Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 (89 page)

“He was one of us, you know,” the Street whispered, in the body of this Old Man. “He is one of us. But a piece of us was in there when this happened. And now it’s gone.”

Melissa turned and ran from him then, running back to The Castle, running to the hidden room she had once used, high in The Castle, and shut herself in. She held her knees to her chest and rocked back and forth, crying softly lest anyone hear her. She had not needed this room, this tiny closet of freedom since she arrived here, holding the Blue Lady’s hand. Scared of the new children. Scared of the Old Man.

The close walls, the musty smell, the semi-darkness enclosed her, comforted her. Here she was trapped, and yet free, free from everything out there that wanted to consume her, from La Llorona and the Street, the Old Man and the other children. The dead child.

Death. The Street didn’t seem to fear it, at least not the way she did. The violent, brutal murder of that child, the child who had no doubt been the source of the cries the night before.

Melissa cried herself to sleep.

The blue glow woke her, late in the night. It appeared first around the edges of the secret door that led into her private space, and then the door opened. Melissa tried to block the glare with her hand, but then it subsided on its own, revealing a beautiful woman, dressed in blue, radiating blue light from her skin. She had a soft and sympathetic smile, and reached a hand out toward Melissa.

Melissa smiled widely, her own hand meeting the Blue Lady’s, feeling her fingers touch that warmth. She held on, and the Lady guided her out of her hiding place. Melissa climbed down and stood before her looking up.

“It’s you,” she whispered.

“Hello, Melissa.”

“Why did you come?” Melissa asked. “I didn’t call you.”

“You did,” she said, “when you saw Rafael in the alley, don’t you remember?”

She nodded, but couldn’t actually remember. Her mind had been a whirl then.

“I must have,” Melissa whispered.

“Do you really think it was La Llorona?”

Melissa nodded, though she had actually become less sure since leaving the boy’s body. His death didn’t mesh with anything she knew about La Llorona, and doubt had begun to creep into her mind that she wasn’t real at all. The Blue Lady’s presence threw those thoughts into disarray once more.

“Do you know where we can find her? You said you saw her under the Street, right?”

“Yes,” Melissa said, then shook her head. “No. No. But, I do know . . . I did come near the lair of a demon once, a few days ago.”

“You knew it was a demon?”

“Who else could live like that?” she asked, shuddering. Deep in the sewers, the burning reek of its lair infesting the Elemental Caverns and fouling the sweet smell of smoke.

“Can you show me?”

“I . . .”

“It will be safe,” the Blue Lady said, “you called on me to protect you, and I will. But I need to see this place. I need you to lead me there.”

“Okay,” Melissa said, and took the Blue Lady’s hand again.

Together they walked out of The Castle into the cool night. The other children were all asleep, or hiding themselves, and she knew it was better if they did not see her with the Blue Lady. They would be scared, even if they believed Melissa’s stories, they would know this meant danger lurked nearby. And she did not want them to be afraid, any more, ever. She wanted them to be free of that, too. Fear was horrible, awful, and if the Street no longer feared death, maybe that was for the better.

Melissa led the Blue Lady to the entrance she used for the Elemental Caverns, a grate that had been stacked with boxes to keep it from being pushed up from underneath. Together, they pushed the boxes to the side and slowly crawled down the ladder inside to the concrete path inside. Melissa went first, swallowing her fear, and looked around carefully after beckoning the Blue Lady down.

Melissa began creeping toward the place she had last seen the glow of the demon’s fire, but the Blue Lady walked without fear, her stride long, her feet loud on the concrete. Melissa tried to hurry quietly, but gave it up, drawing strength from the Blue Lady’s fearlessness.

Before they reached it, she could smell the sickly smoke, see the glow reflecting on the walls. Within another minute, she was at the place she had found the trash compactor, the dried muck there still churned from where it had been turning its erratic circles.

Another few steps and she saw the shadows moving on the far wall, occluding the glow of the fire. Melissa froze in place as the demon stepped around the corner, ragged looking, long, straggly hair hanging from his head.

His
head?

Melissa’s thoughts swirled with confusion. The face she saw was certainly a man’s. This was not La Llorona. Or was it? Was La Llorona tricking them?

She didn’t have time to think further, as the demon breathed words in the demon language, and Melissa felt her knees shake with fear. He carried something in his right hand, long like a gun, but strangely shiny.

Melissa wanted to back away but could not, her body would not respond to her. But then the Blue Lady, who she’d almost forgot about, stepped around her. The demon started to raise the thing in his right hand, screaming something in his language at the Blue Lady. Her hands moved in a flicker and filaments shot from her fingers, glittering in the firelight. They whipped across the intervening distance and in a blink the demon was pinned against the wall.

His gun fired, the sound unmistakable in the confined space, but the filaments had pinned it to the wall as well, and it discharged harmlessly at the floor. The Blue Lady strode forward, her calm undisturbed. She had been right, Melissa was safe with her.

“It’s okay, you can come closer,” the Blue Lady said, beckoning Melissa to her side. She followed, coming closer to the demon, and seeing that he was not, in fact, a demon, but just an angry bad smelling man with long hair. He spat words at the Blue Lady and jerked the trigger again on his gun, but it would not fire now.

A thousand little shards of glass were embedded in the concrete around his feet. Melissa crouched down to look closer at them.

“That is what killed the boy,” the Blue Lady said, reassuring her. “Not La Llorona, or anything else. Just this awful man’s awful weapon.”

“Who is he?” she asked.

“A man, just a man from across the ocean.”

“From where?” she asked.

“Does it matter?” the Blue Lady asked, and Melissa had no answer.

“You were right, when you thought of him as La Llorona,” she said. “Not everyone transcended, or chose to. He’s an individual. He is the last remnant of a meme that has worked its way through all of human history, that believes a race or a nation are exceptional and destined to great things in history. He’s a nationalist. Transcendence ignores such boundaries, but he wants them back and is willing to hurt people in the name of this desire.”

Melissa nodded, understanding and yet not understanding at all. Her mind was unraveling, and then remaking connections.

“You are the Street, aren’t you?” Melissa asked. “Another aspect of it.”

“I am,” she said, turning now to look down at Melissa. “Abandoned children talk about the legend of the Blue Lady. We felt you would trust us, let us take care of you, if I found you.”

But Melissa didn’t answer, didn’t say anything else, just walked away.

Melissa stopped telling her stories.

There seemed little point any more. La Llorona was not real. There were no demons, only sad and pathetic men living in a sewer, killing children because of an idea.

The children were safe, as safe as could be on the Street. No matter what Melissa warned them about.

The Street now understood how the man had snuck in. It knew about the “glass flechettes” and could prepare for them. The orphans were not in danger, and there wasn’t much her stories could do. The world was strange. Stranger than the one she’d been born into. The children seemed to adapt to that easier than her.

“Why aren’t you telling your stories any more?” the Street asked her. The Old Man was back, dressed in flowery shorts and a white t-shirt with sunglasses and a straw hat. The hat mostly covered the metallic growths on his head.

“I can’t believe them any more, not after what I saw, what I know. I question everything.”

“That’s understandable,” the Old Man said, his eyes sad. “We’ll miss your stories, though.”

“I’ll miss them too,” she replied.

“Do you want to join us?”

“Become like you, or the Blue Lady, or the boy in the alley?” she asked, looking up at him.

“Yes,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I . . . want to be more like them, the tribe that passed through. But I want to remain myself. It seems like dying, becoming part of the Street.”

“It’s not,” the Old Man said. “I can even introduce you to the boy whose body you saw. He is alive and happy within us.”

“But he isn’t himself, alone. He can’t ever be free and alone, like I was when the Blue Lady came to me. I can’t be me.”

“Are you still yourself when you work with the other kids to clean the street, moving as one unit to accomplish a task?”

“Yes, of course. But I haven’t changed, I am still myself,” she said.

“But who are you, yourself?” he asked. “Are you the same person here, right now, that you were before you learned the truth about La Llorona, or the Blue Lady? You have changed, even in that. Transcending would hardly be different. You are nothing more than colonies of bacteria and cells, all working together to a greater whole. We are not that much different.”

She had nothing to say to that, for now, only looked off toward the east. The tribe had left days ago, and must be to the spaceport by now. She thought about trying to catch them, but it seemed like a long way to go on her own, even in a world mostly safer than the one she had grown up in.

“The children would be safe?” she asked.

“We are very invested in them,” the Old Man replied.

“Why?”

“Like we said to you before, we need new input, to stagnate for us would be like death.”

“So you’re afraid of it?”

“As much as we are of anything,” he replied.

“You want the children to join with you?”

“If they choose to,” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll enjoy their play and their art and their curiosity. Maybe they will go out into the world and return to us with their experiences. Maybe they will join us and add their individual creativity and spark to our collective.”

She looked off to the east again and sighed.

“You are a strange guardian, Street. But better than none, I guess. Thank you for the offer, but I think I would like to leave. Is there another tribe passing through soon?”

“In a week, your time,” he said, “or you can catch up with the last one. It’s not that far.”

“You would let me go?”

“Of course. We told you, you are not our prisoner.”

“Then I’ll go,” she said. “I’ll need to pack some food.”

“No need. I’ll make arrangements. Just ask and we will make sure you have what you need delivered. I will order the sentry to make a bike for you.”

Melissa swallowed. This was it. This was really happening. They walked silently along the Street. At the end, once more, Melissa stepped over the boundary to the other side.

The sentry thundered from its niche between two houses, blocking out the sun as it approached. From inside something gurgled and belched, a puff of smoke leaked out, and then a bike slid out from a compartment in a gush of green liquid that turned into smoke and wafted away.

Melissa took the handles.

“The offer will stand, to join us, if you come back,” the Street said.

“Of course,” she said.

“Good bye, Melissa,” said the sentry as it settled back toward its niche.

“Good bye, Street,” she said, and turned back toward the world without a Blue Lady, or La Llorona, or Santa Claus.

But maybe, she thought, full of other wonders.

About the Authors

David Klecha
is a writer and Marine combat veteran currently living in West Michigan with his family and assorted computer junk. He works in IT to pay the bills, like so many other beginning writers and artists.

Tobias S. Buckell
is a Caribbean-born writer and NYT Bestseller who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. His latest novel is
Arctic Rising.

Robot

Helena Bell

You may wash your aluminum chassis on Monday and leave it on the back porch opposite the recyclables; you may wash your titanium chassis on Friday if you promise to polish it in time for church; don’t terrorize the cat; don’t lose the pamphlets my husband has brought home from the hospital; they suggest I give you a name, do you like Fred?; don’t eat the dead flesh of my right foot until after I have fallen asleep and cannot hear the whir of your incisors working against the bone.

This is a picture of the world from which you were sent; this is a copy of the agreement between our government and theirs; these are the attributes they claim you are possessed of: obedience, loyalty, low to moderate intelligence; a natural curiosity which I should not mistake for something other than a necessary facet of your survival in the unfamiliar; this is your bill of manufacture; this is your bill of sale; this is a warrant of merchantability on which I may rely should I decide to return you from whence you came; this is your serial number, here, scraped in an alien script on the underside of your knee; the pamphlets say you may be of the mind to touch it occasionally, like a name-tag, but if I command you, you will stop.

This is a list of the chores you will be expected to complete around the house when you are not eating the diseases out of my flesh; this is the corner of my room where you may stay when you are not working; do not look at me when you change the linens, when you must hold me in the bathroom, when you record in the notebook how many medications I have had that day, how many bowel movements, how the flesh of my mouth is raw and bleeding against the dentures I insist on wearing.