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

not match the magnificence of their homeland, with its marble towers, its opulent stupas and tonsured lawns. What struck them instead was the filth. They saw the mouldering trash that floated in the vacuum of the harbour, the ragged stevedores who sweated and steamed under sacks of produce, the unscrubbed slum houses where they were to dwell. Some lifted their veils to shield their nostrils from the stench of urine and inferno.

‘You will not be safe here as unescorted women,’ the smuggler advised. ‘But never fear. I have connections among the merchant class. Those of you who are young and fair of face may find a protection as their wives and concubines. The rest may prove your worth as slaves, or the wives of slaves.’

Most of the women were too shocked to resist. They kept their heads down and followed on like livestock to be auctioned off for butchery. Grandmother, however, decided that she had had enough of bondage. She was a mere child among her people, but her mothers had already taught her the rudiments of transformation and the mystical arts. Once in the merchants’ guild, she was able to take on the guise of a burly uniformed guard and slip away unnoticed from her band of refugees. Could she have saved others with this ruse? Perhaps so. I have never dared to ask.

For days, she roamed the fiery streets alone, pickpocketing and scavenging scraps to sustain her belly, keeping to the five-foot-ways to protect her still tender feet. As she wandered, she came to realize that in a port town, her femininity might be an asset, not a curse. She soon arrived at Jalan Kejora, the centre of the city’s pleasure district, where doorways glowed with lanterns redder than the floors beneath them. Disguised as a john, she gained entrance to one of the more hygienic establishments, whereupon she revealed her true form, as well as her considerable talents, in front of a stunned procuress.

Thus she began her career as a courtesan. She was well known for her striptease act, which she performed for private audiences, winding a miniature albino sandworm around her lissome body. Members of the public beheld her in teahouses, clothed in a skin-tight cheongsam, plucking melodies on the pipa. When overcome with nostalgia, she would treat them to ragas from her homeland, accompanying herself on a Vulcan lute, tuned to the chords of a veena. Then, behind closed doors, she would provide bespoke services for her clients. First, she would wipe down their bodies by hand, to reduce the risk of infection. Then, she would mimic the shape of their darkest desires, always keeping one eye on the clock.

She selected her customers with care. In general, the clean and docile were preferable over the crassly wealthy. After all, she had seen the fates of others in the business: those beaten, murdered or robbed; those infected with disease or parasites; those subjected to the worst depredations of heartbreak.

Her metamorphoses not only charmed the many species of her gentlemen callers: they also defied the scrutiny of vice squads. At any hour of the sidereal clock, their white-armoured troops might storm the bordellos, sending her sisters naked and screaming into the flames of the starlit alleys. She and the other shapeshifters would hide in plain sight, while the fiercest among them fought back with painted tooth and nail. On the whole, however, it was better to avoid such altercations entirely. Pimps and madams paid hefty bribes to the police, and offered their officers complimentary services. They also maintained a network of spies throughout the district, so that if the troops descended, they might at least have a moment’s warning.

This was how she met my grandfather. By now, he had purchased his own rickshaw, and worked as the private chauffeur for the towkay of a nearby sundries store. He no longer needed to solicit customers, as his day was occupied ferrying small stocks of sonic screwdrivers and positronic brains between harbour and warehouse, shophouse and consumer. Still, he was happy to give rides to the girls, and to raise the alarm when police approached, hollering ‘Mata-mata!’ as he raced past the brothels at breakneck speed.

He liked his payment in cash, not flesh: a fact that endeared him to my grandmother. On lazy weekends, she would sometimes invite him to the kopitiam for a glass of chilled Slurm. Together, they would banter mischievously as the ceiling fan turned and the radio crackled strains of Vogon poetry. Neither was rich, and the muscles of both were sore from their daily ministrations. But, they were young and healthy, and had built lives for themselves on a new and distant star. Such accomplishments were worth at least some small celebration.

Alas, it seemed it was my grandmother’s destiny to be trailed by the dogs of war. Rumours were whispered, through pillowtalk and coffeeshop gossip, of mysterious forces with malevolent agendas. Sailors told of trade routes blocked; soldiers spoke of entire star systems laid waste. The city’s composition changed. New refugees arrived in the docks each day, while long-standing denizens began to evacuate in gilded spacecraft. A Hooloovoo tycoon even offered my grandmother a ticket. She hesitated. Within a week, her benefactor had fled.

Then came the attack. It was on the eve of Lunar New Year, which was observed as a municipal holiday. The inky skies above began to turn maroon, then hibiscus crimson. The rivers of vacuum grew turbulent, with gravitational eddies capsizing sampans and tongkangs. Even the less clairvoyant species whispered that their spiracles twitched, that their fur was standing on end.

In spite of such oracles, the people of Xingzhou still gaped to see the heavens fill with beastly perversions: half-fungoid, half-crustacean, half-cephalopodic obscenities, gliding through the aether on batlike wings. Shadows hurtled across the city’s architecture as greater, more monstrous beings revealed themselves, with their exposed beating organs, their infinite eyes, their wolflike jaws that bent time and space.

The Great Old Ones had come.

‘Iä! Iä! Yog-Sothoth fhtagn!’ cried my grandmother’s procuress,