Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 120

by Neil Clarke

  Everyone was pressing closer, now, crushing in against the plinth, and Eris looked for an injector or an autosurgeon, something he would use to distribute the Vaxine update that would keep them safe from his plague. But there was nothing up there with him except the casket and a dull metal beaker.

  Eris realized what the Green Man’s blessing was the split second before Schorr thumbed the catch. The casket split open with a pneumatic hiss, an innocuous puff of dust. The crowd was clamoring for the Green Man. Pressing in close, climbing up the plinth, trying to touch him. Schorr reached into the casket and plucked one finger from the Green Man’s desiccated hand like picking an overripe fruit. He crumbled it into the beaker. Eris could hear the powder hiss as it hit water, or maybe only imagined it.

  She tried to wrest control back from Kit. She needed to scream. She needed to tell them not to fucking drink it, not to even fucking touch it. But Kit was still moving, grim and steady, toward the plinth. Eris watched the beaker pass from hand to hand, dark fluid leaking from pale lips. She knew they were already dead. Schorr wasn’t inoculating his followers; he was using them as his final test subjects.

  Someone who wasn’t Eris started to scream. The first devotees to drink from the beaker were writhing now, toppling backward off the plinth into the crowd. She saw the infection moving through their bodies like a time-lapse, their fingers and faces swelling, bubbling, poisonous green and mud brown. She could almost feel it.

  Kit accelerated, weaving through bodies. Three figures in hazard suits had detached themselves from the shadows and now were closing the casket again, dragging it backward onto a hoverjack. Schorr was still standing, still watching the chaos. People ran, panicked—if they’d come expecting to die, they hadn’t expected it to be this painful.

  Kit had them close, now, close enough to reach out and grab the rough corner of the plinth. Schorr noticed, finally turning his masked head. Eris saw her ghostly reflection in the insectoid eyes. Kit twisted so the biogun was aimed right at him, all she had to do was squeeze and at this range she’d said it would shred right through him and—

  One of the fleeing devotees blindsided her, smacking an arm across her chin. Eris would’ve known how to twist, how to compensate, but Kit was unbalanced by it and she staggered. Suddenly they were on the floor, rolling to avoid feet, the biogun gone. Someone tripped on her, stomped by accident on her gut; the wind went out of her hard. By the time Kit had her upright, Schorr was gone, too. She vaulted them up on the plinth, spinning, searching.

  There.

  The sarcophagus was gliding away through the crowd, back the way they’d come, ushered by Schorr and his men. Back into the crush. Kit kept her eyes fixed on the target, but Eris saw flashes of the infected men and women, all wailing and writhing. Was this how it had been in the colony? Was this how her father had died?

  She saw the tail end of the sarcophagus disappearing around the next corner. She was running faster than she’d ever, Kit wringing every last bit of energy from her muscles. They made it to the elevator just as the doors slid shut on Schorr’s turned back.

  Shit!

  “Aren’t your people waiting for him at the top?” Eris gasped.

  He’s already streamed the footage of what just happened back there. Says if there’s any attempt to follow him, he feeds the Green Man through a nebulizer and the spores go airborne. Says he’s open to negotiations.

  “Bullshit,” Eris snapped. “He’s lying. He wants to do the whole fucking City.”

  I’m being ordered to stand down, Eris. I fucked this up. Bad.

  “Then if Ndirangu asks, it was all me,” Eris said.

  There was a pause. There’s a civilian upcar that’ll be unlocked and unalarmed just around the block. And from here on in, the brainshare implant is malfunctioning.

  The thrumming returned, and an instant later Eris’s body was hers again. The lactic acid in her muscles and aches in her joints made her want to collapse to the floor and rest for a second, just a second. Instead, she staggered back down the hallway. Found her clothes. Her arms. She chinned them back into place. Artinerves snaked up to meet the tender flesh and she flexed her metal fingers.

  “Fucking right I drive this time,” she muttered.

  Schorr was in one of the white vans, climbing fast, by the time Eris threw herself inside the little blue upcar Kit had picked for her. It wasn’t the absolute last vehicle Eris would’ve snagged for a pursuit, but it was close. She slammed over to manual and hauled it up off the pavement, making a dozen hurried adjustments to the dampers, the updrive, the seat. There was no way she was going to catch the van with the inbuilt speed limits still operational, but if she stopped to do the rewiring, Schorr was good as gone.

  Eris jammed the seat back and drove with her feet, how she’d done on the battered old ute in the colony, while she gutted the panel with her metal hands. She’d lost some dexterity over the years. Lost the calluses, too.

  But she could still do it. One foot on the pedals and one steering, she split her concentration between navigating the lower streets, mercifully empty of traffic, and finding the right port on her arm. The van was still in sight, bulling through a cloud of camera drones she assumed were OCI, but in another second it would be a speck and then gone entirely.

  “Couldn’t have found me a fucking custom?” she breathed, even though she wasn’t sure Kit could hear her anymore. She hunted through a tangle of wires, taking both eyes off the windshield, and was nearly blindsided by a cab. The proximity alert wailed, and she could see the driver mouthing off, too, but it didn’t matter because she’d found the right wire and the right port.

  She fed it in, and suddenly she could feel the upcar like an extension of her arms, which were an extension of her brain, and in her brain she decided to go however fucking fast she wanted. She deleted the limits, gunned the engine, and acceleration pinned her to her seat like an invisible hand.

  Schorr had a big gap on her, but he was driving carefully. Eris wasn’t. She was driving wild. Her metal hands were barely skimming the steering wheel, plucking it left, down, right, left, up, fast enough to blur. The City was streaming all around her, unfocused, but she knew its architecture like she knew her own body and all she had to do was follow the van and not even brush another upcar or drone. Her tongue was planted firm between her molars.

  She was shredding the speed limits to pieces, but Kit had to be blocking the safety signal that would have normally overridden her by now. And if there were sweepers patrolling, she’d like to see them try to catch her. Eris knew she shouldn’t be smiling. Kit wouldn’t have been smiling. But her lips were dragged back off her teeth all the same.

  She felt good. Really good. And if there were Green Man spores already inside her, if she was moments from bursting into a viny writhing mess, the instant crash would probably kill her before the infection did. She came level with the white van, then hurtled past it, and she realized where Schorr was heading.

  She cut speed, matching Schorr, who tried to shake left. Eris clung to him like a shadow. Up ahead, one of the City’s largest filtration plants approached, a somber giant in gunmetal grays and blues. Pipettes stretched from its towering tanks into the surrounding infrastructure, pumping water through the City like a beating heart, and that was where Schorr wanted to release the Green Man.

  Which meant he’d been bluffing about taking it airborne. Eris thought back to the underground communion, the beaker being passed. The spores needed water.

  Schorr banked hard and down, and Eris realized something else: he didn’t need to get all the way to the plant entrance. He only needed to get to one of the water tanks, and those were a hell of a lot closer. The white van put on a final burst of speed, angling towards the nearest of them, and Eris could see the top of the tank sliding open via whatever override code Ferris Carrow, owner of half the filtration plants in the City, the woman with the flower in her stomach, had been murdered for.

  Eris could already imagine the van puttering
to a neat halt, Schorr’s men shoving the open casket out the back so it dropped down into the tank like a pill into a water glass. The Green Man would fizz and dissolve and the City would drink his dead body. Use it in their showers, their hydroponics. If there were safety valves to isolate the tank she figured Schorr had codes for those, too.

  They were bare meters away from the tank. She reached for the extra impact webbing and tugged it over herself. Clenched her teeth, then unclenched them, trying to guess what would make them least likely to shatter in her jaw. Breathed deep.

  All it took was a twitch to send her smashing into the top of the van. The sound of shearing metal filled her ears and the impact shook her bones. She could feel herself screaming in her chest as they spun. Feedback from her arms rolled over her like a static wave. She yanked them free and covered her head as the upcar and the van, tangled now, hit the lip of the water tower.

  The impact webbing wove itself around her like an ammonia-smelling cocoon, wrapping her in darkness, but she still felt the upcar crumple. Her head still snapped forward, back. Her teeth scraped her tongue raw on their way shut. Metal was moving all around her, squealing and crunching, and then suddenly there was stillness.

  Eris wanted to flop backward and breathe for a minute, stay in the warm hug of the impact webbing, but she tore her way free instead. The upcar had flipped around, so she had to punch her way out of the back. The whole chassis was shifting, rocking, and when she finally dragged herself out she realized her plan had half-worked.

  They’d splintered against the lip of the water tower; her upcar was still riding the top of the van, which was now sheared in two. The front end of it was a mangle of debris falling down, down, down into the City depths. The back end had skidded over the edge more or less intact, and its doors were torn open. Steam was gushing out.

  Eris climbed down from the wreckage on wobbly legs. She managed to nick herself a few times, but she could hardly feel the sting, too buzzed with adrenaline still. The top of the water tank hadn’t opened all the way, leaving a few meters of slippery metal floor. She approached the edge with a feeling of dread, wondering if she was going to see the casket bobbing inside, if she’d accidentally dumped the Green Man exactly where Schorr wanted him.

  But when she craned over the edge, she saw only gurgling water. Relief hit her all at once. She sank to a crouch, feeling the adrenaline start to ebb. She’d done it. Holy fuck.

  “Holy fuck,” she choked. “Did you see that shit, Kit?”

  Another creaky groan came from behind her. She turned, expecting to see the remains of the upcar sliding off the van, not expecting to see Schorr emerging from the back like some kind of bogeyman, framed by billowing steam. His long coat was torn and one of the antlers had snapped clean off his gas mask, but apart from that he didn’t look the least bit shook by the crash.

  “You fucking bitch.” The words came out dead and flat through the mask, but Eris had the distinct feeling they would have sounded the same without it. Schorr had another halo out, pointing it at her.

  Eris didn’t feel a thing. Kit really had severed the brainshare.

  “That was all me,” Eris said, forcing a bravado she didn’t feel, not even a little. “OCI’s going to be all over your ass in about two fucking seconds, though.” She could hear the wail of emergency drones approaching and hoped a silver upcar or two were with them.

  “Then I’ll be quick,” Schorr said, and he turned back to the van. Going back for the casket. Eris stood frozen for a second, then anger poured through and thawed her. He was ignoring her. Just fucking ignoring her, like with no brainshare she was no threat at all. Eris sprung the stunspray from her arm and lunged.

  Schorr swatted her out of the air without even turning around. He had to have back-cams in that mask of his, and maybe he had some kind of skeletal implants, too, because he was stronger than any asshole philanthropist-slash-cultist had a right to be. Eris hit the ground hard with the breath smashed out of her lungs. She saw Schorr’s boot stomp down on her wrist, crushing circuitry, and her fingers spasmed. The stunspray flew out of her grip. She heard it bounce once, twice, then a distant splash as it went into the tank. Shit.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Schorr asked. “Is being a hero now for the blink of an eye worth being a villain for the rest of eternity?” He seized the edge of the casket with both hands and started to pull. The metal screeched, throwing sparks. “It’s that lack of foresight that got us here in the first place,” he grunted.

  Eris rolled over. Coughed. “New Tenochtitlan,” she rasped. “Were you telling the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  Eris threw herself at his back again, making her fists into clubs, battering his head and shoulders. This time Schorr spun and reached. The arm he’d stomped on was slow, jittery, and he managed to grip it now with both hands. He planted one foot on Eris’s shoulder and tore it free. Feedback lanced all the way down Eris’s spine like a plume of lava. She howled.

  Another kick took the wind out of her, and she sprawled back on the slick metal. Schorr dragged the casket towards the edge. Towards the swirling water.

  “Kit, where the fuck are you?” Eris hollered. She crawled after him on hand and knees, still convulsing. He had the casket poised on the lip. The Green Man, shaken apart by the crash, was barely human-looking at all now, just a viscous, poisonous green mass.

  Schorr was leaning down to thumb the catch when his gloved hand blew apart. Eris blinked as a splinter of bloody bone flew past her face. She stared at Schorr, who stared back at her through the lenses of his mask, both of them equally surprised. Then the second shot cracked the air, and his lenses splattered bright red. He crumpled.

  As his lifeless body fell, it knocked into the casket and sent it lurching forward. Eris flung out her remaining arm and clamped to it. Feedback seared and she couldn’t reach to switch it off. She gritted her teeth instead as she dug her heels in and pulled. The casket shifted by millimeter increments. Polymer muscles popped and strained in her arm. She pulled. Pulled.

  Finally the casket rocked backward, and Eris collapsed on top of it like she could pin it there permanently. She was still lying like that, gasping for breath, when the silver upcar touched down and Kit dropped out wearing a harness with her sniper rifle stowed in back of it.

  “Holy shit, Eris.”

  Kit squatted down beside her, checking her over with a mediscanner, then moved her off the casket. In Eris’s peripherals she could see people in hazard suits with scanners of their own. Two of them were bagging Schorr’s body.

  A blurred out face appeared over her. “Well done, Eris,” Ndirangu’s voice said. “We’ll get you a replacement for the damaged arm. And I’ve just put the request through regarding the traffic cams.”

  Eris tipped her head back against the cold metal roof of the water tower. “Fuck that,” she said. “How about you just give me a job?”

  Kit gave her gravelly laugh. Eris didn’t mind. She didn’t like wearing black anyways, and had something more important to do, besides. Have the OCI pay her way back across the ocean on the first available vessel. She needed to see New Tenochtitlan, or what was left of it. She needed to see stars again.

  She needed to know if her dad was really gone. Eris took a deep breath of the cold night air, and for a moment she could taste the prickling warm breeze that swept through the colony compound at night. Whatever she found over there, she would deal with it. Hopefully the replacement arm would be ready by the time she left, but if it wasn’t, she would deal with that, too.

  She was exactly as tough as she thought she was.

  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.r />
  The Opposite and the Adjacent

  Liu Yang, Translate by Nick Stember

  Just like that the lonely ship appeared before us: an enormous ovoid, scarred with great cracks and fissures, as if having given way under the awesome power of some great unknown force. Despite having long since lost all means of propulsion, inertia and gravity had conspired to carry it within range of our observation station in the Kuiper Belt.

  Having determined that the vessel posed no danger to us, Gu He and I concluded an investigation was in order.

  Upon reaching the cabin door, I pulled at the twisted wreck of metal with the utmost of caution, managing only to pry it open halfway. More or less intact, the furnishings appeared slanted and strange, calling to mind famous works of postmodern sculpture back on Earth. It was around this time that we found the golden box, with “him” inside.

  Having had already long since expired, “he” lay in the box with stiff limbs and no signs of a functioning metabolism. Aside from a strange, triangular-shaped head, “his” body was shockingly similar to that of a man.

  In a cabinet we found sheets of a rubber-like substance covered in countless symbols, each more bizarre than the last.

  After scanning them into the computer, we tried our luck with the automated code breaker. It took nearly a week but in the end we were left with something resembling as much study notes as it did a diary.

  I found the following passages especially significant:

  Entry #103

  Yesterday we studied the Law of Area: The area of a square equals length times width. I’ve already finished today’s homework, including this problem: Calculate the area of an irregular polygon. By cutting it up I was able to create a square from the resulting pieces. During class today our teacher praised me in front of everyone else, saying that I was the only one who’d figured it out. I think all the papercuts I’ve done definitely helped out.