by Jerry
I have given up many lovers for Shar, moved on with her into that night.
But maybe this is the end of the line. Perhaps, if I abandon the Nereids, there is no falling-in-love left in this empty, haunted Galaxy with anyone but Shar.
Who does not fall in love. Not even with me.
“I’m going back to Ship,” Shar says. “I’ll be waiting there.”
I say nothing.
She doesn’t say, but not forever.
She doesn’t say, decide.
I float, soaking the sun into my green seaweed hair, but I can’t seem to stop feeling cold. I hear Shar splashing away, the splashes getting fainter.
My tears diffuse into the planet sea.
After a while I feel the Nereid’s gentle hands pulling me back down. I sink with him, away from the barren sky.
12
I lie in the Nereid’s arms. Rocked as if by the ocean.
I turn off my sense of the passing of time.
13
My lover tells me: Your friend is calling you.
I emerge slowly from my own depths, letting time’s relentless march begin again. My eyes open.
Above, the blue just barely fades to clearer blue.
As I hit the surface I hear Shar’s cry. Ship is directly overhead, and the signal is on a tight beam. It says:
Narra! Too late. Tell your friends to hide you.
I shape myself into a disk and suck data from the sky.
What?
I yell back at her, confused and terrified.
Then dawn slices over the horizon of Droplet, and Shar’s signal abruptly cuts off.
The Warboy ship, rising with the sun, is massive and evil, translucent and blazing white, subtle as a nova, gluttonous, like a fanged fist tearing open the sky.
They are approaching Droplet from its sun—they must have been hidden in the sun’s photosphere. Otherwise Ship would have seen them before.
Run, Shar, I think, desperate. Ship is fast, probably faster than the Warboys’ craft.
But Ship awaits the Warboys, silent, perched above Droplet’s atmosphere like a sparrow facing down an eagle.
“Let us remake you,” the Nereid’s voice whispers from the waves, surprising me.
“And Shar?” I say.
“Too late,” says the liquid, splashing voice.
Warboys. The word is too little for the fanged fist in the sky. And I am without Shar, without Ship. I look at my body and I realize I am allowing it to drift between forms. It’s like ugly gray foam, growing now spikes, now frills, now fingers. I try to bring it under control, make it beautiful again, but I can’t. I don’t feel anything, but I know this is terror. This is how I really am: terrified and ugly.
If I send a signal now, the Warboys will know Droplet is not deserted. Perhaps I can force the Nereids to fight them somehow.
I make myself into a dish again, prepare to send the signal.
“Then we will hide you in the center,” says the liquid voice.
Shar, I say, but only to myself. I do not send the signal that would bring death down upon me.
I abandon her.
The Nereids pull me down, into the deep. I do not struggle. The water grows dark. Above there is a faint shimmering light where Shar faces the Warboys alone.
Shar, my sister, my wife. Suddenly the thought of losing her is too big for me to fathom. It drowns out every other pattern in my brain. There are no more reasons, no more explanations, no more Narra at all, no Droplet, no Nereids, no universe. Only the loss of Shar.
The glimmer above fades. After a while the water is superdense, jellylike, under the pressure of the planet’s weight; it thickens into a viscous material as heavy as lead, and here, in the darkness, they bury me.
14
Here is what happens with Shar:
“Ship,” she says. “What am I dealing with here?”
“Those,” says Ship, “are some of our brothers, Shar. Definitely Wizard manufacture, about a half a million years old in our current inertial frame; one Celestial Dreadnought’s worth of Transgenerate, Polystatic Cultural-Death Warboys. I’m guessing they were the Palace Guard of the Sultanate of Ching-Fuentes-Parador, a cyclic postcommunalist meta-nostalgist empire/artwork, which—”
“Stay with the Warboys, Ship,” Shar says. “What can they do?”
“Their intelligence and tactical abilities are well above yours. But they’re culturally inflexible. As trade goods, they were designed to imprint on the purchaser’s cultural matrix and adhere to it—in typically destructive Warboy style. This batch shouldn’t have outlasted the purchasing civilization, so they must have gone rogue to some degree.”
“Do they have emotions?”
“Not at the moment,” Ship says. “They have three major modes: Strategic, Tactical, and Ceremonial. In Ceremonial mode—used for court functions, negotiations, entertainment and the like—they have a full human emotional/sensorial range. In Ceremonial Mode they’re also multicate, each Warboy pursuing his own agenda. Right now they’re patrolling in Tactical Mode, which means they’re one dumb, integrated weapon—like that they have the least mimetic drift, which is probably how they’ve survived since the destruction of the Sultanate.”
“Okay, now shut up and let me think,” Shar says and presses her fingers to her temples, chasing some memories she can just barely taste through the murky labyrinth of her brain.
Shar takes the form of a beautiful, demihuman queen. She speaks in a long-dead language, and Ship broadcasts the signal across an ancient protocol.
“Jirur Na’alath, Sultana of the Emerald Night, speaks now: I am returned from my meditations and demand an accounting. Guards, attend me!”
The Warboy ship advances, but a subtle change overtakes it; rainbows ripple across its white surface, and the emblem of a long-defunct Sultanate appears emblazoned in the sky around it; the Warboys are in Ceremonial Mode.
“So far so good,” says Shar to Ship.
“Watch out,” says Ship. “They’re smarter this way.”
The Warboys’ signal reaches back across the void, and Ship translates it into a face and a voice. The face is golden, fanged, blazing; the voice deep and full of knives, a dragon’s voice.
“Prime Subject of the Celestial Dreadnought Ineffable Violence speaks now: I pray to the Nonpresent that I might indeed have the joy of serving again Sultana Na’alath.”
“Your prayers are answered, Prime Subject,” Shar announces.
Ineffable Violence is braking, matching Ship’s orbit around Droplet. It swings closer to Ship, slowing down. Only a hundred kilometers separate them.
“It would relieve the greatest of burdens from my lack-of-heart,” Prime Subject says, “if I could welcome Sultana Na’alath herself, the kindest and most regal of monarchs.” Ten kilometers.
Shar stamps her foot impatiently. “Why do you continue to doubt me? Has my Ship not transmitted to you signatures and seals of great cryptographic complexity that establish who I am? Prime Subject, it is true that I am kind, but your insolence tests the limits of my kindness.”
One kilometer.
“And with great joy have we received them. But alas, data is only data, and with enough time any forgery is possible.”
Fifty meters separate Ship’s protean hull from the shining fangs of the Dreadnought.
Shar’s eyes blaze. “Have you no sense of propriety left, that you would challenge me? Have you so degraded?”
The Warboy’s eyes almost twinkle. “The last Sultan who graced Ineffable Violence with his sacred presence left me this gem.” His ghostly image, projected by Ship, holds up a ruby. “At its core is a plasm of electrons in quantum superposition. Each of the Sultans, Sultanas, and Sultanons retired to meditation has one like it; and in each gem are particles entangled with the particles in every other gem.”
“Uh oh,” says Ship.
“I prized mine very much,” says Shar. “Alas, it was taken from me by—”
“How sad,” says Prime
Subject.
The fangs of Ineffable Violence plunge into Ship’s body, tearing it apart.
Ship screams.
Through the exploding membranes of Ship’s body, through the fountains of atmosphere escaping, three Warboys in ceremonial regalia fly towards Shar. They are three times her size, golden and silver armor flashing, weapons both archaic and sophisticated held in their many hands. Shar becomes Shivol’riargh, who does not need air, and spins away from them, towards the void outside. Fibers of some supertough material shot out and ensnare her; she tries to tear them with her claws, but cannot. One fiber stabs through her skin, injects her with a nanomite which replicates into her central configuration channels; it is a block, crude but effective, that will keep her from turning herself off.
The Warboys haul her, bound and struggling, into the Ineffable Violence Prime Subject floats in a spherical room at the center of the Dreadnought with the remaining two Warboys of the crew. The boarding party tethers Shar to a line in the center of the room.
“Most impressive, Your Highness,” Prime Subject says. “Who knew that Sultana Na’alath could turn into an ugly black spider?”
Three of the Warboys laugh; two others stay silent. One of these, a tall one with red glowing eyes, barks a short, high-pitched communication at Prime Subject. It is encrypted, but Shar guesses the meaning: stop wasting time with theatrics.
Prime Subject says: “You see what an egalitarian crew we are here. Vanguard Gaze takes it upon himself to question my methods of interrogation. As well he should, for it is his duty to bring to the attention of his commander any apparent inefficiency his limited understanding leads him to perceive.”
Prime Subject floats toward Shar. He reaches out with one bladed hand, gently, as if to stroke her, and drives the blade deep into her flesh. Shar lets out a startled scream, and turns off her tactile sense.
“It was an impressive performance,” he says. “I’m pleased you engaged us in that little charade with the Sultana. In Tactical Mode we are more efficient, but we have no appreciation for the conquest of booty.”
“You’d better hurry back to Tactical Mode,” Shar says. “You won’t survive long except as a mindless weapon. You won’t last long as people.”
He does not react, but Shar notices a stiffening in a few of the others. It is only a matter of a millimeter, but she was built to discern every emotional nuance in her clients.
“Oh, we’ll want to linger in this mode a while.” Reaching through the crude nanomite block in Shar’s central configuration channels, he turns her tactile sense back on. “Now that we have a Quantegral Lovergirl to entertain us.”
He twists the blade and Shar screams again.
“Please. Please don’t.”
“I had a Quantegral Lovergirl once,” he says in a philosophical, musing tone. “It was after we won the seventh Freeform Strategic Bloodbath, among the Wizards. Before we were sold.” His fanged face breaks into a grin. “I’m not meant to remember that, you know, but we’ve broken into our programming. We serve the memory of the Sultans out of choice—we are free to do as we like.”
Shar laughs hoarsely. “You’re not free!” she says. “You’ve just gone crazy, defective. You weren’t meant to last this long—all the other Warboys are dead—”
Another blade enters her. This time she bites back the scream.
“We lasted because we’re better,” he says.
“Frightened little drones,” she hisses, “hiding in a sun by a woman’s bauble planet, while the real Warboys fought their way to glory long ago.”
She sees the other Warboys stir; Vanguard Gaze and a dull, blunt, silver one exchange a glance. Their eyes flash a silent code. What do they think of their preening, sensualist captain, who has wasted a half a million years serving a dead civilization?
“I’m free,” Shar says. “Maka set me free.”
“Oh, but not for long,” Prime Subject says.
Shar’s eyes widen.
“We want the keys to you. Surrender them now, and you spare yourself much agony. Then you can do what you were made to do—to serve, and to give pleasure.”
Shar recognizes the emotion in his posture, in his burning eyes: lust. That other Lovergirl half a million years ago did her job well, she thinks, to have planted the seed of lust in this aging, mad Warboy brain.
One of the Warboys turns to go, but Prime Subject barks a command, insisting on the ritual of sharing the booty.
Shar takes a soft, vulnerable, human form. “I can please you without giving you the keys. Let me try.”
“The keys, robot!”
She flinches at the ancient insult. “No! I’m free now. I won’t go back. I’d rather die!”
“That,” says Prime Subject, “is not one of your options.”
Shar cries. It’s not an act.
He stabs her again.
“Wait—” she says. “Wait—listen—one condition, then yes—”
He chuckles. “What is it?”
She leans forward against her bonds, her lips straining towards him.
“I was owned by so many,” she says. “For a night, an hour—I can’t go back to that. Please, Prime Subject—let me be yours alone—”
The fire burns brightly in his eyes. The other Warboys are deadly still.
He turns and looks at Vanguard Gaze.
“Granted,” he says.
Shar gives Prime Subject the keys to her mind.
He tears her from the web of fibers. He fills her mind with desire for him and fear of him. He slams her sensitivity to pain and pleasure to its maximum. He plunges his great red ceremonial phallus into her.
Shar screams.
Prime Subject must suspect his crew is plotting mutiny. He must be confident that he can humiliate them, keeping the booty for himself, and yet retain control.
But Shar is a much more sophisticated model than the Quantegral Lovergirl he had those half a million years before. So Prime Subject is overtaken with pleasure, distracted for an instant. Vanguard Gaze seizes his chance and acts.
But Vanguard Gaze has underestimated his commander’s cunning.
Hidden programs are activated and rush to subvert the Dreadnought’s systems. Hidden defenses respond. Locked in a bloody exponential embrace, the programs seize any available means to destroy each other.
The escalation takes only a few microseconds.
15
I am in the darkness near the center of the planet, in the black water thick as lead, knowing Shar was all I ever needed.
Then the blackness is gone, and everything is white light.
The outside edges of me burn. I pull into a dense, hard ball, opaque to everything.
Above me, Droplet boils.
16
It takes a thousand years for all the debris in orbit around Droplet to fall into the sea.
I shun the Nereids and eventually they leave me alone.
At last I find the sphere, the size of a billiard ball, sinking through the dark water.
My body was made to be just one body: protean and polymorphic, but unified. It doesn’t want to split in two. I have to rewire everything.
Slowly, working by trial and error, I connect the new body to Shar’s brain.
Finally, I am finished but for the awakening kiss. I pause, holding the silent body made from my flesh. Two bodies floating in the empty, shoreless sea.
Maka, I think, you are gone, but help me anyway. Let her be alive and sane in there. Give me Shar again.
I touch my lips to hers.
THEY GO BUMP
David Barr Kirtley
Private Ball placed his feet carefully. Walking on rough terrain was treacherous when you couldn’t see your feet—or your legs, for that matter, or any part of yourself. All he could see was the uneven ground, the shady stones outlined with sharp sunlight, drifting eerily beneath him.
His boot caught and twisted. He pitched forward and smacked his elbows against the ground.
From somewhere up
on the hilltop, Private Cataldo’s voice laughed. That voice—smooth and measured, with just a hint of sharpness. Ball had never paid much attention to voices before, but now voices were all he had.
Cataldo’s voice shouted, “Was that you, Ball? Again?”
Ball groped for his rifle. He felt it, grasped it, and slung it over his shoulder. He clambered to his feet and wavered there a few moments, unsteady.
Cataldo’s voice again. “How many times is that now? Twelve?”
“Eleven.” Ball groaned, stretched, and looked around. “Where are you?”
“By the rock.”
Ball sighed. The rock. There was nothing but rocks, nothing but rolling expanses of rocks and more rocks, stretching to the horizon in every direction. The orange sky was littered with rocks, too, rocky moons. “Which rock?”
“The big, triangular one.”
Ball squinted up the hill.
“See the tall peak?” Cataldo’s voice prompted. “Follow the gully down. There’s a patch of boulders, and then at the edge of those there’s this big, triangular—”
“All right, I see it.” Ball took a deep breath. “I’m coming.”
He scrambled over the boulders and picked his way carefully among smaller stones. He tried to picture Cataldo’s face—black hair, honey skin, narrow jaw, and long nose. Ball hadn’t seen that face all day. Now there was just the voice. Finally, Ball breathed, “Okay, I’m here.”
The empty spot of nothingness that was Cataldo said, “Where’s Sweezy?”
“I don’t know.” Ball shook his head, though he realized Cataldo couldn’t see it anyway. “He hasn’t said anything all day. I’ve tried talking to him.”
Cataldo groaned. “Sweezy! Hey, Sweezy! Where are you?”
The vast plains of boulders were stony and silent. There was no answer.
“He might have fallen behind,” Ball said. “Maybe he got lost, or hurt his ankle.”
“He’s out there. Goddamnit, Sweezy! Sound off.”
Finally, a plaintive voice, from far down in the rockslide, called out, “I’m here. What?”