Clarkesworld Anthology 2012 Read Online Free PDF

risked my life to keep her alive. Food is getting low. I’m not bringing more supplies unless I can get some sort of input.”
    “Fine, talk to it, if that will make you happy. But don’t involve me.”
    After this, there was one day when she did not pinch me. Instead, she called out, “You’ve been hiding from me.”
    “No,” I said. “I always come when I hear you calling for me. But sometimes I don’t hear.”
    “No more hiding. I’ve given the whistle to Frederick. You must go to him whenever he calls for you.”
    “Please, not the whistle,” I said, but she had already turned away.
    The next day, my restless burrowing was interrupted by a sound that dragged hooks all across my body. Despite the pain, I tried to resist that insistent tootling. I stayed still for minutes, until the whistle had become near continuous, before I scuttled across the sticky deck of the cabin, up the stairs, and out into the freezing night.
    Uncle Frederick lived in the cabin underneath the stairs. During the day he was largely quiescent: a vaguely human bulk that I sometimes perceived in the distance. But during the night he would lumber up the stairs and outside. He’d be wrapped up in seven layers of cloth and nylon and plastic. He’d seat himself down carefully on a mat, and stare up at the sky for hours.
    I insinuated myself into the folds of his jacket to avoid the buffeting blasts of wind.
    His body rumbled with speech. “Took you long enough to get here, didn’t it?”
    All along the horizon line, fires blazed just out of sight, filling the sky with a sunset glow, even though it was midnight.
    “You’re getting a good look aren’t you?” Frederick said. “It’s not so scary there. And it’ll be even less scary for you.”
    “You’re…you’re taking me to the shore?” I said.
    “Eventually. When your mother and I are gone, you’ll need to forage for food. Don’t worry, though, by then you’ll have help.”
    “Are there more people, then? On land?”
    “I meant that you’d have help from your own kind.”
    “Oh.” The prospect of meeting more of myself was disgusting. I thought of them scrambling all over maman and felt slightly ill. “I would have liked to see more people.”
    “Well, maybe you will. What would you do if you saw them?”
    I nestled more deeply into Frederick’s jacket. “I wouldn’t ever bother them. I know that you and maman don’t like to be bothered.”
    “No, no, there’s no need to be afraid of us. You should think of yourself as one of us.”
    I moved deeper into Frederick’s garments. He shuddered. His hand twitched and started scratching the places where I had been. “I’m sorry,” I said. “So sorry. I won’t touch you again.”
    “No, that’s my problem. I’m not used to people shaped like you. But you’re fine. You’re beautiful.”
    “When are there going to be more of me?”
    “Soon. When your egg case bursts, there should be forty or fifty more of you.”
    I shifted my egg case uneasily, pressing it against Frederick’s bulk as if to stop it from splitting open right there. I’d seen what happened to the mothers of the spiders and flies in maman’s mattress.
    “Will I have to die, then?” I said
    “Die?” Uncle Frederick said. His body shook slightly. “No, never. You really don’t know, then? You’re never going to die. All your children will remember everything you remember. It will feel like closing your eyes to give birth, and then opening them in a new body. You’ll live forever.”
    At the time, this was not a shock for me. I was too young to appreciate the gift that maman had engineered into me.
    Frederick was silent for long moments after this. When I assayed a crawl up onto his face, I caught a brief glimpse of tear-stained eyes before an instinctive sweep of his hand dropped me to the deck with an exoskeleton-jouncing crash.
    I picked myself up off the damp, salty deck and scurried back to the safety of maman’s