Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49

by Seanan McGuire

  Looking ahead, we can see that every upgrade to the Melee in the future—any expansion beyond Neptune, or extension of the existing system on Earth beyond our current stock of calibrated crystal—will require an enormous overhaul to take into account the higher entanglement of new Lucyite. Luckily the system is at present so efficient that no such recalibration will be necessary within our lifetimes, and indeed, any introduction of new crystal into the system would throw it into disastrous confusion and disarray at best, or provoke a devastating chain reaction at worst.

  It would appear that, ironically, the most advanced system of travel and transport we have yet devised is powered by absent-mindedness. The worst thing we could do in our pursuit of getting places quickly is jog our precious superconductor’s memory of where it came from.

  • • •

  Coal to Diamonds

  A melee is a packet of small diamonds all of roughly the same size and value.

  A melee is a fight, a mess, a jumble.

  A melee has three vowels in it, four if you count the indefinite article.

  A melee could be a woman’s name.

  Amelie, Amelie, Amelie.

  A melee or eight. Amelie, orate. A melior ate.

  Ameliorate.

  • • •

  Triton Base 1 Incident Report: Dr. Hala Moussa

  At 0200.23.04.2076 NTC I found Dr. Leila Ghufran in the laboratory, palms pressed into a tray of Lucyite chips. They had cut into her palms and her hands were bleeding. She was standing very still and did not respond to her name until I approached her and initiated physical contact. I grasped her shoulder and pulled her to face me, at which point I saw blood on her lips and at the corners of her mouth. I suspected she had severely bitten her tongue; this appeared to be the case when she began speaking. Her initial lack of responsiveness was alarming, but her eventual words were more so: She began exhibiting severe distress, crying and saying I was hurting her, that she was very cold, that she wanted to go back.

  After we restrained and sedated her, Dr. Ghufran claimed to have no memory of our interaction. Given our proximity to the diamantine ocean of Neptune and Dr. Ghufran’s extensive exposure to it and the samples extracted from it, I am diagnosing her with Meisner’s Syndrome and recommending she be relocated to a subterranean project as soon as possible.

  • • •

  Diamonds and Pearls

  Imagine if you took a tiny piece of a diamond and you put it in some meat.

  Imagine it irritating the meat, agitating it, inflaming it.

  Imagine if the meat rose around to coat it with layers of itself, to obfuscate and obscure it.

  Imagine if Sindbad’s slabs of meat swallowed the diamond and became something else, became diamond-and-meat, became organic crystal, became other.

  I don’t know what I am saying. I’m dizzy. Hala I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I think I am going to fail you. I love you, Hala. I’m sorry.

  • • •

  Extract from “Friends of Lucy” Manifesto

  Meisner Syndrome is a lie!

  Adamancy is a lie!

  A conspiracy concocted by Big Pharma and high-ranking members of international governments in concert with the logistical-industrial complex to make us all complicit in the torture and dismemberment of a living organism!

  We say again, Lucyite is alive!

  We don’t need the Melee any more than we needed to eat animals! It screams like a thousand thousand pigs being slaughtered, like lambs, like cattle!

  Stop the screaming!

  Save Lucy!

  End the Melee!

  • • •

  Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

  Everything is wrong. Everything is broken and wrong and no one can see it.

  Do you remember the playground, Hala? The bullies who hated when we held hands? How it didn’t matter how much they goaded and spat and pushed and shoved, the moment we threw a punch we were at fault? Because we had to be better, we were supposed to be better, and they were just a fact of life. Do you remember how we hated that? How unfair it was? How we vowed that we’d never be taken in by “looking at both sides” when all it meant was that people had the means to justify and excuse our suffering?

  Hala, imagine if when we were children, we had seen a girl splayed out on the floor, spread-eagled, her every bone broken beneath the feet of boys jumping up and down on her as if she were solid ground. Imagine we could hear her screaming, begging them to stop, to let her go, but the boys could not, because she was nothing, she was the earth, she could not feel. But we could see her. We could hear her.

  What would you have done, Hala? Told them to stop? But this ground is so much softer on their feet, it is so much more fun to jump on it, why should they? Why should they believe that there is a woman there they cannot see? We are few and they are so many, we must be insane, we must be diseased to imagine something so horrible.

  Imagine, Hala, that in the eye of one of these boys you see satisfaction. You see knowledge. You see that he knows he is making someone scream but it doesn’t bother him, it doesn’t matter, because he can get away with it.

  What would you do?

  • • •

  President Moore Responds to Diamond Fanatics

  Following the evacuation of the Triton base in response to a terrorist threat, Paragon Industries hastened to reassure the public that the Melee remains safe and open to business as usual. We reached President Alastair Moore for comment.

  “It’s very sad, but they’re deeply troubled people,” says Moore. “They deserve not our scorn, but our empathy, our pity, and our help.”

  When asked whether there might be any truth to allegations made by the Friends of Lucy, Moore responded:

  “Look, it’s just crazy. You may as well say electricity has feelings. People believed all sorts of wacky things when Tesla coiled wires, but we can’t imagine living without electricity now. This is no different.”

  • • •

  A star to steer her by

  Of course I had nothing to do with that threat. I know who did, though. I can feel them at the edge of my vision now, shimmering, especially when my fingers start to go numb. It’s always so cold here.

  They’re cold, too, all of them. Frozen in the ring of diamond time, that was from a poem, wasn’t it? Alexa Seidel? Pre-Melee, of course. I don’t know why all of my favourite things should be. I suppose it’s nostalgia for a time before our fictions were fact.

  It’s good that you’re not on Triton just now. Things are about to happen there. I’d hate for anyone to be stranded when the gate crashes.

  I’m going to miss you so much.

  I remember, now, what I couldn’t on Triton. I remember you taking my wrists and looking at my palms, I remember you sitting by me as they soaked every last speck of diamond from the meat of me to make sure I wouldn’t accidentally bring any back with me to Earth. You never left me, even though the work was piling up, the demand for reports and explanations.

  I wish I could see you one more time. The ocean’s kind, to let me have this memory of you back. I hope you can understand. I hope you can forgive me.

  My tongue wasn’t bloody because I bit it. It was bloody because I licked the diamonds off the tray. I swallowed as much as I could. It’s probably why I haven’t gotten better, for all that you buried me so deep. They’re still inside me, as entangled as any quantum physicist could wish, dense enough with memory of Neptune to summon all the Earth’s stolen droplets and make a body of her again, a mind, a recollection, give her a destination and the will, the energy to reach it.

  All I have to do is make them liquid.

  Ridiculous that I’ve been so cold for so long when the solution’s been so near to hand. We have a Z-machine here, and I’m on its scheduled maintenance rotation. All I need is a moment alone with it, and I will be warm again.

  I am a slab of meat awaiting my vulture. I am a salted bird brought to life. I will dissolve, I will melt, I will dip my toe into a d
iamond ocean and I will swim.

  I am glad there won’t be anything left of me here.

  I hope—I feel that it will take me with it. Back to Neptune. That I might go up to the sea again, the lonely sea in the sky.

  Maybe it will be better there.

  Maybe we’ll keep each other company.

  © 2014 by Amal ElMohtar.

  Amal ElMohtar is the Nebula-nominated author of The Honey Month, a collection of poems and very short fiction written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey. Her work has appeared in multiple venues online and in print including Strange Horizons, Glitter & Mayhem, and Apex, and is forthcoming in Kaleidoscope: Diverse YA Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories. She is a member of the Banjo Apocalypse Crinoline Troubadours; edits Goblin Fruit, an online quarterly dedicated to fantastical poetry; and currently lives in Glasgow with two black and white cats and their pet Glaswegian. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com or on Twitter @tithenai.

  A Burglary, Addressed By a Young Lady

  Elizabeth Porter Birdsall

  “Genevieve,” said her mother sternly, “what has your etiquette tutor told you about stealing from your equals?”

  Genevieve sighed. In a bored singsong, she recited, “Stealing from one’s social inferiors is a faux pas the well-bred lady scorns. That is the purpose of taxation. Stealing from one’s equals is a dull and plebian activity, of neither sport nor honor, and to be avoided except in the direst of circumstances. Stealing from one’s betters is a coup, though one must always take care to punctiliously return any items specifically requested.”

  “Very good.” Her mama seemed impervious to Genevieve’s tone, as she generally took care to be. “What does that tell you concerning the wisdom of your request?”

  “But Mama!” Genevieve restrained herself, with some difficulty, from further expostulations, and returned instead to her carefully planned appeal to her mother’s well-honed acquisitive instincts. “Mama, just think of that lovely Trinitian laser pistol. It would look so gorgeous in your sitting room. And they’re an older family than ours by just the slightest bit, so it’s an acceptable target—”

  “No.” Lady Tadma sniffed, and Genevieve knew she had chosen the wrong tack. “We are every bit as noble as the Yendarias, and with greater battle honors to our name. Your interest in young James will pass—”

  “He’s a perfectly respectable target!”

  “—but our social shame if this ever comes to light will not. Find another burglee for your debutante raid, Genevieve.”

  With an inarticulate sound of frustration imperfectly stifled, Genevieve flung herself out of her chair and stalked towards the door.

  “And Genevieve? Do find Master Coundry, please, and tell him he’s to give you another lesson on the proper tone for speaking to one’s mother. A lengthy one.” Her mother’s voice was as serene as ever. “Kindly recall that it is not in the least too late for your papa and I to decide that your Spree must be postponed a year, if you are insufficiently mature to enter Society this birthday.”

  Genevieve slammed the door behind her.

  • • •

  A proper show of contrition served not in the least to soften her mother’s heart. Nor did a week of good behavior, nor all the diligent practicing upon the hologram generator and pianoforte that Genevieve’s patience could stand, nor the most scrupulously reasoned appeals to logic and covetousness. Lady Alexandria Tadma, her daughter fumed, must never have truly been an adolescent herself. She must have been born a maternal tyrant in miniature, no matter all her thrilling tales of burglary in Seasons past. How else to account for her hardheartedness towards her only daughter’s earnest desires?

  James Yendaria! He was of course the primary target of her longed-for raid. The Trinitian laser pistol was a lovely piece of workmanship, and well worth burgling, but she full intended to leave the broadest acceptable clues to her identity in its place. Perhaps a handkerchief, daintily monogrammed by her own hand; perhaps a sheet of fine scented paper, inscribed with one of the traditional gloating couplets and detailed with microdots containing the Tadma family motto. In any event, the desired consequence would surely materialize: James and his parents, recognizing the compliment paid them in such a daring raid upon their own stronghold, would naturally pay a call upon the Tadma household to request its return. While servants packaged the pistol in synthwool and a beribboned box for transit, James and his family would be shown into the parlor for tea and an opportunity for mutual compliments between thief and robbed. Many a courtship had begun so. And James Yendaria, with his well-turned leg for a dance and his dashing skill at shuttle piloting, was certainly a catch! His family might not be multiple ranks above the Tadmas, but they were no new money to scorn, either. It was perfectly proper.

  But no; Lady Tadma would not hear of it, and Lord Tadma supported her in what Genevieve suspected was more of marital solidarity than genuine preference. He only patted her shoulder with a hearty “There, there, m’dear, you’ll soon be burgling half the ton, but you only get one chance to start your reputation right, eh?” before sequestering himself in his study, where family rules forbade his daughter to interrupt his work, even when she suspected that work was purely a cover for avoiding feminine dissent.

  In the end, the lofty target chosen to begin Genevieve’s debut Spree was Nelson Wesley, the bookish and wealthy Marquis of Battleboro. Genevieve’s sulks and pleas were in vain; she was obliged to obey parental decrees, or face the unbearable prospect of another year of childish lessons.

  • • •

  “Do remember to leave a nice clear token, won’t you, darling?” Lady Tadma tugged fussily at the ribbons of anti-sensor circuitry wound into Genevieve’s curls. Sarah, their ladies’ maid, moved smoothly to checking the infrared bafflers buttoned at Genevieve’s cuffs, while her mistress mussed her careful handiwork in the name of helping. “The marquis would be a most appropriate suitor for a girl of your accomplishments. And don’t forget, he makes ten thousand platinum a year!”

  “I’ll remember, Mama,” sighed Genevieve, who intended to do no such thing. The marquis was all very well and good, if you liked your men with their nose buried in a history tome and no sense of dancing rhythm whatsoever, but he would be a suitor with whom James Yendaria could not possibly compete. More to the point, Genevieve was still annoyed that she’d had so little say in her target. She might be obliged to rob whom her parents instructed, but she didn’t need to be dutiful at every step!

  “Good,” said her mother, as obliviously as Genevieve might have hoped, and stepped back to regard the results of her hair-straightening. To Genevieve’s private horror, her mother’s eyes grew moist. “Oh, Jenny, you look so grown! Just yesterday, it seems, you were a babe in the nursery. Now here you are, all kitted out to burgle a marquis!”

  “I’ll be home triumphant before you know it,” Genevieve blurted. Her mother had never been one for sentimental takings; the sight put Genevieve quite off her stride. “But Mama, I really ought to go, if I hope to slip between the estate sweeps.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Lady Tadma pulled her dignity back around herself with a faint sniffle which her daughter pretended not to notice. “Go on, darling, and remember everything you’ve been taught. I know you’ll conduct yourself properly.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Genevieve kissed her mother’s cheek, and fled for the upper window and the scrupulously trained wisteria that would carry her to the ground.

  • • •

  It was exhilarating, Genevieve had to admit to herself. To be out without a chaperone—to think of the prospect of evading the Battleboro household defenses—to be on her first raid as a proper lady, her debut into true Society! Beyond her own estate’s perimeter, she felt as if antique corsetry had been loosed, so great was the sensation of sudden freedom. Why, she could go almost anywhere!

  Her thieving dress, of black lawn with charcoal-grey sprigs and a delicate tracery of camouflaging circuits she had embroidered herself, ble
nded marvelously with the shadows. She had not yet triggered the circuits, of course, here on the streets of High Town. She clung to corners and shadows, ducking behind the patrolling bobbies, and rested secure in the knowledge that no member of the constabulary would dream of hindering someone who was so clearly a young lady of good breeding going about her own business. All her ladylike tricks and gadgetry would prove their use soon, on the Battleboro estate.

  Had she walked the whole way, she might have wasted half the night in merely reaching her destination, but no young lady would so betray her training as to take a hansom or a tram in burglary dress. Instead, Genevieve sprang lightly to the roof of a public tram while it idled in the station, and traveled in perfect comfort by lying flat atop it. When she dismounted with equal surreptitiousness in the Upmarket neighborhood, she left coin for her fare in the discreet receptacle every tram bore for such purposes. It would never do to leave a debt unpaid, after all.

  Behind the shelter of the gatehouse, Genevieve made her preparations. With precise touches she triggered the circuitry in her hair, her dress, her shoes, and her pantaloons. If she had done her work well—and she must have, with the quantity of hours she had put into her trousseau!—these decorations would conceal her from cameras, muffle the sounds she made and blur the sight of her, and convince infrared detectors and motion-sensors that no one walked these grounds unpermitted. She kilted her dress up high about her waist, to allow herself freedom of motion, and gave herself a moment of pride to admire the black-on-charcoal of her thieving pantaloons. She really had done her best needlework with those, she felt. Then she drew her mask tight about her face, slipped on her fine dark gloves, and set about the delicate task of finding a permeable point in the electrically reinforced fence.