The Feast Night of Vengeful Ghosts, by Lavie Tidhar

AUTUMN 2024, SHORT STORY, 3300 WORDS

On the Feast Night of Vengeful Ghosts, the thin atmosphere above the dome of Yaniv Town filled with floating lights. It was wintertime, when frost formed on the Martian sand and made fantastical shapes on the surface, all spiderlike webs and fairy circles. The snow, similarly made of carbon dioxide, often fell on Feast Night, also called Saints’ Night by some of the older residents. The snow was made of tiny, cube-shaped snow drops, and as it fell over the town and dissipated against the transparent thermoplastic dome it was illuminated by the thousands of floating lanterns that bathed the long winter in their ethereal light.

Maya Khouri could remember being out there herself, in earlier years. They’d put on surface suits and march into the long night through the air lock, family after family, children holding on to their parents’ hands. There was a sense of hushed expectancy, broken only moments later when they all got outside and all the kids started running. The grownups would tell them to stop, but halfheartedly. Maya would usually hold the tiny mindless lantern drone, and it was usually her who released it into the sky, to float there with its tiny rotor and rise slowly higher and higher into the skies. Then another lantern would rise, and another. They’d float on the wind, released into the atmosphere from all the nearby towns, from Port Jessup and Enid and even the hive-mind colony of La Navidad, and Maya would look out and see the clouds of light in the night sky, growing then diffusing as the lanterns floated wherever the winds took them.

It would go on for hours. Maya no longer went out there on Feast Night, not to celebrate. It had been years since she last released a lantern into the skies. Usually she’d be working at the izakaya. Feast Night was always busy. People would want food, beer, the streets of Yaniv Town thronged with guising folks in outlandish costumes. Maya didn’t want to close but she didn’t want company, either, not tonight. She’d hired Jelena Goldin instead, the girl always needed work, she was saving away her money for who knew what and it wasn’t like the Shiva factory she was slumming in raising godlings was paying anything half-decent.

Maya wrapped her coat around her as she walked down the street. It was cold even inside the dome. Kids holding candles walked in procession, behind them came adults carrying an effigy—St. Cohen of the Others, or an approximate representation of him, at any rate. There were still those who didn’t trust the digital intelligences that first emerged out of the Jerusalem labs so long ago. Martians have had to rely on analog tech for most of the first few centuries. Wetware was fragile, software crashed, but an air lock was a simple mechanism, oxygen generators could be fixed with spare parts, and everything could be built with several layers of fail-safes that required nothing more than hammers and screwdrivers.

Now the trains had machine minds driving them, and the Others had their own hidden cores buried deep somewhere near the north polar cap, guarded by their private mercenary army of Clan Ayodhya—but few Others ever came to the outback. Still, St. Cohen was celebrated along with all the other saints—and this night belonged to the saints and the ghosts.

“A soul! A soul!” old Mrs. Hasson said. She stood next to the Hassons’ ancestral spirit house, a huge and ornate construction like a doll’s house, in which the Hasson ancestors clacked and wheeled and generally passed the time since their long-ago deaths. Not much remained of a person after death: a few jumbled memories, long-term storage, traces of a personality—digital debris left in the node that intertwined with their squishy biological brain since birth. Most souls went to the Public Heavens. But some were decanted into miniaturized automata, like the Hassons.

Mrs. Hasson shoved a soul cake into Maya’s hands.

“I made them myself,” she said proudly.

Maya did not particularly like soul cakes. Still, she couldn’t refuse. She took a polite bite.

“Tamarind?” she said.

Mrs. Hasson beamed.

“It’s an old recipe,” she said.

“It’s my recipe!” a tinny voice said, and Mrs. Hasson’s great-grandmother, a cheaply printed, bright blue cube on wheels with two blinking eyes and an unmoving mouth, rattled out of the spirit house. “Came up with it back in, oh, when was it…”

“Nonsense, Edna,” another voice said, as another spirit, this one a dull green, emerged. “It was me who gave it to you back when you were a little girl—”

“Now, Grandma—” Mrs. Hasson’s great-grandmother’s spirit said.

“Don’t Grandma me!” the green cube said. “I remember it clear as day, I had nothing in the kitchen and—”

“They do go on,” Mrs. Hasson said apologetically. “It’s an old family recipe, anyway.”

“It’s very nice,” Maya said politely. “Well, have a good Feast Night, Mrs. Hasson.”

She walked on. In truth, the soul cake was too sweet for her. She disposed of it discreetly in a bin around the corner. Kids ran, shrieking laughter, down the road. Outside the Water of Life, the usual gaggle of four-armed Re-Born warriors stood talking. It was all they ever did; they hung out in their own encampment outside the dome most of the time. They were just kids, really. She’d gone to school with most of them, only they never grew up.

“Hey, Maya,” one of them said as she passed.

“Hey, Daud.”

“What do you think of the new canal?” he said shyly. He fell in recently with those Blaumilchs who liked to dig canals all over the place. Maya wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. It had been a long time since she enjoyed Feast Night.

“I saw it,” Maya said.

“Bloom, the guy who’s digging, he says he wants to run it all the way to Port Jessup!” Daud said.

“Blaumilchs say all kinds of things,” Maya said.

She was desperate to get away. But everyone in town seemed to be out tonight.

“We’re going outside to float the lanterns,” Daud said. “You want to come?”

He was sweet. She said, “I can’t, Daud. But thanks.”

“No problem,” he said; but he looked a little dejected all the same.

“Have fun out there,” Maya said. She walked on, faster. For a small town, it was surprisingly hard to get through. At least tonight. Usually Yaniv Town was more sedate, and usually Maya was more kindly disposed. Working at the izakaya, she saw most people come in from time to time. She grew up here, she knew everyone. But tonight she just wanted them all gone.

It was easier said than done. The roads were crowded with people, makeshift food stalls, members of the Town Decoration Committee handing out free lantern-drones and flags—Red Soviet, New Israel, Mars-That-Never-Was, the short-lived Anarchist Commune of Terminal Beach—and the kids ran around in their guising costumes. One kid ran straight into Maya, a tiny figure out of nightmare, and she held him at arm’s length and said, “And what are you?”

“I’m Elvis Mandela in Tokoloshe 3!” the kid said, stuck his tongue out, and ran off.

“That costume’s from Tokoloshe 2,” Csilla Chen said. “Hey, Maya. You want a drink?” She was with Emily Fitoussi, like she always was. “We have some rice whiskey. For the ghosts.”

“No ghosts,” Maya said. Emily Fitoussi nudged Csilla hard in the ribs.

“What!” Csilla said.

“She doesn’t mean anything by it,” Emily said to Maya. She came around the stand. “You’re going outside?”

“It’s quiet outside,” Maya said.

“I know.” Emily gave her a quick hug, surprising her. “Go find your quiet,” Emily said.

“I will. I…” Maya didn’t know what to say. She turned to leave.

“But what did I say?” she heard Csilla whisper to Emily.

“Not everyone has ghosts,” Emily whispered back.

“Oh…”

Maya didn’t resent them. She just didn’t want the company. She went farther along, until the party crowds mercifully thinned. The co-op apartment buildings were crammed close together in this part of Yaniv Town, close to the edge of the dome, to the refuse and recycle center and the old abandoned chicken factory.

Bougainvillea Road.

She felt a twinge in her heart at the familiar sight. They had lived here when she was a child. Mum, Dad, Moss. She used to take Moss by the hand to the playground. She passed it now. Still here, grass growing between the cracks in the soft dark rubber flooring, the swings rusted. The Council sent maintenance crews here periodically, but sooner or later it always fell into disrepair again. The smell from the refuse center lingered in the air here, it never quite went away. She used to push Moss on the swing, his little baby legs dangling, his podgy little arms raised in exhilaration as he cried, “Higher, May-May! Higher!”

It was a good memory; but a memory was all it was. It was all a person was made out of, in the end. If you were lucky then someone remembered you someday; until the day there was no one left to remember a thing.

Morbid thoughts. She hated Feast Night. She gave the swing a push. It rattled as it swung.

Her memory kept supplying a missing smell in the air. It still smelled of the refuse center and it still smelled of the bougainvillea that gave the road its name, but the smell of the chicken from the factory was gone. It used to hang in the air for years after they closed it, a sort of earthly, unpleasant smell. She and Moss snuck into the factory once, just before it got shut down for good. Dad used to work there, but he’d never let them come in. But they did just once, when the whole place was shutting down anyway.

She saw it then. It was old, obsolete technology. Kornbluth chickens, they used to call the things back in the day. A giant, disgusting mass of organic cells, fed on algae, shaved in shifts by workers who sliced off chunks of meat to package and ship. It never rested, it never slept. It just lived and it grew and it grew.

Someone caught them and booted them out but was nice enough not to tell their dad. The factory closed, but the smell lingered long after, disinfectant and raw meat, and Maya never found out what they did with the last of it. Did they just leave it to rot? Or did they turn off life support and just keep slicing to the very end, until there was nothing left of it to eat?

She left the playground, walked past the old factory. Night pressed against the dome. The lanterns floated in the sky, thousands of them now, like tiny stars. They made the snow outside seem festive. An old woman, dressed all in black, stepped out of the shadows by the air lock to the cemetery, startling Maya.

“Maya Khouri,” the old woman said.

“Mrs. Byrne,” Maya said. “I didn’t think anyone would be here.”

“But no one is here,” Mrs. Byrne said. “There is no one here but us ghosts.”

“That’s not true,” Maya said, unsettled. “I’m alive. You’re a—”

“A ghost,” Mrs. Byrne said, and she smiled a little sadly. “I died two years ago, don’t you remember? It was winter. I went to Earth when I was in my twenties, did you know that? The winters are so short there, not like here. I fell in love but then I fell out of it, and I thought of staying but I came back. Home is where your roots are, I suppose. But I wished I could have died in spring. I liked the spring clouds. Winter was so long, it felt like a relief to finally let go. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. They put my ghost into this body, but mostly I sleep. I always liked Feast Night, though, so I thought I’d come out tonight. I must say, I don’t feel very vengeful, though.” She smiled again. She really was a remarkable simulacrum, Maya thought.

“I thought you were also a ghost,” Mrs. Byrne said. “But I see I was mistaken. Here. Take this.”

She gave Maya a small glass globe, a candle burning inside it. It was heavy at the base.

“It has thirty minutes of oxygen,” Mrs. Byrne said. “Say hello to them for me, will you? To all the vanished ones.”

“I will,” Maya said.

“Then goodbye, dear. Until next year. I am off to scare the children. Like Sivan Shoshanim in Tokoloshe 3.”

The Mrs. Byrne simulacrum chuckled, then shuffled forward slowly and vanished toward the town center.

“Sivan Shoshanim was only in Tokoloshe 2…” Maya whispered. She carried the candle to the air lock, put on a surface suit, and stepped through to the outside.

It was quiet as soon as she stepped on the frozen ground. The town was always filled with noise, even when it was quiet. It had the hissing of the pipes, someone crying or laughing, cats fighting, people having a conversation, or the sound of Chains of Assembly playing its ten thousandth episode on some public feed.

All that stopped outside. And the falling snow with its tiny cubical snowdrops blanketed the world, and the lights of the floating lanterns overhead cast a myriad of shadows over the fairy-circle ice. Maya liked it. Her boots in the snow. She walked without hurrying, now. The suit smelled a bit, but that was all right. The public suits always did. The important thing, as her father always told her, was that they worked.

The outdoors festivities were on the other side of the dome, next to the main air lock. Hardly anyone came down this way. Maya’s steps were etched in the ice. The twin moons hung in the sky, one large, one small. Maya came to the first of the graves.

Old, raised graves, austere. Some had bright artificial flowers left on them, but sooner or later those always blew away in the wind. The headstones, wind-weathered, looked their age. These were planted here in the early centuries of settlement, back when Yaniv Town was new. Once there had been nothing here. Then people came, and eventually the first of them died. She wasn’t sure which one it was. Some of the old graves were little more than rubble by now. It had started with one grave, and then another, and by now the cemetery extended into the sands. She made her way cautiously between the graves. No ghosts here, but the ground could be treacherous.

Something loomed in the dark ahead of her suddenly. Maya froze. The figure, vaguely human, turned and gave a strange sound of surprise on the suit’s comms.

“You scared me for a moment,” it said.

Maya stared. It was an old robot standing there, one of the humanoid ones. She recognized it. It had been hanging around town for a while. Few of the old robots ever came to the outback, so people noticed when one did.

“I didn’t think robots could get scared,” Maya said.

“They can,” the robot said. “I’m scared of ghosts.”

“There are no ghosts here,” Maya said shortly. Then, feeling rude, she said, “Why are you scared of ghosts?”

“Some of us old robots,” the robot said, “we were in the old wars. I don’t like to talk about it much. But sometimes I think about the people I… Well.” It brooded.

“You’re…” She tried to think. “Riperem-ol-Gud?” she said.

“You can call me Rip. And you’re Maya Khouri, from the izakaya.”

“I am.”

“What brings you out here on Feast Night, Maya Khouri?” the robot said.

“The dead,” Maya said. She didn’t really feel like talking. But somehow the robot didn’t bother her, it being there.

“Ghosts?”

“I told you,” she said. “There are no ghosts here. Not tonight, not on any other night.” She walked away. It took her some time, but she found the graves. She knelt in the snow and placed the small globe of the candle on the nearest one, the one that said Mohsan Khouri on the tombstone.

“Oh, Moss…” she said.

She didn’t look back. She could see the robot’s shadow fall on the ground beside her. She said, “They were in an avalanche, east of Tharsis. It was… I think it was quick. But there was nothing left after they dug them out, not even a memory.” She wasn’t going to cry. The candle flame shivered in the glass dome. The robot’s shadow danced on the ice.

“The people we bury here,” Maya said, “all they are is dead.”

“I’m sorry,” the robot said.

“Why are you here?” Maya said. “I mean, really?”

The robot hesitated.

“I guess I am scared,” it said at last. “Not of my metaphorical ghosts, that was a lie. A robot shouldn’t lie. But think—human ghosts are what is left in their node when the organic brain dies. What is a robot, then? We are nothing but ghosts, inhabiting a body. What happens to us when we cease to be? We were made in your image, and yet when we fade away, we become—well.” Its shadow stretched out an arm, encompassing the silent graves. “We become nothing. Who will remember us, when are we gone? I…” It fell quiet, then coughed, the recorded, embarrassed cough of a man who died many centuries past.

“I try not to think about existence too often,” the robot said. “But on Feast Night I allow myself a little indulgence.”

Maya looked at the graves. The candle flame shivered in the glass. She stood slowly and raised her head. Above her the lanterns floated in the sky, and beyond them were the stars, faint behind the Martian dust.

“Look at it,” she said. “It’s beautiful. Isn’t that enough? That it is pretty now? That we are here to see it? Then it will be gone, but there will be other beauties, and maybe no one will ever see them to name them so, but they will still have existed, somewhere in space. All we have is now.”

“Maybe,” the robot said. But it said it dubiously.

Maya nodded. As she watched the sky, she saw a bright point of light falling through the thin atmosphere.

“Look,” she said. “A falling star.”

“Quick,” the robot said. “Make a wish.”

Maya did, her lips moving without sound. The meteor’s light winked out, and only its memory remained. The cemetery lay in the lantern-light, wreathed in shadow, quiet. She took a deep breath of suit air.

Then she turned and walked slowly back to the air lock, passing the robot as she did. It did not follow. She re-entered the dome and when she turned she saw the robot still, standing alone between the graves, and she thought, it never really did answer her question.

She watched the robot and the sky for a long while more; but she did not see another shooting star. And she wondered what the robot had wished for, if robots wished for anything. She raised her hand, though of course the robot, with its back turned, didn’t see her. Nor did he hear her when she said, quietly, “Happy Feast Night.”

Then she turned, and the cemetery vanished from sight, and Maya went back toward the town and its myriad of lights.

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