Golubash, or wine‑blood‑war‑elegy Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente is the critically acclaimed author of The Orphan’s Tales, the first volume of which, In the Night Garden, won the Tiptree Award and was a finalist for the World Fantasy Award. She is also the author of the novels The Labyrinth, Yume No Hon: The Book of Dreams, and The Grass‑Cutting Sword. Her lastest novel, Palimpsest –which she describes as “a baroque meeting of science fiction and fantasy”–was published in February.

Those familiar with Valente’s work may be surprised to see her name in this anthology; for although she is well‑known in fantasy, this story marks her first foray into science fiction. Her fantasy writing is renowned for its exquisite prose style and its highly literary nature; I think you’ll find that’s true of her SF as well.

As the title implies, this one is about wine and war–a pleasing bouquet, with a hint of bloodshed.

The difficulties of transporting wine over interstellar distances are manifold. Wine is, after all, like a child. It can bruise. It can suffer trauma–sometimes the poor creature can recover; sometimes it must be locked up in a cellar until it learns to behave itself. Sometimes it is irredeemable. I ask that you greet the seven glasses before you tonight not as simple fermented grapes, but as the living creatures they are, well‑brought up, indulged but not coddled, punished when necessary, shyly seeking your approval with clasped hands and slicked hair. After all, they have come so very far for the chance to be loved.

Welcome to the first public tasting of Domaine Zhaba. My name is Phylloxera Nanut, and it is the fruit of my family’s vines that sits before you. Please forgive our humble venue–surely we could have wished for something grander than a scorched pre‑war orbital platform, but circumstances, and the constant surveillance of Château Marubouzu‑Débrouillard and their soldiers have driven us to extremity. Mind the loose electrical panels and pull up a reactor husk–they are inert, I assure you. Spit onto the floor–a few new stains will never be noticed. As every drop about to pass your lips is wholly, thoroughly, enthusiastically illegal, we shall not stand on ceremony. Shall we begin?

• • •

2583 Sud‑Côtê‑du‑Golubash (New Danube)

The colonial ship Quintessence of Dust first blazed across the skies of Avalokitesvara two hundred years before I was born, under the red stare of Barnard’s Star, our second solar benefactor. Her plasma sails streamed kilometers long, like sheltering wings. Simone Nanut was on that ship. She, alongside a thousand others, looked down on their new home from that great height, the single long, unfathomably wide river that circumscribed the globe, the golden mountains prickled with cobalt alders, the deserts streaked with pink salt.

How I remember the southern coast of Golubash; I played there, and dreamed there was a girl on the invisible opposite shore, and that her family, too, made wine and cowered like us in the shadow of the Asociación.

My friends, in your university days did you not study the manifests of the first colonials, did you not memorize their weight‑limited cargo, verse after verse of spinning wheels, bamboo seeds, lathes, vials of tailored bacteria, as holy writ? Then perhaps you will recall Simone Nanut and her folly: she used her pitiful allotment of cargo to carry the clothes on her back and a tangle of ancient Maribor grapevine, its roots tenderly wrapped and watered. Mad Slovak witch they all thought her, patting those tortured, battered vines into the gritty yellow soil of the Golubash basin. Even the Hyphens were sure the poor things would fail.

There were only four of them on all of Avalokitesvara, immensely tall, their watery triune faces catching the old red light of Barnard’s flares, their innumerable arms fanned out around their terribly thin torsos like peacocks’ tails. Not for nothing was the planet named for a Hindu god with eleven faces and a thousand arms. The colonists called them Hyphens for their way of talking, and for the thinness of their bodies. They did not understand then what you must all know now, rolling your eyes behind your sleeves as your hostess relates ancient history, that each of the four Hyphens was a quarter of the world in a single body, that they were a mere outcropping of the vast intelligences which made up the ecology of Avalokitesvara, like one of our thumbs or a pair of lips.

Golubash, I knew. To know more than one Hyphen in a lifetime is rare. Officially, the great river is still called New Danube, but eventually my family came to understand, as all families did, that the river was the flesh and blood of Golubash, the fish his‑her‑its thoughts, the seaweed his‑her‑its nerves, the banks a kind of thoughtful skin.

Simone Nanut put vines down into the body of Golubash. He‑She‑It bent down very low over Nanut’s hunched little form, arms akimbo, and said to her: “That will not work‑take‑thrive‑bear fruit‑last beyond your lifetime.”

Yet work‑take‑thrive they did. Was it a gift to her? Did Golubash make room, between what passes for his‑her‑its pancreas and what might be called a liver, for foreign vines to catch and hold? Did he, perhaps, love my ancestor in whatever way a Hyphen can love? It is impossible to know, but no other Hyphen has ever allowed Earth‑origin flora to flourish, not Heeminspr the high desert, not Julka the archipelago, not Niflamen, the soft‑spoken polar waste. Not even the northern coast of the river proved gentle to grape. Golubash was generous only to Simone’s farm, and only to the southern bank. The mad red flares of Barnard’s Star flashed often and strange, and the grapes pulsed to its cycles. The rest of the colony contented themselves with the native root‑vegetables, something like crystalline rutabagas filled with custard, and the teeming rock‑geese whose hearts in those barnacled chests tasted of beef and sugar.

• • •

In your glass is an ’83 vintage of that hybrid vine, a year which should be famous, would be, if not for rampant fear and avarice. Born on Earth, matured in Golubash. It is 98% Cabernet, allowing for mineral compounds generated in the digestive tract of the Golubash river. Note its rich, garnet‑like color, the gravitas of its presence in the glass, the luscious, rolling flavors of blackberry, cherry, peppercorn, and chocolate, the subtle, airy notes of fresh straw and iron. At the back of your tongue, you will detect a last whisper of brine and clarygrass.

The will of Simone Nanut swirls in your glass, resolute‑unbroken‑unmoveable‑stone.

• • •