Nebula Awards Showcase 2016

EXCERPT FROM “GRAND JETÉ (THE GREAT LEAP)” ^{RACHEL SWIRSKY}

As dawn approached, the snow outside Mara’s window slowed, spiky white stars melting into streaks on the pane. Her abba stood in the doorway, unaware that she was already awake. Mara watched his silhouette in the gloom. Shadows hung in the folds of his jowls where he’d shaved his beard in solidarity after she’d lost her hair. Although it had been months, his face still looked pink and plucked.

Some nights, Mara woke four or five times to find him watching from the doorway. She didn’t want him to know how poorly she slept and so she pretended to be dreaming until he eventually departed.

This morning, he didn’t leave. He stepped into the room. “Marale,” he said softly. His fingers worried the edges of the green apron that he wore in his workshop. A layer of sawdust obscured older scorch marks and grease stains. “Mara, please wake up. I’ve made you a gift.”

Mara tried to sit. Her stomach reeled. Abba rushed to her bedside. “I’m fine,” she said, pushing him away as she waited for the pain to recede.

He drew back, hands disappearing into his apron pockets. The corners of his mouth tugged down, wrinkling his face like a bulldog’s. He was a big man with broad shoulders and disproportionately large hands. Everything he did looked comical when wrought on such a large scale. When he felt jovial, he played into the foolishness with broad, dramatic gestures that would have made an actor proud. In sadness, his gestures became reticent, hesitating, miniature.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

In deep winter, their house was always cold. Icy wind curled through cracks in the insulation. Even the heater that abba had installed at the foot of Mara’s bed couldn’t keep her from dreaming of snow.

Abba pulled a lace shawl that had once belonged to Mara’s ima from the back of her little wooden chair. He draped it across her shoulders. Fringe covered her ragged fingernails.

As Mara rose from her bed, he tried to help with her crutches, but Mara fended him off. He gave her a worried look. “The gift is in my workshop,” he said. With a concerned backward glance, he moved ahead, allowing her the privacy to make her own way.

Their white German Shepherd, Abel, met Mara as she shifted her weight onto her crutches. She paused to let him nuzzle her hand, tongue rough against her knuckles. At thirteen, all his other senses were fading, and so he tasted everything he could. He walked by her side until they reached the stairs, and then followed her down, tail thumping against the railing with every step.

The door to abba’s workshop was painted red and stenciled with white flowers that Mara had helped ima paint when she was five. Inside, half-finished apparatuses sprawled across workbenches covered in sawdust and disassembled electronics. Hanging from the ceiling, a marionette stared blankly at Mara and Abel as they passed, the glint on its pupils moving back and forth as its strings swayed. A mechanical hand sprang to life, its motion sensor triggered by Abel’s tail. Abel whuffed at its palm and then hid behind Mara. The thing’s fingers grasped at Mara’s sleeve, leaving an impression of dusty, concentric whorls.

Abba stood at the back of the workshop, next to a child-sized doll that sat on a metal stool. Its limbs fell in slack, uncomfortable positions. Its face looked like the one Mara still expected to see in the mirror: a broad forehead over flushed cheeks scattered with freckles. Skin peeled away in places, revealing wire streams.

Mara moved to stand in front of the doll. It seemed even eerier, examined face to face, its expression a lifeless twin of hers. She reached out to touch its soft, brown hair. Her bald scalp tingled.

Gently, Abba took Mara’s hand and pressed her right palm against the doll’s. Apart from how thin Mara’s fingers had become over the past few months, they matched perfectly.

Abba made a triumphant noise. “The shape is right.”

Mara pulled her hand out of abba’s. She squinted at the doll’s imitation flesh. Horrifyingly, its palm shared each of the creases on hers, as if it, too, had spent twelve years dancing and reading books and learning to cook.

Abel circled the doll. He sniffed its feet and ankles and then paused at the back of its knees, whuffing as if he’d expected to smell something that wasn’t there. After completing his circuit, he collapsed on the floor, equidistant from the three human-shaped figures.

“What do you think of her?” abba asked.

Goosebumps prickled Mara’s neck. “What is she?”

Abba cradled the doll’s head in his hands. Its eyes rolled back, and the light highlighted its lashes, fair and short, just like Mara’s own. “She’s a prototype. Empty-headed. A friend of mine is working on new technology for the government—”

“A prototype?” repeated Mara. “Of what?”

“The body is simple mechanics. Anyone could build it. The technology in the mind is new. It takes pictures of the brain in motion, all three dimensions, and then creates schematics for artificial neural clusters that will function like the original biological matter—”

Mara’s head ached. Her mouth was sore and her stomach hurt and she wanted to go back to bed even if she couldn’t sleep. She eyed the doll. The wires under its skin were vivid red and blue as if they were veins and arteries connecting to viscera.

“The military will make use of the technology,” Abba continued. “They wish to recreate soldiers with advanced training. They are not ready for human tests, not yet. They are still experimenting with animals. They’ve made rats with mechanical brains that can solve mazes the original rats were trained to run. Now they are working with chimpanzees.”

Abba’s accent deepened as he continued, his gestures increasingly emphatic.

“But I am better. I can make it work in humans now, without more experiments.” Urgently, he lowered his voice. “My friend was not supposed to send me the schematics. I paid him much money, but his reason for helping is that I have promised him that when I fix the problems, I will show him the solution and he can take the credit. This technology is not for civilians. No one else will be able to do this. We are very fortunate.”

Abba touched the doll’s shoulder so lightly that only his fingertips brushed her.

“I will need you to sit for some scans so that I can make the images that will preserve you. They will be painless. I can set up when you sleep.” Quietly, he added, “She is my gift to you. She will hold you and keep you… if the worst…” His voice faded, and he swallowed twice, three times, before beginning again. “She will protect you.”

Mara’s voice came out hoarse. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You needed to see her when she was complete.”

Her throat constricted. “I wish I’d never seen her at all!”

From the cradle, Mara had been even-tempered. Now, at twelve, she shouted and cried. Abba said it was only what happened to children as they grew older, but they both knew that wasn’t why.

Neither was used to her new temper. The lash of her shout startled them both. Abba’s expression turned stricken.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“You made a new daughter!”

“No, no.” Abba held up his hands to protect himself from her accusation. “She is made for you.”

“I’m sure she’ll be a better daughter than I am,” Mara said bitterly.

She grabbed a hank of the doll’s hair. Its head tilted toward her in a parody of curiosity. She pushed it away. The thing tumbled to the floor, limbs awkwardly splayed.

Abba glanced toward the doll, but did not move to see if it was broken. “I—No, Marale—You don’t—” His face grew drawn with sudden resolution. He pulled a hammer off of one of the work benches. “Then I will smash her to pieces.”

There had been a time when, with the hammer in his hand and a determined expression on his face, he’d have looked like a smith from old legends. Now he’d lost so much weight that his skin hung loosely from his enormous frame as if he were a giant coat suspended from a hanger. Tears sprang to Mara’s eyes.

She slapped at his hands and the hammer in them. “Stop it!”

“If you want her to—”

“Stop it! Stop it!” she shouted.

Abba released the hammer. It fell against the cement with a hollow, mournful sound.

Guilt shot through her, at his confusion, at his fear. What should she do, let him destroy this thing he’d made? What should she do, let the hammer blow strike, watch herself be shattered?

Sawdust billowed where the hammer hit. Abel whined and fled the room, tail between his legs.

Softly, abba said, “I don’t know what else to give.”

Abba had always been the emotional heart of the family, even when ima was alive. His anger flared; his tears flowed; his laughter roared from his gut. Mara rested her head on his chest until his tears slowed, and then walked with him upstairs.