Interzone Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine #214

by TTA Press Authors

  The wine wasn't good at all, but it still tasted to me like a gift from a kinder God. We toasted and remembered Shelby. We tried to remember what he'd been before, and we think it was a painter, but we're not sure. How come we don't know what Shelby did before? Do I even know what I did before? It was all so long ago, before the black cloaks and the facemasks and the jeering faces in the street, that I can't even remember. I can't remember what it felt like to walk under the sun with my open face turned up to the warmth and the light. I wondered if the others did; our group used to speak so much about freedom and our own expression, in the old days. But I didn't say any of that, and we agreed that we thought Shelby was a painter, and that was all there was to it.

  Then we got drunk and words like ‘organising’ and ‘committees’ started to appear in our conversation, even though we knew they were a waste of breath. People like us don't have a voice any more. We may have had, once, but it slipped away from us and we watched it go. We were so stupid.

  Then we got really drunk, and I described what Shelby's face looked like. I sketched it in the sand at our feet, and everyone took a look. They were all very impressed by how beautiful he was. I wonder if I ever saw any of their faces before the facemasks and the cloaks. If I did, I don't remember any more. Gillespie fell asleep, probably tired because of having to go through tests every day, and the rest of us started talking about doing something as a memorial to Shelby. Hastings had composed a poem, and recited it, and we all liked it. We agreed that it suited Shelby. Darwin sang a tune off the top of his head and we agreed it was very fine as well. Fitzgerald said she wanted to paint Shelby. Then I, very drunk, suggested that we paint Shelby on a wall, where everyone had to see, where they'd be forced to look at what they'd done to him.

  We were very drunk, so we decided to do it. We left Gillespie sleeping and took chalks in five colours and went out into the street. It was very dark and we found a street the patrols hardly ever walk down, because no one like us lives there and there's no danger there. And we spent an hour together, painting Shelby's face on the wall, at least six foot high, if not more, and we got him just right, even though we didn't have enough chalk to shade him in properly. We even got in the slightly confused look he'd been wearing when I'd seen him. Then we all stepped back and looked at Shelby's face. I started to cry and the others shushed me, just sober enough to realise that we would be in very serious trouble if someone woke up and we were caught. So instead of screaming out the question, I took the green chalk and went up to the wall and under Shelby's dead face I wrote three letters: why.

  That's when we left. It was only about five hours ago, and I just realised what we did, and the sun is up, so I can't go back and get rid of it, and I feel sick to my stomach. What's going to happen to us?

  * * * *

  Monday, March 10th

  There were angry editorials, but there wasn't enough evidence to charge any of the four of us, though I did get three more raids than I'd have expected.

  Gillespie went in to have her lung removed, and they say they made a mistake, took out her heart instead, so Gillespie's organs, including her beautiful skin, are being put into other people. I hope her body parts infect them with what we all are. I hope their children are born like us. I wish she'd tattooed herself. I wish she'd made herself sick. I wish she'd made herself a leper, so they'd never have touched her body and harvested everything out of her just because they wanted to and they could. There's no one who can stand up for Gillespie and now she's dead, another of my friends is dead and I never once saw her face. They took her face from my memory and then took her from us and I hate them, I hate them, I hate them! I hope they all die!

  * * * *

  Tuesday, March 18th

  Fitzgerald's gone missing. She was doing laundry service and now she's gone. I checked at the hospital, at the organ clinic, and they said she wasn't there, but I think they could be lying. They started looking at me, like a hungry man looks at a piece of uncooked meat, like they could make something of me, and I left really quickly, without giving my name. I told Hastings and Darwin that I can't go back there again, and they agreed, but how will we find out where Fitzgerald is? There's no one we can go to who won't laugh at us, or who will care. They've been getting rid of us for years; one more is just a step in the right direction. They call us subversive.

  I went to the laundry district and walked around for a while, but then the strap of my sandal broke. I had to take it off and limp into an alley and hide there until night fell and I could walk home with the broken sandal making noise in the street. I was terrified, stopping at every noise in case someone had heard me. The rules say our group can't make a sound in public without punishment. Even a child could kill me if they heard me. When I got home I crawled under my bed and cried all night long. I drew pictures in the dust under the bed, and wiped them out with my hand, crying even more every time I thought of Fitzgerald.

  * * * *

  Friday, March 21st

  They found Fitzgerald's body. It was lying in a gutter. I can't write what was done to her. Some people came in my home, dragged me out there and forced me to look at her where she was. I couldn't make a sound, couldn't scream at them to cover her up, didn't they have any decency, couldn't they cover her up? Some woman screamed at me that this was what we all deserved. Why did Fitzgerald deserve that? Oh God, why did she deserve that? She was so good to everyone, never complained, even seemed to take the coverings so totally in her stride, always finding the bright side to life, somehow. Why did she have to die like that? She didn't choose what she was; we are born, not made, how do they blame us for how we were born? I was crying under my facemask and I wanted to be dead as well, but I couldn't not look at Fitzgerald. I had to look at her, I was her friend, and the last thing I could do for her was to look at her, and remember her in death.

  Then they threw me on top of her, and started to throw things, but I barely noticed, because I'd landed next to Fitzgerald's face, and her eyes were open, and her face was awful, but her eyes were open, and I could see that they were blue, a real sky blue and they were the most beautiful things I'd seen in a long time, and they made me cry more and I had to try to stop, so I wouldn't shake or make a sound, and finally when the crowd got bored and left I got up and went back home and drew Fitzgerald's eyes next to Shelby's face. Then I drew what I thought Gillespie's lungs might look like. And then I went to bed, but didn't cry.

  * * * *

  Wednesday, March 26th

  Darwin and Hastings are dead. The Organ Donation Association caught up with them, and because they were living together, they were accused of collusion with intent to break the laws governing our kind. They were both killed using defibrillation, so as to minimise organ damage and now they're in other people.

  I'm glad they gave me their things before the ODA took them. Next to Shelby's face and Fitzgerald's eyes and Gillespie's lungs I've hung up Hastings’ pages and Darwin's one remaining tape of music, and I've put their names under everything and kissed everything. I drew Gillespie's hands as well. They were lovely hands. I don't think I got them right, but then drawing was never my specialty. I hope they're okay. I hope Gillespie would like them.

  I've made a decision. I've decided not to die like Shelby, or Gillespie, or Fitzgerald, or be carted off like Darwin and Hastings. I'm going to take control over the last thing in my life. I'm going to make it into something that means something. I just have to find a way, think up something really amazing. And then I'll dedicate it to my friends, and to all those like me that I know who died, and those I didn't know who died and those who were still alive and suffering like me, everywhere, on every street, under every cloak, hidden behind every facemask. I'll dedicate it to all of us.

  * * * *

  Monday, March 31st

  Tomorrow is the day I'm going to die. I doubt anyone will ever read this, because I'm putting it into the narrow space where my friends are remembered, but that doesn't matter. What matters is that it e
xists. That's all. I like to think that there are others like me out there, who have hung little memorials of their dead friends, and I hope so, but I somehow doubt it. So many of us are cowed into submission.

  I don't cry any more. They've taken the tears out of me, and left me with a dull pain, that fuels my resolve. We are resolved ones, we always were, though in some ways, we were lazy in terms of our own rights. We always presumed we would be taken care of by everyone else. We assumed we were wanted.

  Tomorrow I'm going to go to the top of the library. I'm on cleaning duty, so I'll be allowed onto the roof. I'll jam the door after I get up there and then I'll stand out on the ledge. I'll take off my facemask, and just as the police are running in the front door to come get me, and the crowds are looking at me, I'll sing one of Darwin's songs. Then I'll yell out one of Hastings’ poems. Then I'll call out the names of my friends, and what they each did, before people decided they didn't want us any more. And I'll tell them what I did, what I still am. I'll tell them that wrapping me up doesn't change what I am, it just hides it. I'll tell them that we can't be got rid of just by being ignored, or being used as organ banks. Hurting us gives us more strength to be what we are, what we are all born to be.

  And they'll all think I'll kill myself. I haven't decided on that yet. On the one hand, I could be a great martyr, being tortured by my government. On the other, I could be like those monks who set fire to themselves. I could hang myself, or cut my throat. I like that last one. Cut my throat and let my blood pour down the front of the library, and let them try to wash it off, but everyone who was there will have seen that shifting art of time; every time they spill any water, my blood will turn up in their minds, spilling down the front of the library. It'll be gone in reality, but in their heads it'll stay. They think of me as pestilence, well let my infected blood stain their precious hall, where the work of my predecessors is locked away, treated as blasphemy.

  I am so tired of what they make of us, but that just makes me more determined. It has always been a world of injustices, and we're not the most special people to be hurt, nor do I think I can end it. It can happen anytime, anywhere, to any group, and it was just our turn to be the unlucky ones. But perhaps, for one or two people in the crowd, I can turn the word ‘artist’ into something other than a curse. Maybe they might wonder what we're like. Maybe I'll wake up an artist tomorrow, one who was born like us, but not raised like us. By God, I hope so. We are dying too quickly, and we are part of this world, no matter what any government says.

  My name is Gabrielle Dyham. I am an artist. I am a novelist who likes to sketch. I am going to die an artist. No black cloak can change that, no facemask can hide it, no cruelty can deny it. To those who would defy art, who would spit on my kind, who hate those born to see the world in a different way, if you have found this account, let me tell you this: you cannot succeed, you cannot destroy us for good, and you can all go soundly into hell.

  And if you're very unlucky, you bastards, you'll find it full of artists. And you will suffocate for eternity among creative genius and people who will show you the world in a new way, force you to think and acknowledge the other side of the story.

  Long live art, and please, somebody—anybody—save us.

  Copyright © 2007 Jennifer Harwood-Smith

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  THE SCENT OF THEIR ARRIVAL—Mercurio D. Rivera

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  * * * *

  Illustrated by Paul Drummond

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  * * * *

  This is Mercurio's second story for Interzone. His first, ‘Longing for Langalana', won the Readers’ Poll for favourite story of 2006. Other stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Abyss and Apex, Sybil's Garage, Northwest Passages: A Cascadian Anthology and elsewhere. He is an Associate Editor at Sybil's Garage magazine and a proud member of the highly regarded Altered Fluid writing group (alteredfluid.com).

  * * * *

  They met at sunrise in the Grand Glacial Chamber on the peaks of Shanriola. The teams of decipherers and the Presiding Council of naturalists and supernaturalists gathered to discuss the new signal that Ember-Musk and Scent-of-Moss had discovered encrypted within the alien ship's mysterious transmission.

  Although Ember-Musk had visited the Chamber several times over the past year, he still marveled at its opulence. As they filed into the cavernous room, he noted the intricate etchings that lined the granite floors, and the polished marble walls that stretched fifty vertecs high, converging in a triangular skylight that framed the cloudless, golden heavens. The Council members congregated at the massive softstone roundtable while the scores of decipherers, including Ember-Musk and Scent-of-Moss, took their seats in the rows of basalt benches along the sides of the Chamber.

  The Presiding Elder—a supernaturalist had been selected this cycle—stood in a mote-flecked sunbeam that streamed down through the skylight. He commenced the meeting with a short prayer and then puffed his midsection, releasing a thick, sweet mist through the engorged pores of his crimson carapace. The attendees inhaled his query: Tell us, decipherers, does this new signal explain why the spaceship has failed to leave orbit, why it continues to ignore our entreaties?

  Scent-of-Moss stood up and flared her pores. She emitted a mist tinged with just the barest trace of burning leaf-wax: I'm afraid this message we've uncovered is as perplexing as the primary transmission, Elder. Except ... it contains a visual image.

  The dignitaries and decipherers simultaneously released a potpourri of sweet-to-sour scented vapors that swirled and amassed and quickly became indistinguishable from one another:

  You have an actual image?

  Are they solid or translucent?

  Why would the aliens hide messages within messages?

  Are they naturalists or supernaturalists?

  They were, of course, no closer to understanding the aliens than they had been a year earlier when naturalists had first detected the spaceship orbiting their world, transmitting its confounding, repeating signal. But now—at last—they had actual visuals.

  While Tang-of-Mint, the Lead Naturalist, tinkered with the Chamber's quartz signal-projector, Ember-Musk raised his arms and everyone ceased misting. He sprayed a cleansing mist to dissipate the lingering smells and, when silence had fallen upon the room, released a brimstone-laced warning: Scent a solemn prayer, and brace yourselves. I've seen it numerous times, and it's ... I can't find the scents to describe it.

  The supernaturalists among them raised their red-hued visages skyward in plaintive prayer and the unpainted naturalists begrudgingly followed suit.

  Scent-of-Moss turned a knob and the holoimage coalesced into view above the roundtable.

  A two-legged, two-armed alien stood before them.

  Everyone simultaneously misted the salty scent of a storm-ravaged sea.

  —holo-seg 6 of 15 [] shiptime 10:07:45 [] 11/12/2251—

  You have to understand, our great solar-sailed ship, The Deliverance, had been in development for years before the invasion. It was over a century earlier that we'd detected the ninety-three reachable Earth-like planets, sitting there while we all dragged our feet. I guess you could say that our war with the Reviled lit a fire under us.

  Who would have thought that our mission of exploration would turn into nothing more than a frantic scramble to escape our world, to flee the horror that had spread across planet Earth?

  * * * *

  What do you suppose it's trying to scent? Scent-of-Moss misted. Following the meeting, she and Ember-Musk had spent three days holed up in their cavern studying the holographic image. The signal's visual track comes through clearly enough, but the olfactory pathway appears damaged.

  Ember-Musk embraced Scent-of-Moss from behind and scraped the jagged crystals of his fore-arms against the nubs on her rear-arms in a way that he knew pleased her. Scent-of-Moss's smooth, ivory-white exoskeleton sparkled, and crystalline carbuncles speckled her four arms. She had an adorable habit of leaning for
ward on her dainty center leg, which otherwise dangled alluringly several inches off the ground. And whenever she stole a sideways glance at him, it accentuated her most attractive feature: the large, regal snout that made Ember-Musk tingle with desire.

  Ember-Musk. She gently pushed him away. I have work to do. For the past year, Scent-of-Moss had obsessed over the riddle of the alien signal, using every naturalist tool at her disposal—mathematics, physics, biochemistry, cryptography—to try to decipher the primary transmission, a textual message that repeated trillions of times at different frequencies. Their discovery of this new message, a holoimage cleverly hidden within the interstices of that transmission, Ember-Musk thought, had only served to heighten the mystery.

  It had also pushed them farther apart.

  Ember-Musk had spent the day painting his face and torso a deep red and praying for a breakthrough.

  Have you checked for any masked scents? he suggested.

  Scent-of-Moss squirted her tangy assent: Spectral bouquets, emotion-based odors, psyche-scents, micro-aromas, subspace fragrances, algorithmically-encoded smells, genetically altered scents. Nothing. It's absolutely odorless. She folded her rear-arms and rubbed her fore-arms in frustration. Why would aliens go to the trouble of sending a ship across light years of space, just to show us mute images?

  There are some who believe that they might be the heralds of the Gods, wife, Ember-Musk misted. That at first scent they will provide us the answers to all of our questions. Change everything.

  She released an overpowering molten-iron stench: I know the Prophecies, Ember-Musk. But I just told you, the holomessage is utterly scentless. And whether they're ‘heralds’ or alien life forms, we still need to understand what they're trying to communicate.