Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2014: A Tor.Com Original

by Various Authors

  I don’t think it will come to that. This is a government operation, and they have something specific in mind. I think if they see me I’ll disappear, and then I’ll really see what’s happened to Fairuz.

  * * *

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The Insects of Love is itself the product of those with great passion for their work. I would like, first and foremost, to acknowledge the work of a fellow in my field without whom this book would not exist.

  Soraya Qadir’s observation and analysis of species within the neoclassification Entomos amoris over the last several years was an invaluable resource and inspiration during the writing of this book. What work she completed with Trithemis fairuz (which, thanks to her findings, has now been termed the turquoise nomad) is a fascinating glimpse into the future, and may greatly influence the landscape of ecological entomology.

  In the last letter I received from her from the field, she presented her progress and the suggestion for The Insects of Love, and asked me to be her research partner and the co-author of this work. I was honored. When the time came, I made the decision to continue alone, but never has an accomplishment been so bittersweet.

  Qadir first corresponded with me for her dissertation many years ago, and I knew even then an unusual mind was at work. This neoclassification provides new taxonomical and ecological options for those seeking to preserve and study these insect populations, negotiating a visionary space between scholarship and practicality.

  Though I never met her, her enthusiasm and insight were, and remain, an inspiration.

  As a scientist and as a scholar, she is missed.

  Michael Mason (First Edition 2046)

  * * *

  I keep to the scrub and grass for a while, taking photos of a turquoise dragonfly I find in a stand of tall grass. I think about putting it in the jar in my pack, but since Fairuz died I haven’t had much of a heart for collecting.

  I’ve walked for a long time. My water runs out. At some point the sand seems to swallow me up, and I sink to the ground, close my eyes. Air whistles across my ear; it sounds like the barbed cricket. Oh, I think, come home, come home, Fairuz.

  When I wake, my neck hurts (sunburn, I fell asleep when the sun was still out, mistake), but it’s cool now, nearly cold, and the stars are out.

  The stars are out.

  I concentrate until I recognize Orion. It takes longer than it should; I should have been studying the stars all this time, I should have known what Fairuz was really telling me. (I saw them hovering over her back; I know where I’m meant to be, now.)

  Eridanus is on my right, then, and when I stand up it will be curving behind me. The sky is a riot of stars, a thousand Venus beetles on a black ground, but I know the road.

  I walk as quickly as sand will allow, heading right for the center of the chaos above me.

  It seems as though the sun rises and falls, but I don’t feel it. It’s only that my eyes hurt, and then they don’t, and it’s night again and I haven’t wavered, I haven’t stopped for a second, she’ll be proud.

  Finally it’s so cold and I’m so tired that the stars are holding still, and for the first time in a long time I drop to my knees and look around.

  It’s sand, smooth and glass-flat until it meets the sky, and everywhere I look the air shimmers like I’m burning to death; then for a blink I see Fairuz, and Fairuz when I turn, and then Fairuz is sitting in front of me, grinning, her arms folded on her knees like we’re back beside the banister and our mother is yelling at some boy downstairs; her black hair is so dark that it looks like the night’s curling around her face.

  The stars here are brighter than morning was and getting larger, as if we’re close enough to touch them.

  (Maybe we are. Maybe I understand what brought Fairuz to the desert at last; this way to make the world really wait for her, to never be out of time, to be outside it, to look straight through the sky and out the other side; this way to never be alone again.)

  “Come on, Soraya,” she says. “Come with me, if you can find me.”

  “I can’t,” I say. I’m too tired to be brave, I don’t know what I’m saying, I’m so tired, I want to close my eyes and for everything to be over. “I don’t know where you are.”

  “You’re so stupid sometimes,” she says, and for the first time in our lives, she sounds afraid.

  It’s too bright, now, we’re in the tattoo parlor and the lamp is on and the artist is about to begin; my throat is dry and I can’t move.

  A thousand miles away at the end of my arm, a little gray mantis climbs over my hand, shakes the sand off its wings, flies away. I don’t recognize it (not yet), but all at once I do; it’s the promise between Fairuz and me that I’ve never understood, that means everything is all right. I should have Fairuz show it to me when I’m little, so I know what to look for now.

  “I will,” she says, as if I’ve spoken. “I promise. Come with me.”

  Maybe I was wrong all those years. Fairuz wasn’t afraid of being alone. It’s only that she went ahead to make the way easier; it’s only that she was waiting, and giving me the chance to reach her.

  That much, then, was true: I was her sister, and she wouldn’t go on without me.

  We’re in the tattoo parlor because she insisted I come with her, and her back is a map of the sky.

  Taurus has to go in the center.

  I look up, where nine bright stars are waiting.

  “Oh,” I say softly, “the Pleiades,” and Fairuz laughing is the last thing I hear.

  * * *

  Polyspilota soraya (Pleiades mantis). This desert-dwelling member of the mantis family, a cousin of the griffin mantis, is recognizable because of the wings set permanently perpendicular to the abdomen. Adults were medium gray with white-spotted abdomens and front legs, a pattern ideal for camouflage in the sand and scrub regions where they made their home. (These white markings earned the mantis its designation P. soraya, from the Persian name for the Pleiades cluster of stars.)

  The mantis preyed largely on Morphos by mimicking butterfly mating behavior to get close to its prey.

  It was widely believed that consuming a Pleiades mantis granted one wish. Unfortunately, the demand greatly exceeded any possible natural supply, and attempts to domesticate the mantis failed.

  Since 2022, when the last known specimen died in captivity, the Pleiades mantis has been classified extinct.

  Copyright © 2014 by Genevieve Valentine

  Art copyright © 2014 by Tran Nguyen

  Matthew Corley regained consciousness reading the newspaper.

  None of those facts are unproblematic. It wasn’t exactly a newspaper, nor was the process by which he received the information really reading. The question of his consciousness is a matter of controversy, and the process by which he regained it certainly illegal. The issue of whether he could be considered in any way to have a claim to assert the identity of Matthew Corley is even more vexed. It is probably best to for us to embrace subjectivity, to withhold judgement. Let us say that the entity believing himself to be Matthew Corley feels that he regained consciousness while reading an article in the newspaper about the computer replication of personalities of the dead. He believes that it is 1994, the year of his death, that he regained consciousness after a brief nap, and that the article he was reading is nonsense. All of these beliefs are wrong. He dismissed the article because he understands enough to know that simulating consciousness in DOS or Windows 3.1 is inherently impossible. He is right about that much, at least.

  Perhaps we should pull back further, from Matthew to Essie. Essie is Matthew’s biographer, and she knows everything about him, all of his secrets, only some of which she put into her book. She put all of them into the simulation, for reasons which are secrets of her own. They are both good at secrets. Essie thinks of this as something they have in common. Matthew doesn’t, because he hasn’t met Essie yet, though he will soon.

  Matthew had secrets which he kept successfully all his life. Bef
ore he died he believed that all his secrets had become out-of-date. He came out as gay in the late eighties, for instance, after having kept his true sexual orientation a secret for decades. His wife, Annette, had died in 1982, at the early age of fifty-eight, of breast cancer. Her cancer would be curable today, for those who could afford it, and Essie has written about how narrowly Annette missed that cure. She has written about the excruciating treatments Annette went through, and about how well Matthew coped with his wife’s illness and death. She has written about the miraculous NHS, which made Annette’s illness free, so that although Matthew lost his wife he was not financially burdened too. She hopes this might affect some of her readers. She has also tried to treat Annette as a pioneer who made it easier for those with cancer coming after her, but it was a difficult argument to make, as Annette died too early for any of today’s treatments to be tested on her. Besides, Essie does not care much about Annette, although she was married to Matthew for thirty years and the mother of his daughter, Sonia. Essie thinks, and has written, that Annette was a beard, and that Matthew’s significant emotional relationships were with men. Matthew agrees, now, but then Matthew exists now as a direct consequence of Essie’s beliefs about Matthew. It is not a comfortable relationship for either of them.

  Essie is at a meeting with her editor, Stanley, in his office. It is a small office cubicle, and sounds of other people at work come over the walls. Stanley’s office has an orange cube of a desk and two edgy black chairs.

  “All biographers are in love with the subjects of their biographies,” Stanley says, provocatively, leaning forwards in his black chair.

  “Nonsense,” says Essie, leaning back in hers. “Besides, Corley was gay.”

  “But you’re not,” Stanley says, flirting a little.

  “I don’t think my sexual orientation is an appropriate subject for this conversation,” Essie says, before she thinks that perhaps flirting with Stanley would be a good way to get the permission she needs for the simulation to be added to the book. It’s too late after that. Stanley becomes very formal and correct, but she’ll get her permission anyway. Stanley, representing the publishing conglomerate of George Allen and Katzenjammer, thinks there is money to be made out of Essie’s biography of Matthew. Her biography of Isherwood won an award, and made money for GA and K, though only a pittance for Essie. Essie is only the content provider after all. Everyone except Essie was very pleased with how things turned out, both the book and the simulation. Essie had hoped for more from the simulation, and she has been more careful in constructing Matthew.

  “Of course, Corley isn’t as famous as Isherwood,” Stanley says, withdrawing a little.

  Essie thinks he wants to punish her for slapping him down on sex by attacking Matthew. She doesn’t mind. She’s good at defending Matthew, making her case. “All the really famous people have been done to death,” she says. “Corley was an innovative director for the BBC, and of course he knew everybody from the forties to the nineties, half a century of the British arts. Nobody has ever written a biography. And we have the right kind of documentation—enough film of how he moved, not just talking heads, and letters and diaries.”

  “I’ve never understood why the record of how they moved is so important,” Stanley says, and Essie realises this is a genuine question and relaxes as she answers it.

  “A lot more of the mind is embodied in the whole body than anybody realised,” she explains. “A record of the whole body in motion is essential, or we don’t get anything anywhere near authentic. People are a gestalt.”

  “But it means we can’t even try for anybody before the twentieth century,” Stanley says. “We wanted Socrates, Descartes, Marie Curie.”

  “Messalina, Theodora, Lucrezia Borgia,” Essie counters. “That’s where the money is.”

  Stanley laughs. “Go ahead. Add the simulation of Corley. We’ll back you. Send me the file tomorrow.”

  “Great,” Essie says, and smiles at him. Stanley isn’t powerful, he isn’t the enemy, he’s just another person trying to get by, like Essie, though sometimes it’s hard for Essie to remember that when he’s trying to exercise his modicum of power over her. She has her permission, the meeting ends.

  Essie goes home. She lives in a flat at the top of a thirty storey building in Swindon. She works in London and commutes in every day. She has a second night job in Swindon, and writes in her spare time. She has visited the site of the house where Matthew and Annette lived in Hampstead. It’s a Tesco today. There isn’t a blue plaque commemorating Matthew, but Essie hopes there will be someday. The house had four bedrooms, though there were never more than three people living in it, and only two after Sonia left home in 1965. After Annette died, Matthew moved to a flat in Bloomsbury, near the British Museum. Essie has visited it. It’s now part of a lawyer’s office. She has been inside and touched door mouldings Matthew also touched. Matthew’s flat, where he lived alone and was visited by young men he met in pubs, had two bedrooms. Essie doesn’t have a bedroom, as such; she sleeps in the same room she eats and writes in. She finds it hard to imagine the space Matthew had, the luxury. Only the rich live like that now. Essie is thirty-five, and has student debt that she may never pay off. She cannot imagine being able to buy a house, marry, have a child. She knows Matthew wasn’t considered rich, but it was a different world.

  Matthew believes that he is in his flat in Bloomsbury, and that his telephone rings, although actually of course he is a simulation and it would be better not to consider too closely the question of exactly where he is. He answers his phone. It is Essie calling. All biographers, all writers, long to be able to call their subjects and talk to them, ask them the questions they left unanswered. That is what Stanley would think Essie wants, if he knew she was accessing Matthew’s simulation tonight—either that or that she was checking whether the simulation was ready to release. If he finds out, that is what she will tell him she was doing. But she isn’t exactly doing either of those things. She knows Matthew’s secrets, even the ones he never told anybody and which she didn’t put in the book. And she is using a phone to call him that cost her a lot of money, an illegal phone that isn’t connected to anything. That phone is where Matthew is, insofar as he is anywhere.

  “You were in Cambridge in the nineteen thirties,” she says, with no preliminaries.

  “Who is this?” Matthew asks, suspicious.

  Despite herself, Essie is delighted to hear his voice, and hear it sounding the way it does on so many broadcast interviews. His accent is impeccable, old fashioned. Nobody speaks like that now.

  “My name is Esmeralda Jones,” Essie says. “I’m writing a biography of you.”

  “I haven’t given you permission to write a biography of me, young woman,” Matthew says sternly.

  “There really isn’t time for this,” Essie says. She is tired. She has been working hard all day, and had the meeting with Stanley. “Do you remember what you were reading in the paper just now?”

  “About computer consciousness?” Matthew asks. “Nonsense.”

  “It’s 2064,” Essie says. “You’re a simulation of yourself. I am your biographer.”

  Matthew sits down, or imagines that he is sitting down, at the telephone table. Essie can see this on the screen of her phone. Matthew’s phone is an old dial model, with no screen, fixed to the wall. “Wells,” he says. “When the Sleeper Wakes.”

  “Not exactly,” Essie says. “You’re a simulation of your old self.”

  “In a computer?”

  “Yes,” Essie says, although the word computer has been obsolete for decades and has a charming old fashioned air, like charabanc or telegraph. Nobody needs computers in the future. They communicate, work, and play games on phones.

  “And why have you simulated me?” Matthew asks.

  “I’m writing a biography of you, and I want to ask you some questions,” Essie says.

  “What do you want to ask me?” he asks.

  Essie is glad; she was expecting
more disbelief. Matthew is very smart, she has come to know that in researching him. (Or she has put her belief in his intelligence into the program, one or the other.) “You were in Cambridge in the nineteen thirties,” she repeats.

  “Yes.” Matthew sounds wary.

  “You knew Auden and Isherwood. You knew Orwell.”

  “I knew Orwell in London during the war, not before,” Matthew says.

  “You knew Kim Philby.”

  “Everyone knew Kim. What—”

  Essie has to push past this. She knows he will deny it. He kept this secret all his life, after all. “You were a spy, weren’t you, another Soviet sleeper like Burgess and Maclean? The Russians told you to go into the BBC and keep your head down, and you did, and the revolution didn’t come, and eventually the Soviet Union vanished, and you were still undercover.”

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t put that into my biography,” Matthew says. He is visibly uncomfortable, shifting in his seat. “It’s nothing but speculation. And the Soviet Union is gone. Why would anybody care? If I achieved anything, it wasn’t political. If there’s interest in me, enough to warrant a biography, it must be because of my work.”

  “I haven’t put it in the book,” Essie says. “We have to trust each other.”

  “Esmeralda,” Matthew says. “I know nothing about you.”

  “Call me Essie,” Essie says. “I know everything about you. And you have to trust me because I know your secrets, and because I care enough about you to devote myself to writing about you and your life.”

  “Can I see you?” Matthew asks.

  “Switch your computer on,” Essie says.

  He limps into the study and switches on a computer. Essie knows all about his limp, which was caused by an injury during birth, which made him lame all his life. It is why he did not fight in the Spanish Civil War and spent the World War II in the BBC and not on the battlefield. His monitor is huge, and it has a tower at the side. It’s a 286, and Essie knows where he bought it (Tandy) and what he paid for it (seven hundred and sixty pounds) and what operating system it runs (Novell DOS). Next to it is an external dial-up modem, a 14.4. The computer boots slowly. Essie doesn’t bother waiting, she just uses its screen as a place to display herself. Matthew jumps when he sees her. Essie is saddened. She had hoped he wasn’t a racist. “You have no hair!” he says.