by Rich Horton
“This is cool!” Cee whispered.
I didn’t really think it was cool—it was weird and sticky in there, and sort of dark, and the weeds kept tickling my legs—but I went farther because of Cee. It’s hard to explain this thing she had: She was like an event just about to happen and you didn’t want to miss it. I didn’t want to, anyway. It was so dark we had to hold hands after a while. Cee walked in front of me, pushing branches out of the way, making loud crackling sounds, sometimes kicking to break through the bushes. Her laugh sounded close, like we were trapped in the basement at Lulu’s. That’s what it was like, like being trapped in this amazing place where everything was magically half-price. I was so excited and then horrified because suddenly I had to take a dump, there was no way I could hold it in.
“Wait a sec,” I told Cee, too embarrassed to even tell her to go away. I crouched down and went and wiped myself on the leaves, and I’m sure Cee knew what was up but she took my hand again right after I was done. She took my disgusting hand. I felt like I wanted to die, and at the same time, I was floating. We kept going until we stumbled into a clearing in the woods. Stars above us in a perfect circle.
“Woo-hooooo!” Cee hollered. “Fuck you, Neighbor!”
She gave the stars the finger. The silhouette of her hand stood out against the bright. I gave the stars the finger, too. I was this shitty, disgusting kid with a lamp and a plaque for parents but I was there with Cee and the time was exactly now. It was like there was a beautiful starry place we’d never get into—didn’t deserve to get into—but at the same time we were better than any brightness. Two sick girls underneath the stars.
Fuck you, Neighbor! It felt so great. If I could go anywhere I’d want to go there.
The counselors came for us after a while. A circle of them with big flashlights, talking in handsets. Jodi told us they’d been looking everywhere for us. “We were pretty worried about you girls!”
For the first time I didn’t feel sorry for her; I felt like I wanted to kick her in the shins. Shit, I forgot about that until right now. I forget so much. I’m like a sieve. Sometimes I tell Pete I think I’m going senile. Like premature senile dementia. Last month I suggested we go to Clearview for our next vacation and he said, “Tish, you hate Clearview, don’t you remember?”
It’s true, I hated Clearview: The beach was okay, but at night there was nothing to do but drink. So we’re going to go to the Palace Suites instead. At least you can gamble there.
Cee, I wonder about you still, so much—I wonder what happened to you and where you are. I wonder if you’ve ever tried to find me. It wouldn’t be hard. If you linked to the register you’d know our graduating class ended up in Food Services. I’m in charge of inventory for a chain of grocery stores, Pete drives delivery, Katie stocks the shelves. The year before us, the graduates of our camp went into the army; the year after us they also went into the army; the year after that they went into communications technologies; the year after that I stopped paying attention. I stopped wondering what life would have been like if I’d graduated in a different year. We’re okay. Me and Pete—we make it work, you know? He’s sad because I don’t want to have kids, but he hasn’t brought it up for a couple of years. We do the usual stuff, hobbies and vacations. Work. Pete’s into gardening. Once a week we have dinner with some of the gang. We keep our Parent Figures on the hall table, like everyone else. Sometimes I think about how if you’d graduated with us, you’d be doing some kind of job in Food Services too. That’s weird, right?
But you didn’t graduate with us. I guess you never graduated at all.
I’ve looked for you on the buses and in the streets. Wondering if I’d suddenly see you. God, I’d jump off the bus so quick, I wouldn’t even wait for it to stop moving. I wouldn’t care if I fell in the gutter. I remember your tense face, your nervous look, when you found out that we were going to have a check-up.
“I can’t have a check-up,” you said.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because,” you said, “because they’ll see my bug is gone.”
And I just—I don’t know. I felt sort of embarrassed for you. I’d convinced myself the whole bug thing was a mistake, a hallucination. I looked down at my book, and when I looked up you were standing in the same place, with an alert look on your face, as if you were listening.
You looked at me and said: “I have to run.”
It was the stupidest thing I’d ever heard. The whole camp was monitored practically up to the moon. There was no way to get outside.
But you tried. You left my room, and you went straight out your window and broke your ankle.
A week later, you were back. You were on crutches and you looked . . . wrecked. Destroyed. Somebody’d cut your hair, shaved it close to the scalp. Your eyes stood out, huge and shining.
“They put in a bug in me,” you whispered.
And I just knew. I knew what you were going to do.
Max came to see me a few days ago. I’ve felt sick ever since. Max is the same, hunched and timid; you’d know her if you saw her. She sat in my living room and I gave her coffee and lemon cookies and she took one bite of a cookie and started crying.
Cee, we miss you, we really do.
Max told me she’s pregnant. I said congratulations. I knew she and Evan have been wanting one for a while. She covered her eyes with her hands—she still bites her nails, one of them was bleeding—and she just cried.
“Hey, Max,” I said, “it’s okay.”
I figured she was extra-emotional from hormones or whatever, or maybe she was thinking what a short time she’d have with her kid, now that kids start camp at eight years old.
“It’s okay,” I told her, even though I’d never have kids—I couldn’t stand it.
They say it’s easier on the kids, going to camp earlier. We—me and you and Max—we were the tail end of Generation Teen. Max’s kid will belong to Generation Eight. It’s supposed to be a happier generation, but I’m guessing it will be sort of like us. Like us, the kids of Generation Eight will be told they’re sad, that they need their parents and that’s why they have Parent Figures, so that they can always be reminded of what they’ve lost, so that they can remember they need what they have now.
I sat across the coffee table from Max, and she was crying and I wasn’t hugging her because I don’t really hug people anymore, not even Pete really, I’m sort of mean that way, it’s just how I turned out, and Max said “Do you remember that night in the bathroom with Cee?”
Do I remember?
Her eyes were all swollen. She hiccupped. “I can’t stop thinking about it. I’m scared.” She said she had to send a report to her doctor every day on her phone. How was she feeling, had she vomited? Her morning sickness wasn’t too bad, but she’d thrown up twice, and both times she had to go in for a check-up.
“So?” I said.
“So—they always put you to sleep, you know . . . ”
“Yeah.”
I just said “Yeah.” Just sat there in front of her and said “Yeah.” Like I was a rock. After a while I could tell she was feeling uncertain, and then she felt stupid. She picked up her stuff and blew her nose and went home. She left the tissues on the table, one of them spotted with blood from her bitten nail. I haven’t really been sleeping since she left. I mean, I’ve always had trouble sleeping, but now it’s a lot worse, especially since I started writing in your book. I just feel sick, Cee, I feel really sick. All those check-ups, so regular, everyone gets them, but you’re definitely supposed to go in if you’re feeling nauseous, if you’ve vomited, it might be a superflu! The world is full of viruses,good health is everybody’s business! And yeah, they put you to sleep every time. Yeah. “They put a bug in me,” you said. Camp was so fun. Jodi came to us, wringing her hands. “Cee has been having some problems, and it’s up to all of us to look after her, girls! Campers stick together!” But we didn’t stick together, did we? I woke up and you were shouting in the hall, and I ran out th
ere and you were hopping on your good foot, your toothbrush in one hand, your Mother Figure notebook in the other, and I knew exactly what they’d caught you doing. How did they catch you? Were there really cameras in the bathroom? Jodi’d called Duncan, and that was how I knew how bad it was: Hunky Duncan in the girls’ hallway, just outside the bathroom, wearing white shorts and a seriously pissed-off expression. He and Jodi were grabbing you and you were fighting them off. “Tisha,” called Jodi, “it’s okay, Cee’s just sick, she’s going to the hospital.” You threw the notebook. “Take it!” you snarled. Those were your last words. Your last words to me. I never saw you again except in dreams. Yeah, I see you in dreams. I see you in your white lacy nightgown. Cee, I feel sick. At night I feel so sick, I walk around in circles. There’s waves of sickness and waves of something else, something that calms me, something that’s trying to make the sickness go away. Up and down it goes, and I’m just in it, just trying to stand it, and then I sleep again, and I dream you’re beside me, we’re leaning over the toilet, and down at the very bottom there’s something like a clump of trees and two tiny girls are standing there giving us the finger. It’s not where I came from, but it’s where I started. I think of how bright it was in the bathroom that night, how some kind of loss swept through all of us, electric, and you’d started it, you’d started it by yourself, and we were with you in that hilarious and total rage of loss. Let’s lose it. Let’s lose everything. Camp wasn’t fun. Camp was a fucking factory. I go out to the factory on Fridays to check my lists over coffee with Elle. The bus passes shattered buildings, stick people rooting around in the garbage. Three out of five graduating classes join the army. Give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change! How did I even get here? I’d ask my mom if she wasn’t a fucking lamp. Cee, I feel sick. I should just grab my keys, get some money, and run to Max’s house, we should both be sick, everybody should lose it together. I shouldn’t have told you not to tell the others. We all should have gone together. My fault. I dream I find you and Puss in a bathroom in the train station. There’s blood everywhere, and you laugh and tell me it’s hair dye. Cee, it’s so bright it makes me sick. I have to go now. It’s got to come out.
Wine
Yoon Ha Lee
The first attack came by starfall, by deathrise. Fire swept out of the darkness, past the great violet curve of the world of Nasteng, like coins from hell’s treasuries. Worse than the fire was the metal: creatures of variable form and singing cilia, joining together into colonial masses that floated high above the moon’s surface and dripped synthetic insects that ate geometer’s traps into its substance.
For decades Nasteng had escaped the notice of the galaxy’s wider culture. This was as its Council of Five preferred. They had a secret that other human civilizations would covet. So they hid behind masks of coral and dangling tassels and quantum jewels, and admitted only traders from the most discreet mercantile societies. Now, their secret had gotten out in spite of their precautions.
Nasteng’s city-domes were ruptured. The gardens with their flower-chorales of tuned crickets went up in smoke and blood and gouges. Spybirds swooped down with eyes glaring out of their feathers and marked targets for the bomber-drones. People were dragged by the insects into agony-circles, their hair fused together and lit on fire, inelegant torches.
The Council of Five had known that such a day would arrive. For the moment they were safe in their subterranean fastness. But their safety could not last forever. They knew that they could not negotiate with their immediate attackers. The colonial masses did not think in words, did not recognize negotiation or compromise. They understood only heuristic target recognition and ballistic calculations. If Nasteng had had more technologically advanced defenses, it might have been able to infect the attackers and subvert their programming, but its long isolation and cultural diffidence toward the algorithmic disciplines precluded any such possibility.
One item Nasteng did possess was a beacon. The Falcon Councilor had obtained it generations ago. Her souvenir of that quest was a gash across her cheek that wept tears that dried into crystals hooking into her flesh. At regular intervals she had to rip her face off and allow a new one to grow, or she would have been smothered. You would have thought that she would want as little to do with the beacon as possible. But no: when the Council of Five gathered around a table set with platters of raw meat and the Wine of Blossoms that was their particular privilege, the Falcon Councilor insisted on being the one to activate the beacon.
The beacon was no larger than a child’s fist, and was shaped like a ball. Light sheened across it as though it had swallowed furnaces. If you held it to your ear, you could hear a distant music, as of broken glass and glockenspiels hung upside-down and sixteenth notes played upon the spokes of decrepit bicycle wheels.
The Falcon Councilor lifted the beacon, then turned it over. It clung to her palm, pulsing like an unhealthy nacrescence.
“I don’t see any point in delay,” the Snowcat Councilor said. It wasn’t so much that he was always impatient, although he was, as that he had never gotten along with her.
“We have to be sure of what we’re doing,” the Falcon Councilor said. “There’s no way to rescind the signal once sent.”
“Falcon,” the Tree Councilor said in their voice like shifting rock and gravel. “We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t sure. Surely you don’t think it would be better to die without attempting anything?”
“No, of course not,” the Falcon Councilor said.
“Then do whatever it is that you do with that thing,” the Snake Councilor said from the dark corner where she was flipping through a book. The book’s pages were empty, although some of them had been dog-eared.
The last councilor, the Dragon Councilor, said nothing, only watched with eyes like etched metal. But then, he never spoke, although sometimes he condescended to vote. They were never tempted to disregard him, however. He was, after all, the head of the Gardeners.
“All right,” the Falcon Councilor said. She flung the beacon toward the floor. It sheared through the air with a whistle almost too high-pitched to be heard and shattered against the floor.
The beacon’s shards could be counted, yet they hurt the eye. They were more like collections of brittle dust than splinters or solids. As the councilors watched, the shards reassembled themselves. Where there had been a single sphere, there were now two. Then both spheres dissipated in a vapor that smelled of antifreeze and disintegrating circuit boards.
“I hope that’s not toxic,” the Snowcat Councilor said, narrowing his eyes at the Falcon Councilor.
Whatever response she might have thrown back at him was interrupted by the formation of two doors right above the beacon—beacons?—in a jigsaw of fissures.
“Well,” the Snake Councilor said softly, “I hope we have enough wine to offer our guests. Assuming they imbibe.” The others ignored her, on the chance that she wasn’t joking.
Their guests numbered two. They didn’t so much step through the doors as emerge like cutouts suddenly fleshed.
The first was a woman, tall, with the finest of veils over her face. She wore soft robes with bruise-colored shadows, and her cloak was edged with dark feathers. The Snake Councilor glanced at the Falcon Councilor, but the latter’s face was an unreadable labyrinth of refractions. The other guest was a man, neatly shaven. His hair was black, his eyes of indeterminate color.
The Falcon Councilor inclined her head to them. “We are grateful for your promptness,” she said. “We are Nasteng’s Council of Five, and the nature of our emergency should be clear to you.”
“Yes,” the woman said. The man bowed, but did not speak. There was something forced about the curve of his mouth, as though the lips had been sutured together. “You may call me Ahrep-na. I have a great deal of experience with situations like yours. I assume you’re familiar with my past successes, but if you need—”
“We know,” the Falcon Councilor said. She had heard the name of Ahrep
-na, although it was not safe to use it until she had given you permission. It was why she had left Nasteng all those years ago, in search of Ahrep-na’s token.
“In that case,” Ahrep-na said, “we will need to discuss the contract. My methods are particular.”
The Falcon Councilor thought wryly of Nasteng’s high generals, some of whom were rather more useful than others. Most of whom were rather less. One of the dangers of having its officers drawn almost exclusively from the nobility, or from people who bought their commissions. “That won’t be an issue,” she said. Behind her, she heard a harrumph from the Snowcat Councilor, but he didn’t interrupt otherwise.
They spoke some more about operational and logistical details, about courtesies blunt and banal, and circled eventually to the matter of payment. Given Ahrep-na’s bluntness about everything else, her diffidence about this matter puzzled the Falcon Councilor. But bring it up she did. “Our contracts are tailored to the individual situation,” Ahrep-na said. “Up-front, we require—” She named a sum. It was staggering, but so was annihilation.
Finance was not the Falcon Councilor’s domain. The Snake Councilor turned to a page in her empty book, frowned at a column of figures that wasn’t there, and said, “It will be done in two days.”
Ahrep-na’s smile was pleased. “We will also require the fruits of a year’s harvest.”
“You’ll have to be more specific,” the Falcon Councilor said, as though this were a tedious back-and-forth about supply depots and ammunition.
Ahrep-na wasn’t fooled. “This point is nonnegotiable.” She offered no elaboration.
The Falcon Councilor opened her mouth. Prompted by some nuance of sound behind her, however, she turned without saying what had come to her mind. Harvest. The councilors’ secret that was no secret to the outside world anymore: the wine that kept them young.