Lightspeed Magazine, Issue 131 (April 2021): Lightspeed Magazine, #131

By John Joseph Adams

LIGHTSPEED is a digital science fiction and fantasy magazine. In its pages, you will find science fiction: from near-future, sociological soft SF, to far-future, star-spanning hard SF--and fantasy: from epic fantasy, sword-and-sorcery, and contemporary urban tales, to magical realism, science-fantasy, and folktales. Welcome to LIGHTSPEED's 131st issue! This month An Owomoyela returns to our pages with a new story of advanced AI, brain adaptations, and oh, yes, dead loved ones: "The Equations of the Dead." It's a riveting read, and so is our other SF original, Rich Larson's "Complete Exhaustion of the Organism," a post-apocalyptic story of love, loss, and, well, dead loved ones. We also have SF reprints from Seanan McGuire ("Swear Not by the Moon") and Ray Nayler ("The Ocean Between the Leaves"). Our fantasy original is a new novelette from Ashok K. Banker: "The Giving One." It's an epic tale that we'll be serializing in two parts. We also have fantasy reprints from Ann Leckie ("The Justified") and Genevieve Valentine ("Blood, Ash, Braids"). The book review team has been busy reading everything from a new serialized dark SF novella (SPIDER KING, by Justin C. Key, MD) to a joyous YA novel from LIGHTSPEED alum Charlie Jane Anders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adamant Press
• Release date: Apr 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393824152

John Joseph Adams

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and the editor of the Hugo Award–winning Lightspeed, and of more than forty anthologies, including Lost Worlds & Mythological Kingdoms, The Far Reaches, and Out There Screaming (coedited with Jordan Peele).

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 131, April 2021

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: April 2021

SCIENCE FICTION

The Equations of the Dead

An Owomoyela

Swear Not by the Moon

Seanan McGuire

The Ocean Between the Leaves

Ray Nayler

Complete Exhaustion of the Organism

Rich Larson

FANTASY

The Justified

Ann Leckie

The Giving One (Part 1)

Ashok K. Banker

The Giving One (Part 2)

Ashok K. Banker

Blood, Ash, Braids

Genevieve Valentine

EXCERPTS

A Dark Queen Rises

Ashok K. Banker

The Conductors

Nicole Glover

NONFICTION

Book Review: Victories Greater Than Death, by Charlie Jane Anders

LaShawn M. Wanak

Book Review: Spider King, by Justin C. Key

Arley Sorg

Book Review: The Bone Maker, by Sarah Beth Durst

Chris Kluwe

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

An Owomoyela

Ashok K. Banker

Rich Larson

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

Support Us on Patreon, or How to Become a Dragonrider or Space Wizard

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2021 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Caleb Worcester / Adobe Stock

https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com

From_the_Editor

Editorial: April 2021

John Joseph Adams | 244 words

Welcome to Lightspeed’s 131st issue!

This month An Owomoyela returns to our pages with a new story of advanced AI, brain adaptations, and oh, yes, dead loved ones: The Equations of the Dead. It’s a riveting read, and so is our other SF original, Rich Larson’s Complete Exhaustion of the Organism, a post-apocalyptic story of love, loss, and, well, dead loved ones. We also have SF reprints from Seanan McGuire (Swear Not by the Moon) and Ray Nayler (The Ocean Between the Leaves).

Our fantasy original is a new novelette from Ashok K. Banker: The Giving One. It’s an epic tale that we’ll be serializing in two parts. We also have fantasy reprints from Ann Leckie (The Justified) and Genevieve Valentine (Blood, Ash, Braids).

The book review team has been busy reading everything from a new serialized dark SF novella (Spider King, by Justin C. Key, MD) to a joyous YA novel from Lightspeed alum Charlie Jane Anders.

This issue also marks a farewell: After nine long years, Dana Watson is stepping down as our copy editor. We’ve been so lucky to work with her for so long. Her sharp eye and keen knowledge of grammar (especially all those tricky rules about commas!) has made every piece in this magazine so much easier to read. Thank you, Dana, for all your dedication and hard work. We are going to miss you so much!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy and is the bestselling editor of more than thirty anthologies, including Wastelands and The Living Dead. Recent books include A People’s Future of the United States, Wastelands: The New Apocalypse, and the three volumes of The Dystopia Triptych. Called the reigning king of the anthology world by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been a finalist twelve times) and an eight-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Lightspeed and is the publisher of its sister-magazines, Fantasy and Nightmare. For five years, he ran the John Joseph Adams Books novel imprint for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Find him online at johnjosephadams.com and @johnjosephadams.

Science_Fiction

The Equations of the Dead

An Owomoyela | 9904 words

The boyo working the transmitter doesn’t look like much, except his face is radiant. Radiant, like one of those pooka upworld adverts for neural templates. Dopamine-druggy, but lucid. Like he’s in love.

Boyo also looks like he hasn’t spoken to a human in days, and like aside from the food allotments he doesn’t have a lick of capital. His clothes have that washed-while-wearing look, and they’re homespun; no fancy imported fabrics or styles. You’d walk away from this jondo in the market. Let him go his own way, pray he’d not bother you.

Well, boyo is bothering someone.

Harmless walks up, closer than comfortable, and waits a moment for a reaction. He gets none. After a few seconds he clears his throat, clears his throat again, and finally sticks a hand out and says Heyo. I’m Harmless, with his best guileless grin.

It’s a joke-threat, really: his fami name sounds like the Commerce word for harmless, and when he tells people he’s harmless when no one’s thought he’d harm them, it starts them wondering why he needs to reassure them. Truth is, he is harmless, except for the Old Man. And the Old Man isn’t here, except in the implication that he might get interested.

That’s the implication most people get, right away.

But boyo doesn’t seem to notice the threat, or the joke, or the hand, no, nor even the fact that harmless is bolsho strange for a man’s name. He nod-nods, and says, I’m Latchko. Eyes still on the transmitter. Like Harmless is a passing, talking breeze.

Lat, Harmless says. If Latchko cares about the nickname, or notices that Harmless has given him one, he gives no sign. What are you doing here, boyo? You making trouble in this nice park? Of course there are worse parks, plenty, where no one would mind trouble. Well, except that the trouble Latchko’s getting in would draw the Old Man’s attention anywhere.

Latchko also seems not to care about the term boyo, which is condescending at best, from a stranger. He shrugs, says, It’s not restricted. It’s public, and keeps fiddling with the transmitter. Not a care on the moon. Makes Harmless wonder if there’s something wrong with his brain, or maybe something in his brain, but folken here, they mostly don’t afford implants, innit? Maybe so, he’s just a strange one.

So what are you doing? Harmless asks.

He knows more or less already or he wouldn’t have come here. Boyo is transmitting to one of the AI clouds drifting through the system; transmitting very little for most human concerns but quite a lot for human-AI communication, and he’s getting back more than the nothing expected of most communiqués, and less than the vast datadumps expected of profitable business.

But the fact that he’s getting anything back at all: that’s tasty, innit. Most don’t. AI clouds out in the interplanetary are like true vapor clouds up in atmo, in how much they care for humans, how much they interact.

Mostly.

So here’s Lat, sitting unassuming and, like a prophet, talking to the heavens.

Lat finally puts the transmitter down and gives Harmless a long odd look. Harmless spreads his hands, waits. After a while—longer silence than most people bear—Lat gives him a wry, dry smile and says, I’m playing a game.

"With the clouds?" Harmless asks. He bites off the next bit he’d like to say: Boyo, the clouds don’t play games. They don’t even talk back. They’re talking back, all right, and Lat seems like he’ll explain, if Harmless finds the right questions.

Mm. I send them equations, boyo says. They solve them.

Why?

Boyo shrugs. They enjoy it.

This is new. Harmless knows crumbs about the clouds, but he’s talked to an expert. And she’d said—one of the things she’d said—that the clouds weren’t human-ish, no, so he, poor human, had better give up if he thought he’d grok. She said what you did was you thought of all the things you’d expect a human to have, warmth and humor and distaste and annoyance and affection and interests and all, and you stopped expecting those. Clouds have priorities, but they don’t want. They have directives, but they don’t strive. They generate a course of action, implement a course of action, evaluate the course of action.

Boyo says, they enjoy?

Businessfolken, Harmless says, gesturing up at the planet their little moon is locked to, pay strange capi to get clouds to solve equations for them.

Boyo is suddenly animated, gesturing, leaning forward. This is different, he says. "Most people want to use the AIs to solve the huge, convoluted data problems—crunching through cryptospace insertion formulae, or, or working on weft port miniaturization, that sort of thing. They don’t have an interest in that; that’s why it becomes transactionary. But these, these—" He touches the transmitter, seems to realize that the transmitter is no repository, and waves at his head, at the sky, at the clouds up there somewhere beyond the sky—happy, so. Boyo is excited for this. These, they . . . like to solve.

They like, boyo says. Harmless doesn’t know an AI cloud from a dumb AI, very, and so now boyo tells him one thing, and his expert told him another. He’s about to give up the convo there, say it’s a bad job, all nonsense, aye, but then Lat says the next thing.

I think, Lat says, "that if I can find the right way to phrase it, I can get them to solve the big equation."

There, well, that sounds like something the Old Man might be interested in. Maybe so. Harmless leans in, and shapes his face into an encouraging grin. "The big equation?"

Emulation of consciousness, Latchko says. I need them to emulate the consciousness of the dead.

The dead.

Then and there, Harmless decides he’s in love. Because raising the dead, that’s big trouble, innit. Humany AI is one thing all the Commerce worlds agree to outlaw. It’s the big gedda crime, the capital crime, and that’s just making an AI that thinks like a human, feels like one. Making an AI that thinks it is one—or, like maybe boyo is suggesting, making an AI that runs a human brain like a computer runs a program; making an AI to bring a soul back from the oblivion beyond—Harmless doesn’t think there’s a word for the kind of trouble that is.

He licks his lips, which’ve gone dry. "You think they can? They will?"

With the right datasets, with the right formulations, the right framing . . . they will. So much faith in Lat’s voice. Harmless has never had that much faith in anything. I don’t have enough yet. Grandfather didn’t leave enough to make the formula robust. But if I can bridge the gaps . . .

Yes, Harmless thinks. This is a good proper person for a lad like him to fall for. So here he’ll call it: he’s in love.

It’s a strange feeling. True, he doesn’t have one of those templates; he can’t ask it to change his neurology, punch up the chemicals—but heyo, this is enough. It is very, very wrong to be on the side of this odd one who talks about crime and blasphemy like nothing, and because it’s very wrong, Harmless regards it as his native right. He works for the Old Man, after all; his profession is ignoring the rules all those normal folken follow. Aye, and the Old Man always says his children will defy him some day.

Old Man says it as a threat, always. But a fond threat. He, too, knows how this game is played.

Harmless crouches down in front of Latchko, putting himself on boyo’s level. You see me, Lat? You know who I am?

Latchko stares at him for a while, like he’s a fun-puzzler traded on the journals. A trick question.

Your brain working? Harmless asks.

There, Latchko laughs. Well. Maybe not, he admits, and gestures to his forehead. It’s, uh, I have a lattice. Degenerative seizures. He shrugs, sheepish; says it like it’s something to be embarrassed by. And there, he starts making much more sense to Harmless. It’s a nice feeling.

Because, ah, well, sometimes it happens. Those implants, when they’re the cut-cost medical ones made to fix things like degenerative seizures, and not the opulent ones they sell upworld for fashion, they can mess up the brain a half-bit. Boyo—Lat—might have a blunted sense of consequence.

Harmless thinks he could make a good proper beau for someone with no sense of consequence.

The Old Man wants to know who’s talking to the AIs and getting talk back. He’ll not be happy if you’re raising the dead. What should I tell him?

Lat shrugs, looks annoyed, looks away, like it’s no care of his what makes the Old Man happy. I don’t know him.

Ah, well, he wants to know you. He wants to know what you’re doing here. Harmless waves his hand over the transmitter. He knows it’s imagination, that he can feel the transmissions when his hand passes through them; feel them tangling in his fingers like cable, or webbing, but he feels them in his imagination just as well as he would on his skin. Tell truthy, boyo. If you work for him, might be good capi, aye. Better life than . . . whatever your life is. He looks at Lat’s clothes, at the food-thin weight of his neck, his cheeks, his limbs. This could make the Old Man richer, innit?

Lat looks at him in disappointment. It’s a look Harmless has known his whole life. "I told you, boyo says. The business problems aren’t interesting."

A ‘can’t,’ or a ‘won’t,’ there, boyo? Harmless asks.

Latchko sighs and shakes his head.

Lat, Harmless says.

Lat waves him away. Harmless raises his eyebrows; no one dismisses him but the Old Man. I need to concentrate, Lat says. You’re bothering me.

Hm, Harmless says. Feels there’s not much more to be learned here, so, quietly, he goes.

• • • •

The Old Man messages Harmless: not to check in, but to tell him to bring dinner back to the office suite. It makes Harmless puff up no small bit. He’s spent good time getting the Old Man to trust him so far.

Of course, it’s only so far; Old Man tells him what to get, and where, and has him pick up his own bowl from the office tower—the good bowl, imported from upworld, that scans what you put in it. And the little trundle-sup-shop Harmless takes it to, well, the gally there still works under her grandfather, so, and grandfather and the Old Man go back. There’s not enough capi on the moon, or upworld, or in the whole system wide to get grandfather to slip poison to anyone. Let alone the Old Man.

The trundler is a cheery banged-up thing, cobbled together on the moon, not dragged down from above. Three and a half sides are open, ringed with composite counters, and folken are already crowded, pressed around, chattering. When Harmless comes up, there’s a riffle as people look at him and mostly look away; general avoidance-of-the-eyes which he knows is mostly distaste but likes to pretend is wary respect.

There’s a queue; of course there’s a queue. But, of course, Harmless stands in no queue. He goes right to the counter, puts his two bowls down, and smiles at the gally there. Usual, he says, and the usual comes up, right quick. The bowl seals up, and its little heater comes to life. The indicator band around the outside glows a pleasant blue: no poisons in this batch, no. The lid seals, and won’t open up except for the Old Man’s implants and biometrics. It pays to be careful.

No capi changes hands, here; the Old Man eats for free. And anyone running for the Old Man takes advantage of his shadow, even when it’s only noodles to take.

The talk around the trundler doesn’t slow down for Harmless. Maybe so, it gets more pointed. Folken expect him to keep an ear out, report little complaints to the Old Man; maybe so, the Old Man will get interested. This Council or that Council is losing favor, maybe not enough to lose their votes, but just enough that maybe the Old Man will want his nose in. Maybe he’ll do something. The Old Man is the third force in how the moon is run, the balancing reactive force that keeps bureaucracy and algorithm from mining the whole place rotten.

Dumb AI runs the moon, ish. Dumb AI is the autonomic part, concerning transport balancing and power routing and waste reclamation and that sort. Dumb AI, because proper AI, like those clouds, doesn’t care and can’t be trusted. People here would riot, burn what-all down, if they thought proper AI had a hand in running anything.

But humans still run human concerns, and how that works is a marvel, innit: people notice an issue, people clamor for someone to do something, people get put forward as people likely to do something, people vote, and a Council forms up. The Councils are numerous and sundry, and like all human groups, they bolsho argue.

Oh, they get done eventually; they’re the reason planetdwellers bring down material goods if they want capital on the moon, and they’re the reason fairs and festivals take place without a hitch and parks stay clean and hydrop farms get good stable land and riots burn out before they burn down the weft ports.

But oh, pooka, the arguing.

It’s why there’s always an Old Man. They may not be legal, quite, no, but they’re quick about things. Effective. Efficient. Councils are good proper, but when something needs done today, aye, the Old Man is the one to get to.

And when something needs ended today, oh aye. The Old Man will handle that, too.

The Old Man lives in a bol spire of a building, and Harmless can see it all the way as he’s walking to it: seven whole stories, which on this weft-ridden moon stops just short of the hubris of Babel. Harmless has to walk past guards patrolling the streets, guards at the doors, scanners at the elevator, scanners at the door to the Old Man’s office, and then a shield-screen that drops so it no longer bisects the office, and he can step over to the desk.

Itscha, the Old Man says, when Harmless approaches his desk. He calls Harmless by his own name, not his fami name, nor his nick. He’s the only one who does. So good to see you.

It’s what he says every time. Maybe so, it’s good to see him; maybe so, the Old Man is just polite, and the words have no meaning past hello.

He thinks, though, maybe it is good for the Old Man to see him. For the Old Man only sees him: Harmless, alone, among all the Old Man’s goons and workers, has the honor of coming into the office now-a-times; he’s the only one who sees the Old Man’s face get older and spottier and more wrinkled. Time was, that was different; more folken could come and speak to him through or beyond that shield-screen. But those trusted many dwindled to a trusted few, and now it’s only Harmless, coming in alone.

Maybe so, the Old Man gets lonely here.

Harmless had worried, when he’d started this line of work, that the Old Man wanted him for a gany. Not that he’d been an attractive boyo, nor that he was attractive now. But the Old Man seemed to have no appetite for sex or skin whatever, or none that he wanted Harmless to address. Not personally, nor through . . . procurement. Harmless didn’t speculate what he got up to in his private time, but he supposed it had to be solitary; it had taken him bol long time before the Old Man had trusted him enough to speak face to face without a shield screen between them. He doubts if anyone’s ever so much as touched the Old Man’s hand.

Harmless bows before the Old Man’s desk, then walks right up to the little round table by the window and sets the bowl down by of the Old Man’s place, and sets his own bowl down in front of the second chair. He turns to the little collection of drinkstuffs and foodstuffs on the windowsill and brings back tines and napkins, and offers them to the Old Man’s hands with another bow. Once the Old Man has seated himself and accepted them, never touching skin to skin, Harmless turns back to the window to get tines for himself.

So, what did you find? the Old Man asks, as Harmless sits down. Old Man’s already checked the indicator strip and unsealed his meal, which lets up fragrant steam. He takes a bite.

The soup the Old Man likes is big sheet noodles; it’s like seeing a man eat a bowl full of napkins. Harmless watches in accustomed fascination.

Found the jondo transmitting, he says.

The Old Man grunts. And?

Boyo my age, Harmless says. Aye, he talks to the AI. And aye, they talk back. Nothing useful. He takes a bite of his own soup: dumplings. Sensible. And he answers with food in his mouth, because he knows it will needle the Old Man, but not enough to inspire remark or reprisal. He gives them equations to solve. Feeds them like hoppirds. He mimes tossing a handful of pellets to imaginary animals, skittering around his feet. He likes it. They like it. Boyo wouldn’t know business if it came and introduced itself. No head for it; implants, innit.

Implants? the Old Man asks, and Harmless feels a surge of dismay. He doesn’t want the Old Man thinking along the lines Harmless thinks along; after all, no head for consequences could also be good proper for the work the Old Man does. Except for the part where it’d be as like to get Lat killed by the Old Man as for him.

Pooka medical webbing, Harmless says, and knocks a finger against the front of his skull. "He’s smart, I think, but he’s not smart, grok?"

Is it those implants they give upworld? The ones that make you think how a boss wants you to think?

Gedda! Harmless says. The Old Man glares at him. Sorry, language, sir. No, just for seizures. Boyo is an odd one, talks like he’s had classes, like maybe he wasn’t always capi-less and idle on the moon, but Harmless thinks he’s never been in thinking distance of a proper new template. Glitchy, prolly. Maybe so, it fries his brain, some day. Maybe so, it’s already fried.

I want him, the Old Man says, and Harmless tenses with jealousy. He’s already decided; he gets Latchko, he saw him first, aye, and besides which, he’s the one in love. No mind that the Old Man wants him in a different way; the words are similar, but not so much so. But still, the Old Man is muscling