Interzone #267 - November-December 2016

by Andy Cox [Ed. ]

  ***

  Nainai says, “It must have been in a rush, your tiger. It left something behind.” She takes her stick and prods at a lump of something in the sand, and Xiao Wei hurries over to pick it up.

  “Fur!” he shouts. “Tiger fur!” Orange and black and white and far bigger than Xiao Wei, holding it up and staggering under the weight.

  I gaze at Nainai, open-mouthed.

  “Can we keep it?” My brother has wrapped the fur around himself, and it’s trailing behind him on the floor.

  Nainai surveys him, her head cocked to one side. “Oh, I think it’s yours now,” she says. “Look after it. And each other.”

  She gives me a look I don’t understand and shuffles away before I have chance to speak. I watch her bent figure until it disappears behind a dune. Then my tiger brother and I set off home through a landscape that is strange to us. The buildings have changed their shapes and the city is lost in a yellowy haze. Xiao Wei keeps tripping over the tiger fur but refuses to take it off, even though he’s hot and getting so tired he can hardly put one foot in front of the other.

  “We’re nearly there,” I say. “Nearly there now,” but to be honest, I’m not sure where we are. We’ve come too far into the city to find our way out. We turn down street after street but nothing looks familiar and the sun is cutting through the clouds. My throat is dry and itchy.

  I see a flash of metal, something rising up like a giant silver beetle.

  “Auntie Tiger’s house,” mumbles Xiao Wei. But there’s something different about it. Auntie Tiger’s house is old and falling apart; this is bright and shining and new, as if it’s been perfectly preserved in the sand. A door in the side is open and beckons us in to the shade, cool and inviting.

  “Let’s sleep here,” says Xiao Wei, trying and failing to hold back a yawn. “She won’t mind.”

  I look around, half expecting to see a stranger approaching, a Company pilot coming back to claim his ship. But there is only the sound of a lone bird, just beginning to sing somewhere up in the ruins of a building above us.

  I guide my brother through the open door and into the cool ship, where he curls up on the floor and closes his eyes, and I collapse onto one of the chairs by the control screen. We’ve earned a rest, after sandstorms and tigers. I’ll let him sleep for a while, though he will wake up hungry, as always, and we will find our way home to our empty house on the edge of the empty city, sweep the sand from the floors and tend the pale vegetables. We will play in Auntie Tiger’s forest and pretend that everything is fine. We will go on telling the same story.

  I rub my hand over my eyes. The ache in my belly reminds me how long ago it was that we ate our dumplings. Xiao Wei mutters in his sleep, squirming into a more comfortable position.

  Cautiously, I run my hand over the screen. Lights appear at my touch. I hesitate, then reach out again. From somewhere in the bowels of the ship, an engine hums into life. I look around at my brother and realise I can’t tell where tiger ends and boy begins.

  The ship door closes with a sigh like an exhaled breath.

  ***

  Sarah Brooks has lived in China, Japan and Italy, and now teaches East Asian Studies at the University of Leeds. She is a graduate of the 2012 Clarion West Writers’ Workshop, and has had work published in a previous issue of Interzone, plus Strange Horizons and Shimmer.

  CRIMEWAVE 13: BAD LIGHT

  Mat Coward

  Ralph Robert Moore

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  Stephen Hargadon

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  Mike O’Driscoll

  Wraparound Cover Art

  Ben Baldwin

  American Royal, 240 pages

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  “A fascinating mix of top-notch practitioners (including writers famous for their stellar work in the horror and science fiction genre)… a unifyingly dark feel, rich with atmosphere and a certain surreal consciousness at the heart” — Barry Forshaw

  YOU MAKE PATTAYA

  RICH LARSON

  illustrated by Dave Senecal

  Dorian sprawled back on sweaty sheets, watching Nan, or Nahm, or whatever her name was, grind up against the mirror, beaming at the pop star projected there like she’d never seen smartglass before.He knew she was from some rural eastern province; she’d babbled as much to him while he crushed and wrapped parachutes for their first round of party pills. But after a year in Pattaya, you’d think she’d have lost the big eyes and the bubbliness. Both of which were starting to massively grate on him.

  Dorian had been in the city for a month now, following the tourist influx, tapping the Banks and Venmos of sun-scalded Russians too stupid to put their phones in a faraday pouch as they staggered down Walking Street. In the right crowd, he could slice a dozen people for ten or twenty Euros each and make off with a small fortune before a polidrone could zero in on him.

  And in Baht, that small fortune still went a long way. More than enough to reward himself with a ’phetamine-fuelled 48-hour club spree through a lurid smear of discos and dopamine bars, from green-lit Insomnia to Tyger Tyger’s tectonic dance floor and finally to some anonymous club on the wharf where he yanked a gorgeous face with bee-stung lips from a queue of bidders on Skinspin and wasted no time renting the two of them a privacy suite.

  Dorian put a finger to his lips to mute the pop star in the mirror, partly to ward off the comedown migraine and partly just to see the hooker’s vapid smile slip to a vapid pout that looked better on her anyways. She pulled the time display out from the corner of the mirror and made a small noise of surprise in her throat.

  “I must shower.” She checked the cheap nanoscreen embedded in her thumbnail, rueful. “Other client soon. Business lady. Gets angry when I late even one fucking second.” She spun toward the bed. “I like you better,” she cooed. “You’re handsome. Her, I don’t know. She wear a blur.” She raked her glittery nails through the air in front of her face to illustrate.

  “That’s unfortunate,” Dorian said, pulling his modded tablet out from under the sheets.

  “Like I fuck a ghost,” she said with a grimace. “Gives me shivers.” She turned back to her reflection, piling up her dark hair with one hand and encircling her prick with the other. She flashed him an impish Crest-capped grin from the mirror. “You want a shower with me?”

  Dorian’s own chafed cock gave a half-hearted twitch. He counted the popped tabs of Taurus already littered around the room and decided not to risk an overdose. “I’ll watch,” he said. “How’s that?”

  Her shoulders heaved an exaggerated sigh, then she flitted off to the bathroom. Dorian flicked the shower’s smartglass from frosted to one-way transparent, watching her unhook the tube and wave it expectantly in his general direction. Dorian used his tablet to buy her the suite’s maximum option, sixty litres of hot water.

  Once she was busy under the stream, rapping along to Malaysian blip-hop, he took advantage of the privacy to have a look at his Bank. The scrolling black figure in his savings account gave him a swell of pride. 30,000 Euros, just over a million in Baht. He was ripping down record cash and the weekend’s binge had barely dented him. Maybe it was finally time to go to a boatyard and put in some inquiries.

  Dorian alternated between watching curves through the wet glass and watching clips of long-keeled yachts on his tablet. Then, in the corner of his eye, the mirror left tuned to a Thai entertainment feed flashed a face he actually recognized: Alexis Carrow, UK start-up queen, founder of Delphi Apps and freshly-minted billionaire. Dorian sat up a bit straighter and the mirror noticed, generating English subtitles.

  CARROW VACATION INCOGNITO

  Alexis Carrow young CEO from Delphi Apps on vacay in our very own beautiful country, celebspotters made clip yesterday on Pat
taya Bay Area. She appears having a wonderful time perusing Soi 17 with only bodyguard. No lover for her? Where is singer/songwriter Mohammed X? Alexis Carrow is secretive always.

  Dorian dumped the feed from the mirror onto his tablet, zooming in on the digital stills from some celebspotter’s personal drone that showed Ms Carrow slipping inside an AI-driven tuk-tuk, wearing Gucci shades and a sweat-wicking headscarf. Thailand still pulled in a lion’s share of middle-class Russian and Australian holidayers, plus droves of young Chinese backpackers, but Dorian knew the West’s rich and/or famous had long since moved on to sexier climes. Alexis Carrow was news. And she was here in Pattaya.

  Cogs churned in his head; grifter’s intuition tingled the nape of his neck. He eased up off the bed and walked to the smartglass wall of the bathroom. Inside, Nan – Nahm? – was removing her penis, trailing strands of denatured protein. He doubted it was her original organ – surgeons needed something to work with when they crafted the vagina, after all – but customers liked the fantasy.

  Dorian put his forehead against the smartglass, watching as she slipped the disembodied cock into the nutrient gel of a chic black refrigerated carrycase. The night’s activities were a slick fog. He tried to remember what she’d told him between bouts of hallucination-laced sex, the endless murmuring in his ear while they lay tangled together. Things about her family in Buriram, things about her friends, things about her clients.

  Someone even richer than you, she’d said, fooled by his rented spidersilk suit and open bar tab. Wants me all the week. You’re lucky I think you are handsome.

  Dorian couldn’t contain his grin as he looked down at his tablet, flicking through the photos. She was right about one thing: he had always been lucky.

  ***

  By the time the hooker was dressed, Dorian had checked on Skinspin and verified her name was Nahm. She exited the bathroom with a slink of steam, wrapped in a strappy white dress, her black hair immaculate again. Dorian appraised her unending legs, soot-rimmed eyes and pillowy lips. She was definitely enough to catch even a celebrity’s biwandering eye.

  “What?” she asked. She crouched to retrieve one Louboutin knock-off kicked under the bed; Dorian produced its partner.

  “Nothing, Nahm,” he said, handing her the sandal. “I was just thinking how much I’d like to take you back to London with me.”

  “Don’t make a joke,” she said, but she looked pleased. She gripped his arm for balance while she slipped into her shoes and then gave him a lingering goodbye kiss. As soon as the door of the privacy suite snicked shut behind her, Dorian scrambled back into his clothes.

  Someone had dumped half a Singha across his shoes and his sport coat stank like laced hash, but he didn’t have time for a clothing delivery. He raked fingers through his gel-crisped hair, prodded the dark circles under his eyes, and left. The narrow hall was a bright, antiseptic white unsullied by ads, and the soundproof guarantee of each privacy suite made it eerily quiet, too. AI-run fauxtels did always tend toward a minimalist aesthetic.

  Walking Street, by contrast, bombarded every last one of Dorian’s senses the moment he stepped outside. The air stank like spice and petrol, and a thousand strains of synthesized music mingled with drunk shrieks, laughter, trilingual chatter. The street itself was a neon hubbub of revelers.

  Dorian used his tablet to track the sticky he’d slapped to the bottom of Nahm’s shoe. He couldn’t see her through the crush, but according to the screen she was heading upstreet toward the Beach Road entrance. He plunged off the step, ducking an adbot trailing a digital Soi 6 banner, and made for the closest tech vendor. A gaggle of tourists was arrayed around the full body Immersion tank, giggling at their electrode-tethered friend drifting inside with a tell-tale erection sticking off him.

  Dorian cut past them and swapped 2,000 Baht for a pair of lime green knock-off iGlasses, prying them out of the packaging with his fingernails. He blinked his way through set-up, bypassed user identification, and tuned them to the sticky’s signal. A digital marker dropped down through the night sky, drizzling a stream of white code over a particular head like a localized rainshower.

  Stowing his tablet, Dorian hurried after the drifting marker, past a row of food stands hawking chemical-orange chicken kebabs and fried scorpions. A few girls whose animated tattoos he vaguely recognized grabbed at him as he went by, trailing fake nails down his arm. He deked away, but tagged one of them to Skinspin later – it looked like she’d gotten her implants redone.

  Once he had Nahm in eyeball sight, he slowed up a bit. She was mouthing lyrics to whatever she had in her audiobuds as she bounced along, necksnapping a group of tank-and-togs Australian blokes with the sine curve sway of her hips. She detoured once outside Medusa, where bored girls were perusing their phones and dancing on autopilot, to exchange rapid-fire sawatdees and airkisses. She detoured again to avoid a love-struck Russian on shard.

  Ducking into a stall selling 3D printed facemasks of dead celebrities, Dorian looked past Nahm to the approaching roundabout. A shiny black ute caught his eye through the customary swarm of scooters and tuk-tuks. As he watched, Nahm checked her thumbnail, then glanced up at the ute and quickened her pace. Dorian felt a jangle of excitement down his spine as he scanned the vehicle for identifying tags and found not a single one.

  Someone had knocked over a trash tip, spilling the innards across Nahm’s path, but she picked her way through the slimed food cartons and empty condom sprays with pinpoint precision that left Dorian dimly impressed. He squinted to trigger the iGlasses’ zoom, wondering if he should chance trying to get a snap of the inside of the ute.

  Then the lasershow started up again, throwing its neon green web into the dark clouds over Pattaya’s harbor, and as Nahm craned her beautiful head to watch for what was probably the millionth time, her heel punctured a sealed bag of butcher giblets.

  “Shit,” Dorian said, at the same time Nahm appeared to be saying something similar. Casting a glance at the approaching ute, she lowered herself gingerly to the curb to hunt through her bag. She produced a wipe and cleaned the red gunge off her ankle and the strap of her sandal. Dorian bit at the inside of his cheek.

  She continued to the underside of the shoe, wiping the needle-like heel clean, then paused. Dorian winced, thinking of all the many places he could have put the sticky. Slipped into her bag, or onto the small of her back, or even somewhere in her hair.

  Nahm pincered the tiny plastic bead between two nails and peered at it. Dorian crossed his tattooed fingers, hoping she wasn’t one of the many girls addicted to Bollywood spy flicks. She frowned, then balled the sticky up in the used wipe and tossed it away. The stream of code floated a half-meter over, now useless, as the ute pulled in.

  Dorian slid closer, watching Nahm get to her feet, smooth out her dress. For the first time, she looked slightly nervous. The ute’s shiny black door opened with a hiss. Dorian didn’t have an angle to see the interior as Nahm slithered inside, but the voice within was unmistakable, Cockney accent undisguised.

  “Christ, what is that stink? Please do not track that shit in with you, love.”

  Dorian didn’t get to hear Nahm’s retort. The door swooshed shut and the ute bullied its way back into the traffic. Dorian trotted over and picked up the bloody wipe, retrieving the sticky from inside. The smell barely bothered him, because Alexis Carrow was slumming it in Pattaya and he was going to blackmail the ever-loving shit out of her.

  ***

  When Dorian tried to search Nahm’s profile again, he wasn’t particularly surprised to see she’d yanked it off Mixt and Skinspin and the rest. Either finding the sticky had spooked her, or her current customer was upping the pay enough to make exclusivity worthwhile. Dorian had to do things the old-fashioned way, with a sheaf of rumpled 200 Baht notes doled out to helpful individuals.

  He didn’t find her on the beach until late afternoon, and almost didn’t recognize her when he did. She sat cross-legged on the palm-shaded sand, chatting to the old woman se
lling coconut milk and bags of crushed ice from a sputtering minifridge. Her face was more or less scrubbed of makeup, eyes smaller without the caked-on kohl, and her black hair hung gathered in a ponytail. Loose harem pants, flip-flops, a canary yellow Jack Daniels tank he assumed was being worn ironically.

  “Sawatdee krap,” Dorian said, butchering the pronunciation on purpose. He flashed her an incredulous grin. “This is a surprise.”

  Nahm looked up, surprised. “Hello,” she beamed, running her fingers through her ponytail. Then her smile dimmed by a few watts. A crease of suspicion appeared on her forehead. “What is it you want? I am no working.”

  “I guessed from the flip-flops,” Dorian said. “Long night for you?”

  Nahm narrowed her eyes. “You,” she said. “You put a…thing. To my shoe. First I think it was Ivan, but it was you.” She said something to the old woman in machine-gun Thai, too fast for Dorian to even try at, and slunk to her feet. “I am going. I don’t care you are handsome, you are crazy like Ivan.” She brushed sand off her legs and made for the street.

  “Have you figured out who you’re fucking yet?” Dorian asked, dropping pretenses. “That business lady? The angry one?”

  Nahm stopped, turned back.

  Dorian clawed the air in front of his face as an extra reminder. “Whatever she’s paying you is shit,” he said.

  “More than you pay me.”

  “She’s a lot richer than me,” Dorian said. “She’s Alexis Carrow.”

  Nahm’s eyes winched wide and she put a furious finger to her lips, scanning the beach as if paparazzi might burst up out of the grey sand.

  Dorian grinned. “So you do know.”

  “What is it you want?” Nahm repeated, raking fingers through her ponytail.