The Apex Book of World SF 2 (30 page)
Read The Apex Book of World SF 2 Online
Authors: Lavie Tidhar
feel like my own.
tall as my husband. He can look right into the flower head, which is a bulbous
monitor with large soft periwinkle petals framing it. There is indeed a slot
right below the head, where the green stem begins. The moth is a pollinator.
Morituri36 says that below the disk is a tube that goes deep; only the proboscis
of this wild creature could fit down there. It is a most unique but not an
unheard-of pollination system. But there are deeper things at work here.
leave come dawn when the plant goes to sleep. But the night has just begun. As
the flower opens wide, so do I. The baby will be here soon. Why do the gods
create this kind of
pain
when bringing life into the world? Why?
she came out screaming. My husband wasn't there to catch her; I wanted him to
stay near the M-CPU's flower. So our daughter landed on the cloth he'd spread.
Morituri36 laughed with joy. A blue dragonfly landed on her for a second and
then flew off. I had to lean forwards and pick her up. I cut my own cord. She
is in the crook of my arm as I hold this portable to my lips and record these
words. A beautiful thing.
off. Could it be that the gift of life was enough to stop this intelligent
beast in its tracks? Or does it know what my husband is doing? Our storage drive
fitted perfectly into the port just below the flower head.
open now. It is sometimes good to be a man. My husband can stand up and watch
as we wait for the download to be complete. I can only lie here in the mud and
listen to what he tells me as I slowly bleed to death.
he keeps asking, with that look on his face. Don't look at me like that,
Morituri36. Like I'm going to disappear at any moment. The moth looms. I've
washed our daughter with the last of my husband's water. She seems happy and
angry, sleeping, trying to suckle and crying. Normal. Amazing.
you see! I'm talking to Morituri36. Doesn't he think I want to know? As if I am
not an explorer, too. Giving birth can't change that fact.
the portable can only record one voice. Here, take it. It's better if you just
speak into it.
in Jungle, approximately 600 miles north of Ooni, 24.44 hours*
She cannot properly describe the situation we are in right now, as I speak. The
trees creep in on us like soldiers. She can't see them, but I can. Every so
often, I see a pink frog with gold dots sitting in the trees just watching us.
Treefrog7 doesn't believe me when I speak of this creature. It is there, I
assure you.
trees nor the frog is our biggest threat. Treefrog7 is truly amazing. It is not
that she just gave birth. That is a miracle in itself but a miracle most women
can perform. No. It is that we have been stalked and hunted by this beast that
our explorer ethics prevent us from killing and still this woman can
concentrate enough to blast a child from her loins, even as the creature stands
feet away, biding its time for the right moment to spear me in the heart and
her between the eyes and then to maybe make a meal of our fresh and new healthy
daughter.
me to talk about this plant that led us to our certain deaths. The M-CPU of
legend and lore. The One Who Reaches. The Ultimate Recorder. Bushbaby42's
obsession. How old must this M-CPU be? Seven, ten thousand years? Older than
the plant towers of Ooni? I believe it's a true elemental with goals of joining
its pantheon of plant griots.
like I'm crazy…but who knows. You look into its head and how can you not
wonder? Look at it, surrounded by purple sterile ray florets the size of my arm
and the width of my hand. Its deep green stem is as thick as my leg and furry
with a soft white sort of plant-down. No protective spikes needed when it's got
a giant moth guarding it.
And everything's colour is altered by the brightness of the flower's head. An
organic monitor is nothing new. It is what we know. We Ooni people have been
cultivating the CPU seed into personal computers for, what, over a century? It's
how the CPU plant got its name. And explorers have seen plenty of wild CPU
plants here in the Greeny Jungle. Lighting the night with their organic
monitors, doing whatever it is they do. But an uncultivated M-CPU? How did
Bushbaby42 find it? And where is she? We've seen no sign of her. Treefrog7 and
I will not speak of her absence here.
head. What do I see in it? How can I explain? It is a screen. Soft to the
touch, but tough, impenetrable, maybe. But I wouldn't test this with the moth
looming, as it is. And I would never risk harming the M-CPU.
is in constant flux. There is a sort of icon that looks like a misshapen root
that moves around clicking on/selecting things. Right now, it shows a view of
the top of a jungle. It cannot be from around here because this jungle is
during the daytime. There are green parrots flying over the trees.
but in symbols of some unknown language. A language of lines branching off
other lines, yes, like tree branches, roots, or stems. The root-shaped cursor
moves about clicking and the screen changes. Now it's a star-filled night sky.
A view of what looks like downtown Ile-Ife, not far from the towers. There are
people wearing clothes made of beads, south westerners. I know that place. My
home a minute's walk from there!
again. Now…most bizarre, the sight of people, humans, but as I've never seen
them. And primitive-shaped slow-moving vehicles that are not made of woven hemp
but of metal. There are humans here with normal dark brown skin but most are
the colour of the insides of yams and these people have light-coloured hair
that settles. My wife looks at me with disbelief. It's what I see, Treefrog7.
The legend is true. The M-CPU can view other worlds. Primitive old worlds of
metal and stone and smoke but friendly-enough looking people. Now there are
more symbols again. Now an image of a large bat in flight. The roots of a tree.
The symbols. A lake surrounded by evergreen trees.
the plant thinking, and it is deep thought. Back to my wife.
Treefrog7, Greeny Explorer number421, 793 days in Jungle, approximately 600
miles north of Ooni, 01.41 hours*
been about two hours. Baby's fine. My bleeding has stopped. The moth is still
there. Watching us. The download is almost done. I can stand up (though it
feels like my insides will fall out from between my legs) and see the monitor
for myself now.
something I've never seen before…a land of barrenness, where everything is
sand and stone and half-dead trees. Where could this nightmarish place be?
Certainly not Ginen. It's almost 2am. In a few hours, we'll know if that moth
actually sleeps.
The Wingless Hawk Moth is an
insect of the taxonomic order
Urubaba
, which includes butterflies and
moths. It is the size of a large car, has a robust grey furry body with pink
dots, pink compound eyes, and hearty insectile legs for running. Its antennae
are long and furry with silver ball-like organs at the tips. Its proboscis is
both a feeding and sucking organ, and a deadly jabbing weapon. It is the
pollinator of the M-CPU. It makes no noise as it attacks and is known to stalk
targets that it deems hostile to its plant for days. Nocturnal.
—written and entered by: TreeFrog7/Morituri36
catharsis as my husband and I stare into its monitor and it stares back. I am
looking into a distorted mirror. We are gazing into the eye of an explorer. It
is like us.
beautiful. She is so fresh and I can see that she will be very dark, like me.
Maybe even browner. Thank goodness she is not dada and that she has all ten of
her fingers and toes. Think of the number of times in the last eight months
that I've been poisoned, touched the wrong plant, been bitten by the wrong
creature, plus I am full of antibiotics and micro-cures. Yet my baby is
perfect. I am grateful.
home, my people will love her. But the
wingless hawk moth
is still here.
The sun rises in an hour.
pictures and they are getting closer to where we are! Pictures of the sky over
trees. Symbols. Clicking. The jungle at night. More symbols. I can see our
backs! What! The moth is coming, but slowly, it's walking. It is calm, its
proboscis coiled up. But what does it
want
? Download is done. What…the
M-CPU's monitor shows two eyes now. Orange with black pupils. Like those of a
lemur but there is nothing else on the screen. Only black. Just two unblinking…Joukoujou,
help us,
o
! Now I see. Don't come looking for us! Don't…
information dies once gathered, once collected.
The Slows
Gail Hareven
Translated by Yaacov Jeffrey Green
A writer and journalist of
considerable reputation in Israel, Gail Hareven won the prestigious Sapir Prize
for literature in 2002 for
The Confessions of Noa Weber
(her first novel
to be translated into English, in 2009) and is the author of several novels and
collections, including an SF story collection where
The Slows
first
appeared (it was first published in an English edition in
The New Yorker
).
close the Preserves was undoubtedly the worst I had ever received. I'd known
for months that it was liable to happen, but I'd deluded myself into thinking
that I had more time. There had always been controversy about the need for
maintaining Preserves (see B. L. Sanders, Z. Goroshovski, and Cohen and Cohen),
but from this remote region, I was simply unable to keep abreast of all the political
ups and downs. Information got through, but to evaluate its importance, to
register the emerging trends without hearing what people were actually saying
in the corridors of power was impossible. So I can't blame myself if the final
decision came as a shock.
The axe fell
suddenly. At six in the evening, when I got out of the shower, I found the
announcement on my computer. It was just four lines long. I stood there with a
towel wrapped around my waist, reading the words that destroyed my future, that
tossed away a professional investment of more than fifteen years. I can't say
that I'd never envisaged this possibility when I chose to study the Slows. I
can't say that it hadn't occurred to me that this might happen. But I believed
that I was doing something important for the human race and, mistakenly, I
thought that the authorities felt the same way. After all, they had subsidised
my research for years. Eliminating the Preserves at this stage was a loss I
could barely conceive of, a loss not only for me and for my future—clearly I
couldn't avoid thinking about myself—but for humanity and its very ability to
understand itself. Politicians like to refer to the Slows as being deviant. I
won't argue with that, but as hard as it is, as repulsive and distressing, we
have to remember that our forefathers were all deviants of this kind.
I confess that I
passed the rest of the evening with a bottle of whiskey. Self-pity is
inevitable in situations like this, and there's no reason to be ashamed of it.
The whiskey made it easier for me to get through the first few hours and fall
asleep, but it certainly didn't make it any easier to get up in the morning. As
if to spite me, the sky was blue, and the light was too brilliant. As often
happens in this season, the revolting smell of yellow flowers went straight to
my temples. When I pulled myself out of bed, I discovered that the sugar jar
was empty, and I'd have to go to the office for my first cup of coffee. I knew
that at some point during the day I would have to start packing up, but first I
needed my coffee. I had no choice. With an aching head and a nauseating taste
in my mouth, I dragged myself to the office shed. I opened the door and found a
Slow woman sitting in my chair.