FSF, October-November 2008 Read online

  When I'm gone, yes, when I die,

  I'm going up beyond the sky;

  Forget the wings and other things—

  I'll poke Jehovah in the eye!

  Dr. Barnes consults her notes for a minute, then says, Now tell me about your son again.

  My son was born shortly after midnight one November 12th. His birthday would have been impossible to forget. Ordinarily, which is to say, back when I could still forget things, back when things were ordinary, I'd never been able to remember even the seasons when family members marked the passing of their years. But I'd been born on November 10th, my wife on November 14th, and there was our first child, perfectly placed between us. It would've meant one big birthday party a year for the three of us if certain things were presumed.

  Such as?

  That my wife and I should remain together, which is to presume a great deal. We were woefully mismatched. It took us years to admit it, even after one of her idiot astrology-minded friends made something of the fact that both of us were Scorpios. We made very little money, hardly enough to keep ourselves going, much less to raise a child. My son was born a month ahead of schedule. There were problems with his lungs, so he went straight from the delivery room to the intensive care ward. As I looked through the glass at him, lying there all purply-red and amazingly hairy, I felt everything. Pride. Wonder. Fear. Resentment. Guilt. He died before dawn, November 12th. All of these years, I've had to live with the memory of the floodtide of relief that rushed over me when they told me he was dead. I never cried for him, either. Everything in my life went to pieces after that. I had finally seen the face and knew the name of the real enemy. I had finally grasped the awful secret, the great truth, the key principle, the primary fact, the essence, the immutable underpinning, of Time.

  Time? says Barnes. Not God?

  Never mind God. Remember, God never quite existed for me, even after my sister died and I declared war on him. But Time—it was Time who's out to get you! Time would rob you blind. Time would punish you whether you deserved it or not. Time would take everything you had that was worth having and leave only sorrow, terror, scars, indignities of every sort—the crap, in short. Then Time would take even that, and take you, too, and in the interim, between the former kind of losses and the latter, ultimate loss, Time would give you just as many or as few hours, days, years as you needed to think about what had happened to you, and about what was going to happen. My wife and I at least had the good sense to go our own ways, though we couldn't resist the urge to inflict a few last slow-healing wounds on each other. I spent the year after the divorce finding out the hard way that I didn't have what it takes to be a successful alcoholic. That seemed to leave me little choice. One evening, an October 15th, I found out the hard way that I did have what it takes to be a successful suicide. I remember the date was January 6th. I remember the water was extremely cold.

  Barnes has a strange expression on her handsome face. Perhaps I have at last moved her to pity. She takes out her cell phone and calls Kawanishi.

  * * * *

  Nighttime is when the dead come out, and not only the dead. All my losses have been made good, not only the dead but also the misplaced, girls and women who went away, boys and men who dropped out of sight, places, pets, everybody, everything. Pride of place, however, goes to the dead, relatives, friends, acquaintances—even if I don't count myself, it appalls me, the number of people I know who have passed away, shuffled off this mortal coil, gone to be with Sartre. I recognize my father's youngest brother, who died of a heart attack, my grandparents and great-grandparents, a cousin of mine who one day picked up the pretty end of a fallen power line, friends, each of them dead too soon—even a guy from my high school. Woodland creatures had been at him for a while when a hunter stumbled upon his shallow unmarked grave.

  Early on, I tried pleading with these phantoms to go away and leave me in peace. I tried threats and insults, even tried laying hands upon them, but, of course, you can't reason with or intimidate or hurt shadows. Now I try to annihilate them and myself. I close my eyes and lie very, very still, waiting, hoping, even praying, for sleep.

  For if the line separating my conscious and subconscious selves has been erased, if indeed everything is right up here on the surface now, then, below, back down in the depths, what can there be but oblivion?

  So, at night, it's crowded where I live, if you call this living, but it could be worse. Usually everyone just hovers at the extremes of my peripheral vision, though occasionally one or two of the other ghosts drift forward and past, cocked at some ludicrous angle in the air and evidently oblivious to me. No one ever speaks to me directly, their voices are barely audible, and I can never tell what they're saying. Tonight I am visited by my grandmother, who undoubtedly has forgotten (undoubtedly she has forgotten, being beyond more forgetting, being in fact dead these many years past) how, when I was a child, she gave me my first instruction about religion by telling me about Heaven. Although I decided that there was a lot to be said for the possession of wings, Heaven didn't fascinate me half so much as the means one used to get there, the thing death. What was death? What? What?

  Then, one night, sometime soon after I had begun to hear of death, I lay me down to sleep and dreamed the dream. In the dream, as I stood outside my grandparents’ house (a big, warm, secure house, my favorite house during childhood, the center of my universe), great invisible hands suddenly seized me, snatched me high into the air, whizzed me away. I realized, somehow, that this was the thing death, that I had died and was on my way to Heaven. I flew high above the world at terrific speed and was not afraid. At last, I slowed in my flight, descended, alighted before a gate of metal bars, entered, found myself in a cobblestone-paved courtyard enclosed by decrepit buildings. A sluggish stream of dirty water bisected the courtyard and passed through the gate. I was alone, and wingless.

  I awoke filled with tremendous disappointment and fury.

  Not that I blamed my grandmother or thought ill of her in any way. Granny, I say as she drifts by, you were badly misinformed.

  But as the night wears on and sleep never comes, my mood sours. My sister's worst fears about the ultimate destination of my immortal soul have been realized. I scream at the walls and shake my fists at the ceiling and at the sky beyond the ceiling, for all the good it does me to shake my fists at either. It doesn't matter whether God doesn't exist or simply isn't moved by my plight. As for Barnes and Kawanishi, when she called him on her cell phone, he arrived so quickly that he could have been waiting hidden, listening all the while, just outside the door.

  Look, Barnes told him, still with that strange expression on her face, and he approached me, peered into my face.

  Yes, he said happily, the tear ducts work perfectly.

  For Nancy Ann Utley (1950-1966)

  and

  Jon Christopher Utley (1971).

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  Novelet: Days of Wonder by Geoff Ryman

  Geoff Ryman's latest novel, The King's Last Song, is due out in the US any day now. Of “Days of Wonder,” Mr. Ryman says this story could not have taken this form without the help of Anil Menon who suggested that artificial chromosomes could be the vehicle for the “ark” genes. Artificial chromosomes date from the early 1980s when a yeast chromosome was constructed from existing genetic material. For a useful introduction to artificial chromosomes see “Genomics and Gene Therapy: Artificial Chromosomes Coming to Life,” Huntington F. Willard, Science magazine, 17 November 2000. Available online at www.sciencemag.org.

  Leveza was the wrong name for her; she was big and strong, not light. Her bulk made her seem both male and female; her shoulders were broad but so were her hips and breasts.

  She had beautiful eyes, round and black, and she was thoughtful; her heavy jaws would grind round and round as if imitating the continual motion of her mind. She always looked as if she were listening to something distant, faraway.

  Like many large people, Leveza was easily
embarrassed. Her mane would bristle up across the top of her head and down her spine. She was strong and soft all at once, and kind. I liked talking to her; her voice was so high and gentle; though her every gesture was blurting and forlorn.

  But that voice when it went social! If Leveza saw a Cat crouching in the grass, her whinnying was sudden, fierce and irresistible. All of us would pirouette into a panic at once. Her cry was infallible.

  So she was an afrirador, one of our sharpshooters, always reared up onto hind quarters to keep watch, always carrying a rifle, always herself a target. My big brave friend. Her rear buttocks grew ever more heavy from constant standing. She could walk upright like an Ancestor for a whole day. Her pelt was beautiful, her best feature, a glossy deep chestnut, no errant Ancestor reds. As rich and deep as the soil under the endless savannah.

  We were groom-mates in our days of wonder.

  I would brush her, and her hide would twitch with pleasure. She would stretch with it, as it were taffy to be pulled. We tried on earrings, or tied bows into manes, or corn-rowed them into long braids. But Leveza never rested long with simple pleasures or things easily understood.

  Even young, before bearing age, she was serious and adult. I remember her as a filly, slumped at the feet of the stallions as they smoked their pipes, played checkers, and talked about what they would do if they knew how to make electricity.

  Leveza would say that we could make turning blades to circulate air; we could pump water to irrigate grass. We could boil water, or make heat to dry and store cud cakes. The old men would chuckle to hear her dreaming.

  I thought it was a pointless game, but Leveza could play it better than anyone, seeing further and deeper into her own inherited head. Her groom-sister Ventoo always teased her, “Leveza, what are you fabricating now?"

  We all knew that stuff. I knew oh so clearly, how to wrap thin metal round and round a pivot and with electricity, make it spin. But who could be bothered? I loved to run. All of us foals would suddenly sprint through long grass to make the ground thunder, to raise up the sweet smells of herbs, and to test our strength. We had fire in our loins and we wanted to gallop all the way to the sun. Leveza pondered.

  She didn't like it when her first heat came. The immature bucks would hee-haw at her and pull back their feeling lips to display their great white plates of teeth. When older men bumped her buttocks with their heads, she would give a little backward kick, and if they tried to mount her, she walked out from under them. And woe betide any low-grade drifter who presumed that Leveza's lack of status meant she was grateful for attention. She would send the poor bag of bones rattling through the long grass. The babysquirrels clutched their sides and laughed. “Young NeverLove wins again."

  But I knew. It was not a lack of love that made my groom-mate so careful and reserved. It was an abundance of love, a surfeit of it, more than our kind is meant to have, can afford to have, for we live on the pampas and our cousins eat us.

  Love came upon Leveza on some warm night, the moon like bedtime milk. She would not have settled for a quick bump with a reeking male just because the air wavered with hot hormones. I think it would have been the reflection of milklight in black eyes, a gentle ruffling of upper lip, perhaps a long and puzzled chat about the nature of this life and its consequences.

  We are not meant to love. We are meant to mate, stand side by side for warmth for a short time afterward, and then forget. I wonder who fathered this one?

  Leveza knew and would never forget. She never said his name, but most of us knew who he was. I sometimes caught her looking toward the circle of the Great Men, her eyes full of gentleness. They would gallop about at headball, or talk seriously about axle grease. None of them looked her way, but she would be smiling with a gentle glowing love, her eyes fixed on one of them as steadily as the moon.

  One night, she tugged at my mane. “Akwa, I am going to sprog,” she said, with a wrench of a smile at the absurdity of such a thing.

  "Oh! Oh Leveza, that's wonderful. Why didn't you tell me, how did this happen?"

  She ronfled in amusement, a long ruffling snort. “In the usual way, my friend."

  "No, but ... oh you know! I have seen you with no one."

  She went still. “Of course not."

  "Do you know which one?"

  Her whole face was in milklight. “Yes. Oh yes."

  Leveza was both further back toward an Ancestor than anyone I ever met, and furthest forward toward the beasts. Even then it was as if she was pulled in two directions, Earth and stars. The night around us would sigh with multiple couplings. I was caught up in the season. Sex was like a river, washing all around us. I was a young mare then, I can tell you, wide of haunch, slim of ankle. I plucked my way through the grass as if it were the strings of a harp. All the highest-rankers would come and snuffle me, and I surprised myself. Oh! I was a pushover. One after another after another.

  I would come back feeling like a pasture grazed flat; and she would be lumped out on the ground, content and ready to welcome me. I nuzzled her ear, which flicked me like I was a fly, and I would lay my head on her buttock to sleep.

  "You are a strange one,” I would murmur. “But you will be kind to my babes. We will have a lovely house.” I knew she would love my babies as her own.

  * * * *

  That year the dry season did not come.

  It did go cooler, the afternoon downpours were fewer, but the grass did not go gray. There was dew when we got up, sparkling and cold with our morning mouthfuls. Some rain came at nighttime in short, soft caresses rather than pummeling on our pavilion roofs. I remember screens pulled down, the smell of grass, and warm breath of a groom-mate against my haunches.

  "I'm preggers too,” I said some weeks later and giggled, thrilled and full of butterflies. I was young, eh? In my fourth year. I could feel my baby nudge. Leveza and I giggled together under our shawls.

  It did not go sharply cold. No grass-frost made our teeth ache. We waited for the triggering, but it did not come.

  "Strangest year I can remember,” said the old women. They were grateful, for migrations were when they were eaten.

  That year! We made porridge for the toothless. We groomed and groomed, beads and bows and necklaces and shawls and beautiful grass hats. Leveza loved it when I made up songs; the first, middle and last word of every line would rhyme. She'd snort and shake her mane and say “How did you do that; that's so clever!"

  We would stroke each other's stomachs as our nipples swelled. Leveza hated hers; they were particularly large like aubergines. “Uh. They're gross. Nobody told me they wobble in the way of everything.” They ached to give milk; early in her pregnancy they started to seep. There was a scrum of baby squirrels around her every morning. Business-like, she sniffed and let them suckle. “When my baby comes, you'll have to wait your turn.” The days and nights came and went like the beating of birdlike wings. She got a bit bigger, but never too big to stand guard.

  Leveza gave birth early, after only nine months.

  It was midwinter, in dark Fehveroo when no one was ready. Leveza pushed her neck up against my mouth for comfort. When I woke she said, “Get Grama for me.” Grama was a high-ranking midwife.

  I was stunned. She could not be due yet. The midwives had stored no oils or bark-water. I ran to Grama, woke her, worried her. I hoofed the air in panic. “Why is this happening now? What's wrong?"

  By the time we got back, Leveza had delivered. Just one push and the babe had arrived, a little bundle of water and skin and grease on the ground behind her rear quarters.

  The babe was tiny, as long as a shin, palomino, and covered in soft orange down so light that he looked hairless. No jaw at all. How would he grind grass? Limbs all in soft folds like clouds. Grama said nothing, but held up his feet for me to see. The forelegs had no hoof-buds at all, just fingers; and his hind feet were great soft mitts. Not quite a freak, streamlined and beautiful in a way. But fragile, defenseless, and nothing that would help Leveza climb the
hierarchy. It was the most Ancestral child I had ever seen.

  Grama set to licking him clean. I looked at the poor babe's face. I could see his hide through the sparse hair on his cheeks. “Hello,” I said. “I'm your Groom-Mummy. Your name is Kaway. Yes it is. You are Kaway."

  A blank. He couldn't talk. He could hardly move.

  I had to pick him up with my hands. There was no question of using my mouth; there was no pelt to grip. I settled the babe next to Leveza. Her face shone love down on him. “He's beautiful as he is."

  Grama jerked her head toward the partition; we went outside to talk. “I've heard of such births; they happen sometimes. The inheritances come together like cards shuffling. He won't learn to talk until he's two. He won't walk until then, either. He won't really be mobile until three or four."

  "Four!” I thought of all those migrations.

  Grama shrugged. “They can live long, if they make it past infancy. Maybe fifty years."

  I was going to ask where they were now, and then I realized. They don't linger in this world, these soft sweet angelic things.

  They get eaten.

  * * * *

  My little Choova was born two months later. I hated childbirth. I thought I would be good at it, but I thrashed and stomped and hee-hawed like a male in season. I will never do this again! I promised. I didn't think then that the promise would come true.

  "Come on, babe, come on my darling,” Leveza said, butting me with her nose as if herding a filly. “It will be over soon, just keep pushing."

  Grama had become a friend; I think she saw value in Leveza's mindful way of doing things. “Listen to your family,” she told me.

  My firstborn finally bedraggled her way out, tawny, knobbly, shivering and thin, pulled by Grama. Leveza scooped my baby up, licked her clean, breathed into her, and then dandled her in front of my face. “This is your beautiful mother.” Choova looked at me with intelligent love and grinned.