Dark Matter

by Sheree R. Thomas

  Xotama took a quick breath. She hadn’t thought beyond the aching need to stop today’s events. “I don’t know. Will you come with me?”

  “No. You must do this alone. It will be dangerous. Not everyone who seeks Ship returns.”

  “There must be another way,” Mayomi pleaded. “I’ve taken care of her since her mother died giving birth to her. Her father entrusted me with her life when he moved to another shabono to marry. I fear her mother’s spirit lingers nearby, pulling at her.”

  “Someone lingers near, but it’s not her mother,” the shaman said.

  Mayomi looked stricken, opened her mouth as if to speak, but put her fist over it instead.

  “You will follow the river to the place where no one lives.” Hurewa held Xotama’s hands. “There, if Ship is agreeable, you may be returned to the shadow in your dreams. We will sit vigil for you.”

  Tears fell from Mayomi’s eyes, but she said nothing.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They stood and walked to the shabono’s exit. No one approached them. Rahimi looked like she wanted to go to her, but her mother was holding her arm.

  “What about supplies?” Mayomi asked.

  “Ship will give her what she needs,” he said. “We should go from here alone, Mayomi.”

  “Remember that I love you,” Mayomi whispered in Xotama’s ear.

  They walked to the river down a rarely used path. The thick, sweet scent of flowering vines lifted her soul; their red blossoms made her smile. The hõrema bird began its afternoon song: “were, were, were…” A little of her fear dissipated in the air of the forest. This could be just another day if not for the fact that she was leaving everyone she knew to search for an unknown person in a place she’d never been before.

  A freshly carved canoe waited on the bank.

  “This is my personal canoe. It will carry you to the next place,” the shaman said. He mixed some earth with spit in his hands and smoothed the mixture over the bow of the canoe, working a spell of protection into the wood.

  “Thank you for believing me,” she said.

  “There is strong magic in you. I wouldn’t be a good shaman if I ignored it.” He helped her into the canoe, handed her a paddle, and pushed the canoe toward the center of the river.

  She waved at him as the canoe carried her away. The current moved well enough that she only used the paddle to push away from rocks or fallen tree trunks. Light from the afternoon sky, and the water’s rocking motion, made her sleepy. Her hand slipped over the edge of the canoe, trailing in the current.

  Xotama dreamed she changed into an eel and slid into the river. The other was also there as an eel. They danced in the water, slithering around each other, over and under thick tree roots. There were no words between them, just a perfect dance. Their tails and heads wrapped together to make a wing shape that lifted into the sky as, below, the canoe filled with water.

  Xotama woke to water flooding the canoe. She tried using her cupped hands to bail it out, but the canoe tipped over, dumping her into the foaming waves. Underwater, a tangle of tree roots threatened to hold her. She kicked up to the surface before she got too snarled in the roots, and swam to the bank.

  She sat on the muddy edge, catching her breath. Now what? The river had carried her away from known territory, and without a canoe she had no idea where to go next. The ground rose, not far from the river, to a hill dense with growth. Trapped between the water and the thick bush, she reasoned that, if this was as far as the canoe took her, the rest of her journey would have to be on foot. She worked her way up the hill, away from the wetland.

  In the overgrown bush, little sunlight passed through the thick canopy. Scrub brush and thick vines, in shades of gray, covered the ground, making walking difficult. There was no sign anyone had ever walked this way, not even an overgrown trail. Pushing through whatever vegetation yielded, she heard a rumble overhead, like a coming storm.

  She tried not to think about the snakes and rodents living under the tangle of vines and rotting leaves. Twice, Xotama stopped to dig a thorn out of her foot. By the time she reached dry ground, she was limping, her body covered with bleeding scratches. Despite eating a couple of tangerine-colored ediweshi on the way, she was dizzy from lack of food. The palm fruit took the edge off her thirst, but left her hungry and weak. The rumbling above grew louder. Nausea twisted her stomach, but she pushed on until she found a small opening in the hillside. She picked up a stick in case snakes lived in the cave; it would be safer there than in the dark jungle if a storm broke.

  Just as she squeezed into the cave, a palm tree crashed down at the entrance. Her scream was swallowed by the thunder of a summer storm. Unable to hold back the nausea, she vomited. Choking on bile, Xotama squeezed deeper into the cave. She listened for sounds of something alive in the cave besides her, but could hear nothing over the roar of the storm.

  Too weak to go on, she crouched with her back against the stone wall. She would die here. Alone, with no songs or rituals to take care of her decaying body, her spirit lost forever. She cried softly, curling into a ball.

  What made her think Ship would talk to her, even let her enter its sacred space to answer her questions? What place did her small lost life have in Ship’s larger existence; in the journey of the people? Drifting into unconsciousness, her last thought was that she had no one to blame except herself.

  Xotama stood outside the cave. Wind and rain threw tree branches at her, ripping flesh from her body. She felt no pain. In a flash of lightning, she saw the cave opening was almost completely covered with debris. She looked down at her hands. Bone peeked through the raw flesh that remained. Under the roar of the storm, she heard her grandmother chanting. The ground became very hot, blistering what little skin was left on her feet.

  Without taking a single step, she moved down the hill, back to the river. Standing at the spot where she had climbed out of the river, she looked across the whitecaps and saw her canoe rise out of the water. Shoro, dark-feathered birds with long tails, were lifting it. Her grandmother’s singing grew louder. It was a chant of protection from the water demons.

  Xotama looked down at her arms and legs. The burning had stopped, and her limbs transformed themselves into wings and claws, like the shoro. The lost feeling she had carried her whole life became a single stabbing pain inside her chest. A ring of fire blazed in the sky. Was this the circle in Hurewa’s warning? Trembling, she rose on her new wings and flew toward the flames.

  She skimmed through the center of the ring. Her feathers burned away. She fell, not down but up, hurtling through a tunnel of colors, to land on a soft pile of leaves. When she opened her eyes, she was an infant being picked up by her grandmother, younger in years but with the same eyes. A woman, the mother she never knew, squatted against a large tree, grimacing in pain as blood ran down her thighs.

  Mayomi lay Xotama carefully on the ground. An infant cried. Not her, Xotama realized, but another baby, coming out of their mother.

  Twins.

  Her mother collapsed as the placenta was delivered. Mayomi cut the umbilical cord and tried to revive Xotama’s mother, but she was dead. Mayomi’s cries mixed with the hungry newborns’ wail.

  Twins. Everything made sense now. The dreams, the feeling of being broken in two. Relief mixed with anger. Mayomi knew all along that Xotama was a twin, and never said anything. All the years of pain explained in one word. Twins.

  Their grandmother picked the babies up and ran crying into the forest. She stopped at an opening in a hill, laid both babies down to examine them. They were exactly the same, except for the sliver of a moon birthmark on Xotama’s face. Mayomi touched the birthmark, kissed the other baby, picked up Xotama, and rushed away from the cave.

  Inexplicably, Xotama floated above her abandoned sister, helpless. An old man came out of the cave and picked up the baby. A Watcher, his skin was iridescent blue, like the evening sky, covered with the curling patterns every Yanomami knew as Ship’s design. He carr
ied her sister into the cave.

  The cries faded. Xotama was on her knees, weeding in her grandmother’s tobacco garden. A reflection of Xotama pulled weeds to her left. Xotama shrieked in joy and grabbed her sister, pulling them both to the ground.

  “It’s you! I can’t believe I’ve found you.” Xotama held her sister’s face in her hands. She kissed and hugged her tightly.

  “Yes, my sister,” she answered, embracing her.

  Xotama pulled away, looked around. “But how can we be here? Am I dead?”

  “You are very much alive.” She smiled. “I wanted a familiar place for us to meet. You have happy memories of this garden.”

  “You can make a place out of memories?”

  “Anything imagined can take form here. Is there another place you would like to be?”

  Xotama looked around. Everything seemed so real, she expected Mayomi to walk out of the forest. “This is fine. I didn’t know Watchers could do this. I guess there’s a lot I don’t know about Ship and Watchers. Before this day I didn’t know I had a sister. I—I thought I was losing my mind.”

  “I know. I haven’t been doing well myself.” Her sister wiped Xotama’s tears away. “Even though I knew you lived, I needed to touch you.”

  “But if we aren’t really here, how can you touch me?”

  She took Xotama’s hand. “Doesn’t this feel real? As real as any two bodies. More real than dreams.”

  “Except in my dreams I never saw your face. Didn’t know you were my sister. I don’t even know your name.”

  “I don’t have a name like you do. Here we know each other by touch.”

  Xotama thought for a moment. “Can I call you Notama?”

  She smiled. “I would like that.”

  “This is unbelievable. There’s so much I don’t understand, ” Xotama said.

  “Do you trust me?”

  Xotama looked into the copy of her face, without the birthmark, and nodded.

  Notama reached up, her arm stretching until it touched the sky. Xotama looked down at where her sister held her hand. Their flesh melted together. Xotama’s eyes closed. She felt as if she were falling asleep.

  They were a wind moving over forests, flowing up into the false sky, swiftly passing through a thick wall until they were beyond the asteroid’s shell and into outer space. Points of light shimmered around them. Below, a long, dark sliver laid against the starry background: the rough rock that contained everyone Xotama loved, everything she knew of life. They plummeted down, through the vessel’s strata of protective minerals, into its meta-plasmic web, caught like insects in the immense memory banks of the intelligence called Ship. It existed in the living plasma that flowed through the outer shell, under the forest ground. It was more than a machine and less than human.

  Images from Ship’s memory rushed past: First Earth, twisted, dying infants born to sick mothers, poison in the air, in the ground, in many humans: DNA spirals mangled into broken, twisted puzzle pieces: another memory bank filled with an endless stream of undamaged genetic codes, tagged and indexed, the genes of the Yanomami living inside the rock as it hurtled through space. Each new marriage, each new infant produces another flow of genetic possibilities. Xotama and Notama’s genetic history undulated from First Earth and extrapolated into patterns that exploded into data streams that even Notama had not experienced.

  More and more information poured into their minds. They saw the debates that led to the decision to maintain the forest society among the villages; to keep the people safe and sane during a long journey that would see the birth and death of generations. They saw the bodies of Watchers in stasis pods, clustered like peas throughout the asteroid. Notama’s body curled in a pod: still the size of a child. Older Watchers in gleaming blue body suits in the forests, observing the villages, taking samples from the water, ground, plants; surveying animals: wild pigs, tapir, giant anteaters; giant rodents, snakes, armadillos, tortoises, monkeys.

  Xotama’s mind was stripped down by the waves of information. Each new concept carried countless layers of explanation, information to explain data to explain information. Images slipped and slid into forms she couldn’t comprehend. She wanted to tear her eyes out, rip her ears off, anything, anything to stop the roar, but she had no body. Notama was near her, also terrified by the images.

  They had unlocked something immense and it was consuming them.

  (stopstopstopstop) Notama screamed in images: white lightning, bitter hot freezing decaying piercing gnawing…

  Xotama was losing words, her thoughts tumbled into ragged sounds, tastes, colors…

  green

  pounding

  sweet

  red

  wet

  screech…

  An old woman’s face formed in the deluge of sensations, older than any Yanomami either of them had seen.

  (Stop data retrieval, repair memory break, restore previous visualization) Her voice was soothing.

  The storm slowed and dissipated like morning mist. They were back in the garden of Notama’s making. The pain and chaos faded rapidly.

  “Who was that?” Xotama asked.

  “One of the first Watchers. Someone who’s been with Ship from the early days,” Notama said.

  They helped each other stand.

  “I’m sorry, Xotama. I made a terrible mistake.” Notama shook her head. “I thought if I showed you what this was, Ship, the world I live in, that maybe you could stay here. But I took us into the neural web too quickly, I almost—”

  “No, don’t apologize,” Xotama interrupted. “I had the same hope when I found you. For us to be together. But I couldn’t live with things shifting around me, or these odd words and things. I need to walk through the forests every day on legs. I need to hold people. I saw your body, it’s too young, and your mind too grown to live in a world you couldn’t fly in or change whenever you choose.”

  They held each other. “It’s time you returned,” Notama said. “I wouldn’t want Grandmother to worry too long about you. What will you do with the information you have?”

  “Keep it close to my heart,” Xotama said. “I see that knowing too much, too soon, is not wisdom.”

  “Yes, my arrogance has shown me I have a lot to learn,” Notama said.

  “Will we dream together again?” Xotama asked.

  “I believe we will, but without the confusion. Are you ready to go?”

  “Yes. You are forever in my heart and my ‘genes.’ ” Xotama smiled at using the new word.

  Notama kissed her forehead.

  Xotama blinked. She stood in the mouth of a cave. Sunlight spilled over the forest. Other than some scratches, she was uninjured. This was not the cave she hid in from the storm. She had been returned to the cave her sister had been carried into as a newborn.

  Her sister. Tears ran down her face and she laughed. She had a sister.

  This cave was not far from her village. She took her time walking back, enjoying every sound and scent along the way. She had seen many things with Notama. It would take a long time for her to understand even a small part of it. Maybe a lifetime.

  For the first time, she looked forward to the future. She and Tutewa would marry, have children. Perhaps one of them would be a Watcher. Xotama wouldn’t see the end of their journey, nor her children’s children, but one day Yanomami would see the end of this path, and the beginning of something she could only taste at the back of her mind. Perhaps some of these Yanomami would carry her genes.

  Xotama entered her village as the sky began to dim. The smell of roasted armadillo and plantains filled the air. Many people feasted around the center fire. Conversation stopped as she walked across the dusty space.

  Rahimi ran up and grabbed her in a tight hug. “I’m so happy you’re safe.”

  Xotama pulled away, looking past Rahimi to her grandmother, who stood transfixed at the edge of her hammock.

  “What’s wrong?” her friend asked.

  “Nothing. Everything is
fine. I’m going to be okay.” She hugged Rahimi back. “I have to talk to Mayomi.”

  She walked to her grandmother. Hurewa signs of protection were painted in red over Xotama’s hammock. She smiled. When she left the village, the shaman knew more than anyone about Ship, but now she returned with so much more knowledge.

  Mayomi met her gaze. Tears began to fall from her eyes. She sat on the ground. Xotama sat next to her.

  “You know?” Mayomi whispered.

  “Yes, everything. I found her. She’s not a dream, any more than I am. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It’s hard enough making a place for one child without a mother. I had just lost a daughter, and held two babies in my arms. On First Earth, one of you would have had to die. Here, I knew the Watchers would take care of the one I left behind. It was the only way both could have a life not filled with burden.

  “I couldn’t tell you what had happened.” Mayomi looked down. “It’s not permitted to speak of these things. Your mother’s spirit might have been pulled back by my words, to haunt us.”

  Xotama shook her head. “You and I will not speak of this again.” She took her grandmother’s hand and kissed it. “I’ve found my lost self. I can be whole. Now we are both here.” Xotama cupped her hands over her chest.

  They stood and held each other. Xotama closed her eyes and saw the rock, their world, hurtling through space toward an unknown future. She would marry and have children and, in spite of the taboos, teach them about their aunt and what she learned from Ship during that time of almost-madness.

  GIMMILE’S SONGS

  Charles R. Saunders

  (1984)

  The banks of the Kambi River were low and misty, crowded with waterbucks and wading birds and trees draped in green skeins of moss. Dossouye, once an ahosi—a woman soldier of the Kingdom of Abomey—rode toward the Kambi.

  Slowly the ahosi guided her war-bull to the riverbank. She knew the Kambi flowed through Mossi, a sparsely populated kingdom bordering Abomey. Between the few cities of Mossi stretched miles of uninhabited bushland speckled with clumps of low-growing trees. Dossouye watched sunlight sparkle through veils of humid mist rising from the Kambi.