Central Station

by Lavie Tidhar

The attack came without warning, once they were deep into the crossing. Carmel was, of course, noded. The background hum of the Conversation was all about her, wherever she went. Like most people her age she had experimented with memcording but found that not only did she value her privacy, but that few were apparently interested in watching a continuous feed of her life. Like most people her age she had ventured into one of the gamesworlds at some point, and for a time worked as a liaison-entertainment officer at a lunar base in the Guilds of Ashkelon universe, converting her gamesworld-earned currency into Universe-One cash. There were a lot of alien species in the GoA universe and the role of a liaison-entertainment officer could sometimes be demanding, if educational.

  Apart from this, Carmel’s node and the resultant network filaments growing out of it were filled with the usual data, no more, probably, than a few exabytes in total.

  All this was to change.

  Carmel was walking through a service corridor. It felt disused. The atmosphere felt cooler here, dust hung motionless in the air. It was dark and the light ahead flashed brokenly on and off, as if spelling out a secret message.

  The woman came at her from a door that wasn’t there. The wall opened like a mesh of spider silk pulled sideways, smooth metal somehow torn aside like a bead curtain. Carmel couldn’t see the woman clearly. She was short, slight of build. Smaller than her. Hardly a threat. The woman said, “Shambleau.” Something terrified and terrifying in equal measures in her voice. The word coursed through Carmel’s mind, through her node. It multiplied like a virus. It broke up into fragments that mutated and mated with each other, multiplied, grew, split, spread, crawling through her node, her wires, her mind. Carmel was frozen. Somehow, she couldn’t move. The woman came close to her. Held her. Her mouth was on Carmel’s neck. She bit her. The bite did not hurt. It felt cold, then hot. Carmel swayed. The woman held her as she fell, gently, to the floor. The woman knelt beside her, her mouth on Carmel’s neck.

  A terrible, exhilarating sensation. As if the woman had somehow pulled a Louis Wu on her, a low electric current stimulating the pleasure centres of the brain, releasing high quantities of dopamine. Carmel swooned as her mind was being devoured, data, all her most secret intimate trivial recall sucked up, devoured:

  In the mining ship with her father, who lets her use the controls, for just a moment—

  Visiting the Ceres Botanical Gardens and being amazed by the flowers, that there could be so many—

  Watching an episode of Chains of Assembly where Johnny Novum kisses Tempest Teapot-Jones as Count Victor, unseen by either, watches in hatred—

  First sexual experience with a boy her own age in the “sea”— it’s what they call the saltwater pool on their little home world, the asteroid Ng. Merurun, the tips of his fingers feel rough on her chest, an unfamiliar heat inside her—

  And in the Guilds of Ashkelon universe welcoming her first alien, assuming an abstract avatar for the guest, an ambassador from a powerful guild in galactic north, an insectoid thing, but his pinchers on her are the touch of a frightened boy, her age, and she guides him, feeling power—

  Trying to learn to play the guitar, and failing—

  Floating in zero gravity on the mining ship and singing to herself, a Sivan Shoshanim song that is popular that year—

  Cooking, for the family, in the small kitchen off their quarters on the long corridor of the longhouse, a rare feast, for the birth of her sister’s firstborn they slaughter a pig—

  Strigoi.

  The word rose like a bubble in her paralysed mind. She was losing the memories, losing her own self, awash in the joy, the unbearable pleasure of the woman’s touch, that current of electricity in the brain as her node was raided, her data sucked away by this . . . thing that had an ancient, terrible name, a word she once heard her sister use, and her mother shushed her angrily—

  Shambleau.

  The word evoked in her a sudden repulsion, a horror even the dopamine could not counter. She struggled against the woman, her limbs suddenly free. She could no longer recall who she was, who she had been. But the woman was surprisingly strong, she pressed her back, and Carmel could smell her then, the fear and the hunger and the arousal that wafted off of this human-shaped creature, and she tried to cry out but her voice didn’t work.

  The strigoi’s teeth left Carmel’s neck. Then, as if reaching a difficult decision, which Carmel only later, much later, realised, the strigoi bit her again.

  This time it was different. Carmel subsided against the cold hard floor of the service corridor. The rush of data flowed over her, into her, a sensory outpouring that left her numb, gasping for virtual air. Not only herself, but bits of other people, entities, all intermingled, memories without anchor, and for fleeting moments she was like a slideshow of humans, she was a Lunar shopkeeper and a Martian field worker, she was a Re-Born in the ancient Mars-That-Never-Was, four-armed and bronze-red, standing on the shimmering canals. She was a human with an Other flesh-surfing him, she was a robot priest at a shrine for St. Cohen, she was a Hagiratech hunter on Jettisoned, she was an Exodus ship departing the solar system, she was a human from Manhome itself, swimming in a vast and alien ocean. . . .

  She came to in the dark. The strigoi was gone. She was alone. Her head hurt. When she touched her mouth it felt delicate, raw. When she opened it against her skin she hurt herself. Her teeth had grown, she had two canines that lengthened. She was frightened.

  She had a new awareness of herself. It came and went, it grew on her in the days to come. She knew herself from the inside, the whispering of the filaments spreading like a cancer from her node, filling her, invading her. Her node grew, spread, it was become her. She had returned to the cabin, where Moses was asleep. She lay beside him. She fell asleep and, when she woke up, he was gone. She ran a shower and watched herself in the mirror but she no longer needed a mirror. She could see herself reflected in the virtuality, every part of her, and she was filled with other people’s ghosts.

  Nighttime in Polyport, and she was hungry, the words of a poem running endlessly on a loop through her head.

  The poet Bashō, who had once encountered a Shambleau on his slow voyage through the solar system, reputedly at a lonely outpost on Mars, wrote:

  Oli saksakem save blong yumi

  Oli saksakem maen blong yumi

  Oli haed long sado

  Awo!

  Olgeta kakai faea blong yumi

  Olgeta kakai save blong yumi

  Oli go wokabaot long sado

  Awo!

  Sambelu. Sambelu. Sambelu.

  Oli kakai faea. Oli haed long sado.

  Olgeta Sambelu.

  Which, translated, reads something like: “They suck our knowledge / they suck our mind / they hide in the shadow / oh! / they eat our fire / they eat our knowledge / they walk in shadow / oh! / Shambleau. / Shambleau. / Shambleau. / They eat fire. They hide in shadow. / They are Shambleau.”

  She was hungry, on Polyport. She had hid on the Emaciated Saviour for months, Moses had avoided her, the crew shunned her, but the ship was haunted by more than one presence and she was not persecuted. There were Shambleau on that ship, there were ghosts in the digitality, there were bloodied rituals in the bowels of the ship, acts of dread nakaimas.

  They booted her out on Titan, at last, spreading across the ship, driving away the dark presences, she amongst them. They were released on Polyphemus Port, and she was a long way from home, the sun cold and distant in the sky.

  She hunted. Confused. A Carmel with others’ memories, others’ knowledge behind her eyes. She saw him walk down the street, weaving drunkenly, his node open, vulnerable, low-level broadcasting to anyone who would listen. She approached him, her hands shaking, her legs felt week. He turned, smiled at her. “Beautiful young thing,” he said, fondly. “What are you doing on this desolate moon?”

  She reached for him. Her hand touched his shoulder and he froze, his system compromised, and she came closer to him and sunk her new fangs into
his neck, draining him.

  His mind was rich, so rich! He was an artist, a weather hacker, his mind full of swirling storms, of rain, of wind and power. His name was Stolly—“Like the vodka”—and he was a Polyporter, a Titanite born and bred. She gained arcane weather hacking routines, memories of a party he had once attended, where the Memcordist Pym had been, bits of poems, agalmatophilia, which was the sexual impulse strongest in Stolly—an attraction to dolls, mannequins and statues—a modest talent for gardening, a love of the powerful red wine made from the grapes of subterranean Titan.

  She was feeding, too much, she suddenly realised. She was draining him. She pulled away, out, putting a barrier between her node and his, her teeth withdrew. “Wait,” he said. He sounded drugged. “I . . .” He blinked. “I need you,” he said.

  Then came a time of interdependence. She moved in with Stolly. He was pliable to her, addicted. “Shambleau,” he’d say, his voice a mixture of wonder and desire. They would lie in his bed, the white sheets stained with sweat, and he would stroke her hair, worship her, and she fed on him, trying to control her need, to measure it out, in dribs and drabs, to give as much as take, so that he existed still, but faded.

  It was a crime. Made worse by the fact that she could not control it. The filaments had spread through her body, she had been turned. Perhaps the one who turned her, the one on the ship, did it out of spite, wanting to pass on the dark curse of strigoi. But Carmel came to realise that a more likely explanation was that the nameless Shambleau had drained her too much, and could only save her by turning her. Now she, too, was a mirror, reflecting others yet casting no reflection herself. She fed on others’ minds, on others’ data, the hunger always in her. Who first developed strigoi? She never learned. Some ancient Earth weapon, released into the wild. Strigoi could be valuable, if held in captivity. Bounty hunters sought them out, military factions sometimes made cruel use of them. In her mind, images of mobs, rending Shambleau limb from limb. Whether it was a real memory or an amalgamation of data gleaned from the Conversation she didn’t know; but people frightened her.

  There were stories of Shambleau acting as muses for the people they fed on. Inspiring their work. Certainly there was something strange, perhaps unique, about that sort of intimate sharing of data. And Stolly seemed happy, adoring. He was working on a new installation, Stillness within a Storm, and yet. . . .

  He was fading before her eyes.

  She was draining him and she couldn’t stop. The only answer would be to turn him, she knew, and she was unwilling to do that, to make copies of herself would be an obscene act. She was old before she was young. Her escape from home brought with it no freedom, only a new kind of imprisonment.

  Her life on Titan came to an end on the eve of Stolly’s unveiling of his new installation. . . .

  Carmel blinked. She was alone on the Level Three concourse. Bright lights, sounds of explosions and cheering from the battle droid arenas. Masses of people, so many, moving to and fro, food courts with unfamiliar smells, in the distance the Multifaith Bazaar, that Martian woman, Magdalena Wu, lost to sight. . . .

  Central Station.

  It felt like an alien world.

  She was not sure what was outside. An alien planet, and she a landing explorer, hesitant before setting foot down on the planet’s surface, in its alien air. She would plant no flag here. Already she could discern in the Conversation around her hints, clues to the one she sought. Outside was another world, an old neighbourhood, older than anything humanity had ever put up in space. The very age of it was terrifying to her. She was a creature of a different age, a different sky. Almost blindly, she groped her way along a virtual map interposed before her eyes, the Level Three concourse spread out, until she found the gamesworlds pods.

  Dark nooks along a narrow corridor, tens of full-immersion pods in each, only half of them occupied. People worked in the gamesworlds, people lived and dreamed and made love in them.

  A solitary, human, attendant. Young, thin, nervous looking, he wouldn’t look at her directly, though Carmel’s hair, moving of its own volition, kept creeping up on him. She paid for a night and, exhausted, slid into a pod.

  It closed over her, sealing her in silence and in darkness, and she slept, plugged in and yet unplugged.

  Polyport, at dusk. . . .

  The unveiling ceremony took place against the membrane of the dome, on the designated eastern side, at the end of a maze of narrow streets.

  Later, her memory remained hazy—

  Stolly standing there, his image, smiling faintly, pale, broadcast across the networks, across Polyphemus Port and the other few Titanic settlements and beyond, into Saturn space and, gradually, across the space hubs, everywhere, to anyone who cared to watch, data moving at the speed of light, so slowly. . . .

  Stolly standing there, giving a little speech—something something “My Muse”—that capital letter—Stolly’s hands shaking, he moved them through the air, summoning the last of the subroutines and embedded protocols, bringing to life his creation—

  The explosion took off his head, showered blood over the assembled guests.

  Screams, intensifying with the second explosion, and a breach in the wall of the dome sucking in poisonous atmosphere, Titan being allowed into the port—the panic, screaming, the sudden network traffic increasing a thousandfold as all over Polyport and near-space people tuned in to watch—

  To watch Stolly’s last, greatest masterpiece.

  Stillness within a Storm can still be viewed on the east side of Polyport, though special permission must be obtained. Tickets are on sale through the regular channels. The breach in the hull has never been repaired, but somehow, Stolichnaya Birú, the artist, had formulated a kind of localised storm in which outdoor and indoor pressure cancelled each other out.

  The storm is roughly globular in structure. It seems to contrast and expand periodically, and a security corridor has been established around the site, as well as emergency filters ready to be activated at the first sign of danger.

  But the weather hacker had known what he was doing.

  The storm combines both internal atmosphere and the atmosphere of Titan itself, merging them into a complex, always-raging ball of storm, in hues of purple and white, inside which—

  Pressure cancels pressure, but filaments of gas and dust weave themselves, within that stillness, into something resembling a face. Much has been made of that face, and efforts to interpret it have failed. It is humanoid, possibly feminine. Its eyes are explosions in violet. Its mouth opens, white streaks like canines slide out, gradually, and it seems the image grimaces, or grins. It rotates slowly, dissipates, returns. For months on end it remains perfectly still, frozen. Then it disintegrates and is reborn, again and again, a stillness captured in a storm.

  The image of the artist’s head exploding as the breach first occurred has since become a minor meme in the Conversation. The artist’s blood and brain matter itself became incorporated into the installation, helping to form part of the enigmatic face.

  As for Carmel, she made her way to the embarkation field and took transport on the first available ship, never to be seen on Titan again.

  She tore open the pod. Blinked in the sudden glare of electric light. Sat up. Her head ached, her mouth was filled with saliva. The machine had otherwise taken care of her bodily functions, her human waste. She felt ravenous. Strigoi-hungry. Human-hungry. She pulled herself out of the pod. Stood on shaking legs. The gravity pressed down on her. Remembered where she was. Earth. Central Station.

  She stumbled out of the pod-room and found a burger bar and devoured a double helping, red meat, deep-fried potatoes, starch and salt and fats. Strigoi still ate food, their hunger was something else, a craving not of the physical.

  It made her think again of Mars, and of the reason she came here, and a feeling stole over her, suddenly, of a terrible loneliness, like a cosmic wind blowing, cold and forlorn, between the stars.

  The space port, this Ce
ntral Station, felt to her like a womb, or a prison—anyhow, somewhere from which she had to escape. Wiping away ketchup and mustard stains and crumpling the cheap paper napkin into a ball, she stood up, walked, almost running, to the giant elevators, and descended down to street level.

  The doors opened. Hot air blew in, fighting the internal air-conditioning units. Carmel felt moisture form on her lips, licked it away. She walked through the doors and found herself, at last, outside.

  The Mediterranean sun was hot, its light fell in sheets, like glass, it suffused the world, picking objects and people in sharp relief, casting halos, obliterating shade. Carmel blinked, thin cataract-like growths of radiation-filtering transparent material formed over her eyes, shielding them from the sun. She blinked again, sneezed. The reaction took her by surprise and for a moment she hovered, uncertain, before bursting into a sudden, rare, natural laugh.

  People stared, but she didn’t mind. She crossed the road and it was like being in another world, this old neighbourhood of rundown buildings out there in the open, the space port receding behind her back to insignificance. This is where people lived, it was like Titan, or Mars, or the asteroids, only the dome above her head was higher, and circled an entire world. There was something comforting, she thought, about domes. About barriers. The space port was a violation of that.

  She entered an old, pleasant pedestrian street. Neve Sha’anan, the sign said. It was shaded here by the old buildings rising on both sides of it, shops on the ground level, flats overhead. She passed old men sitting playing backgammon and bao outside, puffing on sweet-smelling water pipes, drinking coffee. She passed a greengrocers’ where watermelons spilled beside oranges and narafika, that small, sweet, South Pacific fruit they sometimes called Malay Apple or Syzgium Ricchi. She passed a shoe shop and allowed herself a moment to stop, and browse, and try on a pair that particularly captivated her.

  She did not know where she would find him, but she knew she was close. She didn’t know what she would say, or how she could explain why she had come, all this way, when she herself hardly knew.