Looking down, she saw number two, the bigger one, politely handing her back the torus toy. She took it.
The little vanished.
Now I will tell of the time the yoomin beans catched us, it was sad but o so fine. Kick Mwres, bash Mwres, no more soundings. Quiet, Mwres. I am to tell. It was big ship, big shape looming and glooming in the starlite when—no, not G'lydd, I me—saw and took all in. Funny on outside, spidery things and bumps and “numbers,” G'lydd say. Sh, Mwres. So we all swarm in, it being allalonetime now and You Know Who not here, he/she in sun, not knowing what we doing baddie stuff. Oof! into metal wall, ping! inside metal, streaming on to round plastipak cover, can see within.
Creatures! A whole round of creatures is ambulating, zizzing, flesh voice-boxes (such they have, to be sure) et cetera. Yick! says Ulf. Beans, say I. So we go all ways into different places, full of interest, to see beans do such, so we become beanshape, in yellow, to do bean-suches acts, as: Crawling, yelling, jumping, shrieking, et cetera. We fell on hair and lap, got told story like real little crittur, went in and out of water, sat on big, woodeny thing, pulled a toy from littler bean, we yelled, we gave it back, we rolled between “sheets” on “bed,” and so on.
Then a tall, goldy-topped bean SAT on us. Shriek! Shriek! Help! Haw, goes Gr, was sat upon. The beans all shake up, another do a bean thing called “laff,” others too but hide tee-hee under hands.
Short, round-shape bean with front bumps say, “Why is my ship infested with babies and small children in yellow overalls?” and other person reply, “Mam, we receive distress call from planet Ulp, is terrible disease ramping among adults, must be send up kiddies to be safe.”
(This is not lie exactly. Maybe not so true, either, says G'lydd. Yes it is, I say indignants. Horrible rigidity disease all over down below, can be ONLY ONE THING AT TIME, can think of worse?)
Tall story-teller bean say, “Mam, I attempted to verify distress call with”—here Gr interrupt, tweedled and twaddled, but tall bean really say with all cryptograms and codes and distortions and what-not but cannot find no signal except planet Ulp's (sent, as WE know, by YOU KNOW WHO) so Ulpians send up all these babies and small children to ship to be safe.
Starey-eyed Second-person mutter to self, Yes, but will we be safe from them? Mwres snicker. Says, I slummed down pretty wall hanger, ho ho, will never be same.
Nasty! says G'lydd.
Funny skinny little person with front bumps say Oh Mam, oh, mam, they is only innocent little beans, kiddies and such, let us be kind to them, feed them broth and cookings, give them nice place to sleep, &c. We all haw haw at bumpy person; we want eat cherry pie, whipt cream, pickled herrings, wiener buns, strawberry shore cake and such. Make come out of walls. Gr know how.
Doctor say Mam, is against humanities not to give refuge to poor little mites. Gafroy bite her, ugh, taste awful from toes not washed for week, report Gafroy. Doctor pull foot back. Except that one, she say, glaring. We loff, go: we are inocent, inocent.
Uh-oh. Sour-faced Second-person open mouth, say: Captain, I have suspections these not kiddies—but here Gr and Grf and I ram into its stummick, causing loss of breath to speak, & Ff bounce up and down on midsection, causing fuss and silence. Shame! cry Doctor-person, to say such of poor innocents which their peoples is dying down there in droves. Tsk task say all. So we run all of us to splashing pool and splash in, making big fun, then zoom out to food room and gorge selves on cherry pie with whip cream, leaving some on floor, alas. Then to beds which we roll in “sheets” and leave feetmarks on “blankets.” Captain say Can any of you really envision these poor little children six to a bed in your bed? and all persons grab each other and say, no no no, please help, anywhere else, will get in way something terrible. We know what they thinking and Ff want to tell but I won't let. Not proper. Maybe somebody will read us storybooks? They have all this things like stuff was throwed at us. So we nice to all, stick out little bellies, wiggle eyelashes, &c. say, Oh read us a story, plees, plees, O Lady who Steer. Is such lovely thinkings. So she pleesed and do so, very lovely, very exciting, Gr and Ff kiss from it & dance. Is all in rhyme and alliteration, can not understand but beauty. Then somebody else do and somebody elses and elses. This take seven hours forty-five minutes ten seconds three milliseconds. We not tired. Wow. Then off to food room for strawberry pie and chocolate bars wow wow even tastier. Then time to play poker at bottom of swimming pool, which upset guard bean until G'lydd explain we O.K. but still upset so we sleep in botanical place instead, Ff snacking off plants with Mwres. Leave them alone, sir. Comb hair. Clean teeth on plant stalk. All say together, oh You Know Who, guard our sleep but stay away, plees. Then we all loving and goody and glow with friendlies. Then we sleep.
Next day: Doctor-bean very active in laboratory trying find cure for rigidity disease. Muttering to self about blood samples and such we bring up from Ulp surface: Why, these are all ideally normal! Is no disease here. She putter & putter & tsk. G'lydd want to tell her but Ff and I sit on she: No! Mustn't! until give up. G'lydd shake haughty and toss head and vanish away. Lie in sun room pretend bean, with cache-sexe and dark glasses but in switched places. Haw! Then Doctor say Aha! I have found fraction of lipid protein is very strange, without which these people would be mere heaps of protoplasmic gunk. But this cannot be a cure for disease unless disease is normalcy itself. Hurrah! I have found it. Ulpians catch normal humancy from us on ship; that is disease. She then grab and inoculate laboratory squirrel, which was hiding under papers on desk to get away from doctors. Behold! It turn into a mess of Jell-O. Then she inoculate own knee, which also turn all squudgy and nasty. Behold! she say. The antidote to the disease of Form!
Meanwhile nice story-teller person finally contact planet Ulp and up is coming—
No, no! yell Mwres, I didn't it was THEY who did it, I didn't mess up tapestried. I didn't throw books at steer-lady. I didn't gnaw tube, it was THEM.
Ff and L1 and Gafroy say: Look WHO is coming.
It is You Know Who.
Uh oh.
With one loud Word YKW make us fall into line and behave—anybody acts naughty now gets incarnated as cactus for fifty years—and we all sob & cry & promise to be good, turning back into our true shape, which is two-foot-high pyramids of green Jell-O. YKW is a six-foot-high pyramid of green Jell-O. I flash a bit into my yellow-overalls yoomin from to say goodbye.
YKW trounce me. That is telepathic and very awful, tho' I won't say how. If you are pyramid of green Jell-O, it hurts (to make ripples). So I regress right back into being a nauseous Thing.
Story man say softly in mind: You are very beautiful just as you are, little Things. Life is beautiful. Nothing is so graceful and lovely as a heap of green Jell-O.
So we leave happy. Crying goodbye, goodbye, I sorry I hurt your artifactual and put water on it. I was bad. I ate and messed up food room and did other awfuls. But I am only a lit-ul child.
MARCH! says You Know Who.
So we march.
Down on the surface everybody is now cured of looking like Yoomin Beans, and is back to normal, viz. green gunk. Life is again horrible. Up in ship only Ff is still there, try to hide out in botanical bay, imitating frond. Is not successful, is almost devoured by botany cat, must come down to surface in disgrace, to look forever like Graminidae. Sometimes we look up into sky, remembering beautiful ship and food and cry, O ship-thing, ship-thing, wherefore art thou up so high/like a carpet in the sky? And we flow about, savagely chanting:
Rigidity, rigidity,
Wherefore art thou so fond of we?
Which is a sort of spring thing, a festival cry with which we assault the boring semi-liquidity of our fate.
Meanwhile:
Mam say to steer-person: Did you authorize the entry of these…ah…youngsters without checking out Ulp and said species computer-wise?
All say No no, nobody let them in. Do not do bad things to us, plees. Was not our fault.
Enough. We shall torment you no more. Goodbye, goodbye.
&n
bsp; The day shift slept, the Engineer dreaming that she was at home with too few rights and far too many little brothers and sisters. The Doctor woke every few minutes with a start, having dreamed repeatedly of an operating room overrun with Ulpian youngsters, until she gave up, rose, put on her robe, and went to enter results into the hospital computer, from where she could keep an oblique watch on the hall and the next room. The Navigator slept on her face, over a cache of her most precious discs. The Communicator alone slept soundly and did not dream. Both reading, both wearing glasses (the Captain for myopia, her First for a touch of astigmatism) the Captain and the First were in bed together, the latter in pajamas. After a while the Captain put down her book (Military History of the Late T'ang) and frowned. “Thinking about those children?” said the other.
“They were not children,” she said decisively, and shuddered.
“Well, yes,” he said, “they were aliens, true but even as pyramids of green Jell-O, they were…well, baby pyramids.”
“Hm!” said she. There was a moment's silence. He went back to his own book, an annotated Poems of Emily Dickinson. Then she said slowly:
“Love, do you think…did it ever occur to you that all children are aliens?”
He said, “Do you mean the bouncing on adults and the cherry pie between their toes? Oh yes. No, not really. Anyway I rather liked them. The small pyramids, I mean.”
“I suppose,” she said, a bit sharply, “that it's perfectly normal for human male philoprogenitiveness to be roused by contact with small pyramids of green goo. Nonetheless—”
“No, not by them. By you.”
“By me?”
“Absolutely.” He added, “Do you want to back out?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No. We'll do it. It'll be human, after all. Not like them.”
Indeedy yes. Will be little yoomin bean. Will be playmate. Will be lonely. You Know Who go away again soon.
We come back.
The House of Mourning
BRIAN STABLEFORD
Brian Stableford is a biologist and sociologist turned SF and fantasy writer. He is also a critic and scholar of the literary history of the field, and is so talented, productive, and knowledgeable that he might be called the British Isaac Asimov of this generation. He is a scientific rationalist and stands for reason the way Asimov did. He wrote many SF novels in the 1970s and 1980s, but fell out of print in the U.S. toward the end of the 1980s. His short fiction for the last several years has been extremely impressive, especially his novellas appearing in Analog, Asimov's, and Interzone, and he has been nominated several times for the Hugo and Nebula Awards in short fiction categories recently. His recent works now comprise one of the major bodies of short fiction in the SF field of the decade. Much of his recent novel-length fiction (e.g., The Empire of Fear, The Werewolves of London) has been published first in England, and only later, and somewhat obscurely, in the U.S., and as fantasy or horror even though most of it has been alternate history SF or alternate universe SF. This story first appeared in Ellen Datlow's Off Limits. It's a hard-SF horror story about pain and pleasure, biotechnology, and sex.
Anna stared at her thin face in the mirror, wondering where the substance had gone and why the color had vanished from the little that remained. Her eyes had so little blue left in them that they were as gray as her hair. She understood enough to know that a disruption of the chemistry of the brain was bound to affect the body as profoundly as the mind, but the sight of her image in the soul-stealing glass reawakened more atavistic notions. It was as if her dangerous madness had wrought a magical corruption of her flesh.
Perhaps, she thought, it was hazardous for such as she to look into mirrors; the confrontation might be capable of precipitating a crisis of confidence and a subsequent relapse into delirium. Facing up to the phantoms of the past was, however, the order of the day. With infinite patience she began to apply her makeup, determined that she would look alive, whatever her natural condition.
By the time she had finished, her hair was tinted gold, her cheeks delicately pink, and her lips fulsomely red—but her eyes still had the dubious transparency of rain-drops on a window pane.
Isabel was late, as usual. Anna was forced to pace up and down in the hallway, under the watchful eyes of the receptionist and the ward sister. Fortunately, she was in the habit of dressing in black for everyday purposes, so her outfit attracted no particular attention.
The ward sister was there because there was a ritual to be observed. Anna couldn't just walk out of the hospital, even though she was classed as a voluntary patient. She had to be handed over in a formal fashion, to signify that responsibility was being officially transferred from one sister to another. Not that Isabel really was her sister in a biological sense, any more than the ward sister was; she and Anna had simply been parts of the same arbitrarily-constructed foster family. They were not alike in any way at all.
When Isabel finally arrived, in a rush, with all her generous flesh and hectic color, the ceremony began.
“You must remember that this is Anna's first day out,” the ward sister said to Isabel. “We don't anticipate any problems, but you must make sure that she takes her medication at the appointed times. If she shows signs of distress, you should bring her back here as soon as possible. This emergency number will connect you with a doctor immediately.”
Isabel stared at the number scrawled on the card as though it were the track of some mysterious bird of ill omen.
To Anna, the sister said only: “Be good.” Not “Have a nice time” or even “Take it easy,” but simply “Be good.” It's better to be beautiful than to be good, Anna thought, but it's better to be good than to be ugly. She had been beautiful once, and more than beautiful—so much more as to be far beyond the reach of Saint Oscar's ancient wisdom, but now there was nothing left to her except to be good, because her more-than-beauty had gone very, very bad.
Isabel, of course, had no idea that Anna was on her way to a funeral, and that her role was merely to provide a convenient avenue of escape. Anna waited until the car was a good two miles away from the hospital before she broached the subject. “Can you drop me a the nearest tube station,” she said lightly, “and can you let me have some money.”
“Don't be silly,” Isabel said. “We're going home.”
Isabel meant her own home, where she lived with a husband and two children, paying solemn lip service to the social ideal. Anna had seen Isabel's husband three or four times, but only in the distance. He was probably one of those visitors' partners whose supportive resolution failed at the threshold of Bedlam—many in-laws preferred to wait outside while their better halves attended to the moral duty of comforting their afflicted kin—but it was possible that Isabel had forbidden him to come in and be properly introduced. Few women relished the prospect of introducing their husbands to whores, even whores who happened to be their sisters—legalistically speaking—and whose sexual charms had been obliterated in no uncertain terms.
“No we're not,” Anna said. “That's just something I had to tell the doctors, so they'd let me out. If I'd told them the truth, they'd have stopped me, one way or another.”
“What truth?” Isabel wanted to know. “What on earth are you talking about? I'll have you know that I've gone to a lot of trouble over this. You heard what the nurse said. I'm responsible for you.”
“You won't be doing anything illegal,” Anna told her. “I'll get back on time, and nobody will be any the wiser. Even if I didn't go back, nobody would blame you. I'm the crazy one, remember. How much cash can you let me have?”
“I don't have any cash,” Isabel told her, as she drove resolutely past Clapham South tube station without even hesitating. “I don't carry cash. Nobody does. It's not necessary anymore.”
That was a half-truth, at best. At the Licensed House where Anna had worked, the clients had used their smartcards, and the transactions had been electronically laundered so that no dirty linen would be exposed to prying wives or
the Inland Revenue. The streetwalkers who haunted the Euroterminal and the Bull Ring had smartcard processors too, but their laundering facilities were as dodgy as their augmentations and most of their clients paid in cash.
“You can still get cash, can't you?” Anna said, innocently. “Walls still have holes, just like spoiled whores. Don't worry about missing Clapham South. Vauxhall will be fine.”
“Just where the hell do you think you're going, Anna?” Isabel demanded, hotly. “Just what the hell do you think you're going to do?” That was Isabel all over: repetition and resentment, with plenty of hell thrown in.
“There's something I need to do,” Anna said, unhelpfully. She had no intention of spelling it out. Isabel would protest violently just as surely as the doctors would have done. Unlike the doctors, though, Isabel was easy to manipulate. Isabel had always been scared of Anna, even though she was two years older, two inches taller, and two stones heavier. Now that Anna was a shadow of her former self, of course, it was more like four stones—but that only increased Anna's advantage.
“I won't do it,” Isabel said, although the hopelessness of her insistence was already evident.
“I can do anything I like,” Anna said, reflectively. “It's one of the perks of being mad and bad—you can do anything you like, and nobody's surprised. I can't be punished, because there's nothing they can take away that I haven't already lost. I could do with a hundred pounds, but fifty might do in a pinch. I have to have cash, you see, because people with scrambled brain chemistry aren't allowed smartcards. Fortunately, there'll always be cash.” As long as there were outposts of the black economy that weren't geared up for laundering, there'd be cash—and everybody in the world was engaged in the black economy in some fashion, even if it was only token tax-dodging.
“I don't like being used,” Isabel said, frostily. “I agreed to take you out for the day because you asked me to, and because the doctors thought it would be a good idea—a significant step on the way to rehabilitation. I won't stand for it, Anna. It's not fair.”
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