by EeLeen Lee
Pleo knew she was not anonymous, especially not after her outburst in the community hall. Now she was going to be a marked person for assaulting and injuring a medical functionary.
By way of reply, Pleo slumped in the Spinel’s grasp, horrified by what she had just done and by what it was going to mean for her.
“I had expected this sort of response.”
Something about the functionary’s look and manner of speaking was very familiar. Conform and then reform, she had told Pleo in the Constabluary cell.
“There were special talks,” Pleo suddenly recalled. “When you all promised that recipients’ minds and bodies will accommodate the prototype implants with no trouble...”
She knew, as the words spilled out, how feeble and disjointed she sounded.
“We mentioned the necessary preventive measures. But we cannot account for every recipient.” The official adjusted her sleeves while she spoke. Now she was not one of the slick panjandrums who had shilled the implants and augmentations to Blue Taro and Boxthorn all those months ago. “Your sister’s body is to be returned,” she added with what passed for kindness, to Pleo and by extension, to her parents. The functionary’s thin mouth twitched in what may have been a fleeting smile. She seemed to be preoccupied by a private dilemma beyond Pleo’s knowledge or comprehension.
“I’ve never seen this reaction when we collect Nosebleeds. But be warned: such spirit will get you ahead in some way, and then it will get you killed.”
The functionary nodded at the Spinel, who unceremoniously dropped Pleo to the ground. With a thud and billowing of dust she landed on her hands and knees. After what felt like decades in this position Guli came out and took Pleo by the shoulder, ushering her back inside.
She remembered her mother placing her into a chair at the kitchen table and leaving her alone, while Pleo noticed the functionary’s blood was still coating her exposed elbow spur. A drop fattened at the tip before it fell onto the worn tabletop to make a shiny circular stain. The blood is too slow in the clotting, Pleo observed with a shudder. By Gachala’s shining brow, these Polyteknical staff really aren’t human.
“Your mother was right,” said her father from his usual position by the window. “I should’ve died rather than live to see all of this.”
Pleo smeared the blood into the tabletop. This really was not her father talking to her now. He’d never say things like that before the Incident. Death on the job and all the variables that might lead to it occurred to the unlucky or the incompetent. He had prided himself on being neither. Burnout happened to machinery and equipment, but when it happened to people it was negligence, and therefore a personal failure.
But her father had sounded just as cold and inhuman as the medical functionary when she heard him say, “Since you found Cerussa in your room, you can dispose of her when the Spinels return.”
“Stop, stop! Can’t you stop being a pair of mine managers?” yelled Pleo, her vision blurring with tears of frustration. “You and Ma always sound the same. Your default settings are set to ‘delegate’!”
Idilman Tanza leaned on the other side of the table for support, but made up for this sign of weakness by raising his voice even as it trembled, betraying a pre-emptive grief for the duty he was going to foist on Pleo. But his message was clear: Become a Nosebleed like your sister and the person (most likely Guli) who discovers your body will have the same burden. We won’t cremate you, we will leave you outside or under the bridge for the dogs.
Now, he kept his eyes averted as if he was concealing his absence of self from her.
Three Spinels and the functionary had returned Cerussa to the Tanza home the next day, still wrapped in the skein. When Pleo lifted her sister from the stretcher, Cerussa weighed less than the shadows cast by quartz lamps in the fable. Her eyes had been removed and the sockets were sealed over with black resin. Her forearms were slit open from the elbows to the fingers and stitched up again. They had reclaimed the eyes, forceps and elbow spurs: even her nails had been peeled off with sickly meticulous precision. Desperate for any advice, Pleo stood in the Spinels’ way and asked them what to do with Cerussa’s dry husk of a body.
“Go find the Charons at Leroi Minor Canal,” the medical functionary finally muttered as she pushed past Pleo, fixing her with vivid gold eyes, perhaps out of pity or disdain. With that directive, she left Pleo to carry Cerussa inside.
“Don’t carry that—her—inside,” Idilman Tanza said.
Pleo remained in the doorway. “I can’t leave her outside. Cerussa must have some dignity.”
“But not inside,” he repeated.
“I’ll take her to Leroi Canal myself.”
“You will not take her.”
“She’s still my sister! It’s what she wanted. She needs the ending she wanted.”
Pleo showed them the crumpled suicide note: …bring me to the Leroi.
She noticed the other residents of Boxthorn and Blue Taro peering out of the dingy windows of their container homes, alerted by the raised voices and departing Spinels. Men and women clustered on the path outside, their necks craning forward towards any raised voices from the Tanza household that might be fodder for gossip. Their unwavering gazes lent an intense carved quality to their faces. Some people pointed at the front door, shook their heads and covered their mouths while talking to each other.
If her father had heard them, he made no show of it. He remained at the door. She had carried Cerussa to the back of the container home and stopped under her bedroom window. Pleo slid it open and climbed inside first, before hauling Cerussa through. Pleo lay her down on her cot and rummaged through the closet they once shared, for jewellery and clothes. Her father banged on the bedroom door, but Pleo ignored him. Cerussa deserved to be given dignity.
Pleo tore off the translucent skein and it came away from Cerussa too easily, already dry from long exposure. Out of the jewellery Pleo found a pair of beads that approximated the rich hazel of Cerussa’s eyes and pressed into the resin-filled sockets and fixed them in place with nail sealant. Nothing needed to be done for the nose, which was curiously untouched. She wrapped one of Cerussa’s white scarves around her face. After dressing Cerussa in a loose black shift Pleo lifted her from the bed, carried her through the home and out of the front door. She walked through Taro and Boxthorn, staring ahead and ignoring the people watching from their container homes.
She had not stopped at the Lonely Heron, disappointing those who thought she would jump off the bridge with her sister’s body. Pleo went up the terraced stairs at Aqueduct T-Car station. Constabulary presence be damned: the rules of carriage prohibited pets, loitering, drinking, live ammo, littering and smoking, but they never mentioned carrying a corpse on public transport.
The passengers on the platform and inside the carriage hardly noticed anything unusual with Pleo’s burden. Late evening Shineshift crowds were dreaming of dinner or their beds. Cerussa’s body must have looked like an oversized doll. As the T-Car hit a switch, Pleo mentally went over the ritual for summoning a Charon. Like most folk wisdom and beliefs, she never thought to question its origins. You accepted it as necessary if you could not accept it as true:
Running water liberates all the spirits of the dead. Place the body in water and say your prayers for the deceased. Any requests of the departing spirit should be made at this time. If the request is to be granted, wait for a sign of acknowledgement from the deceased. This may occur in the form of passing clouds, random snatches of conversation or song lyrics heard on broadcasts. When the Charon appears, give your offering or token. If or when, after repeating your request five times and nothing happens, and no Charon appears, do not stay to plead your case or press the issue. Leave the deceased for the Charons. Don’t look back especially if one collects the body. Never look back.
The procedure was detailed and elaborate, to make it emotionally easier for the bereaved. Pleo had decided to reserve judgment of that until she was finished with her duty. In the station un
derpass, Pleo heard the water lapping the banks of Leroi Minor Canal. It smelled different from the Throat Singing Waveform Viaduct, its earthy coppery odour both challenging and yet welcoming.
Leroi Minor Canal was one of the dozen waterways on Chatoyance. Once, the minor canals were an efficient method of transport and even the odd pleasure cruise on Tier Dweller barges. Pleo gleaned a growing sense of gradual neglect from the disused surroundings as she walked, and saw fewer people strolling and frolicking along the canal banks. Since the Downturn, the Leroi was always a dumping ground for the unwanted deceased, although the Nosebleeds were a much later addition.
From where she was standing, all Pleo heard was the creaking of support struts, traffic noises and water gurgling out of a row of metal culverts. She stayed for a while in the humid dimness scented with soil and rust. The culverts had presented her with a tempting alternative. They could keep a secret until it rotted away. But Cerussa was so light and desiccated she would rehydrate when submerged in water. Pleo shuddered at the thought.
She emerged from the underpass in the empty docking station of Leroi Minor and passed a row of older sentry turnstile models. One swivelled its head to scan her, but the lights in its eyes were flickering out. Conditioned with Chatoyant respect for sentry machinery, Pleo held up her chain of fare tokens for it to scan but the tokens remained unaffected. Even the formidable sentry turnstiles felt the effects of neglect.
Holding on to Cerussa, she followed the Exit signs hanging crooked on the walls. Fatigue caused Pleo to lose her hold on her sister’s body as she stepped onto the canal bank. The ground was rough yet slippery after a spell of rain, and Cerussa’s inanimate legs dragged in the dirt. Pleo tripped and fell face-down, letting go of her sister. Gasping, she got up on her knees only to see the dirt smearing the white scarf around Cerussa’s face. Pleo cried and slapped the ground in frustration, past caring what sort of attention she attracted.
Water dripped onto her hair. She closed her eyes and welcomed it; if it was raining again, she hoped to fall sick and die. More wetness fell onto her shoulder, but it did not feel or smell like Chatoyant rain; it was freezing cold and reeked of algae.
Pleo opened her eyes and saw an expanse of wet black cloth. She backed away from it on her hands and knees. A figure stood before her, cloaked in black, its face hidden inside a hood. It had slung a roll of sodden cloth, also black, over its shoulder. The figure bent down to drape Cerussa’s body with the cloth and picked up its new burden.
“Don’t touch my sister!” Pleo got up and ran. Perhaps she was running too fast, or the hooded figure slowed down just enough to let her catch up. She had no weapons on her except for one of Cerussa’s old metal hairpins.
The figure stopped moving. It held out a hand that was more a wet cloth-covered stump.
“You’re a Charon,” Pleo blurted, trying to recall the correct order of the ritual. But it all seemed so unnecessary when she could give her offering directly. She put the hairpin on the hand but its owner remained immobile. Pleo added four fare tokens to the hairpin. “That’s all I have on me.”
The Charon dipped its head and continued down the steps on the canal bank. Don’t look back, Pleo remembered. The last part of the ritual.
But she did. The Charon had entered the waters of Leroi Minor Canal and slid under with Cerussa’s body. Maybe it was using some sort of submersible tech under its black cloak, but she did not dwell on it.
Out of fare tokens for the night, Pleo had followed the Minor Canal Network back home safely. Her encounter with the Charon had bestowed her with her own cloak of invisibility.
CHAPTER NINE
SAUREBARAS INSTRUCTED A senior Adept to lead the warm-up session in the hall. While the students arranged themselves into rows, she nudged open one of the double doors and threaded her body through the gap.
The senior Adepts were more than capable of leading the first half of the class. She would not be missed for too long. The corridor was empty, so she set off running, passing the two Spinels posted outside. She aimed to execute a flying somersault over the balustrade at the end of the corridor and to finish with a soft landing, pirouetting like a sycamore seed, in the Garden of Contemplation below.
She reached the end of the corridor, and was about to touch the balustrade when the reconditioning took effect. It was always the same flow of sensations: a split second of heightened perception and nausea, followed by a whip of liquid metal bursting out of her chest and lashing itself around her neck. Finally, blurred vision and her legs seizing up under her.
Saurebaras stumbled backwards as if the balustrade had scorched her. Released from a lab tutorial, a throng of students rushed past and she let them sweep her against the wall. If she tried moving too soon, the metal whip took on a python’s strength and tightened its grip.
A student called out for assistance. One of the Spinels stepped away from her post and barrelled through the human tide. She picked up Saurebaras by the waist and carried her away like a rolled-up carpet. The Spinel was about to head in the direction of the infirmary when Saurebaras summoned enough strength to point to a nearby bench.
The infirmary was a place of repair, not recuperation, not for a prisoner like her. Under her head she felt the metal surface, worn down by years of students sitting and waiting on it. She craned her neck to avoid the glare of ceiling lights and saw the Spinel resume her position next to her comrade. Both guards whispered to each other and cocked their heads in Saurebaras’s direction.
She wished the guards would drop the pretence of their presence being necessary. Better still, leave her wherever she was every time she defied the reconditioning. The guards never spoke to her, but she was well versed in their body language and gestures by now. A periodic shifting of weight from one leg to the other and glances exchanged with each other. These movements seemed to say: we hate to see you hurl yourself against the bars of this invisible prison. Don’t resist. Be grateful they gave you a second chance. Why keep torturing yourself?
To this last question, her answer was: they buried me, and my art. The guards thought she was resisting when she was actually testing the confines of her cage. She’d grown to tolerate the reconditioning over time and learned, via agonising trial and error, to work within its confines, and recognised how it inadvertently guided her in its own twisted way.
The noise and foot traffic in the corridor made her yearn for the private gardens on the Madrugal tier. They were more sprawling than Polyteknical’s and less cluttered with geodes and intersecting paths.
She had discovered how much the Madrugals adored birds in those gardens. This had been on the morning after her promotion to instructor’s assistant, three years before the development of oversized fla-tessen halls, rattling pistes, and the washed-out incessant observation of the screens. A pair of cranes cleaned and shook their black-tipped flight feathers while perching on the roof of an octagonal gazebo. The thick carpet of dew on the surrounding grass was not generated by humidifiers, and peacocks hooted around Saurebaras as she strolled along a stone path lined with crushed seashells.
Like a modrani parading on a catwalk the male peacock strutted towards her, its iridescent blue tail feathers trailing behind it. Saurebaras recognised the bird’s challenge and opened her new fan, matte black with transparent membranes, one of two prototypes recently developed by Ignazia. These fans were not classed as training or Adept types, since those terms had not been established when fla-tessen accoutrements were still in development. The peacock raised and shook its tail in a dominant gesture, making the gold and teal background feathers shimmer while the indigo eyespots remained still. Once Saurebaras’s vision had filled up with the illusion of a raging gold and teal vortex, the peacock reared its head and spat oily black bile at her.
Saurebaras blocked each incoming bile droplet with the opened fan so quickly that the liquid dissipated into fine spray. Unnerved by its opponent’s alacrity, the peacock dropped its tail feathers and retreated behind the gazebo, it
s sustained cries startling the cranes from their unceasing watch.
Applause exploded from behind Saurebaras as she caught her breath. Two meaty palms belonging to Patriach Madrugal slapped together in common time.
“You have the instincts and stage presence of a tiger.” He beamed.
“You’re most kind, but thank you.”
He held out his hand. Saurebaras hesitated before she took it, reminding herself that enduring his company was also part of the performance. The skin of his palm felt thin and dry, but warm.
This is nothing but theatre. Afterwards you’ll retire to the pavilion for some real indigo peony tea and as many squares of spun sugar gauze to place on your tongue as you wish.
“Do you choose from a set of pre-planned routines when you move against an opponent, or is it all instinctual?”
“Neither.”
How could she begin to explain such intricate processes to this jaded Tier Dweller? Every body—even Madrugal’s with its overindulged waist—moving through the kinesphere wrests artistry from it, consciously or subconsciously. She saw through her dance partners and opponents like water in a basin.
“Saurebaras possesses enough humility for all three of us,” Madrugal called out to Ignazia, his wife and Saurebaras’s teacher.
“The accents at the end of her movements are still too vague.” In imitation of the peacock, Ignazia jerked her head from side to side to demonstrate what Saurebaras had failed to achieve. “More definition and less whimsy, please. Especially with your flourishes.”
Madrugal did not defer to her assessment. “Her rhythmic precision is beyond visceral.” He addressed Saurebaras again. “Whenever you land or jump from the middle of the beat, my stomach ties itself in knots and my heart bursts with joy.”
A chorus of birdsong started up, overpowering Madrugal’s voice as he continued to praise Saurebaras’s speed and grace to an unconvinced Ignazia. Saurebaras picked up a fallen peacock feather, smiling even though she had heard all it before.
