Near + Far

by Cat Rambo

  There is a garden in the center of this house, which is called The Little Teacup of the Soul. Small, but green and wet. Everything is enjoyment and pleasure here—to keep the staff happy, to keep them well. This spaceport is large, and there are many Houses of this kind, but this one, Bo the manager says, is the best. The most varied. We'll fulfill any need, Bo says, baring his teeth in a smile, or die trying.

  The staff's rooms are larger than any spacer's and are furnished as each desire. Its cell is plain, but it has covered the walls with scent marks. It has filled them with this story, the story of how it came here, which no one in this house but it can read. It sits in its room and dreams of the taste of hot fluid, of the way the training creatures struggled like rodents caught in a snare.

  One of the visitors pretends that it is something else. Tell me that you are laying eggs in my flesh, he says, and it crawls over him and says the words, but it is not a queen, and its race does not lay eggs in the living. It holds his skin between two pincers and tears it, just a little, so he will feel the pain and think it is an egg. He lies back without moving, his eyes closed. My children will hatch out of you, it says, and makes its voice threatening. Yes, he says, yes. The pleasure shakes him like a blossom in the garden, burdened by the flying insects that pollinate it.

  Everything was war, every minute of every day. The corridors were painted with the scent of territoriality—the priests prayed anger and defense, and the sound of their voices shook the clutch-mates to the core. They were told of the interlopers, despoilers, clutch-robbers, who would destroy their race with no thought, who hated them simply because of what they were. They massed in the caverns, the great vast caverns that lie like lungs beneath the bodies of the Espen cities, and touched each other to pass on the madness.

  They were smaller than the Enemy, the soft fleshed. With limbs tucked in, they were the size of an Enemy's head at most, and every day the Espen people carried packages, bags, that size. So they sent ships laden with those willing to give their lives for the Race, willing to crawl through their stinking sewer tunnels or fold themselves beneath the seats of their transports, blood changed to chemicals that would consume them—and the Enemy—in undying flame, flames that could not be quenched but burned until they met other flames. They watched broadcasts of their cities, their homes, their young, burning, and rejoiced.

  They put One, Three and Six in armor of silver globules, each one a bomb, triggered by a thought when they were ready. They flew at night, a biological plane with no trace of metal or fuel, so it could elude detection, and entered their city. Dropped at a central point, they clung to the darkness and separated, spreading outward like a flower.

  Six found a café, full of the Enemy, drinking bitter brews that frothed like poison. They had no idea it was so close. The little ones ran around the tables and the adults patted them indulgently. They did not resemble the hatchlings Six knew, and each one was different in its colors. On the walls were pictures that did not show war: they showed clouds, and sun, and birds flying. It could smell the liquid in their bodies and knew it was on the third continent. It had tasted them before.

  A child saw Six where it lurked, up near the eaves, and screamed. Some force took over its limbs and it could no longer move. The area emptied, and it watched the death numbers tick downward as the blast radius cleared, trying to figure out what to do. Their soldiers shot it with a ray like crystal, a ray that made the world go away.

  When it awoke, its armor was gone, and it could destroy no one, not even itself. Even the little bomb that would have shattered its body and freed it was gone, an aching, oozing cavity where it had rested so long inside its body the only trace.

  The Espen talked to it. They said they were its friends, they said they were its enemies. They said it would be spared, that it would be killed. They cut away two of its limbs but ceased when they saw it did not hurt. They burned it with fire and acid, and laughed when it made sounds of pain. They mocked it. They said it would be alone forever, that its race had been killed. They said they would kill it too, if it did not communicate, if it did not tell them what they wanted to know, even though it had no knowledge and did not know what the priests at home would do next.

  And when it could make sounds no longer, they made it into a trade. They gained three of their own in exchange. And when it was back among its own kind, the questioning began again, although this time it was by the priests. The Interrogator was a large, dark-chitined creature; the assistants said that the Interrogator's clutch-mates had all died in the war.

  The first day the Interrogator came and asked questions: What had it said to the Espen? What had it revealed about their own armies and weapons? Why had they kept it alive?

  Why indeed? It did not know and said as much. The Interrogator looked at its mutilated body, at the stumps of limbs, at the raw places where they had pried away the carapace and burned the soft exposed patches, and went away without another question, trailed by two assistants.

  The next day, the questions came again. What had Six said? What had it revealed? Why was it alive? Six said it did not know and the Interrogator came closer to where it crouched, favoring its injuries. It reached out a forelimb and rested it lightly on a pain point. The touch was like fire all over again.

  I don't know, Six said. Torture me if you like, as they did, and I will tell you everything I told them, which was nothing.

  The Interrogator leaned still further in, pressing harder, smelling the scents it gave off while sunk deep in pain. Finally the touch pulled back, and Six was alone again.

  The act was repeated every few hours. In the dim light of the cell, as the cycles passed, as it came again and again, severed limbs began to regrow, and the places where they had pried away pieces of carapace healed and thickened, except for the tormented spot the Interrogator had chosen, ulcerated and sore, not healing.

  Long after Six's regenerated limbs could flex as their predecessors once had, Five was allowed to see it. It stood well away, flanked by guards, so Six could not touch it from where it lay bound, no matter how it yearned toward its clutch-mate.

  It asked the same question the Interrogator had. Why was Six still alive? One and Three had accomplished their mission, it said, and Four had died in a similar operation. Only Two and Five were left. But now they were suspect, clutch-mates of a renegade and no longer trusted soldiers. They had found work as cleaners, and subsisted on the gruel fed to drones, barely enough to keep their specialized frames alive. Five's eyes were dull, its delicate claws blunted from rough work. It did not think Two could survive much longer.

  What can I do? Six asked. It felt itself dying inside, untouched. The Interrogator stood to one side, watching the interaction, sniffing the chemicals released into the air as they talked.

  We are suspect, because no one knows what you have done, Five said. Tell them what you have done, and that we are not involved.

  I do not understand, Six said. It was slower in those days. Its mind talked to itself but no one else, and it had grown lonely and unaccustomed to thinking. I have done nothing, Six said.

  Then Two and I will work until we die, Five said.

  Six could feel the thoughts pressing against its own, trying to shape it. I understand, it said finally. And Five went away without another word.

  And so Six confessed to the Interrogator an hour later that it had told the Espen of their tactics, of the caverns full of training captives, of the plans it knew. It said its clutch-mates knew nothing. The Interrogator stood watching it talk. Six could not tell what it thought of the lie, but after that it came no longer.

  A few days later, they placed Six in a cage, hung high in the air, and the armies marched past to look at it.

  Two and Five passed below, reinstated, but they would not look at it with their faceted, gleaming eyes. It looked at them, touching them with its sight, hoping that they would be well, that they would remember it.

  It thought the priests would kill it then, but they sent i
t back to the Espen, with the message, here is your spy. And they sent it to another planet and then another, until finally someone opened the cage's door and said, we will provide for you no longer, you're on your own.

  It lived as it could for a while, hiring itself out for high-altitude or delicate work that clumsy fingers could not perform. But there are many drifters on a space station like this one, TwiceFar, and people hire their own kind. It was not until it met the manager here that it realized uniqueness could be an asset.

  The Universe is large, and the war of its people and that race of soft-fleshed is very far away now. But Six's race remembers its missing member, the one who they believe sold them all for life. Its image hangs on their corridors amid the words of war and tangles of foul scent adorn it.

  Without the touch of its clutch-mates, it feels its intelligence fading, but each time the webs rouse it for a moment, and remind it who it is, who it was. And then it goes downstairs and finds a patron who wishes it to bring them pleasure, to torture them, or be tortured, or who will pay it to say what they wish, and earn enough to keep it alive another day.

  Six drawers in its room hold the emotions that keep it alive—the thoughts of those who would see it dead. Six drawers. Soon they will all be full.

  Afternotes

  The first TwiceFar story that I wrote, this piece was inspired by Octavia Butler's series, Lilith's Brood and the idea of someone taken and tortured by an enemy who, when released, is treated just as badly by their own kind. Pondering the subject led to Six, a creature sustained by contact, forced to rely on hate to keep itself alive since it's the only sort of contact its fellows will give it.

  The brothel in the story is named The Little Teacup of the Soul, which is a name I really like, and in my original vision for the series, the Teacup was the center of all the stories. However, when it appeared only peripherally in "Kallakak's Cousins," I ended up revisiting that decision. Still, the idea of what an establishment providing sexual services would look like in a multi-species setting is one that is interesting to explore, and certainly it's an establishment heavily affected by the station's economic flux.

  The story was originally written in first person. It was purchased by Sean Wallace for Lightspeed, where it appeared in 2010.

  TIMESNIP

  I didn't hope for much when I went around to Roderico's office. Maybe a chance to record some new tapes, at least, get a little spending cash. The Institute covers room and board, but not much else. And lately, they've proven less willing to fund me on sales missions, visiting system to system to pitch their services—my success rate has been bad.

  I don't know if Roderico's a timesnip like me or not. His office doesn't have the usual retro-detritus as décor that many do. Lots of the timesnippers take sidetrips and grab things they like. As long as they don't fall into the category of Artifacts, no one calls them on it. I'd have volunteered for the job if I could have, but timesnips can't become snippers, because of the physics of it all. They yank us out of the timeline, there's a buzz and whirl of interviews, and then when the dust settles, there you are, trapped in the future while the person you used to be labors on in the past.

  Roderico was napping in his office when I went in. I tapped on the desk and he jerked awake, relaxing when he saw it was me.

  "Greetings, Victoria," he said, yawning and stretching. "Did you have an appointment?"

  "No," I said. "But I'm low on cash, Roderico. Any projects up for grabs?"

  "Let me run a query." He tugged a data window open in the air before him and began to scroll through it. I settled onto a chair to watch him.

  His face is lean and dark, Mediterranean blood somewhere in his background—or tweaked into it, I reminded myself—and eyes glittering like a dark war.

  His eyebrows rose. "You're in luck. This has been in the system about thirty seconds so far if you want to jump on it. We've got an Initial Pitch ... "

  "Put my name in," I said.

  "No details?"

  Initial Pitches are major money. "Just put my name in," I said. In a few minutes the outside records would update and every saleslancer in the system would be aware of it. I wanted it.

  He keyed my name in and sent it. It would take a few minutes for the system to confirm that I had the job, and there was no guarantee someone hadn't already spotted it and earned a tipoff fee. But the window chimed and we both smiled.

  "All right," said Roderico. He glanced over the details. "You'll leave in a day—here's a datasheet." He gave me a silvery coin and I tucked it away.

  I set a tea cube steeping and wandered through the pages of the datasheet. I didn't have the air interface that Roderico boasted in his office, so I unrolled my own square of black shiny fabric, no sign of its weave, and slotted the disk into its pocket.

  The Tedum were a patriarchal, polygamous society, one of the many spread out human colonists. I rolled my eyes at that—I've never been fond of patriarchies. It's my greatest disappointment in the future, that the men's nonsense hadn't been eradicated. Instead, you had every possible variety of it, and only a handful of female dominant or egalitarian populations. Luckily, the largest of the gender neutral systems was Galactic Citizenship, and I'd bought my way into that as soon as I could.

  Still, an Initial Pitch was major money. I kept reading.

  The Tedum had harems. Younger men tended to be enlisted in the armies—three rival nations kept up ongoing, bloody conflicts that kept the number of males who reached thirty, the age for marriage, relatively low.

  The documents had been badly translated—I suspected that no program had been available and some non-Standard language speaker had taken a stab at it.

  I didn't have much time and I'd never been a fast reader. They say they can input data into your head faster than you can think, but I still need to go over it piece by piece and worry it into the right shape in my mind. So I picked the following to read on the three-day trip:

  The geographical overview: A mountainous planet whose largest predator was a six legged ursine-type that stood two meters tall and blended with the rocky cliffs. Two major cities, with trade flowing between them. I would be staying in Tabor, the larger of the two, which focused on textile manufacturing. The smaller was called Luxat.

  The economic overview: A small trade in handicrafts and high end goods, including furs from the ursines, which were called Rawrs. Minerals used in manufacturing glass. Dried fish that were consumed by several species. A thick woven wool cloth.

  I read through several months backlog of their primary mediapubs as well. There were men's and women's sections, with the men's devoted to trade agreements, finances, military skirmishes, exchanges with the bandit tribes living in the hills, sports, which focused on a sport called Pummel, a sort of team-based wrestling/boxing.

  The women's section held weather, housekeeping, and a surprisingly rich literary scene. Five of the eight pages were reviews of literary magazines and poetry, rhyme schemes patterned like jeweled bracelets, intricate and rich with formal strictures.

  At the spaceport near the Ardus System, I left the larger cruiser for a shuttle down to the planet. The spaceport was loud and busy, lines of people crossing other lines, the floors marked with thickly textured symbols designating different companies.

  A Tedum, dressed in a briskly formal uniform with golden rickrack along the pockets, checked my ID disk, sliding it through the boxy reader he carried on a woven black wool strap. As he handed it back, looking politely over my shoulder to avoid meeting my gaze, he said, "A word of caution, ma'am. You'll want to dress more circumspectly on the planet."

  I do hate patriarchies, so I'll admit I might have been spoiling for a fight. "What do you mean?" I said, staring at him.

  "Our women wear dresses," he said.

  "Your women don't conduct diplomatic missions, either," I said. "I'm afraid that on this trip, you will have to treat me as an honorary male."

  Standard policy, but I took relish in saying it.

&nb
sp; "Yes, ma'am," he said, still looking over my shoulder. "Have a pleasant stay on Argus-3, ma'am."

  The shuttle was small—seven of us, counting the pilot, who was a borg-box. The other passengers were all male Tedum. One, Avi, was my guiding attendant, come to accompany me to Tabor. Like the other men, he would not look me in the face, but he chattered to me pleasantly enough.

  "So how far in time have you come forward?" he said.

  "Four hundred and thirty two years from the point where they took me," I said. "Humans had an average lifespan of approximately fifty years at that point."

  "It must have been quite a shock for you!" he said. "What was the biggest change?"

  "The food," I said. "We ate less processed food."

  "You will like Tabor, then," he said. "The residence where you will be accommodated has a fine cook. Usually she serves the Ambassador from Luxat, but he has offered her up to your service to show that Luxat also wishes to welcome the Institute."

  Sometimes the Institute is a hard sell to a population, but it was clear that this one already saw the advantages of being able to snip leaders from its past and bring them up to advance the current civilization. I relaxed in my seat. Despite the social structure, it would be an easy tour, and I'd go home with a split of the overall contract, enough to carry me through almost a year, maybe more, depending on how heavily the cities wanted to buy.