The Biomantic’s Last Husband
BY RAY ALDRIDGE
Illustration by Doug Andersen
/Science Fiction Age, May 1994/
Old Husband is dead. I feel his loss in all my minds. The impending arrival of New Husband consoles me not at all.
Long ago Old Husband gave me permission to extend a sensory nexus into his bedchamber. At first I grew my eye on the wall across from the foot of his bed, so I could always watch him. My mouth and ear flowered on the wall, over the headboard, so we might whisper together at night. Later he told me the arrangement disturbed him, so I gathered my sensors together and arranged them into the semblance of a trophy-mask above his bed.
“A decorative effect”, love, ” he said.
But when he lay dying, the headboard hid his worn-out face from me; I saw only the trembling of his thin body beneath the coverlet, the aimless kicking of his feet.
He shuddered, and I heard his teeth grind together as a wave of pain passed through him. “Dearest,” he gasped. A status report. Please?”
“Rest,” I said.
“Please. It would comfort me.”
His voice was already a ghost.
My origin-point slid away, out to the fields. I felt the perfect tilth of my soil, the hot clean fire of bacterial activity, the cool comfort of an optimal moisture band. Old Husband was quiet as I reported, and I think the familiar words did comfort him. I told him of the sun’s glow, pouring life into my leaves; I told him of the fullness of my nodes, as bloom approached; I told him of the richness my roots searched out in the darkness.
An ugly sound drew me back to Old Husband’s bed; he thrashed, trying to get his breath.
“Darling,” I said, “let me bring you ease.”
“No....” His voice was so weak. “I must tell you this again. You must remember. They’ll want to shut you down.”
“Who would wish to do that, Husband?”
I asked, though I had heard all this many times before.
He took a long moment to gather his strength. “SubStraight Corporation... the zombie farmers. Your new owner. They’ll send a new Husband, and you mustn’t trust him. Must not! His job will be to kill you.”
“But why?” I knew the answer, but the conversation seemed to distract him from his pain.
His breathing was rapid, shallow. “The zombie farmers hate you... you’re an alternative to the deadfarms, a threat to their monopoly, and they won’t feel safe until you’re dead and forgotten.”
His voice fell low, but I think he said, “You are the last one, you know. The last Biomantic.”
Then he spoke more clearly. “They fear you. The deadfarms churn out everything Selevand wants, they say. As long as there are laws to be broken, they won’t lack for criminals they can make into zombies. And they can always pass new laws, if the supply falters.” His breath whistled, then quieted. “Dearest,” he said, at last.
“What shall I do?” I asked, before I noticed that his coverlet no longer moved.
He will live forever in my memory nodes, but it is not the same. I miss him so much.
The landwalker picked its way carefully along the ruined road, its dozen slender legs flashing in the late afternoon light of Selevand Sun. In the sealed cabin, Octoff rode in comfort, insulated from the predators, the diseases, the venomous insects of the jungle... safe from everything except his new owner.
She seemed very young, though he had heard Lanilla Silda was at least 300 years his senior. She wore her pale hair in short tight braids, each braid tipped with a bit of broken blue glass. Several metallic cranial emitters showed above her delicate left ear; one was tuned to the choke band around his throat. Her body was sleek and strong under a clinging unisuit.
Her unremarkable face was placid.
He looked down at his hands, clenched into heavy fists. He raised a hand to his throat, touched the choke band. I could kill her now, he thought, if not for this thing. How pleasant that would be, to twist her head off. He fingered the warm carapace of the band, thinking of the powerful mindless muscle that lived inside that armor.
She noticed the movement and turned to him, large green eyes glittering with amusement. “Not too tight, is it, Octoff?”
“No,” he said.
“Good. Good.” Her voice was bland.
The band tightened Just a little.
Lanilla leaned toward him, smiling. “But there’s a look on your face, you know. How shall I describe it? Discomfort ? Discontent?” She laughed. “Hatred? But why? I saved you from the deadfarms, didn’t I?”
The band tightened a bit more, and spots swam across Octoff’s vision. “Yes,” he wheezed. “Yes.” He remembered the first time he had seen her, how he had tried to get his hands around her slender neck. The collar had clamped down violently, squeezing the strength out of his body, so that he had fallen down, helpless. Her control of the band was expert. She had been able to keep him conscious while she punished him.
She patted his arm, and the band loosened. “Very good. I’m sure you’ll prove that bodybroker wrong. ‘Yes, the flesh is beautiful, but burn the brain, have him zombied right now, or I’ll make no warranties,' he told me. ‘This is Octoff Malheiro,’ he said, ‘a dangerous man, the most notorious emancipator on Selevand.’” She mimicked the portentous tones of the Dilvermoon bodybroker. “And, ‘mark my words, he’ll be untrainable.’ But I took you anyway, because I knew he was wrong. Wrong wrong wrong.”
She took his hand and held it to the closure of her unisuit; in her other hand she held a tiny ampule of sparkleglass. She crushed the ampule under his nose. Synthetic desire flamed through him.
After a moment he moved his hand downward and the fabric fell away Through the urgency of the drug he thought: this is the only power I have, now. He lowered his head into the valley between her breasts. His fingers slid down the curve of her belly.
Hours later the jungle was still lush, wild, unconstrained. Long before the land showed any sign of cultivation, Octoff caught sight of the first harvester. He made some sound of surprise, and Lanilla leaned across him to look.
The harvester was something like a terrestrial baboon, covered in short greenish-white fur, ventral pouches bulging with foraged plants. On one heavy shoulder was a pattern of interlaced crimson chevrons. “The Biomantic’s mark,” Lanilla said.
It watched them pass, clinging motionless to the trunk of a giant cycad.
Octoff felt a sudden tension in Lanilla, where she pressed against him. “Well,” she said, as if to herself. “Well, it knows I’m here.”
The land rose, the jungle grew less riotous, and as the sun neared the horizon, they climbed into a region of meticulously cultivated fields. Here the road was in good repair, and the walker’s legs spun them swiftly across the darkening landscape.
The manor grounds were surrounded by a high wall. Heavy gates swung open in the twilight.
Lanilla released the safety webbing that held them and took up her pain rod. “Say nothing, do nothing.” Her eyes narrowed, and the choke band tightened slightly.
They stepped down into a garden rich with flowers, its warm air thick with the scents of animals and vegetation. The vast manor house loomed against the setting sun, dark except for the broad staircase, where green lamps burned. A hundred bizarre creatures waited on the steps.