by Neil Clarke
The sniffer whirls and shoves him backward. Jonas squeals, loud and shrill how mother hates it, and he lets his piss go in a long hot stream that soaks his legs, splatters the bushes and the soldier’s boots. It’s very satisfying. Especially when the sniffer yanks his mask down and curses.
“I thought the other boy was the slow one,” he says.
“He’s frightened,” father says, coming and gripping Jonas by the arm. “You frightened him. Please, just go.”
As Jonas watches, the soldiers climb into their hover. They go.
The instant the whine of the hover fades away into the distance, Fox tells Petar and Blanka that it has to be tonight. His heart is still pounding away at his tiny ribcage, so hard he imagines the bones splintering. He’s sweating all over.
“That was too close,” he says. “Too close. I have to launch tonight.”
Everyone is in the kitchen. Blanka is wetting a rag for Jonas to clean himself; Petar is standing behind a chair and gripping it tightly, rocking it back and forth on its legs. They all turn their heads to look at Fox.
“There’s no storm tonight,” Blanka says, handing Jonas the rag. “Someone will see the exhaust burn. It’ll be loud, too.”
Fox shakes his head. “Nobody around here knows what a launch looks or sounds like,” he says. “And Petar, you told everyone there was oil in the granary, didn’t you?”
His cousin blinks. “Yes.” He pauses, then looks to his wife. “We could set fire to the granary. That should be enough to cover the noise and the light so long as he goes up dark.”
Blanka slowly nods. “Alright. Alright. You’ll need help moving the ship out. I’ll come as well.”
“I want to come,” Jonas says, wide-eyed, wringing the rag between his hands. Fox realizes he never did finish the poem on the wall.
“Bring Jonas, too,” he says. “To say goodbye.”
Bare minutes later, they are dressed and out the door, moving quickly through the crop field. The night air is cold enough to sting Fox’s cheeks. Fear and anticipation speed his short legs and he manages to keep pace with Petar and Blanka, who are lugging the gas. Jonas skips ahead and then back, electric with excitement, already forgetting the fear.
“I pissed on a soldier,” he whispers.
“I saw from the window,” Fox grunts. “But a sniffer can’t read DNA from ashes and bone. He had nothing.”
“Oh.” Jonas’s face reddens a bit. “I’ll do it again, though. I hate the soldiers as bad as the aristos. I want everyone equal, like you said.”
Blanka puts a finger to her lips, and Jonas falls silent. Fox is glad to save his breath. They pass under the godtree, its twisted branches reaching up towards a black sky sewn with glittering stars. For a moment Fox dares to imagine the future. Slipping through the blockade and into the waiting arms of civilization. Telling his tale of survival against all odds. Maybe he’ll be famous on other worlds how he so briefly was here.
And he’ll be leaving Jonas’s family to suffer through whatever comes next. The thought gnaws at him so he shoves it away. He reminds himself that Petar and Blanka are clever people. They know how to keep their heads down. They know how to keep silent and survive.
At the entrance to the abandoned granary, Fox switches on the small lantern he brought from the kitchen and lights the way for Petar and Blanka. They haul the tiny ship out on wooden sledges Petar made for it a day ago. Jonas puts his small shoulder into it and pushes from behind.
Fox checks everything he remembers, moving from the nosecone to the exhaust, then yanks the release. The ship shutters open, revealing the waiting passenger pod. Its life support status lights glow a soft blue in the dark. Ready. In the corner of his eye Fox sees Jonas staring up at the stars.
The ones who survive will be the ones who can keep their heads down. Fox knows it from history; he knows in his gut it’s happening here. Jonas isn’t one of those. Maybe he’ll learn to be, but Fox doesn’t think so.
Before he can stop himself, he turns to Blanka. “Jonas should go,” he says. “Not me.”
Jonas’s head snaps around, but Fox doesn’t look at him. He watches Blanka’s face. She doesn’t look shocked, the way he thought she would, but maybe it’s just that people are different in the village. Harder to read.
“What do you mean?” Petar demands.
“Jonas should take the ship,” Fox says, because why else would he have told them to bring Jonas? He must have known, in the back of his mind, that this was what he needed to do. One brave thing, and then he can go back to being a coward. “He’s already pissed off the teacher and pissed on a soldier,” Fox continues. “He’s going to keep putting himself in danger here. And the two of you, as well.”
“You’re the one who put us in danger,” Petar snaps. “You would take another son from me now, cousin?”
“He’s never fit right here, Petar,” Blanka says, and for the first time Fox sees tears in her eyes. “He’s always had his head up in the sky. We used to say that, remember?”
“He would be safer somewhere else,” Fox says. “Let him take the ship. It’s all automated from here on in.” He pauses. Breathes. “Let him take the ship, then you can burn down the granary and say he was playing in it. You can use what’s left of my bones if you need proof.”
Petar looks at his son. “Is this what you want to do, then, Jonas?” he asks hoarsely.
Jonas chews his lip. Turns to Fox. “Could I come back? Will I be able to come back?”
“Not soon,” Fox says. He knows there are still too many factions scrabbling in the power vacuum, knows things will get worse before they get better. “But some day. When things stabilize. Yes.” He can feel himself losing his nerve. He almost hopes Jonas will refuse.
“I want to go,” Jonas says solemnly. Petar gives a ragged cry and wraps him in his arms. Blanka hugs him from behind, putting her cheek against his cheek. Fox feels ashamed for watching. He looks away.
“What about uncle?” Jonas asks, his voice muffled by the embrace. “Will he be Damjan forever?”
Fox swallows as his cousin straightens up, and tries to look him in the eye. “You could say I was in the fire, too,” he says. “That Damjan was in there. And I could leave again. Try my luck going north. You wouldn’t have to look at me and remember all the time.”
Petar looks sideways to Blanka. Slowly, they both shake their heads. “You can never be Damjan and you can never be Jonas,” Blanka says. “But you are family. We’ve kept you safe this long, haven’t we?”
Fox dares to imagine the future again, this time in the village, slowly growing again in Damjan’s body. He did used to dream of retiring to the countryside one day. And he’s learned how to keep his head down. Soon the bandages will be off and his storage cone, shaved down and covered over with a flap of skin by the autosurgeon, will be undetectable.
Maybe the violence will be over in a few years’ time. Maybe Damjan will become a poet, a better one than Fox ever was.
“Thank you,” he says. “All of you.”
He stands aside while Jonas’s parents say their goodbyes. Jonas does his best to be sad, but Fox sees his eyes go to the ship over and over again, an excited smile curling his lips. He hugs his mother fiercely, then his father, then comes to Fox.
“You can have my bed,” he says. “It’s bigger.” He raises his arms. Pauses. He sticks out one hand instead to shake.
Fox clasps it tight. “I’ll do that,” he says.
Then Jonas is clambering into the pod, the restraints webbing over him to hold him in place during launch, and it’s too late for Fox to take it all back even if he wanted to. The ship folds shut. The smell of gas prickles Fox’s nose and he realizes Petar is dousing one side of the granary to ensure it burns. When he’s finished, Blanka takes his gas-slicked hand in hers, and takes Fox’s with the other. They walk the agreed-upon distance with a few steps extra to be safe.
The ship squats on the pale soil, rumbling through its launch protocols, and then the engin
e ignites. Fox feels it in his chest, vibrating through his bones. Riding a bonfire of smelting orange flame, the ship begins to rise, one fiery tongue catching the roof of the granary on the way up. The engine burns even brighter, stamping itself onto Fox’s retinas, and by the time he blinks them clear the ship is only a pinpoint of light disappearing into the sky.
The crackling flames leap high, consuming the granary and making it hard to see the stars. Fox can imagine them, though. He can imagine Jonas slipping through the blockade to freedom. In the corner of his eye, Petar lifts his hand high, but open, not the clenched fist of the soldiers.
Fox raises his arm. He does the same.
About the Author
Rich Larson was born in West Africa, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in Spain, and at twenty-three now writes from Edmonton, Alberta. His short work has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon and appears in numerous Year’s Best anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Apex.
Away from Home
Luo Longxiang
I. New San Francisco
Planetship Phaeton, New San Francisco City, sunny skies.
A young man with a flat top and an earring sat in the Chinatown substation, face to face with the station chief. Zhao had seen his type before—old enough to dress like a thug, but not quite ballsy enough to act like one.
“Quit looking at me like I’m a criminal,” he said. “I’m here to file a report. My motorcycle was stolen.”
Chief Zhao logged onto the police network and entered the license plate number. After a short pause, the current location of the motorcycle appeared on the screen.
“Zheng Weihan,” Zhao said. “This bike of yours must really be a piece of junk! This is the second time it’s been picked up by the cleaning crews . . . Looks like they thought it was abandoned. Leave a note that says ‘Not Trash’ next time, you hear?”
Weihan laughed. “You guys must get pretty bored around here, huh?”
New San Francisco wasn’t all that large, after all. From Hsia Street, Shang Street, Chow Street to Chinatown and Sung Street—you could count the number of streets in the whole dang city on two hands. Compared to some cities it was an easy beat.
“We have our days,” Zhao said. “There was an accident on Shang Street—two bicycles collided. That was the only ‘incident’ this month. How about you? Argue with your dad again last night?”
“Old bastard is going nuts from boredom over on Planetship Europa,” Weihan said. “He keeps coming over here and trying to force me to sign up for the graduate exam for military school.”
Determined to stay out of military school, Weihan had run away from home and came to New San Francisco to live with his uncle. Wei’s uncle had been Zhao’s neighbor, before he died. Zhao remembered that he was a big drinker. He’d charged through several marriages, failing at them all, finding himself alone in the end, without even a child of his own to keep him company . . . Then, one winter two years back, he’d gone out to the bars right before a big snowstorm hit town. They didn’t find his body under the snow until the next morning.
“Speaking of joining up . . . Well, I can’t say I didn’t think about it when I was your age,” Zhao said. “Back then, I really admired guys who enlisted, so that’s why I decided to enroll in military school. Took the test same year as your dad, actually. Only, he passed and I flunked. So I went to the police academy instead.” He patted his belt holster. “It’s been twenty years now, but this gun hasn’t fired a single bullet in all that time.”
“Dad only went to military school because his family was poor and they could give him room and board. Plus, they didn’t charge him any money to go. He always said being in the military was like gambling with your life. Fifteen years ago, his whole class of fifty guys went into combat. Only five came back . . . I don’t get it! It’s like he wants me to go get myself killed!”
“You want my two cents? Your dad is thinking that it wasn’t easy for him to get promoted to the top brass, but now that he’s there he’s got lots of friends. If you go and get your degree, he’ll be able to arrange a civilian post for you. Way safer than being out on the front lines like the other grunts. And you’re more likely to get promoted, too.”
“That’s got nothing to do with me,” Weihan said. “Anyways, my motorcycle’s gone. When you get off work don’t forget you’ve got to give me a ride home, okay?”
II. Teahouse
Chinatown had a lot of fake historical things that seemed out of place in the modern age, like traditional characters on the signs, banks that were made up to look like old-fashioned pawn shops, and ’verse-famous Chinese restaurants. And of course, there were the teahouses.
The Camel Teahouse had a name all its own, though. There was a storyteller, and Master Tunwuge, who’d show up every day without fail, holding a palm-leaf fan, dressed in the long robes of an old-timey aristocrat. Sometimes there’d even be a group of “foreigners” (ETs). Business had been even better lately, after the Hump-backed Horse had gone out of business. Once news had gotten out that they’d been using android wait staff their customers had dried right up. People who came to places like this were paying for tradition. Going to a teahouse to drink tea had become a status symbol—whether the tea was any good or not wasn’t important.
Worried that their son wasn’t making enough to take care of himself, Weihan’s grandma and grandpa had put Weihan’s uncle in charge of the teahouse. Receipts weren’t enough to make him rich by any means, but he hadn’t had to struggle so much either.
I should probably hire some more performers, Weihan thought to himself. That erhu player at the job fair didn’t seem half bad. They were saying he’d retired from some art academy—only problem was that he wanted too much money.
Later that evening Weihan was surprised to hear a soft voice call out to him as he locked the front door to the teahouse:
“Excuse me sir, are you hiring?”
Weihan almost let the door slam on his foot. In the cold light of the man-made moon he would have sworn the girl looked like a living succubus.
She was wearing a loose robe, with long hair. She seemed a little shy, with an erhu slung over her shoulder. He guessed she was still a student, looking for part-time work.
He composed himself and said, “Play ‘Moonlight on the Second Spring’ for me.”
The girl sat on a stone seat near the doorway. As the strings began to hum with the melody of the ancient tune, a stately story flowed forth:
A long, long time ago, during the Age of Earth, a blind man sat on a street corner, calmly playing the erhu. His clouded eyes stared blankly out at the masses of people, many passing out broadsheets. Deliberately ignoring the noisy excitement of the crowded street, the blind man could feel the coming storm deep in his bones, but he still he sat, in silent reverence, like a silent spring full of the dark reflections of gathering clouds. A storm is all sound and fury, but clouds are mute—and so even on the verge of a raging tempest, the spring remains as silent as ever.
The girl’s voice suddenly pulled Weihan back to the real world.
“That’s all there is to that tune. Can you give me a job or not?”
“Hrm? Oh, yes, a great tune, very impressive,” Weihan said, distracted. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you much money, though . . . If you don’t mind moving in with us, we can at least take care of your room and board.”
He was surprised to find himself trying to win her over. “Oh, that’s right, what’s your name?”
“Han Dan.”
Weihan quickly justified his concern: how would he ever be able to bear the thought of a defenseless woman wandering around an unfamiliar city?
“Have we met before?” He really did think she looked a little familiar.
Han Dan was carrying an old notebook, the kind with an e-ink display that could be rolled up when not in use. The notebook looked just like an ancient scroll. To attract custom
ers, the manufacturer had painted the outside to look like fancy writing paper—it was rather convincing.
Later, in the privacy of her room, she unrolled the notebook and began to type, her fingers dancing lightly across the screen:
. . . I’ll probably live here for a while making a few bucks doing this and that. If I stay too long he’ll start asking questions . . . and then I’ll be right back where I started, on the road again . . .
III. Meteor Shower
During the next month at the Camel, Han Dan performed daily. The teahouse was open from eleven to ten. Decent work had been hard to find lately, so it was good enough for the time being.
Around closing time, Weihan said he had to go out to take care of something. After about an hour he still hadn’t come back, so Han Dan went up to her room and switched on the computer. Entering her long password with practiced elegance, a 3D map filled the screen. Han Dan quickly located New San Francisco on the map, using the mouse to manipulate the image. Continuing to zoom in on the web of streets and alleyways, she enlarged the map until even stray leaves from the greenbelts were visible. She soon found him, standing in line in a 24-hour convenience store.
The Meteorology Board had put out a meteor shower warning earlier that day, so Weihan wasn’t alone. All the stores had had lines out the door, full of people rushing to buy supplies.
Han Dan fretted nervously, wanting to do something to get prepared. She went down into the storeroom and found some pieces of wood she thought she might use to board up the windows. But then she realized it was pointless.
She thought about the old Earth Age tradition: Close your eyes, wish on a star, and all your dreams will come true! Nowadays people wished under the stars too—they just wished that the damn meteor showers would end sooner rather than later!
Weihan came back at eleven-thirty carrying two bottles of purified water and some other things.
“We’re staying in the basement tonight,” he said, catching sight of Han Dan.