“She cannot choose,” the Paik Rede answers, all of them together, and their speech roars like spring sluiceways.
So Kavian fights. She fights with all her art. She sings a song of rebellion, and at her call the air revolts against the wind, the stone rises up against the earth, she cries out as a hero with a cause and the brave world answers her so that she climbs the steps in a whirlwind of fire and black burnt stone that reaches up to the clouds.
“This is the way things go!” the sorcerers of the Paik Rede reply, and they are as the avalanche, as the river going to the sea. This is how things are. Inevitable.
The wrath of their confrontation breaks the monoliths that line the Summit Steps, and in the end Kavian finds herself at a screaming standstill.
“The abnarch!” she cries. “I will set the abnarch loose!”
They must believe her, for they retreat.
Kavian walks into the chamber of the ceremonial pool and the great stone doors to the catacomb, Irasht hopping at her heels, agitated and nervous, chattering in her high-pitched monotone.
At the catacomb doors the warlord Absu stands with Fereyd Japur at her side. “Kavian. Stop.”
Kavian crosses the floor, hobnailed boots hammering on stone and gem. Headed for Absu, and the doors, and the children in the dark.
She won’t stop.
“I know why you’re here.” Absu’s voice says: this is true. I do understand. I do. “These are our beloved children. They deserve better than darkness and suffering to buy another year of war. But we make this bargain every day, Kavian.”
Kavian arranges her wards. Beckons to Irasht—come, come. They circle the ceremonial pool. The herons watch them.
Absu takes a step forward. “The worker suffers in his labor. The lowborn die on the battlefront. But we give them laws and reservoirs, and we keep the Efficate back. That is the bargain: they suffer, so that we may rule. Does it sound callous, put that way?”
Kavian cannot check her tongue: “Not as callous as it looks written on those doors.” Silk is still beautiful. Silk is still necessary.
Fereyd Japur’s shoulders twitch at that. But Absu doesn’t stop. “If isuCter falls, the world loses its center. Chaos reigns. So I must take the awful bargains upon myself. I have been ruthless for you, Kavian. Will you turn your abnarch on me for that?”
Kavian does not have to answer. She was not born with a sister, but she has one. And she knows Absu understands:
This is not the Efficate, devoted to common fraternal good. In green isuCter, ruled by the blood and will of the highborn, one woman’s pain and wrath and love is argument enough.
Fereyd Japur steps forward. “Lord of hosts.” The pain in his eyes when he looks at Absu is the sharpest and most beautiful thing Kavian has ever seen. “This is Kavian Catamount, who gave her blood to the dark. We are bound to her by duty and gratitude. I beg you. Let her pass.”
Absu looks to him with slow regard. The shadow of the weight of a nation moves across her.
Kavian thinks she’s ready to battle her sister Absu to the death. It would be a contest of equals, a duel worthy of legend. The respect between them would permit it.
But she knows that Fereyd Japur would come to Absu’s defense. Or to hers.
She cannot bear to force that choice on him.
Perhaps Absu weighs her duty against the loyalties of her heart. Maybe she looks on Kavian and the abnarch behind her, Irasht her daughter, with eyes that have never mismeasured a war: and she decides she can’t win. Maybe she’s secretly glad that someone has come to do what she cannot ever permit herself.
Whatever the reason, Warlord Absu lowers her head and stands aside.
Kavian goes forward with Irasht to stand before the catacomb door. “It’s your choice,” she whispers, stroking the girl’s hair. “All the other Irashts are waiting down in the dark. And you could be their Kavian, if you let them out. Do you understand? You could let them out of the dark. Do you want to let them out?”
Irasht’s brow furrows. She doesn’t understand. Fereyd Japur watches in expressionless agony as Kavian struggles to make it clear. At last she resorts to signs: bad, the dark empty square, and good, the sky full of stars. And an image in the air, the doors opening, the children decanting from the celled dark to live hard lives of broken speech and brutal nightmare and, maybe, in the end, hope.
Is this good, Irasht? Do you wish you’d had this life instead? Can you wish you’d had this life instead?
Or would it have been better if we’d left you in the dark forever?
It’s an impossible question. No one could answer it. Do you wish you could have been some other way? Some way you’ve never known or even been taught how to know?
Kavian wants to beg: Please choose. Please be able to choose. You can leave them, if you must, or let them out, though we may all perish for it, if they awaken as abnarchs and turn on us.
Just show me you can choose.
Irasht reaches out to the little sign for good, the crowded sky, and then draws Kavian down to her. Kisses her brow. “Kavian,” she says, and strokes the stars, to put them with her name: “Kavian.”
Kavian is good.
“Please.” Kavian tries to aim the abnarch girl back towards the door. “Please decide. Do you want to let them out? Do you wish you’d been let out? You can choose. You can choose.” Behind her she can feel Fereyd Japur, watching, and Absu at his side, one hand on his shoulder, to quiet him or to give him strength.
But Irasht touches the stars again, as if they are all she can see, and then Kavian’s cheek, and then her own brow.
You are good. We are good.
No, Kavian wants to say. No, no, we are so far from that. We did this to you and so we are not good. But she came here to listen to Irasht’s choice. Not her own.
In the ceremonial pool a heron spears a fish.
They wait, Kavian and Fereyd Japur and the warlord Absu, for the child of the dark to make a judgment.
But she will not. Irasht cannot choose. She will stand here forever, hoping for Kavian’s command. Kavian thinks Absu knows this but won’t say it, out of mercy.
Irasht looks up at the door, patient, perched like a little bird. She looks up at the great doors and she waits.
Fereyd Japur said, you highborn always forget this: when you break someone, they stay broken. You cannot ask a broken thing to right itself. They put Irasht into a cell and starved her even of this choice. And Kavian shouldn’t say they, for Kavian did this, didn’t she, and now in her cowardice she wants this child to choose, and lift the guilt from herself. But the child cannot choose.
Irasht looks up at the door, patient. She waits.
“Kavian...” Fereyd Japur says, with the most rigid and agonized formality.
And then Kavian shouts in hope, because she remembers Irasht’s strange habit on the march. When Irasht finds a door she goes up to it, and waits patiently, hoping, Kavian imagines, that someone will invite her in.
“Irasht,” she whispers, kneeling, for Irasht is not a weapon but a person to be loved and taught, and if she cannot make the choice, let a mother give her guidance. “Do you see?”
She shows Irasht an image in the air, and it is only themselves, kneeling before the great door.
And then she turns the image, so that Irasht can see the other side. The children below, in the dark. And now Irasht is inside the door, and the children in the dark are the ones waiting for her to invite them in.
Irasht tilts her head.
“Ah,” she chirps. “Ah.”
TOURING WITH THE ALIEN
Carolyn Ives Gilman
CAROLYN IVES GILMAN is a Nebula and Hugo Award-nominated writer of science fiction and fantasy. Her most recent novel, Dark Orbit, is about a scientific expedition to a crystalline planet where the explorers must confront mysteries about themselves and their reality in order to escape alive. Her other novels include Halfway Human and the two-volume novel Isles of the Forsaken and Ison of the Isles. Her sho
rt fiction appears in many Best of the Year collections and has been translated into seven languages. In her professional career, Gilman is a historian specializing in frontier and Native history. She is author of Lewis and Clark: Across the Divide, and five other books on aspects of Native American and western history. She lives in Washington, D.C. and works as an exhibit developer for the National Museum of the American Indian.
THE ALIEN SPACESHIPS were beautiful, no one could deny that: towering domes of overlapping, chitinous plates in pearly dawn colors, like reflections on a tranquil sea. They appeared overnight, a dozen incongruous soap-bubble structures scattered across the North American continent. One of them blocked a major Interstate in Ohio; another monopolized a stadium parking lot in Tulsa. But most stood in cornfields and forests and deserts where they caused little inconvenience.
Everyone called them spaceships, but from the beginning the experts questioned that name. NORAD had recorded no incoming landing craft, and no mother ship orbited above. That left two main possibilities: they were visitations from an alien race that traveled by some incomprehensibly advanced method; or they were a mutant eruption of Earth’s own tortured ecosystem.
The domes were impervious. Probing radiation bounced off them, as did potshots from locals in the days before the military moved in to cordon off the areas. Attempts to communicate produced no reaction. All the domes did was sit there reflecting the sky in luminous, dreaming colors.
Six months later, the panic had subsided and even CNN had grown weary of reporting breaking news that was just the same old news. Then, entry panels began to open and out walked the translators, one per dome. They were perfectly ordinary-looking human beings who said that they had been abducted as children and had now come back to interpret between their biological race and the people who had adopted them.
Humanity learned surprisingly little from the translators. The aliens had come in peace. They had no demands and no questions. They merely wanted to sit here minding their own business for a while. They wanted to be left alone.
No one believed it.
AVERY WAS VISITING her brother when her boss called.
“Say, you’ve still got those security credentials, right?” Frank said. “Yes…” She had gotten the security clearance in order to haul a hush-hush load of nuclear fuel to Nevada, a feat she wasn’t keen on repeating. “And you’re in D.C.?”
She was actually in northern Virginia, but close enough. “Yeah.” “I’ve got a job for you.”
“Don’t tell me it’s another gig for Those We Dare Not Name.” He didn’t laugh, which told her it was bad. “Uh… no. More like those we can’t name.”
She didn’t get it. “What?”
“Some… neighbors. Who live in funny-shaped houses. I can’t say more over the phone.”
She got it then. “Frank! You took a contract from the frigging aliens?” “Sssh,” he said, as if every phone in America weren’t bugged. “It’s strictly confidential.”
“Jesus,” she breathed out. She had done some crazy things for Frank, but this was over the top. “When, where, what?”
“Leaving tonight. D.C. to St. Louis. A converted tour bus.”
“Tour bus? How many of them are going?”
“Two passengers. One human, one… whatever. Will you do it?” She looked into the immaculate condo living room, where her brother, Blake, and his husband, Jeff, were playing a noisy, fast-paced video game, oblivious to her conversation. She had promised to be at Blake’s concert tomorrow. It meant a lot to him. “Just a second,” she said to Frank.
“I can’t wait,” he said.
“Two seconds.” She muted the phone and walked into the living room.
Blake saw her expression and paused the game.
She said, “Would you hate me if I couldn’t be there tomorrow?” Disappointment, resignation, and wry acceptance crossed his face, as if he hadn’t ever really expected her to keep her promise. “What is it?” he asked. “A job,” she said. “A really important job. Never mind, I’ll turn it down.” “No, Ave, don’t worry. There will be other concerts.”
Still, she hesitated. “You sure?” she said. She and Blake had always hung together, like castaways on a hostile sea. They had given each other courage to sail into the wind. To disappoint him felt disloyal.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Now I’ll be sorry if you stay.”
She thumbed the phone on. “Okay, Frank, I’ll do it. This better not get me in trouble.”
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said. “I’ll email you instructions. Bye.” From the couch, Jeff said, “Now I know why you want to do it. Because it’s likely to get you in trouble.”
“No, he gave me his word,” Avery said.
“Cowboy Frank? The one who had you drive guns to Nicaragua?” “That was perfectly legal,” Avery said.
Jeff had a point, as usual. Specialty Shipping did the jobs no reputable company would handle. Ergo, so did Avery.
“What is it this time?” Blake asked.
“I can’t say.” The email had come through; Frank had attached the instructions as if a PDF were more secure than email. She opened and scanned them.
The job had been cleared by the government, but the client was the alien passenger, and she was to take orders only from him, within the law. She scanned the rest of the instructions till she saw the pickup time. “Damn, I’ve got to get going,” she said.
Her brother followed her into the guest room to watch her pack up. He had never understood her nomadic lifestyle, which made his silent support for it all the more generous. She was compelled to wander; he was rooted in this home, this relationship, this warm, supportive community. She was a discarder, using things up and throwing them away; he had created a home that was a visual expression of himself—from the spare, Japanese-style furniture to the Zen colors on the walls. Visiting him was like living inside a beautiful soul. She had no idea how they could have grown up so different. It was as if they were foundlings.
She pulled on her boots and shouldered her backpack. Blake hugged her.
“Have a good trip,” he said. “Call me.”
“Will do,” she said, and hit the road again.
T HE MEDIA HAD called the dome in Rock Creek Park the Mother Ship—but only because of its proximity to the White House, not because it was in any way distinctive. Like the others, it had appeared overnight, sited on a broad, grassy clearing that had been a secluded picnic ground in the urban park. It filled the entire creek valley, cutting off the trails and greatly inconveniencing the joggers and bikers.
Avery was unprepared for its scale. Like most people, she had seen the domes only on TV, and the small screen did not do justice to the neck-craning reality. She leaned forward over the wheel and peered out the windshield as she brought the bus to a halt at the last checkpoint. The National Park Police pickup that had escorted her through all the other checkpoints pulled aside.
The appearance of an alien habitat had set off a battle of jurisdictions in Washington. The dome stood on U.S. Park Service property, but D.C. Police controlled all the access streets, and the U.S. Army was tasked with maintaining a perimeter around it. No agency wanted to surrender a particle of authority to the others. And then there was the polite, well-groomed young man who had introduced himself as “Henry,” now sitting in the passenger seat next to her. His neatly pressed suit sported no bulges of weaponry, but she assumed he was CIA.
She now saw method in Frank’s madness at calling her so spur-of-the-moment. Her last-minute arrival had prevented anyone from pulling her aside into a cinderblock room for a ‘briefing.’ Instead, Henry had accompanied her in the bus, chatting informally.
“Say, while you’re on the road…”
“No,” she said.
“No?”
“The alien’s my client. I don’t spy on clients.”
He paused a moment, but seemed unruffled. “Not even for your country?” “If I think my country’s in danger, I’ll get in t
ouch.”
“Fair enough,” he said pleasantly. She hadn’t expected him to give up so easily.
He handed her a business card. “So you can get in touch,” he said. She glanced at it. It said ‘Henry,’ with a phone number. No logo, no agency, no last name. She put it in a pocket.
“I have to get out here,” he said when the bus rolled to halt a hundred yards from the dome. “It’s been nice meeting you, Avery.”
“Take your bug with you,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The bug you left somewhere in this cab.”
“There’s no bug,” he said seriously.
Since the bus was probably wired like a studio, she shrugged and resolved not to scratch anywhere embarrassing till she had a chance to search. As she closed the door behind Henry, the soldiers removed the roadblock and she eased the bus forward.
It was almost evening, but floodlights came on as she approached the dome. She pulled the bus parallel to the wall and lowered the wheelchair lift. One of the hexagonal panels slid aside, revealing a stocky, dark-haired young man in black glasses, surrounded by packing crates of the same pearly substance as the dome. Avery started forward to help with loading, but he said tensely, “Stay where you are.” She obeyed. He pushed the first crate forward and it moved as if on wheels, though Avery could see none. It was slightly too wide for the lift, so the man put his hands on either side and pushed in. The crate reconfigured itself, growing taller and narrower till it fit onto the platform. Avery activated the power lift.
He wouldn’t let Avery touch any of the crates, but insisted on stowing them himself at the back of the bus, where a private bedroom suite had once accommodated a touring celebrity singer. When the last crate was on, he came forward and said, “We can go now.”
“What about the other passenger?” Avery said.
“He’s here.”
She realized that the alien must have been in one of the crates—or, for all she knew, was one of the crates. “Okay,” she said. “Where to?”
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eleven Page 28