My plan is so absurd and farfetched, I don’t think it’s even possible. But on the off chance it isn’t... I just need a minute with one of their badass microscopes to check.
“All right,” I say, putting my hands up in surrender. I start to leave but turn back, pretending to remember something. “Did I ever mention I have a coydog?”
This grabs their attention. The lead researcher sits up straighter in her wheelchair, and her assistant’s eyebrows disappear in their hairline.
“Coydog,” they repeat in disbelief, sharing a look with their boss.
“As in a hybrid of coyote and dog?”
I nod innocently. “Yeah, seems her mother—purebred Chow from the upper decks—snuck down and slummed it with a coyote from the American Southwest biodome. Now, I know hybrids aren’t allowed on the ship because they’re less fertile and we need all the biodiversity we can, right?”
They nod like they’re starving and I’m offering them a continental breakfast.
“But from a genetic standpoint, it’s got to be pretty fascinating, yeah? I mean, you were born on this ship. You’ve literally never seen something like Bo’s DNA.” I surreptitiously slip a plastic baggie of hair from my pocket, placing it on a nearby desk.
The researchers kindly turn their backs, leaving the door to their lab unguarded. I waste no time sneaking through and sitting down in front of one of the large microscopes connected to a computer.
I don’t know enough about these machines to use them to their fullest capacity, but I spent enough time dicking around with the one in my high school bio class to run a simple analysis.
I prick my finger, and a dark gem of blood bubbles to the surface. I wipe it gently on the glass slide and wait as the little blue progress bar inches across the screen.
This is ridiculous. What result am I seriously wishing for? The one that leaves us as hopeless as we already are, or the one that turns my world upside down because my baba’s old myths aren’t myths at all?
The one that gives us a dragon, I guess, because that’s the one that gets Ah Fen and I the greatest chance at a happy life together.
The computer gives a cheery little ding, and I can’t look at it right away. I just need everything to stay the way it is for another minute.
When I finally summon the courage to look, there’s no denying the results flashing on the screen.
My DNA closely resembles human DNA, but only closely. There’s a lot in there that doesn’t match anything in the computer’s database.
I bury my face in my hands and breathe deeply. I’m a dragon. Or descended from a hybrid, or... or something. I don’t even know anymore.
“Hey guys?” I call out weakly to the researchers. “You got a sec to take a look at something?”
Bái Hǔ notices the changes first, and curls her lips up in a snarl. I must not smell right anymore, or maybe it’s the way I move. Am I moving different? More like a predator? I only know that I see every little movement my animals make, and that I feel the cold more than ever before.
I think Ah Fen has noticed that. Hard not to notice your girlfriend suddenly wearing oversized sweaters and always wanting to cuddle, but she hasn’t said anything about it.
The sweaters are nice. They hide the scales on my arms far better than my tank tops would have.
They’re ugly, my scales. They don’t have any real color or shimmer, so they just look like hard patches of skin. But I love them. They feel... right, somehow. My soft human skin is a beautiful tan and I love having it—I would never want to go full dragon and lose it—but it feels so good to have a few scales, even if I have to hide them.
We’re less than a week out from our new home. An electric excitement goes through the people aboard the ship at the announcement, spirits soaring.
It seems like my doorbell never stops ringing. By now, everyone knows Ah Fen and I are the ones planning the race, and they all have questions. Where should they stand to get the best view? Where is the finish line? How long after will the new zodiac be issued?
Do we have a dragon?
Ah Fen patiently answers every one. The big viewing windows on the aft decks should provide the best vantage, the finish line is the river a few hundred yards from our prospective landing site, and Ah Fen’s cousins will be working as hard as they can to calculate the new zodiac and get charts drawn up within the day.
“And of course we have a dragon,” she says for the hundredth time today, already starting to close the door. “My girlfriend comes from a long line of dragon tamers. We’ll see you when we land, thank you, zàijiàn.” The door shuts with a click and she leans against it, weariness threatening to encroach on her perpetually sunny demeanor. “Do we have a dragon, lotus blossom?”
She knows. She might not know exactly what I did, but she knows I did something.
I idly doodle on the margins of my paper, where I’ve been trying to figure out all the configurations of zodiac signs that will make us compatible. I figure Bái Hǔ will win the race with the monkey close behind, but I haven’t had as much time as I’d like to watch the others run. Their placements are anybody’s guess.
Ah Fen is a year younger than me, so our signs will be next to each other. And because my age is a multiple of twelve... I do the math in my head. I’ll have been born in the year of the winning sign, and she’ll be in the second place. Dragons and tigers are very compatible, but tigers and monkeys? Not so much.
So I’ll have to make sure I win.
In a footrace against a tiger.
“Min,” Ah Fen says softly.
I look up. “What?”
She sits on the edge of my desk, taking my hand in hers. The warmth radiates off her skin and I soak it up like she’s the sun. “What’s going on? You never told me what you found out at the lab. Even if they couldn’t make a dragon from your DNA, if you are descended from dragons, you can run the race and—”
“But I won’t win.”
Her brow furrows in confusion. “You don’t have to win. Just having a dragon in the race is enough.”
I bite my lip and gesture to the paper. “Not if I want you to marry me. I need to win, or at least place second, and my old body couldn’t do that.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Her eyes go wide and she backs away, afraid of me and what I’ve done.
“You were supposed to use your genes to make a dragon, not—” She looks at my eyes, her head tilting as she notices their yellow tinge. “Not change yourself.”
“A baby dragon wouldn’t have won, and there was no guarantee we’d end up compatible.” I can feel my leg muscles as I flex them, like coiled springs ready to propel me straight to the finish line.
“But we’re already compatible,” she says quietly. “Do you really think I wouldn’t marry you because of our zodiac signs?”
Yes. No. I don’t know what to say. “Then why didn’t you say yes?”
She’s quiet, staring at her hands for a moment. “Everything is changing. This ship and its people are the only home I’ve ever known, and we’re about to leave it and meet all the people from the other ships, and...”
I can hear her heart beating faster, even from a few feet away, just like I can hear the location of every animal in the tanks behind me.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “Maybe I thought you’d find someone better, maybe I thought I would. I was afraid.”
And she still is. She smells like fear, that tangy scent of a mouse staring into the jaws of a snake.
“Everything is changing,” Ah Fen says again, and looks at the scales that have crept onto my hands.
I’ve never seen a blue sky before, never felt a wind that smells of grass and soil instead of industrial fan oil, yet something in my soul, the part that remembers we didn’t always live in space, recognizes this planet as home. The animals do, too. They whine and chatter and scratch at their cages, eager to get out and taste that fresh water burbling just on the edge of sight.
/> If people thought my inclusion in the race, or my scales and eyes and my claim of draconian heritage, was odd, they haven’t let it overshadow their excitement. A palpable buzz fills the air.
I tense at my own gate. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything anymore—I haven’t seen Ah Fen in days—but I still intend to win, if only to prove to myself that I can. This body may not be the one she fell in love with, but I love it.
The bell sounds, our cages open, the other eleven rush out.
But among all the cheers behind us, one voice stands out like a flashing light in the dark.
I turn to see Ah Fen standing in the middle of the viewing windows, waving and screaming and carrying a sign with my name on it. She’s here for me. I run back inside, weaving through the crowd, and take her in my arms.
“Marry me?”
She nods vigorously and kisses me. Chinese dragons supposedly don’t breathe fire, but the heat inside me is hot enough that I’m not so sure about that.
Ah Fen finally breaks away, smiling, and pushes me towards the door. “Go race, my gorgeous dragon.”
Now that’s a nickname I love.
Jennifer Lee Rossman is a queer and disabled nerd born in the year of the horse. She lives in a group home in Binghamton, New York, with her fish Mazie, Rey, and Dr. Sarah Harding. She tweets @JenLRossman and, along with Brian McNett, is the editor of Space Opera Libretti.
JB RILEY
BLACKOUT
You never go into the caves alone.
Lynne knew as soon as she set foot into the dim recess she was violating policy, but the survey was already behind schedule and now Buster had texted her he needed a sick day.
Probably hung over again, Lynne thought. He’d been closing down Hurley’s Bar and Grille every night since they had arrived at Sluice Narrows. Brendan “Buster” MacAndrews had a wife and baby back home, but you’d never know it from the way he hound-dogged his way through the coffee shop, the grocery store and the mercantile. At night he trawled the barstools at the town’s only tavern, and the more he drank the more obnoxious he became.
So far Buster had shown sense enough to leave her alone, at least. Lynne wasn’t sure how long it would take him to work his way through the local talent and try to make a move on her, but she planned to finish her contract before that happened.
Of course, the way he was drinking, his liver might give out first. Last night had been epic, even for him: as Lynne waited at the counter for her carry-out, Buster had been tossing back tequila like water and bellowing along to jukebox Bon Jovi.
Stacey had rolled her eyes at the racket as she rang Lynne up. Young, blond and pretty, the tavern’s sole waitress was Buster’s primary target. “How long is your project supposed to take? We’re going to run out of Cuervo.”
Lynne shrugged. “That may not be a bad thing.”
“That’s because you’re an early bird. Jimmy cut him and his new drinking buddies off last night and things almost got real nasty.” Stacey curled her lip. “Horny and mean, how can any girl resist?”
As independent contractor Lynne didn’t have oversight for Buster’s actions, and the survey would not require his input. Delays could cost her money, as more days on site meant rushing to complete her report for the survey’s deadline. Policy or not, Lynne was not going to lose another day to Buster’s bad habits.
Besides, she thought, as she hammered a 3-foot section of rebar into the gravel floor at the entry and attached a loop of neon pink mason’s line, it would be nice to get some work done without knowing Buster stared at her ass every time she bent over.
She checked the spool where it attached to her belt. Buster had laughed at her “little pink string” but Lynne had insisted on the spool-and-string failsafe. Software could fail, compasses could break or be lost, but her string would guide her out no matter what.
Thus far, getting lost had not been a real danger. The caves they were mapping had remained uncomplicated, with few branches and only a handful of switchbacks. Carved millennia ago by an underground river, the ground was reasonably level, the ceiling stable and high, walls almost smooth. Still, this next turn might reveal more of the same, or it might become a maze of splits and fissures, all needing to be measured and logged. In her career, Lynne had learned each cave held its own dangerous secrets. If something happened to her—an injury, or she became trapped—her string could lead others right to her.
Lynne checked her gear bag to confirm she had ample mason’s line. The spool carried enough string for one-third of a kilometer, and she had ten of them tucked away in her pack. More than enough to cover a day’s work, and well worth the extra weight. Her 12-kilo pack would grow lighter as she drank her water and ate her protein bars and apple slices.
Also packed was the 3-D mapping system which would create digital, rotational images of the caves as she moved through them. The system’s laptop, battery pack and hand-held laser scanner were heavier than the manual tools and sketch pad she had first learned to survey with, but the results were admittedly more accurate and much faster than she could draw and mark by hand. Besides, this way she didn’t need Buster to hold the other end of the tape measure.
Settling her helmet and turning on her headlamp, she switched her prescription sunglasses for her clear-lensed pair, checked her camera in a pocket of her cargo pants and her flashlight clipped to her belt, then slung her tripod over her shoulder and entered the first bend.
The temperature dropped almost immediately, wind and bird sounds cut off, and Lynne felt her shoulders loosen. She loved caves, loved how the dark soothed—
Hiding under the porch, hands over her ears
She set her jaw and pushed the memory fragment away, sweeping the laser scanner around her so it could take its readings. If she focused she could get a significant amount of work done without the need to jolly Buster through his hangover.
Maybe he was just afraid of the dark, she mused, setting up her camera at the junction where they had left off the day before. Satisfied it was level on its tripod, she stood behind the camera and picked up the remote shutter release. Using her headlamp and the camera flash, she’d add serviceable photos to the computer’s 3-D map, giving the civil engineers another set of data from which they would plan the new tunnel.
Lynne closed her eyes against the flash and hummed to herself. There was a rhythm to the work that pleased her. Swing the laser scanner as she walked so it could take its readings. Take a dozen steps and then stop, sweep her headlamp to look for hazards. At each branch, switchback or new opening stop, set the tripod, take a few photos. Pack the camera, pick up the tripod. Repeat.
Most importantly, keep watch on her neon string as it unspooled smoothly from her belt clip. At each tunnel branch she sought out a crack in the rocks, hammering a piton in where she could and tying her string so it would angle smoothly down the branch she chose. When the branch dead-ended she gathered her string as she doubled back then chose the next branch, unspooling as she went.
Buster had mocked this, too. “What are you trying to do, knit a scarf?” he had asked, leaning against the wall and slurping Gatorade. “You’re just going to have to come through and untangle that mess when we’re done.”
Lynne had shrugged and set her piton then moved down the next branch of the tunnel, not waiting for him to heave himself off the wall and follow. He did so, but not before whipping the empty bottle down the tunnel branch they had just come from. It hit the wall and ricocheted with a loud plastic ‘tock!’ that echoed as Lynne winced. “You’re going to have to come through and collect that when we’re done,” she said.
Buster snorted. “I don’t think one little bottle is going to matter. It’s going to get blown up then ground out in the construction, anyway.”
Lynne opened her mouth to point out if that was true then her string certainly wasn’t going to do any harm, but gave it up as a battle she wouldn’t win. This job didn’t pay her by the hour, which meant arguing wasn’t
worth her effort.
She worked her way along to the end of a third spool, which meant she had mapped a kilometer, plus retracing steps. That was a good day’s work, mapping more by herself than she had managed working with Buster.
She ran her fingers lightly along the rough wall as she retraced her steps to the entrance, instinctively cataloguing the different layers beneath her touch. Her light caught a particularly lovely bloom of pegmatite crystals in the rockface and she stopped to admire it. It was thrilling to know she was the very first person to walk here. The Salmon Arm Earthquake had sheared off chunks of the mountain range with its fierce buckling of the earth, burying large swaths of the main highway near the center of the quake. However, the devastation had revealed a tantalizing option even as it destroyed sections of the Trans-Canada Highway between British Columbia and the rest of the country – engineers assessing how to remove countless tons of rubble had found a newly-revealed opening to what appeared to be a long series of caves running through the range that made up the Northern end of Sluice Lake.
If the caves continued, the engineers declared, the best way to reconnect the highway might be to bore them out clean and run the Trans-Canada through. It might take years, sure. But the alternative was being talked about in decades.
“It’s all about calculating statics and equilibrium against the makeup of the rock and volume displacement,” Buster had explained over lunch their first day at Sluice Narrows. “We will have to review potential tension, compression, shear and torsion against the loads.” He took a hefty bite of his club sandwich, continued with his mouth full. “My team will calculate the weight of the structure itself plus the weight and vibration of the vehicles moving through the tunnel.” He swallowed, then drained half his glass of beer with one gulp. “But don’t worry about doing math. You just need to make pictures of all the caves so we know what we’re working with.”
Lynne’s degrees had included classes in physics, calculus, extrapolating fluid and motion dynamics but Buster didn’t need to know that. She was being very well compensated to consult on the caves survey so decided to avoid any comments outside her area of expertise. Comments drew attention. Attention drew—
Hear Me Roar Page 12
