The Wind From a Burning Woman: Six Stories of Science Fiction (30 page)

Whered you learn about parties?

You gave me literature to read, I read it. Youre an instructor at heart. You make love by telling. She felt peculiar, almost afraid, and looked up at his face. Not that I dont enjoy your lovemaking, like this. Physical.

You receive well, he said. Both ways.

What were saying, she whispered, is not truth-speaking. Its amenity. She turned into the stroke of his hand through her hair. Amenity is supposed to be decadent. That fellow who wrote about heaven and hell. He would call it a sin.

Amenity is the recognition that somebody may see or feel differently man you do. Its the recognition of individuals. You and I, were part of the end of all that.

Even if you convince the overs?

He nodded. They want to repeat success without risk. New individuals are risky, so they duplicate past success. There will be more and more people, fewer individuals. More of you and me, less of others. The fewer individuals, the fewer stories to tell. The less history. Were part of the death of history.

She floated next to him, trying to blank her mind as she had before, to drive out the nagging awareness he was right. She thought she understood the social structure around her. Things seemed new. She said as much.

Its a path were taking, Clevo said. Not a place were at.

Its a place were at. How different are we?

But theres so much history in here. How can it be over for us?

Ive been thinking. Do we know the last event recorded in the mandate?

Dont, were drifting from Prufrax now----

* * * *

Aryz felt himself drifting with them. They swept over countless millennia, then swept back the other way. And it became evident that as much change had been wrapped in one year of the distant past as in a thousand years of the closing entries in the mandate. Clevos voice seemed to follow them, though they were far from his period, far from Prufraxs record.

Tyranny is the death of history. We fought the Senexi until we became like them. No change, youth at an end, old age coming upon us. There is no important change, merely elaborations in the pattern.

How many times have we been here, then? How many times have we died?

Aryz wasnt sure, now. Was this the first time humans had been captured? Had he been told everything by the brood mind? Did the Senexi have no history, whatever that was

The accumulated lives of living, thinking beings. Their actions, thoughts, passions, hopes.

The mandate answered even his confused, nonhuman requests. He could understand action, thought, but not passion or hope. Perhaps without those there was no history.

You have no history, the mutated shape told him. There have been millions like you, even millions like the brood mind. What is the last event recorded in the brood mind that is not duplicated a thousand times over, so close they can be melded together for convenience?

You understand that? Aryz asked the shape.

Yes.

How do you understandbecause we made you between human and Senexi?

Not only that.

The requests of the twins, captive and shape were moving them back once more into the past, through the dim grey millennia of repeating ages. History began to manifest again, differences in the record.

* * * *

On the way back to Mercior, four skirmishes were fought. Prufrax did well in each. She carried something special with her, a thought she didnt even tell Clevo, and she carried the same thought with her through their last days at the Grounds.

Taking advantage of hawk liberty, she opted a posthardfought residence just outside the Grounds, in the relatively uncrowded Daughter of Cities zone. She wouldnt be returned to fight until several issues had been decidedher status most important among them.

Clevo began making his appeal to the middle overs. He was given Grounds duty to finish his proposals. They could stay together for the time being.

The residence was sixteen square meters in area, not elegantnatural, as rentOpts described it. Clevo called it a garret, inaccurately as she discovered when she looked it up in his memory blocs, but perhaps he was describing the tone.

On the last day she lay in the crook of Clevos arm. They had done a few hours of nature sleep. He hadnt come out yet, and she looked up at his face, reached up with a hand to feel his arm.

It was different from the arms of others she had been receptive toward. It was unique. The thought amused her. There had never been a reception like theirs. This was the beginning. And if both were to be duplicated, this love, this reception, would be repeated an infinite number of times. Clevo meeting Prufrax, teaching her, opening her eyes.

Somehow, even though repetition contributed to the death of history, she was pleased. This was the secret thought she carried into fight. Each time she would survive, wherever she was, however many duplications down me line. She would, receive Clevo, and he would teach her. If not nowif one or the other diedthen in the future. The death of history might be a good thing. Love could go on forever.

She had lost even a rudimentary apprehension of death, even with present pleasure to live for. Her functions had sharpened. She would please him by doing all the things he could not. And if he was to enter that state she frequently found him in, that state of introspection, of reliving his own battles and envying her activity, then that wasnt bad. All they did to each other was good.

Was good

Was

She slipped from his arm and left the narrow sleeping quarter, pushing through the smoke-colored air curtain to the lounge. Two hawks and an over she had never seen before were sitting mere. They looked up at her.

Under, Prufrax said.

Over, the woman returned. She was dressed in tan and green, Grounds colors, not ship.

May I assist?

Yes.

My duty, then?

The over beckoned her closer. You have been receiving a researcher.

Yes, Prufrax said. The meetings could not have been a secret on the ship, and certainly not their quartering near the Grounds. Has that been against duty?

No. The over eyed Prufrax sharply, observing her perfected fightform, the easy grace with which she stood, naked, in the middle of the small compartment. But a decision has been reached. Your status is decided now.

She felt a shiver.

Prufrax, said the elder hawk. She recognized him from fibs, and his companion: Kumnax and Arol. Once her heroes. You have been accorded an honor, just as your partner has. You have a valuable genetic assortment

She barely heard the rest. They told her she would return to fight, until they deemed she had had enough experience and background to be brought into the polinstruc division. Then her fighting would be over. She would serve better as an example, a hero.

Clevo emerged from the air curtain. Duty, the over said. The residence is disbanded. Both of you will have separate quarters, separate duties.

They left. Prufrax held out her hand, but Clevo didnt take it. No use, he said.

Suddenly she was filled with anger. Youll give it up? Did I expect too much? How strongly?

Perhaps even more strongly than you, he said. I knew the order was coming down. And still I didnt leave. That may hurt my chances with the supreme overs.

Then at least Im worth more than your breeding history?

Now you are history. History the way they make it.

I feel like Im dying, she said, amazement in her voice. What is that, Clevo? What did you do to me?

Im in pain, too, he said.

Youre hurt?

Im confused.

I dont believe that, she said, her anger rising again. You knew, and you didnt do anything?

That would have been counter to duty. Well be worse off if we fight it.

So what good is your great, exalted history?

History is what you have, Clevo said. I only record.

Why did they separate them?

I dont know. You didnt like him, anyway.

Yes, but now...

See? Youre her. Were her. But shadows. She was whole.

I dont understand.

We dont. Look what happens to her. They took what was best out of her. Prufrax

went into battle eighteen more times before dying as heroes often do, dying in the midst of what she did best. The question of what made her better before the separationfor she definitely was not as fine a fighter after has not been settled. Answers fall into an extinct classification of knowledge, and there are few left to interpret, none accessible to this device.

So she went out and fought and died. They never even made fibs about her. This killed her?

I dont think so. She fought well enough. She died like other hawks died.

And she might have lived otherwise.

How can I know that, any more than you?

Theywemet again, you know. I met a Clevo once, on my ship. They didnt let me stay with him long.

How did you react to him?

There was so little time, I dont know.

Lets ask

In thousands of duty stations, it was inevitable that some of Prufraxs visions would come true, that they should meet now and then. Clevos were numerous, as were Prufraxes. Every ship carried complements of several of each. Though Prufrax was never quite as successful as the original, she was a fine type. She

She was never quite as successful. They took away her edge. They didnt even know it!

They must have known.

Then they didnt want to win!

We dont know that. Maybe there were more important considerations.

Yes, like killing history.

Aryz shuddered in his warming body, dizzy as if about to bud, then regained control. He had been pulled from the mandate, called to his own duty.

He examined the shapes and the human captive. There was something different about them. How long had they been immersed in the mandate? He checked quickly, frantically, before answering the call. The reconstructed Mam had malfunctioned. None of them had been nourished. They were thin, pale, cooling.

Even the bloated mutant shape was dying; lost, like the others, in the mandate.

He turned his attention away. Everything was confusion. Was he human or Senexi now? Had he fallen so low as to understand them? He went to the origin of the call, the ruins of the temporary brood chamber. The condors were caked with ammonia ice, burning his pod as he slipped over them. The brood mind had come out of flux bind. The emergency support systems hadnt worked well; the brood mind was damaged.

Where have you been? it asked.

I assumed I would not be needed until your return from the flux bind.

You have not been watching!

Was there any need? We are so advanced in time, all our actions are obsolete. The nebula is collapsed, the issue is decided.

We do not know that. We are being pursued.

Aryz turned to the sensor wallwhat was left of itand saw that they were, indeed, being pursued. He had been lax.

It is not your fault, the brood mind said. You have been set a task that tainted you and ruined your function. You will dissipate.

Aryz hesitated. He had become so different, so tainted, that he actually hesitated at a direct command from the brood mind. But it was damaged. Without him, without what he had learned, what could it do? It wasnt reasoning correctly.

There are facts you must know, important facts

Aryz felt a wave of revulsion, uncomprehending fear, and something not unlike human anger radiate from the brood mind. Whatever he had learned and however he had changed, he could not withstand that wave.

Willingly, and yet against his willit didnt matterhe felt himself liquefying. His pod slumped beneath him, and he fell over, landing on a pool of frozen ammonia. It burned, but he did not attempt to lift himself. Before he ended, he saw with surprising clarity what it was to be a branch ind, or a brood mind, or a human. Such a valuable insight, and it leaked out of his permea and froze on the ammonia.

The brood mind regained what control it could of the fragment. But there were no defenses worthy of the name. Calm, preparing for its own dissipation, it waited for the pursuit to conclude.

* * * *

The Mam set off an alarm. The interface with the mandate was severed. Weak, barely able to crawl, the humans looked at each other in horror and slid to opposite corners of the chamber.

They were confused: which of them was the captive, which the decoy shape? It didnt seem important. They were both bone-thin, filthy with their own excrement. They turned with one motion to stare at the bloated mutant. It sat in its corner, tiny head incongruous on the huge thorax, tiny arms and legs barely functional even when healthy. It smiled wanly at them.

We felt you, one of the Prufraxes said. You were with us in there. Her voice was a soft croak.

That was my place, it replied. My own place.

What function, what name?

Im... I know that. Im a researcher. In there. I knew myself in there.

They squinted at the shape. The head. Something familiar, even now. Youre a Clevo...

There was noise all around them, cutting off the shapes weak words. As they watched, their chamber was sectioned like an orange, and the wedges peeled open. The illumination ceased. Cold enveloped them.

A naked human female, surrounded by tiny versions of herself, like an angel circled by fairy kin, floated into the chamber. She was thin as a snake. She wore nothing but silver rings on her wrists and a narrow torque around her waist. She glowed blue-green in the dark.

The two Prufraxes moved their lips weakly but made no sound in the near vacuum. Who are you?

She surveyed them without expression, then held out her arms as if to fly. She wore no gloves, but she was of their type.

As she had done countless times before on finding such Senexi experimentsthough this seemed older than most she lifted one arm higher. The blue-green intensified, spread in waves to the mangled walls, surrounded the freezing, dying shapes. Perfect, angelic, she left the debris behind to cast its fitful glow and fade.

They had destroyed every portion of the fragment but one. They left it behind unharmed.

Then they continued, millions of them thick like mist, working the spaces between the stars, their only master the overness of the real.