She glares at me. But no one, even those lost to reality, can deny that alien brains are weird. And my injuries are certainly real: bloody head cloth, left eye closed from swelling, skin scraped raw the length of my left cheek, bruised arm. She strokes the Terran gun, a boringly straight-lined cylinder of dull metal. “All right. You may keep the Terran near you—if he agrees. Why should he?”
I smile at her slowly. Pek Fakar never shows a response to flattery; to do so would be to show weakness. But she understands. Or thinks she does. I have threatened the Terran with her power, and the whole prison now knows that her power extends among the aliens as well as her own people. She goes on glaring, but she is not displeased. In her hand, the gun gleams.
And so begin my conversations with a Terran.
* * *
Talking with Carryl Pek Walters is embarrassing and frustrating. He sits beside me in the eating hall or the courtyard and publicly scratches his head. When he is cheerful, he makes shrill horrible whistling noises between his teeth. He mentions topics that belong only among kin: the state of his skin (which has odd brown lumps on it) and his lungs (clogged with fluid, apparently). He does not know enough to begin conversations with ritual comments on flowers. It is like talking to a child, but a child who suddenly begins discussing bicycle engineering or university law.
“You think individual means very little, group means everything,” he says.
We are sitting in the courtyard, against a stone wall, a little apart from the other prisoners. Some watch us furtively, some openly. I am angry. I am often angry with Pek Walters. This is not going as I’d planned.
“How can you say that? The individual is very important on World! We care for each other so that no individual is left out of our common reality, except by his own acts!”
“Exactly,” Pek Walters says. He has just learned this word from me. “You care for others so no one left alone. Alone is bad. Act alone is bad. Only together is real.”
“Of course,” I say. Could he be stupid after all? “Reality is always shared. Is a star really there if only one eye can perceive its light?”
He smiles and says something in his own language, which makes no sense to me. He repeats it in real words. “When tree falls in forest, is sound if no person hears?”
“But—do you mean to say that on your star, people believe they…” What? I can’t find the words.
He says, “People believe they always real, alone or together. Real even when other people say they dead. Real even when they do something very bad. Even when they murder.”
“But they’re not real! How could they be? They’ve violated shared reality! If I don’t acknowledge you, the reality of your soul, if I send you to your ancestors without your consent, that is proof that I don’t understand reality and so am not seeing it! Only the unreal could do that!”
“Baby not see shared reality. Is baby unreal?”
“Of course. Until the age when children attain reason, they are unreal.”
“Then when I kill baby, is all right, because I not kill real person?”
“Of course it’s not all right! When one kills a baby, one kills its chance to become real, before it could even join its ancestors! And also all the chances of the babies to which it might become ancestor. No one would kill a baby on World, not even these dead souls in Aulit! Are you saying that on Terra, people would kill babies?”
He looks at something I cannot see. “Yes.”
My chance has arrived, although not in a form I relish. Still, I have a job to do. I say, “I have heard that Terrans will kill people for science. Even babies. To find out the kinds of things that Anna Pek Rakov knew about my brain. Is that true?”
“Yes and no.”
“How can it be yes and no? Are children ever used for science experiments?”
“Yes.”
“What kinds of experiments?”
“You should ask, what kind children? Dying children. Children not born yet. Children born … wrong. With no brain, or broken brain.”
I struggle with all this. Dying children … he must mean not children who are really dead, but those in the transition to join their ancestors. Well, that would not be so bad, provided the bodies were then allowed to decay properly and release the souls. Children without brains or with broken brains … not bad, either. Such poor unreal things would be destroyed anyway. But children not born yet … in or out of the mother’s womb? I push this away, to discuss another time. I am on a different path.
“And you never use living, real children for science?”
He gives me a look I cannot read. So much of Terran expression is still strange. “Yes. We use. In some experiments. Experiments who not hurt children.”
“Like what?” I say. We are staring directly at each other now. Suddenly I wonder if this old Terran suspects that I am an informer seeking information, and that is why he accepted my skimpy story about having spells. That would not necessarily be bad. There are ways to bargain with the unreal once everyone admits that bargaining is what is taking place. But I’m not sure whether Pek Walters knows that.
He says, “Experiments who study how brain work. Such as, how memory work. Including shared memory.”
“Memory? Memory doesn’t ‘work.’ It just is.”
“No. Memory work. By memory-building pro-teenz.” He uses a Terran word, then adds, “Tiny little pieces of food,” which makes no sense. What does food have to do with memory? You don’t eat memories, or obtain them from food. But I am further down the path, and I use his words to go further still.
“Does memory in World people work with the same … ‘pro-teenz’ as Terran memory?”
“Yes and no. Some same or almost same. Some different.” He is watching me very closely.
“How do you know that memory works the same or different in World people? Have Terrans done brain experiments on World?”
“Yes.”
“With World children?”
“Yes.”
I watch a group of Huhuhubs across the courtyard. The smelly little aliens are clustered together in some kind of ritual or game. “And have you, personally, participated in these science experiments on children, Pek Walters?”
He doesn’t answer me. Instead he smiles, and if I didn’t know better, I’d swear the smile was sad. He says, “Pek Bengarin, why you kill your sister?”
The unexpectedness of it—now, so close to almost learning something useful—outrages me. Not even Pek Fakar had asked me that. I stare at him angrily. He says, “I know, I not should ask. Wrong for ask. But I tell you much, and answer is important—”
“But the question is obscene. You should not ask. World people are not so cruel to each other.”
“Even people damned in Aulit Prison?” he says, and even though I don’t know one of the words he uses, I see that yes, he recognizes that I am an informer. And that I have been seeking information. All right, so much the better. But I need time to set my questions on a different path.
To gain time, I repeat my previous point. “World people are not so cruel.”
“Then you—”
The air suddenly sizzles, smelling of burning. People shout. I look up. Aka Pek Fakar stands in the middle of the courtyard with the Terran gun, firing it at the Huhuhubs. One by one they drop as the beam of light hits them and makes a sizzling hole. The aliens pass into the second stage of their perpetual death.
I stand and tug on Pek Walters’s arm. “Come on. We must clear the area immediately or the guards will release poison gas.”
“Why?”
“So they can get the bodies into bondage chemicals, of course!” Does this alien think the prison officials would let the unreal get even a little bit decayed? I thought that after our several conversations, Pek Walters understood more than that.
He rises slowly, haltingly, to his feet. Pek Fakar, laughing, strolls toward the door, the gun still in her hand.
Pek Walters says, “World people not cruel?”
Behind us, the bodies of the Huhuhubs lie sprawled across each other, smoking.
* * *
The next time we are herded from our cells into the dining hall and then the courtyard, the Huhuhub corpses are of course gone. Pek Walters has developed a cough. He walks more slowly, and once, on the way to our usual spot against the far wall, he puts a hand on my arm to steady himself.
“Are you sick, Pek?”
“Exactly,” he says.
“But you are a healer. Make the cough disappear.”
He smiles, and sinks gratefully against the wall. “‘Healer, heal own self.’”
“What?”
“Nothing. So you are informer, Pek Bengarin, and you hope I tell you something about science experiments on children on World.”
I take a deep breath. Pek Fakar passes us, carrying her gun. Two of her own people now stay close beside her at all times, in case another prisoner tries to take the gun away from her. I cannot believe anyone would try, but maybe I’m wrong. There’s no telling what the unreal will do. Pek Walters watches her pass, and his smile is gone. Yesterday Pek Fakar shot another person, this time not even an alien. There is a note under my bed requesting more guns.
I say, “You say I am an informer. I do not say it.”
“Exactly,” Pek Walters says. He has another coughing spell, then closes his eyes wearily. “I have not an-tee-by-otics.”
Another Terran word. Carefully I repeat it. “‘An-tee-by-otics’?”
“Pro-teenz for heal.”
Again that word for very small bits of food. I make use of it. “Tell me about the pro-teenz in the science experiments.”
“I tell you everything about experiments. But only if you answer questions first.”
He will ask about my sister. For no reason other than rudeness and cruelty. I feel my face turn to stone.
He says, “Tell me why steal baby not so bad for make person unreal always.”
I blink. Isn’t this obvious? “To steal a baby doesn’t damage the baby’s reality. It just grows up somewhere else, with some other people. But all real people of World share the same reality, and anyway after the transition, the child will rejoin its blood ancestors. Baby stealing is wrong, of course, but it isn’t a really serious crime.”
“And make false coins?”
“The same. False, true—coins are still shared.”
He coughs again, this time much harder. I wait. Finally he says, “So when I steal your bicycle, I not violate shared reality too much, because bicycle still somewhere with people of World.”
“Of course.”
“But when I steal bicycle, I violate shared reality a little?”
“Yes.” After a minute I add, “Because the bicycle is, after all, mine. You … made my reality shift a little without sharing the decision with me.” I peer at him; how can all this not be obvious to such an intelligent man?
He says, “You are too trusting for be informer, Pek Bengarin.”
I feel my throat swell with indignation. I am a very good informer. Haven’t I just bound this Terran to me with a private shared reality in order to create an exchange of information? I am about to demand his share of the bargain when he says abruptly, “So why you kill your sister?”
Two of Pek Fakar’s people swagger past. They carry the new guns. Across the courtyard a Faller turns slowly to look at them, and even I can read fear on that alien face.
I say, as evenly as I can manage, “I fell prey to an illusion. I thought that Ano was copulating with my lover. She was younger, more intelligent, prettier. I am not very pretty, as you can see. I didn’t share the reality with her, or him, and my illusion grew. Finally it exploded in my head, and I … did it.” I am breathing hard, and Pek Fakar’s people look blurry.
“You remember clear Ano’s murder?”
I turn to him in astonishment. “How could I forget it?”
“You cannot. You cannot because of memory-building pro-teenz. Memory is strong in your brain. Memory-building pro-teenz are strong in your brain. Scientific research on World children for discover what is structure of pro-teenz, where is pro-teenz, how pro-teenz work. But we discover different thing instead.”
“What different thing?” I say, but Pek Walters only shakes his head and begins coughing again. I wonder if the coughing spell is an excuse to violate our bargain. He is, after all, unreal.
Pek Fakar’s people have gone inside the prison. The Faller slumps against the far wall. They have not shot him. For this moment, at least, he is not entering the second stage of his perpetual death.
But beside me, Pek Walters coughs blood.
* * *
He is dying. I am sure of it, although of course no World healer comes to him. He is dead anyway. Also, his fellow Terrans keep away, looking fearful, which makes me wonder if his disease is catching. This leaves only me. I walk him to his cell, and then wonder why I can’t just stay when the door closes. No one will check. Or, if they do, will care. And this may be my last chance to gain the needed information, before either Pek Walters is coffined or Pek Fakar orders me away from him because he is too weak to watch over my supposed blood sickness.
His body has become very hot. During the long night he tosses on his bunk, muttering in his own language, and sometimes those strange alien eyes roll in their sockets. But other times he is clearer, and he looks at me as if he recognizes who I am. Those times, I question him. But the lucid times and unlucid ones blur together. His mind is no longer his own.
“Pek Walters. Where are the memory experiments being conducted? In what place?”
“Memory … memories…” More in his own language. It has the cadences of poetry.
“Pek Walters. In what place are the memory experiments being done?”
“At Rafkit Sarloe,” he says, which makes no sense. Rafkit Sarloe is the government center, where no one lives. It is not large. People flow in every day, running the Sections, and out to their villages again at night. There is no square measure of Rafkit Sarloe that is not constantly shared physical reality.
He coughs, more bloody spume, and his eyes roll in his head. I make him sip some water. “Pek Walters. In what place are the memory experiments being done?”
“At Rafkit Sarloe. In the Cloud. At Aulit Prison.”
It goes on and on like that. And in the early morning, Pek Walters dies.
There is one moment of greater clarity, somewhere near the end. He looks at me, out of his old, ravaged face gone gaunt with his transition. The disturbing look is back in his eyes, sad and kind, not a look for the unreal to wear. It is too much sharing. He says, so low I must bend over him to hear, “Sick brain talks to itself. You not kill your sister.”
“Hush, don’t try to talk.…”
“Find … Brifjis. Maldon Pek Brifjis, in Rafkit Haddon. Find…” He relapses again into fever.
A few moments after he dies, the armored guards enter the cell, wheeling the coffin full of bondage chemicals. With them is the priest. I want to say, Wait, he is a good man, he doesn’t deserve perpetual death—but of course I do not. I am astonished at myself for even thinking it. A guard edges me into the corridor and the door closes.
That same day, I am sent away from Aulit Prison.
* * *
“Tell me again. Everything,” Pek Brimmidin says.
Pek Brimmidin is just the same: stocky, yellowing, slightly stooped. His cluttered office is just the same. Food dishes, papers, overelaborated sculptures. I stare hungrily at the ugly things. I hadn’t realized how much I’d longed, in prison, for the natural sight of curves. I keep my eyes on the sculptures, partly to hold back my question until the proper time to ask it.
“Pek Walters said he would tell me everything about the experiments that are, yes, going on with World children. In the name of science. But all he had time to tell me was that the experiments involve ‘memory-building pro-teenz,’ which are tiny pieces of food from which the brain constructs memory. He also said the experiments were
going on in Rafkit Sarloe and Aulit Prison.”
“And that is all, Pek Bengarin?”
“That is all.”
Pek Brimmidin nods curtly. He is trying to appear dangerous, to scare out of me any piece of information I might have forgotten. But Frablit Pek Brimmidin can’t appear dangerous to me. I have seen the real thing.
Pek Brimmidin has not changed. But I have.
I ask my question. “I have brought to you all the information I could obtain before the Terran died. Is it sufficient to release me and Ano?”
He runs a hand through his neck fur. “I’m sorry I can’t answer that, Pek. I will need to consult my superiors. But I promise to send you word as soon as I can.”
“Thank you,” I say, and lower my eyes. You are too trusting for be informer, Pek Bengarin.
Why didn’t I tell Frablit Pek Brimmidin the rest of it, about “Maldon Pek Brifjis” and “Rafkit Haddon” and not really killing my sister? Because it is most likely nonsense, the ravings of a fevered brain. Because this “Maldon Pek Brifjis” might be an innocent World man, who does not deserve trouble brought to him by an unreal alien. Because Pek Walters’s words were personal, addressed to me alone, on his deathbed. Because I do not want to discuss Ano with Pek Brimmidin’s superiors one more useless painful time.
Because, despite myself, I trust Carryl Pek Walters.
“You may go,” Pek Brimmidin says, and I ride my bicycle along the dusty road home.
* * *
I make a bargain with Ano’s corpse, still lying in curled-finger grace on the bed across from mine. Her beautiful brown hair floats in the chemicals of the coffin. I used to covet that hair desperately, when we were very young. Once I even cut it all off while she slept. But other times I would weave it for her, or braid it with flowers. She was so pretty. At one point, when she was still a child, she wore eight bid rings, one on each finger. Two of the bids were in negotiation between the boys’ fathers and ours. Although older, I have never had a single bid.
Did I murder her?
My bargain with her corpse is this: If the Reality and Atonement Section releases me and Ano because of my work in Aulit Prison, I will seek no further. Ano will be free to join our ancestors; I will be fully real. It will no longer matter whether or not I killed my sister, because both of us will again be sharing in the same reality as if I had not. But if Reality and Atonement holds me unreal still longer, after all I have given them, I will try to find this “Maldon Pek Brifjis.”
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourteenth Annual Collection Page 19