Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two

by Short Story Anthology

  I sidled up to one of my friends, an astronomer from the Big Island, as he chatted with the parrot, whose fluid, lovely voice mirrored Jean’s. Exactly. Jean’s accent, inflections, even that lovely low chuckle.

  They were talking about dynamic topology—flocking—an emergent behavior around which I developed related software used by many governments.

  Leilani, a thin, brown, sparkling girl with long black hair, was showing her cousins her favorite painting, a copy of Gauguin’s “Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?” The metaphysical painting of 1897 shows lightly clothed Tahitians in various life stages.

  “Look,” Leilani said to her cousin, Jake, as she pointed to an old woman crouched in the corner of the painting. “There’s Tutu.”

  “Ugh!” Jake, eleven, recoiled. “Tutu is prettier than that!” He turned his stare to the bare breasts of a young woman.

  In the painting, a fanciful, fictional Polynesian idol overlooks the people in the foreground. I imagined that Leilani liked the painting because she was always asking about the life of her ancestors in the old days. Perhaps she believed it might have been like the scene depicted in the painting, though we had etchings and photographs that showed the real thing.

  Meitner was on Leilani’s leather shoulder perch, as usual, and attended to the painting quite closely. She often studied it, and I wondered if her mind encompassed the wider implications of the questions that make up the title—particularly since, being a hybrid of human and parrot, she was the living embodiment of where we might all be going.

  But maybe she just liked looking at the tropical foliage in the painting.

  Leilani and Meitner were classmates. In fact, they spent all their time together—sisters, of a sort—and they sometimes squabbled, as sisters do. The true dimensions of their relationship were unknown to me; I only witnessed dynamics, behaviors that looked like love, anger, apologies, wild play, and quiet, shared concentration. Jean brought in tremendously gifted educators on a regular basis. They waited in line to work with Meitner, to carry out their research. As a result, Leilani zipped through subjects that most high schoolers might have a hard time mastering. Like Meitner, she was good at calculus and trigonometry. She loved biology. She was on a soccer team, a debate team, and played a mean ukulele. We dropped her off at her cousins’ houses regularly, and they visited us here. We read, sang, watched movies, and played a lot of card games. Poker, for instance. Leilani and Meitner could take the house anywhere.

  I grabbed my astronomer friend by the elbow. “Hugh, take a look at my new painting. Just hung it today.” I herded several people toward “The Stinger Ship.”Leilani leaped and danced ahead of us, Meitner fluttering to cling to her perch, and stopped in front of the painting, a proud smile on her face.

  “You’ve heard about the latest private space venture?”

  “Yes! Great concept.” Hugh’s broad face crinkled in an enthusiastic smile.

  “Jean and I bought stock.”

  He laughed. “Bound to pay off when your grandchildren are old.”

  “Oh, some of the early spinoffs are already paying dividends. The brightest and the best are working on it. Anyway, this artist painted a picture based on it.”

  Holding drinks, we examined it. A gigantic dome of a space ship with a cylinder hanging from its underside revealed a slice of the planet behind it. The domed shape and the tentacles that tethered human figures to the ship gave the ship its nickname.

  Two figures were foregrounded. One was a space suit attached to the enormous ship with a tether. Another figure hung in space beneath the floating suit.

  Hugh squinted at the second figure. “Ah. This man is naked. See the detail?” He leaned closer, gestured with his drink.

  I clearly saw a human calf. A foot.

  Hugh said, “He’s dead. Or, after a minute out there, he would be.” A tentacle—a life-support tube, I imagined—floated in the foreground. It ended at the edge of the picture without connecting to anything. Perhaps it was out of the frame of the picture.

  Or perhaps it had been cut.

  I edged closer. “Wow. You’re right. Wouldn’t he burst?”

  “No. But there’s a question here. A story. Is it an accident? Suicide? Murder? Execution?”

  Leilani craned her neck to take a closer look. Meitner moved her head back and forth like a metronome, examining; listening. I felt a bit uncomfortable, as we had shielded both of them from television mayhem and violent video games. I always thought that Leilani would learn about the adult world in immediate, graphic terms, soon enough.

  Like now. I wished that I had looked more closely at the picture before having it hung.

  “I’m thinking it’s murder,” said Hugh.

  “Murder?” asked Meitner, cocking her head to one side.

  “When one human kills another.”

  The parrot shifted back and forth uneasily on Leilani’s shoulder. “Why would they do that?” The fluency of her speech never ceased to amaze me. Or everyone else, for that matter.

  Hugh said, shifting swiftly and irritatingly into professorial mode, “Rage. Jealousy. Or, if they have thought things through—this is called murder in the first degree—they might plan things so that it doesn’t look like a murder. They might do this to get money, or to hide something that the dead person knew. They might try to make it look like an accident, or suicide—”

  “Suicide?”

  “Killing oneself.”

  Meitner rested her small gray head, briefly, against Leilani’s ear. I saw a little crease between Leilani’s large brown eyes. My girl said, “Why would anyone kill themselves?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, quite honestly. Someday I would tell her that my brother committed suicide, but this was not the moment.

  She persisted. “Why would anyone kill someone else?”

  “People don’t do it very often,” I lied, thinking of war. “It’s a crime. People who do it go to jail.”

  Hugh snorted. “Sometimes.”

  Meitner’s feathers stood out suddenly. “I don’t like being human.” As she flew down the wide veranda and soared into the night, her strange, jarring cry bit into me like a knife.

  After a moment of silence, all I could think of to say to Leilani was, “Let’s see what your mother is doing.”

  A week later we found Jean’s doorless Jeep at the bottom of a deep crevasse. She was dead. The cause of death was internal injuries caused by the crash. Her face was badly damaged, but the coroner said she was pretty sure that Jean’s face and neck were bitten by birds. Not one bird, but many.

  I was too sick to even think about what might have happened.

  I waited for Meitner to show up so that I could ask her questions, but she did not.

  The parrot flock was wild and protected. We could not trap or kill them.

  Which was a good thing for them.

  In the beginning, it was all so beautiful. It remained beautiful for twelve years. After that, it was a dread horror that brought out all that was worst in me. My lovely girl grew up in the company of her tutu and cousins, because I turned sour when Jean died and I carried the secret of her death inside me, for reasons I never quite understood.

  Now, when I hear Jean’s voice on my pod demanding rights for animals as I monitor the Stinger news channel in the hale where our life together began, I immediately grasp what it’s about.

  I turn on the video that is streaming from the ship with which I have become so deeply involved after that initial, distant investment. But I quickly turn off the visual screen. It’s jarring and heartbreaking to hear Jean’s voice, her syntax and accent, but see a parrot’s head, beak, and eye.

  Meitner

  “I am here in several capacities.

  “Most of you are amazed that I can talk. There is a story in that, which I will tell you.

  “But before that, I am here as spokesperson—yes, I am a person—to offer an invitation to participate in an international mathematical ballet.
This is a ballet planned in conjunction with Psittacus and Company, one of the many corporations sponsoring the Stinger Ship, to celebrate the Stinger’s completion and departure.

  “Many of you already have the neuroplasticity enhancement that will allow you to do so; it is P-493, manufactured by Psittacus and Company, updated a week ago. Psittacus and Company is making a temporary dose of this drug available on demand. Directions about obtaining it will follow. Participation is, of course, entirely voluntary. It is fully compatible with all neuroplasticity drugs manufactured by other companies; it has been extensively tested for years and is fully certified for use by the International Agency for Neuroplasticity and Genetic Modification. Participants will be encouraged to be at particular places at particular times, which will follow dawn around the Earth, beginning on the island of Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, in one week. You will need special 4-D earbuds, which will be provided, and a special bracelet, which will transmit information, accept your feedback movements, and create a dance based on the flocking capabilities bestowed by P-493. We anticipate that this will be a joyous occasion.

  “This is the part of this announcement that is most important to me. I am taking this opportunity to demand certain legal rights for my fellow creatures. The legal document has been prepared and will be released soon, but I will describe it briefly and follow that description with my story. Psittacus and Company is not a party to this demand; I am doing it as an individual.

  “Non-humans—all flora and fauna—are presently treated as beings with no real agency, as robots, slaves, toys, experimental subjects, nuisances, food.

  “As living individuals, we outnumber humans a billionfold. To those of you aware of how I was created, who think that we parrots have been given the gift of speech by magnanimous humans, I tell you no. We have had speech for eons. All of us non-human creatures communicate with one another and with our environment, and many have evolved communication systems that could be called speech—semiotic in nature, couched in context. We are scientists, observing the environment. We collect data. We calculate and make decisions based on that data. Some of us build. Some of us farm. Some of us hunt. Some of us use tools. All of us communicate. Some of us live solitary lives. Some of us are eusocial.

  “Most of us try to avoid you, but some of us are born or trapped into servitude. We parrots can serve as a bridge, spreading this message species to species where communication pathways overlap.”

  John Kalani

  I am musing on the fact that Meitner’s creators were testing the effects of genetic enhancement and neuroplasticity extensions, and that, twenty-five years later, like most people, I sport some of those enhancements, and many newer ones as well, when transmission ceases.

  I realize, in the silence, rather surprised, that Meitner is talking about Jean’s message. Her vision.

  Being realized, perhaps, after all these years.

  Something else is apparent to me, as well. Meitner once said: “My dreams are geometries of flight.” I did not understand at that time that her spatial dynamics were quite as unique as they are. It is something I have learned in the past few years by reading her papers. I think about those geometries in the context of the “experiment” the announcer mentioned.

  A thrill runs through me.

  Chased instantly by dread. As soon as I hear Meitner say that she is going to tell her story I know: I have to call Leilani and tell her.

  Before Meitner does.

  Leilani Kalani

  Hands, fire, speech, memory, stories. My mother taught me that evolutionary grammar of humanity.

  Meitner can talk. She always could tell a good story. I’ll bet she could start a fire, too. Without hands. She sounds angry, imperious. On my television, her yellow eye stares at the camera as she tells the world what she wants. I decide that she would be a bang-up lawyer, too. A dull, sad ache flares in my chest as I watch her, but it has nothing to do with her words, which are splendid.

  “These are my demands: One: Significant funds, their purpose specifically delineated in my document after much research, must be dedicated to enhancing interspecies communication. Two: All animals must henceforth be regarded, legally, as sentient beings entitled to inalienable rights under international law: to wit, the right to an environment in which they can each reach their full potential, the right to live a peaceful, non-threatened life, the right to legal representation, the right to education if desired. The right to sample trans-species enhancement and changes and accept or reject them. The right to freedom from enslavement to researchers or any other human being. The right to form contractual relationships. The right to . . .” My mother’s voice trills on, as soothing and as reasonable as the million times I had heard her cajole, smooth, manipulate Meitner through tantrums and the constant negotiations of our shared childhood. Oh, amazing.

  I admire her. Meitner has fast-forwarded through eons of moral, philosophical, and legal thought and synthesized them into what is probably a compelling document, except for one fact: As a parrot, she has no legal standing.

  Not yet.

  The last time I saw her was the night of my mother’s funeral.

  We hiked up the trail past the hale, winding higher and higher up the road until we reached the ridgetop, where we each tossed a handful of my mother’s ashes to the wind. Wind blasted up from the valley. People leap off to hang glide there, falling and rising on complicated currents of air. The legend is that you can lean into the wind and it will stand you up again on the ridge.

  Mom’s ashes blew back into my face. I felt my hair and found it greasy, full of grit. It was strangely comforting.

  That evening, the house was full. A few uncles sat by the fireplace playing slack-key and talking story about my mother as the sweet smell of wild ginger gusted through the house, borne on the evening trade wind. Our whole ohana filled the house with food, warmth, stories, hugs. Everyone wore white. Our dark skins and slow-moving white dresses and shirts seemed to glow as we floated like moths across the huge, candlelit lanai. I gazed at the full moon, thinking about my mother. I felt as if she was giving me a message, in round, mysterious moonlight, but I didn’t know what it was. Tears on my father’s face sparkled as my aunties hugged him tight. Soon, they all joined in singing the old, old songs and chants.

  I wandered off and sat in the long, broad hallway where my parents kept ancient koa bowls, stone ko’i used to carve canoes, my great-great-great-grandmother’s surfboard, and their art. I looked at my favorite painting, the one that asks Where Are We Going, and I wondered where my mother had gone.

  Then I saw Meitner, perched on the back of a koa bench, staring at the Stinger Ship painting.

  I ran toward her. I was crying. I wanted to hear her voice, my mother’s voice. I wanted her wings to be arms, her beak a mouth to kiss me.

  She spread her gray wings and flew. I followed her out to the vast, cantilevered lanai that hung over the deep, verdant valleys of my childhood. “Meitie!”

  She vanished into the night.

  I never heard her voice again, though I thought that every Grey Parrot I spotted might be her until I saw their lack of her distinguishing red face-blotch. And up at the hale where I lived, sleeping on the futon, before my father sent me to Hilo, none ever spoke to me.

  I snap out of my memories when Meitner’s voice vanishes. After some dead air, a woman’s calm voice says, “Excuse us while we deal with some technical problems.” Some bland music comes on.

  Dad calls. He looks old, much older than he did at Christmas. “Are you watching?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m completely surprised that the parrots are there.”

  “I am too.”

  “Sure, you are, but I’m surprised because I’ve been working on code for the ship for some time and I haven’t heard about this experiment. It seems that I should have known. I may have told you about my work.”

  “Yes, you talked about it at Christmas.” The same kind of thing he’d worked on
his whole life, of course, with total intensity and concentration. For years he had been living either in a shack hidden in the pines on his secluded bit of public—but hard-to-access—North Shore beach, or in the hale roughing it, talking to no one. Connected, of course, but a hermit. I worry about him, but what can I do? I’m sure he’s had various neuroplasticity enhancements. I have too, but just little things. “You’re working on some kind of human-machine interface, right?”

  “Kind of. Anyway, of course, Stinger is a huge enterprise, so I guess it’s not that surprising. Everything is compartmentalized.”

  I don’t say that he is a compartment unto himself, but I’m afraid he hears me think it. Instead I say, “It must have been expensive to get the parrots up there. Specially built suits?”

  “Psittacus and Company have a lot of money, and plan to make more with this publicity.” Silence, then, “Leilani, there is something I need say. It will be hard. I’m sorry, but I have to tell you.”

  “What?”

  “Meitner may have killed your mother.”

  I jump to my feet. “What?”

  He tells me a horrible story.

  “I don’t believe it! That’s ridiculous!

  “It’s not.” He is using his old reasonable-father voice. “She disappeared after that. Remember?”

  “Of course I remember!” I say, instantly regretting my cross tone. “But I don’t see how you can . . . even think! She loved Mom!” I walk to the kitchen to freshen my coffee, put the cup down on a table, walk to the patio door and open it, taking deep breaths of freezing air. Rain pelts my face.

  “I know this is hard for you. But Meitner is a bird. Her relationship with your mother was . . . confusing. Your mother agonized about it all the time, wondered if she was doing the right things, worried about what might happen to Meitner. She thought of Meitner as a victim. A bird that—”