She. I. We. Already I find it difficult to discern the boundary dividing our souls, and when Joe touches our cheek, Sarah’s undiluted joy is almost too painful for me. I could not bear it alone, but she stands here beside me, inside me, around me. Through her vulnerability, she teaches me compassion. Through my centuries of existence, I will gift her with knowledge.
So finally, we both will live, for as long as our body does. Who knows what happens after? The uncertainty terrifies me, but for this one peerless creation, I will dare everything. The ultimate risk for the ultimate illusion: for life itself.
Copyright © 2001 Beth Bernobich
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Beth Bernobich’s short stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Clean Sheets, Electric Wine, and the Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica. Her obsessions include coffee, curry, and writing about men (and women) without shirts. For more about her, see her Web site.
Other Cities #3 of 12: Ahavah
By Benjamin Rosenbaum
Third in a monthly series of excerpts from The Book of All Cities.
11/19/01
You can’t ride the rails for long without hearing about Ahavah. Sitting around a fire in an empty lot near the train yard, some old codger will start raving about the city, and the old arguments will start. It don’t exist, one guy will say. My brother lived there four years, another will retort. Where is it then? North of Nebraska. Eastern Louisiana. Montana. Mexico. Canada. Peru. The argument gets heated. Maybe there’s a fight.
Why all this ruckus about Ahavah? Free food there; free love, too. The mayor’s an ex-bum himself. The citizens welcome you and take you into their homes. There’s sailing and skeet shooting and dancing into the night.
Some of your fellow travelers don’t take Ahavah too seriously. Some others rant about it—the same old cranks obsessed with Lee Harvey Oswald’s trips to Cuba. Some figure there must be such a friendly town somewhere, even if you discount the stories of whores working for charity and a parliament of hobos. Just our luck nobody knows where!
But there are some—mostly young ones, loners, self-reliant, the kind who could succeed in the world if things were just a little bit different from how they are—who decide that, as they got nothing better to do, they’ll look for Ahavah. You might be one of those.
You might spend a while teasing those wild stories out of the older guys. Finding a library that won’t throw you out, cross-checking facts. Asking around.
Sooner or later you’ll find the network of those who look for Ahavah. You’ll start arranging to meet and trade tips. Leave messages at the mail drops. You’ll see the hard evidence some have gathered over the years. Meet some of the older guys who organize the others. They’ll assign you to some circuit: the Yukon, maybe. Get up there, look around as best you can. Get back to us.
Being homeless feels more and more like a cover story, a means to an end. Finding Ahavah stops being a solution to the problem of being a hobo. More and more, being a hobo is a way to help find Ahavah.
“When we find Ahavah,” you say to each other, drinking Gallo in an abandoned house near the Canadian border and waiting for a seeker to show up. Laughter, politics, dreaming.
Eventually you’re one of the old guys running the show, and as you get older you get less certain of your goal. You dispatch resources, look for new recruits, keep in touch with the networks abroad. You make sure those who need help get it. Sometimes there’s a party, maybe even with skeet shooting. More and more, you wonder if this is already Ahavah.
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Previous city (Ponge)
All published cities
Copyright © 2001 Benjamin Rosenbaum
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Benjamin Rosenbaum lives in Basel, Switzerland, with his wife and baby daughter, where in addition to scribbling fiction and poetry, he programs in Java (well) and plays rugby (not very well). He attended the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in 2001 (the Sarong-Wearing Clarion). His work has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Writer Online. His previous appearances in Strange Horizons can be found in our Archive. For more about him, see his Web site.
Money for Sorrow, Made Joy
By M. C. A. Hogarth
11/26/01
The houses of Het Ikoped were only a few days distant when Ledin, the caravan master, called us to the fire pit before supper. I arrived before the others and helped Ledin set up the stakes for the lanterns. Purple shadows stretched from our feet, for the twilight in summer came reluctantly and full of color. I liked the palette: orange sky, violet shadows, black hills in silhouette at the horizon’s edge. Here in the north, colors are cleaner, steadier.
With the lanterns casting yellowed light and the fire, new-built, casting orange, the two of us sat to await the others. I glanced at Ledin; its composure crafted a mask of its face, but its dark green eyes glittered. I knew then that this would be the night, and I grinned.
One by one the rest of the caravan joined us: sturdy eperu, neuters, the only sex of the Jokka that could withstand the grueling travel of a trade caravan. Last of all came little Thodi, our orphan found two circuits back.
Thodi wiggled around to sit by me, resting its slim head on my shoulder. I realized, bemused, that it had grown.
“Friends,” Ledin said, tufted ears canted forward, “you’ve known for a while that I had more planned for our venture than simple trade. Tonight, at last, I think we are ready for the plan.” It withdrew from its pouch a folded square of cloth; with great drama, Ledin opened it and displayed it for view—a map of the known continent, which when seen thus demonstrated just how little we Jokka knew of our land. “I want to explore the northwestern region.”
The others leaned forward, and the fire jumped to their eyes. I knew mine held a similar flame. Exploration? To see places not seen before? Feel perhaps a cooler breeze than the ones on the sandy soil beneath us now? To touch foot to places no Jokkad had ever walked? I had never heard of anyone taking up such a charter. Jokka did not travel.
“We are approaching Het Ikoped,” Ledin continued, placing the map on the ground and anchoring it with a few stones. “I propose this het be our base. We will buy supplies there for a year’s travel and go where we can before we have to turn back.”
“Why only a year?” someone asked.
My ears tilted backward. “Because we have only enough shell for a year’s supplies,” I offered. I saw Ledin nod. I was the only eperu in the caravan besides Ledin itself who had an interest in money, and so I helped with our finances. We were not a rich caravan, and supplies for a year, unless carefully chosen, would bankrupt us.
“Anyway, we will return in a year, take on cargo, and run the trade route for more shell before returning to resume exploring. I am hoping we will discover resources on the journey that will enable us to take fewer supplies on the next run, but we cannot make assumptions. We will be the first.” Ledin sat back, resting its slender hands on its knees. “What say you all?”
They hardly needed to answer: the hunger in their faces and the way they leaned almost into the fire said enough.
Ledin laughed. “Very well, then. Let’s make food and get back on the road!”
The eperu scattered, chattering amongst themselves … leaving me there with Ledin and Thodi.
“You well, little one?” I asked it, ears tilting toward it.
Thodi wrapped its arms around my waist, rubbed its chin on my shoulder. “I can hardly believe it, Ekanoi! Since I’ve been with the caravan, you’ve been taking me places I’ve never seen. But now to be taken places that no one has seen?” It shivered. “This is happiness!”
Ledin heard and chuckled. “It may be that Jokka have passed that way before, Thodi. Indeed, it may be that Jokka have touched foot and hand to every span of this continent. But if so, we haven’t heard of it. And everyone knows that Jokka do not—”
“—travel,” Thodi finished, and grinned. Its face had a fineness of feature reminiscent of a male, one which had prompted not a little conjecture among the others over what sex Thodi had originally been … and what sex Thodi would become. Its first puberty was probably several years past already. “But look at us! We travel!”
“Caravans trade,” I corrected. “Travel implies no reason for the journey. There are no idle journeys. Only caravans and trade.”
“So we trade. Still we move places.” Thodi played with the chain of striped brown pebbles and tarnished silver at my waist. “What will we bring back, ke Ledin? Will we make maps?”