Dead Astronauts

3. BOTCH BEHEMOTH

4. CAN’T REMEMBER

5. LEVIATHAN

6. THE BODY

7. CORPSE

8. THE DARK BIRD

9. CAN’T FORGET

10. THE DEAD ASTRONAUT

0. A SCRAP OF PAPER FOUND IN CHEN’S SUIT

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author

Also by Jeff VanderMeer

About the Publisher

1. THE DREAM OF THE BLUE FOX v.1.0 (#ua5f24917-9ce1-5b23-a5ee-c0bf78fc1996)

So they ran threaded through the breaches, found the seams. So they ran with a memory of the City without buildings. So they navigated two worlds: the new and the old. When the ancient seabed had been green with reeds and lakes and the low salt-poisoned trees with their thick moss-encrusted limbs upon which they might sleep.

Now they must come to rest on half-collapsed roofs and in the shadows of the great rocks out in the desert. Now they must dream where they could and trust in the lookout who would not sleep. Must trust in how thought danced from mind to mind. How there was nothing but a lightness to that. How they knew each other’s will.

They were the color of sand, which might shift and stall, pass between the paws unnoticed, but would never not be there. Would never become weathered down because it was already what it was meant to become.

One from another in the night they snapped at the winking rescue lights of giant fireflies. Savored the crunch of wing, the collapse of carapace. Let in the coolness of the dark. Played games in the aftermath, searched for hidden water, dug their own shallow wells. Licked at the salt when needed. Mated and had cubs. Sometimes looked up at the stars distant and for a moment contemplated what lay beyond. Even though it meant nothing more to them than the fireflies.

Until Nocturnalia.

Until the blue fox.

For one night there came a flare of blue across the heavens and a nimble quicksilver thought in their heads that was both familiar and strange. They sat at the border between the desert and the City. Hearts pumping fast. Motionless but ready to leap, to run, to bite.

Out across the desert came the Source. At a trot. With a familiar grin of fangs. The blue fox. Larger than them by half. Projecting to them what he wanted to project.

Love. Power. Fate. Destiny. Chance.

Showing them another world. Another way.

But why should they have a leader? Why should they not roam like wild things? For they were wild things. Why should they have a purpose? For they were wild things.

I will tell you why said the blue fox as he approached. I will tell you why it matters. To you.

Soon under the glancing moon, the blue fox stood before them. He stood mighty before them. He stood respectful before them. He stood before them.

Came a mighty yipping and barking from the multitudes, the gathered folk that were foxes but not foxes as had been known in the past. For what had a fox been but what a human thought it was?

The blue fox said:

There shall come scavengers to the City from far away. They will call themselves the Company. They shall have no face. They shall have no body at which to strike, but many limbs.

There shall issue forth from the Company beasts and monsters and creatures that shift their form in ways that you cannot imagine. There shall come threats you cannot imagine.

The little foxes seethed, withdrew, seethed around the blue fox, moving like a memory of the sea. Cusp of a new thing, considering what the blue fox showed them.

And by the time the foxes left that place, the blue fox was their leader, and although not one of them could say why this should be, it felt right. It felt true. And in no particulars could it be said that their lives changed in the short-term. In no particulars were they not themselves after. Yet in their hearts they felt the change.

There will be a terrible price to be paid. But I will pay it. If you follow me.

It made them braver. It made them fierce. It focused their thoughts through the prism of the blue fox’s mind.

Now their play had purpose.

There shall come three humans across the burning sands …

2. THE THREE v.3.1 (#ua5f24917-9ce1-5b23-a5ee-c0bf78fc1996)

i.

came unto the city

under an evil star

A glimmer, a glint, at the City’s dusty edge, where the line between sky and land cut the eye. An everlasting gleam that yet evaporated upon the arrival of the three and left behind a smell like chrome and chemicals. Out of a morass and expanse of nothing, for what could live beyond the City? What could thrive there?

Then scuffed the dust, the dirt: A dull boot, a scorpion-creature scuttling for safety much as a human would had a spacecraft crash-landed there. Except the owner of the boot knew the scorpion was unnatural and thus anticipated the scuttle and crushed the biotech beneath one rough heel.

The boot-scuffer was the one of the three who always went first: a tall black woman of indeterminate age named Grayson. She had no hair on her head because she liked velocity. Her left eye was white and yet still she could see through it; why shouldn’t she? The process had been painful and expensive, part of her training a long time ago. Now she glimpsed things no one else could, even when she didn’t want to.

Kicked a rock, sent it tumbling toward the thankless dull scrim of the City. Watched with grim satisfaction as the rock, for an instant, occluded the white egg that was the far-distant Company building to the south.

The other two appeared behind Grayson in the grit, framed by that bloodless sky. Chen and Moss, and with them packs full of equipment and supplies.

Chen was a heavyset man, from a country that was just a word now, with as much meaning as a soundless scream or the place Grayson came from, which didn’t exist anymore either.

Moss remained stubbornly uncommitted—to origin, to gender, to genes, went by “she” this time but not others. Moss could change like other people breathed: without thought, of necessity or not. Moss could open all kinds of doors. But Grayson and Chen had their powers, too.

“Is this the place?” Chen asked, looking around.

“Such a dump,” Grayson said.