Unfettered III

by Shawn Speakman (ed)

  Julius looked at me, amused. “Why Publius, have you understood nothing about how things work? Rome conquers. We enslave. So long as we have slaves, we have all the blood we need. Our slaves feed us. What more complete way to serve a master?”

  “Will it always be as it was? The way it was with Thana?”

  “Taking the blood doesn’t need to be a sexual act, though that’s an enjoyable way to do it. Just don’t run through all your father’s female slaves. He wouldn’t appreciate that. The only thing you must know, Publius, is that when you feed, you must always feed completely. Drain them until they die. That’s part of the covenant. We can’t have slaves as living evidence against us. It’s enough that there are dead bodies to dispose of. Messes to clean up.”

  “No one would believe them if they spoke of it,” I muttered.

  “Are you done complaining, or do you have more?” When I didn’t answer, Julius continued. “Here is what we’re going to do. We’ll talk as long as you like. I’ll help you to understand your gifts, to appreciate them. When you’re ready, you and I will walk to the temple of Jupiter and make the offerings your father has left for you. You’ll thank the god as you should, and then you’ll get busy with the starting of your career.”

  I didn’t refuse. I did say, “I won’t forget her, you know. I won’t forget what I did to her.”

  Julius nodded. “No, I don’t suspect you will.”

  Later that afternoon, Julius escorted me to the temple. We climbed the Capitolium under a gloriously bright sky. From that high vantage, I took in views of Rome that sparkled with a clarity that continued to amaze me. How much I hadn’t seen before! Such cramped, jostling grandeur, buildings and temples piled on top of each other. I could have stood for hours taking in the details of the architecture, the stains in the stonework, the cracks in structures that I’d never have been able to see before. I felt I could gaze right into windows and view the lives inside. Along the Tiber, I could pick out men in their boats, and I could make out individual leaves in the boughs of distant trees.

  Julius pulled me on, mumbling that I shouldn’t stare so hard just yet. I might see an omen I’d rather not.

  The Temple was still being rebuilt from the fire that had destroyed it nearly ten years before. Quintus Lutatius Catulus had yet to dedicate it, and it was not open to the public. For us newly risen nobiles, though, on the occasion of our indoctrination into the covenant, exceptions were made. We entered as did others, through the massive pillars that framed the entrance. We paid homage to Juno Regina on one side, and to Minerva on the other. But it was at Jupiter Optimus Maximus’s feet that we gathered to make our offerings of thanks and eternal fealty.

  My eyes found my friends. Sextus just down the row of young men, and then, on the opposite side of the great statue, Volero. They both looked shaken, anxious to talk. Had they killed a slave as well? Had all of them committed the same bizarre crime? I looked to other faces, still wanting to see kinship with them, some sort of absolution for my crimes, even if only because others shared in it. But there were too many things written on their features. Some of them, I thought, held themselves with a smug superiority they hadn’t demonstrated just the day before. Perhaps they hadn’t all gone through the same ordeal.

  Either that, I realized, or . . . they had enjoyed it. Despite my horror and grief, hadn’t I to admit that I had enjoyed it like nothing I’d ever experienced in my life? Didn’t I know already that when the yearning took hold of me again, I’d have no choice but to feed it? Couldn’t I tell that for the first time in my life my body moved with a grace and perfection I’d thought forever out of my reach? Wasn’t it already true that I would take none of it back, not even to live that life of poverty with Thana? To all these and more, the answer was yes.

  With my peers, I bowed at the god’s feet and gave thanks for what he had made me into.

  SEANAN MCGUIRE

  IN THE SUMMER OF 2017—SUMMER FOR ME, IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST, winter for Oceania—I traveled to Australia and New Zealand as a guest of their respective national science fiction conventions. Being a zoology-oriented person, I spent a great deal of my trip poking into the local flora and fauna, talking to naturalists, and studying the history of humanity’s influence on the two nations. I also had the opportunity to go into the Tasmanian brush to see the site of the last verified thylacine sighting.

  The thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, is very important to me, because it represents so much about mankind’s interactions with the natural world. This was a completely unique, completely innocent animal, wiped out by human intervention . . . or so we currently believe. I devoutly hope that the thylacine is still out there somewhere, hiding, waiting for a chance to come home. This story is the manifestation of my hope . . . although through a rather dystopian, science fictional lens.

  Seanan McGuire

  Stripes in the Sunset

  Seanan McGuire

  Crimson—the crown jewel of the otherwise unremarkable Lakeland Zoo, which had never quite been able to forge a distinct identity for itself—went into labor just before midnight on Tuesday, December 19. Zookeepers and veterinarians rushed to the side of the six-year-old Siberian tiger, while members of the zoo’s social media team stood by with cameras and computers, ready to share the entire process with their eager audience. After the blood had been sponged away, of course. The public couldn’t get enough of Crimson, but they didn’t like to be reminded that she was a predator. The one time a video had been posted showing her in pursuit of a rabbit that had managed to tunnel into her enclosure, well . . .

  It had been a miracle that any of them had still been employed when the dust settled. No one was going to risk a reprise.

  “You’re doing so good, sweetheart, you’re doing so well,” cooed the lead veterinarian, a twenty-year veteran of the zoo and its sometimes-labyrinthine internal politics. She knelt by the tiger’s side, occasionally stroking her flank with one gloved hand, making soothing noises in between words of fawning praise.

  The rest of the veterinary staff, who were either more intelligent or possessed of a more finely honed sense of self-preservation, depending on who you asked, kept a safer distance. It was best for the tiger if she could deliver naturally, without excessive use of drugs or restraints. It was best for the staff if their faces were still attached to their skulls by the time the cubs came. It was a delicate balancing act, made more difficult by the fact that Dr. Fisher seemed incapable of treating her larger, more dangerous patients as anything other than her beloved friends.

  Crimson lifted her head, eyes rolling wildly, and snorted. The rest of the care team took a step back. Dr. Fisher gave her flank another stroke.

  “Good girl, who’s a good girl, yes, you’re doing so well, my girl. So very, very well.” Her tone changed only slightly. It was enough to make it clear to the observers that she was no longer speaking entirely to the tiger. “What’s her blood pressure? Someone give me an update, so I know whether we’re moving toward an intervention.”

  “This is your reminder, as requested by the legal staff, that once you use the word ‘intervention,’ it might be time to move away from the massive apex predator,” said one of the vet techs. “Her blood pressure is good, everything seems to be within normal ranges for her age and size. She’s going to have a baby.”

  “She’s going to have more than one, if the ultrasound can be believed,” said Dr. Fisher, giving Crimson’s flank another stroke before lifting the tiger’s heavy hind leg and checking on her progress. A slow smile spread across the woman’s face. “In fact, I believe she’s going to have a baby right now.”

  The first of Crimson’s cubs came into the world with a refreshing lack of trouble, sliding straight into Dr. Fisher’s waiting hands. She passed the baby on to the vet technician who would weigh and clean it, and returned her attention to the perplexed tiger, who was starting to sniff around for her missing baby.

  “It’s all right, sweetheart, you’re doing fine, just fine,”
she said, in a soothing tone. “Come on, good girl, let’s get that second baby out, okay? I know you can do it.”

  Apparently, so did Crimson.

  The three cubs, all born in quick succession, were weighed, cleaned, and photographed before they were returned to their mother, who had already done the work of cleaning herself and started to growl lowly at the attending humans. Dr. Fisher set the last of the cubs down by its mother and rose to move away. Then she froze, a perplexed frown on her face, seemingly heedless of the increasingly agitated predator in front of her.

  “Dr. Fisher?” said one of the vet techs anxiously. “You need to move. She’s not sedated.”

  “Something’s wrong,” said Dr. Fisher.

  Hands grasped her shoulders and yanked her away right before Crimson’s warning swat passed through the space where Dr. Fisher’s thighs had been. The tiger, eager to get back to her babies, did not pursue. Uncharacteristically, Dr. Fisher didn’t complain about being moved. She was still staring at the babies.

  “Something’s wrong,” she repeated.

  “They’re healthy, they’re feeding, nothing’s wrong,” said one of the other techs. “Three babies, two male, one female. We should all be very proud of our girl.”

  “Three brand-new Siberian tigers,” said a member of the social media team, virtually glowing with the thought of what this would be worth in terms of attendance numbers.

  “No,” said Dr. Fisher, still staring at the cubs. “That’s not what we have. That’s not what we have at all.”

  By morning, reports had come in from zoos around the globe. A mated pair of thick-billed parrots in a zoo in Texas had hatched a nest of five eggs, two of which looked remarkably like their parents, and three of which, even mostly featherless and underdeveloped as hatchling birds always were, already showed distinct morphological differences. A mink had given birth to four pups, three of which were nearly twice the expected size, and which had already nearly exhausted their poor mother with their nursing demands.

  A little eagle had laid an egg substantially too large for her system and had died shortly after, leaving her single potential child to be incubated by zoo staff.

  Dr. Fisher, who had sat up all night with pictures of the cubs and her research library on big cats of the world, was already waiting outside the zoo director’s office when he arrived for work. He looked at her wearily, bracing for her latest diatribe about feeding regiments or enrichment activities for the animals.

  “Can this wait until after the press conference to formally announce the cubs?” he asked.

  “It’s about the cubs,” she replied.

  He sobered instantly. “Come inside,” he said.

  Only after they were seated—him on the safely authoritarian side of his desk, with its weight to protect him from the outside world, her on the outside, the supplicant’s side, where she would remember her place—did he lean forward, resting his weight on his elbows, and ask, “What’s the problem? Is something wrong with one of the babies?”

  “No,” she said, and waited for him to relax before she said, “there’s something wrong with two of the babies. Only one of them is a Siberian tiger. We can’t present them to the public. Not yet. We need to run more tests, we need to sequence their DNA, we need to—”

  “You need to calm down.” The zoo director slumped back in his seat. “They came out of a Siberian tiger. We have it on video. Their father, also a Siberian tiger, donated the sperm that was used to conceive them. We have that whole process on video, God knows why, sometimes I feel like I’m running a very niche pornography studio when these animals get involved. They’re Siberian tigers.”

  “Except that they aren’t,” said Dr. Fisher.

  “Karen. Please.”

  “As I said, I need to run more tests before I can be sure, but I think we’re looking at a pair of Caspian tigers. They’re extinct, Paul. They’ve been extinct for decades. Don’t you think we should know exactly why our purebred Siberian tiger is giving birth to cubs that belong to a subspecies that died out years ago?”

  “You’re seeing things,” said the director. There was a sudden hard note in his voice. “You need a break. Go home. I’ll make sure your rounds are covered for the day.”

  “I’m telling you what I saw.”

  “And I’m telling you that we do not have inexplicable extinct baby tigers. We have two cubs with slightly unusual markings and a clear genetic history. You need to sleep. Go home. I’ll see you tomorrow. Or not, if you need more time to recover.”

  The threat in his words was impossible to dismiss. Dr. Fisher stared at him for a long moment before she stood, straightening her jacket, and said, “When you realize that I’m right, I’ll expect an apology.”

  She left the office without another word. The director watched her go, sighed, and turned to his computer. There was much to do before the cubs could be shared with the world.

  In a zoo in Boston, a red hartebeest gave birth to two foals, one of which resembled its mother, the other of which was a pale sandy color that hadn’t been seen in a hundred years.

  In a zoo in Vancouver, a lioness retreated to her den, where she delivered three cubs, snarling at any zookeeper who tried to get close enough to examine them. It would be three weeks before she allowed them to be seen, and observers commented on how two of them, while healthy, were surprisingly small, with dark brown—almost black—hair rimming their ears. The boy cub had matching smudges below his jawline, indicating that his mane, when it grew in, would be surprisingly dark.

  Births were not unusual for the zoos of the world. So many of them were involved in conservation activities that it was only reasonable that they should be regularly breeding, expanding their stock in terms of genetic diversity and strength. Secondary to the conservation concerns was the fact that baby animals were always good for attendance, and “you can’t look at zebras with the lights off.” The more healthy, viable births a zoo had to announce, the better off they would be.

  Even so, it would seem strange, later, how long it took for anyone to realize what was happening, or to question why. In a community populated by naturalists and animal-lovers, even the slightest deviation from the norm should have attracted immediate attention. And it did, it did. It was just that it attracted the attention of the probable and plausible, which said that it was not outside the realm of possibility for cubs to be born and chicks to be hatched with unusual coloration or morphology; that recessive genes existed.

  The breaking point, when it was reached, was reached in a wildlife rehabilitation center in Tacoma, Washington.

  Eliza looked at the wide-eyed, worried faces of the teens in front of her, and hated her job, just a little. “I’m sorry,” she said. “We can’t accept pigeons. They can’t be released back into the wild, and treating them only to euthanize them when we run out of space isn’t fair. I can’t help you.”

  “But we’re not sure it is a pigeon,” insisted one of the teens, pushing the box toward her. “Please, can you just take a look? It has a broken wing, it’s not going to get loose.”

  Eliza sighed. “If I look at it and say that yes, it’s a pigeon, will you go?”

  “We will,” said the other teen. “Promise.”

  “All right.”

  Eliza opened the box.

  The bird inside was a juvenile, but old enough that its adult coloration had mostly come in. It was crammed into a corner of the box, narrow head up and watching warily, one wing dangling limply at its side. Her breath caught.

  It looked like a pigeon. It was a pigeon, just not a band-tailed pigeon, not a common city bird, feral descendant of someone’s abandoned, beloved pets. The feathers on its breast were a rosy pink, a color so characteristic, so impossible that she would have known it from a single feather. But a feather could have been a hoax, a lie, a pointless prank. This was a living, breathing bird.

  “Yes,” she said in a dazed tone. “You were right to bring him here.”

  “Him? You can
tell it’s a him?” asked one of the teens.

  “Oh, yes,” said Eliza. “We can help him. Thank you. Please fill out this form,” she pushed a clipboard toward the teens, “and indicate exactly where you found him.” She closed the box. She had to close the box. If she didn’t stop looking at the impossibility that it contained, she was going to start crying, and then she would never be able to finish doing what needed to be done.

  Half an hour later, with the teens gone and the door securely locked, she picked up the phone and called the chief veterinary officer.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” she said. “I barely believe this, and I’m looking right at it. But you need to get down here. Two kids just brought me a live passenger pigeon.”

  The pigeon, unaware of his own importance, huddled in the corner of the box, beak pressed to his breast, and waited for the hurting to stop.

  A hastily assembled expedition to the underpass where the teens had found the pigeon uncovered six more, both males and females, all in perfect health, all absolutely, unquestionably passenger pigeons. It didn’t matter that none of the people gathering them up had seen a live example of the breed. They had books, and they had reference films, and they knew a passenger pigeon when they saw one.

  Press conferences were called. Announcements were made. A relic population of passenger pigeons: a chance for a dead species to return. A miracle. They called it a miracle, over and over again, as behind the cameras, ornithologists from around the world gathered to search through the eggshells and the nests looking for some sign of where these birds had come from. Where there were a few, the reasoning ran, there might be more.

  All they found were common city pigeons. Their seven passenger pigeons were all of an age. It was a mystery; no question.

  Mysteries yearn to be solved.