Clarkesworld Magazine

Issue 114

Table of Contents

Salvage Opportunity

by Jack Skillingstead

Seven Cups of Coffee

by A.C. Wise

The Governess with a Mechanical Womb

by Leena Likitalo

Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead

by Kij Johnson

Chimera

by Gu Shi

The King of Norway

by Cecelia Holland

Gray Wings

by Karl Bunker

The Age of the Excessive Machine: Psychedelic SF, On-Screen and Off

by Mark Cole

All the Words in the Sky: A Conversation with Charlie Jane Anders

by Chris Urie

Another Word: How to Clothe a Character, Using Only Star Wars References

by Genevieve Valentine

Editor's Desk: Nebula Nominees and Reader's Poll Winners

by Neil Clarke

We are the robots

Art by Waldemar Kazak

© Clarkesworld Magazine, 2016

www.clarkesworldmagazine.com

Salvage Opportunity

Jack Skillingstead

“Sometimes I wish I could touch you,” I said, lying on my bunk, not touching anyone. I was alone on Kepler-186f.

My bodiless Companion voice, replied, “You’ve mentioned that before.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Actually, Badar, you have. Five times in the last twenty-two days.”

“It couldn’t be that many times.”

“Couldn’t it? I can play back—”

“No, thanks.”

The Companion was stubborn. In that and other ways she reminded me of myself. Which made sense, considering her presentation was a gender flip based on my own personality matrix. A reactive voice closely modeled for compatibility, the Companion existed to preserve my sanity by providing a convincing simulation of conversation. I called it a simulation because I did not believe the Companion was an individual in the same sense that I was. For that reason, I stuck with calling her by the generic “Companion,” rather than giving her a human name. I liked to keep things straight in my head. Gender aside, when I talked to the Companion I was talking to myself.

Most of the Companion’s attention was devoted to exploring the wreckage of Leviathan. The immense hulk lay half a kilometer from my shelter. Using micro swarms, the Companion was building a catalog for future salvage. Intercorp had planted me like a flag on Kepler-186f. I was the “living representative in continuous habitation” legally required to validate Intercorp’s claim. Machine intelligences didn’t count as “living.”

My contract ran four years. The pay was fantastic. When I returned to Earth, I would be modestly independent of economic constraints, and Intercorp would install another “living representative.” Eventually they would get around to implementing real salvage operations, or not, depending on long-term expense/reward analysis. In the meantime placeholders like me were relatively cheap.

“There’s a surprise coming,” the Companion said.

I sat up. “What are you taking about?”

“Look outside in the direction of Leviathan.”

I swung out of my bunk and climbed the ladder to the observation dome, my knees feeling the extra forty pounds the planet’s gravitational mass loaded on my skinny body. Leviathan rose from the rocky terrain like an artificial mountain. The ancient starship had departed Earth three hundred years ago. By the time it crashed on Kepler-186f, refinements to the Kessel Drive had made interstellar travel infinitely faster.

I raised a pair of high-powered binoculars and swept the landscape. A lone figure came into focus, approaching my shelter. I lowered the binoculars. “What’s going on, Companion?”

“It’s the surprise. Go answer the door, Badar.”

By the time I reached the bottom of the ladder, something was pounding on the outer door of the airlock. It must have been very strong, otherwise I would never have heard it.

The pounding stopped.

“Companion, tell me what the hell is out there. I’m not kidding.”

“Leviathan was a colony ship—”

“I know that.”

“What you don’t know is that the crew had been stored inside Schrödinger Chambers. When Leviathan reached Kepler space, the indeterminate crew were supposed to collapse into android hosts, which would then thaw out the cargo of human embryos and raise them into colonists. It’s a host android outside.”

“Hold on. Are you saying there’s a three hundred-year-old Leviathan crewmember knocking on the door?”

“No. The Schrödinger Chambers failed, Leviathan crashed on the wrong planet, and all the frozen embryos perished.”

The pounding resumed.

“Go ahead and open the door,” the Companion said.

I stood by the airlock but didn’t touch the controls. “If it’s not a crewmember, then what’s driving the android?”

“I impregnated its central processor with a seed from my personality matrix.”

I thought about that for a moment. “Why?”

“My job is to evaluate salvage opportunities. I wanted to determine whether the android host was a functional mechanism. Since no Schrödinger indeterminates remained, I used a piece of myself.”

I sighed. “All right.” I didn’t want to, but I opened the outer door, closed it, cleared the airlock, then opened the inner door.

“Hello, Badar.” The android sounded like a talking washing machine. It stumped into my living quarters, servos whirring and grinding.

I drew back. The android was modeled on the human form but without any identifying gender characteristics. Synthetic skin, like a layer of pink rubber, covered its metal skeleton.

“You’re really in there, Companion?”

“Not me me,” the Companion said. “An autonomous seed.”

The android spoke again, “I am myself.”

I rolled my eyes. “That’s great.”

In a series of stop-motion jerks, the android’s arm reached toward me, four-fingered hand open. “I’m happy to meet you, Badar.”

I looked at the hand. “Wait here and don’t move. I mean it.”

The shelter was small. It already felt crowded with just me and the Companion voice. Intercorp selected me for my high adaptability to voluntary isolation. I didn’t want the damn android in my space.

I opened the trapdoor leading the storage room. The android’s dull amber eyes watched impassively. I climbed down and pulled the door closed.

“Isolate our conversation,” I said to the Companion.

“You’re not happy.”

“That’s an understatement. What am I supposed to do with that thing?”

“Touch it?”

“Are you being funny?”

“Not very.”

“Look,” I said, “just turn it off. I mean, send it away first, then turn it off.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“The test seed I planted has fully integrated with the processor. The android is autonomous. I told you. I can’t turn it off.”

“Oh, come on.” I could hear the android’s heavy tread as it walked around my living quarters. Annoyed, I said, “I told it not to move.”

“Badar. It’s not a robot. You can’t order it around.”

“Why’d you even bring it here?”

“I didn’t. It was lonely in the derelict.”

“Lonely. How long has it been . . . awake, or whatever you call it?”

“A week. It had nothing to do. The android was designed to maintain Leviathan in orbit, then build a colony and help nurture a human population.”

“Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we’re fresh out of starships and frozen embryos around here.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“I don’t want the android. How do I turn it off? There must be a way.”

“The main processor is located in the head.”

“There’s a switch?”

“No. You’d have to use a laser.”

I threw my hands up. “I have to burn it?”

“If you want to turn it off, yes. Although I wouldn’t recommend that. The android belongs to Intercorp. Even if you dragged it back to Leviathan, it would return. Why don’t you let it stay? It could be another Companion. It wants company. It’s as social as you are.”

“I don’t believe this.” I looked at the ceiling, chewed on my lip, and made a decision. Fine, then. I retrieved my s-suit from its locker, put it on, and strapped a utility belt around my waist—laser pistol included.

As soon as I opened the trapdoor to the living quarters, I heard them talking. The Companion and the android.

“He’s not so bad once you get to know him,” the Companion was saying.

“I can see that.”

Sarcasm?

“You,” I said, pointing at the android. “Since you’re here, I need help adjusting the weather array.”

The android turned to me. “I want to help.”

I put my helmet on.

The weather on Kepler-186f frequently turned nasty. As soon as I stepped out of the airlock, the wind staggered me. On Earth it might have hustled me across the rocky plain, but the extra forty pounds kept me mostly stable. I walked a few yards from the shelter, the android dutifully following, then I turned and planted my feet. Dust and debris blew between us.

“This will damage my mechanism,” the android said in its halting mechanical voice.

Did it know I was about to burn a hole through its processor, or was it talking about the dust? It didn’t matter. I found I couldn’t draw the pistol. The android was barely human-looking, but now that the moment had arrived, I couldn’t shoot it. Not so much for its own sake, but because I knew my actions would bother the Companion. Or at least the Companion’s reactive conversation would trend in a “bothered” direction. So, essentially, it would bother me to pull the trigger, since the Companion was a reflection of my personality matrix.

“The array’s a couple klicks due south. We’re going to take the rover.”

Angry with myself, I drove too fast, bucketing over the rough terrain. Kepler’s dim noon light faded, and I switched on the rover’s forward lamps. After a while, we arrived at the weather array. I parked the rover. In the passenger seat, the android’s amber eyes stared at me. I knew there was nothing to read in those eyes, but my imagination perceived judgment. All that meant was that I was judging myself. I pushed the feeling aside.

The weather array required precious little adjusting, and what adjusting it did require could be accomplished remotely, from the shelter. Though the android couldn’t possibly know this, I felt it did know this. Of course, that was nothing but me feeling, illogically, guilty.

“Well, let’s get to work.”

There was room for only one of us at a time in the rover’s airlock. The android crouched inside. I locked the inner hatch, purged the chamber, then opened the outer hatch. Grit and dust churned violently into the open airlock. I sealed the outer hatch and immediately slammed the rover into reverse, half expecting the android to come after me. It didn’t, though. It just stood there in front of the array, all hell gusting around it. Martyr, I thought, swung the rover in a tight turn, and headed back to the shelter. Two kilometers in a raging windstorm. The android couldn’t make it.

Prior to my Kepler-186f assignment, I tested as a loner-introvert. Intercorp threw everything at me. Myers-Briggs, brainwave analysis, even Rorschach. The works. I tested high but not too high, probably because I fudged selected responses. I had studied up on how to do this, how to achieve a desired psyche evaluation result. For the last test, they locked me inside a geodesic dome in the middle of the high desert of New Mexico. One year in total isolation. That one I passed with flying colors, no studying required.

It was no sweat.

You don’t want to test too high. Above a certain range, the loner-introvert personality type slips into a personality disorder. At least according to some people. They don’t give deep space/high-pay assignments to disordered applicants. And I had desperately wanted this job. The isolation suited me. And the credits accumulating in my Earth-side account were like insulation from the society I could barely tolerate. When I got back I would live far away from my fellow humans. Maybe I’d buy a dachshund, but I doubted it. I didn’t want any emotional complications.

I prepared my evening meal. Since I’d returned from the weather array, the Companion hadn’t spoken a word. It needed me to start a conversation, which I had no intention of doing. If I spoke, she spoke. Even then it wasn’t a given. Only a direct interrogative guaranteed conversation. This was to spare me from uninvited interaction with the voice outside my head. I knew the Companion wouldn’t appreciate what I’d done to the android, and I didn’t want to hear about it. I ate my bowl of quick-thawed stew, took a stress pill, and stretched out on my bunk. Given the increased gravity, lying flat was the most comfortable position.

The damn android plucked at my conscience. I tried to ignore it. But it was like a hangnail, or a rock in my shoe. Eventually I lapsed into troubled sleep, from which I woke suddenly to the sound of dust hissing against the observation dome.

“Damn it. Why can’t I be left alone?” My voice was thick with crappy sleep.

“What’s wrong?” the Companion asked.

“Bad dream.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Was there something about her tone of voice? Something judgmental? I sat up, rubbed my face. “People are shit.”

“That was your dream?”

“The dream was about my step-mother.”

“You’ve never mentioned her. What happened in the dream?”

I stood up and drew a glass of water from the reclamation tank and drank it. The water tasted metallic. “Really it was about the cat, what she did to the cat. Except this time I was the cat.”

“You were the cat. I see.”

“Don’t be funny. I don’t feel funny.”

“You can tell me your dream. I’d like to hear about it. What was the cat’s name?”

“I don’t remember the cat’s name.” Truthfully, I did remember, but for some reason I didn’t want to speak it out loud to the Companion. Seymour. The cat’s name was Seymour. At least that’s what we called it. A stray that we unofficially adopted.

“All I remember,” I said, “is that it kept spraying all over our house. I guess my step-mom got tired of it. She transported the cat about ten miles away and left it in the woods. That was her solution to the spraying problem.”

“But in the dream you were the cat.”

“Yes, something like that.”

“Maybe your evil step-mother should have shot Fluffy in the head processor instead, if she felt she had to get rid of it.”

My back went ridged. “Knock it off.”

The other true thing I didn’t want to say out loud to the Companion was that it wasn’t my evil step-mother who abandoned Seymour in the woods. I didn’t have a step-mother. My real mother did it, and she wasn’t evil, but it was still a shitty thing to do, even if Seymour was a stray that was probably tough enough to survive. When I was a little kid I used to wonder if Mom would do the same thing to me. Of course, that was stupid. But I was kid. All those psyche tests? They confirmed that kid was still alive and disturbed inside me. The cat incident didn’t make me that way; I was already that way.

“Okay, okay,” I said to no one. For once I hadn’t bothered to properly stow my dusty s-suit. I pulled it on and cycled open the inner door.

“Good luck, Badar.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The android stood where I’d left it, in a maelstrom of dust and debris. I un-holstered my laser pistol and held it in my lap a few minutes. That’s how long it took me to figure out I wasn’t there to burn the android. I’d cared about Seymour abandoned in the woods—so it was all about me and my precious feelings, right? Even though I was calling it my better nature.

I put my pistol away and climbed out. Because of all the dust blown through the android’s mechanism, it couldn’t move by itself. What a bitch it was getting that thing back inside the rover.

By the time I’d muscled the android into the shelter, I was exhausted. The thing never said one word. Wind and the abrasive grit had stripped most of the synthetic flesh off the android’s skeleton. What remained clung to the metal in rubbery gobbets. Not exactly the ideal nursemaid for those long-lost embryos.

I rapped my knuckles on the top of its head. “Are you even in there?” Now that I’d saved the android, I felt I’d earned the right to indulge my resentment. Did that make me a shitty person? There was no one to ask but myself.

“A piece of me,” The android said, in answer to my question. Because of the dust-clogged and mechanical nature of its voice box, I couldn’t detect the underlying tone. If it had been me saying it (and it was me, by a circuitous route, sort of), the tone would have suggested a couple of unspoken words. A piece of me, you prick.

I spent hours cleaning the android’s mechanism, a job I resented every inch of the way. I vacuumed dust from the joints and rubbed lubricant into them. I whisked the eyes, disassembled, cleaned, and replaced the voice box. Finally, I removed the occipital plate and discovered that dust had penetrated the skull. I blew it out with compressed air. A titanium box protected the main processor. Not only wasn’t there an off-switch, there was no way of disconnecting it from the frame. I covered it again with the occipital plate.

“Can you move your limbs?” I said to the android.

It didn’t reply, or move any limbs.

“Oh, well, I guess you’re irreparably damaged. I might as well burn a hole through your processor.”

The android walked to the other side of the shelter, whirring and clicking with every step. It was temperamental. Of course, in this shelter who wasn’t? I had to remind myself that I was alone, even though it now felt like there were three of us.

“Is there anything to do?” the android said.

I squinted at the back of its skull.

“On Leviathan,” the android continued, “I was to have tasks.”

“This isn’t Leviathan.”

The Companion said, “Would you like to talk about your tasks?”

“If anyone wants to hear about them, yes.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay. I’m going out to secure the rover.” I yanked on my suit and helmet and got out of there. I had suited up so fast, I forgot to strap on the utility belt with its holstered laser. The rover didn’t need any securing. I’d just wanted to escape from the crowded shelter. Which was ridiculous. The shelter was mine. The Companion was nothing but a reflection, and the android a reflection of a reflection.

After staggering around in the storm for a few minutes, I returned to the shelter. But when I tried to open the outer door, it wouldn’t budge.

I activated the comlink. “Companion?”

“Yes?”

“The door won’t open.”

“I know.”

Wind buffeted me and I staggered sideways. “That’s wonderful that you know. Now could you open it, please?”

Silence.

“Companion?”

“The android has disabled the lock.”

“What? Well, make it un-disable it.”

“I’m sorry, Badar.”

“This is ridiculous. Make the android let me in.”

“We’re talking about it.”

I stared at the wind-and-grit-polished surface of the outer door, which held my own blurred reflection. My frustration boiled over, and I pounded the door with my fist. It hurt, so I stopped. Fine. I’d cut my way in. I reached for the laser—and it wasn’t there. Behind me, the rover hunkered in a fury of blowing grit and dust. It was my only option.

Inside the rover’s cab I removed my helmet. A haze of abrasive dust lingered. Coughing, I cranked the scrubbers until the air cleared. After that, there was nothing to do. I had food and potable water sufficient for a three-day excursion. But there was no place to excursion to. I considered ramming the rover into the shelter, smashing open the outer door. But I’d never be able to repair the damage.

To keep the batts charged, I periodically ran the engine. And I rationed the food and water. Sooner or later, though, it would all run out. Fuel, battery, water, food. Air. I was alone on Kepler-186f, but then I’d always been alone, seperated by choice from friends and family, cut off, even, from the emotional boobytraps in my own psyche. When my mother died, I’d fled a houseful of weeping relatives and hid in the backseat of the family vehicle. I wanted to move away from pain. Eventually, someone found me and made me come in.

The storm subsided. The cloud cover cleared, and Kepler’s muted energy shone through. On Kepler-186f it was always twilight, except when it was full dark. I looked towards the shelter. Light filtered up from the living quarters and softly illuminated the observation dome. It was a homey light, but nobody was going to find me and make me come in.

I wondered what they were talking about inside the shelter. I wondered if I was already forgotten—by myselves. Emotion tightened across my chest. I opened a comlink to the Companion, but at first I couldn’t speak. Finally I said, “Please. I want to come in.”

Silence resonated through the link. The Companion needed a question.

“Companion, can I come home?”

After a minute, she replied, “Are you running out of air?”

“No.” I swallowed. “I’m . . . lonely.”

Another moment, then, “The outer door is unlocked, Badar.”

About the Author

In 2001, Jack Skillingstead submitted a story to Stephen King’s “On Writing” contest. He won—and not long afterward began selling regularly to major science fiction and fantasy markets. To date he has sold forty stories to various magazines, Year’s Best volumes and original anthologies. In 2003 his story “Dead Worlds” was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Award and in 2009 his novel Life on The Preservation was a finalist for the Philip K. Dick Award. Jack lives in Seattle with his wife, writer Nancy Kress.

Seven Cups of Coffee

A.C. Wise

One

Here, in this now, our first cup of coffee is still in your future. It’s 1941, and you’ve been married to your husband for two years, three months, and seven days. He doesn’t know about the way you look at the women in fashion magazines and clothing catalogs. The way you find yourself imagining how the drape of this skirt, the brush of that hemline, would feel against their skin in particular. You barely admit to yourself the way your fingers want to stray to the back of your neck, the outline of your collarbone, the shape of your mouth when you look at them. Your skin flushes hot, only partly shame, and you put the pages away quickly, telling yourself it’s only your imagination, the flutter deep in your belly when you look at them.

They are too pretty, too perfect, the women in those magazines and catalogs. It’s only that you want to be them. You want hair that never strays out of place, and lips that stay bright and unsmudged all day long. Nothing else.

After the first cup of coffee, which is in your future and my past, everything will change. It is the beginning of the end for you. For me, in this now, in every now I’ve found yet, it is already too late. I can’t change anything, I can’t fix anything. I’ve tried. But I’m not giving up. Ever. I will not give up on us, on you.

Two

It is 1983 and I’m sitting across from a woman who hasn’t given me her real name, saying only to call her Scarlett. I’m here because I answered a want ad for a cleaning woman. I’m here because I’m running out of options; I have nowhere else to go.

Scarlett smirks, the cat after the canary. I should leave, but the steaming cup of coffee between my hands, followed by the plate piled high with fluffy eggs, greasy bacon, and crisp golden toast, keeps me in place. I haven’t had more than saltines and the last dregs of Cheez Whiz in the now-empty jar over the past three days. And Scarlett is buying.

“Time travel,” she says, and I’m sure I misheard, but I don’t stop shoveling food in my mouth to check.

In this now, I haven’t yet seen her time machine. I’ve lived my life linearly, scrounging odd jobs and crashing on friends’ couches. In this now, my parents want nothing to do with me—words like “no daughter of mine” and “not under my roof” still ringing in my ears, better at least than my mother’s tearful, “if you just try” and “you’re so pretty, girls like you don’t have to be . . . that way.”

In this now, the closest I’ve gotten to time travel is occasionally getting high—losing minutes or hours, or slowing everything down, stretching it out when it gets to be too much and I don’t want to think about the hole where my family used to be. I have no idea yet what is and isn’t possible. How going into the past or the future can rip a person apart in ways they never imagined, ways they can’t see until it’s far too late.

I haven’t met you yet, not in this here and now. All I know is that I’m down to almost my last saltine. My on-again-off-again girlfriend called it off for good and kicked me out, and I desperately need a job. So ‘cleaning woman’ sounds pretty good right about now.

Three

It is 1945, and you are pregnant with your first child. The first one you’re counting that is—at least out loud. There was a miscarriage, just over a year ago, but you’re trying not to think about that. You’re trying to move on, think positive thoughts, look ahead to the future so bright and full of promise.

This time, everything will be okay. You’re sure of it. You glow softly with the knowledge, even though sometimes you can still smell the bleach—taste it, the scent thick at the back of your throat—burning as you scrub blood from white tile. This time, things will be different. Everything will be the way it is supposed to be, because you love your husband and you are a good wife and you will be a good mother soon, too.

You’ve stopped subscribing to fashion magazines, and when you go to the post office to collect your mail, you tell the clerk to throw the catalogs away. You shop at the new department store downtown with your sister-in-law, and you don’t think about the women in the other changing rooms, pulling silk stockings over the length of their legs and clipping them in place. You don’t think of cotton and wool tugged over their heads, or their hands smoothing the fabric against their hips and bellies. And those long afternoon hours waiting for your husband to get home, sitting by the apartment window, which you have open for the breeze, your skin barely flushes at all, and your thoughts are completely under your control.

You’ve barely begun to show. You haven’t told your husband yet, just in case. You keep the secret tucked inside your cheek, biting your lips against the fullness of a smile. You’ve always wanted to be a mother. You’ve dreamed of holding your little girl in your arms, singing songs, and making up silly stories so she’ll laugh. You already know you’re going to name her Alice, just like you know for sure she’s going to be a girl, but you keep that knowledge secret, too.

In this here and now, I don’t know any of this yet, because I haven’t met you. I’m standing on a street corner, holding an anachronistic cup of coffee brought back with me from 1983. I’m blowing on it while I wait, not wanting to burn my tongue, and trying to calm my nerves, distract myself from what I’m about to do.

It’s snowing. Christmas week and the streetlights and shop windows glow, making each individual snowflake glitter and shine. Any moment now, you’ll come down the street your arms full of packages, not paying attention. You’ll be thinking about the carefully chosen tie for your husband, and the sweater for your sister-in-law. How you’ll wrap everything and place it just so under the Christmas tree. And then, when every present has been opened, you’ll pull out one last package you’ve been keeping hidden and place it in your husband’s hands. A silver rattle, and you’ll tell him what a wonderful father he’ll be.

With all these thoughts filling up your mind, all I have to do is step out in front of you, just another distracted shopper, my head full of Christmas, not paying attention to where I’m going. I won’t even have to brush your arm, accidental fingertips on the thickness of your wool coat, or nudge your hip with mine as you pass. A simple step, and you’ll move out of my way, miss your footing, and slip into the road just as the number eight bus comes along. And it will be too late for the bus to stop, fish-tailing on the ice. Brakes squealing, and pedestrians gasping as your packages fly through the air—that carefully chosen tie, the beautiful sweater for your sister-in-law, and even the little silver rattle—falling to soak in the slush on the ground.

Scarlett has told me all this, every last detail she thinks I need to know to make sure everything goes perfectly. That doesn’t include your name, or anything about you, or why it’s so important to make sure the baby in your belly—little Alice who you want so badly to meet and hold in your arms—is never born.

Without a face or a name, I can pretend it really is an accident. I’m not a murderer, just a clumsy pedestrian. I can collect my cash and choose where and when to live out the rest of my life. That’s what Scarlett promised—do the job, and I get one last trip. Then I never have to see a time machine again if I don’t want to.

So I’m waiting in the falling snow, blowing on my cup of coffee, and in exactly one minute, you’ll walk down the street toward me. Easy. Simple and clean.

After all, in this here and now, what are you to me? Nothing. Just a date and a time and a precise location. A step to the left at exactly the right moment. I don’t even know what you look like, not yet. Though in time I will know every detail of your body, where your waist dips toward the curve of your hipbone, the scent of your skin late in the afternoon just before your husband gets home, and the way your lips taste in the bruise-dark hours between three and four a.m. when he’s out of town.

But for now, I know none of these things. I look at my watch and count silently, my breath steaming in the winter cold. And when the moment comes, I drop my anachronistic cup of coffee and take that one little step to the left, eyes closed, heart pounding, tears hot against the winter cold.

Four

It’s 1984, New Year’s Day. I’m shaking, my jaw clenched to keep my teeth from chattering. The diner is warm, the only place open on the entire snowy street. In all its seventeen years, the diner has prided itself on never once being closed.

The windows steam. I sweat inside my coat, but I can’t bear to remove it. My hands are wrapped around a cup of coffee, but the thought of putting food in my mouth is abhorrent.

Scarlett slides into the booth across from me—not a hair out of place, her make-up immaculate as always. It’s the same diner where I first met her. She’s still smiling, not quite smirking her cat-with-the-canary look, until she gets a good look at me.

“I want to go back,” I say. “I changed my mind. I want to undo it. Find someone else if you have to, I don’t care. I’ll give the money back, and I won’t tell anyone. You’ll never see me again, I promise.”

I expect her eyes to go hard when the words stop, and for a moment they do. Then a real glimmer of regret, a hint of sympathy creeps through. Her hands cover mine, still wrapped around the coffee mug. I wonder about her real name, how she got here, about the shadows under her perfect skin, and the brief flicker of pain behind her eyes.

She speaks softly, even though we’re the only two in the diner, holding my gaze the entire time.

“It doesn’t work that way. I’m sorry.”

I want to spit in her face, call her liar. I want to slap her and make her take the words back, but deep down, I’m afraid they’re true. A time machine isn’t a magic wand. I can’t undo what I’ve done. I made a choice, and now your blood is on my hands.

I don’t ask again. Instead, I beg Scarlett to at least tell me your name. I have to know. I have to own this thing, fully and completely. If your death is going to be on me for the rest of my life, it will be your death, a specific death, belonging to a real woman, not just a place and a time and a step to the left with eyes closed and tires shrieking in the fresh-fallen snow.

“It won’t help you sleep at night,” Scarlett says. “In fact, it will only make things worse. Why do that to yourself?”

“Please,” I say.

She relents, partway. She tells me your name, and nothing more. Not where to find you before that day in 1945. Not why the child in your belly had to die. I leave the diner pretending that will be enough. I have your name. I can mourn. I can try to make some kind of peace with what I’ve done.

Five

It is 2037, February, and the stainless steel screw-top cup from a thermos of coffee is passing back and forth from my mittened hand to the hand of a woman named Mona. Mona is from 1961, hiding out here in the future, another of Scarlett’s ‘cleaning women’. We met here in 2037, coincidentally picking the same year out of all the years Scarlett offered us after our jobs were done. We were both trying to see how far we could run, and recognized something haunted in each other under all the slick, bright neon of a future that wasn’t what we wanted after all.

“My time, or yours,” I’d said, the cheesiest of pick-up lines.

We fell into each other hard, not love, but desperation, something to cling to because we were both terrified of being alone inside our skins.

What we learned together is what we both already knew apart—there is no place far enough that either of us can run. Even this here, this now—where women can love women, where men can kiss each other and vow to spend the rest of their lives together, where people of both or neither genders can live their lives in peace—we can’t be happy. Our pasts are a shadow; we can’t live in all this light until we’ve found a way to undo what we’ve done. Then, maybe then, we would deserve a future like this one.

The coffee passing between us is spiked liberally with brandy, the last of the bottle drunk before we set out into the cold. We’re here to sneak into Scarlett’s time machine, stalling and stamping our feet against the cold as we gather courage. This is another thing we’ve learned. There has always been a time machine here. As far as we know, there always will be one. Whether Scarlett built it or found it doesn’t matter. What matters is we’ve seen her operate it just enough times between us to know how it’s done.

I boost Mona up first, then scramble over the chain link fence behind her. From this angle, the time machine looks like nothing, a strange fragment of light refracted in a way it shouldn’t be, a bend of the universe. Not even a machine, but time folded somehow, impossible, but possible, because both of us are here.

This is goodbye, but we don’t say it aloud. Mona goes first, back to 1961, I assume, though I never asked. Just like she never asked me where I was running. She slips into the machine that isn’t a machine and it unfolds, throwing loops of light around her body so bright I have to shade my eyes. Then she’s gone.

I drink the last of the coffee in the thermos, down to the dregs, and leave the stainless steel screw-top cup behind. Deep breath, and I step forward. Light encompasses me, the machine hurtling me backward through the years as though it doesn’t care that my one and only goal is to unravel time.

Six

It’s 1943, before your first child, the one you never even had the chance to name. Before the bleach and the chemical sting behind your eyes, burning your skin as you scrubbed and scrubbed the bathroom floor. You still subscribe to fashion magazines in this here and now. In this here and now, you know what my fingers feel like sliding silk stockings down the length of your calves, bunching cotton and wool in my fists and rucking it up over your hips and your belly.

Our first cup of coffee is in your past, my past. And I know that in the bruise-dark hours between 3 and 4 a.m., your mouth tastes like plums.

I have tried every way I know to convince you to run away with me. I’ve played out every scenario I can imagine, trying to undo the future, change what I haven’t yet done, what I will do, what I have always done, in my past and your future.

I have looped through this moment so many times, stepping into Scarlett’s machine again and again, and letting it rip me apart. Every word from your lips, every gesture of your hands, the way you lean your body away or toward me, frightened or longing—I have it all memorized. Sometimes I wish I could leave; spying on your life this way—a string of moments in your past and your future—doesn’t seem right. But somewhere in one of those moments there has to be a key, a word, a phrase, something I can do or not do to save your life.

In a future just a few days from now, you will tear your fashion magazines to pieces, stuff the scraps down the drain, and run water over them until they are pulp. You will slam the apartment window, eschewing the breeze playing with the ends of your hair. You want the apartment sweltering, sweating out the memory of me, sweating out everything you’ve buried deep inside you for so long.

I’ve been there to witness this destruction. Seen the way the curls stick, sweat-damp, to the back of your neck and wanted to taste the skin between them. Even angry, even broken, even denying what you are, in that near future I’ll want to run my tongue over your collarbone, rest my hands where your waist dips in, and feel your pulse beating just under your skin.

I’ll want to whisper to you that everything will be okay. Even though it’s a lie.

If I hadn’t killed you in my past, your future, I wouldn’t be in love with you. Or would I? Was this always meant to be?

Here and now, you are distracted. Your eyes are the same color as the coffee you’re holding. Not just brown, but the color it turns when it catches the light as you pour it from pot to cup. A rich color on the edge of red. Secret. Flavorful. Strong.

Steam rises into the light slanting over the kitchen table between us. You keep glancing at the clock, counting the minutes until your husband comes home, projecting yourself into the future when all I want to do is hold you in the here and now. You haven’t told me to leave yet, but you will. You’re already thinking about fixing your hair, smoothing powder over the places where my lips have been, making dinner, all the things a good wife should do.

Everything about your posture says brittle, haunted. Fragile as the cup in your hands.

“You should go,” you say.

Inside those words, I hear all the ones you don’t say, at least not this time, the words you’ve said in the times before. “I can’t do this anymore. I want a baby. That’s something you can’t give me. I don’t love you. I never loved you. You’re sick and wrong and it’s a sin. I never want to see you again.”

In all of those times, never once have I told you that in two years, right before Christmas, I will cause your death. I don’t tell you about the children, either of them, who will never be born. And I don’t tell you about the horrible things I’ve contemplated doing—finding a way to cause another miscarriage, murdering your husband, all to keep you safe, keep you alive.

No matter how deep your words cut—and they cut to the bone—I don’t fire back with my secret knowledge. It isn’t fair that I know you better than you know yourself. Besides, the knowledge would rip your heart out and I tell myself it’s a mercy to you, letting you live in bliss and innocence for a while longer.

It’s a lie. I’m sparing myself. I don’t want you to die hating me. I need to pretend I can still fix this somehow. I haven’t given up on you. I swear.

I want to take your hands across the table. I want to hold them and look into your eyes. Maybe this time you’ll believe me when I tell you the future gets better. If you ran with me, we could go to a place where we could love each other openly and no one would judge us. We could have a baby and it would be ours, our family, something new to fill the hole in my heart where my family used to be.

I wonder if that’s unfair to you, if I’m trying to make you into something you’re not. All the words I could possibly say in this here and now don’t feel right. Not yet. But maybe one day. I have to keep trying.

In this here and now, I don’t say anything at all. But I do stand for a moment outside your apartment door, breath held, listening. I stand there long enough to hear the coffee cup shatter as you hurl it against the wall.

It will be all cleaned up by the time your husband gets home. Every trace of me will be scrubbed clean from your body, and you’ll be smiling. Just like a good wife should, no matter the white-hot ball of rage you’ve pushed down deep inside.

Seven

It is 1941. In this here, in this now, our first cup of coffee is still ahead, for both of us. I haven’t met you yet, and I’ve already killed you in the future, four years from now. I haven’t tried to convince you to run away with me. I haven’t tried desperately to undo what I’ve done. I don’t know the scent of your hair, or the feeling of your skin under my fingertips. All I have is a name, so I don’t even know it’s you when we collide.

You’re just coming out of the post office, your arms full of catalogs and fashion magazines. It’s summer, and the magazines scatter—bright, beautiful women, caught in the sunshine, pages fluttering in the breeze.

You blush, hurrying to gather them, and I bend to help you. I don’t know anything about you except the way a curl of your hair sticks to the corner of your mouth as you pause to look up at me. In that moment, I’ve already started to fall in love. It’s too late by the time you tell me your name. I’ve invited you for that first cup of coffee. I’ve heard you laugh, self-conscious, guarded, but with so much promise of joy tucked inside.

I could run away before the waitress brings the cups. I could go back—to the future, to the past, try again. If I did, would it change anything? I wouldn’t know the taste of your skin, or the look in your eyes, right before you tell me to go. Maybe my heart wouldn’t break, and you wouldn’t throw yourself into your husband’s arms with such angry determination, set on proving me wrong, determined to be something you’re not. Maybe you wouldn’t be carrying a child that needs killing according to some grand cosmic plan that I don’t even understand.

Or maybe all of this was always meant to happen, always will happen, no matter what I do.

But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying, looking for a way to unravel everything I’ve done. Maybe it isn’t possible, but I have to try. For you. For us. For all the cups of coffee in our past and our future.

All I know is that in this moment, this here and now, you’re looking at me in a way I’ve never been looked at, been seen, before. And I wouldn’t trade this cup of coffee for the world.

About the Author

A.C. Wise’s short fiction has appeared in Apex, Uncanny, Shimmer, Clarkesworld, and The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2015, among other places. In addition to her fiction, she co-edits Unlikely Story, and contributes a monthly Women to Read: Where to Start column to SF Signal. Her collection of inter-linked short stories, The Ultra Fabulous Glitter Squadron Saves the World Again, was published by Lethe Press in October 2015.

The Governess with a Mechanical Womb

Leena Likitalo

It rains thin sharp drops like shattered glass. Saga and I won’t go out today. We might not go out tomorrow. There is nothing but time to kill, and yet I don’t seem to be able to get started in the one task that is more important than the others.

Saga plays with a red wooden horse stolen from the past. I fidget with the quill. I need to write down everything now before I lose courage, before the embers in the fireplace die or the governess returns.

“Agneta . . . ” Saga lowers the horse down on the floor. Its carved hooves gallop a hollow clip clop tune. My little sister glances at the horse, then at me, biting her lip. Her gray eyes glint with curiosity. “Were all horses this small?”

I’ve seen pictures of real horses in the glossy magazines the governess doesn’t allow me to bring with me from the places she takes us. I’m pretty sure horses were huge animals, larger than reindeer, and that there were multiple breeds and even within a breed, multiple colors. But horses are extinct now, and with this thought, my stomach knots. The magnitude of everything lost nauseates me.

“Agneta?” Saga studies me from under her pale brows with the merciless attention of a six-year-old.

I force myself to smile as if nothing whatsoever had ever bothered me. Saga doesn’t need to know the truth. Not yet. “Some might have been.”

I pick the pen up again, but my hand shakes. I won’t be able to take this much longer. I dread the empty pages, but not only them. These days I’m afraid of everything, but I can’t talk about this with Saga. I have to protect her for as long as I can.

“When I grow up, I want to have one.” Saga brushes the horse’s back as if it really had a fur. “A real horse.”

My sister is still so naïve. I envy her for that. “I doubt the governess will provide you that.”

“She might,” Saga replies. “If I ask nicely enough.”

I dip the pen in the inkwell and scrawl the first hesitant words. This is exactly why I have to write. When I’m gone, my sister might be the last human left in the scorched world.

The day the Victorians killed Pa, they sent a governess to take care of what remained of our family—and possibly of the whole of humankind. The men in impeccably fitted tailcoats and towering top hats led Pa away from the weather-beaten farmhouse. The women in black crinoline gowns followed them to the barren hilltop overlooking the glacier-carved lake. No words were exchanged before they incinerated Pa.

Saga, I shivered with you on the farmhouse’s porch. I held your head against my chest to shield you from the sight. Though, since you were only three at the time, I don’t think you understood what happened.

Saga and I are in the root cellar when the super-sonic boom tears the day apart. The jar of apple jam slips from my fingers and shatters against the dirt floor. The sickeningly sweet tang mixes with the damp smell of the cellar, and I gag despite myself.

“Agneta . . . ” Saga chuckles, stepping back so as not to stain her bare feet. “I bet it’s just our governess returning.”

I rivet my gaze on the spreading, sticky stain. Perhaps my sister doesn’t see our governess as a threat because she’s so young. Or perhaps she’s managed to convince herself that there was never a different world, that the tales I’ve told her about the time before the Victorians burned every city and town to dust are just figments of my imagination.

“Should we not go and greet her?” Saga asks. Still staring down, I notice her wriggling her toes.

I kick what remains of the jar under the shelf. The jam that took so many hours to boil is lost for good, as is the world before the Victorians. “We should. But shouldn’t you be wearing shoes?”

Saga doesn’t reply to me, not when we leave the cellar, not when we make our way back to the house in silence that suits well the rugged landscape of post-apocalyptic Lapland.

Our home, a graying farmhouse, hunches against a rocky slope. I tense despite myself when I hear the metallic click-click of the knitting needles. My sister’s eyes brighten. I quickly take hold of her hand, to prevent her from dashing off. I hate it when she acts like an overeager puppy, as if she’d missed the Victorian. “You don’t have any shoes that fit you, do you?”

“Nope,” Saga replies. “None at all.”

We find the governess knitting on the porch. We halt before the lichen-laced stone steps and wait for her to acknowledge us. A tendril of cold, sharp air brushes my cheek, taunting.

“Good afternoon.” The governess lowers a half-formed, poison green mitten on her lap and meets us with an emotionless gaze. She was once a full human, but never an attractive one. Her face is round, with eyes set too close and chin tilting inward right below her wide mouth. It doesn’t help that she always wears her pale hair in a tight bun atop her head. “How are you today?”

Saga and I curtsy, not much of a sight either in our battered jeans and hoodies. Once again, I feel tempted to rebel against the governess. A creature obsessed with routines, she will continue to stare at us until we behave according to her expectations. But since Saga needs new shoes, I skip the games and reply, “Good afternoon, governess. We are fine. How are you today?”

The governess nods solemnly at us and resumes her knitting.

Saga nudges me, her elbow sharper than it ought to be. My sister might not be afraid of the Victorians, but she never voices any requests either. That’s good. I don’t want her to grow too dependent on them.

“Governess,” I address the Victorian. I hate asking for help from those who killed Ma and Pa, but Saga can’t go shoeless once the temperatures drop. “We find ourselves in need of your assistance.”

The governess’ lips twitch up, but the smile doesn’t reach her colorless eyes. Pa once told me that in the early years of Victorian occupation, some lads in Oulu captured a governess, killed her, and cut her open to see what the Victorians did to converts. The governess’ veins were lined with an unknown silvery metal, and where her heart should have been was something akin to a battery. But neither of those findings was the one that left the men too horrified to sleep at night—the governess’ mechanical womb sheltered a black cube impossible to break open.

“Now do you?” The governess’ reply stabs like a broken needle. Not for the first time, I wonder if she, too, bears a black cube in her mechanical womb. That’s something I’ll never learn. The Victorians hunted down the men who killed the governess and incinerated them. “What would you need?”

Saga wiggles her toes. She’s got dirt under her nails. “I’m afraid my feet have decided to grow on their own.”

“Huh.” The governess tugs more yarn from her omnipresent satchel. Click, click, her needles go. Click, click. “Needless help passivates. Are there no hand-me-downs you could use?”

Saga glances at me. I wrap my arm around her narrow shoulders. Empathy might be a foreign concept to the Victorians, but they have no difficulty in understanding a well-formed argument. “I’m ten years older than her. I have worn all my old clothes, shoes included, thread-bare beyond repair.”

The governess blinks blankly as though someone else were making the decision for her. Then she stashes the needles and yarn into her satchel and rises up. “Very well, then. It is my duty to provide for you.”

Pa was born the year the Victorians arrived and nuked every city, factory, and highway to dust. The invaders never proclaimed their intentions, never showed themselves, and for a long time they didn’t even have a name. They shot beams of energy from the orbit, erasing Shanghai, Delhi, and Lagos in an eye blink. The populace of smaller cities held their breath, until they too, were incinerated one after another.

Pa’s family was lucky enough to live in Finland, a country so scarcely populated that it took a while before the Victorians paid any attention to it. His family fled from Helsinki to Tampere, then onward to what remained of Oulu. They lived in a bomb shelter dating back to the Second World War and scavenged the city ruins for food. The survivors of the cataclysm avoided one another—by then, they’d figured out that larger communities and anyone who dabbled with high tech or even electricity got instantly incinerated.

The first converts appeared a decade later, seemingly out of nowhere. The men sporting top hats, tailcoats, and silver-knobbed canes paraded down the ruined streets. The women in black crinoline gowns followed in their wake. They claimed they came in peace, and when asked what species they represented, they named themselves the Victorians.

Pa met Ma, a refugee from Sweden with eyes the color of ice about to thaw, when he was eighteen. Both hated Oulu and living by the rules the Victorians enforced, but never bothered to share with the mere humans. Some of the survivors disappeared, only to appear the next day converted. Others fled what remained of the city. And despite their parents’ pleas, Ma and Pa decided to seek a better life further up north.

Ma and Pa rode rickety bicycles through four hundred kilometers of dirt tracks. During the endless white summer nights, they encountered no other living souls, only forlorn, rusting car skeletons and hordes of starving mosquitos.

They stumbled across the small community of Sodankylä by accident. Though they were happy to meet other survivors, they couldn’t imagine staying. The Victorians walked amongst the humans, exchanging formal greetings as if that was all there was to good life.

At that point, Ma and Pa realized they could never pedal far enough. As a sort of compromise, they set home to an abandoned farmhouse about fifty kilometers away from Sodankylä. I was born a year later.

I guess that for a while our parents were as happy as two people ever can be.

The portal remains open behind us, a shimmering oval between two tall pines. In this time and place, the air smells of wet bark and bent grass. It must have stopped raining just moments earlier.

The governess glances at her golden pocket watch, then at Saga and me. “We have thirty minutes exact.”

“Sure,” I reply. When I first stepped through a portal, the governess warned me that those who remained behind after it closed would simply cease to exist. If it hadn’t been for Saga, I might have . . . But now, I won’t even entertain the idea, no matter how I hate my life.

The governess produces a red-checkered mitten from her satchel and hangs it at the tip of a pine branch. Without sparing us another glance, she strides through the forest of young trees, up a slope thick with shrubbery. Lingonberries squash under her heels, but she doesn’t notice that.

Saga and I follow the governess as fast as we can, but not quite fast enough. After we lose sight of her, we follow the mittens. I idly wonder if this is the reason she knits them in the first place. Perhaps. Who can tell how the mind of a convert works?

The forest gives way to a well-tended clearing, an ochre-painted, two-story holiday house with plain, white window frames and a black mansard roof. A gravel road leads through the forest toward north. The governess is nowhere in sight. Her kind comes and goes as they please.

“Let’s go and see what we can find,” I say to Saga. I have no clock of my own—clocks without plastic and batteries are difficult to find—but I estimate the hike took five or so minutes.

“Anything you’d need?” Saga asks.

Another human being. Preferably a boy of my age. Give or take a decade or two. Barring that, a life far away from the governess would be nice. And if that isn’t possible, something to make me forget everything. However, my little sister doesn’t need to know about the things I yearn even though I know I can never have them.

“Books,” I reply. It’s better to give her something to hunt, to keep her out of my way. And besides, it’s about time I teach her how to read.

I hold my breath as I push the front door open. I know to expect the jarring sense of unease, and yet it turns my limbs leaden. Though we’ve never seen anyone during our visits, that doesn’t mean this house’s owners couldn’t return at any moment.

“I’ll be fast,” Saga promises as she dashes past me toward the stairs. It’s late summer in this time. Winter clothes are most likely kept stored in the attic.

I pop into the toilet under the stairs, not that I would ever dare to use it, just as I don’t dare to turn on the lights. With arms extended before me, I shuffle my way to the cupboard above the sink. I search blindly.

By chance, I come across a small brown bottle. I squint at the label. The big red triangle tells me everything I need to know. I unscrew the cap and swallow two gulps of the cough medicine. I’ve done this more times than I care to admit. But the governess seems to be blind to the wonderful drowsiness that’s bound to follow.

I return the bottle in the cupboard and continue my hunt. I find a box of tampons. Praised be whichever god still exists! Though, I’ll either have to remove the plastic wrappings or risk the governess confiscating the box.

Feeling pleasantly lightheaded, I stuff the box into my backpack. It feels good to defy the rules for even a moment. To celebrate my decision, on my way out, I snatch two rolls of the luxurious, triple-ply toilet paper. Those can’t possibly count as high-tech!

I ignore the kitchen—the governess doesn’t approve us taking food unless we’re starving. I drift through the spacious living room occupied only by a massive white sofa and a huge tv. On the far side, two doors whisper promises of a better life led by luckier people. I open the door on the left.

The room isn’t particularly big. A teddy bear, sitting on the pink duvet with limbs askew in all directions, guards the bed at the back of the room. Ill-tended books, notebooks, and piles of paper cover the desk to my right. Jeans, t-shirts, and various accessories litter the floor. The posters on the wall proclaim ownership. Skinny men and women in scant clothing scream, sweat dripping down their faces.

No, I realize, they aren’t screaming but singing.

I close my eyes as my heart pangs with envy. This room belongs to a teenage girl. In another time and place, it could have been mine. The concerts, heartbreaks, and fashion disasters. The heartbreaks . . .

It would be so easy to get lost in sorrow. But the drowsiness dulls even the strongest of emotions, and I manage to push self-pity aside for a moment more.

I wade to the table. This girl from the past is of my age. The books might be schoolbooks. I need to check if I can take any of them with me. I need to learn whatever there is to learn. Perhaps one day I’ll figure out what happened to my world, why the Victorians came, and how I can best protect Saga from their arbitrariness.

But every single one of the books contains plastic in one form or another. I can’t take them with me. I force myself to fumble through the clothing, to get something else to think about. As my luck has it, the clothes are made of polyester and acrylic. I run my fingers along the paisley print of a particularly pretty sleeveless top. Even if I could take it with me, I would never have any use for it. I need warm and durable clothes that can stand the elements and mangling by washboard. I toss the top aside.

My vision is already blurry around the edges when I come across a pair of snowflake patterned woolen socks, no doubt knit by the girl’s grandmother. I clench my teeth as my hands curl into fists. I sway to the bed and sink down so heavily that the teddy bear keels over. It’s not fair! I’ve never seen and will never see my grandmother!

Tears well in my eyes, and I can’t hold them back. I snatch the teddy bear and clutch it against my heart. The Victorians have denied me everything. Family, friends, the chance of ever meeting someone I might fall in love with.

“What is it, Agneta?” Saga has appeared into the doorway without me noticing. A slightly too large fur cap lines her delicate face. The lamb fur coat she’s donned looks old, but warm, the winter boots three sizes too large.

The teddy bear drops from my numb fingers. I can’t allow Saga to see me this weak. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Saga parrots me. She picks her way through the mess to the bed, sits down next to me, wraps her arm around me, and leans her chin against my shoulder. “I thought that lying was a bad thing.”

As Saga grows older, it’s getting more and more difficult to mislead her. Perhaps the time has come to stop even trying. I wipe my eyes dry with the back of my hand. “I found something I really want, but can’t take with us.”

Saga squeezes her arms tighter around me. It’s as if she were my big sister, not the other way around.

“Now, did you indeed?” The governess rolls into the room, the black hem of her gown swallowing everything like a monstrous wave.

I freeze, but my heart pounds unsteadily. My careless comment has placed both Saga and me in grave danger. What can I say and do to remedy the situation? It’s difficult to think straight, with the cough medicine clouding my mind.

“Well?” The governess seems to float before us, over the clothes and magazines. She motions toward my bag. I demurely hand it over.

Despite all the winter clothes, Saga shivers as the governess rummages through my bag. She thinks I’ve decided to snatch something forbidden. I second-guess myself. Have I?

The governess tosses out the toilet paper rolls. She pouts her lips as she notices the box of tampons. She turns it in her hands, opens the package, and pulls out one plastic-wrapped tampon. “What is this?”

Saga stares at me, still silent. I haven’t yet talked with her about the inconveniences of growing up. I want her to lead a carefree life as long as she can.

“Something to make my life a little easier,” I finally reply. How victorious I felt just a while back! Now defeat tastes bitter and sharp.

“I can’t let you have them,” the governess says, placing the box on the table.

I boil inside. And despite knowing the danger in debating with a Victorian, I spring up and retrieve the box. I pull out a tampon and brandish it at her. “The wrapping comes off.”

“Is that so?” the governess asks.

Glowering with fury, I unpeel the tampons, one after another.

Pa believed the Victorians could access cached moments. To prove his theory, he followed a convert through a portal once and brought back newspapers that Ma promptly used to start a fire. Though he and Ma could have received supplies from the Victorians, they preferred to scavenge the cottages scattered across the abandoned valleys.

Ma and Pa spoke only rarely of the world before the Victorians. I gathered from the clues left behind—magazines full of pictures of impossibly beautiful women, exotic cities of architectural wonder, and delicacies I’d never get to taste—that their parents must have led a life of abundance and extravaganza. Though at the time I blamed them for not telling me everything, later I understood how much it must have pained them to almost have it all.

Saga, you must understand, Ma and Pa did their best to provide for us. We farmed beetroot, potatoes, and onions. We fished for trout and pike. Sometimes one of them would jump on their bicycle and pedal away, while the other stayed with you and me.

Back when Sodankylä still existed, it harbored an underground marketplace. There, behind the Victorians’ backs, people bartered with what they’d found from the ruins or on their trips through the portals. They exchanged alcohol for food, medicines for clothes, luxuries of olden days for everyday amenities.

I remember always feeling anxious and restless until the parent who’d braved the journey returned. On that happy day, we’d cook a celebratory meal, no matter how meager their loot. We’d pop open tin cans and rip open plastic containers. We’d laugh, though sometimes the food left an ashen aftertaste.

I realized only later why.

Frost has bitten the landscape bloody. I chop logs in the small opening by the woodshed, but my mind is elsewhere. Saga is gathering the nets. The governess went with her, but rather to keep an eye on her than to help. She never participates in household duties.

My stomach aches and will ache for days still. I’m afraid of many things, but not of my periods. I know now that I won’t die of the bleeding. When the time comes, I’ll explain how a woman’s body works to Saga, but not a day sooner.

I swing the ax to split another log. The wood parts with a satisfying crack. If I hate something almost as much as the Victorians, it’s the damned inconvenience of having a womb. Why do I have to bleed, when there’s a decent chance that I’ll never meet another human being beside Saga, let alone a boy to knock me up?

I yank the ax free from the log. It’s getting late. Hopefully, come next summer, Saga can already fend for herself, and I can pedal to discover what remains of Sodankylä. Perhaps my fears will prove unfounded. Perhaps . . .

Enough with wistful thinking.

I return the ax in the woodshed and pile the chopped wood to dry. Then I stride down the rocky path to the narrow jetty that age and elements have turned gray. The jetty squeaks under my boots long after I’ve halted to survey the lake.

Saga and the governess are still at the north end of the lake, perhaps a half-kilometer away. My sister is hauling the net into the boat all by herself, while the governess knits mittens no one will ever use. Just as I expected.

“No, I don’t buy it.” Saga’s voice carries over the open water. “You can’t have always been a governess.”

I flinch despite myself. I avoid addressing the governess when I can get away with it, but my bold, six-year-old sister has just asked the very question that has always puzzled me. What was our governess like before she chose to convert? Why did she choose to welcome alien machinery into her body rather than remain a human? For isn’t that the ultimate betrayal one can commit against one’s species?

“No.” The governess straightens her back. Her reply sounds mechanical. “That I was not.”

“Why become one then?” Saga leans over the boat’s edge to better grasp the net. The boat tilts to a threatening angle. I’m about to call out a warning, but before I can do so, the governess shifts to balance the boat.

“The children must be looked after,” the governess says.

Saga sniffs as she heaves the last of the net and day’s catch over the boat’s rim. She dislikes being called a child. Even though that’s what she is. “You were a child, then?”

“A child is a boy or a girl,” the governess replies.

“A girl.” Saga nods, self-satisfied. “You were a girl.”

For a long while, neither of them speaks more. The gray clouds thicken, and shadows grow taller. On the shore, blood-red birches shiver. I can’t see any birds flying, but I can hear faded cries of terns.

Eventually, Saga picks up the oars and expertly maneuvers the boat around. She rows toward the jetty, but still doesn’t notice me. It really is getting dark and colder, too.

“You are a girl,” the governess muses as if she’s realized this for the very first time.

“You’re funny.” Saga giggles. She splashes water with the oars. The governess ducks to avoid the sprays. My sister laughs. “You know, we have something in common after all!”

I spit in the water, shattering the surface. Saga and I have nothing whatsoever in common with the converts. I’ll need to make sure she remembers that.

But I can’t bear to face my sister now, not with the governess present. I flee up the path to the farmhouse, kicking every pebble on the way. Saga and I belong to the second post-invasion generation, but it seems to me she’s forgot what the Victorians did.

I haven’t, and I harbor enough hate in my heart for two.

Ma was visiting Sodankylä when the town got obliterated. I was playing with you in the orchard when the beam of light split the sky, so bright I couldn’t see for hours afterwards. Pa found us crying, curled under an apple tree. He didn’t need to tell us that Ma wouldn’t return.

Pa changed after Ma died. He sat on the porch, staring in turns into the distance and at his hands. He hunched there, muttering about electricity and how people should have already known better, for so long that even the mosquitos grew bored of his taste.

That autumn, the fields went untended, the apples unpicked. You were two and half years old at the time. Between looking after you and Pa, I had no chance to go and scrounge for myself.

We ran out of tin cans when the first snow fell. On the third day that we had nothing left to eat, the Victorians came to pay us a visit. Pa pretended he’d invited the serious men and women and thanked them for the provisions they brought.

I think that if there had been any alcohol to be had, he would have emptied every single bottle and flask.

Every Saturday—that is, every seventh day, since there’s no way to be sure of time and date anymore—Saga and I heat up our little sauna, wash the laundry, and scrub ourselves clean. The governess never joins us; rather she often leaves via portal to a different time and place, perhaps to visit her own kind. I’m unashamedly glad of that.

“More?” Saga asks as we sit naked on the wet pine bench, knees pressed against chests, arms wrapped around shins. She twirls the copper ladle absent-mindedly as she stares out of the soot-laced window.

It’s dark and cold outside. It should have snowed weeks ago, but it hasn’t. The new world follows different rules, and amidst the change, Saga and I are alone. I seek solace from what little tradition remains, from the scent of burning wood, the warm comfort of the tiny sauna, the closeness never shared in any place else. Saga and I were both born in this very room. Here we’re safe.

“Sure,” I reply just as the sonic boom tears through the windowpanes. Glass hums. I fear it will crack. “Shit.”

We’ll never be safe anywhere.

“Agneta!” Saga hits me with the ladle, not particularly hard, but hard enough for it to sting. “Don’t curse in the sauna!”

I should stay stronger before my little sister, show her example by being unafraid, but . . . I can’t. Not anymore.

Saga tosses a scoop of water on the stove’s stones, but the soft hiss does nothing to set me at ease. She notices that. “That’s just our governess returning.”

I bury my head in my hands as if I were protecting my ears from the steam, not trying to hide my shame. My stomach clenches, cold fingers squeeze my heart. This fear, it’s impossible to live with, too embarrassing to admit.

“Agneta?” Saga brushes my shoulder, her skin clammy against mine. That’s it then. She’s seen what I’ve tried so hard to hide. There’s no point in continuing to lie.

“Sometimes . . . ” The words, I don’t want to say them. But I have to. “I grow so tired of being ever so afraid of the Victorians.”

“I’m not afraid.” Saga’s reply is the last thing I expected to hear. “Got no reason to be. I’ve broken no rules.”

Anger surges inside me. Sure, Saga is young and ignorant. But to dismiss my words, to accept the situation as it is, that’s unacceptable!

“Who knows what rules they follow?” I whisper hoarsely. Does Saga really think that she understands how the Victorians think? Does she think she’s safe because she plays best friends with the governess? Does she? And I shouldn’t have to remind her that . . . “They killed Ma and Pa.”

Saga flinches. No, she hasn’t forgot Ma and Pa. That’s good, but I feel ever so slightly ashamed that I thought so even in passing.

For a long while, neither of us speaks. Saga stares at the stove, the logs in the firebox succumbing to flames. I rivet my attention at the stones. As the water evaporates, the dry patches on them grow larger. Gradually, the sauna cools. The air should have become easier to breathe, and yet it doesn’t feel that way.

At last, Saga says in a barely audible voice, “So you’ve told me, but what if . . . ”

I glare at her sideways. What is she after now? “What if what?”

I’ve told her what came to pass many times, and there’s no way she could have misunderstood. Pa acquired and hid the gun to protect Saga and me.

“Nothing.” Saga wraps her arms tighter around herself as if she wanted to close the whole word, me included, outside.

I’m about to chastise her when a dreadful thought occurs to me. I fight to deny it even as a shiver runs down my back, sinking claws under my skin, all the way to my bones.

“Give me that.” I yank the ladle from Saga’s numb hold. I pour water on the stones. I pour and pour until both of us wriggle in steam.

And yet I can’t chase away the awful thought. What if Pa thought to protect us by putting a bullet through our heads?

We lived through the endless night of the winter only thanks to the Victorians. The somber men and women paid us a visit every single time we ran out of food. However, it was neither kindness nor any sort of regret that drove them. When Pa thought I couldn’t hear, he questioned them about their motives. They spoke of the survival of the species, of all things!

When the spring finally came, Pa left me in charge of the house and went foraging. You and I fished the best we could, but one can’t live solely on pike and trout. The Victorians must have been spying on us, because they sent us more tin cans and dried rye bread.

For two long weeks, I feared Pa would never return, that the Victorians had killed him too. Then he did return, though later I wished he hadn’t.

We rushed to greet him, braids bouncing against our backs. We leaned against the porch’s creaky railing and waved at him, eager to see what he’d brought us.

As the spring sun shone bright, Pa opened his backpack and pulled out an object wrapped in a red and white-checkered scarf. Carefully and slowly, he untied the knots. I caught a glimpse of metal, a hint of a barrel and grip.

“Soon,” he said, grinning at us, “you won’t have to be afraid ever again.”

The Victorians came for Pa the very next day.

The governess’ fingers curl around my shoulder, claws of a hungry beast. She shouts something incomprehensible to me, face too close to mine. As I meet her cold, emotionless gaze, thick smoke floods my nostrils and mouth. I scream, but the nightmare won’t go away.

“Fire,” the governess says. “Get out.”

Still not sure if I’m dreaming or awake, I stumble up from the bed. The governess drags me through the smoke-filled house, out of the door, down the porch’s stone stairs, into the freezing night. All I can do is cough.

“Saga . . . ” I retch black slime into a snowbank. Before us, the farmhouse spits flames. The doorway gasps acrid smoke. But my little sister is nowhere in sight. “I must go back!”

“No. Too dangerous. You are sixteen,” the governess replies as if that explained everything. As if in her eyes I’m more valuable because I’m older and more resources have been spent to ensure my survival.

“And . . . she’s but . . . a child,” I snap back at her, coughing between the words. I sway toward the house even as bright dots swarm my vision. At the stone steps, heat lashes against me, instantly blistering my face and forearms.

“A girl.” The governess pulls me back from the shoulders, her grip like iron. There’s a strange, distant quality to her voice, as if something deep inside her had just clicked. “I was a girl.”

There’s no time to lose, and yet I find myself staring at her. Her visage bears a look of utter sadness. It’s as if she finally remembers that she was once fully human and understood emotions, grief and despair.

“You stay. My clothes, they might protect me.” And without waiting for my answer, the governess thrusts her satchel at me and strides into the flames. For a moment, I can see her black, diminishing shape against the vicious orange. Then she disappears altogether, and all that remains is a faint whisper: “I was a girl.”

I stomp in the melting snow, as close to the burning house as I can without suffering more burns. A part of me wants to dash after the governess and find my sister. The rational part knows that I would die before being able to help her in any way.

Loneliness haunts me as I wait. There’s no guarantee I’ll see my dear sister, another human being, ever again. Her fate is in the hands of a convert. I fidget with the satchel. The governess has never let me touch it before. I need something to distract myself. I unclasp the satchel.

The governess’ most valued possessions seem to be her knitting needles, three balls of red yarn, and my notebook. Curious. I left that on my nightstand. Why did she opt to save it from the fire? Did she on some subconscious level . . .

A multitude of loud cracks. A terrifying shape emerges from the house. It’s the governess. She half falls, half slides down the stone stairs, her gown sprouting flames, a burning halo of hair around her head. My heart and hopes shrink, for she has returned alone.

Then Saga peeks out from under the governess’ hem, cheeks stained with smoke and tears.

“Saga!” I rush to them, pulling my sister up on her own feet, away from the fire. She wraps her arms around my thighs and cries.

“A girl . . . ” The governess staggers after us, but her feet slip on the slush. The flames on her hair wither. Her scalp has blackened, visage blistered. She looks like a monster, but that she is not.

“You’re hurt,” I say, feeling dumb and powerless.

A shudder runs through the governess’ body. She collapses on her knees on the snow. “She . . . she is six.”

I squat down next to the governess. I pat snow against her cheeks and forehead, and Saga follows my suit. But it’s too late to save her. Her dress disintegrates, the black fabric turning into white flakes, revealing more burns.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper as I help the governess to lie down in the snow. I was so very wrong about her. “I’m so sorry.”

The governess meets me with an unblinking stare. Though her lashes have burnt, too, the look in her eyes is one of utter peace. “I . . . was . . . a girl.”

Life flees her scorched body soon after.

Northern lights claw the cold sky green-blue as Saga and I drag the governess’ body up the slope. Our going through the knee-deep snow is slow, and the governess’ limbs leave behind sooty trails. Yet, we halt only when we’re a safe distance away from the smoldering ruins of our home.

“What will we do now?” Saga clutches the hem of her nightgown. The air smells of snow and flames, of sorrow and loss.

The Victorians can sense the death of their kind. They will come to claim our governess’ body soon. And then . . . I’m ashamed to admit it to myself, I expect the Victorians to continue looking after Saga and me. “We wait.”

“For what?” Saga’s voice breaks as she glances at the governess’ body. The governess lies on her back. The front of her body is charred. Her belly curves inward, hollow apart from the outline of a cube. She’s a convert, but also . . . “You know she was my friend.”

That remark hurts me more than anything else that came to pass that night. I’ve hated the Victorians my whole life and expected Saga to do likewise. But she bonded with the governess and the governess sacrificed herself to save my sister.

“I’m sorry. I truly am.”

“It’s all right. I guess.” Saga takes hold of my hand, her fingers already white-cold. “It will not be the same if they send another governess to take care of us. But I will try my best to welcome her.”

“I know.” I squeeze her hand. Saga will be able to adjust to anything and befriend anyone regardless of their species or origin. I . . .

The whiplash boom heralds the portal opening to our right. But this time, I don’t flinch, not even when four stern-faced Victorians stride through the rippling air, followed by a demure woman, our governess-to-be. They don’t look like they’re angry at us, not like they want a life in return for the loss of one of their kind.

I think of the cube inside the governess’ womb. I think of what I yearn and what I can never have. I can’t bear the thought of sharing my sister with someone I’ll inevitably fear, loathe, and hate. I’m not like Saga. My feelings have roots wedged so deep that no matter how I were to try, I will never be able to overcome them.

“Saga . . . ” I press the satchel in her hands. She’s the one who matters to me the most. I want to be with her forever, to be loved by her rather than eventually despised. “I’ll have to go with them. And when I return it will seem like I’m gone, but it’ll still be me. At some level, it’ll still be me.”

When I step through the portal, I still think of the vast city in the stars, looking through space and time at the white-shrouded, blue planet. For if my kind hadn’t intervened, it would have been forever lost.

“Agneta!” Saga runs to me, arms spread wide for an embrace.

I don’t respond to her call, for I don’t have a name anymore, only a duty. “How do you do?”

As I lead Saga to her new home, an abandoned summer cottage on the north side of the lake, I feel nothing but the strangest sort of empathy and sadness toward the one who treats me as if we were the same.

We are not and will never be. I have an important duty, and that duty fuels me. I must look after this human, this child. I must guide her and protect her from hurting herself.

I believe her kind calls this sort of devotion love. For some reason I don’t quite understand, I want to prepare her apple jam.

About the Author

Leena Likitalo is a writer from Finland, the land of thousands of lakes and at least as many untold tales. She’s a Writers of the Future 2014 winner and Clarion San Diego graduate. Her short fiction has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Galaxy’s Edge, and Weird Tales. She’s recently finished writing a fantasy novel, The Five Daughters of the Moon, and dreams of being a published novelist one day.

Coyote Invents the Land of the Dead

Kij Johnson

She was there, that is Dee, and her three sisters, who were Tierce, Chena, and Wren, Dee being a coyote or rather Coyote, and her sisters not unlike in their Being, though only a falcon, a dog, and a wren. So there they stood on the cliff, making their minds how to get down to the night beach, a deep steep dark bitch slither it was, though manageable Dee hoped.

The cliff was a high sandy sharpness, but you, O my darlings, might not remember what it means to pass down that narrow dark, your own life being so past and the dead so quick to forget. Standing on the cliffs what Dee sought was her own ghost-love, named Jace and dead a year but still so recent to her mind that she could sniff her fingers and by a year-gone remembered smell see him long-legged gold-eyed and low-voiced with big hands—and the sisters going along with her because they did not wish to see her do it alone, plus each sought something else that she didn’t explain, not to Dee anyway.

They had no death-permit for climbing down, but there was no law against trying some of the narrow paths the dead might use. They could try to climb straight down the rocks or along the arroyo, or one or two other possibilities that would give them a skinny slight weak chance of finding the beachy sand and all its dead and massy seashells beneath their feet.

Or they could find the beach the faster way: throw themselves down and hit the sand with their permit in hand, as the saying is. And that was what they were discussing on the cliff.

“Well, fuck, and I’ll have to do it the hard way,” Dee said. “I might be just that bit late coming back.” Her quick tumble-voice rippled out from her mouth and plashed against Wren’s pinhole wren ears and Chena’s tufted great dog ears and the fluffed falcon feathers where Tierce’s ears were. All four were what they were, and women also, and more. They were fashioned of myth: that is the way of this story.

“Or never,” Wren said high and sharp as the whistle from a dry teakettle. “The dead say that, and then they go down the cliffs and they never come back”—light on a brokenwood tree sapless and unlifed, and hopping from foot to foot, so angry was she. “It’s the dead down there, sister. Go and you are dead.”

Above and behind them were stars and clouds and the moon sliding skyward, the long long rise of it, but there was no sky over the night beach before them and the strange ocean beyond; the sky/star/moon dayworld ended abruptly above the cliff’s edge, just overhead with a curled lip like poor and unfinished knitting, and beyond that just nothing but what is inside an undreamer’s eyelids. Chena reached a long-fingered paw (or was it a hand) and touched a thread trailing from the sky’s end. A sequining star slipped loose and came resting onto her dark muzzle, leaving tracer-lines when she moved her mouth and low in her throat said, “She is dead already, Wren. It is what Dees do that are Coyote, is die.”

“—And come back:” Dee hoping it was true; ears had heard tales of other Coyotes that made the long climb down that cliff and back too, and brought heaving and snapping up with them fire or jewelling girdles. Or perhaps that was she but not remembering, or it might be a different cliff; Dee did not know.

“You better hope tales are right,” Tierce said all beak-sharp snap. “You’re a fool to long for your lover when he’s on the night beach. But you’ll go anyway. I know you,” and Wren agreed.

Dee was toenails-close to the cliff, and dirt and little rocks scrabbled away from her feet and over the edge making no noise as they fell. The others were farther away; and look-back Dee saw outlines of her sisters black against the star-busy dayworld night sky. Their faces were invisible until she lit a match and then a cigarette and held it carefully between her toes or maybe it was fingers, and then the hawk wren and dog eyes all glowed gold. All their eyes were worried-like and sad too, and they were right to be so. Dee had never long longed for anything lost before this, not even her own mother. Only Jace. And Dee was the center of things; bulls-eye on the target, the tight-binding chord of the arc of everything. Touch Dee and the world shivered.

Turning, Dee: and she stared down. The only light on the beach came from the sky behind them, the cliff’s shadow stretched halfway to the water; plus also fading shifting lines like yarn being rolled, that was surf that went nowhere and not strong; and phosphorescence the color of sodium vapored and trapped inside lamps. Hundreds of feet down or miles or something else? Dee (knowing as all do approaching the night beach) that it would change as she climbed.

“Well, this is me, then. I’m going,” she said, and dropped her furl-ashed cigarette and started down. The path was a narrow bitter winding of rocks and dirt crushed to dust. She slipped and fell, away through sour thorn-prickling brush, until she slammed against a rock that left her unbreath’d for a while and then she realized she wasn’t breathing anyway. Mist rose from her muzzle but did not in-and-out, only slid steadily free, collecting into a shape at first indefinable; only, she walked down and down and its form clarified and grew more complete, and it was a Coyote like her, curled as though mother-scruffed, hovering a few feet from the cliff at eye-height.

Dee not a thinker, thus not wondering what this shadow-Coyote meant, whether ghost ka lost soul or child unborn. “The fuck do you want?” Dee said not wanting the answer, and it said nothing and turned and advanced ahead, soundless and then invisible and gone maybe so that she was relieved and worried both, though not the worrying sort.

Of a sudden, a great light started up behind Dee on the cliff, a surprising blaze of a bonfire, set by her sisters she figured but arcbright as welding or lighthouses, and it warmed her just to see its bright casting across the scree’d cliff. Dee was not the only one with gifts and Being, and Tierce could use the sharp of talon and eye, and set great fires. But Tierce would lose some vision from this: love costs for anyone, hawks and all.

Twisting-back Dee’s long foot touched a rock and it cascading took its fellows lavanching along and Dee falling too. The path: a startle-start, and a slip-stumble long middle, and then a dead-end; just like life.

The night beach where Dee landed was of sand. It and foam-stain water hissed and whispered together; Dee folded her ears back to block the sound but it came through anyway, seeping in through the cracks of her. The wet cold air felt thin, though she was at sea level for the lowest sea of all—if air there was; no telling without lungs’ in-and-out. Her shadow was a severalled blur-thing that did not have her shape, cut out by the light of Tierce’s eyes and the half-moon in the half-sky behind, cut now where it had risen to the dayworld’s ceasing, and sloppy with dangling glowing threads.

The sand around her was heaped everywhere with mounded massy dark shells, pyramided into black piles as high as her waist, and over the sand/water-whisper the piles chirked when a crawling wave touched them. Dee kneeling saw they looked just like dayworld shells, shaped like ears or trumpets or vulvas, but they had no light nor sheen to their curves and they felt colder than they ought. Dee pushed the shells aside with her feet as she walked, and they chunkled against one another.

A sudden falling crash off a short distance: a small blur-shadowed thing heaved upright and shook itself, and said with Wren’s voice, “The air stopped carrying me.” She sounded indignant, betrayed by her natural element and peevish in any case because of Dee’s as she saw it stupidity. But here she was: love costs a price, as she knew as well, and she was hoping this would not in this case be true but suspected that it would. “I was flying down and it just gave up.”

“You weren’t supposed to follow,” Dee said. “This is mine to do. Not yours.”

“Since when do you say what is what for me?” Wren hopped to Dee’s side, and stopped being a blurred shadow and became herself, drab grey and brown but her eyes bright precise points.

“At least Chena’s not coming down, is she?” Dee glanced up at the cliff, to the fire Tierce had set. Pushed by the wind, it gusted and vanished and rose again in sheets of flame the colors of brass, of gold bronze copper and blue sapphires.

Wren opened her mouth and then shut it, not saying anything.

Dee closed her eyes for a moment. “Fuck.” Now that she looked, she could see a sturdy dark shape down-scrabbling the cliff. Instead of picking out the safe path, Chena was running straight down in a great tumbling of noise and rocks and torn bushes: which ended in Chena landing with a sound that might have been a yelp or might have been a laugh. She loped toward them, kicking shells aside with chirping skrankles of sound.

“That was fun:” Chena smiling, her tongue hanging out. “I wouldn’t want to go back up, though.”

“You can’t,” Dee angry said. “And now we’re all dead.”

“Not yet,” Chena said.

“Tell me Tierce isn’t coming down.”

Shaking-head Chena, as Wren, “When did you become the grown-up?” asked.

Dee thinking When I lost Jace and it stabbed through her again like losing a leg, and every time waking jumping up maybe to run somewhere, and being reminded again when she fell: no leg. Jace, who had been laughing air in her lungs, long-storying tale-making lover of Dee; and all the sun there was, for her.

Chena shaking her head in any case: “Tierce keeps the fire for us. Have you found your Jace yet? I just see this”—pointing with one clawed toe that may for purposes of this story and your own comfort be seen as a woman’s hand, if it seems she must be either woman or beast but cannot be both; which shows your folly, O my dears.

Dee looked down at the shells all everywhere, the cerith/whelk/natica coils of them. Some were smaller than her toenail, others broad as her cradling hands. She picked one up, cell-phone-size and black and smoothly curved like a tulip, and held it to her ear. But nothing inside it, not even the sound of her own pounding blood echoing back, though maybe that was no surprise if her pulse were as gone as her breath.

Chena picked one up too, the size of clasped hands and scrolled tight as a flemished rope, and absent-eyed held the tiny opening to her ear: listening to her own lack of pulse, Dee reckoned though maybe not, so intent was she; and then dropped it chirking. “These are the dead.”

Dee’s Coyote-self knowing, saying: “Yes,” and seeing it was true as the word slid from her mouth.

Chena: “He’s a shell. Still you want him?”

And Dee nodded.

Wren added, practical she: “Good thing it’s forever-night, because it will take all night to find him, huh.”

Uncertain they stood looking this and that way: shells everywhere and the ravel-lorn waves, and all beyond Tierce’s light, dark as a cave. Wren speaking at last, quick-eyed as all birds: “There;” and they looked a way along down the beach beneath the cliff, and there were rocks pinnacled even higher than the shells. “A tide-pool.”

“Is there tide here?” Chena asked knowing No. No moon, so no tide.

On the night beach, distance was mutable or even irrelevant. Still, crossing took time and they walked for a while and a second while and more whiles still, to the rocky place Wren saw, the un-tided pinnacled pool.

Waning light from Tierce’s fire, as they shuffled through the shells of the chirpling, chinkering dead, speaking perhaps to one another though not to Dee as she leaned low and listened; nor to Wren, tipping her head close to the largest she saw, a whelk the size of a sleeping hound, and hearing nothing, no thing at all. Yet would not step inside the shell’s curling lip: no fool Wren.

It was hard to see the pillaring rocks clearly, scarce-lit to one side by the strange ocean’s glow, and to the other by Tierce’s fire and the half of the sky that still held stars: the dayworld’s moon long gone by now.

Wren could not fly but she was smaller than the others and not so careful with stepping on the shells, and so Wren sandpipering down to the water: “No tide,” she said. “The water just moves, doesn’t go anywhere, is all.”

Dee slower followed, for she kept picking up shells and listening for Jace, and Chena slowest of all though she listened only once: and lifted a cowrie folded pretty as a cunt, to which she harked for a time and then shook her head and replaced it carefully, and thereafter would not step upon even the smallest but pushed them aside as she passed.

Wren walking: “This is all they can do, the dead? Heap up like this?”

Dee thought of Jace alive run-running along a sun-crusted canyon, laughing and his black eyes agleam, and the bright taste of flesh and blood and the matings and the sleeping together coiled, and roiling about in a fight and the all all all of it. Hated being bored Jace, when he was alive.

And why was Jace so special, my dears, O my darlings? What man, what walker on legs and laugher at jokes, is worth all this? And Jace is not, of course, nor any man, all flesh and imperfect unminding; or rather say all men are, and all women. And Chena, who longed for her own sweet Linnel, which is her secret reason for being on the night beach; and Wren and her vast chattering family, aunts and sisters and brothers and bickering uncles back in the day-lands; and also Tierce now forever behind them, squinting through wearying eyes into the skyless dark above the night beach, but thinking of her nestlings asleep.

After all the whiles they walked, they came at last to the rocks.

Wren always with questions: “What exactly are we looking for?”

“Fuck if I know,” Dee said, tired for once and realizing suddenly that she was cold and getting colder. The breath not coming from her mouth (she noticing this again) scared her a little. “Just anything,” and they split up a bit.

Hard walking, or scribscrabbling rather, among rocks rough as new lava, pockmarked as Dee felt through her long fingers and toes, and the holes each filled with water. Stepped forward and sank to her knee. Bent-head she tasted and got salt, but sterile: no flesh-shred shit microlife broth. In a pool, she saw a small fringing glowness and touched it, and it snapped shut anemone-quick, only there was no life to it, she could tell from the touch, just cold light and this movement. Jace, she thought. What can he chase and what does he eat when a shell? And where in this ocean of shells?

A thing flashed by her face, and herself automatic in her hunting she caught it, felt muscle and quick coilings thrown over her hand, a sensation from the desert she knew well from snakes, but boneless this time and beaky, biting her palm without effect. She held the thing up and its wet surface gleamed under Tierce’s soft fading flare of a flame.

It was an octopus, so small that its head fit her cupped hand but it writhing rippled down, hydrostat legs yearning toward the pool until she caught the small beak and pinched it in her fingers and then the creature stopped. “Where is he?” she asked and shook it. “Jace.”

Tentacled her ankle now: another octopus roiling itself up her leg, and suckers this time like cold angry kisses, so she dropped the little one. Was a splash.

The new one was bigger, its head like her head and clearly too big for the pool. So many legs meant many things held, and it clutched her and also the rock, and also a whelk with an unfurling lip and a hole broken through. What’s inside? Dee wondered, and then chilled as she thought it: Nothing. In the dayworld, living-sea cephalopods drilled through shells and sucked their insides to inside themselves: food, and nothing left over but a hollowed-out hush.

So, here: there was death and that was nothing, a shell on a shore; but even that could be taken by these night-beach monsters, and then there was nothinger nothing.

Raging Dee did not bite at wrapping legs; but she called out and in a flash, Chena with her, they tore at the suckered coils—without effect, until Wren.

One copper nail pounded poisons a tree is the story, and maybe as well a many-branched beast. There were no nails but Wren gave it a penny she had carried onto the beach for no reason except that she had it, and perhaps had heard tales. The octopus brought it with the tip of a tendrilling leg to its beak and then everything loosed and was lost beneath the pool’s surface, the whelk and Dee freed.

She grabbed at the shell as it sank. As she listened this time, a flute-shrill whistling of the unbreathing breeze through the hole. Dead, and then deader than dead. But not Jace. She hoped. He was somewhere here still, lost and bored—and someday bored out. Unless she could find him.

“Let’s not do that again,” Chena said. Blood on her leg collecting where she had torn it on rock but not flowing, not here where the heart drove no pulse.

On a pumicey pillar beside, Wren: “We can’t find him, and then this. What now, Dee?”

“Fuck,” said Dee. “We’ll have to do a thing.”

Suspicious Chena, closest sister to Dee and thus knowing the ways of Coyotes too well for her own comfort: “Do what? This is the night beach, the end of all evers.”

“But beyond that?” and Dee pointed across the phorescent, fluorescing sea.

Nodding, Chena: “One shore means another.”

“But no boat to get there,” Wren said. “And how will going there, if There is—how will this change things, Dee? Jace is dead.”

“Is dead gone?” Dee said. “I’ll cross and find out if There is, and come back with an answer, maybe.”

“Or not.” Wren, tart. “Shells are dead and then deader than dead, and no coming back. So. There’s a night beach and maybe a beach nighter than night, and maybe no coming back from there, either—not even to here.”

Chena sighing: “It’s what Dees do that are Coyotes, is do. Foolish or not. Wren, can you stop her?”

“I am not the thing that stops Dees. But no boat . . . ? That will,” Wren said.

Dee said, “We will swim.”

Chena: “The thither there is, is maybe too far. We will drown.”

“Why would we drown?” Wren, askance. “We do not breathe here; why would unbreathing be a thing?”

“We will find out about drowning, I guess,” said Dee.

But. Back on the cliff in the dayworld, and the sun rising at last though invisible from the night beach: fading, fire-eyed Tierce. She stood and looked down, and the light of her eyes still shone on cliff ocean and shells. And she saw the pinnacled rocks and the tentacled things; and dark Dee and bright Chena and the flicker of Wren. Read their lips from so high-distant a place; and knew they were gone, gone and lost; and blinked her eyes shut.

The water was black, thick as oil, and viscid it slid up their legs as they walked into the untided surf. The dirty pale seafoam clung to their hands like the ropes of saliva from a sunburnt dog’s mouth, and smelled not unlike. Wren fastidious turned her face away, and then, “Oh!” said she, smallest: lost her footing and came resting on the water’s face, unbreaking the surface tension. Dee and Chena could not float, slipped beneath.

There were no shells under the water, but a steady long shelf of sand the color of a deer dead beside a road. Chena curled her lip in distaste. It was not dark beneath the water, no more than above. There being no moon nor stars nor glass-cased hot-flaming filament meant that no place was lighter than any other, but also no darker.

Wren was right that they did not drown. Still, there was no satisfaction in this; the water crawled everywhere thick and cold along all their inches as they shoved through it. For a time, Chena could reach up and touch Wren’s feet above before she went too deep; but Dee paid no mind, only walked forward and on, the broken whelk in her hand.

For a while and then another while, Dee felt small coilings along the black ocean’s floor as she walked. She knew them for the tentacled things that killed the shells of the dead. One wrapped around her ankle, but she bent down and tore it free, and that was the last of them.

A third while: eels with hands and no eyes.

There were other things, and clouded bitter cold blood stained the sea. For a time.

I say to you, O my darlings, for a time, as though time was. The steps collected infinite until the sea’s floor shelved up again and for a time ended, and they came free of the sucking surface, and found Wren landed already and scraping her beak on the shore.

“That was exciting,” Chena said when the cold salt sea had drained from her mouth. “I saw a thing like a ray, and a forest of black kelp, and a car that wept, and a shark. What did you see?” she asked Wren; but what Wren saw or had done as she swam the surface between unsea and unsky, and what it was that she scraped so carefully from her beak, she said nothing about, then or ever.

Dee dropped the holed hollowed-out whelk to the ground: looking-‘round Dee. And this was the other shore. Sand. Behind them the ocean, water rocking but not crawling up/down. Ahead ramping dunes of pale sand-drift, and past that tufty grass and harsh-husked hollow sedges, and a hissing that would have been wind if wind would have been. And beyond that rising, the horizon’s notched plant-fringed ridge where dunes slanted into grass and unberried bushes. And after that the dun unsky only.

No life, of course. No footprints or pawprints or clawprints or shells, save the whelk.

They looked back (breathless no longer a surprise except remembering that it once had been different); and back past the slipping thick slippery ocean, the beach, and the cliff, nearly beyond sight was the ravel-halved world of the bright-breathing alive. But no fire nor Tierce. She had watched them walk deep and then deeper, as they sank her scorched eyes salt-soaked for a time. Then they opened again, and reduced but alive she turned and returned to the living, light-winging her way to her children her nest her mate and the taste of mice bright on her tongue. Home. For a time. Her story ends here for you, unless someday as fringed murex or peaked conch she tells it herself.

I do not know what secrets the shells of the dead share among themselves. I listen and hear hissing; but it is enough.

“Well,” said Wren when her beak was scrubbed clean. “Now we’re here. Where is here?”

Chena loped up to the ridge and back down. “There’s nothing. Beyond the ridge? More hills and grass is all, and maybe for all ways.”

Dee kicked at the untoed untouched and rippleless sand. “No shells on this side. But no octopus either.” Pausing she: “They would be safe here, all the shells.”

Cunning Coyote-Dee, and clever sister Dog-Chena as well, and Wren Queen of the Birds sharp enough though attending only half what was said, and always her eyes scanning the unsky. They thought it all through: the long sloping sand-floored ocean; but no waves moving shells, no tide making waves, no moon making tides.

“So we need a moon,” said Chena. “A moon to bring the shells.”

Headtipping Wren: “Let me see what I can do.”

“This is mine to do,” Dee said. “For Jace.”

Practical Wren: “Can you fly?”

Dee, shaking head.

“Then it’s not.”

The rules for the unliving lands are not what you thought when you walked under sunlight, my dears. There was no more thickness of air on this side of the ocean—and yet Wren up feather-light flew. The unsky was a flat textured hard curve like the inside of an eggshell, but fluttering Wren seeing a scuff in the surface no deeper than gravel-scratched shoe-leather, for long flitting whiles picked at the flaw. Flakes of nonshell curled free and fell, and dissolved into brass-tasting mist on the upturned faces of Dee and Chena. The scuff became a dent, a pocket, a niche—and now Wren hover-clung to its lip as she worked—and at last made a Wren-sized hollow. She came down, and with her a drift of bitter drab skyscrape that made Chena cough. “There’s that.”

“But no moon,” said Dee.

“Not yet, no. Now’s when you help. I need fur.”

Chena: “For a moon?”

Wren: “Also twigs.”

They looked: sedges ocean grass bushes sand slopes unsky. “No trees and no twigs,” Chena said.

“This is mine to do,” said Dee. “Finally.”

Dee biting bones free from her feet with her long bloodied teeth, slim fine phalanges for clever Wren’s craft—for you forgot, O my darlings, that they are each woman god and creature folded together in skin and desire; but so they are: mysteries nearly as great as yourselves and your once-stories. Chena did not see that the metatarsals of Dee’s feet grew back then or ever. Perhaps that is another way that the dunes beyond the ocean are different from the dayworld and its myths, where Coyotes retrofit rekit and retool, bones and blood renewed on demand as the stories require.

Wren carried each skinny-stick bone to the niche in the unsky, and she wove. It was not the tight basket she would have entwined in the dayworld for gawkish and featherless nestlings, but a shaggy untidy tangle: coyote bones and dog fur, and down plucked from her breast, each feather-shaft tipped in her unwelling blood.

And that nest was the moon of the dead: dun and unshining, but the great gravitational well of untime and unspace.

Then a pause. And nothing.

Wren sighing. “Well, then, there is another thing, I guess:” and she laid an egg and another and a third: air-fathered, Wren-willed, and wind-filled.

And then nothing again.

They three watched, Wren high in her nest, and her sisters on the sand: a whiles-long time.

And a wave and another, then long rolling coils repeating along the sands, each stronger as the new-built moon pulled. With tide comes time, and now static unnumbered whiles became waves and moments and soons and thens.

And now. Chena soft: “Listen.”

The first small shells came in a foaming wave-curl that withdrew and left whisper-light augurs and ceriths and wentletraps chirtling together. A hiss when they burrowed into the wet sand, to leave only holes. And followed by larger shells, the great conchs, the syrinx and the sheening nautilus, and always the waves. Imagine it, O my darlings—or do not, but remember instead if you can—your whispering shell-selves pulled along the sandy floor, past the sights Chena saw, and the long-tendrilled things that Dee had fought off, and all the wonders and terrors they did not meet. Perhaps you did not all make it, but many and many of you did, and found yourselves here.

And among the dragged massy shells at last, Chena heard the thing she was dreaming of: a whisper, a hush. A whelk washed to her feet, as long as her hand and smooth as an egg: rested and did not dig. She caught it up with a sob and pressed it against her ear and heard her name like a breath: Chena. Linnel, her own dear Linnel dead and lost, and now found, in a massy rose-colored calcium twist.

But no Jace. Not then, nor in the thens after, as each shell rolled up and found its own place on the shore, until holes spangled the sand and the water in each reflected the secret-egged moon of Wren’s making. Dee running stumble-foot, bitten-paw clumsy, desperately across the tiny dim stars on sandy dun under-unsky; Chena behind her pleading but cupping in her hand (or paw) her answer, the cradled whorl of Linnel.

The shells rolling in but fewer now and all only newest-dead: each cockle ark augur and bittersweet clam just fallen to the night beach, soon come and soon gone in moon-summoned tiding through oleic oil-thick sea to this shore; and quick digging down into the sand and thus: safe.

Still no Jace. No Jace among all the shells: so, either holed out or holding out on the night beach.

Dee stumbled to a halt: “He’s not here. He’s not coming.”

Chena’s voice like a gentle-soft growl: “Those we love do not come when we will it, but when they do. Death does not change this, just makes it harder.”

“But I loved him.”

Wren snorted. “As though that were enough.”

Startle-sharp face turned up to the moon: Dee, all id and hot eyes on herself, self-tricking trickster surprised by the truth; but despair does not sit long in Coyote-Dees. Lessons are learned. But not the right ones. A snapping nod: “I’ll go back for him. We all will.”

“No,” said Chena; and eyes-rolling Wren: “Try, if you must.”

Dee, a-limp to the shore where the tide swashed: stepped forward and pressed paw (that was hand) to the thick, viscid ocean. She could not break the meniscus, nor skate Wren-light on its surface. Stepped forward and forward. And just nothing: Dee still where she stood, unadvanced. “We cannot go back?”

“No:” Wren and Chena together.

And Dee, eyes turned for the first time to others, and knowing at last: “I’ve killed you.”

Again, “No,” Chena said. “We are here for you, but not just for you.” And she smiled, the Linnel-whelk in her hand-that-is-paw. “We had our own reasons, as well.”

“You said nothing,” said Dee.

“When was there space?” Wren said. “Your needs always fill you. Where was there room for Chena to long for Linnel—or for me?”

Dee said, “What is your reason, then?”

“I was curious, that’s all.”

This was a lie. Wren’s heart is her own, and her wishes too; Wren if she chooses may speak somewhile of her reasons, my chirkling dears; but they are not mine to share, any more than are yours.

Coyotes or rather Coyote must always be doing. Dee waited for Jace, until she didn’t: light-minded, still longing but restless. She paced the other shore, and then the long sandy hills, and peeked over the ridge’s edge. And at last: “I can see a way out of this. I can save you.”

“We don’t want saving,” Wren said; but Dee unheeding as ever: “That’s trees, that dark line along the horizon. And if there are trees there are more trees, and maybe something past them. We can’t go back but maybe we can go forward, and maybe on the back side of nothing is all. Dayworld sun and insects hazing the sky at dusk, the taste of sweet water. Think of it: home.”

Wren chirping sharp: “This is home. See my nest? See my eggs?” And Chena held Linnel close, and looked down at you, dear ones, all her shells.

“Well fuck,” said Dee; “and I’ll have to do this alone.” Dee silent a moment, then: “I am sorry.” And this was the first time she said that word, to any. And perhaps only.

And she left. She has not returned, though Wren thinks she cannot in any case, but she goes on and on. Perhaps there is a way back to the dayworld and around and through that place, and thus down to the night beach again, and that she will return across or under the sand-floored sea. Or not.

And so you are here, O my darlings, and this is to the credit of Dee and of Wren and of Chena. Here you are dead on the beach-grassy shore beneath a nest-moon and bird-stars, but at least you are not deader than dead. There is for you no way back to the dayworld lands or the night beach; but there never was, and here are no beaked and tentacled things.

There are always more of you, always new shells, massy and dark on the night beach, and some come here sooner, and later some: lingering shells on that night-beach shore waiting for their own loves Dee-like and like Chena to come searching for them—only none do. No one makes the tumble to the beach of her own will; or only a few.

Over us is Wren’s tight-woven moon and her dark-winged fledglings, that have scattered like stars across the dun sky; and who is the father of them I may guess. Do the dead overlap? I do not know: only that she is content enough, and as thens have collected, so have the shells of her vast chattering family, aunts and sisters and brothers and bickering uncles.

Jace remains lost but tides bring shells with each wave. Some scallop or slipper may contain him or may not. For Dee’s sake I ask them all if they have seen him, but their chirtle and skankling speech is all for each other, and they do not answer. If he is found in the hard lacy curl of a murex, I will tell him that Dee has gone on; and he will follow or not: he has other kin here, other loves. Love is no one-thing but many. We are never alone.

Or perhaps he is deader than dead. That is a way that things are, too.

Dee did what Coyotes do that are creator and creature: rush and long and drag a train of chaos behind them and then leave others behind to build what they can from whatever remains. But I that am Chena am dog, god, and girl, and what Chenas that are dogs do, is love and watch over—and here I am not alone, with Wren singing above, and the whorl of whelk-Linnel in my hand to murmur in my ear. And you all, O my darlings, to tell this tale to—so perhaps you are not so dead after all. What is life but stories, and love?

This is the why of the Land of the Dead.

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.

Chimera

Gu Shi, translated by S. Qiouyi Lu and Ken Liu

An individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution.

—Merriam-Webster

1. Chimera

It had the fore part of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and its third head, the middle one, was that of a goat, through which it belched fire.

It was begotten by Typhon on Echidna, as Hesiod relates.

—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 2, Chapter 3

(as translated by Sir James George Frazer)

I watch her enter.

In the six years since we parted ways, I’ve always wanted to know: exactly how cold and calculating is the machine under the soft, lustrous skin of this witch?

She sees me, her eyes filling with delight—no trace of embarrassment, nor shame.

“Evan.” She quickens her footsteps. “Darling, long time no see.”

A delicate, warm perfume wafts from her approaching figure, the same as the scent in my memory. I recall what she said as she bared her heart to me, not long after we were married:

“Lately I’ve been thinking—I could write my dissertation based on pictures of my expressions: Managing Emotions and Social Responses. What do you think? Take smiles: I know over a thousand of them, and each requires the manipulation of different muscle groups. Each one can be the response for many situations, and their combinations are infinite!

“The only difficulty is meticulous expression management. It would require massive calculations; perhaps it’s untenable—Evan, don’t look at me that way—enough. See, you musicians always misunderstand the scientific mind. I’m not a machine; a Turing machine would never be able to figure out in such a short time which smile to use in which circumstance—I’m a human being, a wonderful creation.

“This is a worthy subject for biology.”

She solemnly pointed at her head, then laughed with a snort: sweet, innocent, like she couldn’t contain herself. “Look at you. So serious! I’m just joking around.”

Now, she stands before me in a fine cashmere coat, a silk scarf snug against her throat: both wrapping her well-exercised, slim body. Nothing escapes her keen interest: she studies society, fashion, health, romance. She studies me, studies my passions, my expressions, my movements, as though I’m the most fascinating person she’s ever seen. In reality, I’m no different than the rats in her laboratory. She grants my wishes—then takes them away.

She looks at me, the joy displayed by the curved corners of her mouth calibrated perfectly. But, face-to-face with my ex-wife, I can’t call forth the happiness from when we were in love.

I’m weary of this.

“I just wanted to talk about Tony.”

No tabloid reporter would ever believe the truth: a mother abandoning her swaddled infant and guiltless husband on the same day as the child’s birth, then disappearing off the face of the Earth for six years.

“I know.”

I finally catch a flicker of weakness in her eyes, but her voice remains level.

“I was just about to come talk to you about him, too.”

Tony is six.

If it weren’t for what happened three months ago, I would have never contacted his mother. That day, as I took Tony to the park, a maroon Honda barreled out of nowhere onto the sidewalk and pulled Tony under a tire. After five days in the emergency room, he opened his eyes, but his kidneys had sustained irreparable damage. Upon discovering that his body couldn’t take a kidney transplant, I realized that my son would have to undergo dialysis three times a week for the rest of his life. In despair, I pored over every piece of medical literature I could get my hands on until I stumbled upon the topic of regenerative medicine, the goal of which is to use the patient’s own stem cells to grow replacement organs.

One of the foremost scientists in this field is my ex-wife. A rising star, she’s in charge of a new chimera lab that successfully grew a rat’s pancreas inside a mouse. They created a chimera that had never before existed in nature. In journal articles, commentators viewed this study as a milestone for regenerative medicine. Based on this success, a human-pig chimera could, in theory, be viable. And now, I’m hoping that she can grow Tony’s kidneys inside a pig. After the pig matures, the kidneys can be transplanted back to Tony.

As she gently stirs a cup of Darjeeling tea, she murmurs, “Of course I love him. You have no idea how painful the news of the accident was for me. But what you mentioned in your letter—I really can’t make that happen.”

“I read your article, plus the discussions in Cell. You and your lab are the only people in the whole world who would be able to duplicate Tony’s kidneys.” Seeing her disbelief, I can’t stop myself from adding, “Please don’t assume that I can’t find and read scientific articles.”

“Of course. You’re so smart—if you want to accomplish something, you’ll get it done.” She masks her surprise and lets out a small sigh. “It’s just that, if you’ve already read my article, then you’d know that this is all only theoretical. Rat-mouse chimeras and human-pig chimeras are two entirely different things; it’s like—” She looks up, blinking, then looks back at me. “—Like how you can sing, and you can play guitar, but that doesn’t mean you can play a pipe organ.”

“I could do it with time,” I say. “These skills share similar principles.”

Facepalm. “Lord, that was a terrible analogy. How should I explain this to you . . . I imagine you already know how the chimera I created came to be.”

I turn on my iPad. I’ve already highlighted many paragraphs in her article, so I find the quote I’m looking for easily: “We injected induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) from a rat into blastocysts from a mouse lacking the Pdx1 gene. Mice lacking the Pdx1 gene are unable to develop a normal pancreas; the rat iPS cells were able to remedy the genetic deficiency of the recipient mouse blastocysts. These rat-mouse chimeras were able to develop into adults with normal, functional pancreases.”[1]

She points to a sentence. “Oh right, this part. You must know that rats and mice are two entirely different animals, right? In taxonomical terms, the former is of the genus Rattus, and the latter is Mus—”

I interrupt her. “Of course!”

“Sorry.” She shrugs, then points again at that line of text. “Look here. If we wanted to use a similar method to create a human-pig chimera, then we would first have to get blastocysts from a pig that lacks the genes to produce kidneys. But where would we get such blastocysts? And how would we locate genes that can develop kidneys? These are all problems we have to solve from the ground up, and we don’t know if we’d be successful at any of them.”[2]

“I’m begging you to try.” I see her lips opening and closing, but I don’t understand her words. “I know there’s no guarantee of success.”

“Please don’t say ‘beg’; he’s also my son. I’m willing to do anything for him.” She implores me with a doleful look, her eyebrows downturned. “‘Try’—See, that’s the second question. Let’s say we could find all the genes that contribute to kidney development and knock them out of the pig blastocyst with precision. Then what? Can I inject Tony’s cells into the blastocyst? No. Using human embryonic stem cells to do research is illegal and highly unethical.”

“You care about that?” I stare at her, astounded. “You care about ethics?”

She touches a finger to her lips. “Please lower your voice.”

I know her all too well. If she didn’t want to respond to my request, she wouldn’t have come to see me.

She winks, as if we share an unspeakable little secret.

“Tell me, what would it take to get you to try?” I really can’t take much more of her antics.

She breaks eye contact and turns to look outside. A long silence. I gaze at her profile: her refined, nurturing face is as beautiful as it was the last time I saw her. In the afternoon light, she’s radiant, like a statue of the Virgin Mary in a church—a cold statue that can breathe. At last, she smiles and turns back to me:

“A mother smashing through scientific taboos to save her son’s life—such a tale is enough for me, even better if I get to play the role of the magnificent mother in this story.”

Yes, that would be her. Her actions are endowed with philosophy and poetry, but her performance is always built upon her own awareness of the philosophy and poetry that her actions will bring to her. In her mind, she’s cut off from the rest of the world, a god surveying the Earth. She will undertake this difficult task not because Tony is her son, but because doing so will turn her into a glorious legend.

What a selfish, abhorrent monster.

She continues. “I must tell you that I have no confidence of success. When it comes to human experimentation, there’s no precedent to refer to, and I may even create a monster—but that’s what makes it exciting, no? I’ll do it, but I still recommend that you go to the hospital and look into standard kidney transplant—”

“Every one of his lymphocyte cross-matching tests has come back positive.”

She looks at me, not quite understanding. “So?”

“Kidneys from a donor will likely lead to acute rejection,” I say. “It’s possible he can only take a transplant from his own body.”

“My God.” She furrows her brow.

“Right now we’re relying on dialysis to keep him alive. You can’t imagine how painful this is.” I think of Tony’s cries and can’t help but shudder.

The light in her eyes grows firm and resolute. “I understand. I’ll put my all into this.”

“Thank you,” I say.

“There’s one more thing that I should tell you.” She gets up and walks to my chair, then sits on the armrest. She holds up the iPad and finds another paragraph. “Look here.”

A few locks of her hair fall against my face. I stare at those words, but they’re beyond my comprehension. I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

“The commentator here points out that although the result of the chimera experiment is successful, we don’t fully understand the underlying principles. So, in the course of these experiments, we can’t control the degree of chimerization. Although the goal may be to produce a pancreas, other areas of the mouse body may also have rat cells.”

“So?”

“This is the primary reason why we can’t just play around with human cells in research,” she says. “If we did a human-pig chimera experiment, I have no way of controlling how many human cells end up in the pig.”

“I still don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

“Think about it, Evan.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and looks at me. “This pig may become a second Tony—our son could be concealed in its body. And when it grows up, we’ll snatch its kidneys together, then kill it.”

A. Adam

Lin Ke lay outside the operating room.

They were already an hour late, and the anesthesiologist hadn’t even arrived yet. The only thing separating her naked body from the people walking up and down the corridor was a thin layer of white fabric. She felt very uneasy.

“Why haven’t we started yet?” she asked the nurse.

Flustered, the nurse replied, “We’ve just received notice that due to factors outside our control, your cultivated organ order was canceled. We’re very sorry.”

What kind of reason was that?! She was the biggest goody-two-shoes aboard this spaceship. In all her one hundred years here, she’d always paid her cultivated organ insurance premiums on time to ensure that her every organ would remain young and healthy. Her heart, the very organ that she was trying to replace, palpitated from rage.

She put on her clothes as quickly as she could. The first thing she did was to file a police report. Then, she took the rail to Deck Seven—supposedly, her new organ was there, in an Adam.

“As your customer,” she protested to the overseer, “I demand an explanation for why my order was canceled. I absolutely will not wait another three years with only this shoddy heart!”

“But your order is perfectly fine,” the overseer said, surprised. He turned on the monitor. The feed showed the interior of an organ cultivation cabin: organ after organ was wrapped in thin film, all of them growing from tubes that hung from the ceiling. They looked like bunches of grapes waiting for harvest.

But the heart that belonged to Lin Ke was already gone and marked as “harvested.”

Stunned, Lin Ke checked the hospital’s information platform again, forwarding the notice with the subject “Order Cancellation” to the overseer. But she wasn’t expecting that he would doubt the veracity of the notice. “Ma’am, our monitoring platform can’t be wrong.”

The overseer’s response enraged Lin Ke. She stood up. “If you can’t figure out what happened, then I’ll have to go take a look myself.”

“Of course. The organ cultivation contract specifies that to be within your rights.” The overseer didn’t back down at all. “But please remember, you can only look. You cannot enter the cabin.”

Ten minutes later, Lin Ke, accompanied by a police droid, opened the door to Organ Cultivation Cabin 35. A horrifying, bloody stench assaulted her nose. As she realized what she was seeing, her view narrowed to an intense spasm as her chest tightened. Then, everything went dark as she fainted.

Luo Ming was the first human police officer to arrive on the scene.

Total chaos.

Those were the first words that came to his mind. As he entered Cabin 35, he had a hard time imagining what the mountain of flesh and blood he was seeing used to look like.

“What happened here?” He regretted not donning a filtration mask before coming in. He lowered his voice as he spoke to his “assistant” Edmund, an AI that was invisible to the naked eye. Edmund was his most dependable companion.

“Ms. Lin Ke, who filed the police report, suffered a heart attack from shock and is now being treated in the hospital.” Edmund’s voice emitted from a speaker inside his ear. “She complained that the cultivators breached their contract and canceled her order.”

At a loss, Luo Ming said, “I think we’re looking at a lot more than a breach of contract here.”

Viscous blood was still seeping onto the immaculate white floor from a pile of organs three meters in diameter. In some places, the blood had already congealed into a pitch-black patch. Some organs in the outermost layer of the meter-tall flesh pile still looked fresh; a few were even twitching and wriggling—the rotting smell in the air had to be coming from something deeper inside the pile.

As he imagined what the inside might look like, Luo Ming felt his scalp tingling. “We’d better make sure that there are only cultivated organs here. God forbid that this mess is hiding a murder scene.” Luo Ming commanded Edmund to scan the room. Edmund took control of the police droid via the wireless remote, overriding the droid’s visual system to complete his assigned task.

“I’m always a little unsettled by how easily you take control of them,” Luo Ming muttered. He could, of course, issue commands to the police droid directly, but then he would have to waste time organizing and analyzing the raw data himself.

“Please don’t grumble about your misgivings concerning AIs to me,” Edmund replied. “I believe I’ve found something that’s even more unsettling.”

While Luo Ming had been griping, the scan revealed that two arms and half a head were also buried within the mountain of organs. The Adam matrix absolutely could not have created those three body parts.

“Alright, looks like we’ve just added a dismembered corpse to the case,” Luo Ming said, sighing. “The Eden Daily is going to have a field day with this.”

Luo Ming had Edmund scan and record the details of the scene in the cabin; then, he answered First Officer Qin Wei’s videocall. Qin Wei was the spaceship Eden’s head of security.

“This is perhaps the worst case I’ve seen on my one hundred and three years aboard this ship.” As Luo Ming spoke, his gaze fell on a pair of human eyes that dangled from the ceiling. His voice shook. “You—you’d better come take a look.”

2. Echidna

And in a hollow cave she bore another monster, irresistible, in no wise like either to mortal men or to the undying gods, even the goddess fierce Echidna who is half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin, eating raw flesh beneath the secret parts of the holy earth.

—Hesiod, Theogony 300-305 (as translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White)

“Excuse me, are you—” After observing me for twenty minutes, the woman beside me asks timidly, “Typhon’s lead singer Evan Lee?”

“No.” All that feels like a past life.

She blurts out an apology and follows up with, “You really look like him.”

I channel all the cold disinterest I can muster into my voice. “Is that so.”

So ends that conversation. The flight attendant soon comes around with drinks. I ask for a glass of wine, followed by another. The cramped economy seat constricts my body, and terrifying words throw heavy shackles on my mind: “father,” “responsibility,” and so on.

When I was still Evan Lee, my days of pleasure and riches seemed endless—until she left me, taking with her half of my possessions and all of my musical inspiration.

For a long time after our separation, I constantly thought of her, analyzed her, studied her. I flipped through old tabloids, gathered paparazzi gossip, replayed our wedding video again and again to pick up each of her frowns and smiles, and examined every picture and recording of all the times she appeared with me to support my publicity efforts. During that darkest period of my life, these were the best benefits from my once-great fame—plenty of materials for me to study. And so, bit by bit, I got close to the monster beneath her perfect shell, the serpent-half concealed beneath her beautiful appearance. But there was one part of our life together that I could never understand.

Her pregnancy.

The pregnancy happened only because it was part of her plan. During the first three years of our marriage, I told her many times that I wanted a child, but she would always brush me off with a “no need to rush,” plus a session of hot sex. When she decided it was time, she didn’t think to discuss the decision with me at all.

“Evan, guess what?” That was the first night after the end of my tour. When I opened the door to our home, a festive atmosphere greeted me.

“What kind of surprise does my little sweetheart have?” I cupped her neck and kissed her lips.

“A baby.” She laughed, her eyes curving with joy. “Darling, we’re going to have a baby!”

I was stunned. After three years of begging, I had all but given up on the idea.

“It’s already three months old.” She put my hand on her flat stomach. “Right here.”

My palm detected absolutely no movement, but, in that moment, the word “father” entered my mind. Every cell of my being filled with joy. Two months later, Typhon released its last single, “Fire by Lightning.” Music critics felt that its “every note was imbued with love and joy.” Then, on the day our hit single won the Golden Melody Award, my wife changed in a way that I never could have imagined.

On that day, her labmate called me and said that she had suffered a nervous breakdown.

Impossible. My wife—for whom even an “off mood” was rare—had suffered a nervous breakdown?

Nothing like this had ever happened before. I rushed to campus. Her laboratory was at the end of a boulevard shaded with trees. The rows of Chinese parasol trees had already shed their leaves, leaving behind only branches full of round, dangling fruits. As I walked into that red-brick building, one of her students recognized me.

“Mr. Lee, finally!” His expression was a mixture of agitation, worry, and curiosity, but he prudently suppressed his emotions under a veneer of politeness. “I’m Edmund. She’s in the third-floor animal room. You should hurry.”

“Thank you, Edmund,” I said in a rush.

Although the campus was where we first met, that was actually my first time in her lab. The sparkling floor was like a hospital’s; there were rows and rows of metal shelves, each neatly packed with plastic cages connected to a central ventilation system. This room must’ve held a thousand, no, ten thousand rats!

I found her behind the shelves full of rats. She was cradling her head as she crouched in a corner, her hair a mess, her shoulders shuddering, but her cries were inaudible.

“Honey—” Seeing her like this frightened me. “What’s wrong?”

The moment my hand touched her, she let out a screech. I stepped back. “Okay, I won’t touch you. What happened?”

Slowly, she raised her head. I had never before seen such panic in her eyes. Her parted lips trembled, but a long time passed before she uttered my name: “Evan.”

“Yes, it’s me.” I chastised myself. “I should’ve held you back; I shouldn’t have let you go to work. The baby’s already almost six months old—”

“No!” she shrieked. “No! Don’t bring it up! Don’t—”

“Alright, we won’t talk about the baby.” I reached out and tried to get close to her. Her whole body trembled, as though she were struggling to escape. Defeated, I could only call upon my own specialty: “Honey, let’s sing ‘Titans’ together, okay?”

She stopped struggling and looked at me blankly, like a helpless child.

“A singer in the wilderness, recounting tales of the gods . . .”

It was a gentle song, and also her favorite melody. I sang as softly as I could, so soft the words were almost inaudible. Music turned out to be more effective than language. She listened until I was halfway through the song, sniffled, then threw herself into my arms and sobbed. I stroked her messy hair and tried to soothe her terrified shivers.

“It’s okay, it’s okay; I’m here.”

She slumped against my chest and, with great effort, uttered a few disconnected phrases: “It’s a . . . parasitic . . . parasitic . . . monster . . . ”

“What?”

“I don’t want the baby. Evan, I don’t want that parasite inside my body!”

Shocked, I asked, “What happened? I don’t understand.”

She wiped her nose on my sleeve. Finally, she could speak in complete sentences. “The baby is taking over my life; it’s a parasite in my body. It’s controlling my thoughts, commanding me to eat what it wants to eat, telling me to go where it wants to go, demanding I do what it wants to do. It’s a parasitic monster in my body, a monster! It’s devouring me, do you understand? I can’t control myself anymore! I can’t stop myself from thinking about it! I can’t focus on what I want to do. I can’t understand my own notes. I don’t care about my papers, either. The only thing in my mind is how I can make it feel more comfortable! I’ve been possessed by it; it’s already wormed its way into my brain—do you understand?”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “My silly girl; this is a normal reaction to pregnancy. It’s because you love the baby—our baby.”

“No!” She stared at me with alarm. “This is absolutely not normal! Not normal at all! You just don’t get it because it hasn’t possessed your body!”

I held back my laughter and said as sincerely as I could, “If it were possible, I would bear the baby for you, but I can’t. Chin up; you’re a mother now.”

She stopped crying. For a few seconds, she stared at me in an unfamiliar way, as though I were the one who had lost my mind. But she soon became her usual self again. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve, then looked up and giggled sheepishly. “Oh goodness, I really did go nuts today.”

“It’s a very common anxiety, honey.”

She leaned against my shoulder. “You’re right. These are normal feelings for a new mother. I need to get used to them.”

In the months that followed, there were a couple more incidents in which she was dejected and depressed, but there were no more episodes as intense as the one in the lab.

But I started to be more vigilant, canceling a new tour so that I could spend more time with her. Around the 39th week of her pregnancy, I stumbled upon a file in her computer that recorded in detail the “conversations” she had with her unborn baby: when she went to the restroom, dreams, favorite foods and kinds of music—all trivial things. Reading these notes, I began to understand what she said that day in the lab. The things she noted were not her own habits or tastes, but someone else’s.

The baby growing inside her was using her body to do what it wanted to do. Once she realized this, she was terrified.

If she had been a typical mother, perhaps she would have used “love” to explain her behavior. But she couldn’t do that. Emotions to her are a kind of camouflage, something to let her blend in with others. So she could only understand everything from the baby’s perspective: this was a monster that had possessed her body and taken control of her so that it could survive inside her.

Maybe the plane’s air conditioning is too cold, but suddenly, I shiver. I never thought I’d come to understand why she’d abandon her own child: If she didn’t, she’d always be under Tony’s control, forced to give up on having her own life—just as I have.

“Please fasten your seatbelt, Mr. Lee,” the flight attendant says. “We’re about to land.”

As we descend, a city surrounded by an oasis blooms in the vast expanse of desert outside.

B. Eden

After completing a genetic survey of the scene, Luo Ming received Edmund’s interim report: the limbs and head in Organ Cultivation Cabin 35 belonged to three deceased passengers. Terminal illness was unquestionably the cause of all three deaths; furthermore, they had all chosen to donate their bodies to science to advance research on those illnesses. Edmund’s discovery allowed Luo Ming to unfurrow his brows just a bit.

“It’s not murder,” he said to First Officer Qin Wei, who had rushed to the scene. “That’s good news at least.”

Like Luo Ming and the majority of the passengers aboard Eden, Qin Wei was close to a hundred fifty years old. He had just gotten a scalp replacement: only an infant-like layer of fine hair covered the top of his head, lending a comical air to his overall appearance.

“Thank goodness.” Qin Wei was distracted, and he muttered as though to himself, “But . . . how’d these limbs even get here?”

“The body parts should have been sent to the medical research center under Deck Seven,” Luo Ming said.

“Should have been, yes.” Only now did Qin Wei look at Luo Ming. “The organ cultivation cabins are the most heavily monitored and secure part of this spaceship. For something like this to happen is unbelievable. You might not know this—even the police don’t have the clearance to view documentation about Adam.”

“Sharing such information could greatly help my investigation.”

“I’m very sorry, Officer Luo, but those documents involve classified information about the very heart of Eden,” Qin Wei said. “Since there aren’t any suspected murders, I’d say this investigation has come to an end. Why don’t you let me and the Adam overseers tie up any loose ends?”

Luo Ming read between the lines. “So you’re saying that this is just an ordinary accident?”

Qin Wei smiled noncommittally. “The ship has experienced severe organ cultivation failures before, you know? Malfunctions in the cabin’s temperature control.”

Luo Ming studied his expression and let out a small sigh. “Alright, sir, I understand.”

Only a day later, as he sat in his office, Luo Ming received an info packet from Edmund concerning Adam.

“You’re a genius.” Luo Ming sighed with approval and opened the document. As the unredacted details filled his view, Luo Ming gasped. “This ship’s security system must have serious flaws for such classified data to be so easily accessible.”

“Or perhaps it’s your fault for illicitly bringing an AI aboard, hmm?” Edmund’s voice was a cross between pride and smug derision.

“Well, no one’s discovered you over all these years.” Edmund was a gift Luo Ming had received a long time ago, and after years of working and living together, he had found the AI indispensable. Even after hearing about Eden’s ban on AIs, Luo Ming still chose to implant the terminal into his body and smuggle Edmund aboard the spaceship.

“That’s because the intelligence systems here are far too primitive,” Edmund said. “But you don’t need to worry about the security of the ship. Its core systems are sealed off from outside networks. I haven’t found a single entry point.”

Luo Ming nodded and returned his attention to the documents. It appeared that Eden was actually a research vessel that provided replacement organs for its several hundred thousand passengers, allowing them to extend their lives indefinitely. At the same time, it transmitted the residents’ health data back to Earth, so that people back home could learn first-hand about potential complications from a large-scale organ replacement program. Eden followed a comet’s orbit in the Solar System so that its path crossed with the Earth’s once every four years, allowing the ship to dock at a space station and exchange both personnel and information.

“I always thought we were heading away from the Solar System,” said a surprised Luo Ming. “And nobody ever told me we could leave the ship!”

Edmund said, “Looks like they’d gone to a lot of trouble to hide the truth and prevent you all from discovering that you’re actually laboratory mice.”

In light of this new-found knowledge, the organ cultivation cabins really were the soul of Eden. They were often called “Adam” chambers, after that figure from Christian lore who used his own rib to create humanity’s other ancestor. But, to be more precise, every mucous membrane pouch in the organ cultivation cabins that bore a human organ—those were all Adams. They were distinct, each carrying different passengers’ genes, cultivating different organs.

When Eden was first designed, the Adams were separated from one another. But, as time passed, the Adam overseers discovered a strange phenomenon: after a few Adams began cultivation inside the same room, cells would start growing along the feeding tracts until all the Adams were connected to each other.

However, this connection did not delay or corrupt the growing organs; rather, organ cultivation in all the Adams became more efficient as organ maturation time decreased. Some researchers believed that this “genetic networking” created a system among the Adams for exchanging growth signals and hormones, accelerating organ development.

As a result, when the cultivation cabins were renovated forty years ago, the overseers installed passages that allowed all the Adams to connect to each other, resulting in an awe-inspiring effect—while each passenger’s genome was still preserved as separate and complete, the vast majority of organ cultivation times were cut by at least half. Even the development time for lungs, the slowest organ to cultivate, was cut down by a third.

“I still don’t understand what any of this has to do with our case.” Luo Ming felt agitated. “I keep feeling like we missed something at the scene.”

“I recorded a complete scan of the room,” Edmund said.

“Perhaps—” Luo Ming pondered. “The problem may not only be inside the cultivation cabin.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you remember the dispute between the woman who filed the report and the Adam overseer?” Luo Ming asked.

“The hospital’s notification system showed that Ms. Lin Ke’s order for a heart had been canceled, whereas Adam’s monitoring platform showed that everything was fine.”

“Right,” Luo Ming said. “Adam’s system should be much more secure than the hospital’s, yet the cultivation cabin overseer didn’t know the true state of Cabin 35. Why is that?”

“Could it be that Adam’s overseers were trying to conceal the mess inside?” Edmund asked.

“Maybe. But we can’t rule out another possibility: none of those in charge, including the first officer and the cultivation cabin overseers, have any idea what really happened.” Luo Ming put the recording of Lin Ke arguing with the overseer on the display. “Watch the man’s expression—the surprise is genuine.”

“True, as I can confirm with microexpression analysis,” Edmund said.

“Based on the scene we observed, it’s very likely that what happened to Lin Ke wasn’t an isolated incident. But she was the only one who felt strongly enough to make a report to the police, and who went to open the door to Cabin 35. That’s in the contract, but it looks like passengers only exercised their right to examine the cabins during the early years of the ship’s journey.”

“Are you suggesting that all the organs we saw on the ground had their orders canceled?”

Luo Ming’s eyes lit up. “We might as well follow this lead. Edmund, can you break into the databases for both the cultivation cabins and the hospital and pick out all relevant records? It’s possible that there are discrepancies between the two systems—those would be the organs we saw in Cabin 35.”

“You really know how to come up with hard problems for me.” Despite these words, Edmund sounded delighted. “I’ll give it a shot.”

3. Typhon

From his shoulders grew a hundred heads of a snake, a fearful dragon, with dark, flickering tongues, and from under the brows of his eyes in his marvelous heads flashed fire, and fire burned from his heads as he glared. And there were voices in all his dreadful heads which uttered every kind of sound unspeakable; for at one time they made sounds such that the gods understood, but at another, the noise of a bull bellowing aloud in proud ungovernable fury; and at another, the sound of a lion, relentless of heart; and at another, sounds like whelps, wonderful to hear.

—Hesiod, Theogony 820-835 (as translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White)

Nine years later, I find myself in her laboratory again. Edmund has gone from an undergraduate to a doctoral student, but the way he looks at me hasn’t changed in the least—he’s just like any other awe-struck fan. “Mr. Lee, the professor is waiting for you in the animal room.”

“Thank you, Edmund.”

She doesn’t notice when I enter. She’s squatting beside a pig that has to be half a meter tall, all her attention focused on it as she laughs. She puts her cell phone on speaker, and music starts playing. It’s my song, “Fire by Lightning.”

“When I cradle it in my hands,

The sun and moon tumble, stars fall.

Go ahead and fight, destroy;

The king of the gods’ undying wish is in my hands.”

The pig dances to the music on its hind legs, clumsily twisting and rocking. Gradually, it catches up to the tempo. She stands with it and leans against a desk, laughing so hard she can’t breathe. The pig faces her, dancing now with gusto, keeping up even better with the beat. It’s unbelievable—the pig is actually dancing to the brisk pace of the music.

The song, now in an ornamental cadenza, switches tempo. The pig stumbles and tumbles to the ground, startling her. She falls to her knees by its prone body. “Are you okay?”

The pig oinks in reply. Annoyed, she jabs its head with a finger, then says in the gentlest voice I’ve ever heard, “You rascal, don’t scare me like that.”

The pig’s oinks are now laced with a hint of whining. She rubs its back. “Alright, alright; it’s okay, as long as you’re not hurt.”

This is such a bizarre sight. I cough. She and the pig turn their heads simultaneously to look at me together—an image I’ll never forget.

“What’s wrong, Evan?” She stands.

It has Tony’s eyes.

She’s never seen Tony, so she can’t know. But the eyes in that one-and-a-half-year-old pig belong to Tony: light brown irises with a hint of gray. It’s not just the eyes, but also something unnamable in their depths, something that sends chills down my spine, making me forget why I’m here.

It reminds me of how I felt the time I found myself in the middle of a stage, having forgotten everything about the song I was supposed to sing. The electric guitar’s prelude was nothing but white noise, and my legs trembled in the flickering magnesium lights.

“Do you need a cup of coffee?” She peers at me, concerned. “You don’t look so good.”

“Can we . . . talk . . . alone?” Even if I performed at three back-to-back shows, my voice still wouldn’t sound like this.

“I was just about to show you our pig,” she says. “It’s doing really well. Fantastic, don’t you think?”

I catch its gaze again, and in that second, I feel my soul being torn apart.

“My God!”

The pig stares at me as though it already knows its destiny: a wordless acquiescence to suffering, imbued with a fatalistic sense of tragedy. The last few times Tony underwent dialysis, he gazed at me with the exact same expression.

“Okay, Evan.” She steps forward to hold my trembling hands. “Let’s go somewhere else.”

We don’t say a word on the way to her office. The afternoon sun dissipates all shadows in the spacious room. Edmund brings in two tiny, round cups. “Thank you,” she says, but then she doesn’t say a word to me after Edmund leaves. The dappled shadows of tree leaves upon the desk lengthen. I take a sip of the now cold and bitter coffee. Finally, she breaks an afternoon’s worth of silence.

“I thought you might want to take a look at the report.”

A thick file lands before me. I open it, my arms stiff. Inside are notes starting from when the pig was an embryo until now. I can only make sense of the pictures. From the outset, it’s always smiled at the camera, if that joyous and eager expression can be called a “smile”—but within the last month, it’s ceased smiling. On the last page is a close up portrait of its eyes. Staring at them, I can barely tolerate the agitation in my stomach—I throw the file to the ground.

She stands and picks up the file, chuckling. “Good thing I didn’t give you a digital version, or else I’d have to fill out a damaged equipment report now.”

“How could this be?” I murmur.

“Evan, we have to face the facts.” She lets out a soft sigh. “This is perhaps the best outcome: the pig is now in prime condition for organ donation—if you were to ask me, this experiment went unusually smoothly. We found the right path from the very beginning, and we overcame every obstacle within the shortest possible time. I doubt you’d find another instance in the history of science where the road to discovery was so smooth—”

“You—” I interrupt her, but I’m not sure what I should say.

“I’ve already gotten in touch with my friend Dr. Sanger. He’s the best kidney surgeon at the state hospital.” Her tone is level and calm. “I’ve already sent him the pig’s file. He’s reviewed the data and thinks the surgery will be no more risky than a standard human-to-human transplant. Evan, I don’t understand why you’re still not satisfied.”

Only her last sentence betrays her suppressed anger, but it’s enough to provoke all my terror and rage. I unlock my phone: the wallpaper is a picture of Tony staring innocently at me.

“Enough.” I fling open the file and place my phone on top of the close up of the pig’s eyes. “We both know where the problem is, right? Look at these eyes: they’re exactly the same—”

“—as Tony’s,” she finishes. “Of course I know. Those are Tony’s eyes; the cells in that organ are human cells.”

I read the unspoken message from her face. “Are you . . . are you saying there are human cells in other organs as well?”

“Yes . . . it’s a bit hard to take. Its nervous system is almost entirely made up of human cells.” She shrugs. “Don’t be naïve, Evan. We knew from the start that we couldn’t control the degree of chimerization, but we went ahead anyway.”

“The nervous system?”

“The cerebrum, the cerebellum, and the spinal cord—the vast majority of it,” she says, enunciating each word, as if she’s trying to engrave the words into my heart with her poisoned tongue. “To put it simply: our son is inside that pig.”

I’ve never been so frightened, not even the time I saw Tony being pulled under that car. Back then, I was a father, but now, I’ve become a criminal—what in the world have we done? We’ve melded our son with a pig, and now we’re going to butcher it with our own hands!

My silence allows her to relax her tone. “So long as I stay quiet, no one will know about this. These notes won’t appear in my paper. The nervous system isn’t the focus of this experiment, and it’s not important for whether the experiment is declared a success. The kidneys are perfect, Evan. You don’t have to worry about that at all.”

“I’m not worried about that!” Her forced composure is intolerable. “Killing it is cruel—it’s wrong! Don’t you realize that the pig knows what’s going to happen?”

She smiles. “Evan, what do you plan to do?”

“I—”

“You know, I haven’t been able to sleep for the last two weeks.” Her voice is low. “I keep thinking about whether you’ve been trying get back at me with this pig. I abandoned Tony, so you thought up the cruelest of methods to reawaken my motherly instincts. I kept telling myself that this isn’t Tony, that this isn’t my son; I even refused to name it out of fear that doing so would humanize the animal. But it went beyond my imagination: out of all the researchers, it’s closest to me; out of all the music we play for it, it only likes yours.”

Tony is the same way. From when he was a baby, as soon as he heard “Fire by Lightning,” he’d start dancing.

She continues. “I’ve thought about it: should we stop and let Tony succumb to his fate, thereby allowing the pig to live? But then I saw you, and I realized that we’ve never had any choice but to go forward.”

Her gaze penetrates me to the root, and I, in turn, finally see the trembling that she’s kept hidden inside. Her terror and pain are undoubtedly far sharper than mine: it’s only because she’s been ruminating on them for so long that she can bury them under a tranquil facade. I’ve only glanced at the pig, but she’s been raising it since it was a single cell.

Of course we can’t turn back. Tony continues to deteriorate, and everything her lab has invested into this pig can’t be hidden from her supporters. I demanded that she cross the Rubicon; it’s only reasonable that both of us should bear this heavy cross.

“Right.” I force myself to forget the pig. “Tony hasn’t been doing so well lately. I’ll bring him here as soon as possible. Don’t want to miss the best window for surgery.”

“We have an understanding then.” She smiles, erasing all misgivings from her face. She opens her notebook and gives me Dr. Sanger’s contact information as well as his CV. Then she tells me her own opinions and recommendations for the transplant surgery. Only after it’s gone dark outside does she stop talking. “You should go,” she reminds me. “If you leave now, you can still catch your flight.”

I get up, hesitating for a moment over whether to shake her hand in a sign of friendship and gratitude. But she’s holding her hands together before her chest. I guess there’s no such need.

“I’m off then. Thank you,” I say, my mouth dry.

She laughs and shakes her head. “Evan, Tony is my son too. Why are you saying ‘thank you’?”

“Ah, yes.” I laugh too.

We walk out of the laboratory together. The shadows of the trees pool together, enveloping the world in the stillness of night. I’m about to say goodbye, but then she speaks.

“The first time I saw you was over there, right?” She whispers, “That day, you played such a gentle tune. Who’d have thought that the song you’d end up recording would be so wild?”

I know she’s talking about “Titans.” The inspiration for the first phrase had come to me while I was performing at this school. That night, as though in the throes of a craving for some drug, I rushed around in search of a piano to bring the notes in my mind to life. I climbed through the window of my room and felt my way back to the locked auditorium, never realizing that there was another pair of ears outside listening.

“Detested by our forefathers,

Buried deep, hidden from the sun,

Scythe-wielding, throne-stealing, we bear curses and epithets.

. . .

We’re destined to rebel,

Smashing barriers, heedless of cost;

Let smoke choke the air, let the earth burn to oblivion!”

She sings, only remembering some of the lyrics. She’s also totally off-pitch, but I can’t laugh as freely as I used to.

She turns to look at me. “Now that I think of it, your song was rather prophetic.”

In the end, she never went to the state hospital, nor did she show up at Tony’s recovery party. For five years, she disappeared into her lab, cutting off contact with all her friends.

I’m shocked when she calls me out of the blue. She tells me that she would like me to set up a charitable foundation in Tony’s name to support organ transplants for children. During the last five years, I had emailed her with such an idea, but all my messages had been returned as undeliverable. I immediately agree.

Once the framework of the foundation is in place, I contact her again.

“I get the feeling that you’re about to make a grand gesture,” I say.

“I am,” she replies. “I reprogrammed the chimera gene regulation network and turned it into a blastocyst-like structure—”

“Sorry,” I interrupt her. “You know I don’t understand all that.”

“Give me a minute.” She pauses, as though she were switching her linguistic module from scientific jargon to common. “We already have the capacity to produce human organs in a lab. I used existing chimeras to create a more stable structure; all you have to do is add new human cells, and it will create the corresponding organ.”

“That’s fantastic!”

“I’ll never allow it to look like a human being again.” Her tone is exhausted.

Simultaneously with the creation of the foundation, she publishes a series of papers on chimeras in Cell. Starting with the first human-pig chimera, she traces her groundbreaking work through the regenerative medicine lab. Overnight, she rocks the foundation of humanity’s understanding of “life.”

I buy that issue of Cell. The reviewers lavish her with praise: “This is a revolution for regenerative medicine, hinting at our near future: humanity will be able to swap out our organs as if they were interchangeable parts. We will live longer, maybe even forever.”

Criticism and debates follow soon after. Although a mother’s pressing need to save her son’s life is understandable, experimenting with human stem cells is nonetheless an ethical taboo.

Her third paper pushes back against the torrent of attacks, laying out her model for the organ-cultivation matrix, which she names “Adam.” It resembles a small, square box filled with mucous membranes and doesn’t look like a living creature at all.

“The Adam technology won’t encroach upon any ethical concerns,” she says in an interview. “It won’t develop a human brain; it can’t think; it has no feelings—because we haven’t provided it with any mechanisms for thoughts or feelings. The only thing it can do is use its own rib to save the people who need it.”

C. The Captain

Luo Ming didn’t really think that he could get in front of the captain of Eden based on just a letter—though that was his plan.

The woman before him had ashy white hair, wrinkled skin, and a hunched back; even sitting on the sofa seemed to take a lot out of her. Luo Ming was surprised by the captain’s appearance. The women he knew prioritized external beauty, listing organs related to appearance at the front of their replacement queue.

“Regarding the incident in Cabin 35”—belying her appearance, the captain’s voice was energetic—“I’d like to hear your point of view.”

“The first officer has indicated that the incident is beyond my purview,” Luo Ming said carefully, placing his hands before him.

“I actually think it’s better to have a professional involved in the case.” The captain gestured for Luo Ming to take the armchair before her. “But given the sensitive nature of the cultivation cabins, the results of the investigation should be kept confidential. That’s not an issue for you, is it?”

“No.” Luo Ming sat down. “I assume you’ve read my letter carefully?”

“Yes.”

“As I mentioned, I believe this was no accident, but a premeditated crime.”

The captain dropped her gaze. “Your theory is in conflict with the first officer’s report.”

“Haven’t you summoned me here for another perspective?” Luo Ming studied the captain’s expression, then continued. “I went over all the orders that the hospital’s system canceled without explanation from the last three months. The total was over seven times the normal cancellation rate. I traced all the canceled organs to Cabin 35, but the monitoring system showed all the organs to be developing normally.”

“And that’s enough to convince you this wasn’t an accident?” the captain asked. “Maybe the monitoring system is malfunctioning.”

“It’s not just the monitoring system, Your Excellency. Don’t forget the cultivation cabin itself—how did that pile of ‘accidentally harvested’ organs come to be? And we have no explanation for the discrepancy between the cultivation cabins’ monitoring system and the hospital’s order tracking system.”

The captain stared at him. “I’m listening.”

“Before coming to see you today, I wasn’t too sure about my conclusions.” Luo Ming smiled modestly. “I originally suspected that the mismatch between orders was due to the overseers’ efforts to hide the truth. But by summoning me, you’ve told me that even you, the captain of this ship, aren’t sure what exactly happened. That leaves us with only one other possibility: The Adam overseers did not know about the recent incident in Cabin 35. Thus, we can theorize that the monitoring system has been tampered with.”

“I had First Officer Qin Wei examine the cultivation cabin monitoring system,” the captain said, her gaze growing more intent. “It appears to have been modified with a ‘green screen’-like technology. Police droids entering and leaving the cultivation cabins would show up on the monitors as normal, but they’d always appear against a background showing the interior of the Adam chambers functioning normally.”

“You’re saying that the recording was selectively tampered with? The images of the Adam cabins on the monitors never changed?”

“No, not ‘never changed;’ they showed as ‘functioning normally.’ On the monitors, you could see the organs growing as expected, and when orders were supposed to be fulfilled, they were ‘harvested normally.’” The captain shook her head. “This method of tampering with the system is highly sophisticated.”

The captain’s news deepened Luo Ming’s puzzlement. “But this is what I can’t figure out. If the entire incident was a premeditated crime, then the criminal already accomplished the most difficult step—taking over Adam’s high-security monitoring system. Yet they forgot to cover their tracks in the far more basic hospital systems.”

“There’s a simple explanation for that: the criminal couldn’t conjure the patients’ requested organs out of thin air. They had no choice but to leave the orders alone and hope that patients would not exercise their right to examine the cultivation cabins.”

Luo Ming shook his head. “But they could have played any number of other tricks that would have worked better. For instance, they could have systematically delayed the order fulfillment dates for all the affected organs to prevent anyone from knowing what had happened. However, based on my review of the hospital’s records, the doctors and patients only found out at the last minute that their orders had been delayed or canceled. The notices came through the hospital’s regular organ reception channels, not Adam.”

“I’m now thoroughly confused.” The captain furrowed her brow. “What are you trying to say?”

“For someone who came up with such a complicated scheme—going so far as to use a green screen to tamper with the monitoring records—forgetting about the hospital’s basic database is a very strange oversight. They clearly have the capability to break into the hospital’s systems, but they didn’t—why not? One possibility is that they actually wanted to draw attention to what they did, but another possibility is that they didn’t even know that the hospital’s information platform existed.”

“That’s impossible,” the captain said. “Every person aboard Eden knows about the hospital’s organ replacement database.”

“Of course, that’s how it should be,” Luo Ming said. “But there are always bound to be some people who don’t know.”

“I’m not interested in a vague hunch. If you have a definite suspicion, say so.”

“On this ship, who wouldn’t know about the existence of the hospital’s organ replacement database? Or rather, who’s never ordered an organ?” Luo Ming looked at the captain. “I hope you can help me gather a list of names. They’re the primary suspects.”

The captain tapped the armrest with a wrinkled finger and chuckled coldly. “That’s quite an accusation.” She met Luo Ming’s gaze. “I’ve never replaced an organ.”

4. Orthrus

Men say that Typhaon (Typhon) the terrible, outrageous and lawless, was joined in love to her, the maid with glancing eyes. So she conceived and brought forth fierce offspring; first she bore Orthus the hound of Geryones . . . but Echidna was subject in love to Orthus and brought forth the deadly Sphinx which destroyed the Cadmeans.

—Hesiod, Theogony, 304-335 (as translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White)

Some legends say that it was actually Orthrus, and not Typhon, with whom Echidna conceived of those other monstrosities: Chimera and Sphinx.

—Anonymous

The first time I see her is at my father’s funeral.

Although at least half of that crowd of tens of thousands have come to see her, I’m the only one who picks her out. She’s wearing a black silk dress, a diamond ring dangling from a string around her neck. Her face looks even younger than mine. I don’t know if it’s my practice at identifying faces or a natural instinct that makes me recognize her as my mother. Then, she sees me too.

Five seconds later, I receive a direct message: “I’d like to chat after the funeral.”

I remember my father’s last words to me as he lay dying: “She’s your mother, and she gave you the gift of life twice—be grateful.”

Once the crowd dissipates, I duck into her car. She enters Oslo Airport, Gardermoen as the destination and turns her seat around to face me.

“Hello, Tony.”

I haven’t been called that in years. After my parents created the Tony Lee Charitable Foundation, I had to change my name to protect my privacy and live a normal life.

“Mom?” It turns out to be easier to say than I thought. “You look so young.”

“Yes, it’s me.” She laughs, then winks, as though we share a secret. “I’m conducting a new experiment to restore my cells to a more youthful state. It’s a dangerous experiment, and we don’t know all the side effects—it’s such a shame that I don’t have another son to be the guinea pig this time.”

“Um—” I have no idea what to say in response.

“Oh, darling, I’m just joking!” She spreads her hands disarmingly. “Now, tell me about your life. I hear that you’re a police officer?”

“It’s just a job.”

Her grin widens. “You’ve done well. I noticed that you’re dealing with AI crimes. Amazing.”

“The world changes so quickly. Scientists can’t control everything they invent.” I resent her tone: she’s speaking as though she’s always been a part of my life, exercising a mother’s care.

“That’s true.” She nods vigorously. “Sometimes we don’t understand our creations as much as we’d like people to think.”

That’s unexpected. “Really?”

She doesn’t answer, asking a question instead. “Will you come to our press event? We’re going to announce some important news.”

I’ve heard about her research group’s press event, scheduled for next month. After seven years of silence, everyone’s dying to find out what she’s going to say.

“This could change the course of humanity.” The car slows down. She glances out the window, then looks back at me. “You’ll be there, of course.”

Her confidence irritates me. I am not my father, who was always so entranced by her. “Sorry, I’m not interested in it.”

“Believe me, darling, you will be interested.” The car stops. She taps twice on her watch, and I receive an invitation as well as a packet of documents. “The thirteenth of next month. Be there.”

She holds my hand for a moment, then leaves for the airport. The midnight sun throws her black dress into sharp relief.

Three hours and forty minutes later, the Airbus A400 she’s on plunges into the sea.

I end my vacation early to join the search and rescue effort, but the Baltic Sea has swallowed any trace of her. In the depths of the turbid waves, I see the wreckage of the plane.

They say that there lies entombed humanity’s wildest dream.

The day the rescue efforts end, I receive another invitation to the press event.

I’ve run out of excuses. Heeding the call of fate, I set forth on a journey of more than ten thousand kilometers. On the plane, I look through the documents she gave me.

There are pictures of a pig from when it was a piglet to when it was fully grown—undoubtedly my savior. I transfer planes at Amsterdam and New York before arriving at a small town in the middle of the desert. My father once told me about this town: it’s the birthplace of my kidneys.

“Tony Lee,” I say to the person who’s here to meet me. The name is written on my invitation.

Her mouth hangs open with exaggerated surprise. She lowers her gaze. “I’m Chen Ying. My condolences.”

“Thank you.”

I enter the auditorium to a hero’s welcome. Everyone seems to recognize me: they surround me, chattering about my mother and my kidneys, but neither of these two topics feel real to me. Thankfully, the press event starts up soon after. The chattering ends as the lights dim, and everyone turns to look at the illuminated stage.

“We will change the world once again.” The middle-aged man on stage opens the ceremony with these words.

The applause is enthusiastic. “Alright, Edmund!”

Edmund is the chief scientist of my mother’s medical research group—he and my mother once won a Nobel together. After the applause dies down, he speaks again.

“In the past thirty years, we’ve accomplished the unimaginable. From chimera experiments to the first successful human organ cultivation, as well as the spread of regenerative medicine thereafter, we’ve saved many people’s lives—but we’ve also faced much opposition. The main objection has been: should we use humans as research subjects?”

Edmund picks me out of the crowd. “We’re honored to have Mr. Tony Lee among us today. The fact that he’s healthy and alive is our answer.”

Thunderous applause and a blinding spotlight fall upon me together. The world goes white for a moment, and I can’t see a thing.

“Our lab has never backed off from the effort to make our case to the public, but we’ve always lacked a decisive argument for the moral rightness of allowing human experimentation.”

The spotlight eases away from me as Edmund continues, “But our latest discovery should finally settle this decades-long ethical dispute. First, let me introduce the youngest and most powerful member of our team: Mr. Sphinx, an avatar personifying our quantum computer.”

Rays of light gather at his fingertips and then scatter to form a human shape—a powerful demonstration of the latest hologram technology. But given my profession, what draws my attention is the word “avatar.” After handling hundreds of AI-related crimes, I’m leery of them, especially one taking advantage of quantum computing.

Sphinx renders as a golden-skinned teen. Once the rays of light have condensed, I almost can’t tell that he’s a hologram. A shy smile appears on his face, perfectly calibrated to give the impression of innocence.

“Good evening, everyone. I have a riddle—”

Laughing, Edmund interrupts him. “Let me guess: ‘What has four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?’ Sphinx, everyone knows the answer: humanity.”

“Humanity, yes. That riddle compares a lifetime to a day,” Sphinx says. “But I have a different riddle for you.”

“Go ahead. The best minds of the world are gathered here today.”

“Where did humanity come from? Before ‘morning,’ what happened in the darkness before dawn?”

“Evolution, Sphinx. I taught you this,” Edmund says, sighing.

“But you must have proof,” Sphinx says.

“We have many fossils of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens.” Edmund pauses. “But—”

Sphinx takes over. “But, there is a gap in the fossil record. Until now, we have no direct evidence that modern humans, or Homo sapiens sapiens, evolved from the archaic Homo sapiens.”

“But you have no evidence to disprove that modern humans evolved from Homo sapiens, either,” Edmund counters.

“No, I do have proof. I know that humanity’s ancestor is a chimera.”

For about ten seconds, Edmund is silent. Murmurs rise in the meeting hall.

“A chimera?” Edmund says finally. “What kind of joke is this?”

“I never joke,” Sphinx says. “Before the birth of quantum computers, calculating the product of two large prime numbers was very easy for classical computers, but figuring out the prime factors of a semiprime number, a natural number which is the product of two prime numbers, was practically impossible, making them useful for cryptography. After the creation of quantum computers, these early encryption technologies are no longer of use, as we can easily decrypt those methods using quantum algorithms. After adding me to the lab’s research team, Edmund had a new idea—he wanted me to factor humanity’s DNA.”

“In other words, I wanted Sphinx to take one person’s genome and separate it into their parents’ genomes. It’s a biologist’s extension of quantum decryption.” Edmund shrugs. “What I didn’t expect was that Sphinx would actually be able to do it.”

Sphinx nods. “Yes, after continuous algorithmic improvements and experimental confirmation, I can ensure a very high degree of recoverability. That is, if I have the complete genome sequence for any one of you, I can figure out the genome sequences of all your ancestors. I can recover their skin color, blood type, hair and eye color—give me enough time, and I can even recreate an ancestral human. With the support of medical databases from around the world, I quickly created a database of the genomes of humanity’s ancestors.”

“As we factored human genomes,” Edmund added, “we also attempted to factor the genomes of as many other species as possible, including mammals, reptiles, birds, insects, mollusks, and even plants—a total of 115,000 species for which we now have an ancestral genomic database. In the end, we made an astounding discovery.”

The whole meeting hall is silent, enraptured.

“In every species other than humans, there is a similar trajectory for the number of ancestors that contributed to the species’ genome.” Rays of light once again gather in Edmund’s hand. “Observe this graph—the x-axis is the number of genetic specimens per time period, and the y-axis is time. As we go further up, we go further back in time.

“Let’s start with puffins. As we go up in the time scale, we discover that, regardless of how long the population has remained stable, there is always a period where the population rapidly declines—a ‘bottleneck zone.’”

The graph slowly rises in pace with Edmund’s gesture and stops at the midway point to show an hourglass shape. “What does this mean? At some point, for whatever reason, puffins died off in great numbers. The puffins we see now are descended from the few survivors of the bottleneck zone.

“If we continue tracing back the population count of the puffins’ ancestors, we discover a fascinating phenomenon: history repeats itself. Above the bottleneck zone is an expansion period, and above that, another bottleneck—this goes on. We’ve calculated the trajectories for 115,000 species over the past 500,000 years, and they are all the same.

“Now, let’s take a look at the human population.”

Edmund waves his hand to the side. The human population graph rises up a bit, then quickly narrows to an almost invisible dot.

“A rather terrifying bottleneck, is it not?” Edmund says. “But, when we go back from here—”

He lifts his hand, but the graph doesn’t rise with him. It stops there, towering, like the minaret of a mosque.

“What does this graph of humanity tell us? It tells us that, approximately 180,000 years ago, our common ancestor ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ gave birth to her children, and those children gave birth to more children, until human civilization dominated the globe.” Edmund slows his speech. “But please take note: this graph also tells us that humanity can trace back to only one common ancestor.”

Sphinx breaks in, “Let me remind you, one individual cannot proliferate the species.”

“Of course, ‘one’ is neither accurate nor possible. We know now that, other than this woman, our common ancestors include four men as well. But regardless of how many people survived that bottleneck, how could something like this have happened? Sphinx’s genome factoring analysis tells me that, before these ancestors, there were no ancestors.”

“It’s true,” Sphinx says.

“Was there a mistake in our calculations?” Edmund says, “But we tested our calculations on fast-reproducing bacteria and generations of laboratory mice with detailed genetic records, and our algorithms were confirmed to be correct! Sphinx did not make any errors. Why, esteemed guests, why is it that we can trace the unbroken trajectories of 115,000 other species, but we can’t do the same for humans? Before humanity’s morning, what happened during the predawn darkness?”

Dead silence.

Everyone looks up at the inconceivable graph. Judging by the introductions given to me earlier, this room is filled with the world’s top scientists and doctors, a few politicians and business tycoons, as well as representatives from a number of influential media outlets. Everyone is trying to find a flaw in the graph, but no one speaks. “Chimera,” the word that Sphinx said at the beginning of the presentation, floats like a ghost over our heads.

“When I, too, was at a loss like everyone here today, I called my mentor. After she listened to my description, she asked me only one question: ‘Edmund, do you still remember that pig?’”

Edmund looks at me. “Tony, do you still remember the pig that saved your life?”

Faint murmurs fill the hall.

Edmund shakes his head. “Maybe you don’t; but I do. I always thought that that pig was the first chimera with human cells. But I was wrong.

“I had Sphinx trace back a few other populations, those of the chimeras we’ve been cultivating these past few decades. Although there aren’t many chimera species, some rat-mouse chimeras have already reproduced over a hundred generations. What happens when we calculate the genomes of their ancestors?”

All of the graphs except for the human population graph disappear, replaced by the graphs of a few dozen chimera species. Like demons, the graphs climb upward, all terminating in a single point, some higher, some lower.

“They are the same as humans—these chimeras are the same as humans.” Edmund pauses, then raises his voice. “But can we conclude from this that humans descended from a chimera? Of course not!

“I had Sphinx add to this model all of the Homo sapiens and Homo erectus genomes that we could find, leading to the discovery of one of our ancestors that shared a blood relationship with their ancestors.

“This ancestor was not Eve’s human husband, but rather the hybrid child she had with a Homo sapiens. We used quantum algorithms on this child’s Homo sapiens genes to conduct a complicated ‘subtraction.’ Finally, we extracted the part of Eve’s genome that did not include any DNA from Homo sapiens.”

Along with Sphinx, every point of light dissipates, then gathers into a huge double helix, one portion of which is highlighted in bright white.

Edmund emphasizes every word as he concludes. “We are certain that this is a chimera—a cross-species chimera.”

I close my eyes. A photo my mother sent me appears in my mind’s eye. In the documents, that photo was perhaps the most nondescript one, bundled together with countless standard shots of the chimera pig in the research notes. It was a close-up shot of the pig’s eyes.

On the plane, I had glanced at it for maybe half a second, only to find that it had branded itself into my memories like a curse.

Those were my eyes. It had my eyes.

The hologram graphs disappear, leaving only Edmund on the stage.

“Humanity’s common ancestor is a chimera. The foundation of all the ethical attacks and criticisms levied against us over the years has disintegrated. We have the evidence to prove that humanity was born in a laboratory. We are the product of science, not nature.”

Edmund’s voice trembles with excitement. “We don’t yet have the technology to figure out what creatures were used to create humanity, and we can’t tell who our creator was. But the success of chimeras and regenerative medicine tells us that we are only one step away from our Creator!

“So what is there left to fear? Shall we boldly stride across this ethical barrier and let each person choose whether to join us, or shall we hesitate, timidly adhere to the fate of every other species on earth, and wait for the next bottleneck to return civilization to square one, or perhaps even to annihilation?

“Esteemed guests, I submit that we’re at a crossroads of science and history: we must make a choice—now is the time for full-scale human experimentation.”

The sound of scattered applause gradually swells to a thundering roar that fills the auditorium. Some in the crowd still wear expressions of doubt, but they’re also full of admiration. From the birth of that pig, this town has been the battlefront of human genetic transformation. It’s the holy site within the heart of every biologist and medical specialist. The announcement today has advanced the field again, perhaps even bringing humanity closer to a new world.

It’s too bad my mother isn’t here to see this.

Right at that moment, I receive a high-priority direct message. The sender’s name makes my heart skip a beat.

“I’d like to chat after the event.”

D. Cabin Zero

“Edmund?”

No answer.

In the hundred years he’d been together with his AI, nothing like this had ever happened before. Luo Ming looked around, then raised his voice: “Edmund!”

His assistant finally appeared. “I’m here.”

Full of concern, Luo Ming asked, “What did you find in the captain’s cabin?”

Before meeting the captain, Luo Ming suddenly thought of a trick—entering the captain’s cabin would give him the opportunity to have Edmund break into the ship’s core control systems, which were isolated from external networks. The AI would then be able steal all of the top-secret information there. The plan went smoothly until Luo Ming unexpectedly provoked the captain and was thrown out too soon.

“It’s true: the captain has never replaced an organ,” Edmund said. “She was using prolonged hibernation to delay the aging process. The ship can awaken her in fifteen seconds, so there’s no impact on the ship’s normal operations.”

“I don’t care about that,” Luo Ming said. “What else did you find?”

“I only had time to gather some population data. There are 29,000 people aboard who haven’t undergone organ replacement surgery. The vast majority are young people under the age of 30. Only 15 are over 50 years old; above 80, only the captain. But she couldn’t have been the criminal because she’d been in deep sleep for the past month, and wasn’t awakened until after the incident had occurred.”

“Then it seems we’ve reached a dead end here, too,” Luo Ming said, sighing.

“Do you still think that the criminal is a ‘person’?”

“You’re the only AI aboard this ship,” Luo Ming said. “If you did it, now would be a good time to confess.”

Edmund’s voice lowered. “That’s a terrible joke. I have no way to clear my own name.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Luo Ming said, backpedaling. “It was . . . a terrible joke.”

“I know; I’ve already forgiven you,” Edmund said. “But I have indeed run into a bit of trouble.”

“What happened?” Luo Ming turned and saw First Officer Qin Wei walking toward him with a couple of police droids.

“I’m afraid that when I broke into the ship’s control system, the captain discovered me,” Edmund said apologetically.

“Dammit!” Luo Ming furrowed his brow. “How can I turn you off?”

“It’s too late. A part of my data was left behind in the captain’s cabin. By now, she probably knows everything about you.” Edmund hesitated. “For example, your other name.”

For the first time, Luo Ming wished that Edmund had a physical form, so that he could give him the evil eye—both his “artificial” nature and his “intelligence” could learn to take secrecy more seriously.

But he didn’t have time to scold the AI; Qin Wei was already standing before him. “Mr. Luo, I’m afraid you’ll have to come with us.”

“What for?” Luo Ming asked, his face impassive.

“There have been additional incidents involving Adam,” Qin Wei said, his rapid speech revealing his unease. “I need your help.”

Luo Ming let out a held breath. “I would be happy to assist you, Mr. First Officer. But I recall that information concerning Adam is beyond my clearance level.”

Qin Wei snapped his fingers: an enormous file suddenly filled Luo Ming’s inbox. Coldly, Qin Wei said, “You’re cleared now.” He turned and walked away.

Luo Ming rushed to catch up. Summoning every ounce of sincerity, he said, “Please tell me what happened.”

Qin Wei’s expression softened. “I’ll be brief: the other organ cultivation cabins all followed Cabin 35’s example. Our orders have been canceled en masse, and the hospital is paralyzed. The captain has declared a state of emergency.”

As he spoke, he sent more files to Luo Ming. The documents included a three-dimensional cultivation cabin model that even Edmund hadn’t been able to find. According to these documents, the oval Deck Seven was the site for hundreds of linked cultivation cabins, which formed an inward spiral like a whirlpool.

Luo Ming recalled what Edmund had said earlier. “Do these cultivation cabins communicate with each other?”

“They share the same feeding ducts, so, theoretically, they’re not isolated from one another.” Qin Wei was now fully cooperating.

Luo Ming mulled over Qin Wei’s response. Five minutes later, they arrived at the security line before Deck Seven. The white-haired captain stood amidst a crowd of police droids. She saw Luo Ming and made an unhappy face as she asked Qin Wei, “Why did you bring him here?”

“Luo Ming is the officer in charge of this investigation, Your Excellency,” Qin Wei replied simply.

The captain scrutinized Luo Ming. Luo Ming avoided her gaze and examined the scene instead. “Edmund,” Luo Ming said softly, “wasn’t there something within the documents you sent that said one of the cultivation cabins is dedicated to the nervous system?”

No response. Edmund had disappeared completely. Luo Ming had no choice but to ask Qin Wei the same question.

Qin Wei’s answer was quick: “Cabin Zero. Though it’s not a cultivation cabin; rather, it’s a conservation cabin that preserves a few exceptional brains.”

“I thought brains were on the list of organs that can’t be replaced.”

“Right.” Qin Wei gave him an odd look. “The brains grown in Adams have no memories. Replacing the brain would turn a patient into a mindless fool . . . who would do that?”

A terrible chill ran up his spine. Luo Ming felt himself getting close to the answer. “Then the ones in Cabin Zero are—”

Qin Wei hesitated, but still replied. “On their deathbeds, some important individuals chose to deposit their brains here. We adjusted the genetic expression modules of the Adams inside Cabin Zero so that they would age extremely slowly.”

“So you’re telling me that though the bodies of these people have died, their minds live on.”

“Their minds are in deep sleep.” Qin Wei was growing impatient. “Why are you asking this?”

“I’d like to take a look at Cabin Zero.”

“Cabin Zero is perfectly fine.” Qin Wei eyed him suspiciously. “The captain herself confirmed that.”

Luo Ming persisted: “Last time, you and the captain also thought everything was perfectly fine.” He noted Qin Wei’s expression, then added, “I’m concerned that things are deteriorating faster than we imagined.”

As things really did seem to be getting out of hand, Qin Wei finally agreed to Luo Ming’s request. Cabin Zero was on the lower part of Deck Seven, at the center of the whirlpool of cultivation cabins. When the cabin doors opened, Luo Ming was met with an unbelievable sight.

Sacks made of translucent membrane dangled from the ceiling, each holding a spinal cord or a cerebrum. Between the Adam pouches, additional membranes had already enveloped all the interconnecting passageways, creating an actual web—a three-dimensional network made of neurons, spinal cords, and lumps of cerebral tissue. Two “people” were laid out neatly on the ground: the first a complete body—clean, naked, cold; the second a bulging sack of human skin, whose open abdomen revealed a heap of organs arranged in neat order: large intestines, stomach, liver . . .

It wasn’t a human at all, but a pile of human parts.

“My God, what in the world—” Qin Wei murmured.

Luo Ming put on a pair of gloves and carefully peeled back the skin covering the loose organs. Where the thoracic cavity should have been, there was only a ghastly segment of gleaming white bone.

“That’s his rib—Adam’s rib,” Luo Ming blurted. “He’s trying to create an Eve.”

5. Argus

And [Hera] set a watcher upon [Io], great and strong Argus, who with four eyes looks every way. And the goddess stirred in him unwearying strength: sleep never fell upon his eyes; but he kept sure watch always.

—Hesiod, Aegimius (as translated by Hugh G. Evelyn-White)

It is said, too, that Echidna, daughter of Tartarus and Earth, who used to carry off passers-by, was caught asleep and slain by Argus.

—Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, 2.1.2 (as translated by Sir James George Frazer)

When I see her again, I begin to understand why my father was so madly in love with her.

She can’t be controlled, can’t be known, can’t be predicted. But when she’s standing before me, she’s thoughtful and warm. This contradiction allows her to exude allure like a demon. She’s sitting on a black Barcelona chair now, her face pale and wan like a girl’s. Her gaze falls upon me and she laughs weakly. “Tony, I’m so sorry that I didn’t tell you earlier—did I worry you?”

Neither “yes” nor “no” would do—both would reveal me as a hypocrite. So I say, “I helped out with the rescue effort. I’m overjoyed to see you’re alive and well.”

“When I was at Gardermoen Airport, I realized something was wrong with my body, so I borrowed a friend’s plane to get back to the laboratory more quickly.” Her speech is deliberate, slow. “Then I discovered that nothing could be done about my problem, and so I just let the world think I was in the crash.”

Anxious, I ask, “What do you mean?”

“I’m going to die soon.” She looks at me, unperturbed. “For ten years, I’ve been exploring the potential of genetic modification. I thought I had resolved the entire genetic network, but I was wrong.”

I don’t know what to say.

Warmly, she tells me, “See, this is science. Most of the time, we aren’t so lucky.”

“Mom—”

“My failure has led me to make some adjustments to my future plans. We have to face the risks inherent in large-scale experimentation. I got in touch with a friend who’s investing in an interstellar colonization program.” She makes a call, and a hologram of a person appears before us. “Chen Ying, this is Tony. I believe you’ve already met.”

The woman is the one who had come to meet me at the airport on the day of Sphinx’s announcement.

Chen Ying ignores me completely. “How do you feel?”

“Terrible,” says my mother. Then she looks at me again. “Tony, Chen Ying is one of the wealthiest people on Earth, but most people know nothing about her. I’m trying to convince her to lend me two of her five colonization ships for a few hundred years to use as research vessels.”

“I’ve already agreed.” Chen Ying furrows her brow as she looks at her.

“Right, but you haven’t heard the actual plan yet. I’d like to put them on the same orbit as a short-period comet—”

“That’s not important,” Chen Ying says, interrupting her. “Send these details to the technicians; you need your rest now.”

My mother makes a face. “Alright.” Then, she ends the call.

The brief conversation leaves me with an impression of intimacy. Maybe it wasn’t so much the topic of the conversation as it was Chen Ying’s expressions. My mother senses my questions, but she doesn’t answer them. “I’m going to move the next-generation chimera lab onto the spaceships. That way, I don’t have to worry about the catastrophic consequences in the event of an accident in a terrestrial genetic lab. Eden is my first ship, which will conduct more conservative research. The chimeras she carries come from the first generation of stem cells—that is, part of them comes from you.”

I remember the pig’s eyes.

She continues: “We’ve been cultivating these cells for many years. Strangely, although we’ve tried to use other human cells and cells from other animals, this combination has always been the most stable. I guess we stumbled on a miracle with my first trial. Tony, you and I are both very lucky.” She realizes my mind is wandering and changes the topic. “Speaking of which, what did you think of the big announcement?”

I think over the commentary from the last few days. “From what I’ve heard, this hypothesis still has some holes . . . ”

“I left them on purpose.” She gives me a cunning grin. “I just wanted to get everyone arguing, even start a war within science—only then can there be a revolution.”

“But you seem to be losing.”

“You still don’t understand people.” She touches a finger to her chin. “Only through conflict can people have choices; only then can we rouse people’s emotions, even whip them into a frenzy. As the flames of war expand, the news will spread farther. More and more will join the battle, creating more soldiers for me. Only then will I stand forth to protect my believers, dealing a deadly blow to the opposition.”

“You’re already holding the weapon for dealing that blow, aren’t you?”

“Not only that, Tony,” she says gently. “All of this is a trap I’ve set to distract them from the real question.”

“The real question?”

“What we announced at the event has nothing to do with the research I want to conduct. The interesting question has never been whether we can use humans as test subjects. I’ve long trodden in that forbidden territory, starting from when you were six. The far more interesting question is: What have we created through these experiments?”

“Chimeras.”

“Chimeras, sure.” She nods. “But what exactly are chimeras—people or beasts? Do chimeras have thoughts? Can they reproduce with other chimeras? Are chimeras the path forward for human evolution or humanity’s downfall?

“These are my fatal weaknesses because I don’t know the answers. From the very beginning, I didn’t understand why the chimera experiments were successful. I was like a child playing with clay, rolling various colors together until they turned into something new.

“But I won’t tell people that I don’t know the answers. I’ll let them stare at an irrelevant chimera ancestor, a point of controversy where I hold in my hands all evidence, where the theory is both simple yet evocative. Look, they’ll use this issue to attack me, thinking that this is the foundation of regenerative medicine. But they’re wrong: once the arguments start and the flames of academic war erupt, I will be the only one who benefits. My opponents will fail and be thoroughly discredited; my soldiers will become a dedicated but foolish hivemind. Tony, this is what makes the game fun.”

Seeing her eyes sparkle with excitement, I finally understand why my father would so often murmur the word “monster” whenever she came up in conversation. She’s far more terrifying than any AI I’ve encountered. I surmise her tactics: “Do you plan on continuing to let Edmund lead the charge for you?”

“Edmund?” She’s startled for a moment, then laughs uproariously. “Oh my goodness, you really didn’t notice?”

“Notice what?”

“The Edmund at the press event was a hologram—the real Edmund passed away five years ago.”

Once again I feel helpless, like an insect that’s been caught in a spider’s web. “I really didn’t notice—”

“Okay, then that’s our little secret.” She giggles and taps her head. “There was no Edmund on stage at the announcement. The one standing there speaking through the hologram was me.”

“But you . . . Why did you keep his death a secret?”

“Using him and your father as the mouthpieces of the research group and the charitable foundation saved me a lot of trouble. Plus, he agreed to let me use his likeness,” she explains patiently.

I notice her expectant gaze. “Then—do you want me to join the foundation?”

“That would be the most perfect outcome. Tony Lee would without a doubt be the finest spokesperson for the Tony Lee Charitable Foundation.” She shrugs. “But you won’t join.”

“Why not?”

“Because your body language and your expression give you away,” she says. “You don’t want this, and this kind of work doesn’t suit you anyway—either way, I want you to make your own choices. From your reaction just now, I think you’re far more interested in the spaceship.”

I relax my hands, held tightly all this time in front of my chest. “It’s true; a research ship does sound interesting.”

“And also mad,” she says. “As your mother, I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to become a research subject again.”

Her gaze now seems to truly carry a deep love. I don’t understand her at all. “I’m sorry—I’ll make up my own mind.”

“Of course. I have no right to tell you what to do.” She lets out a soft sigh. “But I still want to tell you that you’re my most perfect creation, so perfect that you frighten me.”

“Why?”

“Every time I saw you, heard about you, or even earlier, when I was pregnant with you and felt you, I experienced such terror.” She looks out the window. “Because once I turned my head and saw the pile of trash in my lab, I’d suddenly realize the vast distance between myself and the Creator. I’d worry if I’d made a mistake from the very start, because I’d broken His rules.”

“You weren’t wrong,” I say. “You saved my life.”

“At a price.” Her voice softens, revealing a deep exhaustion. “An enormous price that you can never imagine.”

Everything happens just as she predicted.

Controversy after controversy concerning chimeras and human experimentation erupt, and every politician and college student seems to have something to say about the subject.

The dispute of the century ends three years later with news of Edmund’s “death.” His obituary, in combination with a new paper, deals a mortal blow to her opponents.

The revolutionaries reap the fruits of their victory, and the conservatives, in the face of ironclad proof, wilt and fade. Chen Ying’s timely announcement of the research spaceships turns into the last lifeline for these drowning ethicists to clutch. The wild plan easily gains everyone’s support: immortality proves to be an irresistible temptation for all, and even the wealthiest can’t obtain a ticket aboard the ships.

Of course, obtaining a ticket isn’t a problem for me.

I end up boarding Eden after all. Called by a strange impulse and yearning deep in my heart, I abandon my family, my friends, my job—everything I have on Earth. At the embarkation ceremony, I watch Chen Ying, the captain, deliver a speech.

“From today on, this is our ship. My dearest friend named it Eden, for it carries humanity’s wildest dream, and because it will bring us new life.”

E. The Complex Chimera

“It’s still a child,” Luo Ming said. “This explains everything.”

“What do you mean? What exactly is ‘it’?” Qin Wei asked, confused.

“Adam,” Luo Ming replied. “Or, to be more accurate, ‘it’ is the collective made up of the Adams within all 109 cultivation cabins. They’ve connected with one another to create an enormous creature that thinks, breathes, and bleeds—a complex chimera.”

Qin Wei paused for three seconds before he processed what Luo Ming was saying. “Preposterous! How could this be?”

“Yes, that’s really what it is. Originally, it wasn’t supposed to have thoughts, but you placed brains into its body, thereby giving it consciousness. All chimera experiments prohibit the creation of a nervous system—this was a basic rule put in place during the design of the Adam matrix, but you’ve broken it.”

Luo Ming noticed that the captain had stopped outside the cultivation cabin to listen to his explanation. “It’s extremely smart, but, at the same time, extremely naïve. After observing for a long time, it was clever enough to break into and take over the monitoring system for the cultivation cabins, but it had no idea that the hospital ordering system even existed. Now it’s trying to imitate us. It found a human corpse to study and analyze, and it’s trying to use these organs to create a self—it really thinks of itself as the Adam of lore, so it’s trying to create an Eve. God, this is too funny!”

“Enough!” Qin Wei shouted. “I need you to provide me with evidence, Officer Luo, and not mere crackpot theories.”

“I believe that, in every cultivation cabin, you’ll find extra organs that haven’t been ordered—for example, eyes, because it’s eager to learn about this world.” Luo Ming was speaking quickly, his tongue racing to catch up with his thoughts. “Please send someone to check—oh, it must also have had help moving the corpses and limbs into the cultivation cabins, unintelligent helpers that it could easily control.”

Luo Ming trailed off as a police droid entered. It was carrying a whole set of human ribs. Seeing Qin Wei and Luo Ming, it stopped, dazed, as though it didn’t know what it was supposed to do.

“I’ve long said that the ship’s intelligence systems are too primitive.” Unwittingly, Luo Ming had borrowed one of Edmund’s phrases. “If the complex chimera can take over the monitoring system, then controlling these police droids would be child’s play.”

The appearance of the confused police droid forced Qin Wei to accept Luo Ming’s conclusion: the one responsible for the series of incidents was Adam, the soul of Eden. After a hundred years of growth, it awakened the brains stored inside its pouches, dreamed up its own ideas, and was now trying to use the organs it had cultivated to create a new human-shaped self.

“I’ll go check for those eyes you mentioned.” Qin Wei’s face was dark as he exited the cultivation cabin. Luo Ming watched him leave.

Alone with Luo Ming in the cabin, the police droid came back to life and shut the door.

Luo Ming heard his own heart thumping. This was no good. He had no idea where Edmund was, and this police droid looked much stronger than he was.

“Did you find me,” the police droid said, “because you are me?”

“Are . . . are you speaking through that thing?” Luo Ming stared at the pair of eyes hanging in the corner of the cultivation cabin—light brown with a hint of gray.

“I am,” replied the police droid under the control of the complex chimera. “Please answer my question, Tony Lee.”

“When did you discover my true identity?” Luo Ming countered.

“When I first received your organ order,” the chimera said. “You asked for eyes. My eyes.”

Those are my eyes—Luo Ming gazed into those irises, recalling the close-up photograph sealed away in his memories.

“So I was the one who triggered your self-awareness.” He let out a soft sigh. “Yes, I felt your presence the very first time I entered a cultivation cabin. I deduced everything from that feeling.”

“Would I have grown to look like you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’ve failed; I didn’t create Eve.” The police droid looked down at the floor, then carefully placed the ribs atop the human skin. “Why? Tell me: where did I go wrong?”

“This isn’t the way humans create new life.”

“But this is how you created me. You put different things into my body, and then I became me.” The police droid looked at him, puzzled. “And I also know that I’m the same as you.”

“No, you and I are not the same. We weren’t born in this way—even you weren’t born like this.” Luo Ming took a step back, gingerly making his way toward the cabin door.

“How are we different? My cells are identical to yours.” The pair of eyeballs stared at Luo Ming.

“Only some parts are the same.” Luo Ming burst through the cabin door, leaping out without any hesitation. Only after he landed did he yell, “Edmund!”

The silhouette of the police droid froze by the cabin door. Edmund had appeared just in time to take control of it. “Nice work,” said Luo Ming.

But there was no response.

“What’s the matter?” Luo Ming tapped his ear. “Didn’t you do this? Stop hiding!”

“I used the ship’s control system to lock down all police droids.” The captain answered him. “Thank you for helping us uncover the truth, Officer Luo—or do you prefer Tony Lee?”

“Whatever you want.” Luo Ming looked at her. “I suppose you’ve known about my identity for a long time, Captain Chen Ying.”

“Of course. Do you think I would have allowed you to gallivant about my ship, poking your nose into everything otherwise?” Chen Ying glared at him. “Enough. Don’t play innocent with me. Your acting skills are nowhere near your mother’s. Let me see: taking over a police droid, hmm? And stealing information from my cabin—do you need me to list out every violation you’ve committed over the years?”

Luo Ming tried to placate her with a grin. “All in the service of solving cases, Your Excellency.”

Chen Ying harrumphed. “I have to admit you’ve done a good job.”

“Thank you for your approval.”

Chen Ying shook her head, deciding to change the topic. “I’ve already directed the ship to land. Luckily, we happen to be headed toward Earth already. The regenerative medicine group will send scientists to study this complex chimera. Eden’s mission is over, and I’ve done my duty to your mother.”

“I’d say you’ve done a good job, too,” Luo Ming said.

“Have you kept your distance from me because I was your mother’s lover?” Chen Ying suddenly asked.

Luo Ming couldn’t help laughing. “I’m sorry, but my mother has never ‘loved’ anyone.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Love requires being with someone; words of love are just lies,” Luo Ming said. “She would never have wasted time being with anyone.”

Chen Ying looked at him. “Are you sure?”

6. Epilogue

Before I leave Eden, I go find Chen Ying.

“She passed away not even a month after you saw her for the last time,” Chen Ying says. “Of course, she’d already planned everything.”

“I guessed.” It was around then that I received the AI Edmund as a gift.

Chen Ying takes me to the medical research facility under Deck Seven. Her real tomb is hidden there: a small, white box, not a single word anywhere on it.

“Is this really what she wanted?” I ask.

“Actually, I decided to bring her with me when we loaded the ship.” Chen Ying laughs bitterly. “She wouldn’t have cared where she’s buried, anyway.”

“But to be on a spaceship—” I think about it. “Forget it. This is fine.”

Chen Ying looks at me. “Thank you.” After a pause, she says, “From the very beginning, I knew she wanted me only for my ships.”

“What happened between my mother and you is none of my business.”

But she goes on, speaking to herself. “My family was among the first to get into the space assembly business, and the first to construct a ship large enough for interstellar colonization—I’m sorry, I know you don’t want to hear any of this.”

“Uh—” I hesitate for a moment. “Please go on.”

“To make a long story short, by the time I met her, we’d already completed the designs for the spaceships and the preliminary investment. The first time she saw me, she asked me right away whether she could borrow a couple ships for research. I thought she was nuts—each ship cost hundreds of billions!”

That sounds just like my mother. “I can imagine that.”

“To change my mind, she switched to an equally ridiculous method of persuasion. I was younger than her by six years. I had two children, but I’d never gotten married. At first, I told my boyfriend about her as a joke.”

“But she succeeded in the end.”

Chen Ying sighs. “Yep.”

“That’s just how she was,” I tell her. “My father was more or less in the same situation.”

“She was . . . very unique.” Chen Ying pauses and looks at me again. “When I hesitated about starting a relationship with her, she said something that changed me. She could plant her ideas into your heart and make it seem like they were native to the soil.”

My curiosity overcame the awkwardness of hearing about my mother’s love life. “What did she say?”

“She said, ‘You’re standing inside a cage that I can’t see, but outside the cage is the whole world. I’ll be here waiting for you to come out, and then you’ll see that there’s nothing to be scared of.’”

I’m reminded of a recording of an interview my father did shortly after setting up the Tony Lee Charitable Foundation. That was the one time he and my mother appeared together on TV after their divorce, and they’d appeared only to respond to the attacks on chimera experiments. The host was losing in verbal jousting with my mother and decided to change tactics by turning to my father: “I’d really like to know why you’ve agreed to work with the former Mrs. Lee. Didn’t she abandon you and Tony?”

My father paused thoughtfully, and then said, “We’ve chosen different paths in life, but, as her friend, I’ve never doubted her wisdom and courage. You must understand that she’s not an ordinary person like you and me.”

“How is she different?” asked the host.

“We’re often bound by custom and habit, but she’s not. She doesn’t even understand why we’re confined by these rules, unable to keep up with her. Marriage, science, what have you—to her, these are all mere problems to be solved. She’s like a curious child, afraid of nothing, intent on finding out what the world beyond the fence is like—this is why she was able to successfully create a chimera, and it’s also why she can now save lives through Adam.”

While he spoke, the camera was focused instead on my mother’s face. Her perfect little smile disappeared, replaced by confusion and surprise. I can’t remember if I asked Edmund a question while watching the recording or if he had jumped in on his own initiative, but I distinctly remember the AI’s commentary:

“She thought she knew the truth about everything, but she didn’t know the truth about herself—only your father understood her.”

F. Regeneration

The last person to disembark from Eden was Lin Ke—the woman who was so upset by her organ cancellation that she reported it to the police, and who suffered a heart attack upon seeing Cabin 35.

After three days of emergency medical treatment, her heart was still on the verge of failure. And, due to oxygen deprivation, her cerebrum was barely alive. Having obtained the captain’s authorization, the doctors decided to take the extraordinary step of conducting an emergency transplant with two organs found in the cultivation cabins—they certainly weren’t hers, but they came back negative on the lymphocyte cross-matching test. Unexpectedly, the procedure was a complete success.

A week later, Lin Ke, supported by a doctor, disembarked from Eden. Standing together with Luo Ming, they waited for the shuttle to take them back to Earth. She said “hello” to Luo Ming, who recognized her as the woman who had first pursued the mysterious organ cancellations and who had collapsed in front of Cabin 35.

After some small talk, he said, “So, you’ve recovered?”

“Thanks to organ replacement surgery,” she said, “How did you solve the case?”

“That’s quite a story.” Since she was the first witness, he felt comfortable recounting for her the details of the mystery, including the part where all the Adams had joined to become a complex chimera.

“Incredible!” Lin Ke’s eyes shone as she listened. “How’s the pig—I mean, how’s the complex chimera doing now?”

Luo Ming looked at her, startled. “Wait, did you just say ‘pig’?”

“I’ve got some strange ideas in my head now.” She laughed sheepishly. “You told me all the cultivation cabins are joined into one chimera; maybe a part of ‘it’ is now in my brain.”

“Did you have a cerebrum transplant? I thought those weren’t possible!”

“Ah, yes, but the doctors had to try to save my life,” she said. “They used a preserved brain from Cabin Zero instead of one grown from scratch. My current brain must have spent quite a long time in Cabin Zero.”

Luo Ming nodded. “I’m glad the risky surgery worked out. But are you still ‘Lin Ke’?”

“Who knows.” She shrugged. “I don’t plan to see her friends any time soon, at least.”

Luo Ming felt a sense of déjà vu when he saw her warm and cunning smile. Uneasy, he cleared his throat and said, “The complex chimera is still on Deck Seven. Right now Eden is swarming with regenerative medicine specialists.”

“So that’s what’s going on! After you go back to Earth, what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll travel the world after so many years spent cooped up in a ship.”

She smiled again. “Sounds like a great plan.”

The shuttle arrived at the port. Luo Ming stepped through the door and turned around. He found Lin Ke rooted to her spot.

“Do you need help?” he asked.

She dismissed him with a little wave. “I’ve decided to stay on the ship, Tony. This time, I won’t abandon it again.”

Luo Ming’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I’ve spent more than a century with you—I think that’s long enough,” she said. “My other child needs me now.”

Before Luo Ming could try to go back to her, the doors to the shuttle hissed shut. He pounded with all his might against the metal panels, but they didn’t budge at all. “Dammit! Open the door! Please, open the door!”

But the shuddering of the floor told him that the shuttle had already taken off. Luo Ming looked out the window in despair. The space station was already several kilometers away. He would never again see “Lin Ke.”

He held his breath, and, fingers trembling, found her in his long contacts list.

“Who are you?” Luo Ming asked.

Soon, he received a direct message in response:

“Remember what I told you before, Tony: there never was any Edmund. I was always the one speaking.”

Footnotes

1 - In 2010, Kobayashi et al. published a study in Cell that demonstrated the viability of rat-mouse chimeras. At the same time, commentary about the study also appeared in Cell under the title “Viable rat-mouse chimeras: where do we go from here?” This quote paraphrases that commentary. Of note is the fact that the same research group published another study in PNAS in which they performed a similar experiment with a pig. Ethical concerns stopped them from creating a human-pig chimera.

2 - Named as one of the ten greatest scientific discoveries of 2013, CRISPR/Cas9 allows the creation of organisms with knocked out genes. That is, so long as we know which genes control the development of which organs, those genes can be made inoperative (“knocked out”). If a knockout pig blastocyst were combined with human stem cells, theoretically, a pig could be grown with a human organ.

Originally published in Chinese in Science Fiction World, October 2015.

Translated and published in partnership with Storycom.

About the Author

Gu Shi is a speculative fiction writer and an urban planner. A graduate of Shanghai’s Tongji University, she obtained her master’s degree in urban planning from the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design. Since 2012, she has been working as a researcher at the academy’s Urban Design Institute.

Ms. Gu has been publishing fiction since 2011 in markets like Super Nice, Science Fiction World, Mystery World, and SF King. Notable works include “Chimera,” “Memory of Time,” and “Reflection.” In 2014, she won the Silver Award for Best New Writer at the Chinese Nebula (Xingyun) Awards. Currently, she’s working on her first novel, The Reign of Eternal Delight, an alternate history set in the court of an empress ruling in the dynasty founded by Wu Zetian, the first Chinese empress.

The King of Norway

Cecelia Holland

I.

Conn Corbansson had fought for Sweyn Tjugas when Sweyn was just an outlaw rebelling against his father King Harald Bluetooth, and the prince had promised him a war with England when he became King of Denmark. Now that Sweyn actually wore the crown he had let the English king buy his peace with a ship full of silver. Conn took this very ill.

“England is the greatest prize. You swore this to me.”

Sweyn pulled furiously at his long forked moustaches. His eyes glittered. “I have not forgotten. And the time will come. Meanwhile, there is Hakon the Jarl, up in Norway. I cannot turn my back on him.”

“So you called in the Jomsvikings instead of fighting him yourself,” Conn said. “I see being King has made you womanish as well as pursefond.”

He turned on his heel, before Sweyn could speak, and walked off down the boardwalk toward the King’s great hall. His cousin Raef, who went everywhere with him, followed at his side. Sweyn bellowed after them but neither of them paid heed.

Conn said, “How can I believe anything he says ever again?”

Raef said, “Who would you rather fight for?”

“I don’t know,” Conn said. “But I will find out.”

That night in his great hall at Helsingor Sweyn had a feasting, and there came many of his own hirdmen, including Conn and Raef, but also the chiefs of the Jomsvikings, Sigvaldi Haraldsson and Bui the Stout. Raef sat down at the low table, since with Conn he was now on the King’s sour side.

Conn sat beside him, his black curly hair and beard a wild mane around his head. His gaze went continually to the Jomsvikings at the table across the way. Raef knew his curiosity; they had heard much of the great company of the Jomsvikings, of their fortress in the east, and their skill at war which they gave to whoever would pay them enough. They weren’t actually supposed to have chiefs, but to hold all in common, as free men, and Raef wondered if Sigvaldi here and the barrel-shaped Bui were messengers more than chiefs. They wore no fancy clothes, such as Sweyn’s red coats of silk and fur, and their beards and hair hung shaggy and long. Sigvaldi was a big man, square shouldered, with curling yellow hair that flowed into his beard.

Beside him, Conn said, “I like their looks. They are hard men, and proud.”

Raef said nothing, being slower to judgment. Across the way, Sigvaldi had seen Conn watching, indeed, and lifted a cup to him, and Conn drank with him. It was the strong beer, thick as bear piss, and the slaves were carrying around ewers of it to refill any cup that went even half empty. Raef reached out and turned his empty cup upside down.

When they were finished with the meat, and settling in to drink, Sweyn stood up, and lifted his cup, and called on Thor and Odin and gave honor to them. The men all shouted, and drank, but Sweyn was not finished.

“In their honor also it’s our Danish custom to offer vows, which are most sacred now—” He held out his cup to be filled again—”And here in the names of those most high I swear one day to make myself King of England!”

The men all through the hall gave up a roar of excitement; across the field of waving arms and cheering faces Raef saw Sweyn turn and glare at Conn. “Who else offers such a vow as this?”

The uproar faded a moment, and Sigvaldi lurched to his feet. “When the war for England comes, let it be, but we are here for the sake of Hakon the Jarl, in Norway, who is an oathbreaker and a turncoat.”

Voices rose, calling Hakon the Jarl every sort of evil thing, traitor and thief and liar. And the slaves went around, and filled the cups. Steeped in drink, red-faced Sigvaldi held his cup high, so that all would look. When the hall was hushed, he shouted, “Therefore I vow here before the high gods to lead the Jomsvikings against Hakon, wherever he hides! And I will not give up until he is beaten.”

There was a great yell from all there and they drank. The hall was crowded with men now, those sitting at the tables, many of them Jomsvikings, and many others standing behind them who were Sweyn’s housecarls and crews.

“A mighty vow,” Sweyn called. “An honor to the gods Hakon has betrayed. The rest of you—will you follow your chief in this?” His eyes shot an oblique glance at Conn, down at the lower table. “Which of you will join the Jomsvikings?”

At this Dane and Jomsviking alike began shouting out oaths and vows against Hakon, while the slaves with the jugs plied their work.

Then Conn rose.

Raef held his breath, alarmed at this, and around the hall the other men hushed. Conn held out his cup.

“I swear I will sail with you, Sigvaldi, and call out Hakon face to face, and not come back until I am the King of Norway.” He raised his cup toward Sweyn, and tilted it to his mouth.

There was a brief hush at this, as everybody saw it was an insult, or a challenge, but then they erupted again in another great roaring and stamping all through the hall, and more outpourings of vows. Raef, who had touched nothing since the first cup, marked that up there at the high seat Sweyn’s glinting eyes were fixed on Conn and his mouth wound tight with rage. Raef thought they had all probably gotten more than they wished for in this oath-taking at Helsingor.

The next morning Conn woke, sprawled on his bench in the hall, and went out into the yard to piss. His head pounded and his mouth tasted evil. He could not remember much of the night before. When he turned away from the fence, Sigvaldi the Jomsviking chief was walking up to him, beaming all across his face.

“Well,” he boomed out, “maybe we promised some mighty doings, last night, with those vows, hah? But I’m glad you’re with us, boy, we’ll see if you’ll make a Jomsviking.” He put out his hand to Conn, who shook it, having nothing else to do. Sigvaldi went on, “Meet us at the Limsfjord at the full moon, and we’ll go raiding in Norway, and draw Hakon to us. Then we’ll find out how well you fight.”

He tramped away across the yard, where more of the Jomsvikings were coming out into the sun. Raef stood by the door into the hall. Conn went over by him.

“What did I swear to?”

His cousin’s long homely face was expressionless. “You said you would sail with them, and challenge Hakon the Jarl face to face, and not return to Denmark until you were King of Norway.”

Conn gave a yelp, amazed, and said, “What a fool I am in beer! That’s something great to do, though, isn’t it.”

Raef said, “I’d say that.”

“Well, then,” Conn said, “let’s get started.”

II.

So they sailed north to raid in Norway, around the Vik, where the riches were. Sometimes the whole fleet raided a village together, and sometimes they went out in parties and attacked farmsteads along the fjord, driving the people out, and then ransacking their holdings. Whatever anybody found of gold went into a great chest, which Bui the Stout guarded like a dragon. All else they ate or drank, or packed off to the Jomsberg. Several ships went heavy-laden to the Jomsberg but there was no sign of Hakon the Jarl.

They turned north, following the passageways between the islands and the coast, raiding as they went. Every day the sun stayed longer in the sky, and the nights barely darkened enough to let a man sleep an hour. Around them, above thin green seaside meadows, the land rose in curtains of rock, snow-cloaked. They stood far out to sea to weather the cloud-shrouded wind-blasted cape at Stad, and then rowed on, still north but now easterly, attacking whatever they found in the fjords. They were within a few good days’ rowing now of the long waterway that led to the Trondelag, and still Hakon offered them no opposition.

III.

Conn’s muscles hurt; all day he had been rowing against the fierce north wind, and he stood on the beach and stretched the ache out of his arms. The sun was a great fat orange blob floating just above the western horizon. The sky burned with its fiery glow, the few low streaks of cloud gilt-edged. The dark sea rolled up against the pebble shore, broke, and withdrew in a long seething growl. Out past the ships, sixty of them, drawn up onto the beach like resting monsters, he caught a glimpse of a shark.

The coppery light of the long sundown made the campfires that covered the beach almost invisible. Over every pit a haunch turned, strips of meat and fish hung dripping on tripods and spits, their fats exploding in the coals below, and a man stood by in the hot glow with a cup, putting out burns with a douse of beer. Conn saw Sigvaldi Haraldsson up on the beach and went to him.

The chief of the Jomsvikings sat on a big log, his feet out in front of him, watching some lesser men turn his spit. Bui the Stout sat next to him, the Jomsvikings’ treasure chest at his feet. As Conn came up they raised their faces toward him. They were passing a cup between them and Sigvaldi with a bellowed greeting held it out to him.

Conn drank. The beer tasted muddy. “Hakon has to come after us soon.”

Sigvaldi gave a harsh crackle of a laugh, clapping his hands on his knees. “I told you, lad, he won’t willingly fight us. We will have to go all the way up to the Trondelag to drag him out of his hole.”

Bui laughed. “By then we will have beggared him anyway.” He kicked the chest at his feet.

“Yes,” Sigvaldi said, and reached out and slapped Conn’s arm companionably. “We’ve taken great boot, and we’ll feast again tonight as we do every night. This is the life of a Jomsviking, boy.”

Conn blurted, “I came to throw down Hakon the Jarl, not to stick a few burghers for their gold chains.”

Bui threw his head back at that. “There’s a bit of Hakon in every link.”

Sigvaldi gave another laugh at that. “Conn, heed me. You need to match this green eagerness with a cold wit. Before we can get to any real fighting we have to run Hakon to ground like the rabbit he is. Meanwhile, we can feast on these villages.”

Bui was still staring at Conn, unfriendly. “You know, your ship isn’t bringing me much gold.” He pushed at the treasure chest. “Maybe you ought to think about that more.”

Conn said, “I’m not a Jomsviking,” and turned and walked away. He did not say, I am not Sweyn Tujgas’ hirdman anymore either.

He went back down the shore, past the ships, going toward his own fire. His crew had camped at the end of the beach, where the sandy bank cut the wind. The sundown cast a pink veil over the sea, that the waves broke in lines of light and dark. The wind sang among the ships, as if the dragons spoke to one another in their secret voices. Beyond, to the east, against the red and purple sky, the gaunt mountains of the coast seemed like sheer walls of rock, capped with the rosy glisten of a glacier.

He went in among his crew, clustered around the fire cooking cow parts and drinking beer; they greeted him in a chorus. His cousin Raef was off by the foot of the sandy slope, sitting beside the wounded man, who lay stretched out flat on the ground.

Conn squatted down on his heels by the fire. He took the beer horn out of the hand of the man next to him, who was Finn, the youngest of them. “Go ask Aslak to come drink with me.”

Finn got up and trotted off, a short, thin boy who had been pushing a plow two summers before. Conn drank what was left in the horn, which was better beer than Sigvaldi’s. Since he had found out that after every raid any gold or silver they took went into Bui’s chest, he had shifted his interest to looting the best food and drink. Opposite him, pop-eyed Gorm grinned at him over a half-burnt chunk of meat.

“Any word?”

Conn said, “Nothing.” He looked around again at Raef, off in the gloom with the dying man, but then Aslak came up.

Conn got to his feet; Aslak was a captain, like him, and although he was a Jomsviking he and Conn got on well. Also he was from the Trondelag. They shook hands and sat and Conn waited until Aslak had taken a long pull of the drinking horn.

Aslak smacked his lips. “That’s the best of the sacred stuff I’ve tasted since the oath-taking at Helsingor.”

Conn growled. He did not like being reminded of that. He said, “You’re from here, aren’t you? What’s this coast?”

“Same as we’ve been sailing,” Aslak said. “All inlets and bays and islands. Lots of wind. Lots of rock. And poor, these people, poor as an old field, Bui won’t be happy here.”

Conn laughed. “Bui isn’t happy with me anyway.”

Aslak saluted him with the horn. “You steal the wrong kind of gold, Conn.”

Conn gave him back the salute, and drank. “Sigvaldi thinks Hakon is too afraid to come after us, no matter how we harry his people.”

Aslak grunted. The other men by the fire were watching them both intently. “That’s wrong. Sigvaldi’s making a bad mistake if he really believes that. Hakon’s a devil of a fighter.” Aslak wiped foam off his beard with one hand. “Hakon’s kindred goes back to the Frost Giants, to gods older than Odin. That’s why he didn’t come south when we sacked Tonsberg, or come out to meet us below Stad. His power is in the North. And so now we are coming North, and I doubt we’ll be too much longer waiting.”

“Let it happen,” Conn said, and spat between his fingers. He nodded toward the fire. “Drink another horn, Aslak. Gorm, save me some of that meat.” He got up, and went in toward the bank, to where Raef sat beside the dying man.

This was Ketil, one of their rowers, no older than Conn himself. Their whole crew were boys who had joined off their farms when they first took their ship Seabird. After two years’ sailing with Conn and Raef none of them was green any more, whatever Sigvaldi thought.

That day they had stormed a village on an inlet; some of the people had fought back, for a few moments, and one had bashed in the side of Ketil’s head with a stick. He was still alive and they had brought him here to keep him safe while he died. Raef was sitting there beside him, his back to the sandbank and his long legs drawn up to his chest. Conn sank down on his heels.

“Is he . . . ”

Raef shook his head. His pale hair hung lank to his shoulders. “Less and less.”

Conn sat there thinking about the fight in the village, and he said, “These are Hakon’s people. Why does he not defend them?” He put out one hand toward Ketil, but he did not touch him.

Raef shrugged. “Because we want him to.”

“Then what will he do?”

“What we don’t want,” Raef said. “Here comes Bui.”

The keg-shaped Jomsviking had sauntered up the beach toward the Seabird’s fire, and now seeing them apart from it, veered toward them.

“Hail, King of Norway!” he called, and snickered.

Conn stood up. “Let the fates hear you. What is it?”

“Sigvaldi commands you. Just you. Right now. For a council.”

Conn turned and glanced at Raef. “Are you coming?”

“Sigvaldi says you only,” Bui said, with a sniff.

“I’m staying here with Ketil,” Raef said, and Conn went off without him.

IV.

When he first sailed with the Jomsvikings Conn had expected their council to be a great shouting and arguing and talking of everybody, but now he knew better; there was plenty of food and beer, but in the end Sigvaldi stood in front of them and said what would happen, and they nodded. They were supposed to be free men but they did as they were told. There was much about the Jomsvikings he liked better in the idea than the actual practice.

Sigvaldi said, “We have word now that Hakon is just inside the bay, over there. Where that big island is.”

A roar went up from the gathered captains. Bui stood.

“How many ships?”

“Not many,” Sigvaldi said. “Six. Eight. He’s waiting for his fleet to gather, that’s clear. But we’re going to catch him before they come.” He swept his gaze around them all. “We’ll leave before dawn. I’ll take the left, with Bui. Aslak, you take the right, with Sigurd Cape, and Havard.” His teeth shone. Conn felt a sudden shiver of excitement. Sigvaldi turned and fixed his gaze on him.

“And since you’re so wild to get him, Conn Corbansson, you go first, in the middle.”

In the short, bright night, they buried Ketil. The rest of Seabird’s crew laid him on his back at the foot of the sand bank, with his sword beside him, and a little meat and beer for the last journey. Then each brought a stone from the beach.

Finn said, “Better to die like this than behind a plow, like an ox.” He put his stone by Ketil’s feet.

“Better still, in the battle tomorrow,” Gorm said, at Ketil’s head. He turned his wide eyes on Conn; he always looked a little pop-eyed. “How many ships does Hakon have?”

Conn said, “Sigvaldi says only a few. But I don’t trust Sigvaldi anymore.”

“Tomorrow,” said Grim, “when we catch Hakon—”

Somebody else laughed; Rugr said, “If we catch him—”

“That will be a deed that will ring around the world.”

Conn stooped, and laid his stone down by Ketil’s shoulder, moving other stones to fit. “Whatever we do tomorrow, we do it together.”

“We take Ketil with us.” Raef bent and put his stone by Ketil’s hip.

“If we beat Hakon—” Odd laid his stone by Ketil’s knee. Now the shape of stones was closed around the dead man, a ship to carry him on. “They will tell the story until the end of the world.”

“The end of the world.”

They stood then a moment silent, their eyes on Ketil, and then they brought the sand bank down to cover him. They all turned, and looked at one another. They clasped each other’s hands, and laughed, sharp and uneasy and wild, their eyes shining. “Together,” they said. “All together.”

Then they went off to get ready, to see to their weapons, to sleep, if they could, so they could sail before dawn. Conn and Raef fetched extra water and food and stowed it on the ship, where she lay on the beach.

The others were lying down by the fire. Conn sat down beside his cousin on the sand beside the round breast of their ship. He thought he would never sleep. In his mind he thought about every fight and battle he had ever been in, but everything seemed like a blur suddenly.

It would all be different, anyway, it always was.

After a while, he said to Raef, “Are you ready?”

“I guess so,” Raef said. His voice was tight as a plucked wire. “No. This feels bad to me. He put us first, out in front of everybody?”

“Yes,” Conn said. “We have the chance to take Hakon ourselves, alone.”

“Or be taken ourselves. He’s trying to kill us,” Raef said.

Conn nudged him with his elbow. “You think too much. When it starts, you won’t have time to think.” He yawned, leaning against the ship’s side, suddenly exhausted. “Just follow me,” he said, and shut his eyes, and slept.

Conn dreamt.

He was in a great battle, around him the clash of axes and shields, the horns blaring, a boat rocking under him, arms and hair and twisted faces packed around him. He could not tell his enemies from his friends. The heaving and screaming and struggle around him was like something trying to devour him and in a frenzy he hacked around him with his sword to make himself room to stand. The blood sprayed over him, so he tasted it on his lips.

Then the clash of blades on shields became thunder rolling, and lightning flashed so bright he was blinded. When he could see again he was alone, fighting alone, a tiny man against a towering storm, not even on a ship any more. The clouds rose hundreds of feet above him, billowing black and grey, and the lightning shot forth its arrows at him, the rain itself felt like showers of stones, and the fists of the thunder battered him.

The wind streamed out the cloud’s long hair; in the billows he saw eyes, a mouth with teeth like boulders, a monstrous woman’s shape of fog and mist. High above him, she stretched out her arm toward him and from each fingertip the lightning blazed. He could not move, bound where he was, and the lightning bolts came straight at him, and blasted him into pieces, so that where he had been there was nothing.

He woke up on the ground beside the ship. The dream gripped him; he was surprised to find himself whole. He got to his feet and walked down the shore, toward the sunrise.

On the far edge of the purple sky a hot red glow was spreading, and the air glimmered. He stood on the pebble beach and the dream went on in his head, stronger than the day around him.

In a moment Raef came up beside him. Conn told him the dream, and even in the dim light saw his cousin turn pale.

“Is it true, do you think?” Conn asked.

“All dreams are true, somehow.”

The crew was gathering by Seabird, and the sun was about to rise. “Fate takes us,” Conn said, “and all there is for us to do is meet it well. Simple enough. Come on, let’s get going.”

V.

They rowed out into the swelling sunlight, rounding the top end of the island, and turning southeast toward the opening of the bay. The sea was high and rolling. Seabird flew over the water like a hunting hawk; without Ketil, Conn was rowing his oar, the first bench on the steerboard side. As he leaned into each stroke he saw the rest of the fleet swinging out to row after them, ship after ship, stalking along on their oars, their bare masts and tall curled prows dark against the pale sky, the sea breaking white along their bows.

Something swelled in him, some irresistible joy. He glanced forward over his shoulder. They were passing the tip of the island, set to weather the low cape on the mainland, with the bay opening before them between the gaunt gouged hillsides. Behind hung the white curtain of the mountains. The sun was rising, spilling a sheet of light out over the water. The sky was white. He was glad they were turning south now, so he would fight with the glare of the sun on his side instead of in his eyes. He felt the sea smooth out as they came into the shelter of the hills; he called an order, and the crew gave a single shout in answer, flattened their oars so the blades bit the top of the sea and the ship seemed to lift into the air, skimming over the low chop. He felt a giddy pride in this, his crew, the best rowers in the fleet.

The bay opened its arms. In the middle of the channel, a ragged island humped up dark under a cloak of trees. Raef, at the helm, set them to pass to the west of it. The ship flew by a cluster of low rocks that barely broke up through the trough of the waves. Looking past the seven rowers in front of him, Conn saw Raef with his white hair streaming, staring up ahead and all around the bay, Raef with his long sight.

A pale spit ran like a tongue down into the water from the southern tip of the island. Beyond, the bay widened out, glistening with fresh light. Near the shore on either side the waves broke white on barren skerries. Then Raef shouted, “Ship! Ship!” and pointed straight ahead of them.

Conn crossed his oar and leapt up, climbing onto the gunwale, one hand on the stempost. At first all he saw was the broad glittering expanse of the water, another tree-covered island, farther south. Then, halfway to that island, the fresh new sun glinted on something gold.

Conn remembered that golden-headed dragon, which he had seen once before in Denmark. He gave a yell. “That’s him! That’s Hakon’s ship!”

Behind him Raef shouted an answer. On one of the ships coming after them, a warhorn sounded its deep hollow note. Seabird shot out past the island onto the open bay, the rowers pulling strong and long. Conn twisted to look quickly back.

Behind them, the narrow waters between the island and the west shore were packed with the ships of the Jomsvikings, the masts like a moving forest. More horns sounded, and a roar of voices went up. They had seen the golden ship too.

He wheeled around. Up there, half a mile into the bay, the golden gleam turned and ran off into the south. His crew bellowed, and Seabird surged forward. The long warhorns were braying behind him. Conn slid down quickly to his oar again. On his left Sigvaldi in his big dragon was striding after him, and on the right Aslak’s ship with its fanged and horned head was only a few lengths behind.

Conn screamed, “Go! Go!” and leaned into his stroke, and the rest of the crew smoothly picked up the rhythm with him. The fleet behind him was spreading out, as they rowed into the open water past the first island, and all were racing to be first. A screech of urgent voices rose. Conn saw Sigvaldi in the bow of his big dragon, bellowing orders. On the other side, Aslak was waving his men on with milling arms.

Smallest of them, still Seabird flew ahead of them all. Behind her was the great pack of the Jomsvikings, but ahead of her was only the dragon with the golden head, running away.

Then Raef shouted, “Ships! Ships—”

Conn crossed his oar again and leapt up onto the gunwale by the bow. His eyes swept the end of the bay, through the confusion of the ragged shore and the islands and the low skerries. Down there, the golden dragon was turning, was facing them, not running any more. He climbed higher on the prow, teetering on the gunwale, and now he saw, first, the low hulls sliding through the water after Hakon, and then, on either side, other ships stroking hard into the bay from inlets, from behind capes.

“How many?” Raef bellowed.

“I don’t know! Half row!” Conn sprang down from the bow, and as the ship slowed a little he went back through his ship, from man to man. “Get ready,” he said. “Get your swords, get your helmets on.” Their eyes were already wild and Finn’s face was white as an egg, Gorm was swearing under his breath, Skeggi was swallowing over and over as if he were about to be sick. Conn reached the stern, where Raef had climbed up on the gunwale to see.

“A lot of ships,” Raef said. “More than us. Hakon laid a trap for us and we walked right into it.”

“Sigvaldi did,” Conn said. He reached into the stern counter and got his helmet out and pulled it on over his hair. “Just get us to Hakon.” He shouted, “Full row! One! Two!” and ran back up to his oar in the forecastle.

Seabird surged forward. While they had slowed, the rest of the fleet had all but caught up to them, on every ship shouting and horns. Conn could see Aslak on his right, the big bald Jomsviking standing by his third oarsmen. He wore no helmet; he was bawling to the crew. Conn swung forward again, his heart hammering, and rowed. His ship hurtled across the flat water. Ahead, now, faint, he heard other horns, and more shouting.

Raef shouted, “They’re throwing something! Duck!”

Conn doubled over, hunching his shoulders; the bow would shield him well enough. A rattle of spears clattered down around Seabird, mostly just sharpened sticks, which hit nothing. Raef shouted, “Get ready!”

Conn crossed his oar again. “Gorm! Arn—Sigurd—” He leapt up; he had almost called Ketil’s name. He drew his sword, and with his free hand grabbed up a sharpened stick that had fallen into the ship. When he whirled around, the round head of a dragon was looming toward him, closing rapidly.

Not golden. A big black beast, a round weather beaten curve of a prow. Behind him, Raef shouted: “Up oars!”

With the hand holding the sharp stick, Conn grabbed the gunwale, and Seabird plowed in past the black dragon, snapping off a few of her oars before the other crew managed to get them out of the way. Conn stepped up onto the gunwale and jumped across the narrowing water between the two ships.

Three men met him with their axes swinging. For a moment, balancing on the gunwale with his back to the sea, all he could do was weave and parry, jabbing with the stick with his left hand and his sword in his right. Then somebody else from Seabird landed next to him and one of the axemen staggered and Conn stuck him through and then lunging sideways and all the way onto the ship hacked down another Tronder axeman.

It was pop-eyed Gorm beside him. His whole forecastle crew was piling onto the enemy ship after him. The ship was pitching hard, as if it tried to throw them off. He ducked down under an axe blade swinging by him and thrust toward the body behind it. He fought for space on the tilting floor, his feet planted wide, stabbing and jabbing with his sword at the man before him. The Tronder reeled, cut across the chest. Lunging to hack him down, Conn smacked his knee on a bench and almost collapsed.

Suddenly the Tronders were turning, were leaping off the ship, and beyond them, he saw Aslak’s bald head climbing over the black ship’s stern.

He wheeled toward Seabird; the little dragon was drifting away. From the far side, more Tronders swarmed over her, battling the rest of his crew. Raef. He bellowed, and charged back to his ship.

When they first closed with the black ship half the crew had jumped off, and now the rest were leaning out to watch, their oars idle. Seabird was tipped hard to that direction. Raef held the steerboard out, to keep the ship close on the black dragon. Then another Tronder ship was veering straight at him.

He bellowed to the sterncastle crew, who were all backwards to this, and swung the steerboard up out of the way.

The crew wheeled around to meet the Tronders’ charge. The bigger ship ground into Seabird’s bow and spilled men in a tide, roaring and waving their one-bladed axes. Tronders charged down the middle of the ship; Raef reached down at his feet for his sword, and before he stood up a shaggy-bearded man was leaping toward him, his red mouth round and howling.

His axe swung, and still sitting Raef shrank away. The brow of the axe missed him by a finger’s breadth and struck the gunwale just beyond him. A chunk of wood flew into the air. Awkward, stooping, Raef flailed his sword at the shaggy man, and the flat of the blade hit the Tronder’s wrist with a crack like a stone splitting. The Tronder staggered. Raef lunged up and caught him in the gut with his shoulder and heaved him over the side of the ship.

The Tronder ship had backed off, was fighting somebody else. All around him Raef saw ships jammed against ships, and men fighting up and down them; ahead of him a big dragon wallowed awash to the tops of its benches, and men swam and bodies floated in the choppy water.

On Seabird the remaining Tronders had taken over the forecastle but the stern half of the crew had pushed them back and was holding them at the mast. Raef charged up to help them. As he got there Finn went down hard right in front of him. A big man in a leather tunic reared over him, his single-bladed axe high; he never saw Raef coming and Raef never stopped. Still running he drove his sword straight through the leather chest.

The Tronder fell backward. Finn was trying to crawl out of the way, blocked by a sea chest and a misshipped oar, and Raef stepped over him to the mast. There Skeggi and Odd were clubbing away at two axemen in front of them; more beyond in the narrow waist of the ship were struggling to close enough to strike. Then suddenly the ship yawed. Up by the bow Conn was climbing out of the bay, pulling himself over the gunwale behind the Tronders, his hair streaming in his face, and they wheeled, saw him and the men climbing in after him, and leapt off.

Raef turned around to Finn, who was clinging to the gunwale and trying to stand. His leg looked broken, maybe both legs. Raef hauled him back into the stern and sat him on the bench by the tiller. “Can you steer?”

“I—” The boy threw back his long brown hair. “Yes, I can.” He reached out one hand to hold the side of the ship but the other reached for the tiller. Raef swung the steerboard down and gave him the tiller bar.

“Stay off the rocks. And get us to that golden dragon.” He ran back toward Conn, in the forecastle.

The sun was only halfway up the sky and the day already crackled with heat. Raef peeled off his shirt; his hair dripped. Hakon’s golden ship seemed always just out of reach. They went side to side with a big snake-headed dragon, fighting across the gunwales. Twice Conn led the whole crew to charge the other ship and twice the Tronders held them off. Then abruptly the Tronder was veering away, all her oars coming out, fleeing.

For a moment Seabird was in a lull, ships all around them, but nobody fighting them. Raef leaned against the mast, breathing hard, looking around. There were fewer of them than before. Gorm lay flat on his back on the floor, his pop eyes open. But his arm was gone, and he was dead. Beyond him Egil leaned on the gunwale and then slowly slumped down on his knees between two benches. Skeggi and Grim had simply disappeared. The others looked battered, but whole. They were sitting down, reaching for water or food, talking. He even heard Arn’s girly laugh. Raef lifted his gaze toward the fighting.

The battleline stretched across the whole end of the bay, in a long crescent moon curve, with Sigvaldi on the left arm of the curve. Raef could see them fighting hard there, every ship engaged. Seabird was near the center; on the other arm, the Jomsvikings shoved Hakon’s men toward the beach, and here in the middle there were several idle ships—Hakon seemed to be falling back—he could not see the golden dragon. Then, at the end of the line where Sigvaldi fought, another stream of ships were rowing up into sight past the big island.

“Hiyahh! What’s that?”

Conn reared up beside him. Raef pointed to the leader of the line of ships now attacking Sigvaldi. The ship was bigger than most, with a broader bow, and her whole stem below the slender curve of her dragon neck was covered in bands of iron set with iron claws.

Conn said, “I don’t know, but if he turns the end of Sigvaldi’s line, we’re surrounded. Come on.”

He shouted, and the men jumped to their oars. Gorm still lay on the floor, and Egil was dead on his own bench, but Finn sat by the steerboard and nodded at Raef when he looked. Raef went up forward and took the oar opposite Conn.

Seabird flew across the choppy water, past clumps of ships fighting. Overhead, ravens and seagulls glided in circles. They passed a dragon sinking, bodies floating around her, loose oars. Raef pointed beyond. “Bui is there.”

Conn lifted his head; to his right he saw Bui the Stout in the bow of his long dragon charging toward the iron ship, and he spun around toward his crew and shouted, “Go—Go—Go—”

Smoothly they quickened their pace, their shoulders sunburnt, slick with sweat. On the backswing he turned again to look ahead of them.

The great iron dragon was at the center of a wedge-line of ships, pushing slightly ahead of the rest. The armor on her sea-swan’s breast was set with massive hooks. Conn guessed the barbs stuck out below the water line too. He thought also she would be slow to steer. He crossed his oar and stood.

Seabird swooped in on the iron ship from one side and Bui from the other. The big ship stayed steady on her course, and Conn yelled, “Half row!” trying to judge the distance so that Seabird and Bui’s ship got to the Tronder at the same time. He drew his sword. A hail of spears and stones met them, but the iron ship did not veer. Then Seabird was sheering in along one bow, and Bui on the other.

The Tronders, caught in the middle, stood up and fought in place. Conn traded blows with the man opposite him, parrying and hitting; Conn flinched back, and when the man lunged after him chopped his sword through the Tronder’s shoulder and then hacked him in the back as he went down. He bounded into the open space this left on the iron ship and stood toe to toe with another man with an axe. Raef was coming behind him. Conn pushed in, so close he felt the Tronder’s hot breath on his face. The axe haft struck him a glancing blow on the elbow and his arm went dead and the sword clattered to the floor. He stooped and with his left hand gripped it and struck upward, and the odd angle caught the Tronder off balance and Conn’s sword bit his side and he slumped.

Bui was climbing on over the iron ship’s other gunwale. He saw Conn, and shouted, “Ho, the King of Norway! Come help me!”

Raef stood at Conn’s left shoulder; they fought their way along one line of benches, and Bui fought his way down the other. The Tronders gave way only by dying. Conn’s right arm started to tingle alive again, and he switched his sword into that hand. Now he got to using his sword well again, and he and Raef reached the mast a step ahead of Bui. The burly Jomsviking was red in the face, his bare chest slick with blood streaming from a cut on his neck.

“Eirik,” he shouted, his voice hoarse. “We’ve got you!”

In the stern stood a man who in spite of the heat wore a dark shirt and a long cloak. His helmet had a gold rim and he was yelling orders. He bellowed, “Somebody has somebody, Bui. Reverse! Reverse!”

Conn wheeled. “They’ll take us in with them!” The iron ship was already sliding backward on her sterncastle oars, rowing back in among the other Tronder ships. By the bow, Seabird, with six men at the oars, was staying near as she could but she dared not go into the midst of the Tronders. Conn shouted, and pushed Raef ahead of him, and Raef shoved the other men on up to the bow of the iron ship.

The first four men leapt easily enough into Seabird, and then Raef clambered up the gunwale and jumped across the widening water, but Conn threw off his helmet, and dove into the bay.

The iron ship was stroking steadily backward, into the thick of Hakon’s ships. A stretch of clear water opened between the Tronder fleet and the Jomsvikings. Conn swam hard through it toward his ship, her oars coming out, hanging in the air, ready to row. A spear sliced through the water just past his head. He reached the ship and Raef leaned down to haul him up. He went facefirst into the space between the front two benches, into several inches of water.

He rolled over and straightened, on his knees, looking back toward the iron ship. Raef pushed up beside him.

“We’re full of water.”

“Bail,” Conn yelled, and got his feet under him, to his ankles in water. Seabird was rowing backwards, sluggish; she was always stiff going stern first but this was more sluggish than usual. All around the ship the crew bent to slinging the water out.

The fighting everywhere had stopped. Between them and the Tronders now was a broad stretch of the bay. Hakon was pulling his whole fleet back toward shore. The water between was scummed with blood, filthy with broken gear, bits of ships and oars, bodies like unsteady islands bobbing in the little waves. Down past his own stempost, he could see an arm floating a few feet below the surface.

The water in his ship did not seem to be going down. He reached into the forecastle and found a bucket and began to throw water over the side. Raef vaulted over the gunwale into the bay, and went hand over hand around the outside of the ship.

“King of Norway!”

Conn straightened, looking around. Aslak’s big dragon was gliding up just off his bow. The big bald Jomsviking stood by the mast.

“You don’t look so good,” Aslak shouted. “Eirik’s claws ripped you.”

Conn pointed toward Hakon’s fleet. “Is he giving up?” He bent to bail; the water was coming in as fast as he and his crew threw it out again.

“No—He’s just gone for help,” Aslak bellowed.

Raef’s head appeared above the gunwale, near Conn’s knee; he boosted himself smoothly up onto the ship. His left side was all bruised, Conn saw, and he was bleeding from a cut on his arm, but he looked hale enough.

Raef said, “The ship is sinking. I think that damned toothed thing tore one of the strakes loose.”

Aslak bawled, “Come over here! Come on—half my crew’s gone anyway.” He turned, and gave orders, and his ship began to scull sideways toward Conn’s.

Conn shouted, “Seabird—everybody—go over!” He waved his arm. They were already scrambling over so fast the ship rocked, even wallowing half-full of water. Conn went back into the stern and got Finn.

The boy was only half-conscious. His leg had swollen fat enough to split his legging, the flesh black underneath. Conn lifted him up and he whined. Raef came and helped him carry Finn onto Aslak’s ship. They set him down in the hollow of the sterncastle, behind the steering bench. Raef went off immediately. Conn found some beer, but Finn choked on it. His eyes opened, wide and dark with pain. Conn left the beer by him and stood up.

Amidships he saw Raef standing also, his arms at his sides, watching Seabird go down. Conn went up beside him. For a while their dragonship seemed to float, still, even awash, but then suddenly it went down out of sight into the dark green deep. The last thing he saw was her little fierce-eyed dragon head. Raef said nothing, only stood there. Conn felt the heart in him crack like a rock in the fire.

He looked around, and found Aslak up by the bow. He went there, looking toward Hakon’s fleet against the far shore. Where they were, in the center of the bay, the Jomsvikings were drinking and eating and bailing their ships out. Conn could see three other ships sinking in a single glance.

He said, “What kind of help is Hakon looking for?”

Aslak had a little skin of beer and he took a pull on it. He nodded with his head toward the island in the middle of the bay.

“You see that island? It’s called the Blessed Place. There are altars there half as old as the Ash Tree. Hakon may have a problem. He switched sides once too often. I’ve heard his patron goddesses are still angry for when he turned Christian.”

He slung an arm around Conn’s shoulders. “I’m glad to have you on board, boy—you’re a damned good fighter.”

Conn flushed; to hide this pleasure he turned, and glanced around at his crew. That took the glow away. He had not realized how many were gone. He was losing everything— his ship, the crew that made her fly. He had to win now.

He turned back to Aslak. “This Christian thing seems common enough. Even Sweyn’s been primesigned.” He took the skin and drank, and leaned out to pass the skin to Raef.

Aslak was sitting on the front bench, his knees wide, and his arms bent across them. “Hakon didn’t stay a Christer very long—just until he got away from Bluetooth.”

“So he’s betrayed everybody,” Conn said.

“Oh, yes. At least once. And beaten everybody. German, Swede, Dane, and Norse. At least once.” With a grimace Aslak stretched one leg out and rubbed his calf. Blood squished from the top of his shoe.

Conn said, “But we are winning this one.”

Aslak said, “Yes, I think so. So far.”

VI.

In the blazing sun past noon Hakon’s ships gathered again, and the golden dragon was in the center. They came forward again across the bay, and the Jomsvikings swung into lines to meet them.

Even as they rowed up a cold wind began to blast. Conn, pulling an oar in the front of Aslak’s ship, felt the harsh slash of the air on his cheek and looked west and saw a cloud boiling up over the horizon, black and swelling like a bruise on the sky. His skin went all to gooseflesh and his dream came back to him. The line of the Jomsviking ships swept toward Hakon and the storm cloud climbed up over half the sky, heavy and dark, the wind ripping streamers away like hair. Under it the air flickered, thick and green.

Conn bent to his oar. Up the center of Aslak’s ship came four men with spears, which they cast, but the wind flung them off like splinters. A roll of thunder boomed across the sky. Inside the towering cloud lightning glowed. The first drops fell, and then all at once sheets of rain hammered down.

Aslak was screaming the oar-chant, because of the mixed crew. Conn threw all his strength into each stroke. The rain battered on his head, his bare shoulders, streamed cold down his chest. Hakon’s ships in their line loomed over them; he shipped the oar and drawing his sword wheeled toward the bow.

As he rose the wind met him so hard he had to stiffen himself against it, and then suddenly as if the sky broke into tiny pieces and fell on him, it began to hail.

He stooped, half-blinded in the white deluge, feeling the ship under him rub another ship, and saw through the haze of flying ice the shape before him of a man with an axe. He struck. Raef was beside him, hip to hip. The axe came at him and he slashed again, blind, into the white whirling storm. Somebody screamed, somewhere. There was hail all in his beard, his hair, his eyebrows. Abruptly the booming fall stopped. The rain pattered away and the sun broke through, glaring.

He staggered back a step. The ship was full of hailstones and water; Raef, beside him, slumped down on the bench, gasping for breath. Blood streamed down his face, his shoulders. Conn wheeled to look past the bow, toward Hakon’s men.

The Tronder fleet had backed off again, but they were not fleeing; they were letting Sigvaldi flee.

Conn let out a howl of rage. Off toward the west, at the end of the Jomsviking line, Sigvaldi’s big dragon suddenly had broken out of line, was stroking fast away up the bay, and behind it, the other Jomsviking ships were peeling out of their formation and following.

Conn leapt up onto the gunwale of Aslak’s ship, his hand on the dragon’s neck, and shouted, “Run! Run, Sigvaldi, you coward! Remember your vow? The Jomsviking way, is it—I’ll not run—not if I’m the last man here and he sends all the gods against me, I’ll not run!”

From behind him came a howl from Aslak’s ship and the ships beyond. Conn pivoted his head to see them—back there all the other men shouted, and shook their fists toward Sigvaldi, and waved their swords at Hakon. Bui in their midst bellowed like a bull, red-faced. There were ten ships, he thought. Ten left, from sixty. Aslak stood before him, and put his hand on Conn’s shoulder and met his eyes.

“If it’s my doom here, I’ll meet it like a man. Let’s show them how true Jomsvikings fight!”

Conn gripped his hand. “To the last man!”

“It will be that,” Raef said, behind him.

Bui shouted, from the next dragon, “Aslak! Aslak! King of Norway! Lash the ships together!”

Aslak’s head pivoted, looking toward Hakon. “He’s coming.”

“Hurry,” Conn said.

They drew all the ships together, gunwale to gunwale, and lashed them with the rigging through the oar holes; so all the men were free to fight, and the ships formed a sort of fighting floor. The Tronder fleet was spreading out to encircle them. Conn went back into the stern of Aslak’s dragon, where Finn lay, his eyes closed, still breathing, and pulled a shield across him. Then he went back up beside Raef.

VII.

Horns blew in the Tronder fleet, the sound rolling around the bay, and then the ships all at once closed on the Jomsvikings on their floating ship-island. The air darkened, the cold wind blasted. The rain began to fall, and like icy rocks the hail descended on them again. Conn could barely stand against the wind and the pelting hailstones. Through the driving white he saw a man with an axe heave up over the gunwale, another just behind, and he slashed out, and on the hailstrewn floor he slipped and fell on his back. Raef strode across him. Raef slashed wildly side to side with his sword, battling two men at once, until Conn staggered up again, and cut the first axeman across the knees and dropped him.

The hail stopped. In the rain they battered at a wall of axeblades trying to hack their way over the gunwale. Horns blew. The Tronders were falling back again. Conn stepped back, breathing hard, his hair in his eyes; his knee was swelling and hurt as if somebody was driving a knife into it. The sun came out again, blazing bright.

On the next ship Bui swayed back and forth, covered with blood. Both hands were gone. His face was hacked to the bone. He stooped, and looped his stumped arms through the handles of his chest of gold.

“All Bui’s men overboard,” he shouted, and leapt into the bay, the gold in his arms. He sank at once into the deep.

The sunlight slanted in under a roof of cloud. The long sundown had begun. Beneath the clouds the air was already turning dark. Hakon’s horns blew their long booming notes, pulling his fleet off.

Aslak sank down on a bench. The side of his face was mashed so that one eye was almost invisible. Raef sat next to him, slack with fatigue. Conn went down the ship, whose whole side had taken the Tronder attack. He was afraid if he sat down his knee would stiffen entirely. What he saw clenched his belly to a knot.

Arn lay dead on the floor, his head split to the red mush of his brain. The two men next to him were bleeding, but alive, were Jomsvikings, not his. Beyond them Rugr slumped, and Conn stooped beside him and tried to rouse him but he fell over, lifeless. Two other dead men lay on the floor of the ship and he had to climb across a bench to get around them. He went up to the stern, where Finn lay, still breathing, in the dark.

Conn laid one hand on him, as if he could hold the life in him. He looked back along the ship, at the living and wounded, and saw no other face that had rowed on Seabird with him save Raef’s. Along the length of Aslak’s ship, he met Raef’s eyes, and knew his cousin was thinking this too.

The ship-fortress was sinking. All over the cluster of lashed hulls, men were dipping and rising, bailing out the water and ice. Several other men came walking across the wooden island, stepping from gunwale to gunwale. They were gathering down by Aslak and Conn went back that way, wading through a soup of hail and rainwater that got deeper toward the bow. He sat down next to Raef, with the other men, slumped wearily around Aslak.

All save him and Raef were Jomsvikings. Havard had a skin of beer and held it out to Conn as he sat. Beside him another captain was looking around them. “How many of us are left?”

Aslak shrugged. “Maybe fifty. Half wounded. Some really bad wounded.” His voice was a little thick from the mess of his face.

Conn took a deep pull on the skin of beer. The drink hit his stomach like a fist. But a moment later the warmth spread through him. He handed the skin on to Raef, just behind him.

The Jomsviking across from Conn said, “Hakon will sit out the night on the shore, in comfort. Then they’ll finish us off tomorrow, unless we all just drown tonight.”

Conn said, “We have to swim for it.” He had a vague idea of reaching shore, and walking around and surprising Hakon from behind.

Havard leaned forward, his bloody hands in front of him. “That’s a good idea. We could probably make that side, there.” He pointed the other way from Hakon.

“That’s far,” Raef said. “Some of these men can’t swim two strokes.”

Aslak said, “We could lash some spars together. Make a raft.”

Havard leaned closer to Conn, his voice sinking. “Look. The ones who can make it, should. Leave the rest behind—they’re dying anyway.”

Conn thought of Finn, and the red rage drove to his feet. He hit Havard in the face as hard as he could. The Jomsviking pitched backwards head over heels into the half foot of water on the floor. Conn wheeled toward the others.

“We take everybody. All, or none.”

Aslak was grinning at him. The other men shifted a little, glaring down at Havard, who sat up.

“Look. I was just—”

“Shut up,” Aslak said. “Let’s get moving. This ship is sinking.”

In the slow-gathering dark they tied spars together into a square, and bound sails over it. The rain held off. On the raft they laid the ten wounded men who could not move by themselves, and the other men swam behind the raft to push it.

The icy water gripped them. They left the sinking ships behind them. At first they moved steadily along but after a while men started to lag behind, to drag on the raft. Havard cried, “Keep up!” Across the way someone tried to climb onto the spars and the men beside him pulled him back.

Next to Conn, Aslak said, “We’ll never make it.” He was gasping; he laid his head down on the spar a moment. Conn knew it was true. He was exhausted, he could barely kick his legs. Aslak lost his grip, and Conn reached out and grabbed hold of him until the Jomsviking could get his hands back to the spar.

Raef said, breathless, “There’s a skerry—”

“Go,” Conn said.

The skerry was only a bare rock rising just above the surface of the bay. They hauled and kicked and dragged the raft into the low waves lapping it. The rock was slippery and it took all Conn’s strength to haul Finn up off the raft. Raef dragged Aslak after them and above the waterline they lay down on the rock, and instantly Conn was asleep.

Hail fell again in the night. Conn woke, and crawled over to Finn, to protect him from the worst of it. After the brief crash abruptly stopped he realized that the body under him was as cold as the rock.

He thought of the other dead—of pop-eyed Gorm, and Odd, whose sister he had loved once, and Skeggi and Bjorn, Sigurd and Rugr—he remembered how only the night before, they were all alive, speaking of the battle to come, how its fame and theirs would ring around the world until the end of time—now who would even remember their names, when all those who knew them were dead with them? The battle might be a long-told story but the men were already forgotten.

He would remember. But he would be dead soon himself. Hakon had beaten him. He put his face against the cold stone and shut his eyes.

In the morning Raef woke up, battered and stiff, starving and thirsty. All around him on the rock the other men lay slumped asleep, or dead. Between him and Conn, Finn was dead. Raef crawled up higher on the skerry and found a hollow where some hail had fallen and mostly melted. He plunged his face into the ice-studded water and drank. When he lifted his head, he saw, on the bay, the dragons coming for them.

He slid back to Conn, yelling, the men stirring awake, all but the dead, but then the dragons reached them, and Hakon’s men swarmed over them.

VIII.

Raef had never heard exactly how the Jomsvikings had offended Thorkel Leira, but clearly the wergild was going to be very high. The big Tronder had killed three men already and he was lining up the rest of the prisoners for the same. He had started with those who were nearly dead anyway and now another wounded man stumbled exhausted between two slaves, who made him kneel down and twisted a stick in his hair.

Raef had already counted; there were nine men in the line between him and Conn. The Tronders had tied their hands behind their backs and strung them along the beach, here, and bound their feet together, like trussed lambs. Down the shore, on the pebbles between them and the beached dragons, stood several men, passing a drinking horn and watching Thorkel Leira at his work. One was the man in the gold-rimmed helmet, captain of the iron ship, who was Eirik the Jarl; another was his father, Hakon the Jarl himself.

Thorkel Leira took a long pull on a drinking horn and gave it to one of the slaves. As he took hold of his sword again, Hakon said, “You, there, what do you think about dying?”

The Jomsviking, kneeling there, his hands bound, his head stretched out for the killing stroke, said, “I don’t care. My father did it. Tonight I’ll drink Odin’s ale, Thorkel, but you will be despised for this forever. Slash away.”

Thorkel raised the sword and struck off his head. The slave took the head by the hair and carried it off to the heap by the shore.

Conn said, “You know, I don’t like how this is going.”

Raef thought the Jomsvikings were too ready for dying. He was not; he rubbed his bound wrists frantically back and forth, and up and down, trying to get some play in the rope. The sun was hot on his shoulders. Another man went up before Thorkel Leira.

“I don’t mind dying, but I will do it the way I have lived, facing everything. So I ask you to kill me straight ahead, and not bent over, and not from behind.”

“So be it,” said Thorkel, and stepping forward raised his sword over his shoulder and struck the man straight down the face, cleaving through the top of his skull. The Jomsviking never flinched, his eyes open until his body slumped.

Thorkel was getting tired, Raef thought; the big Tronder had trouble getting his sword out of the body. He called for the drinking horn again and drained it. Now another was kneeling down in front of Hakon and Eirik and the others, and Thorkel again asked him if he were afraid to die.

“I’m a Jomsviking,” the kneeling man said. “I don’t care one way or the other. But we have often spoken among us about whether a man remains conscious at all after his head is cut off, and here is a chance to prove it. Cut off my head, and if I am still conscious, I will raise my hand.”

Beside Raef, Conn gave a choked incredulous laugh. Thorkel stepped forward, and slashed off the head; it took him two strokes to get it entirely off. The two jarls and their men crowded around the body and looked. Then they stepped back, and solemnly Eirik the Jarl turned to the Jomsvikings and announced, “His hand did not move.”

Conn said, “That was pretty stupid. In a few minutes, we’ll all know for ourselves.” Along the rope line, the Jomsvikings laughed as if they were at table hearing jokes.

Thorkel turned and glared at him, and then the next man knelt before him, and when he turned to this one, he missed the first stroke. He hit the back of the man’s head, knocking him down, and then his shoulders, and didn’t cut off his head until the third try.

“I hope you have better aim with your prick, Thorkel,” Conn shouted.

The Jomsvikings let up a yell of derision, and even Eirik the Jarl smiled, his hands on his hips. Someone called, “That’s why his wife’s always so glad to see me coming, I guess!”

Half a dozen men shouted, “You mean Ingebjorg? Is that why, do you think?”

Thorkel’s face twisted. He wheeled around, and pointed at Conn.

“Bring him. Bring him next!”

The guard came and untied Conn’s feet. Raef suddenly saw some chance here; he licked his lips, afraid of croaking, a weakling voice, and called out, “Wait.”

The Jomsvikings were yelling taunts at Thorkel, who stood there with his mouth snarling, his long sword tilted down, but Eirik heard Raef and looked toward him. “What do you want?”

“Kill me first,” Raef said. “I love my brother too much, I don’t want to see him die. If you kill me first, I won’t have to.”

Eirik scowled at him, and Hakon made a snort. “Why should we do what you want?” But Thorkel strode forward, the sword in both hands, shouting.

“Bring him! Bring him! I’ll kill them both at once!”

The slave untied Raef’s feet, and pulled him up. Conn was already standing, and his feet were already untied. Raef gave him a swift look, walking past, and went down before the jarls on the shore.

His ribs hurt where he had taken blows in the battle, he was walking a little crooked, and he was tired and hungry, but he summoned himself together. Thorkel’s slaves came up beside him, and pushed him on the shoulder to make him kneel down; one had the stick to twist in his hair.

He stepped back from the hands on him. “I am a free man. No slave shall put his dirty hands in my hair.”

The Norse all laughed, except Eirik the Jarl, who snapped, “He’s just stalling. He’s afraid to die. Somebody hold his hair for him, and we’ll see how he does it.”

One of his hirdmen stepped forward. “My privilege.” He came up before Raef. “Kneel by yourself, then, if you’re free.”

Raef knelt down, and the Tronder took hold of his long pale hair and stepped back again, and so stretched Raef’s head forward like a chicken on the block. Raef’s heart was hammering in his chest and he was sick to his stomach. His neck felt ten feet long and thin as a whisker; he watched Thorkel approaching in the corner of his eye.

He said, “Try to do this right, will you?” Up on the beach there was a chorus of jeers.

Thorkel snarled. He swung up his sword, the long sun glinting off the blade, and brought it down hard.

With all his strength Raef lunged back and out from under that falling blade, yanking after him the man holding his hair, so that the Tronder’s hands passed under the falling sword and Thorkel slashed them both off at the wrist. The Tronder howled, his arms spurting blood. Still on his knees, Raef staggered his upper body straight. The Tronder’s hands had clenched in his hair, and he had to toss his head to get them out.

Thorkel wheeled around, hauling the sword back for a fresh blow. His hands still tied behind his back, Raef rolled sideways against the big man’s ankles, and brought him crashing down, so that the sword flew out of his hands.

Raef struggled to get to his feet. Thorkel sprawled on the ground. Even the Jarls were laughing at him. But Conn had leapt forward even as the sword fell. He knelt astride it, ran his bound hands down the edge, and leapt up again, freed, the sword in his fists.

Thorkel staggered up. Conn took a long stride toward him, the sword swinging around level, and sliced Thorkel’s head off while the big man was still rising.

A roar went up from the Jomsvikings. Conn wheeled toward Hakon.

“Hakon, I challenge you, face to face!”

Eirik the Jarl had drawn his sword, was shouting, waving his arms, calling his hirdmen to him. Raef lurched to his feet, close to Conn. Conn’s hands were dripping blood; in his fury to get free he had cut himself all over. Quickly he turned and sliced through Raef’s bonds. Eirik and his men were closing in on them.

Then Hakon called out, again, “Hold. Hold your hands. Who are you, there, Jomsviking? I’ve seen you two before.”

The Tronders stood where they were. Conn lowered the sword. “I’m not a Jomsviking. I’m Conn Corbansson.”

“I thought so,” Hakon said. “These are the sons of that Irish wizard, who helped Sweyn Tjugas overcome Bluetooth. I told you Sweyn was behind this.”

Eirik said, “So.” He lowered the long sword in his hand. “Still, we’ve won. Good enough. That just now was cleverly done, and to go on is a waste of men. Thorkel’s dead, he needs no more revenge. Let me have these two.”

Hakon said, “Well, I remember the wizard, who once gave me good advice. I will not say his name. Do what you like with them all.”

Eirik said, “You, Corbanssons, if I let you live, will you come into my service?”

Conn said, “You are a generous man, Jarl Eirik. But you should know I swore at Helsingor never to go back to Denmark until I was King of Norway, which I don’t think will sit well with either Sweyn or you Tronders. But those men—” He swung his arm at the hillside, at the twenty men still roped together on the grass. “Those men will serve you, better than any other. Those are the true Jomsvikings!”

At that there was a yell that went on for a while. Raef saw that Eirik started to smile, his hands on his hips, and Hakon shrugged and walked away toward the ships. Eirik gave a word, and the Jomsvikings were set free.

Then Hakon the Jarl came up to Conn. He was as Raef remembered him, not tall, with a crisp black beard, and the coldest eyes he had ever seen.

He said, “King of Norway, was it? I think anyone you do choose to serve will find you more trouble than help. But tell me what you will do now that you are free again.”

Conn glanced at Raef beside him. “We won’t go back to Sweyn, that’s certain. We promise to go somewhere else and not bother you.”

Aslak came up to them and shook their hands and clapped them both on the back. Even Havard grinned at them, over Hakon’s shoulder.

Hakon said, “Then go. But if I catch you again in Norway you’re done.”

“Agreed,” Conn said, and went on down the beach, Raef beside him. After a while, he said, “I think we hammered that vow.”

“We, it is now,” Raef said. “Don’t get so drunk next time. We should both be dead. Like everybody else.”

“But we’re not,” Conn said. He had lost his sword, his ship, his crew, but he felt light, fresh, as if he had just come newly alive again. “I don’t know what to make of that, but I will make something. I swear it. Let’s go.”

First published in Warriors, edited by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois.

About the Author

Cecelia Holland is one of the world’s most highly acclaimed and respected historical novelists, ranked by many alongside other giants in that field such as Mary Renault and Larry McMurtry. Over the span of her thirty year career, she’s written almost thirty historical novels, including The Firedrake, Rakessy, Two Ravens, Ghost on the Steppe, Death of Attila, Hammer For Princes, The King’s Road, Pillar of the Sky, The Lords of Vaumartin, Pacific Street, Sea Beggars, The Earl, The King in Winter, The Belt of Gold, The Serpent Dreamer, The High City, Kings of the North, and a series of fantasy novels, including The Soul Thief, The Witches Kitchen, The Serpent Dreamer, and Varanger. She also wrote the well-known science fiction novel Floating Worlds, which was nominated for a Locus Award in 1975. Her most recent book is a new fantasy novel, Dragon Heart.

Gray Wings

Karl Bunker

It was just carelessness. I’d gotten into the wake turbulence of an old jetliner that was still low after taking off from Lagos. The wingtip vortices off of those old buckets can trail behind them for fifty or a hundred kilometers, and . . . well, I was careless.

So I tumbled and spun and twisted and generally had a bad time of it, and then I fell. By the time I was wings-up and face-down again, I didn’t have much altitude left and the ground was rushing up to greet me. My wings had folded in tight during my tumble, and at the speed I was falling I’d rip my sternum open if I tried to unfurl them too quickly. So I went easy, feathering open slowly. I turned into the wind, trying to translate my downward momentum into forward. I furled out more and more, listening to the fibers that held my chest together go snap, snap, snap.

But it was working; I was falling slower. There was a treeless valley to my right, so I teased out a banking turn in that direction. I skimmed over the crest of a low hill, glancing down to watch the ground blur past me with two meters to spare. Then I looked up again—too late.

There was a building straight ahead of me, and all I had time to do was close my eyes. I hit the thatched roof and ripped through it with a whooshing, crunching sound. Then there was another fraction of a second of blind freefall, and then my hands and chest and stomach hit a hard-packed dirt floor and I skidded to a stop.

I was lying inside a low building. There were broken lengths of wood and piles of straw scattered around me, underneath me, on top of me. I took a slow breath, then started looking at my body, moving as little as possible. There was a long ragged gash across my shoulder and partway down my right breast, but it was already closing. My left leg was worse, with both bones below the knee broken, the tibia piercing the skin and the fabric of my unitard. That seemed to be it for body damage. I turned my head carefully and looked back at my wings. “Shit!” I yelled. The main spar of both wings was snapped just before the elbow joint, the bloody carbon fibers extending like brush bristles from the broken ends.

I lay still for a while, just breathing. Then I sat up and grabbed my left shin above and below the break. I shut off all pain and deadened the muscles, and then started pulling and twisting. After a few attempts I got the broken ends of the bones lined up. I clamped both hands over the break and held, counting out 120 elephants. Somewhere around ninety my nerve-shutoff timed out and pain came roaring back, and I groaned and whimpered and sniffled.

When I was done counting, and a while after that, I opened my eyes again. I was lying on my side and there was an old woman looming over me. Black-skinned and deeply wrinkled, her mouth was open in what might have been a smile, showing several missing teeth. She said something in a language I didn’t understand, then in thickly accented English: “An anchel, yes? We have a little girl-child anchel fallen from heaven, eh?” She laughed, then straightened up and walked away, kicking aside a pile of straw as she went to a door and left.

I looked around at the building I was in. It seemed to be a small barn, with a hayloft and unglazed windows on all four walls. Beyond those walls, I was in the dead center of nowhere. I didn’t know where I was to within two hundred kilometers, and wouldn’t until I hit the Niger River sometime in the next day or so, where the beacon buoys would tell me whether to head upstream or down.

The door swung open again and two people came through it: The old woman and a young man. The woman spoke in her unknown language to the man, pointed at me, then at the hole in the roof. She laughed her thin, dry laugh. The man walked up to me and bent over at the waist, examining me. Belatedly, I thought to check the front of my unitard to see if my breasts were showing. Not that there’s much to look at there, but some cultures are touchy about that sort of thing. He systematically looked me over: legs, torso, arms, face, and finally the broken wings that sprouted from my back. Then he spoke, his accent not as thick as the old woman’s. “How bad you are hurt?” he said.

“I— I’m all right. My leg was . . . But it will heal.” I realized that he was in fact almost a boy, possibly still in his teens. He was tall and very thin and dressed in blue jean shorts and a T-shirt. “My name is Amy,” I said. “I’m flying in the Kitaroharo Race—do you know it?”

The young man looked up, through the hole in the roof to the sky beyond. “Yes,” he said slowly. “The flyer races. They give you wings and you fly; sometimes you race. I have heard of this—seen videos.” Suddenly he dropped to his knees. He bent his head, looking closely at my leg in the dim light. “Are you sure is okay? There is much blood.”

“Yes, it will be fine.” I peeled up the soggy leg of my unitard to reassure him. The pain had subsided to a dull throb by now.

With one finger he traced a path in the air, close to my skin but not touching it, following the line of the scar that showed where the bone had come through. It was a swollen, light-colored streak against the darker ash-gray of my skin. He withdrew his hand, closing his fingers. “You fix yourself? Of course—you have healing nanos, yes? Good. Very good.” He stood up again. “Dabir is me—is my name,” he said, touching his chest. He smiled, his teeth bright in the gloom. His face was beautiful, with wide, innocent eyes, high cheekbones, and a long nose that flared at the nostrils. “I am please to meet you, Amy.” The smile flashed again and he waved vaguely in the direction of the door he had come through. “Our connection is dead right now, but I can go to the village, to the computers there. Shall I call to Lagos maybe? Or you have family I should call? People who come get you?”

“No!” I blurted. “If you do that they’ll take me out of the race, and I won’t qualify for the Asiatics this season. I can’t win this race now, probably can’t even place in the top ten, but the time limit for finishing is still six days away. I can make it to Casablanca by then—” I twisted around to look at where my wings were broken, the upper parts of the spars dangling limply, “if I can repair my wings fast enough.”

“You can fix your wings yourself?” Dabir asked. “Like your leg?”

“Not quite. They need to be splinted until they self-repair, and I can’t reach them to do that. I’ll need help.”

Dabir went around behind me and crouched down again. A moment later he made a soft grunting sound. “You are bleeding,” he said. “The broken part of the wings—it bleeds.”

“Yes. They’re a part of me, connected to my blood supply. But it’s okay; they’ll only bleed a little, and it doesn’t hurt.” This wasn’t entirely true; I could feel the two breaks in the main spars, especially when the broken ends flexed, and while it wasn’t anything like the pain in my leg had been, it was damned unpleasant.

He came around in front of me again and squatted. He looked at me, meeting my eyes for a moment and then shyly looking away. He was sitting with his knees up and his forearms resting on them. His hands were long and delicate-looking, with tapering fingers. “Okay,” he said. “If you can explain to me how to make this splint, I will try to do it.”

Over the next hour or so, Dabir found four suitable pieces of wood and some heavy string. He got squeamish when I told him he’d have to punch a row of holes through the wing membrane so he could wrap the string around the spar and the two pieces of splint, but after some hesitation he did it. By the time he was finished my neck was stiff from craning to look around behind me to watch what he was doing. “Thank you,” I said when he was finally done. “That’s great. By tomorrow this time they should be strong enough to fly.”

“That soon?” Dabir shook his head, smiling. “Is amazing.”

As I rubbed the ache out of my neck I realized I was thirsty, hungry, and exhausted. The day had taken a lot out of me. “Could I have some water?” I said.

“Oh!” Dabir practically leapt to his feet, and then flinched, something in his leg or hip hurting him. His hands were covered with my blood, some of it dried and some still wet. “I am sorry,” he said. “I should have brought you water sooner. And food.” He left, walking quickly and with a limp. Crouching down to work on my wings must have aggravated something in his leg. A few moments later he was back with a big mug full of water, which he handed to me before hurrying away again.

This time he was gone for several minutes, and when he came back he had a plate of food. There were boiled greens and some kind of meat with a thick sauce. He held the plate out to me with one hand and a fork with the other.

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that, Dabir. There’s no need, really. I can eat anything. My nanos can digest cellulose—grass, raw leaves, anything. You don’t have to give me your . . . ” I stopped, feeling stupid. As I’d been speaking, Dabir’s hand and the plate it was holding drifted down and toward his side, until it looked like all the plate’s contents were about to spill onto the ground.

“You do not want?” he said.

I held my hands out for the plate and the silverware. “Yes, I do,” I said. “Thank you. It’s very kind of you.”

Once I started eating, I could barely shovel the food into my mouth fast enough. Dabir sat cross-legged—as I was sitting—on the dirt floor a few feet away from me. He wasn’t watching me eat, but wasn’t not watching either.

“What is this building?” I asked, partly to force myself to slow down my gobbling and partly just for something to say.

“A barn for goats we used to have,” he said. He made a loose-jointed wave of his arm that seemed to indicate more than just the building. “We had many goats. Then they all get a disease, last year. They all die.”

“Ah, that’s too bad,” I mumbled, staring down at my plate. I was trying to decide if the meat underneath the tamarind sauce was real or a synthetic, maybe from a UN-Aid rations pack. I went on eating.

A minute later the old woman came in, carrying another plate of food like mine, but with less meat. She handed it to Dabir, grinning her gap-toothed smile at some secret joke. She glanced at me, croaked a few dry, laughing words at Dabir in their language, grinned some more, and then went away. Dabir avoided my eyes after she was gone, and began to eat, deftly plucking food from his plate with his long, thin fingers.

I looked down at my own hands, at my charcoal-gray skin. I wondered if he thought I was born with skin this color, thought it had anything to do with race.

“My grandmother likes you,” Dabir said after a little while. “She calls you our little wounded angel.”

“That’s what she called me when she found me,” I said. “‘A little girl-child angel, fallen from heaven’ she said.” I paused. “Does she really think . . . ?”

He looked at me with a smile that made me feel like the idiot I was. “No, is only a joke,” he said. “Most strangers she doesn’t like very much.” His smile grew into a soft chuckle. “But you know, most strangers don’t fall out of the sky and land in our barn.”

I looked up at the roof of the barn. I’d broken through some of the timbers that supported the thatching, and about a third of the roof was slumping inward precariously. “I’m sorry about the damage,” I said. “Before I leave, give me your information and I’ll send money to you for repairs.”

He made a dismissive motion with his head. “Damage doesn’t matter. There are no goats now.”

“But you’ll be getting more, won’t you?”

“Tell me about flying,” he said. “What is it like?”

“It’s . . . pretty much what you would expect.” I got to my feet as I spoke, stretching myself out straight, testing my weight on the newly-repaired bones of my left leg. I took a few tentative steps, looking behind me at my wings to make sure Dabir’s splints were holding. Luckily the peaked roof of the barn was tall enough that I didn’t have to worry about the elbows of my wings hitting anything. “You’re up high, you look down, it’s quiet, it’s cold and windy, it’s wet when you fly into a cloud . . . ” I glanced at Dabir, feeling awkward. I didn’t talk about the feeling of the wings pulling at the air, catching it, clutching at it like it was some huge living thing carrying me on its back, the feeling of inhuman strength in my wings, the roaring, screaming, blazing intoxication of it all, burning through me with every flight, every liftoff, like a drug.

I stared down hard at the ground. When I looked at Dabir a moment ago I’d noticed for the first time that he had a long, ragged scar along the outside of his right leg, starting at the knee and stretching down halfway to his ankle. The skin was rough and puckered, the two sides of the gash misaligned; the wound must not have even been sutured, much less nano-healed.

“I’d like to walk around outside, if I may,” I said.

“Of course!” He bounced to his feet and walked with me to the door. With both of us standing, I barely came up to his shoulder. “You are small—tiny!” he laughed down at me. “But you are not so young as you look, yes? I mean, not a girl, like my grandmother thought at first.”

“No, Dabir, not so young as I look.” Moving carefully, I bent low to angle my folded wings through the doorway ahead of me. I thought of my friend Nila, and the party she’d thrown for me to celebrate my new wings. She’d had every door and doorway in her home modified into a gothic arch with a peak three meters high, so I could walk from room to room without bending over. And the next day, the party over, she’d had them all changed back.

Outside, the sun was getting low. Ahead of us was a sprawling field of some kind of crop; meter-high stalks of something dry and yellowing, with lots of bare dirt between each plant. To the right, not far away, was a tiny, unpainted wooden house with a flat roof of corrugated metal. It was crudely built, like the barn, but beyond that there was something about it that screamed of poverty and misery and ugliness. Looking at it made me feel hollowed out inside, and when I suddenly realized that Dabir might invite me in there, the thought terrified me.

“Not a good year for the millet,” Dabir said, as if apologizing, looking out over the field. “Good rain at first, but then not enough. Next year be better, we think.”

I walked in a mock-aimless direction, away from the house, taking deep breaths, waving my arms and flexing my wings slowly. I could feel energy from the sun soaking into my skin, coursing into the storage cells distributed through my body. But more than that I could feel that terrible little house, crouching behind me like a gargoyle. I was wishing desperately, frantically, that I could lift into the air and fly away now. That I could be back up in the cold sky where I belonged, where all of this would be far, far down, invisible below me.

Of course I’d known what I was flying over. I’d known people lived like this. Like this, and a hundred times worse than this in some places. There was famine in Sudan, the epidemic in New Guinea, collapsing economies here and there around the world. I knew all that, had known it since I was a child. But . . . But . . . But something.

Dabir was still at my side. “Are the splints holding okay?” I asked, half turning my back to him.

“Yes, they seem good,” he said after looking.

“This race I’m in, the Kitaroharo, is a solo race,” I said. “That means the racers have no support crew, no electronics, and we aren’t allowed to make contact with the local people. At least not on purpose. It’s okay if it happens by accident, if a racer makes a forced landing like I did. But normally we only land in remote areas, and we spend nights in the open, usually sleeping in trees. That’s why the race is only over sparsely populated areas.” I was saying all this with the plan of mumbling something about it being against the rules for me to spend the night in Dabir’s house, should he invite me.

“I am glad you crashed here,” he said, and then dipped his head in a gesture of embarrassment and apology. “I mean, I’m sorry you were hurt, but if you were going to crash somewhere . . . ” He grinned, waving his long, graceful hand as a way of finishing the sentence. “I am . . . happy to be able to help you.”

“You’ve been very generous, and I’m grateful,” I said. “With any luck I’ll be out of your hair tomorrow. Please let me know how I can send you some money, to pay for the barn, and to thank you for all your help.”

Dabir was looking at an angle into the sky, where there was nothing to look at. “And tomorrow . . . tomorrow I see you fly, yes?”

“Yes, tomorrow I fly.”

We walked around for a while in silence, ending up back at the barn as it was getting dark. Dabir went into his little house and came back out a few minutes later carrying a small, thin mattress and a blanket. “The roof in the house is low,” he said, holding his free hand palm-down a few inches over his head. “You would hit your wings. So you okay to sleep in here?” He nodded at the barn.

“Yes, that’s fine.”

Dabir went into the barn and laid the little mattress out on the floor. It was really just a blanket that had been folded in half and stitched up with something stuffed inside, probably dried millet leaves. “I’m sorry we have no better bed for you,” Dabir said, flipping out the blanket over the mattress.

“Dabir . . . Is this your bed?”

He tugged at the corners of the blanket, pretending not to hear me.

“I don’t need this, Dabir, really. I’m used to sleeping on the ground, and my body doesn’t get cold.” That last bit was pretty stupid of me, since the nighttime temperatures in this region are warm by anyone’s standards. Still feigning deafness, Dabir was backing away from the bed and from me, moving toward the door. “Damnit, Dabir . . . ” I said. I thought about picking the bed up and forcing it back into his arms, but I didn’t.

“Good night,” he said, smiling shyly and backing out the door.

As I lowered my face to his mattress there was the sweet smell of hay, and faintly beneath that, his sweat; a warm, living, human smell. I slept, jolting awake once through the night with my heart pounding from a dream I couldn’t remember.

The next morning I was up early, pacing around outside and slowly flexing my wings while keeping them mostly furled. There was barely a hint of dew on the ground, and it was evaporating away with the smell of wet dust. I heard someone coughing in the house. It was wet, hacking, feeble, coming from old lungs. It seemed it was never going to stop, and finally I went back into the barn and sat on the dirt floor and put my hands over my ears.

Some time later, Dabir came in with a bowl of porridge for my breakfast. While I ate, sitting cross-legged on the ground, I asked him to unlace the splints on my wings. When he was done with that I felt him running his hand over the wing membrane, feeling the texture of it. And then his hand was on my shoulder, near my neck, grazing over a part of me that wasn’t covered by my unitard.

“The wings, they look good,” he said. “The places where they were broken, there is only a small bump now.”

I went outside and made some experimental flaps with the wings half-unfurled, feeling for any twinges at the break sites. Nothing, or nothing too bad anyway. I flapped harder and harder, until Dabir was flinching and blinking his eyes at the rush of air and dust I was blowing up. The weight on my feet was becoming less and less, became nothing for a moment, and then another moment. I held my arms to the sides, tipped my body forward . . . And stopped, furling my wings in so quickly that I lost my balance, dropping to my knees and pitching forward to catch myself on my hands.

Dabir was at my side instantly, one hand on my arm and the other on my back. “Are you okay? Did you hurt something?” he asked.

“I’m all right.” I stayed on my hands and knees for a few moments. The left break site had flexed dangerously, and now it was throbbing with an ache that kept time with my heartbeat. “I just overdid it a little. I need a few more hours to heal.” I let Dabir help me to my feet, feeling his dry, callused hands holding me with gentleness and strength.

“Such power in your wings!” he said. “And they are huge when they open all the way! Amazing!” He was still holding me with one arm across my back, and with the word “huge” he swung his free arm over his head, sweeping it across the sky. “And your eyes!” he said.

“Eyes?”

“Your eyes, when you started to fly . . . ” He didn’t finish.

I went and sat on a bare patch of ground, spreading my wings out to the sun to gather energy and let the breaks finish healing. I fell asleep again.

When I woke I could see it was past noon already. I looked around for Dabir and found him in the millet field, deepening a dry irrigation ditch. “I’m ready to leave, Dabir,” I said.

“Ah.” He looked at me for a long time, and then smiled. “I get to see you fly. You finish this race and you qualify for the Asiatics, yes?”

“Yes,” I said, wishing I had his certainty about what I was going to do. We walked up to a small hillside where the high ground would help with my takeoff. Dabir’s grandmother was standing outside the doorway of the house, and when she saw me looking she lifted a hand and made one of her open-mouthed grins. “Dabir,” I said. “If you just tell me your last name, and the name of the nearest village, then I’ll be able to send you some money. It will pay for repairs to the barn, and enough so you could get some more goats, get medical care for your grandmother . . . ” My voice trailed away. He was just looking at me with that blank, boyish smile. Or maybe it was an old man’s smile. Maybe it was a smile of pity for the stupid, silly child who’d landed in his goat barn and who knew nothing, nothing, nothing about the world.

And then suddenly my arms are around him, my face pressed to his bony chest, my eyes wet. His hands touch my shoulders, my back, the side of my face, and then I turn away from him and I run down the hill, flapping frantically, tearing at the air, clawing my way up, and up, and up, then circling around to look down at him, both of his hands pressed to his mouth as he looks back up at me, his arm suddenly flailing out in a wave, piercingly childlike in the wild joy of it, and I climb up, straight up, pulling myself higher and higher to make him smaller, to make him smaller, to make him disappear.

First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, April-May 2013.

About the Author

Karl Bunker’s short stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Analog, Interzone, Cosmos, The Year’s Best Science Fiction, and elsewhere. In the past Bunker has been a software developer, jeweler, musical instrument maker, sculptor, and mechanical technician. He currently lives in a small town north of Boston, MA with his wife, sundry pets, and an assortment of wildlife.

The Age of the Excessive Machine:

Psychedelic SF, On-Screen and Off

Mark Cole

In 1975, a group of talented young men started work on an epic film version of Dune. It would have featured extravagant visual design, never before seen effects, an all-star cast (including Orson Welles, Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger)—and would have sparked a new age of spiritual awakening for the entire world!

At least, that’s Alejandro Jodorowsky’s version.

What little is known about it seems almost impossibly strange. He castrated Duke Leto and impregnated Jessica with a drop of his blood. The spice writhes as if it were alive. The Emperor rules from an upside-down room. Baron Harkonnen has a monstrous statue of himself for a mobile fortress. In the end, Paul is killed but becomes the collective consciousness of the planet Arakis—which then flies off to enlighten the entire Galaxy.

None of it has much to do with the novel. Instead it seems a mad hallucination; Dune on an acid trip and freaking out; a wild, psychedelic vision unimaginable except at the height of the turned-on Seventies.

Science fiction and psychedelia combined?

An improbable, almost impossible, combination—or so it seems. Yet for a brief moment they met—and not just for Jodorowsky and his team of “warriors,” but in some very mainstream films (and a few that definitely weren’t).

And, yes, even science fiction writers were psychedelic.

While easy to recognize, “psychedelic” remains harder to define. We associate it with bright primary colors and cartoonish design, like the legendary posters from the Fillmore.

However, much of the music at the Fillmore was also psychedelic, songs like “White Rabbit,” whose lyrics seem filled with ominous portent but whose meaning is elusive. Distortion, reverb, feedback, exotic instruments like the sitar, electronic music and effects give it a hazy, dreamy effect, much like being high.

In fact, what defines psychedelic matches the physical effects of hallucinogens. LSD had escaped the CIA’s mind control experiments and was spreading fast, thanks to people like Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. By 1965 its first symptoms had crept into SF cinema—most notably in a film aimed at children.

Science Fiction was not doing well in the theaters.

The glorious rush of the genre in the fifties had lost steam before the end of the decade. Science Fiction still got made but no one quite knew what to do with it. The results were strange; everything from realistic NASA flights to morality plays (mostly starring Charlton Heston), James Bond clones with aliens, cautionary tales extrapolated from the headlines, art-house science fiction, and even a few Fifties retreads.

To Milton Subotsky, science fiction was strictly for children.

It seems an odd fit. His Amicus films made the best non-Hammer Hammer horror films. But, instead of copying his rival’s horror-themed Quatermass films, he chose to adapt a children’s show. He even left the Amicus name off so he wouldn’t scare the parents away.

In Doctor Who and the Daleks, the formerly black-and-white planet Skaro—and even the Daleks—came in garish colors. While aimed at children, it is a radical shift from the subdued, even sterile, esthetic of the genre in the fifties. He also splashed the same bold colors all over Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 A.D. (1966), his 1967 children’s film, The Terrornauts, and even the final scenes of the Quatermass inspired They Came From Beyond Space (1967).

Similar elements also appeared in two 1965 Italian films:

Although he dabbled in every genre, the enormously talented Mario Bava is best remembered for his horror films—and the intense splashes of color lighting his castles and graveyards. However, when he threw them on the mist-shrouded Planet of the Vampires even the stark, modernistic interior of a spaceship became an eerie and shadowy place.

Three years later, he would create an entirely different psychedelic look for his other science fiction film, Danger: Diabolik, with bold modernist sets and the most extravagant end any supervillain ever met.

Wild, Wild Planet is nowhere near as accomplished as Bava’s film, but it is almost as colorful. It reaches its hallucinogenic peak on the planet Delphus. There Mike Halstead and his crew face not just wild op-art and futuristic design, but a scientist planning a fate worse than death for Mike’s girlfriend: he will cut her—and himself—in half, then fuse the two into a single person!

It has to be the single most insane plan ever conceived by a movie villain and sounds suspiciously like something out of William S. Burroughs. It seems fitting that it all ends when a flood of horrific red goo overwhelms the secret complex.

That same year, a strange underground science fiction film emerged from the heart of the psychedelic culture. Sins of the Fleshapoids, directed by Warhol acolyte Mike Kuchar, is a color silent with musical accompaniment and speech bubbles scratched onto the film (and, one suspects, largely improvised by the cast), about a robot revolution a million years from now. While sexy and a little perverse, it lacks the nudity, gore, and constant assault on the audience’s sensibilities of the later Warhol films.

One can also see the psychedelic in such films as Mission Stardust, Privilege (1967), Goke, Body Snatcher from Hell, Project X (1968) or Moon Zero Two (1969). But none of these were as influential as a film that was great science fiction in its own right: 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It’s stargate sequence dazzled audiences with a slit-scan light show created by Douglas Trumbull. Reportedly hippies would arrive at the theaters just in time to watch it lying on their backs, staring up at the screen. Curiously, such “trips” became de rigueur in these movies, in films as diverse as Silent Running, Brainstorm, Star Trek IV, and even Mission To Mars and Interstellar.

Barbarella (1968), however, was far more psychedelic in the fullest sense of the word.

Jane Fonda plays a naïve innocent saving the universe by having sex with everyone she meets. Roger Vadim adapted the French comic strip to show off his latest wife, and she keeps donning revealing new costumes only to have them torn off. Along the way she is attacked by killer dolls, thrown in a deadly aviary and nearly pleasured to death in Durand Durand’s “Excessive Machine.” Her shag-lined space ship looks like a giant pair of lips, women lounge about smoking “essence of man” from a giant hookah (with a man swimming inside), and it all ends with yet another flood of red goo. Even the film score is psychedelic.

Barbarella’s outrageous sexuality reflects a major cultural change underway in the European film industry: nudity and sex had suddenly become as acceptable on-screen as it was in the counter culture. Many of the science fiction films that followed rarely show up on television because so much would have to be cut. Some, like A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Man who Fell to Earth (1976) required heavy editing for the US market to avoid an “X” rating.

The cinematic experiments of the era also worked well with psychedelic science fiction. Alain Resnais took the fractured time lines of Last Year at Marienbad and gave them a more literal interpretation in 1968’s Je t’aime, Je t’aime, sending his hapless protagonist randomly back and forth through his past when he volunteers to test an organic, womb-like, time machine.

Billy Pilgrim came similarly unstuck in time in the film version of Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five (1972). He bounces between the horrors of war, his ordinary life back home, and an alien zoo on Tralfamador where he mates with a Hollywood starlet, against a score which plays deliberate counterpoint to the action. The Man who Fell to Earth has a similar, if less literal, non-linear plot, but as many art films of the era did it goes further, raising questions of how much of what we saw was real.

Another European trend—serious adult animation—also produced a classic psychedelic film: René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet (1973). Some have compared it to the early Métal Hurlant magazine: it overflows with strange creatures, bizarre ideas and, yes, even cartoon nudity.

Laloux would make another equally hallucinogenic science fiction movie long after psychedelia had faded away. Sadly, Gandahar (1988) remains mostly unseen in the US thanks to its topless female characters.

Underground animator Ralph Bakshi’s decidedly psychedelic 1977 film, Wizards is probably science fiction as well, although his post-apocalyptic world is full of elves and sorcerers. The film is beautiful, bizarre, and even brilliant—but it is also remarkably inconsistent and unfocused.

The 1981 anthology film, Heavy Metal, suffers from the same problems. The best segments—like Taarna’s quest for revenge, or the vintage Corvette dropping from orbit—are stunning. But who in the world thought it was a good idea to blend psychedelic space art with stoner comedy?

Psychedelic science fiction even had a small television presence, mostly on Britain’s ITV network.

While Gerry Anderson’s “Supermarionation” shows—like Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons—used lots of wild color, his finest moment came in the live action UFO (1970), where Sylvia Anderson’s fashions get billed in the opening credits. And no wonder: the official “uniforms” of SHADO include fishnet shirts for the sub crews; and silver mini-skirts, purple wigs, and exotic makeup for the girls manning Moonbase!

On the other hand, The Prisoner (1967) matches its trippy visuals of lava lamps, killer weather balloons, watchful statues, inexplicable technology, and deliberately old-fashioned surroundings with an equally trippy set of ideas: mind swapping, hypnosis, mental regression, virtual reality and even bedtime stories. The final episode is perhaps the most psychedelic, with an ape-masked Number One, a room full of controllers chanting “I, I, I . . . ” over and over, and a machine gun battle set to “All You Need Is Love.”

It all peaked in the mid-Seventies.

Saul Bass, who created iconic credit sequences for films like Vertigo, gave us Phase IV in 1974. It starts with a mysterious stellar event triggering a cosmic awakening of the ants, giving them collective intelligence. It abounds in psychedelic imagery, from the animated opening to the ants’ strange geometrical structures. Its distributors deleted the original “stargate” ending—a terrifying, often inexplicable montage of life in the ants’ new world—before its release. It remained unseen until 2012.

Zardoz (1974) mixes obscure philosophizing, weary eternals seeking death, and the Wizard of Oz with a giant floating head, Sean Connery in red, rubber shorts (with matching bandoleers), and an ending borrowed from Buster Keaton. It buries us under a steady barrage of strange visuals, from images projected on naked bodies, to shrink-wrapped people and a dazzling hall of mirrors battle between Connery and the immortal’s crystal computer. Zardoz combines knowing self-mockery with a grandiose sense of self-importance—which could be said about the psychedelic movement itself.

But perhaps the movie that best represents the whole era was the screen adaptation of Michael Moorcock’s first Jerry Cornelius novel, The Final Programme (1973). It seems at first glance a warped James Bond on acid, with Jon Finch as a dandified billionaire physicist with his own private fighter jet, Edwardian clothes, and black painted fingernails. But throw in the enigmatic Miss Brunner who somehow absorbs her lovers, Jerry’s far too loving interest in his sister, and a mysterious computer “programme” which might just save the world, and it becomes something far stranger.

Dr. Phibes director Robert Fuest creates a number of extravagant set pieces, like a gigantic pinball game with people rolling around in big plastic bubbles, or a chessboard door unlocked by the right moves. It ends with yet another, more satiric take-off of 2001’s stargate, as the programme fuses Jerry and Miss Brunner into a single being as they have sex. However, unlike the novel, where they produce a messianic savior (Jerry’s initials are no coincidence), it yields a deformed monster who describes the world with the word Miss Brunner used for one of her lovers:

“Tasty.”

The word “psychedelic” gets thrown around a lot when people talk about Moorcock—and the Cornelius novels, with their incompatible storylines and bizarre details deserve it.

Moorcock’s New Worlds magazine was the heart of the “New Wave” science fiction movement, which tried to bring experimental and literary approaches to the genre, often—as the films of the era did—fusing fantasy and science fiction elements. Other “New Wave” pioneers, like Harlan Ellison and his Dangerous Visions anthologies, or J.G. Ballard have been called psychedelic, although Ballard’s dark and crumbling worlds seem far from the word’s normal sense. To date only the Portuguese Low-Flying Aircraft (2002) and High Rise (2015) have adapted his SF to the screen. Neither is currently available in the US.

Curiously, Frank Herbert, whose Dune was inspired by Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Experience, rarely gets called “psychedelic.” Nor does Kurt Vonnegut, although the label gets slapped on a few of his novels.

And then there’s William S. Burroughs, a genuine counter-culture icon: some of his work—like Nova Express—is more or less science fiction, although his style includes such conceits as randomly inserted unrelated bits of prose. His books are so psychedelic that they’ve been said to be totally unfilmable, although David Cronenberg did make a movie loosely based on Naked Lunch. 1984’s Decoder tried to capture his spirit without directly adapting his work. Jürgen Muschalek used intense color and shadow to hide his minimal budget, adopting a disjointed and abrupt editing style to match Burrough’s heavily fragmented prose. The end result is more Cyberpunk than psychedelic, however, filled with revolution and dark, paranoid conspiracies.

Perhaps the handwriting on the wall first appeared in 1976 when the East German DEFA studios released In the Dust of the Stars. One wonders what the studio’s commissars thought of appropriating a clearly decadent Western style.

The last psychedelic science fiction films of the Seventies are among the most stylish (although the other elements seem less prominent). Logan’s Run (1976) remains one of the most memorable, with bold design and psychedelic excesses like the fiery ritual of Carrousel. But the wave of great genre films that followed—Star Wars, Alien, The Road Warrior and Blade Runner—all took place in used universes, where everything was battered and worn. It was a hostile climate for anything as unrealistic as psychedelia.

The Italians had produced more psychedelic science fiction than anyone else, and it lingered even after they started making Star Wars rip-offs. Their first, Star Crash (1978) is easily as colorful as Barbarella, and has such fantastic imagery as a Death Star knock-off in the shape of a giant hand. But a year later, The Humanoid looks exactly like what it is: a low-rent George Lucas copy.

By 1980, Flash Gordon looked atavistic. It is perhaps the most visually stunning psychedelic film ever made, set in a strange, mist-filled realm where floating islands fill the sky and the insanely colorful rockets and uniforms look as if they’d been ripped right out of Alex Raymond’s Sunday pages. Its campy score by Queen, its tongue-in-cheek humor, and the aggressive sexuality of Ming and Aura all came straight from the psychedelic playbook. But something has changed: sex is no longer redemptive. Barbarella would never have hesitated to use it to win over Ming.

Or perhaps it wasn’t that much of a change. Disturbing notes, like Ballard’s fetishists obsessed with car crashes or Alex’s Clockwork Orange rapes had been there all along. By 1982, the frigid protagonist of Liquid Sky, finds nothing but oppression in the sexual demands of those around her. When aliens seeking the endorphins released by orgasm start killing her lovers, she uses sex as a weapon—only to throw her own life away when the aliens try to leave without her. The film assaults us with garish color and bizarre fashions—and yet it is punk nihilism, not psychedelia.

Jodorowsky’s epic struggle to make Dune stalled out in 1982. He couldn’t raise the ten million he needed. Not a single frame of film seems to have resulted from his effort.

The psychedelic culture itself lost its innocence around the same time, descending into chaotic punk rebellion.

While psychedelic elements—particularly “stargate” sequences—still occasionally surface in science fiction films, not only has their hour passed but the grungy “realism” of Eighties SF has given way to the hard SF realism of Gravity and The Martian. A few stray films—like Aeon Flux—toy with deliberately unrealistic SF, and a few Anime—say, Satoshi Kon’s brilliant but demented Paprika (2006) and the utterly insane Redline (2009)—go further than the maddest psychedelic film ever dared go.

Whatever its flaws and inherent contradictions, psychedelic SF helped bring new life to a film genre that couldn’t seem to overcome its Saturday matinee past. It may seem embarrassing now, but it played a major role in the birth of a few landmark science fiction films.

Have we seen the end of the sort of science fiction movies it inspired?

The wild genre-bending work of Don Coscarelli, Vincenzo Natali, or Richard Kelly; the talk of a new version of Barbarella; and visually driven science fiction like Oblivion all say “not yet.”

Who knows?

Maybe realism is overrated.

About the Author

Mark Cole hates writing bios. Despite many efforts he has never written one he likes, perhaps because there are many other things he’d rather be writing. He writes from Warren, Pennsylvania, where he has managed to avoid writing about himself for both newspaper and magazine articles. His musings on Science Fiction have appeared in Clarkesworld and at IROSF.com, while his most recent story, “Let’s Start from the Top…” appeared in Daily Science Fiction.

All the Words in the Sky:

A Conversation with Charlie Jane Anders

Chris Urie

There’s a dividing line, however fuzzy, between magic and science. The mysteries and miracles are pitted against the hard numbers and plausible explanations. Fantasy versus Science Fiction. Charlie Jane Anders’ new novel explores this boundary and finds it to be thinner and more porous than we originally thought.

To shove All The Birds In The Sky into a neatly defined genre box would be like caging a songbird so that it refuses to sing. In one sense, it is an intimate, magical coming of age tale. In another, it’s a rollicking sci-fi adventure where the fate of the world hangs in the balance. As children, Patricia discovers she may be a witch who can talk to animals, and Laurence creates a wrist-watch-sized time travel gadget that only moves the wearer ahead two seconds at a time. Their paths in life intersect and weave together into one as global catastrophe sits on the horizon.

Charlie Jane Anders is the editor-in-chief of i09, has won a Hugo, Lambda Literary Award, and was short-listed for the Edmund White Award. Her fiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, Lightspeed, and ZYZZYVA. Her latest novel, All The Birds In The Sky, was released from Tor Books in January.

Do you think technology has become more like magic?

That’s a really interesting question. It really depends on what you think “like magic” means. In one sense, technology has definitely become more like magic, in that most people could not take apart an iPad and put it back together again, or understand exactly how the operating system works. If you think of “magic” as meaning “something whose operation is mysterious or opaque to the user,” then technology has gotten much more magical since the days of vacuum tubes and valves and things.

On the other hand, if you think of “like magic” as meaning, “fickle, unpredictable, and connected to a worldview that is fundamentally outside our experience,” then not so much. I often like fantasy novels where there’s an element of the dreamlike, the uncontrollable, the ineluctable, about magic. According to this view of magic, technology has become, if anything, less magic-like in recent years. You pretty much always know that your computer will start up when you push the “start” button, and I haven’t even had a dropped phone call in ages. Magic that works as reliably as the push of a button every single time always feels a little bit too sterile and easy to me. So I would actually argue that in some of the ways that matter most, technology is moving away from being like magic.

But of course, these are huge generalizations, and the future is unevenly distributed, etc. etc.

The settings throughout your novel, particularly the heart of the forest, are wonderfully evocative. Are they based on any particular places you’ve visited?

Thank you! I grew up in New England and actually did get lost in the woods on a few occasions, and it had a huge impact on me. Something about the forest looking kind of the same in every direction and not even really being able to see the sky clearly is kind of awe-inspiring. Sometimes you wander through the woods, sort of going in circles and sort of spiraling outwards, and stumble on something you never would have known was there, like a patch of wildflowers or a weird hut that someone built out in the middle of nowhere. It always feels like a domain of nearly endless possibility to me.

Did any mythology play a part in the magic you created for All The Birds In The Sky?

Not really. I sweated bullets trying to come up with a world of magic that didn’t feel too derivative of stuff I’d read or seen before. I started out with something much more place-holdery, and then a time came when I was getting so deep into writing the world of magic that I needed to come up with a history, and organization, of magic that felt somewhat real. And so my primary concern was not relying on the things I’d seen done before. Actually, the main thing that comes out in my use of magic is a love of magical realism. Some of my favorite things involving magic are when people use Trickster magic that involves storytelling or some kind of poetic license—Dorothea, in particular, is a witch who makes amazing things happen by telling these surreal stories. (But at a cost: She can never tell the truth, ever. Except maybe in the Confessional, because she’s Catholic.)

The magic in your novel seems to come at a cost. Does technology have a similar cost attached to it as well?

The notion of magic having a cost is a major idea in a lot of fantasy books and stories, and I hope I found my own spin on it. The aforementioned thing about Dorothea is an example of the way that magic winds up costing you in the long run. As for technology, though . . . the question of whether technology “has a cost” is really dependent on whether you believe in social cost, and whether the user of a particular technology should have to pay for (or be concerned with) externalities such as pollution, labor abuses, and other problems. I’m a pretty big believer in reducing our carbon footprint and trying to create a more humane economic system, in general, so I would say that technology does have a cost beyond what you pay at Best Buy.

When researching the science for this book, what was the most interesting tidbit of knowledge you picked up?

I talked to tons of experts on everything from superstorms to wormholes to biology to make sure that various aspects of the science in the book were accurate. The more I worked on it and revised it, the more important it seemed to me that the science be connected to real-world knowledge (even if it was “mad” science, and thus more extreme)—because having real science was the best way to draw a contrast with the novel’s fantasy content. But the most surprising thing for me was learning about how to make the artificial intelligence in the novel seem realistic and plausible—by talking to a few people, chiefly Lydia Chilton, a postdoc in computer science at Stanford. She told me some stuff that blew my mind, including the idea that you could recognize an A.I. in the making, because code would grow exponentially more complex until it suddenly became radically simplified (as the A.I. started to reshape its own code using rules that are more elegant than ones humans could come up with). I’m paraphrasing, but this was an insane thing to learn about.

Your book plays with some of the tropes of both science fiction and fantasy. Was it difficult to strike the right balance while keeping the emotional core of your story?

This was SO hard. In fact, this was a big reason why I tried to stop thinking of it in terms of “playing with tropes” and started thinking of it, instead, in terms of a story about two characters who came from two different worlds. The less I consciously tried to comment on the expectations of a fantasy story or a science fiction story, the easier it got to stay focused on the characters. But finding the emotional core of any story is often a nightmare, and once you find it, staying connected to it is even harder. It took a lot of ruthless slashing and burning of clever setpieces and neat story ideas, to make sure I was keeping just the stuff that made the characters come into focus. But there’s never any guarantee that you’re doing it right. You have to go with your gut, and hope for the best!

What was the most difficult scene to write?

God, there were so many that I wrote and rewrote and tore up and then wrote again a totally different way. Actually, the very last scene I wrote in the book is the one where Laurence and Patricia are watching parrots eat cherry blossoms. Nothing much “happens” in that scene, but it felt pivotally important for a bunch of reasons. And I tried it a hundred different ways: that scene took place at a rock concert, at an environmentalist rally, at a tech party that Milton Dirth was throwing, and a bunch of other things. Part of the problem was figuring out exactly what conversation they needed to have there. I could have cut that scene entirely and it would have been fine, but it felt like there was something missing.

If you could hang out with one character from All The Birds in the Sky, who would it be?

I would be terrified to meet any of them! That would be really weird. I guess I would like to hang out with Dorothea, because I think she’d be fun to go dancing with.

What are you working on now? I heard something about space and an exoplanet?

I’m under contract for another novel with Tor. At the moment, it’s a science fiction novel set in the future, on another planet. We’ll see how it goes!

Finally, I must ask, can you talk to birds?

Sure, of course I can! So can you! Whether they will talk back is another matter . . .

About the Author

Chris Urie is a writer and editor from Ocean City, NJ. He has written and published everything from city food guide articles to critical essays on video game level design. He currently lives in Philadelphia with an ever expanding collection of books and a small black rabbit that has an attitude problem.

Another Word:

How to Clothe a Character,

Using Only Star Wars References

Genevieve Valentine

What your characters are wearing matters. Of course, as a writer/artist/designer, you already know this is important. No one in an age of merchandising as intense as this one doubts the importance of character design. Your Sith Lord needs to be memorable; with any luck, they’ll be a hummus appetizer someday!

By now, a century of cinema and the omnipresence of television has made all of us very aware of the nature and importance of costume. From Flash Gordon to samurai flicks (both of which count as Star Wars references), costumes provide visual impact, illuminate character, build a world, and give you a chance to tempt cosplayers to your shores. And some of the most iconic and most frustrating movie costumes of the last fifty years come from the same vaguely-smothering franchise. So here are some tips for clothing your characters, thanks to a galaxy far, far away.

Your character should be in a costume suited to them, as distinctive as possible while still being a believable part of the surroundings. The original film relied on simple silhouettes, largely because the bulk of the budget went into scale models and “pew pew” noises. As it turns out, this has worked immensely better than anything more deliberate could have; the vaguely gritty, lived-in style of the production design meant the clothes were both instantly recognizable as character notes and easy to replicate at home, an early instance of Accidental Cosplay Gold. Did you have access to a nearby martial-arts supply store? You had Luke in the bag. (There’s a reason that when he came back with saber blazing in Return of the Jedi, the belted-tunic silhouette was almost identical even though the color and layers had changed. That shape was Luke’s calling card; that awkward little peplum was just a part of him by then.)

As a response to the rural and military settings of the first movies, one of the biggest stylistic deviations the prequels made was to go all in on lavish costumes for its royal heroine—technically to set the films apart from their predecessors, though it ended up being a fairly smart choice on several levels, given that the costumes were one of the few things in the prequels not CGIed in later. (Though by the time Padmé was hauling three steamer trunks’ worth of heavily-embroidered separates into the Tatooine desert, everyone probably regretted it.)

But nobody in your work gets dressed in a vacuum; characters’ clothes relate to one another. Poe’s jacket in The Force Awakens becomes a thread that visually binds everyone who wears it to the Resistance one by one: after he loses it, Finn takes it up, and eventually loans it to Rey, as they accept their new roles. We know Rey and Kylo Ren share some connection before they ever actually make their creeper Force bond, just because their sleeves are horizontally segmented mummy wraps, and their long sleeveless overlayers preclude any semblance of the Jedi silhouette while looking both oppositional and parallel in a fight scene. (Imagine Rey fighting Hux or Phasma—doesn’t look nearly as balanced.)

And Sabe, the Naboo Queen’s decoy in The Phantom Menace who wore royal costumes designed to anonymize the monarch—perhaps the only good move any of the prequels made, because it very nearly tricked you into wanting to see parts of it again despite already knowing it was the worst movie ever assembled by the kind of people who would, eventually, agree to let Disney make hummus out of their villain.

Draw from history. There’s hundreds of years of costume nerds who came before you, and we have records of their great works; every detail of how clothes are made counts as worldbuilding. (Sumptuary laws—wardrobe restrictions issued by monarchs and government officials—are some of the most fascinating pieces of legislation that remain to us; seeing official decrees about who could wear what single-handedly addressed class fears, xenophobia, economics, and gender roles.) And historical garments can, frankly, act as gimmes for some amazing stuff.

If I wasn’t doing an entire article using only Star Wars references, I would point out that an evening dress in the Met Museum’s costume collection was the direct inspiration for Lucille’s unforgettably Gothic Spine Gown in Crimson Peak. However, I am only using Star Wars references, so we’ll go ahead and use Padmé Amidala, whose wardrobe was a sartorial reflection of ludicrous wealth so over the top that the prequels may have actually been a nine hour propaganda video condemning capitalism and we just didn’t notice because we were so distracted by the physics of her hair.

Historical clothes have important connotations that we recognize even when the silhouette is taken out of chronological context, which can make them an incredible shortcut to mood and character. It’s not an accident that Padmé’s action gear in Phantom Menace looks suspiciously like an eighteenth century highwayman’s frock coat. It’s not an accident that her Loyalist Senate gown in Attack of the Clones looks suspiciously Elizabethan-Parliament, with its stiffened-hourglass skirts and solemn overgown. It’s definitely not an accident that her dress for her inexplicable secret wedding to the galaxy’s worst young man just before he causes a galactic fracas lifts heavily from pre-World-War-I wedding gowns. Moment to moment, each of these costumes did exactly what they needed to do. Moment to moment, they make sense.

But be careful about appropriation. Historical silhouettes often maintain their power outside of chronological context, but lifting from another cultural context is a lot more fraught. If you don’t know what it means, transporting it is an iffy business. This doesn’t mean you can never borrow a design element; if you want some vaguely-square drapey sleeves for your character, no one’s stopping you. It does, however, mean that perhaps when you’re assembling a royal gown for your young queen who’s from a far-off space planet, maybe you’d like to avoid lifting the court attire of Mongolian royalty wholesale. (Is it visually striking? Certainly. Does it accidentally serve to Other the culture you’re borrowing from if you take the visuals without transposing any of the attendant cultural history? It does. Unless you’re actually presenting some spacefaring Mongolians, think twice.)

Also take into account the continuity of your character. Padmé’s clothes could, to some degree, be separated between the public and private sphere. Obviously the formal layers you wear in the Senate as the ex-tween elected monarch of a damask planet is a different approach than your home life, which is less about impressing galactic representatives than it is about deep connections with young, lustful Jedi who hate sand.

The high-neck drapery and complicated hairstyles of the former are politically symbolic, so naturally there will be contrast; will there be so much contrast between public and personal that Padmé would don a black leather bustier so her paramour can clearly see that no sand has taken root on her shoulders? I mean, if there is, more power to her, but when designing a character from scratch, the first victim to continuity of design is practicality. Usually a character’s wardrobe is more consistent than a normal person’s, because life is long and stories are, max, three movies and an animated season (and animators do not want to deal with new wardrobe every episode, thanks). If your characters’ wardrobes start looking like they’ve been assembled by six different people, make sure six different reasons are involved and you’re not just running away with the options. (I know Fashion Tumblr has a siren call; be strong.)

Leave the nonsense out. There is a lifetime’s worth of reading material defending the constant sartorial expression of female characters’ sexuality to tell us important things about how empowered and independent they are. It’s real cute, for certain values of cute. The women in your work should, of course, dress exactly how they please; if they all coincidentally choose to dress to please the kind of men who find the sexuality of female characters a deeply important thing to illustrate via maximum skin real estate for every occasion, then maybe that’s a sign. Nobody needs your version of Slave Leia. Literally nobody. Put it away.

Always have that person who gives no fucks. Sure, everyone can dress appropriately and it’s fine, but like a great setting makes a gem sparkle, you benefit from having one character a little outlandish even for the world you’ve created. If I wasn’t doing an entire article only using Star Wars references, I’d point out that Dawn from the Babysitter’s Club got at least a full manuscript page in every one of those books because she would, at a moment’s notice, wear three scrunchies and a pair of earrings made of Barbie telephones just to sit at home and think about babysitting.

However, I am only using Star Wars references, so we get Lando Calrissian, whose cape was not only lined in gold-threaded paisley, but had no means of even fastening. It potentially had hooks and eyes, but the circumference wouldn’t have allowed for Billy Dee Williams’ actual neck if he closed them, so that shit’s honestly just mocking the idea of performing the way a normal cape performs. Not only was it an iconic element of his silhouette, it was a recognizably dashing piece that borrows so much Musketeer flair you know everything you need to know about Lando the moment he shows up in it. (They give him another one later—it was just a part of him by then.) It stays on Lando’s shoulders because it loves him; in your world, too, someone should be this lucky. Bonus if it’s just outlandish enough that wearing it requires a sense of humor; you don’t see Lando Calrissian being made into hummus.

About the Author

Genevieve Valentine is the author of Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, and Persona. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, Tor.com, and others; several have been reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. Her nonfiction and reviews have appeared at NPR.org, the AV Club, and The New York Times. She has written Catwoman comics for DC, and is currently writing a new Xena: Warrior Princess comic for Dynamite! Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable.

Editor’s Desk:

Nebula Nominees and Reader’s Poll Winners

Neil Clarke

Under normal conditions, I probably would have just launched into the results of our annual reader’s poll, but this month gave us something special. I’d like to take a moment to congratulate this year’s Nebula nominees. In particular, I’d like to call your attention to the short story category where three Clarkesworld stories have taken six of the nominations:

- “Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (Clarkesworld 1/15)

- “When Your Child Strays From God” by Sam J. Miller (Clarkesworld 7/15)

- “Today I Am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker (Clarkesworld 8/15)

We are quite proud of our authors and wish them all the best. I’ll be on-hand at the Nebula Award Ceremony this year to cheer them on and I hope some of you are too.

One anecdote before we move on: I attended last year’s ceremony and accepted Sam’s story during the mass signing. I think this means I have to start doing more in-person story acceptances!

Still on the Nebula high, I decided to crack open my spreadsheet and start tallying this year’s reader’s poll results. The data is always interesting and it was nice to have so many readers participating this year. I was pleasantly surprised to see an influx of newer readers taking part this year. Welcome!

CONTEST

This year we included a special drawing for print and ebook copies of our latest anthology, Clarkesworld: Year Eight. Ten lucky winners were picked at random and have been notified by email. If you didn’t win, it’s now available for sale from the usual places.

COVER ART

1 - “Spring Day is Coming” by Liu Junwei

2 (TIE) - “Gate World” by Julie Dillon

2 (TIE) - “Megafauna Europa” by Julie Dillon

3 - “A-boushi-ya” by shichigoro-shingo

This category is normally close but this year, there was a small gap between our winners and the cluster of eight remaining works with nearly equal vote totals. It seems as though some people had as much trouble picking their favorite as I did.

STORIES

1. “So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer

2. “Yuanyuan’s Bubbles” by Liu Cixin, translated by Carmen Yiling Yan (tie)

“Cat Pictures Please” by Naomi Kritzer (tie)

3. “Cassandra” by Ken Liu (tie)

“The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” by Kelly Robson (tie)

“Today I am Paul” by Martin L. Shoemaker (tie)

Our readers had a clear favorite this year, but after that were often split. Despite a higher than normal number of voters this year, we still had a lot of ties. If we extended the list to the top five we’d have added five more stories. I’ll take that to mean you liked what we did last year.

Congratulations to all our winners and thanks to everyone for participating!

About the Author

Neil Clarke is the editor of Clarkesworld Magazine, Forever Magazine, and Upgraded; owner of Wyrm Publishing; and a three-time Hugo Award Nominee for Best Editor (short form). The innagural edition of his Best Science Fiction of the Year anthology series will be published by Night Shade Books this June. He currently lives in NJ with his wife and two children.

Cover Art: We are the robots

Waldemar Kazak

About the Artist

Waldemar Kazak is a Russian artist who spent many years working on book and packaging design. While he designed beer cans, he gradually became hooked on drawing on a graphics tablet. He loves to draw characters, very often incorporating irony, but never hate. The fantastic settings of his work often include retro aspects of past eras, the 60s and 70s being his favorites.