Clarkesworld Issue 32 Read online

  It came after us just after dusk, while we were looking for a tree to sleep in. Out of nowhere you just heard the sound of branches snapping, and leaves getting crushed as it rushed at us from behind. Within moments, it speared me in the thigh and my husband in the upper arm. We’d be dead if it weren’t for our quickness and how good we’ve become at climbing trees. I guess I have to thank my husband and his stupid illness. We’ve bandaged each other up. At least some of the bleeding has stopped, my husband’s wound was worse than mine. So far no sign of poisons from its proboscis.

  The moth’s body shape tells me that this thing’s relatives clearly used to be fliers. It’s been following us for days and now, as we close in on the plant, it has become aggressive; it’s guarding something. I can guess what it is.

  We could kill it. My husband and I have certainly killed larger more dangerous beasts. But killing it might eventually cause what it protects, the M-CPU, to die. The death of centuries of information. No. We’d rather die. So instead, we’re stuck in a tree a mile from the plant.

  There’s a problem. My water just broke. No, not now. Not now!

  ENTRY 11 (20:45 hours)

  We’re in another tree. About 200 feet from the M-CPU. Like everything around here, it’s infested with dragonflies. Their hard bodies smack against my face like hail. The wingless moth is below, waiting, angry, protective. We’re about to climb down and make a run for it. I hope my husband is right. Otherwise, we’re dead.

  The M-CPU’s smell is overly sweet, syrupy, and thick. I’ve vomited twice up here. The labor pains drown out the pain from my leg. They are getting stronger and faster, too. Can barely control my muscles when the contractions hit. If they get any worse I won’t be able to help myself, I’ll fall right out of this tree. A terrible way to die. A terrible way for an unborn child to die. I hope my husband is right.

  ENTRY 12 (21:26 hours)

  If I focus on talking into this portable, I will not die.

  We’re cornered. But we are lucky. We made it to the plant. Dragonflies are everywhere. Their metallic bodies shine in the plant’s light. They make soft tapping sounds when they hit the plant’s screen. Oh, the pain. My husband was right, bless his always sharp mind. The wingless moth indeed is guarding the M-CPU. And thus, now that we are close to the plant, the moth fears we’ll harm it. If we don’t move, the creature will not attack. It is not stupid. It can reason. Otherwise it would have killed us both by now… soon there will be three of us.

  My body does not feel like my own.

  The…M-CPU is as tall as my husband. He can look right into the flower head, which is a bulbous monitor with large soft periwinkle petals framing it. There is indeed a slot right below the head, where the green stem begins. The moth is a pollinator. Morituri36 says that below the disk is a tube that goes deep; only the proboscis of this wild creature could fit down there. It is a most unique but not an unheard-of pollination syndrome. But there are deeper things at work here.

  Maybe the moth will leave come dawn when the plant goes to sleep. But the night has just begun. As the flower opens wide, so do I. The baby will be here soon. Why do the gods create this kind of pain when bringing life into the world? Why?

  ENTRY 13 (23:41 hours)

  I was screaming when she came out screaming. My husband wasn’t there to catch her; I wanted him to stay near the M-CPU’s flower. So our daughter landed on the cloth he’d spread. Morituri36 laughed with joy. A blue dragonfly landed on her for a second and then flew off. I had to lean forward and pick her up. I cut my own cord. She is in the crook of my arm as I hold this portable to my lips and record these words. A beautiful thing.

  The moth has backed off. Could it be that the gift of life was enough to stop this intelligent beast in its tracks? Or does it know what my husband is doing? Our storage drive fit perfectly into the port just below the flower head.

  The flower is fully open now. It is sometimes good to be a man. My husband can stand up and watch as we wait for the download to be complete. I can only lie here in the mud and listen to what he tells me as I slowly bleed to death.

  ENTRY 14 (00:40hours)

  “Are you alright?” he keeps asking, with that look on his face. Don’t look at me like that, Morituri36. Like I’m going to disappear at any moment. The moth looms. I’ve washed our daughter with the last of my husband’s water. She seems happy and angry, sleeping, trying to suckle and crying. Normal. Amazing.

  Just tell me what you see! I’m talking to Morituri36. Doesn’t he think I want to know? As if I am not an explorer, too. Giving birth can’t change that fact.

  Morituri36, you know the portable can only record one voice. Here, take it. It’s better if you just speak into it.

  *Voice recognition detects Morituri36, a male, husband to Treefrog7, Greeny Explorer number 439, 793 days in Jungle, approximately 600 miles north of Ooni, 24:44 hours*

  *Allowed*

  My wife is crazy. She cannot properly describe the situation we are in right now as I speak. The trees creep in on us like soldiers. She can’t see them, but I can. Every so often, I see a pink frog with gold dots sitting in the trees just watching us. Treefrog7 doesn’t believe me when I speak of this creature. It is there, I assure you.

  But neither the trees nor the frog is our biggest threat. Treefrog7 is truly amazing. It is not that she just gave birth. That is a miracle in itself but a miracle most women can perform. No. It is that we have been stalked and hunted by this beast that our explorer ethics prevent us from killing and yet and still, this woman can concentrate enough to blast a child from her loins, even as the creature stands feet away, biding its time for the right moment to spear me in the heart and her between the eyes and then to maybe make a meal of our fresh and new healthy daughter.

  But Treefrog7 wants me to talk about this plant that led us to our certain deaths. The M-CPU of legend and lore. The One Who Reaches. The Ultimate Recorder. Bushbaby42’s obsession. How old must this M-CPU be? Seven, ten thousand years? Older than the plant towers of Ooni? I believe it’s an true elemental with goals of joining its pantheon of plant griots.

  My wife looks at me like I’m crazy…but who knows. You look into its head and how can you not wonder? Look at it, surrounded by purple sterile ray florets the size of my arm and the width of my hand. Its deep green stem is thick as my leg and furry with a soft white sort of plant down. No protective spikes needed when it’s got a giant moth guarding it.

  It’s deep night now. And everything’s color is altered by the brightness of the flower’s head. An organic monitor is nothing new. It is what we know. We Ooni people have been cultivating the CPU seed into personal computers for, what, over a century? It’s how the CPU plant got its name. And explorers have seen plenty of wild CPU plants here in the Greeny Jungle. Lighting the night with their organic monitors, doing whatever it is they do. But an uncultivated M-CPU? How did Bushbaby42 find it? And where is she? We’ve seen no sign of her. Treefrog7 and I will not speak of her absence here.

  So back to the M-CPU’s head. What do I see in it? How can I explain? It is a screen. Soft to the touch, but tough, impenetrable maybe. But I wouldn’t test this with the moth looming as it is. And I would never risk harming the M-CPU.

  The plant’s screen is in constant flux. There is a sort of icon that looks like a misshapen root that moves around clicking on/selecting things. Right now it shows a view of the top of a jungle. It cannot be from around here because this jungle is during the daytime. There are green parrots flying over the trees.

  Now it shows text but in symbols of some unknown language. A language of lines branching off other lines, yes, like tree branches, roots, or stems. The root-shaped cursor moves about clicking and the screen changes. Now it’s a star-filled night sky. A view of what looks like downtown Ile-Ife, not far from the towers. There are people wearing clothes made of beads, south westerners. I know that place. My home a minute’s walk from there!

  The screen changes again. Now… most bizarre, the sight of
people, humans but as I’ve never seen. And primitive shaped slow-moving vehicles that are not made of woven hemp but of metal. There are humans here with normal dark brown skin but most are the color of the insides of yams and these people have light-colored hair that settles. My wife looks at me with disbelief. It’s what I see, Treefrog7. The legend is true. The M-CPU can view other worlds. Primitive old worlds of metal and stone and smoke but friendly enough looking people. Now there are more symbols again. Now an image of a large bat in flight. The roots of a tree. The symbols. A lake surrounded by evergreen trees.

  My guess? This is the plant thinking and it is deep thought. Back to my wife.

  *Voice recognition detects Treefrog7, Greeny Explorer number421, 793 days in Jungle, approximately 600 miles north of Ooni, 01:41 hours*

  ENTRY 15 (01:41 hours)

  I feel better. It’s been about two hours. Baby’s fine. My bleeding has stopped. The moth is still there. Watching us. The download is almost done. I can stand up (though it feels like my insides will fall out from between my legs) and see the monitor for myself now.

  It just showed something I’ve never seen before…a land of barrenness, where everything is sand and stone and half-dead trees. Where could this nightmarish place be? Certainly not Ginen. It’s almost 2 am. In a few hours, we’ll know if that moth actually sleeps.

  Field guide entry (uploaded at 01:55 hours)

  Wingless Hawk Moth:

  The Wingless Hawk Moth is an insect of the taxonic order Urubaba which includes butterflies and moths. It is the size of a large car, has a robust grey furry body with pink dots, pink compound eyes, and hearty insectile legs for running. Its antennae are long and furry with silver ball-like organs at the tips. Its proboscis is both a feeding/sucking organ and a deadly jabbing weapon. It is the pollinator of the M-CPU. It makes no noise as it attacks and is known to stalk targets for days that it deems hostile to its plant. Nocturnal.

  — written and entered by: TreeFrog7/ Morituri36

  ENTRY 16 (02:29 hours)

  I’m having a catharsis as my husband and I stare into its monitor and it stares back. I am looking into a distorted mirror. We are gazing into the eye of an explorer. It is like us.

  ENTRY 17 (05:25 hours)

  My baby is beautiful. She is so fresh and I can see that she will be very dark, like me. Maybe even browner. Thank goodness she is not dada and that she has all ten of her fingers and toes. Think of the number of times in the last eight months that I’ve been poisoned, touched the wrong plant, been bitten by the wrong creature, plus I am full of antibiotics and micro-cures. Yet my baby is perfect. I am grateful.

  If we ever make it home, my people will love her. But the wingless hawk moth is still here. The sun rises in an hour.

  ENTRY 18 (5:30 hours)

  The M-CPU shows pictures and they are getting closer to where we are! Pictures of the sky over trees. Symbols. Clicking. The jungle at night. More symbols. I can see our backs! What?! The moth is coming, but slowly, it’s walking. It is calm, its proboscis coiled up. But what does it want? Download is done. What…the M-CPU’s monitor shows two eyes now. Orange with black pupils. Like those of a lemur but there is nothing else on the screen. Only black. Just two unblinking…Joukoujou help us, o! Now I see. Don’t come looking for us! Don’t…

  *Voice recognition detects…Unknown*

  *Hacked Allowance*

  They will never die. No information dies once gathered, once collected.

  The creatures’ field guide is thorough but incomplete.

  I am the greatest explorer.

  I am griot and I will soon join the others.

  End of Appendix 820

  BongaFish35 Pinging Treefrog7….

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  BongaFish35 Pinging Morituri36…

  KolaNut8 Pinging Morituri36…

  MadHatter72 Pinging Treefrog7…

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  About the Author

  Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu is the author of the novels Zahrah the Windseeker and The Shadow Speaker. Her forthcoming book for children, Long Juju Man, recently won the Macmillan Writer’s Prize for Africa. She has also been an NAACP Image Award and Andre Norton Award nominee, as well as a finalist for the Essence Magazine Literary Award. Her short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons and in anthologies such as So Long Been Dreaming and Dark Matter: Reading the Bones.

  “The Devonshire Arms”

  by Alex Dally MacFarlane

  1. The door, welcoming.

  The door closed behind Ambri with a click.

  A candle burned.

  There was a sword by the heavy wooden door, and a coat made of raven feathers. The leather on the sword’s hilt was faded from long use. The coat had holes at the elbows and armpits.

  Overhead hung a chandelier of amber and glass. The walls were dark, and fabric-covered lights hung over the counter. Windows admitted the murky rainlight of day’s fade. In high-sided booths made of leather like the finest dark shoe, murmurs and laughter passed from mouth to ear, mouth to glass.

  With a swish of her dark red skirts, Ambri swung onto a stool and asked for a whiskey with lemonade. The painted man behind the counter nodded and mixed the drink, moving his hands with the surety of one fluent in the language of bottles and taps. Ambri watched him. A map of the London Underground had grown on his skin, and when he shifted she saw the blues of Victoria and Piccadilly merge into one, the yellow of Circle split into two circles, four circles: an irreal mitosis of helical tracks.

  A strange never-told story, Ambri thought.

  With a word of thanks and an exchange of coin, she received her drink.

  She looked at it sitting on the counter, one amid many low, broad glasses stomach-full of liquids light and dark, and she sucked from the thin black straw. When the alcohol-laced sweet coldness slid down her throat, she smiled.

  It is so good to be back here.

  She smiled over and over.

  2. The walls, dark like cushions

  Ambri had put her sword by the door many times in the century and a half since finding the pub, since that day when she had stepped inside with shoulders aching like the un-oiled joints of a suit of armour and she had seen a woman made of smoke and fire napping in a chair.

  Many times since, she had seen new solid faces between the wispy, unfocused shapes of the short-lived people. She had been the woman the solid people saw at the counter, in a chair, talking at a naval-high table — the woman they approached, saying, “This place! Are you here often? Do others like us come here?”

  “This place is very new,” the woman made of smoke and fire had said when Ambri woke her with those words. “It is my first visit. But I think I will return.”

  Her voice had sounded like spices and sun-baked bricks.

  “Welcome.”

  “Welcome,” Ambri later said to Esnan, who wore a gold ring in his eyebrow that winked like a courtesan. “Welcome,” Ambri later said to the earth-skinned and sun-haired epicene, calling hirself Aus in these times, who had created cassowaries and platypi in hir youth. “Welcome,” Ambri later said to others.

  And afterwards she often saw them in the pub, resting between their work, between the hard steps of their lives.

  “Welcome,” Ambri said to the girl who could not tolerate rhythms, the first time they met.

  3. The plates, hot like embraces

  In a booth of blue leather Ambri found her friends: Esnan, mixing trickeries with the fortunes he sold and talking to Aus, who practised hir next creations with napkins and straws. Idjinna smouldered in the back.

  “Ambri! Good to see you!” Esnan stood up so that she could slide to the back of the booth. “How are you?”

  “Busy.”

  Her sword, with well-worn leather on its hilt, rested
by the door.

  Aus flicked dark fingers, and a marsupial bird made of folded napkins crumpled into sleep.

  “Yes,” Ambri said, laughing, “I would like that. But I’ll relax, first.” A four-legged cactus with cocktail sticks for spines walked across the table, guided by Aus’ other hand.

  “This one is possible,” the epicene said.

  “I like it.”

  Esnan pushed his half-finished plate of fish across the table. The warm ceramic pressed against Ambri’s arm. “You’re in the right place for relaxing.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  The fish was light and lemony over her tongue, tinted with a taste she could not identify — like the pub itself. Ambri had never found a place quite like it.

  A place built over a century and a half ago, by short-lived people who had not known what it would become: a place for those longer-lived, with different tasks and difficult lives.

  She ate the plate bare and reclined against the dark blue leather, letting her lids slide shut until she saw only the faint glows of lamps above and Idjinna at her right. Laughter speckled the air. Idjinna’s skin crackled and flared, as if she was made of small twigs catching alight one after the other. “How are you?” Ambri murmured, reaching out to touch Idjinna’s arm.

  Her fingertips pinkened.

  “There was a bronze bowl,” Idjinna said.

  “Ah.”

  Idjinna’s voice sounded like burning as she told Ambri of a merchant who found a way to trap her, to carefully tap her wishes through the latter years of his life. Medicine gardens flourished around his house and the murals stayed fresh. Idjinna could not escape. The bronze bowl singed around the edges. But the merchant died, eventually, and the bowl among many of his other possessions fell to the care of a young Englishman who took it to auction. As the auctioneer’s assistant held it high, his hand tremored and it fell.