Central Station

by Lavie Tidhar

  Still Boris hesitated. It was silly. He didn’t need to. Taking a breath, inhaling the smell of eucalyptus leaves and hot asphalt and adaptoplant resin, he said, “I need drugs.”

  A wary feel rising from the robotnik. A half-step back. “I don’t do that anymore.”

  “I know, Motl. You wouldn’t do that to Isobel.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  “I know. But I also know you can get it.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Crucifixation.”

  “God,” the robotnik said, and sighed. “You need to talk to Ezekiel, not me. What do you need it for, anyway?” The robotnik was staring at Boris’s aug. “You don’t use.”

  “It’s for a patient.”

  “You’re the birthing doctor, aren’t you? I remember now. Strange kids came out of those vats.”

  “How so?”

  The robotnik laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound and was made almost terrifying by the Martian aug’s distortion. “ You know,” he said. “You can fool the rest of them, but you can’t fool me. I’ve been here too long.”

  Boris bit back on a reply. “Can you get it?” he said.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Yeah. Well, I’ll see you.” And, with that, the robotnik disappeared into the night.

  “We can’t keep meeting like this.”

  Boris was frustrated with this role he’d been forced into. Like something out of a cheap Elvis Mandela flick. But he owed her. He stared at her, mixed affection and anger, a hint of unease. Carmel. Data-vampire, ex-lover, the woman who fell to Earth; who had left the Up and Out to come and find him.

  Why?

  She complicated everything. What possessed her to make the journey, to track him here, to come down the gravity well to Central Station? She seemed to him at times as helpless as a child. And yet it was only the aug, with its alien physiology, that protected him from her.

  They had been lovers, yes, but it was over, for both of them, and long before. Yet here she was, and he was bound to her all the same.

  “We can’t keep meeting like this,” he said again, uneasy.

  Carmel smiled, showing sharp canines. “Meet how?” she said.

  “In secret. If Miriam found out. . . .”

  “It was your idea,” she said.

  “What about Achimwene?” Boris said. Feeling worse. For he liked the man, Miriam’s awkward brother. But for the life of him he couldn’t understand what Carmel saw in him.

  “He doesn’t need to know,” she said. Sharpness in her voice. She was protective of him, Boris realised. Could she really love him? Achimwene, a node-less man? A cripple?

  That feeling in him was strange. Jealousy, he thought. He was jealous. It was irrational. He felt the aug pulsating against his neck, calming him. He shrugged. “It is best if we are not seen. And you are barely tolerated here, Carmel. This is a small, close community. They know what you are.”

  “And still they let me stay,” she said, wonder in her eyes. For all her danger, she sometimes was the young girl who’d left her family’s habitat in the asteroid belt to find excitement elsewhere.

  “On sufferance,” he said. “And as long as the victims are willing, and you take in moderation.”

  She shrugged. “Did you have any luck?”

  “Yes. No.”

  She shook her head and said, “Oh, Boris.”

  Which wounded. He said, “I need to take another blood sample.”

  “We’ve been through this. On Mars. Before. How much blood can you take?”

  “How much can you?”

  Her face showed her disappointment. “I don’t take blood.”

  “Only minds.”

  “Yes.”

  He waited. She rolled up her sleeve. It was hot in the small room. His father’s apartment. He inserted the needle into her arm while his father sat motionless in the other room. His father had withdrawn from life, somehow. Had closed himself off to the world. Waiting. Maybe. Or just not there anymore.

  “I’ll let you know if I have news,” he said. She rubbed her arm where he hurt her, and said nothing.

  With each season a new godling appeared in the streets and alleyways of Central Station. They were nebulous things, more than human, less than Other, like semi-sentient sculptures which straddled both the real and the virtual. They were said to be slivers of God, fragments of God’s creation. With each new season they appeared, like plants.

  There were gods for spring: like young shoots they appeared, organic and unfathomable, reaching out to sun and sky and sea. One spring it was a miniature god, blooming in the green, bound on two sides by Levinsky and Har Zion. The god had appeared, one morning, a tree trunk rising out of moist earth and jutting into the sky, and to go near it one’s node was assaulted by the high-bandwidth speech of the Others.

  There were gods for winter: mecha-beings sculpted out of scrap metal and obsolete tech found in the garbage or liberated from the Palace of Discarded Things. Such gods moved, if slowly. They crawled on the side of buildings. One year such a god left illegible inscriptions all over the walls and rooftops of Central Station, messages no one could read, spray-painted everywhere in some unknown, alien alphabet.

  There were autumn gods: fungal-like they drifted in the air, temporary gods bursting unexpectedly, with a soft whooshing sound, above the heads of the people passing by, sending spores of faith drifting lazily in every direction.

  There were summer gods. Those were translucent; only a fragment in the real, their majesty was revealed in the virtuality, enormous shifting amorphous vistas, superimposed over the real, fed into one’s node in a flood that choked bandwidth and startled and awed.

  The god artist called himself Eliezer, which meant Helper of God, in Hebrew.

  Though he had been known by other names, in other times.

  The god artist walked the streets of Central Station and they sang to him. Each noded plant sent out its individual ident, a hopeful ping, each brick and wall and manhole cover sang and whispered to Eliezer.

  He was a man of indeterminate age. When he spoke one could still discern, sometimes, the faint echoes of an old, obsolete American accent. A Jew, some said. A man as old as the hills themselves. He smiled as he walked, and his eyes were vacant, for they saw less and less into the real; the virtual crept upon them with the passing of ages. Eliezer whistled as he walked, and that whistle sounded in both the physical and the virtual, notes in one, their pure mathematical representation in the other.

  He passed the gods as he walked, and the gods bowed to him, for he was their creator.

  He came to Mama Jones’ Shebeen and passed through the bead curtain and sat down at an empty table. It was cool and dark inside.

  “Eliezer!” Miriam said. Surprised.

  Eliezer’s head bobbed, this way and that. “Have I not been this way for some time, then?” he hazarded a guess.

  “Not for four or five years.”

  “Ah.” He smiled and nodded, listening to sounds only he could hear. “I have been otherwise engaged, I think. Yes. I must have been.”

  “Well,” Miriam said, a little doubtful, it seemed. “It’s good to see you again.”

  “And you . . .”

  “What can I get you, Eliezer?”

  “I think, perhaps, some arak,” he said, tilting his head like a bird regarding its reflection in the water. “Yes, some arak, Miriam. I am waiting for a friend.”

  She nodded, though he didn’t seem to notice. She went behind the bar and came back with a bottle and a glass and placed them before him, along with a bowl of fresh ice. “Thank you,” he said. “Tell me, Miriam. I hear your young fellow is back in town.”

  She looked at him in surprise. “Boris?” she said.

  The god artist smiled and nodded his head. “Boris,” he confirmed.

  “Yes. How did you—?”

  The god artist put his hand into the bowl of ice and picked up a fistful
of cubes and poured them, gently, into his glass. They made a sound that made him smile. “Heard a vampire girl came after him, too, not too long ago,” he said.

  “Yes,” Miriam said. Then, “Her name is Carmel.”

  “Ah.” He poured. The arak hit the ice clear. With its slow melting its colour shifted, became murky, became the colour of milk. Eliezer raised it to his face and smelled the anise. “How is that working out for everyone?”

  Miriam shrugged. He made her uncomfortable, and they both knew it. “It’s life,” she said. The god artist nodded, but she could not quite tell if he were listening to her, or to some music only he could hear.

  “That’s right,” he said. “That’s right.”

  She left him there. The shebeen was not busy, but there was always something to do.

  “I need a dose, Ezekiel.”

  They were standing in the burned place. Ezekiel said, “You’re off the faith, Motl.”

  “It’s not for me.”

  “You’re dealing? Again?”

  “No. It’s . . . a favour.”

  “Who for?”

  “Boris Chong.”

  A silence. The two robotniks stared at each other; remnants of their humanity twisted and turned behind their metal facades. The lights of Central Station floated overhead.

  “Zhong Weiwei’s grandson.” It was a statement, not a question, but Motl answered it nevertheless.

  “Yes.”

  “The . . . birthing doctor.”

  Again, it wasn’t a question. This time Motl said nothing.

  “Does he know?”

  “About the children? I think he must suspect.”

  Ezekiel laughed. Not a sound with much humour in it, Motl thought. “No wonder he left when he did.”

  “Still,” Motl said. “He came back.”

  “And now he wants faith? Crucifixation? Why?”

  “I don’t know. Not my business.”

  “It is mine, since you make it mine.”

  “Ezekiel . . .”

  Again they stared at each other, wordlessly: two beat-down old soldiers.

  “Go see the priest,” Ezekiel said. “He’ll give you a dose. And on your head be it.”

  Motl nodded, once, wordlessly, before he turned away.

  A second old man pushed through the bead curtain of the shebeen and came inside. Ibrahim, the Lord of Discarded Things.

  He sat down at Eliezer’s table. Miriam greeted him, brought another glass without being asked.

  “How’s the junk business?” Eliezer said.

  Ibrahim smiled and shrugged. “Same old,” he said. “How’s the god business?”

  “Could be worse.”

  Ibrahim put ice in his glass, poured. They both raised their glasses, clinked them, gently, together, and drank.

  “I need parts,” Eliezer said.

  “You’re always welcome,” Ibrahim said.

  “This your boy?”

  A young boy had entered the shebeen, accompanied by another. “This is Ismail,” Ibrahim said, with quiet pride.

  “And his friend?”

  “Miriam’s boy, Kranki.”

  “They are like brothers.”

  “Yes.”

  The two boys came and stood close to Ibrahim, staring at Eliezer with frank curiosity.

  “Who’s that?” Kranki said.

  From behind the counter, Miriam: “Kranki, manners!”

  Eliezer smiled. “I’m Eliezer,” he said. “And you two are . . .” His eyes seemed to shift their colour. He was seeing the boys in the real and the virtual at once. “Interesting,” he said.

  “Ismail, go play,” Ibrahim said. The boy shrugged and turned to leave, Kranki following him.

  “Please,” Ibrahim said, in a low voice.

  “Do they know?” Eliezer said.

  “That they are different? Yes.”

  “Do they know what they are?”

  “I found the boy dumped in the street. A baby. I raised him like my own. Eliezer, please. I just want him to have a childhood.”

  “Did you speak to the Oracle?”

  Ibrahim made a gesture of dismissal. Eliezer said, “I wish to build a new god.”

  “So what’s stopping you?”

  Eliezer took a sip of arak. The melting ice stained the glass a milky white. “I am intrigued by the lives of mortals.”

  “Gods are as mortal as humanity.”

  “True. True.”

  And now it was Ibrahim’s turn to smile. “You want to meddle,” he said.

  The other shrugged.

  “You were always a meddler,” Ibrahim said.

  “So were you.”

  “I live in the world. Not apart from it.”

  “Semantics, Ibrahim. L’chaim.” He raised his glass.

  “No, Eliezer. Let things be.”

  “That’s never been your philosophy before, Ibrahim.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “I don’t pursue change. Change comes to me.”

  Ibrahim sighed. “Then let it come,” he said, as he, too, raised his glass. They drank.

  The glasses, placed back on the table, left a dark mark on the wood.

  “What is that, Motl?”

  Motl and Isobel lay entwined on her bed. She ran her hand down his side, feeling the smooth, warm metal.

  “What?” he said. Content. Sleepy. The human side of him was coming to the fore, since he had met her. Even memories, sometimes, from when he was a man, and alive. Unwelcome memories, of the sort that, before, drove him to faith.

  “This.” She sat up. “Is it drugs?”

  “Isobel—”

  Finding the priest was not always easy, but he’d tracked him down eventually.

  “It’s not for me,” he said, quickly.

  “You promised you won’t be doing this anymore.”

  “I don’t!” he said.

  “So what’s this?” She waved it in front of him.

  “I had to,” he said. “I owe—”

  “Oh, Motl.”

  “Isobel, wait.”

  “Get out,” she said. Then, when he didn’t move. “I said, get out!”

  “They’re not for me!”

  “I don’t care.”

  She pushed him. Her small hands against his metal skin. He’d killed more people than there were cats in Central Station. He took the bag of dope and left, heard her crying behind him.

  “What are you doing?” Miriam said.

  “What?” Boris said. Miriam stood in front of him, hands on her hips.

  “You’re buying faith?”

  “I . . . what?”

  “Motl was here. He left you something. And Isobel was here earlier, crying.” Miriam shook her head. “The day I’ve had!” she said. “That god artist was here this morning. Eliezer. Asking about you, and Carmel. Care to tell me what you’re not telling me, Boris?”

  “Miriam, I . . .”

  “I know she came here because of you. I like her, Boris. You know that. She’s strong. She has to be strong, to survive that sickness she has. But why didn’t you tell me?”

  He looked at her. Shook his head. The Martian aug pulsed gently on his neck. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I have to be able to trust you,” she said. He couldn’t bear the look in her eyes. The disappointment. Even when he left for space, all those years before, she had not looked at him like this.

  “I am just trying to help,” he said. Feebly.

  “Here.” She passed him the bag. The white powder inside it. “Next time, just tell me.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  He’d not said it before.

  Now the words were out.

  Her lips twitched. Was it the beginning of a smile?

  “Boris Aharon Chong,” she said. “I don’t know why I put up with you, sometimes.”

  The god artist came to visit Ibrahim on the hill in Jaffa. It was evening and the sky was painted a lurid red, the dying sun’s light smeared across the sky ab
ove the sea. He came into the Palace of Discarded Things and looked around him with an approving set to his lips. The vast junkyard was illuminated by bare electric bulbs.

  “Take what you need,” Ibrahim said, and Eliezer nodded when he said, “I always do.”

  He couldn’t follow her into this virtuality. She was glad of the knowledge, now. Isobel strapped herself into the pod, pulled the cover over herself. Level Three, Central Station. Work. Machines hissed as cables attached themselves to her ports and locked with a soft kiss.

  And then she was elsewhere.

  She was Isobel Chow, Captain of the Nine-Tailed Cat, a starship slick and black. Her crew were on board: waiting for her to command them. “Set course to . . .” she hesitated, but only momentarily. “Set course to Orlov Port, Delta Quadrant,” she said. Her senses were alive, they reached everywhere within the ship. The ship was hers. The Guilds of Ashkelon universe spread out from her, a universe as vast and unexplored as the real.

  Screw Motl, she thought, with sudden savagery. She grinned, and the light of the triple suns of the solar system outside the ship reflected off her dark shades. Then the view blurred as the ship went into game-world hyperspace.

  With each new season a further god was added to the streets and alleyways of Central Station.

  There were wind gods: with delicate fronds they floated in the sky above the rooftops, sending out a shimmering haze; some absorbed sunlight, some absorbed rain. Some exploded unexpectedly, to the delight of children down below, showering the world with fragments of light, or sweet, white spun sugar, or dreams that burrowed into one’s node and woke them, days or months later, hugging themselves from a happy memory they could no longer quite recall.

  There were fire gods: they danced on metal, shimmering on old copper wiring, they burst out of the open drums where the robotniks made their fires, or sang out from glinting surfaces, catching one’s reflection by surprise. There were earth gods: silent, patient, some buried entirely, so that no one even knew they were there, some rising out of the ground, mounds and miniature hills one could lie against, could press a cheek to earth and pray, soundlessly. And there were water gods, who gurgled in the taps, who slithered like eels, who fell from the sky like rain but were not rain, were the fragments of a digital’s dream.