Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 102

by Naim Kabir

  “Achimwene,” she said.

  He raised his head. “Miriam,” he said, heavily.

  They did not get along.

  “The girl, Carmel. She is with you?”

  “I let her stay,” he said, carefully.

  “Oh, Achimwene, you are a fool!” she said.

  Her boy—their sister’s boy—Kranki—was with her. Achimwene regarded him uneasily. The boy was vat-grown—had come from the birthing clinics—his eyes were Armani-trademark blue. “Hey, Kranki,” Achimwene said.

  “Anggkel,” the boy said—uncle, in the pidgin of the asteroids. “Yu olsem wanem?”

  “I gud,” Achimwene said.

  How are you? I am well.

  “Fren blong mi Ismail I stap aotside,” Kranki said. “I stret hemi kam insaed?”

  My friend Ismail is outside. Is it ok if he comes in?

  “I stret,” Achimwene said.

  Miriam blinked. “Ismail,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

  Kranki had turned, appeared, to all intents and purposes, to play with an invisible playmate. Achimwene said, carefully, “There is no one there.”

  “Of course there is,” his sister snapped. “It’s Ismail, the Jaffa boy.”

  Achimwene shook his head.

  “Listen, Achimwene. The girl. Do you know why she came here?”

  “No.”

  “She followed Boris.”

  “Boris,” Achimwene said. “Your Boris?”

  “My Boris,” she said.

  “She knew him before?”

  “She knew him on Mars. In Tong Yun City.”

  “I . . . see.”

  “You see nothing, Achi. You are blind like a worm.” Old words, still with the power to hurt him. They had never been close, somehow. He said, “What do you want, Miriam?”

  Her face softened. “I do not want . . . I do not want her to hurt you.”

  “I am a grown-up,” he said. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Achi, like you ever could!”

  Could that be affection, in her voice? It sounded like frustration. Miriam said, “Is she here?”

  “Kranki,” Achimwene said, “Who are you playing with?”

  “Ismail,” Kranki said, pausing in the middle of telling a story to someone only he could see.

  “He’s not here,” Achimwene said.

  “Sure he is. He’s right here.”

  Achimwene formed his lips into an O of understanding. “Is he virtual?” he said.

  Kranki shrugged. “I guess,” he said. He clearly felt uncomfortable with—or didn’tunderstand—the question. Achimwene let it go.

  His sister said, “I like the girl, Achi.”

  It took him by surprise. “You’ve met her?”

  “She has a sickness. She needs help.”

  “I am helping her!”

  But his sister only shook her head.

  “Go away, Miriam,” he said, feeling suddenly tired, depressed. His sister said, “Is she here?”

  “She is resting.”

  Above his shop there was a tiny flat, accessible by narrow, twisting stairs. It wasn’t much but it was home. “Carmel?” his sister called. “Carmel!”

  There was a sound above, as of someone moving. Then a lack of sound. Achimwene watched his sister standing impassively. Realized she was talking, in the way of other people, with Carmel. Communicating in a way that was barred to him. Then normal sound again, feet on the stairs, and Carmel came into the room.

  “Hi,” she said, awkwardly. She came and stood closer to Achimwene, then took his hand in hers. The feel of her small, cold fingers in between his hands startled him and made a feeling of pleasure spread throughout his body, like warmth in the blood. Nothing more was said. The physical action itself was an act of speaking.

  Miriam nodded.

  Then Kranki startled them all.

  Carmel had spent the previous night in the company of a woman. Achimwene had known there was sex involved, not just feeding. He had told himself he didn’t mind. When Carmel came back she had smelled of sweat and sex and blood. She moved lethargically, and he knew she was drunk on data. She had tried to describe it to him once, but he didn’t really understand it, what it was like.

  He had lain there on the narrow bed with her and watched the moon outside, and the floating lanterns with their rudimentary intelligence. He had his arm around the sleeping Carmel, and he had never felt happier.

  Kranki turned and regarded Carmel. He whispered something to the air—to the place Ismail was standing, Achimwene guessed. He giggled at the reply and turned to Carmel.

  “Are you a vampire?” he said.

  “Kranki!”

  At the horrified look on Miriam’s face, Achimwene wanted to laugh. Carmel said, “No, it’s all right—” in asteroid pidgin. I stret nomo.

  But she was watching the boy intently. “Who is your friend?” she said, softly.

  “It’s Ismail. He lives in Jaffa on the hill.”

  “And what is he?” Carmel said. “What are you?”

  The boy didn’t seem to understand the question. “He is him. I am me. We are . . . ” he hesitated.

  “Nakaimas . . . ” Carmel whispered. The sound of her voice made Achimwene shiver. That same cold run of ice down his spine, like in the old books, like when Ringo the Gunslinger met a horror from beyond the grave on the lonesome prairies.

  He knew the word, though never understood the way people used it. It meant black magic, but also, he knew, it meant to somehow, impossibly, transcend the networks, that thing they called the Conversation.

  “Kranki . . .” the warning tone in Miriam’s voice was unmistakable. But neither Kranki nor Carmel paid her any heed. “I could show you,” the boy said. His clear, blue eyes seemed curious, guileless. He stepped forward and stood directly in front of Carmel and reached out his hand, pointing finger extended. Carmel, momentarily, hesitated. Then she, too, reached forward and, finger extended, touched its tip to the boy’s own.

  It is, perhaps, the prerogative of every man or woman to imagine, and thus force a shape, a meaning, onto that wild and meandering narrative of their lives, by choosing genre. A princess is rescued by a prince; a vampire stalks a victim in the dark; a student becomes the master. A circle is completed. And so on.

  It was the next morning that Achimwene’s story changed, for him. It had been a Romance, perhaps, of sorts. But now it became a Mystery.

  Perhaps they chose it, by tacit agreement, as a way to bind them, to make this curious relationship, this joining of two ill-fitted individuals somehow work. Or perhaps it was curiosity that motivated them after all, that earliest of motives, the most human and the most suspect, the one that had led Adam to the Tree, in the dawn of story.

  The next morning Carmel came down the stairs. Achimwene had slept in the bookshop that night, curled up in a thin blanket on top of a mattress he had kept by the wall and which was normally laden with books. The books, pushed aside, formed an untidy wall around him as he slept, an alcove within an alcove.

  Carmel came down. Her hair moved sluggishly around her skull. She wore a thin cotton shift; he could see how thin she was.

  Achimwene said, “Tell me what happened yesterday.”

  Carmel shrugged. “Is there any coffee?”

  “You know where it is.”

  He sat up, feeling self-conscious and angry. Pulling the blanket over his legs. Carmel went to the primus stove, filled the pot with water from the tap, added spoons of black coffee carelessly. Set it to cook.

  “The boy is . . . a sort of strigoi,” she said. “Maybe. Yes. No. I don’t know.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He gave me something. He took something away. A memory. Mine or someone else’s. It’s no longer there.”

  “What did he give you?”

  “Knowledge. That he exists.”

  “Nakaimas.”

  “Yes.” She laughed, a sound as bitter as the coffee. “Black magic. Like me. Not like
me.”

  “You were a weapon,” he said. She turned, sharply. There were two coffee cups on the table. Glass on varnished wood. “What?”

  “I read about it.”

  “Always your books.”

  He couldn’t tell by her tone how she meant it. He said, “There are silences in your Conversation. Holes.” Could not quite picture it, to him there was only a silence. Said, “The books have answers.”

  She poured coffee, stirred sugar into the glasses. Came over and sat beside him, her side pressing into his. Passed him a cup. “Tell me,” she said.

  He took a sip. The coffee burned his tongue. Sweet. He began to talk quickly. “I read up on the condition. Strigoi. Shambleau. There are references from the era of the Shangri-La Virus, contemporary accounts. The Kunming Labs were working on genetic weapons, but the war ended before the strain could be deployed—they sold it off-world, it went loose, it spread. It never worked right. there are hints—I need access to a bigger library. Rumors. Cryptic footnotes.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Suggesting a deeper purpose. Or that Strigoi was but a side-effect of something else. A secret purpose . . . ”

  Perhaps they wanted to believe. Everyone needs a mystery.

  She stirred beside him. Turned to face him. Smiled. It was perhaps the first time she ever truly smiled at him. Her teeth were long, and sharp.

  “We could find out,” she said.

  “Together,” he said. He drank his coffee, to hide his excitement. But he knew she could tell.

  “We could be detectives.”

  “Like Judge Dee,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Some detective.”

  “Book detective,” she said, dismissively.

  “Like Bill Glimmung, then,” he said. Her face lit up. For a moment she looked very young. “I love those stories,” she said.

  Even Achimwene had seen Glimmung features. They had been made in 2D, 3D, full-immersion, as scent narratives, as touch-tapestry—Martian Hardboiled, they called the genre, the Phobos Studios cranked out hundreds of them over decades if not centuries, Elvis Mandela had made the character his own.

  “Like Bill Glimmung, then,” she said solemnly, and he laughed.

  “Like Glimmung,” he said.

  And so the lovers, by complicit agreement, became detectives.

  MARTIAN HARDBOILED, genre of. Flourished in the CENTURY OF DRAGON. Most prominent character: Bill GLIMMUNG, played most memorably by Elvis MANDELA (for which see separate entry). The genre is well-known, indeed notorious, for the liberal use of sex and violence, transplanted from old EARTH (also see MANHOME; HUMANITY PRIME) hardboiled into a Martian setting, sometimes realistically-portrayed, often with implicit or explicit elements of FANTASY.

  While early stories stuck faithfully to the mean streets of TONG YUN CITY, with its triads, hafmek pushers and Israeli, Red Chinese and Red Soviet agents, later narratives took in off-world adventures, including in the BELT, the VENUSIAN NO-GO ZONE and the OUTER PLANETS. Elements of SOAP OPERA intruded as the narratives became ever more complex and on-going (see entry for long-running Martian soap CHAINS OF ASSEMBLY for separate discussion).

  “There was something else,” Carmel said.

  Achimwene said, “What?”

  They were walking the streets of old Central Station. The space port rose above them, immense and inscrutable. Carmel said, “When I came in. Came down.” She shook her head in frustration and a solitary dreadlock snaked around her mouth, making her blow on it to move it away. “When I came to Earth.”

  Those few words evoked in Achimwene a nameless longing. So much to infer, so much suggested, to a man who had never left his home town. Carmel said, “I bought a new identity in Tong Yun, before I came. The best you could. From a Conch—”

  Looking at him to see if he understood. Achimwene did. A Conch was a human who had been ensconced, welded into a permanent pod-cum-exoskeleton. He was only part human, had become part digital by extension. It was not unsimilar, in some ways, to the eunuchs of old Earth. Achimwene said, “I see?” Carmel said, “It worked. When I passed through Central Station security I was allowed through, with no problems. The . . . the digitals did not pick up on my . . . nature. The fake ident was accepted.”

  “So?”

  Carmel sighed, and a loose dreadlock tickled Achimwene’s neck, sending a warmth rushing through him. “So is that likely?” she said. She stopped walking, then, when Achimwene stopped also, she started pacing. A floating lantern bobbed beside them for a few moments then, as though sensing their intensity, drifted away, leaving them in shadow. “There are no strigoi on Earth,” Carmel said.

  “How do we know for sure?” Achimwene said.

  “It’s one of those things. Everyone knows it.”

  Achimwene shrugged. “But you’re here,” he pointed out.

  Carmel waved her finger; stuck it in his face. “And how likely is that?” she yelled, startling him. “I believed it worked, because I wanted to believe it. But surely they know! I am not human, Achi! My body is riddled with nodal filaments, exabytes of data, hostile protocols! You want to tell me they didn’t know?”

  Achimwene shook his head. Reached for her, but she pulled away from him. “What are you saying?” he said.

  “They let me through.” Her voice was matter of fact.

  “Why?” Achimwene said. “Why would they do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Achimwene chewed his lip. Intuition made a leap in his mind, neurons singing to neurons. “You think it is because of those children,” he said.

  Carmel stopped pacing. He saw how pale her face was, how delicate. “Yes,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then you must ask a digital,” he said. “You must ask an Other.”

  She glared at him. “Why would they talk to me?” she said.

  Achimwene didn’t have an answer. “We can proceed the way we agreed,” he said, a little lamely. “We’ll get the answers. Sooner or later, we’ll figure it out, Carmel.”

  “How?” she said.

  He pulled her to him. She did not resist. The words from an old book rose into Achimwene’s mind, and with them the entire scene. “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” he said.

  And so on a sweltering hot day Achimwene and the strigoi left Central Station, on foot, and shortly thereafter crossed the invisible barrier that separated the old neighborhood. from the city of Tel Aviv proper. Achimwene walked slowly; an electronic cigarette dangled from his lips, another vintage affectation, and the fedora hat he wore shaded him from the sun even as his sweat drenched into the brim of the hat. Beside him Carmel was cool in a light blue dress. They came to Allenby Street and followed it towards the Carmel Market—“It’s like my name,” Carmel said, wonderingly.

  “It is an old name,” Achimwene said. But his attention was elsewhere.

  “Where are we going?” Carmel said. Achimwene smiled, white teeth around the metal cigarette. “Every detective,” he said, “needs an informant.”

  Picture, then, Allenby. Not the way it was, but the way it is. Surprisingly little has changed. It was a long, dirty street, with dark shops selling knock-off products with the air of disuse upon them. Carmel dawdled outside a magic shop. Achimwene bargained with a fruit juice seller and returned with two cups of fresh orange juice, handing one to Carmel. They passed a bakery where cream-filled pastries vied for their attention. They passed a Church of Robot node where a rusting preacher tried to get their attention with a sad distracted air. They passed shawarma stalls thick with the smell of cumin and lamb fat. They passed a road-sweeping machine that warbled at them pleasantly, and a recruitment center for the Martian Kibbutz Movement. They passed a gaggle of black-clad Orthodox Jews; like Achimwene, they were unnoded.

  Carmel looked this way and that, smelling, looking, feeding, Achimwene knew, on pure unadulterated feed. Something he could not experience, could not know, but knew,
nevertheless, that it was there, invisible yet ever present. Like God. The lines from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish floated in his head. Something about the invisibles. “Look,” Carmel said, smiling. “A bookshop.”

  Indeed it was. They were coming closer to the market now and the throng of people intensified, and solar buses crawled like insects, with their wings spread high, along the Allenby road, carrying passengers, and the smell of fresh vegetables, of peppers and tomatoes, and the sweet strong smell of oranges, too, filled the air. The bookshop was, in fact, a yard, open to the skies, the books under awnings, and piled up, here and there, in untidy mountains—it was the sort of shop that would have no prices, and where you’d always have to ask for the price, which depended on the owner, and his mood, and on the weather and the alignment of the stars.

  The owner in question was indeed standing in the shade of the long, metal bookcases lining up one wall. He was smoking a cigar and its overpowering aroma filled the air and made Carmel sneeze. The man looked up and saw them. “Achimwene,” he said, without surprise. Then he squinted and said, in a lower voice, “I heard you got a nice batch recently.”

  “Word travels,” Achimwene said, complacently. Carmel, meanwhile, was browsing aimlessly, picking up fragile-looking paper books and magazines, replacing them, picking up others. Achimwene saw, at a glance, early editions of Yehuda Amichai, a first edition Yoav Avni, several worn Ringo paperbacks he already had, and a Lior Tirosh semizdat collection. He said, “Shimshon, what do you know about vampires?”

  “Vampires?” Shimshon said. He took a thoughtful pull on his cigar. “In the literary tradition? There is Neshikat Ha’mavet Shel Dracula, by Dan Shocker, in the Horror series from nineteen seventy-two—” Dracula’s Death Kiss—“or Gal Amir’s Laila Adom—” Red Night—“possibly the first Hebrew vampire novel, or Vered Tochterman’s Dam Kachol—” Blue Blood—“from around the same period. Didn’t think it was particularly your area, Achimwene.” Shimshon grinned. “But I’d be happy to sell you a copy. I think I have a signed Tochterman somewhere. Expensive, though. Unless you want to trade . . . ”

  “No,” Achimwene said, although regretfully. “I’m not looking for a pulp, right now. I’m looking for non-fiction.”