The Tiger Flu

by Larissa Lai

  By Our Mother’s blues and shoes, its hand has grown back! Through the magnification of my marvellous opera glasses, I can see that although the hand is not to size, it is perfectly formed. It looks a little pink and raw but healthy. A new starfish!

  I rush along the bluff.

  It stumbles, vulnerable. My heart beats faster. A clearing opens down the path in front of it. I take my chances and hurry ahead to a spot just above the clearing. Watch like a young coyote, eyes intent, tail twitching. Quick as a brown fox, I drop a womb bomb over it—Glorybind Groundsel’s latest invention, a translucent wrapping sack made from modified black squirrel bladder cells. With a quick, sharp tug I draw the womb bomb tight, bundling the thing neatly. It shrieks like a wounded rabbit as I rush down the bluff to where it flails. Whistle for my mother double.

  Glorybind Groundsel emerges from the trees seconds after I reach the sobbing Salty. These creatures are so pathetic. I don’t understand how they could ever have disdained us, much less expelled us from Saltwater City.

  “Whenever I want you, all I have to do is preen,” I tell it. “So shut up, Little Susie.”

  The thing whimpers.

  My mother double says, “There’s no need to be cruel, Kirilow.”

  I glare at her. I say nothing but lead her gaze with my own to its new hand.

  It can starfish, she mouths.

  I nod.

  “Let me go,” blubbers the thing.

  I yank the womb bomb tighter. “By the foulest breath of Our Mother, would you please shut up?”

  It bawls.

  “I can’t stand these things, Mother Glorybind,” I say. I pull out my needles.

  “When will you grow out of this murderous phase?” Old Glorybind Groundsel sighs.

  One of the needles is a little tarnished. I pull out a cloth and begin to polish it. “I don’t know why you’re so squeamish,” I say. “The Salty barbarians want us all dead. You should thank me.”

  “We need this one for its starfish wisdom.”

  “At least let me bleed it a little.”

  “Kirilow.”

  “All right,” I say. “I wasn’t going to hurt it anyway. But you can’t stop me from hating. You yourself told me the stories—of how they rounded our grandmothers up by the thousands, lined them up along a barbed wire fence, and shot them. And didn’t they discover, raid, and torch our far forget-me-do fields just last year? Why should you care if I hurt it or not?”

  “The war is over now, Kirilow. Just stun it.”

  “The war is not over. It’s just quieter than it was in Grandma Chan Ling’s day.”

  “Stun. That’s all.”

  “Pardon, master. I will be correspondent to command.”

  “That’s enough cheek for one day,” says my mother double. “The knowledge I feed you from the time before is solid jade. You have no right to abuse it.”

  Tenderly, as though this putrid Salty were my own best beloved Peristrophe Halliana, I tap a needle into its skull and then all down the meridian of sleep. The Salty stops weeping. Its eyes dim and its eyelids flicker down. It dozes softly.

  I pick up one end of the womb bomb, and my mother double picks up the other. Swinging the Salty between us, we take it back to our lab and lay it out on the examination table.

  I’M IN THE KITCHEN WARMING A BIT OF RABBIT STEW FOR PERISTROPHE Halliana when I hear rustling in the lab. I pull aside the curtain to see what’s going on. The Salty is awake.

  “I found you,” it hacks. “You have to come to Saltwater City. The people are dying. You have to cure them.”

  “Why would I do that?” I ask, eyes incredulous wide. “Far as I’m concerned, the sooner you murderers go extinct, the better for me and my sisters. It’s about time you brewed a flu strong enough to kill yourselves off.”

  I move towards the medicine pot to get it a cup of forget-me-do tea. I open a small hole in the womb bomb where its mouth is and press the cup to it, urging it to drink.

  “Please, no,” it begs. “Not yet.” And then, “We didn’t all want rid of you, you know. It was the Chow-McPherson government. It was the militias. Some of us hate them as much as you do.”

  I put on a mushroom membrane glove, stretch its thin elastic skin over my rough hand. I press my palm to its stomach. Even through the glove and the thick fibres of the womb bomb, I can feel the excess bile in its belly. Sickly and sickening.

  “I don’t believe you,” I tell it. “So drink.”

  “Please,” it wails. “When you see them, your heart will fill with pity.” Tears dribble down its pimply cheeks. A river of snot runs from its nose. How can they be so repulsed by us when they themselves are so disgusting?

  I press the cup harder against its lips. “Drink, Salty.”

  “I have a mother and a father,” it says, smiling ever so slightly through the mass of snot and tears. “And two brothers. We could help you.”

  Vomit pools in my throat. I grip its jaw and force it open. Pour the tea into its already gurgling, foaming mouth. As soon as I let go, it coughs and sputters, then spits the whole cup of tea over its front. I want to be sick, and stumble away towards the water closet.

  I hear old Glorybind’s voice then and am astonished to realize she’s been sitting in her rocking chair this whole time, smoking a pipe of sage and pot. “Steady, Kirilow. A good groom doesn’t get excited over nothing. What will you do when you have a real emergency on your hands?”

  Chang stares right in through the middle of the three windows that grace our cave’s sister-built wall. I choke back my puke. If I don’t learn everything my mother double has to teach me before she leaves this world, then Peristrophe Halliana doesn’t have long to live, and nor do I.

  “These things disgust me, Mother.”

  I know they have a second sex they call “men,” and that men are useful in Salty doubling technology. When I was a sprout, Glorybind Groundsel showed me a pair of post-storm slugs on a log slipping and sliming over one another. She intended to demonstrate that it was natural.

  “It’s not so bad,’ she said. “Some Grist sisters like the idea of reintroducing men to the Grist. Not you, I suspect.”

  I remember so clearly the great glob of mucus that dripped from the combined bodies of the two slugs, oozed over the log, shimmered wetly, and plopped to the ground.

  “Not me,” I told her.

  My mother double laughed. “When you get older, you might not find the idea so repulsive.”

  “It will be repulsive no matter how old I get,” I told her. I took forbidden sips of forget-me-do for a whole week afterwards to try to erase the knowledge of how Salty doubling was done.

  Now, Old Glorybind draws a great puff of smoke into her lungs and exhales. “Sometimes it is all right to feel pity.”

  “Am I obliged to feel it? They made us to use us. When they ran out of uses, they murdered as many of us as they could and exiled the rest. Why should I feel anything at all for them?”

  “They aren’t all the same,” says my mother double.

  “They lack sisterly feeling.”

  “I’m just as human as you are,” the Salty whines through the walrus goo that oozes from its facial orifices. “Will you please unbind me?”

  “We aren’t human,” my mother double informs it. But then she puts down her pipe, goes over to it. She pulls the womb bomb back farther, until its head is free from the tidy wrapping. Strangely wistful, she strokes its head, still covered in sticky, threads from the bomb. A loose hair pokes up from the Salty’s temple, seemingly with a will of its own. It looks like a cockroach antenna. Two more spring up. They quiver with curiosity. Disgusted, I shudder.

  “You shouldn’t honey it,” I say. “What would happen if it told the other Salties where we are? We’d be finished then, wouldn’t we? Done and dusted like so many rusted-out car shells.” I hold its face steady and take a swab from its nose. “Let’s see what kind of disease it has. With any luck, it’s a plague that’ll kill them all good and dead, and
then the Grist will be free at last. High day!”

  “Kirilow, be careful what you wish for. The Grist may have evolved beyond its former masters, but we are not immune to their illnesses.”

  I reach into the casing at the creature’s shoulder and pull its right arm out, grab its wrist, and feel its slippery pulse. An unbidden image rushes into my head—Peristrophe Halliana’s mother double laid out on a white table under bright lights as Salty doctors poke and prod. I don’t want to see. I let go of the thing’s hand. Shuffle over to the plant bench and begin to prepare substrate for mushrooms.

  “You’ll help me then?” whispers the Salty.

  “What are you?” I hiss.

  “I dream about time,” says the Salty. “Time past and time to come. I can show you your history.”

  “My mother double teaches me my history,” I say.

  “I can show you how the Grist sisters might survive. I can show you how they might die. I can help you make a path.” Its eyes plead. Its weird independent hairs wave. I don’t trust it.

  “All your kind ever did was use us and lie to us. Your word is dross!”

  “I know you saw your sister,” says the Salty. “I can show you things. In Saltwater City, they hate the ones who dream about time. But we have our place. The city is changing. If you help me now, you’ll pave the way for the Grist sisters to return as full and beloved citizens.”

  “What kind of mark do you take me for?” I snarl. I throw a fresh womb bomb over it and yank. Inside, the thing whimpers. That’s better.

  I DON’T WANT THE SALTY TO KNOW THAT IT HAS UNSETTLED ME. I GET to work preparing substrate for ganoderma as though the Salty isn’t there. The music of the spores will soothe. Perhaps the path to Our Mother’s salvation lies not with animals but with plants. If I could make the perfect substrate, I could capture the perfect spores. If I were a perfect groom, I could modify the longevity bestowed by the ganoderma to become immortality, and then there would be no need for doublers or starfish. Auntie Radix could cut the greedy grasping. Peristrophe Halliana and Glorybind Groundsel would stay with me forever.

  These are the things I think as I water my substrate, massage and knead the sweet, earthy-smelling stew of rotted fibre and bone, fruit and flesh.

  I’m so absorbed, I don’t hear the snipping and cutting sounds until it is too late. Old Glorybind has cut the sick Salty from its sack. They whisper together.

  “Mother Glory, what are you doing? I bagged that thing up for a reason!”

  The Salty passes something dry and purple to Mother Glorybind. She tucks the strange gift into the folds of her robe, then passes a hand over the Salty’s forehead.

  “Stop that! You of all people should know how dangerous those things are. Bomb it now before it’s too late.”

  I move towards the Salty to wrap it up again, but there’s a thump at our old wooden door. My mother double opens it. Standing there in the piss-pouring rain is Auntie Radix’s new young groom.

  “Kirilow, you have to come quick,” she says. “There is something wrong with Radix Bupleuri’s heart.”

  “Did you take her pulse?” I ask. “Did you take her temperature?”

  “There is no time,” says the groom. She sweats and jitters. “Bring your mother double too.”

  “Naw,” I tell her. “Auntie Radix’s every sneeze is an emergency.”

  “This time there’s really truly a problem,” the young groom says. Her eyes brim with shameful tears.

  “I better come with you,” says Glorybind Groundsel.

  “Someone has to stay with that. We can’t let it run amok through the lab.”

  Old Glorybind casts it a glance. “Just bundle it, Kirilow. This might be serious.”

  I sigh like a put-upon old lady. If she hadn’t freed the Salty from its second womb bomb, I wouldn’t have to waste a precious third. I draw it from the deep pocket of my tunic and, with a flick of the wrist, cast it over the Salty.

  This time, the Salty doesn’t struggle. It curls up and seems to sleep.

  My mother double and I take our elk-wool overcoats from their hooks and hustle into the ashy air. The forest fires that have been burning through the dry season rage on to the north. I wish the rains would come, as Glorybind says they have on the coast, but here it’s much too early.

  7

  ISABELLE SHRINE

  KORA KO // SALTWATER FLATS

  NODE: KERNELS PLUMP

  DAY: 3

  WHEN SHE APPROACHES THE GATE TO THE APARTMENT BLOCK, THERE is a whole crew of ragged girls waiting for her, scales wriggling in all directions, eyes all raccoony. Mostly they wear tattered fatigues from Arm-a-Gideon, the police force that used to patrol Saltwater City before Isabelle Chow brought in a new one under HöST. Some wear clothes from the time before: jeans and T-shirts, miniskirts with fishnet stockings, hoodies, and baggy pants. One wears a curly blue wig and a gold lamé dress that sparkles under the solar street light.

  Kora goes around the building, thinking that those nasty girls won’t know about the back gate, but she sees a crew of them loitering there also. They haven’t spotted her yet, though.

  There’s a fort Kora found with K2 when he was well, hidden in the blackberry bushes down by the water. When she last visited, its floor was littered with N-lite tubes, pigeon shit, and scale shells. Her nostrils wrinkle in anticipation of the stale urine and rotten fish smell. But the fort is hidden from the beach and the road. She prays that the tin-can girls don’t know about it.

  Before she gets inside, the sweet scent of sandalwood incense rushes out to greet her. Someone has hung a piece of red satin over the door. It’s stained and frayed at the edges, but it has been hung with care. Please don’t let there be anyone inside. She pushes the curtain back. Enough light comes through the cracks in the walls for Kora to see that the fort has been converted into a shrine in honour of the great inventor and CEO of HöST Industries, Isabelle Chow. Embedded in the altar is a smiling photograph of her from when she was awarded Woman Leader of the Year, taken those few short years ago when it wasn’t a given that all HöST’s leaders were women. Beneath the photo on a wide shelf are neatly arranged statuettes and figurines of female deities as though they were all her avatars: the Virgin Mary, Kuan Yin, a nine-tailed fox lady, Green Tara, the Venus of Willendorf, Athena, Heng’e, and many more besides. Below that sits a small box of sand into which incense, cigarettes, and candles have been stuck and lit.

  The sandalwood fragrance is strong. Whoever lit it was here recently. This is not the great hiding place she’d hoped, but the alternative is surrendering to the Cordova girls. You’ll never catch me, witches, she thinks. Because the shrine seems to want her to, she kneels on the cushion left for precisely this purpose and says a little awkward prayer to Isabelle.

  Hail Isabelle, full of place

  Richer than the moon

  Give us this day our daily cans

  And lead us not into the flu

  But allow the denizens of Saltwater Flats

  To live long and well

  Especially Uncle Wai and K2

  And even Charlotte, though she killed

  The best friend I ever had

  My beloved goat, Delphine

  And may Delphine’s spirit rest in peace

  And may I never eat her

  For thine is the kingdom the power and the glory

  Forever and ever

  She takes a match from the box beside the altar and lights one of the half-burnt candles. In the sand beside it, someone has stuck a long fine filigree of gold. It takes her a moment to recognize it as a scale—not the cheap kind she buys in the wet market when Uncle Wai gives her pocket money but a state-of-the-art, posh, and highfalutin one, the kind used by the people in the glass towers at HöST.

  She pulls it out of the sand. Cleans it off with a gob of spit and the corner of her bamboo-fibre dress. Removes one of her own precious scales—the one about the phases of the moon—and plugs in the filigree.

  The min
ute she inserts it, Isabelle appears before her, ever so slightly larger than life. Her long dark hair flows around her and moves in a gentle breeze that Kora cannot feel. Her eyes look tired, but her flesh looks so tender soft that Kora reaches out to touch it. But there’s nothing to touch in the space she occupies. Kora pulls her hand back as though she’s touched a corpse. The figure retains its appearance of solidity. Begins to speak.

  “Always they want a piece of you. I’m so tired, my love, so tired. I’ve been going day and night. If we don’t perfect this bloody LïFT soon, the UMK will beat us to it, or the Cosmopolitan Earth Council will. Don’t you know it’s a contest for the world now? Someone’s got to win, and if it’s not me, then I’m as good as dead. HöST is as good as dead. That’s the way it works these days, you know? Oh sweetie, please send me a message soon and say that you’ll never leave me. Please? I don’t think you understand how alone I am, and how terrifying it is.

  “When do you think you can deliver those men of yours? They’re going to die anyway, aren’t they? So we’re doing them a favour? You know this project is meant to be a humanitarian one. I couldn’t bear the thought that my work might hurt somebody. You said they’d welcome the LïFT, even if it isn’t perfect. It’s not perfect. I’d call it life-giving, yes, I believe it is. But life on Quay Sera, it’s not the same, not yet. It’s better than dying, if you’re going to die anyway. I’d recommend it for those who don’t have a choice. But for those who imagine a one-to-one trade-off between life on Earth and life on Chang? I can’t honestly say I have that to offer.

  “And since Jemini moved to the Coast Salish Timeplace last year, their price for a single clone has quadrupled. We need those clones to improve verisimilitude. So I need at least a thousand test subjects. How will I ever afford a thousand? Eventually, we’ll reel those Grist sisters in, but if you’re willing to provide a hundred flu-sick men in the meantime, sweetheart, you have no idea how grateful I’d be. I love you. I love you so much my liver hurts. Please message me back soon. Are you sure you don’t want a direct connection to Chang? I could set that up. So many kisses!”