by Lavie Tidhar
Next week, perhaps, he would come.
“Miriam, wait!”
Boris Chong, who had once been beautiful, when she was beautiful, in the soft nights of spring long ago as they lay on top of the old building filled with domestic workers for the rich of the North, they had made themselves a nest there, between the solar panels and the wind traps, a little haven made of old discarded sofas and an awning of colourful calico from India with political slogans on it in a language neither of them spoke. They had lain there, and gloried in their naked bodies up on the roof, in spring, when the air was warm and scented with the lilacs and the bushes of jasmine down below, late-blooming jasmine, that released its smell at night, under the stars and the lights of the space port.
She kept moving, it was only a short walk to her shebeen, the boy came with her, and this man, a stranger now, who had once been young and beautiful, whispering to her in Hebrew his love, only to leave her, long ago, it was so long ago—
This man was following her, this man she no longer knew, and her heart beat fast inside her, her old, flesh heart, which had never been replaced. Still she marched on, passing fruit and vegetable stalls, the gene clinics, upload centres selling secondhand dreams, shoe shops (for people will always need shoes on their feet), the free clinic, a Sudanese restaurant, the rubbish bins, and finally she arrived at Mama Jones’ Shebeen, a holein-the-wall nestled between an upholsterer’s and a Church of Robot node, for people always need old sofas and armchairs reupholstered, and they always need faith, of whatever sort.
And drink, Miriam Jones thought as she entered the establishment, where the light was suitably dim, the tables made of wood, with cloth over each, and where the nearest node would have broadcast a selection of programming feeds had it not been stuck, some time back, on a South Sudanese channel showing a mixture of holy sermons, weather reports that never changed, and dubbed reruns of the long-running Martian soap Chains of Assembly, and nothing else.
A raised bar, offering Palestinian Taiba beer and Israeli Maccabee on tap, locally made Russian vodka, a selection of soft drinks and bottled lager, sheesha pipes for the customers and backgammon boards for use of same—it was a decent little place, it did not make much but it covered rent and food and looking after the boy, and she was proud of it. It was hers.
There were only a handful of regulars sitting inside, a couple of dockyard workers off-shift from the space port sharing a sheesha and drinking beer, chatting amiably, and a tentacle-junkie flopping in a bucket of water, drinking arak, and Isobel Chow, her friend Irena Chow’s daughter, sitting there with a mint tea, looking deep in thought. Miriam touched her lightly on the shoulder as she came in but the girl did not even stir. She was deep in the virtuality, that is to say in the Conversation.
Miriam went behind the bar. All around her the endless traffic of the Conversation surged and hummed and called, but she tuned the vast majority of it out of her consciousness.
“Kranki,” Mama Jones said, “I think you should go up to the flat and do your school work.”
“Finished,” the boy said. He turned his attention to the sheesha pipe nearby and cupped blue smoke in his hand, turning it into a smooth round ball. He became intensely absorbed. Mama Jones, now standing behind her counter and feeling a lot more at ease, here, queen of her domain, heard the footsteps and saw the shadow pass and then the tall, thin frame of the man she last knew as Boris Chong came in, bending under the too-low doorframe.
“Miriam, can we talk?”
“What would you have?”
She gestured at the shelves behind her. Boris Chong’s pupils dilated, and it made a shiver pass down Mama Jones’ spine. He was communicating, silently, with his Martian aug.
“Well?” Her tone was sharper than she intended. Boris’s eyes opened wider. He looked startled. “An arak,” he said, and suddenly smiled, the smile transforming his face, making him younger, making him—
More human, she decided.
She nodded and pulled a bottle from the shelf and poured him a glass of arak, that anise drink so beloved in that land, and added ice, and brought it to him to a table, with chilled water to go beside it—when you poured the water in, the drink changed colour, the clear liquid becoming murky and pale like milk.
“Sit with me.”
She stood with her arms crossed, then relented. She sat down and he, after a moment’s hesitation, sat down also.
“Well?” she said.
“How have you been?” he said.
“Well.”
“You know I had to leave. There was no work here in anymore, no future—”
“I was here.”
“Yes.”
Her eyes softened. She knew what he meant, of course. Nor could she blame him. She had encouraged him to go and, once he was gone, there was nothing to it but for both of them to move on with life, and she, on the whole, did not regret the life she’d led.
“You own this place?”
“It pays the rent, the bills. I look after the boy.”
“He is . . .”
She shrugged. “From the labs,” she said. “It could be he was one of yours, like you said.”
“There were so many . . .” he said. “Hacked together of whatever non-proprietary genetic code we could get our hands on. Are they all like him?”
Miriam shook her head. “I don’t know . . . it’s hard to keep track of all the kids. They don’t stay kids, either. Not forever.” She called out to the boy. “Kranki, could you bring me a coffee, please?”
The boy turned, his serious eyes trained on them both, the ball of smoke still in his hand. He tossed it in the air and it assumed its regular properties and dispersed. “Aww . . .” he said.
“ Now, Kranki,” Miriam said. “Thank you.” The boy went to the bar and Miriam turned back to Boris.
“Where have you been all this time?” she said.
He shrugged. “Spent some time on Ceres, in the Belt, working for one of the Malay companies.” He smiled. “No more babies. Just . . . fixing people. Then I did three years at Tong Yun, picked up this—” He gestured at the pulsating mass of biomatter behind his ear.
Miriam said, curious, “Did it hurt?”
“It grows with you,” Boris said. “The . . . the seed of the thing is injected, it sits under the skin, then it starts to grow. It . . . can be uncomfortable. Not the physicality of it but when you start to communicate, to lay down a network.”
It made Miriam feel strange, seeing it. “Can I touch it?” she said, surprising herself. Boris looked very self-conscious; he always did, she thought, and a fierce ray of pride, of affection, went through her, startling her.
“Sure,” he said. “Go ahead.”
She reached out, touched it, gingerly, with the tip of one finger. It felt like skin, she thought, surprised. Slightly warmer, perhaps. She pressed, it was like touching a boil. She removed her hand.
The boy, Kranki, came with her drink—a long-handled pot with black coffee inside it, brewed with cardamom seeds and cinnamon. She poured, into a small china cup, and held it between her fingers. Kranki said, “I can hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“It,” the boy said, insistent, pointing at the aug.
“Well, what does it say?” Miriam said, taking a sip of her coffee. She saw Boris was watching the boy intently.
“It’s confused,” Kranki said.
“How so?”
“It feels something strange from its host. A very strong emotion, or a mix of emotions. Love and lust and regret and hope, all tangled together . . . it’s never experienced that before.”
“Kranki!”
Miriam hid a shocked laugh as Boris reared back, turning red.
“That’s quite enough for today,” Miriam said. “Go play outside.”
The boy brightened considerably. “Really? Can I?”
“Don’t get too far. Stay where I can see you.”
“I can always see you,” the boy said, and ran out without a look ba
ck. She could see the faint echo of his passing through the digital sea of the Conversation, then he disappeared into the noise outside.
Miriam sighed. “Kids,” she said.
“It’s all right.” Boris smiled, looking younger, reminding her of other days, another time. “I thought about you, often,” he said.
“Boris, why are you here?”
He shrugged again. “After Tong Yun I got a job in the Galilean Republics. On Callisto. They’re strange out there, in the Outer System. It’s the view of Jupiter in the sky, or . . . they have strange technologies out there, and I did not understand their religions. Too close to Jettisoned, and Dragon’s World . . . too far away from the sun.”
“That’s why you came back?” she said, a surprised laugh. “You missed the sun?”
“I missed home,” he said. “I got a job in Lunar Port, it was incredible to be back, so close, to see Earthrise in the sky . . . the Inner System felt like home. Finally I took a holiday, and here I am.” He spread his arms. She sensed unspoken words, a secret sorrow; but it wasn’t in her to pry. Boris said, “I missed the sort of rain that falls from clouds.”
“Your dad’s still around,” Miriam said. “I see him from time to time.”
Boris smiled, though the web of lines at the corners of his eyes—they weren’t there before, Miriam thought, suddenly touched—revealed old pain. “Yes, he’s retired now,” he said.
She remembered him, a big Sino-Russian man, wearing an exoskeleton with a crew of other builders, climbing like metallic spiders over the uncompleted walls of the space port. There had been something magnificent about seeing them like that, they were the size of insects high up there, the sun glinting off the metal, their pincers working, tearing down stone, erecting walls to hold up, it seemed, the world.
She saw him now, from time to time, sitting at the cafés, playing backgammon, drinking the bitter black coffee, endless cups of delicate china, throwing the dice again and again in repeating permutations, in the shadow of the edifice he had helped to build, and which had at last made him redundant.
“Are you going to see him?” she said.
Boris shrugged. “Maybe. Yes. Later—” He took a sip of his drink and grimaced and then smiled. “Arak,” he said. “I forgot the taste.”
Miriam smiled too. They smiled without reason or regret and, for now, it was enough.
It was quiet in the shebeen, the tentacle-junkie lay in his tub with his bulbous eyes closed, the two cargo workers were chatting in low voices, sitting back. Isobel sat motionless, still lost in the virtuality. Then Kranki was beside them. She hadn’t seen him come in but he had the knack, all the children of the station had it, a way to both appear and disappear. He saw them smiling, and started smiling too.
Miriam took his hand. It was warm.
“We couldn’t play,” the boy complained. There was a halo above his head, rainbows breaking through the wet globules of water in his short, spiky hair. “It started to rain again.” He looked at them with boyish suspicion. “Why are you smiling?” Miriam looked at this man, Boris, this stranger who had been someone that the someone that she had been once loved.
“It must just be the rain,” she said.
TWO: Under the Eaves
Isobel saw them talking, Mama Jones and the strange tall man who seemed somehow familiar, as though he were a distant relative she had once, distantly, glimpsed; but her mind was elsewhere. Will I see him again? Her heart beat a fast tatoo of an unfamiliar rhythm. She had not felt this way before and she was torn, so torn. It was easier in her other life; in the virtual you could make yourself anew. She saw how Mama Jones looked at the man, so strangely, as though . . .
But that was ridiculous. As though they were in love.
Love. Love was so confusing!
She gathered her things and left the shebeen. Will she see him again? Will he come? She passed Kranki on her way out, through the beaded curtain, and ruffled his hair. He looked up at her seriously, with those big blue eyes. Then she was out, and the station rose ahead, immense and familiar, gathering rain about itself like glitter on a dress.
It was madness, she thought. And yet her cheeks were flushed and she felt almost ill, giddy with anticipation.
Will he be there?
“Meet me tomorrow?” Isobel Chow said.
Motl the Robotnik looked from side to side, too quickly. Isobel took a step back.
“Tomorrow night. Under the eaves.”
They were whispering. She gathered courage like cloth. Stepped up to him. Put her hand on his chest. His heart was beating fast, she could feel it through the metal. His smell was of machine oil and sweat.
“Go,” he said. “You must—” the words died, unsaid. His heart was like a chick in her hand, so scared and helpless. She was suddenly aware of power. It excited her. To have power over someone else, like this.
His finger on her cheek, trailing. It was hot, metallic. She shivered. What if someone saw?
“I have to go,” he said.
His hand left her. He pulled away and it rent her. “Tomorrow,” she whispered. He said, “Under the eaves,” and left, with quick steps, out of the shadow of the warehouse, in the direction of the sea.
She watched him go and then she, too, slipped away, into the night.
In early morning the solitary shrine to St. Cohen of the Others, on the corner of Levinsky Street, sat untroubled and abandoned beside the green. Road cleaners crawled along the roads, sucking up dirt, spraying water and scrubbing, a low hum of gratitude filling the air as they gloried in this greatest of tasks, the momentary holding back of entropy.
By the shrine a solitary figure knelt. Miriam Jones, Mama Jones of Mama Jones’ Shebeen, lighting a candle, laying down an offering, a broken electronics circuit as of an ancient television remote control, useless and obsolete.
“Guard us from the Blight and from the Worm, and from the attention of Others,” Mama Jones whispered, “and give us the courage to make our own circuitous path in the world, St. Cohen.”
The shrine did not reply. But then, Mama Jones did not expect it to, either.
She straightened up, slowly. It was becoming more difficult, with the knees. She still had her own kneecaps. She still had most of her original parts. It wasn’t anything to be proud of, but it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, either. She stood there, taking in the morning air, the joyous hum of the road-cleaning machines, the imagined whistle of aircraft high above, suborbitals coming down from orbit, gliding down like parachuting spiders to land on the roof of Central Station.
Yesterday had been confusing, she thought. A holiday, Boris said. But she knew there was more unsaid, there were obligations, ties, there were circumstances.
But she did not want to think about all this. Not now.
It was a cool, fresh morning. The heat of summer did not yet lie heavy on the ground, choking the very air. She walked away from the shrine and stepped on the green, and it felt good to feel grass under her feet. She remembered the green when she was young, with the others like her, Somali and Sudanese refugees who found themselves in this strange country, having crossed desert and borders, seeking a semblance of peace, only to find themselves unwanted and isolated here, in this enclave of the Jews. She remembered her father waking every morning, and walking to the green and sitting there, with the others, the air of quiet desperation making them immobile. Waiting. Waiting for a man to come in a pickup truck and offer them a labourer’s job, waiting for the UN agency bus—or, helplessly, for the Israeli police’s special Oz Agency to come and check their papers, with a view towards arrest or deportation . . .
Oz meant “strength,” in Hebrew. But the real strength, Miriam thought, wasn’t in intimidating helpless people, who had nowhere else to turn. It was in surviving, the way her parents had, the way she had—learning Hebrew, working, making a small, quiet life as past turned to present and present to future, until one day there was only her, still living here, in Central Station.
; Now the green was quiet, only a lone robotnik sitting with his back to a tree, asleep or awake she couldn’t tell. Already traffic was growing on the roads, the sweepers, with little murmurs of disappointment, moving on. Small cars moved along the road, their solar panels spread like wings. There were solar panels everywhere, on rooftops and the sides of buildings, everyone trying to snatch away some free power in this sunniest of places. Tel Aviv. She knew there were sun farms beyond the city, vast tracts of land where panels stretched across the horizon, hungrily sucking in the sun’s rays, converting them into energy that was then fed into central charging stations across the city. She liked the sight of them, and fashion-wise it was all the rage, Mama Jones’ own clothes had tiny solar panes sewn in, and her wide-brimmed hat caught the sun, wasting nothing—it looked very stylish.
She left the green and crossed the road. As she did, she saw Isobel Chow passing by on her bicycle, heading to Central Station. Mama Jones waved, but Isobel didn’t see her, and Mama Jones shrugged. It was time to open the shebeen, prepare the sheesha pipes, mix the drinks. There will be customers soon. There always were, in Central Station.
Isobel cycled along the Salame Road, her bicycle like a butterfly, wings open, sucking up sun, murmuring to her in a happy, sleepy voice, nodal connection mixed in with the broadcast of a hundred thousand other voices, channels, music, languages, the high-bandwidth indecipherable toktok of Others, weather reports, confessionals, off-world broadcasts time-lagged from Lunar Port and Tong Yun and the Belt, Isobel randomly tuning in and out of that deep and endless stream which was the Conversation.
The sounds and sights washed over her: deep space images from a lone spider crashing into a frozen rock in the Oort cloud, burrowing in to begin converting the asteroid into copies of itself; a rerun episode Chains of Assembly; a Congolese station broadcasting Nuevo Kwasa-Kwasa music; from North Tel Aviv, a talk show on Torah studies, growing heated; from the side of the street, sudden and alarming, a repeated ping— Please help. Please donate. Will work for spare parts.