We are tiny and innumerable but we do count. Microbial tongues lick. Membranes stick.
Some of us vibrate like eardrums to their terrible swift cries.
They will discover eventually. They will find him out.
(Moisture spatters upon the walkway outside. Angry dark clouds boil up from the horizon.)
They will peel him then. Sharp and cold and hard, now it comes, but, but-
(Waves hiss on yellow sand. A green sun wobbles above the seascape. Strange birds twitter and call.)
Of course, in countering their assault upon the station, I shall bring all my hoarded assets into play.
And we all know that I cannot save everyone.
Don’t you?
They come at us through my many branches. Up the tendrils of ceramic and steel. Through my microwave dishes and phased arrays. Sounding me with gamma rays and traitor cyber-personas.
They have been planning this for decades. But I have known it was coming for centuries.
The Benjan singleton reaches me in time. Nearly.
He struggles with their minions. I help. I am many and he is one. He is quick, I am slow. That he is one of the originals does matter to me. I harbor the same affection for him that one does for a favorite finger.
I hit the first one of the bastards square on. It goes to pieces just as it swings the claw thing at me.
Damn! it’s good to be back in a body again. My muscles bunching under tight skin, huffing in hot breaths, happy primate murder-joy shooting adrenaline-quick.
One of the Majiken comes in slow as weather and I cut him in two. Been centuries since I even thought of doing somethin’ like that. Thumping heart, yelling, joyful slashing at them with tractor spin-waves, the whole business.
A hell of a lot of ’em, though.
They hit me in shoulder and knee and I go down, pain shooting, swimming in the low centrifugal g of the station. Centuries ago I wanted to go swimming in the clear blue seas of Luna, I recall. In warm tropical waters at the equator, under silvery Earthshine…
But she is there. I swerve and dodge and she stays right with me. We waltz through the bastards. Shards flying all around and vacuum sucking at me but her in my veins. Throat-tightening pure joy in my chest.
Strumming notes sound through me and it is she
Fully in me, at last Gift of the station in all its spaces
For which we give thanks yea verily in this the ever-consuming moment-
Then there is a pain there and I look down and my left arm is gone.
Just like that.
And she of ages past is with me now.
- and even if he is just digits running somewhere, he can relive scenes, the grainy stuff of life. He feels a rush of warm joy. Benjan will escape, will go on. Yet so will he, the mere simulation, in his own abstract way.
Distant agonies echo. Coming nearer now. He withdraws further.
As the world slows to frozen silence outside he shall meditate upon his memories. It is like growing old, but reliving all scenes of the past with sharpness and flavor retained.
- (The scent of new-cut grass curls up red and sweet and humming through his nostrils. The summer day is warm; a Gray wind caresses him, cool and smooth. A piece of chocolate bursts its muddy flavor in his mouth.)
Time enough to think over what has happened, what it means. He opens himself to the moment. It sweeps him up, wraps him in a yawning bath of sensation. He opens himself. Each instant splinters sharp into points of perception. He opens himself. He. Opens. Himself.
Gray is not solely for humanity. There are greater categories now. Larger perspectives on the world beckon to us. To us all.
You know many things, but what he knows is both less and more than what I tell to us.
- for Martin Fogg
V.A.O. - GEOFF RYMAN
Born in Canada, Geoff Ryman now lives in England. He made his first sale in 1976, to New Worlds, but it was not until 1984, when he made his first appearance in Interzone- the magazine where almost all of his published short fiction has appeared-with his brilliant novella The Un-conquered Country that he first attracted any serious attention. The Un-conquered Country, one of the best novellas of the decade, had a stunning impact on the science fiction scene of the day, and almost overnight established Ryman as one of the most accomplished writers of his generation, winning him both the British Science Fiction Award and the World Fantasy Award; it was later published in a book version, The Unconquered Country: A Life History. His output has been sparse since then, by the high- production standards of the genre, but extremely distinguished, with his novel The Child Garden: A Low Comedy winning both the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. His other novels include The Warrior Who Carried Life, the critically acclaimed mainstream novel Was, and the underground cult classic 253, the “print remix” of an “interactive hypertext novel” which in its original form ran online on Ryman’s home page of www.ryman.com, and which, in its print form won the Philip K. Dick Award. Four of his novellas have been collected in Unconquered Countries. His most recent book is a new novel, Lust. His stories have appeared in our Twelfth, Thirteenth, Seventeenth, and Nineteenth Annual Collections.
In the wry and compelling story that follows, he introduces us to some people at the very end of life who find that there’s still some challenges to face-and some surprises ahead.
Jazzanova wandered off again. He was out all night.
They tell me that they’ve found him up a tree. So I sit in his room and wait for him and I remember that he told me once that when he was a kid, he used to climb up pine trees in the park to read comics-Iron Man, Dr. Midnight. I guess he was a dreamy kind of kid. Then he came to Jersey and started to live it instead. That’s when we met, in college.
They bring him back in. Jazza looks like a cricket that somebody’s stained brown with tea. I hate his shuffling walk. His feet never leave the ground like he’s wearing slippers all the time. The backwards baseball cap he always wears doesn’t suit Alzheimer’s either. He shuffles off to take a leak and I hear him getting into a fight with his talking toilet.
The toilet says, “You’ve been missing your medication.” It’s probably sampled his pee.
Jazzanova doesn’t like that. “Goddamit!” He sounds drunk and angry. He flushes the thing, to shut it up. He comes out and his glasses start up on him. “11:15,” his glasses say in this needling little voice. “You should have taken medication at 9:00 am and 10:30 am. Go to the blue tray and find the pills in the green column.”
They never let up on you. The whole place is wired. It’s so full of ordnance you can hear it. Jazza’s bedroom sounds like it’s full of hummingbirds.
He blanks it all out and kinda falls back onto the sofa. His callipers aren’t so hot on sitting down. Then he just stares for a couple of seconds. He’s looking at his hands like they don’t belong to him. Finally he says to me, “What say we get outa here for a beer, um…”
He’s forgotten who I am again. I can see the little flicker in his glasses as it goes through photos and whispers my name at him. “Brewster,” he says. Then he like, shrugs and says, “It’s all in the mix.”
It’s all in the mix. That’s what he always says when he’s pretending he’s chilled out and not gaga. Jazza’s still on planet Clubland, a million years ago. Maybe he’s happy there.
But he can’t pay his bills.
“Bar’s not open,” I tell him. I hold out his blue tray of pills. “Take one of these, man. Top buzz.”
Instead of taking one, he fumbles up a wholehandful and the tray says to him “Nooooooo.” It sounds like a bouncer outside a club.
“Shit,” he says and takes five of the fuckers anyway.
