Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 102

by Naim Kabir

  More. He can fix his field—there, just so—and fold his hands, repeating his mantra. Sound wells up and folds over him, encasing him in a moment of silence. So the part of me that still loves the Sabal Game, feels drawn to the one-is-all side of being human—they got that, too.

  Panic. Do something. Slam on the brakes—

  He registers Katonji’s voice, a low drone that becomes deeper and deeper as time slows. The world outside stills. His thought processes are far faster than an ordinary man’s. He can control his perception rate.

  Somehow, even though he is a simulation, he can tap the real Benjan’s method of meditation, at least to accelerate his time sense. He feels a surge of anticipation. He hums the mantra again and feels the world around him alter. The trickle of input through his circuits slows and stops. He is running cool and smooth. He feels himself cascading down through ruby-hot levels of perception, flashing back through Benjan’s memories.

  He speeds himself. He lives again the moments over Gray. He dives through the swampy atmosphere and swims above the world he made. Molecular master, he is awash in the sight-sound-smell, an ocean of perception.

  Katonji is still saying something. Benjan allows time to alter again and Katonji’s drone returns, rising—

  Benjan suddenly perceives something behind Katonji’s impassive features. “Why didn’t you follow Benjan immediately? You could find out where he was going. You could have picked him up before he scrambled your tracker beams.”

  Katonji smiles slightly. “Quite perceptive, aren’t you? Understand, we wish only Benjan’s compliance.”

  “But if he died, he would be even more silent.”

  “Precisely so. I see you are a good simulation.”

  “I seem quite real to myself.”

  “Ha! Don’t we all. A computer who jests. Very much like Benjan, you are. I will have to speak to you in detail, later. I would like to know just why he failed us so badly. But for the moment we must know where he is now. He is a legend, and can be allowed neither to escape nor to die. “

  Benjan feels a tremor of fear.

  “So where did he flee? You’re the closest model of Benjan.”

  I summon winds from the equator, cold banks of sullen cloud from the poles, and bid them crash. They slam together to make a tornado such as never seen on Earth. Lower gravity, thicker air—a cauldron. It twirls and snarls and spits out lightning knives. The funnel touches down, kisses my crust—

  —and there are Majiken beneath, whole canisters of them, awaiting my kiss.

  Everyone talks about the weather, but only I do anything about it.

  They crack open like ripe fruit.

  —and you dwindle again, hiding from their pursuing electrons. Falling away into your microstructure.

  They do not know how much they have captured. They think in terms of bits and pieces and he/you/we/I are not. So they do not know this—

  You knew this had to come

  As worlds must turn

  And primates must prance

  And givers must grab

  So they would try to wrap their world around yours.

  They are not dumb.

  And smell a beautiful beast slouching toward Bethlehem.

  Benjan coils in upon himself. He has to delay Katonji. He must lie—

  —and at this rogue thought, scarlet circuits fire. Agony. Benjan flinches as truth verification overrides trigger inside himself.

  “I warned you.” Katonji smiles, lips thin and dry.

  Let them kill me.

  “You’d like that, I know. No, you will yield up your little secrets.”

  Speak. Don’t just let him read your thoughts. “Why can’t you find him?”

  “We do not know. Except that your sort of intelligence has gotten quite out of control, that we do know. We will take it apart gradually, to understand it—you, I suppose, included.”

  “You will . . . ”

  “Peel you, yes. There will be nothing left. To avoid that, tell us now.”

  —and the howling storm breaches him, bowls him over, shrieks and tears and devours him. The fire licks flesh from his bones, chars him, flames burst behind his eyelids—

  And he stands. He endures. He seals off the pain. It becomes a raging, white-hot point deep in his gut.

  Find the truth. “After . . . after . . . escape, I imagine—yes, I am certain—he would go to the poles. “

  “Ah! Perfect. Quite plausible, but—which pole?” Katonji turns and murmurs something to someone beyond Benjan’s view. He nods, turns back and says, “We will catch him there. You understand, Fleet cannot allow a manifestation of his sort to remain free after he has flaunted our authority.”

  “Of course,” Benjan says between clenched teeth.

  (But he has no teeth, he realizes. Perceptions are but data, bits strung together in binary. But they feel like teeth, and the smouldering flames in his belly make acrid sweat trickle down his brow.)

  “If we could have anticipated him, before he got on 3D . . . ” Katonji mutters to himself. “Here, have some more—”

  Fire lances. Benjan wants to cry out and go on screaming forever. A frag of him begins his mantra. The word slides over and around itself and rises between him and the wall of pain. The flames lose their sting. He views them at a distance, their cobalt facets cool and remote, as though they have suddenly become deep blue veins of ice, fire going into glacier.

  He feels the distant gnawing of them. Perhaps, in the tick of time, they will devour his substance. But the place where he sits, the thing he has become, can recede from them. And as he waits, the real Benjan is moving. And yes, he does know where . . .

  Tell me true, these bastards say. All right—

  “Demonax crater. At the rim of the South Polar glacier.”

  Katonji checks. The verification indices bear out the truth of it. The man laughs with triumph.

  All truths are partial. A portion of what Benjan is/was/will be lurks there.

  Take heart, true Benjan.

  For she is we and we are all together,

  we mere Ones who are born to suffer.

  Did you think you would come out of this long trip alive?

  Remember, we are dealing with the most nasty of all species the planet has ever produced.

  Deftly, deftly—

  We converge. The alabaster Earthglow guides us. Demonax crater lies around us as we see the ivory lances of their craft descend.

  They come forth to inspect the ruse we have gathered ourselves into. We seem to be an entire ship and buildings, a shiny human construct of lunar grit. We hold still, though that is not our nature.

  Until they enter us.

  We are tiny and innumerable but we do count. Microbial tongues lick. Membranes stick.

  Some of us vibrate like eardrums to their terrible swift cries.

  They will discover eventually. They will find him out.

  (Moisture spatters upon the walkway outside. Angry dark clouds boil up from the horizon.)

  They will peel him then. Sharp and cold and hard, now it comes, but, but—

  (Waves hiss on yellow sand. A green sun wobbles above the seascape. Strange birds twitter and call.)

  Of course in countering their assault upon the Station I shall bring all my hoarded assets into play.

  And we all know that I cannot save everyone.

  Don’t you?

  They come at us through my many branches. Up the tendrils of ceramic and steel. Through my microwave dishes and phased arrays. Sounding me with gamma rays and traitor cyber-personas.

  They have been planning this for decades. But I have known it was coming for centuries.

  The Benjan singleton reaches me in time. Nearly.

  He struggles with their minions. I help. I am many and he is one. He is quick, I am slow. That he is one of the originals does matter to me. I harbor the same affection for him than one does for a favorite finger.

  I hit the first one of the bastards square on. It goes to
pieces just as it swings the claw thing at me.

  Damn! it’s good to be back in a body again. My muscles bunching under tight skin, huffing in hot breaths, happy primate murder-joy shooting adrenaline-quick.

  One of the Majiken comes in slow as weather and I cut him in two. Been centuries since I even thought of doing somethin’ like that. Thumping heart, yelling, joyful slashing at them with tractor spin-waves, the whole business.

  A hell of a lot of ‘em, though.

  They hit me in shoulder and knee and I go down, pain shooting, swimming in the low centrifugal g of the Station. Centuries ago I wanted to go swimming in the clear blue seas of luna, I recall. In warm tropical waters at the equator, under silvery Earthshine . . .

  But she is there. I swerve and dodge and she stays right with me. We waltz through the bastards. Shards flying all around and vacuum sucking at me but her in my veins. Throat-tightening pure joy in my chest.

  Strumming notes sound through me and it is she

  Fully in me, at last

  Gift of the Station in all its spaces

  For which we give thanks yea verily in this the ever-consuming moment—

  Then there is a pain there and I look down and my left arm is gone.

  Just like that.

  And she of ages past is with me now.

  —and even if he is just digits running somewhere, he can relive scenes, the grainy stuff of life. He feels a rush of warm joy. Benjan will escape, will go on. Yet so will he, the mere simulation, in his own abstract way.

  Distant agonies echo. Coming nearer now. He withdraws further.

  As the world slows to frozen silence outside he shall meditate upon his memories. It is like growing old, but reliving all scenes of the past with sharpness and flavor retained.

  (The scent of new-cut grass curls up red and sweet and humming through his nostrils. The summer day is warm; a Gray wind carresses him, cool and smooth. A piece of chocolate bursts its muddy flavor in his mouth.)

  Time enough to think over what has happened, what it means. He opens himself to the moment. It sweeps him up, wraps him in a yawning bath of sensation. He opens himself. Each instant splinters sharp into points of perception. He opens himself. He. Opens. Himself.

  Gray is not solely for humanity. There are greater categories now. Larger perspectives on the world beckon to us. To us all.

  You know many things, but what he knows is both less and more than what I tell to us.

  First published in Asimov’s Science Fiction,

  October/November 2002.

  About the Author

  Gregory Benford is a professor of physics at the Universtiy of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to science. In 2007, he won the Asimov Award for science writing. His 1999 analysis of what endures, Deep Time: How Humanity Communicates Across Millennia, has been widely read. A fellow of the American Physical Society and a member of the World Academy of Arts and Sciences, he continues his research in astrophysics, plasma physics, and biotechnology. His fiction has won many awards, including the Nebula Award for his novel Timescape.

  The Book Seller

  Lavie Tidhar

  Achimwene loved Central Station. He loved the adaptoplant neighborhoods sprouting over the old stone and concrete buildings, the budding of new apartments and the gradual fading and shearing of old ones, dried windows and walls flaking and falling down in the wind.

  Achimwene loved the calls of the alte-zachen, the rag-and-bone men, in their traditional passage across the narrow streets, collecting junk to carry to their immense junkyard-cum-temple on the hill in Jaffa to the south. He loved the smell of sheesha-pipes on the morning wind, and the smell of bitter coffee, loved the smell of fresh horse manure left behind by the alte-zachen’s patient, plodding horses.

  Nothing pleased Achimwene Haile Selassi Jones as much as the sight of the sun rising behind Central Station, the light slowly diffusing beyond and over the immense, hour-glass shape of the space port. Or almost nothing. For he had one overriding passion, at the time that we pick this thread, a passion which to him was both a job and a mission.

  Early morning light suffused Central Station and the old cobbled streets. It highlighted exhausted prostitutes and street-sweeping machines, the bobbing floating lanterns that, with dawn coming, were slowly drifting away, to be stored until nightfall. On the rooftops solar panels unfurled themselves, welcoming the sun. The air was still cool at this time. Soon it will be hot, the sun beating down, the aircon units turning on with a roar of cold air in shops and restaurants and crowded apartments all over the old neighborhood.

  “Ibrahim,” Achimwene said, acknowledging the alte-zachen man as he approached. Ibrahim was perched on top of his cart, the boy Ismail by his side. The cart was pushed by a solitary horse, an old gray being who blinked at Achimwene patiently. The cart was already filled, with adaptoplant furniture, scrap plastic and metal, boxes of discarded house wares and, lying carelessly on its side, a discarded stone bust of Albert Einstein.

  “Achimwene,” Ibrahim said, smiling. “How is the weather?”

  “Fair to middling,” Achimwene said, and they both laughed, comfortable in the near-daily ritual.

  This is Achimwene: he was not the most imposing of people, did not draw the eye in a crowd. He was slight of frame, and somewhat stooped, and wore old-fashioned glasses to correct a minor fault of vision. His hair was once thickly curled but not much of it was left now, and he was mostly, sad to say, bald. He had a soft mouth and patient, trusting eyes, with fine lines of disappointment at their corners. His name meant “brother” in Chichewa, a language dominant in Malawi, though he was of the Joneses of Central Station, and the brother of Miriam Jones, of Mama Jones’ Shebeen on Neve Sha’anan Street. Every morning he rose early, bathed hurriedly, and went out into the streets in time to catch the rising sun and the alte-zachen man. Now he rubbed his hands together, as if cold, and said, in his soft, quiet voice, “Do you have anything for me today, Ibrahim?”

  Ibrahim ran his hand over his own bald pate and smiled. Sometimes the answer was a simple, “No.” Sometimes it came with a hesitant, “Perhaps . . . ”

  Today it was a “Yes,” Ibrahim said, and Achimwene raised his eyes, to him or to the heavens, and said, “Show me?”

  “Ismail,” Ibrahim said, and the boy, who sat beside him wordless until then, climbed down from the cart with a quick, confident grin and went to the back of the cart. “It’s heavy!” he complained. Achimwene hurried to his side and helped him bring down a heavy box.

  He looked at it.

  “Open it,” Ibrahim said. “Are these any good to you?”

  Achimwene knelt by the side of the box. His fingers reached for it, traced an opening. Slowly, he pulled the flaps of the box apart. Savoring the moment that light would fall down on the box’s contents, and the smell of those precious, fragile things inside would rise, released, into the air, and tickle his nose. There was no other smell like it in the world, the smell of old and weathered paper.

  The box opened. He looked inside.

  Books. Not the endless scrolls of text and images, moving and static, nor full-immersion narratives he understood other people to experience, in what he called, in his obsolete tongue, the networks, and others called, simply, the Conversation. Not those, to which he, anyway, had no access. Nor were they books as decorations, physical objects hand-crafted by artisans, vellum-bound, gold-tooled, typeset by hand and sold at a premium.

  No.

  He looked at the things in the box, these fragile, worn, faded, thin, cheap paper-bound books. They smelled of dust, and mould, and age. They smelled, faintly, of pee, and tobacco, and spilled coffee. They smelled like things which had lived.

  They smelled like history.

  With careful fingers he took a book out and held it, gently turning the pages. It was all but priceless. His breath, as they often said in those very same books, cau
ght in his throat.

  It was a Ringo.

  A genuine Ringo.

  The cover of this fragile paperback showed a leather-faced gunman against a desert-red background. RINGO, it said, it giant letters, and below, the fictitious author’s name, Jeff McNamara. Finally, the individual title of the book, one of many in that long running Western series. This one was On The Road To Kansas City.

  Were they all like this?

  Of course, there had never been a “Jeff McNamara.” Ringo was a series of Hebrew-language Westerns, all written pseudonymously by starving young writers in a bygone Tel Aviv, who contributed besides it similar tales of space adventures, sexual titillation or soppy romance, as the occasion (and the publisher’s check book) had called for. Achimwene rifled carefully through the rest of the books. All paperbacks, printed on cheap, thin pulp paper centuries before. How had they been preserved? Some of these he had only ever seen mentioned in auction catalogues, their existence, here, now, was nothing short of a miracle. There was a nurse romance; a murder mystery; a World War Two adventure; an erotic tale whose lurid cover made Achimwene blush. They were impossible, they could not possibly exist. “Where did you find them?” he said.

  Ibrahim shrugged. “An opened Century Vault,” he said.

  Achimwene exhaled a sigh. He had heard of such things—subterranean safe-rooms, built in some long-ago war of the Jews, pockets of reinforced concrete shelters caught like bubbles all under the city surface. But he had never expected . . .

  “Are there . . . many of them?” he said.

  Ibrahim smiled. “Many,” he said. Then, taking pity on Achimwene, said, “Many vaults, but most are inaccessible. Every now and then, construction work uncovers one . . . the owners called me, for they viewed much of it as rubbish. What, after all, would a modern person want with one of these?” and he gestured at the box, saying, “I saved them for you. The rest of the stuff is back in the Junkyard, but this was the only box of books.”

  “I can pay,” Achimwene said. “I mean, I will work something out, I will borrow—” the thought stuck like a bone in his throat (as they said in those books)—“I will borrow from my sister.”