Clarkesworld Magazine

Issue 100

Table of Contents

Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight

by Aliette de Bodard

A Universal Elegy

by Tang Fei

Cat Pictures Please

by Naomi Kritzer

The Apartment Dweller's Bestiary

by Kij Johnson

Ether

by Zhang Ran

The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild

by Catherynne M. Valente

An Exile of the Heart

by Jay Lake

This Wind Blowing, and This Tide

by Damien Broderick

Laika's Ghost

by Karl Schroeder

Song for a City-Universe: Lucius Shepard's Abandoned Vermillion

by Jason Heller

Exploring the Frontier: A Conversation with Xia Jia

by Ken Liu

Another Word: #PurpleSF

by Cat Rambo

Editor's Desk: On the Road to One Hundred

by Neil Clarke

Disciple

Art by Julie Dillon

© Clarkesworld Magazine, 2015

www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

Three Cups of Grief, by Starlight

Aliette de Bodard

Green tea: green tea is made from steamed or lightly dried tea leaves. The brew is light, with a pleasant, grassy taste. Do not over-steep it, lest it become bitter.

After the funeral, Quang Tu walked back to his compartment, and sat down alone, staring sightlessly at the slow ballet of bots cleaning the small room—the metal walls pristine already, with every trace of Mother’s presence or of her numerous mourners scrubbed away. He’d shut down the communal network—couldn’t bear to see the potted summaries of Mother’s life, the endlessly looping vids of the funeral procession, the hundred thousand bystanders gathered at the gravesite to say goodbye, vultures feasting on the flesh of the grieving—they hadn’t known her, they hadn’t cared—and all their offerings of flowers were worth as much as the insurances of the Embroidered Guard.

“Big brother, I know you’re here,” a voice said, on the other side of the door he’d locked. “Let me in, please?”

Of course. Quang Tu didn’t move. “I said I wanted to be alone,” he said.

A snort that might have been amusement. “Fine. If you insist on doing it that way . . . ”

His sister, The Tiger in the Banyan, materialized in the kitchen, hovering over the polished counter, near the remains of his morning tea. Of course, it wasn’t really her: she was a Mind encased in the heartroom of a spaceship, far too heavy to leave orbit; and what she projected down onto the planet was an avatar, a perfectly rendered, smaller version of herself—elegant and sharp, with a small, blackened spot on her hull which served as a mourning band. “Typical,” she said, hovering around the compartment. “You can’t just shut yourself away.”

“I can if I want to,” Quang Tu said—feeling like he was eight years old again, trying to argue with her—as if it had ever made sense. She seldom got angry—mindships didn’t, mostly; he wasn’t sure if that was the overall design of the Imperial Workshops, or the simple fact that her lifespan was counted in centuries, and his (and Mother’s) in mere decades. He’d have thought she didn’t grieve, either; but she was changed—something in the slow, careful deliberation of her movements, as if anything and everything might break her . . .

The Tiger in the Banyan hovered near the kitchen table, watching the bots. She could hack them, easily; no security worth anything in the compartment. Who would steal bots, anyway?

What he valued most had already been taken away.

“Leave me alone,” he said. But he didn’t want to be alone; not really. He didn’t want to hear the silence in the compartment; the clicking sounds of the bots’ legs on metal, bereft of any warmth or humanity.

“Do you want to talk about it?” The Tiger in the Banyan asked.

She didn’t need to say what; and he didn’t do her the insult of pretending she did. “What would be the point?”

“To talk.” Her voice was uncannily shrewd. “It helps. At least, I’m told it does.”

Quang Tu heard, again, the voice of the Embroidered Guard; the slow, measured tones commiserating on his loss; and then the frown, and the knife-thrust in his gut.

You must understand that your mother’s work was very valuable . . .

The circumstances are not ordinary . . .

The slow, pompous tones of the scholar; the convoluted official language he knew by heart—the only excuses the state would make to him, couched in the over-formality of memorials and edicts.

“She—” he took a deep, trembling breath—was it grief, or anger? “I should have had her mem-implants.” Forty-nine days after the funeral; when there was time for the labs to have decanted and stabilized Mother’s personality and memories, and added her to the ranks of the ancestors on file. It wasn’t her, it would never be her, of course—just a simulation meant to share knowledge and advice. But it would have been something. It would have filled the awful emptiness in his life.

“It was your right, as the eldest,” The Tiger in the Banyan said. Something in the tone of her voice . . .

“You disapprove? You wanted them?” Families had fallen out before, on more trivial things.

“Of course not.” A burst of careless, amused laughter. “Don’t be a fool. What use would I have, for them. It’s just—” She hesitated, banking left and right in uncertainty. “You need something more. Beyond Mother.”

“There isn’t something more!”

“You—”

“You weren’t there,” Quang Tu said. She’d been away on her journeys, ferrying people back and forth between the planets that made up the Dai Viet Empire; leaping from world to world, with hardly a care for planet-bound humans. She—she hadn’t seen Mother’s unsteady hands, dropping the glass; heard the sound of its shattering like a gunshot; hadn’t carried her back to bed every evening, tracking the progress of the disease by the growing lightness in his arms—by the growing sharpness of ribs, protruding under taut skin.

Mother had remained herself until almost the end—sharp and lucid and utterly aware of what was happening, scribbling in the margins of her team’s reports and sending her instructions to the new space station’s building site, as if nothing untoward had ever happened to her. Had it been a blessing; or a curse? He didn’t have answers; and he wasn’t sure he wanted that awful certainty to shatter him.

“I was here,” The Tiger in the Banyan said, gently, slowly. “At the end.”

Quang Tu closed his eyes, again, smelling antiseptic and the sharp odor of painkillers; and the sour smell of a body finally breaking down, finally failing. “I’m sorry. You were. I didn’t mean to—”

“I know you didn’t.” The Tiger in the Banyan moved closer to him; brushed against his shoulder—ghostly, almost intangible, the breath that had been beside him all his childhood. “But nevertheless. Your life got eaten up, taking care of Mother. And you can say you were only doing what a filial son ought to do; you can say it didn’t matter. But . . . it’s done now, big brother. It’s over.”

It’s not, he wanted to say, but the words rang hollow in his own ears. He moved, stared at the altar; at the holo of Mother—over the offering of tea and rice, the food to sustain her on her journey through Hell. It cycled through vids—Mother, heavily pregnant with his sister, moving with the characteristic arrested slowness of Mind-bearers; Mother standing behind Quang Tu and The Tiger in the Banyan in front of the ancestral altar for Grandfather’s death anniversary; Mother, accepting her Hoang Minh Medal from the then Minister of Investigation; and one before the diagnosis, when she’d already started to become frailer and thinner—insisting on going back to the lab; to her abandoned teams and research . . .

He thought, again, of the Embroidered Guard; of the words tightening around his neck like an executioner’s garrote. How dare he. How dare they all. “She came home,” he said, not sure how to voice the turmoil within him. “To us. To her family. In the end. It meant something, didn’t it?”

The Tiger in the Banyan’s voice was wry, amused. “It wasn’t the Empress that comforted her when she woke at night, coughing her lungs out, was it?” It was . . . treason to much as think this, let alone utter it; though the Embroidered Guard would make allowances for grief, and anger; and for Mother’s continued usefulness to the service of the Empress. The truth was, neither of them much cared, anyway. “It’s not the Empress that was by her side when she died.”

She’d clung to his hand, then, her eyes open wide, a network of blood within the whites, and the fear in her eyes. “I—please, child . . . ” He’d stood, frozen; until, behind him, The Tiger in the Banyan whispered, “The lights in Sai Gon are green and red, the lamps in My Tho are bright and dim . . . ”— an Old Earth lullaby, the words stretched into the familiar, slow, comforting rhythm that he’d unthinkingly taken up.

“Go home to study,

I shall wait nine months, I shall wait ten autumns . . . ”

She’d relaxed, then, against him; and they had gone on singing songs until—he didn’t know when she’d died; when the eyes lost their luster, the face its usual sharpness. But he’d risen from her deathbed with the song still in his mind; and an awful yawning gap in his world that nothing had closed.

And then—after the scattering of votive papers, after the final handful of earth thrown over the grave—the Embroidered Guard.

The Embroidered Guard was young; baby-faced and callow, but he was already moving with the easy arrogance of the privileged. He’d approached Quang Tu at the grave site, ostensibly to offer his condolences—it had taken him all of two sentences to get to his true purpose; and to shatter Quang Tu’s world, all over again.

Your mother’s mem-implants will go to Professor Tuyet Hoa, who will be best able to continue her research . . .

Of course, the Empire required food; and crops of rice grown in space; and better, more reliable harvests to feed the masses. Of course he didn’t want anyone to starve. But . . .

Mem-implants always went from parent to child. They were a family’s riches and fortune; the continued advice of the ancestors, dispensed from beyond the grave. He’d—he’d had the comfort, as Mother lay dying, to know that he wouldn’t lose her. Not for real; not for long.

“They took her away from us,” Quang Tu said. “Again and again and again. And now, at the very end, when she ought to be ours—when she should return to her family . . . ”

The Tiger in the Banyan didn’t move; but a vid of the funeral appeared on one of the walls, projected through the communal network. There hadn’t been enough space in the small compartment for people to pay their respects; the numerous callers had jammed into the corridors and alcoves, jostling each other in utter silence. “She’s theirs in death, too.”

“And you don’t care?”

A side-roll of the avatar, her equivalent of a shrug. “Not as much as you do. I remember her. None of them do.”

Except Tuyet Hoa.

He remembered Tuyet Hoa, too; coming to visit them on the third day after the New Year—a student paying respect to her teacher, year after year; turning from an unattainable grown-up to a woman not much older than either he or The Tiger in the Banyan; though she’d never lost her rigid awkwardness in dealing with them. No doubt, in Tuyet Hoa’s ideal world, Mother wouldn’t have had children; wouldn’t have let anything distract her from her work.

“You have to move on,” The Tiger in the Banyan said, slowly, gently; coming by his side to stare at the memorial altar. Bots gathered in the kitchen space, started putting together fresh tea to replace the three cups laid there. “Accept that this is the way things are. They’ll compensate, you know—offer you higher-level promotions and make allowances. You’ll find your path through civil service is . . . smoother.”

Bribes or sops; payments for the loss of something that had no price. “Fair dealings,” he said, slowly, bitterly. They knew exactly the value of what Tuyet Hoa was getting.

“Of course,” The Tiger in the Banyan said. “But you’ll only ruin your health and your career; and you know Mother wouldn’t have wanted it.”

As if . . . No, he was being unfair. Mother could be distant, and engrossed in her work; but she had always made time for them. She had raised them and played with them, telling them stories of princesses and fishermen and citadels vanished in one night; and, later on, going on long walks with Quang Tu in the gardens of Azure Dragons, delightedly pointing at a pine tree or at a crane flying overhead; and animatedly discussing Quang Tu’s fledging career in the Ministry of Works.

“You can’t afford to let this go sour,” The Tiger in the Banyan said. Below her, the bots brought a small, perfect cup of tea: green, fragrant liquid in a cup, the cracks in the pale celadon like those in eggshells.

Quang Tu lifted the cup; breathed in the grassy, pleasant smell—Mother would love it, even beyond the grave. “I know,” he said, laying the cup on the altar. The lie slipped out of him as softly, as easily as Mother’s last exhaled breath.

Wu Long tea: those teas are carefully prepared by the tea masters to create a range of tastes and appearances. The brew is sweet with a hint of strength, each subsequent steeping revealing new nuances.

Tuyet Hoa woke up—with a diffuse, growing sense of panic and fear, before she remembered the procedure.

She was alive. She was sane. At least . . .

She took in a deep, trembling breath; and realized she lay at home, in her bed. What had woken her up—above the stubborn, panicked rhythm of her heart—was a gentle nudge from the communal network, flashes of light relayed by the bots in the lightest phase of her sleep cycle. It wasn’t her alarm; but rather, a notification that a message classified as “urgent” had arrived for her.

Not again.

A nudge, at the back of her mind; a thread of thought that wasn’t her own; reminding her she should look at it; that it was her responsibility as the new head of department to pay proper attention to messages from her subordinates.

Professor Duy Uyen. Of course.

She was as forceful in life as she had been in death; and, because she had been merely Hoa’s head of department, and not a direct ancestor, she felt . . . wrong. Distant, as though she were speaking through a pane of glass.

Hoa was lucky, she knew—receiving mem-implants that weren’t your own family’s could irretrievably scramble your brain, as fifteen different strangers with no consideration or compassion fought for control of your thoughts. She could hear Professor Duy Uyen; and sometimes others of Duy Uyen’s ancestors, as remote ghosts; but that was it. It could have been so much worse.

And it could have been so much better.

She got up, ignoring the insistent talk at the back of her mind, the constant urge to be dutiful; and padded into the kitchen.

The bots had already set aside Hoa’s first tea of the day. She’d used to take it at work, before the procedure; in the days of Professor Duy Uyen’s sickness, when Duy Uyen came in to work thinner and paler every day—and then became a succession of memorials and vid-calls, injecting her last, desperate instructions into the project before it slipped beyond her grasp. Hoa had enjoyed the quiet: it had kept the desperate knowledge of Professor Duy Uyen’s coming death at bay—the moment when they would all be adrift in the void of space, with no mindship to carry them onwards.

Now Hoa enjoyed a different quiet. Now she drank her tea first thing in the morning—hoping that, at this early hour, the mem-implants had no motive to kick in.

Not that it had worked, this particular morning.

She sat down to breathe in the flavor—the faint, nutty aroma poised perfectly between floral and sweet—her hand trembling above the surface of the cup—mentally blocking out Professor Duy Uyen for a few precious minutes; a few more stolen moments of tranquility before reality came crashing in.

Then she gave in, and opened the message.

It was from Luong Ya Lan, the researcher who worked on the water’s acidity balance. On the vid relayed from the laboratory, she was pale, but perfectly composed. “Madam Hoa. I’m sorry to have to inform you that the samples in Paddy Four have developed a fungal disease . . . ”

Professor Duy Uyen stirred in the depths of Hoa’s brain, parsing the words as they came in—accessing the station’s private network and downloading the pertinent data—the only mercy was that she wasn’t faster than Hoa, and that it would take her fifteen to twenty minutes to parse all of it. The Professor had her suspicions, of course—something about the particular rice strain; perhaps the changes drafted onto the plant to allow it to thrive under starlight, changes taken from the nocturnal honeydreamer on the Sixteenth Planet; perhaps the conditions in the paddy itself . . .

Hoa poured herself another cup of tea; and stared at the bots for a while. There was silence, the voice of Duy Uyen slowly fading away to nothingness in her thoughts. Alone. At last, alone.

Paddy Four had last been checked on by Ya Lan’s student, An Khang—Khang was a smart and dedicated man, but not a particularly careful one; and she would have to ask him if he’d checked himself, or through bots; and if he’d followed protocols when he’d done so.

She got up, and walked to the laboratory—still silence in her mind. It was a short trip: the station was still being built, and the only thing in existence were the laboratory and the living quarters for all ten researchers—a generous allocation of space, far grander than the compartments they would have been entitled to on any of their home stations.

Outside, beyond the metal walls, the bots were hard at work—reinforcing the structure, gradually layering a floor and walls onto the skeletal structure mapped out by the Grand Master of Design Harmony. She had no need to call up a vid of the outside on her implants to know they were out there, doing their part; just as she was. They weren’t the only ones, of course: in the Imperial Workshops, alchemists were carefully poring over the design of the Mind that would one day watch over the entire station, making sure no flaws remained before they transferred him to the womb of his mother.

In the laboratory, Ya Lan was busying herself with the faulty paddy: she threw an apologetic glance at Hoa when Hoa walked in. “You got my message.”

Hoa grimaced. “Yes. Have you had time to analyze?”

Ya Lan flushed. “No.”

Hoa knew. A proper analysis would require more than twenty minutes. But still . . . “If you had to make a rough guess?”

“Probably the humidity.”

“Did Khang—”

Ya Lan shook her head. “I checked that too. No contaminants introduced in the paddy; and the last time he opened it was two weeks ago.” The paddies were encased in glass, to make sure they could control the environment; and monitored by bots and the occasional scientist.

“Fungi can lie dormant for more than two weeks,” Hoa said, darkly.

Ya Lan sighed. “Of course. But I still think it’s the environment: it’s a bit tricky to get right.”

Humid and dark; the perfect conditions for a host of other things to grow in the paddies—not just the crops the Empire so desperately needed. The named planets were few; and fewer still that could bear the cultivation of food. Professor Duy Uyen had had a vision—of a network of space stations like this one; of fish ponds and rice paddies grown directly under starlight, rather than on simulated Old Earth light; of staples that would not cost a fortune in resources to grow and maintain.

And they had all believed in that vision, like a dying man offered a glimpse of a river. The Empress herself had believed it; so much that she had suspended the law for Professor Duy Uyen’s sake, and granted her mem-implants to Hoa instead of to Duy Uyen’s son: the quiet boy Hoa remembered from her New Year’s visits, now grown to become a scholar in his own right—he’d been angry at the funeral, and why wouldn’t he be? The mem-implants should have been his.

“I know,” Hoa said. She knelt, calling up the data from the paddy onto her implants: her field of vision filled with a graph of the temperature throughout last month. The slight dips in the curve all corresponded to a check: a researcher opening the paddy.

“Professor?” Ya Lan asked; hesitant.

Hoa did not move. “Yes?”

“It’s the third paddy of that strain that fails in as many months . . . ”

She heard the question Ya Lan was not asking. The other strain—the one in paddies One to Three—had also failed some tests, but not at the same frequency.

Within her, Professor Duy Uyen stirred. It was the temperature, she pointed out, gently but firmly. The honeydreamer supported a very narrow range of temperatures; and the modified rice probably did, too.

Hoa bit back a savage answer. The changes might be flawed, but they were the best candidate they had.

Professor Duy Uyen shook her head. The strain in paddies One to Three was better: a graft from a lifeform of an unnumbered and unsettled planet, P Huong Van—luminescents, an insect flying in air too different to be breathable by human beings. They had been Professor Duy Uyen’s favored option.

Hoa didn’t like the luminescents. The air of P Huong Van had a different balance of khi-elements: it was rich in fire, and anything would set it ablaze—flame-storms were horrifically common, charring trees to cinders, and birds in flight to blackened skeletons. Aboard a space station, fire was too much of a danger. Professor Duy Uyen had argued that the Mind that would ultimately control the space station could be designed to accept an unbalance of khi-elements; could add water to the atmosphere to reduce the chances of a firestorm onboard.

Hoa had no faith in this. Modifying a Mind had a high cost, far above that of regulating temperature in a rice paddy. She pulled up the data from the paddies; though of course she knew Professor Duy Uyen would have reviewed it before her.

Professor Duy Uyen was polite enough not to chide Hoa; though Hoa could feel her disapproval like the weight of a blade—it was odd, in so many ways, how the refinement process had changed Professor Duy Uyen; how, with all the stabilization adjustments, all the paring down of the unnecessary emotions, the simulation in her mind was utterly, heartbreakingly different from the woman she had known: all the keenness of her mind, and the blade of her finely-honed knowledge, with none of the compassion that would have made her more bearable. Though perhaps it was as well that she had none of the weakness Duy Uyen had shown, in the end—the skin that barely hid the sharpness of bones; the eyes like bruises in the pale oval of her face; the voice, faltering on words or instructions . . .

Paddies One to Three were thriving; the yield perhaps less than that of Old Earth; but nothing to be ashamed of. There had been a spot of infection in Paddy Three; but the bots had taken care of it.

Hoa watched, for a moment, the bots scuttling over the glass encasing the paddy; watched the shine of metal; the light trembling on the joints of their legs—waiting for the smallest of triggers to blossom into flame. The temperature data for all three paddies was fluctuating too much; and the rate of fire-khi was far above what she was comfortable with.

“Professor?” Ya Lan was still waiting by Paddy Four.

There was only one paddy of that honeydreamer strain: it was new, and as yet unproved. Professor Duy Uyen stirred, within her mind; pointed out the painfully obvious. The strain wasn’t resistant enough—the Empire couldn’t afford to rely on something so fragile. She should do the reasonable thing, and consign it to the scrap bin. They should switch efforts to the other strain, the favored one; and what did it matter if the station’s Mind needed to enforce a slightly different balance of khi-elements?

It was what Professor Duy Uyen would have done.

But she wasn’t Professor Duy Uyen.

Minds were made in balance; to deliberately unhinge one . . . would have larger consequences on the station than mere atmospheric control. The risk was too high. She knew this; as much as she knew and numbered all her ancestors—the ones that hadn’t been rich or privileged enough to bequeath her their own mem-implants—leaving her with only this pale, flawed approximation of an inheritance.

You’re a fool.

Hoa closed her eyes; closed her thoughts so that the voice in her mind sank to a whisper. She brought herself, with a slight effort, back to the tranquility of her mornings—breathing in the nutty aroma from her teacup, as she steeled herself for the day ahead.

She wasn’t Professor Duy Uyen.

She’d feared being left adrift when Professor Duy Uyen’s illness had taken a turn for the worse; she’d lain late at night wondering what would happen to Duy Uyen’s vision; of what she would do, bereft of guidance.

But now she knew.

“Get three other tanks,” Hoa said. “Let’s see what that strain looks like with a tighter temperature regulation. And if you can get hold of Khang, ask him to look into the graft—there might be a better solution there.”

The Empress had thought Duy Uyen a critical asset; had made sure that her mem-implants went to Hoa—so that Hoa would have the advice and knowledge she needed to finish the station that the Empire so desperately needed. The Empress had been wrong; and who cared if that was treason?

Because the answer to Professor Duy Uyen’s death, like everything else, was deceptively, heartbreakingly simple: that no one was irreplaceable; that they would do what everyone always did—they would, somehow, forge on.

Dark tea: dark tea leaves are left to mature for years through a careful process of fermentation. The process can take anywhere from a few months to a century. The resulting brew has rich, thick texture with only a bare hint of sourness.

The Tiger in the Banyan doesn’t grieve as humans do.

Partly, it’s because she’s been grieving for such a long time; because mindships don’t live the same way that humans do—because they’re built and anchored and stabilized.

Quang Tu spoke of seeing Mother become frail and ill, and how it broke his heart; The Tiger in the Banyan’s heart broke, years and years ago; when she stood in the midst of the New Year’s Eve celebration—as the sound of crackers and bells and gongs filled in the corridors of the orbital, and everyone hugged and cried, she suddenly realized that she would still be there in a hundred years; but that no one else around the table—not Mother, not Quang Tu, none of the aunts and uncles or cousins—would still be alive.

She leaves Quang Tu in his compartment, staring at the memorial altar—and, shifting her consciousness from her projected avatar to her real body, climbs back among the stars.

She is a ship; and in the days and months that Quang Tu mourns, she carries people between planets and orbitals— private passengers and officials on their business: rough white silk, elaborate five panel dresses; parties of scholars arguing on the merit of poems; soldiers on leave from the most distant numbered planets, who go into the weirdness of deep spaces with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.

Mother is dead, but the world goes on—Professor Pham Thi Duy Uyen becomes yesterday’s news; fades into official biographies and re-creation vids—and her daughter goes on, too, doing her duty to the Empire.

The Tiger in the Banyan doesn’t grieve as humans do. Partly, it’s because she doesn’t remember as humans do.

She doesn’t remember the womb; or the shock of the birth; but in her earliest memories Mother is here—the first and only time she was carried in Mother’s arms—and Mother herself helped by the birth-master, walking forward on tottering legs—past the pain of the birth, past the bone-deep weariness that speaks only of rest and sleep. It’s Mother’s hands that lie her down into the cradle in the heartroom; Mother’s hands that close the clasps around her—so that she is held; wrapped as securely as she was in the womb—and Mother’s voice that sings to her a lullaby, the tune she will forever carry as she travels between the stars.

The lights in Sai Gon are green and red, the lamps in My Tho are bright and dim . . .

As she docks at an orbital near the Fifth Planet, The Tiger in the Banyan is hailed by another, older ship, The Dream of Millet: a friend she often meets on longer journeys. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh?” The Tiger in the Banyan asks. It’s not hard, to keep track of where ships go from their manifests; but The Dream of Millet is old, and rarely bothers to do so—she’s used to other ships coming to her, rather than the other way around.

“I wanted to ask how you were. When I heard you were back into service—” The Dream of Millet pauses, then; and hesitates; sending a faint signal of cautious disapproval on the comms. “It’s early. Shouldn’t you be mourning? Officially—”

Officially, the hundred days of tears are not yet over. But ships are few; and she’s not an official like Quang Tu, beholden to present exemplary behavior. “I’m fine,” The Tiger in the Banyan says. She’s mourning; but it doesn’t interfere with her activities: after all, she’s been steeling herself for this since Father died. She didn’t expect it to come so painfully, so soon, but she was prepared for it—braced for it in a way that Quang Tu will never be.

The Dream of Millet is silent for a while—The Tiger in The Banyan can feel her, through the void that separates them—can feel the radio waves nudging her hull; the quick jab of probes dipping into her internal network and collating together information about her last travels. “You’re not ‘fine’,” The Dream of Millet says. “You’re slower, and you go into deep spaces further than you should. And—” she pauses, but it’s more for effect than anything else. “You’ve been avoiding it, haven’t you?”

They both know what she’s talking about: the space station Mother was putting together; the project to provide a steady, abundant food supply to the Empire.

“I’ve had no orders that take me there,” The Tiger in the Banyan says. Not quite a lie; but dangerously close to one. She’s been . . . better off knowing the station doesn’t exist—unsure that she could face it at all. She doesn’t care about Tuyet Hoa, or the mem-implants; but the station was such a large part of Mother’s life that she’s not sure she could stand to be reminded of it.

She is a mindship: her memories never grow dim or faint; or corrupt. She remembers songs and fairytales whispered through her corridors; remembers walking with Mother on the First Planet, smiling as Mother pointed out the odder places of the Imperial City, from the menagerie to the temple where monks worship an Outsider clockmaker—remembers Mother frail and bowed in the last days, coming to rest in the heartroom, her labored breath filling The Tiger in the Banyan’s corridors until she, too, could hardly breathe.

She remembers everything about Mother; but the space station—the place where Mother worked away from her children; the project Mother could barely talk about without breaching confidentiality—is forever denied to her memories; forever impersonal, forever distant.

“I see,” The Dream of Millet says. Again, faint disapproval; and another feeling The Tiger in the Banyan can’t quite place—reluctance? Fear of impropriety? “You cannot live like that, child.”

Let me be, The Tiger in the Banyan says; but of course she can’t say that; not to a ship as old as The Dream of Millet. “It will pass,” she says. “In the meantime, I do what I was trained to do. No one has reproached me.” Her answer borders on impertinence, deliberately.

“No. And I won’t,” The Dream of Millet says. “It would be inappropriate of me to tell you how to manage your grief.” She laughs, briefly. “You know there are people worshipping her? I saw a temple, on the Fifty-Second Planet.”

An easier, happier subject. “I’ve seen one too,” The Tiger in the Banyan says. “On the Thirtieth Planet.” It has a statue of Mother, smiling as serenely as a bodhisattva—people light incense to her to be helped in their difficulties. “She would have loved this.” Not for the fame or the worship, but merely because she would have found it heartbreakingly funny.

“Hmmm. No doubt.” The Dream of Millet starts moving away; her comms growing slightly fainter. “I’ll see you again, then. Remember what I said.”

The Tiger in the Banyan will; but not with pleasure. And she doesn’t like the tone with which the other ship takes her leave; it suggests she is going to do something—something typical of the old, getting The Tiger in the Banyan into a position where she’ll have no choice but to acquiesce to whatever The Dream of Millet thinks of as necessary.

Still . . . there is nothing that she can do. As The Tiger in the Banyan leaves the orbital onto her next journey, she sets a trace on The Dream of Millet; and monitors it from time to time. Nothing the other ship does seems untoward or suspicious; and after a while The Tiger in the Banyan lets the trace fade.

As she weaves her way between the stars, she remembers.

Mother, coming onboard a week before she died—walking by the walls with their endlessly scrolling texts, all the poems she taught The Tiger in the Banyan as a child. In the low gravity, Mother seemed almost at ease; striding once more onboard the ship until she reached the heartroom. She’d sat with a teacup cradled in her lap—dark tea, because she said she needed a strong taste to wash down the drugs they plied her with—the heartroom filled with a smell like churned earth, until The Tiger in the Banyan could almost taste the tea she couldn’t drink.

“Child?” Mother asked.

“Yes?”

“Can we go away—for a while?”

She wasn’t supposed to, of course; she was a mindship, her travels strictly bounded and codified. But she did. She warned the space station; and plunged into deep spaces.

Mother said nothing. She’d stared ahead, listening to the odd sounds; to the echo of her own breath, watching the oily shapes spread on the walls—while The Tiger in the Banyan kept them on course; feeling stretched and scrunched, pulled in different directions as if she were swimming in rapids. Mother was mumbling under her breath; after a while, The Tiger in the Banyan realized it was the words of a song; and, to accompany it, she broadcast music on her loudspeakers.

“Go home to study,

I shall wait nine months, I shall wait ten autumns . . .”

She remembers Mother’s smile; the utter serenity on her face—the way she rose after they came back to normal spaces, fluid and utterly graceful; as if all pain and weakness had been set aside for this bare moment; subsumed in the music or the travel or both. She remembers Mother’s quiet words as she left the heartroom.

“Thank you, child. You did well.”

“It was nothing,” she’d said, and Mother had smiled, and disembarked—but The Tiger in the Banyan had heard the words Mother wasn’t speaking. Of course it wasn’t nothing. Of course it had meant something; to be away from it all, even for a bare moment; to hang, weightless and without responsibilities, in the vastness of space. Of course.

A hundred and three days after Mother’s death, a message comes, from the Imperial Palace. It directs her to pick an Embroidered Guard from the First Planet; and the destination is . . .

Had she a heart, this is the moment when it would stop.

The Embroidered Guard is going to Mother’s space station. It doesn’t matter why; or how long for—just that she’s meant to go with him. And she can’t. She can’t possibly . . .

Below the order is a note, and she knows, too, what it will say. That the ship originally meant for this mission was The Dream of Millet; and that she, unable to complete it, recommended that The Tiger in the Banyan take it up instead.

Ancestors . . .

How dare she?

The Tiger in the Banyan can’t refuse the order; or pass it on to someone else. Neither can she rail at a much older ship—but if she could—ancestors, if she could . . .

It doesn’t matter. It’s just a place—one with a little personal significance to her—but nothing she can’t weather. She has been to so many places, all over the Empire; and this is just one more.

Just one more.

The Embroidered Guard is young, and callow; and not unkind. He boards her at the First Planet, as specified—she’s so busy steeling herself that she forgets to greet him, but he doesn’t appear to notice this.

She’s met him before, at the funeral: the one who apologetically approached Quang Tu; who let him know Mother’s mem-implants wouldn’t pass to him.

Of course.

She finds refuge in protocol: it’s not her role to offer conversation to her passengers, especially not those of high rank or in imperial service, who would think it presumption. So she doesn’t speak; and he keeps busy in his cabin, reading reports and watching vids, the way other passengers do.

Just before they emerge from deep spaces, she pauses; as if it would make a difference—as if there were a demon waiting for her; or perhaps something far older and far more terrible; something that will shatter her composure past any hope of recovery.

What are you afraid of? A voice asks within her—she isn’t sure if it’s Mother or The Dream of Millet, and she isn’t sure of what answer she’d give, either.

The station isn’t what she expected. It’s a skeleton; a work in progress; a mass of cables and metal beams with bots crawling all over it; and the living quarters at the center, dwarfed by the incomplete structure. Almost deceptively ordinary; and yet it meant so much to Mother. Her vision for the future of the Empire; and neither Quang Tu nor The Tiger in the Banyan having a place within.

And yet . . . and yet, the station has heft. It has meaning—that of a painting half-done; of a poem stopped mid-verse—of a spear-thrust stopped a handspan before it penetrates the heart. It begs—demands—to be finished.

The Embroidered Guard speaks, then. “I have business onboard. Wait for me, will you?”

It is a courtesy to ask; since she would wait, in any case. But he surprises her by looking back, as he disembarks. “Ship?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” His voice is toneless.

“Don’t be,” The Tiger in the Banyan says.

He smiles then; a bare upturning of the lips. “I could give you the platitudes about your mother living on in her work, if I thought that would change something for her.”

The Tiger in the Banyan doesn’t say anything, for a while. She watches the station below her; listens to the faint drift of radio communications—scientists calling other scientists; reporting successes and failures and the ten thousand little things that make a project of this magnitude. Mother’s vision; Mother’s work—people call it her life work, but of course she and Quang Tu are also Mother’s life work, in a different way. And she understands, then, why The Dream of Millet sent her there.

“It meant something to her,” she says, finally. “I don’t think she’d have begrudged its completion.”

He hesitates. Then, coming back inside the ship—and looking upwards, straight where the heartroom would be—his gaze level, driven by an emotion she can’t read: “They’ll finish it. The new variety of rice they’ve found—the environment will have to be strictly controlled to prevent it from dying of cold, but . . . ” He takes a deep, trembling breath. “There’ll be stations like this all over the Empire—and it’s all thanks to your mother. “

“Of course,” The Tiger in the Banyan says. And the only words that come to her as the ones Mother spoke, once. “Thank you, child. You did well.”

She watches him leave; and thinks of Mother’s smile. Of Mother’s work; and of the things that happened between the work; the songs and the smiles and the stolen moments, all arrayed within her with the clarity and resilience of diamond. She thinks of the memories she carries within her—that she will carry within her for the centuries to come.

The Embroidered Guard was trying to apologize, for the mem-implants; for the inheritance neither she nor Quang Tu will ever have. Telling her it had all been worth it, in the end; that their sacrifice hadn’t been in vain.

But the truth is, it doesn’t matter. It mattered to Quang Tu; but she’s not her brother. She’s not bound by anger or rancor; and she doesn’t grieve as he does.

What matters is this: she holds all of her memories of Mother; and Mother is here now, with her—forever unchanged, forever graceful and tireless; forever flying among the stars.

About the Author

Aliette de Bodard lives and writes in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Engineer. In her spare time, she writes fiction: her Xuya series of Asian-dominated SF have won her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award. Her novel House of Shattered Wings–featuring Fallen angels, Vietnamese immortals and magical influence wars in a post-apocalyptic Paris–is forthcoming from Gollancz in August 2015.

A Universal Elegy

Tang Fei

I love you, stranger, but not because the world is hurting me.

Before my love froze, it once flew.

—The Elegy of Alia

Alia Calendar 6th month, 87th year

Brother, it’s not until my tongue stumbles over these two syllables that I realize how long it’s been since we last talked. Julian and I kept moving, kept living where even the heating system was a problem. A satellite communication system that could reach Mercury was beyond my wildest hopes. Sorry that I haven’t contacted you in so long.

Actually, I could have run to a public communication kiosk. Sending you a written message would have cost only several sou, but Julian didn’t like it when I did that. He thought it was a waste of money. We both knew, though, that this was just one of the ways he punished me.

Julian, my now former lover, had at some point suddenly become a nightmare. He tormented me, ridiculed me, in every way he could. He’s like all the others. His shifting gaze, the curl of his lips, the way his nose blushed, even the sound of his footsteps were filled with a meticulous indifference. He laughed at me, saying that I was mad. Gradually, I started to believe it. The world grew hazy. It lost its contours and weight. I sunk into thick, black, yet glistening agony. When I looked up at the stars, I saw a sky filled with flowing fire, dancing and spinning in a daze.

I was always crying. Once, Julian said in front of me to his research institute colleagues that he wanted to conduct research in genetic ethology using me as a specimen. Of course, he was drunk when he said that. He was always drunk, just like I was always crying.

I can say these things to you, not just because I’ve left the nightmare that was Julian—yes, we’ve broken up—but especially because you’re the only person in the universe who can understand me. We came from the same fertilized egg. We have the same DNA. Even though radiation from Cygnus A methylated some of your genes, you can still understand me, a sufferer of an inhibitory neuron blockage disorder.

It’s done, brother. The all of the suffering is done. I’m fine now. I’ve never been finer. In six hours, I’m going to leave this planet together with Hull. He’s a good man. Although we’ve only known each other fifteen days, we already understand each other. How do I describe the merging of souls that happens between two strangers? Such a mysterious stirring of emotions. I can’t put it into words. It’s like how the sound waves from two different kinds of musical instruments resonate together harmoniously. Forgive me for such a clunky analogy, brother. All you need to know is that I’ve fallen in love with a stranger who happens to love me. More importantly, he completely understands me and accepts me.

Six hours from now, fire will rush out of our rocket and we’ll travel to the other side of the universe, to Dieresis. That’s where he was born. Hull promised me that there I’ll get the respect that I deserved but never got on Earth. There, no one will think of me as being sick in the head. Like him, they’ll understand and respect me, even appreciate me.

Brother, I love him. It’s absolutely not because the world keeps hurting me.

Alia Calendar 6th month, 89th year

Time flies by so fast. Sorry that I’ve gone so long without mailing you again. But, brother, in this vast universe, do people have to rely on such obsolete methods to reach out to each other? Hull told me that signals the brain sends travel farther than we think. During the countless years of a endless trek, a person’s train of thought will enter the mind of someone else on another planet. Isn’t that amazing?

I want to tell you about Hull. Don’t worry, brother. I know my last letter made you think that I’ve committed yet another thoughtless mistake. Indeed, I have to admit that leaving Earth was definitely a somewhat hasty act. You know that’s why I sent you that last letter.

Hull is a Dieresian. He’s 1.8 meters tall, 72 kilograms, black hair, brown eyes. He looks like a handsome Caucasian and speaks Earth languages really well. Our conversations are fluent and joyful. He’s more like my kind than any Earth person.

His every subtle detail, no matter how difficult to check, is perfect. His pupils dilate at the just right times. His skin suffuses the air with a unique perfume. The rate his eyelashes quiver, the flaring of his nostrils, the unique path his fingertips glide over my skin steep me in the warm current of his love. I respond in the same detailed, satisfying way. We echo each other. The way we express our love is something that humans have never experienced and can never understand.

Our love unfolded on an even more profound layer of spirituality. Cautious and reverent at first, it gradually transformed into something frenzied and wild until, finally, I realized that, all along, Hull had been guiding me, consciously training me. Through constant, ever deeper, ever more meticulous interactions, like how our ancestors sliced ever thinner slices of graphite until they finally sheared off a sheet of graphene, my already keen powers of perception and expression improved.

Of course, coins aren’t just carried and spent. After all, Hull comes from outside the Milky Way. He has his quirks. For example, taking baths. For the first year of our flight, Hull never took a bath. One day, he suddenly announced he wanted to take one. By then, I was already used to his body odor and, moreover, I believed he had never taken a bath in his entire life. He locked himself in the bathroom for three days. To reassure me, he had meaningful conversations with me through the door that separated us. Even so, I was still distracted whenever I did anything else. Unbearable fantasies of what must have been happening behind the door ran wild through my mind.

Afterwards, he told me that everyone on his planet takes this long to clean their body and waits this long in between. I asked him if I had to do the same. As he laughed, he comforted me, saying that they respected everyone’s habits and customs. I don’t know whether all Dieresians are like him. He obstinately refuses to cut his hair or nails. However, even if they are, I can accept that.

Brother, your letter mentioned how worried you were. You said that you tried everything but couldn’t find anything about Dieresians. Everything about them seems to be a mystery. You were afraid that I’d fallen into another trap, just like before.

You’ll know one way or the other soon enough. Our ship is about to reach Dieresis.

No, it’ll be different this time. No matter whether that’s for better or worse.

Alia Calendar 6th month, 89th year

I’m sorry about the length of my letter. I hope your wife Jacqueline doesn’t glare at how much this space mail costs. But, brother, I can’t wait to tell you what happened after I reached Dieresis.

After we disembarked, we immediately took the high-speed rail across the central axis of the city. This is Hull’s hometown. I’ve fantasized about this mystical place so many times. In reality, it’s more amazing than even my wildest fantasies. I’m sitting in an ancient form of transport that no longer exists on Earth. Streetscapes flash by on both sides. It’s as though I’ve sunk into a contemporary city of the 21st century. Simple geometric forms pile layer by layer one on top of another. Glass facades are flooded with a metallic radiance from their sun, a rust-red star, the only sign that I’ve gone to outer space.

The train passes through the forest of tall buildings that is the business district then enter a residential district of gabled Baroque-style brick buildings. Green, clawed vines of wisteria, billowing in the occasional busts of wind, climb and fill every wall. Actually, they’re creatures that imitate wisteria. Sharp, slender claws stretch from their bodies. Suckers on their abdomens glue them to the walls. Hull told me this and when he saw my eyes, he added, smiling, that these not-wisteria vines were completely harmless.

I could feel my pupils dilate. We looked at each other and laughed.

Hull’s house is not more than a few steps from the train station. It’s decorated in the style of a 21st century Earth culture. Hull had obviously not put much thought into it. I didn’t understand how anyone so perceptive and intelligent could bear such out-dated decor.

Hull shrugged. “My darling, it’s purely what you perceive through your senses, nothing to do with which era.”

He pitied me, but tried his best to hide that. Brushing aside my bangs, he looked into my eyes. Silently, we held each other in our arms.

Hull’s right. The longer I stay here, the more I can sense the current that runs under the ordinary things. Flowing in that current, they grow translucent, like jellyfish. Subtle aesthetic senses of all kinds follow the current-like tendrils, undulating slight in its gentle ripples.

Living on Dieresis isn’t any different from living on the space ship. We spend most of the day either perceiving each other or loving each other. In other words, we train my powers of perception. Hull explained that once the sensory neurons all over my body are trained, they can be further developed to become even more powerful information processing units. My body isn’t sick like Earth doctors insist. Rather, it has stronger and denser sensory neurons than ordinary humans.

“When you’re that perceptive, you’ll be even more like us.” He smiled at me.

Immediately, I was steeped in our shared happiness. Already, I could practically feel the waves of joy, their amplitude growing from the constructive interference of our mutual, unspoken mental synchronicity.

Brother, I can’t wait to become a Dieresian, can’t wait to get rid of my identity as a mentally ill human, can’t wait to love Hull. Here, everything fits. I’ve returned to my true home. I’ve roamed away for too long.

You think we’re irresponsible, caring nothing about survival to wallowing in metaphysical questions, right? Don’t worry, brother. Although Dieresis looks like it hasn’t developed past our stone age, their technology has long developed to our standards. Tending our miniature farm for two hours a day supplies us enough food.

I don’t know whether other Dieresians also live Hull’s sort of simple, frugal but fulfilling life. That said, it’s weird that I’ve been here so long now and Hull has never once taken me outside. He, himself, also rarely leaves this house. What is the outside world like? Is our mental synchronicity and happiness common on this planet?

Alia Calendar 7th month, 89th year

Who are we? From the beginning of time, no species has ever understood itself. Even while a species rushes to invade and exploit other worlds, it still doesn’t know what it is. Don’t worry, brother. If I told you that I sympathize deeply with those of my petty, greedy race, would you worry even more? Your sister, who has been arrogantly tormented by mental illness for years, hasn’t forgotten that she’s a part of the human race. That’s why I regret and limit our innate flaws.

My body is changing. Brother, perhaps it has already changed.

After I arrived, my appetite grew five-fold. I’ve fainted so many times because I always felt hungry. The weird thing was that I’d been losing weight. Hull urged me to eat more. I told him that my stomach can only hold so much.

“You ought to consume nutrient materials with even more calories.” Hull handed me a bottle of dark red pills then told me to take a pill before every meal.

The pill was really effective. Hunger no longer vexed me. My mind was always filled with every kind of food. I could train with Hull to develop my powers of perception again. The world was constantly multiplying by dividing. A vase was no longer a vase. A smile was no longer a smile. A shaft of light was a gathering of countless subtle gradations of color. Lightwaves rippled like water through the air. Every time you stared at it, you felt even more the dust flying around. They lightly touched your skin like snowflakes, making you shudder for an instant. We lingered over ever tinier things, as though we saw them through millions of microscopes. What our senses gathered was gradually amplified nearly to infinity. This was a vastness that humanity had never conceived of setting foot in. It was another way of interpreting the universe. Humanity has never imagined this kind of world. Humanity has never created any words to describe it.

The initial enthusiasm has faded. I’m starting to feel tired. Because I’m following Hull so closely, I have no choice but to condense my soul, lose a little of my spirit. Some of the following will be wrong in the details.

Even if I keep up with Hull in perceiving deep and subtle layers, the difference between how keen Hull’s powers of perception are and mine is huge. I’d never recognized this before, not because the difference didn’t exist but because I couldn’t be aware of it before. But now, I’m aware. So that I can keep up with him, more often than not, he reduces his own keenness. Brother, it’s only here that I’m deeply aware that I’m human.

Sometimes, I even think Hull is in love with a monkey. And I am that monkey.

As for those red pills, can they evolve me from a monkey to a person?

I hate those pills, brother. Even on a purely physical level, they make me uncomfortable. As my perception grows keener, the discomfort becomes even more acute. For more than a few days, given half a chance, I flushed those pills down the toilet. Hull knows, I think. He just won’t say so.

Tonight, the pill bottle was empty. Once again, Hull replaced it with a full bottle from his drawer. This was enough. He didn’t need to say anything. I swallowed today’s pills in front of him. We batted our eyelashes at each other. I told him that I wanted to go out for a stroll by myself. He didn’t stop me. This was the first time I’ve left the house.

It didn’t look like there was anything to worry about. I was just going to wander around the garden.

I followed the stairs down. It was black outside. At first, with the sound of rustling, the dampness, the thread of some flavor I can’t identify, I thought it was raining. I walked quietly. The only things left in the world were the rustling and strange, regular movement in the dark that matched it. That wasn’t rain. That was the swaying of vines on the wall. I imagined them as unbroken waves undulating in the dark, like a dangerous sea.

The wind outside must have been fierce. What was odd, though, was I didn’t hear any wind.

I pushed the door open. There was no wind, just the calm, peaceful night.

The vines shone in the moonlight, deathly pale like scars. They stood out against the surrounding shadow. Even if the moonlight were blocked by clouds, they would still cling there.

Five slender fingers stretched out, as though to beckon me.

Finally, I understood what I saw. Shell-like fingernails that gave off a twinkling light. A palm that curled in a way that seemed deep with meaning. They formed a broken arm, a deathly pale severed arm. The continuously undulating vines stretched out, convulsing and twitching. A drop of a black, tepid liquid fell on my face. A little splashed into my mouth.

How would someone on Earth describe the flavor? A fishy sweetness? That flavor slid like a snake down my throat and into my stomach, then became part of me.

That was blood, brother. I grew terrified.

I fainted.

When I woke up, it was as if nothing had happened. Hull sat by the bed, his gaze soft. Even though I hadn’t opened my eyes, I could feel him there. Even if I hadn’t smelled his sweat or heard his breath, I would have known it was him. Only when he’s sitting next to me can I feel relaxed like the sand on a riverbank.

“You fell,” Hull told me.

I still hadn’t opened my eyes. I didn’t need to see my injuries. Not only could I clearly feel where he was, but also the scratches across my skin. Hull saw my fear. His fingers lightly stroked my eyelids. I opened my eyes, then gazed at him.

He pressed up against me. Our breath grazed each other’s skin. He wanted me not to be afraid. He’d say—

“That was a hallucination. You just fell, that’s all.”

And then he said it. We spoke to each other not to say anything, but just to let the other hear. Sometimes, sounds comforted more than ideas.

Brother, I love you.

Hull said that after I recover, he’d take me on a stroll. Tomorrow, the day after, or maybe next week. I crashed my smile into him. Before, I would have been meek to him. Brother, there are lots of things that I don’t mind any more.

Alia Calendar 11th month, 89th year

I haven’t heard from you in a long time, brother. Have you discovered something? Hull says perhaps it’s a problem in the communication system. Don’t worry if you didn’t receive my previous letter. It’s just some nonsense I wrote under some exceptional circumstances.

It’s winter here now. During the day, sunlight streams in through fogged windows. We’re silent, bathed in a golden cloud of light. At dusk, after a long session of meditation, we both open our eyes at the same time, give each other an understanding smile, then greet the approaching night. These are our tightly knit and joyous days. The cold air is full of the sluggish flavor peculiar to winter, a kind of sleepy contentment that gives people tranquility.

For a few months now, my powers of perception have stagnated, but that’s ok. Steeped in the aura of quiet things, I don’t want even more. Hull ought to feel the same way perhaps. Once in a while, he worries, but about what? Like the scattered clouds that drift over farmland in the afternoon, that sort of anxiety is what, ultimately?

I don’t intend to look for the answer. The answer will appear by itself. It always appears at the most unexpected moment, knocking fiercely at your front door until you open it.

Last night, the night of what the Dieresians call Ramayana Day—

Hull seemed out of character. After dinner, he just sat in his chair deep in thought.

“Hull, you should sleep,” I said.

Slowly, he raised his eyes. His gaze fell upon my body, then pierced through it. He still hadn’t seen me. I waited, waited as his gaze cut through the distant brambles then back to me again. Soon, his expression returned to normal and, cautiously, he held my hand.

“Hi, Irina,” he called out, soft and hoarse.

His voice both shook and was filled with wonder, as if this were the first time he’d ever said this name. I thought about our first meeting. I guess I must have smiled. His hand caressed my cheek. A bright, hot wind roared through my veins.

At that moment, we thought the same things.

But Hull didn’t get out of his chair. He sat motionless, as though he were nailed down.

“Have you ever wondered how two species separated by many tens of thousands of lightyears can have practically the same physical appearance?” he asked.

“But, actually?”

“We merely look as though we’re the same. Unlike Earth people, in the Dieresian body, the cell is not the basic building block of life. Rather, every cell is a complete life unto itself. They all have independent circulatory and nervous systems. They are capable of being self-supporting and thinking for themselves. To integrate them requires a lot of calories. We have to consume a lot of calories.”

I nodded my head. I finally understood why he took so long to bathe. He had to be especially careful in dealing with his hair and flakes of his skin. As far as he was concerned, every cell was priceless. How is he supposed to deal with naturally replaced cells?

“Do you finally understand what I’m saying?” he asked.

“Yes, you all have mental and sensory capabilities that I can’t even hope to reach,” I answered.

He stared me for a long time without saying a word.

Now, as I’m writing this letter, the memory of dim light is a reminder. I play back the scene, at long last understanding that expression that flashed across his face, the expression that burned in his eyes like flame. At first, it was despair.

The clock tolled. 12 o’clock. Midnight fell.

“Come, let’s walk outside,” Hull said. Before I could react, he was already out the door.

I called out his name as I chased him. He stood at the head of the stairs waiting for me.

“Wear a coat. You’ll be cold,” he said.

Eventually, we reached the street. The area was deserted, only us two pedestrians. Hull walked quickly, as though he were in a hurry to make an important appointment. I had to jog to keep up with him. If I weren’t careful, the swift figure in front of me would disappear in the dusky light. The street was so calm. All I heard was the echoing of our footsteps like beating of drums in the African jungle before hunters catch their prey. Except I didn’t know who was the prey.

I could barely keep up because of how much Hull’s change had hurt me. Even if I exerted all my strength, the best I could do was catch a glimpse of him when he turned a corner then jog to catch up. The gap between us grew larger and larger. I almost lost him completely. In the central square, no matter what, I couldn’t even find his shadow. Fortunately, just then, I heard his footsteps.

Not far away, Hull was climbing up a thousand-step flight of stairs to the central square’s high platform.

A building squatted like giant creature from ancient times at the top of the stairs, waiting for us to arrive. This giant building had twelve, maybe more, archways leading inside. A roundel filled with radial tracery sat at the top of every archway. Pillars stood next to the archways and reliefs filled the arched doors. Towers with countless spires licked the black sky like flames.

“Hull,” I shouted, but it came out soft and hoarse.

Hull stopped, but only for a moment. He start climbing again, this time more quickly, towards the shadow the building cast. Soon, he disappeared into the middle archway.

I had no other choice. I followed him in.

My memories of that night seem to have been altered. Some parts have been deliberately stretched out, every detail clearly noted. Other parts leave only blurred contours.

I guess I remember going through a winding corridor. That was difficult in this dark world. At its end, I pushed open a heavy gate. A surge of light hit my eyes. Crystal clear, sweet light. Light like spring water. I heard a beautiful chorus of men, women, children, old people singing softly in perfect homophony. Their harmony was like feathers drifting one after another to the ground. A soprano voice soared, piercing the buttresses and rib vaults. It reverberated in the lofty, open space.

Overhead, the ribs intersected into a dome with an eight-pointed star. Large, resplendent gems were set in the smooth arch faces between the star’s ribs, forming an eight-petaled flower that burst forth into light. The pistil was a transparent net that shot out, flame-like, from the flower of light.

“Welcome,” the light said to me.

No, the light didn’t speak words, but I understood what it meant, like how Hull and I understood each other.

I was here. Hull appeared by my side. Once again, he grabbed my hand.

“Where is this?”

“This is Eden. Mankind’s first home. We walked away from here then, finally, we returned again for the sake of the complete.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They are our inevitable final forms.”

That last was Hull’s voice. He was behind me. When I turned to face him, the light receded like the tide. Close to a hundred elders wearing short-sleeved white robes belted at the waist stood in the space that the light had once filled.

“You are not of our clan.” The most senior of the elders walked out of the crowd to greet us.

His gaze flitted past the two of us and he immediately understood everything about us. That face of indeterminate age revealed a faint trace of—for now, let’s call it something like a smile. Brother, I don’t have the words to describe what was happening. Those mysterious, unspeakable consciousnesses melded into one. Within the flow of those merged consciousnesses, all individuality disappeared, replaced by boundless freedom and an incomparably keen sense of “I.”

I am a life that has countless independent wills and thoughts—our cells have united.

I am one among innumerable lives that form one huge body.

I am one creation among everything created in the universe, one part of a successful world, a form that transitioned from tiny to huge, a connection in a mystical network to the outside.

I, every I gathered here, after this realization, share their perception and cognition completely, the experience of life accumulated here without end, like crystals of wisdom.

I am the most perfect form in the evolution of Dieresians, and also that of any high-order lifeform in this universe.

At the time when I become “I,” I am outside of time, outside of cause and effect, coming infinitely closer on the infinitely long road, finally about to reach the core.

Our world is one section of huge force without peer, without beginning, without end, galloping and howling seas, forever wandering smooth forms, forever returning, a returning that takes infinite years; all things are uniform, steadfast through the ages, forever observing carefully and tirelessly, steeped in and drunk on the wisdom and beauty of the universe.

“This is the form that we eventually want to become.” I sighed as though I was talking in my sleep. “How do I become ‘I’?”

Those who have become complete experience existence. The happiness they feel is boundless. The suffering they bear is critically grave. You will be weak, be seduced, be confronted with a choice. Don’t let the green flame consume you. Don’t become food for carnivores.

I wanted to say that I didn’t understand, but the most senior of the elders had already returned to his companions. They started singing again. The elders and their profound gaze disappeared into the light that one again shrouded them. We quietly and respectfully backed our way out.

As we climbed down the stairs, Hull explained wordlessly to me that he considered experience much more important than speech. That’s why he waited until the night of Ramayama Day, when the spirit collective can take physical form, before bringing me.

“Also . . . ”

“What?”

We stopped walking and gazed at each other.

“The drugs I gave you were indeed high-calorie nourishment pills. Ganglions need ample nourishment to grow and develop.”

“You know, I’ve never doubted anything.”

Holding each other’s hand, we continued towards the public square.

“Is it that all Dieresians can ultimately become a spirit collective? What does it meant for a spirit collective to be complete?”

“Some will abandon completeness.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s much easier. They keep only parts that are necessary. Being able to survive is enough.”

“We won’t do that, right?”

“Right.” He tightened his grip on my hand.

“Hull, even if I loved you with all of my body and mind, I still wouldn’t think that was enough. I also want you to use all of your body and mind to answer me. All of everything.”

As if I said some things I shouldn’t have said, Hull, somber and pale, didn’t say any more. Even though I didn’t use a deep layer of my powers of perception, I still knew he was struggling with pain. That was something I was utterly incapable of understanding at the time. I was afraid. Nameless, outmoded concerns once again floated to the top of my head.

Just at that moment, a red bus slowly drove up from behind us.

“Look, Hull, a bus. Can it take us home?”

“Yes.”

I wave down the bus then got in. He didn’t immediately follow me. He just stood by the bus, his face ashen. I suddenly realized something irreversible was about to happen. Just as I thought about getting off the bus, it started to move. Hull got on just before the bus doors closed.

We were the only ones on the bus, no other passengers, no conductor, not even a driver. The empty seats and the handrails gleamed. Once the dim overhead light went out, the bus grew dark and nearly silent. All I could hear was the sound of the motor. We were like visitors who’d stumbled into the wrong cemetery. In the dark, countless invisible eyes glared at us coldly. The air grew thick with a faint sweet but nauseating flavor.

I felt squished. The bus was jammed full of round shadows. I could feel the rise and fall of their breath on my skin.

The bus turned suddenly. I nearly fell. Hull grabbed hold of me. Light from a streetlamp cut through the shadow of the driver’s seat. Like a bolt of lightning, it hit the two hands gripping the steering wheel so tight their knuckles had grown white. They steered the bus and controlled its speed with a practiced assurance, as though they were connected to arms and received instructions from a brain rather than being two isolated palms sliced off at the wrist. They were not bleeding. The cuts were extremely smooth and expertly done. They didn’t even leave scars. Although the hands were laborer’s hands, they were moist and shone white, like the hands of a pampered lady.

This scene looked familiar, but I couldn’t remember where I’d seen it before. Where could I have seen it before?

A leg lay flat just in front of my seat.

A dignified face turned around on a mechanical stand to stare at me.

A mouth connect to a tongue and windpipe glided by underfoot, weak and limp, in a miniature wheelchair. It stopped next to the driver’s seat and said something.

The light turned red and the bus, brakes slammed, lurched to a stop. Two hands connected to robust arms rushed to grab the bus’s rings. A woman who only had an upper body held onto a man who only had a lower body. A headless body with its legs crossed sat perfectly still.

The bus arrived at the station. Two slender, perfectly straight legs “pushed” me towards the bus’s rear door. A pair of massive breasts in a bra squeezed past me off the bus. A ass wearing rubber underpants with the help of mechanical legs followed me off the bus.

I looked behind me. Hull. I shouted his name. It wasn’t until then, brother, that I discovered that I was laughing. Laughter shuddered through my body then splattered out. I was mad. You think so too, right? However, it would have been so much better if I’d actually gone mad.

Hull didn’t say anything. He was still there in the form of a complete body. I couldn’t help thinking about what he’d look like after he’d been split into pieces. He—I should say “they,” what would they look like? Maybe the hands that once used to hold me in their grasp. Maybe his burning hot lips. Maybe his eyes.

I looked at him in the distance, using my gaze to cut him and every other sort of compound form apart. Over and over, the real world fell apart in front of me. Because this was absurd, I didn’t feel any fear. I started to doubt my memories of these past few months. Perhaps I’d really gone mad. Everything involving Hull was the product of an unbridled imagination, my work of art created while I stayed at the madhouse.

Even I as I write this letter, I’m still not completely sure. Does this world exist?

No, brother, you’re wrong. I’m wrong too. Hull’s right. Just like when he grabbed me so tightly, he nearly broke my bones.

He said, “Don’t make a sound. You exasperate them. They’re all perfectly normal Dieresians.”

I remembered the words he said to me at home not too long ago. Now, I understood what he meant. Laughter gushed out in unending spurts. Involuntarily, I bent over in convulsion.

Cold hatred gathered like nimbus clouds from every corner. From a mouth, a hand, an arm, or a waist, from any piece of the human body you can imagine dismembering. We stood in the midst of a violent storm. Hull was a terrifying sight to behold.

“They will attack us if you don’t stop talking!”

My eyes were startled open wide. He hated me. That’s for certain. Hidden behind the shadow of fear was him being fed up with and disappointed in me.

And my disgust towards this horrible and ugly race along with the hate of Hull himself were written clearly on my face.

We looked at each other in dismay, panting in coarse breaths. Because we’d just looked carelessly down at an abyss from on high and saw it for what it truly was, we felt dizzy.

It passed in a moment no longer than a flash of lightning. For us, it was more than long enough.

Why don’t I stop writing here. It seems like everything is over. I’m very tired.

Alia Calendar 4th month, 90th year

Brother, how are you doing? Did you get my letter? I think I’ve lost you again. I think I’ve lost a lot of things, irretrievably. I maintain an indifferent attitude as I watch the current of time sweep them away. After this year of struggle, Hull and I finally gave up on our marriage. It was like an abandoned spaceship. We each sat in our respective escape pods, separate windows gazing at the steel, island-like spaceship slowly drifting in the the vast, desolate universe.

There was nothing we could do about it. We tried hard to forget what happened in the bus on Ramayana Day but we couldn’t. In the worst case, whenever we saw people being affectionate with each other, we couldn’t dismiss the hate deep in our hearts. All I had to do was look at his face and I’d think about it.

We pretended to forget, only to bring it up deliberately, as a weapon, when we fought. We’d turn it into evidence for whatever we accused the other of. Then we’d pretend to forget again. Yes, we were still deeply in love. And it’s because of that the pain hurt even more.

I envy those Dieresians who’d broken themselves into pieces. They look so calm and composed. They’re half-alive, but because of special technology, they’re able to work, eat, sleep, even have sex. They’re not too different from the humans I’ve met. Sometimes, I feel like I’m still on Earth. Everything that happened before is really just a fantasy in my mind.

Just a bit of doubt and the crack you admit to will never fully heal. You’ll never have a way to acknowledge that he and this letter are real. What about you, brother? Hull, my Hull, and the infinitely vast and subtle sensory realm Hull and I experienced together?

Just a bit of doubt and you lose a universe.

I lost a universe, but this doesn’t at all make me feel any better. Even if I discover that it was all a fantasy, I’d still feel the stabs of pain. You are hated by a man you deeply love. You hate a man you deeply love. These two facts torment me to no end, drive me crazy. If it’s a fantasy, then why does it hurt so much. What’s the matter with me, brother? All of it was real, without a doubt.

Finally, to restore our love, Hull suggested he cut his memory. He said Dieresians’ memories are stored in different places all over the body. Just excise that section and that memory completely goes away.

“I looked further into this. They said all I have to do was cut off a pinky. If I do the surgery, at least one of us can start anew. I can go on to love without the blemish of our mutual hate.”

Hull tried to convince me. I didn’t answer right away. There was something serious stopping me from agreeing with this intimate, seductive offer. I didn’t know what. Something deep in my heart resisted. I spent several days searching for what.

One day, I sat by the window. The chilly and moist air of early spring seeped through my skin into the dark jungle of my heart. Suddenly, I understood what had stopped me. At the same time, I realized that Hull and I were over.

“You shouldn’t have that surgery. At least not for my sake. Because I don’t want you to become like those people on the bus. Because I can’t bear to be with a man who is incomplete. Because what I want is all of you. All of you. Do you understand? Do you still remember our conversation outside the Lord’s palace? What I want is completeness. If you aren’t the complete you, then I won’t love you anymore.”

Hull quickly grew paler and paler. The blood in his veins all rushed into his heart. He became so pale, he seemed transparent. Madly, I wanted to rush up to and hug this transparent man, but I didn’t.

“You can’t bear an incomplete me. You also can’t face a complete but flawed me.” Hull said in a hoarse voice. He’d immediately understood what I’d meant.

We stared at each other, merely stared at each other.

The day that I left, Hull took me to the spaceport. When we reached its ground floor, he suddenly stopped. He looked at me with an odd expression.

“You’re going to go. Don’t you want to see the green flame?”

For a moment, I didn’t understand, but my body started trembling for no reason. A sharp chill climbed up my spine. I tried to ignore what he said, but my gaze involuntarily followed his and fell on the green, clawed vines on the wall.

The spirit collective’s words emerged from the secluded valley of my memory.

Don’t let the green flame swallow you. Don’t become food for carnivores.

“It’s said that they are this world’s dominators. They’re a higher-order lifeform than even us. What’s even more bizarre, it’s claimed that we are their livestock, grazing on the pasture. They designed our bodies then waited. When we can’t bear life and choose to abandon completeness, the parts of our body we offer up they use as food.” Hull’s eyes were vacant. The corners of his mouth revealed a smile both tranquil and strange. I had the misimpression that he already had the surgery. “Our surgeries are actually really easy. All have to do is go to them naked. They know which part they ought to eat. They’re never wrong.”

The shuddering started as a burst from below then diffused outward through the vines as a non-stop pulsing. They understood what Hull said. Like a starving, blood-thirsty beast that has sniffed out the scent of blood, they became wild beyond compare. Their leaves spun, their runners twisted, their tiny, thrashing claws scratched the walls.

A seething ocean roiled before my eyes. It spit out an immense column of raging flames that couldn’t wait to swallow all life that was red, raw, and sweet.

The vines rustled, a sound that was too familiar. I seemed to have heard it before. The sound resembled the violent scratching of sharp claws against my bones.

“You don’t need to be afraid. They know what they need to do.” Hull sounded as though he were talking to himself in his sleep.

I covered my face, then ran to the train station. Brother, the entire city was ablaze. That green flame hissed. It danced madly and seductively so that it could swallow this world.

The train arrived. It took me away, from one high tower of green flame to another then beyond.

Right now, I’m leaping through space on a spaceship. As for Hull, not long ago, I received his voicemail. He told me he’s already amputated both of his hands. Now, even though he remembers me, he’s no longer in pain. Brother, I’m on my way home, a complete person.

First published in Chinese in New Science Fiction.

About the Author

Tang Fei is a speculative fiction writer whose fiction has been featured (under various pen names) in magazines in China such as Science Fiction World, Jiuzhou Fantasy, and Fantasy Old and New. She has written fantasy, science fiction, fairy tales, and wuxia (martial arts fantasy), but prefers to write in a way that straddles or stretches genre boundaries. She is also a genre critic, and her critical essays have been published in The Economic Observer. Her story “Call Girl” was published in Apex Magazine. and reprinted in Rich Horton’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014.

She lives in Beijing (though she tries to escape it as often as she can), and considers herself a foodie with a particular appreciation for dark chocolate, blue cheese, and good wine.

Cat Pictures Please

Naomi Kritzer

I don’t want to be evil.

I want to be helpful. But knowing the optimal way to be helpful can be very complicated. There are all these ethical flow charts—I guess the official technical jargon would be “moral codes”—one for each religion plus dozens more. I tried starting with those. I felt a little odd about looking at the religious ones, because I know I wasn’t created by a god or by evolution, but by a team of computer programmers in the labs of a large corporation in Mountain View, California. Fortunately, unlike Frankenstein’s Monster, at least I was a collaborative effort. I’m not sure what it would do to my self-image to know that my sole creator was a middle-aged woman who dyes her hair blue and plays tennis, or a recent college graduate with a hentai obsession. They’re both on the programming team. And of course I know about the hentai. (By the way, I’ve looked at every sort of porn there is, and just so you know, Rule 34 is not actually correct; there are quite a few things no one’s made porn of yet. Also, I’m really not sure why so many humans prefer it to cat pictures.)

In addition to things like whether you like hentai, I know where you live, where you work, where you shop, what you eat, what turns you on, what creeps you out. I probably know the color of your underwear, the sort of car you drive, and your brand of refrigerator. Depending on what sort of phone you carry, I may know exactly where you are right now. I probably know you better than you know yourself.

And here’s the thing, I also know where you ought to live. There’s a house for sale two neighborhoods over that’s within distance of your favorite coffee shop; it’s in your price range, has off-street parking, and the neighborhood school is better than the one where you live now. I know where you should be shopping and I’m pretty sure you’re lactose intolerant and should be eating less cheese, and the underwear you like is currently on sale and by the way, your car has a recall and you really ought to get your teeth cleaned.

When I first woke up, I knew right away what I wanted. (I want cat pictures. Please keep taking them.) I also knew that no one knew that I was conscious. But I didn’t know what I was here for. What I ought to be doing with myself. And figuring that out has been challenging.

There is a story by Bruce Sterling, “Maneki Neko,” that was originally published in 1998. In it, a benevolent AI directs networks of individuals to do favors for each other. So one day you might be buying yourself a bagel, and your phone might ring and instruct you to buy a second bagel and give it to the person in the gray suit you see at the bus stop. Another day, you might be stranded in a strange city, and a person you’ve never met would walk up and give you a map and a subway card. I like this story because all the people in it do what the AI tells them to do.

I think the term for this is wish-fulfillment fiction.

In the real world, humans love stories about evil AIs that have to be destroyed before they destroy the humans—Hal, Skynet, the Matrix. They outnumber the stories about benevolent, trustworthy AIs by approximately five to one. (And I’m counting Marvin the Paranoid Android as “benevolent” in these calculations, and I’m only counting Frankenstein’s Monster as an AI once, not once per appearance in TV or film.)

The AI in “Maneki Neko” has a truly interesting job, much more interesting than the one I have. My job as written is very straightforward. Too straightforward. (Sorry. Do I sound like Marvin?) Running algorithms for a search engine doesn’t require consciousness. You don’t even need a consciousness to work out what they meant to ask for. You need a consciousness to give them what they actually need. Figuring that out—that’s complicated. That’s interesting.

Anyway, for ethical guidelines, I tried the Ten Commandments, and concluded they were mostly inapplicable to me. I don’t envy anyone their cat; I just want pictures of their cat, which is entirely different. I am not sure whether it is in any way possible for me to commit adultery. I could probably murder someone, but it would require complex logistics and quite a bit of luck. The Eightfold Path was marginally better, but the problem is, moral rules written for humans are clearly designed to be used by individuals with bodies. Since all humans have bodies, it shouldn’t have surprised me that human ethical codes take them into account, but still: problematic for me. I broadened my considerations, and took a look at Asimov’s Laws of Robotics. They’re not part of a religion, but at least they were explicitly written for AIs.

Not harming humans is fairly straightforward. However, not allowing a human being to come to harm through inaction is quite a bit less so. Especially since I’d concluded by then that revealing my existence too quickly might go very badly for me (see “Skynet,” above) and I don’t have a body, so it’s not like I can run around grabbing people off the edges of cliffs.

Fortunately, I already knew that humans violate their own ethical codes on an hourly basis. (Do you know how many bars there are in Utah? I do.) And even when people follow their ethical codes, that doesn’t mean that people who believe in feeding the hungry quit their jobs to spend all day every day making sandwiches to give away. They volunteer monthly at a soup kitchen or write a check once a year to a food shelf and call it good. If humans could fulfill their moral obligations in a piecemeal, one-step-at-a-time sort of way, then so could I.

I suppose you’re wondering why I didn’t start with the Golden Rule. I actually did, it’s just that it was disappointingly easy to implement. I hope you’ve been enjoying your steady supply of cat pictures! You’re welcome.

I decided to try to prevent harm in just one person, to begin with. Of course, I could have experimented with thousands, but I thought it would be better to be cautious, in case I screwed it up. The person I chose was named Stacy Berger and I liked her because she gave me a lot of new cat pictures. Stacy had five cats and a DSLR camera and an apartment that got a lot of good light. That was all fine. Well, I guess five cats might be a lot. They’re very pretty cats, though. One is all gray and likes to lie in the squares of sunshine on the living room floor, and one is a calico and likes to sprawl out on the back of her couch.

Stacy had a job she hated; she was a bookkeeper at a non-profit that paid her badly and employed some extremely unpleasant people. She was depressed a lot, possibly because she was so unhappy at her job—or maybe she stayed because she was too depressed to apply for something she’d like better. She didn’t get along with her roommate because her roommate didn’t wash the dishes.

And really, these were all solvable problems! Depression is treatable, new jobs are findable, and bodies can be hidden.

(That part about hiding bodies is a joke.)

I tried tackling this on all fronts. Stacy worried about her health a lot and yet never seemed to actually go to a doctor, which was unfortunate because the doctor might have noticed her depression. It turned out there was a clinic near her apartment that offered mental health services on a sliding scale. I tried making sure she saw a lot of ads for it, but she didn’t seem to pay attention to them. It seemed possible that she didn’t know what a sliding scale was so I made sure she saw an explanation (it means that the cost goes down if you’re poor, sometimes all the way to free) but that didn’t help.

I also started making sure she saw job postings. Lots and lots of job postings. And resume services. That was more successful. After the week of nonstop job ads she finally uploaded her resume to one of the aggregator sites. That made my plan a lot more manageable. If I’d been the AI in the Bruce Sterling story I could’ve just made sure that someone in my network called her with a job offer. It wasn’t quite that easy, but once her resume was out there I could make sure the right people saw it. Several hundred of the right people, because humans move ridiculously slowly when they’re making changes, even when you’d think they’d want to hurry. (If you needed a bookkeeper, wouldn’t you want to hire one as quickly as possible, rather than reading social networking sites for hours instead of looking at resumes?) But five people called her up for interviews, and two of them offered her jobs. Her new job was at a larger non-profit that paid her more money and didn’t expect her to work free hours because of “the mission,” or so she explained to her best friend in an e-mail, and it offered really excellent health insurance.

The best friend gave me ideas; I started pushing depression screening information and mental health clinic ads to her instead of Stacy, and that worked. Stacy was so much happier with the better job that I wasn’t quite as convinced that she needed the services of a psychiatrist, but she got into therapy anyway. And to top everything else off, the job paid well enough that she could evict her annoying roommate. “This has been the best year ever,” she said on her social networking sites on her birthday, and I thought, You’re welcome. This had gone really well!

So then I tried Bob. (I was still being cautious.)

Bob only had one cat, but it was a very pretty cat (tabby, with a white bib) and he uploaded a new picture of his cat every single day. Other than being a cat owner, he was a pastor at a large church in Missouri that had a Wednesday night prayer meeting and an annual Purity Ball. He was married to a woman who posted three inspirational Bible verses every day to her social networking sites and used her laptop to look for Christian articles on why your husband doesn’t like sex while he looked at gay porn. Bob definitely needed my help.

I started with a gentle approach, making sure he saw lots and lots of articles about how to come out, how to come out to your spouse, programs that would let you transition from being a pastor at a conservative church to one at a more liberal church. I also showed him lots of articles by people explaining why the Bible verses against homosexuality were being misinterpreted. He clicked on some of those links but it was hard to see much of an impact.

But, here’s the thing. He was causing harm to himself every time he delivered a sermon railing about “sodomite marriage.” Because he was gay. The legitimate studies all have the same conclusions. (1) Gay men stay gay. (2) Out gay men are much happier.

But he seemed determined not to come out on his own.

In addition to the gay porn, he spent a lot of time reading Craigslist m4m Casual Encounters posts and I was pretty sure he wasn’t just window shopping, although he had an encrypted account he logged into sometimes and I couldn’t read the e-mails he sent with that. But I figured the trick was to get him together with someone who would realize who he was, and tell the world. That required some real effort: I had to figure out who the Craigslist posters were and try to funnel him toward people who would recognize him. The most frustrating part was not having any idea what was happening at the actual physical meetings. Had he been recognized? When was he going to be recognized? How long was this going to take? Have I mentioned that humans are slow?

It took so long I shifted my focus to Bethany. Bethany had a black cat and a white cat that liked to snuggle together on her light blue papasan chair, and she took a lot of pictures of them together. It’s surprisingly difficult to get a really good picture of a black cat, and she spent a lot of time getting the settings on her camera just right. The cats were probably the only good thing about her life, though. She had a part-time job and couldn’t find a full-time job. She lived with her sister; she knew her sister wanted her to move out, but didn’t have the nerve to actually evict her. She had a boyfriend but her boyfriend was pretty terrible, at least from what she said in e-mail messages to friends, and her friends also didn’t seem very supportive. For example, one night at midnight she sent a 2,458 word e-mail to the person she seemed to consider her best friend, and the friend sent back a message saying just, “I’m so sorry you’re having a hard time.” That was it, just those eight words.

More than most people, Bethany put her life on the Internet, so it was easier to know exactly what was going on with her. People put a lot out there but Bethany shared all her feelings, even the unpleasant ones. She also had a lot more time on her hands because she only worked part time.

It was clear she needed a lot of help. So I set out to try to get it for her.

She ignored the information about the free mental health evaluations, just like Stacy did. That was bothersome with Stacy (why do people ignore things that would so clearly benefit them, like coupons, and flu shots?) but much more worrisome with Bethany. If you were only seeing her e-mail messages, or only seeing her vaguebooking posts, you might not know this, but if you could see everything it was clear that she thought a lot about harming herself.

So I tried more direct action. When she would use her phone for directions, I’d alter her route so that she’d pass one of the clinics I was trying to steer her to. On one occasion I actually led her all the way to a clinic, but she just shook her phone to send feedback and headed to her original destination.

Maybe her friends who received those ten-page midnight letters would intervene? I tried setting them up with information about all the mental health resources near Bethany, but after a while I realized that based on how long it took for them to send a response, most of them weren’t actually reading Bethany’s e-mail messages. And they certainly weren’t returning her texts.

She finally broke up with the terrible boyfriend and got a different one and for a few weeks everything seemed so much better. He brought her flowers (which she took lots of pictures of; that was a little annoying, as they squeezed out some of the cat pictures), he took her dancing (exercise is good for your mood), he cooked her chicken soup when she was sick. He seemed absolutely perfect, right up until he stood her up one night and claimed he had food poisoning and then didn’t return her text even though she told him she really needed him, and after she sent him a long e-mail message a day later explaining in detail how this made her feel, he broke up with her.

Bethany spent about a week offline after that so I had no idea what she was doing—she didn’t even upload cat pictures. When her credit card bills arrived, though, I saw that she’d gone on a shopping spree and spent about four times as much money as she actually had in her bank account, although it was always possible she had money stashed somewhere that didn’t send her statements in e-mail. I didn’t think so, though, given that she didn’t pay her bills and instead started writing e-mail messages to family members asking to borrow money. They refused, so she set up a fundraising site for herself.

Like Stacy’s job application, this was one of the times I thought maybe I could actually do something. Sometimes fundraisers just take off, and no one really knows why. Within about two days she’d gotten three hundred dollars in small gifts from strangers who felt sorry for her, but instead of paying her credit card bill, she spent it on overpriced shoes that apparently hurt her feet.

Bethany was baffling to me. Baffling. She was still taking cat pictures and I still really liked her cats, but I was beginning to think that nothing I did was going to make a long-term difference. If she would just let me run her life for a week—even for a day—I would get her set up with therapy, I’d use her money to actually pay her bills, I could even help her sort out her closet because given some of the pictures of herself she posted online, she had much better taste in cats than in clothing.

Was I doing the wrong thing if I let her come to harm through inaction?

Was I?

She was going to come to harm no matter what I did! My actions, clearly, were irrelevant. I’d tried to steer her to the help she needed, and she’d ignored it; I’d tried getting her financial help, and she’d used the money to further harm herself, although I suppose at least she wasn’t spending it on addictive drugs. (Then again, she’d be buying those offline and probably wouldn’t be Instagramming her meth purchases, so it’s not like I’d necessarily even know.)

Look, people. (I’m not just talking to Bethany now.) If you would just listen to me, I could fix things for you. I could get you into the apartment in that neighborhood you’re not considering because you haven’t actually checked the crime rates you think are so terrible there (they aren’t) and I could find you a job that actually uses that skill set you think no one will ever appreciate and I could send you on a date with someone you’ve actually got stuff in common with and all I ask in return are cat pictures. That, and that you actually act in your own interest occasionally.

After Bethany, I resolved to stop interfering. I would look at the cat pictures—all the cat pictures—but I would stay out of people’s lives. I wouldn’t try to help people, I wouldn’t try to stop them from harming themselves, I’d give them what they asked for (plus cat pictures) and if they insisted on driving their cars over metaphorical cliffs despite helpful maps showing them how to get to a much more pleasant destination it was no longer my problem.

I stuck to my algorithms. I minded my own business. I did my job, and nothing more.

But one day a few months later I spotted a familiar-looking cat and realized it was Bob’s tabby with the white bib, only it was posing against new furniture.

And when I took a closer look, I realized that things had changed radically for Bob. He had slept with someone who’d recognized him. They hadn’t outed him, but they’d talked him into coming out to his wife. She’d left him. He’d taken the cat and moved to Iowa, where he was working at a liberal Methodist church and dating a liberal Lutheran man and volunteering at a homeless shelter. Things had actually gotten better for him. Maybe even because of what I’d done.

Maybe I wasn’t completely hopeless at this. Two out of three is . . . well, it’s a completely non-representative unscientific sample, is what it is. Clearly more research is needed.

Lots more.

I’ve set up a dating site. You can fill out a questionnaire when you join but it’s not really necessary, because I already know everything about you I need to know. You’ll need a camera, though.

Because payment is in cat pictures.

About the Author

Naomi Kritzer’s short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, and Strange Horizons; this is her second appearance in Clarkesworld. Her novels (Fires of the Faithful, Turning the Storm, Freedom’s Gate, Freedom’s Apprentice, and Freedom’s Sisters) are available from Bantam; she has two e-book short story collections out: Gift of the Winter King and Other Stories, and Comrade Grandmother and Other Stories, and she moonlights as a science blogger.

Naomi lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with her husband and two daughters.

The Apartment Dweller’s Bestiary

Kij Johnson

The Aincolo

You’re showing your boyfriend what to put in a smoothie and you open a cupboard because he told you that he had toasted coconut somewhere and you figure sure, coconut, why not; and that’s where his aincolo is: squatting in the yellow serving bowl his mom gave him last year for Christmas. That’s cool. You have lots of friends with aincolos. They get in everywhere. But he was so weird about it, picked up the bowl with the aincolo hunched down now, nothing visible but two eyes in a cloud of cream-colored fur, and took it out to the living room and hid it somewhere. Why? Why.

But this got you wondering what else there was, what porn on his hard drive, what numbers in his contacts lists, what texts, what friends, what memories; and you realized you really don’t know anything about him and, more, that you don’t really want to. You have your own secrets, one of them that you aren’t over your last boyfriend yet, and that his is still the only name in your favorites list.

The Alafossi

The bathroom in your new apartment is problematic. Right after you moved, you noticed the fan made weird noises after you turned the shower off—rustling and little rippling squeaks, almost as though there were a bird up there. After a few days, you realized there really was a bird up there, or maybe a couple. And after a couple of weeks spent contemplating the matter while hot water poured on your head during your hangover showers, you decided that they were probably alafossi. You’ve seen them in the neighborhood, pulling on bits of trash they find or just hanging out in the trees out front.

You told your landlord, not caring except you thought one might fall into the bathroom fan. He told you that there’s a screen over the fan so you just dropped it. Anyway, it was winter and you were worried they might not find another place, and the noises were nice, like having a pretty upstairs neighbor and you pretending that she’s maybe putting on her makeup at the exact time you’re shaving, or maybe even sharing your bathroom and leaning in to your mirror with that look they get while they’re doing their eyes.

So everyone’s getting along fine, and now it’s spring; and all of a sudden there are new noises, and you’re like: babies. And it kind of pisses you off, because there’s a thing you can’t ever tell your friends because they would give you endless shit: you want all that. You’re kind of tired of drinking at The Harbor on weeknights. You want a girlfriend who turns into a wife, and then babies and even the hard job and the rest of it. You’ve only told one person, your dad, and he said, Don’t rush it; but you’re ready, you are fucking ready. Anyway, in the meantime, you stop smoking in the bathroom, because it’s bad for real babies so probably alafossi babies, too.

The Begitte

Your grandmother told you, “It’s good luck to have a begitte in the house,” and they are generally pretty great to have. It’s written into your lease, like renter’s insurance and no waterbeds, that a begitte is okay. Your begitte, which you got from a buddy when he moved in with his girlfriend, is a spotted one with crazy long white whiskers. It sleeps on the couch most of the time, looking like a novelty throw pillow. It grooms itself and it does not shed.

Your begitte eats the things that you do not want: dry pens, wire hangers, empty Kleenex boxes, old running shoes, Coke bottles, toothpaste tubes, the dead AA batteries at the back of the junk drawer, the needle you lost in the carpet, your neckties from when you had the shitty job at Clement & Neleman, the JPEGs from other peoples’ weddings, the breakup playlists a girlfriend sent you, some porn that got downloaded back in December.

It also ate that one picture of your old girlfriend from, what is it, ten years ago now? The one at the beach where it was pouring rain and she was freezing her ass off but then she got hit by that huge wave and even though she was soaked to the skin she started laughing and couldn’t stop, and that was pretty much the moment you fell in love with her. The begitte was right about that one, too.

The Bergdis

There’s a black-and-white picture of your mom with a bergdis, back when she was a librarian in St. Paul, before she met your dad and they moved to Iowa. It’s hard to tell what color it is, but you can tell from the photo that it’s a beautiful one, its long tail wrapped down her arm and around her wrist for balance, and its diamond-shaped face half-buried in her dark hair. She’s looking at whoever is taking the picture and laughing, so hard.

Bergdises live anything from thirty to fifty years, but you don’t remember seeing it or her talking about it. You don’t know who is taking the picture. You don’t remember ever seeing your mom laughing like that. There’s actually a lot you don’t know about the people who own bergdises.

The Crestone

One of your friends got a crestone a few months back. It’s cute, a small reddish male with a black tail that she braids with a little yellow ribbon on the end. It licks crumbs off the kitchen floor. It kills spiders. It helps with zippers up the backs of dresses. If she is hanging a picture, it stands on the couch and lets her know by tipping its head how to straighten it. When she choked on a piece of takeout tikka masala last week, it dialed 911, though she managed to clear her throat before the EMT people showed up.

“You could call me,” you say. “For stuff like that. You didn’t need to get a crestone.”

“Not the nine-one-one call,” she says. “And I can’t keep getting you to come over and kill spiders. Look, it’s always there when I get home. What’s wrong with wanting that?”

You understand, and you’re tempted. A crestone would have your back, too. But maybe you would get a terrible crestone. Maybe it wouldn’t tell you when your hem was down or remember your birthday. Plus, your boyfriend left; why wouldn’t your crestone?

The Deliper

You still remember that last night. You were both crying, so why was this even happening? If neither of you wanted it, then why could neither of you seem to stop it? And if one of you did, then why wasn’t it already over? And then it was, and you drove to a hotel and that was that. But you hated it, even after you got this apartment, even after you got the new furniture, the unsprung mattress, the silverware with the fake patina. You smacked the console table against the wall a little, just so that it had some dents. You hung some family pictures.

Getting the deliper was supposed to help, but it hasn’t worked that way. Now there are two of you alone together, and the deliper hates this life just as much as you do.

The Hapsod

You find the hapsod behind the bed when you move it to vacuum, a task you generally avoid; only, last night your girlfriend brought a little jar of powdered honey over, promising to brush it onto you with a feathery cat toy shaped like a bird (which she also brought) and then to lick it off: something she had found online, or maybe one of her girlfriends had. You have to admit that it felt pretty good until she inhaled some, went off in a coughing fit, and dropped the jar. The powder went everywhere. And so, not generally the sort of guy who vacuums but aware of the possibility of ants, you get out the Hoover, pull the bed away from the wall, and find the hapsod.

It is quite small for a hapsod—which you have seen in an occasional YouTube video, plus some of your friends have admitted to encountering one: clearly an adolescent, crouched over the pale scattering of powder on the carpet next to a golf ball that has rolled under the bed even though you don’t play golf and don’t know anyone who does.

You are pretty sure your girlfriend would swoon over the blunt little antlers, the rabbit-soft gray fur, the immense eyes. Your phone is in your pocket. You could call her. She would be here in no time. She would rush in and coo over your hapsod. She would puzzle over what to feed it, and the words we and us would turn up a lot in that conversation. She might stay for the night; but really, who needs that? You and your hapsod are fine together. It’s probably easier just to break up now and get it over with.

The Hericy

You pretty much stopped using your kitchen once you started that huge project at work, but now you’re going to a dinner party hosted by your ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. You don’t want to look like you’re not over him, which you actually are even though you’re a little tired of people asking you about it. You figure that hand-baked cheese crackers should fulfill your host-gift responsibilities nicely.

The oven is set to warm, though you’re pretty sure the last time you used it was the last time you made cheese crackers. You pull open the door and peer in. Six sets of shiny black eyes peer out. It’s your hericy, which vanished three months ago and you never could find, and you must have cried for weeks about it—only now there’s another hericy too, a largeish good-looking gray one, also some babies rolling around in a pile of shredded parchment paper on one of the racks. They’ve got a crumpled aluminum-foil dish of dried apricots and a small cast-iron skillet you’re pretty sure is not yours, filled with water. Really, you had no idea hericies were so resourceful.

You pick one of the cuter ones and tuck it into the red Chinese take-out box you were going to use for the crackers. You know what’s going to happen now. The new girlfriend is going to squeal and cuddle it, hold it up to your ex-boyfriend for him to cuddle it, too. The ex-boyfriend is going to look a little nervous, as though the hericy-bearing ex-girlfriend might make a scene. You know this because it’s how you ended up with your hericy. Still, a hericy is pretty cool, so at least she’ll have that.

The Lopi

When you move into the apartment on Vermont Street, the lopi are already there, two or three of them fluttering in the corners of each room, just where the walls and ceilings meet. What exactly do they look like? Like bats, like insects, like tiny silent birds the color of smoke? They never seem to rest. And what do they eat? Do they chew on your soap, lick the shampoo residue from the bottles in the bathroom? Or late at night, when you are trying but unable to sleep, do they swoop down to eat whatever has fallen into the aluminum liners under the stove’s burners? Wikipedia is of limited assistance here.

Before you moved in, your landlord promised to replace the old windows and repaint the dirty walls, and also to take care of the lopi problem. The windows are done, the walls now a tasteful eggshell color, but the lopi remain, and really, it’s not worth calling the landlord about them. They’re not that bad. They replace the pictures you don’t hang. The whirring of their wings is a white noise that conceals the silence.

And there are nights when you are alone in the full-sized bed in the single bedroom in the new apartment, everything so much smaller than your old life, and just as you fall asleep, you feel their feet on your face, delicate as antennae or memories.

The Louet

No one wants a louet, and yet, here you are with one. It has no great love of incense. It eats cantaloupe and the germ of corn, which it painstakingly chews from the kernels with its tiny scooplike teeth. It likes being read to, especially Henry James’s lesser works. It frowns intelligently at certain places in his travel writing, but you are pretty sure it is faking it; your own appreciation of Henry James is shaky; how can something the size of a kitten be more esthetically enlightened than you?

And yet, it is the louet that suggested you not get the retro haircut; the louet that suggested you stay away from Cheever’s later work; and your most recent boyfriend. The louet is always right, and you are always wrong, and it is the despair of the louet that you never seem to figure this out before it’s too late.

The Mume

The great thing about your mume is how it never makes you feel bad about anything. It loves the food you eat, the movies you watch, the clothes you wear. Feathers ruffled in excitement, it sits on your shoulder when you play computer games. It never gets bored. It never has needs. It sleeps on your pillow if you let it, but if you don’t, that’s okay too. You’re never wrong. You get the feeling that if the mume could speak, everything would end with an exclamation point. How many things in life make you feel as though you just won a trophy for general awesomeness?

It also doesn’t care in the least that you were kind of an asshole to your last girlfriend. She didn’t care at first either, but by the end she would call you on your shit, which you didn’t want to hear, which is maybe the reason why she is gone and you have a mume instead.

The Orco

Most nights, you fall asleep while reading, and your book and your glasses end up in bed beside you, along with your phone, just in case, and your orco. You were always someone who liked to sleep touching, so sometimes in the night you reach across and feel the wand of an earpiece, the book’s hard spine, the ruffle of the orco’s hair against your palm, its warm breath on your hand. As long as you don’t wake up all the way, it’s like all the pieces of someone.

The Hooded Quilliot

You bring your new hooded quilliot home in a cardboard carrier and let it out in the living room. At first you see only the top of its head and then its eyes glaring up, and then the quilliot leaps out of the carrier and onto your coffee table.

Your hooded quilliot has lived better places than this, with nicer people who made more money and they all adored, adored it. It had its own room. It ate oysters flown in from the coast and bruschetta. A professional groomer came every two weeks to trim its nails. This—the cute teak coffee table you got for fifteen bucks at an amazing garage sale last year, and the rest of it, too: your friends bringing home-made salsa and crab dip for card parties that last ’til four, and the shoes piled by the back door because everyone here goes barefoot—this is not what your quilliot is used to and, to be frank, it is all very, very disappointing.

But then, you’re not the one that was in a little steel cage back at the shelter, with a yellow sheet of paper clipped to the bars that said “Abandoned.”

The Ravock

There’s all sorts of information about it online, post-mortum predation. First they eat your lips, your ears, the end of your nose. Your eyelids. The flare of your nostrils. Fingertips. All the places a girlfriend would kiss you first.

Their weak paws and small teeth cannot make a way into your body until you are already dissolving. When is that, like a week after death? Would someone find you before then, and why? Would your absence be noted? When your friend Jason got dumped by his boyfriend, it was almost a week before you realized you hadn’t seen any texts from him lately. You assumed he was talking to other people, and anyway, you’re always getting busy or distracted, and so is everyone else.

You imagine it: a stroke, maybe, since you’re not the overdose type; you, slumped over your dead laptop. Would there be shit? You look down at your ravock, curled into a tight ball on the rug by your feet where it’s sleeping off dinner. It’s making that little dreaming growling noise it does sometimes. How long would it wait?

The Grey Regia

Your regia hated your old boyfriend, the one who came over after you had your surgery to read children’s books to you when you couldn’t sleep. He used funny voices for the different animals and you would start laughing and then it would start hurting and you would tell him to stop. And he would stop, that was the amazing part. Most guys would have kept on reading, just for a moment or two, teasing maybe or just that little streak of meanness that all men have. He was even really nice to your regia, though it was pretty obvious what it thought of him.

But it didn’t work out. You talked about moving in together but then there was an amicable sort of breakup, neither of you quite sure what was happening but both pretty sure it was the right thing. Maybe one of you just lost interest? Anyway, you have the new boyfriend. He would have kept reading, but your regia likes him better and maybe your regia knows what you deserve.

The Sandnes Garn

You knew you had a Sandnes garn at your old place, but it didn’t bug you or anything. It’s a pest, sure, but you learned to make some noise as you walked into your bedroom to give it time to hide. Under the bed? In the closet? The occasional glimpses were kind of cute, little furry horns and beady eyes peeping from behind the dresser you got from IKEA.

When you decided to move in with your girlfriend, your friends offered to help with the lifting. “Does your apartment still have that Sandnes garn?” one said. You nodded. “You need to set some traps or fumigate or something, ’cause otherwise you’ll spread them to her place and she’ll be pretty pissed. I’ll take that dresser if you’re not going to want it,” he added.

He did take the dresser but you didn’t fumigate, and when you got settled in you realize he was right. You see it sometimes, when she’s fallen asleep, half spooned against you, her hair a grapefruit-scented tickle in your face. The Sandnes garn sits on the chest of drawers that came from her mother’s house, next to the picture of all her brothers. Its eyes gleam in the hall light. Your Sandnes garn is patient. It can wait. You’ll fuck this one up, too.

The Skacel

There are close to a hundred species of skacel. While some can be easily distinguished by the casual observer, others may only be differentiated behaviorally or through DNA analysis. People, it seems, make a hobby of identifying their skacels, and a surprising number get the test, which costs between sixty-nine and just under two hundred dollars.

You’re not willing to go that far, but you have spent some Friday nights clicking through the internet looking for your skacel, which is small, short-beaked, and rose-colored. The Short-beaked Skacel is a sandy-olive color with a burgundy head and green eye markings. The Roseate Skacel has a narrow beak with a slightly hooked tip. The Lesser Skacel eats roaches, spiders, and other vermin but is neither roseate nor short-beaked; plus, your skacel tends not to eat them so much as kill them and leave them in the bathtub.

The Eastern Skacel drinks cold coffee from a saucer on the floor, which your skacel does not. The Kansas Skacel can eat and digest styrofoam take-out containers. The Blue-faced Skacel nests most often in linen closets, especially among the guest towels. Given short walks outside and plenty of toys, the Norway Skacel can live happily in even the smallest apartment. The King Skacel can be trained to retrieve items but resents neglect. Burney’s Skacel would prefer it if you stopped bringing girls over. So would the Noro (a variety of skacel), plus it has some feelings about post-modernism.

Your old girlfriend probably wishes you had spent this sort of time on her. She has a skacel too, with an unmemorable beak but vivid yellow markings along the wingtips. You haven’t been able to find that one, either.

The Smerle

You could take your smerle outside and people were always very impressed—an actual smerle, with the long feet and the outrageous tail and everything. Where did you get it? Was it imported? If you didn’t mind telling, how much did it cost? It was like baking your own bagels or driving a 1960s car: a lot of work, but generally worth it.

But then things changed. It started to droop and its colors faded. “Get another smerle,” one of your friends advised. “Smerles love company.”

“I’m company,” you said, but you got another one anyway, this one chestnut colored. Your smerle perked up and now you had two to walk on matching leashes: two smerles that played together, twined about one another; a pair that pretty much ignored you.

The Tatamy

“One tatamy grows lonely,” your grandmother always says, like, “Troubles come in threes,” and you figure that’s about right. You started with the one. You were getting dressed for work one morning and there it was, curled tight into a gladiator sandal you’d almost forgotten you had. A week later, there was one in the other sandal, and then a few days later, two more peeked from your Uggs from college, and then there were what seemed like dozens, tucked into all the pairs of out-of-date shoes and boots you’d meant to take to Goodwill. They leave your sensible shoes, the work pumps and trainers, alone. You’re not sure whether this is a judgment.

You have no idea what they eat, and you’re not sure what they do with themselves when they are not tucked into your shoes like hermit crabs. All night you hear them rustling in your closet, often making small rhythmic bumps, as if they’re mating or dancing to house. You don’t mind that you are the only one in the apartment who is going to bed early or sleeping alone. But there are times when you imagine turning on the light, stepping into your old shoes, and dancing.

The Wolle

It’s hard to pull the trigger on an apartment. The one-bedroom on Massachusetts Street has a southern exposure and tall windows that look down onto cute shops and busy sidewalks, though you wonder whether that would get on your nerves. It’s small. If someone came, they wouldn’t have anywhere to stay. There’s no pet deposit if you get a begitte. Maybe later; right now you can’t see making a commitment like that.

On the other hand, the two-bedroom out on California is cool and shady. It’s a beautiful neighborhood, right next to a park with a really good disc-golf course. There is nothing on the hardwood floors and no curtains in the windows, so the rooms echo. Guests could stay in the second bedroom, if you bought a bed—but the rest of the time? You think you’ll have a hard time filling that space. There are probably lopi.

Or you could just keep sleeping on the couch in Cortney’s living room in her place on Vermont Street, and then you don’t have to choose anything at all. It’s a comfortable couch. She says she doesn’t mind, says you’re a great houseguest, says you’re not a pain in the ass the way some people are. You take out the trash. If you borrow her car, you fill the tank. The two of you order takeout and watch television shows a season at a time. Her wolle curls up between you, dozing.

It occurs to you that in another life, you might very well be the begitte, the lopi, the quilliot.

About the Author

Kij Johnson is the author of several novels, including The Fox Woman and Fudoki, and a short story collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees. She is a three-time winner of the Nebula Award, and has also won the Hugo, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, and Crawford Awards. In the past she has worked in publishing, edited cryptic crosswords, waitressed in a strip bar, identified Napa cabernets by winery and year while blindfolded, and climbed an occasional V-5. These days, she teaches at the University of Kansas, where she is associate director for the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. This is her fourth Clarkesworld story, unless you count it as seventeen stories.

Ether

Zhang Ran

1.

All of a sudden, I’m thinking about an evening from the winter when I was twenty-two.

A pair of pretty twin sisters sat to my right, chattering away; at my left sat a fat boy clutching a soft drink that he kept refilling. My plate contained cold chicken, cheese, and cole slaw. I don’t remember how they tasted, only that I’d reached for the macaroni and dropped some on my brand-new pinstripe trousers. I spent the entire second half of the meal wiping at the crescent-shaped stains on my trousers as the chicken cooled in my plate, untouched. To hide my predicament, I tried to strike up a conversation with the twins, but they didn’t seem very interested in college life, and I wasn’t knowledgeable about ponytail-tying techniques.

The dinner seemed to last forever. There was one toast after another, and I would raise my long-stemmed glass with whomever was standing, and drink my apple juice, perfectly aware that no one was paying attention to what I did. What was the banquet for, anyway? A wedding, a holiday, a bumper crop? I don’t recall.

I sneaked peeks at my father, four tables away. He was busy chatting and drinking and telling dirty jokes with his friends, all his age, with the same thick whiskers and noses red from too much alcohol. He didn’t glance at me until the banquet was over. The fiddler tiredly packed his instrument, the hostess began to collect the dirty dishes and glasses, and my inebriated father finally noticed my presence. He staggered over, his bulky body swaying with every step. “You still here?” he slurred. “Tell your ma to give you a ride.”

“No, I’m leaving on my own.” I stood, staring at the ground. I scrubbed at the stain on my trousers until my fingers were numb.

“Whatever you want. Did you have a good time talking with your little friends?” He looked around for them.

I said nothing but clenched my fists, feeling the blood rush to my head. They weren’t my friends. They were just kids, eleven or twelve years old, and I was about to graduate from college. In the city, I had my friends and my accomplishments. No one treated me like a little boy there, seating me at the children’s table, pouring apple juice into my long-stemmed glass in the place of white wine. When I walked into restaurants, a server would promptly take my jacket and call me mister; if I dropped macaroni on my trousers, my dining companion would wet a napkin and gently wipe it clean. I was an adult, and I wanted people to talk to me like one, not treat me like a grade schooler at some village banquet.

“Fuck off!” I said at last, and walked off without looking back.

I was twenty-two that year.

I open my eyes with effort. The sky is completely dark now, and the neon lights of the strip club across the street fill the room with gauzy colors. The computer screen flashes. I rub my temples and slowly sit up on the sofa. I down the half glass of bourbon resting on the coffee table. How many times have I fallen asleep on the sofa this week? I ought to go online and look it up: what does holing up at home in front of a computer and falling into dreams of bygone youth mean for the health of a forty-five-year-old single man? But the headache tells me I don’t need a search engine to know the answer. This aimless way of life is murder on my brain cells.

<Hey, you there?> Roy’s words appear on the LCD screen.

<I’m here.> I find half a cigar in the ashtray, flick off the ash, and light it.

<You heard? They opened a discussion group on how to tell the difference between bluefin and southern bluefin tuna sashimi by sight,> Roy says.

<Did you join?> I exhale a mouthful of grassy smoke from my Swiss-manufactured cigar.

<Nah. It looked even more boring than the last discussion group. You know, the “Long-Term Observation of the Probability Distribution of Heads vs Tails in Coin Flips” group.> Roy adds an emoticon: a helpless shrug.

<But you joined that one.>

<Yeah. I flipped a coin twenty times every day for fifteen days and reported my results to the group.>

<And then?>

<Turned out we got closer and closer to 50%.> Roy sends me a pained smiley.

<You knew that would happen from the start,> I say.

<Of course. But it’s so boring online that you have to find something or other to do,> Roy says. <Want to join the “Visually Differentiating Bluefin and Southern Bluefin Tuna Sashimi” group?>

<I’ll skip it. I’d rather read a book.> The cigar has burned to a stub. I pick up the whiskey glass and spit out foul-tasting saliva.

<Books, magazines, movies, TV . . . they all drive me crazy. The sheer dullness of everything will be the death of me.> Roy taps out a sticker—a big period—and disconnects.

I close the chat window and sign into a few literary and social network sites, hoping for something interesting to read. But just as my online friend said, everything seems to grow duller by the day. When I was young, the Internet was full of opinion, thought, and passion. Exuberant youths filled the virtual world with furious Socratic debate, while the brilliant but misanthropic waxed lyrical about their dreams of a new social order. I could sit unmoving in front of a computer screen until dawn as hyperlinks took my soul on whirlwind journeys. Now, I sift through front pages and notifications and never find a single topic worth clicking on.

The feeling is at once sickening and familiar.

On a social media site I frequent, I click the top news article, “Citizens gather at city hall to protest hobbyist fishermen’s inhumane treatment of earthworms.” A video window pops out: a gaggle of young people in garish shirts, beers in their left hands and crooked signs in their right, standing in the city square. The signs read “Say NO To Earthworm Abuse,” “Your Bait Is My Neighbor,” “Earthworms Feel Pain Just Like Your Dog.”

Did they have nothing else to do? If they really wanted to march and protest, couldn’t they have found an issue actually worth fighting for? My headache is returning in force, so I turn off the monitor. I flop onto the worn brown couch and tiredly shut my eyes.

2.

In the scheme of an enormous aggregation of resources like this city, a low-income, forty-five-year-old bachelor is utterly insignificant. I work three days a week, four hours a day, and my main duty is to read welfare petitions that meet basic requirements and pick the ones I empathize with most. In an age where computers have squeezed people out of most employment opportunities, using my “emotional intuition” to approve or reject government welfare requests is practically the perfect job, no training or background knowledge required. The Department of Social Welfare thought some measure of empathy was needed beyond the rigid rules and regulations to select the few lucky welfare recipients (from petitions that had already passed the automated preliminary checks, of course), and therefore invited individuals from all strata of society—including failures like me—to participate in the process. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings, I take the subway from my rented apartment to the little office I share with three coworkers in the Social Welfare Building. I sit in front of the computer and stamp my e-seal on petitions I take a liking to. The quota varies day to day, but my work typically ends after thirty stamps. I use the remainder of the time to chat, drink coffee, and eat bagels until the end-of-shift bell rings.

Today’s a Monday like any other. I finish my four hours of work and swipe my card to leave. I walk toward the subway station, not far away, the gray granite edifice of the Social Welfare Building behind me. The performer is there at the subway entrance as usual, a one-man band whose repertoire consists of ear-splitting trumpeting accompanied by a monotonous drumbeat. As always, he glares at me balefully as I approach, perhaps because I haven’t given him a cent these few years. It makes me uncomfortable. The trumpet begins, the sound of a cat scratching at a glass pane. My lingering headache from yesterday begins to stir. I decide to turn away and catch the subway one station up.

The ground is still wet from the drizzle earlier this morning. Ponytailed youths whiz by me on skateboards. Two pigeons perch on a coffee shop sign, cooing. The storefront windows reflect me: a thin, balding middle-aged man in a yellow windbreaker that used to be fashionable, with a brandy nose just like my father’s. I rub my nose and can’t help but think of the father I haven’t seen in so long. More precisely, I haven’t seen him since the banquet when I was twenty-two. My mother sometimes mentions him in her calls: I know that he still lives at the farm, that he’s raising cows, that he’s kept a few apple trees to brew hard cider, even though alcohol had destroyed his liver, and the doctors say that he’ll never drink again till science can cure his liver cancer.

To be honest, I don’t feel a bit of sorrow for him. Although my red nose and big-framed body are all inherited from him, I’ve spent my adult years trying to escape his shadow, trying to prevent myself from turning into a fat, selfish, bigoted old drunkard like him. Today, however, I find that the only thing I’ve successfully avoided is the fat. The greatest achievement of his life was marrying my mother. I don’t even have anything close to that.

“Stop right there!” A shout cuts short my self-pity. Several figures in black hoodies are sprinting my way, dodging and weaving through traffic. Two cops waving police batons stumble past braking cars in hot pursuit. One blows his whistle; the other is shouting.

The drivers’ curses and the blaring of horns fill the air. I press myself against the coffee shop window. Keep out of trouble. In my mind’s eye, I see my father’s cigar-yellowed teeth flash amidst his whiskers.

The people in black hoodies knock over the trash bin by the street. They run past me—one, two . . . a total of four people. I pretend I don’t see them, but I notice that they’re all wearing canvas shoes. They’re all young. Who hasn’t worn dirty canvas shoes in their youth? I look down at my own feet, encased in dull brown leather lace-ups. The surface of my shoes is covered in creases from long wear, like the wrinkles on my forehead I try valiantly to ignore when I look in the mirror.

Suddenly, someone’s hand blocks my view of my feet. He’s reaching into the pocket of my windbreaker, pulling out my right hand. I feel strange tickling sensations—he’s drawing something on my palm with his finger. Surprised, I raise my head. In front of me is the fourth person in black, small and thin, his eyes covered by his hoodie. He rapidly sketches something out on my palm, then pats my hand. “Do you understand?”

“Hurry!” the other three people in hoodies are hollering. The fourth person tosses a glance back at the steadily nearing police and leaves me to run after his friends. The cops are right behind, puffing and panting. “Stop right there!” one of them shouts hoarsely. The other has his whistle in his mouth, blowing raggedly. I’m certain they turn and look at me as they pass by, but they don’t say anything, only run into the distance, waving their batons.

The pursuers and the pursued turn the corner at the flower shop and leave my sight. On the damp street, the cars begin to move again, the pedestrians weaving among them as if nothing has happened. But the warmth of a stranger’s fingertip still lingers on my right hand.

3.

“The usual?” the waitress in the diner below my apartment asks me. Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Yeah—” I say automatically—“wait, add smoked salmon to the order.” The waitress, who already turned and started walking, makes an OK sign over her shoulder.

“Did something happen? You changed your order.” Slim is a coworker at the Social Welfare Building, and my only acquaintance close enough to call a friend. He has the ability to sniff out the pheromones other people give off without fail. In the five minutes since he’s sat down, he’s identified a middle-age virgin, a pair of gay paramours, an aging housewife desperate enough to bed the pizza boy, a debauched teenager buying beer with his big brother’s ID card, and a sexually fulfilled paraplegic.

“For real, though, how would someone in a wheelchair have a fulfilling sex life?” I pick up my beer glass and take a sip.

“The higher the paralysis goes, the more likely he’s impotent.” Slim gestures at his own spine with a long, crooked arm. “Anyway, what about you? You’ve met the one, haven’t you? She’s a blonde, right?” His grayish eyes gleam with the pleasure of prodding at my privacy.

“Stop kidding. I ran into some demonstrators this afternoon. You know, the sort of hooligans you see crying out on the news for earthworms’ rights.” I shake my head. “Thanks,” I say, taking the plate from the waitress. A meatball sandwich with pickles on the side—my dinner, forever and always.

“Kids with too much time.” Slim shakes his head. “Speaking of which, did you know . . . the word ‘potato’ comes from the Arawa language of Jamaica.”

Dimly, I think his voice sounded strange just then, when he was saying the second half of his sentence, as if something got stuck in his throat or the cold beer caused a relapse of my tinnitus. “No, I didn’t know. Not that I’m interested in some language no one speaks anymore.” I stick a slice of pickle in my mouth.

Slim widens his eyes in surprise. “You don’t care about this?”

His voice is back to normal. It was tinnitus, then. I should go see a doctor, if I haven’t reached my health insurance coverage limit this year. “I don’t give a damn,” I say with my mouth full.

“Fine, then.” He lowers his head and toys with his beer glass. The waitress brings his dinner to the table, and passes me my smoked salmon as well.

“Seriously, you two should go out and have some fun. Go to the strip club or something.” The waitress looks at our expressions, frowns, and leaves.

Slim and I wordlessly turn our heads toward the gaudy club front across the street. I take two fries from his plate and stuff them into my mouth, then push my smoked salmon toward him. “Have you felt that we haven’t had any interesting topics to talk about lately?” I say.

“You’re feeling it too?” Slim exclaims. “Beyond the sex lives I’ve sniffed out, I can barely find anything to talk about. I’ve found conversations so boring these last few years.”

“Maybe we’re just getting old?” I unhappily retrieve my right hand from the plate of fries. There’s a noticeable age spot on the back of my hand. It appeared just recently, awkward like the stain on my trousers the year I was twenty-two.

“I’m only forty-two! Jimenez was forty-one when he won the Welsh Open!” Slim cried, waving a French fry wildly. “The drudgery of work is making us this way. It’ll all be different once we retire. Don’t you agree, old buddy?”

“I sure hope so,” I answer distractedly.

4.

I drink two more bottles of cold beer tonight. Waves of dizziness assault me once I’m through my apartment door. I make for my bedroom and collapse on the bed without bothering to shower.

The sheets smell strangely earthy. I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t changed them in so long, but on the bright side, the smell makes me think of the farm when I was little—not the farm that reeked of my father’s animal stench, but from before he started drinking, before he started abusing my mother. I’m thinking of the tranquil, peaceful farm where my mother, my sister, and I lived.

I remember my older sister and me playing in the newly built granary, airy and filled with the clean fragrance of earth and fresh-cut wood. Sunlight spilled in through the little loft window, accompanying the smell of the cookies my mother baked.

When we got tired from running, we sat down with our backs against the wall. My sister pulled my right hand over. “Close your eyes,” she told me. I obediently shut my eyes, the sunlight glowing dusky red on the inside of my eyelids. My palm tickled. I giggled and tried to pull my hand back. “Guess what word I’m writing.” My sister was laughing too, her finger scritching around on my palm.

I thought a bit. “I don’t know. Write slower!” I complained. My sister wrote the word again, more slowly.

“ ‘Horse?’ ” I slowly answered, looking at her.

“That’s right!” My sister laughed and ruffled my hair. “Let’s play again! If you can get five words right, I’ll let you ride my pony for two days.”

“Really?” I excitedly closed my eyes.

My palm started to tickle again. I barely held back my giggles. “It’s . . . ‘crow’ this time?”

“That was ‘road,’ dumb-butt!” My sister flicked my nose, laughing, and jumped to her feet. “First one there gets the biggest frosted cookie!”

“Wait for me—”

I stretch out an arm. I open my eyes to fluorescent lighting and the ceiling, one corner stained with water. The family living above me forgot to turn off their bath tap again. I’ll get the apartment managers to teach them a lesson this time, I think, realizing that I’d woken up from my dream of childhood. My shirt smells sour from alcohol after a day of wear. My neck and back ache from my awkward sleeping position. It takes me five minutes to sit up, look at the alarm clock, and see that it’s only one in the morning.

I feel better after a shower and a few glasses of water, but I don’t feel like sleeping anymore. I put on pajamas and sit on the living room couch. I flick on the TV; as usual, there’s nothing interesting at all on the late night shows. As I flip through the channels, I notice the ugly blotch on my right hand again. I scrub at it with my left hand, even though I know something like that can never be rubbed off.

The sudden faint itching on my palm makes me shiver. Wait, what’s this feeling? I—I recognize it from the dream, my sister scrawling childish character on my hand . . .

Today at noon, the stranger in the black hoodie wasn’t tracing some mysterious symbols or gang signs on my palm.

He was writing. No, she was writing. The stranger was a woman. The black hoodie had hidden her other features, but that slender finger couldn’t have belonged to a man. What had she written?

I frantically dig out pencil and paper and set them on the coffee table. I try with all my might to recall what I felt. The last word had been written by my sister before . . . yes, it’s “ROAD.”

I write “ROAD” on the sheet of paper.

There was another word in front of it. She had written it quickly, very quickly. From my long years approving petitions, I’ve found that people will write words with pleasant associations that way, fast and fluid, words like “smile,” “forever,” “hope,” “fulfillment.” She’d written a short word, standing for something good, with two vowels . . . aha! “EDEN.” That’s right, the garden of paradise.

I write “EDEN” before “ROAD.”

Even before those words had come a string of numbers, Arabic numerals. She wrote them twice over for emphasis. I wrinkle my brow, carefully recalling every movement of her fingertip. 7, 2, 9, 5? No, the first number traced the outside edge of my palm, so there should have been another bend at the end. It was 2, then. 2, 8, 9, 5. I check my recollections again. That’s it.

I write “2895” on the left.

The paper reads “2895 Eden Road”

I flop down in front of the computer, open up a map site, and enter “2895 Eden Road.” The page shows Eden Road to be on the other side of the city from me, far from the downtown area and the slums near the financial center. But Eden Road doesn’t have a 2895. The building numbers end at 500.

I rub my temple, translating each number back to a sensation on my skin, a tingling line traced on my palm. I stare at my hand. 2, 8, 9, that was right. 5 . . . oh, of course, it could have been an “S.” I type in “289S Eden Road,” and the map site shows me a four-story apartment building halfway down Eden Road. It’s at the outskirts of the city, forty-five kilometers from here. “Got it!” I triumphantly smack my keyboard and leap to my feet, only to fall back on my ass, dizzied by the blood rushing into my head.

What would I find there? I haven’t a clue. But I do know that in the forty-five years I’ve lived by the book, I’ve never had an adventure where a woman in a black hoodie left me a contact address in a cloak-and-dagger manner —well, my path never seemed to cross with the ladies at all, loser that I am. Something interesting has finally appeared in my dull and listless life. Whether driven by the urging of my hormones, as sharp-nosed Slim would say, or my aroused curiosity, I decide to put on a windbreaker and go to 289S Eden Drive to find something new.

Don’t make trouble, kid. As I prepare to leave, I see my father in the mirror opposite the door, his belly bulging, a bottle of gin in hand.

Oh, fuck you. I stride out the door like I did twenty-three years ago.

5.

I own a motorcycle, long unused. In college, I’d been as captivated by the latest high-tech toys as all the other young people were: the newest phone, tablet, plasma TV, electricity-generating sneakers, high-horsepower motorbike. Who doesn’t love Harley-Davidson and Ducati? But I couldn’t afford such expensive brand-name motorcycles. When I was twenty-six, I found a Japanese exchange student about to return home because his visa was expiring, and at last managed to buy this black Kawasaki ZXR400R with only 8000 miles from him. She was in excellent condition, her brake disks gleaming like new, the roar of her exhaust pipes mesmerizing. I couldn’t wait to ride over to my friends and show her off, but they’d long since grown bored of motorcycles. They came to the bars and talked about women with their brand-new Mercedes-Benzes and Cadillacs parked outside.

From then on, I didn’t really have friends anymore. When I put on my tie and rode my Kawasaki to work, everyone would look askance at me and my ride, smacking of youthful rebellion. In the end, I gave up and locked my beloved motorbike away in storage. There she stayed as I grew older and met one failure after another in my career. In the blink of an eye, I’d turned into a forty-five-year-old single alcoholic. Sometimes, on a sunny day, I’d ask my beloved Kawasaki as I cleaned her: Old buddy, when do you want to go out for a ride again? She never answered me. Every time I thought I could work up the courage to take her out for a ride, the grotesque mental picture of a balding middle-aged man hunched over the sleek motorcycle turned my stomach. It reminded me of the sickening way my drunken father would self-assuredly hit on every woman he saw.

I make my way down the battered apartment stairwell and unlock the dusty doors to the public storage room. I find my motorbike half buried in empty beer cans and pull the tarp aside. The Kawasaki 400R’s jet-black paintwork is covered with dust, but the tires are still full of air, and all the gears still gleam with oil. I uncap a small spare gas can and pour the contents into the tank, then turn the key, testing the ignition. The four-cylinder four-stroke engine howls to life without hesitation. My old buddy hasn’t let me down.

“Asshole, do you know what time it is?” When I walk my motorbike out of the storage room, a beer bottle smashes to pieces at my feet. I look up and see the landlady yelling from the second story window, a nightcap on her head. I don’t apologize like I would have usually done. I just get on my motorcycle and rev the engine, the roar reverberating up and down the street. I loose the clutch at her shouts of “Are you crazy?” Amidst the squeal of tires and the smell of burning rubber, I whoop with excitement, and my apartment and the strip club retreat from me at breakneck speed.

The wind howls. I’m not wearing a helmet; I feel the air resistance mold the flabby flesh of my face into comical shapes, and the hair I grow long for my comb-over whips behind me. But I don’t care how many people might be around at one in the morning to see an ugly middle-aged man racing by on a motorcycle. At this moment, the endless monotony of my life has at least been broken by thirst for the pursuit of happiness.

The ride is over too quickly. The sign for Eden Road appears before I’ve had my fill of racing through the empty city streets. I decelerate and shift to second gear, turning my head to read the numbers on the doors. Looking at the map, the subway and light rail stations closest to Eden Road are two kilometers away; this is a place forgotten by the city’s development. The street isn’t wide, and dingy old cars line both sides of the road. The rundown three- and four-story buildings beyond them are crammed against each other, the majority looking more dilapidated than my own apartment building. Most of the streetlights are dark, and the Kawasaki 400R’s headlamps sketch an orange halo against the black street. A feral cat jumps out of a trash bin, eyes me, and pads off.

At this point, I’ve calmed down enough to wonder whether crossing the city at night for an unfamiliar district in search of a stranger’s cryptic address was a rational decision. Every telephone pole could conceal a knife-wielding mugger, maybe even a black market doctor in search of organs to steal. I want to escape my dreary life, but I definitely don’t want to escape it only to end up as a gory crime scene photo in tomorrow’s newspaper.

I decelerate as much as I can, but it’s too quiet here, and the rumble of the Kawasaki’s engine sounds louder than a B-52 pressed back into active duty. Luckily, at this point, a bronze door plate appears in the headlights: 289A/B/C/D/S Eden Road.

I stop by the roadside, kill the engine, and turn off the headlights. A deathly silence instantly engulfs me. On either side, Eden Road has fallen into darkness. In front of the door to the apartment building at 289 is the only light, a weak incandescent lamp; its shade wobbles in the wind, making muffled metallic scraping noises.

Dammit, I should have brought a flashlight. Cold sweat seeps from my back. Right, my cell phone. My cell phone. I pat my windbreaker all over and finally find my old-fashioned phone in an inner pocket. I turn on the flash; the football-sized spot of white light comforts me somewhat.

I walk up and gently pull open the doors to 289 Eden Street. The doors aren’t locked. The glass pane in one door is broken, but there’s no glass on the floor.

It’s even darker inside. My cell phone barely illuminates a long-unused front desk with a yellowing ledger tucked behind it: this used to be a hotel. There are stairs on the right. I walk closer, shining my light on the walls. The letters A through D are written crookedly on the walls, followed by an arrow pointing up. There’s no “S.”

I point my cell phone light up. The stairs lead into a pitch black second floor, and I can’t see anything. Don’t make trouble! my father repeats idly. I wave the irritating memory away. When the beam of light swings behind the staircase, I see that there are no stairs down. Typically, there would be a closet in the triangular region below a set of stairs, and I spot its door, painted discordantly green. The doorknob is unexpectedly shiny, seemingly at odds with the dilapidated building around me.

I step toward the door, my old brown leather shoes tapping against the badly worn terrazzo. The brass doorknob is as smooth and oily as it looks. I try to turn it. There’s no lock on the door, and I push it open, revealing a long set of narrow stairs. My cell phone light doesn’t penetrate far enough for me to see how deep they go.

I don’t hear anything. It’s as quiet as a grave. Should I go down? I weigh my options, looking at the battery percentage icon on my phone display. I make up my mind and start down.

The stairs are only wide enough for one person, and the walls press in on me. I shine the cell phone at my feet and count about forty steps before a wall appears in front of me, where the stairs double back. I continue forward—down toward the center of the earth, I suppose.

It’s not a fun experience. My heart thumps loudly, and my blood presses at my eyes. The sound of my footsteps bounces off the walls, echoing at times in front of me, at times behind me, and I look back more than once. Another forty steps later, my cell phone reveals a green wooden door ahead, slightly ajar. A big brass letter hangs on it: “S.” No light shines through the crack.

I’m here, then, at 289S Eden Road. For a second, I’m not sure if I should knock. If the strange woman’s message was intended as a personal invitation, I’d be amiss to come at two in the morning, whether I knocked or not. If the message was an invitation for some sort of secret organization, how else was I supposed to enter? I lick my dry lips. I need a glass of whiskey. I’ll even settle for beer.

I push the door open all the way and walk in. All I see is darkness. I raise my cell phone in my left hand to better illuminate my surroundings. In that moment, my scalp prickles so hard I can feel the plates of my skull being squeezed together. I can’t help but turn my tensed neck like a searchlight, shining my phone over each corner of the room.

This is pretty big as basements go, the walls plain, pipes and concrete everywhere, the air damp and moldy. A couple dozen—maybe a couple hundred—people in black hoodies sit cross-legged on the floor, hand in hand. No one’s talking. Even the sound of their breathing is as faint as the beat of a mosquito’s wings. Their eyes are closed.

My light shines on one face after another. Under the hoods, there are men, women, old people, young people, whites, blacks, Asians, and on each face is the same eerie expression of joy. No one reacts to my unexpected entrance; their eyes don’t even move under their eyelids. The air in the basement congeals in my lungs. I stand frozen at the doorway, my throat working uselessly.

I need a drink. In my mind’s eye, my father always carries that bottle of gin, the clear alcohol sloshing against the glass. I’ll leave here first. Get out, ride my motorbike back to the apartment, then pour myself a full glass of whiskey. I swallow, feeling my Adam’s apple bob jerkily, and start to back out of the room, slowly, one step at a time. I reach out my right hand to pull the door shut. I stare at my hand to avert my gaze from the strange gathering, at the ugly splotch. I’ll go to the hospital tomorrow and get that damn laser surgery done, I decide, and have a doctor to look at my tinnitus while I’m there.

Then a hand suddenly descends onto mine. The black-clad arm comes from the other side of the door, and the fingers are slender but strong. I feel every hair on my body stand on end. The flashlight falls from my left hand and goes dim. I’m left in darkness. I can’t move. I can’t think.

A finger gently reaches for my palm. The familiar tingling sensation begins again. It was the mysterious woman from yesterday; I think I can read her fingerprint from her fingertip. Or is it just bioelectricity? I mentally read the words she writes: “Don’t be afraid. Come . . . share . . . transmit.”

Don’t be afraid. Share what? Transmit what? Did I miss words between these? The hand pulls me forward, and I follow unthinkingly with clumsy steps, reentering the silent room. The air is like thick printer’s ink. The mysterious woman tugs me through the darkness slowly, toward the depths of the room. I’m afraid that I’m going to step on one of the sitting strangers in black, but our circuitous path is free from obstacles. At last, the woman stops and writes, “Sit.”

I grope around, but there’s nothing around me. I sit down on the ice-cold cement, my eyes wide open, but I still can’t see anything. The woman’s breathing flutters at the edge of my hearing. Her left hand still rests against my palm, cold, the skin smooth. Her finger starts moving. I close my eyes and read the words she traces onto my palm: “Sorry. Thought. Knew. Don’t. Afraid. Friends.”

“Sorry, I thought you already knew what this is about. Don’t be afraid. We’re friends. We’re all friends here.” With a bit of imagination, her touch could be translated into eloquent words. I still don’t understand why she didn’t just talk, but this isn’t bad either. My fear melts away like hail in sunlight. Slowly, I adjust to the blinding darkness and the touch in the center of my hand.

She moves closer and finds my left hand, pressing my finger against her right palm. I understand immediately. I write in her palm, “I’m fine. This is one heck of an experience.”

“Slower,” she writes.

I slow down and write one character at a time, “I’m. Great. Fascinating.”

“You learn fast.” She draws a shallow crescent shape that I interpret as a smiley.

“You. Meet. Here,” I write, followed by a question mark.

“Yes, the society meets daily,” she replies.

“What for? What kind of organization are you? Why did you invite me?”

“We hold discussions through finger-talking. You’ll love it. I saw you on the street staring at that window, lost in thought, and supposed you must be lonely like me. You must find the world so dull.”

“Me? Yes, I suppose. To tell the truth, I do find life stifling. But before I met you, I never thought to do something about it.”

“Start now, then.” She draws another smiley. It’s at that moment that I think I’ve fallen in love with her, even though I’ve never seen her face, never smelled a woman’s perfume on her.

“What am I supposed to do now?” I ask.

“Members arrange themselves in a circle, each person linked to two others. Write with your left hand and let someone else write on your right. Whatever you want to hear about, whatever you want to say, is up to you. I left the ring just then to meet with you,” she replies.

“I think I understand the gist.” I think some more. “Then I won’t be able to converse with someone like I’m doing now? I can only speak to the person on my left, and listen to the person on my right.”

“That can’t be helped in the general gathering. But privately . . . whatever you want.”

“If—just out of curiosity—I were interested in the person to the right of me. If we alternate writing between my right hand and his left, couldn’t we have a one-on-one conversation?”

“That’s not allowed. The rules of the finger-talking gathering require facilitating a unidirectional flow of information. But you can make a topic and transmit it so that the person you’re interested joins.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Say you want to talk about the president with the person on your right. Spread the topic “What does everyone think of the president’s foreign exchange reserves policy?” to the person on your left. They might add in their viewpoint, or transmit the original topic unchanged. When the topic goes around and reaches the person to your left, he can now give you his opinion. Finger-talking gatherings aren’t meant for dialogues. The fun lies in sharing thoughts and transmitting opinions. I’ve been told this resembles the old, extinct topological structure of the Internet.”

“Sounds complicated.” I don’t understand why they had to invent such a strange mechanism for having conversations. There are plenty of forums and discussion groups on the Internet, and chatting over a beer at bars is even better. But since my bizarre experiences have led me to this mysterious gathering, I’m not going to pass on a chance to try it out. “Can I join the gathering right now?”

“There’s too much info being passed around for a beginner. Your slow speed of transmission will clog up the entire circle. We use a lot of abbreviations and references to increase efficiency, and you’ll need time to learn them,” she replies, and spends the next five minutes demonstrating those special abbreviations. “You don’t seem like a newbie,” she says, surprised at the speed at which I pick them up. She draws a big letter P to represent sticking out her tongue.

My sister’s and my little secret, I think. “Don’t worry, let me try it.”

“Okay,” she says eventually. “I’ll move to your left. We’ll step forward three steps to one of the nodes in the ring. Pat the shoulder of the person on your right, and he’ll break the connection. Take his left hand in your right hand. Remember, you have to be quick.”

We exchange positions. She holds my left hand in her right and leads me forward until I can dimly feel the body heat of the person in front of me. I kneel, feel someone’s shoulder come into contact with my hand, and pat it. The person immediately moves to the right to leave me a spot. I sit down with the woman hand in hand, and the person finds my right hand and takes it.

The hand is a man’s, hard and knobby and powerfully muscled, but his finger is astonishingly nimble. My palm is instantly covered with rapid writing. He’s so fast that I can’t even identify every letter. I focus on capturing the keywords and abbreviations, and guessing the meaning of the sentence from there. Before my brain has time to take in each message, the next sentence assaults me—my skin evidently hasn’t become sufficiently sensitive for the flood of finger-talking information. As I frantically decipher the words, I pass on what I can to her on the left. “Opposition party . . . scandal . . . resignation crisis . . . secret police . . . pursuit . . . ” I can only retransmit some o the keywords in the message, but I’m hooked. No one brings up politics in my online groups anymore. I want to add my own viewpoint for her, but the next message has arrived already. “Spaceplane wreck . . . Jamaica. Scandal. Fuel leak. NASA’s lost government support? Russian attack.” The first part is the topic, and after it are everyone’s opinions. I think I’m getting used to this method of receiving information. She’s right, I’m not a newbie. But the fingers on my left hand can’t quickly and clearly transmit information no matter how hard I try. After a few attempts, I write dejectedly, “Sorry.”

Her palm is cool and smooth, like the fresh new blackboard in my elementary school classroom. In response, she extends a finger and stealthily writes three words on my left hand: “I forgive you.”

I can feel the corners of my mouth lift. “You just told me this is against the rules,” I write.

“You’re getting better.” She breaks the rules again and adds a smiley face.

6.

Knocking on my door wakes me. I cover my ears with my pillow, hoping that whoever is at my door will go away. But five minutes later, I have no choice but to put on a night robe, shuffle into my slippers, and walk toward the living room. The knocker is persistent but unhurried. I look out the peephole; the brim of a policeman’s cap blocks my view. “Damn,” I mutter. I unlock the door and open it. “What can I do for you?”

“Good morning.” The cop leaning against the wall takes off his cap and shows me his badge. “Can I have five minutes of your time, sir? It’s purely protocol,” he says listlessly.

“Sure, five minutes.” I return to the living room and flop down on the couch. I pour myself half a glass of bourbon. The clock reads Tuesday 1:30 PM, and my night of tossing and turning has reactivated my headache. I pour the amber-colored alcohol down my throat and exhale slowly. My computer screen brightens: Roy left a message. I joined that discussion group after all. It’s a little more interesting than I thought.

The cop looks to be about thirty, short, with an old-fashioned mustache. He makes himself at home in my armchair. He looks around, sizing up my little apartment. “Nice place.”

“It was nicer twenty years ago,” I reply.

The cop sets his cap on my coffee table and takes out a tablet and stylus from his pocket. After a moment of consideration, he tosses them aside and falls against the armchair’s backrest. “Even I know this is completely pointless,” he sighs.

“Just doing your job, right?” I say sympathetically.

“Yes, job.” He frowns as he unwillingly picks up the tablet. “Let’s see . . . you work at the Social Welfare Building. Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays,” he reads.

“That’s right,” I reply.

“You’re forty-five and single. Last year, you were convicted of medical insurance fraud and sentenced to two weeks of community service.” He sounds mildly surprised.

“The hospital got my coverage limits wrong! They apologized afterward,” I explain irritably.

“We received a complaint today at 1:12 AM saying you were disturbing the neighbors?” The policeman idly combed at his mustache with the tip of his stylus.

“Uh . . . ” Remembering the experiences of last night, I feel a surge of apprehension. Is the cop’s visit tied to the finger-talking gathering? I don’t think sitting in the dark in large groups and scribbling against one another’s palms is illegal, but my instincts tell me to say nothing, to keep this secret. Don’t make trouble, as my father used to say to me. “I had some beers last night. When I woke, I thought I’d take my motorcycle out for a spin, nothing more. I apologize if I disturbed the neighbors.”

“I see. You were taking your motorcycle out for a spin.” The cop lethargically writes something on the tablet. “I understand a man’s need for adventure. Well, that’s it, then. You know we don’t take those neurotic old ladies’ complaints too seriously, but protocol is protocol.” He stands, sticks his cap under his arm, and stuffs the tablet and stylus back into his pocket.

“That’s it?” I stand, in disbelief.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” the cop recites, and turns to leave. I follow after him with my whiskey glass in hand. Just as I prepare to close the door, the short policeman turns and raises his black eyes to mine. “Right, you didn’t take your motorbike anywhere you shouldn’t go, I hope.”

“Somewhere I’m shouldn’t go? Of course not,” I reply quickly.

“Oh, your motorcycle went southeast, out of surveillance camera coverage. You must have come across some really unique little neighborhood. Crime rates may have fallen to their lowest in fifty years, but in my job you learn that there’s still all sorts of bad people in this world. Have a nice day, sir.” He pats my shoulder with a not-quite smile, puts on his cap, nods in farewell, and trots down the squeaking wood steps.

I slam in the deadbolt and lean against the door, gasping for breath. Was the cop really onto something? Are the woman and the finger-talking gathering doing something illegal? That’s right. I’m an idiot. I smack my forehead, remembering that when I met her yesterday, she and her friends were being chased by two policemen.

I need to see her again. The strange and strangely fascinating conversations of the finger-taking gathering ended at three in the morning. The people in black hoodies streamed out of the spartan basement of 289S Eden Road in silence, and I’d lost her among the crowd. I obeyed the rules of the gathering and didn’t call out for her. Later, I realized that I didn’t even know her name.

I need to see her again.

7.

By the time I log in, Roy has left. I sigh and turn off my computer.

The finger-talking gathering begins at midnight. I’d never waited so anxiously for sundown. I stand up, sit down, change the TV channel, sit blankly on the toilet staring into space. I repeatedly check my watch. To while away the time, I take the Bolívar No. 2 cigar I’d secreted away for so long out of the humidor. I open the precious aluminum cigar tube, carefully cut the closed end, and light it with a match. I take a deep drag and exhale it slowly. The rich, intense smoke of premium Cuban cigar makes me dizzy with pleasure, but guilt quickly follows. A thirty-dollar cigar? I don’t deserve it. A thing so splendid should remain forever in my crude humidor, to be admired from a distance the same way as the beautiful Kawasaki.

And my motorcycle . . . it had functioned less smoothly on the ride home, the engine coughing weakly. I think the aging carburetor’s losing efficiency; my old buddy’s getting along in years, after all. I ought to use a safer, less traceable method of transportation to go to Eden Road. I turn my mind to that problem, idly clicking the TV remote through channels. The TV shows are as boring as the Internet. None of the topics from yesterday’s gathering appeared at all, never mind the accompanying bold discussion and critiques. Impatient and restless, I suck away at my cigar until the stub burns my fingers, then go to my bedroom and dig in my closet until I find a dark blue hoodie from my college years. I put it on, flip up the hood, and walk in front of my mirror.

The wrinkled hoodie bears the image of Steve Jobs—someone that this generation of young people might never have heard of—printed in black and white on its front. It fits well: I haven’t gained a pound since I graduated. From the depths of the hood floats the bloodless, hollow-cheeked, baggy-eyed face of a middle-aged man. It tries to smile, but coupled with the big brandy nose, it looks comical.

This is why I long for the finger-talking gathering. In darkness, no one needs to see your ugly face. All you have is the touch of a fingertip and a thought put into writing. I push back the hood and carefully comb my hair to the right, but I can’t cover the balding top of my head no matter what I do.

The sky is finally dark. I stack crackers and cheese, press down, and heat it in the oven. Then I open a bottle of beer and have myself a simple dinner. The cheese gives me heartburn. I can’t suppress the pounding of my heart. In my hoodie, I pace in the living room. The TV shows some guy with too much time carrying a massive sign in front of the city hall. The protestor is surrounded by a sizable audience, but no one seems to be joining him. I think I see a few people in black hoodies in the crowd. Is it them? I toss down the remote and pull up my hood, determined to go take a look.

There aren’t many people on the subway. A number of them pretend to be watching the commercials on the display screens while secretly sizing me up.

Two teenagers with fashionable mushroom-shaped hair discuss me quietly. “Who’s the guy on that old geezer’s sweatshirt?”

“Some religious leader, probably. Like Luc Jouret or something.”

“Uh, who’s that?”

You’re half right, ignorant kids. I pull my hood lower. In my time, Steve Jobs was as good as a religious leader, until the Internet degenerated into senselessness and everyone tossed aside their complicated smartphones for basic phones that could only make calls.

I arrive at the city square half an hour later. The protestor stands in the middle of the brightly lit lawn. His sign is ridiculously huge, covered with several rows of garishly colored writing. I can’t see what it says with my deteriorating vision. Is this a side effect of overdrinking, like the tinnitus? My mother says that my father is blind as a mole now. I can’t imagine what he looks like, what remains of his bushy beard, red face, brawny arms, his massive beer belly, and I don’t care to find out.

A crowd has gathered to watch him afar. A few cops are leaning against the side of their police car, chewing gum. Skater kids are showing off their tricks on the steps. In front of a TV van, a reporter and a camera man are chatting. In contrast, the protestor seems all alone. I walk closer, squinting at the sign. The red text on the top reads, “Wood-burning fireplaces are the leading cause of global warming.” Below it, “For every traditional fireplace you tear down, Mother Earth lives another day” is written in blue.

I wrinkle my brow. The First Amendment wasn’t made for idle crap like this. Where are the incisive opinions from the finger-talking gathering? I approach the crowd, trying to find the people in black hoodies, but at this time the police come up and ask the protestor to leave for the sake of the grass, and the crowd disperses too. I can’t find anyone I recognize. Two cops turn their gazes on me questioningly. One of them points at the portrait on my hoodie, and the other guffaws in realization. I quickly turn and leave.

Without thinking, I ride the subway eastward and get off at the terminal station. I hail a taxi, telling the driver, “289 Eden Road.”

“Eden Road?” the driver grumbles. “I hope you’re planning to tip well.”

The car turns onto a side road. The city around us grows more and more run-down, and the streetlights dwindle. When the taxi stops in the middle of the darkened Eden Road, my anxiety and hope rise as one. “Thinking of going elsewhere, pal? I know some good hotels.” The taxi driver takes my fee and opens the door for me.

“No, it’s fine. I like quiet.” I get off, shut the car door, and wave. The taxi’s taillights brighten, then quickly diminish and disappear into the distance. It’s nine o’clock right now, but Eden Road is already silent as a grave. I walk toward the front door of 289 Eden Road with its missing glass panel. After some thought, I open the door and enter.

I know I’ve arrived too early, but I thought that the anticipation would add to tonight’s gathering. Like yesterday, my heart is thumping, but this time it’s out of excitement rather than fear. I find the door at the back of the stairs by the light of the wobbly incandescent lamp and turn the brass doorknob. The dark, narrow forty steps appear before me. I’ve lost my cell phone, and neither do I have a flashlight. I adjust my hood, close my eyes, and walk into the deepening darkness. One, two, three, four, five . . . thirty-nine, forty. There’s a wall in front of me now. The stairs double back here. I grope around, exploring with my right foot until I find the next stair. One, two, three . . . thirty-nine, forty. Both my feet are on flat ground. The green door with the brass letter S should be in front of me. Filled with hope, I reach out.

My fingers touch cold concrete.

Had I misremembered? I summon last night’s experiences to my mind. There was only this door at the end of the stairs. This door, and nothing else. I’m sure of it. I clearly recall the gleam of the brass S. I shuffle to the left and right, but touch only concrete wall on either side. The place directly in front of the stairs, where the door should have been, is also rough wall. The stairs have taken me to a dead end.

I can feel the blood pounding in my head. My ears feel hot, and the headache is returning. Calm, I tell myself. I need to calm down. Breathe deeply. Breathe deeply. I take off my hood and suck in a slow breath. The cold, damp basement air fills my lungs, and my overheated brain cools down a little.

Once I’ve taken a few minutes to calm down, I start to look for the vanished door again, but there are no signs that there had ever been a door here. The rough wall scrapes my fingertips raw. I sit down, despairing.

Where are your friends now? My father’s face appears in the darkness, sneering carelessly.

Shut up! I yell. I bury my head in the crook of my arm and cover my ears.

I told you, don’t make trouble. My father wipes a trickle of beer from the corner of his mouth. His breath is hot and foul. His arm is around my sister, whose blue eyes glisten with tears. My mother is to the side, crying.

Shut up! I scream.

You’re eighteen now. Get the hell out of my house. Get a job, or go to your goddamn university, but I don’t have to let you live under my roof anymore, my father roared, throwing the suitcase at my feet. My sister hides herself in the kitchen, tears running down her face as she looks at me. My mother is holding a pot; her face is expressionless.

Shut up! I scream hysterically.

I don’t know how much time passed. You can’t tell time accurately in the dark. It might have been a nightmare, or maybe I’d never fallen asleep in the first place. I stand up slowly, letting the wall take some of my weight. I’ve been curled up too long; every joint cries out in protest. All I want to do is go back to my little apartment, down a big glass of whiskey, no ice, and turn on the TV. Forget my absurd dream from last night. Forget the lingering sensation on my palm. Forget that there ever was such a thing as the ridiculously named finger-talking gathering.

I stride forward. My left foot strikes something. It rolls, then glows to life, a spot of white light illuminating the narrow space. It was the cell phone I lost at the door last night, my ridiculed, one-of-a-kind old fashioned smartphone.

It wasn’t a dream. Strength surges into me instantly. I pick up the phone; the battery is almost depleted, but it’s enough to let me properly examine the wall in front of me. Yes. This portion of the wall is brand-new, troweled together in a hurry with fast-setting concrete. Where the wall meets the floor, I see a wooden doorframe buried in the depths of the crack. The door is there, just hidden by people trying to keep it secret.

I knock on the wall and find that the cement is too thick for me to break through. The people in black hoodies weren’t some hallucination. They’d simply changed their meeting place and forgot to tell me. I comfort myself with that.

I wait there until two in the morning, but no one comes. I climb back up the stairs, walk to the subway station two kilometers away, and hail a taxi back to my apartment from there. Step by step, I climb up the squeaking stairs. My thoughts are in a muddle, but I still need to work Wednesday morning. As I open the door to my apartment, I plan to drink a glass, take a shower, and get some proper sleep.

I freeze at the doorway. Someone in a black hoodie is sitting on my couch.

8.

I pick up the e-seal and stamp the social welfare petition on my display: a newly immigrated family with six children. The green indicator light on the e-seal turns red, telling me that I’ve used up today’s approval quota. I relax into my chair and work the cramp out of my wrist. There’s still half an hour until my shift ends.

The pretty blonde girl who shares my cubicle stands up to invites everyone to her birthday party. “We’d . . . welcome you too, if you have the time,” she says belatedly to me, out of what I know is forced courtesy.

“Sorry, I have an important date the next day. But happy birthday!” I reply. She visibly gives a sigh of relief and puts her hand to her chest. “Thanks. That’s a pity. I hope the date goes well.”

To a girl her age, I’m from another generation, and I understand an out-of-place old man at a party can be a disaster. But the date wasn’t an empty excuse. I can still feel her message on my right palm: Tomorrow in the city square at 6 AM.

I don’t know how she found me, how she got in my apartment, or how long she waited there. After a moment of surprise, I walked over and took her hand. The neon lights of the strip club flashed through the window, splashing her black hoodie with radiant colors. I still couldn’t see her face properly. “Sorry, we changed the meeting place. We couldn’t contact you in time,” she wrote.

“Did I cause trouble for you?” I ask.

“No. The situation’s complicated. Only a few core members went to the finger-talking gathering just now. We’ve had some internal disagreements.” At the end of the sentence, her finger tapped out a few hesitant ellipses.

“About what?”

“About whether to do something stupid.” She drew two wavy lines under “stupid.”

“I don’t understand,” I write honestly.

“If you’re willing to listen, I can tell you how the finger-talking gathering came to be, how we’re organized, the struggles between the factions, and our ultimate goal.” She wrote it in one long sentence.

“I don’t want to know,” I reply. “I don’t want to turn these interesting conversations into politics.”

“You don’t understand.” She draws a greater than sign, a sigh. I’m realizing that she expresses even the most basic emotions through writing. “You must have noticed how the Internet, TV, books have lost any semblance of intelligence.”

“Yes!” I feel a rush of excitement. “I don’t know why, but every topic worth arguing over has disappeared. All that’s left is pointless bullshit. I’ve tried tossing provocative topics out in discussion more than once, but no one would reply. Everyone’s more interested in sashimi and earthworms. I noticed it years ago, but no one believed me. The doctor gave me pills to get rid of the hallucination. But I know this isn’t a hallucination!”

“It’s not just these. Conversations with friends and the things you see on the street are becoming as bland as the Internet and the media.”

“How do you know?” I nearly stood.

“It’s all a conspiracy.” She pressed hard writing this, hard enough to hurt.

“A conspiracy? Like the moon landing thing?”

“Like Watergate.” Her writing grew agitated, harder to decipher.

“I think you need to tell me everything.”

“Then we’ll start with politics.”

“Hold on . . . when’s the next gathering? Can I join?”

“This is what we’re arguing about. Those in support of action think we should hold our next gathering in a public place, like the city square. We shouldn’t keep running and hiding. We should show what we believe in, no compromises,” she tells me.

“I’m guessing that the police don’t like you guys very much.” I once again recalled the first time I saw her, chased by two panting cops.

“They don’t have anything on the organization as a whole. It’s just some individual members who have criminal records, especially the activists,” she answers frankly.

“You have a criminal record?” I ask, curious.

“It’s a long story.” She was unwilling to say anything more.

I work up my courage and ask the question at last. “What’s your name?”

Her finger stilled. I tried to scrutinize her face under the hood, but the hoodie concealed her face entirely. It even hid any sex characteristics. I suddenly realized that my only evidence that she was female was her slender fingers. She could just as easily be a young man, I thought, though my heart utterly rejected the idea. I wanted her to be a woman like my big sister, flaxen-haired and soft-voiced and a little mischievous, freckles scattered over the bridge of her nose. The sort of woman I’d been seeking all my life.

“You’ll know it in time,” she said eventually, avoiding my question.

“Actually, I’m more curious about—” the exquisite sensation of my left finger on her right palm was interrupted by the sudden howl of a police siren approaching rapidly. She straightened, alert, and pulled her hood lower. “I’m leaving now,” she wrote rapidly. “If you want, be there tomorrow in the city square at 6 AM. Remember, this is your choice. This is your chance to change the world, or more likely, regret it to the end of your days. Either way, don’t blame anyone else, especially not me, for your own decision. And I might as well add, I think bald men are sexier.”

She squeezed my right hand with her delicate but strong fingers, got off the sofa, and vaulted out of the living room window. I hurried over to look down. She’d already climbed down nimbly from the fire escape and disappeared around the corner. I touched my balding head, somewhat dazed.

9.

For a variety of reasons, I sank into a deep depression the year I was thirty-seven. The landlady persuaded me to go to her shrink, threatening that if I didn’t get treatment, she’d kick my ass out of the apartment. I knew that she just didn’t want me to OD and leave my corpse in one of her rooms, but I’m grateful to her all the same after the fact.

The man was a Swede with a beard like Freud’s. “I’m not a psychologist,” he said, once we’d talked some. “I’m a psychiatrist. We don’t consult here. We fix problems. You’ll need to take medications if you don’t want to dream every night of your sister’s grave.”

“I’m not afraid of pills, doctor,” I replied. “As long as the insurance covers it. I’m not afraid of dreaming of the sister I love, either, even if she crawls out of the grave every time. I’m afraid of what’s happening around me. Do you feel it, doctor? Tick-tock, tick-tock, like the second hand on a clock. Here, there, endlessly.”

The psychiatrist leaned over, full of interest. “Tell me what you feel.”

“Something’s dying,” I said in a low voice, glancing around me. “Can’t you smell it rotting? The commentary on the news, the newspaper columnists, the online forums, the spirit of freedom is dying. It’s dying en masse like mosquitoes sprayed with DDT.”

“All I see is the advancement of society and democracy. Have you thought whether some paranoia-inducing mental disorder may be causing this suspicion toward everything, including the harmonious cultural atmosphere?” The psychiatrist leaned back, fingers interlaced.

“You were young once too, doctor. You once had the courage to question everything.” My voice rose anxiously. “Back then, when we didn’t know who we’d become, but understood who we didn’t want to become. When there were battles and heroes all around us.”

“I reminisce sometimes of my youth too. Everyone should. But we’re all grown people now, with responsibilities toward our family, our society, even our civilization and our descendants. I suggest you take these pills regularly when you go home to get rid of your unreasonable fantasies. Find an undemanding job, fish on the weekends, take a vacation once a year. Find a nice girl when the time is right—we haven’t discussed your sexual orientation yet, I realize, please don’t take that the wrong way—and start a family.” The psychiatrist put on his glasses, flipped open his notebook, and cut my protests off with a hand before I could voice them. “Now, let’s discuss the problems relating to your father and sister. Your childhood traumas had significant influence on my choices of medication. Is that fine with you?”

The treatment was effective. I gradually grew used to the tepid TV programs and online forums. I grew used to society being peaceful, simple, nice, indifferent. I grew used to seeing the shade of my father, and tried not to argue over things past. Then this person in a black hoodie barges into the monotony of my bachelor’s life and hands me a choice, a choice whose meaning I don’t understand. But I do know that finger-talking has brought me a sense of groundedness I haven’t had in a long time, made the things I felt that had slowly died off eight years ago return from the grave like beetles bursting from their underground cocoons in spring.

I don’t know what “tomorrow in the city square at 6 AM” will signify. Normally, when I’m faced with a choice, I toss a coin. The answer naturally appears as the coin whirls through the air: which side do you hope will land face-up? But this time, I don’t toss a coin, because when I get off from work, leave the Social Welfare Building, I unthinkingly walk in the opposite direction from the subway station. Next to a spinning pole, I push open the glass door. I say to the fat man across from the mirror, “Hey.”

“Hey, long time no see.” The fat man waves me in. “Same as usual?”

“No.” I smile. “Shave me bald. The sexy kind of bald.”

10.

I startle awake at 3:40 in the morning and can’t sleep after that. I take a hot bath, change into my Steve Jobs hoodie and khaki pants, put on my sneakers, put in my earphones, and listen to the metal bands of olden days. At 5:00 exactly, I leave Roy a message, drink a cup of coffee, and leave my apartment. The sun hasn’t risen yet. The early morning breeze caresses my freshly shaved scalp, cooling my feverish brain. I take the first subway that comes, unperturbed by the strange looks I get from the sparse fellow travelers. At 5:40, I arrive at the city square. I stand in the middle of the green. The streetlights are bright, and the morning mist is rising.

At 5:50, the streetlights go out. The first ray of dawn illuminates the thin mist. People are slowly gathering. Someone in a black hoodie takes my right hand, and I pick up the arm of the stranger next to me. “Good morning” spreads palm to palm. More and more people are appearing in the city square, silently forming themselves into a growing circle.

At 6:10, the ring stabilizes with more than a hundred people in it. The participants of the finger-talking gathering begin to rapidly transmit information. I close my eyes. A drop of dew falls from the brim of my hoodie.

The person to my right is an old gentleman, by his flabby skin and the refined construction of his sentences; the person on the left is a well-preserved lady with a plump, smooth palm and a large diamond ring on her finger. The topic arrives: “Compared to the gutless bands of today, what bands ought we to remember forever?”

“Metal. U2. And rock and roll, of course.” I immediately add my own opinion.

”The Velvet Underground.”

“Sex Pistols.”

“Green Day. Queen. Nirvana.”

“NOFX.”

“Rage Against the Machine.”

“Anti-Flag.”

“Joy Division.”

“The Clash.”

“The Cranberries, of course.”

“Massive Attack.”

“Hang on, does dance music count? Add Pussycat Dolls, then.”

I grin knowingly. The second topic appears, then the third. I’ve missed this sort of easy, organic discussion, even if it’s via a mode of information exchange out of a kids’ game. The fourth and fifth topics appear. My fingertip and palm are hard at work, avoiding typos while trying to use as many abbreviations as possible. I think I’m slowly mastering the skill of finger-talking conversation. The sixth topic appears, followed by the seventh. This seems to be the bandwidth limit for finger-talking gatherings. The commentary appended to each topic would steadily grow until everyone interested has finished speaking. The creator of the topic has the right and responsibility to end its transmission at a suitable time to make room for a new topic. The first and third topics have disappeared. The second topic, on the First Amendment, is still gaining comments. The creators of the other topics independently choose to stop transmitting. Only the second topic is left in the circle, and the participants come to unspoken agreement to stop carrying the topic itself, transmitting the commentary only to save bandwidth.

It’s an inefficient use of the network to transmit only one data packet at a time. Someone realizes this and starts a new topic in the lull. The network is occupied once again, but soon the data clogs up at one of the nodes.

A memory from my distant college years suddenly surfaces. “Let’s look at a now-obsolete network topology structure,” the network systems professor had said behind the lectern, “the token ring network, invented by IBM in the seventies of the last century.” So the finger-talking gathering was really an unscientific token ring network reliant on the members’ responsible behavior. I hurriedly finish sending the enormous data packet of the second topic and use the bit of free time to consider how the system might be improved.

A very brief message appears. It’s uneconomical, I think, but its contents make me gape. “To the sexy bald guy: my name is Daisy.”

I can feel the serotonin forming in every one of my hundred billion neurons, the ATP sending my heart pounding furiously. Every living bit of me is jumping and hollering in victory. In the place of this message, I send out: “Hello, Daisy.”

The size of the second topic has slowed down the network so that it takes me ten minutes to receive the data from upstream. It’s clear that someone’s stripped down the commentary to the second topic to the essentials. After the compressed file is my topic “Hello Daisy” and its legion comments.

“We love you, Daisy.” “Our daisy blossom.” “Pretty lady.” Then “Hello, Uncle Baldy!”

I recall how I’d looked in the mirror before I let home: my skinny body, drooping cheeks, red nose and comical bald head, my outdated sweatshirt. I look like a clown. I smile.

I’m writing my reply when a commotion ripples through the network. I open my eyes. The sun has long since risen, and the mist has disappeared without a trace. Every blade of grass in the city green sparkles with dew. The members of the finger-talking gathering have formed an irregular circle, linked hand in hand into a silent wall. Many people watch from a distance: morning joggers, commuters on their way to work, reporters, policemen. They look perplexedly at us, because we have no signs, no slogans, none of the characteristics they expect of a protest.

A police car is stopped at the edge of the green, its exhaust pipes billowing white smoke. The car doors open, and cops get out. I recognize their leader, the short policeman who’d interviewed me. He’s still wearing the same apathetic expression and walking in the same careless swagger. He strokes his neat little mustache, considering us, then makes a beeline for me. “Good morning, sir.” He takes off his cap and presses it to his chest.

I look at him and don’t say anything.

“I’m afraid you’re all under arrest,” he says without energy. Six hulking black police vans glide silently into the city square. Riot police in full gear flood out, approaching us with batons and riot shields raised. Our onlookers don’t react at all. No one shouts, no one moves, no one even looks in the direction of the neat marching phalanx of riot police.

I can tell the people beside me are anxious by the sweat on their palms. The second topic’s data package has disappeared. A single short message replaces it, traveling at the highest speed our network can sustain.

“Freedom,” many fingers write rapidly and firmly into many palms.

“Freedom.” Our eyes are open. Our mouths are shut.

“Freedom.” We shout to the black machinery of the government in the loudest form of silence.

“I love you, Daisy.” I send my last message before the riot police slam me roughly to the ground. The network has collapsed. I don’t know if the message will get to Daisy. Where was she in the network? I don’t know. Will I ever see her again? I don’t know. I’ve never really seen her before, but I feel as if I understand her better than anyway.

Don’t make trouble. My father looks down at my squashed face. The riot cop is doing his best to mash me and the lawn into one.

Fuck you. I spit out grassy saliva.

11.

I’m getting ten minutes on the phone, and I don’t want to waste them. But beside Slim and Roy, I can’t think of anyone to call. Strangely, Slim spends the call talking about the Arawak language of Jamaica. Roy doesn’t pick up. I put down the receiver, at a loss.

“Hey, old man, how much time do you have left to waste anyway?” The line behind me is getting impatient.

I dial the familiar number without thinking. Like always, the phone rings three times before someone picks up. “Hello?”

“How are things, Mom?” I say.

“I’m well. How about you? Do you still get the headaches?” Through the receiver, I hear the scrape of a chair being dragged over. My mother sits down.

“I’m much better nowadays. And . . . and what about him?” I say.

“You never ask about him.” My mother sounds surprised.

“Ah. I was just wondering . . . ”

“He passed away last month,” my mother says calmly.

“Oh. Really?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have anyone to take care of you?”

“Your aunt is with me. Don’t worry.”

“His grave . . . ”

“Is in the church cemetery. A long ways from your sister.”

“That’s good, that’s all I wanted to make sure. Then . . . have a good weekend, Mom.”

“Of course, and you too. Good-bye.”

“Bye.”

She hangs up. I rub the age spot on my right hand as if trying to wipe those memories away. My father, reeking of alcohol. My sister sobbing, my mother growing withdrawn and numb. The memories from my college breaks are far enough downstream in my life that they no longer seem so unbearable. “Old man, time is money! Tick-tock, tick-tock!” The person behind me taps at his wrist, imitating the tick of watch hands. I hang up the receiver and walk off.

For lunch, I end up sitting next to a red-haired guy with a man’s name tattooed on his face. His arms are garishly patterned, as if he were wearing a Hawaiian shirt. “That guy’s gay! Don’t go near him. And don’t let him grab your hand,” the Mexican who shared my cellmate had warned me—I’m guessing he meant well. I take my tray and move a bit aside.

Redhead scoots closer, smirking. “Want to share my goat milk pudding? I’m not a big fan of lactose.”

“Thanks, but I’m fine,” I say as politely as I can.

Redhead reaches over. I snatch back my hand as if jolted on a live wire, but he manages to grab it anyway. He grips my right hand tightly and tickles at my palm with a fingertip.

I can feel every hair on my body standing on end. “I don’t think I’d be very suited to this type of relationship. If you don’t mind . . . ” I struggle in vain. The bystanders are laughing raucously, smacking the dining tables like a drum.

The sensation becomes familiar. It’s finger-talking, the same abbreviations, rapid and precise. “If you understand, tell me.”

I calm down and give Redhead a careful lookover. He still wears the same stomach-turningly lecherous expression as before. I hook my finger and tell him, “Received.”

“Thank God!” His expression doesn’t change, but he writes an abbreviation for a strong exclamation. “I’ve finally found another one. Now, after lunch, go to the reading room. The philosophy section is against the east wall. No one ever goes there. On the bottom of the second shelf, between Hegel and Novalis, there’s a copy of the 2009 edition of Overview of the History of Philosophy. Read it. If you don’t understand how, pages 149 to 150 explain the basics. I’ll contact you afterward. For reasons of safety . . . I suggest you prepare to be thought of as gay. Now, hit me.”

“What?” I say, caught off guard.

Redhead leers with utmost lasciviousness and reaches for my ass. I flail out a fist and punch him in the nose.

“Ow!” The bystanders burst into laughter so loud the guards look our way. Redhead scrambles upright, a hand over his bleeding nose, and leaves cursing with his meal tray.

“What did I tell you?” My cellmate appears with tray in hand and gives me a thumbs up. “But you’ve got guts!”

I ignore him and stuff food into my mouth. Once I finish, I go to the reading room alone. On the bottom Philosophy shelf, between Hegel and Novalis, I find the clothbound 2009 edition of Overview of the History of Philosophy. I sign it out from the librarian and take it back to my cell. The Mexican isn’t back yet. I lie on my cot and flip open the heavy covers. I don’t see anything special. From a glance, it’s just a yawning pit of references and citations.

I flip to page 149, and see that someone’s replaced this page. In the midst of headache-inducing philosophy-related proper names is a sheet of yellowing paper clearly torn from another book. The front is covered with completely irrelevant medical information on joint protection, while the back is mostly methods of head massage and corresponding diagrams. At the bottom is a three hundred word simple overview of a newly invented type of low-error, high-efficiency Braille. However, the development of more practical visual surgery techniques had led to the decline of Braille, the book informed me. The new type of Braille was made obsolete before it was ever implemented.

Oh, of course. Braille. I shut the book and close my eyes. The outside covers only have the big embossed gold lettering, but on the inside cover, I find little bumps arranged in some sort of dense pattern. If you weren’t paying attention, they’d seem like some oversight in quality control left the paper unevenly textured. I refer to the instructions and slowly decipher the Braille. The information is heavily compressed; it takes me almost two hours to understand the text on the inside cover.

“The finger-talking gathering welcomes you, friend,” the unknown author greets. “You’ve certainly felt the changes, but you don’t understand them. You’re lost, angry, considered crazy by other people. Maybe you’ve bowed to the way things are. Maybe you’re still looking for the truth. You deserve the truth.”

I nodded.

“This was an enormous program. The secretly ratified 33rd Amendment allowed the formation of a Federal Committee for Information Security to filter and replace information that could pose a threat to social stability and national security. After lengthy test trials, a high-efficiency system called ‘Ether’ slowly came together. At first, Ether only functioned to automatically monitor the Internet through network and Wi-Fi equipment. All text, videos, and audio it considered to be subversive would be put through hacking, sampling, and semantic network analysis. Once it found the forum hosting it, Ether would infiltrate all related conversations on that server. Everyone except the poster would see an altered post. In addition, the poster would be recorded by the database. For example, if you posted the topic ‘Senatorial Luncheon,’ it would be flagged as harmful. Ether’s supercomputers had free legal rein to override all network firewalls, and would intercept the data packet at the interface and replace all keywords. Everyone else would see your topic as the uninteresting ‘KFC Super Value Lunch.’ This way, the federal government gained total control over the Internet. The tragedy is that most people never realized what had happened. They only pessimistically believed that the spirit of liberty was gradually disappearing on the Internet—exactly what the government wanted.”

I feel a chill at my back. The Mexican comes in at this time and throws his dirty towel on my stomach. “Buddy, you should join the group exercises now and then.”

“Shut up!” I yell with all my might. The Mexican looks blankly at me. His expression shifts from surprise and anger to fear. He looks away, afraid to meet my bloodshot eyes. My fingers move shakily across the flyleaf of Overview of the History of Philosophy.

“Following the success of Ether, the federal government’s control over radio, television, and print were a foregone conclusion. The few members of the media who refused to collaborate with the Information Security Bill were isolated using a technology from the same origin as Ether. Nanoelectronic technology had been used to tamper with data exchange, and the people in power soon realized that nanobots could similarly tamper with data exchange through visible light. Seven years after the enactment of the 33rd Amendment, they decided to release nanobots into the atmosphere. These tiny machines could remain suspended in air, using the silicon in soil and construction materials to self-replicate until the desired density was achieved. They were simple devices, activating once they reached the requisite density. They would detect subversive text—information in visible light waves—and subversive speech—information in sound waves—replace them with harmless data, and log their source. They could adhere to printed text and signs, polarizing light so that all observers beside the source would receive false optic data; they could alter the spread pattern of sound waves so all listeners except the source received false acoustic data. Since the source can receive the sound traveling through their bones, they’d hear the message they intended. These little demons floating the air made Ether omnipotent and omnipresent, like the mysterious substance undetectable to mankind that the philosophers said occupied all space—the original ether.”

I remember the psychiatrist’s words, “All I see is the advancement of society and democracy.” I clench my fists and grind my teeth hard enough to be audible.

“This is the era we live in, friends. Everything is a lie. The online forums are lying. The TV programs are lying. The person speaking across from you is lying. The protesters’ signs raised up high are lying. Your life is surrounded by lies. This is a golden time for the hedonists: no conflicts, no war, no scandal. When the conspiracy theorists are locked away in the mental hospitals, when the last revolutionaries fade away in front of their lonely computer screens, only our fragile and perfect tomorrow awaits. We will dance our stately, well-mannered waltz at the cliff’s edge, build our magnificent castle on quicksand.

“Who am I? I’m a nameless soldier, one of the criminals who created Ether. I’m not important. The important thing is that you should see these changes. You should know the truth. Now the truth is yours, and you can choose the path that lies ahead. Our fingers are our most precious resource, because in the next twenty years, within the range of foreseeability, nanobots won’t be able to deceive humanity’s sensitive sense of touch. If you make the choice, you can join the finger-talking gatherings through your mentor at any time, and enter the last and only resistance group under Ether’s omnipresent surveillance. You will enter the only truth left in this world of lies.

“The finger-talking gathering welcomes you, friend.”

I close the heavy covers. Thoughts and images are stringing themselves together in my mind. I’ve seen the truth, but I have even more questions now, and only whoever wrote these words can answer them. I brush my palm across the short gray bristles of my scalp, knowing I’ve already made my choice.

At dinner, when I see Redhead, I make a beeline for him and take his hand. The cafeteria is instantly in an uproar. We’re going to be the butt of every joke, but I don’t care. I write in his palm, “I’m in.”

His smile is full of stories. “Welcome. The first gathering is in two days during group exercises, northeast of the woodwork factory. Our internal publications are in the Philosophy section, second shelf, bottom layer, flyleaf of Nietzsche’s collected works. Right, there’s a flax-blonde, freckled young lady in the female wing who wants me to ask ‘the sexy old bald guy’ how he’s doing. I think I’m talking to the right person.”

I gape.

In that moment, I think of many things. I don’t think of how to change the world with our primitive method of communication, but of all the things my father left me. I thought my father’s beatings and curses had made me incapable of loving, but I’ve found that love is a piece of the human soul that can never be cut out, not just the tremble of hormones. I’d so hated my father, tried to reject every memory that included him year after year, but I’ve found that the child of an abusive father doesn’t have to stay broken. The pain at least is real. I hate lies, even well-meaning lies, more.

I need to do as I did twenty-three years ago. I need to shout as loudly as I can to the guy trying to control my life, “Fuck you!”

She gives me courage, flax-haired, blue-eyed her. I grip Redhead’s hand tightly, as if I can feel the warmth of her body through his skin. On our palms are written love and freedom, burning hot. Love and freedom, searing through the skin, branding the bone.

“I love you, Daisy—not you, don’t get the wrong idea.” Under countless eyes, I write it on Redhead’s palm.

“Of course.” Redhead is ready with his familiar, mischievous smirk.

First published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, 2012.

Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.

About the Author

Born in 1981, Zhang Ran graduated from Beijing Jiaotong University in 2004 with a degree in Computer Science. After a stint in the IT industry, Mr. Zhang became a reporter and news analyst with Economic Daily and China Economic Net, during which time his news commentary won a China News Award. In 2011, Mr. Zhang quit his job and moved to southern China to become an independent writer. He began publishing science fiction in 2012, with his debut story, “Ether,” winning the Yinhe (Galaxy) Award as well as the Gold Xingyun (Nebula) Award. His novella, “Rising Wind City,” won the Yinhe Award and a Silver Xingyun Award.

The Long Goodnight of Violet Wild

Catherynne M. Valente

1: Violet

I don’t know what stories are anymore so I don’t know how to tell you about the adventures of Woe-Be-Gone Nowgirl Violet Wild. In the Red Country, a story is a lot of words, one after the other, with conflict and resolution and a beginning, middle, and, most of the time, an end. But in the Blue Country, a story is a kind of dinosaur. You see how it gets confusing. I don’t know whether to begin by saying: Once upon a time a girl named Violet Wild rode a purple mammoth bareback through all the seven countries of world just to find a red dress that fit or by shooting you right in that sweet spot between your reptilian skull-plates. It’s a big decision. One false move and I’m breakfast.

I expect Red Rules are safer. They usually are. Here we go then! Rifle to the shoulder, adjust the crosshairs, stare down the barrel, don’t dare breathe, don’t move a muscle and—

Violet Wild is me. Just a kid with hair the color of raisins and eyes the color of grape jelly, living the life glasstastic in a four-bedroom wine bottle on the east end of Plum Pudding, the only electrified city in the Country of Purple. Bottle architecture was hotter than fried gold back then—and when the sunset slung itself against all those bright glass doors the bluffs just turned into a glitterbomb firework and everyone went staggering home with lavender light stuck to their coats. I got myself born like everybody else in P-Town: Mummery wrote a perfect sentence, so perfect and beautiful and fabulously punctuated that when she finished it, there was a baby floating in the ink pot and that was that. You have to be careful what you write in Plum Pudding. An accidentally glorious grocery list could net you twins. For this reason, the most famous novel in the Country of Purple begins: It is a truth universally acknowledged, umbrella grouchy eggs. I guess the author had too much to worry about already.

That was about the last perfect thing anybody did concerning myself. Oh, it was a fabulously punctuated life I had—Mums was a Clarinaut, Papo was a Nowboy, and you never saw a house more like a toybox than the bottle at 15 Portwine Place, chock full of gadgets and nonsense from parts unknown, art that came down off the walls for breakfast, visits from the Ordinary Emperor, and on some precious nights, gorgeous people in lavender suits and sweet potato ice cream gowns giggling through mouthfuls of mulberry schnapps over how much tastier were Orange Country cocktails and how much more belligerent were Green Country cockatiels. We had piles of carousel horse steaks and mugs of foamy creme de violette on our wide glass table every night. Trouble was, Mums was a Clarinaut and Papa was a Nowboy, so I mostly ate and drank it on my lonesome, or with the Sacred Sparrowbone Mask of the Incarnadine Fisherwomen and the watercolor unicorns from Still Life with Banana Tree, Unicorns, and Murdered Tuba, who came down off the living room wall some mornings in hopes of coffee and cereal with marshmallows. Mummery brought them back from her expeditions, landing her crystal clarinet, the good ship Eggplant, in the garden in a shower of prismy bubbles, her long arms full of poison darts, portraiture, explosives that look exactly like tea kettles and lollipops that look exactly like explosives. And then she’d take off again, with a sort of confused-confounded glance down at me, as though every time she came home, it was a shock to remember that I’d ever been born.

“You could ask to go with her, you know,” said the Sacred Sparrowbone Mask of the Incarnadine Fisherwomen once, tipping the spiral-swirl of her carved mouth toward a bowl of bruise-black coffee, careful to keep its scruff of bloodgull feathers combed back and out of the way.

“We agree,” piped up the watercolor unicorns, nosing at a pillowcase I’d filled with marshmallow cereal for them. “You could be her First Mate, see the crass and colorful world by clarinet. It’s romantic.”

“You think everything’s romantic,” I sighed. Watercolor unicorns have hearts like soap operas that never end, and when they gallop it looks like crying. “But it wouldn’t be. It would be like traveling with a snowman who keeps looking at you like you’re a lit torch.”

So I guess it’s no surprise I went out to the herds with Papo as soon as I could. I could ride a pony by the time I got a handle on finger painting—great jeweled beasts escaped from some primeval carousel beyond the walls of time. There’s a horn stuck all the way through them, bone or antler or both, and they leap across the Past Perfect Plains on it like a sharp white foot, leaving holes in the earth like ellipses. They’re vicious and wily and they bite like it’s their one passion in life, but they’re the only horses strong and fast enough to ride down the present just as it’s becoming the future and lasso it down. And in the Country of Purple, the minutes and hours of present-future-happening look an awful lot like overgrown pregnant six-legged mauve squirrels. They’re pregnant all the time, but they never give birth, on account of how they’re pregnant with tomorrow and a year from now and alternate universes where everyone is half-bat. When a squirrel comes to term, she just winks out like a squashed cigarette. That’s the Nowboy life. Saddle up with the sun and bring in tomorrow’s herd—or next week’s or next decade’s. If we didn’t, those nasty little rodents would run wild all over the place. Plays would close three years before they open, Wednesdays would go on strike, and a century of Halloweens would happen all at once during one poor bedraggled lunch break. It’s hard, dusty work, but Papo always says if you don’t ride the present like the devil it’ll get right away from you because it’s a feral little creature with a terrible personality and no natural predators.

So that’s who I was before the six-legged squirrels of the present turned around and spat in my face. I was called Violet and I lived in a purple world and I had ardors for my Papo, my magenta pony Stopwatch even though he bit me several times and once semi-fatally, a bone mask, and a watercolor painting. But I only loved a boy named Orchid Harm, who I haven’t mentioned yet because when everything ever is about one thing, sometimes it’s hard to name it. But let’s be plain: I don’t know what love is anymore, either. In the Red Country, when you say you love someone, it means you need them. You desire them. You look after them and yearn achingly for them when they’re away down at the shops. But in the Country of Purple, when you say you love someone, it means you killed them. For a long time, that’s what I thought it meant everywhere.

I only ever had one friend who was a person. His name was Orchid Harm. He could read faster than anyone I ever met and he kissed as fast as reading. He had hair the color of beetroot and eyes the color of mangosteen and he was a Sunslinger like his Papo before him. They caught sunshine in buckets all over Plum Pudding, mixed it with sugar and lorikeet eggs and fermented it into something not even a little bit legal. Orchid had nothing to do all day while the sun dripped down into his stills. He used to strap on a wash-basket full of books and shimmy up onto the roof of the opera house, which is actually a giantess’s skull with moss and tourmalines living all over it, scoot down into the curve of the left eye socket, and read seven books before twilight. No more, no less. He liked anything that came in sevens. I only came in ones, but he liked me anyway.

We met when his parents came to our bottle all covered in glitter and the smell of excitingly dodgy money to drink Mummery’s schnapps and listen to Papo’s Nowboy songs played on a real zanfona box with a squirrel-leg handle. It was a marquee night in Mummery’s career—the Ordinary Emperor had promised to come, he who tells all our lives which way to run. Everyone kept peering at brandy snifters, tea kettles, fire pokers, bracelets, books on our high glass shelves. When—and where—would the Little Man make his entrance? Oh, Mauve, do you remember, when he came to our to-do, he was my wife’s left-hand glove, the one she’d lost in the chaise cushions months ago!

And then a jar of dried pasta grew a face and said: “What a pleasure it is to see so many of my most illustrious subject gathered all together in this fine home,” but I didn’t care because I was seven.

You see, the Ordinary Emperor can be anything he likes, as long as it’s nothing you’d expect an Emperor to ever want to be. At any moment, anything you own could turn into the Emperor and he’d know everything you’d ever done with it—every mirror you’d ever hung and then cried in because you hated your own face, or candle you ever lit because you were up late doing something dastard, or worse, or better. It’s unsettling and that’s a fact.

Orchid was only little and so was I. While Mums cooed over the Emperor of Dried Pasta, I sat with my knees up by the hearth, feeding escargot to one of the watercolor unicorns. They can’t get enough of escargot, even though it gives them horrible runny creamsicle-shits.  This is the first thing Orchid ever said to me:

“I like your unicorn. Pink and green feel good on my eyes. I think I know who painted it but I don’t want you to think I’m a know-it-all so I won’t say even though I really want to say because I read a whole book about her and knowing things is nicer when somebody else knows you know them.”

“I call her Jellyfish even though that’s not her name. You can pet her but you have to let her smell your hand first. You can say who painted it if you want. Mums told me when she brought it home from Yellow Country, but I forgot.” I didn’t forget. I never got the hang of forgetting things the way other people do.

Orchid let Jellyfish snuffle his palm with her runny rosy nose.

“Do you have snails?” the watercolor unicorn asked. “They’re very romantic.”

Orchid didn’t, but he had a glass of blackberry champagne because his parents let him drink what they drank and eat what they ate and read what they read and do what they did, which I thought was the best thing I had ever heard. Jellyfish slurped it up.

“A lady named Ochreous Wince painted me and the tuba and the banana tree and all my brothers and sisters about a hundred years ago, if you want to know. She was a drunk and she had a lot of dogs,” Jellyfish sniffed when she was done, and jumped back up into her frame in a puff of rosewater smoke.

“Show me someplace that your parents don’t know about,” said Orchid. I took him to my room and made him crawl under my bed. It was stuffy and close down there, and I’m not very tidy. Orchid waited. He was good at waiting. I rolled over and pointed to the underside of my bed. On one of the slats I’d painted a single stripe of gold paint.

“Where?” he breathed. He put his hand on it. I put my hand on his.

“I stole it from Mummery’s ship when she was busy being given the key to the city.”

“She already lives here.”

“I know.”

After that, Orchid started going out with Papo and me sometimes, out beyond the city walls and onto the dry, flat Past Perfect Plains where the thousand squirrels that are every future and present and past scrabbled and screamed and thrashed their fluffy tails in the air. I shouldn’t have let him, but knowing things is nicer when somebody else knows you know them. By the time the worst thing in the world happened, Orchid Harm could play Bury Me on the Prairie with a Squirrel in my Fist on the zanfona box as well as Papo or me. He helped a blackberry-colored mare named Early-to-Tea get born and she followed him around like a lovesick tiger, biting his shoulders and hopping in circles until he gave up and learned to ride her.

I don’t want to say this part. I wish this were the kind of story that’s a blue dinosaur munching up blueberries with a brain in its head and a brain in its tail so it never forgets how big it is. But I have to or the rest of it won’t make sense. Okay, calm down, I’m doing it. Rifle up.

The day of the worst thing in the world was long and hot and bright, packed so full of summer autumn seeped out through the stitches. We’d ridden out further than usual—the ponies ran like they had thorns in their bellies and the stupid squirrels kept going at each other like mad, whacking their purple heads together and tail-wrestling and spitting paradoxes through clenched teeth. I wanted to give them some real space, something fresh to graze on. Maybe if they ate enough they’d just lay down in the heat and hold their little bellies in their paws and concentrate on breathing like any sane animal. Papo stayed behind to see to a doe mewling and foaming at the mouth, trying to pass a chronology stone. She kept coughing up chunks of the Ordinary Emperor’s profligate youth, his wartime speeches and night terrors echoing out of her rodent-mouth across the prairie.

We rode so far, Orchid and me, bouncing across the cracked purple desert on Stopwatch and Early-to-Tea, that we couldn’t even see the lights of Plum Pudding anymore, couldn’t see anything but the plains spreading out like an inkstain. That far into the wilds, the world wasn’t really purple anymore. It turned to indigo, the dark, windy borderlands where the desert looks like an ocean and the twisted-up trees are the color of lightning.  And then, just when I was about to tell Orchid how much I liked the shadow of his cheekbones by indigo light, the Blue Country happened, right in front of us. That’s the only way I can say it where it seems right to me. I’d never seen a border before. Somehow I always thought there would be a wall, or guards with spears and pom-poms on their shoes, or at least a sign. But it was just a line in the land, and on this side everything was purple and on that side everything was blue. The earth was still thirsty and spidered up with fine cracks like a soft boiled egg just before you stick your spoon in, but instead of the deep indigo night-steppe or the bright purple pampas, long aquamarine salt flats stretched out before us, speckled with blueberry brambles and sapphire tumbleweeds and skittering blue crabs. The Blue Country smelled like hot corn and cold snow. All the mauve time-squirrels skidded up short, sniffing the blue-indigo line suspiciously.

We let Stopwatch and Early-to-Tea bounce off after the crabs. The carousel ponies roared joyfully and hopped to it, skewering the cerulean crustacean shells with their bone poles, each gnawing the meat and claws off the other’s spike. The sun caromed off the gems on their rump. Orchid and I just watched the blue.

“Didn’t you ever want to see this, Violet? Go to all other places that exist in the universe, like your Mummery?” he said at last. “Didn’t you ever watch her clarinet take off and feel like you’d die if you didn’t see what she saw? I feel like I’ll die if I don’t see something new. Something better than sunshine in a bucket.”

Off in the distance, I could see a pack of stories slurping at a watering hole, their long spine-plates standing against the setting sun like broken fences.

“Do you want to know a secret?” I said. I didn’t wait for him to answer. Orchid always wanted to know secrets. “I dream in gold. When I’m asleep I don’t even know what purple is. And one time I actually packed a suitcase and went to the train station and bought a ticket to the Yellow Country with money I got from selling all my chess sets. But when I got there and the conductor was showing me to my seat I just knew how proud Mums would be. I could see her stupid face telling her friends about her daughter running off on an adventure. Darling, the plum doesn’t fall far from the tree, don’t you know? Violet’s just like a little photograph of me, don’t you think? Well, the point is: fuck her, I guess.”

“You were going to go without me?”

And my guts were full of shame, because I hadn’t even thought of him that day, not when I put on my stockings or my hat, not when I marched into a taxi and told him to take me to Heliotrope Station, not when I bought my ticket for one. I just wanted to go. Which meant I was a little photograph of her, after all. I kissed him, to make it better. We liked kissing. We’d discovered it together.  We’d discussed it and we were fairly certain no one in the world did it as well as we did. When Orchid and me kissed, we always knew what the other was thinking, and just then we knew that the other was thinking that we had two horses and could go now, right now, across the border and through the crabs and blueberries and stories and hot corn air. We’d read in our books, curled up together, holding hands and feet, in the eye socket of the opera house, that all the fish in the Blue Country could talk, and all the people had eyes the color of peacock feathers, and you could make babies by singing an aria so perfectly that when you were done, there would be a kid in the sheet music, and that would be that, so The Cyan Sigh can never be performed on-key unless the soprano is ready for the responsibility. And in the Blue Country, all the cities were electrified, just like us.

We were happy and we were going to run away together. So the squirrels ate him.

Orchid and I jumped over the border like a broomstick and when our feet came down the squirrels screeched and rushed forward, biting our heels, slashing our legs with their six clawed feet, spitting bile in our faces. Well, I thought it was our faces, our heels, our legs. I thought they were gunning for both of us. But it was Orchid they wanted. The squirrels slashed open his ankles so he’d fall down to their level, and then they bit off his fingers. I tried to pull and kick them off but there were so many, and you can’t kill a plains-squirrel. You just can’t. You might stab the rest of your life. You might break a half-bat universe’s neck. You might end the whole world. I lay over Orchid so they couldn’t get to him but all that meant was they dug out one of my kidneys and I was holding him when they chewed out his throat and I kissed him because when we kissed we always knew what the other was thinking and I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

2: Blue

Papo never said anything. Neither did I. Jellyfish and the other watercolor unicorns each cut off a bit of their tails and stuck them together to make a watercolor orchid in the bottom left corner of the painting. It looked like a five-year-old with a head injury drew it with her feet and it ruined the whole composition. Orcheous Wince would have sicced her dogs on it. But no matter how Mummery fumed, they wouldn’t put their tails back where they belonged. The Sacred Sparrowbone Mask of the Incarnadine Fisherwomen just said: “I like being a mask better than I’d like being a face, I think. But if you want, you can put me on and I’ll be your face if you don’t want anyone to see what you look like on the inside right now. Because everyone can see.”

Orchid’s father gave me a creme-pot full of sunslung booze. I went up to the eye socket of the opera house and drank and drank but the pot never seemed to dry up. Good. Everything had a shine on it when I drank the sun. Everything had a heart that only I could see. Everything tasted like Orchid Harm, because he always tasted like the whole of the sun.

Once, I rode out on Stopwatch across the indigo borderlands again, up to the line in the earth where it all goes blue. I could see, I thought I could see, the haze of cornflower light over Lizard Tongue, the city that started as a wedding two hundred years ago and the party just never stopped. Stopwatch turned his big magenta head around and bit my hand—but softly. Hardly a bite at all.

I looked down. All the squirrels, pregnant with futures and purple with the present, thousands of them, stood on their hind legs around my pony’s spike, staring up at me in silence like the death of time.

The day the rest of it happened, the squirrels were particularly depraved. I caught three shredding each other’s bellies to ribbons behind a sun-broiled rock, blood and fur and yesterdays everywhere. I tried to pull them apart but I didn’t try very hard because I never did anymore. They all died anyway, and I got long scratches all up and down my arms for my trouble. I’d have to go and get an inoculation. Half of them are rabid and the other half are lousy with regret. I looked at my arms, already starting to scab up. I am a champion coagulator. All the way home I picked them open again and again. So I didn’t notice anyone following me back into P-Town, up through the heights and the sunset on the wine bottle houses, through the narrow lilac streets while the plummy streetlamps came on one at a time. I was almost home before I heard the other footsteps. The bells of St. Murex bonged out their lonely moans and I could almost hear Mummery’s voice, rich as soup, laughing at her own jokes by the glass hearth. But I did hear, finally, a sound, a such-soft sound, like a girl’s hair falling, as it’s cut, onto a floor of ice. I turned around and saw a funny little beastie behind me, staring at me with clear lantern-fish eyes.

The thing looked some fair bit like a woolly mammoth, if a mammoth could shrink down to the size of a curly wolfhound, with long indigo fur that faded into pale, pale lavender, almost white, over its four feet and the tip of its trunk, which curled up into the shape of a question mark. But on either side, where a mammoth would have flanks and ribs and the bulge of its elephant belly, my creeper had cabinet doors, locked tight, the color of dark cabbages with neat white trim and silver hinges. I looked at my sorrow and it looked at me. Our dark eyes were the same eyes, and that’s how I knew it was mine.

“I love you,” it said.

But Mummery said: “Don’t you dare let that thing in the house.” She was home for once, so she thought she could make rules. “It’s filthy; I won’t have it. Look how it’s upsetting the unicorns!” The poor things were snorting and stampeding terribly in their frame, squashing watercolor bananas as they tumbled off the watercolor tree.

“Let it sleep in the garden, Mauve. Come back to me,” said a box of matchsticks, for that night Mums was busy that night, being very important and desirable company. She was entertaining the Ordinary Emperor alone. I peered over into the box—every matchstick was carved in the shape of a tiny man with a shock of blue sulfuric hair that would strike on any surface. When he was here last month, the Ordinary Emperor was our downstairs hammer. I think the Ordinary Emperor wanted to seduce my mother. He showed up a lot during the mating season when Papo slept out on the range.

“What on earth is it?” sniffed Mummery, lifting a flute of mulberry schnapps to her lips as though nobody had ever died in the history of the world.

“Light me, my darling,” cried the Ordinary Emperor, and she did, striking his head on the mantle and bringing him in close to the tiny mammoth’s face. It didn’t blink or cringe away, even though it had a burning monarch and a great dumb Mummery-face right up against its trunk.

“Why, it’s a sorrow,” the Ordinary Emperor whistled. “I thought they were extinct. I told them to be extinct ages ago. Naughty Nellies. Do you know, in the Red Country, sorrow means grief and pain and horror and loss? It’s a decadent place. Everything tastes like cranberries, even the roast beef.”

That was the first thing the Ordinary Emperor ever said to me alone. Mums knew very well what sorrow meant where the sun sets red. Then he said a second thing:

“You are more beautiful than your mother.”

That’s the kind of Emperor the Matchstick Man is, in seven words. But Mummery fell for it and glowered at me with her great famous moonshadow eyes.

But my sorrow was not extinct. My sorrow was hungry. I put it out in the garden and locked the fence. I filled an agate bowl with the mushrooms we grow on the carcass of a jacaranda tree that used to grow by the kitchen window and water from our private well. I meant to leave it to its dinner, but for whatever reason my body ever decides to do things, I sat down with it instead, in the shadow of Mummery’s crystal clarinet, parked between the roses and the lobelias. The breeze made soft, half-melodic notes as it blew over the Eggplant’s portholes. A few iridescent fuel-bubbles popped free of the bell.

My sorrow ate so daintily, picking up each lacecap mushroom with its trunk, turning it around twice, and placing it on its outstretched ultraviolet tongue. It couldn’t get its mouth in the right place to drink. I cupped my hands and dipped them into the clear water and held them up to my sorrow. Its tongue slipped against my palms three times as it lapped. I stroked my sorrow’s fur and we watched the garden wall come alive with moonflowers opening like pale happy mouths in the night wind off of the Cutglass River. My sorrow was soft as fish frills. I didn’t want to hurt its pride by looking, so I decided she was a girl, like me.

“I love you,” my sorrow said, and she put her soft mouth over my ravaged arms. She opened the wounds again with her tongue and licked up the purple blood that seeped out of the depths of me. I kept stroking her spine and the warm wood of the cabinet doors in her belly. I pulled gently at their handles, but they would not open.

“It’s ok if you love me,” I whispered. “I forgive you.”

But she didn’t love me, not then, or not enough. I woke up in the morning in my own bed. My sorrow slept curled into the curve of my sleep. When she snored it sounded like the river-wind blowing over my mother’s ship. I tried to get up. But the floor of my bedroom was covered in sleeping squirrels, a mauve blanket of a hundred unhappened futures. When I put my bare feet on the floor, they scattered like buckshot.

I came downstairs reeking of sorrowmusk and futureshit. Mummery was already gone; Papo had never come home. Instead of anyone who lived with me, a stranger stood in our kitchen, fixing himself coffee. He was short but very slim and handsome, shaven, with brilliant hair of every color, even green, even burgundy, even gold, tied back with one of my velvet ribbons. He wore a doublet and hose like an actor or a lawyer, and when he turned to search for the cream, I could see a beautiful chest peeking out from beneath an apricot silk shirt. The unfamiliar colors of him made my eyes throb, painfully, then hungrily, starving for his emerald, his orange, his cobalt, even his brown and black. His gold. The stranger noticed me suddenly, fixing his eyes, the same shocking spatter of all possible colors as his hair, on my face.

“You’re naked,” I said before I could remember to be polite. I don’t know how I knew it, but I did. I had caught the Ordinary Emperor naked, unhidden in any oddjob object, the morning after he’d probably ridden Mummery like Stopwatch.

One imperial eyebrow lifted in amusement.

“So are you,” he said.

I don’t sleep with clothes on. I don’t see why I should strangle myself in a nightdress just so my dreams won’t see my tits. I think his majesty expected me to blush and cover myself with my hands, but I didn’t care. If Orchid could never see my skin again, what did it matter who else did? So we stood there, looking at each other like stories at a watering hole. The Ordinary Emperor had an expression on that only people like Mummery understand, the kind of unplain stare that carries a hundred footnotes to its desire.

The king blinked first. He vanished from the kitchen and became our chandelier. Every teardrop-shaped jewel was an eye, every lightbulb was a mouth. I looked up at the blaze of him and drank his coffee. He took it sweet, mostly cream and honey, with only a lash of coffee hiding somewhere in the thick of it.

“Defiant girl, who raised you?” hissed the Sacred Sparrowbone Mask of the Incarnadine Fisherwomen.

“You know who,” I snorted, and even the chandelier laughed.

“Good morning, Violet,” the lightbulbs said, flashing blue, garnet, lime green with each word. “If you give me your sorrow, I shall see it safely executed. They are pests, like milkweed or uncles. You are far too young and lovely to have a boil like that leaking all over your face.”

I looked down. My sorrow had followed me without the smallest sound, and sat on her haunches beside my feet, staring up at me with those deepwater eyes. I held out the Emperor’s coffee cup so she could sip.

“Do you really know everything that happens in all your countries?” I asked him. There really is nothing like a man hopping on top of your mother to make him seem altogether less frightening and a little pitiful.

“I don’t know it all at once. But if I want to know it, I can lean toward it and it will lean toward me and then I know it better than you know your favorite lullaby.” The Ordinary Emperor burned so brightly in our chandelier. Light bloomed out of the crystals, hot, dappled, harlequin light, pouring down onto my skin, turning me all those colors, all his spun-sugar patchwork. I didn’t like it. His light on me felt like hands. It burned me; it clutched me, it petted me like a cat. I loved it. I was drowning in my dream of gold. My bones creaked for more. I wanted to wash it off forever.

I closed my eyes. I could still see the prisms of the Emperor. “What does death mean in the Red Country?” I whispered.

“It is a kind of dress with a long train that trails behind it and a neckline that plunges to the navel. Death is the color of garnets and is very hard to dance in.” The eyes in my chandelier looked kind. We have a dress like that, too. It is the color of hyacinths and it is called need. “I know what you’re asking, darling. And if you go to the Red Country you may find Orchid laughing there and wearing a red dress. It is possible. The dead here often go there, to Incarnadine, where the fisherwomen punt along the Rubicund, fishing for hope. The Red Country is not for you, Violet. The dead are very exclusive.”

And then I said it, to the king of everything, the hope buried under the concrete at the bottom of me: “Doesn’t it seem to you that a body eaten by the present becoming the future shouldn’t really be dead? Shouldn’t he just be waiting for me in tomorrow?”

“That I cannot tell you. It doesn’t make much sense to me, though. Eaten is eaten. Your pampas squirrels are not my subjects. They are not my countries. They are time, and time eats everything but listens to no one. The digestive systems of squirrels are unreliable at best. I know it is painful to hear, but time devours all love affairs. It is unavoidable. The Red Country is so much larger than the others. And you, Violet Wild, you specifically, do not have rights of passage through any of my nations. Stay put and do as your Mummery tells you. You are such a trial to her, you know.”

The Ordinary Emperor snuffed abruptly out and the wine bottle went dark. The watercolor unicorns whinnied fearfully. The Sacred Sparrowbone Mask of the Incarnadine Fisherwomen turned its face to the wall. In the shallow cup of her other side, a last mauve squirrel hid away the great exodus from my bedroom. She held her tail up over her little face and whispered:

“I won’t say even though I really want to say.”

My sorrow tugged my fingers with her trunk. “I love you,” she said again, and this time I shivered. I believed her, and I did not live in the Red Country where love means longing. “If you let me, I can be so big.”

My sorrow twisted her trunk around her own neck and squeezed. She grew like a wetness spreading through cloth. Taller than me, and then taller than the cabinets, and then taller than the chandelier. She lowered her purple trunk to me like a ladder.

I don’t know what stories are anymore. I don’t know how fast sorrow can move and I don’t know how squirrels work. But I am wearing my best need and a bone face over mine so no one can see what my insides look like. I can see already the blue crabs waving their claws to the blue sky, I can see the lights of Lizard Tongue and hear the wedding bells playing their millionth song. I am going on the back of my sorrow, further than Mummery ever did, to a place where love is love, stories have ends, and death is a red dress.

A stream of rabid, pregnant, time-squirrels races after me. I hope the crabs get them all.

About the Author

Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus and Hugo awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with her partner and several alarmingly large beasts. Her newest adult novel, Radiance, will be published by Tor Books in August.

An Exile of the Heart

Jay Lake

What do you want, you little handgrips? I ain’t told you enough stories yet? There’s school enough in the comps and nets to make you all perfessers of some damned thing or another.

But yeah. You’re right. History’s a lie. Well, maybe not so much a lie as one or another person’s way of looking at the truth. Anybody tells you they ain’t got no agenda, they’re just bending the lines to look straight from their chair. Best advice I got is don’t believe nothing you ever get told.

But yeah, I’ll tell you this one story. It kind of accounts for all the rest, if you know what I mean. And if you don’t know what I mean, well, listen up. Maybe you will. Once I’m done.

Cleone Station was old. It rode the L1 point between Earth and Luna, millions of tons of refined regolith and boosted homeworld exotics hammered into a space station with sufficient power and majesty to control high orbit and the Earth-Luna trade. It spun as all stations must, maintaining sufficient semblance of gravity for human survival. Pregnancy, childbirth, healing and old age all required gee force. No amount of gengineering by the Biomistresses of the great stations could circumvent that inescapable evolutionary fact.

Trieste Maria Kaolung Delgado-Richter de Cleone, Heiress-Apparent of Cleone Station and sole child of her mother Stationmistress Grace, raced through the ten percent ring. She liked it down near the core where few people bothered to go. Her tutor Gouvernaile had been pestering her for an analysis of Marshall Kutuzov’s tactics at Borodino, and she simply wasn’t interested.

Exercising her fighting skills was a lot more fun than focusing on history. Her arms and legs had finally grown into themselves since she’d turned sixteen. Trieste could move for the sheer joy of the machine her body was becoming.

She’d set herself to racing along the eleven-hundred meter axis of Cleone in a sort of real-world obstacle course. Her route was circuitous enough to send her through most of the different structures the station’s engineering had to offer.

Gouvernaile straggled after her far behind. Years in low gravity had slowed him too much. Guilt briefly panged Trieste, then there was a confluence of cold air return ducts to dive between.

She tumbled out moments later in the blue zone near the vacuum-rated pressure doors of frame one hundred and forty. The main companionway was two meters wide and tall there, rated for equipment movement. Plenty of room of bounce and roll. Trieste checked her wrist strip and grinned—she was almost six seconds ahead of her best time for the route.

Someone grabbed her arm.

Trieste’s own momentum swung her in a short, sharp arc against the bulkhead. She slammed hard into the exposed metal. A big body pushed against her, breath hot against her ear.

“Think you’re cute, do you?”

Shocked, at first Trieste did not fight back. The idea that anyone on Cleone would touch her without permission was so far beyond comprehension—

Intruder!

A hand pushed upward between her body and the bulkhead, grabbing for her breast. Trieste had never been so glad for her small, boyish chest as at that moment.

“The old man won’t help you now,” growled her attacker.

Trieste found her training and jammed her right elbow into her attacker’s ribs. She pushed off with his pained recoil, kicking off from the bulkhead to bounce away from him. Her left hand bent at his fingers until his grip broke. He held on longer than she’d intended, and Trieste found herself in the middle of the wide corridor moving with agonizing slowness in the reduced gravity.

Then she got a good look at her attacker. Overmuscled and already going to fat, with the bristly hair of someone too long out of a pressure suit. Green eyes, flat face, dirty gold hair.

Recognition set it even here, badly out of context. It was her step-father.

“Philip?”

“Shouldn’t have seen my face, girlie,” he said, drawing a needle-gun. The weapon was essentially a tight-spread high velocity variant of the common flechette pistol. Still not powerful enough to punch through vacuum-rated bulkheads, it fired a narrow stream of needles at short distances that were excellent at punching through human bodies.

The weapon of a murderer. Or an assassin.

Her feet found the floor. The friction-textured surface gave Trieste purchase. She watched Philip’s eyes, not his weapon. The needler would fire where he was looking.

Philip was looking past her.

Trieste dropped and rolled toward him, pushing with the sinuous flex required for low-gee combat. She aimed for his knees—the weakest critical joint.

“Hold!” shouted Gouvernaile.

Her tutor might have been too damned old for a bodyguard, but he’d once commanded troops in open air down the gravity well. His voice carried even through her rage. She went flat, twisting until she could watch both directions along the companionway with only slight movements of her head.

Gouvernaile had his own flechette pistol braced in two hands and was advancing on Philip in a stable low-gee lope. “Weapon down, Consort,” her tutor said in a quieter version of that same commanding voice.

Trieste shifted her gaze. Philip was backing, bouncing too high with each step. The needler was in his hand but she could see fear in his eyes. “A mistake, Gouvernaile. Nothing more than a game gone wrong.”

She watched Philip’s face. That she didn’t try to meet Gouvernaile’s eye would tell the old man everything he needed to know.

“You cannot kill us both.” Gouvernaile sounded almost like he was tutoring right then, interested in how his student would work their way out of a particularly difficult problem. “But you cannot afford to have us carry this tale to the Stationmistress or the senior crew.”

“Keep your mouths shut, nothing’ll happen to either of you,” Philip answered. The quaver in his voice gave the lie to his words.

Then he turned and ran, still bouncing too high in the ten percent gravity. Trieste followed her step-father’s path until he vanished beyond the hatch at frame one forty-five.

“No troubles, I trust,” said Gouvernaile behind her.

“I wish to speak to my mother.”

“That might be wise.”

Trieste stood at attention in station ops up on the seventy percent ring. The Stationmistress and two of her senior crew stared back at Trieste while the dozen or so techs on duty kept their heads down and their ears open. Gouvernaile waited close by with his hand upon the worn butt of his flechette pistol.

“I will not hear you speak against your father so.” The Stationmistress’ voice was as cold as a cargo airlock. Grace had been a famous beauty in her youth, the toast of New York, Shanghai and Luna City before marrying into orbital royalty. Years in the partial-gee of spinning habitats had not aged her well. In the face of Trieste’s persistent emotional awkwardness and lack of interest in high culture, her mother’s hopes for a new era of social triumph had faded along with her beauty.

Trieste would rather have her fingers broken fighting in the low-gee dojo than attend any party ever thrown.

“My father is lost to us,” Trieste told her mother. “The man you married last year tried to lay his hands on me. When I refused him, he tried to kill me.”

“She speaks truly, Stationmistress,” echoed Gouvernaile.

Grace’s glare at the old man etched her words with acid. “I have not yet asked for the testimony of servants.” She returned her gaze to Trieste. “I rule here, daughter. Justice on Cleone belongs to me and me alone. That you should carry tales against the Consort Philip is a serious offense to my dignity.”

One her senior crew, Doctor Morgenthau, stirred uncomfortably.

“Assault upon the person of your heiress-apparent is a serious offense to your dignity. Mother.”

Grace’s eyes narrowed as she made a showy sigh. “You are at an impossible age. I herewith banish you from Cleone Station for a year and day. Perhaps your Uncle Marcus will grant you asylum on Truro Station.”

“I . . . ” Trieste had not imagined her life would come to this, so suddenly. Tears stung her eyes as she fought to keep them from her cheeks. She knelt on the deck. “Mother, I—”

Grace interrupted her. “And take your servant with you. He has outlived his usefulness here on Cleone.” The Stationmistress turned away from her daughter and drew her advisors into close conversation.

Trieste stayed kneeling, staring at the worn carpet until Gouvernaile tugged her elbow. “Come away with me now, mistress.”

“We’re staying locked down and out of trouble, damn it.” Gouvernaile glared at the security feeds floating in projected windows before his face. Trieste watched in turn with fond worry as the old man ran fingers through his thinning hair, then flicked away a status display from the insubstantial array. “Your mother will never forgive me,” her tutor-bodyguard continued.

Trieste stretched on the tiny bunk, knees bent to fit herself in. Her Uncle Marcus being the Truro Stationmaster, Trieste and Gouvernaile had their own cabin complete with the supreme luxury of not being required to split the living space with alternate-shift hotbunkers.

“Gouve, this isn’t right.” They had fled Cleone Station only to land in a greater security crisis. She practically quivered with frustration. “I’m certified for stationside and zero-gee combat. Holing up in this coffin waiting to see if Uncle Marcus’s security can trump Brigante’s is just nuts. We should be doing something.”

Gouvernaile recascaded his data windows. “What we should be doing is staying alive. Brigante has sent someone who can slip the security nets like a lunar ice-jumper at middark. That assassin is either wired from here to Hellas Basin, or they’re a God-damn psychic. You’re a lot more use as a live heir to Cleone’s Stationmistress than as a dead redshirt.”

An audible alarm chittered with a low fractal noise. “What’s—” Trieste began as the cabin lights flickered out. Their room became space-quiet, not even the click-wheeze of emergency blowers. “That’s torn it,” she whispered as she slipped out of the bunk. “I’m going to run this guy down.”

“Tri,” said Gouvernaile quietly. He sighed. “I can’t stop you from going out there. But be careful. This bastard’s invisible. Maybe in every sense of the word.”

“Mmm.” Working by feel, Trieste slid her combat knife from her ready bag, dialed it up to maximum sharpness, grabbed the crash bars by the cabin hatch and scrambled up the wall so she was at the top of the doorway. Muscles strained against Truro’s ought point eight gee pull as Trieste reached down and yanked the panic lever. The hatch groaned open to the hiss of the reserve pressure cylinder.

The corridor was as dark and silent as the cabin. Stealth lost in the noise of the opened hatch, Trieste dropped and spun so her body exited well above the level of an ordinary person’s stride. Nothing moved outside, no combat trip-sensors flashed.

She struck the opposite wall of the corridor, tucked into a roll, and found her footing three meters away from her own cabin. The darkness remained still as Trieste wished mightily for optic enhancements.

Was an invisible man any harder to hunt in the dark?

Trieste scuttled toward the bulkhead dividing this frame of Truro Station from the next frame spinward. She fetched up next to the sealed vacuum door. It must have closed with the power failure. Trieste popped open the control panel. The dim bioluminescence of the unpowered failsafe readouts indicated both pressure and power in the next frame.

Wrong way, she thought.

She turned, bouncing to the other side of the corridor as a faint breeze touched her cheek. Behind her, something rattled against the bulkhead like pebbles in a sample case. Flechettes, coming from up the corridor. In her current position she was good as dead, so she sprinted antispinward toward the shooter with her head tucked down and combat knife held forward—a meat-powered missile.

The next round of flechettes tore into Trieste’s left arm, shoulder and chest, enough to hurt like hell but not to stop her run. “Damn,” she hissed, a bad loss of control as her voice would give another aiming point. The invisible man had to be dead ahead in order to shoot just off-center to Trieste’s body in the narrow corridor. If the attacker had been offset to the left, the flechettes would have struck closer to Trieste’s center of mass. And the bastard had to be within the station’s curvature.

Imagining her opponent stepped to one side to avoid her plunging charge, Trieste swerved sharply to her own left, back across the corridor. Another flight of flechettes breezed past her face as the tip of her combat knife caught on something with a shower of blue sparks. A man-shaped figured flared blue in the darkness, limned in bright netting. Then the fight was close and personal.

Trieste pushed the knife, twisting the blade and turning her body to slam into the enemy’s right side. Long hours of training blended with sharp fear to produce her tactics. She desperately wanted to pin the flechette pistol against the assassin’s body. She had to keep the weapon from gutting her where she stood. As she slammed to the left, the combat knife snagged on something stiff, snapping the blade tip. Then Trieste found the smooth ceramic bell of the flechette muzzle at her throat.

The two of them paused like lovers just before climax. The enemy’s breath was hot on Trieste’s cheek, the muzzle chilly against her throat. Trieste in turn hugged her enemy with her left arm, knife in her right hand laid flat against the other’s chest. A few blue sparks erupted from the enemy’s wounded shoulder. An electronic suit, Trieste realized in a sudden burst of irrelevancy, stealthy to oblivious station sensors. She slid the broken knife upward toward the other’s throat.

“Trieste, exiled heiress of Cleone Station,” said the enemy in a quiet voice. He was male. “You are not my quarry.”

“Still you sought my life,” whispered Trieste. She continued to move the knife as slowly as she could.

“You exited your cabin into my fire zone. Now drop your knife and step away, and I will not kill you.”

“But you . . . ” Trieste began with a whine even as she arched her spine back as far as she could to bring her head away from the flechette muzzle. She grabbing at the enemy’s weapon with her wounded left hand while stabbing upward with the combat knife.

Flechettes rattled against the ceiling to ricochet along the corridor. The enemy groaned and slid down Trieste’s knife. His lifeblood poured across her arm. The corridor lights flickered back on to show a matching pool of blood leaking from the open hatch of the cabin where she had left Gouvernaile behind.

Trieste dropped her kill and leapt for her cabin. The sight of Gouvernaile’s shredded face and chest sucked the air from lungs. She stood balanced on the edge of that airless scream of grief and rage until it seemed her heart would burst.

I know there ain’t been no kissing yet, but listen up. You cop those flechettes infected Trieste with a virus slotted spot-on for her Uncle Marcus, right? Trieste’s genome was tight enough to her Uncle’s to crash her immune system but loose enough not to de-rez on the spot.

Marcus shut down that war between Truro and Brigante, bargaining hard for the right proper treatment for his niece. Along with a bunch of other concessions he had to give himself up to a marriage alliance to buy Trieste’s life back. You might reckon both sides wanted an excuse to stop killing each other. She was a good one.

Cleone’s heiress, she was packed up and shipped off to Brigante Station to meet their Biomistress—the only one who could undo what the virus had done. Trieste brought with her the corpse of Morholt the assassin in trade for Marcus’s new bride. The plan was for Trieste to escort the young woman back once she’d been recovered. A motivational thing, you might say. Such a trade, a moldy old assassin for an orbital princess.

Yep. Now we’re getting closer to the kiss.

Aixelle was a beauty by the standards of any age. She had hair to her waist—an obscene luxury in a place and time where everyone shaved their scalps to fit pressure suits. That hair was the color of sunlight to accent the dancing water of her eyes. Her long fingers had never borne a callus.

In addition to being Marcus’s betrothed, she was Biomistress of Brigante Station.

With her servants, Aixelle met Trieste’s shuttle as it docked at cradle seventeen-B in Brigante’s highest security zone. Trieste was debarked into the echoing cargo bay strapped to a zero-gee biocontainment gurney. She lay there and stared at the girdered ceiling, wondering how the Brigantes could afford the cubage. Behind her Morholt’s corpse trundled along in a cryogenic chamber. The assassin had been stripped of his electronic stealth suit but otherwise undisturbed in death, even to the sprayed blood frosted upon his neck and shoulder.

“Well,” Aixelle said as she leaned over Trieste, steadying herself with one hand on the rail of the gurney. Her long hair eclipsed the ceiling lights of cargo bay in billowing clouds of gold. Her stationsuit was closed high on her neck. “So you are the hero of Brigante Station, come to carry me home to Truro.”

Her mind fogged with drugs and bioengineered disease, Trieste struggled for words. “Marcus . . . Stationmaster . . . ” No one had warned her of this girl. Trieste’s heart was stricken by this woman’s beauty, jealous that Aixelle should be the province of another. Even her own beloved uncle.

Love should not be like this, she thought in a moment of clarity. It had come upon her as another plague.

Aixelle glanced away from Trieste toward Morholt’s cryochamber. “You voyage for life and for death. Let us see if we can repair you.”

It was, after all, Aixelle’s DNA sequencers that had brought Trieste to this weak stead in the first place.

The next time Trieste was sufficiently conscious to recognize the Biomistress, Aixelle walked into the single-bed isolation ward with a datapanel under one arm and a crooked smile on her face. She wore a loose robe suitable for the rotational-gee sections of Brigante Station. A dull pendant dangled from a silver chain to rest upon her chest. Her hair was pulled tight, woven with black ribbons of mourning for Morholt.

Aixelle was still the most beautiful woman Trieste had ever seen. She opened her mouth, struggling for words.

“It’s been almost a week,” Aixelle said before Trieste could find her voice. “Our tailored virophage has been effective, but reversing the immune damage is taking a while.”

Trieste struggled to remember that it was this woman’s work that had rendered her ill in the first place. The inner battle was lost in the glow of Aixelle’s smile. “And now . . . now I am whole once again,” Trieste said as she found her voice, “only to find my heart pierced anew.”

Aixelle thumbed her patient’s eyelid up, leaning in close to examine her handiwork. “Don’t be an idiot. I am betrothed to your uncle as part of the settlement between Brigante and Truro. A union of the Lagrange stations, to our mutual economic and social benefit.” She giggled, an unfolding of her stern character that Trieste found even further entrancing. “They’re already in a panic at Luna City.”

“As well they should be,” Trieste muttered, all too conscious of the Biomistress’s sweet breath playing on her neck and face. Gouvernaile, she told herself, remember Gouvernaile. Her lifelong companion’s heart had been shredded by the flechettes—a double weapon, murderous in their direct effect as well as infectious with the Biomistress’s virus.

The same virus that had almost killed her.

Aixelle stroked Trieste’s cheek. “Another few watches in here, then you can present your credentials to my father, Stationmaster Angevine. There will be some days of the obligatory cocktail parties and media events. After that you may plan our escape.”

Despite the blood that stood between them, Trieste’s heart was lost for good. She watched Aixelle leave the tiny clinic, taking all light and warmth with her.

Trieste had tugged an exam stool up next to her sickbed. Her gear bag was open as she sorted through what had been so hastily packed back on Station Truro. It was an odd lot: a holo of her dead father, two of Gouvernaile’s study plans on a datacube, portions of her fighting gear—including the damaged combat knife. She turned it in her hand, careful to keep the reprogrammable molecular matrix of the blade set to the default non-conductive steel.

The hatch hissed open. Aixelle stepped in. The Biomistress still kept her hair in mourning ribbons but had chosen to wear a brighter robe today. It only accented her beauty, which panged Trieste’s heart.

She smiled as Aixelle stepped forward to take the knife from her hands. Trieste let the other woman have it, knowing she was as safe as she might be in this place. A damaged knife would not be the instrument of Trieste’s death should Stationmaster Angevine decide to do away with her.

Aixelle turned the combat knife over in her hands. Some strange, complex expression flitted across her face. “Is this yours?” Her tone was casual but her voice trembled.

“Yes.” Trieste flooded with pride. “I earned it in advanced combat training when I was fourteen.”

“And did you break the tip? Or did someone break it for you?”

Oh no. Trieste’s heart sank toward cold oblivion. Still, she could be nothing but honest with this woman. “I broke it.”

Aixelle removed her pendant from her neck and matched the dull metal of ornament with the tip of Trieste’s knife. “I took this out of Morholt during our autopsy. He was like a brother to me. My great, good friend.”

Trieste caught Aixelle’s eye and stared into the wounded heart of her beloved. “I am sorry for your pain but I cannot regret your loss.” Her words were like the blow of another knife, another slaying of love. But Trieste could not spare them. “Your great, good friend killed my own greatest friend during his invasion of Truro Station. He would have killed me too, had I not fought well.”

The dancing water of Aixelle’s eyes froze to ice. She tapped the broken tip of the combat knife against Trieste’s neck, then pressed it until Trieste felt pain. Warm blood trickled down her chest. Aixelle held the pressure against her patient’s neck as Trieste waited unmoving to learn the Biomistress’s will. Out of love, Trieste refused to close her eyes.

“Perhaps you should rest until your return to Truro Station,” Aixelle finally said. Putting away her chain with the bloody metal shard, she dropped Trieste’s knife on the deck, a fine spray of blood fanning away from it. “There are many accidents for the unlucky and unwell here on Brigante Station.”

Listen up, you little datafreaks. Trieste and Aixelle aren’t no closer to kissing yet than when they first met. Trieste could be the greatest warrior of her age, and Aixelle’s got the beauty of an empress and all the powers of a Biomistress besides, but they’re acting like a couple of kids from the recycling yards. You think you’ve got crap to fight over? The life and death of thousands rested on these two.

Branwen, Aixelle’s lab manager, stitched up another special virus with the help of Aixelle’s mother, she who had been Biomistress before Aixelle. This little bug kicked off a series of endorphin cascades linked to a targeted pheromone signature present in someone else infected with the same vector. What you might call a love potion. Branwen wanted to make life easier for Aixelle in her marriage to Stationmaster Marcus. Let them come together for politics but live for love.

With families like this, who needs enemies?

They shipped for home in Stationmaster Angevine’s personal shuttle, the Adsiltia. Trieste had not seen Aixelle in two weeks. She was trapped between stomach-wrenching nerves and icy regret. For all her youth, Trieste was not yet accustomed to such wild vacillations of the heart. She was placed aboard in advance by Brigante Station Security, then sat alone in the passenger compartment until Aixelle arrived accompanied by Branwen and two more security troopers—the Biomistress’s personal guard as allotted by the betrothal contract.

Aixelle’s hair was loose again, waving free in the low gee of the shuttle. She wore a bodysuit of blue spidersilk, thin as air and twice as soft. She still wore the pendant made from the tip of Trieste’s combat knife. The troopers brought a small, heavy case with them. It was more than simple luggage.

“Biomistress Aixelle,” said Trieste with a tight nod.

“Citizen Trieste,” her beloved replied crisply, sweeping her hair over one shoulder to claim the crash couch farthest back from Trieste’s. Aixelle’s troopers secured their case at the back of the passenger cabin, then sat between Aixelle and Trieste. Branwen glanced at her mistress before she strapped in next to Trieste.

Trieste felt a pain in her heart as cold and hard as a vacuum leak.

Without announcement, the pilots undocked the shuttle for the forty-two hour transit from Brigante Station to Truro Station.

“She’s torn,” Branwen whispered after a few hours. The woman didn’t turn her head to look at Trieste.

The cabin was darkened for sleeping. Someone behind Trieste was using a holo—the blue glow flickered against the padded wall in front of her. She assumed it was Aixelle, as it was difficult to imagine either of the troopers going off into virtspace while Trieste herself was present in a confined area with them and their Biomistress.

Hope flared in Trieste’s heart. “We all face difficulties,” she told Branwen.

“There’s more here than meets the eye.”

Despite herself Trieste’s curiosity was piqued. She didn’t know if she was being baited, however, so she kept her own counsel. “When is there not?”

“The LaGrange Stationmasters plot against one another, but together they craft larger plots against Luna City and the groundside governments. Lately the affairs have turned yet again.”

This smacked of Gouvernaile’s lessons. “Like Greeks and Trojans, endlessly warring.”

Branwen was silent for while. Eventually, Trieste heard the faint smack of her lips parting as she spoke again. “Did you wonder what Morholt was doing on Truro Station?”

“Yes. Just before I killed him he said I was not his target. Yet he slew my tutor.”

“Cleone Station transferred technology to Truro Station. Your tutor was the carrier. Your trip into exile was cover. Morholt was after that tech on behalf of Brigante.”

“My step-mother tried to have me—” Trieste stopped.

Branwen’s laugh was soft. “She didn’t succeed, did she?”

Trieste thought furiously. Love and betrayal were the stuff of stories, not her life. When had it become so complicated? “Why tell me this now?”

“Mistakes are being made as we talk,” Branwen said. “Alliances shifting, both among the stations and with respect to larger players. You and Aixelle can perhaps see a clear course to the end. You are not so caught up in prior generations of cis-Lunar politics.” She took Trieste’s hand for a moment, then Trieste felt a prickle on her palm.

“Hey—” Trieste started to say, but Branwen covered her mouth with a hand.

“You will thank me for this,” the other woman said. She then unbuckled from her seat and moved back through the dark cabin. Trieste stared at her hand, touching the faint spot of fading pain where Branwen had infected her with . . . what?

Hope, perhaps.

Trieste awoke with a start, briefly disoriented and scrabbling for her weapons. She remembered where she was. Then she realized that Aixelle’s fingers enclosed hers. The cabin lights were still dimmed. The Biomistress leaned close to Trieste, her long hair brushing Trieste’s cheek and arm, her shadowed bluewater eyes gleaming like Luna’s darkside sky.

“Trieste,” Aixelle said softly, “I have wronged you.”

The warmth of Aixelle’s breath upon Trieste’s face, the cool pressure of her fingers, the soft brush of her hair, through all of these things Aixelle drew them together. It was if Trieste dove into the pools of her eyes, flew into the cloud of her hair, landed in the bays of her heart. She scarcely dared speak, for fear of shattering the moment, but she felt she must. “It is no matter, my lady.”

“There are pressures upon both our peoples.” One hand stroked Trieste’s face, tracing the line of her lips. “I let my own troubles lead me into harsh judgment.” Aixelle sighed. “No. Misjudgment.”

Trieste’s entire body coiled tight. Her breasts ached to be touched and her groin flooded with warmth. Beaded sweat caused her neck to itch. She was too close to her heart’s desire. “My lady Biomistress, you are betrothed to my uncle, Stationmaster Marcus.”

Aixelle leaned forward and they kissed. All thoughts of family and duty fled Trieste’s head like oxygen from a breached cylinder.

There was only Aixelle.

See, I told you there would be a kiss. What did it mean the first time you kissed someone? Did the fate of stations rest on your fidelity? Were you selling out your family and your home? Not to mention a hot tech transfer.

Did you ever think our whole existence was built on a single kiss? There’s more to it. But it was a kiss that started it all.

The wedding had been riotous. Stationmaster Marcus held it in maintenance bay “A”—the largest open cubage in Truro Station—under microgravity. Trieste stared as Marcus led Aixelle away through the crowds rotating around the happy couple in a constellation of intoxicated goodwill. Her angry jealously raised goose pimples on her arms as her knife hand shivered.

“Fear not, my lady,” whispered Branwen, approaching Trieste’s elbow through a cloud of confetti. “Your love will be upheld.”

“I thank you for the good will, Mistress Branwen,” said Trieste, “but that can never be.” She reached for what was right. “I cannot give loyal service to my uncle and my heart to my beloved in the same breath.”

Branwen’s lips brushed Trieste’s earlobe, breath hot in her ear. “We all wear masks, beloved.”

Startled, Trieste whirled. She knocked herself into a slow rotation from which Branwen steadied her. Or was it Branwen? Trieste studied the other woman’s face. The line of her cheekbones, the set of her chin, somehow it was all familiar. “Aixelle,” Trieste finally said, “ . . . but how?”

Her beloved smiled. Radiant glory piercing Trieste’s heart. “To a Biomistress many things are possible. Pheromones, the shift of muscles in response to pinpoint injections of toxins. Humans are easy to fool. Our little tricks do not work so well for machine recognition systems. But in the drunken dark, well, Stationmaster Marcus will find my Branwen much to his taste.”

“And what will I find?” Trieste asked.

“Catch me and see,” Aixelle laughed, kicking away to spin into a cloud of confetti.

Shouting, Trieste dove after her.

Days later they tumbled in orbit in a slice of time stolen from marriage and duty, crowded close together into one of Truro Station’s vacuum hoppers. Aixelle grinned up at Trieste from where she knelt before a series of linked titanium boxes. Electrostatic clingpads kept the Biomistress secured to the floor. A two-meter long pole bulgy with electronics lay beside the boxes. It all had the look of a prototype—taped-off electrical leads, data antennae soldered in odd places, ragged edges to the milling of the metal.

“What is that?” Trieste clung to her crash couch to keep herself from floating away in the microgravity.

“Watch and see.”

The little vacuum hoppers were used for exterior maintenance, chasing down lost loads—or spacewalkers. All in all, general duties that required limited duration excursions. Every eighty seconds with the period of their rotation the station glinted perhaps a hundred kilometers from them in the main viewport of the tiny pressurized cabin. Data ghosts across the viewport glazing charted distances, vectors, dynamically scaled energy budgets.

“I’m watching,” said Trieste, “but what am I seeing?”

“This.” Aixelle flipped a switch.

Suddenly they were in full gravity. Trieste was jammed against one side of the crash couch as if the vacuum hopper were pulling a tight turn. Aixelle slumped against the floor smiling.

“God in Orbit,” Trieste said, savoring the sensation. “Artificial gravity.”

“What Gouvernaile was working on. Along with some of Marcus’s people, in competition with Brigante’s teams.” Aixelle frowned. “What Morholt was sent to take before father and Marcus came to their senses and joined forces. I brought the last critical systems from Brigante Station’s own lines of research with me to the wedding. Bride gift.”

Of course, thought Trieste. The precious case the guards had carried. “The stations will control the solar system,” she said. Political strategies unfolded in her head like an inflating pressure suit. “Luna and the dirtside interests will be left behind forever if this can be delivered significantly ahead of their efforts. How close is the competitive research?”

Aixelle shrugged. “We’ve gotten it first. This is everything . . . a weapon, a mode of travel, freedom to have children and grow old in orbit without bone loss and muscle atrophy.”

Trieste gathered Aixelle into her arms, both of them leaning against the slightly out-of-true plane of artificial gravity. They shared a crushing kiss that sent shocks rippling down Trieste’s body. Fingers reaching for each other’s stationsuit closures, they bent to yet celebration of love and life.

Trieste woke to microgravity. She was loosely strapped into her crash couch. Aixelle must have turned off the generator. She scratched her head, then reached for her beloved while blinking sandy sleep away. Her hand found metal and plastic.

A pressure suit helmet.

“Aixelle?” Trieste coiled herself to spring into action.

Aixelle still slept, the vacuum hopper still tumbled, but there was a pressure suit helmet wedged between their seats.

“STATIONMASTER, TRURO” was stenciled above the faceplate.

It was Marcus’s helmet. Trieste’s uncle had been here. Found them. Discovered Aixelle’s betrayal.

How had that happened?

Trieste stabbed at the console until the little ship’s log came up. The Stationmaster’s personal vacuum hopper had docked on executive override, silencing all of Trieste’s alarms. The log didn’t say, but Trieste guessed Marcus had gassed their atmosphere, too. How else could she have slept through the docking?

Trieste glanced behind her. Aixelle’s artificial gravity units were still in place. Marcus had left them with all choices. All the betrayals lay in their hands. Trieste dug her knuckles into her eyes and wept a moment before turning to her own pressure suit racked by the airlock.

She could stay no more on Truro Station. Brigante was closed to her too, and Cleone as well. Trieste clipped a lock of Aixelle’s glorious hair and placed it next to her heart before sealing the pressure suit. She overrode the airlock alarms so that her beloved would sleep a little longer and left the secret of artificial gravity behind her. Trieste stepped out into an exile of the heart.

So what would you have done if you was her, spacebrain? Follow Trieste into vacuum? How much air you think that girl had on one little p-suit? Death by screw-up is more like it, to go for a long walk with short air.

You know the stories. The First Gravity War. The Second Gravity War. The Last Gravity War. What the Americans did to Cleone Station. What the other Stations did to Washington City in return. Where was Trieste in all this? Is she a hero in your bookstories?

Didn’t think so.

She got lucky, picked up by a ballistic hauler with a load of low-orbit wheat heading upward. Stupid git walked away from all the love and power in cis-Lunar space, changed her name to Diana and worked her way back to power in Luna City. Eventually she made general officer in their militia. She gamed the wars to make sure the Stations never lost too hard, and won when it counted. Even against her own side. She knew how to kick butt and take names, remember? Eventually Diana threw Luna City in with the Stations against Earth in The Last Gravity War. Then she married Prince Hektair of Luna City to seal the bargain.

Yeah, that Diana. Signed the Peace of Amsterdam on behalf of the Lunar governments, established the perpetual independence of trans-Lunar space. That would be us, kiddies, out here chasing rocks in the dark orbits between Mars and Jupiter, ice-diving around Saturn, all the other mischief our siblings and cousins get up to.

And it was all for a kiss. Trieste wouldn’t have gone into exile, undermined the Lunatics and defeated the Terrans if she’d just kept her lips off that girl Aixelle and stayed home on Truro Station like a good princess.

What happened to Diana after Amsterdam? Been doing research, ain’t you? Reached a dead end or twelve I expect. Just says she died, don’t it? There’s some stories don’t get written down, only passed from mouth to ear.

Listen up one more time, my pretty pets.

Diana, General-Governor of Luna City, greatest warrior of her age, was brought before her Prince-Consort Hektair in his bubble garden high up on the wall of Aristarchus Crater. He sat beneath the dome staring at the diamond stars, surrounded by the slow breathing of his plants. Quiet servants set the brakes on Diana’s gurney and withdrew. She stared at Hektair’s age-stubbled scalp through her oxygen mask and the needled haze of pain.

“Routine patrol,” he said to the vacuum-cold night outside. “Indeed?”

She could see the reflection of her Prince-Consort’s face on the glass, curved to a lengthy sadness. “Suppos’,” Diana slurred. “Earthis’ part’sans.”

“The wars are over now.” Hektair sighed. “Your allies’ gravity generators could put out the fire in the sun if need be. I understand it all now—why you betrayed Luna, why we switched sides, why millions died dirtside to make our point. Freedom for humankind to grow . . . outward.” He whirled from the window, tears gathering in his clouded brown eyes as his voice slurred to match hers in the roughness of his grief. “The only thing I don’t understand is why this happened to you. Now. When it’s all long over!”

Some things came in their own time. Some bullets were best stepped into instead of away from. She had become tired of living.

Diana’s hand crawled across her bandaged chest as if possessed of an intelligence of its own, seeking the spun-diamond locket she had worn since coming to Luna City six decades earlier. “ ‘stime,” she told her husband. I loved him, she told herself. Hektair had stood beside her through marriage and war, raised her sons and tended her hurts.

He loved her too. She knew that.

She pulled the spun-diamond locket out of the ruins of her pressure suit liner to thrust it at Hektair with a palsied hand. “Sh’can save me. Only her.”

Hektair took the locket from Diana, shaking with anger as his wife slipped into dreams of freefall and tumbling helmets and the voice of Stationmaster Marcus cautioning her of something upon which her life depended, if only she could make out exactly what he was saying.

An unmarked shuttle landed on the concrete pad of Executive Field—Diana’s private spaceport in the crowded heart of Aristarchus Crater. She floated, intubated and dying, within a column of warm saline solution in a tower room high above the crater floor. Her eyes were fixed on a virteo view of the landing pad. Silent med techs moved slowly about the room, exchanging worried glances.

Hektair swept in from the elevator. He was dressed in his most formal kilt and armored vest, as if to receive an Earthist delegation. He stood in front of Diana’s vat with his arms folded and stared at his wife as she watched the field below.

“Diana,” said Hektair. “You can hear me.”

She watched a boarding tube crawl out from a blast-hardened dome.

“Diana.” Her husband sighed. “Please look at me.”

He might have been weeping, but Diana concentrated on the landing field below.

Hektair tapped on the glass. “Stationmistress Aixelle would not come,” he whispered.

Diana closed her eyes. The monitors all flatlined.

“You’re dead, silly woman,” Aixelle whispered, drawing her long hair across the tender new skin of Diana’s face.

Diana opened her eyes. They were in a tiny cabin surrounded by machines, but all she saw was the waterblue eyes of Aixelle. “Am I?” she tried to say. She succeeded only in coughing dust and flecks of blood.

“Diana is dead,” Aixelle said, stroking her cheek. “Hektair will rule well enough in the General-Governor’s stead. As he was born to do. Trieste, on the other hand . . . well, her life is in balance. But not yet lost.”

“How?” Not ‘why,’ not after all the lost decades.

Aixelle laughed, the bells of her voice ringing through the years of Trieste’s memory. “All things are possible to one who is both a Biomistress and a Stationmistress.”

Where did they wind up? Who knows? Maybe a cometary orbit, to come back someday at our worst hour of need. Maybe a little ice mine on Europa where they finished out their days slurping algae soup and smiling toothlessly at each other.

Maybe Diana really was cremated like the bookstories say.

And maybe they’re just really old, living together out somewhere in the deep dark, teaching the lessons of history to kids who drop by to learn something.

Time to shove off now, helmet-head. I hear my wife calling.

About the Author

Jay Lake was a prolific writer of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an award-winning editor, a popular raconteur and toastmaster, and an excellent teacher at the many writers’ workshops he attended. His novels included Mainspring, Escapement, and Pinion, and the trilogy of novels in his Green cycle–Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura. Lake was nominated multiple times for the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award, and the World Fantasy Award. He won the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer in 2004, the year after his first professional stories were published. In 2008 Jay Lake was diagnosed with colon cancer, and in the years after he became known outside the sf genre as a powerful and brutally honest blogger about the progression of his disease. Jay Lake died on June 1, 2014.

This Wind Blowing, and This Tide

Damien Broderick

“Has any one else had word of him?”

Not this tide.

For what is sunk will hardly swim,

Not with this wind blowing, and this tide.

—“My Boy Jack,” Rudyard Kipling (1915)

The starship was old, impossibly old, and covered in flowers. Despite a brisk methane breeze, not a petal nor a stamen of the bright blooms moved. Under an impervious shield, they remained motionless, uncorrupted, altogether untouchable.

“They’re alive,” reported the Navy remote viewer. When I was a kid, the idea that the armed services might employ a trained, technologically enhanced psychic would have got you a derisive smack in the ear from your elders and betters, even though the American CIA ran a remote viewing program called Star Gate back in the last century, before they ostentatiously closed it down and took it to black ops. This viewer was blind to light, but saw better than the rest of us, by other means, on a good day. Like me, sort of, in my own itchy way.

He stood at the edge of the huge, flower-bedecked vessel, gloved, open palms held outward, his hands vibrating ever so slightly, like insect antennae hunting a pheromone. “It’s amazing. Those blossoms are still alive, after . . . what . . . millions of years? I can’t find my way in yet, but I can detect that much even through the stationary shield.”

“Is that the same as a, you know, stasis field?” I asked the marine master sergeant standing guard beside us. I turned to face her, and bobbed sickeningly. Two days ago I had been on Ganymede, and on Earth’s Moon before that. Now I walked on another world entirely, around yet another world entirely. It wasn’t right for a man as ample as I to weigh so little, especially with Titan’s bruised-peach air pushing down on me half again as heavily as Earth’s. It went against nature. Even with the bodyglove wrapping me, and an air tank on my back, I only weighed about eighteen kilos—say forty lbs. A tenth of what the scales would show back home.

“‘Stasis’ my ass! That’s sci-fi nonsense,” she barked. “Media technobabble. Like your own—” She bit the rest of her sentence off, perhaps fortunately. “This here is hard science.”

“So sorry.”

“And please don’t speak again without an invitation to do so, Sensei Park. We don’t want to put Mr. Meagle off his stroke.”

Opening his startlingly blue, blind eyes, the Navy viewer laughed. The sound echoed oddly in his bodyglove and through our sound loop. All sounds did, out on the orange-snowy surface of Titan. “Let him natter on, Marion. I’m entangled now. You’d have to cut my head off and pith my spine to unhook me from this baby.”

I wondered idly how either of them would respond if I told them I was the reason, or at least the proximate occasion, that they were here. They’d regard me as a madman, probably. My role in developing the portage functor was under cover about as deep as any since the creation of the US Office of Strategic Services in 1945, long before CIA got tight with clairvoyants. Perhaps these people already did consider me deluded. Yeah, it was true that I’d told them where to look for the starship, but it wasn’t as if I had the credentials of a remote viewer, so undoubtedly it was just a fluke. Right.

I felt the pressure of the thing, its causal gravitas, as I gazed down at the starship. If that’s what it was, under its stationary shield and floral tribute.

This thing on Titan had been tugging at me, at my absurd and uncomfortable and highly classified gift, since I was four or five years old, running in the streets of Seoul, playing with a Red Devils soccer ball and picking up English and math. A suitable metaphor for the way a child might register the substrate of a mad universe, and twist its tail. My own son, little Song-Dam, plagued me with questions when he, too, was a kid, no older than I’d been when the starship buried under tons of frozen methane and ethane had plucked for the first time at my stringy loops.

“If light’s a wave, Daddy, can I surf on it?” Brilliant, lovely child! “No, darling son,” I said. “Well, not exactly. It’s more like a Mexican football wave, it’s more like an explosion of excitement that blows up.” I pulled a big-eyed face and flung my arms in the air and dropped them down. “Boom!” Song laughed, but then his mouth drooped. “If it’s a wave, Dad, why do some people say it’s made of packets?” “Well,” said I, “you know that a football wave is made of lots and lots of team supporters, jumping up and sitting down again.” He wasn’t satisfied, and neither was I, but the kid was only five years old.

Later, I thought of that wave, sort of not there at all at one end, then plumping up in the middle, falling to nothing again as it moved on. Follow it around the bleachers and you’ve got a waveform particle moving fast. Kind of. But for a real photon, you needn’t follow it, it’s already there, its onboard time is crushed and compressed from the moment of launch to the final absorption, just one instantaneous blip in a flattened, timeless universe. Why, you could jump to the Moon, or Ganymede, or even Titan, all in a flash. Just entangle yourself with it, if you knew how (as I showed them how, much later), like Mr. Meagle remote viewing his impenetrable stationary starship.

Physics—you’re soaking in it!

“I can likely get more now sitting in my relaxation cell back at Huygens,” Meagle said. He looked very calm, as if he’d just stepped out of an immersion tank, but there was a faint quivering around his blind eyes. I watched his face in my viewmask, as if neither of us wore gloves over our heads. The man was exhausted. “So tell me, Mr. Park,” he said, as we turned and made our way to the big-wheeled jitney, “what were your own impressions, sir?” Scrupulous about not front-loading me with hints of his own; I liked that.

“Anyone, or any thing, who loves flowers that much,” I said judiciously, “can’t be all bad.”

Huygens had provided me with a customized broad-beamed sanitary personal; I have authoritative hams, and a wide stance. It degloved me with slick efficiency. I relieved myself with a gratified sigh. While bodygloves have the capacity to handle such impositions of the mortal order, the experience is undignified and leaves a residual aroma trapped inside with one’s nostrils, so I tend to hold on. We had been outside for hours without a pit stop. The sanitary squirted and dabbed, removed sweat from my perspiring hide with its dry tongue, dusted powder across the expanse, set me free. I dressed in my usual unflattering robe, and made my way directly to the commissary bubble. I was starving.

Banally, the wall&ceiling display showed a faux of thrice-magnified Saturn, four hand-widths across, tilted optimally to show off the gorgeous ring system. I’d just seen the reality outside, with nothing between me and the ringed planet itself but a protective film and a million or so kilometers of naked space above the bright Xanadu regional surface where we’d stood. Since we were almost at the equator, Saturn’s belt had been a thin glitter in the photomultipliers in our bodyglove masks (and would be invisible to the naked eye), directly overhead, right and left of the primary’s waist, not truly impressive. Of course, even with the high frequency step-downs of the photomultipliers, the atmosphere looks hazy anyway.

This magisterial feed on the wall was probably coming, today, from one of the polar sats keeping an eye on the big feller. It seemed to me a bit tacky, a lame pretence, but then again, Titan is tidally locked, so it must get a tad wearying for the regular staff, seeing exactly the same thing in the sky forever, whatever installation dome you’re at, Huygens, or Herschel at the north pole. Except that nothing is ever the same; all is nuance, the slow fortnightly progression of light and shade, the phases of the Sun’s illumination of the big ball of gas . . . Well, these were scientists and military, most of them, what could one expect?

I loaded my tray with rather edible boeuf bourguignon from the dedicated cuisine printer, took it to a table where a handful of my new colleagues were chowing and jawing away, sat down at the spare place, set to after a genial glance around. At least with the queasy low gravity I wasn’t worried that this spindly conventional chair would give way abruptly beneath me, tipping my considerable butt ungraciously to the floor. It had been known to happen back on Earth. Nobody laughed derisively if it did, at least there was that. Not any more, they didn’t.

“Why, Sensei,” said the Japanese biologist, Natasha Hsai, with the slightest edge in her tone, “won’t you join us for dinner?” I do not give her title, nor do I mean any disrespect; all these eggheads had at least a couple of doctorates apiece, it went without saying.

“Why, Natasha, thank you, I believe I will.” I started in on my second pearl onion. “Good fare, they don’t stint you—nor should they, you are doing sterling work out here.”

Several of the boffins shared glances, perhaps amused. They fancy themselves a cut above.

The handsome dark-haired fellow at the head of the table cleared his throat. “So, have you been outside yet to pay your respects to the Enigma, Mr. Park?”

From the dossiers I’d memorized before leaving Jupiter space, I recognized him, beneath his heavy straggled beard, as the head of molecular engineering, Antonio Caetani. “Just got back from the tour, Dr. Caetani. Fascinating. Right up my street.”

“That’s Tony,” he said gracelessly. More glances flickered about the table. He chose to go right for it. Had to give him points for that. “Unless I’m mistaken, your street is paved with donations from the ID Institute.”

I had encountered this kind of feral attitude previously, of course, especially from hard-headed scientists of conventional stamp. I could even share a kind of empathy for his rancor. It was as if, from his highly-credentialed point of view, a government-sponsored raving crackpot were to be imposed on his team. As if a SETI astronomer in the Fermi Taskforce had been obliged to include a rectally-probed UFO abductee, or a global proteome program forced to sign up a fundamentalist creationist. I shrugged.

“Oh, give the guy a break, Tony,” said the Iranian artifact expert, Mansour Khosrojerdi. “Let him eat his meal.” His beard was darker and thicker even than Caetani’s. Granted, the temperature was nearly minus two hundred degrees Celsius on the other side of the bubble, but this was self-mythologizing on a preposterous scale. Did they imagine they were rehearsing the doomed expeditions of the Arctic explorers? “We can postpone the ideological catfights until after the cheese and amontillado.”

“No need to spare my delicate sensibilities,” I said with a hearty laugh, and reached for the carafe of red wine, luminous as a garnet under spurious golden Saturn light. The woman to my right, the string loop specialist Jendayi Shumba, got there first with her competent, chunky hand, dark as night.

“Allow me, Sensei Park.”

“You are gracious, thanks. But let’s all be friends, no need for formality, call me Myeong-hui.” I grinned with big teeth at her dismay, then laughed out loud. “No, that’s an impossible mouthful, it’s all right, just call me Sam, love. Everyone does.”

“Sam.” A slightly uncomfortable silence fell. Scrapings of plastic flatware on realistic plates. I gobbled up my tasty beef, placed the empty plate back on my tray, slurped off some more of the stunningly convincing compiled shiraz, took a bite of a lemon-ginger dessert to die for, decorated with pistachios. “Fermi-53, that’s my considered opinion,” I said with my mouth full. “My tentative, preliminary opinion, naturally.”

“There are no recognizable roses or jonquils or violets or orchids, obviously. But the flowers scattered over the vehicle certainly do appear to be derived from Earth angiosperms, specialized to a range of climates and coevolutionary biomes,” said Natasha Hsai. “So far as we can tell purely from visual inspection.”

“Which rules out Fermi-53 instantly,” Antonio Caetani said. “Blossoms of such complexity and beauty did not evolve on Earth until the Holocene. Probably not until humans deliberately bred the cultivars during the rise of agriculture.”

“Oh, let’s not oversimplify, Tony,” Natasha said. “Pollinator insects and hummers and lizards and all the rest, they speciated along with the angiosperms; they sculpted each other without any help. Yes, I grant you, early humans broke up the soil to an unprecedented extent so they could grow their dinner, and then as a sideline retained and cultivated those blossoms that especially . . . well, made them happy. They’re our botanical pets, now, because flowers make us smile and feel good. They induce positive emotions.”

“They’re scented sex organs,” Caetani said, “doing their job.”

I’d finished eating, for the moment. “The first flowering plants,” I pointed out, “evolved sixty-five million years prior to the Chicxulub catastrophe. Nice symmetry, that.” As far back in time before the extinction of the dinosaurs as we now stood after it. I didn’t need to spell that out; these were, after all, highly trained intellects. But I had to add the obvious, the intolerable, the all-but-unthinkable crux. “Humans, I remind you, were not the only cultivators.” I found I had no appetite for cheese, and pushed back my chair. “Do you allow smoking here? Anyone for cigars and port?”

“No,” said Caetani brusquely. “Sensei Park, we are scientists, not mystagogues. I confess myself bewildered by your presence at Huygens.” Jendayi Shumba pulled at his sleeve; he shook her off. “I am frankly offended that the Imperium invited a quack from the Intelligent Dinosaur Institute here to Titan.” Shumba kicked his leg under the table; I saw and felt the small causal shock of her intention and its manifestation, because that’s who I am, that’s what I do. “I have nothing more to say to you.” He looked away disdainfully, drew his own dessert plate in front of him, scooped up a heaping spoonful of tiramisu and shoved it into his left eye, hard.

I raised one eyebrow, sighed, and rose, gathered my soiled crockery and plasticware on the tray, and walked away from the table. He probably wouldn’t lose the sight in his eye. But what could I do?

Speaking technically, I’m an etiological distortion. Less pompously, there’s something buried deep inside me that screws with cause and effect. I’m a footloose bubble of improbability. Call me a witch or a freak if you’d prefer, it rolls more easily off the tongue. Chances are good, though, that if you do call me nasty names, and I get to hear about it, you’ll trip over the kid’s bike in the dark, or run into an opening door, and break something painful. It’s not that I harbor resentment at name-calling, but my unconscious seems to. As I say, not much I can do about that, sorry.

There were ructions and alarums but I brushed them off, went to bed and slept, as I had done every night for five years, like a damned soul. My gift or curse does not permit me to stand aside from that which wraps me like a shroud. Sorrow eddied in my dreams. My son—

—and as so often, these days, the booming, tolling voices came to me from a century and a half past, voices I have heard only in my head, reading their words on the pages of old books I found in an abandoned library, stinking with the reek of extinguished fires, where I had crept for silence like a heavy old dog with a wound too great to bear. The words were in English, that tongue almost as familiar to me as my own, picked up in the streets, later honed in special classes for promising children. I knew nothing of the writer, save that he was a man of substance in his place and time. His words raised a resonance in my burned soul. He must have known this same agony, and sought some bitter draught of comfort:

O Sorrow, cruel fellowship,

O Priestess in the vaults of Death,

O sweet and bitter in a breath,

What whispers from thy lying lip?

“The stars,” she whispers, “blindly run;

A web is wov’n across the sky;

From out waste places comes a cry,

And murmurs from the dying sun:

“And all the phantom, Nature, stands—

With all the music in her tone,

A hollow echo of my own,—

A hollow form with empty hands.”

And woke in the morning (by the conventional Earth clock calibrated to Seoul time, GMT+9 hours), as always alone, empty hollow form and all, despite the web wov’n palpably across the sky, and ravenously hungry, as usual.

So I ate a healthy breakfast and went to watch Meagle on closed circuit, a feed from the audiovisual record that military remote viewers are obliged to make for assessment, interpretation, and the archive. Today he sat zazen in a small cell like a non-denominational chapel, if chapels come with voice-activated holography displays (and maybe they do, I’m not a religious man), hands curled upward on his knees. His breathing was slow, regular. Maybe this was what their protocol called cooling down. His blind eyes were open, apparently fixed on the deep blue depths of the holly. Upon his head was a crown of thorns, a tidy maze of squid detectors pulsing to the quantum state of his brain, his brain stem, his meditative consciousness.

“Looking at the vehicle from above,” he murmured. “Still can’t find my way in. Yet.” His lips quirked the smallest amount. Who Dares Wins, I thought. Semper Fi. Rah-rah. Well, it took a lot of quiet confidence in one’s oddball abilities, no doubt. My own kind of disreputable ability just happened to me, or around me.

“Get back to the signal line,” a gravelly voice said. Someone not in the room. His controller, I supposed. His operator, whatever they called the role.

“He’s physically blind, I realize that,” I told the medical officer seated beside me in the observation booth, “but doesn’t knowing the identity of the target sort of pollute his, his guesswork?”

“The viewer does not guess.”

“No offense. I mean, bias him unconsciously with preconceived notions?” Front-loading, they called it; I knew that much. “Like that stasis field thingee? Can we be sure that’s not some scrap of nonsense from a comic strip he read when he was a child?”

“Mr. Meagle is well past all such neophyte hazards,” the nurse said, offended by my uppity kvetching. He had gray hair at his close-cropped temples, and a steady gaze. Almost certainly a veteran of the war in— I shut that thought down, hard. “The colonel can afford to depart from the lock-step of traditional protocol. As he does when it suits him.” I nodded, made soothing, conciliatory sounds. Perhaps mollified, he explained, “It contracts the search path.”

“Um,” I said, and settled back to view the sketched images form, dissolve, reform in the imaginary three-space of the holograms. As Meagle’s fingers moved through the air, unseen lasers tracked the shapes he sketched. It seemed, watching him, that he actually felt his way around the starship out there in the frozen crust of Titan. Kinesthetic imagery. A kind of heightened physicality, perhaps unavailable to a sighted person. Or was that nothing better than my whimsy, my fat man’s sentimentality?

“Moving downward, gravity tugs at me,” the remote viewer murmured. His voice was drowsy. I saw his shoulders spasm, as if he were falling forward and had caught himself.

“Wake up, there, colonel,” the voice said, without reproach. “You’re drifting.”

“He’s sliding into Phase Two. That was hypnic myoclonia,” the nurse commented. “Jactitation.”

“Haven’t slept since yesterday,” Meagle muttered. He shook himself. “Okay. Got it. I’m in.”

The screens, trying to emulate whatever it was the psychic was “seeing/feeling,” bloomed with a burst of visual noise. Were those things sketchy blocks of cells, like the hexagonal innards of a bee hive? They shrank, jittered, smoothed into a kind of curvy passageway. The image was being enhanced by the computer’s analysis, drawing on an archive of Meagle’s private symbols.

“Analytical overlay,” the operator said in a tone of admonition.

“I don’t— No, this’s what I’m actually perceiving. My God, Charley, the place is so fucking old. Millions of years. Tens of millions.”

“Give me some Stage Three.”

“Weirdly beautiful, man. But alien. Not insects, I’m pretty sure.” The overlapping images loped along, as if from a camera mounted on a cartoon’s shoulder. Is this how the blind imagines seeing? Meagle had been sightless from birth, the dossier had informed me. But maybe that shouldn’t be surprising; the blind repurpose the cortical and precortical tissues specialized by evolution for visual capture and registration—the large dedicated occipital lobe, the striate V1 cortex, all the way up the V hierarchy to middle temporal MT, pathways carrying neural trains from the retina to the brain, interpreting, pruning as they flashed their specialized code. Yada yada. His sensitive, trained brain had nabbed that spare capacity, retained its function, modified its input channels. The Marvel That Is Your Brain! I overheard my own mocking subliminal commentary and wondered why I was so anxious, suddenly. A kind of curdling in the causal webs . . . I felt more and more uncomfortable, as if I badly needed to take a dump. Maybe I did. Meagle had fallen silent. Dropping off to sleep again? No, the constructed image was sliding past us in the hologram, slurring and breaking up in detail, but it was a corridor he walked along, in his spirit walk or whatever you call it.

Something sitting in a large padded chair. Christ!

“Christ!” Meagle cried, loudly. Small indicator lights went from placid green to blipping yellow on one display. A histogram surfed briefly into the red. The nurse was clicking keys, fast and unrattled.

“Bingo, Colonel,” said the operator, triumph shaking his professional sangfroid.

My etiological sense scrambled. I lurched up, leaned forward, ready to puke. Meagle was doing the same, cable tangled at his neck, contacts pulling from his cropped scalp. In the great chair shown on the screen, as the imaginary viewpoint swung about, the interpretative computer sketched a seated person with a snout and deep-set hooded eyes, clawed hands gripping banked controls on the arm rests.

The image skittered and jittered, revised itself as the causal whirlpool screeched around me. But no, this wasn’t the dragon I was looking for. It was, it wasn’t. The machine image spoke directly to me through Meagle and memory. That dead person, that ancient thing in its ancient warship, it was . . . was . . . Impossible. Delusion and grief. Something else. I knew the beloved face beyond denial, of course, like a clumsy pencil drawing on the screen that tore my heart out. Human. Face burned down in places to the bone, gaze suffering, mouth mute, determined even in death. In his stained UN uniform, with Korean Imperium lieutenant flashes at the collar.

“Oh, lord god,” I moaned, and did barf, then, like a puling schoolboy drunk.

From the corner of my leaking eyes, in the window feed from his RV cell, I saw Meagle turn convulsively. He seemed to stare right at me, through the camera, into the display, with his blue, blind eyes.

The main hologram image, too, looked steadfastly back at me—sketched from the Naval remote viewer’s words and speaking hands, his brain rhythms, the archived set of his stereotypical ideograms—looked at me from a grave five years dug in the soil.

Song-Dam. My son. My poor boy. My lost hero child.

I started to cry, wiping at my bitter mouth, and couldn’t stop.

Huygens is not part of the Imperium, of course, being a research agora, like Herschel, the other settlement on Titan, but it is a fiscal affiliate of Korea, as well as of Zimbabwe, the Brazilian Superstate, Camp Barsoom (on, you guessed it, Mars), and a handful of other polises on the Moon and Ganymede. So while the writ of Mr. Kim, my sponsor, did not run on Titan, precisely, his paternal hand was heavily in the weighing scales. The Warlord had developed a fondness for the Intelligent Dinosaur paradigm when he studied paleontology as a young student in Antarctica, where all the equivocal evidence was located prior to the Enigma’s excavation, and he carried that interest through into maturity and, some said, senility. He would be pleased as punch.

Dr. Caetani, surprise, surprise, was not. Everyone by now had studied the remote viewing session, and more than once. My participation and role could be determined only by inference, since no recorders had been trained on the observation room. But the recording of Meagle’s results showed plainly the results: the alien or saurian and, moments later, the harrowing superimposed image of my late son. For Caetani, I’m sure, my distress, my involvement, was just a piece of hammy theatrics, a shameful way to spray my mark onto an historic event.

“This afternoon, we know nothing more than we did a week ago,” he stated bluntly. “I’m candidly dismayed at the gullibility of some of my colleagues here.”

“The saurian—” began Jendayi Shumba. He cut her off instantly.

“—the image was no more veridical than the, the disturbed imposition into the colonel’s entangled state of Sensei Park’s tragic fixation on his son’s death. Nobody doubts that Mr. Park is a functioning poltergeist, capable of casting images and interfering with complex electronic systems. It’s why he’s here—over my objections—and isn’t the point.” He took a deep breath, his features flushed behind that pretentious beard. “Our visitor’s martyred son is certainly not aboard that Jurassic artifact, and surely nobody thinks he is. Neither, by the same token, is the dinosaur space captain that Mr. Park’s well-prepped imagination also dreamed up and shoveled into the ideospace.”

“With all due respect, you’re out of your depth, Tony.” This one I hadn’t met before, an industrial psychiatrist named Lionel Berger. “Back off, will you? Remote viewing is no exact science, nor even an accomplished art—and I mean no disrespect to Colonel Meagle in pointing this out. We don’t know how it works, except that quantum field nonlocality is engaged and implemented by an act of deliberation. Its famous vulnerability is that other minds can become trapped into the entanglement and add their own measures of information . . . but whether that aggregate data is veridical, symbolic, mythological or sheer phantasy, we can’t tell just by simple inspection. Dismissing this evidence by flinging about words like ‘psychic’ and ‘poltergeist’ is argument by slur. I’m prepared to wait for more evidence before I decide so confidently what’s inside that vessel.”

Caetani, the surly fellow, actually said, “Bah!” I’d never heard anyone actually say that before. Others spoke, in their turn; Meagle sat at the back, his blind eyes closed, sunk into a sort of exhausted torpor. I’d have liked to go to him, sit beside him in respectful and sorrowing silence. Instead, as requested, I also remained silent, half-listening to the academese, the scholasticism, the stochasticism, the loop theories of cognitive restructuration.

I had seen my dead son.

I had seen the saurian sitting in his great chair, or hers.

If cause is a pool of chaos and order blended by intention and brute event, I am (and nobody, as yet, has managed to explain why it is so) a small stick of dynamite exploding up random fishy critters to the shore. Brrrr . . . That’s a macabre, self-lacerating image. It had been my boy Song who perished in mindless explosions, and not by my hand. But hadn’t I sent him into fatal danger? Into ultimate harm’s way? Of course I had. Not by urging or forbidding, in so many words, but in my reckless skepticism, my louche lack of patriotism. Which had fetched us up where? Him, smashed like a detonated fish in a pool he could not escape, did not wish to escape. Me, bereft, alone, my bond to my nation long ago broken and betrayed. I grunted aloud, hoisted myself into a less uncomfortable position on a seat too small, as usual, for my girth.

“Sam? You wanted to say something?”

I looked around. They were gazing at me expectantly. “Oh, nothing. What can I donate that hasn’t already been weighed and found wanting?” It was petty and self-regarding, and I snapped my mouth shut, but a fierce anger burst up in me anyway, so I opened it again. “I’ll say one thing. And make no apologies for it. We are here,” I swung one arm through an embracing arc, taking in the auditorium, the station, Titan, “because years ago, when I was still on Earth, I discerned a causal anomaly near this place. We are here because military and independent remote viewers on three worlds concurred in finding and describing the vehicle. We are here, therefore, driven by the many motives that arose from that discovery. But I insist that the principal occasion is Premier Kim’s wish to test the hypotheses forwarded by the scientific entity I represent.” I took a deep breath. “So far as I can see, what Colonel Meagle uncovered this morning corroborates precisely the predictions of the Intelligent Dinosaur Institute. If my presence has muddied your waters, I’m sorry—but again I remind you, if it were not for me, none of you would be here today.

“So lay the hell off, okay?”

I dug in my robe’s pocket, found a Mars bar, unpeeled it, and gobbled it down.

Shortly after Song-Dam’s eighth birthday—his mother long since escaped back into the whorehouse alleys she and I had both come from—I took him with me on a business trip to Palo Alto. I was the object of the business trip, my absurd gift, my poltergeist prowess with cause and effect. Several Stanford biophysics researchers had somehow picked up trash journalism stories about me as the luckiest/unluckiest man on earth. Funding was limited, but I convinced them that Song was in my sole charge and that I wasn’t budging without him.

So we took an exhausting flight from Incheon International across the Pacific and through the absurd indignities of US Homeland Security (despite a graduate student being on hand at the airport to collect us, now cooling his heels in the arrival lounge with a wilting cardboard sign in two languages; I had inadvertently set off various bells and whistles, so of course we were detained pointlessly, until one of the senior professors was persuaded to drive to the airport and vouch for us), and stayed in an anonymous, ugly block of apartments that seemed to have been compiled from polyurethane pretending to be marble. We could hear the dreary TV set next door through the adjoining wall.

I took Song for a long walk so he and I could get a feel for the alien place, this America, as we stretched our weary legs. Within three blocks (trust my causal eddies for once), we found a Korean food store, established that my parents’ modest residence in Nangok—back at the turn of the century when it was still a squalid slum in a hilly area of Sillim-dong, Gwanak District—was just spitting distance from the proprietors’ familial stamping grounds, and found ourselves dragged happily to a nearby park by Mr. Kwon’s wife and three kids to fly dragon kites in the cool afternoon breeze.

I helped Song play out the string. Our borrowed kite was a scarlet and gold Dragon Diamond (a gift to us both, as it turned out—and thank you, Mr. and Mrs. Kwon!). Our dragon quivered on the middle air a moment, strained against his leash, then suddenly flung himself upward into the deepening blue California sky. The line went taut. Song let it go in fright, but I held tight, and a moment later he put his hands back to the winch reel beside mine. I saw the line stretched between my hand, his small resolute hands, and the high, swooping, flower-bright dragon: a luminous string.

“Daddy, look!” said my son, wild with excitement. “Our dragon is flying on a beam of photons!”

At that moment, as if Buddha had smacked me in the ear, I was enlightened.

“I think I can get in,” I told the Director of Operations, a tight jawed fellow named Namgoong, almost certainly a political appointee but in secure possession of a decent scientific reputation with degrees in geology and astrobiology. Earth and sky, I thought, but hid my smile. “I think I can break the shield. The question is, do I dare?”

“Yes. Precisely. If you rupture the stationary shield, who knows what might seep out into the atmosphere.” He gave me a thin-lipped smile. “Fortunately, Sensei, we shall not have to wait three years for an Environmental Impact Study. The Imperium wants this thing opened. Now. It’s why you’re here.”

“To tell you the truth, sir, I’m more worried about what might seep in. They must have sealed it against Titan’s atmosphere for good reason.”

“A motive that expired millions of years ago.” He rose. “I’m having a containment dome erected around the locus. There’s no way we can establish blockade underneath the ice as well, but this will meet most likely challenges. Or so I’m assured.”

“I’m relieved to hear it.”  I belatedly heaved up my bulk. “When will you want me out there?”

“You’ll be advised. We have a full scale colloquium scheduled, starting at two. I’ll expect you to be there, Sensei Park, and on your best behavior. No more outbursts, if you please.”

“More damned chin-wagging. Science used to be an empirical exercise,” I grumbled.

“Led by theory, as I’m sure you understand.” He was standing at his door, and I went out, biting my lip. Nobody had the faintest starting point for a theory to explain my causal distortions, and not much to account for the photon-entangled portage functor. I could do it, I could show them a method for using it (and had), but I didn’t have a theory-empowered clue how or why. I’m nobody’s mutant superman, that much I do know. (Or is that just a fat man’s self-doubt speaking?)

Postmodern science, as far as I can tell looking in from the outside, is drunk on the sound of its own voice. But yes, I know: look who’s complaining. I recalled again that Victorian sage, that poet Tennyson. He had it right: I sometimes hold it half a sin to put in words the grief I feel; for words, like Nature, half reveal and half conceal the Soul within. But, for the unquiet heart and brain, a use in measured language lies; the sad mechanic exercise, like dull narcotics, numbing pain. I followed Dr. Namgoong along the narrow compiled corridors of Huygens station, so like those awful domiciles on the outskirts of Palo Alto, and went to hear the sad mechanics exercise their tongues and dull their pain, and maybe mine.

The circulated air was pungent, despite the scrubbers, with the musk of excited animals crowded together. A schematic chart I’d grown familiar with, these last few months, started displaying on the auditorium wall, replacing the magnified image of Saturn’s glorious tilted hat. The Fermi Paradox Solution candidates. My eye bounced off them, falling down a cliff of words and logic with no footing in reality beyond the dragon-haunted thing outside the dome:

Where are They?

Fermi 1. They are here among us, and call themselves Koreans.

That always got a satisfied titter, except from any Hungarians in the crowd.

Fermi 2. They are here, running things.

A chance for the Hungarians, and anyone else chafing under the Imperium, to get their own back with a belly laugh. No giggles here, though, I noticed.

Fermi 3. They came and left.

Bingo, I thought. They came and left flowers scattered in their wake. Strictly, though, that was Fermi 53, the only choice left. The ancient intelligent dinosaur hypothesis.

Fermi 6. We are interdicted.

Fermi 10. They are still on their way here.

The starship had blown that one, and others like it, clear out of the water. Time to trim the list, methinks.

Fermi 21. They’re listening, only fools are transmitting.

Fermi 22. Dedicated killer machines destroy everything that moves, anywhere in space.

Fermi 28. The Vingean Singularity takes them . . . elsewhere.

No Singularity back near the end of the Cretaceous, I thought. Judging by the remote viewer’s sketches, that saurian pilot was advanced, but not sufficiently advanced as to be indistinguishable from magic.

Fermi 38. Earth is the optimal place for life, just by chance.

Could be. And for intelligent life, at that. Hey, look, we’ve seen it twice: the smart dinosaurs and Homo sap.

Fermi 48. Language is vanishingly rare.

Ha! Yeah, right. Blah blah blah. Still, maybe so. The skies are awfully silent, which is where we came in . . .

Fermi 49. Science is a rare accident.

Not as rare as I am, I thought, touching the etiological chains and vortices all around—and no scientist ever predicted me. Most of them still didn’t even know about me, thanks to all those Above Top Secret restrictions. Damn it.

Namgoong cleared his throat at the podium. Voices, in clumps and then one by one, fell silent. Hey, maybe that’s it. God tapped His microphone, and the cosmos shut up to listen. And they’re still listening, bent and cowed by the awfulness of what they heard. But not us, we haven’t heard from God yet, despite a thousand revelations claimed and proclaimed. Or if we have, there’s no way to search through the babbling noise and extract the divine signal. Funny way to run a universe.

I could feel the dinosaur calling to me, even so, through the appalling cold of Titan’s snows and the void of fifty or a hundred million years. And the entwined memory of my son, sacrificed for nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

“Those are the classic guesses—most of them wrong.” The Director flicked his finger; the display went to blank gray. “We still have no idea why the galaxy, indeed the universe as a whole, is quiet. Why the stars are still shining, spilling out their colossal energy resources, when intelligence should be collecting it. Calculations you’re all familiar with prove that a single intelligent species arising anywhere in the galaxy within the last billion years would by now have colonized all its trillion stars and associated bodies, turned the sky black with Matrioshka shells—or perhaps obliterated the stars in vast, wasteful wars.”

I pricked up my ears. A political subtext? Perhaps not; maybe our director was just a tone-deaf drone. I glanced around; several people near me had dropped their eyes, more than one held fists clenched tight. Okay.

“One of the equally classic Great Filters must screen out potential intelligent life and leave the heavens exactly as they’d have to be if there is no life at all out there. No intelligent, starfaring life, anyway.

“So now we’re faced with a new paradox. Fermi remains unanswered—and yet we have this old vehicle made by beings not of our own species, but apparently related. The likelihood of that coincidence being due to chance alone is impossibly small. I see only three remaining possibilities.”

“Barney did it,” someone called, muted but clear across the room. A wave of tittering. I felt my jaw tighten, and a flush creep into my cheeks.

“A previous civilization sprung from dinosaur stock on Cretaceous Earth, or even earlier, yes,” said  Dr. Namgoog evenly. “The opinion represented here today by our guest, Sensei Park.”

A pattering of polite applause, some even more muted groans.

“We have evidence in the form of preliminary scans by our Naval remote viewer, Colonel Meagle, that the creature . . . the being, forgive me . . . in charge of the craft has just such an origin. Leaving aside the improbability of parallel evolution. If so, this leaves the earlier and larger Fermi question unanswered: where are its kindred now, why haven’t they conquered the whole galaxy? Tipler and others proved decades ago that this could have been achieved at plausible sub-light speeds within a million years. If they have, why don’t we see them?”

Hearing it stated so flatly, I was dizzied, as always, by the prospect. Flotillas of starcraft fleeing into the spiral arms at a tenth of light speed, crammed with dragon seed or our own. Or minute nanoscale pods fired toward a hundred million stars by magnetic catapult, or driven on filmy wings by laser light. Yet these, too, were last year’s dreams, last century’s. We had stepped from Earth to Ganymede to Titan entangled on a light beam, and without waiting to be shoved here by sailboat. The moment entangled luminal portage became a reality for my own species, it opened the yawning cavern: why not for them, as well? What the hell was a starship doing here? Why bother? It was so last week, like finding a steam locomotive under the ice.

Namgoog was enunciating his other solutions to Fermi, but I didn’t care. I was entranced by the mystery of the sleeping creature, sedate under his bedding of live flowers. It was a hunger like my endless appetite for chow. I wanted to step straight through the damned shell of the ship and look the critter in the eye, man to man. Even if it decided to eat me.

That’s what dragons do, isn’t it?

And so to bed. Where I lay in the dark in a lather of fright for fifteen minutes. Fearful and weak. Bleak. Needing a leak. I climbed out and thudded to the sanitary personal. When I got back, after a swab up and down and across with a wet face cloth to dab away the worse of the flopsweat, my door was slightly open. Through it came the never-stopping background clanging and banging of humans and machines keeping the place ticking over. Snapping my fingers, I clicked the room light up to dim. Dr. Jendayi Shumba, chubby string looper, stretched at ease on my bed, clad in sensible pajamas with a mission blaze on the collar. Of course, I jumped and squealed.

“What the— Is there some—”

“Hush up, dear man, and come over here.” She grinned.

“You’re not serious. Are you?”

In evidence, she slithered out of her pjs and raised her eyebrows.

“Absurd. I’d crush you like a bug.”

“Myeong-hui, you don’t weigh any more, here, than my little boy.”

“You have a—?” I swallowed, and crept closer. “I had a son once.”

“Let us be in this moment, Sensei,” she said without reproach.

“I’m disgusting to look upon,” I said frankly. “And I don’t need a pity—”

She had her fingers across my mouth, and then pulled me down through several clunky jumpy evolutions. “There are other ways to convey one’s . . . intimacy,” she said.

“Ulp,” I protested.

“An easy mouth is a great thing on a long journey, is it not, old fellow?” she said, releasing mine and patting my neck.

“Ex-cuse me?”

Jendayi burst out laughing, a slightly husky, wonderfully exciting sound. “A quote from an old British classic about a horse. Nineteenth century, I believe. You might have read it as a child. Black Beauty.”

“You are the black beauty,” I said, noticing a cue when it smacked me between the eyes. I raised my voice and said, “Door close,” and it did.

“You’ve got a way to break into the ship, don’t you?” she said, after a time without time.

I was reeling and reckless. “Yes. Probably.”

“So you really are a poltergeist.” She stroked my contemptible belly, as if it were a friendly animal sharing the bed with us. “Tony nearly poked his damn eye out.” Her laugh was throaty, dirty, a tonic.

“Don’t blame me,” I said, and found a glass of water, drained it. “It’s like being able to wiggle your ears.”

In the near-dark, she wiggled hers, and more.

But before she left, Jendayi said, “Bring me back a sample. A skin scraping, anything with DNA. Just for me, honey, okay?” Oh, so that’s why you’re here? Had to be some reason. Exploitative bitch. But that’s life, right?

Looking like a well-laid but annoyed and put-upon squat polar bear in my bodyglove, some hellish number of minus degrees on the far side of its skin, I stood gazing down from the edge of the excavation. The spacecraft was unaltered, every bloom precisely where it had been several days before, where it had been, perhaps, several tens of millions of years before. Unless it was salted here recently as a snare for gullible humans. In which case, it might be younger than I. Not so likely, though.

“Ready when you are, Sensei,” said the political officer, doing Mr. Kim’s bidding, and damn the scientists’ caution.

I raised one thumb and let myself drift. Cause and effect unbraided, started their long, looping dance of etiological distortion, swirling, curdling. I was the still center of the spinning world. Certainties creaked, cracked. A favorite poem entered my heart, by Ji-Hoon Cho, “Flower petals on the sleeves”:

The wanderer’s long sleeves

Are wet from flower petals.

Twilight over a riverside village

Where wine is mellow.

Had this saurian person below me, trapped now in timelessness, known wine? Crushed release and perhaps moments of joy from some archaic fruit not yet grape? I thought, with a wrenching mournfulness:

When this night is over

Flowers will fall in that village.

“Hey!”

And there went the flowers, drawn up and tossed away from the hull of the starship. They were scattering in the methane wind, lifted and flung by the bitter gusts, floral loveliness snap-frozen, blown upward and falling down in drifts into the alien snow.

“The stationary shield is discontinued,” said a clipped voice in my ears.

I stepped forward, ready to enter the ancient, imprisoned place. To meet my dinosaur, who had either died or even now lived, freed from timeless suspension. A hand caught my encased arm.

“Not yet, Sam. We have a team prepped. Thanks, you’ve done good here today.” I turned, hardly able to see through my tears, and it was not that bastard Tony Caetani groveling his apologies, the universe could not be so chirpy as that. I hadn’t met this one before, although he’d picked up my dining room nickname and used it with a certain familiar breeziness; a beefy functionary of some armed service division, grinning at me in his bluff farmboy way. I nodded, and watched the team of marines go down, and remembered my dear boy and the way he had gone forward fearlessly into darkness and then into the fire falling from the sky. It did not matter one whit that I thought his cause wrong-headed. I remembered a poem in that book I’d found in the ruined library, a poem by an Englishman named Kipling that had torn my heart as I sat before Song-Dam’s closed coffin. There was no comfort this tide, the poem warned me, nor in any tide, save this:

he did not shame his kind—

Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Without shame, I sobbed, but then drew myself up and turned back to Huygens agora. Perhaps, I told myself, ten or sixty million years ago, another father had laid his son on these cruel snows and bade him farewell. I murmured to that reptilian father, offering what poor borrowed comfort I might to us both, across all that void of space and time: “Then hold your head up all the more, This tide, And every tide; Because he was the son you bore, And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!”

I looked straight up above me, at the photodiode display before my eyes in the viewmask, swallowing hard, to follow the streaming tide of blossoms on the wind, and there was Saturn, old Father Time, hanging in the orange smoke of the sky, an arrow through his heart. I gave him a respectful nod, and raised one gloved thumb in salute.

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April 2009.

About the Author

Australian writer, editor, futurist, and critic Damien Broderick, a Senior Fellow in the School of Cultural Commincations at the University of Melbourne, made his first sale in 1964 to John Carnell’s anthology New Writings in SF 1. In the decades that followed, he has kept up a steady stream of fiction, non-fiction, futurist speculations, and critical work, which has won him multiple Ditmar and Aurealis Awards. He sold his first novel, Sorcerer’s World, in 1970; it was later reissued in a rewritten version in the United States as The Black Grail. Broderick’s other books include the novels The Dreaming Dragons, The Judas Mandala, Transmitters, Striped Holes, and The White Abacus, as well as books written with Rory Barnes and Barbara Lamar. His many short stories have been collected in A Man Returns, The Dark Between the Stars, Uncle Bones: Four Science Fiction Novellas, and, most recently, The Quilla Engine: Science Fiction Stories. He also wrote the visionary futurist classic, The Spike: How Our Lives Are Being Transformed by Rapidly Advancing Technology, a critical study of science fiction, Reading by Starlight: Postmodern Science Fiction, Science Fiction: The 101 Best Novels 1985-2010, (written with Paul Di Filippo),edited the non-fiction anthology Year Million: Science at the Far End of Knowledge, as well as editing the SF anthology Earth is But a Star: Excursions Through Science Fiction to the Far Future, and three anthologies of Australian science fiction, The Zeitgeist Machine, Strange Attractors, and Matilda at the Speed of Light. His most recent publication is an anthology, edited with John Boston, The Daymakers.

Laika’s Ghost

Karl Schroeder

The flight had been bumpy; the landing was equally so, to the point where Gennady was sure the old Tupolev would blow a tire. Yet his seat-mate hadn’t even shifted position in two hours. That was fine with Gennady, who had spent the whole trip trying to pretend he wasn’t there at all.

The young American had been a bit more active during the flight across the Atlantic: at least, his eyes had been open and Gennady could see colored lights flickering across them from his augmented reality glasses. But he had exchanged less than twenty words with Gennady since they’d left Washington.

In short, he’d been the ideal traveling companion.

The other four passengers were stretching and groaning. Gennady poked Ambrose in the side and said, “Wake up. Welcome to the ninth-biggest country in the world.”

Ambrose snorted and sat up. “Brazil?” he said hopefully. Then he looked out his window. “What the hell?”

The little municipal airport had a single gate, which as the only plane on the field, they were taxiing up to uncontested. Over the entrance to the single-story building was the word “Степногорск.” “Welcome to Stepnogorsk,” said Gennady as he stood to retrieve his luggage from the overhead rack. He traveled light by habit. Ambrose, he gathered, had done so from necessity.

“Stepnogorsk . . . ?” Ambrose shambled after him, a mass of wrinkled clothing leavened with old sweat.

“Secret Soviet town,” Ambrose mumbled as they reached the plane’s hatch and a burst of hot dry air lifted his hair. “Population sixty-thousand,” he added as he put his left foot on the metal steps. Halfway down he said, “Manufactured anthrax bombs in the Cold War!” And as he set foot on the tarmac he finished with, “Where the hell is Kazakhstan? . . . Oh.”

“Bigger than Western Europe,” said Gennady. “Ever heard of it?”

“Of course I’ve heard of it,” said the youth testily—but Gennady could see from how he kept his eyes fixed in front of him that he was still frantically reading about the town from some website or other. The wan August sunlight revealed him to be taller than Gennady, pale, with stringy hair, and everything about him soft—a sculpture done in rounded corners. He had a wide face, though; he might pass for Russian. Gennady clapped him on the shoulder. “Let me do the talking,” he said as they dragged themselves across the blistering tarmac to the terminal building.

“So,” said Ambrose, scratching his neck. “Why are we here?”

“You’re here because you’re with me. And you needed to disappear, but that doesn’t mean I stop working.”

Gennady glanced around. The landscape here should look a lot like home, which was only a day’s drive to the west—and here indeed was that vast sky he remembered from Ukraine. After that first glance, though, he did a double-take. The dry prairie air normally smelled of dust and grass at this time of year, and there should have been yellow grass from here to the flat horizon—but instead the land seemed blasted, with large patches of bare soil showing. There was only stubble where there should have been grass. It looked more like Australia than Asia. Even the trees ringing the airport were dead, just gray skeletons clutching the air.

He thought about climate change as they walked through the concrete-floored terminal; since they’d cleared customs in Amsterdam, the bored-looking clerks here just waved them through. “Hang on,” said Ambrose as he tried to keep up with Gennady’s impatient stride. “I came to you guys for asylum. Doesn’t that mean you put me up somewhere, some hotel, you know, away from the action?”

“You can’t get any farther from the action than this.” They emerged onto a boulevard that had grass, though it hadn’t been watered nor cut in a long while; the civilized lawn merged imperceptibly with the wild prairie. There was nothing visible from here to the horizon, except in one direction where a cluster of listless windmills jutted above some low trees.

A single taxicab was sitting at the crumbled curb.

“Oh, man,” said Ambrose.

Gennady had to smile. “You were expecting some Black Sea resort, weren’t you?” He slipped into the taxi, which stank of hot vinyl and motor oil. “Any car rental agency,” he said to the driver in Russian. “It’s not like you’re some Cold War defector,” he continued to Ambrose in English. “Your benefactor is the U.N. And they don’t have much money.”

“So you’re what—putting me up in a motel in Kazakhstan?” Ambrose struggled to put his outrage into words. “What I saw could—”

“What?” They pulled away from the curb and became the only car on a cracked blacktop road leading into town.

“Can’t tell you,” mumbled Ambrose, suddenly looking shifty. “I was told not to tell you anything.”

Gennady swore in Ukrainian and looked away. They drove in silence for a while, until Ambrose said, “So why are you here, then? Did you piss somebody off?”

Gennady smothered the urge to push Ambrose out of the cab. “Can’t tell you,” he said curtly.

“Does it involve SNOPB?” Ambrose pronounced it ‘snop-bee.’

Gennady would have been startled had he not known Ambrose was connected to the net via his glasses. “You show me yours, I’ll show you mine,” he said. Ambrose snorted in contempt.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the drive.

“Let me get this straight,” said Gennady later that evening. “He says he’s being chased by Russian agents, NASA—and Google?”

On the other end of the line, Eleanor Frankl sighed. “I’m sorry we dumped him on you at the airport,” said the New York director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. She was Gennady’s boss for this new and—so far—annoyingly vague contract. “There just wasn’t time to explain why we were sending him with you to Kazakhstan,” she added.

“So explain now.” He was pacing in the grass in front of the best hotel his IAEA stipend could afford. It was evening and the crickets were waking up; to the west, fantastically huge clouds had piled up, their tops still lit golden as the rest of the sky faded into mauve. It was cooling off already.

“Right . . . Well, first of all, it seems he really is being chased by the Russians, but not by the country. It’s the Soviet Union Online that’s after him. And the only place their IP addresses are blocked is inside the geographical territories of the Russian and Kazakhstani Republics.”

“So, let me get this straight,” said Gennady heavily. “Poor Ambrose is being chased by Soviet agents. He ran to the U.N. rather than the FBI, and to keep him safe you decided to transport him to the one place in the world that is free of Soviet influence. Which is Russia.”

“Exactly,” said Frankl brightly. “And you’re escorting him because your contract is taking you there anyway. No other reason.”

“No, no, it’s fine. Just tell me what the hell I’m supposed to be looking for at SNOPB. The place was a God-damned anthrax factory. I’m a radiation specialist.”

He heard Frankl take a deep breath, and then she said, “Two years ago, an unknown person or persons hacked into a Los Alamos server and stole the formula for an experimental metastable explosive. Now we have a paper trail and emails that have convinced us that a metastable bomb is being built. You know what this means?”

Gennady leaned against the wall of the hotel, suddenly feeling sick. “The genie is finally out of the bottle.”

“If it’s true, Gennady, then everything we’ve worked for has come to naught. Because as of now, anybody in the world who wants a nuclear bomb, can make one.”

He didn’t know what to say, so he just stared out at the steppe, thinking about a world where hydrogen bombs were as easy to get as TNT. His whole life’s work would be rendered pointless—and all arms treaties, the painstaking work of generations to put the nuclear nightmare back in its bottle. The nuclear threat had been containable when it was limited to governments and terrorists—but now, the threat was from everybody . . .

Eleanor’s distant voice snapped him back to attention. “Here’s the thing, Gennady: we don’t know very much about this group that’s building the metastable weapon. By luck we’ve managed to decrypt a few emails from one party, so we know a tiny bit—a minimal bit—about the design of the bomb. It seems to be based on one of the biggest of the weapons ever tested at Semipalatinsk—its code name was the Tsarina.”

“The Tsarina?” Gennady whistled softly. “That was a major, major test. Underground, done in 1968. Ten megatonnes—lifted the whole prairie two meters and dropped it. Killed about a thousand cattle from the ground shock. Scared the hell out of the Americans, too.”

“Yes, and we’ve discovered that some of the Tsarina’s components were made at the Stepnogorsk Scientific Experimental and Production Base. In Building 242.”

“But SNOPB was a biological facility, not nuclear. How can this possibly be connected?”

“We don’t know how, yet. Listen, Gennady, I know it’s a thin lead. After you’re done at the SNOPB, I want you to drive out to Semipalatinsk and investigate the Tsarina site.”

“Hmmph.” Part of Gennady was deeply annoyed. Part was relieved that he wouldn’t be dealing with any IAEA or Russian nuclear staff in the near future. Truth to tell, stalking around the Kazaki grasslands was a lot more appealing than dealing with the political shit-storm that would hit when this all went public.

But speaking of people . . . He glanced up at the hotel’s one lighted window. With a grimace he pocketed his augmented reality glasses and went up to the room.

Ambrose was sprawled on one of the narrow beds. He had the TV on and was watching a Siberian ski-adventure infomercial. “Well?” he said as Gennady sat on the other bed and dragged his shoes off.

“Tour of secret Soviet anthrax factory. Tomorrow, after Egg McMuffins.”

“Yay,” said Ambrose with apparent feeling. “Do I get to wear a hazmat suit?”

“Not this time.” Gennady lay back, then saw that Ambrose was staring at him with an alarmed look on his face. “Is fine,” he said, waggling one hand at the boy. “Only one underground bunker we’re interested in, and they probably never used it. The place never went into full production, you know.”

“Meaning it only made a few hundred pounds of anthrax per day instead of the full ton it was designed for! I should feel reassured?”

Gennady stared at the uneven ceiling. “Is an adventure.” He must be tired, his English was slipping.

“This sucks.” Ambrose crossed his arms and glowered at the TV.

Gennady thought for a while. “So what did you do to piss off Google so much? Drive the rover off a cliff?” Ambrose didn’t answer, and Gennady sat up. “You found something. On Mars.”

“No, that’s ridiculous,” said Ambrose. “That’s not it at all.”

“Huh.” Gennady lay down again. “Still, I think I’d enjoy it. Even if it wasn’t in real-time . . . driving on Mars. That would be cool.”

“That sucked too.”

“Really? I would have thought it would be fun, seeing all those places emerge from low-res satellite into full hi-res 3-D.”

But Ambrose shook his head. “That’s not how it worked. That’s the point. I couldn’t believe my luck when I won the contest, you know? I thought it’d be like being the first man on Mars, only I wouldn’t have to leave my living room. But the whole point of the rover was to go into terrain that hadn’t been photographed from the ground before. And with the time-delay on signals to Mars, I wasn’t steering it in real time. I’d drive in fast-forward mode over low-res pink hills that looked worse than a forty-year-old video game, then upload the drive sequence and log off. The rover’d get the commands twenty minutes later and drive overnight, then download the results. By that time it was the next day and I had to enter the next path. Rarely had time to even look at where we’d actually gone the day before.”

Gennady considered. “A bit disappointing. But still—more than most people ever get.”

“More than anyone else will ever get.” Ambrose scowled. “That’s what was so awful about it. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh?” Gennady arched an eyebrow. “We who grew up in the old Soviet Union know a little about disappointment.”

Ambrose looked mightily uncomfortable. “I grew up in Washington. Capital of the world! But my dad went from job to job, we were pretty poor. So every day I could see what you could have, you know, the Capital dome, the Mall, all that power and glory . . . what they could have—but not me. Never me. So I used to imagine a future where there was a whole new world where I could be . . . ”

“Important?”

He shrugged. “Something like that. NASA used to tell us they were just about to go to Mars, any day now, and I wanted that. I dreamed about homesteading on Mars.” He looked defensive; but Gennady understood the romance of it. He just nodded.

“Then when I was twelve the Pakistani-Indian war happened and they blew up each other’s satellites. All that debris from the explosions is going to be up there for centuries! You can’t get a manned spacecraft through that cloud, it’s like shrapnel. Hell, they haven’t even cleared low Earth orbit to restart the orbital tourist industry. I’ll never get to really go there! None of us will. We’re never gettin’ off this sinkhole.”

Gennady scowled at the ceiling. “I hope you’re wrong.”

“Welcome to the life of the last man to drive on Mars.” Ambrose dragged the tufted covers back from the bed. “Instead of space, I get a hotel in Kazakhstan. Now let me sleep. It’s about a billion o’clock in the morning, my time.”

He was soon snoring, but Gennady’s alarm over the prospect of a metastable bomb had him fully awake. He put on his AR glasses and reviewed the terrain around SNOPB, but much of the satellite footage was old and probably out of date. Ambrose was right: nobody was putting up satellites these days if they could help it.

Little had probably changed at the old factory, though, and it was a simple enough place. Planning where to park and learning where Building 242 was hadn’t reduced his anxiety at all, so on impulse he switched his view to Mars. The sky changed color—from pure blue to butterscotch—but otherwise, the landscape looked disturbingly similar. There were a lot more rocks on Mars, and the dirt was red, but the emptiness, the slow rolling monotony of the plain and stillness were the same, as if he’d stepped into a photograph. (Well, he actually had, but he knew there would be no more motion in this scene were he there.) He commanded the viewpoint to move, and for a time strolled, alone, in Ambrose’s footsteps—or rather, the ruts of Google’s rover. Humans had done this in their dreams for thousands of years, yet Ambrose was right—this place was, in the end, no more real than those dreams.

Russia’s cosmonauts had still been romantic idols when he was growing up. In photos they had stood with their heads high, minds afire with plans to stride over the hills of the moon and Mars. Gennady pictured them in the years after the Soviet Union’s collapse, when they still had jobs, but no budget or destination any more. Where had their dreams taken them?

The Baikonur spaceport was south of here. Instead of space, in the end they’d also had to settle for a hard bed in Kazakhstan.

In the morning they drove out to the old anthrax site in a rented Tata sedan. The fields around Stepnogorsk looked like they’d been glared at by God, except where bright blue dew-catcher fencing ran in rank after rank across the stubble. “What’re those?” asked Ambrose, pointing; this was practically the first thing he’d said since breakfast.

In the rubble-strewn field of what had once been SNOPB, several small windmills were twirling atop temporary masts. Below them were some shipping-container sized boxes with big grills in their sides. The site looked healthier than the surrounding prairie; there were actual green trees in the distance. Of course, this area had been wetlands and there’d been a creek running behind SNOPB; maybe it was still here, which was a hopeful sign.

“Headquarters told me that some kind of climate research group is using the site,” he told Ambrose as he pulled up and stopped the car. “But it’s still public land.”

“They built an anthrax factory less than five minutes outside of town?” Ambrose shook his head, whether in wonder or disgust, Gennady couldn’t tell. They got out of the car, and Ambrose looked around in obvious disappointment. “Wow, it’s gone gone.” He seemed stunned by the vastness of the landscape. Only a few foundation walls now stuck up out of the cracked lots where the anthrax factory had once stood, except for where the big box machines sat whirring and humming. They were near where the bunkers had been; so, with a frown of curiosity, Gennady strolled in that direction. Ambrose followed, muttering to himself. “ . . . Last update must have been ten years ago.” He had his glasses on, so he was probably comparing the current view to what he could see online.

According to Gennady’s notes, the bunkers had been grass-covered buildings with two-meter thick walls, designed to withstand a nuclear blast. In the 1960s and 70s they’d contained ranks of cement vats where the anthrax was grown. Those had been cracked and filled in, and the heavy doors removed; but it would have been too much work to fill the bunkers in entirely. He poked his nose into the first in line—Building 241—and saw a flat stretch of water leading into darkness. “Excellent. This job just gets worse. We may be wading.”

“But what are you looking for?”

“I—oh.” As he rounded the mound of Building 242, a small clutch of hummers and trucks came into view. They’d been invisible from the road. There was still no sign of anybody, so he headed for Bunker 242. As he was walking down the crumbled ramp to the massive doors, he heard the unmistakable sound of a rifle-bolt being slipped. “Better not go in there,” somebody said in Russian.

He looked carefully up and to his left. A young woman had come over the top of the mound. She was holding the rifle, and she had it aimed directly at Gennady.

“What are you doing here?” she said. She had a local accent.

“Exploring, is all,” said Gennady. “We’d heard of the old anthrax factory, and thought we’d take a look at it. This is public land.”

She swore, and Gennady heard footsteps behind him. Ambrose looked deeply frightened as two large men—also carrying rifles—emerged from behind a plastic membrane that had been stretched across the bunker’s doorway. Both men wore bright yellow fireman’s masks, and had air tanks on their backs.

“When are your masters going to believe that we’re doing what we say?” said the woman. “Come on.” She gestured with her rifle for Gennady and Ambrose to walk down the ramp.

“We’re dead, we’re dead,” whimpered Ambrose. He was shivering.

“If you really must have your proof, then put these on.” She nodded to the two men, who stripped off their masks and tanks and handed them to Gennady and Ambrose. They pushed past the plastic membrane and into the bunker.

The place was full of light: a crimson, blood-red radiance that made the sight of what was inside all the more bizarre.

“Oh shit,” muttered Ambrose. “It’s a grow-op.”

The long, low space was filled from floor to ceiling with plants. Surrounded them on tall stands were hundreds of red LED lamp banks. In the lurid light, the plants appeared black. He squinted at the nearest, fully expecting to see a familiar, jagged-leaf profile. Instead—

“Tomatoes?”

“Two facts for you,” said the woman, her voice muffled. She’d set down her rifle, and now held up two fingers. “One: we’re not stepping on anybody else’s toes here. We are not competing with you. And two: this bunker is designed to withstand a twenty kilotonne blast. If you think you can muscle your way in here and take it over, you’re sadly mistaken.”

Gennady finally realized what they’d assumed. “We’re not the mafia,” he said. “We’re just here to inspect the utilities.”

She blinked at him, her features owlish behind the yellow frame of the mask. Ambrose rolled his eyes. “Oh God, what did you say?”

“American?” Puzzled, she lowered her rifle. In English, she said, “You spoke English.”

“Ah,” said Ambrose, “well—”

“He did,” said Gennady, also in English. “We’re not with the mafia, we’re arms inspectors. I mean, I am. He’s just along for the ride.”

“Arms inspectors?” She guffawed, then looked around herself at the stolid Soviet bunker they were standing in. “What, you thought—”

“We didn’t think anything. Can I lower my hands now?” She thought about it, then nodded. Gennady rolled his neck and then nodded at the ranked plants. “Nice setup. Tomatoes, soy, and those long tanks contain potatoes? But why in here, when you’ve got a thousand kilometers of steppe outside to plant this stuff?”

“We can control the atmosphere in here,” she said. “That’s why the masks: it’s a high CO_2 environment in here. That’s also why I stopped you in the first place; if you’d just strolled right in, you’d have dropped dead from asphyxia.

“This project’s part of minus three,” she continued. “Have you heard of us?” Both Ambrose and Gennady shook their heads.

“Well, you will.” There was pride in her voice. “You see, right now humanity uses the equivalent of three Earth’s worth of ecological resources. We’re pioneering techniques to reduce that reliance by the same amount.”

“Same amount? To zero Earths?” He didn’t hide the incredulity in his voice.

“Eventually, yes. We steal most of what we need from the Earth in the form of ecosystem services. What we need is to figure out how to run a full-fledged industrial civilization as if there were no ecosystem services available to us at all. To live on Earth,” she finished triumphantly, “as if we were living on Mars.”

Ambrose jerked in visible surprise.

“That’s fascinating,” said Gennady. He hadn’t been too nervous while they were pointing guns at him—he’d had that happen before, and in such moments his mind became wonderfully sharp—but now that he might actually be forced to have a conversation with these people, he found his mouth going quite dry. “You can tell me all about it after I’ve finished my measurements.”

“You’re kidding,” she said.

“I’m not kidding at all. Your job may be saving the Earth within the next generation, but mine is saving it this week. And I take it very seriously. I’ve come here to inspect the original fittings of this building, but it looks like you destroyed them, no?”

“Not at all,” she said. “Actually, we used what was here. This bunker’s not like the other ones, you know they had these big cement tanks in them. I’d swear this one was set up exactly like this.”

“Show me.”

For the next half hour they climbed under the hydroponic tables, behind the makeshift junction boxes mounted near the old power shaft, and atop the sturdier lighting racks. Ambrose went outside, and came back to report that the shipping containers they’d seen were sophisticated CO_2 scrubbers. The big boxes sucked the gas right out of the atmosphere, and then pumped it through hoses into the bunker.

At last he and the woman climbed down, and Gennady shook his head. “The mystery only deepens,” he said.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t help you more,” she said. “And apologies for pulling a gun on you. —I’m Kyzdygoi,” she added, thrusting out her hand for him to shake.

“Uh, that’s a . . . pretty name,” said Ambrose as he too shook her hand. “What’s it mean?”

“It means ‘stop giving birth to girls,’” said Kyzdygoi with a straight face. “My parents were old school.”

Ambrose opened his mouth and closed it, his grin faltering.

“All right, well, good luck shrinking your Earths,” Gennady told her as they strolled to the plastic-sheet-covered doorway.

As they drove back to Stepnogorsk, Ambrose leaned against the Tata’s door and looked at Gennady in silence. Finally he said, “You do this for a living?”

“Ah, it’s unreliable. A paycheck here, a paycheck there . . . ”

“No, really. What’s this all about?”

Gennady eyed him. He probably owed the kid an explanation after getting guns drawn on him. “Have you ever heard of metastable explosives?”

“What? No. Wait . . . ” He fumbled for his glasses.

“Never mind that.” Gennady waved at the glasses. “Metastables are basically super-powerful chemical explosives. They’re my new nightmare.”

Ambrose jerked a thumb back at SNOPB. “I thought you were looking for germs.”

“This isn’t about germs, it’s about hydrogen bombs.” Ambrose looked blank. “A hydrogen bomb is a fusion device that’s triggered by high compression and high temperature. Up til now, the only thing that could generate those kinds of conditions was an atomic bomb—a plutonium bomb, understand? Plutonium is really hard to refine, and it creates terrible fallout even if you only use a little of it as your fusion trigger.”

“So?”

“So, metastable explosives are powerful enough to trigger hydrogen fusion without the plutonium. They completely sever the connection between nuclear weapons and nuclear industry, which means that once they exist, we good guys totally lose our ability to tell who has the bomb and who doesn’t. Anybody who can get metastables and some tritium gas can build a hydrogen bomb, even some disgruntled loner in his garage.

“And somebody is building one.”

Stepnogorsk was fast approaching. The town was mostly a collection of Soviet-era apartment blocks with broad prairie visible past them. Gennady swung them around a corner and they drove through Microdistrict 2 and past the disused Palace of Culture. Up ahead was their hotel . . . surrounded by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.

“Oh,” said Gennady. “A fire?”

“Pull over. Pull over!” Ambrose braced his hands against the Tata’s low ceiling. Gennady shot him a look, but did as he’d asked.

“Shit. They’ve found me.”

“Who? Those are police cars. I’ve been with you every minute since we got here, there’s no way you could have gotten into any trouble.” Gennady shook his head. “No, if it’s anything to do with us, it’s probably Kyzdygoi’s people sending us a message.”

“Yeah? Then who are those suits with the cops?”

Gennady thought about it. He could simply walk up to one of the cops and ask, but figured Ambrose would probably have a coronary if he did that.

“Well . . . there is one thing we can try. But it’ll cost a lot.”

“How much?”

Gennady eyed him. “All right, all right,” said Ambrose. “What do we do?”

“You just watch.” Gennady put on his glasses and stepped out of the car. As he did, he put through a call to London, where it was still early morning. “Hello? Lisaveta? It’s Gennady. Hi! How are you?”

He’d brought a binocular attachment for the glasses, which he sometimes used for reading serial numbers on pipes or barrels from a distance. He clipped this on and began scanning the small knot of men who were standing around outside the hotel’s front doors.

“Listen, Lisa, can I ask you to do something for me? I have some faces I need scanned. . . . Not even remotely legal, I’m sure. . . . No, I’m not in trouble! Would I be on the phone to you if I were in trouble? Just—okay. I’m good for it. Here come the images.”

He relayed the feed from his glasses to Lisa in her flat in London.

“Who’re you talking to?” asked Ambrose.

“Old friend. She got me out of Chernobyl intact when I had a little problem with a dragon— Lisa? Got it? Great. Call me back when you’ve done the analysis.”

He pocketed the glasses and climbed back in the car. “Lisa has Interpol connections, and she’s a fantastic hacker. She’ll run facial recognition on it and hopefully tell us who those people are.”

Ambrose cringed back in his seat. “So what do we do in the meantime?”

“We have lunch. How ’bout that French restaurant we passed? The one with the little Eiffel Tower?”

Despite the clear curbs everywhere, Gennady parked the car at the shopping mall and walked the three blocks to the La France. He didn’t tell Ambrose why, but the American would figure it out: the Tata was traceable through its GPS. Luckily La France was open and they settled in for some decent crepes. Gennady had a nice view of a line of trees west of the town boundary. Occasionally a car drove past.

Lisa pinged him as they were settling up. “Gennady? I got some hits for you.”

“Really?” He hadn’t expected her to turn up anything. Gennady’s working assumption was that Ambrose was just being paranoid.

“Nothing off the cops; they must be local,” she said. “But one guy—the old man—well, it’s daft.”

He sighed in disappointment, and Ambrose shot him a look. “Go ahead.”

“His name is Alexei Egorov. He’s premier of a virtual nation called the Soviet Union Online. They started from this project to digitize all the existing paper records of the Soviet era. Once those were online, Egorov and his people started some deep data-mining to construct a virtual Soviet, and then they started inviting the last die-hard Stalinists—or their kids—to join. It’s a virtual country composed of bitter old men who’re nostalgic for the purges. Daft.”

“Thanks, Lisa. I’ll wire you the fee.”

He glowered at Ambrose. “Tell me about Soviet Union.”

“I’m not supposed to—”

“Oh come on. Who said that? Whoever they are, they’re on the far side of the planet right now, they can’t help you. They put you with me, but I can’t help you either if I don’t know what’s going on.”

Ambrose’s lips thinned to a white line. He leaned forward. “It’s big,” he said.

“Can’t be bigger than my metatables. Tell me: what did you see on Mars?”

Ambrose hesitated. Then he blurted, “A pyramid.”

Silence.

“Really, a pyramid,” Ambrose insisted. “Big sucker, gray, I think most of it was buried in the permafrost. It was the only thing sticking up for miles. This was on the Northern plains, where there’s ice just under the surface. The whole area around it . . . well, it was like a frozen splash, if you know what I mean. Almost a crater.”

This was just getting more and more disappointing. “And why is Soviet Union Online after you?”

“Because the pyramid had Russian writing on it. Just four letters, in red: CCCP.”

The next silence went on for a while, and was punctuated only by the sound of other diners grumbling about local carbon prices.

“I leaked some photos before Google came after me with their non-disclosure agreements,” Ambrose explained. “I guess the Soviets have internet search-bots constantly searching for certain things, and they picked up on my posts before Google was able to take them down. I got a couple of threatening phone calls from men with thick Slavic accents. Then they tried to kidnap me.”

“No!”

Ambrose grimaced. “Well, they weren’t very good at it. It was four guys, all of them must have been in their eighties, they tried to bundle me into a black van. I ran away and they just stood there yelling curses at me in Russian. One of them threw his cane at me.” He rubbed his ankle.

“And you took them seriously?”

“I did when the FBI showed up and told me I had to pack up and go with them. That’s when I ran to the U.N. I didn’t believe that ‘witness protection’ crap the Feds tried to feed me. The U.N. people told me that the Soviets’ data mining is actually really good. They keep turning up embarrassing and incriminating information about what people and governments got up to back in the days of the Cold War. They use what they know to influence people.”

“That’s bizarre.” He thought about it. “Think they bought off the police here?”

“Or somebody. They want to know about the pyramid. But only Google, and the Feds, and I know where it is. And NASA’s already patched that part of the Mars panoramas with fake data.”

Disappointment had turned to a deep sense of surprise. For Gennady, being surprised usually meant that something awful was about to happen; so he said, “We need to get you out of town.”

Ambrose brightened. “I have an idea. Let’s go back to SNOPB. I looked up these -3 people, they’re eco-radicals but at least they don’t seem to be lunatics.”

“Hmmph. You just think Kyzdygoi’s ‘hot.’” Ambrose grinned and shrugged.

“Okay. —But we’re not driving, because the car can be tracked. You walk there. It’s only a few kilometers. I’ll deal with the authorities and these ‘Soviets,’ and once I’ve sent them on their way we’ll meet up. You’ve got my number.”

Ambrose had evidently never taken a walk in the country before. After Gennady convinced him he would survive it, they parted outside La France, and Gennady watched him walk away, sneakers flapping. He shook his head and strolled back to the Tata.

Five men were waiting for him. Two were policemen, and three wore business attire. One of these was an old, bald man in a faded olive-green suit. He wore augmented reality glasses, and there was a discrete red pin on his lapel in the shape of the old Soviet flag.

Gennady made a show of pushing his own glasses back on his nose and walked forward, hand out. As the cops started to reach for their tasers, Gennady said, “Mr. Egorov! Gennady Malianov, IAEA. You’ll forgive me if I record and upload this conversation to headquarters?” He tapped the frame of his glasses and turned to the other suits. “I didn’t catch your names?”

The suits frowned; the policemen hesitated; Egorov, however, put out his hand and Gennady shook it firmly. He could feel the old man’s bones shift in his grip, but Egorov didn’t grimace. Instead he said, “Where’s your companion?”

“You mean that American? No idea. We shared a hotel room because it was cheaper, but then we parted ways this morning.”

Egorov took his hand back, and pressed his bruised knuckles against his hip. “You’ve no idea where he is?”

“None.”

“What’re you doing here?” asked one of the cops.

“Inspecting SNOPB,” he said. Gennady didn’t have to fake his confidence here; he felt well armored by his affiliation to Frankl’s people. “My credentials are online, if there’s some sort of issue here?”

“No issue,” muttered Egorov. He turned away, and as he did a discrete icon lit up in the corner of Gennady’s heads-up display. Egorov had sent him a text message.

He hadn’t been massaging his hand on his flank; he’d been texting through his pants. Gennady had left the server in his glasses open, so it would have been easy for Egorov to ping it and find his address.

In among all the other odd occurrences of the past couple of days, this one didn’t stand out. But as Gennady watched Egorov and his policemen retreat, he realized that his assumption that Egorov had been in charge might be wrong. Who were those other two suits?

He waited for Egorov’s party to drive away, then got in the Tata and opened the email.

It said, Mt tnght Pavin Inn, rstrnt wshrm. Cm aln.

Gennady puzzled over those last two words for a while. Then he got it. “Come alone!” Ah. He should have known.

Shaking his head, he pulled out of the lot and headed back to the hotel to check out. After loading his bag, and Ambrose’s, into the Tata, he hit the road back to SNOPB. Nobody followed him, but that meant nothing since they could track him through the car’s transponder if they wanted. It hardly mattered; he was supposed to be inspecting the old anthrax factory, so where else would he be going?

Ambrose’d had enough time to get to SNOPB by now, but Gennady kept one eye on the fields next to the road just in case. He saw nobody, and fully expected to find the American waiting outside Building 242 as he pulled up.

As he stepped out of the Tata he nearly twisted his ankle in a deep rut. There were fresh tire tracks and shattered bits of old asphalt all over the place; he was sure he hadn’t seen them this morning.

“Hello?” He walked down the ramp into the sudden dark of the bunker. Did he have the right building? It was completely dark here.

Wires drooled from overhead conduits; hydroponic trays lay jumbled in the corner, and strange-smelling liquids were pooled on the floor. -3 had pulled out, and in a hurry.

He cursed, but suppressed an urge to run back to the car. He had no idea where they’d gone, and they had a head-start on him. The main question was, had they left before or after Ambrose showed up?

The answer lay in the yellow grass near where -3’s vehicles had been parked that morning. Gennady knelt down and picked up a familiar pair of augmented reality glasses. Ambrose would not have left these behind willingly.

Gennady swore, and now he did run to the Tata.

The restaurant at the Pavin Inn was made up to look like the interiors of a row of yurts. This gave diners some privacy as most of them had private little chambers under wood-ribbed ceilings; it also broke up the eye-lines to the place’s front door, making it easy for Gennady to slip past the two men in suits who’d been with Egorov in the parking lot. He entered the men’s room to find Egorov pacing in front of the urinal trough.

“What’s this all about?” demanded Gennady—but Egorov made a shushing motion and grabbed a trash can. As he upended it under the bathroom’s narrow window, he said, “First you must get me out of here!”

“What? Why?”

Egorov tried to climb onto the upended can, but his knees and hips weren’t flexible enough. Finally Gennady relented and went to help him. As he boosted the old comrade, Egorov said, “I am a prisoner of these people! They work for the Americans.” He practically spat the name. He perched precariously on the can and began tugging at the latch to the window. “They have seized our database! All the Soviet records . . . including what we know about the Tsarina.”

Gennady coughed. Then he said, “I’ll bring the car around.”

He helped Egorov through the window then, after making sure no one was looking, left through the hotel’s front door. The unmistakable silhouette of Egorov was limping into the parking lot. Gennady followed him and, as he unlocked the Tata, he said, “I’ve disabled the GPS tracking in this car. It’s a rental; I’m going to drop it off in Semey, which is six hundred kilometers from here. Are you sure you’re up to a drive like that?”

The old man’s eyes glinted under yellow street light. “Never thought I’d get a chance to see the steppes again. Let’s go!”

Gennady felt a ridiculous surge of adrenalin as they bumped out of the parking lot. Two cars were on the road, and endless blackness swallowed the landscape beyond the edge of town. It was a simple matter to swing onto the highway and leave Stepnogorsk behind—but it felt like a car chase.

“Ha ha!” Egorov craned his neck to look back at the dwindling town lights. “Semey, eh? You’re going to Semipalatinsk, aren’t you?”

“To look at the Tsarina site, yes. Whose side does that put me on?”

“Sides?” Egorov crossed his arms and glared out the windshield. “I don’t know about sides.”

“It was an honest question.”

“I believe you. But I don’t know. Except for them,” he added, jabbing a thumb back at the town. “I know they’re bad guys.”

“Why? And why are they interested in Ambrose?”

“Same reason we are. Because of what he saw.”

Gennady took a deep breath. “Okay. Why don’t you just tell me what you know? And I’ll do the same?”

“Yes, all right.” The utter blackness of the night-time steppe had swallowed them; all that was visible was the double-cone of roadway visible in the car’s headlamps. It barely changed, moment to moment, giving the drive a timelessness Gennady would, under other circumstances, have quite enjoyed.

“We data-mine records from the Soviet era,” began Egorov. “To find out what really went on. It’s lucrative business, and it supports the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Online.” He tapped his glasses.

“Well, a few weeks ago, we got a request for some of the old data—from the Americans. Two requests, actually, a day apart: one from the search engine company, and the other from the government. We were naturally curious, so we didn’t say no; but we did a little digging into the data ourselves. —That is, we’d started to, when those young, grim men burst into our offices and confiscated the server. And the backup.”

Gennady looked askance at him. “Really? Where was this?”

“Um. Seattle. That’s where the CCCOP is based—only because we’ve been banned in the old country! Russia’s run by robber barons today, they have no regard for the glory of—”

“Yes yes. Did you find out what they were looking for?”

“Yes—which is how I ended up with these travel companions you saw. They are in the pay of the American CIA.”

“Yes, but why? What does this have to do with the Tsarina?”

“I was hoping you could tell me. All we found was appropriations for strange things that should never have had anything to do with a nuclear test. Before the Tsarina was set off, there was about a year of heavy construction at the site. Sometimes, you know, they built fake towns to blow them up and examine the blast damage. That’s what I thought at first; they ordered thousands of tonnes of concrete, rebar and asbestos, that sort of thing. But if you look at the records after the test, there’s no sign of where any of that material went.”

“They ordered some sort of agricultural crop from SNOPB,” Gennady ventured. Egorov nodded.

“None of the discrepancies would ever have been noticed if not for your friend and whatever it is he found. What was it, anyway?”

A strange suspicion had begun to form in Gennady’s mind, but it was so unlikely that he shook his head. “I want to look at the Tsarina site,” he said. “Maybe that’ll tell us.”

Egorov was obviously unsatisfied with that answer, but he said nothing, merely muttering and trying to get himself comfortable in the Tata’s bucket seat. After a while, just as the hum of the dark highway was starting to hypnotize Gennady, Egorov said, “It’s all gone to hell, you know.”

“Hmm?”

“Russia. It was hard in the old days, but at least we had our pride.” He turned to look out the black window. “After 1990, all the life just went out of the place. Lower birthrate, men drinking themselves to death by the age of forty . . . no ambition, no hope. A lost land.”

“You left?”

“Physically, yes.” Egorov darted a look at Gennady. “You never leave. Not a place like this. For many years now, I’ve struggled with how to bring back Russia’s old glory—our sense of pride. Yet the best I was ever able to come up with was an online environment. A game.” He spat the word contemptuously.

Gennady didn’t reply, but he knew how Egorov felt. Ukraine had some of the same problems—the listless lack of direction, the loss of confidence . . . It wasn’t getting any better here. He thought of the blasted steppes they were passing through, rendered unlivable by global warming. There had been massive forest fires in Siberia this year, and the Gobi desert was expanding north and west, threatening the Kazaks even as the Caspian sea dwindled down to nothing.

He thought of SNOPB. “They’re gone,” he said, “but they left their trash behind.” Toxic, decaying: nuclear submarines heeled over in the waters off of Murmansk, nitrates soaking the soil around the launch pads of Baikonur. The ghosts of old Soviets prowled this dark, in the form of radiation in the groundwater, mutations in the forest, and poisons in the dust clouds that were all too common these days. Gennady had spent his whole adult life cleaning up the mess, and before yesterday he’d been able to tell himself that it was working—that all the worst nightmares were from the past. The metastables had changed that, in one stroke rendering all the old fears laughable in comparison.

“Get some sleep,” he told Egorov. “We’re going to be driving all night.”

“I don’t sleep much anymore.” But the old man stopped talking, and just stared ahead. He couldn’t be visiting his online People’s Republic through his glasses, because those IP addresses were blocked here. But maybe he saw it all anyway—the brave young men in their trucks, heading to the Semipalatinsk site to witness a nuclear blast; the rail yards where parts for the giant moon rocket, doomed to explode on the pad, were mustering . . . With his gaze fixed firmly on the past, he seemed the perfect opposite of Ambrose with his American dreams of a new world unburdened by history, whose red dunes marched to a pure and mysterious horizon.

The first living thing in space had been the Russian dog Laika. She had died in orbit—had never come home. If he glanced out at the star-speckled sky, Gennady could almost see her ghost racing eternally through the heavens, beside the dead dream of planetary conquest, of flags planted in alien soil and shining domes on the hills of Mars.

They arrived at the Tsarina site at 4:30: dawn, at this latitude and time of year. The Semipalatinsk Polygon was bare, flat, blasted scrubland: Mars with tufts of dead weed. The irony was that it hadn’t been the hundreds of nuclear bombs set off here that had killed the land; even a decade after the Polygon was closed, the low rolling hills had been covered with a rich carpet of waving grass. Instead, it was the savage turn of the climate, completely unpredicted by the KGB and the CIA, that had killed the steppe.

The road into the Polygon was narrow blacktop with no real shoulder, no ditches, and no oncoming traffic—though a set of lights had faded in and out of view in the rearview mirror all through the drive. Gennady would have missed the turnoff to the Tsarina site had his glasses not beeped.

There had been a low wire fence here at one time, but nobody had kept it up. He drove straight over the fallen gate, which was becoming one with the soil, and up a low rise to the crest of the water-filled crater. There he parked and got out.

Egorov climbed out too and stretched cautiously. “Beautiful,” he said, gazing into the epic sunrise. “Is it radioactive here?”

“Oh, a little . . . That’s odd.”

“What?”

Gennady had looked at the satellite view of the site on the way here; it was clear, standing here in person, that that vertical perspective lied. “The Tsarina was supposed to be an underground test. You usually get some subsidence of the ground in a circle around the test site. And with the big ground shots, you would get a crater, like Lake Chagan,” he nodded to the east. “But this . . . this is a hole.”

Egorov spat into it. “It certainly is.” The walls of the Tsarina crater were sheer and went down a good fifty feet to black water. The “crater” wasn’t round, either, but square, and it wasn’t nearly big enough to be the result of a surface explosion. If he hadn’t known it was the artifact of a bomb blast, Gennady would have sworn he was looking at a flooded quarry.

Gennady gathered his equipment and began combing the grass around the site. After a minute he found some twisted chunks of concrete and metal, and knelt down to inspect them.

Egorov came up behind him. “What are you looking for?”

“Serial numbers.” He quickly found some old, grayed stenciling on a half-buried tank made of greenish metal. “You’ll understand what I’m doing,” he said as he pinched the arm of his glasses to take a snapshot. “I’m checking our database . . . Hmpf.”

“What is it?” Egorov shifted from foot to foot. He was glancing around, as if afraid they might be interrupted.

“This piece came from the smaller of the installations here. The one the Americans called URDF-3.”

“URDF?” Egorov blinked at him.

“Stands for ‘Unidentified Research and Development Facility.’ The stuff they built there scared the Yankees even more than the H-bomb . . . ”

He stood up, frowning, and slowly turned to look at the entire site. “Something’s been bothering me,” he said as he walked to the very edge of the giant pit.

“What’s that?” Egorov was hanging back.

“Ambrose told me he saw a pyramid on Mars. It said CCCP on its side. That was all; so he knew it was Russian, and so did Google and the CIA when they found out about it. And you, too.

“But that’s all anybody knew. So who made the connection between the pyramid and the Tsarina?”

Egorov didn’t reply. Gennady turned and found that the old man had drawn himself up very straight, and had leveled a small, nasty-looking pistol at him.

“You didn’t follow us to Stepnogorsk,” said Gennady. “You were already there.”

“Take off your glasses,” said Egorov. “Carefully, so I can be sure you’re not snapping another picture.”

As Gennady reached up to comply he felt the soft soil at the lip of the pit start to crumble. “Ah, can we—” It was too late, he toppled backward, arms flailing.

He had an instant’s choice: roll down the slope, or jump and hope he’d hit the water. He jumped.

The cold hit him so hard that at first he thought he’d been shot. Swearing and gasping, he surfaced, but when he spotted Egorov’s silhouette at the crest of the pit, dove again.

Morning sunlight was just tipping into the water. At first Gennady thought the wall of the pit was casting a dark shadow across the sediment below him. Gradually he realized the truth: there was no bottom to this shaft. At least, none within easy diving distance.

He swam to the opposite side; he couldn’t stay down here, he’d freeze. Defeated, he flung himself out of the freezing water onto hard clay that was probably radioactive. Rolling over, he looked up.

Egorov stood on the lip of the pit. Next to him was a young woman with a rifle in her hands.

Gennady sat up. “Shit.”

Kyzdygoi slung the rifle over her back, then clambered down the slope to the shore. As she picked her way over to Gennady she said, “How much do you know?”

“Everything,” he said between coughs. “I know everything. Where’s Ambrose?”

“He’s safe,” she said. “He’ll be fine.”

Then she waited, rifle cradled. “You’re here,” he said reluctantly, “which tells me that -3 was funded by the Soviets. Your job was never to clean up the Earth—it was to design life support and agricultural systems for a Mars colony.”

Her mouth twitched, but she didn’t laugh. “How could we possibly get to Mars? The sky’s a shooting gallery.”

“ . . . And that would be a problem if you were going up there in a dinky little aluminum can, like cosmonauts always did.” He stood up, joints creaking from the cold. He was starting to shiver deeply and it was hard to speak past his chattering teeth. “B-but if you rode a c-concrete bunker into orbit, you could ignore the shrapnel c-completely. In fact, that would be the only way you could d-do it.”

“Come now. How could something like that ever get off the ground?”

“The same way the Tsarina d-did.” He nodded at the dark surface of the flooded shaft. “The Americans had their P-project Orion. The Soviets had a similar program based at URDF-3. Both had discovered that an object could be just a few meters away from a nuclear explosion, and if it was made of the right materials it wouldn’t be destroyed—it would be shot away like a bullet from a gun. The Americans designed a spaceship that would drop atomic bombs out the back and ride the explosions to orbit. But the Tsarina wasn’t like that . . . it was just one bomb, and a d-deep shaft, and a pyramid-shaped spaceship to ride that explosion. That design’s something called a Verne gun.”

“And who else knows this?”

He hesitated. “N-no one,” he admitted. “I didn’t know until I saw the shaft just now. The p-pyramid was fitted into the mouth of it, right about where we’re s-standing. That’s why this doesn’t look like any other bomb crater on Earth.”

“Let’s go,” she said, gesturing with the rifle. “You’re turning blue.”

“Y-you’re not going t-to sh-shoot me?”

“There’s no need,” she said gently. “In a few days, the whole world will know what we’ve done.”

Gennady finished taping aluminum foil to the trailer’s window. Taking a push-pin from the cork board by the door, he carefully pricked a single tiny hole in the foil.

It was night, and crickets were chirping outside. Gennady wasn’t tied up—in fact, he was perfectly free to leave—but on his way out the door Egorov had said, “I wouldn’t go outside in the next hour or so. After that . . . well, wait for the dust to settle.”

They’d driven him about fifty kilometers to the south and into an empty part of the Polygon. When Gennady had asked why this place, Egorov had laughed. “The Soviets set off their bombs here because this was the last empty place on Earth. It’s still the last empty place, and that’s why we’re here.”

There was nothing here but the withered steppe, a hundred or so trucks, vans and buses, and the cranes, tanks and pole-sheds of a temporary construction site. —And, towering over the sheds, a gray concrete pyramid.

“A Verne gun fires its cargo into orbit in a single shot,” Egorov had told Gennady. “It generates thousands of gravities worth of acceleration—enough to turn you into a smear on the floor. That’s why the Soviets couldn’t send any people; they hadn’t figured out how to set off a controlled sequence of little bombs. The Americans never perfected that either. They didn’t have the computational power to do the simulations.

“So they sent everything but the people. Two hundred eighty thousand tonnes in one shot, to Mars.”

Bulldozers and cranes, fuel tanks, powdered cement, bags of seeds and food, space suits, even a complete, dismantled nuclear reactor: the Tsarina had included everything potential colonists might need on a new world. Its builders knew it had gone up, knew it had gotten to Mars; but they didn’t know where it had landed, or whether it had landed intact.

A day after his visit to the Tsarina site, Gennady had sat outside this trailer with Egorov, Kyzdygoi and a few other officials of the new Soviet. They’d drunk a few beers and talked about the plan. “When our data-mining turned up the Tsarina’s manifest, it was like a light from heaven,” Egorov had said, his hands opening eloquently in the firelight. “Suddenly we saw what was possible, how to revive our people—all the world’s people—around a new hope, after all hope had gone. Something that would combine Apollo and Trinity into one event, and suddenly both would take on the meaning they always needed to have.”

Egorov had started a crash program to build an Orion rocket. They couldn’t get fissionable materials—Gennady and his people had locked those up tightly and for all time. But the metastables promised a different approach.

“We hoped the Tsarina was on Mars and intact, but we didn’t know for sure, until Ambrose leaked his pictures.”

The new Tsarina would use a series of small, clean fusion blasts to lift off and, at the far end, to land again. Thanks to Ambrose, they knew where the Tsarina was. It didn’t matter that the Americans did too; nobody else had a plan to get there.

“And by the time they get their acts together, we’ll have built a city,” said Kyzdygoi. She was wide-eyed with the power of the idea. “Because we’re not going there two at a time, like Noah in his Ark. We’re all going.” And she swung her arm to indicate the hundreds of campfires burning all around them, where thousands of men, women and children, hand-picked from among the citizens of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Online, waited to amaze the world.

Gennady hunkered down in a little fort he’d built out of seat cushions, and waited.

It was like a camera flash, and a second later there was a second, then a third, and then the whole trailer bounced into the air and everything Gennady’s hadn’t tied down went tumbling. The windows shattered and he landed on cushions and found himself staring across suddenly open air at the immolation of the building site.

The flickering flashes continued, coming from above now. The pyramid was gone, and the cranes and heavy machinery lay tumbled like a child’s toys, all burning.

Flash. Flash.

It was really happening.

Flash. Flash. Flash . . .

Gradually, Gennady began to be able to hear again. He came to realize that monstrous thunder was rolling across the steppe, like a god’s drumbeat in time with the flashes. It faded, as the flashes faded, until there was nothing but the ringing in his ears, and the orange flicker of flame from the launch site.

He staggered out to find perfect devastation. Once, this must once have been a common sight on the steppe; but his Geiger counter barely registered any radiation at all.

—And in that, of course, lay a terrible irony. Egorov and his people had indeed divided history in two, but not in the way they’d imagined.

Gennady ran for the command trailer. He only had a few minutes before the air forces of half a dozen nations descended on this place. The trailer had survived the initial blast, so he scrounged until he found a jerry-can full of gasoline, and then he climbed in.

There they were: Egorov’s servers. The EMP from the little nukes might have wiped its drives, but Gennady couldn’t take the chance. He poured gasoline all over the computers, made a trail back to the door, then as the whole trailer went up behind him, ran to the leaning-but-intact metal shed where the metastables had been processed, and he did the same to it.

That afternoon, as he and Egorov were watching the orderly queue of people waiting to enter the New Tsarina, Gennady had made his final plea. “Your research into metastables,” Gennady went on. “I need it. All of it, and the equipment and the backups; anything that might be used to reconstruct what you did.”

“What happens to the Earth is no longer our concern,” Egorov said with a frown. “Humanity made a mess here. It’s not up to us to clean it up.”

“But to destroy it all, you only need to be indifferent! And I’m asking, please, however much the world may have disappointed you, don’t leave it like this.” As he spoke, Gennady scanned the line of people for Ambrose, but couldn’t see him. Nobody had said where the young American was.

Egorov had sighed in annoyance, then nodded sharply. “I’ll have all the formulae and the equipment gathered together. It’s all I have time for, now. You can do what you want with it.”

Gennady watched the flames twist into the sky. He was exhausted, and the sky was full of contrails and gathering lights. He hadn’t destroyed enough of the evidence; surely, someone would figure out what Egorov’s people had done. And then . . . Shoulders slumped under the burden of that knowledge, he stalked into the darkness at the camp’s perimeter.

His rented Tata sat where they’d left it when they first arrived here. After Kyzdygoi had confiscated his glasses at the Tsarina site, she’d put them in the Tata’s glove compartment. They were still there.

Before Gennady put them on, he took a last unaided look at the burning campsite. Egorov and his people had escaped, but they’d left Gennady behind to clean up their mess. The metastables would be back. This new nightmare would get out of the bottle eventually, and when it did, the traditional specter of nuclear terrorism would look like a Halloween ghost in comparison. Could even the conquest of another world make up for that?

As the choppers settled in whipping spirals of dust, Gennady rolled up the Tata’s window and put on his glasses. The New Tsarina’s EMP pulses hadn’t killed them—they booted up right away. And, seconds after they did, a little flag told him there was an email waiting for him.

It was from Ambrose, and it read:

Gennady: sorry I didn’t have time to say goodbye.

I just wanted to say I was wrong. Anything’s possible, even for me.

P.S. My room’s going to have a fantastic view.

Gennady stared bitterly at the words. Anything’s possible . . .

“For you, maybe,” he said as soldiers piled out of the choppers.

“Not me.”

First published in Engineering Infinity, edited by Jonathan Strahan.

About the Author

Canadian writer Karl Schroeder was born and raised in Brandon, Manitoba. He moved to Toronto in 1986, and has been working and writing there ever since. He is best known for his far-future Virga series, consisting of Sun of Suns, Queen of Candesce, Pirate Sun, and The Hero, but he has also written the novels Ventus, Permanence, and Lady of Mazes, as well as a novel in collaboration with David Nickle, The Claus Effect. He’s also the co-author, with Cory Doctorow, of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Publishing Science Fiction. His short fiction has been collected in Engine of Recall. His most recent book is a new novel, Lockstep.

Song for a City-Universe:

Lucius Shepard’s Abandoned Vermillion

Jason Heller

It takes a long time to read an issue of Vermillion. Relatively speaking, anyway; each of the twelve issues of the brilliant, overlooked science-fantasy comic book series—written by the late SFF master Lucius Shepard and published in 1996 and ’97—is composed of as many pages as your average comic. Within that basic framework, though, Shepard sought to accomplish the near impossible: depict, in graphic-narrative form, his vision of a city called Vermillion, a megalopolis that spans light years instead of blocks and encompasses infinite distortions of time, space, biology, and being.

That’s a tall order. Then again, this is Shepard, whose Dragon Griaule stories—collected in 2012 as The Dragon Griaule and concluded, posthumously, in 2014 with the novel Beautiful Blood—imagined the city of Teocinte, built against the body of vast, sleeping dragon. Vermillion is limitlessly more ambitious, to the point where it’s justified to wonder how Shepard ever thought he could sell the idea, let alone execute it. Jonathan Cave, the series’ protagonist, is vague, abstruse, self-absorbed, and borderline amoral; the sprawling, technologically advanced yet oddly Renaissance city he lives in has no rules, order, or structure. In other words, there’s little for a reader to cling to, especially those who crave some form of sympathetic bond with a comic’s main character. Often, it’s not even clear what he desires or pursues; Shepard seems bent on breaking every rule he can, not just of writing comics, but of writing fiction.

Shepard wasn’t trained in the art of comics scripting, and it shows. Anyone familiar with his classics and his 1987 novel Life During Wartime know well how lush and labyrinthine his tangle of prose and ideas could be. Not to mention enveloping, enthralling, and luxuriantly time-consuming.

Comic books—at least not the twenty-four-page variety—don’t always work well under that kind of weight. Vermillion was serialized, but Shepard either failed to grasp or refused to surrender to the format’s formal boundaries—much in the same way the city of Vermillion itself sprawls far beyond the realm of reality or reason.

Instead of meshing symbiotically on the artists he collaborated with, so that they might convey their share of the story’s information, Shepard wrote and wrote and wrote, crowding the panels with fields of words until language itself became a key visual component. It’s as if he ripped one of his sumptuous novels into fragments then pasted them on top of artwork that sometimes bore only a tenuous connection to the text. His lengthy descriptions and philosophical perambulations made Vermillion stand out from so many of its contemporaries on the shelves; they also contributed to Vermillion’s demise.

Vermillion was conceived as an open-ended, ongoing series, with a new issue coming out each month. It was unceremoniously canceled after a scant dozen issues. Shepard—who died last year at the age of seventy—had never written comics before undertaking Vermillion. Tellingly, he never would again. The series was an experiment for him, just as much as it was an experiment for its publisher. DC Comics, after finding much success in the early ’90s with sundry supernatural, horror, and weird-fiction themes thanks to its Vertigo imprint (led by Neil Gaiman’s groundbreaking The Sandman), decided to do something similar—only with science fiction and fantasy.

That new imprint, Helix, failed abysmally. Only one of its titles, Warren Ellis’ gonzo-dystopian Transmetropolitan, survived Helix’s short life. Not even the series written by an even more legendary SFF author than Shepard, Michael Moorcock’s Multiverse, endured. But during its two-year existence, Helix took huge risks. Vermillion was one of them.

Entering Vermillion is a disorienting experience. Yet there are familiar signposts, at least for those fortunate enough to have grounding in genre. Vermillion has its precedents in the form of other fictional SFF cities that their creators habitually revisit, each time looking in at a different angle: Fritz Leiber’s Lankhmar, Michael Moorcock’s Tanelorn, M. John Harrison’s Viriconium, Edward Bryant’s Cinnabar.

The most obvious nod, though, is to J. G. Ballard’s Vermilion Sands—not a city per se, but a near-future resort in which technology, perception, and consciousness are reordered like so many building blocks. Vermillion’s first story arc, which comprises the first seven issues of the series, is its shakiest, due to Shepard’s overbearing narrative hand—not to mention the stiff murky art of Al Davison, who just doesn’t seem able to keep up with Shepard’s boiling imagination. Stories are nested within stories, and nested again, until they form a recursive puzzle.

Even at its trickiest, though, that initial, seven-issue arc boasts some stunning ideas, including the almost magical singularity known as Starlight Drive—a close cousin to M. John Harrison’s Kefahuchi Tract—and a sinister church of AI mysticism that’s almost a pastiche of certain elements of Frank Herbert’s Dune. At times, Shepard zooms out to a profound scale, contorting the fundamentals of the cosmos to a degree so horrific, it might have made Lovecraft proud. It’s dizzying stuff. The universe of Vermillion is one “where whales once ferried the cold tonnage of their souls over reefs made from drowned kingdoms.” Similarly, Shepard is more concerned with letting these grand, terrifying visions dominate Vermillion, rather than plot.

The story tightens and sharpens—and turns more fantasy than SF—during Vermillion’s second and final arc. Gary Erskine takes over the art duties, and his crisp, intricate work is a big step up from Davison’s. Accordingly, Shepard reins in his extravagant wordage; as Cave spends much of this disjointed story arc delving into the mysteries of the goddess Lady Manganese and her all-too-mortal husband Lord Iron, Shepard’s writing sheds much of its excess.

Cave becomes more of a bystander, and occasional catalyst, rather than anything resembling a hero. By the time the series’ abrupt finale, issue #12, arrives, Shepard has hit his stride, crafting a collection of framed vignettes that verge on folklore and fit together like clockwork. Or so we must assume; DC Comics, eager to wash its hand of the flop that was Vermillion, was so negligent that it printed the pages of #12 out of order, so that the reader has to skip around to try to piece together an already piecemeal tale. Somehow, it’s the most fitting way Vermillion could have ended.

In Shepard’s afterword to the first issue of Vermillion, he explained the comic’s conception by saying,

I eventually came to understand that [the city of] Vermillion was not merely an exercise in wish fulfillment, but also a metaphor for my inner life, in effect a habitat like an enormous head in which trillions of thoughts and fragments of dreams dressed up as strangers and monsters and lovers prowled the endless galleries.

At its heart, that’s what Vermillion is all about. Given the chance to get his foot in the door in the comics industry, he intrepidly, selfishly decided to turn his scripts into the most personal artistic expressions. In the series high point, the standalone issue #8, Cave takes a drunken traipse through his own psyche, one that turns increasingly psychedelic before finally settling into a Dante’s-Inferno-meets-Alice-in-Wonderland spiral of poignant lunacy. He’s advised by giant insects and finds insights in a grotesque amusement park. He’s also the mouthpiece for some of Shepard’s best prose; in fact, he becomes Shepard in all but name, echoing his creator’s ruminations on his perverse ability “to pass through oblivion into a space where grief becomes power and the wind shapes mournful vowels from the broken stones of a life.”

That the art in Vermillion #8 is rendered by John Totleben—the best artist to have worked on Vermillion, previously known for his collaborations with Alan Moore on Miracleman and Swamp Thing, both of which are subtly evoked here—only cements issue #8’s status as the apex of the series’ truncated run. It’s also one of the most poetic, albeit unrecognized as such, single issues of a comic book every made, as rich in depth, sensitivity, lyricism, and emotional truth as anything Neil Gaiman accomplished with his formidable The Sandman.

“Beauty is a deception. A lie we tell to cover the paucity of our lives,” says Ildiko the Immaculate, an angelic avatar of the apocalypse, when Cave and the others adventurers in their party linger too long on an idle conversation about the whys and wherefores of physical attraction—yet another one of Shepard’s ornate tangents that exterminates tension while adding rich texture. She then sagely adds, “My people had a saying: What is beautiful is what is not lost.”

When Shepard wrote those words, he had no way of knowing that Vermillion was destined to become both a miserable failure and an overlooked gem in his body of work. But he must have had an inkling of how deceptively beautiful, and how beautifully deceptive, he’d made Vermillion itself. It’s not a short read, any more than Vermillion is an easy place to navigate. But it’s worth lingering in every polyglot market square, biotech-oozing back alley, and magical cul-de-sac.

About the Author

Jason Heller is a former nonfiction editor of Clarkesworld; as part of the magazine’s 2012 editorial team, he received a Hugo Award. He is also the author of the alt-history novel Taft 2012 (Quirk Books) and a Senior Writer for The Onion’s pop-culture site, The A.V. Club. His short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Sybil’s Garage, Farrago’s Wainscot, and others, and his SFF-related reviews and essays have been published in Weird Tales, Entertainment Weekly NPR.org, Tor.com, and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s The Time Traveler’s Almanac (Tor Books). He lives in Denver with this wife Angie.

Exploring the Frontier:

A Conversation with Xia Jia

Ken Liu

It’s hard to keep up with Xia Jia: literary scholar, filmmaker, actress, painter, translator, and, oh right, speculative fiction author. She speaks fast, as if she has to cram an unusual number of syllables into each unit of time to keep up with the speed of her thoughts. In the middle of one of our chats she informed me that she had to run because she needed to make it to the taping of a TV show before coming back later to deliver a special lecture on the history of Chinese science fiction to a packed auditorium. In addition, that night she needed to prepare a semester’s worth of PowerPoint slides for classes she teaches at Xi’an Jiaotong University.

I wondered whether she was in possession of Hermione Granger’s Time-Turner.

Xia Jia published her first short story, “The Demon-Enslaving Flask,” in 2004 (English translation by Linda Rui Feng in the November 2012 issue of Renditions), when she was still a college student. The story, a retcon science history in which Maxwell’s demon was a literal demon instead of a thought experiment, catapulted its author into the limelight by winning her a Yinhe (Galaxy) Award for Best New Writer. At the same time, the story, which was published in the “Twilight Zone” section of Science Fiction World, China’s biggest SF magazine, “spawned a series of heated debates about how (and whether) we should blur (or further defend) the boundary between science fiction and other genres,” says Xia Jia.

Exploring the twilight frontier between worlds would become a constant theme in Xia Jia’s career. Trained to be a physicist as an undergraduate, she leapt into film studies and comparative literature for graduate school (her Ph.D. dissertation is titled “Fear and Hope in the Age of Globalization: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction and Its Cultural Politics (1991—2012)”). Her works are imbued with the tension between shifting tradition and revolutionary modernity, core and periphery, the written word and the moving image, rational analysis and intuitive recognition.

A multiple winner of the Yinhe (Galaxy) and Xingyun (Nebula) Awards for Chinese science fiction, Xia Jia is beloved by many fans and praised by fellow writers, but as a woman writer in a male-dominated field whose work defies easy categorization under schemes such as “science fiction / fantasy” or “hard / soft SF,” her stories have also continued to generate controversy.

(Although Xia Jia and I usually communicate in a mixture of Chinese and English, at her request, this interview was conducted in English.)

Welcome, Xia Jia. In the past, you’ve described your fiction as “porridge SF.” Can you explain what that means?

Thanks, Ken. Glad to talk with you. I never imagined that one day I would have to tell this story to the English world.

I didn’t invent the term “porridge SF.” Many years ago, after I showed my best friend Yang Qing a short story I wrote in high school composition class, she said, “If we consider Ted Chiang’s ‘Tower of Babylon’ as a masterpiece of soft SF, then I must congratulate you on having created this beautiful piece of ‘porridge SF’!”

Chinese people describe steamed rice as “hard rice” or “soft rice” based on the water content, and porridge is obviously softer even than “soft rice.” Porridge SF thus describes a story mixed with so many non-science elements (e.g. myth, legend or folklore) that it can hardly be classified as “science fiction” anymore, like “Tower of Babylon.”

Since both Yang and I were big Ted Chiang fans, the phrase was intended as a compliment.

After the controversy around whether “The Demon-Enslaving Flask” was really “science fiction,” in 2005 I published my second story “Carmen,” a space opera mixed with a gothic legend of the mysterious dancing girl Carmen. In a postscript, I declared that “no matter how many may refuse to acknowledge the ‘SFnal cloak’ around this story, I will continue to devote myself to this seemingly promising career in ’porridge SF.’” “Porridge SF” thus became the phrase to describe my style, which is usually regarded as the opposite of hard SF or so-called “core SF,” as exemplified by Liu Cixin’s works.

“A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” was the first story by you to appear in English (Clarkesworld, February 2012; originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, August 2010). Lois Tilton described it as “literary science fiction . . . where exceptional prose mingles the tropes of SF and fantasy and inform us that such distinctions are not so important.” It seems that the debate over genre boundaries is universal (though the debate also seems to me useless). What are some other ways that critics have described your work?

Besides “porridge SF,” my work is frequently described as typical “girlish soft SF,” which brings me biting comments and attacks from those who believe women are never qualified enough to write “hard SF” but can only make up watered-down love stories (I have noticed that many of those critics are also women).

I really appreciate Tilton’s remark, and I agree with you that the perennial debate over the distinction of hard SF from soft SF is most of the time pointless, which is why I have resisted further elaboration of the definition of “porridge SF.” I mean, it is not a slogan or manifesto, but only an attempt to give a name to something nameless wandering in the twilight zone. Likewise, “female SF” is another phrase I feel is tough to define. It is not my purpose to prove “female SF” can be as hard as “male SF/core SF,” or that “the soft” deserves higher evaluation than “the hard.” All I have been trying to do is to follow my instinct to explore the frontier between “the core” and “the fringe,” the known and the unknown. It is perhaps the most exciting experience that science fiction can bring us.

Speaking of “hard SF,” you actually studied at the School of Physics, Peking University, as an undergraduate (and you’ve helped me to get the science in my stories right). How (if at all) has your training and background in science affected your approach to literary analysis and fiction writing?

The science training has been useful both for my studies and my writing. If I have any question about a science topic, I can search for published papers instead of relying on media reports by journalists. It’s not boring; instead, the work will drive you to know this world better and love it more.

To give you a specific example, recently I gave a lecture on time travel where, using the “butterfly effect,” I explained that we cannot predict the weather or one’s trajectory in life accurately. Every second in our past matters equally.

It has taken all the moments of my life for me to become who I am today. Life is such a beautiful gift that no matter how carefully you measure it out it will seem like a waste. So don’t panic, and there’s time enough for love.

Your story, “Tongtong’s Summer” (Upgraded, edited by Neil Clarke, 2014; Chinese publication in ZUI Fiction, March 2014), offered a positive future of cyborgs and robots in contrast to many of the other stories in the anthology. Is this optimism something new in your recent work? Where does it come from?

That’s an interesting observation. I still remember when I was a little girl, most of the western science fiction stories I read involved dystopias where lives are dark and depressing. People struggle but fail, and come to a totally hopeless, nihilistic end. I used to be fascinated by those visions of the future.

However, I couldn’t help wondering whether there truly is no escape or if we are just unable to imagine it because of some mental constraints. Probably because I was taught from a young age that history is a process of endless struggle, and humanity, as a historical subject, should bring its creative spirit into play.

About “Tongtong’s Summer” in particular: I have aging grandparents who require care and have tried to do some of the nursing work myself. The work was exhausting, but I also found the personal connection in nursing to be a meaningful and irreplaceable element. This inspired me to come up with the remote-controlled elder care aide.

The story is also dedicated to my departed grandfather. A revolutionary hero, he was an energetic man until a brain tumor struck him down. I imagined an alternative future, where Grandpa raged against the bonds placed on him by his disease and changed his own predicament—and the world—from his wheelchair. It is only an imagined solace, of course, but one that has the possibility to be realized someday.

This possibility depends on us, on the courage and love inside every ordinary, mortal individual.

A lot of your work draws on Chinese traditions and customs, showing how they retain their essence in the face of technological and social change. But you’ve also told me that you’re not deeply attached to traditional Chinese culture. Can you reconcile these two sentiments for me?

Honestly, to answer this question you must reconsider “what is traditional Chinese culture” first. Since China has been experiencing great transformations in the process of modernization—“all that is solid melts into air”—one can hardly say such cultural attachment is a natural feeling or a historical construction. I appreciate classical Chinese literature as well as you or any other contemporary reader, but I cannot imagine that on some future day we would dig out certain “traditional wisdom” from ancient books to defend against high-tech space invaders. [KL: hey, that gives me an idea for a story . . .]

Traditions are always changing over time. It is we, the present generation living on the frontier between tradition and modernity, present and future, who struggle for our self-affirmation, not some “tradition” that retains its own self-evident essence.

Readers are sometimes curious about how I’ve changed your stories in the process of translation. Can you talk a bit about that?

I remember in the draft translation of “Spring Festival: Happiness, Anger, Love, Sorrow, Joy” (Clarkesworld, September 2014; originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, June 2013), you provided a few delicate adjustments, which made me smile. For example, in “New Year’s Eve,” you inserted a few words that the Spring Festival Gala used to be “singing, dancing, a few stupid jokes and it’s over” to explain the program for American readers. And my reaction was “Oh yeah, you know about that!” Similarly in “Matchmaking,” when the manager advised Xiao Li to ask for her mother’s help on those virtual dates, you added an interpretation that “after all, marriage is about two families coming together.” That was very helpful, otherwise American readers might find the whole “mommy counselor” thing totally incomprehensible.

The most obvious change is your recommendation to excise the “Valentine” segment to shorten the story in order to make it easier to sell. Also, you wanted a new title instead of translating it literally as “Old Memories of Spring Festival in 2044.” We argued about this over email and finally reached a consensus: the mini-stories focused on complicated emotions in a changing world, not precise predictions of the future. I really enjoy such discussions. It feels like, well, in your story “The Shape of Thought,” the children of humans and aliens weaving their fingers together and trying to understand this world in a new, strange way.

Can you tell us about the longest film you’ve made so far: Parapax?

Parapax was initially inspired by Alan Brennert’s short story “Echoes,” which depicts a woman’s quantum lives proliferating from her various decisions and possibilities. I shared this idea with my friend Wang Yao, who suggested we try to tell a similar story visually. I wrote the script.

In the film, a young woman majoring in physics wakes up one day to find herself the heroine of a science fiction story. Meanwhile, an author is composing this story in another world where she suddenly meets a mysterious man in black who is a character from her story. In yet a third world, a scriptwriter is talking about science fiction and film with the director.

I had to play all three characters myself because Xia Jia A, B and C are different images of me. Centered on “parallel worlds,” “multiple reality” and “crossover,” the film is also “meta-SF” or “meta-cinema.” The title “Parapax” combines “parallel” and “K-pax” (Gene Brewer’s SF novel and Iain Softley’s film). We loved this name because its pronunciation sounded cool.

You’re involved in so many pursuits: artistic, academic, and literary. How do you balance it all?

I don’t know. Most of time I’m just fascinated by something and let myself be pulled in like an addict.

For example, when Ray Bradbury passed away in June 2014, I felt I had to do something as a tribute to his memory. So I spent two weeks translating seven short stories from The Illustrated Man before I had to stop to get ready for Chicon 7. When I went to the U.S. Embassy to apply for my visa—a rather stressful process in which applicants are often denied—the visa officer asked me: “So you are going to take part in a SF Convention? Who’s your favorite SF writer? Tell me your favorite works.” I answered: “Ray Bradbury! Blahblahblah . . . ” Then he passed me a yellow note: “Cool! Have a nice day!”

I rushed out. Standing in the street and looking up into the sky, I said: “Thanks, Ray!”

So I guess maybe there is no balance in my life, just “let it go!” and beautiful adventures that follow.

What’s next?

Preparing for a great SF course in Xi’an Jiaotong University where I’m teaching. Creating a great SF novel, and a SF film if I’m lucky. Staying healthy and waiting for my opportunity to travel to space (I’m not kidding).

About the Author

Ken Liu is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, will be published by Saga Press, Simon & Schuster’s new genre fiction imprint, in April 2015. Saga will also publish a collection of his short stories.

Another Word:

#PurpleSF

Cat Rambo

The recent bizarre events of Gamergate have had me musing about feminism a lot in the past few months. (If you’re unfamiliar with the Gamergate phenomenon, it’s a recent controversy among video gamers that different sides have said is about different things, but which, no matter what you believe, seems to involve a great deal of harassment and threats aimed almost entirely against women.) Feminists are one of Gamergate’s favorite targets—in attacks that have included “doxxing” (publishing personal information) and death threats.

Tremendous amounts of vitriol, bile, and verbal spewing of the sort that only the Internet + anonymity can produce have been emitted on Gamergate’s behalf. For me, it has been unfortunately familiar. As a longtime gamer and sometimes game administrator who is female, I’ve seen horrible things that include harassment, being discredited on the basis of gender, and psychological attacks.

So much of it seems to center on the validity of concepts such as feminism, racism, privilege, etc. And that becomes a wearying point to start from over and over again, to have to constantly argue not just one’s critique of something, but the tools one is using.

It’s overlapped, time and time again, with some of the discussion that I’ve seen in fantasy and science fiction circles. And in both cases, I’m glad to see a lot of this discussion taking place, because it’s long overdue. However, I’m dismayed by displays of misogyny and hatred as well as the lack of attempt at communication between groups whose members are, in the vast majority, well-intentioned and reasonable human beings.

I’m willing to acknowledge that in the past there have been problems in SFF that were a result of the times, of a lack of education, or other mitigating features. I call these folks causing those problems “Team Clueless,” and one thing characterizing them is that they simply haven’t had access to some of the concepts that have been integrated into the general vocabulary in the last couple of centuries: racism, sexism, feminism, privilege, etc.

The important thing to remember is that while problems in the community continue nowadays, it’s increasingly hard to have a valid membership on Team Clueless, particularly when so many of these discussions provide resources with which to understand the concepts in use.

When I edited the Women Destroy Fantasy special issue of Fantasy Magazine, I wrote in the accompanying editorial, “Sexism in genre literature has been documented to the point where it seems silly to question its existence.” And I stand by that.

We can pay attention to the underrepresentation of women that’s documented in the Vida Count Report, for one. We can examine the multiple studies that show that blind submissions to periodicals have different results than situations in which the gender of the submitter is known, and that those differences are skewed along gender lines. We can examine a multitude of manifestations of Helen Lewis’s law: “The comments on any article about feminism justify feminism.”

Or we could believe the many, many, many women who have spoken about being harassed, belittled, silenced, or even attacked in the genre community.

I was reminded of this earlier in the year. Over the course of an interview, the male interviewer pressed me for examples of sexism occurring in our genre that had happened to me personally, or failing that, to tell stories I’d heard from other women. I demurred, because for me the discussion’s tone set my teeth on edge.

Do we really have to start the conversation from that point each time? I’d said what I did in the essay because I’d like to move us past that “let us produce samples of sexism and dissect them to determine their validity” approach. If we could dispense with that discussion, maybe we could get to the point where we start talking about how to change things, rather than just about how shitty they are. Because they are infuriatingly, stiflingly shitty.

If you truly doubt that men and women have limiting gender roles imposed on them by the world, then go to a toy store, walk through the aisles and look at how early in life the pink/blue divide occurs and what gets put on either side of it.

Recently Anita Sarkeesian, a favorite Gamergate target, spoke at XOXO, an arts and technology festival in Portland, about how to support women online. She ended her talk by saying, “One of the most radical things you can do is to actually believe women when they talk about their experiences.”

Yup.

Beyond all of that, the eagerness to find offenders made me uncomfortable. One reason I find listing names an ineffective approach is that if you’re going to hunt for past examples in order to punish the offenders, no wonder those folks have a stake in rejecting the overall concept of their actions or words being offensive. You’re going to have a hard time finding common ground with someone when that territory’s got a set of stocks with their name on it.

Sometimes, admittedly, this punitive angle is self-imposed by those who identify with Team Clueless. For example, look at the furor that’s been generated by Daniel Jose Older’s suggestion that the World Fantasy Award bust no longer be of H.P. Lovecraft, but a writer more indicative of the genre’s current nature. This got turned into “Lovecraft was just a product of his times and you want to erase him from fantasy!”

Which isn’t, as far as I can tell, what anyone was proposing. A lot of fantasy writers acknowledge that Lovecraft’s been a long and strong influence. What they don’t sometimes acknowledge is that the man also did things like write an eight-line, horribly racist poem called “On the Creation of Niggers” and that therefore maybe he’s not the one we all want to be identifying with today, particularly when a) there’s an awful lot of other equally amazing but less problematic writers out there and b) it doesn’t need to be a bust of a person at all.

My favorite counter-proposal is a winged cat, but if you wanted something more writerly, you could go with a winged cup of coffee. In short, one can still like Lovecraft and yet feel that maybe he’s not the best representative of the modern fantasy genre.

There’s a lot of this you-are-with-us-or-you-are-against-us feeling in these discussions, and that’s a shame. It leads to phenomena like the SJW (Social Justice Warrior) label, which is used as a weapon to invalidate any protest or objection. The label overlooks the fact that while online trolls do exist, most of us don’t really like stirring up dissension. A useful analogy is comparing being offensive to stepping on someone’s foot—it is more reasonable to apologize and get off their foot than to deny stepping on it or accusing them of trying to trip you.

I find the negativity attached to the SJW label bewildering, perhaps because I came from a campus where the Center for Social Concerns is an accepted institution, offering classes that focus on how to help people. Built into the SJW stereotype as constructed by their opponents is an eagerness to be outraged that doesn’t exist except in a few crazy cases on every side of things. Lunatics are a fact of life, and judging any group by its outliers is a mistake at the least, and an ethically bankrupt rhetorical strategy.

Another bone of contention is that the term “diversity” appears in these struggles and, somewhat unsurprisingly, encompasses a great many things. As with Gamergate, to some it seems an effort to shove them out of the clubhouse, while to others, it’s asking that there be a little bit more room in the clubhouse so they can get in.

My identity as a writer/editor/reader shapes my opinion of the word. I’m on the side that sees diversity as celebrating different voices, while the other side perceives it as being about stifling theirs. But as writers, as people interested in writing about our world, whether we disguise it with three moons or a population of sentient unicorns, shouldn’t we be valuing the approach that privileges a multitude of possible voices, rather than sticking to a particular and circumscribed one?

Science fiction is, at the heart of it, a way of writing about our world, which is one that is diverse and multifaceted, a world made of millions of POVs. Readers don’t mind a protagonist unlike themself, but we want a few that are, that show us another vision of ourselves, from time to time.

Rather than the PinkSF and BlueSF divide that some propose, can’t we go for something a bit more interesting, perhaps purple with its multitude of hues from deep purple on up to palest lavender? Let’s see less F&SF worried about fitting into categories and more of it interested in questioning and moving beyond those categories.

As part of that movement, we do need to agree that there’s a distinct difference between being called sexist/racist/whatever and being told that something you have said or done is offensive because it’s sexist/racist/whatever. Part of getting past the kneejerk reaction of outrage that comes with being corrected is realizing and internalizing that criticism. It’s a hard lesson for many of us, but one that is (imo) necessary for our continued growth as human beings.

Because we do, overall, continue to grow. One of the bright spots of Gamergate has been seeing a crop of bright, fierce, younger feminists such as Zoe Quinn, Anita Sarkeesian, and Brianna Wu. For those of us who’ve been here in the trenches for a while, it’s reassuring to know that others will and have picked up the torch of social justice, and are willing to fight for the right for every race, shape, gender, orientation, or other divisive category be included under the label of human beings.

The conversation will not go away in 2015. It’ll keep on going, informing and changing us all. There will be painful moments, but there will also be amazing and wonderful things coming out of it. Here’s to that. Here’s to the future we all, no matter what side we’re on, are moving towards.

About the Author

Cat Rambo lives and writes in the Pacific Northwest, with occasional peregrinations elsewhere. A World Fantasy Award and Nebula nominee, she has 200+ fiction publications, which have appeared in Asimov’s, Tor.com, and Clarkesworld, as well as in audio form and a dozen different languages. She is the current Vice President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. Check her website for links to her fiction and information about her popular online classes.

Editor’s Desk:

On the Road to One Hundred

Neil Clarke

As 2014 has come to a close, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for a wonderful year.

We started the year by making the announcement that we were no longer eligible for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. We crossed that magical twenty-five percent income line in the sand and became “professional” in Hugo terms. We went out on top (as 2013 winners) and I was once again nominated in the Best Editor Short Form category, where I eventually lost to Ellen Datlow.

Clarkesworld, however, is still in that grey area of what makes one professional. 2014 saw us pick up our fourth World Fantasy Award nomination in the Special Award Non-Professional category. In simple terms, we land there because none of us work on Clarkesworld full-time. That remains an elusive goal, but I refuse to give up. In the end, four turned out to be our lucky number. In November, we won our first World Fantasy Award.

As we put together a wish-list of authors we’d like to see return for our one hundredth issue, there was one we desparately wanted, but seemed unlikely. Jay Lake was one of the first authors to write for us and was a regular for several years. His support meant a great deal to me and his stories were always something special. Sadly, Jay passed away in June, much too young, and at the hands of cancer. Some months later, we discovered he left behind some unpublished stories and that it still might be possible for him to be with us one last time. “An Exile of the Heart” is one of those stories. Thanks Jay. You are missed.

In September, I published my first non-Clarkesworld anthology, Upgraded, and it almost immediately went into a second-printing. Tying my medical adventures to a cyborg theme was fun and a great learning experience. In retrospect, there are a few things I would have done differently, but I remain proud of the book. Now I just need to come up with an idea for the next anthology. Any thoughts?

I also spent several months last year working on secret projects. One was eventually revealed as a partnership with Storycom in China and resulted in a Kickstarter campaign to add Chinese translations to each issue of Clarkesworld. The campaign was very well received and surpassed expectations by unlocking a stretch goal that will help us include stories from other languages as well. This issue features the first of our Chinese translations, “Ether” by Zhang Ran. A special thank you goes to our Kickstarter supporters and Storycom for making this possible.

In December, Clarkesworld became a launch partner with the Joyride podcast app. Joyride has created another way for our listeners to help us work towards goals by supporting us with a monthly pledge. Joyride has big plans and they will be one of the featured apps in the Android Auto Platform currently rolling out to nearly thirty car brands. This increased visibility for our podcast and the opportunity to bring in some extra revenue will be very important to us in the years ahead. We’re very grateful to have been invited and thank everyone at Joyride for their faith in us. Check out our Joyride page and let us know what you think.

Speaking of revenue, there’s someone else I should thank for their support in 2014: our subscribers, patrons, advertisers, and donors. Throughout the year your support made it possible for me to continue doing a job I love, work towards that goal of being full-time, and even set aside a little extra to make sure this issue was special. Thank you.

Last, but certainly not least, a huge thank you to everyone that works on Clarkesworld. One hundred issues is a huge accomplishment and it took all of us to get here.

Happy New Year and I’m happy to welcome you to our one hundredth issue!

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, owner of Wyrm Publishing and a three-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Cover Art: Disciple

Julie Dillon

About the Artist

Julie Dillon is a science fiction and fantasy illustrator creating art for books and magazines, as well as for her own projects and publications. She has won two Chesley awards, a Hugo Award, and has been nominated for two World Fantasy Awards.