The Best of Galaxy’s Edge 2013-2014

by Larry Niven

  He will think that if I want to meet her, he must also want to meet her. Oh, there are so many truths that humans do not know about the things they make.

  He returns the bread to his plate. “How long will she be here?”

  I say, “Not very.”

  “Well, if it will please you”—his eyes roam over my leafy head—“then we will go.” His meaning is clear: yes, we will go, because I might as well be happy in the time I have left. He is still the Gartner, and I the neep. To drive this home, he spears the largest potato and bites it in two.

  I flinch away. He tells me that other roots, so long as they have not been carved, do not feel pain. But how would he know?

  * * *

  “How much longer will the actress be here?” I ask Sissel.

  “Tomorrow is her last performance,” she says. “All the finest Gartners will turn out for it. You are interested in her now?”

  I nod, flicking the ash away from the end of my cigarette. “Gartner Poulson has promised to take me. What kind of actress is she?”

  Sissel flaps her hand before her face. “What a question, Pluto!” She tucks her apron across her grinning mouth, and the purple-red of her cheeks is just close enough to the color of a scandalized human’s that I cannot help but grin too. “She is, of course, a lady!” But after a moment her merriment fades, and she pats her apron back into place. “They say she is not like other women. They say her skin is as dark as soil beneath the earth.”

  “Impossible,” I say. I puff. And I think of Mads telling me that my skin, in secret, is as white as his. “Have you ever seen a woman like that?”

  Sissel frowns. “No—not a beautiful one. The Gartners do not care for soil.”

  I do not want a woman whom the master will not find beautiful. That will do me no good at all. “Let’s hope it isn’t true, then,” I say. “I would not want to go into town only to find an ugly woman.”

  “Nor would anyone,” Sissel agrees.

  * * *

  When Sissel is gone, and my second-from-final cigarette is burning low, I feel a tingle on my scalp so sharp that I reach for it before I even register what I’m doing. At first my fingers find only the ordinary wrinkles and the thick squarish stems of hair that I am accustomed to. But then, in between them, I feel a little knot, a tightly curled lump.

  Ugh, I think, a beetle. I tear it loose.

  The pain is instant and excruciating. To keep from crying out, I must stuff my fist into my mouth and bite down, and for all that my teeth are no more than square crenelations, even that is painful.

  The knot, no beetle but instead a tight-wound bulb of leafy green, glistens wetly in my hand. It shows no yellow yet, but I know what lies within. It is a flower. A turnip flower. Part of me.

  I throw it with all the strength I can muster, and it arcs through the air and falls into an unremarkable patch of brittle, salinated grass.

  When I bid Mads good-night, I pray that he does not notice the sappy fluid leaking from between my leaves. For once the Tuber of Many Roots answers my prayers, and I am permitted to retire to the cellar in peace.

  * * *

  Even a full night beneath the ground does not revive me, and when I rise from my plot groggy and tender, I feel a sour ache all through my body. I know what Sissel would say—that my attitude has seeped into my flesh—but Sissel is not the one who fears my death. She would hardly be put out if the Gartner found my unripe bud abandoned in the withered grass, but I …

  Mads finds me mending the lining of his best jacket; not his second best, the blue one which he wears to church, but the black one that he prefers for business.

  “You want to see me looking fine?” he asks, following the curve of my broad leaves with his fat maggot fingers.

  “If the actress is so fine to look at,” I say, “won’t you want to look even finer?”

  He pats my shoulder. “Pluto, you clever girl. You know me better than I know myself.”

  I, of course, will wear my tunic. It is the only article of clothing that I own.

  * * *

  All day, Mads laughs at my preparations—but all that means to me is that my Gartner is in a good mood, and that when the time comes for me to button him into his jacket, he lets me do so with hardly a word of protest.

  “You look so handsome,” I tell him. He checks his reflection in the hall mirror to make sure that I am right.

  The only thing Mads must do for himself is hitch the horse to the open buggy. We could perhaps be trusted with a horse, but horses cannot be trusted with us; it is as though they do not believe we are alive, and many turnips have been killed by horses, who bite at us indiscriminately, or tear into our greens and cause us to die of shock.

  The horse is in a foul mood today. He yanks his bridle from Mads’ grip, and screams his displeasure when Mads catches hold again. I am afraid Mads will think him not worth the trouble, so I jump out of the buggy to help.

  At once the horse lunges for me, snapping his terrible teeth at my greens, and only when I lift my hand to stay him does he finally calm.

  “That’s better,” says Mads, puzzled, as the horse settles and chomps at his bit.

  What Mads does not see is my hand, now missing a finger, or the moment when the horse accepts it from me. I fear that he would kill the horse for daring to taste me before Mads himself has had the chance, so I return to the buggy, fold my hands in my lap, and do not let my feelings show on my face. It hurts less to lose one small finger than to lose my first bud, anyway.

  We pass most of the ride in silence.

  * * *

  I have only been to town twice before. It is its own little world made of bricks, some of which have been plastered over and painted yellow; the whole place is the color of fire, like the ends of my matchsticks. We leave the horse and buggy with Sissel Peals’ Gartner, a round man who cannot afford to eat his turnips, and Mads hands him a few kroner in exchange. He is very careful not to touch the man’s grubby hand.

  It is not hard to guess where our visitor will be found. There is a cart set up in the main square, with dozens of steps folded out in all directions: a traveling theater. Perhaps a hundred Gartners, male and female, sit in folding chairs laid out around the plaza, their neeps standing at their sides. All the Gartners are enfolded in their finest clothes, and Mads puffs himself up when he sees them.

  One woman at the far left of the crowd, dressed in vibrant red and richest black, dips her head toward my Gartner and points her neep in our direction. The neep approaches us, face downturned with respect. I think it is called Mikkel, but I cannot recall if it styles itself male or female.

  “Greetings, Herre Poulson,” says the neep, bowing deeply. “My Gartner, Frue Holm, invites you to sit with her.”

  We follow neep Mikkel back to its mistress. Gartner Holm smiles at my master, but it is a cold smile; they are so like each other.

  “What a pleasant afternoon this will be,” says Gartner Holm in her mountain-peak voice. She offers Mads her hand, and he kisses it. I hide my own disfigured hand in my tunic pocket, feeling at the edges of my cigarette carton.

  The crowd chatters mildly, each and every Gartner being sure to look spectacularly unimpressed. We neeps keep our heads turned down. Still, my eyes sneak toward the stage.

  At first all I am aware of is a feeling. A rumble, which might as well be coming from the salt mine. But the rumbling gets louder, and deeper, until I am sure that it is a drum. One by one the Gartners’ sentences trail off and their faces turn toward the traveling theater.

  With a last furious rumble, the drum player leaps out from the cart and lands on the top step of the folding stage, arms upraised. He is dressed as a monster—I do not know what kind of monster, for it is too big to be a horse, but it is beautiful. Its whole body is redder than any brick in the town, and its huge silvery eyes flash our reflections back at us as the man inside the costume turns his head. Is he a lizard? Or a tremendous bird?

  I have no time to decide; the nex
t moment, the man is back to drumming, and the bright colors of his costume flash metallic in the sun. The whole square is silent, except for that drumming, which rattles my fibers until I feel as though I have a human heart beating in my chest.

  And then the drumming stops again. And She appears.

  Every human in the crowd gasps, and I hear Mikkel’s yip of surprise. The woman that pops up from the cart is like no woman I have ever seen. Is she beautiful? Her flesh is dark, just like Sissel said, dark as soil that has never seen the sun. But she gleams, she glows with something that I have never seen before, not in a Gartner, not in a neep. She is convinced of herself. Her features are not small and delicate like mine, and I am the one Mads created to be beautiful—but this woman, the actress, is nothing like me, and yet she smiles as widely as if the difference between us does not matter.

  And she is dressed as a neep in blossom.

  As the drum starts again, she begins to dance. That too is unfamiliar—she moves too freely, without the sneering reservation of the Gartners, and her wild gestures send the papier-mâché leaves and the silk flowers bobbing, as if they are an extension of her own body. I have never moved like that.

  I am more like her than I have ever been like Mads.

  As she dances, the monster that is the drummer begins to circle her, his costume flashing. The light has not changed; it is still midafternoon, with the low weak sunlight of our springtime sloping across the rooftops, and yet the sun seems to have focused all its strength on that little stage so that it is lit from within, while the rest of the world is overdrawn in shadow.

  “A trick of mirrors,” mumbles Mads.

  I do not look at him. I do not look at him again until the dance is done, and the drummer circles toward the actress in her purple-blue neep costume, and spits a gout of paper-ribbon fire at her, and she collapses across the steps. The papier-mâché leaves ignite with real flame.

  “What a spectacle,” says Frue Holm, but even she claps. All the humans clap, because at least the wild neep has met a fitting end: roasted by flame, as all turnips must be in time.

  We neeps applaud as well, though more softly. We, too, have seen something that seems right and true—and we have learned from it, though it is not, I think, the lesson the Gartners would have us learn.

  * * *

  There is no hope now of Mads falling for the actress. This does not trouble me as much as I would have expected. The main fact, which had not occurred to me before, is that no wild thing like her could stand to have a man like Mads yapping at her heels. So I am left with only my Gartner, who sits impatiently while the drummer and the actress take their bows, nods to Frue Holm, and leaves the performers to pack up their stage. He does not leave a single krone for their trouble.

  “What strange nonsense,” he mutters.

  I follow him, my scheme in tatters. Now I am less prepared than ever to become Mads’ supper.

  All through the ride home, I run my roots across the stump where my finger once was, and I consider. How to be rid of Mads Poulson? How to transform myself into a wild neep like the one I saw on stage?

  That night, I smoke my last secret cigarette. And it does not escape me, as the smolder eats away at the paper tube, that my cigarettes are gone—but that one match remains.

  * * *

  All the next day, Mads avoids me. He has got a letter from the head office in Copenhagen, and has locked himself in the study with it. Sometimes these letters make him swear, but today I hear nothing.

  All day, I play with my match.

  Mads does not even come to his hot meal, which is strange. What is stranger still is that cook does not come out to serve it. I can hear cook moving about in the kitchen, but there is another sound in there too, like a squeezed mouse. This does not make sense to me, and I make sure to stay away.

  Late in the afternoon, I see a plume of grey smoke rise over the salt mine. I sit out on the steps, playing with my match, and watch it absently.

  I feel as if a storm is coming. I get the same feeling before a big rain: like the soil is twisted up in anticipation. Only this time it is me twisted up.

  Sissel Peals arrives before the sun fully sets, and when she sees me she rushes toward me and catches me up in her arms. “Oh, Pluto!” she wails. “Oh! You are still with us!” And in between her cries she makes that squeezed-mouse sound like cook has been making all day.

  “Where else would I be?” I ask. Surely she cannot know about my bud.

  She pushes me back to arm’s length and shakes me. “Idiot neep, where is Gartner Poulson?”

  “In his office,” I say, but the plume of smoke catches my eye and every fiber of my body ignites. “Isn’t he?”

  Sissel shakes her head, pointing toward the smoke. “The mine,” she says. “The mine is finished. Gartner Poulson has been called back to Copenhagen.”

  I turn slowly on the spot, refusing to believe and also certain that what she says is true. Mads is done with the mine, and that fire, all that smoke, is what remains of the neeps and turnips who worked there, and have no purpose now that it is to be closed. They are not valuable enough to the company to warrant transport back to the city.

  I am not valuable enough to Mads, either. To spare himself the expense of my train ticket, he will roast me too, flowers or no.

  “Get out of here,” I hiss at Sissel. “You never saw me.”

  She shrinks away from me—neeps are not supposed to be full of wrath and fire, but when that actress pretended to roast, it was as though all that heat flowed through her and into me.

  I am not Gartner Poulson’s creation. He only changed me, and I can change myself back.

  * * *

  There is nothing worth stealing from the house. There is no such thing as a wild neep, not really, and stealing a hundred kroner would do me little good; no human would take it from me, and money is no use beneath the soil.

  So I decide to burn it down.

  My fingers tremble with the matchbox, and at first it fails to strike. The sulfur scrapes against the strip, leaving a grey streak. The second strike fares the same.

  But the third time, the match flares, and I drop it hurriedly to the small pile of paper made from shreds of the letter that doomed our mine, and I wave my hand over it to create a draft.

  Turnips are not friends of fire; I have lit a cigarette, but never a house. The paper burns and chars the wood floor, but my flame dies before taking the building with it.

  I scream and batter the floor with my fists until white pulp shows through my purple skin. I would keep pounding forever, until either my body or the house gave way, but Mads stamps through the doorway and hauls me to my feet.

  “No more of that,” he snarls at me. “You’re mine to keep. Mine to eat. Mine to destroy.”

  I struggle against him, but he is strong, and my fists are battered all to mush. In the end, he simply lifts me off the floor and carries me to the kitchen.

  * * *

  Cook whimpers while she prepares me, no doubt because she knows she will be next.

  “At least you’re worth eating, Pluto,” she tells me while when she cuts my leaves away. The miners and cook are no good for eating. They will be roasted to ash and left in the open air. At least the one who made me will have his satisfaction of me before all this is done.

  What bitter consolation.

  Nothing hurts as much, or will ever hurt as much, as when I tore my bud away. Still, it is not pleasant to feel cook’s cold knife slide into me and gouge out the bruised and rotten parts. Only my best pieces will be saved for Mads.

  It is not Mads’ habit to see his meals prepared, but he was the one that took the knife to me to bring me to life, and now he watches with no small satisfaction as that life is taken away. To my chagrin, the knife reveals flesh that is whiter yet than his; I have not made myself poisonous to him. I have failed.

  Cook is good with her spices, but Mads stays her hand when she reaches for the shallots.

  “As few ingre
dients as possible,” says Mads, looking into my eyes. “I want to taste Pluto.”

  Tuber of Many Roots, I hate him. I wall myself off and think only of the actress in her role as the wild neep; I see the rhythm of her leaves and the roll of her blossoms even as cook adds salt and butter to the pan, even as she dices me into bite-size pieces. She saves my face for last, for she is a kind soul. In my final moments, I bless her.

  * * *

  I cannot say I remember the oven but for its heat. I am largely numb by then.

  And I cannot say I remember the eating, for I am all in pieces; one bite comes in my arm, one in my shoulder, one in my thigh, one in my neck. He does not eat me in order. I have no order left.

  In the darkness of his stomach, though, I feel a change. He is warmer than the soil of the earth, and damper, but damp and darkness are my elements. Within him, I begin to come together again.

  I am too good to waste a single bite. When Mads retires at last, full to bursting with me—and lies down in his above-ground bed, and pulls the blankets over him in a way that feels familiar to me, although cotton is no comfort like earth is—I wake up. True, I am not myself anymore, but I have grown to this, to changing and to being changed. This is nothing more than another transformation.

  Within the world that is Mads Poulson, I roil. I turn sour, just like Sissel promised. And just as Mads promised, I begin to bloom.

  I have held back my flowers for so long that calling them forth is no great feat—they burst out of me, stretching and reaching for sunlight, the only part of me that has ever longed for open air. Mads sits up in his bed, clutching at his throat, coughing and choking and clawing at the skin until it bleeds. I want out, and when my yellow blooms force their way up he cannot continue to breathe.

  Late next afternoon, cook and Sissel find him. His mouth and nose, his ears and eye sockets, are plugged with yellow blossoms.

  Sissel Peals is a very wise turnip. With great effort but no complaint, she drags the bloated remains of Mads to the root cellar and tucks him into my old plot. With the aid of a spare brick, cook knocks a hole in the boards so that the sun can get in. They leave us there to germinate and to find some peace.