“Ideals,” said the woman.
“And contempt for those we don’t like. Do you understand?”
She couldn’t, but she made understanding sounds just the same. Obviously she had found a sore spot.
Then came a new silence, and she found herself marching through the dust, wishing someone would make angry sounds again. Silence was the worst kind of anger. From now on, she vowed, she would be careful about everything she said. Every word.
* * *
The crater was vast and rough and only partway patched. Previous crew had brought giant tanks and the machinery used to make the patch. It was something of an artform, pouring the fresh liquid hyperfiber and carefully curing it. Each shift added another hundred meters to the smooth crater floor. Orleans stood with Quee Lee at the top, explaining the job. This would be a double shift, and she was free to watch. “But not too closely,” he warned her again, the tone vaguely parental. “Stay out of our way.”
She promised. For that first half-day, she was happy to sit on the crater’s lip, on a ridge of tortured and useless hyperfiber, imagining the comet that must have made this mess. Not large, she knew. A large one would have blasted a crater too big to see at a glance, and forty crews would be laboring here. But it hadn’t been a small one, either. It must have slipped past the lasers, part of a swarm. She watched the red beams cutting across the sky, their heat producing new colors in the aurora. Her new eyes saw amazing details. Shock waves as violet phosphorescence; swirls of orange and crimson and snowy white. A beautiful deadly sky, wasn’t it? Suddenly the lasers fired faster, a spiderweb of beams overhead, and she realized that a swarm was ahead of the ship, pinpointed by the navigators somewhere below them … tens of millions of kilometers ahead, mud and ice and rock closing fast…!
The lasers fired even faster, and she bowed her head.
There was an impact, at least one. She saw the flash and felt a faint rumble dampened by the hull, a portion of those energies absorbed and converted into useful power. Impacts were fuel, of a sort. And the residual gases would be concentrated and pumped inside, helping to replace the inevitable loss of volatiles as the ship continued on its great trek.
The ship was an organism feeding on the galaxy.
It was a familiar image, almost cliché, yet suddenly it seemed quite fresh. Even profound. Quee Lee laughed to herself, looking out over the browning plain while turning her attentions inward. She was aware of her breathing and the bump-bumping of wrong hearts, and she sensed changes with every little motion. Her body had an odd indecipherable quality. She could feel every fiber in her muscles, every twitch and every stillness. She had never been so alive, so self-aware, and she found herself laughing with a giddy amazement.
If she was a true Remora, she thought, then she would be a world unto herself. A world like the ship, only smaller, its organic parts enclosed in armor and forever in flux. Like the passengers below, the cells of her body were changing. She thought she could nearly feel herself evolving … and how did Orleans control it? It would be astonishing if she could re-evolve sight, for instance … gaining eyes unique to herself, never having existed before and never to exist again…!
What if she stayed with these people?
The possibility suddenly occurred to her, taking her by surprise.
What if she took whatever pledge was necessary, embracing all of their taboos and proving that she belonged with them? Did such things happen? Did adventurous passengers try converting—?
The sky turned red, lasers firing and every red line aimed at a point directly overhead. The silent barrage was focused on some substantial chunk of ice and grit, vaporizing its surface and cracking its heart. Then the beams separated, assaulting the bigger pieces and then the smaller ones. It was an enormous drama, her exhilaration married to terror … her watching the aurora brightening as force fields killed the momentum of the surviving grit and atomic dust. The sky was a vivid orange, and sudden tiny impacts kicked up the dusts around her. Something struck her leg, a flash of light followed by a dim pain … and she wondered if she was dead, then how badly she was wounded. Then she blinked and saw the little crater etched above her knee. A blemish, if that. And suddenly the meteor shower was finished.
Quee Lee rose to her feet, shaking with nervous energy.
She began picking her way down the crater slope. Orleans’ commands were forgotten; she needed to speak to him. She had insights and compliments to share, nearly tripping with her excitement, finally reaching the worksite and gasping, her air stale from her exertions. She could taste herself in her breaths, the flavor unfamiliar, thick and a little sweet.
“Orleans!” she cried out.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” groused one woman.
The comma-eyed woman said, “Stay right there. Orleans is coming, and don’t move!”
A lake of fresh hyperfiber was cooling and curing as she stood beside it. A thin skin had formed, the surface utterly flat and silvery. Mirror-like. Quee Lee could see the sky reflected in it, leaning forward and knowing she shouldn’t. She risked falling in order to see herself once again. The nearby Remoras watched her, saying nothing. They smiled as she grabbed a lump of old hyperfiber, positioning herself, and the lasers flashed again, making everything bright as day.
She didn’t see her face.
Or rather, she did. But it wasn’t the face she expected, the face from Orleans’ convenient mirror. Here was the old Quee Lee, mouth ajar, those pretty and ordinary eyes opened wide in amazement.
She gasped, knowing everything. A near-fortune paid, and nothing in return. Nothing here had been real. This was an enormous and cruel sick joke; and now the Remoras were laughing, hands on their untouchable bellies and their awful faces contorted, ready to rip apart from the sheer brutal joy of the moment…!
* * *
“Your mirror wasn’t a mirror, was it? It synthesized that image, didn’t it?” She kept asking questions, not waiting for a response. “And you drugged me, didn’t you? That’s why everything still looks and feels wrong.”
Orleans said, “Exactly. Yes.”
Quee Lee remained inside her lifesuit, just the two of them flying back to Port Beta. He would see her on her way home. The rest of the crew was working, and Orleans would return and finish his shift. After her discovery, everyone agreed there was no point in keeping her on the prow.
“You owe me money,” she managed.
Orleans’ face remained blue-black. His tusks framed a calm icy smile. “Money? Whose money?”
“I paid you for a service, and you never met the terms.”
“I don’t know about any money,” he laughed.
“I’ll report you,” she snapped, trying to use all of her venom. “I’ll go to the captains—”
“—and embarrass yourself further.” He was confident, even cocky. “Our transaction would be labeled illegal, not to mention disgusting. The captains will be thoroughly disgusted, believe me.” Another laugh. “Besides, what can anyone prove? You gave someone your money, but nobody will trace it to any of us. Believe me.”
She had never felt more ashamed, crossing her arms and trying to wish herself home again.
“The drug will wear off soon,” he promised. “You’ll feel like yourself again. Don’t worry.”
Softly, in a breathless little voice, she asked, “How long have I been gone?”
Silence.
“It hasn’t been months, has it?”
“More like three days.” A nod inside the helmet. “The same drug distorts your sense of time, if you get enough of it.”
She felt ill to her stomach.
“You’ll be back home in no time, Quee Lee.”
She was shaking and holding herself.
The Remora glanced at her for a long moment, something resembling remorse in his expression. Or was she misreading the signs?
“You aren’t spiritual people,” she snapped. It was the best insult she could manage, and she spoke with certainty. “Yo
u’re crude, disgusting monsters. You couldn’t live below if you had the chance, and this is where you belong.”
Orleans said nothing, merely watching her.
Finally he looked ahead, gazing at the endless gray landscape. “We try to follow our founder’s path. We try to be spiritual.” A shrug. “Some of us do better than others, of course. We’re only human.”
She whispered, “Why?”
Again he looked at her, asking, “Why what?”
“Why have you done this to me?”
Orleans seemed to breathe and hold the breath, finally exhaling. “Oh, Quee Lee,” he said, “you haven’t been paying attention, have you?”
What did he mean?
He grasped her helmet, pulling her face up next to his face. She saw nothing but the eyes, each black hair moving and nameless fluids circulating through them, and she heard the voice saying, “This has never, never been about you, Quee Lee. Not you. Not for one instant.”
And she understood—perhaps she had always known—struck mute and her skin going cold, and finally, after everything, she found herself starting to weep.
* * *
Perri was already home, by chance.
“I was worried about you,” he confessed, sitting in the garden room with honest relief on his face. “The apartment said you were going to be gone for a year or more. I was scared for you.”
“Well,” she said, “I’m back.”
Her husband tried not to appear suspicious, and he worked hard not to ask certain questions. She could see him holding the questions inside himself. She watched him decide to try the old charm, smiling now and saying, “So you went exploring?”
“Not really.”
“Where?”
“Cloud Canyon,” she lied. She had practiced the lie all the way from Port Beta, yet it sounded false now. She was halfway startled when her husband said:
“Did you go into it?”
“Partway, then I decided not to risk it. I rented a boat, but I couldn’t make myself step on board.”
Perri grinned happily, unable to hide his relief. A deep breath was exhaled, then he said, “By the way, I’ve raised almost eight thousand credits already. I’ve already put them in your account.”
“Fine.”
“I’ll find the rest too.”
“It can wait,” she offered.
Relief blended into confusion. “Are you all right, darling?”
“I’m tired,” she allowed.
“You look tired.”
“Let’s go to bed, shall we?”
Perri was compliant, making love to her and falling into a deep sleep, as exhausted as Quee Lee. But she insisted on staying awake, sliding into her private bathroom and giving her autodoc a drop of Perri’s seed. “I want to know if there’s anything odd,” she told it.
“Yes, miss.”
“And scan him, will you? Without waking him.”
The machine set to work. Almost instantly, Quee Lee was being shown lists of abnormal genes and vestigial organs. She didn’t bother to read them. She closed her eyes, remembering what little Orleans had told her after he had admitted that she wasn’t anything more than an incidental bystander. “Perri was born Remora, and he left us. A long time ago, by our count, and that’s a huge taboo.”
“Leaving the fold?” she had said.
“Every so often, one of us visits his home while he’s gone. We slip a little dust into our joints, making them grind, and we do a pity-play to whomever we find.”
Her husband had lied to her from the first, about everything.
“Sometimes we’ll trick her into giving even more money,” he had boasted. “Just like we’ve done with you.”
And she had asked, “Why?”
“Why do you think?” he had responded.
Vengeance, of a sort. Of course.
“Eventually,” Orleans had declared, “everyone’s going to know about Perri. He’ll run out of hiding places, and money, and he’ll have to come back to us. We just don’t want it to happen too soon, you know? It’s too much fun as it is.”
Now she opened her eyes, gazing at the lists of abnormalities. It had to be work for him to appear human, to cope with those weird Remora genetics. He wasn’t merely someone who had lived on the hull for a few years, no. He was a full-blooded Remora who had done the unthinkable, removing his suit and living below, safe from the mortal dangers of the universe. Quee Lee was the latest of his ignorant lovers, and she knew precisely why he had selected her. More than money, she had offered him a useful naiveté and a sheltered ignorance … and wasn’t she well within her rights to confront him, confront him and demand that he leave at once…?
“Erase the lists,” she said.
“Yes, miss.”
She told her apartment, “Project the view from the prow, if you will. Put it on my bedroom ceiling, please.”
“Of course, miss,” it replied.
She stepped out of the bathroom, lasers and exploding comets overhead. She fully expected to do what Orleans anticipated, putting her mistakes behind her. She sat on the edge of her bed, on Perri’s side, waiting for him to wake on his own. He would feel her gaze and open his eyes, seeing her framed by a Remoran sky.…
… and she hesitated, taking a breath and holding it, glancing upwards, remembering that moment on the crater’s lip when she had felt a union with her body. A perfection; an intoxicating sense of self. It was induced by drugs and ignorance, yet still it had seemed true. It was a perception worth any cost, she realized; and she imagined Perri’s future, hounded by the Remoras, losing every human friend, left with no choice but the hull and his left-behind life.…
She looked at him, the peaceful face stirring.
Compassion. Pity. Not love, but there was something not far from love making her feel for the fallen Remora.
“What if…?” she whispered, beginning to smile.
And Perri smiled in turn, eyes closed and him enjoying some lazy dream that in an instant he would surely forget.
NEKROPOLIS
MAUREEN F. McHUGH
Here’s a hard-eyed and compelling look at the price of freedom, from one of SF’s most acclaimed new writers …
Born in Ohio, Maureen F. McHugh spent some years living in Shijiazhuang in the People’s Republic of China, an experience that has been one of the major shaping forces on her fiction to date. Upon returning to the United States, she made her first sale in 1989, and has since made a powerful impression on the SF world with a relatively small body of work, becoming a frequent contributor to Asimov’s Science Fiction, as well as selling to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Alternate Warriors, Aladdin, and other markets. In 1992, she published one of the year’s most widely acclaimed and talked-about first novels, China Mountain Zhang, which received the prestigious Tiptree Memorial Award. She has had stories in our Tenth and (in collaboration with David B. Kisor) Eleventh Annual Collections. Her most recent book is a new novel, Half the Day Is Night. She lives with her family in Twinsburg, Ohio.
How I came to be jessed. Well, like most people who are jessed, I was sold. I was twenty-one, and I was sold three times in one day, one right after another. First to a dealer who looked at my teeth and in my ears and had me scanned for augmentation; then to a second dealer where I sat in the back office drinking tea and talking with a gap-toothed boy who was supposed to be sold to a restaurant owner as a clerk; and finally that afternoon to the restaurant owner. The restaurant owner couldn’t really have wanted the boy anyway, since the position was for his wife’s side of the house.
I have been with my present owner since I was twenty-one. That was pretty long ago, I am twenty-six now. I was a good student, I got good marks, so I was purchased to oversee cleaning and supplies. This is much better than if I were a pretty girl and had to rely on looks. Then I would be used up in a few years. I’m rather plain, with a square jaw and unexceptional hair.
I liked my owner, liked my work. But now I would like to go to him and a
sk him to sell me.
“Diyet,” he would say, taking my hand in his fatherly way, “Aren’t you happy here?”
“Mardin-salah,” I would answer, my eyes demurely on my toes. “You are like a father and I have been only too happy with you.” Which is true even beyond being jessed. I don’t think I would mind being part of Mardin’s household even if I were unbound. Mostly Mardin pays no attention to me, which is how I prefer things. I like my work and my room. I like being jessed. It makes things simpler.
All would be fine if it were not for the new one.
I have no problems with AI. I don’t mind the cleaning machine, poor thing, and as head of the women’s household, I work with the household intelligence all the time. I may have had a simple, rather conservative upbringing, but I have come to be pretty comfortable with AI. The Holy Injunction doesn’t mean that all AI is abomination. But AI should not be biologically constructed. AI should not be made in the image of humanity.
It thinks of itself. It has a name. It has gender.
It thinks it is male. And it’s head of the men’s side of the house, so it thinks we should work together.
It looks human male, has curly black hair and soft honey-colored skin. It flirts, looking at me sideways out of black, vulnerable gazelle eyes. Smiling at me with a smile which is not in the slightest bit vulnerable. “Come on, Diyet,” it says, “we work together. We should be friends. We’re both young, we can help each other in our work.”
I do not bother to answer.
It smiles wickedly (although I know it is not wicked, it is just something grown and programmed. Soulless. I am not so conservative that I condemn cloning, but it is not a clone. It is a biological construct.). “Diyet,” it says, “I think you are too pure. A Holy Sister.”
“Don’t sound foolish,” I say.
“You need someone to tease you,” it says, “you are so solemn. Tell me, is it because you are jessed?”
The Year's Best SF 12 # 1994 Page 17
