The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (28 page)

And yet her mother had not chosen to come here in life. Only in death. Where would Chang E find the answer to that riddle?

Not in the graveyard. This was on an orange hill, studded with
white and grey tombstones, the vermillion earth furred in places with scrubby grass.

The sun bore close to the Earth
here. The sunshine was almost a tangible thing, the heat a repeated hammer’s blow against the temple. The only shade was from the trees, starred with yellow-hearted white flowers. They smelled sweet when Chang E picked them up. She put one in her pocket.

The illness had been sudden, but they’d expected the death. Chang E’s mother had arranged everything in advance, so that once Chang E arrived
she did not have to do or understand anything. The nuns took over.

Following them, listening with only half her attention on their droning chant in a language she did not know to a god she did not recognize, she looked down on the town below. The air was thick with light over the stubby low buildings, crowded close together the way human habitations tended to be.

How godlike the Moonites must
have felt when they entered these skies and saw such towns from above. To love a new world, you had to get close to the ground and listen.

You were not allowed to watch them lower the urn into the ground and cover it with soil. Chang E looked up obediently.

In the blue sky there was a dragon.

She blinked. It was a flock of birds, forming a long line against the sky. A cluster of birds at one
end made it look like the dragon had turned its head. The sunlight glinting off their white bodies made it seem that the dragon looked straight at her with luminous eyes.

She stood and watched the sky, her hand shading her eyes, long after the dragon had left, until the urn was buried and her mother was back in the earth.

What was the point of this funeral so far from home, a sky’s worth of
stars lying between Chang E’s mother and everyone she had ever known? Had her mother wanted Chang E to stay? Had she hoped Chang E would fall in love with the home of her ancestors, find a human to marry, and by so doing somehow return them all to a place where they were known?

Chang E put her hand in her pocket and found the flower. The petals were waxen, the texture oddly plastic between her
fingertips. They had none of the fragility she’d been taught to associate with flowers.

Here is a secret Chang E knew, though her mother didn’t.

Past a certain point, you stop being able to go home. At this point, when you have got this far from where you were from, the thread snaps. The narrative breaks. And you are forced, pastless, motherless, selfless, to invent yourself anew.

At a certain
point, this stops being sad – but who knows if any human has ever reached that point?

Chang E wiped her eyes and her streaming forehead, followed the nuns back to the temple and knelt to pray to her nameless forebears.

She was at the exit when remembered the flower. The Lunar Border Agency got funny if you tried to bring Earth vegetation in. She left the flower on the steps to the temple.

Then Chang E flew back to the moon.

STAY THY FLIGHT

Élisabeth Vonarburg

By day, I go fast, nowhere but fast, not moving, impossible, too focused, unfurled wings, tilted head, eyes on the sun, when there is some. Now for instance, no clouds, nothing but light, rain of light, torrents, maelstroms, hurricanes of light. And me inside it, through my every pore, my skin you’d say, yes, beneath the hair. Naked skin: only on the face,
the torso. Get some light too, but less efficient. The hair mostly, soaking up light, and my wings’ feathers, a million antennas, if you will, conduits, minuscule, avid mouths, tongues, hands, a million fingers, stretching toward the sun, all that energy, everywhere: I’m charging. Inside, metamorphosed light: food, strength, lightning strikes, from cell to cell, vortexes, in my whole body, a continuous
vibration, electric sponge, I absorb life. Fast inside, my body is fast. Accelerated metabolism inside, chemical exchanges, neurons, everything, faster. I am charging, I burn, my own matter, my life, at lightning speed, behind each thought, a condensed frenzy, white hot, ablaze, crackling. Outside unmoving, almost: you don’t, see me move, doesn’t feel like, I’m moving either, but I’m revolving,
with the magnet-sun, like the flowers, but no flower, I: lioness, winged woman. Statue, you say, not quite, but what else, convenient word: on a pedestal, after all, immobile, almost, by day.

You
are immobile, for me, by day, almost, less than I for you, but slow. Everything around me, becomes slow, after dawn: the sun rises, heaves itself up, slows down, crawls, an imperceptible movement, in
the sky, the birds’ songs too, in the Park, draw out, lowering down, deeper and deeper, to a basso continuo, some modulations, but spaced out, wind, when there is some, leaves, music, solemn, meditating, I like. Behind me, lower still, the sound
of the city. Sometimes a blending, images, sounds, leaves moving, shadows, like a music almost, clouds, when there are some, flowers, opening with the
day. Sometimes I try, to seize the moment, when it changes, flowers, shadows, clouds: hard, impossible almost. Then I look elsewhere, or close my eyes, and come back later: more open, the petals, closer to the pistils, the bee, but everything caught, in invisible amber, time, all slowed down. With telescopic vision, perhaps, I could, with a millionfold, magnification, see the sap moving up, the flesh
of the flower, stiffening, or in the clouds, patient, the accretion of molecules. But it’s human vision I have, that’s all, not superhuman. “Look”: not quite, either, hard to will it, by day. Simply: eyes open, I see, my eyes see, like everything else, the other senses, smell, taste, hearing, touch, everything, at a normal speed, but my brain, no, too focused on energy, on charging: registers,
transmits, a drop every decade. If I want to look, to change the direction, in which I look, great effort, lasts for centuries.

A little mist, on the sun; the color of the sky changes; and my speed changes; less light: I slow down, a little; leaves, shadows, clouds, insects: a little bit faster; I could almost see the bee’s wings moving. A slow day, perhaps? Slow days, for me, the days of soft
sun, of mist or clouds, passing: I charge up more slowly, I live, and die, more slowly.

The first passers-by, at the back of the alley, in a few centuries, will walk in front of me, will stop. Tourists, it’s summer, always nice, in here anyhow: the South, warm, just enough wind, in summer, to break up the mist. Sometimes very humid, all that hovering water, invisible, ghost of the melted ice,
far away at the poles. Sometimes it rains, I drink, head tilted up, don’t need to, but it’s nice. Glinting gravel, after the rain, puddles in alleys, kids splashing about, the birds, bathing, in slow motion, droplets, wavelets, glimmerings, soon dry, those waters, tides of the sky. Elsewhere, more rains, I know, but here, sometimes, you can forget, the other tides, everywhere, eating at the earth.
Not me: I stand in the main alley, at the highest point of the Park, facing the Seaside Promenade, I see them, from up here, the tides.

I see them, I look at them, from time to time. My inward clock always knows. This decade: one minute outside, in the slow world, this year one second, I know, exactly. When I am facing in the
right direction, I look at the sea, every five minutes, I must parcel
out time in order to see: the ocean, swelling up, an unending breath, rising, past the ancient marks, on the pier, the blue, the red lines. The black line, would never get past it, they thought: on a rebuilt cliff, fifty meters high, the city. And there it is: vanished, the black line. Heaving, overflowing the sculpted stone parapets, through their interlacing design, the sea, draped on the Promenade,
a shimmering of heat, around the trees, mercury under the sun. It rolls, trembling, under the feet of the passers-by, behind the wheels of the horse-drawn buggies, suspended droplets clinging to the raised hooves, the sea inside the city, slow, irresistible.

More passers-by, not only tourists: the regulars, at this hour. You like to go to the Park, on the heights, far from the sea, turning your
back on it, walking up to me. You spread slowly between the statues, you fold up, sitting down in the grass, on the benches, endlessly, almost statues yourselves, if I don’t perceive you for too long:
The Bird Lover, The Dog Lady
; several dogs, not necessarily hers,
The Dog Walker? The Lovers
: just
The Girl Student
,
The Philosopher,
alone, then the encounter, the month-long first sentence, the
week-long first smile, then seeing them leave, together, throughout a century, and come back, another century, their hands, seeking each other, sea anemones, in a magnetic current. A few hours, another title:
The Kiss.
Are going to change again: their bodies move differently, the space they inhabit together, not the same anymore, their eyes, elsewhere.
The Break-Up
, perhaps?

The mist is gone,
the sun revolves, unmoving, in the sky. Tropism, I move too, don’t see the Promenade any longer, but The Sleeper’s bench, real statue, that is, blue dress, crossed legs, her cheek against her hand. Today, next to her, a youngster, a true human, skin the color of light tobacco, eyes closed, no shirt. Soaking up some sun, but what difference? Doesn’t move either for me, or so little, a breath every
hour.

I see elsewhere, clouds, shadows, leaves, other passers-by ambling on, imperceptibly, for several eternities. Or I close my eyes, to see the crackling energy, behind my lids, flashing through, life in my cells, death.

Eyes open again, bench vanished: the Hummingbirds’ Dome now, the great central lawn; less ardent light; longer shadows; the
color of the sky changes faster; the hummingbirds’
wings vibrate; behind the transparent dome, I am beginning to see them move, from flower to flower; in the trees, the free birds’ symphony wells up again to higher notes; where soon the song of this or that bird stands out, that I recognize; you go on walking, gracefully swimming along the alleys, buoyant; the sun’s orb sinks behind the leaves fluttering in the breeze as in a river. This endless
day is coming to an end. Inside me the energy pulse slows down, gets lighter, fades away. There is a very brief moment when everything stops, when I feel as if suspended, time for the symbols to reverse, for the fluxes to reorganize, for other instructions to move me.

Sunset is coming, a time for questions. Your questions.

But first let me enjoy my newfound body. Let me yawn hugely and turn
my head, this way, that way, to uncrick my neck. Fold my wings, unfold them again, stand up and stretch – front claws gripping the edge of the pedestal, back arched, hindquarters up in the air, braced on my back legs, tail lashing. And then adopt the posture in which I will answer you. Sitting back, wings folded, tail coiled around the haunches, the human head very straight between the animal shoulders,
the chest very obvious with its two little round breasts just above the place where the pelt begins. This posture is disturbing to some of you, it took me a long time to understand one of the reasons why: too much woman. They prefer me in a recumbent posture, head on the front legs, either lying at length on my belly or curled upon myself. And eyes shut. But this is not appropriate, I can feel
it, and in the end I always answer you sitting straight. Thus my face is at the same height as yours when you stand. Perhaps this is what disturbs you, who walk by averting your eyes or feigning not to see me.

You don’t ask many questions, nowadays. You never did ask many questions. Mainly at first, when I was a novelty. Or at least something to be outraged about, since talking statues had been
made before, in the very beginning, fifty years earlier. But to make one just when bio-sculpture was on the verge of being outlawed, only Angkaar could pull that off and stay unpunished. He was famous, a subject for controversy for so long that it was now a routine. And he was old, dying, everybody knew. He had friends in high places: they let him make his last statue, and then they passed the
law.

His face is in my first memory, and in the one after that, and in all the others until he put me to sleep and I woke up on that pedestal in the Park, in front of a wondering, shocked crowd. He let no one interfere with his ultimate creation: advances in the technology allowed it. But when I opened my eyes for the very first time, there was only his face, an ivory parchment, finely engraved
with lines, stretched taut on a delicate bony architecture, the wide rounded forehead, the mouth, sinuous and weary, and eyes like carbuncles, their fire too dark in a face too white. His voice, throaty, always a little breathless.

I remember all the learning – you say «programming», you say «conditioning». He wanted to me to remember it, to remember him. He wanted me to know what I was, and
how I had come to be. An artefact. A living sculpture. An artificial creature, a harmonious meeting of the organic and the electronic. My body, my brain, their development, their assembling: artificial, but organic. My movements, my reflexes, my memory, the algorithms of my thought: programmed. My thoughts themselves? Yes, some of them. There begins the uncertainty which is Angkaar’s gift to me.

There are very narrow physical limits to what I can do on my pedestal, besides the independent movement of each of my limbs: sit up, lie down in two different postures, stand up on all fours, beat my wings, move my head and torso. I cannot «jump down». Those terms have no physical referent for me, neither my joints nor my muscles hold them in memory. Of course, I feel no need to do those things.
The few movements available to me are satisfying enough, and even more, they give me an intense pleasure, as do all my sensations.

In the beginning, I thought there were also limits to my thoughts. Then I slowly understood that those were more limits to my emotions. Your questions made me aware of it. And my answers. At first, I never knew what I was going to say. After all, you have to enter
my perceptual field for me to answer you; you must be inside the magic circle, about four meters in diameter, materialized on the ground around my pedestal by small black triangular tiles. Beyond that limit, I don’t perceive you well enough; your expressions, your body language, yes, but not your electrical and chemical language, the emotions that surround you
like an aura only I can perceive:
I need that to answer you. Thus, in the beginning, I was waiting for my own words, my oracles, just as you were, believing just as you did that all my brief responses were programmed. But with time I was able to see that they never repeat. That since they evolve they take into account everything I have learned during these nearly ten years of my existence. And I concluded that somehow they must fit
themselves to your questions. That in a more obscure fashion they must even answer them. I cannot say whether I am the only one speaking, however. No doubt there is also my creator, a residual echo slowly fading inside me. I have learned to know him better that way, through the gaps: in what I cannot feel although I can think it, in the distance between your curiosity and my enigmas. Between my
questions and the answers you are not giving me, too.