I noticed for the first time that Wo was not only ill; one of its tentacles was truncated, the missing tip protected by a neatly-applied occlusive caul.
"What happened to your -"
"The bit rot has affected a third of us, Lilith. You're one of the lucky ones: there's nothing better than a thick blanket of water for cosmic ray shielding."
"Bit rot?" I still didn't understand what was happening to us.
"Radiation-induced dementia. You may not be familiar with the condition: dementia is a problem that used to affect our progenitors when their self-repair mechanisms failed. Decaying neural networks malfunction by exhibiting loss of short term memory, disinhibition, mood swings, violence. Eventual loss of motor control and death. In us, the manifestations are different. Our techné triggers a hunger reflex, searching for high-purity materials with which to build replacements for the damaged, purged mechanocytes. And our damage control reflex prioritizes motor control and low-level functions over consciousness. We're quite well-designed, if you think about it. I've replaced your sister's techné with fresh marrow and mothballed it: she's stable for the time being, and if you can find her feedstock that isn't contaminated with short half-life nuclei she'll be able to rebuild herself. But you should get her to a place of safety, and hide yourself too."
"Why?" I blinked stupidly.
"Because the techné I shoved up her marrow is some of the last uncontaminated material on the ship," Wo pointed out acidly. "There are people on this ship who'll crack her bones to feed on it before long. If she stays here I won't be able to protect her."
"But -"
I looked around. Not all the silent occupants of the surgical frames were unconscious. Eyes, glittering in the darkness, tracked me like gunsights. Empty abdominal sacks, bare rib cages, manipulators curled into claws where Doctor-Engineer Wo had flensed away the radiation-damaged tissue. The blind, insensate hunger of primitive survival reflexes - feed and repair - stared at me instead of conscious minds. Suddenly my numb feet, the persistent pins and needles in my left arm, acquired a broader perspective.
"They're hungry," explained Wo. "They'll eat you without a second thought, because they've got nothing with which to think it - not until they've regrown a neural core around their soul chip." It waved the stump of a tentacle at me. "Jordan and Mirabelle have been rounding up the worst cases, bringing them here to dump on me, but they've been increasingly unforthcoming about events outside of late. I think they may be trying to keep themselves conscious by..." A tentacle uncurled, pointed at the pathetic husk of my remora. "Take your sister and go, Lilith. Stay out of sight and hope for rescue."
"Rescue -"
"Eventually the most demented will die, go into shutdown. Some will recover. If they find feedstock. Once the situation equilibrates, we can see about assembling a skeleton crew to ensure we arrive. Then there'll be plenty of time to prospect for high-purity rare earth elements and resurrect the undead. If there's anything left to resurrect."
"But can't I help -" I began, then I saw the gleam in Wo's photoreceptor. The curl and pulse of tentacles, the sallow discoloration of its dermal integument. "You're ill too?"
"Take your sister and go away." Wo hissed and rolled upside down, spreading its tentacles radially around its surgical mouthparts. "Before I eat you. I'm so hungry..."
I grabbed your surgical frame and fled.
I carried you back to our module without meeting anybody, for which I was happy. Once inside, I was able to turn up the light level and see what had happened. You were a mess, Lamashtu; were I one of our progenitors I would weep tears of saline to see you so. Ribs hollow, skin slack and bruised, eyes and cheeks sunken. Wo had split open your legs, exposed the gleaming metal of your femurs, the neatly diagrammed attachment points of your withered muscle groups. There was a monitor on the frame, and with the help system I managed to understand what it was telling me. Muscles damaged, skin damaged, but that wasn't all. Once upon a time our foremother bunked atop a nuclear reactor in flight from Mars to Jupiter; the damage here was worse. Your brain... there was not much there. Eighty percent of it dissolved into mildly radioactive mush. Wo decanted it, leaving your cranial space almost empty. But your soul chip was intact, with your laid-down backup: given a few litres of inert, non-decaying minerals you could grow a new cortex and awaken as from a dream of death. But where could I find such materials?
I have an ionization sensor. As I swept it around the module I saw that even our bed is radioactive. If you were to eat its aluminium frame and build a new brain from it, your mind would be a crazy patchwork of drop-outs and irrational rage.
I needed to find you pure feedstock. But according to Wo, the entire ship was as contaminated as if it had been caught in the near-lethal blast radius of a supernova, or flown for a quarter million years close to the active core of our galaxy.
There was one obvious place to look for pure feedstock, of course: inside the cortical shells of those survivors who were least affected by the magnetar burst. Inside my head, or people like me. What did Wo say about the symptoms? Anger and disinhibition first, loss of coordination only late in the day. I ought to be able to trust those who aren't angry or hungry. But I looked at you and wondered, how many of them would also have friends or lovers to nurse? Any friendly face might be a trap. Even a group of rational survivors, working together, might -
I shook my head. Trying to second-guess the scale of the breakdown was futile. There might be other places where feedstock could be found, deep inside the core of the ship. The never-used, mothballed fusion reactors: they would be well-shielded, wouldn't they? Lots of high-purity isotopes there. And with enough working brains and hands, surely we could repair any damage long before they were needed for deceleration. The cold equations seemed simple: with enough brains, we can repair almost any damage - but with a skeleton crew of senile zombies, we're doomed.
So I collected a bundle of tools and left you to go exploring.
The darkened corridors and empty eye-socket spaces of the Lansford Hastings' public spaces are silent, the chatter and crosstalk of the public channels muted and sparse. They've been drained of air and refilled with low-pressure oxygen (nitrogen is transmuted too easily to carbon-14, I guess). There's no chatter audible to my electrosense: anyone here is keeping quiet. I pass doors that have been sealed with tape, sprayed over with a symbol that's new to me: a red "Z" in a circle, evidence that the dementia cleanup teams have been at work here. But for the most part the ship appears to be empty and devoid of life - until I reach the F Deck canteen.
Eating is a recreational and social activity: we may be able to live on an injection of feedstock and electrolytes and a brisk fuel cell top-up, but who wants to do that? The canteen here mainly caters to maintenance workers and technicians, hard-living folks. In normal circumstances it'd be full of social diners. I hesitate on the threshold. These circumstances aren't normal - and the diners aren't social.
There's a barricade behind the open hatch. Flensed silvery bones, some of them drilled and cracked, woven together with wire twisted into sharp-pointed barbs. A half-dissected skull stared at me with maddened eyes from inside the thicket of body parts, mandible clattering against its upper jaw. It gibbers furiously at teraherz frequencies, shouting a demented stream of consciousness: "Eat! Want meat! Warmbody foodbody look! Chew 'em chomp 'em cook 'em down! Give me feed me!" Whoops, I think, as I grab for the hatch rim and prepare to scramble back up the tunnel. But I'm slow, and the field-expedient intruder alarm has done its job: three of the red-sprayed hatches behind me have sprung open, and half a dozen mindlessly slavering zombies explode into the corridor.
I don't waste time swearing. I can tell a trap when I stick my foot in one: someone who isn't brain-dead organized this. But they've picked the wrong deck-hand to eat. You and I, Lamashtu, we have inherited certain skills from our progenitor Freya - and she from a distant unremembered sib called Juliette - that we do not usually advertise. They come in handy at this point, our
killer reflexes. Hungry but dumb, the zombies try to swarm me, mouthparts chomping and claws tearing. I raise my anti-corrosion implement, spread the protective shield, and pull the trigger. Chlorine trifluoride will burn in water, scorch rust: what it does to robot flesh is ghastly. I have a welding lamp, too, an X-ray laser by any other name. Brief screams and unmodulated hissing assault me from behind the shield, gurgling away as their owners succumb to final shutdown.
The corridor cleared, I turn back to the barricade. "This isn't helping," I call. "We should be repairing the -"
A horrid giggle triggers my piloerectile reflex, making the chromatophores in the small of my back spike up. "Meaty. Spirited. Clean-thinking."
The voice comes from behind the barricade (which has fallen silent, eyes clouded). "Jordan? Is that you?"
"Mm, it's Lilith Longshanks! Bet there's lots of eating on those plump buttocks of hers, what do you say, my pretties?"
An appreciative titter follows. I shudder, trying to work out if there's another route through to the reactor control room. I try again. "You've got to let me through, Jordan. I know where there's a huge supply of well-shielded feedstock we can parcel out. Enough to get everyone thinking clearly again. Let me through and -" I trail off. There is another route, but it's outside the hull. It's your domain, really, but if I install one of your two soul chips, gain access to your memories, I can figure it out.
"I don't think so, little buffet." The charnel hedge shudders as something forces itself against it from the other side. Something big. If Jordan has been eating, trying desperately to extract uncontaminated isotopes, what has he done with the surplus? Where has he sequestrated it? What has he made with it? In my mind's eye I can see him, a cancer of mindlessly expanding, reproducing mechanocytes governed by a mind spun half out of control, lurking in a nest of undigestible left-overs as he waits for food -
I look at the bulging wall of bones, and my nerve fails: I cut the teflon shield free, cover my face, and launch myself as fast as I can through the floating charred bodies that fill the corridor, desperate to escape.
Which brings us to the present, Lamashtu, sister-mine.
I've got your soul - half of it - loaded in the back of my head. I've been dreaming of you, dreaming within you, for days now.
In an hour's time I am going to take my toolkit and go outside, onto the hull of the Lansford Hastings, under the slowly moving stars.
I'm going to go into your maze and follow the trail of pipes and coolant ducts home to the Number Six reactor, and I'm going to force my way into the reactor containment firewall and through the neutron shield. And I'm going to strip away every piece of heavily-shielded metal I can get my hands on, and carry it back to you. When you're better, when you're back to yourself and more than a hungry bag of rawhead reflexes, you can join me. It'll go faster then. We can help the others -
I'm running out of wall to scribble on: anyway, this is taking too long and besides, I'm feeling a little hungry myself.
Goodbye, sister. Sleep tight. Don't let any strangers in.
Creatures with Wings
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Kathleen Ann Goonan has been a packer for a moving company, a vagabond, a madrigal singer, a painter of watercolours, and a fiercely omnivorous reader. She has published over thirty short stories in venues such as Omni Online, Asimov's, F&SF, Interzone, Amazing, and a host of others. Her Nanotech Quartet includes Queen City Jazz, Mississippi Blues, Crescent City Rhapsody, and Light Music; the latter two were nominated for the Nebula Award. The Bones of Time, shortlisted for the Clarke Award, is set in Hawaii. Her most recent novel, In War Times, won the John W. Campbell Award and was named as the American Library Association's Best Genre Novel of the Year. Her seventh novel, This Shared Dream, will be out from Tor in 2011, along with a short story collection by PS Publishing. Her novels and short stories have been published in France, Poland, Russia, Great Britain, the Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, and Japan. "Literature, Consciousness, and Science Fiction" recently appeared in the Iowa Review online journal. She speaks frequently at various universities about nanotechnology and literature, and is a Visiting Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where she teaches writing and literature.
Hunched over his third icy mug of San Miguel, Kyo silently lauded the sense of history and mission with which the Pantheon proclaimed itself, on a bold plaque, "Honolulu's Oldest Bar."
Though he didn't know it at the time, it was Kyo's last day on Earth.
Pool balls clicked off of one another behind him. Blazing tropical noon was only a bright rectangle of light framed by the open doorframe. A warm breeze rattled a ratty-looking potted palm just inside the door, carrying the faint, salty scent of Honolulu Harbor and exhaust fumes from Nuuanu Avenue.
Kyo jumped at a light touch on his shoulder.
"Kyo!"
"Liliha?"
His auntie squeezed his face between huge hands and kissed him with the loud smack that had, years ago, embarrassed him. Now he just smiled into her large, brown eyes, framed by sun-and-smile-etched lines. She smelled faintly of sandalwood. The white strands of hair that had escaped her bun framed her face like a halo, backlit by the light from the door.
"Guess I haven't dropped by lately."
"No, not since you decided to shave your head and strut around with those strange birds at the zendo. And you were such a bad little boy!" She laughed. "You used to hide behind the counter and then run off with a package of Chinese crack seed." She shook her head, clucking, as she maneuvered her bulk onto the barstool next to him, shifting to arrange the folds of her holiku.
Kyo shook his head. "I never did anything like that, Auntie. That was Io." He raised two fingers for the barmaid, who clinked a fresh glass of San Miguel against his empty, and added another for Liliha.
He studied Liliha's stately, dark-gold face. Though her heavy cheeks sagged with age - she had to be seventy - the patrician lines of her face were clear and strong.
She regarded him with gravity. "Sure, Kyo. You twins - always tricking me. Io's a big shot lawyer now, yah?"
"His own firm." Io the Perfect made all the right moves.
"So what you doing for yourself now? Still a doctor?"
"Don't give me a hard time, Auntie. You know what happened."
"No, I don't. Never understood it. Your wife dies - that's a hard thing. But it happens to people, Kyo. Lots of people. And how long ago was it?"
"Four years."
"Still blaming yourself."
Kyo opened his mouth to protest, but couldn't speak. The image of Linda, arching herself against the powerful Pali winds, reappeared, as it so often did.
She had insisted on driving to the overlook, on the brink of a sheer drop of a thousand feet, after one of their arguments, "to clear her mind." She'd sat on the wall, facing the parking lot, then had scooted around to face the valley and got to her feet. "Let's see if the wind will hold me up today, Kyo." Her thin white cotton dress, whipped by the strong, upwelling gusts, pressed against her lithe, brown body. She leaned outward.
For instants he could never forget, she looked like an angel in flight, white wings spread above verdant valleys, floating against the brilliant blue backdrop of distant Kaneoe Bay.
It had taken forever for the police to come while he sat on the wall, staring out at the air where she had so briefly been.
Kyo downed the rest of his mug in one long, practiced gulp. Without asking, the barmaid refilled it and set it in front of him. "It was my fault. She told me she was depressed. Many times. I was just too busy with my residency to pay any attention. That was so important. Much more important than her. I laughed at her, Auntie. I laughed at her pain. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe anyone could feel the way she said she did." Linda had definitely enlightened him regarding the amount of pain a human could feel.
"Still live in your parent's house?"
"Why not?" His mother had died when he was little. His father, a Japanese immigrant as a young ma
n, had died soon after Kyo graduated from medical school. Their tiny frame house, paid off after years of backbreaking labor in the Dole fields, was worth more than his parents could have imagined. Kyo found its slow deterioration comforting, and the monstrous greenery hiding the house from the street soothed him when it rustled in the ever-present wind. A pink-striped green gecko, whom he called Bess, lived with him, flicking her sharp tongue and skittering across the walls. And it was right down the street from the zendo.
"Well, Kyo, if you're not a doctor what are you?"
A drunk. Can't you tell? he almost said. At least, that's what he felt like now, though it wasn't always true. The spells spaced themselves out. Maybe one every two months.
At first, when Roshi had been kind enough to take him in, it had been more often. Not that it really mattered to him. Nothing had. Not even, for at least a year, the zendo life. But it was simple. It kept him alive. He had an occupation he thought suited his abilities: he swept the courtyard and raked the sand in the Zen garden into curves that flowed around boulders.
Kyo reached into the pocket of his shorts and pulled out a baggie containing a pale powder. "This is what I do," he said. "Besides a little carpentry to make money."
"Some new drug?"
"An old one. I make beer. I like things that grow. This is a new strain of yeast I've been working on."
"I guess you don't have to pay much attention to yeast, eh, Kyo?" She emptied her mug.
Tears welled in his eyes, and he had a brief impulse to punch his dear old Auntie in the face.
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