Near + Far

by Cat Rambo

  She would not succumb.

  Love, love careless love, the wires complained. It was unseasonably cold. Two monkeys huddled together for warmth in a metal Y only a few feet down from her. Pathetic.

  She would not love again.

  Too many memories were in the way.

  It had happened the second spring that she had been working for the Bureau. She had traveled a lot the first year, taking pictures and conducting interviews of tourists in various areas to find out what had brought them there. She had written a private list: Five Things Tourists Dislike about Porcelain.

  #1: The standoffish nature of its people.

  #2: The unabashed attitude of greed towards tourist money.

  #3: The slowness of the balloon transit center.

  #4: The number of political uprisings.

  #5: The number of native species prone to throwing shit at tourists.

  The man had been trying to clean monkey shit off himself near the sound garden. She'd intervened, led him to a public sluice.

  "No wonder all your people seem so clean," he'd said, washing himself off in the stream of heated water.

  "Down here," she said. She didn't know why she said it. It was forbidden to speak to tourists with anything other than pleasantries. She'd had to go through weeks of training to do it.

  "Other areas don't have these?" he said.

  "Other areas don't have running water," she said. "Why waste technology on lesser clay?"

  A monkey screamed behind him and he flinched. His eyes checked the badge on her chest. "You can deal with tourists, can't you? Not like most of these, forbidden to talk to us. Come and have lunch with me."

  So few restaurants catered to both kinds, but she took him to a place near the Bureau, disks of aetheric energy which she slotted into her mouth, a salad for him, odd grainy lumps scattered through it.

  Humans. The richest of all the multi-verse dwellers, at least many of their branches were. Was he from one? She rather thought so, given the cut of his clothing, the insouciant ease with which he leaned back to survey her and the restaurant. His was not a species accustomed to scraping or scrabbling.

  He said, "I've never understood why more people don't come here. A world peopled by china figurines."

  There were more interesting worlds in the multi-verse, she knew. Paper dolls, and talking purple griffons. Intelligent rainbows and everyone's favorite, the Chocolate Universe. She shrugged.

  "I want you for my tour guide," he said, staring at her. "Can we do that?"

  It was unorthodox. But he had unexpected pull. Blikik had been forced to allow it, although he heaped her with instructions and imprecations. Porcelain must preserve its public face for tourism, he had said. No talk of politics, no talk of clays or those who did not live in the cities.

  She nodded until she thought her neck would give way from the motion.

  Places to take tourists on Planet Porcelain:

  #1: A birthing factory, where the citizenry are mass produced. The list is short; tourists are only taken to the upper class factories, where citizens are made of the highest quality porcelain, rather than one of the more sordid working class manufactories.

  #2 The bridges of Etekeli, which run from building to building in a city more vertical than horizontal. There is a daring glee to the citizenry here; the ground is littered with the remains of those who came to this place, which has a suicide rate twenty times that of elsewhere on the planet.

  #3 The Dedicatorium.

  The first sight of the Dedicatorium awed him. She understood how it must look: from afar a wall of thorny white. Then as one approached, it resolved itself into a pattern made of feet and hands, arms and legs.

  "People leave these here?" he half-whispered, his voice roughened by the silence.

  "They do it for several reasons," she told him. "Some in gratitude for some answered prayer. Others to leave a piece of themselves behind."

  As they watched, a woman approached. She carried a bundle in her only hand. When she got close to the wall, she fumbled away the coverings to reveal the other hand. She searched along the wall until she found a place to fold it into a niche. It curled there, its fingers clustered as though to form a hollow where a secret might be whispered.

  His face was flushed, but she could not read the emotion. "Your people can detach their own limbs?"

  "It is easier to get someone else to do it," she said. "It is not without pain. The joints must be detached, and it usually breaks them to do so."

  "I have seen no amputees on your streets," he said. His eyes searched the wall, taking in the delicate point of a toe, the rugged line of a calf's stilled muscles.

  "It is an injury that often leads to cracking," she said. "Few survive unless they take great care of the point where the limb was severed."

  "It's barbaric," he said, but she heard only love and appreciation in his voice.

  "You spend too much time with him," Blikik complained.

  She let his complaints wash over her like water, eroding irritation. Through his eyes, she was learning to craft lists tailored to humans, their petty desires for restrooms and food that tasted like the food they had at home. And their greed, which must be fed with lists of the cheapest markets, the most inexpensive hostelries, free performances.

  Tourism had increased a very small percentage, but it was due to her efforts. She could not spend enough time with him. He was too full of valuable information, conversation, insight.

  He was such good company, so interesting to listen to, so fascinating in his different viewpoint. She wrote lists specifically for him, five restaurants that served his favorite condiment, five places to view a sunset shaded with indigo and longing.

  Five places to be alone with your native guide.

  Ways to fall in love on Planet Porcelain:

  #1: Slowly, so slowly. At first just a hint of delight at his face when he heard the chimmeree singing.

  #2: Like a revelation, a book opening as he told stories of his childhood, life under a different sun, where different songs held sway. He never talked of taking her there, but she was content. This was his story now, its happy ending on Planet Porcelain.

  #3: Knowing that it was wrong, unheard of. And knowing that its forbidden nature gave it extra savor, gave it the allure of something that shouldn't be, overlying the touch of the exotic that it held for them both.

  #4: In snatches and glances, moments seized outside the monitors. In a corridor, his fingers touched hers, warm against cool, and she felt a liquid warmth pervading her brain until she could barely think. Apart from him, she dreamed of him, and totted up list after list of the things she loved: the hairs on the back of his wrists, the way his teeth fit into the gum, the shape of his ankle, the burr his voice took on when tired or irritated, the flush that mounted to his cheek when he felt aroused.

  #5: Verbally. Word after word, opening secrets. He asked her about coupling and she told him how it was, how the urge drove you together, touch and caress until the moment where you froze and fused, knowing yourself a single part of a larger thing. And how, afterwards, that feeling faded, until you could see the body that had been part of yours and think it something entirely different.

  "Can we go to bed together, you think?" he asked her. At first she didn't understand what he meant. There was no reason they could not share a bed. But his words, the heat in his face, made her realize her mistake.

  Could they? Lovemaking was mental as much as physical, she had always been told. As long as they took care, could they not touch each other to arousal and beyond?

  She could find nothing about such moments in her research. Unthinkable that they could have invented a perversion new to the multi-verse. And yet perhaps they had.

  He circled the topic, over and over. She could feel her resistance wearing away.

  Wearing away.

  It was the only flaw in their affair, his curiosity about her body. Everything else was so perfect.

  Asked again. And ag
ain.

  At some point she realized she would give in eventually. Her determination crumbled beneath that assault.

  In his hotel room, she removed her clothes, let him stroke her.

  "How would we do this, if we were the same?" he demanded.

  "As we become aroused, our flesh softens," she said. "Can you feel how mine has changed?"

  He touched it cautiously, as though afraid he might leave finger marks. "It's closer to my own now," he said.

  "We soften and we come together, and merge," she said. "It is a very intimate and secret thing."

  "And you harden again, together." His breath quickened as his fingers dragged across her skin.

  "When the moment of the most pleasure comes and peaks, we harden," she said. "We become a single thing, melding where our skin touches."

  "And you stay that way for hours?"

  "Till the state gives way, and we can separate," she said. "Hours, yes."

  "And you think I can bring you to the point where you come like that?" he asked.

  Everyone made their own experiments in self-delight as a child. It was not the same, but it was similar, and hard to hide, although the motionless state was shorter. He could do that for her, at least.

  She reached for him.

  He entered her arms without hesitation.

  He played with her as he would have a human woman, licking, spreading, opening. He did not penetrate her—they had both agreed it was too dangerous.

  This was the only time most people could touch without fear of chipping, of breaking each other. Was that the draw he'd had for her all along, that she could touch him like that and know there was no danger of breaking him?

  Her breath filled her, energy rushed along her like swallows fluttering in the wind, trying to break free of its grasp. Pleasure drowned her and she succumbed, feeling her flesh shudder and stiffen, frozen in the moment.

  Where a Porcelain lover would have stayed with her, he drew away. She was aware of him circling her, his fingers straying over and over her surface.

  Touching.

  Testing.

  He began with a toe. Pain surged through her as he broke it off. If she had been able to move, she would have screamed. As it was, all she could do was let it shine in her eyes. What sort of mistake was this? An accident, surely.

  But then he began to detach the joints in her knee. He intended to take her foot. Anger and pain and agony surged through her and she fell unconscious, carrying with her the vision of him sitting on the side of the bed, examining the foot in his lap with an expression she'd never seen before on his face.

  Tikka had never seen him again. She had never been able to guess if the moment had been there in his head all along or if the desire had seized him somewhere along the way, perhaps when she showed him the Dedicatorium.

  In time, she did learn that the perversion was not new. In some channels, the severed limbs sold very well, particularly those unmarred in any other way.

  She padded the stump with soft plastics, a cap that fit over the protrusion, the jagged bits of joint that had not fallen away. She limped, but not much, grown accustomed to the way she moved.

  She paused to watch the sky. Clusters of limentia, like jellyfish floating on the wind, translucent tendrils tinting the light. They filled the air with their mating dance, drifted around her till she stood in the center of a candy-colored cloud. Love surrounded her in a web of tendrils, unthinking action and reaction that drove life, all life, even hers.

  She made a mental note of their presence, of the way they shone in the sunlight, of the acrid smell of their lovemaking, filing details away with clinical precision.

  They were only another sign of spring on Planet Porcelain.

  Afternotes

  This is a retelling of Carson McCullers' "Good Country Folk," liberally mashed up with some thoughts derived from travel writing and a number of "Top 5" lists compiled while working for HelloSeattle.com.

  This is a piece I consider slipstream, along with "Bus Ride to Mars." I hope it makes you feel very strange.

  It is original to this collection.

  BUS RIDE TO MARS

  Day One

  After Djuna had been ushered outside by the men in dark sunglasses, she realized it was cold, even though yesterday had been balmy. Spring's uncertain chill chased her up the steps into the bus's welcome heat. Even cold, though, it was spring, and she wavered on the very last step, suitcase in front of her like a wall. Then someone pushed at her from behind and she went in.

  Wider than most, the bus took up one of the highway's double lanes. Inside two aisles ran between three banks of seats upholstered in royal blue, squares of clear plastic clamped onto each headrest. Shadows pocked the aluminum floor.

  The bus shuddered away from the curb. Azaleas bloomed in each yard, mop-heads of purple and pink and crimson and the occasional yellow.

  They left the neighborhood behind and passed through a wooded area on the town's edge. Fenced-off trees bore carvings featuring pluses and hearts and arrows and one mysterious biohazard marking. Was it warning her, confirming every misgiving about this journey? She could have stayed, somehow. Would have stayed, somehow, refused to remove herself from her house despite the polite gentle insistence of the spirits in black. Could she touch the cord, bring the bus to a stop, get off, walk back home? She flexed her hand, looking up, but made no move to rise.

  When in doubt, eat. She'd packed a hamper. Two sandwiches, bacon and crunchy peanut butter, four more peanut butter on whole wheat, a cooler with four strawberry yogurts and a gamepiece's worth of cheesecake among the ice packs, baby carrots, and a stalk of celery in a baggie. A dozen juice boxes. Tofu cubes marinated in sesame oil and soy sauce, and squishy avocado wrapped up in nori. That was lunch for today, in a few hours.

  She had two carrots now, biting them off with angry snaps. She'd set off and now here she went, despite the fact that she'd rather stay home, to Mars, which was also the Afterlife, somehow.

  The air smelled like old French fries and stale donuts. An unceasing fan blew down on Djuna, making her extract a sweater from her carry-on. She had never expected the Afterlife to have a temperature.

  At the front the robot driver, tireless, drove without ceasing on its own behalf, although it would park every six to twelve hours for the benefit of its passengers. It wore an absurd blue plastic hat and no other illusion of clothes.

  The windows with which the outermost seats were privileged featured mask-sized ovals with plastic shutters. Two-thirds of the way back in the bus, Djuna slid the shutter closed, leaving a slit of brilliance.

  From her vantage point, she could see most of the bus and her fellow travelers. She'd treated it like any other journey. She'd hoisted her rollaway in the overhead shelf, dumped her shoulder bag and coat on the middle seat to discourage seat seekers, and shoved her paperback in the middle seat pocket. The book's cover showed a dolphin curved around a woman, titled Forbidden Waters: A Real Life Odyssey into Inter-racial Passion, blue and silver foil waves shimmering around the couple.

  She hooked the Traveler's Marvelous Window Garden's suction cups below the window's lip. A silly souvenir bought at the station. She did not read the 8 point font descriptions on the seed packets, simply shook vermiculite particles like mica grit from their puffs of plastic into the windowbox. She planted and watered, and read the first two pages of her book and ate another carrot. She was in it for the long haul, the five day trip to Paradise, Mars.

  Most of the other travelers were nondescript. A few stood out, particularly a young woman all in pink and gold, dark hair, a spiral unicorn horn—Djuna couldn't guess whether it was cosmeticked there or some mark of Faerie. Her eyes were saltwater deep, blue as storms. She sat near the front, just behind the driver.

  An elderly man in a slouchy cap stared at her briefly, like an arborist examining a tree, assessing her height and blossom schedule and composition, before going to the back of the bus and sitting down with a sulfur-scented hu
ff.

  A trio of identical blonde ... girls? Young women? Hovering on the edge of adulthood, maybe a little past. They were late getting on. They wavered near her row, clearly thinking three of us, one of you, but she buried her nose in her book and refused to look up. One cleared her throat, but the others tugged her over to a middle row, towards the back.

  Triumphant, Djuna ate another carrot, more slowly this time. She looked out the window. Thunder Lanes Bowling. Lightning Shoes. Kang Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine. Fungi Fun-Go. Mi-go Me-go. Shoggoths-R-Us. Strip malls and lanes of traffic. Spirit houses beside the road, edged with gold and crimson paint. She thought of her little house, of the intricate banisters, the upstairs and downstairs she had furnished with her thoughts, her dreams, her china cupboards.

  The red-haired kid a few seats up tried to explain his hand-held game to his mother again. "You can be animal, vegetable or mineral," he said.

  "Yeah, yeah."

  "I control my race's starting philosophy."

  "Yeah, yeah."

  "I'm warlike and spiritual."

  She took her attention from the phone. "How can you be warlike and spiritual? Isn't that a contradiction?"

  "Aztecs were warlike and spiritual. I was reading a book about them the other day. They had these sacred warriors, Jaguar warriors."

  She snorted but said into the phone, "Will the house be ready? By ready, I mean completely ready. I want linens on the beds and groceries in the cupboards." Then with a shift of tone. "Yes, we'll be fine, the seats are big and he can sleep in them. Yes, I have all of his medication. Bye." She flipped the phone closed and stared at the concavities on the floor, pressing her hands together as though praying.

  "Mom? Mom!"

  "Jaguar warriors," she said wearily. "Listen, do you want to hear a story about Jaguar warriors?"

  "Yeah," he said warily, as though unsure what he was agreeing to.

  "Once upon a time, there was a king named Gil."

  "Was he a Jaguar warrior?"

  "He was a warrior king, fierce as a Jaguar. He ruled his kingdom with a fair and gentle hand, but every time he went out to speak to his people, the people he'd agreed to govern, to oversee, to be the head to, he'd get this sad look on his face. They'd ask him what was wrong, and he'd look away at the horizon with a sad and noble face and shake his head. This was infuriating."