“Do you?”
“We have understood it for a long time.”
“Have you?”
“Ever since you brought it to us.”
“Me?”
“You brought us the concept of individuality. It is the same thing.”
Awareness dawned. “Culture shock! That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You didn’t know there could be more than one sentient being in existence. You didn’t know you lived at the bottom of an ocean on a small world inside a Universe with billions of galaxies. I brought you more information than you could swallow in one bite, and now you’re choking on it.”
Mournfully: “Choking. What a grotesque concept.”
“Wake up, Lizzie!”
She woke up. “I think I’m getting somewhere,” she said. Then she laughed.
“O’Brien,” Alan said carefully. “Why did you just laugh?”
“Because I’m not getting anywhere, am I? I’m becalmed here, going around and around in a very slow circle. And I’m down to my last”—she checked—“twenty hours of oxygen. And nobody’s going to rescue me. And I’m going to die. But other than that, I’m making terrific progress.”
“O’Brien, you’re…”
“I’m okay, Alan. A little frazzled. Maybe a bit too emotionally honest. But under the circumstances, I think that’s permitted, don’t you?”
“Lizzie, we have your priest. His name is Father Laferrier. The Archdiocese of Montreal arranged a hookup for him.”
“Montreal? Why Montreal? No, don’t explain—more NAFTASA politics, right?”
“Actually, my brother-in-law is a Catholic, and I asked him who was good.”
She was silent for a touch. “I’m sorry, Alan. I don’t know what got into me.”
“You’ve been under a lot of pressure. Here. I’ve got him on tape.”
“Hello, Ms. O’Brien, I’m Father Laferrier. I’ve talked with the officials here, and they’ve promised that you and I can talk privately, and that they won’t record what’s said. So if you want to make your confession now, I’m ready for you.”
Lizzie checked the specs and switched over to a channel that she hoped was really and truly private. Best not to get too specific about the embarrassing stuff, just in case. She could confess her sins by category.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been two months since my last confession. I’m going to die, and maybe I’m not entirely sane, but I think I’m in communication with an alien intelligence. I think it’s a terrible sin to pretend I’m not.” She paused. “I mean, I don’t know if it’s a sin or not, but I’m sure it’s wrong.” She paused again. “I’ve been guilty of anger, and pride, and envy, and lust. I brought the knowledge of death to an innocent world. I…” She felt herself drifting off again, and hastily said, “For these and all my sins, I am most heartily sorry, and beg the forgiveness of God and the absolution and…”
“And what?” That gentle voice again. She was in that strange dark mental space once more, asleep but cognizant, rational but accepting any absurdity, no matter how great. There were no cities, no towers, no ashes, no plains. Nothing but the negation of negation.
When she didn’t answer the question, the voice said, “Does it have to do with your death?”
“Yes.”
“I’m dying too.”
“What?”
“Half of us are gone already. The rest are shutting down. We thought we were one. You showed us we were not. We thought we were everything. You showed us the Universe.”
“So you’re just going to die?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Thinking as quickly and surely as she ever had before in her life, Lizzie said, “Let me show you something.”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
There was a brief, terse silence. Then: “Very well.”
Summoning all her mental acuity, Lizzie thought back to that instant when she had first seen the city/entity on the fishcam. The soaring majesty of it. The slim grace. And then the colors, like dawn upon a glacial ice field: subtle, profound, riveting. She called back her emotions in that instant, and threw in how she’d felt the day she’d seen her baby brother’s birth, the raw rasp of cold air in her lungs as she stumbled to the topmost peak of her first mountain, the wonder of the Taj Mahal at sunset, the sense of wild daring when she’d first put her hand down a boy’s trousers, the prismatic crescent of atmosphere at the Earth’s rim when seen from low orbit…Everything she had, she threw into that image.
“This is how you look,” she said. “This is what we’d both be losing if you were no more. If you were human, I’d rip off your clothes and do you on the floor right now. I wouldn’t care who was watching. I wouldn’t give a damn.”
The gentle voice said, “Oh.”
And then she was back in her suit again. She could smell her own sweat, sharp with fear. She could feel her body, the subtle aches where the harness pulled against her flesh, the way her feet, hanging free, were bloated with blood. Everything was crystalline clear and absolutely real. All that had come before seemed like a bad dream.
“This is DogsofSETI. What a wonderful discovery you’ve made—intelligent life in our own Solar System! Why is the government trying to cover this up?”
“Uh…”
“I’m Joseph Devries. This alien monster must be destroyed immediately. We can’t afford the possibility that it’s hostile.”
“StudPudgie07 here. What’s the dirt behind this ‘lust’ thing? Advanced minds need to know! If O’Brien isn’t going to share the details, then why’d she bring it up in the first place?”
“Hola, soy Pedro Domínguez. Como abogado, ¡esto me parece ultrajante! Por qué NAFTASA nos oculta esta información?”
“Alan!” Lizzie shouted. “What the fuck is going on?”
“Script-bunnies,” Alan said. He sounded simultaneously apologetic and annoyed. “They hacked into your confession and apparently you said something…”
“We’re sorry, Lizzie,” Consuelo said. “We really are. If it’s any consolation, the Archdiocese of Montreal is hopping mad. They’re talking about taking legal action.”
“Legal action? What the hell do I care about…?”She stopped.
Without her willing it, one hand rose above her head and seized the number 10 rope.
Don’t do that, she thought.
The other hand went out to the side, tightened against the number 9 rope. She hadn’t willed that either. When she tried to draw it back to her, it refused to obey. Then the first hand—her right hand—moved a few inches upward and seized its rope in an iron grip. Her left hand slid a good half-foot up its rope. Inch by inch, hand over hand, she climbed up toward the balloon.
I’ve gone mad, she thought. Her right hand was gripping the rip panel now, and the other tightly clenched rope 8. Hanging effortlessly from them, she swung her feet upward. She drew her knees against her chest and kicked.
No!
The fabric ruptured and she began to fall.
A voice she could barely make out said, “Don’t panic. We’re going to bring you down.”
All in a panic, she snatched at the 9 rope and the 4 rope. But they were limp in her hand, useless, falling at the same rate she was.
“Be patient.”
“I don’t want to die, goddamnit!”
“Then don’t.”
She was falling helplessly. It was a terrifying sensation, an endless plunge into whiteness, slowed somewhat by the tangle of ropes and balloon trailing behind her. She spread out her arms and legs like a starfish, and felt the air resistance slow her yet further. The sea rushed up at her with appalling speed. It seemed like she’d been falling forever. It was over in an instant.
Without volition, Lizzie kicked free of balloon and harness, drew her feet together, pointed her toes, and positioned herself perpendicular to Titan’s surface. She smashed through the surface of the sea, sending en
ormous gouts of liquid splashing upward. It knocked the breath out of her. Red pain exploded within. She thought maybe she’d broken a few ribs.
“You taught us so many things,” the gentle voice said. “You gave us so much.”
“Help me!” The water was dark around her. The light was fading.
“Multiplicity. Motion. Lies. You showed us a universe infinitely larger than the one we had known.”
“Look. Save my life and we’ll call it even. Deal?”
“Gratitude. Such an essential concept.”
“Thanks. I think.”
And then she saw the turbot swimming toward her in a burst of silver bubbles. She held out her arms and the robot fish swam into them. Her fingers closed about the handles which Consuelo had used to wrestle the device into the sea. There was a jerk, so hard that she thought for an instant that her arms would be ripped out of their sockets. Then the robofish was surging forward and upward and it was all she could do to keep her grip.
“Oh, dear God!” Lizzie cried involuntarily.
“We think we can bring you to shore. It will not be easy.”
Lizzie held on for dear life. At first she wasn’t at all sure she could. But then she pulled herself forward, so that she was almost astride the speeding mechanical fish, and her confidence returned. She could do this. It wasn’t any harder than the time she’d had the flu and aced her gymnastics final on parallel bars and horse anyway. It was just a matter of grit and determination. She just had to keep her wits about her. “Listen,” she said. “If you’re really grateful…”
“We are listening.”
“We gave you all those new concepts. There must be things you know that we don’t.”
A brief silence, the equivalent of who knew how much thought. “Some of our concepts might cause you dislocation.” A pause. “But in the long run, you will be much better off. The scars will heal. You will rebuild. The chances of your destroying yourselves are well within the limits of acceptability.”
“Destroying ourselves?” For a second, Lizzie couldn’t breathe. It had taken hours for the city/entity to come to terms with the alien concepts she’d dumped upon it. Human beings thought and lived at a much slower rate than it did. How long would those hours be, translated into human time? Months? Years? Centuries? It had spoken of scars and rebuilding. That didn’t sound good at all.
Then the robofish accelerated, so quickly that Lizzie almost lost her grip. The dark waters were whirling around her, and unseen flecks of frozen material were bouncing from her helmet. She laughed wildly. Suddenly, she felt great!
“Bring it on,” she said. “I’ll take everything you’ve got.”
It was going to be one hell of a ride.
Knapsack Poems
ELEANOR ARNASON
Eleanor Arnason (tribute page
“Knapsack Poems” appeared in Asimov’s and has only Goxhat characters, with the central character a traveling poet whose selves continually argue and discuss and have sex, who is poor and willing to sell poetic praise for food or money. Many things human are called into question in this amusing tale as an alien poet just trying to get by reinvents something humans already have.
Within this person of eight bodies, thirty-two eyes, and the usual number of orifices and limbs, resides a spirit as restless as gossamer on wind. In youth, I dreamed of fame as a merchant-traveler. In later years, realizing that many of my parts were prone to motion sickness, I thought of scholarship or accounting. But I lacked the Great Determination that is necessary for both trades. My abilities are spontaneous and brief, flaring and vanishing like a falling star. For me to spend my life adding numbers or looking through dusty documents would be like “lighting a great hall with a single lantern bug” or “watering a great garden with a drop of dew.”
Finally, after consulting the care-givers in my crèche, I decided to become a traveling poet. It’s a strenuous living and does not pay well, but it suits me.
Climbing through the mountains west of Ibri, I heard a wishik call, then saw the animal, its wings like white petals, perched on a bare branch.
“Is that tree flowering
So late in autumn?
Ridiculous idea!
I long for dinner.”
One of my bodies recited the poem. Another wrote it down, while still others ranged ahead, looking for signs of habitation. As a precaution, I carried cudgels as well as pens and paper. One can never be sure what will appear in the country west of Ibri. The great poet Raging Fountain died there of a combination of diarrhea and malicious ghosts. Other writers, hardly less famous, have been killed by monsters or bandits, or, surviving these, met their end at the hands of dissatisfied patrons.
The Bane of Poets died before my birth. Its1 ghost or ghosts offered Raging Fountain the fatal bowl of porridge. But other patrons still remain “on steep slopes and in stony dales.”
“Dire the telling
Of patrons in Ibri:
Bone-breaker lurks
High on a mountain.
Skull-smasher waits
In a shadowy valley.
Better than these
The country has only
Grasper, Bad-bargain,
And Hoarder-of-Food.”
Why go to such a place, you may be wondering? Beyond Ibri’s spiny mountains lie the wide fields of Greater and Lesser Ib, prosperous lands well-known for patronage of the arts.
Late in the afternoon, I realized I would find no refuge for the night. Dark snow-clouds hid the hills in front of me. Behind me, low in the south, the sun shed pale light. My shadows, long and many-limbed, danced ahead of me on the rutted road.
My most poetic self spoke:
“The north is blocked
By clouds like boulders.
A winter sun
Casts shadows in my way.”
Several of my other selves frowned. My scribe wrote the poem down with evident reluctance.
“Too obvious,” muttered a cudgel-carrier.
Another self agreed. “Too much like Raging Fountain in his/her mode of melancholy complaint.”
Far ahead, a part of me cried alarm. I suspended the critical discussion and hurried forward in a clump, my clubs raised and ready for use.
Soon, not even breathless, I stopped at a place I knew by reputation: the Tooth River. Wide and shallow, it ran around pointed stones, well-exposed this time of year and as sharp as the teeth of predators. On the far side of the river were bare slopes that led toward cloudy mountains. On the near side of the river, low cliffs cast their shadows over a broad shore. My best scout was there, next to a bundle of cloth. The scout glanced up, saw the rest of me, and—with deft fingers—undid the blanket folds.
Two tiny forms lay curled at the blanket’s center. A child of one year, holding itself in its arms.
“Alive?” I asked myself.
The scout crouched closer. “One body is and looks robust. The other body—” my scout touched it gently “—is cold.”
Standing among myself, I groaned and sighed. There was no problem understanding what had happened. A person had given birth. Either the child had been unusually small, or the other parts had died. For some reason, the parent had been
traveling alone. Maybe he/she/it had been a petty merchant or a farmer driven off the land by poverty. If not these, then a wandering thief or someone outlawed for heinous crimes. A person with few resources. In any case, he/she/it had carried the child to this bitter place, where the child’s next-to- last part expired.
Imagine standing on the river’s icy edge, holding a child who had become a single body. The parent could not bear to raise an infant so incomplete! What parent could? One did no kindness by raising such a cripple to be a monster among ordinary people.
Setting the painful burden down, the parent crossed the river.
I groaned a second time. My most poetic self said:
“Two bodies are not enough;
One body is nothing.”
The rest of me hummed agreement. The poet added a second piece of ancient wisdom:
“Live in a group
Or die.”
I hummed a second time.
The scout lifted the child from its blanket. “It’s female.”
The baby woke and cried, waving her four arms, kicking her four legs, and urinating. My scout held her as far away as possible. Beyond doubt, she was a fine, loud, active mite! But incomplete. “Why did you wake her?” asked a cudgel-carrier. “She should be left to die in peace.”
“No,” said the scout. “She will come with me.”
“Me! What do you mean by me?” my other parts cried.
There is neither art nor wisdom in a noisy argument. Therefore, I will not describe the discussion that followed as night fell. Snowflakes drifted from the sky—slowly at first, then more and more thickly. I spoke with the rudeness people reserve for themselves in privacy; and the answers I gave myself were sharp indeed. Words like pointed stones, like the boulders in Tooth River, flew back and forth. Ah! The wounds I inflicted and suffered! Is anything worse than internal dispute?
The scout would not back down. She had fallen in love with the baby, as defective as it was. The cudgel-bearers, sturdy males, were outraged. The poet and the scribe, refined neuters, were repulsed. The rest of me was female and a bit more tender.
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