Interzone 244 Jan - Feb 2013 Read Online Free PDF Page A

privilege. Achimwene, to his horror,
discovered he had become a middleman. The bag man.
    There was something repulsive about it all,
as well as a strange, shameful excitement. There was no sex: sex
was not a part of it, although it could be. Carmel leeched
knowledge – memories – stored sensations – anything – pure uncut
data from her victims, her fangs fastening on their neck, injecting
dopamine into their blood as her node broke their inadequate
protections, smashed their firewalls and their security, and bled
them dry.
    “ Where do you come from?”
he once asked her, as they lay on his narrow bed, the window open
and the heat making them sweat, and she told him of Ng. Merurun,
the tiny asteroid where she grew up, and how she ran away, on board
the Emaciated Messiah , where a Shambleau attacked her, and
passed on the virus, or the sickness, whatever it was.
    “ And how did you come to be
here?” he said, and sensed, almost before he spoke, her unease, her
reluctance to answer. Jealousy flared in him then, and he could not
say why.
    * *
    His sister came to visit him. She walked
into the bookshop as he sat behind the desk, typing. He was writing
less and less, now; his new life seemed to him a kind of novel.
    “ Achimwene,” she
said.
    He raised his head. “Miriam,” he said,
heavily.
    They did not get along.
    “ The girl, Carmel. She is
with you?”
    “ I let her stay,” he said,
carefully.
    “ Oh, Achimwene, you are a
fool!” she said.
    Her boy – their sister’s boy – Kranki – was
with her. Achimwene regarded him uneasily. The boy was vat-grown –
had come from the birthing clinics – his eyes were Armani-trademark
blue. “Hey, Kranki,” Achimwene said.
    “ Anggkel,” the boy said – uncle , in the pidgin of the asteroids. “Yu olsem
wanem?”
    “ I gud,” Achimwene
said.
    How are you? I am well.
    “ Fren blong mi Ismail I
stap aotside,” Kranki said. “I stret hemi kam insaed?”
    My friend Ismail is outside. Is it OK if he
comes in?
    “ I stret,” Achimwene
said.
    Miriam blinked. “Ismail,” she said. “Where
did you come from?”
    Kranki had turned, appeared, to all intents
and purposes, to play with an invisible playmate. Achimwene said,
carefully, “There is no one there.”
    “ Of course there is,” his
sister snapped. “It’s Ismail, the Jaffa boy.”
    Achimwene shook his head.
    “ Listen, Achimwene. The
girl. Do you know why she came here?”
    “ No.”
    “ She followed
Boris.”
    “ Boris,” Achimwene said.
“Your Boris?”
    “ My Boris,” she
said.
    “ She knew him
before?”
    “ She knew him on Mars. In
Tong Yun City.”
    “ I…see.”
    “ You see nothing, Achi. You
are blind like a worm.” Old words, still with the power to hurt
him. They had never been close, somehow. He said, “What do you
want, Miriam?”
    Her face softened. “I do not want… I do not
want her to hurt you.”
    “ I am a grown-up,” he said.
“I can take care of myself.”
    “ Achi, like you ever
could!”
    Could that be affection, in her voice? It
sounded like frustration. Miriam said, “Is she here?”
    “ Kranki,” Achimwene said,
“who are you playing with?”
    “ Ismail,” Kranki said,
pausing in the middle of telling a story to someone only he could
see.
    “ He’s not here,” Achimwene
said.
    “ Sure he is. He’s right
here.”
    Achimwene formed his lips into an O of
understanding. “Is he virtual?” he said.
    Kranki shrugged. “I guess,” he said. He
clearly felt uncomfortable with – or didn’t understand – the
question. Achimwene let it go.
    His sister said, “I like the girl,
Achi.”
    It took him by surprise. “You’ve met
her?”
    “ She has a sickness. She
needs help.”
    “ I am helping
her!”
    But his sister only shook her head.
    “ Go away, Miriam,” he said,
feeling suddenly tired, depressed. His sister said, “Is she
here?”
    “ She is
resting.”
    Above his shop there was a tiny flat,
accessible by narrow, twisting stairs. It