“I like to be safe.”
He watched me, as if expecting me to say more.
“Actually, I don’t need an escort as much as I like to have a companion—somebody to talk to. I don’t see that many people.”
“It’s your money.”
The game had ended and was being subjected to loud analysis by the men at the bar, their voices suddenly died. A man behind me sucked in his breath as the clear voice of a woman filled the room.
I looked at the holo. Rena Swanson was reciting the news, leading with the Arnoldi story, following that with the announcement of the President’s new son. Her aged, wrinkled face hovered over us; her kind brown eyes promised us comfort. Her motherly presence had made her program one of the most popular on the holo. The men around me sat silently, faces upturned, worshipping her—the Woman, the Other, someone for whom part of them still yearned.
We got back to Marcello’s just before dark. As we approached the door, Ellis suddenly clutched my shoulder. “Wait a minute, Joe.”
I didn’t move at first; then I reached out and carefully pushed his arm away. My shoulders hurt and a tension headache, building all day, had finally taken hold, its claws gripping my temples. “Don’t touch me.” I had been about to plead, but caught myself in time; attitude, as Ellis had told me himself, was important.
“There’s something about you. I can’t figure you out.”
“Don’t try.” I kept my voice steady. “You wouldn’t want me to complain to your boss, would you? He might not hire you again. Escorts have to be trusted.”
He was very quiet. I couldn’t see his dark face clearly in the fading light, but I could sense that he was weighing the worth of a confrontation with me against the chance of losing his job. My face was hot, my mouth dry. I had spent too much time with him, given him too many chances to notice subtly wrong gestures. I continued to stare directly at him, wondering if his greed would win out over practicality.
“Okay,” he said at last, and opened the door.
I was charged more than I had expected to pay, but did not argue about the fee. I pressed a few coins on Ellis; he took them while refusing to look at me, He knows, I thought then; he knows and he’s letting me go. But I might have imagined that, seeing kindness where there was none.
I took a roundabout route back to Sam’s, checking to make sure no one had followed me, then pulled off the road to change the car’s license plate, concealing my own under my shirt.
Sam’s store stood at the end of the road, near the foot of my mountain. Near the store, a small log cabin had been built. I had staked my claim to most of the mountain, buying up the land to make sure it remained undeveloped, but the outside world was already moving closer.
Sam was sitting behind the counter, drumming his fingers as music blared. I cleared my throat and said hello.
“Joe?” His watery blue eyes squinted. “You’re late, boy.”
“Had to get your car fixed. Don’t worry—I paid for it already. Thanks for letting me rent it again.” I counted out my coins and pressed them into his dry, leathery hand.
“Any time, son.” The old man held up the coins, peering at each one with his weak eyes. “Don’t look like you’ll get home tonight. You can use the sofa there—I’ll get you a nightshirt.”
“I’ll sleep in my clothes.” I gave him an extra coin.
He locked up, hobbled toward his bedroom door, then turned. “Get into town at all?”
“No.” I paused, “Tell me something, Sam. You’re old enough to remember. What was it really like before?” I had never asked him in all the years I had known him, avoiding intimacy of any kind, but suddenly I wanted to know.
“I’ll tell you, Joe,” He leaned against the doorway. “It wasn’t all that different. A little softer around the edges, maybe, quieter, not as mean, but it wasn’t all that different. Men always ran everything. Some say they didn’t, but they had all the real power—sometimes they’d dole a little of it out to the girls, that’s all. Now we don’t have to anymore.”
I had been climbing up the mountain for most of the morning, and had left the trail, arriving at my decoy house before noon. Even Sam believed that the cabin in the clearing was my dwelling. I tried the door, saw that it was still locked, then continued on my way.
My home was farther up the slope, just out of sight of the cabin. I approached my front door, which was almost invisible near the ground; the rest of the house was concealed under slabs of rock and piles of deadwood. I stood still, letting a hidden camera lens get a good look at me. The door swung open.
“Thank God you’re back,” Julia said as she pulled me inside and closed the door. “I was so worried. I thought you’d been caught and they were coming for me.”
“It’s all right. I had some trouble with Sam’s car, that’s all.”
She looked up at me; the lines around her mouth deepened. “I wish you wouldn’t go.” I took off the pack loaded with the tools and supplies unavailable at Sam’s store. Julia glanced at the pack resentfully. “It isn’t worth it.”
“You’re probably right.” I was about to tell her of my own trip into town, but decided to wait until later.
We went into the kitchen. Her hips were wide under her pants; her large breasts bounced as she walked. Her face was still pretty, even after all the years of hiding, her lashes thick and curly, her mouth delicate. Julia could not travel in the world as it was; no clothing, no disguise, could hide her.
I took off my jacket and sat down, taking out my card, and my papers. My father had given them to me—the false name, the misleading address, the identification of a male—after I had pleaded for my own life. He had built my hideaway; he had risked everything for me. “Give the world a choice,” he had said, “and women will be the minority, maybe even die out completely; perhaps we can only love those like ourselves.” He had looked hard as he said it, and then he had patted me on the head, sighing as though he regretted the choice. Maybe he had. He had chosen to have a daughter, after all.
I remembered his words. “Who knows?” he had asked. “What is it that made us two kinds who have to work together to get the next batch going? Oh, I know about evolution, but it didn’t have to be that way, or any way. It’s curious.”
“It can’t last,” Julia said, and I did not know if she meant the world, or our escape from the world.
There would be no Eves in their Eden, I thought. The visit to town had brought it all home to me. We all die, but we go with a conviction about the future; my extinction would not be merely personal. Only traces of the feminine would linger—an occasional expression, a posture, a feeling—in the flat-breasted male form. Love would express itself in fruitless unions, divorced from reproduction; human affections are flexible.
I sat in my home, in my prison, treasuring the small freedom I had, the gift of a man, as it seemed such freedom had always been for those like me, and wondered again if it could have been otherwise.
RACHEL SWIRSKY
Detours on the Way to Nothing
Rachel Swirsky is an American writer, poet, and editor of literary, speculative, and fantasy fiction. Her short fiction has been published in both literary journals and genre publications such as PANK, the Konundrum Engine Literary Review, the New Haven Review, Tor.com, Subterranean Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Realms of Fantasy, and Weird Tales. Her stories are frequently reprinted in year’s-best collections. Her work has been recognized with various awards, including the Nebula Award, and nominated for the Hugo Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, and the World Fantasy Award. In “Detours on the Way to Nothing” we learn more about attraction, reactions to another’s desire and how quickly one can change to please someone. It was first published in Weird Tales in 2008.
It’s midnight when you and your girlfriend, Elka, have your first fight since you moved in together. Words wound, tears flow, doors slam. You storm out of the apartment, not caring where you go as
long as it’s far away from her. When you step off the front stoop onto the sidewalk, that’s the moment when the newest version of me is born.
You get on the subway heading toward Brooklyn and ride until the train rumbles out of the tunnels and squeaks into a familiar aboveground stop. The neighborhood isn’t good, but a friend of yours used to live a few blocks away, so you know the area pretty well. At least you won’t get lost while you work off the rest of your anger. You disembark, let your feet pick a direction, and start walking.
That’s how the logic seems from your perspective, but there’s another explanation: I want you to come to me.
By a series of what you think are random turns, you end up in an alley between high rise buildings. Reinforced doors protect apartments built like warehouses; skulls grin on rat poison warning signs nailed beneath barred panes. Abandoned mattresses and broken radios decay in the gutter, accumulating mold and rust.
In the spotlight of a streetlamp, an old Puerto Rican man hurls bottles at a fifth story window. “Christina!” he yells. “Open up!” A voice shouts down, “She doesn’t live here anymore!” but the man keeps throwing. Translucent shards collect around his feet. None have flown back into his face yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
The distraction stops you, as I intended. I wanted people around so you’d be less likely to spook.
You look up and see me. I’m the girl on the roof. The edge where I stand is flat as the sidewalk and has no guard rail. You gasp when you notice my toes edging over the precipice—then gasp harder a moment later when you see my hair floating in the wind. It looks like feathers. Just like feathers.
The Puerto Rican man runs out of bottles. He rubs his sore palms, repeating, “Christina, my Christina, why won’t you open the window?”
Looking up, you gesture between me and the Puerto Rican man, asking: are you Christina? I shake my head and make walking motions with my fingers to say I’ll come down. Not knowing quite why, you put your hands in your pockets and wait.
When I get down to street level, you’re shocked to see it wasn’t an illusion: my hair really is made of feathers. They’re bright blue, such a vivid color that it’s obvious they weren’t plucked from any real bird. They remind you of the ones you and your sister decorated carnival masks with when you were children: feathers dyed to match the way people think birds look.
You reach out to touch them before your sense of propriety kicks in and pulls your hand back. You shuffle your feet with embarrassment. “Hi.”
I find your shyness endearing. I take one hand out of the lined pocket of my ski jacket and wave.
“I’m Patrick,” you say.
I smile and nod, the way people do when they hear information they don’t find relevant.
“What’s your name?” you ask.
I step closer. You tilt your ear toward my lips, assuming I want to whisper. It’s a reasonable assumption, though wrong. I take your chin and gently lift your face so that your gaze is level with mine, then open my mouth to show you where my tongue was cut out.
You back away. Another second and you’d bolt, so I act fast, pull a card out of my pocket and give it to you.
“Voluntary surgery?” you read. “What are you, part of some cult?”
It’s more a philosophy than a cult, but since it isn’t really either, I wave my hand back and forth: in a way.
Debate wavers in your expression. You still might go. Before you can decide, I take your hand and pull your fingers through my hair.
You breathe hard as your fingertips touch skin beneath my feathers. “All the way to the scalp,” you murmur.
That’s when I know I’ve got you. I can see it in the way your eyes turn one dark color from pupil to iris. You’re thinking, how can this be real?
The fantasy has been with you since adolescence. Maybe it started with the feathers you and your sister glued on the carnival masks. They felt so soft that you pocketed a pair—one blue, one white—and took them back to bed with you. Your vision of a bird-woman appeared soon thereafter. Beautiful and silent, she wrapped you nightly in sky-colored feathers that smelled like wind.
In the nearby park, I recreate this. Behind us, a levy of black rocks stands against the East River. Reflected Manhattan lights form a sheen on the water, shimmering like a fluorescent oil spill.
I strip off my clothes and stand naked for you, my shadow falling onto gravel cut with glints of glass. I’m skinny with visible ribs, but soft and fleshy around the belly where you like to stroke your lovers as if they were satin pillows—all the conflicting traits you prefer, combined in one body. Your eyes never leave my feathers.
You will never know how I am possible. My philosophy—my cult, as you called it—is old and secretive. We have no organization, no books of dogma, no advocates to harangue passersby with our rhetoric. Each initiate finds us alone, deducing our beliefs through meditation and self-reflection. Only the magic of our sacrificed tongues unifies us.
Our practices have few analogues in Western thought, though you could call us philosophical cousins to the Buddhists. We believe there is no way to lose the trappings of self so completely as to become someone else’s desire.
If you see me again, I will not be a bird. I will be a figure made of jewels or a woolly primate with prehensile lips. My skin will be rubber. My cock will be velvet. Each of my six blood-spattered breasts will be tattooed with the face of a man I’ve killed. The goal is endless transformation.
I’m still distant from that goal. Though I’ve been transforming for decades, I’m only inching along the path to self-dissolution. I cling to identity; indulge fantasies like this one of telling you my story. Cutting out our tongues is supposed to silence us. Instead, I speak internally. Can you hear me?
I tease you with my feathers, encompassing your face, hands, and cock in turn. When you tire of that, you pull me up against the rocks with my legs around your waist. I throw my head back to let my plumage stream in the wind and you come. I don’t know if you think of Elka, but don’t worry. You can’t be unfaithful with a fantasy.
You recline against the black rocks.
“Wow,” you say, “I’m not the kind of person that would ever do this. Elka and I were together three months before …”
Your eyes glaze. This could be bad. There are two possibilities now. You may pull back, stammering her name, or:
You reach for my shoulder. “I know you can’t talk, but can you write? Is there someplace we could go? I have so much to ask.”
I’ve done my job too well. It’s time to leave. I shrug away from your grip and raise one hand to wave. Goodbye.
“Hey, wait!” you shout.
In your fantasies, when you’re done, the bird-woman dissolves into a shower of feathers. Unfortunately, my magic isn’t that versatile. I have to walk away.
You try to chase me so I maneuver through sharp turns and unexpected byways. You don’t know this area as well as you think you do. Soon, your footsteps grow distant and faint.
I retreat to my rooftop and watch from above as you pace in circles around the neighborhood. I hope you will go soon. If you don’t, it may be a sign I’ve done you permanent damage. Some people can’t survive getting what they wish for.
Finally, you head back to the subway. I have to admit, I’m a little sad when you go. A little jealous, too.
I climb down the building and discover the Puerto Rican man huddled next to a fire escape, muttering in soft Spanish. Tiny cuts bleed on his arms and calves. I consider remaking myself for him, but all he wants is his human Christina. I catch an impression of her: short and blonde, she hates dancing, speaks seven languages badly, calls him The Man She Should Have Loved Less.
As his yearning for this specific, clumsy, jovial woman flows through me, I realize how little I am to you. What is a fantasy? A scrap of yourself made into flesh. An illusion to masturbate with.
Moving away from the Puerto Rican man, I shelter in a doorway and will myself to molt. My feathers f
loat away on the wind and something I was clinging to flies away with them, carried on the same breeze.
I say goodbye to the girl with feathered hair and wait for another’s desire to overtake and shape me. In the few seconds before it does, for one moment, just one, my soul becomes pure essence without form.
It’s the closest I’ve come to nothingness yet.
CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time
Catherynne M. Valente is an American writer. She is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, and the crowd-funded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. Her work has been recognized with various awards including the Andre Norton Award, James Tiptree, Jr. Award, Mythopoeic Award, Rhysling, and Million Writers Award. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Space/Time” is a stunning and incendiary reimagining of the creation myth. It was first publishing in Clarkesworld in 2010 and was a finalist for the Locus Award.
I
In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a high-density pre-baryogenesis singularity. Darkness lay over the deep and God moved upon the face of the hyperspatial matrix. He separated the firmament from the quark-gluon plasma and said: let there be particle/antiparticle pairs, and there was light. He created the fish of the sea and the fruits of the trees, the moon and the stars and the beasts of the earth, and to these he said: Go forth, be fruitful and mutate. And on the seventh day, the rest mass of the universe came to gravitationally dominate the photon radiation, hallow it, and keep it.
God, rapidly redshifting, hurriedly formed man from the dust of single-celled organisms, called him Adam, and caused him to dwell in the Garden of Eden, to classify the beasts according to kingdom, phylum, and species. God forbade Man only to eat from the Tree of Meiosis. Adam did as he was told, and as a reward God instructed him in the ways of parthenogenesis. Thus was Woman born, and called Eve. Adam and Eve dwelt in the pre-quantum differentiated universe, in a paradise without wave-particle duality. But interference patterns came to Eve in the shape of a Serpent, and wrapping her in its matter/anti-matter coils, it said: eat from the Tree of Meiosis and your eyes will be opened. Eve protested that she would not break covenant with God, but the Serpent answered: fear not, for you float in a random quantum-gravity foam, and from a single bite will rise an inexorable inflation event, and you will become like unto God, expanding forever outward.
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