Don’t Bite the Sun Read online

  DON’T BITE THE SUN

  Tanith Lee

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Transcriber’s Note

  Glossary of Jang Slang

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Two

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Three

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part Four

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Part Five

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Website

  Also by Tanith Lee

  Author Bio

  Copyright

  TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

  Although I have put the Four BEE into equivalent modern English, the Jang slang vocabulary which the writer uses pales in translation. I have therefore left the sixteen or so odd words she employs untouched, and included on the following page a glossary, which provides an adequate, if imperfect, guide to what they mean.

  Glossary of Jang Slang

  attlevey

  Hello.

  dalika

  Violent argument.

  derisann

  Lovely, beautiful.

  droad

  Bored out of one’s mind.

  drumdik

  Utterly horrible, the most ghastly thing.

  farathoom

  Bloody, fucking hell.

  floop

  Cunt. See also thralldrap.

  groshing

  Fabulous, marvelous.

  insumatt

  Unsurpassable.

  onk

  Mild ejaculation, e.g., bother.

  ooma

  darling, honey.

  selt

  Slow on the uptake. ‘Con’-able.

  soolka

  Well-groomed. Applied by Jang only to non-Jang.

  thalldrap

  See floop.

  tosky

  Neurotic.

  V ….n

  A word never written in full by the autobiographer. Obviously pretty bad.

  zaradann

  Insane, nuts.

  General Terms

  Glar

  Early Four BEE title, similar to professor. The term hung on as a polite name for Q-R teachers at the hypno-schools, but otherwise was extinct by this time.

  mid-vrek

  Middle period of any vrek, lasting forty units.

  rorl

  Four BEE equivalent of a century.

  split

  Four BEE minute.

  unit

  Four BEE day.

  vrek

  Period of one hundred units.

  My friend Hergal had killed himself again. This was the fortieth time he had crashed his bird-plane on to the Zeefahr Monument and had to have a new body made. And when I went to visit him at Limbo, I was wandering around for ages before the robot found him for me. He was dark this time, about a foot taller, with very long hair and a mustache, all glittery gold fibers, and these silly wings growing out of his shoulders and ankles.

  “Attlevey, Hergal,” I said.

  “Attlevey,” said Hergal, and flapped his wings about. “Groshing, aren’t they? No strength, of course, just for show. Have to get another new bird-plane if I fancy a flight.”

  “I thought,” I remarked, popping a button for a floating chair, even though mannerless old Hergal hadn’t bothered, “that the Committee might have canceled your license to fly.”

  “Ha ha!” gaily chortled Hergal. “Wouldn’t dare.”

  “I do wish, though, you’d pick somewhere else to crash down on top of. It gets rather monotonous, always the boring old Zeefahr. I mean, how about trying the Robotics Museum? You might even manage to crack the roof, and that must be an achievement.”

  Hergal tugged his mustache.

  “Hmm,” Hergal said.

  “Anyway,” I said, giving my messenger bee a good kick—it’s always dozing off and falling on me in the street, usually when hordes of people are about—“I’ve brought you some ecstasy pills and a sixth-dimensional cube to contemplate.”

  “Oh, Good,” said Hergal. I could see his mind (?) was on higher things than ecstasy and contemplation. I remembered the nasty time Hergal and I got married for mid-vrek, down at the Prism Playgrounds, and then lost each other, and I ended up stealing lots of glass dresses out of confusion, and having my dreams analyzed, and buying a desert animal from Four BOO that was fierce and furry, and snored all the way home in the bubble and then bit me at the last moment, when I’d actually decided I could stand it being fierce and furry, and snoring.

  Hergal, of course, just rented a bird-plane and crashed on top of the Zeefahr Monument. That was number nine. What I was trying to say was that Hergal’s mind had been on higher things then, or so he said.

  “Listen, Hergal,” I stated, “I’m afraid I’ve put in an order to have you officially cut out of my circle of friends. It’s not that I don’t like you. I mean, you’re really lovely, particularly with your—er—wings, but I’m just tired of everyone coming up and saying to me: ‘Is it true you know that floop Hergal? Do tell!’”

  “I see,” said Hergal. He didn’t even have the politeness to cry. Everyone in the Jang alwa
ys cries when they’re officially cut out of circles.

  “Oh well, there’s nothing more to be said then, Hergal.” I got down from the chair and bounced on the crystallize-rubber floor. My bee fell on my head.

  “Oh farathoom!” I snapped.

  Hergal looked a bit surprised, but he didn’t bat a gold fiber eyelash until I strode to the doorway.

  “Er,” he ventured then.

  “What did you say?”

  “Er,” Hergal admitted. “Perhaps you’d tell me what circle you’re cutting me out of.”

  “Mine, you thalldrap!” I yelled.

  “But … who are you exactly?”

  Well, I mean, Yd had it flashed all over the city that my new body was pale and slim, with knee-length silver hair and antennae. He just didn’t try.

  Outside, my bee fell on me again, right in front of the Robotics Museum and a crowd of visitors from Four BOO.

  I was so depressed I went and drowned myself, for the tenth time, in my bubble. Perhaps I could even get a duplicate of Hergal’s body and really drive him zaradann.

  PART ONE

  1

  Of course, when I woke up in the Limbo Tub I’d changed my mind. Some quasi-robot medicine man was peering in at me.

  “Look here, young woman—I see that is what you predominantly are—this has got to be stopped. This is the second time you’ve been back here in ten units.”

  “Mmm,” I swam around a bit and smiled at him with my emotional response wires.

  The Q-R went away, and someone came and asked me what I wanted to come out as, and by then, you see, I’d anti-Hergaled myself. How drumdik it would be if people actually thought I was Hergal! What with that, and that floopy bee swooning in my hair … I showed them the new me. As usual it was depressingly lithe and glamorous. Hatta, and lots of other people I know, nearly always make a point of having a fat body once in a while, or spots or something. Anyhow, this me was willow-waisted, with an exotic bust and long, long scarlet hair. I got into it, and it felt so odd I had to go somewhere quiet and have an ecstasy pill, and forget about it for a while.

  Hatta found me not long after.

  “Ooma Hatta,” I purred. Everyone always looks nice when you’re in ecstasy, even Hatta, who was being fat and spotty just now, with three eyes.

  “Attlevey, ooma. Groshing again, I see. Don’t you ever get a mite ill with it?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I’ll take you for a meal. It must be coming up to some eating time or other, isn’t it?”

  “Well, I’m hungry. I drowned just after meal three, and this new body hadn’t had a thing.”

  We went out, Hatta holding me up—I was extremely ecstatic—and rolled on to the float-bridge. My awful, beastly bee came rushing out after us. I just couldn’t get rid of the thing. It fell on Hatta this time.

  “Onk!” said Hatta, typically and nauseatingly mild about what happens to him. I threw the bee off the bridge, but it came back again. “Let’s go to the Fire-Pit.”

  The Fire-Pit, they say, is absolutely the place to go if you’re feeling low. I almost cheered up, but, in the end, just before we got there, my Neurotic Need asserted itself and I had to get off the bridge and go steal something. It was alive, this thing, with long white fur and big orange eyes. Its whiskers got tangled up in my hair, and I gave it to my bee to hold a second or so before I got hysterical.

  “Here we are,” Hatta said.

  We jumped off the bridge, and fell about twenty feet until the electricity wave-net of the Fire-Pit neatly caught us. Hatta looked apologetic. In the Fire-Pit everything burns with scarlet fire. The tables float in flames, non-hot of course, and fireballs bounce gently in the plates. I matched.

  “I forgot,” Hatta said, “about your hair.”

  I’d calmed down now anyway, but he shoved another ecstasy pill into my mouth, just in case, and then had to carry me to a couch.

  “What will you have, dear?” Hatta asked kindly.

  I winced at his un-Jang vocabulary, hoping no one had overheard.

  We had a large nut steak on fire, with all sorts of burning fruit stuck out of it on burning skewers. Hatta carved with the molecule needle knife and did it all wrong, but we got something to eat eventually. Ecstasy was wearing off by then.

  “I hear,” Hatta mumbled through steak, “that you’ve had Hergal officially cut out.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Hatta went on eating for a while. Our bottle of fire-and-ice arrived and he sniffed it and tasted it and stared up at the fiery ceiling.

  “Eight-first Rorl, I shouldn’t wonder,” Hatta said. I fingered a skewer, but Hatta only murmured: “Er, I really admit you’re looking groshing.”

  “Thank you. I can’t say the same for you, ooma.”

  “The thing is,” Hatta said nervously, “I haven’t had love for two units now, and I wondered if perhaps we could get married for the afternoon.”

  “Not with you looking like that we couldn’t,” I said. Well, I mean. Outraged pimples and a couple of tons descending on you with three yellow pupil-less eyes to watch the effect.

  “Look,” Hatta encouraged me, “can’t you see that it’s an Essential Experience to have love with a body you’re not really attracted to?”

  “Why?” No, I wasn’t going to be bamboozled with Jang Essential Experience jargon, particularly from reactionary old Hatta.

  “Well …” began Hatta.

  We were interrupted. Kley and Danor had arrived with a pet animal that immediately started a fight with my white, stolen thing, and therefore with my bee. In the confusion they drew up floating fire couches and helped themselves to our nut steak. They were both male this time, with long iridescent hair, and Danor had those silly wings like Hergal’s and kept knocking things off the table with them.

  They vaguely greeted me and began chatting with Hatta.

  I stood up, got my white furry animal under one arm, and drained my third goblet of fire-and-ice.

  “I must flit, oomas,” I said gaily.

  “Oh, but—” Hatta began.

  “Thank you for a wonderful fourth meal, Hatta,” I gushed. “I’ll see you next body.”

  I flitted.

  Outside it was one of those depressing blue-crystal-golden-drops-of-sunlight afternoons. The weather is always perfect at Four BEE, but now and then the Jang manage to sabotage something, and we get a groshing, howling sandstorm come sweeping in past the barrier beams to cheer us all up. I’ll never forget the time Danor and I, both female then, I might add, disabled the robot controller at Lookout 9A and let in a downpour of volcanic ash from one of the big black mountains outside, floods of it for units and units—everything went zaradann. They had to deliver food by bird-plane, and the roads were full of robots trying to dig us all out. We even achieved an earthquake once. Nothing fell down, of course, though we all hoped the Robotics Museum would. Hergal and I were sitting in a big crystal tower at the time, unsuccessfully having love telepathically, and it shook like jelly, which was more than we were doing.

  I went to a call-post and had my new body flashed out, so my friends (?) would recognize me. I put a scanner on the Zeefahr and waited for ages to see if Hergal would hurtle out of the sky on to it, but he didn’t. So I signaled Thinta.

  “Attlevey,” I said when her three-dimensional female image appeared in front of me. She looked nice, pleasantly plump, with big green eyes and sort of furry hair. She hadn’t changed for ages. Stability at last.

  “Oh attlevey, ooma, I was just making a water dress.”

  She held it up, greenly opalescent and gently dripping.

  “Thinta,” I said, “I’ve just been drowned and come back like this, and I’m absolutely droad.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know it was you,” Thinta said. She obviously hadn’t seen the flash yet. “Well, ooma, why don’t you go to one of the Dream Rooms? Wait a split and I’ll be with you.” She vanished.

  Thinta liked the Dream Rooms, though it was reckoned to be pretty
anti-Jang really. You always met lots of Older People with “set ideas” who told you you shouldn’t be there, but out having love and ecstasy or sex changes or Sense Distortion, like all young people are usually rigidly expected to have. I went into Jade Tower to steal some jewelery while I waited for her to come gamboling down in her miniature safe pink bird-plane.

  Stealing is an absolute art, and one of my few simple pleasures.

  There’s a big dragon in Jade Tower, bred on some farm near Four BAA. It rattles its jade-plated scales at you, and green fire comes out of its mouth and gives you a really invigorating, pine-scented, all-over shower. I’ve always liked the dragon. It stirs me in an odd romantic way. I once sat in its nice warm mouth for ages and tried to get Kley to rescue me, but he just took an ecstasy pill and rudely collapsed. I think I’d embarrassed him.

  “Attlevey, dragon,” I said.

  I got into its right ear for a while—it looks like a shell inside—and thought about what I might like to steal, while the dragon roared and sprayed away at everybody.

  2

  My bee, clutching my white, furry, stolen pet, followed me as I wandered innocently through Jade Tower. I waited subconsciously for both of them to fall on my head. Other people’s bees zoomed by, all efficiency and programmed determination to serve. I felt conspicuous—transparent clothing, chains of gold anemones, toe rings, fingernails as long as my fingers—utterly Jang. And honestly, I never liked wearing it all that much. You feel so naked if you forget to pop a tinselly flower in your navel, and finger-long nails are dangerous.

  All the Older People nodded approvingly at me. I was just what a young person should be, tinkling, almost nude, my one-color eyes still dark from ecstasy, and my Jang vocabulary working like a catalyst in everything I said.

  I sidled up to a large revolving tray of scent bomb earrings, smoking fragrance, light winking and glittering on their tortured shapes. I stretched out my hand. A floating mirror swam down to me and showed me my new face. I selected a pair of solid-phosphorous things, magnetized them to my ears, and watched them uncoil and wend lovingly down my neck, over my shoulders, and sigh to rest on my abdomen.