Probability Space

by Nancy Kress

  “Why?”

  “So they can get the bodies into bondage chemicals, of course!” Does this alien think the prison officials would let the unreal get even a little bit decayed? I thought that after our several conversations, Pek Walters understood more than that.

  He rises slowly, haltingly, to his feet. Pek Fakar, laughing, strolls toward the door, the gun still in her hand.

  Pek Walters says, “World people not cruel?”

  Behind us, the bodies of the Huhuhubs lie sprawled across each other, smoking.

  The next time we are herded from our cells into the dining hall and then the courtyard, the Huhuhub corpses are of course gone. Pek Walters has developed a cough. He walks more slowly, and once, on the way to our usual spot against the far wall, he puts a hand on my arm to steady himself.

  “Are you sick, Pek?”

  “Exactly,” he says.

  “But you are a healer. Make the cough disappear.”

  He smiles, and sinks gratefully against the wall. “Healer, heal own self.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. So you are informer, Pek Bengarin, and you hope I tell you something about science experiments on children on World.”

  I take a deep breath. Pek Fakar passes us, carrying her gun. Two of her own people now stay close beside her at all times, in case another prisoner tries to take the gun away from her. I cannot believe anyone would try, but maybe I’m wrong. There’s no telling what the unreal will do. Pek Walters watches her pass, and his smile is gone. Yesterday Pek Fakar shot another person, this time not even an alien. There is a note under my bed requesting more guns.

  I say, “You say I am an informer. I do not say it.”

  “Exactly,” Pek Walters says. He has another coughing spell, then closes his eyes wearily. “I have not an-tee-by-otics.”

  Another Terran word. Carefully I repeat it. “‘An-tee-by-otics’?”

  “Pro-teenz for heal.”

  Again that word for very small bits of food. I make use of it. “Tell me about the pro-teenz in the science experiments.”

  “I tell you everything about experiments. But only if you answer questions first.”

  He will ask about my sister. For no reason other than rudeness and cruelty. I feel my face turn to stone.

  He says, “Tell me why steal baby not so bad for make person unreal always.”

  I blink. Isn’t this obvious? “To steal a baby doesn’t damage the baby’s reality. It just grows up somewhere else, with some other people. But all real people of World share the same reality, and anyway after the transition, the child will rejoin its blood ancestors. Baby stealing is wrong, of course, but it isn’t a really serious crime.”

  “And make false coins?”

  “The same. False, true—coins are still shared.”

  He coughs again, this time much harder. I wait. Finally he says, “So when I steal your bicycle, I not violate shared reality too much, because bicycle still somewhere with people of World.”

  “Of course.”

  “But when I steal bicycle, I violate shared reality a little?”

  “Yes.” After a minute I add, “Because the bicycle is, after all, mine. You…made my reality shift a little without sharing the decision with me.” I peer at him; how can all this not be obvious to such an intelligent man?

  He says, “You are too trusting for be informer, Pek Bengarin.”

  I feel my throat swell with indignation. I am a very good informer. Haven’t I just bound this Terran to me with a private shared reality in order to create an exchange of information? I am about to demand his share of the bargain when he says abruptly, “So why you kill your sister?”

  Two of Pek Fakar’s people swagger past. They carry the new guns. Across the courtyard a Faller turns slowly to look at them, and even I can read fear on that alien face.

  I say, as evenly as I can manage, “I fell prey to an illusion. I thought that Ano was copulating with my lover. She was younger, more intelligent, prettier. I am not very pretty, as you can see. I didn’t share the reality with her, or him, and my illusion grew. Finally it exploded in my head, and I…did it.” I am breathing hard, and Pek Fakar’s people look blurry.

  “You remember clear Ano’s murder?”

  I turn to him in astonishment. “How could I forget it?”

  “You cannot. You cannot because memory-building pro-teenz. Memory is strong in your brain. Memory-building pro-teenz are strong in your brain. Scientific research on World children for discover what is structure of pro-teenz, where is pro-teenz, how pro-teenz work. But we discover different thing instead.”

  “What different thing?” I say, but Pek Walters only shakes his head and begins coughing again. I wonder if the coughing spell is an excuse to violate our bargain. He is, after all, unreal.

  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, partl
y 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 curtly. 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 Brimmidin’s 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 any more.

  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 neighbor’s 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 and 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 meaninglessly 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 neighbor’s 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 ho
usehold 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…Brifjis…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 clue 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 that Pek Brifjis is a healer.

  A healer.

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