Blackfish City(62)
You scoff. You say: the idea is hopeless fantasy. But I have found a way. Here, alone, locked up, head shaved and back bowed, I have already begun to tip the scales.
Stories are where we find ourselves, where we find the others who are like us. Gather enough stories and soon you’re not alone; you are an army.
Ankit
She seemed huge, sitting at Ankit’s table, bigger than any human had any business being. The whole apartment seemed dwarfed by Masaaraq, transformed.
It wasn’t a home anymore, wasn’t the safe rigid rectangle of civilized grid city living. It was an igloo, a temple, a cave, something sacred and scary. The lights were out, the windows ionized. Three candles stood on the table between them. Scented: sage and lavender and something called “cinnabun,” the only kind of candles Ankit could find, outrageously expensive. She’d shopped dutifully, doing the best she could to approximate the things Masaaraq had asked for. No nag champa incense, so sandalwood smoke curled around them. No whale blubber, so strips of raw seal on the table.
“Are you ready?”
Ankit nodded.
“The entire community would be present for this, before. At the winter solstice, we would bond all the children who had reached the age of weaving.”
“Weaving?”
Masaaraq took out a syringe, prepped Ankit’s arm. “When they learned the skill of weaving. Baskets or textiles. Some got it very young, three or four. Others, not until they were eight, ten. Your brother was a weaving prodigy.”
“Is there a test I should pass?”
“There is,” Masaaraq said. “But I’m not qualified to administer it. Nor, technically, am I allowed to be doing any of this.”
Nevertheless, she got a vein on the first try, and drew out enough blood to fill a small tube.
“I guess there’s not too many nanobonded shamans around these days.”
“No,” Masaaraq said. She held up a small jagged pebble. “This is made up of nanites, but primordial ones—undifferentiated. Coming into contact with other nanites, they will replicate their data and characteristics. It’s treated with a polymerizing agent that will cause other nanites to crystallize around it.” She dropped the pebble into the tube, put a stopper on, and handed it to Ankit. “Shake this. Ordinarily there would be a dance, several hours long, but vigorous shaking for five to ten minutes should technically do the job.”
Ankit pressed it between her palms. Felt its warmth—her warmth, her blood, her body, this thing she’d carried inside herself her whole life without knowing. This potential she’d always had. “Tell me about her,” she said as she started to shake. “My mother. Ora.”
Masaaraq whispered the name with her, then said:
“I was the grounded one. She was always a little bit removed, like none of our problems really hurt her. When we were hungry, when we were scared, when we were on the run, she never complained. Sometimes it was infuriating, like she wasn’t taking things seriously, like she was naive or childish or unprepared for the world we lived in. After we had kids, I saw what a sound survival strategy it was. I was always afraid. Always anxious. Always angry. You kids picked up on that and echoed it. Ora kept you happy, kept your heads in the clouds.”
“What was she bonded to?”
“A bird. A black-chested buzzard eagle. A most unpleasant thing, really, but back then we didn’t mirror our animals’ mind-sets so easily. We had the entire community to keep us stable, our nanites closely related enough that we were all low-grade empaths, smoothing out the edges of each other’s bad moods.”
“Whereas now—”
“Now, me and Atkonartok are all we have. It’s so different. I can’t describe it. I am what she is, she is what I am. I am an animal. We are an animal. It’s so frightening, and at the same time so exhilarating.”
Masaaraq took the tube out of Ankit’s hand, unstoppered it, poured the contents out over the strips of seal. The pebble now sported a smooth blue sheen where it had been jagged and gray. My nanites, Ankit thought. Masaaraq picked it up with bone chopsticks, densely patterned with tiny intricate shapes. “Now for your new sister.”
Ankit took the blanket off the cage. The blue-striped monkey blinked, looked around, yawned to show sharp eyeteeth. Ankit had only needed to wait a half hour from the time she opened her window and put six strings of seal jerky out for her, and when she’d come, and Ankit had put the food into a cage, she’d gone willingly into it. Hadn’t screamed or seemed the least bit distressed when Ankit shut the door behind her. Had apparently gone right to sleep when Ankit covered the cage with a blanket. Did not look particularly frightened now to see these two humans eyeing her.
“She’s had a rough life, I bet,” Ankit said, “or maybe a super-easy one.” She wondered how much of the animal’s trauma would become her own. Maybe trauma was different for animals. Maybe the absence of sentience kept the past from causing them so much pain. She had so many questions but was afraid to ask them—for even here, in her dirty little apartment, lit only by candles, the air of the sacred was so strong that she could not bear to disturb it with petty words.
Masaaraq placed the nanite pebble into a small china bowl, then poured a few drops of clear liquid from a flask over it.
“This will start to deactivate the polymerization agent.”