Fantasy & Science Fiction - JanFeb 2017

by Spilogale Inc.

  A sniffer borrowed from work, as it happened. "This is a mistake," I lied. "I didn't know this was in here."

  She wrinkled her nose. "Put that away."

  Designed to deal with squirming hounds, the sniffer booted in an instant and needed nothing but one quick touch to the skull to do its work. Pivoting the screen, I said, "Here it is. Your soul."

  "I know what that is," she growled, the angry mom returning.

  "Have you seen it before?"

  "Maybe."

  I reached into the bag's outer pocket. "Hey, Mom, I'm curious. What are you weighing lately? You remember?"

  "I keep losing weight," she said.

  "That's why I'm asking. Because you look great."

  She grinned.

  And I kissed her with the injector, the dose pushed through her skin, and the only sensation was a chill that vanished as it was noticed. I knew because I'd done it to myself. With saline, and with the real stuff, too.

  Practicing.

  "What did you do?" she asked.

  "Today or years ago?" I asked.

  That confused her even more than usual.

  A human nurse eventually arrived. "Your mother's asleep?"

  "Yes," I said emphatically. "But she'll wake soon, I think. Do you want me to call you?"

  "If you would."

  "Sure."

  He left, and I brought out the sniffer again. I hadn't turned it off in the first place. And with a touch, the image of my mother's colorful soul was replaced by the honest gray of dunnage.

  Then I touched my head, just to see.

  Nope. Apparently the PES doesn't frog-leap from one head to the next.

  * * *

  How many people have I killed?

  None, of course. These hands have never stabbed anyone or shot anyone, and the only necks they've been wrapped around are the imaginary kind, existing as colorful electrons inside our frail, vicious heads.

  But that's not the question you're asking.

  How many souls have I extinguished?

  None. Not one. Because I don't believe there is such a beast.

  Then what am I responsible for, exactly?

  I'm responsible for thousands of days of being a good-enough citizen. I'm guilty of paying taxes and working harder than many, and I didn't complain when I could have, and I ate my anger, and I ignored some spectacularly poor thinking that was happening around me. Except for those occasions when I spoke my mind, of course. And at the end of it, I allowed my stored-up frustrations to impact people who deserved exactly what I gave them.

  My mother is dead now.

  That's why I'll tell you about her.

  But the others, most of them…they remain healthy and whole, save for those little eddies of spark they will never miss.

  Make a list of my likely targets.

  I'm sure some of them got a visit from me.

  And strangers too. People I met inside a bar, at a concert, on a random corner. And people I never met at all. One of my perfect schemes was to spot the loner in a movie theatre, and when the show began, immersive light and music washing over all of us, I would touch the stranger from behind. First with the dog-sniffer, and if necessary, a quick tap on the neck. Thirty or forty minutes of unconsciousness was enough, unless it wasn't. But if the PES persisted…well, that was their misfortune. I had long since moved to another seat and another target.

  Sometimes I got caught, of course.

  Victims, particularly those who knew me before, would come out of their fog, understanding some little piece of what had happened. In horror, they asked what I had done to them. Robbery? Rape? Because even while groggy, they remembered that I was soulless, thus capable of who-knew-what, and how horrible was this last unremembered hour been?

  I told the truth to some of them.

  On a case-by-case basis.

  It shouldn't amaze me, but it did. It does. When people learn what has been stolen from them, when they were full of outrage and helplessness, I nonetheless gained their silence by promising…silence. Nobody needed to know their fate, and it would be our secret.

  Two dunnages bound forever.

  * * *

  Maybe I'm being too modest. At this point, where's the good in underplaying my role in larger events?

  The Internet was built for odd souls.

  Two days after commercial sniffers left the stores, there were sites dedicated to the wonderful people who had multiple souls inside them. And more importantly, there were hundreds of busy, intense, and usually unhappy digital realms where dunnage could meet dunnage, sharing the woes of their lives.

  The news broke first on various dunnage-support sites. There was an antidote for PES, people learned. And this was its formula, and here were the legal suppliers, and the less-legal avenues, and these were the best three ways to deliver the cure to our loved ones.

  I won't claim to be the source of everything. Others were already working in my field.

  But let's assume I am responsible.

  That means at least ten million PE signatures have been lost because of me, and several hundred people have died due to the inappropriate use of a powerful anesthetic. And besides being a mass murderer, I'm the founder and patron saint of a cause embroiling the world today.

  * * *

  And now you want the famous last bit.

  Oh, you've heard the rumors. The conjectures. People sharing bits of the tale, but not nearly enough.

  After several years of being clever, I was facing arrest and prosecution. The veterinarian at the kennels had turned me in and my face was everywhere, nothing but wits and willing allies keeping me free.

  So of course that's when I went to find her again.

  Which wasn't all that difficult, as it happens. Celebrities are the most visible people in the world. And where a starlet or billionaire would have a platoon of security agents around her, my lady made due with electronic tools and a former Marine who proved easily distracted by several of my dunnage friends.

  So yes, I met with the green-eyed woman once more.

  Not that it ever appears on any charges, or that she would have any interest in seeing me suffer any more than I already have.

  We met inside the women's restroom, in a hotel where she was scheduled to speak. She knew my face instantly. She thought she knew what I was holding in my hand. But no, it was just salt and water, and after waving the injector under her nose, I said, "I don't believe I will."

  "What?" she muttered.

  "I'm not going through with it," I said. "And do you know why?"

  She leaned against the sink, trembling.

  "Let's imagine," I said. "Imagine that what you discovered is real. That these are souls, and they are eternal in all of the best ways. I don't happen to have one, but you have three. The luck of the draw and all that. And yes, I could cut them out of your head right now. But then they're drifting in the afterlife without you. Free of this body and your continued existence, and the poor shits will never know how it ends."

  "What ends?" she managed.

  "Your story. What happens to your life and the world. I don't want those three souls missing out on whatever comes."

  She stared at me, sighed deeply, and then she stared at the injector again.

  I gave the alleged weapon another slow wave.

  "Besides, taking your souls would be a kindness," I said.

  Which startled her, and angered her. "Why's that?"

  "Because there's a war coming. Your war and mine. And if there is an ethereal spark of life, and if I don't have it, then I want something carrying that experience to the ends of time."

  That's what I told her.

  Maybe I believed my words, maybe not.

  I honestly don't know.

  But about hate. I didn't feel any hatred just then. After all those years, she was nothing but a smart, scared lady with her skinny ass pushed against the soapy sink, those green eyes ready to cry. I couldn't come up with any reason to hurt her again. I almost felt so
rry for everything, reaching with my free hand, ready to pull a tear off that sorry cheek.

  That's when she shoved me off my feet and ran.

  And for an instant, dropping toward that hard bathroom floor, I realized that this woman had given me a strange and amazing life, and sure as this fall was going to hurt, I decided that I had no choice but to love her.

  * * *

  There Used to Be Olive Trees

  By Rich Larson | 8144 words

  Rich Larson's first F&SF story was "The Nostalgia Calculator," which appeared in our March/April issue last year. He rejoins us with a new science fiction tale inspired by his time spent working in Andalusia. Lately, he spends most of his time in front of a computer. In addition to the new story we offer below, this talented and prolific young writer has recent and forthcoming work in Asimov's, Lightspeed, Interzone, and Gardner Dozois's The Book of Swords anthology, just to name a few.

  VALENTIN CREPT THROUGH the darkness toward the high stone wall of the Town, heart thumping hard against his ribs. His nanoshadow, wrapped warm and gritty around his chest, sensed his anxiety and gave a comforting pulse. It helped a little. Valentin had never gone over the wall before. He had never left the Town before.

  But anything was better than what awaited him in the morning: the prueba . His fourth prueba , to be precise. Valentin ran a finger over caked scar tissue until it contacted the gleaming black implant poking from the crest of his shaved head. It was the implant that let him control his nanoshadow—for anyone else, it would have been an inert black puddle. It was the implant that let him communicate with some of the simpler machines inside the Town.

  The implant didn't make him a true prophet, though. Not until he passed the prueba , until the Town's machine god spoke to him. No prophet had ever failed the test more than twice. Valentin was on three and counting.

  So he was leaving. Valentin breathed deep, staring up the weathered stone face of the wall that had kept him safe for all his sixteen years. He knew the world outside was a dangerous one. There were wilders and mudslides and scuttling scorpions. Valentin hated scorpions, and he had a healthy fear of wilders from growing up with scarestories.

  But so long as he had his nanoshadow, he could do things no barbarian could even dream of. He reached out with his implant and summoned the gleaming black motes, coaxing the shadow down his arms, gloving his hands. He steadied his nerves, looked around once more for anyone who might stop him, then took a flying leap at the wall.

  Valentin was normally clumsy, but with the nanoshadow strengthening his arms like corded black muscle and coating his hands with clinging tendrils, he went up the sheer wall as easily as a gecko. He felt a grin splitting his face as he topped it. Poised there on the edge with his nanoshadow balancing him, Valentin could see the empty campo stretching far and away. Rolling hills of dead gray soil, dotted ruins, crumbling road. It looked like freedom.

  With only the slightest guilt thinking of Javier, who would wake up in the morning to find his apprentice gone, Valentin slid down the other side of the wall and started to walk. It wasn't long before he heard a familiar rumble of gods on the move. Valentin kept low but still felt a swirl of static inside his skull, the customary sting of his implant, as the pod of biomechanical gods thundered through the dark sky overhead.

  He could sense them, but their thoughts were walled off from him, inscrutable as those of the god who controlled the Town, and a moment later their ghostly yellow lights disappeared into the distance.

  Leaving him in the dark again.

  * * *

  "Wake up, little Townie."

  Still half in a dream, Valentin thought it was Javier's voice, waking him for the prueba . Then he remembered scaling the wall, walking and walking, finding a crevice to sleep in cocooned by his nanoshadow.

  His nanoshadow that he could no longer feel against his skin. Valentin wrenched his eyes open, jolted by adrenaline, and found himself face to face with a monster: beetle-black eyes, an impossibly wide mouth.

  Valentin jerked backward, probing desperately for his shadow, and the bag clutched in the monster's pale hand writhed.

  "None of that," the monster said sourly, shaking the rucksack where Valentin's nanoshadow was trapped. "None of your Townie tricks. All right?"

  It wasn't a monster. It was a boy, maybe his age, maybe a bit younger. His mouth was the normal size, but a raw-looking scar gashed upward from one corner of it, splitting his cheek. He had shaggy black hair and coarse skin and wore a black coat that was different fabrics all patched together, nothing like the identical gray garments made by the Town's autofab.

  The boy turned his head, and Valentin realized the other half of his face was beautiful, fine-cut with long black lashes. He had never thought wilders might be beautiful. It didn't do much to help the cold panic numbing his limbs.

  "A live shadow," the wilder said, shaking his head. His accent was thick and nasal and dropped the endings off familiar words. "Thought they were only in tales. Are you a prophet, then?"

  Valentin tried to clear his head. The wilder had found him while he was sleeping and peeled his shadow off him. Normally he'd still be able to control it, make it leap out of the bag, but he'd used it all through the night to keep warm and now, still without sunshine, it didn't have enough strength to escape.

  "I'm a prophet," Valentin said. "Yeah. I am. So if you don't give me my nanoshadow now, I'll have the gods blast you to ashes and a little heap of bone."

  Alarm flashed over the wilder's split face for a split second, then he tipped back his head and gave a warbling laugh. "Once you do something for me, Prophet," he said, thumbing an eyelash off his cheek, "you can ask the gods to punish me however you like." He hefted the rucksack onto his shoulders and strapped it tight.

  Valentin's heart pounded. Maybe he could run for it, but the hard look of the wilder's eyes and the long knife in his belt made him think otherwise. And no way was he returning to the Town as not only the first prophet to fail three pruebas in a row, but the first to lose his nanoshadow to a wilder.

  "What do you want?" he asked, trying to sound brave, bored, maybe a little mysterious. The tremor in his voice gave him dead away.

  "I'm Pepe," the wilder said. "Who're you?"

  "What do you want?" Valentin repeated, and this time with no quaver.

  The wilder shrugged. "To do what prophets do, Prophet," he said. "Get a stubborn fucking god to care about us for a change. You help me, I won't cut your toes off." He patted his rucksack. "And maybe I'll even let you have your shadow back," he added.

  * * *

  THE CAMPO didn't look like freedom anymore. Pepe set the pace and set it fast, leaving Valentin to stumble along behind him, watching for the telltale skitter of scorpions in the cracked mud. His skin ached for his nanoshadow. A few times he probed hard for it and managed to elicit a sluggish twitch from inside Pepe's rucksack, which in turn made Pepe shoot him a suspicious look from under his eyelids. But without sunshine or Valentin's bioelectricity, the inert nanoshadow was nothing but a lump of gritty black gelatin.

  They walked and walked and only paused to eat—a slab of cold tortilla comfortingly similar to what they had in the Town—before they walked again. Valentin spent the time trying to think of a way to escape. The wilder had them heading west, toward his tribe's derelict autofab, farther and farther away from the Town. Pepe thought Valentin was going to interface with whatever god was controlling it and set it working again. As if it was that simple.

  And when Pepe found out that Valentin couldn't do it, Valentin figured the wilder would use his sawtoothed knife to cut out his implant as a keepsake, then let him bleed out in the dust. He shivered, half from the thought and half from the Andalusian winter, as they walked in silence across another barren field. The soil underfoot was pallid gray.

  Another god, this one alone, hummed through the sky overhead, moving like the whales Valentin had seen clips of, the ones that used to inhabit the oceans. Pepe stopped where he was, pulled d
own his scarf, and craned his neck to watch its passage. The yellow lights bathing his face made the scar glisten wetly.

  "Can you talk to them, then?" Pepe asked.

  "When they want to talk," Valentin lied, feeling Pepe's dark eyes go to the crest of his head, where he had scar tissue of his own. Valentin pulled up his hood and glowered. He didn't like people staring at the implant.

  "Should tell them to give us a lift," Pepe said, with his macabre grin, and started to walk again. They passed the husk of an old harvester stripped for parts. "There used to be olive trees here," he said. "Far as the unaugmented eye could see, my grandfather says his grandfather said. The harvesters rolled up and down the campo all day long. Back when more things grew. Back when machines listened to anybody, not just prophets."

  Valentin probed the harvester as they passed by, wishing he could swing its clawed arm and knock Pepe to the ground, grind him into the dirt, but the farm equipment was long-dead. He didn't feel so much as a flicker from his implant.

  Before long the moon was rising overhead, fat and yellow, and the air was turning cold enough to bite. Valentin missed the slick warmth of his nanoshadow again, pulling his scarf snug against the chill. He could see Pepe's exposed hands turning purple in the night air, and after a few more minutes his captor pointed to a crumbling stone derelict up ahead.

  "We'll hunker down in there for night," he said, tongue flicking distractedly against his scar. "Start early in the morning, get to the autofab by noon. Make sure you have enough daylight to work."

  Valentin gave the ruins a dubious once-over. The sagging stone and twists of old rebar looked like something out of a scarestory. As they approached, Pepe found a torch and thumped it to life with the heel of his hand. The lance of harsh white light strobed damp ground and what was left of the walls. Following Pepe inside, Valentin felt immensely far from the gated pueblo he'd called home only a day ago.