Asimov's SF, April/May 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Help Papa catch the chickies!” Bix told Stoke.

  The boys were outside for a few minutes, then came back in laughing.

  "In the tree!” Stoke told his mother, throwing his little arms into the air. “Chicken in the tree!"

  "We couldn't find them anywhere,” said Bix, dramatizing for the sake of the boy. “And then Stoke heard cheeping, and he looked up and saw them . . ."

  "In the tree,” said Stoke in his sturdy little voice. “High."

  "Roosting in a row,” said Bix. “One, two, three, four. They look smarter than before. We left them there."

  "Papa found an egg!” added Stoke, and indeed Bix had a nice big egg in his hand. He set it down on the kitchen counter.

  "For breakfast,” said Bix. “That's the first egg this spring."

  "You have to roost now,” Vicky told Stoke. “I'll make a nest for you in your room."

  Once Stoke was in his pajamas, Vicky lay down on his bed with him to read.

  "What book do you want?"

  "Read the cans and boxes,” said Stoke. His big thing this week was hauling food cans and packaged goods into his room. If you took them back out into the kitchen or the living-room, Stoke would fetch them again. Wearying of the routine, Bix and Vicky had left a mound of the packages heaped by Stoke's bookcase. “Read a box,” repeated Stoke.

  "Okay,” said Vicky.

  The lists and ad copy were pretty dull, but Stoke seemed to get a kick out of the fact that book-type words were on these colorful little containers. And Vicky made the most of the jaw-breakers among the ingredients—some of them as unlikely as anything invented by Dr. Seuss.

  The brightest label of all was on the slick paper bag of the Ultra Egg shell supplement that Cardo's wife Maricel had given Bix the day before yesterday. Supposedly it made the chickens’ eggshells stronger. While reading out the contents of the sack, Vicky noticed an odd patch in the picture on the bag, which showed a nest with three gleaming “ultra eggs.” One of the eggs was broken open, and standing behind it was something not quite like a chicken. A dark, overly cross-hatched shape that reminded Vicky of the fish-roe junk beneath Bix's sea-urchin morphon.

  "Fnoooor,” said Stoke, pointing at the image of the strange hatchling, almost as if he'd read Vicky's mind. These days, the boy heard and remembered everything. He was like a magpie snatching up words for his own use.

  After Vicky got Stoke to sleep, she had a talk with Bix. “Stoke shouldn't have this Ultra Egg junk in his room. Where did Maricel get it, anyway? The label says it's seaweed, calcium, and proprietary memory proteins. And there's a weird picture of a monster chicken on the bag.” She tossed the shiny sack onto Bix's stomach. He was lying on the couch messing with his Gloze squidskin.

  "Maricel says she's starting a line of chicken vitamins in San Francisco,” said Bix, not looking away from his shimmering display. “Even though she really wants to be an artist. Back in the Philippines, Cardo's family makes biogadgets and Maricel's family makes chicken feed. Maricel told me she hand-painted the illo and used her ink-lizard to print copies for the labels. She's proud of it."

  "Her picture has fnoor in it,” said Vicky, raising her eyebrows.

  That got Bix's attention. He laid the floppy Gloze on the floor and began studying the Ultra Egg label. “Wow,” he said, after a bit. “I hadn't really looked at this. You're right, Vicky. That weird chicken by the nest, it's, I dunno, call it a fnoor hen? Those feathers on its leg spiral into an endless regress. Like on a morphon. Legs on legs on legs. And it has extra eyes on its—"

  "Why's it on the label? What does it mean?"

  Bix held the sack up at an angle, turning it this way and that. “Well—I have been showing my morphons to Cardo and Maricel, you know. While repeatedly asking for my bonus."

  "Or maybe Maricel thought it up on her own,” said Vicky. “Why assume that everything interesting comes from biogadgets?"

  "Okay,” said Bix after a moment's thought. “Sure. I think Maricel even had some gallery shows back in Manila. She's dying to go back there. I've heard her get pretty intense about off-the-grid Filipino stuff like shamanic healers.” He studied the picture some more. “But figuring out that pattern—oh well. Enough thinking for one day. Let's drink beer and watch the godseye.” The godseye was the global feed from the by-now-ubiquitous video cameras. You could always find something interesting there.

  Bix and Vicky watched the seething biogadgets discarded in the local dump, then a high-school dance in Nairobi, then a new band in the Mission, then two black bears having sex, and then they went to bed, forgetting all about Maricel's Ultra Egg picture. But the next morning, things got strange.

  Stoke and Vicky were at the tiny kitchen table, the boy gnawing a bagel with cream cheese and Vicky eating a bowl of granola with milk. Bix stood by the stove, ready to scramble the egg he'd brought in last night. But when he broke the shell, something dark hopped out of the egg and onto the counter.

  Vicky let out a cry, and the shaken Bix threw the egg shells into the air. The thing on the counter—was it a rat? No, it was matte black with too many legs—a spider? No—it was squawking.

  "A fnoor hen!” exclaimed Bix. “Like that thing we saw on the Ultra Egg label."

  "Be careful, Bix!"

  There seemed to be no real body at the fnoor hen's center, just a dark core with little bowls of light. The hen hopped off the counter, jerkily flexing her multi-jointed legs.

  "I don't want to get bited,” cried Stoke. He clambered from his chair onto the table, spilling Vicky's bowl of cereal.

  The fnoor hen veered away from the breakfast nook. Bix tossed a colander after her, meaning to trap her under it. But the fnoor hen was too fast. With a peremptory cluck, she sped across their living-room and into the little hall by the two bedrooms. The aluminum rattled as the fnoor hen scrabbled upward.

  "She's going into our attic!” Vicky wailed.

  "I'll get her,” said Bix, sounding more excited than scared.

  While Stoke and Vicky watched, Bix slowly climbed the ladder, jokingly wearing the colander on his head. He reached into the attic's access hole and turned on the light.

  "Oh, wow,” said Bix, still on the ladder. “The fnoor hen's grown.” He raised his voice an octave. “Good chicken. I'm going to take you outside.” He climbed higher and disappeared into the attic.

  Vicky heard a fuzzy whoosh, followed by—silence.

  "Bix?” she called. “Bix? Don't tease me! You're okay, aren't you?"

  The fnoor hen was faintly clucking.

  "Stay back,” Vicky told Stoke. “Don't get near the ladder."

  Vicky fetched the broom from the kitchen and, screwing up her courage, she climbed the ladder just high enough so that her head protruded into the attic. She saw the fnoor hen resting at the attic's center, considerably larger than before, a brooding tangle of spangled legs. And no Bix.

  "Where is he?” Vicky demanded, shoving her broom toward the strange, dark shape. With a hostile caw, the fnoor hen shook out her feathery limbs—they were starting to look more like tornados than feathers. The hen was nearly six feet across by now, a storm of dark patterns with curved globs of light. Was that Bix's limber silhouette inside one of the lights?

  Vicky hurled her broom at the fnoor hen. The broom tumbled over and over, slowing down and seeming to grow smaller as it approached the ungainly chicken-thing. One of those tornado legs twitched toward the broom, warping it into a crooked pattern and sucking it up.

  Hands trembling, Vicky backed down the ladder without bothering to close the attic's pitifully thin trapdoor.

  "Where's Papa?” asked Stoke, staring up at Vicky.

  "We'll ask Maricel about this,” said Vicky, working to keep her voice under control. She took Stoke's hand and grabbed the bag of Ultra Egg shell supplement from the floor by the couch. “Let's go.” The real chickens were loose in the yard, alertly watching.

  Maricel and Cardo lived two doors further uphill, in a house even smaller than Vick
y's. Cardo didn't actually draw much pay from his family. Yesterday's rain had stopped and the early morning clouds were breaking up.

  "Welcome, dudette,” said Maricel from the stuffed old armchair on her porch. As usual, she was fiddling with her phone slug, which was shaped like one end of a banana. Maricel was a punk-looking woman with purpled, ratty hair—five years younger than Vicky and not entirely friendly.

  "Want some candy, Stoke?” said Maricel. “How about some wine, Vicky?” Cardo and Maricel didn't have children.

  "I'm here because of this crap,” snapped Vicky. She held up the bag of Ultra Egg. “It did something to our chickens, and they laid a weird egg with a black gremlin inside. Bix calls it a fnoor hen. The fnoor hen climbed into our attic and—and I think she swallowed Bix."

  "Aha,” said Maricel, rising to her feet. “Your—your ‘fnoor hen’ looks like the picture on my label? Wow. Cardo's Aunt Perla was right. I should message her. Maybe I could use this for a new show back in—"

  "You knew this would happen?"

  "Sometimes in Manila people get visitations from shaggy creepy things,” said Maricel, wriggling her skinny fingers. “We call them devils. You might see a devil if you get on the wrong side of a shaman healer who does psychic surgery—or if you cheat on a certain kind of business person."

  "A devil?” echoed Vicky, utterly confused.

  "You're not spiritual at all?” asked the younger woman.

  "I teach yoga,” allowed Vicky. “But I'm not what you'd call—"

  "Your husband acts awfully occult about his computer work,” said Maricel in an insinuating tone. “He's been showing Cardo and me these tasty morphon muncher graphics at the Scavenger cafe all week and he keeps using that funny word that you just said."

  "Fnoor?” said Vicky. “Bix says his gnarliest morphons have fnoor."

  "Right. And Bix won't teach Cardo how to use the morphon muncher for anything that's actually valuable. Sure, Cardo has a copy of the protein sequences that run the morphon muncher—but Bix wants extra money for a user's guide. Even though Bix developed his morphon muncher on the Gloze squidskin that Cardo lent him. Even though Bix signed a consulting contract. And Cardo's family is upset about that. So Cardo's Aunt Perla had this idea for a swarm-like biogadget using the source-code proteins from Bix. A high-tech devil. A DNA devil, you might say.” Maricel gave a cold little smile.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Cardo's Aunt Perla amplified the morphon muncher code molecules into a few ounces of tasty protein—with a some shakedown-type instructions added in. She phone-ordered the protein build from a biogadget shop right here in town. I mixed the stuff with seaweed and chalk, and tricked Bix into feeding it to your chickens."

  "Wait,” said Vicky, staring at Maricel's hard, impudent face. “Wait. You're talking about the Ultra Egg shell supplement?"

  "A special formula for you and Bix,” said Maricel evenly. “Frankly I'm as surprised as you are that it worked. Most people think Perla's crazy.’”

  "You mutated our chickens?” exclaimed Vicky. “You made them hatch that weird egg? And you knew there'd be a monster inside it?"

  "Hey, we only tried it as a last resort,” said Maricel. “Bix has been so greedy. But don't worry, I can help fix it now.” Maricel lit a cigarette and fetched a bag of shiny string from inside her house. “Let's go,” she said, with her phone slug clutched in her hand. “And tell me more about your fnoor hen, why don't you?"

  "She's all legs with no head, and she has spots of light buried inside her,” said Vicky as they hurried downhill with Stoke in their wake. “I think I saw Bix inside one of the lights."

  "Can you understand anything that your fnoor hen is saying?” asked Maricel, coughing a little from her cigarette. “She's meant to be like a bill collector, see."

  "She clucks and squawks like a chicken."

  "What it is—she's programmed to make Bix give her a tutorial on the morphon muncher,” said Maricel. “Once she gets that, she'll move on. At least that's what Aunt Perla claims.” Maricel paused on the sidewalk, prodding her phone slug. “Perla's line is down, dammit. The biogadget services in Manila are so—"

  "I want my husband back, Maricel. I can't believe you and your family are such . . . such criminals. You're going to risk my husband's life over some stupid squidskin program? Here we are. Oh god, I left the front door open and—"

  Their four real chickens had wandered inside and were standing in the living room, dropping white spots of poop on the rug and pecking at the books. In a sudden surge of fury, Vicky charged at them and drove them outside.

  Meanwhile Stoke was explaining things to Maricel. “Weird chicken,” said Stoke, pointing toward the hole above the ladder. “Ate Papa."

  "Bix?” called Vicky one more time. The only answer was a brooding cackle from above. Maricel was about to start in on her phone slug again. “Hey!” yelled Vicky. “Are you gonna help me or not?"

  Maricel shoved her phone slug into her pocket, took a skein of orange cord from her bag and tied off a loop. “Put this on your fingers, Vicky. We'll make a wetware calling-card. It'll tell the devil to talk to you as well as Bix."

  "Huh?"

  "It's gonna look like a—a cat's cradle? This string is smart protein cable, see. We pass the loop back and forth. That's right. Pinch those two crossings and spread your fingers. Now let me take it back and—"

  Stoke wanted to mix into the game, but the women kept the emerging pattern out of his reach. After a couple of minutes, they'd woven a shape like a tube, wide at one end and thin at the other, with Vicky wearing the tube like a crumpled sleeve on her left arm.

  "Just feed this into your fnoor hen,” said Maricel.

  "I'm not sure about getting close to that thing,” said Vicky doubtfully. “You called it a DNA devil? You and Cardo sent this devil to eat Bix, and now maybe it's supposed to eat me!"

  "Oh, don't be trippin'. We're still friends. Bix just has to make good on his consulting deal. Our DNA devil is a harmless fog of biogadgets. Like a swarm of tiny bugs."

  "More like a hurricane,” said Vicky. “When I threw my broom at your devil—at the fnoor hen—the broom warped and dissolved."

  "You're a smart woman,” said Maricel with a shrug. “You and the hen will work something out."

  "At least make sure that Stoke doesn't follow me up the ladder,” said Vicky. “Okay, Maricel? Don't get all distracted with your phone slug.” Vicky hunkered down and looked into Stoke's bright eyes. “You wait down here while Mama goes to get Papa from the attic, okay?"

  "I help?"

  "Stay down here, Stokie. Good boy. I love you."

  With her heart hammering against her ribs, Vicky crept up the ladder and into the attic, stepping over the shin-bonking rafters. The sounds from the house faded away. The space of the attic was filled with an intricately patterned hiss.

  The fnoor hen was yet larger than before, perhaps eight feet across and four feet high, squeezed right up against the sloping underside of the little house's roof. Her dark body was like twisting ropes of smoke, a chiaroscuro of grays and blacks with the spots of light like nests in a tree. That lively little silhouette within the closest light—yes, that was Bix. Why didn't he come back out?

  The fnoor hen puffed herself up and made a staccato chirrup. Vicky extended her left arm with its goofy tangle of protein-string and tossed the free end out past her fingers and into contact with the fuzzy border of the hen.

  The mesh came alive when it touched the shifting mass of fnoor. The orange strings twitched and glowed. Eldritch energies flowed through Vicky's body and branched into her brain. And, just as Maricel had predicted, Vicky could hear the fnoor hen's voice in her head.

  "Lonely, lonely,” the fnoor hen was saying. She sounded like a fussy old woman fretting to herself. “No chicky-chicks to play with me."

  "Hello?” said Vicky in a quiet tone.

  "Talking monkey! I have your mate."

  "Let him go,” said Vicky.

 
"Come and lie with him,” said the fnoor hen with a creepy giggle. “Come stay with me.” She drew in the protein-string mesh, slurping it up like spaghetti, leaving Vicky's arm bare. And now she sent her vortices to draw Vicky in as well. Feeling dreamy and passive, Vicky let it happen.

  The hen's interior was like a moist rainy jungle—filled with rustles, whoops and tweets. The sounds fit together in a wonderfully precise way, like the notes of a symphony. Glowing white flowers hovered amid the tangled vines, their scent indescribably lush. A stick-thin creature was perched in a flower cup nearby. Oh wait, that was—

  "Vicky,” said the sketchy form. “Come to me."

  "Bix!” cried Vicky, trying to keep her head together. She was dizzy from the blossom's perfume and from the architectonic cloud of sound. There was much more room inside the fnoor hen than she'd expected. She felt as if she were only a few inches long, like a mantis or a dragonfly—

  "Buzz up,” said Bix, as if reading her mind.

  With a few rapid flaps of her arms, Vicky rose to Bix's creamy flower-bowl. She perched beside him and they embraced, twining their arms and legs together. They made love, reached their climax, and lolled against the smooth petals. For some incalculable length of time, Vicky lounged there, speechless, drunk with pleasure, no longer thinking in words at all, knowing only that she was with her one true love.

  The crying brought Vicky back. She sat up and dragged herself to the edge of the flower cup, which by now loomed as large as a gymnasium.

  "Mama! Papa!"

  "Stoke!” called Vicky, but her voice was so thin and high that the boy didn't hear her. He was outside the fnoor hen, standing alone on the dusty plain of the attic floor.

  "I'm glad you two came for me,” said Bix, hauling himself up to Vicky's side. “My little family."

  "What have you been doing in here all this time?” asked Vicky. “I'm confused."

  "I was thinking about my morphon muncher,” said Bix. “Feeding a user's guide to the fnoor hen."

  "Why?"

  "Because—because it felt good? And talking to her helped me understand my work in a new way? The fnoor hen has a funny way of playing on your feelings. It's kind of wonderful in here."