Eric Vargas's Blog, page 3

The Mere Tide P75

Just before eleven o clock the city klaxons came alive and the girls looked up from their toys out the window and saw like a spill of oil a shimmering membrane enclose the city. The shields. Bells were ringing in the streets and even from behind the glass they could palpate the fear. Scared city. The cars vanishing. In some minutes not so much as a cat in sight. Even the birds flown. They went back to their toys but the klaxons blared on and on and Dachni crashed her fists into the keep and unfolded them among the wreckage. The horror! The horror!

The mother came for her daughter. Dachni followed calling repetitiously like a broken doll.

They prayed, the family, by the window. Sat on rugs bowing to the east in singsong intonings.

Later Juraiska informed them that the Russian Federation had declared war against the plemena beyond the Urals and the colonial government had negotiated air corridors through which they might pass over the Urals to attack.

But the shields did not go down and in bed Dachni and Holnifa lay oppressed in each others arms.

сен қорқып тұрсың ба?

Tryin not ta be fraid. Жоқ

Holnifa found the self-inflicted wounds upon the child’s arm.

Саған не болды? she cried.

Dachni put her fingers from the cuts. Wered an accident. Ye know the word accident? Means aint on purpose. It werent on purpose.

Perhaps Holnifa believed this. She hugged the child closer. Will you come back?

Will you stay?

Two days later Holnifa went into surgery. The shields had not come down and the rain was pounding out a low electric hum against it. Dachni bravely set assured her of the very best of outcomes and promised to be her first sight upon waking. And was. Sharing her gurney, untangled in the myriad wires and hoses hooked into her. Holnifa with effort turned to receive her friend’s kiss. After a while she slept.

She underwent intensive physical therapy. On her first appointment her doctor asked that she pick up a steel mess cup. It took some trying to move the arm but when she finally did grab the cup it crumpled in her hand as though it were paper. The doctor opened a panel in the arm and adjusted the maximum amount of PSI the arm could exert. He explained through a translator that she needed to understand the strength of her augmentations. People can be hurt. Holnifa moved her arm awkwardly. Her fingers twitched. In a few days she could write her name with a pen designed to break under minutest pressure. The mother was given a picture pamphlet detailing the exercises her daughter would need to perform on a daily basis to gain full functionality. After a full week she was discharged.

The Mere Tide P74

The folders fell atop another. Lieutenant General Igor Tsiolkovsky, Colonel Illya Obolenski, Lieutenant General Mikhail Bagration, Major General Dasha Voskoboynilkov, Minister of Defense Colonel General Davor Yevdokimov, Minister of Emergency Response Milenko Yalizarev. Assorted others critically wounded. Predrag Dementyev is next in line to the presidency.

An emptier room now. The televisions removed from the walls. All electronics gone.

Assessment. The SIO who spoke was from DESEC and the analyst he addressed hailed likewise from the agency.

The analyst shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the pile of dossiers on the desk before him. Im not giving an assessment.

The SIO glanced at the pilot. At the various shostii, the demure thing from ISEC. At Dachni and Holnifa.

They sat on a desk almost hugging.

I dont know who those two are, said the analyst.

They are with me.

The analyst looked at his SIO. The fuck does that mean? I mean I know who she purports to be. But shes been seen publicly on two occasions so if we know about her then the SGB knows about her. And since you lost track of her for an entire year how the hell do you know she is who she says she is? How do you know the original wasnt abducted and what sits here isnt a clone?

I know its her, said the pilot. The same way I can see that you were a preemie. That David here will need his appendix removed within the next two years.

The analyst rolled his eyes. Yeah.

The same way I have tacked the nails into your Christ.

Whatever the fuck that means. You think you know. You think. And then your thinking lets an infiltrator run around without restriction. You think because her scars are all in place that its her? I mean you can map out every scar on the skin and then graft it to a body with nanomillimeter precision. Even if she is who she is this is a classified briefing. I mean Dave tell me if Im wrong.

The SIO held up his hands. I cant disagree.

She stays.

It is the opinion of ISEC that the individuals are not replicas.

The analyst looked at the agent. Featureless androgyn in a suit that did not look up from the nails it did not have.

Jesus Christ shitting in a bucket.

The pilot knocked on the table. Continue with the briefing.

Im not giving the briefing, said the analyst. Im not doing it.

Matt.

David.

Do it.

Im not doing it.

Then go back to the office and clean out your desk.

Really?

Really. Or give the briefing.

The analyst shook his head. This is such an amateur donkey fuck.

Matt.

Yeah. Fine. We dont know who is responsible. Possibly a coup. Loginovsky’s doubles disappeared over the course of the previous day we think, possibly it was that morning. Probably theyre dead. The fact that Loginovsky’s death was reported means they have no public intention of replacing him with a clone. The reporting was supposedly live but on a seven second delay so the fact that they didnt cut away like they did when Shogurev was carbombed supports the coup theory. Its possible that Loginovsky has gone into hiding to avoid assassination and will reemerge years from now in a new body. Too early to tell at this juncture. The same is true of every official dead. We have no way of knowing if these were the genuine articles. The fact they announced Loginovsky dead as opposed to wounded to whatever degree and replacing him with a body double also supports this theory.

Sources?

The analyst looked at Dachni again. Good god. The Bureau of PR.

Most likely culprits?

Were awaiting forensic results that will give us indications of whether this was an inside or outside party. Educated guess, this is the plemena. It fits their MO. They have a history of assassinating Russian VIPs. There have been some recent flareups East of the Urals. They had little success in our territory but they made significant gains in Mongolia. They may be be looking to try a new offensive, this may be the prelude to it. However considering that this is the pattern they follow its possible that the Russians staged this event as an excuse to preempt any incursion and in the doing so retake their lost holdings in the Urals blaming any resistance on our part as plemena activity. We cannot render a more accurate assessment until more information is uncovered.

Thank you, said the pilot. You can go now.

The members of DESEC rose and shook hands with the pilot but as they made to leave the SIO looked back at the agent who remained seated. Wait. Is there a private meeting about to happen. Is there something we should know?

No, said the agent. Thank you gentlemen for your input.

Wait a minute, said the SIO. Were all on the same side here. If theres a piece missing here we should know. Our report deadline is by tonight. What is it were missing?

Nothing. Meeshkee’el please see the gentlemen out.

The shosti Meesh rose from her seat and escorted them to the door. Shut it behind them and locked it.

The pilot smiled. What do you think?

The agent straightened its shirtsleeve. Cognitive activity was in keeping with established baselines. Their emotional states met expectation. Genuine surprise. They suspect nothing.

Sheya.

Do you have any spirits?

The pilot laughed. Whiskey.

Another shosti by the name of Gavtcki opened a desk drawer and took out a number of tumblers and a bottle. He poured the tumblers full and distributed them.

Dachni took a tumbler and handed it to Holnifa and took another.

Coresca, said the agent.

Coresca, said the pilot.

They all drank.

Whats that mean?

Coresca is a toast, said Mai-kin.

So celebrations. Its celebrations Holfie. Ура. Whatre yall celebratin?

The agent looked at the pilot. They were right on that account.

No they werent, said the pilot. You know this.

It is still a risk.

I take the risk.

Very well.

So, said the pilot. Can you keep a secret?

Sure. Dachni looked at Holnifa. Сіз құпия сақтай аласыз ба?

And Holnifa who had understood nothing but that events of enormous gravity had come to pass, the true nature of which the rarest few were privy, was now accessible to her by invitation and nodded and better than any present kept her word by not allowing herself to understand.

The pilot lifted the tumbler twistingly high above her head and let a whiskey rope glisten into her throat. Tis the rusks performed the greater part of the act. But this is how it should be. The viskell never strikes at what stands still, it only kills in the run. Ours then is to examine the motion and exploit the opening to negate the business. Here was our enemy’s poison: that his ambition is his station. That was not so fatal to him that he would lose it a while to keep. A defector of mine uncovered a ploy at the highest tier of Muscovy government. The plot simply: To ensure his political survival, doust his rivals, castrate their factions, pacify the abroad and prime for war Loginovsky would undertake the faking of his own assassination. These seasons have proved Caesar’s knives, as the expression I believe goes, and he would bleed on his knees to rival’s feet. The world continued in its inexorable and wholly unpredictable evolution while he was hobbled by a status quo established with the ratification of the Appelat Accords almost a century henced and yet beyond his ambition he envied and resented this dotterel era he cannot leave for as a signery he was prohibited from aggressive overtures, his honest hue, that revealed would put him at odds with the CSC whats graces he must attend to hope prevail in war which in all his vanity and lusting pride knows. At the same the bellicosity of the domestic he himself had encouraged to his end brayed for that same war he could not commence even with all his heart’s yearning with such septic pitch that not even the apparatuses of media could not reverse the narrative despite all its psychological preparations. Inaction he could not afford much longer his government being too full of dissent that any number of challengers could have stepped forth confident of consent to force his resignation and then death. Equal in necessity to that mortal jousting was obtaining the sympathy of nations necessary to contravene the Accords. True any victory no matter how trivial would have served given the proper parameters for to be inaugurated into the mythos. Which alone would unknot the domestic consternation but the killing of a head of state would be a spectacular justification not to be squandered. Precautions had to be made. The assassination had to occur in Moscow. Outside investigators are forbidden allowing the Ministry of the Interior to fabricate any evidence to implicate anyone. For precisely this reason independent investigators would be invited, a signal of openness, that none would doubt the reality of the crime. In fact three hours from now Россия1 is going to initiate a news blitz blaming everything on the plemena. This is the second tell that something is awry because everything is blamed on the Interim Colonial Government, us. That opening is to give the international community plausible deniability. All will suspect, most will know, but all will wash their hands. After all it could in the end very well be true that the ICG assassinated Loginovsky and this being the case it relieves them of responsibility this being the first step of any conquest. To the end of justifying the violation of the Accords later this week Россия1 will abruptly switch course, giving the true appearance they had been fooled, when both state and international forensics reveals the actual mechanism used to trigger the detonation was a classified device employed only by the ICG and specifically designed to defeat the signal jamming put into effect wherever the president is. Thus in the emergency session the гидра will shortly commence they will officially accuse the plemena at first, redeploying entire, that is mock, army groups in anticipation of an offensive into the Eastern District. After forensics release their findings they will make an evidence based claim that the assassination was either carried out directly by the ICG or with its assistance. This provides enough political cover to preemptively invade the ICG while rendering us a pariah on the international stage. Assurances of course will be made to not hold us aienee accountable but that is a ploy to seize our technology, to placate foreign capitals. On Moscow’s timeline an official declaration of war would have passed the state duma 119 hours from now. What theyll discover by 13:00 today is that those factions within the plemena whose infiltration we have facilitated will launch attacks throughout the Komi Republic. 98 hours from now when the forensic experts release their report DESEC will release incontrovertible evidence, verified by the CSC, Berlin, Beijing, and Tokyo, that the trigger mechanism was part of a cache of military technologies stolen the year before last in a hack by the GRU thus undermining their narrative that only we could have supplied the device, which has the benefit of being true, and since their various services are as corrupt as a whore house in a nunnery it will be hardly unthinkable that some hardup praporshchik didnt sell the technology on the black market. And at the same time members of the BNV, the Bureau of Population and Reproduction, will be getting the first indications that their genebase, the database in which Russia backs up their political and military personalities and genetic stock, have been infected by a virus that causes the product to develop acute disseminated intravascular coagulation at two years of age. Only then will they realize that they have decapitated their own leadership for as a precautionary measure an extremely limited circle knew of the plot and only Loginovsky had a double present, the rest being originals intended to die, even if some were to experience an unwitting resurrection. The brain of the real Loginovsky, transferred into the body of a government official Chuprin Vsevelodovich, suffered an aneurysm at 11:49 this morning when a read/write loop error caused an internal memory bank to overheat, the resulting hemorrhage destroying his higher brain functions. Several months ago and thanks to our own intelligence corps we identified the specific IFF code Loginovsky’s genetype uses to identify nanomachines. We released a swarm of forty nanomachines each half the size of a mitochondria in his presence which over time scraped away the wall the circle of willis replacing it with a secretion of thermally activated lipids. When warmed the lipids nearly triple in size, the pressure rupturing the blood vessel. The technology to discover this is some nine centuries beyond mankind but even when the death is discovered the media cannot attribute any great significance to it as Loginovsky’s political reemergence was designed to be organic. This has at last averted war.

Toed shit, said Dachni gawk seeing with the abhorrence of her blank eyes. Why couldnt ye tell ems? Thems other smarties?

If DESEC is unaware of our movements then there is an excellent chance the SGB has failed to detect our manipulations. There is a possibility our counter would be countered but by their response and from other indications we appear in the clear. We needed to know in case we had to act immediately.

What if stills a war?

The snake strikes with its head not its tail. Released documents will show Pedrag Dementyev was privy to the plot, which he was. Fabricated documents will show that he was complicit in Loginovsky’s death, which he wasnt. Yet he also succeeds to the government. In the coming hours he will undoubtedly ascertain what has happened but how many politicians, ambitious by nature, are truly upset theyve been given the kingdom keys? Anything he does now will be in a dialogue. Were talking to him. But realistically his options are either to consolidate his position or risk unsupported war and with a fractious house. He is a rusk aye but we suspect he can muster enough of his meager intelligence to act in such a way as to preserve his life and power.

Its cause yallser enemies anyhowts. Whyd think it weres you?

The pilot gave the child a quizzical smile and seeing how she had not understood said: Nature. But Hines what was your theory on evading capture for a crime?

The agent, perfect postured, downed its drink aristocratically and with exacting delicateness poured its glass full to the atomic brim. Remove the need to commit the crime.

Hay swut?

The art of stainless crime.

It means how aught the larcener proceed without discovery. How to steal without getting caught.

Dachni considered this. Steal really good? An no sees.

No, said the agent. To elude suspicion of a crime you must elevate yourself to a position either where you are immune to prosecution or need not do the crime.

But why steal ifn ye aint gotta?

That is your answer. For instance the common assumption is that theft is a product of need. This is blatantly false. The man driven by hunger to poach a breadloaf is not a thief though we punish him as such. We punish him because his action is an indictment of the system and as a means of moral validation to those who were bereaved of the breadloaf. If we didnt assure the offended party he was a victim he might begin to wonder why the loaf was stolen. That is civic ensurance. True criminals do not violate the law out of necessity but by compulsion. Their need is psychical. Which is also a slight indictment of society. Nevertheless in order to become fully immune to scrutiny one must scrupulously cultivate an aura of civility.

Dachni clutched her consternated pate and Holnifa fixed her fingertips upon a hemisphere of hers as though to aid her cogitations. And there was her brilliance, the child’s. Thass jessa hellerbel world.

It is reality. Motive and suspicion are entangled. Almost without exception the obvious cause is accepted as the cause entire. Occam’s Razor. Few ever permit themselves to see through the veneers with which men clothe themselves for whatever reason. Most of our motivations are hidden especially from ourselves thus flattery is the chief means of shareable vanity. In keeping with this the successful criminal cultivates an identity anathema to his crimes. He is a philanthropist, a populist whatever. He hides his criminality under identity. Father, soldier, locksmith, brother, uncle, reader, fool, moralist. Striped around the same individual the criminal is almost undetectable. That these identities can be concomitant is unthinkable for the untrained. Theres too much overlap between the evil and the average. Evil and the brilliant. Evil and the inbetween.

The pilot smiled. If thee shares this much with me why should thy viler part not be part of me?

The agent mimicked a glass clink. A criminal is apart from the majority of mankind. But criminality does not confer insight. Hundreds of thousands of history have conditioned hominum gregem to believe that their values are derived from society. So men of means steal and their wealth is their guard. An investigator might think he understands greed but cannot separate that vice to see the emotion that birthed it. And if he can somehow slip through our filters he might not understand why the emotional source causes the emotion. Inevitably he will learn in his investigations that the thief does not imagine himself a thief. This is his encounter with pride. Then maybe he will perceive the wounded pride stemming from unfulfillable desire, the desire to father the self. The criminal desire is to father the self, the punishment is to reduce the criminal to childhood. At bottom he must be denied what everyone is denied.

The pilot looked at him. There is an irony we should not overlook here, she said.

There is.

Dachni touched her chin. Ya means mus a steamin iron. Well. Shitfire what the fuck yalls talkin bout?

Irony is the most impotent of observations but as it exists it must be acknowledged, said the pilot. The irony here is that by our actions the lies of the Russians become true and yet they will not be believed whereas if we had not acted their lies would have been accepted as truth. Moral responsibility now is in question. Is the need of food the same as the need of ambition? If meat is the food of the stomach what can be said to be the sate of vanity and how can we say one supersedes the other? Men starve for their ambitions. Do die for them. If ambition’s feed is as necessary to the soul then it might be prudent scientifically to parse the species. This is not the first differentiation by psychical potential. Previous metrics have used calculative power but I would employ the necessity of necessities. To wit a simpleton is not maintained by the same means as a genius. Different sustenances are required. Some men must feed on history.

The beginning and the end are not dissimilar.

Untrue.

The agent arched an eyebrow. Wombs are graves. The life of men is like water united in a river that feeds an ocean that gives back the rain.

The pilot laughed. Vaik Aiani. A man is himself only and no ocean and no stream. And did we visualize that impossible course it would be a schizophrenic rapids evaporating in caustic hazard, pissing out uncountable ways over the bank, knotting to floating stones, and whirlpooling like a sot’s nightmare of a bawdy house choked of choleric sperm spawning retards in a bin. If life has commonality it is that life is ripped away in time. This is the single congruence. You will never partake of this ghastly wine again. You are the first of you and the ultimate last.

The Mere Tide P73

When they got back to the Aiegietti the pilot was waiting for her at the bar. Dachni ran up holding aloft a fat binder of legal disclosures and contracts. Look! look! look!

The pilot spun her off her feet and seated her on her shoulders. I see I see I see. Yakta beers!

At dinner she strained the limits of her vocabulary. Ans bestes tiny nettle bop. Creally sweet sangs glowioso ans gotsa temper too sometimes but ye wunnint knowed it ta look her when shes angry even causes shes reallies quiet ye knows by the pokes an treats of everthin. Shes delaket ike a glass. Ooh her voice is squeegee pretty ans verred brave.

The pilot smiled to hear so beautified a portrait.

We got ta go get her.

We?

Aye. Got to. Go to got to.

Shes on her way.

Nwoooooo shebes inta desserts.

The pilot stirred her farfalle chuckling as might a python choke. Was in the desert. In the air now.

And arrived early next morning on a wicked transport looked to have been dredged from the seas. The spires of its underbelly collapsing inward as it taxied to the skybridge and electricity whipping out its ends and the light bending around it. Dachni with face scrunched against the glass said: Thass a scary fuckin ship.

The pilot grinned. Im told they ran at the sight of it.

The terminal door opened and out dashed Holnifa in a piercing screech. Dachni rushed towards and the two embraced with such force that they tumbled a merry tangle on the floor.

Қалайсыз? Сені сағындым көп көп.

Өте жақсы Өте жақсы.

Haiii ets best ta see ye. Ets best ta see ye.

Behind them came the mother and her brothers and her sons. Carrying their entire house. An assortment of faces embarrassed or indifferent or downright hostile. A clucked tongue paused the girls’ nantling exuberance. The maternal disapproval. They rose giggling, still in each other’s arms. They yammered all the way back to the caravan waiting for them at the pickup but when they pulled out onto the road Holnifa went mute. Unbelief of city unreal. Horrid gray fauna of concrete and steel walked by machines and more men who scarcely could be called such then she had ever seen. What nostrum for man’s insanity had engendered this creation and did it come whole or piecemeal was ever it seen in a dream. Or stoked his fevers to this concrete inferno.

Бұл не? Бұл шынымен бе?

Ия.

Their first stop was at an affiliate clinic where Holnifa gave a sample of her blood and measurements were taken. Holding Dachni’s hands throughout the procedure, unwilling to watch the needle slip in, and Dachni patting her head for her to be brave. The blood flowed down the line. The surgery was scheduled for the coming Wednesday.

An hour later they pulled up to the Aiegietti. The family was settled in the guestroom wherein they began to immediately erect their yurt. Connecting the kereges together and securing the uyks to them with their leather bindings and then fitting the shanyrak. Last of all they draped on the felt cover. The aienee who watched were utterly contemptful and some offended but they held their tongues. The main bedchamber was given over to Holnifa and Dachni. Mai-kin by then had returned from England and at news of his eviction threw up his hands and resolved to make a hallways his bed if he could not rely on permanent quarters. Which denied he did widthwise so as to be an impediment to foot traffic but soon found himself the object of harassment of the two little usurpers who made their girly little rahs and poked him with sticks.

Yevretcha ifgao u’giveen.

Yerra blockin ta bloody thoroughfare!

Rah! Rah! Blockin bluudy thoroughfare!

He rolled himself parallel to the quarter rounds like a valve opening. Pilgrims pass it is not against you that my grudge is set and I have no toll to levy.

Watter ye sleepin inta hall for?

I have been wrongfully put out. Be dears and fetch me a pillow.

The girls darted off to the breakroom down the hall. Where grim shostii watched grimmer news, dark tidings in monotone. Holnifa put a finger to her lips and they got down on their fours and threes and crawled across the tile floor to a lunch table and peered out between the slender chrome chair legs. Dachni pointed out a water cooler and they slid lithe on their bellies and stood behind it in profile. Then under the lee of a divan. Two shostii sat there. The nearer one jotting notes on a pad and alarmed to see three arms snake over the armrest and grope about. The hands alighted upon the small pillows and withdrew them and when he leaned to see what manner of game was in play the girls leapt up squealing and walloped him in the shoulder and walloped each other and ran out.

Mai-Kin they found unmoved.

Міне ұстаңыз.

He accepted the pillows and fitted them under his head. For your services my eternal thanks and a pardon of crimes committed in acquiring them.

Why caint ye sleep in a bed?

Why cant you?

Sleeps in a bed.

A bathtub is not a bed. It is the misuse of heavenly freedom.

Dachni laughed. Yer weird. Aint he weird?

Holnifa agreed upon his weirdness.

Сіз күні бойы ұйықтайсыз ба?

What does she ask of me?

Sheee wants ta know if yell sleep all day.

I am not sleeping. I am protesting by becoming a marginal impediment to foot traffic and will remain so until the validity of my claim is recognized. I shall not be moved.

Dachni stuck her tongue out and laughed.

Mai-kin!

Mai-kin looked up the hall at the pilot.

Brecht kaya vatun, she said gesturing viciously. Vasha.

Vasha, she says, he said rolling over. But then theres the dragon.

They followed the vanquished in celebration into a vast room.

They followed him into a vast room filled with desks. A cluster of televisions were mounted high on the wall and despite their varied tuning they showed the same channel. A shosti noticed them and tried to shoo them out but the pilot overrode him. She beckoned them near and they sat on the table. On each television a British reporter was breaking the story.

The Mere Tide P72

Going down Sumac late one morning she was given pause by cantatrices and company who had bechoired a tunnel stairwell. En face to their audience that dropped change into their instrument cases or lingered to hear the arias. Among the spectators were a pair of resigned policemen who also waited for the conclusion and when it came they drew their billies and moved to prod the singers towards the surface. Shouts rang out in a one sided scuffle. The instrument cases were slapped shut. Arms were locked. The leader among them began decrying their evictors fascism in song and a cellist hustled about sawing a hacky accompaniment.

Und Musik wird zertrampelt

Und Freiheit unterdrückt

Wem wird sein Name zuerst gesungen?

Wer wird der erste Held sein?

I told you yesterday, said the sergeant. Sing to your content just stop blocking the bloody thoroughfare.

A buffo was dancing around the sergeant’s partner. An android that if nothing else was capable of exasperation. It charged its baton and zapped him and he went howling up the stairs clutching tingling buttocks but before he’d even reached the top he dropped his pants and mooned the lot of them. At last the officers managed to get them off the stairs and they turned to confer with another. The human of them was machine below the waist. Good augmentations that looked the legs of a mech. He gestured up at their mockers.

Id shoot them but Im partial to her songs.

How did the date go? asked the machine.

The sergeant sheathed his billy and looked up at his robed soubrette waving and blowing kisses. That sirens got her claws in me.

The opera was moving on. The spectators dispersed. The police took the stairs down. The child followed them. Her minder hustled to her side. At the landing they found themselves in a tunnel full of small convenience shops. Clean and quite fancy. She browsed to a vast chamber that was the central mall. Elevators in glass shafts were at each corner of the promenade. Dachni moved to the glass paneled railing and surveyed the stores below. Three levels below she saw a barker standing before what appeared to be an assortment of human limbs handing out fliers. She hurried to one of the elevators but it was packed and her minder would not fit and he yanked her out before the doors closed.

Glue are we us, he said.

Ok.

They waited until the elevator came up again and they took it down.

The barker didnt even notice the child when she ran up and the child had to kick its shin and even then it looked at Juraiska first. He pointed at the child and its head dropped almost to its chest.

Oh. Who are you?

Ares yall sell arms an stuffs?

Why yes we do. We offer human augmentations and replacement parts for most existing cybernetic lines.

Would ye sell ferred a girl arm?

We carry pediatric models. Why dont you step inside and speak with a sale’s representative.

Inside?

Yep.

They went through the sliding glass doors and she was alarmed of their automatic power but then she subscribed cars to magic. The representative who greeted them was a clone of the barker. Same silicon bangs, same face, delicate features.

Hi Im Mandy, it said bending, its hands on its knees.

Well whota fuck is she?

Thats Eileen. Are you new to the city?

Dachni waved this away. It dont fuckin matter. Need an arm. A right arm for a kidlin.

Thats quite some language.

Wha? Will ye sell a arm for a kidlin.

We carry several lines for children.

Whats yer best got?

The machine scratched its earlobe. It smiled pleasantly at Juraiska. Can I assume youre her caretaker?

Not may you, said Juraiska. Is she guest honored of dagestai behalf on I whom authorized act to am. Should presence be my assumed his presence.

The machine straightened. I see. In that case please follow me.

The machine led them to a holographic exhibit that as they approached materialized a dozen windows each of which cased a model line of arms. The machine turned to them with a spring in its step, its clasped hands dropping from breast to thighs in a bouncy gesture. As you can see we offer several series to best match our client’s needs. I assume this is for you?

Fer who?

This isnt for her?

No its furred a girl.

Is that girl you?

No.

Ok. Why dont you tell me a little about her.

Her names Holnifa. Shes really pretty.

The machine cleared its throat.

Dachni reddened but red with that gory sunset glow so that it looked as though a sun were dying in her heart.

The machine smiled. Well how old is she? Are we replacing an existing limb or an absent one? Does she have access to maintenance facilities? What are her performance requirements?

Dont know how old she is, she lives in the desert an she needs whatevers best.

The machine cradled an elbow in the crook of its arm and tapped its chin. Well our premier line is A La Quatrieme. It has a patented titanium alloy skeleton with a tensile strength of 480MPA. It can be mounted at the elbow joint or the shoulder and its coated in a synthetic self-repairing polymer weave that maintains a constant 98.6 Fahrenheit and is indistinguishable from human skin in both appearance and texture. Reflexes are encoded into its tactile sensors and it includes a full surgical suite. There is also an adjustable force modifier and pain threshold. How old do you think she is? A guess.

Maybe nine or eight.

The salesthing tapped the hologram and a window stretched over the other products. This is the S990, the Grand Jete. I think it would fit your little Holnifa perfectly. And since she is so young we should anticipate her having a growth spurt, we dont get to stay young forever, and this model has the benefit of being able to mimic natural human growth. Our higher end models feature our signature Sighing. The bone, as it is, is made to higher density than our entry tiers and that will with time perspire that extra density onto the bone surface, building it up as the child grows older. In addition the liquid is channeled towards the ends, further slendering the bone as it elongates to keep proportion to the natural limb. Of course what I find to be the most attractive feature to little girls is that the skin is full customizable with a range of epidermic features. Skin tone, freckles, birthmarks, tattoos, although shell have to ask her mother’s approval.

Take that.

A little detail before we go on. The S990 comes standard with the Lien interface, a little chip we put in the brain that regulates motor function as well as monitoring and enhancing the rest of the body.

Ok.

The machine snapped its finger. Congratulations. I can begin the paperwork immediately but first Ill need to speak with your guardian here.

I am consulting with the dagestai now, said Juraiska.

Ok.

She approves. Begin whatever preparations.

Ok. Please wait here.

Dachni nudged Juraiska in the knee. Ye tawked ta her?

Yes.

How?

In my head.

Dachni wide eyed and gawp mouthed. Ayeeee ye dream her too?

New Short Story Release: Yandivagos

Howdy terns and plovers I’m happy to report that the unannounced hiatus of the last two months has come to an end and that like the apparently dormant cocoon of winter that yields the butterfly in spring this hiatus has not gone to waste. Thus I am proud to announce Yandivagos.

Following Retyunskikh Tarasovich a doomed Russian conscript in a period contemporaneous with Things Fall Apart and The Mere Tide Yandivagos is chalk full of the grim umbra and lyrical profanity I dont misdoubt that the ether has come to expect but now with a Slavic tang. Please enjoy this opening excerpt:

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Yandivagos

They forded the dark of the night and the scrannel winter weeds and by and by squatted along the ragged flange of an incline like a murder on a wire. Discrete unto themselves in contour and voice yet it was he himself alone that rose in the east gray aggregate of light on the hills and started down the corrugated knoll like some vaporous gargoyle shifted out of the blackness of a provisional dream.

He followed boottrack slashes with their suggestion of blindness and rage down a trail to a bank where he knelt in the silt and sipped from the waters like a supplicant and the sound of his drink noised this scene quietly to the vault where Aquarius waned in the autumnal equinox. He raised his head and the water dripped from his visage and who could say what epochs out of which this melancholy rindle was echo? This fondless earth. He peered into the stillness of the waters but he was never there.

Days to come like gold and gaunt under a daymoon and neutered gloriole and their beards grown and dust grayed that they resembled much a company of catamite dishabilles uncottered and destitute in pastoral exile. They cut the patches from their shoulders and burned them in a takyr cup and the embroidered black kettle with their silver gilting turned to ash and rode on the thermals. To the South lay the endless roll of the Mughalzhar Hills. Some gazed into that fenceless fastness in that way the roe yet safe watches the wolf for each knew the hour approached when they would cross into the wold and each knew they would die for it is not uncommon in nature to see ends, those places containing them. And they would die, those who gazed, and those who would not, die them to the absolute last.

+

Two days later they marched through the gate of the division muster. Sprawling miles of camp shrouded under a translucent tarp that masked its presence from satellites and drones at too obtuse an angle. A mladshiy leytenant of the 16th Motorized Rifle Guards directed them to a rude hemble where they quartered themselves. He capsized over a plywood crois whereon another languished like the ruined Paraclete and he loosened the laces of his boots and cradled his head in his hands.

+

They sat unsocked in the mud while the medik went down the line attending their feet. Covering blisters, peeling strips of dead skin from the heel or wiping away thick crusts of congealed pus, debriding rottty mushes of dissolved flesh. He soaked his cloth in a bedpan of water and washed their feet.

+

By October sixth their pay was two months in arrears. 12th strela requested mast and their bodies were ripened by brass knuckles and billy clubs. They recuperated around coal stoves. In the march from Ufa Syanin had distilled vodka in his rucksack and they imbibed and Upensky produced his needles and spoons.

In that anesthesized haze they fell upon mechanics from the 113 th . Dull slapping among the chocked trucks. He squared off with a thug in an orange jumpsuit. He ducked the wrench but not the screwdriver and it augured his bicep and he laid four jabs in a floating rib and a hook in a jaw and grabbed the man’s hair and slammed his face into a running board. The man went limp and came flailing back to life and he punched him in the throat and the man doubled over choking. He started rifling his pockets and the occlusion of the wrench fell upon the galvanized steel and augmented his shade.

He woke in the earth. A well that would not give water. Who has not found water did not look up. But it was not rain. A ring of men around the mouth of the hole pissing down. A man’s rump awned, cheeks spread, brown eye dilating, thick shit stained lashes. But it was raining too, the shroud being porous to water. He slumped down. There was a knot above his temple. In the nights he leaned with his ear to the floor of his hole as if he’d log by vibration alone the tectonic motions of the abyss. As if somewhere in his gyrus lay the primordial germ knowledgeable of the cataclysms of before the foreshore on which they rode. Or perhaps a pebble miles aneath his bed.

Towards the middle of the week he was startled to find himself in a cyclone of paper. A pouch dropped into his lap. Tobacco.

Retyun! Retyunskikh!

Retyunskikh looked up. Upensky crouched at the rim, flat against the sky.

Tomorrow , he said.

The next morning a rope snaked down. Retyunskikh returned to their hovel. The needle was cool in his saphenous. Syanin asked had he a paramour, some forlorn devotchka pining after the juice of his loins but of the letters he had no news he would hear.

Far past evening they sat at the edge of the shroud and watched the clinical dayglow of Half-Night race the ecliptic. Two ryadovoy passed by. The recidivist was on his feet in a second rock in hand. Cigarettes, a few rubles, the loot of their pockets. They fled, past the armorer, past the motor pool, past the casern, the mech pool where operators were being cased into their anthropomorphic chassi.

+

Never more than a watery borsch did the mess hall serve. Kirigin quoted regulation, that each soldat was entitled to no less than 100 grams of protein per day during field operations and where was this in evidence in the beet stained piss they served. The cook bonged his ladle against the counter like a judge and roared that if they didnt like it they could get the fuck out. That they could extricate out the fuck even if they did like it. Kirigin drained his bowl and dashed it to the floor like a duellist and demanded pork. A boy from Novgorod named Tima threw down his bowl also and instantly regretted it for he had not finished and in his frustration he rushed the cook, the stocky beef thief, and was bludgeoned as he mounted the collar and had a bootheel ground into his nose. And into the latrine Tima fell and even those who knew him could not be bothered to defecate in another hole.

+

In the latter end of the month the division was reinforced by an augmentic detachment. Sleek synthetic limbed cyborgs etched with tattoos. An addled rawness that swaggered through the camp apathetic to everything below the rank of leytenant in an epidemic of evictions. The rain ran out. Cases of replevin rifed for what in the world did not belong to them?

The streloks of the 12th regarded the foul smelling ulcer to which they had been condemned. Undertones of ozone. Vehicles towed to and fro in neutral. They checked the mess hall but its lee was occupied and other squads had posted guards to prevent usurpers from moving in. More futile than this was the dispensary. The doctors so besieged they had to club back the refugees. They thought they might have had time to find space near the shield generators but the time wasted spent trying to muscle in at the dispensary had been well used by others.

It struck Retyunskikh strange, knowing, all knowing, there would be no room. That the select refuges would have no vacancy, going knowing the cost, that the only true optable location would be the road.

Succumbing to this knowledge they at last threw their kits on a mud shoulder between a long row of refugees and set about procuring material to serve as bedding. Twice they were shook down. First by a signals officer then by a cyborg standing almost three meters tall. Each turning out their pockets and looking under the vamp of their boots and in their beards for cigarettes or pills.

On their third night bivouacked a BMP strayed from the road. Retyunskikh listened to the bones crunch under the track, body after body, the interrupted cries of the sleepers waking to death, their feet swelling hideously and bursting with such force that their boots shot off or vomited gushes of blood out of their nares or earholes, their skulls crushed, the emaciated abdomens ralphing their tumored innards. He closed his eyes but when he opened them again the porters had dragged the machine back into the road and it rumbled harmlessly by.

 

 

Saved Savior

Angel give a whisper in my dream

A line that fades after the wake

I who dreams is but a thing that seems

Who dares not tell any soul my dark catharsis

So dearest I pray give my soul a sound

If a muse can save her creator

And see beyond the seeming

Tis youll see a cancer true but by my troth

Id be saved by you

And resist all saving save by thee

A Sad Advice

In works do good

In arts be moral

In life likewise exercise each part virtuously

For works and arts are the products of the hands

and life is action of mind and heart and hands

The Mere Tide P71

Several blocks on to Frankel’s CornerShot that observed the intersection with two bulging and meropic billiards balls slotted over the canopy. The pilot turned onto Sumac to the child’s distress who told her not to venture that undiscovered way and the pilot backglancing able to see the sliver of the distant embassy asked if it were her way that she walked a straight line and back.

Moored to less.

The pilot would have them exploring and the child kept to her coattails in that exaggerated stealth walk oft seen upon the jackets of whodunits. Suspicious rightly of scraggly rug pedlar and bums. Of the violinist sawing slowly on his piece while the madam of an antique shoppette swayed to his tune. They passed the National Operatic Museum and Theater. Passed a MaidBorgTM, strutting before its authorized distributor and advertising its plethora of features in five languages. Albin who keeps the fishbowls full nods resolutely to her reptilian majesty from the porch of Deep Trouts where he awaits as for the undead the descension of the rancorous covey of bedlamites who have closed Samtzeit. The soul is a font he mutters to overflow or run dry and by no spirit can it be filled that is not its own only may it be summoned forth. Godfearing bufeiter, his tills never empty. And past Gem’s Haberdashery open from 10-17 and the inlets of underground malls. And let me get you a cut cried a dreadlocked barber.

How do you like city life?

Nice nice.

And how are you?

Dachni slumped into the pilot with her arms wide for maximum hug as she cried.

Anaya lifted the child into her arms. Do you want to stay?

Nor furevered but a lattle levver. Mwarber no dancy turbight. Et gwets ye gwogwie.

The pilot chuckled. For the best. Woe is the wages of too much mirth. Aye the bills highing as tis and who knows how long ere the poison chalice is gived to me?

Poison?

The pilot tickled her side. A bight of seriousness weighed down the upturned curves of her smile. Mayst I tax thee a league further?

Dachni reached into a pocket for the lawyer’s unspent note. Here.

Ssiskva. Nein. Not money.

What then?

A different tax. I want you to meet your sister.

Dachni crumpled the bill away. No.

Shes here you know, in the city.

Dont care. Dont wanna see her. Wanna ferget her always an ever.

You shouldnt say that. Theres not a whole lot of family between the two of you. What do you think Id give to see my sisters again? And my brothers again? You wouldnt have to say anything. I doubt she will but let her see you five minutes. Nothing more.

Fer what?

That she may know you limp the earth. She doesnt know youre alive. Its like not naming your children. She doesnt know youre alive. She did ask you know but I didnt tell. Do you know what that means from kin as yours? Ill tell you something about your family that maybe you dont know and that maybe youll recognize in yourself. What doesnt concern you doesnt exist. She asked for you and thats the first shovel load of dirt on the enmity you share.

Ye had a no.

The pilot’s ears swung high and were hooked back by her tendrils. I understand. You dont have to do it today. Or ever. I imagine this was your last expectation. But next Friday Ill ask again. And the Friday after and after that I wont ask ever again. But it would be a good Friday though when considering the merits you assent.

An no. An dont ask.

The Mere Tide P70

The pilot black robed from the waist down, the child primsie in a flower dress, arrived in the great smoky hall to find the table already commenced. A euphonic uproar died as though vacuumed back into the throats of these seated distichous revelers. In sync they turned and on their knees bowed, their elbows palmed, all save Mai-kin who at the table’s head raised his stein. The pilot head slightly bend raked a knuckle along the edge of her fangs that the feast continue. In an instant the din was fully restored, a rolling gaiety, a sesquipedalian mirth, whole jokes in a word, the shostii fuming smoke out their sides like animate straw dolls burning from within.

Dachni followed the pilot to where Mai-kin sat.

Meesegataya.

Mai-kin yielded the spot with a rakish grin.

Dachni frowned at the whinstone floor. Wheres the chairs?

You sit on the floor.

Yall got stupid tables.

Those aienee who overheard laughed and stuck out their tongues.

Anaya tugged her down by the sleeve. Before she had even settled several plates were put before her and the aienee were encouraging her to sample each dish, advising the qualities of each. Her hunger wasnt strong but she tried each offering that was unfailingly spicy and she fanned her tongue to great chorals of laughter and the beer ran like water. Someone pushed an involute epergne forward overloaded with cloned extraterrestrial fruit and the pilot pushed it back citing the weak constitution of earthlings. A ravenous tachyphagia. A wanchancy shalki playing the part of a gaberlunize crawled on fours begging meat scraps but after a few minutes his pride could not abide this humiliation and he stripped out his fool’s borrel. Someone blew the waldhorn and they laughed the shalki out. Unlike their foolish ruckus. All progressions from lower to higher orders marked by growing stillness. The highest sheds all descriptors, at the bottom movement wild and unwieldy. Without restraint or discipline. Untamed life. Inferior. Machines? No. Not life. The wildness keeps in the soul not the cold calculus wicked without sound. The head of some herbivore like a broiled barghest its catawampus visnomy shorn of a jewish nose. Intrauterine to void. A dozen boiled dokes brought out and a horsehead gussied in muskin. Gorgios each, none a mohel. Platters statuminated by blunted talons. Dachni beheld the scene agog. Each syjin paronym of his progenitor indagating the trenchant skeletons of those rachidian mammals put to table. Wirble a pet forever. Intrauterine what has left the rhapsodical uterus of the singularity? Faciend: nonlife accimus of amoeba. How do the dead envy the living. Shirred to through frozen energy that manifested this adroit arm that delivered kedgeree. Dachni squirmed in flouncy overload. Mazarine mure to the sensory world. Conspectus of waur. Dovish besmoked. Lobbed impertration for spices and condiments and dressings. A sigmoid of blood sausage. Forked anabasis upon a hog masticated with carnivorous joy. Graceless feed of life on life. The riuks depleted by impregnation and from 173 7019 viable offspring randomized for to disguise paternity. Two generations more generate a million souls. So exponetiates the enclave. Political considerations needs regulate breeding afterwards. The shovelspur ploughing troughs in giddiness. Give us this clay our clayey bed. Henrietta, daw of ill repute and hirtellous at the loins furring a tattooed distelfink. Interspecies limerance for a master of arms. Rebuffed ever anon by him who would die before suffering ochloracy and refused the taking of feres. Cocksure army analysts projecting total victory. Naive. Even ISEC collective erudite advancing Ridiculous conclusions. No. Too crafty. Lower motives must the royal I keep. Ranarian appetizers dehisced and butter stuffed. Apophatic passer priest of sumptuary code partook not but tallied infractions of his adamantine morals. Do not want to waste nor pine for evil. Frenetically gainsaying plebeian philosophical grunge. Come forth dour hierophant, proselytize not to the dead. No. Rumored necrolatry. Eying a venatic amnicolist recalled from hermitage to attend. Apostasy not the worst of sins. He passes the olio from which he abstains. No no no no alipeds. Not for consumption. Acrid flavor of tobacco on the cuticular layer of each spiry octant of a pineapple custard. Sugar stalagmites in slaver soluble. Lew whiskey tawn from time in rathskellers. Mai-kin it is told, the kign’s ancient, has made secret arrangements with Berlin. For what? For when the Russians cross the 50th parallel. Sirrah sauced have some brandy. Alleviate hurts. Waters eyes. Balancing act. Torrents break the body down. Venomous fumes. Supple brains so lubed lose plasticity, slips back on consciousness does not percolate to inebriated eyes. Glazed. The deaden soul. Slack mouth. Slithey. She recovers. Telangiectasia of old men texturing the floating spots in vision. Brings master glossers to pratfall. Nonpareil goathunter stalks among murklin clitter with arbalest. Anywhen? Somewhen? Winter is the poorest month. Firearms too easy. Atomic weaponry jet delivered to corral tigers. Yarrikus dropped out of existence so long he no longer existed. Lugent patron that is god not inoccidous. Depatriated to questionable safety of the heavens. Iphsisavios elixate. Immoderate fumigations infecting the upper realms. God has not existed so long he has not existed. Christ attrited futilely, the sin overfloweth. Mawky macarism madescent in maggot sweat. The end until the end. Gastric Pentecost pineal or myrtle bestead alienkind of the sour curses drizzling up creation’s bedrock mabbled in shipshape diaphanous black. Enough of blasphemy toast the lampbearer. And on what feeds the lamp flame? The souls the souls the souls. Space smells faintly of nidor and sorcery. What is the scent of improbability? What is magic’s flavor? Earth deferve. Bone to oil, sun to void. Everything recreates itself imperfectly. Gravity of creation. A bouncing ball. The ball now? Dancing? Maffick of the soul. Sated they are risen. Nay azymous. Never never promptly to the ball. Not a ball. Not boy balls. Musicians ho! Strike up! But none have spirit for the thanatopsis and jeers jolt jovial chords out the mayji’s mirthy axinform instrument. Slow slick sluts saunter saintly for their profunding. Menseless humans. Your pure dermis. Vascular anhidrosis induced by creams. Cause I got told yall aint fond of a sweat. Balderdash. Is that the word? I aint no gal of letters. A dance? No. Maybe. Labial prances. Her lusty saraband sustaining gladrags not necessarily in keeping with the melody. Dachni solicited by a more cunning courtesan. No money. I come prepaid. Cant dance. Flattering suggestio falsi. Exquisite footplay not mimeable. Who authors the songs that draws lightning out these ludic thighs. No more inviting. Husky woo and tongue to trace the absent ear and recoil and so dies tips desire but a danseuse without financial concerns prevents her withdraw. Saltatory whirls accommodating of her ability if not her aptitude. Other mock suitors who dance her happy but where the dagestai where is the dagestai? Sliding up. Hand in hand in wonder Dachni waltzed by her maternal paramour their steps execute deliberate and her eyes are of the mortal enemy and hers of nothingness impotent to show their gladness or sorrow or rage now yearning to tell to tell to tell.

These festivities repeated in variation night after night and at each breathless conclusion the child would scurry to a bathtub to calm and after three consecutive nights discovering her there the pilot had the tub converted into a bed and hauled up to the master bedchamber. Dachni encradled making sleepy mewls while the pilot hummed her lullabies until she fell asleep. And woke to be fed clementines.

By week’s end she felt herself right potentiated and one early ante meridiem she on impulse decided to perambulate the neighborhood. She told no one. Left out the front door and out the driveway. Out on the street she felt very small and she scampered from bush to pole to pole again or any other cover but no one noticed her and she was not a mile into her first sojourn when she found herself pursued by a shosti scraping furiously down the sidewalk, his talons raking pale streaks in the concrete.

His name was Juraiska. Let us know before you leave.

Jessa walk.

He followed her then on a presence at a distance enough that she could fancy herself alone nevertheless glancing back from time to time to ensure he never left sight.

Over the course of several mornings she established a silent familiarity with those few other personages fond of dawn. The shalkii first who garrisoned the shack and who bowed formally and still bore the bright blue stripes for having slept at their posts. Elsewhere joggers in bright running gear like starved fruit. A portly tomato lagging behind and calling for his friends to go on go on. At the corner a newsvendor named Brian. Sat upon a crate sipping coffee and mumbling the day’s headlines like a bored prophet hardly agog. General Profiry Ivanovich Shpigun Abducted. 23rd Army Group Fortifies Positions On The Desna. President Loginovsky Renews Demands That The Urals Be Returned. The Tribes Rise Again. People’s Prosperity Congressman Sun Xiadon Arrives For State Visit. Venusian Aid Shipments To Begin Immediately. Farther along this newsstand of lethargic doom she would oft see joggers bright as bananas in their running gear and always there were a few isolated commuters moving towards the city wealth. Of them her fear abated and she would sometimes linger to watch the streets fill and would even keep astride this or that man pretending. None ever paid her attention save once when waiting at a crosswalk she took the hand of a lawyer. Who looked down at the fragile urchin what had confided in him such avuncular reassurance she aghast simpered away but the lawyer, prosecutor though he was and who wished to counterbalance the defendants whom he sent to prison or gas chamber, bestowed a dollar unto her and a cup to keep it in and as it would happen could be relied upon for fresh donuts and was named Laurence.

One morning she found the pilot milling by the gate. Dressed for the cold and of that vulnerable demeanor as are those hopeful of an invitation. Dachni skipped towards her in her little galloping limp and delivered a resounding headbutt into her thigh and head as a hammer butted her into the street. They went down Ulysses as was her way, the child with fists balled in her parka and nodding so enormously to the passersby recognized that it looked as though her head were being manipulated by strings.

Hows says theys newsies?

The newsvendor sipped his coffee through a straw that disappeared into his scarf and told them Colonel General Gusev Semyon Dmitrievich had been appointed army marshal and that his first order was to conscript an entire army group to be dispatched within the month to the Pechora.

Dachni skipped past with a flail of her arms. Whoakay!

She nodded to the joggers. To the huffing bubblefat jiggle expiring in doubletime. To others she didnt know. Warm bakery air gushed out onto the street. She stopped.

Has ye any pennies?

Ive a couple dollars, said the pilot.

Ken ye shake em out?

The pilot could. Three crumpled tens that floated down to her palm.

Now ye hasta wait! She shoved through the glass doors and burst back out again. Canded ye eat a somethin?

Ill take a danish.

Ya said not ta eat people! she hissed in whisper.

Danishes. Those puff pastries with the cream streaks and the cherry caldera. Get me one.

Oh. Ok.

Dachni withdrew into the bakery and joined the line. Soft muzak played. Peacoated professionals prated on phones. The register dinged and a customer moved to the side. After a minute the child was up.

What can I get you? said the cashier leaning over the counter to see this minutest customer.

Dachni clutched the counter and leaned to look into the display case. Wills buys ta strudels anns ta cherries dayyynish ans taaaaaaauuuuhh thatta bakey.

The cashier leaned to see at what she pointed. The baklava?

Aye.

That ones pork.

Thats ok.

The doorchime rang. Dachni.

Dachni looked back. The pilot was leaning inward on the handlebar. Get a few croissants too.

Ok. Enna few croissants.

The cashier rang up her purchases. 13.71.

Dachni looked at her trio of tens. She set them on the counter. The cashier flicked one back and took the other two and punched at his register. The till popped open and he sorted out her change and handed it back.

Thankey.

Yep.

Dachni looked expectantly at him but his assistant called her over and she went to the pickup and received her goods.

Outside she sorted through the bags. Heres yer danish.

Thank you.

An this is aaaaaaa strudel.

Alright lets go find some place to sit and eat.

No gosta wait.

What for?

But Laurence was turning the corner and Dachni squealed in delight and ran up to him.

What is this? What is this? He laughed holding his briefcase aloft trying to follow the little maniac dancer circling him.

Isis earls is earls, she squealed proffering the baklava.

For me? He plucked the baklava up and took a bite and held his belly. It is delicious, he cried through his chewing. Ho ho they spoil me. Oh I am being fattened. Fortune will make a rolling hill of my sides. Thank you thank you.

Whos this?

Laurence looked up at the pilot. Oh it is the dagestai.

Who are you?

Laurence Sauer. Prosecutor at the appellate. He set his briefcase down and shook her hand

Deduction tells me, said Laurence glancing from the pilot to the child, that you two are acquainted.

That meeeeans know folk.

Indeed. Have you known each other long?

Long long. Dachni flung her arms in the air and lost her croissants. Wuupes. She bent and swept them off the sidewalk back into their little brown bags.

Whats on the docket for today? said the pilot.

Ah. Mostly eviction appeals. Its really very sad. At three I have a regional manager who got caught funneling interest dividends from Castle Credit Union into his portfolio. Ah but it is worthless. What he does not know is that when he hacked into the system he left an imprint of his own memories. A friend of mine says if you are going to do a hack you must be like the zen. He will get a harsher sentence for even making the appeal. For the others though. I am a prosecutor I must undermine them all. It would be be better if we were like most other civilized countries. Well. Civilized. I suppose that is what this big huffalahbah is all about. Who is civilized. I can see after victor assigned housing. Universal medical care. I do not mean for the state to go overboard and anticipate the desires of its citizens or blanket us in comfort, I am not talking about universal augmentation or anything of the like but who is looking after the common man? I care little about those dandy moralists at every turn and throwing socialist about like a pejorative. I would like to seem manage a January night out of doors. Can you imagine that? Or have them figure how to survive on a widow’s stipend or be denied their afternoon sorbet. And the machines do not give a crap. They do not even sleep most of them. All this ballyhoo about radical individualism. It is an excuse to fleece the poor and to justify the fleecing! And I am not a crackerpot. I have seen it. Condemning children to poverty for their parent’s poverty and feeling self-righteous about it. Robbing them of every opportunity, marching them off to the army with lies of glory while they sit at home and watch them die on the television. I understand a doctor is more valuable than a janitor and that geneticist is worth probably twenty cafeteria maids but those madmen think that because that is true that the individual is himself worthless. They forget erga omnes. They do not believe in baseline worth. For all their prating about the value of the individual they do not recognize the inherent value of the person independent of the trade and the skill and the wealth. Oh I have seen plenty of affluent baboons who if you presented them with a true day of honest to god toil they would leap out of a window.

I will tell you the proudest case I ever took. Misson Vs. The Interim Colonial Government. Allison and Martin Misson. She was a claims lawyer and he was an insurance provider and together they made a runny slick of manure. They defrauded almost two thousand people. What they did was set up several unaffiliated LLCs, that is a limited liability company little girl, barebone offices typically with nothing more than a receptionist paid to give the run around. They would take the monthly payments, stash them in joint holdings under another name. Any claim from an insuree was immediately denied. No questions asked. I remember in the brief there was a woman by the name of Ms. Faxon. Had a fire in her apartment. Proven to be an electrical fire but since pools of wax were discovered on the bedsprings Misson claimed the fire originated through the negligent knocking over of a candle-even though there was no wick found in the wax-and denied the claim. And would you believe it? A judge found this reasonable and allowed them to countersue. She was ninety years old! They dealt in automobile, flooding, home, fire, weather. There were cases where when the insuree had a solid case they went back and modified the contract. Blatantly. Could not even be bothered to try to hide the hack. Well how many people really check a contract, how many insist on notarized originals? Not many I will tell you. Notarize little girl, notarize everything. You can get a lot over a man by pointing to a few small print paragraphs at the bottom of a page. Well finally they defraud some boy who has an attorney for a brother and that is how they got caught but it was not the end of them. They appealed and it came to me and can you believe it they did not change a single part of their original testimony. Not a single line. I pressed for the death penalty and by that blind most fair scale bearing maiden I secured it and saw them marched to the scaffold and it was a warm sight for the next two weeks every morning I got to see them swinging like a pair of meaty windchimes.

Laurence took a bite of his baklava and looked down at Dachni. Listen to me girl. Whats your name?

Dachni tilted at the waist. Esent a right name figured onna settle yes.

How do you mean?

Well sometimes says Dachni and sometimes Alessa.

Laurence moved to let other pedestrians pass for the sidewalk was growing crowded and there was a constant flow into the bakery. What did your mother name you?

Dont know. She mighta notted done ta namin atall.

Which name came first Dachni or Alessa?

Alessa.

Is that the name you prefer?

Prefer?

Which name do you like better?

Hasnt reckoned it yet.

Alessa antedates Dachni so why let us go with that for now.

Ok.

So. Youre a shineblood what they call your kind. I doubt you need to be told that will win you not many friends anywhere.

Never gived it pay no mind.

And you keep right on doing that. Hear me out because I am going to tell you a great and terrible truth. Life is not fair. I suspect you figured that out a long time ago. The only justice that comes to man is through man and by man. Now man is a mighty hateful creature. He is. There is no two ways about it. But he has also got a lot of the opposite in him too, whatever that is. For as sick as we all are we still manage to make it work. You know how we make it work?

Dachni shook her head. No.

Truth. We tell the truth. We always tell the truth and walk in honesty. We look after another. You stand up for the little man and you stand up for the big man and you stand up for the middleman whatever the times call you to do. Sometimes the rich persecute the poor and sometimes the poor persecute the rich. Poverty is not an automatic conference of righteousness on man. He might take the fancy but it is not true. I have known plenty of paupers who came to means and turned right back around and robbed blind the very persons who helped them to their fortunes. I knew a woman who stole her father’s house, sold it right out from under him, had him evicted out of a home he built with his own tools and hands that made the tools. The law could not touch her for it but she was shot some nine years later and ended up paralyzed from the waist down and sued to get treatment and her own father by that time a paraplegic dying in a hospice. We are a sorry species, man is, so never let anyone ever tell you that you are less than a human being because a human being is a low low lowly thing. He tries though. Even that Misson had a little of grace in him. Might have been a speck but it was there. Even if he did not know it and probably he did not and if you had told him he would have denied it or gone out of his way to snuff it out. But even he was a boy once that maybe marveled at fireworks or had to figure his reflection in sink water. Now what it boils down to is this. Every moment in this life is a choice and you can do what is right or what is wrong. And maybe you cannot tell the difference and maybe the people around you cannot tell the difference but follow what you believe to be upright and true. Stay true to yourself and you can do no falseness to anyone else. Because even if you turn out to be a bad person you will at least be innocent of the rank odor of hypocrisy. I…oh ah look I am late. I am a complete rambler.

No, said Dachni. Its ok. Its good hearin.

Yes. Yes. I hope so. I have to get to a hearing myself.

He held out his hand to the child and she shook it and then he shook hands with the pilot and then the child must shake hands with her to. He said goodbye, gave a second thanks for the baklava, and took his leave.

The Mere Tide P69

Barely functioning jitney pulled up before the gate of the Aiegietti, the aienee embassy. Its doors opened and Dachni watched the pilot emerge like an enormous robed spider and she followed like another. The pilot was reaching for her wallet but the shalkii garrisoning the guardshack one produced his own card and another ran ahead to announce his dagestai’s arrival. They passed through niello gates inscribed with the genesis of the species. Walked the gravel circle. The garden in its eye, a fountain amidst the flowers. The mansion doors opened before their approach and a formationed host bowed in greeting.

Inquiries were made. Did the dagestai wish a change of clothes? to rest? to bathe? to convene with her staff? a briefing?

Yea to all and all to me, she said declining a drink outheld on a silver platter.

Yagt vi coei?

The pilot nodded that the child would indeed accompany her.

They gathered, those shostii of sufficient rank, in the lavish pophiagata of the study, that painstaking style in which every surface is relieved of scenes of history, that they might be tramped upon, and the ends of their talons nick away the faces and the deeds in mimic of time. Of the officers some sat in chairs or on the floor, for they made no distinction, and their attentions were towards the pilot where at study’s front she cupped the head of her uneasy honoree.

This, she began in a rap of talons, is Dachni’isigiat Alessa Gillespie Hasti. Ignore the name, but know it, and afford her the privileges and deference you would me for she descends of gravest lineage and a birth preceded by signs. You will not find her in the histories but the proof that she came of them is this royal frame which presents itself thus to thine eyes. Disregard the facade that would mark her an ignote nor weigh too much youth’s features for in them experience oppugns years. Give credit to her notions, they are more sapient then the rude colloquialisms of her mountain domain in which they are delivered. That it is unright that any of noble birth should not have some aspect of their history known be it declared that the seat of her birth overlooked the staid range called the Urals where through many hardships she pertinaciously clung to life and when unseated and in the plains fought and in the towns fought and saved my life. So let her be she and I bined in your thoughts of service. Then that this our residence should be kept merry and to honor its second master our most august early queen I proclaim feasting and other revelries as may be made to follow. To you Gacci’vikios I charge you epulary master and manage the mansion’s feed by the nineteenth hour.

Ssivka, dagestai, said Gacci’vikios.

To it then.

Gacci’vikios, the stocky factotum, bowed and left the room.

To the rest open your closets that you may flourish yourselves in most excellent garbs and if you should warrant that outfit unworthy take leave of your duties, some monies out the general trust, visit a boutique, peruse the latest fashions, be riven by a clerk’s fad and disdaining a second trite skin return, dress as you can and be merry.

Dachni dreamed no dreams through the daylight in a gazebo of a bed in the master bedchamber. Anaya woke her late to prepare for the evening festivities. She freshened in the shower, feeling a twinge of satisfaction from knowing how to operate this invention without guidance. She came out wrapped in a towel leaving a moky wet trail on the rug. Anaya saw and smiled.

Hi.

Hello heartbeat.

Yer sunshine.

Ok.

For her consideration the pilot had laid out a number of dresses on an ironing board but the child touched the stitched flume of her surgery and said it hurt.

Ive remedy for that. Surprised you didnt ask for it earlier. She started towards the bathroom. Said from it: Do you like the dresses though?

Theyrred ald prettied pretties.

The pilot came out with a plastic tube she pointed at the bed. Sit down for me?

Dachni shuffled over and sat.

Hows my brave girl?

Saided hurt.

Are you ready for tonight? she said unscrewing the tube cap. She squeezed out a glowing sea blue gel. Alien falltrank smelled of a crisp minty sea salt.

Smells nice.

Towel off.

Dachni shrugged off the towel and the pilot massaged the gel into her breast. It grew in viscosity, became almost crystalline, and dimmed.

Is cold. No is hot!

Feels better?

Dachni wiggled cautiously to detect any tremors of agony but it was narrowing to veins. Dissolving as though expelled in the breath. Does is does.

Do you know what this is?

Nuh uh. She took a deep breath, deep as she could, and it was without discomfort. Oh that feels better. What is it?

Sly smile spread on the pilot’s face. Pus.

A crease formed in Dachni’s brow. She knew the word but thought there must be a second definition or else japery. Whats et mean?

Pus.

Ye mean sicky pus?

Aye.

Dachni paled paler than her almost ghostliness near translucent so that the organs that sustained her could be seen in their soundless workings. She began to cast about as though in search, her hands by her side shaking in agitation as though the ingested prions of children past had willed her to a stroke. Ewwwwwwwww, tasssss grooooos!

The pilot doubled in laughter. Oh forlorn urchin. But is the pain faded?

Nooooo, she whined in despair.

The pilot lolled her head with tongue out. Youre fine.

Defiled she felt and slandered by circumstance beyond the limits of medicine.

Very well its not pus. A topical analgesic.

This assurance restored a measure of her composure. Really?

Sure.

Yer lie sayin. Whats et really?

Its processed pus.

Her face scrunched anew but before her long mewl of dismay could escape Anaya pressed her crossed arms on her lap and stopped her mouth with a kiss. A few seconds later she broke the kiss the few millimeters needed to say: Youll catch no illness.

Whats it why?

The process is this. A hxaose, a tree dwelling leaf grazer, which weve cloned, is given a lung infection. The immunoresponse is to swell nodes in the airway to the point that they emulsify into a pussy bacteriophage that agitates the nasal pituitaries, which stretches very far back to the cranium, inducing a prodigious production of mucous that flushes everything out. And in a happy coincidence for mankind this discharge turns out to be a very effective painkiller. So its not just pus but mucous too.

Aets eewen gwosser!

To compound the humor.

Dachni sulked in boiling fury but Anaya’s eyes was asquint and her tongue in her fangs and she began to chuckle. A gargled howl of outrage rose in the child’s throat but before it could rip past her teeth it suddenly failed and the tussive indignation hacked out into a warbling laugh and soon they were cackling together.

Ets stell gose.

And still funny.

Dachni, sides tight, wiped away a solitary tear. Aesent too funny.