Nebula Awards Showcase 2013 (17 page)

My belly starts to feel shaky and two protein bars don't do anything to help it. It grows darker and colder. My arms feel rubbery and numb. Scotty sets a good pace to keep us warm, but not so fast that we keel over. He looks back at me, worried. I grin at him. Mind yourself, Scotty, I'll keep up. There have been other migrations where we've ridden all night just to stay warm, and we'll do that, if we have to.

Then a sway-backed barn as beautiful as a mansion comes into view, and Hector lets out another loud bird cry.

It's not that dry inside, and the moldy hay makes my nose itch, but it'll do. We climb up into the loft where it's drier and settle in to sleep, except for Theo. He sits in a corner near an open window and stares outside. I'm exhausted and need sleep more than the rest of them, but I go sit next to him anyway.

“Big storm,” I say.

He nods.

“What're you thinking?”

A lightning strike illuminates his face. He looks worried. “I'm changing . . . more than I thought I would. More than he said I would,” he says, not looking up from the hay his hands play with.

I wait for him to explain.

He holds out his arm. “Touch it.”

I do. It feels smooth one way, prickly the other.

“Feathers,” he says. “Real small ones.”

I try not to, but it's been a long day. I laugh.

“It's not funny,” he says.

“Yes it is. We all have weird side effects. Hell, that one might even be intentional. They don't exactly know what they are doing with our augmentations.” I hold up one of my hands. The tan polish on one of my nails had chipped off to show the black. “I've got talons on my fingers and toes. Have to keep them trimmed real close or else they cut my wife. Keith, though he hates to admit it, loves to eat worms. Ask him about it. And don't ask Hector and Scotty about where their tale feathers.”

Theo laughs.

“You're doing fine, Theo. You're riding well and dancing well. That's what this life's about.”

“It's just . . . I can't go back, can I?”

“Nope.”

“There's something . . . he offered me five years pay for every migrator I ratted on,” Theo whispers.

“That's a mighty fine offer.” And half of what the bastard would pay out otherwise, I think. “A man could get rich real quick, but there's a price for all that money.”

There's an awkwardness between us. “Do you want to die, Josiah? Don't you want to keep living?”

“Did the Sponsor tell you migrators don't live as long as normal people, even without accidents?”

Silence.

“Course he didn't. It's true though. It's a heavy strain on the body.”

“But don't you want to live?”

“Of course. No one wants to die, but we all do, don't we? You set your mind on getting through this migration. Leave the macabre thoughts to old men like me.” I put my hand on his shoulder and let it rest there.

Lightning pulses outside, and I see what looks like a huge bird flying up in the middle of the storm.

When the morning sun wakes us up the world has been washed clean and pretty. We ride on and pop into hover over huge gashes in the road. We discover a diner that serves up pieces of peanut-butter chocolate pie that we eat as townspeople gawk at us.

 

* * *

 

In Colorado we run into some angry types. They catch up to us on a gut-busting climb out of Steamboat Springs up to Rabbit Ears Pass. They chug passed us spewing griesel fumes that smell like burnt french fries. The environmentalists have joined up with the local dance troupe and picked up some anti-genmod types by the looks of their bumper stickers. They stop their van about a quarter mile away from us. Ten of them all pile out to make a human line across the road. There's forest on both sides of us that we could run into, but we'd have to leave the bikes. We could ride back down the hill, but hell if we're going to.

“What should we do, Josiah?” Hector asks quietly.

One reason birds have died out, beyond all the toxins, is that they just couldn't find hospitable places to live.

“Let's just talk to them,” I say.

We grind on up the hill and stop ten feet away. I'm bonked enough by the ride to be glad for the unscheduled stop, come what may, and squeeze some watergel into my mouth. I keep an eye on them and on my migrators. Usually protesters show up at performances and try to mess us up, but there's nothing but us and them out here.

“Morning,” I call out.

Hatred thick as cream on each of their faces.

“Hacks,” one of them says. She's a dancer, by the thin, ropy look to her. “You're not dancers. You're monkeys!”

“Freaks,” a man says.

A bird streaks across the air above me, but when I look up, nothing's there.

Keith takes a step forward. I put a hand on his shoulder and he stays put. Ten to five ratio is not good odds, and we've got a dance to make by nightfall.

“Your owner destroys all the wildlife, and then gets tax breaks for sending you out to the parks and make people forget all the animals are gone,” a hungry looking man says.

Anger grows among us. A tensing of bodies. A shifting of feet and stances. Like a dance. I feel my hands curl into fists and the desire to hit something grows in me. “We're just getting by, same as everyone,” I say, calmly as I can. “Your beef's with our Sponsor. Go harass him.” But they won't. He's too heavily guarded. “We're just men doing our jobs.”

A woman spits on the ground, and I can see the time to talk is over. When they run at us, we do the same and start beating at each other in the middle of the road. Only it's not a fair fight. They pull out the kind of cheap sticky-tasers you can buy at any 7-11. They aim and fire and we wriggle on the ground and gasp for breath as they put collars around our necks and spray paint the panniers of our bike. They drive off.

“Fuck!” Scotty yells. He's the first one to get his legs back and stand up. He's wearing an inch thick collar that says “Bird Killer.”

We sit up and look at each other. Keith is “Genefreak,” Hector is “Corporate Slave,” Theo is “Dance Whore, and mine says, “Earth Raper.”

“Well, boys,” I say, “looks like we got ourselves some new nicknames.” We bike all the way to Echo Park with our new logos, too proud, I guess, to call our Sponsor for help. We bike through small one road towns and get laughed at by shiny clean Mormon kids lining the street to watch us. The collars rub our necks raw until we meet up with the Sponsor who hires a welder to cut them off.

From Echo Park we change out our tires for heavier threads and bike into the middle of Utah down old cattle roads along the Green river. We swim in the hot water every day and try to avoid the dead fish floating around. The only people out here are long-bearded men living in little blow away shacks. They glare at us even though they see us twice a year, every year. We stay up late and watch bats catch mosquitoes. We tell stories. I tell more than anyone else, which is unusual for me, but somehow I want to tell all of them about me and make sure they remember. When I talk it feels to me like the other riders no longer with us are listening in too.

When a goose dies on a migration, the other geese leave a spot for him in their slipstream, an empty space of air where he used to be. I wish we had something like that.

The migration drags on through Arches, Canyonlands, Rainbow Bridge, and Bryce Canyon. Everyone is still riding well and dancing well. I'm the only one who's feeling it, but I hide my aches and pains. Every night I'm so exhausted I don't ever want to move again. Every day brings us closer to the end: I remind myself of that daily.

“Josiah, we can ride slower,” Keith says.

I glare at him. “You tired, Genefreak?”

I see birds all morning on the ride. They keep playing around the edge of my vision, then disappearing. They got a fancy word for that—heat-induced-hallucinations—but I could just swear they were real.

I bike alongside Theo. He keeps getting stuck in the sand drifts that cover the road into Zion. I show him how to peddle into them with just enough momentum to coast through. I lean over to point to Theo where he needs to stop pedaling, which is why I don't see the hole in the road that sends me end-o off my bike.

End-over-end-over-end, and then I hit the hard-rock ground with my legs, and something in my left leg snaps. Like a painful rubber band ricocheting up my calf and thigh, then biting into my ass. The pain's like getting a tooth pulled out, awful for a moment, then a kind of relief. Until I try to stand up, that is. I scream so loud tears pop out of my eyes.

“Don't move, Josiah,” Scotty says.

I try to get up again, then I curl up on the ground and yell some more.

A torn Achilles takes six months to heal, and it's never very strong after that. Every migrators knows about leg injuries, and which ones are recoverable. This one isn't.

It gets real quiet between us all. There's a question that they don't want to ask, and I don't want to answer. I'd made my decision years ago, but it's different being here, having finally arrived where I always knew I'd end up. Finally, I say, “This'll be my last dance. As long as that's okay with you, Theo?”

We all look at him, but he won't look back at any of us. I can see the struggle going on inside of him, deciding what kind of man he is going to be. Finally, he nods his head and says, “I'm a migrator, aren't I?”

I ride tied up behind Theo and he uses up all his hover on me, riding gentle over all the rough spots. Scotty rides with my bike strapped onto his back. We take a trail through desert back-country so no one will catch sight of us. We're only thirty miles out from Zion, but it's the longest ride of my life. Funny how time stretches out at the least convenient times.

“Hey Theo,” I say, just as the ridge of the Narrows comes into sight.

He looks sick. I remember the first time I was part of something like this on a migration. I tell him the same thing I was told. “This is nothing. Don't let it worry you. Okay?”

Theo hits a bump, and I hold back a groan. As soon as we get to the top of the canyon where the ropes are all set out, Hector radios in that we are starting the dance in four minutes. I hear the Sponsor start to complain and ask why, real anxious like, but Hector cuts him off.

They make a circle around me, and dress and harness me as gently and quickly as they can. The Sponsor will be on his way up the old canyon road. If he makes it here. . . .

Hector radios in again and says they better cue the music because we're starting right now. Scotty and Keith cut both the ropes that will hold me up. Not all the way through, but enough so they will snap. Later on the police will examine the ropes and suspect foul play, but there'll be four men swearing nothing happened. We walk to the edge of the canyon. Theo and Hector hold me up, and, as one, we all jump out into the Narrows Canyon, arcing and spinning around in the air, holding up our arms that are the wings of the California Condor.

The ropes are tethered to both sides of the canyon, and one rope pulls taut as I hit one side of the canyon, then kick out from it with my good leg. The harness pushes on the bulge of my snapped muscles. I hiss and grunt with the effort: the California condor has no vocal cords. Around me others hiss and flap. I spread my midnight wings out to their full length and look down at the canyon, at all the people looking up at me. I flow towards Keith, who grabs my hands, midair, and spins me around. I hit the other side of the canyon and swoop out from it. The other dancers fly around me. Their wings and hands touch me, saying goodbye. I see them with a clarity I don't think I've ever had before. I see the birds in them, and the men. I wish I could tell them this—that it is something more, not less—but there are only hisses and pain.

One of my ropes snaps and I fall hard, hitting one side of the canyon. Hard rock smashes across my head, back, and legs. People scream, though of course this is one of the reasons so many come to see us perform. The other rope holds me above the Narrows, above the silvery Virgin river that wants me to come home, and I kick out into the canyon. A sixth bird joins us, and I know that I don't want to die, am not ready to die yet. It is huge with twice the wingspan of any of us, and I feel the uplift from its wings as it flies beneath me. I recognize it is the bird I've been seeing the whole ride. I reach out to touch it. Its feathers are hot as fire. A Thunderbird. It fills my vision and there is nothing else. My body slams against the side of the canyon again, and the other rope snaps. My body falls, and it is all feathers and flight.

2011 Rhysling Winner, Short Poem Category

They say

she likes to suck peaches. Not eat them, suck them,

tilt her head back and let the juice drip

sticky down her chin, before licking, sucking,

swallowing the sunshine of it down. They say

she likes to tease her fruit, bite ripe summer flesh