Someday

Someday

By James Patrick Kelly

That morning she climbed into the pen and spoke a kindness to her pig Bobo. The glint of the knife made him grunt with pleasure and he rolled onto his back, exposing the tumors on his belly. She hadn’t harvested him in almost a week and so carved two fist-sized maroon swellings into the meat pail. She pressed strips of spongs root onto the wounds to stanch the bleeding and when it was done, she threw them them into the pail as well. When she scratched under his jowls to dismiss him, Bobo squealed approval, rolled over and trotted off for a mud bath.

Sle sliced the tumor thin, dipped the pieces in egg and dragged them through a mix of powdered opium, pepper, flour, and bread crumbs, them sautéed them until they were crisp. She arranged them on top of a casserole of snuro, parsnips and sweet flag, layered with garlic and three cheeses. She harvested some of the purple blooms from the petri dish on the windowsill and flicked them on top of her love feast. The aphrodisiacs produced by the bacteria would give an erection to a corpse. She slid the casserole into the oven to bake for an hour while she bathed and dressed for babymaking.

Daya had considered the order in which she would have sex with the fathers. Las was most important, followed by first. The genes of the middle father – or fathers, since some mothers made babies with six or seven for political reasons – were less reliably expressed. She thought starting with Ganth for his summy nature and finishing with Latif for his looks and good made sense. Even though Bakti was clever, he had bad posture.

Someday. Photo by Elena.

Ganth sat in front of a fuzzy black and white screen with his back to her when she nudged the door to his house open with her hip. « It’s me. With a present. »

He did not glance away from his show – the colony’s daily news and gossip program about the scientists – but raised his forefinger in acknowledgment.

She carried the warming dish with oven mitts to the huge round table that served as his desk, kitchen counter and sometime closet. She pushed aside some books, a belt, an empty bottle of blueberry kefir, and a Fll Juphigher action figure to set her love feast down. Like her own house, Ganth’s was a single room, but his was larger, shabbier, and bilt of some knotty softwood.

Her brother took a deep breath, his face pale in the light of the screen. « Smells delicious. » He pressed the off button; the screen winked and went dark.

Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015, edited by Rich Horton, Prime Books, 2015.