Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 168

by Neil Clarke

  “That was very ingenious of you, young Khinnaree. However, it is clear that your mechanical work needs refining. You had the speed, but not the lasting power. The lasting power is that of sakti, which has been keeping our palaces afloat.”

  The Empress’ expression was inscrutable as she continued, “However, as sakti grows weak, technology must grow strong and evolve. These three denizens of the villages below will be useful in my daughter’s battle.”

  First Admiral nodded, her eyes pleased at the Empress’ decision. Timah slumped in relief.

  On her throne, the Empress surveyed her court with troubled eyes.

  She spoke, “The Jentayu also said that we must consider these apsaras and Khinnaree as potential candidates for our future armies. She says that we must unite against a common danger in the future. We cannot merely be a city of bunian any longer. As the world outside of our kingdoms grows, our forests and our dominions will decrease. We will need to fortify ourselves.”

  Timah wondered what that common danger could be, but she was too overcome with relief to dwell too long on the subject, too overcome to notice the sounds of anger and conflict that swept over the close to two hundred bunian that thronged the huge throne-room in the sky.

  “Take them away to be outfitted and trained. I am weary and must retire,” said the Empress.

  Timah stood up and made to run toward Saengdao. She stopped mid-stride at the cold look Saengdao gave her. Saengdao shook her head and turned away. The two sisters left with the armored guards.

  Timah did not even bother to deny the hollow feeling within her. It was a feeling that would be her constant companion ’til the end of her days.

  First Admiral had placed both the Khinnaree with an aerial defense engineering unit to be trained, while taking Timah to the floating annex for civilian engineers. One of the pavilions had been converted into a practical workshop, filled with bunian engineers, their elegant limbs encased in overalls made of kain pelekat.

  “This is where we work on refining our machines, merging the powers of the elements to create new war-engines and ways to keep our city afloat and invisible,” First Admiral said, “We are trying our best to develop new technology to keep the palaces not just afloat, but to keep them hidden.”

  “I do not know how I will ever be useful to beings so much more intelligent than me,” Timah said, self-conscious and shy. She was overcome with the brilliance and competence displayed by the bunian engineers at work. Her eyes hungered for the machines they were building.

  “You are here to learn. You are not useful to us, yet. But you will be.” First Admiral said. Her voice was not unkind. “The Empress always looks further into the future than any of us—this is what happens when you are connected to the Holy Jentayu.”

  “Am I not here to help with the battle between the Empress’ daughter and the other princesses?”

  “That battle was lost before it began, child. Our story is about to change. Yours is only just beginning. Learn, for you will be the future of this Empire. All of you.”

  Their food was served on bronze platters so grand that the two Khinnaree were shy.

  “Your harnesses brought us to a different world, sister,” Saengdao said to Yong-Yut as they were fed piles of glutinous rice with shredded mango salad.

  “Yes, my harnesses worked. But there is much to be done before the war-kites can be made useful in battle. I have much to do with the aerial defense engineering unit.”

  Saengdao looked happier and calmer than she had been for a very long time. Nevertheless, her eyes seemed uncertain.

  “Will you teach me, sister? I want to help. I am not smart like you, but I can do what needs to be done.”

  Yong-Yut laughed. “Not smart, Saengdao? You always think less of yourself than you deserve. Perhaps asking you to be Timah’s nursemaid was not one of Mother’s better decisions. You may well prove to be the smartest of us all, Saengdao. This is a whole new world for us.”

  Saengdao nodded her assent, staring at the clouds from the open doors of their floating pavilion. During their flight in the sky, moments before they were apprehended, Saengdao has seen the world stretched out before her and felt the rush of knowing instinctively how to keep the propulsion satchel going. She felt as though the hot rage that had engulfed her had transformed her into a different person. Her mind, so sluggish and ready to take instructions before, had turned into something else.

  She was unsure if she knew what that thing was, but she was very sure that she never wanted to be in the vicinity of one who had willingly cast her in a subservient role for most of their life. Some friendships had to die so that some lives could begin.

  Timah never saw her home again.

  Thirty years later, the floating palaces had twenty war-kite squads of six equipped Khinnaree each, patrolling in shifts to protect the floating palaces, or the parts of the floating palaces to which they were assigned. Internecine wars became a trend amongst the bunian princesses. There were neither Khinnaree nor apsaras left in the villages below. Her bare feet forgot the feel of grass and the sweet dampness of forest herbs. Some days, she still saw the owl-women. One or two of them would fly high enough that they reached the floating palaces before they would be swept away by the wind or captured by the war-kite patrol units.

  Timah would see Admiral Saengdao harnessed to her violet war-kite more than once as she patrolled with her sisters, flying in stately aerial formations. Admiral Saengdao’s uniform was a rich lavender songket, adorned with the silver accoutrements of her rank. She laughed as she worked, sounding far more lighthearted than the Khinnaree who had grown up with Timah.

  Timah worked on the machines and propulsion satchels pioneered by Admiral Yong-Yut at the Avian Defense Engineering Unit for civil engineering purposes, keeping their homes afloat and equipped with the wherewithal to stay protected and invisible. The Khinnaree, on the other hand, worked on refining the war-kites so that more Khinnaree could be outfitted. Timah saw the Khinnaree flying past her workshop on a daily basis, harnessed to their war-kites.

  Timah was kept mostly to her workshop when she was not summoned to court for new directives from the next two Empresses who came into power after the Empress who had taken her in had been murdered in her sleep by her daughter’s rivals.

  The war-chariots of the past were never spoken of again. Arch-Admiral Yong-Yut had ordered for the immediate destruction of any war-chariot found in the ruins of the Buried Kingdom.

  They remained only to haunt Timah in her dreams and in her moonlit vigils against the demons of self-defeat.

  About the Author

  Nin Harris is an author, poet, critical theorist and Gothic scholar who exists in a perpetual state of unheimlich. Nin writes Gothic fiction, baroque planetary romances and space operas, mythic fantasies and various other forms of hyphenated weird fiction. Nin’s publishing credits include: Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, The Dark, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, etc. Nin was a 2016 Rhysling Poetry Award nominee.

  The Book Reader

  Keishi Kajifune, translated by Toshiya Kamei

  Outside the window, a large whale swims, or rather floats, in the clear, early-summer sky.

  As its disproportionately huge eyes turn toward me, the whale’s body becomes tinted eerily dark red, and its flesh starts dripping.

  I gaze around the white-walled physics classroom. The digital textbook remains open on my tablet, still showing today’s lesson.

  An infinite number of ants crawl up my hands on the desk—or so I feel. When I blink a few times, they’re gone without a trace.

  The class is thrown into chaos. Some girls get up and scream. Terrified cries fill the room.

  The teacher, a young man in his twenties, writhes about on the floor, screaming in agony.

  An explosion thunders afar, followed by a booming roar.

  “Rumi, come with me!”

  I turn in the direction of the voice. It’s Miina. She grabs my arm and pulls me hard.

  I follo
w her as she drags me along.

  As I feel her grip on my arm, we dash through the long hallway in the midst of utter confusion. We run up the stairs everyone stays away from.

  “Where are we going?”

  “A safe place,” Miina answers. “Away from everybody else.”

  Monitors are everywhere at our school, keeping tabs on us in the name of security.

  Miina leads me toward the rooftop. When she hurls herself against the entrance door, it opens without much resistance.

  We catch our breath in a shower of early-summer sunlight. A clean, monotonous townscape spreads in all directions.

  “That’s the only way in.” She points her chin toward the door. “And out.”

  A flame rises in the downtown area. I cower, startled.

  “What is it?” Miina asks.

  “An explosion . . . ”

  “Is that so? It’s all illusion—triggered by the nanobots.”

  Miina has a special ability.

  She can read physical books.

  “I’ve got something to show you.” Miina handed me a book in her dorm room. “Open it,” she added.

  As I flipped through the book, rubbing the print-filled pages with my fingers, the letters danced before my eyes.

  For a while, I followed the sentences with my eyes, but I eventually got lost in them. I had never read a printed book before. My head throbbed lightly.

  “You can’t read, can you?” she said, as if surprised.

  I shot her a resentful glance.

  “I can,” she said and described what the book contained.

  “The human brain feels threatened when another person suffers less or gains something. That characteristic has survived to this day because it has aided the survival of humanity. In other words, when necessities were scarce, when food and shelter were limited, humans had to take it from someone else in order to get something.”

  “Sounds a lot like the definition of the word ‘jealousy,’” I said.

  “You’ve got that right, Rumi.”

  I first saw Miina among the incoming freshmen who lined up in front of the immaculate first aid room where we regularly have learning nanobots administered. As I impatiently waited for my turn, the sound of cheerful laughter reached my ears. As I looked up, a short-haired tomboy caught my eye. She was the center of attention, chatting with other girls. She struck me as my exact opposite.

  Then she stepped closer and talked to me.

  We began with exchanging names, but the rest is all a blur to me now, except for one thing that I wondered—What does someone like her want from me?

  That’s how I met Miina.

  Before long, I began spending lots of time in Miina’s dorm room.

  “I don’t remember my mother’s face,” I confided in her one day.

  She listened to me attentively while she lay in her bed. When I was done, she rolled over, pulled up her sleeve, and showed me the inner part of her arm.

  “Look,” she said, pointing to several severe bruises. “They’ve tried to harvest my bone marrow cells.”

  I gasped.

  “I’m immune to the nanobots. They want to transfer this immunity to others. The military.”

  “The military?”

  “The psychological forces,” she lowered her voice. “Just don’t tell anyone, okay?”

  By this time, we had grown close to each other and shared each other’s secrets.

  “I’m different. I can read physical books. But because I’m different, the military practically owns me.”

  Although I neglected to tell Miina, my father serves as an officer in the psychological forces. When I went home for the winter holidays, I brought up some questions.

  “Do the nanobots ever fail to affect some people?” I asked.

  “Just between us,” he began, with a half-empty glass of whisky in his hand, relaxing on the couch in the living room. “Some of us aren’t affected by the nanobots. They’ve got a special immune system that expels the nanobots when they enter their bodies. What do you think they’re good for?”

  “The military.”

  “That’s right. We now employ the nanobots as a means of psychological warfare. We scatter them in the air to cause mental disorders in our targets. Anyone who’s immune to the nanobots can be an excellent candidate for a soldier or an agent.”

  “I’ve got a classmate who can read books. She’s immune to the nanobots given to us at school.”

  “A certain percentage of the population possesses that disposition. We keep a huge list of them.”

  I gathered that he knew about Miina as he averted his gaze.

  “Why do you not want us to read books?” I asked.

  “Half-baked imagination will breed hatred,” my father gulped his drink. “There was a time when information wasn’t controlled,” he continued, as if talking to someone afar. “Abundant information existed, more than humanity could process. Back then, humans’ ability to supplement reality with their imagination backfired. Imagination was at fault. That’s why we take away kids’ ability to imagine.”

  “What’s that got to do with our ability to read books?”

  “Information deemed harmful has been expunged from digital publications, but it may still remain in physical books. If you kids come across the harmful information, you won’t understand it. Above all, we need to protect kids from fiction so that they won’t develop imaginations. After you’re administered the nanobots in school for a few years, your imagination will be diminished for the rest of your life. You’ll need training to understand fiction. Without that training, you won’t be able to develop your imagination.”

  The learning nanobots we receive in school are designed to enhance memory as they stimulate the synapses to unite one another. In addition, they affect the prefrontal cortex in our brain and weaken our imagination. They also utilize how our brain reacts to transmitted light and reflected light differently to reduce our ability to understand texts written on paper.

  Besides what my father told me, this is pretty much what my online search has yielded. Even so, information is hard to come by due to blunt censorship. My quest for knowledge has repeatedly run aground, as I’ve never been granted full access to the archives.

  “I feel lonely sometimes,” Miina mumbles. We’re alone up here on the rooftop. The whole city is drowned in a sea of illusion the nanobots have unleashed.

  “Sooner or later, I’ll be alone, away from everyone,” she continues. “But I want someone to remember me and think of me once in a while.”

  “Did you get what I asked?” I change the subject. Miina looks surprised for a moment, but she takes a silver-colored cylinder out of her pocket and hands it to me.

  “I’ll remember you for the rest of my life, Miina,” I say and stick the tip of the cylinder into the inner part of my arm, taking aim at the vein.

  “Are you sure about that, Rumi?”

  “You’re asking me now?”

  We burst into laughter. Now Miina’s hemopoietic cells roam through my body. One prick of a painless needle does the trick. Thanks to the latest technology, no transplant rejection occurs.

  “Do you think you can pilfer your bone marrow cells for me?” I asked her about a month ago.

  An enormous dog walks along the street in the distance while it drools. Another bomb explodes in close vicinity. Unaffected by the nanobots, Miina sees or hears none of this while the whole city is under siege. My father said he had been busy at work. The military must have upped the ante.

  Miina can imagine and read books.

  I want to feel what she feels every day.

  About the Author

  Keishi Kajifune is a Japanese writer of science fiction. He has authored Security Service Division (2018) and Buso rokitai (2018). In 2020, his story “Hon no yomeru tokubetsu na kanojo” won honorable mention in the first Kaguya SF contest organized by VirtualGorilla+.

  “The Moon’s a Balloon”:

  Hot Air Balloons and Airsh
ips in Speculative Fiction

  Carrie Sessarego

  People have always dreamed of flight. With the invention of the hot air balloon (specifically, the Montgolfier balloon, which is essentially the same design one might see at hot air balloon festivals today) this dream became a possibility for a startling variety of people—aristocrats and scientists, entertainers and artists, men and women. The popularity of hot air balloons and their offspring, dirigibles, left a permanent mark on speculative fiction from their first appearance in the skies through the modern era.

  For modern Europe and America, hot air ballooning became a craze when the Montgolfier brothers (Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne) created a balloon that utilized a large envelope made from silk (specifically, taffeta) with an optional attached basket. The Montgolfier envelope was a bag that looked like an inverted teardrop with an opening at the bottom. Modern balloons can have any envelope shape, but the classic Montgolfier teardrop shape is still the most popular. To this day, most recreational balloons have the same three parts as the first Montgolfier balloons, albeit using different materials—the envelope, the basket, and the burner, which heats the air that inflates the balloon and causes it to rise.

  On September 19, 1783, the Montgolfiers sent up a balloon manned by a sheep, a duck, and a rooster. The balloon and its passengers landed safely, so on October 15, 1783, they sent up chemistry and physics teacher Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier on a tethered flight. On November 21, the first manned untethered flight took off (crewed by Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d’Arlandes). Balloonmania was on, and scientists, artists, and the general public remained fascinated by balloons well through the Victorian era.

  People in Regency Europe, especially in France and England, were captivated by hot air balloons. Once people learned how a hot air balloon worked, many people built their own balloons and gave exhibition flights at fairs and other events, often using highly flammable hydrogen gas for fuel. Balloons filled with hydrogen or helium are “gas” rather than “hot air” balloons, but colloquially they are usually called “hot air balloons,” and I will continue to do so despite the technical inaccuracy.