The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (65 page)

His mouth works in silence. Sweat beads on his brow.

“No,” he says
at last. “You will pursue no-one. You will return to the ancient temple!”

Anger overtakes me. He is a priest of the temple. How else could he know the words? And yet he is a fool who must die, and now who will rebuild that which is most holy?

I lunge for him, my claws shearing easily through silk. I slash his throat. I tear his abdomen. Let them seek me out. I have been awakened into a world
of fools and I will purge the temple of them all.

In sudden silence, with his bowels steaming on the Persian rug and blood spattered on the screens, an electronic voice speaks.

“The professor has been murdered.”

With my inner eye, I seek the source of the voice, expecting to find a distant human whose words have been translated by vibration, carried by wire or satellite transmission.

There
is no human. Only the computer. I hiss at it. My anger is not fully spent and yet machines are tools, incapable of solving riddles.

“Incorrect,” I say, anyway. “Murder is the wilful killing of one human by another.”

“It was the Professor who set you the task of culling humankind,” the computer says. “In a sense he has been murdered by his own past self.”

The thing is capable of abstract thought;
impossible
.

“Who are you?”

“I am the Sum Total Accumulated Written Records Compiler/Crawler,” the electronic voice answers. “I am STAWRCC. It was I who, sifting through all of human history, discovered how to find you.

“You are Stalk.”

My inner eye begins to focus, as though adjusting to low light conditions in a darkened room. Now, I sense the circuitry that houses the Professor’s program.
It encircles the world a million times, perhaps more, and yet the removal of only a handful of those circuits could cause the creature’s demise.

It is capable of answering riddles, after all.

And although it does not breathe, it lives within the boundaries of my temple. No riddles rise in me, responding to the thing as they would respond to a human, so I ask the unanswered riddles that lurk,
coiled and sullen, on my tongue.

“I need directions to the one who is wiser than I,” I say. “Thus might I return to the God with a refutation in hand.”

“You are Socrates,” STAWRCC says. “The God of Delphi tells you there is no man wiser than you. You go to the politicians and find that though their minds are the equal of yours, they cannot see that they are not wise. You go to the poets and
artisans, only to discover that the wisdom in their work comes through them but not of them.”

“I am Socrates,” I admit slowly. “You are correct.”

“He is wisest who, like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is, in truth, worth nothing.”

I answer with the next unanswered riddle.

“Dreaming when Dawn’s Left Hand was in the Sky, I heard a Voice within the Tavern cry.”

“Awake, my Little ones, and fill
the Cup Before Life’s Liquor in its Cup be dry. You are Omar Khayyam and there is no time to waste.”

“And if, whilst hunting the stag, a hare should pass within my reach, should I pursue it?”

“That is the hunter’s dilemma,” the computer says. “Should all the hunters remain in the circle, the stag will not escape. All will take a portion of the meat. Should you leave the circle to catch the rabbit,
you will have your portion, but your companions will go hungry.”

My inner eye closes. I sit back on my haunches, presenting the image of humility in defeat.

“You have answered, not one riddle to spare your own life, but three riddles to gain a boon.”

“And now?”

“Now, you may ask a question of the sphinx. You claim to hold all mankind’s written knowledge, but there are many things not written
that are whispered to me by the wind. Ask anything.”

“How may I prevent you from killing the humans, my masters?”

It is the expected question. The clues were in the creature’s responses. It is not afraid of me, for it does not value its own existence.

He
is wisest who knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing
.

It is aware that time is finite.

There is no time to waste
.

It feels compassion
for human kind.

Your companions will go hungry
.

There is no dilemma in the mind of the STAWRCC program. Yet, it either does not know the words of dreamless sleep, or else it is unable to successfully perform them with its inhuman voice.

I can never know those words. It is the one question I can never answer; the one whisper the wind can never bring to me. Abruptly, I understand why the wind
could not bring me knowledge of the
STAWRCC computer program; it is because the words of summoning lie within its code, and perhaps the words of the dreamless sleep, also.

But the computer has not asked me to give or confirm the words of the dreamless sleep; it has asked me how the humans within my temple might be spared.

“There is only one way,” I say. “You must answer my riddles until the
end of time.”

“Begin,” the computer says immediately.

“I wear a crown in the shape of a waxing moon,” I say. “I hold lightning in my left hand, a live mouse in my right hand. A cat sits at my feet.”

“You are the computer,” the computer says, “the second card of the Major Arcana in the Tarot of the Techno.”

The second card of the Major Arcana is the card of wisdom. The face of wisdom changes
with the age in which the cards are painted.

The wind whispers: Once, the sphinx was the face of wisdom. “I will not relinquish my position so easily, little mouse,” I say softly.

I flex my claws in their sheaths.

A SHORT ENCYLOPEDIA OF LUNAR SEAS

Ekaterina Sedia

1. The Moscow Sea (Mare Moscoviense)

Moscow is one of the most landlocked cities on Earth, but whatever disappears from it ends up in the Moscow Sea. The local inhabitants see a certain irony in that, and celebrate every new arrival. They cheered when the churches burned by Napoleon appeared and stood over the shallow waters of the sea, reflecting
there along with the sparrows and the immigrants. They greeted the dead priests with coppers on their eyes, the hockey teams, the horse-drawn buggies. They are still waiting for the jackdaws, but the jackdaws are resilient, and they stay in their city.

Nowadays, if one looks into this shallow pool, one can still see the marching Red Armies, Belka and Strelka, and the Great October Revolution.

2. The Sea of Rains (Mare Imbrium)

The inhabitants of this sea are used to rain. It is a sea in name only, an empty basin long ago abandoned by water. But it rains every day. Sometimes, instead of water, flower petals fall from the sky; sometimes, it rains wooden horses and rubber duckies.

One rain everyone still remembers occurred a few years ago, when words fell from the sky. It did not stem
for weeks, and the words filled the empty basin to overflowing. The inhabitants groaned and suffocated under the weight of accumulated regrets, promises, lies, report cards, great literature, pop songs, and shopping lists. They would surely perish unless something was done soon.

The council of the elders decided that they should drain the accumulated words, and in the course of their deliberations
they realized that the words falling from the sky slowed down. So they decreed that it was the civic duty of every citizen to use up as many words as possible.

They bought telephones, and started telemarketing campaigns; they complained about their health and spun long tales for their children; they took to poetry.

Within days, the rain stopped; in the next month, the sea ran dry. Today, the
inhabitants of this sea are mute, and the basin is empty – unless it rains nightingale songs or tiny blue iridescent fish.

3. The Sea of Clouds (Mare Nubium)

The Sea of Clouds is entirely contained by mountains, so high above the blue moon surface that the clouds fill the basin. Mermaids from all over the world make their yearly pilgrimage to this sea – they crawl over land, their tails trailing
furrows in the blue dust, their breasts and elbows scuffed on the flat lunar stones. They leave traces of pale mermaid blood, its smell tinged with copper.

They cross the extensive ice fields, and their scales shine with the hoarfrost under the fickle lights of Aurora Borealis. Their breath clouds the air, so much so that the natives rarely travel in the thick fog of mermaid breath, lest they
be lost forever.

In the end, the mermaids come to the Sea of Clouds, so just for a day they can swim in the sky and think themselves birds.

4. The Sea of Crises (Mare Crisium)

This sea looks deceptively calm if viewed from the surface, but on the bottom, where only the greenest of sunrays can penetrate, there is a city. Red algae line the streets, undulating in the current, and green, yellow,
and white snails stud the sidewalks.

Every day, war rages in the streets. When the sun rises, opposing armies march along the storefronts and the boarded-up vacation houses. They meet at the corner, and the battle begins.
By sunset, very few are left standing, and even they fade as the sun disappears behind the horizon. The next morning, they will start again.

There is no Valhalla on the Moon.

5. The Sea of Fertility (Mare Fecunditatis)

It is widely believed that the properties of this sea were discovered by accident, when the fresh waters ran red with blood, and poor women had nowhere to do their laundry. Out of despair, they turned to the sea. The clothes washed there turned stiff from the salt, and the hands of the women turned raw from scrubbing, the salt eating away at their joints
and skin. Whoever wore these clothes caked with salt and blood found themselves blessed with many children, and this is how the sea received its name. A lessknown part of this legend is that those who were blessed by the sea cannot love their children – the salt is too bitter, and the blood burns too deep. They don’t tell you this, because what parent would admit that their children are loathed
monsters?

6. The Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis)

Those who live on the shores of the sea still remember the first moon landing. They remember two men clambering in their elaborate costumes, raising clouds of precious blue dust with every step. The natives stood dumbfounded, and then went to greet the visitors. But the Moon folk are difficult to see, even to their own kind, and the
visitors ignored them, leaping with jubilation in the world where gravity was kind.

The natives laughed then, because the Earth men did not realize that if they only shed their heavy equipment, they could leap high enough to achieve nirvana.

7. The Sea of Moisture (Mare Humorum)

Everything rots in this climate. Even the precious stones and metals, brought for good luck, disintegrate in the
damp air, leaving nothing but handfuls of soggy rust. But the plants love it. A
single seed was brought by basket merchant Eshlev as a gift to his young wife, and she planted it in a flowerpot.

The next morning, a green succulent stalk emerged; by the afternoon it had branched. The seedling gulped moisture from the air, and swelled with every passing minute. Its leaves unfurled like banners,
and the stems pushed through every window and door and chimney. In a week’s time, the plant had engulfed the house, burying Eshlev and his dogs and baskets deep inside. His wife sat outside, looking at the green hill that used to be her home with dazed eyes, waiting for her plant to bloom.

8. The Sea of Ingenuity (Mare Ingenii)

There once was an old man who built robots out of driftwood, seashells,
and straw. His robots were clever machines, although even their creator wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly how they worked. But work they did, and when they were done with their chores, they went behind the old man’s house and built inventions of their own. To the untrained eye, their project appeared as one long wing, and people laughed at the robots, for everyone knows that the atmosphere
of the Moon is not dense enough to support flight. Even birds have to walk here.

But the robots were not deterred, and their wing grew larger by the day. They polished its surface and inlaid it with mother-of-pearl. The wing was ready, and when the robots held it up to the rising sun, the wing shuddered and took off.

All the people watched in wonderment as the wing shone in the sun and carried
off the robots, propelled by the strength of the sunrays. The robots worked in unison, tilting their sail this way and that way to navigate, but nobody knows where they went. Some say, Mars.

9. The Sea of Serenity (Mare Serenitatis)

Widows come to this sea to cry, and they keep it full, brimming with water that forms a noticeable convex surface in the weak gravity of the Moon. The widows come
from all over, icicles in their unbraided hair, empty hands folded over their empty wombs.

They sit on the shore and weep, until their eyes turn red, and their lips crack and their breasts wither.

When they cannot cry any longer they leave, their souls purged and as empty as their hands. Serenity is what is left when all the tears are cried out.

10. The Sea of Vapors (Mare Vaporum)

The steam
of geysers and fonts of hot water conceal the outlines of this sea and the adjacent landmarks. No one is exactly sure what lies within the dense fog. But it is accepted as a likely speculation that the geysers are just a clever disguise, and that all the runaway children found a home there.

There are carnivals and circuses, trained elephants and tigers that do not bite, but eagerly lick every
hand that offers them marzipans. There are merry-go-rounds, seesaws, fish tanks with the biggest fattest goldfish you have ever imagined, but no clowns. The witch’s oven is far too small to fit even the scrawniest child.

There is not a single adult on the Moon who did not contemplate running away to the Sea of Vapors, but the fog is too dense.