Botanica Veneris

Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathagan

By Ian McDonald (excerpt)

In the name of the Leader of the Starry Skies and the Ever-Circling Spiritual Family, welcome to my hoondahvi. My apsas speak; my gavanda sing, may the thoo impact their secrets!

I understand completely that you have not come to drink. But the greeting in standard. We pride ourself on being the most traditional hoondahvi in Exxaa Canton.

Is the music annoying? No? Most Terrenes find is aggravating. It’s an essential part of the hoondahvi experience, I am afraid.

Your brother, yes. How could I forget him? I owe him my life.

He fought like a man who hated fighting. Up on the Altiplano, when we smashed open the potteries and set the Porcelain Towns afire up and down the Valley of the Kilms, there were those who blazed with love and joy at the slaughter and those whose faces were so dark it was as if their souls were clogged with soot. Your brother was one of those. Human expressions are hard for us to read – your faces are wood, like masks. But I saw his face and knew that he loathed what he did. That was what made him the best of javrosts. I am an old career soldier; I have seen many more come to our band. The ones in love with violence : unless they can take discipline, we turn them away. But when a mercenary hates what he does for his silver, there must be a greater darkness driving him. There is a thing they hate more than the violence they do.

Are you sure the music is tolerable? Our hormonies and chord patterns apparently create unpleasant electrical resonance in the human brain. Like small seizures. We find it most reassuring. Like the rhythm of the kitting-womb.

Botanica Veneris: Thirteen Papercuts by Ida Countess Rathagan. Photo by Elena

Your brother came to us in the dawn of Great Day 6817. He could ride a graap, bivouac, cook, and was handy with both bolt and blade. We never ask questions of our javrosts – in time they answer them all themselves – but rumours blow on the wind likd thagoon-down. He was a minor aristocrat, he was a gambler, he was a thief, he was a murderer; he was a seducer; he was a traitor. Nothing to disqualify him. Sufficient to recommend him.

In old days, the Duke of Yoo disputed mighty with her neighbor the Duke of Hetteten over who rightly ruled the altiplano and its profitable potteries. From time immemorial, it had been a place beyond: independently minded and stubborn of spirit, with little respect for gods or dukes. Wars were fought down generations, lying waste to fame and fortunes, and when in the end, the House of Yoo prevailed, the peoples of the plateau had forgotten they ever had lords and mistresses and debts of fealty. It is a law of earth and stars alike that people should be well-governed, obedient, and quite in their ways, so the Duke of Yoo embarked on a campaign of civil discipline. Her house-corps had been decimated in the Porcelain Wars, so House Yoo hired mercenaries. Among them, my former unit, Gellet’s Javrosts.

They speak of us still, up on the plateau. We are the monsters of their Great Nights, the haunters of their children’s dreams. We are legend. We are Gellet’s Javrosts. We are the new demons

Calved

Calved

By J. Miller (excerpt)

Thede’s eyes burned with wonder, staring up at the fretted sweep of the windscreen as we rose to meet it. We were deep in a days-long twilight; soon, the sun would set for weeks.

“This is not happening,” he said, and stepped closer to me. His voice shool with joy.

The elevator ride to the top of the city was obscenely expensive. We’d never been able to take it before. His mother had bought our tickets. Even for her, it hurt, I wondered why she hadn’t taken him herself.

“He’s getting bullied a lot in school,” she told me, on the phone. Behind her was the solid comfortable silence of a respectable home. My background noise was four men building words a fight over a card game. “Also, I think he might be in love.”

But of course I couldn’t ask him about either of those things. The first was my fault; the second was something no boy wanted to discuss with his dad. I pushed a piece of trough meat loose from between my teeth. Savored how close it came to the real thing. Only with Thede, with his mother’s money, did I get to buy the classy stuff. Normally it was barrel-bottom for me, greasy chunks that dissolved in my mouth two chews in, homebrew meat moonshine made in melt-scrap-furnace-heated metal troughs. Some grid cities were rumored to still have cows, but that was the kind of a lie people tell themselves to make life a little less ugly. Cows were extinct, and real beef was a joy no one would ever experience again.

Calved. Photo by Elena

The windscreen was an engineering marvel, and absolutely gorgeous. It shifted in response to headwinds, in severe storms the city would raise its auxiliary windscreens to protect its entire circumference. The tiny panes of plastiglass were common enough – a thriving underground market sold the fallen ones as good luck charms – but to see them knitted together was to tremble in the face of staggering genius. Complex patterns of crenelated reliefs, efficiently diverting windshear no matter what angle it struck from. Bots swept past on the metal gridlines, replacing panes that had fallen or cracked.

Once, had gripping mine tightly, somewhere down in the city beneath me, six-year-old Thede had asked me how the windscreen worked. He asked me a lot of things then, about the locks that held the city up, and how they could rise in response to tides and ocean-level increases; about the big boats with strange words and symbols on the side, and where they went, and what they brought back. “What’s in that boat? he’d ask, about each one, and I would make up ridiculous stories. “That’s a giraffe boat. That one brings back machine guns that shoot strawberries. That one is for naughty children.” In truth I only ever recognized ice boats, by the multitude of pincers atop cranes all along the side.

My son stood up straighter, sixty stories above his city. Some rough weight had fallen from his shoulders. He’d be strong, I saw. He’d be handsome. If he made it. If this horrible city didn’t break him inside in some irreparable way. If marauding white boys didn’t bash him for his dark skin. If the firms didn’t pass him over for the lack of family connections on his stuttering immigrant father’s side. I wondered who was bullying him, and why, and I imagined taking them two at a time and slamming their heads together so hard they popped like bubbles full of blood. Of course I couldn’t do that. I also imagined hugging him, grabbing him for no reason and maybe never letting go, but I couldn’t do that either. He would wonder why

Hitch Your Buggy to a Kite

Hitch Your Buggy to a Kite

Is there life after bungee jumping? The latest thrill blowing in the wind

If you're ready to tackle a new high-speed sport, consider the newest activity for thrill-seekers: kite buggying. In this sport, a large kite is used to propel a low-to-the-ground tricycle. The buggy's pilot flies a rip-stop nylon kite with his hands while steering the buggy with his feet. The result: the wind's force pulls the pilot and his gear across an open area (usually a beach) at speeds of up to 50 mph.

Humans have used wind-powered transportation for centuries, but the most recent kite-propulsion craze was born with the lightweight, durable kites of the 1970s. Creative kite flyers experimented  with a variety of kite-propelled vehicles – from incline skates to ice carts. Then Peter Lynn, a designer from New Zealand, built the steel tricycle that today is the vehicle of choice.

The sport claims some 1000 enthusiasts nationally, according to the American Kite-flyers Association's power committee. The first North American kite buggyracing championships took place in September 1995, and then the sport exploded in popularity as more novice kite flyers discovered it. In an effort to educate those flyers, the AKA publishes the Powerflying Manual, a 16-page booklet of safety and instructional information.

Keep in mind that tkite buggying can be dangerous and is not recommended for those with no kite-flying experience. Experts at the AKA say inexperienced kite-flyers should learn how to fly a two- or four-line soft kite before they try kite buggying. Even after mastering from an experienced teacher. A local kite specialty store can help you find one.

A forest as seen from the sky. Photo by Elena.

Guaranteed to Get the Blood Flowing

A sampler of popular and only seemingly death-defying diversions

Ballooning: An hour flight, depending on the wind, can take you from under a mile to over 10, reaching an average height of 500 feet. No training is necessary – the pilot takes care of everything.

Skydiving: Many options. Tandem ride: is attached to instructor's harness – requires minimal ground training. Static line: chute is deployed automatically. Accelerated free fall: instructors hold you until chute opens.

Waterskiing: Ski school can teach you everything from slaloming, kneeboarding, and jumping, and jumping to barefoot waterskiing. Cos depends on how many events you want to learn.

Hang Gliding: Lookout Mountain in Rising Farm, Ga., a top-rated flight school, one day or more classes, one day class include five flights off a gently sloped hill.

Bungee Jumping: Jumper usually must weigh at least 80 pounds. States may have age regulations. Rebounds make one jump feel like three.

Black Diamond on Wheels

Black Diamond on Wheels

When the snow melts, mountain bikers head for the ski resorts

Ski resorts aren't just for ski bums anymore. In fact, many of the nation's ski resorts are keeping their doors and lifts open all summer long so that mountain bike enthusiasts can enjoy the same thrills, jumps, and speeds that skiers do during the winter months.

Capitalizing on the popularity of mountaing biking, 130 of the nation's ski resorts currently offer summer biking programs. Mountain bike aficionado Stan Zykowski of bicycling magazine has put together a best of the best list (below), but for a complete list of the ski resorts offering mountain biking, refer to the Bicycling magazine.

All of the resorts on Zukowki's list offer breathtaking scenery and challenging rides, not to mention a lift up the mountain (you may be adventuresome, but you're no fool). Shuttle service, gondolas, or chairlifts generally bring bikers to the top of the mountain, where they are free to roam the miles of ski trails, logging roads, and national parkland that adjoins many ski resorts. The riding ranges from intermediate to expert. If you've never been on a mountain bike before, 11, 000 feet above sea level on a narrow downhill trail is not a good place to learn.

No matter what your skill level, you may experience a flat tire or an accident while on a trail, and many of the resorts offer emergency repair and rescue. Besides the exhilarating rides, one of the biggest attractions of ski resort biking is the off-season prices. Lodging that would cost you several hundred dollars during prime ski season can run as little as $80 a night off-season.

A bike. Photo by Elena.

Taking Moguls on a Bike

Stan Zukowski of Bicycling magazine picks his favorite resorts biking.

Mount Snow, Vermont: Sixteen miles of trails on the mountain, but bikers also enjoy access to many miles of adjoining land. The vertical drop is 1,700 feet, all-day tickets.

Vail, Colorado: Four miles of downhill riding, many more miles of trails traversing the mountain and on access Roads.Vertical drop almost 3,000 feet., all-day gondola.

Crested Butte, Colorado: Adjacent to Gunnison National Forest, which offers bikers 600,000 acres of riding territory. Ranges by the hour or by the day for trail access only.

Brian Head Resort, Utah: Sixty miles of single-track trails from 11,300-foot summit. An all-day lift pas. 

Mammoth Mountain Ski Area, California: Vertical drop of 3,100 feet. Over 55 miles of trails, half-day ticket, all-day ticket.

Why Women Still Earn Less

Why Women Still Earn Less

The gap is narrowing, but men still make considerably more money

Penny by penny – a dime in the past decades – women's full-time wages have been approaching men's, but the gap amounts to more than 40 percent of the workforce and earned an average of 80 cents to each dollar earned by men, up from 67 cents in 1999 based on weekly wages.

The historic gap between women's and men's incomes has started to diminish, notes the U.S. Government's Population Reference Bureau. But many women do not share in these improvements.

Indeed, the wage gap between men and women exists for low-paid and high-paid jobs. Female dispatchers for rental cars, buses, security services, aircraft, etc., make up half of those in the job category but earn only 80 percent of what men do who perform the same jobs. Almost a third of all lawyers now are women. But they earn, on average, just under 85 percent of male lawyers' wages. When we talk of comparing women's earnings with men's earnings, we find that no matter how we measure them women's earnings are below those received by men, says the Department of Labor's Women's Bureau.

Education and work experience may explain some of the gap. Although the number of women attending law school has shot up dramatically in the past decades, only after they've been practicing law for a while will the salary gap start to narrow further. Another statistic may be more revealing. Despite the increasing numbers of working women, men stay in the labor force for an average of 40 years, while women average 30 years. That, too, is changing. Women are taking less time out when having children. In 2015, 52 percent of women were working by the time their children were a year old, while only 17 percent were between 1961 and 1965.

A beauty. Illustration by Elena.

Women are still virtually shut out of some sectors of the business world. According to Catalyst, a non-profit research and advisory group dealing with women in business and professions, only 6.2 percent of board seats on the Fortune 500 and service 500 companies were held by women in 2000. In addition, according to a 2000 survey, women make up less than 5 percent of senior managers (vice presidents and those higher up) at those companies. Asked why, chief executives most frequently cited management's aversion to “taking risks” and a “lack of careful career planning and planned job assignments for women.”

Paradoxically, the wage gap is narrowest in the few fields where a large percentage of the workers are women as well as in the occupations that have attracted few women workers. Female secretaries, stenographers, typists earn 97 percent of the weekly wages of their male counterparts, who make up only 2 percent of that work force. Only 4 percent of mechanics and mechanical repairers are women. But they earn more than their male counterparts!