The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. 3 Page 7

  Another explosive cough sent a shower of thick blood over the bubble. Morag flinched. Joe fell back, shuddering, still trying to talk.

  Red lights flashed across the face of the monitors. Morag heard human footsteps, running closer.

  You SWIM.

  Suspended in the nine-dimensional Bulk, you are a construct of Dirichlet branes.

  Your mind emerges from the dances of a cluster of universes. These realms are internally timeless, eternal, and perfect. The inhabitants of each tiny cosmos might believe they are gods. But you are entirely unaware of their existence, anymore than a human watches the sparking of an individual neuron. It is the mutual orbit of the cosmoses themselves that is the foundation of your mind.

  And you are driven forward in your swimming by the birth and collapse of a myriad more universes, each filled with minds, even with civilizations, blossoming and dying in hope and fear and longing, sent into the dark for your benefit. Again you are unaware of these miniature agonies.

  You, arising from it all, are alone. And you swim.

  Why must you swim? If you swim, where are you coming from, and where are you going?

  Why is there a “you” separated from a “not-you” through which you swim?

  Why is there something rather than nothing?

  Who are you?

  You cannot rest. You are alone. You are frightened by the swimming. And you are frightened that the swimming must end. For—what then?

  Necroflux Day

  John Meaney

  FOR DAD’S SAKE, Carl tried to pretend that supper at Shadbolt’s Halt was terrific, but they both knew otherwise. Last year, on Carl’s eleventh birthday, they’d truly had a great time. Tonight, exactly a year later, the atmosphere was quieter, a reflection of the greater tension enveloping the city.

  The food was good: komodo steak and buttery mashed tubers, then squealberry pie and ice cream, washed down with hot blue chocolate. But no waiters came out to sing Happy Birthday, and Carl and Dad were seated behind a heavy pillar, where entirely human diners could not see the hint of otherness in father and son as they ate.

  Even the flamewraiths, dancing (in their minimized aspect) inside wall-mounted crystalline bowls, seemed to have caught the tension. How a flame could appear angular or edgy was beyond Carl, but he knew what he sensed—and while he could never be a Bone Listener like Dad, he knew how to perceive deeply.

  Last night, he’d overheard Dad talking to their neighbor, Mr. Varlin. One of the words had been unfamiliar to him, so he’d pulled down the old Fortinium Dictionary that smelled of dust, and now he wondered at the implications of “pogrom” appearing in an old man’s description of the way Tristopolis was changing.

  “Er, Dad?” Carl wanted to change the mood, and thinking of Tristopolis had reminded him of something. “Do you know much about the city’s founding?”

  “Has Sister Stephanie-Charon set you some homework about the Tri-Millennial?”

  “We have to write an essay for next week.”

  “So you know I can’t help you.”

  Dad—Jamie Thargulis to the adult world—had access to the Lattice, which was out of the reach of most Bone Listeners, never mind standard humans. Now, as Dad blinked his dark-brown bulbous eyes, Carl wondered what it truly meant to work as an Archivist, to immerse oneself in the centuries-old flow of understanding.

  “I wasn’t trying to cheat, Dad.”

  “Sorry, son. I know. So do you want to take a swing past Mobius Park? I hear they’re testing the parade balloons tonight.”

  The celebration was three months away. Carl had watched the St Lazlo Day parade last year. He and Dad had stood next to a group of true believers, their foreheads marked with the cobalt-pigment Sign of the Holy Reaver, which they would not erase until the Feast of Magnus.

  “Will we see the parade?”

  “I don’t know, son. This year, things are... Well. Maybe we’ll just stay at home.”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re finished?”

  Carl nodded, and Dad turned to gesture toward a waiter. The man came with the bill in hand, already written, as though he had known that Dad would not be ordering anything more.

  Dad counted out three nine-florin coins, then looked up at the waiter.

  “Thank you for the service.”

  He added a thirteen-sided coin to the amount.

  “Goodbye, sir,” said the waiter.

  Dad, still seated, swallowed.

  THE STREET, WIDE and bordered with centuries-old architecture, looked dim beneath the eternally deep-purple sky. Carl and Dad stood in a patch of orange light thrown by the restaurant windows, buttoning up their overcoats. Wearing his fedora, Dad looked standard human. He waved to a purple taxi. The cab slowed, then accelerated, and was past them.

  “Sharp eyesight,” muttered Dad.

  A stone gargoyle glided overhead, high up.

  “I’d like to walk,” said Carl.

  “All right, son. Let’s do that.”

  They strolled to Illbeck Pentangle, where the traffic was heavy and it took a while to cross, then continued to the high stone walls of Mobius Park. They followed the road outside the walls, keeping to the other side of the street. At school, some older boys had scorned the stories of lone pedestrians disappearing forever—not just intruders, who deserved whatever happened—but Dad was always careful here, and he was an Archivist who worked for the city.

  “The South-South-East Gate,” he said. “Looks like it’s open.”

  Tall and formed of black iron, the gates were closed whenever possible. Now, Carl could see along the gentle curves of Actualization Arc, bordered by dark parkland, and the black-grass clearing where half-inflated balloons were rising.

  “There’s a Leviathan.” He pointed. “See?”

  But what he really noticed was the faint silver glimmer of the force-shield that contained ravenous ectoplasma wraiths among the trees. Beyond, deep inside Mobius Park, reared the great skull outline of City Hall.

  “I thought,” muttered Dad, “there’d be more to see.”

  “No, this is great.”

  “We could get some juice at—”

  “It would be nice to go home.”

  “We’ll take the hypotube, in that case.”

  A floating amber P-sign indicated a Pneumetro station, two blocks along a street that headed away from the park. It took a few minutes to walk the distance, before descending to a Magenta Line platform just as a train slid in.

  “Good timing,” said Dad.

  They boarded the last ovoid carriage, which would split off at the next branch line, Magenta 7. As they sat, Carl noticed a scaly-skinned man who was watching a group of standard human youths. They waved red beer bottles, foul-mouthing each other and the world.

  A percussive wave kicked the train into motion. Then necromagnetic windings in the tunnel walls— Sister Stef had explained it to the class—boosted the acceleration. Carl turned to ask Dad about it; but Dad, too, was observing the youths.

  When the train stopped at Wailmore Twist, the youths got off. The scaly-skinned man glanced at Dad, then opened a copy of the Tristopolitan Gazette, and held it up as a shield. He didn’t lower the paper even when the train rattled going through Shadebourne Depths. Here, the station was disused; but the slum tenements up above (where Carl was not supposed to wander) included the boarding house where Sister Stef had stayed as a newly arrived immigrant, before coming to the school and joining the Order of Thanatos. She’d told her story to the class.

  Dad and Carl got off at Bitterwell Keys, and climbed the winding stairs to street level. A fine quicksilver rain was falling as they crossed Blamechurch Avenue, and reached the purplestone house that they called home.

  “Happy Birthday, son.”

  “Yes. Thanks, Dad.”

  IN HIS BEDROOM, Carl leaned against the iron frame, knowing what Dad was doing downstairs. In the parlor, dark and polished, he was holding his favorite blue-and-white photograph of his dead wi
fe, Mareela. For Carl, she—Mother—existed only as blurred images of warmth, dark hair, and a smile.

  He’d been two years old when she died.

  Mareela Thargulis had been standard human, and pretty. From her, Carl inherited his green eyes, so incongruous in a face that otherwise marked him as of Bone Listener stock. It was a sign that, while he might carry his father’s blood, hearing the resonance of bones, living or dead, would be forever beyond him.

  “He’s neither one thing nor the other,” old Mrs. Scragg had muttered to one of her friends on the street, as Carl had passed them by. “Shouldn’t be allowed.”

  Now, he stared at himself in the rust-splotched mirror.

  It’s not fair.

  Tonight had been terrible. He was a dreamer, never the brightest in class, but he’d wanted Sister Stef to say something nice to Dad tomorrow, during Parents’ Evening. Somehow, thoughts of the Tri-Millennial essay had become mixed up with the heaviness of hatred he felt on the air, the increasing hostility of ordinary citizens to freewraiths and boundwraiths, and even to those who were almost human.

  Even in the schoolyard, things were changing. He’d been bullied because of his slight size before, but now it was worse.

  I’ve had enough.

  He wanted to be different, to have some kind of strength, even if it manifested in a way no ordinary human could appreciate. And he wanted to write an essay to prove Sister Stef’s intuition—that he knew she had—that Carl Thargulis had a spark of originality in him, that he was a dreamer with ability.

  Because I can do it.

  Never the cleverest, never the strongest... but this was in his power.

  I know I can.

  And he was twelve years old, after all. It was time for him to try.

  Now.

  Was that it? At the inner corner of his left eye?

  Right now.

  Was there a twitch of scarlet movement?

  Yes! Try...

  A slender red, hair-thin articulated limb extended—for sure—from inside his lower eyelid. It waved; it really waved—

  Yes!

  —then withdrew inside his eye socket.

  Oh no.

  He strained, but knew he’d lost it.

  Hades.

  It was too much. He was too weak, or just not good enough.

  Try again.

  But Dad called from the landing outside: “Go to bed, son.”

  “All right, Dad.”

  Then Carl undressed, folded his clothes, and climbed into bed, beneath the old, comfortable-smelling blankets. The iron frame creaked. He closed his eyes.

  Happy Birthday, me.

  Sleep curled up maternally around him.

  IN THE EARLY morning, after prayers she didn’t believe in, Sister Stephanie-Charon Mors straightened her dark burgundy habit before going out into the schoolyard. There, she stared up at the featureless indigo sky, wondering whether it would ever seem natural to her.

  She had been born a Lightsider (as only Reverend Mother knew) in TalonClaw Port, where everything was bright, and heating (along with motive power) came from lava conduits in which fire-daemons controlled the magma flow. Tristopolis had seemed so different when she arrived here, and in many ways it remained strange.

  The dark sky allowed her to think of her childhood bedroom with the heavy drapes drawn, while she waited wide-eyed in shadows, knowing Mam was down in the kitchen while Pop was inside the corner bar. Soon, he would be home, drunk, and that was when it would start—the awfulness, the smack of knuckles on flesh, and then the yelling.

  She had such a fine understanding of the troubled lives of the poorer kids here in school, the ones who lived in Shadebourne Depths. It was why Reverend Mother had said, during her last appraisal: “You’re the worst nun in the Order of Thanatos, and probably the finest teacher.”

  In reply, she’d apologized, not knowing what else to say.

  Here in the yard, on her first day, she’d stood during morning break while the kids played snatchball and tag, filling the place with chaos. A small group, holding hands, had danced in a ring chanting a traditional rhyme that she, as a new immigrant, had never heard.

  Verdigris butterfly,

  Spider so cute.

  Snip out their tongues,

  And then they are mute.

  The children had released hands and twirled on the spot, then continued:

  Worms in their eyeballs,

  No one can see

  Beetles devour

  My true love and me.

  And they had crouched down in a gesture that Stef had recognized immediately as symbolic of death. So easy to remember the way that Pop had— Sister Zarly Umbra was ringing the bell.

  —unlocked the front door, and taken the steps—

  It was time for lessons.

  —nearly always seven steps, before he—

  No.

  This was time for lessons and the children came first, as they always would. Yet Parents’ Evening was scheduled for tonight, meaning that Bone Listener Jamie Thargulis would be here, with those dark brown eyes that held intelligence, and implied insight with an overlay of sorrow it was hard for Stef to resist, though she had never revealed her feelings. The Order of Thanatos demanded chastity. While she might not hold to the order’s beliefs, still it formed her only sanctuary.

  The kids were entering the yard, and it was time for her to do what she was good at.

  But she wondered, as she saw the smirk on burly Ralen O’Dowd’s face, and the way that young Carl Thargulis followed him, rubbing at the dirt on his own shirt—Ralen’s footprint?—whether she would ever make the kind of difference that could erase the memory of the sacrifice it took to come here, halfway around the world, just a daydream away from the past.

  CARL’S STOMACH ACHED from Ralen’s kick, but he tried to follow the lesson. If he concentrated, he could forget the anticipation of more beatings to follow—every day this week, Ralen had promised, for no reason except that he could.

  “Starting with the inner planets,” said Sister Stef from beside the blueboard. “Does anyone remember, which is closest to the sun?”

  Carl could name them all, and in the right order—but Ralen was watching. Carl said nothing.

  “All right. I’ll start.” Sister Stef picked up a stick of yellow chalk. “Prometheus, Venus, then Earth.”

  Rubbing at his stomach, Carl felt despair. He stared at the steel punishment ruler that hung on the wall, the ruler that Sister Stef so rarely used. He wished he could see Ralen suffer.

  “And the next planet? Anyone?”

  Angela, her skin pale blue, held up her hand.

  “Is it Mars, Sister?”

  “Very good, Angela.” Sister Stef wrote it up. “Next?”

  “Please, Sister,” said Roger, thin and nervous. “Is it Hel?”

  “Good answer, Roger. That is a planet, just not the next one.”

  Ralen guffawed.

  “And do you know the correct answer, Master O’Dowd? No? Anyone?”

  She looked around the room. Carl stared at his desktop, defaced by the pens and penknives of previous generations.

  “Oberon, then.” Sister Stef wrote. “Followed by Jupiter, Saturn, Poseidon, and Roger’s favorite, Hel.”

  Roger blushed.

  “As it happens,” added Sister Stef, pointing to the board, “Earth and Mars are close enough to have mixed up dust in space, swapping little particles of life, just as Oberon swapped dust with Mars.”

  Carl wished Sister Stef would talk more about this kind of thing, but he knew this diversion would be short-lived.

  “You have things called mitochondria in your body, Ralen O’Dowd, that used to be germs with their own genetic material.”

  Some of the other children sniggered.

  “And the zodules of sages and witches are particularly rich in thaumacules derived from Oberon’s—Well, never mind. Let’s carry on with what we’re supposed to be learning, shall we?”

  In her note
book, Angela was writing the word “sages.” Carl knew it was a Lightsider’s slip of the tongue: the name of a profession that did not exist in the Federation. Dad had told him so.

  And he’d also told Carl not to share his speculation, because Lightsiders were so rarely believers, and that held implications for Sister Stef’s position here. Carl had agreed without understanding.

  He spent the mid-morning break and lunchtime staying out of Ralen’s sight. But just as the afternoon session was about to start, two burgundy-clad nuns swept down on Ralen—Sister Zarly Umbra and an older, dour Sister whose name Carl didn’t know—and led him into the building.

  When the lesson began in Sister Stef’s classroom, Ralen’s desk was unoccupied.

  Part of Carl hoped that Ralen was in Reverend Mother’s study, experiencing the hook-and-whip that some pupils whispered about. But when Sister Stef announced that she had some dreadful news, her words poured sickness into him.

  “Poor Ralen’s father passed away at work today. An accident.”

  From next door, through the thick classroom wall, came the sound of children chanting the Final Litany of St Magnus the Slayer. Sister Stef scowled, before rubbing her face and instructing everyone to open their history books.

  THAT EVENING, THE walk home was devoid of the fear of ambush by Ralen, of threatened pain or taunting humiliation.

  It was a disappointing kind of freedom.

  Two HOURS LATER, Parents’ Evening was in progress, and Jamie Thargulis was sitting on a small chair—designed for kids—trying to keep calm, staring at Sister Stephanie-Charon.

  “I’m sorry if Carl’s a dreamer.”

  “That’s not a criticism.” Sister Stef’s smile was nice. “He’s not ready to flourish just yet.”

  “In the kind of school I went to, dreaming wasn’t exactly encouraged.”

  “That would be a Bone Listener academy?”

  “Yes. Thank Fate that Carl isn’t eligible to—you know.”

  “Hmm.” Sister Stef looked at the blank blue-board. “Reverend Mother sent some UP supporters packing. They were on the street corner handing out leaflets.”