The Tiger Flu Read online

  THE

  TIGER FLU

  THE TIGER FLU

  Copyright © 2018 by Larissa Lai

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any part by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review, or in the case of photocopying in Canada, a licence from Access Copyright.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Suite 202 – 211 East Georgia St.

  Vancouver, BC V6A 1Z6

  Canada

  arsenalpulp.com

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the British Columbia Arts Council for its publishing program, and the Government of Canada, and the Government of British Columbia (through the Book Publishing Tax Credit Program), for its publishing activities.

  Arsenal Pulp Press acknowledges the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, speakers of Hul’q’umi’num’/Halq’eméylem/hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and custodians of the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories where our office is located. We pay respect to their histories, traditions, and continuous living cultures and commit to accountability, respectful relations, and friendship.

  The author also acknowledges the people of Treaty 7 in southern Alberta, which includes the Blackfoot Confederacy (comprising the Siksika, Piikani, and Kainai First Nations), the Tsuut’ina First Nation, and the Stoney Nakoda (including Chiniki, Bearspaw, and Wesley First Nations). The city of Calgary is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III. The author offers humble respect to the fire, earth, metal, water, and wood elements and all the living beings both human and non-human who inhabit these territories.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

  Cover and text design by Oliver McPartlin

  Edited by Hiromi Goto

  Narrative ethics read by Warren Cariou

  Copy edited by Shirarose Wilensky

  Proofread by Alison Strobel

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Lai, Larissa, 1967–, author

  The tiger flu / Larissa Lai.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-55152-731-4 (softcover).—ISBN 978-1-55152-732-1 (HTML)

  I. Title.

  PS8573.A3775T54 2018

  C813’.54

  C2018-901958-1

   C2018-901959-X

  For my birth sister, Wendy And my chosen sisters, Rita and Hiromi

  CONTENTS

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  PART I

  1 FOURTH WAVE

  2 THE STARFISH GROOM

  3 EARTH APPLES

  4 A STRANGER IN THE WOODS

  5 WET MARKET ENCOUNTER

  6 THE SALTY’S HAND

  7 ISABELLE SHRINE

  8 THE LAST DOUBLER

  9 GOAT STEW

  10 DANCING FOOL

  11 PLEASE DON’T LEAVE ME

  12 THE LAST STARFISH

  13 CORDOVA DANCING SCHOOL FOR GIRLS

  14 BOMBYX MORI’S SURPRISE

  15 THE WORST THING DONE FOR FOOD

  16 STORM TRAVELLERS

  PART II

  17 HOMESICK

  18 STATE YOUR INTENTIONS

  19 THE SLEEPING SPARROW

  20 THE FAMOUS DOCTOR

  21 FORAGE DANCE

  22 GROOMED FOR TRAVEL

  23 CATCOAT

  24 NASTY SALTIES

  25 THE RETURN HOME

  26 MADAME DEARBORN’S KITTENS

  PART III

  27 OPEN SCALE

  28 GIRL WITH AN INJURED HAND

  29 POTATO DREAMS

  30 INVITATION

  31 DEEP SCALE COMMUNE

  32 RED RIGHT HAND

  33 PERFECT MONEY MACHINE

  34 LONELY TIME

  35 LOYALTIES SHIFT

  36 FLEE

  PART IV

  37 CHECKPOINT

  38 MI CASA ES SU CASA

  39 THE DARK KITCHEN

  40 ENG’S FIGMENTS

  41 GOA SACRIFICIAL GOAT

  42 CHANGE ENGINEERS

  PART V

  43 THE STARFISH TREE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Tyger! Tyger! burning bright

  In the forests of the night,

  What immortal hand or eye

  Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

  —William Blake, “The Tyger”

  They say that at the point they have reached they must examine the principle that has guided them. They say it is not for them to exhaust their strength in symbols. They say henceforward what they are is not subject to compromise. They say they must now stop exalting the vulva. They say that they must break the last bond that binds them to a dead culture. They say that any symbol that exalts the fragmented body is transient, must disappear. Thus it was formerly. They, the women, the integrity of the body their first principle, advance marching together into another world.

  —Monique Wittig, Les Guérillères

  When Heaven sends forth its engines of destruction, the stars are moved out of their places and the constellations metamorphosed. When Earth sends forth its engines of destruction, dragons and snakes appear on the dry land. When Man puts forth his faculties of destruction, Heaven falls and Earth is overthrown. When Heaven and Man do so in concert, all the disorganised phenomena are re-established on a new basis.

  —ascribed to the Yellow Emperor, The Yin Fu Ching, trans. Fredric Henry Balfour

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  SALTWATER CITY

  Isabelle Chow, inventor, CEO of HöST Light Industries

  Chan Ling, a factory worker, founder of Grist Village

  FIRST QUARANTINE RING (SALTWATER FLATS)

  Woodward’s Building

  Kora Ko, a fifteen-year-old girl

  Kai Wai Ko, her uncle

  Charlotte Ko, her mother

  Godwin Austen “K2” Ko, her older brother

  Stash Sacks, K2’s friend

  Delphine, Kora’s pet goat

  Cordova Dancing School for Girls

  Madame Aurelia Dearborn, headmistress

  Myra Mao, leader of the dancing girls

  Tania Manuel, a different kind of leader

  Pacific Pearl Parkade

  Marcus Traskin, lord and CEO of the Pacific Pearl

  Parkade, leader of 100 tiger men

  COAST SALISH TIMEPLACE (SOVEREIGN)

  Jemini (a cloning company, in exile from Saltwater City)

  Kai Tak Ko, Kora’s father

  Everest Ko, K2 Ko’s twin brother

  SECOND QUARANTINE RING (COSMOPOLITAN EARTH COUNTRY)

  General Manuel, leader of the CEC

  Cousin Sloane, Tania’s cousin, a border guard

  THIRD QUARANTINE RING

  Pente-Hik-Ton

  Billy Armstrong, a Syilx man

  Maria Armstrong, his mother (deceased)

  New Origins Archive

  Elzbieta Kruk, high priestess of the New Origins Archive

  FOURTH QUARANTINE RING (GRIST VILLAGE)

  Kirilow Groundsel, a groom

  Glorybind Groundsel, her mother double

  Peristrophe Halliana, a starfish, Kirilow’s lover

  Radix Bupleuri, a doubler

  Bombyx Mori, Radix’s groom

  PART I

  CASCADIA YEAR: 127 TAO (TIME AFTER OIL)

  UNITED MIDDLE KINGDOM CYCLE 80, YEAR 42 (WOOD SNAKE YEAR)

  GREGORIAN YEAR: 2145

  1

  FOURTH WAVE

  KORA KO // SALTWATER FLATS (FIRST QUARANT
INE RING)

  NODE: SUMMER BEGINS

  DAY: 15

  BEHIND THE CLOUDS OF THE NEW MONSOON, THE ANCIENT MAINFRAME Chang rolls too fast across the sky. He’s a big guy, but he appears much bigger than he should because his orbit is deteriorating. His period is down to two hours now, and he casts a veiled shadow over the rooftop of the old Woodward’s Building, engulfing Uncle Wai’s carefully cultivated garden.

  Kora leans against the fence that holds old Delphine in her pen. Stares mournfully into Delphine’s golden eyes.

  “Uncle Wai’s got it,” she tells the goat.

  The tendril information scales Kora’s got plugged into the single-band halo that circles her head wave gently. For all Chang is so close, the people of Saltwater Flats don’t have access to him anymore. Only the citizens of the glass towers in Saltwater City can tap in. As soon as she can afford it, she’ll add rings to her halo, or even a full helmet, so she can get wiser quicker. She needs all the help she can get.

  “Ma-aaa-aaa-aaa,” says old Delphine.

  “K2’s sick too.”

  “Maaaaaa-aaaaaa-aaaaaaa!”

  “Uncle Wai says that so is big brother Everest, though I’ve never met him. If he comes back to us, he could save us. But I don’t think he’s coming back.”

  “Maaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaaaaaaa.”

  “And Charlotte’s got it.” Kora never calls Charlotte Mom. It seems too corny. “Women aren’t immune you know, Delphine. If they’re hungry enough, if they’re depleted enough, women can get it. If Charlotte’s got it, that means I’m the only one left in our family who doesn’t have the tiger flu.”

  “Meh.”

  “Don’t be like that.” Kora knows Delphine cannot actually understand her grief and dread, but still, the tendril scales atop Kora’s head droop.

  She scratches the old goat between the eyes. Delphine’s hair is pleasantly coarse, and her forehead is warm. “Soon it will be you and me against the world.”

  Behind Kora, the jars in which Uncle Wai grows potatoes lean against crumbling retainer walls. The jars are huge, each one big enough to hold Kora, her goat, and a couple of tigers too. Forty floors below those walls, in the streets of Saltwater Flats, women—young and old, healthy and ill, happy and sad—go about their daily business, shop for a bit of chicken for supper, a few vegetables, a bicycle, a second-hand cake mixer. A wealthy few rest in quiet cafés, sip tea, and eat steamed buns. Others stand on street corners arguing. There are no men in the streets. The men are shut up in houses, covered in lesions and coughing their lungs out, the nasty and condescending beside the gentle and well intentioned. Or else, they are already dead. Except for the tiger men, a small contingent of male survivors who have the flu in all its contagion but whose symptoms never proceed beyond a modest cough and the occasional lesion. Miraculously, they thrive in the privacy of the Pacific Pearl Parkade, doors closed to the world.

  Although the tiger flu has a taste for men, it doesn’t discriminate against the wealthy. In fact, the first to succumb to the fourth wave was the hated despot Aloysius Chow-McPherson. The citizens of Saltwater City rejoiced, as did the denizens of the surrounding quarantine ring known as Saltwater Flats. Then Chow-McPherson’s kindly brother, Ferdinand, took ill. The people still rejoiced, because, though kind, Ferdinand was a high-ranking member of a despotic family. The family company, HöST Light Industries, ruled the city in its own best interests. Chow-McPherson’s wife, Sophia, took charge. But she too got sick. Then his daughter, Isabelle, took over. As Kora is all her family’s got, Isabelle is all the city has got. She better be enough.

  Far behind Chang, the backup mainframe Eng rolls in her expanding orbit. If Isabelle could open diplomatic channels with the Cosmopolitan Earth Council, which controls the last remaining rockets outside the United Middle Kingdom, perhaps they could be convinced to help right the orbits of Chang and Eng. Otherwise, Eng’s elliptical orbit will only deepen, and hundreds of years will pass between sightings.

  Delphine lies down in her bed of straw. “See you tomorrow, sweet goat.” Kora places her hands on the highest rung of the fence, hikes herself up so she can lean in and plant a kiss on the goat’s rough forehead.

  Something rustles behind the shed. She drops her feet back to the ground.

  “Who’s there?”

  No answer. She goes to look, but before she’s taken half a step, a young man leaps out and grabs her from behind. “Boo!”

  “Mother fuck! Get off me! Who the hell are you?”

  Actually, she recognizes him. He’s a friend of her brother’s—Stash Sacks. He looks awful. His face is covered in weeping sores. His eyes ooze pus.

  “What happened to you? How did you get up here?”

  “K2 gave me the keys. We lost our jobs this week because we’re too sick to lift the elk at the abattoir.”

  “That’s awful.”

  He grips her tighter, nibbles her ear.

  “Please let go.”

  He doesn’t.

  “I mean it.”

  “You don’t want me to hug you anymore?”

  “Stash, I would rather hug a Grist sister. Let go, really.”

  “Dirty Kora Ko,” says the boy. “There’s no such thing as Grist sisters. They’re just a story told by scared old men.” The bear hug from behind turns aggressive.

  “Let go of me!” Her scales writhe.

  “When I wasn’t sick you liked me just fine.”

  “I did not. I hardly know you.”

  “The last healthy member of the Ko family.” He leans in, licks her face with his white tongue.

  “Agh! What are you trying to do?”

  He bites her cheek hard enough to break skin.

  “Trying to give me your disease?!”

  He’s fierce, but he’s thin, even thinner than Kora. She might be hungry, but she’s tough as an old shoe, whereas he’s pale and wasted. She kicks a foot out from under him.

  “Little whore! What did you do that for?” He pulls her to the ground with him. Rubs his face into hers, tries to stick his tongue in her mouth.

  “Get off me!” Rolls him over.

  Gripped by jealousy and desire, he won’t let go. On the battered concrete floor that once kept water out of the apartments below, they roll over one another, closer and closer to Uncle Wai’s potato jars and the crumbling wall. They’ll go over the edge if they aren’t careful. Kora throws her weight in the opposite direction, towards Delphine’s pen. She’s heavier than Stash. Back they roll. Her weight on him makes his heart pump. He finds fresh strength. Towards the wall they turn again.

  “You little shit! I’m going to beat the fuck out of you.” Kora won’t be defeated. She jams her shoulder hard against his and forces their momentum back Delphine’s way.

  Rage grips him, makes him superhuman for a moment. They spiral furiously into a jar. It tips over and hits the wall. Fragments of loose concrete clatter to the ground forty floors below. The wall gives. The jar crashes overboard and smashes onto the sidewalk.

  “I’m not gonna die just ’cause you are!” She forces him back, and they roll all the way to Delphine’s fence. The old goat bleats panic.

  “It isn’t fair!” He pushes on top of her again. Rolls her towards the brink as she attempts to pull her arm free to punch him. Here’s the edge. There’s no wall to protect them. Holy shit, holy shit, they’re going to fall! Over the ledge they go. Kora grabs a coil of loose rebar. The sick boy clings to her waist. “I don’t want to die!”

  She could kick him in the belly and he would plummet.

  She feels the temptation. Her arm begins to quiver. She can’t hold their weight for much longer. She has to decide now. She hoists them both back up to the safety of the rooftop garden.

  “You little fuck!” she hisses.

  The monsoon clouds burst open and shower them.

  Stash trembles, flat on his belly beside her. Gets ahold of himself and gives her a crooked grin, half-malevolent, half-teasing.

  “Pis
s off,” Kora says. “I don’t care if you are my brother’s friend. You’re not welcome in my house.”

  2

  THE STARFISH GROOM

  KIRILOW GROUNDSEL // GRIST VILLAGE (FOURTH QUARANTINE RING)

  NODE: KERNELS PLUMP

  DAY: 1

  EVEN IF SHE IS OUR LAST DOUBLER, I DON’T WANT AUNTIE RADIX TO have Peristrophe Halliana’s eyes. Auntie Radix already took Peristrophe Halliana’s liver a week ago, and one of her kidneys four weeks before that. Auntie Radix says that it is the duty and nature of a starfish to give. I tell her it is the duty and nature of a doubler to know when to stop asking. Peristrophe Halliana and I have seen the new monsoons only nineteen times each. We are barely old enough to do what we do. Auntie Radix has been drenched by the rains forty-eight times. It should be her job to sacrifice for us, not the other way round. It’s a good thing that memory is not a part of the body that can be cut out, or no doubt she would ask for Peristrophe Halliana’s memory too.

  I bite back my resentment. Radix Bupleuri is our queen, not to mention the eldest of the eighty-three sisters who live at Grist Village and a direct descendent of Grandma Chan Ling. She is well past a healthy age for child-bearing, but she is also our last doubler. With our death rates, we Grist sisters go the way of the dodo, unless she keeps birthing puppies. Yes, from her midnight egg space and—pop!—out her hoo, once plump and fresh, now floppy as an old sock. Still juicy to her young groom, who loves her. For me, nothing about her is juicy. Everything is duty. That means grit and grin, through every whim and tantrum.

  I sigh. I clean then sharpen my knives on my precious whetstone. Don’t you know that diamonds are a girl’s best friend? We made the whetstone ourselves, crushed so many engagement rings from skeletons of the time before, six glass towers full of nice ladies, sweet so sweet. Purty, the scavenger Aunties tell me, purty as covergirl, wonderful wonderbra, guess? by georges marciano.

  Purty and thin as skin and bones. They had time to work off the weight. Time to rot, time to mummify. For every season there is a reason. Off their skinny dead fingers the scavenger Aunties took their diamonds. Crushed those doggies to a coarse salt and made me my whetstone. Now I smooth my blade, one, two, three. All that love from the time before rushes into my shiv.