Fictions

by Nancy Kress

  Pek Fakar’s people have gone inside the prison. The Faller slumps against the far wall. They have not shot him. For this moment, at least, he is not entering the second stage of his perpetual death.

  But beside me, Pek Walters coughs blood.

  He is dying. I am sure of it, although of course no World healer comes to him. He is dead anyway. Also, his fellow Terrans keep away, looking fearful, which makes me wonder if his disease is catching. This leaves only me. I walk him to his cell, and then wonder why I can’t just stay when the door closes. No one will check. Or, if they do, will care. And this may be my last chance to gain the needed information, before either Pek Walters is coffined or Pek Fakar orders me away from him because he is too weak to watch over my supposed blood sickness.

  His body has become very hot. During the long night he tosses on his bunk, muttering in his own language, and sometimes those strange alien eyes roll in their sockets. But other times he is clearer, and he looks at me as if he recognizes who I am. Those times, I question him. But the lucid times and unlucid ones blur together. His mind is no longer his own.

  “Pek Walters. Where are the memory experiments being conducted? In what place?”

  “Memory . . . memories . . .” More in his own language. It has the cadences of poetry.

  “Pek Walters. In what place are the memory experiments being done?”

  “At Rafkit Sarloe,” he says, which makes no sense. Rafkit Sarloe is the government center, where no one lives. It is not large. People flow in every day, running the Sections, and out to their villages again at night. There is no square measure of Rafkit Sarloe that is not constantly shared physical reality.

  He coughs, more bloody spume, and his eyes roll in his head. I make him sip some water. “Pek Walters. In what place are the memory experiments being done?”

  “At Rafkit Sarloe. In the Cloud. At Aulit Prison.”

  It goes on and on like that. And in the early morning, Pek Walters dies.

  There is one moment of greater clarity, somewhere near the end. He looks at me, out of his old, ravaged face gone gaunt with his transition. The disturbing look is back in his eyes, sad and kind, not a look for the unreal to wear. It is too much sharing. He says, so low I must bend over him to hear, “Sick brain talks to itself. You not kill your sister.”

  “Hush, don’t try to talk . . .”

  “Find . . . Brifjis. Maldon Pek Brifjis, in Rafkit Haddon. Find . . .” He relapses again into fever.

  A few moments after he dies, the armored guards enter the cell, wheeling the coffin full of bondage chemicals. With them is the priest. I want to say, Wait, he is a good man, he doesn’t deserve perpetual death—but of course I do not. I am astonished at myself for even thinking it. A guard edges me into the corridor and the door closes.

  That same day, I am sent away from Aulit Prison.

  “Tell me again. Everything,” Pek Brimmidin says.

  Pek Brimmidin is just the same: stocky, yellowing, slightly stooped. His cluttered office is just the same. Food dishes, papers, overelaborated sculptures. I stare hungrily at the ugly things. I hadn’t realized how much I’d longed, in prison, for the natural sight of curves. I keep my eyes on the sculptures, partly to hold back my question until the proper time to ask it.

  “Pek Walters said he would tell me everything about the experiments that are, yes, going on with World children. In the name of science. But all he had time to tell me was that the experiments involve ‘memory-building pro-teenz,’ which are tiny pieces of food from which the brain constructs memory. He also said the experiments were going on in Rafkit Sarloe and Aulit Prison.”

  “And that is all, Pek Bengarin?”

  “That is all.”

  Pek Brimmidin nods curdy. He is trying to appear dangerous, to scare out of me any piece of information I might have forgotten. But Frablit Pek Brimmidin can’t appear dangerous to me. I have seen the real thing.

  Pek Brimmidin has not changed. But I have.

  I ask my question. “I have brought to you all the information I could obtain before the Terran died. Is it sufficient to release me and Ano?”

  He runs a hand through his neck fur. “I’m sorry I can’t answer that, Pek. I will need to consult my superiors. But I promise to send you word as soon as I can.”

  “Thank you,” I say, and lower my eyes. You are too trusting for be informer, Pek Bengarin.

  Why didn’t I tell Frablit Pek Brimmidin the rest of it, about “Maldon Pek Brifjis” and “Rafkit Haddon” and not really killing my sister? Because it is most likely nonsense, the ravings of a fevered brain. Because this “Maldon Pek Brifjis” might be an innocent World man, who does not deserve trouble brought to him by an unreal alien. Because Pek Walters’s words were personal, addressed to me alone, on his deathbed. Because I do not want to discuss Ano with Pek Brimmidins superiors one more useless painful time.

  Because, despite myself, I trust Carryl Pek Walters.

  “You may go,” Pek Brimmidin says, and I ride my bicycle along the dusty road home.

  I make a bargain with Ano’s corpse, still lying in curled-finger grace on the bed across from mine. Her beautiful brown hair floats in the chemicals of the coffin. I used to covet that hair desperately, when we were very young. Once I even cut it all off while she slept. But other times I would weave it for her, or braid it with flowers. She was so pretty. At one point, when she was still a child, she wore eight bid rings, one on each finger. Two of the bids were in negotiation between the boys’ fathers and ours. Although older, I have never had a single bid.

  Did I murder her?

  My bargain with her corpse is this: If the Reality & Atonement Section releases me and Ano because of my work in Aulit Prison, I will seek no further. Ano will be free to join our ancestors; I will be fully real. It will no longer matter whether or not I killed my sister, because both of us will again be sharing in the same reality as if I had not. But if Reality & Atonement holds me unreal still longer, after all I have given them, I will try to find this “Maldon Pek Brifjis.”

  I say none of this aloud. The guards at Aulit Prison knew immediately when Pek Walters died, inside a closed and windowless room. They could be watching me here, now. World has no devices to do this, but how did Pek Walters know so much about a World man working with a Terran science experiment? Somewhere there are World people and Terrans in partnership. Terrans, as everyone knows, have all sorts of listening devices we do not.

  I kiss Ano’s coffin. I don’t say it aloud, but I hope desperately that Reality & Atonement releases us. I want to return to shared reality, to the daily warmth and sweetness of belonging, now and forever, to the living and dead of World. I do not want to be an informer anymore.

  Not for anyone, even myself.

  The message comes three days later. The afternoon is warm and I sit outside on my stone bench, watching my neighbors milkbeasts eye her sturdily fenced flowerbeds. She has new flowers that I don’t recognize, with blooms that are entrancing but somehow foreign—could they be Terran? It doesn’t seem likely. During my time in Aulit Prison, more people seem to have made up their minds that the Terrans are unreal. I have heard more mutterings, more anger against those who buy from alien traders.

  Frablit Pek Brimmidin himself brings the letter from Reality & Atonement, laboring up the road on his ancient bicycle. He has removed his uniform, so as not to embarrass me in front of my neighbors. I watch him ride up, his neck fur damp with unaccustomed exertion, his gray eyes abashed, and I know already what the sealed message must say. Pek Brimmidin is too kind for his job. That is why he is only a low-level messenger boy all the time, not just today.

  These are things I never saw before.

  You are too trusting for be informer, Pek Bengarin.

  “Thank you, Pek Brimmidin,” I say. “Would you like a glass of water? Or pel?”

  “No, thank you, Pek,” he says. He does not meet my eyes. He waves to my other neighbor, fetching water from the village well, and fumbles meani
nglessly with the handle of his bicycle. “I can’t stay.”

  “Then ride safely,” I say, and go back in my house. I stand beside Ano and break the seal on the government letter. After I read it, I gaze at her a long time. So beautiful, so sweet-natured. So loved.

  Then I start to clean. I scrub every inch of my house, for hours and hours, climbing on a ladder to wash the ceiling, sloshing thick soapsuds in the cracks, scrubbing every surface of every object and carrying the more intricately shaped outside into the sun to dry. Despite my most intense scrutiny, I find nothing that I can imagine being a listening device. Nothing that looks alien, nothing unreal.

  But I no longer know what is real.

  Only Bata is up; the other moons have not risen. The sky is clear and starry, the air cool. I wheel my bicycle inside and try to remember everything I need.

  Whatever kind of glass Ano’s coffin is made of, it is very tough. I have to swing my garden shovel three times, each time with all my strength, before I can break it. On the third blow the glass cracks, then falls leisurely apart into large pieces that bounce slightly when they hit the floor. Chemicals cascade off the bed, a waterfall of clear liquid that smells only slightly acrid.

  In my high boots I wade close to the bed and throw containers of water over Ano to wash off chemical residue. The containers are waiting in a neat row by the wall, everything from my largest wash basin to the kitchen bowls. Ano smiles sweetly.

  I reach onto the soggy bed and lift her clear.

  In the kitchen, I lay her body—limp, soft-limbed—on the floor and strip off her chemical-soaked clothing. I dry her, move her to the waiting blanket, take a last look, and wrap her tightly. The bundle of her and the shovel balances across the handles of my bicycle. I pull off my boots and open the door.

  The night smells of my neighbors foreign flowers. Ano seems weightless. I feel as if I can ride for hours. And I do.

  I bury her, weighted with stones, in marshy ground well off a deserted road. The wet dirt will speed the decay, and it is easy to cover the grave with reeds and toglif branches. When I’ve finished, I bury my clothes and dress in clean ones in my pack. Another few hours of riding and I can find an inn to sleep in. Or a field, if need be.

  The morning dawns pearly, with three moons in the sky. Everywhere I ride are flowers, first wild and then cultivated. Although exhausted, I sing softly to the curving blooms, to the sky, to the pale moonlit road. Ano is real, and free.

  Go sweetly, sweet sister, to our waiting ancestors.

  Two days later I reach Rafkit Haddon.

  It is an old city, sloping down the side of a mountain to the sea. The homes of the rich either stand on the shore or perch on the mountain, looking in both cases like rounded great white birds. In between lie a jumble of houses, market squares, government buildings, inns, pel shops, slums, and parks, the latter with magnificent old trees and shabby old shrines. The manufacturing shops and warehouses lie to the north, with the docks.

  I have experience in finding people. I start with Rituals & Processions. The clerk behind the counter, a pre-initiate of the priesthood, is young and eager to help. “Yes?”

  “I am Ajma Pek Goranalit, attached to the household of Menanlin. I have been sent to inquire about the ritual activity of a citizen, Maldon Pek Brifjis. Can you help me?”

  “Of course.” She beams. An inquiry about ritual activity is never written; discretion is necessary when a great house is considering honoring a citizen by allowing him to honor their ancestors. A person so chosen gains great prestige—and considerable material wealth. I picked the name “Menanlin” after an hour’s judicious listening in a crowded pel shop. The family is old, numerous, and discreet.

  “Let me see,” she says, browsing among her public records. “Brifjis . . . rifjis . . . it’s a common name, of course . . . which citizen, Pek?”

  “Maldon.”

  “Oh, yes . . . here. He paid for two musical tributes to his ancestors last year, made a donation to the Rafkit Haddon Priest House . . . Oh! And he was chosen to honor the ancestors of the house of Choulalait!”

  She sounds awe-struck. I nod. “We know about that, of course. But is there anything else?”

  “No, I don’t think so . . . wait. He paid for a charity tribute for the ancestors of his clu merchant, Lam Pek Flanoe, a poor man. Quite a lavish tribute, too. Music, and three priests.”

  “Kind,” I said.

  “Very! Three priests!” Her young eyes shine. “Isn’t it wonderful how many truly kind people share reality?”

  “Yes,” I say. “It is.”

  I find the clu merchant by the simple method of asking for him in several market squares. Sales of all fuels are of course slow in the summer; the young relatives left in charge of the clu stalls are happy to chat with strangers. Lam Pek Flanoe lives in a run-down neighborhood just behind the great houses by the sea. The neighborhood is home to servants and merchants who provide for the rich. Four more glasses of pel in three more pel shops, and I know that Maldon Pek Brifjis is currently a guest in the home of a rich widow. I know the widow’s address. I know that Pek Brifjis is a healer.

  A healer.

  Sick brain talks to itself. You not kill your sister.

  I am dizzy from four glasses of pel. Enough. I find an inn, the kind where no one asks questions, and sleep without the shared reality of dreams.

  It takes me a day, disguised as a street cleaner, to decide which of the men coming and going from the rich widow’s house is Pek Brifjis. Then I spend three days following him, in various guises. He goes a lot of places and talks to a lot of people, but none of them seem unusual for a rich healer with a personal pleasure in collecting antique water carafes. On the fourth day I look for a good opportunity to approach him, but this turns out to be unnecessary.

  “Pek,” a man says to me as I loiter, dressed as a vendor of sweet flatbreads, outside the baths on Elindel Street. I have stolen the sweets before dawn from the open kitchen of a bake shop. I know at once that the man approaching me is a bodyguard, and that he is very good. It’s in the way he walks, looks at me, places his hand on my arm. He is also very handsome, but that thought barely registers. Handsome men are never for such as me. They are for Ano.

  Were for Ano.

  “Come with me, please,” the bodyguard says, and I don’t argue. He leads me to the back of the baths, through a private entrance, to a small room apparently used for private grooming of some sort. The only furniture is two small stone tables. He checks me, expertly but gently, for weapons, looking even in my mouth. Satisfied, he indicates where I am to stand, and opens a second door.

  Maldon Pek Brifjis enters, wrapped in a bathing robe of rich imported cloth. He is younger than Carryl Walters, a vigorous man in a vigorous prime. His eyes are striking, a deep purple with long gold lines radiating from their centers. He says immediately, “Why have you been following me for three days?”

  “Someone told me to,” I say. I have nothing to lose by an honest shared reality, although I still don’t fully believe I have anything to gain.

  “Who? You may say anything in front of my guard.”

  “Carryl Pek Walters.”

  The purple eyes deepen even more. “Pek Walters is dead.”

  “Yes,” I say. “Perpetually. I was with him when he entered the second stage of death.”

  “And where was that?” He is testing me.

  “In Aulit Prison. His last words instructed me to find you. To . . . ask you something.”

  “What do you wish to ask me?”

  “Not what I thought I would ask,” I say, and realize that I have made the decision to tell him everything. Until I saw him up close, I wasn’t completely sure what I would do. I can no longer share reality with World, not even if I went to Frablit Pek Brimmidin with exactly the knowledge he wants about the scientific experiments on children. That would not atone for releasing Ano before the Section agreed. And Pek Brimmidin is only a messenger, anyway. No, less than a messenger: a tool,
like a garden shovel, or a bicycle. He does not share the reality of his users. He only thinks he does.

  As I had thought I did.

  I say, “I want to know if I killed my sister. Pek Walters said I did not. He said ‘sick brain talks to itself’ and that I had not killed Ano. And to ask you. Did I kill my sister?”

  Pek Brifjis sits down on one of the stone tables. “I don’t know,” he says, and I see his neck fur quiver. “Perhaps you did. Perhaps you did not.”

  “How can I discover which?”

  “You cannot.”

  “Ever?”

  “Ever.” And then, “I am sorry.”

  Dizziness takes me. The “low blood pressure.” The next thing I know, I lie on the floor of the small room, with Pek Brifjis’s fingers on my elbow pulse. I struggle to sit up.

  “No, wait,” he says. “Wait a moment. Have you eaten today?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, wait a moment anyway. I need to think.”

  He does, the purple eyes turning inward, his fingers absently pressing the inside of my elbow. Finally he says, “You are an informer. That’s why you were released from Aulit Prison after Pek Walters died. You inform for the government.”

  I don’t answer. It no longer matters.

  “But you have left informing. Because of what Pek Walters told you. Because he told you that the skits-oh-free-nia experiments might have . . . no. It can’t be.”

  He too has used a word I don’t know. It sounds Terran. Again I struggle to sit up, to leave. There is no hope for me here. This healer can tell me nothing.

  He pushes me back down on the floor and says swiftly, “When did your sister die?” His eyes have changed once again; the long golden flecks are brighter, radiating from the center like glowing spokes. “Please, Pek, this is immensely important. To both of us.”

  “Two years ago, and 152 days.”

  “Where? In what city?”

  “Village. Our village. Gofkit Ilo.”

  “Yes,” he says. “Yes. Tell me everything you remember of her death. Everything.”

  This time I push him aside and sit up. Blood rushes from my head, but anger overcomes the dizziness. “I will tell you nothing. Who do you people think you are, ancestors? To tell me I killed Ano, then tell me I didn’t, then say you don’t know—to destroy the hope of atonement I had as an informer, then to tell me there is no other hope—no, there might be hope—no, there’s not—how can you live with yourself? How can you twist people’s brains away from shared reality and offer nothing to replace it!” I am screaming. The bodyguard glances at the door. I don’t care; I go on screaming.