The Stories: Five Years of Original Fiction on Tor.com

by Various

  “He’s alive,” Mukh’than said. “And they say you can see him. But they also say they will not let us take him away.”

  Our human has emotions and feelings that do not resonate to the same rhythm as our own. His feelings may not be outright painful to us—they do not prevent us from growing our food or raising our families; they do not make existence in his presence a torment—but they are, unmistakably, Other.

  The Trivid village was a collection of mud and grass huts arrayed on an artificial island made of the same mud and dirt, supplemented with crisscrossed strips of cured frond. It was inhabited by maybe a hundred of the frail bipeds, including the thirty who had met Barath and Mukh’than in the jungle. At least a third of those who had stayed home were solemn-eyed young, who watched the off-worlders with a silence that could have indicated anything from awe to defiance. Few seemed to be doing work of any consequence. Several wore the human’s rag-doll image on knotted cords around their necks. All stood by and watched as the party from the woods led Barath and Mukh’than to a straw hut at the heart of the tiny community.

  The villager guiding them jabbered at Mukh’than until the Riirgaan translated: “He says their human lives here. He says that their human is very old and very frail and doesn’t leave his hut very often. He hopes we will be kind to their human and understand his limitations.”

  “Tell the Trivid whatever he wants to hear.”

  After a few more moments of negotiation, the villager handed Mukh’than the handmade human totem from around his neck. The way was cleared, and both Barath and Mukh’than went inside.

  The interior of the hut was dim and redolent with the stench of sickness and death. The dominant sound was the tortured wheezing of the emaciated figure lying on a wooden platform opposite the shrouded entranceway. The figure was indeed a human being, but not a human being of the sort Barath had encountered. Most of those had been young and robust, living on minimal sleep with maximum enthusiasm, enjoying exceptional health and vigor thanks to the treatments the mine owners leased from AIsource Medical. By contrast, this creature was even thinner than the natives outside and lacked even their vitality: he lay curled in a circle, one hand twitching, both eyes uncomprehending, his every breath a painful gasp, his skin disfigured by some kind of ugly skin-creases that seemed to have turned his face into a relief map of hilly terrain.

  Barath felt repelled. “What are those?”

  “Wrinkles. They happen to older humans. Their flesh starts to sag.”

  It was one of the most alien things Barath had ever been told about the Hom.Saps, who he’d considered pretty disagreeable already. “I’ve seen hundreds of humans and never encountered this before.”

  “Most of those who travel off-world get regular rejuvenation treatments. This human must have been deprived long enough for natural processes to come back into play.”

  “They’re disgusting.”

  “I’ve seen worse. There is a small furry creature, native to a plateau on my world, which becomes a delicacy if it dies in sufficient pain. The natives of the region like to place a young one in a cage just large enough for its own body and feed it enough to make it swell to twice its natural size. As it fattens, the cage bars slice it in —”

  Barath had endured more than his share of Mukh’than’s enthusiasm for shocking details. “Enough. Let’s confirm that he’s the correct human.”

  The Human Being coughed twice, raised his head off the ancient pillow, and murmured a few words in Hom.Sap Mercantile. “I want Ravia.”

  “What is that?” Barath asked, as he removed the skin taster from his pack. “A refreshment?”

  “A female of his kind,” Mukh’than said. “A loved one, absent or long dead.”

  The skin taster was a flimsy thing, made for human hands, but Barath managed. He brushed the tip of the device across the old man’s arm, withdrew, then projected a genetic analysis for Mukh’than’s perusal. Mukh’than took longer than he needed to read the results, which was inconsiderate indeed, given that Barath couldn’t read the only alphabet the reader could display, the overcomplicated squiggles of Hom.Sap Mercantile.

  The special tilt of Mukh’than’s head more than compensated for the inadequate expressiveness of the Riirgaan face.

  Barath didn’t even need to ask the question. “It’s him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Magrison? That’s what it says?”

  “Full positive,” Mukh’than said. “It’s the beast Magrison. There’s no margin for error.”

  So shaken he didn’t know whether to feel triumph or horror, Barath muttered a word he hadn’t spoken since renouncing his faith. Magrison was that infamous. “All this time. All those people looking for him…”

  “He had to be under a rock, to hide from the Humans. They have always raised so many monsters among their general population that they’ve grown very talented at finding those who choose to hide.”

  Barath grunted. “You probably consider yourself lucky your kind is less talented in that regard.”

  “Yes. And so must you. But what do you want to do with this one?”

  Barath shuffled back and contemplated the figure. Sixty years, by the Hom.Sap Mercantile calendar, of hiding with people not his own, in squalor that must have reminded him of his fugitive status every day. Sixty years of knowing that the majority of his species fell into those who would have killed him right away and those who would have preferred to make his execution a neverending ordeal. Sixty years of evading the consequences of being a legendary monster…only to be revealed as a pathetic, senile invalid.

  Barath, who didn’t often feel sorry for anybody, would have felt pity for this man, were it not for the magnitude of his crimes against his own people…and the size of the bounty for his capture. “Do you know how many sentients would want to stand where we stand now? How many would kill to be here with a knife, a thresher, or even their own bare fists—just to do what this creature here deserves?”

  “I hesitate to count,” said Mukh’than. “But as for us?”

  “We see whoever makes the decisions around here. We tell them who he is. We see if they’re still so anxious to shelter him then.”

  “They will be,” Mukh’than said. “If anything, more so.”

  The ancient Human Being spasmed, his coughs weak things barely audible beyond his pallet. “Where’s Ravia?” he murmured. “I want Ravia.”

  Barath glowered at the emaciated figure sweating out his last days on the pallet. So many ways to retort to that. So few likely to get past the fog.

  Our human is a creature who has had his life ripped from him, and who now leads a life he would not have chosen, among people who would not have chosen his company.

  Alas, the Trivids had little sense of history and no sense of obligation to justice beyond their little swamp. Barath made Mukh’than translate at the start, but the constant repetitions of “You can’t have him” grew so wearying he just left the Riirgaan to his work. The more Mukh’than wheedled with them the more obstinate they became, jabbering away in the pidgin that Barath could barely stand to consider a language, sweeping their arms in gestures he didn’t need a translator to recognize as abject refusal.

  The shadows cast by the forest canopy had grown considerably longer by the time the villagers dispersed, leaving Barath and Mukh’than alone in a village that seemed to have dismissed them.

  Barath was so tired by then that he was almost happy for the chance to table the negotiations for the night. “No progress?”

  Mukh’than touched a forefinger to his chin in the Riirgaan gesture of negation. “None.”

  “What’s their problem? Do they worship him?”

  “Venerate is probably more like it. They live only a quarter as long as untreated Human Beings, and therefore see him as a creature who has been part of their village life for generations. They consider any crimes Magrison committed before he came here ancient history.”

  “Do they even know what he did?”

 
; “They know he did something bad, once upon a time. He has admitted this much to them. Sometime before he lost his faculties he even warned them that outsiders might try to take him into custody. But they don’t know the specifics, and they don’t care. He is too much a part of their lives for them to care.”

  “Maybe if you gave him the details,” Barath said.

  “Perhaps. I need to rest anyway. Maybe, in the morning, I will know the best way to make our case.”

  Barath could think of few things he desired less than sleep, as his people had minimal need for that condition. He desired another exposure to the prayers Mukh’than mumbled at night even less. But he knew the Riirgaan’s needs were different from his own, so he assented.

  They inflated the sleepcube and went inside for a few hours of protection from the insects and the muggy swamp-stench that saturated everything around the Trivid village. The air inside was not much better, given the olfactory consequences of a Riirgaan and a Kurth curled grubby and unwashed in close quarters.

  It was a long night. Every few minutes in Barath’s imagination, he leaped from the cube, batted the obstinate Trivids aside, seized the withered human from his bed, and collected the bounty. Then every few minutes he came back to himself, still curled beside his noisome guide, and still grimacing from his own dismay at not having done anything at all. It was intolerable for a sentient like Barath who had never seen the value of waiting.

  Of course, impatience was a large part of the crime that had left Barath exiled from Kurth in the first place.

  It hadn’t been a serious offense, as such things were judged among his people. It wasn’t killing without acceptable cause, or procreation without a cleansing fast. It had just been slovenly work: bored performance of a task contracted and paid for. Important people had been inconvenienced; a lucrative industrial concern had been shamed; a slave had been damaged beyond repair. It had all been tracked back to him. Barath would never be allowed back on Kurth unless he redeemed both his reputation and his finances—which was one reason he’d seized upon the claims of the dying Bursteeni he’d encountered at the mining camp infirmary.

  The Bursteeni had claimed to have seen Magrison with his own eyes before illness felled him on his way to reporting this momentous discovery to human interests. . To Barath, fallen so far that he might as well have been one of the slaves commanded by his people, the prospect of finding Magrison himself was a map offering a possible route out of hell. Even split between himself and his guide, the reward offered by the Hom.Saps could be enough to fund an outcast’s way home. It could even be enough to fund a return with honor.

  If the Trivids could be made to see reason.

  If there were a way to take Magrison without their permission.

  If.

  In the midst of lighting a bowl of herbs—he claimed the intoxicating effect was essential for his nightly ceremony—Mukh’than said, “Do you know, we could satisfy ourselves with bringing back a scraping of Magrison’s skin. After all, telling the human beings where to find him is almost as good as managing an actual capture.”

  Barath had thought of that. “They would have no reason to believe us. Samples were sent everywhere the Humans even thought of looking for him. Some have gone missing and later turned up in fraudulent claims.”

  “I know. But we could make a visual record. Bring back pictures.”

  “A child could fake those.”

  “But between the DNA and the pictures and their hunger to see this man caught—they would investigate, wouldn’t they?”

  Barath picked at the scab forming over his scaleworm sore. “The humans would still find a way to give full credit to whoever made the actual capture. We’d wind up with a small finder’s fee, nothing more. No, it has to be all or nothing. We have to be the ones who bring him back. He has to be ours, if we want to earn the full reward.”

  Mukh’than lowered his face over the rising mists. “You sound like one of the Trivids. They consider him theirs, too.”

  “They’re ignorant,” Barath said. “They can’t know the kind of monster he is.”

  Mukh’than was just a silhouette shrouded by a curtain of malodorous vapor. “And maybe it’s just as ignorant for us to think that monstrousness on his scale can be reduced to a commodity for our profit. Maybe that’s why we’re not fit to have him.”

  The words hung heavy in the little sleepcube, with Barath remaining silent not because he concurred but because he saw no possible response to a statement so completely at odds with his own sensibility. Searching for signs of betrayal in the Riirgaan’s sudden, unexpected burst of idealism, he wished he knew what the homeworld of the Riirgaans was like. It would be helpful to know if Mukh’than found the unrelenting mugginess of Irkiirish, or the forsaken wilderness of this world in general, an unbearable hell he would forsake principles to leave. After a long pause, he said: “You want him as much as I do.”

  “I have already said I do,” Mukh’than said, as he lowered himself into the mists. “But perhaps not for all the same reasons.”

  Our Human once worked hard to earn his keep among us. When he was young, and the muscles still clung tightly to his oddly-proportioned bones, he made a point of helping us with the thousand and one small chores necessary to support our lives here. When a hut needed building, the Human lent his strength to the task; when food needed gathering, the Human grabbed a spear like the rest of us; when a child wandered off into the woods and needed finding, the Human searched as diligently as the Firstfather, Secondfather, and Firstmother. Even when we put down the work of our daily lives and sang hymns of praise to the spirits who built all things, our Human sat among us and raised his atonal voice with as much fervor as the most religious holies among us. It was a heroic effort, even if it was doomed to failure, for our Human knew as well as we did that he was not one of us and never could be, not even if the Spirits themselves came down from the sky to declare him an honorary member of the People. He trumpeted his alienness with every word that emerged, foul and unnatural, from his strangely-shaped lips; he came from a world where people walked on air and ate food that never touched the ground and mated in obscene couplings involving only Firstfathers and Firstmothers. Everything he said about his life among the people who had rejected him reinforced our awareness that he was different, that he was strange, and that he rendered us different and strange as well just by the act of living among us. He knew this, too, I think; and throughout the years of his life it made him as lonely as any creature had ever been.

  When the next morning’s negotiations began, the villagers all carried the human’s crude totems around their necks. By the time their apparent spokesperson, a wizened member of the mawchested sex, finished chanting an interminable string of gibberish that might have been anything from legal preamble to heartfelt prayer, Barath’s head throbbed from sheer frustration. How nice it would have been to be able to resolve this by knocking their obstinate heads together!

  Barath could only wonder how much Mukh’than was simplifying the story to accommodate the limited comprehension of the audience. These were people who had never been outside their swamp, who had never used weaponry more advanced than sharpened sticks, who had never seen more than a couple hundred of their own kind in one place. They were people who knew almost everybody in their world by sight, with the odd passing stranger a rare but tolerated anomaly. How could they comprehend a war fought worlds apart, over abstractions, between strangers who had never laid eyes on each other?

  It was impossible.

  But that’s what Mukh’than needed to explain.

  The hours crawled as the Riirgaan finished what he needed to say, but the time for words came to an end with daylight still remaining. Mukh’than returned to Barath’s side, sweat glistening on the flat pads beneath his eyes. He grasped a water tube and sucked it dry, then wiped the moisture from his flat line of mouth.

  Barath couldn’t stand it. “What?”

  Riirgaan feelings are impossible to read on the
ir faces, but Mukh’than still managed to look haunted. “I think I may have made a mistake.”

  “What?”

  “I told them that Magrison’s victims outnumbered the leaves on the trees.”

  “And that’s wrong?”

  “Not if I’m trying to earn points for eloquence,” said Mukh’than. “But very wrong if I’m trying to win their hearts. Images like that reduce a disaster to poetry, make it unreal, harder to comprehend—a joke compared to a familiar presence they’ve treasured all their lives.”

  “Tell them more, then.”

  “Saying more would only weaken what I’ve said so far.”

  Barath watched the Trivids confer among themselves. It was easy to tell that the villagers respected the gravity of their decision; they’d formed two dozen groups of three, lowered their heads and begun to mutter their soft liquid sibilants. Many fingered the Human totems around their necks, as if seeking comfort in a simulation of the man they had known. Another, a ridge-backed specimen who might have been moved by Mukh’than’s case, gripped the doll so tightly that it punctured the doll’s canvas skin, freeing the pebbles inside to spill onto the ground like parodies of blood droplets pouring from a wound. Several emitted a sour blaat that might have been their equivalent of weeping. Or laughter. It was impossible to tell whether they were devastated, or just rendered uncomfortable by the Riirgaan’s evident belief that they should be.

  Watching them, Mukh’than said, “Has it occurred to you, my friend, that this is all about monsters?”

  “Eh?”