Catherine Asaro - Nebula Awards Showcase 2013

Something big and dark flits across the sky. I look up, but there is nothing. A wall of rain rushes toward. When we hit it, there’s so much rain it’s three inches deep on the road.

Hector lets out a ululating cry and raises both of his hands in the air as he raises his head toward the sky. We all do the same. As I stare up at the whirling flecks of rain coming down, everything stops and is made eternal. Then we hunch over our bikes and peddle on.

My belly starts to feel shaky and two protein bars don’t do anything to help it. It grows darker and colder. My arms feel rubbery and numb. Scotty sets a good pace to keep us warm, but not so fast that we keel over. He looks back at me, worried. I grin at him. Mind yourself, Scotty, I’ll keep up. There have been other migrations where we’ve ridden all night just to stay warm, and we’ll do that, if we have to.

Then a sway-backed barn as beautiful as a mansion comes into view, and Hector lets out another loud bird cry.

It’s not that dry inside, and the moldy hay makes my nose itch, but it’ll do. We climb up into the loft where it’s drier and settle in to sleep, except for Theo. He sits in a corner near an open window and stares outside. I’m exhausted and need sleep more than the rest of them, but I go sit next to him anyway.

“Big storm,” I say.

He nods.

“What’re you thinking?”

A lightning strike illuminates his face. He looks worried. “I’m changing… more than I thought I would. More than he said I would,” he says, not looking up from the hay his hands play with.

I wait for him to explain.

He holds out his arm. “Touch it.”

I do. It feels smooth one way, prickly the other.

“Feathers,” he says. “Real small ones.”

I try not to, but it’s been a long day. I laugh.

“It’s not funny,” he says.

“Yes it is. We all have weird side effects. Hell, that one might even be intentional. They don’t exactly know what they are doing with our augmentations.” I hold up one of my hands. The tan polish on one of my nails had chipped off to show the black. “I’ve got talons on my fingers and toes. Have to keep them trimmed real close or else they cut my wife. Keith, though he hates to admit it, loves to eat worms. Ask him about it. And don’t ask Hector and Scotty about where their tale feathers.”

Theo laughs.

“You’re doing fine, Theo. You’re riding well and dancing well. That’s what this life’s about.”

“It’s just… I can’t go back, can I?”

“Nope.”

“There’s something… he offered me five years pay for every migrator I ratted on,” Theo whispers.

“That’s a mighty fine offer.” And half of what the bastard would pay out otherwise, I think. “A man could get rich real quick, but there’s a price for all that money.”

There’s an awkwardness between us. “Do you want to die, Josiah? Don’t you want to keep living?”

“Did the Sponsor tell you migrators don’t live as long as normal people, even without accidents?”

Silence.

“Course he didn’t. It’s true though. It’s a heavy strain on the body.”

“But don’t you want to live?”

“Of course. No one wants to die, but we all do, don’t we? You set your mind on getting through this migration. Leave the macabre thoughts to old men like me.” I put my hand on his shoulder and let it rest there.

Lightning pulses outside, and I see what looks like a huge bird flying up in the middle of the storm.

When the morning sun wakes us up the world has been washed clean and pretty. We ride on and pop into hover over huge gashes in the road. We discover a diner that serves up pieces of peanut-butter chocolate pie that we eat as townspeople gawk at us.

In Colorado we run into some angry types. They catch up to us on a gut-busting climb out of Steamboat Springs up to Rabbit Ears Pass. They chug passed us spewing griesel fumes that smell like burnt french fries. The environmentalists have joined up with the local dance troupe and picked up some anti-genmod types by the looks of their bumper stickers. They stop their van about a quarter mile away from us. Ten of them all pile out to make a human line across the road. There’s forest on both sides of us that we could run into, but we’d have to leave the bikes. We could ride back down the hill, but hell if we’re going to.

“What should we do, Josiah?” Hector asks quietly.

One reason birds have died out, beyond all the toxins, is that they just couldn’t find hospitable places to live.

“Let’s just talk to them,” I say.

We grind on up the hill and stop ten feet away. I’m bonked enough by the ride to be glad for the unscheduled stop, come what may, and squeeze some watergel into my mouth. I keep an eye on them and on my migrators. Usually protesters show up at performances and try to mess us up, but there’s nothing but us and them out here.

“Morning,” I call out.

Hatred thick as cream on each of their faces.

“Hacks,” one of them says. She’s a dancer, by the thin, ropy look to her. “You’re not dancers. You’re monkeys!”

“Freaks,” a man says.

A bird streaks across the air above me, but when I look up, nothing’s there.

Keith takes a step forward. I put a hand on his shoulder and he stays put. Ten to five ratio is not good odds, and we’ve got a dance to make by nightfall.

“Your owner destroys all the wildlife, and then gets tax breaks for sending you out to the parks and make people forget all the animals are gone,” a hungry looking man says.

Anger grows among us. A tensing of bodies. A shifting of feet and stances. Like a dance. I feel my hands curl into fists and the desire to hit something grows in me. “We’re just getting by, same as everyone,” I say, calmly as I can. “Your beef’s with our Sponsor. Go harass him.” But they won’t. He’s too heavily guarded. “We’re just men doing our jobs.”

A woman spits on the ground, and I can see the time to talk is over. When they run at us, we do the same and start beating at each other in the middle of the road. Only it’s not a fair fight. They pull out the kind of cheap sticky-tasers you can buy at any 7-11. They aim and fire and we wriggle on the ground and gasp for breath as they put collars around our necks and spray paint the panniers of our bike. They drive off.

“Fuck!” Scotty yells. He’s the first one to get his legs back and stand up. He’s wearing an inch thick collar that says “Bird Killer.”

We sit up and look at each other. Keith is “Genefreak,” Hector is “Corporate Slave,” Theo is “Dance Whore, and mine says, “Earth Raper.”

“Well, boys,” I say, “looks like we got ourselves some new nicknames.” We bike all the way to Echo Park with our new logos, too proud, I guess, to call our Sponsor for help. We bike through small one road towns and get laughed at by shiny clean Mormon kids lining the street to watch us. The collars rub our necks raw until we meet up with the Sponsor who hires a welder to cut them off.

From Echo Park we change out our tires for heavier threads and bike into the middle of Utah down old cattle roads along the Green river. We swim in the hot water every day and try to avoid the dead fish floating around. The only people out here are long-bearded men living in little blow away shacks. They glare at us even though they see us twice a year, every year. We stay up late and watch bats catch mosquitoes. We tell stories. I tell more than anyone else, which is unusual for me, but somehow I want to tell all of them about me and make sure they remember. When I talk it feels to me like the other riders no longer with us are listening in too.

When a goose dies on a migration, the other geese leave a spot for him in their slipstream, an empty space of air where he used to be. I wish we had something like that.