Poe clicked her tongue, searching for a weapon. She found an icepick. “The birthing chamber,” she said.
They cleared the doorway with pick and shovel, then hurried back past the open outer door and down the slope of the corridor, kicking smaller worms out of the way, slashing and stabbing at the largest as they passed.
Worms covered the half dozen sleepers nearest the entrance of the birthing chamber. Poe went past them, scanning her whiskers low over those lying further back. Only a few worms had penetrated any deeper. She kept going until she reached Munk. Chyu was close on her heels. Together they examined Munk's sleeping body from end to end, plucking a handful of small worms free of her cool flesh.
"What do we do?” said Chyu, when Munk was clean.
"We'll have to clear them,” said Poe. “All the way back to the breach. We'll dump the carcasses down here for the spawn to eat in spring."
She started to work cleaning the smaller worms from on and around the sleeping dams. Chyu dismembered the larger ones with the edge of her shovel. The chamber echoed with the flat clang of iron on stone. Poe plucked and crushed until her fingers cramped with fatigue. Some of the dams were completely cold, the life sucked from their bellies.
Too late, Poe thought in dismay, as she used her pick to prise free the mouthparts of the worms Chyu had severed. Too late.
They rested when they were done, squatting on tripods of legs and tail and leaning on the handles of their tools. Poe's limbs shook. She plucked a small worm from her calf and Chyu a couple from her tail. Poe wound her tail around Chyu's. They sat in a daze, listening to the worms crawl toward them. Chyu swept at them halfheartedly with the shovel.
"Some of them are cold,” said Poe.
"But not all,” said Chyu. “Not all, love."
She stood. Her tail trembled as she tried to hold it off the ground. Poe heaved herself up.
Worms always congregated around the Houses in winter, searching for gaps in the stone, the tiniest slipping in through the drains, the rest preying on each other while they probed the House's defenses with mindless patience. Poe had never imagined there'd be quite so many. She kicked the broken carcasses down toward the birthing chamber. The ring of the shovel blade striking the floor drilled into her head.
The density of worms had thinned by the time they worked their way back to the fuel store. They dragged Ghei into the corridor and cleaned the worms from her. Poe felt queasy, handling the shriveled husk, from which no new life would emerge in spring. Ending without renewal. Extinction. The same awaited her and Chyu.
"What a waste,” whispered Chyu.
Poe began to sob, wracking hiccups that burst from her nostrils. They dragged Ghei down to the birthing chamber and left her there, among her sibs. The most they could do was ensure her flesh would feed the next generation, not the worms.
There were few of those remaining in the last stretch of corridor, from the fuel store to the blocked stairs. Poe and Chyu cleared them quickly.
"Mother Mha,” Chyu breathed when they reached the stairs.
The snowdrift filled the entire corridor. The tower's second fall had torn the outer wall completely away. An enormous worm lay halfway out of the snow, its girth greater than the length of Poe's arm. A ripple passed along its body and it lurched another handspan clear of the drift.
Chyu began to growl. Her cry rose in volume and pitch as she brought the shovel up to her shoulder. She stabbed it at the worm like a spear. The blade hit chitin and slid along until it found the seam between two plates. The worm swung toward the assault.
Poe struck the ice pick into the worm's other side as Chyu withdrew for another lunge. Its mouth petals flared, revealing rows of hooked teeth. Poe retreated and the worm made another lurch forward. Chyu struck again, and again to little effect. With Poe's next blow, the ice pick penetrated the worm's armor and stuck. Its jerk of pain wrenched the handle from Poe's grip. She flung herself clear of its thrashing.
Her foot kicked something metallic. The oil heater!
"Chyu, keep it busy!” she cried.
Chyu slapped the worm's mouth petals. They contracted sharply.
Poe fumbled about on the floor. Her fingers grasped the flintlock lighter. She flicked it frantically to get a spark onto the burner's wick. The wick caught.
Chyu hacked at the worm's side. Its mouth flared and Poe flung the oil lamp into the open maw. The petals snapped shut. The worm swung violently sideways, knocking Chyu from her feet. It flexed upward. Its front struck the roof and Poe heard the crack of splitting stone.
"Chyu!” Poe scrambled to drag her clear. The worm crashed back down. Stones came with it, and ice. The ceiling yawed and tumbled.
* * * *
"Eat."
Chyu opened her mouth to accept the strip of dried meat. She chewed slowly. She shifted awkwardly, her splinted leg stuck straight out beside her.
Poe pressed close beside her beneath the blankets, sharing warmth. She slipped another strip of jerky into her own mouth.
"Poe?” said Chyu. “How long until spring, do you think?"
"I don't know. I haven't been outside to see.” Poe wondered if she would know even if she did go outside. Would the stars and the faint, brief glow of the sun, no longer cresting the horizon, tell her, when she had never wintered in the antarctic before?
"What are we, Poe? We are not sires, the change has come to us. We are not dams, we have no spawn in our bellies. What are we?"
Poe thought it over. “Sleepless,” she said at last.
"Sleepless.” Chyu's snorts of laughter became sneezes.
* * * *
Poe awoke in darkness. She lay a while, listening to the quiet, then, painfully, she got to her feet and tottered to the door. Reflexively, she picked up the snow shovel, with its bent and dented blade.
It took her two attempts to open the fuel store's door. Once she had, she paused, listening again, to an unfamiliar sound. Tinkling. She waited for the noise to stop or change. It didn't.
Tinkling. Dripping.
Running water.
"Chyu!” she cried. “Chyu. Chyu Mha! Water! It's spring."
She turned, confused, when Chyu didn't respond.
* * * *
Poe left Chyu's corpse where it was. She abandoned the shovel, too, but out of habit stomped on the couple of small worms in her path as she crossed to the outer wall. Her feet splashed through icy water in the center of the corridor. She bent to examine the drain holes at the base of the wall. Snowmelt flowed across to the low center of the floor and down the shallow slope.
Poe limped along the wall. Light showed around the edges of the outer door. She got it open in several short drags and had to lean on the frame and rest for a minute afterward. She pushed up the trench through drifted snow and over fallen stones, almost reaching the top before she stumbled, unable to go further. She blinked into the dawn's glare, her eyes watering in the brightness.
"Spring,” she breathed. But a long time yet before the snow was gone and there were flowers on the ground, even longer before the sires sailed south, following the summer.
She stayed there, half fallen, and watched the red bright disc rise clear of the horizon before falling once more from sight. Melted snow began to seep through her furs. With difficulty, she got herself up again and back inside.
When she recovered her breath, she returned to the fuel store and dragged out Chyu's body. A few paces at a time, she followed the tinkling water downward.
The floor of the birthing chamber was already under a film of water. There were tiny worms in it, but that no longer mattered. The spawn were growing in the wombs of their dams. They would eat their way free, and then the roles of predator and prey would be reversed.
Poe wondered if she could last until the ships returned. Her exhaustion answered for her. It was doubtful the sires would ever know what had been done after the House's fall. It didn't matter—enough that the spawning was saved.
She dragged Chyu past her sleeping
sibs, to Munk. Painfully, Poe lowered herself between them. She stroked their cold faces. Chyu, lost to life; Munk, with new life soon to burst forth.
She wondered what extinction would feel like, and felt a sudden stab of fear, now that it was upon her. Would it hurt, or would she slip away, unknowingly, as though into sleep? She rested her head against the slight warmth of Munk's belly. In there was her rebirth. She listened to the tinkling water.
Her mind drifted.
Copyright © 2009 Ian McHugh
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Short Story: SHOES-TO-RUN by Sara Genge
Sara Genge writes, “I'm a new doctor in Madrid, which means that a) I'm hardly doing any writing now and b) I practice insomnia in the pro league.” Her most recent short fiction has appeared in Weird Tales and Asimov's. Sara tells us that she's always been interested in writing about gender, but now seems to be in a particularly gender-oriented phase. Her new story about the dangers and rewards of coming of age sometime in the not-so-near future is a part of this trend.
Shai-Shai parted the tarp and slipped out of the hut, hoisted a metal pot onto her head and left for the Sen river before anyone could spot her. Getting water was one of her girl-chores, but Shai-Shai refused to join the group of giggling girls that would leave for the Sen later on in the day. Going with the girls would be admitting that she was one of them, and she had spent too much time proving otherwise to give it up for the laughter and company.
She steadied the pot with her left hand while her right drifted up to the charred scars on her nipples. She repeated the gesture often; it served to reassure her nothing had changed. She'd stuck in the burning knives when she'd discovered the woman-flesh growing on her chest. The burns blended with her black skin, but the scars were big and visible. She didn't care. She remembered the pain, and the relief when the breasts had stopped growing. They were always the breasts, never her breasts, and she was glad they hadn't come back.
Her sneakers snagged on a tuft of kikiyu grass and she landed on her knees, the pot clanging away in the darkness. She cursed the Parisi ghosts, regretted it, muttered an apology and placed the pot back on her head.
She didn't slow down, determined to return before the boys came out of their huts. They wouldn't let her join them, despite the fact that she had shoes-to-run just like any boy. Shai-Shai would not let them see her doing girls’ work.
She got to the river just as the ground started to redden. The night air nipped her bare arms and back. To the east, the lights of the city of Paris blinked and died. The dome shone purple and orange in the dawn light as the nano wafted out of the city in waves. Shaman had told her that the Parisi lived in the nano. That's where Shaman got his power. To Shai-Shai, the nano looked like a giant flock of birds, but Shaman said they were really verymany small things, visible only because of their numbers. The dome protected the city from the sun and poisons of the Waste, he claimed. The girl didn't understand much of it. Holy men could be cryptic.
Shai-Shai glanced at the expanse of dirt and litter, half expecting to see children hidden in the bushes, laughing at her. She wondered where the “poisons” lay. There were the griava seeds, of course, which glowed faintly and made you vomit, lose your hair, and die if you ate them. There were also the tee-ts leaves, with their gentle fluorescence, and the purple jimba, all poisonous. But surely the city wasn't scared of mere plants? Plants were easy to avoid. Shai-Shai was more concerned about animals. About people.
She kicked off her shoes and waded in with the pot. A branch snapped behind her and she jumped, letting the pot slip between her fingers and sail off into the grey water. Her mother would beat her if she lost it—rightly so; metal pots were precious. She jumped in, grabbed the pot and pulled it out. Shai-Shai congratulated herself on swimming as well as any boy. When she went to refill the pot, she noticed the blood running down her legs.
For a second, Shai-Shai thought she'd hurt herself in the fall but, although her knees were scraped, most of the watered-down blood flowed from her loincloth. She understood that it was all over. If the Parisi had intended to correct the mistake they'd made when they put her in a girl's body, they would have done so by now. She had been angry at the Parisi when she fell, maybe this was her punishment—but people swore at the Parisi all the time, and bad things didn't happen to them.
She rubbed dirt on her legs and clothes, begging the blood to go away. If her mother found out, she'd declare her a woman for all who would hear. There'd be relief in her mother's voice, Shai-Shai knew, an end to the worry that haunted the woman every time she looked at her daughter.
But woman didn't bring Shai-Shai joy. All those hours spent practicing with the spear—wasted. She'd learned to walk like a man, talk like a man...
No, she couldn't be a woman. Not after all she'd gone through, not after all she'd prayed. Girl she could live with—it was temporary anyway. Woman was permanent. Once her mother told everyone, there'd be no going back. She'd have to put away her spear and learn to swing her hips and cook like a good Chere woman.
Shai-Shai would take her own life before she became woman.
The light grew brighter and cast a red glow on the dome and river until it seemed to Shai-Shai that the World was dyed in blood. The waters of the Sen were thick as flesh, welcoming. The water would be no colder than the droplets drying on Shai-Shai's skin. She stepped in, determined to dive to the center of the river and stay under. It would be easy; many children had drowned in the Sen.
By the time the sun had risen, she lay on the bank, exhausted. She'd tried hard, many times, but whenever her lungs started to struggle for breath, her legs would start kicking on their own and she'd surface. She shouted at her stupid legs, even tried pleading with them to do her will, and then, finally, sat on the bank and cried.
Her hands returned to her chest at regular intervals. The Parisi had listened to her desperation back then; why couldn't they do the same now?
Shaman would know. She wondered why she hadn't thought of it sooner. She clung to that thought and stood up. She washed out her wrap and collected some grass and dry dung as an absorbent. The pad wouldn't last long, but all she needed were a few minutes with Shaman before her mother noticed. She put on her boy-shoes and took off, running full out now that she could see. As she ran, she heard the breeze blowing across the rim of the pot which she'd forgotten on the mud bank. She could collect it later. She did not turn back.
* * * *
When Shaman emerged from his tent, Shai-Shai put a couple of nuts in his hand before he could ask for breakfast. There was constant tearing in the old man's eyes and his left eyelid drooped. Shaman had developed the habit of tilting his head upward to stare at people through the slit at the bottom of his eye. Shai-Shai knew it bothered people, but she was used to it. She knew people were bothered by her burnt chest, but Shaman was used to it. Shai-Shai and Shaman got along just fine.
"Trouble,” he grunted. The Parisi sometimes told him people's thoughts. When she'd been young, Shai-Shai had been scared of him. Surprisingly, as her thoughts grew deeper and darker, she'd started to enjoy his company. If anyone could deal with Shai-Shai's thoughts it was Shaman, who had a village-full of dark thoughts to draw from and compare.
She explained what had happened. The ghosts didn't give Shaman details.
"So, you're a wo—"
"No!” She didn't shout as much as forcibly whisper. She couldn't let Shaman say it. There was power in naming, especially if the Shaman did it. Naming something could make it true.
"I guess putting off your woman ceremony wouldn't help.” Shaman sighed.
The girl shook her head. Her chest hurt and she realized she was gasping for air, but it wasn't from the run.
"Maybe it'll go away, maybe it's not real blood, maybe it's a Parisi trick,” she said. Shaman always spoke of “Parisi tricks."
It was Shaman's turn to shake his head.
"What do you know about women-things!” Shai-Shai wailed, and gulped, regretting the
outburst. But Shaman didn't scold her. Instead, he stood up and added a branch to the fire.
"I am so old women no longer consider me a man. They tell me things they'd never tell their husbands. But any man understands the meaning of bleeding.” He sighed and popped a nut in his mouth, twirling it around to position it between his remaining teeth. Watching him eat, Shai-Shai realized how old he was. “I could train you as a helper. Until I die, you wouldn't have to marry,” he said.
It was something, but not enough. Shai-Shai didn't answer for fear of crying.
They sat in silence, watching the sunrise. Shai-Shai shifted her weight to one leg and stretched the other one in front of her.
Next to her, the Shaman dozed off. The girls came out with their pots and headed for the Sen. Shai-Shai tried not to look in their direction. Chir-Ches, the neighbor's daughter, waved at Shai-Shai. Shai-Shai moved her head in the contained nod of a man. She'd practiced it in secret. The girls giggled and pots clanged. Shaman shouted and jolted awake.
"I dreamt,” he said. He sounded breathless. “I think the dream came from the Parisi. A man hunts. A woman doesn't hunt."
"Yes?” asked Shai-Shai.
"That was all. The dream said: a man hunts; a woman doesn't hunt. Raches saw a herd of kudu down east yesterday. He will take two men with him. You will be the runner."
* * * *
Raches wasn't happy with the arrangement. He stood with the men beneath the mosbele, comforted by the strength the ceremonial tree added to his arguments. He was chief hunter and Shaman shouldn't forget it.
"She'll grow out of it,” he said.
"That's what everyone said,” Shaman replied.
"Everyone may be right,” he said.
Shaman shook his head and Raches understood what the old man meant: so far, Shai-Shai had showed more signs of growing into boyhood than of growing out of it.
The men fidgeted and Raches shuffled dirt out of his sandal to give himself time to think. His trench coat was wrapped tight against the cold and his feet were wet from the dew. He'd never had much use for the sneakers the missionaries brought, preferring to stick to sandals like Shaman. He hadn't thought much of it when Shaman asked him to give his sneakers to Shai-Shai. She was a peculiar girl, but he'd seen nothing wrong with her owning shoes-to-run. He'd even taught her to hunt-run as a game when she was little.
Asimov's SF, July 2009 Page 11
