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    Asymmetry
    Asymmetry
    Asymmetry
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    Asymmetry

    By Thoraiya Dyer

    5/5

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    About this ebook

    An Australian Air Force base patrolled by werewolves. A planet where wages are paid in luck. A future where copies are made of criminals to interpret their dark dreams. A medieval cavalry of mothers who are only permitted to take as many lives as they have created.

    In every world, an imbalance of power. Something terribly askew between women and men, humans and wolves, citizens and constructs, light and dark.

    In every world, asymmetry.

    ‘The combination of strange and familiar gives Dyer’s fiction the power wielded by the best SF. The stories unerringly find the human inside the bizarre. These are unsettling, poignant, marvellous. Read them. You will be glad you did.’ - Nancy Kress

    Volume 8, Twelve Planets collection series showcasing Australian female speculative fiction short story writers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTwelfth Planet Press
    Release dateMar 22, 2013
    ISBN9780987216281
    Asymmetry
    Author

    Thoraiya Dyer

    THORAIYA DYER is an Australian writer whose more than 30 short stories, as well as a novella and short fiction collection published since 2008 have racked up 7 wins from 17 Aurealis and Ditmar Award nominations between them. Her debut fantasy Titan's Forest Trilogy is published by Tor Books.

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      Book preview

      Asymmetry - Thoraiya Dyer

      After Hours

      The thoughts you have before you fall asleep are unsaved files on a computer before a storm.

      The blackout comes. The screen goes dark. You can’t ever get back what’s lost.

      What am I thinking, right before a Change? I can’t be sure. Maybe there’s evidence of what I tried to do—sunscreen applied too late or the blinds half drawn. It hasn’t happened since I joined the Air Force. Military life’s very ordered. You don’t forget what day it is.

      I can see why Toby liked it. Even though it got him killed.

      One hundred scrubs of the brush.

      That’s how many you’re supposed to do. Nothing can make human skin sterile for long; the bacteria come oozing out of their hidey holes and recolonise your hands before you’ve even picked up a scalpel blade. But it’s important to do your best.

      I watch my boss, Bradley. He squirts a bit of chlorhexidine on his hands, squelches it around for a second or two and then rinses. He turns off the tap with his elbow. Without ever touching the scrub brush, he’s snapping on a pair of latex gloves, grinning at me over his grey beard.

      ‘Come on, Jess,’ he says. ‘We’ve got six dogs to do this morning.’

      I don’t say anything. I’m a freshly minted graduate, one month into the job, while Bradley’s been practising for thirty-seven years. 

      Everybody loves him. He can spay a bitch in eight minutes flat. None of the dogs ever get infections. It’s all about speed, according to him. Less time under anaesthetic. Less time with the abdominal cavity open. Less time searching around in there, doing unintended trauma.

      Speed might do the trick for a rural mixed practice, but I want to be a specialist surgeon one day. I am methodical. Maybe that makes me slow.

      By the time I get gowned up, Bradley’s already got his spay hook around one horn of the dog’s uterus.

      ‘Here you go,’ he says. ‘Follow it down and bring the ovary out.’

      There’s two things holding an ovary to the inside of a dog’s abdomen. One of them is a ligament. You want to tear through the ligament with your fingers. The other one is an artery. You don’t want to tear that one. If you tear it, you’re in trouble.

      Big trouble.

      And when you’re new to surgery, they feel the same. Like digging your gloved hand into a warm basin of spaghetti and grabbing two identical strands of it. You don’t yet have the instinct for how much pressure to apply, or which direction to angle. Your heart’s in your throat, wondering if you’ve pulled too hard. Is the patient’s blood pressure normal? Are her membranes a little bit pale?

      The ovary feels like ravioli in my hand. I pull. I stretch. It abruptly comes away. I bring it up towards the tiny incision that Bradley has made; an incision I feel is too small to properly examine the abdomen for an upwelling of blood.

      Of course, Bradley doesn’t have to do any examining, because there’s never an upwelling of blood when he desexes a dog. He could do it blindfolded.

      ‘Great, great,’ he says. ‘Here’s the clamps.’

      He shepherds me through two more, then leaves me to do the other three dogs by myself while he goes off into the countryside to scrape some tumours off the eyes of half a dozen Hereford cattle.

      The last dog is an enormous, overweight golden retriever. I search desperately through fat for the ovaries. Every time I think I’ve found them, my hand comes up holding globs of fat. It takes forever for me to clamp and tie them.

      When I’m finally finished closing the abdomen, I look up to discover a stranger in the doorway: a short, heavily muscled man in military camouflage.

      ‘Where’s Brad?’ the man asks.

      ‘Out on a call,’ I say.

      The man runs a roughened palm over his salt-and-pepper buzz cut.

      ‘I’ll wait in his office,’ he grimaces. ‘Black tea with two sugars.’

      He clomps off towards the office. I suppose he’s mistaken me for a nurse, but then, I’m wearing a surgical gown. Maybe he’s a mate of Bradley’s, but this is a staff only area, and I sure as hell didn’t go to university for five years so I could serve up black tea with two sugars.

      I take a deep breath, count to ten, take off my mask and gloves and sit down at the computer to write up the surgeries.

      The dog was new, they said. When they’re new, they make mistakes.

      They needed more dogs than they had. Their metal detectors were suddenly useless. The new IEDs had no metal or electronic parts. Instead of hacksaw blades coming together to complete the circuit, detonating the shell, graphite blades were used with ammonium nitrate. The Australian commanders had a choice between uncertified contractors and dogs that hadn’t finished their training, and the troops were getting shirty with all the waiting around.

      That dog should never have been there.

      By the time I’m finished with them, no bomb detection dog is ever going to make a mistake like that again.

      Bradley arrives, out of breath, in his overalls, smelling of cow.

      ‘Tia says Sergeant Scott is here. I came as fast as I could. Did you make him a cup of tea?’

      ‘No,’ I say, looking up from the computer.

      ‘Listen, Jess. The Air Force account is the most lucrative one that we have. If we lose it, we’re out of business. We bend over backwards for them, okay?’

      ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’ll make the tea.’

      ‘No, no. I’ll make it. I want you to go through the records of all the military working dogs we have on file. Put together an ice box with all the vaccinations that are due. I’m going out to the base in a couple of hours. You can meet me there after your consults.’

      When I look through the files, I find thirty German shepherds who’ve been given exemplary care. Their teeth are cleaned yearly under anaesthetic. State-of-the-art nutrition and parasite control is institutionalised. The dogs are fully immunised for duty in South-East Asia and the Middle East. They each have a service number, but their names are taken from defunct gods or warriors of legend: Ares, Odin, Ghengis.

      All of them are undesexed males.

      The handlers are almost all male, too, except for LAC Nadia Lucas. Her dog is MWD Ripper.

      I try to imagine how it would be working with an entire squad of Sergeant Scotts, and salute Ms Lucas’s fortitude.

      Tia ducks her head around the corner.

      ‘There’s a poodle in consult one,’ she says. ‘Needs a heartworm injection.’

      When I go into the consulting room, the white standard poodle crouching on the table coughs nervously.

      ‘Hi Nan,’ I say.

      ‘Hello, dear,’ my grandmother beams.

      ‘Hi Peppe,’ I say.

      Peppe cowers.

      I hold him gently while I examine him. He’s got a dodgy heart. Through

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