The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (20 page)

Talk … here?

The buoyant warmth flickered past her. She was … drifting. No, swimming. She could feel currents on her skin. Her vision was confused. She blinked and blinked, and things were shattered.

There was nothing to see anyway, but stars.

alice talk here
.

Where am I?

eat alice
.

Vinnie. Vinnie’s voice, but not in the flatness of the heads-up display anymore. Vinnie’s voice alive with emotion and nuance and the vastness of her self.

You ate me
, she said, and understood abruptly that the numbness she felt was not shock. It was the boundaries of her body erased and redrawn.

!

Agreement.
Relief.

I’m … in you, Vinnie?

=/=

Not a “no.” More like, this thing is not the same, does not compare, to this other thing. Black Alice felt the warmth of space so near a generous star slipping by her. She felt the swift currents of its gravity, and the gravity of its satellites, and bent them, and tasted them, and surfed them faster and faster away.

I
am
you
.

!

Ecstatic comprehension, which
Black Alice echoed with passionate relief. Not dead. Not dead after all. Just, transformed. Accepted. Embraced by her ship, whom she embraced in return.

Vinnie. Where are we going?

out
, Vinnie answered. And in her, Black Alice read the whole
great naked wonder of space, approaching faster and faster as Vinnie accelerated, reaching for the first great skip that would hurl them into the interstellar
darkness of the Big Empty. They were going somewhere.

Out
, Black Alice agreed and told herself not to grieve. Not to go mad. This sure beat swampy Hell out of being a brain in a jar.

And it occurred to her, as Vinnie jumped, the brainless bodies of her crew already digesting inside her, that it wouldn’t be long before the loss of the
Lavinia Whateley
was a tale told to frighten spacers, too.

THE ELEVEN HOLY NUMBERS OF THE MECHANICAL SOUL

Natalia Theodoridou

a=38. This is the first holy number.

Stand still. Still. In the water. Barely breathing, spear in hand. One with the hand.

A light brush against my right calf. The cold and glistening touch of human skin that is not human. Yet, it’s something. Now strike. Strike.

Theo had been standing in the sea for hours – his bright green
jacket tied high around his waist, the water up to his crotch. Daylight was running out. The fish was just under the point of his spear when he caught a glimpse of a beast walking towards him. Animalis Primus. The water was already lapping at its first knees.

He struck, skewering the middle of the fish through and through. It was large and cumbersome – enough for a couple of days. It fought as
he pulled it out of the water. He looked at it, its smooth skin, its pink, human-like flesh. These fish were the closest thing to a human being he’d seen since he crashed on Oceanus.

Theo’s vision blurred for a moment, and he almost lost his balance. The fish kept fighting, flapping against the spear.

It gasped for air.

He drove his knife through its head and started wading ashore. Animalis
Primus was taking slow, persistent steps into the water. Its stomach bottles were already starting to fill up, its feet were tangled in seaweed. Soon, it would drown.

Theo put the fish in the net on his back and sheathed his spear to free both his hands. He would need all of his strength to get the
beast back on the beach. Its hollow skeleton was light when dry, but wet, and with the sea swelling
at dusk – it could take them both down.

When he got close enough, Theo placed his hands against the hips of the advancing beast to stop its motion, then grabbed it firmly by its horizontal spine to start pushing it in the other direction. The beast moved, reluctantly at first, then faster as its second knees emerged from the water and met less resistance. Finally its feet gained traction against
the sand, and soon Theo was lying on his back, panting, the fish on one side, the beast on the other, dripping on the beach and motionless. But he was losing the light. In a few moments, it would be night and he would have to find his way back in the dark.

He struggled to his feet and stood next to the beast.

“What were you doing, mate?” he asked it. “You would have drowned if I hadn’t caught
you, you know that?”

He knelt by the beast’s stomach and examined the bottles. They were meant to store pressurized air – now they were full of water. Theo shook his head. “We need to empty all these, dry them. It will take some time.” He looked for the tubing that was supposed to steer the animal in the opposite direction when it came in contact with water. It was nowhere to be found.

“All
right,” he said. “We’ll get you fixed soon. Now let’s go home for the night, ja?”

He threw the net and fish over his shoulder and started pushing Animalis Primus towards the fuselage.

b=41,5. This is the second holy number.

Every night, remember to count all the things that do not belong here. So you don’t forget. Come on, I’ll help you.

Humans don’t belong here. Remember how you couldn’t
even eat the fish at first, because they reminded you too much of people, with their sleek skin, their soft, scaleless flesh? Not any more, though, ja? I told you, you would get over it. In time.

Animals don’t belong here, except the ones we make.

Insects.

Birds.

Trees. Never knew I could miss trees so much.

Remember how the fish gasped for air? Like I would. Like I am
.

It will be light
again in a few hours. Get some sleep, friend. Get some sleep.

The wind was strong in the morning. Theo emerged from the fuselage and tied his long grey hair with an elastic band. It was a good thing he’d tethered Animalis Primus to the craft the night before.

He rubbed his palms together over the dying fire. There was a new sore on the back of his right hand. He would have to clean it with some
saltwater later. But there were more important things to do first.

He walked over to the compartment of the craft that he used as a storage room and pulled free some white tubing to replace the damaged beast’s water detector. He had to work fast. The days on Oceanus waited for no man.

About six hours later, the bottles in Animalis Primus were empty and dry, a new binary step counter and water
detector installed. All he had to do now was test it.

Theo pushed the beast towards the water, its crab-like feet drawing helixes in the wet sand. He let the beast walk to the sea on its own. As soon as the detector touched the surf, Animalis Primus changed direction and walked away from the water.

Theo clapped. “There you go, mate!” he shouted. “There you go!”

The beast continued to walk,
all clank and mechanical grace. As it passed by Theo, it stopped, as if hesitating.

Then, the wind blew, and the beast walked away.

Dusk again, and the winds grew stronger. Nine hours of day, nine hours of night. Life passed quickly on Oceanus.

Theo was sitting by the fire just outside the fuselage. He dined on the rest of the fish, wrapped in seaweed. Seaweed was good for him, a good source
of vitamin C, invaluable after what was left of the craft’s supplies ran out, a long time ago. He hated the taste, though.

He looked at the beasts, silhouetted against the night sky and the endless shore:

Animalis Acutus, walking sideways with its long nose pointed at the wind,

Animalis Agrestis, the wild, moving faster than all of them combined,

Animalis Caecus, the blind, named irrationally
one night, in a bout of despair,

Animalis Echinatus, the spiny one, the tallest,

Animalis Elegans, the most beautiful yet, its long white wings undulating in the wind with a slight, silky whoosh,

and Animalis Primus, now about eight years old, by a clumsy calculation. The oldest one still alive.

Eight years was not bad. Eight years of living here were long enough to live.

c=39,3. This is
the third holy number.

Now listen, these beasts, they are simple Jansen mechanisms with a five-bar linkage at their core. Mechanical linkages are what brought about the Industrial Revolution, ja? I remember reading about them in my Archaic Mechanics studies.

See, these animals are all legs, made of those electrical tubes we use to hide wires in. Each leg consists of a pair of kite-like constructions
that are linked via a hip and a simple crank. Each kite is made up of a pentagon and a triangle, the apex of which is the beast’s foot. The movement is created by the relative lengths of the struts. That’s why the holy numbers are so important. They are what allows the beasts to walk. To live.

Each beast needs at least three pairs of legs to stand by itself, each leg with its very own rotary
motion. All the hips and cranks are connected via a central rod. That’s the beast’s spine.

And then, of course, there are the wings. The wind moves the wings, and the beasts walk on their own.

They have wings, but don’t fool yourself into thinking they can fly, ja?

Wings are not all it takes to fly.

In the morning, Theo was so weak he could barely use the desalination pump to get a drink of
water and wash his face. He munched on seaweed, filling up on nutrients, trying to ignore the taste. After all these years, he had still not got used to that taste. Like eating rot right off of the ocean bed.

The beasts were herding by the nearest sand dune today, mostly immobilized by the low wind. The sun shone overhead, grinding down Theo’s bones, the vast stretches of sand and kelp around
him. The beach. His beach.

He had walked as far from the sea as he could, the first months on Oceanus. All he had found was another shore on the other side of this swath of land. All there was here was this beach. All there was, this ocean.

He poured some saltwater on the new wounds on his knees. The pain radiated upwards, like a wave taking over his body.

The winds suddenly grew stronger.
There was the distant roar of thunder.

Theo let himself be filled by the sound of the sand shifting under the force of the wind, by the sound of the rising waves, by this ocean that was everything. The ocean filled him up, and the whole world fell away, and then Theo fell away and dissolved, and life was dismantled, and only the numbers were left.

a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7
h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3 d=40,1 e=55,8 f=39,4 g=36,7 h=65,7 i=49 j=50 k=61,9 a=38 b=41,5 c=39,3
d=40,1 e=55,8 …

At night, like every night, Theo sent messages to the stars. Sometimes he used the broken transmitter from the craft; others, he talked to them directly, face to face.

“Stars,” he said, “are you lonely? Are you there, stars?”

d=40,1. This is the fourth holy number.

You know, at first I thought this was a young planet. I thought that there was so little here because life was
only just beginning. I could still study it, make all this worthwhile. But then, after a while, it became clear. The scarcity of lifeforms. The powdery
sand, the absence of seashells, the traces of radiation, the shortage of fish. The fish, the improbable fish. It’s obvious, isn’t it? We are closer to an end than we are to a beginning. This ecosystem has died. We, here; well. We are just the aftermath.

Stars, are you there?

Day again, and a walk behind the craft to where his companions were buried. Theo untangled the kelp that had been caught on the three steel rods marking their graves, rearranged his red scarf around Tessa’s rod. Not red any more – bleached and worn thin from the wind and the sun and the rain.

“It was all for nothing, you know,” he said. “There is nothing to learn here.
This place could never be a home for us.”

He heard a beast approaching steadily, its cranks turning, its feet landing rhythmically on the sand. It was Animalis Primus. A few more steps and it would tread all over the graves. Theo felt blood rush to his head. He started waving his hands, trying to shoo the beast, even though he knew better. The beast did not know grave. All it knew was water and
not-water.

“Go away!” he screamed. “What do you want, you stupid piece of trash?” He ran towards the beast and pushed it away, trying to make it move in the opposite direction. He kicked loose one of its knees. Immediately, the beast stopped moving.

Theo knelt by the beast and hid his face in his palms. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

A slight breeze later, the beast started to limp
away from the graves, towards the rest of its herd.

Theo climbed to his feet and took a last look at his companions’ graves.

“We died for nothing,” he said, and walked away.

At night, Theo made his fire away from the craft. He lay down, with his back resting on a bed of dry kelp, and took in the night, the darkness, the clear sky.

He imagined birds flying overhead.

Remember birds?

e=55,8.
This is the fifth holy number.

A few years ago the sea spit out the carcass of a bird. I think it was a bird. I pulled it out of the water, all bones and feathers and loose skin. I looked at it and looked at it, but I couldn’t understand it. Where had it come from? Was it a sign of some sort? Perhaps I was supposed to read it in some way? I pulled it apart using my hands, looked for the fleshy
crank that used to animate it. I found nothing. I left it there on the sand. The next morning it was gone.

Did you imagine it?

Perhaps I imagined it. Or maybe this planet is full of carcasses; they just haven’t found me yet.

How do you know it was a bird?

Have you ever seen birds?