Clarkesworld: Year Four

by Kij Johnson

  But despite the closeness of my flesh, I could not return to it.

  Gongsun knelt and reached for rabbit-me.

  Always begin with taste, I decided, and scurried towards my human mouth. I burrowed between the lips and kissed the tip of my own tongue.

  My awareness flooded back inside my body.

  I pulled the candy out of my mouth and gasped for breath. The Dragon conjuration had taken too much out of me, and I struggled to sit up.

  Gongsun raised a bushy eyebrow and extended his hand. “You and I have much to discuss, candyman.”

  I took his hand. “Magistrate, you must send men to the Flower-Strewing Tower, without delay.” I said, nearly breathless. “The arsonist’s a scholar with almost no eyebrows. Please hurry, before he catches the boy!”

  “What boy? Explain.”

  Lun and Miss Deng saw me stir and came towards us, hand in bandaged hand. “So good to see you awake, Tangren Ao!” Lun said.

  I smiled weakly. “Miss Deng, did a willowy scholar give you any gifts? Dough-figures, perhaps?”

  “Master Shuai? Yes, he tried to give me several of the miniatures, but I refused them all,” she answered. “I didn’t want to encourage him. He’s chased me since my hair-pinning ceremony two years ago.”

  “Shuai had a kid slip a magical figurine into your fire, but now the boy’s a liability.” I turned to Gongsun. “You must believe me, Magistrate. Find Shuai.”

  Gongsun stood and called to a group of halberdiers. “Go. Detain anyone at the Flower-Strewing Tower.” The soldiers hastened away without question. “Stay here, Tangren Ao.”

  “I’m coming with you.” My legs weak, I could only stand with Lun’s help. “Thank you, Lun.”

  We left Miss Deng with her family on the market street and headed for the pagoda.

  The halberdiers found the scholar Shuai trying to limp with a swollen foot away from the Flower-Strewing Tower. They held the cursing suspect at blades’ point and called out to Pest.

  The boy poked his head out from behind a clump of bamboo, still clutching Horse-on-a-stick in an iron grip. “Did you kill the snake?”

  I grinned. “Don’t worry. It won’t be back.” However, my smile faded when I realized I had no idea what Snake would demand of me.

  With Shuai in custody and the boy safe under the soldiers’ protection, Gongsun demanded answers. “Start from the beginning.”

  “I’ll gladly answer all your questions, Magistrate, but only in confidence.”

  “Agreed.”

  Lun helped me to the tower on Gongsun’s instructions. “Thank you, Tangren Ao,” he whispered in my ear.

  “No need, Lun. She likes you. All you needed was a little push.” I was glad the candy-rabbit brought them together, even though things had turned out much differently than I expected.

  “I meant the water dragon.”

  I pretended not to know what he was talking about. “You have a vivid imagination, lad.”

  Lun left with a crooked smile.

  I couldn’t lie to Magistrate Gongsun. I couldn’t prove the scholar’s guilt unless he understood how Shuai’s magic and mine worked. I sat on the steps of the pagoda and recounted the night’s events, and for the first time, spoke frankly about my power. As I revealed my secret, the burden of years fell away. Despite myself, my eyes brimmed with unshed tears.

  At the end of it, Gongsun stroked his beard. “I believe you, though few others will.”

  “No one else must know.”

  “I agree. However, I still intend to bring Shuai up on charges of sorcery and arson. The boy’s testimony will seal his fate, and I will crush him with the full force of the law.”

  Not what I wanted to hear, being a sorcerer myself, but nonetheless I bowed. “I, your insignificant servant, thank you.”

  “You have a strange and useful talent that ought not go to waste, Tangren Ao,” Gongsun said. “Will you work for me? I will pay you well for it.”

  “And give up this sweet calling? The life of a Tangren is all I know.”

  “I am not asking you to abandon your trade. Stay in Chengdu. Learn the city. Help us rebuild. I only ask that when I have need of you, you answer my summons. What say you?”

  He surely knew how my magic could advance his career. For good or for ill, my fate was now entwined with his, so long as he demanded it. But what choice did I have? You should never anger a man who could sentence you to death. I felt as helpless as a rat caught in the coils of a—

  “Your animal sign wouldn’t happen to be Snake, would it?” I asked.

  “Indeed,” Gongsun replied. “How did you know?”

  About the Author

  Tony Pi was born in Taiwan but grew up in Canada. A Ph.D. in Linguistics, he currently works as an administrator at the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto. A finalist in 2009 for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, his work also appears in magazines such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show, and On Spec, as well as numerous anthologies, including The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, The Dragon and the Stars, When the Hero Comes Home, and Tesseracts 15.

  Alone with Gandhari

  Gord Sellar

  And the wailing chief of the cowherds fled, forlorn and spent,

  Speeding on his rapid chariot to the royal city went,

  Came inside the city portals, came within the palace gate,

  Struck his forehead in his anguish and bewailed his luckless fate.

  —from The Mahabharata, trans. Romesh C. Dutt (1898)

  She was out there, serene in the mists, waiting for him, and Ron was coming to her. With the whole of his mind, he willed himself to see her: her immense walnut eyes, slightly alien; her long, regal nose with its flaring nostils; her long, elegant legs.

  And then, suddenly, there she was in all her natural glory: no genetic engineering or hormonal tinkering had been performed upon her, and as such, she was a precious rarity. A creature of such loveliness, a sight for bruised and red-veined eyes. She eyed him calmly as he hurried toward her across the field of endless green and softly swaying daisies, under a sky so blue it would have made you weep if only it were real.

  A memory of Kenny stirred—that poor, sad, dead glob of pudge he’d once been, that Ron had murdered in an empty field one night near Fort Worth with four Brother Ronalds. The ghost of a dead lardass grasping at his spirit’s throat, trying to haul itself back up through the greasy lips of oblivion.

  Ron ignored it. The remnant artifacts of Kenny Jameson’s pathetic life—an army-green trash bag full of oversized clothes and whimpering regrets—had been left to rot in a shallow hole in the ground behind a shopping mall. With Guru Deepak’s help, he’d long ago learned how to deal with Kenny’s ego, the remnants of the man Ron had been before his rescue. He slowed his pace as he approached Gandhari, savoring the scratchy caresses of the high blue grass against his naked legs.

  When he reached her side, he patted her twice upon the hip, with all the gentleness of a tender lover. “Namasté, Gandhari. Now, look at me,” he said with a smile. “Look at my body.” He glanced down at his own taut gut, the thin threads of wasted muscles beneath his somehow-clean skin. He had become somehow translucent, and could see the his own knobby, badly-carved kneecaps, the weary veins in his legs, the clutching bones of his ribcage, and even the curve of his pelvic bones through his patchily tanned, hairless hide.

  Gandhari turned her head, lazily surveying his physique. She belched, and a heavenly draught bathed his face. He was suddenly moved by his passion for her, great Gandhari, gods-kissed blindfolded mother of a hundred sons from the Great Book, who had long ago attained her true and perfect form. He touched his lips to her forehead, between her eyes, and in response, she lovingly swished her tail over her back, an ancient gesture that meant nothing but pure bovinity in this world where flies buzzed no more.

  Heart swooning, he made his way to her rear, and as he did so, she steadied herself, bracing. Gentl
y, and with the greatest of reverence, he stuck a hand into her, and then another. He pried her open, drew a deep breath, and slid headfirst into the peace of the divine mother-cow’s womb.

  Within her, there were others. The sounds of breathing and mumbled prayers and mantras. And Guru Deepak, preaching off in the distance, his voice muffled but undeniably musical.

  Ron ignored the others. He relaxed, breathing mother Gandhari’s life-giving uterine fluids into his lungs, leaning back against the soft, warm walls of her womb. He was alone with Gandhari, within her. He was home, again. Nothing else mattered.

  Then she spoke to him. Close by, tender yet clear, it was her womb-voice speaking to him alone, and he dreamed the most loveliest visions: of broken buildings, smoke and flames, and a endless, rising wave of liberation sweeping the earth entire.

  “Listen, Kenny,” Mr. Paul said to him one day, in the staff room during his lunch break. “I’m gonna have to let you go.”

  “Why?” Envelopes with little plastic windows filled Kenny’s mind. Bills inside them, and sternly worded final notifications. Without Prejudice.

  “You really wanna know?”

  “Uh . . . yeah?”

  “Because you’re a fat fuckin’ pig, Kenny,” his boss said. “People don’t wanna see you servin’ their french fries and deep-fried, greasy chicken, Kenny. It reminds them of why they shouldn’t be eating it in the first place. It’s bad for our image.”

  Kenny wanted to shout, to punch Mr. Paul in the stomach, to tell him to go screw himself, shove the job up his ass sideways. He knew his rights! He didn’t have to take this! He wanted to chuck his soda onto Mr. Paul’s shirtfront and tell him to ram his shitty job up his skinny little ass. But he just retreated inside himself, and began thinking again about how to check out of hotel butterball.

  Pills, Kenny decided, but he lowered his head, and just mumbled his response.

  “What?” Mr. Paul sounded defensive, as if he expected a lawsuit or an outburst or something. But Kenny wasn’t going to sue. He’d grown accustomed to maltreatment. That was just how fat people lived: obesity was the new leprosy. People even avoided your touch, like it was catching or something.

  “Should I finish out my shift?” he asked again, louder. It was a bad time to be out of a job, with talk of another war in the air. Though at least he was too fat to be drafted. They’d never send him to Venezuela, let alone North Korea.

  “Nah, just go on home,” he said, stealing one of Kenny’s fries and shoving it into his mouth. “We’ll mail your last paycheck to you.”

  Kenny nodded, defeated, and turned to leave. Pills.

  “And Kenny . . . don’t come back here again till you lose a couple of belt notches, you hear me?” Mr. Paul said, half-smirking.

  Kenny never did go back there, though it’d be the first place Ron would attack, a few months later.

  Meditations always ended, but today, they faded out too soon, and Ron found himself back in the claustrophobic hell of a media helmet that stank and was stuffy with desert heat. No matter how necessary the return to the world was, it always deadened him a little to leave behind the soft electromagnetic massage of the helmet and his brief audience with ultimate reality.

  He removed the helmet carefully, wrapping it again in an old patchwork quilt, and rose to stow it for the day. All around him, other Ronalds were doing the same thing. There were so many of them: Mexican, black, gringo like himself, female and male alike. Some were wrapping their helmets, and others, that task completed, were sleepily ruffling their dyed-scarlet afros, slipping into their grungy yellow jumpsuits.

  Guru Deepak, shirtless in his golden dhoti, stood beside the storage shelving units in the back of the decrepit U-Haul trailer behind one of the campers. He smiled toothily and mouthed encouragements to them as they stowed the VR gear safely away. To Ron, he said, “Mother Gandhari has blessed you specially,” and set his broad hand on Ron’s shoulder.

  Ron didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t spoken to Guru Deepak in days. Not out of any animosity: it was just one of his silence kicks, the sort of habit Deepak indeed praised and tended not to interrupt.

  “Why?” Ron asked, after a moment’s dazed thought.

  “Later,” Deepak said with a small shrug of his powerful shoulders, and showed him his beautiful white teeth through a grin. They were perfectly straight, a show of dental perfection that could only be divine in nature.

  Breakfast always followed meditations, so Ron made his way to the kitchen. A big vat of greenish dhal was bubbling in a cookpot on the ground, and a huge tray of breads—naan, loaves, buns—sat together in a big assortment. Bean soup again, he moaned inwardly. But immediately, he caught himself, seized his own disappointment, and pinned it to the wall of his mind as one might a live frog for dissection. He jabbed his resentment with harshness he’d once reserved for lily-livered politicians and hardened criminals.

  Bless Gandhari, his craving for meat hadn’t returned. His self-control was always greater after a few hours in Her womb. A few minutes later, a bowl of dhal and a few hunks of bread in his possession, he sat down in his usual place, among usual faces. “Namasté, Ronald,” they all greeted him in something too jumbled to be called unison.

  “Namasté, Ronalds,” he said. “What’s up?”

  Ron had meant nothing by it, but it seemed to him that, unlike most days, something was indeed up. They regarded him with careful, awkward eyes, blinking silent and waiting for someone to spill the proverbial beans.

  Finally, the Mexican Ronald spoke up and said, with his familiar, heavy accent: “Guru say something t’you, don’t he?”

  “How’d all y’all know about that?”

  “In Gandhari’s womb,” the bony, flat-chested Ronald chick whispered, “I heard something. You know how it is.”

  Ron did. Visions and whispers sometimes came. Prophecies, gleanings of Deepak’s wisdom. Burning visions of the future.

  “Last time I had a vision like this one . . . ” she said, leaning forward. “Well, there was a Mac Attack coming up soon, and that Ronald, Gandhari said the same words to . . . ” She glanced down into her bowl of dhal, dipping a chunk of whole-wheat bread into the slop, and chewed noisily, as if she had no intention of finishing the sentence.

  Ron kept his eyes on her as he expertly tore a piece of bread off and used it to spoon up some dhal without looking into the bowl. When she was about to dip her naan into her dhal again, he hissed, “What?”

  “Listen,” she said. “If you’re lucky, you’ll be drinking mother Gandhari’s pure milk today. In heaven,” she added, as if the euphemism hadn’t been clear enough, and dropped the bread into her dhal. Her eyes softened a little, the tattooed-red tip of her nose wiggling as she sniffed, and with a lowered voice she added, “If you want, we can go out behind the storage sheds and I’ll give you a . . . you know.” She jerked a grubby fist up and down suggestively, one gaunt cheek propping outward by her tongue as she gave him a ghastly wink. “Just in case. Nothing more, though. I don’t wanna get pregnant before It happens. He feeds on childrens’ minds; they make Him stronger,” she droned, intoning the familiar mantra that Ronalds chanted to fend off carnal temptation. “But I’ll get you off, one last time before . . . ”

  “No thanks,” Ron said, and filled his mouth with hot, flavorless green bean mush. It wasn’t much of an act of will: she wasn’t his type, her breath stank, she was missing half her teeth, and anyway, he didn’t believe he was going to be a martyr. He’d done nothing to distinguish himself or earn such an honor. And even if Gandhari had chosen him to lead a mission, it didn’t mean he was going to die.

  “Are you sure?” she said and licked her bright-red lips, her eyes slightly narrowed. He realized that she wasn’t being generous: she really wanted to do it. He wondered how many other martyrs she’d led off the path, the same day they were supposed to drink straight from Gandhari’s udder, and sent them spiraling back into the samsaric rut of reincarnation and flesh-addiction.


  Who hungers for flesh of one kind, hungers for all, went Guru Deepak’s motto.

  Was it jealousy, that Mother Gandhari always chose men to lead the Mac Attacks? Or some vestigal human instinct, half-dessicated lust? He imagined the Ronalds he’d admired: those he’d seen shot to death in the parking lots of ghastly eateries, and those whose bodies had been charred by fires or clapped in irons and shipped to reprogramming facilities, their animal bodies trapped and ensouled once again by the System. He imagined himself out behind the storage sheds, or huddled in the cab of a truck, or somewhere behind a clump of bushes, with her rancid breath wafting hot across his skin. Thick, acidic bile scoured its way up his throat.

  Stop, he commanded himself, and he stepped back from all of these overwhelming emotions that had welled up within. From a slight mental distance, his envy and desire looked pathetic. His own disgust peered back at him impishly. They had fused, and sang in one voice. But when he looked deeper, he found sorrow and disdain, braided into one single wormlike creature and wriggling within his mind. He looked upon his flat-chested Ronald Sister and abjured that strange sadness-and-dislike emotion, struggling for compassion.

  “No thank you,” he said with a smile, and admonished her with a mantra of his own. “After a Single Sip, Only a Big Gulp Can Follow.”

  “Yes, true,” she said, nodding, and attacked her food. She tried to look relieved, but refused to meet his gaze again the whole meal. That didn’t surprise him; what surprised him was that none of the other Ronalds caught his eye again, either.

  The first time he had seen a Mac Attack, he’d almost pissed in his size-52 pants. He’d been standing in the usual burger joint when suddenly they’d burst in, yelling through the speakers mounted on the fronts of their gas-masks.

  “Killers! Murderers!” they’d screamed, those freaks. They had looked like Holocaust victims done up in soiled yellow clown costumes, red grins tattooed onto their faces, red curly wigs slapped onto their bald crowns. “You’re filthy! You’re insane!” Even in his panic, he’d thought, Look who’s talking. He remembered that, the way one remembers being a heartbroken teenager, or remembers the panic of holding a steering wheel for the first time: the memory of another person altogether, was what it now felt like to Ron.