Sword Stone Table

by Sword Stone Table- Old Legends, New Voices (retail) (epub)

  She shakes her head and stretches her limbs on the couch, her toes pointing down. The texture of the fabric beneath her fingertips is soft as she thinks of the grit under his nails—sand, from the beach—and the beating of his heart, like a drum.

  He is dying of love for that girl, and that love lingers on her palate. He kissed her tonight. One kiss. It tasted sweet, of innocence and wine—this despite the fact he was kissing a married woman. There was something soft and gentle to it. She supposes it’s because he has never been in love before that this can be something fresh, something untainted by the tendrils of cynicism.

  She doesn’t remember her youth and she also doesn’t remember love. She supposes they must come hand in hand. But just as she did not begrudge time for snatching away the years, she did not rail at the heavens for denying her affection. She might have had it, had she wanted it. She might have it still, if she wills it.

  “My supplier can go to the opera again,” Delgado says. “I know you wanted that performance.”

  “Not now,” she says, and waves her hand, like one might wave away an annoying buzzard. Let me be, she thinks. Let me be alone with him.

  But Delgado hums to himself as he goes about his tasks, tossing components into his briefcase, disturbing her.

  He’s humming “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle.” It’s a disgusting parody of the song.

  “Can you be quiet?”

  “I thought you liked opera.”

  “Not when you sing it.”

  “It can’t be that bad. I may not be a tenor now, but I was once a choirboy.”

  What he was and what he is do not interest her. He is but an intermediary, a conduit.

  She leans on her elbows and turns to look at him. “How did you find Lancelot?”

  “Word of mouth. It’s not like you can advertise for this type of gig. People tell other people, and the recording devices are so small that you can pretty much test it anywhere, and it doesn’t have any side effects. Well, maybe a headache. But for the money, I think it’s worth it.”

  She frowns. She doesn’t wish to discover the specifics of how his trade works. It makes her wonder if the young man ever considers where his memories go, if while he lies in his bed, idly smoking a cigarette, he envisions her existence.

  Not her existence in particular, but the idea of a phantasmagoric buyer, and whether, in those instants, his imagination might conjure an approximation of her.

  She sees him but he does not see her. And what might it be like if he saw her? If his eye should intrude upon her home, taking in the orchids in their glass containers and the bed with silk sheets?

  She feels shy, as if she should veil herself. As if the man has opened the curtains and peered into her bedroom.

  “You ever leave this joint?” Delgado asks, and it makes her wince, the question striking close to what she was thinking. Has she become this transparent?

  She smooths her features, like one might smooth a piece of cloth. “Why would I? There’s nothing out there that interests me.”

  “You might go to the opera.”

  “The opera comes to me.”

  “Then you’ll want something in the new season, a new performance. They’ll have Aida. I can arrange for that.”

  “Aida?” she says quickly, thinking of the magnificent costumes and the pageantry. Such a huge chorus and orchestra, and the glory of its melody. “O terra addio.” But she hesitates. “I didn’t know.”

  “Yep. Quite the spectacle, they say.”

  “I didn’t take you for an opera buff.”

  “I’ve learned a bit from listening to your recordings.”

  She doesn’t know if he means the music that saturates her apartment or the memories of performances he has purchased for her.

  “No, I don’t think I’ll go to the opera,” she whispers, and sits, cross-legged, on the couch, thinking about the glittering night outside and the murmur of a sea she cannot hear.

  * * *

  —

  Memories offer few insights into a person. They’re so brief, after all. Only a few minutes can be embedded into the recording device—she can experience the Queen of the Night aria, but not the entirety of The Magic Flute. These imprints are not meant to last; they crumble if you try to hold them tight. Yet she feels she knows the man. It is as if each moment of his life that she has experienced is a stone from a mosaic, and when you arrange them together, they create a picture.

  She knows the little drama that punctuates his existence, the affair with the girl, that one night—just one, they dared no more—and then the hushed whispers—we cannot, we shouldn’t. How he avoids her now, how he walks the beach early in the morning, when the sun has barely warmed the shore, and tosses a shell back to the waves.

  He loves and he feels so fiercely, it’s like standing next to a crackling fire. One cannot help but be warmed by it. One cannot help but extend a hand and wish to touch the flame.

  He hungers, and he’s so alive it almost hurts, it almost makes her skin blister when she feels him; that manic yearning, grin spreading across his face and the smoke from his cigarette as he leans his head against the pillows and the canary chirps in its cage.

  The feeling of him, sometimes it’s just too much. It scares her. How can someone feel like this? How can such despair and passion be contained?

  It’s the most beautiful melody she’s ever heard, wordless and perfect.

  * * *

  —

  The days drag by when Delgado doesn’t come, when he doesn’t bring her memories. On the walls the ocean rolls in, offering the view of a sand spit, and around her the music plays, low.

  I’m too busy, Delgado says. Not this Wednesday, no.

  And she texts him back furiously, asking who he thinks he is.

  But he really is busy Wednesday, he says.

  Fine. When if not Wednesday?

  The cursor blinks and blinks and he doesn’t reply.

  I’ll sic the cops on you, you little shit, she thinks, and crushes a handful of pomegranate seeds in her fist, the juice like blood trickling through her fingers. But she doesn’t type that. Instead she phones, and he picks up.

  “Let me make it clear,” she says. “We have an arrangement. I expect you to honor it.”

  “I’m not on your retainer.”

  “Is that what you want? Fine. Then you are now. What’s your price?”

  She hears him sigh; she can picture him rubbing his eyes and then the flapping of his hands as he considers the situation, as greed gets the best of him and he tells her an amount. “But I can’t procure more memories from Lancelot,” he adds.

  He’s lying. There’s always more of anything if you can pay the price.

  “Be here on Wednesday. You’re on retainer now.”

  * * *

  —

  Delgado comes on Wednesday, his clothes rumpled, looking a little frazzled. He peels off his beige trench coat and hangs it from a hook. He eyes her carefully, like he’s afraid she’ll bite.

  “As I tried to explain, Lancelot is not working with me anymore, but I have other suppliers you may like,” he says as he sets down his briefcase.

  “What do you mean, he’s not working for you?”

  “He isn’t.”

  “I’ll double the money,” she says simply, taking a sip of her wine. This is his game. It’s a simple case of increasing the markup.

  “It’s not about the money.”

  “I’ll triple it.”

  She looks at him carefully. He scratches his head and gives her an embarrassed look. “Can’t be done,” he mutters.

  “What do you mean, it can’t be done? It’s simple. Message him and say you’ll triple the pay. He can’t retire if we’re talking this amount of cash.”

  “I can’t.”

 
“Then give me his address. I’ll go see him myself.”

  She sets down her glass and crosses her arms. Delgado now stares at her with an irritating stubbornness that makes her chuckle.

  “I can cut you out and find out where he lives on my own. I know enough from his memories to figure out where to look. His age and the fact he lives by the sea are two big clues. A private investigator would be able to find him, I’m sure.”

  “Please, don’t look for him.”

  There’s a hint of fear in his voice that makes her bristle, makes her press on even more vehemently. “And the girl’s name. I know the girl’s name. With that alone I’m certain—”

  “He’s dead,” Delgado says, cutting her short, like swinging a sword.

  She stares at him. “What do you mean, he’s dead? I’ve seen his memories.”

  “Memories don’t have an expiry date.”

  No. They don’t. They’re shadows trapped in amber, but she never thought…She simply assumed…

  And it’s as if all the lights in the apartment have gone dim, the chandelier with the glass jellyfish burnt black and the sweet music stopped. She sees nothing, hears nothing, for the span of a heartbeat.

  “How long has he been dead?” she asks, her voice somehow level.

  “Two months.”

  He’d died shortly after she’d met him, then. She’d communed with a ghost—like stretching out a hand and touching a black hole. That is what lies inside her body now: a thick blackness.

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  “I didn’t think it would matter. Customers, they don’t care where memories come from, they don’t care who makes them. They just want the experience. I didn’t think you’d care to have more than two, three of his memories. It wasn’t even your style, you told me so yourself.”

  She doesn’t reply. She has turned into a stone. She stares at him as he paces and mutters and tries to explain himself.

  “How did he die?” she asks, interrupting him. “Did he drown? Was that it?”

  Delgado seems a bit surprised by the question. “A robbery. He wouldn’t part with his motorcycle.”

  She turns away from him and raises a hand to her mouth, two fingers brushing her lips, black bile coating her tongue. A robbery. Of all things. Prosaic and common and entirely unlike him.

  He was supposed to live forever.

  “You should go.”

  “Please—”

  “I’ll have security drag you out if you don’t disappear in the next two minutes.”

  Delgado doesn’t protest. He walks out and the door latches behind him.

  She walks to the balcony. The sky is as black as her entrails, dyed with ink. The pollution veils the stars, and the clouds shroud the moon. All light comes from below or from the buildings across, spilling from behind curtains and blinds.

  She could find his grave. It’s as she told Delgado: it wouldn’t be too difficult. And then, what? To haunt the places he knew, to trace his route along the seashore, to stand on that cliff and feel the rocks he stood upon and look down at the sea.

  She could follow that river of silver and gold out of the city and search for his soul.

  But for now she stands, poised against the night on the highest floor of her tower, contemplating the squat buildings and the dazzling skyscrapers, the neon signs and the trembling headlights, and she realizes that she does not even know his real name.

  White Hempen Sleeves

  Ken Liu

  The ego bridge hums softly around me as though I’m nestled in a conch shell. I have the sensation of floating weightless in space in the midst of billions of stars—ghostly “glows” caused by the nanobots running up and down my nerves, trying to capture the cascading potentials that cohere into my self.

  I’m thrumming with anticipation, with the thrill of stepping into the unknown for the first time. Will I know? Will I detect the moment my consciousness splits like a real fork? Will I sense time stop, my mind suspended like a questioning tentacle curved invitingly in the deep, bottomless ocean of oblivion?

  * * *

  —

  I hate myself. The chances were fifty-fifty, and I lost the coin flip. Knowing you’re about to die is hell. Even if the one who put you in hell is yourself. [Everybody dies. It’s what you do before you die that matters.]

  There’s no glee in the voice, no palpable sense of relief. But that means nothing. I could have been suspended in time for hours, days, weeks, before being resleeved while my other self had plenty of time to whoop and celebrate his good luck.

  I don’t bother responding to myself, safely ensconced in Octavia, that jellyfish-like aerostat of decadence hovering fifty-five kilometers above me. Fighting against the dizziness of a resleeving, I look up, and all I see is a roiling sea of orange clouds. A faint perpetual twilight filters through them.

  I look down and back at myself, the unfamiliar sensation of twisting my head 180 degrees overwhelmed by the alienness of my body, the sleeve I had selected for myself: a five-meter-long metal slitheroid shaped like an anaconda that roamed the forests of the Amazon from before the Fall, hardened and refurbished to survive long enough on the surface of Venus to accomplish the mission I gave myself.

  [Get ready. This is going to hurt.]

  Some switch seems to have been flipped in my mind, and I scream even though I don’t have a voice.

  It’s hot, hot enough that I feel my skin blistering, boiling, peeling off, erupting like the volcanoes on Ishtar Terra.

  But I don’t have skin.

  It feels like I’m being crushed from all sides by hydraulic presses, compressing my ribs, squeezing my chest cavity, flattening my lungs until they are thin as paper. The terror of not being able to breathe, a primitive fear, seizes my mind.

  But I don’t have ribs or a chest cavity or lungs. I don’t need to breathe.

  [The temperature at your location is 460 degrees Celsius, and the pressure is at ninety-three bars. I’ve recalibrated the sensors in your morph to give you the appropriate pain stimuli without immediately incapacitating you.]

  You fucking bastard.

  [This is to provide adequate motivation for you to seek higher altitudes to cool off and to get some relief from the sensation of suffocation.]

  I curse myself. Of course I’m right—my first instinct upon realizing that I was the one sent to die was to lie down where I was and go to sleep—we can’t have that.

  And so I begin my reluctant climb up Maxwell Montes, the tallest mountain on the surface of Venus, two kilometers taller than Mount Everest on Earth. My body slithers over the parched basalt, strewn with pebbles and sharp-edged rocks created by chemical erosion. It’s easy to navigate: I’m always heading for higher ground, for that is the only direction that promises any relief from the crushing pressure and hellish heat.

  The climb is slow going. With this much pressure, the carbon-dioxide-dominated atmosphere is technically no longer a gas or liquid but behaves as a supercritical fluid that is somewhere in between. I’m half swimming, half crawling. I can feel the heat and the pressure weaken the joints in my morph. I, no, he—I can’t stand the idea that I’m the same person as that sadistic creep even though I am—has left me only one path.

  Higher. Higher.

  Finally, I’m through the supercritical fluid layer, and the air turns to a true gas through which I can move much faster. But far from feeling relief, the conditions around me have grown only more hellish. The wind howls around me at speeds never seen on Earth, threatening to topple me over—good thing that my slitheroid morph hugs the ground and has such a low center of gravity. Thunder booms, and lightning flashes above me between cloud layers, and sheets of sulfuric acid rain pelt my body. The sensors in my morph translate the sensation of sizzling acid into a new kind of pain.

  [Keep moving!]

&
nbsp; I do my best to keep the pain at bay and keep on climbing. My only hope is to get above the snow line before the acid dissolves some critical component of my body.

  Yes, snow line. The temperature near the surface of Venus is hot enough to vaporize metals like lead and bismuth. But with enough altitude, the metallic mist precipitates out of the atmosphere like frost, coating the top of Maxwell Montes in a shiny reflective layer.

  Finally, I emerge out of the clouds into an otherworldly snowscape. I take a moment to enjoy the cool and thin air (though it’s still near 400 degrees Celsius and the pressure is still about half of the level at the surface). One of my eyes has failed, but the sight is still breathtaking: Maxwell Montes stands like an island above a sea of clouds, and the glinting snow is unmarred by any footprint. My body slithers over the ground, carving an endless sine wave through the snow. I’ve lost control over some of the segments due to damage from the heat and the acid, but now that I’m at the top of the mountain, the slitheroid morph should last long enough until a flyer can be sent down from the aerostat to pick me up.

  I feel triumphant. Though I have been forced to do so, it is still an amazing accomplishment to have climbed a mountain taller than Mount Everest and on which no transhuman has ever set foot.

  [I did it!]

  The note of triumph in his voice enrages me. He’s been sitting on his ass in comfort and safety, drifting in the balmy upper atmosphere of Venus where the temperature and pressure are practically Earthlike in a luxury aerostat while torturing me, his alter ego, like some subhuman infugee encased in a brazen bull. For him to claim this accomplishment as his is too much.

  I did it.

  [A bit vain, are we?]

  You should be the one to talk.

  [We’re the same person, just placed in different circumstances.]

  Not anymore.

  [You’ll feel differently after we merge.]

  Get me up there, and I’ll petition for an equitable division of our assets. I’m not merging back with you. No fucking way.