I suppose it was Shàu’s departure led me finally to accept the suit of my husband and his husband and the husband’s wives and their other husbands. I did not care to live alone—if not perpetually in so much company. (I kept my city bungalow. It is more convenient to work, for my husband as well as myself.) In some ways my Sjolussene husband has gone less native than I. He speaks the language stiffly, courteously acknowledges rather than honors the gods and demons of the place, turns up his nose at many delicacies. He will not be seen in public wearing local costume, better suited to the sultry climate than the suits he insists on, although he blushes and balks when I bait him to don his old uniform complete with medal. (His cheeks have not been downy for years but I expect he would have no difficulty fitting into the fawn breeches and azure tunic of younger days.) He will not join me when I retreat from children and wives and twittering husbands to the still room to argue with my charred Kandadal. Yet he bought into Avengi marital customs much sooner than I, and Shàu urged me to accept his proposal the first time it was made. In the society of the imperial colony we continue an entertaining scandal.
It seems I am content here, with my dog at my feet on the verandah of the country house. I hear the happy cries of the children—I am not obliged to make or care for them, their mothers my wives only in a contractual sense—playing with Gad’s children and grandchildren. I know my husband and his husband and our husband will return soon from town. Meanwhile Gad and I will go to visit the Kandadal and his lonely companion far from home, the little bronze Jù.
There are wild tigers in the forest here, as there have not been in the Celestial Realm for centuries. I have not seen them, only their tracks and spoor.
Carouseling
Rich Larson
Ostap is putting the finishing touches on a cartoon tardigrade when Alyce calls him. The render is blown up to the size of a sumo, its butcher-paper skin creased and wrinkled around chubby tendril-tipped legs, its eyeless head dominated by a lamprey mouth. He’ll need to make it less terrifying before he sends it to the art department.
He shrinks it away and answers the call. “Hujambo.”
“Hujambo, yourself, handsome,” Alyce says. “You know you don’t have to learn Swahili before you come visit, right? There’s English pretty much everywhere. And babeltech for everywhere else.”
“Sawa,” Ostap says, using up another third of his Swahili vocabulary. “How was the lab today? The test run?”
“Nothing blew up. So, good.” Alyce’s cam comes on, filling half his goggles. Her dark hair is tied back and she’s wearing the pajamas with the miniature sheep on them. “Tomorrow’s a go.”
Ostap sees the familiar stucco wall of her bedroom behind her. There’s a slice of window that he knows overlooks Nyali Beach. He’s combed over the maps of her neighborhood a dozen times since she moved to Mombasa, trying to imagine her in every street view.
The lab is farther inland, outside the city, and lab is a small word for a super-facility with miles of machinery that make the old Hadron Collider look like a toy. Alyce has tried to explain to him what exactly goes on there, has tried to explain about the Slip, but Ostap was never much for formulas and when he let his eyes glaze over and drool dribble from the corner of his mouth he was only half joking.
“Time to shatter the rules of quantum mechanics?” Ostap asks.
“Yeah. Actually.” She pauses, her mouth set in a way Ostap knows is between worry and anticipation. “If this works, it’ll make history.”
“I can’t wait,” Ostap says. “I love it when you make history.” Her forehead is still creased; he tries to elicit her smile: “Do you worry about your ego expanding to dangerous sizes once you’re famous?”
“Does the universe worry about its constantly-expanding borders?” Alyce asks back, in a grandiose voice, and when Ostap laughs she finally does grin. “How about you? What are you working on today?”
When she asks she always makes it seem as if freelance art is just as important as mind-bending physics.
From the other half of his goggles, Ostap sends her the render plus an animation to make the tardigrade strut in place, its pudgy body wobbling slightly with every step.
“Still designing for that kid’s show,” he says. “This is Terry the Tardigrade, who teaches kids to not be…” He trails off, winding his hand through the air.
Alyce rolls her eyes upward in concentration. “Microscopic.”
“Tardy,” Ostap says. “Teaches them to not be tardy. I’m helping raise good little meat drones.”
Alyce clicks her tongue. “Art School Ostap would be so ashamed.”
“Yes,” Ostap agrees. “But Art School Ostap was sort of a prick.” He revolves the render again. “I’m going to change the mouth. Make it smilier. It’s supposed to look friendly.”
“I thought it was like, be on time or Terry the Tardigrade will eat you?”
“I’ll change the mouth.”
Alyce laughs, her loud laugh that seems too big for her body, and for a moment Ostap wants to ask her then and there. But it wouldn’t be fair. Not on the eve of the test. He’ll ask her in Mombasa.
“Dance with me?” he says instead.
“Yes,” she says. “Yes. Definitely. Let me grab the linkwear.” She disappears off-screen and Ostap hears her rummaging. He minimizes her in his goggles and retrieves a padded shirt and gloves from their hook on the wall.
The linkwear shirt is all smartfabric, kinetic battery, feedback pads and sensors, linked wirelessly to its twin an ocean away. Small blue status lights wink on as he slides it over his head. Gloves next, tickling his palms with phantom pressure. Then he goes to the center of his bare apartment, stands in the footprints he marked with duct tape, and waits for Alyce to sync up.
Suddenly he can feel her in his arms, feel her chest pushed against his chest and her left arm draped perfectly over his right shoulder and her right hand clasped loose in his left. The familiar shape of her body trips some wire deep in his brain; for a second he thinks he can smell her citrus shampoo.
“Pick a song,” he says.
“Just a second. Here.”
The first notes of the melody bloom in his earbuds. It’s an old favorite, a slow kizomba song remixed by a Swiss-Angolan artist they were obsessed with a year ago. He sinks his hip into the piano and feels Alyce sink with him. The percussion kicks in, soft but steady, thumping in his earbuds like an electronic heartbeat.
He slides forward, one, two, marca, and they dance. He can’t feel the brush of her legs against his legs, but Alyce says that’s better, in a way; it makes him lead with his frame instead of cheating with little nudges to her thighs. He can’t feel her cheek against his cheek. But he can feel the warmth and pressure of her body, the subtle shifts of her weight, and when he closes his eyes it’s close enough.
Ostap glides around his empty apartment and guides her around hers, breaking and connecting, slowing and accelerating with the flow of the music. By now the exact dimensions of her room are cemented in his head and he doesn’t have to worry about banging her into her wall or nightstand. They dance another song, and another, then break so Alyce can get a drink of water from her fridge, then dance one final song and end with a dramatic dip two beats too early, which sets them both laughing.