Future Lovecraft

MYRISTICA FRAGRANS By E. Catherine Tobler

ABENI BABA WAS accustomed to things falling apart in her hands: grains from distant worlds, the dead in autopsy, her marriage. As iyaloja of Aphelion Station, she found that things fell apart less than they once had, yet still, these corridors with their people and goods could surprise her, as happened when she took the palm-sized copper pendant from the opened sack of nutmegs. How had it come to contaminate the goods? This was her first thought, being that her purpose was to ensure clean and equal trade among the people; she was Mother of the Market, these traders her children, these goods her grandchildren. And this pendant—

It was marked with a figure: upward man and downward fish. When her thumb moved over it, the pendant came apart, silent and sure, and Abeni closed her hand around it so that none might see. Her dark eyes lifted to the vendor before her. Bolanle bowed her head, spreading broad hands toward the bounty of nutmegs she had procured this journey. Such goods were worth more than gold on Aphelion, yet Abeni would give them all up for a taste of sunlight once more.

“You journeyed to…?” Abeni’s voice trailed off, wondering from where these sacks had come. She knelt before them, one hand sliding over the canvas sack, finding it had no mark upon it. In her other hand, the pendant warmed, seemed to send tendrils of sunlight up the length of Abeni’s arm. Her fist tightened.

Bolanle’s answer didn’t interest Abeni: It was a common trade route, the nearest planet to the Aphelion Station. However, the dark man who emerged from behind Bolanle did interest Abeni. She watched this man, overly tall and thin, peer around Bolanle’s slender bare shoulder, borealis eyes widening as he looked down upon Abeni and the sacks of nutmegs. He reached with one impossibly long arm—Where was the joint for his elbow, for his forearm seemed to reach entirely to his shoulder?—black spindle fingers sliding with a whisper against Abeni’s own, holding a startling coldness that seemed like the very depths of space to her. So, too, his skin: black abyss, like that which stretched around and out from Aphelion.

“Mother Baba.”

The dark man dwindled and faded to nothing more than Bolanle’s shadow as she rounded her goods and knelt beside Abeni. Abeni felt the pulse of the thing in her hand and slowly rose, shaking Bolanle off. “It has been a long morning of arrivals,” she said, nodding to the traders who cluttered the docking ring and cargo bays. “And I’ve more to tend.” Her voice snapped and Bolanle withdrew. Abeni took one nutmeg with her and fled Bolanle’s stall without marking the requisite forms to allow her goods full entry to Aphelion. And if Bolanle opened her mouth to cry a protest, Abeni took no notice, so intent was she on leaving the docking ring.

Aphelion Station spread in five concentric rings, rotating on the edge of known space. Abeni had never been troubled by its motion before, for her work consumed her. But as she hurried away now, she caught sight of the whole and infinite black beyond the arched station windows, and she cried out, as if looking into the face of the shadow man. And then, Aphelion faded.

Abeni felt the pulse of the thing in her hand and found herself standing in a field of grain. Sun drenched the space and her. Abeni thought she would melt, that her entire body would liquefy and flood the ground beneath her. Her death would feed these grains until they were strong, until they—they whispered against her fingertips as she walked and under her passage, they grew. They changed. These grains, once green, flushed to gold and thickened. These grains, once only knee-high, pressed their roots into the soil and surged upward, until they reached skyward. Abeni lifted a hand, but could no longer touch the grain tips. And these tips, once gold, now burned under a flaring sun, turning black, the charred fragrance falling onto Abeni’s shoulders like snow. The grains closed over her then, pressing her to the dirt, until its darkness filled mouth and nose, until the shadow man snatched a hand out and pulled her into the earth.

She woke in the depths of the station, humid, fetid air rolling over her sticky skin. Painlessly, one palm had been marked by the pendant, the fish figure curling inward, as if huddled. Abeni sat up, the small pendant gleaming a step away from her nose. It was sealed shut once more, though the nutmeg she had taken was cracked in half, revealing its labyrinthine innards, brown curling through ivory; its sharp scent carried to her, seemed to clear her mind. Abeni rolled herself to sitting, crossing her legs and finally reaching a hand to claim the strange pendant. Moisture coated its case, making it slick within her grip. When she picked up the nutmeg next, it withered in her hand, yet Abeni took it with her as she climbed her way out of the maintenance levels and returned to her private room.

It was a small room, unassuming, decorated with very little, save small trinkets that merchants brought her. Three books, two miniatures, a dried flower from a riverbank on a planet she would never know. A figure that looked like a blue jellyfish, a small plate with an off-center fish painted upon it, three jars of soil. It was the soil she sought, knowing she needed it—though not knowing why or how. She broke the seal on one jar, releasing a fragrance that seemed like sunlight to her; the air sounded like whispering grains as the lid came away. She stuck her small hand through the mouth of the jar, burying the withered nutmeg in the black soil. After a second thought, she planted the pendant, too.

Come morning, Abeni returned to the docking ring, wishing to pretend all was normal and well. But she knew she had left her work unhed and unhappy merchants greeted her. Goods lined the pathways, awaiting proper entry to the station. One by one, Abeni worked her way through them, last of all to Bolanle, who sat atop her nutmeg sacks, as she had the whole night through. Abeni made no apologies and none of the merchants were openly hostile. As iyaloja, her methods were beyond scrutiny; she would work as she worked and their goods would only be allowed entry by her word. Bolanle worked at her side in comfortable silence, shifting her approved goods to the pallet so they could be moved into the station proper. When Abeni claimed one sack of nutmegs for herself, Bolanle only looked at her.

“I have need of these,” Abeni said and Bolanle said nothing, for it was not her place. She considered herself lucky to lose only one sack. Everyone knew that larger tithes had been taken by iyaloja prior to Abeni.

However, not even Abeni could say why she took the entire sack of nutmegs. She cradled the sack against her side, as she might a child, while she made the last of her daily rounds and checked the following day’s schedule. The sound the nutmegs made within the canvas sack calmed her: click, click, click-click. She pictured their small brown shapes, pressed against each other and her; their veined insides, worms coiling through flour. These things pleased her, but she could not say why. Later, in her room, she would look at the quantity of nutmegs she now possessed, and her meager jars of soil, and she would mourn, not understanding.

Neither did she understand how, in the depth of night, she came to discover the pendant pressed against her breast. It came away with a puckering sound of sweat, the image of this fishman pressed again into her skin. Soil clung to her, as well, proving that she had truly buried it, but now it was here, with her. Abeni held the pendant between her fingers, stroking the fish until the pendant slid open.

It was not a locket as she understood lockets; there was no place for a mirror or an image. Inside, there was only yawning blackness, as if the pendant were a portal. When Abeni pressed a finger to the darkness, it was as though her finger went inside a space she could not otherwise see. Her finger did not come out the backside of the pendant as it should have. It was simply gone.

And inside? That darkness was warm and wet, vaguely like a mouth, she thought, though it contained no teeth. She drew her finger out and, though it felt wet, she could see that it was not. All the ocean in this little ornament, she thought, and closed her eyes. This was not her sunlit grain.

The darkness belonged to Bolanle, as surely as the shadow man did. This thought came to Abeni upon waking. The day had not yet begun on the station; its crew slept on, tied to the rhythms of the ancient world that had envisioned this place. Did that world exist, still? Abeni often wondered, for to her, Earth was but a dream, a place for other generations. Her place was here, Aphelion in deep space, and she roamed its corridors barefooted, heading toward Bolanle.

In Bolanle’s room, Abeni pulled her to the decking and showed her the pendant, cradled in both hands, opened, the darkness yawning. Bolanle stared. “This is for you,” Abeni said, and pressed Bolanle’s hand to the dark.

Bolanle vanished. It was not a sudden thing; Abeni wished it had been. The woman disappeared bit by bit through the small opening of the pendant, as though she were a piece of paper, folded in on itself over and over. Bolanle shrieked once, as the shadow man ripped himself free from her then pushed her—pushed her as he might a boulder from a great height, hands and feet of abyss pressed against her backside—pushed her until only a toe remained poking out, and then that, too, was swallowed by the darkness. Abeni stared, expecting to see something—there was only that small, yawning circle of dark—then lifted her gaze to the shadow man, now crouched across from her.

“Feeding me will not stop it,” the shadow man said. His voice was a terrible thing, the sliding of oil down Abeni’s throat, and she felt she would be sick. “If you plant all the nutmegs…there will still be the water. Even they cannot drink it all.”

Abeni wondered if she could drink it all and the shadow man laughed. His laughter was like a flood—she wished for that field of grain, so the water might be stemmed, but it rushed onward, over her, into her. She was drowning now, in a water thick like oil, which filled her nose and mouth and ears, until she was mute and could only watch herself float away. In this floating, there was no peace, no peace until Aphelion, herself, bent under the pressure and exploded.

Abeni’s hand snatched out to grab the shadow man. His borealis eyes went wide and she laughed, bubbles streaming through his oily flood. She latched onto his impossibly long arms and held to him, and then—

He vanished as Bolanle had. Folded up on himself, until he could be folded no more, and poof! Abeni fell to the decking, the pendant rattling beside her. She half-expected Bolanle to be vomited out, but no, the pendant had closed and there was no Bolanle. Abeni grabbed the pendant and opened it, but even the small darkness has closed upon itself, no more than a pinprick within the metal. Abeni stroked a finger over it—oily wet—but it did not expand.

She closed the pendant and stood on shaking legs, moving out of Bolanle’s quarters, toward the docking ring. Most of the station was still not awake, but merchants would arrive soon, early ships on clocks different from station time. Even now she could feel the slight vibration in the station as a ship docked. By the time she reached the docking ring, they were unloading and Abeni watched from a shadow. As the goods came onto Aphelion, the iyaloja wondered what else she might have let slip through. All these years, how many pendants? How many shadow men folded inside merchants? She saw nothing out of place, yet—until there, there! Her eyes went wide as a trio of shadows slid out of a shipping container over the wall, creeping upward on obscure feet.

If you plant all the nutmegs….

His words came back to her; Abeni shook them off. Of course, she could not plant all the nutmegs, for she lacked the soil—Or did she? Abeni’s mind turned to the place where she had awakened and that awful, fetid smell. Compost, she thought. Station waste. But he had said no—that even planting them would be of no use. She could not see what was coming, only knew there was something—something in these shadows that crept from the containers of distant worlds. What was Aphelion becoming gateway to? What?

As Mother of the Market, it was her job to stop it. Abeni knew this the way she knew her own heartbeat, the way she knew she craved the light of a distant sun. Sunlight on grain, she longed for it—but no, not yet.

Yes now, sweet Mother.

The whisper startled her and the shadow man curled his hand around her throat. Abeni no longer felt inside the station; the docking ring and its cargo bays seemed far distant, only a smudge of light on the distant horizon. The shadow man pulled her backward, through stars and planets, through nebulae and across black holes. Flashpoint, she thought, and squeezed her eyes shut, but even then she could see the places he showed her and all their terrible creatures. The darkness writhed, reaching for her with questing limbs that were sun-warm and slick. Abeni could not breathe for the horror that spread before her, this rotting land with its dying gods. These creatures reached for her, for Aphelion, to live yet again though so many had forgotten.

The sunlight here was sickly, throwing into shadow more than it illuminated, but she could see winged horrors moving within that light. Abeni tried to make sense of what she saw, but could not; she found that when she stopped trying, she could see more, more that made her want to shriek, but she had no breath, for the shadow man kept firm hold of her. She supposed, in a far distant corner of her mind, that he hoped to intrigue her. These goods, if they could be called such, were like none Aphelion had seen; wouldn’t the universe marvel that Abeni had found such wonders? Wouldn’t they herald Aphelion Station as the new dawn, the beginning of an entirely new life?

Abeni wrenched herself free. She stumbled to the decking, hands smacking the metal before her shoulder could. She sucked in a breath and startled when she felt a hand touch her shoulder. She rolled toward the wall, expecting the shadow man, but it was a different man who stood there, the merchant Esmail, whom she slowly recognized. Abeni took his hand and pulled herself up.

“Little Mother, are you well?”

Her eyes moved past him, to the shadows that coated the walls of Aphelion Station. “I am not,” she said, seeing no reason to deny it. She was not well and neither was her station, but she wondered how both might be so, again.

“You speak in riddles, Abeni,” Esmail said, after she told him of Bolanle, of the nutmegs, of the writhing darkness. She could not make better sense of all that she had seen, did not know how to stop what she felt coming. “You speak of things that are not so. These shadows do not move and nutmegs are but nutmegs.”

The worst thing of it, Abeni decided, was not Esmail disbelieving her. It was that she longed for the things the shadow man had shown her. She wanted these creatures to come through Aphelion Station and make their mark upon it. How wonderful a discovery these great and terrible things. This corner of the universe had never seen their like. The curious child within Abeni responded to that, wanted to see these creatures in the light of the sun, wanted—

No. What she wanted did not matter. She could not allow it. Would not. “Esmail, I need your help,” she said. “I need the containers of your ship and the compost of this station.”

The shadow man said it would not matter, but Abeni moved forward, anyhow, claiming one cargo bay for her experiment. Sunlit grain, she wanted a forest of sunlit grain. She would have to make do with nutmegs and so, did, planting all that she had in the malodorous compost the engineers gave her with mocking smiles. They thought she had finally lost her mind, for nutmegs were not grown this way. The horticulturists told her the same, insisting she come to their deck to see how they did their work—one must splice, one must graft!—but no. Abeni paid to house her experiment within one of the cargo holds and waited, ignoring everyone who told her she was wrong.

As the hold began to warm over the coming days, Abeni wondered if perhaps she was wrong after all, but something within her said to keep on. Never had she heard such an insistent voice and so, she tended the nutmegs as she might children, often forgetting her normal duties as she walked among the growing trees. This could not be so, the arborists said, walking down the neatly planted rows; how could these poor nutmegs be growing as they were? Abeni did not know, but watched as they soared upward and reached for the ceiling with its artificial sunlight streaming downward.

Harvest, and Abeni welcomed those who would see what she had grown. Esmail came to help her gather the nutmegs and it was he who opened the first of the pods to reveal the spice inside. Thus, it was Esmail who suffered the first horror as the creature unwound itself from the nutmeg and crawled out of the pod, latching onto the nearest arm. It was, after all, hungry, Abeni supposed.

The creature was a thing she had seen in the writhing darkness, a dozen lashing limbs and one hungering mouth. As it suckled at Esmail’s arm, he staggered backward. Below his moan, the cracking of other pods was heard within the cargo hold. Beneath Abeni’s feet, the decking rumbled. She moved to the doors, knowing then that Aphelion was lost. All that it had been, gone. Her mistake. Her vain hope. She pushed the arborists into the main docking ring, sealing the cargo hold with herself and Esmail inside. All around them, pods broke open, creatures writhing to escape their confines.

And then, the shadow man came and laughed in Abeni’s ear as he wrapped his arms around her. Abeni leaned back in his embrace, wanting to let these creatures out, wanting to show them to the world, and yet -

“Told you, there will still be the water,” the shadow man whispered.

She thought, Oh, but I miss the sunlight. “Let the water come.”

The shadow man flooded the compartment with his warm, oil-slick water. Abeni felt herself float upward, amid the creatures who swam and seemed to grow within the disagreeable water. They moved effortlessly, bobbing and darting, swarming over what remained of Esmail, drifting closer to Abeni and the shadow man. She pressed closer to him, into his darkness and beyond.

“Sweet Mother,” he whispered—and then his eyes flew wide.

Abeni had reached beyond him, to the control panel, where slick fingers skimmed to vent the compartment. Water and creatures alike were blown outward, into the abyss beyond Aphelion Station, into the darkness between the stars. Abeni felt the shadow man release her, felt his scream as his children died, amid boiling water which then exploded in a shower of ice. Did it snow between the stars? That day, it did.

And Abeni…Abeni reached until she could reach no more, and dreamed she felt sunlight trailing over her cheeks, her throat, and into the hollow of her fish-marked palm.

for J., as always