Futures Near and Far

by Will McIntosh

  “Not exactly, although it is good to see you.”

  Philippa waited. For her, it was good to see anyone, but she wasn’t going to say that aloud. Melba was kind, but she was still complicit in banishing Philippa to this place.

  “I’ve come to ask about your experiences in the wild. The survey team is especially curious to know what you’re seeing.”

  What she was seeing? She was seeing the same damned things they saw when they went out there. Then it hit her: even heavily armed, they lost people almost monthly. “Oh, I see. You mean, why aren’t I dead? They want information.” She should have anticipated this. Just a week ago, a team had tried to follow her but couldn’t keep up. “So, before something out there gets me, you want to pump me for information.” She eased herself back onto the bed. “Yeah, I don’t think so. Tell them to get the parasite off me; then I’ll happily give classes.”

  “Don’t forget, we still provide all of your food and supplies. I gave you a gun.”

  The threat hung in the air.

  * * *

  Taking two quick steps, Philippa launched herself off a rock, landed on the side of another, her fingers and toes gripping the slimmest of crevices. A wave of thumps ran across her abdomen, the parasite’s version of praise, as Philippa quickly scaled the rock, reached the top, wiping sweat from her eyes with the back of her arm. She was quick and agile as a monkey. Not that she’d ever seen a monkey, but Philippa knew about monkeys and the Eiffel Tower, and Casablanca.

  The parasite seemed more agitated than usual. If the thing had facial expressions, Philippa couldn’t read them; it seemed to express itself through its legs, and today its legs were fidgety. How long had it been since that night the parasite took her? Had it been a year yet? More? It was difficult to keep track of the days. Maybe she should trade Melba some information for a calendar. Then again, what did the number of days matter? Each was a repetitive blur.

  The parasite jabbed right between her shoulder blades, setting her heart racing. She’d forgotten what that meant. She tried longer strides, then shorter, but both moves resulted in sharper jabs. She switched her pack to her other shoulder, but that didn’t stop it, either. She didn’t panic; it would be patient as long as she kept trying to figure out what it wanted.

  Finally, she got it: it wanted her to stand straighter. Why it cared about her posture, she didn’t know. But it did. Sometimes all it took was an adjustment to her step (her walk was markedly different from what it had been—the parasite insisted she lift her feet high rather than letting them swing); other times it wanted her to walk the entire perimeter of the settlement without stopping for food or water. Whatever it wanted, she did.

  They headed toward the forest. She’d grown to prefer the forest. The ground was covered in the feathery droppings that passed for leaves on Cyan. On Earth, dead leaves underfoot made a crunching sound, but on Cyan there was no sound, only a soft, cushiony feel. One of the strange Cyan birds was perched in a tree overhead. Maybe it was more an insect than a bird. When it flew, its wings spun like they were wound by a rubber band; then they slowed and spun in the opposite direction.

  Far away, there was a faint sound. Even before the parasite had a chance to alert her, Philippa had ducked behind a tree. She waited, listening, as the crack of branches announced one of the boulders moving through the forest. That’s what she called them—boulders. The survey team likely had a better name for them. The team members were inept when it came to surviving among the local fauna, but they were terrific at naming the things that killed them.

  As the sounds reached a crescendo, the enormous, spiny ball rolled past Philippa. It had eyes all around it that closed just before they rolled against the forest floor, and it was so utterly beyond anything Philippa could imagine that the first time she’d seen one she cried out and nearly got herself killed.

  Philippa was in new territory, south of the settlement. The terrain was similar—rocks, pools of water, trees.

  It was a shame no one in the settlement was interested in Earth history. During one of their information-for-food exchanges, Philippa tried to tell Melba about the lessons the British learned eight centuries earlier while trying to settle a new world. The British had sauntered into America and set up a place called Jamestown, bringing all the modern technology of their time and expecting to live their lives as they’d lived back in England. They tried to erect walls to keep the new world out, but the new world wasn’t going to be kept out. The people who didn’t get that, who didn’t adapt, didn’t survive. When Philippa told Melba this, Melba nodded distractedly and asked what Philippa knew about some animal or other. The settlement had half as many people as when they’d landed on Cyan, yet they still didn’t get it.

  Cresting a rise on a steep, tall rock, Philippa stopped short.

  Below, in and around a large pool, were dozens of parasites. Some were wrapped around creatures, others walked on their own sharp legs or waded in the pool, occasionally diving to feed. In the shadow of a shallow cave, Philippa spotted one wrapped around a dog—a collie, its coat damp and filthy. Someone’s pet that had gotten beyond the gate or, more likely, been dumped outside when the owners didn’t want it anymore.

  Her parasite prodded her on. Philippa didn’t want to go down there, but she had no choice.

  As they approached, her parasite made a keening noise, drawing the attention of the others. They chattered rapidly, skittering, hopping, crawling toward Philippa, forming a loose half circle.

  Her parasite prodded her to walk along the inner perimeter of the circle, directed her to stand up straight, to lift her feet high. As she walked, one parasite in particular caught her attention. It was attached to one of the birdlike things. When the bird flew, the parasite would be invisible to anyone on the ground. Philippa thought of the tall unzi trees in the compound, standing far higher than the repulsion fence. If a parasite riding one of those birds dropped into a tree, it could climb into the compound. They were smart enough; she would bet that was how hers got in. That was information the settlement would pay dearly for.

  After a few passes in front of the others, her parasite steered her back up the rock, only to immediately take her back down. Through all of this, her parasite weaved from side to side in a rhythmic manner she hadn’t seen before. It looked like it was showing off. Preening.

  All of the things it had forced her to do for the past months fell into place with an almost audible thud.

  It was preening.

  She surveyed the beasts the other parasites were attached to—dumb, brutish things. Her parasite had landed itself a smart, sleek ride—a starship among bicycles. For parasites, what they were attached to must be an important part of who they were. It determined their status.

  At the edge of the audience, the dog leaped to its hind legs, pawed the air, and barked. None of the others turned to watch. After a moment, it stopped, its bark receding into a plaintive whine.

  Her parasite prodded her to swim across the black pool, then climb a steep rock. All this time it had been training her to be strong and swift not only for its survival, but to impress its friends. That’s why it had insisted she stand up straight, walk just so, because it wasn’t just about being effective, it was about looking good while doing it. They were all watching; it was basking in their attention.

  Maybe she couldn’t kill the little fucker, but she could humiliate it. If she could tolerate the pain.

  When they reached the summit of the rock, it led her down the side, directed her to jump across a series of pools in view of their audience. Ever so subtly, Philippa let her foot slip on one of the longer jumps. Flailing her arms, she landed in the pool with an ungainly splash.

  As she surfaced, sputtering, the parasite punished her, but it didn’t sting. It was an accident, after all. As she lay panting on the rock under the watchful eyes of two-dozen peeping parasites (the peeping sounded suspiciously like laughter), hers directed her to stand her sorry ass up and continue the show.

&nbs
p; It sent her up the rocks yet again to show the others that the miss was a fluke. She resumed leaping from rock to rock, her steps high, shoulders back, just as it had trained her. Still, it was pricking her more than usual, holding the reins more tightly. No mistakes now. She hoped it was sweating. Another big jump loomed. Philippa steeled herself against the coming pain, gauged her jump to come up short, leaped into the air…

  She landed hard on the steep face of the rock; her cheek, forearms, and knees slammed the rough surface, were torn as she slid down the side, then landed hard on the rocks beside the pool.

  The parasite let her have it. The pain was blinding. She screamed as the stings landed on her stomach, her breasts, her lower back. A wall of agony enveloped Philippa. Every muscle in her body clenched. Her vision went gray, then black.

  * * *

  When she opened her eyes, it felt as if only a minute or two had passed. She lay with her face on the rock, watched parasites warble and bob, the whole scene canted at a ninety-degree angle.

  Tentatively, she pushed herself to a sitting position, feeling so light she almost fell backward. Her shredded nightgown was all that covered her torso. She spun to her left, where the long, long body of her parasite stretched out along the rock. It hissed at her.

  Not taking her eyes off it, she reached back into her pack and pulled out the pistol. It just stood there, hissing, as she aimed and fired. The parasite’s head exploded, along with a section of rock a dozen meters behind it. Its long body collapsed, the legs closer to the head folding first, the rest following like dominoes.

  Then she was running, leaping like a gazelle, bounding across the uneven surface. Behind her she heard the dog bark, the hiss of agitated parasites, like a nest of snakes probably, although Philippa had never actually heard snakes.

  Running on the surface of a high rock, she leaped, her feet bicycling in the air, and landed lithely on the next rock, laughing, feeling light as a feather without the weight of the parasite to carry. She paused to return the pistol to her pack, confident that she could navigate the wilds without it. She took a moment to catch her breath, reveling in how freely her chest rose and fell. There was no hurry, although she was eager to get back.

  She wasn’t returning to the settlement, although what she’d learned—what the parasite had taught her—surely raised her value inside. She’d go back to the banished encampment and invite the other misfits to join her in the wild, to found a new settlement. If anyone inside the settlement wanted to join them, they’d be welcome, although Philippa doubted many would. Let them try to hide behind their walls.

  The New Chinese Wives

  The ceremony was held in the park, at twilight, in a black bamboo garden backset with a serene bronze Buddha and glowing stone lanterns.

  “How can you pretend that something is real when it’s not?” Hai hissed to his wife, Yo Wen. “This is a perversion.”

  Yo Wen shushed him.

  Hai sighed loudly, but said nothing.

  His son’s New Wife was escorted into the garden by their ‘marriage counselor’. It was the first time Hai had seen her. She was beautiful, of course—her face a perfect oval, her eyes tilted almonds; long, narrow nose, small red lips. She was short (the perfect size, of course, for a man the size of Jian) and slim, her shapely calves just visible through the gossamer fabric of the wedding dress.

  More than her looks, it was the way she walked that stood out. She walked like a brook flowed, so graceful—calm and energetic both. Like a model on a catwalk. How substantial she seemed. Her veil truly seemed to ripple in the breeze as she exchanged promises with Jian.

  Jian stood beside her, his hands dangling like dead fish. A muscle in his acne-scarred cheek twitched endlessly, and his mouth curled at the edges not in a smile but in a sort of spasm. Hai wondered how many pain pills he’d taken for his bad back before the ceremony. He was only going through with this because of the promise of a disability pension—he’d made that clear enough. Then he could lie in bed all day and eat pain pills.

  The strangeness of it all pelted Hai like a bitter, musty flavor he had never before tasted. His son was marrying this... this emptiness. Better he marry a popsicle stick. At least it was real.

  Hai scanned the guests’ faces, seeking evidence of what he felt, but saw only warm smiles, and occasionally tears. They were all diligently following the New Wives are Persons law.

  Only Jian’s son Ch’an looked unhappy, hanging toward the back of the gathering, staring at his feet. But then, Ch’an always looked unhappy. He’d added another ring to his neck: there was no question now, it was longer than normal. He looked like a giant stork. He was wearing five or six shirts, the ever-present phone dangling from the utility-belt-thing that all the kids wore.

  Hai should call a halt to this, he knew. But no one would listen to an old man.

  You eat much bitterness when you’re old.

  The thought had a strange, familiar echo. Who used to say that—you eat much bitterness when you’re old? When Hai thought it, it wasn’t in his voice. Whose voice was it?

  People out for a walk in the park stood on the stone sidewalk in their blue jeans, watching, whispering, pointing. They could tell it was a New Wife, one of the first in Shanxi’s oldtown neighborhood.

  Amidst the onlookers, a homeless man lay on a bench, his face wrapped in a towel to block the fading light, a shopping bag curled against his belly, a wide empty rice bowl tipped upside-down by his head. Hai could almost believe he’d been placed there on purpose, a reminder to Jian of how he might end up if he did not join the New Wife program.

  His grandfather. That was who used to say that.

  Sixty years ago he used to take Hai to the newsstand and buy him comic books. He used to say it all the time, in that tired, earnest voice. Used to drive Hai nuts. Yeah, yeah, tough getting old. Hai had just wanted the comics, otherwise he wouldn’t have spent time with the boring old man, with his old-fashioned ways. Always Mao-this and Mao-that.

  Now he got it, the full weight of that simple statement. You eat much bitterness when you’re old. You really do.

  When the ceremony was over, Hai stepped up and congratulated his son. He had little choice with so many guests and strangers watching.

  Wei Bong, the marriage counselor, introduced Hai and Yo Wen to their new daughter-in-law, Lin. His hand was curled over Lin’s elbow so skillfully that it created the perfect illusion of touch.

  The little round bone in Lin’s slim wrist seemed so real; three points of light reflected off it, one from each stone lantern.

  “Hello mother and father. It is my pleasure to meet you,” Lin said softly, dipping her head, her eyes never meeting theirs. She held a bouquet of white roses. “From now on, I am your daughter.” It was the perfect thing for a daughter-in-law to say to please new parents.

  Hai exchanged a few platitudes with Lin, feeling like a perfect idiot, and drew away as soon as it was polite.

  “Isn’t she beautiful?” Yo Wen said as they stood at a distance with painted smiles.

  Hai grunted.

  “It’s for the best. A man needs a wife,” Yo Wen said

  “He’s marrying a television picture!” Hai hissed.

  “Be quiet! Do you want to end up in prison?”

  Hai stretched his aching back, looked up into the cinnamon tree shading them. Weak sunlight flashed through windblown leaves. A New Panda sat munching a virtual bamboo shoot on a low branch, its white fur tinted blue by the light of a video screen mounted higher in the tree. The extinct bears were the only things the government allowed to be projected with the new technology, besides wives. Hai wondered if there would soon be a law forbidding people to question how those branches could possibly support four-hundred pound bears. It was coming, surely. It was no more absurd than the New Wives are Persons law.

  On the video screen a beautiful woman was eating a rice cake while the manufacturer’s logo flashed like a firecracker.

  “Think of your son,” Yo Wen pro
dded as Hai continued to stare into the tree. “He will finally be respected again. He’ll be a married man.” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “All his problems stem from that. Before Yousha died, he didn’t have these problems. And the disability pension—you can stop working now! We’ll die knowing our son won’t be alone—”

  “He will be alone!”

  Yo Wen shushed him.

  The guests were filing through the pagoda-styled gate into the Flowering Days Restaurant. Hai and Yo Wen crossed the street and joined the queue. Hai eyed the porridge and noodle shop a few doors down, today’s menus propped on the cobbled sidewalk, doors flung open showing familiar powder blue ceramic tiles. He wished he could go in there instead.

  Inside Flowering Days, the walls were decorated with the traditional character for double-happiness, flanked by a splendid spiral dragon representing the groom, and an elegant Feng Huang bird, it’s plumage as vivid as an artist’s palette, representing the bride.

  The Tengs, who lived in the unit beside theirs, approached and congratulated them. They were very good actors, Hai observed. You would never know that this was their first time pretending that a glorified television picture was a real person. Perhaps they were smiling out of relief that their son had a wife he could touch. Sure, one of her front teeth was black and her nose was too broad, but she bled when you pricked her with a needle.

  * * *

  “Shall I take off my dress?” Lin said.

  “All right,” Jian said, his words slurred from the painkillers. The walls were so thin that Hai could hear the soft whisper of the fabric sliding across Lin’s skin.

  “I curse Mao for this,” Hai whispered to Yo Wen.

  Yo Wen shushed him, but he ignored her.

  “‘Everyone have children,’ he ordered. So we have overpopulation. ‘Only one child,’ he said, ‘that will fix the problem.’ And of course everyone wanted sons, so now there are not enough women—”

  “Make yourself comfortable,” Lin said through the paper wall. “Would it please you if I touched my breasts?”