She was, or had been, just dreadful at checking her email for the monthly Bunco Gals Party Night reminder newsletter. Never mind replying to it. Eventually her friends, organized by Xime Ortiz, arranged to take turns calling her personally on her landline (“You should really get a cellphone, Emma Anne! For emergencies!”), and usually twice: once to invite her, once to remind her.
They even started picking her up in their Buick Centuries and Chevrolet Impalas and Cadillac Club Sedans, with the tacit understanding that Emma Anne was, in turn, to be designated driver on the way home. This obligatory inability to consume more than one margarita during the between-the-rounds pitcher pass was but another barrier to her social enjoyment. It did, however, enable her, as the only adult equal to the task of counting to twenty-one by the end of the night, to keep a fairly tidy score, and therefore a modicum of self-respect.
But she never did buy that cellphone…
… FOR EMERGENCIES.
Staring into the Loping Man’s gravely gentle eyes, Emma Anne forgot to fear her friends. Oh, but she missed them. She wanted them back, yaps and fangs and beads and all.
She sucked in a huge breath, slowed time, her fingers moving to the hand bell hanging from her belt. If Emma Anne were still who she once had been, she’d have called it a Bunco Bell, identical to the one used to ring their game to order. But tonight she was just a child gone feral under a silver sky, and this bell was her endowment.
If only she knew what it was for.
The Loping Man’s raptorial forelegs lifted, slow as sap moving, landing delicately on the hearth of the smokestack. Slow as grass dying, they reached for her. His jaw worked and gaped, worked and gaped.
And gaped.
And gaped.
Did he, then, take the head first, before all? Chew the brains like bubble gum? No chance of survival then, of jumping from his back as he ran. She’d just be a body, slung across his shoulders for a later and more deliberate mastication.
His segmented abdomen looked vast, insatiable, capable of containing several Emma Annes and all her endowments.
“Captious!” she squeaked, expelling breath without replacing it. Her left hand pinched the silver bell’s clapper, holding it soundless. Her right hand clutched some part of the stuffed weasel. “If I close my eyes, can you move fast enough?”
A dubious pause as Captious agreed to understand the full import of the question.
“There’s fast enough,” she said, “and then there’s suddenly you’re a head shorter and a human stole. It’s kind of fifty-fifty.”
“I can!” Bumptious piped up from her lap. “I can move fast enough, Emma Anne. If you trust me.”
Emma Anne sat in the brick dust and bat guano and her own warm urine, nose and eyes running, mouth dry. Not breathing. But those forelegs kept sliding in, inexorably, that triangular head following, and soon the Loping Man would be there with her, right inside her sanity. No, not sanity. Her septic tank. No, that wasn’t… sanctum! Sanctum Sanctorum, from the Latin…
Oh, he was enormous, colossal, an armored giant, but so very terribly compactable. Yes, and maybe that was where he went all day. Not away, but down, folded into leaf and twig and compound eyes, origamied into torpor.
“I won’t look,” Emma Anne promised Bumptious with the last of her breath. “I promise.”
An ecstatic Bumptious cried, “Thank you!” as Emma Anne’s eyelids slammed shut.
She gasped for breath.
Stink seeped back into her nostrils: the ammonia and cat litter smell of the guano, her own excreta, and the Loping Man’s rapidly invading odor, like the damp mystery of mushrooms, as he pressed on, pressed in, at speed.
But now, there came between her body and the Loping Man a roar that better belonged behind an enclosure of stainless steel wire rope mesh than in the non-living body of a plush toy. Bumptious had attacked.
Almost immediately, Captious began to writhe in her fist.
“Lemme go! Lemme go! Hellstars and moonworms! He’s halfway gone to gullet! No, Bump—don’t! EMMA ANNE, LET GO!”
She didn’t have time to obey; Captious sank her manifestly non-textile teeth into her wrist and wriggled loose. A weasel-shaped wind tunnel shot from the palm of her hand toward the hearth.
Then, nothing.
Just the sound of chewing.
But not, Emma Anne noticed when she dared peek again, easy chewing. It was half gagging, half gurgling, as if the Loping Man had thought he was getting squid nigiri for dinner and ended up with a mouthful of magnapinna mixed with cotton candy.
Emma Anne’s trembling left hand released the clapper of the silver hand bell. It chimed faintly against its bowl. Outside, not so very far away, an answering chorus of yips lit the night. Wrist throbbing, Emma Anne stared down at the endowment, and understood it.
Why, after all, did the Chihuahua Ladies always seem to turn up whenever Emma Anne came to Mill Town, following her—and her chiming, clinking, tinkling belt—around?
They recognized the Bunco Bell.
And they wanted to play.
Emma Anne lifted the bell in hand with new vigor and gave it twelve sharp rings. The bats in the smokestack awoke, diving all ways for open air. The Loping Man flinched back from their wings. Or from the noise. Or perhaps he sensed, not far behind him, the red thunder of high heels, the raking-in-the-making of manicured claws, the loyalty of old friends to their Ghost.
As crowded as the smokestack had been a moment before, it was now deserted of everything but Emma Anne. Captious and Bumptious, the bats, the Loping Man, all gone. Even the echoes of the silver bell, gone.
Outside, the world exploded in sound.
SHH. TOCK. FLAP. SHH. YIP. YIP. FLAP. TOCK. TOCK.
All this, threaded together by growling, scuffling, dragging. Something hurled at speed against the brick base of the smokestack. Emma Anne flung herself to her belly and crawled to the ledge, peering down into the starlit dark over the lot.
The Loping Man bled a black-green ooze that glowed, illuminating at least himself and whatever his blood fell upon. He was still chewing, frantically, foam and synthetic fiber batting bulging from his cheeks and the upper seams of his segmented abdomen, where he seemed to be… bursting.
The Chihuahua Ladies harried him, doggedly. But though they were fierce, the Loping Man’s right foreleg swept two of them off their feet, his left spearing another clear through the shoulder and flinging her into the mugwort and sweet clover and knapweed in a fireworks of fragrance.
At that petering howl of dismay, Emma Anne dropped the bell and groped for her belt. Her fingers found the loop of red ribbon, and tugged it loose. She ran it between her hands, pulling the midsection taut. Without daring to think about what she did, she pushed herself into a perching crouch, and waited, waited, waited till he was close enough again—and jumped from the smokestack right onto the Loping Man’s back.
Once, twice, thrice went the red ribbon about the prothorax. Her legs squeezed lower down. His limbs rose around her like scissors every time he moved. He flailed as she pulled. She pulled tighter. His thrashes went wild. He backed up against the smokestack as if to rasp her off his back, like a bear marking territory on trees, or a businessman scraping dog shit from his shoe. She looped the red ribbon about one fist, and tugged her pocketknife from its knotted string.
Just beneath the jaw then. That killing jaw, spilling over with the stuffed bits of Captious and Bumptious.
Let no child wake to the sound of his chewing again.
There.
EMMA ANNE ARRIVED late to the Pirate Banquet, but she was used to that. Besides, she reflected, could you be late if you were never even invited?
She rode in through the open doors of The Grill.
The Grill, in 1912, had been a fruit and vegetable stand owned by a tiny Italian man full of nautical invective and conflicting tales about his arrival on Ellis Island. The stand later became a full-service cafeteria for Mill Town factory workers. Still later a discotheque, co
mplete with gold-laméd Go-Go dancers in cages. Now it was the favorite watering hole of pirates, which meant a fishy smell, a lot of black and red décor, a great deal of skulls, snakes, and the occasional hourglass.
Emma Anne didn’t know how many pirates there were in Mill Town and its environs. There seemed to be hundreds. H. M. S. was not the only floating alligator tethered to the flagpole outside.
Raucous as they were, the whole hairy, tattooed, shirtless, accoutered, and aggressive lot of them fell silent at the sight of her. Even George Sand, stalking back and forth along the scarred bar and holding forth at length, RRAWKED to a surprised standstill.
Mounted on the now-headless Loping Man, Emma Anne was taller than the tallest of them. The skin of her legs stuck to his abdominal chitin, glued there by his ichor, and she was not sure if she would ever be able to tear herself free, or if she herself had now become, in essence and in accident, the Loping Man. Her hands were tangled in the red ribbons that bound his thorax. From his neck hole, where her pocketknife stuck out like a bolt, sprouted two partially chewed stuffed animal heads: one a tiger, one a weasel. They peered around The Grill with eager or ironic plastic eyes, and did not seem to care much anymore if their movements were witnessed.
Chihuahua Ladies flanking her like an honor guard, Emma Anne rode right up to Captain Howard.
The Way Pirate of Route 1 was sprawled on a throne of yet more decorative human skulls, wearing nothing but a lopsided paper crown from a defunct fast food restaurant Emma Anne could barely remember. Goober Bling. Booger Ring. Something.
Blunderbuss and cutlass bobbed through the air like a conductor’s batons as Captain Howard led the pirates, badly, through an incoherent variation of “Fiddler’s Green.” She continued bellowing verses long past the quelling of her pirate court. Whether this was because she was drunker than they or simply less impressed with Emma Anne’s entrance only she could say. But at last even she stopped, squinted one eye, and looked the newcomer up and down.
Emma Anne, glowing with gore, returned the glare. “Guess you got elected, Pirate King.”
Captain Howard burped. “Guess you survived the night, Feral Child.”
They eyed each other, waiting for the gauntlet slap, the taunt, the inciting incident for their final Duel and Doom. Emma Anne sighed and rolled her shoulders.
“Got any food, Margo?”
Her grin skullier than an ossuary, Captain Howard spread her arms wide to indicate the masses of lasagna, the mounds of Italian bread, the wheels of parmesan, and heaps of cannoli, struffoli, panna cotta.
“Maybe,” she teased. “Sing for your supper, Santiago?”
Emma Anne opened her mouth—to sob? to scream?—and choked on a surprised laugh. Raising her chin, she squared her shoulders, met Captain Howard’s gaze, and bellowed:
“I dug his grave with a silver spade!”
Everyone—Captious, Bumptious, the Pirate King, her pirates, her parrot, even the Chihuahua ladies—joined in.
“Storm along, boys! Storm along, John!”
THE MOON IS NOT A BATTLEFIELD
Indrapramit Das
Indrapramit Das (indradas.com) is an Indian author from Kolkata, West Bengal. His debut novel The Devourers was shortlisted for the 2015 Crawford Award and the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBTQ SF/F/Horror. His fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine, Lightspeed Magazine, Asimov’s Science Fiction and Tor.com, and has been anthologized in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and elsewhere. He is an Octavia E. Butler scholar and a grateful graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop, and received his M.F.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. He has worn many hats, including editor, dog hotel night shift attendant, TV background performer, minor film critic, occasional illustrator, environmental news writer, pretend-patient for med school students, and video game tester. He divides his time between India and North America, when possible.
WE’RE RECORDING.
I was born in the sky, for war. This is what we were told.
I think when people hear this, they think of ancient Earth stories. Of angels and super heroes and gods, leaving destruction between the stars. But I’m no super hero, no Kalel of America-Bygone with the flag of his dead planet flying behind him. I’m no angel Gabreel striking down Satan in the void or blowing the trumpet to end worlds. I’m no devi Durga bristling with arms and weapons, chasing down demons through the cosmos and vanquishing them, no Kali with a string of heads hanging over her breasts black as deep space, making even the other gods shake with terror at her righteous rampage.
I was born in the sky, for war. What does it mean?
I WAS ACTUALLY born on Earth, not far above sea level, in the Greater Kolkata Megapolis. My parents gave me away to the Government of India when I was still a small child, in exchange for enough money for them to live off frugally for a year—an unimaginable amount of wealth for two Dalit street-dwellers who scraped shit out of sewers for a living, and scavenged garbage for recycling—sewers sagging with centuries worth of shit, garbage heaps like mountains. There was another child I played with the most in our slum. The government took her as well. Of the few memories I have left of those early days on Earth, the ones of us playing are clearest, more than the ones of my parents, because they weren’t around much. But she was always there. She’d bring me hot jalebis snatched from the hands of hapless pedestrians, her hands covered in syrup, and we’d share them. We used to climb and run along the huge sea-wall that holds back the rising Bay of Bengal, and spit in the churning sea. I haven’t seen the sea since, except from space—that roiling mass of water feels like a dream. So do those days, with the child who would become the soldier most often by my side. The government told our parents that they would cleanse us of our names, our untouchability, give us a chance to lead noble lives as astral defenders of the Republic of India. Of course they gave us away. I don’t blame them. Aditi never blamed hers, either. That was the name my friend was given by the Army. You’ve met her. We were told our new names before training even began. Single-names, always. Usually from the Mahabharata or Ramayana, we realized later. I don’t remember the name my parents gave me. I never asked Aditi if she remembered hers.
That, then, is when the life of asura Gita began.
I was raised by the state to be a soldier, and borne into the sky in the hands of the Republic to be its protector, before I even hit puberty.
The notion that there could be war on the Moon, or anywhere beyond Earth, was once a ridiculous dream.
So are many things, until they come to pass.
I’ve lived for thirty-six years as an infantry soldier stationed off-world. I was deployed and considered in active duty from eighteen in the Chandnipur Lunar Cantonment Area. I first arrived in Chandnipur at six, right after they took us off the streets. I grew up there. The Army raised us. Gave us a better education than we’d have ever gotten back on Earth. Right from childhood, me and my fellow asuras—Earth-bound Indian infantry soldiers were jawans, but we were always, always asuras, a mark of pride—we were told that we were stationed in Chandnipur to protect the intrasolar gateway of the Moon for the greatest country on that great blue planet in our black sky—India. India, which we could see below the clouds if we squinted during Earthrise on a surface patrol (if we were lucky, we could spot the white wrinkle of the Himalayas through telescopes). We learned the history of our home: after the United States of America and Russia, India was the third Earth nation to set foot on the Moon, and the first to settle a permanent base there. Chandnipur was open to scientists, astronauts, tourists and corporations of all countries, to do research, develop space travel, take expensive holidays and launch inter-system mining drones to asteroids. The generosity and benevolence of Bharat Mata, no? But we were to protect Chandnipur’s sovereignty as Indian territory at all costs, because other countries were beginning to develop their own lunar expeditions to start bases. Chandnipur, we were told, was a part of India. The only part of India not on Earth. We were to ma
ke sure it remained that way. This was our mission. Even though, we were told, the rest of the world didn’t officially recognize any land on the Moon to belong to any country, back then. Especially because of that.
Do you remember Chandnipur well?
IT WAS WHERE I met you, asura Gita. Hard to forget that, even if it hadn’t been my first trip to the Moon. I was very nervous. The ride up the elevator was peaceful. Like... being up in the mountains, in the Himalayas, you know? Oh—I’m so sorry. Of course not. Just, the feeling of being high up—the silence of it, in a way, despite all the people in the elevator cabins. But then you start floating under the seat belts, and there are the safety instructions on how to move around the platform once you get to the top, and all you feel like doing is pissing. That’s when you feel untethered. The shuttle to the Moon from the top of the elevator wasn’t so peaceful. Every blast of the craft felt so powerful out there. The g’s just raining down on you as you’re strapped in. I felt like a feather.
Like a feather. Yes. I imagine so. There are no birds in Chandnipur, but us asuras always feel like feathers. Felt. Now I feel heavy all the time, like a stone, like a—hah—a moon, crashing into its world, so possessed by gravity, though I’m only skin and bones. A feather on a moon, a stone on a planet.
You know, when our Havaldar, Chamling his name was, told me that asura Aditi and I were to greet and guide a reporter visiting the Cantonment Area, I can’t tell you how shocked we were. We were so excited. We would be on the feeds! We never got reporters up there. Well, to be honest, I wanted to show off our bravery, tell you horror stories of what happens if you wear your suit wrong outside the Cantonment Area on a walk, or get caught in warning shots from Chinese artillery klicks away, or what happens if the micro-atmosphere over Chandnipur malfunctions and becomes too thin while you’re out and about there (you burn or freeze or asphyxiate). Civilians like horror stories from soldiers. You see so many of them in the media feeds in the pods, all these war stories. I used to like seeing how different it is for soldiers on Earth, in the old wars, the recent ones. Sometimes it would get hard to watch, of course.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume 12 Page 53