I didn’t buy it at first, but when daylight arrived, Rey went back up the ladder and opened the vent’s screen. He reached inside and plucked one of them off its roost. When he brought it back down, I was startled to see just how small it was, bodily. With the wings all folded up, it was mouse-size. A baby mouse.
“See that chipmunk stripe down its back?” Rey said. “That’s not a natural species. It’s a nu-bat. They’re gene-gineered, like the house. They’ve had some human alleles added so they’re resistant to white-nose fungus, and rabies too. Replacements for what’s gone extinct.”
“But … but … what is it doing here?”
He grinned. “My guess is, they found a nice, warm, comfy cave in the attic that literally smells like them, like home. You have a whole colony of them,” Rey told me. “It’s easy to fix, though. All you need is screens with a smaller mesh size.”
I nodded, thinking dire thoughts about bat guano. No wonder my sinuses felt congested so much of the time, in spite of my living way up here.
Then revelation dawned.
“How ‘human’ are they?” I asked Rey. “Could they catch other viruses? Like, say, chicken pox?”
The company rep tried to pooh-pooh the notion, but Rey sent in bat samples, using a sterilized trap/container they lowered to us the same way as the calamine lotion. A couple days later, there was no doubt. My bats had the chicken pox, all right. And nu-bats were clearly the vector that had spread it throughout almost all of the Bi’Omes in northern California. That led to the mass eviction of nu-bats by means of a saline sinus wash and some speedy replacement of natural filters with metal jobs, at least until they could tweak the Bi’Omes’ phenotypes. The nu-bats’ too, for all I know.
In another week’s time, the rash faded away, healing almost as rapidly as it had bloomed. I reveled in my relief from both itching and sinus congestion. My major concern by then was the fast-approaching end of our quarantine.
Rey couldn’t wait for a chance at a steak dinner. I couldn’t quite make myself say farewell. When the day came, though, he seemed reluctant to go.
“It’s been … interesting,” he told me. “I never imagined …,” he started to say, but then stopped, blushing so furiously, his mandala’s colors began to fade in comparison.
“Haven’t you ever done it au naturel?” I asked gently.
He frowned. Slowly, thoughtfully, he said, “I got my first piercing when I was twelve. My first implant. …” He shut himself off, then said, simply, “No.”
So I gave him a rueful smile. “You know those things were only meant to help people when they have problems. Or when they want to synchronize things exactly. For a treat? But two normal, wholly organic and natural people don’t need enhancement. They don’t really need anything but each other, and. …”
My petite sermon was cut short by Rey’s lips attaching themselves to my earlobe. When we came back up for air, an hour later, he told me, “You shouldn’t be so alone up here.”
All I could do was shrug.
“What about online support groups?” Rey asked.
I shrugged again. “Who needs ’em? What? Do they make it all better? Make everything go away? Make things like they were before?”
“No, but—”
“Whining about it is useless,” I blurted, unable to shut off the tap once the seal was cracked. “I’ve dealt with it, okay? I’ve got my Bi’Ome. I’ve rebuilt my life. Now I’ve got to get on with it. I’ve just got to go on. …”
I fell silent, but not from exhaustion. I was suddenly, acutely aware of how empty my Bi’Ome was. There were no bowling trophies, no Niagara Falls souvenirs, no clutter of toys. No family photos hung from my soft pink walls. Well, why look at what you can’t have? I demanded, but Self wasn’t fooled for a moment. The walls, and the rooms, and the shelves were all empty of everything I’d walked away from.
To save yourself, I told me sharply.
Yeah, right, Self answered. You’re saving yourself … for what?
Rey stroked my hair. “Do you … d’you think you’d mind a visitor? Y’know, prob’ly just on weekends or holidays. I couldn’t—”
I answered him with a kiss. By the time all new business was concluded, I’d offered to build him a bath house, outside the Bi’Ome, with heaters and hot water, towels and slippers, and pure cotton clothes he could wear in the house. If he wanted to wear anything at all.
He laughed. “I think I’d better take this one step at a time.”
I couldn’t agree more, though I didn’t say so. All choked up, I simply clung to him. Finally, though, we sealed the deal with one last lingering smooch. Then I had to let him go. It should have been a simple matter of opening my front door. But it wasn’t. The doorknob fought back.
So I tried again. No go.
I took a step backward, and finally noticed the bright salmon-pink flush adorning the wall. An odd distortion on either side of the door jamb made the whole wall panel curve outward. Bulge, in fact.
Cautiously, I reached out and traced the curve on the right side with my fingertips. Hot. Fever-hot. Sore, too. I could feel it, an unpleasant ache/tickle on either side of my own throat.
Oh, no.
I turned and stared at Reynard.
He queried the smartnet. Didn’t take long. A good thing, since I’d just about quit breathing under the onslaught of sympathy symptoms.
He shook his head, and gave me this sad, sheepish sort of a smile. “I, uh … I can’t be sure, but it looks like the house might—”
“What?” I demanded. “What is it this time?”
Rey waved at the swollen door glands. He shrugged helplessly. “Mumps.”
Oh my god!
For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I’ll Not Be Back Again
MICHAEL SWANWICK
Michael Swanwick (www.michaelswanwick.com) lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His seventh novel, The Dragons of Babel (2008), was a sequel to his fantasy novel The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (1993). His eighth novel, Dancing with Bears: The Postutopian Adventures of Darger & Surplus, was published in 2011. His eighth fiction collection, The Best of Michael Swanwick, appeared in 2008—there are seven previous story collections, and he continues to publish several stories each year, often more than one good enough to be reprinted in Year’s Best volumes. In other words, he’s still a pretty hot writer, and one of the finest conscious craftsmen in genre fiction today.
“For I Have Lain Me Down on the Stone of Loneliness and I’ll Not Be Back Again” was published in Asimov’s. The protagonist is a young Irish American eager to find his future in space, which alien conquerors have made possible. He’s visiting Ireland to take a last look at his world. And he is unknowingly in danger of being trapped by the past, politics and sentiment and all.
Ich am of Irlaunde,And of the holy londeOf Irlande.Gode sire, pray ich the,For of saynte chairitéCome ant daunce with meIn Irlaunde.
The bullet scars were still visible on the pillars of the General Post Office in Dublin, almost two centuries after the 1916 uprising. That moved me more than I had expected. But what moved me even more was standing at the exact same spot, not two blocks away, where my great-great-grandfather saw Gerry Adams strolling down O’Connell Street on Easter morning of ’96, the eightieth anniversary of that event, returning from a political rally with a single bodyguard to one side of him and a local politico to the other. It gave me a direct and simple connection to the tangled history of that tragic land.
I never knew my great-great-grandfather, but my grandfather told me that story once and I’ve never forgotten it, though my grandfather died when I was still a boy. If I squeeze my eyes tight shut, I can see his face, liquid and wavy as if glimpsed through candle flames, as he lay dying under a great feather comforter in his New York City railroad flat, his smile weak and his hair forming a halo around him as white as a dandelion waiting for the wind to purse its lips and blow.