermand her request.

At the entrance of the Assembly Room, they were diverted toward an enclosed glass meeting chamber designed so that their first meeting with Jayong Kim and his family could be seen but not heard. They walked towards the suitor, who was dressed in a charcoal gray suit with orange piping.

"I've seen him. And I'm not in love with him," Lydia said lightly into Kaspar's ear.

"You haven't smelled each other," Kaspar said. "Give it time."

"You haven't fooled my genes yet."

"Give it time," Kaspar repeated. "Look, there are his parents, and his courtingboy."

Lydia stopped walking.

"What's wrong?"

"This is wrong," said Lydia.

"What? Did you snag your dress? Break your heel? Break a sweat?"

"No, I..." She pulled her arm from Kaspar's grasp and backed up. "Look. This is terribly wrong. I shouldn't be here. I'm leaving."

Kaspar turned faintly purple. Lydia briefly examined this phenomenon. "What am I supposed to say to them if you leave?" Kaspar asked. "In all my years as a courtingboy---"

"Oh, hush." Lydia swept forward. When she reached the door of the meeting chamber, she made her courtesy and said, "I'm afraid this was all a mistake. I am sensible of the honor your house does to me, but I will not be entertaining offers until the Olympiad is over."

She turned and left. Kaspar did not follow.

#

Lydia was awakened early by pangs of conscience, and went down to the stables to prepare for the competition.

Billy roused from a drowsy contemplation of dawn to full wakefulness when he saw her. He was on his feet and tugging at his forelock before Lydia even made it to Apple's stall. "Morning, miss," he said, and then shuffled about on the balls of his feet until Lydia asked him to speak his mind.

"Apple's more'n ready for you, miss," he said earnestly. "She's right eager."

Lydia's lips twitched with a hidden smile, but she kept her countenance. She appreciated Billy's attempt to speak for Apple. She stepped forward, placing her palm on the side of the horse's neck.

"Aye, Billy," she said, slipping into his violet-class dialect for a moment. "She's right eager."

She hurried him off to attend to his hygiene and his breakfast while she curried and brushed Apple.

Lydia had often found that hygiene rituals were perfect for the contemplation of one's navel, and horse hygiene rituals even more so. There was much to contemplate, Lydia decided; much indeed, if she ever wanted to have a restful night of sleep again.

The first inner demon that she had to confront was her bad behavior to Kaspar. He was a loyal retainer of her foster family, and deserved better than her tantrums. It was easy to blame her nerves on Kaspar's tea party frittering, but she suspected her nerves were simply her nerves; that when approaching true success and the means of securing what she believed to be her ultimate happiness, she'd balked.

Whatever the reason, she'd failed; she'd failed at something she could do. It was humiliating. And there had come Kaspar, offering her the chance not to finish, to back directly out of the humiliation and never to face the world again. And that had spawned another inner demon, the one that said she might just be the sort of person who didn't care enough to see things through. That she might indeed, take up the brochure sitting beside her salad plate and marry the man who'd sent it to her, just to get her dream of horses and pastures.

Last night it had come down to this: she had to see Apple through the Olympiad for pride's sake, even if Apple missed every jump.

Of course, the goal was not to miss every jump.

"I'll phone Kaspar after you're brushed," Lydia told Apple. Apple wisely did not comment, but turned her ears towards the stable door.

Expecting Billy, Lydia did not turn around; only when a well-manicured hand reached for the hard brush over shoulder, did Lydia realize someone else had arrived.

"Kaspar!" she cried, deeply relieved that he had not given up on her altogether in spite of her bad behavior.

"I'm here to help," he said.

"Do you even know how to brush a horse?" she asked.

He gave her a look. "How hard could it be?" he asked, and made to go to work.

She plucked the hard brush out of his hand. "First of all, you and Apple haven't been introduced; second, you don't hard brush a horse's head." She made the appropriate introduction, allowing Apple to smell and see Kaspar, then gave him the mane comb.

Kaspar started to speak several times. Lydia waited patiently, thinking that she would let him have his say before giving him her apology. But he did not manage to say anything at all before Billy returned. After this, there was no time to speak alone together, and everything devolved into chaos as the preparations for the day's competition thereafter.

Apple and Lydia took a turn around the schooling ring, and they were warm and loose, ready for the course. Lydia allowed Kaspar to brush her free of lint, but refused any and all injections. She spent the time before entering the course thinking about Captain Amstall, wondering if she would ever see him again.

"Lydia!" cried a familiar voice. Startled, Lydia looked up to see at the front of the stands, her fosterers, Annice and Robért, sitting with her landlord.

Lydia felt the blood drain from her face, and wondered briefly, madly, if this turned her complexion from class four to class three. "What are they doing here?"

Kaspar tried to smile. "They want to support you, of course!"

"Are they---" Lydia's voice died in her suddenly dry throat. She moistened her lips and swallowed hard. "Are they just here for the competition?" she asked, but she knew they weren't. She glared at Kaspar. "They're here to pressure me to take Jayong Kim's contract."

Kaspar had the grace to look guilty. "It was an impulse born of despair," he said. "I'm terribly sorry, Lydia. But they are here to support you right now."

Lydia pressed her hands to her temples. "Kaspar, I just got my head straightened out! I can't ... I can't deal with their expectations, and their, their ... cheeriness." She flailed with her legs.

Kaspar grabbed for the heel of her boot. "Stop it! Just stop it. Pretend you didn't see them."

"They're calling you, miss," Billy said, giving Apple a last pat.

Lydia kicked free of Kaspar's grasp and moved Apple forward onto the course. The crowd cheered. The sun shone right into Lydia's eyes as she turned Apple towards the first jump. And that's when Lydia made the mistake of looking up at the sky.

Lydia's next clear memory was of sitting on the close-cropped grass of the course, clutching Apple near the fetlock and glancing up at the sheltering belly of her horse, while trying to breathe past the psychosomatic iron clamp on her chest. A trio of anxious Olympic officials were bent over and staring at her. "Are you all right, Miss Eager?" the one with the box-shaped head -- square jaw, square jowls, square forehead -- asked.

"Quite all right," Lydia lied.

The officials all stood up together. "I don't think she's all right," box-head said to the others.

Billy's boots appeared in her field of vision, but he went to reassure Apple and to keep her still. Lydia decided she would be grateful later for his care in seeing she wasn't trampled; at the moment, she didn't have a jot of mental energy to spare.

Kaspar's high-heeled boots appeared next. He pushed past the Olympic triad. "Trainer, coming through!" he announced.

"There's no trainer on record," another official said. "And you are dressed like a courtingboy, sirrah."

Kaspar waved him off and crouched down to peer into Lydia's face. He chafed her wrists. "Breathe, Lydia!"

"I'm -- breathing," she said through gritted teeth. "Go away, please."

"We can't go away, Miss Eager," said the third official. "We need to get you off the course. Or back on your horse."

"That last one isn't going to happen," she said. "I think it's safe to say that I have balked."

The third official bent to look at her upside down. "Can you leave the course under your own power, miss?"

"Lydia!" Annice called. Everyone turned to stare at the well-dressed orange-class woman being lowered over the edge of the stands. Lydia moaned. Robért was the one doing the lowering.

"Oh, for the love of the great sucking core of the galaxy," Kaspar cursed.

"Who is that woman?" the upside-down official asked.

"My foster-mother," Lydia said.

There was silence as the others watched Annice cross the course, waving. Lydia closed her eyes and waited, until box-head asked, "And who are they?"

Lydia opened her eyes. Somehow, Robért had convinced another spectator to lower him onto the field -- and unbelievably, her landlord had followed.

"Isn't that---?" Kaspar asked.

"Yes," Lydia said grimly.

"I don't even know his name," Kaspar said.

"Who are they?" asked the upside-down official, who had straightened and was no longer upside down.

"The silver-haired man is Miss Eager's foster-father. The other man is... Miss Eager's landlord."

"And that is?" The official pointed in the opposite direction, to a spot Lydia couldn't see past Apple's belly.

"That," Kaspar said coldly, "is one Vladimir Amstall, erstwhile freighter captain."

"What's he doing here?" asked the official.

"Wielding an umbrella, it appears," Kaspar said.

Annice and Captain Amstall arrived simultaneously.

"Lydia!" cried her foster-mother. "What's wrong?"

Lydia moaned.

"Agoraphobia, ma'am," said Captain Amstall.

Kaspar frowned. "You never mentioned being agoraphobic."

"I didn't know," her landlord said, puffing onto the scene.

"Because we were certainly great confidantes," Lydia said. Her landlord looked affronted.

"Oh, this is our fault, Robért," Annice said. "We didn't send her off-station often enough."

"She never wished to leave her horse," Robért said.

Captain Amstall squatted down next to Kaspar. "I have my sister's umbrella," he said, unfurling it.

Kaspar gave an exasperated tch. "She doesn't need an umbrella, she needs a doctor."

"A doctor is on the way," said box-head.

"Here, take my hand, Lydia," Amstall asked.

It took tremendous strength of will, but Lydia put her fingers into his hand. She did not allow him to draw her out from beneath Apple, however.

"Ask me to marry," she said.

Kaspar and Annice gasped. "Lydia!" Kaspar cried.

Amstall's false smile flowed away. "You're sitting beneath your horse on the Olympic jumping course."

"I'm aware."

"Are you certain, Miss Eager?" Amstall asked.

"Hardly the proper method, Amstall," Kaspar muttered.

"Here comes the doctor!" said one of the officials.

"Finally!" Annice said. "Lydia, I can't believe you played such games with your mental health."

The doctor knelt next to Lydia, pushing Kaspar aside.

"Ask me to marry," Lydia said again to Captain Amstall.

"Lydia!" Kaspar fairly shouted.

The doctor said, "Do not shout at the patient."

"Ask me."

Amstall cast a sideways look at Kaspar.

"I already have," Amstall said, letting go of her hand so that the doctor could take her pulse. He stood up, lowered the umbrella, and backed away.

Lydia cast Kaspar an accusatory glance. He shrugged. "He's had the discorrective surgery," Kaspar said. "And he can't afford entrée into his class for even one child."

The doctor gave Lydia a temporary subcutaneous emotional regulator, and admonished her for not seeing a doctor sooner about her phobia. "You should rest now," the doctor said. "Panic attacks are very tiring, and the regulator won't take full effect for some hours. And you'll need to see a doctor again in twenty-five hours."

Lydia took stock of her slowing heart and receding sense of panic. When she could breathe well again, she crawled out from under Apple to peer at the scoreboard.

Because she and Apple had not left the field, the clock was still running. She waved everyone out of her way and slowly mounted her horse. It was hard, but not impossible, though she did not look once into the sky. She half-bowed in the saddle to the Olympic officials. "I am going to resume my round now."

"There's no way you can win!" her landlord said.

"There's no way I can come in other than last," Lydia said. "And that is hardly the point." She turned Apple, and lined her up for the first jump. Billy and Captain Amstall and the box-headed official were broadly grinning, while everyone else stared in confusion.

A smile spread across her landlord's face as the crowd was ushered off the course. "Yah, Miss Eager! You got bottom!" he shouted.

Lydia and Apple didn't take the round flawlessly, and the time faults alone set a new Olympic record for worst completed jumping round. But the crowd cheered wildly nonetheless, and when the anthem of the Chang Nebula sounded once more for the gray-purple Appaloosa, Lydia's eyes welled with as many proud tears as if Walton Station Waltz were playing.

#

"He sold his freighter, as you know," said Kaspar. "He can afford to buy his own entrée into orange-class, and he's offering to sink the remainder into a down-payment for a large spread in a prairie state on an outer planet. He'd have almost enough money left over to travel there. On a peri-Nexian green-class freighter." Kaspar's curled lip said exactly what he thought of that, as he sorted through the paperwork of Amstall's proposal while sitting on a bale of hay.

"Sounds perfect," Lydia said. She was drinking tea at the doorway to the stable yard, staring out at the glorious night sky that went on -- forever.

"There's also a small dowry from his sister, but it's not much. Entrée for a yellow-class child."

She smiled. If worse came to worst, they'd both sell down to yellow-class in the end. The gradients between ROY classes probably didn't matter as much out on the prairie. She wondered if she could see Mikia or Saludo's stars from here.

"You know, stars in your eyes make you blind," Kaspar said sourly.

"My vision is perfect," Lydia said.

Kaspar sighed. "This match is so not going into my portfolio."

Lydia shrugged.

"He's made no offspring bid. Do you want to open?"

"No," Lydia said. "I'll open the bidding after the last jumping competition. When I know how many children we can afford."

Kaspar muttered an imprecation about fools marrying for love under his breath, stacked his papers together, and stood. "I'll leave you, tonight," he said. "We shall talk again tomorrow when you've returned to terra firma. We must send formal rejections to your other suitors."

She stood aside so he could pass through the stable door. A thought popped into her head. Her lips twitched.

"Why are you hiding a smile?" Kaspar asked. "Laughing at me because of how unnecessary I am to this courtship?"

"Are you aware that I have eight biological sisters, who are much like me in temperament?"

"No, I was not," Kaspar said warily.

"Something to consider," she said. "If I win at least a silver, I'd like to sponsor one of my sisters to the marriage market. She would, of course, need a courtingboy..."

"No. No more Eagers," Kaspar said, retreating across the stable yard. "One this lifetime is enough."

"Think on it!" Lydia said with sprightly cheer. He closed the gate firmly behind him, and she was left alone, thinking what a deep pity that there would be no meetings alone with Amstall until the contracts were signed.

Lydia finished her tea and returned to Apple's stall. Billy had the night off, and Lydia planned to brush and curry Apple until her hair shone.

Apple whickered in irritation as a hand came over the stall gate, holding a sexual conduct chit. "One night, standard, Miss Eager?"

Lydia turned to face Captain Amstall. "What are you doing here?"

"You told me, some months ago, that I should provide you with social opportunities..."

"Yes, when I was alone on a green-class freighter," she said. "Here I have a horse, a groom, a courtingboy, two fosterers... a landlord... loads of people to talk to."

"So, you're turning down my offer..."

"We're getting married! You're violating courting protocol with this stunt."

"We, of course, are slaves to courtship protocol."

"We've done most things right..."

"Hardly. I sent you flowers before you were even shopping the market. That's a huge violation." From behind his back, he produced a green rose.

"Yes."  She frowned, staring at the rose.  "Do you even know what green roses mean?"

"I meant them to mean, 'Think kindly on a green-class freighter captain who wronged you.'"

"I looked it up. In the ancient language of flowers, green roses meant, 'I am from Mars.'"

He was silent.

"It was the planet next to Earth."

"Ah."

At that moment, Apple leaned over Lydia's shoulder and bit off the head of the green rose.

Amstall stared at the empty stem for a moment. "Does that mean your horse disapproves?"

"Hardly. In the ancient language of flowers, to eat a green rose means, 'I shall win the gold.'"

"Really?"

"Of course not," said Lydia, "but I'm sure that's what she meant."

 © 2008 Merrie Haskell