“I see no sense in these things,” the stranger said, “and I have been in many places, many times.”
“You’re a traveler, then. You go everywhere.”
“Yes. I am… searching… for… echoes.”
He put his big frozen hand in hers. They walked together to a permanent rectangular building of sod and whalebone piled high with snow. It was built partially underground. Aniu had always liked the smell of old earth and bone. Her family had repaired the low roof that summer using young saplings as the framework, and Aniu saw that in the heat and damp, the branches were beginning to bud inside. The seal-gut windows let in the last of the dying light, and one of her brothers had lit a fire in the hearth. Three fat lamps burned steadily in their niches along the walls, sending up oily smoke.
The whole of Aniu’s family group was assembled on two rows of benches lining the room. There were over twenty family members in all; cousins, siblings, aunts, her grandmother, and great aunt.
“You have something to share with us,” her grandmother said.
“I am from where the echo began,” the stranger said. “I seek other echoes. Echoes of where we all began.”
The grandmother told the stranger the story: the story of two brothers who frightened a pair of cormorants. They doomed the younger brother to be stuck in a cave, for cormorants are tricky beasts, with six wings and clever, biting beaks and voices that can fool you into slogging deep into tundra. Every time the elder brother called out to find the younger, all he heard was his younger brother’s voice repeating the same words back him. Such was the boy’s curse, given to him by the frightened cormorants. Boys after that were cursed by cormorants, bound to the valleys; the women had to travel the hills alone.
“He was bound to this world,” the grandmother said. “As you are. As we all are.”
The stranger stood very still. The whole room was quiet except for the squirming of the young ones.
“It is as the others,” the stranger said. He stood and began to shuffle away.
Aniu hurried after him, leaving her family silent and startled. The stranger made his way toward the woods, dragging his booted feet. The sun no longer hung in the sky. It had dipped below the horizon, bathing the cold land in darkness.
“Was there something wrong with the story?” Aniu asked. The air was almost cold enough to freeze the breath in her chest.
“It is the same story, in all times, in all places. Child’s stories. It is not the story I search for.”
“What is the story you want?”
“You do not have what I search for.”
They walked in silence. The stranger came back to that place in the snow she had found him. He stood by the imprint of his body. Just over his shoulder, Aniu saw the hazy green trails of the sky lights flowing across the black sky. The green mist twisted back upon itself, faded, glowed brightly, and vanished. An explosion of purple waves glimmered briefly along the horizon, then dissipated.
“Please don’t leave,” Aniu said. She could see no expression on his face in the night, but that did not matter. He had a dead face. “If you leave me, I will be alone again. The only different one. The girl who came back from the dead. Like you have.”
“I am not like you.”
“But we’re both dead things! We’re both different.”
“Different, yes. A kind that will no longer be. We are no longer needed, now that the worlds give life.”
“I don’t understand. Where are you from?”
“This question. Your people ask nothing but this question.” He looked at the sky, pointed a gloved hand. “Look.”
“Stars.”
“But you see the star above us, the one that does not move, that stays steady and bright.”
Aniu scanned the sky. She saw it. “It’s not a star,” she said.
“It waits for me to return from this body.”
“Whose body is it?”
“A body I found here. Another traveler.”
“Have you ever met people like me?”
“Yes. Times before this, far before, there are many of you, many who can see what others cannot see. But farther forward, less. Then none.”
“Why?”
“They destroy people like you. Those who know death again and again, and return from it. They fear what we once were. We transformed the stars for them, but now we are… echoes. Only echoes. But where did they begin?”
Even as she reached out, she sensed him leaving her. Something spoke all around her, spoke so softly she could not hear the words. And it was gone.
The body fell back, landed with a heavy crunch into its old imprint in the snow.
Aniu gazed back up at the sky. She saw the new star there. As she watched, it streaked away and was gone.
She bent to untie the grandmother’s boots from the body. As she moved, she stared up at the torso of the body. She had not noticed before. The parka had covered the body to mid-thigh, but now she saw the dark edge of a stain on the trousers. She straightened, pulled up the parka, and jerked it away from the skin. Dark blood had frozen the parka to the trousers, the trousers to the skin. The blood had masked the wound, but she could just make out the marks. The hunter must have taken off his parka, worn only his tunic, for the tunic had been clawed through with four large rents in the hide that dug deep into the skin. Aniu knew those marks. Only one animal could make those marks. The bear.
She let the frozen parka fall from her hands. She looked back up at the sky, and back behind her, to where her family house lay. The others would be holding a meeting now, to talk about her and the demon she had brought to them. Another demon. Again. And ahead of her, the sky lights blazed a misty green across the darkness.
But ahead of her, just ahead of her… there, on the horizon, she saw the outline of the bear.
Aniu left the grandmother’s boots. She did not turn back to her family house. She walked past the body, toward the winking purple lights that shimmered on the far-off horizon, and the bear that waited for her on the hill. As she passed through the snow-laden willows, she saw three ravens there, huddled close to one another. They watched her, and one let out a throaty, laughing call from one of its three gaping maws.
She stopped and gazed at the raven, pressed her gloved hand to her chest.
“I am going to where the echo began,” she said, though she could not say why she had taken the stranger’s quest for her own. Perhaps because he was unsatisfied. Perhaps because so was she.
The raven cawed.
Her feet crunched in the snow.
END
Flicker
Gabe Hynri walked into the Falandir compound in search of that which she despised, at the behest of those she hated. She walked in toting her case portfolio, wearing her black boots, and scratching at the new metal loop that punctured the flesh of her left upper ear. Promotion warranted the discomfort.
“We’ve paired you with one of the flicks from the Opposition purge,” the Defense Tailors told her when they presented her with the case file. They had pressed their hands to the green paper, bleeding her instructions onto the page. “Someone has been poisoning our mainframe defense system with Opposition tactics. We think he will have some insight into how to stop it.”
“The last pick you Tailors assigned me tried to inject me with saline,” she said.
“This pick won’t work with anyone else. He’s the only pick capable of working this assignment. He’s the expert on the Opposition’s bio-warfare program.”
“I hate working with these freaks.”
“And we hate working with agents. But that’s our biological destiny, isn’t it? You have no choice.”
The bio-filter at the Falandir compound entrance admitted her without disintegrating her, but it ate the three big cicadas clinging to the ankle of her denim trousers. The second security fence glowed green as she approached, and her skin prickled as she passed through. The organic field shimmered like
a soap bubble in her wake.
Gabe caught hold of a lithe little pick trying to dart out of her line of sight on the pathway leading down into the compound. He had flaccid skin and system scars on his arms. If she wanted to, she could break all his bones with her bare hands.
“I’m looking for a pick called Jorian Glen,” she said.
“He’s in ward.”
“Take me.”
The pick walked quickly across the lawn and into the dim light of the compound. Clusters of picks gathered in the entertainment rooms, computer rooms, research libraries. They smelled like old books and unwashed bedding. They all looked the same to her. Completely human, but Other. Pale, fleshy, faces. Sun-starved skin. Eyes that gazed not at her, but around her, away from her. They twittered about her like a flock of timid children. Little bird bones, quick, furtive gestures.
Her pick guide took her through the main compound and out to the spiral of residences on the hill overlooking the compound.
“I thought you said he was in the ward,” she said.
The pick bobbed his head. “Under ward, not in it. Should be, but isn’t. He’s allergic.”
“Allergic? To what? Medicine?”
“Yes.”
The pick pointed out Jorian’s residence, a low building almost hidden by a tall white security fence with a spiral of thorned wire at the top.
Gabe pressed the com button and waited.
A short matron opened the door. She wasn’t a pick. Too old, past forty. No pick lived that long. Her skin was deep brown, almost black, and she wore the white coat of a med.
“You must be Gabe Hynri.”
“He sick?” Gabe asked as she stepped through the gate.
The med smiled and closed the barred gate behind her. “They’re always ill. But your kind know all about that, don’t you?”
The temperature inside the yard was hot and muggy, at least twenty degrees hotter than the air outside. Gabe looked up and saw the faint sheen of moisture collecting on the physical conditioning screen that sealed in the heat and damp.
The door to the house was open, as was the barred gate over the house door. One longhaired cat spied at her from the thick tangle of vegetation at the edge of the porch. When she looked at the cat, it darted away, deeper into the greenery.
Gabe followed the matron up onto the porch and into the house. She looked at the open grill of the barred gate over the door as she passed it, and saw an enormous padlock on the draw bar.
“You expecting intruders?”
“He expects everything,” the med said.
Gabe hesitated just inside the doorway and gazed warily around the room. The floors inside were made of dark polished wood, not the spongy bio-mass that made up the floor of the agent barracks on the other side of the fence. No displays of engineered photo-phosphorous plant life, no media relay screen. Just a couple of divans, some physical paintings -- bright bursts of color, broad, meaningless strokes. The kitchen was technologically backward. She recognized a stove, but didn’t know how it could be turned on without a stir of fire beetles visible inside the translucent face of its belly. The doors that opened up onto the back porch were solid glass. No filter.
A growing feeling of unease stirred her. Where were all the biofeeds? The organic testing machines? Where were the symbiotic tubes, the worm-bred capsules? Jorian was a pick, wasn’t he?
The med led her past a bookshelf whose contents overflowed onto the floor. Gabe stepped around piles of medical reports issued by the General Health Authority and foot-high stacks of Scientific Pick Applications Quarterly, all very old, all issued outside the country. No one but the Opposition even possessed the archaic knowledge necessary to print hard copies outside a bio-tech context.
The light of the room was orange - all the glow worms inside the globes were dying.
“Gabe Hynri is here,” the med said, and gestured Gabe into a small bedroom.
Jorian lay in a bed reading a thick text. The room was walled with books… which meant he’d brought all of these Opposition texts with him. The only other furniture inside was a desk and chair. No system. No immunio-bacterial serum or the tubing to administer it. No symbiotic blood cleansers. No jack-picks
Jorian waved a little hand at her. “Sit.”
His arms had no track marks from plugging into systems. He was so skinny that his cheeks had hollows. His eyes were clear blue-green, unblinking, like a cat’s, and his hair was a forgettable chestnut color, unkempt.
Gabe shoved the portfolio at Jorian.
He flipped through the pages. “Have you read through any of this?”
“You’re the interpreter, I’m the actor. Why would I read it?”
“I think you’ve already read through it.”
Gabe grimaced. “Skimmed, mostly.”
“Agents aren’t supposed to read unless I ask them to.”
Fuck that little pick. “What is all this, anyway?” She jabbed a finger at the notes. “The portfolio says you’re with the Opposition. It says you were working on the other side of the Divide to abolish our tech. We got you from the weapons-breeding camps after the liberation of Joshteen. You were curled up in there with a dozen cats. What, you eat them? That liberation was ages ago. Where have you been all that time? Here?”
“Who better to help with the defense against your Opposition but a weapon of the Opposition?”
“You fuck with the network? That it?”
“In case you failed to notice it in your headache-inducing read-through of the material, I’m allergic to the network. And bio-filters and fields. They make me deathly ill. So, unfortunately, no, I’m have not, as you say, fucked with the network. I hardly have the time.”
“You’re allergic to technology?”
“If that’s what your kind call the breeding and enslavement of organic tissues and organisms… yes.”
“So why am I here?”
“Ask provocative questions, Gabe, not stupid ones. I can’t access any systems. Just being near them makes me nauseous. The information we deal with will be information you obtain.”
“I can’t jack into systems. I’m not a pick.”
“I didn’t say you’d have to merge with them, only view them. You’ll navigate and tell me what you see. Remember and report. Not so difficult.”
“So we can image-conference.” The sooner she could get away from this freaky little mutant, the better.
“Your image transmissions are made of organic tissues, just like the filters. I can’t be around them.”
“You’re telling me I have to see you every day?”
“Observe the system’s central nervous cavity tomorrow morning. I expect a report by noon.”
Gabe wanted to snarl at him and remind him she was an agent and he was a pick, but that would only encourage him to continue treating her like an agent. “You better be a good interpreter.”
He tossed the portfolio back at her. “You better be a good agent, or all your people are going to die here when that poisoned system goes down.”
#
When she was younger, Gabe dreamt that she lived like the people in the image texts the professors made all the agents learn in primer school. Most people didn’t live like the agents, the texts said. Most people, the Real People, the Creators, lived together in community units and produced food and organic weapons compounds. The Opposition had delegated the Creators as a subclass, to act as the Opposition’s manual laborers, their miners, factory workers, farmers. The Creators rebelled and broke the taboos against domesticating organic tissues and engineering biologic organisms to perform technological tasks.
The Creators bred that which the Opposition was bound by law and moral never to touch: intricate genetic manipulation that went far further than simple cloning or selective reproduction. The Creators split humanity again and again, producing warriors and astronauts, and of course – the age and the picks. Tailors and picks
Falandir mad
e it impossible for picks and agents and the other divided subclasses to rebel. They were not real people, functioning people, without their other half.
Gabe grew up being told that she was someone else’s shadow, a pick’s shadow. But Gabe wanted to be one of the Creators; one of the gods. Her teachers told her that was a biological impossibility. The only time she was a real, whole person was in her dreams. Because when she woke, she was just Gabe; just an agent with three metal loops in her ear, lying in an empty bed. She was an agent with a bad memory, short temper, low proficiency scores, and a hatred for working with picks.
Gabe slid out of bed and went in search of an open agent’s door. Solace in flesh.
Cori, one of the other agents, was awake, her filter set to green. She walked in and found Aisha, her case advisor, already there. She ended up sandwiched between them, warm and naked, her arms wrapped around Cori’s wiry form, Aisha’s arms wrapped around her.
She woke tangled up in Cori’s bed sheets. Aisha was already gone, and Cori sat awake at her desk, cutting little orange worm-bred capsules in half by the light of his system screen. He ate the powder inside like sugar.
“Too much of that will kill you,” Gabe said.
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