Nebula Awards Showcase 2012

by James Patrick Kelly

Of course, you're right. Next to her, then. What is your name?

  Cynthia.

  I am Master Leuwin.

  I know. It's very kind of you to talk to me.

  You're—[ink blot] forgive the ink blot, please. Does that hurt?

  No more than poor penmanship ever does.

  *

  Leuwin? are you there?

  Yes. What can I do for you?

  Speak to me, a little. Do you live alone?

  Yes—well, except for Dominic, my student and apprentice. It is my intention to leave him this library one day—it is a library, you see, in a tower on a small hill, seven miles from the city of Leech—do you know it?

  No. I've heard of it, though. Vicious monarchy, I heard.

  I do not concern myself overmuch with politics. I keep records, that is all.

  How lucky for you, to not have to concern yourself with politics. Records of what?

  Everything I can. Knowledge. Learning. Curiosities. History and philosophy. Scientific advances, musical compositions and theory—some things I seek out, most are given to me by people who would have a thing preserved.

  How ironic.

  . . . Yes. Yes, I suppose it is, in your case.

  [[DECAY, SEVERAL LEAVES LOST]]

  Were you very beautiful, as a woman?

  What woman would answer no, in my position?

  An honest one.

  I doubt I could have appeared more beautiful to you as a woman than as a book.

  . . . Too honest.

  [[DECAY, SEVERAL LEAVES LOST]]

  What else is in your library?

  Easier to ask what isn't! I am in pursuit of a book inlaid with mirrors—the text is so potent that it was written in reverse, and can only be read in reflection to prevent unwelcome effects.

  Fascinating. Who wrote it?

  I have a theory it was commissioned by a disgruntled professor, with a pun on “reflection” designed to shame his students into closer analyses of texts.

  Hah! I hope that's the case. What else?

  Oh, there is a history of the Elephant War written by a captain on the losing side, a codex from the Chrysanthemum Year (Bold Did it Bloom) about the seven uses of bone that the Sisterhood would like me to find, and—

  Cynthia I'm so sorry. Please, forgive me.

  No matter. It isn't as if I've forgotten how I came to you in the first place, though you seem to quite frequently.

  Why

  Think VERY carefully about whether you want to ask this question, Leuwin.

  Why did they kill you?…How did they?

  Forbidden questions from their pet librarian? The world does turn. Do you really want to know?

  Yes.

  So do I. Perhaps you could ask them for me.

  [[DECAY, SEVERAL LEAVES LOST]]

  If I could find a way to get you out…

  You and your ellipses. Was that supposed to be a question?

  I might make it a quest.

  I am dead, Leuwin. I have no body but this.

  You have a voice. A mind.

  I am a voice, a mind. I have nothing else.

  Cynthia…What happens when we reach the end of this? When we run out of pages?

  Endings do not differ overmuch from each other, I expect. Happy or sad, they are still endings.

  Your ending had a rather surprising sequel.

  True. Though I see it more as intermission—an interminable intermission, during which the actors have wandered home to get drunk.

  [[DECAY, SEVERAL LEAVES LOST]]

  Cynthia, I think I love you.

  Cynthia?

  Why don't you answer me?

  Please, speak to me.

  I'm tired, Leuwin.

  I love you.

  You love ink on a page. You don't lack for that here.

  I love you.

  Only because I speak to you. Only because no one but you reads these words. Only because I am the only book to be written to you, for you. Only because I allow you, in this small way, to be a book yourself.

  I love you.

  Stop.

  Don't you love me?

  Cynthia.

  You can't lie, can you?

  You can't lie, so you refuse to speak the truth.

  I hate you.

  Because you love me.

  I hate you. leave me alone.

  I will write out Lady Aster's plays for you to read. I will write you her poetry. I will fill this with all that is beautiful in the world, for you, that you might live it.

  Leuwin. No.

  I will stop a few pages from the end, and you can read it over and over again, all the loveliest things…

  Leuwin. No.

  But I

  STOP. I WANT TO LIVE. I WANT TO HOLD YOU AND FUCK YOU AND MAKE YOU TEA AND READ YOU PLAYS. I WANT YOU TO TOUCH MY CHEEK AND MY HAIR AND LOOK ME IN THE EYES WHEN YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME. I WANT TO LIVE!

  And you, you want a woman in a book. You want to tremble over my binding and ruffle my pages and spill ink into me. No, I can't lie. Only the living can lie. I am dead. I am dead trees and dead horses boiled to glue. I hate you. Leave me alone.

  [FINIS. Several blank pages remain]

  *

  You see he is mad.

  I know he is looking for ways to extricate her from the book. I fear for him, in so deep with the Sisters—I fear for what he will ask them—

  Sweet Stars, there's more. I see it appearing as I write this—unnatural, chanty thing! I shall not reply. I must not reply, lest I fall into her trap as he did! But I will write this for you—I am committed to completeness.

  Following immediately after the last, then:

  *

  Dominic, why are you doing this?

  You won't answer me? Fair enough.

  I can feel when I am being read, Dominic. It's a beautiful feeling, in some ways—have you ever felt beautiful? Sometimes I think only people who are not beautiful can feel so, can feel the shape of the exception settling on them like a mantle, like a morning mist.

  Being read is like feeling beautiful, knowing your hair to be just-so and your clothing to be well-put-together and your color to be high and bright, and to feel, in the moment of beauty, that you are being observed.

  The world shifts. You pretend not to see that you are being admired, desired. You think about whether or not to play the game of glances, and you smile to yourself, and you know the person has seen your smile, and it was beautiful, too. Slowly, you become aware of how they see you, and without looking, quite, you know that they are playing the game too, that they imagine you seeing them as beautiful, and it is a splendid game, truly.

  Leuwin reads me quite often, without saying anything further to me. I ache when he does, to answer, to speak, but ours is a silence I cannot be the one to break. So he reads, and I am read, and this is all our love now.

  I feel this troubles you. I do not feel particularly beautiful when you read me, Dominic. But I know it is happening.

  Will you truly not answer? Only write me down into your own little book? Oh, Dominic. And you think you will run away? Find him help? You're sweet enough to rot teeth.

  You know, I always wanted someone to write me poetry.

  If I weren't dead, the irony would kill me.

  I wonder who the Mistress of the Crossroads was. Hello, I suppose, if you ever read this—if Dominic ever shares.

  I am going to try and sleep. Sorry my handwriting isn't prettier. I never really was, myself.

  I suppose Leuwin must have guessed, at some point, just as he would have guessed you'd disobey him eventually. I am sorry he will find out about both, now. It isn't as if I can cross things out. No doubt he will be terribly angry. No doubt the Sisters will find out you know something more of them than they would permit, as I did.

  It's been a while since I've felt sorry for someone who wasn't Leuwin, but I do feel sorry for you.

  Good night.

  *

  That is all. Nothing else appears. Please, you mu
st help him. I don't know what to do. I cannot destroy the book—I cannot hide it from him, he seeks it every hour he is here—

  I shall write more to you anon. He returns. I hear his feet upon the stair.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amal El-Mohtar is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of twenty-eight different kinds of honey, and is a two-time winner of the Rhysling Award for Best Short Poem. Her work has appeared in Apex, Strange Horizons, The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, Welcome to Bordertown, and The Mammoth Book of Steampunk. She also coedits Goblin Fruit, an online quarterly dedicated to fantastical poetry, with Jessica P. Wick, and keeps a blog somewhat tidy at http://tithenai.livejournal.com.

  AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

  One of my earliest memories is of seeing an Apollo launch on television and my parents telling me the rocket was going to the moon, so I've been interested in space travel for almost my entire life. I've been reading science fiction since shortly after I learned to read, and my dad had a wonderful collection of anthologies and novels that captivated my interest.

  While I dabbled in creative writing while studying political science at Brigham Young University, I gave up on it for about a decade until one day I found myself with an overpowering urge to write a novel. I decided that if I was going to get serious about creative writing, I needed to study it. Since then, I've attended various creative writing workshops and classes in order to improve my craft.

  In 2008, I went to a weekend workshop taught by Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Katherine Rusch, and Sheila Williams. While there, I was supposed to write an entire short story based on the prompt “You are in the center of the sun and can't get a date.” I failed. What I came up with was incomplete; it just stopped because I ran out of time before the deadline, rather than having a real ending—or a real middle, for that matter. But those who read it encouraged me to finish it, so after I went home I wrote a middle and an end to “That Leviathan, Whom Thou Hast Made.”

  Sol Central Station floated amid the fusing hydrogen of the solar core, 400,000 miles under the surface of the sun, protected only by the thin shell of an energy shield, but that wasn't why my palm sweat slicked the plastic pulpit of the station's multidenominational chapel. As a life-long Mormon I had been speaking in church since I was a child, so that didn't make me nervous, either. But this was my first time speaking when non-humans were in the audience.

  The Sol Branch of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had only six human members, including me and the two missionaries, but there were forty-six swale members. As beings made of plasma, swales couldn't attend church in the chapel, of course, but a ten-foot widescreen monitor across the back wall showed a false-color display of their magnetic force-lines, gathered in clumps of blue and red against the yellow background representing the solar interior. The screen did not give a sense of size, but at two hundred feet in length, the smallest of the swales was almost double the length of a blue whale. From what I'd heard, the largest Mormon swale, Sister Emma, stretched out to almost five hundred feet—but she was nowhere near the twenty-four-mile length of the largest swale in our sun.

  “My dear Brothers and Sisters,” I said automatically, then stopped in embarrassment. The traditional greeting didn't apply to all swale members, as they had three genders. “And Neuters,” I added. I hoped my delay would not be noticeable in the transmission. It would be a disaster if, in my first talk as branch president, I alienated a third of the swale population.

  A few minutes into my talk on the topic of forgiveness, I paused when a woman in a skinsuit sauntered through the door and down the aisle. The skinsuit was a custom high-fashion one, not standard station issue, with active coloration that showed puffy white clouds floating across the sky on her breasts, and waves lapping against the sandy beach at her hips. She took a seat on the second row and gazed up at me with dark brown eyes.

  The ring finger of her left hand was unadorned.

  I forced my eyes away from her and looked down at my notes for the talk. While trying to find my place again, I couldn't help thinking that maybe this woman was an answer to my prayers. The only human female listed in the branch membership records was sixty-four years old and married. As far as I knew, there wasn't an unmarried Mormon human woman within ninety million miles in any direction, which limited my dating pool rather severely.

  Maybe this woman was Mormon, but not on the membership records yet because, like me, she was a recent arrival on Sol Central. It seemed a little unlikely, as a member would probably dress more appropriately for church. Maybe she wasn't a member, but was interested in joining.

  By sheer willpower, I managed to focus on my talk enough to finish it coherently. After the closing hymn and prayer, I straightened my tie and stepped down from the podium to introduce myself to the new arrival.

  “Hello,” I said, offering my hand. “I'm Harry Malan.” I caught a whiff of her perfume, something that reminded me of strawberries.

  Her hand was dry and cool, and I regretted not having wiped my palm on my suit first.

  “Dr. Juanita Merced,” she said. “You're the new leader of this congregation?”

  I felt a twinge of disappointment. A member would have asked if I was the branch president. “I am. How can I help you?”

  “You can stop interfering with my studies.” Her tone was matter-of-fact, but her eyes looked at me defiantly.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I'm afraid I have no idea who you are or what studies I might be interfering with.”

  “I'm a solcetologist.” I must have given her a blank look, because she added, “I study solcetaceans—the swales.”

  “Oh.” I knew there were scientists who objected to what they believed was interference with the culture of the swales, but I had thought that since the legal right to proselytize the swales had been established two years ago, the controversy had been settled. I was obviously wrong. “I regret that you feel your studies are being compromised, Dr. Merced, but the swales are intelligent beings with free will, and I believe they have the right to choose their religious beliefs.”

  “You're introducing instability to a culture that has existed for longer than human civilization,” she said, raising her voice. “They were traveling the stars at least a hundred thousand years before Christ was born. You're teaching them human myths that have no application for their society.”

  The two missionaries, clean-cut young men in dark suits and ties, approached us. “Is there a problem?” asked Elder Beckworth.

  “No,” I said. “Dr. Merced, you are free to tell the swales what you have told me: that you believe our teachings are false. But the swales who have joined our church have done so because they believe what we teach, and I ask you to please respect them enough to allow them that choice.”

  She glared at me with her beautiful eyes. “You're saying I don't respect them? I am not the one who tells them they are sinful creatures who need a human to save them.”

  “I'm not here to argue,” I said. “And we are about to have a Sunday School class, so I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

  She spun around and stalked out. I watched her go, unable to deny that my body desired hers, despite our differences. What's more, intelligence was an attractive trait for me, so I regretted that she opposed me on an intellectual level.

  I would not be adding her to my dating pool. Somehow, I doubted that fact would disappoint her.

  Elder Beckworth taught the Sunday School class, which was on the topic of chastity. I found myself acutely uncomfortable when he talked about Christ's teaching “that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”

  Because the Mormon Church has an unpaid, volunteer clergy, my calling as branch president was the result of being sent to Sol Central, not the reason for it. I worked as a funds manager for CitiAmerica, and being stationed here gave me an eight-and-a-half minute head start over Ear
th-based funds managers when it came to acting on news brought in from other star systems through the interstellar portal at the heart of the sun.

  From what I understood, the energy requirements for opening a portal were so staggeringly high that it could only be done inside a star. Although the swales had been creating portals for so long that they didn't seem to know where their original home star was, Sol Central Station was the interstellar nexus of human civilization, and I was thrilled to be there despite the limited dating opportunities.

  The Monday after my first day at church, I was in the middle of reviewing an arbitrage deal involving transports from two colony systems when I received a call on my station phone.

  “Harry Malan,” I answered.

  “President Malan?” said a melodious alto voice. “This is Neuter Kimball, from the branch.” Since the actual names of swales were series of magnetic pulses, they took human names when interacting with us. On joining the Church, Mormon swales often chose new names out of Mormon history. Neuter Kimball had apparently named itself after a 20th-Century prophet of the Church.

  “What can I do for you, Neuter Kimball?”

  After a pause that dragged out for several seconds, Kimball said, “I need to confess a sin.”

  This was what I had dreaded most about becoming branch president—taking on the responsibility of helping members repent of their sins. Only serious sins needed to be confessed to an ecclesiastical leader, so I braced myself emotionally and said a quick prayer that I might be inspired to help Neuter Kimball through the process of repentance. Leaning back in my swivel chair, I said, “Go ahead, Neuter Kimball; I'm listening.”

  “A female merged her reproductive patterns with mine.” While many swales had managed to learn how to synthesize and transmit human speech, their understanding of vocabulary and grammar was not always matched by an understanding of emotional tone. Often they sounded the same no matter what the subject.

  I waited, but Neuter Kimball didn't elaborate.

  It took three swales to reproduce: a male, a female, and a neuter. The neuter merely acted as a facilitator; unlike the male and female, its reproductive patterns were not passed on to the offspring. In applying the law of chastity to the swales, Church doctrine said that reproductive activity was to be engaged in only among swales married to each other, and only permitted marriages of three swales, one of each sex.