The Apex Book of World SF

by Mahvesh Murad

  He had walked as far from the sea as he could, the first months on Oceanus. All he had found was another shore on the other side of this swath of land. All there was here was this beach. All there was, this ocean.

  He poured some saltwater on the new wounds on his knees. The pain radiated upwards, like a wave taking over his body.

  The winds suddenly grew stronger. There was the distant roar of thunder.

  Theo let himself be filled by the sound of the sand shifting under the force of the wind, by the sound of the rising waves, by this ocean that was everything. The ocean filled him up, and the whole world fell away, and then Theo fell away and dissolved, and life was dismantled, and only the numbers were left.

  a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8…

  At night, like every night, Theo sent messages to the stars. Sometimes he used the broken transmitter from the craft; others, he talked to them directly, face to face.

  “Stars,” he said, “are you lonely? Are you there, stars?”

  d=40,1. This is the fourth holy number.

  You know, at first I thought this was a young planet. I thought that there was so little here because life was only just beginning. I could still study it, make all this worthwhile. But then, after a while, it became clear. The scarcity of life forms. The powdery sand, the absence of seashells, the traces of radiation, the shortage of fish. The fish, the improbable fish. It’s obvious, isn’t it? We are closer to an end than we are to a beginning. This ecosystem has died. We, here; well. We are just the aftermath.

  Stars, are you there?

  Day again, and a walk behind the craft to where his companions were buried. Theo untangled the kelp that had been caught on the three steel rods marking their graves, rearranged his red scarf around Tessa’s rod. Not red any more—bleached and worn thin from the wind and the sun and the rain.

  “It was all for nothing, you know,” he said. “There is nothing to learn here. This place could never be a home for us.”

  He heard a beast approaching steadily, its cranks turning, its feet landing rhythmically on the sand. It was Animalis Primus. A few more steps and it would tread all over the graves. Theo felt blood rush to his head. He started waving his hands, trying to shoo the beast, even though he knew better. The beast did not know graves. All it knew was water and not-water.

  “Go away!” he screamed. “What do you want, you stupid piece of trash?” He ran toward the beast and pushed it away, trying to make it move in the opposite direction. He kicked loose one of its knees. Immediately, the beast stopped moving.

  Theo knelt by the beast and hid his face in his palms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

  A slight breeze later, the beast started to limp away from the graves, toward the rest of its herd.

  Theo climbed to his feet and took a last look at his companions’ graves.

  “We died for nothing,” he said, and walked away.

  At night, Theo made his fire away from the craft. He lay down, with his back resting on a bed of dried kelp, and took in the night, the darkness, the clear sky.

  He imagined birds flying overhead.

  Remember birds?

  e=55,8. This is the fifth holy number.

  A few years ago the sea spit out the carcass of a bird. I think it was a bird. I pulled it out of the water, all bones and feathers and loose skin. I looked at it and looked at it, but I couldn’t understand it. Where had it come from? Was it a sign of some sort? Perhaps I was supposed to read it in some way? I pulled it apart using my hands, looked for the fleshy crank that used to animate it. I found nothing. I left it there on the sand. The next morning it was gone.

  Did you imagine it?

  Perhaps I imagined it. Or maybe this planet is full of carcasses, they just haven’t found me yet.

  How do you know it was a bird?

  Have you ever seen birds?

  Are you sure?

  Theo’s emaciated body ached as he pulled himself up from the cold sand. He shouldn’t sleep outside, he knew that much.

  How much of this sand is made of bone?

  Had the winds come during the night, he could have been buried under a dune in a matter of minutes. Animalis Elegans was swinging its wings in the soft breeze, walking past him, when a brilliant flash of light bloomed in the sky. A comet. It happened, sometimes.

  Are you there? he thought.

  Are you lonely?

  f=39,4. This is the sixth holy number.

  Animalis (Latin): that which has breath. From anima (Latin): breath. Also spirit, soul.

  Breath is the wind that moves you; what does it matter if it fills your lungs of flesh or bottles? I have lungs of flesh, I have a stomach. What is a soul made of?

  Do you have a soul? Do I?

  The breath gives me voice. The fish is mute, the comet breathless; I haven’t heard any voice but my own in so long.

  Are you there? Are you lonely?

  When I was a little boy I saw a comet in the sky and thought: Wings are not enough to fly, but if you catch a comet with a bug net, well… Well, that might just do the trick.

  Breath gives life. To live: the way I keep my face on, my voice in, my soul from spilling out.

  Night already. Look, there is a light in the black above. It is a comet; see its long tail? Like a rose blooming in the sky.

  If we catch it, maybe we can fly.

  Tomorrow I think I’ll walk into the sea, swim as far as I can.

  And then what?

  Then, nothing. I let go.

  Instead of walking into the sea, in the morning Theo started building a new animal. He put up a tent just outside the fuselage, using some leftover tarpaulin and steel rods from the craft. He gathered all his materials inside: tubes, wire, bottles, cable ties, remains of beasts that had drowned in the past, or ones which had been created with some fundamental flaw that never allowed them to live in the first place. Theo worked quickly but carefully, pausing every now and then to steady his trembling hands, to blink the blurriness away. New sores appeared on his chest, but he ignored them.

  This one would live. Perhaps it would even fly.

  The rest of the beasts gathered outside the makeshift tent, as if to witness the birth of their kin.

  g=36,7. This is the seventh holy number.

  Come here, friend. Sit. Get some rest. I can see your knees trembling, your hip ready to give, your feet digging into the mud. Soon you will die if you stay this way.

  I see you have a spine, friend.

  I, too, have a spine.

  Theo was out fishing when the clouds started to gather and the sea turned black. Storms were not rare on Oceanus, but this one looked angrier than usual. He shouldered his fishing gear and started treading water toward the shore. He passed Animalis Elegans, its wings undulating faster and faster, and Animalis Caecus, which seemed to pause to look at him through its mechanical blindness, its nose pointed at the sky.

  Theo made sure the half-finished beast was resting as securely as possible under the tarpaulin, and withdrew into the fuselage for what was to come.

  h=65,7. This is the eighth holy number.

  Once, a long long time ago, there was a prophet on old Earth who asked: when we have cut down all the trees and scraped the galaxy clean of stars, what will be left to shelter us from the terrible, empty skies?

  Theo watched from his safe spot behind the fuselage’s porthole as the beasts hammered their tails to the ground to defend their skeletons against the rising winds. Soon, everything outside was a blur of sand and rain. The craft was being battered from all sides; by the time the storm subsided, it would be half
-buried in sand and kelp. And there was nothing to do but watch as the wind dislodged the rod that marked Tessa’s grave and the red scarf was blown away, soon nowhere to be seen. It disappeared into the sea as if it had never existed at all, as if it had only been a memory of a childish story from long-ago and far-away. There was nothing to do as the wind uprooted the tarpaulin tent and blew the new animal to pieces; nothing to do as Animalis Elegans was torn from the ground and dragged to the water, its silken wings crushed under the waves.

  Theo walked over to the trapdoor, cracked it open to let in some air. The night, heavy and humid, stuck to his skin.

  i=49. This is the ninth holy number.

  The night is heavy and humid like the dreams I used to have as a boy. In my dream, I see I’m walking into the sea, only it’s not the sea any more, it’s tall grass, taller than any grass I’ve ever seen in any ecosystem, taller than me, taller than the beasts. I swim in the grass, and it grows even taller; it reaches my head and keeps growing toward the sky, or maybe it’s me getting smaller and smaller until all I can see is grass above and around me. I fall back, and the grass catches me, and it’s the sky catching me like I always knew it would.

  The storm lasted two Oceanus days and two Oceanus nights. When the clouds parted and the winds moved deeper into the ocean, Theo finally emerged from the fuselage. Half the beach had turned into a mire. Animalis Elegans was nowhere in sight. Animalis Primus limped in the distance. The beach was strewn with parts; only three of the beasts had survived the storm.

  “No point in mourning, ja?” Theo muttered and got to work.

  He gathered as many of the materials as had landed in the area around the craft, dismantled the remains of the new animal that would never be named.

  He had laid everything on the tarpaulin to dry, when a glimpse of white caught his eye. He turned toward the expanse of sea that blended into mire and squinted. At first he thought it was foam, but no; it was one of Elegans’s wings, a precious piece of white silk poking out of a murky-looking patch in the ground.

  He knew better than to go retrieve it, but he went anyway.

  j=50. This is the tenth holy number.

  Listen, listen. It’s okay. Don’t fret. Take it in. The desolation, take it all in. Decomposition is a vital part of any ecosystem. It releases nutrients that can be reused, returns to the atmosphere what was only borrowed before. Without it, dead matter would accumulate and the world would be fragmented and dead, a wasteland of drowned parts and things with no knees, no spine, no wings.

  Theo had his hands on the precious fabric, knee-deep in the muck, when he realized he was sinking, inch by inch, every time he moved. He tried to pull himself back out, but the next moment the sand was up to his thighs. He tried to kick his way out, to drag himself up, but his knees buckled, his muscles burned, and he sank deeper and deeper with every breath he took.

  This is it, then, he thought. Here we are, friend. Here we are.

  He let out a breath, and it was almost like letting go.

  k=61,9. This is the last holy number.

  So here we are, friend: I, Homo Necans, the Man who Dies; you, ever a corpse. Beautiful, exquisite corpse. I lay my hands on you, caress your inanimate flawlessness. I dip my palms into you, what you once were. And then, there it is, so close and tangible I can almost reach it.

  Here I am.

  In your soul up to my knees.

  The sand around Theo was drying in the sun. It was up to his navel now. Wouldn’t be long. The wind hissed against the kelp and sand, lulling him. His eyes closed and he dozed off, still holding on to the wing.

  He was woken by the rattling sound of Animalis Primus limping toward him.

  The beast approached, its feet distributing its weight so as to barely touch the unsteady sand.

  “I made you fine, didn’t I?” Theo mused. “Just fine.”

  Primus came to a halt next to Theo and waited.

  He looked up at the beast, squinting at the sun behind it. “What are you doing, old friend?” he asked.

  The beast stood, as if waiting for him to reach out, to hold on.

  Theo pulled a hand out of the sand and reached for the beast’s first knees. He was afraid he might tip the animal over, take them both down, but as soon as he got a firm grasp on its skeleton, Primus started walking against the wind, pulling Theo out of the sand.

  He let go once he was safely away from the marsh. He collapsed on the powdery sand, trying to catch his breath, reel it back in, keep it from running out. Animalis Primus did not stop.

  “Wait,” Theo whispered as he pulled himself half-way up from the ground, thousands of miniscule grains sticking to his damp cheek. The beast marched onwards, unresponsive. “Wait!” Theo shouted, with all the breath he had left. He almost passed out.

  The wind changed direction. Theo rested his head back on the sand, spent, and watched as Animalis Primus walked away—all clank and mechanics and the vestige of something like breath.

  Djinns Live by the Sea

  Saad Z. Hossain

  Saad Z Hossain lives in Dhaka, Bangladesh. His debut novel, Escape from Baghdad! was published in the US in 2015.

  THE DJINN WHO sat beside me was incorporeal at first. He was smoke, a ghost, a faint etching of diamond molecules only visible to me. He had been haunting me. I thought I was mad. I got x-rayed and cat scanned, persecuted by doctors and psychiatrists. Pretty soon there was talk of long term therapy, of setting up a trust fund, of taking all my wealth and making a new wing at the hospital.

  Lawyers started disputing my signature, crack pot mullahs lurked in street corners with their hands out, urging me to grow a beard, to wash my head with holy water, to pray, pray, pray. They offered me magic black string loaded with Koranic verse, potent stuff worth lacs of taka, protection against devils unseen. Unknown creditors started popping up with forged documents, claiming I owed them vast sums. At this point I stopped. I faked my own recovery.

  That day, 12th of July, 2014, I got out of bed, showered, shaved, dressed in my suit, ate breakfast, drank tea, found and kissed my wife and kids—who had moved to other parts of the house in fear, greeted the cowering servants, in effect did everything like a normal human being, ignoring the antics of the past eight months. I issued a five line letter to all concerned parties: lawyers, doctors, mullahs, madrasas, old friends, parents, relatives, and the many business partners scattered throughout town.

  “Dear Friends, Family, and Concerned Ones,

  I have been grievously ill for the past 8 months. I was suffering from a rare malady which is hard to explain, but has a specific scientific cause and remedy. By the grace of God and all your prayers, the medicine has worked! I am cured. All the tests show a full remission of adverse conditions. I feel excellent, and am resuming my duties as a husband, a father, and an industrialist. I thank you all for your support, and apologize for any difficulties you have faced during this trial.

  Yours, etc…”

  “In reality I know that many of you are dismayed to hear of my recovery, and are now frightened that you’ll have to return all of the money you’ve stolen, or answer for all of the liberties you’ve taken.”

  I wanted to add this postscript, but obviously did not, as that would have been taken as a sign of further eccentricity. At this moment, I needed to avoid any sign of eccentricity. It’s remarkable how quickly society can decide to dump you into a sanitarium when they decide it’s in their favor.

  They all buzzed around me for a few days; Welcome back! Knew you could do it! Missed you! What medicine? Congratulations! Which doctor cured you? How much did it cost? Can I keep the company car I appropriated? What medicine? Fortunately, by this point I had so many doctors, no one alive could navigate the malaria infested swamp which was my medical plan. I had been ripped off by so many different kinds of quacks, that no one could actually discover whose treatment had worked.

  It took me a few days to organize my affairs. I wrote down a schedule and followed it rigidly. Sit, smile
, talk, pray, eat, pray, TV, sleep. They started to leave me alone after that. My wife and kids lost their strained, frightened looks, they returned to the family room, took up their various activities around me, made jokes and laughed, poked fun at me, hesitantly at first, and then naturally. The ability of the human mind to adapt to peculiar situations is astounding. The words nervous breakdown, insanity, early onset Alzheimer’s, began to fade.

  After a week I prepared myself to tackle the real problem. Throughout this period, the djinn had waited patiently, winking in and out of the light. My first gambit was based on the theory that he wasn’t haunting me; there was nothing haunting about him, no air of menace. His wild gesticulations had not been the threat of magic—they had, in fact been the gestures of a man trying to communicate.

  By this time, I had lost my initial fear for the thing. In fact, given my ordeal with humans hell bent on curing me, I had come to take comfort in the relatively undemanding presence of the djinn. Thus, I took a chance and sat down across from him with a bunch of kids’ picture books, and pointed.

  He got the idea right away. He wanted to touch the books, to flip through them. He started to solidify, oozing into reality like glue hardening on a stick. I locked the door, my heart racing, terrified once again. He was rather calmer. He sat politely across my desk, being patient, exuding a sense of harmony.

  He looked like a slightly elongated man. Everything was off about him, problems of scale, and subtle, worrisome differences, like his enormous nail beds, or the tiny ears. I took a mirror and showed him, pointing out the problems, guessing that he might have a way of altering himself. He did, in fact, and was most cordial in taking care of it. After several hours, he looked like a very dapper man, and I dressed him in my spare suit, and we stared at the mirror together, subtly alike.