The Long List Anthology Volume 5
Page 21
Meg, said More.
“It’s you!” she said, and took a wild-eyed step toward me – but stopped herself, and so did not rush to me, lay hands upon me, embrace me. “So William was right after all,” she said, more calmly. “I was sure you were seized, or dead.”
Meg! Ah, Meg! Finish me!
To the horrid voice in my pouch, she reacted not at all.
I bowed low. “Alive, and free to serve Madame,” I said.
“Free.” She looked all about, at an overhang of verminous thatch above, at a puddle of piss below, at the leaden sky and the barrel-staves, at everything but me and my noisy pouch.
I glanced at her husband, who gave me only the smallest shake of his head in reply.
“Here, Madame,” I said, and gestured at the pouch that swung heavily at my side, still wailing and moaning.
Drown me in the river, Meg! I am your father! Burn me in a pyre! Meg, you silly bitch, listen! Meg!
Madame made as if to reach for the flap, then snatched back her hand with such haste I heard it slap against the front of her dress.
Looking neither at him nor at me, she said, flatly, “William.”
Roper, sparing me a cold glance, stepped forward and lifted a corner of the flap a few inches. The moment he lifted it, More’s puling ceased.
“Why, ’tis not him,” Roper said.
“You lie, sir,” I said.
Roper’s face twisted in anger. “Dare you speak so?”
Madame looked faint. “What wrong have I done thee to warrant such cruelty?”
Roper and I spoke at once.
“Madame, please.”
“Silence, dog!”
“See for yourself.”
“Meg, let’s away.”
“I will see,” she said, silencing us. She lifted the flap, looked in, and breathed, “Oh.”
As I watched her face, her features seemed to smooth. The lines of care and middle years filled in like canals. Her eyes shone.
“That such a small vessel,” she murmured, “could contain such a great head.”
“Meg! You are mistaken, surely.”
“No. Look, William. Do you not see the mole upon his cheek, the cleft in his chin? As a girl I tried to hide flower-petals in there.”
Her husband looked again.
“He is much diminished,” Roper said. “And yet.”
“Enough,” Madame said, stepping away. “The task is concluded. Take him.”
I thought this meant concealed guards, that the moment had come, and I was ready. But she only watched as Roper gently lifted the satchel off my shoulder.
“When they told me he was gone,” she said, half to me and half to no one, “my own head went a-rolling. I had no mind, no purpose. I wanted only to be in the street, in the crowds. In my slippers I walked through the muck, seeing nothing, facing no one, until I was brought up short … by whiteness. White on white, like a heap of saint-souls. I stood, marveling, before a shop-window full of Low Country linen. So, so beautiful. Mother used to say, ah, Meg, it’s a shame to bring it home, it ne’er can be so pure again. I suddenly had a single thought: a winding-sheet. Father must be wrapped for burial. Of course. But I had no purse. I had left the house in such grief and such haste, I had come away with nothing. Yet I pointlessly, automatically patted the little sewing-pocket of my skirts, and pulled from that pocket three gold sovereigns, which were not there before. And so I came home no longer mad and pitiable, but sensible, and done with my errand, and this winding-sheet was worth two pounds at the most.” She flapped at me the bit of cloth she’d been a-worrying. “Just look at it! Little better than dagswain. Such is the world without my father, friend Aliquo: petty miracles, and petty frauds.” She shook her head, seemed to focus on me. “But my household will e’er remember your good offices. I pray you, seek your perfect homeland. I hope it exists – but you’ll not find it here.” Her eyes ceased to see me. “Ay, not here.”
She and her man turned and walked away. “We’ll pickle him, I think,” I heard her say, “with some elderflower.”
As that grim burden swung at Roper’s hip, down the alley and into the street, her father’s not-voice resumed its wailing.
God damn you. God damn you! God damn you ALL!
I stood at the alley’s mouth and watched them grow smaller in the distance, the voice diminishing all the while, until they could not be seen, and More could not be heard.
• • • •
Freed of my burden, freed of my hopes, I walked southward, away from the city, toward the sea. I moved among women and men, but saw no one, heard nothing.
Two days later, I crouched on a quay on the wet lip of England, hidden behind shipping-barrels, and removed from my pouch the not-More head I had carried all that way.
“Farewell, friend Zapolet,” I told it, and laid it onto the surface of the water, as gently as More must have laid his firstborn babe, wiggling and shiny, ‘pon her coverlet. I watched the Zapolet’s staring head roll ‘neath the waves, as the babe sinks into the adult. Then it was gone forever.
I re-entered the crowd and found a line to stand in, waiting to book passage. Something tugged at my breeches. A grimy child, of indeterminate sex, holding a tray of sweetmeats.
“Suckets, Milord?”
Suckets, repeated More.
I bellowed and whirled, my feet crushing the scattered sweetmeats as the child fled. I stared into the incredulous faces of strangers jostling to get away from me. Gulls shrieked. The ocean heaved. Ships’ colors whipped in the hot wind.
Thou fool, said More. Whose head do you think I’m in?
• • • •
I write this letter in an English inn, a half-day’s walk from London.
I said at the outset that I had failed, and so I believed at the time. Perhaps I will believe that again. In the meantime, with every northward step away from home, questions roil in my head – philosophical questions, such as those chewed after dinner, in the refectories of Aircastle. I will pose them to you.
Was I treated well, or ill, when my lover’s husband discovered me in the arms of his wife, and assumed the entire fault was mine?
Was I treated well, or ill, when I, a mere girl, was charged with “forbidden embraces,” with “defiling the marriage bed”? When my lover was persuaded to swear untruths against me, to save herself?
Was I treated well, or ill, when I was sentenced to slavery? When I was assured my bondage would be temporary if I was good, and if I denied my nature forevermore? When I was told, moreover, that I was fortunate, that voyagers stepped onto our docks daily in hopes of achieving slavery in Utopia, so preferable to freedom elsewhere?
Was I treated well, or ill, when my natural strength and agility placed me in endless daily training, in service to a citizenry that viewed combat and assassination as tasks fit only for mercenaries and slaves?
Was I treated well, or ill, when I was ordered to rescue a half-mythical figure in a faraway land where even my sex must be denied and disguised, if I am to function at all, and promised my freedom if I succeeded?
It is true, my former fellow citizens, my former masters and mistresses, I did not rescue More. He is dead. He reminds me daily of this fact, and of the impossibility of a better world to come, though in an ever fainter voice, one that I am growing used to. Mostly, now, he speaks a single name.
More is unsaved, and yet, I write you today as a free woman, to say farewell.
Our homeland is not perfect. No homeland is. But all lands can be made more perfect – even this England. And all lands have perfection within them: somewhere, sometime, someone.
Thus ends my story and my service, ye Prince and Tranibors of our good land, ye Syphogrants and families thereof. May my example be instructive to you and to your assigns. Though I never return to Utopia, never walk again beside the Waterless Stream, I will feel my people with me always, all those stern and rational generations. I will always be your agent, but I serve another, now.
* * *
A Study in Oils
By Kelly Robson
Halfway up the winding cliffside guideway, Zhang Lei turned his bike around. He was exhausted from three days of travel and nauseated, too, but that wasn’t the problem. He could always power through physical discomfort. But the trees, the rocks, the open sky above, and the mountains closing in—it was all too strange. He kept expecting something to drop on his head.
He pinged Marta, the social worker in Beijing Hive who’d orchestrated his escape from Luna seventy-two hours earlier.
Forget Paizuo, he whispered as his bike coasted the guideway’s downslope. This is too weird.
Turn that bike back around or I’ll hit your disable button, Marta whispered back.
You wouldn’t.
He turned the bike’s acceleration to maximum.
I would. You can spend the next two weeks lying at the bottom of a gully while the tribunal decides what to do with you. Turn around.
No, I’m going back to the Danzhai roadhouse.
When she scowled, her whole face crumpled into a mass of wrinkles. She didn’t even look like a person anymore.
I’d do anything to keep you alive, kid, and I don’t even like you. She jabbed at him with an age-spotted finger, as if she could reach across the continent and poke him in the chest. Turn back around or I’ll do it.
He believed her. Nobody had hit his disable button since he’d left Luna, but Marta was an old ex-Lunite and that meant she was both tough and mean. Zhang Lei slowed his bike, rotated back to the guideway’s uphill track, and gave the acceleration dial a vicious twist.
You don’t like me? he asked.
Maybe a little. Marta flipped through the graphs of his biom. She had full access to that too, and could check everything from his hormone levels to his sleep cycle. You’re getting dehydrated. Drink some water. And slow your bike. You’re going to make yourself puke.
I feel fine, he lied.
Marta rolled her eyes. Relax. You’ll love Paizuo. Nobody wants to kill you there.
She slapped the connection down, and the image of her elderly face was replaced by steep, verdant mountainside. Danzhai County was thick with an impossible greenness, in layers of bushes, trees, grasses, and herbs he had no name for.
Everything was unfamiliar here. He knew he was deep in southwestern China, but that’s about all. He knew he was surrounded by mountains, with Danzhai’s transit hub behind him. It was a two-pad skip station, the smallest he’d ever seen, next to a narrow lake surrounded by hills, everything green but the sky—which actually was blue, like everyone always said about Earth—and the buildings. Those were large, brown, and open to the air as if atmospheric weather was nothing.
An atmosphere people could breathe. That was Earth’s one unique claim. Unlike Luna, or Venus, or Mars, or any of the built environments in the solar system, here in Danzhai and a few other places on Earth, humans lived every day exposed to weather. It was traditional, or something.
Weather was overrated, Zhang Lei decided. The afternoon was so humid, he’d sweated through his shirt. And the air wasn’t clean. Bits of fluff floated in it, and it smelled weird, too. Birds zipped through the air like hovertoys launched from tree limbs—were they even birds? He’d seen so few on Luna.
At least he was alone. A year ago, he would have hated not having anyone to goof around with or show off for. No coach, no team, no fans. Now he was grateful. Marta was watching out for him, always on the other end of a ping if anything went wrong. It was a relief not having to stay ultra-alert.
He pinged Marta.
How long do I have to stay in Paizuo?
Her face appeared again. She was shoveling noodles into her mouth with a pair of chopsticks. The sight of the food made his stomach heave.
At least two weeks. More if I can wrangle an extension. Ideally, I’d like you to stay until the tribunal decides your case.
Okay.
Two weeks. Fine. He’d keep doing what she said, within reason. Drinking water, yes. Slowing the bike down, no. He wasn’t going to toil up the mountain like some slack-ass oldster.
Wasn’t long before he regretted that decision. The nausea wouldn’t be denied any longer. He shifted on the bike’s saddle and hung his head over the edge of the guideway. His mouth prickled with saliva until his guts heaved, forcing what was left of his luxurious, hand-cooked Danzhai lunch—black fungus, eggplant, cucumbers, and garlic with pepper, pepper, and more pepper—up, out, and over into the green gulch below. The nausea eased.
When he got to the Paizuo landing stage, the guideway came to a dead end. He couldn’t believe it. Just a ground-level platform with a bike rack on one side and a battery of cargo floats on the other. Zhang Lei had never even seen a landing stage with only one connection, not even in the bowels of Luna’s smallest hab. Everywhere was interconnected. Not Paizuo, apparently.
He hooked his bike on the rack, shouldered his duffle bag, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve, flicking away a few stray pepper seeds. His lips burned.
I said you’d puke, Marta whispered. No visual this time, only a disembodied voice. Bet you feel like shit.
Yeah, but you look like shit.
It was the traditional Lunar reply. Marta laughed.
Don’t pull that lip here, okay? You’re a guest. Be polite.
He shifted his bag from one shoulder to the other. Nobody seemed to be watching, aside from Marta. Behind the trees, a few brown houses climbed the side of the mountain. Where was the village? A few people were visible through the trees, but otherwise, Paizuo was a wilderness—a noisy wilderness. Wind in the leaves, birds chirping, and buzzing—something coming up behind him.
Zhang Lei spun, fists raised. A cargo conveyor zipped up the guideway. It slid its payload onto a float and slotted itself into place on the underside of the landing stage. The float slowly meandered up a leafy path.
A hospitality fake showed him the way to the guest house, where he stumbled to his room, fell on top of the bed, and slept fourteen hours straight. If someone had wanted to kill him then, they easily could have. He wouldn’t have cared.
• • • •
The other three artists in the guest house were pampered oldsters from high-status habs. They made a big show of acting casual, but Zhang Lei caught each of them exchanging meaningful looks. They were probably pinging his ID to ogle his disable button, marveling at the label under it that said KILLER—FAIR GAME, and discussing him in whispers.
During lunch, Zhang Lei ignored them. Instead of joining their conversation, he watched a hygiene bot polish the floor.
“The wood bothered me at first,” said Prajapati, gesturing with a beringed hand at the guest house’s wooden walls, floor, and ceiling. She looked soft, her dark skin plush with fat and burnished with moisturizers. Her metadata identified her as a sculptor from Bangladesh Hell. “But organic materials are actually quite hygienic, if treated properly.”
“I don’t like the dirt,” said Paul, an ancient watercolorist from Mars. “It’s everywhere outside.”
“It’s not dirt, it’s soil,” said the sculptor. She picked a morsel of flesh out of the bubbling pot of fish soup in the middle of the table.
“People from the outplanet diaspora forget that soil is life,” said Han Song, a 2D photographer from Beijing Hive.
“Yes, we’ve all been told that a thousand times,” replied the watercolorist with a smile. “Earth thinks very well of itself. But I have to say, I like Paizuo. The Miao traditional lifestyle is extremely appealing.”
A woman
shuffled into the dining room bearing plates of egg dumplings and sweet millet cake. The oldsters smiled and thanked her profusely. The woman wore a wide silver torque around her neck, hung with tiny bells and charms. They tinkled as she arranged the dishes. She was slender, but the profile of her abdomen showed a huge tumor under her colorful tunic.
“What a waste of billable hours,” the watercolorist said once the chef was gone. “Couldn’t they task a bot with the kitchen-to-table supply chain? I know tradition is important to the Miao, but the human ability to carry plates is hardly going to die out.”
The chef had tagged the food with detailed nutritional notes, and it said millet was good for digestive upset. After vomiting his Danzhai lunch yesterday, he couldn’t face more peppers. But the millet cake was good—honey-sweet and crunchy. The egg dumplings were delicious, too. He could eat the whole plate.
Marta pinged him.
I thought you’d never wake up. Listen, don’t worry about the other guests, okay? We’ve had them investigated. They’re all nice, quiet, trustworthy people. They agreed not to ask too many questions.
He shoved another dumpling in his mouth. Zhang Lei knew he ought to be grateful but he wasn’t. The three oldsters were getting something out of the deal, too. They would be able to tell stories about him for the rest of their lives. I once shared accommodations with a murderer. Well, not a murderer, I suppose, not exactly, my dear, but a killer. No, I never asked him what happened but you should have seen the disable button on his ID. It said KILLER right under it. I couldn’t help but stare.
Zhang Lei finished the dumplings and claimed the rest of the millet cake. He left the table still chewing, and slammed the front door behind him.
What did you tell them about me? he asked Marta.