Meet Me in the Future

by Kameron Hurley

  He knelt beside Pig. “It’s me,” he said. “It’s me, Pig.”

  Pig snorted and shook his head and trotted away a few steps. He cantered around the yard. Pig came to rest in the doorway to the house, legs splayed, and stared at Nev.

  Nev sighed and leaned back on his heels. “You can’t stay here,” he said.

  Nev took up a sack on top of the rain barrel and managed to corner the little pig in the kitchen and scoop it up. Pig shrieked and flailed inside the sack. Nev always hated the sound of pigs shrieking. It sounded too human. He knotted some twine around the top of the sack and collected a few other things.

  He didn’t like to take much when he moved from town to town. Too many unique items could identify him from body to body, and then it was only a matter of time before someone from the Corpse Guild caught on and captured him, and that would be the end of his very long travels. As much as he wanted closure some days, the deep fear of death, of going where he had watched so many others go, won over every time.

  Nev knotted the sack of his belongings to the end of the sack with Pig in it and slung both over his shoulder. It would be dawn soon, and he wanted to be well clear of the town by then.

  As the suns rose, he traveled up and up into the hills, mile after mile. The way was rocky, churning with mud. Finally, they came to a little clearing. Light brightened a soft blue puddle way back in the woods, and on the other side of that, Nev saw a little family of wild pigs snorting around in the undergrowth.

  Nev untied the sack with Pig in it and gently released him.

  Pig cantered out into the light, kicking up his heels. He trotted away from Nev a few paces, turned back.

  Nev was down on one knee in the mud, the sack in one hand and an apple in the other. He tossed the apple to the pig.

  “I know I don’t look like him,” Nev said, “no beard. Not enough hair, eh? That’s all right. You take care, little pig. You’re more human than any of us.”

  Pig snorted at him.

  Nev got up. He shook the filth from the sack and tied it back up with his other belongings. All he had in the world, again. On to the next town, again.

  Where to, next? War upriver, death downriver. It was time to cross the river.

  Nev headed farther up the path, kicking up dirt and loam as he went. He wondered if Branka had heeded his warning or murdered the body he had left behind in the temple, the one that no doubt now housed Shotsky’s soul again. No matter how far Nev ran away from the world, it always came back for him.

  He heard a little snort behind him, and turned.

  Pig had come forward a few paces. He stood there, head cocked, snorting.

  “What is it, Pig?” Nev said. “Pig?”

  Pig kicked up his legs and barreled toward Nev. Nev got down on his knees and opened his arms, and the little pig hopped into his lap and pressed his nose to Nev’s face, snorting and snuffling all the while.

  “Are you coming then?” Nev said. His throat closed, and his voice shook. He cried as he rubbed the little pig’s waggling butt.

  After a time, Nev stood. Pig gazed up at him adoringly. Nev took a few hesitant steps forward. He called for Pig, still afraid he would not come. But Pig trotted after him, content to follow his new family. Together they forged across the road as the suns broke through the trees.

  GARDA

  DEAD YOUNG MEN kept washing up on the crooked sandbar that abutted the black ruins of the palace on the pier. The body lying now at the feet of Inspector Abijah Olivia was positioned facedown in the sharp black glass of the beach. Abijah wore heavy boots to protect her from the sand, but the body was not so lucky. Barefoot and mostly naked, thousands of tiny lacerations peppered its sallow grayish skin. Tattered remnants of black and gray clothing still clung to the body in places, giving the impression that the corpse was an old, ancient fish that had fought throughout its ascent into the air, then was abandoned here in the ruin of some net. The lower half of the corpse lay at an awkward angle, as if the torso and legs had been twisted in opposite directions. Clumps of black hair still clung to the head, but Abijah noted two chunks of scalp missing just above the neck, as if he had been yanked by the hair so hard that it had come free. The great hooked-beak birds patrolling the coast could have done that after the body washed up, she supposed, hoping to snag the long hair for their nests. More answers would come from the medical examiner.

  “Sorry catch, you are,” Abijah muttered, squatting next to the body. She poked at the left wrist with a stylus, pulling up a necklace of pink kelp to reveal a work tattoo. Like the other dead men she had seen on this sandbar, this young man appeared to have been employed at the wight factory upriver, which was run by the last of the operations that accepted off-world labor. Being off-world would account for the body’s tall, slender frame and weak bones. The twist to the lower body could have just as easily happened postmortem, when the corpse hit the water. If he’d already been a corpse, at that point. One of the previous young men had actually drowned; the others had been dead hours before meeting the salty water.

  The crunching of boots across the volcanic glass alerted Abijah to the arrival of what was most likely the garda assigned to the case. Abijah turned to see the woman duck beneath the webbing that secured the scene. She fixed Abijah with a wintry look. Abijah knew the stout little woman, all hips and ass, who shoveled toward the body like a rugby forward prop ready to hit the opposition at pace.

  “You’re not assigned to this case,” Garda Katya Sobrija said. Behind her, the yellow lights of the garda ambulatory unit blinked muzzily through the mist. This far south, the sun never really set; this moody, yellow-ochre dusk was as dark as the island would ever get.

  Abijah offered up her wrist, and a blooming insignia and the relevant signatures misted up from the interface written into her skin. “Not doing it for the garda,” Abijah said. “Private contract.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Katya said, pointing her fingers at the projection and accepting the data transfer. Her eyelids flickered as she reviewed the data privately, streamed onto her retinas. “Fuck’s sake.”

  “The garda had three chances to solve this one,” Abijah said. “Now it goes private.”

  “Provided somebody pays for it,” Katya said. “Who’s paying?”

  “That’s confidential,” Abijah said. “You saw it’s been sealed.”

  “Concerned citizen, huh?” Katya said, stuffing her fists against her waist. “Who else you working with?”

  Abijah shrugged and gave a little smile. She turned her attention back to the body.

  “Oh no, fuck,” Katya said, pulling at the cigarette case in the front pocket of her slick. “I have six complaints out against that—”

  “She’ll be fine,” Abijah said. “She’s been sober a month.”

  “And you?” Katya said, tapping out a cigarette.

  “Gave it up,” Abijah said, “the way you gave up smoking last summer.”

  Katya grimaced and popped off the tip of the cigarette to light it. “Simple pleasures,” she said.

  “You’re contaminating the scene.”

  “Not my scene anymore, is it?” Katya said. “How’s Maurille and Savida?”

  “Divorcing me,” Abijah said. “Said they were happier with each other.”

  “Sorry to hear it. The kids?”

  “Already on the continent for the exams,” Abijah said. She rose and tucked away her stylus. “Hold the scene for the medical examiner. Bill your time to the account.”

  “This is the biggest shit,” Katya said.

  “Definition of insanity is doing the same old thing, expecting a different result. You need fresh eyes on the case.”

  “You don’t even know it’s connected to the other boys.”

  Abijah snorted. “I don’t know if the sun will come up over that horizon today either,” she said, “but I can tell you that it’s pretty likely.” She crunched back across the sand, moving past Katya, and noticed a gleaming bit of detritus at the
edge of a large, smooth hunk of volcanic glass. She stooped to pick up the object, and hooked it with her stylus. It was a gold-plated button stamped with a grinning round head fitted with a monocle. Abijah knew the farcical design immediately, because it was used on the all-weather coats issued to garda when they reached the Inspector level and above. She had one herself.

  Abijah pulled out a bit of sticky evidence gum and gobbed it over the button, then slipped it into her pocket.

  “What’s that?” Katya said, coming up behind her just as she hid the button from view.

  “Bit of pretty flotsam,” Abijah said.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” Katya said, and flicked her cigarette butt onto the glittering beach.

  “Sorry about your pasties,” Pats said, chomping on the last two bites of something flaky with a gooey center as she pushed inside Abijah’s apartment door.

  “Thanks for saving me some,” Abijah said.

  Pats licked her fingers. She was missing the ring and pinkie fingers on her left hand; both ended cleanly at the knuckle. “Just making sure they aren’t poisoned,” Pats said. “I got your back. And your guts. Such as they are. Used to be my guts, some of them.”

  “You get the files?”

  “Sure,” Pats said. She set the pastry box on the divan and pulled a green folder from inside of her long black coat. Pats sank into the divan and put her muddy boots up on the rock table. She wet her fingers and opened the folder.

  Abijah sat beside her. The folder contained several pages of sketches depicting the park and gardens nearest the local garda station.

  “You’re getting better,” Abijah said, pulling out one of the slippery pages. The ink could be wiped away with a simple solvent and the pages reused.

  Pats peeled back the inside front cover of the portfolio, revealing a double helix-shaped strand of green code. She pulled it free and it floated up into the air, untangling itself.

  Abijah set her interface to receive mode and downloaded the data before it self-destructed, breaking apart into a fine mist and blowing away under the strength of her breath. Abijah quickly streamed the data across her vision: case notes, snaps, crime scene recordings, reports, for all three of the previous murder cases for the off-worlders who had washed up on the sandbar.

  “This everything?” Abijah asked.

  “Everything stored in the general case file,” Pats said. “It hasn’t been secured. So, yeah, if there’s anything else related to the case that they’ve got, it’s not linked to these cases in the server. Always a chance there’s something buried in a file another some code name. But I just don’t get that anyone cares enough about these cases to go to the trouble.”

  “’Cause they’re off-world?”

  “Sure,” Pats said, reaching forward to dig out another pastry. It oozed raspberry filling that glopped onto her fingers. “These are good.”

  “Who left these?” Abijah said, pulling at the top of the box.

  “They’re for Maurille,” Pats said, “from that bakery she sponsors.”

  “Shit, Pats, I’m already on the outs with Maurille.”

  “All the more reason to eat her pasties.” Pats grinned wolfishly. “When they kicking you out?” Her gaze moved to the tubs and plastic barrels half-full of Abijah’s belongings.

  “Had the talk last week,” Abijah said.

  “You don’t sound surprised.”

  “Been bad awhile.”

  “What they tell you?”

  Abijah popped open the top of the box and grabbed the last pastry; strawberry. Maurille’s favorite. “They told me I’m too emotionally unavailable,” Abijah said.

  Pats guffawed and slapped her own knee. “That’s a great one! Youse hooked up during the war! They expect you to change?”

  “Guess so,” Abijah said, and bit into the pastry. “You miss living on the continent?”

  “Nah,” Pats said. “I live on a good disability pension.” She cocked her finger against her head. “Upside to being a nut. But I do miss the war.”

  “You miss killing.”

  “Eh, well, that too. Garda get touchy about that, way touchier than in the war, you know? Bad sports.” Pats stood and wiped her hands on her coat. “You let me know if you need anything else.”

  Abijah dug into her pocket and pulled out the button in its clear webbing. “You take that to the medical examiner, have her look at it? She’s on your way home.”

  “Sure,” Pats said, shrugging.

  “Kids all worked at the same factory,” Abijah said, “judging by the tattoos. Can you confirm that, too?”

  “Those reports should.”

  “I need to know about this fourth one, though. Can you look into his family?”

  “Aw, you always want me to do the messy people shit.”

  “It’s because you’re so personable,” Abijah said.

  “Blah, blah,” Pats said, and waved her fingers at her. “Ah, before I forget!” She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out a large, copper-colored can of rum, then winked. “A divorce gift!”

  “I’ll need a lot more of those,” Abijah said.

  Pats grinned triumphantly and pulled a second can out of her other pocket and thunked it down on the table with satisfaction. “One for each spouse!” she crowed, and flounced out the door.

  Abijah popped open the can before the door had closed and took a long drink. Private work had its benefits. Sobriety was not regulated, and certainly not expected, when someone hired her. Her window screen covered the entirety of one wall, though a large section on the far left was glitchy, which meant the beachy scene she had programmed into it appeared to have a massive black hole zigzagging along the boardwalk through which tourists disappeared as they rambled out of the frame. She opened her interface and ordered up a wintry scene from the continent, something recorded in the Black Hills before the shelling of Solosia. Everything existed in some bio-digital memory these days, even the places long dead—countries, continents, starships, whole worlds, entire systems, so many one could get lost trying to count them, like trying to make a map of the stars from a starship heading out for the edges of a universe that was still expanding, stars blooming ahead and dying behind, endlessly.

  She asked for one of her favorite curated news channels and watched the headlines streaming to the right of the projection. She could just as easily have played it all across her retinas, but when she was home she preferred to switch off. Boots on the table, drink in hand, she asked for the highlights of a few headlines about the case, mostly nonprofessional takes on the recent murder and the usual half-dozen conspiracy theories from unhinged folk on the edges of the colony. To each their own, she supposed.

  Abijah finished her first can of rum as the world began to grow more bearable at the edges. A persistent message tap-tapped at the edge of her vision, a little red arrow indicating a conferenced call from Maurille and Savida. She brooded on it a long moment, then popped open the other can and accepted the call. The safety notification asked her to confirm she was not currently mobile or operating any type of machinery. She checked “no” and her wives’ faces filled her vision.

  Maurille and Savida projected an image of themselves that was certainly far removed from wherever they were currently holidaying on the continent. They both looked severe and buttoned up, as if expecting a business negotiation to break out at any moment. Maurille, tall and lean, like an exceptionally well-bred tree, was older, her face softer now around the edges. Maurille and Abijah had married first, and Savida had come later, a slim woman a decade their junior whose fisher-family had supported her schooling in bio-environmentalism on the continent and then welcomed her back as a local government resource steward. Somehow the two of Abijah’s spouses grew more serious, brought together, no doubt, when Abijah had gone away to the war. When Abijah came back, maybe, there had been time to repair what the three of them had, but she hadn’t been ready back then. Wasn’t ready now.

  “Are you drinking?” Maurille asked, softl
y concerned.

  “Nah,” Abijah said, sipping her rum.

  Savida made a face, because though Abijah had chosen a fine upstanding image of herself to project to them, they could certainly hear everything.

  “We’re calling about the dog,” Maurille said.

  “What dog?” Abijah said.

  “There was a dog in the apartment,” Savida said, “when we came to get our overnight bags for the trip up. Did you get a dog?”

  Abijah turned to look around the room; the motion of her head flipped the full-screen of the faces to the bottom left corner of one eye, letting her get a view of her actual surroundings instead of the projected ones. “No dog here,” Abijah said, but she got up anyway, sipping the rum as she did, and checked the two bedrooms, the closet, and the little balcony, just in case.

  “No dog,” Abijah said. “No paw prints. Not even a shit.”

  Maurille said, “It was quite clearly in the apartment.”

  A knock came at the door. Distracted, Abijah wondered if Pats had come back to try and lick the inside of the pastry box. She opened the door, hoping for a distraction from her wives—and got a fist in her face.

  The blow was so unexpected it took her right off her feet. She sat back hard on her ass, black spots juddering across her vision. The can of rum sailed off to her right and collided with the cold box in the kitchen. The call with her wives went dead; their faces disappeared. Her window blinked dark, and then lights cut. She had already pulled her blackout curtains, so she couldn’t see anything at all. She had time to note three figures advancing, one of them with a six-legged dog on a leash, before they swung the door into the hall shut, completing their cover.

  Three against one was bad odds sober during a fair fight, let alone drunk while on the floor and parted from her interface. At least it solved the question about the dog. These folks had been casing her place earlier. Thank fuck they hadn’t touched Maurille or Savida.

  They proceeded to beat the ever-loving shit out of Abijah. They wore heavy, steel-toed boots that landed hard, savage blows to her chest and stomach and back. One mashed her in the face, dazing her. She wished, then, that she had finished the second can of rum, because she would have felt less and blacked out sooner. Instead, she went limp, letting them think she was down and out for good. The boots gave them away. This was a small town, and only garda wore boots like that.