The Future Is Female! Volume Two, the 1970s by Lisa Yaszek

Author:Lisa Yaszek
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Library of America
Published: 2022-08-23T23:15:07+00:00

Eleanor Arnason

The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons

Here I am, a silver-­haired maiden lady of thirty-­five, a feeder of stray cats, a window-­ledge gardener, well on my way to the African violet and antimacassar stage. I can see myself at fifty, fat and a little crazy, making cucumber sandwiches for tea, and I view my future with mixed feelings. Whatever became of my childhood ambitions: joining the space patrol; winning a gold medal at the olympics; climbing Mount Everest alone in my bathing suit, sustained only by my indomitable will and strange psychic arts learned from Hindu mystics? The saddest words of tongue or pen are something-­or-­other that might have been, I think. I light up a cigar and settle down to write another chapter of The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons. A filthy habit you say, though I’m not sure if you’re referring to smoking cigars or writing science fiction. True, I reply, but both activities are pleasurable, and we maiden ladies lead lives that are notoriously short on pleasure.

So back I go to the domes of Titan and my red-­headed heroine deathraying down the warlord’s minions. Ah, the smell of burning flesh, the spectacle of blackened bodies collapsing. Even on paper it gets a lot of hostility out of you, so that your nights aren’t troubled by dreams of murder. Terribly unrestful, those midnight slaughters and waking shaking in the darkness, your hands still feeling pressure from grabbing the victim or fighting off the murderer.

Another escape! In a power-­sledge, my heroine races across Titan’s methane snow, and I go and make myself tea. There’s a paper on the kitchen table, waiting to tell me all about yesterday’s arsons, rapes and bloody murders. Quickly I stuff it into the garbage pail. Outside, the sky is hazy. Another high-­pollution day, I think. I can see incinerator smoke rising from the apartment building across the street, which means there’s no air alert yet. Unless, of course, they’re breaking the law over there. I fling open a cabinet and survey the array of teas. Earl Grey? I ponder, or Assam? Gunpowder? Jasmine? Gen Mai Cha? Or possibly a herb tea: sassafras, mint, Irish moss or mu. Deciding on Assam, I put water on, then go back to write an exciting chase through the icy Titanian mountains. A pursuer’s sledge goes over a precipice and, as my heroine hears his long shriek on her radio, my tea kettle starts shrieking. I hurry into the kitchen. Now I go through the tea-­making ceremony: pouring boiling water into the pot, sloshing the water around and pouring it out, measuring the tea in, pouring more boiling water on top of the tea. All the while my mind is with my heroine, smiling grimly as she pilots the power-­sledge between bare cliffs. Above her in the dark sky is the huge crescent of Saturn, a shining white line slashing across it—the famous Rings. While the tea steeps, I wipe off a counter and wash a couple of mugs. I resist a sudden impulse to pull the newspaper out from among the used tea leaves and orange peelings.

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