Stories

by Ekaterina Sedia

  "Why would I let you?"

  The robot stepped closer, its hot oily breath singeing Glenn's face. "Because I am stronger than you. I've never killed a person, but there's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

  "I'll scream. They'll hear me and come for you."

  "Compassion?" the robot tried.

  "Not after you killed my car."

  "I'm sorry. Would you like to know what it is that I do?"

  "Yes," Glenn said. "Tell me, and then I'll decide." Glenn edged to the kitchen counter and lit a candle. Glenn much preferred candles to incandescent bulbs.

  "It is an ancient art," the robot said, its faceted eyes glinting in the candlelight.

  The word was haruspex, not disemboweler, the robot told Glenn. From Hittites to Babylonians to Etruscans to Romans to robots it went. The robot's insectoid jaws clicked and its long head glimmered in the buttery, yellow candlelight.

  Robots do not have spirits, the robot contined. They are not like microwaves. Neither they have the knowledge of right and wrong, or any other reliable moral compass, like people do. They only have the desire to be ethical.

  Haruspicy, the robot told him, unlike many other forms of divination, did not reveal future or any past secrets; it did not concern itself with knowledge. It told you only whether you were right.

  The Etruscans and other ancients used it to know the will of gods, whether they supported an undertaking either completed or intended. Robots used haruspicy to know whether they were making a moral choice, a correct choice. There was just no way around it.

  Robots never sacrificed animals-flesh being innocent of the mechanical concerns-and only mechanical guts were acceptable to them. The innards of the combustible engines and electronic devices were used to guide the robots' search for excellence.

  The robots had disappeared, and the engines and electronics acquired souls and flesh. Still, the robot carried on as before, unsure of what else it could do.

  Glenn listened with a dawning sense of sympathy. It all sounded so understandable, and yet… the robot had killed Glenn's Peugeot and threatened violence against Glenn himself.

  "Please," the robot said. "Don't give me to the police. They will kill me."

  "Probably," Glenn agreed. "But technically, it won't be murder. They'll just take you apart."

  The robot's eyes watched him, dull and empty of expression. "You know it is the same thing."

  "What choice do I have?" Glenn now paced the room, crossing the yellow circle of candlelight, stepping into corner shadows and pulling his foot back quickly, as if he just stepped into too-cold water. "They've seen you, they know you. It's only a matter of time. You hid for so long… isn't it time?"

  "No," the robot said. "The signs are clear-I mustn't aid my own demise. Believe me, I think of it every day. I ask the machines and their entrails, was I right to survive another day? And they always say yes."

  "What do you want me to do? You can't hold me captive forever. People will notice."

  "I can hide here. If you permit."

  "They'll look for you. They'll see the tracks you left climbing up the wall."

  The robot contemplated its hands, ending in three sharp metal claws that left deep gouges on the outside stonework of the apartment building and Glenn's kitchen windowsill. "I must run then."

  "Good idea," Glenn said.

  "They will catch me."

  "Probably." Glenn paced again, shadows slipping over him like a second skin.

  The vacuum cleaner kept close to Glenn, mistrustful of the robot. It whistled and gurgled and purred. Looking at it gave Glenn an idea.

  "Perhaps, I could find you a spirit."

  The robot's multijointed arms folded over the carapace of its chest covered in patches of old mold. "I do not see why I would need one."

  "You won't have to kill anything then."

  The robot inclined its long head. "I suppose. What will happen then? Will you help me?"

  "I have to think about it," Glenn said. "But first, I need to sleep. You can stay here for now."

  The next morning, Glenn went shopping. The car insurance paid up, and he decided to get a new vehicle first, now that it wouldn't be threatened by the Disemboweler.

  He went to the parking lot, located next to a crystal-clear, frozen pond and surrounded by a willow grove. The willow branches stood naked like wicker. Several of the willows were blackened and dead, and Glenn suspected that the car lot owners were not always paying for their spirits. He hoped that they would not plunder the grove into oblivion.

  He picked out a small red Audi-the price tag listed a reasonable sum, right under the warning sign that read "Spirit Is Not Included."

  He paid for the car and for the delivery, and then walked through the grove, wondering about how to solve the problem of the robot holed up in his apartment. He could just call the police and have it over with; forgiveness was not easy for him. However, cruelty was even harder.

  He wandered away the car lot and grove, passing by several stores that sold spirits. Perhaps he could find one that would suit the robot or the new car. He began browsing the shops. Tree and water spirits seemed too fluffy; rock spirits lacked vitality and spark-or so he thought until he found the spirit of an iron mine long since collapsed. The spirit bubbled in its bottle with subdued fire and brimstone, ancient anger and secret knowledge of gods so old even the Etruscans had no memory of them. It was perfect for both the car and the robot.

  Glenn walked home, the bottle with the spirit stuffed into his coat pocket. He had the sidewalks all to himself, and the cars drove noiselessly past him, reflecting in the glassy storefronts. He was looking forward to not having to walk, and imagined what it would be like, to drive a car animated by an ancient spirit that smelled of forges and molten metal.

  At home, the robot crouched over the vacuum cleaner.

  Glenn stifled a scream and rushed over to protect his appliance. "What are you doing?"

  "Nothing," the robot said, sullen, and rose to its feet. "Just petting."

  The vacuum seemed unharmed.

  "I'm sorry," Glenn said. "I just thought…"

  The robot nodded. Its faceted eyes looked even more alien in the daylight. "Have you decided what you want to do?"

  "Yes," Glenn said. "But you will have to help me."

  The car arrived in the late afternoon, when the shadows started to grow long and blue. A large green truck, its wheels overgrown with emerald fur, carried Glenn's red Audi on its back.

  Glenn went outside to say hello to the two mechanics who were unloading the lifeless car. "Got a spirit lined up yet?" the older of the two asked with mild disapproval in his voice.

  "Sure," Glenn replied. "A good one, too."

  "Where do you want it?" the other mechanic said.

  "Here, around the corner. In the alley," Glenn said.

  The second mechanic chuckled. "Afraid of the Disemboweler, eh? I read this morning the police had scared him off. Then again, better safe than sorry, right?"

  The mechanics left the car in the alley, lifeless, motionless. Glenn and the robot waited for the mechanics to leave and for the darkness to descend. In the alley, away from the curious eyes, Glenn popped the hood and opened the engine compartment.

  The robot went to work, busting open the engine and the drive train, tossing aside the gaskets and the caps, the gauges and the wheel bearings.

  "How're the omens?" Glenn asked.

  The robot stared at the heap of metal on the ground. "Good," it said. "The gods approve of the transformation."

  Glenn nodded. He was not exactly sure of how the transformation would happen; he just knew that it had to. He trusted the robot, its knowledge of all things mechanical and their internal and secret workings, to figure out the way.

  After most of the engine was gone, the robot set out to the reassembly. First, it folded its long body into the cavity, and Glenn handed it the necessary parts-hoses to connect itself to the engine's remains, and gaskets to fit over its
electronic brain. Its faceted eyes spat forth narrow light beams that illuminated the shining chrome of the car's and robot's intestines mingled together.

  The robot connected its brain to the drive shaft and the brakes; multicolored wires spun out of its arms and legs, cocooning everything inside the car into the robot's neural net. The robot became the car's engine and navigation system, its operator and its heart. Only the spirit that would animate the robot-car was still missing.

  These things demanded care. The spirit had to like its new vessel to bond with it properly; otherwise, it would just blow away with the wind. And the old spirit was sure to be persnickety; Glenn only hoped that the abundance of metal and wires, the crackling, humming energy of the old robot would be enough.

  Glenn flung the bottle that housed the spirit into the very center of the engine, and prayed that it would take. The spirit, a faint ochre-colored cloud, hovered over the engine in hesitation, the motes of dust dancing in the narrow beams of the robot's gaze. Slowly, the spirit gathered itself into a thin wisp, and the wisp twined around the beams of light, pulling itself deep into the robot's flat eyes.

  The engine roared to life and thudded, the robot groaned in his metallic voice, and the innards of the car twisted, growing dark, knotted flesh and sulfurous deposits. A vein of marble bisected the vehicle's interior, splitting the back seat. Stalactites sprouted from the roof, the exhaust pipe breathed out a pungent cloud of foundry fumes, and the pavement cracked under the wheels. The car engine and the robot snorted with a single breath smelling of oil and hot metal and howled in a single furious metal voice, nothing like the gentle gurgling of the regular spirits.

  The robot spoke no longer, but it seemed content; Glenn guessed that haruspicy had finally paid off for it. Disemboweling of the engines was just the first step; one had to put something back in the resulting void, and if one had removed a heart, what was a better substitute than the heart of one's own? He wondered if the oracles of old knew that, if to them too the spilling of the entrails was only half of the story, if their hearts were somehow filling the empty spaces they had created.

  The police never found the Disemboweler, and soon the memory faded, turning into a legend. Glenn supposed that it was a fitting fate for the haruspex, and he never told anyone that his car was made of the last robot on earth.

  The Taste of Wheat

  Dominique came from solid peasant stock, not frequently given to fancy; still, in the privacy of the thick bones of her skull, she dreamt of an Asian gentleman who insisted on being called Buddha, and small dogs with sharp white teeth.

  The heavy sleep descended unannounced, smothering her with dreams in the middle of dinner with her family, or in the wheat fields while she was threshing. Any blink could turn into a jumble of images and voices, and then someone would shake her shoulder and say, "Dominique, wake up."

  Sometimes the dreams stopped before she was forcefully pulled away from them, and then she would hear what they said. "What is wrong with her?" and "You'd never think looking at that girl." Then she blushed, and let the world in shyly, through the slightest opening of her lashes. The sun was fuzzy in their frame, and the faces - soft, undefined, kind. Then she would get up, smoothing down her skirt around her wide hips.

  "You seem so healthy - milk and blood," people said. They kept the second part of their comments silent, but Dominique knew what it was. She was defective, and no man would take a wife with falling sickness, no matter how well-fed and ruddy-cheeked. Her family thought that it ought to bother her, but it did not. She only shrugged and went about her business, ready to be assaulted by dreams with every step she took.

  She worked in the fields with the rest of her compatriots, from the time when the sun rose to the sunset. But at midday she left the merry din of people laughing and talking, children squealing, oxen lowing, and went home to tend to her grandfather. He was too feeble to venture into the fields, and she took it upon herself to make sure that he was fed and attended to.

  The old man looked at her with his colorless rheumy eyes that had seen so many harvests come and go, and she almost wept with pity. He was the only person she had ever known who understood what it was like to inhabit a body ready to betray him at any moment.

  "Don't worry, grandpa," Dominique said, blinking hard to cool her suddenly hot eyes. "Maybe some day you'll be born as a butterfly, alive for just a day, your life short and painless and beautiful." She spoke in a hushed voice; even though she knew that her parents and siblings were in the fields, she worried about being overheard. Sometimes (more often as the time wore on) she intentionally garbled her words, so that only her grandfather could understand. She rather liked appearing as a large, mumbling thing, half-witted from her fits.

  She fed her grandfather, pushing an awkward spoon between his gums, pink like those of an infant. His skin seemed simultaneously translucent and tough, like the wings of a dragonfly, with quartz veins intersecting under its pale, downy surface. His hooded eyelids stood like funeral mounds over his dead eyes, the coarse salt of his eyebrows casting a deep shadow over them.

  "Grandpa," Dominique said, "you are so good, you deserve to be a butterfly." She thought for a bit, the wooden spoon in her red idle hand dripping its grey gruel. "They say being a dog is pretty good, but I'm not so sure - all you get is yelling and kicking. Unless, of course, you are Buddha's dog. Perhaps a bird… the kind nobody hassles. Like a hawk; just promise you'll stay away from the chicken coups, or people will throw stones at you. Promise me."

  Grandpa nodded, in agreement or in encroaching sleep, she couldn't tell. She wondered if her grandfather was afflicted by the same visions as her, if he too dreamt of the stocky Asian gentleman and his dogs, adorable and vicious. Before she could decide one way or another, they all stood around her, and she lay on the earthen floor of a dark cavern. The dogs snarled, showing their needle teeth.

  "What we think, we become," Buddha said, with his habitual feeble smile.

  Dominique sat up, despite the snarling dogs, and nodded.

  "Be grateful you didn't die today," he said.

  The dogs growled deep in their throats but settled down.

  Buddha shifted on his feet, with a look of consternation showing on his moonlike face. "Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world."

  The dogs barked and leapt, and Dominique woke up with a start.

  She collected herself off the floor, smoothing her skirt and blushing. "Sorry, Grandpa," she said.

  The old man did not answer. His body pitched forward in his chair, and a thin streak of gruel hung off the corner of his lips. With a sinking heart, Dominique realized that he was dead, dead on her watch, dead because the dreams stole her attention away from him. She fell to her knees, grabbing the cold hands with blueing fingernails, and keened.

  Her wails brought people from the fields. They came running and hushed when they saw the dead man. After a few seconds of respectful silence, they talked about the funeral arrangements, while Dominique still keened, her cries hanging over the thatched rooftops of the village like tiny birds of prey.

  They buried Dominique's grandfather two days later. The frost came early that year, and the ground grew hard. The diggers' hoes struck the dirt with a dull thump-thump-thump. The diggers sweated as Dominique's family clustered about shivering, drawing their warm clothes tighter around them.

  Dominique never looked at the diggers, and let her gaze wander over the bare fields and the grey hills that lined the horizon. She searched for her grandfather, and worried that she would not recognize him in his new form. Was he a leaf blowing in the wind, a tiny calf that followed its mother on rubbery, slick legs, a sparrow perched on the roof? Life of all persuasions teamed about her, and Dominique despaired to find him. " DIV lips. After the funeral, Dominique walked home among the neighbors and relatives who filled her house with their heat and loud voices. She made sure that everyone's mugs were filled with mulled wine, and that e
veryone had plenty of cracked wheat and raisins. It was for her grandfather. Buddha's words buzzed in her ears like flies tormenting dogs on hot summer afternoons, "To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life." Dominique did not want to die - not until she found out what happened to her grandfather. Then it occurred to her that the nights were growing longer and colder, and many woodland creatures must be feeling hungry and alone. Quietly, she picked up the bowl with wheat and raisins and stepped outside. No one noticed either her presence or departure, just like they didn't notice their own breathing. The wind whipped her hair in her face, as she peered into the freezing darkness, her eyes watering in the cold. She thought about the moles that burrowed through the ground, and the little field mice that skittered across its surface on nervous light feet, of the weasels that eyed the chicken coups when no one was watching, and the shrews that stalked millipedes. There were too many to feed, to many to search through. How could even Buddha hope to recognize one soul among the multitude? She set the bowl a few steps away from the porch and tightened her shawl around her shoulders, shivering, listening to the quiet life that teemed about her. She was too large, she realized, too lumbering to ever hope to find her grandfather. She needed to be smaller. And she needed a better sense of smell. She thought of the tales the old women told around the fire, about the mice who decided to become human, and crawled into the pregnant women's wombs, to gnaw at the growing child and to displace it; they grew within the women, shed their tails and claws, and were born as human children. One could only recognize them by the restlessly chewing teeth and the dark liquid eyes. Surely there must be a way for a woman to become a mouse.

  The winters were always long, with nothing to do but tell stories. Dominique withdrew more, and gave herself to her sleeping fits with zeal, like a soldier throwing himself onto the bristling pikes to aid the cavalry charge. Dominique tried to aid Buddha's visit, so he would answer her questions. One day, he appeared. His dogs were subdued and teary-eyed, shivering and sneezing in small staccato bursts. The winter was not kind to them. " DIV asked. Buddha looked up, into the dripping ceiling of his cave. "A dog is not considered a good dog because he is a good barker." "I cannot find my grandfather," Dominique said, the fear of waking up lending her voice urgency. "All things appear and disappear because of the concurrence of causes and conditions," Buddha replied. "I have to find him though," she said. "I think I need to become a mouse, or another small creature, so I can search better." "He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye." "Just tell me," she begged. "Without riddles." Buddha finally turned his empty eyes to her. "People create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. You are no different than a mouse; you just think you are." Before Dominique could thank him, the walls of the cave melted around her, and she came awake on the floor of the barn, in the warmth of steaming, sleepy breath of sheep and chickens. It was clear to her now - she created the world with her thoughts, and she could alter it just as easily. At this moment of enlightenment, Dominique's clothes fell on the floor, and a small brown mouse skittered away. Soon, the little mouse discovered that her new mind could not hold as much thoughts as the human one, and it worked hard to hold onto its single obsession: find an old man who was now something else. But first, she needed to eat. Dominique the mouse remembered that the granary was close to the barn, and hurried there, her little brain clearly picturing the earthen jugs overflowing with golden grain. She made it there safely, avoiding the prowling cats and the eyes of the humans, and ate her fill of crunching, nourishing wheat. After that, she was ready to go. She let her nose lead her - it twitched toward the wind, sorting through many smells, some comforting, some exciting. She noticed the smell that mixed familiarity with strangeness, fear with solace, and decided to follow it. The fields lay barren, and the mouse squeaked in terror as it ran between the frozen furrows of the fallow field, vulnerable in the open ground with no cover. Her little heart pumped, and her feet flew, barely touching the ground, until the dry grass of the pasture offered her its comfort. She dared to stop and catch her breath, and realized that the smell grew stronger. She found an entrance to an underground burrow, and followed the long and winding tunnel. White hoarfrost covered its walls, and the anemic roots extended between earthen clumps, as if reaching for her. The mouse shivered with fear and cold, but kept on its way until she saw the pale light, and heard soft, high-pitched singing echoing off the white burrow walls. Dominique the mouse entered the large area in the end of the tunnel, and stopped in confusion. The candles cast the silhouettes of the gathered field mice, making them huge and humped. The mice were serving the Mass. Their voices rose in solemn squeaks, and their shadows swayed in a meditative dance, rendering the walls of the cave a living tapestry of black, twisting darkness and white frost, glistening in the candlelight. The mice prayed for sustenance. Dominique stayed in the back of the crowd, too shy to come forth and ask her questions. Even her desires grew clouded, and for a while she could not remember why she was there. Snatches of thoughts and images floated before her dark beady mouse eyes: a jug of grain, the thick arm of her father clutching across his wife's pregnant stomach as they slept, a stretching neck of a new chick. An old man with the eyelids like funeral mounds. The mice stopped their chanting, and lined up to partake of the Eucharist. The mouse who was a priest by all appearances held up a thimble Dominique recognized as her own, lost some time ago, and let all the mice sip from it. Dominique joined the line. Several altar voles helped with the ceremony, distributing grains of wheat and helping the feeble with the sacrament. Dominique shuffled along, and waited for her turn. No one seemed to notice that she didn't quite belong there, and the vole shoved a sliver of grain into her mouth. She chewed thoughtfully, as her eyes sought to meet the gaze of the priest. Finally he turned to her, his work completed. "What do you want, daughter?" Dominique found that she could communicate with the mouse priest easily. "I'm looking for an old man." She stopped and wrinkled her face, trying to remember. "He died, and become someone else. I have to find him." The mouse priest moved his sagging jowls with a thunderous sigh. "We dreamed of the others coming into our midst, and we prayed for signs… none came." "But I smelled him here!" The priest turned away, mournful. "It was God you smelled." Dominique sighed and followed the mice, who filed out of the main chamber into a complex system of burrows. She found a tunnel that led upward, and enticed her with the smell she sought. The snow had fallen while she was underground, and she sputtered and shivered as the white powder engulfed her, its freezing particles penetrating between hairs of her coat. She half-struggled, half-swam to the surface. Buddha was outside with his dogs, running weightlessly across the moonlit snow. His dogs preceded him, their noses close to the ground. They followed a chain of danger-scented footprints. A fox, Dominique guessed, mere moments before seeing the fox. It looked black in the moonlight, and it dove into the snow, coming up, and diving again. It seemed puzzling at first, but then Dominique heard muffled squeaks, pleas, and cries of pain. The fox was hunting mice, too busy to notice that Buddha's dogs were stalking it. The fox sniffed the air, and turned its narrow muzzle toward Dominique. Her heart froze in terror, and her feet screamed at her that it is time to run, run as fast as possible. But she remained perched on two hind legs, looking the fox straight in the eye. "Have you seen my grandfather?" she asked the fox. The fox stopped and tilted its head to the shoulder. "He's not a mouse," Dominique explained. "At least, I don't think so. He died and was born as someone else." "Ask the mice," the fox suggested, yawning. Its teeth gleamed in the moonlight. "They would know - they get everywhere." "I tried. But they are only praying, and - " The dogs she had forgotten about pounced. The fox shrieked, trying to shake two small dogs that latched onto the scruff of its neck. "All things die," Buddha commented.