The Best of World SF by Lavie Tidhar (best romance novels of all time TXT) 📗

EM-L4-D28-58a. I’m the only one left. Request recycling. Repeat, request recycling.’

‘Request received. Re-enter command and grant full data privileges to assist us in situation assessment.’

As Baldy twitched in the pool of blood, he gracefully raised his two hands to signal the command’s sixteen-digits.

Death’s just the middleman. Math is forever.

Data, like snowflakes falling silently in a vacuum, required time. I found a corner to curl up in. I felt like an entire lifetime of strength had been squeezed out of me. Memory and pain chaotically whirled together. I didn’t care how they would judge or deal with me. All I wanted was to leave this hell and get home, even if no one was waiting for me at the door.

If they refused, I would destroy myself along with our asteroid home. All I had to do was adjust the vector of the electromagnetic mass projector and Mother Whale would tear open crushing everything inside it, including all our debts and our sins. My cognitive module reminded me that debt and sin were the same words in Sanskrit, Hebrew and Aramaic.

Now, I really was the only one left.

Then, I felt a strange force dragging me down, drooping my eyelids, weakening my limbs, preventing nerve impulses from flowing smoothly. I was pulled into a dream, like those countless previous confrontations that had ended in my failure. I tried to resist the invasion, tried to listen to the gospel transmitting from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. It was spoken by a voice vague and uncertain.

‘… EM-L4-D28-58a, data assessment has been completed. We will take you home. We will…’

Darkness swallowed me again.

7.

… Wearying debt is sinful and never complete. But completeness can mean only death…

The sheepdog dragged Magpie’s crippled body until it disappeared into deep space.

… Sacrifice is for all the gods, not just death. Death is just the middleman…

Covered in the dust of the shattered cabin, Freckle’s helmet hung from her body by a thread, like dandelion fluff about to blow away.

… When we devote our lives to the God who created us, we commit to paying interest in the form of sacrifice. Only at the end, can our lives repay the principal…

Baldy slapped me on the shoulder. Baldy was blown away by my gun. In the low gravity, he was like a paper doll flung against the wall. A bloody mist bloomed from his chest as I thought on the young Baldy taking form in his amniotic chamber.

… Birth is the original debt, which all humans carry, the debt created by humanity’s emergence in the cosmos. This debt can never be repaid on Earth, where its sum is beyond all reach…

Freckles winked at me and made an indecent gesture. Magpie, emerging from her shower, bent to wipe her calves. She winked at me without any sexual significance.

… When the sacrificial rites are performed justly, God promises a path to shed our human condition and achieve eternity. This is possible because, in the face of eternity, all debt loses meaning…

In the dream, the sequestered girl fell asleep, the picture book still in her hands. The picture frame upside down on the table displayed a line of small characters. The pink embryo rotated slowly in its chamber, eyelids twitching from time to time.

… A form of sacrifice, through supplementing the credit of living humans, makes life extension possible, and in some cases through joining in God, achieves eternity…

The girl’s face behind the seal. A desperate man who intended suicide but froze in mid-air. The bodies of miners. My own body. Freckle’s face. Magpie’s face. The woman in black’s face. The faces of all the living and the dead slowly overlapping, merging into one face.

… Human existence is a form of debt…

Names began floating to the surface, but I wasn’t sure they were real. They were like my memories, fragmented and confused. Then an enormous asteroid tore through the cabin right next to me. Hot fuel fleas tunneled through my body, tearing holes that reeked of singed flesh. I leapt desperately onto the surface of the asteroid as miniature ice volcanoes erupted on its surface in spears of steam. A crack engulfed me and I tumbled into a spinning tunnel as the fabric of all things stretched into infinite distance, transformed into infinitely thin light.

I finally remembered the name, the one name, the name that should never have been forgotten.

8.

‘Anan!’

I woke from the nightmare to find myself neither in the cabin nor in any part of Mother Whale I knew of.

There was a vast open room and milky white light, but the light was so evenly distributed that I couldn’t locate its source. I couldn’t even awaken my cognitive module to get my bearings.

I tried to move but my body was too heavy. It felt as though I could only exert a third of my strength. My every breath was strained. Then I realized what that meant. Joyful tears erupted in two raging streams.

I had finally come home.

Dr. Li, an Afro-Asian woman with a halo of dark curls, was assigned to watch over me. She equipped me with an exoskeleton and breathing aids to help me adapt to Earth’s gravity. Compared with ordinary earthlings, my limbs were too slender and weak. My skin was deathly pale. My head was a little too large. If she had painted me green, I could have easily passed for an alien.

My range of activities was limited to that one floor. Dr. Li explained I had caused a terrible storm outside and must take shelter here for a while.

The area I could access on this floor already exceeded the sum area of all cabins and passages in Mother Whale. Of course, this did not include the inner and outer surface area of the asteroid. After all, not everyone got the chance to participate in a death race on the asteroid itself. Regardless, this space was more than sufficient to meet all my needs. I even had the pleasure of sinking my teeth into some coveted kungpao chicken, working