Ellen Datlow - Off Limits

As suddenly as he’d appeared he was gone, the metal door flowing shut behind him. For one last instant Paul could see the argala, turning its glowing eyes from his father to himself and back again, lovely and gormless as one of those simulacrums that directed travellers in the HORUS by-ports. Then it was only his own reflection that he stared at, and Claude’s voice that he heard calling softly but insistently from the foot of the spiral stairs.

He had planned to wait after class the following morning, to ask Father Dorothy what he knew about it, how a mindless creature could project such a powerful and seemingly effortless torrent of images and sensations; but he could tell from his tutor’s cool smile that somehow he had gotten word of their spying. Ira, probably. He was well-meaning but tactless, and Father Dorothy’s favorite. Some whispered conference during their private session; and now Father Dorothy’s usual expression, of perpetual disappointment tempered with ennui, was shaded with a sharper anger.

So that was pointless. Paul could scarcely keep still during class, fidgeting behind his desiccated textbooks, hardly glancing at the monitor’s ruby scroll of words and numerals when his turn came to use it. He did take a few minutes to sneak to the back of the room. There a huge and indescribably ancient wooden bookcase held a very few, mostly useless volumes— Reader’s Digest Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual, Robert’s Rules of Order, The Ascent of Woman. He pulled out a natural history text so old that its contents had long since acquired the status of myth.

Argala, Paul read, after flipping past Aptéryx, Aquilegia, Archer, Areca, each page releasing its whiff of Earth, mildew and silverfish and trees turned to dust. Adjutant bird: Giant Indian Stork, living primarily in wetlands and feeding upon crustaceans and small amphibians. Status, endangered; perhaps extinct. There was no illustration.

“Hey, Pathori.” Claude bent over his shoulder, pretending to ask a question. Paul ignored him and turned the pages, skipping Boreal Squid and (Bruijn’s) Echidna, pausing to glance at the garishly colored Nebalia Shrimp and the shining damp skin of the Newt, Amphibian: A kind of eft (Juvenile salamander). Finally he found the Stork, a simple illustration beside it.

Tall stately wading bird of family Ciconiidae, the best-known species pure white except for black wing tips, long reddish bill, and red feet, and in the nursery the pretended bringer of babies and good fortune.

“…you hear me?” Claude whispered hoarsely, pinching his ear. Paul closed the book and pushed it away. Without a word he returned to his desk, Claude following him. Father Dorothy raised his head, then went back to explaining the subtleties of written poetry to Ira Claire. Paul settled into his seat. Behind him Claude stood and waited for their tutor to resume his recitation. In a moment Father Dorothy’s boyish voice echoed back to them—

Paul started as Claude shook him, and the older boy repeated, “I have an idea—I bet he just leaves it alone, when he’s not in the room. We could get in there, maybe, and sneak it out…”

Paul shrugged. He had been thinking the same thing himself; thinking how he would never have the nerve to do it alone. He glanced up at Father Dorothy.

If he looks at me now, he thought, I won’t do it; I’ll talk to him later and figure out something else…

Behind him Claude hissed and elbowed him sharply. Paul waited, willing their tutor to look up; but the man’s head pressed closer to his lovely student as he recited yet another elegiac fragment, wasted on the hopeless Ira—

“ Paul! ”

Paul turned and looked at Claude. “We could go when the rest are at dinner again,” the older boy said. He too gazed at Ira and Father Dorothy, but with loathing. “All right?”

“All right,” Paul agreed miserably, and lowered his head when Father Dorothy cast him a disapproving stare.

Trudging up the steps behind Claude, Paul looked back at the narrow plaza where the sculptures had been. They had passed three people on their way here, a man and two women; the women striding in that defiant way they had, almost swaggering, Paul thought. It was not until they turned the corner that he realized the man had been his mother, and she had not acknowledged him, had not seen him at all.

He sighed and looked down into the abandoned courtyard. Something glittered there, like a fleck of bright dust swimming across his vision. He paused, his hand sliding along the cool brass banister.

On the concrete floor he thought he saw something red, like a discarded blossom. But there were no flowers on Teichman. He felt again that rush of emotion that had come when he embraced the argala, a desire somehow tangled with the smell of brackish water and the sight of a tiny salamander squirming on a mossy bank. But when he leaned over the banister there was nothing there. It must have been a trick of the light, or perhaps a scrap of paper or other debris blow by the air filters. He straightened and started back up the stairs.

That was when he saw the argala. Framed on the open balcony in his father’s room, looking down upon the little courtyard. It looked strange from this distance and this angle: less like a woman and more like the sombre figure that had illustrated the Stork in the natural history book. Its foot rested on the edge of the balcony, so it seemed that it had only one leg, and the way its head was tilted he saw only the narrow raised crown, nearly bald because its wispy hair had been pulled back. From here it looked too bony, hardly female at all. A small flood of nausea raced through him. For the first time it struck him that this really was an alien creature. Another of the Ascendants’ monstrous toys, like the mouthless hydrapithecenes that tended the Pacific hydrofarms, or the pallid bloated forms floating in vats on the research deck of Teichman Station, countless fetuses tethered to them by transparent umbilical cords. And now he had seen and touched one of those monsters. He shuddered and turned away, hurrying after Claude.

But once he stood in the hallway his nausea and anger faded. There was that scent again, lulling him into seeing calm blue water and myriad shapes, garnet salamanders and frogs like candied fruit drifting across the floor. He stumbled into Claude, the older boy swearing and drawing a hand across his face.

“Shit! What’s that smell?—” But the older boy’s tone was not unpleasant, only befuddled and slightly dreamy.

“The thing,” said Paul. They stood before the door to his father’s room. “The argala…”

Claude nodded, swaying a little, his dark hair hiding his face. Paul had an awful flash of his father opening the door and Claude seeing him as Paul had, naked and doped, with that idiot smile and a tooth missing. But then surely the argala would not have been out on the balcony by itself? He reached for the door and very gently pushed it.

“Here we go,” Claude announced as the door slid open. In a moment they stood safely inside.

“God, this is a mess.” Claude looked around admiringly. He flicked at a stack of ‘files teetering on the edge of a table, grimaced at the puff of dust that rose around his finger. “Ugh. Doesn’t he have a server?”