Free Nebula Awards Showcase 2012 by John Kessel, James Patrick Kelly Page A

“At the moment.”
     
    “How can I get in contact with Dr. Hamakawa?”
     
    She shrugged. “If Dr. Hamakawa wishes, I’m sure she will be able to contact you.”
     
    “And if I want to speak to her?”
     
    She shrugged. “You’re free to go now. If we need to talk to you, we can find you.”
     
    I had been wearing one of the gray jumpsuits of the pirates when I’d been returned to Hypatia; the guard women had taken that away. Now they gave me a suit of spider-silk in a lavender brighter than the garb an expensive courtesan would wear in the built worlds surrounding Earth, more of an evening gown than a suit. It was nevertheless subdued compared to the day-to-day attire of Hypatia citizens, and I attracted no attention. I discovered that the goggle-eyed sunglasses had been neatly placed in a pocket at the knees of the garment. Apparently people on Venus keep their sunglasses at their knees. Convenient when you’re sitting, I supposed. They hadn’t been recognized as a parting gift from the pirates, or, more likely, had been considered so trivial as to not be worth confiscating. I was unreasonably pleased; I liked those glasses.
     
    I found the Singh habitat with no difficulty, and when I arrived, Epiphany and Truman Singh were there to welcome me and to give me the news.
     
    My kidnapping was already old news. More recent news was being discussed everywhere.
     
    Carlos Fernando Delacroix Ortega de la Jolla y Nordwald-Gruenbaum had given a visitor from the outer solar system, Dr. Leah Hamakawa—a person who (they had heard) had actually been born on Earth—a rock.
     
    And she had not handed it back to him.
     
    My head was swimming.
     
    “You’re saying that Carlos Fernando is proposing marriage? To Leah? That doesn’t make any sense. He’s a kid, for Jove’s sake. He’s not old enough.”
     
    Truman and Epiphany Singh looked at one another and smiled. “How old were you when we got married?” Truman asked her. “Twenty?”
     
    “I was almost twenty-one before you accepted my book and my rock,” she said.
     
    “So, in Earth years, what’s that?” he said. “Thirteen?”
     
    “A little over twelve,” she said. “About time I was married up, I’d say.”
     
    “Wait,” I said. “You said you were twelve years old when you got married?”
     
    “Earth years,” she said. “Yes, that’s about right.”
     
    “You married at twelve? And you had—” I suddenly didn’t want to ask, and said, “Do all women on Venus marry so young?”
     
    “There are a lot of independent cities,” Truman said. “Some of them must have different customs, I suppose. But it’s the custom more or less everywhere I know.”
     
    “But that’s—” I started to say, but couldn’t think of how to finish. Sick? Perverted? But then, there were once a lot of cultures on Earth that had child marriages.
     
    “We know the outer reaches have different customs,” Epiphany said. “Other regions do things differently. The way we do it works for us.”
     
    “A man typically marries up at age twenty-one or so,” Truman explained. “Say, twelve, thirteen years old, in Earth years. Maybe eleven. His wife will be about fifty or sixty—she’ll be his instructor, then, as he grows up. What’s that in Earth years—thirty? I know that in old Earth custom, both sides of a marriage are supposed to be the same age, but that’s completely silly, is it not? Who’s going to be the teacher, I should say?
     
    “And then, when he grows up, by the time he reaches sixty or so he’ll marry down, find a girl who’s about twenty or twenty-one, and he’ll serve as a teacher to her, I should say. And, in time, she’ll marry down when she’s sixty, and so on.”
     
    It seemed like a form of ritualized child abuse to me, but I thought it would be better not to say that aloud. Or, I thought, maybe I was reading too much into what he was saying. It was something like the medieval apprentice system. When he said