I grunted as I turned the body so that it rested mostly on its back. “There appears to be a large tattoo on the chest and stomach—blue-black lines. Looks like a pictogram of some sort, but there’s still a lot of peat obscuring it, and I’ll have to make sure that this isn’t some accidental postmortem marking of some kind. I’ll leave that for later…”
The remnant of the left leg was folded high up on the stomach, obscuring the tattoo. I lifted it carefully and moved it aside, revealing the groin. “Now that’s interesting…”
“What?” Ghost asked. “I’m a blind AI, remember?”
I exhaled under the surgical mask, resisting the urge to rise to Ghost’s baiting. “The genitalia. There’s a scaly, fleshy knob, rather high on the front pubis. I suppose that’s the penis analogue for the species, but it doesn’t look like normal erectile tissue or a penile sheath. No evidence of anything like testicles—no scrotal sac at all. Maybe they kept it inside.”
“They’re aliens, remember? Maybe they didn’t have one.”
I accepted Ghost’s criticism with a nod. She was right—I was lacing some heavy anthropomorphism into my speculations. “Maybe. There’s a youngpouch on the abdomen, though, and I haven’t seen any Mictlanian marsupialoids where both sexes had the pouch. Maybe in the Miccail both male and female suckled the young.” I lifted the leg, turning the body again with an effort. “There’s a urethra further down between the legs, and an anus about where you’d expect it—”
I stopped, dropping the leg I was holding. It fell to the table with a soft thud. I breathed. I could feel a flush climbing my neck, and my vision actually shivered for a moment, disorientingly.
“Anaïs?”
“It’s…” I licked suddenly dry lips. Frowned. “There’s what looks to be a vaginal opening just below the base of the spine, past the anus.”
“A hermaphrodite,” Ghost said, her voice suddenly flat. “Now there’s synchronicity for you, eh?”
I said nothing for several seconds. I was staring at the body, at the soft folds hiding the opening at the rear of the creature, not quite knowing whether to be angry. Trying to gather the shreds of composure. Staring at myself in the mirror, forcing myself to look only at that other Anaïs’s face, that contemplative, uncertain face lost in the fogged, spotted silver backing, and my gaze always, inevitably, drifting lower.…
The Miccail body was an accusation, a mockery placed just for me by whatever gods ruled Mictlan.
“Gabriela speculated about the sexuality of the Nomads,” Ghost continued. “There were notes in her journals. She collected rubbings of some rather suggestive carvings on the Middle Period stelae. In fact, in a few cases she referred to the Nomads as ‘midmales’ because the stelae were ambiguous as to which they might be. It’s all scanned in the database—call it up.”
“I’ve read some of Gabriela’s journals—the public ones, anyway. Gabriela said a lot of strange things about the Miccail—and everything else on this world. Doesn’t make her right.”
“Give poor Gabriela a break. No one else was particularly interested in the Miccail after the accident. The first generation had more pressing problems than an extinct race. As an archeologist/anthropologist she was—just like you, I might add—a dilettante, a rank amateur.”
“And she was your lead programmer, right? That explains a lot about you.”
“It’s also why I’m still working. Ana, I’m running out of time here.”
“All right.”
I took another long breath, trying to find the objective, aloof Anaïs the bog body had banished. The leg had fallen so that the tattered end of the ankle hung over the edge of the table. I placed it carefully back into position and didn’t look at the trunk of the body or the mocking twinned genitals. Instead, I moved around the table, going to the Nomad’s head. Carefully, I started prying it from the folded position it had held for centuries.
“Looks like she…he…” I stopped. Ghost waited. My jaw was knotted; I forced myself to relax. Do this goddamn thing and get it over with. Put the body back in the freezer and forget about it. “She didn’t die of drowning. There’s a large wound on the back of the skull. Part crushing, part cutting like a blunt axe, and it probably came from behind. I’ll bet we’ll find that’s the cause of death, though I guess it’s possible she was thrown into the lake still alive. I’m moving the head back to its normal position now. Hey, what’s this…?”
I’d lifted the chin of the Miccail. Trapped deep in the folds of the neck was a thin, knotted cord, a garrote, pulled so tightly against the skin that I could see that the windpipe had closed under the pressure. “He was strangled as well.”
“He? I thought it was a she.”
I exhaled in exasperation. “Goddamn it, Ghost…”
“Sorry,” Ghost apologized. She didn’t sound particularly sincere. “Axed, strangled, and drowned,” Ghost mused. “Wonder which happened first?”
“Somebody really wanted him dead. Poor thing.” I looked down at the flattened, peat-darkened features, telling myself that I was only trying to see in them some reflection of the Miccail’s mysterious life. This Miccail was a worse mirror than the one in my room. Between the pressure-distorted head and the long Miccail snout, the wide-set eyes, the light-sensitive eyelike organ at the top of the head, the nasal slits above the too-small, toothless mouth, it was difficult to attribute any human expression to the face. I sighed. “Let’s see if we can straighten out the other arm—”
“Ana,” Ghost interrupted, “you have company on the way, I’m afraid—”
“Anaïs!”
The shout came from outside, in the clinic’s lobby. A few seconds later, Elio Allen-Shimmura came through the lab doors in a burst. His dark hair was disheveled, his black eyes worried. The hair and eyes stood out harshly against his light skin, reddened slightly from the cold northwest wind. His plain, undistinguished features were furrowed, creasing the too-pale forehead under the shock of bangs and drawing the ugly, sharp planes of his face even tighter. He cast a glance at the bog body; I moved between Elio and the Miccail. Some part of me didn’t want him to see, didn’t want anyone to see.
Elio didn’t seem to notice. He glanced quickly to the glowing apparition of Ghost. “Is that you, Elio?” Ghost asked. “I can’t see through this damn blindfold.” Ghost grinned under the parti-colored blindfold.
Elio smiled in return, habitually, an expression that just touched the corners of his too-thin lips and died. “It’s me.” Something was bothering Elio; he couldn’t stand still, shuffling from foot to foot as if he were anxious to be somewhere else. I’d often noticed that reaction in my presence, but at least this time I didn’t seem to be the cause of it. Elio turned away from Ghost. “Anaïs, has Euzhan been in here?”
“Haven’t seen her, El.” Your Geeda Dominic doesn’t exactly encourage your Family’s children to be around me, I wanted to add, but didn’t. With my own Family having no children at the moment, if I had a favorite kid in the settlement, it would be Euzhan, a giggling, mischievous presence. Euzhan liked me, liked me with the uncomplicated trust of a child; liked me—I have to admit—with the same unconscious grace that her mother had possessed. It was impossible not to love the child back. I began to feel a sour stirring in the pit of my stomach.
“Damn! I was hoping…” Elio’s gaze went to the door, flicking away from me.
“El, what’s going on?”
He spoke to the air somewhere between Ghost and me. “It’s probably nothing. Euz is missing from the compound, has been for an hour. Dominic’s pretty frantic. We’ll probably find her hiding in the new building, but…”
I could hear the forced nonchalance in Elio’s voice; that told me that they’d already checked the obvious places where a small child might hide. A missing child, in a population as small as ours, was certainly cause for immediate concern—Dominic, the current patriarch of the Allen-Shimmura family, would have sent out every available person to look for the girl. Elio frowned and sho
ok his head. “All right. You’re in the middle of something, I know. But if you do see her—”
His obvious distress sparked guilt. “This has waited for a few thousand years. It can certainly wait another hour or two. I’ll come help. Just give me a few minutes to put things away and scrub.”
“Thanks. We appreciate it.” Elio glanced again at the Miccail’s body, still eclipsed behind me, then gave me a small smile before he left. I was almost startled by that and returned the smile, forgetting that he couldn’t see it behind the mask. As he left, I slid the examining table back into the isolation compartment, then went to the sink and began scrubbing the protective brownish covering of thorn-vine sap from my hands.
“A bit of interest there?” Ghost ventured.
“You’re blind, remember?”
“Only visually. I’m getting excellent audio from your terminal. Let me play it back—you’ll hear how your voice perked up—”
“Elio’s always been friendly enough to me, that’s all. I’m not interested; he’s definitely not, or he hides it awfully well. Besides, El is…” Ugly, I almost said, and realized how that would sound, coming from me. His eyes are nice, and his hands. But his face—the eyes are set too close together, his nose is too long and the mouth too large. His skin is a patchwork of blotches. And the one time we tried…“At least he doesn’t look at me like…like…” I hated the way I sounded, hated the fact that I knew Ghost was recording it all. I hugged myself, biting my lower lip. “Look, I really don’t want to talk about this.”
Ghost flickered. Her face morphed into lines familiar from holos of the Matriarchs: Gabriela. “Making sense of an attraction is like analyzing chocolate. Just enjoy it, and to hell with the calories.” The voice was Gabriela’s, too: smoky, husky, almost as low as mine.
“You’re quoting.”
“And you’re evading.” A line of fire-edged darkness sputtered down Ghost’s figure from head to foot as the image began to break up. “Doesn’t matter—I’m also drifting out of range. See you in three days this time. I should have a longer window then. Make sure you document everything about the Miccail body.”
“I will. You get me those age estimates from Máire’s uploads when you can.”
“Promise.” Static chattered in Ghost’s voice; miniature lightning storms crackled across her body. She disappeared, then returned, translucent. I could see the murdered Nomad’s body through her. “Go help Elio find Euzhan.”
“I will. Take care up there, Ghost.”
A flash of light rolled through Ghost’s image. She went two-dimensional and vanished utterly.
.
CONTEXT: Bui Allen-Shimmura
“Bui, Geeda Dominic wants you. Now.” Bui felt his skin prickle in response, like spiders scurrying up his spine. He straightened up, closing the vegetable bin door. Euzhan wasn’t there, wasn’t in any of her usual hiding places. Bui looked at Micah’s lopsided face, and could see that there was no good news there. He asked anyway. “Did anyone find her?”
Micah shook his head, his lips tight. “Not yet,” he answered, his voice blurred with his cleft palate. “Geeda’s sent Elio out to alert the other Families and get them to help search.”
“Khudda.” Bui didn’t care that da Micah heard him cursing. The way Bui figured it, he couldn’t get into any more trouble than he was already in. If he found Euzhan now, he might just kill the girl for slipping away while he was responsible for watching her. It wasn’t fair. He’d be ten in half a year. At his age, he should have been out working the fields with the rest, not babysitting.
“How’s Geeda?” he asked Micah.
“In as foul a mood as I’ve ever seen. You’d better get up there fast, boy.”
Bui’s shoulders sagged. He almost started to cry, sniffing and wiping his nose on his sleeve. “Go on,” Micah told him. “Get it over with.”
He went.
Geeda Dominic was in the common room of the Allen-Shimmura compound, staring out from the window laser-chiseled from the stone of the Rock. A dusty sunbeam threw Dominic’s shadow on the opposite wall. Bui noticed immediately that no one else from the Family was in the room. That didn’t bode well, since the others sometimes managed to keep Dominic’s infamous temper in check. “Geeda?” Bui said tremulously. “Micah said you—”
Dominic was the eldest of the Allen-Shimmura family, a venerable eighty, but he turned now with a youth born of anger. His cane, carved by the patriarch Shigetomo himself, with a knobbed head of oak all the way from Earth, slashed air and slammed into Bui’s upper arm. Surprise and pain made Bui cry out, and the blow was hard enough to send him sprawling on the rug.
“Hakuchi!” Dominic shouted at him, the cane waving in Bui’s face like a club. “You fool!”
Bui clutched his arm, crying openly now. “Geeda, it wasn’t my fault. Hizo, he’d fallen and skinned his knees, and when I finished with him, Euzhan—”
“Shut up!” The cane whoomped as it slashed in front of his face. “You listen to me, boy. If Euzhan is hurt or…or…” Bui knew the word that Dominic wouldn’t say. Dead. Fear reverberated in Bui’s head, throbbing in aching syncopation with the pain in his arm. “You better hope they find her safe, boy, or I’ll have you goddamn shunned. I swear I will. No one will talk to you again. You’ll be cast out of the Family. You’ll find your own food or you’ll starve.”
“No, Geeda, please…” Bui shivered.
“Get out of here,” Dominic roared. His hand tightened around the shaft of his cane, trembling. “Get out of here and find her. Don’t bother coming back until you do. You understand me, boy?”
“Yes, Geeda Dominic. I’m…I’m sorry…I’m awful sorry…” Bui, still sobbing, half crawled, half ran from the room.
Dominic’s cane clattered against the archway behind Bui as he went through.
.
VOICE: Anaïs Koda-Levin the Younger
“Euzhan! Damn, it, child.…” I exhaled in frustration, my voice hoarse from calling. Elio sagged tiredly near me. He rubbed the glossy stock of his rifle with fingers that seemed almost angry. “It’s getting dark,” he said. “It’s near SixthHour. She’ll come out from wherever she’s hiding as soon as she notices. She always wants the light on in the creche, and she’ll be getting hungry by now. She’ll be out. I know it.”
Elio wasn’t convincing even himself. There was a quick desperation in his voice. I understood it all too well. All of us did. Our short history’s full of testimonials to this world’s whims—as our resident historian, Elio probably understood that better than I did.
Mictlan had not been a kind world for the survivors of Ibn Battuta. Two colonies—one on each of Mictlan’s two continents—had been left behind after the accident that had destroyed most of the mothership. The colonies quickly lost touch with each other when a massive, powerful hurricane raked the southern colony’s continent in the first year of exile, and they never resumed radio contact with us or with Ghost on the Ibn Battuta.
Another storm had nearly obliterated our northern colony in Year 23, killing six of the original nine crewmembers here. I suppose that was our historical watershed, since that disaster inalterably changed the societal structure, giving rise to what became the Families. Local diseases mutated to attack our strange new host bodies, stalking the children especially—the Bloody Cough alone killed two children in five by the time they reached puberty. I know: I see the bodies and do the autopsies. There are the toothworms or the tree-leapers or the grumblers; there are the bogs and the storms and the bitter winters; there are accidents and infections and far, far too many congenital defects. Most of them are bad enough that nature itself takes care of them: miscarriages, stillbirths, nonviable babies who are born and die within a few days or a few months—which is why none of the Families will name a child before his or her first birthday. I also know the others—the ones who lived but who are marked with the stamp of Mictlan.
I knew them very well.
The rate of viable live births—fo
r whatever reason: a side effect of the LongSleep, or some unknown factor in the Mictlan environment—was significantly lower among the ship members and their descendants than for the general population of Earth. Just over a century after being stranded on Mictlan, our human population nearly matched the year; there’d been no growth for the last quarter of a century. Too many years, deaths outnumbered births.
Mictlan was not a sweet, loving Motherworld. She was unsympathetic and unremittingly harsh.
I knew that Elio’s imagination was calculating the same dismal odds mine was. This was no longer just a child hiding away from her mi or da, not this late, not this long.
Euzhan was four. I’d seen the girl in the clinic just a few days ago—an eager child, still awkward and lisping, and utterly charming. Ochiba, Euzhan’s mother, had once been my best—hell, one of my only—friends. What we’d had.…
Anyway, Euzhan had been a difficult birth, a breech baby. All of Ochiba’s births were difficult; her pelvis was narrow, barely wide enough to accommodate a baby’s head. On Earth, she would have been an automatic cesarean, but not here, not when any major operation is an open invitation for some postoperative infection. I could have gone in. Ochiba told me she’d go with whatever I decided. Ochiba had delivered three children before—with long, difficult labors, each time. I made the decision to let her go, and she—finally—delivered twelve hours later.
But Ochiba’s exhaustion after the long labor gave an opportunistic respiratory virus its chance—Ochiba died three days after Euzhan’s birth on 97 LastDay. Neither Hui Koda-Schmidt, the colony’s other “doctor,” nor I had been able to break the raging fever or stop the creeping muscular paralysis that followed. Our medical database is quite extensive, but is entirely Earth-based. On Mictlan-specific diseases, there’s only the information that we colonists have entered, and I was all too familiar with that. Ghost had been out of touch, the Ibn Battuta’s unsynchronized orbit trapping the AI on the far side of Mictlan. I don’t have the words to convey the utter helpless impotence I’d felt, watching Ochiba slowly succumb, knowing that I was losing someone I loved.
Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 2: May 2013 Page 22