October 2017
Author: Asimov's Science Fiction
Date: 0101-01-01 00:00:00+00:00

✮Fortieth✮

✮Anniversary Year✮

NOVELETTES

13

Wind Will Rove . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sarah Pinsker 42

Universe Box . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Michael Swanwick 141

Grand Theft Spacecraft . . . . R. Garcia y Robertson

170

Books of the Risen Sea . . . . . . . . . . Suzanne Palmer SHORT STORIES

36

Riding the Blue Line
with Jack Kerouac . . . . . . . . . . . Sandra McDonald 60

Dead Men in Central City . . . . . . . . . Carrie Vaughn 71

Arriving at Terminal: Xi’s Story . . . . . . . James Gunn 80

The Ganymede Gambit: Jan’s Story . . . . James Gunn

90

Zigeuner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Harry Turtledove 100

The Fourth Hill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Dennis E. Staples 110

The Cabinet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William Preston 124

An Incident in the Literary

Life of Nathan Arkwright . . . . . . . Allen M. Steele

135

Squamous and Eldritch Get a

Yard Sale Bargain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tim McDaniel 164

Disturbance in the Produce Aisle . . . . . . . . Kit Reed

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017

Vol. 41 Nos. 9 & 10

(Whole Numbers 500 & 501)

Next Issue on Sale October 14, 2017

Cover Art by Cynthia Sheppard

POETRY

35

Jump-Point Failure . . . . . . . . . . . John Richard Trtek 41

Poaching Country . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bethany Powell 59

First Contact . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stuart Greenhouse 89

Your Clone Finds her Stray . . . . . . . Robert Frazier 123

Locked in Amber . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jane Yolen 163

X Marks the Spot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Robert Borski 196

Sleeping Beauty Attains Bliss . . . Leslie J. Anderson

DEPARTMENTS

3

Editorial: Thirty-First Annual

Readers’ Awards’ Results . . . . . . . Sheila Williams

6

Reflections: The Last Hittite . . . . Robert Silverberg 9

On the Net: Remembering

Bertie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . James Patrick Kelly 99

Next Issue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

198

On Books . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Norman Spinrad 208 The SF Conventional Calendar . . . Erwin S. Strauss Asimov’s Science Fiction. ISSN 1065-2698. Vol. 41, Nos. 9 & 10. Whole Nos. 500 & 501, September/October 2017. GST #R123293128.

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EDITORIAL

Sheila Williams

THIRTY-FIRST ANNUAL READERS’ AWARDS’ RESULTS
e held the 31st Annual Readers’

ly wrenching) piece of fiction I’ve read all

Award breakfast celebration on May
year.” Of James Alan Gardner’s story,

20, 2017, at the Steelhead Brasserie

“The Mutants Men Don’t See,” Kyle

Wand Wine Bar in Pittsburgh, Penn- Rathbone wrote: “I saw the end coming a sylvania. Although he couldn’t attend in
mile away, but was still very happy
person, our best novelette winner, Dale
when it came.”

Bailey, sent along the bones of an accep-

Fortunately, our best novella winner,
tance speech: “1) Thank yourself for giv-

Suzanne Palmer, was able to attend the
ing the story a chance (weird thanking
celebration. This multitalented author
yourself, but it’s really me!) and 2.) ac-
brought me a pint glass from Hellwater,
knowledge the other finalists, among
the bar that features in her winning
whom it is an honor to stand and 3.)

tale, “Lazy Dog Out.” Either Suzanne
thank the readers most of all, first for
has a time machine or she expertly
reading the story and second for finding
etched the bar’s logo into the glass her-
it worthy of their notice. That’s the most
self. In any case, it’s a stunning keep-
important thing, because bringing read-
sake. Suzanne was wearing two hats at
ers some pleasure is really what it’s all
the breakfast because she was also the
about.” Dale’s thoughts about our read-
winner of Analog’s AnLab award for best
ers were evident in the words of sub-
novelette. The AnLab Award celebration
scriber Dick Harding who wrote: “There
is always held in conjunction with Asi-
were really wonderful stories every-
mov’s Readers’ Award.

where, which made selecting the best

Neither our poet, Herb Kauderer, or
difficult. The novelette category was the
our artist, Donato Ginacola, could join
hardest. It had a boatload of phenome-
us. Fortunately other guests included
nal stories. I had a very hard time choos-

AnLab winner Frank Wu and his wife
ing between first and second place. Dale

Brianna, Analog editor Trevor Quachri,

Bailey’s story (‘I Married a Monster from
and editor emeritus Stanley Schmidt

Outer Space’) was not only funny and
and his wife Joyce. Also on hand were
poignant, but it also did that which is so

Liza Groen Trombi and Arley Sorg of Lo-
difficult—encourage the reader to be a
cus Magazine. Our guest list was round-
better person. Mr. Künsken’s tale (‘Flight
ed out by authors Daryl Gregory and
from the Ages’) was a sweeping epic that

Connie Willis.

I found riveting. Thank you for all the

The best part of collating the Readers’

wonderful stories and work that you

Awards has always been reading the
have done this past year.”

voters comments. This year didn’t disap-

Other missing winners included two
point. Alan K. Lipton wrote to say “2016’s

Canadian authors who tied for best
toughest choices? Novelette and poem.

short story, Rich Larson and James Alan

You published a wealth of ideas both ex-

Garner. Although Rich won the award
plored in long-form and telegraphed
with “All that Robot . . . ,” reader Thomas
with graceful economy. It’s getting hard-

R. Jones commented on another of his
er to pick my favorites each year.” Alan
tales: “What a great year for short sto-
was seconded by Piet Nel, who said, “My
ries! I’m really impressed by Rich Lar-
main difficulty in voting for the year’s
son. He is turning out to be one of the
buffet of outstanding stories was that too
best new voices SF has seen in the last
many favorites were in the same catego-
ten years. His story “Water Scorpion”

ry. Perhaps there could be an additional
was by far the best (and most emotional-
award for the overall favorite.” Jeffrey L.

Editorial: Thirty-First Annual Readers’ Awards’ Results

3

September/October 2017

Arley Sorg/Locus Publications

Photo by

Left to Right: Sheila Williams and Suzanne Palmer

Powell seemed to be in agreement when

Kyle also said that he was very inter-
he commented, “Way too many choices.

ested in where Dominica Phetteplace’s

Why do you torture me every year?

“Project” novel was going. He was not

Sigh. Couldn’t you publish rubbish, and
alone in his praise for these tales.

make my selection so much easier?

Michael Mayotte wrote that he particu-

Thanks!”

larly enjoyed the series, and Phil

Jeffrey D. Powell thought that, “Asi-

Baringer said the author’s “story se-
mov’s needs more optimism, sense of
quence is terrific, and I just decided to
wonder, heroes to fortify my spirit.” Still,
vote for the first in the series. If there
we received great words of encourage-
were an award for best story series, this
ment from Karen Anderson, Andrew
would earn it.” He added, “It’s unusual

Fink, Doug Lee, and especially Susan
for me to have a favorite issue in a given

Blackley who wished “the best of luck to
year, but this year the March issue suit-
all nominees!”

ed my taste in science fiction perfectly.

Kyle Rathbun’s comments about other

My friend Adrian Melott said of the
stories included: “I liked ‘Wretched the

March issue, ‘the best of Asimov’s I have

Romantic,’ which had a potentially posi-
seen, including the great cover.’ ”

tive ending; I thought ‘They All Have

Perhaps because she had so many sto-

One Breath’ was perhaps the SFnal tale
ries competing against each other, none
of the year; ‘The People in the Building’

of Dominica’s tales finished in the top
was perhaps the best story of the year
five novelettes. A couple of days before
regardless of categories—maybe that’s
the Readers’ Award celebration, we
because I’m a Lovecraft fan in addition
learned that her story, “Project Empa-
to much else. His idea that the ‘ancient
thy,” along with Ian R. MacLeod’s, “The
gods’ were actually aliens from across

Visitor From Taured,” are both finalists
the galaxy and not really gods at all—
for the Theodore Sturgeon Award. We
though they appeared to be—is interest-
were proud to see our stories on the
ing. I thought Sandra captured that con-
short list and, like Susan Blackley, wish
cept quite well.”

all the finalists the best of luck! ❍

4

Sheila Williams

READERS’ AWARD WINNERS

BEST NOVELLA

1. LAZY DOG OUT;

SUZANNE PALMER

2. Einstein’s Shadow; Allen M. Steele

3. Where There Is Nothing, There Is God; David Erik Nelson 4. What We Hold Onto; Jay O’Connell

5. Choose Poison, Choose Life; Michael Blumlein

BEST NOVELETTE

1. I MARRIED A MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE;

DALE BAILEY

2. Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man; Suzanne Palmer 3. Matilda; Kristine Kathryn Rusch (tie)

3. They All Have One Breath; Karl Bunker (tie)

4. President John F. Kennedy, Astronaut; Sandra McDonald BEST SHORT STORY

1. THE MUTANTS MEN DON’T SEE;

JAMES ALAN GARDNER (TIE)

1. ALL THAT ROBOT . . . ;

RICH LARSON (TIE)

2. Dome on the Prairie; Robert Reed (tie)

2. White Dust; Nathan Hillstrom (tie)

3. Exceptional Forces; Sean McMullen

BEST POEM

1. AFTER;

HERB KAUDERER

2. The Robot Grows Old; Geoffrey A. Landis

3. Nice Touch; Jane Yolen

4. Long Argument, the Longest; Jane Yolen

5. Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman; Ron Koertge (tie)

5. Old Women of the Wood; Jane Yolen (tie)

5. The Ambassador’s Daughter; Megan Arkenberg (tie)

5. Your Clone Excels at You; Robert Frazier (tie)

BEST COVER

1. JANUARY;

DONATO GIANCOLA

2. September; Michael Whelan

3. March; Fred Gambino

4. February; Alejandro Colucci (tie)

4. August; Kinuko Craft (tie)

REFLECTIONS

Robert Silverberg

THE LAST HITTITE
eneral John Vessey, the chairman of
game for General Vessey in the twenty-
the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the
first century. They do crop up here and

Reagan presidency, was born in Min-
there in the Old Testament, mentioned

Gnesota, and, like many Minnesotans, as one of the many minor peoples living liked to tell Swedish jokes, the Minnesotan
in the vicinity of Palestine. (“Amalek
equivalent of Polish jokes. Vessey, who died
dwelleth in the land of the south,” the
in the summer of 2016, lived on into the

Book of Numbers tells us, “and the Hit-
era of political correctness, when any sort
tite, and the Jebusite, and the Amorite
of joke was likely to give offense to some-
dwell in the mountains. . . .”) But no one
one, and jokes aimed at any specific ethnic
knew what had become of them, or, prob-
or political group became inappropriate,
ably, much cared, until the great nine-
improper, and certain to stir up a fuss not
teenth-century eruption of interest in
only among those who were directly tar-
the archaeology of the Biblical lands.

geted by the joke but among the people

The first step in the revival of knowl-
whose self-appointed task it is to protest
edge of the Hittites came in 1812, when a
against any form of political incorrectness.

Swiss traveler named Jacob Burckhardt

General Vessey, therefore, began to con-
discovered a curious stone in the Syrian
vert his Swedish jokes into Hittite jokes,
town of Hamath inscribed with “a number
on the grounds that the Hittites have
of small figures and signs which appears
been gone for thousands of years and
to be a kind of hieroglyphic writing,
therefore the chances that outraged Hit-
though it does not resemble that of
tite defenders would rise up against him

Egypt.” Other “Hamath stones” began to
were slim. A revised Vessey joke might be-
turn up elsewhere in Syria, and then
gin, “These two Hittites went out in a row-
more inscriptions of the same sort near a
boat together, and Ole said to Sven—”

vast ruin of unknown origin in central

You get the idea. But General Vessey’s

Asia Minor. Finally, in 1879, after study-
politically correct workaround started
ing these inscriptions for three years, the
me thinking. What must it have been like

British scholar Archibald Henry Sayce
to be the very last Hittite—the only per-
published a pioneering paper, “The Hit-
son in the world who had a Hittite name,
tites in Asia Minor,” identifying the mys-
who spoke the Hittite language, who
terious Hamath stones as the work of a
could read Hittite hieroglyphics? Some-
great lost empire, the Hittites of the Bible.

one had to have been the last of the Hit-

And a great empire it was. The records
tites, and a lonely business it surely was.

of the Assyrian king Tiglath-Pileser I, who

The Hittites—I thought you would
had lived about 1100 B.C., told of war he
never ask—lived in Asia Minor before it
had waged against them in Syria. Egypt-
belonged to the Turks, and to the Byzan-
ian annals recorded years of strife with a
tines before them, and to the Assyrians
people called the “Kheta,” culminating in
before the Byzantines arrived. They had
the victory of the Pharaoh Rameses II
an empire of considerable power and
against them in 1290 B.C. and the signing
might from about 1900 B.C. until the As-
of a treaty of peace between Rameses and
syrians wiped it out twelve centuries lat-
a king of the “Kheta” named Hattusilis III
er. The remnants of the Hittites drifted
in 1269. Then, in 1887, clay tablets began
off into what is now Syria, where within
to come to light near the Egyptian town of
a few hundred years they were absorbed

Tell el-Amarna inscribed in cuneiform,
into the largely Phoenician population
the wedge-shaped writing of Assyria and
around them, disappearing entirely from

Babylonia and written in Akkadian, the
the world stage and thus becoming fair
international language of diplomacy then,

Asimov’s
which archaeologists had begun to deci-
other people of Mexico. The Khmer rulers
pher a generation earlier. They mentioned
who built mighty Angkor Wat are gone as

Hittite invasions of Syria, making it clear
well, but the people of Cambodia still
that their home territory was Asia Minor.

think of themselves as Khmer. Egypt is

A couple of the Tell el-Amarna letters
full of Egyptians to this day, though only
were indecipherable, though—inscribed
a handful of them, the Copts, are de-
in cuneiform but written in some un-
scended from the ancient Pharaonic pop-
known language. Eventually archaeolo-
ulation. There are still Assyrians in Syria
gists were able to translate these, too, and
and Iraq, too, though they are Christians
saw that they were in Hittite.

now and stopped writing in cuneiform

By 1920 it was clear that a powerful
several thousand years ago.

Hittite empire had existed in central Asia

But the Etruscans of central Italy are

Minor for at least a thousand years, going
well and truly gone, so much so that we
back to 2000 B.C. or even earlier. The
can barely understand the inscriptions
cuneiform Hittite annals could be read,
they left behind. Very likely their DNA
the names of their kings were known, the
still can be found in inhabitants of Tus-
details of their legal code and the story of
cany and Umbria, but nobody calls him-
their military victories against Egypt and
self an Etruscan today. The same with

Babylonia emerged from the darkness of
the Carthaginians, though, again, their
the forgotten past. By 1190 B.C., though,
genetic traces probably still persist in
their time of greatness had ended. The

Lebanon, where they originated, and

Egyptians under Rameses II defeated

Tunisia. Perhaps there are some Hittite
them, their outlying provinces revolted,
genes among the Turks of Asia Minor,
barbarian invaders appeared out of the
too, but the bloodline surely has been all

Mediterranean, and swiftly the empire
but engulfed by the genes of the many in-
crumbled. The last Hittites of Asia Minor
vaders who have conquered that land in
fled into Syria, where they established a
the last thirty centuries. I do think sadly
minor empire that we refer to as Neo-Hit-
of the last Hittite, then, living some-
tite. The Neo-Hittites, abandoning the old
where in Syria under the new Assyrian
cuneiform script for the hieroglyphic one
rulers, and looking back, perhaps, on the
first seen on the “Hamath stones,” strag-
potent kings of his past, men with the
gled on in Syria for another five hundred
resonant names of Hattusilis and Sup-
years, until the ferocious Assyrians con-
piluliumas and Mursilis. The whole an-
quered them in 717 B.C. And that was the
cient world trembled before those names
last that history heard of the Hittites, so
once, and now they mean nothing except
thoroughly obliterated that General
to archaeologists. Did that last Hittite re-

Vessey felt it was safe to make politically
member his nation’s former greatness?

incorrect jokes about them in our own day.

Or was it already a thing of the forgotten

When I first began learning about van-
past, even there in his own day?

ished ancient empires as a boy, I assumed

Great empires still can vanish. The
that not only the empires but their inhab-

British Empire came apart when I was
itants had vanished as well—the Maya,
in my teens and the Soviet Empire dis-
the Egyptians, the Assyrians, the Cartha-
appeared almost overnight in 1989. I
ginians, the Etruscans, the Khmer of
was reminded once again of the tran-

Cambodia, and so on, all swallowed up by
sience of historical grandeur this week
voracious time. Well, not so, I would dis-
when I heard of General Vessey’s little
cover, as I looked deeper into the history

Hittite joke, converted from a now inap-
of the lands that had produced these van-
propriate Swedish joke, and when at just
ished realms. The Mayan Empire was
about the same time I stumbled across
gone, yes, but Mexico’s Yucatan peninsu-
an obscure short novel by one John Ames
la is still full of Maya, who regard them-

Mitchell, first published in 1889 and en-
selves as ethnically different from the
titled . . . yes . . . The Last American.

Reflections: The Last Hittite

7

September/October 2017

Mitchell was trained as an architect,
astounded that a nation of more than sev-
but after practicing that profession for a
enty millions should vanish from the
few years gave it up for the vocation of a
earth like mist, and leave so little behind.”

satirist, writing eight or nine novels and

It was climatic change, he says, that did
founding the comic weekly Life, a kind of
the Mehrikans in, a change “the like of
nineteenth-century equivalent of today’s
which no other land ever experienced. . . .

New Yorker. (It is unrelated to the twen-

The temperature would skip in a single
tieth-century magazine of the same
day from burning heat to winter’s cold. No
name.) The Last American, the first of
constitution could withstand it, and this

Mitchell’s two science fiction novels (the
vast continent became once more an emp-
other, Drowsy, appeared in 1917) an-
ty continent.” Between 1925 and 1940, the
nounces itself to be the journal of Khan-
last year a census was taken, the popula-

Li, “Prince of Dimph-you-chur and the
tion dwindled from ninety million to less

Admiral in the Persian Navy,” who in the
than twelve million; and by 1990 the
year 2951 led a party of Persian explor-

Mehrikans were completely extinct.

ers to the bleak and almost depopulated

Or almost so. But eventually—it’s the
land of “Mehrika.” Quickly one catches

Fourth of July, no less—the Persians find
on to Mitchell’s style of nomenclature,
a tall, bony man clad in skins, who ad-
which is, well, satiric in intent: “Mehri-
dresses them in the ancient Mehrikan
ka” is not hard to decode, and it takes
language, which they can barely under-
very little effort to turn “Dimph-you-
stand. He and his wife and one old man
chur” into “Dim Future.” Soon we en-
are the last survivors of the Mehrikans.

counter historians named “Nofuhl” and

He shows them through the vast hall in

“Noz-yt-ahl,” and we see that the au-
which he lives—it appears to be an aban-
thor’s method is a bit short on subtlety.

doned museum, full of ancient artifacts—

Nonetheless the little book is an amus-
and serves them some sort of liquor to
ing artifact—in fact a very clever one,
celebrate the national holiday. Which is a
worthy of the three or four reprintings it
mistake; a drunken fracas breaks out
has had in our own era.

when one of the Persians attempts to kiss

The Persian expeditionary force—the
the Mehrikan’s wife. Both the young
first to visit the New World in many cen-
woman and the older Mehrikan man are
turies—finds Mehrika a desolate place in-
killed, and some of the Persians, and by
deed. The first thing that greets them is a
the time Prince Khan-Li can restore or-
gigantic statue in the harbor—the ruined
der, the last of the Mehrikans is dead as

Statue of Liberty, only three years old
well. On July 7, the prince’s journal notes,
when Mitchell’s book appeared. Behind it
the expedition is “again upon the sea.

lie the deserted towers of an enormous

This time for Persia, bearing our wound-
city, “the pavements covered with weeds,
ed and the ashes of the dead. . . . The skull
grass, and flowers, all crowding together
of the last Mehrikan I shall present to
in wild neglect.” Fragmentary inscriptions
the museum in Teheran.”

identify what had been the New York

Will it be our turn soon to become a na-

Stock Exchange and several of the great
tion known only to archaeologists? And
hotels. But of the city’s population, which
what is that like for the last few sur-
the historian Nofuhl declares to have
vivors? Ask the Hittites, if you can find
been four million, no one is to be seen.

any. The Soviets are but a memory now.

What has happened here? “For eleven

The Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian em-
centuries the cities of this sleeping hemi-
pires are gone. Perhaps in thirtieth-cen-
sphere have decayed in solitude,” Nofuhl
tury Persia they’ll tell jokes about the an-
explains. “Their very existence has been
cient Mehrikans. “These two Mehrikans
forgotten. The people who built them have
went out in a rowboat together, and Jorj
so long passed away, and their civilization
said to Zho. . . .”

is but a shadowy tradition. Historians are

Perhaps. ❍

8

Robert Silverberg

On the Net

James Patrick Kelly

REMEMBERING BERTIE
timely
make an entire career writing stories
and novels based on mind-bending con-
can’t imagine any science fiction
cepts explored in this book.

writer not being fascinated—or at least

The latest tick in my personal time
tempted—by the idea of time travel.

travel moment came yesterday, just days

IHowever, although I’ve had a couple of after I’d given my lecture on Wells, when I time travel stories in these pages, I must
came across an essay “When They
admit that it’s been years since I’ve

Came from Another World” < ny
thought seriously about the subject. But
books.com/articles/2017/01/19/when-
recently I’ve been experiencing some-
they-came-from-another-world> in the
thing of a time travel moment.

New York Review of Books, by one James

A couple of columns ago I was anticipat-

Gleick, in which he reviews the ideas
ing Arrival < youtube.com/watch?v=wu8
about time central to both Arrival and

_5TGwr90>, based on the novella “The

“The Story Of Your Life.” If you loved the

Story of Your Life” < en.wikipedia.org/
movie, you need to read this. And then
wiki/Story_of_Your_Life>, by Ted Chi-
go buy Gleick’s terrific book.

ang < newyorker.com/culture/persons-
of-interest/ted-chiangs-soulful-science-

Bertie
fiction>. Then the movie came out last

I called my talk “H.G. Wells, the Man

November to rave reviews < rottentoma-

Who Invented Science Fiction.” And yes,
toes.com/m/arrival_2016>. Not only is it

I know that Jules Verne < gutenberg.

wonderfully smart SF that achieves its
org/ebooks/search/?query=l.en+Verne>
best special effect not on the screen, but
and Mary Shelley < gutenberg.org/
in the mind of the viewer, but as a bonus,
ebooks/84> have legitimate claims to be-
it was a huge box office success. Arrival
ing our founders. However, if not science
was just the first tick of my time travel
fiction, Wells is certainly the man who
moment. I teach creative writing at the
invented time travel, despite all the pre-

Stonecoast MFA program < usm.

cursors. As Gleick persuasively argues,
maine.edu/stonecoastmfa> in Maine and

How strange, then, to realize that
even as Arrival arrived, I was preparing
time travel, the concept, is barely a
a lecture on H.G. Wells < en.wikipedia.

century old. The term first occurs in
org/wiki/H._G._Wells>, for which I as-

English in 1914—a back formation
signed The Time Machine < gutenberg.

from Well’s “Time Traveler.” Some-
org/ebooks/35> as required reading. As
how humanity got by for thousands of

I was gathering my thoughts for that
years without asking, What if I could
presentation, the noted science writer
travel into the future? What would

James Gleick < https://around.com>
the world be like? What if I could
published a book called Time Travel
travel into the past—could I change

< nytimes.com/2016/10/02/books/review
history? The questions didn’t arise.

/james-gleick-time-travel.html?_r=0>,

That Herbert George Wells—Bertie to
which, in my opinion, is the best survey
his friends and many lovers—would be-
of popular and scientific literature on
come the first to ask this question would
the subject ever written. My fellow writ-
have come as no surprise to those who
ers, are you looking for ideas? You could
knew him as a young man. Relentlessly

On the Net: Remembering Bertie

9
ambitious in his twenties despite many
most definitely not so until compar-
failures, Wells returned again and again
atively recent times.

to speculation about traveling through

The Time Machine has never been out
time. His first attempt to express his
of print since 1895, and the many millions
ideas came in 1888. “The Chronic Arg-
who haven’t read it have some notion of
onauts” < colemanzone.com/Time_
the Morlocks and the Eloi, thanks to nu-

Machine_Project/chronic.htm> was pub-
merous movie, television, comic book, and
lished in his college newspaper when he
other adaptations. In my biased opinion,
was just twenty-two, seven years before
the best of these is the 1960 film version

The Time Machine. He dusted off his
of The Time Machine <en.wikipedia.

theories for a longer time travel story in
org/wiki/The_Time_Machine_(1960_

1894; his untitled serial ran at irregular
film)>, directed by the Hungarian direc-
intervals in the National Observer as a
tor George Pal < awn.com/heaven
series of dialogues between an anony-

_and_hell /PAL/GP12.htm>. Pal also
mous Time Traveler and a gathering of
produced a fine The War of the Worlds
dinner guests. Another extensive revision

< en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_
published in 1895—more or less the one
the_ Worlds_(1953_film)> in 1953.

we read today—was also a serial, pub-
lished as The Time Machine: An Invention
grim
in The New Review. Yet another revision

But if you know The Time Machine pri-
came out in book form later that year.

marily from movies, television, and word

This novella caused a sensation and
of mouth, then you may not be aware of
marked the beginning of an astonishing

Wells’s profoundly pessimistic vision of
five-year run for Wells, during which he
our future. This untidy novel begins with
would write the classic SF for which we
a frame story retrospectively narrated by
now remember him. The best of these, in
one of the Time Traveler’s dinner guests,
addition to The Time Machine, are The
who listens patiently as the Traveler spins

Island of Dr. Moreau < onlinebooks.

his theories about time. In writer parlance,
library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/look
this section would be called a narrative
up?num=159> , The Invisible Man < on lump. Note however that when the Trav-linebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gut
eler grandly announces that “There is no
book/lookup?num=5230>, and The War
difference between time and any of the
of the Worlds <onlinebooks.library.

three dimensions of space except that our
upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num
consciousness moves along it,” and that

=36>, all of which and more you can read

“any real body must have extension in four
free at the indispensable Project Guten-
directions: it must have Length, Breadth,
berg < gutenberg.org>. By 1899, the thir-Thickness, and Duration” he is anticipat-
ty-three-year old Wells had become one
ing a famous lecture delivered thirteen
of the best known writers in the English-
years later by the physicist Hermann
speaking world.

Minkowski < www-groups.dcs.st-and

It would be impossible to overstate the

.ac.uk/history/Biographies/Minkowski.

influence The Time Machine has had, not
html>. After doing the math, Minkowski
only on popular culture, but on philoso-
realized that Einstein’s Special Theory
phy and science as well. Gleick quotes our
of Relativity < www.einstein-online.

own Isaac Asimov < asimovonline.com> info/elementary/special RT> could best
on the cultural shift that Wells helped
be understood in a four-dimensional man-
bring about.

ifold, which we now call Minkowski space

Before we can have futurism, we
or, more commonly, spacetime < www.

must first recognize the existence of
einstein-online.info/elementary/special
the future in a state that is signifi-

RT/spacetime>. Minkowski’s talk
cantly different from the present

< spacetimesociety.org/conferences/2004
and the past. It may seem to us that

/minkowski.html> began “Henceforth
the potential existence of such a fu-
space by itself, and time by itself, are
ture is self-evident, but that was
doomed to fade away into mere shadows,

10

James Patrick Kelly

Asimov’s
and only a kind of union of the two will
the point through the two World Wars.

preserve an independent reality.”

And after a couple of disappointing mes-

Way to go, Bertie!

sage novels like The Sleeper Awakes

Wait, where was I? Oh right, The Time

< gutenberg.org/ebooks/12163> and The

Machine! Once we get past the frame, the

Food of the Gods < gutenberg.org/

Traveler himself takes up his tale. Riding
ebooks/11696> (read ’em and weep), this
what amounts to a steampunk bicycle
forefather of our genre spent the last four
into futurity (Wells was an avid cyclist),
decades of his life on other matters. Are
the Traveler recounts his adventures
we modern SF readers presumptuous to
with the Eloi and Morlocks in the year
wish he had stayed with us?

802,701. What catches this writer’s atten-
tion from a craft point of view is that
exit

Wells uses no dialogue for most of the

We are at a moment in the history of
book. The Eloi don’t speak English—of
science fiction and our country when
course!—nor are they particularly bright.

many are asking for a change in literary

“Either I missed some subtle point or
direction. For instance, there are calls
their language was excessively simple—
for a more optimistic science fiction from
almost exclusively composed of concrete
the good folks involved with the Hiero-
substantives and verbs. There seemed to
glyph Project < hieroglyph.asu.edu>, be few, if any, abstract terms, or little use
and more politically engaged writing
of figurative language. Their sentences
from those aghast at recent election re-
were usually simple and of two words,
sults. I’m all for messages in their place,
and I failed to convey or understand any
but I’m also mindful of Wells’s checkered
but the simplest propositions.”

reputation. While his optimistic and po-

After recovering his stolen Machine
litically engaged writing is largely for-
from the cannibal Morlocks, the Travel-
gotten, we continue to turn to the dark
er makes two long hops into the distant
vision of his scientific romances. His
future, the last to a cold, dead earth
apocalyptic future in The Time Machine
some thirty million years hence, before
is peopled by a bifurcated humanity,
finally returning to his own time. The
simpleton Eloi and bestial Morlocks,
novel ends back at dinner in the frame
who have forgotten Aristotle, Newton,
story; our narrator guest returns to mar-

Shakespeare, and Einstein. The British
vel at the Traveler’s adventure and won-
and American Empires are dust and all
der what became of him after he disap-
that remains at the end of time are giant
pears on yet another time adventure.

crabs and a twilit beach. Nor are the

Alas, the Traveler’s amazing invention
other great SF novels any less grim. The
has no impact whatsoever on history.

Invisible Man is a sociopath and humani-

If H.G. Wells was, in fact, the man who
ty survives the Martian slaughter not be-
invented SF, or at least had a hand in cre-
cause of its courage or idealism but be-
ating it, examining his life and work
cause of viruses and bacteria. The
might help us understand some of today’s
bloody-minded and blasphemous Island
genre concerns. Sadly, despite his early
of Dr. Moreau caused such a scandal that
achievements, Wells turned his back on
a reviewer in the Times wrote, “The book
the scientific romance < sf-encyclopedia.

should be kept out of the way of young
com/entry/scientific_romance>, as SF
people.” Another complained that it never
was called back in the day, to write comic
should have been written and suggested
novels of lower middle-class life, optimistic
that Wells pull it from circulation. . . .

socialist tracts, didactic futurological es-

Uh oh, look at the time! I got carried
says, journalism, and histories. He became
away thinking about Bertie. I’m not
one of the great explainers of his age, not
ready for the last tick of my time travel
unlike Isaac Asimov, although his expla-
moment, so we’ll have to continue this in
nations seemed more and more beside
the next column. ❍

On the Net: Remembering Bertie

11

WIND WILL

ROVE

Sarah Pinsker

Sarah Pinsker tells us, “I don’t play fiddle, but I’ve chunked along on guitar at old-time jams. This story was borne out of a New Year’s Eve old-time jam where I played along on guitar behind the fiddlers. I’m always amazed by their knowledge and memory, so I thought I’d put them on a generation ship and see what happened. I brought a draft to Sycamore Hill in 2015 but it took me another year and a half to find my way through.”

There’s a story about my grandmother Windy, one I never asked her to confirm or deny, in which she took her fiddle on a spacewalk. There are a lot of stories about her.

Fewer of my parents’ generation, fewer still of my own, though we’re in our fifties now and old enough that if there were stories to tell they would probably have been told.

My grandmother was an engineer, part of our original crew. According to the tale, she stepped outside to do a visual inspection of an external panel that was giving anomalous readings. Along with her tools, she clipped her f iddle and bow to her suit’s belt. When she completed her task, she paused for a moment, tethered to our ship the size of a city, put her fiddle to the place where her helmet met her suit, and played “Wind Will Rove” into the void. Not to be heard, of course; just to feel the song in her fingers.

There are a number of things wrong with this story, starting with the fact that we don’t do spacewalks, for reasons that involve laws of physics I learned in school and don’t remember anymore. Our shields are too thick, our velocity is too great, something like that. The Blackout didn’t touch ship records; crew transcripts and recordings still exist, and I’ve listened to all the ones that might pertain to this legend. She laughs her deep laugh, she teases a tired colleague about his date the night before, she even hums “Wind Will Rove” to herself as she works—but there are no gaps, no silences unexplained.

Even if it were possible, her gloves would have been too thick to find a fingering. I doubt my grandmother would’ve risked losing her instrument, out here where any replacement would be synthetic. I doubt, too, that she’d have exposed it to the cold of space. Fiddles are comfortable at the same temperatures people are comfortable; they crack and warp when they aren’t happy. Her fiddle, my fiddle now.

My final evidence: “Wind Will Rove” is traditionally played in DDAD tuning, with the first and fourth strings dropped down. As much as she loved that song, she didn’t play it often, since re-tuning can make strings wear out faster. If she had risked her fiddle, if she had managed to press her fingers to its fingerboard, to lift her bow, to Wind Will Rove

13

September/October 2017
play, she wouldn’t have played a DDAD tune. This is as incontrovertible as the temperature of the void.

And yet the story is passed on among the ship’s fiddlers (and I pass it on again as I write this narrative for you, Teyla, or whoever else discovers it). And yet her nickname, Windy, first appears in transcripts starting in the fifth year on board. Before that, people called her Beth, or Green.

She loved the song, I know that much. She sang it to me as a lullaby. At twelve, I taught it to myself in traditional GDAE tuning. I took pride in the adaptation, pride in the hours I spent getting it right. I played it for her on her birthday.

She pulled me to her, kissed my head. She always smelled like the lilacs in the greenhouse. She said, “Rosie, I’m so tickled that you’d do that for me, and you played it note perfectly, which is a gift to me in itself. But ‘Wind Will Rove’ is a DDAD tune, and it ought to be played that way. You play it in another tuning, it’s a different wind that blows.”

I’d never contemplated how there might be a difference between winds. I’d never felt one myself, unless you counted air pushed through vents, or the fan on a tread-mill. After the birthday party, I looked up “wind” and read about breezes and gales and siroccos, about haboobs and zephyrs. Great words, words to turn over in my mouth, words that spoke to nothing in my experience.

The next time I heard the song in its proper tuning, I closed my eyes and listened for the wind.

“Windy Grove”

Traditional. Believed to have traveled from Scotland to Cape Breton in the nineteenth century. Lost.

“Wind Will Rove”

Instrumental in D (alternate tuning DDAD).

Harriet Barrie, Music Historian:

The fiddler Olivia Vandiver and her father, Charley Vandiver, came up with this tune in the wee hours of a session in 1974. Charley was trying to remember a traditional tune he had heard as a boy in Nova Scotia, believed to be “Windy Grove.” No recordings of the original “Windy Grove” were ever catalogued, on ship or on Earth.

“Wind Will Rove” is treated as traditional in most circles, even though it’s relatively recent, because it is the lost tune’s closest known relative.

The Four Deck Rec has the best acoustics of any room on the ship. There’s a nearly identical space on every deck, but the others don’t sound as good. The Recs were designed for gatherings, but no acoustic engineer was ever consulted, and there’s nobody on board with that specialty now. The fact that one room might sound good and another less so wasn’t important in the grander scheme. It should have been.

In the practical, the day to day, it matters. It matters to us. Choirs perform there, and bands. It serves on various days and nights as home to a Unitarian church, a Capoeira hoda, a Reconstructionist synagogue, a mosque, a Quaker meetinghouse, a half dozen different African dance groups, and a Shakespearean theater, everyone clinging on to whatever they hope to save. The room is scheduled for weeks and months and years to come, though weeks and months and years are all arbitrary designations this far from Earth.

On Thursday nights, Four Deck Rec hosts the OldTime, thanks to my grandmother’s early pressure on the Recreation Committee. There are only a few of us on board who know what OldTime refers to, since everything is old time, strictly speaking.

Everyone else has accepted a new meaning, since they have never known any other.

14

Sarah Pinsker

Asimov’s

An OldTime is a Thursday night, is a hall with good acoustics, is a gathering of fiddlers and guitarists and mandolinists and banjo players. It has a verb form now. “Are you OldTiming this week?” If you are a person who would ask that question, or a person expected to respond, the answer is yes. You wouldn’t miss it.

On this particular Thursday night, while I wouldn’t miss it, my tenth graders had me running late. We’d been discussing the twentieth and twenty-first century space races and the conversation had veered into dangerous territory. I’d spent half an hour trying to explain to them why Earth history still mattered. This had happened at least once a cycle with every class I’d ever taught, but these particular students were as fired up as any I remembered.

“I’m never going to go there, right, Ms. Clay?” Nelson Odell had asked. This class had only been with me for two weeks, but I’d known Nelson his entire life. His great-grandmother, my friend Harriet, had dragged him to the OldTime until he was old enough to refuse. He’d played mandolin, his stubby fingers well fit to the tiny neck, face set in a permanently resentful expression.

“No,” I said. “This is a one way trip. You know that.”

“And really I’m just going to grow up and die on this ship, right? And all of us? You too? Die, not grow up. You’re already old.”

I had heard this from enough students. I didn’t even wince anymore. “Yes to all of the above, though it’s a reductive line of thinking and that last bit was rude.”

“Then what does it matter that back on Earth a bunch of people wanted what another group had? Wouldn’t it be better not to teach us how people did those things and get bad ideas in our heads?”

Emily Redhorse, beside Nelson, said, “They make us learn it all so we can understand why we got on the ship.” She was the only current OldTime player in this class, a promising fiddler. OldTime players usually understood the value of history from a young age.

Nelson waved her off. “ ‘We’ didn’t get on the ship. Our grandparents and great-grandparents did. And here we are learning things that were old to them.”

“Because, stupid.” That was Trina Nguyen.

I interrupted. “Debate is fine, Trina. Name-calling is not.”

“Because, Nelson.” She tried again. “There aren’t new things in history. That’s why it’s called history.”

Nelson folded his arms and stared straight at me. “Then don’t teach it at all. If it mattered so much, why did they leave it behind? Give us another hour to learn more genetics or ship maintenance or farming. Things we can actually use.”

“First of all, history isn’t static. People discovered artifacts and primary documents all the time that changed their views on who we were. It’s true that the moment we left Earth we gave up the chance to learn anything new about it from newly discovered primary sources, but we can still f ind fresh perspectives on the old information.” I tried to regain control, hoping that none of them countered with the Blackout.

Students of this generation rarely did; to them it was just an incident in Shipboard History, not the living specter it had been when I was their age.

I continued. “Secondly, Emily is right. It’s important to know why and how we got here. The conventional wisdom remains that those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

“How are we supposed to repeat it?” Nelson waved at the pictures on the walls.

“We don’t have countries or oil or water. Or guns or swords or bombs. If teachers hadn’t told us about them we wouldn’t even know they existed. We’d be better off not knowing that my ancestors tried to kill Emily’s ancestors, wouldn’t we? Somebody even tried to erase all of that entirely, and you made sure it was still included in the new version of history.”

Wind Will Rove

15

September/October 2017

“Not me, Nelson. That was before my time.” I knew I shouldn’t let them get a rise out of me, but I was tired and hungry, not the ideal way to start a seven hour music marathon. “Enough. I get what you’re saying, but not learning this is not an option.

Send me a thousand words by Tuesday on an example of history repeating itself.”

Before anyone protested, I added, “You were going to have an essay to write either way. All I’ve done is changed the topic. It doesn’t sound like you wanted to write about space races.”

They all grumbled as they plugged themselves back into their games and music and shuffled out the door. I watched them go, wishing I’d handled the moment differently, but not yet sure how. It fascinated me that Nelson was the one fomenting this small rebellion, when his great-grandmother ran the OldTime Memory Project.

My grandmother was the reason I obsessed over history, why I’d chosen teaching; Harriet didn’t seem to have had the same effect on Nelson.

As Nelson passed my desk, he muttered, “Maybe somebody needs to erase it all again.”

“Stop,” I told him.

He turned back to face me. I still had several inches on him, but he held himself as if he were taller. The rest of the students flowed out around him. Trina rammed her wheelchair into Nelson’s leg as she passed, in a move that looked 100 percent deliberate. She didn’t even pretend to apologize.

“I don’t mind argument in my classroom, but don’t ever let anyone hear you advocating another Blackout.”

He didn’t look impressed. “I’m not advocating. I just think teaching us Earth history—especially broken history—is a waste of everybody’s time.”

“Maybe someday you’ll get on the Education Committee, and you can argue for that change. But I heard you say ‘erase it all again.’ That isn’t the same thing. Would you say that in front of Harriet?”

“Maybe I was just exaggerating. It’s not even possible to erase everything anymore. And there’s plenty of stuff I like that I wouldn’t want to see erased.” He shrugged. “I didn’t mean it. Can I go now?”

He left without waiting for me to dismiss him.

I looked at the walls I’d carefully curated for this class. Tenth grade had always been the year we taught our journey’s political and scientific antecedents. It was one of the easier courses for the Education Committee to recreate accurately after the Blackout, since some of it had still been in living memory at the time, and one of the easier classrooms to decorate for the same reason. I’d enlarged images of our ship’s construction from my grandmother’s personal collection, alongside reproductions of news headlines. Around the top of the room, a static quote from United Nations Sec-retary-General Confidence Swaray: “We have two missions now: to better the Earth and to better ourselves.”

Normally I’d wipe my classroom walls to neutral for the continuing education group that met there in the evening, but this time I left the wall displays on when I turned off the lights to leave. Maybe we’d all failed these children already if they thought the past was irrelevant.

The digital art on the street outside my classroom had changed during the day. I traced my fingertips along the wall to get the info: a reimagining of a memory of a photo of an Abdoulaye Konaté mural, sponsored by the Malian Memory Project. According to the description, the original had been a European transit station mosaic, though they no longer knew which city or country had commissioned it. Fish swam across a faux-tiled sea. Three odd blue figures stood tall at the far end, bird-like hu-manoids. The colors were soothing to me, but the figures less so. How like the original was it? No way to tell. Another reinvention to keep some version of our past present in our lives.

16

Sarah Pinsker

Asimov’s

I headed back to my quarters for my instrument and a quick dinner. There was always food at the OldTime, but I knew from experience that if I picked up my fiddle I wouldn’t stop playing until my f ingers begged. My f ingers and my stomach often had different agendas. I needed a few minutes to cool down after that class, too. Nelson had riled me with his talk of broken history. To me that had always made preserving it even more important, but I understood the point he was trying to make.

By the time I got to the Four Deck Rec, someone had already taken my usual seat.

I tuned in the corner where everyone had stashed their cases, then looked around to get the lay of the room. The best fiddlers had nabbed the middle seats, with spokes of mandolin and banjo and guitar and less confident fiddlers radiating out. The only prof icient OldTime bass player, Doug Kelly, stood near the center, with the ship’s only upright bass. A couple of his students sat behind him, ready to swap out for a tune or two if he wanted a break.

The remaining empty seats were all next to banjos. I spotted a chair beside Dana Torres from the ship’s Advisory Council. She was a good administrator and an adequate banjo player—she kept time, anyway. I didn’t think she’d show up if she were less than adequate; nobody wants to see leadership failing at anything.

She had taken a place two rings removed from my usual seat in the second fiddle tier. Not the innermost circle, where my grandmother had sat, with the players who call the tunes and call the stops; at fifty-five years old, I hadn’t earned a spot there yet. Still, I sat just outside them and kept up with them, and it’d been a long time since I’d caught a frown from the leaders.

A tune started as I made my way to the empty chair. “Honeysuckle.” A thought crossed my mind that Harriet had started “Honeysuckle” without me, one of my Memory Project tunes, to punish me for being late. A second thought crossed my mind, mostly because of the conversation with my students, that probably only three other people in the room knew or cared what honeysuckle was: Tom Mvovo, who maintained the seed bank; Liat Shuster, who worked in the greenhouse—in all our nights together, I never thought to ask her about the honeysuckle plant; Harriet Barrie, music historian, last OldTime player of the generation that had left Earth. To everyone else, it was simply the song’s name. A name that meant this song, nothing more.

When I started thinking that way, all the songs took on a strange flat quality in my head. So many talked about meadows and flowers and roads and birds. The love songs maintained relevance, but the rest might as well have been written in other languages as far as most people were concerned. Or about nothing at all. Mostly, we let the fiddles do the singing.

No matter how many times we play a song, it’s never the same song twice. The melody stays the same, the key, the rhythm. The notes’ pattern, their cadence. Still, there are differences. The exact number of fiddles changes. Various players’ positions within the group, each with their own fiddle’s timbral variances. The locations of the bass, the mandolins, the guitars, the banjos, all in relation to each individual player’s ears. To a listener by the snack table, or to someone seeking out a recording after the fact, the nuances change. In the minutes the song exists, it is fully its own. That’s how it feels to me, anyway.

Harriet stomped her foot to indicate we’d reached the last go-round for “Honeysuckle,” and we all came to an end together except one of the outer guitarists, who hadn’t seen the signal and kept chugging on the last chord. He shrugged off the glares.

“Oklahoma Rooster,” she shouted, to murmurs of approval. She started the tune, and the other fiddles picked up the melody. I put my bow to the strings and closed my eyes. I pictured a real farm, the way they looked in pictures, and let the song tell me how it felt to be in the place called Oklahoma. A sky as big as space, the color of chlorinated water. The sun a distant disk, bright and cold. A wood-paneled square Wind Will Rove

17

September/October 2017
building, with a round building beside it. A perfect carpet of green grass. Horses, large and sturdy, bleating at each other across the fields. All sung in the voice of a rooster, a bird that served as a wake-up alarm for the entire farm. Birds were the things with feathers, as the old saying went.

It was easy to let my mind wander into meadows and f ields during songs I had played once a week nearly my whole life. Nelson must have gotten under my skin more than I thought: I found myself adding the weeks and months and years up.

Fifty times a year, f ifty years, more or less. Then the same songs again alone for practice, or in smaller groups on other nights.

The OldTime broke up at 0300, as it usually did. I rolled my head from side to side, cracking my neck. The music always carried me through the night, but the second it stopped, I started noticing the cramp of my fingers, the unevenness of my shoulders.

“What does ‘Oklahoma Rooster’ mean to you?” I asked Dana Torres as she shook out her knees.

“Sorry?”

“What do you think of when you play ‘Oklahoma Rooster’?”

Torres laughed. “I think C-C-G-C-C-C-G-C. Anything else and I fall behind the beat. Why, what do you think of ?”

A bird, a farm, a meadow. “I don’t know. Sorry. Weird question.”

We packed our instruments and stepped into the street, dimmed to simulate night.

Back at my quarters, I knew I should sleep, but instead I sat at the table and called up the history database. “Wind Will Rove.”

Options appeared: “Play,” cross-referenced to the song database, with choices from several OldTime recordings we’d made over the years. “Sheet music,” painstakingly generated by my grandmother and her friends, tabbed for all of the appropriate instruments. “History.” I tapped the last icon and left it to play as I heated up water for soporific tea. I’d watched it hundreds of times.

A video would play on the table. A stern looking white woman in her thirties, black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail, bangs flat-cut across her forehead. She’d been so young then, the stress of the situation making her look older than her years.

“Harriet Barrie, Music Historian,” the first subtitle would say, then Harriet would appear and begin, “The fiddler Olivia Vandiver and her father, Charley Vandiver came up with this tune in the wee hours of a session in 1974. . . .” Except when I returned, the table had gone blank. I went back to the main menu, but this time no options came up when I selected “Wind Will Rove.” I tried again, and this time the song didn’t exist.

I stared at the place where it should have been, between “Winder’s Slide” and

“Wolf Creek.” Panic stirred deep in my gut, a panic handed down to me. Maybe I was tired and imagining things. It had been there a moment ago. It had always been there, my whole life. The new databases had backups of backups of backups, even if the recordings we called originals merely recreated what had been lost long ago.

Glitches happened. It would be fixed in the morning.

Just in case, I dashed off a quick message to Tech. I drank my tea and went to bed, but I didn’t sleep well.

“Wind Will Rove”

Historical reenactment. Windy Green as Olivia Vandiver, Fiddler:

“We were in our ninth hour playing. It had been a really energetic session, and we were all starting to fade. Chatting more between songs so we could rest our fingers. I can’t remember how the subject came up, but my father brought up a tune called “Windy Grove.” Nobody else had ever heard of it, and he called us all ignorant Americans.

He launched into an A part that sounded something like “Spirits of the Morning,” but with a clever little lift where “Spirits” descends. My father did things with a fiddle the 18

Sarah Pinsker

Asimov’s
rest of us could never match, but we all followed as best we were able. The B part wasn’t anything like “Spirits,” and we all caught that pretty fast, but the next time the A part came round it was different again, so we all shut up and let him play. The third time through sounded pretty much like the second, so we figured he had remembered the tune, and we jumped in again. It went the same the fourth and fifth times through.

It wasn’t until we got up the next day that he admitted he had never quite remembered the tune he was trying to remember, which meant the thing we had played the night before was of his own creation. We cleaned it up, called it ‘Wind Will Rove,’ and recorded it for the third Vandiver Family LP.”

My grandmother was an astronaut. We are not astronauts. It’s a term that’s not useful in our vocabulary. Do the people back on Earth still use that word? Do they mention us at all? Are they still there?

When our families left they were called Journeyers. Ten thousand Journeyers off on the Incredible Journey, with the help of a genetic bank, a seed bank, an advisory council. A ship thirty years in the making, held together by a crew of trained professionals: astronauts and engineers and biologists and doctors and the like. Depending on which news outlet you followed, the Journeyers were a cult or a social experiment or pioneers.

Those aren’t terms we use for ourselves, since we have no need to call ourselves anything in reference to any other group. When we do differentiate, it’s to refer to the Before. I don’t know if that makes us the During or the After.

My mother’s parents met in Texas, in the Before, while she was still in training.

My grandfather liked being married to an astronaut when the trips were finite, but he refused to sign up for the Journey. He stayed behind on Earth with two other children, my aunt and uncle, both older than my mother. I imagine those family members sometimes. All those people I have no stories for. Generations of them.

It’s theoretically possible that scientists on Earth have built faster ships by now. It’s theoretically possible they’ve developed faster travel while we’ve been busy traveling.

It’s theoretically possible they’ve built a better ship, that they’ve peopled it and sent it sailing past us, that they’ve figured out how to freeze and revive people, that those who stepped into the ship will be the ones who step out. That we will be greeted when we reach our destination by our own ancestors. I won’t be there, but my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren might be. I wonder what stories they’ll tell each other.

This story is verif iable history. It begins, “There once was a man named Morne Brooks.” It’s used to scare children into doing their homework and paying attention in class. Nobody wants to be a cautionary tale.

There once was a man named Morne Brooks. In the fourth year on board, while performing a computer upgrade, he accidentally created a backdoor to the ship databases. Six years after that, an angry young programmer named Trevor Dube released a virus that ate several databases in their entirety. Destroyed the backups too. He didn’t touch the “important” systems—navigation, life support, medical, seed and gene banks—but he caused catastrophic damage to the libraries. Music gone.

Literature, film, games, art, history: gone, gone, gone, gone. Virtual reality simula-tion banks, gone, along with the games and the trainings and the immersive recreations of places on Earth. He killed external communications too. We were alone, years earlier than we expected to be. Severed.

For some reason, it’s Brooks’ name attached to the disaster. Dube was locked up, but Brooks still walked around out in the community for people to point at and shame. Our slang term “brooked” came from his name. He spent years afterward listening to people say they had brooked exams and brooked relationships. I suppose it didn’t help that he had such a good name to lend. Old English, Dutch, German. A Wind Will Rove

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hard word for a lively stream of water. We have no use for it as a noun now; no brooks here. His shipmates still remembered brooks, though they’d never see one again.

There was a verb form already, unrelated, but it had fallen from use. His contemporaries verbed him afresh.

It didn’t matter that for sixteen years afterward he worked on the team that shored up protection against future damage, or that he eventually committed suicide. Nobody wanted to talk about Dube or his motivations; all people ever mentioned was the moment the screens went dark, and Brooks’ part in the whole disaster when they traced it backward.

In fairness, I can’t imagine their panic. They were still the original Journeyers, the original crew, the original Advisory Council, save one or two changes. They were the ones who had made sure we had comprehensive databases, so we wouldn’t lose our history, and so they wouldn’t be without their favorite entertainments. The movies and serials and songs reminded them of homes they had left behind.

The media databases meant more to that f irst generation than I could possibly imagine. They came from all over the Earth, from disparate cultures; for some from smaller sub-groups, the databases were all that connected them with their people.

It’s no wonder they reacted the way they did.

I do sometimes wonder what would be different now if things hadn’t gone wrong so early in the journey. Would we have naturally moved beyond the art we carried, instead of clinging to it as we do now? All we can do is live it out, but I do wonder.

I don’t teach on Fridays. I can’t bounce back from seven hours of fiddling, or from the near-all-nighter, the way I did at twenty or thirty or forty. Usually I sleep through Friday mornings. This time, I woke at ten, suddenly and completely, with the feeling something was missing. I glanced at the corner by the door to make sure I hadn’t left my fiddle at the Rec.

I showered, then logged on to the school server to see if any students had turned in early assignments—they hadn’t—then checked the notice system for anything that might affect my plans for the day. It highlighted a couple of streets I could easily avoid, and warned that the New Shakespeare and Chinese Cultural DBs were down for maintenance. Those alerts reminded me about the database crash the night before. My stomach lurched again as I called up “Wind Will Rove,” but it was there when I looked for it, right where it belonged.

The door chimed. Fridays I had lunch with Harriet. We called it lunch, even though we’d both be eating our first meal of the day. She didn’t get up early after the OldTime either. Usually I cut it pretty close, rolling out of bed and putting on clothes, knowing she’d done the same. I glanced around the room to make sure it was presentable. I’d piled some dirty clothes on the bed, but they were pretty well hidden behind the privacy screen. Good enough.

“You broke the deal, Rosie,” she said, eyeing my hair as I opened my door. “You showered.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

She shrugged and slid into the chair I’d just been sitting in. She had a skullcap pulled over her own hair, dyed jet black. Harriet had thirty years on me, though she still looked wiry and spry. It had taken me decades to stop considering her my grandmother’s friend and realize she’d become mine as well. Now we occupied a place somewhere between mentorship and friendship. History teacher and music historian. Fiddle player and master fiddler.

I handed her a mug of mint tea and a bowl of congee, and a spoon. My dishware had been my grandmother’s, from Earth. Harriet always smiled when I handed her the chipped “Cape Breton Fiddlers Association” mug.

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She held the cup up to her face for a moment, breathing in the minty steam. “Now tell me why you walked in late last night. I missed you in the second row. Kem Porter took your usual seat, and I had to listen to his sloppy bow technique all night.”

“Kem’s not so bad. He knows the tunes.”

“He knows the tunes, but he’s not ready for the second row. He was brooking rhythms all over the place. You should have called him out on it.”

“I wouldn’t!”

She cradled the mug in her hands and breathed in again. Liat and I hadn’t been a couple for years, but she still brought me real mint from the greenhouse, and I knew Harriet appreciated it. “I know. You’re too nice. There’s no shame in letting someone know his place. Next time I’ll do it.”

She would, too. She had taken over the OldTime enforcer job from my grandmother and lived up to her example. They’d both sent me back to the outer circles more than once before I graduated inward.

“I’ll tell you when you’re ready, Rosie,” my grandmother said. “You’ll get there.”

“You know Windy would have done it,” Harriet said, echoing my thoughts.

The nickname jogged my memory again. “ ‘Wind Will Rove’!” I said. “Something was wrong with the database last night. The song was missing.”

She pushed the cups to the side and tapped the table awake.

“Down for maintenance,” she read out loud, frowning. She looked up. “I don’t like that. I’ll go over to Tech myself and ask.”

She stood and left without saying goodbye.

Harriet had a way of saying things so definitively you couldn’t help agreeing. If she said you didn’t belong in the second row, you weren’t ready yet. If she said not to worry over the song issue, I would have been willing to believe her, even though it made me uneasy. Hopefully it was nothing, but her reaction was appropriate for anyone who’d lived through the Blackout. I hadn’t even gotten around to answering her first question, but I wasn’t really sure what I would have told her about Nelson in any case.

I went to pick up my grandchildren from daycare, as I always did on Friday afternoons, Natalie’s long day at the hospital. If anything could keep me out of my head, it was the mind-wiping exhaustion of chasing toddlers.

“Goats?” asked Teyla. She had just turned two, her brother Jonah four.

“Goats okay with you, too, buddy?” I asked Jonah.

He shrugged stoically. He didn’t really care for animals. Preferred games, but we’d played games the week before.

“Goats it is.”

The farm spread across the bottom deck, near the waste processing plant. We took two tubes to get there, Jonah turning on all the screens we passed, Teyla playing with my hair.

I always enjoyed stepping from the tube and into the farm’s relatively open spaces, as big as eight rec rooms combined. The air out here, pungent and rich, worked off a different circulator than on the living decks. It moved with slightly more force than on the rest of the ship, though still not a wind. Not even a breeze. The artificial sun wasn’t any different than on the other decks, but it felt more intense. The textures felt different too, softer, plants and fur, fewer touch screens. If I squinted I could imagine a real farm, ahead or behind us, on a real planet. Everything on every other deck had been designed to keep us healthy and sane; I always found it interesting to spend time in a place dedicated to keeping other animals alive.

The goats had been a contentious issue for the planners in my grandmother’s generation. Their detractors called them a waste of food and space and resources. Windy was among those who argued for them. They could supplement the synthetic milk and meat supplies. They’d provide veterinary training and animal husbandry skills that Wind Will Rove

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would be needed planetside someday, not to mention a living failsafe in case something happened to the gene banks. It would be good to have them aboard for psychological reasons as well, when people were leaving behind house pets like cats and dogs.

She won the debate, as she so often did, and they added a small population of female African Pygmy goats to the calculations. Even then there were dissenters. The arguments continued until the Blackout, then died abruptly along with the idea the journey might go as planned.

She told me all of that three weeks after my mother left, when I was still taking it personally.

“Have you ever tried to catch a goat?” she asked.

I hadn’t. I’d seen them, of course, but visitors were only supposed to pet them. She got permission, and I spent twenty minutes trying to catch an animal that had zero interest in being caught. It was the first thing that made me laugh again. I always thought of that day when I brought my grandchildren to pet the goats, though I hoped I never had any reason to use the same technique on them.

I had wrapped up some scraps for Jonah and Teyla to feed the nippy little things.

Once they’d finished the food, the goats started on Teyla’s jersey, to her mixed delight and horror. I kept an eye on goat teeth and toddler fingers to make sure everybody left with the proper number.

“Ms. Clay,” somebody said, and I glanced up to see who had called me, then back at the babies and the fingers and the goats. They looked vaguely familiar, but everyone did after a while. If I had taught them, I still might not recognize a face with twenty more years on it, if they didn’t spend time on the same decks I did.

“Ms. Clay, I’m Nelson’s parent. Other parent. Lee. I think you know Ash.” Ash was Harriet’s grandkid. They’d refused to play music at all, to Harriet’s endless frustration.

Lee didn’t look anything like Nelson, but then I recalled Harriet saying they had gone full gene-bank. The incentives to include gene variance in family planning were too good for many people to pass up.

“Nice to meet you,” I said.

“I’m sorry if he’s been giving you any trouble,” Lee said. “He’s going through some kind of phase.”

“Phase?” Sometimes feigning ignorance got more interesting answers than agreeing.

“He’s decided school is teaching the wrong things. Says there’s no point in learning anything that doesn’t directly apply to what will be needed planetside. That it puts old ideas into people’s heads, when they should be learning new things. I have no idea where he came up with it.”

I nodded. “Do you work down here?”

Lee gestured down at manure-stained coveralls. “He likes it here, though. Farming fits in his worldview.”

“But history doesn’t?”

“History, classic literature, anything you can’t directly apply. I know he’s probably causing trouble, but he’s a good kid. He’ll settle down once he figures out a place for himself in all this.”

Teyla was offering a mystery f istful of something to a tiny black goat. Jonah looked like he was trying to figure out if he could ride one; I put a hand on his shoulder to hold him back.

“Tell me about the Blackout,” I say at the start of the video I made while still in school. Eighteen-year-old me, already a historian. My voice is much younger. I’m not on screen, but I can picture myself at eighteen. Tall, gawky, darker than my mother, lighter than my father.

“I don’t think there was anybody who didn’t panic,” my grandmother begins. Her 22

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purple hair is pulled back in a messy bun, and she is sitting in her own quarters—
mine now—with her Cape Breton photos on the walls.

“Once we understood that the glitch hadn’t affected navigation or the systems we rely on to breathe and eat, once it became clear the culprit was a known virus and the damage was irreparable, well, we just had to deal with it.”

“The ‘culprit’ was a person, not a virus, right?”

“A virus who released a virus.” Her face twisted at the thought.

I moved back to safer ground. “Did everyone just ‘deal with it’? That isn’t what I’ve heard.”

“There are a lot of people to include in ‘everyone.’ The younger children handled it fine. They bounced and skated and ran around the rec rooms. The older ones—the ones who relied on external entertainments—had more trouble and got in more trouble, I guess.” She gave a sly smile. “But ask your father how he lost his pinkie finger if you’ve never done so.”

“That was when he did it?”

“You bet. Eighteen years old and some daredevil notion to hitch a ride on the top of a lift. Lucky he survived.”

“He told me a goat bit it off !”

She snorted. “I’m guessing he told you that back when you said you wanted to be a goat farmer when you grew up?”

No answer from younger-me.

She shrugged. “Or maybe he didn’t want to give you any foolish ideas about lift-cowboys.”

“He’s not a daredevil, though.”

“Not anymore. Not after that. Not after you came along the next year. Anyway, you asked who ‘just dealt with it,’ and you’re right. The kids coped because they had nothing to compare it to, but obviously the main thing you want to know about is the adults. The Memory Projects.”

“Yes. That’s the assignment.”

“Right. So. Here you had all these people: born on Earth, raised on Earth. They applied to be Journeyers because they had some romantic notion of setting out for a better place. And those first years, you can’t even imagine what it was like, the combination of excitement and terror. Any time anything went wrong: a replicator brooked, a fan lost power, anything at all, someone started shouting we had set our families up for Certain Death.” She says “certain death” dramatically, wiggling her fingers at me. “Then Crew or Logistics or Tech showed them their problem had an easy fix, and they’d calm down. It didn’t matter how many times we told them we had things under control. Time was the only reassurance.

“By ten years in, we had f inally gotten the general populace to relax. Everyone had their part to do, and everyone was finally doing it quietly. We weren’t going to die if a hot water line went cold one day. There were things to worry over, of course, but they were all too big to be worth contemplating. Same as now, you understand?

And we had this database, this marvelous database of everything good humans had ever created, music and literature and art from all around the world, in a hundred languages.

“And then Trevor Dube had to go and ruin everything. I know you know that part so I won’t bother repeating it. Morne Brooks did what he did, and that Dube fellow did what he did, and all of a sudden all of these Journeyers, with their dream of their children’s children’s children’s etcetera someday setting foot on a new planet, they all have to deal with their actual children. They have to contemplate the idea the generations after them will never get to see or hear the things they thought were important. That all they have left is the bare walls. They wait—we wait—and wait for Wind Will Rove

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the DB to be restored. And they realize: hey, I can’t rely on this database to be here to teach those great-great-great-grandchildren.”

She leans forward. “So everyone doubles down on the things that matter most to them. That’s when some folks who didn’t have it got religion again. The few physical books on board became sacred primary texts, including the ones that had been sacred texts to begin with. Every small bit of personal media got cloned for the greater good, from photos to porn—don’t giggle—but it wasn’t much, not compared to what we’d lost.

“Cultural organizations that had been atrophying suddenly found themselves with more members than they’d had since the journey started. Actors staged any show they knew well enough, made new recordings. People tried to rewrite their favorite books and plays from memory, paint their favorite paintings. Everyone had a different piece, some closer to accurate than others. That’s when we started getting together to play weekly instead of monthly.”

“I thought it was always weekly, Gra.”

“Nope. We didn’t have other entertainments to distract us, and we were worried about the stories behind the songs getting lost. The organized Memory Projects started with us. It seemed like the best way to make sure what we wanted handed down would be handed down. The others saw that we’d found a good way to approach the problem and keep people busy, so other Memory Projects sprung up too.

We went through our whole repertoire and picked out the forty songs we most wanted saved. Each of us committed to memorizing as many as we could, but with responsibility for a few in particular. We knew the songs themselves already, but now people pooled what they knew about them, and we memorized their histories, too.

Where they came from, what they meant. And later, we were responsible for re-recording those histories, and teaching them to somebody younger, so each song got passed down to another generation. That’s you, incidentally.”

“I know.”

“Just checking. You’re asking me some pretty obvious stuff.”

“It’s for a project. I need to ask.”

“Fine, then. Anyhow, we re-recorded all our songs and histories as quick as possible, then memorized them in case somebody tried to kill the DBs again. And other people memorized the things important to them. History of their people—the stuff that didn’t make it into history books—folk dances, formulae. Actors built plays back from scratch, though some parts weren’t exactly as they’d been. And those poor jazz musicians.”

“Those poor jazz musicians? I thought jazz was about improv.”

“It’s full of improv, but certain performances stood out as benchmarks for their whole mode. I’m glad we play a music that doesn’t set much stock in solo virtuosity.

We recorded our fiddle tunes all over again, and the songs are still the songs, but nobody on board could play ‘So What’ like Miles Davis or anything like John Coltrane.

Their compositions live on, but not their performances, if that makes sense. Would have devastated your grandfather, if he’d been on board. Anyway, what was I saying?

The human backup idea had legs, even if it worked better for some things than others. It was a worst case scenario.”

“Which two songs did you memorize history for?”

“Unoff icially, all of them. Off icially, same as you. ‘Honeysuckle’ and ‘Wind Will Rove.’ You know that.”

“I know, Gra. For the assignment.”

“Windy Grove”

Historical Reenactment: Marius Smit as Howie McCabe, Cape Breton Fiddlemaker: Vandiver wasn’t wrong. There was a tune called “Windy Grove.” My great-grandfather played it, but it was too complicated for most fiddlers. I can only remember a 24

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little of the tune now. It had lyrics, too, in Gaelic and English. I don’t think Vandiver ever mentioned those. There was probably a Gaelic name too, but that’s lost along with the song.

My great-grandfather grew up going to real milling frolics, before machines did the wool-shrinking and frolics just became social events. The few songs I know in Gaelic I know because they have that milling frolic rhythm; it drives them into your brain.

“Windy Grove” wasn’t one of those. As far as I know it was always a fiddle tune, but not a common one because of its difficulty.

All I know is the A part in English, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t get the melody right now, so I’m going to sing it to the melody of “Wind Will Rove”: We went down to the windy grove

Never did know where the wind did go

Never too sure when the wind comes back

If it’s the same wind that we knew last.

Nelson’s essay arrived promptly on Monday. It began “Many examples of history repeating itself can be seen in our coursework. There are rulers who didn’t learn from other ruler’s mistakes.”

I corrected the apostrophe and kept reading. “You know who they are because you taught us about them. Why do you need me to say them back to you? Instead I’m going to write about history repeating itself in a different way. Look around you, Ms. Clay.

“I’m on this ship because my great-grandparents decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives on a ship. They thought they were being unselfish. They thought they were making a sacrifice so someday their children’s children’s children to the bazillionth or whatever would get to be pioneers on a planet that people hadn’t started killing yet, and they were pretty sure wouldn’t kill them, and where they’re hoping there’s no intelligent life. They made a decision that locked us into doing exactly what they did.

“So here we are. My parents were born on this ship. I was born here. My chromo-somes come from the gene bank, from two people who died decades before I was born.

“What can we do except repeat history? What can I do that nobody here has ever done before? In two years I’ll choose a specialty. I can work with goats, like my parents.

I could be an engineer or a doctor or a dentist or a horticulturist, who are all focused on keeping us alive in one way or another. I can be a history teacher like you, but obviously I won’t. I can be a theoretical farmer or a theoretical something else, where I learn things that will never be useful here, in order to pass them on to my kids and my kid’s kids, so they can pass them on and someday somebody can use them, if there’s really a place we’re going and we’re really going to get there someday.

“But I’m never going to stand on a real mountain, and I can’t be a king or a prime minister or a genocidal tyrant like you teach us about. I can’t be Lord Nelson, an old white man with a giant hat, and you might think I was named after him but I was named after a goat who was named after a horse some old farmer had on Earth who was named after somebody in a book or a band or an entertainment who might have been Lord Nelson or Nelson Mandela or some other Nelson entirely who you can’t teach me about because we don’t remember them anymore.

“The old history can’t repeat, and I’m in the next generation of people who make no impact on anything whatsoever. We aren’t making history. We’re in the middle of the ocean and the shore is really far away. When we climb out the journey should have changed us, but you want us to take all the baggage with us, so we’re exactly the same as when we left. But we can’t be, and we shouldn’t be.”

I turned off the screen and closed my eyes. I could fail him for not writing the assignment as I had intended it, but he clearly understood.

Wind Will Rove

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* * *

“Wendigo”

Traditional. Lost.

Harriet Barrie:

Another tune we have the name of but not much else. I’m personally of the belief

“Wendigo” and “Windy Grove” are the same song. Some Cape Bretonians took it with them when they moved to the Algonquins. Taught it to some local musicians who misheard the title and conflated it with local monster lore. There’s a tune called “When I Go” that started making the rounds in Ontario not long after, though nobody ever showed an interest in it outside of Ontario and Finland.

If we were only to play songs about things we knew, we would lose a lot of our playlist. No wind. No trees. No battles, no seas, no creeks, no mountaintops. We’d sing of travelers, but not journeys. We’d sing of middles, but not beginnings or ends. We would play songs of waiting and longing. We’d play love songs.

Why not songs about stars, you might ask? Why not songs about darkness and space? The traditionalists wouldn’t play them. I’m not sure who’d write them, either.

People on Earth wrote about blue skies because they’d stood under grey ones. They wrote about night because there was such a thing as day. Songs about prison are poignant because the character knew something else beforehand and dreamed of other things ahead. Past and future are both abstractions now.

When my daughter Natalie was in her teens, she played f iddle in a band that would be classif ied in the new DB as “other/undef ined” if they had uploaded anything. Part of their concept was that they wouldn’t record their music, and they requested that nobody else record it either. A person would have to be there to experience it. I guess it made sense for her to fall into something like that after listening to me and Gra and Harriet.

I borrowed back the student fiddle she and I had both played as children. She told me she didn’t want me going to hear them play.

“You’ll just tell me it sounds like noise or my positions are sloppy,” she said. “Or worse yet, you’ll say we sound exactly like this band from 2030 and our lyrics are in the tradition of blah blah blah, and I’ll end up thinking we stole everything from a musician I’d never even heard before. We want to do something new.”

“I’d never,” I said, even though a knot had formed in my stomach. Avoided commenting when I heard her practicing. Bit my tongue when Harriet complained musicians shouldn’t be wasting their time on new music when they ought to be working on preserving what we already had.

I did go to check them out once, when they played the Seven Dec Rec. I stood in the back, in the dark. To me it sounded like shouting down an elevator shaft, all ghosts and echoes. The songs had names like “Because I Said So” and “Terrorform”; they shouted the titles in between pieces, but the PA was distorting and even those I might have misheard.

I counted fifteen young musicians in the band, from different factions all over the ship: children of jazz, of rock, of classical music, of zouk, of Chinese opera, of the West African drumming group. It didn’t sound anything like anything I’d ever heard before. I still couldn’t figure out whether they were synthesizing the traditions they’d grown up in or rejecting them entirely.

My ears didn’t know what to pay attention to, so I focused on Nat. She still had decent technique from her childhood lessons, but she used it in ways I didn’t know how to listen to. She played rhythm rather than lead, a pad beneath the melody, a stac-cato polyrhythm formed with fiddle and drum.

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it if I had been listening to the whole instead of focusing on Nat’s part. Hers was a countermelody to something else entirely, the rhythm swung but the key unchanged.

Harriet would have hated it, but I thought it had a quiet power, hidden as it was beneath the bigger piece.

I never told Nat I’d gone to hear her that night, because I didn’t want to admit I’d listened.

I’ve researched punk and folk and hip-hop’s births, and the protest movements that went hand in hand with protest music. Music born of people trying to change the status quo. What could my daughter and her friends change? What did people want changed? The ship sails on. They played together for a year before calling it quits. She gave her fiddle away again and threw herself into studying medicine. As they’d pledged, nobody ever uploaded their music, so there’s no evidence it ever existed outside this narrative.

My grandmother smuggled the upright bass on board. It’s Doug Kelly’s now, but it came onto the ship under my grandmother’s “miscellaneous supplies” professional allowance. That’s how it’s listed in the original manifest: “Miscellaneous Supplies—

1 Extra-Large Crate—200 cm x 70 cm x 70 cm.” When I was studying the manifest for a project, trying to figure out who had brought what, I asked her why the listed weight was so much more than the instrument’s weight.

“Strings,” she said. “It was padded with clothes and then the box was filled with string packets. For the bass, for the fiddles. Every cranny of every box I brought on board was filled with strings and hair and rosin. I didn’t trust replicators.”

The bass belonged at the time to Jonna Rich. In my grandmother’s photo of the original OldTime players on the ship, Jonna’s dwarfed by her instrument. It’s only a 3/4 size, but it still looms over her. I never met her. My grandmother said, “You’ve never seen such a tiny woman with such big, quick hands.”

When her arthritis got too bad to play, Jonna passed it to Marius Smit, “twice her size, but half the player she was.” Then Jim Riggins, then Alison Smit, then Doug Kelly, with assorted second and third stand-ins along the way. Those were the OldTime players. The bass did double duty in some jazz ensembles, as well as the orchestra.

Personal weight and space allowances didn’t present any problems for those who played most instruments. The teams handling logistics and psychological welfare sparred and negotiated and compromised and re-compromised. They made space for four communal drum kits (two each: jazz trap and rock five-piece), twenty-two assorted amplifiers for rock and jazz, bass and guitar and keyboard. We have two each of three different Chinese zithers, and one hundred and three African drums of thirty-two different types, from djembe to carimbo. There’s a PA in every Rec, but only a single tuba. The music psychologist consulted by the committee didn’t understand why an electric bass wasn’t a reasonable compromise for the sake of space. Hence my grandmother’s smuggling job.

How did a committee on Earth ever think they could guess what we’d need fifty or eighty or one hundred and eighty years into the voyage? They set us up with state of the art replicators, with our beautiful, doomed databases, with programs and simu-lators to teach skills we would need down the line. Still, there’s no model that accurately predicts the future. They had no way of prognosticating the brooked database or the resultant changes. They’d have known, if they’d included an actual musician on the committee, that we needed an upright bass. I love how I’m still surrounded by the physical manifestations of my grandmother’s influence on the ship: the upright bass, the pygmy goats. Her fiddle, my fiddle now.

I arrived in my classroom on Thursday to discover somebody had hacked my walls.

Wind Will Rove

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Scrawled over my photo screens: “Collective memory =/= truth,” “History is fiction,”

“The past is a lie.” A local overlay, not an overwrite. Nothing invasive of my personal files or permanent. Easy to erase, easy to figure out who had done it. I left it up.

As my students walked in, I watched their faces. Some were completely oblivious, wrapped up in whatever they were listening to, slouching into their seats without even looking up. A few snickered or exchanged wide-eyed glances.

Nelson arrived with a smirk on his face, a challenge directed at me. He didn’t even look at the walls. It took him a moment to notice I hadn’t cleaned up after him; when he did notice, the smirk was replaced with confusion.

“You’re wondering why I didn’t wipe this off my walls before you arrived?”

The students who hadn’t been paying attention looked around for the first time.

“Whoa,” somebody said.

“The first answer is that it’s easier to report if I leave it up. Vandalism and hack-ing are both illegal, and I don’t think it would be hard to figure out who did this, but since there’s no permanent damage, I thought we might use this as a learning experience.” Everyone looked at Nelson, whose ears had turned red.

I continued. “I think what somebody is trying to ask is, let’s see, ‘Ms. Clay, how do we know that the history we’re learning is true? Why does it matter?’ And I think they expect me to answer, ‘because I said so,’ or something like that. But the real truth is, our history is a total mess. It’s built on memories of facts, and memories are unreliable. Before, they could cross-reference memories and artifacts to a point where you could say with some reliability that certain things happened and certain things didn’t. We’ve lost almost all of the proof.”

“So what’s left?” I pointed to the graff itied pictures. “I’m here to help f igure out which things are worth remembering, which things are still worth calling fact or truth or whatever you want to call it. Maybe it isn’t the most practical field of study, but it’s still important. It’ll matter to you someday when your children come to you to ask why we’re on this journey. It’ll matter when something goes wrong and we can look to the past and say ‘how did we solve this when we had this problem before’ instead of starting from scratch. It matters because of all the people who asked ‘why’

and ‘how’ and ‘what if’ instead of allowing themselves to be absorbed in their own problems—they thought of us, so why shouldn’t we think of them?

“Today we’re going to talk about the climate changes that the Earth was experiencing by the time they started building this ship, and how that played into the politics. And just so you’re not waiting with bated breath through the entire class, your homework for the week is to interview somebody who still remembers Earth. Ask them why they or their parents got on board. Ask them what they remember about that time, and any follow-up questions you think make sense. For bonus points upload to the oral history DB once you’ve sent your video to me.”

I looked around to see if anyone had any questions, but they were all silent. I started the lesson I was actually supposed to be teaching.

I’d been given that same assignment at around their age. It was easier to find original Journeyers to interview back then, but I always turned to my grandmother. The video is buried in the Oral History DB, but I’d memorized the path to it long ago.

She’s still in good health in this one, f it and strong, with her trademark purple hair. For all our closeness, I have no idea what her hair’s original color was.

“Why did you leave?” I ask.

“I didn’t really consider it leaving. Going someplace, not leaving something else behind.”

“Isn’t leaving something behind part of going someplace?”

“You think of it your way, I’ll think of it mine.”

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“Is that what all the Journeyers said?”

My grandmother snorts. “Ask any two and we’ll give you two different answers.

You’re asking me, so I’m telling you how I see it. We had the technology, and the most beautiful ship. We had—have—a destination that reports perfect conditions to sustain us.”

“How did you feel about having a child who would never get to the destination?”

“I thought ‘my daughter will have a life nobody has ever had before, and she’ll be part of a generation that makes new rules for what it means to be a person existing with other people.’ ” She shrugs. “I found that exciting. I thought she’d live in the place she lived, and she’d do things she loved and things she hated, and she’d live out her life like anybody does.”

She pauses, then resumes without prompting. “There were worse lives to live, back then. This seemed like the best choice for our family. No more running away; running toward something wonderful.”

“Was there anything you missed about Earth?”

“A thing, like not a person? If a person counts, your grandfather and my other kids, always and forever. There was nothing else I loved that I couldn’t take with me,” she says, with a faraway look in her eyes.

“Nothing?” I press.

She smiles. “Nothing anybody can keep. The sea. The wind coming off the coast. I can still feel it when I’m inside a good song.”

She reaches to pick up her fiddle.

There was a question I pointedly didn’t ask in that video, the natural follow-up that fit in my grandmother’s pause. I didn’t ask because it wasn’t my teacher’s business how my mother fit into that generation “making new rules for what it means to be a person existing with other people,” as my grandmother put it. If I haven’t mentioned my mother much, it’s because she and I never really understood each other.

She was eight when she came aboard. Old enough to have formative memories of soil and sky and wind. Old enough to come on board with her own small scale fiddle.

Fourteen when she told my grandmother she didn’t want to play music anymore.

Eighteen when the Blackout happened. Nineteen when she had me, one of a slew of Blackout Babies granted by joint action of the Advisory Council and Logistics.

They would have accepted anything that kept people happy and quiet at that point, as long as the numbers bore out its sustainability.

My grandmother begged her to come back to music, to help with the OldTime portion of the Memory Project. She refused. She’d performed in a Shakespeare comedy called Much Ado About Nothing just before the Blackout, while she was still in school. She still knew Hero’s lines by heart, and the general dramatists and Shakespeareans had both reached out to her to join their Memory Projects; they all had their hands full rebuilding plays from scratch.

The film faction recruited her as well, with their ridiculously daunting task. My favorite video from that period shows my twenty-year-old mother playing the lead in a historical drama called Titanic. It’s a recreation of an old movie, and an even older footnote in history involving an enormous sea ship.

My mother: young, gorgeous, glowing. She wore gowns that shimmered when she moved. The f irst time she showed it to me, when I was f ive, all I noticed was how beautiful she looked.

When I was seven, I asked her if the ocean could kill me.

“There’s no ocean here. We made it up, Rosie.”

That made no sense. I saw it there on the screen, big enough to surround the ship, like liquid, tangible space, a space that could chase you down the street and Wind Will Rove

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surround you. She took me down to the soundstage on Eight Deck, where they were f ilming a movie called Serena. I know now they were still triaging, f ilming every important movie to the best of their recollection, eight years out from the Blackout, based on scripts rewritten from memory in those f irst desperate years.

Those are the only versions I’ve ever known.

She showed me how a sea was not a sea, a sky was not a sky. I got to sit on a boat that was not a boat, and in doing so learn what a boat was.

“Why are you crying, Mama?” I asked her later that evening, wandering from my bunk to my parents’ bed.

My father picked me up and squeezed me tight. “She’s crying about something she lost.”

“I’m not tired. Can we watch the movie again?”

We sat and watched my young mother as she met and fell in love with someone else, someone pretend. As they raced a rush of water that I had already been assured would never threaten me or my family. As the ship sank—it’s not real, there’s no sea, nothing sinks anymore—and the lifeboats disappeared and the two lovers were forced to huddle together on a floating door until their dawn rescue.

When I was sixteen, my mother joined a cult. Or maybe she started it; NewTime is as direct a rebuttal to my grandmother’s mission as could exist. They advocated erasing the entertainment databases again, forever, in the service of the species.

“We’re spending too much creative energy recreating the things we carried with us,” she said. I listened from my bunk as she calmly packed her clothes.

“You’re a Shakespearean! You’re supposed to recreate.” My father never raised his voice either. That’s what I remembered most about their conversation afterward: how neither ever broke calm.

“I was a Shakespearean, but more than that, I’m an actress. I want new things to act in. Productions that speak to who we are now, not who we were on Earth. Art that tells our story.”

“You have a family.”

“And I love you all, but I need this.”

The next morning, she kissed us both goodbye as if she was going to work, then left with the NewTime for Fourteen Deck. I didn’t know what Advisory Council machinations were involved in relocating the Fourteen Deck families to make room for an unplanned community, or what accommodations had to be made for people who opted out of jobs to live a pure artistic existence. There were times in human history where that was possible, but this wasn’t one of them. Those are questions I asked later. At that moment, I was furious with her.

I don’t know if I ever stopped being angry, really. I never went to any of the original plays that trickled out of the NewTime; I’ve never explored their art or their music.

I never learned what we looked like through their particular lens. It wasn’t new works I opposed; it was their idea they had to separate themselves from us to create them. How could anything they wrote actually reflect our experience if they weren’t in the community anymore?

They never came back down to live with the rest of us. My mother and I reconciled when I had Natalie, but she wasn’t the person I remembered, and I’m pretty sure she thought the same about me. She came down to play with Nat sometimes, but I never left them alone together, for fear the separatist idea might rub off on my kid.

The night I saw Natalie’s short-lived band perform, the night I hid in the darkness all those years ago so she wouldn’t get mad at me for coming, it wasn’t until I recognized “Wind Will Rove” that I realized I’d been holding my breath. Theirs wasn’t a NewTime rejection of everything that had gone before; it was a synthesis.

30

Sarah Pinsker

Asimov’s

* * *

“Wind Will Roam”

Historical Reenactment: Akona Mvovo as Will E. Womack: My aunt cleaned house for some folks over in West Hollywood, and they used to give her records to take home to me. I took it all in. Everything influenced me. The west coast rappers, but also Motown and pop and rock and these great old-timey fiddle records. I wanted to play fiddle so bad when I heard this song, but where was I going to get one? Wasn’t in the cards.

The song I sampled for “Wind Will Roam”—this fiddle record “Wind Will Rove”—it changed me. There’s something about the way the first part lifts that moves me every time. I’ve heard there’s a version with lyrics out there somewhere, but I liked the instrumental, so I could make up my own words over it. I wrote the first version when I was ten years old. I thought “rove” sounded like a dog, so I called it “Wind Will Roam,”

about a dog named Wind. I was a literal kid.

Second version when I was fifteen, I don’t really remember that one too well. I was rapping and recording online by then, so there’s probably a version out there somewhere. Don’t show it to me if you find it. I was trying to be badass then. I’d just as soon pretend it never existed.

I came back to “Wind Will Rove” again and again. I think I was twenty-five when I recorded this one, and my son had just been born, and I wanted to give him something really special. I still liked “Wind Will Roam” better than “Wind Will Rove,”

’cause I could rhyme it with “home” and “poem” and all that.

(sings)

The wind will roam

And so will I

I’ve got miles to go before I die

But I’ll come back

I always do

Just like the wind

I’ll come to you.

We might go weeks without no rain

And every night the sun will go away again

Some winds blow warm some winds blow low

You and me’ve got miles and miles to go

I wanted to take something I loved and turn it into something else entirely. Transform it.

The next OldTime started out in G. My grandmother had never much cared for the key of G; since her death we’d played way more G sessions than we ever had when she chose the songs. “Dixie Blossoms,” then “Down the River.” “Squirrel Hunters.” “Jaybird Died of the Whooping Cough.” “The Long Way Home.” “Ladies on the Steamboat.”

Harriet called a break in the third hour and said when we came back we were going to do some D tunes, starting with “Midnight on the Water.” I knew the sequence she was setting up: “Midnight on the Water,” then “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” then “Wind Will Rove.” I was pretty sure she did it for me; I think she was glad to have me back in the second row and punctual.

Most stood up and stretched, or put their instruments down to go get a snack. A few f iddlers, myself included, took the opportunity to cross-tune to DDAD. These songs could all be played in standard tuning, but the low D drone added something ineffable.

When everybody had settled back into their seats, Harriet counted us into the Wind Will Rove

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delicate waltz time of “Midnight on the Water.” Then “Bonaparte’s Retreat,” dark and lively. And then, as I’d hoped, “Wind Will Rove.”

No matter how many times you play a song, it isn’t the same song twice. I was still thinking about Nelson’s graffiti, and how the past had never felt like a lie to me at all. It was a progression. “Wind Will Rove” said we are born anew every time a bow touches fiddle strings in an OldTime session on a starship in this particular way. It is not the ship nor the session nor the bow nor the f iddle that births us. Nor the hands. It’s the combination of all of those things, in a particular way they haven’t been combined before. We are an alteration on an old, old tune. We are body and body, wood and flesh. We are bow and fiddle and hands and memory and starship and OldTime.

“Wind Will Rove” spoke to me, and my eyes closed to feel the wind the way my grandmother did, out on a cliff above the ocean. We cycled through the A part, the B
part three times, four times, five. And because I’d closed my eyes, because I was in the song and not in the room, I didn’t catch Harriet’s signal for the last go-round.

Everyone ended together except me. Even worse, I’d deviated. Between the bars of my unexpected solo, when my own playing stood exposed against the silence, I realized I’d diverged from the tune. It was still “Wind Will Rove,” or close to it, but I’d elided the third bar into the fourth, a swooping, soaring accident.

Harriet gave me a look I interpreted as a cross between exasperation and reprobation. I’d used a similar one on my students before, but it’d been a long time since I’d been on the receiving end.

“Sorry,” I said, mostly sorry the sensation had gone, that I’d lost the wind.

I slipped out the door early, while everyone was still playing. I didn’t want to talk to Harriet. Back home, I tried to recreate my mistake. I heard it in my head, but I never quite made it happen again, and after half an hour I put away my fiddle.

I’d rather have avoided Harriet the next morning, but canceling our standing date would have made things worse. I woke up early again. Debated showering to give her a different reason to be annoyed with me, then decided against it when I realized she’d stack the two grievances rather than replace one with the other.

We met in her quarters this time, up three decks from my own, slightly smaller, every surface covered with archival boxes and stacks of handwritten sheet music.

“So what happened last night?” she asked without preamble.

I held up my hands in supplication. “I didn’t see you call the stop. I’m sorry. And after you told me I belonged in the closer circles and everything. It won’t happen again.”

“But you didn’t even play it right. That’s one of your tunes. You’ve been playing that song for fifty years! People were talking afterward. Expect some teasing next week. Nothing else happened worth gossiping about, so they’re likely to remember unless somebody else does something silly.”

I didn’t have a good response. Missing the stop had been silly, sure, but what I had done to the tune didn’t feel wrong, exactly. A different wind, as my grandmother would have said.

“Any word on what went wrong in the database the other day?” I asked to change the subject.

She furrowed her brow. “None. Tech said it’s an access issue, not the DB itself. It’s happening to isolated pieces. You can still access them if you enter names directly instead of going through the directories or your saved preferences, but it’s a pain. They can’t locate the source. I have to tell you, I’m more than a little concerned. I mean, the material is obviously still there, since I can get to some of it roundabout, but it really hampers research. And it gets me thinking we may want to consider adding another redundancy layer in the Memory Project.”

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She went on at length on the issue, and I let her go. I preferred her talking on any subject other than me.

When she started to flag, I interrupted. “Harriet, what does ‘Oklahoma Rooster’

mean to you?”

“I don’t have much history for that one. Came from an Oklahoma fiddler named Dick Hutchinson, but I don’t know if he wrote—”

“—I don’t mean the history. What does it make you feel?”

“I’m not sure what you mean. It’s a nice, simple fiddle tune.”

“But you’ve actually seen a farm in real life. Does it sound like a rooster?”

She shrugged. “I’ve never really given it much thought. It’s a nice tune. Not worthy of a spot in the Memory Project, but a nice tune. Why do you ask?”

It would sound stupid to say I thought myself on a farm when I played that song; I wouldn’t tell her where “Wind Will Rove” took me either. “Just curious.”

“Harriet’s grandson is going to drive me crazy,” I told Natalie. I had spent the afternoon with Teyla and Jonah, as I did every Friday, but this time Jonah had dragged us to the low gravity room. They had bounced, and I had watched and laughed along with their unrestrained joy, but I had a shooting pain in my neck from the way my head had followed the arcs of their flight.

Afterward, I’d logged into my class chat to find Nelson had again stirred the others into rebellion. The whole class, except for two I’d describe as timid and one as dili-gent, had elected not to do the new assignment due Tuesday. They had all followed his lead with a statement “We reject history. The future is in our hands.”

“At least they all turned it in early,” Nat joked. “But seriously, why are you letting him bother you?”

She stooped to pick up some of the toys scattered across the floor. The kids drew on the table screen with their f ingers. Jonah was making a Tyrannosaurus, all body and tail and teeth and feathers. Teyla was still too young for her art to look representational, but she always used space in interesting ways. I leaned in to watch both of them.

“You laugh,” I said. “Maybe by the time they’re his age now, Nelson will have taken over the entire system. Only the most future-relevant courses. Reject the past. Don’t reflect on the human condition. No history, no literature, no dinosaurs.”

Jonah frowned. “No dinosaurs?”

“Grandma Rosie’s joking, Jonah.”

Jonah accepted that. His curly head bent down over the table again.

I continued. “It was one thing when he was a one-boy revolution. What am I supposed to do now that his virus is spreading to his whole class?”

Nat considered for a moment. “I’d work on developing an antidote, then hide it in a faster, stronger virus and inject it into the class. But, um, that’s my professional opinion.”

“What’s the antidote in your analogy? Or the faster, stronger virus?”

Nat smiled, spread her hands. “It wasn’t an analogy, sorry. I only know from viruses and toddlers. Sometimes both at once. Now are you going to play for these kids before I try to get them to sleep? They really like the one about the sleepy bumblebee.”

She picked Teyla up from her chair, turned it around, and sat down with Teyla in her lap. Jonah kept drawing.

I picked up my fiddle. “What’s a bumblebee, Jonah?”

He answered without looking up. “A dinosaur.”

I sighed and started to play.

Natalie’s answer got me thinking. I checked in with Nelson’s literature teacher, who confirmed he was doing the same thing in her class as well.

Wind Will Rove

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September/October 2017

How wrong was he? They learned countries and borders, abstract names, lines drawn and redrawn. The books taught in lit classes captured the human condition, but rendered it through situations utterly foreign to us. To us. To me as much as him.

I had always liked the challenge. Reading about the way things had been in the past made our middle-years condition more acceptable to me. Made beginnings more concrete. Everyone in history lived in middle-years too; no matter when they lived, there was a before and an after, even if a given group or individual might not be around for the latter. I enjoyed tracing back through the changes, seeing what crumbled and what remained.

I enjoyed. Did I pass on my enjoyment? Maybe I’d been thinking too much about why I liked to study history, and not considering why my students found it tedious. It was my job to find a way to make it relevant to them. If they weren’t excited, I had failed them.

When I got home from dinner that night, when I picked up my fiddle to play “Wind Will Rove,” it was the new, elided version, the one that had escaped me previously.

Now I couldn’t find the original phrasing again, even with fifty years’ muscle memory behind it.

I went to the database to listen to how it actually went, and was relieved when the song came up without trouble. The last variation in the new DB was f iled under

“Wind Will Rove” but would more accurately have been listed as “Wind Will Roam,”

and even that one recreated somebody’s memory of an interview predating our ship. If this particular song’s history hadn’t contained all those interviews in which the song’s interpreters sang snippets, if Harriet or my grandmother or someone hadn’t watched it enough times to memorize it, or hadn’t thought it important, we wouldn’t have any clue how it went. Those little historic recreations weren’t even the songs themselves, but they got their own piece of history, their own stories. Why did they matter? They mattered because somebody had cared about them enough to create them.

I walked into my classroom on Monday, fiddle case over my shoulder, to the nervous giggles of students who knew they had done something brazen and now waited to find out what came of it. Nelson, not giggling, met my gaze with his own, steady and defiant.

“Last week, somebody asked me a question, using the very odd delivery mechanism of my classroom walls.” I touched my desk and swiped the graffitied walls blank.

“Today I’m going to tell you that you don’t have a choice. You’re in this class to learn our broken, damaged history, everything that’s left of it. And then to pass it on, probably breaking it even further. And maybe it’ll keep twisting until every bit of fact is wrung out of it, but what’s left will still be some truth about who we are or who we were. The part most worth remembering.”

I put my fiddle case on the desk. Took my time tuning down to DDAD, listening to the whispered undercurrent.

When I liked the tuning, I lifted my bow. “This is a song called ‘Wind Will Rove.’ I want you to hear what living history means to me.”

I played them all. All the known variations, all the ones that weren’t lost to time. I rested the fiddle and sang Howie McCabe’s faulty snippet of “Windy Grove” from the recreation of his historical interview and Will E. Womack’s “Wind Will Roam.” I recited the history in between: “Windy Grove” and “Wendigo” and “When I Go.” Lifted the f iddle to my chin again and closed my eyes. “Wind Will Rove”: three times through in its traditional form, three times through with my own alterations.

“Practice too much and you sound like you’re remembering it instead of feeling it,”

my grandmother used to say. This was a new room to my fiddle; even the old variations felt new within it. My fingers danced light and quick.

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I tried to make the song sound like something more than wind. What did any of us know of wind? Nothing but words on a screen. I willed our entire ship into the new song I created. We were the wind. We were the wind and borne by the wind, trans-mitted. I played a ship traveling through the vacuum. I played life on the ship, footsteps on familiar streets, people, goats, frustration, movement while standing still.

The students sat silent at the end. Only one was an OldTimer, Emily Redhorse, who had been one of the three who actually turned in their assignments; Nelson grew up hearing this music, I know. I was pretty sure the rest had no clue what they heard. One look at Nelson said he’d already formulated a response, so I didn’t let him open his mouth.

I settled my fiddle back into its case and left.

There are so many stories about my grandmother. I don’t imagine there’ll ever be many about me. Maybe one of the kids in this class will tell a story about the day their teacher cracked up. Maybe Emily Redhorse will take a seat in the OldTime one day and light into my tune. Maybe history and story will combine to birth something larger than both, and you, Teyla, you and your brother will take the time to investigate where anecdote deviates from truth. If you wonder which of these stories are true, well, they all are in their way, even if some happened and some didn’t.

I’ve recorded my song variation into the new database, in the “other” section to keep from offending Harriet, for now. I call it “We Will Rove.” I think my grandmother would approve. I’ve included a history, too, starting with “Windy Grove” and “Wind Will Rove,” tracing through my grandmother’s apocryphal spacewalk and my mother’s attempt to find meaning for herself and my daughter’s unrecorded song, on the way to my own adaptation. It’s all one story, at its core.

I’m working more changes into the song, making it more and more my own. I close my eyes when I play it, picturing a through-line, picturing how one day, long after I’m gone, a door will open. Children will spill from the ship and into the bright sun of a new place, and somebody will lift my old fiddle, my grandmother’s fiddle, and will put a new tune to the wind. ❍

Wind Will Rove

35

RIDING

THE BLUE LINE

WITH JACK

KEROUAC

Sandra McDonald

Sandra McDonald grew up along historic Revere Beach,

Massachusetts, and spent years commuting back and forth on the Blue Line extension of Boston’s MBTA subway system. Her novels and short stories frequently feature New England history, the Atlantic Ocean and marshlands, and blue-collar heroes struggling through ordinary lives. This story is one of her most intensely personal and poignant, with a few guest appearances by her favorite ghosts.

Work every day under Boston, and you’re going to see things. Rats, bats, crack-pots walking the tracks—these are things every driver expects. But the damp, dank tunnels also got ghosts. Like Edgar Allan Poe, riding in the cab with you today on the run back and forth from Alewife to Braintree and back again. The guy never says a word, just stares moodily at the curving track as yellow headlights pierce the black and highlight the muck oozing out of the walls. Sometimes he takes notes on little pieces of paper. He might be writing a book or something.

“Poe’s not a problem,” says your best friend Eddie Heyes, who like you is a motor-man with the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. “Dickens, though. Dick, yeah. He never shuts up.”

You’ve known Bobby since your mothers grew up together in the East Boston projects. They met your fathers while working at the box factory. You both survived Vietnam, though every weekend you drink Schlitz to forget—as cold as possible, as much as possible. You see Poe, he sees Dickens. Maybe proximity to the dead made you special somehow. Next thing you know, you’ll be haunted by Robert Frost prat-tling on about the track less traveled.

“Little Frankie Dolan sees things, and he didn’t even go to ’Nam,” Bobby says one evening when you’re hitting softballs with your families in the park by Logan Airport. “He sees the jumpers. Like, not all the time. Just once in a while.”

Nobody likes jumpers. You had one, just about five years ago. A sweet kid. Long blond hair, denim jacket. Standing on the platform at Broadway. Didn’t even look your way before she leapt. You hit the brakes, your heart exploding in your chest, 36

Asimov’s
obscenities and prayers shrieking from your mouth. But the physics of moving trains hitting human bodies makes no allowance for holy intervention. Eighteen years old, her blood and muscle and brain matter snarled in your wheels. Every day you pass the spot over and over again, but you trained yourself to forget her name.

If Little Frankie Dolan sees ghosts of jumpers, good luck to him. In comparison, Poe’s no problem at all. Sometimes he gets off in Harvard Square and trudges upstairs, easily mixing with the students and professors and buskers. Sometimes he sits in the first car behind you, brazenly taking up one of the handicapped seats. You’d think the shabby coat from 1850 or so—you looked up his biography in the library, saw him in a picture of it—would draw attention, but everyone’s so busy listening to their Walkmans or reading their books that no one appreciates the dead literary guy.

One day you’re waiting for passengers at Kendall, all those MIT folks getting off and on, when this square-faced guy with big ears walks through the wall of your cab.

They all do that. Like they own the place. But this guy’s tilting his head and looking away from you as if kind of shy. Like a bricklayer who prefers working with hard objects because they’re solid and predictable, while people are soft and wild.

“Can I drive?” he asks.

“Who are you?” you ask.

“Jack.”

“Jack, you want me to lose my job? I can’t let any unauthorized personnel drive this train.”

“Knowledge is life with wings,” he grumbles, and leaves.

Later Eddie says, “Jack? Jack Kerouac?” and you’re kind of embarrassed because who? A poet. A hippie poet. He died in 1969 while you were swaggering through villages full of terrified locals. Dead Jack now doesn’t look any different than the picture on this book Eddie shows you, On the Road.

“I want to meet him,” Eddie says.

You’re both drinking at the Belle Island yacht club, a ragtag collection of rowboats and dinghies and f ishing boats on the marsh near the airport. The electrical hookup’s illegal and the toilets dump right into the water. There’s nothing nice about the clubhouse, but also nothing warm about the beer, and if you sometimes have to shout over the roar of passenger jets, so what? A dozen years now you’ve been driving trains, your ears full of grinding metal, and before that were mortar shells and rifle fire and Lieu’s last screams, so you’re going to be half-deaf by forty anyway.

“You don’t still write stuff, do you?” you ask Eddie.

“Yeah, when?” he says, grouchy, as if someone forced him to marry Linda DeRosa and have three kids and do maintenance work every weekend for his father-in-law. They all live in a big old wooden four-plex in Beachmont. Great views of the ocean, but the plumbing’s hell and the wiring wasn’t built for color TVs, VCRs, and microwaves.

Probably nobody but your old teachers at the Fitton Catholic school remembers that Eddie was once a dreamy boy who scribbled poems between the lines of his brown composition book. Across the aisle, at your desk with the hinged lid, you wrote stories about pirates and astronauts and worldwide adventure, all of them forgotten the day you reported to Parris Island and the Marines stripped away, with razors and blasting caps, all of your childhood notions.

“None of them have anything useful to say,” you tell Eddie as a jet thunders overhead. Dead poets, dead authors, dead dreams. Eddie has a family now. You have a cold beer in your hand and the last gunshots anyone fired at you hit Lieu instead.

She’s at peace and so are you. What else do you want?

Alewife is a funny name for a train station. It’s named after a river, which in turn is named after a fish. Just south of the station, directly under an old chemical plant, Riding the Blue Line with Jack Kerouac

37

September/October 2017
water dripping from the ceiling has formed eerie orange stalactites. Nobody knows how toxic they are. If the lights are red, and you’re waiting for clearance before bringing your train in, you think about poisonous drops landing on the cab, seeping into the metal seams, and lingering in the air vents.

“The people above us made Agent Orange,” Sylvia Plath says, her nose pressed to the glass as she stares into the gloom. “They poisoned the jungles.”

You don’t think you were exposed over there, but some mornings there definitely was a funny smell in the air, and sometimes the rain tasted strange. Eddie’s joked about his kids coming out with extra toes, but the boys are all normal, and though Linda’s miscarried two daughters the priest at Our Lady of Lourdes tells her it’s God’s plan, no use grieving too hard about it.

Because Eddie’s so keen on meeting Jack, you trade routes with him. He takes the Red Line and you switch over to the Blue, hauling passengers from downtown out past the airport and marshes to the cold green ocean. Back and forth you ride, six miles of standard gauge, darkness to light and back again. You carry a lot of flight crews and travelers, and tired immigrants who clean planes at night, and old men trying to make a buck or two on the horses at Suffolk Downs or greyhounds at Won-derland. You see a lot more sunshine and have to invest in sunglasses.

Changing routes doesn’t affect your ghosts, though. In fact, Sylvia and Jack show up even more frequently than before. She grew up in Winthrop right across from the air-field that became Logan International. Although from Lowell, Jack was certainly no stranger to the gin joints that rotted themselves out of business on old Revere Beach.

“You can see the whole world in a grain of sand,” Jack says moodily, watching the November sunrise over the ocean.

He says it in French. Hungover, trying not to puke, you think he’s being a dick that way. Your own grandparents came down from Cape Breton and you learned the tongue from them. His parents came from Quebec. You looked that up. Sylvia speaks French, too, but from fancy Smith College. Poe never says anything in any language, but he snickers at a dirty joke Jack makes in French one night, and this is the connection you must share, the four of you and Lieu, too, who would whisper French endearments in the hot darkness while her belly swelled under your hands.

“Can I drive?” Jack asks on Lieu’s birthday, and you tell him no in plain English.

At Christmastime a union boss named Mike Dyke drinks one too many at the union shindig and blurts out that he’s personally seen President John F. Kennedy, God Rest His Soul, get on the Green Line trolley at Government Center. These days the plaza above is home to the hideously designed Boston City Hall, a concrete mon-strosity of stark lines and cavernous spaces built to intimidate the hippies. Back when you were little, however, it was known as Scollay Square, jammed with bars and burlesque, taverns and tattoo shops. Your train runs below the streetcar lines at the same station, but you’ve never seen JFK, which would be kind of interesting, so maybe you’re a little jealous.

When Eddie downs too many vodka shots and starts boasting about riding with Charles Eff ing Dickens, you pull him away. Stories like that don’t need to get around. Then he’s yelling about how you hog Kerouac for yourself and you haul him to the alley, where you trade sloppy punches amid half-frozen garbage and falling snow. You both take cabs home. Your knuckles are bruised, your mouth cut up and bitter from your own teeth.

A few weeks later Mike Dyke retires, though there’s a rumor that he’s vacationing in the loony bin at McLean Hospital. Eddie apologizes for being stupid. Neither of you want to be locked up, right?

“Loneliness is the bleak fact of humanity,” Jack says on Sunday morning, your train curving northward past old Catholic churches with dwindling attendance.

38

Sandra McDonald

Asimov’s

Sentiments like that deserve a warm

“To me, Asimov’s has always been the
sip from your flask, but the wind off the
secret portal in my closet. The magic
water cuts through you anyway.

door under the stairs. The trap door in
the wooden floor. Opening an issue

“You need a wife,” says your brother
means passing through to the unknown
who married a pretty Puerto Rican girl
fantastic, and a subsequent journey
when he was stationed in San Juan.

through stories that teach me as much

“Someone to cook for you,” says your
about myself as they do the world out-
other brother, who married a British side, however fictionally distorted. I am girl he met while serving in Germany.

very pleased to be part of the Asimov’s

“Wives just get in the way,” says your
family that not only delights in these jour-
oldest brother, Stan, who has a lot of neys but also can help bring them to guy friends in Somerville that everyone
readers around the world.”

has silently agreed not to talk about.

—Sandra McDonald

If Stan’s friends are taboo topic num-
ber one, taboo topic two is how your brothers managed to pull assignments safely away from Vietnam but you were unlucky enough to carry the family banner across the paddies. Taboo topic three, and this one will never be violated, is how your hard-scrabble mother had to welcome a few sailors to her bedroom now and then while your father spent long weekends in Southie barrooms, and consequently you and your siblings don’t actually look a lot alike. Your sisters moved to the South Shore a long time ago, which in Boston terms is tantamount to moving across an ocean to a continent where nothing interesting happens.

Eddie’s wife Linda would like to see you settled down and less of an unsavory influence on her husband, so she sets you up with girls hoping one will stick the same way pasta sticks to the wall once it’s done cooking. But dating is a hassle. You have to call the girl, maybe leave a message on an answering machine, make a date somewhere, hope she shows up, hope your shift doesn’t run late or you don’t oversleep. If she’s not from somewhere local it’s like talking to someone from another planet, and if she is from the neighborhood you’re going to have too many things in common. It all seems kind of futile.

For a while you do see this girl Michelle, who is tough and short and works under-cover for the MBTA police. Usually she’s posing as a junkie. Her coworkers look like skinheads or plain businessmen or street musicians. You have to use a lot of mouth-wash around her so she doesn’t suspect you’ve been drinking on the job. After that there’s Lucille, who works as a telephone switchboard operator at Sears. She’s sweet but prefers staying in her apartment over absolutely any other activity. People give her a headache, she says. Next is a dreamy redhead named Alice who teaches English at Revere High School. You end it after she discovers you used to write before

’Nam and urges you to “re-engage with your creative spirit.”

“The world is a fiction made of contradiction,” Sylvia warns, crouching in your cab like a child and rocking back and forth against the metal walls.

Spring comes, thawing the marshes, and you hook up a few times with Barbara, whose mother lives in the same assisted living complex your own mother does. Barbara works for the chief muckety-mucks on High Street, tracking all the trains, signals, switches, and vents across the system. You visit her once at command central.

It’s like an aircraft carrier up there, or maybe a spaceship. When anything goes wrong—jumper, collision, breakdown—Barbara starts calling radio stations to get the word out to passengers.

From her chair, the enormous sprawl of lines and trains looks like a big cobweb.

From your cab you’ve thought yourself important, but you’re really a fly caught in that web like a million other dumb flies.

Riding the Blue Line with Jack Kerouac

39

September/October 2017

“And there’s going to be computers soon, more automation,” she says cheerfully.

Less jobs for working-class men and women, she means. Nobody to announce what station you’re coming into and help lost tourists. No one to manually operate the doors and watch that moms with strollers don’t get caught in the doors. Everything’s becoming a machine, and she’s obliviously proud of it.

“It’s not about you, I’m just not good at this,” you tell her after standing her up a few times. A couple of weeks later she starts seeing a city councilman and you raise a toast to any future nuptials. It’s a Saturday night in summer and the jets are landing three minutes apart and some of the guys are sniffing coke over by the pool table, but you saw what drugs did to your friends overseas and you won’t touch that stuff.

It’s a rainy Sunday in summer and you slept on a worn sofa by the pool table and the jets seem even louder today. Nobody talks about the fall of Saigon anymore, and no one in America knows Lieu’s name or how hard she worked or what dreams she had for you and your unborn child. If there’s a grainy black and white photograph of the two of you in a letter postmarked 1970, it’s buried in your mother’s closet along with faded envelopes scribbled by lonely men on merchant ships far away.

It’s a beautiful Monday morning in summer and you clock into the nearby rail yard, twist the cast-iron handle in your cab, and ease six steel cars into motion under catenary wires that crackle with current. Jack asks, wistfully, “Can I drive?”

Why the hell not. The sun is blood-orange, the world split open and oozing, and Sylvia laughs like a happy young girl as the train flies along its silver tracks. Even Poe seems to be in a lighter mood. Poe, who died incoherent and miserable after a long descent into a bottle. Jack, who woke up vomiting blood and tried rinsing away the metal tang with more booze until he bled out. Sylvia, who drank vodka for its heady thrust of power and then lulled herself to sleep with her head inside an oven.

Jack shouts out gleefully in French, and you all shout along with him.

Eddie visits you in McLean. He’s obligated to, more or less, since he’s crashing in your tiny apartment in Maverick Square while you’re here. Or until Linda forgives him for the waitress he’s been seeing up at Caruso’s on Route 1. The waitress has two baby daughters by Eddie, the oldest being five years old, so the forgiving won’t be coming anytime soon if ever. The waitress’s name is Ellen.

“Like Ellen Ternan,” you say in the day room, watching summer bloom outside the windows.

“I don’t know who that is.”

“Dickens’s mistress.”

“How do you even know this stuff ?”

“Sylvia told me months ago.”

“I don’t know anything you’re talking about,” Eddie maintains, eyes not meeting yours, because he has to say that. Having two families isn’t cheap. Neither is divorce or child support. He needs his job so much that you’ll never hear him ever mention Charles Dickens again. “And you don’t know either, got it? If the union’s going to save your ass, you’ve got to quit with the crazy talk.”

You know that. The staff is always listening for things to use against you. Even though Sylvia spent time here in McLean you haven’t seen her at all. Poe, too, has disappeared, gone back to Baltimore maybe, to wander the streets and tunnels there.

Your mother, a spring scarf over her blue-gray hair, visited yesterday with a picture transported from another life, another side of the world. In it you are nineteen years old and grinning. Lieu is dark and lovely, her face alight with hope. You were both kids who thought the world would bend to your dreams. Your mother, who knows a thing about living a broken life, also brought a blank composition notebook just like the doctors suggested.

40

Sandra McDonald

Asimov’s

“When you were in school you wrote such wonderful stories,” she says, her voice gone to sandpaper after decades of cigarettes. After she leaves you crack open the white pages and put a pencil to the straight blue lines.

“To thine own self be true,” whispers Jack from under the bed, and you write. ❍

Riding the Blue Line with Jack Kerouac

41

UNIVERSE

BOX

Michael Swanwick

The author tells us, “last year I flew to Moscow to receive the Grand Roscon Award and was later guest of honor at MidAmeriCon II—forty years after the first MidAmeriCon was my very first Worldcon. Forty seems to be an auspicious number for me.” Of his latest tale, he adds, “knowing me as long as you have, I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that this story is autobiographical. So much here happened to me—the stint I put in at the Parc Zoologique de Paris, my dreary youth, my love of cigar boxes, and my rapid rise to the status of Trickster being the least of them! Indeed, my responsibilities as a cosmic power are such that I would have long ago abandoned this planet were it not for my deep and abiding love for Asimov’s.

I’m sure the rest of the world will forgive you for this.”

Out of the everywhere and nowhere the thief fled, quarks and galaxies crunching un-derfoot, vacuum rippling like a banner in his wake. Skipping nimbly in and out of space and time, he dropped down into the quantum slush underlying physical existence and then up again into the macrocosmic realms of which reality is but the tiniest province. Nightmares beyond human imagining howled and ravaged at his heels.

Nihilism and despair sleeted down on his upturned face. But the thief couldn’t have been happier. His grin was so mad and bright that it would melt granite.

His erection was shocking.

The thief—who was not really so mundane a thing as a thief but something far more intense and much less forgivable for which there was no word in any language, though he knew billions—had just pulled off the biggest heist in the history of existence. Even he was impressed. For tucked under one arm was a box containing everything that anybody could possibly desire. Some of those anybodies were extremely dangerous, even by the thief’s standards. There were no limits to what atrocities they might perform to wrest the treasure from his grasp.

Which only made his flight all the sweeter.

Finally, in part because all other avenues of escape had been cut off and in part because that was simply the way the game was played, the thief went to ground. Compared to the other powers-that-be, he was pathetically weak. But he had one tactical advantage over them all, which was that no laws had any hold over him, not even 42

Asimov’s
physical ones. So he could go where none of the others dared. He sought shelter in a place so fragile that his Opponent would not dare to follow him there, because doing so would burst it open and incinerate it and everything it contained, the box he had stolen most definitely included, to ashes and the memory of ashes.

This delicate soap-bubble of a world was called Earth.

In a low grey river port city, a former industrial center fallen on hard times, a dove-cote of stenches and miasmas, a huddling-place of heartbreaks and miseries, a habitat of bad memories and unthinkable futures, indeed in the exact geographic center of that city, a young man who thought that he was happy checked his wristwatch for the seventh time that evening. Howard had on a new suit with front row tickets to a Valentine’s Day concert at the Academy of Music tucked into one pocket and a tidy little box containing a rather expensive ring in another. A magnum of champagne was chilling in the fridge, and a dozen red roses lurked in the shadows of the bedroom. There, the sheets had been changed and the bed freshly made, to create an attractive theater for the passionate sex he anticipated would fill half the night.

Mimi had promised to drop by after work. She suspected nothing.

There was a knock at the door—Mimi had a key but never used it—and Howard hurried to fling it open.

And froze.

Black fog filled the doorway, billowed, condensed, solidified, and then sprouted a striped scarf and the world’s largest, roundest head. As Howard gaped, a crack appeared in that tremendous cheese wheel of a face and split it from ear to ear. “Aren’t you going to say hello to your Uncle Paulie?” the apparition exclaimed, flinging its arms wide.

“Uncle . . . Paulie. Oh. Oh, yes, of course. Uncle Paulie? Come in, come in,” Howard said, all in a fluster because an instant ago he would have sworn that he had never seen or heard of this man before, yet now a lifetime’s worth of memories of this dear and beloved relative coursed through his brain.

“What a lovely little place you have!” Uncle Paulie tossed his sable greatcoat onto the George Nakashima coffee table, dumped a cigar box atop it and threw loop after loop of red-and-white scarf after them. “Charmingly Spartan. Is that a Picasso? So modest to have a print rather than an oil. But that’s typical of you. I came as soon as I heard the good news.”

“Good news?”

“Your engagement, dear boy, your engagement. Have you asked Mimi yet? No, of course not. Look at that bulge in your coat! Is that a ring in your pocket or are you just glad to see me? Hah! Don’t answer that.”

“You haven’t changed one bit,” Howard said with an embarrassed, perfectly pointless grin. “But I don’t understand. I haven’t told anybody yet, not even Mimi. So how . . . ?”

“That hardly matters, dearest of all nephews. Not one iota. Not one scintilla. Not one single charming quark. And do you know why? Because I am here.” Uncle Paulie slapped his chest. “To help.” He patted Howard on the head, two light taps. “You.”

At which awkward moment, there came another knock at the door. This time it turned out to be Mimi.

Big scared eyes, waifish body, short-cropped hair. Mimi crept into the apartment like a mouse, raised a pawlike hand to her nose, twitched her whiskers, and froze motionless at the sight of Uncle Paulie. “Oh!”

“This can only be little Mimikins!” Uncle Paulie lifted her up, whirled her around, set her down, and bussed her on the lips. Then he mock-scolded, “Nephew, she’s ex-quisite! Why did you only say she was gorgeous?”

Universe Box

43

September/October 2017

“I—”

“Never mind, if we don’t get a hurry on, we’ll be late!” Uncle Paulie snatched up hat, coat, and scarf, tossed all into the air, and was holding open the door, dressed to go. “Chop-chop, kiddies!” Exuberant, irresistible, he swept Howard and a rather dazed Mimi along before him, down the elevator, out of the Drake, several blocks down the street, through glass doors, and up an elevator to the Top of the Tooz.

Which was a rooftop revolving nightclub, and one that Howard had never been to because it had closed years ago.

“Have they reopened this?” Howard said. Surely, he would have heard.

“Nothing is ever closed,” Uncle Paulie said, handing his things to a sullen hatcheck girl who tossed them over her shoulder onto the floor. “Not really.”

The hatcheck girl accepted Howard’s coat and, rummaging through his pockets, came up with a pack of Marlboros, from which she tapped a cigarette. Once she had extracted matches from Mimi’s purse, she threw the purse and both coats onto the growing pile.

“Hey!” Howard objected, but Uncle Paulie, Mimi leaning happily on one shoulder, was bulldozing him into the club, where they were greeted with abject enthusiasm by the maître d’, the owner, several women who had spent a great deal of money on not very much clothing and considerably more makeup, and an elegant presence in a rose tuxedo whose hair was chopped in a blond slash that was either too long or too short for his or her gender, depending on what it might be.

With air kisses and squeals and declarations of eternal fealty from gushing strangers who had to be shooed away by the maître d’, they were planted at a table with a splendid view of a city far too glamorous, it seemed to Howard, to be the one he had all his lifetime inhabited. Or perhaps it was the sunset slowly crawling by that granted magic to an otherwise drab world.

“Glasses! Caviar! A jazz band! Not overly advanced! Nor too loud! You’ll waive corkage, of course.” As his impromptu retinue scattered like pigeons to obey, Uncle Paulie turned to Howard and Mimi and said, “I have something special to show you both.” He reached into an inner jacket pocket and pulled out an object that he solemnly placed on the table before him and patted with both hands. “There. What do you think?”

It was a cigar box.

Mimi clearly wasn’t about to say anything. So Howard cleared his throat. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Uncle Paulie, but I’m afraid I don’t smoke cigars.”

Uncle Paulie looked shocked. “This isn’t for you, child. No, no, no, I’m just going to let you see it.”

“Oh. Okay, I guess.”

Holding up a finger, Uncle Paulie made an owlish face and said, “Let me posit a question: What one thing does the world currently need most? Eh?”

“Um . . . love?” Howard ventured.

“World peace,” Mimi said firmly.

“Pah! I’m disappointed in you both. A good bottle of wine, of course!” Uncle Paulie flipped open the lid of the cigar box and reached within. “As you doubtless know, the very finest collection ever assembled was the legendary Wine Cellar of Alexandria.

Destroyed in that dreadful fire, such a pity. But no matter. I’ll just have to dig deeper.” A puzzled look came over Uncle Paulie’s face as he reached within and further within and yet further indeed, until his arm had disappeared up to the shoulder.

Then his expression cleared and, leaning back, he reeled in his arm, at the end of which was an unlabeled black glass bottle upon which were scratched archaic runes.

“Ahh, Amarone della Lemuria! A ‘sea-dark wine, half as old as time,’ as that drunken sot Homer put it. There’s never been a plonk like it.”

44

Michael Swanwick

Asimov’s

“Back in the day, Isaac Asimov was a regular at all the East Coast conventions.

He was famous for not flying but was happy to hop a train to mingle with fans. “You could chat with him. You could ask him questions.

“You could get his autograph.

“I have a copy of the first issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, as it was then called, autographed in person by the great man himself. So do many. But I also have copies of every issue since, right up to the present. Taken together, they must be worth . . . well, let’s be honest, not very much. Because they’ve all been read shabby.

“I am not a collector. I read Asimov’s for pleasure, for entertainment, and to learn what’s happening at the leading edge of science fiction. I also read it to learn what the Competition is up to.

“You’ll forgive me if I feel that the most exciting period for Asimov’s was the eighties, when I was breaking into the field and a new generation of writers—Kim Stanley Robinson, Pat Cadigan, James Patrick Kelly, Nancy Kress, Connie Willis, John Kessel, Bruce Sterling, and others—was kicking in the slats and setting fire to old expectations of what science fiction was and could be. Today’s “young Turks,” to borrow a term much beloved by former editor Gardner Dozois, doubtless have their own pantheon of new writers. Writers of exceptional merit known only to each other and to those readers who approach Asimov’s with exceptional care and passion.

“It is the readers, as much as the writers, who decide who tomorrow’s Isaac Asimov will be. And I leave that happy chore in their capable hands.”

—Michael Swanwick

Laughing, Mimi clapped her hands. Howard scowled and grumbled, “That’s quite a trick.”

“It is the single best trick ever performed, nephew—and I say that with no hyperbole whatsoever. May I burst into flames if I lie.” A waiter cut away the lead, dug out the cork with a knife, poured the contents into glasses, faded to nothingness.

“A toast!” Uncle Paulie cried. “To the criminals, cads, con men, and perverts within us all!”

This struck Howard as being in very poor taste. But Mimi was already drinking, so there was nothing to do but follow suit.

He took a sip. His eyes went wide.

A clarity that surpassed all understanding suffused his brain. The sun rose within the midnight of Howard’s soul. A blindfold was ripped from his mind and flung to the wind. Everything that existed was right and holy; he could see that now—no, better than seeing, he knew it for a true thing down to the root of his being. The world was good, the Universe better, and as for life—peanut butter and chocolate combined were tasteless by comparison.

“What’s in there?” he gasped.

Howard meant in the wine. But misunderstanding him (whether intentionally or not, who could say?), Uncle Paulie held up the cigar box as if it were a window and opened the lid. “Everything you could desire: castles in the air, mountains on a plate, treasury bills, wisdom . . . you name it. Voluptuous goddesses, glass moons, methane seas. Dinosaurs, if that’s to your taste.

“Look.”

Howard looked. And beheld:

Endless clouds of diamond dust glittering on the deep, black velvet of infinity. Stars exploding above the frozen husks of sunless worlds. A herd of Parasaurolophus trum-peting and feeding in a grove of dawn redwoods. Wise machines drifting between galaxies, carrying in their bellies clusters of civilizations, each written on a silver disk Universe Box

45

September/October 2017
smaller than a dime. A drunken Elizabethan poet singing and urinating from a third-story window. Nanowars being fought endlessly on the surface of a single mote of dust. A stray dog in Milwaukee gulping down a hamburger foraged from a dump-ster. Trillions of integers, deep in the heart of an irrational number, pledging their love and obeisance to . . .

Uncle Paulie snapped the cigar box lid shut and said, “Enough of that! Mimi and I are going to dance.”

Howard blinked, gaped, and was back in real time. He wondered how many years had passed in stunned contemplation of the glory of . . . whatever it was in the box.

Then he saw that his wine glass was still half full. He seized it and gulped down every drop. It made him feel better, so he refilled the glass and drank that down as well. The clarity this gave him intensified to such a degree as to be indistinguishable from a dizzy sense of genius.

He became aware that Lena Horne was singing “Stormy Weather.” That his girlfriend and his uncle were slow dancing. That the bastard had his hand on Mimi’s ass. And that, from the way she moved, she liked it there!

Intolerable. Howard was about to get up and confront his uncle when the personage in the rose tuxedo materialized before him, extended a hand, and said, “C’mon, sport.” His head was reeling with the zodiac, and his tongue seemed to have climbed out an ear and slipped away. Meanwhile, the music demanded to be danced to. So he accepted the invitation with a nod.

At first, Howard thought that he was dancing with a woman in drag. Then, that his partner was an elaborately made up man masquerading as a woman pretending to be a man. Or else a gender trickster made up to look like one and the same time like everything and anything that one might actually be. Or . . .

“You’re not sure, are you?” the enigma leered. And, pressing up against him, murmured, “Slow dancing is your friend.”

“I’ve, uh, never danced with, uh. You know. Before this.” Giddy from the wine, Howard felt wondrously liberated. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t have . . . But tonight everything was okay.

“That you know of.”

Howard giggled. He must be a lot drunker than he thought. “I guess you’ve got a point,” he said. Which sounded so witty that he giggled again.

By the time the song ended, the wine had done such a splendid job blurring the memory of looking inside the box that he was beginning to believe that he had suffered a momentary dream and nothing more.

When Howard returned to the table, Mimi looked flushed and happy while Uncle Paulie appeared uncharacteristically solemn. He handed Howard the cigar box, saying, “Take this, dear boy. Take it! Hide it! Don’t tell me where. Don’t tell anybody where. Don’t even tell yourself.”

“How do I do that?”

“Put the box on the table before you. Close your eyes. Open the lid with one hand.

Then take the box in your other hand and place it inside the opening you just created. All of space and time will be accessible to you. Hide it wherever. Just be careful not to put it somewhere obvious. Excuse me. I have to change.”

Uncle Paulie stood, winked, and plunged into the women’s restroom.

“Hey! You can’t—!” Howard started after his uncle, but was brought up short by the door. If he went inside, women would scream. They might even throw things.

Anyway, what could he hope to accomplish? No obvious answer presented itself. In an agony of indecision, he returned to the table, closed his eyes, and made the cigar box go away, as he had been told to do.

The woman who, minutes later, emerged from the ladies room was zoftig to an 46

Michael Swanwick

Asimov’s
extreme. Tremendous breasts bulged out of a very tight dress that was obviously struggling to contain them. Everything else, belly and butt and who-knew-what, piled curve upon curve upon curve. But the huge round head was unmistakable, and lipstick could not disguise that ludicrously long mouth. She descended upon Howard like an out-of-control tugboat upon a dock.

“Uncle . . . Paulie?” Howard said in a choked voice.

“Silly billy! It’s Aunt Polly.”

With that, she pulled his head down into those soft, warm breasts. Which caused Aunt Polly’s dress to f inally admit defeat and rip down the middle, revealing the biggest pinkest nipples any man had ever seen.

“Why, Howie!” Aunt Polly squealed, clutching him so close he could not breathe, and stumbled backward into the cloakroom. “You spontaneous devil!”

She fell onto the pile of coats and furs, pulling Howard atop her billowing flesh. He heard the hatcheck girl sigh and unzip her skirt. People came in from the dance floor, chattering and laughing, giggling, kicking off their shoes, shedding their clothes.

And then, well, things happened.

Deep in the Pillars of Creation, the Opponent, whom the thief had robbed, made itself manifest. Underlings, the least of which could have snuffed Earth’s Sun like a candle, cowered at the sight.

Commands were issued, which the underlings scurried to obey.

Sounds.

There was a murmur of voices and a scuffle of feet, as musicians packed up their instruments and waiters upended chairs onto tables. Closer by, revelers were buttoning and belting and pulling together their outfits, and slipping off into the night.

By slow degrees, Howard found himself returning to what might well be described as consciousness. The orgy, he realized, was over, and he was lying in the cloakroom atop a diminished mound of jackets, wearing only one sock and a shirt missing half its buttons.

How on earth was he going to explain to Mimi what had happened? He couldn’t even explain it to himself. He had done things that he’d never imagined people doing—and he had thumbed through a significant number of pornographic magazines in his time.

The coats stirred and Mimi crawled out from beneath them with a stunned expression on her face.

She was naked.

Howard’s jaw dropped.

Howard and Mimi dressed in silence, neither capable of looking at the other. The streets outside were empty, dark, slick with rain, smeared with reflected neon. The hatcheck girl, fully dressed if a little rumpled, sneered as she locked the doors behind them. There were few cars out, so it had to be very late. Howard pulled his coat tight against the cold.

After a block or three, Mimi said in a small voice, “I didn’t know you were into—”

“What? No! I only . . .”

“Oh.” She fell silent. After a time, almost inaudibly, she added, “Because I liked it.

A little, maybe. Sort of. I mean—” Mimi took a deep breath. “Howard, I was going to break up with you tonight. Because I thought, well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I thought you were the most predictable man on earth. I thought, how much more of this can I take? It’s like going out with a robot. Everything laid out in the most obvious manner imaginable, a long straight road leading from this very instant to the grave with not one single surprise along the way.”

Howard could hardly believe what he was hearing. “You’re saying that I’m . . .

Universe Box

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September/October 2017
boring?” Simultaneously, a painful sensation blossomed in the back of his head, and he realized that the hangover he had confidently expected to arrive in the morning was tapping its toes in the anteroom, anxious to be recognized.

“You’re going to laugh, but when you said you had concert tickets, and I realized that it was Valentine’s Day, I thought: Oh no, he’s going to ask me to marry him! I could see a bottle of champagne in the fridge and roses in the bedroom and a cornball diamond ring and suddenly it was all too much for me. It literally felt like I was choking. I wanted to cough you up out of my life like a hairball.”

“I . . .”

Mimi grabbed Howard’s arm then and hugged herself against it. “But then—
tonight. It was wonderful. The dancing! New people! In the cloakroom, I did things I thought I wasn’t ready for. Things I was afraid I might never do.”

“Mimi,” Howard pleaded. “You can’t mean that.”

“They were all such interesting people, too. There was a rare book counterfeiter and a giraffe wrangler and a burglar and a garbage artist and . . .”

“Wait. What? Giraffe wrangler? Mimi, I’m not sure these are people I want you as-sociating with.”

Mimi stopped in mid-gush and let go of Howard’s arm. In a voice grown suddenly cold, she said, “You were screwing them—and they’re not good enough for you to see socially? Just what kind of a jerk are you?”

“Listen, maybe the sex was a mistake.”

“Maybe you’re the mistake. I—”

A car screeched down the street and leaped the sidewalk, headed right at them.

Mimi shrieked and grabbed Howard, yanking him out of the way.

Crash! With a noise that would have made a corpse jump, the car smashed into the side of the building inches from where they had both fallen to the pavement.

For a small, still eternity, neither so much as breathed. Then they helped each other to their feet. “Well,” one of them said. “That was—”

A second car crashed into the wall to the other side of them.

Fifteen car crashes later, Howard and Mimi tumbled into the Drake, fetching up against the elevators like two scraps of paper disdainfully blown in by the winter wind. “Well,” Howard said. “Would you care to come up to the apartment?” There would be no proposal tonight, obviously, but he f igured he could somehow explain away the roses in the bedroom.

“No. And I’ll tell you why.” Mimi was shivering with indignation. “All this time we’ve been going out, I had no idea that you might actually have a sense of fun. Finally—
finally!—you show me a good time, and then you scold me for enjoying it! How dare you judge me for liking a change from your dreary, dreary, dreary, predictable life?”

A low dark uneasiness spread itself across Howard’s skull. It was not quite a throbbing but, now that he acknowledged its existence, he realized that it soon would be. “I . . .”

Mimi stomped (pip! pip! pip!) all but weightlessly across the lobby. Just before she disappeared through the door and down the street, without even turning to look back, she raised a hand, middle finger erect.

Slam.

Despondent, dejected, detumescent, Howard elevatored to his f loor. With every foot the car rose, the incipient ache in his skull intensified, extending itself into his belly and his gastrointestinal system to form a chord of discomfort that grew steadily worse until, when the doors finally opened, his head clanged, his gut clenched, and he was afraid he might vomit. Stomach and bowels in a knot, he unlocked the door and scuttled into his apartment.

48

Michael Swanwick

Asimov’s

Where a stranger awaited.

“Speak of the devil, here I am!” the slim dark man said with unbearable chirpi-ness. “Dan Scratch, attorney at lawlessness.” He presented a card that immediately burst into flames, then tapped the side of his nose, a gesture that Howard had previously only encountered in books. “I represent someone who wishes to remain anonymous, but who is very powerful indeed. Powerful enough to destroy you, your fiancée, all that you value, and indeed the entire planet you’re standing on with the Moon, Mars, and Venus thrown in for good measure. That’s not a threat. Yet.”

“Go away,” Howard groaned. “Or else kill me, I don’t much care which.”

“Tsk.” Dan Scratch went to a wall clock Howard had never seen before and moved its hands ahead eight hours. Sunlight flooded the room. “Is that better?”

Howard clutched his head in agony. “Oh god, no!”

“Big night, eh?” The attorney spun the hands around the dial so fast they blurred.

Morning faded to twilight again and again and again before the dwindling light finally took with it the last remnants of Howard’s discomfort. “Now. Let’s talk.”

Howard’s emotions were divided. On the one hand, he was grateful to be rid of the single worst hangover he had ever experienced in his life. On the other, the imp with the pencil-thin mustache was still there. “How about let’s you just scram?”

“Oh, sir!” When he grinned, Dan Scratch’s eyes turned as yellow as his teeth. “You and I both know that’s not going to happen. I’ll cut to the chase: You have something my client wants. Frankly, you’re in a very good bargaining position.”

“Dear Lord. You’re trying to buy my soul.”

When Dan Scratch pursed his lips, his mustache disappeared entirely. “That shabby thing? Have you any idea of its Blue Book value? Of course not. Suffice it to say—
negligible. However, for a certain cigar box . . . Well, idioms notwithstanding, the sky’s no limit.” From hidden pockets he deftly extracted small objects, lining them up upon the air before him. “A bell to summon mastodons, perhaps? A vaccine against sin?—you could inoculate the entire human race from this one vial. Lozenges of wisdom-come-too-late? A homunculus the size of your fingernail? It comes with a planet to keep it on. One of Abraham Lincoln’s baby teeth? A crystal to relieve cramps and sharpen razor blades?”

Howard swept out an arm, scattering items about the room. The little silver bell bounced noiselessly on the rug. “Get out of my apartment!”

“Oh, you are a hard sell, sir,” Dan Scratch said, bobbing up and down to retrieve his scattered possessions. “But I am confident I can break your resolve. What do you most want out of life? Deep down and for real, I mean. You can be honest with me.

Whatever it is, I’ve heard worse.”

The question caught Howard by surprise and, to his surprise, he heard himself answering it honestly: “Mimi left me. I want her back.”

“Hmm. Tricky. Did she say why she was leaving?”

“She said I was boring,” Howard said bitterly.

“I see. Did you ever break into her apartment while she was away and fill it with endangered lizards? Did you paint her nude on the side of a mountain over a major interstate and bring her to a high place to watch trucks collide? Did you kill the girl who humiliated her in high school and drop the bitch’s head at her feet?”

“What? No!”

“Then she was right. Now that that’s settled, sir, I’ll see what I can arrange. You want her mind intact, I presume? Would you object to her becoming an addict? I can see you would. Not another word, it’s as good as taken care of. Good day, sir.”

With a jaunty little salute, Dan Scratch was gone.

Mimi was going through the adult classifieds in the weekly paper, reading each Universe Box

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September/October 2017
one carefully, when the doorbell rang. People certainly wanted a variety of different experiences! She wasn’t sure that she was interested in half of them. Still, it was best to keep an open mind. She put down the paper, went to the window, and saw via the busybody that her caller was the giraffe wrangler.

She buzzed her in.

“Mimi! So good to see you again.” The wrangler was as round as a pumpkin and twice as cheerful. She had a chubby, pleasantly open face and her hair was cut in a dyke do, shaved on one side and purple on the other. Her clothes were as nondescript as she was not.

“Gloria! How did you find me? Would you like some tea?”

“Kismet, chance, Brownian motion—take your pick. Yes, please.”

While Mimi boiled the water, set out the milk and sugar, and filled the cups, Gloria grilled her on her breakup with Howard. It was odd that she knew so much, but then, it had been three days, which was more than time enough for rumors to spread.

“Bad feelings?” Mimi said. “Not really. Though I am a little peeved with my friends for setting me up with him in the f irst place. My so-called friends, I mean. Really, looking back I’m insulted they ever thought we were a good match.”

“Forgive me, but maybe they believed you were a little dull yourself ?”

Mimi laughed. “Touché. Only on the outside, though. Howard is boring to the bone, but inside I always had strange thoughts. So maybe this breakup was a blessing in disguise, a kick in the derriere to get me to stop being so timid.” Gloria nodded, smiling. “But enough about me. I want to hear all about your giraffes.”

“Oh, I’m not really a giraffe wrangler, dear. That’s just my cover story.” Gloria reached into her handbag and pulled out the most lethal-looking gun Mimi had ever seen in her life. “Actually, I’m an assassin.”

As soon as the visitor was gone, Uncle Paulie emerged from the closet, comment-ing, “I thought he’d never leave.”

“A minute ago,” Howard said, “I’d have sworn that nothing could astonish me anymore. Were you here all along?”

“Of course, darling boy! Where else would I be in your hour of need?” Uncle Paulie opened the fridge. “You’re out of mayonnaise. How is that possible? Well, no matter.

Retrieve my box and I’ll have this unfiascoed in a jiffy.”

“Your box.”

Leaving the door ajar, Uncle Paulie turned, hands on hips. Frowning as ominously as a thunderhead. There was a crackle of ozone in the air. The refrigerator softened and began to melt. “Yes,” he said with terrible emphasis. “The one you hid for me, remember? To keep it safe? While we were partying?”

“I know which box you mean. I just don’t know where I put it.”

Uncle Paulie reached out one tremendous hand, grabbed Howard by the chest, and hoisted him almost to the ceiling. “What?!” His outraged mouth opened so wide that Howard could count every row of sharp triangular teeth. There were thirteen.

Terrified, Howard said, “You told me not to remember—remember?”

Putting Howard down, Uncle Paulie shook his head in chagrin. “The biter bit. The shark made sushi. The invading army killed by dysentery. This is certainly one for the books.” He clapped his nephew on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll get it back. The first order of business is to rescue Mimi from her kidnappers.”

“Kidnappers?! Who said anything about kidnappers?”

“Think, lad! You just told one of the Opponent’s minions that you’d give up anything for Mimi. Of course he did the obvious thing.”

“Oh, my God.” For a long moment Howard processed this information. Then, 50

Michael Swanwick

Asimov’s
because he had seen and learned too much to accept even his own memories, vivid though they were, he said, “Who are you, Uncle Paulie? What’s your real name?”

“Name? Dear boy. Nobody who’s anybody has a name. Call me whatever you wish.

One label’s as good a lie as any other.”

The mad glitter in Uncle Paulie’s eyes told Howard that this person or creature or entity, whatever he might be, was in no way his relation or, indeed, even human.

Nevertheless, Howard said, “Before I do anything, I have to know what’s in the box, who’s trying to get it away from you, and why.”

“You had only to ask,” Uncle Paulie said, and began to explain.

Howard listened intently, all the while worrying about Mimi. God only knew what horrors she must be going through now.

“More cocaine?” Gloria asked.

“Oh, no. It’s not really my thing,” Mimi said. “I just did those lines to be wicked.”

“How about if I open a wicked bottle of Chablis Grand Cru? Indulge yourself. Consider it my way of thanking you for coming along quietly. You’d be surprised how often I have to put a bullet into a client’s leg before they’ll take my kidnapping them seriously.”

Mimi threw on a kimono, not to cover herself, but just for the sensation of silk against skin. She went to the window wall and looked out over the snowy rooftops of the city. “You have such a lovely view of the Eiffel Tower,” she said, and then, thoughtfully, “I always wanted to see Paris. And now it’s my prison.”

“Paris isn’t your prison,” Gloria said. “France is. That’s a very important distinction, if you should happen to want to see Mont Saint-Michel, or Carcassonne. Berlin is ver-boten, however, as is Tokyo. And I really would have to kill you if you tried to escape.”

“You seem so comfortable with . . . your profession.”

“I am now. You should have seen what a mess I was when I began my spiritual journey.” Gloria chuckled. “How many men did I have to kill before I achieved enlightenment? Ah, me. Youth!” She began pulling on her clothes. Item by item, that lovely body of hers disappeared, like the moon vanishing behind clouds. “But we’ve wasted almost all the day indoors. Get dressed, and we’ll go out.”

Mimi shed her gown and stood naked before the closet, lush with dresses and all of them in her size. A lot of care had gone into her kidnapping. “Where are we going?” she asked.

“Why, anywhere you like. There’s a very amusing sex club I happen to know the password for. There’s a show of embarrassing art at the Louvre. This being France, there are some highly regarded restaurants, of course. And there’s always the Parc Zoologique.”

Eagerly, Mimi said, “Do they have giraffes?”

“Wait,” Howard said. “Wait. The cigar box you were carrying around contains the Universe? Everything that is, was, or ever will be? And you stole it from its Creator?

Who is not only pissed at you but at me personally as well?”

A little testily, Uncle Paulie said, “That is the gist of what I’ve just, at some length, told you, yes.”

“I’ve made an enemy of God?!”

“Oh, pish. Don’t be ridiculous,” Uncle Paulie said in a tone that would have been reassuring coming from anyone else. “You couldn’t expect an important fellow like God to do the actual construction work Himself. He sublet the job. To the Demiurge. Who built everything and therefore feels inappropriately possessive about it. So you haven’t made an enemy of God but of somebody who is, for all practical purposes, as powerful as God without actually being Him. That’s an important distinction. Though I can see where it might be a fine one for you.”

Universe Box

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September/October 2017

“And the Opponent—the Demiurge—has arranged for Mimi to be kidnapped? In order to put pressure on me? To reveal where I’ve hidden the Universe? Even though I don’t know that fact?” A dangerous look came over Uncle Paulie’s face and Howard hastily said, “I understand everything now. Except . . .”

Uncle Paulie slammed his hand down on the kitchen table so hard it left its imprint half an inch deep in the oak. “Stop talking! Your own dear wee Mimi is in danger. Also, she was with you when you hid the box and must have seen where you put it. Go. Now. I’ll wait for you here.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

That tremendous face folded in upon itself like so much pizza dough being knead-ed into a ball, then reemerged—f irst mouth, then eyes, then nose and, last of all, ears—smiling in a manner that Howard no longer found endearing. “Alas,” Uncle Paulie said, “I have to hide your doings from the Opponent, buy some mayonnaise, make a sandwich, oh there are not enough hours in the day. Why are you still here?”

“I . . . I don’t know where to start.”

“Start anywhere.” Uncle Paulie thrust a hand as large as the blade of a shovel into his jacket. It emerged overflowing with kibble. “Let’s see. A length of string, a rab-bit’s foot, the arrowhead I dug out of Abel’s body, a vaccine against sin—where did that come from? Here, it’s yours.” He stuffed it in Howard’s shirt pocket. “Ah! Any of these contacts would be particularly helpful.”

Uncle Paulie thrust a rubber-banded bundle of calling cards at Howard. “Draw one at random.” Howard did. It read:

[Name Withheld]

Underpaid Minion to the Stars
by appointment only

An icy knife of wind ripped through his clothing, skin, flesh, bones. Howard found himself before a turreted stone building completely surrounded by dark forest. The night was so cold that it drove all thought of Mimi from his mind. Desperately, he hammered on the door.

A sound that could only be the flapping of great wings came from inside. Then silence. Then the door opened. The hatcheck girl from the Top of the Tooz looked down at him. “Oh,” she said. “You. Sorry. I’m busy. Cutting my toenails.”

She shut the door in his face.

Howard threw himself against the door, drumming on it with fists and forearms.

“Please! Help me! I can pay! Anything that you want!”

The door opened again. “Define ‘anything,’ ” the hatcheck girl said.

Howard shoved past her and made straight for a baronial stone hearth in which crackled and roared a fire as big as the Renaissance. Stretching out frozen hands toward its glorious heat, he began to talk. Turning a backside so cold that it stung to face the fire, he continued. Until at last he had explained all, his body had rotated a dozen times before the blaze, and that terrible cold had retreated bone-deep within his flesh, to become a memory he doubted would ever go away.

“So Polytreptos sent you out to slay dragons without giving you a sword or telling you where they live. Typical. Well, yes, I can help. In fact, I may safely say that without me, you’re as good as dead. Now. My price. Anything, you said?”

“Mountains on a plate, if that’s what you want. Or so I was told. Ask! It’s yours.”

The hatcheck girl raised her chin, staring off into inf inity. “I was born in a city whose name you are not worthy of hearing. I was there when it fell to the armies of Uruk. Blood flowed in the streets, smoke assailed the heavens, vultures gorged on the corpses, the survivors were taken away in chains, the wailing went on forever.

52

Michael Swanwick

Asimov’s

The usual. But I was a child and thought it was the end of the world. I was added to the slave coffles almost as an afterthought; a less greedy soldier would have killed me as hardly worth the bother. Long story short, I eventually signed on with the True Powers as a gofer, a waitress, a piano player, a clerk typist, or whatever else they might require. I had no idea promotions would be so scarce.

“My first two thousand years, I swore that if I ever achieved real power, I would humble the nation that destroyed my city. But that nation fell and will not rise again.

The next two thousand, I vowed to raise up an empire that would outdo Uruk in its atrocities and teach all mankind a lesson. But I have seen atrocities beyond number forgotten before the corpses cooled.” Her eyes, dark with eons of rage and resentment, lowered to Howard’s. “Now you appear on my doorstep offering whatever I desire.”

Overcome by an awareness of how far out of his depth he had swum, Howard hastily said, “Within reason, of course.”

“Reason? You are already so far beyond reason that, without my aid, you couldn’t find your way back if you dedicated your entire life to it.” The hatcheck girl sat down at a table that had been planed from a single slab of oak and poured herself a glass of amber liqueur from a crystal decanter. “All I want is to escape. That’s not too much to ask, I trust?”

“No! Not at all!” Howard cried, tremendously relieved.

“Good. My name is Shamkat. You probably won’t need to know that, but just in case. Give me the cards.” She riffled through them swiftly, handed him one.

“Him,” she said. “He knows where all the bodies are buried.”

THE BLACK LAMA.

Karma Adjusted, Retribution Deferred, Justice Baffled Holy as Shit

When he looked up, Howard and the hatcheck girl were in a swan boat like those in the Boston Public Garden. It floated in black waters within what looked to be a Gothic cathedral. Candles f lickered and guttered and dripped wax in every stone niche and cranny, though he could not see how even the most agile climber could have set all of them in place. The leaded glass windows had patterns he could not make out because the glass was black.

“Even here I am found,” someone sighed.

Howard twisted around in his chair. At the controls of the boat was he whom they had come to see.

At first glance, the Black Lama looked like every Asian holy man in every racist movie ever made: wispy white Van Dyke, owlish expression, a robe with sleeves wide enough to hide an AK-47 inside. But when he met the ancient’s eyes, Howard instantly whipped his head away, heart pounding furiously, for the lama was as much like a human being as a tiger was like a mouse.

Fighting back terror, Howard said, “We came here—”

“Please.” The Black Lama held up a hand. “I know your banal little quest and how it will end as well. The Universe indeed! When will one of you come looking for something worth having? Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question. My price is stiff but I already know you will pay it. The one you seek is in Paris—the 7th arrondisse-ment, to be precise. With the giraffe wrangler.”

“Mimi said something about a giraffe wrangler.”

“It is a code name. For a very dangerous woman.”

“How dangerous?” Shamkat asked.

“When you unexpectedly materialize in her presence, she will without hesitation shoot the boring man twice—once fatally, the second time for insult. She will then Universe Box

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September/October 2017
immobilize you with bullets through your first and fourth chakras and report you to middle management, requesting that you be docked two weeks’ pay.”

“The bitch!”

“You are gambling for high stakes, which necessarily entails risk. As for the nonen-tity—were I in his place, I would simply go home.” He addressed Howard directly:

“There are plenty of f ish in the sea, young man, and none of them love you. Your Mimi is nobody special. Find someone else to make miserable.”

Howard flushed red. “You’re the worst excuse for a holy man I ever met,” he said.

“And you, I am sure, are the worst whatever-you-are. Your possession of the vaccine notwithstanding. But no matter. My work is done. You may hand me my calling card.”

“Why?”

“For payment.”

“Not yet,” Shamkat said. “First, I want your soul.”

“That old thing? I hid it in an egg in a hen in a well on an island in an ocean half the world away. It may not be easy to find. But I can give you the GPS coordinates, if you wish.”

“Yeah, right. As if you’d hide something that valuable where you couldn’t keep watch over it. Try again, boyo.”

The Black Lama snarled silently, then pointed. “Fourth candle to the right. Up seventeen.”

Shamkat scrambled, nimble as a monkey, up the cathedral wall, tipped over a candle, and made a sharp cry of delight and pain. She held up a stone, gleaming darkest red in the candlelight. Blood dripped from her hand.

“Careful,” the Black Lama said, smirking, “it’s sharp.” Then, after Shamkat had climbed back down, “My payment.” When she handed over the card, he put it into his robes. “Let the bastard try to find me now!” he exulted.

And then the Black Lama was gone.

“That went better than I expected.” Shamkat tucked away the leaf-shaped gem and wrapped a handkerchief around her hand to stanch the bleeding.

“What did you want his soul for?”

“It’s sharp and pointy, and that’s always useful when dealing with folks who are hard to kill.”

“Kill? Nobody said anything about killing anybody.”

Shamkat grabbed Howard’s shirt with both fists and lifted him just high enough that his feet didn’t touch the ground. “Do you love the girl? Maybe yes, maybe no. But if you’re not a man who loves a woman so much that he’ll sacrifice anything and anybody for her, then who the fuck are you? Eh?”

“I . . .”

“You ignorant little nullity. Without me, you don’t get your fiancée back. Without your fiancée, you don’t recover the Universe. And if the Universe stays lost for much longer, the Demiurge will come after it. Do you think your world would survive that?” The hatcheck girl let Howard go. His feet hit the ground with a startled thump. “Are you following me?”

Unhappily, Howard said, “Yes.”

Shamkat extracted a card from the bundle and handed it to Howard. “Last stop before the main event. Read!”

He read.

Waylandia Smith

Armorer

Please Do Not Contact

54

Michael Swanwick

Asimov’s

Wherever they were now was uncomfortably warm. Shadows filled vast spaces lit only by the fires of an occasional open kiln or furnace. What walls could be seen were of rough stone.

A burly woman dropped an anvil at the sight of Howard and Shamkat. She wore work boots, leather trousers, a heavy leather apron, and nothing else. Her skin was scorched black and her head singed almost hairless. The muscles on her arms were beyond belief, as were the silvery scars crisscrossing her body. “No tours!” she barked. “No solicitors, no street artists, no questing, no wronged individuals looking for revenge, their own true love, or long-lost heirs. Beat it.”

“It’s not who we are,” said Howard, who fancied he was beginning to learn how to handle such extravagant individuals, “but what we can offer you.”

The giantess scooped up the anvil one-handed and f lung it. If Shamkat hadn’t grabbed Howard out of the way, it would have pulverized him. As it was, she nearly tore his arm out of its socket.

“You know me, armorer,” Shamkat said as the anvil bounced and rattled to a stop.

“Or, rather, you know who I work for. You will therefore not be surprised to learn that I know that the one thing you want most is the formula for Greek fire.”

A wistful look entered the armor’s eyes. “Pyr thalássion. I saw it burning on the water off the coast of Ruthenia once, but . . . how can you possibly know its formulation?”

“I don’t. No one does. The secret was lost in the fall of Byzantium. But I know how to recover it.” Shamkat began talking, steadily and convincingly, of Uncle Paulie’s cigar box and the access it afforded to all space and time.

When she was done, Waylandia said, “I have better chemical weapons, of course.

But the romance of Greek fire! There’s never been a more beloved incendiary in all of history. Napalm doesn’t even come close.”

“We’re going up against the giraffe wrangler,” Shamkat said. “We’ll need armor.”

“Yes.” The armorer turned to Howard. “Take off your shirt,” she said.

Howard obliged. There was a silence.

“Huh,” Waylandia said at last. “Not bad.”

“I work out at the gym.”

“Of course you do,” Shamkat said. Waylandia snickered.

Howard’s ears burned. “Hey! If you—”

“Hush.” The armorer handed him a metal plate, padded on one side and the size of his hand, with straps attached to its three edges. “Place this over your heart.” When he had done so, she tugged the plate half an inch to the left and strapped it in place.

“Now, trousers.” She strapped another piece of padded metal, very much like an ath-letic cup, over Howard’s vulnerable parts. “When she shoots you, it’s going to hurt like hades and maybe splinter a few ribs. But you’ll be alive, and her attention will be on Gofer Girl. Act then.”

“He’ll need a weapon,” Shamkat said.

“The vaccine’s not enough?”

“He doesn’t know how to use it.”

Waylandia shrugged and produced a gun. “This is a Glock 21. Reliable, light-weight, packs a .45 round. There are ten bullets in the clip, but if you don’t take her down with the first, I doubt the others will matter. Tuck it into the back of your belt and put your shirt back on.” She picked up two handfuls of chain mail and turned to Shamkat. “Strip down. These go over your undies and under your clothes. You dress shapeless, so it won’t be obvious.”

“A metal bikini. Really?”

“When she shoots you, ham it up. That will give Joe Sixpack time enough to take a shot at her.” To Howard: “Make it count.”

“How can you possibly know all this?” Howard asked.

Universe Box

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September/October 2017

“It’s my business.”

As she was donning her armor, Shamkat said, “One more thing.” She held up the Black Lama’s soul. “I want this placed in the tip of a dagger.”

“Huh. Ain’t seen one of these for a long time. Now where did I—?” The armorer went into the shadows and returned with what looked like the skeleton of a knife.

She snapped the gemstone into place so that it formed the cutting tip of a blade defined by gleaming arcs of silver. It looked lethal.

“What is that for?” Howard said. “Are you going to kill the giraffe wrangler with it if I fail?”

“Maybe.” Shamkat riffled through the cards one last time. “Do your part, and you’ll be a big hero to little Mimi.”

“I honestly don’t think that Mimi would like—”

Shamkat looked ready to kill him. “Your girlfriend is in danger, you twit! She’s probably hysterical with fear. Weeping. Tied up with ropes.” She paused for emphasis. “Sexy ropes. The kind men like.” She handed him a pasteboard rectangle.

Gloria Wunderly
giraffe wrangler
rates on request

Howard found himself in an apartment with an obviously expensive view of the rooftops of Paris and, beyond them, the Eiffel Tower. A rotund but competent-looking woman was simultaneously turning to face him and raising a gun toward his heart. All he had to do was catch two bullets and, believing him incapacitated, she would turn away to confront Shamkat. There would be just enough time to snatch the Glock from his belt and shoot her. At this distance, he could hardly miss.

Or so he had been told.

But Howard had been thinking. He knew that no one, himself included, had ever believed him capable of serious thought. But danger brought out unsuspected qualities. So, instead of sticking with the plan, he f lung out his arms in surrender and said, “I only want to talk.”

Gloria held her gun pointed at Howard’s heart, but did not shoot. In a pleasant voice she said, “You were in the orgy at the nightclub. I remember you made little grunty noises, like a pig.”

Howard blushed yet again. “That was a mistake. I was drunk and—”

“Oh, piffle. You enjoyed it. I could tell. But let’s get to business. You have a gun in your butt. Are you going to draw it and try to shoot me or is it just there for fun?”

Howard took a long, deep breath. “I’m going to draw it out slowly and place it on the floor.” When he had done so, he said, “I have something you want.”

“I don’t want anything. That’s what enlightenment is all about,” Gloria said.

Adding, “Shamkat, if you think you can kill me before I shoot you three times in the face, go ahead and try. But your bosses won’t let you die, and the damage will take a long time to heal.”

“Crap.” Shamkat’s dagger—the one with the Black Lama’s soul in its tip—disappeared from her hand.

“You say you don’t want anything,” Howard said, talking fast lest Gloria lost interest. “But the Universe is a big place and contains many things. For example.” He showed her the vial he had just drawn from his pocket. “I happen to have a vaccine against sin. I can see that you want it. Let’s make a deal.”

Gloria clearly recognized the vial. “A specific against human folly? One that can be used to immunize the entire human race against all its worst impulses?”

Howard thought. Why not? “Sure.”

56

Michael Swanwick

Asimov’s

“And all you want for it is Mimi?”

“Yes.”

“Then it’s a deal. She should be here in three . . . two . . . one . . .”

The door opened and Mimi rushed into the apartment, cheeks red from the cold.

“I got the job!” she cried. Then, seeing Howard, “Oh.”

Confronted with a Mimi so unlike the one he had conjured up in his imagination—
no tears, no ropes, no look of newborn love in her eyes—Howard found himself too deflated to speak. But Gloria suffered no such disadvantage. “You’ve been rescued, dear. Your boyfriend offered me a bribe I could not refuse.”

Arms crossed, Mimi listened. Then she said, “Let me see if I understand,” She snatched the vial from Howard’s hand. “No more sin, no more folly. No more free will, right? No more lust, no more children, is that it? Of course it is. What would be the point? You’re talking about the extinction of the human race. Or have I misread the implications here?”

Howard flinched. “I, uh, I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Don’t forget that we’ll die off in a state of grace.” Gloria smiled beatifically. “In the long run, that’s all that really matters.”

Mimi’s lips grew thin and white. She marched into the kitchenette, placed the vial into the microwave, and hit High. A few seconds later, there was a quiet pop from within the machine. “Now,” Mimi addressed Howard directly, “just what are you doing here?”

Realizing how little Mimi would like being told that he’d been expecting to rescue her, Howard said, “Well, I sort of . . . misplaced the Universe, you see. It was in the box Uncle Paulie showed us in the nightclub, and he told me to hide it, and I . . . was maybe a little drunk. He, uh, sent me to find you.”

“He did, did he? Why doesn’t he just ask me himself ?” Mimi went to a closet and opened the door. “You might as well come out, Uncle Paulie. I know you’re in there.”

Sheepishly, Uncle Paulie emerged.

“Not a word. Take us back to Howard’s apartment,” Mimi said. “Gloria can stay here. She’s not needed anymore.”

Shamkat handed the bundle of cards to Uncle Paulie. He handed one to Howard: HOWARD PENDLETON
nobody in particular

Philadelphia

So they were back where it had all begun. Mimi drew a sheet of paper from her clutch, crossed out something, scribbled a word above it, and laid the paper down on the kitchen table. “I was going to leave this for somebody else. But it fits you just as well,” she told Howard. She went to the door. Over her shoulder, she said, “You hid it under your bed. It was the single most obvious place you could have put it, so of course that’s what you did.”

She left.

“That girl has spunk,” Uncle Paulie said. “Am I the only one who noticed that?”

“No,” Howard said glumly.

“Well, much energy and no matter.” Uncle Paulie went into the bedroom, redolent of dying roses, got down on his knees, and groped under the bed. “Ah! Here it—”

Without warning, Shamkat leaped upon him, plunging her dagger into his back.

With all the grace of a side of beef falling off a truck onto the Interstate, Uncle Paulie crashed flat on the floor, undeniably dead. By one outstretched hand, the cigar box lay, lid open. Galaxies and nebulae glimmered in its depths.

“What have you done?” Howard cried.

Universe Box

57

September/October 2017

Shamkat turned a savage face on him. “All my life I’ve been trapped. In an empire that killed my family. In a job I hated. In a Universe I despised. Now I have my cage before me. At last I can destroy it!”

She raised her foot high and brought it down hard on the box.

But as her foot descended, it grew smaller, and the rest of her leg with it. Thrown off balance, Shamkat toppled forward, tumbling, dwindling, into the box. She screamed and as her body diminished to the size of a pebble, a speck, a memory, so too did the scream, growing smaller in volume and higher in pitch until it was nothing but an unheard tension in the air.

Uncle Paulie got up, groped around his back, and pulled out the dagger.

Because he could think of nothing else, Howard said, “I thought you were dead.”

“I was. Then I brought myself back to life. It’s a thing I know how to do.” Uncle Paulie’s eyes twinkled. Then he tapped the folded paper sheet on the kitchen table. “I think it’s time you read this.”

Dear Gloria, the note had originally begun. But Mimi had crossed out the assassin’s name. It now read:

Dear Howard,

It was pleasant enough spending time with you, but I’m moving on.

Don’t come looking for me. If you succeed, I’ll have to kill you. I know you don’t believe I could do that. But I’m not the woman you took me for. Not anymore. I have absolutely no doubt who would be left standing at the end of the confrontation. I know what you’re thinking. If I’m so sure of myself, why aren’t I making money off of it? No disrespect, but what is money?

And wish me luck! I’m going to become a giraffe wrangler.

Mimi

Howard had never read anything so blithe and final in his life. When he was done reading, he cried for a very long time.

“Ashes to ashes and tit for tat,” Uncle Paulie said when he was finally done. “Do you remember playing London Bridge as a child? This is the price of being alive. We all fall down at the end.”

“Not you,” Howard said resentfully.

“Even me.” Uncle Paulie put an avuncular arm about Howard’s shoulders and squeezed. “Why do you think I behave the way I do? I’m as much a victim as you are.

Only, in stark contrast to you, I’m having fun on the way down.” He thrust two fingers into his mouth and whistled so loudly that Howard flinched. Something large and brown scuttled out from under the bed—the world’s largest cockroach, Howard thought for an instant. But then it reared up on two of its four legs and revealed itself to be Dan Scratch.

“Did everything work out well, Boss?” he asked.

“Yes, yes, fine.”

“And my service?”

“Impeccable as usual.” Uncle Paulie handed the dapper little man the dagger that Shamkat had used to kill him. “Here’s your payment. I know you’ll put it to good use.

Oh, and when you see him, tell the Black Lama I kept a duplicate of his card. He doesn’t get free of me as easily as all that.”

“Will do, Big Guy.” The little man bowed deeply and was gone.

Now there were only the two of them, Howard and his uncle.

“This was all a put-up job, wasn’t it? You were responsible for everything, from Mimi’s kidnapping to Shamkat’s falling into the box.” It was all so obvious to him now. His uncle smiled benevolently. “Uncle Paulie . . . Aunt Polly . . . whoever you are 58

Michael Swanwick

Asimov’s

. . . out of all the people in all the planets in the universe you could have descended upon . . . why me?”

“Opposites attract, dear child. You were dead inside. So I reached out to give you a spark of life. That’s all. How could I not help you, loving you as I do?”

The world went still, black and white, grainy, unvarying, and tenuous. Then, just like all the others, Uncle Paulie was gone.

The adventure, if that’s what it had been, was over. Howard’s quest to win back Mimi had been an abject failure. And now, after all had been said and done, what was there for him to do? He looked at the clock. It was three a.m.

It was time—indeed long past time—for him to go to bed.

But before he did, Howard walked out into the city night, leaving his apartment door unlocked and open behind him, only to discover that in his absence it had begun to snow. The flakes came slanting down from the north, hurrying through the air, pausing in mid-flight to dance about the streetlights and traffic signals, creating white and red and yellow and green halos that diminished the farther away they were. But through some minor miracle of meteorology, though the clouds were heavy on all sides, a dwindling patch of sky overhead was clear as glass and thronged with stars. Howard gaped up at them, breathing in fugitive flakes, feeling tiny bursts of ice implode on his tongue and deep within his lungs, and in a moment of sudden lu-cidity realized that it didn’t matter whether he ever got together with Mimi again or not. He could die right now and it wouldn’t make any difference. Hearts were broken every day and mended themselves every bit as reliably. Lives went on, grew tedious, underwent unexpected renewals, changed direction for no discernable reason, lingered beyond their natural spans, came to abrupt ends. In the meantime, the night was cold and holy, the air as pure and exhilarating as antique wine, the stars as thick as snowflakes and every snowflake as large as any star. ❍

Universe Box

59

Carrie Vaughn is best known for her New York Times bestselling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty who hosts a talk radio show for the supernaturally disadvantaged. Her latest novels include a near-Earth space opera,

Martians Abroad, from Tor Books, and a post-apocalyptic murder mystery, Bannerless, from John Joseph Adams Books.

She’s written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upward of eighty short stories. The author is a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared world superhero books edited by George R.R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com. While Carrie’s previous Asimov’s
stories have been SF—in a nod to our annual slightly spooky fall issue—her latest tale introduces us to . . .

DEAD

MEN IN

CENTRAL CITY

Carrie Vaughn

Horses were the most unreliable, most unfortunate creatures ever to walk the Earth. And yet, Ricardo was immensely sad that his was gone. He and his pretty tamed Mustang mare, Bandita, had been back and forth across the west for six years, and now she’d taken a bad step—a hole, a sharp rock, he hadn’t been able to figure out which—fallen down a hillside, and broken not one but two legs.

Traveling on horseback through the Rockies at night, accidents happened. His own neck had snapped in the fall, twisting wrong when Bandita came down on top of him. He’d heard the crack. Half an hour of lying still and staring at treetops healed him well enough. But she was mortal. The whole time, he’d listened to Bandita groan in pain, working herself into a sweat as she struggled to stand and fell back again, her broken legs unable to support her. Once he was upright, he’d done the only kind thing he could and ended it for her with his .45. He lay next to her for a time, taking 60

Asimov’s
in her last warmth and working to remember her, because she deserved to be remembered. Coiled up a couple strands of hair from her tail because he wasn’t sure why. Just that he had a braided band made up of tail hairs from all the horses he’d cared about over the centuries.

He gathered what gear he could carry, saddlebags and blankets, left her to the scavengers and moved on. The sky was turning gray, dawn was close, and he desperately needed a place to bed down for the day. He was in the middle of forest, miles from the next town with no sign of shelter anywhere.

He did not panic. He’d lasted this long and been caught in more unlikely situations than this. He could always find someplace out of the sun if he just took a moment and looked. Around here, plenty of mine shafts were dug into the rock, out of the light, if he could f ind one. The fall had turned him around a bit, but if he remembered right there were plenty of small towns between here and Denver. Maybe not much more than miners’ cabins and a general store, but they’d do.

Finding high ground, he paused and took a deep breath, tasting every scent that came to him. Felt eddies in the air, sensed creatures that had passed this way, and knew what might be waiting for him over the next hill. He found prey, a concentra-tion of warm human blood rising. More than blood, he smelled the smoke of wood and coal fires, masonry and painted wood. The collected smell of horses and livestock kept in corrals. There was a whole town nearby.

Central City. Had to be. If he could get there in time, he might even be able to spend the day in a bed instead of a dank mineshaft. He tasted another breath, checked the direction, murmured a quiet prayer to the gray sky—he still prayed, taking it on faith that He was listening—and ran.

Trees blurred; the air turned to wind around him. He drew on some other force, a demonish power that f lowed into him from some unknown source. From the f irst he’d been suspicious of it—but he would use it when he had to. It meant he could run. A shadow in the night. If only it were night.

His last bit of borrowed blood turned sluggish in the growing light. He didn’t have long. He kept to shaded gulches and gullies—away from the hilltops that would get the first rays of morning sun.

He could smell the town, sense people waking up with the dawn. He might or might not make it. At this moment the only creature more unfortunate than his horse was very likely him.

Then, coming around the next gulch, down the next slope, he found a road. Not much of one—dirt packed down by wagon wheels and dozens of horses. Not a main route, this probably went up to mining claims in the hills. But the way opened up.

Just a few more minutes, a few more yards of speed—

And there it was. The mining boomtown of Central City, tucked in the mountains above Denver and looking to Ricardo’s eyes like a beacon of civilization. Two main streets intersected each other; another dozen side streets ran off from them. Solid rows of buildings three and four stories tall lined up. Maybe not pretty, not sturdy—the town had grown from nothing in just a few years after all—but it made a good showing.

One storefront had light shining through the windows, faint with the dawn but still visible. The sign said “saloon” and “rooms to let.” There, he’d go there.

The edges of the peaks sheltering the town lit with golden sun. Ricardo didn’t look, he just moved, drawing the very last bit of life in him, very nearly flying down the main street to the saloon door, stumbling inside and slamming it behind him, as the light outside grew.

Inside seemed darker than it should, the lanterns weak and the furniture brown and stained. The mirror behind the bar was dusty. But there were people here, a few who’d stayed up all night drinking and playing cards. They might continue through the day.

Dead Men in Central City

61

September/October 2017

Three men at a faro table, another at the bar. One behind the bar who might have been the proprietor, and at the back door a matronly looking woman who seemed to be just getting started for the day. For the most part, despite their tired eyes and roughshod appearances, they smelled good. Full of warm blood, and he was hungry.

Except—the man behind the faro table smelled ill.

They all glanced up at him and stared. Ricardo imagined he looked a mess. At the best of times he presented a handsome, aristocratic figure, with dark hair, a firm jaw and fine nose. But now he was dusty, grimy, and probably had a panicked gleam in his eyes. He noticed a spatter of blood on his beige shirt from shooting Bandita, and his dark pants were torn. He looked like a man in trouble.

He reminded himself to breathe, so as to appear normal. Straightening, he settled his saddlebags firmly over his shoulder and convinced himself—and the rest of the room, he hoped—that he knew what he was doing.

Stepping up to the bar, he told the man, “I’d like a room. One without windows if you have it. Or a corner of the cellar if you don’t.” He set coins on the polished surface of the bar.

The barman stared at him. Swallowed visibly and stammered. “We . . . I mean . . .

what do you mean . . . no windows?”

“I mean I’m sensitive to the light. No windows.”

“I—I’m sorry. We’re all full up.”

“You are not all full up, Frank. Sell the man a room, why don’t you.” The faro dealer spoke with an accent—light, lilting, southern.

The barman really couldn’t seem to decide what to do. He glanced back and forth between Ricardo and the dealer like one of them was holding a gun to his head, but he didn’t know which. Ricardo didn’t have time for this—he couldn’t look that terrible, could he? Surely a town like this had seen worse.

Fine. They couldn’t do this politely, Ricardo would manage in his own way. He leaned in; Frank gripped the edge of the wood, almost as if he knew what was coming. He watched Ricardo, which made it very easy for Ricardo to catch his gaze. Catch his gaze and fall into it, grabbing hold of a corner of the man’s will and twisting.

“You’d like to give me a room with no windows. You have something for me, don’t you? My money’s good here. You’re happy to help out.” He spoke low, persuasively, and his words filled the man, whose gaze softened. He nodded with understanding.

“We’ve got . . . something. Not much of a room. More like a closet. But it ain’t got windows.”

“That’d be fine. I’ll take it, and I want to be left alone.”

“Right. Sure. Upstairs. Second door on the left.”

“And no one will bother me.”

“Of course not, sir. Of course.” He reached under the counter for a key and slid it across the bar. Ricardo took it gratefully. Only a few more moments and he could collapse. Worry about blood tomorrow.

He turned to the stairs, and out of the corner of his eye saw the faro dealer nod to his players, stand, and nonchalantly make his way over, as if he just happened to want a stroll across the room at that moment, and they just happened to meet at the base of the stairs. The man glanced into the tumbler of whiskey he held, swirling the amber liquid. He also held a handkerchief, which he’d coughed into a couple of times already. Lungs rotting from the inside out—Ricardo could smell it.

Ricardo waited. The man obviously wanted to say something.

“Remind me never to sit down to cards with you, sir,” he said f inally. His grin seemed amused.

So, the faro dealer noticed that, did he? Ricardo hadn’t planned on playing cards; most games of chance weren’t, and he wasn’t interested. But did this man really 62

Carrie Vaughn

Asimov’s

“I started writing short stories and sending them out to magazines when I was sixteen. I was going to be an amazing science fiction writer, you see. Stunning.

People would read my stories and be astonished at my genius. So of course I started at the top of the pile, the best of the best, the magazine that everyone read, that produced multiple award winners year after year, the magazine with the name of one of the greatest SF writers of all time in the title: Asimov’s Science Fiction.

“That first story got rejected, but that was okay because my second one was better. That one got rejected, too. So did the next. And the next. And . . . it turns out, at age sixteen I had a lot of hubris, but still needed to work on my writing. A lot.

“Eventually, I started making sales, landed book contracts, became a real actual science fiction writer, and I kept submitting stories to Asimov’s, because that was still the top of the pile, the badge of honor. Placing a story there would put me in the company of my favorite authors, the very best in the field. And seventeen years after that very first submission, I finally placed a story with Asimov’s. That felt great.

The only thing more satisfying than making that first sale to Asimov’s? Making the second one.”

—Carrie Vaughn
understand what he had seen? The hair on the back of Ricardo’s neck stood up.

“I’m not much for cards myself.”

“Your wisdom impresses me.”

The gambler stood out with his precise way of speaking, his polite bearing, and his f ine clothes. Shirt starched, jacket pressed, tie neatly knotted. He drew the eye, a calm pool in the grungy saloon. A man like him didn’t have to go out and dirty himself in the mines and the town, when people would come to him and hand over their money.

“Thank you, Mr.—”

“Doctor, if you please, sir. Doctor John Holliday.” The handkerchief disappeared in a pocket, and he held out a hand for shaking.

Ricardo knew that name. Everyone knew that name. “A pleasure.”

“The pleasure is mine. Gratifying, meeting a fellow man of manners way out here.”

“Indeed. My name is Ricardo Avila.”

“You are from Mexico?”

“Spain.” Really, though, he’d only spent the first eighteen years of his life in Spain, and the next two centuries in Mexico. He sometimes said the latter, when the situation warranted. In this place, he judged it would be better to be from Spain. “Though I have not been back there in some time.”

“Won’t you have a drink with me, sir? I suspect you have some fine tales to tell of your recent travels.” He gestured at his whiskey, nodded to a chair, and Ricardo lamented that it was sunrise. He was dead on his feet, nearly.

“My deep apologies, sir. I need to rest after the night I’ve had. Can I take up your invitation tonight?”

“Just after sunset, maybe?” Holliday suggested.

And wasn’t this ominous? Ricardo had to remember to draw breath in order to answer, “That’ll do nicely.”

“Tonight then, sir.”

Holliday watched him rush up the stairs.

As he was informed, the closet had a bed, a chair, barely enough room to navigate around both—and no windows. Ricardo locked the door, propped the chair in front of it for good measure, and collapsed just as the coming day pulled him out of consciousness. Somehow, he’d made it through another night.

Dead Men in Central City

63

September/October 2017

Hours later, the sun set, and he awoke in darkness uncertain where he was until he retraced his steps. He’d had to kill Bandita. He’d managed to f ind shelter. And Doc Holliday was dealing faro in the saloon downstairs.

Well then.

His veins burned, his mind throbbed. He didn’t get hungry, but his heart gaped, empty. He’d gone several days without new blood. The situation would not stand—
he could feel every heart in the place. The saloon had filled with patrons. He didn’t just hear their voices echoing against the floorboards. He could hear their hot, beating hearts, and he wanted them all.

He had not lasted this long by not being very careful at times like these.

Even without windows or a lantern, he could see a little. He straightened his clothing, rubbed a hand on his stubbled face. He needed to get cleaned up. He took the chair away and carefully opened the door to look out in the hallway. Fortunately, he only had to wait a moment before the matronly woman from last night appeared, climbing up the stairs.

“Oh sir! You’re awake! Been waiting to hear from you—you were quiet as the dead in there.”

“No doubt,” he said. “If I could trouble you for a few things? A lantern maybe, some water?”

“Sure thing, give me just a minute.”

He learned that her name was Hannah O’Shea, she was the barman’s wife, and they made a decent living running this place. When she came to set a basin and lantern on the chair, which was also a washstand apparently, Ricardo carefully closed the door behind her. She turned at the sound, and he caught her gaze. Murmured words of comfort until she drifted into a stupor, settling on the bed as if she slept. He took her wrist and drank from it.

Not much. Not enough to do serious harm. A few swallows of rich blood, which filled him with fire and life. The burning in his veins settled, the thirst quenched.

Hannah might be a little dizzy for the evening, but he held her gaze and reassured her that all was well, she just needed to drink some water and eat a little something, it was probably the heat made her feel a little off. She agreed, apologizing for nodding off like that, and he gently sent her off to the rest of her business.

It was not a perfect system, but it worked well enough in emergencies. He could now safely move among the saloon’s patrons without fear of losing himself. Time was, he had friends who knew what he was and were willing to offer up some of their blood for him. He’d been so grateful—not just for the blood, but for the companion-ship. Now—he’d been alone in the wilderness too long.

Denver. Denver would be different.

He washed, shaved, put on his spare shirt—smelled a little of horse, but he aired it out the best he could. Put on his coat. He trusted he made a presentable enough picture.

At last, he emerged. He probably didn’t look too awful.

The saloon was exactly what he expected, full of miners and cowboys, workmen and itinerants f inishing their day by drinking and gambling the money they’d earned. The place was popular, the bar and tables full. Several card games were in progress—and yes, Holliday was still at the table against the far wall. A crowd two deep gathered to watch. Man had a reputation, after all.

Ricardo sidled up to lean against the bar, to take stock of the place, to think for a minute about what he needed to do next. Get a horse, get to Denver, settle in. Place like this ought to be just a stop on the road. But he was intrigued. He’d met legends before and knew he was seeing something special.

“Get you a drink?” asked the barman—Frank, Ricardo remembered.

“Whiskey,” Ricardo said. “Just a bit.” He didn’t drink—not in the usual sense, 64

Carrie Vaughn

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anyway—but it was good to have something in hand to blend in. Frank poured him a shot, and Ricardo had a thought. He asked, “How long has Holliday been in town?”

“Just a few days. On his way to Leadville, I hear, but there’s plenty of action in town, he decided to stay for a few.”

“And you get the usual cut?”

He grinned happily, and Ricardo thought about all those miners and prospectors working to get rich at entirely the wrong end of things.

Ricardo leaned in. “You have any work needs doing around here? I’m looking to earn some cash before I head out. And I wouldn’t mind sticking around to see the action.”

The barman nodded in perfect understanding. He could charge admission to watch Holliday deal faro. “Been a little short handed. What all can you do?”

“Anything,” Ricardo said.

“Tend bar? Clean the place? Deal with riff raff ?”

“Oh yes,” Ricardo said, a curl on his lip. He didn’t even have to catch the man’s gaze and twist his will to make him believe. Holliday brought in business, but he brought in trouble, too, and they were trying to balance the both. A strong young man behind the bar might help with keeping folk in line.

So, Ricardo had a job.

Four nights in, Ricardo had become familiar, part of the furniture. He’d demonstrated his value to Frank—after that first shot of whiskey, he didn’t take another drink. Nothing better than a sober barman. He’d stopped two fights already without fuss or trouble. Just grabbed the miscreants by their collars, looked them in the eyes, and walked them out the door. Had a knack for it, Frank observed happily, and gave Ricardo a bonus both times it happened. If regular folk felt safe in his place, they’d come spend their money.

Ricardo could bend this whole town to his will. Gather to himself a whole collection of servants who worshipped him. This was what his kind normally did, what they were made to do.

He’d heard the arguments, and he did not like them. He didn’t want servants; he wanted friends, just a few. But they died so quickly, and the older he got the quicker they died. More than three centuries, and the paradox of his existence was still revealing itself to him.

Holliday was always at his table when Ricardo emerged for the night, and rarely retired before he did. Coughing kept him awake, he said, and if he was awake he might as well be making money. Every couple of hours he’d come to the bar to refill his drink, and he’d talk. Each night, a little more.

“I have heard of some folk having a sensitivity to sunlight,” Holliday said, drinking off the last from his tumbler and holding it out for more. Ricardo obliged. “Your condition appears to be most severe.”

They had done this dance for four days. Somehow, Holliday knew what he was and seemed to be watching for bodies stashed under the bar and studying Ricardo’s mouth for a glimpse of telltale fangs. But Ricardo was very careful.

“I manage,” he said. He could always find a man or two in back sleeping it off. A couple of girls he could pay for an hour of company. None of them remembered what he did to them. He never drank from anyone twice. He was able to gather some strength before the next leg of his journey. “As a medical man, you must see that kind of thing a lot.”

“Oh, not so much. You have to know what to look for.”

“And of course, you do.”

The man’s moustache shifted as he grinned. “Of course.”

Dead Men in Central City

65

September/October 2017

“It’s a topic you’re interested in, I gather.”

“Certainly. I’ve heard such good stories. Like yours. Traveling ’cross the Rockies on horseback at night? Why ever would you do such a thing?”

“The train was all booked up.” In fact, the train had been watched, and he couldn’t risk getting cornered. After what had happened on this trip, he might risk it next time.

Holliday chuckled. “I can tell you are a man who always finds a way. A survivor.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “I am that.”

“Any advice? For someone who might like to survive?” He waved a hand in a casual gesture, and Ricardo had a strange thought. Holliday was dying, that was clear.

Cough by cough, his life ebbed. Ricardo could smell it, a miasma that hung about him—unlike everyone else in the room, he didn’t smell like food.

He had no advice. Not really. “I keep to myself. Try not to bother anyone.”

“And if they bother you?”

Ricardo glanced at Holliday sidelong. Holliday had never once met his gaze. He looked in his glass, he studied the crowd, traced the grain in the wood of the bar. But he knew better than to look in Ricardo’s eyes. Ricardo just about came straight out to ask, how? How did he know?

“Well then,” Ricardo said. “I send them on their way as politely as I can.”

“Amen, sir.”

Ricardo had been in Central City for ten days when he figured it was time he moved on. Holliday had made noise about doing likewise. As fascinating as this stop had been, as much as he was sure there were more stories to learn, Ricardo was starting to get a reputation, and people were starting to know him. This was too small a place for that to be healthy. He’d been through about as much of his food supply as he could without doubling up and raising questions. Best to get a horse and head on out.

One more night, he decided. One more night of watching Holliday, of watching people watch Holliday, and then maybe he’d have his own story to tell about the man.

Holliday had been dealing for an hour or so already. His regulars and more than a few folk passing through surrounded his table and took part in the action. The night was perfectly normal. Which made it all the more jarring when a chair clattered back as a man stood up from the faro table and shouted, “You cheat! You’re a lying cheat!”

A young cowboy type stood pointing at Doc Holliday. He was not a regular.

Ricardo set down the cloth he’d been using to wipe down glasses and moved around the bar. The room had gone still, conversation falling quiet, everyone looking over.

A space had formed around the table—a number of players took up their cash and rushed away, and they couldn’t be faulted for it. That left the cowboy type, a beard-less kid in boots, trousers, a plain shirt and bandana around his neck, sandy-colored hair brushing his ears, and a fiery look in his eyes. He wore two six-shooters in holsters on his belt.

Ricardo had a feeling this wasn’t about faro.

Holliday hadn’t moved. He sat straight as always in his chair, one hand holding his ubiquitous handkerchief, the other tapping on the box from which he’d apparently dealt a double, if Ricardo read the board right. Banker won half the stakes on a double, and Ricardo wondered how many pairs Holliday had dealt out of that box. Didn’t really matter, faro was an easy game to cheat at, and in any case you didn’t just stand up and call Holliday a cheater. At least, most folks didn’t.

“Might you repeat yourself, sir? I don’t think everyone heard you clear enough,”

Holliday said, leaning back.

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“You cheat! You fixed the deck!”

The corner of Holliday’s lip curled up. “You’ve been betting so little, how do you even notice you’ve lost?”

The cowboy looked like he wanted to lunge across the table at him, but he restrained himself. Ricardo watched, fascinated.

“Doesn’t it bother you? Me calling you a cheater?”

“Boy, I’ve been called so much worse. You seem quaint to me.”

The young man snarled. But still, he didn’t start the fight Ricardo was sure was coming. He was ready to grab whichever fist shot out first.

“Doesn’t this blowhard bother any of y’all?” the cowboy called out to the rest of the room, to his fellow players who’d pressed even farther away. “You sit here every night and let him take your money! Why!”

“Kid, you know who that is?” a voice hissed from the crowd, and the cowboy’s hard gaze turned straight back to Holliday. Of course he knew exactly who Holliday was.

It was why he’d come here, and his expression twisted, trying to come up with something to say that would get the gunfighter out of his chair.

Holliday read him right. He’d probably seen a dozen of these young hotheads in his time. Ricardo hoped Holliday would stay seated, tell the kid to simmer down. Maybe buy him a drink. Not egg him on, because something about this didn’t feel right. But alas.

“Your ploy is weak, sir,” Holliday said carefully, directing the words like gunfire. “If your intention is to get me out on that street to challenge me on some point of honor—
well, my honor’s not worth so much. You want to try against me you just need to ask.”

“Doctor,” Ricardo warned, moving close. The young cowboy had a kind of madness that told him that challenging Doc Holliday was a good idea. He wanted to be famous.

There were easier ways. Write a novel. Invade a country.

Holliday stilled his warning with a hand and a smile. He had his own madness—
the fearlessness of a man who was already dying. “I want to see what he’s going to do with his fine guns there, and his heap of pride.”

“All right then. I challenge you.” The cowboy spoke calmly, but a sheen of sweat glowed on his brow.

While the two men faced each other down, Ricardo glanced at the crowd. Everyone wanted to watch—this was a story they’d tell their grandchildren, for certain. But most of them didn’t want to get too close. Most held back—except for two other men, nondescript white men wearing respectable coats and laundered shirts with neat ties, boots that had seen miles, and holsters tucked away under coats. When the ex-citable gentleman challenged Holliday, these two each took half a step forward.

This was a trap, Ricardo was sure of it. The cowboy wouldn’t be so confident if he had come here alone.

Holliday pushed back from the table. “Not even a glove to throw down. These are fallen times, aren’t they?” When he flipped back the edge of his coat, a casual move meant to look like he was only straightening the garment after standing, he flashed a glimpse of his revolver. Everyone murmured. There was going to be a show.

The other two men had already left the room, ducking out by some other door in the commotion.

Holliday and his challenger marched together toward the front door like gladia-tors entering the arena. Not so far off, really. Ricardo took Holliday’s arm and pulled him aside. “He has two friends waiting outside for you. This won’t be a fair fight.”

Holliday clicked his tongue, as if disappointed but not surprised. “They never are.”

“But you’re still going.”

“I have a reputation to maintain.”

Ricardo blinked at him. “A reputation for what?”

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“Surviving.” He tipped his hat and winked at Ricardo, who decided he liked the man immensely.

* * *

Time was, a duelist would need a second, and Ricardo almost asked Holliday for that honor. But the lanky man marched to the middle of the street before he had a chance. Life in a young country was not so formal.

Didn’t mean Ricardo couldn’t do his part. He walked a little way down the street, steps crunching on dirt, and studied the surroundings. The tops of buildings, the hidden alleyways. For all his time in the west, in some of the roughest places one could ever tell tales about, Ricardo had never seen an actual gunfight. Not like this, with two faced off, hands at their sides, waiting for the draw. His pulse, if he’d had one, would have been racing.

Few souls came out to watch. Most stayed indoors, crowded at windows. No one wanted to get in the way of a stray bullet. Almost no one, anyway.

He used his nose, his eyes, his other senses, listening for every heartbeat, every spot of heat moving through the world around him. And there they were, easy to spot for someone like him: one of the men had climbed to the roof of the saloon and lay flat, invisible in the darkness. He aimed down the barrel of a rifle, right at Holliday.

The other was in an alley across the street, pressed into the shadows like his com-patriot. His pistol was still holstered—he was backup, then. Holliday had three men gunning for him, not one, and it stood to reason that the one on the roof wouldn’t wait for a polite count of three to fire.

The gunfighters’ breaths fogged in the chill night air. Ricardo’s did not.

He focused everything he could feel, everything he’d learned, all that power he’d struggled to understand and fed with blood. Blood was the price for what he was, and there were rewards he’d resisted in the early days. But he’d learned to use them well.

The man on the roof breathed slow and steady, his muscles tense, and Ricardo could just about feel the tension in his trigger finger, a muscle contracting, pulling on a ten-don. The man in the alley was calmer, just there to clean up whatever mess the others made. Ricardo would have to deal with him, but not f irst thing. With his eyes, he watched the tableau before him, Holliday and the cowboy who hadn’t even had the decency to introduce himself—he likely expected to live, to be able to tell everybody the name of the man who shot Doc Holliday. They were a good fifty paces apart, hands at their sides, each waiting for the other to flinch. The young one looked like he stood at the edge of a volcano; Doc Holliday smiled, his skin pale with illness until it almost glowed.

Once this started, it would go quickly, but Ricardo could move faster than any of them, and he wasn’t afraid. Another reward for the price he paid.

That trigger finger on the roof squeezed, and Ricardo stepped into the street. To observers he would look like a blur, a shadow that had detached itself from the night and somehow appeared to suddenly stand in front of Holliday. When they thought back on the moment, they would say that he had always been there—he must have come out to the street with Holliday, or maybe he had run to warn him. Something.

However it happened, he was there, and the bullet from the rifle struck him.

The shot pounded into his chest and he stumbled. Three more shots fired, cracks of thunder in his ears, pounding waves of force that struck the air and brushed against his skin. Three shots, and he looked to where they came from, where he must stand so that the bullets would strike him instead of Holliday.

But all three shots came from behind him, from Holliday.

First, the cowboy standing in front of them fell. He’d drawn, he’d gotten that far as soon as the shot rang out, but for all his bluster he was too late.

The man on the roof was next. He’d been aiming down the rifle for a second shot, probably wondering how the f irst had gone so far awry—obviously it had, since 68

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Holliday was still standing. But Holliday was at just the right angle to get him first.

He slumped over his weapon and lay splayed on the roof as if he had dropped there from the sky.

Holliday shot the cowboy, the man on the roof, and the one from the alley had just stepped out and raised his revolver when the last shot fired, and the man fell. He lay groaning for a short time, a strangled attempt to cry for help through blood bubbling up his throat. The sound a dying horse might make. Then he died, and that was that.

Holliday hadn’t moved, merely pivoted his arm, and killed them all in less time than it took to inhale.

Ricardo touched the place on his shirt that now had a hole in it, where a little bit of blood had stained the fabric. Then he adjusted his coat to hide the spot. Holliday, replacing his gun in its holster, saw him do this but made no mention of it.

“Hey! Hey, are you all right?”

A stout man with a bushy gray moustache came running up the street. He was the sheriff, a temperance man who never set foot in the saloon, but someone must have gone to get him when trouble broke out. He grabbed Ricardo’s shoulder, as if he expected him to fall over any minute now.

“I’m fine,” Ricardo said. “Thank you.”

“I could have sworn you got hit!”

“Just a bad angle,” Ricardo said. “He missed.”

“Thank goodness for that,” Holliday said.

The sheriff seemed both nervous and thrilled. “I’ve got a dozen witnesses say that man threatened you, Holliday. Not a person here would blame you for this. If I could just get a statement—from both of you—we’ll call this all finished.”

Holliday had clearly done this dance before. “I’m obliged to you, sir.”

They followed the sheriff back to his office.

A couple of hours later, Ricardo offered to buy Holliday a drink. They sat at a table in the corner, and after a round of excited congratulations and well wishes from the onlookers who’d witnessed the fight—and more than a few who wished they had—
they were left alone.

Holliday looked exhausted. Usually, he could spend all night dealing cards and nothing more. But that little bit of effort on the street had taken a great deal out of him, and his handkerchief was spotted with blood.

“I thank you again,” Holliday said. “I underestimated those jokers, and you did not.”

“They thought killing you would make them famous.”

“I never did get the boy’s name,” he said, chuckling. The sound turned to coughing, and the handkerchief covered his mouth again.

Ricardo took a deep breath and said, “I could cure you. You would live ageless, forever. There is a price. A difficult one. But you would live.”

Ricardo considered that keeping alive such a man—prone to violence, expert at killing, with an attitude to suit—was perhaps not wise. Giving him the powers that came with his so-called cure was absolutely not wise, not wise at all. But more than either of those things he thought what a shame it would be to lose him. In three hundred fifty odd years, Ricardo had never made this offer to anyone. Not even those he loved best. He wouldn’t curse anyone he loved.

But this man? This man could survive very well with such a curse.

Holliday also seemed to consider, leaning back, stroking his moustache once. Ricardo couldn’t guess what he was thinking. Holliday’s reddened eyes gazed f latly, his expression didn’t f linch—that famous poker face revealed nothing. He brought Dead Men in Central City

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his handkerchief to his mouth and coughed, as if to emphasize his own stake in the matter.

When he drew his hand from his face, he was smiling. “I do thank you for the cour-tesy, sir. But to live forever in this sad world? I do not see that as a blessing.”

Ricardo could be forgiven for feeling relieved.

“No, I expect to die on my feet, boots on. I’m almost looking forward to it. Better, don’t you think?”

“I hadn’t given it much thought,” Ricardo admitted.

“What, boots?”

“Death,” he said. Holliday coughed.

“You’ll be off to Denver soon, then.”

“Yes.” He knew of a couple of bolt holes he could use along the way. He wasn’t worried. “Tomorrow night. It’s time.”

“I have heard—there are others like you in the city. Most of your kind stay in cities, as I understand.”

“And how have you heard of such things?”

“You know of a man named Wyatt Earp?”

Ricardo smiled. “Yes. Of course I do. Just like I’ve heard of Doc Holliday.”

Holliday tipped his hat in thanks. “Let’s just say if you ever run into Mr. Earp, you watch yourself. He’ll know what you are just by looking. And he doesn’t much like your kind.”

“Perhaps when you see him again you’ll put in a good word for me.”

“I don’t much expect to see him again.” He sounded sad. Immensely sad.

“I’m sorry. I’ll watch out.”

“Good.”

They both looked out the window then. The reflections in the glass had faded, and the sky outside was gray.

Holliday held out his hand. “I may not see you come evening, so I’ll say farewell now. You take care, sir.”

Ricardo suspected that Holliday didn’t much like goodbyes. Ricardo was used to them. “You as well. I’ll remember you.”

“That, sir, will be a kindness I do not deserve.”

Holliday was dead two years later. Ricardo read about it in the papers, and that the gambler had died in bed, boots off. Ricardo mourned him and kept the story of their meeting to himself, because who would believe it? But he remembered. ❍

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ARRIVING

AT TERMINAL:

XI’S STORY

James Gunn

James Gunn’s memoir, Star-Begotten: A Life Lived in

Science Fiction should be out any minute from McFarland and Company. It follows Mike Page’s book about Jim’s career from the same publisher, Saving The World Through Science

Fiction, and the publication by Tor Books in June of Transfor -
mation, the third volume in the Transcendental trilogy. The two

“Tales from the Transcendental” that you are about to read derive from this trilogy.

Xi looked quickly to either side before he left the comparative safety of the space-elevator climber for the unknown world of Terminal. The bare box of the climber and the absence of guards or law of any kind meant that he had to spend seven sleep periods in a corner with his self-protection senses alert for movements and approaches, and one hand on his knife. But Xi was born prepared for peril in enclosed spaces. He had evaluated his fellow passengers over the half a long cycle in the freighter that had brought them to the top of the elevator, and he knew which were too strong to be challenged and which were weak enough to kill. An alien planet with its unknown dangers was different, and this miserable planet at the end of nowhere fed into all Xi’s paranoias.

The distance between the platform at the foot of the elevator and the waiting room some hundreds of meters away was strewn with unknown perils. Xi had to cross a dark body of water on a bridge of untested safety and then the space carved out of a tropical jungle with its grotesque green and orange and blue vegetation, and, beyond the jungle, ranges of mountains that completely surrounded the primitive spaceport.

Terminal was fecund and strange, so unlike Xi’s native Xifor and therefore to be feared. Except the mountains. He was from the mountains of Xifor, and it was the mountains that nourished strength and resentment. But Xi was in the unexplored valley of Terminal, where his destiny had delivered him. Here was where the dangerous quest began. Here was the opportunity to find the pardon from the death sentence that Xi had received when he was hatched.

Xi broke through his shell into a world that wanted him dead, that hated itself as much as it hated Xi. He was born knowing that the world was created to kill him, and that was what kept him alive the first cycle. He studied his environment with quick, apprehensive glances, the close areas first and then the rest. The nest seemed 71

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to be made of sticks bound together by some sort of cement that he later learned was hardened Xifora saliva. In the far distance was the outer rim of the amphitheater that enclosed the nest, and in the middle distance were the figures of other Xifora hatchlings roaming, competing for food, sometimes fighting among themselves. Xi knew instinctively that they were his siblings, and they would kill him if they had the chance. He cowered back over the remains of his shell and fell into a gap in the stick and mortar wall. He didn’t know it then, but he had earned a reprieve by two strokes of good fortune: he had been hatched close to the amphitheater wall, and he had found a hiding place from the deadly competition into which an unfair universe had thrown him. It was the last good fortune he did not fashion for himself.

Xi worked with his immature arms to remove sticks and stones to enlarge the re-cess into a tiny cave. From the sticks and the rocks, Xi concealed the entrance to his hideaway. In this surrogate egg, Xi rested from his birth struggles and nursed his strength until hunger drove him into the perilous outer world. When he emerged he was as strong as he was able to be, but he would always be smaller and weaker than his dozen fellow hatchlings. They were the lucky ones—the siblings that had been born a cycle or two earlier and gained an unfair advantage in the game of survival.

But, as Xi learned early in his existence, everything was unfair in an unfair universe.

Every morning, Xi learned, food was dropped into the center of the nest by creatures unseen and unknown, perhaps the parents of the hatchlings, perhaps some governmental bureaucrats. The food consisted of chunks of unidentif iable meat and rotting vegetables. Part of the meat may have been parts of dead Xifora. Xi never learned because rushing toward the food was suicide for a small Xifora like him. Instead, while his siblings were fighting over the morning feast the first time a meal arrived, Xi came upon a part of a hatchling limb that had somehow escaped his hungry siblings, possibly when two of them had turned upon each other before they had finished eating. Xi dragged the food supply back to the cave. Anticipating disaster was Xi’s saving talent. He needed whatever help his apprehensive mind could provide.

The next time Xi ventured out of his cave, he was not as lucky. He lurked outside the battle for the morning food drop, hoping to be able to go unnoticed until the others had been satiated and had drifted away. But before that occurred, the largest of them turned to see Xi trying to make himself inconspicuous. In a couple of strides, the large hatchling had come within reach of Xi.

“Ah,” the large hatchling said. “This person has not seen you before, and this person will not see you again because you will be dead and eaten. You are small, but you will make a suitable meal.”

Xi thought of running, but he knew he was no match in speed or strength for his brother, whom he later learned was named Xivic. Instead he offered his left arm.

Xivic grabbed it and tore it from Xi’s body. The pain was excruciating, but Xi blocked it from his mind, and while Xivic was holding the limb, Xi ran—not toward his hideaway, but toward the mound of food, and then dodged the other hatchlings to run toward the far wall. His siblings, unaware of his encounter, looked toward Xivic and then toward the food in front of them and went back to eating and squabbling among themselves and grumbling at Xivic when he tried to make his way through them. Finally, when even Xivic had lost interest, Xi circled back to his cave and cowered there, hungry and afraid, while his arm grew back. That took almost all the nutri-ents Xi had absorbed after hatching as well as from the partial limb he had found.

The encounter left him more cautious than before. Now he always foraged for scraps at night.

One night Xi returned to his cave to discover a sibling that had lost two legs and an arm and had, apparently, pulled himself laboriously across the nest until he fell by accident into Xi’s sanctuary. In the open nest or in the cave he was doomed and 72

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incoherent much of the time from the pain of loss and the struggle of regrowth, but in moments of clarity he spoke what seemed like cryptic revelations.

“One is bad,” he said. “Two is dangerous. Three is fatal.”

He was speaking of limbs, Xi thought.

“Eat or be eaten,” the dying Xifora said.

This was the way of the nest.

“The fittest survive.”

That was the Xifora way, Xi learned. That was life and death in the nest, and existence on Xifor itself. For the hatchlings who survived it meant food and status, and for Xifor it meant stronger Xifora to withstand the enmity of a cruel universe. But what Xi had learned was that mind was as good as strength, and cunning was as good as aggression.

Xi gave his dying sibling the death the incautious hatchling had earned. The body provided food that nourished Xi through another loss of limb and another period of regrowth. Cycles passed. Several more of Xi’s siblings lost their battles and their lives. But Xi found a large stick that had pushed through the side of the nest. He broke it off and had a stick with a piece of hardened saliva stuck to one end. Xi rubbed the end of the hardened saliva against the rock wall of his cave for long parts of a cycle until it was sharpened to a point. The next time food was dropped, Xi made his way to the center of the nest with his siblings, and when one of the other hatchlings approached him, he hit it with his stick, and then when another approached he stuck the pointed end of his stick into the sibling’s arm. After that the others turned back to food that didn’t resist, except for his brother Xivic. Xivic saw the sibling he had tormented before, the one who had gotten away through deception, and moved confidently toward Xi. Once more Xivic reached toward his younger, weaker brother, but this time Xi was not fleeing. When he offered his left arm and Xivic rushed to grab it, Xi raised the pointed stick and Xivic ran upon it, in his vulnerable eating sack. After the accident, Xi stood aside while the tormentor was consumed by the other nestlings. His brother would torment no more. Xi did not need to consume any of the remains to be strong.

As soon as the feast began, Xi climbed the amphitheater wall and left the nest. The valley lay before him, but he looked at its pleasant fields and villages as no better than the nest from which he had escaped. He made his way out of the valley into the mountains that surrounded it. The nights were cold and the days only slightly warmer, but Xi soon trapped a furry creature and fashioned a warm garment from its hide. He stole fire from a mountain village, cooked meat from animals he killed, and fashioned weapons, first a sling for propelling rocks, then a mechanism for projecting small, pointed sticks, and finally, when he stumbled upon a dump of discarded materials, weapons shaped from metal scraps, and then tools that he used to build a foundry, and the foundry to construct machines. Machines, he thought, were the equalizer between strength and weakness.

So the long cycles passed until Xi became an adult and ventured out of the mountains into the valley where he had been hatched, no longer haunted by his life-and-death struggle in the nest. He had become confident in his ability to cope with any challenge—until he encountered his mother in the bazaar where he hoped to sell his furs and perhaps his inventions. His mother looked like every other adult Xifora, but he recognized her by her family pheromones, and for a moment ancient fears and hatreds f lared. Naturally his mother attempted to kill him, but though Xi still was small, he had developed skills that bigger Xifora did not need. He avoided all her blows, and then, seeing no way to stop her short of her death or his, tore her right arm from her body. She stood in front of him, stunned, waiting for the fatal blow.

Arriving at Terminal: Xi’s Story

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“This person is your offspring,” Xi said.

“You smelled like someone who should be killed,” she said.

“It is this person’s garment,” Xi said, and dropped the fur cloak from his shoulders and allowed himself to be scented.

His mother flared her scent organ and admitted that indeed he was a member of her brood.

“But you are small. You should have died in the nest.”

“And yet this person survived and Xivic, the largest and strongest and most promising of the brood, did not,” he said.

“You were that hatchling!” his mother said, and Xi was concerned that he might have to tear off another limb. But his mother quickly told Xi that everything that happened in the nest was just and that Xi’s survival would be celebrated.

Xi demonstrated the machines he had built. Impressed, his mother gave him the honor of family membership and enrolled him in an academy situated in a valley near the equator and the spaceport that had been constructed there. It was not far, Xi learned, from where the Xifora had developed from clumsy beasts crawling out of the sea onto the land to lay their eggs, and there Xi began his formal education.

The first day a large Xifora adult, a classroom monitor to keep the young Xifora from killing each other, said to Xi as he passed, “You’re a small one.”

“Size is not everything,” Xi replied.

“You must be clever,” the monitor said, “to have survived the nest. Now you must survive the academy.”

Xi’s survival skills were called upon again while he learned Xifor history, science, and technology. Ever watchful, ever apprehensive were the practices he had learned well. Now he learned that the machines in which he had placed so much pride had been invented before, and better. The discovery was a lesson in humility that served him in the long cycles to come. With that insight, Xi’s career as an inventor and a scientist came to an abrupt end. Instead, he became a philosopher and a politician. On Xifor, he learned, the callings were identical.

In his philosophy class he heard an old Xifora, who was lacking an arm that had never grown back because of age or some hormonal deficiency, explain how Xifora developed their racial identity.

“Xifor,” the old Xifora said, “is a cruel world in a cruel universe. It is a world of rocky continents and cold seas whose misery is relieved only by a few fertile valleys near the equator. Xifora life began and civilization emerged in those valleys.

“Xifor’s sun is old and dim, and Xifor was a rocky wanderer from outer space that strayed into the Xifor system late in its life cycle and was captured and deposited in orbit by the gas giants that dominate the system.”

Some of those gas giants had satellites as large as Xifor, Xi learned, and a long cycle later Xi heard some of his fellow students argue that Xifor had been one of those satellites torn free by the attraction of a passing astral body and condemned to an obscure and solitary orbit among the giants.

When Xi listened to Xiforalogists, they said that Xifora had evolved feeling that they had to fight to stay alive in a universe that did not love them. The geology of Xifor meant that most Xifora were born and raised in the unforgiving mountains.

Many creatures loved their planet of origin, but Xifora did not love Xifor. Xifor was respected, like the competition of the nest that transformed its survivors into creatures of strength and endurance, but it was not loved.

And when Xi listened to historians, they said that contemporary Xifora were the descendants of ancestors driven from the fertile valleys by the privileged few, the hereditary nobility that were strong when the people were weak, and seized for themselves the lands that had belonged to everyone. They cast out the Xifora who 74

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tilled the f ields and harvested the grain and kept only the weak ones they could force to their will. The exiled Xifora’s only food became what they could steal from the valley dwellers or hunt down upon the crags among creatures as hungry as themselves. But the exiled Xifora scratched terraces out of mountain slopes, domes-ticated mountain animals for food and clothing and used their dung to fertilize their terraces, stared at the stars, dug deep in the land, and, after many generations, built machines. It seemed to Xi that he had reenacted his people’s history.

But that, as he learned from the historians, was not the final chapter in Xifora’s story. Out of deprivation came strength. Out of suffering came a people for whom suffering was accepted as a way of life. Out of the Xifora’s pain-filled past came their glorious future. Being cast out of their fertile valleys made mountain Xifora strong.

They prospered and the valley-dwellers decayed until the mountain Xifora descended into the valleys and created a new world—still harsh, and beautiful in its harsh-ness, but fair, insofar as anything can be fair in an unfair universe.

The mountain Xifora did to the valley-dwellers what they had done to the Xifora from the mountains: the valley dwellers were forced out, to live or die, as the mountain Xifora were compelled to do in long cycles past. And just as had happened to their predecessors, the former valley dwellers learned the essential lessons the universe had to offer a misbegotten species: suffering was good, and the easy life was the way to racial ruin. Xifora could not depend upon the kindness of others; the only resource Xifora had was their own strength and resolve, even when soaring hatchling rates caused them to resort to the same solution as that of the hereditary nobility.

To cope with the ugly reality of their circumstances, Xifora turned to technology.

The machines Xifora had developed to make their existence possible and to take back the valleys from the decadent valley Xifora, they now adapted to fly above the mountains rather than to crawl upon those cold and cruel excrescences of their world. And from these lofty vantage points, they studied the gas giants that oppressed Xifor and Xifora, and saw those worlds, like the valley Xifora, hoarding resources that Xifor lacked. They saw the satellites that could provide a home for more Xifora, perhaps more hospitably than the Xifor mountains.

Xifora dug ore out of their mountains, smelted the ore into metal, and worked the metal into ships that conquered space, mined the atmospheres of the gas giants for precious fuel and materials, and took the satellites as their own. Within a few hundred long cycles the Xifora turned the system of weak sun and oppressive planets into their own domain. The undersized interloper became the master. Again, Xi saw Xifor’s life story reflected in his own.

But as the Xifora narrative had proven, success can be destructive. Some of the satellites were more favored by geology and climate than rocky Xifor, and their Xifora became as soft and decadent as the valley-dwellers. The governors responded, acting with stern kindness to transport children to the remote areas of the home planet to harden or die. Many died, but many survived, prepared now to suffer as a way of life and to act when circumstances demanded.

But with machines to protect Xifora from the cruelties of nature, even Xifor became too soft, and the Xifora turned their eyes to the stars, knowing that the stars were cold and distant and uncaring, and that space itself, like the remote regions of Xifor, was the ultimate test of Xifor will and strength. So Xifora ventured forth and discovered that the galaxy was not as empty as the giants’ satellites; like the valleys, it was already owned. Once more the Xifora were thwarted, deprived of their birthright. Here, again, the Xifor past informed the Xifor present: Xifora would be better and tougher, more determined to succeed and more willing to persist over long-cycles, over failures, than other Galactics.

So events went, many long-cycles ago, Xi learned. Gradually, through faith and Arriving at Terminal: Xi’s Story

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perseverance, the Xifora became one of the co-equal members of the Galactic ruling council, recognized for Xifora determination to succeed no matter what the obstacles, Xifora willingness to sacrifice for their beliefs, Xifora inventiveness in solving great problems, and Xifora willingness to accept indignities without protest.

“Xifora suffer in silence and revenge at length,” his teacher said.

And then, while Xi was still enrolled in the academy, news arrived that a new species had emerged from the isolation of its small solar system. The creatures who had ventured out in their slow, fragile vessels into the terrifying, empty vastness of interstellar space called themselves “humans.” Xi identified with them. Like the Xifora, the humans had suffered the pain of surviving natural perils and the dismay of discovering that the galaxy was already populated and owned by others. But as descriptions of the behavior of humans reached Xifor, Xi’s feelings changed. Unlike Xifora, humans were impatient and complained about their treatment. They wanted immediately what Xifora had endured hundreds of long cycles of misery to achieve.

Xi knew that war would be the unavoidable result and that the Federation would need what Xifor could provide, Xifora to build the ships and to provide their crews.

“An egg-laying biology is a handicap when times are good,” his classmate Ximar said, “but an advantage when times are bad. War is a bad time for the Federation, but a good time for Xifora.” All Xifor had to do was to eliminate the wastefulness of the nest now that the Federation had a need for its hatchlings. The credit for this insight might have gone to Ximar, but he had an accident with a knife and Xi was the student who published the concept in the student journal. It led to Xi’s being discovered by Xibil, the chief assistant to the most able leader in Xifora history, Xidan.

Xibil himself came to the academy. “You are small,” were Xibil’s first words, and Xi felt his chance at greatness slipping away through the cruelty of his birth status. But then Xibil said, “But your ideas are big. This person wants you to come work with this person.”

“That would be the greatest opportunity in this undeserving person’s life,” Xi said, and went to work with the Xifora who had been the philosopher behind Xidan’s re-splendent political career. Xidan had not been responsible for the invention and production of spaceships, as many Xifora believed, or for the series of actions and decisions that led to the occupation of the satellites of the gas giants, nor for the interstellar flight that made contact with the Federation, nor, indeed, for the negotiations that resulted in the acceptance of Xifor as a junior member of the Federation. All these events had happened many long cycles earlier. Xidan’s great accomplishment was to bring all the colonies of Xifor under the absolute control of the native world and with the loss of only a few million Xifora lives and only a single satellite. Under Xidan, Xifor finally gained full membership on the Federation Council. But, working for Xibil, Xi learned that the best of what Xidan had accomplished had been with Xibil’s guidance.

Now, for Xifora and for Xi, life was good; Xifor was beginning to reap the benefits of Federation good will and the full range of Federation science and invention, and Xi flourished under the mentoring and confidence in him that Xibil provided. Xi and Xifora basked in the illusion that the Universe had been transformed and the glare of hatred had become the glow of love. And then the war happened, just as Xi anticipated.

“Xifora are born with the knowledge that war is the natural condition of the Universe,” Xi said to Xibil. “Xifora must kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.”

But Xibil replied, “Sublimation of this instinct to survive by all and any means, and the sublimation of the instinct to defend Xifora territory and Xifora honor, are the price of civilization.”

But when war began Xi’s vision prevailed and Xifor became an integral part of the war effort. No longer were hatchlings killed, but instead sent forth in endless 76

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numbers to f ight the Federation battles. Xifora numbers and Xifora production became a major component of Federation strategy.

Humans would have been defeated within hours and forced back into the nothingness from which they came if other Galactics, less committed than Xifor to the consensus principles of the Federation or, sensing an opportunity for political advantage, had not protected the humans from the righteous rebuke of the Galactic Federation. Xi volunteered to be among the first warriors, but Xibil insisted that Xi was a thinker, not a doer.

“Your best place is in Xifor councils, planning the tactics of battle and the strategies of peace that sooner or later will follow,” Xibil said.

“The end of war is the time when scales are rebalanced and adjustments made,”

Xi said, “when those who are ready have the chance to seize power and to hold it.”

“These are the attitudes that have handicapped Xifora from their earliest days,”

Xibil said. “We must learn to think beyond our ancestral limitations.”

Xi made the Xifora sign for agreement, the offering of a limb, but inside the shell he had built around his secret self he knew that Xifor had the opportunity to become one of the major powers, perhaps the major power in the Council, rather than a junior member, seldom heard and often ignored. Xifora might be small, but this was their chance to seize the proper reward for their suffering.

As the war reached its decisive stage, Xi suggested a tactic. “Let the Federation commanders sacrifice a part—a ship, a fleet, or a world—to gain an overall advantage. Such a strategy is rooted in Xifora physiology and evolution. In personal conflict, clever Xifora emerge victorious by offering an arm while the other appendage wields a deadly weapon.”

Envious rivals spread the rumor that the tactic originated with a subordinate and not with Xi. Every administration was rife with such knife wielders, Xi knew; the secret to survival was never to leave a back exposed to colleagues. Xi dismissed such accusations, and the unlucky subordinate died by accident.

Before the subordinate’s body was cold, Xi communicated the tactic to Xidan. Xibil was involved in discussions concerning the next envoy to the Federation Council, the previous envoy having been killed when the envoy’s ship was attacked by what was assumed to have been a human vessel, but which may have been that of an envious Federation rival.

After the war Xi discovered that the tactic of strategic sacrifice had been discovered independently by humans. Even though humans were too soft to accept sacrif ice willingly except in unusual circumstances, humans had a strange custom in which they modeled human behavior in something called “games.” They then applied the knowledge learned to everyday behavior, including war. Thus the tactic was not as successful as Xi and Xidan had hoped, or Xibil had feared.

Xibil had opposed Xi’s strategy. “It will only increase casualties and anger,” he said to Xidan, but Xidan had already decided to adopt Xi’s proposal and claim it as his own. Then as quickly as the war had begun, the war ended. Xifor protested the stop of hostilities, but the envoy’s death left it with little influence, and even the passionate words of the assistant envoy, who fortunately had survived the attack that killed the envoy, went unheeded. Less hardened Galactics had tired of sacrifice and were willing to trade honor for peace.

Now was the time for Xifor to act, Xi thought. While other Galactics were fatigued by war and eager for peace, Xifor determination and willingness to sacrifice would give Xifor the opportunity to dominate the Federation Council and shape the Federation future. But Xidan turned to Xibil and asked him to accept the position of envoy to the Council. Xibil accepted on the condition that Xifor sacrifice its ambitions in behalf of Federation harmony and the future of galactic civilization.

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Then Xibil met with an unfortunate accident.

In the Xifor tradition, Xidan turned to Xibil’s assistant and named Xi the envoy, but without the unnatural directive to sublimate Xifora behavior that Xibil had urged. Interstellar travel is slow, even with nexus point shortcuts, and an understanding of political power relationships is even slower. A long cycle elapsed before Xi joined the Council and came to an understanding of the Council’s operation and secret levers of influence. The Council was a large and deliberative body that, like a glacier, moved slowly but inexorably downhill, seeking consensus. The Council was hard to stop and impossible to steer; the Council could only be shattered, at best, into maneuverable segments.

The Council was a devastating disappointment. Xi had expected opposition but found indifference. Other Council members were older and, Xi discovered, wiser in the strategies of negotiation. Xi tried to move the inertia of the Council into action, with Xifor at its head. Other Council members listened and agreed, but nothing happened. No opposition could be identified; no individual stood in the way; an accident to any person or group of persons would change nothing.

Xi drew upon the patience that resides at the heart of Xifora experience.

Patience brings with it an acceptance of the way things are, and a hope that change will emerge through a slow accumulation of small improvements. It was not only the Xifor way; it was the Galactic Federation way. The galaxy turned slowly, and the spiral arms were distant reminders of Federation limitations. The Federation was old, and it had gotten old by minimizing change and its accompanying potential for conflict. The emergence of humans had disturbed the Galactic balance; change had occurred, and the Federation didn’t like change. Now, with the Great Truce established, the Federation was ready to return to the ancient ways that had worked so well for so many eons, keeping aliens from the breathing tubes of other aliens.

And then word came that a new religion had sprung up. Without a name, without an origin, without a species identification or description, a prophet was rumored to have announced the possibility of transcendence—not the Xifora way of deprivation and inner strength but an instantaneous mechanical ascension through some kind of machine. The staid Federation Council became a scene of chaos that Xi had never imagined possible. “It is only a rumor,” Xi said to anyone who would listen. But if there was anything the Federation hated more than war, it was religion, particularly a religion that promised miracles. The old and wise Councilors became frantic and frightened. Evolution was understood by all, but evolution was slow and the massive Federation could adjust. But transcendence by machine could happen instantly. A person or a species could gain superiority. The current balance—Xi had heard the condition called “stasis”—was threatened. All galactic civilization was in danger.

Councilors dispersed across the galaxy, fleeing home for consultation or consola-tion. Xi did not, knowing that the change he had sought had become change of another sort, but change nevertheless, and in change was the possibility of something better. Xifora share that belief with humans.

Xifora, Xi thought, also shared with humans a passion for transcendence. Though the Xifora passion was different. Humans already believed they were a favored species, chosen for greatness, deserving good fortune, while Xifora knew that all life was a cosmic accident, an improbable joke, and that Xifora had been badly treated from their very beginnings and had to fight for everything. Somewhere, somehow, the Universe owed Xifora transcendence.

At this moment in Federation and Xifor affairs, Xi was summoned to a meeting with creatures he did not know. He would have refused, but the summons included the word “transcendence.” He was taken by automated transportation devices 78

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through the enclosed world of Federation Central along devious routes to a room that he had not known existed. There, in an unfurnished space with blank walls, he waited. He thought he could wait longer than whoever had summoned him, but he finally broke the silence. “What do you want?”

“We have a task for you to perform,” said a voice speaking perfect Xiforan. Xi thought it was too perfect.

“This person’s tasks come from the Council,” Xi said.

“The Council is ineffective and powerless,” another voice said. This time the language was Galactic Standard.

Xi thought the voices were trying to confuse him. “Why should this person believe you?”

“Because you know we are right,” a third voice said. Back to Xiforan again. “Decisions sometimes get made but not by the Council. We are the decision makers.”

“And who are you?” Xi asked.

“If we revealed that, we would be no better than the Council. It is enough to say that we act, in moments of crisis, with decision and foresight, and the new religious fervor sweeping the galaxy is one of those moments. It could be a promise or a threat. If true, transcendentalism could start a new war, a war that this time might well destroy the galaxy, if one species achieved transcendence and tried to exert its newly achieved superiority over the others. Or it could be the beginning of a new and greater Federation in which every species could achieve its own perfection and the galaxy would blossom with wealth and good will. And if the rumors are not true, the failure of transcendentalism could send the galaxy into a depression of disappointed expectations from which it might not emerge for many long cycles. Or this new religion could be co-opted by the proper authorities to set the galaxy on a path toward individual species betterment that would launch a new era of mutual aspiration and tolerance.”

“And what will all this mean for Xifor?” Xi asked. It was not a question he would have asked a Xifora—that issue was implicit—nor a Federation alien for whom it would have seemed presumptuous, but these questioners were not Xifora nor perhaps even Federation.

“Ah, Xifora. Always what is in it for them. But that is why we chose you, that and the fact that you stayed while the others fled. You will discover what transcendentalism really is,” one voice said and then another added, “You will join the pilgrim-age and determine if the Prophet is on board the ship that has been sent to f ind what has been called a Transcendental Machine. You will learn whether the Transcendental Machine is real and how it works, and you will bring it back, or if you cannot do these things, you will destroy the Prophet or the Machine before the Prophet or the Machine can be misused by the wrong persons or species.”

“And why should this person do these things?”

“Because it is in your nature,” the voices said, one after another. “And it will serve your ambition, which we know was born in you and nurtured in your nest, and it will serve the psychological needs of the Xifora.”

Half a long cycle later Xi found himself entering the waiting room at the base of the elevator. He surveyed the crowded space, clearly not planned for such a large and diverse group of alien creatures of many sizes and shapes. They stood or sat or re-clined across a f loor cluttered with bodies and belongings in a room thick with a hundred different stenches. He identified a few of the aliens: an arrogant Dorian, a bulky Sirian, a feathery Alfa Centauran; and some he did not: a squat machine on treads, a spindly vegetable-like creature, and four humans.

He wondered which of them he would have to kill. ❍

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79

THE GANYMEDE

GAMBIT:

JAN’S STORY

James Gunn

The eight-year-old boy sat in a chair fixed to the floor of a hollowed out former satellite of Jupiter. It had been hollowed out by a mining operation that removed its largely metal interior and left the residue in stockpiles on the satellite’s surface and its interior equipped as a living and working space for nine children. And it was a former satellite because it had been maneuvered into position as a satellite of Ganymede.

The boy was named Jan, and he was alone. That fact made him uncomfortable, verging on neurotic, because he had almost never been alone since he was born. But he had been chosen to receive a message from his father before it was revealed to the others. He did not know why he had been singled out. He was no different from the other eight. In fact, he could hardly think of himself outside the context of the group.

The first-person pronoun was not forbidden; it simply never came to mind.

“Jan,” said a voice that seemed to come out of the air itself, “look at the view on the screen to the far left.” The room was a half circle. The circular half was lined with screens on which something was always showing, sometimes on more than one, always informational and frequently numerical data and graphs. The voice that directed his attention was more like that of a supervisor than a parent, and it was omnipresent in the transformed satellite, as if it was the voice of the satellite itself.

Jan turned his head to see the screen that had been blank and dark until now. On the screen was a world of spinning white and gray clouds and one huge red spot. It filled the entire screen, as if it were about to swallow the mechanical eye and everything connected to it that had defiled the great world’s majesty. “That is the planet Jupiter,” his father’s voice said. “It is the largest planet in our Solar System, two and a half times as large as all the rest combined, and it will become the central fact of your and your siblings’ lives as you are growing up.”

Jan was impressed, but not intimidated. Instead he felt elevated by the thought that he and his karass were considered in the same category as this massive body.

“Why is it called Jupiter?” Naming things brought them into human scale.

“Early human astronomers saw planets in the sky and gave them the names of ancient mythological deities in whom they no longer believed. Humans cherish the imagination and the imaginary more than Galactics, and they humanize their environment with fanciful names. The huge and mighty Jupiter, for instance, was the supreme god of the ancient Romans.

“Look at the screen on the far right,” his father said.

On that screen was another astronomical body. This one, though substantial, was not as threatening, a feeling that was more intuitive than the relative grandeur the depictions might suggest. The new world was a solid object, not gaseous, and it had surface characteristics that enabled the imagination to encompass it. The outer part seemed frozen, mostly light-colored with a number of dark patches. The dark 80

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patches were craters. The bright parts were carved up by grooves and ridges. Sometimes they crossed the craters, suggesting they had occurred after the craters.

“That is Ganymede,” his father said, “a satellite of Jupiter just as your habitat was once a satellite of Jupiter, but now is a satellite of Ganymede. Ganymede also has a name out of mythology. He was a human transported to heaven on the back of Jupiter, who had taken the form of an eagle, and Ganymede became the cupbearer to the gods and one of Jupiter’s favorites.”

“That’s dumb,” Jan said.

“No doubt. There is much to ridicule in human beliefs and behavior—imagination fuels the human endeavor, and its follies are the unavoidable byproducts. Ganymede, like the other sixty-seven satellites of Jupiter, is cold beyond our understanding of the word. Most of the satellites are small and worthless. But four of them, including Callisto, Europa, and Io along with Ganymede, are not.”

Jan took another look at the frozen world on the screen. “And what are those four good for?”

“Possibly the noblest calling humanity has been offered—the chance to realize the potential of worlds deprived of their birthrights, to bring the possibility of life to worlds that were created too big or too small or in the wrong place. Your task as you mature, you and your brothers and sisters, will be to terraform Ganymede.”

“Like Mars?”

“By comparison Mars was easy. Jupiter and its satellites receive only 4 percent of the solar radiation that falls on Earth. Ganymede has only a wisp of an atmosphere, but it has deep oceans, most of them frozen. Your task is to f ind a way to give it warmth, create an atmosphere and a means to contain it, and prepare it for life.”

“Is that all?” Jan was trying out “ironic,” a mode of intellectual response that he had just discovered, but he did not really think the burden his father had placed on him and his siblings was beyond their capabilities. He was only eight and everything was possible.

“It may seem difficult,” his father said, “even impossible. But you and your siblings will grow into it, and it will prepare you for greater challenges.”

“And what are they?”

“You will find out when it’s time.”

“Why can’t you tell us now?”

“You will f ind out when you and your siblings are ready,” his father said. But it was not really his father. His father was in his laboratory on the far side of Earth’s Moon, and a conversation with him would have had lapses of many minutes, even at the speed of light, as the statements and responses traveled between the two remote places. In an act of hubris, which Jan and his siblings learned was one of their father’s major traits, he had programmed the computer that acted as nanny of their group and custodian of their habitat to use his voice to communicate.

And Jan and his siblings were not ordinary brothers and sisters. They were all eight years old, and they had been born from a single egg that had been divided nine times. Their karass was a clone.

When they were twelve, Ganymede and its transformation into a world that could support life had become a central fact of their existence. Jan and his fellow clones—
five boys and four girls who lived and thought as one—studied the cold facts about Ganymede on the screens in the space that had become known as the classroom.

When they weren’t studying the satellite, they were gazing at it and the gigantic planet around which it orbited, as if the wonder of it could somehow transform itself into answers. Jupiter was almost a solar system in itself, and it loomed in Ganymede’s sky like a failed sun.

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When Jan and his siblings weren’t studying the screens, they talked about the job of terraforming Ganymede. They might live and think as one, but their talk was like thinking out loud. It helped the process of coming up with new ideas.

“Why did our father single out Ganymede and not one of the other three?” Jon asked.

“Ganymede is the biggest of them,” Jan said. “It’s even the largest satellite in the Solar System, larger even than the smallest planet. It has an iron-rich liquid core inside a mantle of silicate rock, but half of its mass—one thousand kilometers deep—
is water. Most of it is frozen, although a salt-water sea lies two hundred kilometers down, sandwiched between layers of ice. And its liquid core provides Ganymede with the only magnetosphere among all Solar satellites; it also provides some protection from the effects of charged particles, mostly from Jupiter.”

“If the issue is the absence of warmth,” Jil said, “why don’t we just heat it up?”

“Yeah,” Jem said. “We could use atomic-fueled furnaces and drop them onto the surface. Maybe make the process automatic, once we got it going.”

“Where would we get the materials?” Jon asked.

“I think our father anticipated that question,” Jil said, “ and had the material excavated from this habitat deposited on the surface.”

“Yeah,” Jem said. “A lot of it is metal, and some of it is radioactive. What we don’t f ind there, we can get from some of the other moons or the asteroid belt, or from Earth if it comes to that.”

“Does everyone agree that this is a project likely to achieve sufficient success to make it worth our effort?” Jan asked. He didn’t have to get their answers. He thought it was worth trying and so would they. “Okay, Jil and Jem, you have f irst crack at managing this, since you came up with the idea.” But they were already busy discussing the project among themselves.

They got to work, which actually consisted of programming their central computer to research and design the atomic heating units that would be dropped onto Ganymede’s ice and then to construct them, using scurrying, many-digited robots to move the heaps of ore on the surface of their habitat into ref ineries that had been constructed to receive them and then to pass on the materials to fabrication units. Automated as it was, the project nevertheless required the oversight of Jil and Jem and their personal inspection and approval of each stage. That meant not only the designs the computer produced and the development of the materials and processes required but trips to the surface of the habitat, appropriately enclosed in spacesuits, and observation of the progress and completion of each stage.

Finally, two years after it had begun, the project produced its first nuclear heating unit, and it was lowered onto Ganymede’s surface by an attached rocket. It was an occasion for celebration, and the siblings had a party in the classroom joined by their father, this time in holographic projection. “Congratulations!” he said and did not wait for a response. “But be prepared for failure. No one learns from success—or rather, what you learn from success is all wrong.”

As if their father’s words had been a curse, the first unit failed in thirty-two days, sitting where it had landed in a pool of thawed ice as the water refroze around it. Jil and Jem took a shuttlecraft to the surface, the first time any of them had touched the satellite around which their young lives had focused. They were able to report that the problem seemed to be a crack in the body of the unit that allowed water to enter and sabotage the controls. But at the cost of their lives.

Jem was trapped in a crevasse that had opened in the ice, perhaps triggered by the operation of the warming unit, and Jil got swallowed up in the same crevasse when she tried to save Jem. They died with the ice closing around them and their brothers and sisters in the habitat above feeling their dying agonies as if they were their own.

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The seven remaining siblings took a month to recover, a month without talk, a month without interaction of any kind as they each sought their own solace at being diminished and another month gingerly coming back into the kind of intimacy of understanding and emotion. Contact with their father only made it worse. They had not sought it; in fact, they had kept the news from him, as if hugging it to themselves was necessary to their mourning. But the computer informed him and had brought home to them, at the worst of times, that they were never free from their father’s watchful eye.

“You have lost an important part of the group I entrusted with the work of a lifetime,” their father’s holographic projection said. “And through carelessness. Mistakes cannot be tolerated. In space any mistake can be fatal. You are shocked. Your confidence is shaken. But you must press on. The future of humanity depends on you.”

That betrayal of the parental bond delayed the recovery of the siblings another month, relieved only when Jer, whom accident had given particular skills at programming, instructed the nanny-computer to be more selective in the information it reported to their father. And then, f inally, they began to think again, and if not to heal at least to accept. Part of their acceptance was their decision to continue the project that Jil and Jem had begun, as a kind of memorial. Jan and Jon went over the plans and the designs with the information Jil and Jem had sent back, redid the amalgams that went into the protective casing, and tried another heating unit on the frozen seas of Ganymede. It melted a puddle that became a pond and kept on functioning as Jil and Jem had planned.

Jan and Jon put the process into full production, and within two years the Ganymede ice was dotted with thousands of units that were turning ponds into pools and pools into lakes. They would eventually form open seas that over time would finally join to provide Ganymede with a liquid ocean kilometers deep.

“There’s one big problem,” Jan said. “The process works, but only over geologic time.

It will not happen within our lifetimes and perhaps not within the lifetime of our culture. If that is the case, we could leave it as a gift to our successors—a water world suitable for a new generation. But we can’t wait. We need to do something else.”

That took them two more years, and before that happened they got discovered.

The discovery was by the Interplanetary News. The title was hyperbole. “Interplanetary” involved only Earth and its Moon, Mars, scattered research projects—the largest orbiting Venus—and a variety of space tugs supplying mining operations on Mars and in the asteroid belt and bringing resources from remote areas of the Solar System to a depleted Earth. And it wasn’t exactly news in the traditional sense. It was a centralized system of targeted information and entertainment over personalized social media, and one of those was “weird people and their weird occupations.”

That the siblings orbiting Ganymede had gone undiscovered for so long was a result of their father’s paranoia. Jan and his siblings understood it now. Though he was universally recognized as one of the great scientists of his time, their father felt that he should have been acclaimed as the greatest scientist since Einstein and maybe since Newton. He had retreated to a laboratory on the far side of the Moon, resigned from every organization he had ever joined and from every one that had given him an honor, and retired not only from human society but from human contact.

But the clone karass had no such inhibitions. When Jan instructed the habitat nanny to accept the invitation for an interview, the holographic image of a ridiculously clothed young woman appeared in front of the group assembled in the classroom. The siblings suppressed their snickers. They were accustomed to wearing comfortable coveralls, suitable for work and relaxation in enclosed environments and appropriate for all occasions, of which there were only those two.

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“You are an unusual karass,” the young woman said, “engaged in an unusual project. And you have unusual names. Tell me why you are called the ‘Jays.’ ”

“Our father—we call him our father, because he supplied the sperm that fertilized the egg that he made divide nine times, though he was more of a CEO and we largely raised ourselves—has a sense of the ridiculous,” Jan said.

“Some say a cruel streak,” Jer said.

“He was named ‘Jak,’ so he gave us all similar names, as if to solidify our identities as clones,” Jon said.

“So I’m Jan,” Jan said.

“I’m Jer,” Jer said.

“I’m Jon,” Jon said.

“And these are Jef and Jed,” Jan said. “And those are Job and Jin. We lost Jil and Jem—” He paused and swallowed. “—in an accident on Ganymede.”

After a long hiatus for the words to get to Mars and the reply to come back, the interviewer said, “You’ve been out here in this hollowed-out satellite since you were eight. That seems unusual, and maybe even cruel.”

After another long pause, Jon said, without self-consciousness about accepting a role as a subject, “We were part of an experimental program in group dynamics, aimed at producing a spaceship crew capable of coping with interstellar issues at all levels.”

“Capable of coping with the worst that the Universe, and its alien masters, could throw at humanity,” Jan said.

“We were encouraged to think and act as one,” Jer said. “We were a unit, a species unto ourselves, a race apart.”

“Other scientists were involved, but it was mostly Jak,” Jon said.

“Humanity needed representatives who acted spontaneously,” Jan added.

“Who needed no verbal interactions to do what needed to be done,” Jer completed.

“The challenges of terraforming an alien world are like interplanetary travel,” Jef continued.

“Responses to crises must be instant,” Jin said.

“And intuitive,” Jed added.

“We were that karass,” Job said.

“We weren’t any different from other multiple births,” Jan said. “Our upbringing was what made us unusual.”

“When we became capable of taking care of ourselves—still children, but preco-cious children—we were transported here,” Jer said.

“Where, alone, we were given the responsibility for terraforming Ganymede,” Jon said.

After another long pause, as much, it may have seemed, to digest the interactions among the clones as the distance the messages had to travel, the interviewer continued.

“About Ganymede, I understand that you are trying to turn this moon of Jupiter into a small world suitable for life—even for people. But many people, and a few experts, claim that you are defying the order of things—playing god, they used to say—
and that you are destroying the life forms that actually evolved here.”

“We are not actually destroying anything,” Jan said.

“The only life on Ganymede,” Jer said, “is some mindless bacteria in the briny inner sea that we have just encountered.”

“And we are experimenting with it,” Jin said, “to see if we can help it achieve a more effective interaction with its environment. It seems to form a kind of film, like a Terran jellyfish but without the organization. Maybe we can give it awareness, a purpose.”

And so it went, with long pauses between and even longer pauses as the interviewer began to run out of questions. She terminated the process when Jan began explaining the Cedan philosophy of sentience—that sentient life should be encouraged 84

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wherever it could exist, that sentience and matter are locked in perpetual conflict between organization and disorganization, between energy and entropy, between life and death.

When the link was cut and the holographic image dissolved, Jer said, “Jak will hate this.”

They all laughed. It was the first time they had really laughed since Jil and Jem died.

After the laughter faded away, Jan said, “But we’ve got to do something about speeding up the warming process.”

“Jed and I have been talking about mirrors,” Jeb said.

“Space mirrors,” Jer said.

“Of course,” Jed said.

“They’d have to be huge,” Jon said.

“And thin,” Jin said.

“What about the Ganymede bacteria?” Jan said. “They make films.”

“We could work on that,” Jed said. “But if we coated them with some kind of reflective material, they would probably die.”

“We’ve thought about a thin plastic with a molecule-thick silver or aluminum coat-ing,” Jef said.

Jan looked at his siblings. They didn’t have to say anything. Jed and Jef would work on the space mirrors to reflect more of the Sun’s rays onto Ganymede’s frigid surface, like a heat lamp in a cold room.

When they were twenty, the space mirrors were complete, huge, thin, silvery objects in the space around Ganymede, turning the dark side of the satellite into day.

While Jed and Jef worked on the mirrors, the rest of them designed and built computers equipped with lasers to monitor the focusing of these giant mirrors and to correct changes in their positions with high-powered laser bursts. Nano-machines they developed repaired the holes that the busy environs of Jupiter punched in their kilometer-wide surfaces. The frozen world below continued the long process of thawing that the nuclear heating units had begun. Ganymede’s transformation into a viable world speeded up from a geologic time span to one for a few millennia.

The clones were bringing salvation to the yearnings of inanimate matter. Or so Jak told them.

But Jef and Jed were sick. They had spent too many hours in Jupiter’s radiation belt, putting space mirrors into place and adjusting the microscopic machinery that kept them intact and in place. Even with the protection of their specially designed protective suits, the pharmaceuticals with which they dosed themselves, and the dai-ly check-ups, they came down with radiation poisoning and no amount of treatment could reverse the effects. The clones could have called for help, but by now they knew more about the consequences of space existence than anyone on Earth or the Moon or even Mars. But all their combined efforts and treatments could not cure or even halt the damage that Jupiter had done. Jef and Jed died a year later. Another protected period of mourning left the survivors numb and uncommunicative. But finally they told Jak and endured his accusations and criticisms, and particularly his lack of appreciation for their loss, without responding that it was he who had sacrificed Jef and Jed to his own ambition.

“But the loss has been worth it,” Jak said.

They stiffened in their chairs in the classroom.

“Your progress has been remarkable,” Jak continued. “It demonstrates the success of my vision. You have done great things.”

Finally they understood. They were nothing more to Jak than an extension of his The Ganymede Gambit: Jan’s Story

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own abilities and a testament to his genius. From that point forward, only their remaining clones had any reality for them.

“But now you must complete the project,” Jak said. “You have begun the warming process and the creation of an atmosphere. But if you stop here, everything will escape into space. Your next goal is to keep Ganymede from losing both.”

When they were twenty-two they got back to the final task of terraforming Ganymede. “We may despise Jak,” Jan said, “but what do we have left except to finish the job?”

“And we aren’t going to be able to move on until we do,” Jer said.

Job and Jin had been experimenting with the Ganymede bacteria. “They seem to be responding to environmental change,” Jin said.

“Almost as if they were cooperating,” Job said.

“Or evolving?” Jer said.

“Yeah,” Jin said.

“They’re getting better at making films, even adapting to space and cold and radiation,” Job said.

“So we think maybe they could form the protective bubble Ganymede needs to keep in the air and heat,” Jin said.

Jan looked at the other four and it was decided.

This was their greatest challenge, the creation of a monomolecular film that would form a cocoon-like sphere around Ganymede to prevent the escape of the atmosphere the nuclear generators and space mirrors had created. It required not only the invention of a substance new to nature, but one that, if created, also had to resist the charged particles of Jupiter’s radiation belt and restore itself after meteorite strikes and, eventually, the passage of ships.

Finally, after many failed attempts, Job and Jin developed their biological creation—the evolution of the Ganymede bacteria into a cell that reproduced even under adverse conditions and spread into a f ilm that lived at the top of the new atmosphere. It would be nourished by the chemical brew liberated from Ganymede’s melted primal substances and energized by Jupiter’s charged particles.

That elegant solution brought them praise from their father, even though he cautioned that they had unleashed a dangerous new living substance upon the Universe that, in time, might evolve and proliferate into a competitor to other, more traditionally evolved creatures. He thought that unlikely, however, and he was willing to take the risk. The monomolecular film would take centuries before it completed its cocoon around Ganymede. And even if it escaped Ganymede and Jupiter, that would be far in the future when humans and other creatures would be equipped to handle any such problems.

A few months later Job came down with an infection. Its effects lingered for nearly half a year until it was traced to the Ganymede bacteria. Even though the bacteria were isolated while Job and Jin worked with them from a distance, somehow a mutated strain had gotten through the safeguards and, against all odds, affected Job.

The other siblings developed an immunization that kept them from contracting the ailment and seemed to help Job recover.

When they were twenty-four, the f irst batch of evolved bacteria was ready for seeding. Job and Jin took a shuttle into close orbit of Ganymede and released a frac-tion of their cargo into the highest level of Ganymede’s new atmosphere. It was already enriched with oxygen from the bombardment of water vapor by Jupiter’s radiation and the escape of hydrogen into space. And the transformation of oxygen into ozone was creating a mantle protecting Ganymede from radiation reaching the surface. Job and Jin moved on to release more bacteria in pre-selected spots around the near-planet until their supply was exhausted.

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James Gunn

Asimov’s

When they returned to the habitat they collapsed in the classroom, triumphant but concerned. “Are they going to survive?” Job said.

“Are they going to thrive?” Jer asked.

“There already are visible patches,” Jan said, “and it looks as if they might be spreading.”

“Though it might take centuries for the cocoon to be completed,” Jon said.

“I don’t think we can wait,” Jer said.

“I don’t feel so good,” Job said.

In a few weeks it was clear: Job’s infection had returned, renewed and reinvigo-rated. The bacteria had evolved once again and had infected not only Job but Jin as well. Over the year while bacterial film spread around Ganymede, Job and Jin slowly became sicker in spite of all the efforts of the other three to help. Toward the end Job and Jin were raving about monstrous things taking over their minds and then their bodies. They died in full dementia, and their loss was the worst of all to the remaining three clones.

Until they discovered that they had been infected as well. The immunization had failed against the transformed bacteria. And the bacteria was not simply a disease; it had become a symbiote.

The effects were small at first, like a virus, but slowly it became apparent to the clones that the bacteria had become symbiotic parasites, strengthening the siblings’

bodies, improving their reactions by adding neurons and diminishing the resistance of the nerve connections. Finally, as the symbiotic relationship developed, the parasites became invisible companions.

Then the clones knew what the bacteria were—full-body biological computers that had enclosed the clones’ bodies and their selves in the same way the bacteria had been programmed to enclose Ganymede—and it was too late to turn back. The clones were twenty-eight when their symbiotes began to communicate as silently as thought. For a brief time the clones nourished the notion that they had been changed into super beings, and then they realized that their new condition was not an improvement but a total transformation imposed upon them. They had not been improved; they had been changed into something else. The symbiote was the new creature. And it was the symbiote that put together the truth that this is what their father had planned from the beginning.

Then their father addressed them once more—Jon and Jer and Jan.

He spoke to them in holographic projection. When they thought they would not be overheard, they used to joke among themselves that their father’s life was too precious to risk among the charged particles and debris of Jupiter’s belt. But the joke had turned bitter: they were there and they had lost two-thirds of themselves.

“Your job is done,” Jak said. “Now you have a new task.”

“What of our brothers and sisters?” Jer said.

They waited for Jak’s reply. He was far from Jupiter, probably on his Moon station, and transmission delays meant a disjointed conversation. Finally his answer came.

“That five of you died in this noble effort was tragic—”

“Six!” Jer said.

Jak went on as if he had not heard—and, indeed, he would not for another four minutes—“but the sacrifice must not be in vain. And it will not.”

“What can compensate for our loss?” Jer asked.

Jak went on as if he had heard the question. “You have accomplished something godlike, appropriate to mighty Jupiter himself. You have given life to dead matter.

You have created a new world for the human species. Your names will be among those blessed by human generations.”

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“And yours,” Jer said.

“In the process,” Jak continued, “you have remade yourselves. You started as gifted children, and you have become adults capable of anything. You have become like gods. You have become gods.”

“Those who survived,” Jer said.

“You are prepared for your next challenge,” Jak said, “to represent humanity in an alien galaxy. The Galactics who control the stars are old and wise and powerful. Humanity is young and restless and troublesome. We emerged from our long evolution-ary path like butterflies breaking free of our cocoons into a cold and hostile world.

But, for a weak, system-bound species, we fought the alien confederation until it agreed to deal with us as equals. The losses on both sides were terrible, though far more significant on ours with our limited numbers and resources than on theirs. But we proved ourselves worthy of our place in the galaxy. Now a new issue has emerged to disturb the fragile peace that ensued.”

They waited for Jak to continue. What could be more important than the war that had ended only a few years ago? What could be more important than the transformation of a frozen world? What could be more important than the lives they had lost?

“A new religion is sweeping the galaxy,” Jak continued. “Or rather, a movement that may become a religion. It is based on a rumor that a transcendental machine has been discovered, a machine that can realize the potential in any sentient creature. You can imagine what such a machine might accomplish for any of the civilizations in the Universe, including our own. And you can imagine what the possibility of such a machine might do to the truce that was negotiated after the recent war.”

The clones looked at one another. Jan’s symbiote put words in his head: “Don’t listen to him,” it said. “We are your partners, your own transcendence. We can provide what that transcendental machine—if it exists—only promises. If you listen to him, you risk everything we have gained.”

Minutes passed, and then Jak said, “You haven’t said anything.”

“What is there to say?” Jer asked. “We understand the issue, but what can we do about it?”

After more minutes Jak responded, “An Earth ship has been ordered to pick up a mixed group of Galactics at Terminal. Jan and Jon have been appointed to the crew.

That took some doing, but I still have influence. The ship has already departed from Earth orbit, but Jan and Jon can join the ship at Terminal.”

“Why should we do that?” Jan asked, or rather his symbiote asked through Jan’s lips.

Minutes later, Jak said, “The spaceship Geoffrey has been instructed to seek out the Transcendental Machine. The so-called Prophet—the person that rumors say first was transformed by the Machine and let fall, carelessly or deliberately, information about it—will not be able to resist joining the passengers. Your first task will be to identify the Prophet and discover his secrets, if he has any, and, second, you must be first to discover the Transcendental Machine, if it exists, and secure its secrets for humanity.”

“He means ‘for himself,’ ” Jan’s symbiote silently said to him. “And what of Jer?”

Jan said.

Minutes later the reply arrived. “She will join me in my laboratory,” Jak said. “I’m not as strong as I used to be, and I need her help.”

Jan had noticed that Jak, who looked like an older version of themselves, was looking thinner and more fragile. “He’s sick,” his symbiote said. “Don’t listen to him.”

“What can we two do among so many?” Jan asked.

After minutes the answer came, like all Jak’s responses impatient with the resistance of the Universe. “You have been bred and trained for this. This is your destiny.”

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“Yes, father,” they said as one, but if Jak had seen their faces he would not have believed their words.

“If you cannot be f irst to the Transcendental Machine, you must be sure that it does not fall into alien hands, even if that means destroying it. Then you must return with your information or find a way to get the information back to me, even if you cannot return.”

“Especially if we cannot return,” Jan whispered. “And won’t that start another war?” Jan said aloud.

After another long pause, Jak replied. “That is a risk we will have to take—for the sake of humankind.”

“A risk we will have to take,” Jan whispered.

“Now there is no more time,” Jak said. “Your ship is waiting, and you cannot delay if you are to join the Geoffrey at Terminal.”

The clones looked at one another, shutting out the clamor of their symbiotes, and understood that having been manipulated since their birth and treated like disposable pieces on a gigantic chessboard, they could rebel and go their own ways into blessed obscurity. But, being pieces—maybe bishops or even queens, but probably merely pawns—they might as well see the game played out.

And so the journey toward transcendence began. ❍

The Ganymede Gambit: Jan’s Story

89

ZIGEUNER

Harry Turtledove

After too long an absence, Harry Turtledove returns to our pages with a deeply disturbing look at the human capacity for inhumanity. The author’s next book, Hot War: Armistice, is just out from Del Rey. Harry tells us he’s up to two grand-daughters, continues to write, and is spreading alternate history on Twitter as @HNTurtledove.

H auptsturmführer Joseph Stieglitz looked up into the gloomy gray late-October sky. Drizzle speckled the lenses of the SS officer’s steel-framed spectacles. It wasn’t really raining, but it also wasn’t really not raining. Muttering, he pulled a handkerchief from the right front pocket of his Feldgrau trousers and got his glasses as clean as he could.

He peered across the town square, then nodded to himself. Yes, the Kübelwagens and the trucks were ready. Everything here in Zalaegerszeg seemed peaceful enough. Yes, the town lay in Hungary, but on the west side of the Platten-See (on Magyar maps, it was Lake Balaton). Off in the eastern part of the country, the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS and the Hungarian Honvéd were fighting thunder-ous panzer battles to try to halt or at least slow the onrushing Red Army.

Better not to dwell on that too much. Better to hope the Germans could use their now-shorter supply lines to advantage. Better to hope the Honvéd would fight hard now that it was defending its homeland. Better to hope Ferenc Szalasi and his Arrow Cross Fascists would make the Honvéd fight harder than Admiral Horthy had. Horthy the trimmer, Horthy the traitor, Horthy who’d tried to fix up a separate peace with Russia till the Führer got wind of it and overthrew him before he could make it stick.

Because if you did dwell on that, if you looked at where the Red Army was and at how far it had come since the start of summer, what could you do but realize the war was lost? Like almost all German officers in the autumn of 1944, Joseph Stieglitz made the effort of will he needed not to realize that.

He walked across the square toward the transport he’d laid on. The hobnailed soles of his jackboots clicked on the cobbles. The drizzle was turning the stones slippery; he planted his feet with care so he wouldn’t take a tumble. As long as he kept his head down, the patent-leather brim of his cap protected his glasses well enough.

Some of the men in the Kübelwagens wore German Feldgrau like Stieglitz. Others were in Hungarian khaki. Despite the brown Stahlhelms on their heads, they were militiamen, not real soldiers; their Arrow Cross armbands showed as much. The truck drivers were also Hungarians. Hauptsturmführer Stieglitz shrugged. For this operation, he probably wouldn’t need anything more.

His driver was an Unterscharführer named Klaus Pirckheimer. The junior noncom waved as Stieglitz came up. “We’re all ready, sir,” he said. “Let’s go clean those bastards out.”

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“Sounds good to me.” Stieglitz slid into the right front bucket seat.

Pirckheimer started the engine. As he did so, the bells of the Catholic church on the square chimed the hour: ten in the morning. The Hauptsturmführer had gone into the church to admire its eighteenth-century frescoes. Though no Catholic himself, he appreciated f ine art wherever he found it. He was, and worked at being, a man of Kultur.

The road leading south had been blacktopped, but not recently. Some of the potholes the Kübelwagen hit seemed big enough to swallow the utility vehicle. But it kept going. It didn’t have four-wheel drive like an American jeep but was surprisingly nimble even traveling cross-country.

“Don’t miss the turnoff, Klaus,” Stieglitz said. “We want the right-hand fork, remember.”

“Zu Befehl, mein Herr!” Somehow, in Pirckheimer’s mouth, a simple Yes, sir!

sounded more like Why don’t you shut up and leave me alone?

He did f ind the fork—just in time, with a hard right turn, to keep from driving past it. The rest of the column followed his lead. No sign marked the road’s branch-ing. Maybe there had been one before the war drew near, and the local authorities took it down to give invaders a harder time navigating. More likely, the turnoff never was important enough to mark.

A couple of kilometers past the turnoff, maybe ten kilometers out of Zalaegerszeg, lay the village of Nagylengyel. Though it too boasted a Catholic church, it couldn’t have held more than three or four hundred people. Two grannies were selling beans and grapes at a little roadside market. An old man hawked sausages on a folding table and had a half-grown pig on a rope tied to one of the table legs. Business looked slow.

“We’re getting close, hey, Herr Hauptsturmführer? ” Pirckheimer said.

“Well, I hope so,” Joseph Stieglitz replied. “The Zigeuner encampment was reported to be three kilometers south of Nagylengyel. SS headquarters in Szombathely got the word a couple of days ago. They didn’t waste any of their precious time telling me about it till last night, of course.”

“Of course,” the driver agreed. Stieglitz was an off icer, but off icers and enlisted men united in sneering at the headquarters oafs who didn’t bother to let them know what was going on. Pirckheimer went on, “Gotta be better than even money the rats have found a new hole between then and now.”

“If they have, we’ll find them,” Stieglitz said, shrugging. “If we don’t find them today, we’ll find them tomorrow. If we don’t find them tomorrow, somebody else will next week.”

“And then they’ll get what’s coming to them, the stinking Untermenschen,” Pirckheimer said.

“Ja,” the Hauptsturmführer agreed, though he preferred not to think about that too much. His job was rounding up the Zigeuner and arranging for them to be transported. What happened after they got where they were going to . . . That was none of his business. The fewer questions you asked about such things, the less you officially knew, the better off you were. But there had been almost a million Zigeuner in Europe when the war started. If any were left when fighting finally stopped, it wouldn’t be for lack of effort.

The Kübelwagen rounded one more corner. Klaus Pirckheimer let out a happy little yip. “They are still here! Too dumb even to run, looks like.”

Another Zigeuner encampment, as filthy and disorderly as all the rest. Six or eight wagons that looked as if they’d been designed and possibly built in the seventeenth century sat on the grass by the side of the road. The donkeys that pulled them when they were on the move grazed one here, one there, one somewhere else. The sorry Zigeuner

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beasts were scrawny and tiny: hardly bigger than large dogs. To give comparison, a couple of big, toothy, plainly mean dogs prowled among them and started barking as the vehicles neared.

A motley assortment of tents sheltered the Zigeuner from the elements. By the faded paintings on its canvas, one had come from a traveling circus a long time ago.

Another . . . The Hauptsturmführer’s mouth twisted. It was assembled from no doubt stolen German shelter halves. Zigeuner produced next to nothing for themselves, but they were first-rate thieves.

“Pull past them and stop,” Stieglitz said.

“I’ll do it, sir,” his driver replied, and did. The other Kübelwagens and the trucks halted behind the first.

SS men and Arrow Cross militiamen hopped out of the vehicles. The Germans carried Schmeissers or captured Russian PPDs. The submachine guns weren’t worth much out past a couple of hundred meters, but they made dandy intimidators at close range. The Hungarians had Mausers and pistols.

Stieglitz himself wore a Walther P-38 on his belt, but didn’t unholster it yet. Instead, he cupped both hands in front of his mouth and bellowed, “Alle Zigeuner raus!” For good measure, he added, “Sofort!” Right away!

Out they came: swarthy, sharp-nosed, feral-looking men and women in shabby clothes, some of the women’s outfits ornamented with incongruously bright embroi-dery. They all wore the brown triangle, point down, required of their kind; they didn’t break the law in such small ways.

A skinny, gray-mustached fellow who looked like a pimp down on his luck spoke to the others in the gibberish the Zigeuner used among themselves. Their dark, frightened eyes went back and forth from Stieglitz to him.

The leader of the pack, the Hauptsturmführer thought. He pointed at the man. “Du!

Sprichst du Deutsch?” He used the familiar pronoun, as he would have with children or servants or anyone else with whom he didn’t have to bother staying polite.

Only a string of that incomprehensible lingo came back at him. Stieglitz rolled his eyes. He could have just taken out the pistol and pointed with it. That probably would have worked. But the Zigeuner might have panicked if he gave orders with the barrel of a gun. They were liable to have a shotgun or two in the tents or in their wagons. If a hothead grabbed one, he might hurt somebody before he could be disposed of.

So Stieglitz turned to the Hungarian lieutenant who headed up the militiamen.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” With the Hungarian, who was on his side, he used the formal pronoun.

But the man spread his hands and shook his head. He answered in Hungarian.

That did the Hauptsturmführer as little good as the nonsense the Zigeuner spouted.

He eyed the rest of the Hungarians. The armed militiamen were all young, like their officer. One of the truck drivers, though, had graying hair and the beginnings of a wattle under his chin. He was bound to be close to f ifty. Stieglitz walked over to him. “How about you?” he asked. “Do you speak German?”

“Military German,” the man said. Stieglitz nodded; that was what he’d hoped for.

German had been the language of command in the Austro-Hungarian army during the last war. Basic words got drilled into soldiers of all nationalities. Then the Magyar unbent enough to go on: “Maybe more than military German. We had a division from the Kaiser’s army on our left for a while in the Carpathians, and we got friendly with them. I think it was the one your Führer served in.”

“Ach, so.” Joseph Stieglitz nodded. “It could be.” He knew the Führer had fought against the Russians in World War I. Everybody knew that. It was where he’d acquired his rancorous hatred for the Zigeuner. They’d stolen horses and boots and telegraph wire from his outfit, and cost it casualties it wouldn’t have taken if they 92

Harry Turtledove

Asimov’s
hadn’t prowled around. Now he was

“I’m old enough to have been reading
taking his revenge on them, as he had

Asimov’s from the start, and to have been
on so many others.

writing for it pretty soon afterward. The

Which Austro-Hungarian division
two pleasures have always been oddly
had served on the German unit’s flank,
mingled. It was plain from the beginning

Stieglitz couldn’t have said. That didn’t
that the magazine attracted some of the
much matter, though.

best writers in SF and fantasy, and that it

“Translate for me, will you?” he said
demanded the best from them. That’s
to the truck driver. “They may act like
made it a pleasure to read for the past
they don’t speak German, but I don’t
forty years. And it’s made selling to
think they can pretend they don’t know

Asimov’s a high bar to get over, a bar I’ve
any Hungarian.”

felt proud of topping every time I made it.

“I’ll do it, Herr Major,” the driver

If I’m counting correctly, ‘Zigeuner’ is my
replied. He could read German shoulder
sixteenth story to appear here. I’m always
straps, anyway. Stieglitz’s SS rank was
delighted when the Kindly Editor is rash
equivalent to major in the Wehrmacht.

enough to say yes to a submission, and

“Danke schön,” Stieglitz said. “Tell them
the magazine consistently gives me
we’re going to put them in the trucks and
things to enjoy and things to think about
transport them up to Zalaegerszeg.”

when my byline isn’t in the table of con-

He waited for the veteran to translate
tents. What more could anyone want?”

that. As soon as the man did, the old vil-

—Harry Turtledove
lain who led this band of Zigeuner let
loose with his own torrent of Hungarian. “He says, What will you do with us there?”

the truck driver reported.

Stieglitz suspected the chieftain said some other things as well, but that would do for now. “We’ll put you on a train with others of your folk,” the Hauptsturmführer said. “We’ll take you to resettlement camps in Poland, far away from the f ighting.

You’ll be well housed there, and well fed.”

The driver duly translated. The chieftain said, “But we like it where we are now just fine. We don’t want to be resettled.”

“It’s a matter of military necessity,” Stieglitz said, trying not to meet the Zigeuner’s dark and piercing gaze. He told the old bandit what his superiors instructed him to say whenever he rounded up a band of these subhumans. Maybe it was true; maybe it wasn’t. Poking into that wasn’t good for your career. If you poked too hard, it wasn’t good for your own safety.

“Why is it military necessity for us to get shipped away and not for the Hungarians?” the chieftain asked after he got that turned into a language he could follow.

“Because the Hungarians are allies of the Reich,” Stieglitz answered. “We trust their loyalty.” We do now, with Horthy out and Szalasi in. Szalasi has no more use for Zigeuner than the Führer does.

“It doesn’t matter whether we’re loyal or not,” the old man insisted. “We want nothing to do with this cursed war.” He spewed out more of his own jargon. The rest of the Zigeuner bobbed their heads up and down in unison to show they wanted nothing to do with it, either.

“I’m sorry, but it’s not as simple as you make it out to be. That’s why I have my orders, and why I’ll carry them out.” Joseph Stieglitz let the truck driver translate that, then continued, “Besides, it’s for your own safety. Some Zigeuner bands have stolen from German supplies. Some have spied and scouted for the Red Army. You can guess what happened to them after that.”

“We would never do any such wicked things! By the Mother of God, I swear it!” The chieftain made the sign of the cross. After he told his chicken thieves and slatterns and brats why he did it, they crossed themselves, too.

Zigeuner

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September/October 2017

The SS officer was not a Christian. The SS discouraged religious observances of any kind. He strongly doubted the Zigeuner were Christians, either. They were for themselves, f irst, last, and always. Cockroaches and rats with—almost—human faces, he thought, curling his lip in distaste.

“Look, tell him I didn’t come here to argue with him,” he said to the Hungarian truck driver. “Tell him I came here to relocate his band. I’ll do that peacefully if I can.

If I can’t, I’ll do it anyway. He won’t like that so much. Make sure he understands how much he won’t like it.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll do it, sir.” The driver could have sounded no more obedient if he were a German. By the way he pointed at the submachine guns and rifles the SS men and Arrow Cross militiamen carried, he was making the point with gestures as well as with his jabbering.

Stieglitz watched the air leak out of the Zigeuner chieftain as he weighed his chances and found them bad. He deflated still more when he tried to choose between bad and worse. He didn’t realize even yet that none of his choices was merely bad; they were all worse. The Hauptsturmführer didn’t aim to enlighten him on that score. Soon enough, he’d find out for himself.

His lined, tanned face a mask of bitterness, he said something in his own lingo. A couple of the younger Zigeuner men started to gabble out protests. As the truck driver had before him, the chieftain pointed to the weapons the Germans and Hungarians held at the ready. He spoke again. Stieglitz didn’t need to know what the words meant to get the drift. What can we do? They’ll murder us right here if we give them grief.

He was right. The young bucks in the band could see it, too. They might not like it, but they could see it. They subsided.

Wearily, the mustachioed villain switched back to Magyar. “He says he and his people will go to the train with you, sir,” the truck driver told Stieglitz. “He says he relies on your honor as a German officer that everything will work out the way you told him it would.”

“Mein Ehre heisst Treue.” Joseph Stieglitz quoted the SS motto— my honor is loyalty. And it was. He was loyal unto death to the Führer. He was just as loyal to the Reichsführer-SS, the commander-in-chief of the Black Corps. To an unwashed old Zigeuner? That might be a different story.

By the look in the old man’s eye, he suspected it was. Untermensch or not, he was nobody’s fool. But when all your cards were bad, how many brains you had didn’t win you even a pfennig.

“Tell him to tell his followers”—Stieglitz wouldn’t call them people—“they can go back to the wagons and tents and take whatever they can carry in their hands. Tell them to get into the trucks then. And make sure you tell them that if anyone tries to jump out of a truck and run, it’s the last stupid mistake he’ll ever make.”

“I’ll take care of it, sir.” The Hungarian turned that into his own language. The Zigeuner chieftain translated the translation. How long had this band lived in Hungary? Generations, by the look of things. Were there still some of these petty bandits who knew no Magyar? Evidently there were, though Stieglitz had trouble believing it. He shook his head. They were aliens. They didn’t belong here. They didn’t belong anywhere. The Führer was dead right about that. He usually was right.

“Come on,” Stieglitz said sharply. “Let’s get moving. We’ve wasted enough time here already.” He noticed a couple of the Arrow Cross militiamen nodding before the driver translated. So they followed more German than they let on, did they? Somehow, the Hauptsturmführer found himself unsurprised. Hungary was like that. It remained Germany’s ally, but nothing could make the Magyars enthusiastic about the struggle against subhumans and Bolshevism.

* * *

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The Zigeuner went off to snag their movable property. They came back with coats and trousers and blankets and pots and pans. Stieglitz suspected they’d taken the chance to stash rings and chains and coins and bills where they wouldn’t be so easy to find. He also suspected that would do them less good than they hoped.

One little girl cradled an ugly puppy in her arms. By the smiles she gave it, it wasn’t ugly in her eyes. The Arrow Cross lieutenant sent Stieglitz a questioning glance. Stieglitz shrugged an answer. If carrying the dog kept the girl quiet, she was welcome to it as far as he was concerned.

The chieftain walked over to Stieglitz and the truck driver. His shirt looked lumpy.

What all had he stashed under there? “Please, your Excellency,” he said, “but what about our donkeys? What about our watchdogs?”

“I’m sorry, but they have to stay,” Stieglitz replied. “The people in Nagylengyel will tend to them, I’m sure.”

The people in Nagylengyel would shoot the dogs (Stieglitz was glad his men hadn’t had to shoot any themselves) and either work the donkeys to death or butcher them for their meat. By the old Zigeuner’s narrowed eyes and tight lips, he knew it as well as Stieglitz did. But he also knew he couldn’t do anything about it. He turned his head to the side before spitting on the grass. “It will be as it must be,” he said.

“Everything will be as it must be.”

That was true. It couldn’t very well help being true. Stieglitz figured the scrawny Zigeuner couldn’t tell the truth any other way.

“Everyone have everything you can take?” the Hauptsturmführer asked loudly.

Also loudly, the truck driver turned his words into Hungarian. Stieglitz went on, “All right—into the trucks, then. We’ll take you back to Zalaegerszeg.”

Into the backs of the Opels they went. Men helped women climb up and hoisted children in. No one raised a fuss. Part of that was the Zigeuner’s hopelessness of resisting the firepower the SS men and Arrow Cross militiamen had. And part of it, Joseph Stieglitz judged, was the fatalism of their kind, a fatalism spawned in ancient days far beyond the borders of Europe.

Stieglitz went back to the men he led. “We’ll put Kübelwagens between trucks on the way up to Zalaegerszeg,” he told them. “If anybody tries to jump out and run for it, you’ll finish off the damn fool, right?” He waited for the driver to render that into Hungarian for the benefit of the Arrow Cross militiamen, then continued, “You fellows behind the wheel, look into your rear-view mirrors every now and then. If the Zigeuner try to overpower a driver and hijack the truck, they won’t get away with it.”

As he got into his Kübelwagen’s front passenger seat, Klaus Pirckheimer hopped in on the other side. “Been easy so far, Herr Hauptsturmführer,” Pirckheimer said as he fired up the sturdy little utility vehicle. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

“Yes,” Stieglitz agreed laconically. “Let’s.”

And it did stay easy all the way back to Zalaegerszeg. No Zigeuner sprang out and tried to dash for the roadside bushes. The Untermenschen didn’t try coshing the Hungarian truck drivers. They didn’t send any of their prettier women to seduce the drivers away from their duty, either. Fatalism, Stieglitz thought again.

Yes, everything was fine as long as the convoy stayed on the road. It all went sideways when the trucks and Kübelwagens came into town and made for the railroad station to unload the Zigeuner onto the waiting train. But traffic around the station had gone to the devil.

Another train, this one completely unexpected (at least as far as Joseph Stieglitz was concerned), had come into Zalaegerszeg while he was out on the roundup. The new arrival was full of Wehrmacht troops bound for eastern Hungary and the fight against the Red Army. But the driver of the train that would haul the Zigeuner up into Poland had refused to clear the track to let the German soldiers head for the front.

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That left the major in charge of the held-up regiment hopping mad. Seeing they weren’t going anywhere right away, some of his men had got off to rubberneck or grab something to eat or a glass of beer. The major took out his fury on Stieglitz. “I’ll be hours herding everybody back into place!” he shouted. “Some of these bastards will find a way to get left behind, too—see if they don’t. Gott im Himmel! How are we supposed to win the war if we can’t get to where we need to be when we need to be there?”

“I’m very sorry, my dear fellow.” Stieglitz’s tone gave his words the lie. “I must remind you, though, that SS transports have priority over all other rail traffic. That includes troop movements. So the train driver’s done the right thing. We might have made other arrangements if anybody in Szombathely telephoned or wired to tell us you were on the way. But no one did. And so . . .” He shrugged.

The Wehrmacht major exhaled angrily. “We’re fighting the Russians, you know.”

“We’re fighting the Zigeuner, too. I presume you have read the Führer’ s book and all he has to say about them?” Stieglitz’s voice, silky with menace, presumed no such thing. But he’d gone all the way through the hefty volume—gone through it two or three times, in fact. He knew exactly what it said about enemies of the Reich.

“They’re less likely to shoot us or blow us up than the Red Army is.” But the Wehrmacht officer knew he was fighting a losing battle here. He threw his hands in the air. “All right. All right, dammit! Would your most gracious Majesty please be kind enough to let me know when my men can proceed to their little tea party with the Ivans?”

Had Joseph Stieglitz been a vindictive man, he could have made the younger major pay for that. But he wasn’t. He was just a fellow trying to do the job his superiors had given him. “I’m not trying to hold you up,” he said—fighting the Russians, after all, was its own punishment. “We’re all in the same struggle, you know.”

“Yes, and the way things are going right now, we’re all losing it.” The Wehrmacht major had to be either a fine soldier or a hell of a lucky man. No ordinary jerk could have won the rank he had without learning how to put a governor on his tongue.

Shaking his head, he clumped away.

Stieglitz let him go. It wasn’t that he was wrong, only that he was impolitic. The Hauptsturmführer went back to his own command. “Let’s get them onto the train,”

he said. “The sooner they’re on, the sooner they’re gone, the sooner the soldiers can head east.”

The Wehrmacht major seemed eager to get into the fight against the Red Army.

How many of the troops he led shared his eagerness? Not so very many, not if Stieglitz was any judge. German soldiers commonly wanted to avoid the Eastern Front, not to go there. But, these days, not so many got what they wanted. And the Eastern Front was coming to them.

Pretty soon, we won’t be fighting the Russians in Hungary and Poland. We’ll be fighting them in Germany. As he always did when that thought floated to the surface of his mind, Stieglitz shoved it under again. However many times he tried to drown it, though, it kept popping up.

The transport train sat waiting, a thin plume of steam and smoke rising from the stack. All the cars behind the locomotive and its tender were cattle cars. Some already had their doors barred and secured. Others were ready for more Zigeuner.

When the band Stieglitz had rounded up came out of the trucks, their chieftain took a long look at the train. Arrow Cross militiamen opened one of the cattle cars and grinned in mocking invitation as they waved the Zigeuner towards it. Instead of climbing in, the chieftain ambled over to Stieglitz. “So much for your honor,” he said in pretty good German.

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That also didn’t altogether astonish the Hauptsturmführer. “We all do what we’re required to do,” he said.

“Yes, I know.” With immense dignity, the old man walked to the cattle car and climbed in. The rest of the band followed him. As they had with the trucks, men helped women and children board. The dark little girl with the puppy hesitated for a moment in front of the cattle car. Then she put the dog down on the gravel. It didn’t want to leave. She drew back her leg and kicked it in the ribs. It ran off, yipping in pain and shock. The girl clambered into the car without help from anyone.

She’d made the right choice. If the dog went with her, it had no future at all. Now someone in Zalaegerszeg might give it a home. Or if nobody did, it might eke out a living by guile and theft, the way the Zigeuner had for so many centuries.

Not for much longer, though, Stieglitz thought. The Führer had ordered Europe pu-rified of Zigeuner and Bolsheviks and homosexuals and other such riffraff. The Bolsheviks had an unfortunate tendency to shoot back. The others, though. . . . The others were sand in the tide of history, and the tide was going out.

As soon as the last short-pants boy went into the cattle car, the Hauptsturmführer gestured sharply at the Arrow Cross militiamen standing in front of the door. They slid it shut. The bar slammed down into the steel L that secured it. Chains and pad-locks made sure no one would defeat it from the inside.

Stieglitz walked up to the locomotive. The engine driver was swigging from a bottle of slivovitz or vodka. When he spotted Stieglitz, he quickly made the bottle disappear. Stieglitz wouldn’t have called him on it. He’d seen the like plenty of times.

Some people needed numbing before they could do what they were required to do.

“They’re here. They’re loaded and secured. You can take them away,” Stieglitz said.

“Zu Befehl, mein Herr.” The engine driver didn’t sound thick. When you had enough practice, you didn’t get sloppy drunk the way someone new to the sauce would. You didn’t show it. You soaked up the hooch and went on about your business.

The whistle screamed, once, twice, three times. The world needed to know the train was leaving the station. Smoke belched from the locomotive’s stack. The drive wheels began to turn, ponderously slow at f irst but then faster and faster. Away went the train. Away went the Zigeuner. Except through the tiny space between the planks of the cattle car, they wouldn’t see daylight again till they got to Poland. After they got there, they probably wouldn’t see it for long.

With the cork that had plugged his way east gone, the Wehrmacht major started chivvying his men back to the troop train. No, they weren’t so eager to go as he was to get them going. Junior officers and noncoms gave the regimental CO what help they could.

So did the chaplains. In their purple-piped frock coats, they stood out from the soldiers. They weren’t supposed to carry weapons, but the Lutheran minister wore a holstered pistol on his hip. The world was a rougher, crueler place than the striped-pants gentlemen who made rules like that could imagine.

When one of the chaplains turned and happened to catch his eye, Stieglitz waved to him. He would have had trouble saying why. Maybe the way the little Zigeuner girl put down her puppy was still on his mind. Maybe it was that the chaplain followed the faith the Hauptsturmführer’ d been raised in. Maybe it was all of that. Or maybe not. Maybe it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing.

Whatever it was, the Feldrabbiner walked up to Stieglitz. Where his Catholic and Protestant counterparts wore two different versions of the cross on a chain around their necks, he had a Star of David. Another one replaced a cross on his officer’s cap.

Unique among German servicemen, he was allowed to have a beard.

“Something I can do for you?” he asked, his voice friendly, his accent Bavarian.

“I don’t even know.” Joseph Stieglitz wished he’d kept his damn hand at his side.

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“Those Zigeuner—” he started, and then broke off. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He didn’t know if he wanted to say anything.

“That’s a hard business, all right.” The Feldrabbiner studied him with shrewd eyes.

“You’ll tell me if I’m wrong, but I’d say you also come from a family of Germans of the Mosaic faith.”

That also invited Stieglitz back into something he’d invited himself out of long before he joined the SS. It was nothing he much wanted to return to. Nevertheless, he couldn’t bring himself to lie. “Well, what if I do?” he said harshly.

“If you do, Herr Hauptsturmführer, I suggest you do what I do every day,” the Feldrabbiner said. “Count your blessings.”

“Excuse me?” Stieglitz said, in lieu of something like That’s fine for a clergyman, but not for an SS officer.

The Feldrabbiner understood him whether he said it out loud or not. “Count your blessings,” the man repeated. “Some Englishman is supposed to have said, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ I often think that when I see Zigeuner getting on those trains.”

Stieglitz wished he hadn’t waved to the Feldrabbiner. “I’m afraid I don’t follow you,” he said, and began to turn away.

But the man with the frock coat and the Star of David didn’t let him escape so easily. “When you’re a Jew, when you remember you’re a Jew, you also have to remember such things can happen to you, too.”

“Oh, Quatsch!” Stieglitz said.

“It isn’t rubbish,” the Feldrabbiner insisted. “Plenty of people don’t like us. Let’s not mince words. Plenty of people hate us. If the Führer hadn’t seen what the Zigeuner were like when he fought in the east during the last war, if he hadn’t already despised the Russians and seen how they mistreated the Jews in the Austro-Hungarian provinces they overran . . . Herr Hauptsturmführer, you might have boarded that train yourself instead of putting them on it.”

“You are a man of the cloth. I make allowances for that. But if you say one more word along those lines, I will give you to the Sicherheitsdienst,” Stieglitz said, his voice colder than any blizzard on the Eastern Front. “I am a good German, and whatever religion my grandparents held has nothing to do with it. I follow the Führer’s orders the way any other good German would. Since you wear the uniform, mein Herr, you had better do the same.”

If he hadn’t put the fear of God in the Feldrabbiner, he had put the fear of the SD
in him. That would do. The man gulped. He licked his lips. “I mean nothing by it, of course,” he said quickly. “Just, uh, thinking on how things might have been.” He showed far more alarm than the wicked old Zigeuner chieftain had.

“Of course.” Stieglitz freighted the words with all the scorn he could. When he turned this time, the Feldrabbiner didn’t bother him. He walked away, grubbing in his pocket for a pack of cigarettes. ❍

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NEXT ISSUE

FORTIETH

We are pleased to announce that Asimov’s November/December ANNIVERSARY 2017 issue will launch a brand new novella by SFWA Grand YEAR!

Master Connie Willis. “I Met a Traveller in an Antique Land”

welcomes us into that little shop around the corner and
thence into the subterranean mysteries of New York City. With all the twists and turns, you’ll soon be as lost as her hapless traveller. This is an intriguing tale that you won’t want to miss!

November/December caps our stellar anniversary year with ALSO
its own stellar line up: Norman Spinrad looks at the conse-IN
quences of “The Nanny Bubble”; Greg Egan investigates “The NOVEMBER/

Discrete Charm of the Turing Machine”; “And No Torment

DECEMBER

Shall Touch Them” if James Patrick Kelly can rescue his characters from the machinations of a difficult relative; James Gunn’s saga continues with “Love and Death and the Star that Shall Not Be Named: Kom’s Story”; Jason Sanford reveals the harsh secrets infusing “Nine Lattices of Sargasso”; and new author Emily Taylor quietly shows us what’s been “Skipped.”

We’ll go “Timewalking” with Michael Cassutt; find ourselves

“Afloat Above a Floor of Stars” alongside Tom Purdom; hear the moving “Confessions of a Con Girl” in Nick Wolven’s bitter-sweet short story; meet Joel Richards’ desperate “Operators”; join Jack McDevitt for the “Last Dance”; and, with Rick Wilber, we may find ourselves on the wrong side of town “In Dublin, Fair City.”

Robert Silverberg’s Reflections column discusses walls in OUR

Westeros and “Gog and Magog”; James Patrick Kelly’s On EXCITING
the Net goes to the “Time Party”; Peter Heck reviews Norman FEATURES

Spinrad, Peter S. Beagle, China Miéville, James P. Blaylock, Jack Womack, and others; plus we’ll have an array of poetry and additional features you’re sure to enjoy. Look for our November/December issue on sale at newsstands on October 14, 2017. Or subscribe to Asimov’s—in paper format or in downloadable varieties—by visiting us online at www.asimovs.

com. We’re also available individually or by subscription on Amazon.com’s Kindle and Kindle Fire, and Barnes
and

Noble.

com’s Nook, as well as from magzter.com/magazines, Google Play, and Kobo’s digital newsstand!

THE

FOURTH

HILL

Dennis E. Staples

Dennis E. Staples graduated from Bemidji State University with a bachelor of fine arts in creative writing and is a current master of fine arts in fiction student at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Dennis grew up around the Leech Lake Reservation, which inspires a lot of his writing including his first story for

Asimov’s, but he is enrolled in the Red Lake Band of Chippewa (Ojibwe). The author tells us, “I don’t have much of a testimoni-al other than to say that I’ve been reading the magazine since about 2013, and it’s been one of my main goals as a writer to appear in it. I’m extremely honored that a story so close to my cultural heritage is my first professional publication.”

Grandfather slams the phone down and growls about my brother Nathan.

“He’s over there right now, digging up all that sludge, and he dares to ask me to come over?”

I keep quiet and pour his beer. It’s a cheap brand, about six dollars for a thirty-pack, and he drinks it with water. He taught me exactly how much water he likes in his plastic mug and how to pour it so it doesn’t fill up with foam.

“They’re going to destroy our land.” He drinks it fast.

I don’t tell him how he is wrong, how dumping polluted wood and water is different from geoengineering. Instead, we watch the static television pour out Three’s Company reruns while outside, just a few blocks away, the geoengineers are set to begin their project on the field.

“So are you going to let him?” The question slips out before I realize that it’s not what my grandfather wants to hear.

“You want him bringing poison here, Callum Roy? You wanna get sick?” His voice is slurry from the beer and full of grief. Years ago, a paper company had buried polluted wood and sprayed wastewater all over town. As a former IHS orderly, he had seen many Indian children with birth defects over the years, cleft palates, exposed intestines, Downs, and blamed them all on the pollutions.

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“I was just wondering,” I say.

“He’s not allowed anywhere near my house.”

He continues his rant and I pour him another drink. When he f inally gets to a mumble level, I quietly walk out of the house. I always leave when he gets like this.

He’ll be passed out when I come back, so I’ll need to make sure he’s okay.

It’s seven P.M. and still light out. October is just beginning. I walk down the road to a stream of water that I visit in the summer. I used to catch frogs here, but after a while I realized I was just shortening their lives by carrying them around so much. I sit on a log and kick at the water.

A voice calls to me from across the stream. “Did you lose this, Callum?”

I look up and see a little man with wild white hair and saggy gray skin. He stares at me with a big, ugly smile and begins to cross the stream. He is holding a child’s shoe.

“Which one are you?” I ask.

“Maangoons nindizhinikaaz.” He passes the shoe to me.

I grab it even though it’s covered in dirt and say thank you in Ojibwe. Miigwech.

I’ve been learning it since I was in elementary school, but in ten years I’ve really only learned animal names and how to introduce myself. And a few immature phrases like nimazhiwemin ina dibikong?

“What’s it for, Little Loon?” I say. I think I heard him right. Maangoons means little loon.

“It’s for your feet. Your grandfather will be so happy that you found it!” I’ve never told my Grandpa about the river dwarfs, but they have been watching me for a long time.

The shoe is white with blue stripes, both faded and smudged with dirt. On the bottom there are a few plastic bulbs that held multicolored lights when I was a kid. I don’t bother to check and see if they work.

“I lost these when I was eight,” I tell the dwarf. “I gave up looking for them long ago.”

“Oh, but your grandfather! He was so mad you lost them that he hit you and sent you to bed without supper! Remember? Remember?” He sits down on a nearby rock.

It feels like I’m babysitting a toddler now.

I do remember the incident. They were expensive shoes at the time, and money has never come easy to us. Except when it comes in the mail. I lost the shoes after months of wearing them and was punished. I’m not angry about it though.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” I ask Little Loon.

“Give it to grandfather and get your supper back!”

What about the slap across the face? Do I take that back?

“Thank you, Little Loon.” I put the shoe in my sweater pocket and turn to leave.

“But what about my favor?” his little voice says. I sigh.

In the Ojibwe dictionary I have at home, there’s a funny translation. The word is Memegwesi. In English, it’s oddly specific. Hairy-faced bank-dwelling dwarf spirit.

That’s what they are, him and the others. The first one I met was a young boy no bigger than a liter of soda, but still hairy in the face. He was named Big Kettle and the only thing he ever asked for in favors was food. There was Stone Man, and Leaf Crow, and Walking Feather. They all brought me things I didn’t want and expected small, seemingly useless favors in return.

“What do you want, Little Loon?”

He laughs and backs away. “No, consider this a gift because it was so late. . . .

Maybe another time.” He bounds down the river like a hare, and I walk back home.

Grandfather is still up, and he can’t stand still. “I brought you something, Grandpa.” I hand him the shoe and wait for a reaction.

“Mysterious ways, my boy. The Creator works in mysterious ways,” he laughs. “I called . . . called that fucker . . . whass his name . . . Nathan. He’s coming home for dinner in a few days.”

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I say thanks and go to my room. I place the shoe in a box under my bed, along with a water-logged deck of cards with the ace of hearts missing, an unopened can of peas from the seventies, some baby’s umbilical cord in a leather pouch, and a small dreamcatcher with no beads.

I haven’t found a use yet for the trinkets the Memegwesi have given me. But they always want something back.

I stop walking to school in about mid-October when it gets too cold, so today might be my last. This morning I tried to sneak a look at the field, but it’s been blocked off by large tents.

At school, my first class is Indian studies. The older kids sit in this classroom comfortably. As a freshman, I thought the class would be much more serious. We learn a lot, but both the kids and the teacher are so casual and relaxed that it’s almost not a class. Every day we start out with current events. Each student has an opportunity to talk about something.

A senior girl with a big pregnant belly is the first to be negative about the project.

“I don’t think they should be messin’ with Mother Earth like that.” Her voice is thick with the reservation accent.

“My grandfather says the same thing,” a guy named Daniel says. His family is known for their traditional ties. “He said the Great Spirit made the Earth for humans to live on, not to mess with.”

I don’t care for Daniel. He talks a lot about heritage and spirituality in class, but in the hallways and after school, he’s just a bully. I’ve never had a run in with him, but I’ve seen enough boys and girls harassed to know that’s true.

“Isn’t that what farming is?” I ask sarcastically.

I am not prepared for the glares and resistance I get.

“Indians don’t farm, bud, they hunt and gather,” Daniel says.

There’s nothing I hate more than when people call me bud or buddy instead of my name. “I know some Indians that farm,” I say, thinking of my cousins from a neighboring reservation. “They do well.”

“They were made to farm by white people, but their real heritage was stolen.

Right, Bern?”

Our teacher speaks up. “Oh yes, there was a lot of assimilation going on in the past. We’re going to learn about that soon.”

Bern is white, but he acts as Indian as any of us. I hate disagreeing with the teacher, but my dislike of Daniel makes me not want to give up. “But there had to be Indian farmers before . . .” A sudden memory springs up. “And the Cahokians,” I nearly shout. “They built those mounds. Isn’t mound building the same thing the geoengineers are doing?”

It’s hard not to smile when I see Daniel’s face as he looks to the teacher. “That’s different. Those were burial mounds. What the geoengineers are doing is for profit.”

That was true enough, but I still disagree. “They’re getting paid to clean the pollution.”

Bern answers before Daniel can. “That’s right, Callum. It’s been a problem for way too long.” He ends the discussion by casually mentioning today’s lesson plan. I can still feel Daniel, and others, looking at me. Glaring.

No one wants the geoengineers here. From their looks, I think they don’t want me here either.

When I graduated from elementary school, I was chosen as the mini-valedictorian. I gave a speech in front of the whole school, and I didn’t mess up. I was used to being the class clown back then, so I wasn’t nervous.

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The only thing I remember saying in that speech was how I loved science and hoped to become a scientist one day. For the past five years, my grades have been going down a slippery slope to shitty, and now I cannot stand science class. I hate science. I hate igneous rocks and continental shifts. I hate my old, fat science teacher who doesn’t understand sarcasm, and I hate protons and neutrons because I just don’t get them. I think I’ve failed ten-year-old me.

But I’m here, near the field, and I’m watching the geoengineers. The tents are still up, but every few minutes I see the plastic-suited workers walk in and out. I can get a small glance inside. In between flashes of a black light, I see piles of dirt churning from an unseen machine and the high-pitched whirr of a vacuum. I remember this from news reports of other projects.

Machines called EchoTanks use concentrated sound waves to break up the ground and churn it in a bouncing whirlpool, almost like a rock tumbler. The process is mostly used for landscaping techniques, making rich people’s yards nice, and creating reservoirs and rivers. Back when the company was founded as Hanging Gardens Earthscapers.

Now they’re not just reshaping the land but cleaning it. The flashes are from the Ultraviolet Desorper zapping the soil and burning only the volatile substances into vapor, which is then sucked up by the vacuum.

In a way, I guess I’m not failing my ten-year-old self’s science dreams.

Eventually the crew makes their way down the field where I can’t watch inconspicuously, so I leave. I walk down to the small creek where the dwarf spirits hang out. It’s late afternoon and none of them are here. There is only the sound of the rushing water and the occasional car passing nearby. The sound of the geoengineers has stopped. Must be their down time.

I stay at the creek for an hour before taking a walk through my neighborhood. It’s not exactly the worst part of the town, but there is no best part. There is the HUD
housing ghetto from the Great Depression (which my teacher calls the only good time for Indian Country since 1492); Main Street, which has more businesses and bars than a small town can support; and a few streets of houses that are not unpleasant to look at but not great.

Grandfather isn’t home when I walk through the door. Instead, there is a note taped to the refrigerator.

Your brother is in the hospital. I went to tell him I told you so. Come over if you want.

A young Indian boy is playing with the bead roller coaster in the hospital lobby.

It’s made of yellow, pink, and blue wires and beads to run along each track. The boy is having fun sending them down a spiral, pushing them back up, and then back down again. There’s also a gruff-looking man with glassy eyes across from me. He looks Mexican, but on the reservation it’s hard to tell. I’ve never seen eyes so focused and piercing, almost crazed, so I watch the boy play with the bead coaster.

I used to do that a lot when I’d come here as a kid. My mother came here for pills, and my father once had to be rushed here for a detox. Grandfather comes here a lot.

He’s paranoid about getting diabetes. A few years ago, they misdiagnosed him and for weeks I helped him needlessly check his blood sugar. He hasn’t kept up with his healthy diet he promised himself, but it’s not diabetes that I’m worried about.

“Callum?” a nurse says from behind her counter. “You can come back now.”

She leads me to a small room where Nathan is lying down and my grandfather is sitting in a chair, reading a newspaper.

“Hey, Brother,” Nathan says in a rough whisper.

“Did the soil do this?”

I haven’t seen my brother in years. I would like to be more emotional, more filled with love or concern, but I’ve always been wary of being close to my family.

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“I can’t talk about that, Cal. How are you?”

“Good, I guess. What can you talk about then?”

That’s when Grandfather looked away from his newspaper. “Ah, he’s f ine now.

Don’t worry yourself.”

I hear about where Nathan’s been. I hear about how he got his job with the geoengineers. Grandfather is stoic then, but doesn’t get angered. I hear about everything in Nathan’s life—turns out the frightening shiny-eyed man in the lobby is Nathan’s boyfriend Mateo, but he left the room so Grandpa wouldn’t feel uncomfortable—and I tell him all about school and anything else I’ve done.

By the end of the night the only thing we don’t talk about is what happened to him. I guess I have my secrets, too. Nathan doesn’t know about the Memegwesi either, so maybe I can’t be mad about the secrets he and Grandpa are keeping. We leave the hospital and make plans to visit Nathan again. The sky is milky blue by the time we walk within sight of our house. Grandfather is silent. Always silent. This isn’t the first time he’s hidden things like this from me.

Like his cancer.

He’s been hiding it from me for months. He hides the letters and doesn’t tell me about his doctor’s visits. I found out by accident at the bar down the road. I was there with a few friends playing pool during the daytime when one of the barf lies said something about a guy he knew getting some bad news. They didn’t say much more, but I had heard enough. A little snooping after that led me to the hidden shreds of hospital letters and the phone call history.

I don’t know what kind it is or how severe or how much time he has left. I won’t until he’s honest.

Nathan was in the hospital for a week before he came home.

He settled back into his old room, and despite his oxygen tank and slow movement, it feels just like years ago before he moved out. Until he recovers, he’s on a paid leave from work. He still hasn’t told me what happened and avoids the subject if I try to al-lude to it. Now both he and Grandfather are guarding the mail and phone calls.

It’s not too tense though. So far, the only real fight they’ve had was about Mateo.

“He can stay right where he’s at,” Grandpa yelled. “I don’t want your thing tracking any of that poison mud in here.”

“I told you, there’s no risk of outside contamination!” Nathan said.

“Why don’t you go fuck him at the hotel like a whore?” He had had a few beers by then, so I laughed when he slurred out the words as goff fuggem.

Nathan makes the phone call, and we share a pizza. “You certain you’re cool with Mat coming over?” he asks for the tenth time.

“Sure.”

“It’s not weird?”

“Of course it’s weird, Nathan,” I joke. “It might not be if you’d called more or had come home sooner.”

I thought he’d laugh, but his eyes grow damp with sadness. “I wanted to. But by the time I thought Grandpa would be calm after I came out, I had my job. We traveled too much and too randomly for me to come home.”

“I’m just teasing,” I say. But am I? I don’t know. He left just like our parents left us, but it feels worse.

“I had to grovel to come here, though,” Nathan says. “I was supposed to be in Canada cleaning up tar sands, but when I heard about the job here I made sure me and Mat would both be on this job. Grandpa wouldn’t let me near you at first, I had to ask over and over. I did see you once, watching from the street.”

He launches into a story about how he and Mateo met. Workers on the same hill 104

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engineering job for some rich lady, occasional glances at each other, and finally they both just knew. His breath is heavy by time he f inishes his story. I thought it was just his embarrassment, but he almost falls out of his chair.

I help him to his room and hook up his oxygen tank to his nose. Mateo shows up not long after that. Nathan sends me away, and I help Grandpa stumble from the living room sofa to his bed.

It seems like all I’m doing lately is helping adults who hide the truth from me.

The creek is getting frostier as each day goes by. But the Memegwesi don’t care about the cold.

“Did you get your supper back?” Little Loon asks me.

“No. I can’t just get it back after all these years.”

“I bet you didn’t ask.”

“It wouldn’t do any good.”

Little Loon splashes around in the stream and sings. I think I catch a few Ojibwe words, but it’s mostly short chants.

“Could I ask you for a favor?”

The Memegwesi stops and stares, a big smile spreading across his face. Water drips from his fur and horns. “Favor . . .” the Imp says slowly. “I did you a favor, yet you ask me more . . . But Maangoons likes the gwiiwizens. I want something in return.”

In school I’ve heard a few stories about the Memegwesi . Always take what they offer you. Never tell them they’re short. Don’t ever ask them for favors.

“What do you want?” I ask.

Little Loon dives under the water and jumps back up, holding a lump of granite.

“What do you want? I will honor your request f irst, and later will tell you what I want in return.”

I watch him splash around collecting more rocks, and I think about the offer. In the stories the boys who made the favors always went missing if they didn’t follow through on their end of the bargain. If it’s true, it’s a hard choice to make.

“I want the truth, Maangoons. I want to know what happened to Nathan, and I want my grandfather to tell me the truth about his health.”

The Memegwesi laughs and back paddles to the other side of the stream. “Done.”

He disappears into the woods, footsteps and giggles echoing through the trees.

If I was superstitious I’d be worried.

November has begun, although I’m living in summer.

In school, we’re learning about the four hills of life. Babies and toddlers climb a small hill in spring. When life begins. Adolescents run a bigger hill, where it’s summer all the time. That doesn’t sound right to me though. High school and puberty don’t feel like summer. Maybe I just skipped that hill and went right to fall where my brother Nathan is now, in adulthood. The fourth hill is winter.

It’s been days since the Memegwesi disappeared, and still I have no honesty from either my brother or grandfather. I’ve gone back to the stream and he hasn’t shown up once. But I don’t mind. If he does follow through, it’ll just be confirming what I already suspect.

Down at the polluted field, the tent has been taken down. Where there was once a f lat expanse of grass, there is now a series of large earth mounds with blades of grass scattered all around. And it’s still fenced off, so who knows if the pollution is really gone. The geoengineers have moved their machines down toward the end of town and are prepping more land to morph into hills. Nathan says a series of hills will look like a trophy, a reminder that the community has been cleansed.

At home, Nathan and Grandfather are killing a few cases of beer on the front The Fourth Hill

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September/October 2017
patio, and only an hour before f ive o’clock. I expect shouts and a f ight, but they’re chatting and laughing like old times. Strange. Nathan doesn’t often drink, and I assume he would have even less while recovering.

“Cal! My boy, do you want a beer?” Grandfather says in a dopey voice friendlier than ever before.

“No.”

“You know I love you, kid. You can have some if you want. I won’t get mad later.

Your parents don’t care about you, but I do.”

Only beer gets him to talk about his son and daughter-in-law. I don’t think of them as mother and father, never truly have. I think of them as addicts who may or may not be dead at any given moment, far away from here.

“No, really, Grandpa. I’m fine.”

He walks inside. I can’t tell if he’s angry. Nathan is smiling at me with glassy eyes.

“Hey . . . brother . . .” he drawls out.

“Are you good, Nate? Where’s Mat?”

“I’m fine. Mat’s at work, and I’m just enjoying a beer or two with the old man . . . I think he’d like it if you would, too. . . .”

“Before it’s too late?” I ask, dropping to a whisper. He drops that smile for a moment.

“Yeah, yeah. Never know what could happen. World is a crazy place . . .” Nervous laughter follows.

The smell of beer and the scattering of cans f inally breaks me. I’m fed up with them hiding the truth. “I saw the letters,” I say. “I saw what the doctor said about Grandpa.”

“You . . . you saw that it’s back?”

Back? “What’s back?”

Now he realizes he’s messed up. I caught him.

“You didn’t know, did you?” Those drunk eyes become heavier, shinier.

I shake my head. “Not about the f irst time, I guess.” We sit in silence. When it’s clear that Grandfather isn’t coming back out, I talk again. “I’m f ifteen now. I can handle the truth, Nate.”

“No, Callum. I know you too well. And we care about you. You’re not prepared for it.”

“Maybe not, but I need to know. Because . . . because it’s real. Because it’s not going to get easier, and the longer I don’t know the worse the truth with be.”

Another can is cracked open, and he tells me. It’s close to what I gathered these past few months. A type of cancer. His muscles are slowly becoming infected and will eventually fail. And it wasn’t the first time. He went through chemo years ago, and he went into remission. Another thing I was never told, but I was only five so I don’t mind.

I don’t think I’m close to tears but I take a deep breath just in case. “And you?

What happened to you at the pollution site?”

“Ah, nothing really.”

“Stop that,” I nearly shout. “You missed years of my childhood, so don’t treat me like one. In three years I’ll be an adult. Will you still hide everything from me that’s hard to hear?” It takes one more beer for him to talk.

“I breathed in some fumes and they attacked my lung cells. But I mean it when I say don’t worry. The doctors don’t think the damage will be permanent.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

He hands me a beer, but I still decline. Not yet.

Little Loon is shivering. Like he has a fever.

“See? See?” His breath comes out in tiny puffs, like smoke signals. “You have honesty.”

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I’m shivering myself. The stream is still flowing, but the edges have been frozen. “I said I wanted my grandfather to tell me the truth.”

“You said honesty first, and you have that now. And I will have my due.”

“Okay, fine. What do you want?”

He walks over to the rock I’m sitting on and holds out four fingers. “I have a better idea. You can pay me back the shoe I gave you . . . or you can have another favor if you bring me these items, four. Copper. Gold. A blueberry. And a rock from the new dirt pile.”

I try not to laugh. Sometimes I think the stories were written by idiots, because they somehow have the impression that these things are wise.

“Any favor?”

“Any.”

“Could you cure my grandfather?”

He laughs. “The Great Mystery in the sky is in charge of life and death . . . but we little people are much healthier than you big folk and know all about healing sick-ness.”

“So you can heal him?”

“For copper, gold, a blueberry, and a rock, I can heal, I can heal. Deal?”

“Deal. But does the rock really have to be from the new mounds? They’re off limits.”

He disappears with his laugh echoing behind him.

On the first day of snowfall, Grandfather collapsed in the kitchen. Just a week before Thanksgiving. Nathan is still trying to hide as much as he can from me. But I’ve heard the doctor’s prognosis, and it’s not good. And Grandpa doesn’t want to go through chemotherapy again.

I’ve been spending my nights trying to plan out how I’m going to get copper and the rock. I have a gold and diamond ring that belonged to my father, but I care about it like I care about him. Not at all. One blueberry won’t be missed from our fridge.

That leaves finding a copper pipe and trespassing in a construction area.

On a night when my brother is passed out from his pain medication, I sneak out and head to a rough part of town. The houses can hardly be called as such. They’re shacks made of thin walls and Chinese newspaper. Every other house has boarded windows and graffiti.

It’s past the town curfew. I walk slowly, between alleys and out of sight. I’ve never been a nuisance, so if the cops caught me I’d just be taken back home. On the far corner of the town ghetto, where the ditch is more trash than grass, there’s a house that’s just recently been abandoned. It’s all boarded up, but it’s easy to push in a plywood window and slide in.

I have a small f lashlight, but it’s good enough to get me around. These houses aren’t that complicated. Sometimes families of ten stay in here even though there’s only three bedrooms. I walk to the kitchen and look under the sink.

There’s nothing. It’s been two days and the pipes look like they’ve already been ripped out. I turn and point the flashlight at the walls. Dark trails travel across the paint where wires have been torn away.

Just as I start to think about why all the decisions I make are stupid and pointless, I hear stumbling in another room. I turn and run back to the kicked-in window and jump out. There’s a voice behind me screaming to get the fuck away from his house.

I doubt it’s his, but I can’t really say anything since I also broke into it.

I walk back across town, ignoring the stupid curfew, and struggle to think of somewhere I can get copper. I come to the train tracks and see the dark outline of the mounds. There is no one around. At least I can get that done tonight.

The Fourth Hill

107

September/October 2017

The fence is easy to jump. My feet sink in the loose soil. The hill is easy to climb at f irst, but the farther up I go it’s more slippery. The dirt beneath each step slides down, and I have to dig my hands in to get a good hold.

At the top I don’t find any rocks. There’s only more soil. I dig into the dirt clumps and squeeze through the mushy grains. Finally, my hand wraps around a small clump that doesn’t break. When I pull it up a piece of dirt flies into my mouth and makes me cough.

The image of my brother lying the in hospital crosses my mind. The coughing, the oxygen tank, the geoengineers. The pollution.

I don’t care that they’ve supposedly cleaned it all away. I launch myself down the side of the mound, leaving deep trails and marks into the side as I go. By time I get to the fence and climb over, my legs are caked with dirt. I still have the rock in my hand but the only thing I want to do now is shower. Somewhere on the other side of the mound, I see flashlight beams.

Back at home I wash away all the once-contaminated f ilth with hot water. We don’t have a good heater, so the warmth doesn’t last long. When I shut the water off, I notice that the faucet handles are copper. I realize, perhaps for the first time, that all of our plumbing is made of copper. Once again, I feel stupid and useless.

I go in the basement. Near the washing machine in the corner, there is a faucet that hasn’t been connected to the water for years. It takes a few good pulls with a wrench to take the first section of pipe out of the wall.

Up in my room I have a rusty copper pipe, a once-polluted rock, a deadbeat’s gold ring, and there are still blueberries in the fridge. I stare at these stupid things and wonder why my grandfather’s fate relies on such junk.

I gave Little Loon what he wanted the day after I gathered them all. He put them in a deerskin bag and ran away in the snow. Grandfather hasn’t shown any visible recovery since then, but the doctors allowed him to come home for Thanksgiving dinner.

Nathan asks me about classes, and Grandfather asks me about girls in the classes, giving a joking glare at Nathan when he does. I tell them what they want to hear.

And even though it made me angry before, I know they are telling me what I want to hear, too.

Both are still acting as if I don’t know the seriousness of it all and trying to keep me out of the loop. But I know why now. It’s because of the worry. It was bad before when I only suspected, but now that I know the fine details, I don’t get good sleep and I can’t concentrate on anything.

Grandpa eats a nasty slice of liver and onions, and to all of our surprise he talks to Mateo. “Nathan never told me. Did you swim over or jump?”

I think Mateo didn’t know if he was joking or not, but right away Nathan and I laugh. Once he gets it, Mat is fine.

“I was actually born in Nashville,” Mateo says. He looks right into our Indian grandfather’s eyes. “I guess that makes me a Native American.”

“Oh, I see it now. . . . You look like you could be Cherokee. Must be why you wanted to smoke Nathan’s peace pipe.”

Nathan and I both turn bright red. But not Grandpa. Even dying, he’s a wonderful perv.

When I go to sleep, I find the stone on my pillow. The same stone from the mound I gave to Little Loon. It wasn’t granite like the one he offered me last time. It’s dark grey shale. Maangoons must have acted tonight.

The morning is blinding. Snow covers the ground just a few inches. I bundle up and head to the creek. It hasn’t frozen over yet. Maangoons is sitting on his rock. The 108

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sight is as comical as it is disturbing. He’s holding a bottle of Colt 45, though it’s almost as big as him. Most of it is gone. So is he.

“Callum!” he slurs. “Cal . . . Um, Cal . . . Um . . . Cal!”

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m drinking . . .” He looks in my eyes and I think he sees how shocked I am. “To your health! I mean . . . to your family’s health. God bless ’em!”

The fur around his head is messy and his deerskin clothes have been replaced by a ragged white T-shirt. His horns look like they’ve been clipped. “Is this a part of it or something?”

“A part of it? A part of it?” He sprawls out over the rock and laughs and laughs.

“No, this is just a bottle. A wonderful bottle, yes.”

My frigid fingers clench in anger. “But my grandfather.”

“Is dying.” The dwarf f inishes off the bottle and throws it in the creek. It f loats away downstream, out of sight. “And no one will stop it.”

I don’t want to shout but I do. “You said.”

“I said us little people are healthier. I said Gichi Manidoo is in charge of life and death. I said I can heal.” He jumps up and waddles over to the edge of the water.

“You’re the one that assumed I meant I could heal him.”

His words sound right. But he’s taken payment from me, and worse, my hope. My feet ache, yet I want to punt him across the stream and into the tree. “You took my payment.”

That made him laugh hardest of all. “I took gold from a boy who believed in fairy tales. It’s not every day that children fall for that nonsense.”

Don’t ask for favors. The stories either lied or were right on the mark. “What did you do with what I gave you?”

“I sold the ring and the copper for beer. I ate the blueberry . . . you’d think the wild kind are better, but no, I get sick of those, so I wanted a bigger one grown with chemicals. And the rock? Ha! That was just to see if you’d actually climb on that poisoned hill!”

I walk forward. I should kick him, stomp him, and drown him. He sees my intent and in a blur he zooms across the stream, faster than I’ve seen anything living move.

“Gwiiwizens, don’t get mad at me for being gullible. You chose to believe in that old crap. Look around you. I live in a polluted town in a dirty creek. You live all around chemicals and oil. And now humans are moving the land like the Creator meant to.

The world’s different now.”

“But you’re here,” I say to this horned creature, not even half my height. “You may be a drunk but you’re still here.”

“Your grandfather’s a drunk, and he’s still here . . . tell him I said ‘you’re welcome.’ ”

His laugh fades away as he dives into the icy creek and disappears. Hot, angry tears fall into the snow and leave behind small holes.

On the first day of December, my brother and I build a bonfire in our yard.

The snow melts away in a circle around the tall flames. We sit on dry logs that the reservation forestry has delivered for the coming winter. After a few cans of beer, Grandpa finally hands me one.

We have our first drink together as my grandfather’s winter ends.

By morning, when his body is taken away by the ambulance, I want mine to begin.

I want to skip summer and autumn. I want to begin the same walk up the last cold hill, just to see him on the other side.

But Nathan will keep me here. He will keep me walking through the coldest summer of my life. ❍

The Fourth Hill

109

THE

CABINET

William Preston

Although William Preston wishes stories gushed forth from an ever-bubbling well within him, his tales usually derive from something he has seen or read. This present story is no exception, as its source is a movie with which he bent the minds of his film studies students. The tale’s main character, however, and what he found beyond that film’s narrative . . . well, perhaps some mysteries of inspiration remain.

Otto wasn’t the least bit curious. Wedged in alongside me at the corner table of the Public Records office, his suit smelling of onions, he dismissed my suggestion that, in the head clerk’s temporary absence, we watch from the window as workers set up the spring fair.

We were the lowest of the clerks; our one conceivable advancement would put us at a table nearer the window, though given the quality of light in our town, it was like squabbling over bruised pears. Gray, glary light was the usual; clouds turned yellow before a storm; the overcast sky purpled briefly at twilight before night settled like a lid.

The Jahrmarkt would open later that afternoon, continuing into the weekend, and all town off ices closed early to welcome it. One rejoiced over such unaccustomed breaks from sitting bent-backed at the table.

Otto leaned even closer toward his ledger and tidied a figure. “What’s to see? It’s one scam after another.”

“It’s for children mostly.”

“It’s Jews and gypsies and foreigners selling things you couldn’t usually give away.”

I didn’t take his complaint about Jews personally. “There’s so much more! All kinds of people are selling. And there are games and mysterious tents and the rides—”

“A boy got his leg caught last year on a carousel.”

“Not exactly. He took a tumble.”

“I think he lost his leg.” Perhaps Otto’s attitude regarding the fair was the result of a disturbing experience. In his youth, did he see someone maimed? Or was the accident his own? His nose was noticeably crooked, and a scar like an apostrophe hung over one eye.

“No, no! It was I who told you about the boy! I saw what happened.” At the sound of a wailing child, I had pushed through the crowd to investigate. The boy had slipped from his horse before it had even begun its mechanical gallop. He had had a fright, was all.

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The head clerk returned, silencing me with a dark look as he ascended his ludicrously tall chair, a modern piece he himself had selected. From this post above his equally elevated desk, he had an unobstructed view into the fair, but he was not one for delightful distractions.

Nothing in our days ever bettered the head clerk’s foul disposition, but the events of that day altered it for the worse. In the early afternoon, the head clerk blew his stack at a visitor. His shriek of “Wait!”—as if trying to halt a train driving his family to oblivion—first brought my attention to the unfolding drama. Evidently, the visitor, hat in hand, broad back servilely bowed under his caped coat, had entered the inviolable sphere of space in which the head clerk worked—he was terribly sensitive to such invasions—thus prompting the outburst. The head clerk’s angular gesticula-tions resembled a marionette’s. The office, narrow and doglegged, was made closer by the inward tilt of the walls, the head clerk’s towering perch, and the smell of us all in our wool jackets. This sudden commotion made the room feel more crowded. Under the weight of continued invective, the visitor retreated to the wall bench. I tried to catch Otto’s eye as the scene developed, but he showed no interest. If a matter did not personally concern him, he could easily put it from his mind.

The visitor squirmed against the canted wall. His glare brushed me. His grip on his cane threatened the accessory’s impending use.

Despite his initial treatment, the visitor stood again after only a minute and sidled toward the head clerk’s desk. What if he were to strike the head clerk? I imagined every other clerk rising in alarm, Otto and myself banging into each other as we came around the table from either side. Then what? A struggle to catch hold of the cane? When they hired me, no one had mentioned the possibility of violence erupt-ing in the off ice. We could shout for a policeman. Those fellows, with their f lorid, right-angled mustaches, tended to arrive in swarms. Thin-boned as a rule, they did not, singly, make an impression. What a scene that would be, the white-haired, nearly hunchbacked stranger waving his stick, going down under a cascade of batons.

The head clerk teetered on his chair, having caught sight of the creeping visitor.

“Wait! Great God! Have you no sense?” Rebuffed again, the stranger returned to the bench. Even with his head turned away, I felt his boiling wrath.

At last the head clerk completed his task and clambered down—a smooth descent being nearly impossible, but such are the vicissitudes of high off ice. He swept his hands down his length to straighten his clothes. He was ready for the impertinent stranger, setting aside his circumstantial fury in favor of off iciousness. He led the man to a side table and, with his chief assistant, discussed matters. Voices rose, and further conflict seemed inevitable, until a folded bill passed from the stranger’s hand to be slipped in the head clerk’s coat. I must have made a noise.

“What,” said Otto.

“Some cash has smoothed the way.”

“That’s likely how he got in the door in the first place.”

Next they brought the man to me. A doctor of some sort, it turned out. Hastily they had prepared a permit for his Jahrmarkt display, “Somnambulism,” and I recorded in the ledger the official payment, though I could not keep myself from glancing toward where I knew the head clerk had secured the additional cash.

When I had set down my pen, the head clerk thought to introduce me. “This is Max.”

Given the verbal thrashing the man had suffered, I thought to give him a look of welcome; I, at least, bore him no ill will nor expected from him further remuneration.

Why should the face presented to the stranger be—rather than welcoming—a show of bared teeth and a barrage of rude words like an elbow in the ribs? But the morning had, evidently, worn raw whatever good feelings our visitor might have had, and I received no answering smile.

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When the visitor had gone, the head clerk accompanying him into the hall, I asked Otto, “What’s a somnambulist?”

“Utter foolishness.”

“Certainly, but—”

“Go see for yourself.”

The Jahrmarkt brought harmless fun to our village. To the eyes of a child, the fair’s joys and terrors were alike magnified, and they would remain with that child forever. So it had been for me. My mother hated crowds and stayed home; my father let me ride the merry-go-round as often as I wanted. The horses heaved me up and dropped faster, it seemed, than falling bodies, and I clung to the slick pole, certain I would slip and (Oh, the unreasoning fears of childhood!) be trampled beneath the gold and silver hooves. But at each revolution, there stood my father, broad-faced and bearded, watching intently for my approach, lifting his hand to waggle his fingers at me, mouth open to say something I could never hear, perhaps my name. He never failed to wave. We shared bags of mixed almonds and raisins. When the crush of the crowd threatened to separate us, he held my hand.

Youthful curiosity drew me also to the fair’s stranger corners, but my father had pulled me away from the tents and exhibits meant for more mature audiences—until he allowed that I was old enough to attend by myself. Sometimes with school companions, but often alone, I investigated the exhibits that promised titillation. There, confused, squeezed amidst older men all breathing open-mouthed, I saw my f irst naked woman and a being who claimed to be neither woman nor man. I fled from tents that remained too dark for too long; I ran when people’s gaze lingered on me, as if I, too, had come to be displayed and scrutinized.

My father no longer attended the fair, and I felt his absence—indeed, the absence of any familiar contact at the Jahrmarkt. How odd to have so many people gathered into one place but no possibility of making their acquaintance. There was no place to simply sit. I sometimes saw familiar faces, people from work or my neighborhood, but they watched their own feet or the back of the person in front of them or the approaching attraction—games, exotic items for sale, tents promising a glimpse of nature’s oddities—and never looked my way. I seemed to be the only person hoping to catch another’s eyes. Interesting and unrecognized faces appeared and were gone. I passed attractive women, but we were hustled past each other in the swirl of the crowds. How, I wondered, did any two people meet? According to my father, in our ancestors’ village, on the edge of the Black Forest, romances were arranged. You didn’t have to worry about finding a mate, because it was someone’s job to find one for you.

Hardly had I left work and entered the Jahrmarkt environs when a repeated clanging caught the attention of many. And there he was! The persistent doctor from this morning, waving over his head a bell such as a schoolmistress might use. The sudden ringing created around the doctor’s tent a space from which the general din was exiled and only the bell resounded. Human voices halted. A crowd settled before the tent, and the doctor lowered the bell only to lift a pole from which a banner un-rolled lengthwise. Here was depicted the elongated figure of a man—or the figure of an elongated man. With no background or other object for comparison, it was impossible to judge.

The doctor loudly declaimed, “His whole life—asleep! What secrets has he seen and dreamed? What can he tell you of what the future holds? Come see the sleeper awake!” He continued in this vein for a bit and then again rang the bell.

The connection between protracted sleep and esoteric knowledge eluded me, but perhaps I missed some logical connecting tissue in his opening remarks. Surrounded by so many people transf ixed, none of them looking my way and thus unlikely to 112

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meet my eyes, I took the opportunity to consider them. From the clothes they had selected to the way they held their bodies—or how their bodies held them, constrain-ing and yet expressing the soul—each person seemed uniquely strange. People’s noses I found singularly fascinating, protruding in a way that invited comparison.

Ears protrude as well, but not so much, and I found them harder to compare. And by

“strange” I do not mean unappealing or ugly. No, each body demonstrated grace in its clumsy squalor, its fragility, its persistence despite every foe that might have snuffed it out. We are all such improbable things.

These ruminations distracted me from the object of the introductory material, and as the crowd, a fist loosely clenched, pulled me up the steps to the platform and toward the dark arena beyond the tent flap, I wondered mostly why everyone else had found the doctor’s exhibit so enticing rather than puzzling.

A surprisingly spacious area lay under this tent. Before a stage lit by footlights, we spectators stood massed in our collective darkness, faces gray and nervous with anticipation. (I imagined my own face as more relaxed, observant.) The stage held only the dark-suited doctor and a tall box or portable closet, cut somewhat like a coffin, set on its foot. One door overlapped the other.

Too far back to hear all of what was said (through air stuffed with the sighs and movements and unconscious sounds from my fellows), my full appreciation was impeded. The doctor, pointing with a short white rod, called the upright box his “cabinet.” Experience granted me some sense of where his narrative would lead. In previous years at the Jahrmarkt, exhibits often featured boxes said to contain mysteries. Insert a hand to feel a strange substance, a squirming small creature, bones; peer within this glass case at the frozen lady, the vanishing lizard, Alexander’s sword; look quickly, as we will open this for but a moment to reveal a treasure in gems, a sacred artifact from the Second Temple, a living human head. A marvelous game, this, with many iterations. Often the description preceding the revelation generated more anxiety and excitement than the thing revealed, but it was an enrap-turing experience, before a box was opened, to imagine what might emerge.

Employing the white rod, the doctor tapped the cabinet. He swung back each door; within stood a pale man clad all in black, his snug shirt running from the top of his neck to his wrists. Hair slick and black as a gypsy’s. This was the man from the banner—which had, it turned out, portrayed him with passing accuracy.

The doctor introduced him: “CHAY-za-RAY.” An Italian, it seemed. Cesare the Sleeper. I leaned into the gap between two people to suggest a way forward, and they parted.

Slept his whole life, we were informed. Knows the secrets of the ancients. Some reference to Egypt. The Ptolemies. Moses.

The good doctor explained that Cesare would speak, but we must first prompt him with questions of great significance, questions of history and theology, questions of science, questions from our hearts.

A young man near me called out: “Should I marry Anna?”

The young woman beside him shook his arm. “Should I marry Kurt?”

Much laughter followed this.

Sensing an amenable crowd, a man well behind me shouted, “How many Poles does it take to—”

But he was interrupted by, “Will there be another war?”

More spectators joined in. “Is there life on other worlds?” “Will my daughter walk again?” “Is my father in heaven?” “What of hell? Is there a hell?”

The doctor directed his withering glare toward each speaker, as if the questions were of no use, and this dissuasive response soon brought an end to the audience’s participation. Then his head snapped toward his companion.

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“Cesare! Answer the question! Will there be another war?” I winced at the severe tone, but the so-called sleeper betrayed no emotion. He was, evidently, accustomed to this treatment. It might have been that in his half-living state, such harsh tones were required in order to elicit a response.

Cesare took two meager steps forward. It was a brief stage. Two good strides would have pitched him into the audience.

His dark mouth shuddered open and his kohl-rimmed eyes twitched. “Soon! Too soon!”

Certainly a profound pronouncement. We waited for more. The man’s lips remained parted, his peeled-wide eyes fixed on a point beyond the tent and—I began to believe—beyond the visible world.

“Cesare! This couple! Should they marry?”

The initial questioner said quietly, “I was joking. . . .”

Behind Cesare gaped his box. How long must he spend in there? I wondered whether he bathed before climbing in, so at least a pleasant scent accompanied his confinement. Had he been watching us through gaps in the boards before emerging?

How did this night’s audience compare to the others down the years?

The doctor’s voice reasserted itself. “Cesare! Should they marry?”

“Yes! Yes!” he answered. “Marry! And soon!” The words alone might have been cause for hurrahs, but the staring eyes with the dark rings, the rigid, joyless body, the quavering voice out of a nightmare—these made the pronouncement less a blessing than a curse, as if time were one commodity these young people did not possess, and no one in the audience gave forth any sound of good cheer.

I had two rooms to myself one floor above my parents, and I typically stopped to visit or eat with them mornings and evenings. A tailor who could also make mechanical repairs when called upon, my father hummed but did not talk when working, and around the house, reading a book or the newspaper, he gnawed on an empty pipe, the bowl flapping up and down. My mother’s brother had recently moved into my old room; with my uncle at the dinner table, my father became more voluble, and on evenings when the mood struck him, he would sing folk songs to the accompani-ment of my uncle’s violin. My mother, who laughed soundlessly, would clutch at her stomach at my how my father gestured and jumped about while singing.

My family life was happy enough, but each day’s return to those rooms bore a touch of dread. Until my adolescence, my grandfather and I shared a bedroom. As a child, I never knew a night’s sound sleep. Opa woke me with snorts and coughs or the effort-ful sounds of turning in the bed as if the bed resisted him, and I pictured the sheets as white hands clutching his underclothes. My grandfather inhabited my dreams, which were not fanciful. I dreamed of him breathing, rolling over, calling to me in his sleep.

Opa died in the narrow bed next to mine when I was thirteen, and that next morning, rousing me proved diff icult, my mother panicking as if whatever had at last claimed Opa had taken me too.

Once installed in my own rooms each evening, I filled my time with a steady diet of inexpensive novels stuffed with suspense, excitement, and terror. I did not enjoy every book; love stories especially left me cold, but I read whatever I bought or relatives had handed on, and as I read I imagined a person who would enjoy such a book.

I saw that person—man or woman—sitting in my place, taking great pleasure from every turn of the plot and exclamation by its characters. There must be, I reasoned, someone for each story, someone who loved it whatever I might think.

We clerks stood singly along the wall so as not to clog the hallway; the head clerk was uncharacteristically late. Eventually, word of our helpless state reached an 114

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authority who dispatched a limping man to unlock our door. I truly expected to see the head clerk atop his perch, intent on his work, but the stool stood startlingly bare, and an autumn chill had crept into the room overnight. No matter. Our bodies would warm the place soon enough.

The first assistant said, “We know our tasks!” and then let us go about them. His name was Dieter.

Within minutes, Dieter left the office, and I opened my mouth.

Otto put up his hand. “I don’t want to hear about the fair.”

“Oh, but some amazing things happened.” One amazing thing, but I aimed to generate interest in my story.

“No, they didn’t.”

“Indeed! Indeed! Let me tell—”

“Max, it’s rampant foolishness. Jews and foreigners taking our money.”

“Yes, certainly, but this is something more.” I lowered my voice, another ploy to heighten my story’s uncertain value. “There was a man who’d been asleep his whole life. He made predictions. He spoke about the distant past as if he had been there. It made quite an impression on all—”

“What do you mean,” asked Otto, now looking at the ceiling, “asleep his whole life?”

“Well, he—”

“Does he eat? Does he shit? Or does he do those in his sleep? How would he learn to speak? He spoke German?”

“I think he was Italian, but he spoke German, like the doctor. I believe he traveled everywhere inside his box. The doctor pointed to the box—”

“Doctor. What doctor?”

“Remember the man who came in yesterday?”

“No.”

“Surely you do. The only man to enter. A stranger. The man who so agitated the head clerk. There was the argument over the permit.”

Voices approached from the hall. The assistant head clerk returned with someone from another department, the two of them engaged in a discussion of bookkeeping details.

Later that morning, Dieter stepped out again, summoned by a finger crooked at him from the doorway, and, to my surprise, Otto returned to the subject of my earlier story.

“So you’re saying this man travels in a coffin. Lives in a coffin.”

“Did I say ‘coffin’? It is shaped like a coffin. There’s an odd lid that doesn’t fit in a straight line. I wonder whether the doctor himself built it.”

“Doctor. How is this man a doctor? This doesn’t sound like any doctor.” He set down his pen and asked me to elaborate on what I had seen. When I was f inished, he shook his head and at last looked me straight in the face. “What’s the mystery? The fellow’s partner gets in the box before the show, he comes out and says bizarre things to shock the audience. There’s no great mystery.”

“You need to see for yourself. This afternoon, I’m sure—”

He pushed back from the table, no longer looking at me. “And people pay to see this. The mystery is why you think there’s any mystery.”

The assistant to the head clerk returned. He put his hand on the head clerk’s columnar stool and stared at his own hand as if its form had changed.

“I have an important announcement.” Everyone stopped working. My stomach performed a somersault. “The head clerk has been murdered.”

Murders were not novel in our town. A regular occurrence in the poorer sections, murders rarely made the newspaper. Bodies to which names were never attached appeared in the farmers’ fields beyond the remains of the ancient town walls, on the The Cabinet

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disused lanes where secret lovers made their rendezvous, washed up on the edge of the foul river—having perhaps drifted from a neighboring village. Word spread; schoolchildren and the curious gathered, whether or not the body remained. We stared and pondered what was and what might have been. The bodies ended in common graves, if not first handed over to medical students for study.

This murder, though: The blade struck in the district of well-heeled businessmen and people with notable positions. This body had a proper name.

The police must have believed that such a deed required a visible response demonstrating their concern for the public welfare. As if he thought he might have use of it, the policeman who visited our office kept his club in his left hand, nodding it forward to make his points. Between pronouncements, with his other hand he twisted and tugged at his twitching mustache.

“Keep sharp! Move with alacrity! Travel in groups if possible. Let no woman go un-attended.”

I could just imagine offering to take the arm of an unaccompanied woman hurrying through the shadows of our narrow streets. Her screech would bring police on me like a deluge.

Dieter thanked the police officer and concluded, “Let us all be on guard and keep a watch for suspicious strangers.”

No one talked about the head clerk. None of us knew him beyond the office. A clerk from the births and deaths office told us that the head clerk’s sister worked in the building. I hadn’t known he had a sister. Never before had I contemplated his ties to a larger and more populous community. The office had seemed to be his entire world, like that of a fictional character who could no more appear on the streets of one’s own town than he could migrate to another book. I imagined that, for the head clerk’s fu-neral, someone would have collected all the photos of him for a memorial display, but in my mind, in every photo, he was in this off ice, signing documents, berating lower clerks, pounding the desk, ignoring the camera from his attenuated perch.

When the office closed for lunch, we typically carried our lunches to the building’s courtyard; there we ate among the workers from the other town off ices. The late head clerk had never joined us. Sometimes he remained behind to eat at his desk and sometimes he would join other superiors at a nearby café. This first day without the head clerk, Dieter joined us, though obviously his role had now changed. I made a show of sitting on a stone bench, looking immensely puzzled, then standing to search the ground and look back the way I had come.

“Did I drop my satchel?” I asked the air.

“You’ve left it upstairs,” Otto said from a neighboring bench.

Dieter had not yet been given the office key. “Unless someone else came and locked it, it should be open.”

“How foolish of me,” I said.

Dieter had not even securely shut the off ice door. I retrieved my satchel, then struggled onto the head clerk’s perch, clutching his high desk for assistance. The perspective differed profoundly from my typical point of view: an unfamiliar set of angles; a proximity to the blotchy ceiling; perhaps even a less dusty atmosphere. I briefly took in the fine third-floor view of the fair alive with the activity of its ven-dors. To fully embrace the moment, though, I imagined the bowed heads of the clerks at our desks.

I shook my finger toward where my own head should have been. “Max! You’re too slow! Look at that mess! You’re smudging your work again! Stop mumbling!” I imagined my upturned, blanched face, at which I fully intended to glare, but I couldn’t stop grinning, and rather than shout, I whispered my rebukes.

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I shook my head. How silly! Evidently, such thunder and lightning were not within me. I gave one last look around the office. Not such a bad space after all.

After work, I returned to the fair. In the crush of people, I was ever aware of the scent of my body, its heat, and the heat of others. Competing tunes rang out from the carousels and street musicians. Above the crowd, the houses of our village rose, piled atop one another along the hillsides till they reached the old church at the great hill’s crown. Here among constricted curlicues of streets is where we lived out our days.

So I came once more to the somnambulist’s tent and stood amid a jostling, anxious pack of humanity.

Again the doctor conjured Cesare from his cabinet. “Behold, the sleeper!”

You had to admire the work ethic of Cesare, his commitment to his vocation.

Youthfully slender, poised as a dancer, he may have been about my age, nearing thirty, but the wrinkles extending from his mouth and eyes, made evident in the harsh stage light, suggested someone much older, someone who had suffered for his unique achievement. A prematurely aged appearance, I reasoned, might have been due to the extremity of spending so much time in a box, waiting to be called. What could he do in there? And propped upright, how could he sleep without toppling out? Though I had seen him only yesterday, still I watched riveted as Cesare seemed to carry from the cabinet the utter blankness of that space, the vacuum into which the audience was drawn.

“Cesare will answer any question! But before you ask him, consider whether you want to hear his answer. He knows what he knows! His mind has lived in those mysterious regions beyond perception! What would you dare to ask?”

I would have liked someone to ask Cesare about life inside the box. Was he happy there? The doctor seemed so severe, but was there a love between them, as father to son? A friendship? So cut off from the commonplaces of life and from all eyes, did even the Lord God lose sight of him? When the doors closed, might the man return to the nothingness from which we all have been conjured forth?

Then a dearer question surfaced—like a voice beyond the window at night, unclear but plaintive and urgent. How to phrase my question, I did not know, but I pushed forward, certain that, by the time I reached the foot of the stage, what I wanted to know from Cesare would have taken shape in my mouth. Ahead of me, an exchange occurred between Cesare and someone in the audience, but too faint to apprehend.

My forward movement stalled. I cast about for spaces to slide through but halted at an unfolding bit of chaos. A man wailed with laughter, shrieked with laughter. A woman keeled over to be caught by companions. As I stood on tiptoe to parse the event, two men pushed sideways through the unsettled crowd and slipped out one side of the tent.

The disruption allowed me to move closer. A shabbily dressed man whose hat had slipped over one eye appeared to have been in the midst of what transpired.

I said in his ear, “Friend, what happened up there?”

He tilted his head toward the stage. “He told that fellow he would die tonight.”

“Who did . . . which . . . ?”

He indicated Cesare, upright as a pike set in the f loor, thick eyelids f luttering.

“That one there, the sleeper. He told one of them two that just left that he was going to die tonight.”

“That would be a disturbing thing to hear. But now the fellow can prepare himself.”

The man seemed to see me anew and adjusted his hat. “Why are you talking to me?” Then he turned and put me from his mind. Perhaps this unveiling of Cesare’s powers had unsettled him. And my own question returned, unformed, to the depths.

* * *

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The next day, Dieter, now formally our new head clerk, came and went repeatedly—
called into meetings, most likely. I had the impression, too, that he didn’t care for the late head clerk’s unsteady roost and was happy to avoid it.

Otto was not interested in hearing about my fresh experience at the fair. I felt it was quite a good story, though I lacked direct involvement, and I rehearsed how I would describe the shock Cesare prompted under the tent should Otto ever let me detail the matter.

Midmorning, Dieter rapped on his new desk to draw our attention. Whey-faced and shaking, he looked to have been set upon by a fast-acting ailment. He set his arms akimbo, steadying himself.

“There’s been another murder,” he announced.

Our lunchtime dismissal brought the work week to an end. The unloosed populace thickened the Jahrmarkt lanes like harvested logs bobbing and slamming down a mountain stream, helpless to do anything but proceed and incautious of each other’s proximity. I got pretty fairly jostled but resisted returning elbow for elbow. Repeatedly in my circlings, I passed the somnambulist’s tent, but the banner was gone and clearly the exhibit had not opened.

Idly, I visited every booth and tent and sampled foods till I was full. I would not leave till I saw the somnambulist once more, so for relief from the crush, I took a spin on the carousel, the only adult to do so, earning some insulting calls from unknown commentators. I shut my eyes and felt the wind of my moving; I clenched my thighs against my slender ride. From my darkened perspective, I felt any loosening of my grip would propel me over the heads of everyone to smash against some ancient building. The wind pulled thin tears from my eyes. When the ride ran down, I held out a coin and went around again.

What of the doctor and his companion? I made a final pass. The mute flap of the somnambulist’s tent beckoned me. I mounted the steps and pulled aside the entrance flap. I stepped within and let the fabric fall. Lightless, the space smelled faintly—and unexpectedly—of the wildflowers growing beyond the old city walls, as if the scents were drawn by some physical principle to this one vacant place. I gave my eyes time to grow accustomed, but the darkness remained impenetrable. Climbing on stage tempted me, but in a blackness such as that, I’d have certainly stumbled and hurt myself. I put my arm behind me, felt nothing, realized I had inadvertently stepped away from the tent wall, then retreated and found my way out, shaking.

A young man at the foot of the steps jumped to see me.

“I wanted to see the show again,” I explained.

He stepped up from the flowing crowd. In his lapel, he wore a small blue flower.

“He won’t be there. Didn’t you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“Suspicion has fallen upon him. For last night’s murder. Him and that sleepwalker.”

“He’s not a sleepwalker.”

“In any case. A man died, and it doesn’t look good.”

The dispute between the head clerk and the sleeper’s caretaker now took on greater meaning. It was immediately obvious who had killed my former superior.

At twilight, taking my usual winding route home, I imagined how it would be to lurk in the shadows and creep through the narrowest alleys. I had known these streets my whole life. Posters of the newspaper’s exclamatory front page (“Second Night of Murder in Holstenwall!”) plastered the sides of buildings. If they found Cesare in his cabinet before the doctor could awaken him, would he be borne insensate to the magistrate? What would he say when he rose from his wooden bed?

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I had not gone far when the sky threw its switch that turned twilight to night.

What town office oversaw lamplighting? Were we in the same building? Had there been cutbacks? Perhaps whoever was responsible for the streets leading to my cozy home had overstayed at the fair or been waylaid. Slivers of gold showed through shutters where householders sat in bright concealment. This did nothing to illuminate the uneven stones of the street, but at least by their light I managed to not bang into any exterior walls.

A great commotion arose behind me, inchoate noise like a wave but soon becoming particular with voices and running feet. Before it reached me, people spilled from nearby houses, shouting to one another.

“The sleepwalker abducted a girl!”

“A virgin!”

“He carried her off !”

How did news spread so? The people newly emerged onto the lane ran to and fro, peering down alleys, till the approaching, roiling mob turned the curve below us and swelled uphill, taking with it everyone who meant to join the chase.

“Search every street!”

“No more murders!”

“He’s a lunatic!”

A knot of people tumbled against me. Stretching out my body, I pressed my fingers against a garden’s stone wall to hold tight like a lizard. I made the mistake of putting my face forward, so my nose took a beating against the stone till I turned my head and put my cheek to the cool, uneven surface. I sniffed back blood.

When the tumult had passed, I considered my options. I still had my question for Cesare; I chewed the air, tapping my teeth together, testing for words.

Nonresident guests at the fair—performers, hawkers, and even attendees—lived for the week at a kind of village within our village, adjacent to the fairgrounds. Turning at the half-wall of a centuries-old synagogue burned near to nothingness decades before (a new and finer one had been erected elsewhere), one entered a long dirt lane running between tiny portions of land holding tents or sheds. People clustered, men with men, women with women, around bins of fire, warming themselves against the quick-descending chill.

A group of women huddled so close together, clad so similarly in gray shifts, they appeared to be one creature with too many heads and hands. Their stockings showed because they clutched their shifts in their f ists, pressing the fabric to the their mouths, yet still managing to speak to each other.

I remarked on their evident distress.

“Oh, it was terrible. They brought out that coffin, that box.”

The cabinet!

“There wasn’t nothing inside but a dummy!”

“But where,” I asked, “was the man from the coffin?”

“Off taking that girl!”

“The dummy had them fooled! They didn’t know he’d gone off abducting people!”

“It was so he could go do his secret murdering!”

“I see.”

After a pause, one of the women contributed, “They ran after the doctor fellow.”

“Police shouting everywhichwhere . . .”

I expressed concern that such a scene must have been upsetting. These poor women had perhaps journeyed a long way in hope and happiness only to be caught up in this terror.

“We all have children. We’ve shut them up in our places. The men are keeping watch.”

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I nodded vigorously. “Yes, children must remain safe.”

“Are you a native of this town?”

“I am, I am, but let me tell you, these awful doings in no way represent the character of our little village.” At this I lifted my eyes to view our town’s distinctive peak, but a fog had dropped and gathered about the highest places. “Can you tell me, where did this man live, this doctor?”

As one, they point.

“This side of the street. The shed set back. You can’t miss it.”

“Though I can’t think why you’d want to see it.” This woman clutched her shift tighter yet. “Are you disturbed?”

“No, no,” I laugh. “I am a town clerk. Record keeping, you see. Permits. The man came to our offices.”

“I saw him through the window.”

“Tell him.”

One woman’s hands went flat against her ears. “I can’t bear to hear this again.”

Another woman edged toward me. “The doctor fed him in his box.”

“He was lying down and eating?” I asked.

“No. Sitting up. I saw the back of his head. And the doctor sat feeding him.” She nodded firmly at this as if proving a point.

The woman with her hands over her ears cried, “I’m going to have nightmares!”

“They didn’t say a thing to one another.”

“This is very valuable information,” I said, not sure that it was.

“How is it valuable?”

“Is it a clue?”

“Are the police paying for clues?”

“No. No, I mean it . . . it gives me a clearer picture. You’ve all been such a help. I wish you all a safe journey home.”

As I left them, they murmured in tones of deepest unease.

The shed stood at the top of a few steps at the back of a fenced dirt yard. Sprawled awkwardly on the ground alongside the cabinet, the mannequin looked as a fallen man might look. I straightened its limbs, placed the mannequin back in Cesare’s cabinet, and hauled the box, lighter than I’d have thought, up the steps and into the tiny shack.

I shut the door and contemplated by sudden moonlight the conditions under which this extraordinary pair had lived. In every town they visited it must have been like this: shabby temporary quarters, little space for any belongings (there was a single trunk that could not have held much more than the mannequin), a squat stool (where I seated myself), two buckets (one empty, one containing clear water).

I grew aware, after only a few minutes, that the air had become close. The window was not designed to be opened. Leaning forward from the stool, I opened the cabinet doors. There lay the mock Cesare, as still as the man himself must have been in his mysterious slumber. I rose, removed the mannequin, leaned it against the rear wall, and stepped inside the cabinet. Like a dog, I turned about a few times, instinctively seeking a proper orientation. At last I sat, facing the cabin door, knees touching my chin. I took hold of small handles on the inside of each half of the lid.

I could see out the single, low window to the lane beyond the fence.

I lay back, closing the doors above me.

Inside the cabinet, darkness reigned. No gaps in the wood let in light. Tight though the space was, I could, without dislodging the doors, slip my hands upward along my body to touch my face. I needed such reassurance: mouth, nose, eyes. With nothing to see, I shut my eyes and laid my fingers on my cheeks.

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Perhaps the doctor would be cleared of all charges, and only the mad Cesare would be ground under the law’s grim wheels. I imagined the doctor returning to find me.

“What’s this?” he’d cry. “A doppelgänger! A changeling!”

“Take me along,” I’d suggest. “I’ll play the part in every town!”

Weeks of training would follow. I practiced fluttering my eyes as I would flutter them when waking from my transcendent sleep. In time, it would no longer be an act. In time, I reasoned, life inside the cabinet might grant me access to previously impenetrable truths.

Would the doctor be a harsh master? But who could be harsher than the head clerk? There would be, of course, no possibility of advancement in my career, but such things would not concern me.

What might be the precise conditions of my employment? How would we divvy up the earnings? What if he were to cheat me? I could threaten to leave. He wouldn’t want that; nor would I. We would be so successful, so convincing, our years together binding us. Still, under an iron f ist, and with him dictating “Stay in the box!” and

“Leave the box!” and “Speak!” and “Prophesy!” wouldn’t I grow increasingly angry?

And some night, in a strange town always damp and moody, a town grown familiar and unfamiliar, where what’s known seems as unlikely as what is unknown, might I not rise from the cabinet and have my revenge? Or, in my half-sleeping state, strike at others? Who would fall at my hand? Any man who dictated what I might and might not do. Those who were so rude to me as I made my quiet way in the world.

People mocking my vocation of somnolence. And what of the people of Holstenwall?

The crowd that bloodied my nose in their race to catch Cesare? The ones who said nasty things about my being a Jew? Before we moved on, I would strike in this town.

I knew the narrow ways, how shadows folded through the tight alleys, the walls against which one could vanish.

The smell of wood had grown more intense with my breathing against the boards.

It mixed with the smell of earth and something from the black fields north of town, as if a wind had come through bearing the countryside in its breath.

I could have remained in this state indefinitely. I felt like a man who had held his breath so long that he no longer needed to breathe. I am not sure, now, that I was breathing. No one had instructed me to breathe. No voice of authority might ever wake me, and would that be so bad?

My hands no longer touched my face. There in the dark, I had no substance, nothing of me but my mind. The shapeless question I had meant to ask Cesare surfaced, solid and surprising as a fish I had sought but not expected: Why are we who we are and not someone else, you in your body and I in mine, me being me and never anyone other?

I did wait a while after that. The waiting ended with light behind my eyelids, daylight, and even voices scrambling across one another. I saw then the faces at the Jahrmarkt, pale and focused with pushing past and moving onward, always occupied and looking for some new thing or next thing. In my silent watching I became for a moment each person who passed. A soldier missing an arm. A young mother carrying a baby in a sling around her neck. A old man who—I saw it in his face—had lived too long and buried his children. A child who would make a journey to the sea.

How easily I stepped into their lives, their faces like tent flaps I could raise and slip behind. I knew more: the flow of things, the way the world had gone and would go.

Swells of time raised my weightless little box. I knew what Cesare meant, that soon every person I saw in my vision would be borne to an unwelcome place.

Such a wondrous and terrible knowledge Cesare had let inside his slender shell—
and how the doctor had misused him.

I became aware of disturbances beyond my cabinet and the cabin, and my body The Cabinet

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remembered itself and remembered my hands on my face. My senses strained to reel in what they faintly detected. Voices, for a start, from outside the doctor’s dwelling. I lowered my hands, and my cheeks felt the flashings of heat.

The thickened air snapped and groaned. There had been words; now voices shouted alarms. My fit broke. I blinked in the darkness and knew what had transpired.

Fire! I pushed with both arms and the wings of the cabinet f lew back. Flames already laced the ceiling. I sat upright in the midst of smoke and shadows and an awful light, the room a confusion, but the door, ablaze, was clear enough. Flames shot through the f loorboards and snatched at my legs. I leapt over the cabinet’s foot to run directly at the door. Half-taken by flame, it splintered and exploded, and I fell past the few steps, tumbling at the feet of people who had either started the fire or gathered to watch it raze the object of their fears.

As I struggled to stand, shouts of “Make way!” sounded. Men bearing buckets pushed past. They pitched water on the spreading f ire and the high surrounding fence to keep it from catching. They shouted at and shoved the bystanders. “You want to burn the whole encampment?”

My face was hot and I shook with unlocalized pain. Past the splintered door, I saw the cabinet consumed and the mannequin likewise on fire.

A man with a bucket stopped before me. “My God!” he cried, and I followed his example to look myself up and down. One trouser leg was on fire, and smoke puffed outward from my sleeves as if I housed a locomotive. A line of pain seared my scalp.

The other man opened his mouth for a huge breath, then overturned the contents of his bucket on me. The shock of it restored my sense of having a body.

“You’re alive, eh?” He clapped me on the shoulder, heartily, as if we were old friends. “But you need another,” he concluded, and he directed the next running man to douse me as well. “Well done!” he exclaimed when that was accomplished, and then the two ran off to refill their buckets. “Help or begone!” I heard my friend cry.

As I could be no help, drenched and patchily singed, and unhappy to be stared at so, I went out from that place. I heard my name or a word that rang like my name, but it did not hold me or adhere. All the way home, I touched the walls of the town, which did their part to hold me up till I reached my parents’ home, my stairway, my insubstantial door, and the thin mattress of my bed. And there I slept, dreaming of many things, retaining the next morning one dream only: I lay inert in the shallow bottom of a tiny boat, carried beneath a starless sky. Only, from time to time, the blackness brightened with the streaks of f ireworks or comets that f lared into life and made, flickering out, human cries of loss.

My story had somehow preceded me. Women and men from other offices streamed through the door in my wake. Otto posed as if he were introducing an entertainer.

“Behold the Salamander!” Laughter caromed about the packed room.

Did I look like a lizard? I couldn’t align my image of a lizard with the vision I’d seen in the mirror before f irst light. My eyebrows gone, three quarters of my hair had been razed nearly to the scalp; I had slicked what hair remained across my head. One ear and the tip of my nose refused, no matter how I scrubbed, to lose their gray stain. My uncle had lent me a pair of too-small shoes that caused me to step gingerly, as if afraid of setting foot on an anarchist’s bomb. The smell of smoke still clung to me like a drunken companion of the previous night.

“Look at you,” Dieter said, more exuberant than I’d ever seen him. “You emerged from the fire!” Somehow, this had brought credit to our little department.

Otto once more announced, “The Salamander!”—resulting in a unified chorus of

“The Salamander!”—and I realized they meant that, like that creature, I had been born in fire, or at least jumped from a flaming hearth. Unlike the salamander, I was 122

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not unscathed, but I had lived. The truth about the salamander is, it should stay out of woodpiles. Or leave before the logs are set ablaze.

Otto enthusiastically slapped me on the back and people I hardly knew crowded close to shake my hand or grasp my shoulder. Otto briefly described the exhaustions and heavings of the night—masses of people clotting the streets (he’d been caught in the maelstrom himself); the police waving batons at every head; a moonlit pursuit into the dark forest; the cries and rescue of the kidnapped girl; Cesare collapsing dead from exhaustion; the ongoing hunt for his master. The others buffeted me with questions. Had the mad doctor captured me? Had the sleepwalker dragged me to his home? Had I been drugged and robbed of reason? Every face opened to reveal a black tunnel. Behind my mouth lay such a tunnel. It led to the storehouse of the breath, the chamber of murmuring thought. I could have told them that there is a secret space to which no one ever gains admittance—even if you pass through f ire. Your throat might set the air vibrating and your mouth might form words, but all your life you will carry, deep within, a compartment whose interior no one else may enter.

Otto, his face too near to mine, saw my lips part, and he called for quiet.

I told all those assembled, and these were my only words, “I awoke inside the cabinet.” ❍

The Cabinet

123

AN

INCIDENT

IN THE

LITERARY LIFE

OF NATHAN

ARKWRIGHT

Allen M. Steele

“An Incident in the Literary Life of Nathan Arkwright” is a sidebar to Allen M. Steele’s recent novel Arkwright (part of which first appeared in Asimov’s). It’s an untold story from his notes that quite didn’t fit into the storyline and therefore was left out until now. Allen’s latest novel, Avengers of the Moon
was released in April by Tor. It’s the first new, authorized Captain Future novel since 1946.

In his later years, Nathan Arkwright’s fans would often wonder why he chose seclusion. Considered one of the Big Four science fiction writers of the twentieth century—
the others were Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clarke—Nathan was credited as being the author who raised the standards of space opera, taking what had largely been kid stuff and turning it into an adult genre. But during the seventies, just as the field was entering a Silver Age of popularity and respect, Nathan retreated from public life. Although he’d continue writing his Galaxy Patrol novels until the late eighties, he seldom left his home in the Berkshires and was rarely seen by anyone except his housekeeper and a few close friends.

Fans believed that his wife’s death was the principal cause. There may have been some truth to this, because Nathan deeply loved her and was shattered by the loss.

However, it was pointed out by genre historians that Judith Arkwright died of leukemia in 1977, and by then Nathan had already been in seclusion for two years.

Others speculated that the success he’d enjoyed from the Galaxy Patrol—not just the books, but the television series, the comics, and eventually the movies—had made him arrogant as well as wealthy, and he just didn’t want to deal with fans and their 124

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annoying questions. This was denied by fellow writers who knew him well, chief among them Harry Skinner, aka Matt Brown. They pointed out that Nat Arkwright had once been a fan himself and had even attended the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939. While not exactly the type to sit up all night drinking and singing dirty filk songs, Nathan had never been known to say anything nasty about fans. At least not until his infamous meltdown at the Boston worldcon in 1989, when he lost his temper at a young man who’d questioned the necessity of space exploration.

Truth is, no one knew why, in mid-1975, Nathan Arkwright abruptly disappeared from the SF social scene, going so far as to cancel a Guest of Honor appearance he was scheduled to make at Lunacon in New York later that year. He didn’t go to a science fiction convention again until 1989, and never again afterward. Even when he was named a Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, he asked Harry to attend the Nebula Awards dinner and accept the award on his behalf.

The reason for his self-imposed exile remained unknown to everyone, even family and friends. Yet there was a reason.

He’d never been to a convention in the Deep South before he received an invitation to attend one in Nashville, Tennessee. Until then, his con appearances had been largely on the East Coast, with the occasional outing in Chicago, Denver, or Los Angeles. But then he received a letter from the Nashville Science Fiction Club asking if he’d consider being a Special Guest at something called Kubla Khan Khubed. He was offered airfare, a hotel room, and a banquet ticket, along with his membership, and promised a good weekend at a small but comfortable convention where people would appreciate him.

Nathan nearly turned it down. He knew that by late May he’d be close to finishing his next Galaxy Patrol novel, The Sirius Affair. He hadn’t been doing a lot of conventions lately; they were fun, but they distracted him from what he considered to be his principal task. He liked the work more than the role. Or as he often said to Judith, “I’d rather write science fiction than be a science fiction writer.”

But it wasn’t just that. At age fifty-four, he’d lately begun to feel a certain distance between himself and the younger generation of writers and fans. He belonged to a generation that had come of age during the Depression and World War II, and although he’d earned a revered position in the f ield, he was acutely aware that the New Wave writers who’d emerged during the sixties—Moorcock, Ellison, LeGuin, Spinrad, all the rest—had become the authors SF fans were most excited about. The cultural dissonance wasn’t quite as bad as what friends like Bob Heinlein and Sprague de Camp were experiencing, but still he was having trouble relating to the new breed of SF writer who didn’t know how to handle a slide rule, or to the fans who thought science fiction was invented by Gene Roddenberry.

Science fiction was a young man’s game: this was a thought that had recently entered Nathan’s mind. Although the Galaxy Patrol books sold as well as ever, and the TV series based on it remained in perpetual daytime syndication, he was beginning to wonder if he should tie things up. He had enough money that he could comfortably retire, and there were other things he could do besides write. Maybe the time had come to call it quits and move on with the rest of his life.

Nonetheless, Nathan let himself be talked into going to the convention. Maggie Krough, his agent, told him that it couldn’t hurt to promote the Galaxy Patrol books a little more aggressively. Instead of pulling away from conventions, she advised him to actually do a few more, particularly in places where he hadn’t been before. “This thing in Nashville would be a good start,” she said.

Harry said that he’d heard that Kubla Khan was a pretty decent convention. Fred Pohl had been there a couple of years previously as Guest of Honor, and he’d said An Incident in the Literary Life of Nathan Arkwright

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that the Southern fans were respectful, loved to read, and were generally a lot of fun.

“Yeah, okay, they drink like fish,” he added, “but hell, Nat, would it kill you to have a beer now and then?”

Judith had the final word. Although she’d lately been feeling under the weather, she gave him permission to make the trip. “Oh, go ahead,” she said, “go down to Nashville. If you meet Johnny Cash, get his autograph for me, please.”

So he flew down to Music City with expectations of having a good weekend, but by Saturday afternoon he’d come to realize that it might have been a mistake. Kubla Khan Khubed—the third Kubla Khan, hence the name; no one seemed to notice the way it was abbreviated—was smaller than most SF cons he attended, no more than three hundred or so people. The program consisted of the writers’ and artists’ panels that were little more than bull sessions, the movies were ones he’d seen countless times like Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe and Forbidden Planet, and the huckster room was filled with spine-broken paperbacks and mouse-nibbled pulps.

The big attraction seemed to be the con suite, where the bathroom tub was kept filled with ice and beer. Harry had warned him that Southern fans loved their liquor, and he wasn’t kidding. Nathan saw people drinking in the hallways, in the elevators, in the lobby, in the function rooms, even in the swimming pool. They were amused when he nursed a Stroh’s through most of Friday evening and scandalized when he politely turned down a second.

For a small Southern convention, Kubla Khan had attracted quite a few of his colleagues. Kelly Freas was the Master of Ceremonies. Kelly was a longtime friend who’d painted the covers of DAW’s reissues of the Galaxy Patrol novels, so Nat was glad to see him again. And there were also old pals like Don Wollheim and Bob Tucker, friendly acquaintances like Keith Laumer and Joe Green, and local authors Perry Chapdelaine and Charlie Fontenay. But Nathan barely knew the young new writers—George R.R.

Martin, Joe Haldeman, and Thomas Burnett Swann—and he privately considered the Guest of Honor, Andrew J. Offutt, to be something of a showboat. The fact that Andy, an author of sword-and-sorcery novels, also unabashedly wrote porn under the pseudo-nym of John Cleve offended the Yankee puritan in him. Nathan sat in the audience during his Saturday afternoon solo talk, and quietly eased himself out of the room after one too many lewd comments.

So when a polite young couple approached him a few minutes later and invited him to dinner, Nathan was open to the suggestion.

He’d just left the ballroom where Andy was holding forth and was strolling across the foyer, wondering what to do until the banquet—he had the most recent John D.

MacDonald novel in his room, and was thinking he might spend some time with Travis McGee—when someone behind him spoke his name. Turning around, he found a couple he hadn’t noticed until then.

“Yes?” Nathan asked. “May I help you?”

The young man opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly became f lustered and tongue-tied. “Ah . . . ah . . . hello, I . . . uh . . . I . . . ah . . .”

“Peter.” The young lady gave her companion a mildly admonishing look, then favored Nathan with one of the most radiant smiles he’d ever seen. “I’m sorry, Mr. Arkwright. He gets that way sometimes with people he admires.” She held out her hand.

“I’m Barbara, Barbara Shepard. This is my husband, Peter.”

Nathan clasped her hand. “A pleasure to meet you both.”

“Are you busy? I mean, if you’re going somewhere—?”

“Not at all. Just taking a little break, that’s all.” The Dreadful Lemon Sky could wait a little longer. He was down here to meet his readers, after all. And at least these two didn’t smell like beer.

Indeed, of all the people he’d encountered so far this weekend, Barbara and Peter 126

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were the most . . . well, normal. Both appeared to be in their late twenties. Peter was tall and slender, with dark hair barely touching the top of his ears; he wore permanent-press trousers, a long-sleeved dress shirt and—a rarity at SF cons these days—
a tie. Black plastic-frame glasses suggested a college-educated professional, perhaps an engineer or a teacher. Barbara was shorter, her f igure trim and attractive, her blond hair shoulder length but neat; she wore a sleeveless blue blouse and denim bell-bottoms. She also wore glasses, wire-frame aviators whose teardrop frames com-plemented her face. Nathan pegged her as an academician, perhaps a grad student working on an advanced degree from Vanderbilt.

“Good. That’s great.” Peter recovered his poise. He reached under his left arm to produce a book. “If you’d be so kind, I wonder if you’d, ah—”

“Sign it? Sure.” The book, of course, was one of his own, The Far Side of the Galaxy.

It was a hardcover, not a Science Fiction Book Club copy that he was used to signing at conventions, but rather the more expensive, harder to find Doubleday trade edition. As Nathan took it from Peter, he noticed that the dust jacket was wrapped in clear cellophane. Yet it hadn’t come from a library sale. This belonged to a private collection whose owner cared about preserving the condition of his books.

Impressed, Nathan reached into his shirt pocket for his Mont Blanc fountain pen.

He was glad he’d remembered to bring it and not the cheap Bic that he usually carried for everyday use. Peter Shepard obviously wasn’t the kind of fan who’d hand an author a dog-eared paperback with a remainder mark on the spine; he deserved better.

So Nathan signed his novel, and then—because he liked these two, and because they seemed to like him—he decided to forgo the break he’d meant to take and instead spend some time with them. There was a couch and a couple of armchairs nearby, so they went over to the welcoming spot to have a quiet conversation, occa-sionally interrupted by raucous laughter from the nearby ballroom. He told them a little about the next Galaxy Patrol novel, and was pleased that they got the title’s pun—some of the fans he’d met this weekend hadn’t—and answered their questions about the series, which were intelligent and demonstrated familiarity with his work.

Indeed, Peter let Nathan know that he’d started reading his books when he was only ten years old. The Galaxy Patrol was his first, and he’d read every one after that, and when he’d met Barb and discovered that she liked science fiction, too, one of the first things he’d done was lend her his Nathan Arkwright collection.

Nothing about them suggested that Peter and Barbara Shepard were anything but what they seemed to be: a well-mannered, well-scrubbed, young married couple.

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Neither had a Southern accent, which was noticeable in this particular place but not unusual; they sounded like they’d come from a Mid-Atlantic state like Maryland or New Jersey. They never mentioned politics, religion, or sex, which was refreshing in this day of anything-goes conversation, and Nathan doubted that either of them would have uttered an obscenity if a bowling ball fell on their toes. And so, when Barbara extended an offer to take him out to dinner, Nathan accepted.

He knew that he was expected to attend the convention banquet. A meal ticket had been handed to him along with his name badge. But hotel buffet food had little appeal to him, and Andy was supposed to deliver his Guest of Honor speech after dinner; Nathan had already tasted his brand of humor, and didn’t care to have any more. So dinner at a good restaurant with a couple of adoring readers was an attractive alternative.

Later, Nathan would regret that decision.

He went back to his room for a little while to rest, then met Peter and Barbara in the lobby. Their car was parked beside the motel, a beige Chevy station wagon with fake wood paneling along the sides. It wasn’t surprising that a conservative young couple like Peter and Barbara would have a car like this; they were probably expecting to start a family and were already preparing for it. But the Chevy was brand new. There was a faint aroma of polyurethane when he climbed in, and even the floor mats were spotless and fresh. Nathan couldn’t see the dashboard panel from the back seat, but he suspected that the odometer had less than a hundred miles on it.

“New car,” Nathan commented as he found the seat belts. They lay flat against the back seat, never used until now. “Just get it?”

Barbara and Peter glanced at each other; there was an odd wariness in that look, as if unwilling to admit the obvious. “Yes . . . yes, it is,” Peter said, glancing back at him from the driver’s seat. “We leased it—”

“Bought it,” Barbara quietly corrected.

“—bought it just yesterday.” Resting his hands lightly on the steering wheel, Peter seemed indecisive for a moment. Then, as if suddenly recalling what came next, he dug into his trouser pocket, f ished out a pair of keys that were still on the plastic dealer fob—Jim Reed Chevrolet; Nathan had noticed the plaque above the rear fender—and carefully inserted the ignition key. The engine started with no problem at all, yet Peter gave his wife a quick smile of apparent relief.

Well, that was all right. New car, bought—leased, rather, although they were reluctant to admit it—only yesterday. Still a bit unfamiliar with it. Nathan tried not to smile as he watched Peter cautiously pull the steering column gearshift down from P to D. At least he could expect a safe trip in a clean car. The con chairman had picked him up at the airport yesterday in a battered Volkswagen with trash in the back and a front bumper that looked like one end was being held on with coat hanger wire. The con chairman’s name was Ken and he’d given Nathan the scariest ride of his life, weaving through traffic at seventy mph and only reluctantly touching the brakes. So long as Nathan didn’t get a repeat of that, he figured he’d be okay.

Kubla Khan Khubed was being held at a Rodeway Inn on the city’s outskirts, the sort of convention motel that hosts everything from Shriners meetings to hobby shows. There wasn’t much around except gas stations and convenience stores; downtown Nashville was visible in the far distance as a couple of skyscrapers in an otherwise small Southern city. So, as they pulled out of the parking lot, it didn’t come as a surprise when Barbara told him they’d have to go “a little way” to get to the restaurant. Unless they meant to take him to Burger King or Hardee’s, there wasn’t much out here.

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dealerships and billboards for places and products Nathan had never heard of before. The sun was beginning to set, casting long shadows across the bus stops and parking lots. They chatted about small things before f inally settling on the old Galaxy Patrol TV series as a topic of conversation, with Barbara and Peter asking Nathan which episode was his favorite and being intrigued by the revelation that he’d liked best the one Jerome Bixby had written (“I would’ve thought it was the one by Harlan Ellison,” Barbara said, and Nathan allowed that Harlan’s episode was his second-favorite), and it only gradually occurred to him that they’d been driving for quite a while, the city was thinning out, and night had begun to fall.

“So . . . where are we going for dinner?” By then they’d already passed a number of places that weren’t fast-food franchises, and while Shoney’s didn’t look particularly appetizing—the giant Big Boy statue out front was oddly unsettling, as if he was about to drop the platter he held above his head on the next car to pass his feet—

Nathan was getting seriously hungry and not much caring where they ate so long as it was soon.

“It’s a nice place.” Barbara half-turned about in the front seat to smile at him. “Really good food. I think you’ll like it.”

“It’s a little way out,” Peter added. He’d become less nervous about driving, but he still gripped the wheel f irmly with both hands and was positively orthodox about obeying speed limits, stopping at lights even when they were changing.

“Well, yes, you said that before, but—”

“It won’t be much longer.”

The vague way Peter said this caused Nathan to look straight at him, and when he did, he noticed something peculiar.

Although dusk was settling in and streetlights were starting to come on, Peter hadn’t yet turned on the headlights. That wasn’t unusual; many other cars weren’t using their lights either. But it meant that the dashboard wasn’t illuminated either. . . .

So what was that reflected on Peter’s glasses?

From where he was sitting, on the right-hand side of the back seat behind Barbara, Nathan saw Peter’s face in profile. From this angle, he could make out the inside of the lenses of the black plastic-frame spectacles that, until now, had seemed so ordinary. Yet it appeared that a pair of translucent images were being cast upon the lenses. Softly glowing and flickering, changing every so often, like a couple of tiny TV
screens close to Peter’s face.

The reflections couldn’t be coming from the dashboard panel, nor did they appear to be coming from anywhere outside the car. They seemed to be emitted by the lenses themselves.

Looking out, Nathan searched for some light source that might be causing this weird effect. It was then that he truly realized how far they’d apparently traveled.

Downtown Nashville was nowhere in sight. No more stores, no more gas stations, no more billboards for Family Bootery or Double Cola. All he saw were houses, and not many at that; farm fields and horse pastures surrounded them. This was not a place where you’d be likely to find a restaurant. The summer twilight was setting on the rural countryside, shrouding everything in a soft but menacing darkness.

“Where are you taking me?” Nathan asked, trying not to show the fear he was beginning to feel.

“I think it’s time for us to talk,” Barbara said.

It was then that Nathan realized what should have been obvious all along: Peter and Barbara had abducted him.

There never had been any intention to take him out for dinner. Everything they’d said was meant only to get him into the car—a station wagon so new that it may An Incident in the Literary Life of Nathan Arkwright

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well have been stolen from the lot at Jim Reed Chevrolet, hence their disagreement over whether it was leased or purchased—and drive him so far away from the Rodeway Inn that he wouldn’t know where he was or how to get back.

“Who are you people?” He could feel his heart racing, the cold sweat at the back of his neck. “What do you want?”

“Mr. Arkwright . . . Nathan . . . please relax.” Peter spoke to him calmly, trying to soothe him. “There’s no reason to panic. We’re not going to harm you—”

“What the hell do you want?”

“Please . . . there’s no reason to shout. If you’ll just calm down—”

“Take me back!”

“We will.” Barbara turned to look over the seat at him. “Really, I promise. We’ll take you back to the hotel soon, and you’ll get there safe and unharmed.”

When she spoke to him, her face was in shadow except for her eyes. In the darkness, Nathan could see a dim luminescence in her pupils, as if her eyes were backlit by . . . her glasses. The effect didn’t occur on the outside, but like Peter’s spectacles, the lenses of Barbara’s glasses displayed some sort of images on the inside.

At that moment, Peter apparently realized that he needed to turn on the headlights. He reached forward and pulled out the knob on the dash. The lights came on and so did the dashboard lamps, and in that instant the weak illumination from Barbara’s glasses immediately disappeared. Nathan glanced at Peter, and saw that the same thing had happened to his glasses. Whatever he’d seen, it was obviously affected by stronger sources of light.

“Who are you?” Nathan was trying not to sound scared, but he wasn’t doing very well.

“You’re not going to believe this, but we really are who we told you we were. I’m Barbara, he’s Peter, and we’re great admirers of you and your work.”

“Think of us as fans,” Peter added. “Maybe just a little more . . . well, I guess you could say we’re a little more devoted than most.”

He chuckled as he said this, and Barbara smiled, but it did nothing to ease Nathan’s mind. He was in a moving car being driven by two strangers who could have any number of things in store for him. They’d kidnapped him, and since it was possible that the car was stolen, there was no telling what else they were capable of doing.

Nathan knew that he was in trouble. The only way out was by being smarter than they were. So: don’t panic. Keep talking to them, listen to what they had to say. Act like you’ve accepted the situation. And watch for a chance to escape, because this car couldn’t keep moving forever.

“Well . . . okay, you’re fans.” Nathan forced himself to settle back into his seat.

“Which of my novels are your favorites? You’ve mentioned the Patrol novels, but those aren’t the only books I’ve—”

“No.” Barbara pouted a little, disappointed by his patronizing response. “We’ve talked about all that already. You know we love your work, you know we’ve read everything . . . or at least the Galaxy Patrol series, because that’s what you’re most famous for. But if all we wanted to do was fawn over you, we could’ve stayed at the convention.”

“So why didn’t you?”

“We need to tell you something,” Peter said. His gaze never left the road ahead, his hands firm on the wheel. “Something that’s for you and you alone, and we couldn’t take a chance on anyone overhearing us.”

All Nathan could see through the windshield was a two-lane highway with a long faded yellow stripe down the center. Occasionally a farmhouse or a small church swept by, and he caught a glimpse of a John Deere farm equipment dealer, but that 130

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was it. Someone had mentioned to him that the county where Nashville was located also included a dozen or so smaller towns. He could be anywhere in the rural part of Davidson County, or even outside of it.

“So what did you want to tell me?” he asked.

Peter and Barbara were both quiet for a moment. Nathan caught a hesitant glance being passed between them, as if each was hoping for the other to speak first. Barbara gave her husband a silent nod, and it was Peter who broke the nervous silence.

“Nathan . . . Mr. Arkwright . . . when we told you that we were honored to meet you, we weren’t being obsequious. We really mean it. Your novels are popular now, but in time your work will become even more esteemed . . . more valuable . . . than you can ever know. More than you could ever believe.”

“We’re not talking about them being bestsellers or getting awards,” Barbara said, turning to look at him again. “Those will . . . I mean, those things may happen, but sales and literary prizes are ephemeral, really. In the long run, what truly matters isn’t just the test of time, but the influence your words and thoughts have upon readers who haven’t been born yet.”

“What she’s trying to say . . . what we’re both trying to say . . . is that you must keep doing what you’re doing.” Peter’s quiet voice now had an undertone of insistence. “I know you’ve been writing for a long time, and you’re tempted—”

“—you’re probably tempted,” Barbara interjected.

“—to give up now, even retire. But you can’t do that. You absolutely have to keep writing the Galaxy Patrol novels, at least for a little while longer.”

Despite his fear, Nathan found himself becoming curious. If this was a kidnapping, then it was the damnedest kidnapping he’d ever heard of. There was a certitude in what Barbara and Peter were saying to him that was oddly persuasive, and not because it stroked his ego.

“Why is that so important?” he asked.

A reticent pause, then Peter went on. “We’re coming on hard times, Nathan. Dark times. I know things have seemed tough lately, what with the Vietnam War, Water-gate, the Middle East oil embargo . . . these problems will pale in comparison to what lies ahead. We’re approaching a period in history where people will need to f ind hope, to believe that there’s a future, however fictional it may be, that will be better than what they’re living through.”

“Hope is what they’ll need more than anything else,” Barbara added. “Like Pando-ra’s box, hope is the one thing that can’t be allowed to escape.”

“Right. So naturally, my Galaxy Patrol books—”

“Don’t ever let yourself believe that they’re trivial, Nathan, or that you’ve somehow outgrown them.” Again, she looked back at him. Her face was solemn as she did.

“Peter’s right. You must keep writing. The future—”

She stopped herself, as if suddenly self-aware that whatever she’d been about to say was not something she could say aloud. “What about the future?” Nathan asked.

“Nothing. Never mind.” She turned away from him again.

“No, really. I want to hear the rest.” All at once, he felt fear being replaced by something else: annoyance. Like he’d been told a joke with a stupid punchline. “You’ve been talking like you know what’s to come, but no one can know that. So is that it?

You’re trying to convince me that you’re a couple of time travelers?”

Barbara and Peter gave each other a sharp look, and Peter muttered something beneath his breath. Neither of them replied, though, and that caused Nathan to become anxious again. Now he knew what was happening here. Peter and Barbara were not visitors from the future. They were two seriously crazy people, mentally un-hinged and possibly dangerous. And he’d just done the wrong thing: he’d told them that he didn’t share their delusion.

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“If we were,” Barbara said slowly, not looking at him, “what would it take to convince you?”

“You don’t have to convince me,” Nathan hastily replied. “If you say you are, then I’ll take your word for—”

“No, you won’t. You’re better than that.” She continued to gaze straight ahead. “I’m serious, Nathan. If we were to make such an incredible claim, then the burden of proof falls on us, yes? So I’ll ask you again . . . what would it take to persuade you?”

“Barb—” Peter began.

“No, really. I want him to answer this.” Barbara turned about in her seat again; in the dim light from the dashboard, her expression was determined.

“There’s nothing you could show me.” Nathan was afraid, but nonetheless decided to call her bluff; clearly she wasn’t going to be assuaged by simply agreeing with her.

“Anything you put before me could be faked.” He hesitated, then plunged the rest of the way in. “Time travel is impossible. It can’t be done. It’s a fun idea that a lot of writers have used to come up with some great stories, but aside from the relativistic effects of Einsteinian physics, it cannot be achieved. And that’s it.”

Peter let out his breath as an exasperated sigh. Barbara said nothing for a few moments. She regarded him in disappointed silence, as if he’d let her down. Nathan refused to look away. He gazed straight back at her, and as he did, he noticed something: Straight ahead on this lonely country highway, a blinking red light. A traffic signal, suspended above the intersection of another road.

“I’m a little surprised at you, Nathan,” Barbara said at last. “I expected you to be more open-minded. And you’re wrong about both things. Time travel is not impossible, and I can prove that to you in a way that cannot be interpreted as a hoax.”

“Barbara, no.” Peter darted a look at her. “We can’t do that. You know the rules.”

“We’ve already broken the rules. We did that the moment we walked up to him and—”

“Asking for an autograph is one thing. Taking him to . . . no! Absolutely not!”

Shaking his head, Peter apparently hadn’t noticed the stoplight they were coming up on. Nathan tried not to stare at the flashing light, but as it got closer, he spotted something else. At the intersection, on the right side of the road, was a convenience store: a 7-11, with gas pumps out front and everything. And it was before the light, not after it.

“We’re not far from where we left it.” Barbara looked at her husband again. “We can be at the lake in just a few minutes.”

“Barb—”

“It’s proof, Peter . . . solid evidence. If he has this, then he’ll know that we need to taken seriously.” Her tone became pleading. “That’s why we broke the rules in the first place, isn’t it? So that he’ll know what’s at stake?”

Peter didn’t say anything; he seemed to be thinking it over. The light was coming up fast, and already he’d lifted his foot from the gas. Most drivers would only make a rolling stop at a red f lasher, but Nathan had observed that Peter was unusually careful behind the wheel.

He stole a glance at the door beside him. Yes, the button-stem was up; the door was unlocked. Chevy station wagons had automatic door locks, but so long as Peter would overlook this for just a few more seconds . . .

“How about it?” Turning to Nathan again, Barbara seemed to be challenging him.

“Are you ready to have your opinion changed of what’s possible and impossible?”

Peter was easing on the brakes. Any second now . . . “Well, I might,” Nathan said,

“if you could really show me something I haven’t seen before. Where did you say it is?”

“Not far from here.” As the Chevy glided the last few feet to the intersection, 132

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Asimov’s

Barbara pointed in the general direction of the road ahead. “Out near a place called Old Hickory Lake. It’s—”

The car stopped, and Nathan flung open the back door. In a heartbeat, he was out of the station wagon and running away as fast he could.

By his mid-fifties, Nathan had largely given up strenuous exercise, and he’d never been one for jogging anyway. But he wasn’t so completely out of shape that he couldn’t reach the parking lot in just seconds. He heard Barbara shout his name, but he didn’t even look back as his legs carried him into the bright fluorescent lights of the overhead awning above the gas pumps. The front doors were only a few feet away. The 7-11 with its window posters offering Marlboros for sixty cents and six-packs of Schlitz for three bucks had become a sanctuary in a dark and dangerous world.

The store was vacant save for a plump woman with beehive hair and too much makeup. Sitting on a stool behind the counter, she stared at Nathan as he flung open the door and charged into the store. “Hey, now . . . hey!” she yelled. “You can’t come bustin’ in like that! This is a—”

“Where’s the phone? Call the police! Is there a bathroom? Someone’s after me! I need to hide!” All this came out as a breathless babble as Nathan skidded to a halt, knocking off a display box of baseball cards. “Call the cops! They—!”

“Now you just simmer down.” The store clerk glared at him. “Ain’t nobody after you.” There was a portable TV behind the counter, with Buck Owens on the tube. Apparently she was put out with him because he’d interrupted Hee Haw. A plastic tag on her flower-print blouse read Brenda June.

“Yes, there is!”

Even as the words tumbled from his mouth, he heard the faint screech of tires on asphalt.

Nathan looked back just in time to see the station wagon rushing through the intersection and down the highway. He caught the briefest glimpse of Barbara’s face through the side window, then the Chevy’s taillights vanished into the hot Tennessee night.

“Now pick up them bubble gum cards,” Brenda June demanded.

Once he calmed down—and appeased Brenda June by restoring the cards to their rightful place—Nathan learned where he was: a little town called Mt. Juliet, about fifteen miles east of Nashville. There wasn’t much out there except farms and Old Hickory Lake, so it was a poor place to be stranded without a car.

On the other hand, Nathan reflected, it was probably an excellent location to cut someone’s throat and throw his body off a bridge. Which may very well have been his fate if he hadn’t made good his escape.

However, he didn’t continue to insist that Brenda June call the police, but instead asked if she’d get him a cab instead. He realized almost at once that calling the cops would have been an exercise in futility. First, the only witness he had was Brenda June, who didn’t strike him as being very bright, and claimed to have seen nothing except him running through the door. And since Nathan doubted that the FBI had ever recruited anyone from the Mt. Juliet police department, asking them to investigate an abduction would probably have been too much to ask of lawmen more accustomed to picking up teenagers for vandalism and underage drinking.

But there was more than that. Who’d ever believe his story? And even if they did, how would this look when it got into the local papers, as it almost certainly would?

As he consumed a ham and cheese sandwich and waited for the cab to arrive, Nathan contemplated the Nashville Banner and The Tennessean stacked in wire newspaper racks beside the door. It wasn’t hard to imagine their headlines: Visiting Author Kidnapped from Sci-Fi Convention—Claims It Was By Time Travelers. Yes, this would do his reputation a lot of good, wouldn’t it? The fans would never let him An Incident in the Literary Life of Nathan Arkwright

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hear the end of it. And good grief, if Harlan were to ever find out . . .

So he settled for a cab ride instead.

Getting back to the Rodeway Inn cost him all the cash in his wallet, plus a twenty-dollar traveler’s check he retrieved from his room while the driver waited. A number of people at the convention were sore at him for skipping the banquet; apparently Kelly Freas tried to introduce him from the podium, only to discover that he was nowhere in the room. But Andy Offutt had given a stirring, patriotic speech about the upcoming Bicentennial, so that was what the fans were talking about, not his absence. When Nathan was asked why he hadn’t been there, he told a version of the truth: a couple of fans had taken him out for dinner, but they’d had “a bit of a disagreement” and he’d ended up having to call a cab.

He asked a few people if they knew Peter and Barbara Shepard, but no one recognized their names or remembered them from any previous conventions. They’d bought their memberships earlier in the day, paying cash; aside from the lady who’d been running the registration table, no one recalled speaking to them. Apparently the only person who’d met them was Nathan.

Later, back in his room, he lay on the bed and thought about what had happened.

If he hadn’t run off, and if he’d been wrong about Peter and Barbara’s intentions, what might have happened? What would they have done? Taken him to where they’d left their time machine?

Nonsense.

It had been a practical joke, and an elaborate one at that. Lure a famous science fiction writer into a car—leased, to hide your identity—drive him off into the sticks, and tell him a flattering story about how much his work would matter to future generations. There might have actually been a “time machine” at the end of the ride: a prop cobbled together from plywood and sheet metal, lit just well enough to make it seem authentic. Then take the poor guy back to the Rodeway Inn, drop him off in the parking lot, and head for the nearest bar for a few drinks and a lot of laughs.

Even the strange light-effect he’d seen with the glasses they’d worn had a mundane explanation. They’d been driving east, which meant that the sun was setting behind them. So what he’d observed was a flickering reflection of the sunset upon the lenses of their glasses. In his nervousness, his mind had led him to imagine something else . . .

and no one had ever accused him of not having a good imagination.

In the end, Nathan decided to drop the matter. He didn’t tell anyone in Nashville what had happened, and even after he flew home to Massachusetts, he kept the incident to himself. He didn’t tell Maggie or Harry or anyone else about the abduction, although he resolved never to go to a science fiction convention again: one prank was enough.

He considered telling Judith, but never got around to it. She became ill shortly after that, so there were far more important things to think about in the last couple of years they had together.

But he remembered the things Peter and Barbara had said to him, and deep in his heart, he knew that they were right.

About everything.

And so, for just a little while longer, he kept writing. ❍

134

Allen M. Steele

Tim McDaniel teaches English as a Second Language at Green River College, not far from Seattle. His short stories, mostly comedic, have appeared in a number of SF/F magazines, including F&SF, Asimov’s, and Analog. He lives with his wife, dog, and cat, and his collection of plastic dinosaurs is the envy of all who encounter it. Tim’s author page at Amazon.com is www.amazon.

com/author/tim-mcdaniel. In his latest tale for the magazine, we encounter a mysterious object when our heroes . . .

SQUAMOUS

AND ELDRITCH

GET A

YARD SALE

BARGAIN

Tim McDaniel

Squamous turned right on Second. The Pinto squealed a bit, but it usually did that on sharp turns, and there was probably nothing supernatural about the sound. The car was just getting old; there was nearly as much rust as blue paint on its chassis.

He had to be close now. He peered out of the dusty windshield at the house numbers he was passing by.

4215. 4217. The address on the next house was impossible to read. Ah! That had to be 4227 up ahead—there was a neon pink Yard Sale sign out front. Squamous parked along the curb and swung his bulk out of the car.

The car had been hot, and brown strings of Squamous’ hair lay plastered against his scalp. Why did people always have their yard sales in the summer, anyway? The perversely warm breezes were probably rife with melanomas and worse. Well, he was here, and it shouldn’t take him long to find the book. If it hadn’t already been sold. He hurried toward the house, wheezing.

In the yard was a clothing rack, hung with children’s dresses, some patched jeans, and an enormous women’s swimsuit, purple with yellow starfish. There were a few foldout card tables on the other side of the yard. One was loaded down with Dora the Explorer plastic toys, videocassettes, a stuffed dinosaur (not an actual carcass, Squamous noted with regret—and badly proportioned, at that), some old electric lamps, a 135

September/October 2017
soap dish shaped like a shell. The second table featured a variety of small planters and gardening tools, a few gardening magazines (none rare or valuable), some unused candles, and a single dumbbell.

Under the tables were boxes of CDs and videogames, more toys, a pair of cheaply framed Monet paintings (neither authentic), and other detritus of modern life. No books, however.

Squamous sighed and looked around. There were several other shoppers present: an old couple pawing through the dresses, a father watching his young daughter picking up and discarding dismembered Barbies and glass dogs. A woman shouldered the girl aside to examine a lamp. The woman was, perhaps, suntanned—but what kind of alien sun, wondered Squamous, what collection of chemicals or abuse, could produce that unnatural shade of russet?

An overweight bearded man in a wheelchair had stationed himself under the garage door, flanked by the rack of clothes on one side and the card tables on the other, and seemed to be the one taking people’s money in exchange for his junk. Squamous decided to approach him.

“Pardon me,” he said.

The man looked up and raised his eyebrows. “Yes! Can I help you?”

“I was just wondering if you had any books for sale.”

“Books?” The word seemed foreign to him, and Squamous briefly wondered if he had been sent to the wrong place. Could the Oracle have been wrong? And if so—the implications sent a chill down Squamous’ warm back.

But then the man continued. “Oh, wait a second,” he said. “Yeah, there were a couple of books around here somewhere. I think they might be in that box with all the CDs.” He pointed.

The box in question was no longer on the ground; the suntanned (?) woman had picked it up and put it on one of the tables, and was looking through its contents.

“Thank you.” Squamous waddled over to the box and peered inside, bumping up against the woman as he did so.

“Excuse me,” she said impolitely.

Squamous did not answer. He had seen his objective: the book. Just over nine inches by seven and a half, a red leather (he supposed the ignorant would want to call it) cover, marked by three intersecting pentagrams—one, the notoriously rare six-sided pentagram. The title, of course, was not visible in the daylight. Three raised bands on the spine. Signs of light wear, but in splendid condition, considering its age and history. The whole thing dripping with evil, of course. And the box, he saw now, was labeled “2 bucks each.”

In a rare moment of complete happiness and satisfaction, Squamous lifted his face skyward, eyes closed. What a moment! What a triumph! He very nearly laughed.

And why shouldn’t he? Eldritch wasn’t around to mock him if he did.

Then he opened his eyes again and reached for the box.

The book was gone.

Squamous brought his face closer. He pawed through the contents of the box—only CDs and videocassettes!

He looked up in sudden comprehension. Yes! The suntanned woman was there, walking away with the book tucked under an arm!

The woman set the book down before the man in the wheelchair. “Just this,” she said. “Though I got to say, two dollars just for a book. It doesn’t even look new.”

“Yeah, well, it’s a hardback though, right? We had a couple of paperbacks, but maybe they’re all gone now. They were f ifty cents each. Guess you missed your chance for those.”

“Just my luck. Anyway, I have a niece that plays Dungeons and Dragons, and she 136

Tim McDaniel

Asimov’s
might like this, all in a weird fake lan-

“I was sixteen when the first Asimov’s
guage, and with pictures of monsters and
issue came out. I snapped it up and ate
everything. Do you know that game?”

it up: already impossible thoughts about

The man made change from the woman’s
someday being a science fiction author
five and gave it to her. “I don’t think so,” he
were in my head. And only several
said. “Your niece, huh? Yeah, girls play all
decades later, look! I’ve had stories in
kinds of games nowadays, don’t they? I
this magazine! I’m smart enough to
mean, not just soccer anymore.”

know that each such appearance is a

“And my nephew, well, he showed quite a
fluke, that it’s only a matter of time
bit of disrespect to yours truly, here, the
before Sheila says, “Hey! Who thought
last time I visited, so I figured if he sees his
letting him in here, alongside all these
sister get a little gift from me, and not him,
real writers, was a good idea?” But until
he just might rethink his ways.” The man
then, I will keep trying to slip through
nodded, frowning, and the woman took the
the cracks, and each time, I will thrill to
book and started for a large black vehicle,
be part of Asimov’s history.”

a Chevrolet Suburban. Squamous took

—Tim McDaniel
three hasty steps to catch up with her.

“Pardon me, ma’am,” he said.

She turned a skeptical eye on him. “Yeah? What do you want?”

Squamous gestured. “That book,” he said. “I am quite interested in acquiring it.”

“I already bought it,” she said, fishing in a pocket. “See it right here in my hand?

That’s how you would know.” She brought out a keychain.

“I understand that you have already purchased the item,” Squamous said. “That you have expended some money on its acquisition. However, I—”

“Two bucks!” the woman said, shaking the tome. “For just a book, if you can imagine that. I guess you were too slow, if you wanted it, too.”

As she placed her hand on the door handle, Squamous touched her shoulder. “Perhaps I could buy it off you,” he said. “I can pay more than two dollars.”

“Oh, yeah? Like how much more?”

Squamous emptied his own pockets. “Well, let’s see,” he said. “I have fifty dollars.”

The woman looked at the other things Squamous had pulled out of his pocket: bits of orange paper, yellow discs, ragged twists of a blue metal, several limp black worms, and bills that looked like Monopoly money. “I don’t know,” she said. “You seem to want this book pretty bad. Look at you, sweating and puffing. And it looks like you got more than fifty.”

“Yes, yes, I do,” Squamous said. “If I may just count—yes. I have five Spanish dou-bloons, three hundred baht, almost a thousand yen, twelve-and-half skrotskreels (but dating back to the former Empress, I’m sorry to say), twenty-three hellbucks, and six Rigellian aihstlaas.”

“I don’t know what any of those are,” the woman said. “You some kind of scam artist or something?”

“No, no! I assure you, I am a legitimate business owner.” Squamous reached into a shirt pocket. “Here—my card.”

The woman took it as if it were a known vector of Ebola and squinted at it. “Arcane and Obscure Books, Inc. Squamous and Eldritch, Proprietors,” she read. “Like a used book store?”

“Used, sometimes more than once, but certainly unusual or rare,” Squamous said.

He put a hand up to shade his eyes. The sunlight was too bright. He couldn’t wait to get back to the dimness of the shop.

“Well, if this book is all so rare, maybe I’ll sell it myself on eBay,” the woman said.

“Probably get a lot more than fifty bucks for it.”

“That would be a mistake,” Squamous said. “Few eBay shoppers would recognize Squamous and Eldritch Get a Yard Sale Bargain

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its worth, and those who might do so would prove a considerable nuisance. Also, that book is quite dangerous. And as the new owner, you would be especially susceptible to its hazards, if certain intricate and painful steps are not taken. You see, each time a book like that is sold, it devises—”

“Yeah, right. It’s dangerous. Sure. Nice try.” The woman opened the car door and threw the book in before climbing in herself. Squamous flinched, but the book just lay there in the seat. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know,” the woman said as she got into the car herself.

Squamous watched her start her car and sighed. Then he hurried to his own vehicle.

Fortunately, the light at the end of the block was red, and Squamous had time to catch up to the Chevrolet. He followed her for two more blocks, and then parked across the street and watched her get out of her car and head into a house, book in hand.

Then he reached for his phone—an iPhone 13, a birthday gift from a customer, and it still smelled of sulfur—and called Eldritch.

“Well, I’m here,” said Eldritch, leaning over to tap on Squamous’ car window.

Squamous got out of the car. “And you brought money? Current United States currency? That seems to be all she’s interested in.” The top of his head didn’t even come up to his brother’s shoulder, and Squamous took a step back so he wouldn’t have to crane his neck so severely.

“Yes, yes,” Eldritch said. “About seven hundred dollars. All that was in the store. If you were a better negotiator, I wouldn’t have had to become involved in this mess.”

“I just hope it’s enough,” Squamous said. He looked at the house the woman had entered.

“The rent will soon be due, and then there’s the electric bill,” Eldritch said, poking Squamous in the chest with a long, thin finger. “This expenditure is not in our bud-get. And I had to close the store to come here, you realize. So we lose more money from walk-ins. We might have to let the Shakespeare superhero comic go for what Smoke was offering after all. A shameful pittance, even considering the damage that occurred to one page as it was ripped out of the First Folio.”

“This is a deal we can’t pass up,” Squamous said. “The Imp of the Perverse has been looking for this item for an eternity.”

“Nearly two, now,” Eldritch said.

“I was sure she would go for fifty,” Squamous said, shrugging.

“You just don’t know how to bargain,” Eldritch said. “But let’s be clear. Is she a dabbler? A collector? Or has she sealed an unholy pact?”

“No, no. She’s just got hold of the thing by accident.”

“Then if we are not successful in getting it away from her—”

“I know, I know. I told her. She’ll be the one to suffer the consequences. She’s very annoying, even irksome, but hardly the kind of fiend we could allow that to happen to.”

“Fine, then. Let’s go.”

They crossed the street and approached the house. Squamous rang the doorbell.

The woman answered the door, then stood back in surprise. “Hey! What’d you do, follow me or something? I told you the book isn’t for sale.”

“My apologies for disturbing you, ma’am,” Eldritch said. “If we could have but a moment of your time, I am sure we can reach an agreement that would benefit us both.”

The woman looked doubtful.

“We have more money,” Squamous said.

“You only had fifty bucks at the yard sale. Or did you call up your old great-grandpa, there, and ask him for more?”

“Yes, I did contact my twin brother, here, and ask him to bring more funds. May we come in?”

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Asimov’s

“Well, I guess so. I could snap the old guy like a twig if he causes any trouble, and you, tubby, look like you’d get winded just tying a shoelace. Ha! Come on in.”

The woman led them into a small living room. A ratty, greenish couch and a couple of mismatched armchairs were placed in front of a television and a coffee table. The carpet had seen better days, and there was a single sock and a half-full bag of potato chips on the couch, but neither brother minded a mess in a good cause. Eldritch perched on one chair, and Squamous lowered himself into the other. “Thank you for seeing us, ma’am,” Eldritch said.

“Davina Stump,” the woman said.

“Pleased to meet you,” Eldritch said. “I am Eldritch, and I believe you have already spoken to Squamous, here.”

“The little tubby guy said you were his twin brother,” Davina said. “Only you’re about four feet taller, a couple hundred pounds lighter, and fifty years older.”

“We are not identical twins, no,” Eldritch admitted. “Ms. Stump, I would like to re-open negotiations regarding the little book you bought today. A collector we are in contact with is hoping to get his talons—er, hands—on this particular book. If f ifty dollars is not an acceptable offer, may I propose one hundred? Certainly a f ine markup, a nice little prof it that you can congratulate yourself for making this afternoon.”

Eldritch took five twenty-dollar bills out of a pocket and laid them, one by one, on the coffee table. Ms. Stump’s gaze followed every movement of his hands. Then Eldritch straightened up and placed his hands on his knees. “What do you think of that proposition, Ms. Stump?”

Ms. Stump managed to tear her gaze away from the money on the table. “I don’t know,” she said, biting her lower lip. Then a hard glint entered her eye. “But I guess if you’re willing to pay me a hundred, you can pay more, too. Maybe a lot more.”

“You don’t understand!” Squamous blurted out. Eldritch laid a hand on his shoulder, but Squamous shook it off. “Books like these are not—not just things,” Squamous said. “They have purposes and cravings, effects and needs. They are extremely resentful of perceived mistreatment. Some of them can bring about very serious consequences for an ignorant owner!”

“What do you mean, ‘ignorant,’ you greasy little toad?”

“I mean you are dabbling in domains of which you have no inkling,” Squamous said. “Many of the books we deal with curse their unprotected owners. They can cause nightmares, ill luck, or possession! They can burn hands or eyes, inflict their owners with earworms—the same stupid song for months, sometimes even smooth jazz. Explosions and floods and tornadoes and stubbed toes and earthquakes. They can attract monstrous forms from other realms, and even cause perpetual constipa-tion! The book you have there, for example—”

“Constipation? What are you talking about?” Ms. Stump asked, brow furrowed.

Eldritch managed to produce a thin smile. He once again put his hand on his brother’s shoulder. “My brother eats entirely too much macaroni and cheese,” he said.

“But the dangers are very real. If you accept our offer, you would make money while at the same time avoiding an unpleasant fate. We would not wish to see anything horrible or ghastly happen to you, Ms. Stump.”

“Horrible?” Ms. Stump was finally looking doubtful; whether it was because she was beginning to wonder if her new acquisition might harbor unholy powers, or if she were pondering the mental health of her visitors, would be hard to say. “I tell you what,” she finally said. “Five hundred. Final offer. Five hundred bucks, or you can just go home empty-handed.”

Eldritch looked at his brother, who slowly nodded. “Very well,” Eldritch said, his mouth in a grim line.

Squamous and Eldritch Get a Yard Sale Bargain

139

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“I put the book in the other room,” Ms. Stump said. “I’ll go get it.” She nearly danced as she left the living room.

Eldritch looked at his brother from under unkempt eyebrows. “We really cannot afford this,” he said. “This is a very awkward position you’ve put us in.”

“I told you before, we could save some money on garbage pickup if we just shoved our junk in the neighbor’s bin,” Squamous said.

“They’re not equipped for hazardous materials!” Eldritch said.

Then Davina Stump was back in the room. “Here you go,” she said, plopping the book down on the table.

Out of the direct sunlight, the pentagrams on the cover glowed gently red, like lava seen between rocks.

Eldritch picked the book up. He brought it close to his nose and took a deep sniff, then nodded. He examined the front cover, spine, and back cover, then gently turned some pages.

“A mix of rag and linen paper,” Eldritch murmured.

“Look at the fine, wide margins!” Squamous breathed. “Beautiful!”

“The ink is still dark,” Eldritch continued. “Magnificent. The burn imprint on page 23 is quite distinct, as is the infamous and infectious doodle on page 31. The charts, the diagrams, all clear and without significant wear. Considering some of the previous owners, a miracle indeed.” He turned another page and gasped. “What is this?” he said.

Squamous made an odd sound deep in his throat, like a frog might make if it were swallowing a larger frog.

“What?” Ms. Stump leaned in for a look.

“This page, here—it’s been recently folded!”

“Oh, yeah,” Ms. Stump said. “When I got the book home I had a look through it, trying to see what was so special about it. When you rang the bell, I folded that page there to save my place because I didn’t have a bookmark.”

Eldritch looked at her, aghast. Squamous had allowed his mouth to drop open.

“You did what?” Eldritch asked.

“Folded the page to mark my place,” Ms. Stump said. “Jeez, a couple of book dealers, and you don’t know that little trick?”

“It’s defaced, damaged,” said Squamous.

“And more importantly, disrespected,” Eldritch said. He looked at his brother, and their gazes met. Eldritch gently laid the book back down on the table. He gathered the money there and returned it to his pocket.

“What—hey! What are you doing? We had a deal!” Ms. Stump said.

“No longer, I am afraid,” Eldritch said. “The book has been insulted. Consequences will follow.” He got up out of the chair and lent an arm to Squamous so the portly man could do the same.

“Hold on! You’re not leaving, are you?” Ms. Stump said. “Tell you what. I’ll let it go for three hundred. How’s that?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Stump, I really am,” Eldritch said. He opened the door.

“All right! One hundred!” Ms. Stump followed them outside. “Fifty—fifty, like you first said!”

“Goodbye,” Eldritch said. He and Squamous crossed the street to Squamous’ car.

“A shame,” Squamous said to his brother, looking back at the house. Ms. Stump made a rude gesture, then went inside and slammed the door.

“Not much,” Eldritch said. “Folding a page to mark one’s place, indeed!”

“Well, at least this way we save a little money,” Squamous said. “And we can easily locate the book in the smoldering crater in the morning. It’ll be the only thing left.”

“Don’t look so smug,” Eldritch said. “What with that folded page, we’ll have to sell it at a discount.” ❍

140

Tim McDaniel

GRAND

THEFT

SPACECRAFT

R. Garcia y Robertson

R. Garcia y Robertson says, “The great thing about ‘Grand Theft Spaceship’ is that Jazmyne is a real person. She was my foster daughter for three years, and the smartest person I have ever known. By the time she was four she had taught herself to read and write. When I was half way through this story, I found an old tale that Jazmyne had written when she was about five. It was a paragraph long, but it was the same story! Like Cole says, ‘scary smart’!” Rod had to take years off writing to care for his aged parents. Now he’s an orphan in his sixties, but, fortunately, still has many stories to tell.

First Rule of the Family:

(1) Women and children first.

CHILDREN’S CRUSADE

Morning watch 04:20:20 Bifrost station, in halo orbit around Europa’s inner La Grange point.

Morning began with a 4 A.M. call from Randi Lynn:

I AM ON THE HANGAR DECK AND NEED A RIDE.

Cole was jerked out of a sweet dream involving cousin Amanda. 04:20:20. Time to take a toke or two. Brushing dark, unruly hair out of his eyes, Cole wished he could go back to that dream, but real time beat dream time, even with kissing cousins.

Finding the unfinished joint beside his bedroll, he replied: OK ON MY WAY.

No names needed. Cole knew it was Randi Lynn, because no one else called him for rides at outrageous hours in the A.M. Pulling on his pants as he took a toke, Cole told himself, “It’s pickin’ time.” Four A.M. was the time for crime. When honest folk were at their worst, or just asleep. He never heard from Randi Lynn unless a felony 141

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was going to be committed, had been committed, or was in progress. That girl dearly loved crime. Dressing swiftly, he rolled up his bedroll, and was out the door by 4:22.

Fourth rule of the Family was, “If you cannot be good, be quick.”

Telling the empty cubicle to lock itself, Cole headed for the nearest drop shaft wearing full gangsta regalia, 360 shades, and a 3-V jacket over his preacher’s suit of lights, whistling the “Ode to Joy” from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony:

“Joy, beautiful goddess child, bright daughter of Elysium, We’re all fire drunk, with thy Holy light . . .”

Ever since Crown Princess Rylla of Callisto declared RAGNAROK, Cole had been bunking on B-deck of Bifrost station, eating ship’s rations, and enjoying navy protection. He was a Jute Knight-Deacon, pastor of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, just the sort of felon the navy wanted to watch over in troubled times. Randi Lynn did not say which hangar deck she was on. Tapping into Bifrost security cams, Cole searched the hangar deck ahead of him. Before exiting the drop shaft, he knew this was not the hangar deck he wanted. H-deck on Bifrost catered to honest folk with real jobs; survey crews, naval auxiliaries, Titan Corp employees, vacuum hands, and the like—decent respectable folk who worked in dangerous places. Not a place to find Randi Lynn. Cole went straight to his bike waiting in a docking bay, put on his vacuum suit, and sealed the helmet.

(From out of his helmet phones a friendly voice asked, “Going somewhere, Cole?”)

“Yes sir,” Cole recognized Commander Washington, the naval intelligence officer assigned to his case. “I’m going, but I’m not sure where. Asgard, maybe Alfheim.

Thanks for putting me up.”

(“Was it something we said?”)

“No sir, just private business of a personal nature.” Cole pulled back the canopy of his BIKE—Binary Intelligent Kinetic Engine—a two-seat cockpit sitting between two big fuel tanks whose contents exploded on contact, giving more kick than a fusion engine as long as the fuel lasted.

(Commander Washington laughed at Cole’s evasion. “Here’s a private personal warning; tell Randi Lynn to keep her cotton picking paws off navy property.”) Climbing into the cockpit, Cole strapped himself in, saying, “Naval Intelligence is sadly misinformed. Randi Lynn has reformed. I personally helped her find Jesus.”

(“And try to stay out of the brig yourself.”)

“Always.” Cole slammed shut the canopy and blasted off, headed up system for Asgard.

Bifrost orbited Europa’s inner La Grange point, looking down on Jupiter’s deep gravity well, a jumping off point for Saturn system and the great void beyond. King Jove hung in full phase, a giant whirling sea of storm-tossed cloud tops so vast you could drop Earth into it and hardly notice the splash. Asgard and Alfheim orbited Europa’s far La Grange point, a short ways upsystem. Since his bike knew the way, Cole tuned his glasses to the NET.

(Waiting for him in 3V was a cute blond Valkyrie, at Asgard control. “Headed our way, Deacon Cole?”)

“Absolutely.” First Commander Washington, now this pretty Valkyrie. Cole was going to have to work with authorities looking hard over his shoulder.

(“Always happy to have you. We are inviting the Jutes to peace talks at 0630. Hope to see you there.”)

“Isn’t that a bit early for talks?” Asgard ran on Baltic time, two hours ahead of Naval Greenwich time. 0630 was like now. “Half the system’s asleep.”

(“Peace never sleeps,” she primly informed him. “It is already dawn over Copenhagen.”)

“See you at Jute HQ,” Cole promised.

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(“We’ll be there.”)

Cole had to go in 3V, appearing ahead of himself as a hologram on Asgard’s C-deck.

Dawn was indeed breaking over the sleeping city. Jute headquarters was on Christa-nia, an island in the harbor defenses that the Jutes shared with hippie pot growers and Danish privateers. This was not the real Copenhagen, which was still on Earth, hundreds of millions of miles downsun. This was the mini-Copenhagen built on C-deck, Asgard—an A-class colony habitat made from a hollowed out asteroid—sixty square miles of city and country with canals, sculpted bridges, and a copy of Tivoli Gardens, set in a 3V sea. Jute HQ was a high-timbered hall built like a Viking longship, where Ragnar Hairy Breeks would have been right at home. At 0630, half the senior Jutes were there in hologram only, while the rest just wished they were. When Cole appeared, his Knight-Commander whispered, “Watch your wallet. We got degos on deck.”

Cole saw that the Valkyries had brought Choctaws into Jute HQ, something only blond warrior women dared do. While blood enemies stood looking at each other in amazed silence, the Valkyries pleaded for peace and understanding, inviting them all to join the truce they had declared to end the fighting on Callisto. Cole tried to be at peace with all the Cosmos, even Choctaws, since killing was a sin and never good for business, but Choctaws had put a million-peso price on his head, and who knows when some hop head would try to collect. These were desperate times. Half the folks in Jupiter system were out of work. Families were forced to sell themselves or their children just to survive, and fights broke out over the little that was left. Then the Space Vikings descended on Callisto, setting off a feeding frenzy. War might be bad for business, but it was good for the winners.

Valkyries pushed for a vote, saying the navy and Space Vikings would enforce the truce if Jutes and Choctaws would agree to it. Choctaws voted with the blonds. La Raza was helpless in the right hands. So did most of the Jutes, including Cole. As long as the truce held, no one could collect that million pesos for killing him.

Happy Valkyries rejoiced that armed hooligans could see reason. Everyone relaxed and complimented each other. Cole tried to think of nice things to say to drug addicted thugs who wanted to kill him. Only one word entered his head: GOTTERDAMMERUNG

Conversation ceased, and smiles froze. That was Crown Princess Rylla, raising the stakes.

RAGNAROK had been bad enough, now Rylla was saying things had gotten way worse. Cole immediately left the meeting, jumping back onto the NET into a live 3V
feed from Callisto, where Space Vikings had f inally caught up with the fugitive princess, in an ice cave beneath the moon’s pitted surface: (Red-haired, green-eyed princess Rylla, twenty-two years old and astonishingly beautiful, in a gold gown topped by a ruby tiara, stood facing her enemies, a squad of Space Vikings in full battle armor. Rylla ridiculed the charges against her, saying,

“You have no authority, no proof, no legal warrants. These so-called charges are just an excuse to loot Callisto Colony, driving innocents from their homes, stealing what my family has built.”)

Cole’s heart was with Rylla, standing brave and alone among her enemies. Brave and bankrupt. Space Vikings had appointed themselves debt collectors for Callisto’s creditors, attacking the last privately owned colony in the Jovans. Rylla had put up an amazing resistance, making the colony itself fight for her. Space Vikings found they could not trust parking orbits, drop shafts, slidewalks, or footpaths. Ships were riddled, cyborgs smashed. Smart tanks and Space Vikings were whisked into ambushes or just blown up. But now they had her.

(Rylla’s accusers protested that they had stolen nothing. “All this can be settled in court.”

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She smirked at that notion. “What court? Callisto is a sovereign colony. Here, I am the law.”

“Not any more.” Her accusers moved forward to arrest her.

Rylla arched an eyebrow. “Really? We shall see. In the meantime, this audience is over. You have my leave to go.”

“Alas, we are taking you with us.” Men moved to hem her in.

That got an outright laugh from Rylla. “My person is sacred. You may not even touch me.”

Men in armor reached out to prove her wrong. Rylla sighed, as though she were dealing with unruly children, going from anger to sorrow. There was a telltale flash, and transmission ended as the bunker and everyone in it was blown to bits.) Stunned and sickened, Cole sat on the seat of his bike, staring at the cold hard stars, recognizing the nearby triangle of Vega, Altair, and Deneb. Cole never thought it would end so quickly. Like a light going out, Rylla and the centuries-long line of the Callisto royal family had vanished before his eyes. Ahead of him he saw the new rulers of the Jupiter system, the huge hollowed out asteroid called Asgard and the Space Viking battlecruiser Valkyrie, the most powerful ship in the Jovans. Might made right. Callisto had been bankrupt and now belonged to her creditors.

He cursed the Valkyries’ little peace ploy. This was why they wanted peace talks first thing in the morning and pushed for an immediate vote. They knew Rylla’s “arrest” was coming, so they caught everyone in a good mood before the bomb went off.

Blond “Choosers of the Slain” had chosen to abandon Rylla and hoodwink him. He actually felt sorry for the Choctaws, who were now on the warpath with nowhere to go.

His bike took him into Asgard’s hangar deck, past the scrawl of graff iti on the habitat’s outer hull; gang signs, MARTIANS GO HOME, and some brave Choctaw had carved the motto of the Callisto resistance into the enemy’s citadel. RL, for Rylla Lives. Not anymore. Swinging sadly out of his seat, Cole thumbed the entrance lock, which issued him a badge allowing him to leave the hangar deck. It would also track his movements throughout the multi-level habitat. Space Vikings were even more paranoid than the navy. Sign of a bad conscience. The Good Book says, “The guilty flee, where none pursue.” For Christ’s sake, he was free, male, and twenty-one, a church pastor, with no outstanding warrants, and all charges dropped. Who in hell would not trust him?

Inside, he saw a sad knot of Callisto refugees, unable to enter the habitat, and up for sale on the hanger deck—colonists driven from their homes, in a solar system where living space and O2 did not come free. Some had marketable skills, like systems analysts, whores, vacuum hands, and hydroponic gardeners. Most were just kids, whose parents were arrested, detained, or headed for the Ice Mines in Saturn system. Huns and Mongols looked them over, always alert for a good deal on a cute kid. As he searched for some sign of Randi Lynn, a girl of seven or eight stepped up, clutching a rag doll. “Hi, Cole.”

Bingo. It was Jazmyne, older and taller than when he had last seen her, but looking as sharp as ever with the same wide alert eyes and serious smile. Cole was always happy to see her, and she was a sure sign that this was the right hangar deck.

“Hey, Jazz, what’s up?”

“We’ve got business to do.” Jazmyne nodded toward the knot of kids for sale.

“So I hear.” Cole knew better than to ask what sort of business.

“This Mongol needs your thumb print,” she explained. “Won’t take mine ’cause I’m eight.”

“Eight already?” Last time he had seen Jazz, she was six.

“Almost nine.” And already the designated adult in her branch of the family.

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“Sweet.” Kids grew up at light speed these days. It had taken Cole almost half his lifetime to get to nine. Jazmyne led him over to a mean looking, slate black Mongol, with sky blue eyes. His armor bore the battlecruiser Valkyrie’ s winged white horse.

Pointing to Cole, Jazmyne told the glowering Mongol, “My dad will thumb for me.”

“Foster dad,” Cole quickly explained, being barely old enough to have a half-grown kid.

Holding out a pay pad, the Mongol smiled. “Your girl’s a smart one. Out bid the Huns and got you a fine bunch of kids—bright, alert, and they’ve had all their shots.”

Cole gave Jazmyne his best Sunday-go-to-meeting grin. “Unmarried virgins care only for the work of the Lord, to be holy in body and in spirit—First Corinthians, 7-34.”

Nodding, the kid merchant replied with the Koran. “Virgin girls are closest to Allah.”

Cole pressed his thumb to the pad, promising to feed, protect, and educate the children until adulthood, resale, or their parents made bail. Their former owner pocketed the pad, saying, “Genghiz Khan’s last words were: listen to the grandchild Kublai, who is wise and will make you prosper.”

“Kublai?” Cole thought for a moment. “He’s the guy who gave us printing, gun-powder, and paper money. Can’t prosper without them.”

“And pasta,” Jazmyne added.

“Oh, yeah, pasta.” Cole jerked his thumb toward the docking bays. “You can use that thumbprint to claim the bike in bay 113, BMW RaumRocket, as part payment—
if you get there before Space Vikings seize it.”

“Shalom Aleichem,” replied the Mongol, eager to grab that Beamer.

“Aleichem Shalom,” Cole agreed. Business was over for a bit. Mongols would deliver the children when Cole made full payment. Mongols believed that the three finest things in the world were children, making children, and grinding their enemies into dust, so it never paid to cross them, especially when it came to kids.

“Great.” Jazmyne beamed, always pleased when adults did the right thing.

“Did you throw in an older sister for me?” Cole asked. He tried never to disappoint Jazmyne, knowing how hard it was to be a child, especially when you are smarter than everyone else.

“We bought them all,” Jazmyne informed him, taking his ID badge and pinning it to the rag doll. Slipping a digital remote out of the doll, she gave the doll to a younger girl, saying soberly,

“Rylla lives.”

Cole was shocked to see Jazmyne so misinformed. Usually she knew things before they happened. Cole was determined not to be the one who told her that Rylla was dead. They headed straight for the docking bays, to get to work before the Space Vikings found out they were tracking a rag doll. As they entered the empty bay area, Jazmyne pushed PAUSE on the remote, freezing the sensors and cameras, so they would continue to show an empty corridor. Cole asked, “How come you’re not in school?”

“School’s out,” Jazmyne informed him. “We graduated. I was valedictorian.”

“For the whole third grade?” Cole tried to sound impressed. He had dropped out at thirteen to join the Jutes.

“For the whole school, K–12.” Jazmyne was scary smart. Which was why Randi Lynn put her in charge of this caper, telling Cole nothing. Passing up the bike Cole had just given away, and which would never have held all those kids, Jazmyne took him to a big robo-cargo, RU2666.

“The Beast,” Cole noted.

Jazmyne nodded. “One reason I picked it.” She pushed OPEN on the remote, and the robot freighter opened the airlock for them. Inside Jazmyne pushed CLOSE.

Cole asked, “What about Missy?” Missy was Jazmyne’s “invisible” friend, the one Grand Theft Spacecraft

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crutch for a girl who was smarter than everyone else—a friend who was always with her. Maybe she had outgrown Missy.

“Missy is with someone who needs her more than me.” Having nothing of her own, the girl was eternally giving.

Jazmyne plugged the remote into the control deck terminal, pushing PLAY to de-ploy Randi Lynn and return cameras and sensors to their normal mode. Now there was no digital record of them entering the ship. They had vanished from H-deck on Asgard, leaving only a rag doll. Soon Cole’s bike would disappear too.

Randi Lynn had reformed and moved to Bellingdam but not before downloading her skills into a really wicked virus. Older and perhaps wiser, Randi Lynn now let others do the crime. Really successful criminals work within the system. Instead of trying to overpower a ship’s programming, Randi Lynn joined the data stream, feeding in false information so the ship did what she wanted. Her voice came out of the command deck speakers. “RU2666 is fully secured and lifting off on schedule.”

Cole sat down on the pilot’s acceleration couch, though there was no piloting to be done. Able to talk freely at last, he asked Jazmyne, “Why do we need this ship and all those kids? And how will we ever pay for them?”

Jazmyne stared at him. She operated on a need-to-know basis, and Cole never needed to know.

Finally, she simply said, “I’ll show you.”

Cole followed her down to the freight deck, with Randi Lynn opening and closing hatches for them and turning lights on and off. As soon as Cole saw the cargo, he knew what this was all about.

Most of it was in containers, but the row of black BITCH missiles was unmistakable. Ballistic Intelligently Targeted Chemical missiles were not nukes, but one well-placed BITCH could put a nasty hole in your day. He saw HELLHOUNDS as well, and smart tanks, but no SLAM nukes. “So this ship is replacing the one riddled with stealth rocks over Callisto?”

Jazmyne nodded silently. Space Vikings had made the mistake of putting one of their support ships in Callisto orbit. Firing from the unseen side of Callisto, Rylla’s people put a swarm of heavy metal slugs covered in radar-absorbing material in a reciprocal orbit. The radar-invisible swarm collided with the robo-cargo at horren-dous speed, destroying the ship and its cargo of weapons. Cole flipped open the nearest crate, finding it filled with rows of smartpistols in their power holsters. The next crate contained riot guns. Taking a pair of smartpistols and a riot gun for himself, Cole asked, “What are we going to do with all this stuff ?”

“Set things right,” Jazmyne replied grimly. Jazmyne had that firm girl-child’s grip on right and wrong. Cole was ashamed to say that the average two-year-old girl had more moral sense and notion of right and wrong than he did. Jazmyne hated adult dysfunction, which was why Cole tried to be on his best behavior around her. Growing up in a family that often doted on dysfunction, she had been the “designated adult” since she was four. Once Cole had been piloting a UFO stealth ship, the Uni-corn in the leading Trojans shut down on a ballistic trajectory, trying to slip past a slaver’s nest. Late in the midwatch, with Jazmyne asleep on the copilot’s couch, Cole needed a rest himself, so he risked a quick chemical burn to speed things up, which could have alerted the slavers. Slavers did not notice, but Jazmyne woke out of deep sleep, saying, “You can’t do that.”

Then she fell back to sleep. Jazmyne could judge acceleration and spot malfunc-tion in her sleep. Cole asked her, “How will we set things right?”

“You’ll see,” Jazz replied smugly.

Apparently, he did not need to know yet. Figuring he was in better hands than his, Cole closed the crates, pocketed his new smartpistols, picked up the riot gun, and 146

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headed back for the command deck. Randi Lynn sealed the freight deck behind them. When they got back to C-deck, Cole settled into the command couch for a much-needed nap, telling Randi Lynn to wake him for lift-off. Halfway through the morning watch, and it had already been one hell of a day.

“Unless you become as little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Mathew 18-3

SLEEPY BOOTY

Noon watch, 12:10:05 P.M., aboard RU2666, in constant acceleration to Callisto.

DNA confirmed it, Rylla was dead. NCIS, suspiciously on the scene (Callisto was a million miles from Bifrost,) found Princess Rylla’s DNA at the blast site, along with the DNA of several senior Space Vikings. For Naval Criminal Investigative Services to do its job so quickly meant that Commander Washington knew the “arrest” was coming, even while he was warning Cole to be good. Bastard! Why not warn poor Rylla? Doubly glad that he ignored the navy’s warning, Cole did not doubt the DNA. In a solar system full of digital faking and human error, DNA was the gold standard, the final proof of the truth. Recordings could lie, 3-V distorted reality, eyewitnesses were notoriously wrong, but DNA was coded into every cell, hair follicle, and spit drop.

Too bad. Really rotten actually. Cole had secretly been keeping hope alive. He had never even met Rylla, yet he felt he had lost a loved one. Red-haired Princess Rylla, born in prison to a mom serving life without parole, raised in jail then recognized by her royal dad to become the shining face of Callisto, speaking up for those without a voice. Now she was just another story that had ended wrong, making it harder to do right. Good thing he had Jazmyne with him on this job. Jazz would not let him do wrong, not ever.

Cole f lipped his glasses to the Family channel, to see how Cousin Amanda was taking the news. She had been closest to Rylla, as First Lady in Waiting and then Princess-Regent of Conway castle. Not well. Since GOTTERDAMMERUNG, she had been hiding in her room, not even coming out on 3V. Cole placed his 360 shades and his spare smartpistol (not personalized to him) in the ship’s fabricator, faxing her working copies of both along with a message:

RUN FOR YOUR LIFE LITTLE GIRL.

After speed-of-light lag, a message came back from Cousin Amanda: THANKS RUN WHERE?

Unable to speak freely over an open channel, Cole just whistled an old time tune:

“When I was young and had no sense,

I bought my fortune for ten cents,

But the only thing the cookie could say,

Was over the hills and far away . . .”

Amanda would get the message. It hurt him not to be there, to look out for her like he had done for half her life, but right now people were hurting everywhere. He could not even talk to Jazmyne about Rylla’s death—but he would sure as hell look out for her.

Halfway to Callisto, Randi Lynn did a Crazy Ivan, reversing course and decelerat-ing to match orbits with Callisto Colony. Then, well into the midwatch, RU2666’s fusion drive gave out, and Beast began broadcasting a MAYDAY. Cole glanced at Jazmyne, lying awake on the copilot’s couch. “So, the game is afoot?”

Jazmyne nodded, plainly anticipating this power failure. In her spare time Jazmyne was a chess grand master, one of the youngest ever, and Outer System Grand Theft Spacecraft

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Human Chess Champion. Only opponent this side of Phobos who had beaten her was MIMIR, the supercomputer on Asgard that ran the Jovan system, captain of all robo-cargos, communications director, 3-V coordinator, and supreme commander of the Space Vikings. Cole sensed a rematch.

Jazmyne gave him an evil grin. “MIMIR does not even know the game has begun.

Right now he is running systems checks and trying to restart the fusion drive, but Randi Lynn won’t let him.”

“Then what will MIMIR do?” Fortunately, Cole could not think like a supercomputer.

“MIMIR will send a f leet tug to haul us in,” Jazmyne replied conf idently. Right now RU2666 was on a fast vector, taking the Space Vikings’ arms shipment out of the Jovans.

“Or order a constellation class cruiser to check us out,” Cole suggested, “armed with enough smart nukes to blow us into photons.”

“No,” Jazmyne scoffed at his worst-case fears. “There are only three Space Viking heavy cruisers in Jupiter system— Vixen, Virgo, and Volans, all supporting the attack on Callisto. MIMIR will not split the f leet just to run down a robo-cargo; a tug is safer and surer.” Neither of them even mentioned the navy, which had only two light cruisers— Polaris and Procyon—guarding Bifrost. Terra-Luna relied on Space Vikings to police the Jovans while Bifrost watched over Jupiter’s gravity well.

As usual Jazmyne was right; the robo-tug Rescue detached herself from the fleet around Callisto and headed their way. She had called MIMIR’s first move, tug to Beast.

Without warning, the command deck airlock started to cycle, and Cole nearly had a seizure. Out beyond Ganymede, headed into deep space, and someone was coming aboard? Radar showed nothing bigger than a softball for a million klicks in every direction. “Who the hell is this?”

In reply, the airlock opened and the black Mongol off the Valkyrie greeted them.

“Batu Khan, commander of the Ulan Bator, with those kids you ordered.”

“Welcome aboard.” Cole relaxed, realizing this was part of the plan, or Randi Lynn would not have let him in. “I was not expecting a UFO.”

“No one expects a UFO.” Batu looked pleased with his surprise entrance. U-ships were chemically powered ships covered in radar-absorbing material, giving them the radar image of a baseball. “We fly under the radar like rockets did before there were nukes and computers.”

“Before computers?” Cole found that hard to believe. “How did they calculate ballistics?”

“Rooms full of smart young women figured trajectories,” Batu explained.

Cole would take that over MIMIR any day. “You make the pre-Atomic sound fun.”

“Oh, it was,” Batu assured him. “How do you think Ghengiz Khan got his thousand kids?” Children came trooping in behind Batu wearing sticky boots since they were in free fall—not a thousand of them, but enough to fill up the command cabin, walking up the bulkheads, hanging upside down from the deck head, fiddling with the locked down controls, and asking questions at light speed.

“Where’s the bathroom? Where are we going? When will we get there?”

Cole let Jazmyne deal with the infant invasion, asking Batu, “Do you have a list of the children’s names and masses?”

“Already in your computer,” Batu assured him.

“You must know our cargo,” Cole concluded. “Take any weapons you want, so long as the total mass matches the mass of the kids, plus any baggage they bring aboard.”

Batu Khan was pleased. “That is more than you promised.”

“Masses have to match,” Cole explained, “or the wrong folks will know someone is aboard.”

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“Wrong folks?” Batu Khan wore a Space Viking uniform with the Valkyrie’ s flying horse badge. “Are we the right folks, trading children for weapons?”

“Absolutely.” Cole often felt like he was the only one doing right in a universe gone horribly wrong. “Second rule of the family is: all men are brothers; all children are your children.”

Batu looked him over. “Brother, this family of yours sounds like Mongols.”

“Maybe, we’re a pretty mixed breed,” Cole admitted. With a thousand children, two of whom were also Great Khans as well, Ghengiz’s genetic marker was spread throughout the Solar System.

One small boy walked up Batu’s back and sat perched atop the Mongol’s head, staring down at Cole, his new owner. Batu ignored the weightless child. “Before there were these thousand children, Genghiz Khan’s beloved Bortay was taken and raped by Tartars. It took Genghiz a year to get her back, and when he did, Bortay had a newborn son. Genghiz always treated that boy as his first born, and his descendants were given half of Europe to rule, becoming so rich you Aryans called them the Golden Horde.”

Cole had heard of them. “I am also descended from bastard rebels, bank robbers, and cattle thieves. When I was a boy, I played on Lexington Green, where my country was born. Legal authorities found our forefathers bearing arms and told them, ‘Disperse, you bastard rebels, disperse.’ When they did, the law shot them in the back.

We have been dispersing ever since.”

While they swapped lies about Old Earth and played with the kids, Batu’s brothers f iled past, introducing themselves as Berke, Baidar, and Buri. Going down to the freight deck, they came back bearing arms. Cole was happy to see that hard-ware go now that they had all these kids aboard. When they had the children’s weight in weapons, Batu bid them adieu, saying, “We must trust you not to misuse these children.”

That was a polite Mongol warning. To avenge the rape of Bortay, Ghengiz told his men to kill every Tartar taller than a wagon wheel. Cole returned the compliment.

“And I will trust you not to misuse those smart weapons. Shalom Aleichem.”

“Aleichem Shalom,” they replied and departed, laughing at the notion Mongols might misuse a weapon.

Beast now swarmed with kids banging off the bulkheads, playing tag in zero g.

Randi Lynn kept them confined to B and C decks and locked down all the controls, so there was no chance of a toddler decompressing the command deck or firing off a BITCH missile. Cole had other worries, telling Jazmyne, “Batu trusts me, but I am not sure I trust myself.”

“Why?” Jazmyne was shocked, just expecting that Cole would do the right thing, as he had done for all of her life.

“Before, it was just you and me. Now we have a load of kids headed into a war zone.” He reminded her, “MIMIR beat you last time.”

Jazmyne scoffed. “That was at chess.”

“What are we playing now? Jetan?”

“Shogi,” Jazmyne replied. Japanese chess. “Shogi has no black and white, so either side may start play. I began the game, but did not tell MIMIR.”

Classic Pearl Harbor opening; don’t inform your opponent until the bombs are falling. “Might work.”

Jazmyne did her best to soothe him. “You are a knight-deacon. In shogi, knights can only go forward, so there are no good knight openings. You won’t be needed until the middle game.”

“What’s the use having a horse if you cannot run away?” Self preservation was not in the kamikaze code. Happy to save himself for the middle game, Cole just had to trust Jazmyne, since he could not have beaten MIMIR at handball.

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Jazmyne took charge of B-deck, organizing the smaller kids. At school, she had gone straight from kindergarten to teaching assistant. Cole remembered when he had picked her up after her second day at kindergarten. She told him that seven kids had been absent. He asked her which ones, and she rattled off the names of the seven kids who were not there. Jazz did not have to see to know. Besieged by questions like, “Where are we going? When will we get there? Will I see my mom?” Jazmyne had pat answers ready, “Home. Soon. Of course.”

Older kids, who did not want to be bossed by an eight-year-old, took their questions straight to Cole on the command deck, led by two tall dark twin sisters, Indica and Sativa, who asked, “Are you really a Jute?”

Lounging on the command couch, with no piloting to do, Cole felt compelled to entertain. “Yep, a knight-deacon.” Wearing the colors if you were not a Jute would be suicide, since everyone would be on you—Jutes, Choctaws, and the law.

Sativa nodded toward her silent younger brother. “Cuba’s a Choctaw.”

Cole glanced at the boy. “Jutes and Choctaws got a truce in the Jovans.”

“So I hear.” Cuba was not buying it.

“We sure do on this ship. I voted for it.” He asked Cuba, “Were you born on a Wednesday?”

“How’d you know that?” asked Sativa.

“Being a knight-deacon doesn’t make me some fool cracker. We got Choctaws in the family, Martians even.”

“That so?” Cuba began to warm up to him.

“Hell yes. We just wish you all would go back to Mars.”

Kids laughed and hooted. “No can do, we’re transportees.” Even Mars did not want them.

Cole grinned. “Guess you’ll have to go home instead.”

Cuba scoffed. “To Callisto? Callisto Colony’s crawling with Space Vikings shooting up the place and kicking everyone out.”

“We just want to see our mom,” his sisters complained. “Even in 3V.”

Cole shook his head. “Sorry, we got a communications black out. No calls, coming or going.”

“Why?” the kids chorused.

“Because we are at war.” Kids deserved the truth. “Don’t blame me. I voted for peace.” Cole tried to be a friend to the cosmos, but the cosmos did not always cooper-ate, which was why he went around armed. Pulling out his spare smartpistol, the one he fax-copied to Cousin Amanda, he handed it to Cuba. “I’m just happy to have the Choctaws on my side for a change.”

Grinning, Cuba grabbed the gun, immediately personalizing it so it would only fire for him. Sub-lethal and self-targeting, smartpistols would not f ire at unarmed kids—even his bossy big sisters. Cole was the only person Cuba could use it on, but in troubled times, boys needed to feel safe. Cole knew; he had been one.

Teens made the command deck their clubhouse, taking turns at the locked down controls, getting lessons from Cole on orbital mechanics, celestial navigation, ancient folkways, moral philosophy, and the care and operation of smart weapons. He had promised to educate them, and Cole started with the basics. “Since ancient times, every Aryan gentleman is required to ride, shoot, and speak the truth.”

Cuba asked, “Does that apply to Choctaws?”

“Goes double for Choctaws,” Cole insisted. “Being Aryan is not about skin color.

Many ancient Aryans were black as the night. It means speaking an Aryan language, like English, Portu-Greek, or Pushtu, and living by shared moral laws.”

“What law?” These kids had been born beyond Luna, where there was no law, just navy regs, when the navy was around.

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“Laws laid down during the Last World War,” Cole told them. “The Four Freedoms of the Atlantic Charter.”

Kids objected. “That was ages ago.”

“On a planet far away,” Cole agreed. “But the Last World War was fought for the Four Freedoms and was won. They were promised to everyone, winners and losers, and to you.”

“What were they?” Cuba asked. Now all the kids wanted to know what was owed them.

Cole recited the Four Freedoms of the Atlantic Charter: “Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. Freedom from want. Freedom from fear.”

Children laughed. “We sure don’t have those.”

Cole nodded. “But millions gave their lives for them, and just because we got cheated is no reason to give them up. We owe that to the dead.”

Boy Toy asked, “Is that what this war is about?”

“You bet, girl,” Cole assured her, “if I have anything to say about it.” He was a preacher as well as a knight-deacon and believed these kids deserved the truth, even if it was not pretty. “I gotta warn you. They poisoned Buddha and Socrates, they shot Gandhi and Martin Luther King, and they nailed Jesus to a cross. Do not think that folks are gonna love you for doing the right thing and speaking the truth.”

Cole was much relieved when the robo-tug Rescue arrived to attempt repairs and take them in tow. Randi Lynn took over the tug as well, and Cole got the kids off Beast, a flying bomb that was fast becoming the good ship Lollypop.

Jazmyne could not resist an I-told-you-so grin. “In shogi, when you capture a piece, it becomes yours to use against the enemy any time you want. Two of MIMIR’s ships are mine, and MIMIR still does not know we are playing.”

MIMIR still had all the big pieces, but Cole let the girl have her victory, for as long as it lasted.

Rescue reduced their speed, taking them to a support ship Repair, tethered to another ship Reward, rotating around a Callisto La Grange point so they could both have Earth normal spin gravity.

Everything turned right side up, and kids stopped bouncing off the bulkheads.

With things semi-normal for the moment, Cole suggested that Jazmyne and the older girls watch over the youngsters, while he took a short trip to Reward and got some reward for his hard work. If you cannot be good, be quick. Jazmyne made a face at him. Reward was a “Bordel Mobile de Campagne,” a Space Viking f ield brothel meant to raise morale among the troops struggling to subdue Callisto Colony.

Jazmyne had the usual eight-year-old’s prejudice against sex. When she was four, Jazz had been his “bid dog” always chatting up the prettiest girl in the room, “forcing” Cole to introduce himself. But kids outgrew him so quickly. Cole insisted that his morale could use a lift. Didn’t he deserve a reward? “Rule number three in the family is, don’t do no felonies for free.”

As they argued, a call came in from Reward requesting immediate help repairing leaking oxygen recycler pipes. Proof positive that there is a God, and that he is a guy.

“Look, you kids can stay safe in the tug, while I plug these ladies’ leaky pipes.”

Jazmyne just rolled her eyes in disgust. Randi Lynn took them straight to Reward, while Cole whistled an old time tune that Jazmyne did not know the words to, “Wish I was in Dixie, but Damn, She’s out of Town”:

“Way down south, where I’ve been often,

Good times there are not forgotten.

Hook away, hook away, hook away Dixie girl . . .”

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Before he finished whistling, they were docked with Reward, and the command deck’s airlock started to cycle. Instead of Cole going to Reward, the mobile f ield brothel was coming to him. When the lock opened, pretty women burst in paying no attention to Cole, except to ask, “Where are our kids?”

“Try B-deck,” suggested Cole, nodding to the hatch that Randi Lynn opened. As usual, Jazmyne was three moves ahead of him. These free fallen women were the moms they were looking for. Women dashed past him, disappearing down the hatch except for a sleek blond in a skimpy bikini who slumped down against a bulkhead with her eyes closed and went right to sleep—it was 2 A.M. Baltic time.

Squeals of joy erupted from the open hatch as families were reunited, then the happy moms came back through the command deck carrying sleepy little ones and herding teens ahead of them. Indica, Sativa, and Cuba introduced their mom, Afrodite, who thanked Cole profusely. “My girls say you are a good man.”

“I try,” Cole confessed.

“Even Cuba likes you,” Afrodite sounded amazed. “Says you are the coolest Jute he ever met.”

Cole grinned at that. “You are raising one hell of a Choctaw.”

Afrodite laughed. “No offense, but boys are a trial.”

“Oh, I know. I was one. Cuba’s been no trouble to me. I gave him a smartpistol, and with your permission, he can keep it—times being iffy and all.” Cole told Cuba, “Do what your mom says. A lot of great men loved and obeyed their moms. Genghiz Khan, Napoleon, Elvis, and Jesus were all mama’s boys.”

Afrodite smiled. “They said you were a preacher.”

“Church of Jesus Christ Christian, but that don’t make me a Nazi,” Cole added.

“Praise the Lord.” Afrodite led her family to Reward.

Boy Toy’s mom, Ah Ho, thanked him too, saying, “My husband’s with the Hp Yee Tongs, so she is all I have to help with the little ones. We will both burn joss sticks for you.”

Someone should. More moms thanked him, though none offered to sleep with him.

Story of his life. As Jazmyne started to follow the kids, Cole asked, “Where’s your mom?”

“Transportee aboard the Valkyrie.” Jazmyne clearly missed her.

“Can we do something about that?” Cole wished they could, since Jazmyne was so good at doing for others.

“That has to wait for the endgame,” Jazmyne told him sadly. “But don’t worry, Missy is with her.” Invisible Missy. Jazmyne cycled through the airlock, leaving Cole alone except for the bikini blond sleeping against the bulkhead.

Cole called out over the ship-to-ship intercom, “Hey, you’re leaving one.”

Afrodite answered with a laugh, “She’s all yours, preacher Cole. Enjoy.”

Cole looked over the living sculpture he had acquired, asking the catatonic blond,

“Don’t you have any kids?”

She did not open her eyes, but a talkbox chained to her wrist replied, “No, but we could still have a good time.”

“Maybe after we have been properly introduced. My name is Cole.”

Her talkbox replied, “Hi, my name is Sleepy Booty.”

“Guess that makes me the Beast,” Cole decided.

“All men are beasts,” the talkbox declared, “but we could still have a good time.”

Not being much into necrophilia, Cole was not so sure. “Usually I like my dates to be awake.”

Sleepy Booty lifted her eyelids, revealing bright blue sonar-powered prosthetic contacts focused on him. Cole realized she could “see” just as well with her eyes closed. Her talkbox told him, “You sure were a hit with those kids and their moms.

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Guess that makes you a nice guy. Real beasts might have taken advantage of the situation.”

“Even beasts have standards,” Cole replied. “No kids, no dogs, no wackos.”

Her talkbox told him, “I’m over eighteen, and folks say I’m a looker, but I am brain damaged. We can still have a good time.”

So you say. “What sort of brain damage?”

Sleepy Booty closed her eyes, but the box kept talking. “None of us wanted to be whores and screw the guys who stole our homes and families. Those moms signed brothel contracts because Space Vikings had their children. Not being a mom, they had to beat me into submission. I lost my speech center and optical lobe, but we can still have fun.”

Cole felt guilty for his former carnal desire. “You said you did not want to be a whore.”

Sleepy Booty smiled as her talkbox explained, “This is a freebee. Just nookie, no hookie. I am not doing this for pay. I’m doing it because you are a nice guy, and nice guys deserve to get some.”

Noble sentiments, but Cole was still not sure. He already liked her and did not want to compound the felony assault done to her just for some fun. That was not the Family way. “So, what’s the matter?” asked the talkbox. “Don’t I look pretty?”

“No, you are mega beautiful,” Cole admitted. Looks were not the issue.

Her talkbox thanked him coyly, “Bet you say that to all the whores.”

“Nope,” Cole shook his head. “This would be my first time with a pro.”

Her talkbox chuckled, “Want to see what you’ve been missing?”

“I’ve done all right with amateurs,” Cole insisted. “I’m just the type of guy who has to be in love to make love. Luckily, I fall in love at the drop of a panty. And there is a lot to love about you. You are cool, brave, and caring, and I can tell you like me.”

“Hold on sailor,” the talkbox warned him. “Of course I like you. What’s not to like?

But this is not love, it’s what I do for a living. So no falling in love. It’s bad for business. Besides, what would your wives say?”

“No wives. No girlfriends. Only females in my life right now are Jazz, my step mom, and Cousin Amanda, but we are just kissing cousins.”

In fact he was amazed to be talking to an insanely beautiful woman with zero sexual tension. No fear of rejection. No worries about insulting her. No silly seduction ploys. He just had to say, “Yes.” But his conscience got in the way. He could not take advantage of the harm done to her.

Her talkbox told him, “Look, you are a nice guy, and we owe you. So if you ever get over this attack of scruples . . .”

“Okay,” Cole promised, “you’ll be the first to know.” Cole could tell it would be very hard not to take advantage of Sleepy Booty’s offer. In fact it already was.

“Faint hearts never fucked a flag captain.”

—Navy saying

LAST CHARGE OF THE MONGOL HORDE

Forenoon watch 11:07:38 aboard Reward, in halo orbit around Callisto La Grange point.

Cole learned long ago that women are never ever satisfied. Now that the moms had their kids back, they complained they had nowhere to keep them. Navy regulations let you raise kids in the brig. Bifrost station had a whole D-deck section KidCon devoted to Grand Theft Spacecraft

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prisoner dependents and juvenile offenders, offering K–12 education plus closely supervised field trips to the free decks. Princess Rylla had spent her formative years in KidCon and had always claimed to be better for it. Cole too approved. If only the pure and honest raised children, humans would have died out long before they got to the Moon. Space Vikings piously banned children from jails and brothels, even if it meant making them orphans for sale on the open market. Nor could the moms just run off with their kids, since breaking their brothel contracts was a crime: “stealing yourself.”

Any civilized habitat would have to return them to their legal owners.

Afrodite swore that if she could send her teenagers down to Callisto Colony, “Dark Dwarfs on D-deck would take them in. Teach them to live by the Old Way and give them back when my contract’s up.”

Ah Ho said the Gung Ho Tongs on C-deck would take in Boy Toy and her younger brothers. “Teach them to be warriors for China in the Sky.”

Cole was all for f inding some safe haven for the kids, even in Callisto Colony.

“When MIMIR figures out what we’re doing, he’ll lash out with SLAM nukes.”

“I know.” Jazmyne had cold contempt for poor losers who wanted to blow up the board. “Opening with your queen is bad chess.” Even worse shogi, which had no queens.

Sleepy Booty keyed her talkbox. “Paying customers are coming here on their way to Callisto.”

“Anyone I know?” Cole felt jealous already.

“Maybe,” her talkbox replied. “Mongols off the battlecruiser Valkyrie, on recon.”

Mongols liked getting their reward up front.

“Led by a Mongol named Batu Khan?” Cole asked. “Those are the ones who sold us the children.”

“That will make us happier about being whores.” Sleepy Booty liked to do nice guys.

“Get them in a good mood,” Cole suggested. “Then see if they’ll take me and some of the kids down to Callisto Colony with them.” Cole retired to the tug, so he did not have to watch Sleepy Booty at work. The more he saw of her, the more he liked her, and the worse he felt about the way all the women were recruited. There was a huge difference between being a “pro” and being a slave.

Shortly after the Mongols arrived, Batu took time out from the love fest to visit Cole on the tug, looking indecently happy. “Of course you can come with us,” Batu declared,

“but this is no simple recon. We are also on a mission for the Sultana of Slutsk.”

“Really?” Cole had seen the Sultana on 3V, tall, dark and regal, said to be Princess Rylla’s number one woman. “Are you officially working for both sides now?”

“Not off icially,” Batu confessed, “but the Sultana is a great lady and our chosen leader.”

Cole cocked an eye, asking, “What would Genghiz say?”

Batu sighed. “Genghiz was a Khan of Khans, with a thousand children and a million horses. We are simple Mongols, earning our living millions of miles from home.”

Poor lost lambs. Cole asked, “What’s your mission for the Sultana?”

Batu’s confident grin returned. “Tell you when we get back. What you do not know cannot be beaten out of you.”

Comforting thought. When the orgy aboard Reward was over, Batu and his brothers took Cole and whatever children the moms felt free to part with down to Callisto Colony, the habitat orbiting the pitted ice moon. Valkyries on the colony’s hangar deck, enforcing their latest truce, were vastly amused to see four Mongols and a Jute doing daycare. What could be more peaceful? Armed Space Vikings eyed Indica, Sativa, and Boy Toy, asking, “Are they from Reward?”

“Their moms are,” replied Batu, putting his pervy allies in their place.

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Callisto Colony began as a C-class colony ship, built centuries ago by a Sino-Russian syndicate, part of the Communities in Space project to settle the Jovans. Mars was being terraformed then, and there was a great need for water ice and Titan hydrocar-bons. By the time the ice trade collapsed, Callisto Colony had gone through several owners before being drastically remade by Rylla’s royal family. Outwardly, it was still a C-class colony ship: four contrarotating toruses, each seven miles across and two miles wide, with a central axis, fusion drive, and a zero-g hangar deck. Inside, it would never be the same. Taking the central drop shaft up to D-deck, they herded the kids through the despin system, to where the Dark Dwarfs dwell. Rylla’s family had a passion for little people, championing anyone under four feet tall. D-deck was forty square miles of jungle and savanna, where African pygmies could live in the Old Way, eating forest plants and game animals raised on A and B decks. Fusion light filtered down through the green canopy, creating a hot steamy paradise for short folks.

Pygmies met them at the lock entrance, taking in Afrodite’s teens and any other children that favored a forest habitat. Batu asked how the Space Vikings were treat-ing them. Not well, pygmies complained. “They come here on safari, trampling our crops and shooting the big game animals. They pay us, but we do not want their money. We want to be left in peace.”

LOL. Cole figured that at best the new owners would turn D-deck into a tourist attraction, and at worst they would log the forest. Jupiter system needed wood products and tourist dollars way more than it needed pygmies and their peaceful ways.

C-deck was guarded by Gung Ho Tongs and Mao Say Tongs, armed with throwing hatchets, Molotov cocktails, and the Little Red Book. They did not deal in women or slaves, so it was safe to leave Boy Toy and the rest of the children with them. These kids would be a mere drop in the human sea inside. C-deck was forty square miles of farms and tall apartment blocks inhabited by over a hundred thousand descendants of the original Chinese settlers. China in the Sky. When Batu asked how they liked the Space Vikings, lock guards waved the Little Red Book, chanting, “Reactionaries appear fierce and terrible, but they are really paper tigers. Only the people have power.”

Cole tapped his shoulder holster, saying, “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun.” Mao Say Tongs were happy to see that he too had read the Little Red Book.

Having found semi-safe havens for the children, they went up to B-deck to see what Space Vikings were doing with Princess Rylla’s former principality of Beloruss.

Inside the heavily guarded lock, energy fences surrounded transit camps, where future transportees were being appraised by buyers. 3-Vs of “Free Russia” had been edited to hide the presence of the Amurs—Black Dragon slavers—that the Space Vikings were supposed to be f ighting but were now in business with. Cole quoted from the Little Red Book, “People are the sea that the revolutionaries swim in.”

Batu nodded. “So they are draining the sea.” Depopulation was the age-old way of dealing with popular resistance. That was how the Hebrews ended up “By the Rivers of Babylon.” From inside the energy fences, Cole heard the mournful song that the Space Vikings had made popular:

“. . . they pen us like cattle,

Chase us like robbers, like outlaws, like thieves.

Goodbye to my home, farewell to Callisto,

Adios mi familia, y mis amigos.

You won’t have a name aboard the big spaceship,

All they will call you will be transportees . . .”

Getting motortrikes from a rent-a-stand, they mounted up to head for Slutsk, halfway around the habitat. As the singing faded behind them, Cole saw another sign Grand Theft Spacecraft

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of resistance—an armored cyborg scorpion topped with STINGER missiles flipped over in a ditch. Batu pointed to it, saying, “IED.” Improvised Explosive Device.

Beside the wreck a boy that no slaver wanted sat begging, minus an arm and a leg.

Cole stopped and gave the boy a ration pack. Space Vikings shouted, “Don’t do that.

He got blown up begging by the road.” Ignoring the advice, Cole gunned his trike.

Batu tossed him a riot gun, and they turned their trikes off the dirt road onto the potato fields. No sense sticking to a road that might explode. B-deck was a narrow river valley two miles wide and twenty miles long, with two sizable towns—Starova by the dropshaft lock and Slutsk, ten miles further on. Beloruss had been the colony berth deck until the growing population spilled over into the other decks.

Passing a second wrecked scorpion, punctured by what looked like a shaped charge, Cole pulled up and inspected the hole. Then he bent down and picked up a thin strand of superconducting wire.

Batu warned him, “That could be booby trapped.” Mongols always expected the worst.

Cole shook his head, saying, “Whoever killed that scorpion did not have a smart missile, so the rocket charge was wire-guided, probably from that patch of woods behind us.”

“Very clever.” Batu called to his brothers, “Beware of rocket bombs from the bushes.” Cole “personalized” his riot gun, then remounted his motortrike and set off under a pale blue 3V sky. Slutsk was now a Space Viking base, but Batu stopped well short of the town by the banks of the Little Slu, which gave the town its name. Ignoring the bridge, they waded the stream and walked the mile or so to the canyon wall that concealed the B-deck bulkhead. Batu must have had explicit instructions, because he went straight to a stone in the canyon wall that looked like any other rock. Tapping several times, he then turned the stone, and it popped open revealing a dark cavity. Batu reached inside, took something out, then screwed the stone back in place. Mission accomplished.

Turning to his brothers, Batu declared, “I have seen enough; let’s get back to Reward.” Recrossing the Little Slu, they mounted their trikes, heading for Starova and the central dropshaft. Above them, beyond the 3V sky, was A-deck, Asia Higher, ancestral home to Huns and Mongols. No one wanted to see what the Space Vikings had done there.

Someone had seen them. As Cole’s motortrike got going, his 360 glasses caught a bright flash behind him, streaking out of the long grass by the riverbank, followed by a familiar whooping sound. Throwing himself off the speeding trike, he instinctively pressed the infrared button on his riot gun. His trike kept on going, then exploded, as if it was hit by an AVATAR antitank rocket. Cole had already fired back, sending a HORNET round streaking into the long grass, following the rocket’s heat trail. Silence descended on the valley of the Little Slu. Mongols had dismounted as well and lay prone in the potato field, hiding behind their riot guns. The only movement was a quiet thrashing in the long grass where the HORNET had hit.

Cautiously, Cole got up to see what his HORNET round had found. Mongols rose and followed, watching his back. HORNET—Homing Ordinance Net—was a larger version of the tanglefoot rounds fired by smartpistols. Proximity fused, it exploded into a flying net of sticky fibers that entangled the target. Lying in the long grass was a girl of fourteen or so, struggling in a white sticky cocoon. Going down on one knee beside her, he saw through the webbing that she was typical Beloruss, with shining brown hair and blue eyes. Control wires sprouted from her cocoon, showing she had fired the wire-guided rocket at him. Cole asked her name.

She spat a venomous line of gibberish back at him that made the Mongols laugh.

Buri told Cole, “She called you a filthy pig fucker in Lithuanian.”

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Cole was shocked. “You speak Lithuanian?”

Buri shrugged. “Just the dirty words.”

That made more sense. Cole told him, “I had a Lithuanian girlfriend in middle school, but she never sounded like that. Though she used to lapse into German when we were making love.”

His prisoner spat out another word, “Juden.”

That word Cole knew. “Yes, she was Jewish. So you do know English. My name is Cole, and until you tell us different, your name is Filthy Piglet.”

“Olga,” she replied, but refused to say more, aside from a defiant, “Rylla Lives.”

Cole wished it were so. He doubted Olga even had a rank or serial number, so the interrogation had gone as far as rules of war allowed. They stuffed Olga into Buri’s sidecar, and Cole doubled up with Batu, looking back to see that Olga was all right—
angry but not hurting. Batu grinned at his concern for the girl. “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”

At Starova, Batu paid for the blown up trike, telling the Space Vikings they were taking the shooter in for further interrogation. Lock guards laughed, saying, “We can do that. Tell us what you want to know.”

Batu shook his head. “I’ve seen your work.” They were clearly miffed that they would not get to work Olga over and then sell what was left to the Black Dragons.

Luckily there were plenty more where she came from. The beggar boy limped up and started talking to Olga in a language Cole did not know. Space Vikings shooed him off. He hobbled over to Cole, giving back the ration pack, indicating it should go to Olga. Cole promised she would get it.

Valkaries at the hangar deck got a good laugh seeing them return with yet another kid, this one wrapped in a tangle web. “Does it really take half an arban to transport one teenager?”

Cole shrugged. “They grow tough kids on Callisto.”

Cutting Olga free, Valkyries asked if she was going willingly. With Space Vikings ready to take her into custody, she had little choice. Then the Valkyries solemnly counted their weapons to see that nothing was being left for the colonists to defend themselves with. Buri asked his brother, “What is the difference between Valkyries and Vultures?”

But Batu had heard that one already. “Valkyries are blond.”

On the shuttle to Reward, Olga broke down and asked grudgingly, “Where are you taking me?”

“Somewhere safe,” Cole assured their prisoner. “Where you can be with your own people.” No one had the heart to tell her it was a brothel.

Sleepy Booty was waiting for them on Reward, sitting eyes closed by the airlock.

Her talkbox asked, “Who’s the babe?”

“Says her name is Olga,” Cole explained. “She took a shot at me with a homemade rocket, then called me nasty names. We could not just leave her to Space Vikings and slavers.”

Sleepy Booty got up and kissed him. Surprised and pleased, Cole asked, “What’s that for?”

“For being such a nice guy,” replied her talkbox.

Cole shrugged off the compliment that he had done nothing to warrant. “There is a war going on down there, and not a nice one. If you do not respect your enemy, then you do not deserve respect.”

While the women convinced Olga she was among friends, Batu took Cole aside and told him, “What I got for the Sultana was Princess Rylla’s RAGNAROK files.”

“What’s in them?” Having almost gotten killed to get them made Cole extra curious.

“Many royal secrets,” Batu told him, “most importantly, Space Viking military codes, Grand Theft Spacecraft

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stolen when Callisto and Asgard were allies. That virus you are using works on civilian ships, because when a robo-cargo is underway, its operating systems emit electromagnetic signals that can be read and analyzed. Weapon systems only give off such signals when they are fired—much too late for analysis. By fair means or foul, Callisto spied on their allies, even getting the control codes for some Space Viking warships.”

“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. First rule of the Jutes.”

“And the Mongols,” Batu agreed. “But the RAGNAROK files are protected by the same on-off codes, and only Rylla could read them. Or maybe the Sultana of Slutsk, which would be why she wanted these files.”

One more reason to wish Rylla was alive. Seeing Callisto up close convinced Cole that things were worse than he imagined. Space Vikings were originally formed and recruited to protect the Jovans from looters and wreckers. Seeing them in business with the Black Dragon slavers meant the cats sent to catch mice had joined the rats.

But what could he do about it? The navy needed the Space Vikings more than it needed Callisto or some annoying Jute knight-deacon. Handing the ration pack to Olga, he headed for his cabin on the tug.

When he got to Rescue’ s control deck, he found Jazmyne and Sleepy Booty waiting for him. Glad to see Jazz still gravitated toward the prettiest girl in the room, he wondered what they were up to. Jazmyne spoke up, saying, “We’re now in the middle game, and it’s time to stop the war.”

Having seen the horror show in Callisto Colony, Cole agreed. “Past time, but how?”

“By destroying the Space Viking invasion fleet.” Jazmyne always went right to the heart of the problem, no matter how daunting. “Without those three heavy cruisers, the invasion will collapse; cyborgs won’t operate, supplies and reinforcements won’t arrive, and most of those mercenaries will not wait around for the next blow to fall.” QED.

Cole complimented her reasoning, “Spoken like Lord Nelson, A.T. Mahan, or Admiral Scott, ‘Get the big ones first.’ Smash the enemy’s main weapon, and the rest is easy. But you need to read Clausewitz—‘war is politics carried on by other means.’

Without Rylla we have no political program. We cannot restore the royal family; they are gone. You and I are not politicians, thank goodness; not even voters. You’re a child genius, and I’m your unpaid gun hand. Sure, I’d f ight for the Four Freedoms, but who would follow me?”

Jazmyne rolled her eyes at adult lack of imagination, then turned to Sleepy Booty.

“Could you talk to him?”

“Sure,” her talkbox replied. “Unimaginative men are my specialty. If they had any imagination, they’d get girlfriends and would not need me.” Turning to Cole, she keyed her talkbox. “Hey, sailor, want to have a good time? Let’s go somewhere private. I have something fun and pretty to show you.”

“Sure thing.” Cole could see where this was going. Taking Sleepy Booty to his cabin, he sealed the door and shut down the sensors, saying, “You are not going to fuck me into agreeing with Jazz. I would be really, really happy to let you try, but I got to warn you it’s hopeless—that’s the plain truth.”

Sleepy Booty smirked, keying her talkbox. “Really think you can take the truth?”

Cole nodded confidently. “Gentlemen are allowed to lie to the law and required to lie about sex—otherwise, the truth shall set you free.”

Unchaining her talkbox and setting it aside, Sleepy Booty sat down on his float-abed. Reaching up, she removed the icy blue contacts, revealing sea-green eyes, while saying in her own voice, “Rylla lives.”

“Holy Mother of God!” Cole always tried to meet life’s many surprises with prayer.

“DNA says you’re dead.”

“That was a clone. I am the real Rylla,” she proclaimed. “Want to check my finger-prints? As soon as I was born, Dad had me cloned in case he needed replacements. I 158

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did not even meet my twin sisters until I was a teen, but we became very close. At first it was all fun and games, posing as each other, so I could be in several places at once, driving our enemies crazy. Then one of us got killed. It could as easily have been me—but it was Rylla III. Rather than risk more deaths, I decided I needed a new identity. Most mass-automated searches rely on retinal scans or voice prints, so I needed a disguise that beat both, and Sleepy Booty was born.”

“Oh, I believe you.” Cole took her in his arms. “I have been constantly wishing you were alive, mourning you ever since GOTTERDAMMERUNG.” To prove it, Cole tenderly kissed his reborn princess.

Rylla kissed back, then looked at him askance. “I thought we were not going to fall in love.”

“Too late for that.” Cole laughed. “Years too late. I have been in love with Princess Rylla since I was ten.”

“When I was still in prison? Before I was even acknowledged as princess?”

Cole nodded soberly. “You are the first woman I have ever loved.”

Rylla was not buying that. “In love with someone you never met? Never even seen, except in 3V? That’s not love, that’s infatuation.”

He smiled and shook his head. “Despite your newly chosen profession, you have a lot to learn about men. Dante wrote the Divine Comedy for some woman he saw once in a marketplace. We fall in love for no apparent reason.”

“So it seems.” Rylla eyed him warily. “Is that why gentlemen are ‘required’ to lie about sex?”

“No. We are required to lie about sex because it involves another person, if you are doing it right. You can only tell the truth about yourself. Truth is, I loved you even before I knew you were a princess. When I began my career of cyber crime, I hacked into the navy jail roster, looking for criminals my age.”

“In a women’s prison?” Rylla acted scandalized.

“Of course. I was scrolling through the roster, then I saw your face, and I was in love. You weren’t even a criminal, just the daughter of one, but I thought, there is a girl who wants to do right, not just for herself, but for everyone.”

“That’s true, I did. I still do,” she confessed. “That comes from growing up innocent in jail.”

“And now that you are a princess, “Cole added,” there is a whole generation of young felons who feel like I do. Choctaws use your initials as a gang sign. Gung Ho Tongs burn joss sticks before your picture. For half my life, you have been everyone’s hope and inspiration.”

“Oh, I already knew that,” Rylla told him, “but you are the first to make it so personal. What are these Four Freedoms you would fight for?”

“You know, what the Last World War was fought for. The Four Freedoms of the Atlantic Charter. FDR? Winston Churchill? Doesn’t anyone 3V ancient history anymore?”

“I was educated in jail,” Rylla reminded him. “In Bifrost brig, freedom is what you get for serving your sentence, minus time for good behavior. Unless you are an innocent child—then you have to serve every day of it until you are eighteen, or thirteen with parental permission.”

“Naval education is not what it used to be,” Cole concluded. “The Atlantic charter was signed under Royal Navy protection, aboard the battleship Prince of Wales—not a spaceship but a ship that floated on water, because this was in the last years of the pre-Atomic. Four freedoms were promised but still have not been given to us. Freedom of Speech. Freedom of Religion. Freedom from Want. Freedom from Fear.”

“We had that on Callisto,” Rylla insisted. “We had free speech. No one cared what you said, least of all me, and I was the government. We had all sorts of religions: Shinto, Jews, Baptism, Satanism. I could not even count them, much less ban them.

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We had no currency, and everyone worked for free so there was no want, and we were totally unafraid until GOTTERDAMMERUNG.”

Cole felt like he was holding the Four Freedoms in his arms and began to be afraid for her. “Who else knows that you are alive? Besides your clone sisters.”

“Only those who need to know,” his bikini princess replied primly. “So do not tell on me.”

“Heaven forbid.” Cole would not think of it. “I’m just glad to be finally included in those who need to know.”

“You are the first person I have actually told,” Rylla admitted. “Jazmyne figured it out for herself. Kid’s a genius.”

“And then some,” Cole agreed. “I’m just Jazz’s unpaid gun hand.”

Rylla looked him straight in the eye, saying, “I have another unpaid job for you, if you’re interested.”

“You bet. I’m always looking for unpaid labor if the boss is pretty enough. What’s the gig?”

“Flag captain,” she said slyly.

“For a runaway princess, without a ship? I’m your man.”

Having said it, Cole had to prove it, and for a long while, neither of them spoke.

Her talkbox did not lie, Rylla was the best. She was really, really amazing, putting as much energy into loving as she did into living. Later, when they lay together, tired and naked, Rylla whispered to him, “Well, that was not very businesslike, maybe you do love me.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you? Nice guys finish last.” Cole kissed her, then asked,

“Just how many clones of you are there?”

“That’s a state secret,” his princess replied. “How many of me do you need?”

Clearly Cole did not need to know. “One’s plenty for me. More than enough.”

Jazmyne’s plan had to wait until the Vixen’s crew and mercenaries rotated up to Reward, to relieve the stress of oppressing people by dallying with enslaved prosti-tutes. Then Rylla needed to widen the circle of those in the know, asking Cole,

“Which side is Batu on?”

“That’s a no brainer, his own. He despises the Space Vikings,” Cole added, “and adores the Sultana of Slutsk, who was said to be your number one woman.”

“She is,” Rylla replied smoothly.

“So you say. Right now she does not even know you are alive. Nor does Batu. Your best bet is to tell Batu,” Cole concluded, “same way you told me. I was dead set against Jazz, but you convinced me awful quick. But I’m a pushover for a pretty face with a tall tale. Batu will hate to break his enlistment oath. He’s a Mongol and a marine. Semper Fi.”

“Will he go with what he loves or what he hates?” Rylla asked. The eternal question when it comes to guys.

“Hard to tell with Mongols,” Cole admitted. “East is east, and west is west, and never the twain shall meet—at least according to Kipling.”

Rylla smiled mischievously. “Obviously you do not know how that poem ends.”

“Bellingdam middle school goes halfway at best.” Which was why he dropped out and joined the Jutes.

Princess Rylla quoted the often forgotten last lines, “But there is neither east nor west, nor border, nor breed, nor birth, when two strong men stand side by side, though they come from the ends of the earth.”

Feeling complimented, Cole kissed her. “Then tell him the same way you told me. If it’s any help, Genghiz Khan had red hair and green eyes.”

“Oh, I know.” Rylla’s smile turned wicked. “That is my ace in the hole.”

* * *

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Batu took it well, saying Genghiz Khan himself would agree. Asgard had betrayed too many folks—Callisto, Terra, the navy, and the women and children sold to slavers—and deserved no loyalty in return. As soon as Vixen’ s officers and marines were safely entertained aboard Reward, Cole and Batu boarded Vixen, using Randi Lynn and the code keys in the RAGNAROK files. Then Rylla’s unpaid Flag Captain made himself the executive off icer of the constellation-class cruiser. Batu’s arban was already aboard RU2666, breaking out the BITCH missiles. As Batu turned to join them, he told Cole, “If this little girl’s plan goes wrong, we will both die.”

“Too true,” Cole admitted. “Admiral Scott, the guy who said, ‘Get the big ones first.’

That was the last order he ever gave. His heavy cruiser, San Francisco, fought it out with a Japanese battlecruiser at point blank range in the First Battle of the Solomons. Scott’s cruiser survived, though he didn’t. But we will die knowing that we both bedded a princess.”

Batu laughed. “Just do not tell my four wives at home.”

“Four wives?” Cole was shocked. “Sounds to me like four too many. We’ll just say you died a hero.”

“My life’s ambition.” Batu paused at the airlock. “Can we wish for peace, while going to war?”

“Probably not.” Cole considered for a moment. “You’re a marine, so I’ll just say Semper Fi.”

“Always faithful.” Batu’s grin returned “Very fitting. Semper Fi.” Then he was gone.

Cole strapped himself into the command couch. Time for the Flag Captain to earn his no pay. He told Randi Lynn to arm the cruiser’s ATREMIS anti-missiles and set proximity fuses on the big SLAM nukes. Then he settled back, waiting for MIMIR to say “Fire.”

At f irst there was not much to see. Radar showed nine vacuum-suited Mongols leaving RU2666 and heading for the robo-cargo support ships. What radar could not show was that they were riding BITCH missiles. Speed-of-light lag worked against MIMIR. It was half a minute before orders alerted the cruisers, and by then the transponders aboard the robo-cargoes had gone dead. As Cole predicted, Mimir’s f irst move was a SLAM missile from Virgo, vaporizing RU2666. Mimir correctly IDed the source of the trouble and took it out at once. Bye-bye Beast; at least no one was aboard. By now Mongols were breaking into the robo-fleet, blowing out the C-deck airlocks and disabling the autopilots. Not wanting to lose all his support ships, MIMIR ordered Virgo and Volans to retake the supply ships, calling on Vixen to provide fire support, since Vixen’s own marines were still aboard Reward.

Cole obeyed. Virgo and Volans sped ahead of him to get their marines aboard the four non-responding robo-cargoes before the Mongols made off with them. Mimir had no notion that Vixen, Rescue, and Reward were already in enemy hands. Asgard’s supercomputer was still playing chess, while Jazz was playing shogi. War has no referees, and if you play the wrong game, you lose. Virgo and Volans ran straight into a barrage of BITCH missiles hidden amid the debris from the Mongol breaking and entry. Homing in on the cruiser’s own radar signals, the BITCH missiles remained undetected until their contact fuses set off shaped charges that destroyed the warship’s radar and blew big holes in the cruiser’s radiation armor. Men inside were protected by their own battle armor and v-suits, but both cruisers lost life support and fire control. Volans took a direct hit on E-deck, demolishing the fusion drive, turning her into a powerless hulk. Virgo still had power and was struggling to regain f ire control, relying on v-suits for life support.

Half a minute later, just as Jazmyne predicted, MIMIR went straight for his queen, ordering Cole to fire four SLAM—Smart, Long-range Anti-Matter missiles—at the robo-cargo ships the Mongols had seized. Taking no chances, the supercomputer Grand Theft Spacecraft

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willingly sacrif iced the supply f leet to end Jazmyne’s attack. Cole obeyed, then blanked his own communications so Mimir would have no good picture of what happened next. Cole’s missiles streaked straight toward the robo-cargos, but as they passed struggling Virgo and crippled Volans, the proximity fuses Cole had set went off. There was no blast in airless space, and the energy was released as radiation.

EMP, electromagnetic pulse, poured through the holes made by the BITCH missiles, burning circuits and wiping out memory, ensuring the cruisers would not recover anytime soon. MIMIR would not even know why he lost. Four nukes had gone off, as ordered, and then nothing. Every ship in the invasion fleet was offline, all systems crashed or in enemy hands, without so much as a “See you later.” Nuclear combat in space was like that—swift, silent, and devastating. Facing complete defeat, MIMIR
continued to give orders and call for information, getting no response. NULL program. Jazmyne had beaten the machine. Game. Set. And rematch.

Being a nice guy, Cole blinker signaled Rescue, telling the tug to pick up the cruiser’s crews before their air ran out. Mongols got a hero’s welcome when they returned to Reward and disarmed Vixen’s bewildered officer crew and marines. Then Batu’s boys left for their UFO, ready to report to the Sultana of Slutsk that their reconnais-sance showed that the invasion fleet was eliminated.

Cole was a hero too. Despite his communications blackout, when he returned to Reward, Olga was waiting at the airlock. She must have staked it out. Second time Olga had ambushed him without warning. Damn good for fourteen. His contrite stalker told Cole, “I’m sorry I tried to kill you.”

“I’m not.” Cole laughed, wishing every time he was shot at had such a happy ending. Besides, pretty girls her age would be safer just shooting him on sight.

“Why not?” asked the girl from B-deck.

“Cannot say. It’s a state secret. But damn girl, that was war. First thing I did was fire back at you,” Cole confessed, “without caring who you were or why you fired. Actually, I’m proud of you for getting the f irst shot; that’s what they give medals of bravery for.”

“Really?” Blue eyes looked amazed.

“Absolutely. By getting the f irst shot, nine Mongols took out two heavy cruisers and ended an invasion without killing anyone on either side. I’m just glad it’s over.”

Olga brightened, “Is it over?”

“Hope so.” Cole secretly feared it was not. “If it is over, it’s because you and I both did the right thing, at great risk, in terrible times. If it is not over, then I’m glad to be fighting on your side.”

“Me too,” the girl agreed.

Not bad for a f ilthy pig. For the f irst time since GOTTERDAMMERUNG, Cole found himself whistling the “Ode to Joy.”

When it was just Cole, Jazmyne, and their princess, he was more blunt—they were the ones who needed to know. “Great, Callisto is saved, for now. Moms got their kids.

Jazz, you did wonders. You beat MIMIR, and you can go into fourth grade a winner.

But you’re only eight. And you, my pretty princess, you’re still dead. When people start to piece this all together, they are gonna come gunning for me, the unpaid Flag Captain.”

“What people,” Rylla inquired innocently.

“MIMIR, the navy, Black Dragon slavers, Vikings, Valkyries—the list is long and ugly. Right now the battlecruiser Valkyrie is headed our way, with three times our firepower, and we do not even know who is really in command of her. Is it your girl the Sultana? Or is it angry slavers and Space Vikings?”

Rylla kissed him, saying, “My Flag Captain worries too much.”

“Why not worry?” Kissing was fun, but . . .

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“Because Rylla lives.” She kissed him again, while Jazmyne made gagging sounds.

Right. Having her alive and at his side was a miracle. The best thing that had happened to him in a long, long time. When their lips unlocked, he conceded, “Okay, we’ll take them on one at a time. But the fourth rule of the family is—If you can’t be good, be quick. Right now, I’m going to break communications silence and put a call through to Valkyrie and find out who’s in command of her.” ❍

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DISTURBANCE

IN THE

PRODUCE AISLE

Kit Reed

Kit Reed says she comes from the Neolithic age, when she worked on a Royal Standard office model manual typewriter and instead of hitting delete, tore up pages that weren’t working, ripped them out and started at the top all over again. She composes the same way now, but it takes just as long because she can re-re-rewrite and start all over a lot more times because, keyboarding, she doesn’t get as tired. Her 2015
novel, Where, was a finalist for the Campbell award;

Mormama, her Southern Gothic novel, is just out from Tor.

We’re relieved that she managed to get a spooky new tale out of her computer in time for our September/October issue.

Before dark, in what they used to call the violet hour, in the freezer section of the supermarket, this amorphous, could-be-the-devil comes on to me, and if you don’t think this is weird, I feel sorry for you.

Sure, I need to call 911 on this, or make a flash film to prove I’m not crazy. I need to record these sessions with the huckster, monster, temptster, whatever this jitter-ing presence is to me, so I can put it behind me and walk free.

Look, at a dollar per download I could make millions on the “Cavanaugh Meets the Devil” webisodes. Proof positive that I’m not nuts. —Okay, Satan, Beelzebub, Whatever-You-Are. Would you mind saying that into my phone? Trouble is, when I walk into the supermarket like this, it’s because Douthea and I had another fight.

For the zibledy-hundredth time, the wife and I converged at an impasse in the peaks of chronic differences and, having run out of witty comeback lines, I took off so fast that I forgot my phone. It’s back there on the kitchen counter, where I smacked it down on the granite to prove a point.

As usual, I came back into my head in the far reaches of the parking lot, one angry, quivering loose end.

Oh look. The Stop and Shop.

Enter Dick Cavanaugh, empty-handed and unprepared.

It’s not like I’m here to shop, although I usually pick up something to sweeten my path back into my wife’s good graces: a hasty purchase to prove my point. A barbe-cued chicken, maybe, or these shrink-wrapped sushi platters glittering like plastic 164

Asimov’s
display pieces, so we won’t argue about whose turn it is to cook. Add Ferrero Roche chocolates, those hazelnut thingies individually wrapped in gold foil, gold ribbon on the f ive-dollar box, a nice gesture, or the industrial size, depending on how bad it was when I left. Or take her supermarket roses, two dozen to make an impression—
any more would imply a comment on her age.

Anything to smooth the path. Find something nice, okay? Otherwise, dude, don’t even think about coming home.

And, me? I’m here to hang out with the dead. Since there’s nothing at stake for either of us, it’s relaxing. Or it was, until the. Um. Incursions began. I try to walk in smiling, in case someone’s looking. They’re here to shop; I’m looking for my happy place.

Tacking back and forth in the aisles, I slip into the usual meditative state, all transcendental and chill, which this place does to me. The wallpaper ambiance works on me like elevator music. Nothing disturbing, nothing alarming, nothing different from anything else. On good days, I browse until my seismograph registers normal, and nine times out of ten, I go home feeling better.

Or I did until the devil/whatever showed up and started coming on to me.

H/Sh/It comes in many guises, from amorphous curl of vapor to 3D variations, e.g.

a retro sexy-sixties Playboy bunny or the kind of woman you can trust that turns out to be the best friend you never had. Could be a shaggy bluegrass guy, spangled rock singer, somebody you can jam with, or a bland, amiable working stiff that comes on with a big grin and the high f ive, my kind of guy; it changes. Once, gack! H/Sh/It morphed into our pretty daughter—a drunk driver murdered our Polly when she was eight years old. Working me. The thing is working me.

When push comes to shove in these exchanges and we get down to it, the master of disguises presents as burly Tony Soprano, the premise being that H/Sh/It is here to make a deal. Details unstated, at least out loud, although that should be obvious.

We haven’t really talked terms.

Today the cover is . . . Surprise!

A towering adolescent in the Mr. Peanut suit, walks in grinning, but vaporous enough to signify that this is H/Sh/It in front of me, and not a human being. The frozen pizza display case shimmers in H/Sh/Its midsection as we speak. Don’t worry Douthea, I’ll never bring home that frozen cardboard and cheese. I’ll call Luigi’s Gourmet Pizza from the car; delivered just as I pull into the drive. Leave now, and I can stop at Feingold’s on the way, pick up that cuff bracelet she admired. We did not part gracefully this time.

But now, crap! H/Sh/It speaks. All these conversations start the same way. — Where do you think you’re going? Translucent or not, H/Sh/It sets up a psychic barrier between me and the exit at the south end of the frozen products aisle.

I can’t get past. “ Out of my way.”

—I asked you a question.

“Dammit, move!”

But H/Sh/It stonewalls me. — What do you think you’re doing here?

I shout, “What are you doing here?” Bad call, like yelling in church. Nice mom with twin boys riding on the axle of her shopping cart stops with a little shriek. “Sorry, Ma’am . . . I didn’t mean you.”

She gives me the stink-eye and moves on.

H/Sh/It continues as though none of this happened. — You know damn well what I’m doing here, Dick Cavanaugh. And what are you doing here?

Okay, dude. To argue with Mr. Peanut here without getting hauled away by store personnel, don’t say it. Think at the thing. H/Sh/It, to be precise. —I don’t have anywhere to be. Yes I am pissed off. — And you, you’re—

The Tony Soprano attitude is at odds with the fuzzy peanut suit and black tights:

— Here to make you an offer you can’t refuse.

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Cut to the chase, Cavanaugh. Get this over with and get out. — Like, whatever I want in exchange for my immortal soul.

—It’s not that simple. What are you looking for, here in the perfumed ether of the su-perstore?

It’s not like I’m about to tell H/Sh/It. To be honest, when I’m up against it, which I am right now, any time that I’m at odds with Douthea and fed up with my life, I come here to hang out with the ghosts. It’s hard to explain.

No, we don’t interact. They go about their business as though the place is theirs and they’re alone in the supermarket and we—what they call the meat people, us normal, ordinary shoppers—are no more to them than grain moths that coasted in with the cereal or cockroaches breeding in the produce bins. They go about their business, and I . . .

Okay. I don’t exactly know. Let’s just say we coexist. The ghosts are a welcome distraction. Let’s say I’m sick of living with problems I can’t solve. Okay, here’s what I am. Taking my mind off it. Mortality and loss. Those things. Pleasing Douthea with a burnt offering, some trinket, whatever works.

Enjoying the company. — Not you, H/Sh/It.

I hang with the ghost in the produce aisle, although she doesn’t notice me—sweet little lady you used to know before she went bonkers and her children put her in a place. She took to driving all the way out here from the big house on Shell Isle a few years ago, showed up here at any hour of the day or night, no wallet, no to-do list, nothing to justify her presence here. She came all that way and kept on coming over and over, even after her adult children took away her keys. She’d stride into the store like a woman with a purpose. You’d see her drifting along with her empty hands floating up from her sides because she had absolutely no idea why she was here. Or you would until they put her away.

Well, she’s here all the time now, pretending to compare prices, in a lame attempt to look like a woman who knows things, when it’s clear that her brains blew out of her ears at least a decade before she died.

Every time I run into the butcher whose heart killed him the day he smacked his assistant with a shoulder clod roast, I feel better. “Incompetence killed me,” he says thoughtfully, when in fact we all knew that uncontrollable rage killed him before he could take over the family business, which he didn’t really want to do. Heart attack.

He was thirty-seven years old. There’s the missing four-year-old, and sometimes I wonder if he and Polly play in the candy aisle when I’m not here to see. On his last day he tugged on his mother’s hand, whining for another Flying Saucer—one thing too many for somebody holding it together with her bare hands. She was explaining while she put groceries on the belt and handed off her coupons to the cashier, but he wouldn’t quit. The poor woman lost it, and when she pried off his sticky fingers so she could swipe her credit card, she gave him a little push. It took two seconds for her to sign the tab, but in that sliver of distraction, her son disappeared. She looked and looked. She pleaded with other shoppers, she grilled the kids rounding up shopping carts in the parking lot, she asked people going in and out of the store, but nobody saw anything. She had store security put it on the PA system, but nobody responded because there was nothing to report. She told the police as soon as they came; five years, and she’s still looking for him.

Missing is a chronic condition. Missing is when you’ll never know what came down after you lost sight of him. The person you lost may still be out there, but you’ll never find out where that person is.

I’m so sorry, lady; your kid pops up in the candy aisle from time to time, but he flew out of that body three years ago, and no, he won’t talk about where he went or what they did to him, you’ll just have to reconcile yourself. Your boy is not safe in a 166

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“My long, happy relationship with Asimov’s began with Shawna McCarthy’s purchase of “The Bride of Bigfoot” in 1984. It was a new market for me, in what would turn out to be a very happy home. That story turned a corner for me. I was part of a group reading. There were three of us, my friend the crime novelist Peter Blauner, whose first novel won an Edgar; a romance novelist who must remain nameless, and me. There was also one SF fan and four or five ladies with big hair. The romance novelist’s writers’ group. She read first and it was—well, romantic. The ladies left as soon as she was done. Peter was next, and thank God he attracted three bikers who may have come in because it was raining buckets out there. I thought: these people, I can read to, but I did a last-minute switch because I’d been asked to read a story I knew was a half-hour too long. I turned to the romance writer and said, ‘My story is called, “The Bride of Bigfoot.” It’s a kind of a romance,’ and if I’d been in any doubt when I walked in and saw the audience, I knew who I was.

“In a strange, more or less magical way, this sums up my feelings about Asimov’s. It’s about its quality and the excellent continuing staff, the ideas that overflow its pages and the terrific colleagues whose work makes the magazine what it is. Not to get all squashy about it, but I look around me like an explorer in fresh territory yet to be charted, and it makes me happy and excited to think, These are my people. This is my place.”

—Kit Reed
squat with some benign kidnapper who’ll take care of him until he gets big enough to run away; he isn’t loping through the woods with a mother-wolf and the other pups in the pack, either. The police were right when they told you he was dead.

Don’t go there, Cavanaugh. You’re playing into H/Sh/Its hands. Be grateful. You know where your Polly is; you identified the body because grief leveled your wife when you most needed her; you saw to the arrangements for her they-call-it-a-celebration of life, and because neither of you wanted to see the body after Polly stopped using it, her castoff went to its f inal destination looking lovely in her party dress; they photographed her for you before they put it on the belt into the furnace and sealed the lid.

You burned Polly’s shell because to see it would break Douthea’s heart.

Yes, there is grief in the supermarket, just not mine. It’s my job to help the two of us—you and me, me and Douthea—get past these things. I’m grappling with all this when, like a pushy f loorwalker, H/Sh/It rises up, all knotted hands and smarmy, kiss-me grin. In Sexy Sixties Playboy Bunny mode. — Yeeessss?

I’m studying the wraith of sweet, shaky Miss Lydia, who beamed when she told me she was traveling to China, back when she was still alive. She was ninety and I was twenty at the time. We had the conversation at the dairy counter all those years ago, and I worried. So trusting, so excited and so tremulous and delusional, poor thing.

“You know, I’ve always wanted to go back to the mission in Peking, where I was born.” I thought it was a metaphor, but in fact it was a surprise birthday present from her grandchildren; she didn’t die for weeks after they brought her home, so sweet, so strange when a nice lady like Lydia dies happy, so . . .

H/Sh/It derails my train of thought. It’s the incessant buzzing, like insects in my ears.

— Heavenly hours, 24/7 all beauty, for the taking. The monster before me is a pageant of temptation, rapidly morphing through every known object of desire, changing color, gender, shape, intent on pleasing me when all I want is a chance to think this through. I could swear H/Sh/It is exuding pheromones, all the while wringing those hands. . . .

— Promises, promises. Go away.

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. . . Crooning, — Unendurable pleasure, indefinitely prolonged.

—In exchange for my . . .

—Well, yes.

— Not today.

Wham. H/Sh/It becomes Tony Soprano, all bunched shoulders and clenched fists.

— And you are procrastinating, why?

I don’t mean to be nebulous, but right now, nebulous is what I am. Halfway between, neither here nor there. One more reason that I end up like this, browsing sun-dries in the Stop and Shop at the violet hour.

H/Sh/It snaps its fingers in my face. — Give me one good reason. Speak up!

— Can’t. I have things to do.

—You mean won’t.

But I am distracted by lovely Maribel Hawk, model wife, perfect mother, she had the perfect husband and all-American happy family; when we were f irst married, Douthea and I wanted to be just like them when we grew up, but what did we know?

A Main Street fender bender shattered the illusion. Maribel’s windshield split and bisected her face—an emblem for everything that had been wrong within the family that we didn’t know about; it stripped the façade. The Hawk family blew apart.

H/Sh/It bears down on me, all venal and intense. — Worldly goods, then. An earth-ly palace. Five billion dollars in the lottery before taxes, and no tax bills ever, for you and the wife and any children you want to produce. Another little girl, prettier than the one you lost.

Oh, Maribel, you and your sons the psycho and the felon, and your apparently genial but bitter, bitter husband. What happened to you, lady? Where did it all go?

— Unless you want Polly back.

“Don’t!” — Freedom from pain, I think. I can’t stop myself.

— Of course. You can jump off a cliff and not feel it. Rise up dancing and still gorgeous, even if you get hit by a bus.

Here’s my best friend Billy, who put himself out when we were eighteen. He looks the same, drifting in the background at my left, and I want to ask him why, but it’s obvious that even Billy doesn’t know.

—Everything you ever wanted will be yours. Are you listening to me? H/Sh/It is getting strident. — All the perfumes of Arabia, idiot. Everything you want and everything you ever thought you wanted. And more.

So sad. At least I think it was sad. Two children I don’t recognize skip past me on their way past the checkout lines to the exit, vaporizing in the darkening air. Okay, Cavanaugh. Let’s do this. — I said no. No thank you. Will you please just pack up your bag of surprises and leave me alone?

Sly, H/Sh/It is sly. Tonight the monster that wants to devour me saved the best for last. Yes, tonight. While we were sparring, twilight went away. It’s dark outside. The shoppers are rushing to put their purchases on the belt so they can get home and settle in with so-so food and bad TV. How long have we been here, anyway?

As though I’d addressed H/Sh/It, the thing that plagues me snaps angrily. — Funny you should ask. Long pause. — You’ve pissed away hours of my valuable time. Now, let’s cut to the chase. I’ve offered you eternal gratification of the sexual kind, treasures beyond measuring, freedom from all injury. What do you really want?

Apologies, you wraiths enduring here among the disposable products that keep humanity going; I yell. “I want to get out of here!” And ambiance or not, it turns out that I do. I want to grab the candies and two trays of plastic sushi, pick up white roses for my love and go home and make things better. Whatever it takes, and in bad times I will always come back to the nighttime Stop and Shop and pretend that I’m above pain and loss and I can do that, at least for as long as I hang out with you.

168

Kit Reed

Asimov’s

—Name the object of your desires and it’s yours. Sounds genial, but the toe is tapping. Impatient. H/Sh/It’s anxious to get on with it and get out of here, but not before we seal the deal. Tap tap tap. Harsher in tone. — Whatever it takes.

H/Sh/It’s tired out; I’m tired. On edge. So taut with exhaustion compounded by anxiety that I try to buy my way out with a promissory note — How about we talk about this another time?

—Now.

—Now or never?

—No. Now. Shut up and listen and we’ll settle this. Here’s the deal. H/Sh/It plays the ace in the hole. — I can give you eternal life with little Polly and bring the wife into the package, that is, if you want her. You got a problem with eternal happiness?

Just think, she’ll always be eight and you’ll always be . . .

So I grab a tinned ham from the display rack, hefting it as I advance on H/Sh/It, all clenched teeth, determined to fight it to the death. Yelling, “No!”

No more Mr. Nice Guy. — What did you say?

“You heard me.”

Morphing so rapidly that I can’t make out which persona I’m battling, H/Sh/It gets bigger as I watch, filling my head with a psychic roar. — Do you dare to defy me?

And, WHAM, I lob that canned ham into whatever passes for H/Sh/Its face.

— Then I will take you by force.

Well, don’t we get into it then, H/Sh/It bashing me with seismic disturbances and ripping into me with skull-cracking screams, me striking back with whatever came to hand. My next shot smashes the front of the frozen desserts case, and as the battle overflows Frozen Foods and we crosshatch the store, I hurl half the inventory at H/Sh/It, which strikes back with vertigo, chills, nausea, the whole nine, never mind who or what I threw up on. By the time we’re done I’m lofting grapefruit at him on the battlefield between the delicatessen counters and the produce aisle. We fight on until the floors are littered with ruined products, jelly and jam and relish jars that break on contact as they pass through my psychic nemesis and smash on the floor, while the evil spirit gives back as good as H/Sh/It gets, bombarding me with phe-nomena while store personnel and shoppers scatter and the manager calls 911. We keep at it until the massed forces of security and police and f ire department and paramedics rush in and bring me down.

Now I’m here, and if you think I feel bad about it. Well, I don’t.

Listen, it was a draw.

At the end, H/Sh/It went all Terminator on me, looming over the gurney after they strapped me in and rolled me out the door, where paramedics performed the requisite physical exam before they turned me over to the cops, it’s a liability thing.

I’m safe for now, but the vibe followed me. H/Sh/It looming as the police frog-marched me into the van. — I’ll be back.

They probably think I’m crazy because I yelled. “You know what? Fine!”

So I’m being held here until they complete the evaluation and Douthea comes to bail me out. I’ll use my one phone call to tell her that it’s dinner out tonight, at Carmine’s Steak House, followed by sweet makeup sex and a long sleep because I have to wake up strong. See, I’m not done, and although the faceoff is over, this battle between me and H/Sh/It isn’t.

For better or for worse, I can’t quit now. I have things to do, and over the years, in the back aisles of the Stop and Shop, in the company of wraiths, between Douthea and me, and me and you, my faithful, translucent friends, I think we can figure this one out. ❍

—for Sidney Offit

Disturbance in the Produce Aisle

169

BOOKS

OF THE RISEN

SEA

Suzanne Palmer

Suzanne Palmer made quite a splash with her 2016 short fiction.

Her novella, “Lazy Dog Out” won its category in the Asimov’s

Readers’ Award Poll. Her novelette, “Detroit Hammersmith, Zero-Gravity Toilet Repairman (Retired)” took its category in

Analog’s AnLab Awards, and her short story “Ten Poems for the Mossums, One for the Man,” is a current finalist for the Eugie Foster Memorial Award for Short Fiction. Suzanne lives in a very small town with an even smaller library that is the heart of her community, and she tells us she has learned this:

“Libraries are always bigger on the inside than on the outside, they can take you anywhere in time and space, and they are our best antidote to inequality and ignorance. Whatever apocalypses come our way, if we can keep our public libraries alive for all of us, we might just be all right.”

The dark green band along the horizon had grown thicker and more ominous since the last time Caer had glanced over the roofline, past the jagged teeth of the shattered seawall. He set the page in his hands down gently on the drying bed and closed the lid, flattening the wrinkled and blotched paper. He’d already lost a third of it to the mold, but the words he’d salvaged were irreplaceable.

That was assuming the storm didn’t finish the job. His drying bed was proof against most rain, but when the wind got fierce enough, the water would find its way through even the tiniest cracks. There was room for another three or four pages before the bed was full, but he’d learned the hard way that rushing made for mistakes and sloppy work he’d regret later. There was always another sunny day to wait for.

If it was a big enough storm, it would also bring in a new wave of ocean garbage, which would be followed by scavengers and potential danger. His time now was better spent locking down what he could, making sure his traps were set and working.

The large skylight in the roof had been shattered long ago, probably as far back as the Wave. He’d rigged cover over the broken parts, leaving himself a hatch and a ladder down to the fourth-floor balcony below. Where the glass remained he’d kept it 170

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clear as best as he could; light was a precious and fleeting resource inside. After one last check that the drying bed and other things on the rooftop—solar panels, his rigged-up hot water system, last year’s attempt at building a medieval siege engine—were secure, he climbed through the hatch and locked it above him, then made his way down the long, sloping ladder lashed to the balcony rails below.

There were three balconies inside the abandoned library circling an open atrium.

The lowest balcony was barely above the worst of the storm surges; the main floor of the building, once a graceful, arched space dedicated to community and love of the printed word, was now permanently awash in the runaway sea. On calm days, when the tide was especially low and the sunlight from above bright, he could make out bits of the ornate tile floor through the accumulating silt.

He thought of the fourth floor as his eyrie, mostly because he loved the sound of the word, picked up from a fragment of a novel he’d recovered from a lower f loor about a kid who could teleport himself away from trouble. He’d taken over a small corner between the stacks for his nest, sleeping sandwiched between history on one side, archaeology on the other. In the winter, when the outer wall seeped chill into the air, he moved over to sleep among the thicker engineering texts, closer to the rail.

Rummaging through his pile of belongings, he took out his longknife and his back-pack full of repair supplies, then slipped on the insulated raincoat he’d scavenged during his first dismal spring in the library.

He took the curving stairs down to the third floor balcony, skipping with practiced ease around and over the cracked marble treads that could spill an unwary person down the flight; he’d thought about trying to repair them, but they were a useful if minor defense, if it came to it. At the bottom of the stairwell an arch opened up toward the floor’s stacks of poetry and classical fiction. Opposite it, in the outer wall, was a tall window with a matching arch. It was, somewhat unique to the building, still intact, although he had long since broken the lock on the left pane.

Pulling the half-window open, he took a minute to listen before he stepped out onto the wide ledge and shimmied his way along the building to the corner. Flagpole bases held the ends of the wobbly suspension bridge he’d made of cables and wood salvaged from the sunken remains of a marina. The bridge crossed the ten-meter span between the library and the roof of the parking garage next door. There were many buildings that he felt territorial about, but the garage and the library were the core of his life, his home.

Feeling always unsafe from watching eyes, he ran across the bridge as quickly as he could and took the driving ramp from the garage roof down to the level below.

The Wave had done an excellent job of rendering the garage virtually impassable, one giant debris-plug of jagged rusty metal and smashed glass thrown up against the shore-side wall, spilling over and filling the next ramp down. There was one sad-eyed black SUV squatting on top of a flattened Mini with a solid-looking hood, an equally passable roof; there was no other way in and out except over it unless you wanted to scale the crumbling cement exterior of the structure.

Caer clambered up on the roof, peered down at the hood, and then nodded in satisfaction. The rigging was still good. The weight of a grown person on that hood would drop anyone atop it like a trapdoor down through the carefully excavated engine cavity, and through the open sunroof of the mini underneath into its moldy interior. He also checked that the dried silt he’d spread thinly over the wall edge and downramp was free of footprints. He didn’t trust people and he hated surprises.

Satisfied, he went back up to the roof. On the far side of the parking garage from the library was a half-submerged mall. The bottom floor was a murky, seaweed-filled pool like so many of the other buildings that had floundered in the hostile surf. Its food courts and wide halls now teemed with what fish and other sea life had found a way to survive in the toxin-saturated water. There was little there left of much use to Books of the Risen Sea

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anyone but him, and even that last was starting to run thin. Still, he had a plank bridge over to its roof from the garage, made of pressure-treated decking and aluminum extension ladders from the sodden remains of the home improvement store.

The mall was dangerous to navigate, but also harder to protect. He drew back the planks f irst, then used the ropes to swing the ladders up and back. The effort left him sweating even in the cool air that was pushing in ahead of the storm.

Walking to the edge of the garage roof, Caer looked west at the remains of his town. There was a bright rectangle visible just below the brownish water, the original foundation of the Wintercove town hall. The rest of the building now stood, its gothic columns bright again in the afternoon sun, where it had been cleaned and re-assembled higher up in the greening hills. New buildings and streets, new shops and houses surrounded it, the town alive again, if reduced.

Between it and him were the places—and people—not considered worth saving; the rough gray of a hastily built cement wall drew a thin, but confident line to mark out where the town had officially cut its losses.

A network of wooden walks had sprung up between roofs of the sunken houses.

New, ramshackle structures built from the skeletons of the old perched on top as if Victorians and Capes and gambrels were simply styles of ocean stilts. He glanced at the one that had once been home, then away again. He was self-conscious of letting himself look at it too long, self-conscious of avoiding looking at it at all. Too many memories he neither wanted nor could entirely let go of.

Above the waterline in the hills he could see the bright blue roof of the town grocery store, straddling the wall line between oldtown and new. The oldtowners— drowntown-ers, rats, human flotsam—were lazy, dirty, living off disaster relief checks rather than earning an honest wage, or so the rhetoric declared; that got little traction until it was further suggested that they might carry in their clothing the black mold that had been the second deadly tide to wash through the town. Now there was a mandatory dress code with sporadic enforcement by a town-formed watch group to keep out undesirables.

When he had to go, he washed first, then put on clean, rip-free clothes he kept for the occasion. He picked up his monthly relief check from his post office box—turning eighteen had simplified his life in many ways—and hit the grocery store when it opened just after dawn, before the newtowners were up and around. Burt Adams, who ran the store, would trade him what he needed for the check signed over, and help him get out again quickly. “We used to be a country that prided itself on fixing things,” Mr. Adams said to him, more than once. “Now we’re full of over-entitled whiners who insist on not having to look at all the things they’ve broken.”

He was elderly, and his head and hands shook, but he spoke his opinions like a man perpetually ready for war. Mrs. Adams would have him carefully relegated to the back office before business picked up late morning.

Sometimes Caer would find a few extra food items tucked away in his totes when he got back to the library. Chocolate, usually, or a wealth of expired items Adams couldn’t sell but Caer would gladly eat.

Between the DIY store and a sporting goods outlet he had a camp stove and enough propane to last him years, even if he cooked every meal. What he missed, though, were fresh vegetables. This storm would be a significant test of his plan to fix that.

The wind was picking up, the air carrying the taste of fresh, untainted ocean. Peering over the other side of the garage roof, he watched the choppy waves swarming over the remnants of the seawall, starting to pull apart the coagulated islands of floating garbage that had settled into place in the lee. No one would be coming in by boat, certainly not until the storm was over.

His stash of cinder blocks and pavers, originally hauled up here for defense or for testing his trebuchet, had long since been turned into raised beds. Bags of loam and manure 172

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had proven bulky and arduous to move, and in turn seemed to add depressingly little volume, but he’d eventually managed to fill them. After, he’d covered the dirt with cut lengths of fencing to help keep the soil from being blown out. Tiny seedlings now sprouted up from between the diamond-shaped grid. Tomato. Cucumber. Carrots and radishes.

He carefully laid plywood down on top of the beds, setting his remaining pavers on the corners to hold the sheets down.

After one last look at the approaching storm, then back at the quiescent town, he ran across his rope bridge and slipped back through his window to home. There were books there, waiting for him.

. . . impossibly large man stood there, grinning at him, hand still raised.

“Sovo,” he managed, still coughing and wiping beer from his beard. “I see you’re still as gentle with your manners as you are with your drums.”

The Ottish giant smiled wider. “Missed you too, Atras my friend.”

Over the drummer’s shoulder, Atras could see the rest of the company sprawled around a table along the far wall, where they had obviously enjoyed a good view of Sovo’s ambush. Anor waved as Menok tipped his mug forward in a mock salute. Both were laughing.

“Where’s Rat?”

“Stowing the gear upstairs. Got here just before the sunfall bell. We’re here for the night, maybe two.”

“Oh?” Atras . . .

Caer carefully excised the last remaining bit of moldy paper with his knife, cutting between words if he could match a spot on both sides. Half-words were useless. He had, at the beginning, tried to cut off at whole sentences, but he had lost too much that way.

This paper was dry now, wrinkled but solid, saved. He took a sheet of acid-free paper from his box, laid the page portion atop it, and carefully traced its jagged edges.

Then he expertly cut inside the outline, leaving just enough overlap to hold the partial page in its center, readable on both sides. There were other pages of this book in his box waiting to be sorted and trimmed, more yet to be carefully harvested from the puffed-up remains of its binding. Once it was as complete as it could be, he would rebind it with thread from the craft store; he had done two already—small books, admittedly—and as clumsy as the effort was, he was getting better at it.

It was f ixing the blankness, repairing the holes in the stories themselves, that stumped him.

His lantern had dimmed to a dull orange; he wound it up again and double-checked his table. No more of Atras’s story here. The rest was from another rescued book set in the future, space ships instead of horses, alien artifacts instead of a magic kingdom. He had three other partial stories going on his table, but nothing new to add to any. At last, admitting exhaustion, he dragged himself to his blanket-nest and crawled in, unwrapping the length of cloth he kept around his chest, and was asleep even before his lantern had faded to nothing.

The storm howled through the night and well into the next day, dying out in fits.

By late afternoon the sky was a uniform gray, casting down its last, exhausted handfuls of drizzle. Caer checked the drying bed and his seedlings, both of which had survived without damage. He had remembered his binoculars this time, and carefully checked what the storm had brought.

The tangles of flotsam around his buildings were thicker now, bolstered with new debris from unnamed towns and cities up and down the coast; Wintercove had survived better than some, worse than others. At least there didn’t appear to be bodies this time.

He peered out to sea. There were usually a few things caught up on the seawall, Books of the Risen Sea

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and this time was no different. Something large, like a dock or raft, was caught on one of the cement teeth, a jumble of junk on top that glinted metallic.

Metal was often useful, always valuable. It wouldn’t take long, once the rain ended, for someone else to spot it. He wasn’t the only one who watched the ocean.

A large swell pushed the jumble of flotsam over the edge and it spun, dipping and rising, into the waters that milled restlessly over what had once been the town’s sea-side park, adjoining the public library.

If he was fast enough, the remnants of poor visibility would work in his favor. The front of the library had an outdoor balcony facing the once-distant sea. At high tide, it sat barely a meter above the wavetops. Caer grabbed his ten-foot PVC pole, cour-tesy of the plumbing department in the submerged home improvement store, and clambered out onto the pitted, slick tiles. On one end he’d fitted a sturdy hook, and on the other a bright pink kids’ inf lated waterwing was tightly taped to the pole.

Jani would have laughed at him, were she here, but it had kept him from losing the pole enough times that he no longer cared.

He leaned over the cast iron rail, bracing himself there, and waited for the debris tangle to come within its reach. Already his mind was drifting, back to Atras and his friends, to pages he needed to find. It was a moment after the flotsam finally drifted within reach of his pole that it sunk in that he wasn’t looking at a metal tank or keg or other typical debris, but a face.

Caer blinked at it and it blinked, slowly, back at him.

“Uh . . .” Caer said. “You’re a robot.”

“Yes,” it said. Its voice was static-laden, hard to understand. It was half-submerged, only its head, a portion of its thick chest, and one shoulder riding above the swells. “I am damaged.”

“What’s your function?”

“My primary operating designation is caretaker,” the robot said. Was it Caer’s imagination, or did it sound sad? “I was not adaptable to other functions, so I was discarded.”

Discarded sounded familiar, at least. Caer stared down at it. “Are you trying to go somewhere?” he asked.

“It is my understanding that I am expected to sink, but I have not yet done so, nor have I put effort toward fulfilling that expectation. I do not wish to be trash.”

“Can you climb up?” Caer asked. “If I pull you closer?”

“I can attempt to,” it said. “If I do so, will you assign me the function of trash as well?”

“I will not. Hang on.” Caer leaned further over the railing and used his pole to catch an edge of the flotsam tangled around the robot. With the waves pushing up against the building, it took effort to steer the mass of it toward the edge of the wall where an old gutter pipe still dangled. Caer wasn’t sure it would hold the robot, but it should at least keep it from sinking further.

The robot shifted sideways, reaching up with one hand, then swung the other arm out of the water. It ended in a large, rusty, circular saw blade.

“Aaah!” Caer yelled, and dropped his pole in surprise. It fell, landing across the robot’s chest, knocking it loose from the gutter it had just managed to cling to.

The robot clasped its normal arm across the pole, and hid the other under the water again. “I am sorry,” it said.

“You said you were a caretaker!”

“That is my designation. I was modified outside my parameters, and I was unable to adapt,” it said. It blinked up at Caer, then said, sadly, “I accept I am trash.”

“Shit.” Caer looked at the robot, noticed it was drifting lower in the water already.

“Are you sinking on purpose?”

The robot did not answer, but instead closed its eyes.

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“HEY! You! Stupid robot!” Caer yelled. When it opened its eyes again, Caer pointed. “Hand me back up my pole!”

It stretched out its arm, holding the pole up toward Caer. “Don’t let go,” Caer said as he grabbed it, trying to get leverage to swing the bottom end toward the building.

“I see no value to this endeavor,” the robot said, but it held on.

“Yeah, well, no one told you? I’m the local patron saint of hopeless things.” He tried to maneuver the pole and robot to the edge of the building, but had no luck. Finally, the robot let go. “Can you . . .” Caer said, trying not to sound too ridiculous. “You know. Swim?”

“It is not a regular function,” the robot answered.

“Well, is sinking?”

“No.”

“Then can you try? I mean, f lail your arms, see if you can move?” He raised his arms, waving them in wide circles, trying to demonstrate.

“Where would I move to?” the robot asked. “I do not believe I could climb your structure, even if I were to reach it. I am damaged.”

Caer scanned the horizon. The skyline was clearing, the rain down to the last few, scattered handfuls. It would not be long before the scavengers came out. He pointed to the garage, whose lower level walls were right now only a few feet above the choppy waves. “What about there?”

“I do not know,” the robot said.

“Try! If you can’t get yourself out of the water, people will come who will cut you apart for scrap,” Caer said. The robot tried with its one good arm, propelling it in a circle. “Use both arms!”

The robot seemed deeply reluctant, but eventually swung its sawblade arm up out of the water and mirrored the motion of the other. It moved, albeit slowly. Caer reached out again with his pole and nudged it on a better course. “When you get to the building, the floor slopes up. If you hide among the wrecked cars, you should be safe until nightfall. Just don’t try to climb over them, because they’re full of traps.”

He watched for a few minutes as the robot made steadier progress toward the garage, then went back inside his library and around to the far side to peer toward shore.

Two rowboats were crossing from oldtown. He was almost certain the one in the lead belonged to Jani’s asshole of a husband, Trevor. Bad news.

He went over to the arched side window, the late stages of sunset casting feeble light over the sunken garage. He got there just in time to see the robot pull itself over the low wall and tumble into the wrecked cars on the far side with a crash. Then there was silence.

If he knew Trev, the man would circle the library and garage, looking for any signs Caer had already taken in a good haul, and if so try to steal or bully it out of him. He made sure the window to the outside balcony was sealed and barricaded, then headed back around to the front window and the small, peaked roof that once stood over the front entrance.

When the two boats came around an old, sunken convenience store, Caer was sitting on the roof, feet dangling, a pruning saw on a long pole held upright in the crook of his arm. Trev was in the lead boat with his best friend, Mike, and the boat behind him was the other half of his gang: Sutter and Steve.

Trev brought his boat up close to Caer’s perch. “Seen anything good come in, Carolyn?” he asked.

“Fuck you, Trev,” Caer said, and gave him the finger with his free hand. “There’s nothing here worth your time.”

“Yeah?” Trev said. “I saw something metal on a raft hung up on the wall.”

“I saw it,” Caer said. “Tipped off and sank when it went over the edge. You’re welcome to go diving for it. I think it was one of those big church coffee urns.” He rapped Books of the Risen Sea

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the end of his pole on the roof tile. “Might even still be some good coffee in it, if you don’t mind salt and fishpiss.”

“Your father once offered me three months of his relief checks if I hauled your sorry ass back home,” Sutter said. “He said you’ve been out here playing house too long, and you need to be back earning your keep for the family. Sounded to me like he was offering a dowr—”

Caer swung the saw blade at Sutter, who barely managed to duck as it whistled over his head. “Crazy bitch!” Sutter shouted.

“Two things to get straight,” Caer said, through gritted teeth. “I’m not ever going back unless I wash up there dead, and you don’t ever get to call me that again. So just take your boats somewhere else. It’s getting dark. You know I have the strategic advantage here, and if you try to set foot anywhere in my territory, I will sink the whole lot of you like a stone.”

“Yeah, and how would your sister take that?” Trev asked.

“Knowing how much you fart, probably as a relief,” Caer answered.

Mike snickered. “She’s got you there, Trev,” he said.

“Get out of here now,” Caer said. His face felt hot, almost stinging, and the gnawing anxiety in his stomach he always hoped he’d left behind was back as if it had never left. “Go home or else.”

“Or else what?” Steve spoke up. “There’s four of us, and one of you.”

“Yeah, remember the last time you tried to pay me a visit? Gave you some good scars, I bet. This whole place is trapped, and now I’ve got a robot, too,” Caer said.

“With a big whirling sawblade arm. Saved him from the sea. You actually get far enough to set one foot inside and he’ll chop it off for good.”

“This is fucking useless,” Sutter said. “Kid’s got nothing but stupid daydreams and lies. It’s getting dark out. We can come back in the morning and check the wall and shore. You know she don’t care about anything but books, anyhow.”

“Yeah,” Trev said. He glared up at Caer for a while, then put his oar in the water. “ ’Til next time,” he called out. “You know your father’s not going to let you stay here forever.”

“He should just leave me be,” Caer said. “What does that cost him?”

“His pride in his own unbreakable authority,” Trev said. “I’ll tell Jani you said hi.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Caer said. He waited on the ledge as they circled around and moved downshore, toward the mall and ruins beyond, before giving up and heading back to the sunken houses of oldtown. He watched through his binoculars as they tied up their boats in the last of the light, then vanished inside through a doorway bright with the yellow-orange light of warmth.

His fickle stomach growled.

Caer went back inside, setting a string of cans across the windows, and trudged up to his eyrie. He rewound his lantern, then held it up over the returns cart he’d turned into his mobile pantry. He still had half a box of free crackers from his last visit to Mr. Adams’ store, edging toward stale but still filling, salty. He cracked open his jar of peanut butter and spread tiny dollops on top of a half-dozen, then added a second cracker on top. He drained the liquid out of a can of carrots and ate those, trying not to think how mealy the texture was. Soon he’d have fresh carrots and these cans could sit until winter locked him in.

He was too tired to work on his stories, and instead pulled a book out from under one edge of his blankets and opened it to the page he’d marked with a torn-out subscription card to some long-dead detective-story magazine.

19th Century Painted Eggs, it was called, and there was something about the exacting and almost fetishistic frivolity and meaninglessness of the art inside that was comforting in a world that no longer had time for any such things.

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he tucked the book back where it had been and curled up under his thick pile of blankets, willing them to warmth.

In the morning he would see if he could do anything for the robot.

Unsurprisingly, the robot did not want to go back in the water. “I have finally dried out,” it said. “I am happy to remain here.”

“Here” was leaning against the pile of wrecked cars, head tilted sideways on a rusted-out Ford like it was a pillow, while the faint pinkish glow of dawn rose behind them. In daylight, the robot would be visible to anyone looking closely from shore, and impossible to miss by someone boating past the garage. “You’ll be found,” Caer said. “And if not, you’ll still get wet from storms.”

“Rain water does not contain salt,” the robot said. “It is less corrosive.”

“Have you tested the pH and chemical composition of the rain lately?” Caer said. “I wouldn’t count on it being any better, but you pick your poison. Although if you stay here, it won’t matter—you’ll be cut up and melted down long before either would become a problem.”

“Where would you have me go?” the robot asked.

“Inside the library.” Caer pointed. “It’s mostly weather-tight and a hell of a lot safer than here.”

“A library? With books?” The robot perked up, then immediately seemed to slump again. “I read books when I was a caretaker. Before I was discarded.”

“Well, you can read books all you want,” Caer said. “But I need you to swim over there, and we need to do it before the sun’s fully up, or we’re both going to have trouble.”

The robot heaved itself up with its one good arm. “I do not wish to make trouble for you,” it said.

“Good. How much do you weigh?”

“When not half-full of seawater, approximately one hundred forty kilograms,” the robot said.

Caer snorted. “Whoever programmed you was way too optimistic. This is the still-twitching corpse of America. We let the world end before we gave in to the metric system.”

“Three hundred and ten pounds?” the robot said.

“Okay.” Caer hoped it would be lighter, but he could still make it work. “I’m going to go up to the roof and cross. Can you get yourself back down into the water? You remember how to swim?”

“Yes. I saved that memory.”

“Good. Once you reach the place where we were last night, I’m going to lower down a ladder for you to climb up. You can do that?”

“I can try,” the robot said. “Having one inadequately functioning arm reduces my ability to precisely answer in advance.”

“Once we’re on that side of the building we can take more time. Also, I have rope if we need it,” Caer said. He glanced back at the brightening sky. “I’m going over now.”

He clambered back over the cars, avoiding his car trap, and returned to the roof.

Glancing back at town, he saw no signs of anyone moving yet, much less out on the water. He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

The low, booming splunk as the robot dropped over the wall into the water was loud enough that Caer had ducked into a crouch before he realized what it was. Stupid stupid, he told himself. He should have been explicit that it should get back in the water slowly.

Crossing his bridge, he saw the robot in the still-choppy water; it was reluctant to use its saw arm, despite the disadvantage. Still, it was moving in the right direction.

He climbed out to the balcony rail. He had carried a heavy aluminum extension Books of the Risen Sea

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ladder out here to some effort and several mashed fingers, and now carefully lowered one end down, having to fight with it as the current tried to sweep the ladder sideways. When the end hit the thick sediment accumulated against the foundation it finally stopped bucking and settled in place. To be sure, he used one of several bundles of rope he’d brought to knot it tightly to the rail.

The robot bobbed into view below, listing sideways and half-submerged again. Its face was a passive, dulled metal mask, but when it saw Caer, something seemed to shift and it looked somehow hopeful. “Can you grab the ladder?” Caer called down.

It made it to the edge, caught the ladder with its good hand as the current tried to carry it past, and hung on. After a few moments it seemed to get itself upright and tried to climb. Letting go of a rung to reach higher, it nearly fell. “Lean against the ladder!” Caer called, and after a few attempts it managed to climb high enough that Caer could almost reach it.

He looked at the other rope in his hand, then down at the robot. “Um,” he said, “can I put a loop over your head? Or will that kill—I mean, damage you?”

“I have a reinforced infrastructure,” the robot said.

“Okay, then.” Caer made a fast slipknot and expertly dropped it over the smooth plate of the robot’s head. He hesitated only a second before pulling, tightening it up, and then running the rope over the top rung of the ladder so he could pull it taut against it. “Climb slowly and I’ll try to keep you stable.”

The robot lurched up another step, grabbing hold of the rung above more easily than before. The strain on Caer’s arms as the robot let go and tried to move up, and gravity tried to pull it back down, was something he knew he’d suffer for later, but Caer was not going to let go; he’d stubborned himself into worse hurt many times before this.

Finally, the robot could hook its saw arm over the railing to brace itself. Caer stepped in to free his rope, then backed up against the library wall as the robot managed to heave itself over the top of the ladder and railing to land on its side on the balcony. Water poured out between its metal and plastic plates and ran in thick streams down the slight decline of the roof back into the sea.

“Do you have a name?” he asked it.

“Yes. Orchid-Iridium-Zero-Hexagon,” it answered.

Caer barked a laugh. “Seriously?”

“It is a self-designation,” the robot said. “I chose it after my initialization. It was a privilege to be given that choice.”

“Oh.” Caer felt suddenly like an asshole. “I didn’t mean—”

“It is okay. There is understanding and not-understanding, always.”

Now that was truth. “Are you mostly done leaking?” Caer asked, eyeing the widen-ing puddle around the robot. He was thinking now about the worn carpets inside the library’s upper floor, so carefully kept dry as a bulwark against the pervasive mold always trying to creep in.

“Mostly,” the robot confirmed.

“I don’t want to leave you out here, but you need to dry a bit before you come inside.”

“I detect a strong decline in barometric pressure,” the robot said. “I do not think I will have time to dry completely.”

“What?” Caer said. The sky was bright and clear. The wind, though . . . it was picking up again, and it smelled sharp and salty. For a moment Caer stood looking out over the old park and the harbor that once lay beyond, remembering its last, frantic hours as the ocean raced in to claim it. Was there now, after all, a razor-thin line of black on the horizon?

“This could be bad,” he said at last. “Okay, then, Orchid-Iridium-Zero-Hexagon, let’s get you inside. You’re going to have to sit on a plastic tarp for a while, but it’s better than floating in the ocean.”

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“You said there are books?”

“Lots of books.”

“Then it is definitely better than floating in the ocean,” the robot said, and heaved itself back to standing with its one good arm.

Night fell faster than it should have, dragged in under heavy clouds by wind that seemed to rise in an instant and never relent. The robot had sat down on the plastic tarp Caer had spread out for it and announced its need to shut down and recharge moments before going completely still.

It was odd how something not alive could suddenly seem dead, and after catching sight of it out of the corner of his eye and startling himself, Caer went over and crouched next to it, studying it.

Shiny personal robots had gone out of vogue the last decade or so before the Collapse and the Wave; there had been brief fads of colors, and a disastrous attempt by one hapless manufacturer to make them flesh-toned. Despite its age, Orchid-Iridium-Zero-Hexagon had a fully articulated frame, and its remaining original hand had fingers that should be almost as capable as Caer’s own. The robot had seen rough times, though; beyond the obvious dents and gouges and the massive, crude saw that had been grafted onto the robot’s left arm, he could see several seized joints and exostructure plates that no longer fit together properly, and its once silver exterior was now largely a dull matte.

He didn’t know if he could fix any of its problems. If there were any sort of practical repair manuals here, they would have drowned with the lowest floor of the library.

Using a broom, he swept some of the puddle water into a dustpan and dumped it over the railing down into the restless water two floors below. It was, for now, all he could do.

He had brought down the contents of the drying beds on the roof, certain this time that the storm would find its way through. Leaving the robot where it sat, he went over to his table and began to shuffle through the pages, looking for more of Atras’s story.

—uproar at the court,” Anor said. “The Prince was in a rare rage, threw everybody out of the castle. And I mean everybody, even the court musicians—
they were nearly beside themselves, being tossed out with us commoners as if there was no distinction.”

Atras chuckled. He could imagine it. Only during the six-day Festival of Am-nan were unsanctioned musicians given an opportunity to play for the nobles, though they were strictly limited to the historical Chronicles. The court musicians resented the competition, brief as it was.

“With four full days left in the festival? Must have been quite—

The words from there were a lost cause on this page. He trimmed carefully around the good paper, still able to faintly smell the denatured alcohol solution he’d used to kill the mold, and wondered if somewhere else on the battered coast there was another abandoned library, another person living there rescuing what they could, and maybe just now salvaging the bottom half of this very same page he could only save the top of.

He could put notes in bottles, call out to End Of The World Librarians everywhere. Or if magic was real, as in his favorite stories, he could reverse the damaged, swollen, fused-together books in time, returning them to their original condition with a spell . . .

Barely audible over the wind howling around the library, he heard a sound, like something crashing through glass. Caer leapt off his stool, his paper knife falling to the f loor, and raced over to the railing. He could feel a draft of wet, chill air that shouldn’t be there.

“No no no!” he cried. Could the storm have broken a window after they had held through so many others? Or was he under attack? He bypassed his suitcase of tools Books of the Risen Sea

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and materials and instead grabbed his baseball bat from where he kept it at the top of the stairs. Above the handle, its surface was covered with an angry mosaic of screw nuts, gears, and protruding nails. He had been uncomfortable making it, more so now holding it, but defense came before all else.

He moved down the stairs quickly and quietly, listening intently for any clues of what might be happening. There was a low, irregular thud, as if a large piece of debris or a boat was knocking against the outside of the building.

As he came around the curve he could see the broken window, glass scattered wide on the stairs, and an arm fumbling through the break in the glass for the latch.

The awkward angle made it difficult, but he whacked the arm with the bat, not as hard as he wished. “Owwww!” someone yelled, and the arm pulled back. Moments later a face hovered in the window, and Caer held the bat end-forward like a spear, ready to ram it through the hole in the glass.

He recognized the face. “Mike?” he asked. “Come to see if I’ll make good on my threat?” He waved the end of the bat close to the break in the window, to make his point.

Mike scowled. “Jesus fuck, you’re creepy,” he said. “Now help me get this damned window open!”

“No!”

“I’ve got your fucking sister out here, you little shit!” Mike yelled.

“. . . What?” Caer let the bat waver.

“She’s hurt. Raiders came in just ahead of the storm, and are busy working their way through oldtown stripping it of anything worthwhile.”

Caer glanced through the intact glass above Mike’s arm. There were a lot of lights out toward shore. Too many. “Is oldtown on fire?” he asked.

“One of the raider boats. That’s how we got away,” Mike said.

“Where’s Trev?”

“Busy. Help? Please?”

Please was not a word Caer expected Mike to have in his vocabulary. He undid the latch and opened the windows, sending a fresh shower of glass down onto the floor.

Mike disappeared.

Caer leaned out the window, his head enveloped in the driving rain. Mike was back in the boat, using a pole to push it closer to the building again. He’d wedged it up against the library where the building provided some shelter from the worst of the ocean drag, though it rose and fell against the stone with each swell. At its highest it was about a meter and half below the window frame, at its lowest nearly three. In the bottom of the boat, hauling tightly on a rope that was slung around a flagpole base, was Caer’s sister Jani.

“I can lower a rope!” Caer called down.

“She can’t climb a rope!” Mike yelled back.

“Can you tie one around her and I can pull her up?”

“No!” Both Mike and Jani yelled at the same time.

Caer turned and stared around the library, looking for anything he could use. His one free ladder was still out back on the balcony, and it was big enough that he’d have to heavily damage the window to get it through. A smaller ladder . . .

“Fire escape!” he yelled down to Mike and Jani. “North side of the building. It’s trapped, so give me a few minutes to make it safe.”

Mike stared up at him in disbelief, then shook his head. “Got it!” he yelled back, and began untying the boat.

Caer ran up the stairs to the third floor, hauling stacked boxes of books out of the way as fast as he could, then put his hands on the door bar and shoved. The door didn’t budge. He threw his shoulder into it, kicked it, and it remained jammed. How long would it take Mike to get the boat over? “Open, damn you!” he shouted, kicking it again.

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“May I assist?” a voice asked behind him, and he jumped from the sudden shock.

The robot was standing now, awake, still on its tarp.

“I need to get this door open,” Caer said. “Quickly.”

The robot moved with surprisingly little noise for its size, though stiffly. It put its good hand against the door as Caer pressed the bar in, and pushed.

Screaming in protest, the door gave way. “Stay back,” Caer told the robot, and got down on his hands and knees and leaned out over the side of the metal grating. Two thick wires ran almost invisibly along the underside and disappeared into a box he’d attached beneath the platform and painted black. Below he could see Mike just now trying to fasten his boat to the bottom of the ladder.

Caer had to find the two wingnuts holding the side of the box on by feel; rain had plastered his hair across his forehead like a wet mat, and he dropped one of the two down into the seething waters. It didn’t matter; he had spares inside, and time later to find them. Inside the box, he unclipped both wires from the marine boat battery nestled inside and slipped rubber caps, left in the box when he built it, over the ends of both leads. He put the lid back on and had the one remaining wingnut spun down just as Mike called up from three floors below.

“Is it safe?” Mike shouted.

Caer brushed the soaking hair from his forehead. “Safe now!” he yelled back down.

“Stop before the second platform, though!”

It was Jani that came up the f ire escape f irst, hunched over and wrapped in so many layers she seemed twice her usual size, and moved as if twice that again. At the second platform she paused, looked up, her eyes wide and red. “Don’t step in the center!” Caer called. “If you can step straight over onto the next ladder up, do it, otherwise you’re going for a swim.”

Mike was behind her and gave her a helping hand over, then waited as she climbed up the rest. Reaching Caer, Jani turned. “Mike!” she called. He was already back down in the boat.

“Going back,” he said. “Gotta get the women out. You’ll be safe here, if anywhere.

After all, your sibling has a killer robot!”

“Be careful, Mike,” Jani called down. “I’m counting on you to keep Trevor and the others safe, and yourself, too.”

“No promises,” Mike said. He pushed off in the rowboat and disappeared past the corner of the library with the swell.

Jani turned away from the door, then stopped in her tracks, stif ling a scream.

“What?” Caer said, and whirled around in alarm.

Orchid-Iridium-Zero-Hexagon stood there, and after a tiny hesitation hid its saw hand behind its back.

“Uh, Jani, this is Orchid,” Caer said. “He’s safe.”

“Safe? He’s got a goddamned saw blade!” Jani backed up. “What the hell have you been up to, all alone out here?”

“I saved him from the ocean,” Caer said, hating explaining himself like a child.

“I am no danger,” the robot added.

“Sure,” Jani said. She pointed across the open atrium. “How about you just back up, like way over there where I know you’re no danger.”

The robot dutifully turned and walked around the library to the far side, where it sat upon the steps. After a few more seconds of watching it, Jani let out a long, sharp breath and shrugged awkwardly out of her coat. The bulk remained.

Caer stared.

“Yeah,” Jani said. “In a couple of months you’re going to be an . . . um. Uncle?”

“An uncle! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not like you come visit,” she said.

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“It’s not like I’m welcome,” Caer answered. “You’re hurt?”

Jani pushed up her sleeve, showing a long jagged cut along her forearm encrusted in blood.

“Did you get any floodwater in that?” Caer asked.

“Yeah, getting into the boat.”

Caer took her arm, ignored her grunt of complaint as he poked gently around the cut. “I don’t think it’s too deep,” he said at last. “We’ve got to wash it out, though.

Right away.” He glanced briefly up at the roof, the sound of wind and rain against the library. “There may still be some hot water left in the system. There’s a large tub in the bathroom on the top floor—do you remember where those were, from when we were kids? I’ll come help you in a few minutes.”

“There’s no tub in the bathroom,” Jani said. “It’s a library.”

“There is now. Pond liner.”

“Oh,” she said.

Caer called over to the robot. “Orchid, could you stay and watch the door? If anyone else shows up, shout for me? . . . You can shout, yes?”

“I CAN!” the robot thundered.

Caer winced; his sister put her hands over her ears. “That’ll be more than sufficient,” he said. “If anyone tries to push past you anyway, tell them you have instructions from me to push them out into the water.”

“Is that your instruction?” the robot asked.

Caer met Jani’s angry gaze and sighed. “No. But lie and tell them it is,” he said.

“That is good, because I do not like the idea of pushing a person into the ocean. It is a contradiction to my primary programming.”

“And lying is not?”

“Mis-stating facts sometimes serves a necessary protective function.”

“Yeah, well, remember that necessary protective thing if someone tries to come in with a knife or a torch,” Caer said.

The robot stared at him expressionlessly. Caer let out another long breath and followed his sister up the stairs. One thing at a time, he thought. He wanted desperately to hook back up the battery under the fire escape, but if Mike or Trev came back . . . It’d serve them right, he thought bitterly, then shook his head. Mike had saved Jani, whatever else might be said about him.

His sister was staring at the peanut-shaped black pond liner in the middle of the bathroom floor, both hands folded across her expanded midsection. “Really?” she said.

“Really,” he answered. He reached up to where he’d rigged a hose down through the dropped ceiling and turned the spigot he’d aff ixed to the end. Water came through, not as hot as it would be in daytime, but still warm. “Not too bad,” he said.

“You want a full bath? With bubbles? They’re watermelon-scented.”

Jani stared at him, not too differently than the robot had. He suddenly felt incredibly self-conscious. “Never mind,” he said. “Just pull your sleeve up.”

Jani didn’t move. “How . . . ?” she asked.

“There’s a big water tank on the roof and a series of crisscrossing pipes to warm the water in the sun, that then collects down into an insul—”

“No,” she said. “Not that. Though I haven’t had a bath since we were kids. Before the Wave. Ma used to throw us in together. Remember that?”

“Yeah,” Caer answered reluctantly.

“What I meant was, how did you become such a stranger?” She rubbed at her eyes. “But I know the answer to that, and I don’t want to argue about it, so forget I asked. I would die for a warm bath, but not now. I can clean my own arm up, and I’m going to have to take my shirt off to do it right, so you have to get out. No boys allowed.”

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“This is the boys’ room,” Caer said.

Jani laughed, an exhausted sound. “Not right now it isn’t. Go. See if you can see what’s going on in oldtown.”

Caer wound his lantern up again and left it with her, then headed back down the dark stairs to where the robot stood sentry. “This human,” Orchid asked, its voice startling in the quiet, “she is in a manufacturing cycle?”

“What?”

“Inside her central body chamber.”

Caer laughed. “A baby? So it seems.”

“You two are batchmates?”

“If you mean siblings, then yeah. Family.” He snorted.

“Family is good, yes?”

“Sure, in picture books for little kids along with the tooth fairy and other fantasies.

In the real world, you get what you get.”

He went to the door, crouched down on the damp floor inside it, and peered out.

Oldtown was burning.

The smoke rose orange in the light of the flames, and against it he tried to make out shapes—standing houses, boats, anything—to no avail. He could hear shouting across the water, but it was all haze and shadow in the distance. He resented more than ever that the early looters had gotten all the night scopes from the sporting goods store. “I wish I could see,” he complained.

“I can see,” Orchid said.

Caer glanced up. Right, he thought. Robot. I’m an idiot. “Tell me what’s happening?” he asked.

The robot moved closer and peered out above him.

“There are two boats that are painted matte black and hard to fully discern, but I can extrapolate their shape as they appear to be identical to the ones the raiders who discarded me used; it is entirely possible they are the same boats, in which case there will be a fortified barge further off shore waiting for them to return. There are three houses on fire, of which one is fully involved. Four more are producing smoke.

I see people struggling and can hear sounds of conf lict, but cannot make out specifics at this distance. It appears the raiders are moving through from north to south.”

“Do they . . . kill people?” Caer asked. Dumb question.

“If there is resistance, yes. Also there is a particular violence they often commit against females. Their primary objective, however, is to take whatever people have of value, that they’ve saved from before the Wave or pulled from the water. They do not like it when their victims impair their efficiency at doing so.”

“Yeah, well, you can bet Trev and crew are getting in their way but good,” Jani said, coming down the stairs behind them. “Dumb stubborn assholes better not get themselves dead. And you! You better not let them!”

“What am I supposed to be able to do?!” Caer retorted.

“You with all your tricks and traps and stuff, there has to be something! And your killer robot!”

“I am not a killer,” Orchid said.

“Everything I have is defensive,” Caer said. “I just wanted to be left alone.”

“You were alone!”

“And I liked it!” Caer roared. “Why the hell didn’t Trev and the others come with you, to start with?”

“Trev wouldn’t ever abandon Pa,” Jani said. “Pa calls him the son he never had, and Trev feels the same.”

The son he never had. Right, Caer thought. But to hell with the son he did. He Books of the Risen Sea

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knew the bottomless pit of that conversation all too well, knew the futility of throwing any more of himself into it. “Orchid, do you know anything about raider tactics?”

he asked, as much to change the subject as anything else.

“I witnessed only a portion of one such excursion,” Orchid said. “They used four boats. Two were used to block off the town from any help from, or escape to, shore, and the other two went in to perform the collection of valuables. I was brought to menace the townspeople, but my loud and repetitive declarations that I would not hurt anyone were found to be unacceptable ‘mixed signals’ and myself a wasteful encumbrance upon available space, and as such I was shortly thereafter pitched overboard.”

“There are nearly thirty houses inhabited in oldtown,” Caer said. “Two boats per side can’t possibly watch them all?”

“If a few people successfully flee, but are still forced to leave their possessions behind, this is not considered a problem. The goal is profit, not mayhem, and as long as the number of escapees is small and their flight harrowing, the credibility of the raiders as a threat is not negatively impacted.”

“Can you see Mike’s boat?” Jani asked.

“I cannot determine either way,” Orchid said, “but I only got a partial view of it when you arrived, it is very dark out, and there are many obstacles. However, there is a boat of similar size approaching the tiered structure to our north.”

“What?” Caer exclaimed. “The parking garage?!”

“Yes,” the robot said.

“How close are they?!”

“At their current pace I’d estimate they’ll reach the structure in approximately six min—”

Caer took off running, taking the stairs up two at a time. “Stay here!” he shouted behind him. “Keep my sister safe!”

The roof was wet, and he had to slow to keep from slipping, but he dared to only barely. Once he reached his suspension bridge he raced across it to the garage and to the town-facing side. He could hear the creak of oars and the voices of people carrying up over the sound of the waves against the building. “Mike?” he called down. “Mike!”

“Caro—” Mike’s voice came up out of the dark a moment later. “Is that you?”

“Garage is trapped, you can’t get in!” he called down.

“I’ve got the Gresmeres with me,” Mike shouted back. “They need shelter!”

The Gresmeres were two sisters who lived one sunken house over from where he grew up. Sometimes Caer’s mother would send him or Jani over with leftover food, when they had any, when their father wasn’t watching. Less and less often toward the end, but always the Gresmere sisters were grateful. Later he understood how much of it was desperation.

But this is my sanctuary, he thought, and felt immediately ashamed of himself.

“Can they climb up the fire escape into the library?” he asked before he could find some excuse not to offer.

“No, and your library isn’t safe either. You and Jani need to get out too. I heard Sutter tell the raiders you had all the valuable stuff. They’re going to be coming your way!”

“What?!”

“They were gonna cut on people for info,” Mike yelled. “You’ve got all your traps and shit, and you’re good at hiding. And you told us you had a robot!”

Caer stared down helplessly at the darkness.

“Come on! We’re freezing down here, and I need to go back for others while there’s still a chance!”

He forced himself to shake off the fear. “Go to the mall,” he said. “Old loading dock in the back, there’s a hole in the overhead door. Be careful; the edges are sharp and the swells can push you up into it. Once you get inside, row into the old food court.

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You should be able to get up to the second level from there and find somewhere to get under cover. Don’t drink any water you didn’t bring in with you.”

“Okay. Uh, Elena and Michelle say thank you,” Mike shouted up. Caer could hear him setting the oars again. “You get going too!”

He could hear the boat moving away against the waves. Along the far shore, flames had spread; he could see the shapes of people running on the walkways in between, but couldn’t tell if they were oldtowners or raiders. Higher up, on shore, he could see glints of light along the wall that separated the abandoned half of town from dry land and he wondered, if it came down to it, if the wall was being held just against the raiders, or anyone fleeing them as well.

So far, there did not seem to be any movement toward the library, although it was hard to see.

He went back across his makeshift bridge to the library roof, thinking furiously; were his traps enough? As he came down the stairs and saw his sister in silhouette near his worktable, he considered how much more was at stake, and how he resented being called on when no one ever gave a rat’s ass about him.

Almost no one. Jani looked up. “Caer,” she said, her face relaxing in relief. “Where’s Mike?”

“Dropping off the Gresmeres over in the mall,” Caer said. “There’s—”

“I was reading what you got here,” she said. “There’s a lot missing.”

“Yeah,” Caer said. “We need to—”

“Atras is a prince, right? Older brothers try to assassinate him, he runs away and becomes a traveling musician, everyone thinks he’s dead—”

“How do you know that?”

“I read this when I was a kid,” she said. “I read some of it to you, too. Funny. Always about runaways, isn’t it?”

“I don’t remember it at all,” Caer said. “How could you?”

Jani laughed. “Unlike you, I haven’t read all that many books. None since you left, of course, ’cause they’re all gone.”

“Gone? I didn’t take even a third.”

“Pa threw the ones you left behind in the sea.” At Caer’s pained look, she briefly hung her head. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you. He thought it must’ve been from books that you got the idea that you . . . You know.”

Caer knew, felt the stab of a new loss in his gut.

Orchid leaned forward slightly over the table, and began to read.

. . . swung his legs slowly over the side of the cot and managing to stand with a minimum of wobble. He slipped his trousers on, tied the strings, and lifted the bolt on the door. Sovo pushed his way into the tiny room. The drummer was back in his grays from the night before, his massive head of hair combed back into a neat ponytail, a silver clip holding it in place that must have cost him half a year’s performance money. “Festival is back on. We need you,” he said. “We’re good without you, but you make us great. We need to win a commission.”

“No,” Atras said. “I’m sorry, but no. I will not play the court.”

“Why?” Sovo sat on the cot beside him, looking stricken but not surprised.

“My family had dealings with the court, years ago, and it ended poorly.”

“But you won’t play for either court, not for either Prince Korol or Danar.”

Sovo wrung his hands. “Menok’s worked for a commission for years. He makes us practice the Chronicles until we’re so sick of them that we begin to loathe music itself! This festival is the only chance us common musicians get to play for the nobles. You know we won’t make it without you.”

“And if you do with me, what then? I become trapped there, where I least want to be.”

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“So much so that you would rather forage in the wilderness, feigning retreat, whenever we play the court? Yes, I’ve seen. I know. But I had to try to persuade you, for Menok.”

“I know,” Atras said, and patted his friend on the shoulder. “Ask anything of me but this.”

The robot stopped reading as abruptly as the page ended. “There is more?” he asked.

“Some,” Caer said, passing a hand above the pages he had laid out. “It was a big book, but the whole last fifty pages or so were just one giant block of mold. I saved what I could.” He looked over at his sister. “Do you remember how it ends?”

Jani laughed. “I don’t think it really did. Beginning of some endless series, I bet.

There’s a dryad and they fall in love and there’s a lot of running around in the woods and sword fighting and magic and stuff. You loved the fighting. Always did.”

“I hate fighting,” Caer said, then stood up straight in alarm. “Shit!”

“What?”

“You two distracted me. It’s not safe here any more. We need to get you over to the mall.”

“What?!” Jani put one hand on her belly. “I’ve seen that fucking plank you’ve got a million feet off the ground and there’s no way I’m crossing it.”

“It is twenty-seven point six feet off the average water surface at low tide,” Orchid said, “which is in turn approximately eleven feet from the sea floor beneath.”

“Whatever. I’m not going,” Jani said. “And what do you mean get ‘me’ over there?

What about you?”

“I’m not leaving here,” Caer said. “If the world hadn’t gone and fucked itself up so thoroughly I could have had a real life somewhere else. This is all I’ve got, and I’m not letting anyone wreck it.”

“Then defend it, and us,” Jani said. “I trust you.”

“I don’t!” Caer said. “I built my traps to keep Trev and his buddies out, the occasional local looter, and father after he said he’d rather see me dead than leave me be.

Not an entire gang of experienced coastal raiders with weapons!”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t know!”

“Then figure it out,” she said. She pointed at the robot. “You! Can you help?”

“I can try, within my parameters of non-violence,” Orchid said.

“Great, that’s useful, then. You two go do that. I need to lie down now.”

“Uh, I have some blankets upstairs—”

“Not going upstairs. I’ll just sleep on the floor.”

“I’ll bring you down some,” Caer said,

“Sure. Because being comfortable while my entire life burns down outside is at the top of my list.”

Caer opened his mouth to apologize, realized he would end up yelling, and instead turned his back and stomped upstairs without looking back. The robot began to follow, but he pointed toward the window. “Go see what’s happening, please, Orchid.”

His own blankets were in bad need of a wash, but he had a small extra stash for deep winter and pulled it down from the shelf where he’d tucked them. They were dusty, but he decided that wasn’t his problem. Remembering the constant mildew on everything in his childhood bedroom back in Oldtown, he didn’t expect Jani would complain either.

She was sitting, her legs looking awkward under the bulk of her abdomen, and Caer was surprised to realize she’d been crying while he was gone. Her face now, turning toward him as he came down the stairs, was a mask of determination.

“Here,” he said, and set the blankets down. “It stays warmer if you sleep in between the stacks. Do you want me to help—?”

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“No,” she said. “I can do it just fine. You have stuff to do.”

“Yeah,” he said.

He left her to it, and joined Orchid by the window. “What’s going on?” he asked, keeping his voice low.

“Most of the fires are out now,” Orchid said. “I do not see much activity, although there does appear to be some movement between the walkways and raider boats, suggesting the hauling of material.”

“There isn’t much worth taking,” Caer said. “Food, I guess.”

“They will take anything they think they can sell or trade,” Orchid said.

“Do they take people? To sell?”

“The ones I was with did not because they felt it was too much trouble. They will, however, recruit anyone fit enough that they think would adapt to and come to enjoy their employment with them. It is a life with more immediate material rewards than in many of the shore towns, if one does not mind danger.”

“And dishonesty.”

“The people who mind the latter are much rarer,” Orchid said.

“I’d accuse you of cynicism, but you’re a robot and you’re not wrong,” Caer said.

“We’ve got maybe three hours until dawn. You think they’ll come before then?”

“They will want to be moving off before the sun is fully up. Daylight emboldens people.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Caer said. “Well. I’ve got a few traps on the fire escape, but they only work when they’re a surprise. I can pull the ladder back over from the parking garage, and there are traps there that will take out another one or two if we’re lucky. After that, there’s not much to stop them.”

“It would be advisable to keep them from reaching the library, if you have a deterrent that functions at a distance.”

Caer laughed, no humor in it. “If only!” A moment later he added, “I have a trebuchet I built on the roof, but nothing to throw with it. I chunked a few cinder blocks out over the sea wall when I first made it just for fun, but cinder blocks are heavy to cart up there and too useful to waste. And there’s nothing else here.”

“There are books,” Orchid said.

“NO!” Caer shouted, the word flying past his lips before he could even half-form the thought. Jani poked her head out from between the stacks, eyed them for a few minutes, then retreated. “No,” he said again, more quietly. “I won’t.”

“There are books here that are too damaged—”

“I haven’t tried everything yet!”

“There are books still underwater.”

“They’ll disintegrate as soon as we touch them. I’ve tried.”

“The second floor—”

“That’s where all the good fiction is!” Caer couldn’t help but cast a stricken glance at his worktable. The lower shelves had been completely swamped in the first wave, but the upper ones had fared better, at least until the mold began to creep in. Everything had long-since dried, but it was as if the books on the lowest shelves had melted into one colossal pulpy sponge. More than once he’d stood there and managed to find a title he wanted desperately to read, but the words on the spine were now just immobile mockery.

He sat on the floor and put his face in his hands. The library was quiet, the faint sound of the water outside against its walls and a tiny ticking, whirring sound that came from the robot itself. Jani’s breathing was slow enough that he was sure she was asleep, or close to.

He resented, in that fraught peace, all those books about time travel where someone could freeze a moment forever, or rewind and fix all the ways everything went wrong. But outside he knew the raiders weren’t going to stop for him, the ocean Books of the Risen Sea

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wasn’t going to retreat, the country wasn’t going to put itself back together whole again, and all he could do was waste time he couldn’t afford. “The second floor,” he said, quietly, feeling the words shatter the illusion of standstill. “I’ll need your help.”

Orchid dutifully followed him down.

Caer walked to the start of the stacks and ran his fingers along the spines there, despairing in the utter lack of movement among them. They had fused long before he ever could have saved them, but he found the idea of letting go almost unendurable.

Not quite as much as that of letting go of the library itself.

“If we can find a way to pull these apart into blocks heavy enough to throw, maybe we can convince the raiders we’re not worth the effort,” Caer said. “Can you see what you can do?”

“What approximate parameters are you needing?”

Caer held his hands out, about a foot apart. “Much bigger and they’ll be hard to lift.”

“I can carry,” the robot said.

“If you find any books that are still salvageable . . .”

“I will be mindful.”

“Okay. I’m going up to the roof. Bring some as soon as you can.” Would he even remember, later, how many volumes smaller his world had become, what titles he’d committed to the risen sea forever? He didn’t want to think about it, and when he heard the faint whirring of the robot tentatively starting up its blade arm, he ran.

The siege weapon stood where it had for more than a year, a big double-triangle with a long boom suspended in between, a thick mass of cabled-together cinder blocks on the short, thick end pulling the longer, tapered end up nearly vertical. A thin steel cable swung gently in the wind along it. To load it, he’d have to pull the long end down and raise the counterweight up; it was the drop of that weight again, when released, that threw whatever missile had been attached to the cable on the end of the boom. He’d stumbled across the plans in a mechanics magazine, of all places, long after having concluded from actual medieval warfare texts that no designs for such things still existed.

It had been fun, in all its enthusiastic impracticality. Now it seemed ominous and somehow complicit, a dark skeleton waiting poised against the faint gray of the sky.

Turning to oldtown, he could see the faint glow of where fires still burned, an un-dulating orange on the pre-dawn water. That same water carried to him, like an unwelcome gift, the low thump of boats against the dock piles, the unsteady beat of booted feet, and rough, unintelligible voices. They would not be long in setting out.

“Pardon me.” The robot’s muffled voice came from the skylight opening, and Caer turned to see a chimneystack of cut book blocks rising vertically out through the skylight behind him. “I am unable to climb the ladder while encumbered.”

Caer crouched at the edge of the opening and took the ragged-edged blocks, one by one, and set them aside on the roof. Despite himself he caught fragments of titles on mangled spines, and knew exactly which section of shelf they had come from. Goodbye, Cordwainer and Doc, he thought, and set them so that the lettering was facing away.

Once all the paper blocks had been stacked, the robot disappeared back down for more. Caer glanced at the blocks, considered, then after a quick glance toward oldtown—no boats heading into open water yet—went back inside and rummaged through his boxes of supplies. He didn’t doubt the blocks would hold together if thrown by hand, but the stresses of being f lung at the end of a fast-moving chain were another matter, and raining loose fragments of old, moldy, torn science fiction down on the raiders was not likely to give them pause.

He found plastic strapping he’d salvaged from the home improvement store and carried it, the clips, and pliers up, and set to work wrapping one tightly around each bundle. It would also give the hook at the end of the trebuchet’s chain something to haul on.

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Orchid had carried up nearly two dozen blocks before Caer stopped it; the light had grown just enough for him to witness the first of the raiders’ boats pushing off from oldtown. He rested one hand on the trebuchet frame. “I’m going to need your help to aim this,” he said. And, remembering how badly he’d thrown out his back the last time he’d used it, he added, “and to pull the boom end down and set it. We need to test the range.”

“I will need you to demonstrate,” the robot said.

There were three boats, one towing the badly burnt shell of the fourth behind it.

The lead boat was not quite halfway across the span of water between oldtown and the library when the first of the paper blocks plunked itself into the ocean. It was far enough short of its mark, in the bad light, that he was sure it hadn’t been seen, but it had definitely been heard. There was a shout of surprise.

The robot picked up the next paper block. “Seven ounces lighter,” it declared as it hooked it to the cable. Then it wrapped its saw-arm elbow around one leg of the trebuchet frame and its fist around the other, and with a loud groan shifted the trebuchet slightly to the south and barely a centimeter forward. “You may try again,” it said.

The second bundle also fell short but was right in line with the lead boat, and all of them pulled up their oars and drew closer to one another. He could hear urgent conversation floating over the water as a solitary gull dove across the waves where the block had sunk, looking for a possible meal.

The boats pushed back from one another and drew apart, oars were set again, and they began to pick up speed.

“It is perhaps insufficient deterrent,” the robot said.

“Yeah.” Caer had expected as much. He connected up the next block, then pulled a bottle of lighter fluid from his pocket. He soaked the paper brick and then stepped back, hating the feel and smell of it on his hands. “Can you set the boom again?”

Orchid pulled the boom down, raising the counterweight, and set the release. “Now you should reach within approximately ten meters of the lead boat,” it said.

“Thanks,” Caer said. He waited.

After a few moments the robot added, “There is an increasing danger of striking the boat, rather than merely deterring with proximity.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was thinking too,” Caer said. He pulled a small matchbox out of his pocket, struck one, and threw it at the bundle at the same time as he yanked the release cord.

Fire was not evident as it arced over the waters, but it struck the prow of the center boat and burst into a thousand dancing flames. Caer could see the occupants of the boat scrambling to put them out. “Stop there!” he shouted, and when they did not hear him, he tilted his head toward Orchid. “Tell them to stop there. Loudly?”

“STOP THERE!” Orchid boomed, and this time the raiders heard.

Caer prepped another brick with lighter fluid and made sure it was ready to throw before he stepped over to the roof edge and cupped his hands to either side of his mouth. “There’s nothing here for you!” he shouted.

Someone stood up in the lead boat. In the growing light the raiders didn’t look much older than he was. “That’s not what we were told!” the leader shouted back. He kicked a dark shape in the bottom of the boat and Caer heard Sutter’s voice protest.

“He’s a liar!” Caer shouted back.

“He said you had the most valuable stuff in town!”

“Yeah, I do! Books!”

He could now see the raiders more clearly; the outer two boats had five men apiece in them, and the lead ship four men and two people hunched down in the middle. He could see the first few strains of daylight glinting dully off a knife one raider held over the two in the bottom. Sutter, and who else? Caer wondered.

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“You’re going to a lot of trouble to defend just a bunch of books!” the leader shouted back.

“I also like my peace and quiet!” Caer retorted.

“You saying you got nothing else?”

Orchid walked up to stand beside him at the roof edge. “I’ve got a robot!” Caer yelled.

The raider laughed. “Yeah, I recognize that robot. We threw him out! He’s not going to help you fight us, you know.”

“Hello, Martin,” Orchid called out, waving, just as Caer send another flaming bundle of paper sailing over the water. The leader had to duck, and it hit somewhere in the back of the boat and sent the others chasing after the flames.

“You don’t want to fight us!” the leader shouted.

“No, I don’t! I want you to just go away and leave me alone! But I will if you make me!”

“Over just books?!”

“Over just books! Ask Sutter the truth, he’ll tell you I’ve got nothing else.”

“Yeah, Sutter. Don’t be an asshole,” the other huddled person said.

“Mike?” Caer called.

“. . . Yeah.”

“His hands appear to be bound,” Orchid said.

“A friend of yours?” the leader called. “He didn’t behave for us. Maybe you’d trade for him back?”

“Let him go, and I’ll let you get back out to sea without firebombing the shit out of you on your way past,” Caer said. “More than that I’m not sure I like him enough for.”

“You think you could hold that hunk of shit building against us by yourself ?”

“The whole place is trapped. How much are you willing to lose for a bunch of moldy paperbacks?”

“Is that true?” the leader asked Sutter.

When Sutter didn’t answer, the leader kicked him harder. “Yeah, yeah!” Sutter said. “Traps everywhere. She’s a fucking psycho. Runs in the whole goddamned family.” He hunched further down into the boat.

“Martin!” A raider shouted from another boat. “Call from Josh. There’s a patrol coming up the coast! We gotta get moving!”

“Right,” the leader said. “Tell him we’re on our way, and to mark this dump down on the map as Doesn’t-Have-Shit-Town. Next—Aaah!” He stumbled back and fell into the bottom of the boat as another flaming brick soared right over his head. It struck the man behind him with the knife, who dropped it and began flailing at the swarm of embers crawling over his chest.

Mike leaned over, and Caer could see the brief flash of the knife before he stood up, dropping cut fragments of rope behind him, and leapt into the water.

Caer loaded and hooked up another brick as quickly as he could, as Orchid stood and tried to adjust the angle of the frame to match the boats’ renewed, rapid movement forward.

“Let him go!” Caer yelled, “or I will burn your boats down to the water!”

“Yeah? And what then happens to your other friend here?” Martin kicked Sutter.

“Let him swim for it too!”

“No, fucking hell, no,” Sutter said. “I don’t want to go back. Anywhere’s gotta be better than here. Can I go with you, please?”

Martin held up his hands and shrugged.

“Fine, then, you can keep him! Just go now,” Caer said.

The leader signaled, and his boats pulled together and away from where Caer could see Mike struggling in the waves. “He’s not going to make it,” Caer said to Orchid.

The robot nodded. “I have continued to retain the memory of swimming,” he said, and then with all the grace of a boulder falling off a cliff toppled over the roof edge toward the ocean below.

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The sound of him hitting the water was no less impressive. The raiders all startled in their boats, pointing toward both the water and up at the roof line where Caer stood, still caught in surprise.

One boat veered toward Mike, who was barely moving. The water was cold, and Mike’s soaked clothes would be heavy as lead, dragging him down. “Ah, no, you idiot, don’t give up!” Caer said, not loud enough for anyone to hear, gripping his f ists so tightly closed his fingers were starting to go numb.

Suddenly there was something shiny in the water, close enough to reach out one hand and snag Mike; the other raised up brief ly with its sawblade, and the boat turned sharply astern to avoid it.

“Yeah! Go Orchid!” Caer shouted, jumping up with his fists in the air. He ran to the open skylight and shouted down as loudly as he could. “JANI! I NEED YOU!”

He raced back to the edge of the roof, grabbing a paper bundle as he went, prepared to throw it by hand down on anyone approaching. The three raider boats were passing the library now, closer than he would have liked, but not so close that they were an immediate danger. He saw someone point him out, and hoped that his presence was sufficient to keep them moving on.

Jani’s voice floated up from below. “Caer?”

“I’m on the roof,” he said. “Can you get up here?”

“Probably not if my life depended on it,” she answered.

“What about Mike’s life?”

Her groan was audible even from the roof edge, and about half a minute later Jani’s head appeared in the opening, her hair a tangled muddle, her face pale. “What are you doing?” she said.

“The raiders are going past. I need you to make sure they don’t change their minds and decide to stop here after all,” Caer said. “I have bombs.”

“Of course you do,” she said. She made a face, then managed to climb far enough up the ladder to crawl out onto the roof on her hands and knees. “Help me up?”

He cast a worried glance at the raiders—had they slowed? Had they edged slightly nearer?—and then set down his block and hurried to help Jani up. She joined him back at the edge a moment later. “There’s a patrol boat coming, so they either need to get out of here or get under cover quickly. I need you to convince them there’s no practical way for the latter.” He pointed out the paper blocks, then handed her the bottle of lighter fluid and his matches. “There’s enough liquid for three or four more bricks, more if you’re sparing with it. Try not to burn yourself. If you can, wait until they get close enough to land it right in their boat.”

Jani smiled. “My pleasure,” she said. “Where’s Mike?”

“He went overboard. Orchid is bringing him in. They’ll both be so waterlogged they won’t be able to get out of the water on their own. That’s if they don’t sink entirely before they get here.”

“Then fucking go,” Jani said. “I can drop bombs on these assholes just fine on my own.”

“Yell if you need help,” he said, and then climbed down the ladder and raced down to the second floor, where he climbed out the window onto the balcony. The ladder he’d used to haul Orchid in was still there, and he carried it across the library and out onto the entryway roof facing oldtown. There were brackets along one side, originally for colorful flags and holiday decorations, and he lashed the ladder to them as best as he was able.

He couldn’t yet see Orchid and Mike in the water. What if it’s too late? he wondered, feeling sick. “Orchid! Orchid, the balcony!” If the raiders heard him . . . well, Jani could get the drop on them from all four sides of the library. He went back into the library and grabbed a six-foot length of pipe, just in case, and his ten-foot pole with the hook. He hung the hook pole over the railing.

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“Caer!” Jani shouted down from above. “They’ve gone over the sea wall and they’re heading out!”

For a heart stopping moment he thought she meant Mike and the robot, then he took a deep breath. “Okay! Keep an eye out until they’re completely gone! Can you see Mike and Orchid?”

“They’re heading right toward you,” she said. “I . . . they’re barely above water at all.”

Caer took off his shoes and socks and rolled his pants legs up past his knees, already grimacing from the cold. He tested the ladder again for stability then climbed down until his feet were barely above the reach of the waves. “Orchid!” He yelled again. “Mike!”

At last he saw something in the water, moving feebly and intermittently. He reached up and grabbed his pole from the roof and tipped it out, trying to snag the bundle of sodden clothing without hurting Mike. Just when he thought it was a lost cause, a shaking hand reached up and wrapped itself around the pole, and Caer hauled as hard and as fast as he could. When Mike was close enough Caer let go of the pole, leaned out, and grabbed a big handful of wet jacket. Straining, he pulled Mike the remaining few feet to the ladder.

Mike’s face was pale, shaking, blood still encrusted over one swollen eye. At first his gaze was vacant, then his eyes found Caer, and he smiled. “Carolyn,” he said.

“Fuck you, Mike, and help me get you out of the goddamned water,” Caer said. He tried to haul the man upright, but it was as if he was a ton of dead weight. “You still got your pants and shoes on?”

“Shoes . . . ?”

“You’re too heavy. Take off everything you can.”

“C . . . cold.”

“Your clothes aren’t making you any warmer. There’s blankets inside. Come on, Mike!”

Mike hunched over in the water, and then moments later nodded. “Those were my favorite boots,” he said. “My only boots.”

“Yeah, well, if I see the fishes wearing them around I’ll ask politely for them back,”

Caer said. He pulled again, and this time Mike managed to get both hands on the ladder on his own. “Don’t let go,” Caer said. He shifted to one side of the ladder, one foot on a rung and the other in midair. “Go up past me. You only need to get inside and then you can rest. You hear me?”

“Hear you,” Mike said, and began to haul himself up the ladder. He had ditched both pants and shoes, but kept his socks and a ragged pair of boxers. His legs were pale, almost blue.

Halfway up the ladder Mike stopped, and Caer was afraid he was going to let go.

He got back on the ladder under Mike and put his shoulder up into the man’s ass, shoving. “Keep moving!” he yelled. “You can’t stop now!”

At last, Mike managed, with a lot of shoving from Caer, to topple off the ladder onto the slate tile roof. “This is good,” he mumbled.

“No, it’s not. You’re gonna slide right off again. You need to get inside and get out of those wet clothes.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Mike said.

“No, Mike, I fucking wouldn’t,” Caer said, his face reddening with anger. “I could just roll you right back off this roof and save myself a shitload of aggravation, and no one would ever know.”

“He saved the Gresmeres,” Jani said, from the roofline above.

“Yeah,” Caer said. “But he’s got to get his own ass inside now, or I’ll just leave him here. Cause of death? Being a massive asshole and more stupid than dirt.”

With a groan, Mike pushed himself up onto his hands and knees, then stumbled awkwardly upright on the slanted roof. “That’s more of a Sutter way to go,” he said, 192

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and pulled himself through the window and in, where he immediately collapsed again on the floor. “This good enough?”

“Good enough for now,” Caer said. He looked back at the water. “Where’s the robot?”

“It sank,” Mike said. “Got me as far as it could ’til it was so full of water it was worried it would pull me down with it. Apologized, then let go of me and was gone.”

“Shit,” Caer said. He went back outside, shivering and soaked through, and climbed back down the ladder to where he could reach his pole, bobbing against the side of the building. Holding the end with the floatie, he shoved the pole down into the opaque waters, hoping against all odds that he could find and hook onto the robot, manage to pull him up somehow. The pole slipped into emptiness, over and over.

“Caer?” Jani called again from the rooftop.

Caer didn’t look up, didn’t want his sister to see tears on his face. “I’m trying to find the robot,” he said. “Raiders are gone?”

“Yeah. Just saw the patrol boat go by.”

“Mike needs to get out of his wet clothes and wrapped in blankets to warm up. Can you get down from the roof by yourself ?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Jani said. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, just go inside, all right?”

She disappeared from the edge. Caer swept the pole around in the water, finding nothing. At last he gave up, stared down at the waves for a few more minutes, then with a deep, long sigh he tossed the pole back up onto the roof and climbed up after it. Inside, he shut the window with enormous regret.

Mike was no longer curled up on the floor directly inside. From the echo of voices through the open space at the center of the library he guessed Jani had managed to get him up one more floor, which was smart; it stayed warmer up there, farther from the water.

Caer went up to the third floor, set up the camp stove, and put a pot of clean water on to boil. Tea would do everyone good, and he didn’t have much else to offer that wouldn’t leave him starving. If most of oldtown had been relieved of their food supplies, there were going to be tough times ahead for a while.

Jani was sitting next to Mike, who was sound asleep under a thick pile of blankets.

“He got Sophia, Izzie, and Maria over to the mall too, but they caught him going back for a third trip,” she said as he handed her a mug of tea. “Told him they were gonna break his arms and then dump him out at sea to show him how being brave never did anyone any good.”

“I’m glad he got some people to safety,” Caer said.

“He told me they hurt Trev and Pa too, he’s not sure how bad, and Steve is dead,”

she said.

“I’m sorry.”

She stared at Mike a little longer. “I hate everything,” she said. “Why is it always so awful?”

“I don’t know,” Caer said. He shivered, sipping at his own tea.

“You need rest too,” she said. “I’ll keep an eye on things for a few hours, then we can figure out how to get us all back to oldtown.”

“Yeah,” he said, and stood.

“I’m sorry about your robot,” she said.

“Yeah.”

He went up to the fourth floor and crawled into his own blanket pile, and despite certainty that sleep would be far away and hard to come by, barely remembered getting himself settled down before he was out.

He slept for a long time, waking up as the sun was starting to set. His whole body Books of the Risen Sea

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was stiff and aching, and he almost decided to go back to sleep. But there was stuff that needed to be done.

Downstairs, Jani was standing at his worktable. “I found the next page in your stack,” she said. “It’s almost completely whole.”

He leaned over her shoulder and read.

Anor was carefully unpacking the last of his bells and chimes, hanging them with precise movements on their frame. Atras sat in the still-dewy grass, finishing his tuning, mind and attention fully on that one task.

“Atras,” Rat hissed at him, and he realized the others had gone very quiet.

He twisted the last peg into position and looked up. Standing before them was a tall man, with a small moustache and sun-yellow hair swept up into a ponytail. The man wore a white tunic with gold trim, gleaming even in the indirect sun of the day, setting off the dark, hard eyes.

Prince Korol, his half-brother.

With a shock, Atras almost dropped his xitar. He caught himself and managed a bow with the rest of his company, his heart racing madly.

“Welcome.” The prince addressed the entire band. Behind him, a small group of nobles attended him, looking on with barely disguised boredom. The Lady Olia was standing on the central dais. Her eyes were locked on the Prince’s location, a frown on her face. Beside her stood a thin, older woman with the same bright hair as her son, looking over the courtyard as if all around her were merely livestock at a show. The Lady Oresia.

“Your Highness,” Menok bowed lower than the others. “We are at your service.”

“Indeed,” the Prince said, just as the sunhigh bell rang out from the castle tower, echoing

The page ended where it ought, for once, and he flipped it over and read the other side. Would the prince recognize his half-brother, presumed dead at age nine? What he had here didn’t get far enough to tell. “I think I have the next page too,” he said, and turned toward his box, then stopped mid-step. “Do you hear thumping?”

Mike looked up from where he was hunched in blankets against the stacks. “I do,”

he said. He pointed. “From that way, I think.”

That was the direction of the window and entryway roof. Caer realized he’d left the ladder in place, where anyone could just climb up. If the raiders had come back . . .

He ran to the window, and saw to his relief that there was no one on the roof, at least not yet. His boots were still there by the opening, and he slipped his feet into them and stepped out onto the slate, picking up the length of pipe he’d left there as well during the dawn chaos.

Peering over the edge down the length of the ladder, he saw a metal elbow crooked over a rung dipping in and out of the waves, the top of a shiny dome head, and a fist reaching out and knocking, politely but persistently, on the building itself. “Mike!

Jani! I need your help!” he yelled. “Grab the rope!”

Mike appeared on the rooftop, still in his bare feet, and tossed the end of the rope down to Caer. When he saw the robot, he smiled. “Hey, it made it!”

“Almost,” Caer said. He got close enough to make a light rap on Orchid’s head, and the robot turned his face upward in the water. Caer slipped the rope around his neck, then backed off up the ladder to the peak and braced himself. He and Mike began to pull.

Ponderously, Orchid raised its normal hand and grabbed the ladder, then unhooked its saw arm and moved it up a rung. Water streamed out from its joints. After a moment, it repeated, and little by little they got it up to the ladder. Jani joined in pulling the rope and Orchid tumbled at last onto the roof, cracking the slate tiles beneath it as it fell.

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Asimov’s

Caer glanced at the dusky sky. “Should be dry for a while,” he said. “You stay here and stop dripping, okay, Orchid?”

“That is okay,” the robot answered.

Caer smiled. “Good to have you back.”

“Yes. I prefer this to underwater.”

He followed Mike and Jani back in through the window.

Mike still looked like he was barely keeping upright. “I should try to get the people in the mall home again; they’re probably scared and hungry. You, ah, have any extra pants or boots that might fit—? No, of course you don’t. Steve was about my size. I’ll check his stuff, if Sutter and his new friends didn’t take it all.”

“You sure you’re up to this? You can stay until morning.”

“No, but I’m going to anyway. Can I borrow your boat?”

“Yeah, as long as you bring it back.”

“I will,” Mike said. “Jani, you want first ride back?”

“Yeah. I’m worried about Trev and Pa.” She tilted her head toward Caer. “You okay here?”

“I’m always okay here,” he said.

“I’ll send word when the baby’s born.”

“Thanks. I hope everything goes smoothly,” Caer said. “Gotta take good care of my nephew.”

“Or niece,” Jani said. “You never know.”

“Only the baby will,” Caer agreed. “Uh, if you remember how the rest of that story goes . . . I don’t think I’ll find much more of it.”

“So what?” Jani said. “Fill in the missing pieces yourself, and write your own ending. It’d probably be better than the original was, anyway! Magic rings and wizards and warring kingdoms and all that cliché stuff. You could do better. I liked the prince, though. Atras. Make sure you give him a happy ending. Someone deserves one.”

She pointed a finger at Mike. “Your blanket is slipping,” she said, and as he hastily wrapped it around himself again, she smiled back at Caer. “Thanks for watching out for us,” she said.

“Yeah, no problem,” he said.

Mike coughed. “Boat?”

“I’ll show you where it’s tethered,” Caer said.

It was nearing midnight, and the robot had come inside at last, though it stayed on its tarp in case it still had some water inside. It had shut down to recharge, and sat there like an inert statue, alien and comforting at the same time. Caer really was glad to have it back. Have it home, he corrected himself. The robot had asked if it could stay and read books with him, and he’d readily agreed. He told himself it was because the robot would be useful and could help him with some projects that had been out of his reach before, but really, it was nice to have the company.

There is understanding, and there is not understanding, the robot had said, but even more importantly there was not having to explain.

He looked at the last page of Atras’s story he’d been able to find.

—door. Sovo looked down at his shoes, then back up. “Where will you be heading? Back into Baulor?”

“The mountains are nice in the spring,” Atras said. “I was thinking of heading north, spending some time in Taug Nekarr. I have friends there I have not seen in some time.”

The Ottishman nodded. “Enjoy yourself. I must say that I hope you will join us for the Valmetat Festival, but as long as I see you again, and play with you again, Books of the Risen Sea

195

September/October 2017

I care not where it is. I wish I knew what drives you away yet again, but you will tell us in time, yes?”

Atras gave him a fast hug, patting the giant man on the back. “Perhaps. Take care of yourself, Sovo, and the others. You really do not need me.”

“There you are wrong, my friend, but I will say no more. Enjoy the hills, and I will see you again.”

Sovo ducked out the doorway and ambled away. Atras watched him go, feeling sad, feeling satisfied. At least we’ve parted well, he thought. Friends. He flipped the room key in his hands a few times, then with a deep sigh he slung the bag and the xitar over his shoulder and left.

Easily two-thirds of the book was missing, much more than he’d thought. Jani had hinted at a little bit of the rest, but the words themselves were gone. There were other books, many of them whole, just waiting for him to get to them, but he felt no hurry toward them. They were safe. There was an anxiety toward the broken books that he couldn’t shake, couldn’t fix.

Before she’d left, Jani had left a blank sheet of paper and a pen on his worktable. He stared at it, not touching either.

Behind him, he heard the small pot of soup he’d put on the camp stove bubbling away, and got down off his stool to stir it. “How do you write a story that’s not yours?” he mused out loud.

Without moving or opening its eyes, the robot said, “If you tell it, it is yours. Just as when you read a story, it is also yours.”

“Easy for you to say,” Caer answered, but the robot did not respond. He poured his soup carefully into his bowl, watching the steam curl up into the air in front of his face.

It smelled wonderful, full of flavor and promise of a full stomach.

He turned off the light by his desk and settled down on the floor to eat, listening to the waves outside in their endless slow parade. Some stories could, after all, wait until tomorrow. ❍

196

Suzanne Palmer

ON BOOKS

Norman Spinrad

OUTSIDE AMERICA

BINTI
that both were right and both were wrong;

Nnedi Okorafor

Wells’ technological extrapolations,

Tor, $4.22
though not central to his science fiction,

978-0765385253
were as well thought out as Verne’s, and

Verne, at least in the original French, was

THE DEVOURERS
not all that apolitical or characterologi-

Indra Das
cally indifferent.

Kindle $11.99

But let’s not get into that in this es-

978-0143424406
say. The point here is that while the
godfathers of all serious science fiction

PIRATE UTOPIA
might have had their differences, they

Bruce Sterling
were a Frenchman and an Englishman.

Tachyon Publications, $19.95

Neither was an American, but by the

978-1-61696-236-4
middle 1930s, America had given sci-
ence fiction a third stream—pulp ad-

CENTRAL STATION
venture science fiction, A.K.A. genre

Lavie Tidhar
science fiction, A.K.A. space opera, soon

Tachyon Publications, $15.95
to be dubbed sci fi—and it quickly be-

978-1616962142
came dominant.

More of this genre science fiction was
t is generally recognized that modern
being published than literary or hard
or at least pre-modern literary science
science fiction, and the lion’s share was
fiction—as opposed to post Gerns-
being published in American maga-

Ibackian pulp science fiction, which zines. Why? For one thing, America had was born in 1926 with Amazing Sto-a strong tradition, which is to say pub-
ries— originated toward the end of the
lishing business, of pulp adventure long
nineteenth century. It started with the
before Amazing Stories. When “scien-
key works of an Englishman writing in
tifiction” became another pulp adven-

English, H.G. Wells, and a Frenchman,
ture magazine genre, there were plenty

Jules Verne, writing in French.

of writers who could churn out this for-

Indeed, the public dialectic (a polite
mulaic stuff and could be paid peon
term for an argument that was not al-
word rates sometimes even lower than
ways so polite) between Verne and Wells
a cent a word. America was already in a
was the birth of two modern streams of
good business position for magazine
science fiction: so-called hard science fic-
publishers.

tion and literary science fiction, which

For another thing, while pulp sci fi
are with us even today. Verne accused
magazines did not have big sales demo-

Wells of not being serious about techno-
graphics compared to the circulation of
logical and scientific speculation in his
major American magazines, the overall
science fiction, but using it for political

American magazine sales demographics
purposes, and Wells accused Verne of
compared with other countries was gi-
centering his stories on the nuts and
gantic, allowing these magazines to run
bolts without serious literary, political,
in the black on their minor slices of the
or social intent.

world’s biggest pie.

With hindsight, it’s easy enough to see

And while there was science fiction

198

Asimov’s
written and published in other lan-
of how American science fiction came to
guages, most of it, even Verne, was re-
rule the science fiction publishing world.

garded as another form of general litera-

* * *
ture, because genre sci fi as such didn’t

In the 1960s and 1970s, English lan-
much exist.

guage science fiction became more

Finally, very finally, American science

Transatlantic, thanks in part to the New
fiction of all three streams was written

Wave, which started in Britain and moved
in English, the closest thing to a
west to America. British writers of seri-
transnational language in the world. It
ous science fiction like Brian Aldiss, J.G.

may be arguable that Chinese, all di-

Ballard, and perhaps especially Michael
alects taken together, might be the first

Moorcock, were successful in America
language of more people than English,
without resorting to second-hand Ameri-
but by far English was and is the second
can characters or settings. And later,
language of more of the world’s popula-

British authors of Post Modern Space
tion than any other.

Opera were as successful in the United

Furthermore, while English was also

States with it as they were in England,
the first language of Australians, New
because, superficially at least, there was-

Zealanders, Britons, the Irish, and a ma-
n’t a question of American or British
jority of Canadians, if you added all of
characters at all.

them up together, America was and still

But English language science fiction
is by far the largest market in the world
continued to have the demographic mar-
for readers whose first language is Eng-
keting advantage, and whether written
lish.

by Americans, Britons, Canadians, Irish,

So much so that even many British
or Australians, science fiction and fanta-
science fiction writers who had a viable
sy written in English, unless it was set
home market still wanted to crack the
in a fairly distant future in outer space

American market, because that was
and perhaps even then, has had a not
where the bigger money was. Unlike au-
entirely subtle consensus Transatlantic
thors writing in other languages, they
and Anglo cultural and even pop-cultur-
could succeed because they didn’t have
al background.

to be translated.

There has been science fiction of liter-

Or at least not linguistically.

ary merit written in other languages all

But culturally many of the American
along, and even genre traditions in some

SF magazines wanted stories appealing
non-English-speaking countries with the
to American readers (hardly surprising).

cultural and pop-cultural backgrounds

This meant American central characters
of Russia, France, Japan, Germany, and
and/or settings, and the more commer-
so forth. But the English-speaking world
cially shrewd and less patriotic British
knows this literature only in English

SF writers played along and succeeded,
translation. Not much of it has been
at least with the genre stuff. When sci-
published in English translations, be-
ence fiction book publishing began to
cause not many American publishers are
flower in the 1950s and then became
equipped to make literary judgments in
economically dominant over science fic-
other languages, and for obvious reasons
tion magazine publishing bottom line-
they are not going to front the money for
wise, this trend followed, if anything
translations of books they have not yet
more so, since there was relatively more
bought.

money to be had for both writers and

However, of late, for several reasons,
publishers.

there has been a quiet slo mo evolution—

Call it literary English language impe-
or maybe it’s been going on longer, and
rialism, call it the power of the bottom
only now is this positive cosmopolitan
line, call it inevitable market demograph-
trend becoming more noticeable. There
ics—that is the brief down and dirty story
is now, and there has been, a diaspora of

On Books: Outside America

199

September/October 2017

American and British SF writers living
was divided between Italians and Slavs,
outside of America or Britain, going way
and chaos reigned because nothing else
back to Harry Harrison, Mack Reynolds,
seemed capable of doing so.

Arthur C. Clarke, and so forth. Most of

Into this mess march a bunch of what
them wrote their fiction as if they weren’t
might have been called anarchists led by
expatriates, generally setting it in the
the Futurist poet Gabriele D’Annunzio,

Anglo-American culture, with characters
who sort of ruled for fifteen chaotic
familiar to Anglo-American readers, be-
months, after which the governments of
cause wherever they were, they were

Italy and Yugoslavia formally recognized
writing for that demographic.

a Free State of Fiume. After much back

I myself, while living in France for
and forth and weird elections involving
over a decade, wrote a novel set entirely
communists, libertarians, Italian and
in Los Angeles and another set entirely

Croatian nationalists, fascists-to-be and
in the United States, and a third novel
more, four years later it was legally ab-
set mostly in Paris, but with American
sorbed by Italy.

lead characters as well as Russians. A

Too simple, you say? You want a little
significant portion of that book was set
more complexity? Fear not, Sterling
in the United States.

takes care of it. Pirate Utopia takes

But now something different is hap-
place in this little slice of turf and time.

pening. English is still the dominant in-

Well, not exactly. This is an alternate
ternational language, if anything even
history thereof. Well, sort of. That would
more so. But more and more science fic-
be a little too simple, wouldn’t it? You
tion and fantasy writers are writing in
could say it was a sort of Italian Magic

English, yet are extrapolating from quite

Surrealism written by an American liv-
different cultures.

ing in what was Fiume, and you’d be get-

Current examples being Pirate Utopia,
ting close.

by Bruce Sterling, now an American liv-

But not quite. The McGuffin of the
ing in Italy; Central Station, by Lavie Tid-

Italian Magic Surrealism is Futurism.

har, an Israeli living in London; The De-

Futurism sounds like some kind of sci-
vourers, by Indra Das, an Indian living in
ence fiction cult, and, among other things,

India; Binti, by Nnedi Okorafor, a Niger-
it sort of is. But for a short period in the
ian-American living in the United States.

twenties this weirdo crazy ideology real-

Why Bruce Sterling moved to Italy
ly existed, and Sterling has lots of mad-
and to Fiume in particular I have no
cap humorous fun with it. Ha. Ha. Ha.

idea, but it’s hard to believe that if he

But the Futurism of the first half of the
hadn’t he would have wanted to write or

1920s was an ideological forerunner of
could have written Pirate Utopia. What
the Italian Fascism of the 1930s, which
happened there in five short years of Fi-
was not so funny at all.

ume’s existence as a city state could only

It would take Bruce Sterling to ex-
have been written about by someone
plain what Futurism was and why it
who was at the very least a temporary
was both sinister and ridiculous, a mash-
homeboy.

up of a painting style, Nietzsche’s con-

I am not making this up, and up to a
cept of the Ubermensch, D’Annunzio’s
point neither is Sterling.

neo-anarchist political screeds and

The Free State of Fiume was one of
deeds, a kind of worship of steam-punk
those semi-independent city states left
reverse futuristic technology, pulp sci-
over and bargained for by various major
ence fiction before there was pulp sci-
feudal semi-nations. After World War I it
ence fiction, a Wagnerian lust for war
was formally recognized by the League
and physical power—a kind of spaced-
of Nations as an independent entity, sort
out version of Hitler’s dream of the Third
of, between Italy and Yugoslavia, which

Reich in his Lord of the Swastika in my
was created at the time. Its population
novel The Iron Dream.

200

Norman Spinrad

®

Sterling does this by pushing the real

Free State of Fiume and Futurism way
over the top into a cartoony surreal al-
ternate history parody of something that
was a parodic version of what would

SHEILA WILLIAMS

Editor
morph into Fascism in the first place.

Real historical personages become car-

EMILY HOCKADAY

Associate Editor
toon version of themselves, some playing
something like their historical roles,

DEANNA MCLAFFERTY

Editorial Assistant
some morphing into others entirely off

JAYNE KEISER
the wall. D’Annuzio is The Prophet. One

Typesetting Director

Guido Keller, a real WWI fighter plane

SUZANNE LEMKE
ace à la Herman Goering, becomes The

Assistant Typesetting Manager

Ace of Hearts, and so forth, but to make

KEVIN DORIS
things even more arbitrary, Lorenzo Sec-

Senior Typesetting Coordinator
ondari, a real life strongman, becomes

VICTORIA GREEN
the Minister of Vengeance Weapons un-

Senior Art Director
der his real name.

CINDY TIBERI

It gets further and further away from

Production Artist
straight-line historical characters as

JENNIFER RUTH
they transmogrify into other imaginary

Production Manager
roles. Houdini is an American spy. H.P.

ABIGAIL BROWNING

Lovecraft is his press agent. Mussolini is

Manager Subsidiary Rights and Marketing
shot in the balls by his ex-wife. Hitler is

CAROL DEMONT

Licensing/Digital Sales Manager
killed. Marconi is a Futurist politician.

What is going on here?

SANDY MARLOWE

Circulation Services

Well, there are two afterwords and an
interview with Sterling in this volume,

ADVERTISING SALES DEPARTMENT
printadvertising@dellmagazines.com
but as a critic I see it as part of the game

(Display and Classified Advertising)

to ignore them here. Should the reader

Subscriber Services: 203-866-6688 Option #2
read them before reading this short nov-

PETER KANTER
el? Maybe yes, maybe not. I didn’t, and

Publisher
for me the first half of the story was hard

BRUCE W. SHERBOW
going. It was all a grossly off-the-wall

Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
cartoon with characters so simplified

CHRISTINE BEGLEY
and shallow that they didn’t even exact-

Vice President, Editorial and Product Development
ly have names. They were vicious thugs

SUSAN MANGAN
building things like flying torpedoes and

Vice President, Design and Production
death rays, glorifying war, and declaring

ISAAC ASIMOV

Editorial Director (1977-1992)

themselves Supermen. Only halfway
through did Secondari become the lead

Stories from Asimov’s have won 53 Hugos and 28
character and a creature with emotional

Nebula Awards, and our editors have received 20
depth, after which the story became

Hugo Awards for Best Editor.

more comprehensible, the political as-

Please do not send us your manuscript until you’ve
pects of it somewhat more coherent, and
gotten a copy of our guidelines. Look for them
online at www.asimovs.com or send us a self-

Sterling’s intent somewhat more clear.

addressed, stamped business-size (#10) envelope,

I do admit to doing a little research
and a note requesting this information. Write “man-
uscript guidelines” in the bottom left-hand corner
upon reading Pirate Utopia, and I found,
of the outside envelope. We prefer electronic sub-
to my amazement, that the events in the
missions, but the address for manual submissions
novel, though seen in a funhouse mirror,
and for all editorial correspondence is Asimov’s

Science Fiction, 44 Wall Street, Suite 904, New York, actually happened, more or less. And Fu-NY 10005-2352. While we’re always looking for
turism, while not as extreme as depicted,
new writers, please, in the interest of time-saving,
find out what we’re looking for, and how to pre-

On Books: Outside America
pare it, before submitting your story.

September/October 2017
really was a proto-Fascist Communist
pages and pages devoted to lesser

Anarchist Narcissistic Ubermenschen
awards. You pays your money and you
witch’s brew on acid.

takes yer choice, but as a critic I didn’t

It seems to be, without reference to the
have to. But if I did, if what I was looking
afterwords in the book, that Bruce Ster-
for was good fiction to read and nothing
ling was exploring Futurism and the
else, I wouldn’t.

Free State of Fiume in the only way pos-

Be that as it may, Binti, though by the
sible, with a novel that was an utter ex-
rules a novella, and not a novel, is ar-
aggeration of an historical reality that
guably worth the money standing as a
was already surreal in the real world, a
book alone. In addition to its original
kind of test to destruction, a surface and
publication online at Tor.com, it has been
phony enthusiasm for its Pirate Utopia
released as a paperback by the same
beneath which is a psychohistorical ex-
company. As far as I know, nothing quite
plication, à la, well, The Iron Dream,
like this has ever been written and pub-
which Sterling does mention as relevant
lished in English.

in his interview.

Nnedi Okorafor is not an African

Why an American writing in English

American whose ancestral and cultural
chose to write a novel like this, set in an
history is rooted in American slavery
obscure slice of European history in a
and its three centuries of cultural evolu-
small Italian city, I don’t know. Maybe
tion. She is a Nigerian American, and
because he knew about it from living in
her family and cultural roots are deep

Fiume and saw it as a way to deal with
and wide in Africa, as can be gleaned

Futurism, which, though temporally ob-
from this novella. What is more, in a way
scure, had wider general cultural and
much more, the heroine of the title is
historical significance than just its epit-
neither generically African nor Nigerian
ome in The Pirate Utopia in the short-
but neo-Namibian.

lived Free State of Fiume.

About all I, and I suppose most other

American culture, history, and demo-

Americans, know about Namibia is what
graphics being what they are, it’s only

I read in Thomas Pynchon’s V, where the
natural that while this trend has been

German imperial colonization is a sec-
accelerated of late, there have long been
ondary plot. Binti is not about that. Bin-

African Americans writing science fic-
ti is not about Namibia at all. Binti is set tion and fantasy grounded in their own
in a far future galactic multi-species civ-
culture. But that culture is African
ilization, not in Namibia, not in Africa,

American culture, not African culture,
not on Earth at all, or a future set meek-
for Africa is perhaps at least as diverse
ly in our Solar System.

in culture as Europe.

Nnedi Okorafor has taken Namibian

And Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti is some-
culture, religion, consciousness, beliefs,
thing else again. I came across Binti in
and geology as the template for an ex-

Nebula Awards Showcase 2017 because it
trapolation of a complex, sophisticated,
won the novella Nebula. Before I get
clade of star-faring cultures and species
into Binti— the best thing in an antholo-
as experienced by Binti, who is a neo-
gy that has several good stories, not sur-

Nambian culturally and mentally
prising since all of the complete stories in
maybe, but has never even set foot on
it were Nebula winners, or nominees—I
the Earth or even heard of Africa.

feel it my unpleasant duty as a former

This would be a kind of post-modern
president of SFWA and current reviewer
space opera if it weren’t so serious in
to warn potential readers that one third
literary, psychological, and anthropolog-
of this eighteen-dollar anthology is not
ical intent, so well written, so carefully
complete stories but excerpts from nov-
mimetic in its mandatory use of rubber
els, SFWA’s self-congratulation, the his-
science. This is updated full-bore sci-
tory of the Nebula, lists of past winners,
ence fiction. Imagine Larry Niven’s

202

Norman Spinrad

Asimov’s
franchised universe written by Poul An-
el. Central Station is the only novel writ-
derson or Brian Aldiss if they were
ten in English that is mostly set in a fu-
writing as Africans. Or not. I have nev-
ture Tel Aviv. Central Station is also one
er really read anything like Binti be-
of the best, most unusual, and convinc-
fore, and I wonder if or when I will able
ing depictions of human-cyborg-robot-AI
to read something like it again.

interactions I’ve read or heard of. And

Binti has never been off her home

Central Station does something so radical
planet or really much besides her arid
with points of view and structure that at
local turf, modeled on Namibia but not
first I thought that the text had never

Namibia, when she gains entrance to a
been copy edited because it seemed like
far away and prestigious multi species
such a mess.

university. Like the Namibian outback,

Central Station itself is a huge tall
where she comes from is so dry that peo-
space ship terminal in between Israeli
ple coat and clean themselves with a
and Palestinian quarters in a Tel Aviv
special kind of mud. This will be a key
maybe two centuries or so in our fu-

McGuffin in the story when she leaves
ture—Tidhar doesn’t really specify. The
her family and her ship is hijacked by

Solar System is pretty well inhabited,
jellyfish-like aliens. They are on a mis-
it’s well in range of the technologically
sion to retrieve the stinger of their chief
possible, and the politics and demo-
that rests as an exhibit in a university
graphics are pretty familiar. We have
museum and Binti, through no choice of
semi-libertarian asteroids, Chinese and
her own, becomes the political and cul-
other colonies on Mars, the Jovian and
tural go-between.

Saturnian moons, and so forth.

And unlike most science fiction, family,

Tel Aviv itself is a cosmopolitan city,
extended family, and Binti’s relations with
with Jews and Arabs having more or less
her family, and her consciousness influ-
buried the hatchet, and Central Station
enced thereby while not entirely central
being a, well, central station for Solar
to the novella, are an important subplot.

System traffic, is full of transient and

For sure there have been many, many sci-
permanent people from all over Earth
ence fiction and fantasy novels and sto-
and the Solar System. The quarters sur-
ries in which the central character’s fami-
rounding it, or rather of which it is the
ly relationships are important, but it’s
center, with transients from everywhere,
also almost always the successful adoles-
scruffy, lower and middle class popula-
cent rebellion writ older, the escape from
tions, shops, cafés, markets, and so forth,
the family rules, mores, and cultures.

are the sort of milieu to be found around

But in Binti it’s quite the opposite.

major railway stations in contemporary

Binti does break family rules and collec-

Europe, and for all I know, contemporary
tive desires when she goes off to univer-

Tel Aviv itself.

sity, and it’s always worrisome in the

Most of the central characters are
back of her mind. But what she worries
three or so generations of the Jones,
about is whether and how she will be

Chong, and Chow families, all folks of
welcomed back into the fold, which is not
the Central Station neighborhoods and
something she is fleeing from but some-
intermingling socially and romantically
thing she desires.

with each other since way back when,

Lavie Tidhar is an Israeli living in
and most of them are completely human.

England, and family relations are front

But in this future, there are various
and center in Central Station more so
degrees of sentient robots and cyborgs.

than in Binti. This is an unusual and

And not only that, but there are entities
groundbreaking novel, at least for me.

who are entirely non-physical software

Central Station is that rara avis, a novel
from the git-go, superior to humans in
cobbled together from previously pub-
the Artificial Intelligence sense, but tru-
lished stories that really works as a nov-
ly sentient beings, consciousnesses with

On Books: Outside America

203

September/October 2017
emotional lives, however alien they may

Is a double line space like this.

seem or be.

So much for the so-called real world.

This is by now a time-honored and use-

But cyberspace and virtual reality game
ful convention, and readers understand
space have gone a long, long way. More
it. Tidhar starts by using it, but sometime
people than not have avatars in them,
along the way, he stops. Viewpoints jump
and not only live there much of the time,
back and forth without line breaks, and
but can make money there that can be
even the action in different threads and
transferred into quotidian market reality.

time-frames moves along without them

In addition, everyone, or almost every-
not only on the same page, but back and
one, is plugged most all of the time into
forth between different scenes, too.

the Conversation, a combination of Face-

What the fuck is this? was my first re-
book, Twitter, real-time overlays and
action. What gibberish. What an awful
something close to electronic telepathy
amateurish mess.

cum-Wikipedia on steroids, so that

But as the interweaving stories pro-
everyone is inside everyone’s head, not
gressed, I finally got it. Not gibberish.

one on one, but communally.

Not an amateurish mess. Genius literary

All this makes for very fertile ground
invention.

for short stories. When it comes to craft-

I have long written and said that third
ing a novel out of them, though, an over-
person or first person prose style is the
lying structure is needed, so that
only way to put the reader’s conscious-
episodes that stand by themselves can
ness inside the consciousnesses of the
combine to create a true novel with emo-
viewpoint characters. Method Writing, I
tional depth, thematic continuity, and a
call it, after the Stanislavsky Acting tech-
satisfying epiphany.

nique, and it’s still useful and valid.

Tidhar accomplishes this in a way not

But in Center Station Lavie Tidhar
exactly common to Anglo-American sci-
does something congruent with form
ence fiction by interweaving multiple
that works brilliantly in this novel be-
love stories and stories of familial inter-
cause of the stories he is telling. The
action, all of which could stand alone.

Conversation is a multi-consciousness

But in Center Station the novel, as in
mish-mash in the conscious perceptions

Center Station the neighborhood, they
of everyone, attention jumping back and
affect each other and come to satisfying
forth between times and memories, and
individual as well as overall conclusions.

Tidhar jumps around in points of view,

But not linearly.

non-linear time packets, ongoing bits of

Tidhar starts to do something stylisti-
intertwined story lines, because that is
cally toward the middle of the novel so
the nature of human consciousness in
daring and radically unique that at first,
this fictional future.

and indeed maybe for dozens of pages, I

For once the medium really is the mes-
thought it was an amazingly sloppy print-
sage.

er’s error. The novel is written in multi-

But I hasten to warn my fellow writers,
ple third person viewpoints, something I
including Lavie Tidhar, do not do this
do all of the time, and while Phil Dick
without a fitting thematic and dramatic
and I may have introduced this form to
reason. After I wrote Bug Jack Barron in
science fiction way back in the 1960s, by
the unique style the portrayal of the view-
now it’s commonplace.

point characters’ consciousnesses re-

But what Lavie Tidhar does with it in
quired, I was told that I should keep writ-

Center Station certainly is not. What I
ing in that style. No way! That specific
do, and what almost everyone does when
style was the consciousness style of the
going from one third person viewpoint to
characters, not a style in which to write
another
anything else. Same thing applies to Tid-
har’s use of radical form in Center Station.

204

Norman Spinrad

Asimov’s

The medium also has to be chosen to
fiction written by Indian writers in Eng-
fit the nature of the message.

lish for an Indian readership and origi-

It’s hard to imagine an American sci-
nally published in India is that there is a
ence fiction writer grounded in Ameri-
larger potential readership for English
can culture writing a novel like this even
language literature in India than in the
if the setting were moved to Grand Cen-
rest of the world combined. In the near
tral Station in New York. Yes, Tidhar
future, perhaps even already, Indian
didn’t have to be an Israeli expat writing

English language SF written by Indians
in English to invent this thus-far unique
will become commercially viable in the
form, but the story he uses it to tell is,
home market alone.

well, Israeli-European cosmopolitan. Not

And easily exportable, if it is as good
just the cast of characters, but the cen-
as The Devourers.

trality of family relationships.

It may or may not be an acquired taste,

Indra Das’s The Devourers, on the oth-
but if it is, I have acquired a taste for the
er hand, is a novel written in English by
real culture and popular culture of con-
an Indian that is set entirely in India,
temporary India thanks to this novel.

past and present, with the human char-

The frame story takes place there, and
acters at least denizens thereof. Perhaps
specifically Kolkata. This is not the grim,
it is not insignificant that this book was
horribly overpopulated city with people
first published in India by Penguin
sleeping everywhere in the streets,

Books India and then in the United
which was its reputation in the United

States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random

States and Britain elsewhere when it

House, a division of Penguin Random
was “Calcutta,” as in the Black Hole

House, because a genre science fiction
thereof. This is a complex depiction of
and fantasy imprint publishing a novel

Kolkata that could only be written by an
like this in the United States might have

Indian, and probably by one who has
required some high corporate backing.

lived in the city and loves it.

Not because it isn’t good. It’s excellent.

Alok, a college professor of history, is

Not because it isn’t a fantasy novel—it
our first person viewpoint character in
is. But that the nested stories are all set
mostly the middle and lower class neigh-
in India and all the human characters
borhoods of contemporary Kolkata, made
are Indian and that the inhuman ones
very real, very down home, very pop cul-
are not even exactly European can’t be
tural with fast food joints, sleazy cafés,
considered a plus. The Devourers reads
more upscale bars and restaurants, yet
like a novel primarily written for an In-
exotically Indian with cults, religious
dian readership, which it apparently
ceremonies, and so forth abounding.

originally was.

Alok meets a man—or creature—who

Think about what that may mean for
insists on remaining nameless for much
the future of English language SF. India
of the book—who claims to be a were-
has a population of something like a bil-
wolf, fascinates Alok intellectually and
lion and a half people who speak many
in a very subtle manner sexually, and
mother tongues, and it would be an un-
gives him several old manuscripts to
derstatement to say that many of them
translate into modern language.

are mutually incomprehensible. That is

These were written in the deep past by
why English is the lingua franca and
his human mother, who was raped by his
second language for at least half a billion
father, one of the devourers of the title—
people—more than the population of the
virtually immortal shape shifters with

United States, Canada, Australia, and
human avatars and monstrous avatars

New Zealand combined—and probably
who hunt humans, kill them, and eat
at least half of those who read for plea-
them, and do not even comprehend the
sure can read fiction in English.

concepts of morality or caritas.

What this already means for general

At the center of the novel is a kind of

On Books: Outside America

205

September/October 2017
love-hate story between the mother and

The Devourers is a fantasy novel about
father, rapist and victim, hunter and
a fantasy Indian past framed in a realis-
hunted, human and monster. Encapsu-
tically depicted Indian present. Could an
lating this is the story of the slow motion

American writer have written such a
seduction of Alok by the their near im-
novel by doing the necessary research
mortal half-breed son in modern India
and/or spending some time in contempo-
which begins intellectually and ends up
rary India? Maybe, maybe not. I did this
becoming physical.

myself in Mexica with pure research, but

Das not only writes very well on a so-
that was set entirely in the Mexican past
phisticated literary prose level and mys-
that no one could visit. Same thing with
tical philosophical level Indian style; he

The Druid King. A nd as long as you did
does all this without shying away from
the research well, no one alive could say
many scenes of detailed vivid violent
you got it wrong, and all the more so
and cannibalistic gore without the book
when what you are writing is fantasy
descending into genre horror, no mean
and not historical fiction.

feat. And he does the same and even

But The Devourers is not merely a fan-
more so with absolutely precise and de-
tasy set in ancient Indian wrapped in a
tailed descriptions of sexual carnality,
realistic depiction of contemporary In-
human and human, human and mon-
dia. It is a novel that arose from Indian
ster, heterosexual and homosexual, not
culture, mythos, mores, and conscious-
excluding the key rape scene, without
ness, at once alien and somehow familiar
any of it descending into pornography.

to the Anglo-American reader and par-

And in the doing of this he uses the
ticularly the SF reader.

word “fuck” frequently and precisely as

We connect with the common humani-
the correct verb for the physical act itself.

ty but are fascinated and enlightened by

This may seem like something trivial, but
meeting the Other. And after all, is that
may be a significant cultural marker of
not one of the central pleasures we seek
the difference between Indian and Anglo-
in the reading of fantasy and science fic-

American literary and sexual cultures.

tion? ❍

206

Norman Spinrad

SF CONVENTIONAL CALENDAR
ow that each SF Conventional Calendar has to cover two months instead of one, space to make rec-ommendations is limited. A good guide for Asimovians is to look for cons described as “general” or “literary.” Plan now for social weekends with your favorite SF authors, editors, artists, and fellow fans. For Nan explanation of our con(vention)s, a sample of SF folksongs, and info on fanzines and clubs, send me an SASE (self-addressed, stamped #10 [business] envelope) at 10 Hill #22-L, Newark NJ 07102. The hot line is (973) 242-5999. If a machine answers (with a list of the week’s cons), leave a message and I’ll call back on my nickel. When writing cons, send an SASE. For free listings, tell me of your con five months out.

Look for me at cons behind the Filthy Pierre badge, playing a musical keyboard. —Erwin S. Strauss AUGUST 2017

25–27—BuboniCon. For info, write: 933 San Mateo Blvd. NE, #500-208, Albuquerque NM 87108. Or phone: (973) 242-5999 (10 a.m. to 10 p.m., not collect). (Web) bubonicon.com. (E-mail) info@bubonicon.com. Con will be held in: Albuquerque NM (if city omitted, same as in address) at the Marriott Uptown. Guests will include: C. J. Cherryh, Sherwood Smith. General SF, fantasy and horror con.

26–27—OnyxCon. onyxcon.com. Atlanta GA. The impact of the African diaspora on the realms of the imagination.

SEPTEMBER 2017

1–4—DragonCon. (404) 669-0773; dragoncon.org. Hyatt Regency, Atlanta GA. Huge event; focus on media SF, comics and gaming.

1–4—North American Discworld Con. nadwcon2017.org. New Orleans LA. The world of Terry Pratchett. “Join Us in Genua” theme.

8–9—TitanCon. titancon.com. Wellington Park Hotel, Belfast Northern Ireland. SF, fantasy and horror literature, media and gaming.

8–10—PotterVerse. potterversecon.com. Renaissance Harborplace, Baltimore MD. Celebrity guests planned. Everything Harry Potter.

9–16—Milford Writers’ Conference. milfordsf.co.uk. Milford UK. One of the most prestigious writers’ conferences.

14—Ig Nobel Awards. improbable.com/ig. Cambridge (Boston) MA. Humorous scientific awards that make you laugh, then think.

15–18—HawaiiCon. hawaiicon.com. Muana Lani Bay HI. A Roddenberry Adventures event; science, cosplay, gaming and more.

16—Israel National SF, Fantasy and Horror Con. iconfestival.org.il. Tel Aviv Israel. Fair warning: the Web site is all in Hebrew.

21–24—Oxonmoot. tolkiensociety.org/events/oxonmoot-2017. St. Antony’s College, Oxford UK. The life and work of J. R. R. Tolkien.

22–24—FenCon, Box 701448, Dallas TX 75370. fencon.org. Westin DFW, Irving (Dallas) TX. Kevin J. Anderson, Tom Kidd.

22–24—Poland National SF, Fantasy and Horror Con. copernicon.pl. Torun Poland.

22–30—Thin Air. thinairwinnipeg.ca. Winnipeg MB. Writers’ workshop.

29–Oct. 1—Archon, Box 440332, St. Louis MO 63144. archonstl.org. Collinsville IL (St. Louis MO). Seanan McGuire (Mira Grant).

29–Oct. 1—Arcana. arcanacon.com. St. Paul MN. Celebrating the weird, the macabre and the dark fantastic.

29–Oct. 1—Fantasy Con. hwsevents.co.uk/shop-2. Bull Hotel, Peterborough UK. Long-running con celebrating fantasy.

29–Oct. 1—EerieCon, Box 412, Buffalo NY 14226. eeriecon.org. Grand Island NY. V. Gischler, K. R. A. DeCandido, D. Schweitzer.

30—Twin Cities Zine Fest. tczinefest.org. Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis MN. For those who like to make zines.

OCTOBER 2017

4–6—Tennessee Valley Interstellar Workshop. tviw.us. Embassy Suites Downtown, Huntsville AL. Space development.

6–8—CapClave. capclave.org. Hilton Washington DC North, Gaithersburg MD. Ken Liu, Neil Clarke. Strong literary emphasis.

6–8—ConVolution. con-volution.com. San Ramon (San Francisco) CA. “Redshirts, Sidekicks and Minions.” Media SF/fantasy/horror.

6–8—ConTraflow. contraflowscifi.org. Kenner (New Orleans) LA. Alicia and Timothy Dardar (Bad Wolf Bar and Grill), Sam Fleagal.

6–8—Imaginarium. entertheimaginarium.com. Ramada Plaza Hotel, Louisville KY. Dragonlance author Michael Williams.

6–9—Ireland Discworld Con. idwcon.org. International Hotel, Dublin Ireland. The life and work of Terry Pratchett.

12–15—BoucherCon. bouchercon.com. Sheraton Centre, Toronto ON. L. Penney, M. Abbott, C. Brookmyre, others. Mystery fiction.

13–15—The Continuum (formerly ConClave). continuumcon.org. Wayne (Detroit) MI. Jim C. Hines, John Wick, singer Tom Smith.

13–15—CanCon. can-con.org. Sheraton, Ottawa ON. Sheila Gilbert. Canadian content is speculative art and literature.

13–15—James River Writers’ Conference. jamesriverwriters.org. Convention Center, Richmond VA. Writers’ workshop.

13–15—Ireland National SF, Fantasy and Horror Con. octocon.com. Camden Court Hotel, Dublin Ireland. Dan and Nik Abnet.

20–22—ValleyCon. valleycon.com. Baymont Inn (formerly Best Western Doublewood), Fargo ND. James Lucena, Troy Denning.

AUGUST 2018

16–20—WorldCon 76, Box 61363, Sunnyvale CA 94088. worldcon76.org. San Jose CA. Spider Robinson. WorldCon for 2018. $190.