The Starry Rift Read online

  “But what am I supposed to do?” I cried.

  He handed me a plastic cup. “Spit. Or pee, I don’t care. Fifteen grams ain’t much.”

  I tried to spit, but my mouth was as dry as the Ass-hat Desert.

  “You want me to make you cry, kid? Tears must weigh something.”

  I scowled at him, realizing that my eyes were in fact burning. But I was too dehydrated to turn my anger and shame into salt water. Salt traps water weight, and I hadn’t eaten anything salty in a month.

  “I can’t spit.”

  He shrugged. “Why you need that book, anyway? It’ll be in the ship’s memory, even if it’s porn.”

  “It’s not porn. And it’s not the same in memory.”

  He pulled it from me again and flipped through the pages. “Must be some book. What’s it about, anyway?”

  “A spider,” I said. “And a pig.”

  “Sounds kinky,” he chuckled. “And you’re sure it’s not porn?”

  “No, I mean yes, I’m sure.” I groaned. A few more minutes with this guy and I was going to cry. I wondered how many tears were fifteen grams.

  “So, what’s it about?”

  I wondered if I was losing weight just standing here, my anger and frustration burning away the micrograms. “The pig is going to get eaten at Christmas, and the spider makes a web saying it’s great.”

  “What’s great? Getting eaten?”

  “No, the pig. Like, the spider puts a message in the web saying, ‘Terrific.’ So nobody eats the pig.”

  “So the spider’s magic?”

  “No! The spider’s not magic.”

  “So, how come it knows how to spell?”

  I sighed. “Well, I guess it is sort of magic. But not in a major way. It just makes the web because it has to, otherwise the pig’s going to get eaten.”

  “And the spider cares about this pig why?”

  “Because they’re friends,” I said. My eyes were burning like chili peppers now, but still no tears came.

  He leafed through the book some more. “Look, whatever, kid. I admit this thing’s got a nice feel. Never read anything this way, myself. But you could pull the covers off, you know? That would cut some weight. All the words will still be there.”

  I clenched my fists. “No, I’m not pulling the covers off.”

  He fondled the dust jacket. “Hey, this paper wrapper comes off. That might help.”

  “Put that back! I’m not taking it without the dust jacket.”

  “And look, there’s all these pages before the story starts, and a bunch of blank ones at the end. Man, they had trees to burn back then! You could tear those out.”

  “I’m not tearing anything out, okay? We’ve got to find a way to make me weigh less, not the book. What if I hold my breath?”

  He laughed. “The air in your lungs doesn’t hardly weigh anything, kid.” He looked at his watch. “And I don’t have all day. Got a shuttle to load.”

  I looked down at my fingernails, which were already cut down to the quick. I wished I had hair on my arms or my chest, so I could shave that off right now. I visualized myself running a few more dozen flights of stairs or eating one less tablespoon of peanut butter, hoping my brain could burn the calories with imaginary exercise.

  “Listen, kid. The next time you wake up, you’re going to be a hundred years of light-speed travel from the nearest other bunch of humans, on a planet that can barely support you. No hospitals, no police, no one to call for help. And this is the kind of book you want to bring? One about magic spiders?”

  “That’s exactly the book I want to bring,” I said. And finally, I realized that I was going to have to tear Charlotte up and leave part of her behind. She was first edition, perfect except for the slightest foxing on the upper left of page eighty-six. And I felt a single hot tear float down my cheek. I started to reach for it.

  “Don’t, kid.” He grabbed my wrist. “Your fingertips are so dry, they’ll suck it back up.” And he reached out and flicked the tear from my face with his thumb. Then he handed me the book. “Get on the scale again.”

  “Doesn’t matter.” I closed my eyes, wondering if ripping off just the back cover would be enough. “No tear is going to weigh fifteen grams.”

  “Quit wasting my time, kid. Get on the scale.” He held out his hand and pulled me on.

  My head was already dizzy from all the exercise that morning, from a week of dehydration and my nerves about the launch, and from the fact that my collection had gone from whole shelves full to just one book, and now that was going to be mutilated.

  I didn’t notice at first that he hadn’t let go of my hand.

  “Hey, look, kid. You’re right on target.”

  I opened my eyes. The red numbers weren’t quite steady, but they shimmered just under the allowance. My hand, resting in his, felt the slightest upward pressure. He clicked a foot switch, nailing the red numbers right where they belonged.

  “Okay, kid. Get your butt on board.”

  I stepped off, then paused for a moment, wondering if this was really a good idea. “What about the universe? What about slowing down on the other side?”

  He laughed. “Last few guys before you were under by a few grams. Most people are. Your mom’s right. It is kind of worked into the formula, but we couldn’t tell anybody that.”

  “Oh. But why did you . . . ? Why me?”

  He laughed. “Because I’m an ass-hat magic spider, kid. And you are the saddest little pig I ever saw.”

  So, yeah, that’s the other story I’ve been meaning to tell you. It’s probably why I’ve read you this one novel so many times, even though your mom thinks it’ll turn you into a vegetarian. And why you’re called Wilbur, instead of some name you’d probably like a lot more. And it’s also why you don’t get to touch this book—the book, the only real one on this whole planet, I’ll have you know—until you’re old enough not to get finger-grease on it. Because it’s a perfect book, except for the slight foxing on page eighty-six, and it’s at exactly the right weight, right now.

  SCOTT WESTERFELD was born in Texas in 1963. He studied at Vassar College and has worked as a software designer, a composer, and is now a full-time writer. His first novel, Polymorph, was published in 1997 and was followed by Fine Prey, Evolution’s Darling (a New York Times Notable Book, shortlisted for the Philip K. Dick Award), and The Risen Empire. His novels for teenagers include the Midnighters Trilogy (The Secret Hour, Touching Darkness, and Blue Noon) as well as So Yesterday, Peeps, The Last Days, Uglies, Pretties, Specials, and Extras. Westerfeld has also contributed essays to Book Forum, Nerve, and the scientific journal Nature. He and fellow writer Justine Larbalestier divide their time between New York, Sydney, and Mexico.

  Visit his Web site at www.scottwesterfeld.com.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  While I was traveling for a few months recently, a friend stayed in my apartment. Upon my return, I found he’d left a scale behind in the bathroom. I started stepping onto it during the day, watching my weight change as things came and went from my body. I was more variable than I’d thought, pounds arriving and departing like subway trains.

  It occurred to me that in certain situations, like space travel, exact mass is very important—every gram must be accounted for. And every time you sweat, spit, cut your hair, or blow your nose, your mass changes. So I began to wonder what space-exploring colonists might go through to leave behind just a little more of themselves, if it meant they could bring along just a bit more cargo. Which brought up the question, “What possession would it be worth diminishing your own body to keep?”

  This story is my answer to that question.

  CHEATS

  Ann Halam

  My brother and I were not lost. We’d hired our kayak from the stand at the resort beach; the kayak man had taken our names and set down where we said we’d be going. Plus the kayaks had world-map locators, what did you think? He could nail us anytime he liked. If we were stationary too long without an e
xplanation, or if we went crashing into the reeds of the bird reserve, we were liable to get a page asking if we were okay or yelling at us to get out of there.

  So we weren’t lost, but we were pretending to be lost. The reeds were double as tall as either of us would have been standing, the channels were an eerie maze, and they seemed to go on forever. There was nothing but blond, rustling walls of reeds, the dark, clear water, occasionally a bird silhouette crossing the sky, or a fish or a turtle plopping. We’d take a different channel when we came to one we liked the look of, totally at random. It was hypnotizing and slightly scary because the silence was so complete. There were things in those reeds. You’d glimpse something, out of the corner of your eye, and it would be gone. Once there was a sly, sinister rustling that kept pace with us for a long time: something in there tracking us, watching us. We talked about making camp and would we ever find our way out and what would we do if the mystery thing attacked—

  “If it bleeds,” said Dev, in his Arnie accent, “we can kill it.”

  I had wriggled out of my place; I was lying along the front end of the kayak shell (you’re not supposed to do that, naturally), peering down into the water. I could see big freshwater mussels with their mouths open on the bottom, breathing bubbles. We could eat those, I thought. Then I saw a gray-green snake, swimming along under the kayak, and that gave me a shock. It was big, about two feet long, easily.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “Hey, do you want a turn up front?” I didn’t tell my brother about the snake, because there was no way he’d see it before it was out of sight, and I know how annoying that is.

  My brother said, quietly, “Get back in the boat, Syl.”

  I got back and retrieved my paddle. I was in time to see what Dev had seen. We had company. Another kayak, a single seater, had appeared ahead of us, about thirty, forty yards downstream. Whoever was riding in it had customized the shell; it was no longer the plain red, orange, yellow, or green it must have been when it left the stand. It was black, with a white pattern, and it was flying, or trailing, a little pennant off its tail. Skull and crossbones. The person paddling was wearing feathers in his or her hair, and a fringed buckskin shirt.

  “How totally infantile.”

  “Sssh. It’s the cheat.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have the evidence of my own eyes,” said my brother, solemnly.

  We hated cheats. We hated them with the set-your-teeth-and-endure-it hatred you feel for the sneaky kind of classroom bully, the kind who never does anything to bring the system crashing on their heads (no flick knives, no guns), but who is always breaking rules that everyone else respects. It makes you mad because you could break the rules yourself, it’s not hard, it’s not smart; only you choose not to. The cheaters could always get a high score, always solve the puzzle, always make it through the maze, and what’s the point in that? Cheating might not seem an issue in the kind of place where we liked to play. But it ruined the whole atmosphere, running into someone with that attitude. You’re not supposed to pop into existence, you’re supposed to paddle to the reserve from the channel by the beach stand. So we were vindictive. We wanted to get this clown in the Indian brave costume and the pirate shell. We wanted him or her thrown out of our little paradise.

  We gave chase. We stayed far enough behind to be out of sight. The water wasn’t fast running; it was easy to control our pace—close enough to follow the other kayak’s wake. All the lonely mystery was wrecked, of course. There were no more monsters stalking us. We were just two very annoyed kids. We followed that cheating kayak, and we followed it, completely fixated. We came to a dark-water crossroads we must have seen before but didn’t remember, and saw the reeds, the water, the air, go into a quivering shimmer. The cheat turned around. I caught a flash of a face; it looked like an adult, but you can’t tell. We didn’t hesitate. When the pirate kayak vanished, we shoved on our paddles and zoomed straight into the flaw—

  So then we were in another part of the reedbeds.

  “Stupid pointless, stupid pointless, stupid pointless—” muttered Dev, grinding his teeth. We couldn’t see any wake, because some kind of backwash was disturbing the channel. We pushed on, the reeds opened, and we were facing a shining lip, kind of a natural weir. The water beyond it was much shallower: white water, clamoring over pebbles. We stood our paddles vertical to brake ourselves.

  “What’ll we do?” whispered my brother.

  “I dunno, I dunno. Could we carry this and wade?”

  “I’ve got a better idea! Let’s split the kayak!”

  I thought this was brilliant. Get out of our shell, swim to the weir, carry it, splosh along over those pebbles; obviously, we were never going to catch our prey that way.

  “What if there isn’t enough information?”

  “There’s got to be. Logically, this is a thing that keeps two kids afloat, right?”

  We didn’t think we were in danger of getting a page from the kayak stand for this trick, as we knew we were off the map. It didn’t cross our minds that we were in actual danger, although we were. We could go into anaphylactic shock if we hit a real physical limit off-map, and that’s like your lungs filling with water, no word of a lie.

  I said, “Excellent!” and we got out into the channel, first me, then Dev. We hung there in the cool depth, holding on to our paddles, treading water: looked at the code and worked out how to make the kayak split in two. It made itself a waist and sort of budded, was what it looked like. Then we each wrestled into our single shells, scooped out as much water as we could, and went skimming over that lip, down the white water, which was shallow as all hell, until it became deeper but still clamorous, swooshing around rocks. Dev was yelling, Whooooeee! Herelgo! etc. I was silent. When I get thrilled I don’t shriek, I just grin and grin until my face nearly comes in half. I got into a flow state, I could do no wrong, it was just wonderful.

  We never knew when we’d popped back onto the map. We came flying out of the white water into a much broader, quieter, deeper channel, and the landscape was all different, but still related. I dipped my hand in the water and tasted salt.

  “I know where we are,” I said. “Those are the dunes at the end of the resort beach; this is the fish river they have there. We can follow it to the sea and kayak back along the shore.” My brother turned around in a big circle in the midstream. There was no sign of the cheat, not a whisker. He looked up at the clear blue sky.

  “You know what we just did, Syl?”

  “What?”

  “We did a cheat. We can’t turn the pirate in; we’re guilty ourselves.”

  “We were off the map,” I said. “It doesn’t count.”

  “Does.”

  I knew he was right, by our own private laws, so I said, “The shell was a pirate, stupid. The cheat-guy was an Indian brave.”

  We did our splitting trick in reverse, faster this time: got away with it, and let the current carry us.

  So there we were, my brother and I, not lost at all, just paddling along the shore. It was harder work, plugging through the choppy little waves, but we were fine, we had life jackets, and nobody had told us the ocean was out of bounds.

  “What the hell’s that?” demanded Dev.

  That was a helicopter, going rackety rackety rackety and buzzing us, so we could hardly see for the spray its downdraft was kicking up. Then we saw the rescue service logo on its side, and we were indignant. Safety was not being served!

  “What are you doing?” I yelled, waving my paddle. “You’re a danger to shipping! You’ll capsize us! Go away!”

  “Go and play with your stupid flying machine somewhere else!”

  Next thing, we got a page. The pilot was talking to us, ton-of-bricks-style.

  The rescue service was looking for us. We’d failed to return our kayak, and we were hours overdue. So that was us hauled out of the ocean, scolded, sent home. Mom and Dad yelling at us, whole anxious parent, we trusted you, how could you do that?—


  We made the right faces, said the right things, and let it all go over us.

  When my brother was a little kid I played baby games with him all the time, the ones I’d loved when I was a little kid myself. We were candy-colored happy little animals, jumping the platforms, finding the strawberries and the gold coins; we dodged the smiley asteroids in our little spaceships; we explored jungles finding magic butterflies; we raced our chocobos . . . I’m naturally patient, and I love make-believe; I didn’t mind. My parents used to say, You don’t have to babysit, Sylvie, but I never felt it was a burden, or hardly ever. I taught him things that would stand him in good stead, and I was proud of how quick he was at picking things up. Dev is not naturally patient, but he sees things in a flash. We drifted apart when he was five, six, seven. Then one day when he was eight and I was twelve, he came to my room with his Tablo—the games platform small boys had to have at that time—and said he wanted me to play with him again.

  “Girls don’t play boy games,” I told him (I was feeling a bit depressed that day). “Boys don’t play girl games. We can’t go around together, and we won’t like the same things. You just want to share my hub access, why not say so?”

  “We do like the same things,” he said. “I miss you. No one I know gets carried away in a game the way you do. Please. I want you to take me with you.”

  So we compromised. I did let him share my hub access (with our parents’ approval), and I let him use it without me. It’s true, boy games mostly bore me. Racking up kills in the war-torn desert city, team sports (bleegggh!), racing cars, fighter jets . . . Leaves me cold. I think it’s because I have the ability to get into a game and feel that it’s real. I can be a commando, I can kill. But there has to be a gripping story to it, or you might as well be playing tic-tac-toe as far as I’m concerned. Managing a football team in real life would be my idea of hell, so why would I want to play at it? I want to play at things I would love to do. The cockpit of a fighter jet or a formula car? No, thank you! I don’t want to be strapped down. I want to run, swim, use my arms and legs.