by Nisi Shawl
I decided to find Dad and tell him it would be a truly enlarging experience for me to get a copy of this maggie book. I tried to home in on him by listening for voices, but there were none. The ventilators sighed. The glass glittered silently as I passed up and down the shining paths.
“I can’t.” That was my father, very quiet, very close. They must be just on the other side of this set of shelves, to my left. “I can’t,” he said again. I’d never heard him like this. He sounded small and helpless. “I can’t.”
“I know.” Tata’s voice. “I’ll go tomorrow, as soon as my skin is ready. And I’ll ask about this imbalance, about our paths, just to be sure, but—”
“I love you,” he said, interrupting her, and he sounded more familiar now: bitter, and tired. “And I can feel it, I can tell what’s going to happen next, and I mustn’t do that with you, I mustn’t hurt you the way I want to hurt you, but I can’t—”
I realized that I was eavesdropping and jerked back, bumping two bowls together on a shelf. They chimed, a high, perfect hum that hung on the air after my father’s voice choked to a stop.
“Kayley?” Tata called softly under the ringing glass.
“Coming.” I turned a corner and there they were, facing each other and looking anywhere but in each other’s faces. “Dad, can I borrow—”
“Why the hell not?” he said. “Sure.” He brushed past me and I started to follow him.
“No,” said Tata. She didn’t sign. “This way. Where were you? I thought you were going to stay with me.” She headed in the opposite direction, which turned out to be a shortcut to the door.
She took me to her room and pulled the curtain closed. I sat on her bed, waiting for her to ask me what I’d heard. But instead she turned to her skin, not brushing it but checking the ties that held it in place, loosening them to accommodate its growing fullness.
In dormancy, the skin’s sluggish circulatory system accumulated an ever-swelling supply of hyper-oxygenated blood. Its nerve sheaths, worn by long contact, regenerated themselves. Tata held the back of one hand close to the skin’s underside. I was too far from her to see it happen, but she had shown me before how the thin white funiculi erected themselves, anticipating connection with her wells. Like the curtains, they responded to pheromonal cues.
I couldn’t tell from Tata’s reaction if the response was satisfactory. Her face was smooth, her black body blank. When she spoke to me, she kept using words. “Kayley, in the Morning I will need to return to Quarters. For the balance of my highest head.”
I tried not to sulk. She’d just gotten back, and she was going out again. “Why?”
“I must…consult.”
“Oh.” I felt stupid. Of course the work crews had to decide what to do about the new, more distant sites. That was what I’d overheard—wasn’t it? I asked Tata if it was really bad to be out in a skin for Days. She looked at me blankly for a moment, then averted her eyes and answered.
“The elders say that it becomes a strain. We get ‘tipsy’; our heads unbalance easily, going so long without enough oxygen, and we drop things. A tingling that grows painful, or numbness…. There is some compensation: danger pay, and the contract will be shortened if we take that path.” When the contract ended Tata would leave. Unless my Dad or Penny purchased a permanent agreement.
“So is that what’s going to happen?”
“Probably not. It would be cooler to move Quarters nearer to where the work is being done.” This sounded depressingly likely. It was, after all, their module, at their command. It would take a couple of Days to shift and re-anchor, but they’d still save time in the long run.
I sighed and let my chin sink down into one cupped hand.
“Kayley?” said Tata.
“What?” I didn’t bother to look up.
“Your sorrow equals?”
“You’ll be gone so much, traveling back and forth…”
“Kayley, must you always try to reach so far in front of your arms? These troubles are unborn. Each path has many branchings.” She came over to me and put her hands on my hunched-up shoulders.
“I’m here,” Tata continued. “I don’t have any work right now, and I’d really like to way with you. So ask your head to tell you what it’s best for us to do.”
My head was empty of suggestions. We wound up hacking my father’s book codes. Despite what she’d said, Tata was not wholly there, and it took longer than it should have. We succeeded about supper time, fed her skin, then hurried to join Penny and Dad in the kitchen.
I watched them all carefully. Penny and Dad were already at the counter, sawing away at grilled swordfish steaks. “Something’s wrong, Tata,” he joked as we entered. “You forgot to program me the sword I need to cut this thing.”
Penny winced. “Your wit, dear. Use your wit.”
“I am. Maybe yours is a little sharper. Mind if I borrow it a moment?” He reached over and started rummaging through her wild curls. “Looks like what you’ve got here is mostly hair.”
All very jolly and fine, all throughout the meal. Except once I caught what Penny’s book would have called a long, burning look. Dad to Tata. Tata to Dad. Then both of them were studying their empty plates.
Afterwards, Penny asked Dad to come cad with her. I stayed behind, pretending to help Tata clean up, wondering whether or not I was jealous. At last I decided I just wanted to know what was going on.
“You love him, don’t you, Tata?”
Her hands stayed busily silent, smoothing creases from our crumpled paper napkins.
“Tata—”
“Yes. It hardly matters, but yes, I love your father very much.” She tossed the napkins into the paper cycler and turned away to face the sink.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “It doesn’t matter why?”
“Because.” For a moment I thought that was all she was going to say. Then the words came flooding out.
“Because it is unlikely that this love will advance either of us on our path of light and destiny. Because your father knows this as well as I do, though we both wish we didn’t. Because your father is strong for me, and I am weak for him. Because, because, because…” Tata stopped talking and turned on the water, flushing food scraps from the sink. “There are many, many reasons. Good ones.”
“All right,” I said. I kept quiet while she unloaded the washer and stacked our clean, dry plates in their hopper. When she was done, I followed her out into the corridor. “Do you still want to way with me?” I asked. “I could stay in your room tonight, if…if you’d like?”
She stood still, considering. “I might.”
Tata’s desk had such a tiny screen. “Or you could come spend the night with me.” That way we could read.
“Perhaps that would be most cool.” But when we came to her doorway, she stopped. “There are a few things it would be better for me to do tonight, before I leave for Quarters.” I could see she was still trying not to sign, though her soft, dark shoulders curved in some awkward emotion: shame, embarrassment? I didn’t know.
“Anything I can do, Tata?” I asked her.
“Wait. I’ll come when I’m through.” The glamp-light glimmered on her curtain’s fur as it closed behind her.
I went on to my room. Leaving the curtain open, I activated my desk and took a look at this afternoon’s discovery.
The book was called Space-Apes in Eden: The Anti-Domestication of a New Racial Archetype. It was a load of filth.
I was eleven Years old, up to my fortieth semester of school. I had heard of the antiquated notion that humanity is divided into races, special variations due to local inbreeding. But no one had ever discussed the inferences once commonly drawn based on this theory: that members of these racial subsets possessed differing abilities, qualitatively and quantitatively. That certain of these abilities made their possessors more fit to survive and reproduce than those possessed of other, and therefore inferior, abilities. That the inbreeding which had produced these races was
a highly desirable occurrence, one to be cultivated and encouraged—“by any means consonant with the rapid colonization of space.”
I struggled to comprehend these repulsive assumptions as they were presented to me. The murky mysteries of the written word forced me to formulate this nastiness within my own mind. There were a few useful pieces of information; the origin of the word “maggies,” for instance. It had nothing to do with the works of Dylan, the Twentieth Century Welsh songwriter. “Maggie’s Farm” may have been an anthem of the rebellion, but the name came first. It derived from magnesium, the only element the rebels couldn’t mine or synthesize. With no access to planetary bases, it became their sole trade-link with Earth.
I also learned the names of the team that designed humanity’s first (and only?) self-replicating artificial mutation. It was a team, though Harding gets the credit, for the maggies, the curtains, and all the other spin-offs.
The rest—I couldn’t tell what was true, what contained a grain of truth, and what was pure, poisonous nonsense. The author implied, rather than stated, that maggies were animals, or anyway, less than human. Because they were made for us, to work for us. The more I read, the more I felt like I was agreeing with things I absolutely knew were wrong. At one point I stared so long at the screen, too stupefied to scroll any further, that my default clicked on. The swimming clocks showed two sharp. Late. My circadians would be way off.
Where was Tata? She’d have to help me deal with this. I didn’t care what she was doing. I needed her. I went down the tunnel to her room.
Her curtain was closed. I slapped it in frustration, and it opened slightly. Maybe it hadn’t been drawn completely shut. Or if she had sensitized it to my touch, she did so without telling me. I swear I didn’t know that it would open, that I would see them there like that.
Actually, I heard them first. A sound too soft to be a groan, followed by a low, desperate, sobbing. I was in the room, then, and I saw.
Tata lay on her bed, on her side, eyes closed. She was naked—no, without clothes, but not naked. Her long, beautiful breasts and her belly and thighs blazed black between the edges of her partially closed skin. With one gold-clad arm she lifted her leg, with the other she braced herself to thrust against him. Him. Dad.
Dad was behind her. I only saw his hairy knees, and his hands on her shoulders. But I recognized his voice.
“Tata, Tata, won’t forget me Tata, won’t forget who loves you, Tata—” Tension tore his words apart then, left ragged gasps fluttering in the air.
I should have gone away.
But I stayed.
It lasted a long while without changing, then slowed a little. Tata opened her eyes. I know she saw me.
It was my dad who spoke, though. “Sweet, sickin God, Tata, this will never be enough.” And quite deliberately his hands sought out the edges of her open skin, touching her there, underneath.
She screamed. It was nothing like Penny’s books. I wanted to die, I wanted to come, I wanted to run away and hide.
I was moving toward her, somehow, to help her. Spasming with pain, she signed me to stop.
My father’s hands continued their torture, brushing and plucking at the skin’s exposed funiculi. Tata’s scream had subsided to a hoarse grunting, nearly drowned out by my father’s moans. I hesitated, and she signed again: go. Her imbalance was extreme. I could not aid her. Go.
I went.
At the door I turned, still unsure. The hands went suddenly limp. Tata lay still beneath them. Then she showed me one more sign, simple, yet nuanced. Swimming through a virtual Nassea, she slipped into the contracting lock of Quarters, into the arms of healers, elders that would assist her in retrieving her coolness and alignment. She rested there, with them, depending on their love. And the memory of mine.
She was telling me goodbye.
I shut the curtain.
In the morning, Tata was gone, and next Day another maggie came to take her place. His name was Lebba. Dad didn’t care how often he left the station, and he never tried to stop me from going out with him, either. I thought sometimes I’d ask him to tell Tata I was well, I was fine, I was growing, developing quite normally. I thought I’d ask him to convey to her my wishes that she continue to receive the blessings of her highest heavenly head. But I haven’t done anything like that yet, and I still don’t know if I’m going to.
It’s been over six Years. With the last of the seeding done, my father has left New Bahama. I surprised him when I told him I wanted to stay here, with Penny, in what he called “this Surge-abandoned mud-hole.” But I’m eighteen now, no longer in need of a guardian.
I have settled down here, sinking into the darkness and silence of the Nassea. Penny provides me with an easy, unassuming companionship, and I help her with her work. Which is about to move into construction. For soon, according to our maps, the carefully nurtured coral will break the surface of the Nassea.
When that happens, the maggies will be moving on, to another waterworld, or something rare, a world of ice or dust. Tata, too.
Does she realize how much I miss her, how the loneliness is always there, still curdled up inside?
I think she does.
Momi Watu
I was just tired, that’s all. That gritty feeling in my eyes, as if the lids were encrusted with sand; it would pass. Blinking helped, though not much. Maybe a really long blink.… No. Only two more braids to go. Then the laundry to bag and unbag. Then a bath for both of us. Then I could sleep.
I bent back to my work. Individual strands of hair feathered beneath my comb, and I examined them all closely. Too bad she was so fair. Took after her Dad. Too bad I spoiled her so. It really should all come off. But even with school coming up next week, I just couldn’t. Every strand of heavy, golden brown was a link to Steve. Like dripping syrup, like the sweetness we had shared, making this child. Steve was gone, captured, disappeared. I just couldn’t stand the thought of cutting these ties between us. That’s probably why Lily threw a shit-fit every time I mentioned the idea.
Eleven p.m. and one braid left. Time for the news. I switched on the tv: just the picture, as accompaniment for the radio. That was where I got all my actual information. The pictures on the screen, when I glanced up at them, never exactly matched the stories I was listening to. But they acted as a sort of disjointed commentary, on the level of my lizard brain.
The Tigers were moving up into third place. They’d never make it past that, though, everybody knew. Not since they tore down the old stadium. The image of Tyree Guyton appeared on the tv as if in confirmation. He stood before one of his hoodoo houses, talking to an off-camera interviewer. Mannequin legs and bicycles sprouted from the veranda at his back. The spirit of Old Detroit lived.
Nina Totenberg did a thing on the “Cold Water Wars,” part of a series. They weren’t really wars, of course; no state had seceded from the union, no officials openly supported the “terrorist tactics” groups like Steve’s engaged in, though they were only trying to enforce the law. But insurance rates had risen, security on dams and pumping stations soared sky high, underwritten by our taxes.
The tv showed beer commercials, several minutes of tanned, beefy men pouring glowing golden liquids for one another. The condensation on their glasses looked real good.
Back to local and the weather. Clear and in the 90s; no surprises there. But what was this? Adrenaline kicked in as I isolated a strand of Lily’s hair. A small white fleck seemed to be attached to it, about an inch from the scalp.
With trembling hands I took up my scissors and severed the hair, carefully laying it on a scrap of black cloth. Dread burned like a fever, just below the surface of my skin. But when I rubbed the hair back and forth, the little speck of white detached itself from the strand. It lay there innocently, a mere flake of dandruff or dead scalp.
For a moment I let myself enjoy the cool ripples of relief spreading over me. It was always like this: the crisis, forcing me to focus all my senses on the narrow circle of immedia
te threat, then the resolution, and the corresponding sensation of floating, of release.
So far, anyway.
I finished the last braid without further incident, left Lily curled up on the floor and went to bring in the laundry.
Light from the kitchen window spilled yellow out into the yard and let me see enough to avoid the lopsided picnic table, the borrowed grill. The clothesline was a flapping shadow toward the back. I unpegged the clothes, mostly by feel. Into the wicker-creaking, plastic-rustling basket by layers: first underwear, then t-shirts, then socks, shorts, and scarves. The shaker pegs went into a separate bag. I carried the basket in, swung through the living room to check on Lily. Still sleeping. Her long braids swirled out in “esses” over the floorboards. Her lashes fluttered over her plump brown cheeks, then settled into stillness.
I hurried into the former study, sealed the laundry bag, and labeled it. Lifted it out of the basket, into the space awaiting it on my makeshift shelves. Pegs on top. I scanned the labels of the bags already in place. Some people say two weeks is long enough. They’ve studied the life cycle; they should know. I wait three, just to be sure. I found the bag labeled August 5, 2009, and carried it to our bedroom.
“Wake up, pumpkin, time to get ready for bed.” I had the herbs all set out on the mat: sage, rosemary, lavender, artemisia. Lily scowled as I scrubbed her with them. I was as gentle as I could be, turning her with one hand while the other rubbed her up and down with the scratchy leaves. Poor pumpkin. She used to love it back when she was a baby and we used water. Bath night was tough on her now, but I insisted. Better a tired and grumpy little girl than a sick or dying one. We usually slept in Sunday mornings, waking just in time for her favorite cartoons.
The bruised herbs released their piercing scents into the air. They left trails of green on Lily’s smooth, dry skin. I finished by massaging a little oil into her hair and brushing it through. “There. Now go dust yourself off and hop in bed.”
I stripped off my house dress and grabbed another bundle of herbs for myself. “Got your pajamas on, amazon?”