The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (35 page)

The Tisu Atians can alter their bodies in accordance with their desires. Those who practice climbing mountains develop longer and longer arms, until their arms are longer than their bodies. Those who operate machinery develop five or six arms, until an individual can simultaneously control the opening and closing
of numerous valves. On the street, no two Tisu Atians look alike.
Everywhere, one can see a mouth so large as to take up half a face, a waist thinner than a strand of noodle, or a round sphere covered by a layer of armor-like scales. These changes are unique to each individual, and it’s impossible to detect anyone’s parentage based on appearance. Even the parents themselves, if sufficient time
has passed, have a hard time picking their children out of a crowd.

But “in accordance with their desires” is not quite accurate. It’s not true that every Tisu Atian can attain the appearance they have in their minds. Most of the time, they’re vague in their self-images. It’s only when someone takes an extra large step or bumps into something that that person realizes their legs have grown another
30 percent or their back has grown a row of little spikes. Of course, in a few years, one has turned into a long-legged strider able to go up an entire flight of stairs in a single step, or a warrior whose body is covered by hard and sharp spikes.

So, many Tisu Atians are even more cautious than the inhabitants of other planets. They speak carefully; they work carefully. They’re terrified of
the possibility that in a moment of carelessness, the silly face they made before going to bed will become permanent, will turn into a tumor impossible to remove.

On the busy streets of Lutikawulu, you can tell at a glance each person’s career and daily life. This may be the only point on which Tisu Ati and Lutikawulu agree.

The Lutikawuluans also look very different from each other: runners,
singers, sculptors, thinkers, etc. The difference between them can be clearly gleaned from differences in musculature, body shape, size, and facial features, just like on Tisu Ati.

But on Lutikawulu, the journey of life is the exact opposite of life on Tisu Ati. This is a Darwinian planet, where everyone is in agreement that any effort expended in directing the path of evolution is useless. The
Lutikawuluans have stable genomes that evolve slowly in accordance with the principles of random variation and natural selection. But because the Lutikawuluans reproduce asexually, genetic changes in their somatic cells do continue to be expressed through inheritance. The cells, as they divide and change, pass on their adaptations without reservation to the next generation. And so children inherit
the alterations in their parents.

As a result, a blacksmith’s son is born stronger than other
children, and a clocksmith’s daughter is born with better vision and more nimble fingers. These differences, accumulated over thousands of years, slowly add up to the level of speciation. Every occupation has evolved into its own independent species. And even when some occupations have disappeared, the
features associated with them continue to be expressed and continue to evolve.

All of these different species are united by their language. It’s only through the common tongue and identical numbers of chromosomes that they can recognize themselves as possessing a common origin. Other than these, they have nothing in common. No one is jealous of another’s work, just as a monkey would not be jealous
of a dinosaur. As the proverb says,
the birds have the sky while the fish have the sea.
They pass by each other in the same town, but it’s as if they see each other without seeing each other.

While the Tisu Atians have replayed evolution a hundred million times, they have always refused real evolution. No matter how they alter their own appearance, their children always begin in the same place,
keeping the same original, primitive shape. The Lutikawuluans are just the opposite. No individual ever experiences any change, but when seen through the lens of eons, they are each points along numerous diverging curves.

“You lie,” you say, pouting. “How can the same universe follow two opposite sets of rules?”

Why not? My dear, there’s nothing that’s impossible. Numerous steps, each meaningless
by itself, when added together become a rule, a principle. Perhaps in this moment you laugh, or frown, and the future is divided into two paths, two sets of rules. But how can you, the you of this moment, know?

“Is that true?” you ask, leaning your head. And for a while you are quiet.

I look at you and laugh lightly. The swing you sit on sways back and forth, and the breeze causes the locks
of hair next to your ears to flutter. The key to your question is the method of reproduction, of course, but this kind of answer is too dry. I have no wish to give it.

You know something? The real key isn’t about whether what I say is true, but whether you believe it. From start to end, the direction of narrative is not guided by the tongue, but by the ear.

CHINCATO

The tongue and the ear have
the most meaning on Chincato. For the people of this planet, speech is not a mere way to pass the time, but a necessity for existence.

There’s nothing special about Chincato, save its thick atmosphere. It’s so dense that no light can penetrate it, and the surface of the planet is covered by darkness. Chincato’s life is born from warm, thick, deep-sea currents, full of organic material and warmed
by bubbling lava, and it gains its energy from the heat at the heart of the planet. For the Chincatoans, the boiling crater of the underwater volcano is their sun, the home of the gods, the source of wisdom and strength. Outside the crater, they can find organic sugars, which are their food, the foundation of their life.

The Chincatoans do not have organs that sense light, or eyes. They rely
on sound to locate each other. Their ears are both for listening and observing. Actually, to be precise, they don’t have ears. They listen with their entire body. The upper halves of their bodies are covered by trapezoidal diaphragms, each of which is strung with thousands of hairs of different lengths, and each of which can resonate with the sound of a particular frequency. Using timing differences
between when each trapezoidal diaphragm hears a sound and their positions, the brain of a Chincatoan can deduce the location of the source of the sound, its distance, and even its precise shape.

So, all day long, the Chincatoan talk and listen without pause. They emit sounds to feel the presence of others, and also to let others know of their own existence. They cannot be silent. Silence is dangerous
and makes them panic. Only by continuously talking can they ascertain their own position, be sure that they’re still alive. They compete with each other to speak louder, because only by doing so can they make themselves appear brighter, more noticeable by others.

Some children are born with defects in their voice organs. These children almost cannot survive. They’re always in danger of being
run over by others, much bigger and faster. And then no one would even know that such a child once existed.

“That is so sad. Your stories have become shorter and shorter, but why have they also become so much sadder?”

Sad? Is it that the story I’m telling is sad, or is that that the story you’re hearing is sad?

“What’s the difference?”

Very different. I’ve been to a planet where the people
can make sounds at ten thousand different frequencies, but can only hear a small portion of the frequency range. The sensitivity of their ears is not matched to the versatility of their vocal cords, and so they never hear as much as they can speak. But the most interesting part is that the range of frequencies that each of them can hear is different. While they all think they’re hearing the same
song, a thousand individuals would actually hear a thousand different songs, but none of them knows that.

“You’re making things up again. How can such a place exist?” You bite your lips and widen your eyes. “I’m now suspicious that you haven’t been to these planets you’ve been telling me about. Have you made them all up to amuse me?”

My darling, starting with the Odyssey, every knight errant
has told romances of faraway places to court the ladies they love. Can you tell which stories are real and which are not? I travel through these planets like Marco Polo wandering through the cities of the Orient, like Kubla Khan riding through his endless realm: Everything happens in the blink of an eye. You can say that I really have been to those places, or that I have never left. The planets I
speak of are scattered at every corner of the universe, but sometimes collect themselves into the same place, as though they have always been together.

Hearing this, you giggle. “I understand now. They are gathered together by your stories, and now you tell these stories to me, so they are gathered in my mind. Isn’t that right?”

Looking at your happy face, I sigh. The sound is so quiet that
you cannot see anything strange in my smile. How can I explain this to you? How do I make you understand? Stories cannot gather anything together, if they’re fated to separate.

Yes
, I say quietly.
We have been sitting here for an afternoon telling stories, and together, we possess a universe. But these stories are not something I tell you. This afternoon, you and I are both tellers, and both
listeners.

JINJIALIN

Jinjialin is the last story I will tell you today. It’s a short tale. I’ll be finished soon.

The people of Jinjialin possess bodies unlike the bodies of the people of any other planet. They are like soft balloons, or maybe like jellyfish floating through the air, transparent and loose. The surface of the Jinjialinians is membranous, like a cell’s outermost layer. When two
membranes touch, they can merge into one.

When two Jinjialinians encounter each other, parts of their bodies briefly merge and mix the materials inside. When they separate, the materials are redistributed. Thus, the people do not care much about their physical bodies. Even they cannot tell how much of their current bodies come from strangers they met along the road. They believe that they are
still themselves, and it’s no big deal to exchange some materials.

But they don’t realize that this sense of “self” is an illusion. At the moment when two of them merge, the two original selves cease to exist. They become a combined person, and, when separated, two new persons. The new persons do not know all that transpired before their encounter and each believes that the self is the self,
never having changed at all.

Do you understand? When I am done telling you these stories, when you’re done listening to these stories, I am no longer I, and you are no longer you. In this afternoon we briefly merged into one. After this, you will always carry a bit of me and I will always carry a bit of you, even if we both forget this conversation.

“You’re saying that Jinjialin is our own world?”

Our own world? Which one? Can any planet have belonged to us? Or can we have belonged to any planet?

Do not ask me about the coordinates of these planets. Those numbers are the oldest mystical proverbs of the universe. They are the air between your fingers. You reach out to grab them, but when you open your hands, there’s nothing. You and I and they meet for a moment, and we are fated to again
separate. We’re only travelers, singing songs whose meanings are obscure, wandering through the dark sky. That is all. You know they are singing in the wind, singing in the wind of a distant homeland.

ON THE LEITMOTIF OF THE TRICKSTER CONSTELLATION IN NORTHERN HEMISPHERIC STAR CHARTS, POST-APOCALYPSE

Nicole Kornher-Stace

The One Who Got Away
Area: 513.842 sq. deg. (appx. 1.29%)
from the Palisade Chart: pine pitch, birch bark Winter

Seven stars: three major, four minor. Six represent the head, heart, hands and feet of an androgynous child; the seventh, an object gripped in the child’s left
fist. Regrettably, this object’s identity remains a puzzle that has thwarted both the restoration efforts of our team and the scrutiny of every expert in the field: this sector of the chart, including roughly 1/3 of the lower-left quadrant of the One (to say nothing of its neighbor, the Flensed Bride, foxed down to her caption – see fig. 1), is obliterated. A further unhappy consequence of this
damage: it is impossible to tell whether the child in question is hugging itself (as children will, against cold or loneliness or fear) or if its wrists are tied.

Any scholar of the charts will forgive me – posthumously, at least – for saying that the trickster constellations prove, time and time again, the
trickiest
to study: whereas the constellations out of history (e.g. the Payload, the Comet,
the Exodus, the Pest), those shaped by daily circumstance (the Huntsman, the Pitfall, the Bear), and those obviously conjured by minds seeking to realize them with wish (the Wellspring, the Garden) tend to leave us careful breadcrumb trails to follow, in the form of Songkeepers, journals, and old books, the trickster constellations set us a puzzle on the best of days, an ambush on the worst,
and it is utterly in
keeping with the trickster’s own motif that, at times, even the most meticulous of combings comes up emptyhanded, yielding little but a tag-end or a fragment of a tale – or, in the case of this odd little constellation, nothing.

In default of contextual evidence, the imagination picks at clues, thumb-and-forefinger, as if at a spider in the stewpot, or undetonated ordnance
in the path. From this figure’s caption we can glean it “got away,” but from what? When? And how? Is it a refugee? An escaped prisoner? A ghost?

Of a certainty this was the constellation mothers made offerings to, when their infants’ fevers spiked, and the one whose name lost wanderers invoked on lonely roads – but why? Those who threw themselves upon this trickster’s questionable mercies did
not lead easy lives. Their very bones assure us of this: soft with radiation, pitted with disease. Their toothless skulls give tongue to songs of loss. Was the object of these prayers then to be returned unto oneself, one’s place, one’s family – or to be spirited away from all of these, propelled headlong into some gentler tale?