New Suns

by Nisi Shawl

  I keep my forehead to the cold ground for ten seconds, my own grey hair mixing with creepers of hag-hair. Then, still kneeling, I look up at the sky, and see the mother crouched high above the bony hags, a demon against the stars, horns silhouetted against the twinkling arch of deadmoon.

  “I have come to leave this tributary, and swim out to the great ocean of spacetime above. You are the shadow we’ve cast, and our guide to darkness. I offer myself freely to your kal, mother of contagion,” I say, looking up while still kneeling.

  The horned head retreats, becoming one with the spikes and bones of the hagtower. I look down again, and wait for what seems an eternity, my breath hissing in my mask. Then, the hags of the tower sing to me, a haunting wail that raises my body up. Something is moving through the hagtower’s cavities, the kal inside responding like an intricate machine, turning the entire colony lifeform into a musical instrument as the wind runs through it. The song stops. The demon emerges from the doorway to darkness in front of me, parting the curtains of hair.

  At first, the mother of contagion looks like a human, skin white as a star, etched with scars just like me, dressed in diaphanous robes of hag-hair that hang off them like moonlit water. They wear a chain of black bones around their hips, which ends in a living spearhead. It is their tail—the most visible part of the mutated kalform skeleton inside their ante-human flesh. Then, as the demon walks out of the hagtower, emerging from the writhing, unseen grasp of the kal inside, their crown of shadows slides out of the dark doorway. The horns curling out of their head; two daggers of dark slicing out of the temples, two spirals curled with all the grace of the universe itself behind their pointed ears. There are smaller horns decorating their bald scalp, bristling down their neck like jet flames. The black fire of deep space, and the water of time.

  I am face to face with Death Walking, like the first child to come to the kal forest. The demon’s eyes are the burnished scarlet of dying stars. And in their pale arms, nestled in the folds of the demon’s white robes, is a sleeping infant, small black pinpricks like drops of blood decorating its hairless scalp—the beginnings of horns, a crown of shadows. This cannot be, of course—Death Walking cannot give birth through womb or machine, only humans can. I assume I’m hallucinating this star-carved child out of fear and euphoria.

  But the demon pays my disbelief no heed, walking up to me, their bare clawed feet caked in dirt, sinking into the mulch. They bend down, a rattle in their chest and throat, mouth parted to reveal fangs black like their horns. Like me, the demon kneels, but only on one knee, their powerful legs sliding out of the robes. Their thighs are crisscrossed with scars where the kal inserted its shadowjacks all along the given body, to mutate it into this kalform. I was so surprised to see the baby in their arms that I barely looked at their face. They wear the faces of the dead—perhaps I will see the death mask of one I have loved. But this demon wears the face of someone I have never known, though they are very beautiful in their own way, their cheekbones and temples sharper than any human because of their kal-mutated bones, growing into their crown of horns. But how can I be disappointed, here at the end of my life, when Death Walking holds out this strange infant to me, as if to show me a miracle.

  “Is this your baby?” I ask, my voice trembling through the mask’s speaker.

  There is kindness in the demon’s face, if only because my human brain wants there to be—recognizes something in the death mask of a human from hundreds of years ago, turned to something else. Behind them, the hags of the tower smile their toothy smiles, my people from across time laughing at this unexpected ripple in the river. I laugh as well. The mother of contagion has become a mother. The demon does not laugh. The demon extends their arms so that the baby is near my own chest, head and buttocks cradled in their elongated hands, stirring memories of holding so many of the village’s babies to my breasts, years and years ago. I notice that the baby has genitals, which look the same as a human’s. Instinctively, I reach out to take the baby, the thought that the demon wants me to feed it suddenly growing amid the blossom of memories within my skull. I am too old, and have no milk in my breasts, but my hands reach out anyway.

  I think of Saya, refusing to take from my arms the first baby I birthed for the village, even though she knew there was something of her in it.

  The demon steps back lightly. There is a lash of movement that starts at their waist and shimmers around them. A razored flower of agony in my back, brief and powerful enough to buckle my legs and send me tumbling to the ground. The pain subsides quickly, but I can barely move. The demon looms over me, returning the infant to their chest, where the robes have parted to show small breasts leaking rivulets of dark, viscous milk like ink. Just as the hagtowers feed the demons with their hagmilk, so does the demon feed this child. I see their tail slither around their body again, curling against flesh leaving a trail of my blood with its spearhead. It reminds me of another spirit of Farhome, the serpent, seen in many lores I’ve learned from Archive. I remember that, to many peoples across the sky, our world would be seen as punishment for the wrongdoings of humanity. Hellhome, because here be demons. I laugh. Another demon moves towards the mother of contagion who felled me, climbing down from another hagtower nearby. They squat by the mother’s legs, watching me. I can’t see their face well, just the blazing pinpricks of their eyes reflecting the deadmoon. I imagine that this one wears the face of Saya, even though Saya is too old to have been used to create a demon, and is now being digested inside a hagtower. I may as well imagine her face, though. I wonder whose body grew whatever mutant seed that created the baby in the demon’s arms, derived of DNA spiraling out of the stars and into the shadow of this world. The infant starts to cry, and it is a sound I’ve never heard before—a higher, sharper rattle than that of the demons. It is one of them. This is a real child of demons, offspring of Death Walking. I am witness to a great turbulence in the river of time, a bloom of life springing from the depths.

  Saya was right all along. She had seen what she’d seen. All these generations of taking human bodies to create new kalforms, and the kal has finally learned how to use the bodies as we do. Death Walking has evolved to reproduce sexually. I laugh, and wonder if that’s the taste of blood at the back of my throat.

  The mother of contagion wasn’t asking me to feed their infant, but showing me, the human, their antecedent, what they have learned from us. Tears blur my vision. As I was mother, they are too. I, we, are a mirror to them, and always have been.

  PERHAPS ONE DAY the humans of our world will die out completely, leaving only Death Walking. As I send these words up to Archive, a demon watches, lets me speak. I have no pain, their tail’s spearhead slick with anesthetic to numb the gash in my back. They seem remorseful, but that is because they have a human face, and once again, I see what I want to see in its scarlet eyes. I startled them by reaching for the infant. There are others, their eyes glittering atop the hagtowers and their swirling hair. Is this the first of their children that I hear suckling at the breast of the demon, like the first child that walked into the doorway to darkness and created their race? Was this baby truly created through sex, through that ancient dance of bodies forged from the echoes of Farhome? I cannot know these things. It seems a pity to die now, at the cusp of such realizations, though it doesn’t sadden me. These demonic poisons are intoxicants; how else to explain this ridiculous poem I have narrated to my killers, reliving the last moments of my life to you, to them?

  Even as my life leaves this body, I feel it raging in my brain, as if the language demons don’t yet have must be expressed through me, the waters of time muddied by my glorious flailing. I can barely feel this body, which will be dragged into a doorway to darkness and turned to hagmilk.

  These demons, that surround me as I die, no longer seem like aliens. They never were aliens. This is their home, the home of the kal. Perhaps the kal has been trying to hold us by the hand all along, and bring us to its world, not ours. If the gate in the sky
never opens, it may not be such a tragedy for us all to die, as I will soon. The strange cry of the demon infant proves this. Our flame may waver out on the world, but our shadow will remain. It isn’t possible, is it, for shadow to be cast without light, but here I have witnessed a miracle unthought of in all my days of praying by the Reactor of our ancient starship Eko, may it never crumble so that the children of demons may play on its weathered flanks.

  I’ve taken off my mask, so that I breathe the same bitter air as the demons. This tributary ends, and I clamber out wet with lived time. The handmaidens sing, and Death Walking feeds their child with the black milk of space. I walk with them now across the bridge of deadmoon, studded with roiling gemstones of ice and rock, alive with Umi’s light. The ocean above is dancing with starry surf. I dive into it.

  WHEN AT DAWN what used to be the child emerged from the spire, they were not human, for their bones had turned black as distant time. The child was no child any longer, but first of demons on this world, Death Walking, because all worlds need death if humans must tread on them. From that day onwards, the humans of our world began to die, as humans must, as we did on first world, and as we have done on all the worlds.

  The Robots of Eden

  Anil Menon

  WHEN AMMA HANDED me Sollozzo’s collection of short stories, barnacled with the usual fervent endorsements and logos of obscure book awards, I respectfully ruffled the four-hundred page tome and reflected with pleasure how the Turk was now almost like a brother. Of course, we all live in the Age of Comity now, but Sollozzo and I had developed a friendship closer than that required by social norms or the fact that we both loved the same woman.

  It had been quite different just sixteen months ago; when Amma informed me that my wife and daughter had returned from Boston, the news sweetened the day as elegantly as a sugar cube dissolving in chai. Padma and Bittu were home! Then my mother had casually added that “Padma’s Turkish fellow” was also in town. They were all returning to Boston in a week, and since the lovebirds were determined to proceed, it was high time our seven-year old Bittu was informed. Padma wanted us all to meet for lunch.

  I wasn’t fooled by Amma’s weather-report tone; I knew my mother was dying to meet Sollozzo face to face.

  I wasn’t in the mood for lunch, and told my mother so. I had my reasons. I was terribly busy. It was far easier for them to drop by my office than for me to cart Amma all the way to Bandra, where they were put up. Besides, they needed something from me, not I from them. Some people had no consideration for other people’s feelings—

  I calmed down, of course. My mother also helped. She reminded me, as if I were a child, that moods were a very poor excuse. Yes, if I insisted, they would visit me at the office, but just because people adjusted didn’t mean one had to take advantage of them, not to mention the Turk was now part of the family, so a little hospitality wasn’t too much to ask, et cetera, et cetera.

  Unlike his namesake in The Godfather, Sollozzo was a novelist, not a drug pusher (though I suppose novelists do push hallucinations in their own way). I hadn’t read his novels nor heard of him earlier, but he turned out to be famous enough. You had to be famous to get translated into Tamil.

  “I couldn’t make head or tail,” said Amma, with relish. “One sentence in the opening chapter is eight pages long. Such vocabulary! It’s already a bestseller in Tamil. Padma deserves a lot of the credit, naturally.”

  Naturally. Padma had been the one who had translated Sollozzo into Tamil. And given herself a serving of Turkish Delight in the process.

  “If you like Pamuk, you will like him,” said Amma. “You have to like him.”

  I did like Pamuk. As a teenager, I had read all of Pamuk’s works. The downside to that sort of thing is that one fails to develop a mind of one’s own. Still, he was indelibly linked to my youth, as indelibly as the memory of waiting in the rain for the school bus or the Class XII debate at S.I.E.S college on “Are Women More Rational Than Men?” and Padma’s sweet smile as she flashed me her breasts.

  Actually, Amma’s lawyering on the fellow’s behalf was unnecessary; my Brain was already busy. My initial discomfort had all but dissolved.

  I even looked forward to meeting Sollozzo. Bandra wasn’t all that far away. Nothing in Mumbai was far away. Amma and I lived in Sahyun, only about a twenty-minute walk from my beloved Jihran River, and all in all I had a good life, a happy life in fact, but good and happy don’t equal interesting. My life would be more interesting with a Turk in it, and this was as good an opportunity as any to acquire one.

  However, I knew Amma’s pleasure would be all the more if she had to persuade me, so I raised various objections, made frowny faces, and smiled to myself as Amma demolished my wickets. Amma’s home-nurse Velli caught on and joined the game, her sweet round face alight with mischief:

  “Ammachi, you were saying your back was aching,” said Velli in Tamil. “Do you really want to go all the way to Bandra just for lunch?”

  “Yes wretch, now you also start,” said Amma. “Come here—arre, don’t be afraid—come here, let me show you how fit I am.”

  As they had their fun, I pulled up my schedule, shuffled things around, and carved out a couple of hours on Sunday. It did cut things a bit fine. Amma was suspicious but I assured her I wasn’t trying to sabotage her bloody lunch. I really was drowning in work at Modern Textiles; the labor negotiations were at a delicate stage.

  “As always, your mistress is more important than your family,” said Amma, sighing.

  Amma’s voice, but I heard Padma’s tone. Either way, the disrespect was the same. If I had been a doctor and not a banker, would Amma still compare my work to a whore? I had every right to be furious. Yes, every right.

  I calmed down, reflected that Amma wasn’t being disrespectful. On the contrary. She was reminding me to be the better man I could be. She was doing what good parents are supposed to do, namely, protect me.

  “You’re right Amma. I’ll make some changes. Balance is always good.”

  Unfortunately, I was as busy as ever when the weekend arrived, and with it Padma and Bittu, but I gladly set aside my work.

  “You’ve become thin,” observed Padma, almost angrily. Then she smiled and put Bittu in my arms.

  I made a huge fuss of Bittu, making monster sounds and threatening to eat her alive with kisses. Squeals. Shrieks. Stories. O, Bittu was bursting with true stories. She had seen snow in Boston. She had seen buildings this big. We put our heads together and Bittu shared with me the millions of photographs she had clicked. Bittu had a boo-boo on her index finger which she displayed with great pride and broke into peals of laughter when I pretend-moaned: doctor, doctor, Bittu better butter to make bitter boo-boo better. It is easy to make children happy. Then I noticed Velli had tears in her eyes.

  “What’s wrong Velli?” I asked, quite concerned.

  She just shook her head. The idiot was very sentimental, practically a Hindi movie in a frock, and it was with some trepidation that I introduced her to Padma. They seemed to get along. Padma was gracious, quite the empathic high-caste lady, and Velli declared enthusiastically that Padma-madam was exactly how Velli had imagined she would be.

  Eventually, with Padma guiding the car’s autopilot, all of us, including Velli, set off from Sahyun. At first we kept the windows down, but it was a windy day, and the clear cool air from Jihran’s waters tugged and pulled at our clothes. Amma had taken the front seat, since Bittu wanted to sit in the back, between Velli and me. We would be gone for most of the day, and so Velli had asked us to drop her off at Dharavi so that she could visit her parents. We stopped at the busy intersection just after the old location of the MDMS sewage treatment plant and Velli got out.

  “Velli, you’ll return in the—” I began, in Tamil.

  “Yes, elder brother, of course I’ll be there in the evening, you can trust.” Velli kissed her fingers, transplanted the kiss onto Amma’s cheek, and then said in her broken English: “I see you in evening
soon, okay Ammachi? Bye bye.”

  The signal had changed and the car wanted to move. Velli somehow forgot to include Padma in her final set of goodbyes. She ran across the intersection. “She’s an innocent,” said Amma. “The girl’s heart is pure gold. Pure gold.”

  “Yes, she is adorable,” said Padma, smiling.

  “She was sad,” observed Bittu. “Is it because she is black?”

  Amma laughed but when we looked at her, she said: “What? If Velli were here, she would’ve been the first to laugh.”

  Maybe so. But two wrongs still didn’t make a right. Amma was setting a bad example for Bittu. It was all very well to laugh and be happy but the Enhanced had a responsibility to be happy about the right things. Padma explained to me that Bittu actually had been asking if Velli was sad because she wasn’t Enhanced. In their US visit, Bittu had noticed that most African-Americans weren’t Enhanced, and she’d concluded it was for the fair. Velli was dark, so.

  I met Padma’s glance in the rear-view mirror and her wry smile said: did you really think I’d taught her to be racist?

  “No, Bittu.” I put an arm around my daughter. “Velli is just sad to leave us. But now she can look forward to seeing us again.”

  I too was looking forward, not backwards. Reclining in the back seat, listening to the happy chatter of the women in front, savoring the reality of my daughter in the crook of my arm, meeting the glances of my wife—I was still unused to thinking of Padma as my ex-wife—I realized, almost in the manner of a last wave at the railway station, that this could be the last time we were all physically together.

  When she’d left for Boston with Bittu, I had hoped the six months would be enough to flush Sollozzo out of her system. But life with him must have been exciting in more ways than one. The Turk had given her the literary life Padma had always craved, a craving it seemed no amount of rationalization on her part or mine could fix.