I don’t even know what is happening to me anymore. In my heart is some perfect harmony, some sweetness where every interaction flows against the gradient, conning death, laughing at entropy, tricking decay out of its wages. It isn’t an image, it’s a feeling, a configuration of moments and so-called weak interactions, a fullness. Something wants to burst out of the ruination. Out of futility, out of crushed hope, out of that broken place where nothing can ever help. No superglue to repair this tear in the universe. Loss is just the way it is.
Except that I am here flying through the gas fire that is the plasma field that is the end of the birdmasters’ world that is the beginning of our adventures, I am the definition of change and I’m made back-to-front and inside-out. You stolen waveforms like stolen time, you abide deep in the engines that the bird mothers built into my tissues, where you and I will alter each other forever. I will love you always – and when the moment is right, when the stars align? Well, one by one, I will kick you the hell out of my body and back into the world.
Get ready to relaunch on my count. You can’t stay with me. I am burning alive.
* * *
From so far as this I can see Akele. It’s winter. He sleeps in a sleeping bag under two heavy quilts and his breath stands up when he stands, still wearing his boots. He removes them so he can wash and pray, hissing at the zing of the cold water on his feet. After his prayers he makes coffee. He turns on the radio to 1010 WINS New York – you give us twenty-two minutes we’ll give you the world – wiping condensation off the window as he peers out into darkness yellowed by lamplight. Helicopters judder overhead. He is putting Splenda in his coffee when there’s a noise from the corner.
There it is, the giant double fridge that he has never plugged in. It lies on its side and doubles as a work bench. He has thrown a furniture-mover’s brown quilt over it so that the tiny screws and pieces of hard solder won’t roll right off. There’s a scarred old wooden vice grip and a signal testing kit and a couple of disembowelled phones and a waffle iron, all works in progress. There’s a plastic chess set paused in mid-game. Akele plays himself.
The fridge has been singing softly to him for two days. Just like it did before it disgorged the angel. It gives off a faint mist of sound though it’s not plugged in. He sips his coffee, waiting for the sound to die away so he can forget he heard it. The coffee hasn’t hit his system yet but there are fluttering movements in his abdomen because his body knows more than he does. He picks up one of the phone cases and puts it back down again. The sound isn’t coming from anything on the workspace. It must be coming from somewhere beneath.
He bends over the back of the fridge but the sound is softer here. Now there is a tapping coming from inside. As if a rapping. Now, a knocking.
Too late to run away, to feign ignorance. Not that Akele would.
He puts the coffee cup down. Then he flips up the edge of the quilt covering the fridge doors and tugs one of them open.
All flowers in time bend towards the sun.
The boy is curled, elbows over forehead, toes flexed, clad in yesterday’s best donations to the household recycling centre next door (originally from Kaufman’s and Gap) plus a straw hat of dubious provenance. After he topples out of the open door, landing on hands and knees on the frigid carpet of the trailer, the hat falls off. His black hair comes down in a sheet to cover his shining eyes and he makes to hold himself tight, shivering.
‘You got a extra coat, man?’ the boy says. He was scanned in 1476 in the place that is now Bangladesh but already he has a Long Island accent, because preloads. ‘It was warmer inside the fridge.’
Akele puts his fingers to his lips. He is remembering me the way you remember a tune you learnt as a child. Of course I am no more, not as I was. I am changing. I will become the future history I hold in my body. Like dewdrops can turn to clouds can turn to thunder that shakes your bones, what’s in my archives can change the scheme of things. I will unravel like skywriting on the blue face of the world. Medicine will be delivered. Promises will be kept.
Akele takes the boy’s hand and pulls him to his feet.
‘We gonna get you a coat,’ he says.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who helped me between 2011 and 2014 while I was writing this. In particular I’m grateful to:
Stephanie Burgis.
Pat Cadigan, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Kate Elliott, Aliette de Bodard, Johan Anglemark.
Nina Allan.
Michael Fauconnier-Bank on international banking. Steve Morris on isometrics.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
Kelley Eskridge of Sterling Literary, for her deeply insightful editing of the first draft.
My agent Alex Adsett.
Simon Spanton and the entire team at Gollancz.
Finally, I need to thank Karen Mahoney, who gave me Pearl’s name and who told me in no uncertain terms to write this story. Thank you, Kaz.
About the Author
Tricia Sullivan is an award-winning writer of SF, Fantasy and YA. Her third novel, Dreaming In Smoke, won the Arthur C. Clarke Award for best SF novel. Her work has encompassed cyberpunk, space opera and near-future satire. Her novels have been shortlisted for the BSFA Award, the Tiptree Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. An American, she has lived in the UK since 1995.
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