by M. J. Locke
Geoff had been expecting another tiny room—Zekeston was a warren of cramped passages and small crannies—but the door Jeweled Scale Woman was guarding slid open into a section of Kukuyoshi he had never seen before. Geoff looked around and whistled sharply, impressed. The noise startled a flock of song birds, which scattered into the air nearby.
He had read about temperate rain forests, and this appeared to be one. This park’s footprint was a relatively narrow slice of space—only room for a dozen or so big trees, and maybe a handful of smaller ones—but it was very tall. Its bottom level, where he stood, near the roots of a massive cedar, was only a few levels up from Zekeston’s lowest story. Its upper reaches—it was hard to see through the mists—but clearly they rose many levels. A third of the way to the Hub, even, though this wasn’t a spokeway. At least not an official one. Vines draped from the trees’ branches; mists scudded past, obscuring boulders, birds, and ground squirrels. Wildflowers and grasses dipped under the gentle breezes. He and Thondu stepped in, and the door rematerialized behind them.
Last night’s attack had left its mark here. Dirt coated tree bark, leaves, and stones. One upended tree had smashed into another, which leaned against a wall. Conifer needles and giant cones lay about. The cold, damp breeze smelled of cedar bark and upturned earth. Icy dew dripped onto his head. He heard low voices but could see no one.
“This way,” Thondu said, and led the way. The mist cleared. Geoff spotted people sitting on boulders at the base of a giant, gnarled and knotted tree. He scrambled across the rough terrain to them, scraping hands and knees on logs and exposed roots. There, he froze.
He was startled at the violence of his aversion. And the depth of his attraction.
They were monsters, every one. The multiple limbs were just the start. He looked around, trying to make sense of all he saw, heard, smelled. He could only take it in in fragments. Over here were eyestalks with crystalline compound eyes; over there, multiple limbs; dragonfly wings here, bird wings there; giantism … dwarfism … shining carapaces. Over there were diamantine claws, rippling musculature, pelts to put a Kodiak bear to shame. They were not just bizarre; they were all weirdly beautiful. Like something out of a dream. One that might turn any minute into a nightmare. Geoff had to breathe deeply, to keep from screaming and running away.
He had seen such people in wavespace, but it was a different matter to be standing right next to them, breathing their air; feeling their meatness pressing on him. They were too real, and not quite real enough. It was too much to take in. He began to tremble.
“I’m Geoff Agre,” he said, and dashed sweat from his face. To his relief, his voice came out steady. “Vivian said you could help me.”
One of them nodded. “Yes. Welcome.” This one spoke softly to the others, who departed—flying, walking, lumbering—talking casually. A couple of them gave Geoff curious glances.
The one who remained stood and motioned Geoff over. Geoff glanced back at Thondu, who merely shrugged, with an amused look on his face. Geoff stepped forward.
This other one, this person, had very pale skin—surprisingly pale, for an Upsider—and gleaming chesnut brown hair that fell in long thick twines, which moved about the head, graceful and sinuous in this light gravity. The face was inhumanly beautiful: skin like the polished interior of a seashell; full, dusted-rose lips. The eyes were catlike slits an unlikely shade of green. In place of two arms and two legs were three pairs of arms. The top set was where you would expect; the second pair emerged from the spine’s sides at the bottom of the rib cage; the third two extended from the hip joints, where the legs should be. All six hands were twice as large as human hands, and each had ten strikingly long fingers, with at least five joints, maybe six. The overall effect was a blend of insectoid and mammalian.
Most troubling of all, Geoff could not tell whether the person was male or female. It made it hard for Geoff to even know how to think about this person. He could not create a mental picture—his mind kept sliding off the person’s gender. Geoff had to keep correcting himself. He? No. She? No, neither was correct. It? Definitely not. It would mean the person was sexless, and there was something intensely sexed about this person, even if Geoff did not understand exactly how that could be so.
The person’s otherness was so blatant, yet so slippery, a thing, Geoff could not grasp hold. He floundered.
Most Viridians prefer nongendered pronouns, he remembered dimly, from some public service bulletin of years before, when a recent wave of Viridian immigrants arrived Upside. He tried the odd pronouns on for size.
Sie, was it? Or ze? Right. Ze. And hir. These pronouns did not feel right on his tongue. But they were better than any alternative.
The other—ze; Geoff forced himself to say the word in his head: ze, ze, ze—smiled at Geoff. “I am Obyx. Pleased to meet you.” Geoff’s skin prickled. He had heard of Obyx. Ze was the leader of the Viridians, if they could be said to have one.
Obyx cocked hir head at Geoff, and then offered hir hand. Geoff brushed palms. To his chagrin, his hand trembled, and afterward he had a powerful urge to rub his palm on his pant leg.
“How can I help you?” Obyx asked.
“I think I’m in trouble. I guess I didn’t program the stoprun sequence properly, and bone dancers are starting to show up all over in the sewers.”
Obyx tapped hir fingers together. “I guess you didn’t.”
Ze pinged Geoff’s waveface, and brought up a shared display, expanding it between four hands into a large cube. It was a translucent schematic of Zekeston with little flares of color scattered here and there, ranging from crimson, through various shades of red, to a dark brown. Occasionally a bright new red point flashed into existence.
“The spots of color are sightings of your bone dancers,” Obyx explained. “The brighter the color, the more recent the occurrence. The size of the flash indicates how many skeletons appeared for how long and how big they are.
“We’ve counted twenty-eight incidents so far, and they are increasing in frequency of occurrence, and in intensity, as they spread inward and upward”—Obyx gestured—“toward the assemblyworks plant in the Hub. If it reaches there, it would destroy entire batches of assembler bugs. Alas, this is all too common for bad stoprun code. Unchecked, it would eventually overwhelm assembler production. The Resource Commission people learned of this last night. You are fortunate that they have their hands full today.”
“My God.” Geoff paced in a small circle, tugging at his hair, trying not to panic. “So … can you help?”
“Of course,” Obyx said. “We couldn’t afford to wait for you to get around to noticing. We’ve already dealt with it. Our juicejockeys have injected a retroviral stoprun sequence into the assembler system. It targets your bone dancers. It will infect them and turn them off. The incidents will gradually die out over the next twelve to eighteen hours,” ze said.
Relief made Geoff’s knees weaken. He found a boulder, and sat down on it. Obyx leaned back. Ze gazed at Geoff, green eyes gleaming, jewel-like. “A trivial fix, for an experienced juicejock. Which, as you are perhaps now aware, you are not.”
“Yeah. I screwed up. I get it.” Geoff slumped, embarrassed, and angry at the criticism. But the Viridian had a point.
“What do you want in return?” he asked.
Obyx nodded: an acknowledgment of the debt. “Nothing, for now. I understand you have been involved in two different attempts—successful ones—to save Zekeston. Those acts have benefited us also. Though our offer of training remains open, if you decide to continue with your dabblings in juice-hacking. And I am obliged to warn you that if you choose not to take us up on our offer, and if by some chance you are idiotic enough to cause something like this again, we will out you as the culprit without hesitation.”
Geoff shrugged. “Vivian made that clear.”
“But,” said Obyx, “given that we have just saved you from a prison sentence, you still owe us.”
Geoff looked suspicious
ly at hir. “Like what?”
“Hmmm. I’m not sure yet. Something. Not too big, not too small. A goldilocks favor, shall we say? In exchange for our actions today, let us stipulate that Viridians may need a mediumish favor from you sometime. When the time comes, you will provide it without hesitation. Agreed?”
Geoff looked at Obyx a long time without speaking. He could still end up in jail if they chose to out him. But he was not willing to sign a blank check. Better to take the hit now than ransom his future to an uncertain fate. “I guess that depends on what the favor is.”
Thondu threw his head back and laughed. Obyx glanced at Thondu, and finally broke into a real smile. “Your momma gave you three stones, I give you that. Very well, we’ll agree that some sort of favor is owed, but we’ll negotiate further when the time comes.” Obyx languidly waved an oversized hand or two. “Now, if you don’t mind. Thondu?”
“Of course, Learned.”
Thondu escorted Geoff in silence back down across the catwalks and bridgeways, to the edge of the Badlands.
“Thanks,” Geoff said.
“Think nothing of it,” Thondu said, with a smile that reminded Geoff of Vivian’s.
Geoff said, on impulse, heart suddenly pounding against his ribs, “And tell your sister—” Thondu raised eyebrows. “Tell her I said hi,” Geoff finished lamely. “Tell her to call me. If she wants. I mean, I wouldn’t mind.” Thondu gave him an arch little smile. Geoff felt his face grow hot. “She helped me out. I want to thank her. That’s all.”
Thondu eyed him speculatively. “Well, well. You are a complicated young man, Mr. Agre. I will relay the message.” He flicked a hand.
Something about his grin lingered in Geoff’s mind. He thought about Thondu and Vivian. He sensed that Thondu and Vivian shared some connection he didn’t understand, some bone-deep secret tie. That bothered him a lot. He had to admit, he had already fallen, hard, for Vivian. But Thondu unnerved him, and something about him drew Geoff, too. He’d never thought of himself as attracted to men. What was he getting himself into?
Still, he had gotten out of the Badlands with body and soul intact. That was something.
* * *
At the hospital he found his friends having a picnic on Ian’s bed in a private room. Amaya and Kam had smuggled breakfast past the orderlies. Ian held up a pastry. Geoff’s mouth filled with saliva. The room’s antiseptic smell did not put a dent in his appetite. “We saved one for you, doof. But you’d better hurry or I’m going to eat your roll.”
“Not on your life, chinpo.” Geoff took the last sticky bun. It was dripping in brown sugar and butter. He bit into it, and felt as if his face would explode from sheer caloric overload.
Amaya leaned across the bed to hand him a coffee. “Well?” She was referring to the bone dancers.
The room was thick with motes and mites, so Geoff merely said, “We’re good.” He would fill them in on his visit to the Viridians later—back on Ouroboros, perhaps.
Over sweet rolls and hot, bitter coffee they went over the prior night’s events. Ian was pallid, and not as loud as usual, but still in good humor. Geoff wondered what painkillers they had him on.
“Hard-Rock News 42 came by earlier. And Upstreamers 180! I’m going to be all over the nine o’clock news. Have you seen my sammy cache? Take a look!”
Geoff exchanged an amused look with Kam and Amaya. They all agreed the contents of Ian’s cache were impressive. “You’re famous,” Geoff said. “No doubt about it.”
“The prime minister is coming by! Can you believe it? Get my arm ripped off and everybody thinks I’m hot shit. Maybe I can write my memoir and make a million.” Kam and Geoff both laughed; Amaya looked mildly disgusted.
Kam replied, “Now if only you could write three sentences in a row, you’d be all set.”
“You’re just jealous.”
“Oh, yeah. I can hardly wait to get my arm ripped off.”
“Great! The gimp twins. We’ll get adjoining hospital beds,” Ian said. But the idea made everyone queasy. To change the subject, Geoff asked, “You said they’re going to start growing you, you know, a new arm today?”
“Yeah.” Ian looked at his covers, at the place where his arm should be, as if still surprised it was not there. “They said there was so much damage to the old one that it’s easier to just start from scratch. In a couple of months, nobody will be able to tell the difference. Look.” He pulled up his sleeve. The others recoiled—but the wound had already closed up. Pink, baby-smooth skin stretched over the shoulder joint, and just below that was a bump with five little nubs. Ian wiggled them, and Geoff thought again of the Viridians. Was what they did so different than this?
Amaya’s anger at Ian seemed to have cooled; she touched the tiny new fingers growing there, and then they kissed. Ian gave her this wondering look. Geoff knew, even if he didn’t; even if Amaya didn’t. Ian had just figured out he loved her. Geoff wondered if that meant he’d stop being such a chinpo. One could hope.
“What?” she demanded. He only shook his head, and laid his head back on his pillow. “Nothing.” He laughed. “It’s weird, I keep feeling my arm there. I mean, my whole arm. They tell me that’s normal. It hurts like hell, when they aren’t doping me.”
“Good thing they’re doping you,” Amaya said.
“Yeah.” He grinned. “I thought I’d get me some neon tattoos, once it’s all done, all down the new bicep and forearm, you know, to impress the girls. What do you think?”
Amaya rolled her eyes. “Oh, please.”
Ian asked, “Did they get the thing? You know, the feral?”
Geoff shrugged. “I guess so. The old man just made sure we got checked out and then sent us home. We didn’t get any more out of him.”
Amaya said, “The biker buzz this morning is that they killed it, or whatever they do to stop them, and it’s gone now.”
Everyone looked at Ian then. His eyes were sunken, shadowed in his pale face. No one said it, but Geoff knew he wasn’t the only one thinking it: Ian should be dead. He would have bled out in seconds if the feral sapient hadn’t rendered aid—and feral sapients did not render aid. Something strange had happened last night, they were all witness to it, and no one could make sense of it.
After awhile, Ian’s parents showed up. Mr. Carmichael had showered and his hair was combed for the first time since Geoff had met him. He wore a nice suit. His pores still smelled, faintly, of stale booze, which he had tried to mask with cologne. Mrs. Carmichael had her hair coiffed and wore a bit too much makeup. They greeted Geoff and the others with a plastic cheeriness. It grossed Geoff out to look at them. They looked like doll versions of themselves.
Geoff, Amaya, and Kam made their good-byes and left. Geoff was glad that he would not be required to participate with his parents in a meeting with the prime minister. Just, yuck. On a whole lot of levels.
On their way out, the doctor gave them each a quick checkup, and gave Geoff another shot of bug juice. Almost immediately he felt better, and saw in a nearby mirror that the swelling in his face had already gone down.
Outside Yamashiro Memorial, they all looked at one another. All were conscious of the soft mote haze around them.
“Spin the rock?” Kam asked.
Amaya hung back. She looked around, and said softly, “What about the ice?”
“Well?” Kam asked. “Didn’t you hear the PM’s announcement? We’re getting a big shipment in a couple of weeks. Everything is going to be fine.”
“But the black marketers know about Ouroboros.”
“They were all arrested,” Kam said. “And we did what we were supposed to. I notified the bank.”
“You notified the bank,” Geoff pointed out, “but I didn’t sign the paperwork yet. They’re not going to send anyone out to survey it till I do. And we didn’t do everything we were supposed to do—they told us they wanted a statement from us at the precinct.”
“True, but we also told Moriarty all about what happened last night.
If they need more information, they’ll know where to reach us.”
“He is way up there in the government,” Geoff said thoughtfully.
“Exactly. We should just let them deal with it. He’ll know who needs to know, and they can tell us if they need anything else from us.”
Geoff pondered this. They had notified the authorities. And now that more ice was on its way, he did not want to give up on the Orbital Olympics. Not if he did not have to. “You’re right. I think we’ve done enough.”
Amaya sighed. She did not look quite convinced, but Geoff could tell she did not want to give up their ice either.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s spin.”
* * *
Xuan met his contact in the main shuttle hangar out at the docs, at the appointed time, twelve noon. The man in charge of the expedition, Mr. Mills, had his assistants transfer Xuan’s survey tools to their shuttle. Mills wore a knit cap on his head, and a long knit scarf, both in striking shades of blue. He held a bag that contained skeins of brightly colored yarn. It was incongruent with his business-like appearance, but by no means surprising; many spacers knitted or crocheted as a hobby. And everyone was bundling up.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice,” Mr. Mills said. He seemed bemused at Xuan’s appearance. “We were expecting someone else.”
“A student? Yes, Dr. Okuyama informed me. I am Professor Xuan, from the university. My specialty is astrogeology.” He brushed palms with the other man. “Everyone else was tied up with emergency preparations, and I was ahead of schedule on my own tasks. So I volunteered.”
The other man seemed rather dismayed—for what reason, Xuan could not tell; perhaps a concern about wasting Xuan’s time? It seemed unlikely. “Of course. Thanks for taking the time.”
