by Simon Ings
Ziyi told her it was a misunderstanding, said that she’d had a visitor, yes, but he had left.
“I would know if someone came visiting from the capital,” Sergey said. He was puffed up with self-righteousness. “I also know he was here today. I have a photograph that proves it. And I looked him up on the net, just like you did. You should have erased your cache, by the way. Tony Michaels, missing for two years. Believed killed by bandits. And now he’s living here.”
“If I could talk to him I am sure we can clear this up,” Aavert Enger said.
“He isn’t here.”
But it was no good. Soon enough, Sergey found the shed was locked and ordered Ziyi to hand over the keys. She refused. Sergey said he’d shoot off the padlock; the policewoman told him that there was no need for melodrama, and used a master key.
Jung and Cheung started to bark as Sergey led the man out. “Tony Michaels,” he said to the policewoman. “The dead man Tony Michaels.”
Ziyi said, “Look, Sergey Polzin, I’ll be straight with you. I don’t know who he really is or where he came from. He helps me on the beach. He helps me find things. All the good stuff I brought in, that was because of him. Don’t spoil a good thing. Let me use him to find more stuff. You can take a share. For the good of the town. The school you want to build, the water treatment plant in a year, two years, we’ll have enough to pay for them…”
But Sergey wasn’t listening. He’d seen the man’s eyes. “You see?” he said to Aavert Enger. “You see?”
“He is a person,” Ziyi said. “Like you and me. He has a wife. He has children.”
“And did you tell them you had found him?” Sergey said. “No, of course not. Because he is a dead man. No, not even that. He is a replica of a dead man, spun out in the factory somewhere.”
“It is best we take him to town. Make him safe,” the policewoman said. The man was looking at Ziyi.
“How much?” Ziyi said to the policewoman. “How much did he offer you?”
“This isn’t about money,” Sergey said. “It’s about the safety of the town.”
“Yes. And the profit you’ll make, selling him.”
Ziyi was shaking. When Sergey started to pull the man towards the vehicles, she tried to get in his way. Sergey shoved at her, she fell down, and suddenly everything happened at once. The dogs, Jung and Cheung, ran at Sergey. He pushed the man away and fumbled for his pistol. Jung clamped his jaws around Sergey’s wrist and started to shake him. Sergey sat down hard and Jung held on and Cheung darted in and seized his ankle. Sergey screaming while the dogs pulled in different directions, and Ziyi rolled to her feet and reached into the tangle of man and dogs and plucked up Sergey’s pistol and snapped off the safety and turned to the policewoman and told her put up her hands.
“I am not armed,” Aavert Enger said. “Do not be foolish, Ziyi.” Sergey was screaming at her, telling her to call off her dogs. “It’s good advice,” Ziyi told the policewoman, “but it is too late.”
The pistol was heavy, slightly greasy. The safety was off. The hammer cocked when she pressed lightly on the trigger.
The man was looking at her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and shot him.
The man’s head snapped back and he lost his footing and fell in the mud, kicking and spasming. Ziyi stepped up to him and shot him twice more, and he stopped moving.
Ziyi called off the dogs, told Aavert Enger to sit down and put her hands on her head. Sergey was holding his arm. Blood seeped around his fingers. He was cursing her, but she paid him no attention.
The man was as light as a child, but she was out of breath by the time she had dragged him to her jeep. Sergey had left the keys in the ignition of his Humvee.
Ziyi threw them towards the forest as hard as she could, shot out one of the tyres of Aavert Enger’s Range Rover, loaded the man into the back of the jeep. Jung and Cheung jumped in, and she drove off.
Ziyi had to stop once, and threw up, and drove the rest of the way with half her attention on the rear-view mirror. When she reached the spot where the road train had been ambushed, she cradled the man in her arms and carried him through the trees. The two dogs followed. When she reached the edge of the cliff her pulse was hammering in her head and she had to sit down. The man lay beside her. His head was blown open, showing layers of filmy plastics. Although his face was untouched you would not mistake him for a sleeper.
After a little while, when she was pretty certain she wasn’t going to have a heart attack, she knelt beside him, and closed his eyes, and with a convulsive movement pitched him over the edge. She didn’t look to see where he fell. She threw Sergey’s pistol after him, and sat down to wait.
She didn’t look around when the dogs began to bark. Aavert Enger said, “Where is he?”
“In the same place as Sergey’s pistol.”
Aavert Enger sat beside her. “You know I must arrest you, Ziyi.”
“Of course .”
“Actually, I am not sure what you’ll be charged with. I’m not sure if we will charge you with anything. Sergey will want his day in court, but perhaps I can talk him out of it.”
“How is he?”
“The bites are superficial. I think losing his prize hurt him more.”
‘’I don’t blame you,” Ziyi said. “Sergey knew he was valuable, knew I would not give him up, knew that he would be in trouble if he tried to take it. So he told you. For the reward.”
“Well, it’s gone now. Whatever it was.”
“It was a man,” Ziyi said.
She had her cache of treasures, buried in the forest. She could buy lawyers. She could probably buy Sergey, if it came to it. She could leave, move back to the capital and live out her life in comfort, or buy passage to another of the worlds gifted by the Jackaroo, or even return to Earth.
But she knew that she would not leave. She would stay here and wait through the days and years until the factory returned her friend to her.
(2012)
THE BIRDS OF ISLA MUJERES
Steven Popkes
Steven Popkes was born in Santa Monica, California in 1952. He sold his first story in 1982. His first novel, Caliban Landing, appeared five years later. Slow Lightning followed in 1991: both novels deal with the complexities of alien contact. In 1994 Popkes was part of the Cambridge Writers’ Workshop project to produce science fiction scenarios about the future of Boston, Massachusetts. When not writing he works for a company that builds avionics for planes and rockets, and is learning to be a pilot.
Afterward, it was never the people she remembered, never faces or bodies or voices—even Alfredo’s. It was always the wind, blowing from the west side of the island, and the frigate birds, balanced on their wingtips against the sky. They flew high above her, so black and stark they seemed made of leather or scales, too finely drawn to be feathered.
*
It was March, the beginning of the rainy season, and she had come to Isla Mujeres to leave her husband. That she had done this some half a dozen times before did not escape her and she had a kind of despairing fatalism about it. Probably this time, too, she would return. Her name was Jean Summat. Her husband, Marc, lived the professor’s life in Boston. She, it was supposed, was to live the role of professor’s wife. This was something she had never quite accepted.
Isla Mujeres. Island of Women.
She sat in a small pier cafe that jutted out into the water, waiting for her first meal on the island. In a few minutes it came. A whole fish stared glassily up at her from the plate. Delicately, she began to carve small pieces from it, and ate. She glanced up and a Mexican man in a Panama hat smiled at her. She looked back to her food, embarrassed.
Boston was cold right now and covered with a wet snow as raw as butcher’s blood. But here in Mexico, it was warm. More importantly, it was cheap and people’s lives here were still enmeshed in basics, not intricately curved in academic diplomacy.
She left the restaurant and stood on the pier watching the birds, feeling the warm heav
y wind, sour with the hot smell of the sea. The late afternoon sun was masked with low clouds and in the distance was a dark blue rain. She had a room, money, and time.
*
The Avenida Ruda was clotted with vendors selling Mayan trinkets, blankets, pots, T-shirts, and ice cream. Several vendors tried to attract her attention with an “Amiga!” but she ignored them. A Mexican dressed in a crisp suit and Panama hat sat in an outdoor cafe and sipped his drink as he watched her. Just watched her.
Lots of Mexicans wear such hats, she told herself. Still, he made her nervous and she left the street to return to her room. On the balcony she watched the frigate birds and the people on the beach.
*
Jean swam in the warm water of Playa de Cocoa. When she came from the water she saw the man watching her from one of the cabanas as he sipped a Coke. She walked up to him.
“Why are you following me?”
The man sipped his Coke and looked back at her. “No entiende.”
She looked at him carefully. “That’s a lie.”
There was a long moment of tension. He threw back his head and laughed. “Es verdad.”
“Why—what the hell are you doing?”
“You are very beautiful, Señora.”
“Jesus!”
“You need a man.”
“I have a man” Or half a man. Or maybe more than a man. Do I still have him Do I want him? Did I ever?
“With specifications?”
She stared at him.
*
Hector led her through the rubble at the end of the Avenida Hidalgo to a small concrete house nearly identical to all the other concrete houses on the island. It was surrounded by a wall. Set into the top of the wall were the jagged spikes of broken soda bottles. She looked down the street. The other houses were built the same. There was a burnt-out car leaning against one wall, and a thin dog stared at her, his eyes both hungry and protective.
Inside, it smelled damp. It was dark for a moment, then he turned on a blue fluorescent light that lit the room like a chained lightning bolt. Leaning against the wall was a tall, long-haired and heavily built man with Mayan features. He did not move.
What am I doing here?
“This is Alfredo.” Hector was looking at her with a considering expression.
She shook her head. The air in the room seemed thick, lifeless, cut off from the world. “Alfredo?”
“Alfredo. I show you.” Hector opened a suitcase and took out a box with a complex control panel. He flipped two switches and turned a dial and the box hummed. Alfredo pushed himself away from the wall and looked around.
“Good God.” She stared at him. Alfredo was beautiful, with a high forehead and strong lips. His body was wide and taut, the muscles rippling as he moved. Hector touched a button and he became absolutely still.
“You like him?”
She turned to Hector startled. She’d forgotten he was there. “What is this?”
“Ah! An explanation.” He spoke in a deep conspiratorial whisper. “Deep in the mountains north of Mexico City is a great research laboratory. They have built many of these—andros? Syntheticos?”
“Androids.”
“Of course. They are stronger and more beautiful than mortal men. But the church discovered it and forced them to close it down. The church is important here—”
“That’s a lie.”
Hector shrugged. “The Señora is correct. Alfredo was a prisoner in the Yucatan. Condemned to die for despicable crimes. They did not kill him, however. Instead, they removed his mind and inlaid his body with electrical circuits. He is now more than a man—”
“That’s another lie.”
“The Señora sees most clearly.” He paused a moment. “You have heard of the Haitian zombie? The Mayans had a similar process. My country has only recently perfected it, coupling it with the most advanced of scientific—”
Jean only stared at him.
He stopped, then shrugged. “What does it matter, Señora? He is empty. His mind does not exist. He will—imprint? Is that the correct word?—on anyone I choose.”
“This is a trick.”
“You are so difficult to convince. Let me show you his abilities.” Hector manipulated the controls and Alfredo leaped forward and caught himself on one hand, holding himself high in the air with the strength of one arm. He flipped forward onto his feet. Alfredo picked up a branch from a pile of kindling and twisted it in both hands. There was no expression on his face but the muscles in his forearms twisted like snakes, the tendons like dark wires. The branch broke with a sudden gunshot report.
Hector stopped Alfredo at attention before them. “You see? He is more than man.”
She shook her head. “What kind of act is this?”
“No act. I control him from this panel. The—master? maestro?—would not need this.”
Control. Such control.
Hector seemed uncertain for a moment. “You wish to see still more? You are unsure of how he is controlled?” He thought for a moment. “Let me show you a feature.”
In the stark light and shadows, she had not noticed Alfredo was nude. The Mayan turned into the light.
“There are several choices one could make when using Alfredo.” Hector manipulated the box. “Pequeno.” Alfredo had a normal-sized erection.
She wanted to look away and could not. The Mayan face was before her, dark, strong, and blank.
“Medio,” said Hector softly.
She looked again and the erection was twice as large, pulsing to Alfredo’s breathing.
“Y monstruoso!” cried Hector.
Alfredo looked fit to be a bull, a goat, or some other animal. There was never any expression in Alfredo’s eyes.
“Y nada,” said Hector. And Alfredo’s erection wilted and disappeared.
She couldn’t breathe. She wanted to run, to hide from Alfredo, but she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
“You are pleased, Señora?” Hector stood beside her.
Jean tried to clear her head. She looked away from both of them. No man could fake this. It was real, a marvelous control, a total subjugation. Was this what she had wanted all this time?
“A very nice show.” She took a deep breath. “How much do I owe you?”
“You owe me nothing, Señora.” Hector bowed to her. “But Alfredo is for sale.” When she did not answer immediately, he continued. “He imprints on the owner, Señora. Then voice commands are sufficient. He will show initiative if you desire it, or not. He is intelligent, but only in your service.”
“But you have the controls.”
“They do not operate once imprinting occurs.”
Crazy. Ridiculous.
“How much?” she heard herself asking.
Alfredo followed her home, mute, below the birds and the sky. She could smell him on the evening wind, a clean, strong smell.
“Do you speak?” she asked as he followed her up the steps to her room.
Alfredo did not answer for a moment. “Yes.”
She asked him no more questions that night.
*
His mind was like a thunderstorm: thick, murky, dark, shot through intermittently by lightning. These were not blasts of intelligence or insight but the brightness of activity, the heat of flesh, the electricity of impulse. He was no more conscious of what happened or what caused his actions than lightning was conscious of the friction between clouds. Occasionally, very occasionally, a light came through him, like the sun through the distant rain, and things stilled within him.
He was a chained thunderbolt, unaware of his chains.
*
She copulated with Alfredo almost continuously the first three days. It was as if a beast had been loosed within her. If she wanted him to stroke her thus, he did so. If she wanted him to bite her there, it was done. Something broke within her and she tried to devour him.
It was only when she fully realized she owned him, that he would be there as long as she wanted him, that this
abated. Then it was like coming up from underwater, and she looked around her.
Alfredo had cost her almost everything she had, nearly all the money she would have used to start a new life. She could not go back to Marc now. Perhaps buying Alfredo had been an act ensuring that. She didn’t know. There were jobs on the island for Americans, but they were tricky and illegal to get.
At the end of the first day of a waitress job, she came to their room tired and angry. Alfredo was sitting on the edge of the bed staring out the window. It was suddenly too much for her.
“You! I do this to feed you.” She stared at him. He stared back with his dark eyes.
“I can’t go home because of you.” She slapped him. There was no response.
She turned away from him and looked out at the sea and the birds. This wasn’t going to work.
Wait.
Jean turned to him. “Can you work?”
He ponderously turned his head toward her. “Yes.”
“You do speak Spanish?”
“Sí.”
“Come with me.”
She looked through her toilet bag and found a pair of scissors. They were almost too long for what she wanted but they would do. The fluorescent light in the bathroom glittered off the steel as she cut his hair, a sharp, pointed light. After a few moments, she turned his head up toward her. The hair was nearly right. His cheek was smooth against her hand. Impulsively, she kissed him and he moved toward her but she pushed him back down in the chair. “All right,” she said finally. “Take a shower.” He started the water and she watched him for a long minute. After that, she thought, after that, we’ll see.
*
Alfredo found a job almost immediately and made enough to keep them both alive. Now, Jean lay on the beach and tanned. Alfredo worked hard and his strength was such that he could work through the siesta. He had only to watch a thing done and then could do it. The workers on Isla Mujeres grumbled. Jean shrewdly noticed this and sent him across the bay into Cancún where the wages were higher.
Two weeks after this they had enough to move into the El Presidente Hotel.
That night she looked at him. “Ever the sophisticate,” she murmured. “Go get clothes fit to wear here.”