Clarkesworld: Year Six

by Aliette de Bodard

  I can’t help thinking the absence of children has something to do with this withering of the spirit—this pale new way of seeing the world. Children knew better. You always say yes. If you don’t, there’s no adventure, and you grow old in your ignorance, bitter, bereft of magic. You say yes to what comes, because you belong to the future, whatever it is, and you’re sure as hell not going to be left behind in the past. Do you hear the fairies sing? You always get up and open the door. You always answer. You always let them in.

  The Fair Folk are gone. I’m in the ocean with Honey. I bounce her on my knee. She’s so light in the water: soap bubble, floating seed. She clings to my neck and squeals. I think she’ll remember this, this morning at the beach, and the memory will be almost exactly like my own memory of childhood. The water, the sun. Even the cooler, the crumpled maps in the car. So many things now are the way they were when I was small. Simpler, in lots of ways. The things that have disappeared—air travel, wireless communication—seem dreamlike, ludicrous, almost not worth thinking about.

  I toss Honey up in the air and catch her, getting a mouthful of saltwater in the process. I shoot the water onto her shoulder. “Mama!” she yells. She bends her head to the water and burbles, trying to copy me, but I lift her up again. I don’t want her to choke.

  “My Bear, my Bear,” I murmur against the damp, wet side of her head. “My Honey Bear.”

  Dave is waving us in. He’s pointing at his watch.

  I don’t know if it’s the excitement, or maybe something about the salt water, but as soon as I get Honey up on the beach, she voids.

  “Christ,” says Dave. “Oh, Christ.”

  He pulls me away from her. In seconds he’s kneeling on our towels, whipping the gloves and aprons out of the bag. He gets his on fast; I fumble with mine. He rips open a packet of wipes with his teeth, tosses it to me, and pulls out a can of spray.

  “I thought you said it wasn’t time yet,” he says.

  “I thought it wasn’t. It’s really early.”

  Honey stands naked on the sand, slick pouring down her legs. Already she looks hesitant, confused. “Mama?”

  “It’s okay, Hon. Just let it come. Do you want to lie down?”

  “Yes,” she says, and crumples.

  “Fuck,” says Dave. “It’s going to hit the water. I have to go make a call. Take this.”

  He hands me the spray, yanks his loafers on and dashes up the beach. There’s a phone in the parking lot, he can call the Service. He’s headed for the fence, not the gate, but it doesn’t stop him, he seizes the bar and vaults over.

  The slick is still coming. So much, it’s incredible, as if she’s losing her whole body. It astounds me, it frightens me every time. Her eyes are still open, but dazed. Her fine hair is starting to dry in the sun. The slick pours, undulant, catching the light, like molten plastic.

  I touch her face with a gloved hand. “Honey Bear.”

  “Mm,” she grunts.

  “You’re doing a good job, Hon. Just relax, okay? Mama’s here.”

  Dave was right, it’s going to reach the water. I scramble down to the waves and spray the sand and even the water in the path of the slick. Probably won’t do anything, probably stupid. I run back to Honey just as Dave comes pelting back from the parking lot.

  “On their way,” he gasps. “Shit! It’s almost in the water!”

  “Mama,” says Honey.

  “I know. I tried to spray.”

  “You sprayed? That’s not going to do anything!”

  I’m kneeling beside her. “Yes, Honey.”

  “Help me!” yells Dave. He runs down past the slick and starts digging wildly, hurling gobs of wet sand.

  Honey curls her hand around my finger.

  “Karen! Get down here! We can dig a trench, we can keep it from hitting the water!”

  “This is scary,” Honey whispers.

  “I know. I know, Hon. I’m sorry. But you don’t need to be scared. It’s just like when we’re at home, okay?”

  But it’s not, it’s not like when we’re at home. At home, I usually know when it’s going to happen. I’ve got a chart. I set up buckets, a plastic sheet. I notify the Service of the approximate date. They come right away. We keep the lights down, and I play Honey’s favorite CD.

  This isn’t like that at all. Harsh sunlight, Dave screaming behind us. Then the Service. They’re angry: one of them says, “You ought to be fucking fined.” They spray Honey, right on her skin. She squeezes my finger. I don’t know what to do, except sing to her, a song from her CD.

  A sailor went to sea-sea-sea

  To see what he could see-see-see

  But all that he could see-see-see

  Was the bottom of the deep blue sea-sea-sea.

  At last, it stops. The Service workers clean Honey up and wrap her in sterile sheets. They take our gloves and aprons away to be cleaned at the local Center. Dave and I wipe ourselves down and bag the dirty wipes for disposal. We’re both shaking. He says: “We are not doing this again.”

  “It was an accident,” I tell him. “It’s just life.”

  He turns to face me. “This is not life, Karen,” he snarls. “This is not life.“

  “Yes. It is.”

  I think he sees, then. I think he sees that even though he’s the practical one, the realist, I’m the strong one.

  I carry Honey up to the car. Dave takes the rest of the stuff. He makes two trips. He gives me an energy bar and then my medication. After that, there’s the injection, painkillers and nutrients, because Honey’s voided, and she’ll be hungry. She’ll need more than a quick drink.

  He slips the needle out of my arm. He’s fast, and gentle, even like this, kneeling in the car in a beach parking lot. He presses the cotton down firmly, puts on a strip of medical tape. He looks up and meets my eyes. His are full of tears.

  “Jesus, Karen,” he says.

  Just like that, in that moment, he’s back. He covers his mouth with his fist, holding in laughter. “Did you hear the Service guy?”

  “You mean ‘You ought to be fucking fined’?”

  He bends over, wheezing and crowing. “Christ! I really thought the slick was going in the water.”

  “But it didn’t go in the water?”

  “No.”

  He sits up, wipes his eyes on the back of his hand, then reaches out to smooth my hair away from my face.

  “No. It didn’t go in. It was fine. Not that it matters, with that giant dump floating in the Pacific.”

  He reads my face, and raises his hands, palms out. “Okay, okay. No Mr. Simko.”

  He backs out, shuts the door gently, and gets in the driver’s seat. The white clown on the boardwalk watches our car pull out of the lot. We’re almost at the hotel when Honey wakes up.

  “Mama?” she mumbles. “I’m hungry.”

  “Okay, sweetie.”

  I untie the top piece of my suit and pull it down. “Dave? I’m going to feed her in the car.”

  “Okay. I’ll park in the shade. I’ll bring you something to eat from inside.”

  “Thanks.”

  Honey’s wriggling on my lap, fighting the sheets. “Mama, I’m hungry.“

  “Hush. Hush. Here.”

  She nuzzles at me, quick and greedy, and latches on. Not at the nipple, but in the soft area under the arm. She grips me lightly with her teeth, and then there’s the almost electric jolt as her longer, hollow teeth come down and sink in.

  “There,” I whisper. “There.”

  Dave gets out and shuts the door. We’re alone in the car.

  A breeze stirs the leaves outside. Their reflections move in the windows.

  I don’t know what the future is going to bring. I don’t think about it much. It does seem like there won’t be a particularly lengthy future, for us. Not with so few human children being born, and the Fair Folk eating all the animals, and so many plant species dying out from the slick. And once we’re gone, what will the Fair Folk do? They don’t seem able
to raise their own children. It’s why they came here in the first place. I don’t know if they feel sorry for us, but I know they want us to live as long as possible: they’re not pure predators, as some people claim. The abductions of the early days, the bodies discovered in caves—that’s all over. The terror, too. That was just to show us what they could do. Now they only kill us as punishment, or after they’ve voided, when they’re crazy with hunger. They rarely hurt anyone in the company of a winged child.

  Still, even with all their precautions, we won’t last forever. I remember the artist in the park, when I took Honey there one day. All of his paintings were white. He said that was the future, a white planet, nothing but slick, and Honey said it looked like fairyland.

  Her breathing has slowed. Mine, too. It’s partly the meds, and partly some chemical that comes down through the teeth. It makes you drowsy.

  Here’s what I know about the future. Honey Bear will grow bigger. Her wings will expand. One day she’ll take to the sky, and go live with her own kind. Maybe she’ll forget human language, the way the Simko’s Mandy has, but she’ll still bring us presents. She’ll still be our piece of the future.

  And maybe she won’t forget. She might remember. She might remember this day at the beach.

  She’s still awake. Her eyes glisten, heavy with bliss. Large, slightly protuberant eyes, perfectly black in the centers, and scarlet, like the sunrise, at the edges.

  The Smell of Orange Groves

  Lavie Tidhar

  On the roof the solar panels were folded in on themselves, still asleep, yet uneasily stirring, as though they could sense the imminent coming of the sun. Boris stood on the edge of the roof. The roof was flat and the building’s residents, his father’s neighbors, had, over the years, planted and expanded an assortment of plants, in pots of clay and aluminum and wood, across the roof, turning it into a high-rise tropical garden.

  It was quiet up there and, for the moment, still cool. He loved the smell of late-blooming jasmine, it crept along the walls of the building, climbing tenaciously high, spreading out all over the old neighborhood that surrounded Central Station. He took a deep breath of night air and released it slowly, haltingly, watching the lights of the space port: it rose out of the sandy ground of Tel Aviv, the shape of an hourglass, and the slow moving sub-orbital flights took off and landed, like moving stars, tracing jeweled flight paths in the skies.

  He loved the smell of this place, this city. The smell of the sea to the west, that wild scent of salt and open water, seaweed and tar, of suntan lotion and people. He loved to watch the solar surfers in the early morning, with spread transparent wings gliding on the winds above the Mediterranean. Loved the smell of cold conditioned air leaking out of windows, of basil when you rubbed it between your fingers, loved the smell of shawarma rising from street level with its heady mix of spices, turmeric and cumin dominating, loved the smell of vanished orange groves from far beyond the urban blocks of Tel Aviv or Jaffa.

  Once it had all been orange groves. He stared out at the old neighborhood, the peeling paint, box-like apartment blocks in old-style Soviet architecture crowded in with magnificent early twentieth-century Bauhaus constructions, buildings made to look like ships, with long curving graceful balconies, small round windows, flat roofs like decks, like the one he stood on—

  Mixed amongst the old buildings were newer constructions, Martian-style co-op buildings with drop-chutes for lifts, and small rooms divided and sub-divided inside, many without any windows—

  Laundry hanging as it had for hundreds of years, off wash lines and windows, faded blouses and shorts blowing in the wind, gently. Balls of lights floated in the streets down below, dimming now, and Boris realised the night was receding, saw a blush of pink and red on the edge of the horizon and knew the sun was coming.

  He had spent the night keeping vigil with his father. Vlad Chong, son of Weiwei Zhong (Zhong Weiwei in the Chinese manner of putting the family name first) and of Yulia Chong, née Rabinovich. In the tradition of the family, Boris, too, was given a Russian name. In another of the family’s traditions, he was also given a second, Jewish name. He smiled wryly, thinking about it. Boris Aaron Chong, the heritage and weight of three shared and ancient histories pressing down heavily on his slim, no longer young shoulders.

  It had not been an easy night.

  Once it had all been orange groves . . . he took a deep breath, that smell of old asphalt and lingering combustion-engine exhaust fumes, gone now like the oranges yet still, somehow, lingering, a memory-scent.

  He’d tried to leave it behind. The family’s memory, what he sometimes, privately, called the Curse of the Family Chong, or Weiwei’s Folly.

  He could still remember it. Of course he could. A day so long ago, that Boris Aaron Chong himself was not yet an idea, an I-loop that hadn’t yet been formed . . .

  It was in Jaffa, in the Old City on top of the hill, above the harbor. The home of the Others.

  Zhong Weiwei cycled up the hill, sweating in the heat. He mistrusted these narrow winding streets, both of the Old City itself and of Ajami, the neighborhood that had at last reclaimed its heritage. Weiwei understood this place’s conflicts very well. There were Arabs and Jews and they wanted the same land and so they fought. Weiwei understood land, and how you were willing to die for it.

  But he also knew the concept of land had changed. That land was a concept less of a physicality now, and more of the mind. Recently, he had invested some of his money in an entire planetary system in the Guilds of Ashkelon games-universe. Soon he would have children—Yulia was in her third trimester already—and then grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and so on down the generations, and they would remember Weiwei, their progenitor. They would thank him for what he’d done, for the real estate both real and virtual, and for what he was hoping to achieve today.

  He, Zhong Weiwei, would begin a dynasty, here in this divided land. For he had understood the most basic of aspects, he alone saw the relevance of that foreign enclave that was Central Station. Jews to the north (and his children, too, would be Jewish, which was a strange and unsettling thought), Arabs to the south, now they have returned, reclaimed Ajami and Menashiya, and were building New Jaffa, a city towering into the sky in steel and stone and glass. Divided cities, like Akko, and Haifa, in the north, and the new cities sprouting in the desert, in the Negev and the Arava.

  Arab or Jew, they needed their immigrants, their foreign workers, their Thai and Filipino and Chinese, Somali and Nigerian. And they needed their buffer, that in-between zone that was Central Station, old South Tel Aviv, a poor place, a vibrant place—most of all, a liminal place.

  And he would make it his home. His, and his children’s, and his children’s children. The Jews and the Arabs understood family, at least. In that they were like the Chinese—so different to the Anglos, with their nuclear families, strained relations, all living separately, alone . . . This, Weiwei swore, would not happen to his children.

  At the top of the hill he stopped, and wiped his brow from the sweat with the cloth handkerchief he kept for that purpose. Cars went past him, and the sound of construction was everywhere. He himself worked on one of the buildings they were erecting here, a diasporic construction crew, small Vietnamese and tall Nigerians and pale solid Transylvanians, communicating by hand signals and Asteroid pidgin (though that had not yet been in widespread use at that time) and automatic translators through their nodes. Weiwei himself worked the exoskeleton suits, climbing up the tower blocks with spider-like grips, watching the city far down below and looking out to sea, and distant ships . . .

  But today was his day off. He had saved money—some to send, every month, to his family back in Chengdu, some for his soon to be growing family here. And the rest for this, for the favor to be asked of the Others.

  Folding the handkerchief neatly away, he pushed the bike along the road and into the maze of alleyways that was the Old City of Jaffa. The remains of an ancient Egyptian fort could still
be seen there, the gate had been re-fashioned a century before, and the hanging orange tree still hung by chains, planted within a heavy, egg-shaped stone basket, in the shade of the walls. Weiwei didn’t stop, but kept going until he reached, at last, the place of the Oracle.

  Boris looked at the rising sun. He felt tired, drained. He kept his father company throughout the night. His father, Vlad, hardly slept any more. He sat for hours in his armchair, a thing worn and full of holes, dragged one day, years ago (the memory crystal-clear in Boris’ mind), with great effort and pride from Jaffa’s flea market. Vlad’s hands moved through the air, moving and rearranging invisible objects. He would not give Boris access into his visual feed. He barely communicated, any more. Boris suspected the objects were memories, that Vlad was trying to somehow fit them back together again. But he couldn’t tell for sure.

  Like Weiwei, Vlad had been a construction worker. He had been one of the people who had built Central Station, climbing up the unfinished gigantic structure, this space port that was now an entity unto itself, a miniature mall-nation to which neither Tel Aviv nor Jaffa could lay complete claim.

  But that had been long ago. Humans lived longer now, but the mind grew old just the same, and Vlad’s mind was older than his body. Boris, on the roof, went to the corner by the door. It was shaded by a miniature palm tree, and now the solar panels, too, were opening out, extending delicate wings, the better to catch the rising sun and provide shade and shelter to the plants.

  Long ago, the resident association had installed a communal table and a samovar there, and each week a different flat took turns to supply the tea and the coffee and the sugar. Boris gently plucked leaves off the potted mint plant nearby, and made himself a cup of tea. The sound of boiling water pouring into the mug was soothing, and the smell of the mint spread in the air, fresh and clean, waking him up. He waited as the mint brewed; took the mug with him back to the edge of the roof. Looking down, Central Station—never truly asleep—was noisily waking up.