The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (39 page)

I say, “Doctor?”

He takes my hand and notices its tremor. He asks if he can walk me home.

4.

I am shy. I have never let anyone in.

Valentine enters, and his eyes widen at the sight of all of the little boxes lining the walls, perched on shelves, the bits of things everybody knows spread over the
floor. “What is this?”

“Information,” I whisper. “I – have chunks missing. Parts of the world I can’t figure out. And I think – I think that bits of other worlds are melting in to cover the gaps. I think that maybe all Valentines are the same Valentine. I think the universe or the multiverse or whatever has this stopgap for data loss, and I think the human brain does pattern-patching on a subconscious
level – finding the things that match you and filling holes with them. Do you think that’s what happens?” And I pray for an “everybody knows,” but he gives me something else.

He had been on duty when I had the seizure. He watched my body arc back; he called 911. Probably saved my life. The doctor told him I might lose some memory.

I lost more than that.

I lost swathes of long-term memory, the
things everybody knew, the things I knew. I stopped being able to get all of my short-term memory into long-term. I started having trouble conceptualizing things.

I started writing. Data retrieval. Trying to make sense of the world.

I don’t remember. I don’t remember any of it. But Valentine so clearly does. And he is right there, holding my gaze and holding my hand, and the earth begins to
tremble—

He tries to pull me to the doorway, but I refuse – I stand in the middle of the room and the whole building starts to shake, and I watch a year of carefully gathered and filed slips of information explode from the walls and shower around me like a snow globe, all of the fact and the speculation, all of the ways to learn people and make things make sense, all falling around me like ash,
and I have a sort of hitching sob in my chest as I drop to my knees as the room settles, and he is there. V. Val. Valentine. His hair flashes silver, flashes blond, settles to dark, and his hands resolve from callused to slim, and he is folded back into himself; all Valentines are one Valentine. And I look up at him helplessly, all of my data scattered, and I ask: “Do you dance?”

DANCING IN THE SHADOW OF THE ONCE

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz

They came with their big ships, riding through the rifts in the Veil that protected the Once-country. We could not say if it was capture or salvation that came to us. They, who we called Compassionate, came for us and took us from the devastation left behind. Of the great number that was the Once-tribe, there were only a handful of us left.
We watched as the world we knew and loved vanished in the chaos created by the rifts. And as we departed the Once-country, we wondered if we would ever see it again.

—From Artifact Hala’s account,
Chaos and the Once-Country—

Hala’s joints creaked as she unfolded herself from the regeneration egg. She paused and waited for her augmentations to adjust before moving again. Consciousness thrummed
through her, a constant susurrus of memories through which she could sift and select when it was time for her to stand before her audience.

A visit to Ay-wan was in order, she thought. Hala’s inner self was always comfortingly chaotic, always thrumming with the reminder of what she was, but there was something about the chaos that disturbed her now.

Ay-wan would know what to do. If there was
anyone who would pinpoint an error in her augmentations, it would be him.

She pondered Ay-wan briefly. When she’d arrived on Silhouette, he had been among the first to greet her. He had been old already, the lines of his face telling a story of grief and joy and inevitable sorrow.

“They’ve assigned you to my care,” he’d said. And he’d taken
good care of her all throughout the augmentations,
the installation of her arrays, and the surgical procedures that the Compassionate deemed necessary.

They’d sent him to the shapers for a complete rejuvenation five years ago, and now the skin of his face was stretched tighter than the skin of a drum. It was eerie to see him looking that way – not young, not old, more like a construct.

Her body signaled its readiness for movement. With a sigh,
she swung free of the egg and walked towards the mirror. They’d added more transmitters to her array in this most recent surgery, and she was thankful that they’d chosen to set the connectors close to where her hairline ended. It was less unsightly this way and it allowed her the temporary illusion of ordinariness.

“Old,” she thought as she stared at her reflection. Her hair, once compared to
midnight by the young men of her tribe, still shone; but there were silver tendrils among the black and it was impossible to hide the crinkles at the side of her eyes.

“So what,” she said to the mirror. “Age is a badge we wear with honor.”

In the old days, the Munhawe came into the fullness of their power in their elder years. The patient growing into wisdom, the waiting and the watching as
the years passed, smoothing down the sharp-edged impatience that was youth – all these necessary things took time.

But with the Once-country fallen into chaos, and with the Compassionate dominating the worlds where the remnant of the Once-tribe were allowed succor, there wasn’t really any need to consider anything more than the roles that had been assigned to the remnant.

She hadn’t had the
luxury of time to grow into the fullness of her power. Instead, the Compassionate representative had her fitted with tiny little machines that crawled around inside her body, and an array of receivers and transmitters so she could tap into that source from which the Munhawe drew their wisdoms, their dreams, their prophecies, their healings and the skill to carry the weight of history and legend.

Artifact.

That was the title they gave her along with the rest of those who had been rescued. They had all been tested and fitted with
whatever augmentations the Compassionate saw fit to grant them, and then sent out to various worlds under the protection of Compassionate attachés.

In the beginning, she’d wanted to know where the others had been sent. But the attaché had looked at her with his
cold blue eyes and told her that she should be honored to be selected as Artifact representative on Silhouette.

She’d accepted the reprimand, but she still missed her friends and wondered what had happened to the others.

She pressed her lips together and walked towards the console that projected her daily schedules. She was to appear at a benefit tonight. Funds were being raised for refugees
located in various Once-worlds. She brushed away her nostalgia and her longing and tried to flow into the role that had been impressed on her.

No matter how hard she tried, no matter how much she reasoned with herself, she couldn’t help but feel that she was nothing more than a museum exhibit trotted out for display every now and then. A trophy belonging to the Empire, a being that should have
long ago been declared obsolete, but by some miracle still walked and talked, told stories and conjured visions of a place that might just as well be nothing more than a fairytale.

She folded her hands together in the proper form and moved from her bedroom. Her implants whispered loudly of memory, but she ignored them for now. They would quiet down as the day progressed and hopefully she would
reach the state of calm that she needed each time she had to stand before a crowd.

Her stomach grumbled. Augmented or not, she was human and her body still desired food.

“So good of you to be here,” the organizer of the 19:00 hour event gushed at her. “So many entry chips sold. There’s bound to be a good audience. You’ll want the dressing room first, I suppose?”

She had difficulty concentrating
on the organizer’s faces. Four on one, she thought. And she had a silly vision of bears piled up on top of each other as they strove to maintain balance on a onewheeler, or wait, was it a two-wheeler? The memory did not belong to the history vaults of the Once-tribe, and it slipped through her fingers quicker than she could say fish.

It’s not the Once-tribe’s story all the time, she thought.
Artifact, I may be, but it doesn’t mean I can’t have memories of my own.

She nodded and smiled as the organizers rushed her off in a flurry of nervous gasps, fluttering fingers and repeated bowing.

The dressing room was bigger than her living room. A long line of mirrors fitted with muted lights greeted her. Enhancers were plugged into the sockets – all on standby. Perhaps there was another
performance after hers?

She sat down at one of the tables and unpacked the satchel she’d brought. The long length of woven cloth shone at her. Red and white threaded through with yellow, green, purple and black – the traditional wear of the Once-tribe’s
Munhawe
.

“This will be yours when your time comes.”

Her memory of her mother wearing the same colors came back to her so vividly she didn’t
see the mirror she gazed at. A year later, her mother had been dead, one of the countless victims of the bombings that took place after the Charter changes. They’d brought her back in a sealed casket, the skirt too tattered to be passed on.

Hala pushed back the memory. She smoothed her fingers over the woven cloth. They’d had this made for her and she could tell that the cloth had been enhanced.

She frowned and stared at her reflection. A deep breath and the connectors beneath her skin slid into view. There was no help for it. She’d never learned meditation the right way and without her augmentations, she couldn’t enter the veils. She’d tried and failed to do so before.

“Are you all settled here?”

The four-headed organizer peered around the edge of the half-open door.

“Settled,” Hala
said. “Just getting myself psyched up.”

“Good, good,” the organizer said. Her faces smiled, and one of them whispered something to the other. “Do you want something to eat perhaps or to drink?”

“Ginger tea?” Hala asked.

“It will be arranged,” the organizer said. “How much time will you need? The crowd isn’t here yet, but the primary sponsors will be in before the rest.”

“Half an hour,” Hala
said

It was disconcerting to watch the heads consult each other. After one of them whispered directives into a headpiece, all four nodded.

“Fifteen minutes then to mingle with the primaries. Your tea is coming. I’ll check up on the other arrangements.”

She watched as the organizer left. Her heads bobbed from side to side and her hands gesticulated at each other. At least the organizer would
never lack for company, Hala thought. And she would never want for someone to talk to when the nights grew long and dark and lonely.

The door to the dressing room slid open again and this time one of the stewards came in. It was her tea, piping hot and filling the room with the sweet scent of ginger.

Thank you,” Hala said.

The steward nodded and departed as smoothly as he had entered and Hala
was alone again. She sighed, lifted the cup to her nose and inhaled.

“Ah,” she said.

The aroma brought back memories of her childhood and the mother who brewed ginger tea each time she had to do a long reading.

She blew on her tea, and sipped at it. It was good. Better than any she’d ever had before. She wondered briefly if the kitchen had a source and if they used real ginger instead of the
amalgam that was available in machines for the masses.

Twelve hours spent in meditation.

Twenty-four hours spent replenishing her energy supply.

She was spruced up as well as she could ever be for an Artifact who was almost a septuagenarian.

She had prepared. Yes she had. But this question …

“I beg your pardon?” she said and she tapped the connector under her right ear discreetly.

Surely
there must be a malfunction.

“I said, are you poor?” The woman who asked the question had a psychedelic array of hair plumes rigid with techno-spray, glittering under the bright lights of the dome.

“There’s no need to be shy,” the woman went on. “We see it on the news and we read it in the pages. The Once-country is sunk in
poverty and Chaos holds sway over what remains of the populace. Without
the Compassionate, there wouldn’t be anything left of it by now. Want to see my display?”

Fragrance filled Hala’s nostrils as the woman invaded her space.

“Look,” the woman said.

Her screen flashed and the images appeared.

She knew what the vid was, of course. She’d seen them repeated countless times – and no matter that there was truth in the desolation shown on-screen, the Once-country was
not all about mud and rain and blank-faced hopeless people living on Central City’s streets.

“I came from a good family,” Hala said as the vid came to an end.

“Oh,” the woman seemed disappointed. “So you’re not poor?”

Hala shook her head.

“But …”

“How do you measure poverty anyway?” Hala said. “What about yourself – do you consider yourself rich or poor?”

The woman took a deep breath and
leaned away from Hala. Censure was in every line of her body.

“Well, I never,” the woman said. “And we’re doing all these things for you and your people. I should think you’d at least be a little grateful.”

Hala sighed as the woman left her in a puff of sweet-smelling perfume.

“Well,” said a voice behind her. “That’s that then, and I suppose we can wave goodbye to a sizeable contribution from
her. You do know how to deflate the pretentious, Hala.”

She turned around and let out a squeal of joy.

“Bayninan! How … Why … when did you arrive?”

She fumbled for words not knowing what to ask first. The last time she’d seen Bayninan was when the Compassionate decreed that Hala would be sent to Silhouette. Bayninan’s protests at the selection and segregation of the blooded had been rejected.

Hala was “blooded” – of the blood – and as a true descendant of the
Munhawe
she was expected to be an ambassador of goodwill, an Artifact. What flowed in the veins of the blooded was priceless and could not be entrusted to a planet still embroiled in
the Chaos. For all that Bayninan was of the warrior class, she was deemed unfit to stand as companion to an Artifact. So she had been assigned to
a different planet.