Stories by Elizabeth Bear Part 46

They are the last creatures in the universe, he and she and the shark. The real world, outside, is running down, and the world they inhabit is a false, constructed world.

But it is a real shark. Fishy blood slimes her hands as she slits its belly with the back-curve of knives that are a part of her, extruded from her hands at need. She grows extra arms as convenient, to hold the wound open while she drags him free.

The shark's skin is silky-slick and sandpaper-rough simultaneously, sc.r.a.ping layers of material from the palms of her hands. The serrations on her blades are like those of the shark's teeth, ragged jags mes.h.i.+ng like the rollers of a thresher.

There had been three living things left in their world.

Now there are two.

She cuts him from the belly of a shark. Allowing himself to be swallowed was the easiest way to beach and kill the monster, which for humane reasons must be dead before the next stage of their plan.

He stands up reefed in gnawed car tires and bits of bungee cord, and picks rubber seaweed from his teeth. They are alone on a boat in a sea like a sunset mirror. The sky overhead is gray metal, and a red sun blazes in it. It is a false sun, but it is all they have.

They have carefully h.o.a.rded this s.p.a.ce, this fragment of creation, until the very end. They have one more task to fulfill.

As for him, how can he survive being swallowed by a shark? If entropy itself comes along and eats you, breaks you down, spreads you out thin in a uniform dispersal permeating its meat and cartilage-if it consumes, if it digests you-surely that's the end? Entropy always wins.

Final peace in the restless belly of a shark, nature's perpetual motion machine. Normally, it would be the end.

But he is immortal, and he cannot die.

There, under the false and dying sun, becalmed on a make-believe sea, they do not make love. She is a lesbian. He is sworn to a celibate priesthood. They are both sterile, in any case. They are immortal, but their seed has been more fortunate.

Instead, he picks the acid-etched rubber and bits of diode from his hair and then dives into the tepid sea. The first splash washes the shark's blood and fluids away.

The water he strokes through is stagnant, insipid. The only heartbeat it has known in lifetimes is the shark's. And now that the shark's is stilled, it won't know the man's. His heart does not beat. Where blood and bone once grew is a perfect replica, a microscopic latticework of infinitesimal machines.

He dives for the bottom. He does not need to breathe.

This desolate sea is little enough, but it is all there is. Outside the habitat, outside the sea and the sun and the boat and the gape-bellied corpse of the shark, outside of the woman and the man, nothing remains.

Or not nothing, precisely. But rather, an infinite, entropic sea of thermodynamic oatmeal. A few degrees above absolute zero, a few scattered atoms more populated than absolute vacuum. Even a transfinite amount of stuff makes a pretty thin layer when you spread it over an infinite amount of s.p.a.ce.

Suffice it to say there is no place anyplace out there; every bit of it is indistinguishable. Uniform.

The universe has been digested.

While the man swims, the woman repairs the shark.

She doesn't use needles and thread, lasers or scalpels. She has tools that are her hands, her body. They will enter the shark as they entered her, millennia ago, and remake the shark as they remade her, until it is no longer a consuming machine made of muscle and sinew, but a consuming machine made of machines.

They are infinitesimal, but they devour the shark in instants. As they consume it, they take on its properties-the perfect jaws, the perfect strength, the slick-sharp hide. The shark, mercifully dead, feels no pain.

The woman is more or less humane.

When the machines reach the animal's brain, they a.s.sume its perfect appet.i.te as well. Every fishy thought. Every animal impulse, every benthic memory, are merely electrical patterns flickering dark in already-decaying flesh. They are consumed before they can vanish.

The shark reanimates hungry.

She heaves it over the side with her six or eight arms, into the false, dead sea, where the man awaits it. It swims for him, driven by a hunger hard to comprehend-a ceaseless, devouring compulsion. And now it can eat anything. The water that once streamed its gills in life-giving oxygen is sustenance, now, and the shark builds more shark-stuff to incorporate it.

The man turns to meet it and holds up his hands.

When its jaws close, they are one.

The being that results when the shark and the man unify, their machinememories interlinking, has the shark's power, its will, its insistent need. Its purpose.

The man gives it language, and knowledge, and will. It begins with the false world, then-the sea and the s.h.i.+p, and the gray metal sky, and the make-believe sun. These are tangible.

The woman, like the man, like the shark-that-has-become, is immortal, and she cannot die.

The shark will consume her last of all.

Consider the shark. An engine for converting meat into motion. Motion generates heat. Heat is entropy. Entropy is the grand running-down of the clock that is the universe.

The shark-that-has-become does nothing but eat. Time is irrelevant. What now the puny unwindings of planet and primary, of star and galaxy? There is no night. There is no day.

There are only the teeth of the shark, vacuuming the cosmos. Enormous electromagnetic webs spin out from its ever-growing maw, sweeping spa.r.s.e dust and heat into its vasty gullet. The shark grows towards infinity.

The dead universe is swept.

The woman follows.

You are a G.o.d. For forty hundred thousand million days and forty hundred thousand million nights, the shark carries you under its unbeating heart. And when all s.p.a.ce lie clean and empty, polished and waiting, you turn to her. You will consume her, last of all.

There will be nothing when she is gone. The entire universe will have pa.s.sed down your throat, and even your appet.i.te must be a.s.suaged. And if it is not, you will devour yourself.

A machine can manage that.

You wonder what it will be like not to hunger, for a while.

But as you turn to swallow her, she holds up her hand. Her small, delicate hand that compa.s.ses galaxies-or could, if there were any left to compa.s.s.

Now, it cups the inverse glow of a naked singularity, as carefully h.o.a.rded as the shark, as the false-world that was the first thing to fall to the shark-that-has-become. She casts it before you, round and rolling, no bigger than a mustard seed.

You lunge. It's hard and heavy going down, and you gulp it sharply. A moment later, she follows, a more delicate mouthful, consumed at leisure.

She joins the man and the shark in your consciousness. And it is her knowledge that calms you as you fall into the singularity you've swallowed, as you-the whole universe of you-is compacted down, swept clean, packed tight.

When you have all fallen in on yourself, she says, there will be a grand and a messy explosion. Shrapnel, chunks and blobs and incandescent energy. The heat and the fires of creation.

The promise of rebirth.

But for now, collapsing, the shark has consumed all there is to consume. The shark is a perfect machine.

And at the end of the world the shark is happy, after all.

Tiger! Tiger!

What of the hunting, hunter bold?

Brother, the watch was long and cold.

What of the quarry ye went to kill?

Brother, he crops in the jungle still.

Where is the power that made your pride?

Brother, it ebbs from my flank and side.

Where is the haste that ye hurry by?

Brother, I go to my lair-to die!

-RUDYARD KIPLING It was in India, on the high Malwa Plateau in July of 1882, that I chanced to make the acquaintance of an American woman whom I have never forgotten and undertake an adventure which I have long waited to recount. The monsoon was much delayed that hot and arid summer, and war raged between the British and the Russians in nearby Afghanistan-another move on the chessboard of the "Great Game." No end was yet in sight to either problem when I, Magnus Larssen, s.h.i.+kari, was summoned to the village of Kanha to guide a party in search of tiger.

My gunbearer (who was then about fifteen) and I arrived some ten days before the shooters, and arranged to hire a cook, beaters, and mahouts and prepare a base of operations. On the first full day of our tenancy, I was sitting at my makes.h.i.+ft desk when "Rodney" came into my tent, ferment glistening in his brown eyes. "The villagers are very excited, sahib," he said.

"Unhappy?" I felt myself frown.

"No, sahib. They are relieved. There is a man-eater." He danced an impatient jig in the doorway.

I raised an eyebrow and stretched in my canvas chair. "Driven to it by the drought?"

"The last month only," he answered. "Three dead so far, and some bullocks. It is a female, they think, and she is missing two toes from her right front foot."

I sipped my tea as I thought about it, and at last I nodded. "Good. Perhaps we can do them a favor while we're here."

After some days of preparation, we took transportation into Jabalpur to meet the train from Bhopal. The party was to be seven: six wealthy British and European men and the woman, an American adventuress and singer traveling in the company of a certain Count Kolinzcki, an obese Lithuanian n.o.bleman.

The others consisted of a middle-aged, muttonchopped English gentleman, Mr. Northrop Waterhouse, with adolescent sons James and Conrad; Graf Baltasar von Hammerstein, a very Prussian fellow of my long acquaintance, stout in every sense of the word; and Dr. Albert Montleroy, a fair-haired Englishman, young around the eyes.

As they disembarked from the train, however, it was the lady who caught my attention. Fair-haired, with a clean line of jaw and clear eyes, she was aged perhaps twenty-two, but her beauty was not the sort that required youth to recommend it. She wore a very practical walking dress in sage green, fas.h.i.+onably tailored, and her gloves and hat matched her boots very well. I noticed that she carried her own gun case as well as her reticule.

"Ah, Magnus!" Von Hammerstein charged down the iron steps from the rail coach and clasped my hand heavily, in the European style. "Allow me to present your charges." Remembering himself, he turned to the American, and I saw that she was traveled enough to recognize his courtesy. "Fraulein, this gentleman is the noted author and hunter of heavy game, Mr. Magnus Larssen. Magnus, may I present the talented contralto, Miss Irene Adler."

"So what is this I hear about a mankiller, s.h.i.+kari?" The older Waterhouse boy, James, was talking. "On the train, we heard a rumor that a dozen men had been found mauled and disemboweled!"

"Lad," his father warned, with a glance to the woman. She looked up from her scarcely touched sherry.

I think Miss Adler winked. "Pray, sir, do not limit the conversation on my behalf. I am here to hunt, just as the rest of you, and I have visited rougher surroundings than this."

Montleroy nodded in the flicker of lantern light. The boys had collected the supper dishes, and we were each relaxing with a gla.s.s. "Yes, if we're to have a go at this man-eater, let's by all means hear the details. It's safest and best."

"Very well," I allowed, after a moment. "There have been three victims so far, and a number of cattle. It seems that the tigress responsible is wounded and taking easy prey. All of the bodies have been mauled and eaten; that much is true. The details are rather horrible."

Horrible indeed. The eyes had been eaten out of their heads, and the flesh off the faces. The bodies had been dismembered and gnawed. If it had not been for the fact that the only prints close to the bodies were those of the wounded tiger, I might have been tempted to think of some more sinister agency: perhaps agents of a Thuggee cult. I was not, however, about to reveal those facts in mixed company, Miss Adler's high opinion of her own const.i.tution notwithstanding.

Across the room, I saw the younger Waterhouse boy, Conrad, shudder. I shook my head. Too young.

Thick leaves and fronds brushed the flanks of our elephants as they stepped out of the cool of the jungle and into more dappled shade. The ground cover cracked under their feet as we emerged from the sal trees into a small meadow. From there, we could catch a glimpse of the gra.s.slands sweeping down a great, horseshoe-shaped valley to the banks of the Banjar River.

"This heat is beastly, Mr. Larssen!" the count complained.

I glanced across the red-and-gold knotted carpets spanning the broad back of the elephant we shared with Miss Adler. I sweated even in my shaded perch, and I did not envy the mahouts perched astride the beasts' necks in the brutal light of the sun, but I presumed they must be more accustomed by blood and habituation to this barbarous calescence. "It is India, Count," I replied-perhaps more dryly than necessary.

"And the insects are intolerable." Kolinzcki's humor did not seem to extend to irony. I raised an eyebrow and returned my attention to the trail, keeping my pot gun to hand and an eye out for edible game, as the beaters took a large portion of their pay in meat.

My mind drifted as I sought any spoor or scat of our quarry. A strange, oppressive silence hung on the air, and there was no trace of moisture upon the breeze. I felt a chill of unease upon my neck-or perhaps it was only the shade of the trees as our mounts carried us back down the jungle trail.

I felt the need to break the uncanny quietude. "The tiger," I said to Miss Adler and her companion, "is the true king of the jungle. No mere lion can compare to him for ferocity, intelligence, or courage. He fears nothing and will easily turn the tables on a hunter."

"That is why we ride elephants?" The Lithuanian's accent could have been better, but his speech was comprehensible.

I nodded. "Tigers respect elephants, and the reverse is true as well. One will not trouble the oth-"

A great outcry among the monkeys and the birds in the jungle on our left ended my lecture. I heard an intermittent cras.h.i.+ng in the bamboo as an antelope sprinted away. Our tiger was on the move.

Our beaters fanned toward the jungle, several of them disappearing from sight among the trees. One or two glanced back at us before vanis.h.i.+ng into the brush, understandably apprehensive: there was at least one tiger in that cover who had learned the taste of man.

I directed the mahouts back to the clearing, where we could intercept the line of beaters. The good doctor and von Hammerstein were mounted on the second beast, and Mr. Waterhouse with his two sons rode the final one. Rodney walked alongside with a cargo of rifles. Count Kolinzcki fumbled with his gun, and I made a note to myself to keep an eye on the Lithuanian, in case he should require a.s.sistance. Miss Adler quietly and efficiently broke her under/over Winchester and made it ready on her own.

We reached the clearing in good order and took a moment to array ourselves. The cries of the beaters rang out-"bAgha! bAgha!"-"Tiger! Tiger!"

She was within their net and moving toward us. Miss Adler drew a deep breath to steady herself, and I restrained myself from laying a hand on her shoulder to calm her. A glance at her lovely face, however, showed only quiet resolve.

Von Hammerstein also readied his gun, as did the Waterhouses and the doctor. Not intending to shoot, I foolishly failed to exchange the bolt-action .303 Martini-Lee for my double rifle.

The moment stretched into silence. I found myself counting my breaths, gaze fixed on the wall of brush. "Mir s.h.i.+kar," von Hammerstein began-luckily, for as I turned toward my stout and stalwart old friend, I saw the tigress lunge.

The tricky old killer had somehow doubled back and come up upon our flank. She was too close, perhaps a stride away. She made one gigantic bound out of the brush and was airborne even as I whipped my rifle around.

In that instant, my eye photographed her-the twisted forefoot, the sad traces of mange and hunger, the frantic golden eye-and my finger tightened on the trigger.

To no avail. With a hollow click, the rifle failed to discharge. It seemed an eon as I worked the bolt-jammed-and tossed it aside, extending my hand down to Rodney for the .534 Egyptian. In the instant before my fingers closed on the warm Turkish walnut of the stock, I heard two weapons roar and sudden plumes of acrid white smoke tattered in the hot breeze. The shots caught the tigress in side and breast, tumbling her over and backward.

She dragged herself upright, and Mr. Waterhouse fired as well, squinting along the barrel like a professional as he put a third and final bullet into the defiant cat. She made a little coughing sound and expired, her body going fluid in each joint.

I glanced around before sliding off my elephant. Miss Adler had broken her Winchester and was calmly replacing the cartridge she had expended into the creature's breast. Von Hammerstein was also dismounting his beast, keeping his weapon at the ready in case he was forced to fire again.

I bent over to examine the kill, and found myself straightening abruptly, scanning the jungle for any sign of movement. I saw only our returning beaters.

Von Hammerstein saw it and laid a questioning eye on me.

"Her teeth," I said thickly. "There must be a second cat. This one might bring down a man, but she could never manage a bullock. Not with that crippled foot, and the ruined teeth."

It was then that I heard a sound like a throbbing drumbeat, distant but distinct. I did not know what made it, and my curiosity was piqued.