The Mammoth Book of SF Stories by Women (42 page)

“No,” Bayninan said. “You need to rest. Lie down. All will be well, Hala. You’ll see.”

She stared up at
this strange Bayninan who exuded more authority than she’d ever had before.

“What do you mean, all will be well?” she asked. “Do you know what the Suguran Foundation does, Bayninan? Do you understand what they are?”

Of course, Bayninan couldn’t know or understand, Hala realized. How could Bayninan know that it was the Foundation that was at the heart of the implants and the boosters? If the
Foundation realized that her augmentations were failing, they would take them away without asking. She would lose everything – the archive of memory, the names of the clans, the faces, the songs, the dances, even the memory of warm earth, the taste of steamed rice, and the scent of betelnut.

“Your augmentations are failing, Hala,” Bayninan said. “I know the signs. They’re like poison to you now,
and if you don’t get rid of them, you’ll be dead before year’s end.”

“I can’t,” Hala said.

“It’s no longer impossible,” Bayninan replied. “There have been advancements and the other augmented have been restored to their own selves without harm.”

“I can’t,” Hala insisted. “Without these, I’m nothing, Bayninan. I won’t be able to access the veils, I won’t be able to perform. I’ll be nothing.”

“You’ll never be nothing,” Bayninan said. “You’ll always be Hala to me – always as you were meant to be.”

“You don’t understand,” Hala cried out.

“I do,” Bayninan replied. “But you don’t need to be afraid. There’s no risk to your life.”

“But there is,” Hala shouted. “You’re not an Artifact. You don’t get to say what it is that I will lose or that I will gain. You’re not the one people turn to
when they need to remember the long line of history. You’re not the one people come to when they want access to the wealth of our culture, our chants and our songs and our dances. You don’t understand at all.”

“And for whom do you keep those histories, Hala?” Bayninan asked. “For whom do you recite the poems and chants? For whom do you dance and for whom do you speak? You say you do these things
in memory of the Munhawe and the Mama-oh. But the Munhawe and the Mama-oh served the Once-tribe, Hala. I do not see any of the Once-tribe among your audience. For what purpose do you risk your life, Hala? Is it for the Once-tribe or is it for yourself?”

Bayninan’s words fell like a scourge on Hala’s shoulders. She stiffened in indignation – was this how her friend saw her? Was it how people looked
at her? Was she nothing more than an old woman who put her heritage on display?

“Get out,” she said. “Get out of my sight, Bayinan. Get out before I forget that I love you and that you are my friend.”

Let us be clear on this. There was no invasion. With the signing of the treaty, the Once-country was brought into the folds of the Empire. It was an acknowledgment of the Compassionate’s sovereignty
and the god-given right to lead those who were left behind into the light of the Compassionate’s greater wisdom.

—from History of the Empire and the Once-Country—

Bayninan’s departure left Hala with the luxury of solitude and time to think. It was very late in the evening – that much she knew. Silhouette’s moon hovered in the night sky and the chimes sang out the eleventh hour. Not so long ago,
she had been standing before delegates from the allies of the Compassionate Empire. They had admired her, of that she was certain, they had listened to her. Perhaps her words had confused some of them, perhaps some of them had been titillated, perhaps some of them had been
amused, and the Compassionate attaché had most certainly been moved to anger.

She recalled fragments of what she had spoken
and she wondered how she could have found the voice to sing the warrior’s chant and the temerity to speak of the first invasion and the defeat of the Compassionate at the hands of the Once-tribe.

There was silence in her head now. None of the humming that accompanied her even when she was alone, none of the buzzing awareness that prickled at her skin even when in solitude. It was a strange feeling
because no matter what, she’d always had the awareness of data streaming through her from the implants in her head.

Bayninan had spoken of some drug being applied to her system and she supposed it was that which quieted the data and made her feel suddenly so alone.

As she contemplated the darkness, she wondered if this was what it would be like if she consented to have her augmentations removed.
She would no longer be the Artifact, as Bayninan had said. But was it really that important to be the Artifact? To recite auguries and poetry, to dance the dances and to explain symbols that held no significance to those who viewed her only as a novel thing, to be whispered of by people who had no understanding of the rhythm of harvest and planting or the variations of the gong?

She closed her
eyes in weariness. Tears seeped from beneath her eyelids and spilled down her cheeks as she acknowledged Bayninan’s words.

Alone with her thoughts, Hala acknowledged their truth. She’d clung to her role as Artifact, refusing to question it, but if she allowed herself to continue on as the Artifact, she would be betraying the blood that flowed in her veins.

“It’s not deadly,” Ay-wan said. “But
it is still a procedure that carries risk.”

Ay-wan had come to her on the second day of her confinement and she had given him permission to relay her corrupted state to the representative.

Now, he was talking her through the procedure that would change her life for ever.

“You mentioned no risk when we spoke of this in my home,”
Hala said. “And Bayninan said that removals had been successfully
carried out on others who had been augmented.”

A sliver of pain went through her. Bayninan had not been to see her since she’d sent her friend away. Instead, an emissary had come with the message that Bayninan was preparing for a return to the Once-country.

I will wait for word from you, Bayninan had written. My promise still stands. If you send for me, I will come.

What was Bayninan thinking?
The Once-country was still in the grip of Chaos. Who would be there to greet them if they chose to return to the place of the Once-tribe? And why send a message when she could easily have come herself?

“You have lived with the augmentations for so long, lady,” Ay-wan said. “Did you stop to consider that you were born of the blood? With the augmentations, you did not have to think of the consequences
of your heritage. The machines suppressed what came naturally and the visions you brought forth for the public were what the Compassionate desired of the program.”

Hala frowned.

“What do you mean by that?”

Ay-wan shrugged. Something flickered in his eyes. It was lonely and sad, and for a moment Hala wished she had made the effort to know more about him instead of sealing herself away from any
intimate connections.

“There is this possibility that you could come into the role you were meant to fill,” Ay-wan said after a pause. “It is also possible that you will never be anything more now than what you were before the augmentations.”

Hala bowed her head and stared at her hands. She thought of the exhilaration brought on by the dance. The moments of joy and the way she had lived towards
those moments. Outside of the performances, she had simply been going through the motions – moving from one performance to the next like a doll or a machine waiting for its master to utter the word of command.

She raised her eyes and stared out the window. There were fliers drifting above the dome outside; she’d seen them before and yet never really seen them. What else had she not seen while
she was caught in the haze of her half-life as an Artifact, a person and yet not?

She thought of Bayninan looking at her with so much emotion and so much passion and wondered if her friend had also gone through the same process. She felt a pang at her own thoughtlessness. She’d never even bothered to wonder or to ask about Bayninan’s life after their parting. What pain had Bayninan gone through,
what suffering had she endured?

She bit her lip as she thought of their conversations. How spoiled she must have seemed. Now, as she contemplated the possibilities before her, she felt very small and unsure. Could she be brave enough to make her own way in the world as Bayninan had? Could she be strong enough to stand up and simply be Hala?

Beside her, Ay-wan cleared his throat.

She took a
deep breath and turned to meet his gaze.

“I am ready,” she said. “Whatever happens, I will embrace it.”

The Once-Artifact named Hala has been released from her duties. The Empire in its benevolence has bestowed on her the gift of life and the choice to remain on Silhouette as a citizen or to go wherever it is that she wishes.

In her farewell speech, the former Artifact graciously acknowledged
the good work of the Compassionate and regretted that she could no longer continue in her capacity. In the attached visual clip it is clear that she has not yet fully recovered from the extraction of her augmentations. Silhouette will miss her spectacular performances. Most memorable are her final presentations before she opted for the operation that saved her life.

At the farewell ceremony,
the Compassionate attaché announced the arrival of a new Artifact from the Once-place called Siargao. The new Artifact will be arriving on the jump ship named Carollus. Siargao representative Pero Nimata says that the Once-place has prepared a spectacle to greet the new Artifact’s arrival. It will be something to look forward to.

—Newsclip, Silhoutte Daily—

Author Note: This story has been two
years in the making. JT Stewart planted the seed for this story on the afternoon she came to visit while I was at Clarion West. I cried, she talked. Her words continue to inspire me.

EJ-ES

Nancy Kress

Jesse, come home
There’s a hole in the bed
where we slept
Now it’s growing cold
Hey Jesse, your face
in the place where we lay
by the hearth, all apart
it hangs on my heart …
Jesse, I’m lonely
Come home.

—“Jesse,” Janis Ian, 1972

“Why did you first enter the Corps?” Lolimel asked her as they sat at the back of the shuttle, just before landing. Mia looked at the young man
helplessly, because how could you answer a question like that? Especially when it was asked by the idealistic and worshipful new recruits, too ignorant to know what a waste of time worship was, let alone simplistic questions.

“Many reasons,” Mia said gravely, vaguely. He looked like so many medicians she had worked with, for so many decades on so many planets … intense, thick-haired, genemod
beautiful, a little insane. You had to be a little insane to leave Earth for the Corps, knowing that when (if) you ever returned, all you had known would have been dust for centuries.

He was more persistent than most. “What reasons?”

“The same as yours, Lolimel,” she said, trying to keep her voice gentle. “Now be quiet, please, we’re entering the atmosphere.”

“Yes, but—”

“Be quiet.”
Entry
was so much easier on him than on her; he had not got bones weakened from decades in space. They
did
weaken, no matter what exercise one took or what supplements or what gene therapy. Mia leaned back in her shuttle chair and closed her eyes. Ten minutes, maybe, of aerobraking and descent; surely she could stand ten minutes. Or not.

The heaviness began, abruptly increased. Worse on her eyeballs,
as always; she didn’t have good eye-socket muscles, had never had them. Such an odd weakness. Well, not for long; this was her last flight. At the next station, she’d retire. She was already well over age, and her body felt it. Only her body? No, her mind, too. At the moment, for instance, she couldn’t remember the name of the planet they were hurtling toward. She recalled its catalogue number,
but not whatever its colonists, who were not answering hails from ship, had called it.

“Why did you join the Corps?”

“Many reasons.”

And so few of them fulfilled. But that was not a thing you told the young.

The colony sat at the edge of a river, under an evening sky of breathable air set with three brilliant, fast-moving moons. Beds of glorious flowers dotted the settlement, somewhere in
size between a large town and a small city. The buildings of foamcast embedded with glittering native stone were graceful, well-proportioned rooms set around open atria. Minimal furniture, as graceful as the buildings; even the machines blended unobtrusively into the lovely landscape. The colonists had taste and restraint and a sense of beauty. They were all dead.

“A long time ago,” said Kenin.
Officially she was Expedition Head, although titles and chains-of-command tended to erode near the galactic edge, and Kenin led more by consensus and natural calm than by rank. More than once the team had been grateful for Kenin’s calm. Lolimel looked shaken, although he was trying to hide it.

Kenin studied the skeleton before them. “Look at those bones – completely clean.”

Lolimel managed,
“It might have been picked clean quickly by
predators, or carnivorous insects, or …” His voice trailed off.

“I already scanned it, Lolimel. No microscopic bone nicks. She decayed right there in bed, along with clothing and bedding.”

The three of them looked at the bones lying on the indestructible mattress coils of some alloy Mia had once known the name of. Long clean bones, as neatly arranged
as if for a first-year anatomy lesson. The bedroom door had been closed; the dehumidifying system had, astonishingly, not failed; the windows were intact. Nothing had disturbed the woman’s long rot in the dry air until nothing remained, not even the bacteria that had fed on her, not even the smell of decay.

Kenin finished speaking to the other team. She turned to Mia and Lolimel, her beautiful
brown eyes serene. “There are skeletons throughout the city, some in homes and some collapsed in what seem to be public spaces. Whatever the disease was, it struck fast. Jamal says their computer network is gone, but individual rec cubes might still work. Those things last for ever.”