by Rich Horton
He worked particularly diligently on the eldest, then thought again and smeared away the paint on her eyes. He gripped the youngest’s face in one hand and decorated her as formally and elaborately as he could.
She tried to bite him again.
When he had finished, he pulled on his rumpled, stained apron and sword-belt, and went to the access hatch to wait, unshirted and grubby. Even the sword-belt carried stains, none, he regretted, from duels, and the sword’s edge remained dull.
Hardly a scene from a romance, he thought. But it was the best he could do with his—and Glory’s—resources fast declining.
A scratch at the access hatch. Qad pulled open the sphincter and followed the energetic leader light into the shipyard.
The Executive’s quarters surrounded Qad with opulence, everything clean and new, sharp-edged and glittering. The lights blazed. Artificial Stupids surrounded him, herded him to a bathing room, and scrubbed him and the little sisters clean. He cupped his hand over the eldest little sister, to shield her. The Artificial Stupids did not notice.
They shaved him, pomaded his hair, dressed him in silk trousers and open-fronted shirt, and made up three of the little sisters’ faces. The eldest remained concealed and unnoticed beneath his hand.
One of the Artificial Stupids handed him an elaborate modesty apron. The Artificials departed so he could arrange it himself, which puzzled him since they had already seen him, and the little sisters, naked.
He was surprised that the apron followed his own, old-fashioned customs, concealing the eyes and orifices of the little sisters.
The Artificials returned and herded him again, to an even more elaborate receiving room. The Chief Executive, dressed in vivid white with silver apron embroidery, sprawled on a black couch, his great stomach bulging into his lap. A bottle of wine stood near, with a single glass half full.
He gestured to Qad, then held up his hand to stop him at the formal five paces distant.
“I want to see what I’m getting for my patronage. I might decline, if I’m displeased.”
If that stipulation was in the proposal, Qad had forgotten it. But he could hardly object; it would do him no good.
“Show me,” the Executive said.
“May I know your name, first?”
“No. Don’t be too audacious in my presence, young adventurer.”
He knew Qad’s name, from the council meeting, but had never used it. This interbreeding would belong to the Executive’s lineage alone.
“Show me,” he said again.
Reluctantly, Qad loosed the bow of his modesty apron. He had never revealed himself to another person. He had expected—intended—for the little sisters to reproduce their lineage with him alone, to keep him pure.
Face and neck flushing hot, he pulled the apron aside, leaving its edge to conceal his eldest. Agitated by Qad’s reaction, the little sisters writhed and stretched, showing their teeth.
The Executive grabbed the apron and yanked it from Qad’s body. The frill of its neckpiece parted with a sharp rip, and the apron fluttered to the floor. Qad’s eldest little sister craned outward, fluttering smudged eyelids, snapping sharp teeth.
The Executive looked from one little sister to the next, beginning with the youngest, passing uninterested over the middle two, and fastening on the eldest.
“Names?”
Qad had never named the little sisters. It never occurred to him to do so. They were part of him; why would he name his own parts? This must be another fashion, like the modesty apron eye-slits, that he had never heard of. He turned the situation to his own advantage.
“No,” he said. “As you decreed, we aren’t exchanging names.”
The Executive laughed. “Well played, young adventurer. So. You neglect this one, which I will take and you will not miss.”
He nodded at the eldest little sister, whose teeth—smeared with misplaced red paint—snapped in a vertical line, who was most robust, most fit for the taking.
“This one—” Qad did his best to keep his expression neutral, failed, and gestured to the youngest. “This one is younger. Fresher.”
The Executive smiled. “One I will leave for you to raise.” He looked closer, inspecting the bruise Qad had left when he corrected his youngest. “And train to your will. The eldest has a longer benefit of absorbing your audacity, and perhaps your discipline in curbing it.”
Another new-fangled idea, that a little sister would learn from example, would learn from anything. Qad knew better than to argue, for the Executive had made his decision.
He had come close enough to rip off Qad’s modesty apron. Now he was even closer, pressing his belly against Qad’s stomach. He reached behind himself and loosened his trousers, allowing them to fall away from his skinny thighs, his boots, his skinny ankles and delicate feet. He kicked the silken clothing away, leaving only boots and sword-belt.
Possessed by terror, Qad reached for his own sword. The Executive snarled, grabbed his wrists, and powered him to the floor. The fur of the rug turned steely and wrapped itself around his arms and legs, pinioning him spreadeagled. On his knees, the Executive straddled him, straightened, and wrapped his arms around his own belly to pull it out of the way. His prehensile ovipositor writhed from his body, extending from his crotch.
All four of Qad’s little sisters snapped their teeth and craned toward it, but its attention focused on the eldest. It brought its tip to the little sister’s orifice and plunged inside.
Qad cried out in apprehension. The force opened him—his little sister—and extended along their tangled nerves. The ovipositor flexed and bulged, propelling the ovum along its length. The bulge reached the little sister’s orifice, pushed, failed to press past the teeth.
The little sister bit, severing the tip of the ovipositor. Lubricated by blood, the ovum squirted into the orifice. The Executive screamed and shuddered in agony and triumph.
The ovipositor dragged itself slowly back into the Executive’s body to regenerate.
Horrified, Qad felt his own ovipositor clench and writhe below his belly, aching to push out of his body. Groaning, holding himself, he managed to repress it.
The Executive rose. He gazed at Qad.
“You may leave,” he said, as if they were back in the council meeting. His docked ovipositor vanished into his body, leaving blood spatter on the Executive’s legs, on the rug, on Qad.
The rug’s restraints retracted, returning to fur, releasing him. Qad staggered to his feet, clutching his torn and stained modesty apron. Holding it against him, covering himself, he stumbled after the leader light, back to Glory, as his little sister moaned and keened and finally fell silent.
He slept.
He had no idea how long he remained insensible in his pod. When he awoke, a faint light permeated Glory’s center. His body ached.
“Glory?”
“Sleep.”
Desperately grateful for the sounds of his ship’s voice, he obeyed.
He could barely move. He hurt all over. Glory’s bulkheads glowed, more brightly than the last time he came out of his fugue. He pushed aside the material of his pod—clean now but much rougher than normal.
The eldest little sister protruded from his belly, a curve of taut skin, with a faint silver scar where the orifice had been. The other little sisters had retreated into him, leaving their sharp teeth snapping in defense and disappointment. He was ravenous. His arms and legs had shriveled to bone-thin appendages, fat and muscle absorbed to nourish the Executive’s growing interbreed. He tried to call for food, for wine. An Artificial Normal approached him—an unfamiliar one, not belonging to Glory.
It must be the Executive’s, Qad thought, here to watch and keep me.
He asked it for wine.
It extended an appendage and snapped him hard against the forehead. He fainted. After that, he no longer begged for wine. He submitted to the discomfort, even to the pain.
When the Executive pounded on the access hatch, Qad wept with
relief. He struggled out of his pod, clasping his hands beneath the enormous bulge of the little sister—no longer a little sister, but the Executive’s interbreed. If he let go, it bounced uncomfortably and kicked from inside.
He found the foreign Artificial Normal scratching and probing at the clenched sphincter, insensible to the damage it inflicted. He pushed the Artificial aside and opened Glory by hand, as gently as he could. He imagined that his ship whispered appreciation.
The Executive entered, striding on stick-thin legs, cupping his belly in his long arms. Qad imagined that he carried even more little sisters than before. Their eyes sparkled and blinked at him from beneath the modesty apron. The Executive smiled, baring long teeth beneath cadaverous gums.
“It is time?” Qad asked.
“You have plenty of time.”
The Executive guided him back to his pod, waited while he settled in, and sat on a chair produced—how? Qad wondered, and realized that the Executive’s patronage gave the Executive authority over Glory’s resources.
He slept and woke again and again. He lost track of time. A nutrition tube crawled down his throat, assuaging his hunger but leaving the aches untouched, the discomfort of the interbreed increasing. Always when he woke he found the Executive watching him. He tried to speak but the tube gagged him and kept him silent.
Pain roused him.
The bulge of the interbreed clenched, released, clenched again. Its nerves, tangled with his own, fired agony into his belly, his ovipositor, his spine. He screamed against the nutrition tube. It scrambled out of his way, falling from his lips. The Executive stood over him, silently watching.
The scar of the little sister’s orifice split open, searing him with a pain more intense than any he had ever experienced. The head of the interbreed protruded through the toothless opening, followed by shoulders, then skinny, spidery arms. As the Executive reached down, the interbreed’s sharp teeth snapped. The Executive flicked his fingernail against the interbreed’s cheek, bringing a long, wailing cry, which the Executive ignored. He picked up the new being, whose long thin legs and delicate feet slid from the pouch created by the little sister’s presence. The neck of the pouch closed and cut it off, spilling fluids into Qad’s nest. The pouch shriveled and fell away.
“Let me hold—” Qad cut himself off when he heard his own voice, dry and raspy, begging. The Executive gazed down at him, impassive, one arm cradling the interbreed, the other his belly.
If he lets me hold the interbreed, Qad thought, I’ll never let go. I’ll have to duel him.
And he will win.
Glory groaned as the Executive’s Artificial wrenched open the access sphincter, but a moment later the lights and power returned, along with the soft sounds of Glory’s life.
“Sleep,” whispered the ship.
Qad obeyed.
In a millennium of time, he woke. Glory pulsed around him, full of life and starlight, sensing nearby untouched worlds.
Qad’s belly ached where the little sister had lived, where the interbreed had grown. He throbbed with longing for the interbreed, but Glory was so far from the ship dock that the Executive must have solidified his new lineage. The interbreed would be entirely his creature. The Executive would give the interbreed a modern ship and send him out to conquer, to colonize, to perform evolutionary eliminations with the audacity the Executive so valued. Qad would never see either of them again.
A spiral of arousal moved beneath the scar of the interbreed’s birth. A new little sister, descended from the one he had lost, struggled to grow from its leftover ganglion. The other little sisters craned to see it. Qad snatched up the modesty apron that Glory had created anew for him, and flung it over them. Following his custom, it was solid and opaque. The little sisters squeaked and snapped, competing for his attention beneath the heavy shipsilk.
Three only, Qad thought. They are pure. The fourth is . . . gone, used up, contaminated. I want never to think of the eldest little sister again.
He reached toward it through his nerves, to its leftover ganglion, and extinguished it with a rush of anger. It burned out, leaving him bereft.
Ignoring the other little sisters, for now, he turned his attention to Glory, and singled out a new world.
Folding Beijing
Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu
1.
At ten of five in the morning, Lao Dao crossed the busy pedestrian lane on his way to find Peng Li.
After the end of his shift at the waste processing station, Lao Dao had gone home, first to shower and then to change. He was wearing a white shirt and a pair of brown pants—the only decent clothes he owned. The shirt’s cuffs were frayed, so he rolled them up to his elbows. Lao Dao was forty–eight, single, and long past the age when he still took care of his appearance. As he had no one to pester him about the domestic details, he had simply kept this outfit for years. Every time he wore it, he’d come home afterward, take off the shirt and pants, and fold them up neatly to put away. Working at the waste processing station meant there were few occasions that called for the outfit, save a wedding now and then for a friend’s son or daughter.
Today, however, he was apprehensive about meeting strangers without looking at least somewhat respectable. After five hours at the waste processing station, he also had misgivings about how he smelled.
People who had just gotten off work filled the road. Men and women crowded every street vendor, picking through local produce and bargaining loudly. Customers packed the plastic tables at the food hawker stalls, which were immersed in the aroma of frying oil. They ate heartily with their faces buried in bowls of hot and sour rice noodles, their heads hidden by clouds of white steam. Other stands featured mountains of jujubes and walnuts, and hunks of cured meat swung overhead. This was the busiest hour of the day—work was over, and everyone was hungry and loud.
Lao Dao squeezed through the crowd slowly. A waiter carrying dishes shouted and pushed his way through the throng. Lao Dao followed close behind.
Peng Li lived some ways down the lane. Lao Dao climbed the stairs but Peng wasn’t home. A neighbor said that Peng usually didn’t return until right before market closing time, but she didn’t know exactly when.
Lao Dao became anxious. He glanced down at his watch: Almost 5:00 AM.
He went back downstairs to wait at the entrance of the apartment building. A group of hungry teenagers squatted around him, devouring their food. He recognized two of them because he remembered meeting them a couple of times at Peng Li’s home. Each kid had a plate of chow mein or chow fun, and they shared two dishes family–style. The dishes were a mess while pairs of chopsticks continued to search for elusive, overlooked bits of meat amongst the chopped peppers. Lao Dao sniffed his forearms again to be sure that the stench of garbage was off of him. The noisy, quotidian chaos around him assured him with its familiarity.
“Listen, do you know how much they charge for an order of twice-cooked pork over there?” a boy named Li asked.
“Fuck! I just bit into some sand,” a heavyset kid named Ding said while covering his mouth with one hand, which had very dirty fingernails. “We need to get our money back from the vendor!”
Li ignored him. “Three hundred and forty yuan!” said Li. “You hear that? Three forty! For twice–cooked pork! And for boiled beef? Four hundred and twenty!”
“How could the prices be so expensive?” Ding mumbled as he clutched his cheek. “What do they put in there?”
The other two youths weren’t interested in the conversation and concentrated on shoveling food from the plate into the mouth. Li watched them, and his yearning gaze seemed to go through them and focus on something beyond.
Lao Dao’s stomach growled. He quickly averted his eyes, but it was too late. His empty stomach felt like an abyss that made his body tremble. It had been a month since he last had a morning meal. He used to spend about a hundred each day on this meal, which translated to three thousand for the month. If he could stick to his plan for
a whole year, he’d be able to save enough to afford two months of tuition for Tangtang’s kindergarten.
He looked into the distance: The trucks of the city cleaning crew were approaching slowly.
He began to steel himself. If Peng Li didn’t return in time, he would have to go on this journey without consulting him. Although it would make the trip far more difficult and dangerous, time was of the essence and he had to go. The loud chants of the woman next to him hawking her jujube interrupted his thoughts and gave him a headache. The peddlers at the other end of the road began to pack up their wares, and the crowd, like fish in a pond disturbed by a stick, dispersed. No one was interested in fighting the city cleaning crew. As the vendors got out of the way, the cleaning trucks patiently advanced. Vehicles were normally not allowed in the pedestrian lane, but the cleaning trucks were an exception. Anybody who dilly–dallied would be packed up by force.
Finally, Peng Li appeared: His shirt unbuttoned, a toothpick dangling between his lips, strolling leisurely and burping from time to time. Now in his sixties, Peng had become lazy and slovenly. His cheeks drooped like the jowls of a Shar–Pei, giving him the appearance of being perpetually grumpy. Looking at him now, one might get the impression that he was a loser whose only ambition in life was a full belly. However, even as a child, Lao Dao had heard his father recounting Peng Li’s exploits when he had been a young man.
Lao Dao went up to meet Peng in the street. Before Peng Li could greet him, Lao Dao blurted out, “I don’t have time to explain, but I need to get to First Space. Can you tell me how?”
Peng Li was stunned. It had been ten years since anyone brought up First Space with him. He held the remnant of the toothpick in his fingers—it had broken between his teeth without his being aware of it. For some seconds, he said nothing, but then he saw the anxiety on Lao Dao’s face and dragged him toward the apartment building. “Come into my place and let’s talk. You have to start from there anyway to get to where you want to go.”