He is intense. I feel dizzy, sick, as if I am being sucked in even though I know that cannot be so, due to the heavy levels of security built into my being.
I am aware of the others, Ee-jian-die and Sen-jian-die, turning to look. I sense their turmoil.
I open my hand and spotlight him. That should stun him, lock him into a pool of slowed time so that he will be swimming through perceptual treacle.
He is unaffected.
He drops a glass, ducks, moves, is gone.
We channel, and are standing where he was.
We know of the other exit. We look, and he is there, reaching for the door.
We close our eyes, lock minds, shift consensus. There is no door there. There never has been a door there.
He ducks, vanishes again. He is channeling, too, although he does not know it. Short, desperate hops. He reappears by the windows, snatching a chair.
He does not understand what is happening. He is resorting to violence, the chair his only weapon against us.
I smile. He is making it easy.
He swings the chair—but not at us, at the window. It shatters, he turns, he throws himself after the chair.
We look out of the smashed window at the sea and rocks below.
He is not dead.
He cannot be dead.
He can only be reabsorbed.
We remain in Penhellion, even though our anomaly has probably moved on now. He would be foolish to remain, after our first contact. We do not think he is a fool.
He is still here. Or rather, he has not gone far: only as far as the cliff-top community.
We tackle him immediately contact is made, through our proxy Billi Narwhal.
He pulls the same trick and evades us.
He is fast, but he appears to be a creature of habit.
He has another weakness, too: the woman, Tish Goldenhawk. She is with him. She appears to have retained her integrity, too, which is a bonus.
He is an anomaly. He can be detected by his disruption patterns, but equally, he can lie low. That is the nature of an anomaly. Or one of its natures.
But Tish Goldenhawk … If we find her, there is a high probability that we find him.
3. TISH GOLDENHAWK
“Who are you? What are you?”
Tish Goldenhawk has travelled the length of Laverne’s main continent with the man she calls Angelo, and finally she realises that her invented name for him, “Angelo,” is a more appropriate label than “man.”
She has travelled the length of the continent with him, but today is the first time she has seen him kill, although she suspects it is not the first time he has killed. She has dispensed bread and feathers for his victim before confronting Angelo.
She has travelled the length of the continent with him and she is ill, drained both physically and mentally, like a scag addict.
He smiles. He shrugs. He says, “I don’t know. I did not know the first time you asked me and I have not yet made that discovery. You are beautiful. Death is beautiful. I soak up beauty. That is as close as I have come to defining myself: I am a receptacle.”
Death. Tish had never witnessed violent death until today. She hoped young Ferdinand would find peace in his absorption into the Accord.
They were walking, Tish and Angelo at the front, and his ragged band of followers, now numbering some twenty-four, doing as their role demanded: following.
Angelo accumulated followers. It was his nature. People he encountered, people with a sharp enough sense of perception, of distinction, were always able to detect his special nature, his divinity, the fact that he had been touched by the Accord.
They wanted to be with him.
They wanted to share with him.
They wanted to give to him.
And he, like a child with toys made of flesh and not even the slightest sense of responsibility, took.
The first time Tish had found him with another, she had ranted and raved, and he had smiled and looked puzzled, and she had seen that he had no concept of what she was feeling, and anyway, she could never be the first to cast stones in matters of infidelity.
Blind to herself, Tish had first seen the weakness in others. In Maggie and Li, who had joined the group late but had given so wholeheartedly, she had first seen the addict look in the eye, the transformation of devotion into something physical, something living. They each of them carried a cancer, and that cancer was Angelo.
Ferdinand had been one of the first to join. Tish and Angelo and three or four others had stayed the night in a grand ranch house somewhere a few days to the northwest of Daguerre. The welcome was warm—as welcomes for Angelo tended to be—and the seventeen-year-old son of the owner had been cute and, instantly, devoted.
Ferdinand had come with them. Told his parents he was guiding them to the river crossing and just carried on with them, and then they’d had to speed up a bit, hitching a ride on a goods wagon, because their welcome at that ranch would never be as warm again.
Ferdinand supplanted Tish as Angelo’s favourite, if he could be said to have such a thing. To be honest, she was not too put out by this development: already she was starting to feel that psychic leaching that would only get worse.
Ferdinand went from fresh-faced disciple to hollowed devotee to shuffling, skeletal wreck in only twenty or so days.
It happened among them—it was happening to all of them, only at a slower rate—and yet it had taken far too long for Tish to notice. In the worlds of the Diaspora suffering had long since been banished. It was not even something readily recognised, like a language newly encountered. There was a whole new syntax of suffering for them to learn.
“What am I? I don’t know. But I can tell you that it is like flying: I wish to fly and I fly, but once I am up there it is only the air and a few feathers that prevent me from plummeting. So tenuous the thread of existence!
“You are strong, Tish. So much stronger than the others. You hold me together. You are my air, my feathers. Without you … well, I don’t know what would be without you to support me, to contain me.”
She was growing weak. Had been growing weak.
But not as rapidly as Ferdinand.
She came up on them early that morning, when the sun was still heavy over the mountains, painting them gold and pink.
Angelo was holding him, his arms easily enfolding the wasted frame.
Tish almost turned away. She had seen this kind of encounter often enough by now. She closed her eyes and thought back to those few precious nights when it had just been the two of them, sleeping rough, both enfolded by his wings.
She had been strong then.
She opened her eyes just as Ferdinand started to vanish.
She watched. She could see through him. See the stones, the thorn bush, the tussock grass, the inside of Angelo’s embracing left arm, previously obscured by Ferdinand’s bony torso.
Things blurred. Things dissolved, melted, slipped away from this existence.
He was gone.
Angelo turned to her, his expression startled, as if he did not know what had happened, had not expected it to happen; but beneath the surprise there was satisfaction, a thrill of pleasure, of strength, and the first hint of that crooked-toothed smile.
4. ER-JIAN-DIE
“Your air, your feathers … so poetic. If you weren’t such an innocent I’d say you had the crassest line in smooth-talk, but you don’t have a clue, do you?”
We have her. We have him. I see him through the eyes of Tish Goldenhawk and it is as if a distorting lens has been removed. He is male, of indeterminate age, of mid-brown skin tone and dark hair. He is beautiful and engaging.
He draws you in.
Even at this remove—proxied and many hundred kilometres distant—he draws you in.
We debate, as he moves out of view. Act now, via proxy, or attend in body, allowing a short interval in which he might detect our approach and take evasive action? We do not know how much his powers have grown.
Data flashes.
There is momentary disorientation and then we are standing on a plain, surrounded by cacti and thorn bushes and oddly balanced round boulders.
The two of them are there, locked in conflict. A short distance away there is an encampment of bubble tents and track trikes. The people there look on, too damaged to stir.
She has him in the beam. She stands, knees slightly bent, body tipped forward, one arm stretched out, palm first, fingers straight, and a beam of white light lances from her hand to him, the anomaly.
He stands there smiling.
He looks at us, as we materialise, although he should not be able to turn his head at all.
He raises a hand so that he mirrors Tish Goldenhawk’s stance and his palm cuts out the beam, reflects it.
It shines on her face and she crumples, sobbing, more damaged than she had been before.
Ee-jian-die appears at my side, his proxying of Tish abandoned.
He looks ashen, damaged by the encounter, even at a proxy.
I allow myself to be identified as leader, even though we three are equal, we three are far greater than we three alone. “Your time is up,” I tell the anomaly. “Let these people go. Come back with us. Allow yourself to be reabsorbed.”
He smiles in a way that indicates he is both amused and puzzled. “Reabsorbed?” he said. “Re?”
I nod. “You are a glitch,” I tell him. “A chaotic anomaly. The Accord contains all the individuals who have lived and then died since its inception. You are a bug in that process, a self-resonant fluctuation in the billions upon billions of human elements within the Accord. A remix error. You’re a strange attractor and you need to be smoothed over. Come with us: you will not be lost, you will simply be reabsorbed.”
“But how? … How can I be reabsorbed if I am not yet dead?”
He doesn’t know. He has grown, but he does not know.
“This is the Accord,” I tell him. “We are living the afterlife. The afterlives.”
“What happens if I say ‘no’?”
“We will force you.”
“And if you fail?”
“You will carry on growing. Like a leak in a pool, you will continue to drag in those about you, soaking them up until they are husks. They are drawn to you. We are drawn to you. You are like a black hole in human form. You will suck us all in and the Accord will fail to be. It will crash on a galaxy-wide scale.”
He—this thing, this entity, this it—is smiling. “So, if I believe you, then I—” he thumped his chest in apelike display “—am an alternative to the Accord? An alternative reality?”
It laughs. “I like this,” it says. “It is all so beautiful. So, so beautiful.”
We strike, synchronised.
Ee locks him in the immobilising beam, far more powerful than we have used so far. I lock him in a second, our combined beams more than doubling their intensity in combination. Sen moves in to interface, a physical connection with the Accord.
The anomaly is still smiling.
It turns and lashes out a beam of light and Sen flies through the air in several pieces.
It turns again, and lashes at Ee, and I sense our hold—if ever we had had a hold—weakening.
And then … light, dark, an absence that is where the pain would have been if my body had not immediately shut down those pathways. A lot of absence.
Mental silence. Ee-jian-die and Sen-jian-die have been returned to the Accord. They will reappear, but not here, not now.
I am still here, though. I have not been returned.
I open the eye that I am able to control.
I see sky, a thorn bush.
I see her. Tish Goldenhawk. Looking down at me.
“What can I do?” she says.
“Nothing,” I tell her. The body that carries me is too fundamentally damaged. It could be repaired, of course, but what is the point? My task is over, I have failed. I will be reabsorbed. Someone else will be sent, and they will try again. The anomaly will have grown, but it will be fought, only not by me next time, or at least, not by the combination of traits that is this me.
“What happens to us when he has sucked us dry?”
She is strong, this one.
“If this is the Accord, then where does the data go when he has absorbed it? You said he’s some kind of black hole—what’s inside him?”
“Who knows?” I say. “The physically dead enter the Accord and we live on, again and again, for eternity. But attractant anomalies like this remove us from the after-life. It’s like asking where the dead went before there was an Accord. They died. They stopped being. They ended. If he takes us from the Accord, we end.”
“What can I do?” she repeats, and I realise that she does not mean to ask what she can do to help my mortally damaged body, but rather what can she do to stop the anomaly, the attractor, her lover.
“He said I was his air, his feathers, that I held him together,” she said. “I want that to stop.”
In that instant I want to paint her. Like the rainbows, I could paint her a million times and each would be different, but always her strength, her purity, would come through.
“You have to get close to him,” I tell her.
5. TISH GOLDENHAWK
“You have to get close to him,” this wreck of a human construct tells her. “Hold him.”
Tish Goldenhawk nods. In her mind she can see Angelo holding Ferdinand, absorbing him. She knows exactly what this agent of the Accord means. “What then?”
“That’s all,” he tells her. “I will do the rest.”
Angelo waits for her in the encampment, smiling. She should have known he would not go on without her.
“I’m sorry,” he says. His words have no meaning. They are just vibrations in the air. “They tried to kill me.”
She nods. “They’re dead now,” she says, wondering then at the lie—whether she has made a fatal mistake already.
He shakes his head. “One lives,” he says, “but only tenuously. He does not have long, I think.”
He turns. “We must move on,” he says. “There will be more of them. Another day and we will reach a city, I think. A city would be good.”
She looks at him, tries to see him as she had once seen him, a charming, exciting escape. That had only ever been one of her fantasies. She tries to see him as her lover, but cannot. Tries to see him even as human, but no.
“I can’t,” she says in a quiet voice.
He turns, raises an eyebrow.
“I can’t go on.” Getting stronger. “I’m leaving. Going home. You don’t need me anymore.”
“But …”
“No buts,” she says. “I can’t do this. I’m exhausted. Drained. I’m leaving.”
He is not human, but there is so much in him that is.
“You can’t,” he says. “I … You’re my support. My feathers, the air that holds me up. The air that I breathe!”
“I’m tired,” she says. “You can’t lean on me anymore. I’m none of those things … . I’m not strong enough. Can’t you see? It’s me who needs supporting!”
“I will always support you,” he says.
He opens his arms, just as he had for Ferdinand, who had been too weak to continue.
He steps forward.
She waits for him to come to her, to hold her.
Scent of cinammon, of dry, dusty feathers. She holds him.
She senses the flow, the seething mass of energies. They came from … beyond.
He gasps, straightens.
She holds on.
He is looking down at her. He knows. He dips his head and kisses her on the brow.
She holds nothing, holds air, hugs herself. She drops to her knees.
There are feathers, nothing else. She gathers some. She will cast them for him, with bread, when she gets back to Penhellion.<
br />
She does not doubt that she will go there, go home.
Poor Milton. Poor Druce. She has changed. She does not know what can be salvaged, but she will go home now and she will see.
She stands.
Even if nothing can be repaired, she has no regrets. She would do it all again.
She is of the Accord.
They all are of the Accord.
Laws of Survival
NANCY KRESS
Nancy Kress began selling her elegant and incisive stories in the midseventies, and has since become a frequent contributor to Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Omni, SCI FICTION, and elsewhere. Her books include the novel version of her Hugo and Nebula-winning story, Beggars in Spain, and a sequel, Beggars and Choosers, as well as The Prince of Morning Bells, The Golden Grove, The White Pipes, An Alien Light, Brain Rose, Oaths and Miracles, Stinger, Maximum Light, Crossfire, Nothing Human, and the Space Opera trilogy Probability Moon, Probability Sun, and Probability Space. Her short work has been collected in Trinity and Other Stories, The Aliens of Earth, and Beaker’s Dozen. Her most recent book is the novel Crucible. Coming up is a new novel, Dogs, and a new collection, Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories. In addition to the awards for “Beggars in Spain,” she has also won Nebula Awards for her stories “Out of All Them Bright Stars” and “The Flowers of Aulit Prison.”
Here she tells us the story of someone who quite literally has gone to the dogs—and must somehow learn to live with them if she wants to survive.
My name is Jill. I am somewhere you can’t imagine, going somewhere even more unimaginable. If you think I like what I did to get here, you’re crazy.
Actually, I’m the one who’s crazy. You—any “you”—will never read this. But I have paper now, and a sort of pencil, and time. Lots and lots of time. So I will write what happened, all of it, as carefully as I can.
After all—why the hell not?
The Year's Best SF 25 # 2007 Page 81
