by Annie Bellet
She’s the one who had underestimated him. Despair floods through her and there’s nothing to hold it back.
Ruth can hear the man stagger up off the floor. She wills herself to turn over, to move, to reach for the gun. She crawls. One foot, another foot. She seems to be moving through molasses because she’s so weak. She can feel every one of her forty-nine years. She feels every sharp stab of pain in her shoulder.
She reaches the gun, grabs it, and sits up against the wall, pointing it back into the center of the room.
The man has gotten out of Carrie’s ineffective knots. He’s now holding Carrie, blind in one eye, shielding his body with hers. He holds a scalpel against her throat. He’s already broken the skin and a thin stream of blood flows down her neck.
He backs towards the bedroom door, dragging Carrie with him. Ruth knows that if he gets to the bedroom door and disappears around the corner, she’ll never be able to catch him. Her legs are simply useless.
Carrie sees Ruth’s gun and screams. “I don’t want to die! Oh God. Oh God.”
“I’ll let her go once I’m safe,” he says, keeping his head hidden behind hers.
Ruth’s hands are shaking as she holds the gun. Through the waves of nausea and the pounding of her pulse in her ears, she struggles to think through what will happen next. The police are on their way and will probably be here in five minutes. Isn’t it likely that he’ll let her go as soon as possible to give himself some extra time to escape?
The man backs up another two steps; Carrie is no longer kicking or struggling, but trying to find purchase on the smooth floor in her stockinged feet, trying to cooperate with him. But she can’t stop crying.
Mom, don’t shoot! Please don’t shoot!
Or is it more likely that once the man has left the room, he will slit Carrie’s throat and cut out her implant? He knows there’s a recording of him inside, and he can’t afford to leave that behind.
Ruth’s hands are shaking too much. She wants to curse at herself. She cannot get a clear shot at the man with Carrie in front of him. She cannot.
Ruth wants to evaluate the chances rationally, to make a decision, but regret and grief and rage, hidden and held down by the Regulator until they could be endured, rise now all the sharper, kept fresh by the effort at forgetting. The universe has shrunken down to the wavering spot at the end of the barrel of the gun: a young woman, a killer, and time slipping irrevocably away.
She has nothing to turn to, to trust, to lean on, but herself, her angry, frightened, trembling self. She is naked and alone, as she has always known she is, as we all are.
The man is almost at the door. Carrie’s cries are now incoherent sobs.
It has always been the regular state of things. There is no clarity, no relief. At the end of all rationality there is simply the need to decide and the faith to live through, to endure.
Ruth’s first shot slams into Carrie’s thigh. The bullet plunges through skin, muscle, and fat, and exits out the back, shattering the man’s knee.
The man screams and drops the scalpel. Carrie falls, a spray of blood blossoming from her wounded leg.
Ruth’s second shot catches the man in the chest. He collapses to the floor.
Mom, Mom!
She drops the gun and crawls over to Carrie, cradling her and tending to her wound. She’s crying, but she’ll be fine.
A deep pain floods through her like forgiveness, like hard rain after a long drought. She does not know if she will be granted relief, but she experiences this moment fully, and she’s thankful.
“It’s okay,” she says, stroking Carrie as she lies in her lap. “It’s okay.”
• • • •
[Author’s Note: the EchoSense technology described in this story is a loose and liberal extrapolation of the principles behind the technology described in Qifan Pu et. al., “Whole-Home Gesture Recognition Using Wireless Signals,” The 19th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (Mobicom’13) (available at http://wisee.cs.washington.edu/wisee_paper.pdf). There is no intent to suggest that the technology described in the paper resembles the fictional one portrayed here.]
* * *
Ken Liu (http://kenliu.name) is an author and translator of speculative fiction, as well as a lawyer and programmer. A winner of the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards, he has been published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, and Strange Horizons, among other places. He also translated the Hugo-winning novel, The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin, which is the first translated novel to win that award.
Ken’s debut novel, The Grace of Kings, the first in a silkpunk epic fantasy series, was published by Saga Press in April 2015. Saga will also publish a collection of his short stories, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories, in March 2016. He lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.
Grand Jeté (The Great Leap)
By Rachel Swirsky
ACT I: Mara
Tombé
(Fall)
As dawn approached, the snow outside Mara’s window slowed, spiky white stars melting into streaks on the pane. Her abba stood in the doorway, unaware that she was already awake. Mara watched his silhouette in the gloom. Shadows hung in the folds of his jowls where he’d shaved his beard in solidarity after she’d lost her hair. Although it had been months, his face still looked pink and plucked.
Some nights, Mara woke four or five times to find him watching from the doorway. She didn’t want him to know how poorly she slept and so she pretended to be dreaming until he eventually departed.
This morning, he didn’t leave. He stepped into the room. “Marale,” he said softly. His fingers worried the edges of the green apron that he wore in his workshop. A layer of sawdust obscured older scorch marks and grease stains. “Mara, please wake up. I’ve made you a gift.”
Mara tried to sit. Her stomach reeled. Abba rushed to her bedside. “I’m fine,” she said, pushing him away as she waited for the pain to recede.
He drew back, hands disappearing into his apron pockets. The corners of his mouth tugged down, wrinkling his face like a bulldog’s. He was a big man with broad shoulders and disproportionately large hands. Everything he did looked comical when wrought on such a large scale. When he felt jovial, he played into the foolishness with broad, dramatic gestures that would have made an actor proud. In sadness, his gestures became reticent, hesitating, miniature.
“Are you cold?” he asked.
In deep winter, their house was always cold. Icy wind curled through cracks in the insulation. Even the heater that abba had installed at the foot of Mara’s bed couldn’t keep her from dreaming of snow.
Abba pulled a lace shawl that had once belonged to Mara’s ima from the back of her little wooden chair. He draped it across her shoulders. Fringe covered her ragged fingernails.
As Mara rose from her bed, he tried to help with her crutches, but Mara fended him off. He gave her a worried look. “The gift is in my workshop,” he said. With a concerned backward glance, he moved ahead, allowing her the privacy to make her own way.
Their white German Shepherd, Abel, met Mara as she shifted her weight onto her crutches. She paused to let him nuzzle her hand, tongue rough against her knuckles. At thirteen, all his other senses were fading, and so he tasted everything he could. He walked by her side until they reached the stairs, and then followed her down, tail thumping against the railing with every step.
The door to abba’s workshop was painted red and stenciled with white flowers that Mara had helped ima paint when she was five. Inside, half-finished apparatuses sprawled across workbenches covered in sawdust and disassembled electronics. Hanging from the ceiling, a marionette stared blankly at Mara and Abel as they passed, the glint on its pupils moving back and forth as its strings swayed. A mechanical hand sprang to life, its motion sensor triggered by Abel’s tail. Abel whuffed at its palm and then hid behind Mara. The thing’s fingers grasped at Mara’s sleeve, le
aving an impression of dusty, concentric whorls.
Abba stood at the back of the workshop, next to a child-sized doll that sat on a metal stool. Its limbs fell in slack, uncomfortable positions. Its face looked like the one Mara still expected to see in the mirror: a broad forehead over flushed cheeks scattered with freckles. Skin peeled away in places, revealing wire streams.
Mara moved to stand in front of the doll. It seemed even eerier, examined face to face, its expression a lifeless twin of hers. She reached out to touch its soft, brown hair. Her bald scalp tingled.
Gently, Abba took Mara’s hand and pressed her right palm against the doll’s. Apart from how thin Mara’s fingers had become over the past few months, they matched perfectly.
Abba made a triumphant noise. “The shape is right.”
Mara pulled her hand out of abba’s. She squinted at the doll’s imitation flesh. Horrifyingly, its palm shared each of the creases on hers, as if it, too, had spent twelve years dancing and reading books and learning to cook.
Abel circled the doll. He sniffed its feet and ankles and then paused at the back of its knees, whuffing as if he’d expected to smell something that wasn’t there. After completing his circuit, he collapsed on the floor, equidistant from the three human-shaped figures.
“What do you think of her?” abba asked.
Goosebumps prickled Mara’s neck. “What is she?”
Abba cradled the doll’s head in his hands. Its eyes rolled back, and the light highlighted its lashes, fair and short, just like Mara’s own. “She’s a prototype. Empty-headed. A friend of mine is working on new technology for the government—”
“A prototype?” repeated Mara. “Of what?”
“The body is simple mechanics. Anyone could build it. The technology in the mind is new. It takes pictures of the brain in motion, all three dimensions, and then creates schematics for artificial neural clusters that will function like the original biological matter—”
Mara’s head ached. Her mouth was sore and her stomach hurt and she wanted to go back to bed even if she couldn’t sleep. She eyed the doll. The wires under its skin were vivid red and blue as if they were veins and arteries connecting to viscera.
“The military will make use of the technology,” Abba continued. “They wish to recreate soldiers with advanced training. They are not ready for human tests, not yet. They are still experimenting with animals. They’ve made rats with mechanical brains that can solve mazes the original rats were trained to run. Now they are working with chimpanzees.”
Abba’s accent deepened as he continued, his gestures increasingly emphatic.
“But I am better. I can make it work in humans now, without more experiments.” Urgently, he lowered his voice. “My friend was not supposed to send me the schematics. I paid him much money, but his reason for helping is that I have promised him that when I fix the problems, I will show him the solution and he can take the credit. This technology is not for civilians. No one else will be able to do this. We are very fortunate.”
Abba touched the doll’s shoulder so lightly that only his fingertips brushed her.
“I will need you to sit for some scans so that I can make the images that will preserve you. They will be painless. I can set up when you sleep.” Quietly, he added, “She is my gift to you. She will hold you and keep you…if the worst…” His voice faded, and he swallowed twice, three times, before beginning again. “She will protect you.”
Mara’s voice came out hoarse. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You needed to see her when she was complete.”
Her throat constricted. “I wish I’d never seen her at all!”
From the cradle, Mara had been even-tempered. Now, at twelve, she shouted and cried. Abba said it was only what happened to children as they grew older, but they both knew that wasn’t why.
Neither was used to her new temper. The lash of her shout startled them both. Abba’s expression turned stricken.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“You made a new daughter!”
“No, no.” Abba held up his hands to protect himself from her accusation. “She is made for you.”
“I’m sure she’ll be a better daughter than I am,” Mara said bitterly.
She grabbed a hank of the doll’s hair. Its head tilted toward her in a parody of curiosity. She pushed it away. The thing tumbled to the floor, limbs awkwardly splayed.
Abba glanced toward the doll, but did not move to see if it was broken. “I— No, Marale— You don’t—” His face grew drawn with sudden resolution. He pulled a hammer off of one of the work benches. “Then I will smash her to pieces.”
There had been a time when, with the hammer in his hand and a determined expression on his face, he’d have looked like a smith from old legends. Now he’d lost so much weight that his skin hung loosely from his enormous frame as if he were a giant coat suspended from a hanger. Tears sprang to Mara’s eyes.
She slapped at his hands and the hammer in them. “Stop it!”
“If you want her to—”
“Stop it! Stop it!” she shouted.
Abba released the hammer. It fell against the cement with a hollow, mournful sound.
Guilt shot through her, at his confusion, at his fear. What should she do, let him destroy this thing he’d made? What should she do, let the hammer blow strike, watch herself be shattered?
Sawdust billowed where the hammer hit. Abel whined and fled the room, tail between his legs.
Softly, abba said, “I don’t know what else to give.”
Abba had always been the emotional heart of the family, even when ima was alive. His anger flared; his tears flowed; his laughter roared from his gut. Mara rested her head on his chest until his tears slowed, and then walked with him upstairs.
• • • •
The house was too small for Mara to fight with abba for long, especially during winters when they both spent every hour together in the house, Mara home-schooling via her attic space program while abba tinkered in his workshop. Even on good days, the house felt claustrophobic with two people trapped inside. Sometimes one of them would tug on a coat and ski cap and trudge across the hard-packed snow, but even the outdoors provided minimal escape. Their house sat alone at the end of a mile-long driveway that wound through bare-branched woods before reaching the lonely road that eventually led to their neighbors. Weather permitting, in winter it took an hour and a half to get the truck running and drive into town.
It was dawn by the time they had made their way upstairs, still drained from the scene in the basement. Mara went to lie down on her bed so she could try for the illusion of privacy. Through the closed door, she heard her father venting his frustration on the cabinets. Pans clanged. Drawers slammed. She thought she could hear the quiet, gulping sound of him beginning to weep again under the cacophony.
She waited until he was engrossed in his cooking and then crept out of her bedroom. She made her way down the hallway, taking each step slowly and carefully so as to minimize the clicking of her crutches.
Ima’s dance studio was the only room in the house where abba never went. It faced east; at dawn, rose- and peach-colored light shimmered across the full-length mirrors and polished hardwood. An old television hung on the southern wall, its antiquated technology jury-rigged to connect with the household AI.
Mara closed the door most of the way, enough to muffle any sound but not enough to make the telltale thump that would attract her father’s attention. She walked up to the television so that she could speak softly and still be heard by its implanted AI sensors. She’d long ago mastered the trick of enunciating clearly enough for the AI to understand her even when she was whispering. “I’d like to access a DVD of ima’s performances.”
The AI whirred. “Okay, Mara,” said its genial, masculine voice. “Which one would you like to view?”
“Giselle.”
More clicks and whirs. The television blinked on, showing the backs of several row
s of red velvet seats. Well-dressed figures navigated the aisles, careful not to wrinkle expensive suits and dresses. Before them, a curtain hid the stage from view, the house lights emphasizing its sumptuous folds.
Mara sat carefully on the floor near the ballet barre so that she would be able to use it a lever when she wanted to stand again. She crossed the crutches at her feet. On the television screen, the lights dimmed as the overture began.
Sitting alone in this place where no one else went, watching things that no one else watched, she felt as if she were somewhere safe. A mouse in its hole, a bird in its nest—a shelter built precisely for her body, neither too large nor too small.
The curtain fluttered. The overture began. Mara felt her breath flowing more easily as the tension eased from her shoulders. She could forget about abba and his weeping for a moment, just allow herself to enter the ballet.
Even as an infant, Mara had adored the rich, satiny colors on ima’s old DVDs. She watched the tragedies, but her heart belonged to the comedies. Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pineapple Poll. Ashton’s choreography of Prokofiev’s Cinderella. Madcap Coppélia in which a peasant boy lost his heart to a clockwork doll.
When Mara was small, ima would sit with her while she watched the dancers, her expression half-wistful and half-jaded. When the dancers had sketched their bows, ima would stand, shaking her head, and say, “Ballet is not a good life.”
At first, ima did not want to give Mara ballet lessons, but Mara insisted at the age of two, three, four, until ima finally gave in. During the afternoons while abba was in his workshop, Mara and ima would dance together in the studio until ima grew tired and sat with her back against the mirror, hands wrapped around her knees, watching Mara spin and spin.
After ima died, Mara had wanted to ask her father to sign her up for dance school. But she hated the melancholia that overtook him whenever they discussed ballet. Before getting sick, she’d danced on her own instead, accompanying the dancers on ima’s tapes. She didn’t dance every afternoon as she had when ima was alive. She was older; she had other things to do—books to read, study hours with the AI, lessons and play dates in attic space. She danced just enough to maintain her flexibility and retain what ima had taught her, and even sometimes managed to learn new things from watching the dancers on film.
