The next morning, Leela is standing outside Emi’s previous residence, lips tight with concern. I called her last night and asked if she would help me find Emi and I must have sounded desperate because she agreed. A part of me expects the window to be broken but the glass is new. A woman in her twenties sits at the dresser, brushing her blonde curls with elaborate strokes. The display has been changed to that of a rich woman’s boudoir, complete with plush fur coverings and a poodle. Irrational anger flails inside me. How easy it is to be replaced. All the mess and muck of the other night has been replaced by a smooth, glossy shine. A sheen that reflects off bare white walls and fills me with quiet dread.
“I’m not getting anything from this woman,” Leela says. “Where is Emi and how is she hiding from the brothel owners who must certainly be looking for her? How will she use her powers? She flicks her antennae with an idle hand. I think it may hurt but she seems unbothered. “Why did Emi allow them to capture her in the first place, considering her powers?” she continues.
“Maybe she was outnumbered. Or ingrown. Most Kild manifest by age twelve—but some show late like me. Our powers are more unruly. Harder to control.”
The woman smiles at us, a blank smile made of compliance and pills.
“Who are these Bhulg people?” I ask Leela.
“They used to be priests in some other land. Powerful at one time as oracles. During the last time-spill, they were overthrown, cast out, appeared here for refuge. Trièste took them in on the condition that they would live in isolation. The Concilium didn’t want them using their powers here. They were given that land under the bridge and that’s the only place they can live.”
“How old are they? The men, they looked young.”
“Hundreds of years? Nobody knows.”
Leela sighs. “This isn’t working—I can’t read her. It’s a void. Let’s go see Krista. “She’s one of the oldies, knows all the gossip. She tells fortunes as well.”
The house is a regulation one-storey glass house with three names engraved on the door in gold calligraphy. They must have lived here a long time to have that done. Every fantasy is acted out in these glass houses; every fantasy, fairy tale, mythology, legend and dirty dream. In fantasies, we preserve our psychic history. Half the houses here don’t even practice sex work. They practice story work.
Krista is a tall woman in a leopard-print dress whose sadness settles into the corners of my body. She leads us down a white corridor to a small, concrete room. A gilded mirror stands next to a bed topped with a silk canopy and the walls are covered with more mirrors, each as tiny as a moth wing. A pack of hologram cards are splayed on the table, their multicolored, fanged deities indulging in childish antics.
Settling on the bed, Leela chatters about her week while I swallow my impatience. Small talk is the oil that runs social life; I wish I was half as skilled at it as Leela. When she brings up Emi, it is inserted into the conversation as neatly as a coin in a slot machine.
Krista scowls. “That showboat. Attracting more useless tourists and then what can we do to keep up with that? Good thing she left. One of ’em Kild as they’re called. They give me the creeps. Hard enough to manage life as a regular, if you ask me.”
I turn up my collar to hide the salamander. “Not that many Kild here, right?”
“Ya—hard to keep ’em in. You saw. Don’t know why she didn’t cut out sooner if she had such them powers and whatnot.” Krista drops her voice dramatically though there is nobody around. “Must be some strong drugs involved. Anyway, I don't know much about her. She was sixteen. They said she would be moved soon.”
“To where?”
Krista stares at the mirrors for a while. “Sometimes girls are taken away,” she says, finally, “and they don’t come back.”
“One more thing,” Leela says, “—was she on the new shapeshifting potion?”
“No,” Krista says. A chill runs up my legs, soft but distinct. Krista is hiding something. She ambles to her dresser and starts applying orange shimmer to her eyelids. “What’s your power then?” she asks me with an edge in her voice.
Turns out I wasn’t successful at pretending to be normal. “I’m an empath,” I tell her, leaving out any mention of the Fog.
“What a useless piece of shit power.”
“Yes, very useless,” Leela says. “Poor girl. She’s been having some trouble lately. Do a reading for her, okay, please? I told her you’re the only one who can help.”
Krista looks like she wants to refuse but after a moment, she takes the pack and shuffles, lays out two cards face-up, her hands trembling. Her voice falls two octaves for effect. “You feel like you’re stuck. Love comes your way but sacrifices will be necessary. Blood must be met with blood. You will learn much before this is over.”
“What sacrifices?” Leela asks.
Krista shrugs. “That would be the premium package. Doesn’t look like she can afford it.”
When we’re outside, Leela lights a joint, inhales and squints at the dumpsters where gulls peck and jab at garbage with sullen beaks. “If Emi is still shape-shifting, every transformation would require the breakdown and transportation of cells. That requires energy, and thus food, making the person incredibly hungry while changing.”
I wonder where she’s going with this but I know better than to interrupt.
She continues. “Where would she get that amount of food? She had no money.” Finally, she looks at me. “Krista was lying. When I asked where Emi could have gone, she was thinking of the slaughterhouse.”
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It is a pretty day even in Ki Gardens where pretty days come rarely. Cooler weather has settled on the landscape, making it look less harsh, less baking. The patches of grass are greener. A group of boys outside a mud hut, in a circle. A few of them in orange bandannas. I shiver for some reason. They give me the chills. Leela has been slouching in the passenger seat but now sits up with some interest. “You’re right. There’s something wrong with them.”
When we reach the low-slung red buildings of the slaughterhouse, the security guard lets us in with a cursory glance at Leela’s appointment note. Inside, it is a maze.
The manager, a blue-haired woman with large ears and slim legs leads us through corridors, heels clicking. The warm smell of blood is everywhere and I grimace. “You'll get used to the smell,” she says with a smile. “It takes a few minutes.” Pushing open a door, she sighs. “These are the goats. Some of them are ready.”
We are in a large room with tiny enclosures. It is stifling. I try not to gag. “Why are they so small, the cages?” Leela asks.
“So they get minimal movement. This helps keep the muscles soft and makes for juicier meat. I’ll leave you to look around. For a science article, you said?”
“Yes,” Leela says. “Some people are suggesting hybrids as easy meat but goats are still the best, aren’t they? How long have you worked here?”
“Been here a while, thirty years or so.”
We are interrupted as a man brushes past us and disappears into the shadows. We hear the sounds of a pen cranking open and he leads a goat out. It is agitated, frisking about. With a firm hand, he takes it through another door at the back.
“What’s in there?” I ask.
“That’s where the butchering happens. It’s hard to kill a live being. Mentally taxing too. Anyway, I have to get back to work. Come on out and talk to me if you have more questions.”
After she leaves, we walk around the goat pens, uncertain of what we are looking for. Suddenly, the bleating of goats fills the air and Leela drops down, face alert and body tense. I follow her lead but it is only the butcher, making his way past the stalls, whistling a tune as he does, and after he passes, we get to our feet.
Later, we sit in the cafeteria with the woman, whose name we learn is Carla. She tells us about her early days at the slaughterhouse, the horror she felt about the conditions, and how she’s tried to make improvements. Giving us a hopeful look, she says, “Maybe if you write abut it, we can get more funds from the Concilium. We’re so underfunded.”
I feel sorry about duping her. “It must be a tough job,” I say.
She sighs. “It’s alright. Only, two months back when goats went missing, it was hard. Had some explaining to do with the authorities.”
“Goats went missing?” I ask.
“Yes, someone broke in and stole all the goats. Every single one of them.”
[3/6/24, 1:50 PM. The gang stole the goats to feed the samples in the experiment. Reveal later.]
I have no will to do anything the next day but Pali drags me to a biology convention where the main speaker is Osiris Manatios, the founder of Alke Corp. As he approaches the stage, she clutches my arm as if she’s glimpsed a particularly interesting creature in the wild. It is only then I notice Pali has matched her silk skirt with a cream silk top and a string of pearls. Her hair is a waterfall down her back, her lips painted crimson.
The MC introduces Osiris with gushing praise which he waves off as he strides to the podium. For a few moments, he stands like a statue, lit from behind. “It is going to be a cold winter,” he says. “Imagine crossing the desert in the cold. Imagine a child.”
With his salt-and-pepper hair artfully ruffled, shimmering burgundy robes and fierce eyes, Osiris is commanding. He looks like he genuinely cares about what he is saying, and about the people listening to him. His voice is rough but his words are soft as he urges them to be more welcoming of refugees. I begin to understand why so many people are charmed. Pali leans forward in her chair, tucks her hair behind her ears.
“To speak only of actions done from the motive of duty implies that people should fix their minds on something so large and wide, that it’s unimaginable. The World. Who knows what that is? The great majority of good actions are intended for individuals. The multiplication of individual happiness is what we should be aiming at…”
I drift in and out.
“Even for those who believe in the old gods—and I know some of you do. It’s okay, I’m not telling on you,” he elicits a laugh from the audience, his eyes twinkling with mischief, “—One has to believe that he desires above all else the happiness of his primary creatures. That this was his purpose in creating us. And if we believe we arose, from the nether, through sheer luck and might, then taking care of individual happiness, even focusing all our energies on it should be natural. But we have to help others do the same for themselves. Otherwise, it is meaningless. If we believe in individual happiness, we must believe in it for everyone—,”
I am bored out of my mind but there is thunderous applause at the end of his speech.
Afterwards, people mill about in the grand hall, pecking at a feast. Dumplings and algae nubs, eel roe, decanters of wine, brew from the northern lands, banana flowers, lace pasties made from rare weeds so delicate they had to be hand-picked.
“I recognize these! We used to get them in our village. They must have imported them from there,” Pali says, putting one in her mouth. She wriggles through the crowd, pulling me with her. “I loved your speech,” she says when she reaches Osiris. “Particularly the bit about refugees.”
“Thank you.” His eyes are warm as he turns to us. “May I ask what work you do?”
Pali starts talking and I excuse myself to use the restroom. I am worried. Pali has always loved men who lie across a chasm, men impossible to love. “We traveled a long way,” she told me once about her childhood, “stopping little and sleeping even less, more than five hundred miles west across mountains and desert to find Raia.”Sometimes I pictures them crossing the miles. What longing might have driven such determination? In Pali’s face, there is some of that hunger.
I wander out into the patio which adjoins the grand hall. Laden with star jasmine and lit with golden strobes, it is a magical setting, but Pali is deep in thought as she stares at the grounds beyond, her dark eyes flashing. I try not to think about the heavy energy coming off Osiris. I don’t mention it to Pali. She seems broody enough as it is. I practice my sensor on some unsuspecting people, get no images of interest beyond illicit love affairs and in one case, an unusually strong desire for cured meats.
Afterwards, I tell Pali abut the Bhulg prediction and my search for Emi. She clutches my arm. “Zaria! The Bhulg people are weird but their predictions were always accurate. The guy seemed to think the girl had passed on some condition to you, the same condition that causes those markings on the addicts’ faces—,”
“I tried but we’re at a dead end.” I stare out at the abyss of the garden in the dark. “The girl is connected somehow—to everything, but I have no leads ”
“Slaughterhouse?” Pali runs hand over her eyes. “Slaughterhouse. Slaughterhouse. There’s something else. I don’t know what to make of this but remember that slime I collected at the junkyard? I ran it through some tests and it had goat blood in it.”
“It’s all connected to the shape-shifting potion,” I say slowly. “But how? And who is making it?” I am exhausted and frustrated, the same questions circling my head.
“Maybe I can do some digging around,” she mutters. I am not paying enough attention to her in that moment so I don’t say anything, don’t warn her, don’t insist she stay out of problems that are not hers to solve. Later I will wish I had said something.