by K. M. Szpara
I wished so hard that you were there with me. I wanted so much to cry on your shoulder, to sob as hard and hysterically as I had when you took me to 1981. And I wanted to be able to slap you, hit you, to push you in the water and hold you beneath the surface. I could have killed you that day, Mama.
When I was finished, Dara took me back to the house. We cleaned it as best we could for the next family member who would live here: there always has to be a member of the Stone family here, to take care of the shelter, the anachronopede, and the travelers that come through.
Then she took me away, to 2073, the home she’d made more than a century away from you.
Today was the first day I was able to leave the house, to take cautious, wobbling steps to the outside world. Everything is still tender and bruised, though my body is healing faster than I ever thought possible. It feels strange to walk with a weight between my legs; I walk differently, with a wider stride, even though I’m still limping.
Dara and I walked down to the pond today. The frogs all hushed at our approach, but the blackbirds set up a racket. And off in the distance, a heron lifted a cautious foot and placed it down again. We watched it step carefully through the water, hesitantly. Its beak darted into the water and came back up with a wriggling fish, which it flipped into its mouth. I suppose it was satisfied with that, because it crouched down, spread its wings, and then jumped into the air, enormous wings fighting against gravity until it rose over the trees.
Three days before my surgery, I went back to you. The pain of it is always the same, like I’m being torn apart and placed back together with clumsy, inexpert fingers, but by now I’ve gotten used to it. I wanted you to see me as the man I’ve always known I am, that I slowly became. And I wanted to see if I could forgive you; if I could look at you and see anything besides my father’s slow decay, my own broken and betrayed heart.
I knocked at the door, dizzy, ears ringing, shivering, soaked from the storm that was so much worse than I remembered. I was lucky that you or Dara had left a blanket in the shelter, so I didn’t have to walk up to the front door naked; my flat, scarred chest at odds with my wide hips, the thatch of pubic hair with no flesh protruding from it. I’d been on hormones for a year, and this second puberty reminded me so much of my first one, with you in 1963: the acne and the awkwardness, the slow reveal of my future self.
You answered the door with your hair in curlers, just as I remembered, and fetched me one of Dad’s old robes. I fingered the monogramming at the breast pocket, and I wished, so hard, that I could walk upstairs and see him.
“What the hell,” you said. “I thought the whole family knew these years were off-limits while I’m linear.”
You didn’t quite recognize me, and you tilted your head. “Have we met before?”
I looked you in the eye, and my voice cracked when I told you I was your son.
Your hand went to your mouth. “I’ll have a son?” you asked.
And I told you the truth: “You have one already.”
Your hand went to your gut, as if you would be sick. You shook your head, so hard that your curlers started coming loose. That’s when the door creaked open, just a crack. You flew over there and yanked it all the way open, snatching the child there up in your arms. I barely caught a glimpse of my own face looking back at me, as you carried my child-self up the stairs.
I left before I could introduce myself to you: my name is Heron, Mama. I haven’t forgiven you yet, but maybe someday, I will. And when I do, I will travel back one last time, to that night you left me and Dad for the future. I’ll tell you that your apology has finally been accepted, and will give you my blessing to live in exile, marooned in a future beyond all reach.
hhhhhh
??
hhhhh
well this is fucking useless isn’t it
kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk
that’s worse Romaan STOP IT
kkkkkkeyesn’tkkkkkanyoukkkkus?
there’s something now
kkkkkkkaliyekkkkkKKKKKK
fuck that hurt!
what was that
was that my name
try again
kkkkkkaliye?aliye!kkkkkk
YES I can hear it now /// I can HEAR it (guess this is hearing?) this is fucking weird i tell you
kkkkAliyeogdwekkkiditdkkkkknowwhatthismeans?
Of course I know what it fucking means. I’ve been working on the project as long as any of them; longer than many. I guess Romaan thinks my work didn’t count because none of it’s been said aloud, only input through computers. Well, screw him. He’s never spoken to anyone working on this back on Earth in person either, only in text relay, but I suppose that’s different, right. After all, I’m only the fallback after none of the hearing walking people’s brains could adapt to the neural linkage, aren’t I?
Must fucking burn Romaan, that I could do this and he couldn’t, just cos my battered old brain’s had to adjust to so much fucking adaptive tech over the decades. Neuroplasticity. Nice little word. I suppose it’s nice to have something they’re jealous of, for once. God knows several degrees don’t do it, not when you’re old and a woman and deaf.
The hearing’s secondary, of course, a side bonus of the main task: that neural linkage between my brain and an animal’s. I’ve been working on it most of my life, this fake telepathy, trying to match the other side’s advantage in this strange war.
We tried between people, but it was too overwhelming. We—lost people, in that stage.
(Saira, my dear Saira, who will never be the same; I see her each week, her in her bed and me in my chair, and she smiles and touches my hand, and doesn’t speak. Leish, Persis; oh, my dead dears. I reread that poem this week, before the linkage that might have done the same to me, thinking of you. Rock-a-bye baby, washing on the line. The drowned dead voices asking, How’s it above? I imagine your voices in those lines, the white bone talking: When she smiles, is there dimples? What’s the smell of parsley? I am going into the darkness of the darkness forever. My lost darlings all, I’m so sorry, I am. I think of your sinews in the far-away earth, and how I’m not enough. I can’t give you back the world, the smell of parsley, anything at all. Would you have been pleased that we succeeded, in the end?)
My Romaan was the one who worked out the audiovisual part; he’s brilliant, if annoying, and being able to promote this sort of shit to civilians always does the Service good, doesn’t it? Look at how helpful we are. We can even give veterans back some of the senses we cost them. Know he’ll expect me to be over the moon (ha, there’s an old-fashioned phrase, now) over actually hearing for the first time in my life. That’s what I’m supposed to be excited about, isn’t it? Noise, or the simulation of it, in my skull. Big deal. Bunch of hissing and clicking and the odd weirdly three-dimensional word that hurts and echoes. I’d stick with text, if it wasn’t for the rest.
But. The rest. To get down there, and not in a clunky suit but slipping easy as fish through not-water through the strange thick air, resting light in alien animal mind, witch-riding a foreign familiar in a world no human’s ever touched, not with skin and eyes and nose—and ears, I suppose, those too (do the otterfishcatsnake things they showed me have ears?)—this extraordinary modern magic that will, if it goes right, let us eavesdrop on the other and its hidden world… For that, oh God, for that. That’s worth all the hissing and clicking inconvenience, the drilling in my skill, all the years of different aids.
And, I mean, it’s war. Doing my bit for the Effort. All the shit I was meant to do, defective daughter of a military family. Daddy would be so proud, the old bugger. Thank fuck he’s dead. Last thing I need’s him being proud that his broken little girl’s able to be a spy.
Them the enemy the Bad Guys the invaders (though how they’re invading planets that used to be theirs…but you don’t question that, do you, old woman? Not if you’ve got the sense you were born with) and worst the aliens. NotOfUs. The Others. Headless freaks, The Blob. Spooks, Dad called them. You’d think he’d
’ve been less shitty, given the crap people in his own beloved military called him in his day, but I reckon there wasn’t much that’d make Dad be less shitty. Whatever they are, they can move easy through that thick weird air down there, and we can’t. We can protect our mining interests in vehicles and suits, missiles and lasers and bombs from space, but we can’t walk among them. And we can’t do what they can, use our minds as weapons, not directly. Neither of those things.
Well. I can, now.
The animal they bring me’s as high as my knee, as long as my body lying flat. It does have ears, little hollow dents. I wish I could reach through the clear glass or plastic and touch it, see if those are thin scales or strange fur, if it’s warm or cool against my own smooth skin. Its head is small, sharp-nosed, its legs short like a ferret’s, its back supple as a cat’s. Its gill-like orifices pulse gently. It looks at me through one nictating eye and then the next, turning its head like a bird. I can’t remember its scientific name; we’ve been calling it the catsnake, and it fits.
I look for the implants but they’re invisible, hidden in the scale-spike-fur. My own make my head throb, pried between the plates of my skull. I wonder if it’s afraid. I can see its sides expand and deflate slowly as it breathes; maybe it’s sedated. Lucky bugger.
we’re goingkkkkkto trythelinkage hhhhhere first, Romaan says. The existing link, the one through the computer, is working so much better now, though I’m still adjusting to (the illusion of) actually hearing words in my skull. Whatever part of my brain that input stimulates aches, a constant weird throb. I’d rather he just used my old text relay, but he’s too fucking proud of his invention. And I don’t want to look ungrateful, do I? That doesn’t look good for the cameras that’ve been trained on me these recent weeks, on and off, for this marvellous breakthrough: hearing to the deaf! Sight to the blind! Pick up thy bed, and walk!
This isn’t being filmed, though. The Service doesn’t like too many records of its little failures, and we’ve had too many of those in this long project. I’m very aware of that as I close my eyes, let them wire me up yet again, little clips and clamps, the vibrations that used to be my sound. I move my hands on the padded arms of my chair, feel-hear them run through me: bass throb, treble sting. Familiar and easing, beneath the godawful kkkkkHHHkkkkness they’ve given me.
And then, the linkage.
Not much at first: sharp little zap all through me, leaving a dull ache in my back teeth, heavy sort of throb in my balls that could almost be pleasure. And then—falling. Not like falling in dreams, not like the sick whirl when you miss a step (I remember that, so clearly), but vertigo, everything spinning, no up no down and nothing to hold onto (somewhere my fingers clench, but I can’t feel it, I can’t feel it, oh god the old paralysis, please no—) and darkness and lights all mixed and through the computer feed my own screaming fed back to me on and on and on, ringing through me so that I batter myself against glass, supple body thrashing helplessly between panes like a sample on a slide somehow living and aware, the noise must stop the noise must stop—
—and this is not my body and these are not my ears that hear, this is not-i and i together, pulse of gills and beat of strange slow blood. catsnake is this you, i, i-thou, we? catsnake is frightened, and so is aliye. hush, hush. rock-a-bye. you’re hurting us, we’re hurting us. see, the screaming has stopped. see, there through the distorting glass, the woman in the chair. when she smiles, there’s dimples. there, the slow breathing, the calming blood. i-thou-i, resting nested. nest-memory, slow weed-breathing thickness by the slow river’s bank, dark hole hollow, infant scale-skin against adult fur: so we are twice mother, thou and i? so I held my baby. how soft her tiny fingers were, her soft and dented skull! so; so. we are together.
—and then we are not, and I am in my chair with everything hurting and my fingers tearing at the implants, Romaan shouting kkkkkk and the catsnake thrashing panicked in its narrow tank. I get myself free and wheel myself across to it, press my hands against the glass. There are alarms somewhere: I can feel them. The film on its eyes is flickering fast in panic. I have never touched an animal that wasn’t human before—how strange it is that I still haven’t, when I’ve been in its bloody head! I wish I could hold it to me like the baby we remembered, touch its strange pelt.
So. Hush. Rock-a-bye. The prick of a needle in my neck, putting me to sleep. Rock-a-bye, Aliye, falling into vertigo-darkness. Rock-a-bye, catsnake. Silence all.
It’s months before we’re ready, catsnake and me. I’m never able to make it—her?—us?—understand what it is we’re doing, and I’m glad. It’s its planet down there, after all, that I’m going to be creeping over in its head, when it’s released, its planet that we’re filleting with mining gear in the cause of Need. There are less of them now than there used to be, I’m told: rivers dammed or dried, swamps drained, and a war zone besides. I wonder what became of the kits in the nest, the thick quiet hollow, if they died or throve. There’s no way to ask it. Its animal-brain works in now and glimpses, flashed sense-memory. We can’t communicate, not properly, though I can stir or soothe it in its glass box.
What’s it like to walk again, Mum? He does care so much, in his own way, doesn’t he, my Romaan, though he doesn’t understand a thing. Desperate to have given me that, like he tried to give me hearing I didn’t want, had never had. To have given it back, as if I ever ran on four stubby legs beneath a wiggly back and tasted electricity in the air. Blinked back through my text relay: It’s not so bad. It shuts him up, for a bit.
But there are always others: You must be so happy, Aliye. Ms Parlak, it must be so liberating for you. Will you tell our viewers what it’s like? No one fucking saying: “Well done, Aliye, you and your team’ve fucking cracked a military and scientific problem we’ve been working on for a couple of lifetimes, you genius woman. How does that feel?” Romaan’s shaking hands, accepting the awards. Saira would be furious with him, our son pushing me into the background like that. She would have understood, my Saira. She would.
I asked Romaan to turn off the noise. He didn’t want to—he’s been angry, the little shit—but he did it. Eventually. I suppose it hurts to have your mother reject what’s meant to be a gift, even an incidental one, a side-effect. He took it better when I explained it helped me with the catsnake, that its hearing from inside is strange and muffled, the underwater booms and bangs close to what I feel through skin and bone without my ears.
It’s got another sense, too, strange to me: electric zaps and tingles with nowhere to go, leaving it confused as I was in my vertigo. I’ve insisted they give it a bigger box, a tub of water to wallow in. It pings its electricity off the plastic sides of the tub and hums to itself constantly, a discontent whining thrum. Everyone in the lab’s starting to hate it. Bet they wish they could turn off their hearing now. They only get peace when we’re hooked up, it and me, curled together in memory-dark, sharing half-memory without words. Smell of a baby’s head, taste of riverweed and strange fish, Saira’s hands on my skin, sharp sweet jolt of a barbed dick inside us. I’m filling in all sorts of facts for the xenobiologists: they’re the ones who really love me now. Not sure what good it does anyone, this knowledge of a dying species on a torn-up world. Seem to be getting even more bitter these days, don’t I? And people think old ladies’re sweet.
And now. And now we’re going down. My body in close orbit, catsnake’s down to the surface. In the linkage still, and I’m caught in its confusion, the horrible pressure. Both of us screaming. Thick air of its tank shaking. Our bones are splitting—
—and then there is freedom, the wide soft air in which to run far and fast and then free of all the strangeness to leap and twist, dancing delighted loops under a double moon in doubled shadows, there is the river and its taste, familiar-unfamiliar home at last all full of whiskered things that swim and we are in the bottom-mud all stomach-wriggling hunting in hunger for the savour of real food after immeasurable incomprehensible long and homehomehome here an abandoned de
n to nest in all tail-over-nose and warm and safe parlakparlakyouhavetomoveit for time without measure in the slow warm dark.
parlak can you hear me. you have to move it. north-west, their camp is north-west.
in the slow. warm. dark.
parlak.
warmdarkwarmdarkwecan’thearyou
parlak. aliye.
no.
mum.
romaan? (catsnake confused: no names here.) (the kit, the kit that survived.) romaan. What?
go north-west, parlak. mum.
moving confused-obedient, body bending to the river. romaan like this? yes mum. deep drumming of machines. taste of metal in not-water, vibration, electricity all wrong. up out of the water, almost-voices, strange smells
there, parlak, there, we’re recording. go further in.
shapes moving, vast and almost-formless. not one looks at catsnake, another animal slinking along. ones closelike to catsnake chained up, yowling protest at intrusion. pets? guards? humans’ve never been this close. only glimpses on screens
lightblare sudden, handshapes reaching, sirens all piercing skin and it
hurtshurtshurt pull back pull back parlak get out they’ve detected our signaland PAINPAINPAIN whiter than light all bloodsmell and run go go go waterseeking dive deep engines on water vibrating following. bowels voiding sudden sharpwater stink. deeper twist and flee, swamps shallow and streams thin, up and over down again twisting, catsnake-and-woman flee flee flee and there is
so
much
pain.
darkplace found, hiding now. i’m sorry, i’m sorry, i did this to you, we did, the pain, i’m sorry. this is our fault, oh god, our fault. are we dying?
our belly hurts so very much
and then
…shhhh, otherperson, rider, it tells us without words. shhhh forget, come back to riverlair safe and sleep, safenest dark and silence shhh. come back to dreams of kitsandbabes, lullaby quietsoft sleep. shh now forever silence dreams, no more machine loudshouting no more the headvoice intruding mum and we are back in riverdeep mum metaltaste slipaway silence song and home to lair and we are back in rock-a-bye memory and we are mum we are we are we.
