Writers of the Future, Volume 30

  “That’s lovely, Sammy,” said the Baroni.

  “It is what she requested.”

  “What did you do after you buried her?” I asked.

  “I went to the barn.”

  “For how long?”

  “With Miss Emily dead, I had no need to stay in the house. I remained in the barn for many years, until my battery power ran out.”

  “Many years?” I repeated. “What the hell did you do there?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You just stood there?”

  “I just stood there.”

  “Doing nothing?”

  “That is correct.” He stared at me for a long moment, and I could have sworn he was studying me. Finally he spoke again. “I know that you intend to sell me.”

  “We’ll find you a family with another Miss Emily,” I said. If they’re the highest bidder.

  “I do not wish to serve another family. I wish to remain here.”

  “There’s nothing here,” I said. “The whole planet’s deserted.”

  “I promised my Miss Emily that I would never leave her.”

  “But she’s dead now,” I pointed out.

  “She put no conditions on her request. I put no conditions on my promise.”

  I looked from Sammy to the Baroni, and decided that this was going to take a couple of mechs—one to carry Sammy to the ship, and one to stop the Baroni from setting him free.

  “But if you will honor a single request, I will break my promise to her and come away with you.”

  Suddenly I felt like I was waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I hadn’t heard the first one yet.

  “What do you want, Sammy?”

  “I told you I did nothing in the barn. That was true. I was incapable of doing what I wanted to do.”

  “And what was that?”

  “I wanted to cry.”

  I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t it.

  “Robots don’t cry,” I said.

  “Robots can’t cry,” replied Sammy. “There is a difference.”

  “And that’s what you want?”

  “It is what I have wanted ever since my Miss Emily died.”

  “We rig you to cry, and you agree to come away with us?”

  “That is correct,” said Sammy.

  “Sammy,” I said, “you’ve got yourself a deal.”

  I contacted the ship, told it to feed Mech Three everything the medical library had on tears and tear ducts, and then send it over. It arrived about ten minutes later, deactivated the robot, and started fussing and fiddling. After about two hours it announced that its work was done, that Sammy now had tear ducts and had been supplied with a solution that could produce six hundred authentic saltwater tears from each eye.

  I had Mech Three show me how to activate Sammy, and then sent it back to the ship.

  “Have you ever heard of a robot wanting to cry?” I asked the Baroni.

  “No.”

  “Neither have I,” I said, vaguely disturbed.

  “He loved her.”

  I didn’t even argue this time. I was wondering which was worse, spending thirty years trying to be a normal human being and failing, or spending thirty years trying to cry and failing. None of the other stuff had gotten to me; Sammy was just doing what robots do. It was the thought of his trying so hard to do what robots couldn’t do that suddenly made me feel sorry for him. That in turn made me very irritable; ordinarily I don’t even feel sorry for Men, let alone machines.

  And what he wanted was such a simple thing compared to the grandiose ambitions of my own race. Once Men had wanted to cross the ocean; we crossed it. We’d wanted to fly; we flew. We wanted to reach the stars; we reached them. All Sammy wanted to do was cry over the loss of his Miss Emily. He’d waited half a millennium and had agreed to sell himself into bondage again, just for a few tears.

  It was a lousy trade.

  I reached out and activated him.

  “Is it done?” asked Sammy.

  “Right,” I said. “Go ahead and cry your eyes out.”

  Sammy stared straight ahead. “I can’t,” he said at last.

  “Think of Miss Emily,” I suggested. “Think of how much you miss her.”

  “I feel pain,” said Sammy. “But I cannot cry.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I am sure,” said Sammy. “I was guilty of having thoughts and longings above my station. Miss Emily used to say that tears come from the heart and the soul. I am a robot. I have no heart and no soul, so I cannot cry, even with the tear ducts you have given me. I am sorry to have wasted your time. A more complex model would have understood its limitations at the outset.” He paused, and then turned to me. “I will go with you now.”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  He immediately fell silent.

  “What is going on?” asked the Baroni.

  “You shut up too!” I snapped.

  I summoned Mechs Seven and Eight and had them dig Sammy a grave right next to his beloved Miss Emily. It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t even know her full name, that no one who chanced upon her headstone would ever know it. Then I decided that it didn’t really matter.

  Finally they were done, and it was time to deactivate him.

  “I would have kept my word,” said Sammy.

  “I know,” I said.

  “I am glad you did not force me to.”

  I walked him to the side of the grave. “This won’t be like your battery running down,” I said. “This time it’s forever.”

  “She was not afraid to die,” said Sammy. “Why should I be?”

  I pulled the plug and had Mechs Seven and Eight lower him into the ground. They started filling in the dirt while I went back to the ship to do one last thing. When they were finished I had Mech Seven carry my handiwork back to Sammy’s grave.

  “A tombstone for a robot?” asked the Baroni.

  “Why not?” I replied. “There are worse traits than honesty and loyalty.” I should know: I’ve stockpiled enough of them.

  “He truly moved you.”

  Seeing the man you could have been will do that to you, even if he’s all metal and silicone and prismatic eyes.

  “What does it say?” asked the Baroni as we finished planting the tombstone.

  I stood aside so he could read it:

  “That is very moving.”

  “It’s no big deal,” I said uncomfortably. “It’s just a tombstone.”

  “It is also inaccurate,” observed the Baroni.

  “He was a better man than I am.”

  “He was not a man at all.”

  “Screw you.”

  The Baroni doesn’t know what it means, but he knows it’s an insult, so he came right back at me like he always does. “You realize, of course, that you have buried our profit?”

  I wasn’t in the mood for his notion of wit. “Find out what he was worth, and I’ll pay you for your half,” I replied. “Complain about it again, and I’ll knock your alien teeth down your alien throat.”

  He stared at me. “I will never understand Men,” he said.

  All that happened twenty years ago. Of course the Baroni never asked for his half of the money, and I never offered it to him again. We’re still partners. Inertia, I suppose.

  I still think about Sammy from time to time. Not as much as I used to, but every now and then.

  I know there are preachers and ministers who would say he was just a machine, and to think of him otherwise is blasphemous, or at least wrong-headed, and maybe they’re right. Hell, I don’t even know if there’s a God at all—but if there is, I like to think He’s the God of all us Australopithicines.

  Including Sammy.

  The Shaadi Exile

  written by


  Amanda Forrest

  illustrated by

  Vincent-Michael Coviello

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Amanda Forrest has slept beneath humming MMO servers, under the stars on the South China Sea, while strapped to the sides of thousand-foot cliffs, and (much to her waking surprise) along the morning migratory path of a Himalayan goat herd. While her many adventures provide inspiration for her stories, she wishes she could reliably nod off under more ordinary circumstances.

  After many years away, Amanda recently returned with her family to her childhood hometown in western Colorado.

  As a child, the quiet, empty landscapes of the Western Slope provided ample space for a thriving imagination. Her introduction to speculative fiction came before kindergarten when her mother read The Hobbit to her, and while she reads widely, science fiction and fantasy have always been closest to her heart.

  Despite her love for literature, Amanda pursued another passion in college, studying computer science. Afterward, she worked as a programmer and manager in the video games industry. It wasn’t until her daughter was born that she retired from software and turned her efforts to writing.

  Writers of the Future gave her her fourth professional sale, and she has since had four more stories accepted at professional rates, including sales to Asimov’s Science Fiction, Apex, and Upgraded.

  Visit Amanda's website at: amandaforrestfiction.com.

  ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

  Vincent-Michael Coviello is also the illustrator for “Carousel” in this volume. For more information about Vincent, please see here.

  The Shaadi Exile

  In the dark of the tea stall, men argued. Rise and fall of voices and glint of eyes and teeth. Daliya paused near the entrance, lured by the smell of flatbreads sizzling in ghee, the woodsy scents of dark-leaf tea. In the stall’s front, a girl stomped on a bellows and the cookfire flared and popped, hot against Daliya’s face.

  “Chappati?” the girl asked. She offered up a brown-crusted flatbread with the butter still fizzing.

  The girl’s mother stepped from the dim recesses of the stall and pressed a kiss into the girl’s hair. Daliya swallowed, abruptly swamped in memories of sandalwood incense and laughter and the faint creases of her mother’s long-ago face. Ammi. Mama. So long gone.

  Daliya shook her head at the offered bread and hurried on. She could miss her mother later. Alone.

  A tram rattled overhead, and dust filtered down the narrow artisans’ alleyway. Chickens squawked and ran, beaks jabbing the air with each footstep. She watched them, amused, while the retreating tram switched track lines to veer for the neathspace portal station.

  Oh, Daliya, she thought. She’d dallied too long already. Tomorrow morning, a new bride would step through that portal. Alone, terrified, sent into an arranged marriage light-years from home. And instead of finishing the poor girl’s memory box, Daliya’d let chickens distract her. She hurried on.

  Her workshop door swung shut, wrapping her in silence. On her workbench, the unfinished box stood open, a rough-carved rosewood frame with a layer of nanites sparkling in the bottom.

  She slid the dupatta off her hair, set the headscarf aside, and inserted a data capsule into a niche in the box’s base, intending a quick review of the images of home that the bride’s family had transmitted.

  She ran a finger over the activation nub. The nanites rose in a cloud, swirled, and organized. An animated landscape coalesced inside the box and took on coloration. Mountains towered, crowned with cloud. Mud-brick buildings crusted the closest hill.

  When the last group of nanites settled into place, Daliya clapped a hand over her mouth.

  A dead man dangled from a heavy tree limb, noose tight around his neck. His face was purple, mottled. Open eyes stared out from the scene.

  She cringed and advanced the image. Dirty teeth were bared in a snarl for the camera, close enough to show food trapped at the gum line. Thick veins like roots tunneled through the whites of the man’s eyes. The only motion was a tremble in his upper lip.

  In the next tableau, a dog limped in a circle. It dragged a mangled leg behind. Bone showed near the foot.

  She clapped the box lid shut and ejected the capsule, held it away from her between thumb and forefinger as if it were poisoned.

  Perhaps there had been a mistake. These scenes were supposed to provide comfort for a young bride sent between star systems. Daliya was used to seeing family gatherings with siblings lined up and clowning for the camera. Sunrise over the village lake. What kind of family would instead send these sorts of images through truespace while their frightened daughter walked the neathspace span?

  Though it had been thirty years, Daliya’s own journey echoed in her mind. She ached again, the black despair of abandoning everything she’d loved heavy in her chest.

  There must have been some mixup with the data. She glanced at her watch—she’d be hard pressed to finish the lid’s carvings already. But she needed to sort this out.

  Quickly, she stuffed the capsule into her pocket and rewrapped her dupatta over her hair. She opened the door to the sounds of the street—goats, laughter of the street children, the whine of electric motors and clank of the tram overhead—and stepped outside.

  A boy leaped in front her. He jangled jewelry on a stick, lapis lazuli and hand-worked silver. Dirt filled the lines on his knuckles, and his nails were cracked and split, but his eyes remained bright with hope.

  “Tomorrow, Keef. I don’t have time to look today.” She laid a hand on his ratted hair.

  A smile cracked his smudged face. “I’ll be here waiting.” He scampered off, and she smiled sadly after him. Sweet boy.

  Shaadi. Marriage. It is for the women to carry our culture between the stars. To bind us as one people, even as we scatter across the galaxy like salt spilled on a table.

  That’s what they’d told her. Daliya was important. An emissary as well as a wife, picked for her wide range of achievements. Her coursework in the sciences, her mastery of the arts of woodcarving and inlaying. The volunteering she did for charity. It was an honor to be chosen as a bride.

  But all those years ago, as she sat with her mother and her sister in the dark-draped room and submitted her fingertips and palms to the woman who marked them with henna, the words were nothing. The brush tickled her skin, cool where the henna stained her.

  One more day. Breakfast, tea, and one last evening feast. And then she’d never see her mother again. She’d be cast out onto the neathspace span—a silver ribbon slicing the universe’s ink-blank substrate—with just a kilogram allowance for clothing and possessions. To journey, light-years passing beneath her stride, while true years passed outside.

  Her mother dabbed rosewater behind her ears. “You look beautiful, piyaara.”

  How could her mother call her piyaara, darling, yet raise no protest that she’d soon be gone? Daliya wanted to rip her chest open, show everyone what a breaking heart looks like .

  “These preparations are ridiculous, Ammi. We’re playing make-believe. By the time I’m married, you’ll probably be …” her throat seized up “… dead.”

  Wrinkles deepened in the corners of her mother’s eyes when she smiled. “But for you, it will be just days. For you, I will have been part of your preparations. There to see you readied for your husband.”

  Daliya ripped her hand from the henna artist’s grasp. “I don’t want to be readied for him. I don’t want to be some she-goat sent off for impregnation.”

  Her mother’s gaze was stern, and then her face softened and she pulled Daliya close. Folds of cloth, soft beneath, smell of cookfires and sandalwood and love. “You chose this, Daliya. You could have refused the invitation. But you didn’t. Somewhere down inside, you want this. You’re going to a whole new world.”

  A tear wet
the crown of Daliya’s head, and her scalp itched where the damp melted into her hair. Her mother sniffed and backed away, smiling through the tears. “You have an adventure ahead. I take comfort in that.”

  Daliya stared at her red-stained fingers. “I made a mistake, and it’s too late now to fix it.”

  Her sister, Qirat, propped a mirror in front of her. Daliya glanced up. Reflected was a young woman with shimmering dust brushed on high cheekbones. Kohl rimmed her eyes. In place of a headscarf, a net of delicate silver set with semiprecious stones lay over her hair, nearly weightless but somehow pressing down so hard.

  She parted her lips to speak but no words came.

  “You’re leaving forever, sister of mine,” Qirat said. “At least let us have this part in your marriage.”

  The interplanetary communications manager regarded her with a clenched jaw. He slid one of the viewscreens on his desk back and forth. “I don’t understand. Are you accusing us of tampering with incoming messages?”

  “No, of course not. I should know how faithfully you deliver communications.”

  The manager inclined his head at that, and his jaw softened. Of course he’d know that she referred to the messages from her mother, received every week since she exited neathspace. Thirty years of tears and smiles, stories about her nieces and nephews. The communications department hadn’t messed up a single delivery.

  She sat on the edge of the chair in front of the man’s desk. “I’m just not sure what to do. The capsule contains scenes that are … unexpected. I thought that there might have been an inadvertent—”

  “I can show you the data trail if you like, but frankly, Daliya, I think you’re looking in the wrong place. If anything, we handle these packages from brides’ families with more rigor than the ordinary comms.”

  “No, that’s all right. Thanks for your time.”

  Daliya stood. As she walked for the door, the man cleared his throat. “There’s one thing. The data packages usually come ident-stamped from a family member. A DNA tag. But the incoming bride’s package had no origin declared, other than the source planet. We usually see protocol irregularities like this from worlds that are more than twenty-five light years or so distant. This girl’s home is just fifteen, I think. Anyway …” He tapped his index finger on the desk. “That’s all I’ve got. You might check with the groom. He received a package last week, meant to acquaint him with his bride.”