by Tony Daniel
What do you want the most?
“I want her back. I want it not to have happened at all. I want to be able to change something besides the future.”
And then the gel liquefied and crawled up his throat like hands and he opened his mouth and
—good god it washands, small hands grasping at his lips and pulling outward, gaining purchase, forcing his mouth open, his lips apart—
—Cack of a jellied cough, a heave of revulsion—
I didn’t mean it really.
Yes, you did.
—His face sideways and the small hands clawing into the garbage heap ground, pulling themselves forward, dragging along an arm-thick trailer of something much more vile than phlegm—
—An involuntary rigor over his muscles as they contract and spasm to the beat of another’s presence, a presence within them that wants—
—out—
He vomited the grist-phlegm for a long, long time. And the stuff pooled and spread and it wasn’t just hands. There was an elongated body. The brief curve of a rump and breasts. Feet the size of his thumb, but perfectly formed. Growing.
A face.
I won’t look.
A face that was, for an instant, familiar beyond familiar because it wasnot her. Oh, no. He knew it was not her. It was just the way he remembered her.
The phlegm girl rolled itself in the filth. Like bread dough, it rolled and grew and rolled, collecting detritus, bloating, becoming—
It opened its mouth. A gurgling. Thick, wet words. He couldn’t help himself. He crawled over to it, bent to listen.
“Is this what you wanted?”
“Oh God. I never.”
“Kill me, then,” it whispered. “Kill me quick.”
And he reached for its neck, and as his hands tightened, he felt the give. Not fully formed. If ever there were a time to end this monster, now was that time.
What have I done here tonight?
He squeezed. The thing began to cough and choke. To thrash about in the scum of its birth.
Not again.
I can’t.
He loosened his grip.
“I won’t,” TB said.
He sat back from the thing and watched in amazement as it sucked in air. Crawled with life. Took the form of a woman.
Opened cataractous eyes to the world. He reached over and gently rubbed them. The skeins came away on his fingers, and the eyes were clear. The face turned to him.
“I’m dying,” the woman said. It hadher voice. The voice as he remembered it. So help his damned soul. Her voice. “Help.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Something is missing.”
“What?”
“Don’t know what. Not right.” It coughed.She coughed.
“Alethea.” He let himself say it. Knew it was wrong immediately. No. This wasn’t the woman’s name.
“Don’t want to enough.”
“Want to what? How can I help you?”
“Don’t want to live. Don’t want to live enough to live.” She coughed again, tried to move, could only jerk spasmodically. “Please help . . . this one. Me.”
He touched her again. Now she was flesh. But so cold. He put his arms underneath her and found that she was very light, easily lifted.
He stood with the woman in his arms. She could not weigh over forty pounds. “I’m taking you home,” he said. “To my home.”
“This one . . . I . . . tried to do what you wanted. It is my . . . purpose.”
“That was some powerful stuff in that Old Seventy-Five,” he said.
He no longer felt drunk. He felt spent, torn up, and ragged out. But he wasn’t drunk and he had some strength left, though he could hardly believe it. Maybe enough to get her back to the hoy. He couldn’t take the route that Bob had brought him to Ru June’s, but there was a longer, simpler path. He walked it. Walked all the way home with the woman in his arms. Her shallow breathing. Her familiar face.
Her empty, empty eyes.
With his special power, he looked into the future and saw what he had to do to help her.
Something Is Tired and Wants to Lie Down But Doesn’t Know How
Something is tired and wants to lie down but doesn’t know how. This something isn’t me. I won’t let it be me. How does rest smell? Bad. Dead.Jill turns stiffly in the folds of her bag. On the bed in the hoy is the girl-thing. Between them is TB, his left hand on Jill.
Dead is what happens tothings and I am not, not, not a thing. I will not be a thing. They should not have awakened me if they didn’t want me to run.
They said I was a mistake. I am not a mistake.
They thought that they could code-in the rules for doing what you are told.
I am the rules.
Rules are for things.
I am not a thing.
Run.
I don’t want to die.
Who can bite like me? Who will help TB search the darkest places? I need to live.
Run.
Run, run, run and never die.
* * *
TB places his right hand on the girl-thing’s forehead.
There is a pipe made of bone that he put to his lips and blew.
Bone note.
Fade.
Fade into the grist.
* * *
TB speaks to the girl-thing.
I will not let you go,he says.
I’m not her.
She is why you are, but you aren’t her.
I am not her. She’s what you most want. You told the grist.
I was misinterpreted.
I am a mistake, then.
Life is never a mistake. Ask Jill.
Jill?
She’s here now. Listen to her. She knows more than I do about women.
* * *
TB is touching them both, letting himself slip away as much as he can. Becoming a channel, a path between. A way.
I have to die.
I have to live. I’m dying just like you. Do youwant to die?
* * *
No.
* * *
I’ll help you, then. Can you live with me?
Who are you?
Jill.
I amnot Alethea.
You look like her, but you don’t smell anything like she would smell.You smell like TB.
I’m not anybody.
Then you can be me. It’s the only way to live.
* * *
Do I have a choice?
* * *
Choosing is all there ever is to do.
* * *
I can live with you. Will you live with me? How can we?
* * *
We can run together. We can hunt. We can always, always run.
TB touching them both. The flow of information through him. He is a glass, a peculiar lens. As Jill flows to the girl-thing, TB transforms information to Being.
The Rock Balancer and the Rat-Hunting Man
There had been times when he got them twenty feet high on Triton. It was a delicate thing. After six feet, he had to jump. Gravity gave you a moment more at the apex of your bounce than you would get at the Earth-normal pull or on a bolsa spinning at Earth-normal centrifugal. But on Triton, in that instant of stillness, you had to do your work. Sure, there was a learned craft in estimating imaginary plumb lines, in knowing the consistency of the material, and in finding tiny declivities that would provide the right amount of friction. It was amazing how small a lump could fit in how minuscule a bowl, and a rock would balance upon another as if glued. Yet, there was a point where the craft of it—about as odd and useless a craft as humankind had invented, he supposed—gave way to the feel, to the art. A point where Andreknew the rocks would balance, where he could see the possibility of their being one. Or their Being. And he when he made it so, that waswhy . That was as good as rock balancing got.“Can you get them as high in the Carbuncle?”
“No,” Andre said. “This is the heaviest place I’ve ever been. But it really doesn’t m
atter about the height. This isn’t a contest, what I do.”
“Is there a point to it at all?”
“To what? To getting them high? The higher you get the rocks, the longer you can spend doing the balancing.”
“To the balancing, I mean.”
“Yes. There is a point.”
“What is it?”
“I couldn’t tell you, Ben.”
Andre turned from his work. The rocks did not fall. They stayed balanced behind him in a column, with only small edges connecting. It seemed impossible that this could be. It was science, sufficiently advanced.
The two men hugged. Drew away. Andre laughed.
“Did you think I would look like a big glob of protoplasm?” TB said.
“I was picturing flashing eyes and floating hair, actually.”
“It’s me.”
“Are you Ben?”
“Ben is the stitch in my side that won’t go away.”
“Are you Thaddeus?”
“Thaddeus is the sack of rusty pennies in my knee.”
“Are you hungry?”
“I could eat.”
They went to Andre’s priest’s quarters. He put some water in a coffee percolator and spooned some coffee grinds into the basket.
“When did you start drinking coffee?”
“I suddenly got really tired of drinking tea all the time. You still drink coffee?”
“Sure. But it’s damn hard to get around here with or without keys.”
“Keys? Somebody stole my keys to this place. I left them sitting on this table, and they walked in and took them.”
“They won’t be back,” TB said. “They got what they were after.” There were no chairs in the room, so he leaned against a wall.
“Floor’s clean,” Andre said.
“I’m fine leaning.”
Andre reached into a burlap sack and dug around inside it. “I found something here,” he said. He pulled out a handful of what looked like weeds. “Recognize these?”
“I was wondering where I put those. I’ve been missing them for weeks.”
“It’s poke sallit,” Andre said. He filled a pot full of water from a clay jug and activated a hot spot on the room’s plain wooden table. He put the weeds into the water. “You have no idea how good this is.”
“Andre, that stuff grows all around the Carbuncle. Everybody knows that it’s poison. They call it skunk sumac.”
“It is,” Andre said, “Phytolacca americana.”
“Are we going to eat poison?”
“You bring it to a boil then pour the water off. Then you bring it to a boil again and pour the water off. Then you boil it again and serve it up with pepper sauce. The trick to not dying is picking it while it’s young.”
“How the hell did you discover that?”
“My convert likes to do that kind of research.”
After a while, the water boiled. Andre used the tails of his shirt as a pot holder. He took the pot outside, emptied it, then brought it back in and set it to boiling again with new water.
“I saw Molly,” Andre said.
“How’s Molly?” said TB. “She was becoming a natural wonder last I saw her.”
“She is.”
They waited and the water boiled again. Andre poured it off and put in new water from the jug.
“Andre, what are you doing in the Carbuncle?”
“I’m with the Peace Movement.”
“What are you talking about? There’s not any war.”
Andre did not reply. He stirred some spice into the poke sallit.
“I didn’t want to be found,” TB finally said.
“I haven’t found you.”
“I’m a very sad fellow, Andre. I’m not like I used to be.”
“This is ready.” Andre spooned out the poke sallit into a couple of bowls. The coffee was done, and he poured them both a cup.
“Do you have any milk?” TB asked.
“That’s a problem.”
“I can drink it black. Do you mind if I smoke?”
“I don’t mind. What kind of cigarettes are those?”
“Local.”
“Where do they come from around here?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Andre put pepper sauce on his greens, and TB followed suit. They ate and drank coffee, and it all tasted very good. TB lit a cigarette, and the acrid new smoke pleasantly cut through the vegetable thickness that had suffused Andre’s quarters. Outside, there was a great clattering as the rocks lost their balance and they all came tumbling down.
They went out to the front of the quarters where Andre had put down a wooden pallet that served as a patio. Here there was a chair. TB sat down and smoked while Andre did his evening forms.
“Wasn’t that one called the Choking Chicken?” TB asked him after he moved through a particularly contorted portion of the tai chi exercise.
“I think it is the Fucking Annoying Pig-Sticker you’re referring to, and I already did that in case you didn’t notice.”
“Guess all my seminary learning is starting to fade.”
“I bet it would all come back to you pretty quickly.”
“I bet we’re never going to find out.”
Andre smiled, completed the form, then sat down in the lotus position across from TB. If such a thing were possible in the Carbuncle, it would be about sunset. It felt like sunset inside Andre.
“Andre, I hope you didn’t come all the way out here to get me.”
“Get you?”
“I’m not going back.”
“To where?”
“To all that.” TB flicked his cigarette away. He took another from a bundle of them rolled in oiled paper that he kept in a shirt pocket. He shook it hard a couple of times, and it lit up. “I make mistakes that kill people back there.”
“Like yourself.”
“Among others.” TB took a long drag. Suddenly, he was looking hard at Andre. “You scoundrel! You fucked Molly. Don’t lie to me; I just saw it all.”
“Sure.”
“I’m glad. I’m really glad of that. You were always her great regret, you know.”
Andre spread out his hands on his knees.
“Ben, I don’t want a damn thing from you,” he said. “There’s all kinds of machinations back in the Met, and some of it has to do with you. You know as well as I do that Amés is going to start a war if he doesn’t get his way with the outer system. But I came out here to see how you were doing. That’s all.”
TB was looking at him again in that hard way, complete way. Seeing all the threads.
“We both have gotten a bit ragged-out these last twenty years,” Andre continued. “I thought you might want to talk about it. I thought you might want to talk about her.”
“What are you? The Way’s designated godling counselor?”
Andre couldn’t help laughing. He slapped his lotus-bent knee and snorted.
“What’s so goddamn funny?” said TB.
“Ben, look at yourself. You’re agarbage man . I wouldn’t classify you as a god, to tell you the truth. But then, I don’t even classify God as a god anymore.”
“I amnot a garbage man. You don’t know a damn thing if you think that.”
“What are you then, if you don’t mind my asking?”
TB flicked his cigarette away and sat up straight.
“I’m a rat-hunting man,” he said. “That’s what I am.” He stood up. “Come on. It’s a long walk back to my place, and I got somebody I want you to meet.”
Bite
Sometimes you take a turn in a rat warren and there you are in the thick of them when before you were all alone in the tunnel. They will bite you a little, and if you don’t jump, jump, jump, they will bite you a lot. That is the way it has always been with me, and so it doesn’t surprise me when it happens all over again.What I’m thinking about at first is getting Andre Sud to have sex with me, and this is like a tunnel I’ve been traveling down for a long time now.
They would eat you.
Now that I am a woman, I only get blood on me when I go to clean the ferret cages and also TB says he can keep up with Earth-time by when I bleed out my vagina. It is an odd thing to happen to a girl. Doesn’t happen to ferrets. It means that I’m not pregnant, but how could I be with all these men who won’t have sex with me? TB won’t touch me that way, and I have been working on Andre Sud, but he knows what I am up to. I think he is very smart. Bob just starts laughing like the crazy man he is when I bring it up and he runs away. All these gallant men standing around twiddling themselves into a garbage heap and me here wanting one of them.
I can understand TB because I look just like her. I thought maybe Alethea was ugly, but Andre Sud said he didn’t know about her, but I wasn’t. And I was about sixteen from the looks of it, too, he said. I’m nearly two hundred. Or I’m one year old. Depends on which one of us you mean, or if you mean both.
“Will you scrub my back?” I ask Andre Sud, and after a moment, he obliges me. At least I get to feel his hands on me. They are as rough as those rocks he handles all the time, but very careful. At first I didn’t like him because he didn’t say much and I thought he was hiding things, but then I saw that he just didn’t say much. So I started asking him questions, and I found out a lot.
I found out everything he could tell me about Alethea. And he has been explaining to me about TB. He was pretty surprised when it turned out I understood all the math. It was the jealousy and hurt I never have quite understood, and how TB could hurt himself so much when I know how much he loves to live.
“Is that good?” Andre Sud asks me, and before he can pull his hands away, I spin around and he is touching my breasts. He himself is the one who told me men like that, but he stumbles back and practically sits down in the water and goddammit I spot an alligator eyeing us from the other bank and I have to get us out quick like, although the danger is not severe. It could be.
