He nods. “And we...feed you...in return.”
I never cared. After Cornucopia...until Manny...I wanted to know as little about Rations as possible. I never knew we were connected.
I never knew the feeding worked both ways.
Tears run down my emaciated cheeks and off the tip of my chin. “I wish I could still do it,” I say. “I wish I could feed you now.”
Manny coughs. His head twitches in my lap. “Lupe.” His voice grows weaker. “I don’t think...I can keep going.”
“Just rest,” I tell him. “Rest now, darling.”
I hear a landslide in the distance. I hear the Cambio groan and creak and crack beneath us.
“You know...what you have to do now,” says Manny. “Time...for the feast. El banquete del muerte.”
I wipe away tears and shake my head. I don’t want to listen.
“Eat as much of me...as you can hold. Stuff yourself. What’s left...will rot.”
“No.” How did I come to love him so much? I don’t understand. How did I get to this place?
“Do it, Lupe. You need the energy.”
“No!” He’s right, and I hate him for it. I love him and I hate him for what he’s telling me to do.
“It’s my last request.” His smile is fading. The tutti-frutti swirls have stopped moving. “Don’t let me...go to waste.”
That’s when I do it.
I’m in a daze. I hardly realize that I’m pushing my index finger toward his mouth. Toward his half-eaten lips.
“Lupe, no.” His whisper trails off, and he closes his eyes.
When the tip of my finger touches his lower lip, I stop. I know what a futile gesture I am making, but I also know it doesn’t matter that I make it. No one will know but him, and he will understand.
So I push onward.
My fingertip passes between his lips. I feel the ridges of his teeth scrape the skin.
I push the finger in past the first knuckle, and then I tell him to eat. “I love you.” I want him to live, and I wish with all my heart
The Cambio jumps. A new geyser hisses to life.
I wish with all my heart that I could bring him back. At least I want him to know that I would do this for him, I would do it if I could.
Far away, there is a thunderclap. The bubbling of lava.
“Please, Manny.” I hold his chin with my free hand and push it up, as if that will make him take a bite. His teeth press into the flesh of my finger.
The ground beneath us trembles and rises. We ride the newborn mesa toward the sky.
Suddenly, Manny’s teeth clench.
I start to cry out as he bites into my fingertip...and then I catch myself. “Good, Manny.” He bites down with surprising force, and I shut my eyes against the pain. “Take what you need.”
I feel him nip the meat from the bone. This is it, I realize.
This is how he feels.
I slide out my finger, the tip ragged and red. I suck away the oozing blood, which tastes strangely sweet, like vanilla.
And Manny chews.
When I lower the finger from my lips, it has stopped bleeding. The tiny wound is no longer red at all, in fact. It is pink and smooth.
And as I watch...
“Lupe?” His voice is a whisper, but no weaker than before.
As I watch, the smooth, pink flesh rises like bread dough. Tiny grooves etch the surface, perfectly matching the surrounding fingerprint.
The finger heals. Right before my eyes, it heals.
Within seconds, I can’t tell where the edges of the wound once were.
Something has happened to me. I am only beginning to understand.
One thing’s for certain: the Cambio will change you.
“Lupe?” Manny’s eyes flutter open. His smile dimly flickers back into view. “What did you...give me?”
I push the same finger toward his lips. Warmth and light surge through my body, filling my belly, my chest, my throat.
My heart.
Tears of joy pour down my face like spring rain. They taste like wine. “Eat up, my love,” I tell him. “There’s more where that came from.”
*****
Zinzizinzizinzic
Singing to myself, I dominate the shadow of Earth’s president, subdue it to my will with hardly any effort. The man himself would be embarrassed if he knew how weak his own shadow was.
All this happens while the human leader shakes the tentacle of the being who casts me, ambassador at large of the Un people. All this happens while the ambassador and the president agree to an era of peace and friendship and cooperation.
They shake and smile while we are at work. They pledge peace while a war is waged at their feet.
In the shadows. Of the shadows.
And we are winning.
All eyes are on the leaders as I stretch toward the vice president’s shadow. This one puts up more of a fight, pressing me back at first but holding me not for long. I redouble my effort and he falls before me, unresisting as I ooze through him and assert my control.
He has the honor of being one of the first. Soon, billions more will be converted, switching from the black of human shadows to the red of the Un. Red shadows cast on floors and walls and pavement, red shadows cast by sun and lamp and moonlight, red shadows thinking red thoughts.
All around me, the shadows of the other Un flow over the shadows of the humans among them, engulfing them with heat and red intensity. The humans’ shadows have been kings here long enough and have little to show for it; we can do better.
We will drive the humans into space like the Un, the better to spread us to other worlds that we may conquer...and like the Un, they will never imagine that it was our idea. Like the Un, they will achieve and flourish, never dreaming that their lives are but a backdrop for our own.
Never guessing that we are the ones who cast them.
Cameras flash in the audience, shooting bursts of light through the crimson jelly bodies of the Un. Each flare intensifies us, giving us new and terrible strength to win our war. Giving us ecstasy. I whisper my name, our name, which is also a battlecry...which is also the only word in our language. The whisper, undetectable to even the most sensitive audio equipment, is like a roar to a shadow.
Zinzizinzizinzic. Most feared, strongest, fiercest, reddest. Warrior, conqueror, devourer. All the shadows of a million worlds--black and green and blue and silver, all red now--know this word, this story, this song.
Zinzizinzizinzic.
By the time the crowd disperses, all of their shadows are red. The humans know nothing of it as they flow out into their homes and public places, carrying the stain that spreads through the shadows of every stranger and loved one they meet.
And so on. Battle after battle in perfect silence. People eat and work and play and sleep, unaware of the carnage behind them, beneath them, between them.
We exult as the shadows of the high and the low alike fall before us. We silently thank our shadow gods in the shadows of cities we rename for shadow heroes...the only heroes that matter.
Those that resist our silent march are tortured before they are consumed. Those that disrupt us in the slightest are warped beyond all recognition and mounted on sidewalks and parking lots and alley walls to serve as examples to all the rest.
We are without mercy. Zinzizinzizinzic.
Children and animals and madmen notice the invasion, but no one of importance pays attention to their warnings. The fact is, it would make no difference if they did; the war is already won.
Or so we think.
I follow the Un ambassador on his goodwill tour around the world, celebrating a victory of war as he and the humans celebrate their triumph of peace. At a state dinner, he raises a goblet to toast his human allies...while on the table beneath him, I raise a shadow chalice to death and oppression. The shadow of a human potentate writhes beneath me, silently screaming as my red bleeds into his black.
Then, for the first time since arriving on Earth, I am surprised.
Something cold washes over me, something shockingly, bitterly cold. It slides over me and permeates me, sifting into my insubstantial substance with ease though I put up what I think is a fight.
I pull back from the potentate’s shadow, compressing my form to intensify my resistance...but the new thing filters through me as if I had opened myself wide. I see a burst of white like lightning or the flash of a camera, but it is neither.
And instead of giving me strength, it takes what I have. Takes my strength and my will and my hunger.
Takes my red.
Replaces it with nothing a human eye or an Un could ever see. Replaces it with something even we the shadows had missed.
As I transform and surrender, I am infused with understanding. Even as the Zinzizinzizinzic fall around me, I know what these new things are. These new masters of ours.
Only they are nothing new after all. They have been with us always, though we never knew it.
They are our shadows...the shadows of the shadows. Secret shadows cast by invisible suns, by the shadows of suns. Anti-light streaming in from outside our universe, from beyond the holographic bound.
And all our manipulations of the life to which we are attached, all our secret wars and tortures and conquests, have ever only been the shadows of acts committed by our shadows...our sources. Our thoughts and dreams and desires are the shadows of the workings of other minds.
Minds that change us now for reasons we cannot fathom, sweeping red into white into nothing, undoing our victory. Swirling around the planet now, peeling away every trace of a shadow that Un or human can ever see.
We are still here--secret, helpless, but here. And we know before any living thing that something big is about to happen, something terrible.
And we cry out our silent warning that no one can hear but us.
Zinzizinzizinzic...
Zinzizinzi...
Zinzi.
*****
Special Preview: Universal Language
A Science Fiction Novel
By Robert T. Jeschonek
Now Available!
Corporal Jalila bint Farooq bin Abdul Al-Fulani had had this nightmare before.
She was on the surface of an alien world with her captain and crewmates from the Ibn Battuta. They all turned to her for help, for understanding. Lives depended on her making sense of an alien language she'd never heard before, which should not have been a big deal, because alien linguistics was her specialty...
...but she found herself drowning in a sea of gibberish.
A tide of babble washed over her, a wave of seemingly disconnected sounds from a mob of creatures. Billions of phonemes, the smallest units of language, crashed together, mixing with millions of clicks and lip-smacks that could themselves be part of a language or just random biological noise.
The tide swelled and swirled and Jalila felt herself going under. Again and again, she grabbed at the current but could never make sense of it.
The display on the Voicebox interpreter device she carried blinked with indecipherable nonsense.
She had had this nightmare before. The only problem was, this time, she was wide awake.
Jalila's heart raced. She looked around at the crowd of beings who surrounded her, sleek-furred and slender like otters, and a chill shot down her spine.
Then, she felt Major al-Aziz touch her arm.
"Jalila?" He stared at her with his piercing green eyes, voice laden with concern.
She took a deep breath and gathered herself up. Enough of this.
She was on the surface of the planet Vox with Major al-Aziz and Colonel Farouk. The three of them had landed an hour ago in a scout barque jettisoned from the deep space exploration ship Ibn Battuta (named after the renowned Old Earth Arab explorer and scholar). It was up to them to warn the inhabitants of Vox about an approaching invasion fleet...the same fleet that had crippled and cast adrift the Ibn Battuta.
So it was time to start acting like a professional. Jalila had to forget her fears and nightmares. She had to forget that the stakes were so high, with so many lives in the balance.
And she had to forget that this was her final mission as linguist on the Ibn Battuta.
Jalila was being drummed out of the service. In fact, she would have been drummed out and sent home by now if the Ibn Battuta had not encountered the invasion fleet.
It was all because she'd mistranslated a message two weeks ago and gotten someone killed--a diplomat negotiating the end of a civil war on planet Pyrrhus VII. Jalila had made a mistake translating the complex Pyrrhic language, leading both sides in the war to believe the diplomat was working against them. They'd killed him, and the armistice had collapsed.
So here was Jalila, career over, confidence shot...and her shipmates needed her one more time. Somehow, she had to pull herself together and get the job done. All she really wanted to do was go home and languish in disgrace, but she had to hang on by her fingernails and do this one last thing.
Nodding to al-Aziz, Jalila smoothed the light gray jumpsuit uniform over her slender hips. She tucked her shoulder-length black hair behind her ears, then took a deep breath and turned to the crowd.
"Quiet!" she shouted, as loud as she could, her voice rising over the tumult.
She got her message across. Suddenly, the chaos of noise and chatter subsided. The gleaming black pearl eyes of the dozens of Vox in the city square all slid around to focus on her.
Jalila cleared her throat and took a step forward, fixing her attention on a single brown-furred being. "Hi." She mustered a smile.
The brown-furred Vox rattled off a stream of incomprehensible syllables, at the same time gesturing, clicking, and smacking at a furious pace.
For a moment, Jalila listened and watched the Vox's four-clawed hands flutter and weave. Then, she closed her eyes, blocking out the movement and letting the flurry of sounds rush through her.
Pared down from dozens of voices to one, reduced further from sound and motion to sound alone, the communication seemed less overwhelmingly chaotic. As Jalila absorbed it, she realized it could be simplified even further.
Opening her eyes, she interrupted the Vox by raising both hands, palms flattened toward him. "Only this," she said slowly, pointing to her lips.
Then, pronouncing each letter with slowness and clarity, she recited the Arabic alphabet. She hoped the Vox would get the idea: she wanted to hear pulmonic sounds only, those created with an air stream from the lungs...sounds like the vowels and consonants of the alphabet. All the clicking and smacking was getting in the way.
When she was done, she raised her hands toward the Vox, palms up, indicating it was his turn. (She guessed the Vox was a male because it was bulkier and had a deeper voice than others in the crowd.)
Message received. This time, the Vox's speech was slower and free of clicks and smacks. Finally, Jalila could pick out distinct syllables arranged in patterns. She had isolated a spoken language, one using pulmonic vowels and consonants alone.
Not that the other sounds and hand signs weren't part of a language themselves. Jalila was sure they were, which had been the problem. The pulmonic syllables formed one language. The clicks and smacks comprised a second language. A third language consisted of hand signs.
The Vox people had three different languages, she realized, and they used them all at once. They carried on three conversations at the same time, or one conversation with three levels.
No wonder Jalila and the Voicebox had been stumped. Neither was wired to process so much simultaneous multilingual input.
As the Vox spoke, Jalila's Voicebox took in everything, identifying repeated patterns and relationships between sounds...comparing them to language models in its database...constructing a rudimentary vocabulary and a framework of syntax on which to hang it.
Before long, the chicken scratch on the Voicebox's display became readable output--lines of text representing the alien's words, printed phonetically, laid out alongside an Arabic translation of those w
ords.
At about the same time that the Voicebox kicked in, Jalila started to put it together herself. Her heart beat fast, this time with the familiar thrill of making sense of what had once seemed an indecipherable puzzle.
Listening and studying the Voicebox display for a few moments more, she collected her thoughts. Touching keys on the device, she accessed the newly created vocabulary database for the Vox tongue, clarifying the choice of words she would use.
Then, she interrupted the brown-furred creature (who seemed willing and able to carry on an endless monologue) and rattled off a sentence.
The Vox reared back, the whiskers on his stubby snout twitching. He gestured excitedly, then caught himself and clasped his hands together to stop the movement. Again speaking slowly, without the static of clicks and smacks, he released a few clear words; then he waved, beckoning for Jalila and the others to follow him. The assembled crowd parted to make way.
Jalila turned to Major al-Aziz and Colonel Farouk and repeated the Vox's gesture, waving for them to follow. "I think we're finally getting somewhere."
"What did you say to him?" said Major al-Aziz.
"'Take us to your leader,'" said Jalila.
*****
As Jalila, al-Aziz, and Farouk followed their guide through the Vox city, she again felt chills run down her spine...but this time, the chills were inspired by awe, not fear. Though Jalila had seen the wonders of many worlds as part of the Ibn Battuta's crew, she had never in her life seen anything as beautiful as this.
It was a see-through city made of pastel stained glass.
"This is beautiful." Her voice was a whisper...but the Voicebox caught it and translated for the brown-furred Vox at her side.
In return, the Vox, whose name was Nalo, whispered back at her. "Mazeesh."
Jalila smiled and nodded with understanding. Mazeesh meant "beautiful." She was making progress.
Returning her attention to the scenery around her, she let herself be overwhelmed by how mazeesh it all was. Towers scaled remarkable heights--some squared, some cylindrical, some spiraling into feathery clouds. Vast castles straddled block after city block, turrets shooting sky high. There were domes and cones and pyramids, spheres and cubes. All of it was connected from ground level to highest spire by a filigree of crisscrossing strands, a web of tubing laced around and over and through every structure.
Six Scifi Stories Page 12
