The Tiger Flu Read online

  IT SEEMS LIKE HOURS LATER WHEN I REACH BOMBYX MORI WAITING for me still inside the bus.

  “Did you see the batterkite? Did you hear it? Just after the storm? By Our Mother’s feet, I wonder what they came back for, we’re so lucky it wasn’t us …”

  The grumbling, snoring carcass of Calyx Kaki lies in a heap of leaves beside Corydalis Ambigua. “Did any others, besides this fine specimen, come to you?” I ask.

  “None.”

  “Then I’m going to Saltwater City to find them. And I’m going to catch that dirty Salty on my way. If they’ve harmed Glorybind Groundsel in the least little bit, I will kill them all.” I whip out my remaining knife so she knows I’m serious.

  “Put that away, you silly fool. You’re scaring Corydalis Ambigua.” Bombyx Mori casts a glance to the rear of the bus. “I checked the sister puppies this morning for partho marks. And starfish ones too. There’s nothing.”

  I sheath my knife. “I guess this means you’re not coming to the city with me.”

  Bombyx Mori shakes her head. “We might be the last Grist sisters in the world,” she says. “But Corydalis Ambigua could fruit again. My duty and yours are not the same. Remember that place in the mountains where you took down that old bull elk last summer?”

  I remember. He gave me such a chase, and when I finally caught him, the look of sorrow in his eyes was almost unbearable. I nod.

  “You didn’t know I was following you.”

  “You couldn’t have been.”

  “That was a well-hidden valley. If the Kainai will give permission, I’ll take the sisters there. I’ll begin a new Grist Village.”

  “I’ll take Calyx Kaki with me. She’s sipped a lot of forget-me-do. You’ve got more important things to take care of.”

  Bombyx casts her eyes over our sleeping sister. “Calyx Kaki, of all the sisters who could have made it.”

  “Our Mother says gratitude above all else. We’ll be okay.”

  “Come find us when you’ve got your mother double and our other sisters back.”

  She picks up a stick and scratches a map in the dirt to show me where the hidden fertile valleys are.

  “There were many expulsions to those places,” I tell her. “Expulsions older than the expulsion of Grandma Chan Ling. Who knows what … or who … you’ll find.”

  “I have no choice, Kirilow.”

  “Neither of us do.”

  We hug for a long time. Bombyx, Corydalis, and the new Grist litter head immediately east. I return to the sad cave I shared with my dearest beloved and my mother double to pull supplies together before heading to the city.

  PART II

  CASCADIA YEAR: 127 TAO (TIME AFTER OIL)

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

  GREGORIAN YEAR: 2145

  17

  HOMESICK

  KORA KO // SALTWATER FLATS

  NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD

  DAY: 9

  “HOW ARE YOU FEELING?”

  “Better.”

  “Want to learn the tango?”

  “Tango?”

  “It’s the dance that fights back.”

  Madame leads Kora around the floor. Slow, slow, quick quick slow.

  “How is this going to help anything?”

  “It’s the first lesson, and you must learn it well. The other dances are harder, because they are secret. So come on now, move like you mean it.”

  NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD

  DAY: 11

  IN SPITE OF MADAME’S KINDNESS, KORA FEELS HOMESICK LIKE CRAZY. She’s forgotten the hunger. She’s forgotten the strife. She wants to see Charlotte, Kai Wai, and K2 so badly she thinks she might burst.

  On a moonless night, after Chang has set, she leaves her narrow cot in the sleeping hall. Pads softly down the stairs all the way to the basement, past Madame’s private quarters, to the back door. Unlocks it and lets herself out into the night.

  The city is blissfully quiet. Kora walks quietly to the street corner and looks off in the direction of home. The giant W atop the building still turns on its axis, though the light it gives off is dim and flickering. Still, it’s bright enough to make her heart leap. She hurries towards it on the lightest feet she can manage.

  Here’s the path to the Isabelle shrine. She feels a sudden urge to have a look.

  Instinctively, she looks left and right in case there are any kohl-eyed girls lurking nearby. Smirks inwardly, remembering she’s one of them now. Scurries down the broken sidewalk, past haunted alleys full of trash, two plague houses, and a crumbling church towards the water.

  The Isabelle shrine is more lavishly decorated than before. Someone has painted an image of Isabelle in profile on either side of the door, looking right on the left, and left on the right. The torn satin curtain has been replaced with red velvet. Kora approaches softly and pulls the curtain aside just slightly at first, in case there’s an attendant or priestess inside. A recently lit candle burns on the altar. It casts a warm glow. Beside it, smoke wafts up from three sticks of incense. But no one is there.

  Kora steps inside. Kneels on the cushion and mutters an awkward prayer for Charlotte, Wai, and K2. Hesitates. Grumbles one out for Madame Dearborn, Velma, and the other Cordova girls, including Myra, Tania, Soraya, and Modesta.

  When she’s finished, she notices a red filigree scale stuck in the sand beside the candle. Was it there before? Once she pulls it out of the sand, she can see the plug is standard. She wipes it off as before, with spit and the corner of her dress. Pulls out one of her own scales and inserts the filigree.

  The Isabelle projection kneels this time, her face uncomfortably close to Kora’s, her cheeks streaked with tears. “I guess you chose her after all. I can’t believe it, after all we’ve been through together. What was I thinking? I guess I’m a girl and stupid. Nix that. I’m not stupid. You’re an asshole. To think how much I loved you. Well, I hope you’re happy and I hope you’re screwing yourselves silly, because it’s not going to last, do you hear me? I know you don’t. You don’t take my messages anymore, I know. I’m not even talking to you, I’m talking to the ghost of you I keep in my moronic little heart, like an idiot, like a chump. Oh God, I can’t believe I feel this. I can’t believe I let you do this to me.” Her eyes are fountains, gushing water. Kora twitches, but she can’t stop watching the emotional slaughterhouse.

  “Well, don’t imagine for a minute that you have the last word. LïFT is still only at eighty-five percent verisimilitude, you know. And neither you nor that little bitch—how could I have ever called that charity case my best friend?!—have the smarts to generate the other fifteen percent. So you’re going to sell a defective product to the desperate. I’ll make it again, and I’ll make it perfect. There will be no contest. And then just you wait, because I’m amassing an army, do you hear me? You don’t get to treat me like this and live!”

  The transmission ends there. Kora is in shock at the intensity of Isabelle’s emotions. Isabelle—the brilliant inventor, the cool and canny CEO of HöST and heroine to millions of girls surviving the tiger flu, girls who will far outlive their boyfriends, brothers, fathers, and uncles in the streets of Saltwater Flats and beyond. How can she be such a mess? How could anyone hurt their golden princess this much?

  This time, Kora leaves the Isabelle scale in her head. Sticks the old moon phase scale in the sand beside the candle as a kind of offering. She no longer needs it in her halo because her brain remembers most of its content anyway. She pushes the red velvet curtain aside and departs the shrine. Takes the path by the ocean towards the Woodward’s Building.

  She doesn’t see them waiting for her until they step out of the shadows.

  “Think you can get away from us so easily, spoiled girl?” It’s Modesta, in charge in Myra’s absence. Shit.

  “After all we’ve invested in you?” And Soraya. Crap.

  Modesta grabs her by the ear as though she’s a delinquent child. Soraya takes her firmly by the arm. They drag her back to
the Cordova School.

  18

  STATE YOUR INTENTIONS

  KIRILOW GROUNDSEL // PENTE-HIK-TON (THIRD QUARANTINE RING)

  NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD

  DAY: 7

  THE NEW MONSOONS HAVE ARRIVED DECISIVELY. THIS MORNING’S rain falls in torrents. I haven’t slept, but I spent the night coiled in the fragrance of Peristrophe Halliana’s hair. I didn’t cry, and I won’t. I wash the dishes from our last meal together, fold and put away her clothes, then move to Old Glorybind’s room to make sure it is in order. Peristrophe was never tidy, but my mother double always was. Her room is just the way she left it every morning—a quilt of tiny squares laid perfectly over the bed, her four tunics hanging neatly in the closet, not a speck of dust on the old pine dresser built by Grandma Chan Ling herself. Atop the dresser lies my mother double’s pipe. I put it in my pocket. I pack the tent that Peristrophe made for me, half a dozen womb bombs, a few basic herbs, a handful of needles, plus dried foodstuffs—elk, chicken, mushrooms. Also knives, scalpels, and of course, my precious whetstone. The pack will be heavy, but it can’t be helped.

  I rest for a moment and watch the rain subside at the little window where my mother double used to sit. Chang follows the dark clouds as they roll away.

  Calyx returns from her own cave with an old knapsack of Glorybind’s I gave her, packed with her own things. I help her load it onto her back, then hoist my own.

  If I had nuclear rockets like the Cosmopolitan Earth Council, I would launch them all and blow Saltwater City to high heaven. I would, I swear it. I would kill every one of those last little mothers and not bat a single pretty eyelash. If I could be there to watch blood run from their eyes, as I was forced to make blood run from the eyes of my best beloved, nothing would make me happier. I’d knife them through their slitty peepers myself, revel as red fountains spurted skyward. I’d make their children drink them dry from their bleeding eyes. If I could kill them twice and twice again. If I could vaporize them and gore them too, I would. I’d burn them in the hottest and deepest reaches of hell. There is no pain they don’t deserve. But I don’t have a rocket launcher. I don’t have swords, guns, napalm, sarin gas, or any of the weapons my mother double taught me they had in the time before.

  We march towards the New Origins Archive, where my mother double took me for my rite of spring just this past monsoon.

  “A penny,” says Calyx Kaki, trudging beside me as we descend a bluff into the thickening forest. We’ve walked through the horror of the morning without a word. It’s mid-afternoon. Chang rises, as he does every other hour, on the western horizon. He’s noticeably closer today than yesterday. The tug of his gravity irritates me.

  “I won’t share,” I tell her. “I’ve got nothing nice. Nothing I should inflict on you.”

  She gazes at me, mournful and lost.

  “Look, baby, I am not your mama. I’m not anyone’s mama and never will be. Radix Bupleuri was a greedy mother who died of greedy greed. I’m done taking care of people. So don’t you think I will take care of you. You can come with me, and that is all.”

  She sniffles, then chokes.

  I don’t have anything to give her.

  The choke becomes a sob.

  “By Our Mother’s hairy crotch, do not cry.”

  She bursts into tears.

  “You stop that now, or I will leave you in the burnt village. Do you want to stay at Grist and pick the rags off dead sisters? Hmmmmmm? And eat their rotting meat, ’til you die of maggot poisoning? Do you?” We reach the bottom of the bluff. I’m appalled at my meanness, but I can’t stop. “I will take you back there and tie you to Mourning Rock, I swear I will, if you don’t stop testing me!”

  A scream erupts from her scrawny throat.

  “Stop that.”

  She wails like one possessed, rolls to the ground. Her body shakes and quivers.

  “They will find us, you stupid ninny. You better get control of yourself right now.”

  She vibrates uncontrollably. What is wrong with her? The vibrating intensifies. Is she still breathing? Get ahold of yourself, Kirilow Groundsel. You cannot afford all this rage. You’ve got to get Calyx Kaki to Saltwater City. You’ve got to catch that Salty and find your sisters. Do it for Peristrophe Halliana.

  I roll down beside her, grab her tight. “I’m sorry, Calyx Kaki, I’m sorry …”

  Her body vibrates fearsomely as she sobs. I grip her tighter. The shaking stops and she’s just crying. “Don’t abandon me, Groom Kirilow, you are all I’ve got.”

  “Shhh, Calyx, you are all I’ve got,” I say, though I feel numb. “We will get them back, do you hear me? We will catch and kill that invading Salty, and we will make the others pay in fountains of blood.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Groom Kiri. Your mother double would not want that.”

  “She is gone, and I’m in charge.”

  “We are children. We know nothing.”

  “I know things. High Priestess Elzbieta Kruk took me through my adulthood rites last spring. We will go to the New Origins Archive now for help.”

  I must pull it together. If I want my revenge, I must find patience. I have a long march ahead during which to find it, and I hope I can remember the way.

  THE PATH IS NARROW AND OVERGROWN WITH SAGE. ALTHOUGH MY mother double took me to the New Origins Archive only last year, it was just the one time. I’m not at all sure of the way. I could take the longer route, which follows old railway tracks, but I’ve never been that way, and it goes through the city of Kim-Ach-Touch, also known as Grizzly Bear Town. The last time one of our runners came back from there, she said it was infested with flu. Better to go through Pente-Hik-Ton farther south, where the Syilx are still in control and, thanks to their medicinally cultivated immunity, have kept the flu out, at least for now. The old matriarch of that town, Maria Armstrong, was the one who helped Grandma Chan Ling back in the days of the Grist sister exodus from Saltwater City. I think her great-grandson Billy Johnson will remember me, even without my mother double.

  So we pick through sage and pinyon in the growing heat, and I chant and chant to Our Mother to make my memory right. By day’s end, we hit a road made of crumbling asphalt. Sage and dry grass push through the pavement at every weakness, but the road is still recognizable. I breathe a sigh of relief. We’ll make it as far as Pente.

  It’s growing dark, and the evening rain will hit any minute. Calyx Kaki and I duck into the trees and set up the mushroom-fibre tent that Peristrophe Halliana wove, sewed, and waxed for my mother double and me last year, before our trip along this same route. Calyx and I get the tent up and shove a few scraps of still-dry wood inside just before the first drops of rain begin to fall. We dive beneath the shelter of its thin yet sturdy fabric. It still smells of beeswax and, ever so faintly, Peristrophe’s thyme and orange water perfume.

  The fragrance surrounds me, and my heart goes soggy with grief and longing. How will I pass a whole night inside here? When I close my eyes, her presence is so intense I almost believe I’ll see her when I open them. Her impossible closeness is unbearable.

  As soon as the rains let up, I exit quickly and build the lowest of fires under the flaps of the tent, where it’s still dry but open to the air. Over it, we simmer a broth of dried elk and herbs. We eat in silence.

  Back inside the tent, still overwhelmed by the scent of Peristrophe’s ghostly presence, I tumble into an exhausted slumber.

  NODE: GRAIN IN BEARD

  DAY: 8

  THUMP. I WAKE WITH A START. SOMETHING HAS HIT THE FINELY WOVEN roof of the tent and is now gnawing at its fibre. Squirrel? You’ll make a good breakfast if I catch you. I lift the flap and climb out.

  “Good morning, Groom Kirilow.”

  I gasp. “Who are you? How do you know my name? What do you want?”

  “You’re in my territory now. I could well ask you the same.”

  The sky is barely light. I pull my little firefly jar from the pocket of my tunic. In the pale light, a face
I recognize. “Billy Johnson?”

  “State your intentions, please.” The Pente Syilx have guns from the time before. He’s pointing one right at my face. Gone is the friendly young man I met with his grandmother last year. His demeanor is dead cold.

  “I mean no harm. Grist Village was burnt out by HöST the night before last. I’m going to Saltwater City to rescue my mother double, Glorybind Groundsel.” No reason to tell more than I need to. Last year, his grandmother let us pass without issue through Pente-Hik-Ton, but something has clearly changed.

  Billy sits quiet, thinking. “Have you brought anything to help us?”

  I offer him a small pouch of forget-me-do. “You know this plant, I think?”

  “What is your relationship to the extraction companies?”

  “Billy, you know that my people are products of the Jemini Group, and that we escaped them three generations ago.”

  He nods, still very formal. “The protocols are all the more important in these uncertain times,” he says. “Any more Grist sisters in these woods?”

  I hesitate. If I tell the truth that there’s only me and Calyx, and he’s not feeling charitable, he could take us prisoner. But if I lie and say there are more Grist sisters, he might feel threatened and still detain us. “Any more Syilx?”

  “I asked you first. Why answer so slowly?”

  I take a deep breath. “It’s just my cousin and me.”

  He nods and drops the gun. “HöST attacked us two nights ago. You may pass through these woods, but don’t try anything funny. We’ve got you surrounded.” He nods in several directions through the forest. “Go before I change my mind.”

  I nod back politely. “Is it safe to pass through Pente?”

  “Safer than through Kim. Kim is occupied. They burnt Pente down.”

  “Billy, I’m sorry,” I say. “Your grandma was my mother double’s friend.”

  He gives just the slightest smile then. “To trust you is all the hospitality I can afford, Kirilow Groundsel.”