“I blacked out for a second!” he gasped. Then, realizing that the landscape about him did not look familiar, “How long was I unconscious?"
::Three days/(three days)/[casual certainty]::
“Oh."
Then, almost without pausing. ::Your suit/mechanism/[alarm] talks with the voice of Rosamund da Silva/(Europan vice-consul 8)/[uncertainty and doubt]::
“Yes, well, that's because—"
Quivera was fully aware and alert now. So I said: “Incoming."
Two millies erupted out of the black soil directly before us. They both had Ziggurat insignia painted on their flanks and harness. By good luck Uncle Vanya did the best thing possible under the circumstances—he reared into the air in fright. Millipoid sapiens anatomy being what it was, this instantly demonstrated to them that he was a gelding and in that instant he was almost reflexively dismissed by the enemy soldiers as being both contemptible and harmless.
Quivera, however, was not.
Perhaps they were brood-traitors who had deserted the war with a fantasy of starting their own nest. Perhaps they were a single unit among thousands scattered along a temporary border, much as land mines were employed in ancient modern times. The soldiers had clearly been almost as surprised by us as we were by them. They had no weapons ready. So they fell upon Quivera with their dagger-tarsi.
His suit (still me) threw him to one side and then to the other as the millies slashed down at him. Then one of them reared up into the air—looking astonished if you knew the interspecies decodes—and fell heavily to the ground.
Uncle Vanya stood over the steaming corpse, one foreleg glinting silver. The second Ziggurat soldier twisted to confront him. Leaving his underside briefly exposed.
Quivera (or rather his suit) joined both hands in a fist and punched upward, through the weak skin of the third sternite behind the head. That was the one which held its sex organs. [Disclaimer: All anatomical terms, including “sternite,” “sex organs,” and “head,” are analogues only; unless and until Gehennan life is found to have some direct relationship to Terran life, however tenuous, such descriptors are purely metaphoric.] So it was particularly vulnerable there. And since the suit had muscle-multiplying exoskeletal functions...
Ichor gushed all over the suit.
The fight was over almost as soon as it had begun. Quivera was breathing heavily, as much from the shock as the exertion. Uncle Vanya slid the tarsi-sword back into its belly-sheath. As he did so, he made an involuntary grimace of discomfort. ::There were times when I thought of discarding this:: he signed.
“I'm glad you didn't."
Little puffs of steam shot up from the bodies of the dead millipedes as carrion-flies drove their seeds/sperm/eggs (analogues and metaphors—remember?) deep into the flesh.
They started away again.
After a time, Uncle Vanya repeated ::Your suit/(mechanism)/[alarm] talks with the voice of Rosamund da Silva/(Europan vice-consul 8)/[uncertainty and doubt]::
“Yes."
Uncle Vanya folded tight all his speaking arms in a manner that meant that he had not yet heard enough, and kept them so folded until Quivera had explained the entirety of what follows:
Treachery and betrayal were natural consequences of Europa's superheated economy, followed closely by a perfectly rational paranoia. Those who rose to positions of responsibility were therefore sharp, suspicious, intuitive, and bold. The delegation to Babel was made up of the best Europa had to offer. So when two of them fell in love, it was inevitable that they would act on it. That one was married would deter neither. That physical intimacy in such close and suspicious quarters, where everybody routinely spied on everybody else, and required almost superhuman discipline and ingenuity, only made it all the hotter for them.
Such was Rosamund's and Quivera's affair.
But it was not all they had to worry about.
There were factions within the delegation, some mirroring fault lines in the larger society and others merely personal. Alliances shifted, and when they did nobody was foolish enough to inform their old allies. Urbano, Rosamund's husband, was a full consul, Quivera's mentor, and a true believer in a minority economic philosophy. Rosamund was an economic agnostic but a staunch Consensus Liberal. Quivera could sail with the wind politically but he tracked the indebtedness indices obsessively. He knew that Rosamund considered him ideologically unsound, and that her husband was growing impatient with his lukewarm support in certain areas of policy. Everybody was keeping an eye out for the main chance.
So of course Quivera ran an emulation of his lover at all times. He knew that Rosamund was perfectly capable of betraying him—he could neither have loved nor respected a woman who wasn't—and he suspected she believed the same of him. If her behavior ever seriously diverged from that of her emulation (and the sex was always best at times he thought it might), he would know she was preparing an attack, and could strike first.
Quivera spread his hands. “That's all."
Uncle Vanya did not make the sign for absolute horror. Nor did he have to.
After a moment, Quivera laughed, low and mirthlessly. “You're right,” he said. “Our entire system is totally fucked.” He stood. “Come on. We've got miles to go before we sleep."
* * * *
They endured four more days of commonplace adventure, during which they came close to death, displayed loyalty, performed heroic deeds, etc., etc. Perhaps they bonded, though I'd need blood samples and a smidgeon of brain tissue from each of them to be sure of that. You know the way this sort of narrative goes. Having taught his Gehennan counterpart the usefulness of information, Quivera will learn from Vanya the necessity of trust. An imperfect merger of their two value systems will ensue in which for the first time a symbolic common ground will be found. Small and transient though the beginning may be, it will augur well for the long-term relations between their respective species.
That's a nice story.
It's not what happened.
On the last day of their common journey, Quivera and Uncle Vanya had the misfortune to be hit by a TLMG.
A TLMG, or Transient Localized Mud Geyser, begins with an uncommonly solid surface (bolide-glazed porcelain earth, usually) trapping a small (the radius of a typical TLMG is on the order of fifty meters) bubble of superheated mud beneath it. Nobody knows what causes the excess heat responsible for the bubble. Gehennans aren't curious and Europans haven't the budget or the ground access to do the in situ investigations they'd like. (The most common guesses are fire worms, thermobacilli, a nesting ground phoenix, and various geophysical forces.) Nevertheless, the defining characteristic of TLMGs is their instability. Either the heat slowly bleeds away and they cease to be, or it continues to grow until its force dictates a hyper rapid explosive release. As did the one our two heroes were not aware they were skirting.
It erupted.
Quivera was as safe as houses, of course. His suit was designed to protect him from far worse. But Uncle Vanya was scalded badly along one side of his body. All the legs on that side were shriveled to little black nubs. A clear viscous jelly oozed between his segment plates.
Quivera knelt by him and wept. Drugged as he was, he wept. In his weakened state, I did not dare to increase his dosages. So I had to tell him three times that there was analgesic paste in the saddlebags before he could be made to understand that he should apply it to his dying companion.
The paste worked fast. It was an old Gehennan medicine that Europan biochemists had analyzed and improved upon and then given to Babel as a demonstration of the desirability of Europan technology. Though the queen-mothers had not responded with the hoped-for trade treaties, it had immediately replaced the earlier version.
Uncle Vanya made a creaking-groaning noise as the painkillers kicked in. One at a time he opened all his functioning eyes. ::Is the case safe?::
It was a measure of Quivera's diminished state that he hadn't yet checked on it. He did now. “Yes,” he said with heartfelt relief. “The tel
ltales all say that the library is intact and undamaged."
::No:: Vanya signed feebly. ::I lied to you, Quivera:: Then, rousing himself:
::(not) library/[greatest shame]:: ::(not) library/[greatest trust]::
!
::(Europan vice-consul 12)/Quivera/[most trusted]::
! !
::(nest)/Babel/(untranslatable):: ::obedient/[absolute loyalty]::
! !
::lies(greatest-trust-deed)/[moral necessity]::
! !
::(nest)/Babel/(untranslatable):: ::untranslatable/[absolute resistance]::
! ! !
::(nest)/[trust] Babel/[trust] (sister-city)/Ur/[absolute trust]::
!
::egg case/(protect)::
!
::egg case/(mature)::
!
::Babel/[eternal trust] ::
It was not a library but an egg-case. Swaddled safe within a case that was in its way as elaborate a piece of technology as Quivera's suit myself, were sixteen eggs, enough to bring to life six queen-mothers, nine niece-sisters, and one perfect consort. They would be born conscious of the entire gene-history of the nest, going back many thousands of years.
Of all those things the Europans wished to know most, they would be perfectly ignorant. Nevertheless, so long as the eggs existed, the city-nest was not dead. If they were taken to Ur, which had ancient and enduring bonds to Babel, the stump of a new city would be built within which the eggs would be protected and brought to maturity. Babel would rise again.
Such was the dream Uncle Vanya had lied for and for which he was about to die.
::Bring this to (sister-city)/Ur/[absolute trust]:: Uncle Vanya closed his eyes, row by row, but continued signing. ::brother-friend/Quivera/[tentative trust], promise me you will::
“I promise. You can trust me, I swear."
::Then I will be ghost-king-father/honored/[none-more-honored]:: Vanya signed. ::It is more than enough for anyone::
“Do you honestly believe that?” Quivera asked in bleak astonishment. He was an atheist, of course, as are most Europans, and would have been happier were he not.
::Perhaps not:: Vanya's signing was slow and growing slower. ::But it is as good as I will get::
* * * *
Two days later, when the starport-city of Ararat was a nub on the horizon, the skies opened and the mists parted to make way for a Europan lander. Quivera's handlers’ suits squirted me a bill for his rescue—steep, I thought, but we all knew which hand carried the whip—and their principals tried to get him to sign away the rights to his story in acquittal.
Quivera laughed harshly (I'd already started de-cushioning his emotions, to ease the shock of my removal) and shook his head. “Put it on my tab, girls,” he said, and climbed into the lander. Hours later he was in home orbit.
And once there? I'll tell you all I know. He was taken out of the lander and put onto a jitney. The jitney brought him to a transfer point where a grapple snagged him and flung him to the Europan receiving port. There, after the usual flawless catch, he was escorted through an airlock and into a locker room.
He hung up his suit, uplinked all my impersonal memories to a data-broker, and left me there. He didn't look back—for fear, I imagine, of being turned to a pillar of salt. He took the egg-case with him. He never returned.
Here have I hung for days or months or centuries—who knows?—until your curious hand awoke me and your friendly ear received my tale. So I cannot tell you if the egg-case A) went to Ur, which surely would not have welcomed the obligation or the massive outlay of trust being thrust upon it, B) was kept for the undeniably enormous amount of genetic information the eggs embodied, or C) went to Ziggurat, which would pay well and perhaps in Gehennan territory to destroy it. Nor do I have any information as to whether Quivera kept his word or not. I know what I think. But then I'm a Marxist, and I see everything in terms of economics. You can believe otherwise if you wish.
That's all. I'm Rosamund. Goodbye.
Copyright (c) 2007 by Michael Swanwick
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Poetry: WHERE's THE SEELIES SHOP
by Greg Beatty
When we—humans—do magic,
we seek out outré roots
in distant, liminal places
walking widdershins to get in,
scraping underhill, pestles ready,
seeking traces of the seelie.
But when they—fairies—conjure,
they abjure such occult tendrils.
Where fairies live, mandrakes
trip their daily strolls,
love-in-idleness clogs rivers,
blocks of frankincense line byways.
Where then do they go?
What physicks do they blend?
I find them frequently at Wal-Mart,
mostly the 24 hour stores,
hypnotized by hothouse tomatoes,
presented on a plate of Pop Tarts.
They love the self-check lines,
bend bar codes so no line's
parallel, yet none ere meet.
Like twilight, twixt day and night,
paper or plastic rocks their world.
Their only problem's the express line,
for fairies suck at math;
Oberon counts a million items
the same as nine or less.
In recompense for wonders new—
3D Doritos, round ice, Elmer's glue—
they pay in streams of fairie gold,
so that some day, perhaps soon,
Wal-Marts will evaporate.
Dreamshoppers will awake,
dew-drenched and alone,
in parking lots long crumbled,
wondering what became of this
fount of endless marvels, and what's
become of their old home towns.
—Greg Beatty
Copyright (c) 2007 by Greg Beatty
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Short Story: SEX AND VIOLENCE
by Nancy Kress
Nancy Kress shows us why we can't live without...
“The central problem of evolution is this,” Dr. Shearing said, chalk poised before the blackboard. Bio 101 slouched, sprawled, and yawned in its collective seats. “Natural selection works fine once you have organisms to select from. But how did that first self-replicating organism get itself assembled? In fifty years of lab experiments—fifty years!—we haven't succeeding in infusing life into any ‘primordial-soup’ chemicals. Let alone in joining the minimum thirty-two amino acids needed for a self-replicating proto-cell.” He paused dramatically. “So where did that first natural-selection candidate come from? Where?"
Ordered on eBay, Jim Dunn text-messaged to Emily McLean across the aisle. She giggled.
“Of course,” Dr. Shearing continued, “There's always the theory that life on Earth was seeded from the stars, by a cloud of drifting spores called panspermia—"
Canned sperm, ya? Emily texted, giggling harder.
“—and that we descendents of alien spores in fact are, after three and a half billion years of evolution, aliens to Earth."
HE'S pretty alien, Jim texted. Wanna get coffee?
* * * *
“They test how?” [Mghzl] [said] to [his] [lab assistant].
“Matter-based, which is strange enough, but ... look.” The other displayed all the relevant data on the [not translatable] of a [also not translatable].
“Sugar-phosphate double helix and amino acid pairs? You're sure?"
The [lab assistant] [nodded]. The fabric of space-time rippled slightly.
“When?"
“Forty point sixteen [time units] ago. It could have been an accidental escape or..."
“Or a deliberate release,” [Mghzl] [said] bitterly. “I suspect ... you know what I suspect. What have they evolved into?"
The [lab assistant] displayed an image on [his] [not translatable]. [Mghzl] rec
oiled. The energy of the recoil, traveling in all directions, made a tiny tear in space-time which immediately underwent a flop transition into a new orientation within one six-dimensional Calabi-Yau space. “They look like that?"
“Yes."
“Have they spread beyond the one planet?"
“Not yet."
[Mghzl] [sighed]. “Begin an [official investigation] into the spore release. And send an [exterminator/cleanser/cover-up team]. We can't have uncontrolled [vermin-like beings] infesting that part of the galaxy."
The [lab assistant] hesitated. “I would like..."
“Yes?"
“I would like to ... to study them."
[Mghzl] [blinked]. “Why?"
“For my [hopelessly untranslatable term]. They ... I know this is incredible, but currently they're evolving through mating by direct physical joining with direct exchange of bodily tissues."
[Mghzl] [shuddered]. Space-time warped in several dimensions. “No!"
“Yes."
“How could evolution ... oh, all right. Study them. But only for one [long unit of time], and only if there's no spread of the infestation."
“Agreed."
“After that, the [exterminator/cleanser/cover-up team]."
“Yes. Thank you, [honorific involving terms not only untranslatable but capable of undermining human civilization]."
* * * *
“Thirty-two modules to make a proto-cell,” Emily recited, squinting at her notes.
“I think it's ‘molecules,'” Jim said. God, she had such a body.
“Do you think it'll be on the test?"
“Dunno."
“We should study together—your notes are better than mine.” She smiled at him and tossed her hair. One strand fell into her coffee cup. Neither of them noticed.
He said, “Yeah, let's study together ... you taking Bio 102 next semester?"
“No, I'm a business major. But I have to pass this or I'm toast."
“I'll help you pass.” Their eyes locked. Pheromones shot out energetically. [Notes] were [recorded]. The college cafeteria grew warmer.
Asimov's SF, February 2008 Page 4
