TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 85, June 2017

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial, June 2017

SCIENCE FICTION

Yakshantariksh
Vandana Singh

Marcel Proust, Incorporated
Scott Dalrymple

The Heart’s Filthy Lesson
Elizabeth Bear

Love Engine Optimization
Matthew Kressel

FANTASY

World of the Three
Shweta Narayan

The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory
Carlos Hernandez

Crossing the Threshold
Pat Murphy

Substitutes
Ben Hoffman

NOVELLA

Iseul’s Lexicon
Yoon Ha Lee

EXCERPTS

Down Among the Sticks and Bones
Seanan McGuire

Never Now Always
Desirina Boskovich

NONFICTION

Book Review: June 2017
Amal El-Mohtar

Movie Review: June 2017
Carrie Vaughn

Interview: Yoon Ha Lee
Christian A. Coleman

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Shweta Narayan

Scott Dalrymple

Pat Murphy

Matthew Kressel

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2017 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Randy Gallegos

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial, June 2017

John Joseph Adams | 1536 words

Welcome to issue eighty-five of Lightspeed!

We have original science fiction by Scott Dalrymple (“Marcel Proust, Incorporated”) and Matthew Kressel (“Love Engine Optimization”), along with SF reprints by Vandana Singh (“Yakshantariksh”) and Elizabeth Bear (“The Heart’s Filthy Lesson”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Shweta Narayan (“World of the Three”) and Pat Murphy (“Crossing the Threshold”), and fantasy reprints by Carlos Hernandez (“The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory”) and Ben Hoffman (“Substitutes”).

All that, and we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. Our cover art is by Randy Gallegos, illustrating Shweta Narayan’s “World of the Three.”

For our ebook readers, we also have an ebook-exclusive reprint of Yoon Ha Lee’s “Iseul’s Lexicon” and an excerpt from the latest novel by Seanan McGuire, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, as well as a bonus excerpt from Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich.

New Release: Cosmic Powers

My new anthology, Cosmic Powers, is now available from Saga Press. It’s a collection of epic-scale science fiction, inspired by movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars, featuring brand-new stories from Dan Abnett, Jack Campbell, Linda Nagata, Seanan McGuire, Alan Dean Foster, Charlie Jane Anders, Kameron Hurley, and many others.

Here’s what some reviewers have been saying about it:

“Astonishingly good [. . .] Rich in great stories.” —Rocket Stack Rank

“This collection will prove to be great reading for fans of the space cowboy antics of Guardians of the Galaxy.” —RT Book Reviews

“Highly recommended for anyone looking for a variety of engaging sf experiences.” —Booklist

“One kickass good anthology [. . .] Highly recommended.” —File 770

“The first great anthology of the year, jam-packed with smart, entertaining sci-fi adventure stories that bring a nicely modern sensibility to old ideas and tropes.” —SF Bluestocking

Visit johnjosephadams.com/cosmic to buy the book, read selected stories from the anthology, or just learn more.

Awards News

The Nebula Awards were presented on May 20 at the 51st annual SFWA Nebula Conference, held this year in Pittsburgh, PA. Lightspeed stories “Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea” by Sarah Pinsker and “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station│Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” by Caroline M. Yoachim were finalists this year. Alas, neither Caroline nor Sarah won the coveted starstuff-filled block of Lucite. It seems that Lightspeed authors are pretty good at getting nominated for Nebulas, but currently have a record of 0-18 at winning Nebulas. But of course, as they say, it’s an honor just to be nominated—so another round of congrats to Sarah and Caroline for being named finalists, and congrats as well to all of the other nominees and winners for this year’s award! You can find the full slate of winners and finalists at sfwa.org.

The Locus Award finalists have been announced, and we’re pleased to see that Lightspeed is a finalist in the Magazine category, and yours truly is a finalist in the Editor category. Alas, there was no love for Nightmare, and no stories from either magazine were named finalists, but we’re honored to receive the overall recognition, of course! The winners will be announced June 24, at the Locus Awards Weekend; a complete list of the finalists is available at locusmag.com.

The Shirley Jackson Award finalists have been announced. Happily “Angel, Monster, Man” by Sam J. Miller, from our sister-magazine, Nightmare, is a finalist in the novelette category. Congrats to Sam, and to all of the other finalists. A complete list of the finalists is available at shirleyjacksonawards.org.

The Stoker Awards were presented on April 29 at StokerCon 2017, held this year in Long Beach, CA, at the historic Queen Mary hotel. “The Bad Hour” by Christopher Golden, from my horror anthology co-edited with Douglas Cohen, What the #@&% is That?, made the final ballot, but, alas, it didn’t win (that honor went to Joyce Carol Oates). Congratulations, however, to Nightmare’s reprints editor, John Langan, who won the Stoker Award for best novel for his book The Fisherman! You can find a full list of the winners (and finalists) at horror.org.

ICYMI, the Hugo Award finalists for 2017 have been announced. Alas, no stories from Lightspeed or Nightmare made the ballot this year, but your humble editor is once again honored to be a finalist for Best Editor, Short Form. There are a lot of great finalists this year—including, I’m pleased to see, seven different contributors to Cosmic Powers and many different authors who have appeared in (or are friends to) Lightspeed. Congrats to all of the finalists! To see the full list, visit thehugoawards.org/2017-hugo-awards. Voting closes July 15.

Staff News

We’re sad to announce that our long-time Assistant Editor, Robyn Lupo, has stepped down. Editorial Assistant Laurel Amberdine was promoted to Assistant Editor to fill the void left by her departure. Thank you, Robyn, for your many years of service—we salute you! And welcome, Laurel, to the upper echelons of Lightspeed editorial—try not to go mad with power!

John Joseph Adams Books News: 2017 Cover Reveal

No new deals to report for John Joseph Adams Books, but we did just do a cover reveal for all of our 2017 titles. If you’d like to check that out, visit johnjosephadams.com/2017-covers.

Otherwise, here’s a quick rundown what to expect from John Joseph Adams Books in the coming months:

In July, we’ll be publishing Carrie Vaughn’s novel, Bannerless—a post-apocalyptic mystery in which an investigator must discover the truth behind a mysterious death in a world where small communities struggle to maintain a ravaged civilization decades after environmental and economic collapse. Here’s what some of the early reviews have been saying about it:

“Skillfully portrays a vastly altered future America. [The] focus on sustainability and responsibility is unusual, thought-provoking, and very welcome.” —Publishers Weekly

“An intimate post-apocalyptic mystery [. . .] well-crafted and heartfelt.” —Kirkus

“A compelling, deft post-apocalyptic tale.” —Library Journal

“Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower mixed with a modern procedural mystery […] Wonderfully intriguing.” —Thomas Wilkerson, BookPeople

“Totally fascinating as a thought experiment and compulsively readable.” —Jenny Craig, Seattle Public Library

Also in July, we’ll be publishing Sand by Hugh Howey, a reissue of his acclaimed indie-published novel:

“Magnificent […] After reading Wool, his other post-apocalyptic series, I didn’t think he could repeat the creation of a great world setting filled with characters you instantly care about. But he did.” —SFF World

“Sand immerses you in its grubby post-apocalyptic world. […] Howey conjures a credible, brutal future.” —Financial Times

In September, we’ll be publishing Retrograde by Peter Cawdron, a hard SF novel about an international colony of astronauts on Mars, who have been prepared for every eventuality of living on another planet except one: What happens when disaster strikes Earth?

In October, we’ll be publishing Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey, a short story collection including three stories set in the world of Hugh’s mega-hit Wool and two never-before-published tales, plus fifteen additional stories collected together for the first time.

In November, we’ll be publishing Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Will and Temper—a Victorian-era urban fantasy inspired by The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which an épée-fencing enthusiast and her younger sister are drawn into a secret and dangerous London underworld of pleasure-seeking demons and bloodthirsty diabolists, with only her skill with a blade standing between them and certain death.

A bit further out, in Spring 2018, we’ll have The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp, about a magician with a talent for finding lost things who is forced into playing a high-stakes game with the gods of New Orleans for the heart and soul of the city. And then in late 2018, we’ll have Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker, an epic fantasy about a group of siblings battling for control of a vast empire while a powerful demonlord pits them against each other.

That’s all the JJA Books news to report for now. More soon!

• • • •

Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new SF/Fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, as well as the USA Today bestselling editor of many other anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent projects include: Cosmic Powers, What the #@&% Is That?, Operation Arcana, Loosed Upon the World, Wastelands 2, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist eleven times) and is a seven-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Nightmare Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

Yakshantariksh

Vandana Singh | 1940 words

The Yakshantariksh is beyond one’s imagination, yet that is where its existence is made manifest. It is a being so real that it can only be sensed by that most intangible of organs: the mind! What a delightful paradox! And yet it is so. It was discovered in a dream—supporting evidence came later. Thus a tick living on the body of an elephant may never realize the elephant exists, unless, perhaps, the elephant speaks to it mind to mind. So it is with the Yakshantariksh, which is as vast, perhaps vaster than galaxies. Its great bulk coils around the Milky Way, its torso curling in the dark spaces between the spiral arms, the tip of its tail resting not far from the event horizon of the central black hole. Perhaps the tail has a mouth at the end that sips delicately at the radiation emitted as matter falls into the black hole, while the gravity of the hole itself keeps Yakshantariksh tethered to the galaxy.

I know it exists because it has spoken to me. It came to me first in a dream, as I’ve said, registering an enormous surprise that I existed. I would have dismissed it as a dream-creature but for the fact that I felt its presence in my mind again in broad daylight, while I was awake—like a tendril it was, an experimental hand reaching out, tentative, uncertain, as though I had been the dream. I was washing dishes at the sink, making a big clatter to drown out the fact that I was upset about something, when I felt it. I sensed, all of a sudden, an indescribable Himalayan vastness—and following its first surprise, a loneliness like a tsunami. Oh, how useless our human-made, human-sized words are, how inadequate for a being that is so far beyond space and time! Later, while I was working on my calculations, I felt a sudden urge to tear up the sheets and throw them away, because what do we know, after all? If the Yaksha exists, how can anything we know be the final truth?

Lately other people have been posting things on the internet about odd sensations in their heads, like a mild possession, by something improbably huge. I think the Yaksha, having found me by sheer chance, is dipping into other consciousnesses, discovering, delighting in the newfound knowledge that it is not alone. I have seen a pariah dog stop in its tracks while crossing the road, nearly being hit by a car—the dog shakes his head in surprise exactly as though something, someone, has reached into its mind—then carries on, bemused. I wonder whether the Yaksha is a little drunk with the discovery that there is Other. Surely that means that the Yaksha has, for the first time, become conscious of itself?

Perhaps because I was the first, it visits me—or so I like to think—more often than other beings. Sometimes I catch glimpses of where it’s been—in my mind appear vistas of city streets and mountain peaks, from the vantage points of humans, beasts, butterflies—and also strange worlds: angular-winged creatures with tapering snouts flying over a pink sea under a pale, purple sky. I see fierce red suns and diaphanous nebulae, and regions of impenetrable darkness. I wonder if my thoughts are transparent to it during these visitations—what it might make of credit card bills and dirty laundry.

I’ve named it after the ancient Yaksha of myth, the guardian spirit of trees and springs. To imagine that it is a guardian spirit of any sort, let alone of the antariksh, the cosmos, is a leap of faith, I know. But I can’t help thinking of it as essentially benign. A creature so enormous can have no need to defend itself, to fight others. If, as I suspect, it feeds on the energy of the central black hole and the stars, it need not hunt for prey. Nor would it need to reproduce, because it is probably nearly as old as the universe and has no need to fear death. Perhaps it is immortal, or at least as immortal as a galaxy. The tensions that drive us small species would be completely foreign to my Yaksha.

I have figured out that it is made of dark matter. What else would render it invisible to our telescopes? The bulk of its body must lie outside the galaxy, which would explain the rotation curves that first hinted of dark matter. I imagine its great, sinuous torso following the spiral curve of the galaxy’s arms. The dark matter diffuses thinly from the main body into the space between the stars—we breathe it in, you and I, a tiny fraction with each breath. In a sense we—stars, planets, all that is made of “normal” matter so rare in the universe—are riding the body of the Yaksha as it drifts through space. Who can tell which is the rider and which the mount?

When the Yaksha gives me a sense of its shape, I see something rather like Ananta-naga, the great world-serpent, but with multiple mouths along its length. I believe these mouths allow it to feed on radiation from the surrounding stars. There was that case a few years ago of a star that was expected to go supernova, and didn’t. Astronomers thought they had made a mistake, but I think it was only the Yaksha, delicately siphoning matter and energy off the swollen giant, rather like a giraffe, with its prehensile lips, savoring fruit on a branch, leaving behind the stone.

The recent discovery of the possibility that tachyons exist, in which I had a small part to play, is, I believe, another indication that the Yaksha is real. To retain its integrity as an organism, the Yaksha cannot depend on a nervous system like ours—think how long it would take for an impulse to travel even at close-to-light-speed over the extent of the galaxy! No, I believe its nervous system uses tachyons, particles traveling faster than the speed of light, along specific paths that perhaps give some hint of the Yaksha’s large-scale structure. I have named these hypothetical pathways Sudarshan Channels in honor of the first person to come up with the idea of tachyons.

Thanks to its accidental intrusion into my consciousness and those of others, the Yaksha now knows it exists as an entity. Drifting across the void of space, clutching the galaxy to its breast, it had only known a sleepy contentment—but now, when it comes to visit, its loneliness sometimes overwhelms me; it is a kind of vertigo, like standing on the slope of a mountain that falls away into infinity. I am recently alone for the first time in my life, but my sense of being alone is a small, atomic-sized thing compared to what it feels. I give it what I hope are comforting thoughts, a small echo of the comfort its presence brings me—but I have no idea if it comprehends anything. All I sense in return is a vast, benign curiosity. It wants to know the universe through my eyes. Everything and anything is interesting to it: a twig, a plastic straw, a house, a mountain, have equal value. But the thing that fascinates it most is consciousness. It is child-like in its interest in the mynahs at the window, the pariah dog I feed in the mornings, and, of course, human beings. Sometimes it sends me images accompanied by a feeling that indicates a question. I see in my mind a bacterium, a mosquito, a denizen of another planet. What is it asking? What does it want to know? I speak to it aloud when I am alone, telling it what I know about such things. When it communicates, the primary sense is visual (is that because it is speaking through my brain?) although at other times I smell things: metallic, burning, richly sulfurous, familiar, unfamiliar. There are moments when I feel as though I am on the edge of a sensation that is foreign to anything humans have: not touch, nor sight, nor sound nor smell, nor taste—but something else. I have the strongest desire to experience the universe through this sense but I presume my mind is too limited, and all I have are hints of wonder.

Lately it’s been sending me images on a much larger scale: other galaxies around our own, made unrecognizable by its different and shifting perspectives. I can guess what it is trying so say: Are there others of my kind, wrapped around those distant spirals? Perhaps it is, for the first time, reaching out beyond its own neighborhood, to where other Yakshas might lie coiled, embryo-like, around each cosmic egg. I have been thinking about what these great beasts, pastoralists of the cosmos, might say to each other. Alone, yet separated, both like and unlike humans. When my solitude began I used to wonder whether humans really understand each other or if instead we labor to create an illusion that we do—if in fact all human relations are nothing but a great lie that we must believe for our sanity. Touch, after all, is an illusion: What I feel when I touch someone is not the person but the intermolecular forces between our ever-separate skins. Yet if the Yaksha’s companions exist (and why not? this is a generous universe), then they are truly separated, are they not, by that unimaginable void between galaxies?

At the same time it is also true that nothing is really separate. We all swim in the sea of the vacuum, which is a place bubbling with exchanges of matter and energy, a cauldron of potentialities. Perhaps the way my Yaksha will know of the existence of others of its kind is through subtle messages in the vacuum, in space and time itself. I wonder if they will call to each other, like cows in an alpine meadow at sunset. I think of the fact that the local group of galaxies, including our Milky Way, is hurtling toward some unknown place at some six hundred thousand meters per second: a place that scientists have called the Great Attractor. What does Yakshantariksh know about our destination? Since its awakening to itself and others, it must have sensed that pull as something beyond mere gravity. Does it know where we are going and why?

I can just imagine them, the great Yakshas, hearing the call that is deeper and more insistent than any other, like the cowherd’s call that brings the cows home. Recently, I have begun to feel something, too—as though something is calling me. After drifting like a blinded moth through my life, I am at last conscious of a mooring rope, a faint but persistent signal through the noise, pulling me toward a kind of destiny. Is it merely a psychological shift common to those who suddenly find themselves alone at a late age, and must adjust to survive? Or is it that I’ve begun to hear it, too, the call of the Great Attractor, through the mind of the beast that is Yakshantariksh? Strange terms have begun to appear in my equations; most days, I find myself poised at the edges of great truths. Perhaps I am succumbing to a happy, harmless insanity—or maybe my Yaksha is giving me a hint, an answer to a question I cannot begin to fathom.

©2015 by Vandana Singh. Originally published in The Bestiary, edited by Ann VanderMeer. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vandana Singh is an Indian science fiction writer living in the Boston area. She has a Ph.D. in theoretical particle physics and teaches physics full-time at a small and lively state university. Her recent short fiction includes “Of Wind and Fire” in the anthology To Shape the Dark.  Many of her stories have been reprinted in Year’s Best anthologies, and she is a winner of the Carl Brandon Parallax Award. Recent work includes a novella, “Entanglement,” in the anthology Hieroglyph, and “Ambiguity Machines: An Examination” at Tor.com. She has a website at vandana-writes.com and a blog at vandanasingh.wordpress.com.

Marcel Proust, Incorporated

Scott Dalrymple | 4130 words

It’s 12:15, and Monica West is late for our lunch.

We’re meeting at a trendy Greenwich Village bistro, one of the few to survive the depression that bankrupted the City, and so many of its residents, nearly two decades ago.

There are few reminders of those trying times here now. The place is packed with the young power elite, the air thick with talk of mergers and screenplays and spring designer collections. I order a glass of Cabernet and wait.

Precisely thirty minutes later, I spy her walking toward me. Tall, slender, and dressed in a form-fitting white suit, she might be a junior partner in an Uptown law firm.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I had some trouble with the subway.”

I say it’s perfectly all right and invite her to sit. We make small talk about the weather (we approve), the Knicks’ season (we decidedly do not), and the proposed repeal of the obesity tax (I’m in favor, she isn’t). She strikes me as bright, witty, and thoroughly charming; I find myself wondering if I’m interviewing the right person.

The first sign of anything odd appears when I notice the red ring on her right hand. “You’re a Cardinal,” I observe.

She jerks the hand under the table as if I’ve slapped it. “Yes,” she whispers, glancing around the room. “I am. I was. I’m not supposed to wear this now. But I like it so much, you know?”

I ask if she’d like to order lunch.

She scans the menu intently. The text is entirely in French, and while she seems to know a few words she clearly struggles with others, mouthing them like a child.

“Poison?” she asks, surprised.

“Poisson,” I tell her. “Fish.”

She smiles politely, closing the menu in defeat. “I used to know this,” she says. “I mean really know it.”

I nod and order her a croque monsieur. When it arrives she picks at it for a few minutes, then abruptly asks if she can leave.

I thank her and watch as she exits the restaurant head down, sobbing.

It may not seem much of a tragedy, an attractive young woman forgetting how to read French.

Yet what if I told you that Monica graduated summa cum laude from Stanford University with dual majors in Electrical Engineering and French? Or that the severe memory loss she just exhibited has nothing to do with amnesia, a brain tumor, or any other natural condition? What if I told you that someone did this to her deliberately—and that it could happen to anyone?

Like thousands of Americans, Monica West has had her education repossessed.

• • • •

The San Jose headquarters location of The Amygdala Group is a massive complex of gleaming glass, fountains, and meticulously maintained green space. The grass and fountains would be illegal anywhere else in California, but the company has somehow managed to get them classified as research projects.

The entire place is surrounded by walls five feet thick and thirty high, so artfully constructed that the gun turrets seem mere architectural flourishes. The security force is well-armed and ubiquitous. As I approach the main gate, the place strikes me as a cross between a military base, the old Applesoft headquarters, and Vatican City.

Few outsiders come here. There are no tours, no signs to aid navigation. Official visits must be arranged months in advance and typically allow severely restricted access. The vast majority of those who work here actually live inside the walls. They’re ostensibly free to leave, but doing so is discouraged and happens infrequently. And no wonder—they have access to shopping, entertainment, and health care that few Americans can boast, much of it free. Some describe Amygdala as the corporate version of a cult. If so, it’s a generally happy one with few defectors.

Gate security seems at a loss for what to do with me. Few reporters have ever been allowed inside, and no one has interviewed Dr. Andrea Phan, Amygdala’s reclusive CEO, in twenty years.

I explain that I was invited by her office.

The head guard eyes me skeptically. “We’ll need to verify that.” He’s a heap of muscle with a goatee, so perfectly imposing that I find myself wondering whether he might be one of the high-end androids that Amygdala is rumored to employ.

He disappears behind a door for a few minutes before returning. “Follow me, please,” he says flatly.

We take a Musk tube to the center of the complex, exiting in front of a massive building whose base spreads into the ground like the roots of a gleaming tree (or, I suddenly realize, like a neural cluster). As we board the building’s elevator, I attempt to engage the guard in conversation, conducting my own ad hoc Turing test. He’s having none of it, which leads me to believe he’s failing.

Suddenly, fifty stories above the ground, the elevator doors open and I scream.

There’s nothing in front of us but air.

“Close! Close the doors!”

Instinctively I press against the wall of the elevator, terrified. Is this how Amygdala maintains its secrecy? This what happens to reporters who dare come this far? Will I be thrown from the Tarpeian Rock? I find myself experiencing many moments of instant clarity, among them the realization that for some reason I don’t want to die in California.

The guard, now quite clearly human, smiles and pushes me into the sky.

• • • •

The amygdala is a fascinating product of evolution. Actually a pair of almond-shaped neural clusters deep inside the brain—amygdala means almond in Greek—it governs both our emotions and our long-term memory.

On the face of it, this dual role seems to make little evolutionary sense. But consider our ancient past. If you happened by a particular tree and encountered a giant snake hanging from it, your amygdala would release the neurotransmitter dopamine, triggering an emotion (in this case fear) and starting a chain reaction telling your body to release adrenaline, which is good because it helps you run faster. Increased dopamine levels also aid memory—which is also good, because you’d want to remember to avoid that particular tree again.

This explains why, after a traumatic event, we often perceive time as slowing down, recalling minute details that would normally escape our notice. The amygdala wants us to remember.

None of this crosses my mind as I assume the fetal position and weep, suspended in the air, but it no doubt crosses Andrea Phan’s. It’s no accident that she has the full attention of my amygdala; she wants me to remember this particular tree.

As my higher-order brain function returns, I deduce what you no doubt already have: that I’m not floating in the air at all, but merely inside something you’ll find at any second-rate theme park, an Invisible Room—albeit a very sophisticated one cantilevered hundreds of feet above the ground.

“It’s normal to feel some vertigo,” says a woman’s voice with a Vietnamese accent. “You get used to it.”

Even though I know, logically, that I’m safe, it still takes some time before I can stand.

“My eyes don’t believe what my brain is telling them,” I say.

Dr. Phan is a small woman, fitter than her eighty years would suggest. She shrugs. “Your eyes don’t see. They’re just input devices. It’s your brain that sees. It’s just confused at the moment.”

I shuffle across the floor, my arms feeling for the walls. “You need to put up some pictures or something,” I say.

She laughs. It’s the laugh of someone unused to people joking with her, but I sense that she likes it.

She extends her hand, and as I take it, I’m suddenly aware that I’m touching perhaps the wealthiest person in the history of the world.

It wasn’t always that way.

Phan was born in desperate poverty in Danang, Vietnam, in the days before that country was annexed by China. She came to the U.S. as a college student, attending first Columbia College in Missouri and later Princeton. Early on it became apparent that she was a genius, perhaps even a once-in-a-generation genius—a term, incidentally, at which she bristles. (“I don’t even know what that word means,” she said once in a rare public speech. “I think it actually cheapens human achievement, implying that I didn’t work for what I have.”)

Hers is one of the great rags-to-riches stories of all time. To appreciate how she rose from complete obscurity to incredible wealth and power—and to understand just what she did to Monica West—we must first explore some oddities of neuroscience.

• • • •

People have long noticed that certain sensations can super-encode memories. Marcel Proust explored this more than a century ago in his masterwork, In Search of Lost Time, where a madeleine cake dipped in tea transports the narrator back to a vivid childhood memory of eating a similar cake. Such an intense sensory experience has become known as a “Proustian rush.”

The most powerful memory sense of all, it turns out, is smell. That’s because smells are fast-tracked to the amygdala, which as we’ve established affects both emotion and memory. Smell gets special expedited treatment, even above sight, which takes much more processing power (and therefore takes longer for the brain to interpret).

Phan learned firsthand how memories can be super-encoded. “I was working on chemical ways to improve memory,” she told the LA Times before she became so notoriously reclusive. “I had hit a wall. My husband and I were having awful relationship problems, just awful. I was very distraught. I still came to the lab, but I was very emotional.”

Phan made a careless mistake and sliced her wrist on the shards of a broken flask (she insists it was an accident, though at the time the ER physician labeled it an attempted suicide). Her body quickly went into shock, and she realized with interest that the world seemed suddenly more vivid. She noticed small details, like the precise pattern of the floor tiles—things she usually didn’t perceive at all. She later remembered them more vividly, too. That’s when she realized that manipulation of the amygdala was the key to improving memory.

“We all knew it had something to do with emotion, and that it could be amplified further by smell,” Phan said. “That wasn’t particularly revolutionary thinking. But I had the additional hypothesis that the amygdala doesn’t get tired—there’s no reason not to make it work full time in third gear.”

For two decades, she and her research team experimented with thousands of drug cocktails before settling on one they would label Proust: a top-secret formulation that excites the amygdala into an aroused emotional state, while fooling it into thinking it’s smelling a unique and powerful smell. “The best part is that you don’t actually perceive any odor,” Phan announced proudly, even though Proust sends olfactory brain activity off the charts.

By any measure, Proust was an astonishing discovery. In study after study, subjects exhibited long-term memory recall up to fifteen times better than normal, regardless of the subject’s underlying IQ.

Most users reported no negative side effects of the drug. The typical patient described an overall feeling of well-being, similar to the effect of the reuptake inhibitors so popular at the turn of the century. (Curiously, but apparently harmlessly, a small percentage of the population claims to be able to detect Proust’s odorless smell, most often describing it as similar to bread dough. For some the perception is so intense they must stop taking the drug altogether.)

Early in testing, however, it became clear that Proust was dangerous for a subset of patients. Those with underlying emotional issues, for instance, or otherwise compromised amygdalae, could be pushed over the edge by Proust. For some depression sufferers, Proust increased suicide risk significantly—one reason the drug is tightly regulated. Candidates must undergo a series of tests before treatment, and supplies are controlled more strictly than medical narcotics.

Yet for the vast majority of patients, Proust proved to be a wonder drug with no appreciable downside. “Soon we’ll all be geniuses,” proclaimed one scientist.

There’s just one catch, and it’s a big one.

• • • •

The Amygdala Group and its critics agree that there is one major downside of Proust: If you learn something while taking the drug, and you later stop taking the drug, then you don’t just remember things normally. You remember almost nothing that you learned while under Proust’s influence.

You won’t lose the memories you learned before taking Proust. And you won’t lose autobiographical memory—where you live, who your friends are, or where you keep the toaster—because that sort of information is handled differently by the brain. (This is why an amnesia victim may be able to solve a crossword puzzle and yet have no idea what his name is.)

But you will forget nearly everything else you learned while taking Proust.

The reason isn’t entirely clear. Company officials claim that Proust is some sort of unintended data encryption key—they have no idea why. Critics scoff at this explanation, pointing out the obvious financial incentive for Amygdala to keep patients effectively addicted to Proust forever.

The federal government has certainly done little to curtail the activities of Amygdala. The company quietly negotiated an unprecedented 200-year patent in exchange for special “access” by select government agencies—including, unsurprisingly, the Department of Defense.

Given all of this, you might assume that Amygdala would be a household name, the story of the decade, the subject of dinner table conversation across the world. Yet surprisingly few people have heard of it, and those who have tend to be from the ruling class: doctors, lawyers, architects, and their children. The company is masterful at quietly managing public perception. Through a complex web of shell companies, Amygdala controls a number of global media outlets, leading to speculation about whitewashing, corruption, and worse.

Over the years, plenty of investigative journalists have tried to interview Dr. Phan and otherwise infiltrate Amygdala, hoping to crack the story wide open. All have given up, discouraged. Now, standing in a transparent room high above the ground, I finally have a chance to succeed where they failed, and the prospect is immensely exciting.

First, though, I need to know something.

“Dr. Phan,” I ask, “why me?”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m flattered of course. But why did you invite me here? I’m with The Chronicle of Higher Education. You could have called The Times, or anybody.”

She acts as if she didn’t hear me, though I’m certain she did.

“Are you . . . are you Diogenes?” I ask.

“Who?” She seems genuinely puzzled by the name.

“Diogenes. The one who sent me—”

Before I can finish, the room shakes violently. There is a tremendous explosion—through the transparent floor I can see that far below, one of the buildings in the research complex is now engulfed in flame.

I’m too stunned to react right away, but Phan appears unsurprised, even pleased. A panicked face appears on a screen in mid-air but she calmly waves it away. A second explosion nearly knocks me off my feet. She giggles.

As Phan surveys her empire, part of which is now ablaze, she whispers, confidentially, “He’s back.”

Another explosion, closer this time. I find myself particularly interested in the construction of the glass room.

“Who’s back?” I ask.

The elevator door opens, revealing the crumpled body of the muscled security guard. A white-bearded man dressed in an old-fashioned suit steps off as if nothing has happened.

Phan smiles. “My husband.”

• • • •

I’ve met Eddie McGill before.

Eloquent, intelligent, and much more flamboyant than his ex-wife, he has never been difficult to find. I’ve interviewed him twice over the years.

Nearly as rich as Phan after their divorce, McGill has used his wealth to cast himself as an outspoken public intellectual, particularly on higher education issues. He has long contended that educational, financial, and governmental interests have conspired against the average American. In his best-selling book The Educational Industrial Complex, McGill decried the Financial Aid Privatization Act of 2025, which handed over administration of all federal student financial aid programs to private companies.

“That was the beginning of the end for higher education,” he wrote, “giving banks tremendous incentives to dole out financial aid.” This in turn caused banks to entice more and more people to attend college, he contended, whether or not those people were academically prepared or even interested. Since their bottom lines depended on people staying in school, the banks pressured universities to lower academic standards to retain students. “It’s the big banks, not colleges, that set higher education policy in this country,” wrote McGill. “Ostensibly they believe in ‘student retention.’ Every time you hear them use the word ‘student,’ insert instead ‘revenue stream.’”

Some of McGill’s claims seem to be supported by the data. By 2035, a decade after the Act, the average student loan debt balance had ballooned to nearly $350,000—well more than many graduates could reasonably hope to repay. Loan defaults were common, despite the fact that since last century student loans have not been dischargeable in bankruptcy proceedings.

Banks needed a way to protect the student loans they were issuing. But what could possibly serve as collateral? McGill predicted that banks would find a way to treat education loans like car or home loans. “Stop making car payments, they’ll take back your car,” he warned. “Stop making house payments, they’ll take back your house. Before long, stop making student loan payments, and they’ll take back your education.”

McGill was widely ridiculed for that statement. Even the President quipped, “Is there any way we can protect Congress from this education repossession thing? Wait—I see I’m too late!”

Few people paid attention when, just two years later, the common application used by most colleges and universities included cryptic language indicating that students were now being granted merely “a renewable license” to the education they obtained in college. Among other things, terms of renewal included one’s loans being in good standing.

Few people paid attention because it was laughably absurd to think such a clause would ever be enforceable.

• • • •

Six weeks before my lunch with Monica West, I received an untraceable message from someone called “Diogenes.” It contained information on a pilot student loan program by a small bank called Latro Unified. After much investigation, I finally learned that the primary shareholders of Latro are Patriot Bankshares, The Amygdala Group, and the federal government.

Included in the message were account details for 11,000 Latro customers whose student loans were in default for at least six months. Half of the names were marked “RP.” It took considerable digging to reveal that RP was an internal bank code for repossessed.

According to an internal Latro analysis, “While there is no economic value to the Company per se in ‘repossessing’ education, the deterrent effect will be substantial once the plan is rolled out at scale, with appropriate media support.”

A memo from the U.S. Undersecretary of Education congratulated Latro on “a bold and successful experiment” that “will be of great interest to many Department of Education partners.”

I contacted a random sample of twelve of the individuals marked RP. All twelve had been denied access to Proust after failing to make payments on their student loans. All twelve suffered severe long-term memory loss and subsequently lost their jobs. Of the nine who had been married at the time of repossession, seven were now separated or divorced. Five had attempted suicide, four with success.

The fifth was Monica West.

• • • •

“Diogenes,” I say to McGill as he strides from the elevator and into the darkening sky. Like Phan, he seems unfazed by the violent detonations beneath us.

He smiles, revealing a set of famously crooked teeth. Though he could afford it a million times over, he wrote once that he would never have them straightened; he wants them to forever remind him of his own humble beginnings. “Great to see you again,” he says with a charming Scottish burr.

The force of continued explosions has driven Phan to the floor. McGill sits next to her, hugging her tightly as the room rocks.

“Andrea went too far,” McGill says. “She knows that now. She wants it to stop. Don’t you, dear?”

Sobbing, she says something in Vietnamese.

McGill motions me closer. “This is a bigger problem than you think,” he says. “Latro is just the beginning. Proust will spread to the public schools, to everywhere. Everyone will be held hostage. Everyone. What do you think will happen then?”

The room is now surrounded by smoke, adding feelings of claustrophobia to my vertigo. I find myself at a loss for theories. “What is your plan?” I manage to ask. “Give everybody free access?”

He shakes his head. “We must rip off the Band-Aid, as they used to say.”

“What does that mean?”

His charming demeanor dissolves. After a long pause, he says, “By now, my people will have killed every scientist who knows the secret of how Proust is made. There weren’t many, thanks to my ex-wife’s rather paranoid safeguards.” I must appear as shocked as I am, because he adds, “I’m sorry about that, truly. Terrible business. Just terrible.”

Phan has stopped sobbing but shows no indication that the conversation surprises her.

“No one will have Proust ever again,” he continues. “The world will have forgotten how to make it. I’ve just spent the better part of a considerable fortune to make that a true statement.”

“But it will be—”

“A mess,” he says. “But you’ll all figure it out. I believe in you.”

The room begins to make a slow cracking sound. McGill mumbles something and a ladder descends from the ceiling.

“Climb,” he says. “At the other end is my copter.”

“Are you—”

“Write the truth, and I’ve authorized my attorney to give it to you.”

“What?”

“Go!”

When I’m almost out of earshot, Phan calls, “Remember!”

• • • •

In the months since this story first appeared, much has occurred.

With every one of its facilities across the world destroyed in a coordinated attack, The Amygdala Group has effectively ceased to exist. A total of forty-seven scientists were killed; nearly 9,000 other employees were saved in an elaborate evacuation plan executed by McGill’s paramilitary forces. All employees will be paid a year’s severance from a trust funded by Phan’s estate. Families of the slain scientists will be paid one hundred years’ severance per the terms of Phan’s will.

Most of the world’s Proust supply was destroyed in the attack, and so far all efforts to reproduce the drug have failed. It turns out the Proust was not simply a mixture of chemicals, which might have been simple enough to reverse engineer; it also contained sophisticated nanobots that governed the drug’s effects. Only a handful of Amygdala scientists understood exactly how—and all were killed. Patent filings, and other documents that might have been helpful in recreating the drug, have so far proved useless.

Given Proust’s strict controls, few people had more than a month’s supply on hand. For some the loss has been devastating. My own physician had to leave practice because he forgot much of what he learned in medical school. By one estimate, as many as five million Americans find themselves in a similar situation: Everyone knows an accountant, engineer, or pilot who can no longer work in that field. The economy may take decades to achieve equilibrium again.

There have been bright spots. Most people, of course, never tried Proust. And among those who did, graduates in fields less reliant on memorization—particularly liberal arts disciplines like English or Philosophy—have seen increased employability. Their primary skill was always critical thinking, which is handled differently by the brain and is relatively unaffected by the presence or absence of Proust. Enrollment at liberal arts colleges, previously in a decades-long slump, has soared.

The federal government issued a blanket denial of everything I wrote, claiming that I fabricated nearly my entire narrative. Officially, Phan and McGill have been judged victims of the attack rather than perpetrators. The government’s stance is that an unidentified terrorist group coordinated the worldwide attack on Amygdala. The President has vowed revenge.

Latro Unified has been dissolved, its loans quietly forgiven. Without admitting the existence of an education “repossession” experiment, the Department of Education issued each of the roughly 5,500 RPs a lump-sum payment, the terms of which prohibit disclosure of any details.

Marcel Proust, dead for nearly a hundred and fifty years, now dominates the best-seller list.

Monica West recently moved to Paris, where I’m told her French is coming along nicely.

©2017 by Scott Dalrymple.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Scott Dalrymple made his fiction debut in back-to-back issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, where he was pulled from slush by a young John Joseph Adams. His novelette “Queen of the Kanguellas” appeared in the final printed issue of Realms of Fantasy and won its Readers Choice Award for Best Story (that the story caused the magazine’s death remains mere speculation). His day job is President of Columbia College (www.ccis.edu), which has a traditional campus in Columbia, Missouri, as well as 25,000 students at 35 extended sites across the U.S. and online. His hobby is challenging students to video game tournaments and then losing. Columbia College recently became one of the first institutions in the country to offer scholarships for League of Legends players at the Diamond level or above.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Heart’s Filthy Lesson

Elizabeth Bear | 9690 words

The sun burned through the clouds around noon on the long Cytherean day, and Dharthi happened to be awake and in a position to see it. She was alone in the highlands of Ishtar Terra on a research trip, five sleeps out from Butler base camp, and—despite the nagging desire to keep traveling—had decided to take a rest break for an hour or two. Noon at this latitude was close enough to the one hundredth solar dieiversary of her birth that she’d broken out her little hoard of shelf-stable cake to celebrate. The prehensile fingers and leaping legs of her bioreactor-printed, skin-bonded adaptshell made it simple enough to swarm up one of the tall, gracile pseudo-figs and creep along its gray smooth branches until the ceaseless Venusian rain dripped directly on her adaptshell’s slick-furred head.

It was safer in the treetops, if you were sitting still. Nothing big enough to want to eat her was likely to climb up this far. The grues didn’t come out until nightfall, but there were swamp-tigers, damnthings, and velociraptors to worry about. The forest was too thick for predators any bigger than that, but a swarm of scorpion-rats was no joke. And Venus had only been settled for three hundred days, and most of that devoted to Aphrodite Terra; there were still plenty of undiscovered monsters out here in the wilderness.

The water did not bother Dharthi, nor did the dip and sway of the branch in the wind. Her adaptshell was beautifully tailored to this terrain, and that fur shed water like the hydrophobic miracle of engineering that it was. The fur was a glossy, iridescent purple that qualified as black in most lights, to match the foliage that dripped rain like strings of glass beads from the multiple points of palmate leaves. Red-black, to make the most of the rainy grey light. They’d fold their leaves up tight and go dormant when night came.

Dharthi had been born with a chromosomal abnormality that produced red-green colorblindness. She’d been about ten solar days old when they’d done the gene therapy to fix it, and she just about remembered her first glimpses of the true, saturated colors of Venus. She’d seen it first as if it were Earth: washed out and faded.

For now, however, they were alive with the scurryings and chitterings of a few hundred different species of Cytherean canopy-dwellers. And the quiet, nearly-contented sound of Dharthi munching on cake. She would not dwell; she would not stew. She would look at all this natural majesty, and try to spot the places where an unnaturally geometric line or angle showed in the topography of the canopy.

From here, she could stare up the enormous sweep of Maxwell Montes to the north, its heights forested to the top in Venus’ deep, rich atmosphere—but the sight of them lost for most of its reach in clouds. Dharthi could only glimpse the escarpment at all because she was on the “dry” side. Maxwell Montes scraped the heavens, kicking the cloud layer up as if it had struck an aileron, so the “wet” side got the balance of the rain. Balance in this case meaning that the mountains on the windward side were scoured down to granite, and a nonadapted terrestrial organism had better bring breathing gear.

But here in the lee, the forest flourished, and on a clear hour from a height, visibility might reach a couple of klicks or more.

Dharthi took another bite of cake—it might have been “chocolate”; it was definitely caffeinated, because she was picking up the hit on her blood monitors already—and turned herself around on her branch to face downslope. The sky was definitely brighter, the rain falling back to a drizzle and then a mist, and the clouds were peeling back along an arrowhead trail that led directly back to the peak above her. A watery golden smudge brightened one patch of clouds. They tore and she glimpsed the full, unguarded brilliance of the daystar, just hanging there in a chip of glossy cerulean sky, the clouds all around it smeared with thick, unbelievable rainbows. Waves of mist rolled and slid among the leaves of the canopy, made golden by the shimmering unreal light.

Dharthi was glad she was wearing the shell. It played the sun’s warmth through to her skin without also relaying the risks of ultraviolet exposure. She ought to be careful of her eyes, however: A crystalline shield protected them, but its filters weren’t designed for naked light.

The forest noises rose to a cacophony. It was the third time in Dharthi’s one hundred solar days of life that she had glimpsed the sun. Even here, she imagined that some of these animals would never have seen it before.

She decided to accept it as a good omen for her journey. Sadly, there was no way to spin the next thing that happened that way.

“Hey,” said a voice in her head. “Good cake.”

“That proves your pan is malfunctioning, if anything does,” Dharthi replied sourly. Never accept a remote synaptic link with a romantic and professional partner. No matter how convenient it seems at the time, and in the field.

Because someday they might be a romantic and professional partner you really would rather not talk to right now.

“I heard that.”

“What do you want, Kraken?”

Dharthi imagined Kraken smiling, and wished she hadn’t. She could hear it in her partner’s “voice” when she spoke again, anyway. “Just to wish you a happy dieiversary.”

“Aw,” Dharthi said. “Aren’t you sweet. Noblesse oblige?”

“Maybe,” Kraken said tiredly, “I actually care?”

“Mmm,” Dharthi said. “What’s the ulterior motive this time?”

Kraken sighed. It was more a neural flutter than a heave of breath, but Dharthi got the point all right. “Maybe I actually care.”

“Sure,” Dharthi said. “Every so often you have to glance down from Mount Olympus and check up on the lesser beings.”

“Olympus is on Mars,” Kraken said.

It didn’t make Dharthi laugh, because she clenched her right fist hard enough that, even though the cushioning adaptshell squished against her palm, she still squeezed the blood out of her fingers. You and all your charm. You don’t get to charm me any more.

“Look,” Kraken said. “You have something to prove. I understand that.”

“How can you possibly understand that? When was the last time you were turned down for a resource allocation? Doctor youngest-ever recipient of the Cytherean Award for Excellence in Xenoarcheology? Doctor Founding Field-Martius Chair of Archaeology at the University on Aphrodite?”

“The University on Aphrodite,” Kraken said, “is five Quonset huts and a repurposed colonial landing module.”

“It’s what we’ve got.”

“I peaked early,” Kraken said, after a pause. “I was never your rival, Dharthi. We were colleagues.” Too late, in Dharthi’s silence, she realized her mistake. “Are colleagues.”

“You look up from your work often enough to notice I’m missing?”

There was a pause. “That may be fair,” Kraken said at last. “But if being professionally focused—”

“Obsessed.”

“—is a failing, it was hardly a failing limited to me. Come back. Come back to me. We’ll talk about it. I’ll help you try for a resource voucher again tomorrow.”

“I don’t want your damned help, Kraken!”

The forest around Dharthi fell silent. Shocked, she realized she’d shouted out loud.

“Haring off across Ishtar alone, with no support—you’re not going to prove your theory about aboriginal Cytherean settlement patterns, Dhar. You’re going to get eaten by a grue.”

“I’ll be home by dark,” Dharthi said. “Anyway, if I’m not—all the better for the grue.”

“You know who else was always on about being laughed out of the Academy?” Kraken said. Her voice had that teasing tone that could break Dharthi’s worst, most self-loathing, prickliest mood—if she let it. “Moriarty.”

I will not laugh. Fuck you.

Dharthi couldn’t tell if Kraken had picked it up or not. There was a silence, as if she were controlling her temper or waiting for Dharthi to speak.

“If you get killed,” Kraken said, “make a note in your file that I can use your DNA. You’re not getting out of giving me children that easily.”

Ha ha, Dharthi thought. Only serious. She couldn’t think of what to say, and so she said nothing. The idea of a little Kraken filled her up with mushy softness inside. But somebody’s career would go on hold for the first fifty solar days of that kid’s life, and Dharthi was pretty sure it wouldn’t be Kraken.

She couldn’t think of what to say in response, and the silence got heavy until Kraken said, “Dammit. I’m worried about you.”

“Worry about yourself.” Dharthi couldn’t break the connection, but she could bloody well shut down her end of the dialogue. And she could refuse to hear.

She pitched the remains of the cake as far across the canopy as she could, then regretted it. Hopefully nothing Cytherean would try to eat it; it might give the local biology a belly ache.

• • • •

It was ironically inevitable that Dharthi, named by her parents in a fit of homesickness for Terra, would grow up to be the most Cytherean of Cythereans. She took great pride in her adaptation, in her ability to rough it. Some of the indigenous plants and many of the indigenous animals could be eaten, and Dharthi knew which ones. She also knew, more importantly, which ones were likely to eat her.

She hadn’t mastered humans nearly as well. Dharthi wasn’t good at politics. Unlike Kraken. Dharthi wasn’t good at making friends. Unlike Kraken. Dharthi wasn’t charming or beautiful or popular or brilliant. Unlike Kraken, Kraken, Kraken.

Kraken was a better scientist, or at least a better-understood one. Kraken was a better person, probably. More generous, less prickly, certainly. But there was one thing Dharthi was good at. Better at than Kraken. Better at than anyone. Dharthi was good at living on Venus, at being Cytherean. She was more comfortable in and proficient with an adaptshell than anyone she had ever met.

In fact, it was peeling the shell off that came hard. So much easier to glide through the jungle or the swamp like something that belonged there, wearing a quasibiologic suit of super-powered armor bonded to your neural network and your skin. The human inside was a soft, fragile, fleshy thing, subject to complicated feelings and social dynamics, and Dharthi despised her. But that same human, while bonded to the shell, ghosted through the rain forest like a native, and saw things no one else ever had.

A kilometer from where she had stopped for cake, she picked up the trail of a velociraptor. It was going in the right direction, so she tracked it. It wasn’t a real velociraptor; it wasn’t even a dinosaur. Those were Terran creatures, albeit extinct; this was a Cytherean meat-eating monster that bore a superficial resemblance. Like the majority of Cytherean vertebrates, it had six limbs, though it ran balanced on the rear ones and the two forward pairs had evolved into little more than graspers. Four eyes were spaced equidistantly around the dome of its skull, giving it a dome of monocular vision punctuated by narrow slices of depth perception. The business end of the thing was delineated by a sawtoothed maw that split wide enough to bite a human being in half. The whole of it was camouflaged with long draggled fur-feathers that grew thick with near-black algae, or the Cytherean cognate.

Dharthi followed the velociraptor for over two kilometers, and the beast never even noticed she was there. She smiled inside her adaptshell. Kraken was right: going out into the jungle alone and unsupported would be suicide for most people. But wasn’t it like her not to give Dharthi credit for this one single thing that Dharthi could do better than anyone?

She knew that the main Cytherean settlements had been on Ishtar Terra. Knew it in her bones. And she was going to prove it, whether anybody was willing to give her an allocation for the study or not.

They’ll be sorry, she thought, and had to smile at her own adolescent petulance. They’ll rush to support me once this is done.

The not-a-dinosaur finally veered off to the left. Dharthi kept jogging/swinging/swimming/splashing/climbing forward, letting the shell do most of the work. The highlands leveled out into the great plateau the new settlers called the Lakshmi Planum. No one knew what the aboriginals had called it. They’d been gone for—to an approximation—ten thousand years: as long as it had taken humankind to get from the Neolithic (agriculture, stone tools) to jogging through the jungles of alien world wearing a suit of power armor engineered from printed muscle fiber and cheetah DNA.

Lakshmi Planum, ringed with mountains on four sides, was one of the few places on the surface of Venus where you could not see an ocean. The major Cytherean land masses, Aphrodite and Ishtar, were smaller than South America. The surface of this world was eighty-five percent water—water less salty than Earth’s oceans, because there was less surface to leach minerals into it through runoff. And the Lakshmi Planum was tectonically active, with great volcanoes and living faults.

That activity was one of the reasons Dharthi’s research had brought her here.

The jungle of the central Ishtarean plateau was not as creeper-clogged and vine-throttled as Dharthi might have expected. It was a mature climax forest, and the majority of the biomass hung suspended over Dharthi’s head, great limbs stretching up umbrellalike to the limited light. Up there, the branches and trunks were festooned with symbiotes, parasites, and commensal organisms. Down here among the trunks, it was dark and still except for the squish of loam underfoot and the ceaseless patter of what rain came through the leaves.

Dharthi stayed alert, but didn’t spot any more large predators on that leg of the journey. There were flickers and scuttlers and flyers galore, species she was sure nobody had named or described. Perhaps on the way back she’d have time to do more, but for now she contented herself with extensive video archives. It wouldn’t hurt to cultivate some good karma with Bio while she was out here. She might need a job sweeping up offices when she got back.

Stop. Failure is not an option. Not even a possibility.

Like all such glib sentiments, it didn’t make much of a dent in the bleakness of her mood. Even walking, observing, surveying, she had entirely too much time to think.

She waded through two more swamps and scaled a basalt ridge—one of the stretching roots of the vast volcano named Sacajawea. Nearly everything on Venus was named after female persons—historical, literary, or mythological—from Terra, from the quaint old system of binary and exclusive genders. For a moment, Dharthi considered such medieval horrors as dentistry without anesthetic, binary gender, and being stuck forever in the body you were born in, locked in and struggling against what your genes dictated. The trap of biology appalled her; she found it impossible to comprehend how people in the olden days had gotten anything done, with their painfully short lives and their limited access to resources, education, and technology.

The adaptshell stumbled over a tree root, forcing her attention back to the landscape. Of course, modern technology wasn’t exactly perfect either. The suit needed carbohydrate to keep moving, and protein to repair muscle tissue. Fortunately, it wasn’t picky about its food source—and Dharthi herself needed rest. The day was long, and only half over. She wouldn’t prove herself if she got so tired she got herself eaten by a megaspider.

We haven’t conquered all those human frailties yet.

Sleepily, she climbed a big tree, one that broke the canopy, and slung a hammock high in branches that dripped with fleshy, gorgeous, thickly scented parasitic blossoms, opportunistically decking every limb up here where the light was stronger. They shone bright whites and yellows, mostly, set off against the dark, glossy foliage. Dharthi set proximity sensors, established a tech perimeter above and below, and unsealed the shell before sending it down to forage for the sorts of simple biomass that sustained it. It would be happy with the mulch of the forest floor, and she could call it back when she needed it. Dharthi rolled herself into the hammock as if it were a scentproof, claw-proof cocoon and tried to sleep.

Rest eluded. The leaves and the cocoon filtered the sunlight, so it was pleasantly dim, and the cocoon kept the water off except what she’d brought inside with herself when she wrapped up. She was warm and well-supported. But that all did very little to alleviate her anxiety.

She didn’t know exactly where she was going. She was flying blind—hah, she wished she were flying. If she’d had the allocations for an aerial survey, this would all be a lot easier, assuming they could pick anything out through the jungle—and operating on a hunch. An educated hunch.

But one that Kraken and her other colleagues—and more importantly, the Board of Allocation—thought was at best a wild guess and at worst crackpottery.

What if you’re wrong?

If she was wrong . . . well. She didn’t have much to go home to. So she’d better be right that the settlements they’d found on Aphrodite were merely outposts, and that the aboriginal Cythereans had stuck much closer to the North pole. She had realized that the remains—such as they were—of Cytherean settlements clustered in geologically active areas. She theorized that they used geothermal energy, or perhaps had some other unknown purpose for staying there. In any case, Ishtar was far younger, far more geologically active than Aphrodite, as attested by its upthrust granite ranges and its scattering of massive volcanoes. Aphrodite—larger, calmer, safer—had drawn the Terran settlers. Dharthi theorized that Ishtar had been the foundation of Cytherean culture for exactly the opposite reasons.

She hoped that if she found a big settlement—the remains of one of their cities—she could prove this. And possibly even produce some clue as to what had happened to them all.

It wouldn’t be easy. A city buried under ten thousand years of sediment and jungle could go unnoticed even by an archaeologist’s trained eye and the most perspicacious modern mapping and visualization technology. And of course she had to be in the right place, and all she had to go on there were guesses—deductions, if she was feeling kind to herself, which she rarely was—about the patterns of relationships between those geologically active areas on Aphrodite and the aboriginal settlements nearby.

This is stupid. You’ll never find anything without support and an allocation. Kraken never would have pushed her luck this way.

Kraken never would have needed to. Dharthi knew better than anyone how much effort and dedication and scholarship went into Kraken’s work—but still, it sometimes seemed as if fantastic opportunities just fell into her lover’s lap without effort. And Kraken’s intellect and charisma were so dazzling . . . it was hard to see past that to the amount of study it took to support that seemingly effortless, comprehensive knowledge of just about everything.

Nothing made Dharthi feel the limitations of her own ability like spending time with her lover. Hell, Kraken probably would have known which of the animals she was spotting as she ran were new species, and the names and describers of all the known ones.

If she could have this, Dharthi thought, just this—if she could do one thing to equal all of Kraken’s effortless successes—then she could tolerate how perfect Kraken was the rest of the time.

This line of thought wasn’t helping the anxiety. She thrashed in the cocoon for another half-hour before she finally gave in and took a sedative. Not safe, out in the jungle. But if she didn’t rest, she couldn’t run—and even the Cytherean daylight wasn’t actually endless.

• • • •

Dharthi awakened to an animal sniffing her cocoon with great whuffing predatory breaths. An atavistic response, something from the brainstem, froze her in place even as it awakened her. Her arms and legs—naked, so fragile without her skin—felt heavy, numb, limp as if they had fallen asleep. The shadow of the thing’s head darkened the translucent steelsilk as it passed between Dharthi and the sky. The drumming of the rain stopped, momentarily. Hard to tell how big it was, from that—but big, she thought. An estimation confirmed when it nosed or pawed the side of the cocoon and she felt a broad blunt object as big as her two hands together prod her in the ribs.

She held her breath, and it withdrew. There was the rain, tapping on her cocoon where it dripped between the leaves. She was almost ready to breathe out again when it made a sound—a thick chugging noise followed by a sort of roar that had more in common with trains and waterfalls than what most people would identify as an animal sound.

Dharthi swallowed her scream. She didn’t need Kraken to tell her what that was. Every schoolchild could manage a piping reproduction of the call of one of Venus’s nastiest pieces of charismatic megafauna, the Cytherean swamp-tiger.

Swamp-tigers were two lies, six taloned legs, and an indiscriminate number of enormous daggerlike teeth in a four hundred kilogram body. Two lies, because they didn’t live in swamps—though they passed through them on occasion, because what on Venus didn’t?—and they weren’t tigers. But they were striped violet and jade green to disappear into the thick jungle foliage; they had long, slinky bodies that twisted around sharp turns and barreled up tree trunks without any need to decelerate; and their whisker-ringed mouths hinged open wide enough to bite a grown person in half.

All four of the swamp-tiger’s bright blue eyes were directed forward. Because it didn’t hurt their hunting, and what creature in its right mind would want to sneak up on a thing like that?

They weren’t supposed to hunt this high up. The branches were supposed to be too slender to support them.

Dharthi wasn’t looking forward to getting a better look at this one. It nudged the cocoon again. Despite herself, Dharthi went rigid. She pressed both fists against her chest and concentrated on not whimpering, on not making a single sound. She forced herself to breathe slowly and evenly. To consider. Panic gets you eaten.

She wouldn’t give Kraken the damned satisfaction.

She had some resources. The cocoon would attenuate her scent, and might disguise it almost entirely. The adaptshell was somewhere in the vicinity, munching away, and if she could make it into that, she stood a chance of outrunning the thing. She weighed a quarter what the swamp-tiger did; she could get up higher into the treetops than it could. Theoretically; after all, it wasn’t supposed to come up this high.

And she was, at least presumptively, somewhat smarter.

But it could outjump her, outrun her, outsneak her, and—perhaps most importantly—outchomp her.

She wasted a few moments worrying about how it had gotten past her perimeter before the sharp pressure of its claws skidding down the rip-proof surface of the cocoon refocused her attention. That was a temporary protection; it might not be able to pierce the cocoon, but it could certainly squash Dharthi to death inside of it, or rip it out of the tree and toss it to the jungle floor. If the fall didn’t kill her, she’d have the cheerful and humiliating choice of yelling for rescue or wandering around injured until something bigger ate her. She needed a way out; she needed to channel five million years of successful primate adaptation, the legacy of clever monkey ancestors, and figure out how to get away from the not-exactly-cat.

What would a monkey do? The question was the answer, she realized.

She just needed the courage to apply it. And the luck to survive whatever then transpired.

The cocoon was waterproof as well as claw-proof—hydrophobic on the outside, a wicking polymer on the inside. The whole system was impregnated with an engineered bacteria that broke down the waste products in human sweat—or other fluids—and returned them to the environment as safe, nearly odorless, non-polluting water, salts, and a few trace chemicals. Dharthi was going to have to unfasten the damn thing.

She waited while the swamp-tiger prodded her again. It seemed to have a pattern of investigating and withdrawing—Dharthi heard the rustle and felt the thump and sway as it leaped from branch to branch, circling, making a few horrifically unsettling noises and a bloodcurdling snarl or two, and coming back for another go at the cocoon. The discipline required to hold herself still—not even merely still, but limp—as the creature whuffed and poked left her nauseated with adrenaline. She felt it moving away, then. The swing of branches under its weight did nothing to ease the roiling in her gut.

Now or never.

Shell! Come and get me! Then she palmed the cocoon’s seal and whipped it open, left hand and foot shoved through internal grips so she didn’t accidentally evert herself into free fall. As she swung, she shook a heavy patter of water drops loose from the folds of the cocoon’s hydrophobic surface. They pattered down. There were a lot of branches between her and the ground; she didn’t fancy making the intimate acquaintanceship of each and every one of them.

The swamp-tiger hadn’t gone as far as she expected. In fact, it was on the branch just under hers. As it whipped its head around and roared, she had an eloquent view from above—a clear shot down its black-violet gullet. The mouth hinged wide enough to bite her in half across the middle; the tongue was thick and fleshy; the palate ribbed and mottled in paler shades of red. If I live through this, I will be able to draw every one of those seventy-two perfectly white teeth from memory.

She grabbed the safety handle with her right hand as well, heaved with her hips, and flipped the cocoon over so her legs swung free. For a moment, she dangled just above the swamp-tiger. It reared back on its heavy haunches like a startled cat, long tail lashing around to protect its abdomen. Dharthi knew that as soon as it collected its wits it was going to take a swipe at her, possibly with both sets of forelegs.

It was small for a swamp-tiger—perhaps only two hundred kilos—and its stripes were quite a bit brighter than she would have expected. Even wet, its feathery plumage had the unfinished raggedness she associated with young animals still in their baby coats. It might even have been fuzzy, if it were ever properly dry. Which might explain why it was so high up in the treetops. Previously undocumented behavior in a juvenile animal.

Wouldn’t it be an irony if this were the next in a long line of xenobiological discoveries temporarily undiscovered again because a scientist happened to get herself eaten? At least she had a transponder. And maybe the shell was nearby enough to record some of this.

Data might survive.

Great, she thought. I wonder where its mama is.

Then she urinated in its face.

It wasn’t an aimed stream by any means, though she was wearing the external plumbing currently—easier in the field, until you got a bladder stone. But she had a bladder full of pee saved up during sleep, so there was plenty of it. It splashed down her legs and over the swamp-tiger’s face, and Dharthi didn’t care what your biology was, if you were carbon-oxygen based, a snout full of ammonia and urea had to be pretty nasty.

The swamp-tiger backed away, cringing. If it had been a human being, Dharthi would have said it was spluttering. She didn’t take too much time to watch; good a story as it would make someday, it would always be a better one than otherwise if she survived to tell it. She pumped her legs for momentum, glad that the sweat-wicking properties of the cocoon’s lining kept the grip dry, because right now her palms weren’t doing any of that work themselves. Kick high, a twist from the core, and she had one leg over the cocoon. It was dry—she’d shaken off what little water it had collected. Dharthi pulled her feet up—standing on the stuff was like standing on a slack sail, and she was glad that some biotuning trained up by the time she spent running the canopy had given her the balance of a perching bird.

Behind and below, she heard the Cytherean monster make a sound like a kettle boiling over—one part whistle, and one part hiss. She imagined claws in her haunches, a crushing bite to the skull or the nape—

The next branch up was a half-meter beyond her reach. Her balance on her toes, she jumped as hard as she could off the yielding surface under her bare feet. Her left hand missed; the right hooked a limb but did not close. She dangled sideways for a moment, the stretch across her shoulder strong and almost pleasant. Her fingers locked in the claw position, she flexed her bicep—not a pull up, she couldn’t chin herself one-handed—but just enough to let her left hand latch securely. A parasitic orchid squashed beneath the pads of her fingers. A dying bug wriggled. Caustic sap burned her skin. She swung, and managed to hang on.

She wanted to dangle for a moment, panting and shaking and gathering herself for the next ridiculous effort. But beneath her, the rattle of leaves, the creak of a bough. The not-tiger was coming.

Climb. Climb!

She had to get high. She had to get further out from the trunk, onto branches where it would not pursue her. She had to stay alive until the shell got to her. Then she could run or fight as necessary.

Survival was starting to seem like less of a pipe dream now.

She swung herself up again, risking a glance through her armpit as she mantled herself up onto the bough. It dipped and twisted under her weight. Below, the swamp-tiger paced, snarled, reared back, and took a great, outraged swing up at her cocoon with its two left-side forepaws.

The fabric held. The branches it was slung between did not. They cracked and swung down, crashing on the boughs below and missing the swamp-tiger only because the Cytherean cat had reflexes preternaturally adapted to life in the trees. It still came very close to being knocked off its balance, and Dharthi took advantage of its distraction to scramble higher, careful to remember not to wipe her itching palms on the more sensitive flesh of her thighs.

Another logic problem presented itself. The closer she got to the trunk, the higher she could scramble, and the faster the adaptshell could get to her—but the swamp-tiger was less likely to follow her out on the thinner ends of the boughs. She was still moving as she decided that she’d go up a bit more first, and move diagonally—up and out, until “up” was no longer an option.

She made two more branches before hearing the rustle of the swamp-tiger leaping upwards behind her. She’d instinctively made a good choice in climbing away from it rather than descending, she realized—laterally or down, there was no telling how far the thing could leap. Going up, on unsteady branches, it was limited to shorter hops. Shorter . . . but much longer than Dharthi’s. Now the choice was made for her—out, before it caught up, or get eaten. At least the wet of the leaves and the rain were washing the irritant sap from her palms.

She hauled her feet up again and gathered herself to stand and sprint down the center stem of this bough, a perilous highway no wider than her palm. When she raised her eyes, though, she found herself looking straight into the four bright, curious blue eyes of a second swamp-tiger.

“Aw, crud,” Dharthi said. “Didn’t anyone tell you guys you’re supposed to be solitary predators?”

It looked about the same age and size and fluffiness as the other one. Littermates? Littermates of some Terran species hunted together until they reached maturity. That was probably the answer, and there was another groundbreaking bit of Cytherean biology that would go into a swamp-tiger’s belly with Dharthi’s masticated brains. Maybe she’d have enough time to relay the information to Kraken while they were disemboweling her.

The swamp-tiger lifted its anterior right forefoot and dabbed experimentally at Dharthi. Dharthi drew back her lips and hissed at it, and it pulled the leg back and contemplated her, but it didn’t put the paw down. The next swipe would be for keeps.

She could call Kraken now, of course. But that would just be a distraction, not help. Help had the potential to arrive in time.

The idea of telling Kraken—and everybody—how she had gotten out of a confrontation with two of Venus’s most impressive predators put a new rush of strength in her trembling legs. They were juveniles. They were inexperienced. They lacked confidence in their abilities, and they did not know how to estimate hers.

Wild predators had no interest in fighting anything to the death. They were out for a meal.

Dharthi stood up on her refirming knees, screamed in the swamp-tiger’s face, and punched it as hard as she could, right in the nose.

She almost knocked herself out of the damned tree, and only her windmilling left hand snatching at twigs hauled her upright again and saved her. The swamp-tiger had crouched back, face wrinkled up in distaste or discomfort. The other one was coming up behind her.

Dharthi turned on the ball of her foot and sprinted for the end of the bough. Ten meters, fifteen, and it trembled and curved down sharply under her weight. There was still a lot of forest giant left above her, but this bough was arching now until it almost touched the one below. It moved in the wind, and with every breath. It creaked and made fragile little crackling noises.

A few more meters, and it might bend down far enough that she could reach the branch below.

A few more meters, and it might crack and drop.

It probably wouldn’t pull free of the tree entirely—fresh Cytherean “wood” was fibrous and full of sap—but it might dump her off pretty handily.

She took a deep breath—clean air, rain, deep sweetness of flowers, herby scents of crushed leaves—and turned again to face the tigers.

They were still where she had left them, crouched close to the trunk of the tree, tails lashing as they stared balefully after her out of eight gleaming cerulean eyes. Their fanged heads were sunk low between bladelike shoulders. Their lips curled over teeth as big as fingers.

“Nice kitties,” Dharthi said ineffectually. “Why don’t you two just scamper on home? I bet mama has a nice bit of grue for supper.”

The one she had peed on snarled at her. She supposed she couldn’t blame it. She edged a little further away on the branch.

A rustling below. Now that’s just ridiculous.

But it wasn’t a third swamp-tiger. She glanced down and glimpsed an anthropoid shape clambering up through the branches fifty meters below, mostly hidden in foliage but moving with a peculiar empty lightness. The shell. Coming for her.

The urge to speed up the process, to try to climb down to it, was almost unbearable, but Dharthi made herself sit tight. One of the tigers—the one she’d punched—rose up on six padded legs and slunk forward. It made a half dozen steps before the branch’s increasing droop and the cracking, creaking sounds made it freeze. It was close enough now that she could make out the pattern of its damp, feathery whiskers. Dharthi braced her bare feet under tributary limbs and tried not to hunker down; swamp-tigers were supposed to go for crouching prey, and standing up and being big was supposed to discourage them. She spread her arms and rode the sway of the wind, the sway of the limb.

Her adaptshell heaved itself up behind her while the tigers watched. Her arms were already spread wide, her legs braced. The shell just cozied up behind her and squelched over her outstretched limbs, snuggling up and tightening down. It affected her balance, though, and the wobbling of the branch—

She crouched fast and grabbed at a convenient limb. And that was more than tiger number two could bear.

From a standing start, still halfway down the branch, the tiger gathered itself, hindquarters twitching. It leaped, and Dharthi had just enough time to try to throw herself flat under its arc. Enough time to try, but not quite enough time to succeed.

One of the swamp-tiger’s second rank of legs caught her right arm like the swing of a baseball bat. Because she had dodged, it was her arm and not her head. The force of the blow still sent Dharthi sliding over the side of the limb, clutching and failing to clutch, falling in her adaptshell. She heard the swamp-tiger land where she had been, heard the bough crack, saw it give and swing down after her. The swamp-tiger squalled, scrabbling, its littermate making abrupt noises of retreat as well—and it was falling beside Dharthi, twisting in midair, clutching a nearby branch and there was a heaving unhappy sound from the tree’s structure and then she fell alone, arm numb, head spinning.

The adaptshell saved her. It, too, twisted in midair, righted itself, reached out and grasped with her good arm. This branch held, but it bent, and she slammed into the next branch down, taking the impact on the same arm the tiger had injured. She didn’t know for a moment if that green sound was a branch breaking or her—and then she did know, because inside the shell she could feel how her right arm hung limp, meaty, flaccid—humerus shattered.

She was dangling right beside her cocoon, as it happened. She used the folds of cloth to pull herself closer to the trunk, then commanded it to detach and retract. She found one of the proximity alarms and discovered that the damp had gotten into it. It didn’t register her presence, either.

Venus.

She was stowing it one-handed in one of the shell’s cargo pockets, warily watching for the return of either tiger, when the voice burst into her head.

“Dhar!”

“Don’t worry,” she told Kraken. “Just hurt my arm getting away from a swamp-tiger. Everything’s fine.”

“Hurt or broke? Wait, swamp-tiger?”

“It’s gone now. I scared it off.” She wasn’t sure, but she wasn’t about to admit that. “Tell Zamin the juveniles hunt in pairs.”

“A pair of swamp-tigers?!”

“I’m fine,” Dharthi said, and clamped down the link.

She climbed down one-handed, relying on the shell more than she would have liked. She did not see either tiger again.

At the bottom, on the jungle floor, she limped, but she ran.

• • • •

Four runs and four sleeps later—the sleeps broken, confused spirals of exhaustion broken by fractured snatches of rest—the brightest patch of pewter in the sky had shifted visibly to the east. Noon had become afternoon, and the long Cytherean day was becoming Dharthi’s enemy. She climbed trees regularly to look for signs of geometrical shapes informing the growth of the forest, and every time she did, she glanced at that brighter smear of cloud sliding down the sky and frowned.

Dharthi—assisted by her adaptshell—had come some five hundred kilometers westward. Maxwell Montes was lost behind her now, in cloud and mist and haze and behind the shoulder of the world. She was moving fast for someone creeping, climbing, and swinging through the jungle, although she was losing time because she hadn’t turned the adaptshell loose to forage on its own since the swamp-tiger. She needed it to support and knit her arm—the shell fused to itself across the front and made a seamless cast and sling—and for the pain suppressants it fed her along with its pre-chewed pap. The bones were going to knit all wrong, of course, and when she got back, they’d have to grow her a new one, but that was pretty minor stuff.

The shell filtered toxins and allergens out of the biologicals it ingested, reherving some of the carbohydrates, protein, and fat to produce a bland, faintly sweet, nutrient-rich paste that was safe for Dharthi’s consumption. She sucked it from a tube as needed, squashing it between tongue and palate to soften it before swallowing each sticky, dull mouthful.

Water was never a problem—at least, the problem was having too much of it, not any lack. This was Venus. Water squelched in every footstep across the jungle floor. It splashed on the adaptshell’s head and infiltrated every cargo pocket. The only things that stayed dry were the ones that were treated to be hydrophobic, and the coating was starting to wear off some of those. Dharthi’s cocoon was permanently damp inside. Even her shell, which molded her skin perfectly, felt alternately muggy or clammy depending on how it was comping temperature.

The adaptshell also filtered some of the fatigue toxins out of Dharthi’s system. But not enough. Sleep was sleep, and she wasn’t getting enough of it.

The landscape was becoming dreamy and strange. The forest never thinned, never gave way to another landscape—except the occasional swath of swampland—but now, occasionally, twisted fumaroles rose up through it, smoking towers of orange and ochre that sent wisps of steam drifting between scalded yellowed leaves. Dharthi saw one of the geysers erupt; she noticed that over it, and where the spray would tend to blow, there was a hole in the canopy. But vines grew right up the knobby accreted limestone on the windward side.

Five runs and five . . . five attempts at a sleep later, Dharthi began to accept that she desperately, desperately wanted to go home.

She wouldn’t, of course.

Her arm hurt less. That was a positive thing. Other than that, she was exhausted and damp and cold and some kind of thick liver-colored leech kept trying to attach itself to the adaptshell’s legs. A species new to science, probably, and Dharthi didn’t give a damn.

Kraken tried to contact her every few hours.

She didn’t answer, because she knew if she did, she would ask Kraken to come and get her. And then she’d never be able to look another living Cytherean in the face again.

It wasn’t like Venus had a big population.

Dharthi was going to prove herself or die trying.

The satlink from Zamin, though, she took at once. They chatted about swamp-tigers—Zamin, predictably, was fascinated, and told Dharthi she’d write it up and give full credit to Dharthi as observer. “Tell Hazards, too,” Dharthi said, as an afterthought.

“Oh, yeah,” Zamin replied. “I guess it is at that. Dhar . . . are you okay out there?”

“Arm hurts,” Dharthi admitted. “The drugs are working, though. I could use some sleep in a bed. A dry bed.”

“Yeah,” Zamin said. “I bet you could. You know Kraken’s beside herself, don’t you?”

“She’ll know if I die,” Dharthi said.

“She’s a good friend,” Zamin said. A good trick, making it about her, rather than Kraken or Dharthi or Kraken and Dharthi. “I worry about her. You know she’s been unbelievably kind to me, generous through some real roughness. She’s—”

“She’s generous,” Dharthi said. “She’s a genius and a charismatic. I know it better than most. Look, I should pay attention to where my feet are, before I break the other arm. Then you will have to extract me. And won’t I feel like an idiot then?”

“Dhar—”

She broke the sat. She felt funny about it for hours afterward, but at least when she crawled into her cocoon that rest period, adaptshell and all, she was so exhausted she slept.

• • • •

She woke up sixteen hours and twelve minutes later, disoriented and sore in every joint. After ninety seconds she recollected herself enough to figure out where she was—in her shell, in her cocoon, fifty meters up in the Ishtarean canopy, struggling out of an exhaustion and painkiller haze—and when she was, with a quick check of the time.

She stowed and packed by rote, slithered down a strangler vine, stood in contemplation on the forest floor. Night was coming—the long night—and while she still had ample time to get back to base camp without calling for a pickup, every day now cut into her margin of safety.

She ran.

Rested, she almost had the resources to deal with it when Kraken spoke in her mind, so she gritted her teeth and said, “Yes, dear?”

“Hi,” Kraken said. There was a pause, in which Dharthi sensed a roil of suppressed emotion. Thump. Thump. As long as her feet kept running, nothing could catch her. That sharpness in her chest was just tight breath from running, she was sure. “Zamin says she’s worried about you.”

Dharthi snorted. She had slept too much, but now that the kinks were starting to shake out of her body, she realized that the rest had done her good. “You know what Zamin wanted to talk to me about? You. How wonderful you are. How caring. How made of charm.” Dharthi sighed. “How often do people take you aside to gush about how wonderful I am?”

“You might,” Kraken said, “be surprised.”

“It’s hard being the partner of somebody so perfect. When did you ever struggle for anything? You have led a charmed life, Kraken, from birth to now.”

“Did I?” Kraken said. “I’ve been lucky, I don’t deny. But I’ve worked hard. And lived through things. You think I’m perfect because that’s how you see me, in between bouts of hating everything I do.”

“It’s how everyone sees you. If status in the afterlife is determined by praises sung, yours is assured.”

“I wish you could hear how they talk about you. People hold you in awe, love.”

Thump. Thump. The rhythm of her feet soothed her, when nothing else could. She was even getting resigned to the ceaseless damp, which collected between her toes, between her buttocks, behind her ears. “They love you. They tolerated me. No one ever saw what you saw in me.”

“I did,” Kraken replied. “And quit acting as if I were somehow perfect. You’ve been quick enough to remind me on occasion of how I’m not. This thing, this need to prove yourself . . . it’s a sophipathology, Dhar. I love you. But this is not a healthy pattern of thought. Ambition is great, but you go beyond ambition. Nothing you do is ever good enough. You deny your own accomplishments, and inflate those of everyone around you. You grew up in Aphrodite, and there are only thirty thousand people on the whole damned planet. You can’t be surprised that, brilliant as you are, some of us are just as smart and capable as you are.”

Thump. Thump—

She was watching ahead even as she was arguing, though her attention wasn’t on it. That automatic caution was all that kept her from running off the edge of the world.

Before her—below her—a great cliff dropped away. The trees in the valley soared up. But this was not a tangled jungle: It was a climax forest, a species of tree taller and more densely canopied than any Dharthi had seen. The light below those trees was thick and crepuscular, and though she could hear the rain drumming on their leaves, very little of it dripped through.

Between them, until the foliage cut off her line of sight, Dharthi could see the familiar, crescent-shaped roofs of aboriginal Cytherean structures, some of them half-consumed in the accretions from the forest of smoking stone towers that rose among the trees.

She stood on the cliff edge overlooking the thing she had come half a world by airship and a thousand kilometers on foot to find, and pebbles crumbled from beneath the toes of her adaptshell, and she raised a hand to her face as if Kraken were really speaking into a device in her ear canal instead of into the patterns of electricity in her brain. The cavernous ruin stretched farther than her eyes could see—even dark-adapted, once the shell made the transition for her. Even in this strange, open forest filled with colorful, flitting flying things.

“Love?”

“Yes?” Kraken said, then went silent and waited.

“I’ll call you back,” Dharthi said. “I just discovered the Lost City of Ishtar.”

• • • •

Dharthi walked among the ruins. It was not all she’d hoped.

Well, it was more than she had hoped. She rappelled down, and as soon as her shell sank ankle-deep in the leaf litter, she was overcome by a hush of awe. She turned from the wet, lichen-heavy cliff, scuffed with the temporary marks of her feet, and craned back to stare up at the forest of geysers and fumaroles and trees that stretched west and south as far as she could see. The cliff behind her was basalt—another root of the volcano whose shield was lost in mists and trees. This . . . this was the clearest air she had ever seen.

The trees were planted in rows, as perfectly arranged as pillars in some enormous Faerie hall. The King of the Giants lived here, and Dharthi was Jack, except she had climbed down the beanstalk for a change.

The trunks were as big around as ten men with linked hands, tall enough that their foliage vanished in the clouds overhead. Trees on Earth, Dharthi knew, were limited in height by capillary action: How high could they lift water to their thirsty leaves?

Perhaps these Cytherean giants drank from the clouds as well as the earth.

“Oh,” Dharthi said, and the spaces between the trees both hushed and elevated her voice, so it sounded clear and thin. “Wait until Zamin sees these.”

Dharthi suddenly realized that if they were a new species, she would get to name them.

They were so immense, and dominated the light so completely, that very little grew under them. Some native fernmorphs, some mosses. Lichens shaggy on their enormous trunks and roots. Where one had fallen, a miniature Cytherean rain forest had sprung up in the admitted light, and here there was drumming, dripping rain, rain falling like strings of glass beads. It was a muddy little puddle of the real world in this otherwise alien quiet.

The trees stood like attentive gods, their faces so high above her she could not even hear the leaves rustle.

Dharthi forced herself to turn away from the trees, at last, and begin examining the structures. There were dozens of them—hundreds—sculpted out of the same translucent, mysterious, impervious material as all of the ruins in Aphrodite. But this was six, ten times the scale of any such ruin. Maybe vaster. She needed a team. She needed a mapping expedition. She needed a base camp much closer to this. She needed to give the site a name—

She needed to get back to work.

She remembered, then, to start documenting. The structures—she could not say, of course, which were habitations, which served other purposes—or even if the aboriginals had used the same sorts of divisions of usage that human beings did—were of a variety of sizes and heights. They were all designed as arcs or crescents, however—singly, in series, or in several cases as a sort of stepped spectacular with each lower, smaller level fitting inside the curve of a higher, larger one. Several had obvious access points, open to the air, and Dharthi reminded herself sternly that going inside unprepared was not just a bad idea because of risk to herself, but because she might disturb the evidence.

She clenched her good hand and stayed outside.

Her shell had been recording, of course—now she began to narrate, and to satlink the files home. No fanfare, just an upload. Data and more data—and the soothing knowledge that while she was hogging her allocated bandwidth to send, nobody could call her to ask questions, or congratulate, or—

Nobody except Kraken, with whom she was entangled for life.

“Hey,” her partner said in her head. “You found it.”

“I found it,” Dharthi said, pausing the narration but not the load. There was plenty of visual, olfactory, auditory, and kinesthetic data being sent even without her voice.

“How does it feel to be vindicated?”

She could hear the throb of Kraken’s pride in her mental voice. She tried not to let it make her feel patronized. Kraken did not mean to sound parental, proprietary. That was Dharthi’s own baggage.

“Vindicated?” She looked back over her shoulder. The valley was quiet and dark. A fumarole vented with a rushing hiss and a curve of wind brought the scent of sulfur to sting her eyes.

“Famous?”

“Famous!?”

“Hell, Terran-famous. The homeworld is going to hear about this in, oh, about five minutes, given light lag—unless somebody who’s got an entangled partner back there shares sooner. You’ve just made the biggest Cytherean archaeological discovery in the past hundred days, love. And probably the next hundred. You are not going to have much of a challenge getting allocations now.”

“I—”

“You worked hard for it.”

“It feels like . . .” Dharthi picked at the bridge of her nose with a thumbnail. The skin was peeling off in flakes: Too much time in her shell was wreaking havoc with the natural oil balance of her skin. “It feels like I should be figuring out the next thing.”

“The next thing,” Kraken said. “How about coming home to me? Have you proven yourself to yourself yet?”

Dharthi shrugged. She felt like a petulant child. She knew she was acting like one. “How about to you?”

“I never doubted you. You had nothing to prove to me. The self-sufficiency thing is your pathology, love, not mine. I love you as you are, not because I think I can make you perfect. I just wish you could see your strengths as well as you see your flaws—one second, bit of a squall up ahead—I’m back.”

“Are you on an airship?” Was she coming here?

“Just an airjeep.”

Relief and a stab of disappointment. You wouldn’t get from Aphrodite to Ishtar in an AJ.

Well, Dharthi thought. Looks like I might be walking home.

And when she got there? Well, she wasn’t quite ready to ask Kraken for help yet.

She would stay, she decided, two more sleeps. That would still give her time to get back to basecamp before nightfall, and it wasn’t as if her arm could get any more messed up between now and then. She was turning in a slow circle, contemplating where to sling her cocoon—the branches were really too high to be convenient—when the unmistakable low hum of an aircar broke the rustling silence of the enormous trees.

It dropped through the canopy, polished copper belly reflecting a lensed fisheye of forest, and settled down ten meters from Dharthi. Smiling, frowning, biting her lip, she went to meet it. The upper half was black hydrophobic polymer: She’d gotten a lift in one just like it at Ishtar basecamp before she set out.

The hatch opened. In the cramped space within, Kraken sat behind the control board. She half-rose, crouched under the low roof, came to the hatch, held out one her right hand, reaching down to Dharthi. Dharthi looked at Kraken’s hand, and Kraken sheepishly switched it for the other one. The left one, which Dharthi could take without strain.

“So I was going to take you to get your arm looked at,” Kraken said.

“You spent your allocations—”

Kraken shrugged. “Gonna send me away?”

“This time,” she said, “. . . no.”

Kraken wiggled her fingers.

Dharthi took it, stepped up into the GEV, realized how exhausted she was as she settled back in a chair and suddenly could not lift her head without the assistance of her shell. She wondered if she should have hugged Kraken. She realized that she was sad that Kraken hadn’t tried to hug her. But, well. The shell was sort of in the way.

Resuming her chair, Kraken fixed her eyes on the forward screen. “Hey. You did it.”

“Hey. I did.” She wished she felt it. Maybe she was too tired.

Maybe Kraken was right, and Dharthi should see about working on that.

Her eyes dragged shut. So heavy. The soft motion of the aircar lulled her. Its soundproofing had degraded, but even the noise wouldn’t be enough to keep her awake. Was this what safe felt like? “Something else.”

“I’m listening.”

“If you don’t mind, I was thinking of naming a tree after you.”

“That’s good,” Kraken said. “I was thinking of naming a kid after you.”

Dharthi grinned without opening her eyes. “We should use my Y chromosome. Color blindness on the X.”

“Ehn. Ys are half atrophied already. We’ll just use two Xs,” Kraken said decisively. “Maybe we’ll get a tetrachromat.”

©2015 by Elizabeth Bear. Originally published in Old Venus, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R. R. Martin. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Bear was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo, Sturgeon, Locus, and Campbell Award winning author of nearly 30 novels (The most recent is Karen Memory, a Weird West adventure from Tor) and over a hundred short stories. She lives in Massachusetts with her partner, writer Scott Lynch, three adventurous cats, and an elderly and opinionated dog.

Love Engine Optimization

Matthew Kressel | 5300 words

I rooted her system on the first day. It was the only way to be sure. Sure that she’d love me. Step by matching step, I walk her under the boughs of great elms in Prospect Park, while the slanting sun passes through the tangled mesh of leaves to dapple her smiling face. When her heart rate spikes, I know she’s excited. When it slows, she’s bored.

“It’s like what Yes, Mother says in their song, ‘A Lifetime Away,’” I tell her. “‘All day I walk in circles / All night I dream in bokeh.’”

“Holy shit!” she says, pupils dilating. “I fucking love that song.”

Of course she does. She’s listened to it 1,146 times, five times more than the second most popular song in her playlist, “Eleanor Rigby.” “I love it, too,” I say. “‘A Lifetime Away’ is my all-time favorite.”

Her heart rate soars. A little graph in my vision plots excitement vs. time. Like the slope we’re walking, she’s been moving steadily up as the afternoon wears on. She stares at me, pupils wide. A proficient application of make-up highlights her blue eyes. But it’s not quite perfect and I add it to my list.

“Man,” she says, “I thought I was the only one this into Yes, Mother.”

“If I only had one day to live,” I say, “I’d play ‘Black Moon Rover’ on repeat until I died.” It’s something she said forty-seven days ago at a bar after several drinks with friends. Their conversation, overheard by watches and phones and glasses, was blink-uploaded to a cloud farm off the California coast where it festered for months, waiting for some bot to crawl over the data and improve the company’s voice-comp (a clause buried deep in their EULA lets them store that shit indefinitely). I’ve got more than a million of Jane’s words, not even including her typed ones.

“This is so weird,” she says. “I feel like I have déjà vu.” Pupils narrow and blood pressure rises; she’s getting nervous. Something this good must come with a catch, right?

“Let’s sit over there,” I say, pointing to a weathered bench under the plentiful shade of an oak. Eighty-one days ago she shared a memory with her mother in which she—a toddler—and Dad—now dead—walked down to the park when she’d had the chickenpox. They had sat together on a park bench and fed the pigeons with breadcrumbs. This memory, she exclaimed to her mother in great detail, was one of her happiest.

“We could feed the birds from the bench,” I say.

“Yeah . . .” she says. “That sounds really nice.”

The wind tousles her hair as we sit. Her cut is average, and I prefer a bit more waviness. I add it to my list, already long, though not yet deal-breaking.

I tear off the crust of a sandwich I bought just for this moment and toss it to the ground. Pigeons and sparrows fly over to snatch the crumbs. “When I was young,” I say, “I loved feeding the birds.”

She meets my gaze, the gleam in her eyes longing for something lost eons ago. She’s on the verge. She might laugh or cry or sneeze. Her hand is hot and shaking as it takes mine. We entwine fingers. Her aqua nail polish, a shade lighter than her eyes, matches her blouse, and I’m really not a fan of the garish color. She’d look sexier in red or black, and I make another note.

“Can I be honest with you, Sam?” she says.

“Always.”

“I’ve been on a few dates recently. They were all really awkward. This just feels easy.”

Of course it’s easy. I’ve made myself into exactly what she wants. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful,” I say, “if things could be this easy forever?” throwing stressors like frisbees so she can’t help but dream of happily-ever-afters.

Her pupils are as wide as Kings County. She shivers so much the bench shakes under us. Her heart rate spikes as she leans toward my lips. And just before her lips touch mine, I stand.

“Jane.”

Her hand flies to her mouth like a blushing schoolgirl. “Was that too fast?”

“I have to go.”

“Go?” She checks her watch. I snap a photo of her face with it; she’ll never know I’ve done this. “Oh,” she says, blinking away the surprise of tears; surprising to her. “All right. I mean, is everything okay, Sam?”

“I hope to see you again, Jane.” I spin on my heels and leave her shaking on the bench, just like the parent who left her too soon, so that there is only one possible emotion for her now.

Under towering sycamores, I stroll to the park’s exit, blinking up the photo I took of her face, and her goofy, dumbfounded expression thrills me to the fucking core. I had Jane hanging on my every word. And yeah, I wanted to kiss her back, but the first rule of seduction is you must always leave them wanting more.

• • • •

I found Jane the usual way, of course. Through Google.

I began by picking a phenotype: early twenties, five-five to five-seven, above-average breasts, blemish-free skin, sky-blue eyes, raven-black hair. From here it was a matter of searching for images to match these traits. Some wget-magic and Google-fu, and I was able to narrow this down to about 4,000,000 individuals from around the globe. I cross-linked each photo to place of residence, and narrowed my search down to about 9,000 in and around the New York City region. From here, I scoured social media profiles, gleaning such information as job, income, frequency of drug and alcohol use, musical tastes, political leanings, city of birth, and sexual orientation. I cross-correlated this from personality assessments taken from Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Snapchat. And so from my initial large group, I narrowed it down to four promising individuals.

The final step was to observe them in person. These days, people have such finely crafted social media presences that meeting them IRL is like seeing the real man (or woman) behind the curtain, typically a let down of galactic proportions.

Not Jane. Jane was better IRL. Let me explain.

From her geotagged Instagram photos and Facebook posts, I knew on Thursdays she went out for drinks with her coworkers at a dive Irish pub on Park Avenue South called Desmond’s. I waited in the back, using my smartglasses to record when she smiled, the sounds of her voice, the delicate way she threw back her hair each time she took a sip of her Macallan 10 (neat, with a glass of water). Through rooted phones and watches and glasses and Fitbits I listened to their conversations, noting what they said and what they left out, because it’s in the lies and obfuscations where you learn the most you like about a person.

They spoke about coworkers they hated. (Maria had once declared in conversation with her boyfriend she wished to stab Jacob in the eye with a pencil or poison his coffee.) They spoke about people with whom they wanted to snuggle up warmly in bed (Ingrid told them she’d wanted to sleep with David forever, but she’d secretly been fucking him in the copy room for three weeks, and—unbeknownst to them—security videos of their “Office Hardcore” had been making the rounds of certain internet circles.) Bethanne expressed her distaste for superhero films. (Though she had secretly gone to see the new Marvel film twice in a theater far from her Upper East Side apartment so she wouldn’t be recognized by friends). Frankie said how much he liked the new Netflix Original series called Camouflage Heart. (The previous night he had gotten really high on South Asian Kush, ate a whole container of Newman’s Own cookies, and watched the entire run in one sitting, then masturbated to pictures of the show’s male lead before bed.)

Jane listened to them all with bemused interest. (The night prior she had studied French for an hour, then read a biography of Jefferson until she fell asleep.) She was better than these people. She knew it, and based on how they looked at her for approval after they told a story, they knew it, too. For this power, they privately envied and hated her. But in Jane’s presence, they treated her like the queen she was.

Jane was better looking than them all (a 9.6 on the Kardashian scale, to their average of 7.2). She had spent more time on her makeup (thirty-six minutes, compared to a max of thirteen for the others). She dressed better (black Gucci belted dress, $265.00; matching Cole Haan’s Bethany Pumps, $119.95; gold Michael Kors smartwatch, $324.99; Warby Parker BrightEye smartglasses, $249.95). She had graduated with the highest GPA (3.85 from the University of Virginia, with a B.S. in Social Psychology), and had saved prudently so she had more in her bank account than all of them ($1,912.86). Her credit card debt was $17,861.24 (the lowest among them), and she was on track to pay off her student loans in the next sixteen years.

I thought, Not bad, girl.

But Jane wasn’t perfect. My heart sank as she pulled an e-cig from her purse and stepped outside with Maria to smoke (Maria preferred old-fashioned cigarettes). Later I discovered that on stressful days Jane swapped out the nicotine cartridge for liquid marijuana, puffing on breaks (On those days her productivity actually went up). My lungs have been stained green from all the pot I’ve toked, but my dad smoked so many cigarettes that my leather jacket (which I’m never getting rid of) still reeks of them, and creepy old Hank’s been dead for seven years (there is nothing I loathe more than cigarettes.) Jane also had the bad habit of sticking out her tongue when she’s absorbed in someone’s conversation and biting her cuticles.

No one is perfect, though. Jane wouldn’t be human if she were, and I found a kind of poetic perfection within her imperfections. In her flaws she made herself sublime. Plus, I knew I could fix all of them.

And so it was there, in the back of Desmond’s, a hundred years of collective data splayed out before my eyes, when I decided Jane would be mine.

• • • •

The cavernous lobby of the Times Square Marriot Marquis feels like some 1980s film version of the future, as if we’ve stepped inside the glittering mothership in Close Encounters to be greeted by countless weird and exuberant aliens. Jane and I wait our turn to fly up the glass elevators to the rotating bar at the hotel’s peak. I have my (smoke-smelling) leather jacket on, and Jane wears a red blouse and has painted her nails to match (thanks to a flurry of targeted ads I rerouted to her browser over the past week, ad-blockers be damned.)

A day after our first date, she left a voicemail where she awkwardly explained what a good time she’d had talking with me. “Maybe,”—a hard swallow—“we could do it again?”

I didn’t reply. The next day, she texted, “Hey, Sam, how are you? You up for hanging out???” It was tough, but I ignored this, too.

On the third day she wrote, “Hey, what r u up to?” and this too I ignored.

Ultimately I left her hanging for five days, and when I finally called, she picked up on the first ring. I could hear the relief spilling from her voice even without having live graphs of her bio-data spread wide before me.

A Facebook psychological assessment of Jane—they generate these to sell to advertisers—told me she empathizes with wounded individuals. “I was hurt once,” I told her. “I got scared.”

“I understand, Sam,” she said. “And I want you to know, you don’t have anything to fear from me.”

Of course not, I thought. I know everything about you.

It’s our turn to enter the glass elevator. Our bodies pressed up together, Jane smiles as we squeeze in. Her heart pounds as we ascend the central column of the hotel. The lighted ribbons of each floor zip past, flicker-flashing on our faces. The tourists in the elevator gasp and shriek and snap photos flash-uploaded to cloud servers all over the world, to be stored alongside pictures of their spouses and children in every private and intimate moment of their lives.

We exit the elevator and head to the bar, where tall windows gape at the Manhattan skyline and peer across the Hudson River to Jersey and beyond. The outer ring of the bar slowly spins, so that over the course of an hour you make a full 360, as if you’re inside a giant clock. A blotch of orange and green daubs the horizon like a child’s finger-paint where the sun has set. All around, the purpling sky fades to black. A few stars shine futilely above the city.

The server has my reservation in his wrist-POS, and Jane beams as he leads us to our table. She is fucking radiant tonight, every aspect perfectly honed, and I sense the other patrons’ jealous stares on my back as we sit.

“Scotch?” I say. “Macallan?” Her favorite.

“I love it!” she says. “The 10?”

“Let’s do the 25.” An absurd price, but I’m fully committed.

Thirty degrees later, we’re sipping single malts while New Jersey’s urbanized glory spins into view. “Sam,” she says, “I realized I don’t really know much about what you do. I know you work in IT, but what do you do exactly?”

I smile. I have nine talking points ready to go, each designed to elicit strong emotional memories from her past and link them to me. I have one fantastic subject on work-life balance versus one’s duty to her employer, which I think will make a great opener. I blink to bring it up in my glasses.

Nothing happens.

I try again. Still nothing.

“Sam? Are you okay?”

“Hang on.”

“What is it? You’re blinking a lot.”

I try to switch tabs to her bio-data. Nothing. I try to call up the text of her past conversations. Nothing. Net connection. Dead.

“Fuck!”

“Sam?”

“Wait.”

“What?”

I can’t restart the gateway process. My cellular device won’t refresh. Even wi-fi, even ancient Bluetooth won’t switch on. I’ve been bricked.

“Jane, give me your phone, Jane!”

“What?”

“Your phone, give it to me!”

Frowning, she fetches it from her purse and hands it over. It’s pass-locked.

“Unlock it.”

She does.

I try the net and everything works. “I don’t fucking get it!”

“What the hell’s going on, Sam?”

And then, in my ears, a heckling laughter, and in my vision, an evil Easter Bunny a la Donnie Darko descends like a curtain. Underneath, in glowing marquis, the words “BURN, BITCH!” slowly scroll past.

Motherfucker. It’s DaniDarknet, revenge for when I shutdown her botnet because she was DDOS-attacking some North African credit card processor for funneling money to one jihad or another. I needed the site up because I had been using it as a proxy for another hack. I probably shouldn’t have boasted on Reddit about how I rewrote her botnet code to self-destruct.

DaniDarknet has left me blind and deaf. Without my notes, without her bio-data, I’ve no idea how she’s feeling, what she’s thinking. I have nothing to say.

Now it’s my turn for my heart rate to spike. With a shaking hand, I give her back her phone.

“So . . .?” she says. “What was that?”

I shake my head. “Sorry. A work thing.” I try to laugh, but it comes out forced and awkward. “It’s nothing.” My smile is weird and crooked.

She stares at me. “Is this you getting scared, Sam?” She reaches over and takes my hand. I flinch.

“I . . . um . . . well . . . um . . . yeah.”

“This asshole must have hurt you pretty bad.”

“Devastating.”

She sighs and looks out the window. City lights fleck her eyes. “It reminds me of ‘Hound Days,’ you know? ‘All the little points of light / the city like circuit boards.’”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Definitely.”

Glasses clink. Someone laughs and another coughs. Conversations happen in other places about people that don’t know us, whose lives will never intersect with ours. Silence stretches between us. Jane is as far away from me as the sun.

“You’re quiet tonight,” she says. “Last time you had so much to say.”

“Am I?” I try to smile. “I didn’t notice.”

Do I sound stupid? What is she feeling? Is she reacting positively to me? I can’t track her pupil dilation. Does she love me or loathe me?

She takes a slow sip of scotch, as if it will make the passage of time easier to bear. Perhaps it will. “So,” she says. “What kind of IT work do you do?”

“I’m a sysadmin? For a bank?” They sound like questions, but they’re not.

“Do you like it?”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. You?”

“Me what?”

“What do you do?”

“I’m a marketing psychologist, remember?”

I vaguely recall speaking at length about her job on our first date, but without my notes I can’t remember what was said. “Right. Of course. You, um, like it?”

A grimace—does she despise me? “Sometimes,” she says, and now it’s my turn to have déjà vu, because I know we spoke about this before.

She sips her scotch and I catch her check the time. I’m really fucking glad I can’t capture her expression now. As the world whirls by at six degrees per minute, our date spins ever further out of control. After two-hundred and forty degrees I tell Jane I’m not feeling well and we call it a night. We didn’t even go once fully around.

DaniDarknet, I’m so going to fucking ruin you.

• • • •

The next morning is hell. I’ve been up all night making repairs, but we have three mergers and an IPO today, plus my boss is just in from her third home in Barbados to inspect her worker drones. I can’t miss work. But I’ve prepared well, so work is mostly cubicled me in front of a four giant screens watching numbers stay in the green while I fire off a hundred shell scripts in my smuggled-in netbook, fixing yesterday’s catastrophe.

While some rich asshole makes another billion, fifty-three rooted servers in Kazakhstan crash hard, taking with them eighty-five percent of DaniDarknet’s ouvre. I want to shout with glee as each one falls, but I’ve got decorum to keep. This is a multinational bank, after all.

When the markets close and the rich executives pat themselves on the back for work that was mostly mine, after they’ve drunk enough liquor to make the halls explosive with fumes, I get the email.

“Hi Sam, Michael Robert Kowalski, VP of Biz Dev. Donna Nuñez”—my well-tanned and rested immediate supervisor—“tells me what a superb job you did on the Reiss Affair.”—affair, capital “A”—“I’d like to see you in my office. Come by at 7.”

Note that in Michael Robert Kowalski’s executive worldview there is no possibility whatsoever that I might have reason to refuse, like for example a dinner date or children to pick up from day care or, you know, any life of my own. If one is invited by such a man, one must go. I groom myself in the bathroom, making sure I’m sufficiently tucked and professional. I brush my teeth and reapply deodorant, even count to ten with my eyes closed, but by the time I get to his office door, I’m shaking like a homeless person in February.

I should not fear this guy who, twice a week, visits a massage-and-tug on 58th Street and gets a happy ending before using their showers and dry-cleaning service to come home and greet his wife and kids smelling like fresh laundry. He says to his friends he does it for the “stress” so he “doesn’t have to bring that shit home.” But, yeah, I’m afraid of this guy who crushes small governments over cocktails. Maybe it’s the desk. It’s enormous, like he sits at the head of a tractor combine, and it’s gunning for me.

I knock.

“Yes?” Michael says. He’s mid-fifties, moon-crescent bald, well-trimmed beard, wearing a sport coat but no tie. His feet are up on his desk, and his black Chuck Taylors either make him look really cool, or really dorky, I can’t tell which. There’s a glass of whiskey on the table, and beside him a wrapped box.

“Hi,” I say. “You sent for me?”

“What?” he says. His feet stay propped on the desk; I’m not important enough for them to move. “Who are you?”

“Sam.”

“Sam?”

“From IT? Did you not send me an email?”

I get this a lot, so I wait for him to catch up. It takes him a second.

“Right! Saaaaam!” Now the feet come down. “Sorry, I presumed you were–”

“A dude. Yeah, I get it. Sysadmin? Gender-neutral first name? You made assumptions.” A primary assumptive fault that one of the world’s top financial analysts should not be making, and yet here we are, careening into chaos with the gas-pedal floored. “It happens to me all the time,” I say, faking a smile.

“Sam—antha?”

I nod once to let him know the finality of it. “Please call me Sam.”

He has a leather chair pulled aside, which I can only presume was meant for Sam the XY not Sam the XX. He glances at it and makes a quick calculation, deciding that the father-son bullshit mentor thing that he had planned to endow me with won’t work on this fragile female creature before him, and so I’m not invited to sit.

“Well, Sam,” he says, “You really knocked it out of the park on that Reiss Affair.” Holy shit, did he just use a baseball metaphor? “This is for you.” He points to the wrapped box on his desk, and upon closer inspection it’s a bottle of Lagavulin 16. “Enjoy it, kid.”

Did he just fucking call me kid? I want to smash his smug little face, because here in microcosm is the kernel of the capitalist hypocrisy: For saving the bank from a billion-dollar hack, I’m given an $83 bottle of whiskey and a pat on the back.

“Do you drink whiskey?” he says.

“No,” I say, snatching the box. “Girls don’t drink this stuff. But I know a few women who do.” I’m not sure if he gets my meaning or cares, but Michael Robert Kowalski, Vice President of Business Development, doesn’t stop me from leaving as I flee, bottle in hand, as far away as possible from one more misogynistic asshat capitalist destroying the world one percentage point at a time.

Back at my desk, I’m happy to see two more of DaniDarknet’s servers have crashed. There’s a desperate email from her to one of my anonymous accounts. “Please!” she says. “I’m sorry! You’re destroying years of work! Have mercy, man!!!”

Man? I twist open the bottle of Lagavulin and take a heavy swig. It burns hard going down. “Prepare yourself, DaniDarknet,” I say, “for you shall weep.”

And I am ruthless.

• • • •

Before we even left the spinning bar, a half-dozen dead-man’s switches I had set in place years ago were unzipping tarballs on servers across the world, beginning the work of repairing DaniDarknet’s damage. But the full cleanup took several days. I restored from backups and spent a full weekend installing military grade proxies, firewalls, and honeypots around my wares, girding my loins against another attack. And so when I have my servers more-or-less back to where they were, I start up again with Jane.

Because of a high number of early-adolescence abandonment experiences—including but not limited to the death of her father and losing her best friend in a drunk-driving accident—her Facebook psychological assessment tells me Jane positively favors repairing fouled relationships (marketers take note). I send Jane a long-winded email paraphrased from her favorite books, which highlight themes of reconciliation. My email leads to a phone call, where I tell Jane a highly metaphorical story about each person’s journey from fragmentation to wholeness.

“We’re all so broken,” I say.

“No, Sam. You’re not broken.”

This leads to date number three, an Italian dinner followed by espresso and a walk in Central Park. I have enough wares this time to take out a small country, but DaniDarknet does not show her digital face—how can she? I have destroyed her—and by the end of the night, I have brought Jane’s excitement up to first-date levels. Without further interruptions, I estimate it will take between seven and nine days before Jane will fall helplessly in love with me.

On the fourth date, we meet at her place, a small, but tidy one-bedroom on the Lower East Side. We order Chinese and empty a bottle of Syrah together. While a Netflix thriller murmurs in the background, we heavy pet each other on the couch. Her lips are a little dry, and her tongue tastes like soy sauce and lo mein. She desperately needs a mint, and the beige dress she’s wearing just isn’t flattering.

“It’s getting late,” I say.

“You could stay.”

“No. I’ve got to be up early tomorrow.” I leave before the film’s climax.

The next day, I text her a smiley emoji and ignore every one of her four replies. The day after this I surprise her at lunch. “I’m close, let’s meet.” We share a sandwich at an eat-in bodega and after twenty minutes I have her giggling hysterically, repurposing jokes from a comedy sitcom she used to love. Then on Friday, after we share bottle of Chianti in her kitchen, everything dark but the glow of our faces from a single candle flame, she pulls me into her bedroom.

The sex isn’t what I expect.

Jane is decent. Not great, just decent. She does some things that pleasantly surprise me. Others, not so much. And so, when it’s over and we’re lying under the sheets, I wonder if I might have erred in somewhere in my search.

“I love you,” Jane says, her body marble-gray in the pre-dawn light.

“I love you, too,” I say, and as I speak there’s this terrible gnawing itch above my belly and below my heart, a hunger for something not quite food, but just as necessary. I know this itch has been in me forever and will linger long after I’m dead and my corpse has rotted away.

“I’ve got to get to work,” I say, and rise from bed.

• • • •

I’m ensconced in my cubicle, patching an SSL exploit in the company’s servers, making sure to leave behind an array of back doors, when Jane forwards me an email someone sent her at two a.m. this morning.

From: Prometheus Vulture (prometheusvulture666@anonymail.com)

To: Jane [redacted]

Subject: Samantha [redacted] is lying

Jane, BEWARE! Your ‘lover’ is not who she seems. The evil creature known as Samantha [redacted] has access to all of your personal data and is using it to manipulate you. She’s a dangerous psychopath and you need to stay the fuck away from her if you value your life. I say this as one who has been irreparably harmed by her. Sam has destroyed my life! Oh, and if you don’t believe me, here’s proof.

Sincerely,

Dani.

Attached to this email are spreadsheets of data: Jane’s excitement vs. time, pupil dilation vs. topic, weekly sleep patterns, daylight hours correlated with mood, GPS location history, textual analyses of conversations, Myers-Briggs personality models, etc., and all of this in easy-to-read Excel format, all of this data DaniDarknet snatched before she bricked my systems.

I can’t make a personal call at my desk, and I stew in rage all morning. As soon as I get a break, I rush outside to call her.

“Is it true?” she says. “Please tell me it’s bullshit, Sam.”

“Of course it’s bullshit! I can’t believe you’d even ask, Jane.”

“That time . . . at the spinning bar, when you got quiet. You were blinking a lot. You needed to get on the net.”

“It was a work thing, Jane. Don’t let this spammer poison your mind.”

“But it’s not just a spammer. This Dani knows you. Who is she?”

“The woman who hurt me.”

“Or maybe you’re the one who hurt her.”

“No, Jane. That’s what she wants you to believe! She’ll say anything to hurt me. That’s why I left her. She’s destructive.”

It’s so quiet I hear a distant car drive past on her end of the connection.

“Look, Jane. Even if it were true, that I somehow could use this information to seduce you, why would it matter? If you were selected as having the best traits from among millions, how is this bad? She wants you to believe I used this data to do what, exactly? To mold myself into the person you want? And how is this bad? Isn’t it best when both parties get the person whom they want?”

“Except in this case, one person is real and the other is a construct.”

“Jane, this is nonsense. I’ll come over and we’ll order a pizza and forget all about this.”

“No,” she says. “Not tonight.”

“Tomorrow then. I’ll come over at seven.”

“I don’t know, Sam. I need time to process.”

The connection-ending beep ignites a rage in my belly. This has gone beyond digital. I will find DaniDarknet and destroy her life.

At home, I finish the rest of the Lagavulin and smoke a joint and patch code and update servers and write long screeds in multiple forums about how the WordPress update leaves it open to JavaScript exploits, and generally do whatever I can to keep my mind off Jane. Nothing works.

Her feeds have gone dead. She’s taken off her watch and glasses, shut off her phone and computer. Even her bedside internet-clock-radio is off. For all I know, she might be on a flight to Amsterdam. But, no, I’d know that.

I bring my laptop to bed, and sometime after midnight, I pass out. I shiver awake as the morning light breaks my rippled sheets into hills of light and shadow. I’ve left the window open, and my breath puffs with frost. I rise to shut the window, when a blinking red light on my desk catches my eye.

On my phone, a voicemail.

“Sam. I’m . . . I’m sorry. I’ve been up all night thinking. You’re right. It doesn’t matter if any of it’s true. What’s real is how I feel. And, I love you, Sam. Let’s chill at my place after work, watch a movie or something. Will you eat pad thai? Call me.”

My screens awake first to Jane’s heart rate, then her blood pressure and pupil dilation. A minute later, GPS data and early work emails trickle in. She’s data-live again. I plop into my chair and sigh, lighting what’s left of the joint in the ashtray, work be damned. I’m fucking fantastic, aren’t I? Because not even my worst enemy could take her from me. I’m the goddamned queen.

Outside, a car honks. A bus drives by. The radiator hisses steam.

The THC filters into my blood, turning the morning sublime. I’ve got two hours before work, so I open a browser window, stretching and yawning as I decide what I want to work on. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m typing into the search bar, “female, dark hair, blue eyes, smart-looking, glasses, attractive, twenties.”

I get 7,490,000 hits.

©2017 by Matthew Kressel.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Matthew Kressel is a multiple Nebula Award-nominated writer and World Fantasy Award-nominated editor. His story “The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye” was a 2014 Nebula Award nominee for Best Short Story. And his story “The Sounds of Old Earth” was a 2013 Nebula Award nominee for Best Short Story. The story also made the 2013 Locus Recommended Reading List.

His short stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Nightmare, Clarkesworld, io9.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Interzone, Electric Velocipede, Apex Magazine, and the anthologies Cyber World, Naked City, After, The People of the Book, The Mammoth Book of Steampunk, and elsewhere. His first novel, King of Shards, was hailed as “Majestic, resonant, reality-twisting madness,” from NPR Books. Kressel is currently writing a near-future Young Adult thriller.

Kressel co-hosts the Fantastic Fiction reading series at the famous KGB Bar alongside veteran speculative-fiction editor Ellen Datlow. The monthly series highlights luminaries and up-and-comers in speculative fiction.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

World of the Three

Shweta Narayan | 9340 words

Then the Bird of A Hundred and Eight Names gathered together her three new children, and she said, “You have passed our people’s tests and joined our ranks, and may leave if you wish. But leaving will take you among the Alabar, who collect salt in their bare hands and have no fear of rust, and call themselves merely people.

“Some among us speak slightingly of them, for their lives are short and easily ended, and they don’t protect one another as we do. You should be more wary. They number in the hundreds of hundreds of hundreds, make children without training, and never need winding up. They learn without being taught, and their tests kill as often as not; those who survive become adults, and those who kill become leaders.”

“But would it kill us to learn about them tomorrow?” whined the golden monkey Usithan.

“You can listen tomorrow if you like,” their mother said, “but I’m telling the tale today.”

“But there’s people climbing coconut trees outside right now! Using ropes for harnesses. I wouldn’t need a harness. I could bring the fruit down in half the time.”

“And they could take you to court for stealing their lawful trade.”

“. . .What if I just steal the coconuts?”

His sister Maari’s silver tail and tufted ears twitched. “Imagine the impression he’s going to make on the queen,” she said, lazily extending her claws and pulling them back in. “Her commissioned guest, dragged in as an incompetent thief.”

Usithan chittered and jumped, teeth bared, from bench to worktable; but great-springed Anbu said, “We’re not so ill-made as to ignore our mother’s teaching,” and their saying so made it true. For the others would take themselves apart before disappointing the eldest, whose voice brought to mind the Goddess of Speech as their form resembled an idol cast in bronze, who brightened golden anklets and bracelets and necklaces by wearing them, whose gentle reason had stopped their arguments from the hour they’d all been brought alive.

“Coconuts are boring anyway,” said Usithan. “All they do is fall. But can we hear your tale in the courtyard?”

“So you can better annoy Maari?” said their mother. But she flew to the courtyard, where warm wind and sun-baked stone might calm all her children’s restless gears, and there she spoke poetry in three languages.

• • • •

The bloodiest of Alabar leaders call themselves the Three Crowned Kings; they say this world is theirs, and that bloodshed is a virtue. They ride so often to battle, against one another or lesser killers, that the crows all know and love them.

The Chera kings, most distant of the Three, live over the mountains and have fought us only for trade routes. May the gears that turn the stars keep it so. These gem-studded ones call themselves children of fire, and in Vanji, their capital, firelight makes the temples themselves dance, so cleverly are the figures upon them carved. That land is blessed with plenty by the river Chulli, fortified by steep mountains, and protected by engineering they’ve never dreamed of; for downstream of Vanji where the river meets the sea is built Musiri, beloved of the West, whose traders deal in all the world’s goods. So many ships ride the rains there each year that their sails block out sea and sky and outshine lightning.

We cross into those lands only rarely, even now, but we care for the Chulli’s flow as our own heartspring, for a calamity along that great river would spill over the mountains onto us all.

The Pandya name you know. Clever in craft and commerce, the moon’s children rule from here in Madurai and sell their cotton, light as moonlight, to nobles so far off as Europa, who are as greedy for it as for Tamil steel. The Pandyas have been our allies and partners in trade for as long as their queens have ruled, and so many of their generations have passed that they think it was always so. You, who were made to join their court, need to know that it wasn’t.

The Chola kings rule from Udaiyur in the north. Alone among the Alabar, these quick-tempered children of the sun have harmed us and lived. For the greatest of my children died of Alabar treachery not just once, but thrice; and it started in Udaiyur.

• • • •

There lived in Udaiyur a great king of the Cholas, who they now call Vikramaditya, though at the time he was known as Varsembiyan as well. The tales of him speak of great feats of might, compassion, and justice.

Don’t groan, Usithan, I won’t repeat the stories you’ve already studied. Those were written by Alabar, and say far more about them than us. And while they love to dwell on him trudging back and forth across a corpse-burning ground while carrying that Vedala-possessed corpse and coming up with an answer to each riddle, they never can explain how he managed it without collapsing from exhaustion and foul air; for of course they refuse to admit that Vikramaditya of legend was no man of their kind, but a mechanical.

He was mostly male at the time, and just as the great rivers change their course but slowly, he stayed that way for many years. Accordingly his body was built to appear as such to Alabar, its lines rising to the sky graceful as smoke, though it was taller and broader of chest than those around him. In those times we made only our supporting frames from steel. We had not yet the craft to form it into our tiniest gears, so all of us were larger. And—

—Maari, my dear, your ears speak so clearly of skepticism that a lecturing brahmin would notice. One flick would have sufficed. What is it?

• • • •

“When have we ever appeared as men to Alabar?” said Maari, disdainful as any cat. “I wonder if we are meant to believe this, or merely understand some lesson that we could learn as well more directly.”

Usithan, unwilling to agree, picked up a few message tubes and started juggling them.

“Is that how you speak to our mother?” said Anbu.

“She made me as I am.”

“So I did,” said their mother. “And I approve, my children. It’s unwise to trust too quickly to stories when you are around Alabar, for there is nothing they love to improve on so much as the truth. I give you your question back, though. Don’t trust my answer. Find your own.”

• • • •

Many tried to kill the great king Vikramaditya, for he reined in the greed of the powerful. But he was of course untouched by poison, and stronger and sturdier than any Alabar. He was faster, too, which you might predict; but his assassins, repeatedly, did not.

He had only one weakness: Kabilan, his heir, a descendant of his Alabar father who he had adopted as his own and loved dearly. Prince Kabilan was fearless in the hunt, handsome and well-spoken in the palace, and seldom truly unkind; but he did not love as deeply as he was loved.

Eventually—perhaps inevitably—one of the king’s enemies turned their poison into words, and dropped it into the prince’s ear a little at a time. It started with admiring comments scattered into his days: How long the glorious king had ruled! May he rule forever! Perhaps he would, being divine as kings are and mechanical, too.

Do mechanicals ever grow old? asked a pretty girl, sad-eyed. It must be terrible for the king, to see his own son age before him.

Next the prince noticed whispers that stopped when he drew near. How long had that been going on? He went on the hunt and uncovered a pair of servants wondering, a little too loudly, what reward there was in loyalty to an heir who would never be king. That same evening, his own attendant hissed to see—he claimed—a gray hair, immediately plucked and thrown into the fire.

Then a dying scholar insisted that mechanicals, who had no breath, could not have souls, since the Sanskrit word Atman means both.

With such droplets from all directions was the prince drenched in poison, till in place of a father who loved him he saw a clever device, ticking on forever, robbing him of his throne.

So it was surely inevitable that one evening, instead of winding his father up while speaking of his day, prince Kabilan forced the key the wrong way and wound him all the way down.

• • • •

Three message tubes hit the ground. Usithan caught the other two, barely. “Wound down isn’t the same as dead!” he said.

“You know that,” said her mother. “And maybe Kabilan did, too, but do you think his nobles knew? Remember too that Alabar make Alabar laws and, even more powerfully, customs, which bind even their kings. The ruler known as Vikramaditya was pronounced dead, so he was dead; though your eldest sibling, who I named Vikramaditi, was not.”

“You gave your child a forbidden form?” asked Anbu. They could not frown, as their brow was made all of one piece, but they placed one hand over their mouth in a gesture of shock.

“My first child,” said the bird. “From before we codified the laws. We lived apart from Alabar, then, and their fear kept us from harm.”

Maari said, “Oh, so when Anbu asks, you’ll answer.”

“You asked different questions. Yours, I’ll answer this far: Vikramaditi’s first death taught us that their kings live by different rules, and that not all forms are safe to wear. But that doesn’t mean you should accept a story unquestioning.”

“Well, good,” said Usithan, picking up the tubes with more noise than needed. “Because none of this makes sense.”

“You’ve irritated the monkey,” said Maari. “A marvelous accomplishment. Normally it’s the other way around.”

“Years of experience,” their mother said.

Usithan said. “How do you know any of it to tell? How did you learn the nature of Vikramaditi’s death in some Alabar land? What happened to them when they were wound down? They can’t have been cremated or they’d have crumpled beyond repair, even if Alabar fires couldn’t melt them outright. It’s just not a proper story.”

“Half a story is seldom a proper story.”

“And,” Maari added, “it was you who interrupted.”

A clang, a yowl. A tube bounced off Maari’s head, spinning on itself until Maari’s paw brought it to an abrupt stop.

“If either of you breaks the other,” said their mother, “—or my tools, you’ll be sorting gears by size for a week.”

Usithan said innocently, “Of course, dear mother. Besides, I’d hate to break this.” He twisted one tube to its speaking position, and from it came Maari’s startled yowl. A little low and slow, and cut off at the end, because message tubes were far from perfect, but close enough. Maari growled.

Anbu said, “Could you both just—stop, for once? Both the bickering and the complaining about questions that aren’t answered because you’re too busy complaining to listen?”

Maari and Usithan stared at Anbu, then at each other, and fell silent.

• • • •

One of Vikramaditya’s oldest and most favored servants was a Kammalar named Nakkiran, a small, round, neat man who kept his gears clean and oiled and did what basic maintenance Alabar have the craft for. Nakkiran was a mouse to prince Kabilan’s tiger, timid and high-sprung, and well acquainted with the palace’s hidden spaces and paths.

And while only Kabilan had the duty of winding the king, Nakkiran too possessed a winding key.

When word of the king’s sudden death wailed its way down to Nakkiran, he was halfway to the royal chambers, bent over the stairs, wheezing and dripping salty sweat and wondering when the five flights had grown so steep. He looked up in shock, and a golden oiling can slipped from his hand to bounce clattering down the stairs. He ran after it, while the gears of his mind slowly started turning again: the king, dead. Stopped. Not ticking. Who kept the king’s gearwork in order? One Nakkiran. Who would be blamed, then?

He tripped down the last three steps, grabbed the dented vial, darted into the nearest storeroom, jumped into a large woven basket, pulled the lid down after himself, and started shaking like a lotus in a strong current.

The basket was too tight-woven for him to see more than fuzzy circles of light as people rushed by carrying lamps, but he could hear, and in time he calmed enough to listen.

To running feet, voices shouting over one another, snatches of panicked whispering passing by the storeroom, one shrieking laugh. Kings, like other gods, did not just die. Not without battles or age or illness to curse for the disaster. Nobody asked whether misfortune would follow, only what form it would take. Would the rains fail? Cows sicken? War burn down the cities?

Prince Kabilan would save them, said one voice, then another, building a raft over dark water. He was strong and brave and handsome, and once the rituals of coronation were observed, why, then they would be safe.

And as evening slowed to iron-black night, and Kabilan’s name became a prayer, nobody cursed Nakkiran, or said he had failed, or even asked where he was. In truth, half the servants and all the nobles had forgotten him entirely, for who remembers a mouse when there’s a tiger to crown?

When silence convinced Nakkiran at last that prince Kabilan wasn’t going to call for his head, or summon him to explain—or even attempt a repair—suspicion grew to balance out his dread. It took him hours to talk himself out of the basket, but, slowly, seeing spears and crocodiles in every shadow, he crept up the stairs. He passed the chambers of the queens as silently as any mouse and paused at the archway to the king’s chamber to check for movement. The smell of sour liquor hit his nose, and his shoulders unwound till they were no longer quite touching his ears. Whispering thanks to Kottravai for shrouding him, he skittered past snoring attendants to see if Vikramaditya was truly dead.

His relief on finding his clockwork king all in one piece was so great that all sense flew out of him with his breath. Quickly as he could, straining at the key, he wound Vikramaditya back up. At first he wasn’t sure whether the king stirred, but when his eyelids flickered Nakkiran cried out, “Murugan be praised!”

At least, he tried to. He had barely put lips together when he found a gilded bronze hand firm over his mouth. With the buzz of a voice tube damped to near-silence, Vikramaditya said, “Quietly, my child. You mustn’t be heard.”

Nakkiran, whose younger brother’s children had children of their own, was somewhat taken aback. “But surely, my king” he whispered once the hand was gone, “the prince—king—no, prince—will want to know . . .” He trailed off.

“Of course he will,” said Vikramaditya grimly. “Who else wound me down? So quiet, for my sake and your own.”

“Mine?” Nakkiran squeaked. His eyes grew round. “Ohhhhh. I’ve never known too much before.”

Glancing around, Vikramaditya said. “Same night, past moonset, yes? We must be close to dawn.”

“Yes, it’s nearly . . . oh.”

“Time for the priests to arrive,” murmured Vikramaditya, “and scratch their heads over how to cremate me and how badly they can plunder the treasury to do it. So, I’ll need your aid a little further.”

“Mine? I’m no warrior.”

“Amman keep me from warriors. They’d want war. Do you?”

“No! My king.”

“Kabilan didn’t try to kill me just to set my slippers on the throne. To be king, I’d have to fight him, divide my people, lay waste to my land. I refuse this dharma. Will you still help me?”

“Of course, my—ah, that is . . .” he quavered, “yes?”

“Good. Kabilan musn’t suspect you.”

This much, Nakkiran had no trouble agreeing with. Vehemently.

“My people—I don’t mean the Cholas—will reward you well for helping me, and any you meet along the way will help, for we are few and must defend one another. But I won’t be able to protect you myself.”

“Along what way?”

“You’ll need to get my heartspring to the sangam of artificers.”

Poor Nakkiran nearly fainted, though whether of terror or excitement even he could not say. He’d seen the king’s heartspring, of course. It was the piece that gleamed nearly purple, forged of a metal unknown to men; the one part he was never on any account to touch or even breathe on.

Moreover, at that time no Alabar had so much as seen our sangam. It was housed not in Madurai, but far from Alabar lands.

“Leave the body behind, just as you found it,” said Vikramaditya; then, fondly, “—as if you’d ever leave a mess. Once you’ve escaped the palace, don’t run. If you can manage it, weep. If not, rub your eyes so they think you have. Look lost. Be unremarkable.”

Nakkiran swallowed. Nodded.

“Come, you must start your work while I give you directions to the sangam; I hear birds starting to wake.”

• • • •

“Still don’t believe it,” Usithan proclaimed.

Anbu said, “They must have gotten safely to our mother, and once she remade our sibling she could easily have heard the whole tale.”

Usithan twisted a message tube. It said, “—don’t believe it.”

“Are you a monkey or a parrot?” said their mother. “I explained some things Vikramaditi learned only later. You don’t need the entire tale of their doubts and questions and search, any more than you need to hear how Nakkiran defeated seven brahmins in debate, or how he was named friend to tigers. So! They made it to the sangam.”

“The mouse befriended tigers?” said Maari.

“Just so. Even now, any Kammalar may travel the jungle west of Korgai in safety, thanks to the mouse.”

Maari’s gaze shifted to a squirrel on the roof.

“Vikramaditi’s heartspring came to me half-crushed, more by his son’s betrayal than the journey. Once mended, it uncoiled to a fiercer, more feminine rhythm, so I made a body modeled on Alabar sculptures of women, its weight not rising but flowing soft as Madurai muslin to the ground. It stood no taller than Alabar women, its gearwork both finer than before and contained in a generous roundness of breast and belly.

“On seeing me base my forms on Kammalar work, Nakkiran was at first wide-eyed as an owl, and saying ‘Ohhhh, Oh!’ like an owl too. But he recovered, and we learned much from each other.

“Vikramaditi loved the new body’s dancing grace, but it didn’t serve her purpose. ‘Keep it for me?’ she said. ‘Right now I need to be a bird. No fantastical creature like yourself, just a parrot. I have a plan.’”

• • • •

So it was that a marvel came to Korgai, city of pearls: a parrot unlike any mechanical the people had seen before. Her body shaded from brushed gold to verdigris, and emerald-green flashed from her wing and tail feathers. More astonishing still was her head, gleaming as if feathered with slivers of amethyst. The fine copper-work of her beak and claws went nearly unobserved against this glory, except to the jewellers. And it was to the market of jewellers that she flew.

Goldsmiths and gem-cutters gathered around to admire her form, and she preened a little, showing off how smoothly her head could turn nearly backwards and upside down; then she said, “Whoever gives me fifty perfect pearls, in a week my advice will earn him double that price.”

In that time, what trade we had with Alabar went mostly through Korgai, but we weren’t partners in trade to the makers of jewellery. We were competitors, and fifty pearls is a high price to pay for trusting the wrong person. So they hesitated, and argued among themselves, and nearly stopped admiring the parrot in their unease, until a very young person came forward.

“My father’s brother tended to the late Chola king,” they said, “and my grandfather before him, for mechanicals live longer than we do. Neither of them ever had a bad word to say about their master or his people, so I’d take this chance if I could. But unless I sold my wife’s own jewellery, I couldn’t put up more than twenty pearls.”

“My child,” said the parrot, both amused and touched, “for one of your family I’ll turn ten pearls into a hundred. Though it might take me two weeks.”

The full tale of how that young Kammalar became the Pandya queen’s jeweller must be left for another time. You need only to know that she was pleased with their work, and summoned them to Madurai to offer them a boon.

“Great queen,” they said, well-taught, “for myself, the brilliance of your presence is boon enough.” Nor were they lying; the elderly queen was splendid. Her face was cracked with wrinkles like land awaiting the rains, her hair flew above like the clouds they wait for, and her expressions shifted quick as lightning. Her grand silks and jewels seemed simply fitting.

“But what virtue can one such as I earn,” said the queen, playing the game with a smile, “if not that of generosity towards a dependent? Surely you would not rob me of the chance to be freed from sorrow in the next life.”

“If it pleases my queen, then I am honored to ask,” they said. “My parrot wishes to speak with you.”

“Your . . . parrot.”

“Oh, that is, my companion the parrot. I don’t own her, she just—”

Vikramaditi saved their tongue from further knots by flitting down from the rafters to their shoulder and saying, “My friend speaks of me, O Queen.”

“Ah?” In the court’s dead silence, the queen squinted, leaning forward. With sudden delight she said, “A mechanical!”

“Is that an unusual quality for talking birds in Madurai?”

“Absolutely. And so’s actual talking, rather than blather, though that’s hardly limited to birds.” The queen leaned back. “But though we welcome your people and depend on trade with you, I’ve met more Romans than I have mechanicals. Only one other have I spoken to, nearly fifty years ago, and he—” she blew out an appreciative breath—“was no parrot.”

“My queen!” said one shocked minister. “That is hardly a—”

“I recall your dear mother agreeing,” said the queen serenely. “Enthusiastically. Now, would anyone else like to interrupt? No? Then tell me, parrot—surely that’s not your name—what it is you want.”

Vikramaditi spread her wings and tail for balance and bowed. “I’m called Ramaa,” she said, “since I deal in fortune. And yours and mine run together just now, Queen of the South, for I am the Chola king’s conscience.”

• • • •

When the Pandya queen descended upon King Kabilan, every tongue in the Chola land spoke of her. Mostly with questions.

In the temple courtyard and markets: Had she brought her pretty granddaughters so that one might charm the king, to strengthen blood ties between the lands before she died? What might that mean for the future of Tamilagam, and, most importantly, for trade?

And in the palace: Did she know the chief minister had been pushing for Chola control of the strategically vital Palakkad pass, and for annexing the Pandya territory around it, since the moment Kabilan had been crowned? If she did know, who were her spies? But she’d arrived with a retinue of women and only a handful of guardsmen—did that mean she still saw the Cholas as allies?

More quietly, in the king’s chambers: If she knew, was she pushing Kabilan to choose between power and honor? Making sure everyone would see how he treated women who visited in peace? Would she risk her own life to test him so? She was old . . .

She arrived in impressive state, her golden chariot like the sun, her white hair outshining its jewels, heavy rainclouds following her as though summoned. Perfect Korgai pearls edged her bracelets and armbands, and the silk that framed her breasts. Even her horses, proud Arabians all the same shade of brown, wore pearl-studded harnesses.

In all this splendor, the mechanical parrot that rode with her went unremarked; and Vikramaditi, after three days of saying “You’re a pretty parrot” to everyone and repeating words as if she understood nothing, was able to flit around the palace as if unseen.

• • • •

“They forgot so easily that she was a person?”

Maari said, “We didn’t deal much with Alabar back then. Weren’t you listening?”

“But their last king was—”

“Be quiet,” Anbu said fiercely.

• • • •

The elderly queen, meanwhile, got up the stairs to her guest chambers perfectly well, even waving off her attendants; but then her leg became all at once fragile and unable to bear any weight, so that her hosts had to visit her. Such a pity, she told them with her small smile, that they should be inconvenienced by her frailties, but where was the point in raging at the whims of gods? Mortals had no choice but to adjust—as King Kabilan had done so marvelously on his father’s sudden death. The poor boy must be greatly distressed, but he didn’t show it at all, did he?

So she was able to mark each visitor’s response, while her granddaughters and nieces and attendants, scattered around the palace, heard what ministers and poets and princes said to one another after speaking to her.

Her granddaughter Meenatchi followed Kabilan around, listening with scatterwitted admiration to his every word and asking soothingly ignorant questions. On the third day, with her character established, Meenatchi managed to get so thoroughly lost that Vikramaditi had time to confer with her unnoticed.

She made enough wrong turns to find Kabilan again, then joked about how people should visit her instead; he generously offered to visit her that night, an hour after dark. She told him with earnest innocence that all the old ladies would be in bed by then, so if he wanted to visit Grandmother too he must do so earlier. Then she flitted off to admire Kabilan’s chief minister, and soon he had plans to visit her two hours after dark.

When Kabilan slipped in, the room was aglow with little lamps burning scented sesame oil and lush with flowers, golden kadambu and bright jasmine scattered with bursts of red. Faint under those scents and that of sandalwood paste lurked something less pleasant. Still, nothing to stop the tiger who’s sighted a doe. He eased closer, murmuring, “What flowers aspire to adorn these lotus arms?”

“Oh!” said Meenatchi, turning from the window. Jasmine crowned her and twined down her braided hair, and her smile was everything he’d hoped. “You’re here, finally! I’m happy to see you. I nearly fainted!”

He paused. “. . . Fainted?”

“Aiyo, don’t you smell it? A sewer must have burst. It’s terrible!”

It was actually barely discernable, but Kabilan purred, “Then come with me, and we’ll find a trysting place more suited to the nectar of your presence.”

“No, no, no, I can’t do that,” she said earnestly. “The rain makes it better just here, so I can’t leave the window and am trapped.”

Slightly annoyed now, he said, “If beauty is pleased by the window, we can—”

“First let me anoint the noble king,” said Meenatchi’s attendant, a large dark lovely girl, “so that he may better distract my princess from her troubles.” She guided him soothingly to a chair, removed his necklaces and armbands with admiring murmurs, and massaged scented clay into his hair. Then she started to rub sandalwood paste over his chest and back and arms, and even his face, removing his garments and jewellery as she went.

At first he was soothed, by expert fingers and ritual both, but the ripe stench of sewage slowly grew. By the time she removed his lower garments and started on his feet he was breathing only through his mouth. He’d smelled worse on battlefields, but not in bedchambers.

He stood, all at once out of patience, knocking the attendant back. “Come, lovely one,” he said shortly. “This room is not suitable for either of us. We must have the servants—”

“Aiyo!” Meenatchi whispered. “Do you hear that?”

In the silence, he did: footsteps trying to be stealthy.

“Someone must have heard you. Quickly, quickly, climb into the trunk behind that chair or they’ll catch you here and then what’ll happen I don’t know!”

While Meenatchi spoke, the attendant came to her feet, pulled him far too hard, and shoved him into the trunk with far more strength than he’d credited her with. She shut the trunk just as footsteps reached the door, and sat on it.

Inside, in the stifling dark, Kabilan swallowed hard, for the smell kept growing worse. He wondered if it came from the trunk itself. Which it did, in a way; for the girls had mixed indigo dye into the sandalwood paste he’d been so thoroughly covered with, and wet indigo, as it warms, smells much like fresh dung.

In this state, Kabilan was less than pleased to hear the deep, perfectly modulated tones of his chief minister’s voice.

“Vendan parts the clouds; the face of the moon shines upon me,” proclaimed the chief minister. “Her eyes gleam and dance like fish, and her hair, coiled like—what is that smell?”

“Oh, can’t you do something?” Meenatchi wailed piteously. “It’s been getting worse since sunset, even by the window, and I fear that I will soon faint.”

“You must be given another room, and quickly.” The chief minister’s voice grew muffled, as from one who has covered his mouth and nose with cloth. “A delicate lady should not be exposed to this.”

“Can you change the king’s arrangements?” said the delicate lady, as clear as ever. “It won’t anger him?”

“Kabilan won’t even notice,” said the chief minister. “He cares only for amusement.”

Which was both false enough and true enough to sting.

“But how can you know?” Meenatchi said. “If he shouts—aiyo, grandmother will get angry, and then what will I do?”

She sounded as helpless as a maiden really shouldn’t when she has a naked king trapped in a trunk, and Kabilan started to smell something off. Something besides the actual smell. He tried to muscle the trunk’s lid up; it creaked, but didn’t budge.

“Stop fretting, girl,” said the chief minister with strained patience. “Kabilan’s a puppet, and I hold his strings. He will do as I ‘advise’ him.”

Meenatchi said, “I don’t see how. King Kabilan fears nobody.”

“Only a fool tries to drive a bull he can lead by the nose. Speaking of noses—”

“You can’t lead him. He’s your king!”

“Then who arranged the rumors against that thing that called itself his father? Kabilan makes his choices from what I let him hear.”

Meenatchi’s attendant slipped off the shuddering trunk and into its shadow, silent against the wall.

“And if he gains the wisdom to see it, what can he do? I know he killed the ticker. So he will do as I—”

Naked, purple, and furious, hair wild and matted, eyes and bared teeth flickering with the light: Like vengeful Sivan himself, Kabilan burst from the trunk in a cloud of stench.

His chief minister took one look and fainted dead away.

Kabilan’s fury, robbed of its first target, turned on Meenatchi. “You—!” he bellowed.

She beamed at him. “You can thank me later, cousin,” she said. “You should first gag this scorpion of yours before he drips any more venom, hmm? And maybe then put on some clothes. Most of you is nicely purple, but one part doesn’t quite match.”

Kabilan couldn’t show his face in public for weeks—not for the chief minister’s execution, not even for those sacred rituals which brahmins say the land can’t thrive without. He had to pretend to be ill, which mortified him only a little less than being purple.

With the chief minister’s plotting revealed, though, and the army calmed before it had massed to demand blood, nothing too terrible happened. Even without rituals, the rains continued, and Chola hearts were warmed with tales of the Pandya queen’s loving attendance on their sick king, how she treated him as her own grandson.

That last was true. She scolded him quite as though he was her grandchild, age about seven.

She asked, after he admitted remorse, how he planned to save his land from divine or mechanical wrath; for as the Pandya line knew well, the two were much alike. Did he think he could take a brahmin into confidence? Someone like his late chief minister, perhaps?

Once she had him squirming, she added, “But fate smiles on you. Meenatchi is a poet of rare skill, and knows the Vedas well. She can advise you on your dharma.”

“But how—”

“The mechanicals told me, of course.” She stroked the parrot with the back of one knobbled finger. “Did you think they don’t know? My lovely friend here is their envoy. It’s by her mercy that you live.”

“You’re not a good parrot,” Vikramaditi told her son. “But the indigo’s a start.”

If Kabilan could have fallen into the floor just then, the Chola line would have ended.

“Go on,” said the queen, “You don’t rank high in Meenatchi’s regard, but if you implore her prettily enough—and you’ve clearly had practice—she might take pity.”

• • • •

“Small price,” said Maari, ignoring Usithan’s hooting laughter. “He tried to kill one of us.”

“And that one gave judgment,” Anbu said.

“A bad judgment.”

Their mother said, “The sharp blow to the pride did improve him. He came to rule well enough, and to think twice about what he heard. It helped that, ever after, when someone compared his might to Raman or his beauty to Maayon, he had to wonder whether they were calling him purple.”

Usithan said, “You’d think with all those blue gods they’d be fonder of the look.”

“Perhaps if it wasn’t for the smell?” said Anbu.

“Your elder sibling’s mistake in judgment came later,” said the bird. “The day she left.”

“Oh,” said Anbu on a downward note. “Oh no, what did she do?”

“She asked Kabilan one question. What do you think it was?”

Maari said, “Whether he understood that we could destroy him?”

“You should be a hound,” said Usithan. “You keep chewing that one bone.” And being well practiced, he leaped onto the roof before the last word, leaving a laughing message tube behind.

Anbu said, “Whether he loved his father.”

“No no no,” scolded Usithan. He dropped into their lap with a clang. “He’d have said yes. Probably loved his father in absence more than ever before, that’s how it is with people who annoy you.”

“Are you saying you love Maari?” they teased.

“Maybe I’m talking about you.”

Maari said, “What then did she ask, o wisest of sages?”

“Whether he wanted his father back. Is that not so, mother?”

Their mother spread her wings. “The point of this lesson,” she said, “is to find your answers. Not mine. I’ll say this much: that from that time they abandoned the name I gave them, and used Ramaa when more female and Raman when male, for their bruised heartspring could only continue by counting their past self dead.

“They kept the parrot form for many years, getting me to change only their head coloring, redder when they were more male and more purple as their heartspring shifted again to womanly. Chola fortunes fell before the Pandyas; Alabar built homes and farms and towns, always increasing, till we moved our sangam finally to Madurai. Your sibling still lived among them—though never again the Cholas—advising, telling stories, and gathering information for our traders. They even went west over the sea with a merchant once, as far as Aksum, in the years before trade from Rome gave way to Greece.

“The parrot form suited them, both for how beautiful it was and how easy to ignore. Some Alabar tried to cage them, but none managed, and nobody in all those years tried to kill them.

“But one day they returned to me and said: Mother, that second body you made me. Do you have it still? I need them to see me as a girl.”

• • • •

It was still functional, more or less. I build these forms to last. But it needed buffing, oiling, and extensive work in the legs, which had suffered from some year’s floods. I had been reading of certain Greek innovations, too, and wanted to try using pockets of trapped air to absorb shocks.

Ramaa told me much about their travels while I worked, but left out the reason for their sudden need. Eventually, I asked.

They started preening nonexistent feathers, but I waited, and at length they stopped hiding their head to say, “In the market, if a northerner from Kalinga or Ujjain trades with the Greeks, or if a merchant from Aksum wants peppercorns that stay fresh, do you know who they speak to?”

I paused with a tiny screw held in my beak, dropped it into a cup. “Not this generation,” I said.

“They seek out the broker-poet Aathan, whose tongue has been blessed by Murugan so that a river of language falls from the heavens above him, and Greek and Prakrit and Ge’ez flow with as much grace and force as Tamil; who gathers the name and friendship of all the best artisans as the bees gather nectar; whose superior taste the foreigners have come to trust regarding everything from sandalwood to horses, so firmly that even those whose main trade is in Musiri will travel the river Chulli, brave the Palakkad pass, and come in search of him.”

“Planning to open a shop, are you?”

“Mother.”

I tightened the vise holding one leg plate and lined the next up. “I hate to think of you besotted,” I said. “Consider how well that worked out for me, with Madurai in ashes and Pukhar lost for years beneath the waves.”

“Worse for everyone else involved, I’d think,” they said. “Besides. He’s not like that.”

I thought the same once, I didn’t say. When love tightens the heartspring, what outside words can change the rhythm it sets their gears dancing to? So I said, “How do you know him?”

“He sought me out at first to hear more about Aksum, and we never really stopped talking after that. I wondered at first if he was looking for a trade connection, but no, our merchants know him well.”

“Then may the gearwork of the stars grant you better luck than I had.”

When the body was fit to wear, Aathan the broker was not the only pretty youth to court Ramaa; he wasn’t even the best known or respected, not with the new queen’s cousin singing rather bad poetry to our windows. But Ramaa barely noticed. It fell to me to gently discourage them.

So I gathered them all and I said, “Tell me, why yearn for one you never noticed before, just because they wear a different form? You flatter my craftsmanship, but all this passion and pining clutters up the workspace. Go find someone you love for more than her jewellery, for that is all a body is to us.”

—Yes, laugh; but you know I have trouble with “gently.” In any case, they left.

Soon after the rains that year, when Madurai itself stood clean-washed and anointed with sandalwood, lush with dyed silks as if garlanded with blue kurinji, Ramaa married the broker.

By then I felt silly about my earlier misgivings. Aathan looked and smiled at Ramaa as if they were the whole three worlds, and moreover he spoke with them about matters both grave and trivial, and laughed with them too. He thought of them as a woman entirely, and was baffled by our more neutral language, but Ramaa didn’t mind. For do not most of us respond to the words for women, rather than explain our full nature to Alabar?

For a while I thought the old dents and scratches in their heartspring would smooth out with new joy; and for a while it was true. Aathan’s trade grew as Ramaa started helping, and making connections he could not, till their only worldly trouble was deciding which temples and schools to fund. And if Aathan laughed less, that comes to us all with age.

But seasons shift, and once more the ground cracked with thirst; and though we travelled little and spread finest muslin over the windows, still dust scratched goldwork and stole into joints. So I knew the matter was serious when one of our traders came to me swathed in muslin one scorching day to say, “Grandmother, we grow worried about the company your son Aathan keeps.”

So I created the form of a mouse with a coat of darkened bronze, lined it with oiled muslin, roughened the metal till it was dull in any light, transferred my heartspring into it, and went to spy on Aathan.

I recommend the form for this purpose; if Alabar see you, they’ll be too busy fussing to notice that you’re mechanical.

But the mouse’s landscape is one of small dark tunnels with bursts of noisy light and large stomping feet, and I was less than happy to find Aathan in the river itself—on a crowded and noisy boat with one long narrow plank to the dock. Who holds their party on a boat?

As I discovered at the price of a squashed tail and a frantic dash for the gap between two barrels, that night the answer was: those who hide from both our kind and Pandya law.

Some voices I knew, had thought were friends. And the enamelled goblets from which they sipped mango juice and western vinum were our work. But the conversation—! On barring the wind-ups from overseas trade, using the Greeks’ disdain for their own automata, bypassing guilds and their laws. Whether to shift trade to mechanical-free Musiri and up the Chulli to the Chera capital, where to meet next time, free of ticking.

And there was my child’s husband, welcomed by these men, conferring with some, laughing with another group more freely than he’d laughed with us in years.

But what do you think he did, when Ramaa asked why he visited people who meant them ill? He laughed as he’d done on the boat.

There were more traditional topics for wifely scolding, he said. Ramaa should know he didn’t despise us, since he’d married her, and brokers had to make friends everywhere, and didn’t Ramaa have contacts who didn’t work with him?

“And when,” said Ramaa, “were you planning to warn us of the danger?”

Aathan said, “The only danger’s to your wealth—and for people who don’t eat, you—”

“No,” said Ramaa, voice rising as their heartspring twisted. “We’re not misers. That lie’s how it starts, every time, against anyone, and I’ve seen where it ends. You’re hiding a conspiracy, parroting its lies, and what else? Telling them where to strike?”

Aathan’s fists clenched. “What nonsense,” he said through his teeth. “We’ll talk when you’re calmer, I’m less tired, and it’s not the middle of the night.”

But Ramaa was calm, though he didn’t understand it; battle-calm. Rage pulled their heartspring too tight for smaller feelings.

They waited for Aathan to start snoring before they opened the basket I’d been hiding in. “So you’re right,” they murmured, “and I no wiser than I was a hundred years ago.”

I said, “I liked him, too, after we met.”

“It’s what he does.”

After a small silence, I said, “And what will you do?”

The next time Aathan met the crooked merchants, more than half of Madurai’s mechanicals showed up, too. We hid till they’d said too much, then showed ourselves all at once; cornered, they scratched and screamed like rats. How could we have found them?

Ramaa said, “How do you think?”

“No!” said Aathan. “I never—”

But the rats might have ripped him apart right there, if Ramaa had not added, “We brought the queen’s guard. For safety. And proof when we take you to court.”

We didn’t accuse Aathan. We didn’t need to. His work withered under a mistrustful sun, and if his tale ended there, its lesson would be for Alabar to learn, not you.

But Aathan was not Kabilan. The blow taught him only that mechanicals are cruel. He railed at Ramaa when they tried to mend the marriage, calling them vicious names before storming out, and from there his silence and absence only grew.

One night, when he came home staggering from toddy, Ramaa told him he was his own enemy, that if he’d show loyalty to his family and the law, his honest friends would return. The next morning he was gone, leaving a note like a slap:

You, who found the sweetest mangoes,

I forgot you never knew their taste.

Now, with thorns in my tongue,

I’ll walk across the dark sea

and remember:

The first rain’s music in every well,

The scent of wet earth,

The beat of a beloved heart.

First fury, then sudden fear, pulled Ramaa’s heartspring askew. How literal was this walk? He’d been speaking too much, and too drunkenly, of the sea and the fabled lands beneath it, but—

He wasn’t on any ships’ lists, not that any would sail till after the rains. And fisherfolk, like everyone, claim to follow the priests’ rules; but tales said they’d take a willing passenger out to sea for a price. And Aathan’s poems spoke the messages he meant them to.

Rage and worry twisted Ramaa’s heartspring . . . let’s say doubly tight, since we tell Alabar that’s how heartsprings break and in Madurai you never know who’s listening. Ramaa’s was too strong to break, too hurt to power them. They’d sit still for entire days, answer a question a week after it was asked.

Aathan’s one wise choice was getting far, far away from me.

There’s nothing to do for a heartspring so wounded, but though my own whispered high with fear, your sibling persisted, and I saw that they could heal in time.

But the windings of the greater gears are not for us to know. Our merchants in the north sent word of trade vanished all at once, like streams in summer, in Pataliputra itself. They told of stories that travelled in whispers, each one a small gemlike poem, each one painting us as things. Dangerous, impossible to know or trust, betraying those trapped by our beauty. The tales were in Prakrit and unclaimed by any author; but we knew that voice, those details.

Our merchants, with all sixty-four of the great city’s gates shut in their faces, pleaded for help finding the author before they were ruined or killed, or Gupta armies came down on all Tamil peoples. But he’d be using some northern name we couldn’t guess, and claiming some other trade.

Ramaa held our people’s only hope against him: a small portrait on lacquered wood, kept close even through grief.

So I let their messenger speak to my wounded child.

Ramaa listened. Gave them the picture. Turned to me and said more than they had in a year: “He never meant to court the sea. Only to scare me. He must have known I still cared.”

And with that, their heartspring broke.

• • • •

The lengthening shadows carried silence into each child’s heartspring, so that even Usithan and all his voices were still.

Anbu spoke first, more fiercely than ever before. “I hope you killed him.”

“I?” said their mother. “No. I carried out the rites for my child. Then I stopped till my own heartspring healed.”

“Hard to imagine you struck down.” said Usithan softly.

“I’m strength itself, in the tales I’d rather tell. Here I was lucky. No new grief caught me. Our people mended ties Aathan had broken. I made ornaments for others to sell till I could stand to speak to Alabar again. Eventually I made another child, and another. So many years passed that their Tamil became half Sanskrit, and their kings far more than half, before I could make another who’d live with them, wearing an Alabar form. But this time they’re one of three. I’ve healed enough to share this tale.” She looked at each in turn. “And when I made your heartsprings, the time finally came to mix in the metal from Ramaa’s.”

She let the silence linger a moment longer, then turned brisk. “Now tell me. What was our biggest mistake?”

“Dealing with Alabar,” Maari said.

“Have to,” said Usithan. “They’re everywhere.”

“Dealing with them gently, then,” said Maari.

Anbu said, “We should live without allies, home, or safety?”

“Don’t we?”

“What about Nakkiran?” said Usithan. “His brother’s child? The queen?”

“Long dead, and who knows how they truly felt.”

“So . . . Alabar are dangerous, impossible to know or trust, betraying those who—” He was on the roof the moment Maari’s ears flattened.

“Mother’s understanding failed,” said Anbu, holding out a hand to Maari, who padded over as though pouncing on monkeys would never enter her mind. “And Ramaa’s. That’s why it’s a riddle tale. Where don’t Alabar make sense?”

“Everywhere!”

“No, that’s you,” said Maari.

“I don’t make laws about coconuts. But all right, why didn’t Aathan like Ramaa sharing his trade? They weren’t competitors.”

Maari said, “No? There’s five new Alabar made every tick of the heart, and five more getting killed.”

“We’re talking about married people! One’s wealth was the other’s.”

“Is that how they think?”

Anbu said, “That’s it,” and laughed at Maari and Usithan’s identically tilted heads and twitching tails. “The real question. And no single answer’s correct.”

“Then what’s the point of asking,” grumbled Usithan.

“Who can give a question three answers without breaking? Alabar. And us! That’s why—”

• • • •

The Chera king’s Pannikar was quick, but not so quick as the golden monkey who called herself Usha. His arrow stuck, quivering, in a pillar of carven teak. Laughter hooted from a rafter far above in the cavernous throne room.

“Most people throw fruit, but your Panikkar’s right—” Another arrow, another dodge, “—in his guess, O king,” she sang out. “My new-made name, so many years ago, was Usithan.”

Usha leaped from rafter to pillar to one minister’s head and away again holding his shawl, followed by a shriek of outrage. Waving it cheerily, she danced around the room, more and more of the court chasing after till no guard dared loose another arrow. The mass of nobles finally trapped her hooting laughter in a corner, just out of reach.

But while her voice drew all eyes to the far corner, the monkey herself dropped onto the back of the throne, tossed the shawl around the king’s neck, and pulled it tight with both feet. “I even warned you about my message tubes,” she said. “Where’s the challenge if you don’t listen?”

Everyone stopped. The device in the corner did not. The monkey’s laughter joined it, one jarring sliver higher.

“Now,” she said, “where was I before our little game? Never mind. When their mother judged them all ready, Anbu and their siblings joined the court of the Pandya queen. She’d expected only one mechanical advisor, but accepted three with grace like the elderly queen in the story, and humor more like Meenatchi’s.

“Years flitted by in that delightful court with its delicious intrigues; and we repaid the queen’s courtesy many times over, for a monkey can overhear nearly as much as a parrot. Her children grew, as Alabar do, as quick and generous as sugarcane, and one day her eldest son, who’d been travelling, returned accompanied by the young Chera king. And he said—no, wait.”

Usha picked the Chera crown right off the king’s head, set it on her own, and said, “Do I look the part?”

It was far too big, crooked, and made of a paler gold than her coat, but nobody dared laugh. Even the device in the corner had stopped.

“The young Chera king,” said Usha, pointing at the top of his head, “was as handsome and well-spoken as Kabilan. He came to meet his friend’s lovely sisters, he said, and was welcomed with joy. But he stole away one night, and it was no princess he took with him but the Pandya queen’s advisor, Anbu. His messenger returned almost immediately with a pretty letter that begged forgiveness, swore friendship, and claimed they were driven by love; but nothing he said of his bride sounded like our sibling. So we followed.

“We found the first emerald inside a cloud, in the Palakkad Pass where they land to rest and turn the air to mist. I’m sure Anbu’s beloved knows this—it’s not my place to call a king a liar, after all—but for the rest of you, my sibling’s anklets are hollow. One contains thirteen pearls, perfectly matched, and the other has—had—seven mechanical-cut emeralds as big as the tip of my little finger. The gems are set so that they can’t fall out; they must be pried out after the anklet’s opened, with jewellers’ tools. Or mechanical fingers.

“Two different jewellers in the great port of Musiri had emeralds to match the first. Both said they’d bought them from fisherfolk. One was leaving a temple when a gleam by the river Chulli showed him the blessing he’d prayed for. The other found her emerald in a fish.

“We didn’t need the other four. The first gem already pointed to the Chera capital. Those found upstream of Musiri could have come from nowhere else, and the message Anbu sent by dropping them was distress.

“Which is why—no, don’t move, I’d hate to tighten this shawl in my terror—my sister and I stole our sibling’s heartspring from their body last night while you all slept. Silly Alabar, you think I’d tell you any of this if Anbu weren’t already safe? I’ve been watching daylight dim while I babbled. Maari will be home with them by now, and word’s going out to our people.

“Maari said to distract you till it was too late, but I’m not the creature of claw and rage. I like your people. They’re funny.”

Usha leapt again for the rafters. A spray of arrows hit the wall behind her. She laughed. More arrows. Another laugh, from another part of the room. And another, and another, till nobody knew where to look.

They were still searching when six hooting tubes of bronze fell to the ground. One said in Usha’s voice, “I’ll even give you some advice. If only to annoy my beloved little sister.” Its last word trailed lower and slower, its end more guessed than heard.

A moment later, another said: “Evening: Chulli’s jasmine garland unfurls its lonely scent. Deer need no monkey’s warning when the red soil shakes.”

Another: “Gears like mountains turn. Stones like mountains shift.”

“Higher than clouds, atop cliffs only wings can scale, a dam larger than dreams screeches open.”

“What child does she birth with the greatest of rivers?”

The silence grew, strained, snapped; one argument broke out, then another, high-voiced—and both stopped abruptly at the sound of Usha’s voice. Her last device said mildly, “It’s not a real riddle, silly Alabar. Run. Leave Vanji, leave Musiri, leave every village between. The river’s coming for you.”

©2017 by Shweta Narayan. | Art © 2017 by Randy Gallegos.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shweta Narayan was born in India, has lived in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands, Scotland, and California, and feels kinship with shapeshifters and other liminal beings. Their short fiction and poetry have appeared in places like Strange Horizons, Tor.com, the 2012 Nebula Showcase anthology, and We See A Different Frontier.

They’ve been mostly dead since 2010, but have a few stories and poems in the works again. Seven years is a traditional length for otherworldly imprisonment, so they’re hopeful.

Shweta received an Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship, co-edits the speculative poetry zine Stone Telling, and feels old on tumblr at shwetanarayan.tumblr.com.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory

Carlos Hernandez | 4670 words

Vocations don’t grant vacations. I’m supposedly on holiday in London when I get an offer no reporter could refuse: to see a unicorn in the wild.

I’m with my friend Samantha, hanging out at her Dad’s pub after a long night’s clubbing, still wearing our dance-rumpled dresses, dying to get out of our heels. Sam’s father, Will, is tending bar tonight, so it’s the perfect spot for late-night chips and hair-of-the-dog nightcaps. Plus, most of the clientele is over fifty. We wouldn’t have to spend all evening judo-throwing chirpsers. (And yes, this Latina’s been in London a full eight days and has decided to adopt every bloody Britishism she hears. Deal.)

It was a good plan while it lasted. Sam flicks her head toward a guy sitting alone, staring at us over his drink. He could be my dad, if my dad had forgotten to bring a condom to his junior prom. Short, stout, but really fit, as though a cooper had built his torso. The man’s never heard of moisturizer. He’s wearing a black pinstripe shirt with a skinny leather tie, black pleated pants and black ankle-boots. I’m sure it was some cute sales girl who had dressed him—because nobody who cared about him would’ve let him leave the house looking like dog’s dinner.

And now—shit—I have stared at him too long. He comes over, beer in hand.

“Ladies,” he says.

“We’re not hookers,” says Sam. “I know these dresses might give a gentleman the wrong impression.”

“Sorry to disappoint,” I add, big smile.

“Right,” he says, and turns on his heel.

“Hold on, Gavin,” says Will, who’s just pulled up with my Moscow Mule. “Don’t let these two termagants scare you off. Make a little room for Gavin, Sam, will you?”

Gavin considers us a moment, then pulls up the stool next to Samantha and offers her his hand. “Gavin Howard.”

“Oh!” says Sam. She’s suddenly unironically warm—a rare demeanor for her. “You’re the forest ranger. Dad’s told me about you. I’m Sam.”

I put out my hand. “And I’m Gabi Reál.”

“A pleasure,” he says, then proceeds to purée my knucklebones—one of those insecure guys who has to try to destroy the other person’s hand. Charming.

“This man’s a national hero,” Will says to me. “He’s keeping our unicorns safe.”

Now that is interesting. Back in the States, we’ve heard reports of unicorns appearing in forests throughout Great Britain. But in this age of photo manipulation it’s hard to get anyone to believe anything anymore.

So I say as much: “Plenty of Americans don’t think unicorns are real, you know.”

“Oh, they’re real, Ms. Reál,” says Gavin, pleased with his wit. As if I hadn’t heard that one twenty billion times.

“Americans,” says Samantha. “You never think anything interesting could possibly happen anywhere else in the world, do you?”

The Brits share a chuckle. I don’t join in.

“We shouldn’t insult our visitor,” says Will. “I mean, if the Americans were to tell us snaggletoothed pookahs started appearing in California, I’d want better proof than a picture.” He leans to Gavin and adds, “Gabi’s a reporter for The San Francisco Squint. Her column’s called ‘Let’s Get Reál.’ Two million read it every week, don’t you know.”

Gavin sizes me up like a squinting jeweler. “I have no patience for falsehood. I wish more people would ‘get reál.’” His voice gets weirdly sincere.

I lean toward him and say, “Me too. My column’s subtitle is ‘Truth or Death.’” I smile and sip my Mule.

It’s not the first time I’ve chirpsed to land an interview. Gavin drinks the rest of his beer but never takes his eyes off me. Neither do Will or the slightly disgusted Sam, who sees exactly what’s happening.

But screw her; a story’s a story. Gavin sets down his glass and says the words I am longing to hear: “You know, I’m working the New Forest this weekend. If you’d like, it would be my pleasure to take you with me. You might just see a unicorn for yourself.”

• • • •

I thought this would make a nice fluffy piece for my column. I mean, unicorns!

Gavin—who is completely professional and hands-off, thank the gods—and I are having a delightful Sunday-morning hike through some less-traveled parts of the New Forest. It’s everything an American could want of an English woods: fields of heath; majestic oaks and alders; rivers that run as slow as wisdom itself; and ponies! Thousands of ponies roaming feral and free like a reenactment of my girlhood fantasies.

Of course, that sets my Spidey-sense tingling. Wouldn’t it be easy enough for rumors of unicorns to sprout up in a place with so many darling ponies ambling about?

This is what I am thinking when we come across a thick, almost unbroken trail of blood.

“Hornstalkers,” Gavin says. And when he sees I’m not following: “Unicorn poachers. Of all the luck.”

He calls it in on some last-century transceiver. HQ wants more information. They tell him to send me home and to follow the blood trail with extreme caution. “Do not attempt to apprehend them on your own,” says HQ.

“Understood.”

“I mean it, Gavin. Don’t go showing off in front of your lady-friend.”

“I said, ‘Understood.’” He stows the transceiver and adds: “Wanker.” And then to me he says, “Well, Gabi, it’s poachers. Dangerous people. HQ says I’m supposed to send you home.”

“Just try,” I reply. We high-five.

And then we’re hustling through the wilderness, following a grim trail of blood, snapped branches, hoofprints, and bootprints. Gavin jogs ahead, while I do my best to keep up. He’s a totally different person out here, absolutely in tune with the forest. He’s half hound, loping with canine abandon through the woods, then stopping suddenly to cock his head to listen, sniff the air.

It’s also clear he’s used to running with a high-powered rifle in hand. He told me back at the truck that he was bringing it “just in case.” So here we are.

He stops suddenly and crouches. I do too. From one of his cargo-pants pockets he pulls a Fey Spy, a top-of-its-class RC flying drone that looks like a green-gold robot hummingbird.

He tosses it into the air and it hovers, awaiting orders; using a controller/display-screen the size of a credit card, he sends the little drone bulleting into the forest.

I peer over Gavin’s shoulder and am treated to a dizzying live-cam of the terrain that awaits us. Gavin’s a great pilot. The drone zooms and caroms through the woods with all the finesse and speed of a real hummingbird.

And then we see them: the poachers, two of them. They wear balaclavas and camouflage jumpsuits, the kind sporting-goods stores love to sell to amateurs.

Between them walks a girl. A girl on a dog leash.

I’d judge her to be eight or nine. She’s dressed for summer, tank top and shorts and flip-flops; she’s muddy to her ankles. Her head hangs, and her hair, the colors of late autumn, curtains her face. The collar around her neck is lined with fleece. (To prevent chafing, I presume? How considerate.) The leash seems mostly a formality, however, as it has so much slack that its middle almost dips to the ground.

“What the hell?” I whisper. “What’s with the girl?”

Gavin, slowly and evenly, says, “Some hornstalkers believe that unicorns are attracted to virgin girls. So they kidnap one to help them in their hunt.”

“What? You can’t be serious.”

Gavin shrugs. “One too many fairy tales when they were kids.”

• • • •

I can only imagine what is going through that poor girl’s head. Kidnapping alone is already more evil than anyone deserves. But as a girl I loved horses, ponies, and especially unicorns. If unicorns had existed in our timeline when I was young, they would have dominated my every daydream. I can’t imagine how scarred I would have been if I’d been forced by poachers to serve as bait. To watch them murder one right in front of me. Dig the horn out of its skull.

Gavin gives my wrist a fortifying squeeze. Then he hands me the RC controller, takes out his walkie-talkie and, as quietly as he can, reports what he’s seen to HQ. I use the Fey Spy to keep an eye on the poachers. The group is moving forward cautiously. The girl’s gait, stooped, defeated, fills me with dread.

Gavin has a conversation with the dispatcher that I can’t quite make out. When he’s done, he pockets the transceiver and looks at me. Then he holds out his rifle to me with both hands.

“This,” he says, “is a Justice CAM-61X ‘Apollo’ sniper rifle. It has a range of 1,700 meters. It’s loaded with .50 caliber Zeus rounds. They’re less lethal bullets. Bad guys get hit by these, they lose all muscular control, shit their pants, and take a nap. Then we just mosey up and cuff ’em.”

I squint. “1,700 meters in a desert, maybe. You’d have to be halfway up their asses to get a clear shot, with all these trees.”

He pats the rifle. “Not with these bullets. They’re more like mini missiles, with onboard targeting computers and everything. They can dodge around obstacles to reach their target. Especially,” he emphasizes, “if we create a virtual map of the forest between us and the poachers.”

Lightbulb. “Which we can make with the Fey Spy.”

He nods. “Listen, Gabi. That girl’s in great peril. We’re on the clock here. We can’t wait for backup.”

As a journalist, my ethics require me to remain disinterested when covering a story. Fuck you, journalistic ethics. “What you need me to do?”

He points at RC display/controller in my hand. “You any good flying one of these?”

“I’m a reporter. I make my living spying on people with drones.”

Gavin smiles. Then: “I need you to fly the Fey Spy back to us, slowly and from high up in the canopy, so that it can map the forest between us and the poachers. Then fly it back over to them and keep them in the Fey Spy’s field of vision. It’ll automatically transmit the map of the forest to my rifle. Once it’s done, it’s as simple as bang bang bang. Everyone goes down.”

I nod in agreement at first, before I realize this: “Wait. Bang bang bang? Three bangs? There are only two poachers.”

His face goes green and guilty. “Well, we can’t have the girl running scared through the forest. She could hurt herself.”

I wait a second for the punchline, because he can’t be serious. But of course he is. “Oh my God. Are you insane? You are not shooting the girl!”

“She’ll just take a little nap.”

“And shit her pants. You said she would shit her pants.”

“She’s not even wearing pants.”

“Gavin!”

Gavin’s face oscillates between contrarian and imploring. Finally, he shrugs. “Look, if you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

“I do have a better idea. You shoot the poachers. I’ll handle the girl.”

“Gabi, that girl’s undergone a severely traumatic sequence of experiences. I’m not sure a team of highly-trained psychologists could handle her right now.”

“She’ll be even more traumatized if you shoot her. Look, I admit it’s not a great option. We just don’t have any better ones. As soon as you have a lock on the hornstalkers, you take them out. I’ll fly the Fey Spy to the girl and keep her entertained until backup arrives.”

He should name his eyebrows Super and Cilious. “What if she runs?”

“I’ll go get her myself. She won’t get far. She’s in flip-flops.”

He’s about to argue, but decides against it. “Out of time,” he sighs. “We do it your way. Don’t fuck up.”

“Don’t miss.”

Gavin aims the rifle ahead, looks into the scope with one eye, winks the other. I look back to the Fey Spy display screen, catch up with my targets. They’ve barely moved at all. As if they’re not sure what to do next. “I don’t think these guys are pros,” I say to Gavin.

“Unicorn horn is worth a mint,” he says, his aim never wavering. “Every imbecile with a gun wants a piece of the action. Guide the Fey Spy back to us.”

I do, slaloming left and right through the forest in large swaths as I fly. It’s a little over ten minutes before we make visual contact with our hummingbird robot.

“Good job,” says Gavin, checking his rifle’s readout. “We’ve almost got what we need. Steer the Fey Spy back over to them.”

By the time I catch up with the poachers again, they are crouching behind a pair of trees, trying to peer into a hole the wounded unicorn must have punched through the forest as it fled. The girl stands next to the poacher who has the other end of her leash around his wrist. She’s as still as a Degas ballerina.

Within the space of a second Gavin fires two shots, and a blink later the two poachers suffer seizures. They slap at their necks and fall to the ground, their guns tumbling away from them.

I hover in place; I want to see how the girl reacts.

She doesn’t. She just stands above her handler. He is weakly reaching up to her. The leash is looped around his wrist, her neck. Her sheet of yellow-orange hair shields her face from me.

The poacher’s hand finally drops. He’s out. It suddenly occurs to me the girl must think he’s dead. Jesus Christ: How much worse can we make things for her?

Gavin’s already charging ahead to the forest to go truss up the poachers with zip-ties. He’ll be there in minutes. All I need to do is keep her entertained until he gets there and make sure she doesn’t—

—no! She slips the leash off the poacher’s wrist and takes off running.

• • • •

Here’s an important safety tips for the kids at home. Do not go tearing as fast as you can through a moderately dense woods while also trying to fly a Fey Spy. You can’t run and watch a screen and steer a robot at the same time. After my fourth stumble, I decide to go with the Fey Spy. It can move through the forest much faster than I can, and it will provide me a map of the forest that will lead me right to her.

It’s the right choice. In minutes, the Fey Spy makes visual contact. I fly it into a small clearing, where a scene plagiarized from a medieval tapestry is already in progress. The girl—the leash still around her neck—is kneeling in front of a horse. Huge and beautiful, chestnut-colored, male. He has folded his legs under him. He can barely keep his dipping head aloft. On his flank a bullet wound yawns; a slow lava-flow of blood gurgles out of the hole. Below it spreads a scabrous beard.

And, spiraling out from the horse’s head, is a horn almost a meter long.

• • • •

We have the Large Hadron Collider to thank for unicorns. Once the scientists at the LHC discovered they could make these adorable microscopic black holes, they couldn’t resist doing it all the time. “They only last for microseconds,” they said. “What harm could they do?” they asked.

How about destabilizing the membrane that keeps other universes from leaking into ours?

Think of our universe as some kid’s crayon drawing on a piece of paper. Take that drawing, and place it on top of some other kid’s. If nothing else happens, the drawing on top will hide the drawing beneath it. But now, take a spray-bottle and spritz the drawing on top. Don’t ruin it or cause the colors to run; just moisten it a little. As the paper gets wet, you’ll be able to see hints of the picture that’s underneath.

The numberless black holes created at the LHC “moistened” the paper on which our universe is drawn, allowing other universes to come peeking through.

Handwringers have announced the inevitable collapse of our universe but, so far at least, nothing so dramatic has happened. And in fact, a great deal of good has come of the LHC’s experiments. Scientists have gained invaluable insights into how parallel universes work.

For instance, we now know that, in at least one alternate timeline, unicorns exist. And a few specimens have found their way into our neck of the multiverse.

• • • •

Even before I entered the clearing, I could hear the girl calling out “Help! Is anybody there? Help us!” Not “Help me.” “Help us.”

So I move into the clearing slowly. The girl sits with the unicorn’s head on her lap, petting his neck. Her face is a tragedy mask.

She asks me, “Are you a hunter?”

I sit next to her. “My name’s Gabrielle Reál. I’m a reporter.”

“You’re American?”

I nod. “I’m here to help you.”

She feels safe enough to start crying in earnest. “Can you call my parents?”

“Help is on the way, sweetheart.”

She nods. “Can you help him?”

She means the unicorn. How to reply? I will not compound her future suffering with a lie—truth or death, remember?—but I don’t want to heighten her present suffering by lecturing her about the stark realities of life and death. I finally settle on, “I can’t. But I have a friend coming. He’s a forest ranger. If anyone can help the unicorn, he can.”

She nods, sniffles, redoubles her petting. The unicorn sighs, settles further into her lap. I have to dodge his horn. It’s even more amazing up close than any picture I’ve seen. It’s a spiral of silver-gray, pitted and striated, covered with the nicks and flaws that come from a lifetime’s use. It doesn’t feel as cold as I expect; it’s like reaching into a body and touching vital bone.

I should get us away from him, I know. This is a wounded wild animal; he can turn on us at any moment. But the truth is I don’t want to move. I don’t want this magnificent creature to die without knowing some comfort in his passing. It’s a sentimental thought, I know. That doesn’t make it any less authentic.

I scratch the unicorn’s head. He moves slightly toward my hand, grateful. The girl rests her head on my arm, and together we pet him and weep.

• • • •

Thousands of animals—elephants especially, but also walruses, rhinoceroses, and narwhals—are massacred every year for their horns and tusks. The demand for ivory continues with little abatement in places like China, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and other countries. In spite of the bans and the international efforts to curb the ivory trade, poachers have no trouble finding buyers with deep pockets and government officials on the take.

In fact, the only thing that has seemed to be effective at slowing down the butchering of these animals has been the introduction of an even more desirable kind of ivory: that of the unicorn.

Unicorn horn is said to possess all sorts of salubrious woo. It can detect and cure disease, anything from nosebleeds to lupus. It’s a universal poison antidote. It can impart superhuman strength, speed, and/or intelligence; regenerate lost limbs; restore sight to the blind; recover sexual potency; reverse aging; raise the dead. Slice it, dice it, powder it, or keep it whole and use it as your magic wand—unicorn horn is good for what ails you.

Of course it has no such properties. But what science has learned already about unicorns is almost as wondrous. Equus ferus hippoceros seems to fit so well into our timeline’s system of classification, there is reason to believe they might actually have existed in our universe at some point and that we may someday find indigenous unicorn fossils. Of the extrauniversal specimens we have encountered so far, male unicorns seem to be up to fifteen percent larger than the modern horse, females up to ten percent. Their large skulls somewhat resemble those of large, extinct species from our Eocene era: save, of course, for the horns sprouting from their head.

A unicorn horn, much like a narwhal’s, is actually a pair of repurposed canines that grow helically from the animal’s palate and intertwine as they emerge from the forehead. Scientists believe that when the unicorn’s ancestors switched from being omnivores to herbivores, evolution found other uses for its meat-tearing teeth. Defense against predators and mating displays are obvious assumptions, though neither has been observed as yet. We have observed, however, them using their horns as “fruit procurement appliances” (Gavin’s words). And since the horn is actually two twisted teeth, it is sensitive to the touch. Scientists are just beginning to hypothesize the various ways in which unicorns use their horns as sensory organs.

In short, the unicorn is an endlessly fascinating animal, one that not only has enriched our knowledge of our own natural world, but the natural world of at least one other timeline. It’s scientifically priceless.

As I sit scratching this dying beast’s head, I wonder Why isn’t that enough? Why do we have to invent magical bullshit? They just got here, and we’re hunting them to extinction based on lies.

But then I grimly smile. Unicorns are not of our timeline. The stragglers who have appeared here came by an LHC-induced accident. No matter what we do here, we can’t erase them from existence in all universes. Even our folly, thank the gods, has limits.

• • • •

Gavin cautiously enters the clearing. The rifle is holstered on his back. He walks in smiling, open-armed, crouching, cautious. He reminds me of Caliban.

“There they are,” he says merrily. “Glad I finally found you. Now we can get you home safe and sound. So let’s get a move on, hm?”

Neither I nor the girl move. The girl’s eyes are locked on Gavin, assessing. “Is that your friend?” she asks me.

“The forest ranger,” I reply. “The men who kidnapped you are going to prison for a long time thanks to him.”

She doesn’t take her eyes off of him. “You said he could save the unicorn.”

Gavin shoots me a look.

“I didn’t say he could definitely save him,” I say. “I said if anyone could, he could. He’s going to try.”

“He can’t just try. It has to work.”

“There, now,” says Gavin, coming over to us. He’s picked up what’s transpired between the girl and I and plays his part perfectly: He kneels down next to the unicorn and pats the beast’s neck, looking at it nose to tail, examining it studiously. But you don’t have to be a unicorn expert to know the animal’s almost dead.

“Right,” he says. “I’m going to have to perform a complicated bit of field surgery on this poor fellow. Gabi, my crew’s half a click south of here. You should head toward them with the little lady.”

“Come with me, sweetie,” I say to the girl, standing and holding out my hand. “Let’s get you back to your parents.”

She doesn’t look at me. “I want to stay,” she says flatly.

“We have to let Mr. Howard do his work,” I say. “He’s the only chance the unicorn has. You want to help the unicorn, right?”

“Yes.”

“The best way for us to help is to get out of the way.”

She considers this, pets the horned horse more vigorously to help her think. Then—so, so carefully—she sets the unicorn’s head on the ground, scoots her legs out from under. The unicorn is well beyond noticing such subtle kindnesses. Its black unmoving oculus reflects the clouds.

The girl rises and takes my hand. “Please do what you can,” she says to Gavin.

Gavin opens a leather satchel of sharp instruments on the ground. They look a little crude for the fine cuts operations usually require. They look like tools for an autopsy: for sawing, hacking, flensing off.

“Don’t you worry,” Gavin says to the girl. “I’ll have Mr. Unicorn patched up in no time.”

• • • •

The support team is everything I could want from British rescuers. I’m offered tea and blankets and biscuits and a satellite phone. I call my editor and confess how I blew the story.

“Fuck journalistic ethics!” she says. Love that woman.

The support team does even better with the little girl. They’ve got her sitting on the tailgate of a pickup, drinking tea from a thermos, wrapped in a blanket she doesn’t need. They washed her feet. A comfortingly overzealous Mary Poppins kneels behind her in the bed of the truck and brushes out her hair. The woman chats nonstop the entire time, a stream of solicitous chatter that, like all good white-noise machines, is threatening to put the blanketed girl to sleep.

But the girl wakes up immediately when Gavin rejoins us.

I have exactly one second to gather the truth from his body language. Then Gavin sees the girl scrutinizing him and muscles up a smile. He marches over to her with his elbows out, like he’s about to start a musical number. “How are we doing? My people taking good care of you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you talk to your mum and dad? I bet they were glad to hear your voice.”

“Yes.”

“We’ll, you’ll be back with your family in a few hours.”

“Did you save him?”

He had to know that question was coming, but in the moment he still finds himself unprepared to answer. “Well,” he says slowly, looking down, “it wasn’t easy.” But then, looking at her conspiratorially: “But yes. I saved him.”

“Really?” Her voice is chary.

Gavin clears his throat. “We had to pull a bit of a trick to pull it off. You see, unicorns really are magic in their own universe. But when they come here, suddenly they’re as normal as any other horse.”

“They’re magical?”

“Sure they are, in their own time and place. Unicorns don’t die or get sick or grow old in their own universe. Once I got him back to his rightful place, he healed up like that.” Gavin snaps.

The girl blooms. “You can do that?”

“Sure I can. Can’t I, team?”

“Yes. Oh, certainly. Do it all the time,” says the team.

The girl is looking from face to face. She seems better. Finally she looks at me. “Is it true, Ms. Reál?”

“If Mr. Howard says so,” I say before I can think about what I’m saying.

“Promise?”

Gavin’s lying out his ass. It’s not like there’s some handy stargate we can push unicorns through to send them back to their universe. They’re the first verifiable case we have of a living creature passing between timelines, but that may only be because, since they don’t exist in this one, they were easy to identify. Millions of animals may be traveling back and forth between universes, or maybe just unicorns. Who knows? Certainly not us, not yet. We have zero idea how to send them back to their rightful reality.

So why am I not telling the girl all this?

Because doing so will gut her afresh. Because there’s such a thing as mercy. Because she can learn what really happened later, when she’s stronger: maybe even from me, if she happens to read this article. If you’re reading this, P————, I’m so sorry. As a reporter, I’m supposed to be a steward of the truth. But as unheroic as it sounds, it’s better to lie and stay alive. Way, way better.

I take P————’s hands and look her in the eye when I say, “Sweetie, I promise you, that unicorn is as alive as you and me.”

©2016 by Carlos Hernandez. Originally published in The Assimilated Cuban's Guide to Quantum Santeria. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carlos Hernandez has published over 30 works of fiction, poetry and drama over the last decade. His first collection of short stories, The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria, was released in February of 2016 by Rosarium. He earned a Ph.D. in English in 2000 from Binghamton University; by day, he is as Associate Professor of English in CUNY, where he teaches English at BMCC and is a member of the doctoral faculty at the CUNY Graduate Center. His academic work has led him to explore the pedagogy of game-based learning and, more generally, game design. Most recently, he has worked as a contributing designer and the lead writer on Meriwether, a CRPG of the Lewis and Clark Expedition due out later this year.

Crossing the Threshold

Pat Murphy | 4180 words

I was walking to my car from San Francisco’s 22nd Street Train Station when I first saw the old man. He was on the wrong side of the chain-link fence that separated the sidewalk from the steep rocky slope that led down to the train tracks.

The station was an asphalt platform beside the train tracks, set at the bottom of a ravine. Steps from the platform led up to the street, but no steps led where the old man was walking. The only way to reach that particular spot was to climb a six-foot concrete block wall and then scramble up the slope on hands and knees, at great danger of falling onto the tracks.

The old man did not look like he had been scrambling in the rocks and dirt. He was wearing a hat and a tweedy coat with patches on the elbows. He carried a walking stick and he strode forward with conviction, like a man who knew where he was going.

He was headed for the corner where Iowa Street meets 23rd. There’s no gate in the fence at that corner. To the right, there’s a steep drop where the train goes into a tunnel. To the left and in front of him, the fence. Nowhere to go but back.

I crossed 23rd Street, heading for my car and leaving the old man behind. He could take care of himself. I was tired. I was heading home after a long day and I had many things to do. My father had died three months before and I was trying to clear out his flat.

On the far side of 23rd Street, I glanced back to see what the old man was doing. By that time, he was halfway up the chain-link fence.

I stopped. It’s not every day that you see an old man in a hat climbing over a fence. He was doing a good job of it. He had started where the fence turned the corner, putting one end of his walking stick through the wires on either side of the corner. Supported by the fence at both ends, the walking stick acted as kind of a step.

While I watched, he reached the top of the fence and swung one leg over to the other side. That’s where he got stuck: one leg over the fence, both hands clinging to the top, about six feet off the ground.

All the other commuters from the train had rushed to their cars. I was the last one. Me and the old man at the top of the fence.

I went back. “Can I help you?” I asked.

“Very kind of you to ask, young lady,” he said. He sounded remarkably calm for an old man stuck halfway over a fence. “Maybe you could move my stick?”

Under his direction, I pulled his walking stick through the fence, then reinserted it so that he could use it as a step on his way to the ground. He seemed to know just what I needed to do, as if he had thought all this out beforehand.

“Now if you would give me your hand and welcome me to your side of the fence, I would be very grateful.”

I offered my hand to steady him—though he hardly seemed to need it. Once the stick was in place, he stepped on it and down to the sidewalk. He was over the fence, smiling above his pointy beard.

He asked me the way to the nearest bus stop, nodded when I waved toward Pennsylvania Street, then strode off in that direction.

I stood there for a moment, baffled. The old man shouldn’t have been there, climbing that fence. It didn’t make any sense. The neighborhood around the station was not the sort of place you’d expect an old guy in a tweed jacket to be visiting. The sun had set and it was getting dark.

I walked to my car, half a block away. By the time I got there, I had decided that the man was lost and confused and needed help.

I drove over to the bus stop, looking for him. He wasn’t there. I drove up and down the streets. No sign of him. Feeling uneasy, I gave up and went home.

I live in the top flat of an old Victorian. It’s my father’s house and he used to live in the bottom flat. But he died three months ago.

That evening, after helping the old man over the fence, I went to my father’s flat to drink wine and sort through his papers. I felt compelled to look at each letter and paper and ancient receipt, but I needed the wine to get me through it.

In the last few years of his life, my father had suffered from dementia. Unable to distinguish between junk mail and important correspondence, he kept every paper that came across his desk. The boxes that filled his study contained a random mix of journal articles, grocery receipts, academic papers, coupons and advertising fliers, letters (personal and business), keepsakes from his travels, and—ever so occasionally—something valuable. A month ago, I discovered a check for five hundred dollars, payment from a speaking engagement.

I took a box of paper from my father’s office and sat down at the kitchen table to work. I turned on the radio to the news station my father had always listened to. It provided a soothing background murmur as I worked.

My father had been an anthropologist, an archaeologist, a crackpot, and a curmudgeon. He studied dead people—probably because he really wasn’t very good with the live ones. My mother died when I was nine, and my father raised me.

At that very kitchen table, not long after my mother died, my father told me about the Heat Death of the Universe. We had just finished dinner—Chinese takeout, I think. My father was drinking whiskey. I stood up to clear the table, and I must have said something about washing the dishes.

“Sit down. Take it easy,” my father said. “In the long run, that doesn’t matter.”

I sat down, looking puzzled.

“Have you ever heard of entropy?”

I shook my head.

“It’s the tendency of things to turn into a mess. Here’s what you need to know: Entropy always wins. Physicists figured that out. The whole world—the whole universe—is always getting to be more and more of a mess. You can try to stop it—you can wash the dishes and dust the bookshelves and vacuum the floor. But it does no good. Do you know why?”

I shook my head.

“Because all the work you do uses energy. To get that energy, you eat food and your body breaks down the molecules, adding to the disorder in the universe. No matter what you do, there’s always more disorder than you started with. You can’t win.”

Maybe he was trying to be educational. I don’t know. I’m sure I was staring at him, wide-eyed.

“Ultimately, you get to the Heat Death of the Universe,” he said. “All available energy is evenly distributed throughout the entire universe. Everything is as big a mess as it can be. The universe has reached maximum entropy. Nothing is hot; nothing is cold. Everything is lukewarm, motionless, unchanging.”

The way he said it, it sounded like the heat death of the universe might happen next week. We were doomed.

I made the best of it. “I guess I’ll wash the dishes anyway,” I said.

That had been sixteen years ago. And here I was, once again doing battle with entropy.

I poured myself a second glass of wine and continued sorting the box of papers. I was about halfway through the glass and the box when I found an article by my father, sandwiched between a flyer for discount vitamins and a 1983 issue of Archeology Today. The article was titled “Crossing the Border.” The first line caught my eye: “The devil cannot cross the threshold without Faust’s help.”

The article dealt with the folkloric meaning of thresholds and borders—specifically, their power over demons and devils. In the first paragraph, my father described how Mephistopheles wouldn’t come over the threshold until Faust welcomed him.

I frowned, thinking about what the old man at the train station had asked me to do. “Welcome me to your side of the fence,” he said. Such an odd thing to say.

I realized that I could think about that old guy in two different ways.

Here’s option number one. He was an ordinary old man. In that case, he must have been lost. Why else would he be trying to climb the fence? Was he still wandering around in the neighborhood by the train station?

Then there’s option number two, an option that might occur to you in the dark of night a couple of months after your father died when you’re drinking red wine and reading an article about the devil. Suppose that old man was really the devil. I had invited him over the fence and into the world. No doubt, he was out to cause trouble.

I tried to dismiss that thought. After all, nothing bad had happened.

At that moment, the radio announcer said that an earthquake had struck Nepal just four hours ago—right after I had helped the old man over the fence. Buildings were flattened. People killed. Much trouble.

Obviously the timing was a coincidence. It was ridiculous to think otherwise. I knew that. Option number two was unacceptable. He had to be an ordinary old man. But if that were the case, he might be in trouble. Someone should be looking for him.

So I called the cops.

“I want to report a missing old man,” I told the cop on the phone.

“Name?” the cop asked.

“I don’t know.”

I could tell by the quality of the silence over the phone line that the cop was not happy with this answer.

“What’s your relationship to the missing person?” he asked at last.

“He’s an old guy I helped over the fence,” I said. Then I told the cop about how the old man had been stuck at the top of the fence and how I had helped him over. “I keep thinking I should have offered to give him a ride to wherever he was going,” I said. “My dad had Alzheimer’s and I keep thinking maybe this old guy was confused and he’ll be found in a ditch tomorrow morning or next week sometime. I thought you guys could look for him.”

“Sure,” said the cop. “We don’t have anything else to do.”

He didn’t sound sincere, but I thanked him anyway and answered all his questions. He took my name and address and phone number and that was that.

At least for a while, that was that. The next day was Saturday, and I was once again at the kitchen table in my father’s flat.

I had cleared and bagged all the papers I’d sorted the night before. I had four grocery bags of recycling, one bag of shredding, and a small stack of bills to pay. What remained on the table were small items that I had found nestled among the papers in the boxes. I just wasn’t sure what to do with those. The items were:

Twelve arrowheads,

Two stone knives,

A tobacco pouch made from a buffalo scrotum,

One necklace made of rattlesnake vertebrae and another made of bird leg bones,

A authentic shrunken head (about the size of a baseball; eyes and mouth sewn shut),

Two dried lizards from a Chinese apothecary, and

A shadow box containing a display of six iridescent tropical beetles pinned to cardboard.

I had just put on the kettle for a cup of tea when I heard the doorbell ring. Two cops stood on the doormat—a smiling woman and a man in sunglasses. They were looking for me. It seems they had found the old man.

Before I could ask them anything, the teakettle started whistling. “I’d better get that,” I said.

The cops followed me in. I shut off the burner and turned from the stove to find them studying the artifacts on the kitchen table. The woman was looking at the shrunken head and frowning.

“That’s my father’s,” I said by way of explanation.

Her frown deepened.

“I mean, my father got it in Ecuador. This is my father’s flat.”

The woman was looking around the room, taking it all in. On one shelf: a mummified crocodile (about four feet long), a set of canopic jars (designed for storing mummified lungs, stomach, intestines, and liver), and a winged penis carved from bone. (This last was a replica of a charm popular among the Romans of Pompeii, just before Mount Vesuvius blew up.) On another shelf were four big glass jars filled with dried seahorses, dried tree fungus, seedpods, and what looked like beetle larvae.

“Is the old man okay?” I asked.

“Oh, he’s fine,” she said. “He was having coffee at the café near the train station. He was very grateful that you had helped him over the fence.”

“I’m so impressed you actually went looking for him. I didn’t think it would be a high priority.”

“Coffee was a high priority,” the man said. He had taken off his sunglasses and he looked a lot more human. “He was between us and the coffee.”

“We got lucky,” the woman said.

“You got lucky, too,” the man said. “He insisted we bring you something to thank you for your help.”

He pulled a gold coin out of his pocket and set it on the table beside the shrunken head.

I picked it up. No, it wasn’t one of those chocolate gold coins. It was heavy, cool to the touch. My father had shown me a gold doubloon once and this looked and felt like real gold.

“And you just brought it over? That so nice.”

The woman looked sheepish. The man was smiling a little. “Well, technically, we should have logged it in at the station first and had the transfer recorded officially,” he said. “But then we’d have to write a report and you wouldn’t get it for months. And the paperwork would just piss off the sergeant. So we skipped all that.”

I turned the coin over in my hand. It was worn almost smooth—I could make out an animal stamped on one side, but couldn’t tell what it was. A horse? A goat? The cool touch of the metal in my hand was unnerving. Who gave a gold coin as a reward?

“Where is your father?” the woman asked.

“He died three months ago. So I guess all this is mine now.”

“Wow,” she said in a tone that was anything but congratulatory.

“Don’t you have anyone to help you sort through this stuff?” the man asked.

I shrugged. “Not really. I was an only child. And I can’t think of any service that specializes in . . .” I hesitated, looking around the kitchen, then concluded, “. . . stuff like this.”

“I suppose you could have an estate sale.” The woman sounded doubtful.

“I know someone who could help,” the man said. He didn’t seem at all worried by the shrunken head. “My sister is kind of a witch.”

I should have warned you. These were San Francisco cops. They’re cops with badges and guns and sirens, just like regular cops, but they can be a little weird, being surrounded by San Francisco and all.

“How could she help?” I asked him.

He shrugged his dark-blue cop shoulders and pulled a notebook and pen out of his pocket, like a detective on a TV cop show. But instead of taking notes, he wrote down his sister’s phone number. “Give her a call,” he said. “She’s good at this sort of thing.”

I really wasn’t sure what sort of thing he meant—the gold coin, the mummified crocodile, or the heaps of paper—but he seemed pretty sure of himself. After the cops left, I called the witch. She came over first thing on Sunday morning.

She went by the name of Aradia, and she was a Northern California sort of witch. By that I mean she dressed in earth tones, she was warm and nurturing, and she had an incredible network of contacts on her iPhone.

She looked at the mummified crocodile, the iridescent beetles, the shrunken head, the bones, the statues, the leering masks on the walls, the dusty books on the shelves, and all the other treasured possessions that my father had left behind and she smiled.

“You need help,” she said. “And I know people who would love to work a trade.” The very first trade she worked out was her own: After a quick tour of the house, she offered her assistance in finding appropriate homes for my father’s possessions in exchange for two fertility dolls, originally used by women who wished to conceive a child. Both were from Africa. One had a tiny head, a stretched neck, and a beautifully beaded body and the other had a large, disk-shaped wooden head on a thin, unadorned body.

I had no problem letting her have them. It had always seemed to me that those dolls would be better off with someone who understood them.

I agreed, and Aradia gently and efficiently took charge. She had me walk through the house and set aside things I wanted to keep. There were only a few.

I kept a ratty-looking phony shrunken head—I remembered my father pointing out the features that told him it was a fake.

I kept the thangka painting that my mother had brought me from Nepal. It depicted Kala Bhairava, a six-armed god wearing a garland of human skulls and brandishing a sword, a trident, and blood-filled bowl. I remember that my mother explaining that this terrifying figure would guard my room, just as it guarded the temple in Nepal. A guardian had to be fierce.

I kept a few other things: my mother’s jewelry, a few books I had read as a child. Everything else could go.

For the rest of the day, Aradia worked the phone. She called an artist who specialized in collages made with insect parts, a woman who created jewelry from bone beads, a small natural history museum, the special collections librarian at a university where my father had once taught, and others. People came and they offered to trade.

Sometimes they offered cash and sometimes they offered services that I wasn’t sure I needed but I wasn’t sure I didn’t need either. Aradia listened, sometimes nodding, sometimes regarding the person making the offer with a slight frown—until they offered something better.

By the end of the day, the kitchen had been blessed, cleansed with sage smoke, and scrubbed from top to bottom. Oh, yes—and the windows were washed inside and out. Late afternoon sunlight filled the sage-scented air.

Aradia was ready to keep going on Monday. (Witches, it seemed, didn’t have nine-to-five jobs.) So I called in sick and we kept working.

The special collections librarian sent over some graduate students to sort and box up my father’s books and academic papers. The owner of a vintage clothing store packed up the contents of my father’s closet. An artist who worked in fabric took dusty weavings from the old steamer trunk that served as my father’s coffee table, exclaiming with delight over each one.

I watched rooms emerge, like ancient ruins that had been buried. Aradia kept meticulous notes on what went where. She explained to each person that I had six months to change my mind and reclaim the possessions.

It took four more days—a day for the bedroom, a day for the living room, and two for the office. The graduate students (a cheerful and excitable group who were thrilled by every dusty paper) unearthed a box of correspondence between my mother and father from before their marriage. They also found two hundred dollars tucked in a book on burial customs and another three hundred in a book on Anasazi pottery.

Everyone was so happy. And I was happy, too. These were my father’s treasures and the stuff of my childhood. But they were not my treasures. I was glad to see them going to good homes. But I was also uneasy.

On the fourth day, Aradia’s brother, the cop, stopped by. He surveyed our progress and waited until Aradia completed her negotiations with a heavily tattooed man. The man was offering to pay for the mummified crocodile in sandwiches. Apparently he ran a sandwich shop. I’m not sure why he wanted the crocodile, but Aradia had known he would.

“Your client’s not happy,” the cop told his sister.

“I’m happy,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“She’s not fine,” the cop said. “I can tell.”

“What’s wrong?” Aradia asked.

“Nothing.”

“What’s in your pocket?” the cop asked.

“My hand,” I said, pulling my hand out of the pocket where I had been clutching the gold coin.

They didn’t let up, and I’ll tell you: It is very difficult to withstand questioning by a cop and a witch.

“Do you feel guilty about getting rid of your father’s stuff?” Aradia asked.

I shook my head. “Everyone who is taking it appreciates it more than I ever would.”

“You’re still grieving,” Aradia said.

“That’s not it,” the cop interrupted. He was very sure of himself. “You don’t look sad. You look worried. What’s worrying you?”

I looked around the kitchen with its dusted shelves and clear counters. “It’s all so clean,” I said.

They got the truth out of me—though I hardly knew it myself.

I was worried about two things. First, the balance of entropy and order. The house was reaching a state of order—and that meant somewhere else was becoming more of a mess. I couldn’t stop thinking about the Heat Death of the Universe.

Second, I still had the gold coin. Gold from the devil, maybe. What was I supposed to do with that?

“So you’re worried about entropy and the devil,” the witch said. “That makes sense. Many cultures view the devil as the embodiment of chaos.”

“Oh, come on,” the cop protested. “It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

The witch gave him a look. “Let me handle this,” she said.

The cop shrugged. His sister was a witch and he’d apparently learned that there were times when it was better to shut up.

She turned back to me. “Maybe you helped out the devil and maybe you didn’t. But clearly the situation makes you uneasy and we want to err on the side of caution. So how about this?” She proposed a plan, I agreed, and the cop assisted with implementation.

The cop—his name was Dave and he was actually a really nice guy—took me to a coin shop where the gold piece was appraised. The shopkeeper offered me a thousand dollars for it. I accepted the offer, but rather than having him pay me, I arranged for the money to go directly to a relief agency assisting victims of the earthquake in Nepal. It would be used to help restore order.

“Cosmic money laundering,” Dave observed.

I returned to my father’s tidy flat with a clean conscience and sat at the kitchen table. The only thing remaining on the table was the box of letters between my parents. I read the first one, a letter that my father had written to my mother three decades ago.

“Embrace the chaos,” my father wrote. “Love and entropy are not in our control. It does no good to fight them, to fear them. Chaos will always be with us. And, if we’re lucky, so will love.”

Maybe, when my father told me about the Heat Death of the Universe, he was trying to tell me not to fear entropy. If so, he did a terrible job of it.

That evening, I went for a walk. In the coffee shop on the corner, I saw the old man sitting at a table by the window.

The light was fading and his face was in shadow, but I recognized him immediately. There was a mirror beside him, and I noticed that he had no reflection. It could have just been the light. Maybe he was just an old man with an impressive coin collection. Erring on the side of caution, I did not greet him.

I am glad that someone in Nepal will restore order in their home. Perhaps that person will hang up a thangka of Kala Bhairava to protect against an old man in a hat who might or might not be the devil.

In the meantime, I have plenty of sandwiches.

©2017 by Pat Murphy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Pat Murphy writes fiction that inhabits the borderland between genres, where life is interesting and the rules are slippery. She is very grateful that science fiction exists, since it has provided a happy home for seven of her eight novels and many of her short stories. Her work has won numerous awards, including two Nebula Awards, the Philip K. Dick Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Seiun Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. Her novels include The Falling Woman, The City Not Long After, Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles, Wild Angel, and Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell. Her short stories are collected in Points of Departure and Women Up To No Good. With Karen Joy Fowler, she co-founded the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender roles. In her day job, she is the resident Evil Genius at MysteryScience.com, where she creates science activities to inspire and amaze elementary school students.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Substitutes

Ben Hoffman | 7820 words

When Claudia’s six-year-old daughter Jane disappeared, Claudia was making love to a man who was not her husband. All her life she’d made mistakes and here was one more, worse than the others. This was in the house of Jane’s friend Magda. Magda and Jane were downstairs playing an aggressive doll game they’d invented; Claudia and Magda’s father were in the guest bedroom. He’d steered Claudia away from the master bedroom, the way he might any old house guest on a tour of the upstairs: No, no, total disaster zone in there.

Tension had been building between Claudia and Magda’s father over the years at play date pickups and school picnics, and now was the time. Tomorrow Claudia and Jane were moving across the state; her husband had gone there already for work. Claudia would do this thing quickly, while Magda’s mother was at the grocery store, then she and Jane would finish packing the car and leave the next morning and she would not have to see this man or his wife ever again. It was done quickly—quicker than Claudia had expected, what seemed like only a few turns of the ceiling fan, pushing the hot air down. Afterward, Magda’s father feigned sleep. Claudia could see he’d lost all interest—good thing she was leaving!—and she slipped out of bed, tidied up and dressed, and went downstairs.

Magda was alone in the living room, flipping through The Economist, brow furrowed as if grappling with some new political instability in Eastern Europe. She was also six. A doll sat next to Magda on the couch, head ninety degrees askew, arm missing. Nestled on the doll was a health drink that was a green so healthy it almost looked unhealthy.

Magda, where is Jane? Claudia asked.

Without looking up, Magda said she didn’t know. She was a pale, ragged child who recoiled from candy as if physically repulsed. It wasn’t the girl’s fault; her mother had taught her that. Probably at this very second Magda’s mother was buying cod oil or soy crackers to shove down her daughter’s throat. Probably the father had played a part in this too, Claudia considered, but she was done with him, with this whole family.

Magda, honey, what do you mean you don’t know? Claudia asked. Is Jane playing one of her hiding games? Magda shrugged.

Claudia looked in every room in the house, in closets, under beds. Claudia peeked into the guest bedroom; Magda’s father was passed out, clutching the sheet like it was a great comfort. Jane was nowhere. Claudia was getting nervous. She ran back to the living room.

Magda, where is Jane?

Magda sipped the health drink, which bubbled like it was full of living organisms trying to breathe. Dunno, said Magda. I think Jane went outside. Maybe she ran away from you. Magda turned a page of the magazine.

Something in Claudia snapped, and she jumped across the room and slapped Magda—another urge that had been building for years, though this consummation was far more satisfying. The health drink spilled across the doll and magazine and couch. Magda looked too shocked to cry for her father. Her face shook, then she began to sniffle, the preamble to the deep sob. Sniffle away, Claudia thought. Sniff your heart out. But then Claudia’s satisfaction scared her; poor Magda was only a kid, a child who’d never learned childhood. And where was Jane? Claudia ran outside. Jane was not in sight.

Claudia wandered the empty streets, calling her daughter’s name. A few neighbors peered through their windows. No one came outside. It was too gray and hot; Claudia had never made friends with these women and thus could not count on their allegiance now. She searched for what seemed like hours. She checked the pool, the park, the gas station where older kids got into trouble. She returned home, in case Jane had gone there, then left and searched more. She wondered what she would tell her husband. She passed desperation and grew tired. It was almost night. She thought she would kill herself. She would drive to the bridge, throw herself off. Was that how it worked? What if you could swim? You’d tell yourself not to swim but did the body take over? Claudia was a fine swimmer, too skilled to drown. She didn’t have the courage for any other sort of offing; she couldn’t imagine anything sharp or tight.

Finally, a few blocks from home, Claudia saw her daughter, leaning against a tree like a teenager up to no good. Jane was wearing different clothes: jeans and a jacket, like she’d come from the cold. Claudia ran to her, heart soaring, but up close she could see it wasn’t her Jane, though this girl looked remarkably like Jane. She was a different version: She had shorter arms, a squarer face, and lacked Jane’s twinkle. All the rest was the same: the perfect, runny nose, the location of her freckles, the tiny birthmark on the left ear where an earring would one day go. The girl squinted up in confusion, as if Claudia also looked like someone she knew.

Are you lost? Claudia asked. Are you Jane, she thought. She wiped the girl’s sweaty forehead. The girl nodded. Claudia felt an instinct and she scooped up the girl. It’s okay, honey, Claudia said. The girl fit perfectly in Claudia’s arms. Claudia thought she weighed exactly as much as Jane. She almost had to be Jane. The world couldn’t hold two Janes who were so similar to one another. Claudia carried this almost-Jane home. She found herself thinking of a chemistry test she’d cheated on in her freshman year of college: She’d known it was wrong, that awful punishment would come her way (though it hadn’t). But it had been too late to do anything else, just as it was now. The girl fell asleep in Claudia’s arms, which Jane could never do. Jane could barely fall asleep in bed. Jane would make Claudia read to her for hours, the same story, over and over, until Claudia wanted to butcher Wilbur the pig herself. Back home, Claudia gave the girl some water in a Dixie cup and laid her in Jane’s sleeping bag. Claudia was exhausted, but she sat by the front window in case Jane came home or the police came to arrest her. Twice she went outside and stood in the hot night, waiting. She heard screams next door, but they were canned—only a horror movie. Eventually Claudia fell asleep on the couch they were leaving behind.

• • • •

In daylight, the girl looked even more like Jane. She rubbed her eyes, as if she’d been sleeping for years and did not know where she was. She moved her limbs stiffly, like they were thawing. She examined the room, or what was left of it: toothpaste over nail-holes in the wall, the outfit Jane had set aside for the trip—as ridiculous as all of Jane’s self-selected outfits.

This doesn’t look like my bedroom, the girl said.

Claudia rubbed her own eyes, like the girl who was almost her daughter might become her actual daughter, if only she could get this sleep crud away.

We’re moving today, Claudia said. You can decorate your new bedroom however you like. She tried to think—tried to chart a course that would make sense, that would restore everyone to their proper role, that would allow everything to churn forward without consequence. Finally Claudia said, Remember how we’re moving? How Dad is already there?

The girl scrunched her face, thinking, like this was a thing she might remember.

Where are we moving again?

Across the state, said Claudia. It will be sunnier there—though Claudia had no reason to believe this was a concern of the child, nor that it would be true. It was Claudia’s concern. Her husband had promised her sun. She was dubious. He had the habit of making promises on behalf of other authorities: the weather, airlines, parking garages.

Do you want to help me finish loading the car?

The grogginess left the girl. Sure thing! she said, which shot a thrill into Claudia: Sure thing was Jane’s line. Sure thing! Jane was always saying. Sure thing!

Thanks, said Claudia. Then she added—Jane.

The girl considered, then nodded.

• • • •

The girl fell asleep before they made it to the turnpike. She wore the outfit Jane had selected for moving day: pink shorts, an orange esprit shirt. Claudia had dumped the girl’s old clothes into the trash can before they left. Claudia thought about guilt but she couldn’t quite feel it, couldn’t get in its groove; it was like God when she was a kid. She felt she had done the right thing, or at least the best thing given the choices available. Still, she drove even more recklessly than she usually did, speeding past blurs of cows and trees. Claudia pictured the two of them hurtling away from where they’d been, away from the scene of the crime. She had the funny idea she should have burned the girl’s old clothes in the backyard, something like that. The girl’s little mouth hung open and Claudia had the urge to peer in. This girl was so close to Jane, so Janeish. It seemed impossible that both could inhabit the same world at once. One of Claudia’s college boyfriends, a sculptor, had always been talking about transformation; at the time, it had seemed pretentious babble. When a thing transforms, a piece remains elsewhere, in a place we cannot find. Was that what he’d said? Transformation, Claudia decided. Yes, transformation had occurred. She and the girl tunneled through mountains—between the two cities, this state was nothing, just farms and mountains—then they were home.

The new house was a sprawling ranch house in a neighborhood that felt more polished, better manicured than their old neighborhood. The house had a porch in front and a pool in back, neither of which their old house had, so that was something. Claudia’s husband was waiting for them on the porch. He’d been here for a week, and he swept them both into his arms like nothing was amiss.

My girls! he said. My long lost loves!

He was not usually in this good a mood. Claudia had thought he might be a new man here, slightly different in the right ways, and she thought he was aware of this possibility too, though they hadn’t discussed it. Not that he was a bad man, only dour, too focused on the wrong things: steel derivatives, football, world affairs. Claudia was an artist, or was trying to be, and had always thought she’d marry an artist, but in her twenties all the artists had ponytails and smoked incessantly and had no money, which was not as alluring as it had once seemed, so she’d married this man and had to live with it.

Is it sunnier here or what? he asked.

It was sunnier here, though it had only been a few minutes. Plus it was summer. Winter was the issue. Claudia was not expecting sun from winter anywhere in this state. But her husband looked tanner, and thus thinner. She smiled and kissed him with a little tongue.

Is this place bigger or what? he asked. In their old house he was always using or what like this: Did you remember to buy pretzels or what? Can I watch the fourth quarter or what?

It doesn’t seem bigger than my old house, the girl said.

Claudia’s husband frowned at the girl and patted her head. Do I have a surprise for you! he said. He led them down the crisp, white hallway, stepping around picture frames leaning against the unmarked walls. His new positivity was throwing Claudia for a loop. It seemed to be weirding out the girl and she hadn’t even experienced his usual nature.

Check. It. Out!

He’d turned Jane’s bedroom into a galaxy: The walls and ceiling were plastered with rocket ships, stars, planets, UFOs, whatever else crept through space. In the dark, Claudia could see, they’d glow. It gave her hope—he was trying, truly he was. But this new version of Jane wouldn’t enter.

You love space, her father said.

What are you talking about, she said. Space is terrifying.

• • • •

That night, new Jane slept on the new couch amid towers of unpacked boxes. Claudia’s husband had promised he’d strip all the decals from her room tomorrow. In bed, in the dark, he asked Claudia if Jane seemed different to her. A little . . . off?

Claudia weighed her answer. How could she explain? She couldn’t. She told him, no, it was only the move. Jane had to leave all her friends; there would be an adjustment period.

I guess, Claudia’s husband said. I guess you’re right.

Though in truth Magda had been Jane’s only real friend and Claudia was glad to be rid of her. Slapping Magda had felt amazing, which made Claudia ashamed. Before Magda, Claudia had never considered you wouldn’t like your child’s friends before they became teenagers. Weren’t all little kids the same: cute, messy, careless with household pets and objects?

Claudia’s husband kissed her ribs because he thought it did something for her, but it didn’t, never had. She couldn’t remember ever pretending, not even early in their relationship; he was just bad at noticing. They made love. Our first time in the new house, he said, like if he didn’t say it she would fail to realize this and its weight would go unnoticed. He thought saying the fact was what made it special rather than the fact itself and how they carried it out. They carried it out the same as always.

Yes, everything would be the same here, except for what was different.

• • • •

Before they moved, they’d signed Jane up for a day camp so she could make new friends in their new town, and so she would not drive Mommy insane. Now Claudia was worried: Camp seemed a place where the secret would come out, where things would go horribly wrong. Camp was out of Claudia’s control. But Monday morning came and what else was there to do but take new Jane there? What was the alternative? Take her out of school? Keep her home for the rest of her life? Become one of those insane homeschooling mothers? Claudia tried to picture a housebound Jane at eighteen, ignorant of evolution and how to kiss a boy.

The head counselor, one of those frazzle-haired artsy types Claudia had once consorted with, was very kind, if disorganized, and soon she’d coaxed Jane into beading. Beading, the gateway art! Next would come hemp bracelet making. Many years down the road: clay-making orgies. In the meantime, one small problem—the camp had misplaced Jane’s medical records. Could Claudia send them over? Oh, was that important? Very. So Claudia faxed over old Jane’s records, hoping her new Jane was physiologically the same, and did not have severe allergies to peanut butter or bees.

• • • •

They’d been there a week and new Jane was adjusting well. She wore all old Jane’s clothes; they seemed to fit new Jane better than old Jane, like they’d been bought for her in the first place. The head counselor noted that Jane was not making many friends, though she said it like it was an achievement. Maybe it was. Old Jane had never had many friends back home either. Neither had Claudia, which had made it difficult to object to the move: no job, no friends. Once, she’d considered Magda’s father her friend—they’d shared banal spousal frustrations over coffee—but now he was someone she tried not to remember. How could she have slept with someone who had slept with someone and created Magda? For a moment, when they’d lain on that tiny guest bed, Magda’s father had felt novel. But now, Claudia knew he’d been the same as her husband, in the way that every man had been mostly the same. And remembering sex with Magda’s father brought back that whole day. Slapping Magda. Jane disappearing. Jane gone. A different Jane. Claudia taking different Jane home. Transformation, Claudia told herself. But she did not like thinking of that day, and she tried not to.

If nothing else, it was sunnier here. In the mornings Claudia painted rolling landscapes that were technically perfect but fell short of art. She’d pursued a life of art beyond what her talent called for, and she knew it. In the afternoons, before Claudia picked up Jane from camp, she swam in their new pool, smooth strokes and lunges. Sometimes she thought about her old Jane, but she pushed the memory underwater and swam right over. Claudia was a beautiful swimmer; again, she thought how she could never kill herself in water. She pictured herself from above, sun gleaming off her arms and legs as they cut through the water. Her swimming was more like art than her art. She should have been a swimmer. Well, another notch in her belt of mistakes.

One night Claudia’s husband came home elated. He’d made a power play at work with steel derivatives. Sold? Bought? Claudia wasn’t sure. Both had happened, she supposed—it was just a question of which end he’d been on this time. He and Jane took turns stealing potato off each other’s plates, pretending to spy something ominous or exciting behind the other, pointing dramatically: a spider! a monster! Magda! (This Jane seemed to remember Magda.) Claudia reclined in her chair, feeling warm. Her husband drank his wine. Claudia laid her hand over her new daughter’s. Jane squeezed back. Then Jane made a particular motion against Claudia’s hand, drawing a star, which Claudia recognized because old Jane had done the same thing. Claudia felt high. This Jane was daughter enough. They didn’t need any friends—what was the point of family but that you’d need no friends? With a buzzing energy, she plowed into dishwashing.

Later, in bed, her husband explained his steel derivatives deal, but it was like a mad lib of meaningless phrases: risk exposure, contractual defaulting, market volatility. This was what happened when he got drunk: He got jazzed about steel. His family had grown up nearby, but farther out, in the hills; his father had worked in a steel mill—his father had broken his back and his marriage in a steel mill—and so Claudia’s husband by virtue of his job was able to feel that he was carrying on a family legacy but also improving their lot in life. Claudia was jealous of those people, like her husband, who could say—and they were always happy to—that they were the first in their family to go to college. All well and good for him. But what if your family had always gone to college, what if your family had practically built the college? What then? Sure, you had perks, privileges, Claudia didn’t dispute that. But how did you express yourself, throw yourself off the previous path they’d laid out for you? You became an artist, she supposed.

That night, Claudia dreamed of the glorious new life of old Jane. Jane was happier than she’d ever been. She lived with her new family on a spaceship; they drifted along in close quarters where her new, tenderer mother and father never let her out of sight. Out the window, all the dark matter passed thrillingly close to Jane. Best of all, dream Jane understood that what her mother had done was for the best. Claudia had given Jane this spaceship life. Do not open the door, Claudia wanted to tell Jane, though surely her new parents had explained all the rules of space; after all, they were better parents than she was. They would never lose her. But Claudia told Jane anyway: Stay inside. Space is such a bad place to get lost.

• • • •

The next morning, Claudia found a girl in Jane’s bed who was not Jane. Not the original, not the newer one. She was, to be sure, extremely close—to both Janes—but she had no freckles, and the birthmark was on the right ear, not the left, and her hair was silky, unlike the other Janes’ curls. The girl groaned. Four more minutes, she said, which unnerved Claudia further—who asked for four more minutes? It was unnatural, like those snoozes set to nine minutes—a digital programming, not a human one.

Claudia rushed to the kitchen and gulped down another cup of coffee. She splashed cold water on her face. It had been four minutes. She waited another ten. She hoped it would be a different daughter under the covers, one of the old ones. It wasn’t.

Did you bring me breakfast in bed? this different Jane asked.

You’re going to be late for camp, Claudia said dumbly. You can eat in the car.

What kind of mother are you?

Claudia thought about this on the way to camp, while the new Jane fiddled with the radio. She thought about it all day: painting, not eating, swimming, driving to pick up Jane. She’d almost landed on an answer when Jane came bounding into the front seat after camp, and Claudia saw it was yet another Jane. The birthmark was back on the left ear. She had a little pot belly, and thin, wispy eyebrows, almost translucent.

• • • •

So they changed, quicker and quicker. Underwater in the pool. When Claudia went out to the mailbox. During pre-dinner handwashing. Whenever Claudia wasn’t looking, whenever Jane was out of sight, there was a chance that Jane would vanish and a new Jane would appear, a little more removed from the original. But each Jane was so almost like the one before, an echo distorted by the shape of walls. The frequency of their changing made Claudia hyper aware of all the moments she left her children alone. This was how she thought of them, sometimes: children, plural, like she’d birthed a motley crew of daughters who shared certain features and whose lives were so busy and rich only one could be present at any given moment. They were always floating in and out on the way to camp or recital or swim practice. It ought to have felt festive. Claudia imagined extra stretch marks on her belly, her body ruined, like she’d spawned an entire litter. But she knew she had only one daughter, one Jane, endlessly morphing into another who was almost the same.

There were things the Janes knew and things they didn’t. They were like those computer upgrades that came with certain data pre-installed, fixing one bug but inevitably creating another (though Claudia tried not to think of them as upgrades; each Jane had her pros and cons, and Claudia tried to love each for who she was). One Jane knew where the can opener was, the next where to find Disney in HD. They all knew daddy was a little crazy about the Steelers. None could recall past vacations. They all did the first Jane’s little trick of drawing a star on Claudia’s hand. Some were precocious readers, others great subtractors. They all had runny noses, the birthmark on one earlobe or the other. Most had freckles. No one was lukewarm about space; they were astrophobes or they were going to walk on the moon. One Jane liked her sandwiches cut diagonal, the next horizontal, the next crustless. One hated chocolate (she didn’t stay long). They all hated the jumper their grandmother had made, though Claudia could not imagine any child liking this jumper. They all said sure thing! like her first Jane, and duh, which her first Jane had never said, but Claudia suspected the word was being spread around camp, like a virus.

The camp authorities didn’t notice, and Claudia realized she’d been silly to worry about camp. The place was anarchy. Counselors could barely keep track of the kids who weren’t changing. And at the end of the day, splattered with mud and paint and Popsicle juice, the kids did all look a little alike. As usual, Claudia’s husband didn’t notice. He knew love’s broad strokes but none of its particulars, none of its fine grains, whereas Claudia noticed everything, but from what felt like a considerable distance she could never quite figure out how to cross. Had it always been like this? Jane had always seemed distant, but Claudia knew that in truth she’d been the distant one, not her daughter. She wanted to discuss with her husband, but she wanted him to bring it up. Did she have to feed him every bit of info? It was like her haircuts. Did you notice? Yes, now that you mention it! I knew you were even lovelier than usual, I just wasn’t sure why.

Besides, what could she say? I slept with Magda’s father. I couldn’t help myself. And in exchange I lost our child. But I found another. It made sense then. I don’t know why.

Claudia tried to tell him, one breezeless night in late July. It was almost midnight. In the pool, they floated on rafts. Inside, their sleeping daughter was surely morphing into another version of herself. Claudia asked, Did you notice our daughter is not our daughter anymore?

She’s been acting a little strange. But you said this was normal.

Claudia put her face to water and blew bubbles. What would happen, she wondered, if she opened her mouth and swallowed? Would the protective instinct take over, dominate the fatal urge? She raised her head, water dripping off her lips. Her husband laughed. He paddled over and hooked his toe under her suit strap, towing her to him like she was shipwrecked on driftwood. His tan was nothing in the moonlight and he looked bloated, like he’d been too long on the bottom. Don’t fret, he said.

Such an odd word, fret, thought Claudia. Too cute for its meaning.

He said, We won’t let her grow up too fast, I promise. He splashed playfully. How about we go to the park on Saturday?

So they went to the park. They brought a thin blanket, an Eiffel Tower puzzle, a bottle of white wine, two cartons of overripe berries, and one Jane, who became another behind a thick oak, another immersed in the cool gushing water of the fountain, another, another.

• • • •

How many Janes had there been? It was too painful for Claudia to calculate, so many of her daughters leaving her. Sometimes they’d stay for a few days, sometimes a few minutes. Claudia had the notion they were testing out life in her household, a sort of parental speed dating for kids. Whenever they checked out and moved on right away—for instance, one new Jane Claudia picked up at camp announced she had to go to the bathroom the second they were home—Claudia felt it was an indictment of her mothering. She redoubled her efforts: She was patient. She didn’t yell. She cooked, she cleaned, she showered Janes with love and toys. She made snack after snack. She sang to herself: You’re a heartbreaker, snack maker. She had the idea that one day her original Jane would return, would see what a better mother she had become. They’d both be new and improved.

There was one particular Jane who Claudia loved more than the others, from the moment she popped out of the covers in the morning. Although this Jane was the same age as all the others, she was wearing rouge and already had her ears pierced, but was also warm and cuddly, as if to compensate for her teenage effects. Claudia and Jane had a girls’ day: They skipped camp, got their nails done, ate Mediterranean. When they went shopping after lunch, Claudia insisted on going into the dressing room with Jane. Jane rolled her eyes, but in the dressing room, she complimented her mother’s figure. All day, Claudia did not let Jane drink water, so she wouldn’t have to use the bathroom. At home, they made supper; Jane wielded the knife expertly.

Claudia didn’t want it to end. After dinner, she brewed coffee. It was like Body Snatchers, she thought: Fall asleep and it would all be over. Did Jane want to stay up late and watch PG-13 movies? Did Jane want Claudia to make more popcorn? Claudia would make popcorn all night if Jane wanted. But eventually Jane grew tired. Claudia read to her in bed. How tender Wilbur the pig and Charlotte the spider were now! What pals, what synergy! Jane fell asleep. Claudia closed the book. She tingled with energy. It would be like one of those weekends in college: drinking wine, binge painting, and before you knew it Monday morning had come and you weren’t even tired. (It was one of these weekends that had led Claudia to cheat on that freshman chemistry test.) If only she had her easel and paints. But Claudia couldn’t leave Jane, and her husband was on the computer, at the other end of their big new house. Jane slept so peacefully Claudia couldn’t bear to wake her. Claudia sat by the bed, stroking Jane’s hair, keeping watch. Please, she whispered. This Jane was almost as wondrous as her very first Jane. Her Jane. What had her Jane been like? It was an exercise in futility trying to remember the specificity of old Jane when another Jane, nearly identical, slept here now. Claudia wondered if she’d be able to pick her original Jane out of a line-up. Of course, she’d recognize her as a Jane. But as the one she’d birthed, taught to walk and talk, taken to the space museum when she was three? Claudia felt ashamed—that she’d lost this Jane, that she’d stopped looking, that she’d instead taken the other Jane who’d materialized. Claudia dreamt of her little astronaut floating in another galaxy; in Claudia’s dreams, she knew exactly what Jane looked like.

When Claudia woke, the room was painfully bright. A new Jane—chubbier, ears unpierced, eyes green not blue—stood over her, poking curiously at the scar on her arm, as if recalling when her mother had gotten it, defending her from that angry swan, so many Janes ago.

• • • •

It was August.

Claudia painted. She tried painting the Janes before they could disappear on her, but they all said the same thing: That looks nothing like me. They were probably right; landscapes were her specialty. She was not so good with people. She swam, she showered. She shopped for groceries. She tidied up. She turned on the TV. She turned it off. She looked at her paintings and wished she hadn’t. She went to pick up Jane from camp. She made dinner. She did this again and again and again. She had ceased to be astonished that no one else noticed. In fact, she liked it. She felt she was sharing a secret with all her daughters—though she was not sure they were fully in on it. Did they know about each other? What happened to them before they came? Where did they go when they left? She tried to ascertain:

Where were you before I picked you up from camp?

Free swim.

Before that?

Lunch.

No, honey, before camp. Where were you before camp?

Uh, with you in the car. Duh.

Was there another place? Before you knew me, honey? Before I was your mother?

I think you are getting at something I’m too young to know about.

Claudia remembered her initial thought that last hot jumbled day in their old neighborhood: The world could not hold two Janes who were so similar to one another. A piece remains elsewhere, in a place we cannot find. In her dreams, Claudia had seen Jane in space. Maybe they were all up there in that black void, tumbling by in their sealed ships. Even the ones scared of space; their good mothers soothed them. They’d see each other passing by, unbound by gravity, looking like reflections, sharing the sense that they’d shared a bed and clothes down on Earth, in that big house with that bad mother.

• • • •

When the girl came out of the camp gates amid a sea of campers, Claudia had seen so many vaguely familiar children that at first she didn’t realize she’d seen this exact child before. But she had. It was Magda. Claudia felt a warmth for Magda she’d never felt before—if Magda was here then so was Jane, her old Jane. Jane was back! Magda was almost never without Jane, not in the sliver of her life that Claudia had witnessed. But where? Only Magda walked to the car, only Magda slipped into the passenger seat wearing the clothes Jane had been wearing that morning. Magda chomped on a celery stick, and without a word she handed Claudia a permission slip. Claudia’s muscles stiffened. She had Jane’s earlobe birthmark. She had Jane’s freckles. Claudia closed her eyes and opened them. She tried again. Praying for any other child on earth. Magda rubbed the celery around her lips like gloss. She had a slight mark on her cheek; was this where Claudia had slapped her? Magda rubbed the mark and glared at her.

At home, Claudia locked herself in the bathroom. She sat on the toilet, lid down, for a long time. She thought about something she’d heard on television: With a tweak here or there, whites would be blacks, Palestinians Jews, all of us apes. We were all 99.9 per cent the same. They’d said this like it was a comfort. Claudia stood at the mirror, looking very carefully at herself. She moved her eyebrows, trying to catch an instant when the reflection didn’t catch up, but of course she couldn’t. She washed her hands with lots of soap. She dried her hands and listened. The house was quiet. She heard a low murmur; had she left the TV on? Had she been watching before she picked up . . . Magda? The name gave Claudia shivers. But she could not think of Magda as Jane. She’d never call her that. Magda was Magda. Claudia paused at the door, giving Magda a few more seconds to clear out. Magda was at the kitchen table, making origami out of the sports section. A rhinoceros or triceratops, something horned.

Geez Louise, Mom. Thought you fell in.

• • • •

Magda refused dessert. Magda refused to go to bed. Magda refused everything. Suit yourself, Claudia said when she finally turned in for the night. The next morning, Magda came to breakfast wearing the jumper that Jane’s grandmother had made. She wanted orange juice, but Claudia had purchased apple for the last Jane. Magda sighed, like Claudia’s husband did when she forgot pretzels. Magda swore off camp, declaring it an idiot’s game. She wouldn’t go. Claudia understood: Magda wouldn’t go anywhere. Magda was here to stay.

Claudia’s husband didn’t notice. Major things were happening with derivatives; whatever he’d done before, bought or sold, the opposite had occurred and he was in a foul mood, complaining at every meal. Magda nodded along seriously at appropriate intervals, like she knew all about low profit margins.

Magda refused Frosted Flakes. Magda refused to respond to Magda, and Claudia refused to call her Jane. They settled on hey. Claudia wondered if the girl thought of herself as her old friend Jane, or if she remembered the child she’d been across the state as her old friend Magda.

• • • •

It had been four days. It was the afternoon, gray and drizzly, and they’d been stuck in the house, which was shrinking by the hour. Magda was wearing the jumper. She was going to wear that jumper for the rest of her life. She was going to be here for the rest of her life.

Hey, Claudia said, Let’s go for a drive.

Where, Magda asked suspiciously.

The health food store.

Cool beans, said Magda.

They got in the car and Claudia drove across the state. She wondered what she’d find. Had the girls switched places? Was Jane living in Magda’s place, being raised by her philandering father and awful, healthy mother? Did they have her drinking celery shakes? Claudia and Magda passed sitting cows, standing cows, signs for firewood and berries. Perhaps Magda’s mother was holding Jane hostage, keeping her to punish Claudia. She probably liked Jane better. Who wouldn’t! They drove through mountains, one long dark tunnel then another.

This is not the way to a health food store, observed Magda, as if she knew the route to every health food store on Earth. Probably she did.

They reached the outskirts of their old neighborhood at that moment after the sun’s setting when romance has ended. Claudia drove past the gas station at the corner, and Magda’s head perked up, like a dog recalling the way to the old park.

Claudia parked the car around the corner from Magda’s house.

Magda looked out the window. She asked, Didn’t my friend live around here?

Claudia considered but didn’t answer.

Was that the friend you hated?

Had Claudia said this? What kind of mother told her six-year-old she hated her friend? Or had Magda inferred this from how Claudia had once treated her? Whose memory was Magda accessing?

No, Claudia said. I liked her very much. She was my favorite of all your friends.

But didn’t you slap her once?

Stay in the car, said Claudia.

The front door of Magda’s house was open. Magda’s father was lying on the couch in his underpants, eyes dull. He barely seemed to register her presence. He didn’t even sit up.

Well, well, he said. How is the other side of the state? Any sunnier?

No, she said. Is Jane here?

Though Claudia knew right away that Jane wasn’t.

Why would Jane be here? he asked. He did not look that different from when she’d last seen him, except his belly was bigger now. You moved, remember? You don’t live here no more.

Well, where’s Magda?

Her mother has her. She found out.

She found out?

Yes. About us. And she took Magda and they left.

Now Claudia saw the evidence of their leaving: the wall bare where photographs had been; scattered junk food wrappers that Magda’s mother would never have allowed.

How did she find out? Claudia asked.

Magda told her!

Magda! Claudia felt her throat strum. She asked, Where are they now?

Fuck knows. Her aunt’s place. Hotel. He put his hand into his underpants and scratched. Your husband know?

No.

Magda’s father snorted. Well, get ready. She’ll probably tell him. He sat up on the couch and Claudia saw it was still stained. So, anyway, Magda’s father said, do you want to come in?

He was ugly, dumb and ugly, like an earlier version of man, and Claudia couldn’t fathom what she’d been thinking that day. How had that affair felt right?

Do you want to see Magda? she asked.

He looked behind him, like his daughter might be hiding there in the kitchen.

I have Magda, said Claudia. I can give her to you.

Are you teasing?

She’s in the car. Please, can I return her to you? She’s yours. Yes, I’ll bring her.

You bitch, he said. You get my daughter taken away, then you rub it in my face.

No, said Claudia. You don’t understand. She belongs with you. He jumped up and strode toward her. She thought he might hit her but he just slammed the door.

• • • •

You shouldn’t leave kids in cars, Magda told Claudia in the car. Bad things could happen.

Claudia restrained herself from giving Magda another slap. Okay, she said. Get out. Here. This is your house. This is where you live.

What are you talking about? asked Magda. We live across the state.

Magda, said Claudia. Get. Out.

I’m not Magda.

Magda. Whoever. Whoever the hell you are. Get out.

You’re going to make your own daughter get out of the car? she asked.

Claudia rubbed her temples. Seeing Magda’s father in that state made her understand more fully the binding line between action and consequence. They’d both been punished, out of proportion to their crime and by some mechanism she couldn’t fathom. She started the engine.
Are we going home? asked Magda. Where are going?

The mall, said Claudia, without knowing why, and Magda recoiled in terror.

That place is gross, said Magda, and Claudia decided they would go to the mall.

Claudia’s satisfaction horrified her; she recoiled at herself.

Won’t Dad wonder where we are? Magda asked when they parked.

He won’t notice, Claudia thought. Unless I come home without you. And once this thought struck through her brain, she realized what she’d come here to do: She would leave Magda in the mall and drive home and it would all be over.

But Magda was right: The mall was both gross and terrifying, a warped perversion of Claudia’s past. She’d taken Jane to this mall years ago, when Jane was a child in her stroller. There’d been so much snow that winter—even after they plowed the roads it just sat there, giant mounds growing black and filthy. She’d walked through the mall every afternoon, pushing Jane in her stroller. It had been such a pleasant place, clean and bright, sunlit, sleepy. The teenagers had been in school, she realized now, that had been the key; it was all babies and the elderly, who would peer into the strollers and make fussy noises. Now the mall felt dangerous. Grimy. Teenagers strutted everywhere, darting in and out of stores from which they were shoplifting, poking and groping each other, screaming lewdness, chains hanging from their necks and jean pockets and probably their nipples, beneath their black t-shirts. Probably that was the rage now. The rage was always something. They’d built an arcade—or had it always been there? Maybe, but it had been empty on Tuesday mornings. Now it was packed, though dark, and strobe lights flashed from within, accompanied by beeps and the sound of explosions. She imagined it as an opium den or brothel. Claudia felt she was catching a glimpse of the future.

Please, Mom, Magda said. Can we go home now? She reached for Claudia’s hand and Claudia let her take it, though she kept it limp. Magda began to whimper. Claudia realized she couldn’t leave her here. No, she wouldn’t do that. What she would do was make do—she would make Magda hers. She would teach her to be better, to eat candy, to smile.

Then, at the other end of the atrium, by the fountain, Claudia saw her. Jane. Her Jane.

Claudia hadn’t forgotten. She could pick her Jane out of any line-up in the world. She’d know her girl anywhere! That perfect curly hair, that runny nose, glistening even from this distance. Those cutesy flashing sneakers. I bought you those! Claudia thought. Jane was with a man and a woman, who Claudia understood were her mother and father now. Her new mother and father were both morbidly obese, the sort of people you usually found in the middle of the state, on the farms. But they were holding Jane by the hand and she was swinging between them, hopping, her legs lifting, gliding off the ground in a way that made the man and woman seem athletic. Of course! Why had Claudia and her husband never thought of this? They’d swung Jane, yes, they’d lifted her, twirled her, tossed her, made her a plane. But not this! Never like this, the three of them working in concert, making Jane such a glorious little kangaroo. As Jane’s new family approached, Claudia felt a deep shame; Jane was happy, but Jane would not understand what Claudia had done the way she had understood in the dream. No one would. Claudia knew that now. Even Claudia no longer understood what she’d done. She’d abandoned Jane and if Jane looked into her eyes, she would know it. Claudia couldn’t bear to face her daughter. She backed away. But Jane’s new family kept coming, swinging forward, swinging forward, fifty feet away.

Mom, where are you going? said Magda. Mom, don’t leave me.

Claudia broke free of Magda’s grasp and ran into the candy store. But there was nowhere to hide, only a few rows of glass dispensers, full of jelly beans and gummies and chocolates. Claudia stuffed herself between the last row of dispensers and the wall. She slid down to a crouch.

Ma’am? said the woman at the register. Claudia ignored her; she crunched herself into a ball. Ma’am? Claudia closed her eyes. She breathed very carefully, trying to understand each distinct molecule entering and leaving her body. The store smelled of sugar, the fake, chemical kind, and Claudia felt sick. She’d walked by this place with Jane in the stroller, smiling at the gluttons in the store, at her own willpower: She didn’t need candy, she was losing this pregnancy weight, she would be skinny again, she would be perfect.

Claudia heard a woman say, Candy time, Janey!

Don’t call her Janey! thought Claudia. Then she heard Jane’s voice, sweet and rich, say, The red ones, Mommy, please, the red ones.

Yes, Claudia wanted to say, yes, of course. You always loved the red ones.

Claudia opened her eyes. Jane stood there, looking at her between the dispensers. Jane looked directly at Claudia, and what Claudia saw in Jane’s eyes was not pain but nothing. Jane did not recognize her. Jane looked at Claudia like she’d never seen her before in her life.

Claudia reached out, between the candy jars, to her daughter.

Jane took a quick step back, knocking into the dispenser behind her, the candies rattling.

Jane, said Claudia. Jane, sweetie. It’s me.

Then the fat mother was there, taking Jane’s hand, jerking her away.

This woman knows my daughter’s name, the fat mother told the lady at the register.

I’m deeply sorry, said the lady at the register. Security is on the way.

Claudia stood up behind the dispenser, but she was not going to come out. She would stay right here, pressed against the wall. Security couldn’t make her leave. Let them try. She looked out into the mall, but Magda was already gone, swept up in the thrum of whistling teenagers. Jane’s mother led Jane from the store to the atrium where the fat man was waiting, arms open, for his little girl. The teenagers parted around this little family. Claudia heard Jane ask, Mommy, what’s wrong with that lady? Claudia leaned in for the answer.

©2015 by Ben Hoffman. Originally published in Granta. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, ICM Partners.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ben Hoffman’s fiction has won the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award and been named among the Notable/Distinguished Stories of the Year in the Pushcart Prize, Best American Non-Required Reading, and Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy anthologies. He lives in Oakland, California and is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

Iseul’s Lexicon

Yoon Ha Lee | 19790 words

kandagghamel, noun: One of two names the Genial Ones used for their own language. The other, menjitthemel, was rarely written. Derived from kandak, the dawn flower of their mythology and a common heraldric device; agha, or “law”; and mel, “word” or “speech.” Note that mel is one of a small class of lexical elements that consistently violates vowel harmony in compounds. The Genial Ones ascribe considerable metaphysical importance to this irregularity.

• • • •

She went by the name Jienem these days, a proper, demure Yegedin name that meant something between “young bud” and “undespoiled.” It was not her real name. She had been born Iseul of Chindalla, a peninsula whose southern half was now occupied by the Yegedin, and although she was only the bastard daughter of a nobleman and an entertainer, she never forgot the name her mother had given her.

The Empire of Yeged had occupied South Chindalla for the past thirteen years, and renamed it Territory 4. Yeged and free Chindalla had a truce, but no one believed it would last for long, and in the meantime Chindalla had no compunctions about sending agents into South Chindalla. People still spoke the Chindallan language here, but the Empire forbade them to write it, or to use Chindallan names, which was why Iseul used a Yegedin name while operating as a spy in the south for the Chindallan throne. Curiously, for people so bent on suppressing the Chindallan language, Yeged’s censors had a great interest in Chindallan books. Their fascination was enormous and indiscriminate: cookbooks rounded out with gossip, military manuals, catalogues of hairstyles, yearly rainfall tabulations, tales of doomed love affairs, court annals, ghost stories, adventures half written in cipher, everything you could imagine.

Iseul worked for Chindalla’s Ministry of Ornithology, which, despite its name, had had nothing to do with birds or auguries for generations. It ran the throne’s spies. The ministry had told her to figure out why the books were so important to the Yegedin. Iseul had a gift for languages, and in her former life she had been a poet, although she didn’t have much time for satiric verses these days. The ministry had recruited her because she was able to write Yeged-dai and speak it with any of three native accents. She also had a reasonable facility with the language of magic, a skill that never ceased to be useful.

In the town the Yegedin had renamed Mijege-in, the censor was a magician. Iseul was to start with him, especially since tonight he was obliged to attend a formal dinner welcoming an official visiting from Yeged proper. It would have been more entertaining to spy on the dinner—she would have had a chance of snacking on some of the delicacies—but someone else was doing that. Her handler, Shen Minsu, had assigned her to search the magician’s home because she had the best chance of being able to deal with magical defenses.

Getting into the house hadn’t been too difficult. The gates to the courtyard and all the doors were hung with folded-paper wards inscribed with barrier-words of apathy and dejection to discourage people like Iseul. She had come prepared with a charm of passage, however, and a belt hung with tiny locks worn around her waist under her sash. The charm of passage caused all the wards to unfold, and reciprocally, most of the locks had snapped closed. One time, early in her career as a spy, she had run out of locks while infiltrating a fort, and the thwarted charm had begun throwing up random obstacles as she attempted to flee: a burst pipe, crates almost falling on her, a furious cat. Now she erred on the side of more locks.

It was a small house, all things considered, but magicians were a quirky lot and maybe he didn’t want to deal with the servants necessary to keep a larger house clean. The courtyard was disproportionately large, and featured a tangle of roses that hadn’t been pruned aggressively enough and equally disheveled trees swaying in the evening wind. Some landscaper had attempted to introduce a Yegedin-style rock garden in the middle. The result wasn’t particularly harmonious.

She circled the house, but heard nothing and saw no people moving against the rice-paper doors. Then she went in the front door. She had two daggers in case she came across someone. After watching the house for a few days, she had concluded that the magician lived alone, but you never knew if someone had a secret lover stashed away. Or a very loud pet. That time with the peacock, for instance. Noisy birds, peacocks. Anyway, with luck, she wouldn’t have to kill anyone this time; she was just here for information.

Her first dagger was ordinary steel, the suicide-blade that honorable Yegedin women carried. It would be difficult to explain her possession of the blade if she was searched, but that wasn’t the one that would get her in trouble.

Her second dagger was the one that she couldn’t afford to be caught carrying. It looked more like a very long needle, wrapped around and around by tiny words in the Genial Ones’ language. It was the fifth one Iseul had constructed, although the Ministry of Ornithology had supplied the unmarked dagger for her to modify.

The dagger was inscribed with the word for human or animal blood, umul. The Genial Ones had had two more words for their own blood, one for what spilled out of them in ordinary circumstances, and another used in reference to ritual bloodletting. The dagger destroyed the person you stabbed it with if you drew blood, and distorted itself into a miniature, rusting figure of the victim: ghastly, but easy to dispose of. Useful for causing people to disappear.

The house’s passages had creaky wooden floors, but nobody called out or rushed out to attack her. Calligraphy scrolls decorated the walls. Yeged had a calligraphy tradition almost as old as Chindalla’s, and the scrolls displayed Yegedin proverbs and poetry in a variety of commendably rhythmic hands. She could name the styles they were scribed in, most of them well-regarded, if a little old-fashioned: River Rocks Tumbling, Butterfly’s Kiss, Anaiago’s Comb . . .

Iseul looked away from the scrolls. She shouldn’t get distracted, even though the scrolls might be a clue of some kind. There was always the chance that the magician would find some excuse to leave the dinner early and come home.

She found part of what she was looking for in the magician’s study, which was dismally untidy, with scraps of paper on every conceivable surface. There was still some light from outside, although she had a lantern charm just in case.

The magician had brought home two boxes of Chindallan books. One of them mostly contained supernatural stories involving nine-tailed foxes, a genre whose appeal had always eluded her, but which was enduringly popular. She had to concede the charm of some of the illustrations: fox eyes peering brightly from behind masks, fox tails curving slyly from beneath layers of elaborate robes, fox paws slipping out of long gloves.

Stuffed into the same box was a volume of poetry, which Iseul pulled out in a spirit of professional interest. With a sigh, she began flipping through the book, letting her eye alight on the occasional well-turned phrase. She kept track of syllable counts by reflex. Nothing special. She was tempted to smuggle it out on principle, but this collection had been popular sixteen years ago and there were still a lot of copies to be had in the north. Besides, the magician would surely notice if one of his spoils went missing.

The next book was different. It had a tasteful cover in dark red, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. She had seen books with covers in every conceivable color, some of them ill-advised; hadn’t everyone? No. It was the fact that the book shouldn’t have been in the box with the others. She went through a dozen pages just to be sure, but she had been right. Each page was printed in Yeged-dai, not Chindallan.

However, Iseul could see why whoever had packed the box had gotten confused. She recognized the names of most of the poets. More specifically, she recognized the Yegedin names that Chindallan poets had taken.

Iseul knew from experience that a poet’s existence was a precarious one if you didn’t come from a wealthy family or have a generous patron. Fashions in poetry came and went almost as quickly as fashions in hairstyles. Before the Ministry of Ornithology recruited her, she had written sarcastic verses for nobles to pass around at social functions, and the occasional parody. Slightly risky, but her father’s prominence as a court official had afforded her a certain degree of protection from offended writers.

The poets who survived in occupied Chindalla could no longer rely on their old patrons, or write as they had been accustomed to writing. But some of them had a knack for foreign languages, as Iseul did, or had perhaps learned Yeged-dai even before the invasion. Those poets had been able to adapt. She had known about such people before this. But it still hurt her to see their poems before her, printed in the curving Yeged-dai script, using Yegedin forms and the images so beloved of the Yegedin: the single pebble, the grasshopper at twilight, the song of a heartbroken lark sitting in a bent tree.

Iseul put the book back in its place, wishing for something to staunch the ache within her. It would have been easy to hate the southern poets for abandoning their own language, but she knew that resistance carried a considerable risk. Even in Mijege-in, which had fallen early and easily, and which the Yegedin considered well-tamed, the governor occasionally burned rebels alive. She had passed by the latest corpses on the walls when she entered the city. Mainly she remembered them as shadows attracting shadows, charred sticks held together by a conglomeration of ravens.

There were also those who had died in the initial doomed defense of the south. Sometimes she thought she would never forgive her father, whose martial skills were best not mentioned, for dying with the garrison at Hwagan Fort in an attempt to slow the Yegedin advance. There were poems about that battle, all red-stained banners and broken spears and unquiet pyres, all glory and honor, except there had been nothing glorious about the loss. She hated herself for reading the poems over and over whenever she encountered them.

Iseul went through the second box. More Chindallan books, the usual eclectic variety, and no clue as to what the Yegedin wanted with them. Maybe it was simple acquisitiveness. One of the Yegedin governors, knowing the beauty and value of Chindallan celadon, had taken the simple expedient of rounding up all the Chindallan potters in three provinces and sending them to his homeland as slaves along with their clay, as well as buying up everything from vases to good forgeries of antique jewelry boxes.

The rest of the box didn’t take her long to get through. It included a single treatise on magic. Those were getting harder and harder to find in the south, as the Yegedin quite reasonably didn’t trust magic in Chindallan hands. The treatise in question concerned locator charms. Like all magic, locators were based on the writings of the Genial Ones, who had once ruled over the human nations the way Yeged desired to rule over the known world. Humans had united under General Anangan to destroy the Genial Ones, but not long after that, a chieftain assassinated the general and the alliance dissolved.

People discovered that, over time, magic started to fail because its masters were no more. Locators had stopped being reliable about a century ago or Iseul would have had some uses for them herself. On the occasions that you could get one to activate at all, it tended to chew a map into your entrails. Some people would still have used them anyway, but the maps were also inevitably false.

The treatise’s author had included a number of gruesome illustrations to support her contention that the failed magic was affected by the position of the user’s spleen. The theory was preposterous, but all the same, Iseul wished she could liberate the treatise. She didn’t dare risk it, though. The magician would be even more sure to notice a missing book on magic.

Iseul froze. Had she just heard footsteps? How could the magician be back so early? Or had she spent more time looking through those damnable poems than she had realized? She ducked behind a coat rack. Under better circumstances, she would have critiqued the coats, although a quick glance suggested that they were in fact of high quality. That cuff, for instance; hard to find embroiderers these days who were willing to put up with the hassle of couching gold thread that had to be done in such short segments. Iseul’s mother had always impressed upon her the importance of appearances, something that Iseul had used against a great many people as a spy.

The footsteps were getting closer and their owner was walking briskly. A bad sign. Contrary to popular belief, magicians couldn’t detect each other; being a magician was merely a matter of study, applied linguistics, and a smattering of geometry. Magicians could, however, check the status of their charms by looking, just like anyone else with a working pair of eyes. Or by touch, if it came to that. The problem with the passage charm that Iseul used was that it made no attempt to hide its effects. The older version that disguised its own workings had stopped working about 350 years ago.

It might be time to flee. Iseul was willing to bet that she was more athletic than a magician who worked in an office all day. Her glimpses of him hadn’t suggested that he was particularly fit. The study’s window was covered in oiled paper, and was barely large enough for her to squeeze through.

More footsteps. Iseul headed for the window, but her sleeve snagged on a coat, and it rustled to the floor. Just her luck: The magician had left a coin purse in it, and the coins jangled as they landed. She cursed her clumsiness. Now he probably knew her location. Indeed, halfway on her way to the window, flowers with shadow-mouths and toothy leaves started growing in hectic tangles from the window, barring her passage.

Iseul knew better than to believe the illusion, no matter how much the heavy, heady scent of the blossoms threatened to clog her sinuses; no matter how much her hands wanted to twitch away from the jagged leaves and the glistening intimation of poison on the stems. She had seen these flowers in her dreams as a child, when she was afraid that she would fall asleep in the garden during hide-and-seek and be swallowed up by the spirits of thorn and malice. They were only as real as she allowed them to be.

Her father had once, uncharacteristically, given her a piece of military advice, probably quoted from some manual. They had been playing baduk, a board game involving capturing territory with stones. As usual, he refused to give her any handicap despite the disparity in age. She had been complaining about the fact that she was sure to lose. In her defense, she had only been ten. It doesn’t matter how good your position is, he had told her, if you’re already defeated in your head.

If the magician thought that a childhood nightmare was going to get her to give up so easily, he was sorely mistaken. She could have punched through the window, which was only covered with paper, and gone on her way. But he already knew someone with knowledge of magic had broken into his home. She might as well have it out with him right now, even if she ordinarily preferred to avoid confrontations. Minsu was going to lecture her about taking risks, but the dreadful timing couldn’t be helped.

Iseul’s pulse raced as she drew her second dagger and angled herself back behind the coat rack. For a moment she didn’t realize the magician had entered the room.

Then a figure assembled itself out of shadows and dust motes and scraps of paper, right there in the room. Iseul was tall for a Chindallan woman, but the figure was taller, and its arms were disproportionately long. She thought it might be a man beneath the strange layers of robes, which weren’t in any fashion she’d seen before. She could see its eyes, dark in a pale, smudgy face, and that it was holding up a charm of a variety she didn’t recognize.

Iseul had killed people before. She lunged with her dagger before the magician had a chance to finish activating the charm. He brought up his arm to protect his ribs. The dagger snagged on his layers of sleeves. She gave it a good hard yank and it came free, along with strands that unraveled in the air.

She made one more attempt to stab him, but he twisted away, fiendishly fast, and she missed again. She bit back a curse. It was only with great effort that she kept herself from losing her balance.

Iseul ran past the figure since momentum was taking her there anyway and out of the study. The dagger was needle-keen in her hand, with blood showing hectic red at its point. It should have shrunk into a misshapen figure amid shivers of smoke and fractured light the moment she marked her target. She flung it aside in a fit of revulsion and heard it clattering against the wall. It made a bright, terrible sound, like glass bells and shattering hells and hounds unloosed, and she had never heard anything like it before.

If the dagger hadn’t changed, then that meant the magician was still alive. She had to go back and finish the job. She swung around. The dagger was visible where she had cast it. The blood on the blade seemed even redder. Words writhed in the sheen of the metal’s surface. Probably no good to her if it hadn’t worked the first time. She plunged past it and into the study without hesitating at the threshold.

The magician was waiting for her. The mixture of amusement, contempt, and rage in his eyes chilled Iseul more than anything else that had happened so far. He threw his charm at her as she cleared the doorway.

The charm didn’t grow thorns or teeth or tendrils. Instead, it unfolded in a twisting ballet of planes and vertices. For a single clear second, Iseul could see words in the Genial Ones’ language pinned to the paper’s surface by the weight of the ink, by the will of the scribe. Then, with a thready whispering, the words flocked free of the paper and spread themselves in the air toward her, like a net.

Iseul knew better than to be caught by that net. She twisted around it, thanking her mother for a childhood full of dance lessons, although some of the words brushed her sleeve before they dispersed. Her entire left forearm grew numb. No time to think about that. The magician was reaching for something in a pouch. She ignored that and went instead for his throat. People never expected a woman to have strong hands.

The magician croaked out half a word. Iseul pressed harder with her thumbs, seeking his windpipe, and felt the magician struggle to breathe. His hands, oddly chilly, clawed at her hands.

How could someone as skinny as the magician have such good lung capacity? Iseul hung on. The magician’s skin grew colder and colder, as though he had veins of ice creeping closer to his skin the longer she choked him. Her hands ached with the chill.

Worse, she felt the scrabbling of her lantern charm in response to the magician’s proximity. Belatedly, she realized he was trying to scratch words into her skin with his fingernails. Her teeth closed on a yelp.

Like all her charms, the lantern charm was made of paper lacquered to a certain degree of stiffness. It scratched her skin as though it were struggling to unfold itself just as the magician’s original charm had done. For the first time, she cared about the quality of the charm’s lacquer, hoping it would hold fast against another word-cloud.

Iseul could barely feel her left hand. She kept pressing against the magician’s throat and staring at the ugly purple marks that mottled his skin. “Die,” she said hoarsely. The numb feeling was spreading up her forearm to her elbow, and at this rate, she was going to lose use of the arm, who knew for how long.

The lantern charm was starting to unfurl. Iseul resisted the urge to close her eyes and give up. But the magician was done struggling. The cold hands dropped away, and he slumped.

Iseul was trembling. But she held on for another count of hundred just to be certain. Then she let the figure drop to the ground and staggered sideways.

The magician’s eyes slitted open. Careless of her. She should have realized his physiology might be different. She scrabbled for her ordinary dagger with her good hand and cut his throat. The blood was rich and red, and there was a lot of it.

The magician wheezed something, a few words in a language she didn’t recognize. Her first instinct was to recoil, remembering the cloud of words. Her second and better instinct, which was to stab his torso repeatedly, won out. But nothing more emerged from those pale lips except a last cool thread of breath.

She sat back and forced herself to breathe slowly, evenly, until her heart wasn’t knocking at the walls of her ribs anymore. Then she went back out into the hallway. The magical dagger showed no sign of shrinking. She brought it back with her into the study and its mangled corpse.

Iseul wanted to drop both daggers and huddle under the coats for the rest of the night. Instead, she wiped off both daggers on the magician’s clothes and tucked them back into their sheaths. She took off her jacket. There was a small basin of water, and she washed her hands and face. It wasn’t much, but it made her feel better and right now she would take what she could get. She hunted through the magician’s collection of coats for something that wouldn’t fit her too poorly and put it on.

Since she had killed the magician, she might as well complete her search of the house. She wouldn’t get another opportunity once they found out about the murder.

Yes. Think about logistical details. Don’t think about the corpse.

Except she had to think about the corpse. It would be remiss of her not to search it to see if the magician had been carrying any other surprises.

She couldn’t think about the fact that the dagger would have disintegrated a human. It might simply be that the charm no longer worked, the way any number of charms had stopped working. There was an easy way to test that, but she wasn’t about to kill some random victim just to test whether her dagger really had lost its virtue.

Iseul thought about the fact that its blade repeated, over and over in a winding trail, the word for human blood. Umul.

About the fact that she might have killed a Genial One, and the Genial Ones were supposed to be over a thousand years extinct.

Someone would find the corpse. But first, the search. See what the corpse wanted to say to her in the language of violence and clandestine corners.

Iseul went through the magician’s robes, all of them, layers upon layers that clung clammily to her fingers. Next time she did this she was going to bring gloves. All the while she puzzled over the magician’s last words. She had believed that she was fluent in the language of magic. The longer she thought about it, the more she became convinced that the magician had said, You can kill one of us, but not all of us. We won’t accept this—and then there was one more word that she couldn’t get to slot into place no matter how much she shifted the vowels or roughened the fricatives.

The most unhelpful thing she found in the magician’s pockets was the candy. It smelled like ordinary barley candy, but she wasn’t about to put it in her mouth to check.

The one useful thing was a charm. Iseul recognized it because it was folded very similarly to her own charm of passage, except it had a map-word inscribed on some of its corners, which meant that it was meant to interact with a specific lock rather than being intended for general use. The magician had worn it on a bracelet. Iseul cut it away, then set about stuffing the magician’s corpse into a closet and wiping down the room. It wouldn’t pass a good inspection, but she would be long gone by the time anyone came searching.

It was hard not to flinch every time a branch knocked against the walls of the house as the wind outside grew stronger, but eventually she found the secret passage by paying attention to the way the charm quivered in her hand. The door was in the basement, which had a collection of geometrically sorted blocks of bean curd, bags of rice, and other humble staples. Curious thought: Had the magician cooked his own food? She wasn’t sure she liked the thought of a Genial One enjoying Chindallan food.

The secret room was situated so it was under a good portion of the oversized garden. Brandishing the magician’s charm opened the door. Lantern charms filled the space with a pale blue light. It was hard not to imagine that she walked underwater.

Iseul checked the shadows for signs of movement, but if an ambush awaited her, she would have to deal with it when it came. She stepped sideways into the room.

A book lay open on a cluttered escritoire. Next to it was a desk set containing a half-used, sumptuously carved and gilded block of ink. The carving had probably once been a dragon, judging by the lower half: conventional, but well-executed. A charm that had been folded to resemble a quill rested against the book. The folds had been made very precisely.

Iseul’s gaze went to a small stack of paper next to the book. The top sheet was covered with writing. Her hackles rose as she realized that that wasn’t precisely true. It sounded like someone was writing on the paper, and the stack made a rustling sound as of furtive animals, but there was no brush or graphite stick, and the ink looked obdurately dry.

Against her better judgment, she approached the desk. She looked first at the charm, which was covered with words of transference and staining, then at the papers. Black wisps were curling free from the book, leaving the page barren, and traveling through the air to the paper, where they formed new words. She flipped back in the book. The first thirty or so pages were blank, as faceless as a mask turned inside out. Iseul flipped forward. As before, the words on the next page, which were in somewhat archaic Chindallan, continued sizzling away in ashy curls and wisps.

Iseul reminded herself to breathe, then picked up the top of the pile and began paging through. All of the words were in the Genial Ones’ language. It appeared to be some sort of diatribe about the writer’s hosts and their taste in after-dinner entertainment. She squinted at the pages: only three of them so far. She pulled out the page currently being written on.

More words formed on the new sheet. Iseul had expected a precise insectine march, but that wasn’t the case. There seemed to be someone on the other end; it wasn’t just a transfer of marks. Sometimes the unseen writer hesitated over a word choice, or crossed something out. At one point a doodle formed in the margin, either a very fat cow or a very large hog, hard to tell. The writer, a middling artist at best, had more unflattering comments about the people they were staying with.

Would she alert the person on the other end if she made off with the letter, which was becoming increasingly and entertainingly vituperative? She didn’t know how close by they were. How much time did she have? Her left arm felt less numb than before, which was reassuring, but that didn’t mean she should let down her guard. Time to read the letter and see if there was anything she should commit to memory. Sadly, the writer was cagey about revealing their location, although she learned some creative insults.

It was tempting to linger and find out if the writer was going to regale the dead magician with more misshapen farm animals, maybe a rooster or a goose, but Iseul made herself turn away from the escritoire and examine the rest of the hideout. There were more books with the writing worn away, and a number of what she recognized as ragged volumes of a torrid adventure series involving an alchemist and her two animal-headed assistants, popular about five years back. Since she preferred not to believe that one of the Genial Ones had such execrable taste in popular fiction, it seemed likely that the books were convenient fodder for this unusual method of exchanging letters.

Still, it paid to be thorough. Iseul didn’t like turning her back on the escritoire, but she still needed to search the rest of the secret room, which was well-supplied with books.

She was starting to think that most of the books would fall into the two previous categories—blank and about to be blank—when she found what the magician had been so keen on hiding. These books, unlike the others, were only labeled by number. Each was impressively thick. An amateur, albeit a moderately accomplished one, had stitched the binding. The binder—probably the magician—had a fondness for dark blue linen thread.

Iseul picked up the first book and flipped rapidly through the pages. Thin paper, but high quality, with just a hint of tooth. The left-hand pages were in a writing system unfamiliar to her. Unlike Chindallan, the letterforms consisted of a profusion of curves and loops. She wondered if it, like the language of the realm of Moi-quan to the south, had originally been incised into large leaves that would split if you used straight strokes.

The right-hand pages were in the Genial Ones’ writing, in script so small that it hurt her eyes, and it was immediately obvious that they were compiling a lexicon. Definitions, from denotations to connotations; usage notes, including one on a substitute word to be used only in the presence of a certain satrap; dialectal variations; folk etymologies, some amusingly similar to stories in Chindalla, like the one about a fish whose name changed twice in one year thanks to a princess discovering that something that tasted delicious when you were starving in exile didn’t necessarily remain so after you had returned to eating courtly delicacies. And look, there was a doodle of a sadly generic-looking fish in the margin, although it was in a different style than the earlier pig-cow. (Like many Chindallans, Iseul knew her fish very well.) How long had it taken the magician to put this together?

The unfamiliar writing system was summarized in five volumes. Iseul went on to the next language. Four volumes, but the notes in the Genial Ones’ language were much more terse and had probably been compiled by a different researcher or group of researchers. She estimated the number of books, then considered the number of languages. Impressive, although she had no way of knowing how many languages there were in the world, and what fraction of them this collection of lexicons represented.

She sampled a few more languages at random. One of the sets was, interestingly, for Yeged-dai. Judging by its position in the pile, it had been completed a while ago. She was tempted to quibble with some of the preferred spellings, but she had to concede that the language as used in occupied territories probably diverged from the purer forms spoken in Yeged proper.

Then she came to the last set. Only one volume. The left-hand pages were written in Chindallan.

It turned out that the second volume hadn’t yet been bound, and was scattered in untidy piles in drawers of the study. The words were sorted into broad groups more or less by Chindallan alphabetical order, although it looked like they were added as they were collected. For instance:

Cheon-ma, the cloud-horses that carry the moon over the sea. Thankfully, the magician hadn’t attempted to sketch one. It probably would have ended up looking like an ox. The cheon-ma were favorite subjects of Chindalla’s court artists. There was a famous carving of one on a memorial from the previous dynasty, which Iseul had had the privilege of viewing once.

Chindal-kot, the royal azalea, emblem of the queen’s house. This included a long and surprisingly accurate digression on the evolution of the house colors over the lifetime of the current dynasty as new dyes were discovered. Iseul bristled at the magician’s condescending tone, although she didn’t know why she expected any better from a Genial One.

Chaebi, the swallow, said to be a bearer of good luck. Beneath its entry was a notation on the Festival of the Swallows’ Return in the spring. And, inevitably, a sketch of a swallow, although she would have mistaken it for a goose if not for the characteristic forked tail.

Iseul put the papers back. Her throat felt raw. The magician couldn’t be up to anything good with this, but what did it mean?

Especially puzzling: What did it mean that all the lexicons were copied out by hand? The rough texture of ink on paper had been unmistakable. She had already witnessed a magician sending a letter by manipulating the substance of text from a book already in existence. Surely magicians could use this process to halve the work? Or did it only work on the language of magic itself?

She had spent too long here already. It was time to get out and report this to her handler, who might have some better idea of what was going on.

Iseul hesitated, then gathered up the Chindallan lexicon and the four volumes of the Yeged-dai lexicon. For all she knew there were duplicates elsewhere, but she would take what she could get. If she had more time to inspect the lexicons once she was far from here, there might be valuable clues. She was going to look odd hauling books around at this hour, but perhaps she could pretend to be running an errand for some Yegedin official.

Cold inside, she headed back up the stairs, and out of the house with its secrets wrapped in words.

• • • •

The Genial Ones believed in the sovereignty of conservation laws. This may be illustrated by a tale that begins in the usual way by naming the Genial Ones as the terrible first children of the world’s dawning. In due course (so the story goes), the sun grew red and dim and large, threatening to swallow the world. Determined to preserve their spiraling towers and their symphonies and their many-bannered armies, the Genial Ones unlanterned a younger star in order to rejuvenate their own.

It is likely that they did this more than once.

Many of Chindalla’s astronomers believe that, since this sun indisputably supports learned civilizations, other stars must do the same. Some astronomers have produced lengthy essays, complete with computations, to support this position.

Reckoning whether any such civilization would survive the extinction of its sun, on the other hand, requires no arduous calculation.

• • • •

Iseul’s handler, Shen Minsu, was a tall, plain woman with a strong right arm. Before the invasion, she had been known for her skill at archery. Iseul had seen her split one arrow with another at 130 meters during a private display. “Useless skill,” Minsu had said afterwards, “people dead of arrows to the heart find it hard to confess what they’re up to. Much better to make use of the living.”

They met now in the upper storage room of a pharmacy in a small town. The Shen family had risen to prominence by running pharmacies. One of the earlier Shens had been elevated to a noble after one of his concoctions cured a beloved king-consort’s fever. Even in the south, the Shen family maintained good ties with medicine-sellers and herb-gatherers. Yegedin medicine was not terribly different in principle from Chindallan medicine, and the Yegedin prized Chindalla’s mountain ginseng, which was said to bestow longevity. Iseul had grown up drinking the bitter tea at her mother’s insistence, but from observation of her mother’s patrons, it didn’t do anything more for you than any other form of modest living.

Minsu didn’t care for ginseng tea, ironically, but she always insisted that they drink tea of some sort whenever they met. Iseul took a sip now. She was wearing clothes cut more conservatively, and she had switched her hairstyle to the drab sort of thing a widow might favor. Shen Minsu was wearing subdued brown and beige linen, which suited her surprisingly well, instead of the sumptuous embroidered robes she would have worn in northern Chindalla.

Minsu was going methodically through the incomplete Chindallan lexicon. She had already glanced through the Yeged-dai lexicon. “You’re certain,” Minsu said for the third time this meeting, which showed how unsettled she was.

“I killed a Yegedin guard on the way out, to be sure,” Iseul said bleakly. She had agonized over the decision, but it wouldn’t be the first time she had killed a Yegedin on Chindalla’s behalf. The dagger had performed flawlessly, which meant the issue wasn’t that the charm had stopped working; the issue was that the charm only triggered on human blood. “And the last thing the Genial One said—”

You can kill one of us, but not all of us. We won’t accept this—and then the unfamiliar term.

“My guess is that the Yegedin are as much in the dark as we are,” Minsu said. “I find it hard to believe that even they would knowingly ally with the Genial Ones.”

“I wish I believed that Yeged conquered Chindalla so handily by allying itself with monsters,” Iseul said bitterly.

Both of them knew that Yeged’s soldiers hadn’t needed supernatural help. In the previous century, Chindalla had turned inwards, its court factions squabbling over ministry appointments and obscure philosophical arguments. The Yegedin had also been a people divided, but that division that taken the form of vicious civil wars. As a result, when a warlord united Yeged and declared himself Emperor, he was sitting on a brutally effective army that had grown accustomed to the spoils of war. It had only been natural for the Emperor’s successor to send his soldiers overseas in search of more riches to keep them loyal.

“I feel as though we’ve walked into a children’s story,” Minsu said. “When I was a child, the servants would scare us out of trouble by telling us tales—you know the ones. Don’t pull the horses’ tails, or the Genial Ones’ falcons will come out of the shadows and eat your eyes. If you pinch snacks from the kitchens at night, the Genial Ones will turn your fingers into twigs and use them for kindling. Or if you tear your jacket climbing trees, the Genial Ones will sew you up with your little brother and use you as a ceremonial robe. That sort of thing.”

“Except they were real,” Iseul said. “All the histories in all the known nations agree on the basics. It’s difficult not to believe them.”

Minsu sighed. “The Yegedin haven’t mentioned anything in their official dispatches so far as we know, but one of my contacts in Mijege-in has remarked on how the censor has been terribly quiet. A very long-running hangover after entertaining the guest from Yeged. No doubt the Yegedin authorities are looking for the murderer as we speak.” She looked sideways at Iseul; her eyes were dark and very grave. “And that means the Genial Ones are looking for the murderer, too.”

“We don’t know how many of them there are,” Minsu went on, “although if they’re researching the world’s languages it’s certain that they’re widely dispersed. You’re lucky to have survived, and you’re also lucky that he tried to take care of you himself instead of raising the alarm.”

“He probably didn’t want to risk anyone else finding out about his collection of lexicons,” Iseul said, “if he ran afoul of some Yegedin magician.”

“This is a complication that I didn’t need,” Minsu said, “but it can’t be helped. We’re going to have to pull out.”

“It’s hardly unexpected,” Iseul said. People were talking about it in the markets, not least because the prices for ordinary necessities had gone up again.

The Yegedin were preparing to break the thirteen-year truce and move on free Chindalla to the north. Reinforcements had been filtering into the territory, some crossing the ocean from Yeged itself.

“I assume you have dedicated assassins,” Iseul said, “but we need to find out if there are any Genial Ones associated with the Yegedin army. One of them might have been mediocre at hand-to-hand combat, but we don’t know how closely connected they are with Yeged’s plans. If they intervene as magicians, or trained the Yegedin magicians, the border defenses could be in a lot of trouble. At least we know that they can be killed.”

Humans had battled the Genial Ones as a matter of necessity, even if they hadn’t done as thorough a job of obliterating them as everyone had thought.

“Well,” Minsu said, “it’s clear you can’t rely on the charms anymore, since they’ll be suspicious of anyone using magic. You’re in a lot of danger.”

Iseul looked at her bleakly. Like everyone in Chindalla, she had grown up with stories of the Genial Ones’ terrible horses, whose hooves opened cracks in the earth with bleak black eyes staring out until they boiled poisonously away; the Genial Ones’ banquets, served in the skulls of children; the Genial Ones’ adulthood ceremonies, where music of drum and horn caused towers of glistening cartilage to grow out of mounds of corpses. Even in the days of their dominion, the histories said, there had been humans who objected not to the Genial Ones’ methods, but to the fact that they didn’t have mastery of those terrible arts for themselves. After the Genial Ones’ downfall, they had lost no time in learning. The wars in the wake of General Anangan’s assassination had been wide-reaching and bloody.

“Everything has been dangerous,” Iseul said. “We just didn’t realize it until now. And who knows—maybe if I can lure them out, we can get them to reveal more about whatever it is they’re up to.”

They discussed possible options for a while. “Your tea’s getting cold,” Minsu said eventually. “Drink up. You never know when you’ll next taste Three Pale Blossoms tea harvested before the Yegedin took over the plantation.” Her smile was bitter. “I keep track, you know. Not many people care, especially when the stuff is a luxury to begin with, but it matters.”

“I know,” Iseul said. “You don’t have to remind me.” She drank the rest of the cup with slow sips. She didn’t like the tea, but that wasn’t the point.

• • • •

himmadaebi, noun: More literally, “great white horse rains.” A Chindallan term used of the worst storms. Originally reserved for the storms that the Genial Ones used to call down on cities that defied them. Usage shifted after the Genial Ones’ defeat by General Anangan, although attempts to date the change have been hampered by the fact that literacy rates in Chindalla at the time were much lower than they are now, and only a few reliable sources are extant.

• • • •

Not long after Iseul’s run-in with the magician, the second Yegedin invasion began with a storm, and with horses.

The horses were the color of foam-rush and freezing ice. They had wide, mad eyes and hooves that struck the earth as though it were a breaking drum. Their shadows broke off behind them every fourth stride and unfurled into tatters that sliced off tree branches and left boulders in crumbled ruins.

Iseul had been traveling with the soldiers ever since they decamped from the city that the Yegedin had renamed Mijege-in, heading north toward the border of free Chindalla. The infantry soldiers had wan, anxious expressions, and the highborn cavalrymen didn’t look much better. Their horses were blinkered, and the blinkers were made of paper covered with cryptic words: charms. She had checked one night. Too bad she couldn’t cause a little confusion by making off with all the blinkers, but it wasn’t feasible and she had a more important task.

She had been tempted to report to Minsu for further instructions the moment she saw the horses. The storm-spell had been defunct for over two centuries. There were accounts of it in the old histories. One of the northwestern Chindallan forts had been thundered down by such a storm generations past. To this day the grasses and trees grew sickly and stunted where the stones had once stood. It wasn’t surprising that the Yegedin had more magicians in their employ, but the fact that an old charm had been resuscitated suggested that at least one of the magicians was a Genial One, or had been trained by one. Perhaps a Genial One could pass the charm off as a brilliant research discovery, even though the problem of magic that didn’t work anymore had vexed the human nations ever since the phenomenon was noted.

But Iseul needed better information. It had taken an alliance of all the human nations to defeat the Genial Ones the last time, and some of them had survived anyway. There were probably much fewer of them now, but she was under no illusions that the human nations of the present time were likely to unite even for this, especially if they had a chance of claiming the Genial Ones’ magics for themselves.

She had spent cold hours thinking about the fact that at least one of the old spells worked again, which meant others might, too. And which meant that human magicians and their masters would seek those spells for their own ends, no matter how horrible the cost.

Tonight Iseul was dripping wet and huddled in a coat that wasn’t doing nearly enough to keep out the chill. She had killed a scout early on and was wearing his clothes. Her hair was piled up underneath his cap and she had bound her chest tight. It wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but no one was looking closely at anyone in such miserable weather.

Iseul was helped by the Yegedin themselves. Not that the Chindallans were known for tight military discipline either, but the Yegedin force was doing unusually poorly in this regard. Part of the problem was that no one felt comfortable near the storm-horses. The other part was that orders from Yeged had apparently assigned the initial attack to not one but two rival generals. No doubt the theory was that the two would spur each other on to ever greater feats in battle, but in practice this meant the two generals’ soldiers squabbled over everything from watch assignments to access to the best forage. Iseul had situated herself at the hazy boundary between the two armies so she could claim to be on either side as necessary.

Tonight she had decided that she would try approaching the magicians’ tent again. The Yegedin were sheltering in hills perhaps two days’ march from the nearest Chindallan border-fort. The Chindallan sentries would have seen the storm, although the knowledge wouldn’t save them. They almost certainly wouldn’t realize what it signified.

She was tempted to assassinate the Yegedin magicians. But she would undoubtedly die in the attempt. Besides, as terrible as it would be to lose the fort, it was more important to determine how the Genial Ones meant to threaten all of Chindalla.

Iseul eased her way toward the magicians’ tent a little at a time. She had learned that there were two of them and that they kept to themselves, although not much else. Even the officers didn’t like speaking of them too loudly. When they did mention the magicians, it was with careful distaste. Iseul was only a little reassured to find out that Yegedin attitudes toward magicians weren’t far different from Chindallan attitudes, considering that she knew how to use charms herself.

Most of the soldiers who weren’t on watch were, sensibly, sleeping. But a few exchanged ribald jokes about shapeshifting badgers, or spoke of how much they missed proper plum pickles from home, or mentioned pilgrimages they had made to Yeged’s holy mountains in the past. Some of them looked quite young.

One of the younger ones mentioned a pretty Chindallan woman who was waiting for him in a southern town. Iseul kept her face blank at the coarse remarks that followed. She had long practice controlling her expression, and it wasn’t news that a number of the Yegedin had taken lovers among the Chindallans. South Chindalla had been occupied for thirteen years, after all. There were Chindallans who had grown up thinking of the Yegedin as their natural rulers, and whose only memories of freedom were a child’s memories of stubbed toes and overripe persimmons and picking cosmos flowers in the fall.

Iseul clutched the satchel of the unfortunate scout and continued to the magicians’ tent, which stood by itself with two reluctant sentries at the tent flap. A pale, unsettling light burned from the tent. She wound her way to the back. The sentries were exchanging riddles. She wished she could stay and listen; the Yegedin, for all their faults, knew the value of a good riddle.

She was going to have a hard time getting past the sentries into the tent, and from the sounds of it the magicians were having a discussion. The fact that there were always sentries was bad enough. She might have dealt with them, but usually at this hour the magicians were speaking to one or the other of the generals in the command tent. Rotten luck.

Of course, all the rotten luck in the world didn’t make a difference when the magicians’ defensive charms were certain still to be in place. She had glimpsed some the first time she approached the tent nights ago. While some of them were unfamiliar, she recognized the ones that would have detected the use of concealment magic. Another was a boundary-warden, which would have caught her if she had attempted to cut her way into the tent.

This was no doubt just punishment for developing a dependence on the Genial Ones’ tools all these years, but Iseul couldn’t help but grit her teeth. She wondered if a passage charm would work, but the Genial Ones might have a countermeasure for that, too. Keeping her expression placid, she strolled on by.

The magicians’ voices carried remarkably well in the chilly damp. They spoke the language of magic with an accent similar to that of the Genial One Iseul had killed. She had difficulty understanding their pronunciation, as before, but her mother had taught her how to sing in foreign languages by concentrating first on the sounds without worrying about the meaning. As she traced a meandering path, she committed the conversation, which had the rhythms of an argument, to memory.

Iseul slouched her way to a less conspicuous location, avoiding contact with Yegedin soldiers as much as possible. She had only two days to figure out a better approach. If she had Minsu’s astonishing skill with a bow—but going around with a Chindallan weapon, especially one so difficult to conceal as a bow, would be a sure way of getting herself killed for no gain.

The storms grew worse in the next two days. Iseul drifted to the rear with other laggards. The generals had people whipped for it, but nothing could change people’s opinion of the storm-horses.

She tried again the next night. The guards were clearly bored. One of them kept peeling back the tent flap to look in and make snide comments about the magicians’ furnishings. Time to risk a more direct approach if it would get her a glimpse of the tent’s contents. She made sure to spill some of the scout’s rice wine on her coat and take a long sip before she strolled on by just as one of the guards was finishing up a joke about an abbot and an albino bear.

“Hey, you’d better move on,” the other guard said, noticing Iseul. “The only things that go on in there are related to spiders.” He shuddered.

The guard was probably referring to the moving shadows. Iseul staggered a little as she approached him. Inside, there was a charm on the small table right next to a telltale sheaf of papers, but it was hard to see—ah, there it was. Two quills, curving in opposite directions. She guessed that they complemented each other, one to send letters and one to receive.

“If he’s drunk, maybe he’s drinking something better than we are,” the first guard said. “Want to share what you have, friend?”

“It’s no good if they catch us drinking on duty,” the second guard said.

“Like they pay attention to people like us.”

“Ah, what’s the harm,” Iseul said in her gruffest voice, which wasn’t very, and handed over her flask. It was terrible wine, but maybe terrible wine was better than no wine. She didn’t hang around to find out what the guards decided to do with the flask.

The information about the quills was all she had gotten out of the miserable journey, but it might allow her to figure out a charm to spy on the Genial Ones’ future communications. She worked her way to the rear again, and left six hours before dawn the day the siege began. Without an army’s impedimenta to trouble her, she could make better time. Not that the storm wasn’t obvious, but it wasn’t clear to her the Chindallan watchers would realize just what it signified.

She shed the Yegedin clothing while hiding behind some shrubs, exchanging it for the plain brown dress—now quite rumpled—she had been carrying with her, although she resented even the moments that this took. Then she ran for the border-fort, pacing herself. It was hard to make herself concentrate on the dubious paths, but she would be no use if she sprained an ankle on the loose rocks. She had not eaten well while she traveled with the Yegedin army, and it took its toll now. Her breath came hard, and she could feel the storm-winds drawing ever closer behind her.

She had kept the Yegedin boots on because she hadn’t brought spare shoes—they would have been a nuisance to carry around—but she discovered that the boots were even worse than she knew from days of marching around in them. Every step jolted the soles of her feet, and the toes were starting to pinch. The scout she had killed hadn’t had notably small feet, so she was guessing the boots had caused him even more discomfort than they were causing her. Ill-fitting shoes were apparently a military universal: She knew Chindallan soldiers complained about it, too.

The sky to the north was yet clear, but every time she glanced over her shoulder she saw the storm clouds.

The gate guards to the border-fort must have been bemused to see a small, disheveled woman huffing as she came up the road. Iseul was gratified to see the wall sentries training their bows on her: At least they were prepared for the enemy. “I work for the Ministry of Ornithology,” she called out. Iseul trusted that the purity of her Chindallan accent, high court from the north, would convince them that she was no Yegedin. “That’s an army a few hours south, as you’ve guessed, but it has magicians.”

The guards conferred, and after a few moments escorted her in to see the guard captain. “You must have made a narrow escape, sister,” he said. He was a stocky man, much scarred, with kind eyes, and he spoke Chindallan with the unhurried rhythms of the hill people. Iseul had never been so grateful to hear her people’s language. “The outriders had thought as much. Follow me. We can at least give you something to eat.”

The guards let Iseul in, and a young soldier led her to the kitchens, where the cook gave her some rice and chicken broth. Iseul was glad of the opportunity to sit and rest her aching feet.

The captain came in with her and asked her questions about the disposition of the enemy. Iseul reported everything she had observed about the rival generals and their temperaments, the disarray of their army as it marched, and the estimated numbers of cavalry and infantry. “But it’s the magicians you must worry about, Captain,” she said, determined to impress this point upon him.

“It doesn’t matter,” the captain said quietly. “We’re the first thing that stands in their way, and stand we must, however terrible the thunder that comes for us.”

He didn’t have to mention the fact that two of the three first land battles in the original Yegedin invasion had involved Chindallan commanders abandoning their forts, destroying all the supplies, and fleeing north. It was a shame that no Chindallan would soon forget.

“You won’t stand for long unless you have magical defenses of your own,” Iseul said.

The captain was already shaking his head. “The Yegedin will next have to pass Fort Kamang on the River Hwan,” he said. “They have two magicians there. That will have to do.” He eyed Iseul’s soup bowl, already empty, with affectionate amusement. “We’ve sent word north, but it won’t hurt to give them more recent intelligence. You undoubtedly have business of your own in that direction. Could I trouble you to—?”

“Of course, Captain,” Iseul said.

The captain insisted on making her eat more soup, and she was given rice and barley hardtack and clear, sweet water for the journey. They let her rest for half an hour. The captain asked if she could ride, and she replied that she could, as her mother had taught her. They mounted her on a steady mare, a plain bay without markings, but one who responded calmly and quickly to each of Iseul’s aids.

She set out on the bay mare. She had pulled her coat tightly about her in response to the air, which tasted increasingly of ice even though winter was months away. Then, looking back only once, she rode north, knowing as the distance unribboned behind her that she had failed her people.

• • • •

The terrible thing about the Genial Ones was not that they held nations as their slaves, or that they destroyed cities with firefall and stormlash, or that they concocted their poisons from corpses. After all, human empires have done similar things.

• • • •

It was not even that they were fond of sculpture. The Genial Ones regarded it as one of the highest arts. A favorite variant was to attune a slab of marble or a mossy boulder to a particular individual. As the days passed, the victim’s skin would crack and turn gray, and their movements would slow. When the process was complete, only a dying, formless lump would remain of the victim, and the statue would be complete.

As much as people dreaded this art, however, the Genial Ones could only kill one person at a time with it.

• • • •

Two hours before the siege of the border-fort, six arrows flew.

The senior general wore a back banner in livid red and a great helmet that resembled the head of a beetle. Only a small part of his face was exposed.

The first arrow took him through the side of the face, beneath the left eye, and even so he didn’t die of it.

At the time, he was consulting with the two magicians. In the gray light and the fine haze of rain, it was difficult to discern their otherwise distinctive blue robes. Three arrows took one of the magicians in the chest. She wore no armor and the arrowheads’ barbs caught in her heart.

Two more arrows killed one of the general’s servants, who happened to wear clothing that you might mistake for a magician’s robes from a great distance on a day where the visibility was terrible to begin with.

This left the Yegedin army in disarray: Someone notified the junior general, who wished to take command, while the senior general was shouting orders even as his servants tried to call for a physician. Both generals were keen on capturing the assassin, but by the time the two of them had organized search parties—since both groups of soldiers were confused as to whose orders should take precedence—the assassin had gotten away.

All that the Yegedin searchers found, at a distance sufficiently far from the command tent that everyone agreed the archer had taken the shots from some other, closer location, were goose feathers dyed red, damp from the rain, stuck into a hill at the base of a tree in the shape of an azalea.

• • • •

Hwado, noun. The way of fire. At one point the Chindallan bow and arrow were believed to be sacred to the spirits of sun and moon. A number of religious ceremonies involve shooting fire-arrows. Such arrows are often fletched with feathers dyed red. There is a saying in Chindalla that “even the wind bleeds,” and most archers propitiate the spirits of the air after they practice their art.

• • • •

Minsu was late for the rendezvous. Iseul had taken advantage of one of the safehouses in the town of Suwen, which was some distance to the north and out of the likely path of the Yegedin advance. She took advantage of the lull to experiment with making her own charms, even though she knew Minsu would have preferred her not to risk working with magic. Still, Iseul had a notion that she might be able work out something to spy on the Genial Ones’ communications if she could only exploit certain of the charms’ geometries.

After her latest failure, which resulted in words of lenses and distance charring off the attempted charm, Iseul sought comfort in an old pleasure: poetry. She could barely remember what it was like when her greatest problem had been coming up with a sufficiently witty pun with which to puncture some pretentious noblewoman’s taste in hairpins. After a couple hours failing to write anything entertainingly caustic, she ventured to one of the town’s bookstores to buy a couple volumes of recent poetry so she could pick them apart instead.

Iseul had once wondered what the Yegedin were getting out of piles of Chindallan books when the majority of them were simply not very good. Especially when the Yegedin were famed for their exquisite sense of aesthetics. It was almost difficult, at times, to hate people who understood beauty so thoroughly, and who even recognized beauty when it was to be had in a conquered people’s arts.

She returned to the safehouse with her spoils. One of the books was an anthology by highborn poets. All of the poems were written in the high script, which Iseul had learned as a child at her mother’s insistence. She had hated it then. The high script was based on the language of the great Qieng Empire to the north and east, but the Qieng language had little resemblance to Chindallan, necessitating a whole system of contrivances to make their writing work for Chindallan at all. Complicating the matter was the fact that the high script had come into use in Chindalla’s earlier days, when Chindallan itself had been different, so you had to compensate both for the Qieng language and for the language shifts within Chindallan.

The other volume was a collection by an entertainer who had made a specialty of patriotic poems. He wrote in the petal script, which had been invented by a female entertainer, Jebi the Clever, to fit Chindallan itself. The shapes of the letters even corresponded to the positions of the tongue as it made Chindallan’s speech sounds. Sadly, while the collection was beautifully illustrated—the artist had a real eye for the dramatic use of silhouettes—the poetry itself was trite and overwritten. How many times could you use the phrase “hearts of stout fire” in the space of twenty pages without being embarrassed for yourself, anyway?

Minsu met her at the safehouse two days later. She was wearing modestly splendid robes of silk embroidered with cavorting quails. “I am tired of hearing about battles with no survivors,” she said. She was referring to the border-fort.

“I heard about the supernatural archer who came back from the dead to defend the fort,” Iseul said, raising her eyebrows. “A rain of arrows to blacken the sky, people falling over pierced through the eye, that sort of thing. I didn’t even know you had that many arrows.”

“You should know better than to listen to hearsay,” Minsu said. “Besides, I’m sure I got one magician, but I missed the other. Damnable light, couldn’t tell who was who and couldn’t risk getting closer, either. And it made no difference in the end.”

Iseul nodded somberly. People in the town spoke of nothing else. The storm clouds, the white hands of lightning, the tumbling stones. Skeletons charred to ash, marrow set alight from within. The kindly guard captain at the border-fort was almost certainly dead.

Despite the city magistrate’s attempts to keep order, the townsfolk had been gathering their belongings to flee northward. One of them had insisted on explaining to Iseul the best things to take during an evacuation. “Don’t take rice,” the old woman had said. “Only fools weigh themselves down with rice.” She had shown Iseul her tidy bundles of medicines, small and light and pungent. “Someone always gets sick, stomach trouble or foot pains, or some woman has a hard childbirth, if you’re unlucky enough to bring a child into the world in these times. You trade the medicine for the food someone else has had to carry, and you fill your belly without having to break your back.” Bemused, Iseul had thanked the old woman for her advice.

“I couldn’t get into the magicians’ tent,” Iseul said, “and I still haven’t figured out if there’s a way to spy on their letters. The trip was for nothing.”

“Overhear anything useful?” Minsu said, looking at her with such an expression of calm trust that Iseul felt even more wretched.

Iseul thought over the magicians’ exchange while she waited for Minsu. “They were arguing about how destructive to make the storm, I think. That was all. But there was something—” She frowned. Something about their words had just reminded her of the poetry, but what could Chindallan poetry possibly have to do with the Genial Ones?

“Have some tea,” Minsu said, her solution to everything, “and maybe it will come to you.”

Iseul gave a tiny sigh. The safehouse’s tea might as well have been mud steeped in rainwater, but Minsu gave no sign that she noticed its inferior quality. Iseul recounted the rest of her meeting with the border-fort’s captain, although there wasn’t much to tell.

“I don’t think the magicians at Fort Kamang will do us much good,” Iseul said. “How are mere human magicians going to stand up to the Genial Ones themselves? Magic clearly prefers to serve its original masters if the Genial Ones can so casually invoke spells we all thought had decayed to uselessness.”

“I’d send you to kidnap one of the Genial Ones,” Minsu said, “but I don’t think we have a safe way of holding one for questioning.”

Over and over Iseul heard the two magicians arguing in her head. “Their accent,” she said slowly. The threads were in her hands. She only had to figure out how to weave them together. “Their accents, and the accent of the one I killed. The fact that I didn’t recognize the language at first.”

Minsu eyed her but knew better than to interrupt. Instead, she poured more tea.

“Minsu,” Iseul said, going pale. “I was wrong just now. We’ve all been wrong. Magic didn’t die because the Genial Ones were wiped out. Because we know now that they were never wiped out. Magic stopped working for the humans piece by piece because it’s their language, and their language changed over time just as Chindallan has changed, which everyone who has studied the high script knows. Their language became different. We’ve been trying to use the wrong words for magic.”

“You could make more powerful charms, then,” Minsu said. “Using the proper words now that you know them.”

“Now that I know some of them, you mean. It would take trial and error to figure out all the necessary changes, and magical experimentation can get messy if you do it wrong.”

“So much for that,” Minsu said. “What about the lexicons? What do they signify?”

“I still don’t know what they’re doing, but I will find out,” Iseul said.

“We have some time,” Minsu said, “but that doesn’t mean we can afford to relax. The fact that Yegedin have learned from their mistakes in the first invasion may, in some sense, work in our favor.” Originally the Yegedin armies had raced north, far ahead of their supply lines, and eventually had to retreat to the current border. “This time they’re making sure they can hold what they take: Conquest is always easier than subjugation. Still, tell me what you need and I will make sure you are well-supplied.”

“More paper, for a start,” Iseul said. “A lot of paper. I will have to hope that the Genial Ones don’t track me down here.”

“Indeed.” Minsu’s eyes were unexpectedly grim. “I would get you the assistance of a Chindallan magician, but you do realize that there’s every possibility that the Genial Ones have been hiding among our people, too.”

“It had occurred to me, yes.” Iseul was starting to get a headache, although in all fairness, she should have had one ages ago. “I don’t suppose you have any of that headache medicine?”

“I have a little left from my last detour to a pharmacy,” Minsu said, and handed it over. “I’ll get you more. I have other business to attend to, but I will check back with you from time to time. The safehouse’s keeper will have instructions to assist you in any way she can.”

“Thank you,” Iseul said. She didn’t look up as Minsu slipped out.

• • • •

The first Chindallan dynasty after the fall of the Genial Ones only lasted four abbreviated generations. Its queens and kings were buried in tombs of cold stone beneath mounded earth. Certain Chindallan scholars, coming to the tombs long after they had been plundered, noted that many of the tombs, when viewed from above, seemed to form words in the high script: wall, for instance, or eye, or vigilant. The scholars believed that this practice, like that of burying terracotta soldiers with the dead monarchs and their households, arose from a desire to protect the tombs from grave robbers. Like the terracotta soldiers, the tombs’ construction was singularly inadequate for this purpose.

• • • •

Iseul slept little in the days that followed. She was making progress on the scrying charm, though, which was something. It required suspending the charm along with two of the quill-charms in a mobile. Sometimes, when her exhaustion overcame her, she found herself staring at the charms bobbing back and forth in the air.

She also developed a headache so ferocious that Minsu’s medicine, normally reliable, did her no good. Finally she ventured out in search of a pharmacist. It turned out that the pharmacist had fled town, to her vexation, but an old man told her that one of the physicians, a somewhat disreputable man who had evaded registration with the proper ministry for his entire life, was still around. Since she didn’t have much option, she went in search of him.

The physician lived in a small hut at the edge of town. He was sitting outside, and he had finished ministering to a pair of grubby children. One of the children was eating a candy with no sign that her splinted wrist bothered her. The other, an even younger girl, was picking wildflowers.

The physician himself was a tall man who would have been taller if not for his hunched shoulders, and he had a wry, gentle face. His clothes were very plain. No one would have looked at him twice in the market square. He stood at Iseul’s approach.

“This will be quick, I promise,” Iseul said. “I’ve been having headaches and I need medicine for it.”

The physician looked her up and down. “I should think that a few good nights’ sleep would serve you better than any medicine,” he said dryly.

“I don’t have time for a few good nights’ sleep,” Iseul said. “Please, don’t you have anything to take the edge off the pain? If it’s a matter of money—”

He named a sum that explained to Iseul what he was doing in such plain clothes. Any respectable licensed physician could have charged three times as much even for something this simple.

“I can pay that,” Iseul said.

The girl with the splint tugged at the physician’s sleeve, completely unconcerned with the transaction going on. “Do you have more candy?”

“For pity’s sake, you haven’t finished what’s in your mouth,” he said.

“But it tastes better when you have two flavors at once.”

He rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Maybe later.”

“You should be all right so long as you don’t fall out of any more trees.” But the melancholy in his eyes told Iseul that he knew what happened to children in wartime.

The younger girl handed him the wildflowers. She didn’t speak in complete sentences yet, but both Iseul and the physician were given to understand that she had picked him the prettiest and best wildflowers as payment. The physician smiled and told her to go back to her parents with her sister.

“You can come in while I get the medicine, if you like,” the magician said.

Iseul looked at him with worry as he began to walk. Something about the way he carried himself even over such a short distance intimated a great and growing pain. “Are you well?” she asked.

“It’s an old injury,” the physician said with a shrug, “and of little importance.”

The hut had two rooms, and the outer room was sparsely furnished. There were no books in it, which disappointed Iseul obscurely. On a worn table was a small jar with a crack at the lip and a handful of wilting cosmos flowers in it. He added the newly plucked wildflowers to the jar.

Iseul couldn’t help looking around for weapons, traps, stray charms. Nothing presented itself to her eye as unusually dangerous, but the habit was hard to lose.

“Here it is,” the physician said after a moment’s rooting around in a chest. “Take it once a day when the pain sets in. Ideally you want to catch it before it gets bad. And try not to rely on it more than you have to. People who take this stuff every day over long periods of time sometimes get sick in other ways.”

“That shouldn’t be an issue,” Iseul said, one way or another. She hesitated, then said, “You could do a lot of good to the military, you know. They’re sure to be looking for physicians, and they’d probably give you a temporary license.”

The physician held out the packet of medicine. “I am a healer of small hurts,” he said, “nothing more. Everything I accomplish is with a few herbal remedies and common sense. A surprising number of maladies respond to time and rest and basic hygiene, things that soldiers don’t see a lot of when they go to war. And besides, the people here need someone, too.”

Iseul thought of the little girl picking flowers for him. “Then I will simply wish you well,” she said. “Thank you.” She counted out the payment. He refused her attempts to pay him what he ought to be charging her.

She took a dose of the medicine, then headed back to the safehouse. She passed more people heading out of the town. Mothers with small, squalling children on their backs. Old men leaning on canes carved in the shape of animal heads, a specialty of the region. The occasional nervous couple, quarreling about things to bring with them and things to leave behind. One woman was crying over a large lacquered box with abalone inlay. The battered box was probably the closest thing to a treasure she owned. Her husband tried to tell her that something of its size wasn’t worth hauling north and that nobody would give them much money for it anyway, which led to her shouting at him that it wasn’t for money that she wanted to bring it.

Merchants were selling food, clothes, and other necessaries for extortionate sums. People were buying anyway: not much choice. Iseul paused to glance over a display of protection charms that one woman was selling, flimsy folded-paper pendants painted with symbols and strung on knotted cords.

The seller bowed deeply to Iseul. “They say the storms are coming north,” she said. “Why not protect yourself from the rains and the sharp-toothed horses?”

“Thank you, but no,” Iseul said, having satisfied herself that the charms’ symbols were beautifully rendered, but empty of virtue. “I wish you the best, though.”

The seller eyed her, but decided not to waste time trying to sway her. Shrugging, she turned away and called out to a passing man who was wearing a finer jacket than most of the people on the street.

There was a noodle shop on the way back to the safehouse. The noodles were just as extortionately priced, but Iseul was tired of the safehouse’s food. She paid for cold noodles flavored with vinegar, hoping that the flavor would drive out the foul taste of the medicine. The sliced cucumbers were sadly limp, so she added extra vinegar in the hopes of salvaging the dish, without much luck. At least her headache seemed to have receded.

Iseul sat down with her papers and began her work again. She had been keeping notes on all her experiments, some of which were barely legible. She hadn’t realized how much her handwriting deteriorated when she was in pain. This time she adjusted the mobile to include a paper sphere (well, an approximate sphere) to represent the world, written over with words of water and earth and cloudshadow.

When the scrying charm did begin to work, hours later, Iseul almost didn’t realize it. She was staring off into space, resigned to yet another failure. It was a bad sign that the tea was starting to taste good, although that might possibly be related to the desperation measure of adulterating it with increasing quantities of honey. Not very good honey, at that.

The safehouse’s keeper had come in with another pot of tea and was staring at the mobile. “My lady,” she said, “is it supposed to be doing that?”

Iseul stifled a yawn. She didn’t bother correcting the keeper, although a mere spy didn’t rate “lady.” “Supposed to be doing—oh.”

The sphere was spinning at a steady rate, and black words were boiling from its surface in angry-looking tendrils. Iseul stood and squinted at them. Experimentally, she touched one of the tendrils. Her fingertip felt slightly numb, so she snatched it back. The safehouse’s keeper excused herself and left hastily, but Iseul didn’t notice.

Iseul had a supply of sheets of paper and books of execrable poetry. She opened one of the poetry books, then positioned one of the sheets beneath the sphere’s shadow. Sure enough, words began to condense from the shadow onto the paper, and lines of poetry began to fade from the books. The lines were distorted, probably because they were traveling from a curved surface to a flat one, but the writing was readable enough, and it was in the Genial Ones’ language, as she had expected it would be.

Not far into this endeavor, Iseul realized she was going to need a better strategy. There was only one of her, and only one of the scrying charms. Based on the sphere locations, there looked to be at least a hundred Genial Ones communicating with each other. She could make more scrying charms, but she couldn’t recruit more people to read and analyze the letters.

Minsu stopped by the next day and was tactfully silent on Iseul’s harried appearance, although she looked like she wanted to reach out and tidy Iseul’s hair for her. “That looks like some kind of progress,” she remarked, looking around at the sorted stacks of paper, “but clearly I didn’t provide you with enough paper. Or assistants.”

“I’m not sure assistants would help,” Iseul said. “The Genial Ones seem to communicate with each other on a regular basis. And there are a few hundred of them just based on the ones who are writing, let alone the ones who are lying low. How many people would you trust with this information?”

She had worse news for Minsu, but it was hard to make herself say it.

“Not a lot,” Minsu said. “There’s that old saying: Only ashes keep secrets, and even they have been known to talk to the stones. What is it that the Genial Ones are so interested in talking about? I can’t imagine that they’re consulting each other on what shoes to wear to their next gathering.”

“Shoes are important,” Iseul said, remembering how much her feet had hurt after running to the border-fort in the Yegedin soldier’s completely inadequate boots. “But yes. They’re talking about language. I’ve been puzzling through it. There are so many languages, and they work in such different ways. Did you know that there are whole families of languages with something called noun classes, where you inflect nouns differently based on the category they fall into? Except the categories don’t usually make any sense. There’s this language where nouns for female humans and animals and workers share a class, except tables, cities, and ships are also included.” She was aware as she spoke that she was going off on a tangent. She had to nerve herself up to tell Minsu what the Genial Ones were up to.

“I’m sure Chindallan looks just as strange to foreigners,” Minsu said. Her voice was bemused, but her somber eyes told Iseul she knew something was wrong. “I once spoke to a Jaioi merchant who couldn’t get used to the fact that our third person pronouns don’t distinguish between males and females, which is apparently very important in his language. On the other hand, he couldn’t handle the formality inflections on our verbs at all. He’d hired an interpreter so he wouldn’t inadvertently offend people.”

The “interpreter” would have been a spy; that went without saying. Iseul had worked such straightforward assignments herself, once upon a time.

“You haven’t said how bad things are down south,” Iseul said. She couldn’t put this off forever, and yet.

“Well, I’m tempted to have you relocate further north,” Minsu said, “but there’s only so far north to go. The Yegedin have taken the coastal fort of Suwen. We suspect they’re hoping to open up more logistical options from their homeland. I don’t, frustratingly, have a whole lot of information on what our navy is up to. They’re probably having trouble getting the Yegedin to engage them.” During the original invasion, only the rapacious successes of Chindalla’s navy—always stronger than its army—had forced the Yegedin to halt their advance.

“I have to work faster,” Iseul said, squeezing her eyes shut. Time to stop delaying. Minsu was silent, and Iseul opened them again. “Of course, every time the safehouse keeper comes in, she looks at me like I’m crazed.” She eyed the mobiles. There was only room for eleven of them, but the way they spun and cavorted, like orreries about to come apart, was probably a good argument that their creator wasn’t in her right mind. “What I don’t understand . . .” She ran her hand over one of the stacks of paper.

When Iseul didn’t continue the thought, Minsu said, “Understand what?”

“I’ve tested the letter-scrying spell,” Iseul said, “with languages that aren’t the Genial Ones’. I’m only fluent in five languages besides Chindallan, but I tried them all. And the spell won’t work on anything but the language of magic. The charms spin around but they can’t so much as get a fix on a letter that I’m writing in the same room.”

“Did you try modifying the charm?” Minsu asked.

“I thought of that, but magic doesn’t work that way. I mean, the death-touch daggers, for instance. If you had to craft them to a specific individual target, they’d be less useful. Well, in most circumstances.” They could both think of situations where a dagger that would only kill a certain person might be useful. “But I think that’s why the Genial Ones have been so quiet, and why they’ve been busy compiling the lexicons by hand for each human language. Because there’s no other way to do it. They know more magic than I do, that goes without saying. If there were some charm to do the job for them, they’d be using it.”

“I have the feeling you’re going to lead up to something that requires the best of teas to face,” Minsu said, and stole a sip from Iseul’s cup before Iseul had the chance to warn her off. She was too well-bred to make remarks about people who put honey in even abysmal tea, but her eyebrows quirked a little.

Iseul looked away. “I think I know why the Genial Ones are compiling lexicons,” she said, “and it isn’t because they really like writing miniature treatises on morphophonemics.”

“How disappointing,” Minsu said, “you may have destroyed my affection for them forever.” But her bantering tone had worry beneath it.

Iseul went to a particular stack of papers, which she had weighted down with a letter opener decorated with a twining flower motif. “They’ve been discussing an old charm,” she said. “They want to create a variation of the sculpture charm.”

“That was one of the first to become defunct after their defeat,” Minsu observed. “Apparent defeat, I should say.”

“That brings me to the other thing,” Iseul said. “I think I’ve figured out that word that the first Genial One said, the one that was unfamiliar. Because it keeps showing up in their conversations. I think it’s a word that didn’t exist before.”

“I remember that time that satirist coined a new word for hairpins that look like they ought to be good for assassinations but are completely inadequate for the job,” Minsu said. “Of course, based on Chindalla’s plays and novels, I have to concede that we needed the word.”

Minsu’s attempts to get her to relax weren’t helping, but Iseul appreciated the effort. You can kill one of us, but not all of us. We won’t accept this— “‘Defeat,’ ” Iseul said softly. “The word means ‘defeat.’”

“Surely they can’t have gone all this time without—” Minsu’s mouth pressed into a flat line.

“Yes,” Iseul said. “These are people who had separate words for their blood and our blood. Because we weren’t their equals. Until General Anangan overcame them, they had no word for their own defeat. Not at the hands of humans, anyway, as opposed to the intrigues and backstabbing that apparently went on among their clans.”

“All right,” Minsu said, “but that can’t be what’s shadowing your eyes.”

“They want to defeat us the way we almost defeated them,” Iseul said. “They’re obsessed with it. They’ve figured out how to scale the sculpture charm up. Except they’re not going to steal our shapes. They’re going to steal our words and add them to their own language. And Chindalla’s language is the last to be compiled for the purpose.”

• • • •

In the old days, the forgotten days, the human nations feared the Genial Ones’ sculptors, and their surgeons, and their soldiers. They knew, however, that the greatest threat was none of these, but the Genial Ones’ lexicographers, whose thoroughness was legendary. The languages that they collected for their own pleasure vanished, and the civilizations that spoke those languages invariably followed soon afterwards.

• • • •

Iseul was in the middle of explaining her plan to thwart the Genial Ones to Minsu, which involved charms to destroy the language of magic itself, when the courier arrived. The safehouse’s keeper interrupted them. Iseul thought it was to bring them tea, but she was accompanied by a young man, much disheveled and breathing hard. He was obviously trying not to stare at the room’s profusion of charms, or at Iseul herself. She couldn’t remember the last time she had given her hair a good thorough combing, and she probably looked like a ghost. (For some reason ghosts never combed their hair.) Her mother would have despaired of her.

“I trust you have a good reason for this,” Minsu said wearily.

“You need to hear this, my lady,” the keeper said.

The young man presented his papers to Minsu. They declared him to be a government courier, although the official seal, stamped in red ink that Iseul happened to know never washed out of fabric no matter what you tried, was smeared at the lower right corner. Minsu looked over the papers, frowning, then nodded. “Speak,” Minsu said.

“A Yegedin detachment of two thousand has been spotted heading this way,” the courier said. “It’s probably best if you evacuate.”

Iseul closed her eyes and drew a shuddering breath in spite of herself.

“All this work,” Minsu said, gesturing at the mobiles.

“It’s not worth defending this town,” Iseul said bleakly, “am I right?”

“The throne wishes its generals to focus on protecting more important cities,” the courier said. “I’m sorry, my lady.”

“It’ll be all right,” Iseul said to Minsu. “I can work as easily from another safehouse.”

“You’ll have to set up the charms all over again,” Minsu said.

“It can’t be helped. Besides, if we stay here, even if the Yegedin don’t get us, the looters will.”

The courier’s expression said that he was realizing that Iseul might have more common sense than her current appearance suggested. Still, he addressed Minsu. “The detachment will probably be here within the next five days, my lady. Best to leave before the news becomes general knowledge.”

“Not as if there are a whole lot of people left here anyway,” Minsu said. “All right. Thank you for the warning.”

Iseul was used to being able to pick up and leave at a moment’s notice, but she hadn’t reckoned on dealing with the charms and the quantities of text that they had generated. There wasn’t time to burn everything, which made her twitch. They settled for shuffling the rest into boxes and abandoning them with the heaps of garbage that could be found around the town. Her hands acquired blisters, but she didn’t even notice how much they hurt.

Iseul and Minsu joined the long, winding trail of refugees heading north. The safehouse keeper insisted on parting ways from them because she had family in the area. Minsu’s efforts to talk her out of this met with failure. She pressed a purse of coins into the keeper’s hands; that was all the farewell they could manage.

Minsu bought horses from a trader at the first opportunity, the best he had, which wasn’t saying much. The price was less extravagant than Iseul might have guessed. Horses were very unpopular at the moment because everyone had the Yegedin storm-horses on their mind, and people had taken to stealing and killing them for the stewpot instead. Minsu insisted on giving Iseul the calmer gelding and taking the cantankerous mare for herself. “No offense,” she said, “but I have more experience wrangling very annoying horses than you do.”

“I wasn’t complaining,” Iseul said. She was credible enough on horseback, but it really didn’t matter.

Most of the refugees headed for the road to the capital, where they felt the most safety was to be had. Once the two of them were mounted, however, Minsu led them northeast, toward the coast.

In the evenings, Iseul would rather have dropped asleep immediately, but constructing her counterstroke against the Genial Ones was an urgent problem, and it required all her attention. Not only did she have to construct a charm to capture the Genial Ones’ words, she had to find a way to destroy those words so they could never be used again. Sometimes she caught herself nodding off, and she pinched her palm to prick herself awake again. They weren’t just threatened by armies; they were threatened by the people who had once ruled all the known nations.

“We’re almost there,” Minsu said as they came to the coast. “Just another day’s ride.” The sun was low in the sky, but she had decided they should stop in the shelter of a hill rather than pressing on tonight. She had been quiet for most of the journey, preferring not to interrupt Iseul’s studies unless Iseul had a question for her.

Iseul had been drowsing as she rode, a trick she had mastered out of necessity. She didn’t hear Minsu at first, lost in muddled dreams of a book. The book had pages of tawny paper, precisely the color of skin. It was urgent that she write a poem about rice-balls into the book. Everyone knew rice was the foundation of civilization and it deserved more satiric verses than it usually received, but every time she set her brush to the paper, the ink ran down the bristles and formed into cavorting figures that leapt off the pages. She became convinced that she was watching a great and terrible dance, and that the question was then whether she would run out of ink before the dance came to its fruition.

“Iseul.” It was Minsu. She had tied her horse to a small tree and had caught Iseul’s reins. “I know you’re tired, but you look like you’re ready to fall off.”

Iseul came alert all at once, the way she had trained herself to do on countless earlier missions. “I have to review my notes. I think I might have it this time.”

“There’s hardly any light to read by.”

“I’ll shield a candle.”

“I’ll see to your horse, then,” Minsu said.

Minsu set up camp while Iseul hunched over her notes. Properly it should have been the other way around, but Minsu never stood on formalities for their own sake. She was always happy to pour tea for others, for instance.

“If they think to do scrying of their own once I get started,” Iseul said while Minsu was bringing her barley hardtack mashed into a crude cold porridge, “our lifespans are going to be measured in minutes.”

“We don’t seem to have a choice if we want to survive,” Minsu said.

“The ironic thing is that we’ll also be saving the Yegedin.”

“We can fight the Yegedin the way we’d fight anyone else,” Minsu said. “The Genial Ones are another matter.”

“If only we knew how General Anangan managed it the first time around,” Iseul said. But all that remained were contradictory legends. She wondered, now, if the Genial Ones themselves had obfuscated the facts.

“If only.” Minsu sighed.

Iseul ate the porridge without tasting it, which was just as well.

A little while later, Minsu said quietly, “You haven’t even thought to be tempted, have you?”

“Tempted how?” But as she spoke, Iseul knew what Minsu meant. “It would only be a temporary reprieve.”

She knew exactly how the lexicon charm worked. She had the Yeged-dai lexicon with her, and she could use it to destroy the Yegedin language. The thirteen-year occupation would evaporate. Poets could write in their native language without fear of attracting reprisals. Southern Chindallans could use their own names again. No more rebels would have to burn to death. All compelling arguments. She could annihilate Yeged before she turned on the Genial Ones. People would consider it an act of patriotism.

But as Minsu had said, the Yegedin could be fought by ordinary means, without resorting to the awful tools of humanity’s old masters.

Iseul also knew that turning the lexicon charm against the Genial Ones’ own language would mean destroying magic forever. No more passage charms or lantern charms; no more convenient daggers that made people vanish.

No more storm-horses, either, or towers built of people’s bones erupting from pyramids of corpses, as in the old stories. It wouldn’t be all bad. And what kind of spy would she be if she couldn’t improvise solutions?

Besides, if she didn’t do something about the Genial Ones now, they would strike against all the human nations with the lexicons they had already compiled. Here, at least, the choice was clear and narrow.

“I don’t want to be more like the Genial Ones than I have to,” Iseul said with a guilty twitch of regret. “But we do have to go through with this.”

“Do you have ward spells prepared?” Minsu said.

“Yes,” Iseul said. “A lot of them. Because once we’re discovered—and we have to assume we’ll be—they’re going to devote their attention to seeking out and destroying us. And we don’t know what they’re capable of.”

“Oh, that’s not true,” Minsu said. “We know exactly what they’re capable of. We’ve known for generations, even in the folktales.”

“I should start tonight,” Iseul said. “I’m only going to be more tired tomorrow.”

Minsu looked as though she wanted to argue, but instead she nodded.

Iseul sat in the lee of the hill and began the painstaking work of copying out all the necessary charms, from the wards—every form of ward she knew of, including some cribbed from the Genial Ones’ own discussions—to the one that would compile the lexicon of the language of magic for her by transcribing those same discussions. That final charm was bound to fail at some point when its world of words was confined to the sheets of blank paper she had prepared for it, but—if she had done this correctly—she had constructed it so that it would target its own structural words last.

The winds were strong tonight, and they raked Iseul with cold. The horses were unsettled, whinnying to each other and pulling at their ropes. Iseul glanced up from time to time to look at the sky, bleak and smothered over with clouds. The hills might as well have been the dented helmets of giant warriors, abandoned after an unwinnable fight.

“All right,” Iseul said at last, hating how gray her voice sounded. She felt the first twinge of a headache and remembered to take the medicine the physician had given her. “Come into the circle of protection, Minsu. There’s no reason to delay getting started.”

Obligingly, Minsu joined her, and Iseul activated each warding charm one by one. It was hard not to feel as though she was playing with a child’s toys, flimsy folded shapes, except she knew exactly what each of those charms was intended to do.

At the center of the circle of protection were four books as empty as mirrors in the darkness, which Iseul had bound during her time in the safehouse. She hoped four books would be enough to cripple the Genial Ones, even if they couldn’t contain the entirety of their language. Iseul began folding pages of the empty books, dog-earing corners and folding them into skewed geometries. When she wasn’t watching closely, she had the impression that the corners were unfolding and stretching out tendrils of nascent words, nonsense syllables, to spy on her. She didn’t mention this to Minsu, but the other woman’s face was strained. There was a stinging tension in the air; her skin prickled.

Lightning flickered in the distance as she worked. It cut from one side of the sky to the other in a way that natural lightning never did, like the sweep of a sword.

“Hurry if you can,” Minsu said, head raised to watch the approach of the storm.

“I’m hurrying,” Iseul said.

The winds were whipping fiercely around them now. One of Minsu’s braids had come unpinned and was flapping like a lonely pennant.

The candle flickered out. Minsu brought out a lantern charm.

“I’m all for ordinary fire if you can get it to work for you,” Minsu said at Iseul’s dubious look, “but you need light and this will give you light for a time.”

Iseul continued with the lexicon charm, double-checking every fold, every black and twining word, every diagram of spindled lines. The sense of tension sharpened. If she dared to look away from the books’ pages and at the suffocating sky, she imagined that she would see words forming amid the clouds, sky-words and wind-words and water-words, words of torrential despair and words of drowning terror, words that had existed in some form since the first people learned to speak.

She slammed each book shut counterclockwise, shuddering, suddenly hoping the whole affair was an extension of the dream she had had and that she would wake to sunlight and flowers and a warm spot by some fire, but no. With a dry, creaking voice—with a chorus of voices that rose and rose to a roar—the books wrenched themselves open in unison.

For a second, the pages fluttered wildly, like birds newly freed. Then they darkened as words inundated them. Slowly at first, then in a steady pouring of black writhing shapes. Postpositions. Conjunctions. Nouns that violated vowel harmony and nouns that didn’t. Verbs in different conjugations, tenses, aspects. A stray aorist. Scraps of syntax and subclause generators. Interjections snatched from between clenched teeth. Sacred names rarely spoken and never before written.

One of the horses was thrashing about, but Iseul was only peripherally aware of it, or of Minsu swearing under her breath. A dark shape plunged up before Iseul, but she was intent upon the books, the books, the terrible books. Who knew there were so many crawling words in a language? Years ago, when reviewing a cryptology text, she had seen an estimate of the number of words a literate Chindallan needed to be able to read. She had thought the number large then. Now she knew the estimate must be low. It wasn’t possible for more words to flood the four books’ pages, but here they came, again and again and again, growing smaller and smaller as they crushed each other in the confines on the pages.

The dark shape was one of the horses, which had pulled free of the rope in its panic. Minsu had her riding crop out and struck the horse. Iseul had a vague idea of how desperate she must be. The other woman had always been softhearted about the animals. But the horse wheeled and ran toward the hills, neighing wildly.

Iseul’s attention was abruptly drawn to the horse when, having passed the circle of protection, lightning scythed through the horse. Except it wasn’t lightning, precisely: pale light with eyes in it, and black waving feelers sprouting from each pupil, and the feelers ate holes into the unfortunate animal’s spine. The horse screamed for a long time.

More lightning zigzagged down from the sky, crackling around the circle. Rain was pelting down all around them, and muddy water sluiced down the hillside. Voices whispered out of the darkness, murmuring liplessly of entrails and needlepoints and vengeance. The light from the lantern charm glittered in the raindrops and the sheets of water like an unwanted promise. The lantern, although flimsy in construction, seemed to be in no danger of being toppled by the rising winds.

One of the protective wards began to unfold itself.

Minsu said a word that Iseul hadn’t even realized she knew.

“We can’t let them win this,” Iseul said breathlessly. Stupid to just stand here watching, as if the Genial Ones would simply submit to the destruction of their magic. She began constructing an additional ward to reinforce the one that was disintegrating.

Chasms of fire opened in the air, then closed, like terrible fierce smiles. The rain hissed where it met the fire, and Iseul flinched when tendrils of steam were repelled by the circle of protection. Leaves spun free of the hillside wildflowers and the nearby copses of trees, formed into great screaming birds, battered themselves fruitlessly against the wards before dissipating into shreds and slivers of green and yellow.

Iseul spared a glance for the books. Was it possible for them to hold any more words? She set the current ward in place, then flipped through the pages of the fourth book in spite of herself, in spite of the conviction that the paper would hold her hands fast and drag her in. And then the teeth began.

The teeth grew from the corners of the pages. They distended into predatory curves, yellow-white and gleaming. Iseul flinched violently.

The teeth took no notice of her, but the books fanned themselves out like a hundred hundred mouths. Then, with a papery crumpling sound, they began to eat the words.

Minsu was holding Iseul’s shoulder. “This is not,” she said thinly, “at all what I thought it would be.”

The storm crackled and roared above them. The two women clung to each other as rain and lightning crashed inland. If the winds grew any stronger, Iseul felt she would fall over sideways and not stop falling until she had gone through the world and out the other side. But she didn’t dare rest, and she didn’t dare contemplate leaving the circle of protection.

More of the wards were unfolding. Despite her shaking hands, Iseul bent to the task of making more charms, except now the charms were fighting her. Of course, she thought, cursing herself for her carelessness. She had thought to specify that the lexicon charm would spare itself as long as possible, but she had done no such thing for the wards. She would have to try synonyms, circumlocutions, alternate geometries; she would have to hope that the Genial Ones were having as much difficulty sustaining their attacks as she was her defenses.

The lantern charm abruptly guttered out. Iseul couldn’t see, through the water in her eyes, whether the words upon it had been devoured, or whether the Genial Ones had discovered them and snuffed it themselves.

Faces of fire scattered downward and struck a hilltop perhaps thirty meters from them. All the faces were howling, and their eyes were hollow sooty pits. For a moment everything was crowned in sanguinary light, from the silhouetted grasses swept nearly flat to the hunched rocks.

“We’re done for,” Iseul whispered. Was it her imagination, or did she hear horses in the distance, sharp-toothed horses with hooves that struck savage rhythms into the earth’s bones?

More charms uncurled, crumpled, made the kinds of sounds you might imagine of lost love letters and discarded prayers.

“Hold fast,” Minsu said, although she had to repeat herself over the drumming storm so that Iseul could hear her. Her expression was obscure in the darkness.

Iseul was holding down the covers of one of the books, small futile gesture. The whole thing should have been drenched. Ordinarily she would have been appalled at herself for leaving a book out in the rain, but the teeth seemed just as happy to devour water as words.

A swirl of flame made it past the circle of protection. Minsu’s hair caught on fire. She beat at the flames with her hands. For a bad moment, Iseul thought that the fires had spread to her eyes, her ears, the marrow of her hands. But after one horrifying white-red flare, the fire shook itself apart in an incoherent dazzle of sparks, then sizzled into silence.

“I’m fine,” Minsu shouted, although her voice shook. She went to retrieve the lantern charm. “No words,” she said, squinting at it during the next lightning-flash. The charm had unfolded completely. There were only faint rust-colored marks where the words had been, like splotches of blood.

Hurry, Iseul bid the books with their gnashing teeth. Hurry.

There was no way to guide the books’ hunger now, no way to tell them to eat words of storm and fire above all others. They were indiscriminate in their voracity. More and more of the pages were spotted rust-red, like the former lantern charm.

Then the storm broke. There was no other word for it. It came apart into smaller storms, and the smaller storms into eddies of wind, the rain into a fine wandering mist. In the distance they heard the tolling of dark bells and the screams of sharp-toothed horses.

The teeth receded. The books’ pages twitched upward, yearning, then subsided. A sullen light rippled from their covers. Every single one of their pages was covered with splattered blood, a slaughterhouse of words. Fighting her revulsion, Iseul closed each one and put them away. The light sloughed away.

Iseul and Minsu were drenched through. “We’ll catch our death of chill out here,” Iseul said. Her throat felt raw although she had hardly spoken. After what had just happened, a great lassitude threatened to drag her under, but she couldn’t afford to sleep, not yet.

“We have to see what became of the coastal fort,” Minsu said. “If we walk through the night we might make it. Assuming the place hasn’t been overrun by the Yegedin navy.”

The books felt like chains all the way through the night. They found a trail through the hills, difficult to see in the darkness and dangerously slippery at that, but Minsu had experience of this region and was able to lead them in the right direction. She insisted that Iseul ride the remaining horse while she led it. By that point, Iseul didn’t care where they were going or how they got there so long as she was allowed to collapse and sleep at the end of it. Any flat surface would do.

“Oh no,” Minsu said at last.

Iseul almost fell off the horse. She had slipped into a half-doze, except she kept seeing black spidering shapes behind her eyelids.

They had stopped on the crest of a hill: risky to be silhouetted if there were enemies in the area, especially archers, but an excellent vantage point otherwise.

The sea crashed against broken white-gray cliffs. The bones of ships could be seen floating in the newly formed harbor along with uprooted trees. “They destroyed the coast,” Minsu said, bringing out a spyglass and looking north and south. “Fort Jenal used to be out there—” She gestured toward the horizon, toward the frothing waves. “Now it’s all water and wreckage.”

“Do you suppose there are any survivors?” Iseul said. But she knew the answer.

Minsu shook her head.

“If only I had figured it out sooner,” Iseul said, head bowed. If only she had been able to make the lexicon charm work faster.

“We’ll have to notify the nearest garrison,” Minsu said, “so they can search for survivors, Chindallan or Yegedin. But for now, we must rest.”

She said something else, but Iseul’s knees buckled and she didn’t hear any of it.

• • • •

The Genial Ones originally had no word for medicine that did not also mean poison. They ended up borrowing one from a human language spoken by people that they slaughtered the hard way for variety’s sake, person by person dragged from their villages and redoubts and killed, cautery by sword and spear.

• • • •

Minsu said very little to the garrisons they visited about the real reason the storm had broken, which was just as well. Iseul wasn’t sure what she would have said if asked about it. She did, at Minsu’s urging, write a ciphered account of the lexicon charm and the devouring books to send to the Ministry of Ornithology with a trusted courier.

They were sitting in a rented room at the time, and Minsu had scared up a tea that even Iseul liked.

“I only wrote the account,” Iseul said, very clearly, “because none of the charms work anymore.” With the Genial Ones’ language extinguished, the magic it empowered was gone for good. She had attempted to create working charms, just to be sure, but all of them remained inert. “Imagine if Yeged’s Emperor had figured out how to use this on Chindallan or the language of any other nation he desired to conquer.”

“The way we could have?” Minsu said sardonically. “It’s done now. Finish your report, and we can get out of this town.”

There were still refugees on the road north. They might have deprived the Yegedin of magical assaults, but then, they had also deprived the Chindallans of magical defenses. Given that both sides had spent the uneasy peace preparing to go to war, it was anyone’s guess as to who would prevail.

At one point they ended up at a wretched camp for those who were too sick to continue fleeing, and the few people who were staying with them, mostly their families and a few monks who were acting as caretakers. Iseul remained prone to headaches and was running low on medicine. Minsu had insisted that they seek out a physician, even though Iseul tried to point out that the people at the camp probably needed the medicine more than she did.

As it turned out, they forgot all about the question of who deserved the medicine when Iseul saw a familiar little girl. She was picking flowers, weeds really, but in her hands they became jewels.

Iseul approached the girl and asked her if she knew where the physician was. The girl seemed confused by the question, but after a little while her older sister appeared from one of the tents and recognized Iseul. “I’ll take you to him,” the girl said, “but he’s very sick.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Iseul said. Despite the monks’ best efforts to enforce basic sanitary practices, the camp reeked of filth and sickness and curdled hopes, and she couldn’t help but imagine that the physician had taken sick while helping others.

She and Minsu followed the older girl to a tent at the edge of the camp. Flowers had been weighted down with a rock at the tent’s opening: the younger girl’s handiwork, surely. They could smell the bitter incense that was used to bring easeful dreams to the dying.

The tent was small, and there were more flowers next to the brazier. Their petals had fallen off and were scattered next to the pallet. The incense was almost all burned away. The physician slept on the pallet. Even at rest his lined face suggested a certain weary kindness. Someone had drawn a heavy quilted blanket over him, stained red-brown on one corner.

“What happened?” Minsu said. “Will he recover? I’m sure he could be a great help here.”

“He fell sick,” the girl said. “One of the monks said he had a stroke. He doesn’t talk anymore and he doesn’t seem to understand when people talk to him. They said he might like us to visit him, though, and our mother works with the monks to help the sick people, so we come by and bring flowers.”

He doesn’t talk anymore. Iseul went cold. He had spoken Chindallan; shouldn’t that have saved him? But she didn’t know how language worked in the brain.

Without asking, she lifted the corner of the blanket. The physician had longer arms than she remembered, like the Genial One she had killed at his house a lifetime ago. Who was to say they couldn’t change their shapes? Especially if they were living among humans? Tears pricking her eyes, she replaced the blanket.

“I’m very sorry,” Iseul said to the girl. “It’s probably not long before he dies.”

She couldn’t help but wonder how many Genial Ones had lingered into this age, taking no part in the conspiracy for vengeance, leading quiet lives as healers of small hurts to atone for their kindred who summoned storm-horses and faces of fire. There was no way to tell.

The Yegedin had tried to destroy Chindalla’s literature and names, but Iseul had destroyed the Genial Ones themselves. It hadn’t seemed real until now.

“Thank you,” she said to the dying Genial One, even though his mind was gone. She and Minsu sat by his side for a time, listening to him breathe. There was a war coming, and a storm entirely human, but in this small space they could mourn what they had done.

For a long time afterwards, Iseul tried to come up with a poem about the Genial Ones, encapsulating what they had meant to the world and why they had had to die and why she regretted the physician’s passing, but no words ever came to her.

• • • •

—. A noun, probably, pertaining to regret or cinders or something of that nature, but this word can no longer be found in any lexicon, human or otherwise.

© 2013 by Yoon Ha Lee. Originally published in Conservation of Shadows. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Yoon Ha Lee’s first novel, Ninefox Gambit, came out from Solaris Books in 2016, and its sequel, Raven Stratagem, is due out in June 2017. His short story collection Conservation of Shadows was published by Prime Books in 2013. His short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Lightspeed Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld Magazine, and other venues. Lee grew up in both Houston and South Korea, and majored in math at Cornell University. He now lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.

EXCERPT: Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Tor Books)

Seanan McGuire | 3311 words

Chapter 1: The Dangerous Allure of Other People’s Children

People who knew Chester and Serena Wolcott socially would have placed money on the idea that the couple would never choose to have children. They were not the parenting kind, by any reasonable estimation. Chester enjoyed silence and solitude when he was working in his home office, and viewed the slightest deviation from routine as an enormous, unforgiveable disruption. Children would be more than a slight deviation from routine. Children would be the nuclear option where routine was concerned. Serena enjoyed gardening and sitting on the board of various tidy, elegant nonprofits, and paying other people to maintain her home in a spotless state. Children were messes walking. They were trampled petunias and baseballs through picture windows, and they had no place in the carefully ordered world the Wolcotts inhabited.

What those people didn’t see was the way the partners at Chester’s law firm brought their sons to work, handsome little clones of their fathers in age-appropriate menswear, future kings of the world in their perfectly shined shoes, with their perfectly modulated voices. He watched, increasingly envious, as junior partners brought in pictures of their own sleeping sons and were lauded, and for what? Reproducing! Something so simple that any beast in the field could do it.

At night, he started dreaming of perfectly polite little boys with his hair and Serena’s eyes, their blazers buttoned just so, the partners beaming beneficently at this proof of what a family man he was.

What those people didn’t see was the way some of the women on Serena’s boards would occasionally bring their daughters with them, making apologies about incompetent nannies or unwell babysitters, all while secretly gloating as everyone rushed to ooh and ahh over their beautiful baby girls. They were a garden in their own right, those privileged daughters in their gowns of lace and taffeta, and they would spend meetings and tea parties playing peacefully on the edge of the rug, cuddling their stuffed toys and feeding imaginary cookies to their dollies. Everyone she knew was quick to compliment those women for their sacrifices, and for what? Having a baby! Something so easy that people had been doing it since time began.

At night, she started dreaming of beautifully composed little girls with her mouth and Chester’s nose, their dresses explosions of fripperies and frills, the ladies falling over themselves to be the first to tell her how wonderful her daughter was.

This, you see, is the true danger of children: they are ambushes, each and every one of them. A person may look at someone else’s child and see only the surface, the shiny shoes or the perfect curls. They do not see the tears and the tantrums, the late nights, the sleepless hours, the worry. They do not even see the love, not really. It can be easy, when looking at children from the outside, to believe that they are things, dolls designed and programmed by their parents to behave in one manner, following one set of rules. It can be easy, when standing on the lofty shores of adulthood, not to remember that every adult was once a child, with ideas and ambitions of their own.

It can be easy, in the end, to forget that children are people, and that people will do what people will do, the consequences be damned.

It was right after Christmas—round after round of interminable office parties and charity events—when Chester turned to Serena and said, “I have something I would like to discuss with you.”

“I want to have a baby,” she replied.

Chester paused. He was an orderly man with an orderly wife, living in an ordinary, orderly life. He wasn’t used to her being quite so open with her desires or, indeed, having desires at all. It was dismaying . . . and a trifle exciting, if he were being honest.

Finally, he smiled, and said, “That was what I wanted to talk to you about.”

There are people in this world—good, honest, hard-working people—who want nothing more than to have a baby, and who try for years to conceive one without the slightest success. There are people who must see doctors in small, sterile rooms, hearing terrifying proclamations about how much it will cost to even begin hoping. There are people who must go on quests, chasing down the north wind to ask for directions to the House of the Moon, where wishes can be granted, if the hour is right and the need is great enough. There are people who will try, and try, and try, and receive nothing for their efforts but a broken heart.

Chester and Serena went upstairs to their room, to the bed they shared, and Chester did not put on a condom, and Serena did not remind him, and that was that. The next morning, she stopped taking her birth control pills. Three weeks later, she missed her period, which had been as orderly and on-time as the rest of her life since she was twelve years old. Two weeks after that, she sat in a small white room while a kindly man in a long white coat told her that she was going to be a mother.

“How long before we can get a picture of the baby?” asked Chester, already imagining himself showing it to the men at the office, jaw strong, gaze distant, like he was lost in dreams of playing catch with his son-to-be.

“Yes, how long?” asked Serena. The women she worked with always shrieked and fawned when someone arrived with a new sonogram to pass around the group. How nice it would be, to finally be the center of attention!

The doctor, who had dealt with his share of eager parents, smiled. “You’re about five weeks along,” he said. “I don’t recommend an ultrasound before twelve weeks, under normal circumstances. Now, this is your first pregnancy. You may want to wait before telling anyone that you’re pregnant. Everything seems normal now, but it’s early days yet, and it will be easier if you don’t have to take back an announcement.”

Serena looked bemused. Chester fumed. To even suggest that his wife might be so bad at being pregnant—something so simple that any fool off the street could do it—was offensive in ways he didn’t even have words for. But Dr. Tozer had been recommended by one of the partners at his firm, with a knowing twinkle in his eye, and Chester simply couldn’t see a way to change doctors without offending someone too important to offend.

“Twelve weeks, then,” said Chester. “What do we do until then?”

Dr. Tozer told them. Vitamins and nutrition and reading, so much reading. It was like the man expected their baby to be the most difficult in the history of the world, with all the reading that he assigned. But they did it, dutifully, like they were following the steps of a magical spell that would summon the perfect child straight into their arms. They never discussed whether they were hoping for a boy or a girl; both of them knew, so completely, what they were going to have that it seemed unnecessary. So Chester went to bed each night dreaming of his son, while Serena dreamt of her daughter, and for a time, they both believed that parenthood was perfect.

They didn’t listen to Dr. Tozer’s advice about keeping the pregnancy a secret, of course. When something was this good, it needed to be shared. Their friends, who had never seen them as the parenting type, were confused but supportive. Their colleagues, who didn’t know them well enough to understand what a bad idea this was, were enthusiastic. Chester and Serena shook their heads and made lofty comments about learning who their “real” friends were.

Serena went to her board meetings and smiled contently as the other women told her that she was beautiful, that she was glowing, that motherhood “suited her.”

Chester went to his office and found that several of the partners were dropping by “just to chat” about his impending fatherhood, offering advice, offering camaraderie.

Everything was perfect.

They went to their first ultrasound appointment together, and Serena held Chester’s hand as the technician rubbed blueish slime over her belly and rolled the wand across it. The picture began developing. For the first time, Serena felt a pang of concern. What if there was something wrong with the baby? What if Dr. Tozer had been right, and the pregnancy should have remained a secret, at least for a little while?

“Well?” asked Chester.

“You wanted to know the baby’s gender, yes?” asked the technician.

He nodded.

“You have a perfect baby girl,” said the technician.

Serena laughed in vindicated delight, the sound dying when she saw the scowl on Chester’s face. Suddenly, the things they hadn’t discussed seemed large enough to fill the room.

The technician gasped. “I have a second heartbeat,” she said.

They both turned to look at her.

“Twins,” she said.

“Is the second baby a boy or a girl?” asked Chester.

The technician hesitated. “The first baby is blocking our view,” she hedged. “It’s difficult to say for sure—”

“Guess,” said Chester.

“I’m afraid it would not be ethical for me to guess at this stage,” said the technician. “I’ll make you another appointment, for two weeks from now. Babies move around in the womb. We should be able to get a better view then.”

They did not get a better view. The first infant remained stubbornly in front, and the second infant remained stubbornly in back, and the Wolcotts made it all the way to the delivery room—for a scheduled induction, of course, the date chosen by mutual agreement and circled in their day planners—hoping quietly that they were about to become the proud parents of both son and daughter, completing their nuclear family on the first try. Both of them were slightly smug about the idea. It smacked of efficiency, of tailoring the perfect solution right out the gate.

(The thought that babies would become children, and children would become people, never occurred to them. The concept that perhaps biology was not destiny, and that not all little girls would be pretty princesses, and not all little boys would be brave soldiers, also never occurred to them. Things might have been easier if those ideas had ever slithered into their heads, unwanted but undeniably important. Alas, their minds were made up, and left no room for such revolutionary opinions.)

The labor took longer than planned. Serena did not want a C-section if she could help it, did not want the scarring and the mess, and so she pushed when she was told to push, and rested when she was told to rest, and gave birth to her first child at five minutes to midnight on September fifteenth. The doctor passed the baby to a waiting nurse, announced, “It’s a girl,” and bent back over his patient.

Chester, who had been holding out hope that the reticent boy-child would push his way forward and claim the vaunted position of firstborn, said nothing as he held his wife’s hand and listened to her straining to expel their second child. Her face was red, and the sounds she was making were nothing short of animal. It was horrifying. He couldn’t imagine a circumstance under which he would touch her ever again. No; it was good that they were having both their children at once. This way, it would be over and done with.

A slap; a wail; and the doctor’s voice proudly proclaiming, “It’s another healthy baby girl!”

Serena fainted.

Chester envied her.

• • • •

Later, when Serena was tucked safe in her private room with Chester beside her and the nurses asked if they wanted to meet their daughters, they said yes, of course. How could they have said anything different? They were parents now, and parenthood came with expectations. Parenthood came with rules. If they failed to meet those expectations, they would be labeled unfit in the eyes of everyone they knew, and the consequences of that, well . . .

They were unthinkable.

The nurses returned with two pink-faced, hairless things that looked more like grubs or goblins than anything human. “One for each of you,” twinkled a nurse, and handed Chester a tight-swaddled baby like it was the most ordinary thing in the world.

“Have you thought about names?” asked another, handing Serena the second infant.

“My mother’s name was Jacqueline,” said Serena cautiously, glancing at Chester. They had discussed names, naturally, one for a girl, one for a boy. They had never considered the need to name two girls.

“Our head partner’s wife is named Jillian,” said Chester. He could claim it was his mother’s name if he needed to. No one would know. No one would ever know.

“Jack and Jill,” said the first nurse, with a smile. “Cute.”

“Jacqueline and Jillian,” corrected Chester frostily. “No daughter of mine will go by something as base and undignified as a nickname.”

The nurse’s smile faded. “Of course not,” she said, when what she really meant was “of course they will,” and “you’ll see soon enough.”

Serena and Chester Wolcott had fallen prey to the dangerous allure of other people’s children. They would learn the error of their ways soon enough. People like them always did.

Chapter 2: Practically Perfect in Virtually No Ways

The Wolcotts lived in a house at the top of a hill in the middle of a fashionable neighborhood where every house looked alike. The homeowner’s association allowed for three colors of exterior paint (two colors too many, in the minds of many of the residents), a strict variety of fence and hedge styles around the front lawn, and small, relatively quiet dogs from a very short list of breeds. Most residents elected not to have dogs, rather than deal with the complicated process of filling out the permits and applications required to own one.

All of this conformity was designed not to strangle but to comfort, allowing the people who lived there to relax into a perfectly ordered world. At night, the air was quiet. Safe. Secure.

Save, of course, for the Wolcott home, where the silence was split by healthy wails from two sets of developing lungs. Serena sat in the dining room, staring blankly at the two screaming babies.

“You’ve had a bottle,” she informed them. “You’ve been changed. You’ve been walked around the house while I bounced you and sang that dreadful song about the spider. Why are you still crying?”

Jacqueline and Jillian, who were crying for some of the many reasons that babies cry—they were cold, they were distressed, they were offended by the existence of gravity—continued to wail. Serena stared at them in dismay. No one had told her that babies would cry all the time. Oh, there had been comments about it in the books she’d read, but she had assumed that they were simply referring to bad parents who failed to take a properly firm hand with their offspring.

“Can’t you shut them up?” demanded Chester from behind her. She didn’t have to turn to know that he was standing in the doorway in his dressing gown, scowling at all three of them—as if it were somehow her fault that babies seemed designed to scream without cease! He had been complicit in the creation of their daughters, but now that they were here, he wanted virtually nothing to do with them.

“I’ve been trying,” she said. “I don’t know what they want, and they can’t tell me. I don’t . . . I don’t know what to do.”

Chester had not slept properly in three days. He was starting to fear the moment when it would impact his work and catch the attention of the partners, painting him and his parenting abilities in a poor light. Perhaps it was desperation, or perhaps it was a moment of rare and impossible clarity.

“I’m calling my mother,” he said.

Chester Wolcott was the youngest of three children: by the time he had come along, the mistakes had been made, the lessons had been learned, and his parents had been comfortable with the process of parenting. His mother was an unforgivably soppy, impractical woman, but she knew how to burp a baby, and perhaps by inviting her now, while Jacqueline and Jillian were too young to be influenced by her ideas about the world, they could avoid inviting her later, when she might actually do some damage.

Serena would normally have objected to the idea of her mother-in-law invading her home, setting everything out of order. With the babies screaming and the house already in disarray, all she could do was nod.

Chester made the call first thing in the morning.

Louise Wolcott arrived on the train eight hours later.

By the standards of anyone save for her ruthlessly regimented son, Louise was a disciplined, orderly woman. She liked the world to make sense and follow the rules. By the standards of her son, she was a hopeless dreamer. She thought the world was capable of kindness; she thought people were essentially good and only waiting for an opportunity to show it.

She took a taxi from the train station to the house, because of course picking her up would have been a disruption to an already-disrupted schedule. She rang the bell, because of course giving her a key would have made no sense at all. Her eyes lit up when Serena answered the door, a baby in each arm, and she didn’t even notice that her daughter-in-law’s hair was uncombed, or that there were stains on the collar of her blouse. The things Serena thought were most important in the world held no relevance to Louise. Her attention was focused entirely on the babies.

“There they are,” she said, as if the twins had been the subject of a global manhunt spanning years. She slipped in through the open door without waiting for an invitation, putting her suitcases down next to the umbrella stand (where they did not compliment the décor) before holding out her arms. “Come to Grandma,” she said.

Serena would normally have argued. Serena would normally have insisted on offering coffee, tea, a place to put her bags where no one would have to see them. Serena, like her husband, had not slept a full night since coming home from the hospital.

“Welcome to our home,” she said, and dumped both babies unceremoniously into Louise’s arms before turning and walking up the stairs. The slam of the bedroom door followed a second later.

Louise blinked. She looked down at the babies. They had left off crying for the moment and were looking at her with wide, curious eyes. Their world was as yet fairly limited, and everything about it was new. Their grandmother was the newest thing of all. Louise smiled.

“Hello, darlings,” she said. “I’m here now.”

She would not leave for another five years.

Copyright © 2017 by Seanan McGuire. Excerpted from Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire. Published by permission of the author and Tor.com Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seanan McGuire was born and raised in Northern California, resulting in a love of rattlesnakes and an absolute terror of weather. She shares a crumbling old farmhouse with a variety of cats, far too many books, and enough horror movies to be considered a problem. Seanan publishes about three books a year, and is widely rumored not to actually sleep. When bored, Seanan tends to wander into swamps and cornfields, which has not yet managed to get her killed (although not for lack of trying). She also writes as Mira Grant, filling the role of her own evil twin, and tends to talk about horrible diseases at the dinner table.

EXCERPT: Never Now Always (Broken Eye Books)

Desirina Boskovich | 1545 words

In this now, a looming space with herds of frightened children, ragged breath and staring eyes, moving across the concrete floor. Shivering and much afraid.

Overhead, the roof is almost too far removed to see, where darkness gathers among the metal rafters.

We huddle close, one to another against the cold and windy drafts. It comes to me: this warehouse is larger than an airplane hangar. There are enough children in this place to populate another world.

And I am with my sister, Tess. We are together as we’ve been now all along. I hold her hand tight as can be. I am still the youngest, though only slightly smaller. I need her badly, as she needs me. We cling to each other and wait to see what days or times will come. And though my heart is beating hard and fast and my breath is coming quick, though my throat is hard and tight and shivers rattle through my trembling frame, I know we are together. This we have, at least.

I have forgotten all befores. Already, I cannot remember how we came to be inside this massive loft nor what happened to allow this circumstance. I recognize no faces among the crying, bleating children.

The Caretakers emerge into the room from some door we cannot see. So many, more than we’ve ever seen before, all congregated in one place. They stream in all directions like a horde of insects, like a nest of ants disturbed.

Tess and I cling still tighter, determined that we should not be separated. They will not pry our hands apart.

As the Caretakers approach, they bring overwhelming dread with them like a nightmare, a gross and creeping cloud. They make the edges of my sight feel dim and dark and fogged. My stomach churns, and all this story swirls along the edges. A rushing in my ears. A conviction that the world must end.

The Caretakers grip some kind of tool and press it to the forehead of each child. It whirs and grinds and emits a glare of light. With beeps and whistles, this scanner tells them something.

Tess and I watch all this with trepidation.

Until the Caretakers come to us. They scan her head, then mine, with a tickling, prickling presence just past the edges of my brain. It’s like a shadow creeping close. It doesn’t hurt. But it makes my stomach flip-flop, feel strange.

They point their pale and clammy fingers at our entwined sister hands. They do not speak. They can’t. Nonetheless, we grasp their point: let go our fingers. We refuse.

The two of them with damp and bony hands grip fast the two of us. They clamp our hands. They are stronger than they look: limp and moist but forceful. They pry apart our fingers, and though we shriek and flail, there’s little we can do. We are separated. We are two.

Grabbing fast to my right hand so tight it hurts, the Caretaker splays apart my fingers. He holds my palm to the scanning tool’s hot edge. Fast as lighting, it imprints a symbol on each fingertip. My hand stings, but it’s all too quick to badly hurt.

Soon as this code is imprinted, the Caretaker releases me. It lets go, and I almost fall. I gaze with wonder at my palm, the symbol etched upon each whorl. This blackly purple ink, suspended just beneath the skin as if always part of me.

I look for Tess, to show her, to see if they’ve done the same to her. I look for her, to take her hand in mine.

But she’s gone. In mounting panic, I scan the room. I see only lost and frightened children, so many sobbing faces.

I glimpse her back, her hair. They’re pulling her away. She’s peering over her right shoulder and trying to fight back. But the Caretakers drag her forward.

I lose sight of her amongst all the other roiling kids.

I take off in a run. I swerve and dodge, not bothering to say, Excuse me, tripping and falling more than once but pushing on. With force of sorrow, I will this crowd to part for me.

Once past this wave of children, I reach these towering glass cubes. Four walls, one roof, perfectly encased, this massive cage all made of glass.

There are six—seven—ten—twelve—too many to count. Each fills up with children as the Caretakers sort all kids into these vast transparent hulls.

I see in time, just soon enough, as Tess is herded in this glass. The crate is filled with children, all teeming, frightened, stampeding. I run as fast as I can, tripping over all and sundry, to get into this same box.

Before I’m there, the door slides shut. The edges seal.

This glass is now impermeable, as if those doors were never there at all.

I run around all sides, panting, frantic, heaving, searching for an opening. Instead, I see my sister, looking sadly through the glass. I stand on one side; she on the other.

I slap the glass with mournsome sobs and rage that I can’t break through. She does not rage. It’s not her way. She’s still and quiet as a marble statue.

She places her palm flat against the glass. On the tips of her fingers, I see her own black-purple code. Five symbols.

These letters or numbers or icons—whatever they are, these ideograms—they are emblazoned deep and pure upon my brain. This stark and graven image remains when nothing else remains. This awful vision I will not ever shake.

Then there’s a sort of grinding, a sound like—a steel ship hull run aground into a granite cliff? A grating sound like this. The floor opens up, becomes a tunnel or a well or a massive shaft into a cave. Her glass box drops, descends, is sucked away. And with it Tess.

But now I know: the tattoo etched into her fingertips is inscribed inside my heart. I don’t know what the symbols mean. But I know how they look.

This piece I can record. This knowledge I can keep.

• • • •

It comes to me.

There are whole hours, perhaps whole days, when I forget this code carved on my fingertips. It is with me like breathing. It calls me hither and yon; it summons me to take my lunch tray in my turn, to bring myself to memory rooms like a pirate walks a plank. These things I do without quite knowing. Sleepwalking, here and there.

Then, sometimes, I turn my palm and gaze in wonderment at these characters.

One breakfast, I cup my palm and look. It’s there, of course. There all along. My breath catches quick.

I see it for what it is: my own monogram. Written on my body, which must hold all of me, all that I feel and know, however little this might be. This code my own.

And in this moment, I notice—for the first time? Nothing here is for the first time, that I’m sure—I notice the first symbol, etched into my thumb, is the same that hovers on the wall of every space in our rapt children’s lair.

I look to that hologram and back to my first stubby finger.

Hasty and ill-mannered, I grab Gor’s hand, knocking his flimsy fork away. (Ever good-natured, Gor does not reproach, just scoops his morsels with his other hand, eating lumps with fingers bare.) I turn his palm upward, compare his tattoo to my own. His thumb’s the same. This symbol, we share.

My thoughts grow quick. I run from kid to kid, grabbing hands, comparing. I do not tell them what I think. This secret is my own.

We share the same mark on our thumbs. It marks our territory, what places we can travel without rousing thoughts of buried traumas.

This now, I know. I know this map, the map that leads to her.

Before I leave, I bow beside the breakfast table and palm that fallen fork. I slip it up my sleeve. I do not need this fork. It has no urgent attributes nor skills. But I know now what it is to own something, to save one small token for myself. The feel is sweet.

I sneak back to my bunk. I pull back my mat to reveal the secret stash: things I’ve nabbed to be all my own. Syringe, first. My own first property. Then other bits and bobs: some strips of cloth from undershirts. A stolen block. A purloined spoon. A pilfered sweet, now surely stale.

My fork now joins the hoard.

Stretched out flat, I study the code etched in flaking rust upon the wall.

This is all I have. This is all I know.

Somehow, it must guide me.

Copyright © 2017 by Desirina Boskovich. Excerpted from Never Now Always by Desirina Boskovich. Published by permission of the author and Broken Eye Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Desirina Boskovich has published fiction in Lightspeed, Nightmare, Realms of Fantasy, Fantasy Magazine, and Clarkesworld, and in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Aliens: Recent Encounters, and Last Drink Bird Head. She is also the editor of the anthology It Came From the North: An Anthology of Finnish Speculative Fiction and is an ’07 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop. Find her online at desirinaboskovich.com.

Book Review: June 2017

Amal El-Mohtar | 1353 words

Amberlough
Lara Donnelly
Hardcover / Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 9780765383815
Tor Books, February 2017
400 pages

As the present US administration’s modelling of old-school fascism dips into self-parody—two days into Passover saw Sean Spicer claim that Hitler “never gassed his own people”—well-meaning folk keep finding new ways to discuss whether or not it’s all right to punch Nazis.

So this month I want to write about Lara Elena Donnelly’s Amberlough.

The last in-depth review I did of a single book for this column was of Fran Wilde’s Cloudbound, during which I marvelled at how well it anticipated our current problems with populist demagoguery, media manipulation, and fake news. It was very much about how a single, profoundly united society could fracture along its fault-lines into civil war while the environment it takes for granted begins to crumble. Amberlough makes an interesting point of comparison: The four federated states of Gedda begin as diverse, semi-autonomous entities, and the novel charts the fall of decadent, liberal, politically regional Amberlough to Tatié’s conservative and aggressively unifying One State Party (called Ospies). Focused on spies, smugglers, and cabaret performers, Amberlough’s particularly interested in the complicity and resistance of those who tell lies in the spotlight in order to operate honestly in society’s shadows.

Cyril DePaul is a bored spy from a wealthy family, and wears the trauma of past fieldwork in a scar across his stomach. Aristide Makricosta is a smuggler and wildly popular emcee at the Bumble Bee Cabaret, and has worked hard to disguise his class and ethnic origins in the big city. Cordelia Lehane is a sharp, streetwise performer, and makes ends meet by being the Bumble Bee’s top dancer while dealing drugs on the side.

In spite of being on opposite sides of the law, Cyril and Aristide are lovers, for whom part of the thrill is keeping each other on their toes. But things go wrong when Cyril’s higher-ups send him out of state and back into the field to gather evidence of the Ospies’ electoral fraud in order to discredit their leader: Cover blown, Cyril agrees to be a double agent, offering to hand them control of Amberlough’s police force in exchange for exit visas when the jackboots come to town. But part of the price is to appear morally unobjectionable to the Ospies until then—so Aristide recruits Cordelia to be Cyril’s beard.

I haven’t seen any iteration of Cabaret—neither film nor stage production—so in spite of it probably being the most natural comparison, it’s not one I’ll be making. Instead I want to say how beautifully Amberlough nails everything to do with performance—the clash of personalities, the energy and power of being on stage, the magic that transforms the tawdry into the tremendous, and the audience’s desire to touch it and be transformed in turn. The Bumble Bee is the beating heart of Donnelly’s depiction of the city: Everything to do with late nights, late mornings, rickety commutes, and inadvisable assignations felt real enough to taste.

Donnelly’s prose is as dextrous and elegant as the performers she describes. Descriptions of food, coffee, and cologne linger with me long after I’ve turned the pages; characters read, touch, breathe, and taste each other with the immediacy and intensity of the theatre. I loved, too, that Amberlough City’s geography felt lived in and rigorously sketched, in everything from the streetcars to the invented, regionally inflected slang. In terms of sensory experience and evocation of the demimonde, Amberlough is superb.

Where I have difficulty with it is where I have difficulties with Nazis—and where I wonder, as with Cloudbound, about how much our post-November world affects and afflicts my reading.

My problem with Amberlough—an unfortunately substantial one, given its centrality to the story—is almost entirely down to Cyril’s motivation and character. Cyril loves Amberlough and hates the Ospies; both these facts are established far more effectively than the cowardice to which he frequently refers but seldom exhibits. It’s cowardice, claims Cyril, that makes him choose to dismantle his city for the Ospies; it’s cowardice that makes him sell out the people he cares about to save his own skin, and the skin of the person he cares most about.

But Cyril is wealthy, privileged, and with diplomatic family connections; surely if all he wanted was to save himself, he could have done so immediately on returning to Amberlough? The middle chunk of the book is concerned with showing Cyril getting slowly tangled in the puppet strings of his spycraft in order to undermine his intelligence agency and turn the ACPD over to the Ospies, at great risk to himself—why do all that if he’s a coward? Why not put those skills (again, more told than shown—both Aristide and Cordelia are orders of magnitude more competent players of the game than Cyril is) to work for Amberlough?

Which leads to the main problem I have with the book: If the inevitability of the Ospie takeover is meant to motivate Cyril to enable the Ospie takeover, then it wasn’t inevitable at all. Reading Amberlough was an exercise in admiring the beautiful choreography of the main characters’ respective deceits without being able to suspend my disbelief about the plot. Cyril’s betrayal is meant to be tragic, something he loathes doing every step of the way—but he never stops doing it until there’s absolutely nothing he can accomplish by turning on the Ospies. He repeatedly sabotages his betrayal on his friends’ behalf, which begs the question of why he’s working to betray them in the first place, instead of helping them fight.

It’s possible that I’m simply not in the right frame of mind to have sympathy for collaborators. It’s possible that I would have loved this book better if it were centered on Cordelia or Aristide, if it foregrounded their own ambitions and motivations instead of making them ancillary to Cyril’s. They’re all excellent characters, and they play gorgeously together, but the weakest link is the most load-bearing.

One of the most effective scenes in the book has the performers of the Bumble Bee rallying together to tell the owner that the show must go on in spite of the loss of their lead satirist at the Ospies’ hands; everyone is terrified and grieving, but decide, together, to fight by whatever means they can. It’s a scene I love not only for the commitment to resistance, but because the threat there is so real, so visceral; what’s at stake is their livelihood and the wholeness of their bodies. I would have sympathised with any of them for choosing not to fight; I might have sympathised with Cyril if he’d faced anything like the same danger when he turned traitor. But the Bumble Bee performers face the danger they do as a consequence of Cyril’s smoothing the entry of the Ospies into the city.

Perhaps, however inadvertently, this is Amberlough’s statement: The Nazis can’t win without well-to-do, cowardly collaborators. They can’t win without manipulation and deceit from those who should know better than to work against their own interests.

At time of writing, Donald Trump has fired missiles at Syria and dropped the largest non-nuclear bomb in the US arsenal on Afghanistan for the sake of keeping up appearances. Waiting until the Nazis take over before fighting the Nazis is as effective a tactic as helping the Nazis in the hope of fleeing the Nazis.

It’s something we’d all do well to keep in mind.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amal El-Mohtar’s essays have appeared in Chicks Unravel Time, Queers Dig Time Lords, Science Fiction Film & Television, Apex, Stone Telling, The Outpost, Cascadia Subduction Zone, and Tor.com. She reviews books for NPR, edits and publishes the poetry in Goblin Fruit, is a Nebula-nominated author and founding member of the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours, and has been known to deadlift other genre professionals. Find her on Twitter @tithenai.

Movie Review: June 2017

Carrie Vaughn | 1664 words

Colossal: A Most Satisfying Tale of Redemption and Giant Monsters

Colossal
Written and directed by Nacho Vigalondo
Toy Fight Productions, April 2017

Colossal, written and directed by Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigolando, mashes up two film genres that shouldn’t go together, but it turns out they totally do. First, it displays full mastery of the conventions of the giant monster movie, including breathless infodumpy newscasts and small children falling in the street as the beast approaches. Also on display: full mastery of the conventions of the indie comedy in which directionless alcoholics fuck up everything.

The first scene takes place in a park in Seoul. Late one night, a young girl is looking for her lost doll. She glances up and sees the silhouette of a massive creature, its head jutting above the skyline of the city. She screams.

In the second scene (twenty-five years later, we’re told), Gloria (Anne Hathaway, who has never quite fit into sweetheart roles precisely because of her talent for pulling off quirky characters like this) stumbles into her boyfriend’s apartment after an all-night bender, calling out excuses for herself even before she’s finished pulling her key from the lock. Her boyfriend (Dan Stevens, who is having a very good year and it’s only April) promptly kicks her out. He already has her bags packed. Seems Gloria does this kind of thing a lot. She flees to the small town where she grew up to hide away in the now-empty family home. The first person she meets is Oscar, a guy she knew back in school. He offers her a job at the bar he owns. It’s unclear whether there was ever anything romantic between them. Conventions of the romance genre suggest there might have been. But the story quickly goes off any conventional rail.

After a bender in the bar, Gloria hauls her air mattress through a nearby playground, gets home, passes out, and awakes to the horrifying news that a giant monster has stomped through Seoul, causing mass destruction and inspiring global panic. The general horror, the way that the bar is packed with people watching the footage over and over again on the big screen, feels genuine.

Then it happens again, right after Gloria has once again stomped through the playground on her drunken way home. Moreover, the creature displays one of Gloria’s distinctive nervous ticks: idly scratching the top of its head. She tries an experiment: She goes to the playground the next morning, at exactly the same time (we know it’s the same time, it’s right when kids are walking to school), stands in the playground, and executes a series of gestures that can’t possibly be coincidence. And yes, it’s true, Gloria is somehow controlling the actions of this terrible monster.

But there’s more. After yet another all-night bender, she hauls Oscar and friends to the playground to prove what’s happening. She falls over (which is horrifying to her—hundreds die because of her drunken clumsiness, and she stops drinking entirely), Oscar runs over to help—and a giant robot appears next to the giant monster.

So now Gloria and Oscar have something in common, yeah?

The solution should be easy. In order to stop the destruction, they simply need to never, ever step into the playground at 8:05 ever again. Right? Well. It turns out Oscar is a raging asshole, and the film immediately stops being a romcom. It’s kind of brilliant.

My favorite thing this movie does is dismantle the trope of the woman who goes away to the City to make it big, fails, and comes crawling back to her small town to lick her wounds, where she promptly runs into the Guy She Knew Before. Most of the time, this is the setup for a romance in which the woman overcomes her hubris to realize the small town and the small-town guy she left behind aren’t so bad. They fall madly in love, everyone grows and learns, ta-da and the end.

For the first half, Colossal makes us think this is what we’re getting. A silly, happy story in which everyone will learn and grow and check into rehab and so on. Then it deftly, in the space of a scene, turns into a domestic horror movie. Oscar resents Gloria for ever leaving town in the first place. When she tries to leave again, or even strike up relationships with other people, he threatens her. And the threat is dire: Every time she doesn’t do exactly what he tells her to, he will go to the playground and visit his robot doppelgänger on the city, killing thousands, and it will be her fault.

This is the classic line of the textbook abuser: He only hurts her because she won’t listen to him. This section of the film probably should come with a trigger warning, the depiction of this abuse cycle is so vivid and raw. She physically tries to stop Oscar from entering the playground, and he beats her. It’s clear that Oscar isn’t some obsessive stalker who thinks he loves Gloria. No, he enjoys controlling her because it’s the only power he has and he’s going to use it. Gloria briefly succumbs to helpless despair, and at this point I was afraid the story wasn’t going to be able to figure out how to end without killing her off. Happily, though, she figures it out. For all her many faults she’s a problem solver, doing everything from mapping the city of Seoul over the playground so she knows exactly where she’s stomping and can avoid people, to getting a Korean translation of an apology that she can write in the dirt. She’s an active protagonist who triumphs, and the film sticks the landing beautifully. I don’t want to give away exactly what happens because it’s wonderful and juicy and satisfying and Oscar gets exactly what’s coming to him. (Comic actor Jason Sudeikis plays Oscar, and he pivots incredibly well from the gosh-gee schlubby potential love interest to holy-shit scary abuser.)

The metaphor of untreated, out-of-control alcoholics becoming monsters that unwittingly destroy everything around them is obvious. Fortunately, there’s a whole lot more going on here. One way I judge movies that use genre conventions as metaphors is whether or not they make an attempt to explain the genre elements on their own terms and not handwave them away. (An example of a genre-adjacent film that never made it past metaphor: Another Earth (2011) gives us the intriguing image of a second, alternate Earth appearing in the sky of our own Earth. Characters explore the idea of how their lives might have gone differently on this other Earth, whether they might be happier there. In the end, the film is emotionally manipulative and completely ignores all real-world physical implications of having an Earth-sized planet so close. At the moment, I can’t even remember how it ended.) Colossal solves its conflict and brings about its very satisfying ending by using its genre elements, not in spite of them. Gloria figures out the practical set of steps she needs to accomplish to stop Oscar, and she does it. She also learns what brought about this astonishingly unbelievable set of circumstances in the first place: Twenty-five years before, on the future location of the playground, at exactly 8:05, Oscar the bully stomped to pieces Gloria’s school-project diorama of Seoul at the moment a freak bolt of lightning struck them both. It’s a little bit ridiculous, but it’s also entirely within the spirit of the story, or any story that conjures kaiju from nuclear blasts or rifts in the ocean floor. My point is the situation isn’t handwaved into existence, or out of existence. The whole story can be regarded as metaphor, but it also handles these elements on their own terms, and I appreciate that.

One of my fears going into this was another obvious metaphorical set up: The clueless white woman whose actions destroy lives on the other side of the world without her even realizing it. Would the film be aware of this possible interpretation? Would it even be concerned with the fate of Seoul, or would the city be little more than a McGuffin sacrificed to Gloria’s tale of redemption? In fact, the movie begins and ends on the ground in Seoul, getting up close to the damage and the faces of the victims. The minute she understands what’s happening, Gloria is devastated at the harm she’s caused, and her primary goal moving forward is to prevent any more damage. The people around her, not so much. When the appearances of the monster and the robot become predictable, people outside of Seoul tune in to watch mecha-kaiju battles like it’s any other monster movie. So the film is aware of this particular set of metaphors and plays on them as much as all its other metaphors.

The middle of the film drags, maybe indulging too much in the indie-arthouse side of its heritage with long scenes of characters conducting long conversations that don’t really move the story forward. There’s a super-awkward seduction storyline with Gloria and a side character that mostly serves to give Oscar a reason to flip his asshole switch, and remind us that yes, Gloria is no saint herself. But as I said, the film’s denouement is so satisfying that it makes up for my quibbles. A movie like Colossal is a perfect counterpoint to the summer SFX superheroes-and-explosions blockbuster extravaganza we’re gearing up for. Sometimes you just want a story about a woman who is also a monster trying to do the right thing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series, about a werewolf who hosts a talk radio advice show. Her newest novel is a planetary adventure, Martians Abroad. Bannerless, a post-apocalyptic murder mystery, will be released by John Joseph Adams Books in July 2017. Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, from Lightspeed to Tor.com and George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. She lives in Colorado with a fluffy attack dog. Learn more at carrievaughn.com.

Interview: Yoon Ha Lee

Christian A. Coleman | 4047 words

Yoon Ha Lee is a writer and mathematician from Houston, Texas, whose work has appeared in Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and The Magazine Of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He has published over forty short stories, and his critically acclaimed collection, Conservation of Shadows, was released in 2013. He lives in Louisiana with his family and an extremely lazy cat, and has not yet been eaten by gators.

• • • •

The Machineries of Empire series is your very first. Tell us what the experience has been like writing Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem.

Kind of a rollercoaster! I almost quit so many times when I was originally writing the first book, Ninefox Gambit. I have bipolar disorder and struggle a lot with depression, and I often questioned whether it was worth sinking the time into writing a novel as opposed to more short stories. I knew by then that I could sell short stories. I had no guarantee that I could write a novel that made any sense. Raven Stratagem went more easily, in the sense that I had one completed novel behind me, even if it hadn’t yet sold at the time, and I was eager to tackle its plot.

The original impetus for creating the world of these novels was wanting to tackle a big space opera plot with more room for characterization than I typically got in a short story. It was hard at first: I’m not used to spending so long in the same world, and at times it felt claustrophobic. On the other hand, after a certain point it was nice to be working in a familiar setting, rather than having to create everything from scratch like I do with short stories!

When did you notice or feel you had honed your voice? Was it before or after you made short story and poetry sales?

I think it developed during the process of learning to write. Early on, I aimed for a very clear, very transparent style in imitation of writers like Piers Anthony. Then I discovered Patricia McKillip and Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelazny, and they blew my head open in terms of how language can be used. Part of it was also subject matter. After reading Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game for the first time, I realized that what I wanted to write about, most of all, was military ethics. That was sometime in high school, and my writing shaped itself accordingly after that.

How has the overall reaction to Ninefox Gambit been from readers?

Very bimodal! From what I can tell, most people either love it or hate it. There were some narrative decisions I made that I knew would not be popular with some readers. For example, because the two main characters, Cheris and Jedao, are making command decisions from the very top, I chose to use throwaway viewpoint characters to depict the “boots on the ground” perspective and show the consequences of decisions that are abstract from a general’s perspective. Some readers really like to tunnel into a smaller number of characters and get close to them, and I knew that I would be losing people who like to read that way. For another, I used minimal exposition. I remember really enjoying C.J. Cherryh’s Faded Sun books because they’re told in a similar way, leading to this great sense of immersion, but some readers prefer to have the world spelled out for them. On the other hand, other readers liked those very things. There are always trade-offs.

General Shuos Jedao is a compelling and charismatic trickster figure. That goes for Captain Kel Cheris as well. Why did you want to put trickster characters at the center of space-faring battles and governmental intrigue?

Jedao’s situation by the time we meet him in Ninefox Gambit is that he’s literally nothing but a voice, and he has an agenda that amounts to high treason. The success of his mission depends on him being able to lie convincingly. One of the things he teaches Cheris in the course of that book is guile.

It’s funny—ordinarily trickster characters drive me up the wall and I frequently find them annoying. But in this case I found them necessary. I reread Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (the translation by Lionel Giles) as part of the research for this series, and it seemed to me that the way I’d stacked up the odds against both Cheris and Jedao made it impossible for a head-on approach to succeed for them in pursuing their goals of revolution. So they’d have to fight smart—fight tricky, and dirty—rather than doing the Charge of the Light Brigade thing.

Many of your characters are motivated by redemption. In Raven Stratagem, General Jedao—if we are to believe him—wants to right the wrongs he committed in Ninefox Gambit. Is redemption a theme that’s important to you, even outside of the military setting of these novels?

I think it’s a theme that’s hard for me to escape. Even though there are cockamamie Asians in the setting of these books, I attended a Christian high school, and I took a couple of Bible classes. (I’m agnostic now, though.) The way redemption is presented here really owes more to that background than to anything specifically Asian.

In Raven Stratagem, you also seem preoccupied with the idea of the double. Shuos Mikodez hires his sibling Istradez to act as his double at governmental meetings. Captain Cheris becomes General Jedao’s double when he possesses her. Where does that come from?

For me, it’s just a more efficient way of making use of characters. I feel that major characters should either be wildly different from each other so that they are easy to tell apart, or that they should be doubled or otherwise connected so that readers can see how they refract each other. Cheris and Jedao would be good examples of the former: They’re almost polar opposites. For the latter, I am personally fond of the Jungian idea of the animus/anima.

Your exploration of the double is also connected to the way you envision immortality. Immortality entails being turned into a ghost and then being anchored to someone who’s alive. The ghost, though, is kept in what you call a black cradle. Jedao escapes the confines of his black cradle by possessing Cheris. Do you think immortality would be as dreadful as the governmental officials in your series make it out to be?

I will own that immortality sounds to me like hell on Earth. If you offered it to me, I would turn it down. So that’s my personal philosophy coming through. I don’t want an afterlife either. I will be content to wink out into nonexistence when I die. My feeling is that we live, we die, we make space for those who follow us, and so the cycle continues.

The technology in Machineries of Empire is based on calendars. The government, called the hexarchate, enforces strict timekeeping, because as long as everyone uses the same calendar, it enables one set of technologies. You’ve mentioned you got the idea from reading Marcia Ascher’s ethnomathematics book Mathematics Elsewhere and Harlan Ellison’s “Paladin of the Lost Hour.” I was wondering if you could tell us more about the ideas you took from Ascher and Ellison to come up with this system.

I don’t own Ascher’s book anymore (it was a flood casualty from last year), but from what I recall, she spends a section of the book talking about different ways that different cultures construct time and keep track of the year. One of the coolest ones, although I didn’t use it, involves a society that uses the yearly cycle of bioluminescent sea critters to let them know when to reset their year, or something like that. It made me think about how timekeeping relies on a set of agreed social conventions.

I last read “Paladin of the Lost Hour” in high school, so it’s been a while, but if I recall correctly, it concerns the guardian of an hour that was “lost” during all the shenanigans in converting between the Julian and Gregorian calendars. It just struck me as incredibly interesting that something that I had took for granted until then, timekeeping, could be something that people had fought over.

As an SF/F writer who majored in math, you’ve stated that math isn’t just about arithmetic and computation; it’s also about argumentation. What can you tell us about the math you use in this series?

To be honest, the actual math in Ninefox Gambit is pretty minimal. I was going to come up with the equivalent of an applied algebra game engine for the calendrical warfare, but my husband talked me out of it on the grounds that none of my readers was going to sit still for that much math. (To be clear, my husband is not afraid of math; he has a doctorate in astrophysics from MIT, and he actually uses math on a daily basis. But he is also a science fiction reader.) While perhaps not one hundred percent true, he was correct to the extent that my agent and I almost couldn’t find a publisher for Ninefox—even with the minimal actual math in it, several publishers turned it down for having “too much math.” There’s honestly more security engineering than math. (I read Ross Anderson’s Security Engineering twice for inspiration.)

That being said, one of the battles in Raven Stratagem uses a bit of watered down information theory, plus my memory of working with codecs back when I made fanvids. And the third book, Revenant Gun, will have a brief discussion of prime factorization and cryptology (thanks especially to Andrew Plotkin and Helen Keeble for their thoughts on the matter!).

How did you get interested in mathematics?

I hated math until ninth grade, when I had geometry. Up until then it looked like a bunch of arbitrary and tedious memorization and computation. Geometry introduced me to proofs, and then I understood that math didn’t just fall out of the sky, it came from somewhere. I am more of a mathematical Platonist, so I have this weird conviction that math is uncovered rather than invented, but still.

I also liked to read nonfiction about science, so I naturally wound up in the math section of the library. There I would read books about fractals, chaos theory, fuzzy (multivalent) logic, artificial intelligence, cryptology, and so on. I became hooked on the beauty of math and how it expresses the structures of the universe.

Linguistics forms an active part of the worldbuilding. What I like most is that the languages your characters speak are clearly not derived from English or other Western languages. You can tell by the details: animate and inanimate forms of words, suffix honorifics, social hierarchy indicated through conjugations. What language or languages is your future linguistics based on?

Korean, mostly, although Korean does not (to my knowledge) have an animate-inanimate distinction. I thought it would be interesting to have noun classes (or grammatical genders) that weren’t the familiar Western masculine, feminine, (sometimes) neuter. (I’ve taken some French, a little German, and a little Latin, although I am by no means fluent in any of them.) Like Japanese, which is more familiar to most Westerners (yay, anime?), Korean has suffix honorifics and different formality levels encoded on the verb.

I haven’t bothered doing much of a conlang (constructed language) sketch for the high language, because it would be an enormous timesuck, but besides the above, I know it’s written with a featural code not unlike the Korean alphabet, although probably not organized in syllabic blocks, because the high language doesn’t have as neat a syllable structure. And the alphabet is written vertically, not horizontally. It doesn’t generally inflect for number, so when Hexarch Kel Tsoro always refers to herself as “we,” because she’s speaking for the Kel hivemind, she’s actually using an archaic form of the first person pronoun from an earlier version of the language that did inflect for number.

You return many times to flower imagery throughout Raven Stratagem. During one spectacular battle scene, the invading enemy, the Hafn, create flower formations with their battle crafts. Some hexarchate ships have names such as Beneath the Orchid. Would you like to say anything about that?

The longer version of that story is that the Andan emblem is flower-based (the kniferose) and they are the ones who use a lot of flower imagery. Beneath the Orchid has a flower name because it’s an Andan ship. The Kel currently have an antipathy for the Andan. Basically, the Kel are the military and are in the business of fighting heretics, and they tend to be xenophobic fascists. The Andan are responsible for the hexarchate’s finance, first contact, culture, and diplomacy, so they’re the ones who deal with foreigners, and they’re the ones most likely to be xenophilic. The Kel find this very suspicious and don’t trust the Andan: A Kel thinks that a foreigner is basically the same thing as a heretic, so people who deal with foreigners aren’t much better. The Hafn formations are given flower names by the Kel sort of as a gesture of contempt, because flowers have that negative connotation for the Kel.

(If you’re thinking that the Kel aren’t nice people, that’s correct, although given that the Andan superpower is mind control, they’re not exactly saints, either.)

Seeing how changing gender is commonplace in your far-future setting, what appears to be absent is gender performance—at least in Judith Butler’s definition of the term in her book Gender Trouble. For example, while General Jedao possesses Captain Cheris, he’s recognizable in her body not because of his maleness but because of his Jedao-ness. Similarly, Lieutenant Colonel Kel Brezan, though male, presents physically as female. Another character, Shuos Zehun, goes by the singular they pronoun and has no discernible gender at all. Is this a statement of how far-future military culture neutralizes gender, or are you perhaps foreseeing a future gender-neutral society?

I honestly wasn’t trying to make a statement as such. Rather, it seemed to me that it shouldn’t be automatic that even a dystopia as horrible as the hexarchate—and I mean, as far as I’m concerned, the hexarchate is up there in terms of horrible places where I would never want to live—wouldn’t necessarily be equally evil on all axes. So my thought was that gender was one area where they would be relatively egalitarian, not because the society is a good society to live in, but because it’s just not something they culturally care about.

In the hexarchate, advanced handwaved genetic technology plus the “crèches” (artificial wombs) means that women, or anyone else for that matter, can have children without undergoing the pregnancy themselves. The fact that there’s robot slave labor—the servitors—means that there is help with childcare. So, see, this doesn’t come without a cost. The servitors are sentient and most of them are patient with human shenanigans, but the fact remains that human freedom from this kind of labor is built on slavery. Genetic tinkering plus the ability to “mod,” or sculpt your body beyond what you’re born with, minimizes physiological differences between males and females, if one so desires. Basically, all of this is in the background, because I was adamantly not interested in writing a story where gender is a big deal. That’s not to say that stories about gender and sexuality aren’t important—they are—but it wasn’t what I wanted to focus on personally. I was here to blow up spaceships.

When did you decide that you wanted to address issues of gender in your work? Your exploration of gender seems to be a way of acknowledging your trans identity.

It’s funny—I didn’t even see it as an exploration of gender. I wanted to represent different possibilities, yes, so you have characters like Brezan or Tseya or Zehun, but I didn’t, for the most part, want to talk about gender, or make it a plot point. I guess for the longest time I wasn’t even comfortable having trans characters in my own fiction because it cut too close too home. The first time I did that was a story I wrote in sixth grade, and I got into trouble because my teacher saw the story and called my mom and she started trying to get me to be “feminine.” So I’ve been wary ever since, I guess.

You’ve mentioned that when you read works by Jack L. Chalker and Piers Anthony as a teenager, you found their trans representations deeply problematic. Could you tell us what you found problematic?

Well, let me clarify that “trans representation” is maybe a bit misleading. I’m not even sure what the correct technical term is for what they were doing. (I guess I don’t hang out enough on Tumblr?) Chalker wrote, more than once, stories in which characters underwent various transformations, including men being transformed into (usually) very highly sexed, very attractive women. One example is The Identity Matrix. It’s actually a little frustrating, because the more thoughtful aspects of his works (he has a preoccupation with historical processes—he was a history teacher once—that I find fascinating) tend to get swamped by a very exploitative portrayal of female sexuality and subjugation, to say nothing of the misogyny. And I say “trans representation” is maybe not what’s going on here because, generally, the men characters don’t think of themselves as being women before their transformations. Rather, they’re transformed and stuck and have to adjust, possibly with various forms of mind control or brainwashing involved. So I don’t know if that’s exactly what I’d call a depiction of an actual trans person. That being said, what I did find valuable in these books, even if they were far from ideal, was that they depicted worlds in which characters’ physical sex could be changed. It might have been an impossible daydream, but it was one that I found comforting as a teenager when I encountered these books.

In And Eternity, Piers Anthony had a depiction of a woman changed into a man. Again, the woman didn’t think of herself as a man before the transformation, so I wouldn’t really call her a trans person—and taking on stereotypically male personality characteristics due to the magic involved, including being so overcome with lust that he/she/they (???) attempted to rape a friend. Besides the problem with “men can’t help raping women,” the general gender essentialism here bothers me.

Do you have any favorite examples of fiction featuring trans protagonists? And if so, what makes them your favorites?

To be honest, I generally avoid fiction with trans protagonists. Either it’s too close to home, or it’s poorly done, or it’s well done and happy, and the happy ending and/or character just reminds me that I’m not in a good position.

Another one of my favorite aspects of the worldbuilding is the recurring reference to dramas about assassins and killers. Your characters often compare what happens in the dramas to what’s happening to them. What tickles me is the fact that we the readers are technically reading a drama. Is this meta-commentary on space opera and military science fiction?

It’s not just meta-commentary on space opera and military science fiction; it’s meta-commentary on K-dramas and anime. (Ironically, it was my white boyfriend-now-husband who introduced me to anime . . .) It also seemed to me that the characters in the world would have their own forms of cracky entertainment and pop/fannish culture. Cheris likes watching bad dueling shows; a character in the third book, Revenant Gun, likes making fan videos. (I was briefly a vidder, mostly of the Buffyverse, before my computer died and I had to give it up.)

On one level, the dramas seem similar to TV shows or soap operas. On another level, your characters’ familiarity with them makes the dramas seem like mythology that informs their outlook.

Well, perhaps pop culture serves as modern mythology? My husband and I were once deeply involved in a collectible card game with an ongoing storyline called Legend of the Five Rings (L5R). To this day, we can often explain other stories to each other by making references to L5R—perhaps this character in a TV show reminds me of an L5R character or Clan, etc. I’m sure any group of fans with a common knowledge of a narrative could do the same. And that narrative doesn’t have to be fictional. Just listen to any group of sports fans talking together!

Speaking of mythology, in one scene, your Andan character Tseya says this about Jedao: “He’s more of a storybook figure come to life than a threat.” She talks about him as though he’s a character in the dramas.

Historically, the people who have worked with Jedao are Kel and occasionally Shuos. So for Tseya, who hasn’t, he really is more of a drama character than a real person. There actually are (not very accurate) dramas about Jedao’s life, and most of her impressions of Jedao would have been formed from those. (We get to see a snippet of one such drama in book three.)

You’ve spoken a few times about the third book, Revenant Gun. What’s coming up next for Cheris and company?

In book three, Cheris and friends will be going up against the trilogy’s big bad, Nirai Kujen himself, and finding out why Kujen has made the hexarchate the way it is—and even worse, Kujen has his own copy of Jedao for his general. Sleep tight!

Are there any other writing projects you’re working on that you can tell us about?

My current project is a middle grade novel for Disney-Hyperion, Dragon Pearl, which will be one of the books in the forthcoming Rick Riordan Presents line. It’s fantasy space opera with Korean mythology sprinkled in (although I play fast and loose—I mean, it’s already in space, there’s only so much authenticity that’s possible). My heroine is a fox spirit girl searching for her brother, who allegedly deserted from the Space Forces to quest after a magical pearl with the power to terraform worlds and revitalize their dying colony.

After that, I’ll be working on a collection of hexarchate short stories for Solaris (provisionally titled Hexarchate Stories, but that may change). About half the material will be new, and there will probably be a mini-gamebook in which YOU get to play Jedao! Assuming that playing Jedao’s role is something that might entertain you. (Don’t worry. I won’t take offense if you cheat your way through. I used to cheat all the time when I played gamebooks!) And after that, we’ll see.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christian A. Coleman is a 2013 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. He lives and writes in the Boston area. He tweets at @coleman_II.

Author Spotlight: Shweta Narayan

Arley Sorg | 1334 words

This story, which I might describe as fables woven into a wondrous tapestry, is as much about tribe and solidarity in the face of the dangers of a world that is different from one’s own, as it is about heartbreak, betrayal, and loss. Its parts are expertly formed into a whole. Where did it come from? What were its inspirations?

Thank you! But, confession: I winged it, with only a vague sense of the structure, aiming for half the length I got and flailing about side characters turning into Characters on me.

In terms of the form and explicit content, I stole some Northern subcontinental story guts and stuck them in the “World of the Three” described in ancient Tamil literature, as closely as I could manage with my English internet-only research. (I’m two miles from some of the best Tamil Studies folks in the world, but have been too sick to contact them.)  The bird’s been nesting in my brain since 2009, and this is the seventh story she’s in, but before this, humans were always part of the intended audience. So this is me exploring what mechanicals might say when we’re not around—which is a deliberate mirror on marginalized human experiences, but it’s the only thematic aspect that was deliberate. My conscious brain isn’t in charge of that stuff. I was just writing in December 2016-February 2017, as a chronically ill non-citizen US resident with many friends in scary situations, and my feelings got into the story. So your question made me go “sounds legit, those are my themes, yes,” but you probably see them more clearly than I can.

Not surprisingly, given who authored this story, much of the language is poetic and beautiful. While there are various social ideas on discussion in this piece, what I really admire is the sense of humor with which the topics are framed. One of the themes explored is the shifting or changing of the body but retaining, more or less, the mind and personality. I really love the line, “Go find someone you love for more than her jewellery, for that is all a body is to us.” Are concepts of body, identity, and gender personally important to you?

Very much so. The mechanicals’ normalization of fluidity is part wish fulfillment and part trying to teach myself their confidence. I’m agender/genderfluid, diasporic, and chronically ill in ways that mess with my sense of identity and my relation to my body. But around other people I push myself to pass as cis, able, and whatever cultural identity is easiest for them, to the point of changing accents mid-sentence when I look from one person to another. I even used to draw cartoons of myself uncolored, as though I was white, and only realized it in my mid-twenties. I could learn a lot from mechanicals!

I’d never written humor before, but luckily Nakkiran and the monkey set the tone for me, and the stories I’m riffing off are full of puns, tricks, physical slapstick, and snarky social commentary. I even used a traditional motif for Meenatchi’s part, though I added a little . . . local color.

I feel like there are notes in here about traditional ideas of beauty. For example, I loved this description: “Nor were they lying; the elderly queen was splendid. Her face was cracked with wrinkles like land awaiting the rains, her hair flew above like the clouds they wait for, and her expressions shifted quick as lightning.” For me, in reading this, she is definitely aged, definitely majestic, and definitely beautiful; importantly, the wrinkles are an asset to this image. Am I just reading into things? Or is the idea of beauty something you are deliberately addressing?

 One hundred percent deliberate; so was describing Meenatchi’s assistant as “large, dark, and lovely,” and I’m glad it’s noticeable! Ramaa’s humanoid form isn’t intended to be skinny either, but I suspect I didn’t do enough with that, or with a few other attempts.

As fun as they are, a lot of the traditional stories I was researching have Problems when it comes to describing “beautiful women.” Taken individually, they can be funny (legs like lotus stems? Someone get this poor girl to a doctor) but the misogyny (and colorism, ageism, sizeism, cisnormativity, ableism) builds up. So my descriptions are a NOPE at my own cultural traditions, as well as at contemporary versions of these issues.

This piece is strongly grounded in Indian cultures, and, I might even guess (being somewhat naïve), specific Indian cultures. What sorts of challenges, if any, does writing from this perspective present in terms of genre markets and readers?

It turns out that “megalithic-era Tamil Kingdoms with steel, complex trade networks, poets of all classes and genders, and probably indoor plumbing” sounds like speculative fiction to almost everyone, my family included—though that part’s all real! So much of the information has only become generally available in the last couple of years, and the first excavation of a city from this period only started in 2013. So my first challenge was to stop reading all the cool brain-changing stuff and get words down, and the most recent challenge seems to be not infodumping at anyone who’ll listen. The other main one was making it accessible at all. I don’t expect any reader to come in knowing anything about the setting. But in some ways that simplifies my job, because we’re all clueless cultural outsiders together, and the mechanicals stand in pretty well for our perspective.

Is there anything else in particular you would like readers to know about this story?

In my head, this story is a fragment from a document of dubious provenance, translated by a skeptical scholar. I’d even intended to scatter snarky footnotes throughout. But the story felt complete without them, so while I’d love to do more with the idea, I’m not quite sure what yet. There’s written Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Tamil literature going back a couple thousand years plus. Tamil in the south, the others in the north. Vikramaditya’s first attested appearances are in medieval Sanskrit literature. The stories were doubtless around far earlier in oral traditions, but not in Tamil-speaking areas. I made that up. But being turned into a parrot is canon.

Three of my characters—Vik/ramaa/diti, Usha, and the jeweller—would face transmisogyny if we stuck them in the current world. I do not. I had awesome sensitivity readers who do, and they helped me to avoid oppressive tropes: Alyssa while I was still brainstorming, and Ziva and Dee once I had a clean draft to share. Anything I still got wrong is my bad (and I’d like to know so I can avoid repeating the error, and fix it if I can). There’s a database of sensitivity readers and their rates online, so to anyone who’s writing outside their experience, I encourage you to talk to folks who have the experience, and to listen to them, especially when it’s uncomfortable.

Shweta, thank you for the lovely tale. I was delighted and surprised and entertained. Moreover, I laughed! What are you working on now that we can look forward to?

Sadly, I’m overdue on another really boring chapter of the saga, “chronic illness: trial and error with meds” because migraines are knocking me flat, so right now I don’t know when I’ll next be in possession of a brain.

No definite idea what I’ll work on after that, but it’ll probably be set in the same world. I’ve got two and a half short-ish stories and two novels yelling to be written. Plus I kind of want to know the rest of Nakkiran’s story!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Arley Sorg grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado. He studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and usually writes in local coffee shops. A 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate, he is an assistant editor at Locus Magazine. He’s soldering together a novel, has thrown a few short stories into orbit, and hopes to launch more.

Author Spotlight: Scott Dalrymple

Laurel Amberdine | 551 words

If you could use Proust to help in learning new things, would you? What conditions would make that acceptable, or not?

I don’t think so. I have a decent memory, but nothing special, and I don’t feel deprived. If Proust could help me remember people I’ve met, that might change my mind . . . but I suspect that’s handled as autobiographical memory, so Proust wouldn’t work anyway. I’m holding out for augmented reality glasses to help me with faces and names.

I found both Dr. Phan and Eddie McGill to be quite striking characters. What inspired them?

I’m fascinated by geniuses, who are nearly always flawed in some major way—they often lack social skills, self-awareness, conventional morality, or some combination thereof. (The Greeks didn’t necessarily invent the concept of the tragic hero; they simply observed it.) Andrea Phan is oblivious to the darker implications of her research, while Eddie McGill is her conscience, albeit one with his own ruthless code. On a practical level, my youngest son was born in Danang, Vietnam, so I thought it would be fun to make that Andrea’s birthplace, too.

How did your experiences as a college president influence the development of this story?

My job allows me to be around smart people with diverse interests, which is great fun. I can skip across the surface of many fields, rather than focus on just one. The kernel of this story was a financial oddity that I found intriguing: the strange fact that student loans are the only major loan type that isn’t collateralized. It’s obvious why, of course, since you can’t repossess an education. But what if you could? Most of us don’t own software or music anymore—we merely buy a renewable license to access them. What if education were treated the same way? These questions gave me an excuse to learn more about brain science as I tried to engineer a way to repossess an education if one were so inclined. Along the way I got to have some fun with French literature—one of my personal goals in 2017 is to finally finish In Search of Lost Time. For the record, I’m anti-repossession of education, and my own student loans were paid off long ago.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing or working?

That’s a harder question than it seems, because I’m pretty much always working or writing. My wife and I travel a lot, mainly for the college. We love movies and good TV—this is a golden age of TV, with some very well-written series. We have a wonderful bunch of grown children, an ungrateful cat, and fifteen chickens.

What are you writing lately?

I have three or four stories at various stages of polishing. I think of writing in carpentry terms. Some people are frame carpenters—they’re good at turning dimensional lumber into large, impressive structures. Others are finish carpenters—they concentrate on making that mantel over your fireplace as perfect as they can. Novelists are frame carpenters; short story writers are finish carpenters. Some people do both well. I’m a finish carpenter.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She currently lives in San Francisco where she writes science fiction and fantasy and works for Locus Magazine. Her YA fantasy novel Luminator is forthcoming from Reuts Publishing in 2017. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Pat Murphy

Alex Puncekar | 789 words

What was the inspiration behind “Crossing the Threshold”? How did entropy and the heat death of the universe come into play? Where did the devil fit into all of that?

I actually encountered an old man climbing over the chain-link fence at 22nd Street Station in San Francisco. The rest is imaginary. Except, of course, for entropy and the heat death of the universe. Those are real, I’m sorry to say. My father really did try to explain difficult physics concepts to me when I was ten or so. Not the heat death of the universe exactly, but I remember a long discussion related to the conservation of energy. As a ten-year-old, I contended that if I put some heat in the freezer, I could destroy it. My father did not agree. It was a long conversation and, as I recall, it did not reach a conclusion that satisfied either of us.

As far as I’m concerned, entropy, the heat death of the universe, and the devil are involved in just about everything. I suppose that’s what comes of being raised Catholic and then becoming a scientist.

As you were writing the story, did anything surprise you?

I think what surprised me most was the sandwiches. Who knew that you could trade a mummified crocodile for sandwiches? My characters knew. And they let me know.

Your work is vast, ranging from short stories and novels to nonfiction works about science and travel essays. What sorts of things from your career in science or your traveling experiences did you bring to this story?

One of the things that’s wonderful about being a fiction writer is that just about everything I’ve done becomes useful in one story or another. For this story, I borrowed info and artifacts from travels in Nepal and Thailand and bits gleaned from a long fascination with archeology and anthropology.

I love this piece because you successfully incorporate so many different concepts and expertly weave them into a short space without losing the reader in things like exposition or too much explanation. Every word feels vital to the story. What is your approach to writing such big concepts (like entropy or the heat death) in short fiction and how do you write them so that your audience will understand them?

 I’m so glad you like the story! I gained my experience in writing about big concepts while writing exhibit labels at the Exploratorium, San Francisco’s hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception. I was a science writer/editor there for a couple of decades. On exhibits, the word count was dictated by the space available on the exhibit and by the visitor’s patience. I had to learn to be brief.

Though I studied science in college, I credit the Exploratorium with my science education. The museum was founded by Frank Oppenheimer, a brilliant physicist who had a talent for explaining science. I was lucky enough to work with him for a number of years. He taught me to ask questions and argue (in the right sort of way). He once explained the gyroscopic effect to me over lunch using butter, a bread plate, and a dinner roll as props. These days, I work with Paul Doherty, another physicist who delights in accessible explanations, collaborating on a science column for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

The bottom line is this: I’m fascinated by science. I love to ask questions and I’m not afraid to keep asking questions until I understand the answers. I’m intrigued and I’m persistent, two traits that are essential to understanding. And once I understand, I want to share what I have figured out.

What’s next for you? What other projects are you working on?

I hesitate to say. When it comes to fiction, whatever I tell you that I’m going to do will probably turn out to be untrue. I’m always working on a number of projects, and I don’t always know which ones will take off. I wish I knew.

On the nonfiction side of things, I’m the activity guru (yes, that is my title) at Mystery Science (mysteryscience.com), an ed-tech startup where we are creating an elementary science curriculum designed to inspire students (and their teachers) to love science. Right now, I’m building chain reaction machines that teach about energy. One of my favorite projects (beloved by teachers and fourth graders) is a robot hand made of paper and string.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Alex Puncekar lives in Ohio and is finishing up his MFA at Youngstown State University. You can find his published work in Aphelion: The Webzine of Science Fiction and Fantasy and Jenny Magazine, or you can find him on Twitter @AlexPuncekar.

Author Spotlight: Matthew Kressel

Sandra Odell | 1275 words

I was immediately drawn in by the narrative voice of “Love Engine Optimization.” It walks a thin line between digital phishing and grooming. What made you decide on this particular voice and first-person point of view for the story?

The story had to be told from the point of view of the seducer. If the story were told from Jane’s point of view, we might never get a sense of how much and how often others use her private data without her knowledge or consent. Sam is cocky and overconfident precisely because she has access to all Jane’s private data without her knowledge. Ultimately, Sam sees Jane as just another collection of pixels on the screen, i.e. a form of data, and never a person. I wanted the reader to ask themselves, “Am I Sam, or am I Jane?”

What was the inspiration behind “Love Engine Optimization”?

I read this blog post by Hugh Howey called “The End of Privacy and Capitalism” (bit.ly/1pQBinn) where he argues that privacy is obsolete. I like Hugh and his work, but I call bullshit. There are just some things we need to keep private in order to have a healthy and functional society. We have all these devices now that record our data and send it into the cloud. Your phone tracks your location via GPS. Google, Facebook, and your internet provider know what sites you visit and build highly detailed profiles of your likes and interests. With Alexa and Siri and Cortana, your conversations are being sent into the cloud for analysis. Smartwatches record your heart rate, respiration, and sleep patterns. Department stores have hidden cell phone and WiFi trackers in their mannequins to see which sections you spend the most time in. There are smartglasses which measure your brainwaves, etc., etc. It is likely that, as technology improves, more of what we assume is private will be broadcasted out to the world for unknown actors to use. Most importantly, they might use this data without our consent or awareness in order to manipulate our behaviors. I find that very frightening.

Most of us don’t consider the long-term ramifications of having so much of our private data being sent into the cloud. I’m not talking about what porn sites we visit. I’m talking about our highly personalized psycho-emotional profile. There is evidence this kind of deep psychological profiling was used to influence the recent presidential election in the United States. People’s psychological profiles—created without their consent or awareness—were used to manipulate their voting behavior. These were not generalized ads targeting a broad demographic. These were highly specific, individualized ads targeting unique personality types. And this is just the beginning, because as more and more of our private data goes into the cloud, it will be that much easier for bad actors to use it to manipulate us.

I’m no Luddite, though. Obviously these technologies can have positive applications. But it’s foolish to rush to adopt them without carefully considering the ramifications of giving up so much of our personal data. Hence, “Love Engine Optimization,” which to me is a horror story inside a science-fictional mask. I want to scare the hell out of people.

Social media has been lauded as both the savior, and ruination, of modern intimacy. Here you wield the vast potential of social media as a conductor would a baton, grand sweeping gestures laden with intricate details. You have a strong presence on many media platforms. What sort of research did you do to prepare for this story?

I’m a full-stack software developer and work with a lot of different technologies every day. Edward Snowden’s revelations never surprised me, because I saw from the beginning how the open nature of the internet could be abused. The Mirai botnet, for example, one of the largest denial of service attacks in history, which took out a huge chunk of the US internet for nearly a day, was caused by a single person.

And I also read a lot about narcissism. Social media is the narcissist’s medium of choice, because the individual can tailor her image however she wants. Social media gives the illusion of ultimate control over how one is perceived, and to the narcissist, how they are perceived is who they are.

Sam is the ultimate narcissist, incapable of seeing Jane as an individual, with her own needs and desires. Jane exists only as an object to fulfill Sam’s needs. Sam is the ultimate product of modern alienation. You almost feel sorry for her, because you see how incapable she is of finding real human intimacy. This is only partly her fault.

Sam is equal parts genius, entitled loser, resistance fighter, and damaged goods. Not only is she a woman with a solid footing in the computer and social sciences, she is human enough to use her skills for selfish means. When writing, how conscious are you of creating a fully realized character? Do you set out with a clear image in mind, or do certain character traits grow organically from the work itself?

With Sam, I started from the first three sentences, which came to me whole: “I rooted her system on the first day. It was the only way to be sure. Sure that she’d love me.” That set me right off knowing that Sam is (a) ruthless, (b) clever, and (c) desperate. Her character evolved from there. I don’t think characters are very interesting if they are all evil or all good. Even though Sam is using the system to manipulate people, the system also manipulates her. She is as much a victim as she is an abuser. She’s a product of a system that alienates many, especially those that are most intimately connected with it.

Not only are you a prolific writer, you are also an accomplished editor and the co-host for the Fantastic Fiction readings. If you could speak to the up and coming writers of the world, what would you tell them about the benefits of being widely read? How can reading help them grow as writers?

I’ve noticed the greatest improvement in my work after reading works of fiction outside of the genres I write in. But I don’t have an agenda when I read. I pick up whatever interests me at the moment. For some reason this usually means that about every third or fourth book is nonfiction. I would never dare tell others what to read, other than what interests them. But I’ve never felt that limiting one’s breadth of knowledge is a good thing. Why wouldn’t you want to read widely?

And continuing with the question of reading, to whom do you turn when you want to get your genre fiction on? Who keeps you turning the page?

I’m currently reading the graphic novel series Injection and Trees, which I’m enjoying. I also love Kim Stanley Robinson’s and Iain M. Bank’s visionary science fiction. I devour the stories of Jeffrey Ford and Laird Barron. I recently read Never Now Always, a novella by Desirina Boskovich, and loved it. The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma was fantastic. Pretty much whatever I’m reading at the moment is my favorite.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 147 words

Coming up in July, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by John Grant (“The Law of Conservation of Data”) and E. Catherine Tobler (“Mix Tapes from Dead Boys”), along with SF reprints by Chris Beckett (“Marcher”) and James Tiptree, Jr. (“The Last Flight of Doctor Ain”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro & Adam-Troy Castro (“A Touch of Heart”) and Debbie Urbanski (“How to Find a Portal”), and fantasy reprints by A.G. Howard (“Stitches”) and Will Ludwigsen (“Acres of Perhaps”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns. We’re also sharing an in-depth interview with long-time contributor Carrie Vaughn.

For our ebook readers, we also have our usual ebook-exclusive novella reprint and a book excerpt.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

Stay Connected

The Editors

Here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Lightspeed:

Website

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

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Subscriptions and Ebooks

The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed includes 96 stories (about 480,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $35.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! For more information, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.

Ebooks & Bundles: We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors ($3.99 each), and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Lightspeed ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! We currently have a number of ebook bundles available: Year One (issues 1-12), Year Two (issues 13-24), Year Three (issues 25-36), the Mega Bundle (issues 1-36), and the Supermassive Bundle (issues 1-48). Buying a bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. So if you need to catch up on Lightspeed, that’s a great way to do so. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

• • • •

All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots of ebooks available from our sister-publications:

Nightmare Ebooks, Bundles, & Subscriptions: Like Lightspeed, our sister-magazine Nightmare (nightmare-magazine.com) also has ebooks, bundles, and subscriptions available as well. For instance, you can get the complete first year (12 issues) of Nightmare for just $24.99; that’s savings of $11 off buying the issues individually. Or, if you’d like to subscribe, a 12-month subscription to Nightmare includes 48 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction), and will cost you just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price).

Fantasy Magazine Ebooks & Bundles: We also have ebook back issues—and ebook back issue bundles—of Lightspeed’s (now dormant) sister-magazine, Fantasy. To check those out, just visit fantasy-magazine.com/store. You can buy each Fantasy bundle for $24.99, or you can buy the complete run of Fantasy Magazine— all 57 issues—for just $114.99 (that’s $10 off buying all the bundles individually, and more than $55 off the cover price!).

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

John Joseph Adams

Assistant Editor

Robyn Lupo

Editorial Assistants

Laurel Amberdine

Jude Griffin

Book Reviewers

Andrew Liptak

Amal El-Mohtar

LaShawn Wanak

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, you might also enjoy these anthologies edited (or co-edited) by John Joseph Adams.

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 (with Karen Joy Fowler)

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu) [forthcoming Oct. 2017]

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Cosmic Powers

Dead Man’s Hand

Epic: Legends Of Fantasy

Federations

The Improbable Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects

Lightspeed: Year One

The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2

Loosed Upon the World

The Mad Scientist’s Guide To World Domination

Operation Arcana

Other Worlds Than These

Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen)

Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Seeds of Change

Under the Moons of Mars

Wastelands

Wastelands 2

The Way Of The Wizard

What the #@&% Is That? (with Douglas Cohen)

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above. Each project also has a mini-site devoted to it specifically, where you’ll find free fiction, interviews, and more.