Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 118

by Neil Clarke

  “Tish, it’s going to be okay. But I need to talk to Hera. Alone.”

  They traded a puzzled glance. Then Hera gave Tishembra a quick hug—“I’ll be right back”—and stepped past me into the hall. I followed her, closing the door behind us.

  Hera turned to face me. She looked gaunt and worn—a woman who had seen too much grief. “I want to thank you, Zeke, for not telling Tishembra who filed that complaint. I wasn’t myself when I did it. I don’t even remember doing it.”

  She wasn’t lying.

  I stumbled over that fact. Had I gotten it wrong? Was there something more going on than a need for misguided revenge?

  “When was the last time you had your defensive Makers upgraded?”

  She flinched and looked away. “It’s been a while.”

  I sent a DI to check the records. It had been three years. I pulled up an earlier report and cross-checked the dates to be sure. She hadn’t had an upgrade since her brother’s execution. My heart rate jumped as I contemplated a new possibility. No doubt my pupils dilated, but Hera was still looking away and she didn’t see it. I sent the DI out again.

  We were standing beside an open door to an unoccupied office. I ushered Hera inside. The DI came back with a new set of records even before the door was closed. At my invitation, Hera sat in the guest chair, her hands fidgeting restlessly in her lap. I perched on the edge of the desk, scanning the records, trying to stay calm, but my DI wasn’t fooled. It sensed my stress and sent the paralytic ribbon creeping down my arm and into my palm.

  “Let’s talk about your brother.”

  Hera’s hands froze in her lap. “My brother? You must know already. He’s dead . . . he died like Key.”

  “You used to be a city councilor.”

  “I resigned from the council.”

  I nodded. “As a councilor you were required to host visitors . . . but you haven’t allowed a ghost in your atrium since your brother’s arrest.”

  “Those things don’t matter to me anymore.”

  “You also haven’t upgraded your defensive Makers, and you haven’t been scanned—”

  “I’m not a criminal, Zeke. I just . . . I just want to do my job, and be left alone.”

  “Hera? You’ve been harboring your brother’s ghost, haven’t you? And he didn’t like it, when you started seeing Key.”

  The DI showed me the flush of hot and cold across her skin. “No,” she whispered. “No. He’s dead, and I wouldn’t do that.”

  She was lying. “Hera, is your atrium quirked? To let your brother’s ghost take over sometimes?”

  She looked away. “Wouldn’t that be illegal?”

  “Giving up your body to another? Yes, it would be.”

  Her hands squeezed hard against the armrests of the chair. “It was him, then? That’s what you’re saying?” She turned to look at me, despair in her eyes. “He filed the complaint against Tish?”

  I nodded. “I knew it wasn’t you speaking to me that day. I think he also used you to sabotage Key’s railcar, knowing I’d have to look into it.”

  “And Robin?” she asked, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the chair.

  “Ask him.”

  Earlier, I’d asked the DI to bring me a list of all the trained molecular designers in Nahiku, but I’d asked the wrong question. I queried it again, asking for all the designers in the past five years. This time, mine wasn’t the only name.

  “Ask him for the design of the assault Maker, Hera. Robin doesn’t deserve to die.”

  I crouched in front of her, my hand on hers as I looked up into her stunned eyes. It was a damned stupid position to put myself into.

  He took over. It took a fraction of a second. My DI didn’t catch it, but I saw it happen. Her expression hardened and her knee came up, driving hard into my chin. As my head snapped back he launched Hera against me. At that point it didn’t matter that I outweighed her by forty percent. I was off balance and I went down with her on top of me. Her forehead cracked against my nose, breaking it.

  He wasn’t trying to escape. There was no way he could. It was only blind rage that drove him. He wanted to kill me, for all the good it would do. I was a cop. I had backups. I couldn’t lose more than a few days. But he could still do some damage before he was brought down.

  I felt Hera’s small hands seize my wrists. He was trying to keep me from using the ribbon arsenal, but Hera wasn’t nearly strong enough for that. I tossed her off, and not gently. The back of her head hit the floor, but she got up again almost as fast as I did and scrambled for the door.

  I don’t know what he intended to do, what final vengeance he hoped for. One more murder, maybe. Tishembra and Robin were both just across the hall.

  I grabbed Hera, dragged her back, and slammed her into the chair. Then I raised my hand. The DI controlled the ribbon. Fibers along its length squeezed hard, sending a fine mist across Hera’s face. It got in her eyes and in her lungs. She reared back, but then she collapsed, slumping in the chair. I wiped my bloody nose on my sleeve and waited until her head lolled against her chest. Then I sent a DI to Red Star.

  I’d need help extracting the data from her quirked atrium, and combing through it for the assault Maker’s design file.

  It took a few days, but Robin was recovered. When he gets cranky at night he still tells Tishembra she’s “wrong,” but he’s only three. Soon he won’t remember what she was like before, while I pretend it doesn’t matter to me.

  Tishembra knows that isn’t true. She complains the laws are too strict, that citizens should be free to make their own choices. Me, I’m just happy Glory Mina let me stay on as Nahiku’s watch officer. Glory likes reminding me how lucky I am to have the position. I like to remind her that I’ve finally turned into the uncompromising jackboot she always knew I could be.

  Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to help Hera, but she’d been harboring a fugitive for three years. There was nothing I could do for her, but I won’t let anyone else in this city step over the line. I don’t want to sit through another execution.

  Nahiku isn’t quite bankrupt yet. Glory assessed a minimal fine for Hera’s transgression, laying most of the fault on the police since we’d failed to hunt down all ghosts of a condemned criminal. So the city won’t be sold off, and Tishembra will have to wait to get free.

  I don’t think she minds too much.

  Here. Now. This is enough. I only wonder: Can we make it last?

  Copyright © 2012 by Linda Nagata. First published in Analog Science Fiction, October 2012.

  About the Author

  Linda Nagata is a Nebula and Locus-award-winning author. She’s spent most of her life in Hawaii, where she’s been a writer, a mom, and a programmer of database-driven websites. She lives with her husband in their long-time home on the island of Maui.

  Her most recent work is The Red trilogy, a series of near-future military thrillers published by Saga Press/Simon & Schuster. The first book in the trilogy, The Red: First Light, was named as a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2015. “Nahiku West” marked her return to writing short fiction after a twelve-year hiatus. It’s set in the story world of her Nanotech Succession novels, and looks at the early life of a minor character from her novel, The Bohr Maker. The story was runner up for the 2013 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award.

  Lion Walk

  Mary Rosenblum

  Tahira Ghani stared down at all that was left of the trespasser, the stunner pointed down at the summer yellow grass. The big California condor she had interrupted spread it’s huge stretch of wings and gave a reproachful squawk, scattering the smaller turkey vultures. A hot breeze washed their carrion scent over her, but she barely noticed. The pride probably hadn’t left much and the coy-dogs—well on their way to emulating the Pleistocene wild dogs—had cleaned up whatever the lions hadn’t eaten before the vultures even had a chance. She squatted beside the mess, smelling a trace of blood, spilled gut, lion, and the musky tang of violent death on the hot wind. A torn, bloodstained pi
ece of black fabric fluttered in the breeze, snagged on a hawthorn. Flies swarmed over the few vertebrae and the piece of a rib that remained, the rags of flesh dark red-brown now, the color of old blood. A strand of auburn hair caught her eye, tangled among grass stems. Long. A woman? Like the other one. Caucasian this time. She read the diary of last night in the scuffed ground where the lions had killed, the tracks leading to it, faint on the dry grass, human prints overlaid with lion. She squatted, the stunner in one hand, her dun suncloth coverall hot against her thighs. Laid her fingertips lightly on the double imprint; woman, lion. Brought her hand to her mouth and touched her tongue to her fingertips, tasting dust, dead leaves, and lion.

  Running. No shoes. Tahira stood, wiped her fingers on her coverall and circled the dusty patch of ground that gave up this information, shaded her eyes to stare at the single print, the faint ovals of toes, ball of foot. No blood, so she hadn’t been barefoot long. Frowning, she searched the prairie bisected by the willow-clad banks of the river. Maybe the intruder had thought the river could save her. Barefoot? In the distance, beyond the summer yellow grass and white fluff of the seeding thistles, the stark peaks of the Rockies jutted against the cloudless sky. Once they had had snow on them, even in the summer. Not in her lifetime. Her frown deepened as she studied the marks where the lions had lain to eat. Coy-dog tracks pocked the dust and flattened grass, along with the prints of the turkey vultures. The condor had chased them away and now they circled patiently overhead waiting for her to leave. By tomorrow, you’d find no traces to prove that someone had died and the lions had eaten here.

  Tahira’s frown deepened as she used her link to video the site. She dug into her daypack for a plastic bag, waved the blow flies from the vertebrae and carefully bagged them. Plenty of flesh for a DNA identification. If this trespasser had wanted to be eaten, she could not have done a better job of placing herself in the old lioness’s path.

  Just like the other one.

  Tahira collected the fabric and hair, added them to the bag, then trudged back to her skimmer, stowed the stunner in the scabbard beneath the saddle and climbed aboard. The vultures were already descending, dodging the condor’s half-hearted feints, squabbling as they searched for overlooked scraps, their huge black wings raising dust from the scuffed ground. She pulled out her link and texted a report of the intruder’s death to her boss. Then she frowned at the screen and turned it off. He’ll scream about the PR aspects. Not now.

  The fabric, torn, dirty, and bloody as it was, had had the feel of silk, the sexy kind of shirt you might buy to wear for a lover. Tahira toed the skimmer to life and lifted gently from the riverbank.

  Thoughtfully, she pulled her AR goggles on and zoomed in on the ground as she spiraled slowly outward from the site of the killing, reading the night’s traffic in the bent grass stems, the wisp of tan hair snagged on a tangle of riverbank willow.

  She knew where this pride would be lying up, didn’t need to search for their signatures with the tracking software. Every major mammal in the Pleistocene Preserve was chipped, from coy-dogs to the new pair of giant sloths that had the gene engineers popping champagne corks, but after her years here, she rarely needed to use a chip to find what she was looking for.

  Tahira accelerated until the wind pulled her lips back from her teeth. Not one Perimeter alarm had gone off last night. Same with the last one.

  Tahira spied a patch of tawny hide in the shade beneath a clump of hawthorn a split second before the goggles ringed it with red and flashed an ID number above it. She braked hard, spiraled back and down. That was the small male, the one with the ragged ear, one of the old lioness’s last surviving cubs. He was a classic African type, with a full tawny mane and only a hint of the Pleistocene striping and narrower head. Which meant he was on the cull list. Like the old lioness. The IDs of the rest of the pride flashed into view. Right where she knew they would be. The old lioness was on her feet, looking up at the skimmer, her scarred face and faded, ratty fur a testament to her age. She was smart and she learned quickly. An offering like the girl would have been too good to pass up the first time. This second offering would have been easier to take.

  Tahira sighed, and spun the skimmer away, out over the broad plain of yellow summer grass patched with the dusty gray green of hawthorn and the darker junipers. A small herd of antelope raised their heads as she soared over, tails flashing nervously. The big herd would be farther north, she’d check on them as she circled home. A hawk soared at eye level as she rose, turned its attention back to the ground, searching for rodents flushed by the antelope below. Tahira checked on the horse herd, found them southward, watering at the grassy back of the narrow river, whose waters ran clear and dark. Automatically, she noted the dwindling feeder stream that would be down to a trickle in another month. No glaciers to keep rivers running out here, not anymore. Dark tails whisked their dun sides and they stamped dark-striped legs at the biting flies. The gene engineers were winning here, too. They had engineered the original Przewalksi’s horse into a chunky look-alike to the horses that had grazed this plain in the Pleistocene. They were working hard on the elephants now. Some of the recent calves were going to be huge and hairy. She did a quick count of the herd using her link software to scan the GPS chips, although she really didn’t need to. She’d have all the numbers available from the daily sat-scan when she got back to Admin. She didn’t have to do the rounds in person at all, but she liked to see for herself.

  And the last body hadn’t showed up on the Security report at Admin. She suspected this one wouldn’t either.

  The lead mare raised her head as she circled. The lame filly was gone, probably brought down by the same lion pride that had taken the trespasser. They would have gotten the filly long ago except that the old lead mare was her dam and had protected her foal fiercely, with the whole herd to back her up. Luck must have aided the pride. The old lioness was showing her age, and avoided the hard kills now.

  So she had taken the meal that had walked up and asked to be eaten.

  How in the name of all that was unholy had the trespasser gotten past the Perimeter?

  Tahira kicked the skimmer to high speed, circled south to where the bison herd grazed the lowlands, their huge, erect horns another testament to the geneticists wizardry. The eastern elephant troop was hanging around there right now, close enough to the monorail to give the tourists a good show. Sure enough, a train had stopped and even at her height and speed she could make out the passengers hanging out the windows, pointing their links. Their tour goggles would pick out the hairy Mastodon-type calves for them and explain in a pleasant voice how the engineers were tweaking the genome. The old cow raised her trunk to blow at Tahira as she skimmed by, then went back to scooping dust from the wallow they’d created, tossing it in ochre showers over her back. Tahira didn’t see any of the camels, but they were probably all back in trees, out of the sun. They, too, were changing. The old lioness was the only remaining lion that carried wholly African genes, had been wild-caught as a cub.

  Tahira liked her for that.

  With a sigh, Tahira grounded the skimmer to text a quick report on her find to her boss. Then she shut off the link before he could reply and swung the skimmer northward to find the big antelope herd.

  The sun was dipping toward the horizon by the time she returned to Admin. Only the solar farm beyond the low, ochre buildings, row upon row of collectors following the sun, spelled ‘tech.’ The earth-brick buildings might have been built by some primitive peoples, blending gently into the summer prairie. Tech was pretty much invisible now—except in the dry lands where the ranked mirrors of the solar farms and the wind towers had supplanted juniper and sage. But nobody went out there. Her village would have suited this landscape, she thought. Huts decaying slowly into the shriveling desert that had once fed lions and antelope and people. Tahira set the skimmer down hard and fast on the small landing pad behind the building. The trickle of water down the central interior water-wall washed a brea
th of moist cool and greenery-scent over her as she entered, tempting her to strip, shower, and sit in the pool. She ached after her full day on the skimmer. Once upon a time, she had not ached. It was time to make another appointment at the geri clinic. Or perhaps not. Every cycle had a natural end. Well, perhaps that was no longer true. Tahira sighed at the angry blink of the red priority icon above the holo deck.

  She ignored it and instead seated herself on her working cushion, doing full lotus for concentration. Called up Security. Some eye somewhere must have seen the girl last night. She started a search for predator-prey movement, narrowed the profile to a human’s mass. No point in watching rodents and coy-dogs. That got her lions, antelope, bison calves. A headache blossomed behind her eyes as the images flickered through her field.

  Then . . . there she was. Shadowy, slender, her arms, neck, face, legs stark white in the night-eye recording, that black shirt that would be torn and bloodied revealing a deep cleavage and breasts that were small enough to be natural, not sculpted. Tahira’s eyes narrowed. Short shorts, sexy clothes, nothing you’d wear into the thorny scrub of the Preserve. Sandals, so she had lost them, running. No blood on that white skin. She hadn’t waded through the hawthorn then. How old? Sixteen? No, she decided. Less. Maybe fourteen. That was how old her daughter had been, last time she had seen her. Tahira tasted blood, realized she was biting her lip. She watched the girl wince, bend a slender leg to rub at something—thorn or bite. She looked lost. Pissed. Stood up by a date pissed.

  Then, her expression changed from lost-and-angry to startled. Then frightened. She looked around and for an instant her eyes seemed to meet Tahira’s. Accusingly.

  Like an antelope, she turned and bolted, running through the grass and thorns. One of the sandals flew off, a twinkle of motion on the screen.