Dichronauts

by Greg Egan

  Still, Seth could see one benefit from Dahlia’s censorship: it might have saved him from revealing just how fervently he was wishing for a better outcome. If the Southites believed that he was content with the deal, there was still a chance that he could take them by surprise.

  Theo said, «But we do know that it’s not what Ada wants.»

  «If she’s here beside the boat, if there’s nothing to stop her, do you really think she’d turn down the opportunity?» Her relationship with Dahlia would be difficult, but when she weighed that against the misery of being trapped here, Seth couldn’t believe that she’d choose a life of suffering. «You and I should fight more, in front of her. Let her know that it’s perfectly normal for Walkers and Siders to have to patch up their differences.»

  «It’s not what Dahlia wants, either,» Theo added.

  Seth said, «Dahlia’s a child who’s never even seen her real home. She’s in no position to decide whether to go or stay.»

  «And when the Southites catch us trying to renege on our agreement, you’re certain that they won’t punish us by refusing to allow anyone to leave?»

  «I never said I was certain about anything.» Seth backed the cart away from the water, and started to turn it around.

  Theo wasn’t finished. «Dahlia’s not a child any more, in any sense of the word. If there are places she hasn’t seen and things we haven’t told her, that’s no reflection on her own powers of judgment.»

  «All right, she’s not a child,» Seth conceded. «But that doesn’t make me any more willing to give in to her. She’s used her access to the Southites to get her own way on everything, but just because Ada’s resigned herself to that, it doesn’t mean I’m going to do the same.»

  as he drove back into the settlement, Seth passed the stationary convoy of carts, still loaded with supplies in readiness for the expedition to the old home. «They’ll choose an unpredictable route,» he suggested. «It might take a bit longer, but it’ll make things much harder for anyone who’s trying to cut them off. And if they stay away from places where people can hide a catapult, they won’t need to see into the sky to avoid surprises.»

  Theo was skeptical. «If it were as simple as that, no one would ever get ambushed. But it’s not me that you need to convince.»

  Seth drove the cart all the way up to the enclosure, and then lowered himself slowly down the three narrow stairs that Iqbal had attached to the front of the vehicle after Dahlia described his painfully abrupt dismount during the attack on the search party.

  “How’s the boat looking?” Ada asked. She was curled up on her blanket, and covered in a second one to keep out the cold.

  “It’s going well,” Seth replied, crawling over onto his own blanket. “I think they’ll be done in a few more days.”

  “Good.”

  Seth was surprised that Dahlia hadn’t greeted him. “Is she asleep?” he asked quietly.

  “Yes,” Ada confirmed.

  “Then try not to wake her. I want to talk to you without her.”

  Ada said nothing, but Seth took her stillness as assent.

  “I’m going to find a way to get us all home,” he promised. “I know it will be hard for you and Dahlia, when she learns the truth. But did I ever tell you that my sister almost murdered her Sider? And they got over it, eventually. You’d be amazed what people can forgive, when they’re stuck with each other.”

  “I know you mean well,” Ada replied. “But you need to understand that this is something you can’t change.”

  Seth was about to respond, but Ada’s face tightened in a warning.

  “Hello, Seth,” Dahlia said sleepily. “What’s happening?”

  “I was looking at the boat,” he said. “It’s beautiful. I want you to thank the builders for me, next time you get a chance.”

  “I will.”

  seth was woken by Theo’s voice in his skull.

  «We need to try something different.»

  He opened his eyes, squinting against the glare from the chasm. «What, exactly?»

  Theo said, «You seem to be willing to risk everything to help Ada. What I’m going to suggest involves a risk, too, but it’s a much smaller one.»

  «I’m trying to help Ada and Dahlia,» Seth replied irritably. «Why don’t you just tell me what your idea is, and then we can argue about the relative degrees of danger?»

  «I want you to press one of the northern fingers of your right hand against the rim of my right pinger, as hard as you can.»

  Seth looked across the enclosure, checking to see if Ada was awake, but she was huddled motionless in her blankets. «Why would I want to do that? If we’re going to fake a fight, shouldn’t we have an audience?»

  «I don’t want you to fake anything,» Theo insisted. «I want you to break the seal.»

  «Have you lost your mind?» Seth rubbed his eyes. «I don’t mind a bit of blood, but that would be ridiculous.» As he moved his arm, he realized belatedly that Theo wasn’t pinging in either direction; he was holding both membranes tensed and still, in the same protective configuration he would have used if he’d actually been under attack.

  «We need to show Dahlia what’s possible.»

  «Dahlia?» Seth was lost now. «Ada’s the one who needs convincing that reconciliation is possible.»

  «But it’s Dahlia who gets her own way,» Theo countered. «So we need to show her another possibility, for what her way could be.»

  Seth was finally beginning to see where this was heading. «No, no, no. We can’t do that to her!»

  Theo said, «It’s not our decision. Show her, and let her choose for herself. I told you, she’s not a child.»

  Seth felt nauseous. «Show her what? Even if I can pry you loose, what then? I can cut myself to feed you, but then what’s the point? Apart from the fact that we’ll have half-blinded each other, you’ll still be relying on a Walker to survive.»

  «I’ve heard people say there was another way,» Theo replied tentatively. «When a Walker died and the Sider was separated, sometimes the Walker’s relatives would bleed themselves, but sometimes they’d chew up food instead and offer that to the Sider. Any Southite could do that much—and for the magic weapon that’s going to save them from their enemies, they’d hardly begrudge her the effort.»

  Seth said, «She’d be light-blind and naked. Do you think you really know what that would be like?»

  «No,» Theo replied. «But I’m willing to find out.»

  «And when you’re back inside my skull, what then?» Once the connections that enabled shared vision and inspeech had been severed, how long would they take to be reestablished?

  «I don’t know,» Theo admitted. «We’re not so young that everything’s guaranteed to sort itself out, like it did for Leanne and Patricia, but the fact that it’s the same pairing, not a new one, has to count for something.»

  «Does it?» Seth wished Theo could see his scowl of disbelief. «Did I blink and miss it when you studied medicine?»

  «If your plan goes wrong,» Theo replied, «the Southites sink the boat to punish you for trying to spirit Ada and Dahlia away. Don’t try to tell me that’s not worse than us ending up incommunicado.»

  Seth felt his courage faltering. If Ada was intent on staying, why should he risk going side-blind just to stop her? He should have agreed from the start to go along with her plan, and let her have exactly what she claimed she wanted.

  «Are you playing me?» he asked Theo suspiciously. «Hoping I’ll give up on Ada, if you can make the price as unpleasant as possible?»

  Theo said, «What I’m hoping for is that you won’t get everyone stranded, along with the measurements.»

  «But you really want to try this?» Seth pressed him.

  Theo hesitated. «Can you think of a better way? Not counting scenarios where the Southites turn a blind eye, Ada does whatever you ask her to, and Dahlia doesn’t scream for help when we try to kidnap her and take her down the river?»

  «Fuck.» Seth put his finger in plac
e, and applied as much force as he could muster.

  The pain fell far short of being stabbed, but his protective instincts compounded the raw unpleasantness of the sensation; it was like trying to poke himself in the eye and then dig deeper without flinching. He could feel the ridge where his skin joined up with Theo’s membrane warning of the danger, then protesting at the damage, and then finally starting to yield. And he could feel Theo shivering—but apart from his own labored breathing, they both succeeded in remaining silent even as he broke through the seal.

  Seth knew that if he stopped to take stock of what he’d done he might not be able to bring himself to continue; the warm dampness on his skin and the scent of blood were still abstractions whose meaning he could hold at bay, but only for so long. He kept his finger pressed against the bony wall on his side of the wound, and forced it around the edge of the circular aperture, tearing through the seam more readily now that it had been breached. At the halfway point some part of him rebelled in panic and revulsion, summoning up mental images of the difference between a cut that left a flap of skin attached, and one that excised it completely to leave the flesh unprotected. But he stared through the visions of flaying and persisted.

  When his finger came full circle he flopped down against the blanket. Blood was trickling over his face and the back of his head, but he kept his hand out of sight so he wouldn’t have to look at it.

  «Can you hear me?» he asked Theo.

  «More or less.» Theo’s inspeech was muffled; they’d already disturbed something deeper than the pinger itself.

  «If I do anything that feels like it’s going to injure you, yell out loud.» On the rare occasions when he’d thought about the anatomy of the connection, Seth had always imagined that the intertwined tissues linking Walker and Sider would be weaker than anything in the interior of either. But that was just a guess, without even a trace of folk-wisdom to back it up; the only time most pairs were separated was when one member had already died.

  The bottom pinger was much harder to attack, with his left arm confined between his body and the ground. It was difficult to control the angle his finger made with the membrane, and it kept slipping out of the wound. He heard himself emitting brief, quiet sobs, as much out of frustration as pain, but he did his best to stifle them. Any chance of selling the endpoint to Ada and Dahlia would vanish in an instant if they had to witness what the process entailed.

  With both seals broken, he lay still for a while, breathing slowly, trying to marshal his strength. But then he felt Theo squirming, shifting inside the tunnel. There was no room for him to thrash about, but waves of contraction were moving along his skin, tugging at Seth’s flesh one way then the other, pulling on a thousand tiny connections like an animal snagged in a patch of thorns patiently working itself loose.

  Seth wanted to ask if he needed help, but he couldn’t bring himself to speak, even in a whisper. When he’d started this, it had felt like a contained, self-inflicted mutilation, but now his perception of the act kept switching between amputation and expulsion—as if the thing in his head, having ceased to be a normal, welcome part of him, desperately needed to be driven out, but at the same time the idea of its loss was as horrifying as the prospect of a limb breaking free and crawling away.

  “Can you give me a push?” Theo said quietly. His words sounded as odd as if they’d come from some other Sider whose invisible host was lying so close to Seth that their heads should have touched.

  Seth brought his right hand to the side of his head and gently pressed all three axial fingers against Theo’s pinger. Immediately, it started to yield—and he froze, as shocked and revolted as if he’d prodded his own side and the flesh had begun to give way like rotten fruit.

  “More than that,” Theo begged.

  Seth increased the pressure, and he felt Theo tensing so as not to damp the force on its way to the connective tissue. For a moment there was no more play; it was almost as if they were back to normal, if not for the fact that his right hand was farther to the left than had ever been possible when he’d held it beside his skull before. Then the taut membrane began retreating from his touch and he forced himself to follow it down, until his fingers could reach no farther, their target slipped away and they were hanging in the air.

  He heard something drop onto the blanket beside his left shoulder. The upper part of Theo’s body would still be in the tunnel, but once he emerged fully he’d need something else keeping him upright. Seth hurriedly rearranged the blanket, gathering it up to form a supportive pit, but that felt precarious so he reached beneath it and scooped soil into place under the ridges. Then he raised his head and let Theo slide out completely.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I think so.” Theo’s voice sounded stranger than ever.

  Seth moved away from him slowly, taking care not to disturb the mound that was supporting him. When he’d gone far enough to shift Theo out of his dark cone, he still found it hard not to avert his eyes, afraid that the result of their rash experiment might resemble an organ ripped from his body, with no chance of surviving on its own.

  But the pale gray cylinder standing on the blanket was only bleeding in a couple of places, and though Seth could see tears in Theo’s skin, they did not look like serious wounds. The muscular wall of his body appeared perfectly capable of maintaining its posture without the usual jacket of bone; Theo might never have needed to move more than a finger’s width in his entire life, but pumping out sound waves every waking moment clearly required more strength and rigidity than Seth had appreciated.

  “Have you got . . . two mouths?” The small apertures, each bearing four tiny teeth, were widely separated, but Seth couldn’t discern any difference between them.

  “No. One’s for waste.”

  Seth pondered this revelation. “Are you saying that you’ve spent your whole life pissing into my blood?”

  “Where did you expect it to go?”

  “I’m not letting you back.”

  “It might not end up in your bloodstream,” Theo decided. “There might be a different vessel that transports nothing but urine. As you keep reminding me, I’m not a doctor. I just know that I have to latch on in two places.”

  “What’s going on?” Ada demanded.

  Seth turned toward her; she’d barely raised her voice, but he could see the shock on her face. “Don’t panic,” he said. “We’re just trying out some different living arrangements.”

  “But how’s he going to eat?” Dahlia asked, more fascinated than concerned.

  “Toss me some fruit,” Seth instructed Ada. He took a small bite and chewed it for a while, then spat it out onto a finger and approached Theo. “I’m going to try feeding you; just don’t stick those teeth into me.”

  “All right.”

  Seth hesitated. “Which one’s your mouth?”

  “The left one.”

  He dabbed some of the mush directly into the tiny hole. Theo did something and the food was drawn in deeper. Seth had imagined his blood spurting freely into his Sider’s mouth under pressure, as it would from a wound, but maybe it wasn’t like that at all; maybe his body measured out and partitioned its offerings, giving Theo access to a small reservoir to draw on, rather than a continuous stream. “I’m really starting to wish I’d studied anatomy.”

  “What does it taste like?” Dahlia wondered.

  “Strange,” Theo admitted. “But not terrible. Can I have some more?”

  Seth complied. “Tell me if you feel in danger of toppling.”

  “You’ll be the first to know.”

  “What’s wrong with you idiots?” Ada was moving from incredulity to anger. Seth couldn’t blame her; no one liked being ambushed.

  “We’re just gathering information,” Theo replied innocently. “How could anyone not want to know what it’s like for a Walker and Sider to live apart?”

  “Everyone already knows that they’d live badly.”

  “There are degrees of b
ad,” Theo retorted. “I’m sure you can think of some worse arrangements, can’t you?”

  Ada fell silent. Dahlia said, “I’m worried about Theo falling. Can I ask Iqbal if he could bring something, or make something . . .?”

  Theo said, “A surrogate skull, with a stable base?”

  “Yes.”

  “So long as there are gaps for my mouth and urethra, that would be perfect.”

  iqbal kept coming back to make more measurements of Theo, and to converse at length with Dahlia. Half a dozen other Southites gathered around the enclosure to gawk at the strange new development.

  Seth was tired, and all the noise from the spectators was wearying. “It’s like arriving all over again,” he complained. “They did know all along that there were four of us, didn’t they?”

  “Yes,” Dahlia confirmed. “But they didn’t know that we could live this way.”

  Ada said bluntly, “We can’t. I’ll give him three days before he starts to get sick.” Seth wasn’t sure why she remained so hostile. She must have guessed what Theo was hoping for, but it was hard to see why she found the plan so objectionable. Given a choice between living side-blind back home, or confined to lying on a cart while she and Dahlia went into battle with the Southites, the first option sounded more like a reprieve than a maiming.

  After half a day of to-ing and fro-ing, Iqbal finally brought his construction. It had a broad, square frame as its base, and three smaller squares that acted like collars for Theo’s body, connected to the base by short, inclined beams. Iqbal held it above Theo so he could ping it and decide if he was happy to make it his new home; Theo gave his approval, with Dahlia translating.

  Seth helped Iqbal slip the thing into place; Iqbal had more than enough hands for the job, but Seth would not have forgiven himself if anything had gone wrong.

  “Is it comfortable?” he asked Theo.

  “Comfortable enough. And at least I can’t fall over in my sleep now.”