"You OK?” Gaetan asks.
She shrugs. “Not sure yet,” she says. “Come on. Let's go home and grab some sleep."
Later, there'll be time for words: time to explain, time to heal and rebuild. But for now, there is nothing left but silence within her—only one heartbeat she can hear, and it's her own.
I'll be OK, she thinks, blinking furiously, as they walk back to Gaetan's car. Overhead, the stars are fading—a prelude to sunrise. I'll be OK.
But her womb is empty; and in her mind is the song of her unborn son, an endless lament for all that was lost.
Copyright © 2009 Aliette De Bodard
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[Back to Table of Contents]
MOTHER OF CHAMPIONS—Sean Mcmullen
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Illustrated by Anne Stone-Coyote
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Sean McMullen has worked in scientific computing for decades longer than is healthy. In his spare time he has had fifteen books and over five dozen stories published. His novelette ‘Voice of Steel’ was a BSFA Award finalist, and a Nova Fantastyka Award winner. His next story in Fantasy & Science Fiction is about a dragon that ate the Eiffel Tower. The fourth volume in his award-winning Moonworld series, The Time Engine, is available now. For more information visit seanmcmullen.net.au.
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We Champions do not write, neither do we read, but we are very particular about time, numbers, family and memories. After all, we are perfect.
My vantage is the lowest limb of a shady tree, from where I watch the scavengers in their sanctuary of glass and metal, and observe the echo images on their machines. I watch and I shape, too, for Champions are shapers of tools. The scavengers study us from within their sanctuary, and my tree is only a few bounds distant. All that they do, I can see. All that they say, I can hear, for my familiar has given me a machine collar.
I watched as the echospeaker arrived in her shelter engine, then walked within the long, enclosed cage to the scavenger sanctuary. My familiar released the outer door and let her in.
"Mike, how are you?"
"Come on in, Ella."
"Can you believe this heat?"
"It's Texas, and it's summer."
"Man, but it's good to be back in air-conditioning."
"That's for the computers. I don't mind the heat."
"You're kidding."
"I do a lot of fieldwork, heat is in my job description."
"I'd die without air. That's why I'm in computers."
They chattered words called laughter, that had no meaning but signified that for now there would be no conflict between them.
"So, what brings you out here? The director said on the phone that you had a DVD file for me to view."
"Yeah, and he's paranoid about it! No copies, and no transmissions on the net. I have to play the file on this laptop, then take it back with me."
The echospeaker began to prepare her image machine to show its echoes.
"So, what do you do for beer, pizza and girls out here?” she asked as she worked.
"There's only one girl in my life, Ella, and there she is, draped along that branch. One hundred and thirty pounds of perfect, high-speed death."
My familiar, who was a mature male, swung his paw to indicate me. I favoured them by looking up, knowing that my grace and beauty would entrance them.
"Mike, did she look up because you waved?” asked the echospeaker in awe.
"She really did."
"Hey, now that's some lady. Is she the famous one?"
"She's Demelia, the fastest cheetah ever caught on radar. Just over seventy-five miles per hour, on a dead-flat surface, with no wind."
"I thought falcons were way faster, around two hundred miles per hour."
"Only in a dive, not in level flight. Even humans can manage that."
"Yeah? Hey, nice joke! What's the punch line?"
"It's true. Skydive head first, and even you can fall as fast."
"Well okay, but that's cheating."
"Just like falcons. Without a tailwind, gravity or a machine to help, you need a cheetah to break records. Demelia's the fastest self-propelled creature in Earth's history."
"Okay, okay, I'm just IT support. You know this stuff better than me. The Director says you're doing language experiments with her."
"That's right."
"You mean they talk? I mean I've heard of dolphins, apes, and birds learning a few words, but cheetahs?"
"Cheetahs are the most talkative of cats. They have seven types of vocalisations, and there are hundreds of substructure patterns within those. There's a speaker and microphone built into Demelia's GPS collar, so better watch what you say about her, she can hear everything going on in this room."
"Yeah? And what does she say to you?"
"I'm not sure. Certain groupings of her purr modulations could be called words and sentences. When it comes to meanings, though, I just can't figure her, even with computers and decoding algorithms. She's a predator and I'm a monkey. We don't think the same way."
"So no luck?"
"If talking to cheetahs were easy, someone else would have done it already."
The echospeaker looked out at me through the glass.
"Awesome,” she said as I caught her eyes. “Hey, like when she looks at me, is she thinking about lunch?"
"They avoid humans if they can,” replied my familiar.
"Yeah? Don't they eat people?"
"People shoot trank darts into them, stick thermometers up their butts, clip tracking collars onto their necks, extract their eggs and sperm, and inject them with microchips. How would you feel about humans if you were a cheetah?"
"Oh, yeah. I suppose we're not nice to be near, seeing you put it like that."
"Still, sometimes I wish we could explain to her that we're doing all those things to conserve the species."
"It's strange, you know, having a conservation park for cheetahs in Texas. I mean cheetahs are African, aren't they?"
"Texas is politically stable, which is always a big plus in conservation. Anyway, cheetahs actually evolved here when they split from pumas, about five million years ago."
"But cheetahs come from Africa now."
"They started here, then spread out over most of the world. For a long time it was Cheetahs Rule."
"So why aren't there cheetahs in Texas today? Like apart from these imports?"
"Around ten thousand years ago the cheetahs died out just about everywhere. Genetics shows they were reduced to as few as one or two breeding pairs in Africa."
"What happened? Was it a meteor, like the one that killed the dinosaurs?"
"No, the end of the last ice age was about then, so it was probably disease and climate change combined. Ever since then cheetahs have been so inbred that they are effectively a species of identical twins."
I lay as if dozing while I listened to them chatter, but this was a hunt. I was fully alert and very, very patient.
"Am I going crazy, or can I hear purring?"
"That's Demelia. The purr is coming through that speaker on my desk. Remember the microphone in her collar?"
My purr carried my wishes, and I wished to see what my familiar saw.
"Say Ella, could you put the laptop on the back desk, so that the light from the window's behind us? It reduces the glare."
"Sure thing, you know me. Anything to please."
The echospeaker's words were laced with deceit, but only one such as I could perceive the soft, shadowy forms of lies. She feigned to be dim of wit, so that my familiar would expect no guile from her. Echoes of things that once happened became images on the face of her machine. Their alpha scavenger's echo appeared and began speaking.
"Mike, we have a situation in Africa. Ella has this DVD file on her laptop, it explains everything. The future of all conservation may depend on what you are about to see, so watch carefully."
From my vantage limb,
through the glass of the sanctuary, I could see image echoes of some Champion's domain. I watched as my familiar watched. I was only six bounds distant, and my eyes are keen.
"That's no cheetah, that's a lioness,” said my familiar.
"Er, yeah, there's no spots,” agreed the echospeaker.
It was indeed a lioness, and she was creeping along in tall grass, close to the ground. To me she was clumsy and quite graceless, but then I am perfect and lions are not.
"She's stalking a wildebeest herd,” said my familiar. “She's after that juvenile, it's wandered away from the others."
Suddenly the herd broke and ran, and along with it went the wayward juvenile. The image echo turned to focus on a Champion that had bounded elegantly into the scene and startled the herd. The lioness charged my brother Champion, but he streaked off, two strides in seven faster than her. She quickly broke off the chase.
"Looks like that cheetah was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said the echospeaker. “There goes one very ticked off lioness."
The image of their alpha scavenger appeared again.
"I have DVD files of half a dozen incidents like that,” said his image. “All of them are recent, and all from the same African conservation park. Now this next—"
"Pause it!” snapped my familiar.
The echospeaker made the image stop. My familiar paced the floor of the sanctuary, his paw stroking his chin.
"Habitat shrinkage pushes predators up against each other for common prey resources,” he said slowly. “It's probably—no, no, even the biggest cheetah only weighs one-forty pounds, tops, a wildebeest is way out of its prey class. That guy was just spoiling things for the lioness."
"Why would a cheetah give lions a hard time?” asked the echospeaker.
"Lions kill cheetah cubs, steal cheetah kills, they're all-round bad neighbours. Okay, if I were a cheetah, I'd sure want lions out of my territory, but cheetahs don't do consistent, strategic harassing."
"Are you sure?"
"My PhD was on cheetah family dynamics and behaviour. Okay Ella, play the rest of the file."
The echospeaker commanded her machine, and it returned to life.
"-vid should really shake you up, Mike,” their alpha's image concluded.
The machine now showed echo images of a Champion chasing a gazelle. The distance between them diminished very quickly, and the chase soon became a game of dodging and weaving. Champion and gazelle merged into a flurry of dust and flailing limbs.
"Now he has the gazelle by the throat, suffocating it,” explained my familiar. “He's exhausted. It will be half an hour before he recovers from that chase."
On the screen a hyena was approaching the Champion and his kill. The gazelle was no longer moving, but the Champion was still exhausted. Exhausted or fresh, however, he could not have hoped to win a fight against a hyena. The echo image turned to the left, revealing several more hyenas approaching.
"It's the same old story, all that hard work is about to be robbed,” said my familiar with genuine regret in his tone. “Cheetahs lose half of their kills like this—no, wait! What's this? This doesn't look right."
A number of other Champions were now converging, focused on the lead hyena. Seven of them isolated him from the rest of the pack while four more bracketed him. They closed, but only bit or slashed from behind and never allowed the confrontation to become a test of strength. The rest of the hyenas were put to flight in much the same way while the Champion began eating his kill.
"Pause again,” said my familiar. “Incredible, absolutely incredible. Substitute a pack of wolves for a coalition of cheetahs and I could believe what I just saw. That was a great bit of teamwork, but cheetahs are not pack animals. You seldom see more than three cheetahs together, but I counted at least a dozen on the screen."
"Maybe they were watching team animals and thought it was a good idea,” suggested the echospeaker.
"No, animal learning doesn't happen like that. Not so fast, anyway.” He began to pace again, his paws pressed against the sides of his head. “Let's think, what if cheetahs were like ... say, wolves or meerkats? Teamwork would mean a kill rate of one hundred percent, while the theft of kills by other animals would drop to nil. Nanny cheetahs might take turns to guard the cubs from hyenas and eagles, and even harass lions. With normal cheetahs, maybe one cub in ten survives to adulthood. Just say they all survived. Cheetah generations are about two years, they mate all year round, and their litters are big. Add that to the fact that they are the fastest animals ever to break into a run ... and we could soon see cheetahs become the dominant large predator in Africa. Maybe even the only large predator."
"So they're too good?"
"Team spirit has been added to the fastest animal alive. Their survival rate will go up tenfold and—and this is a nightmare. I love cheetahs, but I'd hate to see lions go extinct because of them. Okay, play the rest of the file."
The alpha's image reappeared on the face of the machine.
"As you can see, Mike, there's a big issue here. Cheetahs have suddenly begun to work in packs. Doctor Anne Taylor's behaviour latency theory is a possible explanation. Her idea is that pack behaviour has been buried in cheetah genes for millennia. In the really distant past, the cheetah may have been a pack animal, but its extreme and unchallenged speed allowed it to adopt a near-solitary existence. Now, faced with habitat degradation and predator competition, cheetahs are reverting to pack behaviour. There's an emergency meeting of the Institute's steering committee in New York tomorrow, and I want you to be there when they start asking questions. Taylor will be there too, so brainstorm with her. Ella has an envelope with all the details you need."
The echo images ended, and the echospeaker commanded her image machine to sleep. My familiar studied papers that she gave him.
"Not much detail here,” he said. “There's an address, an e-ticket, cab vouchers, and a reservation for a hotel. Not much time, either. Two hours to reach the airport."
"Just go, I'll lock up,” said the echospeaker. “Anything need to be turned off?"
"Yes—no, leave everything running. I'll phone you with instructions if I have to stay away for more than one day. My passwords are written on the back of the calendar."
"Hey Mike, that's terrible!” she said with laughter chatter. “Security says your passwords should be—"
"You're the sysadmin, Ella, if I can't trust you with a computer, who else can I trust?"
"I can't believe all the hurry."
"There may be more than cheetahs involved. What happens if eco-degradation triggers natural defence mechanisms that favour a lot more species over others? What should we do? Try to stop something natural? How do we know what is natural or unnatural? Some very important decisions need to be made in a big hurry."
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My familiar departed within less time than it takes to run a chase, leaving the echospeaker in the sanctuary. I lay purring, and the echospeaker wallowed within my words. Only by serving those who are perfect can scavengers hope to even reflect perfection. She spoke of what I wished to know, and I listened. It was time, I already knew that it was time. It was the day's noon, and the stalk was about to become the chase.
The alpha scavenger arrived in a shelter engine that was not sleek, but was quite as clumsy as a rhinoceros. He was a cold, hard thing, a blank within my vista. He was known to me, yet I had never been within sight of him. He ruled his pack of scavengers with no more than the promise of security, because all scavengers are survivors and value security as the foundation of their world. His domain covered nine thousand chases squared, and this was the domain where we lived.
He came hurrying along the walkway cage to the scavenger sanctuary, and was flushed and panting with the heat as he entered the sanctuary room. Through my collar I listened as he performed his dominance ritual with the echospeaker.
"I see Mike's car is gone,” said the alpha.
"He's gone to New York, just like you wanted,” replie
d the echospeaker.
"What about his file systems?"
"I have about half of your files inserted, with the date-time stamps changed. They look like his files now."
"That's great, great. When you're finished, we can ‘discover’ them."
The echospeaker tapped and stared for eighty-seven breaths of languor. The alpha looked on, baring his teeth with pleasure.
"So far I've set up nine files between twelve days and three months old,” said the echospeaker. “It looks like they've been disguised too well, and that Mike missed them while he was cleaning up. They're in the shared folder."
"Okay, good, now let's also get our stories synched. You arrive here and start running through the files on Mike's cheetah language work, just to do some backups. You discover criminal activity."
"But Mike is a dork!” said the echospeaker. “He wouldn't know criminal activity if you hung a sign on it."
"He's an idealist, everyone knows they put themselves above the law. My files have lists of DNA surveys, artificial insemination data, spreadsheets, tables, contacts, funding transfers. He'll sink like the Titanic."
"Are they convincing? Like will they stand up in court?"
"These are my files, this was my project. Lucky nobody knows my real identity but you. The operatives in Africa and the labs only know me as Mr I, the Institute Insider. Now Mike will be Mr I."
"I still don't see why you can't claim credit for all this. It's clever work."
"Nature went wrong. The scheme seemed like such a good idea when we started, just a slight tweak to the DNA of whatever species was vulnerable. The parrot that's been driven to the edge of extinction by the rare bird trade is suddenly hyper-suspicious of humans; the musk glands of a deer once prized by the perfume industry are suddenly smelling rancid; the bile from bears that's used in traditional Chinese medicine suddenly becomes toxic to humans. It could have taken the pressure off a lot of species, just by making poachers lose interest."
"But that's a good thing."
"For parrots, deer and bears, yes. We should have started with some goddamn parrot, but I run an institute that conserves cheetahs, so it was just too convenient. We spliced a little strategic wolf DNA into the cheetah genome, and the fastest animal ever suddenly started hunting in packs. It's like adding a big brain to free hands in apes."
Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #222 Page 11
