STET—Anna
12. Read: “how they decide who to murder,” when the decision to swerve in any direction will cause a death and they decide that one death is better than another.
Can we include this as a vocabulary note in the glossary?—Ed.
It’s relevant specifically to this passage. They decide who gets to live. They decide who gets to wake up tomorrow and put on a new dress and go to her friend’s birthday party. Her best friend, whose mother didn’t even attend her funeral. Don’t think I didn’t notice.
Even if you don’t care, the people learning about programming these things need to understand. That’s what they decide.
STET—Anna
13. Per Foote, the neural network training for cultural understanding of identity is collected via social media, keystroke analysis, and pupillary response to images. They’re watching to see what’s important to you. You are responsible.
Strike—Ed.
How long did you stare at a picture of an endangered woodpecker vs. how long did you stare at a picture of a little girl who wanted a telescope for her birthday? She was clumsy enough to fall into the street because she was looking up at the sky instead of watching for a car with the ability to decide the value of her life. Was that enough to make you stare at her picture when it was on the news? How long did you look at the woodpecker? Ten seconds? Twelve? How long?
STET—Anna
14. Like the World Wildlife Foundation’s endangered species list, and the American Department of the Interior’s list of wildlife preservation acts, four of which were dedicated to the preservation of Carter’s woodpecker. It’s only a distinct species because of the white band on its tail. Other databases they have access to: the birth and death certificates of every child born and recorded. Probably kindergarten class rosters, and attendance rates, and iCalendars too. It’s all data. All of these are data, so don’t tell me they don’t know.
Is this relevant?—Ed.
Yes. Other than that white band, it’s exactly like any other woodpecker, but because of that white fucking band it has four wildlife preservation acts. Four, which is four more than the number of acts dedicated to regulating weighted risk matrices in autonomous vehicles.—Anna
This passage seems to wander a bit far afield. Perhaps you could tighten it to reflect the brief?—Ed.
STET—Anna
15. They’re smart enough to read your email and measure your pupils and listen to your phone calls; they have access to all of the data on who we are and what we love. They’re smart enough to understand how much a mother loves her baby girl. They’re smart enough to understand the emotional impact of killing a woodpecker. They’re smart enough to know what they did and they’re smart enough to keep doing it, right? Do you think it’s going to end with Ursula? Just because she was on the news, do you think it’s going to stop? You’re not stupid, if you’re reading this. You’re smart enough to need to spend hundreds of dollars on a textbook that’s drier than a Toyota executive’s apology. You want to do this shit for a living, probably. You don’t care about Ursula or me or telescopes or any of it, and you don’t care about a woodpecker, you just want to see what you can make go and how fast you can do it. She just wanted to look at the fucking sky. Can a woodpecker look at the sky and wonder what’s past the clouds? That’s what you need a textbook about, you idiot, that’s what you need to be learning about. None of the rest of it matters. None of it matters at all if you don’t know that Carter’s woodpecker doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. It never mattered.
See my initial note. I want to discuss this more on a phone call with you, or have you come into the office? Just to talk about this last passage, and how you’re doing. Or if you don’t want to do that, Brian and I would love to have you over for dinner. Nathan misses his playdates with Ursula, but he’s also been asking why you don’t come over to visit anymore. He misses you. We all miss you. We haven’t seen you in months, Anna. Everyone here cares about you. Please let us help?—Ed.
STET—Anna
16. Foote on Autonomous Vehicular Casualties, Human and Animal, 2024–2042.
Kelly Robson
What Gentle Women Dare
from Uncanny Magazine
Liverpool, midsummer, 1763
When Satan himself came to Lolly, she didn’t recognize him. She wasn’t on her guard—hadn’t been for years. Why should she be? Her immortal soul had long since drowned in rum and rotted under gobs of treacle toffee. If any scrap was left, it was too dry and leathery to tempt evil. But even the most pious of parsons wouldn’t have recognized the Devil in the guise of a dead woman floating facedown in the Mersey.
Lolly matched her steps with each clang reverberating from St. Nicholas’s bell tower. The morning sky was dim and lightless except for a yellow haze to the east, silhouetted by Liverpool’s cold chimneys. Over her right shoulder, the glowing lamp of the Woodside ferry skittered across the inky river. A pale streak drifted along the edge of the timber wharf.
Could’ve been a log or a scrap of sailcloth, but no, Lolly knew death when she saw it. She’d seen plenty and it always made her shiver. An icicle shoved through the living lights of her eyes couldn’t chill her more than the sight of a corpse.
Wasn’t long before the Wharfinger’s men spotted it.
“Hey ho, a floater.” George pointed with his pipe stem.
“If we’re in luck, the current will carry it out to Bootle,” said Robbie. “Then it’ll sink into the marsh and be nobody’s problem.”
They turned back to their dice game. If George and Robbie didn’t care about the corpse, Lolly shouldn’t either. Still, she stared at it until a sailor appeared at the edge of the timber wharf, stooped and weaving from a long night in a tavern. The sight of him lifted her spirits.
“Mouth tricks here,” she called out. “Soft as a tit, wet as a twat, twice as tight, and good for sucking.” She licked her gums.
The sailor grinned. He had no more teeth than she did, and the long plait hanging over his shoulder was iron-gray all the way to its curly pigtail end. The sight of him made her glad. Sailors who lived to get old were often kindly.
“Thart thirsty, old girl?” he asked.
“Not old.” She gave him a saucy wink. “Tha might be me da, maybe. Did tha never plug a Welsh ewe?”
He laughed and hitched down his trousers. While she was working, he clutched her head hard, mashing her hat with his grimy fingers. But after, he gave her four pence and a kiss on the cheek. Generous. Lolly always thought she could be rich if only she could line men up in a row, but men, like fish, were shy, and catching them took more time than eating.
When she looked for the corpse, it had beached on the mud bar at the corner of the timber wharf. Head, arms, legs, maybe eyes and a mouth under her hair. A woman, for certain. The men had finally put down their dice. George hung off the side of the wharf like a monkey, reaching for the corpse with a boat hook. He snagged it, passed the hook up to his friend, and together they hauled the sodden, streaming form onto the wharf.
George groped the corpse’s neck. He pulled off his cap and held it to his chest.
“Cold and fresh,” he said.
“Suicide.” Robbie swiped off his own cap. “Me missus won’t want it. Will yourn?”
George shook his head. “She’d bar the door. That’s nobody’s honest wife or daughter.”
Lolly crept closer. The corpse was naked but for a smock, so flimsy her mottled flesh showed through. When Lolly reached out to touch the wet cloth, George swung a fist at her.
“Get off, tha ol meff.”
“Gentle, now. Tarts take care of their own,” Robbie whispered to his friend. He swiped a callused hand over his hair and turned to Lolly. “This here’s one of yourn. I’ll bring the parson’s man by and by, but if tha hant thruppence to pay for burial, just weigh her down and tip her into the river. I’ll turn my back if you do.”
Lolly shook her head, pretending not to understand.
�
�A sinking stone solves many a problem,” Robbie explained.
He pointed at the nearest pile of ballast gravel and mimed tying a knot in the girl’s shift. Lolly stalled until he slipped her a penny, then nodded agreement. Robbie scooped up his dice, and both men retreated to the far end of the timber wharf.
Lolly had a sharp eye for a chance. She wanted the smock. Once she had it in hand, she could just roll the naked corpse back in the river. If the men pulled it out again, she could say the rocks had ripped through the fabric.
Lolly was neither God-fearing nor churchgoing, but stealing from a corpse didn’t sit easy in her mind. It seemed to flout a rule more basic and ancient than any in the Bible. She looked the corpse over, trying to find a reason to justify taking the one thing it still possessed.
“What’s that, Mammy?”
Little Meg tottered out of the timber yard, knuckling her eyes and dragging her old red blanket behind her. The wool barely had enough nap left to pick up sawdust.
Lolly knelt and pulled her daughter close.
“Good morning, my Meggie. Did tha dream all night long?”
Meg was warm and damp with sleep. Her eyes were puffy, and she still had that yeast-bread smell of a sleeping child.
Meg yawned. “What’s the lady doing?”
“Sleeping, love, just like thee.” Lolly kissed Meg’s ear and then turned her attention back to the corpse.
The woman was tall, with a breadth of shoulder a young man might be proud of. Her thighs were wide and strong. Her hair stuck to her temples in little half-crescent locks. Her teeth were so even Lolly thought they must be ivory, but no, they were set into her bloodless gums tight as fence posts. Despite the good teeth, when alive she’d been homely, with small eyes, a bulbous forehead, and flat cheeks marred by constellations of pockmarks.
Lolly turned the corpse’s hands over and squinted at her fingers and palms. Soft skin, no warts or scars, but before she could think much about what that might signify, the skin on her palms flushed pink. Lolly’s gaze darted to the woman’s face. Though deathly gray a moment before, now it was flushed. The new skin in each smallpox scar glowed red as a tart’s lips.
She was alive, and that meant Lolly had no time to spare. She hiked the smock up the woman’s torso, exposing her rapidly pinkening flesh to the rising sun. The wet cloth clung to her skin and rucked under her armpits. The woman’s arms flopped as Lolly yanked the smock over her head. She stuffed it under her arm, grabbed Meg’s hand, and ran behind the rope shed.
As Lolly peeked around the corner with one eye, the drowned woman propped herself on one elbow. She convulsed twice, retching fluid onto the warped boardwalk. She lay still for a moment, then looked both ways, sharp and quick, slithered to the edge of the wharf, and slipped back into the water.
Lolly had a habit of telling boastful stories about herself. Not lies. Lies could be found out. Stories were different—nobody could prove them untrue. She told a few on her way home that morning, clutching the wadded-up smock under her arm.
First she told a ship’s cook she wouldn’t buy his slush because she wasn’t hungry. Truth was, both she and Meg were hollow, but those greasy leavings from the salt-pork barrel turned Meg’s stomach and left her trotting for days. Slush was cheap, but her dear girl couldn’t abide it.
On Castle Street she told a baker she would never take nothing from his basket without paying, even if nobody was watching. Just to prove it, she bought two cream buns for Meg instead of one.
Behind the Punch Bowl Tavern, she told the sleepy girl minding the dregs keg that she didn’t mind filling her flask with the drainage from last night’s tankards. Salt from a sailor’s tongue just made the liquor more tasty. When the girl caught her sipping from the spout, Lolly claimed she was just smelling the dregs and if the girl wanted an extra farthing for a whiff, she’d be happy to pay because she liked that just as well as a gulp.
Walking up the Dale Street hill, Lolly told her daughter she wasn’t tired nor limping. She could walk a lot faster if she wanted, but she liked a slow stroll of a morning.
When a pack of rough boys surrounded her in the forecourt of Cable Yard, Lolly told them she had a knife. Fact was, she’d lost it months back. A press-gang crimp had heard Lolly knew mouth tricks that would turn a man cross-eyed, and when his curiosity was satisfied, he’d walked away without paying. When she’d tried to cut him, he’d knocked her down, kicked in her ribs, and left her cringing in the sawdust. If a broken rib wasn’t enough payment for trying to make a man do what he ought, the Wharfinger punished her too. So angry he’d actually taken the time to climb down from the pilots’ office and cross the dockyards. He tracked her down and bent back her thumb until it snapped. Took her knife away too.
The rough boys had all the vim of youth and a good night’s sleep, while Lolly was tired and defenseless. A whore without a knife is like a cat without claws—she could hiss or she could run. But Lolly couldn’t run. At the first sign of trouble, Meg ducked under her mother’s skirt and clamped fast to her leg, gripping her knee like a foremast jack in a hurricane.
Lolly held the smock tight and swatted the boys with her other hand, taking care to protect the flask in her pocket.
“Keep dogging me and I’ll cut y’open and give your heartstrings to your mammies,” she shouted.
Lolly swung her fist at the tallest boy. He dodged easily. When he began snatching at her hat, Lolly knew it was either that or the flask. She let the hat go. The boys chased it like dogs after a rat.
When Lolly got home, her landlady was up to her elbows in suds in the narrow backyard, with three children crawling four-legged around her and a herd of two-legged ones scurrying about. Snot ran over their lips like water through a sluicegate.
“Where’s tha hat?” asked the landlady as Lolly latched the gate.
“Blew into the river,” Lolly answered. Usually she’d tell a better story, but the brawl had left her shaking.
“Doest tha have another?”
“Seems a shame to cover my tresses.” Lolly dredged up a saucy smile. Dockside charm never worked with her landlady, but habits are hard to break. “I might go bare-headed.”
The landlady pushed her sweat-darkened hair off her brow with a wet forearm and scowled.
“If it’s a choice between a new hat and making me happy on rent day, tha knowst which to choose. If we come to blows it won’t be me worst off.”
Lolly nodded and trudged up to her room. She knew better than to cross her landlady. She could be vicious. Anyone who expects women to live together happy as Eden before the fall has a poor understanding of human nature. A woman with ten children and a husband sailing the African trade has little enough kindness to spare for her own kin, and certainly none for her tenants.
Meg ate her buns and dandled her straw doll while Lolly spread the smock over her lap for examination. The silk was so fine she couldn’t see strands in the weave. No wrinkles, no pulled threads, no seams. Soft as new skin under a blister. It didn’t seem fabric at all, more like something grown as one piece. Also, it was perfectly clean, not a scuff or stain. In fact, it didn’t seem to hold dirt. Her hands were none too clean, but the grime from her fingers dried and flaked away, leaving no mark behind on the pure white cloth.
She dragged the smock over her face. Off came all the dirt that had built up since she’d last got caught in a rainstorm: salt grime, coal dust, and the crusty flakes of sailors’ leavings all embedded in her greasy mutton-fat rouge. She pulled the fabric away and held it out with both hands like a curtain. A ghost of her own self stared back, with rosy cheeks, a red smear for a mouth, and two blank spaces for eyes.
Then the dirt flaked off, and the cloth shone white again.
Lolly slept with the smock wadded under her head like a pillow. It warmed her hands and cooled her brow, cradling her in a cloud of comfort. When she woke, she stripped and pulled it over her head.
Meg ran in from the yard. The child yanked at the smock’s edge.
&
nbsp; “It’s too fine to keep, Mammy.”
“I’ll sell it tomorrow,” Lolly said as she pulled on her skirt and belted her bodice over the smock. “When I do, I’ll buy thee a cake with sugared plums in all the colors of a rainbow.”
On her way back to the wharf, Lolly seemed to float. The fabric glissaded over her thighs. It cupped her shoulders in a cool embrace, and soothed the itch and burn of her flea bites, nicks, blisters, and scabs. From the soles of her feet all the way up to her scalp, Lolly felt fine. When she scratched herself, it was only from habit.
Lolly stopped at the Nag’s Head. She asked the landlady for a bun and a bit of bacon rind for Meg, and had her flask filled with the cheapest rum.
“Tha ent dressed for jobbing, little puss.” The old man in the chair beside the door blew smoke in her face and leered. He poked his spit-coated pipe stem into the white fabric on her chest. “How doest tha catch fish with nowt jiggling on tha hook?”
She batted the pipe away.
“Don’t need it. I’m a legendary suckstress. They talk about me in foreign ports.”
He kept hounding her, but she hardly noticed. She sauced him back automatically—men queue up to give me gravy—nobody gets more mucky than me—even backskuttle jacks shoot milt my way.
When the landlady brought her flask back, Lolly gave it a shake to make sure she hadn’t dropped in pebbles to cheat her. Then she tasted it and grimaced. The rum was so badly still-burnt it could put a wrinkle in her tongue, but it would do.
On the way down Dale Street, Lolly held tight to Meg’s hand, careful to protect the child from the carts and wagons.
“That white cloth does look strange,” Meg mumbled, her mouth full of bread.
True, the smock was too modest. Sailors liked a high pair of swollen teats. It reminded them of their long-lost mammies.
With one hand, Lolly adjusted her clothing as she dawdled along. If she pulled the cloth slowly, it stretched and stayed that way. By the time she entered narrow, dark Water Street, Lolly looked much as she always did, but stood a little taller. She had a secret next to her skin, and a good one. The smock made her feel clean. Stainless. Prideful. Not the boastful, fake pride she claimed every day, but something truer. Like a pip of gold at the core of a soft brown apple. A secret something that proved she was more than bruises and bluster.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 Page 34
