The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women

by Alex Dally MacFarlane

  She broods.

  SING

  Karin Tidbeck

  The cold dawn light creeps onto the mountaintops; they emerge like islands in the valley’s dark sea, tendrils of steam rising up from the thickets clinging to the rock. Right now there’s no sound of birdsong or crickets, no hiss of wind in the trees. When Maderakka’s great shadow has sunk back below the horizon, twitter and chirp will return in a shocking explosion of sound. For now, we sit in complete silence.

  The birds have left. Petr lies with his head in my lap, his chest rising and falling so quickly it’s almost a flutter, his pulse rushing under the skin. The bits of eggshell I couldn’t get out of his mouth, those that have already made their way into him, spread whiteness into the surrounding flesh. If only I could hear that he’s breathing properly. His eyes are rolled back into his head, his arms and legs curled up against his body like a baby’s. If he’s conscious, he must be in pain. I hope he’s not conscious.

  A strangely shaped man came in the door and stepped up to the counter. He made a full turn to look at the mess in my workshop: the fabrics, the cutting table, the bits of pattern. Then he looked directly at me. He was definitely not from here – no one had told him not to do that. I almost wanted to correct him: leave, you’re not supposed to make contact like that, you’re supposed to pretend you can’t see me and tell the air what you want. But I was curious about what he might do. I was too used to avoiding eye contact, so I concentrated carefully on the rest of him: the squat body with its weirdly broad shoulders, the swelling upper arms and legs. The cropped copper on his head. I’d never seen anything like it.

  So this man stepped up to the counter and he spoke directly to me, and it was like being caught under the midday sun.

  “You’re Aino? The tailor? Can you repair this?”

  He spoke slowly and deliberately, his accent crowded with hard sounds. He dropped a heap of something on the counter. I collected myself and made my way over. He flinched as I slid off my chair at the cutting table, catching myself before my knees collapsed backward. I knew what he saw: a stick insect of a woman clambering unsteadily along the furniture, joints flexing at impossible angles. Still he didn’t look away. I could see his eyes at the outskirts of my vision, golden-yellow points following me as I heaved myself forward to the stool by the counter. The bundle, when I held it up, was an oddly cut jacket. It had no visible seams, the material almost like rough canvas but not quite. It was halfeaten by wear and grime.

  “You should have had this mended long ago,” I said. “And washed. I can’t fix this.”

  He leaned closer, hand cupped behind an ear. “Again, please?”

  “I can’t repair it,” I said, slower.

  He sighed, a long waft of warm air on my forearm. “Can you make a new one?”

  “Maybe. But I’ll have to measure you.” I waved him toward me.

  He stepped around the counter. After that first flinch, he didn’t react. His smell was dry, like burnt ochre and spices, not unpleasant, and while I measured him he kept talking in a stream of consonants and archaic words, easy enough to understand if I didn’t listen too closely. His name was Petr, the name as angular as his accent, and he came from Amitié – a station somewhere out there – but was born on Gliese. (I knew a little about Gliese, and told him so.) He was a biologist and hadn’t seen an open sky for eight years. He had landed on Kiruna and ridden with a truck and then walked for three days, and he was proud to have learned our language, although our dialect was very odd. He was here to research lichen.

  “Lichen can survive anywhere,” he said, “even in a vacuum, at least as spores. I want to compare these to the ones on Gliese, to see if they have the same origin.”

  “Just you? You’re alone?”

  “Do you know how many colonies are out there?” He laughed, but then cleared his throat. “Sorry. But it’s really like that. There are more colonies than anyone can keep track of. And Kiruna is, well, it’s considered an abandoned world, after the mining companies left, so—”

  His next word was silent. Saarakka was up, the bright moonlet sudden as always. He mouthed more words. I switched into song, but Petr just stared at me. He inclined his head slightly toward me, eyes narrowing, then shook his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. He reached into the back pocket of his trousers and drew out something like a small and very thin book. He did something with a quick movement – shook it out, somehow – and it unfolded into a large square that he put down on the counter. It had the outlines of letters at the bottom, and his fingers flew over them. WHAT HAPPENED WITH SOUND?

  I recognized the layout of keys. I could type. SAARAKKA, I wrote. WHEN SAARAKKA IS UP, WE CAN’T HEAR SPEECH. WE SING INSTEAD.

  WHY HAS NOBODY TOLD ME ABOUT THIS? he replied.

  I shrugged.

  He typed with annoyed, jerky movements. HOW LONG DOES IT LAST?

  UNTIL IT SETS, I told him.

  He had so many questions – he wanted to know how Saarakka silenced speech, if the other moon did something too. I told him about how Oksakka kills the sound of birds, and how giant Maderakka peeks over the horizon now and then, reminding us that the three of us are just her satellites. How they once named our own world after a mining town and we named the other moons for an ancient goddess and her handmaidens, although these names sound strange and harsh to us now. But every answer prompted new questions. I finally pushed the sheet away from me. He held his palms up in resignation, folded it up, and left.

  What I had wanted to say, when he started talking about how Kiruna was just one world among many, was that I’m not stupid. I read books and sometimes I could pick up stuff on my old set, when the satellite was up and the moons didn’t interfere with it so much. I knew that Amitié was a big space station. I knew we lived in a poor backwater place. Still, you think your home is special, even if nobody ever visits.

  The village has a single street. One can walk along the street for a little while, and then go down to the sluggish red river. I go there to wash myself and rinse out cloth.

  I like dusk, when everyone’s gone home and I can air-dry on the big, flat stone by the shore, arms and legs finally long and relaxed and folding at what angles they will, my spine and muscles creaking like wood after a long day of keeping everything straight and upright. Sometimes the goats come to visit. They’re only interested in whether I have food or ear scratchings for them. To the goats, all people are equal, except for those who have treats. Sometimes the birds come here too, alighting on the rocks to preen their plumes, compound eyes iridescent in the twilight. I try not to notice them, but unless Oksakka is up to muffle the higherpitched noise, the insistent buzzing twitches of their wings are impossible to ignore. More than two or three and they start warbling among themselves, eerily like human song, and I leave.

  Petr met me on the path up from the river. I was carrying a bundle of wet fabric strapped to my back; it was slow going because I’d brought too much and the extra weight made me swing heavy on my crutches.

  He held out a hand. “Let me carry that for you, Aino.”

  “No, thank you.” I moved past him.

  He kept pace with me. “I’m just trying to be polite.”

  I sneaked a glance at him, but it did seem that was what he wanted. I unstrapped my bundle. He took it and casually slung it over his shoulder. We walked in silence up the slope, him at a leisurely walk, me concentrating on the uphill effort, crutch-foot-foot-crutch.

  “Your ecosystem,” he said eventually, when the path flattened out. “It’s fascinating.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’ve never seen a system based on parasitism.”

  “I don’t know much about that.”

  “But you know how it works?”

  “Of course,” I said. “Animals lay eggs in other animals. Even the plants.”

  “So is there anything that uses the goats for hosts?”

  “Hookflies. They hatch in the goats’ noses.”

&nbs
p; Petr hummed. “Does it harm the goats?”

  “No … not usually. Some of them get sick and die. Most of the time they just get … more perky. It’s good for them.”

  “Fascinating,” Petr said. “I’ve never seen an alien species just slip into an ecosystem like that.” He paused. “These hookflies. Do they ever go for humans?”

  I shook my head.

  He was quiet for a while. We were almost at the village when he spoke again.

  “So how long have your people been singing?”

  “I don’t know. A long time.”

  “But how do you learn? I mean, I’ve tried, but I just can’t make the sounds. The pitch, it’s higher than anything I’ve heard a human voice do. It’s like birdsong.”

  “It’s passed on.” I concentrated on tensing the muscles in my feet for the next step.

  “How? Is it a mutation?”

  “It’s passed on,” I repeated. “Here’s the workshop. I can handle it from here. Thank you.”

  He handed me the bundle. I could tell he wanted to ask me more, but I turned away from him and dragged my load inside.

  I don’t lie. But neither will I answer a question that hasn’t been asked. Petr would have called it lying by omission, I suppose. I’ve wondered if things would have happened differently if I’d just told him what he really wanted to know: not how we learn, but how it’s possible for us to learn. But no. I don’t think it would have changed much. He was too recklessly curious.

  My mother told me I’d never take over the business, but she underestimated me and how much I’d learned before she passed. I have some strength in my hands and arms, and I’m good at precision work. It makes me a good tailor. In that way I can at least get a little respect, because I support myself and do it well. So the villagers employ me, even if they won’t look at me.

  Others of my kind aren’t so lucky. A man down the street hasn’t left his room for years. His elderly parents take care of him. When they pass, the other villagers won’t show as much compassion. I know there are more of us here and there, in the village and the outlying farms. Those of us who do go outside don’t communicate with each other. We stay in the background, we who didn’t receive the gift unscathed.

  I wonder if that will happen to Petr now. So far, there’s no change; he’s very still. His temples are freckled. I haven’t noticed that before.

  Petr wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept coming in to talk. I didn’t know if he did this to everyone. I sometimes thought that maybe he didn’t study lichen at all; he just went from house to house and talked people’s ears off. He talked about his heavy homeworld, which he’d left to crawl almost weightless in the high spokes of Amitié. He told me I wouldn’t have to carry my own weight there, I’d move without crutches, and I was surprised by the want that flared up inside me, but I said nothing of it. He asked me if I hurt, and I said only if my joints folded back or sideways too quickly. He was very fascinated.

  When Saarakka was up, he typed at me to sing to him. He parsed the cadences and inflections like a scientist, annoyed when they refused to slip into neat order.

  I found myself talking too, telling him of sewing and books I’d read, of the other villagers and what they did. It’s remarkable what people will say and do when you’re part of the background. Petr listened to me, asked questions. Sometimes I met his eyes. They had little crinkles at the outer edges that deepened when he smiled. I discovered that I had many things to say. I couldn’t tell whether the biologist in him wanted to study my freakish appearance, or if he really enjoyed being around me.

  He sat on my stool behind the counter, telling me about crawling around in the vents on Amitié to study the lichen unique to the station: “They must have hitchhiked in with a shuttle. The question was from where …”

  I interrupted him. “How does one get there? To visit?”

  “You want to go?”

  “I’d like to see it.” And be weightless, I didn’t say.

  “There’s a shuttle bypass in a few months to pick me up,” he said. “But it’d cost you.”

  I nodded.

  “Do you have money?” he asked.

  “I’ve saved up some.”

  He mentioned how much it would cost, and my heart sank so deep I couldn’t speak for a while. For once, Petr didn’t fill the silence.

  I moved past him from the cutting table to the mannequin. I put my hand on a piece of fabric on the table and it slipped. I stumbled. He reached out and caught me, and I fell with my face against his throat. His skin was warm, almost hot; he smelled of sweat and dust and an undertone of musk that seeped into my body and made it heavy. It was suddenly hard to breathe.

  I pushed myself out of his arms and leaned against the table, unsteadily, because my arms were shaking. No one had touched me like that before. He had slid from the stool, leaning against the counter across from me, his chest rising and falling as if he had been running. Those eyes were so sharp, I couldn’t look at them directly.

  “I’m in love with you.”The words tumbled out of his mouth in a quick mumble.

  He stiffened, as if surprised by what he had just said. I opened my mouth to say I didn’t know what, but words like that deserved something—

  He held up a hand. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “But …”

  Petr shook his head. “Aino. It’s all right.”

  When I finally figured out what to say, he had left. I wanted to say I hadn’t thought of the possibility, but that I did now. Someone wanted me. It was a very strange sensation, like a little hook tugging at the hollow under my ribs.

  Petr changed after that. He kept coming into the workshop, but he started to make friends elsewhere too. I could see it from the shop window: his cheerful brusqueness bowled the others over. He crouched together with the weaver across the street, eagerly studying her work. He engaged in cheerful haggling with Maiju, who would never negotiate the price of her vegetables, but with him, she did. He even tried to sing, unsuccessfully. I recognized the looks the others gave him. And even though they were only humoring him, treating him as they would a harmless idiot, I found myself growing jealous. That was novel too.

  He didn’t mention it again. Our conversation skirted away from any deeper subjects. The memory of his scent intruded on my thoughts at night. I tried to wash it away in the river.

  “Aino, I’m thinking about staying.”

  Petr hadn’t been in for a week. Now this.

  “Why?” I fiddled with a seam on the work shirt I was hemming.

  “I like it here. Everything’s simple – no high tech, no info flooding, no hurry. I can hear myself think.” He smiled faintly. “You know, I’ve had stomach problems most of my life. When I came here, they went away in a week. It’s been like coming home.”

  “I don’t see why.” I kept my eyes down. “There’s nothing special here.”

  “These are good people. Sure, they’re a bit traditional, a bit distant. But I like them. And it turns out they need me here. Jorma, he doesn’t mind that I can’t sing. He offered me a job at the clinic. Says they need someone with my experience.”

  “Are you all right with this?” he asked when I didn’t reply immediately.

  “It’s good,” I said eventually. “It’s good for you that they like you.”

  “I don’t know about ‘like.’ Some of them treat me as if I’m handicapped. I don’t care much, though. I can live with that as long as some of you like me.” His gaze rested on me like a heavy hand.

  “Good for you,” I repeated.

  He leaned over the counter. “So … maybe you could teach me to sing? For real?”

  “No.”

  “Why? I don’t understand why.”

  “Because I can’t teach you. You are handicapped. Like me.”

  “Aino.” His voice was low. “Did you ever consider that maybe they don’t hate you?”

  I looked up. “They don’t hate me. They’re afraid of me. It’s different.”

 
; “Are you really sure? Maybe if you talked to them …”

  “… they would avoid me. It is what it is.”

  “You can’t just sit in here and be bitter.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “It just is what it is. I can choose to be miserable about it, or I can choose not to be.”

  “Fine.” He sighed. “Does it matter to you if I stay or leave?”

  “Yes,” I whispered to the shirt in my lap.

  “Well, which is it? Do you want me to stay?”

  He had asked directly, so I had to give him an answer, at least some sort of reply. “You could stay a while. Or I could go with you.”

  “I told you. I’m not going back to Amitié.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “No.”

  I could have kept quiet when the procession went by. Maybe then things would have been different. I think he would have found out, anyway.

  We were down by the river. We pretended the last conversation hadn’t happened. He had insisted on helping me with washing cloth. I wouldn’t let him, so he sat alongside me, making conversation while I dipped the lengths of cloth in the river and slapped them on the big flat stone. Maderakka’s huge approaching shadow hovered on the horizon. It would be Petr’s first time, and he was fascinated. The birds were beginning to amass in the air above the plateau, sharp trills echoing through the valley.

  “How long will it last?”

  “Just overnight,” I said. “It only rises a little bit before it sets again.”

  “I wonder what it’s like on the other side,” he said. “Having that in the sky all the time.”