Philippine Speculative Fiction 9

by Andrew Drilon

  My arrival in Parang had been broadcast to the community and we were already busy planning. More than anything, we longed to see Luwalhati freed from the Compassionate’s benevolence.

  “We will speak together,” I say. “We may not yet be able to return, but our day will come and when it does we must be prepared.”

  Manong Patrice grunts and mutters a prayer as he positions the four gods around the wheel of power.

  “May the wisdoms come to us,” Patrice says. “May the gates of true freedom be opened and may we return to our homes and reclaim what was lost.”

  I think of my little sister’s sacrifice and when we recite the litany of names, I whisper her name under my breath.

  She gave her life in exchange for mine. Already, the denunciations have reached my ears. She allowed her old life to die so I might live. Even if I must die again, I will not fail my sister’s trust.

  “Who are our brethren on the other planets?” I ask. “If we combine our strengths, surely we will be able to raise enough power to fuel a revolution.”

  THE REVOLUTION STARTED as a whisper in the back alleys of the places of refuge. The elder houses were gathering together their power and there were garda from other worlds who joined themselves to our cause.

  When the embargos were put into place, Sarrat and his son barricaded themselves in the Central Palace. The join boxes hummed with transmissions from Luwalhati to the Mothership and from there to where the Compassionate held a base on Silhouette. Perhaps Sarrat and his council hoped for the return of the Pacifying Troops.

  But they knew, just as well as we knew, there would be no stopping this uprising. A nation, once awakened, will refuse to sink back into Silence and subjugation.

  On the third day after the first transmission, we marched out into the streets. We linked our arms and marched towards the Palace and the cordon.

  We did not know if we would meet with death. We only knew we were going there.

  Above the Palace, the colors of the Leader-Elect hang limply. The guards who blocked our way looked nervous.

  We stood before them and raised our voices.

  “Your time is over,” we said. “Let those who love Luwalhati prevail.”

  The guards raised their weapons and for a moment we were silent. Then, a wave of voices rose up from behind and around us. If the guards shot us down, we had no defense against them.

  As we stood there, we heard a high shrill sound. It was that fabled being, the one the Compassionate had gifted to Sarrat. We watched it descend from the skies above us, and we wondered if we would all be erased with a blink of its eye.

  We stood there, ready to accept our death, but the being did not turn toward us. Instead, it surround Sarrat and his son in a ball of light. It pulsed once, twice and then another high shrill sound brought us to our knees.

  When we looked again, Sarrat and his son had vanished.

  -Filomena Adyay, The Fall of The New Society-

  DOVE OF MY heart,

  As much as we know, Sarrat and his son were sent to one of the obscure stars.

  As much as we know, Nene was last seen in their company.

  As much as we know, none of them returned to Luwalhati.

  My heart aches for you as it aches for the loss of my sister.

  IT WOULD BE more comfortable to indulge my grief and retire from public life forever. Sometimes, I curse whatever gene it is that makes me choose the path of struggle. Why can’t I take the easy road when others have no trouble taking it?

  I have mapped out my proposals as I remember them.

  Here I am raising my voice again. Here I am, joining my lot with Luwalhati’s dreamers. We who are from a generation who saw a vision of what our lives could be (you would think all our dreams had died in the pits of suffering and anguish) we still hold onto our vision of freedom.

  This is our heritage.

  We say this to all the young ones.

  We sit down with them and teach them the forgotten expressions. It is not their fault that so much has been excised from their memory. It is not their fault that they have no remembrance of who we were and where we came from.

  Come home.

  We send the call out to those who have left.

  We need you.

  Surely those who share in our love will read the message within the words.

  Reconnect.

  Return.

  Remember.

  Crystal Koo

  Anthropomorpha

  Crystal Koo was born and raised in Manila. She is currently in Hong Kong writing, teaching at a university, and playing the guitar in a band. Her recent short stories are published in or are forthcoming in The Apex Book of World SF 3, Maximum Volume: Best New Filipino Fiction, Philippine Speculative Fiction 8, International Speculative Fiction, and Abyss & Apex. Her work has won the Hong Kong Top Story Competition, the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature, and the UNSWeetened literary competition from the University of New South Wales. She maintains a blog at cgskoo.wordpress.com and tweets @CrystalKoo.

  LUZ USED TO be a marcupo and covered herself up in human form. Like other anthros, the urge to shift back sometimes came in the most terrible moments—a meeting, a date—and she’d have to dash to the toilet or a dark alley. She applied for an H. Anthropomorpha–Right ToAppearPubliclyInNaturalForm–LimitedWorkPermit–LimitedHealthcare– ReproductionSubjectToApproval–NoRightToInternationalTravel–NoRightToRunForPublicOffice license but it was rejected. The threat level of a marcupo was considered to be Very Severe. This meant that if she didn’t want to be arrested, she had to keep up a human disguise in public at all times. She could tell people what she was but that was up to her, and really, who’d want to tell anyone anyway?

  Not her. Two years ago, Luz found Dr. Cardoso, who masqueraded as a gastroenterologist and used his private clinic as a gateway for mutagenic operations. The procedure was totally irreversible, deliciously illegal, and turned Luz entirely into H. sapiens.

  That same afternoon, Tai was in a rally at a park in Quezon Memorial. She was listening to Dominic, the head of the anthropomorpha union, talk about streets full of anthros, about leaves from the trees falling on their scales, their feathers, their leather skin. A day when the license to exist was no longer necessary. He stood in natural form for the duration of the entire speech under broad daylight. Siokoy ako. It had been daring and symbolic. Tai signed up with the union that day, determined to be in garuda claws and feathers at his side when that day came.

  THE GIRL DRESSED in human form introduces herself to Luz as a garuda. It’s part of Luz’s job as Dr. Cardoso’s secretary to know that garudas are also classed as Very Severe, so Luz makes sympathetic noises and gives the woman a medical form to fill. A wakwak is preening on the left.

  Tai stays by Luz’s reception desk and studies the document. The berberoka next in line groans loudly but doesn’t say anything.

  “So were you always sapiens or did you have the operation too?” Tai asks Luz.

  “What would an original sapiens be doing here?” Luz smiles at Tai. “You can sit down now, miss.”

  “A lot of sapiens groups out there are saying mutagenic ops should be legalized,” says Tai. “Eradicate anthros unless they join the human fold. You could be supporting the cause.”

  “The only cause I support is getting you to wait by the sofas,” says Luz, her smile tightening, “and I’m afraid you’re holding up the line.”

  “Don’t you miss it?”

  The berberoka is now listening intently. The solicitousness in Luz’s voice thins. “Miss what?”

  The back of Tai’s skin shatters open, like clouds in a monsoon. Brown feathers throb underneath, and long, luscious wings, her largeness, fly open across the room. Claws break out from the webs between her fingers; she bristles her feathers and every muscle in her young, sinewy body is clenched.

  “What we should be more concerned about is all of us being able to walk around the streets exactly the way we are.” Tai raise
s her voice and it trembles. “Not having to shift into human form when we’re in public so people wouldn’t suspect anything. And God forbid, not having permanent operations to become sapiens. This is all backwards!”

  “If you’re having second thoughts about seeing Dr. Cardoso,” says Luz, “you can schedule another consultation. Please keep your voice down.”

  “One time I tried to walk out in public in natural form,” says Tai, undeterred. “I tried midnight. I thought maybe there’d be less people to ‘offend’. I walked out and ten seconds later, someone was yelling at me. Turn around and show me where your hole is, he said.”

  Luz has picked up the phone and is punching a number.

  “I told him if I slept with him, I’d crush his tiny little spine,” says Tai, her face flushed. She takes out a sheaf of brochures from the backpack she has left on the floor. She places them on the table.

  Luz is speaking quietly into the receiver as she looks at Tai’s large, avian eyes.

  “We’re having a meeting next week. Come with us,” says Tai. “Our speaker’s name is Dominic. He’ll help you remember that what’s in our blood is stronger than we think.”

  “Some of us want to forget,” says Luz, hanging up the phone as the guards come in.

  TAI SHIFTS INTO human form, pulling out a blouse and a new pair of pants from her backpack and putting them on. The guards knock on the door and tell her to hurry up. This part always humiliates her. She needed to burst through her clothes and into natural form to make a statement earlier but now she needs to have human legs back on before anyone else outside can see her and get her arrested.

  On her way out of the building, she replays the glare Luz had given her before hanging up. There had been resentment there, anger at the fact Tai had something she doesn’t. Courage? A clear conscience? Some clunky definition of freedom? Tai isn’t sure but she’s seen it nearly every time she goes pamphleteering. She knows it comes from their last remains of doubt. It’s when that resentment flares that Tai knows what she has said or done has somehow sunk in. But that’s where it stops. Time drips like morphine, their anger melts, and Tai is forgotten.

  The traffic when she takes the bus is oppressive, demoralizing. Across the road, a sarangay in natural form puts his grocery bags down and pauses to slip a cigarette into his thick, bull lips. He’s not wearing a license around his neck. People stare and the police officers nearby point at him but they don’t arrest him. The sun is too hot today.

  Tai is aware she’s jealous of the sarangay’s level of defiance. Sometimes she thinks the point of the anthro license is just the sapiens’ way of dividing anthros. Give some of them rights and none for the others, give them classes, and watch the fireworks.

  Tai gets off the bus at City Hall, crosses the tunnel under Circle, and surfaces at Quezon Memorial. The monument is insouciant, asleep, and children on bicycles frolic around its feet.

  Tai withdraws into the leafier, darker parts of the park where the ice cream carts wouldn’t bother her. This is where she goes when she feels her resolve dismantling itself.

  Everyone in the union understands that you have to give it time when you’re dealing with an entire planet that has built their sense of normalcy on how different they are from you. It’s good enough for Tai on most days, but there are moments when she needs more.

  Nearby, where the rally stage had been erected two years ago, is a man wearing glasses on his paunchy, sensitive face. It takes a few seconds for Tai to realize, with a shot of horror, that it’s Dominic.

  He’s a short man when he’s on two legs. She has never seen him in human form before, especially at the union office, but she recognizes his face. Sapien clothes! Plaid longsleeves and corduroy pants. Tai can’t be bothered to realize the hypocrisy of thinking this even though she’s in jeans herself. She’s not the head of the union. She’s not the one with a quiet voice that shows its passion with words of conviction.

  She doesn’t know if she should reveal herself. The embarrassment would be immense.

  He’s limping right now like a man with a shorter leg. This makes sense. In the office, he goes around in siokoy form in a water tank placed on a large, makeshift segway. A siokoy’s threat level is low enough for him to be able to get a license but he has opted not to because he doesn’t believe in having to get permission to be who he is. A part of his tail is mangled. He says a human once tried to hack it away with an ax when he was sent to a school-run rehabilitation camp when he was young. Everyone has always tried not to stare. Despite his charismatic speeches, he keeps to himself most of the time.

  It’s been a rough day. Tai’s indignation gets the better of her.

  “Dominic,” she says.

  She’s right. The embarrassment is potent enough to take down a tikbalang. Dominic whirls around, stumbling on his bad leg. The expression on his face is crushing. He takes his glasses off and wipes the sweat away, looking (Tai thinks numbly) like a human father about to lose an argument against his two-legged toddler about why they shouldn’t have another ice cream.

  “Tai, I didn’t know you’re here,” he says and makes it worse.

  Stop limping, Tai thinks helplessly.

  “I was giving pamphlets,” she says. “To a place for mutagenic operations.”

  Dominic winces like any unionist. This makes Tai feel better.

  “I was tired and I needed some fresh air,” says Tai. “I came here so I can be reminded of things.”

  “Really?” Dominic shifts his weight and starts rolling up his sleeves up to show very human forearms. “I’m here for the same thing too. Kind of.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The head of the Cavite office died yesterday,” he says. “Romualdo. Shot through the head.”

  The afternoon sun comes down in hazy slits under the trees. News that isn’t news. “Which party does the killer work for?” asks Tai.

  “Suicide,” says Dominic, staring at the dust motes dancing in the light. “Left a note. He died from a tiny little nine-millimeter.”

  Tai allows some time for silence. “Are you sure?”

  “He was a kapre. You’d have to be very close to Romualdo to use a gun that small on him. And on his head.”

  Tai isn’t convinced. News that isn’t news.

  Dominic straightens himself. “You know that old myth about what happens when an anthro dies? When their soul leaves this planet, it gets a little colder here because there’s a bit less anito fire to go around with. Good against global warming.” He smiles broadly at Tai. “Romualdo would’ve liked that. Everything he ate was organic.”

  Later Tai takes the train home. The moment she locks the deadbolt of her apartment door, she throws off her clothes and once her bra hits the floor, she transforms.

  She wants to get into a fight. She doesn’t know with whom. So she dives into writing a press release for the union’s public meeting next week.

  She’s deep in the middle of a mental diatribe when Dominic rings her phone.

  “It was good seeing you earlier,” he says.

  “I’m sorry about Romualdo.” She really is.

  “Can you come to the union office tomorrow?” he asks. “I need to talk to you about something.”

  “Good news?”

  “Potentially for everyone.”

  They hang up and Tai finds out she can’t concentrate on the press release anymore. She goes to the living room and discovers someone has thrown an egg against one of the windows, the yolk leaving a runny stain. People know what she is. She’s never hid it when she’s at home. She doesn’t draw the curtains shut. Every little bit helps.

  She’ll clean the splattered egg tomorrow. She turns the television on.

  LUZ ARRIVES HOME to the smell of her mother frying shallots and garlic on the pan. She goes to her bedroom, closing the curtains before she undresses herself. Her father had died of a stroke years ago and there’s only herself and her mother in the house now, but she locks the door out of habit anyway.
r />   Neither her father nor her mother are anthros; it was a recessive gene that decided to buck the trend when her turn came. Her telling them had been a whispered affair steeped in guilt when they caught her in mid-transformation. Her father had said, “Turn into human form when you’re in public so you don’t rub it in anyone’s face. Don’t make life difficult for us and don’t ever let me see you that way again,” and that was all there is, but her mother, a soft-spoken woman always plagued with migraines, gradually stopped speaking with her.

  After the operation, Dr. Cardoso said she could pay everything back, including the flight to Penang, by working as his secretary. At least her mother could look her in the eye now.

  Luz sits down on her bed and reaches for her shoulder bag. She had thrown the brochures away when the girl had left but she kept one for herself. It says she can meet other anthros in natural forms in a safe place, license or no license. Free food, free coffee, music and all-day talks. It sounds like college to Luz. She had tried joining the university organizations before and didn’t enjoy them.

  Tomorrow she will treat her sapiens friends from high school to dinner and they will talk about sapiens problems and she will listen and nod and sigh and she will learn her role from them and play it well.

  TAI DROPS BY the union office in the evening, her garuda feathers molting a little on the wooden floor. Dominic is alone and back in his water tank in siokoy form. He has lost the discomfort of the other day and replaced it with a self-satisfaction that shows in how smoothly he moves the segway to open the door for her.

  “Beer and pizza,” he says, gesturing at the table. Tai hands him a copy of the finished press release.

  “This is exactly why I want to do this one on one with you,” he says, glancing quickly at what she has written. “And why I want you to be the first one I talk to.”

  “Did they find out who killed Romualdo?” she asks.

  Dominic’s face falls a little. “He killed himself, Tai.”