by Kris Schnee
As she explored the wooded slopes, the son of Big Beer Pijiu the innkeeper found her. The young man lowered his bow. "Chie! What are you doing?"
She shrugged. "Hunting Wuling."
Pijiu's son laughed. "I see. She's a fine doe, very light and speckled."
"Where is she?"
"I think I saw her near the shore over there, but she bounded away too quickly for me. You'd better hurry before she's caught."
"Thank you!" she said, and started running downhill. The soil softened near the coast.
Something rustled in the bushes. Chie grabbed an arrow, more carefully this time, and nocked it. Everything went quiet, but then she spotted a flicker of movement. She pulled back the string, let go, and flubbed the shot completely, stinging her fingers. She hopped and hissed, clutching her hand. Meanwhile the padded arrow bounced off a branch. A boy ducked and yelped in surprise.
He said, "Watch where you're... huh?" He recognized Chie, frowned, then got distracted by another sound. Both hunters spotted the source: a beautiful doe with pale speckled hide. The boy drew his bow.
"She's mine!" Chie shouted, drawing another arrow.
"Fine! Whatever." The boy ran in search of another target.
The deer panicked and bounded straight at Chie. She dodged. Her hands trembled with the bowstring's tension and her arrow wobbled in midair — but the deer dodged the wrong way and got hit sidelong! Soot from the rounded arrowhead left a mark. Chie's prey staggered and stopped to look at her.
"Got you, Wuling!" Chie marched up to the deer and faced her down. "My wish is for you to call off your engagement! You've got to promise or you'll be cursed by the spirit of the hunt."
The deer stared at her and nodded, with an expression Chie couldn't read. Chie took out the spare robe she carried and dropped it, then struck the doe with her piece of iron. She did it a bit harder than necessary.
The deer's body reshaped in fits and starts that looked painful to watch. She grew gradually bulkier, somehow wrong for Wuling's natural build. Chie stared at her prey, held one hand to her mouth, and then turned aside in embarrassment as the animal became a naked Kan Ma.
Kan snatched the spare robe and struggled to cover himself as soon as he had thumbs again. "Ow! You almost got me caught by Che-u!"
"W-what are you doing here like this?"
"I saw that look. You were going hunting, I knew it! I didn't want Wuling's family to lose face by breaking the marriage contract." He stood. "But now I have an obligation to call it off." He smiled. "Honoring this festival-wish of yours makes for a good excuse."
Chie stammered, "Then... then you really do... prefer me?"
Kan shrugged. "I didn't say that. I was hoping to hunt today, catch whatever young lady I can find, and demand a home-cooked meal."
She tried to read his expression, but he could be as stoic as his father. If she was going to catch him after all, she would need to be captured in turn. Blushing, she set down her iron and her bow and quiver, then retreated behind a tree for privacy. She began the prayer of the deer, the least suited to her by destiny, and let it reshape her into an antlered buck. Before she lost her voice to the change she called out, "You make a nice doe!" For a moment a thought flickered across her mind that the two of them could play together in the forest, both transformed, and be well matched for each other.
A call came back, "I'll get you for that!"
The chase didn't last long. She dodged and taunted Kan up and down the forest, leaping at the fun of outwitting him each time. Twice someone else came near but she ducked their shots and continued, until she came to a place where boulders blocked her escape route. An arrow struck her in the leg, fired with an easy grace. Chie stuck out her tongue at Kan, and bowed her head in defeat.
Once she'd accepted his demand for a meal, he tapped her with the iron. Kan watched her body slowly returning to human and his gaze lingered for longer than was proper before he turned away. Chie didn't much mind.
While they sat together on a log, making fun of each other, a sleek black bear padded into the clearing with Wuling on its back. Wuling stared at them. "But I thought she wouldn't go!"
Chie shrugged. "You should just accept fate." That looked like the bear form of Pijiu's son. So, he had been the one to capture Wuling? Chie looked at him and said, "Did you direct me to the wrong target on purpose?"
The bear only gave her a sharp-toothed grin.
Wuling tried to copy Chie's nonchalance. "At least Kan will see how badly you cook."
"Actually," said Chie, "I caught him first."
Wuling slid down from the bear's back. "What? Kan, what did this mudskipper do?"
"I'll have to explain later," Kan said, since Chie was laughing and pulling him by the arm. "Sorry!" Together the two Horse-month friends ran. On the way home they became horses and charged along the shore, back to the village.
* * *
Hooves tapped at Liren's door. She opened it and blinked at the two horses. She found an iron and tapped both, then went inside to fetch clothes for them. "I heard," she said. "So, is there another betrothal coming?"
Kan sat stiffly and cross-legged, very close to Chie. "My father would practically sell me to another rich girl, for the dowry."
"I don't blame him for wanting to do that," said Chie, "but I can't give him treasure if that's what he most wants."
Liren said, "Destiny is against you, then."
Kan said, "We'll make our own. We'll run away if we have to."
Liren pressed a cup of tea into Chie's hands and another into Kan's. "There may be troubles you haven't seen. Are you sure?"
They stared into their tea for a while, worrying. Eventually they looked up, silently exchanged cups, and drank.
Turning Back
Alice smiled up at me from the waterbed, inviting me to share it once more. She was dressed only in a one-piece swimsuit that blended in with her grey pelt, creating the appealing illusion that she was nude while being "safe for work", as she put it. People who worked for themselves could wear whatever they wanted, and people who lived in modern Cuba could be whatever they wanted. Her big rabbitty incisors and long fuzzy ears made her grin contagious. She said, "What brings you here, Miguel? Decided to take me up on my offer to move in, after all?"
I set down my suitcase and looked around her home. It didn't take long, since it consisted of a single cargo container cleverly divided into bedroom, bathroom and kitchen/office yet made to look like the cabin of a luxury yacht. These days living in a small space was mostly an affectation left over from the lean times, right after the US secession crisis, when the world had turned upside down. Meanwhile I'd seen this land, my home country of Cuba, become free after the reign of the Castros.
I said, "I've been thinking about how we got here."
The rabbit-girl rolled over onto her belly, making the bed ripple. She sat with her hands under her fuzzy chin and twitched her whiskers. "I'd rather not, amigo. Those days are over."
I sighed, because that was exactly why I'd come. "For you they are, but not for everyone. What if you could help people in another country to get the kind of life you have?"
"I do that already. My designs already feed people in every place they're legal."
Alice was an industrial biotech engineer, or Food Alchemist according to her business card. She made the wondrous vertical farms and desert plantations that fed so many people, merging modified plants and fish and machinery into a harmonious system. Not that she or I had done anything Nobel-worthy. We'd just worked hard, gotten in early on helping to invent the latest wave of biotech, and been paid in stock. Alice and I had lived together (platonically) for the first, poorest years.
Cuba was creating the future! My homeland, of all places, now had free markets and the rule of law and a willingness to embrace the latest, most "unnatural" technology. We'd done well here, in an age when most of the world was sinking into the same central planning my people had abandoned. Now, we had to lead. I wanted to wave our flag to t
he whole world, saying, Come and see, and join us!
I said, "There's a trade show coming up in the United States. A chance to demonstrate some of your work. Not that they'll let you bring the gengineered stuff, but you can show off the machine side."
Alice waved one clawed hand dismissively. "If the Americans want to know what I do, they can watch my education videos or, y'know, give in and buy our inventions. What good is a demo in a country that bans the really cool tech?"
I sat on the bed beside her and stroked my fingers through the ruff of fur just beneath her neck, making her shiver. I wasn't sure she really understood what drove the new Cuba and the other self-proclaimed "Free States" in contrast to her old country. "The people back in your homeland are good people; they just have different goals. There's a chance to go visit for educational purposes... and to do some unadvertised work on the side."
The bunny's ears perked up. "You're talking about spy stuff."
"Officially no. We'd just be there to boast about farming and biofuels and to make business contacts. If we just happen to whisper in person to a few promising youngsters about how to leave the country without permission, that'd be a total coincidence."
My people were opportunists and proud of it. As soon as people like Alice figured out how to grow fur, someone was there to sell them fancy shampoo. As soon as it got tough to leave the US if you were a doctor or engineer — just like it once was in Cuba! — we invented ways to "expedite the emigration process".
"That sounds muy illegal, Miguel."
"Just a little." That was the nice thing about being born in a country bound with red tape: knowing how to work around it.
"And they wouldn't be Free States citizens."
"I'd buy them citizenship. Maybe even get a percentage of their future earnings and turn a profit off the whole deal." The Free States loved calling talented legal immigrants "refugees" to taunt the US with the implication that theirs was a country to run from.
Alice said, "And you know I can't go there at all. Why can't you relax? We have sun and waves and scenery here." She snuck her hands closer to undo a few of my shirt buttons.
I couldn't let myself accept what she was offering right now. "Do you remember when you left the US? You were the hotshot engineer, the wonderboy with the patents —"
"I was never a boy!" Alice said, flicking her ears back. "Not in my heart. Don't remind me of what I used to look like."
I pressed on. "That'll always be true, right? Just like how you're still human even though you're gengineered and part rabbit and part cybernetic and you might never die of old age. You'll still be you even if you have to, say, look like something else for a while."
Now she sat up, eyes wide. "What's in the suitcase?"
I nodded, keeping my eyes locked on her cute little black nose. "It's what you think. I need you to go back."
"No, no, that's crazy! Wait. Do you mean back to the mainland, or back to being an ugly naked ape? They won't even let me in; I'm an abomination to them."
"Why do you think that?" I asked.
"Because they see video of someone with cute bunny ears and a tail and they shout, Freak! How dare she!"
"How dare she what?"
Alice flopped backward and made a sort of snow angel with the waterbed's covers. "Geez, I don't know. Exist. Be what she wants to be. Use the latest tech to be better. Because it's evil to buy nice things for yourself while anybody is in need, no matter how much good your work does." She whapped her head backwards against a pillow and hissed.
"We can help people on this trip." I opened the briefcase and let her see the glittering syringe full of our latest medical nanites. She would need to change back into her old human male self. Between the anti-biotech laws and the paperwork, she really was a walking felony back in the US. To go there, she'd more-or-less need to undo all the things she'd done to her body since leaving. "I need your help, Alice. I wouldn't ask if your skills weren't important to the plan."
Alice said, "Why in dog's name would I let you change me back? Don't you know what I went through? I went from stupid intolerant parents and classmates who beat me up, to 'friends' who were so supportive until they found out I wasn't totally on board with their politics. And then they called me a 'self-hating Nazi trannie'. Ugh! I'm so done with both sides of that garbage. Nobody but me should care what I am, physically!"
"You can never totally get away from that kind of stupidity. Even here."
I reached out to scratch her long ears. I very much did like what she'd become, physically; her being called a freak by less open-minded people was the other side of the coin. If you get a new body, it ought to come with a thick skin.
Alice twitched and moved away, crossing her arms. Her eyes were a startled rabbit's, as though she were unsure whether to freeze or bolt. I sighed. "I had my own problems during the revolution. I don't feel a burning obligation to spend all my time and money helping the needy, but we really should make an effort. We can do some, ah, software and social engineering on this trip."
Flatly she said, "You want me to show off my tech as cover for hacking and forgery or something, to sneak people out of the country and bring them here."
"Something like that. It worked for you, didn't it?"
Alice seemed to shrink into the bed as she crouched, burying her head in her hands and shaking it no, no. "You smuggled me out, sure, but if it hadn't been for your promise about getting a new body, I wouldn't have gone. And now you want me to give it up, to turn back!"
Her words made me feel tired and heavy, with a little more of the world's weight falling on my shoulders. "We talked, that night before we took you away. About freedom."
"And I got it!" said Alice. "I got to be what I always wanted to be, with nobody to call me sick or evil."
"Yeah, but..." She'd heard plenty of Free States propaganda over the years, so if she still didn't understand our cause, would she ever? I took a deep breath and said, "Your goal was to transform, to become something physically new and experience all the differences in how you think and feel, and what you can do. What about other people's dreams? There are geniuses and other creative folks out there who have some vision as crazy as yours, that they can't do because it'll be regulated to death. We can give a few of those people a chance to escape to a land where they can try."
She still cowered on the sheets and I wanted her to open up, to smile at me again. "My own problems screwed up my life. I had ideas, but everything got overshadowed by feeling like I wasn't in the right body."
That feeling had been a big part of why she got into biotech in the first place. When we first met, she said she felt like she was evil, like she deserved to be shunned. Brilliant mind, caged ego. I said, "My point is that other people are hurting too, feeling like they can't live out whatever they want to do, because they're not free." I crouched beside her, afraid to touch her. "I'm asking as a friend. I'm not going to hurt you."
Alice said, "You're not gonna jab me with that needle and force me to go back?" The syringe glittered in its case nearby.
"No!" I said, startled. "What makes you think I'd do that?"
"Because you're not gonna take no for an answer!"
"I would." I struggled for what to say. "Why didn't you tear my clothes off when I came in, anyway? You've got enhanced reflexes and everything."
Alice blinked, with her ears hinting at a hidden smile. "Do you want me to?"
"I mean, why didn't you?"
She said, "It wouldn't have been any fun. Not if I'd been forcing you."
"Like rape."
Alice's ears flattened. "Yeah."
"In most of the world that's like what everyone is dealing with. Every aspect of their lives is monitored and regulated to conform to the standards of whoever's in power today. When I visit, it's like I'm on a leash."
"You're doing politics again. I never liked this abstract stuff. I just wanna live here in peace."
"So do I."
Her warm hands were on my shirt, th
is time clutching it and holding me close. Her little muzzle bumped my nose, and her eyes were as pleading as her voice. "Then stay! Don't risk getting arrested or worse back there. You've got no obligation to keep visiting, let alone to make this trip extra dangerous. You're letting their rules about gengineering hold you back from turning into something better than human. Doesn't everybody here talk about how it's great to be selfish?"
"I don't talk like that," I said, avoiding her eyes. "Looking after yourself first, and fighting people who want to control you, isn't the same thing as not caring about others. For me, being free means doing what I think is right, not what someone orders me to do. What does your own conscience tell you? To keep your nose down, work on your inventions, and ignore the outside world?"
Alice's cold nose slid past mine, as she looked down. "I'm afraid we won't come back if we go."
"Nobody's forcing us. We can refuse to help others. But will we be good people?"
"I don't wanna make this choice." She sighed. "But no matter what I do, it's a choice, right?"
"Yeah. Can't get away from that."
"I'm not a bad person, am I?"
"No. Even if you decide not to go. The important thing is that you decide. Don't let me push you around."
Alice hesitated, then hauled me right next to her and pressed my face to her breasts. I didn't mind the view, but she sniffled and her arm trembled. "I'd be the same inside, right?"
"You're a wonderful person, with the right to decide things yourself. Gorgeous, too."
"Can't hear ya," she said, stroking the back of my neck. "C'mon, now's the time to get the politics out of your system." I only mumbled.
I seemed to sink farther against her. The plan for another trip to the mainland scared me too, though I'd feel more confident with Alice beside me. Alice seemed to want nothing more right now than to share warmth with me, by mutual consent. It was a nice way to live.
Alice coughed and sniffled, so I held her tighter. I noticed that the fur tickling my fingers felt thinner. Surprised, I lifted my head and met her eyes. "Did you...?"