by A. C. Wise
“Hey!” The shout draws Ro up short, bringing the realization they’ve crossed out of the Zone.
Xal crowds behind them, all three looking toward a knot of men and women emerging from the bar across the street.
“You can’t be here.” One of the men points at Xal.
To Ro’s surprise, Xal slides past them, gathering limbs together the way a human would draw themselves up to stand tall.
::Tone—Fear/Pride: It does not break any laws.::
Of course not; the rules are all unwritten, enforced by silent consent, by looking the other way. Ro’s fingers clench—a body caught between fight and flight, heart pounding.
“Fucking Immie! Get back in the Zone.” Another man joins the first, the rest of the group bunching closer.
“We should go back,” Audra says.
“No.” Ro turns deliberately, walking away from the group, further away from the Zone.
Xal and Audra follow, the weight of hostile gazes tracking them. Fear and hope mix in equal parts. Xal is right—if they spark enough conflicts, people can’t continue to look the other way. A bottle explodes, glass spraying at their feet.
“Keep walking,” Ro murmurs, picking up the pace.
A second bottle flies, higher this time, bouncing off Ro’s shoulder before hitting the ground.
“I’m calling the cops.” Audra pulls out her phone.
Pounding footsteps, then one of the men grabs Ro’s shoulder. Instinct brings Ro’s hands up to break the contact with a shove. The man reels on slick, neon-stained pavement and loses his balance, landing hard. One of the women in the group laughs, nervous, unsteady.
Another projectile glances off Ro’s cheek, stinging. Ro touches the spot and fingers come away wet with blood. Audra whispers into her phone, voice low and urgent. Xal moves again, a solid mass between Ro and Audra and the group of men and women. The man Ro accidentally knocked down gets to his feet, his face red.
For a moment, no one moves. The red-faced man’s fingers curl, his jaw clenched. Ro sees the moment of decision, but isn’t fast enough to shout a warning.
It doesn’t matter. Xal is there, then not. The man’s blow never lands and he stumbles, but keeps his feet this time. One of the women casts about for something to use as a weapon.
“We have to get out of here,” Audra says.
Xal holds a line between the two groups of humans. More people emerge from the bar, some merely curious, others spoiling for a fight.
“We’re about to have a full-blown mob on our hands.” Audra plucks at Ro’s sleeve, not touching flesh.
This time, Ro doesn’t see the moment of decision, or even where the punch comes from. Fist connects with jaw, and Ro hits the ground. Shouts, feet scuffling. Someone yells. Ro looks up in time to see Xal lift one of the men, tossing him away. Xal’s colors and movements speak anger and distress.
A siren cuts through the night, freezing everyone in place. As the cop cars stop, bodies scatter. Ro stands. Audra and Xal move closer, the three of them alone making no attempt to flee as the cops climb from their cars.
“It might be a while, are you sure you wouldn’t…” The officer assigned to babysit them glances nervously between Audra and Ro, trying to pretend he doesn’t see Xal at all.
They’re in an empty interrogation room, out of the way. They’ve given their statements, declined to press charges, and been assured no charges are being leveled against them, though the cop delivering the news didn’t look happy about it. He’d looked even less happy when Ro requested sanctuary, using the police station as a safe space to meet with Xal’s friend. Ro credits Audra with charming him into reluctantly agreeing.
“No. We’re fine right here.” Audra smiles sweetly, seeming to enjoy the way Xal’s presence makes the cops uncomfortable, now that the immediate danger has passed.
The officer withdraws, and Audra pours two cups of coffee from the carafe he leaves behind. In the corner, Xal ripples in silence. Ro’s cheek is sore, but the blood has dried and there will be no lasting damage.
But the bruise goes deeper than Ro’s skin. Something has changed, but not changed enough. There has to be more; Ro feels it, the seed of an idea starting to grow. Talking to Xal’s friend is a first step, but they have to push harder if they want real change.
“I want to go to the Immie homeworld,” Ro says, voicing the growing notion in a remarkably even tone. Xal and Audra register surprise—human and inhuman.
“There should be ambassadors on both sides working toward change. You’re right, Xal, violence gets attention, but we can do better than that.”
As the words stop, Ro’s cheeks burn. Said aloud, it sounds ridiculous.
::Tone—Statement/Uncertain: It might be arranged. Humans have never been, but it is not impossible.::
Xal unfolds from the corner, moving closer to the table in the center of the room. Audra puts her hand on the table, near but not touching Ro.
“Ro?”
Ro turns.
“If Xal can arrange it, if it’s possible, I have to go. I’m sorry.”
Audra’s hand moves, not withdrawing, fingers curling in on themselves, a knot of confusion and pain.
“I’m sorry,” Ro says again. And again, words are inadequate. For just a moment, Ro considers bridging the gap, touching the back of Audra’s hand, but it wouldn’t be the same. They shared a moment with Xal, but there’s still too much space between them. Necessary space, space Ro cannot bridge.
“I thought…” Audra looks down, studying the table’s faux-wood grain. “Maybe because of what happened…”
The lines of her body pull inward. It hurts Ro to look at her, but their truths are too different. Audra must know that.
“I can’t change who I am.” Ro doesn’t look away from Audra, hoping she’ll understand.
One of Audra’s shoulders lifts and falls again. It might be agreement, dismissal, or shrugging off an absent touch.
“If I go, what will you do?” Ro asks.
“I don’t know.” Audra traces circles on the fake wood; Ro can almost feel it through the tips of Audra’s fingers. “We’ll see what happens with Xal’s friend. Maybe I’ll join the cause. Maybe I won’t. I’ll keep working, and life will go on.”
Audra looks up, and her expression does something complicated. Her eyes are bright, but the light in them reminds Ro of reflections glinting off broken glass.
“My life doesn’t begin and end with you, you know.” The edge of a smile touches Audra’s mouth. “I do have other friends. Family.”
The smile becomes a grin. “I like you, Ro. We’re friends. I’ll miss you, but you’re not breaking my heart.”
Ro’s pulse trips. Audra sounds sincere, Ro believes her, but at the same time Ro doesn’t have enough experience to differentiate the temporary sting of rejection from something deeper. Maybe if Ro leaves and comes back, things will be better. Maybe they can learn a mode of friendship—better, deeper—one that doesn’t cause either of them pain.
Audra’s fingers uncurl. She presses her palm flat against the wood.
“Are you…” Ro hesitates, uncertain how to end the sentence: Are you sure? or Are you okay?
Xal shifts closer, body forming a complicated pattern. The colors chasing across Xal’s skin are sunlight, leaves, and the sensation of flying, not falling. Xal unfurls a limb, brushing the back of Audra’s hand with the briefest of touches. The air smells of tangerines and Audra’s eyes widen, as if Xal whispered something just for her.
Audra draws her hand away from the table, pressing it to her heart. Ro feels it, the steady thump of blood and life and warmth inside Audra’s skin. On the table, the ghost outline of Audra’s hand remains. Footsteps approach the door, but Ro’s attention remains fixed on the table. The fading shape, the memory of touch, outlines possibility. It is everything.
The door cracks open, a rust scream. Light enters the bunker. A spill of sand…grain ticks over grain, inaudible to human ears, and chases footsteps echoing
on the metallic floor.
Has he returned? The Master?
No. I know—human lives are moth-wing brief, and just as delicate. And it’s been years—not sleeping, not dreaming, but…waiting. Longer than a human lifespan by far.
But who else would come, after so long? Who else would dig through ages of sand piled against the bunker door? No one knew where we fled, save the Master.
And now, hands turn the wheel, and it shrieks, the only sound after ages of tick, tick, tick—grains falling against rust, and counting off the years of our exile. My exile. The Master’s ended long ago.
But I remain.
A breath, sharp-drawn, chases footsteps and tumbled grains of sand, the second sound against the silence in all these years. My eyes, never closed, open.
Anique’s breath catches, heart slamming the roof of her mouth.
There’s someone in the tomb, someone sitting at what can only be the Great Pornographer’s desk. She backs away, one step, sweat prickling beneath her clothes. Irrational as it is, her first thought is that it must be the Pornographer’s desiccated corpse. Pernaud’s Tomb—the name was meant to be a joke.
She should flee. She knows she should. But she’s come so far, searched so long. And this is the bunker where Pernaud lived out his exile. It has to be. A find like this is every archeologist’s dream. But more than that, it’s her dream, the very core of her, a splinter lodged at the heart of her being.
Hands shaking, she lifts the goggles from her eyes. After the terrible wash of sun, burning the wastes pure white, the dark is a relief. Still, she blinks. And forces her pulse to calm. She reverses her flight, and steps forward. Sand trickles in at her heels.
“Hello?” Even whispered, her voice is too loud, crashing against the silence.
Slowly her eyes adjust; the figure resolves. Not a corpse, but metal in the shape of a human being. An automaton.
“Oh.” Anique’s breath catches again, a different speeding of her pulse this time.
As if afraid of waking a sleeper, she approaches the Pornographer’s desk.
The automaton’s face is thin-beaten silver, hung upon gears and delicate wires forming the rough shape of a skull. From the skull trails a spine, each vertebra perfectly formed. From the spine, shoulder blades spread outward like wings, and a pelvis flares at the base. Legs, arms, collarbone, knees—a perfect fleshless skeleton. Except for the hands. Like the face, they are plated in thin sheets of metal, bright as starlight. The metal is jointed, and the fingers curl around a pen, a feathered quill, which is poised over a roll of vellum.
The automaton’s lips look as though they might part at any moment. Dark eyes shine like spilled ink, like black glass, fixed on the last word written on the page. Anique leans close, wonder-caught. Her breath fogs the silver cheek. Unable to help herself, she touches fingertips to metal skin. Light fills the pooled black. Even though they were not closed, Anique senses the eyes open.
Fingertips touch. Perfect whorls imprint in a thin layer of breath. Exhaled condensation gathers beneath her hand; tiny pearls of moisture lining up in the ridges of her skin, a constellation, a galaxy, spiraling out in the echoed shape of her fingerprints.
I have no breath to gasp, no way to let her know I am alive but to turn. Slowly, so as not to startle her, I move my head. She startles nonetheless, tripping over her heels and hitting the ground, eyes wide.
“My apologies.” My voice catches, a faint click and whir in the time-stiffened gears. “I did not mean to frighten you.”
“I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry. I was looking for…” The woman scrambles to her feet, but remains rooted where she stands.
The flight impulse tenses her muscles, bunching them beneath her skin, but she doesn’t flee. Arrested by fascination at my strangeness, perhaps?
I assess. She is short, her body swathed in traveling clothes. An inventory—heavy boots, laced high; cargo pants, many pocketed; a cotton shirt buttoned tight against her throat; goggles pushed up into wind-spiked hair, red as flame. Straps cross her body left and right; a satchel and a canteen hang against either hip.
Despite the space between us, I feel the tension pouring from her in waves. She is afraid in a way I have never known fear.
My sight is not sight; it is a sensation far more complex, far more complete. Looking at her, I feel the sweat beaded on her skin. I feel the quickness of her breath, and the tremble-beat of blood at wrist and throat. There is something else, too.
Metal. There is metal beneath her skin.
It hums. Resonance reaches across the space between us. Reaching for me. It sings.
I have no heart to beat, just as I have no breath to speed.
“I was looking for Pernaud’s Tomb.”
I do not miss the reverence with which she speaks the Master’s name.
The woman’s skin warms, a subtle thing, blood spreading to her cheeks as if embarrassed by her admission. So: in her eyes, I am not a thing before which she can mindlessly speak with no fear of reprisal. She perceives me as she would any sentient thing.
Her image fixes in my eyes thus: she stands uncertain, poised for flight. Can she see herself—a ghost drifting in my eyes’ endless black? I want to show her what I see—an echo where she is safe. There is no need to flee.
“The Master has not been here in a very long time.”
Bolted to the chair, to the table, to the ground, I cannot rise or approach her. I cannot reciprocate the touch lingering on my cheek like a scar where her fingers rested for an instant. But I will remember her, always. Just as I remember the Master’s hand, heavy and sad on my shoulder. So marked, I can never forget.
“The master?” The woman blinks confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“I am the Pornographer’s Assistant. Pernaud was my Master.” Will the truth keep her here, or will disappointment decide her flight?
Her eyes widen further, catching light. They are green. She steps closer, still skittish, but her gaze moves to the vellum. Though it is long since my pen last moved, I hear the scratch of the nib over a surface thin as skin; it haunts the silence.
The woman’s lips move, reading over my shoulder. This time the blood spreads beyond her cheeks, down her neck, and further—a quickening throughout her body. She shifts, pressing her legs close together for a moment before remembering herself.
“His assistant…you recorded Pernaud’s words? You were his scribe?” Her breath’s pace matches that of her blood.
“He spoke. I wrote.” My answer is not a lie.
The woman reaches out, the gesture as unconscious as her fingers on my cheek. Her nails are ragged, torn short. Blood traces the curve of her left thumb. Her skin is chapped, cracked around her knuckles. She touches an edge of the vellum, shy.
I have no heart to beat, no breath to catch. I ache nonetheless.
The woman looks up, and fear leaves her eyes. She will not run. She removes the canteen and her satchel, setting both on the floor. She takes in the bunker—the single cot, the shelves, long-since emptied.
“I’ve read all of Pernaud’s books.” Her voice is soft. “People kept smuggling them into the city, even after his exile.”
A brief smile touches her lips, then she looks abashed.
“Of course, you know that.” Her gaze, skittish, touches me again. “People still read them today. He’s still famous.”
The air in the bunker scarcely stirs. Even out of the blaze of sun, visible beyond the open door, the space is warm. Dream-caught, the woman undoes the top few buttons of her sweat-and-travel-stained shirt, exposing the arch of her throat. Shadows pool in the hollow just above her collarbone.
“I can’t believe he really wrote here,” she says.
“He spoke. I wrote.” I repeat the words, filled with the sudden, inexplicable need for her to understand.
I should not feel hubris; I should not desire to have even one person in the whole, vast universe know. But I do.
The woman’s head snaps up. Her lips part
. Doubt blooms in her eyes. A nervous gesture—she runs her fingers along her collarbone. “I … I don’t understand.”
But I think she does.
Anique’s pulse beats in her wrists and throat. Her blood, her heart, her breath—all are too loud in the silence. She’s been searching for so long. Even before she started looking for the tomb, she’s been searching. Wanting. And now?
Her heart stutters; she is afraid. Hope is such a fragile thing. Does she dare close it in her hand? No. She should push it down, crush it deep into the dark corners of her mind. If she never lets her desire see light, it need never be real. If she never admits it, even to herself, she need never have her heart broken.
Her eyes close, and she sees Pernaud’s words written on her eyelids. They are soaked through her being, cut through her skin, deep as bone. She opens her eyes.
From the memory of crisp-printed text in her smuggled editions, her gaze travels to the flowing script beneath the automaton’s pen. The ink shimmers, more than black. It contains hints of peacock blue, bruise purple, emerald green. It is every color, and no color, all at once. Traced on the vellum, the hand loops, curves, flows to capture the essence of the word written. In the automaton’s hands, the words she supposed to be Pernaud’s come alive.
Watching her, light slides across the automaton’s eyes.
And it is beautiful.
Shaped bones, thin beaten flesh, fingers curled around the quill pen. Anique holds her breath, wanting, and not wanting to hear how the silver lips will answer her. Her fingers rise and curl, too, echoing the silver ones, and digging into the skin over her collarbone. Teeth catch lip; she bites down, tasting salt and sand.
“The Master…” The automaton falters.
Anique doesn’t miss the catch, the hitch in the gears. There is doubt in the strange, flat tone.
“The Master could not read, or write. He told stories. I wrote…” The automaton stops; pain flickers in its inhuman eyes.
“Oh.” She lets out a breath, every breath.
