Harsh Oases

by Paul Di Filippo

  Suddenly a roar of pain from the Manticore, followed by an exclamation, filled Swee’pea’s ears.

  “It bites! It bites!”

  Saffron must have opened a portal through which her sharp beak could wreak an injury.

  But while her assault had resulted in the freeing of Swee’pea, it had not altered the destructive downward course of the grappling combatants.

  Evidently unclamping her beak from the Manticore’s flesh, Saffron managed a last communication.

  “The heat, Swee’pea—so rich—it’s our mother’s womb—”

  Out of range in the pyroclastic soup, Saffron and the Manticore disappeared from Swee’pea’s senses.

  Weeping, cursing, Swee’pea turned and homed in on Uncle Thomas’s beacon.

  In Swee’pea’s day, the great Plains of North America were still home to herds of wild shoggoths.

  The blimplike, amorphous, gelatinous creatures, each as big as a bam, had been sartorized from plasmoidal slime molds, with snippets of various fungi added. Essentially large bags of cytoplasm with multiple nuclei and assorted intracellular bodies, the humongous wobbly sacs— colored a pale matte grey and smelling of sperm—cruised in sizable herds up and down the middle of the continent, subsisting on nutrients extracted from the air and soil, leaving behind temporarily bald patches of earth and trails of fertilizing ooze.

  The shoggoths did not reproduce in great numbers, thanks to the dictates of their original designers. But when they did, it was a sight to behold. Like their basal slime mold ancestors, they would go sessile, erecting large stalks containing fruiting bodies full of spores. Upon release, the spores would darken the skies like clouds of ancient passenger pigeons.

  This extensive territory had been ceded to the shoggoths during the decades of mega-tomadoes, artifacts of the Greenhouse Effect. Gradually draining of population for a century, due to cultural factors, the American Midwest had been easy to finally empty out, in the face of the destructive storms. Humanity had chosen to migrate to bastions where they could huddle more safely while trying to repair the damaged climate. Recent successes along those lines meant that humans could probably re-populate the Great Plains now. But they seemed to be in no rush.

  And anyway, their niche had already been occupied.

  Swee’pea knew that Uncle Thomas felt uneasy around the Centaurs. Their mixed horse and human composition echoed his in a twisted fashion. Whereas Thomas appeared mostly human below the neck, and horsey above, the Centaurs were fashioned on the opposite plan, resembling the classical Greek creatures of myth. But what bothered Thomas more than their mirror-image somatypes was their dumbness.

  The Centaurs had been engineered with a minimum of intelligence, as mounts for various athletic competitions. They were hardly brighter than baseline equines, and Thomas experienced shame for that portion of his heritage which he shared with the capricious, balky, mute and rough-edged beasts. He was reminded too vividly of his own insensate days on the cell-phone plantation, before the coming of Petrina.

  Of course, what the Centaurs lacked in intelligence, the Cynocephali more than supplied.

  An individual Cynocephalus resembled nothing so much as the Egyptian god Anubis: jackal head on a human frame. As a race, they were sharp-witted, sardonic, proud and excitable, capable of great acts of bravery.

  Their lifestyle demanded the latter. For the Cynocephali, along with their Centaurs, had adopted the ways and technologies of the pre-Columbian Native Americans, migrating to follow the shoggoth herds on which they lived.

  And bringing down a shoggoth was no easy task.

  Right now, Swee’pea was about to participate in his own first hunt.

  Sitting on his Centaur mount amidst his fellows, beneath the rich blue bowl of the sky, Swee’pea appeared indistinguishable from his companions. His frequent matings within the tribe had locked his somatype into their mode.

  (Oh, he had tried mating with one of the Centaurs when he and Uncle Thomas had first arrived at their new refuge, after their escape from Mauna Loa. But although he had succeeded in mimicking a Centaur in shape, in mass he was no match for the big splices, metamorphosing into a dwarf version that could hardly sustain the forces of mating in either male or female form. Swee’pea couldn’t summon mass out of nowhere, helpful as it would have been. After all, his abilities weren’t magic!)

  Bare-chested, wearing his facial paint and breechclout, holding his feather-decorated spears, Swee’pea shared the fierce pride of the Cynocephali males who were on the verge of risking their lives to supply their kin with sustenance.

  Off in the distance, the herd of shoggoths marked as targets rolled slowly across the grasslands, producing squelching noises, thunderous crepitations. Breezes carried their scent to the hunters.

  Swee’pea’s own lonely and singular relative, Uncle Thomas, swam into the boy’s mind now. Elderly before Swee’pea had been born, the old mosaic had been failing of late. Their haunted hegira through the harsh oases had taken much out of him. Swee’pea wondered sadly if Uncle Thomas would even live to see his protégé attain his first birthday next week. That milestone seemed particularly important to the old philosopher, for some reason. Thomas had striven of late to impart so much knowledge to Swee’pea that the boy’s head was frequently left churning with novel ideas and startling facts. One reason he had insisted on taking part in the hunt today was actually to escape further lessons, to give his overworked brain a chance to rest.

  On the lead Centaur, the tribe’s chief signaled the commencement of the hunt Chief Creekborn was a wiry, scarred veteran of a thousand such assaults on the amoeboid behemoths, and Swee’pea felt confidence in his planning.

  Lighting their torches from live coals contained in clay pots, the torchbearers set out first, followed by the spear-carriers.

  As the hunters approached the shoggoths, the yeasty monsters began to exhibit an elephantine skittishness, alerted by whatever crude senses they possessed. They began to rumble off helter-skelter, seeking to flee their predators. But even their impressive speed was no match for the fleeter mounts of the warriors.

  Soon Creekborn had selected the runtiest member of the herd as his victim. The torch-bearers began to peel it off further off from its mates. The moist shoggoths were intensely averse to fire, and could be maneuvered with some precision.

  Once the shoggoth was isolated, the spear-carriers surged in.

  Swee’pea found himself losing all fear in the thrill of the assault. He darted in on a tangent, the hooves of his Centaur kicking up sweet-smelling divots, eventually coming close enough to slice into the shoggoth s thick redolent hide. Cytoplasm welled out the cut. Lacking any central organ or ganglia that could serve as fatal target, the shoggoth would instead die by scores of individual slashes that robbed it of cellular integrity.

  Swee’pea reined in his mount at the end of its arc and turned for another pass.

  At that moment, the shoggoth reared up, forming the lower half of its body into a pseudopod. When it came down, it landed on three warriors, crushing them lifeless into the earth.

  The Cynocephali did not pause to mourn, but maintained their fierce pricking assault

  After half an hour without any further loss of life, the tribespeople met victory. Deflating like a tent deprived of its supports, the shoggoth expired in a giant puddle of its contents.

  Now the female tribespeople arrived, to butcher and dress out the blubbery meat, and transport it back to camp.

  Chief Creekborn sought Swee’pea out personally to congratulate him.

  The jackal mask of the chief expressed pleasure, long pink tongue lolling out. Swee’pea found himself responding in kind.

  “You have upheld the honor of the tribe, lad. You may call yourself one of us now.”

  Sweaty and with shaky muscles, but very proud, Swee’pea raced back to the wickiup he shared with his uncle, intent on telling him about the hunt and his role in it.

  He found Uncle Thomas sleeping, even though it was onl
y mid-day. More and more the old philosopher retreated into dreams. Swee’pea did not wake him.

  That evening the nightly meal was followed by fevered dancing and singing. Uncle Thomas awoke to participate as watcher. Something about the bonfire and revelry under a starry sky out on a grassy plain seemed to stir a deep nostalgia in him.

  “Swee’pea, my boy, I’ve seen and done much in my life. More than I ever thought to experience when I was young and unknowing. But sometimes now I wonder if I wasn’t happiest when most ignorant.”

  “But Uncle, you can’t believe that, can you? All your life you’ve sought for knowledge and answers to big questions. And you’ve taught me to do the same.”

  Thomas sighed deeply. “True. But what I was compelled to do—by my own nature and by circumstances—did not necessarily lead me to happiness. I pray that you do not experience the same disappointments I did.”

  “I’ve let you down then, Uncle?”

  Thomas sat upright from where he lay against a saddle, the blankets that covered him against the chill dropping down to pool in his lap.

  “Never! You have been exemplary, all that I could have hoped. I just want you to fulfill your destiny without someday wondering if you should have chosen a different course, and becoming full of regrets.”

  Swee’pea patted his uncle’s shoulder gently, with great affection. “No fear of that, Uncle. Won’t the Categorical Imperative guard me against such a fate?”

  Thomas subsided, murmuring, “I hope so, I only hope so …”

  His uncle fell asleep then, and Swee’pea snugged the blankets more tightly around him, before setting off to look for sex.

  That night’s partner proved to be an unexpected individual: Creekborn’s own daughter, Ahleucha, with whom he had never yet mated. She approached Swee’pea with seduction plain in her every move, her tongue stropping her attractive brindled muzzle. They took a blanket and moved away from the crowd. She kneeled before him, and Swee’pea took her wildly from behind. Their quick orgasms elicited involuntary howls from them that segued into paeans to the rising moon. Later, Swee’pea would wonder if this mating had been dictated by the chief, as a kind of tribute to the new brave’s initiation by slaughter.

  A week passed, and the anniversary of Swee’pea’s decanting arrived. His youth in Scyphozoa City seemed an eternity ago. Even the anguish of Saffron’s sacrifice in the caldera had begun to fade. Swee’pea wondered if the rest of his life, however long, would continue to be such a series of disjunct climacterics.

  In their wickiup, Swee’pea and Thomas shared a ceremonial cake made of omnigrain, and a drink of water. Then his uncle spoke.

  “You have attained your majority, my son. And with this should come a further extension of your talents. You should be able to assume any form you want now voluntarily, without the trigger of copulation, utilizing the library of somatypes included within you. Your identity is completely variable now, at will.”

  “That’s wonderful, uncle. But is it really so much different than what I’ve been doing?”

  “No. And that leads me to another aspect of your skills. Any intercourse you partake of in the future will result in the acquisition of your partner’s memories.”

  Swee’pea sat stunned for a moment before replying. “But—but how? That seems impossible.”

  “It’s not. An organ within you has now come online for the first time. It generates cerebrotropic silicrobes that can map neural templates. These nanites travel with your exudations into your partner, map the other’s connections, then return to you epidermally in the course of an average bout of sex. Once returned, they overlay blank areas of your own neural pathways with the stolen memories. Your brain is very plastic, and much larger than average, with plenty of extra storage space. Now, not only can you masquerade superficially as another, but also mentally as well. Your survival to carry forward the splice legacy is thereby enhanced immensely.”

  “I don’t know what to say. It seems like too great a prowess to manage—”

  “No, no, you will do fine. But Swee’pea, you have to test this skill. And I’d like you to have me as your first mind partner. I’m close to death, I know, and it may be selfish, but I’d like to live on in some form. Philosophy, I’ve come to realize, is only a cold bulwark against extinction.”

  “Uncle, you’ll always live in my heart! But if you want this, then I’ll do it as well.”

  Swee’pea leaned over to kiss his uncle. He could feel the familiar metamorphic tide began to sweep over him, primed to render him a female clone of his uncle. But before the change could truly begin, his uncle’s words halted him.

  “Not the same. Do not become the same as me. Become something different. Would you become—a human female?”

  “Let me try .…”

  Swee’pea concentrated, and the transition came with surprising ease. She regarded her baseline human form with awe, running her hands over her breasts and hips.

  After undressing herself and her uncle, Swee’pea moved gently to rouse Thomas, producing a mild erection. Swinging herself atop him, she began to rock both of them to a climax.

  “Petrina,” whispered Thomas. “Sweet Petrina, you’ve returned—”

  Swee’pea’s orgasm was unlike anything she had ever experienced. Not only did her body explode with delight, but her mind nova’d into a second sun. She collapsed onto Thomas’s broad grizzled chest.

  When she recovered, Thomas Equinas was dead, his strong old heart at last gone to ghost

  But alive inside her. Not as an active realtime consciousness, but as everything he had done till moments before his death.

  Swee’pea resumed his male Cynocephalic shape. He dressed and stepped outside the wickiup.

  Claws instantly raked across his back as a hurtling figure leaped at him, and he slammed to the ground. Scrabbling away, blood pouring down to soak his loincloth, Swee’pea regained his feet and turned to face the Manticore. A ring of Cynocephali warriors, alerted by the noise and armed with spears, was assembling around the two combatants. Swee’pea motioned for them to hold off any charge. He did not want any more friends dying on his behalf.

  The creature’s human face snarled. “Two times you have evaded your death. But not this time. Even if your companions strike, they will not stop me before I kill you.”

  “Just tell me why,” asked Swee’pea. “You’re a splice yourself. Don’t you know my mission? To preserve our legacy?”

  “Fool! Why would I want to preserve anything about myself. I hate every fiber of my own monstrous being!”

  With that, the Manticore launched himself at Swee’pea.

  But the killer quickly found himself tussling with his exact doppelganger.

  Somewhat evenly matched at first, the two chimerae wrestled across the encampment, smashing tents, rolling into and out of cookfires, spooking Centaurs. Through Swee’pea’s turbulent mind resonated two maxims, now at odds:

  “My life must be a model.”

  “Honor all life.”

  How could he now kill one of those he was meant to protect? But how could he let the assailant of all he held dear win?

  The original Manticore was bigger than Swee’pea. Eventually this superiority swayed the balance of the battle. Swee’pea lay pinned beneath the four paws of the Manticore. The killer arched his scorpion tail and prepared to drive it into his victim.

  As the venomous barb descended, Swee’pea changed shape, reverting to his Anubis form.

  The tip of the Manticore’s deadly tail passed through the space where Swee’pea’s flank had been and continued on into the monster’s own gut.

  Loosing a guttural shriek, the Manticore somersaulted in pain, landing on his back to kick and expire in anguish, his human face purpling.

  Swee’pea got wearily to his feet. Ahleucha and others rushed to comfort him. Swee’pea accepted their aid gratefully, although he already knew he’d be leaving them soon.

  How Thomas Equinas had hated to run. Swee’pea remembere
d every nuance of his uncle’s distaste.

  But although he would go far, Swee’pea would never run again.

  Although this small postmodern fairytale derives its title from a Sonic Youth album, its ambiance has little to do with that groups wild-eyed experimental music. Instead, I tried to achieve a kind of Tom-Dischian sardonic romanticism, and think I succeeded pretty nicely.

  Damien Broderick was kind enough to purchase the story for the newish Aussie zine Cosmos, where he serves as fiction editor. I liked the fact that it was the sole piece of fiction in that issue, amidst a host of well-done pop-science articles. I never got to appear in Omni, in a similar setting, so this felt like a second chance to reach an audience attracted more by technology than dreams.

  DAYDREAM NATION

  Alone again, damn it.

  Cirri Beausoleil carried a twist-tied plastic bag filled with random, trivial possessions Ken had left behind down the corridor to the fifth-floor garbage chute. A pair of smelly gym socks; several Chinese take-out cartons filled with remnants of that noxious sweet-and-sour chicken he adored; a key-fob USB device big as a dime containing terabytes of possibly-important-but-screw-him files. And assorted other grimly quotidian reminders of another affair that had ended before it had really even begun.

  Unlatching the stained, scratched metal door, Cirri launched the emotional ballast downward into dark basement oblivion, and instantly felt a little better.

  She and Ken had been basically incompatible. Matters were as simple as that. She wasn’t a bad person, and neither was Ken. (It cost Cirri a twinge to affirm this latter statement, but she immediately felt big-hearted for doing so.) They were just two different types who had grown to grate on each other’s nerves in daily proximity.

  Of course, she had been blinded to Ken’s annoying features and habits for the longest time by his original seductive iDreams presentation. God, how strongly that parasensorial burst had hit her, some six months ago! She recalled those moments as if she were undergoing them again right now.