The Apex Book of World SF 2 (25 page)

Nothing less and
nothing more.

 

It was water day.
Four hours of running water. The luxury of a warm shower was something he
looked forward to the whole week. He hummed and closed his eyes and thought of
blue-green waterfalls.

 

As he stood in the
shower, head bowed under the spray, he heard a loud pounding.

He wrapped a towel
around his waist and opened the door.

A courier held out a
letter for him.

"From Mr De la Vega,"
the man said.

Gerardo tore open
the black envelope. Inside was a card with an address and a date. An invitation
to Mr De la Vega's apartment. An invitation to show him the maquech.

He'd done it.

He was going to De
la Vega's home to parade his maquech in front of him like a real trader.

Gerardo froze as he
realised the wooden or plastic cages where he normally stuffed his merchandise
wouldn't suffice. He needed something grand and elegant that would display the
maquech as an elaborate brooch.

Perhaps a red velvet
box lined in silk with appropriate breathing holes. At once he began to panic,
considering the price of this custom-made, urgent item.

But then he looked
at the maquech with its golden chain, the painted back, the tiny stones in the
centre of the composition. A breathing mosaic. A walking jewel. It was beautiful.
It needed a beautiful setting.

 

The room was black
and as bright as polished obsidian. The floor and the walls reflected and
distorted Gerardo's image as he opened the box and held it up for De la Vega to
inspect.

 

The young man
glanced at the maquech, just a little glance and looked up at him.

"What on earth is
that?"

"
Zopherus
chilensis
," Gerardo said. "In Yucatan they call them maquech and wear them
as brooches."

"It's alive?"

"Yes.
Live-jewellery. It is decorated with …"

"Pablo, did you
select this?"

A man in impeccable
white, wearing a matching white hat stepped from behind De la Vega's right, a
little silver tablet in his left hand.

"Yes," said the man.

"What for?"

"It's a curiosity. I
haven't seen one since I was a child."

"It's ugly," De la
Vega said and waved Gerardo away.

 

He considered
tearing off the jewels from the insect's back. There were bills to pay and the
maquech had been an extravagant purchase at a time when he couldn't afford it.
Not that Gerardo could ever afford much.

 

"Stupid, slow bug,"
he told the maquech as it walked on the palm of his hand. Or maybe not stupid,
merely indifferent. In Yucatan they said it could live for many decades, even
centuries. Maybe after hundreds of years of walking in the jungle, things such
as humans and their games were of little importance. Of course, these were just
legends. Stories old people told. He didn't believe them.

But as the maquech
began to crawl up his arm, he wondered what time might be like for a
quasi-immortal creature, sitting under the jade shade of the trees.

 

Gerardo was thinking
of black eyeless fish and cenotes when the phone rang. The cenotes melted away
as he punched a key.

 

"Yes?" he asked.

"It's Pablo, Mr de
la Vega's assistant. I need you to come tomorrow to the apartment and bring
your insect again. He wants to have a second look at it."

Pablo's voice had a
hint of metal as it poured from the phone, crisp and sharp and bright. Gerardo
swallowed and leant forwards.

"I'm sorry?"

"Tomorrow at five.
You got that?"

"Yeah, sure."

"See you then."

Gerardo punched
another key and sat back. The maquech took a step with each tick of the black
minute hand of the clock on the wall. The heavy jewels on its back made it
slow. Or maybe it did not care to move quickly. There was all the time in the
world for it to reach its destination.

 

Pablo, the man in
white, was wearing grey this time. His fingers danced over the tablet and he
spoke with his measured voice.

 

"They use them as
love talismans. The Mayans said there was a girl that was turned into that
insect."

"The Mayans thought
a princess's doomed lover was turned into a maquech so he could remain close to
her heart," Gerardo said, correcting the assistant. "The Mayans thought it was
a symbol of immortality."

Pablo glanced up at
him, his fingers frozen for a second.

Arturo de la Vega
did not reply. He sat in his obsidian room, holding a glass between his
fingers. He did not look at the insect that Gerardo was holding up in its
velvet box for him to examine. Instead, Arturo set down his glass on top of a
black, lacquered table.

"I don't enjoy
insects," he said. "I don't find them interesting. They're too small, too
common, and they don't live very long."

"A maquech can live
three or four years in captivity. Maybe even more with the proper care."

"That's not very
long."

"Do you purchase
your animals based on their longevity?"

"Normally, longevity
is not an issue."

"Four years is not a
short period of time."

"It seems short to
me."

"Then you shouldn't
have called me. I can't make it live forty years just for your sake," he said,
and he knew it was a rude remark but he could not help himself. Arturo had made
him wait for two hours before he deigned to see him, and he was tired of this
curious sensation of levity, as though everything that might happen was
inconsequential.

"Do you smoke?"
Arturo asked as he took out a white gold case and plucked a thin black
cigarette.

"Sure," Gerardo
said, although he had not smoked in over five years. He couldn't afford it.

Arturo made a little
motion with his hand and Pablo stepped forward, lighting their cigarettes. Up
close, Pablo's eyes glinted a synthetic blue-silver. Modified. Beautified.

Arturo puffed twice
and smiled.

"I'm not completely
indifferent to your beetle, Gerardo. But I'm not completely interested either.
I've got other traders showing their goods to me and they have very impressive
merchandise, and they are much better known than you. Does he come recommended?"

"No recommendations,"
Pablo said with his beautiful, beautiful voice, and Gerardo wondered if that,
too, had been modified. "But talent springs from the oddest place."

"I do have a knack
for spotting talent," Arturo said.

"Mr De la Vega made
Yuko Saitou an overnight sensation. Her two-headed koi are all the rage."

"Synthets," Gerardo
said.

"We buy many, many
things."

There was a pause.
The smoke of the cigarettes curled up towards the glass ceiling, and Gerardo
shifted his weight feeling suddenly pinned under the men's gazes.

"How about a test?"
Pablo asked.

"I'm sorry?"

"Try on the beetle.
Wear it."

"That's not such a
bad idea," De la Vega said.

"Now?"

"I have a party on
Friday. Come back Friday. We'll see how it goes."

 

The maquech smelt
like old wood. Beneath its jewels it was the colour of wood and if Gerardo
closed his eyes, it felt like it was a leaf moving upon his hand, stirred by
the breeze.

 

He opened his eyes
and let the beetle back into its terrarium. He turned on the TV and clicked
through the channels, and there was the news and talk about crime rates, and
the soap operas, and the late night variety hour pop-star sensation.

Gerardo tried to
concentrate on the TV and the images flickered in dazzling colour, but they
seemed as insubstantial as ghosts. There was nothing remotely interesting to
watch inside his box of an apartment with its concrete lid.

He turned off the TV
and sat in silence.

He thought he could
hear the rain falling, far away.

 

A woman walked with
a leopard on a leash; a teenage boy wore a snake-skin jacket and a real snake
around his neck. Men, wrapped in silk and feathers, with fish scales glued to
their faces drank out of amethyst glasses. Women in dresses made of iridescent
butterfly wings smiled at him.

 

And then, amongst
the sea of revellers, Arturo walked forth with a jaguar's skull upon his head
and a cape made of animal bones, and he smiled at Gerardo. Pablo, black suit
and black hat, served as his shadow.

"So good to see you.
So good. Are you having fun?" Arturo asked.

"It's a very grand
party."

"It is. Have you
brought it then?"

Gerardo opened the
velvet box and held it up. Pablo slipped forwards and took the box, took the
maquech, and placed it upon Arturo's shirt, fastening the golden chain. It
shone like a star. It shone brighter than he'd ever seen it before, as if to
please Gerardo, and people circled Arturo and fawned and sighed.

Pablo, who was still
next to Gerardo, smiled a tiny, calculated smile.

"Will he buy it?"
Gerardo asked, as the star moved away and was lost from his sight.

"He never knows what
he wants," Pablo said. "But he likes real things and real things are scarce."

Gerardo was quiet,
and then Pablo took out his tablet and walked away. "Luck of the draw," he
said, without turning to look at him.

 

A couple of hours
later, Pablo walked up to Gerardo and handed him a card.

 

"Mr De la Vega
wishes to purchase your beetle," he said.

Gerardo nodded. He
did not know what else one was supposed to do in such situations.

"Come back sometime,"
Pablo said.

"The maquech,"
Gerardo muttered. Pablo's blue eyes swept over him: a question mark. "It'll
need to eat. There's some wood it needs."

"I'll send someone."

He was escorted out
of the party to a black car with tinted windows. He had never been in a car.
Well, nothing like a real car. Once he had sat in his uncle's beaten-up
bochito
when he
was a kid, but he hardly remembered anything about that ride.

Now he went down
Reforma, down the only car lane, fast like a silver bullet. And he thought he'd
never, ever forget that moment.

 

Gerardo walked down
three flights of stairs into his windowless apartment.

 

There was something
missing there. But everything seemed to be in its place; all the papers
remained where he'd left them; each bird sat in its cage; each fish swam in its
tank.

When he walked into
the kitchen he saw ants were feasting on a sandwich he had left on the table,
and he tossed it into the garbage.

He turned on the TV,
and there was a report about riots due to increases in the cost of the
tortilla. Somewhere in Santa Julia, two men had been shot for stealing hoarded
water. In the Colonia Roma, Mexican freshwater turtles were being served as
appetisers at a fine restaurant. He turned it off.

There was something
missing.

He grabbed the
terrarium and started putting the pieces of wood into a bag so he could courier
them to De la Vega. And as he did, he realised what was missing: the smell of
old wood and jungle. The smell of the maquech.

That night Gerardo
did not dream of rivers.

 

Author's Note: Thanks to
entomologist Dr. Aristeo Cuauhtémoc Deloya Lopez and his information about the
maquech, which was invaluable in the writing of this story.

 

The Glory of the World
Sergey Gerasimov
 

Ukrainian writer Sergey
Gerasimov has a degree in theoretical physics from Kharkiv University and has
sold twelve novels and nearly a hundred stories in Russia and Ukraine. His
stories have appeared in English in
Fantasy Magazine
,
Clarkesworld
and
Adbusters
.

 

They went upstairs, to the second floor that was actually much higher than the first. An unknown
contractor had sandwiched it between the dimly lit twenty-second and the
exceptionally roomy fifty-fifth, either for fun or as a publicity stunt. As
they walked up they saw through the big windows an embarrassed town changed
very much by the linear perspective, refracted here and there as if seen
through a huge quivering prism, scared, shiny, dark-cornered. One of the
corners folded up and the rain flickering along the horizon trembled there like
piano strings.

 

The starry heaven
gaped over the clouds. The constellations and shiny dabs of galaxies wheeled
there, shivering with their own beauty. Seeing this, a lady with a tame cobra
around her neck frowned and strained herself to unlock the door. She was
long-legged and purebred like a Great Dane.

"Saviour, hold it,
please," she said.

She handed him the
pensive cobra, freeing her hands for a two-handed key. Saviour took the snake.
The cobra shook its head as if rousing itself, then squashed his hand, smiling
quite cheekily and glistening as if it were smeared with stale grease. Saviour
put the snake into a pot with a cocoa palm and it immediately, with rumbling
stomach, muzzled into the soil rich in fluoric limestone.

"Shouldn't have done
that," said the lady. "Now she'll gnaw the roots. She's a snake, a predator.
Understand?"

Saviour presented
her with a bunch of red folios, and she gave him a condescending nod. They
entered.

The boss sat at a
round table elongated enough to receive lots of victuals, which formed a
slanted turret in the middle of it. Steamed crabs' legs made of wild sardine
scales crowned the turret. A few nonentities with indiscernible faces sat
nearby, but the table was empty both to the right and to the left.

A security guard
with such a muscular neck that the muscles dangled below his shoulders slept at
some distance. A dog, extremely lean and long, romped on a leash, staying
aloof. The pet was so attenuated by hunger that you had to have a really
trained eye to distinguish it from the leash. It licked off its sweat, reducing
the environmental pollution. Very far away, three moneychangers, small end evil
like avian flu viruses, played cards for curtseys with a coal-miner. A buffoon
played the pipe and sold doves.