Year's Best Weird Fiction, Vol. 4

by Helen Marshall

  “If you want food and work, you will find both here,” the woman said. “If you don’t want to stay, you will die before long.”

  “I know,” I said. “Why is the sea silver?”

  The woman fixed a measuring gaze on me. “I’m not sure you really want to know.”

  At that moment, I was startled by the sound of splashing water from the mouth of the cave. Something dark, shiny and large was swimming towards us in the water.

  “Hands. Hands taught us. Hands made this species what it became. Hands manipulate their surroundings. Hands were an extension of our brains. Our two most important organs are our hands and our voice box.” The woman sat on the floor of the cave a short distance from me. She spoke in a dream-like manner, clearly not caring whether I heard her or was even listening.

  “First verbal language, then written language, and through that a collective memory. But without written language, there can be no permanent race or species memory. And without a written memory, there can be no history, no science, no higher learning.”

  I didn’t understand more than that the woman was talking about language. “How did the apes learn to speak?” I blurted out.

  “The apes have always known how to speak, we just didn’t know how to interpret it correctly. Their larynx isn’t suited to making as many sounds as ours, so their verbal language is quite limited, with the meaning of the same sound being altered by a simultaneous gesture or facial expression. Sign language is well suited to them. There has never been anything wrong with their minds.” The woman sniffed. “There was a time when it was common to consider animals as being less intelligent than humans if they couldn’t do the same things in exactly the same way.”

  “Can the apes read?” I asked, remembering the chimpanzee that had carried books to the woman with careful respect. The woman was taken aback. She stood from her day dreaming position, walked over to me, and looked me right in the eyes. “You’re not as dumb as you look after all,” she said. “No, I don’t think they can read—not yet at least. And because they haven’t yet learned, I don’t think they ever will. The kings of creation will never pay them enough attention to give them the chance, or won’t allow them the chance.”

  The woman stood in front of me and pressed her hand to my chest. The back of her hand was brown and wrinkled, and veins rose high on its spotted surface. A wave of lust washed over me again, leaving me trembling. The woman took me like she was performing an intense mockery of a dance. She didn’t care for me at all. Realizing that, even in the midst of the lusty spell I was under, made me feel a sharp sorrow.

  *

  There were thousands of them in that strange community.

  Most were chimpanzees. I never found out exactly how such a large number of chimps had ended up in these limestone caves. According to my book knowledge, the region was not one where they could survive in the wild, but here they were. The network of limestone caves included some large caverns that were partially under water. Huge loads of fish were brought out of them regularly to be dried, smoked, and salted. Some ways outside the caves, bustling apes cared for gardens growing a variety of vegetables and roots.

  Every third or fourth day, the bicycle caravan would go out or come back.

  Not much was known about the lost cities. The apes were straightforward and tenacious explorers. They would leave with the wagon full of food, ride for a time, and turn back when half of the food, enough for the return journey, was left. If they came across an abandoned city, they would load up the wagon with what they could find. Most of it was useless junk, but every now and then the apes would find just the right things—certain materials, containers, small instruments.

  I heard that many generations of apes had gone blind before they found enough dark glasses.

  The rest of the members of the community were humans.

  The woman I met first was called Jackie. It wasn’t the name her parents had given her, and she never told me what she had been called before. She had taken the name from an ancient magazine that the chimps had found in a lost city. The magazine was full of strange but clearly important information, because Jackie read it over and over again. Printed on the cover of the magazine in large letters were the words ALIENS BEHIND JFK ASSASSINATION. The woman had taken the name “Jackie” from one of the articles in the magazine. When I asked her why she had chosen precisely that name, she said in her annoying, incomprehensible way that she was the widow of the nation.

  The other people were crazy. Even more crazy than Jackie. They mumbled to themselves, had long, signed conversations with the chimps, filled long lists with numbers and calculations, and stored odd-colored substances in glass containers. Most of them didn’t share a language with me. Two or three times a day they would eat fish and vegetables. Some of them never slept.

  I would often wander through the caves. There was no end to them along the limestone coast, and I never got so far as to run out of chimps or people. Every cavern was full of activity, intense and patient work. For a long time, I had thought that Jackie was some kind of leader, but she wasn’t. I met a few other horribly old people like her, but she was the only one who was able or willing to talk to me. I signed with some people. They weren’t the least bit interested in me. A few times I mated with women I met who came to me directly and without a word. Afterwards I felt empty and miserable. Soon I stopped my trips into the surrounding caves and only participated in the work in Jackie’s cavern. It was light and easy. I carried things, boiled water in a rough fireplace, and carried the water into a cavern where they washed fine, thin glass containers. Sometimes I helped pull in a net that the kings had driven our daily portion of fish into. I had more food than ever, and soon began to be strong and almost plump compared to my previous form.

  *

  I quickly grew to hate Jackie, her power to use me sexually like an object. Her long, nonsensical speeches. Her certainty that I would never leave here. It was true that having become accustomed to an abundance of food, the mere idea of hunger had become repellent. Hunger, which circumstances had forced me to endure for months with bravery, was now a feeling that I experienced three times a day as a pleasant and not the least bit painful expectation, a certainty that soon I would have fish and vegetables and sometimes even a strange and intoxicatingly sweet fruit.

  *

  “The ozone was lost from the atmosphere, and the climate warmed,” Jackie explained to me one day while we were eating fish in our cavern. “It killed a great many people. That didn’t really matter, but when it began to threaten the kings—they didn’t like the stronger ultraviolet radiation or the ecological changes brought on by warming either—they decided to do something about it. That is why the sea is silver.”

  I took a bite of my white-fleshed, juicy fish and nodded, as I had noticed that Jackie was nicest to me when I pretended to listen to her.

  “The kings found out that plankton and some other micro-organisms in the sea had begun to spontaneously mutate. They had begun to reflect ultraviolet rays, begun to develop epithelial tissues that would return as much harmful radiation back into the air as possible. They needed reflective substances for their metabolisms, and that is why we have been feeding them certain compounds for hundreds of years. Soon, most of the world’s oceans will be silver. Sea life will be protected by a reflective surface that stops all harmful radiation. At the same time the earth will cool. I will cool a great deal as more and more sunlight is reflected back out. Imagine how bright it must look from space—”

  I had trouble following her train of thought again. I remember how I had taken some of the silver surface in my hand. It was thin, almost non-existent, as if there was nothing but seawater in my hand. The hole I made in the silver membrane closed up in mere moments, sealed by beautiful patterns that were like parts of a flower or leaf, a series of patters getting infinitely smaller towards their edges.

  “Now they are changing the world. They have no hands, so they have made us their hands. They ar
e harnessing the rest of creation to their purposes. Like we harnessed it before them,” Jackie mumbled.

  “Why haven’t the kings ruled before? Why are they only doing it now?” I asked. Jackie looked at me with anger.

  “Because they simply never thought of it before,” she snapped. “Every god has its prophet.” She got up and left the cavern. I took her fish and ate it, too.

  *

  The work, which had at first been light and almost like a game, became heavier and took on a more intense pace. The change happened so slowly that I barely noticed it. While at first I did chores just to pass the time, now I noticed that I would lay down on my pallet in the evening sore and exhausted. I didn’t know why I did things. I carried things, stirred strange-smelling substances in huge vats. Sometimes I would have to watch like a hawk for something to boil, other times I would drag large baskets of different types of earth from further inland into the caves. No one actually threatened me or ordered me around, I was just matter-of-factly assigned work, and I found it very difficult to refuse. Once when I decided to take an extra break, I came back to find that everyone had already eaten and there was nothing left but fish bones and the stubs of roots. I was hungry as a wolf for the rest of the day, and after that I made sure that I was always in sight and working at meal time so I wouldn’t be forgotten again.

  Nevertheless, there was another time when I forgot myself and had to go without a meal. I was visiting a cave very far from Jackie’s cavern when I found a hollow I had never been in before. It was full of books and magazines of different ages, some in such poor condition they were barely readable. One book had been put aside from the others. It looked as if it had been read a great deal and then just cast aside. I picked it up. It was some sort of scientific work about war and weapons of war. Of course, I knew what war meant. In my grandparents’ time, there had been a war. That was when most of the cities had become lost cities. This book went into detail about the various methods that could be used against an enemy. It had many words that I didn’t understand at all, but one line stopped me in my tracks.

  The book said that a large nation had looked into the possibility of training animals for war. Indeed, they had trained a large number of them and found them to be apt learners. They had been taught sign language and had been kept in continual contact with humans and their technology.

  Then it had been decided that this kind of war equipment was not needed.

  The animals had been set free.

  Chimpanzees and dolphins.

  *

  “The question is of adapting to an environment. Humans never adapted properly. Humans need other humans, tools, and fire to survive. Humans have always needed hands. Humans need language to tell other people what it takes to survive. Humans need written language so that the information necessary for survival can be passed on even when there is no one to receive it directly at that moment,” Jackie explained to me. “If all information was just passed forward from generation to generation as word of mouth, the smallest interruption or misunderstanding could destroy valuable information. But written language endures. We can still read the messages of the ancient Egyptians, thought the Pharaohs have been dust for five thousand years.”

  “Is that what we’re making now? Written language for the kings?” I asked in a hoarse voice.

  “I think so, though I don’t believe that any of us knows what we’re really doing. We are all part of something bigger. We are like cells in the body or parts in a machine. The ones who were given the original mission are long dead and have passed it on, generation after generation becoming more obedient. We are beginning to forget that there was ever anything else. We are becoming their hands more and more seamlessly. My children, and there are many of them here, wouldn’t even know who I am if I went to talk to them today.”

  “I don’t understand. Why don’t you leave this place?” I asked.

  “You haven’t left, either.”

  “No, but I could any time.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I marched out of the cave and left an annoyed Jackie standing with her hands on her hips. I climbed up a hill, pulled up two handfuls of roots from the garden to take with me and, trailing clods of dirt, walked with determination in the direction I hoped would take me to the opening of the tunnel.

  I don’t know how much time passed before I blacked out.

  *

  Jackie stood over me. I was lying on the floor of the cave and I was in great pain. I raised my arm. It was full of cuts. I was bruised and sore all over.

  “When you come back, you come the straightest way, not the most comfortable”, Jackie said. “I would have warned you, but I’ve found that first-hand experience is the best teacher.”

  “How do they do this?” I croaked through parched lips.

  “I don’t know. If I did, things would be much different. Do you think I enjoy mating with an idiotic creature like you whenever the kings want? Do you enjoy it? They’re making sure they have enough hands. They take a more free approach with the chimpanzees. The chimps couldn’t survive without them. I think the chimps obey voluntarily, to preserve their species. But we need control. They take care of the will to reproduce with pheromones, I think. Strong scent signals that someone here must be making the materials for at this very moment without knowing it. How they make us stay, I don’t know. Something in the food? Some kind of radiation or scent? Perhaps a chemical that we have been exposed to and now cannot go without? I don’t know. Nobody knows. A cell does not know why it dies when cut away from the skin of the hand.”

  I tried to sit up. My head was spinning and aching terribly.

  “Are they going to build cities next, gather armies? I don’t know. But they have hands, and we are those hands. Will they make the same mistakes we did? We were the ones who taught them, showed them that you can improve the survival of your species by manipulating the environments. That should mean that they could make the same mistakes.”

  “The war dolphins?”

  Jackie looked amazed. “How do you know that? Yes, I think so. They had gained a great deal of knowledge about humans and the human way of doing things. When they were released, they spread and processed that knowledge. I can just imagine: the prophets of a new way of life, taught in a strange world by the gods. When the hazards caused by humans began to affect them, too, and we humans completely destroyed our advantage, they turned against their gods. Sometimes I wonder if all of the disasters humans caused were put in motion by humans in the first place.” Jackie rubbed her forehead and looked almost friendly for a moment. “They think so differently from us. I have sometimes wondered whether coating the seas with silver doesn’t also serve another purpose: a message, an invitation, a signal. It makes the Earth so much brighter than before. Though the radio waves have fallen silent, the planet would now be visible as an attractive anomaly in far away observatories. I think the kings hope to have guests.”

  I had managed to stumble to my feet. “So, I will never leave here?”

  Jackie shook her head. “No, you will live here until you are old, very old. You and the ones who live after you.” She patted her stomach, and the horror of the gesture dawned on me in the blink of an eye.

  *

  I took two steps, jumped, and sank through the silver.

  The sea water stung my cuts and bruises terribly, but it was a good pain, sharp and real, it cleared my head.

  I held my eyes open under the water.

  The terrible brightness of the outside world filtered its way down to where I was sinking, and that’s when I saw it.

  I saw the Book of the Kings.

  It was a stunning lace, like the silver patters in the sea, but dark and strong, moving with the currents in the water but keeping its shape exact and clear. I imagined how the kings could take it with them, how it would follow them into all the seas of the world and how its message and the message of thousands of other Books of the Kings would remain unchanged when all of u
s were dust.

  I could imagine how the kings had communicated and passed on their traditions up till now, but their language had been flexible, changing from generation to generation without a foundation to build on—to build cities and armies and perhaps flying machines.

  I was not proud to have been one of the hands that had built the book. Neither had I stopped to think about what freedom was. When I looked at the Book of the Kings hovering in the brightness, I realized that long ago, when I had chosen the time of my death in that oasis, I had been at my most free.

  As I tried to stay under the water, so that I would have to breathe water into my lungs and never be able to rise again, dark shadows surrounded me and blunt snouts pushed me back onto the limestone ledge.

  CAMILLA GRUDOVA

  Waxy

  My new bedroom was an old kitchen. One wall was taken up by dozens of small cupboards and drawers, a fridge, a black stove and a little brown sink with a beige hose hanging out of it like a child’s leg. The landlord told me the fridge and stove didn’t work, but they were good for storing clothes and other things. I could use the fridge as a wardrobe, she said.

  It was on the fourth floor of a fat house covered in green tarpaper, and shared a hall and bathroom with another room, where a couple lived. Neither of our rooms had doors, only door frames. All the windows looking out onto the street were covered in dirty sheets, giving the impression from the outside that the house was nothing more than an empty shell with a giant’s patchwork blanket hanging on the other side.

  Along with the fridge and stove, my room had a table, a stack of flimsy chairs and a couch, which I was to use as a bed.