The New Weird (53 page)

With a sigh, he let go of this pleasant dream and let his mental vision of the god sink back into silence as he and the madwoman emerged into the louder drub and hum of the crowded street. Street children, dusty hair and big eyes, were grouped around a dhosa cart, begging for scraps from the vendor, who did his best to ignore them while fulfilling the orders of the paying members of the crowd. From far away the crackle and pop of a string of firecrackers overcame the oil sizzle and clink of coins, even though the sun had yet to set, and the pleasant, savory wind became tainted with sulfur and gunpowder.

The crowds were frenzied, an eddy from one place to another, a factory shift changing perhaps or a performance of some sort letting out, maybe a gathering going somewhere, where, he couldn't tell, but he kept his hold on the madwoman's sleeve as the crowd pulled him along, washed him through the street like a paper boat on a stream. He thought he heard her saying? singing? something, but when he shouted and gestured incomprehension with his free hand, she gave him a sweet, bewildered smile. He noticed her eyes were as blue as a midday sky, the blue of answered prayers and sunsets in fairy tales just as an enormous woman in a yellow sari jostled past, features working with emotion, and severed the grasp of their hands.

He pushed his way after her, swimming through the crowd with awkward flailing motions that may have slowed more than sped him along. He saw her over the crowd, then through a gap between two white-robed men, then glimpsed her pushed in the direction of the central fountain. He followed up the twelve worn steps, running, half-falling, not sure why he was so terrified at the thought of losing her.

He reached her at the peak of the stairs where she stood beside a balloon vendor. She fell back into his arms laughing, a deep guttural laughter as her body fell apart into thousands of brilliant blue petals, a drift of color that danced on the breeze like a dust devil long enough for him to gasp. The balloon vendor said something intelligible and let go of the strings, letting the red balloons soar upward, faster than birds. The air went still and the petals fell, carpeting the stone in a bright, slippery flood that made him stumble and go to one knee, the vendor clutching at his shoulder for support while the unnoticing crowds continued their dizzy swirl and the balloons fell into the darkening sky.

VIEW 3

All God's Chillun Got Wings
| SARAH MONETTE

JIN DOES NOT REMEMBER a time before she was Jin.

She knows that there must have been such a time, for no salp would be wasteful enough to attach itself to a puppy, and salps themselves have a complicated life-cycle, in only one phase of which do they require symbionts. So there was a dog, and there was a salp, and they were not always one.

But now there is Jin.

Barring disease or disaster, a salp's host will live as long as the salp remains in its symbiont phase. What happens after that, Jin doesn't know. She's seen the transformation, the salp fighting its way free of its protective sac, all claws and teeth and wet-glistening membranous wings; she's seen the new creature ― called a salp no longer, but instead a dhajarah ― launch itself, screaming, for the sky, and the dog, which a minute ago had been a friend, a fellow-soldier, collapse to the ground, a lifeless sack of bones and fur.

But no dhajarah has ever returned to talk to a salp. She doesn't know if her friend Mutlat, if her friend Ru, are still themselves as they hurl themselves across the sky or hang in their rookeries in the vaults of the cathedrals, the railway stations, the cavernous, reeking warehouses that bulk along the docks. She doesn't know if she will still be Jin.

Most of the time, she doesn't worry about it.

Goza the Beggar was a good fellow, but people didn't want to talk to him, no matter how many times he swore ― truthfully! ― that he wasn't contagious. So when he left headquarters, it wasn't as Goza the Beggar, but as Azog the Hoodlum.

People talked to Azog, whether they wanted to or not.

He worked his way through the less desirable quarters of the city, following the line of the railroad, cajoling, threatening, bribing, in a couple of instances resorting to violence, more to relieve his steadily growing frustration ― and to stay in character ― than anything else. No one seemed to know anything, although people were definitely nervous. Everyone was willing to tell him the omens their mother's best friend's son-in-law had seen, or the dream their sister's second husband's granddaughter had had. Discord among the gods. Yeshe's name came up a few times, Jaggenuth's over and over again, and that tied right back into that very peculiar pilgrim encountered next to a yogurt cart, a pilgrim in Riarnanth for a festival his people did not celebrate.

Jaggenuth's name, and anger, and barely whispered, the Factors' Dance. Something about the Factors' Dance, but no one knew what.

The third time he threatened to break someone's arm, it wasn't Azog at all. Not Azog the Hoodlum or Goza the Beggar or Enif the Constable or any of the other masks he slid between himself and the world like a shadow-show's colored screens. Just Nashira, who barely recognized himself in the mirror any longer.

Dseveh was performing at the Factors' Dance. Dseveh of the great dark doe's eyes and the wicked fox's smile. Dseveh with his voice like sunlight through raw honey. Dseveh who made all Nashira's charades and stratagems at once petty and worthwhile, worthwhile insofar as they could be used to keep Dseveh safe.

Dseveh who laughed at him for his romantic ideas ― laughed, and then kissed him because no one in Dseveh's life had ever wanted to keep him safe before.

And for Dseveh, Nashira wrapped himself tightly in Azog and went down to the garbage dumps in the triangle between the Torpid Canal, the railroad, and Bangma Bay, where the salp-infested dogs denned and rutted and fought each other in the sweltering heat of midday. As informants went, the dogs were refreshingly, blessedly direct. If they knew something, they would say so. If they didn't, they would say so. And then probably try to eat him, but that was all right. He could handle it.

It was actually marginally safer to approach them on their own territory than to try to accost one in an alley. The latter tactic would get you eaten first; the former made you intriguing.

Azog had come to the dumps ― the Fester, they were called by those unfortunate enough to live nearby ― often enough that the dogs recognized his scent. Jin was waiting for him when he crawled out of the culvert.

I'm on a first name basis with a salp and its host,
Azog thought, shivered, and said, "Hello, Jin."

"Hello, two-legs," Jin said, tilting her head to watch him with her one working eye. "What do you want?"

Azog told her about the peculiar pilgrim, about the rumors and fears. About halfway through, Jin sat down, and Azog felt a sense of relief that told him how anxious he had been. When he had finished, and was looking at her with a head-cocked curiosity that mirrored her own, she told him first about an encounter between a dog-pack and a woman made of cornflowers ― "Lini still isn't back in his right mind," she said with a snort ― and then turned her head and yelled, "Pimyut!"

Another dog emerged like a magic trick from the nearest pile of garbage and limped over.

"Tell this two-legs about the other two-legs," said Jin. "Tell him about the smells."

"And about the bitch who shot me," Pimyut said, half growling.

"Shot
you?" Azog said, sounding as appalled as he could, and Pimyut, gratified, showed him a long shallow graze along her left shoulder and told him about a man in an alley off Poonma Way near the garial factory, easy pickings, and then the bitch with the gun, and all the things the man had smelled of, at least half of them foreign.

"Give him the sandal," Jin said.

Pimyut whined.

"Can't eat it," Jin said.

"Goj says ― "

Jin stood up, her lips drawing back from her teeth. "Give him the fucking sandal."

Pimyut rolled to display her belly; courteously, Azog looked away, and didn't look back until Pimyut had returned with a broken-strapped sandal which was incontrovertibly made in Dardarbji. It said so on the sole.

"Thank you," Azog said, bowing first to Jin, then to Pimyut. "I will make the usual arrangement with Ravay the butcher ― "

Jin made a noise, a noise he'd never imagined a dog could make. He lurched back, and Pimyut lurched with him, both of them staring as Jin crumpled and the sac on her neck writhed and bulged and finally tore, and a glistening black shape launched itself, fierce as a poisoned arrow, at the sky.

They stared for a long time at the heap of fur and bones that had been Jin. Then Pimyut shook herself as if she'd just emerged from the water and said, "So, two-legs. Ravay the butcher?"

She screams it to the sky, to the gods who may or may not be listening.

She is still Jin.

VIEW 4

Locust-Mind
| DANIEL ABRAHAM

ONCE, IN THE DAYS before he had dedicated his inner self to Chuzdt, Majin Panaranja had had many alternatives. He might marry, or again he might not. He might take the man living in the small rooms across the alley as a lover, or he might not. He might have become a policeman, joining one of the morality squads that would beat men caught in the company of unescorted women. He might have learned to sing or to read or to grow living things. He might have left wicked and blessed Riarnanth and taken to distant, dust-paved roads. He might have lived in an alley and eked out his existence stealing gull eggs from the cliff face. He might have grown rich by selling slaves or gained spiritual merit by freeing them.

Once, in the days before he had dedicated his inner self to Chuzdt, Majin Panaranja had been a young man of infinite possibility and great promise. It was a burden he had been relieved, at the time, to set down.

Walking now through the close streets of the Tsongtrik banlieue, his mind was filled with the constant, wordless mantra that was the true name of Chuzdt and his mouth and eyes were set in a constant, beatific smile. He wore a grey robe large enough to cover the blisters where the locusts that made up his god had been inserted into his opened flesh. He did not wish to be recognized.

Unease touched him; it was a human concern, and a falling away from Chuzdt. He paused for a moment, closing his eyes, and practiced devouring the thought until he was once again pure. A woman cursed at him mildly for blocking her way. Majin smiled without feeling either bliss or dismay and returned to his path.

The door at Number 50 Djudrum Lane showed that some former inhabitant of the building had been dedicated to Yeshe. Six hundred and fifty-four spider-black eyes considered him as he stood before it. With Yeshe, always six hundred and fifty-four. He knew no reason for the number's significance. He waited until, with a sigh of resignation, the door swung open.

Within, the house smelled sour with neglect. The low rumble of its plumbing suggested some stray infection afflicted its works and had never been tended to. The light that flickered from the heavy iron lanterns was as blue and cold as the moon. Irshad stumbled into the room, his hands taking the broken-wrist pose of prayer. Majin imagined what it would be like to eat the man; skin lifting from flesh, flesh from bone. In his mind, he took the small, frail body apart, lifting each organ to his own mouth with the joy of a toddler exploring taste for the first time. Majin returned the prayerful pose.

"Septon," Irshad said. "Something has gone wrong. The Dardarbji tool never came. I didn't know what to do."

Majin accepted the information, letting it fall into the constant clicking maelstrom of his consciousness, letting it be torn apart by the aspect of Chuzdt. Slowly it occurred to him that this eventuality would require a human mind with all of its faults and peculiar abilities. He looked

down and, with a sense of profound nausea, forced himself to think.

"Did he discover that we were in collusion with his masters in Dardarbji?" Majin asked.

"I don't know, Septon. He never came to accept his assignment."

Majin nodded. The plans for the Factors' Dance would have to be adjusted. He found himself annoyed that years of planning against his rival, the Septon Anjai Mace, could be derailed by so small a thing as a missing Dardarbji. His sense of clarity grew as he considered, a bubble rising through water.

Septon Mace might have discovered the plot and had the tool from Dardarbji disposed of or imprisoned. The Dardarbji might have discovered that he was a pawn sacrificed by his own masters in the exchange Majin had engineered. Or perhaps the poor, foreign fool had fallen prey to one of the thousand, thousand dangers of Riarnanth. He might even now be smoking mint poppy in the dens of the Salvationists or suffering vivisection at the hands of whatever band of black artists had most recently adopted this unsavory form of political protest. His mind traced the possibilities, weighed them, and made a decision.

"We will move ahead without him," Majin said. "It will be more difficult, but not impossible. I believe I have sufficiently mastered the techniques he would have taught us, all on my own, thanks to sharing the god-mind. So if the Dardarbji does arrive, kill him. If the Septon Mace does not arrive at the dance, we will stop the plan then. Not before."

"Yes, Septon," Irshad said, and scurried away again.

Majin stood silently, his fingertips caressing the lumps in his flesh, feeling the insect twitch and jump at being disturbed. As always, thinking as a man thinks had left his mind impure. Like shoots of spring grass, thoughts and memories pressed up into the light. The face of a girl he had loved once. The song his mother had crooned when lulling him down to sleep. A shrill regret that he had become a septon rather than study law or trade. A bone-deep, wordless sense of loss. The pale, greenish flesh pushed up into him, and its roots tickled at a buried anguish and rage that constantly threatened to undo his training. Majin ate each thought, clipping it back with chitin mandibles until it died again, and he was once more pure.