Nebula Awards Showcase 2013

by Catherine Asaro

  Often, when the flow of time becomes too strong, I crawl into the dark space beneath my bed and run my fingers along the rough stones and jagged glass fragments that I have collected there. But today the pointe shoes are connecting me to the ground. I move to the center of the room, rise to full point . . .

  And wait.

  Time stretches and spins like molasses, pulling me in all directions at once. I am like the silence between one movement of music and the next, like a water droplet trapped halfway down a waterfall that stands frozen in time. Forces press against me, churning, swirling, roaring with the sound of reality changing. I hear my heart beating in the empty chamber. I wonder if this is how Daniel Tammet felt when he contemplated infinity.

  Finally I find it; the pattern in the chaos. It is not music, precisely, but it is very like it. It unlocks the terror that has tightened my muscles and I am no longer a mote in a hurricane. I am the hurricane itself. My feet stir up dust along the floor. My body moves in concordance with my will. There are no words here. There is only me and the motion, whirling in patterns as complex as they are inconstant.

  Life is not the only thing that evolves. My dancing changes every day, sometimes every second, each sequence repeating or extinguishing based on how well it pleases me. At a higher level in the fractal, forms of dance also mutate and die. People call ballet a timeless art, but the dance performed in modern theatres is very different from the ballet that originally emerged in Italy and France.

  Mine is an endangered species in the performance hierarchy; a neoclassical variant that no one remembers, no one pays to watch, and only a few small groups of dancers ever mimic. It is solitary, beautiful, and doomed to destruction. I love it because its fate is certain. Time has no more hold on it.

  When my muscles lose their strength I will relinquish the illusion of control and return to being yet another particle in the rushing chaos of the universe, a spectator to my own existence. But for now I am aware of nothing except my own movement and the energy rushing through my blood vessels. Were it not for physical limitations, I would keep dancing forever.

  * * *

  My brother is the one who finds me. He has often brought me here and waits with electronics flickering at his temples while I dance. I like my brother. I feel comfortable with him because he does not expect me to be anything other than what I am.

  By the time I have knelt to unlace my dance shoes my parents have arrived also. They are not calm and quiet like my brother. They are sweaty from the night air and speak in tense sentences that all jumble on top of each other. If they would bother to wait I might find words to soothe their frantic babble. But they do not know how to speak on my time scale. Their conversations are paced in seconds, sometimes in minutes. It is like the buzzing of mosquitoes in my ears. I need days, sometimes weeks to sort my thoughts and find the perfect answer.

  My mother is close to my face and seems distressed. I try to calm her with the answer I’ve been saving.

  “No new shoes,” I say. “I couldn’t dance the same in new shoes.”

  I can tell that these are not the words she was looking for, but she has stopped scolding me for leaving the house unaccompanied.

  My father is also angry. Or perhaps he is afraid. His voice is too loud for me, and I tighten my fingers around the paper sack in my hands.

  “Stars above, Hannah, do you have any idea how long we’ve been looking for you? Gina, we’re going to have to do something soon. She might have wandered into the Red District, or been hit by a car, or—”

  “I don’t want to be rushed into this!” Mother’s voice is angry. “Dr. Renoit is starting a new therapy group next month. We should—”

  “I don’t know why you’re so stubborn about this. We’re not talking about drugs or surgery. It’s a simple, noninvasive procedure.”

  “One that hasn’t been tested yet! We’ve been seeing progress with the ABA program. I’m not willing to tfhrow that away just because . . .”

  I hear the Zzzap of father’s shoulder laser. Because I have not heard the whine of a mosquito, I know that it has targeted a speck of dust. This does not surprise me. In the years since father bought the laser the mosquitoes have changed, but the dust is the same as it was millennia ago.

  A moment later I hear mother swear and swat at her shirt. The mosquito whizzes past my ear as it escapes. I have been keeping track of the statistics over the years. Mother’s traditional approach to mosquitoes is no more effective than Father’s hi-tech solution.

  * * *

  My brother takes me home while my parents argue about the future. I sit in his room while he lies down and activates the implants at his temples. Pinpricks of light gleam across his forehead, flickering because he’s connected to the Vastness. His mind is wide, now. Wide and broadening; horizons without end. Each pulse of his neurons flares across the thoughtnets to stimulate the neurons of others, just as theirs are stimulating his.

  Forty minutes later my grandparents pause by the open doorway. My grandparents do not understand the Vastness. They do not know that the drool pools at his cheek because it is hard to perceive the faint messages from the body when the mind is ablaze with stimuli. They see the slackness of his face, the glassy eyes staring upwards, and they know only that he is far away from us, gone somewhere they cannot follow, and that they think must be evil.

  “It isn’t right,” they mutter, “letting the mind decay like that. His parents shouldn’t let him spend so much time on that thing.”

  “Remember how it was when we were young? The way we’d all crowd around the same game console? Everyone in the same room. Everyone seeing the same screen. Now that was bonding. That was healthy entertainment.”

  They shake their heads. “It’s a shame young people don’t know how to connect with each other anymore.”

  I do not want to listen to them talk, so I stand up and close the door in their faces. I know they will consider the action unprovoked, but I do not care. They know the words for temporal autism, but they do not understand what it means. Deep inside, they still believe that I am just bad mannered.

  Faintly, beyond the door, I hear them telling each other how different young people are from the way they used to be. Their frustration mystifies me. I do not understand why old people expect the younger generations to hold still, why they think, in a world so full of tumult, children should play the same games their grandparents did.

  I watch the lights flare at my brother’s temples, a stochastic pattern that reminds me of the birth and death of suns. Right now, he is using a higher percentage of his neural tissue than anyone born a hundred years ago could conceive of. He is communicating with more people than my father has met in his entire lifetime.

  How was it, I wonder, when Homo habilis first uttered the noises that would lead to modern language? Were those odd-sounding infants considered defective, asocial, unsuitable to interact with their peers? How many genetic variations bordered on language before one found enough acceptance to perpetuate?

  My grandparents say the Vastness is distorting my brother’s mind, but I think it is really the opposite. His mind is built to seek out the Vastness, just like mine is attuned to the dizzying flow of seconds and centuries.

  * * *

  Night collides into morning, and somewhere along the way I fall asleep. When I wake the sky beyond my brother’s window is bright with sunlight. If I bring my face close to the glass, I can just see the flytrap with the magnificent blossom and the crumpled stem. It is too early to tell whether it will survive the day.

  Outside the neighbors greet each other; the elderly with polite nods or handshakes, the teenagers with shouts and gestured slang. I wonder which of the new greetings used this morning will entrench themselves into the vocabulary of tomorrow.

  Social structures follow their own path of evolution—variations infinitely emerging, competing, and fading into the tumult. The cathedral at the end of our street will one day host humans speaking a different language, wi
th entirely different customs than ours.

  Everything changes. Everything is always changing. To me, the process is very much like waves hitting the tidal rocks: Churn, swirl, splash, churn . . . Chaos, inevitable in its consistency.

  It should not be surprising that, on the way from what we are to what we are becoming, there should be friction and false starts along the way. Noise is intrinsic to change. Progression is inherently chaotic.

  Mother calls me for breakfast, then attempts to make conversation while I eat my buttered toast. She thinks that I do not answer because I haven’t heard her, or perhaps because I do not care. But it’s not that. I’m like my brother when he’s connected to the Vastness. How can I play the game of dredging up memorized answers to questions that have no meaning when the world is changing so rapidly? The heavens stream past outside the windows, the crustal plates are shifting beneath my feet. Everything around me is either growing or falling apart. Words feel flat and insignificant by comparison.

  Mother and father have avoided discussing synaptic grafting with each other all morning, a clear indication that their communication strategies must once again evolve. Their conversations about me have always been strained. Disputed phrases have died out of our family vocabulary, and my parents must constantly invent new ones to fill the gaps.

  I am evolving too, in my own small way. Connections within my brain are forming, surviving, and perishing, and with each choice I make I alter the genotype of my soul. This is the thing, I think, the my parents most fail to see. I am not static, no more than the large glass window that lights the breakfast table. Day by day I am learning to mold myself to a world that does not welcome me.

  I press my hands to the window and feel its cool smoothness beneath my skin. If I close my eyes I can almost feel the molecules shifting. Let it continue long enough, and the pane will someday find its own shape, one constrained not by the hand of humans but by the laws of the universe, and by its own nature.

  I find that I have decided something.

  I do not want to live small. I do not want to be like everyone else, ignorant of the great rush of time, trapped in frantic racing sentences. I want something else, something that I cannot find a word for.

  I pull on mother’s arm and tap at the glass, to show her that I am fluid inside. As usual, she does not understand what I am trying to tell her. I would like to clarify, but I cannot find the way. I pull my ballet slippers from the rustling paper bag and place them on top of the information packet left by the neuroscientist.

  “I do not want new shoes,” I say. “I do not want new shoes.”

  “The sauerkraut is what makes us special,” Lizzie explained as she opened up the plastic door to show Themba the hydroponic units. She scooped a pale green head of cabbage from the moist sand and placed it gently into Themba’s cupped hands.

  She held her breath as Themba cradled it in his palm, hoping: Please. Please don’t tell me that stuff grows everywhere at home.

  Themba ran a dark brown finger along the cabbage’s veins, then let loose a sigh of wonder. “That’s marvelous,” he said.

  Lizzie puffed out her chest. Themba had passed her final test. At ten years old, Themba was two years younger, six inches shorter, and eight shades darker than Lizzie was, and she’d known him for a record three days and nine hours. That made him her best friend ever.

  Themba leaned in through the access hatch to grab for another cabbage, but one of his escorts hauled him back out by the scruff of his red-and-gold kaftan. Lizzie was sure Themba would protest this time, but he ignored them as always. “You grow that stuff in here?” he asked her. “In space?”

  “Yup,” Lizzie said proudly, watching the escorts inspect the hydroponic basin for traps. “Momma says there are thousands of refill stations across the Western Spiral, but only we have genuine, home-made sauerkraut—one jar for ten indo-dollars, four for thirty. I know captains who chart an extra point on their jump-charts just to take some of our kim-chi home with ’em, yessiree.”

  “You gotta tell me how to make this stuff!” Themba stuck a thumb inside the jar of sauerkraut—the escorts had already tested it—and licked the juice off. “I mean, if it’s not a trade secret or anything.”

  “It’s pretty simple,” Lizzie said—though secretly, she wondered if Momma would mind her sharing. “I can show you now, if the stoops don’t get in my way.”

  “Aw, they’re good eggs. Come on, fellas, give us some room. It’s been three days, it’s not like she’s going to go all homi on me now.”

  The escorts squeezed reluctantly back out of the station kitchen, a convenience nook just large enough to allow two people to defrost prefabbed meals for the daily guests. Lizzie could see their muscles flex as they squatted on the aluminum cafeteria benches outside, glaring at Lizzie through the serving window.

  Themba’s escorts creeped Lizzie out; they had wrinkle-free faces that never smiled. They were utterly unlike Themba, whose broad, flat-nosed face was so expressive it flickered from mischievous grins to repentant sadness in the twinkle of an eye. Themba wore colorful, flowing robes, his cornrowed hair dotted with beads; his guards wore crisp, gunmetal-gray uniforms.

  “I’ve never cooked!” said Themba, rubbing his hands together at the unexpected freedom. “All my food gets brought to me. So when I’m staying with the Gineer heads of state, I’ll make sauerkraut for them. They’ll all ask, 'Where did you learn this amazing recipe?’ and I’ll say, 'In space.’”

  “That’ll impress them?”

  “You kidding? To hear that actual, grown food came from an outpost? In a system with no habitable planets? When I’m done, they’ll all be begging to live in space stations.”

  “Themba, you are awesome,” laughed Lizzie. “I hope your ship’s busted forever.”

  Themba blushed. “I love it here, but I need to get to my reward.”

  “What’s your reward?”

  “I’m gonna be—”

  One of the guards stood up, so fast he banged his knee against the cafeteria tables. Themba glanced over nervously.

  “It’s a secret,” he whispered. “A state secret. But it’s gonna be awesome.”

  If Themba said it was awesome, Lizzie believed him. Themba was the only visitor to Sauerkraut Station who’d ever understood just how awesome her home was.

  It was one of Lizzie’s duties to show their guests’ children around for the handful of hours it took Gemma and Momma to resupply their ships. Space travel was both expensive and time-consuming, so the kids were spoiled and cranky. Most wrinkled their noses and told her it stank in here, which it most certainly did not—Lizzie had lived her all her life, and she was sure she would have noticed any funny smells.

  Determined to prove how glorious life in space was, she always took them on the full tour, displaying all the miracles that kept her family alive in the void.

  Lizzie took them for a walk all the way around the main hallway, explaining how the central, cigar-like axis rotated to give Sauerkraut Station its artificial gravity. She told them why the station looked like a big umbrella—Lizzie didn’t know what an umbrella was, but the dirters always nodded—it was because the axis had a great, solar-paneled thermal hood on the end that shielded them from the sun. That hood simultaneously kept the heat off so they weren’t boiled alive and generated electricity to keep their servers running—a clever design that her great-great-Gemma had pioneered.

  To finish, she showed them the cabbages, which took a lot of time and precious energy to grow.

  “We have cabbages at home,” they yawned. “Can’t we go for a spacewalk? Or watch the ships dock?”

  Of course they couldn’t go outside. Lizzie only got her first spacewalk after months of training—and considering Sauerkraut Station only entertained five ships a week during the busy season, they weren’t likely to see any other ships.

  So her guests inevitably went down to press their noses against the observation deck window—the only window on the station looking ou
tside. That baffled her; why would anyone want to look at a boring old dust belt? They didn’t even know the constellations.

  Themba hadn’t wrinkled his nose.

  Momma had towed Themba’s crippled ship down off the edge of the system’s gravity well. He’d entered the station with a cautious wonder bordering on reverence. And when Lizzie had showed Themba the banks of magnets that kept the worst of the radiation off, he’d asked all sorts of questions.

  When she’d offered to show him the EVAC suits, which Lizzie had never done before, Themba held up his hand to stop her.

  “My Dad says tourist stuff’s all the same,” he’d said. “Ships are ships. What’s important is the people who run it. What do you do for fun?”

  So she’d taken him to the observation deck to point out her Daddy’s body. She told him how he orbited by once every forty-seven days, and they always held up a candle for him.

  Themba saluted Lizzie’s father, real solemn and sad, like a soldier. He didn’t tell her it was creepy; instead, he asked what Daddy had been like.

  So Lizzie showed him Daddy’s constellation. She traced the family shapes on the narrow, scratched porthole of the observation deck: Daddy’s bear-constellation, Gemma’s turbine-constellation, Momma’s battleship. Themba started making up his own constellations until Lizzie explained that you only got to pick your own constellation when you turned thirteen.

  He stopped. She’d liked that.

  So Lizzie showed him how to make wishes off the microshields, where you said a question out loud three times and if a meteoroid got zapped before you could count to thirty, your wish would come true. And by the time Themba and Lizzie were done, Lizzie’s last wish was that Themba would stay here forever.

  Even though he was two years younger, he seemed older, because his Dad hauled him around the galaxy on diplomatic trips. He had lots of crazy stories. And though Lizzie wasn’t too clear on how life actually worked on a planet, Themba never got tired of answering her questions.