Ecotones: Ecological Stories from the Border Between Fantasy and Science Fiction Read online

  “Wait. You’re blaming me for Ro’s death?”

  “By injuring personnel, we mean your attempted suicide. You’re a valuable asset to the company. Which is why I’d encourage you to hear my alternate proposition.”

  “Does it involve letting me fucking die, like I wanted?”

  “As I said, you’re a valuable asset. How long have you been here? Two years?”

  “Twenty months.”

  “That’s a lot of experience. We’ve invested in you, Ms. Yengko. We want to see you achieve your potential. I want you to walk away from this… challenge in your life, stronger, more capable. You’ve got a second chance. Do you know how rare that is? It’s a unique personal growth opportunity.”

  “Double pay.”

  “One and half times.”

  “Plus my pension payout. You wire it to my mom in the meantime.”

  “You don’t want to hear about the alternative?”

  “More of the same, isn’t it?”

  “It’s better. We’re running a pilot program. New suits. We want you to head it up. We’ve learned from our mistakes. We’re ready to move on. It’s a new day around here. What do you say?”

  She thinks I don’t know. She thinks I’m an idiot.

  Homelab has been renovated in the time I’ve been out. A week and a half according to Shapshak, who is strangely reproachful. He follows me around, as if trying to make sure I don’t try to off myself again. He can’t look at my face—at the puckered scar that runs from my ear to the corner of my mouth, twisting my upper lip into a permanent sneer. He’s more stoned than ever, and so are most of the other crews. Whatever else Catherine’s proposed “new day” involves, obviously restricting access to recreational pharmaceuticals isn’t part of it. Or maybe it’s the mandatory counseling sessions, which involve a lot of anti-depressants that Mukuku says leave him feeling blank and hollow. I wouldn’t know. I felt that way for a while.

  The Pinocchios are, true to Catherine’s word, gone. Along with some of the staff. Lurie has been shipped out, together with Hoffmann, Ujlaki, and Murad—all the A-level am-bots—plus half the other team leaders and sixty percent of the labtechs. Leaving a shoddy bunch of misfits, like me, unsuitable for anything except manual labor.

  Or guinea pigging.

  Labs one to three have been cleared to accommodate the new suits, ornate husks floating in nutrient soup in big glass tanks. Like soft-shelled crabs without the crab. The plating is striated with a thick fibrous grain that resembles muscle. The teaser sheet posted on the bulletin board promises Biological Solutions for Biological Challenges. There is grumbling about what that means. But underneath all that is the buzz of excitement.

  The operations brochure talks about how the suit will harden on binding, how the shell will protect us from anything a hostile environment can throw at us, how it will process the outside air through a unique filtration system to be perfectly breathable without the risk and inconvenience of carrying compressed gas tanks around. We’ll be lighter, more flexible, more efficient—and it’s totally self-sufficient, provided we take up the new nutritionally fortified diet. “No more fucking oats!” Mukuku rejoices. He’s not Ro, but he’s not an asshole and that’s about all we can ask around here.

  Lab four is still cranking. The reduced complement of labtechs are busier than ever, scurrying about like bugs. They wear hazmat suits these days. They’ve always been offish, always above us, but now they don’t talk to us at all.

  Inatec management send in a state-of-the-art camera swarm to record the new suit trials—for a morale video, Catherine explains. Exactly the kind of camera swarm they supposedly can’t afford to send out into The Green to scout ahead of us to avoid some of the dangers. “You won’t have to worry about that any more,” she says. I believe her.

  Harvest operations are called off while they do the final preparations, leaving us with too much leisure time, too much time to think. Or maybe it’s just me. But it allows me to make my decision. Not to blow it wide open (as if they wouldn’t just hold us down and do it to us anyway). Because I’m thinking that a cell doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It doesn’t have to be a prison. It could be more like a monk’s cell, a haven from the world, somewhere you can lock yourself away from everything and never have to think again.

  On Tuesday, we’re summoned to lab three. “You ready?” Catherine says.

  “Is my pension paid out?” I snipe. There is nervous laughter.

  “Why can’t we use our old suits?” Waverley whines. “Why we gotta change a good thing?”

  “Shut up, Waverley.” Shapshak snaps, but only half-heartedly. And then, because everyone is jittery—even us uneducated slum hicks can have suspicions—I volunteer. Like I said, ma: leadership material.

  I step forward and shrug out of my grays, letting them drop to the floor. Two of the labtechs haul a suit out of the tank and sort-of hunker forward with it, folding it around me like origami. It is clammy and brittle at the same time. As they layer one piece over another, it binds together and darkens to an opaque green. The color of slime mould.

  The labtechs assist the others into their suits, carefully wrapping everyone up like presents, leaving only the hoods and a dangling bioconnector like a scorpion tail. The tip has a pad of microneedles that will fasten on to my nervous system. Nothing unusual here. The GMPs use the same technology to monitor vital signs. Nothing unusual at all.

  “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt,” Catherine says, telling us nothing we don't already know. “It injects anesthetic at the same time. Like a mosquito.”

  “Not the ones on this planet, lady,” Waverley snickers, looking around for approval, as they start folding him into his suit.

  “Can we hurry this along?” I ask, impatient.

  “Of course,” Catherine says. And maybe that’s a glimmer of respect in her blue eyes, or maybe it’s just the reflection of the neon lighting, but I feel like we understand each other in these last moments.

  A labtech slips the hood over my face, and in the dark gauze I remember how, back in Caxton, I tried converting to the Neo-Adventists for a time. They promised that the golden glow of God’s love that would transform us utterly, then they covered our faces and dipped us back, waterboarding us to salvation. But I still felt the same after my baptism—still dirty, still broken, still poor.

  She presses the bioconnector up against the hollow at the base of my skull, and clicks the switch that makes the needles leap forward. Suddenly the armor clamps down on me like a muscle. I fight down a jolt of claustrophobia so strong it raises the taste of bile in my mouth. I have to catch myself from falling to my knees and retching.

  “You okay, Yengko?” Shapshak says, his voice suddenly sharp through the glaze of drugs he’s on. He must really care, I think. But I am beyond caring. Beyond anything. I pull the hood away so they can be reassured that all is well.

  I wondered what it would feel like. The soft furriness of the amoebites flooding through the bioconnector, the prickle as they flower through my skin. What’s better than a dead zombie? A live one. And maybe God’s glow is green, not golden.

  “Yes,” I say, and close my eyes against the light, against the sight of the others being parceled up in the suits, at Waverley starting to scream, tugging pointlessly at the hood as he realizes what’s going on, what’s in there with him. “I’m fine.” And maybe for the first time, I actually am.

  Seeds by a Hurricane Torn

  Daniel Ausema

  Daniel Ausema is a native of West Michigan now living in the shadow of the Colorado Rockies, a former experiential educator turned stay-at-home father of three, who devotes his near-infinite free time to writing fantasy fiction and poetry. His biopunk/steampunk serial Spire City is currently seeping out into the world, and elsewhere his work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Every Day Fiction, Three-Lobed Burning Eye and The Journal of Unlikely Architecture, amongst many others.

  We think of natural environments as geologically slow, semi-permanen
t things, but the weather can transform the world in fleeting ways, states that are most distinct from each other. A fierce storm is an environment itself—visibility drops away amidst overwhelming sound, familiar surroundings fade into a ghost of the known—and after it has passed, everything can be left much changed in its wake…

  When the spell plants of Montaep Coast meet the force of a tropical storm, the plants give way. Magic is no match for hurricane winds. And when that hurricane is so powerful the survivors name it Taepel’s Eye for the father-mother deity of the coast, then the devastation is extreme. Gardens that have grown the spells of coastal kings lie fallow. Salt poisons the inland gardens a day’s walk from the sea.

  And the people flee, with only false hopes of ever returning, though they tell each other otherwise.

  Leehm was no gardener. His knowledge of spells came only from the minor plants grown by his parents and neighbors, simple seedlings of luck and health. He’d never known the coast itself, only the stories told by other refugees in the camp outside the city of Ormenna. Yet he had always been told that he had the salt of the coast in his veins, and the stories his parents told—though never enough to satisfy him—always quickened his heart.

  Nearly thirty years after that terrible storm, here he stood at last, in an abandoned garden, looking down on the coastal homeland of his elders.

  Not quite in the dramatic homecoming they no doubt would have imagined. Not a return to settle again in the old buildings, but only a visit. And him merely brute labor, a porter for a scientific expedition.

  The land, high on an escarpment over the coast, wasn’t obviously ravaged, not as far as Leehm could see. Many of the trees were bent near the base, as if the strong wind that nearly felled them years ago still blew, and none were big or old. The coast below would surely show more signs of the damage, but even here abandoned buildings dotted the thinly wooded land. Land that had been fields was bare except for a covering of patchy weeds. The bleached wood of ancient trees lay here and there, each facing inland with their roots toward the sea, those at least standing high.

  Professor Wayel, their leader, took samples and measurements whenever they paused, discussing the results with the other important member of the expedition, the gardener Dalochs, one of those celebrated citizens of Ormennan society whose spell plants and seeds were the city’s fame, its might and protection.

  “Seven… three… still very salty in here.” Other numbers followed, arcane figures that Leehm didn’t comprehend as the professor and the gardener debated over the soil of the escarpment—but he wasn’t expected to know. Or to interrupt, regardless.

  The professor had the porters pack up his instruments. “How do your spells fare?”

  The gardener also gathered up her things, though she carried most of them herself, stowing seeds in her pockets and hand tools at her waist. “Seedlings take well enough, despite the salt. Enough to cleanse the garden, in time.”

  The professor nodded. “Good. We’ll be on our way down, then.”

  He gestured to the crew without really seeing them. They lifted their packs and fell into line. Like Leehm, they came from Ormenna’s refugee camp. All had been anxious to return to a place they barely remembered or had only heard of, willing to endure the light pay and heavy work of a scientific expedition so they might see their parents’ land.

  Not so the professor and gardener. They were Ormenna-born, interested in the coast for reasons that had nothing to do with ancestry.

  As they began their descent, Leehm noticed a frondy plant growing beside the trail. A good luck plant he knew from the camp. He gathered a handful at the roots, plucked a frond to chew as they descended. Luck for his balance, if nothing else.

  The path, at last, led them down the steep incline toward the coast. A mud-slick track cutting through a line of larger trees. The slope must have protected them somewhat from the storm. The air grew thick, the smell of old forests rising up. No hint of salt, for now at least. As they rounded a switchback, the lead porter stopped. Leehm leaned out, careful not to lose the balance of the top-heavy load he carried, so he could see around the porter in front of him.

  A creature lay across the trail.

  At first glance it had the look of a massive leech, though the thought of one that size made Leehm’s stomach seize. Its flank came as high as his chest, and the woods to either side hid its front and back. Its sides glistened brown with the mud of the trail. Then it twisted the front of its body with surprising speed, and its salamander shape became clear. Its puny front legs lifted its bulk up, and a fringe of skin marked with greenish-blue specks flared out around its wide mouth.

  Even two people behind the lead, Leehm stumbled backward. His pack threw off his balance, and he dropped to one knee to avoid a full-length spill.

  The professor came around from behind. “What’s the hold up?” By the time he got the question out, he saw the creature. No answer required. “Dalochs? Any spells for this thing?”

  The gardener hurried up beside him. “What is that...? Give me a moment to think.” She pulled out a variety of powders and seeds, arranging them on her hand.

  Leehm knew only the simple charms of the refugee camp, backward spells compared to the gardener’s, so he shifted in place to better watch what she did. She came up beside the lead porter and blew across the arrangement with something that looked like a reed-whistle.

  A bubble of distorted air floated toward the salamander. The creature pulled back but made no effort to avoid the magic. When the bubble exploded, a wave of fear swept over Leehm. They had to leave, to back up or turn aside, find some hollow to hide in. A mud wallow or a shallow creek.

  The thought only seemed logical for a moment. His legs scrambled to get away even as he realized the absurdity. Mud? A stream? Clearly suggestions meant for the salamander. He stopped scrambling and pushed himself unsteadily to his feet so he could see the spell’s effects.

  The salamander reacted in fear. But it didn’t flee. It thrashed and flailed and knocked down the saplings to either side of the trail. And then it flared out the skin around its head once again.

  Wayel removed his hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Have anything else, Dalochs?”

  The gardener shook her head. “Nothing quick. Plenty that would do the trick, if we want to wait here a month for something to grow.”

  “Hardly. And this is the only good route without going days out of our way.” He raised his voice. “Porters. Packs down and spears out!”

  Oh, the spears. Leehm lowered his pack carefully. Maybe if he was slow enough the salamander would shamble off on its own. Spears were not a weapon of the camps, and they never felt natural in his hands. He spat out the mash of chewed luck plant—some luck.

  The other porters looked more excited by the prospect than he felt. One twirled her spear in a circle and set it as if to charge straight in. Where would the best place be to wound a creature like this? As the rest of them prepared, Alshen, an older porter said, “Did your spell include blue aloe, ma’am?”

  Dalochs cocked her head. “I don’t know that one.”

  Leehm withdrew his spear and checked to make sure the head was on tight.

  Wayel pointed at the animal as if directing a charge in battle. “We don’t have time to discuss plants—”

  “We have time.” Dalochs gestured for the porters to lower their spears. The animal was holding its ground, but didn’t look like it was about to attack. With a glance at the professor, who was technically in charge, Leehm obeyed. Wayel frowned and tapped his foot impatiently.

  “I want to hear this,” Dalochs said. “We’re in their land, best learn the spells that grow here.” She gestured for the porter to speak.

  “I’m not a gardener, ma’am. But I’m older than some of these others, old enough to remember the storm. When the Eye came tearing through.”

  “What’s that have to do with aloe?”

  “Blue aloe, ma’am. We used to grow it outside our door. My mot
her always said it was to keep animals calm and drive them away. Mice, mostly, I guess, but I thought maybe bigger animals might react, too.”

  “Does it grow up here?”

  “All along, ma’am. That’s what made me think of it.”

  So Leehm set his spear back down and helped gather the plant. Not something grown in the camps, so nothing he recognized, even though his family had tried to preserve what folk spells they’d once grown. But once he was shown one, he could easily identify more, found them amidst luck plants, in fact. They soon had plenty.

  Dalochs laid the gathered stalks of aloe on the path in a complex pattern. A model of a zigzag fence. He’d seen something of the sort when they left Ormenna to come here. Then she arranged the seeds on her hand again, this time adding a tip of aloe to the mix.

  She positioned herself right behind the tiny fence of aloe. This time when she blew, the salamander reared up. It would smash the puny fence. Probably smash the gardener as well. Leave them with just the professor for company. If even that.

  It swung from side to side, slid closer to the crew, and even Leehm brandished his spear freely at the prospect—but after looming there for a moment, only a few hand spans from Dalochs, it swung aside and slithered off into the wet woodland. The dull thud of it smashing through rotted logs came from the hillside below.

  “Very well,” Professor Wayel said, his sole concession to the gardener’s success. He swept up his own small pack and jerked his arm at the porters. “Let’s move on out.”

  Halfway down the next descent, Dalochs lost her balance and fell into the porter in front of her, who just avoided falling into Leehm. As she stood up, he offered the whole group leaves of the good luck plant. The porters took them with enthusiasm, Dalochs more hesitantly. Wayel abstained, aloof.

  No one fell the rest of the way down. The professor muttered about the superstitious.