Near + Far

by Cat Rambo

  "I think he is. I think he's the luckiest man alive."

  Her forehead furrowed in confusion. "What?"

  He shrugged.

  "So you're going to do it?"

  "I don't know," he said. "It'd be giving in."

  "You are one fucked-up individual," she said. "Look, you're kidding me, right?"

  "Sure," he said. "Just kidding."

  She thumbed a pocket open and took out a small cylinder. "This is a bio-bomb. Cost me a lot to get one that would kill a Solin and not affect any other species in the room. I want my friend avenged. But now I can't get close enough to use it. You can. You can free Luke."

  "All right."

  Suspicious, she glared at him. "You're going to use it, right?"

  "I don't know."

  "Shit," she said, but she pressed it into his palm anyway. "Tap the red button to set it going. Should take about three seconds, five tops, to work. Good tech."

  He tucked it away without looking at her.

  "Buy you some noodles?"

  "No," he said. "I need to get some sleep for tomorrow."

  "Surely there must be some room to negotiate here," he said to Kizel the next day.

  "Not for this." It was regretful but firm.

  He took the bio-bomb from his pocket. "See this?" he said. "Angry Rose gave it to me. She wanted me to kill you, and instead I'm giving it to you. Isn't that worth something?"

  "It is appreciated," the Solin said. "We will change the number of items you may remove to twelve."

  "I could just set it off right now."

  "It is within the realm of possibility. I do not know what we would do then. It is most probable that we would try to start again before our system is stripped clean."

  "God," he said. He leaned his forehead onto the surface of the table. Maybe if I just don't move, nothing will happen. Maybe I'll wake up and find myself back in my old life.

  The Solin let him sit in silence until his cramping limbs forced him upright.

  "We cannot survive without this," the Solin said.

  "That's not my responsibility."

  "No. It's not."

  "I want to talk to Luke again."

  "We contain Luke. You are speaking with him."

  "What's it like?" he said. "What's it really like?"

  "Like love," Luke said. "It's like love."

  "How do I know you're not lying? Or that you're really there? Or that you haven't been altered by the minds with you?"

  "You don't."

  Tears ran down his face, washing away the traces of dirt left on the skin by his morning walk to the Representative Building. He thought about the others, of their hopes, of their dreams, of the losses they had already suffered to the drug. He thought about Angry Rose, and her refusal to forgive her friend for changing. And of stardrift itself, of surrendering himself to the drug, feeling that glow, feeling that connection, feeling loneliness slip away. He thought about all these things, the Litany a counterpoint behind them, before the word "Yes" echoed in the room, and the Solin moved forward, sting quivering and poised.

  Afternotes

  This story was written at Clarion West for Andy Duncan's week, where one classmate referred to it as the "Stick your head in this hole, there's cookies and kittens on the other side" story. It's an attempt to talk about issues of addiction, a theme that comes out of my own family history, and the Litany is a reference to the Serenity Prayer. It originally appeared in Abyss & Apex under the editorship of Wendy S. Delmater.

  A rutter is a mariner's guide, used in the late medieval period through modern days.

  SEEKING NOTHING

  Remember that they're not like you nor I, boy," Uncle Abraham said, his voice dusty as ash. "They're not human. Elder Samuel says the soul stays with the original body, and that's the real reason clones are classified Subhuman."

  Sean buttoned his collar and adjusted its two ornamental pips. The uniform had come out of its package smelling of sharp chemicals and acrid plastic, cheap gear suitable for his low status occupation. The front hall mirror showed him pale and nervous, but ready to go on his first assignment. He'd hoped for better than working with clones. Jeb had made steward on a cruiser, Hank was going to be a tug pilot. He'd hadn't thought to surpass them, though he'd hoped it. Instead, here he was, ready to embark to Asiu, a planet cold and dark and ready for terraforming by the clone teams he'd be handling.

  He ignored Abraham. What had the old man ever given him beside disapproval and grief? Now Sean was taking himself and his shameful activities away, leaving Abraham with nothing to disapprove of. Sean didn't look at Abraham as he said, "They're tools, Uncle. You don't need to worry. I'll be using them, not socializing with them.

  Abraham grunted deep in his chest. "Just you wait," he said. "They were invented by the Red Hand, that's why we've never used them here on God's New Promise. How long is the trip again?"

  "Three weeks."

  "Three weeks for solitude and prayer, praise be," Abraham said.

  "I'm going in cold sleep."

  "Cold sleep! Why?"

  "Maybe I don't think I have that much to pray about."

  The elderly man grabbed the younger's shoulder, pulling him around so they stood face to face. "God sees into your heart, boy. You pray to him to keep you strong. To help you resist your foolish ways."

  "Saint Francis said when we pray to God, we must be seeking nothing," he said.

  Abraham said, "He was a Catholic. Here we know what prayer is for. We ask God for everything, and he gives it to us, including strength to resist temptation."

  Sean's face burned. He hoped his uncle wouldn't guess at the evidence of those foolish ways in his duffel bag. Abraham had never approved of the hobby of perfumery, calling it weak and decadent. Evidence of civilization's soft taint.

  But his uncle simply released him, stepped back, and shook his hand once, a single firm clasp and pump.

  As Sean left, he could hear his uncle beginning to chant. He wanted to look back at the Church Elder that had raised him. Shaped him. But men didn't live for regret or sentimental farewells. That was best left to the women.

  The pilot was a woman, which gave him a thrill. Her ship was built for durability, rather than speed. Sean had hoped for a courier transport. He must have had an awful lot of ill will stirred up before graduation. Or maybe this was what every new graduate got, to keep them in their place. He stood looking at it, duffel in hand.

  Her name was Angry Rose, a space-scarred, olive-skinned woman. Cold eyed. When he boarded, she showed him where to put his gear. The air was full of the smell of oil and long habitation.

  "I don't usually take a passenger," she said. "But I need to defray fuel costs this run. Bound for Asui, eh? Lots of ice there. Couple miners told me that they fish, but it means drilling tunnels down through the ice before they reach any place where they can drop a line. Said that the fish ain't so much fish as slugs, but that the fishing's good around the base, comes from having the sewage vents there."

  He made a face and she laughed.

  "You're funning me, aye?" Sean said. It can't be as bad as all that, he hoped. And the trip ... They'd flirt all the way to the edge of the atmosphere; she'd let him kiss her, maybe even go further, up to the forbidden. His schoolmates had said sin didn't exist between the planets, that in curlspace anything, everything was permitted.

  But his balls crawled at the chill in her eyes as she said, "If anything, I'm glossing over the worst."

  She gestured at him to follow her.

  His quarters were broom-closet wide. Leaning in through the doorway, she showed him how to thumb the gravity button to make standing up lying down.

  "Put what you don't want wet in the box," she said, opening and closing it by way of demonstration. "Then that button'll sluice you off, cycles water vapor through for two minutes, followed by air. Won't start with the door open like this. Water's recycled, but don't waste it. You stow in here while we're taking off."

  "Wait," he s
aid. "I'm supposed to be in cold sleep all the way."

  "Yeah, about that." She rested her hand on her hip, jutting her chin out. "Coldsleeper's broken, won't be able to fix it till I swing by a Dockery. You're getting the better of the bargain, though, waking passage for the cost of sleep. Don't worry, I won't charge you for food and air. Water maybe."

  He hadn't reckoned on being forced into wakeful days out in the blackness of space. The vertigo of the idea caught him up and he reached out to touch the wall. She pushed him towards the sleeper, and he reeled.

  "I'll com when it's all right to come out."

  But it was at least twenty minutes after the onset of the weightlessness of space that her voice spat from the intercom: "Out the door and follow the red line till you see yellow, and take that."

  Snaking through a crawl of tunnels punctuated by one wider lockspace, the thumbwidth yellow line led him to the main room. Boxes and netted goods pressed inward, but there was enough space for Rose to sprawl on a couch, pointing him towards a lumpy chair.

  "Exercise room in there with a runner and weights," she said, pointing. "You can fix yourself food in the galley—we're not a pleasure liner, and I don't cook for passengers. Stay out of the red-taped drawer, that's my private stash." She gave him a level look. "And here's the thing—I don't want to hear your life story or tell you mine or sit around bonding. If I'm exercising, you stay out. You don't expect conversation from me and I don't expect any from you. There's plenty of tapevids and a shelf of printies."

  That was the longest conversation he had with her for the rest of the voyage. He thought that every once in a while he caught her looking at him, but he wasn't sure. He hadn't interacted with an unchaperoned woman since days of childhood parties. He felt as though half his brain had been removed when he was around her—he wasn't sure what to say, what to do, even how to smile without it looking as though he were leering.

  He would have liked to work with his hobby to pass the time. But the ship's air scrubbers were old and tottery as it was. He didn't want to bring Rose's wrath down on him for overstretching them. He went so far as to open his kit, trace his finger along the tiny bottles of fixatives and bases, the droppers, the synthesizer that had cost him three years of after-school extra chores.

  Abraham had never been willing to give him money. Sean had worked where he could, anything for a slim credit, whenever and wherever. He'd read the Bible to Widow Jonas, sitting in her too hot parlor feeling her fawn over him. He'd worked in the fields, and one hot summer in a communal kitchen. And worse than that, on occasion.

  He had learned about the perfumes from his mother. She had distilled scents where she could, trying to break the bleakness of the planet she'd been brought to as a paid bride. But she hadn't been able to hack it, and once her contract was up—three sons for Sean's father, she'd left. Not her fault that her husband and two of those boys died soon after in a fever summer. Not her fault that her oldest son, Sean, was left to Abraham at five, with only memories of her, her fougere, the smell of lavender and rosemary, the merest hint of tomato leaves ... He'd spent years trying to replicate it. Unsuccessful years. He folded the case's lid back down.

  In Asiu, he'd have his own quarters and leisure time to blend scents. He'd create the scents that the teams knew each other by. Only a nose as delicate, as nuanced, as his could create something and then verify that the replicator had given the clones the right scent.

  To pass the time, he read books on clone psychology, all of which seemed to contradict each other. Use isolation as punishment, one said, while another advised, Never split clone families apart for more than a few days under any circumstances—the stress will undermine their sanity in an irreparable way. He read about the genetic twist that effectively lobotomized them, removed their sense of selfness.

  The cautions seemed excessive to him. After all, he'd endured weeks of isolation as a child, sent away to Exalted. It had been worst for him there than most. He'd wet the bed each night and laid awake, shivering and cold in the stink of it. He'd prayed all through those nights. But his sanity was intact, and God had sustained him, even though he would have never admitted that to Abraham.

  But did God watch over clones? The Writings said not—clones were the same as animals, and God had not granted them souls.

  He put down the reader and stared at the window screen. It displayed the mist and cold of curlspace, curdled amniotic fluid. Was he being reborn, in God's eyes? Was he being sent forth—to witness, to question, to preach?

  Asui was the smell of steel and ozone, the air so cold that it bit at the inside of his nose, stiffening the sensitive tissue there. He made his way from the ship, head lowered, trying to blink away ice, in a flurry of wind and particles so thick and hard that it couldn't be called snow, rather a barrage of pea-sized hail. He followed the orange cord someone had strung along the ground and found himself in a plascrete Quonset hut where a column-shaped heater battled to put out heat, managing to keep a meter-wide space livable.

  A parka-ed clerk checked Sean's billet. "Your shuttle's been waiting an hour," she snapped, and shoved him back out the door into the wind. He stumbled, bewildered, along another orange line until he found the shuttle and banged on the side to be allowed in. He clambered up the ladder barely in time; it folded in after him with malicious speed.

  Inside the shuttle there was the smell of coffee and two men playing cards. They both looked up and grunted, almost in unison, but not quite. For a moment the similarity threw him—were clones driving the shuttle? Surely that was too much responsibility for them. Then he noted the difference in features and realized the two were not so identical—brothers, perhaps, or cousins.

  They didn't say anything, just gestured him to a seat. The shuttle was mostly unoccupied seats, twenty in five rows of four, the center set facing inward as though quizzing each other, an oval window set between each pair. He settled into one of those and stared at the unpersoned window across the aisle from him. Towards the front, a couple of heads sat. He couldn't tell anything about them. They bent together as though conferring, and then one rose slightly, turned in their seat to look back.

  Their face was the same as the card-players, and the mirroring effect was disorienting somehow. They glanced at him, gaze skittering across his face, then flushed, slid back into their seat, leaned over to speak with their partner again.

  He leaned back against the paper-thin cushions and tried to relax. His kit was tucked under his feet. He braced them against it as the shuttle jolted into motion and the snowy vista outside was replaced with more snowy vista.

  The station was just an impression of more snow before he was bundled into a squat building, its walls a pistachio green intended to be soothing. He followed the shuttle crew through a green hallway into a green room.

  The woman in front of him was burly and muscular, broad shoulders suggesting life in heavy gravity, hair cut short and sensible. Broken capillaries scattered her face with fretwork as she said, "Sean Marksman?"

  He nodded, setting his case down and rising again. He felt an absurd desire to stoop, reduce the difference in their heights.

  She didn't seem to notice. "I'm Ghira Connell. Company rep on base. I'll give you the tour, show you where to drop your gear."

  At least he had his own room, twice the size of his ship berth, a cot bumping into a small metal dresser, a fold-down two-in-one desk/com unit, a window the size of his fists pressed together, cloudy glass showing more snow.

  He shoved his things under the cot, followed Ghira through more hallways.

  "The clone bunks." She tapped the glass window of a door. He peered through the slit to see a space barely bigger than his own, six chest-wide bunks.

  "They're all working now."

  "Laying the tunnels?"

  "That's the section of the project we're on right now, yeah. You've done your homework, Marksman." She studied him like a specimen, then turned. "C'mon, I'll take you to the canteen."

  "How many pers
onnel on base?" he asked, following her.

  "Sixteen of us, eight hundred clones. They're not really clones, per se, of course. Created beings, straight from the pump and chump machines."

  He blinked. "Is that the usual ratio?"

  "No. We're worker-stressed. So we want to get you up to speed as soon as possible." She paused. He almost bumped into her.

  "Look," she said. "I need to warn you, no preachy stuff."

  "Huh?" he managed.

  "Last guy we had from one of the fundie planets, he pissed everyone off, trying to convert them. He kept printing out lists of helpful suggestions on how they could find God, pinning them up. People didn't mind too much at first, but it got tiresome when he got to talking as well."

  "Oh," he said. "That's not my sort of thing at all. I don't really believe, it's why I left." Still, it was hopeful people had tolerated difference, up to a point. They'd be patient with him as he adjusted. "You said people didn't mind too much, though?"

  "Course not," she said. "Always need new toilet paper, good to have extra handy."

  Before the canteen, they visited the green infirmary. All of the clones there had the features he'd noticed on the shuttle.

  Something odd with one on a table towards the back. He went over to it, pulled the sheet down over the face—they left their dead in the open here?—and was appalled.

  "This man has four arms!"

  The chest swelled unnaturally with extra muscles. The flesh around the lower limbs looked diseased, raddled. He noted that only the upper pair had patches of hair underneath them.

  "Some of the handlers experiment—they call it sculpting," Ghira said. "Most of the staff don't do it. It's a complex, time-consuming process. Most often the results aren't viable, like this one."

  He stared at the body, repulsed and fascinated.

  Ghira went up to a cot that held a live clone.

  "How are you doing?" she said to it.

  The face stared up at her. "Where are the rest?" it asked. "Are we broken?"

  "You will be all right," she said, and patted its shoulder. She beckoned and Sean followed her out into the green hallway.