All the Birds in the Sky

by Charlie Jane Anders

  “It’s so weird to be back here, after so long,” Patricia said. “Feels like a lifetime since we left, but also like we were just here yesterday. Like a spell that makes us both younger and older. I am glad to see you again.”

  No, Patricia really had changed—she moved like a Bodhisattva, or a Jedi, not the rambunctious klutz Diantha remembered. And behind her thin-lipped smile, she had some underground lake of sadness. Maybe sad to see what Diantha had become.

  “I know why you’re here,” Diantha said to Patricia. “But I’m not sure why I am.”

  “Why am I here?” Patricia took the daintiest sip, leaving a lava-lamp patina on the inside of her glass.

  “You’re the prodigal daughter. They bring you back into the fold, and show that they can forgive.”

  “You feel like you were exiled, but me, they let back in,” Patricia said. “The truth is, you exiled yourself.”

  “You can choose to see it that way if it eases your mind.” Diantha turned away.

  Patricia put her hand on Diantha’s forearm—just three fingertips—and it felt like the sharpest static charge. Diantha felt as though she’d tongued a dose of Ecstasy. Warm, at ease. This was not something the old Patricia could have done.

  “What are you?” she stammered. Everybody in the room was staring. Patricia’s hand was long removed, but Diantha still wobbled.

  “We don’t have much time, things are changing quickly,” Patricia said in Diantha’s ear with quiet clarity. “You’ve turned your guilt into resentment, because that seemed easier to face. You won’t move on until you turn it back into guilt, and then into forgiveness for yourself.”

  The rational part of Diantha’s mind was saying this analysis seemed much too facile, too straightforward, but she found herself nodding and sniffling. Now everybody was definitely watching, though nobody else could hear what Patricia said.

  “I can help,” Patricia said. “I want to help you, and not just because we need you to work with us. If I help you throw away the guilt that you’ve fashioned into armor that constricts your every movement, what will you do for me in return?”

  Diantha came so close to saying she would do whatever Patricia wanted, anything at all. And then it hit her: She was being Trickstered. She’d been this close to becoming a slave to her former best friend. Diantha backed away, almost tipping over a teak side table full of drinks.

  “Serious…” Diantha scrambled to remember the arrangement of facial muscles that constituted a normal expression. “Serious … seriously. What happened to you?”

  “Honestly?” Patricia shrugged. “I had some great teachers, in San Francisco. But the main thing was, I fell in love with a man, and he built a doomsday machine.”

  Patricia walked away. Diantha fell onto an armchair, landing on the arm instead of the seat. The worst of it was, she hadn’t escaped Patricia’s clutches at all. She would be ready to do whatever Patricia asked of her, soon enough. Probably the very next time she felt loneliness pile up. Maybe even later that same night.

  * * *

  THEODOLPHUS ROSE WAS happy at last. His neck was affixed to the stone wall behind him by a wide steel collar that chafed his jaw and clavicle, and his hands and feet were embedded deep in that same wall, so his arms and legs cramped. Far above, he heard the sounds of Eltisley Hall: students processing and recessing, teachers gossiping over sherry, even a madrigal chorus. Besides the collar and stones, a dozen spells held Theodolphus. His captors brought him food and bathed him, and meanwhile he had the world’s most escape-proof prison to keep him entertained. This was far preferable to being a wooden tchotchke.

  Plus, he had visitors! Like Patricia Delfine, who had discovered his cell a few days ago. Since then, she stopped by at least once a day to pay her respects, neither gloating nor scowling. She had grown into quite a terrifying woman, who moved like a knife thrower. The Nameless Assassin School would have given Patricia top marks for her soundless gait, the slight pronation of her left foot, the roll of her right shoulder, the lack of mercy in her sea-green eyes. She could end you, before you even saw her coming. Watching her close the heavy white door behind her, Theodolphus took a certain pride in his former student.

  “Miss Delfine,” he said. She had brought some food for him. Fish and potatoes! Food of the gods. The warm starchy smell banished the usual rankness.

  “Hello, Ice King,” she said. She always called him Ice King. He didn’t know what that meant.

  “I’m so delighted that you could come and visit,” he said, just like always. “I wish you would let me help you.”

  “How would you help me?” Patricia gave him a look that made it clear she had follicles that were deadlier than his entire arsenal.

  “I told you already, about the vision I saw at the Assassin Shrine. It’s coming: the final war between science and magic. The destruction will be astounding. The world will be torn, torn to giblets.”

  “Like Kawashima said, visions of the future are pretty much always total crap,” Patricia said. “Laurence and his people had a machine, we dealt with it. End of story.”

  “Oh. I remember Laurence!” Theodolphus smiled. “I tried everything I knew to turn him against you, you know. I used all my guile. He still stood up for you. Bloody brat.” His pelvis made a sound like popcorn popping.

  At that, Patricia’s calm wavered. “That’s not true,” she said. “He bailed on me. I remember. When I needed him most, he flaked. I could never rely on him when we were kids.”

  Theodolphus attempted to shrug, but his shoulders were partway dislocated. “You believe what you want,” he said. “But I was there, and I saw the whole thing. Laurence suffered beatings because he would not disavow you. He spat the most awful insults at me. I remember well, because it was the beginning of how I ended up here.”

  “The best thing about my life now is, I never have to listen to you again.” And now Patricia seemed a vulnerable child again—as if he’d somehow reached an exposed nerve, without even realizing. “I survived all your stupid mind games. I can survive whatever happens, from here on out. Goodbye, Ice King.” She put the plate of food on the wooden shelf in front of his face, then slammed the door, not even waiting for him to thank her for the fish and potatoes. They tasted amazing.

  * * *

  THE HENS LIVED in a coop and a small yard that became slick with chicken shit no matter how often you shoveled. Their ringleader was a big clay-colored broody named Drake who puffed herself up like a poisonous fish whenever anyone came near, and tried to peck your eyes out for the crime of feeding her. The other hens scattered in Drake’s path and attacked anyone whom they judged Drake to have softened up first; you had to let these little fuckers know who was boss right up front or they would ride your ass forever.

  Roberta found herself shielding her face with her forearms and shouting, “I’m warning you, I’ve killed a man!” at Drake and her crew. The hens were unimpressed, launching another attack on Roberta’s ankles, and she had to leap outside the ring before she got clobbered. She leaned over the fence, looking down into Drake’s dark little eyes glaring up at her like come-at-me-bitch, and Roberta had instant access to a catalogue of a few dozen ways to retaliate. Ranging from minor acts of sadism that would leave no mark to a deniable accident that would remove Drake from the pen forever. Roberta could picture them. Her hands were ready. She could teach this dumb bird, it would be easy.

  A surge of nausea followed that thought, and Roberta had to sit down, in the mud, nose perilously close to the wire hexagons of the fence. Dry-heaving. Of course she was not going to hurt this chicken. That was crazy, right? She stared at Drake, who was still a ruddy bowling ball, and felt kinship with the little psycho. “Listen,” she told Drake. “I get where you’re coming from. I’ve been through some stuff, too. I just lost both parents, and I had a lot of unfinished business with them. I spent so long thinking I never wanted to speak to them again, and now that I never can, I’m realizing how wrong I was. I never even expected to outliv
e them; they were supposed to mourn me and feel all helpless, not the other way around. And I guess what I’m saying is: Can we be friends? I promise I won’t challenge your authority. I just want to be one of your lieutenants or something. Okay? For real.”

  Drake craned her neck and unpuffed slightly. She gave Roberta a once-over, then seemed to nod slowly.

  “Tell your sister,” the hen said, “she waited too long, and it’s too late.”

  “What?” Roberta leapt to her feet, then tripped and fell on her ass again.

  “You heard me,” Drake said. “Pass on the message. She said she needed more time to answer, we gave her more time. It’s a simple yes-or-no question, for fuck’s sake.”

  “Uh.” This was it. Roberta was finally losing her mind. “Okay. I’ll, uh, tell her.”

  “Good. Now give me my goddamn corn,” Drake said.

  Drake never spoke to Roberta again—at least, not in English—but after that they really were sort of friends. Roberta learned how to read Drake’s moods and know when to give the alpha hen space. She knew when one of the other humans had pissed Drake off, and she would cuss him or her out on Drake’s behalf. At last, Roberta had found an authority figure she could please without hating herself.

  She tried to get in touch with Patricia, but her little sister’s phone seemed permanently turned off and nobody knew where she’d gone.

  A few weeks later, Roberta dreamed she was being chased by a giant metal statue, swinging a scythe whose blade was the size of a bus. She ran down a grassy hill, then lost her footing and plunged headfirst into the bushes. Roberta closed her eyes to scream, and when she reopened them, the statue was Patricia.

  “Hey, Bert,” the giant steel Patricia said, loudspeaker-like. “Sorry to bust in on you. I got help from a friend of mine, who does dreamwalking. I’m going to be washing his car. Anyway. I wanted to make sure you were okay. I’m tying up all my loose ends.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  Big Patricia blinked, as though she didn’t understand the question.

  “Loose ends are cool.” Roberta got upright and parted the bushes with both hands, craning her neck to look up at her skyscraper sister. “Loose ends mean that you’re still living your life. The person who dies with the most loose ends wins.”

  “I don’t get you.” Patricia had the sun behind her, so she was just a shape. She wore mountainous jeans, with a belt buckle that looked like the square Art Deco face of the scary statue.

  “Jesus, Trish. You’ve never understood me. Don’t act like that’s some big revelation.” Roberta could say things to this imaginary Patricia that she would never say to her real sister. “I tried telling you when we were kids, that you and I were the same kind of crazy. But you always had to be special. You’re never going to make it in this world if you always have to be a martyr.”

  Patricia turned and kicked the hill behind her, sending sprays of sod over Roberta’s head. “All this trouble I go to, to check up on you, and you just want to bust my balls,” she said. “Fuck you.”

  It came out before Roberta even knew what she was saying: “Don’t be a bitch, or I’ll tell Mom.” Then she heard herself and felt all of the air go out of her.

  Patricia shrank. All at once the two women were the same size. Patricia looked gut punched, the way Roberta felt.

  “Hey,” Roberta said. “You were always their favorite, you know. Even when they were torturing you and praising me. They loved you the most.”

  Patricia reached out and touched Roberta’s face, palm first. “That’s so not true,” she said. “Hey, I can’t stay in your dream much longer. I’m already losing signal. But you’re safe, right? You found someplace safe to lay low? Because there are more shitstorms coming.”

  “Yeah,” Roberta said. “I’m at the world’s most boring commune, in the mountains near Asheville. I’m looking after the chickens, and being super-sweet to them. Oh, speaking of which, one of the hens wanted me to tell you something.”

  “What was that?”

  “Basically, that you suck. That you screwed everything up. And that it’s too late to fix it.”

  Patricia’s posture stiffened and her face grew masklike, too, so it was like she was turning back into a statue. Patricia let out a ragged breath.

  “Tell the bird,” she said, “to get in line.”

  Roberta woke up.

  29

  AFTER THE WORMHOLE generator went up in smoke, Laurence went back to his life. He had the house atop Noe Valley to himself, since Isobel was off doing mysterious errands for Milton. Most of Laurence’s friends had gone to live at Seadonia, an oil rig and cruise ship that Rod Birch had lashed together and turned into an independent nation in the North Pacific. Laurence received cryptic e-mails from burner accounts, telling him exciting things were happening. They were making discoveries. They were concocting plans. “Come to Seadonia,” Anya urged in one e-mail. “We’re still going to save the world.”

  Laurence felt as if he’d quit both caffeine and cigarettes. He woke up a few times a night, sweating and even crying. In his fucking sleep. He didn’t have that thing where he forgot for a second how fucked everything was, and then remembered, and then felt his heart break all over again—that would be too easy. Instead, he remembered always. He would feel stricken, doubled over, with grief and misery—and then he would remember how bad it really was and feel worse, as his brain took on a bit more of the weight.

  Except sometimes, he read an article or saw a TV report about the latest sign that the world was screwed—a wall of dead babies, piled like stones at the outer boundary of some farmer’s pasture. And he would think, by reflex, Oh, thank goodness we’re building an escape route. And then it would flood back to him, the despair. The one actual good thing he’d done in his life, and it was scrap and ashes. It was more than enough to drive him mad.

  Laurence didn’t think of Patricia, except to imagine her listening to the voicemail he’d left her. And laughing at how stupid he was. Maybe playing it for the whole wizard gang, when they were drunk on mystical cocktails together.

  The only other time Laurence let himself think of Patricia was when he realized he couldn’t go to Seadonia, or anywhere else. People would ask too many questions about the attack, and it would get weird if Laurence kept refusing to say anything. So not only did Laurence have no girlfriend, he also had no friends, because nobody would ever understand about his vow of silence. Only Laurence had recognized Patricia in Denver, or else he’d be in a lot more trouble.

  Other than those two things, Laurence didn’t think about Patricia at all.

  Laurence got a big dark peacoat and wandered around the city with his shoulders up and his head down. He made believe he was a time traveler from the postapocalyptic future, looking in on the last days of civilization. Or maybe this was the postapocalyptic world, and he was visiting from a better past. He went days without speaking to another person. He checked in with his mom and dad, who were safely in Montana and Arizona, respectively, but blew off their questions. He sat up all night trying to write a new OS for the Caddy, one that would be fully open-source and user-configurable. He went to the hAckOllEctIvE, but left if anybody spoke to him. He trimmed his beard but did a half-assed job of it, so he had a lopsided Vandyke shaped like a profile of a duck. One time he sat in a tea shop and listened to one of those new groups sing madrigals, but then he started to cry, and really, fuck that, so he bailed.

  Laurence got a job working for a bank that wanted to install a series of safeguards on its website preventing people from transferring too much of their money at once—which they were perfectly entitled to do, but the bank wanted to make it more complicated and also throw up as many distractions as possible during the process, like a series of notices tailored to the customers offering them things like painless refi or free overdraft protection. Anything to sidetrack the customers and keep the capital from flying away.

  Maybe that was why the world was circling the drain. Maybe people�
��s short attention spans finally weren’t short enough.

  At the end of a few weeks’ solitude, Laurence ran into Serafina, his ex-girlfriend, and got roped into going to dinner with her. At least she wouldn’t ask what happened in Denver. They went to a cavernous tapas place that was still hanging in there at 16th and Valencia, though its prices had gone way up.

  Laurence drank too much sangria and looked into Serafina’s candle-lit face, her cheekbones thrown into relief, and he found himself saying, “You know, you’ll always be the one who got away.”

  “You are so full of crap.” Serafina laughed, gnawing a rabbit’s leg. “The whole time we were together, you were looking for an excuse to dump me.”

  “No! No, I wasn’t.”

  “You would make stuff up, like that thing where I was putting you on ‘probation.’ Like you were trying to talk me into dumping you. You just didn’t want it to be your fault.”

  This struck Laurence as massively revisionist history. But he couldn’t deny it fit all the facts. A mariachi group in matching little vests came around to try and serenade them. Including little children in teeny vests way past their bedtime. Laurence shooed them away, then felt guilty and ran after them and gave them a hundred bucks as they were leaving the restaurant. Shit. Little kids in teeny vests, out this late.

  “I still don’t know what gave you the stones to dump me at last,” Serafina said when he got back. “Something happened, but I never knew what.”

  Laurence thought of his grandmother’s ring and how Patricia had stolen it from him, and he choked up, right there at the dinner table. “I don’t,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  He went off to the men’s room and splashed water on his face. His duck beard looked worse than slovenly—it looked like he was failing to start a trend. It would be gone as soon as he got home.

  “So,” he said when he got back to the table. Change the subject change the subject. “What’s going on with your emotional robots?”