I didn’t even realize she could do that—age out of order. But it just goes to show you. The best art can be a mystery even to its creator.
• • •
The next afternoon I get a message from Marjorie’s Eyes telling me Marjorie’s Brain is dead. She stepped outside at sunrise, uncovered. She bowed out gracefully while she had the chance.
Verdana is sunning on the couch beside me when I get the news.
“Are you sad?” she asks me.
“No.”
There is a flash of light from upstairs. Perpetua’s fish. They’re right. I haven’t been this sad since Frank was killed by shifting tectonic plates a few years back. Although whether it was the actual fact of his death that pained me most or the loss of his copy of the museum—crushed right along with him—I couldn’t tell you.
“If everybody leaves,” asks Verdana, “will you miss them?”
“No.”
There is another flash, this one so bright that it takes me nearly five minutes to blink away its afterimage. When I go upstairs to check, I find all the danios dead, burnt out like old bulbs.
• • •
Marjorie is wrong. Not everyone will leave. Almost everyone, maybe, but not everyone. There are optimists in the ocean, keeping tabs on amoebas. Cheering them on. Waiting for life to begin all over again. They will stay. I know they will. So will the sleepers buried under the mountains. The lotus eaters. The handmaidens of Hades. The nostalgic. The homesick. The tireless keepers of the frozen Pope in his underground Vatican, waiting in silence for Jesus and the thaw.
And my three daughters and I. We’ll stay.
We’ll get transmissions now and then from the ones who leave, I’m sure. The lag will grow as they push farther out, but I imagine we will keep on hearing from them periodically until they fail or until they reach their destination. That will be something to look forward to, centuries from now, if I live that long. I haven’t decided yet if I will.
My fourth daughter will be ready soon.
She has been many years in the making, and if she proves viable, which I believe she will, she will be a new thing altogether. There is very little of me in her. Her ingredients are pulled from every corner of the archives. She is a balancing act. An exercise in form and color.
She is Ursus arctos and Solenodon paradoxus. Puma concolor and Panthera onca. All the creatures that never moved in packs, never bonded in pairs, never huddled together for warmth in the night. Creatures that never sought a mate but simply split, if the mood struck, one into two. The two parts would never bother each other again, not even to ask for a cup of sugar or an iota of endoplasm.
She is every creature that left the nest and never looked back.
She will be my greatest work yet. A museum unto herself. Not just a petri dish, but an ocean full of life. She will be beautiful and she will be strange and, best of all, she will never be lonely.
© 2012 by Maria Romasco Moore.
Originally published in Unstuck 2, edited by Matt Williamson.
Reprinted by permission of the author.
Maria Romasco Moore’s stories have appeared in Unstuck, Diagram, Hobart, and the anthology FISH (Dagan Books, 2013). She was born in Baton Rouge in the rain but currently lives in Pittsburgh. In her spare time, she makes miniature houses.
Love Is the Plan the Plan Is Death
James Tiptree, Jr.
(Alice Sheldon)
Art by Li Grabensetter
Remembering—
Do you hear, my little red? Hold me softly. The cold grows.
I remember:
—I am hugely black and hopeful, I bounce on six legs along the mountains in the new warm! … Sing the changer, Sing the stranger! Will the changes change forever? … All my hums have words now. Another change!
Eagerly I bound on sunward following the tiny thrill in the air. The forests have been shrinking again. Then I see. It is me! Me-Myself, MOGGADEET—I have grown bigger more in the winter cold! I astonish myself, Moggadeet-the-small!
Excitement, enticement, shrilling from the sun-side of the world. I come! … The sun is changing again too. Sun is walking in the night! Sun is walking back to Summer in the warming of the light! … Warm is Me—Moggadeet Myself. Forget the bad-time winter.
Memory quakes me.
The Old One.
I stop, pluck up a tree. So much I wanted to ask the Old One. No time. Cold. Tree goes end over end down-cliff, I watch the fatclimbers tumble out. Not hungry.
The Old One warned me of the cold—I didn’t believe him. I move on, grieving… . Old One told you, The cold, the cold will hold you. Chill cold! Kill cold. In the cold I killed you.
But it’s warm now, all different. I’m Moggadeet again.
I bound over a hill and see my brother Frim.
At first I don’t know him. A big black old one! I think. And in the warm, we can speak!
I surge toward him bashing trees. The big black is crouched over a ravine, peering down. Black back has shiny ripples like—It IS Frim! Frim-I-hunted-for, Frim-run-away! But he’s so big now! Giant Frim! A stranger, a changer—
“Frim!”
He doesn’t hear me; all his eye-turrets are under the trees. His end is sticking up oddlike, all atremble. What’s he hunting?
“Frim! It’s me, Moggadeet!”
But he only quivers his legs; I see his spurs pushing out. What a fool, Frim! I remind myself how timid he is, I try to move gently. When I get closer I’m astonished again. I’m bigger than he is now! Changes! I can see right over his shoulder into the ravine.
Hot yellow-green in there. A little glade all lit with sun. I bend my eyes to see what Frim is after, and all astonishments blow up the world.
I see you.
I saw you.
I will always see you. Dancing in the green fire, my tiny red star! So bright! So small! So perfect! So fierce! I knew you—Oh, yes, I knew you in that first instant, my dawnberry, my scarlet minikin. Red! A tiny baby red one, smaller than my smallest eye. And so brave!
The Old One said it. Red is the color of love.
I see you swat at a hopper twice your size, my eyes bulge as you leap after it and go rolling, shrilling Lililee! Lilileee-ee! in baby wrath. Oh, my mighty hunter, you don’t know someone is looking right into your tender little love-fur! Oh, yes! Palest pink it is, just brushed with rose. My jaws spurt, the world flashes and reels.
And then Frim, poor fool, feels me behind him and rears up.
But what a Frim! His throat-sacs are ballooning purple-black, his plates are engorged like the Mother of the storm-clouds! Glittering, rattling his spurs! His tail booms! “It’s mine!” he bellows—I can hardly understand him. He jumps straight at me!
“Stop, Frim, stop!” I cry, dodging away bewildered. It’s warm—how can Frim be wild, kill-wild?
“Brother Frim!” I call gently, soothingly. But something is badly wrong! My voice is bellowing too! Yes, in the warm and I want only to calm him, I am full of love—but the kill-roar is rushing through me, I too am swelling, rattling, booming! Invincible! To crush—to rend—
Oh, I am shamed.
I came to myself in the wreckage of Frim, Frim-pieces everywhere, myself is sodden with Frim. But I did not eat him! I did not! Should I take joy in that? Did I defy the Plan? But my throat was closed. Not because it was Frim but because of darling you. You! Where are you? The glade is empty! Oh, fearful fear, I have frightened you, you are run away! I forget Frim. I forget everything but you, my heartmeat, my precious tiny red.
I smash trees, I uproot rocks, I tear the ravine open! Oh, where are you hiding? Suddenly I have a new fear: Has my wild search harmed you? I force myself calm. I begin questing, circling, ever wider over the trees, moving cloud-silent, thrusting my eyes and ears down into every glade. A new humming fills my throat. Oooo, Oo-oo, Rum-a-looly-loo, I moan. Hunting, hunting for you.
Once I glimpse a black bigness far away and I am suddenly up at my full height, roaring. Attack the black
! Was it another brother? I would slay him, but the stranger is already vanishing. I roar again. No—it roars me, the new power of black. Yet deep inside, Myself-Moggadeet is watching, fearing. Attack the black—even in the warm? Is there no safety, are we truly like the fatclimbers? But at the same time it feels—Oh, right! Oh, good! Sweet is the Plan. I give myself up to seeking you, my new song longing Oo-loo and Looly rum-a-loo-oo-loo.
And you answered! You!
So tiny you, hidden under a leaf! Shrilling Li! Li! Lililee! Trilling, thrilling-half mocking, already imperious. Oh, how I whirl, crash, try to look under my feet, stop frozen in horror of squashing the Lilili! Lee! Rocking, longing, moaning Moggadeet.
And you came out, you did.
My adorable firemite, threatening ME!!
When I see your littlest hunting claws upraised my whole gut melts, it floods me. I am all tender jelly. Tender! Oh, tender-fierce like a Mother, I think! Isn’t that how a Mother feels? My jaws are sluicing juice that isn’t hunger-juice—I am choking with fear of frighting you or bruising your tininess—I ache to grip and knead you, to eat you in one gulp, in a thousand nibbles—
Oh, the power of red—the Old One said it! Now I feel my special hands, my tender hands I always carry hidden—now they come swelling out, come pushing toward my head! What? What?
My secret hands begin to knead and roll the stuff that’s dripping from my jaws.
Ah, that arouses you too, my redling, doesn’t it?
Yes, yes, I feel—torment—I feel your sly excitement! How your body remembers even now our love-dawn, our very first moments of Moggadeet-Leely. Before I knew You-Yourself, before you knew Me. It began then, my heartlet, our love-knowing began in that very first instant when your Moggadeet stared down at you like a monster bursting. I saw how new you were, how helpless!
Yes, even while I loomed over you marveling—even while my secret hands drew and spun your fate—even then it came to me in pity that long ago, last year when I was a child, I saw other little red ones among my brothers, before our Mother drove them away. I was only a foolish baby then; I didn’t understand. I thought they’d grown strange and silly in their redness and Mother did well to turn them out. Oh, stupid Moggadeet!
But now I saw you, my flamelet—I understood! You were only that day cast out by your Mother. Never had you felt the terrors of a night alone in the world; you couldn’t imagine that such a monster as Frim was hunting you. Oh, my ruby nestling, my baby red! Never, I vowed it, never would I leave you—and have I not kept that vow? Never! I, Moggadeet, I would be your Mother.
Great is the Plan, but I was greater!
All I learned of hunting in my lonely year, to drift like the air, to leap, to grip so delicately—all these learnings became for you! Not to bruise the smallest portion of your bright body. Oh, yes! I captured you whole in all your tiny perfection, though you sizzled and spat and fought me like the sunspark you are. And then—
And then—
I began to—Oh, terror! Delight-shame! How can I speak such a beautiful secret?—the Plan took me as a Mother guides her child, and with my special hands I began to—
I began to bind you up!
Oh, yes! Oh, yes! My special hands that had no use, now all unfurled and engorged and alive, never stopping the working in the strong juice of my jaws—they began to bind you, passing over and around and beneath you, every moment piercing me with fear and joy. I wound among your darling little limbs, into your inmost delicate recesses, gently swathing and soothing you, winding and binding until you became a shining jewel. Mine!
—But you responded. I know that now. We know! Oh, yes, in your fierce struggles, shyly you helped me, always at the end each strand fell sweetly into place… . Winding you, binding you, loving Leelyloo! … How our bodies moved in our first weaving song! I feel it even now, I melt with excitement! How I wove the silk about you, tying each tiny limb, making you perfectly helpless. How fearlessly you gazed up at me, your terrifying captor! You! You were never frightened, as I’m not frightened now. Isn’t it strange, my loveling? This sweetness that floods our bodies when we yield to the Plan. Great is the Plan! Fear it, fight it—but hold the sweetness yet.
Sweetly began our lovetime, when first I became your new true Mother, never to cast you out. How I fed you and caressed and tended and fondled you! What a responsibility it is to be a Mother. Anxiously I carried you furled in my secret arms, savagely I drove off all intruders, even the harmless banlings in the grass, in fear every moment that you were stifled or crushed!
And all the warm nights long, how I cared for your helpless little body, carefully releasing each infant limb, flexing and stretching it, cleaning every scarlet morsel of you with my giant tongue, nibbling your baby claws with my terrible teeth, reveling in your baby hum, pretending to devour you while you shrieked with glee, Li! Lillili! Love-lili, Leelylee! But the greatest joy of all—
We spoke!
We spoke together, we two! We communed, we shared, we poured ourselves one into the other. Love, how we stammered and stumbled at the first, you in your strange Mother-tongue and I in mine! How we blended our singing wordlessly and then with words, until more and more we came to see with each other’s eyes, to hear, to taste, to feel, the world of each other, until I became Leelyloo and you became Moggadeet, until finally we became together a new thing, Moggadeet-Leely, Lilliloo-Mogga, Lili-Mogga-looly-deet!
Oh, love, are we the first? Have others loved with their whole selves? Oh, sad thinking, that lovers before us have left no trace. Remember us! Will you remember, my adored, though Moggadeet has spoiled everything and the cold grows? If only I could hear you speak once more, my red, my innocent one. You are remembering, your body tells me you remember even now. Softly, hold me softly yet. Hear your Moggadeet!
You told me how it was being you, yourself, tiny-redling-Lilliloo. Of your Mother, your dreams, your baby joys and fears. And I told you mine, and all my learnings in the world since the day when my own Mother—
Hear me, my heartmate! Time runs away.
—On the last day of my childhood my Mother called us all under her.
“Sons! S-son-n-nss!” Why did her dear voice creak so?
My brothers came in slowly, fearfully, from the summer green. But I, small Moggadeet, I climb eagerly up under the great arch of her body, seeking the golden Mother-fur. Right into her warm cave I come, where her Mother-eyes are glowing, the cave that sheltered us so strongly all our lives, as I shelter you, my dawnflower.
I long to touch her, to hear her speak and sing to us again. Her Mother-fur troubles me, it is tattered and drab. Shyly I press against one of her huge food-glands. It feels dry, but a glow sparks deep in her Mother-eye.
“Mother,” I whisper. “It’s me, Moggadeet!”
“SONNNNNS!” Her voice rumbles through her armor. My big brothers huddle by her legs, peering back at the sunlight. They look so funny, shedding, half gold, half black.
“I’m afraid!” whimpers my brother Frim nearby. Like me Frim still has his gold baby fur. Mother is speaking again, but her voice booms so I can hardly understand.
“WINNN-TER! WINTER, I SAY! AFTER THE WARM COMES THE COLD WINTER. THE COLD WINTER BEFORE THE WARM COMES AGAIN, COMES … . ”
Frim whimpers louder, I cuff him. What’s wrong, why is her loving voice so hoarse and strange now? She always hummed us so tenderly, we nestled in her warm Mother-fur sucking the lovely Mother-juices, rocking to her steady walking-song. Ee mooly-mooly, Ee-mooly mooly, while far below the earth rolled by. Oh, yes, and how we held our breaths and squealed when she began her mighty hunting hum! Tann! Tann! Dir! Dir! Dir Hataan! HATONN! How we clung in the thrilling climax when she plunged upon her prey and we heard the crunching, the tearing, the gurgling in her body that meant soon her food-glands would be richly full.
Suddenly I see a black streak down below—a big brother is running away! Mother’s booming voice breaks off. Her great body tenses, her plates clash. Mother roars!
Runni
ng, screaming down below! I burrow up into her fur, am flung about as she leaps.
“OUT! GO OUT!” she bellows. Her terrible hunting-limbs crash down, she roars without words, shuddering, jolting. When I dare to peek out I see the others all have fled. All except one!
A black body is lying under Mother’s claws. It’s my brother Sesso—yes! But Mother is tearing him, is eating him! I watch in horror—Sesso she cared for so proudly, so tenderly! I sob, bury my head in her fur. But the beautiful fur is coming loose in my hands, her golden Mother-fur is dying! I cling desperately, trying not to hear the crunches, the gulps and gurgling. The world is ending, all is terrible, terrible.
And yet, my fireberry, even then I almost understood. Great is the Plan!
Presently Mother stops feeding and begins to move. The rocky ground jolts by far below. Her stride is not smooth but jerks me, even her deep hum is strange. On! On! Alone! Ever alone. And on! The rumbling ceases. Silence. Mother is resting.
“Mother!” I whisper. “Mother, it’s Moggadeet. I’m here!”
Her stomach-plates contract, a belch reverberates in her vaults.
“Go,” she groans. “Go. Too late. Mother no more.”
“I don’t want to leave you. Why must I go? Mother!” I wail, “Speak to me!” I keen my baby hum, Deet! Deet! Tikki-takka! Deet! hoping Mother will answer crooning deep, Brum! Brrumm! Brumaloo-bruin! Now I see one huge Mother-eye glow faintly, but she only makes a grating sound.
“Too late. No more … The winter, I say. I did speak … . Before the winter, go. Go.”
“Tell me about Outside, Mother,” I plead.
Another groan or cough nearly shakes me from my perch. But when she speaks again her voice sounds gentler.
“Talk?” she grumbles. “Talk, talk, talk. You are a strange son. Talk, like your Father.”
“What’s that, Mother? What’s a Father?”
She belches again. “Always talk. The winters grow, he said. Oh, yes. Tell them the winters grow. So I did. Late. Winter, I spoke you. Cold!” Her voice booms. “No more! Too late.” Outside I hear her armor rattle and clank.
Lightspeed Magazine Issue 49 Page 24