Elizabeth Bear - Some of the Best from Tor.com: 2019 Edition

A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York

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A Tom Doherty Associates Book
New York

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

Leonardo da Vinci

Sometime later; maybe tomorrow

My name is Marq Tames, Im a mathematician, and Im planning suicide.

Until today, I wasnt planning. You couldnt say I was planning . Because I know perfectly well that it would be the grossest of irresponsibility to plan my exit at least until Tamar didnt need me anymore.

You dont do that to people you love.

You dont do that to people who love you.

Now

Stop taking your oxy, Tamar says, skeletal hand on my wrist. Theres not much left of them. Their skin crackles against the back of my fingers when I touch their cheek. Their limbs are withered, but their torso is drum-taut, swollen-seeming. I dont look. Deathand especially transitional deathis so much prettier in the dramas.

Fuck that, I answer.

Just stop taking the damn bonding hormones. Their papery cheek is wet. I cant stand to see you in this much pain, Marq. Even Atticus cant help me with it.

Do you think it wouldnt hurt me worse not to be here?

Tamar doesnt answer. Their eyelids droop across bruised sockets.

Im exhausting them.

Do you think this didnt hurt people before? Before we could contract for pair-bond maintenance? How do you think people did it then? Do you think losing a spouse was easier ?

Tamar closes their eyes completely.

And no, of course, no, they do not think that. Theyd just never paused to think about it at all. We all forget that people in the past were really just like us. We want to forget it. It makes it easier to live with the knowledge of how much suffering they endured.

They endured it because they had no choice.

Tamar avoiding thinking about that is the same as Tamar thinking that I should go away. Stop taking my drugs. Maybe file for divorce. Tamar wants to think theres a way this could hurt me less. Theyre thinking of me, really.

Ive already stopped taking the oxy. I havent told Tamar. It helps them to think theres something more I could do. That Im just being stubborn. That Im in charge of this pain.

That I have a choice.

I wish I were in charge. I wish, I wish I had a choice. But I dont need bonding hormones to love Tamar.

I knew how this ended when I signed the contract.

Im still here.

Is this what you want? Tamar asks me. One clawlike hand sweeps the length of the body that used to be so lithe, so strong.

I just want every second of you I can get, I say. Ill have to do without soon enough.

Tamar squints at me. I dont think Im fooling them, but theyre not going to call me on it.

Not right now. Maybe not ever.

Maybe theyd rather not know for sure.

But the thing is, I dont want to keep doing this without them. Especially with, well, the other stuff thats going on.

* * *

I knew Tamars deal before we got involved. It was all in the disclosures. I knew there were limits on our time together.

But you tell yourself, going in, that itll be fine. That fifteen years is better than no years and hey, the course might be slow; you might get twenty. Twenty-two. How many relationships actually last twenty-two years?

And there are benefits to being the spouse of someone like Tamar, just as there are benefits to having a Tenant.

Something is better than nothing. Love is better than loneliness. And its not like anybody gets a guarantee.

So you tell yourself that you can go into this guarded. Not invest fully, because you know theres a time limit. And that it might even be better because of that, because it cant be a trap for a lifetime.

Theres life after, you tell yourself.

So much life.

Except then after comes, and you discover that maybe the Mythic After Time isnt what you wanted at all. You just want now to keep going forever.

But now wont do that. Or rather, it will. But the now you want to keep is not the now you get. The now you get is a river, sweeping the now you wanted eternally back toward the horizon disappearing behind you.

* * *

Evangeline doesnt sit behind her desk for our sessions. In fact, her desk is pushed up against the wall in her office, and she usually turns her chair around and sits down in it facing me, her back to the darkened monitor. Im usually over on the other side of the room, next to a little square table with a lamp.

Evangelines my transition specialist. Shes a gynandromorphfrom environmental toxicity, rather than by choiceand she likes archaic pronouns and I try to respect that.

Im legally mandated to see her for at least a year before I make my final decision. Its been eighteen months, because I started visiting her a little before Tamar went into hospice. So I could make my decision tomorrow.

If I thought Evangeline would sign off on it yet. Which she wont.

Today she isnt happy. I can tell because she keeps fidgeting with her wedding rings, although her face is smooth and affectless.

Shes unhappy because I just said something she didnt like.

What Id said was, If you change who you are so that someone will love you, and youre happy afterward, is that so terrible?

Transition specialists arent supposed to let you know when youve rattled their cages, but her disapproval is strong enough that even if she doesnt demonstrate it, I can taste it. I wonder if there are disapproval pheromones.