Pump Six and Other Stories Part 8

Lisa gave up on the tickling and flopped down beside me again. "Blah, blah, blah. He wouldn't take any gene modifications. No c-cell inhibitors. He was dying of cancer and he wouldn't take the drugs that would have saved him. Our last mortal poet. Cry me a river. So what?"

"You ever think about why he wouldn't?"

"Yeah. He wanted to be famous. Suicide's good for attention."

"Seriously, though. He thought being human meant having animals. The whole web of life thing. I've been reading about him. It's weird s.h.i.+t. He didn't want to live without them."

"Mrs. Alvarez hated him. She had some rhymes about him, too. Anyway, what were we supposed to do? Work out weeviltech and DNA patches for every stupid species? Do you know what that would have cost?" She nuzzled close to me. "If you want animals around you, go to a zoo. Or get some building blocks and make something, if it makes you happy. Something with hands, for G.o.d's sake, not like that dog." She stared at the underside of the bunk above. "I'd cook that dog in a second."

I shook my head. "I don't know. That dog's different from a bio-job. It looks at us, and there's something there, and it's not us. I mean, take any bio-job out there, and it's basically us, poured into another shape, but not that dog.... " I trailed off, thinking.

Lisa laughed. "It shook hands with you, Chen. You don't worry about a centaur when it salutes." She climbed on top of me. "Forget the dog. Concentrate on something that matters." Her smile and her razor blades glinted in the dimness.

I woke up to something licking my face. At first I thought it was Lisa, but she'd climbed into her own bunk. I opened my eyes and found the dog.

It was a funny thing to have this animal licking me, like it wanted to talk, or say h.e.l.lo or something. It licked me again, and I thought that it had come a long way from when it had tried to take off Jaak's arm. It put its paws up on my bed, and then in a single heavy movement, it was up on the bunk with me, its bulk curled against me.

It slept there all night. It was weird having something other than Lisa lying next to me, but it was warm and there was something friendly about it. I couldn't help smiling as I drifted back to sleep.

We flew to Hawaii for a swimming vacation and we brought the dog with us. It was good to get out of the northern cold and into the gentle Pacific. Good to stand on the beach, and look out to a limitless horizon. Good to walk along the beach holding hands while black waves crashed on the sand.

Lisa was a good swimmer. She flashed through the ocean's metallic sheen like an eel out of history and when she surfaced, her naked body glistened with hundreds of iridescent petroleum jewels.

When the Sun started to set, Jaak lit the ocean on fire with his 101. We all sat and watched as the Sun's great red ball sank through veils of smoke, its light shading deeper crimson with every minute. Waves rushed flaming onto the beach. Jaak got out his harmonica and played while Lisa and I made love on the sand.

We'd intended to amputate her for the weekend, to let her try what she had done to me the vacation before. It was a new thing in L.A., an experiment in vulnerability.

She was beautiful, lying there on the beach, slick and excited with all of our play in the water. I licked oil opals off her skin as I sliced off her limbs, leaving her more dependent than a baby. Jaak played his harmonica and watched the Sun set, and watched as I rendered Lisa down to her core.

After our s.e.x, we lay on the sand. The last of the Sun was dropping below the water. Its rays glinted redly across the smoldering waves. The sky, thick with particulates and smoke, shaded darker.

Lisa sighed contentedly. "We should vacation here more often."

I tugged on a length of barbed wire buried in the sand. It tore free and I wrapped it around my upper arm, a tight band that bit into my skin. I showed it to Lisa. "I used to do this all the time when I was a kid." I smiled. "I thought I was so bad-a.s.s."

Lisa smiled. "You are."

"Thanks to science." I glanced over at the dog. It was lying on the sand a short distance away. It seemed sullen and unsure in its new environment, torn away from the safety of the acid pits and tailings mountains of its homeland. Jaak sat beside the dog and played. Its ears twitched to the music. He was a good player. The mournful sound of the harmonica carried easily over the beach to where we lay.

Lisa turned her head, trying to see the dog. "Roll me."

I did what she asked. Already, her limbs were regrowing. Small stumps, which would build into larger limbs. By morning, she would be whole, and ravenous. She studied the dog. "This is as close as I'll ever get to it," she said.

"Sorry?"

"It's vulnerable to everything. It can't swim in the ocean. It can't eat anything. We have to fly its food to it. We have to scrub its water. Dead end of an evolutionary chain. Without science, we'd be as vulnerable as it." She looked up at me. "As vulnerable as I am now." She grinned. "This is as close to death as I've ever been. At least, not in combat."

"Wild, isn't it?"

"For a day. I liked it better when I did it to you. I'm already starving."

I fed her a handful of oily sand and watched the dog, standing uncertainly on the beach, sniffing suspiciously at some rusting sc.r.a.p iron that stuck out of the beach like a giant memory fin. It pawed up a chunk of red plastic rubbed s.h.i.+ny by the ocean and chewed on it briefly, before dropping it. It started licking around its mouth. I wondered if it had poisoned itself again.

"It sure can make you think," I muttered. I fed Lisa another handful of sand. "If someone came from the past, to meet us here and now, what do you think they'd say about us? Would they even call us human?"

Lisa looked at me seriously. "No, they'd call us G.o.ds."

Jaak got up and wandered into the surf, standing knee-deep in the black smoldering waters. The dog, driven by some unknown instinct, followed him, gingerly picking its way across the sand and rubble.

The dog got tangled in a cl.u.s.ter of wire our last day on the beach. Really ripped the h.e.l.l out of it: slashes through its fur, broken legs, practically strangled. It had gnawed one of its own paws half off trying to get free. By the time we found it, it was a b.l.o.o.d.y mess of ragged fur and exposed meat.

Lisa stared down at the dog. "Christ, Jaak, you were supposed to be watching it."

"I went swimming. You can't keep an eye on the thing all the time."

"It's going to take forever to fix this," she fumed.

"We should warm up the hunter," I said. "It'll be easier to work on it back home." Lisa and I knelt down to start cutting the dog free. It whimpered and its tail wagged feebly as we started to work.

Jaak was silent.

Lisa slapped him on his leg. "Come on, Jaak, get down here. It'll bleed out if you don't hurry up. You know how fragile it is."

Jaak said, "I think we should eat it."

Lisa glanced up, surprised. "You do?"

He shrugged. "Sure."

I looked up from where I was tearing away tangled wires from around the dog's torso. "I thought you wanted it to be your pet. Like in the zoo."

Jaak shook his head. "Those food pellets are expensive. I'm spending half my salary on food and water filtration, and now this bulls.h.i.+t." He waved his hand at the tangled dog. "You have to watch the sucker all the time. It's not worth it."

"But still, it's your friend. It shook hands with you."

Jaak laughed. "You're my friend." He looked down at the dog, his face wrinkled with thought. "It's, it's... an animal."

Even though we had all idly discussed what it would be like to eat the dog, it was a surprise to hear him so determined to kill it. "Maybe you should sleep on it." I said. "We can get it back to the bunker, fix it up, and then you can decide when you aren't so p.i.s.sed off about it."

"No." He pulled out his harmonica and played a few notes, a quick jazzy scale. He took the harmonica out of his mouth. "If you want to put up the money for his feed, I'll keep it, I guess, but otherwise.... " He shrugged.

"I don't think you should cook it."

"You don't?" Lisa glanced at me. "We could roast it, right here, on the beach."

I looked down at the dog, a ma.s.s of panting, trusting animal. "I still don't think we should do it."

Jaak looked at me seriously. "You want to pay for the feed?"

I sighed. "I'm saving for the new Immersive Response."

"Yeah, well, I've got things I want to buy too, you know." He flexed his muscles, showing off his tattoos. "I mean, what the f.u.c.k good does it do?"

"It makes you smile."

"Immersive Response makes you smile. And you don't have to clean up after its c.r.a.p. Come on, Chen. Admit it. You don't want to take care of it either. It's a pain in the a.s.s."

We all looked at each other, then down at the dog.

Lisa roasted the dog on a spit, over burning plastics and petroleum skimmed from the ocean. It tasted okay, but in the end it was hard to understand the big deal. I've eaten slagged centaur that tasted better.

Afterward, we walked along the sh.o.r.eline. Opalescent waves crashed and roared up the sand, leaving jewel slicks as they receded and the Sun sank red in the distance.

Without the dog, we could really enjoy the beach. We didn't have to worry about whether it was going to step in acid, or tangle in barbwire half-buried in the sand, or eat something that would keep it up vomiting half the night.

Still, I remember when the dog licked my face and hauled its s.h.a.ggy bulk onto my bed, and I remember its warm breathing beside me, and sometimes, I miss it.

The Pasho.

The acrid scent of burning dung carried easily on the dry wind. Raphel Ka' Korum breathed once, deeply, tasting memory, then fastened his electrostatic scarf over his face and turned to receive his luggage from the pa.s.sengers still on the fat wheel.

Wind gusted around them. Scarves came loose and flapped wildly in the stinging air and brown hands s.n.a.t.c.hed at the ragged free-flying banners before tucking them, sparking and crackling, over dust-caked noses and mouths. A man, Kai by his crucifix, Keli by his silk s.h.i.+rt, handed down Raphel's leather satchel, then pressed his palms together and ducked his head in ritual sterile farewell. Raphel did the same. The rest of the pa.s.sengers, a motley conglomeration of basin people all stuffed tightly in the bed of the fat wheel, made gestures of their own, observing scrupulous politeness to his Pasho's robes and attainment marks.

The fat wheel slowly rolled away. Its bulbous jelly tires crunched on the Dry Basin's hardpan. Raphel watched the beat-up vehicle recede. Its pa.s.sengers observed him in turn, their eyes full of questions at the Keli Pasho who disembarked in the center of the desert. Raphel turned to face his village.

The round haci of the Jai huddled in the barren basin like a small mob of conical-hatted refugees, their pointed heads jammed tight together, their adobe robes splattered with white Jai geometric patterns. Around them, clay-clotted fields lay tilled and patient as wind blew across them, ripping dust devils into the air and sending them dancing across the pale plain. In the far distance, the bones of the old city stuck up from the basin in a tangled ma.s.s of steel and concrete ruin, silent and abandoned for more generations than even the Jai could remember.

Raphel unwrapped his scarf and once again breathed deeply, taking in the scents of home, sniffing at nostalgia, letting it fill the depths of his lungs. Dust and burning dung and sage blown from the distant hills intermingled. Somewhere within the village, meat was grilling. A coyote or rabbit, likely stunned into sonic paralysis and skinned before it regained consciousness, now dripping fat onto open coals. Raphel inhaled again and licked his lips. Already they chapped in the aridity. His skin, long accustomed to Keli's lush humidity, felt tight on his face, as though he wore a mask that would fall away at any moment.

He glanced back wistfully at the receding fat wheel, a child's toy slowly creeping toward the distant muddy line where blue sky finally touched yellow clay. Sighing, Raphel shouldered his satchel and headed for the village.

The few scattered haci at the village outskirts quickly sidled close. They formed a tightly packed ma.s.s of thick walls and claustrophobic alleys. Streets twisted randomly, inviting invaders to stumble into cul-de-sacs and death courts. Sonic bulbs dangled overhead, their beaks gaping, eager to scream.

Raphel wandered amongst the Jai defenses along a path of childhood memories. He recognized Bia' Giomo's haci, and remembered how she had paid in sugar rocks when he brought her water from the well. He recognized the thick blue door to Evia's courtyard, and remembered hiding together beneath her parents' bed, stifling laughter while her parents groaned and creaked above them. His mother had written to him that Bia' Giomo had pa.s.sed beyond and that Evia was called Bia' Dosero and now lived at Clear Spring Village.

Raphel turned another corner, and recognized Old Martiz squatting outside his haci. Red beans boiled over the old man's dung fire, slowly congealing into porridge. Raphel smiled and started to greet the old man, but as soon as Martiz saw Raphel, he grabbed his bean pot and scrambled backward, desperate to keep Quaran.

Raphel hastily pulled his scarf back over his face and ducked his head in apology. Martiz softened enough to set down his beans and press his palms together. Raphel returned the ancient gesture. He could have told Martiz the source of the Quaran gesture and how it had spread during the Cleansing, but Martiz was unlikely to care. For the Jai it was custom, and that was enough. Jai observed the old ways. In Keli, people shook hands and hardly observed Quaran at all. The trading culture easily discarded careful traditions of past survival. The Jai had longer memories.

Raphel skirted Martiz by the prescribed two meters of sunlight and threaded deeper into the village. The alley narrowed to a tight path between squeezing walls. He turned sideways and sc.r.a.ped through a kill-slot, its walls pressing against his chest and shoulder blades. At the far end of the kill-slot, he paused to brush ineffectually at the adobe dust that clung to his white robes.

Children's laughter echoed. Young Jai boys, their robes bright crimson splashes against the pale yellow clay of the haci, dashed down the alley toward him. They stopped short, staring at his Pasho's white robes and attainment marks, then pressed their brown hands together and ducked their heads in careful respect. A moment later they were past him and continuing their chase, slipping through the kill-slot with the easy limberness of basin lizards.

Raphel turned to watch them, remembering when he had dashed down the self-same alley, chasing friends, pretending that he was a hook-hand crusader, pretending he himself led the war against the Keli. It seemed a long time ago. The boys' red flapping robes disappeared beyond the kill-slot, leaving Raphel alone in the alley.

Raphel cleared his throat and swallowed several times, trying to relieve its constricting dryness. He inhaled again, deeply, hungry for the scent of his native place. His scarf crackled and he breathed sterile air.

"A Pasho's responsibilities are often convoluted. How can one know in advance the consequences of an action? It is a Pasho's duty to peer into the nooks and crannies of possibility and only proceed with caution. Slow change is a virtue. For a society to survive the upheavals of technology, the race and culture must adapt. It is not enough that clever fingers learn to work a plough in a few short days, the culture must also be readied for its expanding population, its s.h.i.+ft to agriculture, the w.i.l.l.y-nilly follow-on ripples of technology introduction. Without proper preparation, moral and philosophical, how can any culture be trusted with a technology as casually violent as a gun?"-Pasho Giles Martin, CS 152.

(Lectures on Moral Change) "You must be very proud, Bia' Pasho." Bia' Hanna smiled at Raphel as she spoke. Gold flashed in her mouth and the crow's feet at the edges of her desert eyes deepened.

"Proud?" Raphel's mother laughed. She took a pot of newly boiled tea from the hearth fire and turned to eye Raphel where he sat separated from them by three meters, electrostatic scarf covering his face. "Proud that my only son abandons his family for ten years? Proud that he turns from his family in favor of Keli and its thousand lakes?" She shook her head and poured tea into Bia' Hanna's clay cup. The thick black liquid, its source leaves dried and fermented over her own hearthfire, sent up smoke-laden scents as it splashed into the glazed clay.

"But a Pasho, a Jai Pasho." Bia' Hanna's marriage bangles clinked as her wrinkled hand reached for the steaming cup. She and all her friends sat in Raphel's family home, cl.u.s.tered around his mother, a bright seething ma.s.s of laughing blue-swathed married women all happy and excited to be invited for the occasion of a family reunion.

Bia' Hanna's gold teeth flashed at Raphel again. She was proud of the dental work she had received at the border of Keli and smiled willingly and widely. "Yes, you must be so proud. Your son returned to you and a Pasho already, at his age." She sipped her tea appreciatively. "You make the best smoke tea, Bia' Pasho."

"Stop already with this 'Bia' Pasho' nonsense. I was Bia' Raphel before. I am Bia' Raphel now, whatever my foolish son has done." Raphel's mother turned to refill another woman's cup, one hand deftly holding the blackened steel pot, the other twining around the blue folds of her skirts, keeping them from dragging on the floor.

Bia' Hanna laughed. "So modest. But look how handsome he is with his attainment marks." She pointed at Raphel. "Look at his hands, Jai Bia'. The script on his face, so much knowledge on his skin, and that only a tiny portion of what sloshes inside his shaven head."

Raphel ducked his head and stared at his hands, vaguely embarra.s.sed at the women's sudden attention. On the back of his left hand were his first attainment marks: the old alphabet in tiny script. From there, lettering the color of dried blood marched up his arms and stole under his robes. Denotations of rising rank, ritually applied over the years, the chanted mnemonic devices of the ten thousand stanzas, hooks into the core of Pasho knowledge, each one a memory aid and mark of pa.s.sage. They covered his body in the spiking calligraphy of the ancients, sometimes a mere symbol to hook a bound tome's worth of knowledge, something to recall, and ensure that all Pasho trained later might have access to an unchanging spring of wisdom.

Raphel looked up in time to catch the quirk of a smile on his mother's face. Bia' Hanna also spied his mother's quickly hidden pleasure. Bia' Hanna slapped his mother on the hip as she turned to pour for another woman. "Ah there! You see, Jai Bia'? You see how the mother flushes with pride at the son's accomplishment? You watch, she'll be seeking a wife for him before the sun touches the basin rim." She cackled, her gold teeth glinting in the dim light of the family haci. "Lock up your daughters, Jai Bia', she'll want to harvest them all for her tattooed son!"

The other women laughed and joined in the teasing, commenting on Bia' Pasho's good fortune. They shot smiles and evaluating glances in Raphel's direction His mother laughed and accepted their jokes and adulation, Bia' Raphel no longer: Bia' Pasho. Mother of the Pasho. A great honor.

"Look! He thirsts!" Bia' Hanna cried, and motioned toward Raphel's empty cup. "You ignore our new Pasho!"

Raphel smiled. "No, Bia', I only wait to speak between your outbursts."

"Cheeky Pasho. If we didn't keep Quaran, I'd redden your bottom. Don't forget it was I who caught you uprooting bean plants when you were no higher than my hip."

The women laughed. Bia' Hanna played to her audience, waving her arms in outrage. "He said he only wished to help-"

"It's true!"

"-And what was left? Nothing but shredded greens! As though the dust devils had torn through it. It's a good thing he has a new profession, Bia' Pasho. Your fields would never survive his return."

The Jai women all laughed as Bia' Hanna continued, recalling Raphel's childhood transgressions: rock sugar that disappeared whenever a woman blinked, electrostatic masks reversed, goats with flaming tails, the tales poured out of her golden mouth. Finally, her fountain of memory apparently depleted, she paused and eyed Raphel. "Tell me, revered Pasho, do the Keli people really eat fish? Straight from their lakes?"

Raphel laughed. "They ask if we really eat coyote."

"Yes, yes. But custom, Raphel . . . you didn't eat fish, did you?"

The women fell silent, watching him, their breath unconsciously held for the answer.

Raphel smiled slightly. "No. Of course not."