Nebula Awards Showcase 2016 Read Online Free PDF Page A

woman to her breath-sibling, she could feel him every night: blurred images of him hovering over the plateaux, never venturing far from the place of his birth. A relief, because he was her only hope.
    On Voc, it took a stoneman’s breath to quicken a baby at birth—and not any stoneman’s, but the mother’s breath-sibling, the one she had carved on accession to adulthood and entrusted with her breath. Without Sang, her baby would be stillborn.
    â€œWe’ll find a vehicle,” Mau said.
    Rechan watched her niece from a distance. The discussion was getting animated and Akanlam’s hand gestures more and more frantic. “Help me up,” she said to Mau.
    The stonewoman winced. “You shouldn’t—”
    â€œI’ve spent a lifetime doing what I shouldn’t,” Rechan said; and after a while Mau held out a hand, which she used to haul herself up. The stonewoman’s skin was lamsinh —the same almost otherworldly translucency, the same coolness as the stone; the fingers painstakingly carved with an amount of detail that hadn’t been accessible to Rechan’s generation. Mau was Akanlam’s breath-sibling; and Akanlam had put into her carving the same intensity she always put in her art. Unlike most stonemen, nothing in her looked quite human, but there was a power and a flow in the least of Mau’s features that made her seem to radiate energy, even when sitting still.
    â€œWhat is going on here?” Rechan asked, as she got closer.
    Akanlam looked up, her face red. “He says the nearest repair point is two days down.”
    Rechan took in the herder: craggy face, a reflection of the worn rocks around them; a spring in his step that told her he wasn’t as old as he looked. “Good day, younger brother,” she said.
    â€œGood day, elder sister.” The herder nodded to her. “I was telling the younger aunt here—you have to go down.”
    Rechan shook her head. “Going down isn’t an option. We have to get to the plateaux.”
    The herder winced. “It’s been many years since city folks came this way.”
    â€œI know,” Rechan said, and waited for the herder to discourage her. She’d gotten used to that game. But, to her surprise, he didn’t.
    â€œExhalation?” he asked. “There are simpler ways.”
    â€œI know,” Rechan said. He’d mistaken Mau as her breath-sibling and not Akanlam’s—an easy mistake to make, for in her late stage of pregnancy, having a breath-sibling at hand would be crucial. “But it’s not exhalation. She’s not my breath-sibling; she’s hers .”
    The herder looked from her to Mau and then back to Akanlam. “How far along are you?” he asked.
    Too far along; that was the truth. She’d waited too long, hoping a solution would present itself; that she wouldn’t need to go back into the mountains. A mistake; hope had never gotten her anywhere. “Eight months and a half,” Rechan said, and heard the herder’s sharp intake of breath. “My breath-sibling is in the mountains.” Which was . . . true, in a way.
    The herder grimaced again, and looked at the bulge of her belly. “I can radio the nearest village,” he said, finally. “They might have an aircar, or something you can borrow, provided you return it.”
    Rechan nodded, forcing her lips upwards into a smile. “Perfect. Thank you, younger brother.”

    The village didn’t have an aircar, or a cart, or any contrivance Rechan could have used. They did have mules and goats, but in her advanced state of pregnancy she dared not risk a ride on an animal. So they radioed the next village, which promised to send their only aircar. Rechan thanked them, and hunkered with Akanlam down in the kitchen to help with the communal cooking. There was a wedding feast that night, and the community would need the