Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 114

by Neil Clarke

  “No:” Wren and Chena together.

  And Dee, eyes turned for the first time to others, and knowing at last: “I’ve killed you.”

  Again, “No,” Chena said. “We are here for you, but not just for you.” And she smiled, the Linnel-whelk in her hand-that-is-paw. “We had our own reasons, as well.”

  “You said nothing,” said Dee.

  “When was there space?” Wren said. “Your needs always fill you. Where was there room for Chena to long for Linnel—or for me?”

  Dee said, “What is your reason, then?”

  “I was curious, that’s all.”

  This was a lie. Wren’s heart is her own, and her wishes too; Wren if she chooses may speak somewhile of her reasons, my chirkling dears; but they are not mine to share, any more than are yours.

  Coyotes or rather Coyote must always be doing. Dee waited for Jace, until she didn’t: light-minded, still longing but restless. She paced the other shore, and then the long sandy hills, and peeked over the ridge’s edge. And at last: “I can see a way out of this. I can save you.”

  “We don’t want saving,” Wren said; but Dee unheeding as ever: “That’s trees, that dark line along the horizon. And if there are trees there are more trees, and maybe something past them. We can’t go back but maybe we can go forward, and maybe on the back side of nothing is all. Dayworld sun and insects hazing the sky at dusk, the taste of sweet water. Think of it: home.”

  Wren chirping sharp: “This is home. See my nest? See my eggs?” And Chena held Linnel close, and looked down at you, dear ones, all her shells.

  “Well fuck,” said Dee; “and I’ll have to do this alone.” Dee silent a moment, then: “I am sorry.” And this was the first time she said that word, to any. And perhaps only.

  And she left. She has not returned, though Wren thinks she cannot in any case, but she goes on and on. Perhaps there is a way back to the dayworld and around and through that place, and thus down to the night beach again, and that she will return across or under the sand-floored sea. Or not.

  And so you are here, O my darlings, and this is to the credit of Dee and of Wren and of Chena. Here you are dead on the beach-grassy shore beneath a nest-moon and bird-stars, but at least you are not deader than dead. There is for you no way back to the dayworld lands or the night beach; but there never was, and here are no beaked and tentacled things.

  There are always more of you, always new shells, massy and dark on the night beach, and some come here sooner, and later some: lingering shells on that night-beach shore waiting for their own loves Dee-like and like Chena to come searching for them—only none do. No one makes the tumble to the beach of her own will; or only a few.

  Over us is Wren’s tight-woven moon and her dark-winged fledglings, that have scattered like stars across the dun sky; and who is the father of them I may guess. Do the dead overlap? I do not know: only that she is content enough, and as thens have collected, so have the shells of her vast chattering family, aunts and sisters and brothers and bickering uncles.

  Jace remains lost but tides bring shells with each wave. Some scallop or slipper may contain him or may not. For Dee’s sake I ask them all if they have seen him, but their chirtle and skankling speech is all for each other, and they do not answer. If he is found in the hard lacy curl of a murex, I will tell him that Dee has gone on; and he will follow or not: he has other kin here, other loves. Love is no one-thing but many. We are never alone.

  Or perhaps he is deader than dead. That is a way that things are, too.

  Dee did what Coyotes do that are creator and creature: rush and long and drag a train of chaos behind them and then leave others behind to build what they can from whatever remains. But I that am Chena am dog, god, and girl, and what Chenas that are dogs do, is love and watch over—and here I am not alone, with Wren singing above, and the whorl of whelk-Linnel in my hand to murmur in my ear. And you all, O my darlings, to tell this tale to—so perhaps you are not so dead after all. What is life but stories, and love?

  This is the why of the Land of the Dead.

  About the Author

  Kij Johnson is the author of several novels, including The Fox Woman and Fudoki, and a short story collection, At the Mouth of the River of Bees. She is a three-time winner of the Nebula Award, and has also won the Hugo, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, and Crawford Awards. In the past she has worked in publishing, edited cryptic crosswords, waitressed in a strip bar, identified Napa cabernets by winery and year while blindfolded, and climbed an occasional V-5. These days, she teaches at the University of Kansas, where she is associate director for the Center for the Study of Science Fiction.

  Chimera

  Gu Shi, translated by S. Qiouyi Lu and Ken Liu

  An individual, organ, or part consisting of tissues of diverse genetic constitution.

  —Merriam-Webster

  1. Chimera

  It had the fore part of a lion, the tail of a dragon, and its third head, the middle one, was that of a goat, through which it belched fire.

  It was begotten by Typhon on Echidna, as Hesiod relates.

  —Apollodorus, Bibliotheca, Book 2, Chapter 3

  (as translated by Sir James George Frazer)

  I watch her enter.

  In the six years since we parted ways, I’ve always wanted to know: exactly how cold and calculating is the machine under the soft, lustrous skin of this witch?

  She sees me, her eyes filling with delight—no trace of embarrassment, nor shame.

  “Evan.” She quickens her footsteps. “Darling, long time no see.”

  A delicate, warm perfume wafts from her approaching figure, the same as the scent in my memory. I recall what she said as she bared her heart to me, not long after we were married:

  “Lately I’ve been thinking—I could write my dissertation based on pictures of my expressions: Managing Emotions and Social Responses. What do you think? Take smiles: I know over a thousand of them, and each requires the manipulation of different muscle groups. Each one can be the response for many situations, and their combinations are infinite!

  “The only difficulty is meticulous expression management. It would require massive calculations; perhaps it’s untenable—Evan, don’t look at me that way—enough. See, you musicians always misunderstand the scientific mind. I’m not a machine; a Turing machine would never be able to figure out in such a short time which smile to use in which circumstance—I’m a human being, a wonderful creation.

  “This is a worthy subject for biology.”

  She solemnly pointed at her head, then laughed with a snort: sweet, innocent, like she couldn’t contain herself. “Look at you. So serious! I’m just joking around.”

  Now, she stands before me in a fine cashmere coat, a silk scarf snug against her throat: both wrapping her well-exercised, slim body. Nothing escapes her keen interest: she studies society, fashion, health, romance. She studies me, studies my passions, my expressions, my movements, as though I’m the most fascinating person she’s ever seen. In reality, I’m no different than the rats in her laboratory. She grants my wishes—then takes them away.

  She looks at me, the joy displayed by the curved corners of her mouth calibrated perfectly. But, face-to-face with my ex-wife, I can’t call forth the happiness from when we were in love.

  I’m weary of this.

  “I just wanted to talk about Tony.”

  No tabloid reporter would ever believe the truth: a mother abandoning her swaddled infant and guiltless husband on the same day as the child’s birth, then disappearing off the face of the Earth for six years.

  “I know.”

  I finally catch a flicker of weakness in her eyes, but her voice remains level.

  “I was just about to come talk to you about him, too.”

  Tony is six.

  If it weren’t for what happened three months ago, I would have never contacted his mother. That day, as I took Tony to the park, a maroon Honda barreled out of nowhere onto the sidewalk and pulled Tony unde
r a tire. After five days in the emergency room, he opened his eyes, but his kidneys had sustained irreparable damage. Upon discovering that his body couldn’t take a kidney transplant, I realized that my son would have to undergo dialysis three times a week for the rest of his life. In despair, I pored over every piece of medical literature I could get my hands on until I stumbled upon the topic of regenerative medicine, the goal of which is to use the patient’s own stem cells to grow replacement organs.

  One of the foremost scientists in this field is my ex-wife. A rising star, she’s in charge of a new chimera lab that successfully grew a rat’s pancreas inside a mouse. They created a chimera that had never before existed in nature. In journal articles, commentators viewed this study as a milestone for regenerative medicine. Based on this success, a human-pig chimera could, in theory, be viable. And now, I’m hoping that she can grow Tony’s kidneys inside a pig. After the pig matures, the kidneys can be transplanted back to Tony.

  As she gently stirs a cup of Darjeeling tea, she murmurs, “Of course I love him. You have no idea how painful the news of the accident was for me. But what you mentioned in your letter—I really can’t make that happen.”

  “I read your article, plus the discussions in Cell. You and your lab are the only people in the whole world who would be able to duplicate Tony’s kidneys.” Seeing her disbelief, I can’t stop myself from adding, “Please don’t assume that I can’t find and read scientific articles.”

  “Of course. You’re so smart—if you want to accomplish something, you’ll get it done.” She masks her surprise and lets out a small sigh. “It’s just that, if you’ve already read my article, then you’d know that this is all only theoretical. Rat-mouse chimeras and human-pig chimeras are two entirely different things; it’s like—” She looks up, blinking, then looks back at me. “—Like how you can sing, and you can play guitar, but that doesn’t mean you can play a pipe organ.”

  “I could do it with time,” I say. “These skills share similar principles.”

  Facepalm. “Lord, that was a terrible analogy. How should I explain this to you . . . I imagine you already know how the chimera I created came to be.”

  I turn on my iPad. I’ve already highlighted many paragraphs in her article, so I find the quote I’m looking for easily: “We injected induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) from a rat into blastocysts from a mouse lacking the Pdx1 gene. Mice lacking the Pdx1 gene are unable to develop a normal pancreas; the rat iPS cells were able to remedy the genetic deficiency of the recipient mouse blastocysts. These rat-mouse chimeras were able to develop into adults with normal, functional pancreases.”1

  She points to a sentence. “Oh right, this part. You must know that rats and mice are two entirely different animals, right? In taxonomical terms, the former is of the genus Rattus, and the latter is Mus—”

  I interrupt her. “Of course!”

  “Sorry.” She shrugs, then points again at that line of text. “Look here. If we wanted to use a similar method to create a human-pig chimera, then we would first have to get blastocysts from a pig that lacks the genes to produce kidneys. But where would we get such blastocysts? And how would we locate genes that can develop kidneys? These are all problems we have to solve from the ground up, and we don’t know if we’d be successful at any of them.”2

  “I’m begging you to try.” I see her lips opening and closing, but I don’t understand her words. “I know there’s no guarantee of success.”

  “Please don’t say ‘beg’; he’s also my son. I’m willing to do anything for him.” She implores me with a doleful look, her eyebrows downturned. “‘Try’—See, that’s the second question. Let’s say we could find all the genes that contribute to kidney development and knock them out of the pig blastocyst with precision. Then what? Can I inject Tony’s cells into the blastocyst? No. Using human embryonic stem cells to do research is illegal and highly unethical.”

  “You care about that?” I stare at her, astounded. “You care about ethics?”

  She touches a finger to her lips. “Please lower your voice.”

  I know her all too well. If she didn’t want to respond to my request, she wouldn’t have come to see me.

  She winks, as if we share an unspeakable little secret.

  “Tell me, what would it take to get you to try?” I really can’t take much more of her antics.

  She breaks eye contact and turns to look outside. A long silence. I gaze at her profile: her refined, nurturing face is as beautiful as it was the last time I saw her. In the afternoon light, she’s radiant, like a statue of the Virgin Mary in a church—a cold statue that can breathe. At last, she smiles and turns back to me:

  “A mother smashing through scientific taboos to save her son’s life—such a tale is enough for me, even better if I get to play the role of the magnificent mother in this story.”

  Yes, that would be her. Her actions are endowed with philosophy and poetry, but her performance is always built upon her own awareness of the philosophy and poetry that her actions will bring to her. In her mind, she’s cut off from the rest of the world, a god surveying the Earth. She will undertake this difficult task not because Tony is her son, but because doing so will turn her into a glorious legend.

  What a selfish, abhorrent monster.

  She continues. “I must tell you that I have no confidence of success. When it comes to human experimentation, there’s no precedent to refer to, and I may even create a monster—but that’s what makes it exciting, no? I’ll do it, but I still recommend that you go to the hospital and look into standard kidney transplant—”

  “Every one of his lymphocyte cross-matching tests has come back positive.”

  She looks at me, not quite understanding. “So?”

  “Kidneys from a donor will likely lead to acute rejection,” I say. “It’s possible he can only take a transplant from his own body.”

  “My God.” She furrows her brow.

  “Right now we’re relying on dialysis to keep him alive. You can’t imagine how painful this is.” I think of Tony’s cries and can’t help but shudder.

  The light in her eyes grows firm and resolute. “I understand. I’ll put my all into this.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “There’s one more thing that I should tell you.” She gets up and walks to my chair, then sits on the armrest. She holds up the iPad and finds another paragraph. “Look here.”

  A few locks of her hair fall against my face. I stare at those words, but they’re beyond my comprehension. I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”

  “The commentator here points out that although the result of the chimera experiment is successful, we don’t fully understand the underlying principles. So, in the course of these experiments, we can’t control the degree of chimerization. Although the goal may be to produce a pancreas, other areas of the mouse body may also have rat cells.”

  “So?”

  “This is the primary reason why we can’t just play around with human cells in research,” she says. “If we did a human-pig chimera experiment, I have no way of controlling how many human cells end up in the pig.”

  “I still don’t understand what you’re trying to say.”

  “Think about it, Evan.” She puts her hands on my shoulders and looks at me. “This pig may become a second Tony—our son could be concealed in its body. And when it grows up, we’ll snatch its kidneys together, then kill it.”

  A. Adam

  Lin Ke lay outside the operating room.

  They were already an hour late, and the anesthesiologist hadn’t even arrived yet. The only thing separating her naked body from the people walking up and down the corridor was a thin layer of white fabric. She felt very uneasy.

  “Why haven’t we started yet?” she asked the nurse.

  Flustered, the nurse replied, “We’ve just received notice that due to factors outside our control, your cultivated organ order was canceled. We’re very sorry.”

  What kin
d of reason was that?! She was the biggest goody-two-shoes aboard this spaceship. In all her one hundred years here, she’d always paid her cultivated organ insurance premiums on time to ensure that her every organ would remain young and healthy. Her heart, the very organ that she was trying to replace, palpitated from rage.

  She put on her clothes as quickly as she could. The first thing she did was to file a police report. Then, she took the rail to Deck Seven—supposedly, her new organ was there, in an Adam.

  “As your customer,” she protested to the overseer, “I demand an explanation for why my order was canceled. I absolutely will not wait another three years with only this shoddy heart!”

  “But your order is perfectly fine,” the overseer said, surprised. He turned on the monitor. The feed showed the interior of an organ cultivation cabin: organ after organ was wrapped in thin film, all of them growing from tubes that hung from the ceiling. They looked like bunches of grapes waiting for harvest.

  But the heart that belonged to Lin Ke was already gone and marked as “harvested.”

  Stunned, Lin Ke checked the hospital’s information platform again, forwarding the notice with the subject “Order Cancellation” to the overseer. But she wasn’t expecting that he would doubt the veracity of the notice. “Ma’am, our monitoring platform can’t be wrong.”

  The overseer’s response enraged Lin Ke. She stood up. “If you can’t figure out what happened, then I’ll have to go take a look myself.”

  “Of course. The organ cultivation contract specifies that to be within your rights.” The overseer didn’t back down at all. “But please remember, you can only look. You cannot enter the cabin.”

  Ten minutes later, Lin Ke, accompanied by a police droid, opened the door to Organ Cultivation Cabin 35. A horrifying, bloody stench assaulted her nose. As she realized what she was seeing, her view narrowed to an intense spasm as her chest tightened. Then, everything went dark as she fainted.