“Abiba?” she said, even as Bilqis continued their dialogue.
Abiba has prepared a new kind of ctenophore, which can transmit over great distances.
Meala considered the implications, speaking rotely as she did. “Praise the Lady Who is the Source of All Wisdom.” She thumbed send.
Please be cautious with these new cybernetic devices. We don’t know their range or how secure they are.
Yes, your glory. Do you have any orders for me?
No new directives, Admiral Meala. Abiba tells me you have conquered many unbelievers.
Yes, your glory. Those who submit to the spur and scarab, we spare. We put many to death.
Meala could hear Bilqis’ harsh laugh in her mind as she read, Yes they would rather die than go through a temporary fraction of what they have put us through down through the centuries of Zarwak rule!
Meala’s stomach turned lightly. And how do we presume to take the Lady’s vengeance in our own hands? Does this make us better than they were?
But all she replied was, Yes, your glory.
You have done well, my admiral. Now we can stay in communication and you can advise me of your victories!
Isis is great.
So it is. Selah.
The screen faded. Meala slipped the ctenophore into the moistened pouch at her waist, bending to scoop a palmful of seawater in behind it to keep it wet. It let out a subtle trill and nestled into its home.
XII.
Snatched from the Jaws of Victory
“I think they’re entangled, Alfred!” D.D. said.
“The new ctenophores you got from the traders?”
“Indeed.”
“Not possible.”
“I think so.”
“Let me run the math again.”
“Not necessary.”
“What do you mean?”
D.D. nudged the hovering drone and the translucent ten-armed creature within it towards him. The ctenophore obligingly whirred to his side.
Alfred peered at it, pursing his lips. “Holy Mother of Us All!” he expostulated.
D.D. grinned. “I don’t know what alphabet that is…”
“…Not Sanskrit or Arabic, I’d’ve recognized those…”
“But it’s definitely not coming from here!”
The foreign shapes faded in the creature’s multilayered gel-covered skin. A new message began to scroll, this time in English—DEFINITELY NOT COMING FROM HERE, transcribing what D.D. had just said.
A few milliseconds earlier, the ctenophore cupped in Bilqis’s hand spelled out “definitely not coming from here,” and Bilqis beckoned Suzanne to her side. Suzanne left the table where she had been sorting out the duty roster for the sentries, tailed by Jomana.
But by the time she had crossed the majestic room to look at Bilqis’s messenger ctenophore, the message had faded. Bilqis scrolled back and held it out. Jomana had plunked down on the floor and returned to picking at her rag doll’s fine wool hair, so Suzanne scrutinized it quietly for a moment.
“Well, what does it say?” Bilqis demanded.
“It says,” Suzanne translated the phrase into Awar, and the creature heard her and faithfully transcribed her words in the Ge’ez alphabet.
“But what does it mean? Why is it giving this message?” Bilqis asked.
“I don’t know,” Suzanne murmured in English, and the ctenophore scrolled I DON’T KNOW across its face. She repeated herself in Awar, and the ctenophore typed that as well.
A few milliseconds earlier, D.D.’s Ctenophore scrolled I DON’T KNOW, followed by some letters in the script which neither D.D. nor Alfred could identify, but which was the script used in Northeast Africa and known as Ge’ez. The two of them eyed each other, hope and fear warring with incredulity in their microexpressions.
“Hello. Is someone there?” D.D. spoke into the ctenophore. Moments later, that message faded, and the return message appeared: YES I AM HERE. WHO IS THIS?
D.D. AND ALFRED. WHO IS THIS?
SUZANNE.
D.D. quirked an eyebrow. “Do you know a Suzanne?”
Alfred shook his head. There was no Suzanne within the range of ctenophore transmission, not that Alfred or D.D. knew of.
WHERE ARE YOU?
GABAL ELBA. THE PALACE.
IS THAT NEAR HOUSTON?
ARE YOU IN HOUSTON?
NEAR HOUSTON, YES.
GABAL ELBA IS IN EASTERN AFRICA NEAR THE RED SEA.
D.D. felt the hair stand up at the base of her skull and she could see from Alfred’s wide eyes that he was feeling the same sense of eerie astonishment. She cupped the Ctenophore. “Do you think it’s someone playing a joke?”
“Hmm. Think about it. Who would do that?” Alfred shook his head. “This feels real.”
“Well if it’s a hoax, I’m playing along so I can figure out who it is!” D.D. uncovered the beast and said, “If you’re in Africa, how can you be messaging us?”
I DON’T KNOW. THIS CTENOPHORE BELONGS TO EMPRESS MUEZZIN BILQIS OF THE ISIS TEMPLE OF THE NEW ISLAM.
“Whoa. If you don’t mind, I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain things a little more.” D.D. tapped the relay on the wooden tray that held the ctenophore, and the tiny wooden propellers slowed, settling the device to the ground on its spindly legs, then shutting off as the legs folded up beneath it. Alfred, almost as spindly as the drone, sat down across from her.
Over ten thousand kilometers away, Bilqis and Suzanne reclined on cushions with their ctenophore between them as well.
Hours passed in intense conversation. The three Americans fell into long-disused social-media habits spontaneously. Bilqis, whose children had mobile phones but who had never seen the point herself, discovered the simple wonder of chatting with someone a world away.
Jomana, having a toddler’s attention span and a toddler’s needs, began to whine and worry at her mother’s side. On Bilqis’s insistence, Suzanne sent her away with an aide for dinner and bedtime.
The pace of the conversation was reminiscent of early bulletin-board internet chats. Bilqis and Suzanne’s replies were slow. Suzanne had to translate for Bilqis both ways, and Suzanne’s Awar was intermediate at best, while Bilqis’s English was non-existent. Plus, there were lots of pauses:
BILQIS ASKS IF YOU ARE MARRIED AND IF YOU ARE COUSINS, Suzanne conveyed. AMONG AFARS IT IS CONSIDERED BEST TO MARRY YOUR FIRST COUSIN.
WE ARE NOT COUSINS AND WE ARE NOT MARRIED. WE ARE FRIENDS.
Pause. Suzanne explaining to Bilqis, D.D. explaining to Alfred that it was a myth that first cousins oughtn’t have children together, at least genetically speaking.
Finally, Bilqis and Suzanne had to beg off due to the lateness—or earliness—of the hour.
OF COURSE, I FORGOT ABOUT THE TIME DIFFERENCE! GOODNIGHT!
GOODNIGHT, Suzanne replied. A string of Ge’ez characters that D.D. assumed was “goodnight” in Awar floated up like a Magic 8-Ball message and slowly faded.
D.D. set the ctenophore beside its sisters, near a window where they would catch the morning sunlight. They hungrily absorbed the sunlight to recharge themselves by photosynthesis, sitting all in a row like giant craneflies perched on a reed.
“I’m starving. We’re long past dinnertime, and we skipped lunch!” she said.
“I know! And I bet there was lots of great food at the market festival, too!”
“Oh, damn! I was so excited about the quantum communicator that I forgot all about the market! Damn!”
“Maybe we can still rustle up some leftovers from the booths. Come on, let’s go.”
But as they approached the exit, the door burst open and Jessica staggered in.
She stopped short and glowered at them from sunken eyes, her lips puffy. Her hair was lank and mussed. She reeled in a spiral and her gaze jerked unsteadily from D.D. to Alfred and back again.
“I’m sick of your bullshit, Mom!” Jessica growled without preamble.
D.D. raised her hands placatingly, exhaustion an
d hunger slowing her thinking. “What bullshit? What are you talking about?”
“I don’t appreciate your sharing my personal business with people all over Texas and Arkansas!” Jessica shook her finger in her mother’s face.
“What personal business? What did I say?” D.D. was genuinely perplexed.
“Martha told Josh I was a puta borracha, a drunken whore!”
Martha was too young to use that kind of language on her own, so the implication was that she’d heard an adult call her that.
“Oh, baby!” D.D. reached as though to comfort her daughter.
Jessica was having none of it and batted her hand away, harder than necessary.
“What did you tell those people about me?”
“Jessica! Listen to me. They didn’t hear anything from me! But we weren’t alone. Jeremy,” (Martha’s stepfather), “was there that night in the barn. You know the night I mean. The night when you came crawling back, after Juan beat you half to death! Did you forget that?”
“That was years ago!”
“I know it was years ago, and you’re young enough that two or three years feels like a long time. But believe me, to someone my age, the pain of seeing my daughter bloody and filthy and almost unconscious is as fresh as if it happened yesterday.”
“Oh, now this is about your pain, is it?” Her voice dripped bitter sarcasm, “Well I’m sorry to be such a disappointment to you as a daughter!”
“You’re not—”
“I don’t want to hear it! It always comes down to this!” Spit flew from her lips and she clenched her fists. “I can never do anything right. Any time I have any chance at a relationship, it comes back at me. You never let me live down any of my mistakes!”
“How did I—”
“I’m through with you! Do you understand? Ozark and I are leaving! Don’t try to find us! You’ll never see your grandson again!”
D.D., stunned, took a step towards her, arms extended wordlessly to wrap her in a hug—hold her close, keep her from leaving, heedless of the boozy fumes she emanated.
Jessica planted a meaty palm on her mother’s breastbone and shoved her so hard, she sprawled on her butt on the concrete floor.
Jessica nodded, cracked her knuckles, and gave an inebriated sneer down at her mother. Chin up, she turned, overshooting slightly, and wove her way out the door she’d come in.
D.D. had tears in her eyes that stitched the pain and shock of Jessica’s bewildering explosion together with the pain in her jolted tailbone, which had never felt quite the same anyway after she’d given birth to Jessica over twenty-five years earlier. She palmed herself into an upright position and gingerly gathered her feet under her.
Alfred was a few steps away, awkward, uncertain, silent. D.D. looked at him and felt embarrassed and humiliated for his awkwardness.
D.D. fought back a sob fizzing in the back of her throat. Instead, she hopped to her feet and forced her face into a smile.
“I should eat. Let’s go!”
Alfred’s eyes flicked to the ctenophores on their shelf, then to the door Jessica had just walked out of. D.D. walked out herself, and he followed her, headed to the campground.
XIII.
Pedal to the Metal
As you come to her, the ocean approaches you through all your senses. Li had been smelling the ocean for some time—a complex aroma carried in a tinge of moisture, a salty, composted fragrance on the intermittent breeze. The ocean’s song of surging and seceding gradually made itself known to his ears, first imperceptibly, and then undeniably. And as he crested the rise of the millionth dune today, his calves beyond cramping, numb with pain, she touched his eyes with her gleaming glory.
The remaining distance was unbearably cruel, but he finally crossed it and took off his boots and socks, sighing in ecstasy as the salt water enveloped his chafed, throbbing, swollen feet. He thought of stripping naked for a swim, but found he felt still too vulnerable. He collected his foot coverings and headed north along the beach, walking on the wet-packed sand, thinking to find a hiding place among the rocks of the next point.
He saw what looked like an animal rising from the water. A bird? A seal? (Do they have seals or sea lions in the Red Sea?) Poised to hunt or to flee, he rubbed a hand across his eyes, thinking his vision dazzled by the reflection of the waves.
The beast resolved into a human form. He recognized the old woman Abiba from Sheik Musa’s compound, but the left side of her face was no longer caved in, her mouth no longer drawn into a rictus of disfigurement. She was a whole and handsome woman in her prime. She continued rising and rising, and he took a step back.
Her frail old-woman body was gone—a younger, symmetrical physique instead embedded at the pinnacle of a mountain of undulating, glowing, mucilaginous flesh.
“Li, I told you to go to Gabal Elba!” Her voice was different, too. It was imperious and irritated now, but also youthful, ringing like a bell.
He recoiled unknowingly, closed his gaping mouth, swallowed hard. “I know, I’m sorry. I needed to make a detour once I escaped the assault party.”
She regarded him serenely. “This assault party. How many? What armaments?”
“About four hundred. All armed with sidearms and rifles. They are carrying a few machine guns—type 80s they called them—but they only have a box or two of ammunition apiece for those.”
“And what type of attack are they planning?” She queried him about more details of the Chinese approaching Bilqis’s stronghold.
His wonder faded as he realized she was not supernaturally omniscient. Rather, she needed the information he had.
Finally, she said, “Thank you for the information. You’ve done well.”
He said, “May I ask how you come to be,” He gestured at her impressive height—twelve feet or more of billowing skirts that blended into seafoam at his feet—“here?”
She smiled. He’d never seen her smile without wanting to flinch in horror, but her face had been remade. Her smile was radiant, her visage firm and bold, yet somehow full of a gentle, grandmaternal delight. “I have always and never been here and not-here.”
“A riddle, then? Magic?”
“No, no riddle! No magic.” She chuckled, with the sound of waves swirling on rounded glass pebbles. “Things far enough away are in an eternal present. And an entangled electron can be an infinite distance away. I have been told that physicists imagine we must flee gravity to truly interact with quantum entanglement. But the phosphate in living nucleotide chains creates spin-stacked electrons that can be entangled, even in water. And in water, well, we float.
“See? We float. Look.” She dissolved in a fizzing eddy. Within moments she was floating, a film of twinkling seafoam in the cove, as if that explained everything.
Li was no scientist (political science is not a science, despite its name), and so to him, she had explained nothing. She might as well have said, “bibbety bobbety boo, the science is settled,” for all the clarity it added.
She washed out to sea in a sequence set by the rhythm of breaking waves.
His attention followed her, dissipating as she dispersed. He felt unsatisfied, as though she could have told him more. He felt abandoned, as though she could have been looking out for him better. He felt too awkward to address her, though, as she slowly dissolved, for it seemed a vulnerable moment. Besides, how would he know if he had her attention?
But, after all, he was doing okay at looking out for himself so far. He wasn’t her concern, nor did he need her.
So he returned towards the rocky head to find a sheltered cave to rest in while it was still daylight. He was so tired. And there was no Meala to cradle his head if he should stumble and fall into the surf.
XIV.
Extra! Extra!
Esther cupped her hands together, forming a clamshell. Her impish smile looked out of place on that usually intensely serious face.
Lou couldn’t help but smile too. He indulged her.
“Okay, what is
it? Something alive?”
She’d caught a frog, or cicada perhaps. Frogs were slower in the cool Fall air, and she’d been walking in the glorious red and orange woods of the Carolina hills.
“No, it’s not. Guess again!” She held her hands closer to him.
“Just tell me.” Even though he was in a good mood from the crisp breeze and honey-gold sunshine, his patience with childish games was never great, and growing less as his time grew shorter with age.
She opened her hands slowly, at first so only she could see, and then she tilted them towards him. Inside was a segmented, apricot-sized beast with eight legs, its flesh translucent, its flattened back just barely revealing glimpses of a curving circuit-board-like pattern within. Its eyes seemed primitive, just dark spots.
He gazed in slightly horrified fascination.
“Is it alive?”
She proffered it to him, and he recoiled instinctively, surprising himself with his dismay. “I’m good, thanks.”
The circuitry within began to glow, but then the flat skin covering it absorbed the glow and became gradually opaque, turning from white into brown, with occasional quick ripples of shades of purple and red.
She tickled it somehow at the base of its legs, and creamy letters began to scroll across the chocolate-colored surface.
~~~TREEFALL ACROSS BOONE ROAD CLEARED. FIREWOOD FIRST COME FIRST SERVED. ~~~#OLDTIMEMUSIC JAMBOREE PICKENS STATION SATURDAY 8 PM ~~~ 5 HOME INVADERS CAPTURED TRIAL AND HANGING TUESDAY DAWN CLARK HOLLOW. ~~~
He watched the news scroll, agog, for a few moments.
Finally he gathered his thoughts enough to comment, “Now I understand. This explains why they weren’t excited to have that old movable-type press we were so proud to drag along with us!” He squeezed her shoulders lightly.
“Exactly.” She smiled sheepishly up at him.
“So, this—trilobite?—is picking up a broadcast? Like an old-fashioned radio? How do you change stations?”
Eupocalypse Box Set Page 58