“How?”
“More lye,” she said. “Mama taught me how.”
Rose turned away and started toward the white steel door. She had only one more thing to do. She had done her duty here.
“Rose? Rose?”
She ignored Papa’s shaky voice as she left the brick police station and headed down Cordova Street toward Dr. Trask’s office in the West End of Vancouver.
When she arrived at Dr. Trask’s Queen Anne-style house on Comox Street, the nurse turned her away until Dr. Trask intervened and allowed her back in to his consulting office.
“I want a deal,” said Rose. “All I ask in return is that you drop the charges against my father.”
“Miss Rose,” said Dr. Trask, gesturing to the bruise on his face. “Your father made it explicit. You are not to have that arm.”
Rose shook her head. “I don’t want the arm anymore. Just cash for my eyes.”
Dr. Trask furrowed his eyebrows. “Why would you do that?”
Rose handed the eviction notice to Dr. Trask. “Because we’ll be on the street by tomorrow otherwise.”
Dr. Trask read the note and then turned to Rose. “You would do this for your father?”
Rose nodded.
Within two hours, Rose was lying on one of Dr. Trask’s metal operating tables and given anesthetic. She resolved herself that the last thing she would see with her natural eyes was the light above the operating table.
At first, Rose heard the soft whirring of a desk fan and feet shuffling across a creaky wooden floor. Hollow, distant voices murmured as if she were listening through a cardboard tube. A metallic tang hung in the air, like iron filings. Blood.
Globs of blurry lights throbbed into vision. She propped herself up on her elbows. A sharp pain ran up her right arm and there was a clang of metal on metal beside her. Rose looked down at her side. There was a brand new, mechanical arm affixed to her fleshy stub just below the elbow.
She lifted her hand up to her face, spreading her fingers outward like a fan. Tiny brass cranks and pistons spat puffs of steam from hissing valves in her forearm. She beamed. Her arm wasn’t as thick or clumsy as Dr. Trask’s. It was shapely and feminine with soft lines and thin valves.
But she wasn’t supposed to have a new arm. She gave up her eyes.
Rose touched her left brow and gasped. She was expecting the same brassy goggle-eyes as Mang’s. But they weren’t there. She picked up a mirror sitting on a small metal table filled with operating instruments, and lifted it to her face. She gazed into the mirror. Her eyes stared back. Her real eyes.
Dr. Trask hadn’t taken them. But why? The arm was expensive. Was he giving it to her after all?
“You’re awake.”
Dr. Trask’s nurse walked into the room, a metal tray with a glass of water and a bottle of pills in her hands.
“Take this, it will ease the pain.”
Rose obeyed and swallowed the two white pills with a gulp of cold water.
The nurse switched on a bright, overhead light and shone it onto Rose’s arm. The nurse grabbed her elbow. Rose stiffened and pulled away.
“Don’t squirm,” said the nurse, grabbing her mechanical arm and twisting it, examining the metal stub.
“You’re fine. You can go.”
But Papa told her that the hakujin don’t do anything for free.
“When does Dr. Trask want me back? To take my eyes?”
“Nein,” the nurse said. “Already paid for.”
“But who? Who paid for them?”
The nurse glared at her. “Ask your father.”
Rose found Papa sitting on the docks where Mama and she had spent many hours. The North Shore Mountains reflected a warm pink glow from the setting sun as salty coolness from Vancouver Harbour chilled her. Rose pulled her coat tight about her shoulders.
She sat down beside her father and dangled her feet above the water. Then, she turned toward him and stiffened. Rose gasped. Dizziness and nausea overwhelmed her as if she were struck in the chest by a tsunami. She propped herself up with her left arm to prevent from falling into the harbour, as the cost of her good fortune stared her in the face.
Her father gazed back at her with brassy goggle-eyes.
Rose shook her head and opened her mouth to say something. All she heard were waves slapping against barnacle-covered wooden posts.
“Dr. Trask came to me in jail,” Papa said. “He showed me the eviction notice and told me what you asked of him. I offered my eyes.”
Rose gazed at her father’s new goggle-eyes. The copper glinted brightly in the fading sun. “Why, Papa?”
He looked down at the urn he cradled between his legs.
“You have Mama’s eyes,” he said. “I could not stand to lose them. Not again.”
Rose pulled her father close with her new arm, placed her left hand on his lap and leaned her head on his shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Papa.” Warm tears rolled down her cheeks.
Papa folded his hand over hers.
Rose remembered their earlier conversation and straightened up, gazing again at Papa’s new, mechanical eyes. “They won’t last forever,” she said.
Papa nodded. “Nothing ever does.” He gazed down at the urn. “Please bring Mama’s shoes in tonight.”
“Okay,” she said.
Together, they watched the bright red sun descend slowly behind Stanley Park’s cedar trees.
Back to Myan
Regina Kanyu Wang
(translated by Shaoyan Hu)
The flyer stops its engine thirty meters above the ice and curves gently around under the combined effect of inertia and gravity, braking at the last moment to float one meter above the surface. The landing gears push out from the bottom of the flyer, securing a steady touchdown on the frozen water.
Kaya leaps out of the pilot’s module and checks the underside of The Flying Fish. The three landing pads, shaped like discs, have fixed themselves tightly on the surface of the ice. As she lightly pats the body of the ship, her lips curl into a smile. She has prepared those gears specifically for this journey. Made by Kaya, safe and reliable.
I’m back, Myan, she thinks silently.
Kaya was brought up in a state college of the Union. Although the Union waived the education charges for the interplanetary refugees and offered medical insurance with attractive discounts, the expenses of livelihood and maintenance were never low. Not until last year did Kaya manage to pay off the low-interest loans and acquire the license for jobs in outer space, the frontier of the Union’s expansion, a place for future colonials. The work there was usually tough and hazardous but not without profits. Kaya needed money, but that was not the only reason she had submitted her resume to the committee of Project Saion.
She wanted to go back and see Myan. Eleven planets orbited Saion, and one of them had given birth to sentient beings. In other words, in Saion’s solar system, only her native planet Myan had had sentient inhabitants.
Myan is covered with ice. After tightening the ties of her blade shoes, Kaya kicks back with her right foot and begins to skate.
The two blades of her shoes glide through the ice one after another, while Kaya enjoys the pleasure that comes with speed. As she moves through the wind, it stings her face a little, but that does not matter. She plunges on even faster.
The icy surface of Myan is as smooth as mirror, without even a small bump. The gravity, eighty-five percent of the Union’s, and the low friction grant her the feeling of freedom and swiftness that has been missing for too long. For the moment, she is the queen on the ice. Every inch of her exposed skin senses the air flow. She lightly touches the ice with the tip of her right blade, and springs up with a push supported by the rear inside of her left blade. After spinning twice in the air, she drops down and slides on.
When Kaya started to practice skating, she was already in her adulthood. Having missed the best age to learn, she had to step onto the rink with the younglings. Tumbles and injuries were famili
ar to her, but it was a real agony to see the younger ones master the tricks faster than she did. When all the others were asleep, she went to the rink alone to practice at midnight. She jumped and spun, jumped and spun, repeating the movements again and again, seeking perfection. At the time, she was not even sure if she would have a chance to set foot on the frosty coat of Myan.
Kaya barely remember the time before leaving Myan because she had been too young. Her only memory of her native planet was water. Her people had once lived and grown in the sea that covered the entire world, swimming joyfully, worrying about nothing, until a flaming tongue of Saion swept by too closely. The water temperature rose. Those who survived herded the fishes to the deeper sea on the opposite side of the sun. However, they could not escape the scalding heat from above. The Union noticed the anomaly in Saion and found signs of intelligent life on Myan by chance when the planet moved to the perihelion. They sent an emergency rescue fleet from the nearest location. But it was too late. When they arrived, only three out of every thousand Myan natives were still alive to be evacuated. Kaya’s parents died in the disaster.
The Union brought her and a few hundred of her kin to a fully-developed colony, where they were educated and re-engineered to blend into the communities in the Union. Having learned Myan’s history in school, Kaya tried to recall the discomfort and terror of being surrounded by hot water, but nothing came up. Biology told her that Myanese would not develop full sensations until they were four years old. She had left Myan at the age of three, and the cool blue water was the only thing that left an impression on her mind.
Now, skating on the ice reminds her of the pleasant feeling of swimming, an experience she cannot find in walking or running. It makes her feel buoyant, as if lifting to the sky. With a thrust using the front outside of her left blade, she jumps, rotating anticlockwise once, twice, thrice. She has done it! A kind of clarity settles in her mind, as fresh as the Myan air, cleansed of any darkness, and with that clarity, she descends. However, when the blades come down to the surface, she feels a stabbing pain in her right knee and stumbles to the ground.
That again. Kaya sits on the ice and rubs her knee. The relapse comes sooner than expected, probably due to the planet’s coldness. She had had her pair of bioprostheses checked before the journey. The medic suggested replacing the parts as soon as possible, and that she should keep regular maintenance and avoid strenuous exercise before the upgrades. But she could not afford the replacement and has to wait due to a shortage of money. Besides, her new job could not be postponed. This is her only chance to go back to Myan and she would not miss it.
Her pair of bioprostheses is more than ten years old, with minor malfunctions from time to time. She barely keeps them in working condition on her medical insurance, but upgrading them is beyond her income. The bioprostheses were gifts from the Union government, given to her when she left Myan. In order to help the Myanese refugees adapt to life on land and settle down in the Union, the Refugee Agency funded the bioprostheses to replace their fishtails. Kaya did not remember the surgery except for a prolonged dream. She woke up as a citizen of the Union, with two legs below her. Learning to walk was as difficult as learning the common language of the Union. Her first few years on land were burdened with physical pain and mental frustration. Myanese use very few phonetic elements for conversations above the water surface. Most of the time, they communicate in the water, using body language. Kaya had long forgotten how to use Myanese languages, but from the short footage shown in her class, it looked like elegant dancing, the kind for stage performance.
She gently strokes her gills, which are in a degenerated state. That she has not been locked in a zoo or sold to a circus is enough to make her feel lucky. The Union has given her legs and citizenship, along with the opportunities for education and a career. She has nothing to complain about. She just wants to visit her native world again.
In recent months, Myan appeared in her dreams with increasing frequency. In those dreams, she had a fishtail again, swimming in the endless planet water of Myan. She hunted the untamed fish with knives made of shells, enjoyed her share of delicious fish meat, and then came up to the surface. There, in the phosphorus light of the Algae Moon, she prayed to the Goddess of Myan, thanking Her for the gifts.
Later, as Kaya twisted around to dive again, she was attracted by a fuzzy glow in the shadow of the Slate Moon. There should not be any light there. She quietly swam toward the glow, taking care not to disturb the currents too much. Closer still, she could now see a figure inside the brightness, slowly turning around as if it had sensed her. However, just before Kaya could make out the details, she woke up.
The dream first came to her three years ago, and she did not think much of it. However, the same scene played out in her dream again a year ago.
Last year, she got a job with Project Saion. She would use a spaceship to tug the membranes around the last opening of the sphere and complete the envelopment of the sun. Started in the second year of the disaster, the project was to prevent Saion’s sudden bursts from destroying everything in the system and to collect energy effectively. The plan was to encompass the sun with a certain type of membranes, which could capture most of the Saion power output and convert it to electricity for storage while the rest of the energy spilled out from where the membranes were absent. The surface temperature of Myan dropped drastically, and the water became ice. The surviving native people had been evacuated, but other organisms remained underwater as the ice cover expanded and encased them in an enormous ice coffin. The night that Kaya received the letter of appointment, she again dreamed of Myan and again woke up before making out the figure in the glowing light. Since then, the dream visited her repeatedly. She decided to look for an answer on Myan.
The preparation was easy. As a pre-eminent pilot and mechanic, she did not have to struggle to make the necessary modifications to The Flying Fish so it could land on ice. The base camp of Project Saion was only three standard hours away from Myan. The day after she arrived at the camp, Kaya took off with the excuse of flight practice and surveying the surrounding areas. She headed for Myan right away. After all, who would stop a refugee from paying her respects to a devastated home world.
Who would have known that she has to sit helplessly on the ice all alone? Now that skating is no longer an option, Kaya removes the blades from her boots. Fortunately, she has geared up with dual-purpose ice boots. The tiny barbs embedded in the soles can prevent slips over the ice. She stands up and limps forward. Since she is not moving as fast as before, Kaya can observe the environment more closely. Myan has no solid land. Once, it was a planet full of water, now completely covered in ice. There are no mountains or ravines or rivers. When the surface temperature dropped years ago, even the most violent waves calmed down despite the tidal force of the two moons. Afterwards, everything fell into silence.
Kaya has no idea where to go. She believes she will find something on her native planet. She looks down through the translucent ice cover and notices a dark shadow. Shifting her weight to the left, she crouches down carefully and inspects. The shadow is shorter than her palm, a small fish with a rather plump body. Its two short pectoral fins splay out ridiculously, as if swimming was very hard. The poor little thing was trying to escape the coldness even in the last moments of its life. Kaya rises to her feet, walking awkwardly.
A dozen steps away, there are more shadows, a school of fish or something similar to fish. They are as long as half her fingers. They look like fish but covered with dark grey carapace. There are about forty to fifty of them, and they seemed to share the same urgency as the plump fish to hurry forward. They were heading in the fish’s direction too. Why such a fuss in the last moments? Was it a coincidence that they were all going to the same place? Kaya adjusts her course and follows the group of fish.
Along the way, she encounters various creatures trapped beneath the ice cover: a fish with caudal fins spreading like rainbows, a cluster of organisms resembling alg
ae, and jellyfish with a dense collection of oral arms shaped like hooks. Without any exception, they were all trying tenaciously to reach the same location before all the water was frozen. What were they looking for? Or escaping from?
Darkness closes in. Saion hangs in the sky like a dull amber disk. If Kaya does not look carefully, Saion’s blurred edge makes it difficult to tell the sun from the background. In the feeble light of Saion, Kaya’s body casts a faint and elongated shadow over the ice. It is becoming more and more difficult to observe the creatures beneath the ice cover.
A large dark patch catches her attention and she finds a bigger shadow near the surface. She advances a few steps, coming to the top of the shadow. Compared to where she saw the other creatures, the ice here feels thicker. Kaya is standing over a tail, which is wider than the distance between her fingertips when she opens her arms to the sides. While Kaya walks on, the shadow becomes narrower where the tail meets the body and widens again after that point. She moves to the middle of the enormous form where its width reaches the maximum. Her own long shadow is obscured by the darkness below. Her heart feels cold and pained, as if pierced by an icy blade. She squats down before kneeling on both knees. Slowly, she leans forward, her forearms touching the ice and the left side of her face pressing against the surface. Coldness seeps into her heart through the fabrics of her clothes and her exposed skin, but it is not capable of freezing her tears. In the remaining Saion light, Kaya cries.
Before leaving the project base, Kaya had applied for thirty hours off, of which one third has already passed. As Saion is now below the horizon, the temperature drops quickly. The light of the Algae Moon is weaker than it was in her dream, but the ice reflects more light than the water would have done. Guided by that phosphorus glow, Kaya moves faster. Whatever those creatures had sought, their lives were doomed. Once, Kaya tries to deviate from the course, but she finds other creatures moving along a diverted route that undoubtedly led to the same destination. It feels as if there was a hole in that place and everything in the water was flushed toward it, albeit they were gradually frozen in the process. The shadows under the water become denser. Although the Algae Moon is not bright enough to illuminate their details, Kaya knows clearly where she is treading. The answer is close.
Where The Stars Rise: Asian Science Fiction and Fantasy Page 16
