by Watts Martin
Everyone claps, except for the woman with the stiff smile. As she looks at Carmen, though, her smile softens. Of course: she’s Nevada’s mother. From Solera. When was the last time she and her daughter have spoken? Does she still insist on calling her Linda? What does she think when she looks at her granddaughter?
But—she’s here. She’s made the trip. That’s something. Gail doesn’t know how much, but it’s surely something.
Nevada leans to the side, and gently holds Gail’s goddaughter out to her.
The bartender has glasses set down in front of them before they take their seats.
Dani laughs. “Are we really that predictable?”
He grins. At first glance he’s cisform, but then you catch the transforms: bioluminescent tattoos and slit-pupil cat eyes. It makes him look unsettling, but he clearly enjoys that. “You want a different sweet gin or vodka drink every time, Gail wants a rum drink every time. A good bartender learns patterns.”
Gail taps the miniature snifter he’s set in front of her. “This is just a shot of rum.”
“Rum is definitionally a rum drink.”
She picks it up and takes a sip. “Well played.”
They’d left the hospital through a back entrance, parting ways with Sky and Jack, and circled back toward Dani’s neighborhood. The coyote had introduced Gail to the Four Rivers Pub a few months ago, and Gail had introduced Dani to spirits rather than beers, a shift made with great enthusiasm.
Gail looks over at Dani as she sips. “One of the reporters tried to ask how I’d feel about species disappearing entirely.”
“Why would that happen? Non-inherited transformation won’t go away. And just because Carmen’s born a fox doesn’t mean she has to stay that way. She could grow up and decide she wanted to be something else.”
“Could she, though? We have generations of experience saying that remaking yourself more than once or reversing a transformation carries a lot of risk.”
“But she’s starting with no transformations. You and I are transform humans. She’s a cisform totemic.”
“A cisform totemic.” She feels her viewcard ping in her pocket, and reaches in to pull it out. “That’s a hard phrase to wrap your head around.”
“What is it?” Dani leans over.
“A call from Ansel. Excuse me a second.” She gets up and heads outside the bar, then connects the audio. “Hey.”
“Well, hello. Speaking to me from your head again, so you must be out.”
She laughs. “Yeah, out at Four Rivers with Dani.”
“Oooh.” As if that’s shocking. They’ve been dating over eight months. “So did you get to see Nevada’s child?”
“Yeah. She’s…I mean, she’s exactly what you’d expect, and that’s completely unexpected. Does that make any sense?”
“For you, absolutely.”
“Ha ha. They named her after me. Carmen Gail.” As proud as she is, she knows she sounds incredulous. She’s that, too. “And I’m the kid’s godmother. I agreed to that and I don’t even know what it means.”
“You’re every natural-born totemic’s godmother, dear. Listen.” He takes a deep breath. “You asked me to do a deep search for reports on emergent behavior in expert systems when I had free cycles. I finally did.”
Her ears lift. “And?”
“And I’ve found at least a hundred reports. About three-quarters of them are, ah, let’s say pretty fringey, but there’s at least two dozen from expert system labs.”
She’s pretty sure a report of her life with Kismet would sound pretty fringey, and not just the ship’s last words. “Wow. Josie and I have only found a half-dozen.”
“Nearly all of these reports—and all of the ones from actual researchers—came after a point about twenty years ago, when a new generation of systems hit the market and were deployed in more sophisticated environments. Like spaceships.”
She runs a hand through her hair. “So why are these reports so hidden?”
“They’re not hidden, they’re just…anecdotal. No one can reliably reproduce the results. The only two peer-reviewed papers I could find are inconclusive.”
“And if they were reproducible, they’d raise a lot of questions people don’t want to ask.”
He sighs. “Maybe.” Abruptly he changes both his tone and the subject. “I’m expecting to see you and Dani—and Sky, if she’ll deign to have fun—at Acceleration for my birthday next month.”
“What about Jack?”
“Jack?” Ansel sounds delighted. “He’s back out here?”
“Yeah, and not just visiting, either.”
“Oh, my God. You have to get him to come along.”
“You just want to get drunk and argue politics.”
“You bet your naked rat tail I do.”
“We’ll be there, I promise.”
When she takes her seat by Dani again, the coyote’s looking contemplative. “This morning I heard you mention the idea of renting a one-bedroom place near Sky’s flat.”
Gail nods. “Yeah.”
“You didn’t like it when I brought that idea up a few months ago.”
“I wasn’t…” She wasn’t ready for the possible future she sees now, of staying here, with the school, with Dani—God, sitting here, it makes her stomach twist. But it’s not the old feeling of dread, not in the same way. Now she dreads not having that future. Is home where are you are, or who you’re with? With Kis, it was always both. Maybe it still is. “You know, I still don’t think I know how to settle down.”
“But?”
She takes the coyote’s hand, entwining their fingers together. “But everyone has a home port.”
Acknowledgments
The novel that became Kismet has been through multiple iterations over a dismaying number of years, shifting focus, protagonists and, at least once, verb tense. What finally led to its current form—indeed, to it being finished at all—was taking an early partial draft to a novel writing workshop held at the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction at the University of Kansas. So I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the workshop’s instructors, Kij Johnson and Barbara Webb, as well as my fellow attendees: Marcy Arlin, Elizabeth Bourne, Jennifer Campbell-Hicks, Dominick D’Aunno, Kevin O’Neill, Dayna Smith, and Tim Susman. Their suggestions, critiques and “what ifs” didn’t just make it a stronger work, they made it work, period.
My local writing group, the Unreliable Narrators, dealt with the first completed draft: Ryan Campbell, David Cowan, and Tim Susman again. Barbara also provided critique on this draft; I followed a lot, but not all, of their advice, so we’ll just assume that anything you didn’t like was my fault and not theirs. Christina Bass also gave me both comments and copy edits.
Lastly, I’d like to thank Argyll’s editor/publisher, Mark Roy, both for his work and for agreeing to all this.
About the Author
A native Texan who, for practical purposes, never lived in Texas, Watts instead grew up around Tampa Bay, Florida, living there for the better part of three decades. Despite aspirations of being a famous novelist by 30, Watts instead drifted into computer work, and now lives in Silicon Valley, working as a technical writer.
Watts’s stories include the Cóyotl award-winning fantasy novella “Indigo Rain” and the Cóyotl nominee novella “Going Concerns,” fan favorite gothic romance “A Gift of Fire, A Gift of Blood,” and a host of short stories in anthologies such as Five Fortunes, Inhuman Acts and The Furry Future (which contains “Tow,” a prequel story to Kismet).
@chipotlecoyote
ranea.org
About Argyll Productions
Argyll is a small press publisher based in Dallas, Texas. We’re LGBTQ owned and operated, and since 2007 we’ve been publishing stories with queer characters for the furry community. Now we’re looking to bring our stories to the broader speculative fiction community, and to find great works from anyone whose voice has been underrepresented in fiction.
If you liked Kismet, please lea
ve a rating and review at your favorite online book retailer. It really helps!
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