She Walks in Shadows (35 page)

“Do you feel your life is insignificant? That you are a tiny ant in a vast, uncaring universe?”

“I don’t know, like, maybe.”

“Do you feel you have no real control and could be wiped out at any time by unknown forces more powerful than you can comprehend?”

She fidgeted and looked over my shoulder, likely at my other sisters. “Yeah, sure, whatever.”

“Then you will be happy to know there are answers to your questions, if you dare to look.” I flipped open the pamphlet. “The Magna Mater grants her worshipers the knowledge and power to ensure the propagation of her seed across the cosmos. Her children are the chapters of her ongoing revelation.”

Her gaze shifted to the paper I held, its signs and sigils squirming from the attention. “Is this a joke? Are there, like, cameras or something?”

“Not at all.” I offered her the pamphlet. “Read this at your leisure. There is a website on the back.”

“
Pero
, like, what’s the point?”

Sister Honoria chuckled, the sound coming up from deep in her chest like a cough. “There is no point to anything. No point at all.”

That wasn’t entirely true, but I wasn’t going to contradict her.

“Okay, sorry, but I really have to go.” The woman snatched the pamphlet and closed the door.

Sister Honoria and I walked back out to the street to join the others. Some were already returning to the forest behind the neighborhood’s flimsy wooden fence, with or without victims for the blood sacrifice trailing behind them. Sister Lydia appeared to have eaten another dog, but there was no telling with her. It might have been a cat, or a man.

“Sister,” I said. “Why did you not tell her that Shub-Niggurath grants immortality to her chosen?”

The gentle clopping of her hooves stopped and I turned to look back at her. She watched as the woman climbed into her car and drove away, narrowly avoiding a pair of us in her haste.

“Because,” she said, “the wife of the Not-to-Be-Named-One owes us nothing. We exist to serve her and her children.”

“
Iä! Shub-Niggurath!
” I said.

Sister Honoria resumed her walk, scratching her horns absently. “Besides, not everyone survives the ritual to become a
gof’nn hupadgh
. Being regurgitated is very uncomfortable.”

“She did take the pamphlet, at least.”

“Indeed. Let us continue our ministry until she joins us or goes mad.”

The sun disappeared behind a wall of dark-gray clouds, bringing with them a storm that quickly soaked through our skirts. We trailed Yourladies to her place of employment, an old movie theater in a shopping center, with a bright, neon-lit lobby jangling with gaming machines.

The projection booth inside was deliciously dark compared to the sunny streets. After a delightful few hours of terrorizing her — making bloodcurdling noises, casting eldritch shadows into empty theater houses, revealing to her the true forms of the Twin Blasphemies and the untranslatable Sign — we finally wore her down and she brutally murdered her supervisor with a conveniently placed umbrella.

“You had to, of course,” I assured her as we led her out to the woods. “Your tender sensibilities can only withstand so much stress under the weight of the vast, ineffable horrors of reality.”

“
Pero
, like, what do I do now?” she asked, examining her bloody nametag, which read, “YOUR NITE.”

“The only solution is to give yourself to the will of the All-Mother,” Sister Honoria said.

We soon reached the trees, whose branches tore off our clothes so we could cavort naked with our sisters in the glorious darkness between tongues of lightning. Yourladies was hesitant at first, but she did love to dance. Soon, she was twirling and stomping with the best of us. We even let her keep the umbrella.

PROVENANCE

Benjanun Sriduangkaew

THEY SAY SHE
has always been there, as old as the station’s rust: its progenitor, birthing a series of bio-systems, auxiliary supports, rooms and ventilation, and plumbing. The incredible labor, the vast contractions, the ichor on the thighs. The lack of a midwife. Upon the completion of decks slotting into place and parks fertilized to prosperity, she became part of the station itself. There was no umbilicus, or else the umbilicus was never cut — she feeds the engines still or they feed her, reverse-birth where offspring repays the womb.

In this version, she is the mother and ancestor of us all.

We come to adolescence, then adulthood, in her shadow. At its blue-black edge, we decant new infants; within the netting made by her tendril hair, we wed; and in corners formed between her limbs, we hold funerals. From first breath to last, we inhale her salt.

I see her as oil on wood, two-dimensional. The artist was imprecise with her skin color, or perhaps meant to blend her complexion into the fluids of her sustenance. Her head is an impression, hairless, her features smudged on purpose. Shadow of fins and scales undulate about her flanks, and her nictitating membranes are lit by anemone blooms. She’s something between
nak
and
nguek
, we say, though she’s neither serpentine nor piscine — and in any case, lacks the beauty of either. If she has been dreamed up, it was by a strange, afflicted imagination.

I’ve seen her name spelled out, but nobody can pronounce it. We say Prathayayi — close enough — and so, our version of her name overwrites her the way our languages have been overwritten in different times, our history overwritten in different places.

Others define her by comparison to fable; I define her by what she is not. My negatives are empirical and exact — a crèche evaluator has plenty of time to squander on observation. These are some of the things she is not: a robot, a fish, a crossroad. She is not a story, a prop, a mannequin — something animates her after all this time, moves breath through her lungs and turns the valves of her aortae. Every day, we monitor her vitals, just to be sure.

This is what we must never try: to speak to her, to wake her up, to remove her from her tank.

To listen to her will, even for a moment.

There is a trick of optics and lighting that makes the hothouse foliage appear to stretch without limit, the fruits fatter and brighter than they are, facsimile of the humid forests that our ancestors knew in that country shaped like an axe. In their days, they filled those forests and public parks with dolls animated to an appearance of sweet intelligence, shaped like
kinnaree
and
upsorn-sriha
. They would enchant visitors, sing, dance. They would pour roselle drinks in celadon cups while musicians dressed like
khrut
plucked the
jakhe
and played the
khim
.

In our day, we hold the blueprints of those dolls and dream of a future when we will have the time and resources to devote to their making. For now, every breath and circuit — every fistful of raw substance — is strenuously accounted for. No waste. No frivolity.

It is this thought that preoccupies my client when I find him. He is standing straight, back to me, in a circle of pebbles and murmuring plants. Glossy coveralls, young, dreadlocked: From his application, I have learned that he’s a botanist and a mechanic, and that he wishes for a child of his own. “Khun Kittisak,” I say, barely audible above the foliage.

Even then, he jumps as though my voice had carried a killing charge, frying synapses and cleaving nerves. “Doctor Sutharee.” His breath is short, the rhythm of guilt. “Thank you for coming to see me.”

He wears an optical implant in the left eye. In its indigo lens, the color of Prathayayi’s tank, I catch a concave glimpse of myself, interpreted as a black skull with an insect’s gaze. “It was no trouble. I was glad for an excuse to get out of my office. Shall we get started? I see you entered the most recent lottery, but withdrew. May I ask why? There won’t be another one for 37 months.”

Kittisak stares at me, eyes blank with alarm. “This isn’t the most private spot.”

“No one else is in the hothouse, Khun Kittisak. I’m sorry if I seem brusque.” I am not sorry, but people expect a modicum of manners. “But I find it best to establish everything clearly from the outset with a prospective client. Your qualifications are fine; I believe you will ably provide for a child. The issue of your withdrawal will, however, need addressing. In this matter, indecision would be ... troublesome, yes?”

“I want to bear the child myself.”

“That’ll take surgery.” I make a note to his file, not adding aloud that it’d be difficult to convince my superiors the operation is necessary. He can’t convince even me and I’m his case worker. “You’re unpartnered.”

He nods, matter of fact. “By choice, but I couldn’t find a volunteer, either, and it’s as fair as any that I should carry the fetus.”

(Pregnancy parasitic, childbirth a nightmare of Prathayayi pouring a tide of fluids and gore through orifices. Until the entire body is one great wound, organs worn inside out.)

My face does not change. When suicidal despair and grief of rejected clients is so common, you normalize emotional extremes and learn control of your expression. React to nothing. More decorous that way. “Won’t you consider the more conventional way?”

“The more normal way, you mean.” He touches his belly, as though already, it is seeded and gravid. “I do want to do it. Gives you a special connection, they say.” A delicate cough. “It’s how I was born.”

“I sympathize.” The lie is automatic, rolling off my tongue with the easy taste of familiarity. Fish and lime. “If your request for an operation isn’t granted, would you settle for the other option?”

Kittisak’s expression flickers. He would not. “I’ll consider it. Mostly, of course, I want a child ....”

“Yes, and outside a lottery, it’ll be tricky. Still, your suitability profile is good and you have every reason to be optimistic.” I dismiss his file, vision adjusting to the greenhouse, tendrils of light residual behind my eyelids. There have been no breakthroughs in visual interfacing for years and implant components can be recycled only so many times before they degrade. Barring miracles — survey drones happening upon asteroids full of convenient metals and silicates — in three generations, our descendants will be down to interfacing with the station by console. In six, we will cut our birthrate down by a quarter to fulfill the logarithm of survival. In eight ....

Everything rots, save the corpse in the tank. Everything halts, save the tempo of her pulse.

When I see Kittisak again, it is in Prathayayi’s shadow and he has come to cancel his application.

Nowhere on the station can we escape the sight or sound of her, the smell and chill of her flesh. Among us, there isn’t a soul alive who has ever seen shore or beach, the glare of sun on wave. But we all know the sea. Not the surface of it, where water drinks light and gives back jewels, where birds are alleged to flit and flying fish dart. Instead, we know the sea from the other way around: inside its cold, colorless liver and, like deep-sea creatures, we are blind and full of teeth.

My office is directly beneath her gaze, surrounded by her the way blood is sheathed inside arterial walls. Nowhere else are we so close to her, temple to its god, offspring to progenitor. Perhaps that is why I’m less inclined than most to revere and believe: familiarity, contempt.

Inhaling the salt smell for so long, my body is of it, my brain sodium-white. It may also explain why I don’t have much empathy left, by sheer proximity absorbing the qualities of the carcass, its amphibious indifference, its distance from humanity. Black glass and old metal and her.

On a cluster of compound lens, I catch sight of Kittisak. He is furtive, looking over his shoulder and sideways. When he looks up and sees me standing between him and the exit, he essays a smile. “Doctor.”

“You appear to have withdrawn your request.” My expression is neutral, though I don’t step aside. “While that is entirely your right, I can’t help but feel my time has been wasted.”

“I
am
very sorry about that.” Kittisak is favoring his left side. His face, half-lit, is swollen. A tender, slightly red cheek. Drowning his sorrows? He can afford a decent alcohol allotment. “My elder sister talked me out of it. Family, you know how they are.”