21st Century Science Fiction (76 page)

“You let him in?” Mahi shrieked, several octaves higher than normal. I’ve often wondered how a two-dimensional creature can create such startlingly loud sounds in a multi-dimensional universe.

Something in Israphel’s demeanor exuded fascination, though when I looked closely at him I didn’t know how I could tell—his expression was still one of polite interest.

“The maw’s only son, I presume? I had heard she rejected you, but . . . this is an honor.”

Mahi sniffed, put out at having been discovered so quickly. His feathers bristled. “Yes, well. A two-dimensional mouth is not particularly useful for three-dimensional food, is it?” He turned to me, his human mouth stretching and widening as it always did when he was hurt or angry. If it continued to expand, it would settle into a shape even I sometimes found disturbing. Mahi was still, after all, the son of the most feared creature in the scorched desert. He grinned—cruelly—revealing several rows of teeth that appeared to be the silently wailing heads of countless ancient creatures.

“I’m surprised at you, Naeve,” he said, his voice a studied drawl. “Confounded by a pesky human? Losing your touch, are you?”

I frowned at him, trying to decide if he was being deliberately obtuse. “He’s not a human, Mahi,” I said carefully.

Mahi’s face had now been almost entirely subsumed by his hideous mouth, but he still managed to look thoughtful. “No . . . he isn’t, is he? Well, I trust you’ll get rid of him soon.” He folded himself into some inscrutable shape and seemed to disappear.

Israphel turned to look at me. He smiled, and I felt my skin turning a deeper, more painful shade of blue. For a calculated moment, eyes were transparent as windowpanes: amusement and fascination and just a trace of wonder . . .

By the Trunk, who is this man?

“What is my first task, Naeve?” he asked, very gently.

I turned away and walked blindly down a hall that had not been there a moment before. I didn’t look, but I knew he was following.

• • • •

I could practically feel his eyes resting on my back, radiating compassion and equanimity. Out of sheer annoyance, I shifted my body slightly so a gigantic purple eye blinked lazily on my back and then stared straight at him. I had hoped for some kind of reaction—a shriek of surprise, perhaps—but he simply nodded in polite understanding and looked away. His eyes focused on the indigo walls, and he jerked, ever so slightly, in surprise. For a moment I wished for a mouth as big and savage as Mahi’s to grin with. I knew he had noticed the gentle rippling of Top’s smooth muscles. Israphel looked sharply at my back, but my third eye was beginning to make me feel dizzy, so I subsumed it back into my flesh. No use, I could still sense him.

I ran my hand along Top’s indigo gizzards and silently drew the symbol for where I wanted to go. The walls shivered a little in her surprise—it had been nearly a hundred cycles since I had last visited there. But I needed to get rid of this not-a-man quickly, and it was in Top’s second appendix that I had saved my cleverest, most wildly impossible task. Even Israphel, with all of his jade green understanding and hard-won wisdom would not be able to solve it.

A light blue membrane slammed across the corridor a few feet ahead of us, blocking the path. Seconds later, a torrent of unidentifiable waste roared just behind it, smelling of freshly digested nematodes and one-eyed birds. Top tried her best, but it was difficult to keep things clean this deep in her bowels. As soon as the last of the waste had gone past, the membrane pulled back and we continued. I surreptitiously glanced at Israphel, but his expression was perfectly bland. Too bland? I wasn’t quite sure. Top shunted her waste past us several more times before we reached the entrance to her second appendix. The air here smelled funny, not quite foul but still capable of coating your throat with a thick, decaying mustiness.

“Are you sure about this, Naeve?” Top asked, just before she opened the membranous gate. “It’s taking a lot of energy to shunt the digestive flows around you. I’m having difficulty keeping things up. Charm is complaining that his bed feels like cartilage.”

“Charm always complains. Let us in.”

Israphel paused before the open membrane. “Are you from the scorched desert?” he asked, addressing the walls as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

I could tell that Top was just as mesmerized by his eyes as I was. Of course, she had always loved eyes—mostly for eating.
Perhaps I’ll give his to her as a treat once he fails the task
—but the thought made me unexpectedly ill.

“No,” Top said. “I’m the first of Naeve’s family. She found me on another world.”

Israphel frowned, such an unprecedented expression that it had the impact of a fiery declamation. “Another universe?” he said.

“I’m not sure. It’s been many triads. You have quite beautiful eyes.”

Israphel must have heard the predatory overtones, but he simply smiled and thanked her. Irrationally annoyed, I stepped through the opening into the chamber. Israphel followed me, glancing at the pulsing yellow walls and then the enormous heaps of bric-a-brac that littered the space. Some, including the one for my impossible task, had been there for countless cycles, but they were all immaculately clean. Dust was one of Top’s favorite things to eat, which was one of the many reasons that made her an excellent castle.

I summoned the object to me—a fantastic, mysterious device that I had discovered on my travels and had saved for just this sort of emergency. In the far corner of the room something crashed to the floor as my object began its slow, lumbering way towards us. The humans of whatever place I had found it clearly hadn’t designed their objects for summoning—it moved gingerly, as though its stubby wooden legs or wide, dark glass screen were in danger of breaking. It had a dark brown tail made of some strange smooth-shiny material that was forked at the end.

I had wanted to destroy his easy composure, and yet I still wasn’t prepared for his reaction when he saw the object laboring towards him. He shook with laughter, his hands opening and closing as though they were desperate to hold onto something. He laughed, and yet his eyes nearly seared me. Top gave a sort of giggle-sigh that made the walls shudder. Was it the pain lurking behind his eyes that had made them so beautiful? But the pain wasn’t lurking anymore, it was pouring and splashing and nearly drowning both of us. I looked away—what else could I do?

He stopped laughing almost as abruptly as he started, with a physical wrench of his neck. “Where did you find this?” he asked quietly. It had stopped in front of him and shuddered to a halt.

“I don’t really remember. Some human place.”

He turned to me and smiled. I coughed. “The first human place,” he said.

I tried to mask my dismay. “Do you recognize it?” I asked. None of my tasks were allowed to be technically impossible, but I had hoped that this one would be about as close as I could get.

“Yes. They didn’t really look like this, when—yes, I do.”

“What’s it called?” I asked, intrigued despite myself.

“A tee-vee. Television. Terebi. Many other things in many other dead languages. So what task have you set me, o demon of the scorched desert?”

His voice was slightly mocking, but raw, as though he hadn’t quite gotten over the shock.

“You have to make it work,” I said.

• • • •

Back through Top’s lower intestines, he carried it in his arms—carefully, almost lovingly, the way I imagine humans carry their babies. I had often pitied humans because of their static bodies and entirely inadequate one pair of arms, but Israphel did not ask for my help and I did not offer. Awkward though he was, he still managed to look dignified.

By the time we reached the end of her intestine, Top had managed to redecorate the front parlor. I can’t say I was entirely pleased with the changes—fine, gauzy cloth of all different shades of green draped gently from the ceiling, rippling in an invisible breeze. The floor was solid, but appeared to be the surface of a lake. It reflected the sky of an unknown world—jade green, just like Israphel’s eyes.

I could have killed her, only it was notoriously difficult to kill a castle. Instead, I felt my skin tinting red, like my hair.

Israphel gently set the tee-vee down on the rippling lake floor and looked around contemplatively.

“It’s quite nice,” he said to the ceiling. “I thank you.”

Top knew how angry I was, so the only response she dared was a kind of wistful “good luck” that made me turn even redder. My own family!

Perhaps, after all, they
wanted
a . . .

I didn’t even want to think of it.

“You have until first light,” I said curtly, and walked straight into a nearby wall.

• • • •

Hours later, when twilight had sunk onto the scorched desert and the maggots were giving their farewell light show as they burrowed deeper into the sand, Charm found me. I knew he was there because of the peculiar smell wafted towards my nose this high in castle—that tang of fresh saltwater could only mean that Charm had been drinking again.

“He’s interesting, that fellow,” Charm said in a studied drawl.

“You noticed?” I summoned several balls and began juggling them in intricate patterns—a nervous habit.

“Not really human, but . . . I mean, he doesn’t smell like one, he doesn’t smell like anything I’ve ever encountered, but he still
feels
like one. Looks like one. The way he stares at that tee-vee thing of yours? Very human.”

I nearly fumbled my balls and had to create an extra hand just to keep the pattern going. “He’s succeeding, then? He’ll get it to work?”

“I don’t know. He isn’t doing anything, just sitting there. But still . . . something’s just funny about him. Powerful, that much is obvious.” He paused. “Mahi is sulking,” he said, after a few moments.

I let out a brief laugh. “Typical. Does he really think I’ll let this man succeed?”

“I don’t know, will you?”

I lost the pattern of the balls entirely, and glared in the direction I guessed Charm was—a challenge even when he wasn’t trying to hide.

“Don’t be stupid,” I said as the balls clacked and bounced on the floor. “I’ve lived this long without a . . . why would I need him now?”

Charm laughed and I caught a strong whiff of saltwater. “Why, indeed? But Top was telling me about your fixation with his eyes, his broken nose—”

“
My
fixation . . .”

“You can’t fool us, Naeve. We’re your family. Why else do you think Mahi’s sulking? Maybe you’re lonely.”

“But I already have all of you.”

“Not that type of lonely, Mother.” I felt him lean forward until his breath tickled my ear. “Mahi and I could never have passed the third test.” His deep whisper sounded louder than an earthquake. “But he can.” His voice grew fainter and I knew he was vanishing in his own strange way—different parts of him at once.

His voice was the last to leave. “Are you lonely, Naeve?”

I sat frozen at the top of my castle, staring at the blackened desert with its shivering, luminescent sand for several minutes. Then, almost involuntarily, I conjured an image of Israphel.

He was sitting in the parlor where I had left him, a few feet away from the tee-vee. His brows were drawn up in concentration and his fingers occasionally stroked the strange object’s forked tail. I stared at him for minutes, then hours—how many, I’m not sure. He never stirred, but once in that long night he whispered someone’s name. I couldn’t hear him clearly, but I saw his lips move and the pain that briefly flitted across his eyes.

Was
I lonely?

I waited for the dawn.

• • • •

First day light. Mahi awoke me from my trance-like stupor, wiping out the vestiges of Israphel’s image with a flick of his two-dimensional tongue. He was all mouth this morning and his grotesquely abundant teeth were screaming a morning aria that I supposed might be pleasurable to the son of a creature who climaxed while she chewed.

“You seem happy. Charm told me you were sulking.”

“Why would I sulk? Our green eyed intruder has failed!”

I sat up straight and stared at him. “Failed? How do you know?”

He cackled like a magpie and his teeth groaned with him. Positively unnerving, even for me. “He hasn’t moved. He’s just sat there all night, and the tee-vee hasn’t done a thing. Go down and see for yourself.”

He compressed himself into a line and started darting around me, giggling even as his teeth wailed like damned souls.

“I knew you wouldn’t let him pass, Naeve,” he said, flattening himself out again. “Are you coming? I want to see you toss him out.”

My throat felt like someone had lit a fire to it. “Soon,” I croaked.

After he left, I turned to stare back out at the desert. The maggots had started popping back out of the sand, making crackling noises like the sound of bones being slowly crushed. Light sprayed and twisted in the rapidly thickening air as they emerged. Just from the timbre of the pops, low and crunchy, I could tell that it must be fairly late in the season. In two days, perhaps, the desert would have its lights. I couldn’t remember the last time I had been here to see it, but my sudden longing was mixed with dread.

If Mahi was wrong like I thought—hoped?—then in two days we would all see something more than just the lights.

• • • •

By the time I arrived, the others were all there, staring silently at Israphel who stared just as silently back at them. Even Top had fashioned a body for herself for the occasion—a seductive brown human connected to the wall with an orange umbilical cord. He still sat on the floor, the tail of the tee-vee balanced on the tips of his fingers. It appeared that what Mahi said was true—he had not gotten it to work. The object looked just the same as it had yesterday. I fought a surge of disappointment. After all, why should I be disappointed? Just one less nuisance in my life. I could still stay and watch the lights if I wanted.

Israphel looked up as soon as I appeared, and a smile briefly stretched his hard lips. My nipples hardened and I felt Charm flit over them with an almost-silent laugh.