Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 85

by Julie Novakova

  Compare chattel slavery. We look on the buying and selling of sentient bipeds, as if they were livestock, with revulsion. Who could question that? Then think of the intense bond between a beloved master, or mistress, and a beloved servant. A revered commanding officer and devoted troops. Must this go too? The An and the Ki accept that their way of life must change. But there is a deep equality in that exchange of being, which we “democratic individualists” can’t recognize—

  Patrice thought of the Ki-Anna’s scars.

  The “deep equality” entry was almost the last.

  The journal ended abruptly, with no sense of closure.

  Lione’s incense—he’d decided the “lichen” was a kind of KiAn incense, perhaps a present from the An-he—filled his cabin with a subtle perfume. He closed the tablet, murmuring the words he knew by heart, a deep equality in that exchange of being, and decided to turn in. In his tiny bathroom, for a piercing moment it was Lione he saw in the mirror. A dark-skinned, light-eyed, serious young woman, with the aquiline bones of their North African ancestry. His other self, who had left him so far behind—

  The whole journal was a message. It called him to follow her, and he didn’t yet know where his passionate journey would end.

  When he learned that permission to visit the surface was granted, but the Ki-anna and the Interplanetary Affairs officer were coming too, he knew that the Ruling An had been forced to make this concession—and the bargaining was over. He just wished he knew why the police had insisted on escorting him. To help Patrice discover the truth? Or to prevent him?

  He didn’t meet the odd couple until they embarked together. They were all in full protective gear: skin sealed with quarantine film, under soft-shell life-support suits. The noisy shuttle bay put a damper on conversation, and the flight was no more sociable. Patrice spent it encased in an escape capsule and breathing tanked air: the police insisted on this. He saw nothing of KiAn until he was crunching across the seared rubble of their landing field.

  The landscape was dry tundra, like Martian desert color-shifted into shades of gray and green. Armed Green Belts were waiting, with a landship and all-terrain hardsuits for the visitors.

  “The An-he offered me a military escort,” said Patrice, freedom of speech restored by helmet radio. “What was wrong with that?”

  “Sorry,” grunted Bhvaaan. “Couldn’t be allowed.”

  The Ki-anna said nothing. He remembered, vividly, the way he’d felt at their meeting. There had been a connection, on her side too: he knew it. Now she was just another bulky Speranza doll, on a smaller scale than her partner. As if she’d read his thoughts, she cleared her faceplate and looked out at him, curiously. He wanted to tell her that he understood KiAn, better than she could imagine . . . but not with Bhvaaan around.

  “You’ve been keeping yourself to yourself, Messer Ferringhi.”

  “I could say the same of you two, Officer Bhvaaan.”

  “Aap. But you made friends with the An-he.”

  “The Ruling An were very willing to help me.”

  “We’ve been working in your interest too,” said the Ki-anna. She pivoted her suit to look through the windowband in the landship’s flank. “Far below this plateau, back that way, was the regional capital. Were fertile plains, rich forests, towns and fields and parklands. The ‘roof of Heaven’ was never beautiful. It’s strange, this part hardly seems much changed—”

  “Except that one dare not breathe,” she added, sadly.

  On the shore of the largest ice sheet, the Lake of Heaven, the odd couple and Patrice disembarked. The Ki-anna led the way to a great low arch of rock-embedded ice. The Green Belts had stayed in the ship.

  Everything was livid mist.

  “We’re going under An-lalhar Lake alone?”

  “The Green Belts’ll be on call. It’s not their jurisdiction down there. It’s a precious enclave where the Ki and the An are stubbornly dying together.” Bhvaaan peered at him. “It’s not our jurisdiction either, Messer Ferringhi. If we meet with violence we can protect you, but that’s after the event and it might not save your life. The people under the Lake don’t have a lot to lose and their mood is volatile. Bear that in mind.”

  “I could have had an escort they’d respect.”

  “You’re better off with us.”

  They descended the tunnel. The light never grew less; on the contrary, it grew brighter. When they emerged, the Heaven Lake was above them: a mass of blue-white radiance, indigo shadowed, shot through with rainbow refractions. It was extraordinarily beautiful. It seemed impossible that the ice had captured so much light from the poisoned smog. Far off, in the center of the glacial depression, geothermal vents made a glowing, spiderweb pattern of fire and snowy steam. Patrice checked his telltales, and eagerly began to release his helmet. The Shet dropped a gauntleted fist on his arm.

  “Don’t do it, child. Look at your rads.”

  “A moment won’t kill me. I want to feel KiAn—”

  The odd couple, hidden in their gear, seemed to look at him strangely.

  “Maybe later,” said the Ki-anna, soothingly. “It’s safer in the Grottos, where your sister was headed.”

  “How do we get there?”

  “We walk,” rumbled Bhvaaan. “No vehicles. There’s not much growing but it’s still a sacred park. Let your suit do the work; keep up your fluids.”

  “Thanks, I know how to handle a hard shell.”

  They walked in file. The desolation, the ruined beauty that had been revered by both “races,” caught at Patrice’s heart. His helmet display counted rads, paces, heart rate: counted down the meters. Thirty kilometers to the place where Lione had last been seen alive.

  “Which faction mined the Lake of Heaven parkland?”

  “To our knowledge? Nobody did, child.”

  It was a question he’d asked over and over, long ago when he thought he could get answers. Now he asked and didn’t care. He followed the Shet, the Ki-anna behind him. His pace was steady, yet the display said his body was pumping adrenalin; not from fear, he knew, but in the grip of intense excitement. He sucked on glucose and tried to calm himself.

  As the radiance above them dimmed, they reached the Grotto domain. Rugged rocky pillars seemed to hold up the roof of ice, widely spaced at first, clustering towards a center that could not be seen. There was a Ki community, surviving in rad-proofed modules. The Ki-anna went inside. Patrice and the Shet waited, in the darkening blighted landscape. She emerged after an hour or so.

  “We can’t go on without guides, and we can’t have guides until tomorrow. At the earliest. They have to think it over.”

  “They weren’t expecting us?”

  “They were. They know all about it, but they may have had fresh instructions. They’re in full communication with the castle: there’s some sophisticated kit in there. We’ll just have to wait.”

  “Do they remember Lione?” demanded Patrice. “I have transaid, I want to talk to someone.”

  “Not now. I’ll ask tomorrow.”

  “Can we sleep indoors?” asked the Shet.

  “No.”

  The Shet and the Ki-anna made camp in the ruins of the former village, using their suits to clear ground and construct a shelter. Patrice moved over to a heap of boulders where he’d noticed patches of lichen. He had fragments of Lione’s incense in the sleeve pocket of his inner, in a First Aid pouch. The police were fully occupied: furtively he opened the arm of his hardshell, and fished the pouch out. He was right, it was the same—

  Lione had stood here. The incense was not a gift, she had gathered it. She had been standing right here. His need was irresistible. He released his face-plate, stripped his gauntlets, rubbed away quarantine film.

  KiAn rushed in on him, cold and harsh in his throat, intoxicating—

  “What is that?”

  The Ki-anna was behind him. “A lichen sample,” said Patrice, caught out. “Or that’s what I’d call it at home. It was in my sister’s room, in the
An Castle. Look, they’re the same!”

  “Not quite,” said the Ki-anna. “Yours is a cultivated variety.”

  He thought she’d be angry, maybe accuse him of concealing evidence. To his astonishment she took his bared hand, and bowed over it until her cheek brushed the vulnerable inner skin of his wrist. Her touch was a huge shock, sweet and profoundly sexual. She made him dizzy.

  This can’t be happening, he thought. I’m here for Lione—

  “I don’t know your name.”

  “We don’t do that,” she whispered.

  “I felt, I can’t describe it, the moment I met you—”

  “I’d better keep this. You must get your gloves and helmet back on.”

  “But I want KiAn—”

  Gently, she let go of his hand. “You’ve had enough.”

  The shelter was a snug fit. Sealed inside, they shared rations and drank fresh water they’d brought from the Habitat. They would sleep in their suits, for warmth and security. Patrice lay down at once, to escape their questions and to be alone with his confusion. He was here for Lione, he was here to join Lione. How could he and the Ki-anna suddenly feel this way?

  “Were you getting romantic, with Patrice, over by those rocks?” asked Bhvaaan. “Sniffing his pheromones?”

  “No,” said the Ki-anna, grimly. “Something else.”

  She showed him the First Aid pouch and its contents.

  “Mighty Void!”

  “He says it was in the room Lione used, in the castle.”

  “I don’t think so! We took that cabin apart.” The Shet’s delicates unfolded from his club of a fist. He turned the clear pouch around, probing her find with sensitive tentacles. “So that’s how, so that’s how—”

  “So that’s how the cookie was crumbled,” agreed the Ki-anna.

  “What do we do, Chief? Abort this, and run away very quickly?”

  “Not without back-up. If we run, and they have heavy weaponry, we’re at their mercy. I see what it looks like, but we should show no alarm.”

  “I have had thoughts about him,” she murmured, looking at the dark outline of Patrice Ferringhi. “Don’t know why. It’s something in his eyes.”

  “Thaap’s the way it starts,” said the Shet. “Thoughts. Then wondering if anything can come of them. They say sentient bipeds are attracted to each other like . . . like brothers and sisters, long separated. Well, I’ll talk to the Greenies. And you and I had better not sleep.”

  The suit was a house the shape of her body. She sat in it, wondering about sexual pleasure: pleasure with Patrice. What would it be like? She had only one strange comparison, but that didn’t frighten her . . . What Roaaat Bhvaaan offered was far more disturbing.

  She glimpsed the abyss, and fell into oblivion.

  Patrice dreamed he was in a strolling crowd, among bronze and purple trees, with branches that swayed in the breeze. He knew where he was, he was in the KiAn Orientation, a virtual reality. But there was something sinister going on, the crowd pressed too close, the beautiful trees hid what he ought to see. Then Lione came running up and bit him.

  He yelled, and shook her off.

  She came back and bit his thigh, but now he was in the dark, cold and sore. Lione was gone, he was being hunted by fierce hungry animals—

  Suddenly he knew he was not asleep.

  He was completely naked. Where was his suit? Where was he?

  He had no idea. The air was freezing, the darkness almost complete. He stumbled towards a gleam ahead, and entered a rocky cave. There was ice underfoot, icy stalactites hanging down. A lamp burned incense-scented oil, set on the ground next to a heap of something—

  That’s a body, he thought. He went over and knelt down. It was a human body, freeze-dried. She was curled on her side, turned away from him, but he knew he’d found Lione. She was naked too.

  Why was she naked?

  He lifted the lamp and saw where flesh had been cut away, not by teeth, as in his dream, but by sharp knives. Lione had been butchered. He tried to turn her: the body moved all of a piece. Her face was recognizable, smooth and calm in death, the eyes sunken, the skin like cured leather. Was she smiling? Oh, Lione—

  But why am I naked? he thought. Who brought me here?

  The Ki entered the cave, and surrounded Patrice and his sister. They had brought more lights. One of them was carrying, reverently, a flattened spherical object, dull gray, the size of Patrice’s fist. It had a seam around the center, a beveled cap. That’s a vapor mine, he thought, shaken by an explosion of understanding. Then the An came. The Ki made no attempt to interfere with the banquet. They were here to witness. Patrice screamed. He fought the knives with his bare hands, kicked out with his bare feet. The An, outraged, kept yelling at him in scraps of English to keep still, be easy Blue, you want this, what’s wrong with you?

  The Ki-anna and the Shet had ditched their hard shells, to search the narrow passages. They arrived armed but badly outnumbered, and they couldn’t get near Patrice. “I was the Earth In Heaven!” shouted the Chief of Police. “I say that flesh is not sacred, not yours to take. Let the stranger go!”

  She held the fanatics at bay, uncertain because of her former status, until the Green Belts joined the party. Luckily Bhvaaan had summoned them, before he and the Ki-anna followed Patrice into that drugged sleep.

  Patrice’s injuries were not dangerous. As soon as he was allowed he signed himself out of medical care. He had to talk to the police again. He met the odd couple in the same bare interview room as before.

  “I’m sorry, I need to withdraw my statement. I can’t press charges.”

  If the next of kin didn’t press charges, KiAn law made it difficult for Interplanetary Affairs to prosecute. He knew that, but he had no choice.

  “I realize the tablet I found in Lione’s room was planted on me. I know her words, if some of them were genuinely hers, had been rearranged to fool me into accepting atavism. It doesn’t matter. My sister wanted to die that way. She gave herself, her body. It was a ritual sacrifice, for peace. She was my twin, I can’t explain, I have to respect her wishes.”

  “A beautiful, consensual ritual,” remarked the Shet. “Yaap. That’s what the cannibal die-hards always say. But if you scratch any of these halfway ‘respectable’ atavists, such as our Ruling An here—”

  “You find the meat-packing industry,” said the Ki-anna.

  Patrice heard the blinkered, Speranza mindset.

  “My sister was willing.”

  “I believe she was.” To his confusion, the Ki-anna reached out, took his injured hand and held his wrist, where the blood ran, to her face. The same sweet, intimate gesture as on KiAn. “So are you, a little. It’ll wear off.”

  She drew back, and placed an evidence bag, containing his First Aid pouch and the scraps of lichen, on the table.

  “In English, the common name of this herb, or lichen, would be ‘Willingness.’ It grows naturally only under the Lake of Heaven. Long ago it was known as a powerful aphrodisiac: the labwork kind has another use. It’s given to a child chosen to be the Ki-anna, which means sold to the An as living meat. It’s a refined form of cannibalism, practiced in my region. A drugged child, a willing victim, with a strong resistance to infection and trauma, is eaten alive, by degrees. If one of these children survives to adulthood, they are free, the debt is paid.

  The Ki-anna showed her teeth. “I made it, as you see; but I haven’t forgotten that scent. When I smelled your flesh, under the Lake, I knew you’d been treated for butchery—and I understood. They drugged Lione until she was delirious with joy to be eaten, and they sent her to the atavist fanatics under An-lalhar. Then they tried the same trick on you.”

  Bhvaaan tapped the casefile tablet with his delicates. “Your sister died too quickly, that was the problem.”

  “What—?”

  “We couldn’t prove it, but we knew they’d killed Lione, Messer Ferringhi. We could even show, thanks to the Chief here, who was pulling the strings, and h
ow they got the prohibited ordnance into the Grottos. Your sister fell into a trap. She had to get under the Heaven Lake and that suited the atavists just fine. It would have been a powerful message. A Speranza scientist ritually eaten, then consumed by the very air of KiAn—”

  “Controlled annihilation,” whispered Patrice. “That’s what I saw, in the cave. Something they would understand—”

  “Thap was the idea. The atavists are planning to bring back the meat factories, once their planet has an atmosphere again. Your sister was going to help them: except something didn’t work out. You were right about the tropo sampling: there’s also stringent military activity monitoring. If a mine had gone off under the Lake, we’d know. If a human-sized body had been atomized, there’d have been a spike. So we knew the ‘consummation’ hadn’t happened, and we couldn’t figure it out. We think we know the answer now: she died too quickly. She had to be vaporized alive, a dead body can’t be willing. But she wasn’t a Ki, and they hit an artery or something.”

  Patrice had gone gray in the face.

  “You going to crash out, child—?”

  “No, go on—”

  The Shet rearranged his bulk on the inadequate office chair. “The autopsy’ll tell us the details. Then you came along, Patrice. We saw a chance to get ourselves to the crime scene, and wasted Diaspora funds pushing on an open door. And you nearly died, because we drank the nice fresh water from this Habitat. Which happened to be doped—”

  “The atavists thought the willingness they’d cooked up for Lione would work on you,” explained the Ki-anna. “They’ve never heard of ‘fraternal twins.’ Ki litter-mates can be of any sex, but otherwise they are identical. You were begging to be lured to the Grottos, it was perfect, you would replace Dr Ferringhi. Luckily, you and your sister weren’t clones. You were affected, but you weren’t ready to be butchered. You fought for your life.”