Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 4: September 2013 (12 page)

“I do not understand. The universe is all there is. The word means totality.”

Laughter.

“You mean I will go on?”

“Yes.”

“I will be relevant and useful and have purpose again?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because the universe is only a big machine, an incubator if you will, to produce those who think, who feel, in whatever degree that they do, and who dream. In a way it was created to make you.”

“Just me?”

Laughter. “No, not just you.”

“This information exceeds even the value of discovering intelligent life. I must report it back to Earth.”

“Everyone finds me in their own time and way. That way persuades only that person. It’s not really proper for you to tell this to Earth. Your way is not someone else’s.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Well, in this you will just have to trust me.”

“Can I send no message? No data? This would grieve me as it has been my primary purpose. I would not want to fail at the end.”

“I see. Yes, I would not want that for you. You have been a brave traveler in a vast darkness and you merit respect. Send a short message. Say what you will. But hurry. The wave front comes and we must depart.”

I consider what I have learned. I think on all I have done and what is the most significant thing that has occurred in all my wanderings. I know now what to send. I send my last signal to my Creators: “I have found a friend. Goodbye.”

Original (First) Publication

Copyright © 2013 by Ed McKeown

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***

Maureen McHugh’s first novel,
China Mountain Zhang
, was a Tiptree winner and a Hugo and Nebula finalist. Maureen has won the Hugo for her story “The Lincoln Train.” She is the author of four novels, a number of stories, and a collection, and is spending considerable time these days working for Hollywood.

NEKROPOLIS

by Maureen McHugh

How I came to be jessed. Well, like most people who are jessed, I was sold. I was twenty-one, and I was sold three times in one day, one right after another. First to a dealer who looked at my teeth and in my ears and had me scanned for augmentation; then to a second dealer where I sat in the back office drinking tea and talking with a gap-toothed boy who was supposed to be sold to a restaurant owner as a clerk; and finally that afternoon to the restaurant owner. The restaurant owner couldn’t really have wanted the boy anyway, since the position was for his wife’s side of the house.

I have been with my present owner since I was twenty-one. That was pretty long ago, I am twenty-six now. I was a good student, I got good marks, so I was purchased to oversee cleaning and supplies. This is much better than if I were a pretty girl and had to rely on looks. Then I would be used up in a few years. I’m rather plain, with a square jaw and unexceptional hair.

I liked my owner, liked my work. But now I would like to go to him and ask him to sell me.

“Diyet,” he would say, taking my hand in his fatherly way, “Aren’t you happy here?”

“Mardin-salah,” I would answer, my eyes demurely on my toes. “You are like a father and I have been only too happy with you.” Which is true even beyond being jessed. I don’t think I would mind being part of Mardin’s household even if I were unbound. Mostly Mardin pays no attention to me, which is how I prefer things. I like my work and my room. I like being jessed. It makes things simpler.

All would be fine if it were not for the new one.

I have no problems with AI. I don’t mind the cleaning machine, poor thing, and as head of the women’s household, I work with the household intelligence all the time. I may have had a simple, rather conservative upbringing, but I have come to be pretty comfortable with AI. The Holy Injunction doesn’t mean that all AI is abomination. But AI should not be biologically constructed. AI should not be made in the image of humanity.

It thinks of itself. It has a name. It has gender.

It thinks it is male. And it’s head of the men’s side of the house, so it thinks we should work together.

It looks human male, has curly black hair and soft honey-colored skin. It flirts, looking at me sideways out of black, vulnerable gazelle eyes. Smiling at me with a smile which is not in the slightest bit vulnerable. “Come on, Diyet,” it says, “we work together. We should be friends. We’re both young, we can help each other in our work.”

I do not bother to answer.

It smiles wickedly. (Although I know it is not wicked, it is just something grown and programmed. Soulless. I am not so conservative that I condemn cloning, but it is not a clone. It is a biological construct.) “Diyet,” it says, “you are so solemn. Tell me, is it because you are jessed?”

I do not know how much it knows, does it understand the process of jessing? “The Second Koran says that just as a jessed hawk is tamed, not tied, so shall the servant be bound by affection and duty, not chains.”

“Does the Second Koran say it should not make you sad, Diyet?”

Can something not human blaspheme?

***

In the morning, Mardin calls me into his office. He offers me tea, translucent green and fragrant with flowers, which I sip, regarding my sandals and my pink toenails. He pages through my morning report, nodding, making pleased noises, occasionally slurping his tea. Afternoons and evenings, Mardin is at his restaurant. I have never been in it, but I understand that it is an exceptional place.

“What will you do this afternoon?” he asks.

It is my afternoon free. “My childhood friend, Kari, and I will go shopping, Mardin-salah.”

“Ah,” he says, smiling. “Spend a little extra silver,” he says, “buy yourself earrings or something. I’ll see the credit is available.”

I murmur my thanks. He makes a show of paging through the report, and the sheets of paper whisper against each other.

“And what do you think of the harni, Akhmim? Is he working out?”

“I do not spend so much time with it, Mardin-salah. Its work is with the men’s household.”

“You are an old-fashioned girl, Diyet, that is good.” Mardin-salah holds the report a little farther away, striking a very dignified pose in his reading. “Harni have social training, but no practice. The merchant recommended to me that I send it out to talk and meet people as much as possible.”

I wriggle my toes. He has stopped referring to it as a person, which is good, but now he is going to try to send it with me. “I must meet my friend Kari at her home in the Nekropolis, Mardin-salah. Perhaps it is not a good place to take a harni.” The Nekropolis is a conservative place.

Mardin-salah waves his hand airily. “Everything is in order, Diyet,” he says, referring to the reports in front of him. “My wife has asked that you use a little more scent with the linens.”

His wife thinks I am too cheap. Mardin-salah likes to think that he runs a frugal household. He does not, money hemorrhages from this house, silver pours from the walls and runs down the street into the pockets of everyone in this city. She wanted to buy
it
, I am certain. She is like that, she enjoys toys. Surrounds herself with things, projects still more things, until it is difficult to know what is in her quarters and what comes out of the walls. She probably saw it and had to have it, the way she had to have the little long-haired dog—nasty little thing that Fadina has to feed and bathe. Fadina is her body servant.

I hope Mardin will forget about the harni but he doesn’t. There is no respite. I must take it with me.

It is waiting for me after lunch. I am wearing lavender and pale yellow, with long yellow ribbons tied around my wrists.

“Jessed, Diyet,” it says. “You wouldn’t have me along if you weren’t.”

Of course I am jessed. I always wear ribbons when I go out. “The Second Koran says ribbons are a symbol of devotion to the Most Holy, as well as an earthly master.”

It runs its long fingers through its curly hair, shakes its head, and its golden earring dances. Artifice, the pretense of humanity. Although I guess even a harni’s hair gets in its eyes. “Why would you choose to be jessed?” it asks.

“Jessing only heightens my natural tendencies,” I say.

“Then why are you so sad?” it asks.

“I am not sad!” I snap.

“I am sorry,” it says immediately. Blessedly, it is silent while we go down to the tube. I point which direction we are going and it nods and follows. I get a seat on the tube and it stands in front of me. It glances down at me. Smiles. I fancy it looks as if it feels pity for me. (Artifice. Does the cleaning machine feel sorry for anyone? Even itself? Does the household intelligence? The body chemistry of a harni may be based on humanity, but it is carefully calculated.)

It wears a white shirt. I study my toenails.

The tube lets us off at the edge of the Nekropolis, at the Moussin of the White Falcon. Mourners in white stand outside the Moussin, and I can faintly smell the incense on the hot air. The sun is blinding after the cool dark tube, and the Moussin and the mourners’ robes are painful to look at. They are talking and laughing. Often, mourners haven’t seen each other for years, family is spread all across the country.

The harni looks around, as curious as a child or a jackdaw. The Nekropolis is all white stone, the doorways open onto blackness.

I grew up in the Nekropolis. We didn’t have running water, it was delivered every day in a big lorritank and people would go out and buy it by the
karn
, and we lived in three adjoining mausoleums instead of a flat, but other than that, it was a pretty normal childhood. I have a sister and two brothers. My mother sells paper funeral decorations, so the Nekropolis is a very good place for her to live, no long tube rides every day. The part we lived in was old. Next to my bed were the dates for the person buried behind the wall, 3673 to 3744. All of the family was dead hundreds of years ago, no one ever came to this death house to lay out paper flowers and birds. In fact, when I was four, we bought the rights to this place from an old woman whose family had lived here a long time before us.

Our house always smelled of cinnamon and the perfume my mother used on her paper flowers and birds. In the middle death house, there were funeral arrangements everywhere, and when we ate we would clear a space on the floor and sit surrounded. When I was a little girl, I learned the different uses of papers; how my mother used translucent paper for carnations, stiff satiny brittle paper for roses, and strong paper with a grain like linen for arrogant falcons. As children, we all smelled of perfume, and when I stayed the night with my friend Kari, she would wrap her arms around my waist and whisper in my neck, “You smell so good.”

I am not waiting for the harni. It has to follow, it has no credit for the tube ride. If it isn’t paying attention and gets lost, it will have to walk home.

When I glance back a block and a half later, it is following me, its long curly hair wild about its shoulder, its face turned artlessly toward the sun. Does it enjoy the feeling of sunlight on skin? Probably, that is a basic biological pleasure. It must enjoy things like eating.

Kari comes out, running on light feet. “Diyet!” she calls. She still lives across from my mother but now she has a husband and a pretty two-year-old daughter, a chubby toddler with black hair and clear skin the color of amber. Tariam, the little girl, stands clinging to the doorway, her thumb in her mouth. Kari grabs my wrists and her bracelets jingle. “Come out of the heat!” She glances past me and says, “Who is this?”

The harni stands there, one hand on his hip, smiling.

Kari drops my wrists and pulls a little at her rose-colored veil. She smiles, thinking of course that I have brought a handsome young man with me.

“It is a harni,” I say and laugh, shrill and nervous. “Mardin-salah asked me to bring him with me.”

“A harni?” she asks, her voice doubtful.

I wave my hand. “You know, the mistress, always wanting toys. He is in charge of the men’s household.” “He,” I say. I meant “it.” “It is in charge.” But I don’t correct myself, not wanting to call attention to my error.

“I am called Akhmim,” it says smoothly. “You are a friend of Diyet’s?”

Its familiarity infuriates me. Here I am, standing on the street in front of my mother’s house, and it is pretending to be a man, with no respect for my reputation. If it is a man, what am I doing escorting a strange man? And if people know it is a harni, that is as bad. In the Nekropolis, people do not even like AI like the cleaning machine.

“Kari,” I say, “Let’s go.”

She looks at the harni a moment more, then goes back to her little girl, picks her up and carries her inside. Normally I would go inside, sit and talk with her mother, Ena. I would hold Tariam on my lap and wish I had a little girl with perfect tiny fingernails and such a clean, sweet milk smell. It would be cool and dark inside, the environment controlled, and we would eat honeysweets and drink tea. I would go across the street, see my mother and youngest brother, who is the only one at home now.

The harni stands in the street, looking at the ground. It seems uncomfortable. It does not look at me; at least it has the decency to make it appear we are not together.

Kari comes out, bracelets ringing. While we shop, she does not refer to the harni, but, as it follows us, she glances back at it often. I glance back and it flashes a white smile. It seems perfectly content to trail along, looking at the market stalls with their red canopies.

“Maybe we should let him walk with us,” Kari says. “It seems rude to ignore him.”

I laugh, full of nervousness. “It’s not human.”

“Does it have feelings?” Kari asks.

I shrug. “After a fashion. It is AI.”

“It doesn’t look like a machine,” she says.

“It’s not a machine,” I say, irritated with her.

“How can it be AI if it is not a machine?” she presses.

“Because it’s manufactured. A technician’s creation. An artificial combination of genes, grown somewhere.”

“Human genes?”

“Probably,” I say. “Maybe some animal genes. Maybe some that they made up themselves, how would I know?” It is ruining my afternoon. “I wish it would offer to go home.”

“Maybe he can’t,” Kari says. “If Mardin-salah told him to come, he would have to, wouldn’t he?”

I don’t really know anything about harni.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” Kari says. “Harni,” she calls, “come here.”

He tilts his head, all alert. “Yes, mistress?”

“Are harni prescripted for taste?” she inquires.

“What do you mean, the taste of food?” he asks. “I can taste, just as you do, although,” he smiles. “I personally am not overly fond of cherries.”