Asimov's Science Fiction 02/01/11

by Dell Magazines

  “Cool,” Little Girl whispered. She saw what he was doing.

  He was baiting the sphinxes with riddles.

  The sphinxes were walking toward them now.

  “How can a man leave a room he never entered?”

  As they came closer, they passed behind a refrigerator. By a trick of perspective, it looked as though they were disappearing inside the refrigerator. Little Girl moved to her left so she could get a better view—

  —and a long sharp shaving sunk into her knee.

  “Oww!”

  She shouted so loudly the echo was like a dozen girls screaming.

  Craziness. The sphinxes ran. They ran in all directions, banging into refrigerators, knocking down random stacks, their stubby wings beating uselessly. A pair of them bore down on her and Alistair as if intending violence, but then changed course at the last moment.

  Most of the sphinxes ended up leaving by the delivery bay. Little Girl thought they would be stuck there or maybe fall off the platform to their deaths. But they recovered from their panic and began jumping to the delivery cart monorail, then walking along it with surprising grace.

  “Nice job, Sasha.”

  “My knee is bleeding. And don’t call me Sasha.”

  Alistair was angry. “You and your dumb—” he started, then he broke off. He stared at where the sphinxes had been grazing. “Look at that. Will you look at that!”

  He was on his feet now, hurrying, and Little Girl stood up and followed him. In a hole in the floor some five feet wide and two feet deep, there was a sphinx. It was on its belly. It had the face of a balding middle-aged man, somewhat overweight; its body was of a half-grown lion.

  Its rear left leg was broken and dislocated savagely so that it was extended at a right angle to its body.

  It stared at them with frightened yellow eyes.

  Alistair said, “How is a matchstick like spring vacation?”

  The sphinx smiled, showing its diamond teeth.

  The riddle had worked; it seemed to relax. “Help,” it said.

  They found a length of plastic pipe and a roll of duct tape, and after raising the sphinx’s body by wedging floor tiles beneath it, Alistair set the broken leg. Ligaments popped as the thigh bone went back into the pelvic socket and the sundered bone snapped back together. Little Girl held the sphinx’s shoulders because they thought it might struggle because of the pain. But aside from making a soft keening and crying a few milky tears, the sphinx acquitted itself well.

  That close to it, she could smell its sweat, which was like musk mixed with motor oil.

  They used the length of pipe as a splint, binding it to the sphinx’s thigh with duct tape.

  Then they helped the sphinx up from the hole. They found a wheeled dolly the sphinx could rest its broken leg upon, while pulling itself along with its three good legs. “We’ve got something that will make you feel better,” Alistair said.

  “Yes?” the sphinx said.

  “Little Girl?”

  “What? Oh!” She reached into her pocket, and pulled out one of the souls she had enhanced. It seemed like a good one; just touching it made her feel both relaxed and excited. “You’ll like this,” she told the sphinx.

  “Yes?” the sphinx said, greed in its eyes.

  Little Girl offered the soul to the sphinx.

  “No!” Alistair said, grabbing the soul as the sphinx opened its mouth to eat it.

  “What?” Little Girl said.

  “That’s not how you do it,” Alistair said.

  “Then how?”

  “Watch. Close your eyes, sphinx.”

  Alistair began stroking the sphinx. It purred, shivers of pleasure rippling down its haunches. He motioned for Little Girl to give him the soul. Then all at once he squeezed the sphinx’s shoulder blades together forcefully. The sphinx went still and rigid, as a plate opened in the back of its head. A soul cradle, webbed bioform shiny with mucous, emerged on a reticulated stalk. As always when looking inside someone’s head, Little Girl felt like a voyeur.

  Alistair put the soul into the cradle.

  With a whir, the cradle returned to the head, carrying the soul.

  The sphinx opened its eyes and said, “Am I hungry?”

  And how the sphinx could eat. They brought it to Alistair’s house and watched it gorge itself. It plowed through a bucket of pink insulation. It scarfed down a spool of #4 coaxial cable. It munched down a wall display of Hermes-head beetles. It ate ass jaws, pig’s feet, calf’s liver, synthburger, and a rack of triceratops ribs, all from the freezer. In the kitchen it reduced a box of oats to crumbs, a cask of honey-wine to residue. It finished off a serving ladle and sucked down a string of Crone’s Spice that was surely decorative. It ate tassels from a nice rug, the leaves of a gardenia, the head of a mop, the skin of a drum, and three dozen eggs. It ate so ravenously and omnivorously, so intently and obsessively, that Alistair suggested they might have to tear out the soul before its stomach burst from over-consumption or the soft pink heart of the house’s intelligence was destroyed.

  But then, strips of yellow wallpaper in its claws, torn-open sofa before it like a butchered carcass, stretch marks clearly visible on its patchy-furred distended belly, it dropped a box of fish-food it had been holding in its mouth.

  It said: “Am I tired?”

  Then it fell to a deep sleep atop the ruined sofa.

  In the evening, there was a moodstorm.

  Alistair’s Cliffside house had a porch with a big window that gave a view of the Gash Peculiar. They sat there with the sphinx. Storm clouds black as ink billowed up over the canyon walls opposite them. Purple squalls of acid rain moved like monster brushes across the cliff faces. Periodically waves of rain would reach them, drops drumming against the roof, dislodging conglomerate bits of stone and souls and other human artifacts from the cliffside two dozen meters distant, sending them down to the dark thousand-mile deep crevice that was the Gash Peculiar.

  The rain brought moods, depressions bleak as sunless moons, brief euphorias, but mostly a backdrop of wistfulness and sentiment that put them in a reflective or sweetly melancholic state of mind.

  “Am I sad?” asked the sphinx, double-chin resting between its forepaws. Sitting beside it, Little Girl stroked its round bald head, feeling hairs too fine to see. It hadn’t eaten since the afternoon but just in case it got out of control again, Alistair had a device in hand, a wand, that would send out a electromagnetic pulse to knock it unconscious.

  “It’s the cloudmind,” Alistair said. He never called it mother .

  “She’s a fucking bitch,” Little Girl remarked. She had to curse to keep from crying. This memory kept coming: her own mother had fallen into the Gash. “I’m sorry, sphinx. We scared you so you broke your leg. Then we made you hungry. And we brought you here and the cloudmind has ruined everything.”

  “Am I called Nestor?” asked the sphinx.

  “Whatever. You were hungry, and happy, and now the cloudmind’s made you sad.”

  “I don’t know if that’s exactly what the soul we gave it does,” Alistair said. “I think it more makes Nestor have a bigger appetite for everything. Maybe a bigger capacity for feeling.”

  She wanted to curse Alistair for contradicting her, but she didn’t because he had tears running down his cheeks. Suddenly she felt a pang in her chest—why was he nice to her when she was mean to him?—and she looked away, at the sphinx’s, Nestor’s, yellow eyes. The oval-shaped pupils looked more cat than human. “Poor sphinx.”

  The sphinx shifted, lunch inside its swollen gut clanking.

  The rain intensified, drops batting against the big window; and the realization that her father would be dead soon intensified too. “And if the cloudmind’s bad now,” she said, slowly, dully, “it’s going to be even worse, once the Papa’s gone.”

  “But maybe you’d do a better job,” Alistair said. “Keeping the cloudmind happy.”

  The prospect seemed to smother her. “I don’t want to even fu
cking try.”

  “Oh.” The storm quieted, rainfall just taps. But on the other side of the canyon a chunk of rock, building-sized, slipped loose, its great size giving the illusion that gravity pulled it down but slowly. The Gash Peculiar seemed to groan as the rock fell into it. “Maybe you could stop your father.”

  She turned. “What do you mean?”

  Alistair met her gaze. He didn’t look embarrassed by his tears. “Give him memories, maybe even part of a soul, to make him change his mind. Do something to him to make him want to live.”

  She rubbed the folds of flesh at the back of Nestor’s neck. She could just feel the seam where the edge of the plate met neck. She didn’t say anything.

  “Well, do you think we should attempt something with your father?”

  Warmth suffused her. Suddenly she wanted to reach out and kiss Alistair. Instead she said:

  “Hell. It couldn’t hurt to try.”

  They planned to meet early next morning to decide on a strategy for changing the Papa. The day had been long and full and if you added the moodstorm to that, she was left exhausted. The one positive of the storm was that the Papa would have to delay shutting down, to give him time to console the cloudmind.

  “Is that Nestor? Tell me!”

  She and the sphinx had reached her house and were walking through the long portico which led corridor-like to the front door. The dolly the sphinx pulled itself along with click-clicked on the tiled floor. The walls were of a polished pink marble devoid of any mood and reflective; she could see herself, wan, tired, her eyes old-seeming in the young girl body. The sphinx was looking at itself suspiciously. “Is that Nestor?” it repeated. “Tell me!”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Haven’t you ever seen a mirror?”

  The sphinx grinned. “Is Nestor handsome? Is Nestor beautiful?”

  “Come on,” she said.

  “Do Nestor’s teeth make rainbows?”

  “This way,” she said. She waved the electromag wand at Nestor, and he limped after her. He may have been stupid, but he had figured out already that being knocked out cold even for a few minutes was no fun.

  She wondered if the sphinx would be her last chance to ever shock the Papa.

  They took the lift to her room. Nestor, eager, limped in ahead of her. Her heart pounded when she saw the remaining souls, still arrayed on the table, like a selection of chocolates. But Nestor did not go for the souls. He went to her window. Dark out, the window partly reflected the starglobe light above her experiment station. And partly reflected Nestor. “Is Nestor pretty? Are his eyelashes like golden wheat? Is his double-chin like the curve of fresh-fallen snow?”

  “If you know how to talk poetically, why can’t you say ‘I’ instead of ‘Nestor’?”

  “Are Nestor’s words like honey?”

  “Whatever.” She fingered a soul, a dull one. “You hungry?”

  Nestor, regarding himself in three-quarters profile, swallowed as if to test himself. “Is Nestor’s Adam’s apple like the vapor-shrouded moon?”

  A faint voice said: “Who is that with you, Little Girl?”

  She started. Had one of the souls spoken? But you never get a soul with buzz so strong that contextually relevant cogitations manifest.

  A tap at the window. “Hey, Little Girl.”

  It was the Living Will. He was outside her room, probably clinging to a drainpipe, looking at her with his shiny mirror eyes. “What’s that there with you, Little Girl?”

  She was too tired to have it out with the Living Will. She wondered if he was smart enough to figure out what she’d done with the sphinx. “It’s my friend. My boyfriend.”

  “That? A sphinx? An automaton?”

  “Move over,” she told the sphinx, as she stepped closer to the window. “It’s mostly biological.”

  “I see. I should apprise your father of this boyfriend.”

  “Why? Is ‘relations with automatons’ an inheritance deal-breaker too?”

  Nestor hadn’t moved though she’d told him to. He was staring at the Living Will’s mirrored eyes. “Two Nestors? Which is the prettier one? Tell me!”

  “They’re the same, Nestor. Now can you move?”

  The sphinx limped sideways, the dolly squeaking.

  The Living Will said, “I also see you have fewer souls on your table.”

  She shrugged. “So?”

  The Living Will closed its eyes. She was pretty sure it was communicating with the Papa. It couldn’t even make simple judgments on its own.

  “Are Nestor’s paws cute and softly padded?” the sphinx inquired, as he began to lick one paw.

  By the time the Living Will opened its eyes again, she felt anxious. The Papa knew what she’d done to the sphinx, and she was about to suffer the consequences.

  The Living Will said, “Your father turns himself off tomorrow.”

  She tried to affect a yawn of boredom, and it turned into a real yawn, part exhaustion, part anxiety. “He’s not going to put it off because of the moodstorm?”

  “He is working all night to propitiate the cloudmind.”

  “Great. I’m looking forward to taking his place. Next storm it will be me losing sleep.”

  “I’m glad you are accepting of the new order that is to be.”

  “Accepting! I was being sarcastic! I don’t want to deal with the cloudmind bitch!” She felt tears in her eyes. “I don’t want the Papa to die!”

  Nestor stopped licking his paw, and leaned his head against her waist.

  “Ah,” said the Living Will. “Your father expected you might still be resistant. In fact, he sent me here to give you one more reason that he was turning himself off.”

  “I’m all ears,” she said.

  “He is punishing himself, because he has failed you.”

  “Failed? How?

  “He has not fulfilled his obligations to you as a parent. He has not optimized your happiness. He has not kept your brain at ten as he has kept your body.”

  Oh, the old arguments, this time through a proxy. “It was keeping my body at ten that was the failure!”

  “But ten is the ideal age for happiness.”

  “That’s what he thinks.” So tired. “This is dumb, turning himself off to punish himself. It’s just another way of being irresponsible.”

  “You should know his reasons.” Something shifted beneath the Living Will. Then there was a scraping, a clattering, and he was gone for a moment. A roof tile must have given way beneath him. When she saw him again his face was forty-five degrees off vertical, as if he’d climbed to a higher part of the roof and now had to lean to his left. “And another thing,” the Living Will said, “remember that a resurrected soul is an abomination. He trusts you have not installed one in this sphinx.”

  “ ‘Neither an emotion more nor a perception less,’ ” she quoted.

  “Good,” the Living Will said. “And one last thing, this one an inducement for your cooperation.”

  “What? I’ll get to scrub the floors of the Elderhaus?”

  “The Papa will grant you your fondest desire. Despite his own misgivings, he will give you the aging instruction set containing the biocode to restore your skeletal and endocrinal growth mechanisms.”

  “He’ll let me grow up?”

  “To your detriment,” the Living Will said, then it climbed down.

  The sphinx looked up at her. Its man-face needed a shave. It said:

  “Is Nestor not a comforting companion?”

  In ancient times, nights were short because Earth spun quickly, young and in a hurry. Now Earth was old and slow, and it was a rare night that Little Girl slept through. But that night she slept until dawn, waking only because Nestor licked her face with his tongue rough as sandpaper. “Off me! That hurts!” she said. He jumped down from her bed. When she wiped her cheek, she came away with a little blood on her knuckles. “Were you going to eat me?”

  “Are you supposed to meet Mister Alistair?”

  “Oh! Shit!”
>
  She jumped out of bed and hurried to her toilet, where she slapped some mending cream upon her cheek. Then she ate a summerfruit and fed Nestor a couple of souls. As they were about to leave, she noticed the floor and walls were scratched and wet in patches. “You woke up the walls too?”

  “Does Nestor like to taste new things?” said the sphinx.

  They met Alistair upstream from Rust Canyon, at a place called Dismal Columns.

  The Columns were outcroppings of stone, conglomerations of rock and fossil and souls fifty or more feet tall, carved from an ancient mesa. There was a forest of them. Little Girl disliked the columns as a soul-source. She was afraid of heights, for one thing; the easy-pickings had been harvested long ago, by her mother and (so it would seem) the Papa. And of the souls that remained, most were distorted and disturbed. But Alistair contended that the distortions could yield souls with the best buzz imaginable.

  “Check this one out!” said Alistair. He was twenty feet up one column, roped by the waist to it, a chisel in his hand. He threw something disk-shaped to her. It floated downward, spinning: a soul aerodynamically flattened. The sphinx batted at it, then knocked it down. She thought he would pounce on it, but he retreated from it. “Is Nestor scared?”

  She picked it up. A shiver passed through her.

  She felt dread and smelled sulfur and saw corpses on spits being turned by walking skeletons.

  “Ew,” she said, dropping the soul. The bad things vanished. “I don’t like this one at all.”

  She’d only seen the corpses for a second, but she was pretty sure one was her.

  “Pretty disturbed, hey?” Alistair said.

  “Yeah, getting roasted for dinner, that qualifies.”

  “Roasted? I saw a man with a dog head tear out my heart then weigh it on a scale.”

  “What is eschatology?” asked Nestor.

  “Huh?” Little Girl said.

  “I think he’s right,” Alistair said. “The soul shows the end of the world. Or maybe visions of Hell. What happens to you after you die. You want to use it on your father?”

  “Why? It’s all one discontinuity for him. He doesn’t believe in life after death.”

  “So? It could freak him out. Scare him enough to at least reconsider.”