Nebula Awards Showcase 2006 (33 page)

Soma woke to find the Kentuckians doing something terrible. When he tried to speak, he found that his face was immobilized by a mask of something that smelled of the docks but felt soft and gauzy.

The four younger Crows were dressed in a gamut of jerseys and shorts colored in the hotter hues of the spectrum. Japheth was struggling into a long, jangly coat hung with seashells and old capacitors.

But it was the Owl that frightened Soma the most. The broadchested man was dappled with opal stones from collarbones to ankles and wore nothing else save a breechcloth cut from an old newspaper. Soma moaned, trying to attract their attention again.

The blue-eyed boy said, “Your painter stirs, Japheth.”

But it was the Owl who leaned over Soma, placed his hand on Soma’s chin and turned his head back and forth with surprising gentleness. The Owl nodded, to himself Soma guessed, for none of the Crows reacted, then peeled the bandages off Soma’s face.

Soma took a deep breath, then said, “Nobody’s worn opals for months! And those shorts,” he gestured at the others, “Too much orange! Too much orange!”

Japheth laughed. “Well, we’ll be tourists in from the provinces, then, not princes of Printer’s Alley. Do
I
offend?” He wriggled his shoulders, set the shells and circuits to clacking.

Soma pursed his lips, shook his head. “Seashells and capacitors are timeless,” he said.

Japheth nodded. “That’s what it said on the box.” Then, “Hey! Bug! Are we to market yet?”

“It’s hard to say, whiskey man,” came the reply. “My eyes are funny.”

“Close enough. Open up.”

The rear of the beast’s abdomen cracked, and yawned wide. Japheth turned to his charges. “You boys ready to play like vols?”

The younger Crows started gathering burlap bundles. The Owl hoisted a heavy rucksack, adjusted the flowers in his hat, and said, “Wacka wacka ho.”

In a low place, horizon bounded by trees in every direction, Jenny and her horse came on the sobbing car. From the ruts it had churned up in the mud, Jenny guessed it had been there for some time, driving back and forth along the northern verge.

“Now what have you done to yourself?” she asked, dismounting. The car turned to her and shuddered. Its front left fender was badly dented, and its hood and windshield were a mess of leaves and small branches.

“Trying to get into the woods? Cars are for roads, car.” She brushed some muck off the damaged fender.

“Well, that’s not too bad, though. This is all cosmetic. Why would a car try to go where trees are? See what happens?”

The horse called. It had wandered a little way into the woods and was standing at the base of a vast poplar. Jenny reached in through the passenger’s window of the car, avoiding the glassy knitting blanket on the other side, and set the parking brake. “You wait here.”

She trotted out to join her horse. It was pawing at a small patch of ground. Jenny was a mechanic and had no woodscraft, but she could see the outline of a cleft-toed sandal. Who would be in the woods with such impractical footwear?

“The owner’s an artist. An artist looking for a shortcut to the Alley, I reckon,” said Jenny. “Wearing funny artist shoes.”

She walked back to the car, considering. The car was pining. Not unheard of, but not common. It made her think better of Soma Painter that his car missed him so.

“Say, horse. Melancholy slows car repair. I think this car will convalesce better in its own parking space.”

The car revved.

“But there’s the garage still back at the beach,” said Jenny.

She turned things over and over. “Horse,” she said, “you’re due three more personal days this month. If I release you for them now, will you go fold up the garage and bring it to me in the city?”

The horse tossed its head enthusiastically.

“Good. I’ll drive with this car back to the Alley, then—” But the horse was already rubbing its flanks against her.

“Okay, okay.” She drew a tin of salve from her tool belt, dipped her fingers in it, then ran her hands across the horse’s back. The red crosses came away in her hands, wriggling. “The cases for these are in my cabinet,” she said, and then inspiration came.

“Here, car,” she said, and laid the crosses on its hood. They wriggled around until they were at statute-specified points along the doors and roof. “Now you’re an ambulance! Not a hundred percent legal, maybe, but this way you can drive fast and whistle siren-like.”

The car spun its rear wheels but couldn’t overcome the parking brake. Jenny laughed. “Just a minute more. I need you to give me a ride into town.”

She turned to speak to the horse, only to see it already galloping along the coast road. “Don’t forget to drain the water tanks before you fold it up!” she shouted.

The bundles that were flecked with root matter, Soma discovered, were filled with roots. Carrots and turnips, a half dozen varieties of potatoes, beets. The Kentuckians spread out through the Farmer’s Market, trading them by the armload for the juices and gels that the rock monkeys brought in from their gardens.

“This is our secondary objective,” said Japheth. “We do this all the time, trading doped potatoes for that shit y’all eat.”

“You’re poisoning us?” Soma was climbing out of the paste a little, or something. His thoughts were shifting around some.

“Doped with nutrients, friend. Forty ain’t old outside Tennessee. Athena doesn’t seem to know any more about human nutrition than she does human psychology. Hey, we’re trying to
help
you people.”

Then they were in the very center of the market, and the roar of the crowds drowned out any reply Soma might make.

Japheth kept a grip on Soma’s arm as he spoke to a gray old monkey. “Ten pounds, right?” The monkey was weighing a bundle of carrots on a scale.

“Okay,” grunted the monkey. “Okay, man. Ten pounds I give you . . . four blue jellies.”

Soma was incredulous. He’d never developed a taste for them himself, but he knew that carrots were popular. Four blue jellies was an insulting trade. But Japheth said, “Fair enough,” and pocketed the plastic tubes the monkey handed over.

“You’re no trader,” said Soma, or started to, but heard the words slur out of him in an unintelligible mess of vowels.
One spring semester, when he’d already been a TA for a year, he was tapped to work on the interface. No more need for scholarships.

“Painter!” shouted Japheth.

Soma looked up. There was a Crow dressed in Alley haute couture standing in front of him. He tried to open his head to call the Tennessee Highway Patrol. He couldn’t find his head.

“Give him one of these yellow ones,” said a monkey. “They’re good for fugues.”

“Painter!” shouted Japheth again. The grip on Soma’s shoulder was like a vise.

Soma struggled to stand under his own power. “I’m forgetting something.”

“Hah!” said Japheth, “You’re remembering. Too soon for my needs, though. Listen to me. Rock monkeys are full voluntary citizens of Tennessee.”

The outlandishness of the statement shocked Soma out of his reverie and brought the vendor up short.

“Fuck you, man!” said the monkey.

“No, no,” said Soma, then said by rote, “Tennessee is a fully realized postcolonial state. The land of the rock monkeys is an autonomous partner-principality within our borders, and while the monkeys are our staunch allies, their allegiance is not to our Governor, but to their king.”

“Yah,” said the monkey. “Long as we get our licenses and pay the tax machine. Plus, who the jelly cubes going to listen to besides the monkey king, huh?”

Soma marched Japheth to the next stall. “Lot left in there to wash out yet,” Japheth said.

“I wash every day,” said Soma, then fell against a sloshing tray of juice containers.
The earliest results were remarkable.

A squat man covered with black gems came up to them. The man who’d insulted the monkey said, “You might have killed too much of it; he’s getting kind of wonky.”

The squat man looked into Soma’s eyes. “We can stabilize him easy enough. There are televisions in the food court.”

Then Soma and Japheth were drinking hot rum punches and watching a newsfeed. There was a battle out over the Gulf somewhere, Commodores mounted on bears darted through the clouds, lancing Cuban zeppelins.

“The Cubans will never achieve air superiority,” said Soma, and it felt right saying it.

Japheth eyed him wearily. “I need you to keep thinking that for now, Soma Painter,” he said quietly. “But I hope sometime soon you’ll know that Cubans don’t live in a place called the Appalachian Archipelago, and that the salty reach out there isn’t the Gulf of Mexico.”

The bicycle race results were on then, and Soma scanned the lists, hoping to see his favorites’ names near the top of the general classifications.

“That’s the Tennessee River, dammed up by your Governor’s hubris.”

Soma saw that his drink was nearly empty and heard that his friend Japheth was still talking. “What?” he asked, smiling.

“I asked if you’re ready to go to the Alley,” said Japheth.

“Good good,” said Soma.

The math was moving along minor avenues, siphoning data from secondary and tertiary ports when it sensed her looming up. It researched ten thousand thousand escapes but rejected them all when it perceived that it had been subverted, that it was inside her now, becoming part of her, that it
is primitive in materials but clever clever in architecture and there have been blindings times not seen places to root out root out all of it check again check one thousand more times all told all told eat it all up all the little bluegrass math is absorbed

“The Alley at night!” shouted Soma. “Not like where you’re from, eh, boys?”

A lamplighter’s stalk legs eased through the little group. Soma saw that his friends were staring up at the civil servant’s welding mask head, gaping openmouthed as it turned a spigot at the top of a tree and lit the gas with a flick of its tongue.