Imaginarium 3

by Sandra Kasturi, Helen Marshall (ed) (v5. 0) (epub)

  vaguely. Predators. His

  heart sinks. People talk of

  eagles with a wingspan of

  3 metres in the northern

  regions. He begins to

  imagine his own heroic

  death as told by Daniil

  Kharms. If the sky—but

  now the air is darkening

  around him and strange

  vectors dive whizz swoop

  —he gasps suddenly

  realizing what it is. Not

  predators. Ice bats! They

  are blueblack. They are

  absolutely silent. They

  are the size of toasters.

  And they are drafting him

  down the ice fault with

  eerie gentle purpose. A

  spearhead in front and a

  convoy each side. His

  shoulders begin to relax.

  Is there an etiquette for

  this he should worry

  about? Theoretically he

  can gain 35% efficiency

  by riding their wheels a

  while. But it should be

  some sort of exchange.

  On the other hand theirs is

  a volunteer intervention

  and they do look tireless

  despite all going so fast

  there’s a smell of burning—

  he is thinking this odd this

  smell of burning when the

  whole mass of them veers

  around an ice bend and

  arrives in a vast garage.

  ICE BATS GO nimbly

  and can stop on a dime.

  Here’s how you stop. Flap

  both wings downward

  creating a vortex above

  the leading edge of each

  wing this allows you to

  hover. Then flap once

  upward to release suction

  as you glide from the

  flight path in an attitude of

  careless royalty and

  subside onto some ledge

  or throne with neatly

  folded fingerbones. G’s

  descent is less fine. He

  slams into the

  blueblackness ahead of

  him not expecting it to

  stop. Or instantly

  disperse. Each bat goes

  whizzing its way into an

  aperture in the back wall.

  BATCATRAZ says a sign

  nailed up there. G drops

  to the ice floor stunned.

  Clever of you to come in

  the back way says a voice.

  G looks up.

  THE SALT AND IRON DIALOGUES

  Matthew Johnson

  Shi Jin gripped her stylus and tried to concentrate on her lesson rather than her grumbling stomach. She had enough trouble understanding why she had to learn Earthlang in the first place—nobody on Garamond spoke it—and now, hungry as she was, concentration was next to impossible.

  She looked up at the timer on the wall: still two dozen minutes left to her study session. The timer was the only decoration in her room, a wooden cell about four paces square which contained her bed, some drawers inset in the wall and the work terminal.

  The inactivity warning flashed—two flashes and her time would be extended—and she put her hand on the controller, closing Earthlang and opening Calligraphy. Holding the stylus carefully, thumb and forefinger gently stroking the thickness sensors, she started to write the character p’u. ‘The uncarved block’ was what it really meant: the fundamental nature of a thing, the part that stayed unchanged whatever was done to it. She preferred the more complicated characters, enjoyed the tiny twists and curls required to get them just right. Her father had told her that when she was older she would miss the simplicity of the ‘child’s two hundred,’ but so far as she was concerned her life was more than simple enough.

  After a while Jin released the stylus and let the program judge her work. She had broadened a line in the component character that meant “monkey in a thicket”—she wanted it to look more like the monkeys she’d seen in vids, all dark and hairy—but the program took points off for exceeding standard line width. She couldn’t help doing more than the program wanted, even though she knew her changes wouldn’t be accepted.

  She remembered what her father had said when she told him about it. “Do you think you’re the first person to say that?” he had asked, smiling gently. “People have been writing this way for five thousand years. But who knows? Study hard, learn how we do things now, and maybe someday you’ll be put on the Board of Regulations. Then you could tell the computer, and All-the-Stars, how thick a brushstroke should be.”

  That was her father’s answer to everything: study hard, and someday you’ll be one of the people who make the rules. She supposed he must be right: he had studied hard when he was Jin’s age and now he was Colonial Magistrate. His characters were all perfect to the fingertip—he relearned them every time the Board of Regulations issued a change—and he could speak Earthlang just as well as the pilots who came on the food ships.

  The food ships . . . that thought made her stomach speak up again, an acid rumbling that made her gag. She had only had a pressed rice cake with a thin layer of protein jelly so far today, and was having trouble keeping her thoughts off her next meal. She had never known the food ships to be so late, though some of the miners spoke darkly of a time twelve years ago when an entire shipment was lost, the ship destroyed by rebels or pirates depending on who you asked, and nearly a quarter of the people in the camp had died.

  The timer flashed green, releasing her from her bondage, and the program closed. The computer’s screen resolved to one of the Eight Instructional Poems, in pixel-perfect calligraphy:

  Do your duty to your parents.

  Honour your elders.

  Be at peace with your neighbours.

  Instruct sons and grandsons.

  Be content in your occupation.

  Do not commit offences.

  She got up, unsteady, then opened one of the drawers in the wall and pulled out her grey cotton indoor pants and her dark red pleather Technical jacket. She put them on over her basic duty coverall and then closed the drawer, smoothed her short, straight black hair with her hand and walked out the door. She did not really know where to go. She wasn’t sure what time it was: her lessons were metred out in golden hours, the Magistracy’s clock, so she was always out of synch with the planet’s blue hours. On her schedule it was time for the evening meal, but she had already used up her food ration for the day. She wandered down the hall to the small dining room to see if her father was there anyway; he was the only other person on Garamond who lived on golden time like she did.

  Her heart jumped for a moment when she saw him sitting at the table, chewing thoughtfully at something—could the ship possibly have come without her knowing it?—but when he saw her and passed his plate she saw immediately that whatever was on it was not food.

  “Sealant gum,” he said after carefully spitting what he was chewing into a cup. “It is not toxic, and it makes the hunger less.”

  Jin gave him a quick low bow, sat down. On the plate in front of her was a disk about two fingers thick of clear silicone, cut into wedges. Picking up her sticks she seized one of the wedges, put it in her mouth, then chewed quietly for a few minutes as her father did the same. Finally, when she thought the taste was about to make her vomit up what little actual food she had had that day, she picked up her cup and spat the gum into it.

  She woke sometime in the night, the memory of the noise that had awakened her already fading. Some kind of bang, and an anxious voice down the hall . . . She rubbed her eyes and reached out to key the lights. Nothing happened. She lay very still, calmed her breathing, heard nothing—not even, she realized, the s
ound of the mine far below. She could not remember it ever having gone silent before.

  She rose carefully, made her way out into the dark hallway. Now she could hear her father’s voice, low, coming from the control room. She paused outside, straining to hear.

  “—all systems, we have to shut down now. Contact me when everything’s green.” She peered inside to see him hit the CLOSE CHANNEL key and then methodically turn off every system in the camp. One by one, sounds she had never known could go away—the water pump, the oxygen circulation system—went silent. She thought of the red-faced men who maintained them, wondered if they would be worried or glad for the rest.

  “Jin?” he said. “Are you out there?” She was unable to answer. “Come on. Let’s go outside.”

  She nodded, her father’s casual inflections disconcerting her as much as anything else. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Why did you—”

  “Later,” he said. He led her out of the building, to the big open area around the landing pad. “Look up,” he said. “It should hit in a few seconds.” She watched the sky intently, seeing nothing, then put her hands to her ears as a huge roar crashed through the air. Her father grabbed her shoulder and pointed to the sky. There, outside the plasteel dome that was the camp’s protection from the harsh air outside, a fireball had appeared, shooting across the dark sky. When it reached the horizon it disappeared but the rumble continued, making the dome tremble. She looked at her father.

  “Keep watching,” he shouted over the noise. Other people, off-duty miners and their children, were starting to come out of their homes and look to Jin’s father for explanation. Many of them she had not seen in weeks, and she was shocked by how thin they had become.

  Her father pointed at the sky again and she saw the fireball reappear, bigger and slower, and once again cross to the other horizon. The rumble became quieter as the fireball disappeared again.

  “One more pass ought to do it,” he said, to himself more than anyone else. He stood still, looking up, as a crowd gathered around. Noticing them, he raised his voice. “It’s all right. It should be all right.” He sounded so certain Jin could not help but be reassured, but she wondered if he would have said the same thing to her if they had been alone. The volume of the rumble increased and they all looked up again. The fireball reappeared once more, this time slow and close enough that they could see it was a ship, glowing red hot.

  “Is it the food ship?” she asked. It did not look like it. Nor did it look like the old, cobbled-together ships the Travellers used when they came on their once-a-year visits: it looked like one of the ships from the adventure vids. Like a warship.

  Her father shook his head. “No,” he said. The ship arced across the sky, almost lazily compared to its previous speed, and once it was out of sight he took the portable comm from his tool belt. The incoming signal light was flashing. “Shi here. What’s your status?”

  “We’re fine, zi Shi,” the tinny voice on the other end said. “Just got hit with a pulse that would’ve fried us if we hadn’t shut down. As it is, it’ll take us ten blue hours to be up and running again. Should we send a message rocket?”

  “No, I don’t think we’re going to get any more visitors. Let me know your status in five blue. Shi out.”

  Jin followed her father as he made his way back to the central building. He took a slightly roundabout route, passing by as many people as possible and reassuring them that everything would be all right but not giving them any details about what was happening. It wasn’t until they were back in her father’s study, and her father had restarted all of the computer systems and sent the orders to start the mines going again, that Jin felt able to speak.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “Li Pang, part of the Colonial Administration. He runs the surveillance satellite.” Her father keyed in a number of sequences and paused. After a few seconds Jin could feel the low hum of the mine equipment far below starting up again. “I hope this doesn’t drop productivity too much,” her father said. “I’m not sure if I could explain it.”

  “Who’s on that ship?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll have to take the Rescue ship out to investigate, but the satellite’s going to be blind for a few hours—we won’t have any guidance ’til then.” He drummed his fingers on his desk. “Did you complete your lessons for today?”

  Jin nodded.

  “And did you find them illuminating?”

  She frowned, unsure why he was asking about this now. Yesterday she had asked her father why the Equitable Marketing System did not allow them to grow food, or even store more than five years’ worth at a time, and he had told her to read the “Salt and Iron Dialogue” in the Book of Shang. Now that she had, she wondered whether admitting she had not understood how it related to her question would be an admission of failure or a proper showing of humility. “I am not sure I did,” she said, keeping her inflection as formal as possible. “It did not seem to bear on our situation.”

  “It was written a very long time ago. But zi Shang thought highly enough of it to include it in his Book, so perhaps it has some worth anyway, hm?” It was not a question but an order, a challenge to think more deeply. “Summarize the debate, then you may see how it relates.”

  She took a breath. “Well, it’s—it is between two wise men, a minister and a scholar. They are debating whether or not the Emperor was right to restrict the sale of salt and iron to the government . . . the scholar says it’s wrong, because the people need those things, but the minister says that it will keep the people from being preyed on by speculators.”

  “And which one is right?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. Most of the dialogues she had read had a clear teacher and student, but this one did not: both the scholar and the minister made arguments she found difficult to find fault with.

  Her father glanced at his datapad, tapped his desk again. “Which one did you think was right?”

  Jin took a breath. “I think the scholar was right, because he said the people should have what they need. I mean, I’m sure the minister was right too, but maybe there are other ways to keep the people from being cheated. I don’t know why salt and iron would be so important though.”

  “When these debates were written salt was used to preserve food,” her father said. “If you wanted to store food for lean times, you needed salt. But salt had to be mined, so it was very precious—a person could become very rich by selling salt to people who feared a famine.”

  “So salt means food? And then iron means—ships?”

  “Yes. That is why the Travellers are permitted to move freely and to buy and sell whatever they please, but there are two things only the Magistracy may trade in—food and ships.” He closed his eyes, began quoting. “‘For such reasons the sages built boats and bridges across rivers; they tamed cattle and horses to travel across the country. In this way they were able to feed all the people.’ There have been a half-dozen rebellions since the Corp Wars, Jin, and each has failed—because people know that without the Borderless Empire there will be no more food ships, ever.”

  “But if people were allowed to grow just a little food, or buy some from Travellers, it wouldn’t be so bad when the ships were late,” Jin said.

  “If the ships are late, it is because something more important has delayed them. But they will come.” He turned away slightly, so that he was not quite looking her in the eyes. He tapped his desk one more time, let out a breath and then stood up. “Come on,” he said, heading towards the door.

  “Where?”

  “To see the ship.”

  She stood up quickly and stumbled after him. “But the satellite—”

  “I believe I still remember how to pilot by sight. Unless you’d rather wait?”

  Jin had never been allowed to ride in the Rescue ship before. She didn’t know if the Rescue ship had ever been flown before. It had
been part of the colony’s original equipment; other than the dome itself, it was the only thing on Garamond not built by someone who lived there, and it did not bear a maker’s mark. It was spotless, and in perfect condition—she ought to know; she had been responsible for maintaining it since she turned twelve—but it had a kind of lonely, unused feeling to it. It didn’t smell like people, the way everything else in the camp did. Instead it had the sharp smell she associated with ore fresh from the mines. She wondered if the ship they were going to find smelled that way.

  “There it is,” her father said as they passed over a ridge.

  Jin looked out the viewport to where her father was pointing. The new ship was resting unevenly on the rocky terrain. It didn’t look much like the ships from the vids now that she was close to it. Or rather, it looked like they did at the end, after they’d been ambushed and surrounded by raiders and rebels and nearly destroyed before they enacted their secret plan and turned the tables. Maybe that was what had happened. That would explain everything.

  Her father piloted their small ship alongside the larger one, lowered it to the ground. He pressed the comm button several times. Finally he rose, opened the cabin closet and pulled out an oxygen mask. “Stay in here,” he said.

  Jin stood up. “Father—”

  “No. Leave the channel open—it’s time for your language lesson.”

  He stepped out of the cabin, into the corridor that led to the airlock. It wasn’t until the ‘lock had sealed that Jin realized he was afraid.

  She watched through the viewport as her father walked to the front of the Rescue ship, listened to him breathing. There was no air on Garamond, but there was plenty of atmosphere, all of it poisonous. The good side to that was that you didn’t need a suit to go outside the dome, just a mask.

  “I can hear you, father,” she said into the comm.

  “Good. Don’t speak again until I tell you, please.”

  She willed herself to breathe quietly as he walked over to the airlock on the other ship that was closest to the ground. He pressed a key on the side of the ‘lock then rapped on it, drew his hand back—the ship must still be hot, two golden hours after landing.