Fish draws: the cascading light of Jacob’s ladder spilling across the desert; a close-up of Ubalo’s eyes, fearless and sad, creased by time; a thoughtliner tearing through a hell-bardo, trailing the disturbed dreams of its passengers; a parade of glowing comets crossing the starry sky; Yvalu’s desperate hand, reaching for a falling leaf. More than once, I catch Fish writing words of her own, but before I can look she always tucks her pad away.
Meanwhile, my words flow better than they have in decades. I write:
And after days of thought and deliberation, Yvalu knew there was only one reason why Ubalo had called her across the gulfs, why he himself could not be here to welcome her. There was only one reason why he had erased all evidence of himself from the planet’s records. He had called her out here not to bring her toward him, but to move her away from something else.
He had sent her here to protect her.
I reread my words and a warm feeling fills my heart. There are moments as I’m writing when I think this might be my best work yet, my magnum opus. By now I should be suspicious of such thoughts, but the feeling is hard to shake. If only I can finish it in time.
The afternoon is hot as Fish and I work from opposite ends of the room, deep in creative flow when the voice startles us. “Dolandra! Oh, thank Mitra!”
A woman stands outside the window, and even from across the room, the glare of her violet eyes shines brighter than the sun. She has the same shape of face, the same nose as Fish. “I been looking for you all day!”
“Moms!” Fish says, dropping her pad. She leaps to her feet.
I walk to the front door to let the woman in, but she gives me a look as if I’m a demon come to eat her soul and stays put. “DOLANDRA!” she shouts.
Fish sprints around my legs, outside and onto the grass. Her shirt and hands are stained black as she stands beside her mother, head hung low, and I can’t help but feel guilty even though I know I’ve done nothing wrong.
“Why you shut your neural?” her mom says, eyeing me. “What the bones and dreck, girl?”
“I’s …” Fish says. “I’s drawing, Moms.”
The woman stares lasers at me. “I got your number,” she says. “You stay the fuck away from my daughter, or I show you real Ardabaabian justice.” She grabs Fish by the shirt and yanks her away, down the path toward the sea. Before they turn around a bend of sugarcane, Fish looks back.
I wave goodbye, because I have a feeling I’ll never see her again.
The bungalow is quiet without Fish’s exuberance. I try to write on the porch, but find myself scribbling random shapes on the page, which pale in comparison to her art. I try the beach, seeking the inspiration I found on my first days here, hoping Fish might return to plop beside me. But I meet only wind and floating gulls and the occasional ship drifting slowly across the sky. To jar my inspiration I buy a neur-graft of Gardni Johnner and experience her famous BASE jump on Enceledus, the one where she tore her suit on a rock and nearly died. But this just leaves me shaken and craving solid earth. At night I drink and stare at Fish’s drawings, following each delicate line, wishing she were here. And still my words do not flow. I’m as dry as a lizard carcass in the sun.
The baby lizard still sits in the yard, just leather now. Even the ants have departed for tastier shores. The rain and wind have tossed it about, but the carcass lingers always near, as if it’s trying to tell me something.
“I know,” I tell it. “I know.”
It’s been six days since Fish has left, and I’ve written a sum total of negative three thousand words (I have scrapped two chapters) when I activate my neural for the first time since I arrived. I request a skinsuit from the local We, and after it instructs me on the standard safety precautions—using my dead wife’s voice again, the bastard—I walk down to the beach.
I’ve found the address of one Dolandra Thyme Heurex in the local wiki, and my neural guides me to her home. While the hot sun slowly rises over the placid waters, I wade into the turquoise sea. I’ve swum in a skinsuit before, but my heart still pounds as I fully submerge. Fins grow from my feet and hands, and black-and-yellow striping appears on my body to mimic a local species.
And there are many. Their sheer number and palettes of bright colors make me gasp. It’s as if some ancient god let her creative spirit loose on the canvas of the sea. Crimson and gold fans of coral wave like bashful geishas of old. Barracudas peer curiously at me before swimming off. Schools of fish flash in the sun as they dart from my grasp. In the distance, a pair of bottle-nose dolphins inspect a sponge on the sea floor.
Fish’s house is set among a group of blue-gray domes in twenty meters of water. I swim up to the door and try the chime.
“Who’s there?” I recognize the voice of Fish’s mom.
“Havair Heurex? It’s Reuth Bryan Diaso. I’d like to speak with you about your daughter.”
“I warned you!” she says.
“Look,” I say. “I did nothing wrong and won’t apologize. Your daughter is a supremely talented artist. She was illustrating my book. I’m an author—”
“A what?”
“An author.”
A wiki-length pause. “Go on.”
“The truth is, Havair Heurex, your daughter and I have become friends. I respect your decision to keep her from me—you don’t know me at all—but I wanted you to know what a talented artist she is, and I hope that you’ll encourage her to pursue it in the future, that you won’t keep her from her art.”
The
