Itch: Nine Tales of Fantastic Worlds

by Kris Austen Radcliffe

  I stared at the blobs on the card table thinking, yes, Willa’s life will be different. Someone else had brought her the clay today, and I could see it. Actually, honestly see the difference. The world had a pinkish cast, now.

  “I don’t think it matters if I choose anymore,” I whispered. Helping Willa was no longer my role.

  She’s frowning an exact frown, one practiced for the stage. She’s worn stage make-up, or will, I don’t know. Make-up not all that different from whatever sat on the table. She used to dance with the beads—marbles—ground up and worn on her face.

  “I wish you understood what losing you means to the world.” She’s not looking at me and I don’t think she meant me to hear what she said. She frowns again, and holds up a pinch of clay. “What you brought me had a taste to it, something so subtle just sniffing won’t do.”

  She knew about my disability. She’d always known. “Why didn’t you say something, Willa?” She never offered help.

  Willa shrugs and sits back in her chair. “It wasn’t my place, dear.” Her hands wave around almost as if they have a mind of their own. “This is my place.”

  What was I going to do now? I wasn’t good at transitions. They were scarier than driving, or snakes, or flavors I couldn’t identify. I often just blanked them out, choosing to let my body deal with them without the interference of my mind trying to think. But if Willa understood, maybe she could help.

  She nods as if she already knew what I was going to ask. “You know, there’s really not a lot left in this world. It’s been used up. What’s left is nothing more than a phantom swirled up out of bits and data.” When she drops another bead onto her pile, I hear it hit. Little twinkling bells, like faeries. Or someone’s cell phone going off. “But you gave back, honey. You donated and I thank you for your service.” She nods toward the wall. “Look in the cabinet, dear.”

  I slowly push back my chair. The scraping is harsh now, loud, and full of more resonance than I’ve ever noticed before. Out in the hallway, I hear people shuffling by, both residents and nurses. Someone’s grumbling about the tasteless mashed potatoes the kitchen’s suddenly serving. The nurse huffs, not caring.

  My attention spins back to the cabinet and its unchanging, void of a door. Whatever’s behind it is silent now, as much a void of noise as it is a void of color. My fingers dance over the surface, searching for a handle or a grip—someplace I can get purchase. But the pads of my fingers slide over its surface like I’m touching ice. Or air.

  But it’s got a scent. It smells like steel, and a little like a gun. I almost run my tongue over my fingers but stop, realizing what I’m doing. And realizing in this case, I don’t want to know.

  I hear another bead land on the pile.

  “Open it, darling,” Willa says behind me. “It’s not random, only complex.”

  This time, my fingers find what they need. This time, the cabinet door swings open.

  It’s not black inside anymore. It’s bright and warm as the surface of the sun but in a life-giving way, not the incinerating way. It’s all colors and sounds and I think I’m looking at life on Earth. Not some of it, not the mold and gross shit that would grow in a place like this, but all of it. And I wonder if that monitor above the cabinet is there just to give Willa a larger bandwidth when she’s deciding on what beads to make next.

  “Reach inside,” she says, pointing into the brilliance. Strangely, I understand what she wants. Maybe all these years not being able to sort what I’m seeing trained me for this moment. Or maybe it’s just a happy coincidence. But for once, I feel like I have a purpose.

  My fingers stroke moss. They touch bark and fur and fire. I poke mud and water. Rainbows dance on my fingernails and my skin pales to nothing at the same time it darkens as deep as a human’s can get. And when I pull them back, I taste it all. Decades, epochs, places and times humans cannot fathom.

  Willa’s right. It’s not random. It’s complex.

  “Did you find it?” She’s turned around now, facing me and the cabinet, her back to the washed-out brightness of the outside world. She’s a dancer again, an artist. A sculptor. And she’s here in this nursing home because her family didn’t want her around anymore.

  I almost ask “Find what?” but I realize I’m holding something in my hand. It sits on my palm, so smooth I barely feel it, so light it almost floats. It’s shimmering, but not with its own light. It’s picking up reflects from me.

  “Oh,” I breathe. I think I’m looking at my soul.

  I wonder what it will taste like.

  “Don’t, darling.” She holds out her hand, her fingers wiggling.

  Don’t swallow my own soul? Don’t take in what should have been inside me all along? My cheeks heat—I’m pissed. Is this why I have the stupid dumbass disability? Because I’m missing something vitally important?

  Her eyes widen and she sighs, her shoulders slumping. “Sweetheart, why would it be that simple?”

  Her hand’s still out and her fingers still beckon. I look down at my palm. The little shimmering ball rolls and a wonderful symphony of strings and woodwinds fill the air.

  She wants me to give this up?

  Another sigh flows from Willa and she drops her hand. “You haven’t noticed, have you? How much clearer things are? How well you’re seeing? I know it takes time to recognize these things, but I was expecting better of you. You understand what that means, right? You’re going to do more than your daily infusions. You’re going to donate what needs donating.”

  I don’t really hear what she’s saying. I don’t honestly care. The ball holds too much promise. Too much freedom. I don’t think I have the strength I need to give it up.

  I try to close my fist around it, to hold it close and dear to my heart, but I can’t. My fingers won’t shut.

  Willa watches me with her piercing gaze. She’d got blue-green eyes, something I’d never noticed before. Bright eyes, full of intelligence and learning. And the hands of a dancer.

  The little ball’s missing from my palm. She steps back, pinching it between two fingers as if she’s eating a tea cake. Licking it, she closes her eyes. Her mouth scrunches up like the ball is bitter, like it was forged in the 00s and carries a slight slickness of decay, but that doesn’t stop her. She doesn’t pause, but finishes her movement the way she finishes her beads.

  Willa pops the little ball into her mouth and with one quick, delicate movement of her throat, swallows my soul.

  Swallows it whole. I think I blink. I think I’m frightened, but I don’t know. I can’t taste anything anymore. Not the air, not my tongue. Not time. Not the flat-grayness of the sky or any sense at all of a decade or lovers lost and not regretted. Not being fired either, because that’s irrelevant. I volunteered for this. I donated every day.

  Willa tastes, now.

  Willa and all of the bead-marbles.

  “Thank you, sweetheart.” She touches my cheek. “Would you like a glass of orange juice? It’s good here, in this place.”

  I shake my head no. Why would I want something I can’t taste?

  “Don’t worry about your job, darling.” Willa takes my hand and leads me toward the door and what I suspect will be my new room in this unchanging old home. “You’ll get used to it here,” she says. “I promise.”

  ~ ~ ~

  A young space pirate harbors a machine intelligence deep in the orbit of Jupiter….

  Diamonds and Bones

  The frigate captain sitting across from Sabastia was the ugliest son of a bitch she’d ever seen. Being that ugly took effort. He must primp for hours every morning, pockmarking his face. Preen his conjoined eyebrows so they danced like a sewer rat and scratch at his bulbous nose, just to achieve the perfect shade of sallow ruddiness.

  The bastard grunted and sat back in his chair, folding his arms across his chest. The three lackeys twitching behind him grunted too, a unified gesture of chimps reinforcing their alpha. All three shuffled and scowled, uncomfortable from standing on the
storeroom’s uneven grating. Like the other outposts beyond the Asteroid Belt, the space station’s economy suffered. But here within Jupiter’s gravity well, the costs of infrastructure upkeep were much higher, and the station’s rotting interior showed it.

  The walls creaked and one of the betas looked up, obviously concerned.

  They wanted off the station as badly as Sabastia. Good, she thought. Fear makes for faster deals.

  Seven years ago, before the War, Earth would never have allowed an outpost to become dangerous to its human inhabitants. Now, the Construct Intelligences—the artificial machine brains controlling the economic systems of Earth—no longer wanted to share resources.

  But not every Construct agreed. Some, like Tal, went rogue after the War. A .03 microsurge of radiation infiltrated the station’s shielding, the CI whispered through the speakers implanted in Sabastia’s ears. A hidden angel sharing her body, Tal squatted in Sabastia’s skeletal reinforcements and the other alterations her body required for off-Earth living.

  A sensor ping issued from the center male, Tal said. He carries visual and tactical augmentations. The other two protect him.

  The deal offered by the frigate captain would allow Sabastia to upgrade the systems onboard her ship, the Frost. If all went well, she and Tal would jump Jupiter’s gravity well and move freely throughout the outer Solar System. And maybe—just maybe—land one of the lucrative Titan runs.

  “Twenty minutes,” the captain said. He grinned, his yellow teeth gleaming like frozen piss under the dark room’s jury-rigged overhead light. The work lamp swung in rhythm with the space station’s creaking walls, elongating shadows and tossing glare into the corners.

  The flunkies glanced around, more unnerved than before.

  Captain Ugly wanted twenty minutes of processor time on the Frost’s computing core. No one got twenty minutes on a core. Ever.

  Sabastia laughed and tapped a finger on the table’s rough metal surface. The sensor systems in the gauntlet around her forearm pinged softly with each touch. She wasn’t some middling wannabe but a real Trader with real Trader augmentations—beyond her secret angel, who would stay hidden, especially from these scumbags.

  “What can I process that you can’t on your own ship?” She leaned into the lamp’s pool of light and flashed the corneal implant on her left eye.

  He captained a frigate, for goodness sake. Not a real Central Earth Research and Defense vessel, but still a contracted ship under the Sheins-White corporate umbrella. His ship’s core processed navigation data and the ship’s systems at the same time. And he had free access to the StormCloud Communication Net. He didn’t need twenty minutes on a Trader ship’s core.

  The captain placed his elbows on the table. “Why do you care, little girl?”

  He wishes to access the Trader’s Net.

  Sabastia snorted and sat back. Porn. In twenty minutes the ugly dumbass could download literally a lifetime’s worth without fear of the trackbots in the StormCloud.

  “Your bauble for twenty minutes?” She grinned, tapping her finger again. “It’s not worth five.”

  On the table between them, the diamond hilt glistened in its case. Dead center on the flat plank, the makeshift light on it like a spot, Sabastia watched color wiggle through its facets like a rainbow of snakes. She’d seen a similar artifact only once before—a computer core grown in the micro-gravity of the now-abandoned colony orbiting Titan. That cube had danced with the entire spectrum, shining as if the sun itself hid within the matrix. The hilt in front of her, weighted perfectly to counter a slashing blade, sparkled with the same brightness.

  But it wasn’t a weapon. The hilt was a mobile memory unit, designed to infiltrate from any physical contact regardless of access ports. Inside the crystalline structure hid over ten thousand monofilament tentacles.

  Tal could sequester significant processing power inside the luminous diamond. It would boost Frost’s navigation systems and they’d take their leave of Jupiter.

  “You know damned well what it is, child, and how much it’s worth.” The twitching of Captain Ugly’s thin lips matched the twitching of his lackeys.

  They’re networked, Tal whispered. Passive scanning initiated.

  Great. Fighting as one, they’d whip her ass. Better to outsmart the idiots.

  “I am a Holder, Captain. I outgrew ‘child’ long ago.” With the purchase of the Frost, she’d become a legal adult. Not a citizen yet, but close.

  “Six months? You’re a whelp.” Smirking, he drummed his fingers on the tabletop.

  “I’ll give you three minutes and my search bots facilitate all information transfer.” She mimicked his movements, tapping in the same rhythm.

  The three toadies snorted. The captain’s nose crinkled.

  “Don’t insult me,” the bastard snarled. “That pathetic hull of yours can’t do shit. You need ten minutes to open your hatches. Twenty is fair.”

  Sabastia’s muscles tightened, her fingers curling.

  A faint smile appeared on the captain’s disgusting mouth.

  “Your blood pressure rises.”

  Tal compensated. Sabastia’s body calmed but she kept her muscles tight. Better to let his lackeys read her physiology and think that their captain still had the upper hand.

  “Seven minutes. My bots facilitate.”

  “Fifteen. And my bots do the search.” The smug bastard’s brow-rat bopped over his tiny eyes.

  “Ten. My bots. You don’t put your fingers in my drives.”

  “Twelve.”

  Sabastia leaned forward. “Deal.”

  Another creak rattled through the station. The light swung, shadows dancing through the crates that lined the little room’s discolored walls. The augmented minion grimaced.

  “Passive scanning complete. Interface protocols and algorithms locked. I’ve hacked their network.”

  Sabastia’s hand moved over the table’s dented metal toward the hilt, but her eyes stayed on the men. After accepting and before the other party agreed was the most dangerous moment in a deal, especially with employees of the Sheins-White security force. These four were as likely to kill her as to consent.

  A dagger flashed, pulled by the augmented snake in the middle, and flicked toward her hand.

  Tal yanked Sabastia’s arm back. The dagger dug into the table, clinking in the space between her ring and middle finger.

  “Not so fast.” The captain’s meaty hand wrapped around her wrist. “I don’t like the idea of your traitor bots knowing my business. So I think we control your systems for the twelve minutes.”

  “Traitor” instead of “Trader”. The old insult dropped off his lips with the same venom the dock workers used to hurl racial slurs at each other.

  “There was an incident. They’ve covered most of their tracks.” A pause. “But Traders were involved.”

  So it wasn’t porn. They needed to mine the Net to finish their cover-up. No wonder they wanted twenty minutes.

  “They have no intention of leaving the memory unit.”

  His grip on her wrist tightened. “What you got in those leathers, little girl?” His eyes leered at her breasts.

  The incident—she didn’t need Tal to tell her what happened. “You’re trying to screw me out of a deal and get into my pants?”

  The flunkies chuckled.

  “They are tight, lovely. You’re going to bust right out.”

  Two of the minions stepped toward the table.

  “They will dock the Frost to their vessel and leave, us in tow. They believe their security bots can crack the Frost before they’re out of range of the station.”

  Tal could disable their ship in less than two minutes, but the Corp would become aware of her presence. They rode the edges of human existence patrolling for rogue Constructs, an excuse that netted them great profit. That, and stealing from Traders.

  Best to end this quickly. Sabastia’s corneal implants blazed on and augmented information overlaid reality. The little room br
ightened. Every crate, box, and nook glowed in full relief. The ceiling’s surface popped and the floor’s uneven edges danced. Sabastia saw the world in the fullness of its three dimensions.

  She knew every handhold, every weakness, every single spot where they’d trip or slip.

  “She’s got telemetry!” the augmented one yelled.

  The other two dropped to a crouch, hands reaching for concealed weapons.

  “One projectile weapon with smart bullets. Three knives.”

  The weapon’s positions highlighted in her vision.

  “Gun disabled.” Tal skated dangerously close to revealing herself.

  “My leathers do not concern you.” Sabastia pointed at the fingers constricting her wrist. “Let go. Now.”

  His grip tightened. Anger bobbed his swollen nose. “No one’s going to notice if a whelp with a derelict ship disappears. Then we pull as many minutes as we want.”

  “The other Traders will not tolerate you stealing the Frost.” But they might not retaliate. Or catch his frigate before it entered the Asteroid Belt. Trader ships didn’t access the positioning data in the StormCloud Net, limiting their navigation capabilities. Only a few of her crazier colleagues were willing to enter the Belt.

  Sabastia needed to do this on her own, and now.

  Captain Ugly bared his teeth. “We kill your kind every day. Central Earth doesn’t approve of pirates.”

  But they did approve of hired killers.

  Her free hand swiped for the dagger’s handle. Fast, but slower than her capacity. All four of the scumbags watched her fingers, their systems focused on assessing her threat potential.

  Sabastia twisted the wrist grasped by the captain. Momentarily confused, his gaze dropped to her hand. Sabastia thrust her palm into the underside of his jaw.

  A gurgle erupted from his throat.

  A second dagger whipped toward her head and she pulled right and caught the hilt. Straightening, she flipped the blade in her hand and jammed it into the captain’s retreating wrist. He shrieked like a wounded pig, his porky features blanching. Free of the bastard’s grip, she lunged for the diamond hilt.