The Mammoth Book of Nebula Awards SF

Merchant, keep your attar of roses,

your ambers, your oud,

your myrrh and sandalwood. I need

nothing but this dust

palmed in my hand’s cup

like a coin, like a mustard seed,

like a rusted key.

I need

no more than this, this earth

that isn’t earth, but breath,

the exhalation of a living city, the song

of a flute-boned woman,

air and marrow on her lips. This dust,

shaken from a drum, a door opening, a girl’s heel

on stone steps, this dust

like powdered cinnamon, I would wear

as other girls wear jasmine and lilies,

that a child with seafoam eyes

and dusky skin might cry, There

goes a girl with seven thousand years

at the hollow of her throat, there

goes a girl who opens her mouth to pour

caravans, mamelukes, a Mongolian horde

from lips that know less of roses

than of temples in the rising sun!

Damascus, Dimashq

is a song I sing to myself. I would find

where she keeps her mouth, meet it with mine,

press my hand against her palm

and see if our fingers match. She

is the sound, the feel

of coins shaken in a cup, of dice,

the alabaster clap of knight claiming rook,

of kings castling — she is the clamour

of tambourines and dirbakki,

nays sighing, qanouns musing, the complaint

of you merchants with spice-lined hands,

and there is dust in her laughter.

I would drink it, dry my tongue

with this noise, these narrow streets,

until she is a parched pain in my throat, a thorned rose

growing outward from my belly’s pit, aching fragrance

into my lungs. I need no other. I

would spill attar from my eyes,

mix her dust with my salt,

steep my fingers in her stone

and raise them to my lips.

Jeremiah sits in a room at Cornell

Lit by fluorescent lights

His ears are covered by headphones, and he’s bopping along as he searches

(He doesn’t look anything like Jodie Foster)

He’s not listening to the telescope — his headphones are blasting Queen

The telescope sends to him nothing but a string of numbers

His fingertips are doing the search

Writing a new algorithm to implement frequency-domain filtering

Sorting out a tiny signal of intelligence

(hypothetical intelligence)

from the thousand thousand thousand sources of noise from the sky

It’s four a.m., his favorite time of night

No distractions

Outside, the stars are bright

Inside, the stars sing to him alone.

Nine hundred light years away

In the direction of Perseus

Intelligent creatures are wondering why they hear nothing from the skies

They are sending out messages,

Have been sending out messages for hundreds of years

One of their number, renowned for his clear thinking,

Has an electromagnetic pickup on his head

(or, what would pass for a head)

He is thinking clear, simple thoughts

1 + 1 = 2

1 + 2 = 3

1 + 3 = 4

And the electromagnetic signals of his brain

(or, what would pass for a brain)

Are being amplified and beamed into the sky

In the direction of Earth

It is the simplest signal they know

A brain thinking

1 + 1 = 2

2 + 2 = 4

Jeremiah has been searching for years

He has a beard like Moses

Glasses like Jerry Garcia

A bald head like Jesse Ventura

Patience like Job

They are out there

If only the telescope arrays were larger…

if only they could search deeper…

If only his filtering algorithms were more incisive.

Nine hundred light years away

In the direction of Perseus

The aliens are patient

They are sending their thoughts to the stars

Clear, simple thoughts

We are here

We are here

We are here

Where are you?