The Doll Ladies
The air inside the airlock actually smells terrific, at first, like the fragrance counter at a fancy department store, but it’s only the chemicals, which our work contracts firmly insist don’t hurt us. Plus we have good insurance. Every morning I breathe it in, then my nose forgets it once I’m at about minute seven of the ten minute process. The nasal passages have had it for another day.
The valve opens onto a vast, barn-like structure, crowded with noise and movement, where the warm, moist atmosphere would be definitely primate if only I could appreciate it. I trundle my cart along, saying good morning to the girls, but they’re more interested in the fruit and veggies I’m bringing. Today’s special treat: watermelon. They all love watermelon.
I have something special in store for my favourite old girl, whose name is Zamuka. When Zamuka was co-opted for Surro-Surround, she was over-socialized with humans. Confused, sad, angry. She’d been the special pet of a research assistant at a lab, a young woman who’d taught Zamuka sign language, then had been killed by her husband, who then killed their deformed baby and himself. A surprising amount of that kind of thing went on, back then, but the upshot was that Zamuka was left adrift, unable to communicate in the way she’d become reliant on. She had lost her best friend. Plus, she then had to endure the gruelling process of medical prep for her job here. Nothing she’d asked for.
I came in early to the program too, for lack of anything better going on. After my third miscarriage I had my tubes tied, to hell with it, even though I was only twenty-six. Despite the gloomy forecasts, perhaps I should have clung to hope. A lot of people were trying the hope gambit. Others, more pragmatic or more wealthy, were availing themselves of the service offered here.
Had Carver stuck around, and we’d had the money, I might be on the other side of the airlock right now. Last I heard, Carver was still at the survivalist enclave he’d joined in ’39, somewhere near Sandpoint, Idaho. They aren’t big into communication up there.
So when Zamuka and I met we were both pretty shell-shocked. Took a while for us to gain a decent level of trust. But life goes on. We had jobs to do, and we became first immune to each others’ pain, then later friends, especially after she realized that I was trying to sign to her. Have you ever seen a great ape laugh? It’s hard not to join in. Anyhow, I’ve gotten better at signing over the years.
“Good morning Zam-zam!” When I call her Zam-zam she pretends to get mad at me. She turns her back, but after a few seconds she casts a coy little glance over her shoulder, sees me waving and smiling, and turns to waddle slowly up to the gate. She’s had time to recover from the anaesthetic, still a little bleary but looks okay. She gives me a smile, a fearsome thing when worn by a fifty-one-year-old gorilla, who outweighs me by at least seventy pounds.
Zamuka, among the first dozen or so gorillas brought in, was standard model. Younger apes have been engineered for faster functioning. They are naive and rather silly compared to Zamuka, as they’ve had no experiences other than in here. Some of them can sign a bit, but I know Zamuka holds them in disdain.
She signs Zamuka. No Zam-zam.
Yes, Zamuka. I talk and sign at the same time, because I think she likes to chat. Well, so do I. Erika loves you, I say and sign. Zamuka okay?
She nods, and signs Baby doll? Erika give baby doll?
She knows. She always knows. And she wants it more than she wants watermelon. I open the gate to her spacious cage and sidle in, pulling my cart along. She’s pooped in her usual corner, and has spent some time demolishing a cardboard box.
Yes, baby doll. The highlight of her restricted life.
She hoots softly, slapping the concrete floor with her big black hands, causing the scattered shreds of hay to flutter up and down.
I say, Surprise. Special baby doll today.
Zamuka sits back on her ample haunches, empty belly sagging. She’s too excited right now to sign, and eagerly watches me as I open the cart’s hatch and reach in.
And pull out a very sturdy and quite realistic doll. I had a hard time finding it, but you can eventually get anything online.
The hooting stops. This is unusual. Zamuka can be counted on, every time, to eagerly reach for the doll and clasp it to her hairy breast, but not today. I waggle it enticingly, and watch her face.
I can read her moods pretty well. She’s remarkably expressive and sophisticated once you get to know her. Right now she has the look of an upper class matron presented with a silver platter of dog turds. She is outraged. She is disgusted. She turns her back on me and shuffles to the farthest corner of her enclosure, crosses her arms and begins to sulk. I can practically feel the rays of righteous indignation shooting from her whole body.
What have I done wrong? The doll is different, yes. But not really so very different from the array of dolls Zamuka has earned over her years of service. Cute face, soft body, big eyes. I walk slowly toward her, murmuring apologies. Baby doll no good?
She ignores me steadfastly. Yeah, I get it. All her previous babies were human, and all the dolls she got when her human newborns were taken away look like humans. This one looks like a gorilla baby, dark brown and furry. It was really pretty adorable. I liked it, and I’d thought she would take to it immediately. My bright idea.
Suddenly she reaches out a long black arm and slaps the doll out of my hand. Warily, I hold my arms out for a hug. Zamuka’s a hugger. But she turns away, grabs her sturdy canvas hammock, rips it out of its metal hooks and throws it at me. At this point I should exit her enclosure and report her behaviour to my bosses. But she’s been terribly disappointed, and she’s hurting. I can’t leave now.
After a minute of listening to me croon apologies, she cradles the very first doll she got to her chest and begins to rock back and forth. It’s barely recognizable as a blue-eyed blonde infant, lips pursed as if for a kiss or a bottle. It’s the one Carver and I bought for our baby when we first learned we were pregnant with a girl. Stupid. Didn’t we know the rest of the world’s troubles applied to us too? We soon found that Kuru was serious about what it was doing to our unborn child. The next tries were worse. I’d had to get that doll out of my house. Carver left shortly thereafter.
Now that stupid doll, and all her other dolls, are well-cuddled, licked and sniffed. They all look pretty bad by now, but Zamuka will not part with them. Most of the surrogates are the same: they love their pretend babies.
Sorry Zamuka. Erika very sorry. Baby doll no good.
I turn and leave, biting my lip. This was supposed to have been a day of celebration for her, and for me too. Though she doesn’t know it, she bore a child of her own kind less than eight hours ago. And now I realize that if she did know, she’d be horrified. I continue my rounds, pondering. So, really not much of a celebration today. She’d never hold or nurse that gorilla child, for it was already in prep for its new job, which would start as soon as possible. Zamuka’s baby girl was destined for a life in a cage bearing human children.
The Price of Memory
Kat’s ears were wrapped around his head so tightly that it looked like a fist. He was a small, terrified, purple ball, just out of my reach. Reason: my hands were bound together by a crotchety old cord that hissed angrily as I tried to stretch my body toward Kat. To add insult to injury, there was an ordinary metal—metal—chain attaching my ankle to a wall. A cold stone wall, doing its bit to form a neat cube of incarceration.
The whole situation was extremely embarrassing.
“Kat! Wake up!” My troucat had retreated to an instinctive lock-down state, just when I needed his help, drat it. I would have gnawed through the cord but for three things: it would taste awful, it would melt my teeth, and I’d get in trouble with my Clan. No unauthorized tampering with bios.
A loop of electrical reactant high overhead emitted fitful yellow light, enough to reveal seeping walls and a noxious hole in the floor, meant for necessary bodily functions. I shuddered.
How, by all the gods, had Kat and I ended up here?
I’m a Retriever, Hunter Clan Grey. Kat and I are partners, bio and human. Events in the immediate past of our missions get spooled out backwards, and I don’t remember them. Kat remembers everything, somewhere in his teeny round head. So, the misfortune or miscalculation that had got us here was unavailable to me… but I could deduce the gist: Surprised, grabbed, tossed into dungeon. At least I knew where I was: somewhere in the east quarter of Nagala City’s nether regions.
Retrievers are never given complete intel, in case of being caught just like this, but I did deduce that my quarry must be close.
One problem: I didn’t know what that quarry was, exactly. Kat did, but he was curled up and unresponsive.
Okay, one other problem: we were stuck in a cell.
So, I didn’t know what we were meant to Retrieve, but I did remember this: Revenbrook Karel lived in Nagala City. It was his uncle Quel’s stronghold, after all. Ah, Rev… I thought I’d got him out of my system long ago.
Revenbrook Karel, now Chief Circ-haut of Nagala City, had been childhood playmate, friend and more, until I’d been farmed out to Clan Grey after my parents’ bones were found on Dragon-tail Ridge. Rev’s uncle Quel had been the one to persuade the family that Clan life was better for me than moping around House Karel, weeping for my ruined childhood. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, to everyone but me.
Soon Rev would find out I was here. Then what?
The rhythmic thud of a pump sounded from somewhere below, accompanied by random groans and wheezes, whether animal, bio or mechanical I couldn’t tell. The exhaust fumes indicated mechanical. Some newfangled contraption that someone had thought was a good idea. How stupid could people be? Wasn’t it obvious that bios were on this world for a reason, and that reason was to do the work? Or in some cases, to become a partner in crime… I thought I saw Kat twitch a little, but then he subsided with a tiny, wheezing sigh.
My slide into self-pity was interrupted by metal rasping against metal. With a shriek of hinges the cell door swung wide. Harsh artificial light spilled in… and there he was.
Revenbrook Karel, pretty much filling the doorway.
“About time,” I snapped, wiping my eyes.
He looked windblown, as if he’d been riding recently. The sweaty tang of cheval came with him, and a welcome whiff of fresh, cool air.
“Mag Grey-Hunter, as I live and breathe,” he drawled, giving me the once-over. “Just as pretty as ever.”
My name was Magdalena, drat it, not the diminutive Mag. “Well, Rev, I see you’ve risen in the ranks. Good for you.”
His face was thinner than I remembered, the downy whiskers of youth replaced by bristly three-day stubble. Dark blond to match his hair. His body had firmed up since I’d last seen him.
He crouched beside me. “You were found near my archive vaults. Explain.”
“Archive vaults? I don’t understand.”
That got me a harsh shaking.
“It’s my job,” I whined. “I’m a Retriever, in case you hadn’t noticed my troucat.”
“Oh, I noticed him. He will be squeezed dry when I get around to it. But, to save time, Magdalena, why don’t you tell me what you were sent to steal?”
“It’s not stealing, it’s Retrieving.” I tried a seductive shimmy to distract him.
“Stop that. You really don’t know what you’re doing. Tell me what you came here for.”
“Haven’t a clue.”
This time my head snapped back and my teeth clacked together. “You know how this works, don’t you?” I yelled. “My orders are inaccessible!”
What had I ever seen in him? Jerk. He dropped me and looked contemplatively at Kat.
Troucats aren’t actually felines, who originated, like us, on Ancient Earth. They’re bios—neither animal, vegetable nor mineral. Similarity of size, flexibility and furry coat makes troucats vaguely resemble cats, but there it ends. Mine, whom I had named Kat in a brilliant stroke of creativity, was a delicate shade of lavender shading to purple, and had legs jointed in four places, making him extraordinarily bendy. His strong, prehensile tail was a tapering length of dark purple.
His feet were coated in tiny glass-like beads, reflective in certain lights. His big, leathery, flexible ears, which he used both to gather information and to protect his ganglia-node—as close as a troucat got to a brain—were purple too, fringed delicately with long wisps of silky cream tendrils.
All in all, Kat was a damn fine accessory. I was proud to be his human. Right now, he was completely useless either as partner or fashion statement.
Rev extended a hand as if to stroke Kat. “Hey! No touching!” I struggled, the cord around my wrists hissed angrily, and Rev went ahead and stroked anyway. Damn him!
He stood up and said, “Don’t go anywhere.”
“Ha, ha.”
He smirked and sauntered out.
As soon as the door clanged shut, Kat came awake, sprang for me and clamped himself to my head. He was panting, and the pinpricks of his little claws dug into my scalp.
A flood of impressions shot from his consciousness into mine, like a flurry of torn and curling silver nitrate exposures. I picked up something… a big and scary thing hovering at the edge of his primitive reasoning. No idea if it was actually a physical item, or just a ball of fear in Kat’s mind. Whatever, it was our mission.
Oh, joy.
He burrowed under my chin, pushing hard with his head as if he meant to climb right into my heart. He lived there already.
The far-off pump stopped, and the cell echoed with silence, except for intermittent mechanical groans. Was this whole awful place empty, but for Kat and me?
By all the Terran gods, how were we going to get out of here?
Intersection
I didn’t know I’d meet the most important person in my life today. And it wasn’t technically a person.
I was squatting on the ground, knees popping, back complaining. Shut up, old-man body—this is your job. Such as it is, now. Looking at something I knew was impossible.
Two corpses, lying before me like tossed rags, dusty and wind-twitched under the hot grey sky. It was the newcomers, a couple who’d seemed sensible and prepared when I’d met them and logged them into Town. They’d managed to get themselves dead in less than a week.
Alik crouched on the sand beside me to poke at one of the two shallow heaps.
“It’s Sperling and Kim, Doc.”
“Yeah.” Alik and I both knew how odd this was.
And that’s why I’d gone out on a limb and hired a Recorder, once I’d remembered there was one on Thirteen, in the possession of the TunXi Mining Consortium. We were waiting for it to arrive at the scene.
With a gloved finger Alik lifted the edge of Shaw Sperling’s thin yellow shirt to reveal parchment skin hugging dry, stringy musculature. A small fluttering of mouse-brown hair on the skull. Beside Sperling, his partner Wendy Kim, face up, her teeth bared in a sandy grin. A tote bag lay beside her, trapped within her hard-curled fingers. A gust of wind suddenly rippled her long hair out like a torn white flag. Had they surrendered to something evil? Or had they just been reckless and ignorant?
Alik stood, stripping off his gloves. “What were they doing way out here?”
“A very good question.”
Jan Klein from the Port Authority rolled up just then, the Recorder with him. Both hopped out onto the sand. Jan had an idea of my limitations, those imposed by rehab, but he didn’t blab them around.
He hauled two white body bags out of the roller while the Recorder strode close with barely a glance at Alik and me, and bent like a raptor over its prey. Alik gawked unashamedly. I stood up—more pops—and watched it.
Clad in a skin-tight grey bodysuit, it hovered over the corpses, slender and supple as a newt, mouth wide open and arms outstretched as if it were about to pounce upon the dead bodies. Gathering air and dust and everything contained within air and dust. Recorders were an amalgam of human, animal and machine, and this one seemed to be trying to vanish into sexlessness. I’d seen a couple of them before, years ago, skewing male human. They didn’t have to be pointed out once you knew they existed.
Was there a slight self-consciousness in it, a morsel of pride? I’m not a slave. I see this and think: Well you probably are. Its nose was long, the nostrils wide and flared. It had fingers but no nails; they’d been designed away in favour of sensory folds like magnified fingerprints. I don’t know why, but I saw it as female.
Its large, limpid brown eyes were the wettest things around here. Those eyes could see with detail and in wavelengths unavailable to we normal folk. It was beautiful in its own weird way, and I had a hard time taking my eyes off her. It.
On Ceres Station, I’d had a partner. I’d had love, until I broke love’s promise. And I’d had an atmosphere full of tattle-tales to aid me in my work. The air and dust spoke directly to me, sharing the secret information about illness and death that they’d gleaned. Here I had only the basics, plus my brain. And a Recorder.
“They were exploring, maybe,” Alik said, looking at the fluttering piles. “Got caught in a sandstorm? Is that what you’re thinking, Doctor Kay?”
“I have no idea what to think.”
“So is Port getting involved?”
“Hashim has that accident at Deep Two. We’ll get this.”
We would get this because I wanted it. It was too odd to let go.
Dust and heat shimmers made the whole operation look as if it were long ago and far away. In maybe fifteen minutes the Recorder had what it needed. It pulled its protective gloves back on while Jan stuffed the bagged bodies onto the roller he and the Recorder had come in on.
That meant the Recorder had to ride with us now. It was the last on board, and as it slid into the seat next to me it looked directly into my eyes. Yeah, it’s okay to think of her as female.
That look turned my preconceptions upside down. I hadn’t thought her sort was interested in live humans, or anything that didn’t mean profit for their owners. But those eyes, soft brown under a fringe of carelessly cropped black hair, reminded me of the eyes of a dog my ex had once owned. Curious, innocent. That animal softness of regard.
Human? Animal? Machine? None of the above?
I know my sense of allegiance is faulty. In my past I’ve been seduced by beauty, style, gloriously splashy wealth. A soft look in someone’s eyes. I know it about myself, and I’ve worked hard to kill it.
We all trundled toward town. Jan with his bagged bodies to the sterile, brutally air-conditioned medical/mortuary/examination facility next to Customs and Immigration, Alik and me to the medical office suite above Social Services, which always smelled like garlic from the restaurant next door. The Recorder back to her owners.
© 2024 Sally McBride
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