Tegan swore she’d have to be two people to keep up with Marlo, so she became two people, and shortly thereafter became the first person in history to lose custody to her clone. Which had benefits: the alternative was dropping out. Twenty with a five-year-old. Doesn’t take a math degree.
“You’re late,” says Tegan2, wreathed in kitchen smells (Tegan can’t cook a Hot Pocket).
“Sorry,” Tegan mutters.
“Get your backpack, sweetie!” Marlo comes running.
Tegan2‘s got crow’s feet and gray hair: fraying telomeres. She won’t see thirty. Tegan takes Marlo’s hand and turns away, eyes filling, hating herselves.
Wednesday, September 6, 2006
Rombach7 is blind and he can’t sit for long without pain, so he paces close enough for his whiskers to brush the Lexan plate. Rilke meets generation loss. Visitors can’t hear it, but he’s actually a mutant–he purrs.
The zoo’s exchange chief is in negotiations with Bombay for a breeding pair of lions from a much more successful pool, once the habitat’s freed up. 7’s the last splice from the original Rombach stock, and his caretakers don’t consider him viable for stud, much less a remaster. No more Rombachs.
The gift shop plushies, now, those they can sell forever.
Thursday, September 7, 2006
Tegan’s born a twin while her father Amory, old-fashioned, paces in the hall; neither of them will ever see baby Tessa, whom the doctors quickly hide behind curtains and soft words. Elspeth’s got sweat in her eyes, so she only sees her daughter’s harlequin smile for a second. She should be glad, she thinks, that one of them lived.
Later, Elspeth and Amory reach into the incubator through plastic bags. They’ve already agreed never to tell her about the miscarriage, but Elspeth makes a silent promise when Tegan squeezes her finger.
Someday, she says. Somehow we’ll get your sister back.
Friday, September 8, 2006
Through the bluffs now, they stow pitons and ropes and bury those bags under a red marker. It doesn’t have to be a big one. There’s no need to change out the rest of their gear: the silver clothes that kept them warm in the shadow passes will cool them on the next leg of the trek.
There is a brief time, in evenings, when the sun shoots red and orange beams up at the soles of their feet. Telemachus holds out his water bottle and thinks of blood. There will be no rain, no oases in this desert of cloud.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
The ghost ship roams the Sargasso Sea like a black wolf. A hundred-foot-tall, floating, translucent, ship-shaped black wolf.
The ghost ship meets a fish. “Whoo!” it says.
“Sorry,” says the fish, “fish aren’t scared of ghosts.”
“But I’m a black wolf!” says the ghost ship.
The fish shrugs. It doesn’t know what a wolf is.
“A white shark, I mean,” says the ghost ship weakly.
But the fish has already left. The ghost ship mopes over to Cochran the sailor, who is clinging to some driftwood.
“Saved!” gasps Cochran.
“Not quite,” says the ghost ship, and eats him.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Once the world was dry. All the water was in the heavens of the bird-gods. One god, Aquipher, saw us scraping the dirt and thought: they are poor. I will give them the heavens.
He took his spear and pierced the belly of the sky, and we danced in the rain. The heavens emptied. The bird-gods raged.
They roared thunder and struck Aquipher with lightning. His feathers burnt away; his body charred. He hid from the sky beneath the earth, but his lightning-wounds would not heal.
At night, when he leaves his cave, you may hear him screaming.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Hugh sings about cruel women as the Kia zips toward the barrier at fifty, sixty, sixty-five. He’s got Wild Turkey triple vision, so it’s a good thing he’s not steering–he’d probably miss it.
Car and barrier introduce themselves. The airbag deploys with exactly the flawed but rakish angle they discovered last week; Hugh’s head dislocates the driver’s window, and his right shoulder dislocates itself.
“Okay!” shouts the lady in the white coat as they rush toward the steaming wreck, clipboards flapping. “Get photos, get x-rays, measure blood loss stat!”
“Begher huhrry,” says Hugh, whose jaw is already healing.
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Sky Harbor has no Terminal One, so you don’t have to go through security to enter it, since the sidewalks won’t take you there. There’s nothing to keep those without tickets from standing near the gate. No planes are boarding passengers in Zone A. She can’t have packed or sold her sofa; he won’t need to find someone to take over their lease. She can’t touch his chin with her thumb or tuck his hair into place. He can’t blot his eyes with his sleeve.
Sky Harbor has no Terminal One, so they can’t possibly be standing in it, saying goodbye.
Monday, September 25, 2006
She knows everyone in the world, and these are their names:
- The Magician
- The Popess
- Strength and her friend Temperance
- Star
- Death
- The Knight
- The King
- The Queen of Swords
And herself, of course, the Page. So when she meets the man in the worn blue coat she doesn’t know what to call him.
“I’m the Emperor, my child,” he says. “Emperor Norton the First. Not Emperor here, of course, just a state visit, a diplomatic consort mission envoy. Where am I?”
“The world,” says the Page uneasily.
“Ah,” he says, “but what do you call it?”
She calls it Summersend.
Friday, September 29, 2006