by Linda Nagata
Nikko gripped the glass cage that enclosed the balcony and looked out on the Highway. It was less than a kilometer away, a great ribbon of black glass and amber lights rising out of the Castle’s courtyard, straight up past the hundreds of spires of intricately worked glass and white ceramic perfection that were the Castle towers, past the gel lock and the transparent bubble that encased this fairyland. On into the empty spaces of the Gulf until it vanished in the dark and the distance. Black on black, the Imperial Highway stretched for over forty thousand miles until it met the Earth.
It was night in India.
Every half hour an elevator car the size of a ten story building would appear on one of the Highway’s six Castle-bound tracks, decelerating rapidly as it approached the Castle gates. Fifteen minutes later another car would leave on one of the six Earth-bound tracks. Nikko could make that journey only as a ghost. His physique had been designed for the variable G of Summer House, his own native city, where the highest pseudogravity reached only three-quarters Earth normal. This was one of his few regrets.
He breathed in the pleasant atmosphere. It was a few degrees warmer here than inside, reminding him of the balmy interior of Summer House. He felt his dark mood begin to ease. Perhaps he could find it in himself to charm Kirstin after all.
He let himself drift down into a chair beside her, as a ’bot rolled onto the balcony, carrying a pot of tea on its flat back. It squatted between them, performing as a table.
Kirstin lifted the teapot and carefully poured a syrupy stream, then set china splash lids on the full cups. Steam rose in white tendrils through the sipping slots.
Nikko reached for his cup. His enameled fingers clacked against the bone-white china: like meeting like. He felt the searing heat and the steam in his nostrils. He gently picked up the cup. If a third person had been present, the intruding eyes would have seen the cup still upon the table, undisturbed, while Kirstin drank her tea alone, because a ghost could not really affect the physical world, not so much as by picking up a cup.
But within the cloistered reality shared by Nikko and Kirstin, this long-fingered hand that seemed to move the cup was a faithful depiction of the actual hand of the real Nikko Jiang-Tibayan, complete with the same disabilities. His hand twitched in a sudden, grotesque spasm. Scalding tea sloshed against the cup’s lid, emerging like a dark ribbon through the sipping slot to collapse in a burning line across his wrist. He swore at the pain, and his hand snapped down, inadvertently launching the cup toward the tiled floor. It fell like a tiny missile, shattering on impact, shards of ceramic perfection flying apart in a fountaining explosion of unhappy disorder.
Kirstin watched the pieces fly overhead, then fall back down again in long arcs. Globs and streamers of dark tea added to the illusory mess. She looked at Nikko and clucked in studied scorn. “You’re getting so clumsy, Nikko darling. And my fine antiques! If you were real, and no ghost, I daresay I wouldn’t have the nerve to bring them out at all.”
His hand twitched again. He hated himself. He sat very stiff in his chair and stared out at the thread of the Imperial Highway. “What do you expect?” he asked softly. “I’m dying.”
“Oh, please. That’s in such bad taste.”
“You can stop it.” He bit down hard on his lip, horrified at what he’d just said. He hadn’t planned it. The words had just rolled off his tongue. He turned stiffly, to see what effect this blunder would have on Kirstin.
Her face was lit with the faintest of smiles. “At last, at last,” she crooned. Her brown eyes chided him. “Nikko darling, I love you for your stubbornness. But I see even you have limits. And finally, after—what has it been now? two years in my bed?—you come to the point of this charade of love. ‘Kirstin, dearest,’“ she said, mocking his deep voice, “‘I’ve screwed you faithfully. Now won’t you grant me a reprieve?’“ She laughed. “My sweet gigolo.”
His kisheer unfolded across his shoulders in a short cape, the thin film of it aquiver with his silent rage. Gigolo. She was kind. Whore was the word he might have used. Fuck for your life.
“You’re a hard old hypocrite,” he told her. “But you won’t have much longer to enjoy me in your bed. How do you think you’ll feel when I’m irretrievably gone?”
“Oh, Nikko, you flatter yourself. Remember, you’re a ghost. I’ve never even touched you, really. And you’ve never touched me.”
“Ghost or flesh: we know what’s real.”
“You won’t be the first lover who’s died in my arms.”
“There won’t be anyone else like me.”
“So true. Freak.”
He bolted to his feet. He couldn’t help himself. He caught hold of the glass cage that enclosed the balcony to arrest his momentum, then turned back to look at her. One long-fingered hand coiled in on itself as he recalled the smooth, soft vulnerability of her throat.
But he was only a ghost, and he’d never touched her.
“You know I need you,” he said, his words emerging mangled past his shame. “What would you have me do?”
She smiled, her teeth an icy wall that seemed to flow out around him. He felt himself trapped in her voracious bite. “I would have you beg.”
He was a dying man. And imminent mortality breeds its own desperation. Beg. He let go of the cage bars. He felt himself drift down to the tiles, legs bent. He landed on his knees. He watched himself, a ghost outside a ghost as the words she’d commanded spilled from his throat in a voice choked with frustration. “Please, Kirstin. You’re the only one who might save me. Please grant me a reprieve. Just let me live.”
“No.” Her gaze cut across him in scathing triumph, from his head to his bended knees. “You’re an illegal creation. An abomination in the eyes of the Goddess, and I will not abide your existence beyond your lawful span—no matter how fine a fuck you are.”
He shuddered—a nikko-blue china teacup deliberately flicked off the table for the pleasure Kirstin would take in watching him shatter against the floor.
“Stop playing with me!” he screamed. “What do you want from me?”
“Nothing I haven’t already taken.”
“You can’t let me die.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you—after you’re gone, do you think you might will me your carapace? That fine china exoskull would make a marvelous addition to my bedroom collection.”
His hands twitched. His fingers tapped like the legs of some monstrous spider against the dark skin of her finely muscled thigh. She’d gone too far. There were some affronts that even a whore couldn’t overlook.
But it was all right, he told himself. He was glad she’d done it. Because now the rules of the game would change.
He felt his anger blossom into a kind of fierce joy. Now there were no rules at all.
“Enjoy your moment,” he told her. “Because I’ll see to it you don’t outlive me.”
She laughed at the absurdity of his threat. “Oh, Nikko. I’m going to miss you. I really am.”
But it was all right. He prepared his ghost to leave while she watched him with mocking eyes.
“You’ll be back,” she said. “Because you’ll always carry the niggling hope that I might change my mind.”
“Don’t believe it.” He left her, to retreat home across the net.
Chapter
3
Visions tumbled through Phousita’s mind like paper images tossed about by an impish wind: scraps of memory, half-forgotten knowledge, outright fantasy, all aswirl, visible for a moment, then gone, gone, gone away to nowhere, swept around a corner, she couldn’t catch them, hold on to them, every bit of her life slipping by. And something that wasn’t a part of her life, recurring. A face. It appeared and disappeared, and alone amongst all the other images, appeared again. It matched nothing in her memory, this angular face, lovely as an angel. White skin, blond hair, unnaturally angry eyes. A song surged around it. She reached out to touch it and it faded again.
The song went on. It tugged at her, and unwillin
gly, her eyes fluttered open.
Sumiati’s lilting voice rolled over her and she found herself staring at the familiar mildew-stained graffiti that covered the wall beside her hammock. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the cracks between the boards, striping her fingers as they clutched at the hammock’s coarse nylon webbing.
She could see the angel’s face again. It drifted just behind her eyes, a haunting, spectral image. Fear permeated her body like a poison. She lifted her head. Her hair clung in sticky threads to her sweat-dampened cheeks. Cautiously, she looked over her shoulder, half expecting to see the angel himself.
Sumiati squatted nearby, tending a pot of rice set to cook over a small gas fire. She sang a soft pop tune, mimicking words from a language no one but Arif understood. Two children played quietly beside her, seemingly oblivious of the oppressive afternoon heat. Silently, Phousita eased her aching body from the hammock. She swept her oily hair out of her face and shivered. What witch had sent her such an evil dream?
“Hey,” she called softly. “Sumiati?”
The kids looked up from their game and started jabbering excitedly. Sumiati turned around to stare, her mouth a small circle of surprise.
“Sumiati, I don’t feel very well,” Phousita said. Her hand rose tentatively to a half-remembered wound on her breast. She frowned, perplexed, as the soft touch of her fingers elicited a mild jolt of pain. She looked down to see a tiny circle of angry red flesh.
“Phousita!”
Her head jerked up. Sumiati hunkered by the fire, staring at her as if she were a ghost. The children had fled.
“Phousita,” Sumiati whispered. “Is it you?”
Phousita looked down at her hands. “I had a dream . . . about a dead man . . . and an angel.”
“It was no dream! Oh, you said tuan’s presence here was a bad sign. Phousita, you were right.” Despite the bulk of her pregnancy, Sumiati rose gracefully to her feet, her eyes suddenly brimming with tears. “Tuan was evil! You were so deeply asleep when Arif pulled you out of the river, we couldn’t wake you. We thought tuan had killed you, and stolen your body to house his own wicked spirit. Phousita—” She caught Phousita’s hands in hers, squeezed them tight, kissed her cheek. Her eyes were shining. “I’m so glad it’s you.”
But Phousita wasn’t so sure. The image of the angel that occupied her mind—this was not the face of dead tuan. Still, she sensed something new inside her, a foreign presence rapidly growing in strength. She squatted by the cooking pot, staring into the blue gas flame. Compulsively, her fingers kept returning to the wound on her breast. It was no dream. Then tuan must have been a sorcerer. What spell had the needle cast when it entered her body?
Sumiati squatted beside her. She adjusted the height of the flame, then glanced at Phousita. “You know, I’ve never seen Arif so angry.”
“Oh?” She looked up, surprised.
Sumiati nodded. “Yes. He said he would drive tuan’s spirit from your body or kill you himself.”
Phousita glanced around nervously.
“He’s gone,” Sumiati assured her. “He took the Knives and went to temple market to sell tuan’s clothes. He’s going to bring the Chinese doctor back with him, whether he wants to come or not.” She nodded knowingly.
Phousita’s eyes widened in surprise. The Chinese doctor never left his little shop to visit patients. How would Arif convince him to come? And then, “I don’t need a doctor,” she realized. Any money Arif got from the clothes would be wasted on the doctor’s fee. The clan needed that money for food! Fish and fruit for the children, more rice, cooking oil. And of course medicine, when the next plague swept through the city. Phousita rose to her feet. “I have to find him.”
But Sumiati was shaking her head. “Arif warned me you might wake up and try to leave. He said I must keep you here. He left some of the Knives. . . .” Her voice trailed off in embarrassment.
“Sumiati!” But the girl refused to look up. Phousita stamped her bare heel against the broken vinyl floor. She started toward the door, the only way out of this little room at the end of the warehouse where she and Sumiati and the littlest children took their naps.
A boy and a girl stepped out of the shadows beyond the door to block her way. Phousita could read fear in their eyes, but their hands were steady as they passed a knife back and forth in a deadly juggling act, the blade moving so quickly it seemed to be in a dozen places at once. The leaping blade of the knife wove a fence of steel across her path.
She stared up at them. Little Sri was only seven, yet already taller than she. Phousita had delivered her in the shelter of a cardboard box on a dark morning when the rain hammered down as if it were determined to flood the world. Maman was a year or two older (nobody was quite certain). Arif had rescued him from a municipal cop who was beating him for sleeping on the sidewalk after dawn.
Phousita had become surrogate mother for both of them. She knew they loved her. Would they really cut her? She didn’t believe it, but their eyes begged her not to test them. Arif was their master. He’d trained them in this deadly game and he would beat them if they didn’t obey.
Her fist clenched in sudden anger. To force children into such a terrible choice! To give pain, or to receive it. . . . She would have no part of that.
Her hand opened. She smiled gently and beckoned to them. “Come. We’ll help Sumiati with the sewing.” Gratitude shone in their eyes. She stepped back, and the flashing blade of the knife disappeared.
Through the last hour of the steamy afternoon Phousita and Sumiati tended to chores while the river grumbled beneath the rotting floorboards. There were clothes to be mended, children to be bathed, and more pots of rice to be cooked. (There was only one pot and one stove so that the rice had to be scraped into a large plastic tub after each batch was finished.)
Voices drifted in from the street—idle chatter of the homeless, the hungry, waiting for the cover of night before they tried to approach the river. Twice, alert sentries called the Knives out to defend the warehouse against trespassers. Shots rang out once. At the sound of the rifles Phousita and Sumiati hurried to the windows to peer past the crumbling cardboard shades.
A hunting party from the Islamic Resurgence occupied the cracked concrete of the riverbank. Two men stood guard, their ancient weapons at the ready while a third carefully searched the blood-soaked clothes of an emaciated beggar caught feeding on the fluff. The Resurgence claimed a devil had cast the spell that cleansed the river; they shot on sight anyone who dared to eat from the devil’s hand. Someday soon they’d discover Arif’s fluff booms under the warehouse and then they’d burn the old building down. The clan would make its home on the street again.
Phousita watched until the beggar’s body was kicked into the water, then she turned away, picked up a broom, and began to sweep at nonexistent dust while once again the face of the white angel filled her inner vision. Altogether, it was a quiet afternoon.
“Arif is here!”
Phousita started awake at the whispered warning. Twilight had fallen. She lay in the half-light, numbed by the sweltering heat left behind by the long afternoon. Her shoulder ached where she’d been sleeping on the hard floor.
“Phousita?” the voice whispered again.
She stirred herself with an effort. “I’m here. I understand.” A figure at the door turned away and disappeared. She looked around. Sumiati and the children were gone. She could hear a commotion in the front of the warehouse, the cheerful, bragging, bantering chaos that always accompanied the end of the day when the clan’s foragers returned from the city. Her hand rose, to touch the sweat-slick skin surrounding the wound on her breast. In her belly, hunger growled and scraped like a beast in a barren cage.
Sumiati had left the last pot of rice on the floor to cool.
Phousita became profoundly conscious of this fact as she sat listening to the distant noise of the new arrivals. The pot was very close. It was possible she could reach it simply by raising her arm. Her belly roared in urgency.
Never had she felt hunger like this! Perspiration trickled down her cheek as she fought to ignore the sweet aroma of the rice. Suddenly, she could stand it no longer.
“Arif!” she screamed, and her fists pounded against the crumbling floor. “Arif come free me. I’m dying, dying.” She pressed her face against the floor. The torn linoleum scraped her skin. The rice pot drew nearer. She couldn’t understand how it did this. She tried to turn away from it. Her hands shook as she sought to burrow into the floor. Her fingers burned as the rice pot touched them. She snatched them away, but the pot pursued her, searing her palms with steam as she removed the lid. She flung it across the room and screamed again. She pounded her forehead against the floor, again and again and again. Pain thundered in her skull, but the hunger would not recede. She collapsed, sobbing hysterically, her cheek pressed against the searing metal of the cooking pot.
“Where is she?” “Get out of the way!” “It’s plague, I knew it.” The voices blurred together, melted into one by a blinding yellow light. Strong arms lifted her, rolled her gently until she lay on her back. “Eat, Phousita.” Someone placed rice in her mouth and she swallowed without chewing. Another mouthful, and another. The blurred figures around her began to resolve into recognizable faces. Sumiati. Sri. And the hand that fed her? She caught the wrist; looked up into the cool brown eyes of the Chinese doctor.
He was a young man, by his appearance not much older than Phousita, with a pale, translucent complexion and thick black hair tied neatly behind his neck. “Eat, Phousita,” he said again.
She stared at the rice in his hand while saliva pooled in her mouth. She swallowed hard. “No one else has eaten,” she whispered.