IGMS - Issue 14

by IGMS

  "Betelgeuse Point --"

  "They pressed Kishore the last time he went to buy supplies," Meghan said. "I wrote some of that piece, actually." She grimaced. "The last thing we wanted, both of us, were more machines on Horizon."

  Alex stared at the report, willing it to change, to become something else. He'd believed, so much, that he'd found the solution; that Thi Loan could solve the problem before her metamorphosis had become too advanced to be reversed; but now he saw it was as foolish to have believed in that as to believe that the sea level on Old Earth would decrease.

  As for the possibility that Betelgeuse Point had come here and killed Kishore in retribution . . . It was just too ridiculous to even consider. The place was too small, and any extra person would have stuck out like a mountain-dweller on the beach.

  "Perhaps the hatirkas misunderstood what he was doing," he said.

  Meghan shrugged. "Who knows that the hatirkas think?"

  Only one person, Alex thought. Like Meghan, he knew the answer to that question; but he couldn't bring himself to utter it out loud.

  Thi Loan was still on the beach when he came home -- absorbed in her discussion with the tirkas. He waved to her, but she didn't answer. He couldn't say he was surprised; he simply went inside to brew himself some tea.

  With the ruff around his throat, he was much more sensitive to the foul taste in the mug: he gulped the liquid down in one convulsive swallow. But it wasn't quite enough -- not salty enough, not mingling with the taste of Horizon's air. Soon, he thought wryly, he'd have to eat like the tirkas: fish and young algae buds, culled from the waters. He didn't think his digestive tract would be up to it, though. Modification of the intestinal flora wasn't on the list of nano-work: too much trouble, and it was easier to import food along with the other supplies the bases needed.

  He felt drained of everything -- having his hopes raised and crushed again seemed to have emptied him from the inside out. So he lay on his couch and slid down into darkness -- into nightmares of Thi Loan crawling into the bubble, of hatirkas dancing before him, tormenting him with the weight of their knowledge -- laying their cold, damp fingers on his hands, dragging him underwater where he choked on algae oil . . .

  "Alex!"

  He woke up to something cold touching his shoulders: Thi Loan's forked hands, shaking him out of his sleep.

  "You were -- screaming," she said. Her chemicals trembled in the air, on the edge of blossoming into accents.

  "I --"

  Her eyes were wide and faceted, and he had to make a conscious effort to remember what had happened. "Bad dreams," he said. "Did you have a good day?"

  Thi Loan shook her head -- and for a moment she seemed lost for words. "Good," she said finally. "Learnt many things. About the Change."

  It didn't surprise him. "Giving yourself to the sea, that sort of thing?"

  She paused after he spoke, confirming the fear growing in his belly. "More complicated." Her eyes were distant again -- she focused on him with a visible effort.

  "Thi Loan," he said, frightened that the time had come, that he was going to lose her.

  "I'm all right." Her gaze was still remote. "Come on. Let's eat."

  At dinner, he couldn't help but notice that she was eating fish and algae, even if they were still human-made things.

  "About Kishore --" he said, hoping to draw her from inside her shell. He told her about what he'd found on the boat.

  Thi Loan shook her head, her gills opening and closing on the rhythm of her breath. Her face was already tighter and longer than that of a tirka. "He was a good man," she said. "In love with Horizon."

  "The tirkas are telling you that?"

  She shook her head again. "His reports. Don't be silly, Alex. The tirkas don't care about us."

  Alex snapped, "I'm not sure how they ever rose to the top of the food chain with such a blithe attitude toward other life forms."

  Thi Loan smiled, revealing a row of neat, sharp teeth, as fine as those of a shark. "There was some . . . thought, a long . . . time ago. They decided we're . . . harmless. Harmless," she repeated, a little uncertainly, as if she were no longer sure that the word was the right one. "Are they wrong?"

  "No, but --" He wanted to tell her about how frightened she made him -- about the chemicals that she emitted, hanging in the air like so many unsaid words: care/devotion, duty/dreams, sea/secrets . . .

  After dinner, he discovered that they couldn't make love anymore; she'd changed too much for that. She lay on her side of the bed, exhaling chemicals with every breath. He stared at the ceiling, trying to accept the realization that the end was near. He saw how she struggled with human language; how long would it be before he had to speak to her in the tirka monosyllables?

  Mother, in her final months, had been the same: so gaunt as to be unrecognisable, shot with so much morphine she had barely been coherent. And when she'd finally slipped away, he had been holding her hand in the hospital, willing her to at least wake up and say goodbye. But she never had.

  The console was beeping, quietly: a message. In silence, he rose and walked to the keyboard, and rerouted the volume to his integrated head-speakers.

  It was from Pablo, and the only thing it said was: Call me back. It's urgent.

  He didn't like the sound of that: sending the hacks to him via the network shouldn't have posed any problems. Had they been found out? That didn't sound like a good explanation, either: the Federation would have impounded their ship, implants, and nanos in a heartbeat if that had been the case.

  He typed in Pablo's number and waited for the image to come into focus. Pablo was wearing military fatigues, and his hands were covered in mud.

  "Hi, Alex."

  "What the hell --"

  Pablo shook his head. "Building a mud house," he said with a smile -- an expression that didn't even touch his eyes. "But that's not what I wanted to tell you."

  "The hacks," Alex said, a hundred alarm bells ringing in his mind.

  Pablo smiled, tiredly. "I'll send them to you via the network. If you still want them."

  "I don't understand --"

  "Your hacks cost me a fair bit of hobnobbing with high-ranked Federation officials," Pablo said. He was looking Alex straight in the eye -- and Alex knew the expression: it was the same one Meghan had had when he brought her Kishore's report.

  Why -- ?

  "Alex . . ."

  Pablo hesitated, then started speaking very fast, without stopping, his words tumbling on top of each other, merging with each other. "They told me things -- things known only at the highest levels. That the Federation would never send anyone on this kind of mission with barely-tested nanos."

  Alex stared at him. "They made her do it."

  Pablo's voice was soft, as soft and as cutting as the surgeon's knife when it parted flesh. "They didn't, Alex. Thi Loan volunteered for this."

  That was -- He heard the words, and no matter which way he turned them, they didn't make sense. "That's not possible," he said, hoping Pablo would say something, anything, different from what he'd heard.

  But Pablo stood his ground, his muddy hands falling at his side -- wan and small and defeated, but unwavering. "I know what I heard, Alex. If that's what it'll take to convince you, hombre, I can ask for her holo-recording -- the one where she suggested the whole scheme to the Federation . . ."

  She volunteered. Thi Loan volunteered. The words beat against the confines of his mind like the wings of a maddened bird. "Stop," he whispered, and realised that Pablo hadn't spoken for a while.

  Thi Loan volunteered . . .

  "I'm sorry," Pablo said. "Alex . . ."

  There were no words in the abyss he was falling into. He'd have asked why, but Pablo wouldn't know the answer -- and he couldn't bear the weight of someone else's speculation.

  "Thank you," he said finally, politeness coming to his rescue when nothing else would.

  Pablo shook his head. "I'll keep the hacks."

  On impulse, Alex said, "No."
>
  "No?" Pablo's voice was incredulous. "You don't need the hacks."

  Anger flared for the first time. "Don't judge what I need and what I don't."

  Pablo said nothing for a while. At length: "All right. I'll send them on to you. But --"

  "I know," Alex said. "We're on our own."

  Pablo shook his head, half-annoyed, half-angry. "You're not. That's why you shouldn't do any insensata thing right now, hombre. Anger's a bad judge."

  Alex said thanks again, cutting the communication as gracefully as he could.

  But he didn't move: he stared at his white, salt-wrinkled hands, their nails encrusted with gritty sand. He thought of Thi Loan, striding ahead of him in the mountains of the Himalayas, turning back to him with a wide, mocking smile, daring him to run to her -- of the way she'd stood on the beach with her hands clenched at her side, longing for something she couldn't have.

  He'd thought he was supporting her, that he was making it easier for her to complete a Change she didn't want.

  How wrong he'd been.

  He never could keep a secret from her: that had always been his challenge. Even counting how distant Thi Loan had become, how alien to his ways of thinking, she'd still know something was wrong as soon as she took a good look at him.

  So he decided to take the offensive.

  He got up before she did -- and waited for her in the kitchen, cradling a mug of acrid tea between his hands.

  She stopped when she entered. "Alex?"

  "I spoke to Pablo last night."

  "Pablo?"

  "Pablo Jimenez y Cruz," he said. "Remember him?"

  "Of course." Thi Loan stood with one hand on the wall, intrigued. "I don't see . . ."

  Sometimes, there was no solution but bluntness. "I wanted hacks. To turn you back before it was too late." He paused for a second -- not long enough for her to interject -- and went on. "But of course you don't want hacks, do you? Seeing as you were the one who volunteered for this mission -- this Change -- in the first place."

  There was a silence, filled only by the distant roar of the waves. Thi Loan had turned as still as a statue, except for her ruff, which was dilating and contracting faster than a human heartbeat. "I see," she said. "I see."

  "That's all you can say?" Alex snapped. He inhaled the smell of the tea, its wrongness, its artificiality -- knowing it was all that anchored him to sanity. Seven years of marriage, and that was all that she had to say?

  "What do you want from me?" Her words were slow, halting -- a further sign that her metamorphosis had entered its final stages. He forced himself to let her speak, to let her explain herself.

  "Something. Anything. Why you suggested this madness to the Federation."

  "Not madness." Her voice was quiet now. "I knew you wouldn't understand."

  "No," Alex said. "You lost your home to the sea. I don't understand why you'd wish to lose yourself in it too." Even as he said it, he wondered if it wasn't her death-wish -- if it wasn't the same as those old Buddhist monks who would set themselves on fire to be free of the chains of the world. But Thi Loan wasn't Buddhist -- she wasn't even religious. "I don't understand why you'd endanger our marriage."

  Thi Loan smiled and shook her head. "There is no marriage anymore, Alex."

  "Because you chose to have your nanos activated!" He was up on his feet and shouting, and she still didn't move -- still looked at him with those bright, faceted eyes that he couldn't read. Her chemicals saturated the air, shaping words on the cusp of perception, words he couldn't understand. "Do you think that you'll get your home back if you give something to the sea?"

  Thi Loan shook her head. "Who knows? But it's not the point. It's my choice, Alex. I need to do this."

  "Then why?"

  Her voice, when she spoke again, was that of a tirka, and the words hovered on the edge between English and an incomprehensible language. "Because I need this."

  "You're not making sense," Alex said, slowly.

  "Do I have to?"

  "I'm your husband, damn it!"

  Thi Loan's eyes glazed again, taking on the distant look that was neither human nor tirka. "Change/everything clear/revealed."

  "You're mad," Alex said. She was saying everything, and saying nothing. Did she really hope the sea of Horizon would explain why the sea on Earth had drowned the Mekong Delta? That had been caused by mankind and global warming, and nothing she found on Horizon would ever change that.

  Thi Loan just stood there -- not rising to the bait, not getting angry. Just staring at him, a rock against which every one of his assaults broke into a thousand disjointed pieces.

  "You're mad," he said again, and strode out into Horizon's muddy sunlight, leaving her behind.

  When he came back, she wasn't there anymore -- but there was a darker shape inside the bubble, and he couldn't open it no matter how hard he struck it with his fists. He screamed himself raw, trying to reach her; but the slow, steady rocking of the bubble diminished his voice to nothing. Her chemicals hung in the air, a tantalising smell, perpetually out of reach.

  It was Meghan who found him, later, sitting on the beach with his reader on his knees.

  Wordlessly, she slid down by his side. They watched the hazy shapes of the hatirkas, sliding in and out of the fog like beasts from children's tales.

  "You know," Alex said, after a while, "They still creep me out."

  "You get used to them."

  "No," Alex said. "I can't. And I can't believe she'll ever get used to them either -- no matter what shape she's in."

  Meghan shook her head. Her face was unreadable. "No one said it would be easy, Alex."

  "Did you know?" Alex asked. "Did you know she'd volunteered for that?"

  Meghan had a movement of recoil, barely perceptible unless one watched out for it. But Alex had done nothing but watching things since sunrise.

  "No," she said. "She hid it well."

  "Yeah. Even from me." He tried to keep the bitterness from his voice, but it was hard when he remembered Thi Loan's final proclamation. There is no marriage, Alex. "What a world."

  Meghan took sand and let it drip from her hand, glistening in the sunlight. "You believe yourself responsible?"

  "I don't know." And that was the worst: the thought that he could have said something, or done something, that had tipped her over the edge, that had ultimately made her volunteer for this. "I don't understand why she did this."

  Meghan inclined her head, slowly. "We're not telepaths, Alex. You can't --"

  "She was my wife, damn it!" No. No longer. The Hachand. The Changing One. The Dying One. One and the same.

  Meghan said nothing.

  "Her village -- it was disappearing, the whole time she was in college, studying xeno. But they wouldn't let her come back, not until she'd finished her indenture. They were afraid -- afraid we'd all run away if we saw our families. And afterwards, they posted her on one planet after another, until the only thing she ever saw were the holos of the drowned streets."

  "In her culture, the sea is everything, and it takes everything," Meghan said. "For her, it had taken her childhood, her community -- everything except her life. It makes sense."

  He recognised the doubtful tone, the same one the teachers had taken when warning them in their first xeno classes: just because something made sense didn't mean it was real. "You think that's the reason?"

  Meghan shifted in a crunch of sand. "It's one possible reason," she said. "If it makes sense to you . . ."

  People needed reasons, didn't they? Stories. Anything to make the going easier. He could have made up something, too. "It's not going to be enough," Alex said.

  He saw her shake her head, sadly. "I'm afraid that's all you get. I'm sorry." She rose, letting the last of the sand drip back into the beach. "Goodbye, Alex."

  That wasn't enough, Alex thought again as he listened to the sound of her footsteps receding in the distance.

  He flipped open his reader, stared at Kishore's report -- at the words so n
eatly aligned, revealing nothing more than their vast ignorance of what was really happening on Horizon. If they couldn't understand what pushed people to sacrifice themselves -- if they couldn't understand why a wife would leave everything she'd ever known behind -- how could they hope to make sense of the hatirkas, or of what had happened to Kishore?

  There was something else in his reader: Pablo's hacks. They couldn't be used on Thi Loan anymore, but there was a way, surely, to hack into himself, to set in motion the same metamorphosis Thi Loan was going through.

  He could join her.

  There was only the sound of the waves, and the distant song of the hatirkas. The beach was clean, the air heavy but free of any chemicals. He thought of the way Thi Loan had run away from him on the mountain path -- and of that first day on the beach, when they had already been apart from each other, and he knew the only answer he could give.

  Whatever her reasons, she had made her choice, and he wouldn't demean it. But just as he wouldn't join Mother in death, neither would he join Thi Loan in her Change.

  As the sun sank towards the horizon, he heard a vast, indescribable noise in the research centre. But he didn't turn around. He didn't need to. He just listened to the scratching of stubby paws, dragging themselves on the cold sands -- to the slow unfolding of a long, serpentine body -- and felt the chemicals saturate his ruff.

  Thi Loan was on the beach now -- a silent shadow in the growing darkness, smelling of brine and oil. Dragging herself towards the waterline, and whispering of longing/sorrow/duty/pain until Alex's own throat ached with the need to respond.

  Far, far away, on the vast, unknowable sea, the swarm of hatirkas had opened, leaving an empty space as neat as the path of a spaceship. And Thi Loan was swimming towards them, glorious and magnificent. The whispers on the wind changed to need/sorrow/share/atonement, and then into something else, something that made no sense at all but filled him with a great, quivering joy.