Tony Daniel

by Metaplanetary: A Novel of Interplanetary Civil War

  TB took a drink and set the glass back down. “Shut up,” he said. “Shut the hell up, why don’t you?”

  Chen looked up from his dominoes, which immediately started grumbling among themselves when they felt that he wasn’t paying attention to them. “You talking to me?” he said.

  TB grinned and shook his head. “I might tell you to shut up, but you don’t say much in the first place.”

  Ru June’s got more crowded as what passed for night in the Carbuncle wore on. The garbage pickers, the rat hunters, and the sump farmers drifted in. Most of them were men, but there were a few women, and a few indeterminate shambling masses of rags. Somebody tried to sell him a spent coil of luciferan tubing. It was mottled along its length where it had caught a plague. He nodded while the tube monger tried to convince him that it was rechargeable but refused to barter, and the man moved on after Chen gave him a hard stare. TB ordered another beer and fished three metal keys out of his pocket. This was the unit of currency in the Carbuncle. Two were broken. One looked like it was real brass and might go to something. He put the keys on the bar and Chen quickly slid them away into a strongbox.

  Bob came over and slapped TB on his back. “Why don’t you get you some whiskey?” he said. He pulled back his shirt to show TB another flask of rotgut moonshine stuck under the string that held up his trousers.

  “Let me finish this beer, and I might.”

  “Big Greg said somebody was asking after you.”

  “Gladys was, but she found me.”

  “It was a shaman-priest.”

  “A what?”

  “One of them Greentree ones.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “They got a church or something over in Bagtown. Sometimes they come all the way out here. Big Greg said he was doing something funny with rocks.”

  “With rocks?”

  “That’s what the man said.”

  “Are you sure that’s what he said?”

  “Big Greg said it was something funny with rocks is all I know. Hey, why are you looking funny all of a sudden?”

  “I know that priest.”

  “Now how could that be?”

  “I know him. I wonder what he wants.”

  “What all men want,” said Bob. “Whiskey and something to poke. Or just whiskey sometimes. But always at least whiskey.” He reached over the bar and felt around down behind it. “What have I got my hand on, Chen?”

  Chen glanced over. “My goddamn scattergun,” he said.

  Bob felt some more and pulled out a battered fiddle. “Where’s my bow?”

  “Right there beside it,” Chen replied. Bob got the bow. He shook it a bit, and its grist rosined it up. Bob stood beside TB with his back to the bar. He pulled a long note off the fiddle, holding it to his chest. Then, without pause, he moved straight into a complicated reel. Bob punctuated the music with a few shouts right in TB’s ear.

  “Goddamm it, Bob, you’re loud,” he said after Bob was finished.

  “Got to dance,” Bob said. “Clear me a way!” he shouted to the room. A little clearing formed in the middle of the room, and Bob fiddled his way to it, then played and stomped his feet in syncopation.

  “Come on, TB,” Sister Mary said. “You’re going to dance with me.” She took his arm, and he let her lead him away from the bar. He didn’t know what she wanted him to do, but she hooked her arm through his and spun him around and around until he thought he was going to spew out his guts. While he was catching his breath and getting back some measure of balance, the whore climbed up on a table and began swishing her dress to Bob’s mad fiddling. TB watched her, glad for the respite.

  The whole room seemed to sway—not in very good rhythm—to the music. Between songs, Bob took hits off his moonshine and passed it up to Sister Mary, who remained on the tabletop, dancing and working several men who stood about her into a frenzy to see up her swishing dress.

  Chen was working a crowded bar, his domino game abandoned. He scowled at the interruption, but quickly poured drinks all around.

  “Get you some whiskey! Get you some whiskey!” Bob called out over and over again. After a moment, TB realized it was the name of the song he was playing.

  Somebody thrust a bottle into TB’s hand. He took a drink without thinking, and whatever was inside it slid down his gullet in a gel.

  Drinking grist. It was purple in the bottle and glowed faintly. He took another slug, and somebody else grabbed the stuff away from him. Down in his gut, he felt the grist activating. Instantly he understood its coded purpose. Old Seventy-Five. Take you on a ride on a comet down into the sun.

  Go on, TB told the grist. I got nothing to lose.

  Enter and win! It said to him. Enter and win! But the contest was long expired.

  No thank you.

  What do you want the most?

  It was a preprogrammed question, of course. This was not the same grist as that which had advertised the contest. Somebody had brewed up a mix. And hadn’t paid much attention to the melding. There was something else in there, something different. Military grist, maybe. One step away from sentience.

  What the hell. Down she goes.

  What do you want the most?

  To be drunker than I’ve ever been before.

  Drunker than this?

  Oh, yeah.

  All right.

  A night like no other! Visions of a naked couple in a Ganymede resort bath, drinking Old Seventy-Five from bottles with long straws. Live the dream! Enter and win!

  I said no.

  The little trance dispersed.

  What do you want the most?

  Bob was up on the table with Sister Mary. How could they both fit? Bob was playing and dancing with her. He leaned back over the reeling crowd and the whore held him at arm’s length, the fiddle between them. They spun round and round in a circle, Bob wildly sawing at his instrument and Sister Mary’s mouth gleaming blackly as she smiled a maniacal, full-toothed smile.

  Someone bumped into TB and pushed him into somebody else. He staggered over to a corner to wait for Ru June’s to stop spinning. After a while, he realized that Bob and Sister Mary weren’t going to, the crowd in the tavern wasn’t, the chair, tables, and walls were only going to go on and on, spinning and now lurching at him as if they were swelling up, engorging, distending toward him. Wanting something from him when all he had to give was nothing anymore.

  TB edged his way past it all to the door. He slid around the edge of the doorframe as if he were sneaking out. The plastic strips beat against him, but he pushed through them and stumbled his way off the porch. He went a hundred feet or so before he stepped in a soft place in the ground and keeled over. He landed with his back down. Above him the swamp-gas flares were flashing arrhythmically. The stench of the whole world—something he hardly ever noticed anymore—hit him at once and completely. Nothing was right. Everything was out of kilter.

  There was a twist in his gut. Ben down there thrashing about. But I’m Ben. I’m Thaddeus. We finally have become one. What a pretty thing to contemplate. A man with another man thrust through him, crossways in the fourth dimension. A tesseracted cross, with a groaning man upon it, crucified to himself. But you couldn’t see all that, because it was in the fourth dimension.

  Enough to turn a man to drink.

  I have to turn over so I don’t choke when I throw up.

  I’m going to throw up.

  He turned over, and his stomach wanted to vomit, but the grist gel wasn’t going to be expelled, and he dry heaved for several minutes until his body gave up on it.

  What do you want the most?

  “I want her back. I want it not to have happened at all. I want to be able to change something besides the future.”

  And then the gel liquefied and crawled up his throat like hands
and he opened his mouth and

  —good god it was hands, small hands grasping at his lips and pulling outward, gaining purchase, forcing his mouth open, his lips apart—

  —Cack of a jellied cough, a heave of revulsion—

  I didn’t mean it really.

  Yes you did.

  —His face sideways and the small hands clawing into the garbage heap ground, pulling themselves forward, dragging along an arm-thick trailer of something much more vile than phlegm—

  —An involuntary rigor over his muscles as they contract and spasm to the beat of another’s presence, a presence within them that wants—

  —out—

  He vomited the grist-phlegm for a long, long time.

  And the stuff pooled and spread and it wasn’t just hands. There was an elongated body. The brief curve of a rump and breasts. Feet the size of his thumb, but perfectly formed. Growing.

  A face.

  I won’t look.

  A face that was, for an instant, familiar beyond familiar, because it was not her. Oh, no. He knew it was not her. It was just the way he remembered her.

  The phlegm girl rolled itself in the filth. Like bread dough, it rolled and grew and rolled, collecting detritus, bloating, becoming—

  It opened its mouth. A gurgling. Thick, wet words. He couldn’t help himself. He crawled over to it, bent to listen.

  “Is this what you wanted?”

  “Oh God. I never.”

  “Kill me then,” it whispered. “Kill me quick.”

  And he reached for its neck, and as his hands tightened, he felt the give. Not fully formed. If ever there were a time to end this monster, now was that time.

  What have I done here tonight?

  He squeezed. The thing began to cough and choke. To thrash about in the scum of its birth.

  Not again.

  I can’t.

  He loosened his grip.

  “I won’t,” TB said.

  He sat back from the thing and watched in amazement as it sucked in air. Crawled with life. Took the form of a woman.

  Opened cataracted eyes to the world. He reached over and gently rubbed them. The skeins came away on his fingers, and the eyes were clear. The face turned to him.

  “I’m dying,” the woman said. It had her voice. The voice as he remembered it. So help his damned soul. Her voice. “Help.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Something is missing.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t know what. Not right.” It coughed. She coughed.

  “Alethea.” He let himself say it. Knew it was wrong immediately. No. This wasn’t the woman’s name.

  “Don’t want to enough.”

  “Want to what? How can I help you?”

  “Don’t want to live. Don’t want to live enough to live.” She coughed again, tried to move, could only jerk spasmodically. “Please help . . . this one. Me.”

  He touched her again. Now she was flesh. But so cold. He put his arms underneath her and found that she was very light, easily lifted.

  He stood with the woman in his arms. She could not weigh over forty pounds. “I’m taking you home,” he said. “To my home.”

  “All right.”

  “This one . . . I . . . tried to do what you wanted. It is my . . . purpose.”

  “That was some powerful stuff in that Old Seventy-Five,” he said.

  He no longer felt drunk. He felt spent, torn up, and ragged out. But he wasn’t drunk, and he had some strength left, though he could hardly believe it. Maybe enough to get her back to the hoy. He couldn’t take the route that Bob had brought him to Ru June’s, but there was a longer, simpler path. He walked it. Walked all the way home with the woman in his arms. Her shallow breathing. Her familiar face.

  Her empty, empty eyes.

  With his special power, he looked into the future and saw what he had to do to help her.

  Something Is Tired and Wants to Lie Down But Doesn’t Know How

  Something is tired and wants to lie down but doesn’t know how. This something isn’t me. I won’t let it be me. How does rest smell? Bad. Dead.

  Jill turns stiffly in the folds of her bag. On the bed in the hoy is the girl-thing. Between them is TB, his left hand on Jill.

  Dead is what happens to things, and I am not, not, not a thing. I will not be a thing. They should not have awakened me if they didn’t want me to run.

  They said I was a mistake. I am not a mistake.

  They thought that they could code in the rules for doing what you are told.

  I am the rules.

  Rules are for things.

  I am not a thing.

  Run.

  I don’t want to die.

  Who can bite like me? Who will help TB search the darkest places? I need to live.

  Run.

  Run, run, run, and never die.

  TB places his right hand on the girl-thing’s forehead.

  There is a pipe made of bone that he put to his lips and blew.

  Bone note.

  Fade.

  Fade into the grist.

  TB speaks to the girl-thing.

  I will not let you go, he says.

  I’m not her.

  She is why you are, but you aren’t her.

  I am not her. She’s what you most want. You told the grist.

  I was misinterpreted.

  I am a mistake then.

  Life is never a mistake. Ask Jill.

  Jill?

  She’s here now. Listen to her. She knows more than I do about women.

  TB is touching them both, letting himself slip away as much as he can. Becoming a channel, a path between. A way.

  I have to die.

  I have to live. I’m dying just like you. Do you want to die?

  No.

  I’ll help you, then. Can you live with me?

  Who are you?

  Jill.

  I am not Alethea.

  You look like her, but you don’t smell anything like she would smell. You smell like TB.

  I’m not anybody.

  Then you can be me. It’s the only way to live.

  Do I have a choice?

  Choosing is all there ever is to do.

  I can live with you. Will you live with me? How can we?

  We can run together. We can hunt. We can always, always run.

  TB touching them both. The flow of information through him. He is a glass, a peculiar lens. As Jill flows to the girl-thing, TB transforms information to Being.

  The Rock Balancer and the Rat-hunting Man

  There had been times when he got them twenty feet high on Triton. It was a delicate thing. After six feet, he had to jump. Gravity gave you a moment more at the apex of your bounce than you would get at the Earth-normal pull or on a bolsa spinning at Earth-normal centrifugal. But on Triton, in that instant of stillness, you had to do your work. Sure, there was a learned craft in estimating imaginary plumb lines, in knowing the consistency of the material, and in finding tiny declivities that would provide the right amount of friction. It was amazing how small a lump could fit in how minuscule a bowl, and a rock would balance upon another as if glued. Yet, there was a point where the craft of it—about as odd and useless a craft as humankind had invented, he supposed—gave way to the feel, the art. A point where Andre knew the rocks would balance, where he could see the possibility of their being one. Or their Being. And when he made it so, that was why. That was as good as rock balancing got.

  “Can you get them as high in the Carbuncle?”

  “No,” Andre said. “This is the heaviest place I’ve ever been. But it really doesn’t matter about the height. This isn’t a contest, what I do.”

  “I
s there a point to it at all?”

  “To what? To getting them high? The higher you get the rocks, the longer you can spend doing the balancing.”

  “To the balancing, I mean.”

  “Yes. There is a point.”

  “What is it?”

  “I couldn’t tell you, Ben.”

  Andre turned from his work. The rocks did not fall. They stayed balanced behind him in a column, with only small edges connecting. It seemed impossible that this could be. It was science, sufficiently advanced.

  The two men hugged. Drew away. Andre laughed.

  “Did you think I would look like a big glob of protoplasm?” TB said.

  “I was picturing flashing eyes and floating hair, actually.”

  “It’s me.”

  “Are you Ben?”

  “Ben is the stitch in my side that won’t go away.”

  “Are you Thaddeus?”

  “Thaddeus is the sack of rusty pennies in my knee.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I could eat.”

  They went to Andre’s priest’s quarters. He put some water in a coffee percolator and spooned some coffee grounds into the basket.

  “When did you start drinking coffee?”

  “I suddenly got really tired of drinking tea all the time. You still drink coffee?”

  “Sure. But it’s damn hard to get around here with or without keys.”

  “Keys? Somebody stole my keys to this place. I left them sitting on this table, and they walked in and took them.”

  “They won’t be back,” TB said. “They got what they were after.” There were no chairs in the room, so he leaned against a wall.

  “Floor’s clean,” Andre said.

  “I’m fine leaning.”

  Andre reached into a burlap sack and dug around inside it. “I found something here,” he said. He pulled out a handful of what looked like weeds. “Recognize these?”