FSF, September 2008

by Spilogale Authors

  "What is it?” Osaji frowned at the pill he handed her.

  "Codeine,” he said.

  So he hadn't consumed all of them. She glanced at him, but he had turned away.

  She managed to get Mota to swallow the pill and wash it down from a cup with a straw. Almost at once, far quicker than the drug could have taken effect, Mota closed her eyes and relaxed. They waited till they were sure she was asleep, then moved her onto the bed.

  When they had done all they could, Jack said, “You want me to leave or stay?"

  At first Osaji was unsure of what she wanted. Then at last she said, “Stay."

  So began a long ordeal of waiting. From time to time Mota would rouse and reach out for one of them; it didn't seem to matter which one. As Osaji sat looking at Mota's face, she was forced to think: I longed to be free of her, yet now I don't want her to die.

  More than anyone Osaji knew, Mota had forsaken her own wants in order to live for others. Selflessness. It was a virtue; everyone said so. And yet, it was as if her individuality had slowly withered away from neglect over the years. She had spent a lifetime making herself transparent, till she had no substance of her own, and all you saw was the substance of others seen through her.

  As Osaji studied Mota's face, it seemed impossible that those mild and vacant features had ever known obsession, rage, or remorse. Had Mota ever believed deeply in something, or taken risks? She had never spoken of herself—never even known herself, perhaps. Now she never would.

  "She doesn't deserve this,” Osaji said softly.

  After a few seconds, Jack said, “No one does. But we all get it, in the end."

  "I mean, to die out here, so far from everyone else. She lived for other people. Without them, there's nothing left of her."

  There was a long silence. At last Jack said, “Just to warn you, this takes a long time. It's messy and hard. People fight it. Even her."

  He was right. She struggled painfully against the ebbing of her life. Osaji and Jack took turns sitting with her and giving her medicine when she roused. They were soon worn out, but still she hung on. At the very end she looked up at Osaji, and seemed to recognize her. “Why is it so dark?” she said.

  "Don't worry about it, Mota. We're right here with you."

  Her hand contracted around Osaji's, and she said, “I wish...."

  Osaji never found out what she wished.

  Osaji dressed Mota's body in her favorite clothes and they wrapped her in one of the weighted nets used for burial in the Saltese Sea. At home, they would have laid her among barren rocks to nourish the microorganisms, so she could become mother to all the life that followed. Here, they laid her in a spot that was already like a garden: a cushiony bed of tubeworm flowers. Then they raised the anchor and floated on.

  It was the next day before the grief came. Osaji had gone to Mota's vac to clean up, and found in one of the wall pockets a sweater that Mota had worn till it was the shape of her. When Osaji held it up, it seemed so empty, and yet still full of her. She hugged it tight, and it gave off the smell of love.

  All at once, Osaji missed Mota so intensely her throat squeezed tight around her breath, and around her heart, and tears pried their way out between her eyelids. She knew then she had lost the only person who would ever love her just for being herself. It was the only inadvertent love she would ever know—love as deep as the genes that knit them together. There would never be anyone else who simply had to love her.

  They had come to a place where, far away through the water, they could see the flickering light of eruptions from a line of undersea volcanoes. They went outside to sit on top of the ark and watch.

  "Do you believe in an afterlife?” Osaji said.

  Jack paused, as if considering whether to lie. At last he said, “No."

  "So when we die, that's the end?"

  "We can only hope.” After a few seconds he added, “Sorry. I ought to give you comforting platitudes, I suppose."

  "No. I hope death is the end, too. Because if Mota knew we'd left her so far from everything familiar, she'd feel lost and scared forever."

  A paddletail shot past them, swimming upstream. “Where do you suppose they're going?” Osaji said.

  "Nowhere. They're just crazy. Always swimming against the current, as if—” Suddenly, he stopped.

  "What?” she said.

  "I've got an idea."

  It was as crazy as all his other ideas. But at least it didn't require technology they didn't have, or skills they couldn't acquire. It wasn't a spacer idea, it was a Bennish idea.

  They set about gathering paddletails. They used sheets of plastic scavenged from inside the ark—vat covers, tarpaulins, anything that could be spared. They spread them wide to catch the creatures speeding past. Once affixed to a surface, the paddletails held on tenaciously, still whipping their tails against the current. As their numbers increased, Osaji and Jack repositioned some to the upstream side of the ark, where they strained against the lines holding them as if they were in harness. Others went to the downstream side to push against the ark like so many flailing motors.

  The moment when Divernon started moving slowly against the current, Osaji and Jack slapped each other's hands in triumph, then swam to catch up with the ark.

  For many days they experimented and refined the rigging before they were satisfied with the way their herd of snakes was deployed. It looked absurd, as if their washing were spread out in a tattered array all around the ark. But it pulled them slowly, inexorably, backward the way they had come.

  They still couldn't steer, of course. The paddletails would go only one direction, upstream. But if they kept going long enough, they would take Divernon home.

  Back they went, over the seagrass plains, past the tubeworm jungle. Every day Osaji went to the control pod to search for the best current—strong enough to keep the paddletails going, weak enough not to overpower them. Every day she and Jack went outside to catch more, fearful their present herd would die. In a few weeks they began to discover eggs embedded in the rough outer membrane of the ark, the spawn of their captives. Uncertain of the paddletail life cycle, they gathered some to raise in one of their tanks and left the rest to hatch outside, in hopes that the creatures’ instincts would bring them back to spawn in the place where they were born.

  They must have passed the glass city, but they did not see it and could not stop to search. They rose up over the edge of the rift valley and into the primeval waste with some misgiving. The current was much gentler here, so they made better headway; but the paddletails did not thrive. Carefully they nursed along their second generation, experimenting to see what they ate. One day, having tried everything else, Jack poured some of his home-brewed rotgut into their tank, and they went into a frenzy trying to drink it.

  "Kindred souls!” he whooped. “They need to be plastered to stay alive!"

  After that, Osaji and Jack devoted as much biomass as they could spare to the production of alcohol. Across the dark plain, Divernon became like a floating distillery. “At least something around here is lit,” Jack observed.

  Despite their best efforts, their creatures were much depleted by the time the sonar began to show the outline of mountains ahead. Remembering the strength of the current that had swept them through the gap, Osaji worried that their paddletail propulsion system wouldn't have the power to get them through. She and Jack were both in the control pod when they made the first attempt. The paddletails pulled them unerringly toward the pass where the current flowed strongest; but as the water velocity increased, the ark slowed. Barely a hundred yards from the gap, they came to a complete stop. The paddletails, pushing as hard as they could, could not draw them through.

  "We've got to drop down out of the current,” Osaji said. “They can't do it. We're going to wear them out."

  "Wait,” Jack said, looking at the screen. “What's that above us?"

  "The ice,” Osaji said, dread in her heart. Here, at the mountain pass, it was perilously
close.

  "Go up,” he said.

  She shook her head. “We could get trapped.” People had warned of it all her life.

  "It's our only choice,” he said.

  So, quelling her fear, she input the command that would dump ballast water from the tank and send them slowly upward.

  As they rose, she watched the image of the ice's underside grow clearer on the screen. It was not smooth, but carved into channels, with knifelike ridges projecting down like the keels of enormous, frozen boats. The water temperature was falling. The cold made the paddletails sluggish; soon they would cease to pull. “This isn't going to work,” Osaji said softly.

  "Hang on,” Jack said.

  They were almost close enough to touch the ice when they felt the stirring of a countercurrent flowing east. The paddletails, paralyzed with cold, did not respond. Divernon started floating toward the mountains again, this time swept on the breath of the sea.

  Ahead, the sonar showed that the ice and the mountain peaks converged. “Get into one of those channels in the ice,” Jack suggested.

  "But what if—"

  "Just try it, for chrissake! What have we got to lose?"

  They entered a deep cleft with ice walls on either side. As the mountains rose to block their way, a floor formed beneath them, cutting them off from below. Now, there was no longer an option of dropping back down. They were in a tunnel of ice and rock. Ahead, the walls closed in. They felt a gentle jostle, then heard the sound of water rushing past the membrane.

  Divernon had come to a stop in the stream. The passage was too narrow, and they were stuck.

  They sat motionless for a few moments. Then Jack said, “Sorry."

  "No!” Osaji said. “We can't give up now. I'm going to vent air. Maybe it will push us past this narrow spot."

  The first jet of air had no effect. “Keep going,” Jack said. “Less air, smaller balloon. Maybe it'll shrink us down to size."

  They had vented an alarming amount when Divernon stirred, slipped, and then floated on down the tunnel. Two hundred yards beyond, the floor fell out from beneath them again. Eager to escape the entrapping ice, Osaji commanded the ark to begin a descent. A valley opened up before them, and the navigational station that had gone dead months before suddenly came to life. “It's recognized where we are!” Osaji cried out. “We're back in the Saltese Sea!"

  The map on the screen showed that they had returned over the mountain range barely twenty miles from the place where they had left it, close to the Cleft of Golconda. No longer were there any boiling plumes; far below them, the familiar currents had resumed. There was even a scattering of dots for the beacons of an arkswarm. Osaji seized the radio and put out a call.

  "Any ark, this is Divernon. Please respond."

  There was silence. She repeated the call.

  A crackly, faraway voice came from the speaker. “Which ark is that? Please repeat your call."

  "It's Divernon!” Osaji nearly shouted.

  "Divernon?” There was a pause. “Where are you?"

  "Above you, just under the ice. We've just come back over the mountains. We were swept across when Golconda erupted, but we made it back."

  There were some staticky sounds from the radio that might have been exclamations of surprise, or a conversation on the other end, or merely interference.

  "Divernon, did you say mountains?” the radio finally said. “We can't have heard you right. Please repeat."

  * * * *

  7. Breaking Free

  They repeated their story many times in the hours, and finally days, that followed, as they sank back into the inhabited depths and the radio communication improved. They learned that the seafloor station at Golconda had not been utterly destroyed. Though the main dome had collapsed in the earthquake, and the port facilities had been severely damaged, the auxiliary domes had survived, and now the main one was being rebuilt. Through a friend of a friend, Osaji even learned that Kitti and her family were all right.

  "She will be very surprised to see her sister again,” the woman said over the radio. “The name of Osaji was listed among the casualties."

  The paddletails revived as they sank into warmer water, and started towing them upstream again. Since this would take the ark by the fastest route to Golconda, they let them continue. Osaji relished the idea of arriving pulled by a snakeherd in their makeshift harnesses.

  As they neared the station, Osaji dutifully started to pack and clean in order to vacate their purloined vessel. She had not entered Mota's vacuole since they had started the journey home. It was just as she had left it. Hardening herself against the memories, Osaji started to fill a recycling bin with the possessions of Mota's lifetime. She was standing with Uncle Yamada's flute in her hand when Jack peered in.

  "Do you suppose anyone would value Yamada's flute?” she said.

  He came in and took the flute, but gave it back. “Not like you would,” he said.

  "I can't keep it,” she said. “Someone else will use this vac next round. One must clear everything away so the next round can begin.” She stuffed the flute in the trash.

  "I'll take it, then,” Jack said, and fished it out.

  "Does it play?” she asked.

  He blew over the airhole and it let out a protesting squawk. “I guess I'll have to learn how,” he said. “Or Yamada will haunt me."

  He looked around the small bubble. “She was a nice lady. Not at all like you.” Realizing what he'd said, he winced. “That's not what I meant."

  Osaji knew what he'd meant, and didn't mind. She didn't want to be like Mota. At least one person on Ben knew that about her.

  "So what's next for you?” he said. “You going to settle down and have a normal life now?"

  Osaji felt as if the room were listening for her answer. Claustrophobia suddenly oppressed her. “Let's go outside,” she said. “Maybe we can see Golconda now."

  All was blackness outside, except the glowing ark itself. They swam around and sat atop it, silent with their crowded thoughts. At last Osaji said, “Do spacers always go back to space?"

  "No, I think I'll give Ben another try,” he said.

  "Good,” Osaji answered.

  He turned to look at her. Through his facemask, his expression was indistinguishable. “You never answered my question."

  Osaji still couldn't answer right away. Even out here, she felt the pull of community and family and duty, tugging at her to become the woman she ought to be.

  Then, defying it all, she said, “I want to go over the mountains again."

  "Really?” he said.

  "Yes. I want to find what else is out there. I want to explore the glass city, and know what happened to its builders."

  "Yeah,” he said.

  "Will Jack go back?"

  "I think I may. I've decided you Bennites have something here, with these arks, this autopoiesis thing."

  "It's not a new idea,” Osaji said. It was, in fact, as old as life.

  "No, but it's a better idea than you realize. Permeable membranes, that's the key: a constant exchange between outside and in. You've got to let the world leak in, and let yourself flow out into the nutrient bath around you. You've got to let in ideas, and observations, and ... well, affection ... or you become hard and dead inside. Life is all about having a permeable self—not so you're unclear who you are, but so you overlap a little with the others on the edges."

  Osaji was too surprised to say anything. She could not imagine anyone less permeable than Jack. But as she thought about it, and herself, she said hesitantly, “Some people are too permeable. They spend their lives trying to flow out, and never take in nutrient for themselves. They end up thin and empty inside."

  Just then, she saw a mote of light ahead. “Look!” she cried.

  It was Golconda. Ahead waited joyous reunions, amazing tales, celebrations of a new future. Once they arrived with their news, the planet would never be the same.

  "All the same,” Jack said, “I think I'll
take an outboard motor next time."

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Short Story: Picnic on Pentecost by Rand B. Lee

  Rand Lee's third story for us this year is very different from either of his last two. It's part of a series of stories about interactions between humans and the alien D'/fy. The last story in this series, “Coming of Age Day,” appeared in our Dec. 2003 issue and we've reprinted that story on our Website this month. These stories are challenging and rewarding.

  The planet has a face like a dead circus performer, slag green, gray-yellow, flecked with mica tinsel. You cannot tell it is a killer, except that it has no manners. No brothers or sisters; three suns: One, Two, Three. The weirdest orbit you can think of. Every thirteen years it earns the name Pentecost.

  Four of us, then: Jacques, Cora, Willem, and I. We do everything, my dears; we are practically a four-celled organism: Jacques black, West Indian (that's Earth) background; Cora, from the Europa Syndicate, vaguely Chinese from what little you can see through the machinery she calls her face; Willem, Dutch-Irish, two fathers he had, a gene-splicee of course, reared on Angel Station; and what did I call myself then? Oh, yes. Elizabeth. I grew up in the lusty halls of the Convent of the Sisters of Eternal Charity, on Masseràt. I am white as the Ace of Moons, whiter than anybody in three hundred years; gene-provenance unknown.

  Cora is our Coordinator for this little jaunt, the brains that links us all and helps us work smoothly, as a unit. We are utterly, totally, completely in love with one another.

  Just another survey team. The Damanakippith/fy, who are furry (all different colors), tall, look vaguely like centaurs, and are probably the sexiest beings in the outer rim of this galaxy, do it in sixes. They cannot imagine doing anything in less than sixes. Nobody has quite figured out why, since they have five fingers on each of their two hands and five toes on each of their two feet, as we do (well, as I used to). They like quartz crystals, which may be a clue. Because the D'/fy think Humans are cute, they gave us all their technology within four hundred years of their first contact with us.