Engineering Infinity

by Charles Stross

  Lione had stood here. The incense was not a gift, she had gathered it. She had been standing right here. His need was irresistible. He released his face-plate, stripped his gauntlets, rubbed away quarantine film.

  KiAn rushed in on him, cold and harsh in his throat, intoxicating -

  "What is that?"

  The Ki-anna was behind him. "A lichen sample," said Patrice, caught out. "Or that's what I'd call it at home. It was in my sister's room, in the An Castle. Look, they're the same!"

  "Not quite," said the Ki-anna. "Yours is a cultivated variety."

  He thought she'd be angry, maybe accuse him of concealing evidence. To his astonishment she took his bared hand, and bowed over it until her cheek brushed the vulnerable inner skin of his wrist. Her touch was a huge shock, sweet and profoundly sexual. She made him dizzy.

  This can't be happening, he thought. I'm here for Lione -

  "I don't know your name."

  "We don't do that," she whispered.

  "I felt, I can't describe it, the moment I met you -"

  "I'd better keep this. You must get your gloves and helmet back on."

  "But I want KiAn -"

  Gently, she let go of his hand. "You've had enough."

  The shelter was a snug fit. Sealed inside, they shared rations and drank fresh water they'd brought from the Habitat. They would sleep in their suits, for warmth and security. Patrice lay down at once, to escape their questions and to be alone with his confusion. He was here for Lione, he was here to join Lione. How could he and the Ki-anna suddenly feel this way?

  "Were you getting romantic, with Patrice, over by those rocks?" asked Bhvaaan. "Sniffing his pheromones?"

  "No," said the Ki-anna, grimly. "Something else."

  She showed him the First Aid pouch and its contents.

  "Mighty Void!"

  "He says it was in the room Lione used, in the castle."

  "I don't think so! We took that cabin apart." The Shet's delicates unfolded from his club of a fist. He turned the clear pouch around, probing her find with sensitive tentacles. "So that's how, so that's how -"

  "So that's how the cookie was crumbled," agreed the Ki-anna.

  "What do we do, Chief? Abort this, and run away very quickly?"

  "Not without back-up. If we run, and they have heavy weaponry, we're at their mercy. I see what it looks like, but we should show no alarm.

  "I have had thoughts about him," she murmured, looking at the dark outline of Patrice Ferringhi. "Don't know why. It's something in his eyes."

  "Thaap's the way it starts," said the Shet. "Thoughts. Then wondering if anything can come of them. They say sentient bipeds are attracted to each other like... like brothers and sisters, long separated. Well, I'll talk to the Greenies. And you and I had better not sleep."

  The suit was a house the shape of her body. She sat in it, wondering about sexual pleasure: pleasure with Patrice. What would it be like? She had only one strange comparison, but that didn't frighten her... What Roaaat Bhvaaan offered was far more disturbing.

  She glimpsed the abyss, and fell into oblivion.

  Patrice dreamed he was in a strolling crowd, among bronze and purple trees, with branches that swayed in the breeze. He knew where he was, he was in the KiAn Orientation, a virtual reality. But there was something sinister going on, the crowd pressed too close, the beautiful trees hid what he ought to see. Then Lione came running up and bit him.

  He yelled, and shook her off.

  She came back and bit his thigh, but now he was in the dark, cold and sore. Lione was gone, he was being hunted by fierce hungry animals -

  Suddenly he knew he was not asleep.

  He was completely naked. Where was his suit? Where was he?

  He had no idea. The air was freezing, the darkness almost complete. He stumbled towards a gleam ahead, and entered a rocky cave. There was ice underfoot, icy stalactites hanging down. A lamp burned incense-scented oil, set on the ground next to a heap of something -

  That's a body, he thought. He went over and knelt down. It was a human body, freeze-dried. She was curled on her side, turned away from him, but he knew he'd found Lione. She was naked too.

  Why was she naked?

  He lifted the lamp and saw where flesh had been cut away, not by teeth, as in his dream, but by sharp knives. Lione had been butchered. He tried to turn her: the body moved all of a piece. Her face was recognisable, smooth and calm in death, the eyes sunken, the skin like cured leather. Was she smiling? Oh, Lione -

  But why am I naked?, he thought. Who brought me here?

  The Ki entered the cave, and surrounded Patrice and his sister. They had brought more lights. One of them was carrying, reverently, a flattened spherical object, dull grey-green, the size of Patrice's fist. It had a seam around the centre, a bevelled cap. That's a vapor mine, he thought, shaken by an explosion of understanding. Then the An came. The Ki made no attempt to interfere with the banquet. They were here to witness. Patrice screamed. He fought the knives with his bare hands, kicked out with his bare feet. The An, outraged, kept yelling at him in scraps of English to keep still, be easy Blue, you want this, what's wrong with you?

  The Ki-anna and the Shet had ditched their hard shells, to search the narrow passages. They arrived armed but badly outnumbered, and they couldn't get near Patrice. "I was the Earth In Heaven!" shouted the Chief of Police. "I say that flesh is not sacred, not yours to take. Let the stranger go!"

  She held the fanatics at bay, uncertain because of her former status, until the Green Belts joined the party. Luckily Bhvaaan had summoned them, before he and the Ki-anna followed Patrice into that drugged sleep.

  Patrice's injuries were not dangerous. As soon as he was allowed he signed himself out of medical care. He had to talk to the police again. He met the odd couple in the same bare interview room as before.

  "I'm sorry, I need to withdraw my statement. I can't press charges."

  If the next of kin didn't press charges, KiAn law made it difficult for Interplanetary Affairs to prosecute. He knew that, but he had no choice.

  "I realise the tablet I found in Lione's room was planted on me. I know her words, if some of them were genuinely hers, had been rearranged to fool me into accepting atavism. It doesn't matter. My sister wanted to die that way. She gave herself, her body. It was a ritual sacrifice, for peace. She was my twin, I can't explain, I have to respect her wishes."

  "A beautiful, consensual ritual," remarked the Shet. "Yaap. That's what the cannibal die-hards always say. But if you scratch any of these halfway 'respectable' atavists, such as our Ruling An here -"

  "You find the meat-packing industry," said the Ki-anna.

  Patrice heard the blinkered, Speranza mindset.

  "My sister was willing."

  "I believe she was." To his confusion, the Ki-anna reached out, took his injured hand and held his wrist, where the blood ran, to her face. The same sweet, intimate gesture as on KiAn. "So are you, a little. It'll wear off."

  She drew back, and placed an evidence bag, containing his First Aid pouch and the scraps of lichen, on the table.

  "In English, the common name of this herb, or lichen, would be 'Willingness.' It grows naturally only under the Lake of Heaven. Long ago it was known as a powerful aphrodisiac: the labwork kind has another use. It's given to a child chosen to be the Ki-anna, which means sold to the An as living meat. It's a refined form of cannibalism, practiced in my region. A drugged child, a willing victim, with a strong resistance to infection and trauma, is eaten alive, by degrees. If one of these children survives to adulthood, they are free, the debt is paid.

  The Ki-anna showed her teeth. "I made it, as you see; but I haven't forgotten that scent. When I smelled your flesh, under the Lake, I knew you'd been treated for butchery - and I understood. They drugged Lione until she was delirious with joy to be eaten, and they sent her to the atavist fanatics under An-lalhar. Then they tried the same trick on you."

  Bhvaaan tapped the casefile tablet with his
delicates. "Your sister died too quickly, that was the problem."

  "What - ?"

  "We couldn't prove it, but we knew they'd killed Lione, Messer Ferringhi. We could even show, thanks to the Chief here, who was pulling the strings, how they got the prohibited ordnance into the Grottos. Your sister fell into a trap. She had to get under the Heaven Lake and that suited the atavists just fine. It would have been a powerful message. A Speranza scientist ritually eaten, then consumed by the very air of KiAn -"

  "Controlled annihilation," whispered Patrice. "That's what I saw, in the cave. Something they would understand -"

  "Thap was the idea. The atavists are planning to bring back the meat factories, once their planet has an atmosphere again. Your sister was going to help them: except something didn't work out. You were right about the tropo sampling: there's also stringent military activity monitoring. If a mine had gone off under the Lake, we'd know. If a human-sized body had been atomised, there'd have been a spike. So we knew the 'consummation' hadn't happened, and we couldn't figure it out. We think we know the answer now: she died too quickly. She had to be vaporised alive, a dead body can't be willing. But she wasn't a Ki, and they hit an artery or something."

  Patrice had gone grey in the face.

  "You going to crash out, child - ?"

  "No, go on -"

  The Shet rearranged his bulk on the inadequate office chair. "The autopsy'll tell us the details. Then you came along, Patrice. We saw a chance to get ourselves to the crime scene, and wasted Diaspora funds pushing on an open door. And you nearly died, because we drank the nice fresh water from this Habitat. Which happened to be doped -"

  "The atavists thought the willingness they'd cooked up for Lione would work on you," explained the Ki-anna. "They've never heard of 'fraternal twins.' Ki litter-mates can be of any sex, but otherwise they are identical. You were begging to be lured to the Grottos, it was perfect, you would replace Dr Ferringhi. Luckily, you and your sister weren't clones. You were affected, but you weren't ready to be butchered. You fought for your life."

  "You see, Messer Ferringhi," said Bhvaaan, "what really happened here is that a pair of murdering atavist bastards thought they'd appoint themselves as Chief of Police a child who had been eaten. A girl like that, they thought, will never dare to do us any damage. Instead they found they had a tiger by the tail..." He opened the casefile tablet, and pushed it over to Patrice. "They're glamorous, the Atavist An. But your sister would never have fallen for them in her right mind, from what I've learned of her. Still want to withdraw this?"

  Patrice was silent, eyes down. The Ki-anna saw him shedding the exaltation of the drug; quietly taking in everything he'd been told. A new firmness in the lines of his face, a deep sadness as he said farewell to Lione. The human felt her eyes. He looked up and she saw another farewell, sad but final, to something that had barely begun -

  "No," he said. "But I should go through it again. Can we do that now?"

  The Ki-anna returned to her quarters.

  Roaaat joined her in a while. She sat by her window on the streets, small chin on her silky paws, and didn't look round when he came in.

  "He'll be fine. What will you do? You'll have to leave, after this."

  "I know. Leave or get killed, and I must not get killed."

  "You could go with Patrice, see what Mars is like."

  "I don't think so. The pheromones are no more, now that he knows what 'making love to the Ki-anna' is supposed to be like."

  "I've no idea what making love to you is supposed to be like. But you're a damned fine investigator. Why don't you come to Speranza?"

  Yes, she thought. I knew all along what you were offering.

  Banishment, not just from my own world, but from all the worlds. Never to be a planet-dweller any more. And again I want to ask, Why me? What did I do? But you believe it is an honour and I think you are sincere.

  "Maybe I will."

  The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees

  John Barnes

  John Barnes has published 28 volumes of fiction, probably 29 by the time you read this, including science fiction, men's action adventure, two collaborations with astronaut Buzz Aldrin, a collection of short stories and essays, one fantasy and one mainstream novel. His most recent books are mainstream novel Tales of the Madman Underground and techno-thriller Directive 51.

  He has done a rather large number of occasionally peculiar things for money, mainly in business consulting, academic teaching, and show business, fields which overlap more than you'd think. Since 2001, he has lived in Denver, Colorado, where he has a wonderful girlfriend, an average income, and a bad attitude, which he feels is actually the best permutation.

  Stephanie Ilogu knew the Southern Ocean was supposed to be cold. Lars had been battling to cool the ocean since Stephanie was seven years old. If my teeth chatter, I'm disrespecting my husband's success.

  Maybe I wouldn't think so much about my numb feet and face, or the dank sogginess leaking into my hair through my watch cap, or how much cold air leaks in under this huge parka, if I had something to do besides listen to my husband and his ex-wife make history together, so I can write about how great they both are.

  Lars had warned her about his ex's enthusiasm. "Bigger than Brazil in less than three months!" Nicole leaned far out over the railing, risking a five-meter plunge into the dense mat, which looked like floating spinach. Below the first, surface meter, black, oily fibre extended forty meters down, so dense and deep that the Southern Ocean's surface was nearly flat despite a face-stinging headwind.

  Lars wore his parka hood up, and from behind him Stephanie could not watch his expression as Nicole arched her back, revealing Greek-statue glutes under glistening skin the colour of hot chocolate. Twisting tightly at the waist, she grasped the sampling pole beside her, hooked heel behind knee around the rail, and dangled over the green, motionless, freezing sea.

  She wore her thin one-piece bathing suit for company or cameras and no other reason. Naked except to broadcast, Nicole had walked on Mars, swum under the ice on Europa, and spent four years outdoors in methane snow and slush on Titan. If Nicole fell into the slimy cold mess below, to her, the icy sea that could chill a human to death in minutes would call for a slight speedup of her fusor. She could then tread water for weeks, swim north to Cape Town, or walk on the sea floor to Davis Antarctic Station.

  Nicole whipped up in a back flip and lighted as neatly on the ice-coated deck as if she'd been wearing sneakers on a dry sidewalk. Stephanie reminded herself that those bare toes had dealt with far worse.

  Nicole peered through the sample jar. "Mat's still spreading outward at eighty kilometres a day. And if this sample is like every other one, there's more genetic diversity in this jar than we've found in the solar system up till now. The million new species we've catalogued have DNA less like anything on Earth than a Europan tentacled clam or a Martian braidworm. The ocean still has surprises! I love it!"

  "I hate surprises," Lars said. "Surprises are what good management is supposed to control."

  "I love surprises," Nicole said. Her huge grin invited Stephanie into the conversation. "No surprises, no news media, no job for Steph. And the sea should surprise us." Her sweeping, circular gesture embraced the horizon; Clarke's bow cut ceaselessly into the featureless plain of mat, stern jets churning a darker path that closed up in less than a kilometre. "Science is about knowing enough to know what's just uncommon and what's a real surprise. Most people are -"

  Clarke cleared its forward intake screens. An immense stream of green and black mat shot upward and forward, sounding like God's clogged toilet clearing. The headwind blew the plume, the colour and texture of black bean and broccoli soup, back onto them.

  "I think we're done, for the moment," Lars said.

  Just before going below, shivering and holding her breath against the stench like rotten fish and cabbage, Stephanie looked back at Nicole bobbing for another sample. Her beautifully muscled legs wrapped around
the railing in a figure-four; beyond her upward-reaching feet, all the way to the horizon, the Southern Ocean was a bright green sheet in the clear wet sunlight.

  Stephanie usually liked undressing in front of Lars, but the fresh memory of Nicole, her body as fine today as when it was built, made her hesitate. Lars grabbed the hem of her parka and pulled it up over her head, stripping her into the refresher slot until he knelt to remove her safety boots. "Now you do me."

  The freezing, stinking seawater that had drenched him spattered onto her as she removed his parka, but she didn't mind when she saw the smile as his gaze caressed her.

  He gently stroked her hair, forehead, and cheek, his hands still warm and damp from his glove. "She has too many muscles," Lars said, reading Stephanie's mind, "and not enough colour contrast." He folded his all-but-paper-white fingers gently into her deep brown ones, where she had been caressing the forearm stroking her cheek, and guided her hand to the back of his neck. His hand returned to her cheek, and trailed down along her neck, and over her collarbone. "See? An old poop like me needs high contrast or he'd never be able to find his way around. Now let's boil the stink and cold off ourselves."

  In the roaring hot shower, she scrubbed his shaven head fiercely, the way he preferred; he relished lathering her and rinsing her off. When they had washed and kissed enough, he said, "Well, now at least we don't reek of spoiled sardines." They towelled each other off in the small space between the bed and the closet, close enough to feel each other's warmth. "I'm feeling a little more secure," Stephanie said. "It's just - oh, everything. She's so beautiful."