Clockwork Phoenix 3: new tales of beauty and strangeness

by Mike Allen

  Mason raised his head and saw the braid.

  “It’s for you,” Nin said. “It’s yours.”

  His hand shot out so fast she did not see it move.

  The braid and the silver ring disappeared into his clenched fist.

  “I am Nin Stix,” Nin said. “What’s your name?”

  “I am Mason Ezekiel Gont,” said the ghost, and then he laughed. The sound seemed to surprise him. Then, surprising Nin, he dipped his head and brushed her belly with a kiss.

  “And I am pleased,” he said, “I am most pleased to meet you, Nin Stix.” He kissed her belly again, the spot between her breasts, the side of her throat.

  Then, in a whisper she almost missed: “Stop me, Nin.”

  “No,” she said. “You’re free. You’re my friend. You’re the only one I want.”

  His tongue licked a few grains of salt from the spill across her belly. His exhale moved, frozen, across her skin. Nin felt a thin ice crust her stomach.

  “Mason,” she began.

  “Nin Stix.”

  “Mason Ezekiel Gont.”

  “Nin Stix, sorceress.” His tongue worked on her, his lips, his teeth. The hunger of a hundred years. “Nin, gentle mistress. Nin of the Four Winds…”

  “Mason…”

  “Nin, do not stop me now…”

  “Mason—finish it!”

  And he did.

  * * *

  All Souls’ day passed in a dream, and then night came.

  Nin and Mason lay together, foreheads touching, and Nin wept to realize that Mason’s kiss had driven the taste of ash from her mouth. She burrowed against him, driving her flesh to his, knowing she would not be able to touch him again after midnight.

  “Nin.” His breath was warm now, warm on her scalp, and it smelled of lily and of myrrh. “Nin, my Nin, what will you do now?”

  She knew what he was asking. He was asking, “What are you going to do without me?” He was asking, “How will you live, when I leave you alone—more alone than anyone has ever been alone?”

  Nin shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does,” he insisted. “I know it does. What will you do?”

  The answer came to her then, like a bruise behind the eyes, or a freezer-burn of the marrow bone, and she put both her hands over her face and stayed that way for some time.

  “Nin?”

  “This can’t continue.”

  “What can’t?” the ghost asked carefully.

  Nin rolled onto her back, her neck cradled in the crook of his arm. “Any of it.”

  * * *

  Reshka Stix waited out the day in her Ring Room.

  She had lived through one hundred eight All Souls’, midnight to midnight; she knew what to do. For twenty-three hours, she had been supine upon her worktable, covered in a net of silver that glittered under the bright electric lights. She barely breathed, keeping a light trance that let her listen for the ghosts. Even when they left the Haunt, she could hear them. Reshka Stix could always hear them, screaming through the marshes, baying in the woods, frightening the water moccasins and the foxes and the owls to stony deaths. Searching for their names.

  She could name them all.

  No one in the house now but Noir’s mouse, mooning for her ghost boy. That girl would end up gobbled. Or she’d end up too weepy and weak for the sorcery, and abandon the Haunt as Noir had done, salting her footsteps so the ghosts could not bring her back…

  Shimmering under silver and memory, Reshka did not hear her granddaughter creep up to the Ring Room door. Reshka never heard the living so well as the dead. So when Nin poured water into the salt trenches at the Ring Room’s threshold, Reshka did not know it.

  Only when the ghosts came back did she know. She knew, and they knew, and they poured back into the Haunt so fast they blew the front door off its hinges and left it for splinters on the floor. A horde of ghosts descended upon her, twenty-two shrieking things, crowding the bright-lit chamber where silver rings were made. Reshka Stix could name them all.

  The oldest saw her first. Perhaps her foot twitched beneath the net of silver. Or her breathing gave her away. In a flash, in a blink, moving as only a ghost could move—he was upon her, ripping off the silver veil with one hand, while the other lunged for her braided hair.

  Each ghost who could reach one seized a braid, and those who could not started chewing, chomping, gnawing the rings off her fingers with their teeth, gnawing off her fingers one by one.

  Reshka Stix did not scream. Even when they tore the braids out of her scalp, taking chunks of skin and clots of blood, she kept her tight pink lips compressed. And when they sucked the flesh from her severed fingers to get to the grave-rings, even then, proud Reshka made no sound. Of course, by that time, she was dead.

  So there was no one alive at Stix Haunt that night to stop the ghosts from setting it ablaze.

  * * *

  “Nin, my love?”

  “Yes, Noir, my love?”

  “Is it over?”

  “Yes. It’s over and he is gone.”

  “It’s morning, Nin. It’s very late, in fact. I think you should wake.”

  “Did I really…Is Reshka…?”

  “Wake…”

  * * *

  The morning smelled like a funeral feast. Ashy air filled Nin’s mouth, and she coughed, then turned onto her side and retched.

  She had no recollection of leaving Stix Haunt after Reshka’s ghosts came ravening back through. Mason must have done something, put her to sleep somehow and carried her to the willow tree—but she remembered nothing of that. Nin rubbed her head. She missed her hair, but not as much as she missed the braid and what it had bound. On hands and knees, she crawled from her damp shelter. It was in this genuflection that she had her first sight of the Haunt—what it had become.

  Smoke filtered the sweet colors from the air. Reshka’s house was a charred shell, clung about with trembling curtains of heat. A few piles of rubble smoldered yet. Nin made a sound between a cough and a cry.

  “Oh, Noir! Oh, Mason—what have I done?”

  The distance from willow to ruin might have been the distance between stars. She could not bear to go any closer. Palms pressed to eyes, she dropped until her forehead rested on the ground. Something cold kissed her forehead.

  Nin did not have to see the ring to recognize it. His ring, his name, his birth and death—his broken and stolen tombstone—the ring she had returned to him, encircled her finger once again. Mason had put it there, he must have done, had bequeathed it to her, making her his resting place.

  “Nin, my Nin,” the ghost had asked, “what will you do now?”

  Nin pushed to her knees and wiped her face.

  SURROGATES

  Cat Rambo

  Floor 13: Government Offices

  They were married on a Monday in the Matrimony office. A poster on the wall said, “Welcome to your new life!” Belinda signed the forms in her careful penmanship, but Bingo simply spit-signed, letting his DNA testify to his presence. There were three rooms processing couples and triads—larger family structure required even more complicated licenses than the one they had secured. This room was painted blue, and one wall was an enormous fish tank.

  Three fish spoke to Belinda, but she ignored them. She wished she’d remembered to have the Insanity Chip nullified for the ceremony, but it had been a busy week. The fish pressed their mouths to the plastic separating them from her world. Word pearls rose from their lips, seeped upward, through the barrier, and whispered in the room.

  After the computer had pronounced them spouses, Belinda and Bingo stood there grinning at each other while behind them silver fish swam back and forth, back and forth, as though imitating the waves they’d never known. A wall camera took their picture.

  In a few moments, a wall slot spat out a plastic bag containing two chipkeys, a silver-colored frame around their wedding picture, and a checklist of Entitlements on a slip of dissolvable paper, already graying
around the edges.

  The clerk handed over the items. “This is where I tell you that you should treat everything as though it’s new,” she said. “Studies have shown that the marriages which survive the longest are the ones where the newlyweds begin to build their new life together.”

  “Thanks!” Bingo said with a bright smile. Belinda could tell how happy he was, like he couldn’t stop smiling. He looked at her, and the fish tried even more frantically to say something, battering themselves against the plastic until they were just blood and silver scraps drifting in the water, but she ignored them and focused on Bingo and thoughts of butterflies.

  Floor 22: Surrogates

  “Preferences haven’t changed?” the technician asked as he strapped Belinda into the configuring bed. The straps turned into flowers, tiny lilac-colored bells that smelled like uncertainty.

  “No,” Belinda said. The question surprised her. They had filled out the forms for marriage only two weeks ago, including the list of preferences for her latest surrogate. It was something she’d thought about for a long time. Her old surrogate had been given to her when she first started having sexual feelings, and she had put it away for good a few years ago, when she’d met Bingo.

  “Do people really change their preferences at the last minute?” she asked.

  “It’s not that their preferences really change, so much,” the tech said. “But sometimes after they’ve spent a little time thinking about it, they realize things that they didn’t realize they want.”

  He checked his data pad. “Blue eyes, blonde hair, skin pigment pale brown, no scars, no disfigurements, face model Adam?”

  “That’s it,” Belinda said. She’d picked a generic face. She didn’t believe in getting attached to surrogates. Her father had chosen to keep the one she’d used all through her teenage years rather than recycle it. The choice was vaguely illegal by virtue of a statute that was rarely enforced. A person was entitled to one surrogate, which could be replaced whenever you changed status levels, as she and Bingo had done by marrying. But her father was a sentimental sort. She wondered how he would cope now that she was out of the apartment and he was living by himself.

  The flower straps tickled her wrists. Perfume netted her, dragged her into sleep, content and dreamy as the machine went about its work, measuring her and calibrating the surrogate to her dimensions.

  Afterwards they looked at the visuals of their surrogates. She was surprised by Bingo’s choices: he had gone into much more detail than she had, as though designing a flower or piece of jewelry. Her face model was Maria and she wore elaborate blue tattoos like webbing over her arms and spreading across her nipples, half obscured by her long red hair.

  Belinda liked the simpler look of her surrogate and she liked knowing that it was specifically designed for her, that it would smell and feel right, that it was hers in a way nothing else would ever be.

  “They’ll be delivered tomorrow, after we’ve done the final calibration,” the clerk said. They signed data pads. “Congratulations,” she said in a perfunctory tone and checked to make sure their names were spelled correctly.

  Floor 77: Mental Services

  On Floor 77, Belinda had her Insanity Chip reset so it would factor in her marriage. The Chips were subtle, she knew. They altered your perceptions, they showed the world in the way you wanted to see it. When she’d had a fight with her best friend Angie, she’d had the Chip set so she couldn’t see Angie for a week, even when the other girl was standing, shouting in her face. When she’d finally relented, missing Angie, though, she’d found the other had gone, moved away.

  “I don’t want the Chip to change Bingo,” she told the doctor. “Let him stay constant.”

  The doctor fiddled with the machine, her stubby fingers recalibrating the keys. “Do you want hallucinations amped up or down?”

  “What I want,” Belinda said, “is for everything to seem more significant somehow. Can you do that?”

  “Of course,” the doctor said. She pressed a few more buttons and turned into a giant jellyfish that hung in the air, glistening greasily. “How is that?” Her voice was muffled, as though coming through water.

  “Perfect,” Belinda said.

  Bingo was in the waiting room. He had worn his best for the wedding: gleaming black pants, a silver hoop in one ear, goatee trimmed to a point. His feet were bare. He was talking to the child beside him but he broke off when Belinda came in. He smiled at her, rising.

  “Ready to go home?” he asked.

  Behind him the child wavered into a frog, a puddle, a big-eyed kitten.

  “Perfect,” Belinda said again.

  Elevator 17-3

  In the elevator between floors 45-75, Belinda said, “You never thought about having an Insanity Chip? Life is more interesting that way.”

  He kissed her despite the two other women in the elevator. “Life is already interesting.”

  The younger woman sniffed and stared at the wall; the older woman smiled at them before she got off on floor 82. Belinda saw stars in her eyes, promise in her smile, omens spilling out of the net bag she carried.

  In the shop, they bought a new bedspread, dishes, cleaning liquids. They ordered an assortment of food and chose the color of their walls. Belinda liked a yellow and white diamond pattern because it seemed to her, when she stared at it long enough, figures danced across it, harlequins in shoes with long pointed toes, kicking them up and down as they capered. She heard it in her head like a complicated marching tune.

  Bingo gave her a dubious look. He liked a plain blue. But he let her pick the wall pattern and in return she let him pick a muted grey rug flecked with earth tones, like walking across fabric pebbles, a gentle hum underfoot in the key of C.

  Floor 689: Green Leaf Living Quarters

  Floors 650-700 were Green Leaf Living Quarters. They would live on 689, in a studio that overlooked one of the four great hollow spaces contained inside the sector.

  They kissed as they entered, dropping their bags in a cloud of butterflies beside the door. The curtains matched the walls, which had been prepared in the time they’d spent travelling on the elevator. It was as far in the Building as Belinda had ever travelled in one day. Bingo had been outside it to two other Buildings, but travel like that had never interested her. From what she’d seen on the holovids, every place looked much the same. Belinda kissed the tip of Bingo’s nose before she went to the window and looked out.

  Portals marked the sides of the living unit walls, and zip lines led from one to another, letting people circumvent the space on handheld lines. Down below was a great green park, filled with grass carpets and plants in pots. Over it stretched the mesh that would catch those who missed the safety straps, or the multitudes of young who delighted in falling, landing on the stretchy softness of the field.

  Bingo started supper and she rearranged the pillows on the sofa, then unpacked her clothes into the wall drawers and shelves. Bingo came in smelling of spices and steam and kissed her again.

  Bingo worked in advertising and Belinda was an assistant textile designer. That was how they had met. Belinda didn’t think it very romantic, but Bingo always told the story as though he was writing an advertisement for it: I Saw Her And Then Wham Be Still My Heart. It made Belinda smile when Bingo talked like that.

  After dinner they fucked, and fucked again. Bingo nibbled her ears and she tickled his nipples and they gave themselves to each other and murmured sweet things until they fell asleep.

  Before breakfast, they uncrated the surrogates and turned them on, flipping the knob on the back of their necks. The surrogates clicked to life, their wide eyes fastening on Bingo and Belinda’s faces. After orders, both went to the kitchen and started breakfast, then Maria emerged and began putting their belongings away. While they ate breakfast, the surrogates worked.

  An animal came out of the crate that Adam had been in, which lay dissolving on the floor with the other one. Belinda didn’t know what it was. It had the usual an
imal shape. It turned cartwheels on the floor and made Belinda laugh.

  “What?” Bingo said. He was watching her face, the movement of her eyes tracking the back and forth of the animal, which had purple fur and hair made out of noodles.

  “The Chip makes me see funny things sometimes,” she said. He reached out and took her hand in his. “Funnier than me?” he said. The animal was behind him, hanging from the ceiling. Its noodles hung down, limp and shiny. The surrogates came in; they were done, so they went into their closet, ignoring Belinda and Bingo. “I don’t think of you as funny,” she said.

  They fucked on the kitchen table. The cupboards talked to Belinda while she jolted back and forth, flapping plywood tongues. They sang folksongs, oh my darling Clementine and green hills hop to my Lou and sweet sweet summer enviro-clime.

  On Sundays they went to her father’s for dinner with his parents, who were still married and her other father, who was not. This father, Father Bob, worked as a restaurant manager, and they ate well on last night’s restaurant leftovers, fungus shaped into simulacrums of more expensive creatures, scallops and firm-fleshed shrimp and exquisite orange roe.

  Father Anton worked in a news studio and would tell them about the Anchors, what they liked, what they said.

  He had a fervid adoration for one Morning Host, a perky blonde woman a quarter his age, and when he told stories about her, he did so in hushed tones, like a primitive talking about God.

  They drank liters of homemade beer, which Bingo’s mother distilled in her kitchen and always brought, and afterwards they played cards around the table while the holovision blared news of the Building.

  Father Bob kept the surrogates, his and Belinda’s, out for company much of the time. She went over a couple of times to pick up belongings she’d left behind and found the three sitting watching holovid. Hers was the size of a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy; it was propped in an easy chair while the other surrogate leaned on the sofa beside Bob.