by Nisi Shawl
Once I looked up from the action of one of these scenes and saw to my surprise that tears fell from Amma’s eyes. When she signalled an end to the session, I followed her to the other edge of the plateau we worked upon. As we walked she seemed oblivious to me, but reaching the drop-off she stopped and called me to her.
Her tears left starry trails on her indigo skin, shining like her hyalescent hair. “Your performance is quite moving, Shiomah,” she told me in a low, steady voice. “I am proud.” So was I, for the scene just completed had been rather difficult. Juusli was struggling with the ghosts of her dead selves as they urged her to fling herself to another death. The difficulty lay in creating the physical impression of resistance while wrestling with the air. Departing from her usual procedure, Amma had chosen to screen-animate these devils after the recording, rather than manufacture bioservs which would only be demolished during their plunge into the canyon below. I was glad to have met this challenge so well, but I didn’t think Amma cried for joy in my competence. I waited and hoped for an explanation.
Instead she asked, “If I were to assure you, Shiomah, that you would be given immortality if only you jumped over the edge of this plateau, would you do it?”
I thought of my mother, tossed high into the air, dead, no doubt, before she hit the ground. “No.” I paused, weighing my position. “Of course I would have to, if you commanded me to, wouldn’t I?”
“But you have already answered my question,” she stated, dismissing mine. “Here is another. If I asked you to throw me down there, would you?” I started to speak, but she continued. “If I did not tell you to, but asked, with no authority.”
I could not picture autocratic, arbitrary Amma with no authority, though I tried. “What would become of me, if I did?” I inquired.
My mistress laughed, all melancholy suddenly gone from her manner. “You funny thing! So selfish, so practical. Never mind. I will not ask you to kill me, for you would surely find it an annoying task.” Taking my hand, she returned with me to the others.
A later sequence was recorded on Nyglu’s estate. Before his current obsession took hold of him, Nyglu had been fascinated with the order of amphibians, as his personal appearance showed. Perhaps this is why mortals associated him with rivers, and with fresh water in general. He certainly associated himself with it. Pools, bogs, swamps, and wet places of all sorts made up the bulk of his “grounds.” When we visited he still took great pride in showing the estate to his visitors, pointing out the particular species he had reconstructed from his studies. Some were immense and ugly, others small and subtle, effacing themselves into the dark, decaying backdrop.
There were also experiments, whims come to life. My favorites were the triphibians, a sort of winged salamander. Mottled scarlet and sky blue, one came and perched briefly on my arm then skimmed away. Seeing my delight, Nyglu hatched three eggs for me, and I spent my free time feeding and observing the larvae. Soon I had tame triphibians of my own, but I had to leave them behind when we went to the moon. Nyglu promised that they would be mine again when we returned.
The dryad was packed away in her trunk, and we coptered off to meet Amma’s sky shuttle. Weyando stayed behind; his character, Jez, didn’t appear in the final scenes. As we floated away from the world, its immensity was belittled.
We spent a long time in orbit because of a hitch in the preparations for our landing. An ancient resort on the moon’s surface was to have been restored to habitability without destroying the period flavor of the setting. Some too authentic material used in the repairs had ruptured and released most of the complex’s air. The old oxygen machines below the surface had long since been dismantled, and regular flights to and from Earth had stopped decades ago, at the end of the last space craze. It was a couple of days before more air was brought up. Trouble arose, due, in part, to our long confinement on board the shuttle.
In preparing me for the profession she had chosen for me, that of acting roles in her creations, Amma had given me access to all sorts of old cubes and reels. After I used up all the sleep tapes, she even taught me to read; not pictos like mortal writing, but words composed of letters, like these. While examining some written antiquities during the delay, I learned with real shock that the Earth had once been almost literally covered with mortals.
I ran to Amma in her cabin, craved to see her, was quickly admitted. What atrocity, I demanded of my mistress, had reduced the mortal population fifty-thousand-fold? As I asked this, I actually clutched Amma’s elbow to stop her from turning away from me. She froze.
I whipped my hand away, startled at what I had just done. I had tried to use force to press my will upon a divinity.
But when she again faced me, she was smiling. Sadly. As if she had expected this to happen, while at the same time hoping that it never would. As though I had pleased and pained her both, at once. “I will answer you, Shiomah,” she said, “but first I am going to show you something. Something I ought to have shown you long ago.” She extended her left hand.
Not for the first time I noticed that the sides of her fingers and the edges of her palm were lined with numerous shining dots. “Activation of one of these circuits,” she told me, “will wipe out a selected memory in your brain. I have chosen your mother’s name.” She let this sink in, then went on.
“Activation of a second will deprive you of the use of the centers of conscious volition. And the third,” she promised, “will prevent the operation of your autonomic systems. Do you understand me?”
I nodded. “Yes, midam.”
“Now. There was no disaster, no epidemic, no mass murder of mortals. The current population, my dear, is a result of time and care and thoughtful planning.” She made gestures with her hands like a prince in a story, dispensing coins to a crowd. “Birth-control, ample food, lebensraum—the ancient fifty billion never had it so good.” I still had a lot to learn.
It was difficult after the revelation of these threats to reassume the role of Juusli, a character whose last motivation is fear. With relief I removed my pressure suit in the simulated vacuum of the closing act, the heroine succumbing to the hallucinatory call of dust sirens. It was an ambiguous ending, with Juusli unharmed, drifting away with the sirens (specially made bioservs, of course), leaving a sparkling trail of palpable looking dust.
When we returned to Earth, Amma let me age again, though more slowly than mortals are accustomed to do. She used me in other, smaller works, or in the social games she played with the other gods. Sometimes she devoted her enormous energies to my training, sometimes she seemed merely to relax and enjoy my company. Her attentions were far from constant. I would be ignored for months, a year at a time, then taken up again without, apparently, a beat skipped.
One afternoon, when I had been with her nearly fifteen years, she fancied she would make love with me. My body was that of a fourteen-year-old, an awkward, pudgy beauty, but she was attracted. How can the gods ever tire of such pleasure?
In time our desire was heightened by a burgeoning love. My adoration was natural, inevitable even. I think I had only been waiting to release it until I received some sign from her.
As to why she loved me I can only say that not even mortal passions are easily subjected to analysis. Amma’s love was fierce—and ridiculous, on the face of it. I still had pimples, at times. My nose was too long. I thought perhaps she confused me with Juusli, the first character she had created for me.
No deity questioned Amma’s absorption with me. Such fascinations were not unheard of. Sometimes the infatuated god went as far as actually regrowing the mortal undeified, merely in faithful reduplication of the beloved original.
Those foolish gods. They should have known that this would not be enough for Amma.
She contrived to have me conditioned into partial godhood while growing and then secretly disposing of the expected replacement. Immortality was given to me for as long as I can stand it, and the powers of the god machines were made mine.
The si
ns of my “mortal counterpart” were not visited upon the new Shiomah. Weyando’s eggson’s spermdaughter was again allowed into the circle of my influence. Others that I had alienated upon Amma’s instructions made me welcome in my new guise, with calls of congratulation and invitations to their estates. With all this obligatory gaiety, it was almost a year before we settled in again back on the island.
Amma became more and more attentive. She involved me in the details of her creations, seeking advice on costume and dialog for her daring depiction of a god in mortal disguise. I decided to have my rooms dismantled, as I spent nearly all my time in hers. Everything was packed away except the terminal when she came to me with her offer of marriage.
I stared at her across the wide, bare floor. She was colored all turquoise, with hair like ethereal jade. She clashed horribly with what was left of the decor.
“Well?” she asked, a little sharply. “Don’t you want to be my wife?”
“Oh yes, yes Amma,” I managed to reply. Since being deified I no longer referred to my mistress as “midam.” “I do, I’ll be so happy, I’ll make you so happy, only I am very much surprised.…” I trailed off. I came towards her, one eye on the terminal’s screen. I did love her, and it meant so much to me to please her. She kissed the top of my head and clasped me to her.
“You should be used to receiving surprises from me by now,” she said as she released me, smiling. “In time, you will grow accustomed to my ways, and come to find me quite boring, no doubt.”
I shook my locks in vigorous dissent. “Never, no, never, Amma.” I took her hands in mine and kissed each sea-colored fingertip, saying “You are so sweet, so generous, so full of precious secrets—” I came to one of the little silver circles with which she controlled her underlings.
“Oh, yes, that reminds me,” she said when I did not continue. “I almost forgot to tell you. I’m going to have those signals removed, those ones I told you about on the moon.” I met her eyes. They were dark, gravely serious in her expressive face.
“The ones you said could erase my memory or destroy my nervous system?”
She nodded. “So. Now that you’ve consented to engage yourself to me, there’s no danger of those circuits ever being engaged.” She grinned, suddenly in an impish mood, and I perceived the pun (no pun at all in mortal speech) almost at the same time as I saw the call light blink on the com screen. Pretending to be disgusted with the lowness of her humor, I managed to shove her playfully through the door before she noticed the flashing signal.
As I had expected, it was Nyglu. His warty face showed satisfaction to my trained eyes. “I have the body,” he reported, “and the other arrangements are under way.”
“Very good,” I told him. With the passage of time I had grown used to my deepening contact with Nyglu and the leverage it gave me. “Then you may count on my presence in your mudroom—” I hesitated. Amma had planned to leave for Nyglu’s estate this evening, but there was no telling when I’d be left alone there, now that we were betrothed. “Whenever I can come without Amma knowing,” I hastily amended. Nyglu looked like he wanted to protest, but to whom? Not to me. I switched off the screen and went looking for my mistress.
We were wed in a short but impressive ceremony aboard the ship Amma had been given by Weyando. I begged her to wear some form of clothing, and at last she compromised by causing her hair to cling to her nakedness, covering almost all the right places. By contrast, I was draped in fluttering, dune-colored fabrics designed to hide the tiny scars and other imperfections my body carried. True, we might have said that Amma had caused my replacement to be grown bearing these marks, but I desired to avoid explanations.
The wind sang in the rigging, our only choir. The sky, as ever in those latitudes, was a vaulted dome of blue. The child Lizore joined our hands as we pledged our love, “as long as its life continues.” After kissing one another’s eyelids, we turned to bestow our wedding gifts upon our guests, all of whom, at Amma’s insistence, were present.
As we passed among her friends and relatives, Amma made sketchy introductions to those I had not yet met. “Hayvre, Lizore’s eggmother,” she named one black, black woman who reached out to clasp my hand in one sporting two thumbs. “Elleefaw” was a tiny, shaggy, sexless looking god in spiked heels. I recognized the name as belonging to the deity of unpleasant truths.
“He makes the best monuments. We used the Hill of Glass in my last piece, Elleefaw,” she said to the short, red-furred god. “It was perfect, especially the way it opens and closes like an eye.” Elleefaw nodded his approval of this tribute, running his own sharp eye up and down my pudgy awkwardness. I felt uneasy in his presence, and I wasn’t made more comfortable by the remark he made as he walked way. “Now you’ll each find out what the other is really like,” he announced over his shoulder, clip-clopping off across the deck. But surely we had learned all that in over twenty years?
I was glad to see Nyglu, preferring his familiar strangeness to these upsetting new acquaintances. Our encounters had been curtailed since the betrothal, and he was glad to stay by my side when I asked him to, as a sort of buffer.
“I don’t know why you couldn’t broadcast the ceremony like everyone else does,” he complained to us in a mildly fretful tone. “But I must admit that I am enjoying myself,” he added politely (and perhaps also to prevent Amma from detecting his morose jealousy).
My mistress hadn’t explained to me her reasons for an in-person celebration, but now she said, “This one isn’t for show. This one is going to last.” With a fond look she walked away from me, taking our glasses to be filled with the bright, frothy drink that was being served.
Still disturbed by Elleefaw’s pronouncement, I was silent until Nyglu wondered out loud if anything was wrong. “Do you think everything will change now?” I asked him. I expected denial. His precarious happiness, his treasured times with me, would work to keep him from accepting the possibility of a different course in our lives.
Instead, he shrugged, resigned. “Change,” Nyglu answered, “is Amma’s only constant.”
For several months after our marriage, all remained the same. I continued to work for Amma as before, to make furious or languid love with her, to study and transact my own business. I acquired islands, asteroids, and watersheds entirely my own, as well as other, less common commodities. Nyglu took care of this for me, with all the discretion I relied upon him for.
Then Amma decided that we were going to have a child. The new Shiomah might have asked upon deification how gods were born. Perhaps Amma attributed my lack of curiosity on the subject to habits formed in earlier days. I could hardly tell her of my source. Instead, I massaged her hands, pulling and stroking her pale violet fingers as she recited the possibilities to the tower’s open ceiling, full of stars.
“We can mate as mortals do,” she whispered, “or we can let machines do it for us. Two males can join genetic material, or two females. We can mate with ourselves or with those long dead. Just as soon as you’re ready,” she said, “we’ll start taking the enzymes that neutralize the sterilizing compounds.” She sighed as I dug into the fleshy mound beneath her thumb.
“And then?” I asked. But in answer Amma held her hand to my mouth and brought mine in turn to her delicately nipping teeth. Her excitement at the thought of conception made further details impossible to come by until dawn.
What Amma offered me was the opportunity to impose my genetic message over that of a microscopic animal. The animal would then be injected into a donated sperm cell, and the sperm cell would join with an egg of hers. This was fine with me; I leapt at the chance for another sort of immortality. Amma and I disagreed on only one important point; I wanted her to carry the baby in her own body. Even for just a short while. She would not; not even her innate love of the curious made pregnancy appealing to her.
I offered to bear the child within my own body. She pointed out that to do so would endanger the lie we lived. “Only a mortal would allow itself to be i
nvaded in such a manner,” she declared hotly. Anyway, what did it matter that our wombs were empty; we would still be mothers as the gods saw things.
It mattered to me.
Weeks passed. I took to sulking in my old refuge, the brown and russet rooms I had occupied before our marriage. Gradually I brought the furnishings out of storage, determined to be comfortable in the midst of my self-imposed exile. I avoided Amma, keeping to my own apartments as much as possible.
Finally she came to me, persuasive and proud. I slouched on my couch seat, not looking up as she lowered herself beside me.
“Don’t pout, Shiomah,” she said, putting an arm around me. She laughed. “I could walk to Kimp Sinn on your lower lip.” That made me smile, but I quickly pretended that I never had.
“Our ways are better, you will see,” she continued, coaxingly. Pale blue, she rested like a piece of sky on the brown slopes of my shoulders.
I shook her arm off, standing up and walking away angrily. “Your ways? You have no ways. You do nothing except let things be done for you.” In the silence that followed I felt the presence of Elleefaw, happy that we did no better than he had expected.
“Oh, Amma,” I said remorsefully, turning back to her again.
“Why do you oppose my will?” She was displeased that I had a will, rather than a mere collection of childish whims, that I had walked away from her, that I stood and she sat. Seeing this, I knelt, thus allowing her to continue to be gracious.
“Have I not treated you well, my dear?” she asked. Her fingers sought my hair, toyed with my tangles. “Have I not given you everything you ever desired, and more?” No, I thought, for my mother is gone, and you refuse to take her place. Deaf to my inner voice, Amma continued to talk of how she had spoiled me, ignorant of my deepening resolve.
“So you must understand,” she concluded, “that it will be best for both of us if you yield to me in this.”
“No,” I said, and her hand ceased fondling my locks. “If you make a child this way, it will be without my consent. You will have to kill me then, to keep me from confessing our crime.”
