SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

Back in London, on a Sunday morning comfortable and hushed with snow, Meg curled up under a blanket on the sofa and let Deepika bring her tea. "Masala chai, just how you like it," she said, and Meg smiled up at her, breathing it in.

"You know," she said, idly worrying a loose thread on the blanket, "I don’t like your friends. Especially Pink Hair. She’s a twit.”

Deepika blinked. “She has a name, Meg."

“So do I,” Meg said. “It’s Meg. Meghna. Clouds, you know? That’s what it means. Like, up in the sky, though I suppose the Magellanic Clouds would also count."

"Meg, is there a point to this?"

"I’m getting to it," Meg said. "I didn’t like what’s-her-name, Annelise, either. I’m sorry I ran out on your party but I’m not sorry I was rude to them."

"You were rather rude," Deepika agreed. "Maybe I should trade you in for a better model."

"Maybe you should make new friends."

"Maybe I should," Deepika said, easily, and Meg was comforted by it. "Maybe I’d do worse things than that for you, you grumpy hidebound Luddite. Is your engineer okay? Did you let his family know?"

"I spoke to them myself," Meg said, "and I think he’s doing all right. I mean"—she smiled at the thought—"I think he’ll get to go where he needs to go. Deepika, don’t make new friends."

"Oh, really?" Deepika said, fetching her own tea and taking a sip. “Have you come round to queerness as political, then?”

"I’m just a civil servant," Meg said, with some asperity. "No, that’s not it."

"You’re not just anything, Meg," Deepika said, impatiently. "Well?"

Meg leaned back into the sofa, resisting the urge to fall asleep. One day, and then it would begin: one day before the legislative reveal; one day before the department went before Parliament and all around them a change in the weather. "Turns out she was right. I just saw some queers at the vanguard of transformation."

"Idiot," Deepika said, fondly, and went to fetch a plate of biscuits.

Originally published in the Timberland Reads Together anthology, 9/15.

Rinna Sen paced backstage, tucking her mittened hands deep into the pockets of her parka. The sound of instruments squawking to life cut through the curtains screening the front of the theater: the sharp cry of a piccolo, the heavy thump of tympani, the whisper and saw of forty violins warming up. Good luck with that. Despite the huge heaters trained on the open-air proscenium, the North Pole in February was cold .

And about to get colder, provided she did her job.

The stage vibrated slightly, balanced in the center of a parabolic dish pointed straight up to the distant specks of stars in the frigid black sky. The stars floated impossibly far away—but they weren’t the goal. No, her music just had to reach the thermo-acoustic engine hovering ten miles above the earth, centered over the pole.

Rinna breathed in, shards of cold stabbing her lungs. Her blood longed for summer in Mumbai; the spice-scented air that pressed heat into skin, into bone, so deeply a body wanted to collapse under the impossible weight and lie there, baking, under the blue sky.

That had been in her childhood. Now, nobody lived in the searing swath in the center of the globe. The heat between the tropics had become death to the human organism.

Not to mention that her home city was now under twenty feet of water. There was no going back, ever.

“Ms. Sen?” Her assistant, Dominic Larouse, hurried up, his nose constantly dripping from the chill. “There’s a problem with the tubas.”

Rinna sighed—a puff of breath, visible even in the dim air. “What, their lips are frozen to the mouthpieces? I told them to bring plastic ones.”

“Valve issues, apparently.”

Dominic dabbed his nose with his ever-present handkerchief. He’d been with her for two years, and she still couldn’t break through his stiff formality. But little things, like insisting on being called by her first name, weren’t worth the aggravation. Not here, not now.

“Get more heaters on them,” she said, “and tell those damn violins we start in five minutes, whether they’re warmed up or not.”

“Five minutes. Yes ma’am.”

Her job included being a hardass, but she knew how difficult it was to keep the instruments on pitch. The longer they waited, the worse it would get.

Goddess knew, they’d tried this the easy way by feeding remote concerts into the climate engine. Ever since the thing was built, the scientists had been trying to find the right frequencies to cool the atmosphere. They’d had the best luck with minor keys—something about the energy transfer—and at first had tried running synthesized pitches through. Then entire performances. Mozart’s Requiem had come close, but not close enough.

It had to be a live performance; the immediate, present sounds of old wood, horsehair, brass and felt, the cascade of subtle human imperfection, blown and pulled and pounded from the organic bodies of the instruments.

There was no substitute for the interactions of sound waves, the immeasurable atomic collisions of an on-site concert fed directly into the engine. Once the thing got started, the techs had promised they could loop the sound. Which was good, because no way was Rinna giving up the rest of her life to stand at the North Pole, conducting a half-frozen orchestra. Not even to save the planet.

She’d spent years working on her composition, assembled the best symphony in the world, rehearsed them hard, then brought them here, to the Arctic. Acoustic instruments and sub-zero temperatures didn’t get along, but damn it, she’d make this happen.

What if the composition is a failure? The voice of all her doubts ghosted through her thoughts, sounding suspiciously like her long-dead father.

She pinned it down and piled her answers on top, trying to smother it into silence.

The simulations had proven that certain frequencies played through the engine could super-cool the air over the pole. Then, with luck, a trickle-down effect would begin and slowly blanket the world. The scientists had run the models over and over, with a thousand different types of sound. But it wasn’t until the suits had hired Rinna—one of the best composers in the world (not that the world cared much about symphonies)—that the project had really started to gel.

“Ms. Sen.” Dominic hurried up again, holding out the slim screen of her tablet. “Vid call for you.”

“I told you, I don’t want any interruptions.”

“It’s the President.”

“Oh, very well.” Fingers clumsy through her mittens, Rinna took the call.

President Nishimoto, Leader of the Ten Nations of the World, smiled at her through the clear, bright screen. Behind him, the desert that used to be Moscow was visible through the window of his office.

“Ms. Sen,” he said. “The entire world wishes you the very best of luck in your performance.”

He didn’t need to say how much was at stake. They all knew.

“Thank you.” She bowed, then handed the screen back to Dominic.

It was almost too late. Last winter, the pole ice had thinned so much it couldn’t support the necessary installation. Doom criers had mourned the end, but a freak cold-snap in January had given them one final chance.

Now here they were—the orchestra, the techs, Rinna. And five thousand brave, stupid souls, camping on the precarious ice. Come to see the beginning of the world, or the end of it.

Out front, the oboe let out an undignified honk, then found the A . Rinna closed her eyes as the clear pitch rang out, quieting the rest of the musicians. The violins took it up, bows pulling, tweaking, until there was only one perfect, single note. It deepened as the lower strings joined in, cellos and basses rounding the A into a solid arc of octaves.