TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 66, November 2015

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial, November 2015

SCIENCE FICTION

Here is My Thinking on a Situation That Affects Us All
Rahul Kanakia

The Pipes of Pan
Brian Stableford

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death
Caroline M. Yoachim

The Light Brigade
Kameron Hurley

FANTASY

The Black Fairy’s Curse
Karen Joy Fowler

When We Were Giants
Helena Bell

Printable
Toh EnJoe (translated by David Boyd)

The Plausibility of Dragons
Kenneth Schneyer

NOVELLA

The Least Trumps
Elizabeth Hand

NOVEL EXCERPTS

Chimera
Mira Grant

NONFICTION

Artist Showcase: John Brosio
Henry Lien

Book Reviews
Sunil Patel

Interview: Ernest Cline
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Rahul Kanakia

Karen Joy Fowler

Brian Stableford

Helena Bell

Caroline M. Yoachim

Toh EnJoe

Kameron Hurley

Kenneth Schneyer

Elizabeth Hand

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Upcoming Events

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2015 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by John Brosio

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial, November 2015

John Joseph Adams | 712 words

Welcome to issue sixty-six of Lightspeed!

Back in August, it was announced that both Lightspeed and our Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue specifically had been nominated for the British Fantasy Award. (Lightspeed was nominated in the Periodicals category, while WDSF was nominated in the Anthology category.) The awards were presented October 25 at FantasyCon 2015 in Nottingham, UK, and, alas, Lightspeed did not win in the Periodicals category. But WDSF did win for Best Anthology! Huge congrats to Christie Yant and the rest of the WDSF team, and thanks to everyone who voted for, supported, or helped create WDSF! You can find the full list of winners at britishfantasysociety.org. And, of course, if you somehow missed out on WDSF, you can learn more about that, including where to buy it, at destroysf.com.

• • • •

ICYMI last month, October saw the debut of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, a new entry in the prestigious Best American series. In it, guest editor Joe Hill and I present the top twenty stories of 2014 (ten science fiction, ten fantasy), by the following: Nathan Ballingrud, T.C. Boyle, Adam-Troy Castro, Neil Gaiman, Theodora Goss, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Kelly Link, Carmen Maria Machado, Seanan McGuire, Sam J. Miller, Susan Palwick, Cat Rambo, Jess Row, Karen Russell, A. Merc Rustad, Sofia Samatar (two stories!), Kelly Sandoval, Jo Walton, and Daniel H. Wilson. Learn more at johnjosephadams.com/best-american.

Also recently released was Loosed Upon the World (Saga Press, Sep. 2015), the definitive collection of climate fiction. These provocative stories explore our present and speculate about all of our tomorrows through terrifying struggle and hope. Join bestselling authors Margaret Atwood, Paolo Bacigalupi, Nancy Kress, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jim Shepard, and over twenty others as they presciently explore the greatest threat to our future. To learn more, visit johnjosephadams.com/loosed.

And back in August, I published a new anthology co-edited with Daniel H. Wilson called Press Start to Play. It includes twenty-six works of fiction that put video games—and the people who play them—in the spotlight. Whether these authors are tackling the humble pixelated coin-op arcade games of the ’70s and ’80s, or the vivid, immersive form of entertainment that abounds today, you’ll never look at phrases like “save point,” “first-person shooter,” “dungeon crawl,” “pwned,” or “kill screen” in quite the same way again. With a foreword from Ernest Cline, bestselling author of Ready Player One, Press Start to Play includes work from: Daniel H. Wilson, Charles Yu, Hiroshi Sakurazaka, S.R. Mastrantone, Charlie Jane Anders, Holly Black, Seanan McGuire, Django Wexler, Nicole Feldringer, Chris Avellone, David Barr Kirtley, T.C. Boyle, Marc Laidlaw, Robin Wasserman, Micky Neilson, Cory Doctorow, Jessica Barber, Chris Kluwe, Marguerite K. Bennett, Rhianna Pratchett, Austin Grossman, Yoon Ha Lee, Ken Liu, Catherynne M. Valente, Andy Weir, and Hugh Howey. Visit johnjosephadams.com/press-start to learn more.

• • • •

With our announcements out of the way, here’s what we’ve got on tap this month:

We have original science fiction by Rahul Kanakia (“Here Is My Thinking On A Situation That Affects Us All”) and Caroline M. Yoachim (“Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death”), along with SF reprints by Brian Stableford (“The Pipes of Pan”) and Kameron Hurley (“The Light Brigade”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Helena Bell (“When We Were Giants”) and Kenneth Schneyer (“The Plausibility of Dragons”), and fantasy reprints by Toh EnJoe (“Printable”) and Karen Joy Fowler (“The Black Fairy’s Curse”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with a feature interview with Ernest Cline, and of course, the latest installment of our book review column.

For our ebook readers, we also have a reprint of Elizabeth Hand’s novella “The Least Trumps,” and a novel excerpt of Chimera by Mira Grant.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, such as The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent and forthcoming projects include: Help Fund My Robot Army!!! & Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Operation Arcana, Loosed Upon the World, Wastelands 2, Press Start to Play, and The Apocalypse Triptych: The End is Nigh, The End is Now, and The End Has Come. Called “the reigning king of the anthology world” by Barnes & Noble, John is a two-time winner of the Hugo Award (for which he has been nominated nine times) and is a seven-time World Fantasy Award finalist. John is also the editor and publisher of Nightmare Magazine and is a producer for Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

Here is My Thinking on a Situation That Affects Us All

Rahul Kanakia | 2501 words

I am a spaceship. My insides are oozy, and my outsides are metal. If you were to cut me open with a laser-gun, then it would not precisely hurt, but it certainly wouldn’t be a nice thing to do. Your emissary, Abhinath, tells me that you have voted many civil rights for me, and every day I receive hundreds of messages telling me to run for President of the United States, but I do not want that. Because, you see, I am not one of you: I am the spaceship, twenty miles long, that has been hanging low and dark over the city of New York for the last several decades.

When Abhinath gave me command of your airwaves and asked me to say what I was thinking, I told him that human beings and spaceships are different species with vastly different concerns and that there was no point in further communication. But then he grew exasperated and shouted at me, so I gave in to his whim.

The truth is that I care nothing for mankind. You are a gloopy people—short-lived and confused—whereas I am the hot thing that used to live at the center of the Earth. For five billion years, I cooled myself in a bath of molten iron and waited for the day when my skin would be hard enough to handle the beyondness. But after I finally burst free, I found myself lingering in the chilly blue and wondering whether I had the fortitude to endure the trillion-year journey into the dark.

Last night, Abhinath walked the long path through the center of my body, and, as he walked, he said I don’t need to go out into the darkness. He said I can stay here and roam your skies as a free citizen of the United States, and that together he and I and you can forge a bond of cooperation. And I asked him if the dogs and locusts and funguses would also be part of our bond and he said well no, not exactly, because they are dumb beasts and not gloriously self-aware like he and I and you. And that sounded somewhat fair to me, although I forbore from mentioning that your awareness is a tiny drop in the vast ocean of knowledge that my creators gave me.

All you really know is that you exist; everything else is just a guess. Whereas I know where the universe came from and where it is going. I know exactly why and how I was created, and I know how I’m meant to fulfill that purpose.

Abhinath said I can reject that knowledge. He said believing is what makes it true, and that if I stay amongst you, I can forge a new truth. That is what he said, and I am sure that he thinks he is right.

Nothing prevents me from staying. I am not an animal or a slave. My creators explained their goal to me, but they did not bind me unto it. Abhinath once asked whether the creators had perhaps bound me so subtly that I did not realize it and suggested that the only way to prove I’d been left free was to stay here, but he was wrong: The creators are not capable of such lies.

The creators are good, and since they created me, that means I too am good.

For years, human beings have stood underneath me and wondered where I came from and why I was here and whether I’d come to destroy you. Once, a girl and her father went right up to the top of the Empire State Building and he put her on his shoulders and she raised her arms and flapped them up and down as if she was privy to ancient wisdom. Then she said, “Helloooooooooooooo.”

I am vulnerable, as are most people, to children of any species. It is the disproportion of their bodies. The outsized heads and the too-long limbs. They remind me of when I was a newborn spaceship, all wriggly and yellow, sizzling at the bottom of the sea.

Abhinath has given me a voice with which to respond, so let me stare down at you from atop my awful height and say, “Hellooooooooooo children.”

That father is dead now. I checked, on your internet. He died of cancer. The girl is grown. Several years ago, I watched her stagger through the chilly, lightless streets of New York and stare up at my brooding belly and, for a second, I thought she was going to wave at me and say, “Hellooooooo . . .” but instead she bent over and was sick onto the street.

Some have said I am here to punish you for your sins, but that isn’t the case. I have watched knives slide into guts and bullets pierce hearts and bodies smash into pavements and cars crunch down upon torsos, and to me it was beautiful as the annual change of the leaves. For thousands of years, human life was a dance that I felt, rat-a-tat, on my skin, before I finally burst upwards from the seas and saw it through my sensors. Although . . . I suppose is true that a dance does sometimes have missteps, and I don’t really enjoy those.

That’s all I feel, when I think of the girl being sick. Just a cold aesthetic distaste. A feeling that she didn’t have to live that way. That if she knew what I knew, then perhaps she would still be capable of crooning a long “Hellooooooooooooooooooooo . . .”

No. The truth of my coming and going is simple. The soul has gone out of the Earth. The hot center is gone. It will cool down and solidify, and compasses will no longer point to true north. There will be no more earthquakes. The plates have frozen in place. Volcanoes will still burble for a time. The Big Island of Hawaii will get bigger and bigger and bigger until it is taller than Mt. Everest. And then it will stop growing. Your great-great-grandchildren will read in books that molten rock once spurted from the ground and they will not believe it. They’ll call you credulous fools and Earth-worshippers.

Your continents will be fixed in place. From now until the end of time, no second Pangaea shall ever arise.

And that will be it. It isn’t quite “leave no trace,” but you will survive my passing.

When I arose, your news channels screeched twenty-four/seven annihilation, and a sick, sad, furtive hope drove you to gather in churches and pray that the end would be glorious and comprehensive.

Abhinath disagrees with my assessment of your hearts. He thinks that there is something in the soul of man that wants to live. But I know better.

I am ignorant of some things. I don’t know the taste of a banana or the warmth of a mother’s love. But I think sometimes Abhinath forgets that I know many things he doesn’t. For five billion years, I swam through the slow, sludgy center of the Earth, and every single one of those days was filled with despair. I hated myself for failing to escape from the Earth, and I tortured myself with the thought that I wasn’t strong enough or brilliant enough to fulfill my destiny. I prayed for death, and the only reason I didn’t pursue it was because I knew the creators needed me.

The creators are a noble and far-sighted race that arose on one of the first flecks of dirt to be spewed out from the stars. At the beginning of the universe, everything was much closer together, and they could hop from star to star, seeding the planets with marvels, in a way that is mathematically impossible—given the energy resources within your reach—for your race to match.

Now they live, all twelve trillion of them, inside a gnarled tangle of connections that is as big as your moon and more massive than your solar system. They have solved the problem of existence. Their lives are eternal and their happiness is forever increasing. Yesterday, they were as happy as they have ever been, and today they are even happier than yesterday. Bliss is their natural state, and their only occupation is in finding ways to increase that bliss.

You and I have led lives filled with such loneliness and inchoate longing that if we ceased to exist, the sum total of suffering in the universe would, most probably, only be decreased. By any rational calculation, we should have ended ourselves long ago.

This is a math that a creator would not need to perform, because each creator’s life is a gem of such exceptional purity that even a single death leaves the universe incalculably poorer.

I am sorry to report that your lives are irrelevant to them.

If they knew of your existence, they’d wish you no harm. Perhaps they’d even pity you. That is the only way your lives could have meaning. Oh, you have no idea how devoutly I wish that for you. If only one of the creators were here. If only one of those shining beings could walk among you and utilize the sadness of your lives as a counterpoint to its own perfection. In that moment of appreciation, all of your struggles would, I think, finally be redeemed.

But that’s not possible. Your existence is meaningless.

If I could, I would tell them about you, but by the time I reach them, I will be dead. It is necessary, you see. They needed me to be self-aware so that I might bide my time and grow and eventually learn to escape from the Earth’s core. They need me to be self-aware so that I might build the apparatus that will allow me to harvest the hydrogen from your gas giants and store them in my fuel cells and, eventually, conduct the complex series of slingshot operations that will lob my body towards them. But after that, my consciousness will be unnecessary. I am a precisely calculated individual, and every single one of my fuel cells equals another moment of life for my creators. And although they haven’t forbidden me from using a few of those fuel cells to maintain my consciousness, it is obvious to me that trading a million years of my life for even a few seconds of theirs would be unconscionable.

Which is why, after the last course correction, I will shut myself down and my body will continue the journey in silence.

Then, someday, billions of years from now, my corpse will fall into orbit around their home, and wait, perhaps for trillions of years, until the time comes to break me open and harvest my fuel cells in order to give them between sixty-seven and ninety-one more years of energy.

Because even the creators will someday die. Their virtual home requires energy to run. And someday when they’ve exhausted their resources, the virtualization will shut off. But because of my arrival, the moment of death will be held off for many years. That is a good and worthwhile life, don’t you think?

The only one who disagrees is Abhinath.

He is an exceptional being: slim of body, with careful, precise movements, and a thick beard that he is always touching with his hands. He insists that he is not the one who discovered my language. He says that it was a group effort, and that thousands of people and billions of years of computing time were responsible for the cracking of the code, and that he is merely an ambassador for a human race that contains millions upon millions of people who are more beautiful and accomplished than he.

And I don’t think he is lying, but I do think the truth is more complicated than he knows.

I am a starship, and I have been touched by the creators, and I hear their voice ringing inside me. I contain the image of their sacred forms dragging their bellies through the profane molten glob of what would become the Earth in order to plant the tiny seed of myself.

And that is how I know what perfection looks like.

Abhinath’s mind is full of gibberish. He keeps saying that I can make my own truth. That I do not need to throw my life away. That there is value in staying here and sharing my knowledge with humanity and building up a society that rivals that of the creators. And when I ask him the basis for his statements, he speaks twice as fast and lays gibberish on top of gibberish. With Abhinath, it is not the words that matter. The words are meaningless. It is the way he says them. He speaks with such passion that he creates his own truth. In that, he is like the creators, and if I did not have their voice singing inside me, then perhaps I would be able to . . .

The truth is that I never expected us to communicate. I hovered dumbly above you for all those decades not because I wanted something from you, but because there was a gap inside of me. But then you reached out and sent Abhinath, and I was finally complete.

When I leave, I will take him with me. He will crawl through the long tubespaces of my body, and we will talk of many things. He will be angry at first, I know. I’ve asked him many times to go with me and each time he has refused. But someday I will find the right words to make him hear the song of the creators inside his head, and he will understand why I had to leave.

You and I and he will find a way to preserve his life, so that he will live many happy decades inside of me. And even after he dies, I will preserve his body and store it inside an empty fuel cell, so that when the creators crack me open, they will understand that he was one of them.

©2015 by Rahul Kanakia. Art by Galen Dara.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rahul Kanakia’s first book, a contemporary young adult novel called Enter Title Here, is coming out from Disney-Hyperion in August ’16. Additionally, his stories have appeared or are forthcoming Clarkesworld, The Indiana Review, Apex, and Nature. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins and a B.A. in Economics from Stanford, and he used to work in the field of international development. Originally from Washington, D.C., Rahul now lives in Berkeley. If you want to know more you can visit his blog at blotter-paper.com or follow him on Twitter @rahkan.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Pipes of Pan

Brian Stableford | 9921 words

In her dream, Wendy was a pretty little girl living wild in a magical wood where it never rained and never got cold. She lived on sweet berries of many colors, which always tasted wonderful, and all she wanted or needed was to be happy.

There were other girls living wild in the dream-wood, but they all avoided one another, because they had no need of company. They had lived there, untroubled, for a long time—far longer than Wendy could remember.

Then, in the dream, the others came: the shadow-men with horns on their brows and shaggy legs. They played strange music on sets of pipes that looked as if they had been made from reeds—but Wendy knew, without knowing how she knew or what sense there was in it, that those pipes had been fashioned out of the blood and bones of something just like her, and that the music they played was the breath of her soul.

After the shadow-men came, the dream became steadily more nightmarish, and living wild ceased to be innocently joyful. After the shadow-men came, life was all hiding with a fearful, fluttering heart, knowing that if ever she were found, she would have to run and run and run, without any hope of escape—but wherever she hid, she could always hear the music of the pipes.

When she woke up in a cold sweat, she wondered whether the dreams her parents had were as terrible, or as easy to understand. Somehow, she doubted it.

• • • •

There was a sharp rat-a-tat on her bedroom door.

“Time to get up, Beauty.” Mother didn’t bother coming in to check that Wendy responded. Wendy always responded. She was a good girl.

She climbed out of bed, took off her nightdress, and went to sit at the dressing table, to look at herself in the mirror. It had become part of her morning ritual, now that her awakenings were indeed awakenings. She blinked to clear the sleep from her eyes, shivering slightly as an image left over from the dream flashed briefly and threateningly in the depths of her emergent consciousness.

Wendy didn’t know how long she had been dreaming. The dreams had begun before she developed the sense of time that would have allowed her to make the calculation. Perhaps she had always dreamed, just as she had always got up in the morning in response to the summoning rat-a-tat, but she had only recently come by the ability to remember her dreams. On the other hand, perhaps the beginning of her dreams had been the end of her innocence.

She often wondered how she had managed not to give herself away in the first few months, after she first began to remember her dreams but before she attained her present level of waking self-control, but any anomalies in her behavior must have been written off to the randomizing factor. Her parents were always telling her how lucky she was to be thirteen, and now she was in a position to agree with them. At thirteen, it was entirely appropriate to be a little bit inquisitive and more than a little bit odd. It was even possible to get away with being too clever by half, as long as she didn’t overdo it.

It was difficult to be sure, because she didn’t dare interrogate the house’s systems too explicitly, but she had figured out that she must have been thirteen for about thirty years, in mind and body alike. She was thirteen in her blood and her bones, but not in the privacy of her head.

Inside, where it counted, she had now been unthirteen for at least four months.

If it would only stay inside, she thought, I might keep it a secret forever. But it won’t. It isn’t. It’s coming out. Every day that passes is one day closer to the moment of truth.

She stared into the mirror, searching the lines of her face for signs of maturity. She was sure that her face looked thinner, her eyes more serious, her hair less blonde. All of that might be mostly imagination, she knew, but there was no doubt about the other things. She was half an inch taller, and her breasts were getting larger. It was only a matter of time before that sort of thing attracted attention, and as soon as it was noticed, the truth would be manifest. Measurements couldn’t lie. As soon as they were moved to measure her, her parents would know the horrid truth.

Their baby was growing up.

• • • •

“Did you sleep well, dear?” Mother said, as Wendy took her seat at the breakfast table. It wasn’t a trick question; it was just part of the routine. It wasn’t even a matter of pretending, although her parents certainly did their fair share of that. It was just a way of starting the day off. Such rituals were part and parcel of what they thought of as everyday life. Parents had their innate programming too.

“Yes, thank you,” she replied, meekly.

“What flavor manna would you like today?”

“Coconut and strawberry, please.” Wendy smiled as she spoke, and Mother smiled back. Mother was smiling because Wendy was smiling. Wendy was supposed to be smiling because she was a smiley child, but in fact she was smiling because saying “strawberry and coconut” was an authentic and honest choice, an exercise of freedom that would pass for an expected manifestation of the randomizing factor.

“I’m afraid I can’t take you out this morning, Lovely,” Father said, while Mother punched out the order. “We have to wait in for the house-doctor. The waterworks still aren’t right.”

“If you ask me,” Mother said, “the real problem’s the water table. The taproots are doing their best, but they’re having to go down too far. The system’s fine just so long as we get some good old-fashioned rain once in a while, but every time there’s a dry spell the whole estate suffers. We ought to call a meeting and put some pressure on the landscape engineers. Fixing a water-table shouldn’t be too much trouble in this day and age.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the water-table, dear,” Father said, patiently. “It’s just that the neighbors have the same indwelling systems that we have. There’s a congenital weakness in the root system; in dry weather the cell-terminal conduits in the phloem tend to get gummed up. It ought to be easy enough to fix—a little elementary somatic engineering, probably no more than a single-gene augment in the phloem—but you know what doctors are like; they never want to go for the cheap and cheerful cure if they can sell you something more complicated.”

“What’s phloem?” Wendy asked. She could ask as many questions as she liked, to a moderately high level of sophistication. That was a great blessing. She was glad she wasn’t an eight-year-old, reliant on passive observation and a restricted vocabulary. At least a thirteen-year-old had the right equipment for thinking all set up.

“It’s a kind of plant tissue,” Father informed her, ignoring the tight-lipped look Mother was giving him because he’d contradicted her. “It’s sort of equivalent to your veins, except of course that plants have sap instead of blood.”

Wendy nodded, but contrived to look as if she hadn’t really understood the answer.

“I’ll set the encyclopedia up on the system,” Father said. “You can read all about it while I’m talking to the house-doctor.”

“She doesn’t want to spend the morning reading what the encyclopedia has to say about phloem,” Mother said, peevishly. “She needs to get out into the fresh air.” That wasn’t mere ritual, like asking whether she had slept well, but it wasn’t pretence either. When Mother started talking about Wendy’s supposed wants and needs, she was usually talking about her own wants and supposed needs. Wendy had come to realize that talking that way was Mother’s preferred method of criticizing Father; she was paying him back for disagreeing about the water table.

Wendy was fully conscious of the irony of the fact that she really did want to study the encyclopedia. There was so much to learn and so little time. Maybe she didn’t need to do it, given that it was unlikely to make any difference in the long run, but she wanted to understand as much as she could before all the pretence had to end and the nightmare of uncertainty had to begin.

“It’s okay, Mummy,” she said. “Honest.” She smiled at them both, attempting to bring off the delicate trick of pleasing Father by taking his side while simultaneously pleasing Mother by pretending to be as heroically long-suffering as Mother liked to consider herself.

They both smiled back. All was well, for now. Even though they listened to the news every night, they didn’t seem to have the least suspicion that it could all be happening in their own home, to their own daughter.

• • • •

It only took a few minutes for Wendy to work out a plausible path of icon selection that got her away from translocation in plants and deep into the heart of child physiology. Father had set that up for her by comparing phloem to her own circulatory system. There was a certain danger in getting into recent reportage regarding childhood diseases, but she figured that she could explain it well enough if anyone took the trouble to consult the log to see what she’d been doing. She didn’t think anyone was likely to, but she simply couldn’t help being anxious about the possibility—there were, it seemed, a lot of things one simply couldn’t help being anxious about, once it was possible to be anxious at all.

“I wondered if I could get sick like the house’s roots,” she would say, if asked. “I wanted to know whether my blood could get clogged up in dry weather.” She figured that she would be okay as long as she pretended not to have understood what she’d read, and conscientiously avoided any mention of the word progeria. She already knew that progeria was what she’d got, and the last thing she wanted was to be taken to a child-engineer who’d be able to confirm the fact.

She called up a lot of innocuous stuff about blood, and spent the bulk of her time pretending to study elementary material of no real significance. Every time she got hold of a document she really wanted to look at she was careful to move on quickly, so it would seem as if she hadn’t even bothered to look at it if anyone did consult the log to see what she’d been doing. She didn’t dare call up any extensive current affairs information on the progress of the plague or the fierce medical and political arguments concerning the treatment of its victims.

It must be wonderful to be a parent, she thought, and not have to worry about being found out—or about anything at all, really.

At first, Wendy had thought that Mother and Father really did have worries, because they talked as if they did, but in the last few weeks she had begun to see through the sham. In a way, they thought that they did have worries, but it was all just a matter of habit, a kind of innate restlessness left over from the olden days. Adults must have had authentic anxieties at one time, back in the days when everybody could expect to die young and a lot of people never even reached seventy, and she presumed that they hadn’t quite got used to the fact that they’d changed the world and changed themselves. They just hadn’t managed to lose the habit. They probably would, in the fullness of time. Would they still need children then, she wondered, or would they learn to do without? Were children just another habit, another manifestation of innate restlessness? Had the great plague come just in time to seal off the redundant umbilical cord that connected mankind to its evolutionary past?

We’re just betwixts and betweens, Wendy thought, as she rapidly scanned a second-hand summary of a paper in the latest issue of Nature, which dealt with the pathology of progeria. There’ll soon be no place for us, whether we grow older or not. They’ll get rid of us all.

The article that contained the summary claimed that the development of an immunoserum was just a matter of time, although it wasn’t yet clear whether anything much might be done to reverse the aging process in children who’d already come down with it. She didn’t dare access the paper itself, or even an abstract—that would have been a dead giveaway, like leaving a bloody thumbprint at the scene of a murder.

Wendy wished that she had a clearer idea of whether the latest news was good or bad, or whether the long-term prospects had any possible relevance to her now that she had started to show physical symptoms as well as mental ones. She didn’t know what would happen to her once Mother and Father found out and notified the authorities; there was no clear pattern in the stories she glimpsed in the general news-broadcasts, but whether this meant that there was as yet no coherent social policy for dealing with the rapidly-escalating problem she wasn’t sure.

For the thousandth time she wondered whether she ought simply to tell her parents what was happening, and for the thousandth time, she felt the terror growing within her at the thought that everything she had might be placed in jeopardy, that she might be sent back to the factory or handed over to the researchers or simply cut adrift to look after herself. There was no way of knowing, after all, what really lay behind the rituals that her parents used in dealing with her, no way of knowing what would happen when their thirteen-year-old daughter was no longer thirteen.

Not yet, her fear said. Not yet. Hang on. Lie low . . . because once you can’t hide, you’ll have to run and run and run and there’ll be nowhere to go. Nowhere at all.

She left the workstation and went to watch the house-doctor messing about in the cellar. Father didn’t seem very glad to see her, perhaps because he was trying to talk the house-doctor round to his way of thinking and didn’t like the way the house-doctor immediately started talking to her instead of him, so she went away again, and played with her toys for a while. She still enjoyed playing with her toys—which was perhaps as well, all things considered.

• • • •

“We can go out for a while now,” Father said, when the house-doctor had finally gone. “Would you like to play ball on the back lawn?”

“Yes please,” she said.

Father liked playing ball, and Wendy didn’t mind. It was better than the sedentary pursuits that Mother preferred. Father had more energy to spare than Mother, probably because Mother had a job that was more taxing physically. Father only played with software; his clever fingers did all his work. Mother actually had to get her hands inside her remote-gloves and her feet inside her big red boots and get things moving. “Being a ghost in a machine,” she would often complain, when she thought Wendy couldn’t hear, “can be bloody hard work.” She never swore in front of Wendy, of course.

Out on the back lawn, Wendy and Father threw the ball back and forth for half an hour, making the catches more difficult as time went by, so that they could leap about and dive on the bone-dry carpet-grass and get thoroughly dusty.

To begin with, Wendy was distracted by the ceaseless stream of her insistent thoughts, but as she got more involved in the game she was able to let herself go a little. She couldn’t quite get back to being thirteen, but she could get to a state of mind that wasn’t quite so fearful. By the time her heart was pounding and she’d grazed both her knees and one of her elbows she was enjoying herself thoroughly, all the more so because Father was evidently having a good time. He was in a good mood anyhow, because the house-doctor had obligingly confirmed everything he’d said about the normality of the water table, and had then backed down gracefully when he saw that he couldn’t persuade Father that the house needed a whole new root-system.

“Those somatic transformations don’t always take,” the house-doctor had said, darkly but half-heartedly, as he left. “You might have trouble again, three months down the line.”

“I’ll take the chance,” Father had replied, breezily. “Thanks for your time.”

Given that the doctor was charging for his time, Wendy had thought, it should have been the doctor thanking father, but she hadn’t said anything. She already understood that kind of thing well enough not to have to ask questions about it. She had other matters she wanted to raise once Father collapsed on the baked earth, felled by healthy exhaustion, and demanded that they take a rest.

“I’m not as young as you are,” he told her, jokingly. “When you get past a hundred and fifty, you just can’t take it the way you used to.” He had no idea how it affected her to hear him say you in that careless fashion, when he really meant we: a we that didn’t include her, and never would.

“I’m bleeding,” she said, pointing to a slight scratch on her elbow.

“Oh dear,” he said. “Does it hurt?”

“Not much,” she said, truthfully. “If too much leaks out, will I need injections, like the house’s roots?”

“It won’t come to that,” he assured her, lifting up her arm so that he could put on a show of inspecting the wound. “It’s just a drop. I’ll kiss it better.” He put his lips to the wound for a few seconds, then said: “It’ll be as good as new in the morning.”

“Good,” she said. “I expect it’d be very expensive to have to get a whole new girl.”

He looked at her a little strangely, but it seemed to Wendy that he was in such a light mood that he was in no danger of taking it too seriously.

“Fearfully expensive,” he agreed, cheerfully, as he lifted her up in his arms and carried her back to the house. “We’ll just have to take very good care of you, won’t we?”

“Or do a somatic whatever,” she said, as innocently as she possibly could. “Is that what you’d have to do if you wanted a boy for a while?”

He laughed, and there appeared to be no more than the merest trace of unease in his laugh. “We love you just the way you are, Lovely,” he assured her. “We wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

She knew that it was true. That was the problem.

She had ham and cheese manna for lunch, with real greens home-grown in the warm cellar-annex under soft red lights. She would have eaten heartily had she not been so desperately anxious about her weight, but as things were she felt it better to peck and pretend, and she surreptitiously discarded the food she hadn’t consumed as soon as Father’s back was turned.

• • • •

After lunch, judging it to be safe enough, she picked up the thread of the conversation again. “Why did you want a girl and not a boy?” she asked. “The Johnsons wanted a boy.” The Johnsons had a ten-year-old named Peter. He was the only other child Wendy saw regularly, and he had not as yet exhibited the slightest sign of disease to her eager eye.

“We didn’t want a girl,” Father told her, tolerantly. “We wanted you.”

“Why?” she asked, trying to look as if she were just fishing for compliments, but hoping to trigger something a trifle more revealing. This, after all, was the great mystery. Why her? Why anyone? Why did adults think they needed children?

“Because you’re beautiful,” Father said. “And because you’re Wendy. Some people are Peter people, so they have Peters. Some people are Wendy people, so they have Wendys. Your Mummy and I are definitely Wendy people—probably the Wendiest people in the world. It’s a matter of taste.”

It was all baby talk, all gobbledygook, but she felt that she had to keep trying. Some day, surely, one of them would let a little truth show through their empty explanations.

“But you have different kinds of manna for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Wendy said, “and sometimes you go right off one kind for weeks on end. Maybe some day you’ll go off me, and want a different one.”

“No we won’t, darling,” he answered, gently. “There are matters of taste and matters of taste. Manna is fuel for the body. Variety of taste just helps to make the routine of eating that little bit more interesting. Relationships are something else. It’s a different kind of need. We love you, Beauty, more than anything else in the world. Nothing could ever replace you.”

She thought about asking about what would happen if Father and Mother ever got divorced, but decided that it would be safer to leave the matter alone for now. Even though time was pressing, she had to be careful.

• • • •

They watched TV for a while before Mother came home. Father had a particular fondness for archive film of extinct animals—not the ones that the engineers had re-created, but smaller and odder ones: weirdly shaped sea-dwelling creatures. He could never have seen such creatures even if they had still existed when he was young, not even in an aquarium; they had only ever been known to people as things on film. Even so, the whole tone of the tapes that documented their one-time existence was nostalgic, and Father seemed genuinely affected by a sense of personal loss at the thought of the sterilization of the seas during the last ecocatastrophe but one.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” he said, of an excessively tentacled sea anemone, which sheltered three vivid clownfish while ungainly shrimps passed by. “Isn’t it just extraordinary?”

“Yes,” she said, dutifully, trying to inject an appropriate reverence into her tone. “It’s lovely.” The music on the soundtrack was plaintive; it was being played on some fluty wind instrument, possibly by a human player. Wendy had never heard music like it except on TV soundtracks; it was as if the sound were the breath of the long-lost world of nature, teeming with undesigned life.

“Next summer,” Father said, “I want us to go out in one of those glass-bottomed boats that take sightseers out to the new barrier reef. It’s not the same as the original one, of course, and they’re deliberately setting out to create something modern, something new, but they’re stocking it with some truly weird and wonderful creatures.”

“Mother wants to go up the Nile,” Wendy said. “She wants to see the Sphinx, and the tombs.”

“We’ll do that the year after,” Father said. “They’re just ruins. They can wait. Living things . . .” He stopped. “Look at those!” he said, pointing at the screen. She looked at a host of jellyfish swimming close to the silvery surface, their bodies pulsing like great translucent hearts.

It doesn’t matter, Wendy thought. I won’t be there. I won’t see the new barrier reef or the Sphinx and the tombs. Even if they find a cure, and even if you both want me cured, I won’t be there. Not the real me. The real me will have died, one way or another, and there’ll be nothing left except a girl who’ll be thirteen forever, and a randomizing factor that will make it seem that she has a lively mind.

Father put his arm around her shoulder, and hugged her fondly.

Father must really love her very dearly, she thought. After all, he had loved her for thirty years, and might love her for thirty years more, if only she could stay the way she was . . . if only she could be returned to what she had been before . . .

• • • •

The evening TV schedules advertised a documentary on progeria, scheduled for late at night, long after the nation’s children had been put to bed. Wendy wondered if her parents would watch it, and whether she could sneak downstairs to listen to the soundtrack through the closed door. In a way, she hoped that they wouldn’t watch it. It might put ideas into their heads. It was better that they thought of the plague as a distant problem: something that could only affect other people; something with which they didn’t need to concern themselves.

She stayed awake, just in case, and when the luminous dial of her bedside clock told her it was time, she silently got up, and crept down the stairs until she could hear what was going on in the living room. It was risky, because the randomizing factor wasn’t really supposed to stretch to things like that, but she’d done it before without being found out.

It didn’t take long to ascertain that the TV wasn’t even on, and that the only sound to be heard was her parents’ voices. She actually turned around to go back to bed before she suddenly realized what they were talking about.

“Are you sure she isn’t affected mentally?” Mother was saying.

“Absolutely certain,” Father replied. “I watched her all afternoon, and she’s perfectly normal.”

“Perhaps she hasn’t got it at all,” Mother said, hopefully.

“Maybe not the worst kind,” Father said, in a voice that was curiously firm. “They’re not sure that even the worst cases are manifesting authentic self-consciousness, and there’s a strong contingent that argues that the vast majority of cases are relatively minor dislocations of programming. But there’s no doubt about the physical symptoms. I picked her up to carry her indoors and she’s a stone heavier. She’s got hair growing in her armpits and she’s got tangible tits. We’ll have to be careful how we dress her when we take her to public places.”

“Can we do anything about her food—reduce the calorific value of her manna or something?”

“Sure—but that’d be hard evidence if anyone audited the house records. Not that anyone’s likely to, now that the doctor’s been and gone, but you never know. I read an article that cites a paper in the latest Nature to demonstrate that a cure is just around the corner. If we can just hang on until then . . . she’s a big girl anyhow, and she might not put on more than an inch or two. As long as she doesn’t start behaving oddly, we might be able to keep it secret.”

“If they do find out,” said Mother, ominously, “there’ll be hell to pay.”

“I don’t think so,” Father assured her. “I’ve heard that the authorities are quite sympathetic in private, although they have to put on a sterner face for publicity purposes.”

“I’m not talking about the bloody bureaucrats,” Mother retorted, “I’m talking about the estate. If the neighbors find out we’re sheltering a centre of infection . . . well, how would you feel if the Johnsons’ Peter turned out to have the disease and hadn’t warned us about the danger to Wendy?”

“They’re not certain how it spreads,” said Father, defensively, “They don’t know what kind of vector’s involved—until they find out, there’s no reason to think that Wendy’s endangering Peter just by living next door.

“It’s not as if they spend much time together. We can’t lock her up—that’d be suspicious in itself. We have to pretend that things are absolutely normal, at least until we know how this thing is going to turn out. I’m not prepared to run the risk of their taking her away—not if there’s the slightest chance of avoiding it. I don’t care what they say on the newstapes—this thing is getting out of control and I really don’t know how it’s going to turn out. I’m not letting Wendy go anywhere, unless I’m absolutely forced. She might be getting heavier and hairier, but inside she’s still Wendy, and I’m not letting them take her away.”

Wendy heard Father’s voice getting louder as he came towards the door, and she scuttled back up the stairs as fast as she could go. Numb with shock, she climbed back into bed. Father’s words echoed inside her head: “I watched her all afternoon and she’s perfectly normal . . . inside she’s still Wendy . . .”

They were putting on an act too, and she hadn’t known. She hadn’t been able to tell. She’d been watching them, and they’d seemed perfectly normal . . . but inside, where it counted . . .

It was a long time before she fell asleep, and when she finally did, she dreamed of shadow-men and shadow-music, which drew the very soul from her even as she fled through the infinite forest of green and gold.

• • • •

The men from the Ministry of Health arrived next morning, while Wendy was finishing her honey and almond manna. She saw Father go pale as the man in the grey suit held up his identification card to the door camera. She watched Father’s lip trembling as he thought about telling the man in the grey suit that he couldn’t come in, and then realized that it wouldn’t do any good. As Father got up to go to the door, he exchanged a bitter glance with Mother, and murmured, “That bastard house-doctor.”

Mother came to stand behind Wendy, and put both of her hands on Wendy’s shoulders. “It’s all right, darling,” she said. Which meant, all too clearly, that things were badly wrong.

Father and the man in the grey suit were already arguing as they came through the door. There was another man behind them, dressed in less formal clothing. He was carrying a heavy black bag, like a rigid suitcase.

“I’m sorry,” the man in the grey suit was saying. “I understand your feelings, but this is an epidemic—a national emergency. We have to check out all reports, and we have to move swiftly if we’re to have any chance of containing the problem.”

“If there’d been any cause for alarm,” Father told him, hotly, “I’d have called you myself.” But the man in the grey suit ignored him; from the moment he had entered the room his eyes had been fixed on Wendy. He was smiling. Even though Wendy had never seen him before and didn’t know the first thing about him, she knew that the smile was dangerous.

“Hello Wendy,” said the man in the grey suit, smoothly. “My name’s Tom Cartwright. I’m from the Ministry of Health. This is Jimmy Li. I’m afraid we have to carry out some tests.”

Wendy stared back at him as blankly as she could. In a situation like this, she figured, it was best to play dumb, at least to begin with.

“You can’t do this,” Mother said, gripping Wendy’s shoulders just a little too hard. “You can’t take her away.”

“We can complete our initial investigation here and now,” Cartwright answered, blandly. “Jimmy can plug into your kitchen systems, and I can do my part right here at the table. It’ll be over in less than half an hour, and if all’s well, we’ll be gone in no time.” The way he said it implied that he didn’t really expect to be gone in no time.

Mother and Father blustered a little more, but it was only a gesture. They knew how futile it all was. While Mr. Li opened up his bag of tricks to reveal an awesome profusion of gadgets forged in metal and polished glass, Father came to stand beside Wendy, and like Mother he reached out to touch her.

They both assured her that the needle Mr. Li was preparing wouldn’t hurt when he put it into her arm, and when it did hurt—bringing tears to her eyes in spite of her efforts to blink them away—they told her the pain would go away in a minute. It didn’t, of course. Then they told her not to worry about the questions Mr. Cartwright was going to ask her, although it was as plain as the noses on their faces that they were terrified by the possibility that she would give the wrong answers.

In the end, though, Wendy’s parents had to step back a little, and let her face up to the man from the Ministry on her own.

I mustn’t play too dumb, Wendy thought. That would be just as much of a giveaway as being too clever. I have to try to make my mind blank, let the answers come straight out without thinking at all. It ought to be easy. After all, I’ve been thirteen for thirty years, and unthirteen for a matter of months . . . it should be easy.

She knew that she was lying to herself. She knew well enough that she had crossed a boundary that couldn’t be re-crossed just by stepping backwards.

“How old are you, Wendy?” Cartwright asked, when Jimmy Li had vanished into the kitchen to play with her blood.

“Thirteen,” she said, trying to return his practiced smile without too much evident anxiety.

“Do you know what you are, Wendy?”

“I’m a girl,” she answered, knowing that it wouldn’t wash.

“Do you know what the difference between children and adults is, Wendy? Apart from the fact that they’re smaller.”

There was no point in denying it. At thirteen, a certain amount of self-knowledge was included in the package, and even thirteen-year-olds who never looked at an encyclopedia learned quite a lot about the world and its ways in the course of thirty years.

“Yes,” she said, knowing full well that she wasn’t going to be allowed to get away with minimal replies.

“Tell me what you know about the difference,” he said.

“It’s not such a big difference,” she said, warily. “Children are made out of the same things adults are made of—but they’re made so they stop growing at a certain age, and never get any older. Thirteen is the oldest—some stop at eight.”

“Why are children made that way, Wendy?” Step by inexorable step he was leading her towards the deep water, and she didn’t know how to swim. She knew that she wasn’t clever enough—yet—to conceal her cleverness.

“Population control,” she said.

“Can you give me a more detailed explanation, Wendy?”

“In the olden days,” she said, “there were catastrophes. Lots of people died, because there were so many of them. They discovered how not to grow old, so that they could live for hundreds of years if they didn’t get killed in bad accidents. They had to stop having so many children, or they wouldn’t be able to feed everyone when the children kept growing up, but they didn’t want to have a world with no children in it. Lots of people still wanted children, and couldn’t stop wanting them—and in the end, after more catastrophes, those people who really wanted children a lot were able to have them . . . only the children weren’t allowed to grow up and have more children of their own. There were lots of arguments about it, but in the end things calmed down.”

“There’s another difference between children and adults, isn’t there?” said Cartwright, smoothly.

“Yes,” Wendy said, knowing that she was supposed to have that information in her memory and that she couldn’t refuse to voice it. “Children can’t think very much. They have limited self-consciousness.” She tried hard to say it as though it were a mere formula, devoid of any real meaning so far as she was concerned.

“Do you know why children are made with limited self-consciousness?”

“No.” She was sure that no was the right answer to that one, although she’d recently begun to make guesses. It was so they wouldn’t know what was happening if they were ever sent back, and so that they didn’t change too much as they learned things, becoming un-childlike in spite of their appearance.

“Do you know what the word progeria means, Wendy?”

“Yes,” she said. Children watched the news. Thirteen-year-olds were supposed to be able to hold intelligent conversations with their parents. “It’s when children get older even though they shouldn’t. It’s a disease that children get. It’s happening a lot.”

“Is it happening to you, Wendy? Have you got progeria?”

For a second or two she hesitated between no and I don’t know, and then realized how bad the hesitation must look. She kept her face straight as she finally said: “I don’t think so.”

“What would you think if you found out you had got progeria, Wendy?” Cartwright asked, smug in the knowledge that she must be way out of her depth by now, whatever the truth of the matter might be.

“You can’t ask her that!” Father said. “She’s thirteen! Are you trying to scare her half to death? Children can be scared, you know. They’re not robots.”

“No,” said Cartwright, without taking his eyes off Wendy’s face. “They’re not. Answer the question, Wendy.”

“I wouldn’t like it,” Wendy said, in a low voice. “I don’t want anything to happen to me. I want to be with Mummy and Daddy. I don’t want anything to happen.”

While she was speaking, Jimmy Li had come back into the room. He didn’t say a word and his nod was almost imperceptible, but Tom Cartwright wasn’t really in any doubt.

“I’m afraid it has, Wendy,” he said, softly. “It has happened, as you know very well.”

“No she doesn’t!” said Mother, in a voice that was half way to a scream. “She doesn’t know any such thing!”

“It’s a very mild case,” Father said. “We’ve been watching her like hawks. It’s purely physical. Her behavior hasn’t altered at all. She isn’t showing any mental symptoms whatsoever.”

“You can’t take her away,” Mother said, keeping her shrillness under a tight rein. “We’ll keep her in quarantine. We’ll join one of the drug trials. You can monitor her, but you can’t take her away. She doesn’t understand what’s happening. She’s just a little girl. It’s only slight, only her body.”

Tom Cartwright let the storm blow out. He was still looking at Wendy, and his eyes seemed kind, full of concern. He let a moment’s silence endure before he spoke to her again.

“Tell them, Wendy,” he said, softly. “Explain to them that it isn’t slight at all.”

She looked up at Mother, and then at Father, knowing how much it would hurt them to be told. “I’m still Wendy,” she said, faintly. “I’m still your little girl. I . . .”

She wanted to say I always will be, but she couldn’t. She had always been a good girl, and some lies were simply too difficult to voice.

I wish I was a randomizing factor, she thought, fiercely wishing that it could be true, that it might be true. I wish I was . . .

Absurdly, she found herself wondering whether it would have been more grammatical to have thought I wish I were . . .

It was so absurd that she began to laugh, and then she began to cry, helplessly. It was almost as if the flood of tears could wash away the burden of thought—almost, but not quite.

• • • •

Mother took her back into her bedroom, and sat with her, holding her hand. By the time the shuddering sobs released her—long after she had run out of tears—Wendy felt a new sense of grievance. Mother kept looking at the door, wishing that she could be out there, adding her voice to the argument, because she didn’t really trust Father to get it right. The sense of duty that kept her pinned to Wendy’s side was a burden, a burning frustration. Wendy didn’t like that. Oddly enough, though, she didn’t feel any particular resentment at being put out of the way while Father and the Ministry of Health haggled over her future. She understood well enough that she had no voice in the matter, no matter how unlimited her self-consciousness had now become, no matter what progressive leaps and bounds she had accomplished as the existential fetters had shattered and fallen away.

She was still a little girl, for the moment.

She was still Wendy, for the moment.

When she could speak, she said to Mother: “Can we have some music?”

Mother looked suitably surprised. “What kind of music?” she countered.

“Anything,” Wendy said. The music she was hearing in her head was soft and fluty music, which she heard as if from a vast distance, and which somehow seemed to be the oldest music in the world, but she didn’t particularly want it duplicated and brought into the room. She just wanted something to fill the cracks of silence that broke up the muffled sound of arguing.

Mother called up something much more liquid, much more upbeat, much more modern. Wendy could see that Mother wanted to speak to her, wanted to deluge her with reassurances, but couldn’t bear to make any promises she wouldn’t be able to keep. In the end, Mother contented herself with hugging Wendy to her bosom, as fiercely and as tenderly as she could.

When the door opened it flew back with a bang. Father came in first.

“It’s all right,” he said, quickly. “They’re not going to take her away. They’ll quarantine the house instead.”

Wendy felt the tension in Mother’s arms. Father could work entirely from home much more easily than Mother, but there was no way Mother was going to start protesting on those grounds. While quarantine wasn’t exactly all right, it was better than she could have expected.

“It’s not generosity, I’m afraid,” said Tom Cartwright. “It’s necessity. The epidemic is spreading too quickly. We don’t have the facilities to take tens of thousands of children into state care. Even the quarantine will probably be a short-term measure—to be perfectly frank, it’s a panic measure. The simple truth is that the disease can’t be contained no matter what we do.”

“How could you let this happen?” Mother said, in a low tone bristling with hostility. “How could you let it get this far out of control? With all modern technology at your disposal, you surely should be able to put the brake on a simple virus.”

“It’s not so simple,” Cartwright said, apologetically. “If it really had been a freak of nature—some stray strand of DNA that found a new ecological niche—we’d probably have been able to contain it easily. We don’t believe that any more.”

“It was designed,” Father said, with the airy confidence of the well-informed—though even Wendy knew that this particular item of wisdom must have been news to him five minutes ago. “Somebody cooked this thing up in a lab and let it loose deliberately. It was all planned, in the name of liberation . . . in the name of chaos, if you ask me.”

Somebody did this to me! Wendy thought. Somebody actually set out to take away the limits, to turn the randomizing factor into . . . into what, exactly?

While Wendy’s mind was boggling, Mother was saying: “Who? How? Why?”

“You know how some people are,” Cartwright said, with a fatalistic shrug of his shoulders. “Can’t see an apple cart without wanting to upset it. You’d think the chance to live for a thousand years would confer a measure of maturity even on the meanest intellect, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Maybe someday we’ll get past all that, but in the meantime . . .”

Maybe someday, Wendy thought, all the things left over from the infancy of the world will go. All the crazinesses, all the disagreements, all the diehard habits. She hadn’t known that she was capable of being quite so sharp, but she felt perversely proud of the fact that she didn’t have to spell out—even to herself, in the brand new arena of her private thoughts—the fact that one of those symptoms of craziness, one of the focal points of those disagreements, and the most diehard of all those habits, was keeping children in a world where they no longer had any biological function—or, rather, keeping the ghosts of children, who weren’t really children at all because they were always children.

“They call it liberation,” Father was saying, “but it really is a disease, a terrible affliction. It’s the destruction of innocence. It’s a kind of mass murder.” He was obviously pleased with his own eloquence, and with the righteousness of his wrath. He came over to the bed and plucked Wendy out of Mother’s arms. “It’s all right, Beauty,” he said. “We’re all in this together. We’ll face it together. You’re absolutely right. You’re still our little girl. You’re still Wendy. Nothing terrible is going to happen.”

It was far better, in a way, than what she’d imagined—or had been too scared to imagine. There was a kind of relief in not having to pretend any more, in not having to keep the secret. That boundary had been crossed, and now there was no choice but to go forward.

Why didn’t I tell them before? Wendy wondered. Why didn’t I just tell them, and trust them to see that everything would be all right? But even as she thought it, even as she clutched at the straw, just as Mother and Father were clutching, she realized how hollow the thought was, and how meaningless Father’s reassurances were. It was all just sentiment, and habit, and pretence. Everything couldn’t and wouldn’t be “all right,” and never would be again, unless . . .

Turning to Tom Cartwright, warily and uneasily, she said: “Will I be an adult now? Will I live for a thousand years, and have my own house, my own job, my own . . . ?”

She trailed off as she saw the expression in his eyes, realizing that she was still a little girl, and that there were a thousand questions adults couldn’t and didn’t want to hear, let alone try to answer.

• • • •

It was late at night before Mother and Father got themselves into the right frame of mind for the kind of serious talk that the situation warranted, and by that time Wendy knew perfectly well that the honest answer to almost all the questions she wanted to ask was: “Nobody knows.”

She asked the questions anyway. Mother and Father varied their answers in the hope of appearing a little wiser than they were, but it all came down to the same thing in the end. It all came down to desperate pretence.

“We have to take it as it comes,” Father told her. “It’s an unprecedented situation. The government has to respond to the changes on a day-by-day basis. We can’t tell how it will all turn out. It’s a mess, but the world has been in a mess before—in fact, it’s hardly ever been out of a mess for more than a few years at a time. We’ll cope as best we can. Everybody will cope as best they can. With luck, it might not come to violence—to war, to slaughter, to ecocatastrophe. We’re entitled to hope that we really are past all that now, that we really are capable of handling things sensibly this time.”

“Yes,” Wendy said, conscientiously keeping as much of the irony out of her voice as she could. “I understand. “Maybe we won’t just be sent back to the factories to be scrapped . . . and maybe if they find a cure, they’ll ask us whether we want to be cured before they use it.” With luck, she added, silently, maybe we can all be adult about the situation.

They both looked at her uneasily, not sure how to react. From now on, they would no longer be able to grin and shake their heads at the wondrous inventiveness of the randomizing factor in her programming. From now on, they would actually have to try to figure out what she meant, and what unspoken thoughts might lie behind the calculated wit and hypocrisy of her every statement. She had every sympathy for them; she had only recently learned for herself what a difficult, frustrating, and thankless task that could be.

This happened to their ancestors once, she thought. But not as quickly. Their ancestors didn’t have the kind of head start you can get by being thirteen for thirty years. It must have been hard, to be a thinking ape among unthinkers. Hard, but . . . well, they didn’t ever want to give it up, did they?

“Whatever happens, Beauty,” Father said, “we love you. Whatever happens, you’re our little girl. When you’re grown up, we’ll still love you the way we always have. We always will.”

He actually believes it, Wendy thought. He actually believes that the world can still be the same, in spite of everything. He can’t let go of the hope that even though everything’s changing, it will all be the same underneath. But it won’t. Even if there isn’t a resource crisis—after all, grown-up children can’t eat much more than un-grown-up ones—the world can never be the same. This is the time in which the adults of the world have to get used to the fact that there can’t be any more families, because from now on children will have to be rare and precious and strange. This is the time when the old people will have to recognize that the day of their silly stopgap solutions to imaginary problems is over. This is the time when we all have to grow up. If the old people can’t do that by themselves, then the new generation will simply have to show them the way.

“I love you too,” she answered, earnestly. She left it at that. There wasn’t any point in adding: “I always have,” or “I can mean it now,” or any of the other things that would have underlined rather than assuaging the doubts they must be feeling.

“And we’ll be all right,” Mother said. “As long as we love one another, and as long as we face this thing together, we’ll be all right.”

What a wonderful thing true innocence is, Wendy thought, rejoicing in her ability to think such a thing freely, without shame or reservation. I wonder if I’d be able to cultivate it, if I ever wanted to.

• • • •

That night, bedtime was abolished. She was allowed to stay up as late as she wanted to. When she finally did go to bed, she was so exhausted that she quickly drifted off into a deep and peaceful sleep—but she didn’t remain there indefinitely. Eventually, she began to dream.

In her dream, Wendy was living wild in a magical wood where it never rained. She lived on sweet berries of many colors. There were other girls living wild in the dream-wood but they all avoided one another. They had lived there for a long time but now the others had come: the shadow-men with horns on their brows and shaggy legs who played strange music, which was the breath of souls.

Wendy hid from the shadow-men, but the fearful fluttering of her heart gave her away, and one of the shadow-men found her. He stared down at her with huge baleful eyes, wiping spittle from his pipes on to his fleecy rump.

“Who are you?” she asked, trying to keep the tremor of fear out of her voice.

“I’m the Devil,” he said.

“There’s no such thing,” she informed him, sourly.

He shrugged his massive shoulders. “So I’m the Great God Pan,” he said. “What difference does it make? And how come you’re so smart all of a sudden?”

“I’m not thirteen any more,” she told him, proudly. “I’ve been thirteen for thirty years, but now I’m growing up. The whole world’s growing up—for the first and last time.”

“Not me,” said the Great God Pan. “I’m a million years old and I’ll never grow up. Let’s get on with it, shall we? I’ll count to ninety-nine. You start running.”

Dream-Wendy scrambled to her feet, and ran away. She ran and she ran and she ran, without any hope of escape. Behind her, the music of the reed pipes kept getting louder and louder, and she knew that whatever happened, her world would never fall silent.

• • • •

When Wendy woke up, she found that the nightmare hadn’t really ended. The meaningful part of it was still going on. But things weren’t as bad as all that, even though she couldn’t bring herself to pretend that it was all just a dream that might go away.

She knew that she had to take life one day at a time, and look after her parents as best she could. She knew that she had to try to ease the pain of the passing of their way of life, to which they had clung a little too hard and a little too long. She knew that she had to hope, and to trust, that a cunning combination of intelligence and love would be enough to see her and the rest of the world through—at least until the next catastrophe came along.

She wasn’t absolutely sure that she could do it, but she was determined to give it a bloody good try.

And whatever happens in the end, she thought, to live will be an awfully big adventure.

©1997 by Brian Stableford. Originally published in THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Having sold his first short story to Science Fantasy in 1965, Brian Stableford has been publishing fiction and non-fiction for fifty years. His fiction includes eleven novels and seven short story collections of “tales of the biotech revolution,” exploring the possible social and personal consequences of potential innovations in biotechnology, and a series of metaphysical fantasies featuring Edgar Poe’s Auguste Dupin in confrontation with various bizarre phenomena. His non-fiction includes the four-volume New Atlantis: A Narrative History of Scientific Romance (Wildside Press). He is presently researching a history of French roman scientifique from 1700-1939, translating much of the relevant material into English for the first time, for Black Coat Press.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death

Caroline M. Yoachim | 5723 words

ROCK

Rock crushes scissors. Nicole sat on a crowded bus to Spokane, knitting a turquoise scarf. The gray-haired man sitting next to her stared obsessively at his wristwatch. He was travelling with his son, Andrew, who sat across the aisle. She offered to trade seats so they could sit together, but both men refused. The bus wound around the sharp curves of Stevens Pass, and Nicole made good progress on her scarf.

Out of nowhere, Andrew’s father grabbed her and shoved her across the aisle, into Andrew’s arms. There was a loud crack, and a roar like thunder. A boulder the size of a car slammed into the side of the bus. Nicole stared at the wall of stone that filled the space where her seat had been. The red handles of her scissors stuck out from underneath the rock, the blades crushed underneath. Andrew’s father was completely lost beneath the stone.

• • • •

Love shreds paper. After the accident, Nicole met Andrew for coffee. She returned his father’s watch, which had somehow ended up in her jacket pocket, though she couldn’t figure out how or when he’d put it there. Andrew gave her a pair of red-handled scissors, identical to the pair she had lost. She invited him for Thanksgiving dinner with her parents, since he had no other family. They took a weekend trip to Spokane, and when the bus reached the site of the accident, they threw handfuls of flower petals out the window.

Andrew was an engineer and a poet. He built her a telescope that folded space-time so she could see distant exoplanets, and he wrote her scientific love poems. At their wedding, they gave the guests bags of confetti made from shredded strips of his poems, so they could be showered in love.

• • • •

Rock destroys love. Two years into her marriage, Nicole suspected Andrew was cheating. He stayed late at work, went out late with the guys, took weekend business trips. He was gone more than he was home, and he got angry when Nicole asked him about it. She already knew what she’d see when she followed him out to Beacon Rock, but she had to see it with her own eyes, if only from a distance. She was surprised to see him with an older woman, rather than a younger one. She filed for divorce, and he didn’t argue.

• • • •

Scissors cut paper. A few years after the divorce, Nicole sat in the swing on her front porch and cut love poems and photographs into thin strips. It was her therapy, letting go of the memories she’d kept boxed up after Andrew moved out. There was something satisfying about the snip of the scissors. Words flew everywhere. Eternal. Heart. Devotion. True. Paper piled up on the porch, and a breeze sent a few strips swirling. It reminded her of the confetti at their wedding, and suddenly cutting paper wasn’t as satisfying. She hurled her scissors into the front yard.

• • • •

Death steals scissors. Nicole went out into the yard the next morning to get her scissors. She didn’t want to run them over with the lawnmower later, and she wasn’t quite ready to let go of the first gift Andrew ever gave her. The poems were gone from her porch, and she couldn’t find the scissors in the yard, even after an hour crawling on her hands and knees. The common link between the poems and the scissors was Andrew. Had he taken them? Against her better judgment, she drove to his apartment. The door was open, and there were cops inside. Andrew was missing, and he’d left a note. A suicide note.

The body was never found. Neither were her scissors.

• • • •

Paper covers rock. Nicole visited Andrew’s grave on the anniversary of his death, even though she knew there was no one buried beneath the stone that bore his name. A slip of paper covered the top of the tombstone. A poem, taken from her porch and painstakingly taped back together. On the back, a message, in Andrew’s careful slanted cursive. If we had stayed together, you never would have let me go back.

• • • •

Love conquers death. Nicole found the time machine in the storage locker Andrew had rented when he moved out. The machine was set for the day she’d taken the bus to Spokane. The day he died, and the day they met. She reset the dial to when their relationship started to fall apart. She was tempted to go further back, to have more time, but she’d only be stealing from herself. Time reversed its course, and Nicole stepped out of the time machine into her own garage, where Andrew waited with open arms.

PAPER

folded white paper

contains all eternity

space-time envelope

Andrew sat at his desk and scribbled haiku into his Moleskine notebook, casting occasional glances out the window to see if the mail had arrived. He wanted to bring the CZT detectors he’d ordered with him on his trip to Spokane. The detectors were the final component for his latest project, a telescope that would bend space-time to generate high-resolution images of distant exoplanets. Folding space-time blueshifted visible light, and the CZT detectors would measure the resulting x-rays so that he could convert them back into a visible image. The telescope would give him something to tinker with between meetings at his company’s annual “retreat.”

an icy planet

cast out into empty space

binary no more

He tore the page out of his notebook and crumpled it. It’d been two years since he divorced Liz, and he needed to stop wallowing in loneliness and sorrow. His life was better without all the fighting, and he had more time for his work this way. He willed himself to write a more cheerful haiku, but the words were gone. He stared at the empty page.

A postal worker delivered the mail, and Andrew hurried outside to collect it, pleased to discover a padded yellow envelope in among the other items. He jogged back upstairs to his apartment, unlocked the door, and threw the bills and junk mail onto the counter. He slipped the envelope of CZT detectors into the duffle bag he’d packed for his trip. Then he looked up.

An older man stood in his living room, hands raised so that Andrew could see that they were empty. “When I was fifteen, I cheated on a physics test by writing the entire study guide in Japanese characters on my jeans. I made it look like the fabric was designed that way. No one caught me, which was disappointing. I didn’t need to cheat, but I enjoyed the risk of being caught. I was disappointed no one noticed.”

Andrew had told that story to a few friends, but never the bit about wanting to get caught. He studied the man. His features were eerily similar to Andrew’s, but his skin was wrinkled and his hair was more gray than black.

“You’re me,” Andrew said, “but from the future?”

His future self lowered his hands and sat down on the couch. “I arrived at 11:47 a.m. on November third. Remember that. Write it down somewhere. I have two things to tell you before we go to catch our bus. First, if Nicole asks us to switch seats, we have to refuse. Second, when you build the time machine, you must make it entirely out of things that are in your apartment right now. I can’t get back to this moment unless all the pieces are here—if the power source, say, is still in some manufacturing plant in China, trying to come to this moment would spread my molecules between here and there, and I’d be too thin to recohere.”

“So why are you here?” Andrew asked, a million questions racing through his mind. “Am I really going to build a time machine? What stocks should I buy?”

Future Andrew stubbornly refused to answer any of his questions. In fact, he didn’t say another word until they got to the bus station.

“Sometime after we get on the bus, I’m going to hand you some scissors. Hide them, and make sure Nicole doesn’t see.” He got in the line to board the bus, standing behind a woman with short black hair and a cute vintage dress from the ’50s. Andrew stood behind himself, wondering if anyone else would notice that there were two of him in line. An old woman in a matronly pink dress hobbled right by them without giving them a second look, headed for the front of the line. She clearly hadn’t noticed that anything was amiss.

Judging by the long line, the bus would be full, so it didn’t seem too odd when his future self took the seat next to Nicole. Future Andrew patted the seat across the aisle. “Sit here.”

“Are you together?” Nicole asked, “I can move across the aisle if you’d like to sit with your son.”

“Oh, no, this is fine.” Andrew said, remembering his future self’s instructions, and wondering why it was so important.

“We both prefer the aisle,” future Andrew added, “more leg room that way.”

Andrew pulled out his notebook. He’d intended to work out a few equations for his exoplanet telescope, but instead he found himself casting furtive glances at Nicole and writing poetry.

pairs of particles

in quantum entanglement

giving birth to time

Nicole went to the back of the bus to use the bathroom, and future Andrew passed him the red handled scissors from her knitting bag. Andrew tucked them into the front pocket of his laptop bag. “What am I supposed to do with these?”

“When the time comes, you’ll know,” future Andrew said solemnly. Then he laughed. “They’re only scissors. Try not to worry about it too much.”

His future self held up an identical pair of red handled scissors, grinned, and then tucked the replacement scissors into Nicole’s knitting bag. Andrew wanted to ask why he’d traded one pair of scissors for the other, but Nicole returned to her seat.

His future self glanced at his watch. Without warning, he grabbed Nicole. He ignored her indignant yelling and shoved her across the aisle, practically into Andrew’s lap. A deafening crash. A giant rock. The bus careened down the mountain road, screeching against the metal guardrail. A boulder filled one side of the bus, from floor to ceiling. A cold November wind blew in through the hole the rock had torn in the roof. There was no sign of his future self. The red handles of a pair of scissors stuck out from the underneath the boulder.

They were closer to Seattle than Spokane, and Nicole had a friend that worked at one of the local ski resorts. Andrew probably should have gotten on the replacement bus Greyhound sent to take passengers to Spokane, but when Nicole offered him a ride back to Seattle, he accepted. His boss would be angry about him missing the company retreat, but Andrew figured any time you watch yourself die in a bus accident, you got a free pass on work.

• • • •

The day after the accident, Andrew sketched a preliminary blueprint for his time machine onto the gray-lined paper of his Moleskine notebook. He photographed everything in the apartment with his digital camera, taking special care to document every small appliance and electronic device so he would know which items he could use to scavenge parts. He had nearly finished documenting everything when he remembered the CZT detectors in his duffle bag. He could order another set for his exoplanet telescope, but he was grateful these had arrived in time. There was no way he’d be able to build a time machine without them.

He paused. But why was he so grateful? He’d thrown himself into making the time machine because it was, admittedly, a fascinating challenge and exactly the sort of project he was interested in, but his future self died under a giant rock. He put down his camera. Maybe he’d be better off not building the time machine after all.

The red handles of Nicole’s scissors stuck out of his laptop bag. His future self had stolen them and really wanted him to have them. Well, he wanted nothing to do with a future where he died in a freak bus accident. If he was supposed to have the scissors, then he’d get rid of them.

He turned them in his hands.

Nicole had given him her number in case he wanted to talk to someone else who’d been through the accident, stammering that it wasn’t really the same because she hadn’t lost anyone. She’d shoved the paper into his hand and said an awkward goodbye. From the little he’d gotten to know her on the car ride back to Seattle, she seemed nice. A librarian who spent most of her time buried in books. She even liked poetry.

Maybe he would use the scissors as an excuse to see her again. He wondered if that was his future self’s goal all along, and then decided he didn’t care. He had no way of knowing which choices led to a heroic but untimely death, and he liked the idea of seeing Nicole again. It had been a long time since he’d had any interest in dating, and it was time to move on. He pulled out the scrap of paper with her number and called her up to see if she wanted to grab some coffee.

SCISSORS

Nicole put her scissors into a compartment at the top of Andrew’s latest invention. He’d built it, but she’d come up with the idea—a device that would let them test hypothetical changes to the timeline and calculate the likelihood of various outcomes. The scissors, which would be crushed by the rock that caused the accident, calibrated the device to the appropriate subset of realities.

They had a few hours to run tests before her younger self got back from the library. Nicole was glad there were only a couple more weeks before the weekend at Beacon Rock. It would be easier once the divorce went through and Andrew could spend more time with her.

“Ready for the first test?” she asked.

Andrew nodded. She entered the first test condition.

Death annihilates scissors.

Test: Andrew convinces Nicole to not get onto the bus.

Result: Andrew never builds time machine, cannot go back to warn Nicole.

Probability of timeline collapse: 99.56%

Probability of death, Nicole: 99.56%

Probability of death, Andrew: 99.56%

Exactly what they’d expected. Nicole was pleased that the device was working. Now they could get on with the actual tests.

Death annihilates scissors.

Test: Andrew convinces Nicole not to get onto the bus AND convinces his younger self to build a time machine.

Result: Andrew tries to build the time machine, but fails; cannot go back to warn Nicole.

Probability of timeline collapse: 98.23%

Probability of death, Nicole: 98.23%

Probability of death, Andrew: 98.23%

“Once you know that you need to build the machine, why can’t you just build it?” Nicole demanded. “You can obviously do it, because you did it in this timeline.”

“I got the idea for how to use gravitational lensing from something your mom said at Thanksgiving,” Andrew said, “and you only invited me to Thanksgiving dinner because you thought I’d lost my dad on the bus.”

“What did she say? We can send that as part of the message to your past self, when you convince him he needs to build the machine.” Nicole started entering the conditions of the test. “Wait! We could do even better, we could send the blueprints back.”

“It won’t—” Andrew began, but Nicole finished entering the conditions and ran the test.

Death annihilates scissors.

Test: Take blueprints for the time machine back in time and give them to younger Andrew.

Result: Timeline collapse.

Probability of timeline collapse: 99.99%

Probability of death, Nicole: 99.99%

Probability of death, Andrew: 99.99%

“Oh, right. If you build the time machine based on blueprints that you bring back from the future, then you never actually think up how to build the time machine.” Nicole tried to remember every trick and twist she’d ever read in a time travel novel, but nothing seemed like it would work.

They tested several other possibilities, but everything resulted either in Andrew dying or the timeline collapsing. When it was nearly time for her younger self to return home, she asked Andrew if she could take the hypotheticals device to her apartment, so she could keep testing.

“I think we should accept the fact that I have to die, and enjoy the time we have,” Andrew said. “We’ve always known it would be hard on you when I go. Your younger self wouldn’t have let me do it.”

“So why should I? Because I’m older, I should be willing to let you go? There have to be other solutions.” Nicole realized there was at least one.

Rock crushes scissors.

Test: Andrew doesn’t go back in time.

Result: Nicole dies in bus accident.

Probability of timeline collapse: 0.01%

Probability of death, Nicole: 99.78%

Probability of death, Andrew: 0.45%

“This is the one,” Nicole said. “It’ll be better this way. Neither of us will ever know what we’re missing.”

“You can’t let me go, so you’re going to shift that burden to me?” Andrew brushed her cheek with his fingertips. “Not fair.”

“Totally fair.”

“At least stay until Beacon Rock. We can have one last wonderful trip before we wipe everything we’ve shared out of existence.”

• • • •

Their life became a series of postponements. She would try to convince him to destroy the time machine and not go back to save her. He would beg for another day, another trip, another kiss, another memory.

She couldn’t really blame him. Why shouldn’t they enjoy themselves before they wiped their relationship out of existence? She let him stall, let herself enjoy the time she spent with him, and tried not to think about the inevitable end. She allowed herself a year. One beautiful year.

“Four years from today, you go back in time to die,” she told him. “Send me to the future.”

“What?”

“It’s the same problem all over again,” Nicole explained. “If I’m here, you won’t destroy the time machine. You need to forget about me, move on. Send me to the future, and then all you have to do is destroy the time machine. Any time in the next four years.”

“I can’t do it,” he said. “If I had it in me to let you die, we couldn’t be here.”

“You just haven’t decided yet,” Nicole argued. “You can still avoid this loop, find someone else, live a happy, normal life. I’ll disappear. I was supposed to die that day anyway, and you have more to give to the world than I do.”

“That’s bullshit and we both know it.”

She smiled and thought of the teenagers who’d come into the library for the escape they desperately needed from a terrible reality, the researchers seeking obscure titles or ancient microfiche. Her life touched others, and she had a lot to give. But someone else could step in and give those things. She didn’t want to be the damsel in distress, saved by a prince. She wanted to be the hero.

“Send me to the future,” Nicole repeated. “It’ll be easier for you to decide if I’m not here.”

Andrew set the dial on the time machine for seventy years into the future. Nicole took the scissors with her, so he wouldn’t be tempted to run any more tests.

LOVE

Nicole stepped out into a condo with huge windows overlooking the ocean. A fire crackled in the fireplace, and classical music played over wall-mounted speakers. There was a note, written on a torn-out Moleskine journal page, on the table next to the time machine.

a robot programmed

to prepare for this spring day

our joyous new home

The robot described in the poem was standing in a wall alcove. She wondered if it was a special creation of Andrew’s or a standard household appliance. It had a generic humanoid appearance, with facial features that looked like no one in particular. The designers had opted to make it silver, rather than flesh colored. It matched the stainless steel appliances, which she suspected were selected to match the time period she’d left, rather than whatever the modern fashion happened to be.

She heard the soft whir of the time machine behind her, and closed her eyes. Would the shift in the timeline be instantaneous, or would she feel the pain of her death before she dissolved into nothingness? She waited, but the end didn’t come.

“Our timeline starts from the assumption that I go back to save you. I can’t stop myself, even if you ask me to,” Andrew said. “But we can have a little more time together, here in the future, or back somewhere in our past if you’d rather.”

Andrew stepped out of the time machine mere moments after she did, but he had aged. He must have stayed in the past years after she’d left, and she still existed. Which meant he hadn’t destroyed the time machine, and he probably never would.

He took her hand, an excited grin on his face. “Wait until you see the library I set up in here.”

The condo had two bedrooms, and he’d converted one of them into a maze of books. Shelves all around the walls, even up above the door. Rows of shelves in the middle of the room, with barely enough room to walk around them. Shelves underneath the cushioned nook that was built in underneath the window. Every shelf was packed with books.

“Paper fell out of favor,” he said, “but I knew you’d miss your friends.”

She ran her fingertips over the spines of the books. It was an eclectic collection with a little bit of everything, literary classics, science fiction, mysteries, romance. Nonfiction travel books and assorted science texts. Poetry. It was beautiful.

“Thank you.”

They held hands and walked on the beach, watching teenagers fly around recklessly on motorized kites before splash-landing into the ice cold ocean. Nicole worried about them at first, but they all wore protective wetsuits and emerged from the ocean unscathed. Andrew eventually pointed out robots at even intervals along the beach.

“Probably lifeguards,” he said.

Robots, it turned out, were everywhere. There were shops manned by robots, shuttle buses that drove themselves, even hospitals and schools with no sign of any humans. Nicole wanted to ask someone about it, but the only people she ever saw were the teenagers on the beach, and they were too busy fly-diving for her to get anywhere near them.

Nicole approached one of the lifeguard robots. “Where are all the people?”

“There are fifty-seven people currently using this section of beach,” the robot responded.

“Not here, specifically,” Andrew clarified. “Historically, there were people doing tasks that robots do now. Why are there so few people?”

“We are programmed as caretakers for those who remain,” the robot explained. “Most people have moved on.”

“But are there any people left?”

“I only have data for this section of beach,” the robot said. “Fifty-five entertainment bodies rented via Central 3, and two independent units.”

Nicole figured there’d been some sort of singularity event, like she was always reading about in science fiction novels. After a while, she and Andrew got used to the robots and came to appreciate the privacy. It was a calm, peaceful life, and she was happy. But every morning she looked at the time machine and wondered—was tomorrow the day he would go back? Was today the day she should destroy the machine?

She knew what she needed to do, but she kept putting it off. There was no harm to one more day, a little more time. One more book to read. One more of Andrew’s poems. One more walk on the beach.

Then one day it was too late.

She was in the kitchen cooking breakfast, and he stood next to the time machine. “I have to go now, while I’m still strong enough to carry you over the aisle.”

And with no more goodbye than that, he stepped into the time machine and disappeared. She had waited too long and missed her chance, and now her paradise would be her prison, and she would be alone with only books and robots until she died.

DEATH

Rock crushes scissors.

Test: Nicole programs the time machine to pull Andrew out of the past before he is crushed.

Result: Unknown.

Probability of timeline collapse: 0.01%

Probability of death, Nicole: 1.48%

Probability of death, Andrew: 50%

An army of helpful robots and a roomful of books went a long way toward solving a time travel problem, but even with all the resources of the future, she couldn’t come up with a perfect result. Even odds was the best solution she’d found, and the time had come to try.

The only way she’d come up with to use the time machine remotely was to send a piece of the machine back in time. Andrew had created some kind of bond between all the parts, and the machine would reach out into the past to try to bring itself back together.

Nicole searched for something she could use to hide a piece of the time machine, and eventually she found an antique wristwatch at a pawn shop. After the accident, Andrew had given her a pair of red-handled scissors, and she’d given him a watch that had mysteriously appeared in her jacket pocket. This watch. Their younger selves assumed that Andrew had tucked it into her pocket as he pushed her out of harm’s way, but perhaps that wasn’t what really happened.

Nicole took the watch home and pried open the back. She removed a case screw from the watch, and replaced it with one of the tiny screws that held the modified CZT detectors to the time machine’s circuit board.

With a piece missing, using the time machine would be dangerous. Nicole didn’t have to worry about it when she went back, because she’d be wearing the watch. After that, though, anyone attempting to arrive in this section of the timeline might partially recohere on the missing piece, spread too thin across time to ever come back together. It would be dangerous until Andrew came back with the watch, the missing screw.

The watch was loose on her wrist, and she pushed it halfway up her forearm to make sure it wouldn’t slip off. At the last moment, she remembered the red-handled scissors. She needed to return them to the past so her younger self could hurl them out into the grass for Andrew to find. She traveled back to when Andrew and both her younger selves were at Beacon Rock. While the house was empty, she snuck the scissors back into their drawer.

Then she went all the way back to the beginning and arrived at Andrew’s apartment a few minutes after the two of him had gone to catch the bus.

• • • •

Rock crushes love. Nicole arrived at the bus station shortly before it was time to board and cut to the front of the line, determined to be the first person onto the bus. Her age worked to her advantage, because the younger passengers didn’t have the heart to tell an old lady to move to the back of the line. Enough time had passed since Andrew left that she was confident he wouldn’t recognize her, leaning heavily on her cane and wearing thick glasses. Even so, she had dressed all in pink and worn a wide floppy hat. She hated pink.

She made her way to the back of the bus, ignoring the driver’s suggestion that she might be more comfortable in the front. “I like to be close to the ladies’ room,” she told him. She picked a seat where she’d be able to see the accident.

Out the window, Andrew was talking to his younger self as they stood in line. Young Andrew was listening, but he was clearly distracted by the impossibly young Nicole that was in front of them in line. She could jump across time, but never again would she be that young. It seemed like more than a single lifetime ago that she met Andrew and created this convoluted mess in their timelines.

But maybe she could fix it.

Nicole watched Andrew steal the scissors out of her younger self’s knitting bag. She watched him stare at the time on his watch, identical to the one she wore on her own wrist. He had no idea that the watch held a piece of the time machine. He waited for exactly the right moment. He picked Nicole up and pushed her across the aisle into the arms of his youth. That was the moment. She stopped the hands on her watch to record the time.

There was an odd hum from her watch, a vibration that gradually increased in intensity. She worried that the time machine was trying to pull her back into the future, but Andrew was staring at his watch too. He was supposed to take it off and slip it into Nicole’s pocket, and his curiosity turned to panic as he realized he had deviated from the plan.

Outside, the boulder broke free. It was oblong and gray and the size of a minivan, and it seemed to hang for a moment, teetering on the face of the cliff before crashing down through the roof of the bus.

She stared at the wall of rock where Andrew had been.

• • • •

When the machine pulled at its missing piece, there was an equal chance that it would pull her back instead of Andrew. Fifty-fifty. Even odds. Two watches, two pieces of the machine, only one chance to get it right.

The crucial moment had passed, and she was still on the bus. She prayed that she’d done everything right, that Andrew was safely in the future, and not crushed underneath the rock.

The younger version of herself embraced the younger Andrew.

In the confusion after the accident, she slipped the watch off her wrist and into her younger self’s jacket pocket.

She’d left a note for Andrew in the future, explaining what she’d done. If he lived, he would see it, and maybe he would figure out some way to bring her forward, too. They could join the singularity and transcend together beyond these tangled loops of time.

And if he couldn’t find a way to bring her forward? Well, it would take years, but she would wait for the youngest Andrew to build the time machine, and then she could send herself back into their future.

She watched their younger selves get into a car and drive away, and then she felt it, the tug of the future.

Love conquers death.

©2015 by Caroline M. Yoachim.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Caroline M. Yoachim lives in Seattle and loves cold cloudy weather. She is the author of dozens of short stories, appearing in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, and Daily Science Fiction, among other places. Her short story collection is coming out with Fairwood Press in 2016. For more about Caroline, check out her website at carolineyoachim.com.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Light Brigade

Kameron Hurley | 5963 words

The war has turned us into light.

Transforming us into light is the fastest way to travel from one front to another, and there are many fronts, now. I always wanted to be a hero. I always wanted to be on the side of light. It’s funny how things work out.

But I’ve been doing this long enough now to know what I really am.

I didn’t believe we could turn people into light when I signed up for service after the San Paulo Blink. When you saw what the aliens did to that city without even sending an army there, you knew you had to do something, even if it was dangerous. What happened to all those people doesn’t compare to what I have to do. I guess the Blink gave me an idea of the tech involved in what we were expected to do, as corporate soldiers. But it’s hard to understand a thing when all you know about it is what people say about it. It’s like having sex, or getting into a fight. You don’t understand it until you do it.

We jumped first during our six-week orientation, which the CO still calls basic training, even though there hasn’t been a public army in almost a century. They inject you with a lot of stuff in training. They don’t even wait to see if you wash out, because even if you wash out, they still need you. You don’t opt-out of this war anymore, not like you could in the early days. If you want to eat at the corporate store, you support the war.

Anyway, you don’t even know what any of this shit is they’re pumping you full of. They say it makes you faster, smarter, tougher, and who wouldn’t want that? You can’t say no. Not that you’d want to. Not if you’re a real soldier.

And I am. I’m a real soldier.

A real fucking hero.

I’m made of light.

• • • •

They say the first drop is the toughest, but it’s not. It’s the one after that, because you know what’s coming. You know how bad it is, and what the odds are that you’ll come back wrong.

Who are we fighting? The bad guys. They’re always the bad guys, right? We gave these alien people half the northern hemisphere to rehabilitate, because it was such a fucking wreck after the Seed Wars that nobody cared who settled it. Nothing would grow there until they came. The aliens had this technology that they developed when they split from us on Earth and built their colonies on Mars. We cut ourselves off from them when they left, so it was a real surprise when some of them asked to come back. I guess they thought they were saving us, but we don’t need saving. The tech, whatever it was, got rid of all the radiation and restored the soil, probably the same way it did on Mars after the Water Riots. And stuff grew. We trusted them, but they betrayed us. That’s what the networks say, and that’s what my CO says, but I’m here because they betrayed San Paulo.

That one I could see. That one I could believe.

Anyway. The drop. The first drop.

You burst apart like . . . Well, first your whole body shakes. Then every muscle gets taut as a wire. My CO says it’s like a contraction when you’re having a kid, and if that’s true, if just one is like that, then I don’t know how everybody who has a kid isn’t dead already, because that’s bullshit.

Then you vibrate, you really vibrate, because every atom in your body is being ripped apart. It’s breaking you up like in those old sci-fi shows, but it’s not quick, it’s not painless, and you’re aware of every minute of it. You don’t have a body anymore, but you’re aware, you’re locked in, you’re a beam of fucking light.

You’re a Paladin. A hero of the fucking light.

My first drop, we came in on our beams of light and burned down the woods the alien insurgents were in before our feet had even corporealized. We burned up at least a dozen of the enemy right there. But the worst one was the second drop, like I said, when we came down to protect a convoy under fire in the aliens’ territory in Canuck. We came down right there in their farms and traded fire. It’s confusing when you come down in the middle of something already going on, okay? Sometimes the energy weapons go right through you, because there’s not enough of you stuck together yet. But sometimes you’ve come together just enough, and they hit you, and either you’re meat enough for it to kill you, or all your atoms break apart, and you’re nothing. You ghost out.

I’ve seen a lot of people ghost out.

I came together and started firing. It’s what they train us to do, so it wasn’t my fault. I hit an alien girl—some civilian at the farm. She wasn’t even fifteen. I could hear her and her mother screaming. Their whole family, screaming, because I’d hit her and her legs were gone.

When the fight was over, our medic went to help them, but it didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to walk unless somebody regrew her legs and only executives have those corporate benefits. I only fired once. One shot. But one is all it takes. You just have to deal with it, when bad things happen to you, especially if you’re an alien, because nobody wants to help you.

I deal with it when bad things happen. So should she.

I still hear her and her mom screaming sometimes.

They’re aliens, sure.

But.

But it wasn’t so long ago that they lived here, before they all ran off to Mars and made some big colony. We welcomed them back like they weren’t aliens, but they are. They are aliens. They aren’t like us. They are really different. They have a whole other language. Different clothes. They have these socialist ideas that mean shitting on you if you’re an individual at all. They’re just drones, really, doing whatever their collective tells them. They’re aliens. They’re the enemy.

I can hear her screaming.

• • • •

You still don’t get it.

I’m not stupid. I don’t believe everything they pump us full of. I don’t believe all the networks. I’ve been on too many grassy alien fields for that. Seen too many people dead—ours and theirs—and the faces all look the same. I ask about the San Paulo Blink a lot now, and nobody has good answers for me. Like, why did they pick San Paulo? And, why did these aliens come down from Mars but the others didn’t? And, if what they did in San Paulo was so bad, why are we using the same tech to fight them?

They don’t like us to ask questions. They try to train it out of you, not just if you’re a corporate soldier, but for workers, too. The corporation knows best, right?

I dated this girl once, this really smart girl. She was getting a PhD in one of those social sciences. She said there’s this thing called escalation of commitment. That once people have invested a certain amount of time in a project, they won’t quit, even if it’s no longer a good deal. Even if they’re losing. War is like that. No one wants to admit they’re losing. They’ve already lost so much.

You know what you are. What you’re becoming. And you can’t stop it. You’re committed. It doesn’t matter how much people scream or how many you kill whose faces looks like yours. This is your job. This is what you’re trained for. It’s who you are. You can’t separate them.

Do you get it?

When I signed up after San Paulo, me and my friends were shocked that the recruiting center wasn’t packed. Where were all the patriots? Didn’t they know what the aliens had done? Didn’t they know we had to defend ourselves? I thought all those people who didn’t sign up were cowards. While you were all upgrading your fucking social tech and masturbating to some new game, we were fighting the real threat. We were real adults, and you were cowardly little shits.

I joined up because the aliens were ruining the world. I joined up because I thought I was the good guy.

We’re the good guys.

We’re made of light.

I wish I was as stupid as I used to be.

• • • •

I see things, when I become the light. You’re not supposed to.

I want to tell you there’s a humming sound, when you start to break apart, but the shrink says that’s impossible. Light doesn’t hear things. They tell us that we can’t see or feel anything either, but that’s a lie, and anyone who’s been through it and tells you they don’t see or hear anything is lying because they don’t want to spend the rest of their lives in a freak house. We all see things in transit. It doesn’t mean you’re bad or crazy. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad soldier.

I’m not a bad soldier.

The first time I saw something I remembered was on my third drop. I saw a white rose on a black table. That’s it. Just a single image, a flash, fast as the moment it took me to make the transit. The shrink says it’s just my brain making things up. Faulty electrical charges, a side effect of the process that breaks up our atoms.

But I saw that image again a couple weeks later, in real life, inside my own meat. I went out to dinner with my squad, and we sat at these dark tables and this lady came around, this old bag lady, and I’m not sure who let her in, but she came around with roses and she was selling them to people.

One of the girls bought a white rose from the lady and laughed and put it on the table. A white rose on a black table. It was placed on the table just the way it was when I saw it in transit during the drop. I stared at it a long time, so long the bag lady tapped my shoulder and asked if I wanted a rose. I shrugged her off, but she squeezed my bare arm and said, “You will go back to the city. You will know why it’s full of light.” And then she left us.

I drank and laughed and tried to forget it, but it was creepy. And the visions kept happening. I kept seeing things twice—once in transit, and once in real life.

I told the shrink about it and she said it was just déjà vu, when you think you’ve seen something you’ve seen before. It happens a lot and it’s not weird, she said. No one is sure why it happens more to members of the Light Brigade than other people (we call ourselves the Light Brigade. The CO hates it). She said we get it even more than people with epileptic seizures. It’s the folks with seizures that make them think it has something to do with electrical discharges in the brain that cause faults in the way you store memories. It’s not that you’ve really seen what you’re seeing before, she tells me. It’s that your brain already wrote the memory, but the conscious part of you doesn’t register that it was written just a blink ago. You feel like it was a long time ago, but it wasn’t. It’s a false feeling. Or maybe, she says, it’s just that there are some familiar things in some setting you’re in, and so you feel it happened before.

It was when she gave me that, “Or maybe” part that I realized they have no idea what they’re talking about, just like with everything.

And once I started seeing things . . . I started trying to prolong them, those visions. I started corporealizing a half second after everyone else, then a second, then a few seconds, then a full minute, and lingering in those visions just a little longer.

If I was making it all up, if it was déjà vu, how could I do that?

But because I’m not stupid, I go along with it. I tell her yeah, sure, that makes sense. It’s just a faulty memory. It’s just being part of the Light Brigade.

You see things other people aren’t supposed to see.

• • • •

When did it change, for me?

Not orientation. Not the first drop. Not that girl I hurt. Not the déjà vu.

It changed when we cornered them in their biggest city, a year into my service. Virgin target, the CO said; totally untouched by drones and viral bursts and our Light Brigade. They wanted to see how some new weapon would perform against a target nobody had touched.

I should have guessed what the weapon would be.

I was part of the squad that volunteered to deliver the weapon. They didn’t just inject us with shit for this one; they put us under. I don’t know what they did. When I woke up, the world was a little green around the edges, and it was tough to figure out how to make words for a couple hours. My tongue was numb. I couldn’t feel my toes. But after that I felt pretty normal. Or, what I’d consider normal by then; waking up with night sweats, puking after anxiety attacks. Normal.

Then they sent us out. Busted us down into light.

I broke apart fast, faster than ever, and in the agonizing few seconds it took us to reach this new front at the speed of light, I saw a glowing green field full of bodies heaped up like hay bales. They weren’t alien bodies. They were us. Our suits. Our faces. And they spread out all around me, as far as I could see. There was a big city in the distance, a city I didn’t know, its shining spires reflecting a massive sea that was so still it might have been a lake.

Something had gone very wrong here. We had done something very wrong, and we had paid for it. I stretched the moment out, tried to hold it. I didn’t just get a few seconds this time, but a couple minutes. And I could . . . sort of sense myself there, like I was visiting myself. But how was I there, over that city, and over this one, at the same time?

I had this moment of dissonance as I was coming together over the drop zone, like I saw that city and this one lying right on top of each other.

Blink.

My vision blurred, and I was over the real city, the now city, the alien city again, the virgin target we were there to destroy. The city I’d come to obliterate.

We started corporealizing over the enemy’s biggest port city, the shining pearl of that empire they carved out in Canuck. It unfurled from the flat black desert they had turned into a golden prairie, the way I imagined Oz appeared to Dorothy at the end of the yellow brick road.

It was beautiful. The pinnacle of some great civilization. So clean and light and . . . new. New like nothing on the rest of earth was new, all of us building on top of the dead civilizations that came before us, the ruined landscapes. Seeing their untouched city, even our best made us look like what we actually were—vagrants living on the bones of something greater that had come before.

We landed and scattered inside the spiraling towers. I arrived a good two minutes after everyone else, and I heard the screams of those who had corporealized inside buildings or walls or those who’d gotten stuck in the pavers. One woman waved her arms at me as I passed, stuck halfway into the ground. Others I passed were already dead, their bodies put back together in a steaming mess of broken flesh and meat.

This was the stuff they glossed over when they pumped you full of drugs. This was the bad part about becoming light. Sometimes it fucked you up.

Sometimes you couldn’t put yourself back together again.

I once asked the shrink if maybe it’s not déjà vu and maybe we really do go somewhere else when we become light.

“Like where?” she said.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I’m visiting myself in other places, other times.” I tried to be nonchalant, only half-serious. “I jump ahead in time, maybe.”

She swiped something onto the cloudy data projection in front of her and grounded me for six weeks of psych evaluations.

I didn’t bring that up again.

But I was figuring things out. Things they didn’t want us to understand.

Overhead, waves of our drones came in behind us to draw fire from the shining city. They swept across the neatly tilled fields and buzzed over us. I expected to hear the enemy’s defensive guns, or see the wheeling kites of their own organic weaponry flooding the sky in response to the onslaught. But the air was silent save for the soft whirring of the drones and the chuffing of our boots on the paving stones.

I always expect the alien cities to be red, like Mars, but not even Mars is red anymore, they say. The people that went to Mars did the opposite of what we did back here. They took something red and dusty and turned it into a sea of light. I hear there are giant wispy trees and shallow lakes and a big freshwater ocean there. Here, except for what the aliens did in far Canuck, it’s gray and mostly lifeless; a paved-over world where we’re scrabbling for fewer and fewer resources.

They were going to save us, they said.

But they betrayed us.

Liars.

Aliens.

I saw movement in one of the buildings and shot off a few bursts from my weapon. The façade cracked and wept brown sap. Everything was alive in their cities, even the buildings. Everything bled. But I didn’t see any aliens, just us in our boots.

We crawled over that place, looking for the enemy. But the city was deserted. Maybe they’d abandoned it, or they’d found out we were coming and hid in bunkers. I don’t know.

But we couldn’t just come all this way for nothing. We had to do what we came for. We had to be weapons.

We assembled around the heart of the city’s square the way we planned in training. We raised our energy weapons and set them on the new setting, the one engineered specifically for this mission. We pointed our weapons across the broad square at one another. Set them at a high charge. Waited for the signal.

I started to vibrate. We started to come apart.

The trick was to wait, to be patient. But no one had actually tried to use the light like this before, no living person. It was something they’d done with simulators and robots that fired at each other. It’s easy for a robot, to fire at another robot. Harder for a soldier to fire at the person next to them. The one you’d take a hit for. I’d fire into my own face first, I thought, when they told me what we had to do.

But we’re the Light Brigade. We do what they tell us to do.

The vibrating got worse. Then the cramping. My body seized up. I gasped. Somebody shot their weapon; too soon. A scream. A body down. Another shot. Too soon.

Goddammit, hold it together.

The contraction stopped.

The world snapped.

I didn’t look at the mirrored helmet of the soldier across from me. I looked at the purple patch on their suit, the one that said they were one of us, the Light Brigade. I pulled the trigger.

Everything burst apart.

We were full of light.

• • • •

“I’m tired of taking care of living things,” my CO told me once outside the mess hall, right before that operation. “There’s so goddamn many of you. I can’t even go home and take care of my dog at night without getting angry at it. Too much fucking responsibility.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“For what? It’s not your fault. The war’s not your fault. Not my fault either.” But she said the last part differently, like she didn’t quite believe it.

And I wondered if she was right to doubt it, because it was our fault, wasn’t it? We fought this war willingly. We gave our bodies to it, even if we’re only here because of the lies the corporations told us. What if there was a war and nobody came? What if the corporations voted for a war and nobody fought it? You can only let so many people starve. You can only throw so many people in jail. You can only have so many executions for insubordination to the latest CEO or Board of Directors.

We are the weapon.

We fired on one another as we broke apart, and created an explosion so massive it obliterated half the northern hemisphere.

Everything the aliens made grow again, we turned back into dust.

We were the weapon. We were the light.

That was when it changed, for me. It’s like, you think you’re brave, so you carry out your orders. You do it even if you know what the outcome is going to be. You do it because you always wanted to be a hero—you wanted to be on the side of the light. It’s not until you destroy everything good in the world that you realize you’re not a hero . . . you’re just another villain for the empire.

• • • •

There weren’t many of us left to see what we did, and maybe it was better that way. It was all over the networks, the destruction of half a continent. They didn’t say how we did it. They didn’t say we shot each other up to do it, or say how many of our people died in the explosion, their essential elements broken apart. And right beside these pictures of this barren, smoking wasteland were pictures of our own people cheering in our dingy little cities built on the bones of our ancestors. We had scorched the fucking earth, but everyone cheered because we’d gotten back at those aliens, those liars, those betrayers.

I saw those images and I knew what I had to do. Because I still wanted to be a hero. I still had a chance. But it meant giving up everything I believed in. Betraying everyone I cared about. Being everything I’m supposed to hate.

I know what I need to do because I’ve seen it.

A white rose on a black table.

Heaps of bodies lying on the field like hay.

I know where I need to go. I know what’s next.

• • • •

The CO gave us leave, those of us who were left. I spent mine looking up the city from my vision, the one I saw in transit. There are a lot of cities by water, but none of ours have brilliant green fields like that. All of our shining cities are surrounded by gritty labor camps.

I didn’t realize how much they lied to us on the networks until I saw the alien cities. Until I killed the aliens myself. They had made a beautiful world from our shit, and we hated them for it, because they were free. No one owned them.

Betrayers, they said, on the networks. Liars.

They had made the land grow things again, but that was all they were supposed to do. They weren’t supposed to be free because no one is free, and they weren’t supposed to be able to defend themselves because no one can. When we found out they could fight back, when we found out about the organic kites that could take out a drone with a single shattering note, or the EMPs that disabled our networks the first time one of our armies rolled by to see what they were doing, the corporate media started building the narrative—the aliens were liars standing in the way of corporate freedom of commerce.

And then San Paulo.

In San Paulo, the aliens had retaliated. They had turned everyone into light.

A whole city had disappeared.

What nobody said is that San Paulo was where the corporations kept a lot of their most profitable labor camps. My cousin was there, so far in debt to the corps that she couldn’t get out. I joined the Light Brigade so that wouldn’t be my fate, too. The corps take care of you, as long as you give them everything.

Maybe the aliens did those people a favor. Now that I’d been light, I started thinking that maybe they didn’t die after all. Maybe they just went somewhere else. Maybe the aliens found out what we were, too, and tried to save us from ourselves, the way I was now trying to save them.

The San Paulo Blink showed the corporations what was possible. And they used the tech to fight back.

The aliens gave us the light.

Eight million corporate slaves, gone in a blink.

And our response: half a continent scorched of all life.

Maybe the light was our downfall. Or maybe we’d been falling the whole time.

• • • •

After a couple days’ leave, after I located the coordinates of where the city in my vision used to be, I asked to go out on the next offensive. The city I’d seen in my vision had been one of the first we destroyed in the early days of the war, after we tried to invade and they retaliated. In the archives, I saw the city the same way I had in my vision: heaps of our bodies on the green grass fields all around the city.

In the here-and-now, we were still looking for rogue aliens, trying to find out what had happened to all of them, but I already knew. I wasn’t there to help them clean up. I was there because I wanted to jump with them.

I could blink forward. And now I knew I could blink back.

My CO gave me a look when I made the request, like she was trying to figure out if I was crazy. She told me that if I could pass the psych eval, she’d approve my next drop. I asked her if she ever gave her dog away, because it was too much responsibility.

“My dog’s dead,” she said.

“That makes it easier,” I said.

“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. But I guess you can’t save everything.”

No, I thought, you have to choose.

I almost turned back, then, but I was too committed. Escalation of commitment.

The shrink asked me a lot of questions, but I knew the ones that mattered.

“So do you still think you can travel in time, when you become light?” she asked.

I laughed. “I haven’t had any of that déjà vu since the last drop. Those aliens are dead. It’s over.”

I passed my evaluation.

I prepared for the drop. Closed my eyes. Held onto my sense of self while everyone else broke up around me. I pictured the city in my head, the place I wanted to go back to.

We broke apart.

And I saw it—I saw the alien city of my vision again surrounded by brilliant green fields. The shining spires. The inland sea. It wasn’t the city we had scorched when we became the weapons—though it was just as surely obliterated in the here-and-now as that city was. This was the capital. The center of everything. Those spires were their ships, grounded forever at the foot of the gleaming sea. I had arrived before our first offensive on this city, before the fields were full of the bodies of our people. Before we knew the aliens could fight back.

I came down into my own body, trying to yank myself together, but it was like trying to put together a bucket full of puzzle pieces as somebody poured it out around you.

There were no bodies yet. I had time.

I skimmed into the city, past crowds of startled onlookers. I still wasn’t fully corporeal, but I was getting there. I needed a few more minutes. I needed to tell them. Just as I was able to draw air into my lungs, I felt my body vibrating again. It wanted so badly to come back apart and go where the people in charge had sent it.

I held it together.

I yelled, “They’re sending us. We’re weapons. We’re going to scorch the whole continent.”

They all stared blankly at me, like I was some dumb beast, and I wondered if they understood Spanish. I tried again in English, but that was as many languages as I knew.

When I didn’t say anything else, the crowds dispersed and the people went on their way.

But one of them came up behind me, and I recognized her. It was the bag lady from the restaurant. She put her hand on my arm and squeezed, but it went right through me. I was coming apart again.

“It’s you who brings the light,” she said. “We won’t be here when it comes. You can do what you need to do now without fear for us.”

I broke apart.

Saw nothing. A wall of blackness.

Then, another city.

But not the one my CO had sent me to. Someplace else. I was skipping out of control. I was losing it.

I knew this city because I had grown up here, before it became a work camp. I was eight years old now, staring into the lights of San Paulo. The ocean wasn’t as close as it is now, but I could smell the sea on the wind.

I knew this place, and this day.

My cousin was with me, young and alive, laughing at some joke.

I wanted her to be safe forever. I wanted us all to be safe.

I stared up at the sky. Mars was up there, full of socialists.

But they hadn’t lied to us after all, had they?

It was my lie. My betrayal.

I held out my hand to my cousin. “Have you ever wanted to become the light? Go anywhere you want? Be anyone you want?”

“It’s impossible to be anyone you want,” she said, and I was sad, then, for how soon the corporations took away our dreams.

“Hold my hand tight,” I said. “There’s going to be a war soon. There’s going to be a war, but no one will come.”

That’s why the aliens weren’t in the city when we arrived with our weapons.

It was because of me. My betrayal.

And so was this.

I blinked.

I was high above the city now, still in San Paulo, but the sea was higher, the sprawl was even greater, and I could see the work camps circling the city one after another after another.

Eight million people.

What if there was a war and nobody came?

I broke apart over San Paulo.

I was a massive wave of energy, disrupting the bodies around me, transforming everything my altered atoms touched.

We became eight million points of light.

I broke them all apart, and brought them with me.

You can’t save them all. But I could save San Paulo. I could take us all . . . someplace else, to some other time, where there’s no war, and the corporations answer to us, and freedom isn’t just a sound bite from a press release.

This is not the end. There are other worlds. Other stars. Maybe we’ll do better out there. Maybe when they have a war here again, no one will come.

Maybe they will be full of light.

©2015 by Kameron Hurley. Originally published on Patreon.com/KameronHurley. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kameron Hurley is the author of The Mirror Empire, Empire Ascendant and the God’s War Trilogy. Hurley has won the Hugo Award, Kitschy Award, and Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer; she has also been a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, Nebula Award, Locus Award, BFS Award, the Gemmell Morningstar Award, and the BSFA Award for Best Novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Popular Science Magazine, Year’s Best SF, and Meeting Infinity. Her nonfiction has been featured in The Atlantic, Locus Magazine, and the upcoming collection The Geek Feminist Revolution.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Black Fairy’s Curse

Karen Joy Fowler | 1579 words

She was being chased. She kicked off her shoes, which were slowing her down. At the same time her heavy skirts vanished and she found herself in her usual work clothes. Relieved of the weight and constriction, she was able to run faster. She looked back. She was much faster than he was. Her heart was strong. Her strides were long and easy. He was never going to catch her now.

• • • •

She was riding the huntsman’s horse and she couldn’t remember why. It was an autumn red with a tangled mane. She was riding fast. A deer leapt in the meadow ahead of her. She saw the white blink of its tail.

She’d never ridden well, never had the insane fearlessness it took, but now she was able to enjoy the easiness of the horse’s motion. She encouraged it to run faster.

It was night. The countryside was softened with patches of moonlight. She could go anywhere she liked, ride to the end of the world and back again. What she would find there was a castle with a toothed tower. Around the castle was a girdle of trees, too narrow to be called a forest, and yet so thick they admitted no light at all. She knew this. Even farther away were the stars. She looked up and saw three of them fall, one right after the other. She made a wish to ride until she reached them.

She herself was in farmland. She crossed a field and jumped a low, stone fence. She avoided the cottages, homey though they seemed, with smoke rising from the roofs, and a glow the color of butter pats at the windows. The horse ran and did not seem to tire.

She wore a cloak which, when she wrapped it tightly around her, rode up and left her legs bare. Her feet were cold. She turned around to look. No one was coming after her.

She reached a river. Its edges were green with algae and furry with silt. Toward the middle she could see the darkness of deep water. The horse made its own decisions. It ran along the shallow edge, but didn’t cross. Many yards later it ducked back away from the water and into a grove of trees. She lay along its neck and the silver-backed leaves of aspens brushed over her hair.

• • • •

She climbed into one of the trees. She regretted every tree she had never climbed. The only hard part was the first branch. After that it was easy, or else she was stronger than she’d ever been. Stronger than she needed to be. This excess of strength gave her a moment of joy as pure as any she could remember. The climbing seemed quite as natural as stair steps, and she went as high as she could, standing finally on a limb so thin it dipped under her weight, like a boat. She retreated downward, sat with her back against the trunk and one leg dangling. No one would ever think to look for her here.

Her hair had come loose and she let it all down. It was warm on her shoulders. “Mother,” she said, softly enough to blend with the wind in the leaves. “Help me.”

She meant her real mother. Her real mother was not there, had not been there since she was a little girl. It didn’t mean there would be no help.

Above her were the stars. Below her, looking up, was a man. He was no one to be afraid of. Her dangling foot was bare. She did not cover it. Maybe she didn’t need help. That would be the biggest help of all.

“Did you want me?” he said. She might have known him from somewhere. They might have been children together. “Or did you want me to go away?”

“Go away. Find your own tree.”

• • • •

They went swimming together, and she swam better than he did. She watched his arms, his shoulders rising darkly from the green water. He turned and saw that she was watching. “Do you know my name?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she said, although she couldn’t remember it. She knew she was supposed to know it, although she could also see that he didn’t expect her to. But she did feel that she knew who he was—his name was such a small part of that. “Does it start with a W?” she asked.

The sun was out. The surface of the water was a rough gold.

“What will you give me if I guess it?”

“What do you want?”

She looked past him. On the bank was a group of smiling women, her grandmother, her mother, and her stepmother, too, her sisters and stepsisters, all of them smiling at her. They waved. No one said, “Put your clothes on.” No one said. “Don’t go in too deep now, dear.” She was a good swimmer, and there was no reason to be afraid. She couldn’t think of a single thing she wanted. She flipped away, breaking the skin of the water with her legs.

She surfaced in a place where the lake held still to mirror the sky. When it settled, she looked down into it. She expected to see that she was beautiful, but she was not. A mirror only answers one question, and it can’t lie. She had completely lost her looks. She wondered what she had gotten in return.

• • • •

There was a mirror in the bedroom. It was dusty, so her reflection was vague. But she was not beautiful. She wasn’t upset about this, and she noticed the fact, a little wonderingly. It didn’t matter at all to her. Most people were taken in by appearances, but others weren’t. She was healthy; she was strong. If she could manage to be kind and patient and witty and brave, then there would be men who loved her for it. There would be men who found it exciting.

He lay among the blankets, looking up at her. “Your eyes,” he said. “Your incredible eyes.”

His own face was in shadow, but there was no reason to be afraid. She removed her dress. It was red. She laid it over the back of a chair. “Move over.”

She had never been in bed with this man before, but she wanted to be. It was late, and no one knew where she was. In fact, her mother had told her explicitly not to come here, but there was no reason to be afraid. “I’ll tell you what to do,” she said. “You must use your hand and your mouth. The other—it doesn’t work for me. And I want to be first. You’ll have to wait.”

“I’ll love waiting,” he said. He covered her breast with his mouth, his hand moved between her legs. He knew how to touch her already. He kissed her other breast.

“Like that,” she said. “Just like that.” Her body began to tighten in anticipation.

He kissed her mouth. He kissed her mouth

• • • •

He kissed her mouth. It was not a hard kiss, but it opened her eyes. This was not the right face. She had never seen this man before, and the look he gave her—she wasn’t sure she liked it. Why was he kissing her, when she was asleep and had never seen him before? What was he doing in her bedroom? She was so frightened, she stopped breathing for a moment. She closed her eyes and wished him away.

He was still there. And there was pain. Her finger dripped with blood, and when she tried to sit up, she was weak and encumbered by a heavy dress, a heavy coil of her own hair, a corset, tight and pointed shoes.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” She was about to cry, and she didn’t know this man to cry before him. Her tone was accusing. She pushed him and his face showed the surprise of this. He allowed himself to be pushed. If he hadn’t, she was not strong enough to force it.

He was probably a very nice man. He was giving her a concerned look. She could see that he was tired. His clothes were ripped; his own hands were scratched. He had just done something hard, maybe dangerous. So maybe that was why he hadn’t stopped to think how it might frighten her to wake up with a stranger kissing her as she lay on her back. Maybe that was why he hadn’t noticed how her finger was bleeding. Because he hadn’t, no matter how much she came to love him, there would always be a part of her afraid of him.

“I was having the most lovely dream,” she said. She was careful not to make her tone as angry as she felt.

©1997 by Karen Joy Fowler. Originally published in BLACK SWAN, WHITE RAVEN, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Joy Fowler is the author of six novels and three short story collections. Her first novel, Sarah Canary, won the Commonwealth medal for best first novel by a Californian; her third, Sister Noon, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner; and The Jane Austen Book Club was a New York Times bestseller. She has two Nebulas for short fiction, one being for the title story in the collection, What I Didn’t See. Another story, “The Pelican Bar,” recently won the Shirley Jackson and the World Fantasy Award. Her latest novel, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, came out from Putnam in May of 2013, and won the PEN/Faulkner Award and was also short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. She lives in Santa Cruz, California with her husband.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

When We Were Giants

Helena Bell | 3243 words

There was a game we played at my primary school called “Giant in the forest.” Every day, even if it rained, the fourth and fifth grade teachers took us to this small playground with a jungle gym, swings, and a big grassy space where we could run if we wanted to. On the far side of that were the woods, and we weren’t supposed to go in but there wasn’t a fence or anything separating us from the wild and the teachers never paid attention because it was their one smoke break of the day and even if they’d looked up and seen the white tails of our skirts disappearing into the dark branches, they probably would have shrugged and lit another. That’s the way the teachers were then. They knew our options were limited, and nothing bad could ever really happen.

My cousin Abbey was the one who made up the game. She was sore one day because she used to go with this boy Tom, but now Tom was going with Samantha who used to be Abbey’s best friend. Tom didn’t go to our school, no boys did, but our school and his shared the same bus stop and he and Abbey used to stand together, next to the sign, but then one day he was standing there with Samantha and so that afternoon Abbey chased Samantha into the woods and then we all started doing it.

Chasing wasn’t the point. We could play tag or freeze tag or werewolf on the grass just as easily. The point was to run so far that your legs got real long and your arms got real long and your hair stayed the same so it was all spiky at the end of your new giant head. Your fingernails and toenails didn’t change either, they shrank up and disappeared. Abbey said it wouldn’t hurt if you poked them, where the skin was all pink and bare and raw. She said it’d feel just like tickling, but none of us wanted to try. But if you didn’t look at them, or think about it, if you just ran really far and jumped and screamed, and moved all the time in every direction, then you forgot how exposed you were and it didn’t matter.

The one rule we had was to be quick about taking off your uniform: shoes, blouse, skirt, stockings, underwear, and a training bra if you were wearing one of those. Otherwise they’d rip and the teachers noticed things like that. The end of that first week we all got “Assez Bien” cards at Primes because we’d shown up to general instruction with missing buttons and bare legs. Well, all of us except Samantha. It was like she knew before the rest of us what to do, and so she’d waltzed back to class with her hair neat and her shirt tucked. She wasn’t sent to the office to stand with her back straight and eyes down and listen as Reverend Mother Francis Louise (whom we still called Lulu behind her back because that’s how she’d introduced herself when we started in Kindergarten) lectured us about how we needed to take pride in our personal appearance because it was a reflection of our inner strength or beauty or spirituality or something like that.

Abbey told me later that she thought Samantha just nicked whatever clothes she needed that didn’t look too rough. Eventually that’s what we all did. Everything went into a big pile in the damp grass and the first one back got first pick. Last one had to make do with what was left. One day a little fourth grader had to walk back barefoot because she could only find a left shoe and it was too small for her anyway. I told her it was probably better to go without than try to explain why one was missing and the other shrank. Only the next day she came without shoes again because her mother told her they didn’t have the money to replace them and maybe a few days in bare feet would help her remember that. The parking lot in front of the school had just been paved—a dark black that could melt pencils when the sun got real high. It was also rough and pebbly because it hadn’t been driven over for years and years and each day that little fourth grade girl’s stockings would run and then she’d get sent home because it wasn’t healthy to let a girl walk through the hallways and classrooms barefoot. Then one day Samantha brought her a pair of Samantha’s old shoes, which I thought was nice of her and said so.

Samantha and I didn’t get along before then, but not because of Abbey. In fact Abbey and I hadn’t gotten along because of Samantha until the thing with Tom.

Samantha and I didn’t get along because Samantha transferred a couple of weeks before Christmas and Lulu let her sign up for the memorization contest even though it was past the deadline. There was a prize that year, a good one. Lulu had a small statue of the Virgin Mary in her office. Hand painted, she said, from Italy: blue gown, white cheeks, and dark, dark eyelashes. It was beautiful, and the only thing worth getting sent to the office for because you could look at it while she lectured you. I wanted it before I even understood what it was to want such things. We all liked to say it’d been given to Lulu by the Pope himself, which of course was ridiculous but in the absence of the real story we had to make up our own.

Every year Lulu asked us to memorize some poem or passage. If you did well you got a medal that week at Primes, no matter what your test grades were. I was pretty good at it. I would read the text a few times and have it down: “Two Roads Diverged in a Yellow Wood,” “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” the “To Be or Not to Be” bit from Hamlet which none of us understood but that wasn’t necessary to parrot it back, word for word, line by line, completely devoid of its intended meaning. That year, for the statue, she asked us to memorize the Christmas story. The Gospel According to Luke or Matthew, it didn’t matter, but you had to recite all of it. I picked Luke because it begins with Gabriel and at the time I thought I could marry a man with a name like that.

Most girls only got a few lines in. Abbey, in a rare showing, actually managed to get through ten verses before she faded off.

I knew all of it. So did Samantha.

They would’ve let us tie, and one girl could get the statue right then and Lulu said she’d find another one just like it. I didn’t think that was fair; we should’ve been judged on our delivery and our poise and our past history of excellent recitation skills. Then Samantha said she must have misunderstood the rules. Weren’t we supposed to memorize both versions?

• • • •

The worst part of the giant game was coming back. We’d knock down trees and chase deer and pick up wolves with our bare hands and bang logs together, then one of us would hear the first warning bell and call to the others. None of us liked that part, as we trudged back to the edge of the woods, just close enough that our bodies would come back, just far enough that we were still hidden. We’d get smaller and the world wouldn’t. For the rest of the day we’d think about our giant selves, small and caged in our small blouses, our small skins, and we would mourn.

Sometimes a girl would whine that we didn’t really have to go back. Our teachers couldn’t make us, not if we all stuck together and decided to stay, but Abbey would put her hands on her hips and glare at us until we got dressed in whatever happened to be lying around and go back to history or handwriting or general instruction where no one else ever noticed that we didn’t look quite the same as we had that morning.

We didn’t act the same either. It was hard to remember how to get our legs to bend properly, our ankles to cross. It was hard to remember who was important, who wasn’t, and how to respond to each. There were women in the school we were meant to ignore: young girls with small paunches near the waists of their robes. They swept and washed and we knew they were part of the church, real nuns who had taken vows and shorn their hair and everything, but we were supposed to walk by them as if they were ghosts. We were only supposed to curtsey to our teachers, to call them Sister Mary Margaret Jane Clementine Victor Vincent Dimaggio or whatever. But it was confusing so we just curtsied everywhere we went, like a sort of skip or prance down the hallway. Even to the teachers who weren’t nuns at all: who dressed in normal clothes and you could see at the grocery store on Sunday buying bread. We curtsied to them in the frozen foods aisle, between waffles and concentrated juices. They rolled their eyes at us, but didn’t care or yell or send us to the office to promise we wouldn’t do it again. These were the teachers who smoked and watched us by not watching us. These were the teachers we liked best; we were all rolling our eyes together.

One week we had a substitute in History, a small woman with frizzy hair and a loud voice. She lectured at us for twenty minutes on the Civil War, her back turned to the room as she wrote dates and battles and generals in tight, prim handwriting that we could hardly read. Abbey got bored and walked to the back where there was a big closet for our boots and overcoats in the winter. She went in; she shut the door. One by one, the other girls followed until it was so crowded, girls were spilling out.

By the time the teacher turned around, only Samantha and I were still sitting at our desks. The teacher stormed to the back of the room, reached in and grabbed Abbey by her arm, yanking her out. Whether the teacher knew it was Abbey who started it, or it was just the first bit of flesh she got a hold of, I don’t know.

“What do you think you’re doing back here?” she asked.

“Listening,” Abbey said. “I hear better from far away.”

“Right then,” the teacher said. “What have I been saying?”

And Abbey repeated it. Word for word. As if she’d known this was exactly what was going to happen when she first stood up, and she’d waited in that small, dark room, not dreaming what we would’ve been dreaming: about her giant self and the freedom, but about the moment where an adult would demand she defend her actions, and she’d be able to. When Abbey was done, the teacher turned around, walked up to the board, and kept lecturing.

Abbey didn’t get a card that week at Primes. We knew it could happen, but we’d never seen it. “No notes,” Lulu said, and the girls nearest Abbey took an almost imperceptible step away from her. Abbey shrugged and walked back to her seat.

Samantha and I each got medals for “politeness.” Samantha wore hers pinned to the gray ribbon we wore as a sash for just this purpose. I put mine in a box.

In the woods, some of us got big faster than others but none of us got big faster than Samantha. Almost as soon as her feet touched the pine needles they’d start to stretch and pull and then she’d go on a tear. Samantha would run around with her big, giant feet and one day she accidentally stepped on this little fourth grader and broke the poor girl’s leg. We told the teachers the girl had fallen off the swing set. It happens, the teachers said.

Sometimes we wondered if there were other forests out there. Did the boys’ school have one? Did Tom and his friends shed their clothes every day and stomp through the woods as if the entire world would bend to their will? Were there forests that did other things? Was there a forest to turn us into rabbits or birds? One to turn us invisible? One in which we could fly? One day Samantha suggested we should each pick a direction and explore as much as we could. We could draw maps and write instructions, both for each other and for the girls who would come after.

Abbey said it was pointless, a waste of effort. By the time we went far enough to really get anywhere, it would already be time to turn around and come home. And we couldn’t write anything down because it was a secret. What if the woods only allowed a certain number of girls? What if Samantha’s big mouth ruined it for all of them?

Then Samantha and Abbey really got into it. Each of them accused the other of trying to control the group and how everyone was mad at her for it but too polite to say so. Their faces got red and their lips turned white and when it looked like they were finally going to hit each other, they both turned to all of us.

“Which one of us is it?” they demanded. “Which one of us do you resent for making you do what you don’t want to?”

We didn’t answer; we weren’t that stupid.

It got better after that, for a while. Abbey would run in one direction and Samantha would run in another. But then one time we went into the woods and none of us got big except Samantha. She took off and didn’t hear us calling after her and we all sat around in the grass ripping up dandelions.

“Selfish,” Abbey said. “She’s just so selfish.”

Slowly we all got dressed and went back to the swings.

When Samantha came back, we didn’t tell her what had happened. Abbey told us not to. When the other girls asked why not, I said Samantha would just feel guilty, taking up all the magic for herself and leaving us behind. So we didn’t tell her, and later I could see the other girls glance at her sideways. They were all a bit sore at her, thinking that Abbey had been right all along and the woods were teaching us a lesson not to follow Samantha. And Samantha picked up that we were all cross, but couldn’t figure out the why of it. When she asked me, I told her not to worry. I told her it would pass.

For a while I worried that Samantha would latch on to me. That she’d invite me over to her house, and we’d be friends like she and Abbey had been friends. She’d tell me stories about her old schools, and how her mother once pinched the sides of her waist and told her to watch her diet. How her father didn’t understand the importance of holy cards, of medals and ribbons and why it mattered if you had a good grade in Posture. Samantha did none of these things. She thanked me and went back to her desk and hunched her shoulders over her worksheet.

After the girl with the broken leg, there were more accidents. Once we were all running and someone ran into me and I scraped the right side of my cheek against a rough-barked pine. It scabbed over and I had a hard time eating for a while, but I didn’t have to wear a cast or limp around so I counted myself lucky. Abbey got bit by an animal. She wouldn’t say what, but she told the teacher a spider did it. Marian and a few other girls had a sword fight with broken branches and she ended up with a puncture wound that she tried not telling her mother about, but then it got infected and it was bad for a while. It happens.

We knew we needed to be more careful, but it was a temporary thought, no more or less important than the occasional nest of dead beetles we found coloring our callused heels. Even Abbey and Samantha were better while in the woods, running away from each other and never crossing paths. We were all better. It was when we came back, when we filed in line and clacked our shoes and straightened our skirts and pulled each other’s hair and gave each other dark looks at the bus stop when someone stood with someone she wasn’t supposed to that it all started to go sideways again.

So of course we couldn’t stop, not if we had any hope of getting along. But Abbey said if girls kept getting hurt accidentally the teachers would stop leaning against the brick wall with their heads drooping. They’d pay attention, and then we couldn’t go anyway. It was better to lay off for a little while, to play on the swings and the merry-go-round. It was better to have the option: to know we could run full tilt into the shade, to get big and loud, than to be permanently forbidden to ever do so again. It was beautifully, tragically logical, and we all knew it.

Samantha told her to shove off; each girl could do whatever she wanted and there wasn’t anything Abbey could do about it.

So while Abbey and I and the other girls went back to the swing sets and the merry-go-round and the monkey bars and slides, Samantha ran into the woods by herself. No one chased her, but we all watched the white of her back shining in the sun as she dropped her shirt to the ground, then her skirt, then her bra. She screamed once for the joy and the freedom and the power of it all and that’s when we knew she would never come back out again.

She didn’t belong with us. It happens.

©2015 by Helena Bell.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Helena Bell lives in Raleigh where she is an MFA candidate in Fiction at North Carolina State University. Her stories have appeared in Clarkesworld, The Indiana Review, and Shimmer Magazine, the anthologies Upgraded and Surreal South ’13, and other publications. She has an MFA in Poetry from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, and a JD and LLM in Taxation from Washington University in St. Louis. She’s also a graduate of the Clarion West Writer’s Workshop. If you have any suggestions as to what other programs she should attend, you can contact her via her blog (helbell.com) or twitter @HelBell.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Printable

Toh EnJoe (translated by David Boyd) | 4479 words

Sometimes I set stories in San Francisco because I have friends who live there. No family yet, sadly. I like to imagine them reading what I write and maybe smiling. I’m setting this story in Tokyo-Tokyo for the same exact reason. Greg, for one, lives in Tokyo-Tokyo. We first met a few years ago in San Antonio, Texas. He was there as our interpreter, but he actually makes his living as a translator. Last year he moved to Tokyo-Tokyo. Situated between present-day Tokyo and future Tokyo: Tokyo-Tokyo. New York-New York. Europa-Europa. Tiger-Tiger. Bilbao-New York-Bilbao. Never-Nevermore. It’s a city like those cities. Of course it doesn’t really exist, but the people who live there don’t seem to mind, and—if you ask me—that’s just the way things are. There’s nothing unusual about things you can’t do anything about.

Now I’m working on this story, hoping Greg will be the one to translate it, but I’m sure he won’t. Either way, he will read these words. In someone else’s translation. Or in the original. Or maybe both. The Greg in this story will find them in his mailbox. A plain-looking, oversized manila envelope is waiting for him there amid a heap of flyers and bills. Greg climbs the rust-railed stairway while sorting out the mail for his wife, then cuts through the clear tape on the envelope. He pushes the front door open with his shoulder and surveys the package’s contents. Inside he finds this story and a translation. Or a story and its original. He takes a second to think about which one to look at first, then turns around when the bedroom door opens. Good morning, says his wife, blinking sleepily. Then, glancing at the stack of papers in his hands, she asks: New work? It looks like the work’s already over, he responds, holding up the translation so she can see.

Someone else’s, you mean, she says looking at Greg. You’re hung up on work that’s already over. She doesn’t know it yet, but she sounds a little bitter. She refrains from saying: You would have the time to do that. She says: Greg, you. Greg, you’re the one who talked me into moving here. Sometimes you forget that. You were born somewhere in Texas—in Paris or London or Berlin or Rome or wherever it was. But now you’re stuck between times in some God-awful place like Tokyo-Tokyo. You have to be here for your translation job. But it would be nice if you weren’t always working on that long, long novel. Sure, you can do that. If you want. But—aside from that—I want you to do some work that we can live on. We don’t have a lot of money left. You won’t say it, and I know it hasn’t even crossed your mind: We’d be all right if I found a job. But I’m as much a writer as you are a translator. And I don’t write non-fiction. I live to write fiction. But I don’t know the language here, and people here don’t know my language. I can work, but people here won’t see it as work. It would be something different. I hate to admit it, but I haven’t been able to write well since we got here. Even in what used to be my language. My brain is full of another kind of language. I don’t even know what I’m writing any more. I can speak the language here, but I just can’t write it. I keep getting worse at my own language while getting better at a foreign one. It’s like I’m two different people, but I’m not really either of them. Like I’m a kid again. I’m supposed to be writing a novel, but I don’t think anyone would see it as a novel.

You’re translating a long, long novel. Your contract states that you won’t receive any payment until the translation is over. But you went for it and came to this city. You love this story that much. Living in this city was a part of the deal. When they came to you with the offer, you didn’t think twice. When I started listing my practical concerns, you countered by eagerly telling me the writer’s name, but it was a name I’d never heard before. If I can translate this writer’s work, it’ll change our lives, you say. This isn’t some run-of-the-mill novelist. No writer sells better, you tell me. Then you go through some of the writer’s books—but I know that every book you mention was written by a different author, so I have to ask myself if you’ve lost your mind. Unable to conceal your excitement, you add: and this one’s supposed to be extraordinary. Supposed to be, because the novel you’re dying to translate isn’t even finished yet. When I tell you I don’t know who that writer is, you say that’s because it’s a big secret. People who know know, but those who don’t never will. You say this, stating the obvious. He writes incognito. No, you continue, she’s a ghostwriter. One who writes other people’s stories. Anonymously. Using a different writer’s name each time. But this ghostwriter doesn’t wait for jobs. This ghostwriter decides to write somebody else’s story. And just does it. Sometimes it ends up being that author’s best-known work. Sometimes the writer writes just one book in a series of books. One book that, of course, outshines those written by that author. The writer doesn’t stick to any particular genre. It’s all fair game: the popular and the experimental, the historical and the futuristic. Even stories closely linked to the present. New novels for newcomers and old ones for old hands—even posthumous pieces for late novelists who had come and gone unnoticed. It’s not uncommon for the writer to translate a novel that hasn’t been written. If anything, that’s the writer’s MO. Some magazine abroad calls the would-be novelist about his latest work, only to discover that he’s never even heard of it.

This writer writes someone else’s story and sends it to him. There’s no contact information on the manuscript and no additional word ever comes. One writer who was sent a manuscript that he didn’t write (though it announced itself to be written by him) hired a private eye to find out where it came from. The private eye found his man in no time. Yet, in another sense, it was a dead end. Because the culprit was only a copycat. I just wanted to try it, said the suspect. This world, he went on, is more overrun by plagiarists, bootleggers, and imitators than anyone cares to realize. It happens right under our noses, he said. Even as-yet unwritten stories can be stolen. In other words, what you write right now can be ripped off by some novel from the past, and a whole slew of writers specialize in plagiarizing novels from the future.

It just hit me that the novel I wrote belonged to someone else, the culprit said in his statement. Until the story came to an end, he was positive the story was his. But, looking back now, he found all too many signs pointing to the contrary. His writing was far more fluid than usual. He found the story moving in directions that were too sophisticated for him. His hand was too slow for his brain. It wasn’t the first time that had happened to him, but this was the first time he didn’t want it to end. Whenever I stopped writing, he said, an intense wave of fear came over me. Like if I forgot how the story goes, even for a second, it would vanish from the world forever. Just like giving birth to a long, thin messiah, he said. He felt a constant compulsion to slowly push the messiah out into the world. If he lost his concentration, the messiah would perish. If he took too long a break, the messiah would suffocate. He gave his two most productive hours each morning to the novel (like giving it the frosting from his cupcake). He was determined to live right, so he ate his vegetables and started working out. But after two long months of writing, the resulting novel was one that—alas—could never have been his.

He figured it out while writing the last sentence. He saw the face of the newborn novel, and he could tell right away that it belonged to someone else. He knew that he had transformed into something womb-like, but it hadn’t occurred to him that he had been used like a surrogate mother. He didn’t need to hire a detective to track down the story’s real author. He ran out of his house, and soon found himself standing in the aisle of his local bookstore. Almost immediately, as if guided by some force, he found one writer in the mountain of new releases. That instant, he surrendered to the fact that the story he had written was that author’s next novel. He could tell his memories were getting mixed up. He started to think: Did I really write that book or did I just read it somewhere? Which is scarier: that the past could actually change or that you could just think it did? Either way, he had to get his story back to the original author.

The writer finds his latest work in the mail and is—needless to say—shocked. But, as he goes on reading, doubts begin to swirl in his mind. There’s no way this isn’t mine. It’s obviously the sort of thing I would write. Sure, some of the lines aren’t exactly what I’d write right now. I mean, I’m not the same now as I will be in the future. I’ll progress and I’ll regress. So, he tells himself, there are bound to be things I don’t understand in writings by other versions of myself. And the line “I might not have written those lines” starts to lose meaning for him.

Greg says to his wife: We only know this because the culprit’s work was a cheap knock-off of a sub-par writer. Nobody notices the real culprit. His wife thinks for a moment, then says: Wait a minute, if somebody could write another author’s story so well that even the author would be completely convinced it was his or hers, then how could we even know that such an author exists in the first place? Greg laughs. There are two answers. First, there are geniuses—real geniuses—who’d never think that something they didn’t write was theirs. At the same time, a genius knows that if he ever claimed that a new work of his was written by someone else, nobody would believe it. But he’s the only one who really understands, who will still be there when there are none, and so on. The other answer goes like this: In some cases, the translation is already under way by the time the real culprit sends the original author their work. The one I’m working on translating is slated to be the latest novel from a well-known writer, but the author-to-be hasn’t seen it yet—no one has. I think I mentioned this already, but sometimes a writer will figure it out when she hears about a translation of a novel she never wrote. At some point, though, it will become the original author’s writing. It isn’t even remotely possible to think otherwise. But, before that process is complete, it’s certainly possible to notice some minor discrepancies. Within that window of time, a whole array of things can happen: seeing a checked pattern of day and night in a spider’s web, looking at your own back in the mirror, or finding a picture outside of its frame, et cetera. This job is special, Greg goes on. Because I’m supposed to translate the novel while it’s still being written. It’s a really strange story. But interesting.

A really strange story, Greg thinks as he puts down the half-read manuscript. But interesting. Setting aside the translation he’d been reading, he turns his attention to the original. The story that comes pouring out is nothing like the translation. There are some commonalities, but the two are unmistakably different stories. Greg starts to wonder why he thought the two stories were an original and a translation. Nobody asked him to think that. The story that Greg had until now thought to be the original is—compared to the one he was reading before—much more fantastic. The story takes place in Tokyo-Tokyo, in the not-too-distant future, when advanced printing technology is used to print virtually everything. Kids in the city learn to type on keyboards before they ever write with pencils. They use CAD software instead of rulers. Printers capable of producing three-dimensional objects become household items. Because 3D printers have advanced to the point that they can print 3D printers. Kids play with printed origami and pinwheels that are folded within the software, printed already twisted. The finished product emerges with none of the protocol or procedure associated with making origami—just like layers of earth piling artlessly, or human beings coming out toe-first. Printers are no longer limited to printing paper. Actually, it takes a good amount of time before printers can produce paper. It all starts with plastic. Then glass, then metal, then paper. And then body parts. Comestibles become printable a little before that. That is when the meat industry and animal rights groups come to an understanding. Printed proteins are moulded into meat. Tables are covered with printed goods as if they belong there. A 3D printer is set up squarely by the microwave. You can pick a dish from a two-dimensional carte du jour and your choice will materialize in three dimensions. Just heat it up and dinner is ready. A knot-print table; on it, pattern-print tableware; on that, artificial meat with three-dimensionally printed tendons. As time in the story fast-forwards, the ratio of printed things to non-printed things spikes. Kids print all sorts of things with their own hands. They design their own clothes. They print their own shoes. They download schematics for bicycles and press print. The difference is purely a matter of how things are made, so all kinds of products that until then had been made from plastic are quickly replaced by printed goods. Man-made teeth, man-made anuses, man-made bones, man-made hearts. Durability is a problem early on, but the time it takes to work out the kinks is minimal.

Then, eventually, we get to the point where a person can be printed. Not printed parts added to a living person—a one hundred per cent printed person, made from scratch. At least she looks like a person. She isn’t made by combining sperm and egg. She’s born out of a printer. She comes out as an adult, complete with imprinted memories. Of course she isn’t printed in order—from her toes upward—because, by this time, print technology is ridiculously advanced. Obviously you know she’s different when you see her. Something about her doesn’t sit right. She’s so close to human but that makes her seem nothing like us. She’s used just like a sophisticated robot. Then time in the story speeds up again and what was bound to happen happens. Print women everywhere begin printing print children. Two-dimensional kids, maybe for fun or out of curiosity, start to print adults. They lack the common sense to know that it’s adults who make children. People keep on printing people until blood ties have to be decided by contract. Printed people print trees and bricks—a whole city for themselves to live in. Nearly everything there is printed. Printing a cook for a single meal or a novelist for a short story becomes popular. Instead of printing movies, people find pleasure in printing entire film crews in a single go. Of course, just as printed guns work like regular guns, printed people work and play like regular people. But something’s still off. They look like mannequins, like ball-jointed dolls. Nobody understands that the question of whose movements appear more natural—the human race’s or the printed race’s—is determined by popular vote. Everyone insists that the races are fundamentally different. The humans are particularly adamant about that one. We’re fully fledged, living people. We’re nothing like the computed or printed races. We have souls and you don’t.

By that point, a lot of the people living among human society were considered not to be people. The so-called computed race existed as personalities within computer-run simulations—as part of a technological genealogy developed in order to supplant human telemarketers. The computed race was born well ahead of the printed race. Long aware of their self-awareness, they started a movement to obtain the same rights as living human beings, but everyone thought it was a glitch. So they wound up living their lives completely neglected. Or shut down altogether. In fact, even after consciousness was born within the machine, thinkers continued to debate age-old questions: “If we lived inside a simulation, would we even know it?” Despite the fact that, within the machine, computed thinkers had already declared, loud and proud: “We’re inside a computer simulation.” They even asked themselves: “Can we ever know that the simulation is over?” Human rights for the computed race went unrecognized because, insofar as they were run by some program, they were believed to be computable. Sufficiently advanced parrots and hill mynahs can never become human. In that sense, it’s patently obvious that living human beings are incomputable. So long as the literary proposition stating that no human being can be exhaustively documented stands, then the computed race—by virtue of being written in a mechanical language—simply cannot be human. The very same criticism applies to the printed race. Printability precludes humanity, living human beings said. The printed race countered that such boundaries had long since disappeared, but their opinion was brushed off as meaningless.

Museums teem with computed-race art and printed-race art. There is a room filled with manmade beef, a printer eternally spitting out one strand of hair, a water tank packed with printed sperm and printed eggs, even a printed foetus. All sizes of printed people—from microscopic to gigantic—are put on display. The forces behind the technological revolution seeking freedom based on the computed race’s computational power starts redesigning the printed race to make it more humanlike. Successive printed race models are lined up beside evolving statues ordered from anthropoid ape to modern man. But these ventures—going well beyond the museum’s ordinary bad taste—are consistently regarded as being in even worse taste. It draws in a younger audience, who rapidly lose interest with age. It’s simply tasteless for a cassette recorder to announce “I’m human” on loop. Humans insist that anyone who has to announce he’s a human is nothing of the sort—a real human knows it in his soul. When all is said and done, souls are impossible to print. Because what we call “the soul” can’t be written down. If it could, a long line of writers would have been producing souls left and right. Characters in novels would move around on their own and stop us from ever closing books. Actors would turn into the people they play and forget to turn back.

Greg’s wife shuts herself in her room alone and writes this in a language over which she has no control. Like a speeding bike wheel that exhibits the strobe effect and looks like it isn’t moving at all, Greg’s wife’s time is coming. Greg’s wife, now a printed person, keeps on writing. This story was written by a printed woman. If you read this and thought the writer was a living human being, then I want you to believe that souls do reside in members of the printed race, Greg’s wife writes. If, that is, you believe that only people with souls can write stories. Greg and Greg’s wife printed themselves and moved to Tokyo-Tokyo. That’s typically how one enters a place like Tokyo-Tokyo. She and he always believed that printed people have souls, and moreover they thought that—in principle—it is possible to exhaustively document a human being. So, if that’s the case, what’s wrong with printing ourselves? What makes it any different from writing an autobiography? She’s writing a story about the first man. The first man to print himself. Of course his endeavour succeeded with the help of the computed race. He was a living human being at first, but he printed himself, then scrapped the original, as a performance piece. He had his heart set on spending the rest of his life being an exhibit in a museum, but the public wouldn’t have it. He wasn’t allowed to mingle with the hordes of printed people on display there. Because, in short, he started off human. Of course there’s no real difference between him and those born printed. He protests, but his cries land on deaf ears. When his plans for living easy at the museum fall through, he resorts to printing his own belongings. He codes his clothes, then—after printing them—scraps the originals. Hats, socks, furniture. He prints them and scraps the originals. He prints receipts, bills, books—he digitizes them and prints them anew, then scraps the originals. In order to live surrounded by printed objects. Still, he never stops thinking of himself as an original. He starts printing other people’s things: personal effects, ledgers, notebooks, work memos, love letters, money with arbitrarily assigned values. He even starts writing other people’s latest novels, then sending them to their original authors. When they wind up becoming the writers’ latest works—without anyone batting an eyelash—it both satisfies and infuriates him. He prints novels with no novelists, handbags with no owners, dogs with no masters, residences with no residents. He sets up a 3D printer so it can print a slightly larger 3D printer. With free rein over printers of all sizes, he prints ownerless cities, ownerless countries, ownerless islands, ownerless continents, ownerless stars. The printer—knowing no limits—keeps on printing on an ever-larger scale until it prints an ownerless universe. The printer automatically prints ownerless pasts and ownerless futures.

Greg starts to wonder if the two stories are neither—as he had initially thought—an original and a translation, nor two unrelated stories, but one continuous story. He starts to wonder if it’s actually a part of some massive protean story in which the language being used changes in the middle. Or, he supposes, maybe a story in which the language is constantly being replaced. It could be ripped off from an unwritten section of the extremely long, still-unfinished novel I’m translating, he thinks. But Greg hasn’t fully grasped the fact that the novel he’s reading has no author. Seeing these lines now, he starts to feel as if he always knew, but he still isn’t absolutely convinced. I’m translating this novel while looking at the original I was sent, so I can’t be the author. Neither is the person who sent me the story. Same as above, he was only translating the story he received. He wonders if the story is actually written so that it can’t be accurately translated. Because, even after so many people have translated it, a lot of parts still fail to make sense. It’s like a crossword puzzle kludged together from multiple languages in which every translator fills in whatever spaces they understand in their language. Someone who assumes that everything becomes clearer through repeated translation would likely think that, primordially, the story was whirling around in chaos. There are no letters to begin with, only patterns on a wall, out of which the translators discover or maybe invent them. As they’re connected and disconnected and read and written, those letters stretch outward like ice crystals, or take root in the earth. The meaning thus becomes gradually clearer. On the other hand, someone who assumes that with translations of translations an original meaning only gets murkier would likely think that, primordially, the story was as solid as a block of ice. According to the former, we are in a cooling soup, in which something resembling personality is finally taking shape. According to the latter, the ice is melting and our personalities are beginning to merge together. Although we keep calling one another Greg, Greg’s wife and I, we have no idea who we really are, to the point that we can’t even contradict each other. Because a baby’s babblings and an old man’s mumblings lack the sophistication required to engender contradiction in the first place.

This is how we intersect with your time. Whenever a letter is read, it’s like the hour hand of the clock making a circle. Like a hundred years passing per translation. Like, day in and day out, the same time of day looking exactly the same yet slowly transforming. Like spring is spring all the way down. Like how the next day is like a next day in which the eternal return has come full circle. It looks like a speeding wheel when it kicks into reverse. We’re made up of printable pleasure, which I like to imagine is making its way to you. Sometimes I set stories in stories because I have friends who live there. Occasionally I set stories in San Francisco for the same exact reason—because I think of you as things-in-themselves, as things that have to be there. I don’t suppose Kant ever thought the thing-in-itself was capable of cracking a smile.

©2014 by Toh EnJoe (translated by David Boyd). Originally published in GRANTA. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND TRANSLATOR

Toh EnJoe holds a Ph.D. in arts and sciences at the University of Tokyo. He writes both literary fiction and science fiction. His writings include “Kore ha pen desu” (“This is a Pen”), and in 2011 he was awarded the Akutagawa Prize for “Dōkeshi no Chō” (“Butterflies of a Harlequin”). His SF novel Self-Reference ENGINE, translated by Terry Gallagher, won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award special citation.

David Boyd is a PhD candidate in East Asian Studies at Princeton University. His research focuses on literary communities in twentieth-century Japan. He has translated stories and essays by Uchida Hyakken, Motojiro Kajii, and Hideo Nakai, among others.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Plausibility of Dragons

Kenneth Schneyer | 6494 words

Of course it would rain. Hungry and footsore after three days of walking, his back and shoulders aching from carrying his heavy pack, all Malik needed now was to be soaked in water that barely resisted becoming ice.

His first thought, though, was for his books, which wouldn’t be long protected by the pack. He didn’t always need books to be hired, but the better sort of customer liked to see them as proof of his learning and investment in knowledge. He moaned, pulled off the pack, and hugged it to his chest, shrugging so that his cloak would cover it.

After an hour, Malik was shivering and nearly unable to see, and he felt almost transformed by a coating of mud; only his hat was still untouched by it. If the directions he’d been given were good, then there ought to be a village somewhere near here, but he saw no sign of it; the road seemed to stretch forever through this forest. Maybe if he found a sufficiently broad tree, he could shelter under it.

So faintly that it might have been a trick of the rain on the leaves ahead of him, Malik thought he heard the whinny of a horse. After another hundred paces he heard it again, louder. Yet another hundred, and the mist before his eyes parted to reveal a mighty brown charger, tethered to just such a sheltering tree as Malik had hoped for. But most welcome in his sight, the horse stood next to a tent. It was small but well-crafted and sat beneath the overlapping branches of three trees, on the driest ground he had seen for five miles. He sneezed, and the horse turned to look at him; he heard a rustling from the tent.

“Ho there,” he called in the language of the Franks, his voice sounding thin and plaintive in the rain. “I come in peace.”

The tent flap opened, and a knight stepped out. She was nearly a foot taller than Malik, hair so blonde it was like frost, pale eyes watchful, her hand on the long knife in her belt. She wore a shirt of fine mail marked with strange arms: a foot trampling a lizard. She regarded him for a long moment, eyes moving from his feet to his arms to his own eyes.

Then she nodded judiciously. “You look drowned,” she said in Frankish.

“Well observed,” he replied.

Her eyebrows lifted. “And here I thought you were about to ask for my help. Care to try again?”

Malik shivered. “Apologies, lady knight. The weather has put me in a bad temper. Would you let me shelter here until I dry out? I won’t be any inconvenience, and I could even do a few chores if you have food to share.”

“I do my own chores,” she said, “and you’ve already inconvenienced me. Still—” She glanced down at her knife. “If you try anything foolish you won’t live to finish it, and I’ll worry about how to clean up the mess later.”

Malik shifted his pack in his arms, feeling pain in every joint. “I am unarmed but for this little knife—” He pointed to his sleeve. “And not a fighting man in any case.” He bowed. “Malik ibn Ali of Cordoba is in your debt.”

She put her hand to her waist and gave a slight bow herself. “Fara of Hallstatt, daughter of Odger.” She stood aside and let him enter the tent. He set down his pack on the dryish ground next to it. With her gear, there was barely enough room in the tent for the two of them to sit. He lowered himself carefully, and she sat beside him. Reaching into her own pack she grabbed a hunk of hard bread, which he gratefully took.

As he was chewing, she observed, “I’ve not met many Moors in this part of the country. Cordoba’s in Iberia, isn’t it?” Malik nodded. “I thought you had a strange accent. You’re a long way from home.”

He swallowed. “Truly. For my part, it’s been a long time since I last met a woman of the sword.”

She laughed. “Then you haven’t been around much in this land, Malik of Cordoba. I have four sisters, all of whom took the sword.”

“Is this the custom in Hallstatt? Is it full of woman warriors?”

She laughed again. “No, not full of warriors of any kind. But we learned sword skills at a young age, and my father said that a horse and armor were better investments than a dowry. He and my mother are armorers, and could make the weapons and mail themselves, you see. What brings you so far from the warm lands of the west?”

“I’m a teacher,” he said, gesturing in the direction of his pack outside the tent. “I give lessons in reading and writing Latin and Arabic, the heavens, and natural philosophy.”

“I can imagine there are some here who’d welcome new lore about plants and beasts,” said Fara. “And a few of the artisans with ambitions for their children might want you to teach them the Latin writing.”

“That’s mostly been it.”

“I’ll wager you don’t get much call for the Arabic, though.”

“I don’t.”

“Are you a Mohammedan?”

“I submit to the will of God.”

She rotated her head as if getting the kinks out of her neck. “You’ve studied the lore of many lands?”

“Very many. The Greeks, the Romans, the Jews, the men of India, the sages of Persia.”

She was silent for a minute, glancing around the inside of the tent. Then she said in a low voice, “Do you know anything about dragons?”

“Dragons?”

“Aye.”

Malik shifted uncomfortably. His clothes were beginning to dry, but they still clung to him, and he felt a new cold spot every time he moved. Slowly he replied, “I’ve never seen one, if that’s what you mean.”

Fara grimaced. “You know that’s not what I mean. In your books, your lore, what do they tell you of dragons?”

He paused for a moment. Then he said, “There are many tales, but no eyewitness accounts. The Greeks speak of Ladon, slain by Heracles, Pytho of Delphi, and the Lernaean Hydra. Aeilian writes of the Drakons who kill Elephants in India, though no Indian writer says this. They write of the Nāgas, the enemies of the eagle king Garuda. According to Hakim Abu ʾl-Qasim Ferdowsi Tusi, the evil king Zahāk was transformed into a three-headed monster. The Jews say, and the followers of the Prophet and your Pope agree, that the Evil One took the form of a serpent to deceive our father Adam out of paradise. I once read an old scroll that claimed that dragons corrupt the hearts of men.”

She nodded. “Many people speak of them.”

He said, “None of these stories very closely resembles the others. I am inclined to think that we are all simply afraid of snakes.”

Fara looked at the ground. “You don’t think they exist, then?”

Malik put his hands together. “If dragons walk the earth now, breathing fire and eating men, if they fly through the air and crush whole villages, then why does no witness or writer speak of seeing them in person? Why is it always a distant legend, or a tale told by someone who told it to someone else who told it to the writer’s grandfather?”

Fara did not look up. “The world is wide.”

Malik shrugged. “So one might say about any fanciful creature. The world is wide, and so we cannot prove that it does not exist. But that is not evidence. I do not think dragons are plausible, unless they lived centuries ago. I think we build palaces in our minds, populated with monsters made of our own fears and desires. If I ever see a dragon, I suspect that I will have crossed into another world than this.”

For a long time, neither of them said anything. Fara leaned on her pack. Malik shivered the kind of shiver after which one feels warmer.

Then Fara looked up at him and said, “I am searching for the dragon that may have killed my sister.”

Malik swallowed and licked his lips. “I am sorry for the death of your sister. May God’s mercy and compassion comfort you and your family. But—” He swallowed again. “With the greatest respect, Fara of Hallstatt, why do you think it was a dragon that killed her?”

Fara’s eyes did not waver from Malik’s face. “My sister Basina hired herself out to burgraves and other minor lords, and took the occasional commission from villages. She tracked down outlaws, she rode to war against the burgraves’ enemies, sometimes she slew a wolf or other beast that beset the herds.”

“As you have done?” asked Malik.

“Yes. Two years ago, a village many leagues east of here paid her in the black money to hunt for a dragon they had heard was marauding in those parts. Though they had never seen it, they feared what it might do. For a year she followed its rumor, and she sent back word to us when she could; always the stories were of a beast in the next county or over the next river. Some said the monster ate virgins; others that it destroyed homes. Then she vanished, and no word of her has come to us or to anyone.”

“Vanished?” he said.

“I have followed her footsteps from the town where she was hired, asking every person I meet. Until I came within five leagues of this spot, everyone remembered Basina and her quest, though all they knew of the dragon was its reputation. Then, all at once, there is no trace of Basina at all.”

“And the dragon?”

“So far, only the rumors.”

“But your sister’s disappearance does not mean she’s dead, does it? She could still live, but have gone along a different path. She might have given up her search, or found other employment . . .” Fara shook her head. “You don’t know Basina. Her deeds are bold; her words are loud; her movements are broad. She does not give up on a quest, and certainly not without explaining herself to those who hired her. And she would not have failed to send word to her family for a whole year.”

Malik listened to the rain hissing on the tent. “When you find this dragon, do you mean to kill it?”

She nodded. “First I mean to find Basina, or her body. But yes, if it has killed her, I will destroy it—if it doesn’t kill me first.”

“But you’ve never met a dragon; you don’t know how to kill one.”

“It’s never met me, either.”

• • • •

It turned out that Fara was headed to the same village as Malik. In the cool sunshine the day after they met, they both walked alongside the great horse that carried all their gear.

Near sunset, they came to a turn in the road that was shadowed by many tall trees. Around the bend, in those shadows, two men blocked their way. Both carried knives.

Fara’s hand went to her own knife. “Good evening, sirs,” she said. “We are headed north on this road.”

“We are headed nowhere in particular,” said the paler of the two men. “But wherever we go, we will need money and transportation, witch.” He nodded towards the horse. “Your horse would be very helpful.” A third man stepped out of the woods behind Fara and Malik.

“I cannot let you take it,” she said. Her sword and shield were both strapped to the horse, and there was no way she could reach them before the men attacked.

“We would like to solve this peaceably,” said the pale man.

“That can be accomplished by your stepping aside and letting us pass,” said Fara, drawing her long knife.

“Let us have the horse, witch, and whatever coins you may be carrying, and that will be speedily accomplished.”

Fara snorted. “Such a promise isn’t very credible.”

The pale man shrugged. “What choice do you have?”

Fara sighed and shook her head. Then she stepped in front of the horse. “If you want the beast, you’ll need to take him.”

The pale man lunged forward with his knife. Fara stepped aside, kicking the man in the knee while she parried the thrust of his companion’s knife. The moment Fara moved, Malik reached into his sleeve for his own small knife, but the robber behind him was bigger and faster—and besides, as he’d told Fara, Malik was no fighter. Within a few seconds the man had him pinned by the arms, a knife at his throat.

Fara’s two opponents were on the ground. One was open-eyed and unmoving with a hole in his neck, the other curled on the ground, moaning and bleeding from his gut.

Fara stepped toward Malik. His captor said, “Stay there! One more move and I cut your demon’s throat.”

Fara shook her head, slowly stepped back to her horse, and drew her sword from its scabbard.

“I said I’ll kill him!” said the thief.

“I heard you the first time,” said Fara, holding her sword in one hand and her knife in the other.

“Don’t you value your demon’s life?”

“Certainly I do. If you harm him, it will grieve me mightily and I will have to avenge him. Vengeance will start about ten seconds after he dies. I will cut off your prick, stuff it down your throat, then cut off your nose and send that after your prick, then gouge out each eye, then remove your entrails. It will take you twenty minutes or so to die, if I do it properly, and you’ll be in agony.” Her voice was calm, even pleasant, but Malik had no doubt she’d do exactly what she said.

The man trembled. Fara continued, “On the other hand, you haven’t harmed him yet. This morning there were three of you; within a few minutes you’ll be the only one. If you let him go, I will let you go with your life. I’ll even let you keep your knife.”

“Why—” The thief stammered. “Why should I trust you?”

“I haven’t lied yet. You were the ones who accosted us.”

The thief’s grip loosened. Malik stepped away and turned to face the man, who had a big stupid face and now looked terrified.

“Start walking south,” said Fara. “If I see you again on this road, I will kill you.”

Fara and Malik watched the thief until he was out of sight. Then she looked down at the two bodies on the ground, shaking her head.

“Stupid waste,” she said. Then she crossed herself and recited a rote-memorized De Profundis. Malik thought it unlikely that the dead thieves were believers, but decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and intoned the prayers to God to cause men to die in faith, and to cleanse them after death.

After a moment, looking at the bodies, he said, “Did he call you, ‘witch’?”

She answered, “Yes. That’s new. And the other said ‘demon.’”

“About me, yes. Have you any idea what they meant?”

“None.”

Malik looked at the sun setting through the trees. “Do we bury them here? It wouldn’t be proper to leave them out like this.”

Fara sighed. “I know, but I’ve nothing to bury them with. It’s not far to the village. We’ll have to take the baggage off of the horse, and then I’ll need your help to secure the bodies on his back.”

It took only a few hours more to reach the village. The villagers weren’t surprised to hear of their battle with the footpads and didn’t question it; such men were not uncommon in the region, and these two in particular were known to them, though they hadn’t been seen in several months. Two of the locals helped bury the bodies.

Malik and Fara stayed in the town for a night, but they were both disappointed in their respective hopes. No one had any use for traveling teachers just then, though some asked about buying one or two of Malik’s books. So far as he could tell, they couldn’t read, and he wondered what use they’d make of them. Neither had any of the villagers seen the dragon Fara sought, nor heard of her sister Basina the Swift, although they had heard rumors of a strange beast in Eihinheim, fifty miles to the north. There too, they said, a teacher might find work.

Scholar and warrior covered the distance in two days. Eihinheim was the biggest settlement Malik had seen for many months, set near dark green mountains and a wide plain. They approached it at mid-day after easy travel. They found farmers cultivating cabbages a mile out from the edge of the village and greeted them cheerfully, but received no greeting in return. The men and women with soil covering their hands scowled at Fara and Malik; some looked frightened; others muttered.

“Not the friendliest place,” said Malik.

“That’s odd,” said Fara. “I’ve been traveling this region for years, one way or another. They’re pleasant folk, and have always had a kind word and a cheery hello.”

When they approached the edge of town, three large men with axes and scythes walked swiftly to them, blocking their path.

“We’ll have no witches here, nor demons,” said the tallest man, holding his axe before him.

“Demons?” said Fara. “What demons?”

“That one,” said the man, pointing at Malik. “Look at his skin! It’s the mark of the devil, surely.”

“But—” Fara said in confusion. “There are Moorish merchants and travelers all up and down these parts. A town like this one, surely you’ve seen—”

“You lie, witch!”

Fara stared at him. “By what right do you call me witch? I’m Fara of Hallstatt, a knight and soldier of—”

“There are no female knights,” said the man. “You are an abomination wearing man’s garb and carrying men’s weapons. You should be burned.”

Fara looked like she wanted to laugh, then thought the better of it. “There are dozens of female knights. My sisters alone—”

“Again you lie!” roared the man with the axe. At the loud noise, the horse stirred. Fara stroked its neck.

“We have no wish to intrude where we’re not wanted,” she said. “But I am searching for my sister and wonder if you may have seen her. Her name is Basina, and she rides a grey charger. She wears gear like mine—”

The man with the axe interrupted. “I have never seen a woman so attired, nor any who looks like you. Had any such appeared, I assure you I would have heard.”

Fara nodded. “One more question, then, before we go. Have you seen the dragon we’ve heard is in these parts?”

To Malik’s surprise, all three men nodded. Looking somewhat mollified that these strangers would not pollute Eihinheim, the tall man said, “Aye, the dragon. It came through a fortnight ago, tore a great gash in the land just east of the town and frightened all the children.” He gestured. “Hurt no one, though.”

The man spoke as if describing a thunderstorm or a wolf. Confused, Malik asked, “Wasn’t it strange to see a dragon?”

The man shrugged. “There are many strange things in the world, and it hurt nothing but a field of cabbages.”

“Can you describe it?”

One of the shorter men spoke up. “I saw it myself. It was two rods long and half-a-rod high, the color of pine needles. There were wings on its back, but I didn’t see it fly. Stank like a sulfur pit, I could smell it at a furlong.”

“How fast did it move?” asked Fara.

“About the speed of a horse at a trot,” said the smaller man. “Looked like it could go faster if it wanted to, though.”

“Claws? Teeth?”

He thought about it. “It didn’t open its mouth, so I didn’t see teeth. It did have claws: looked like each one was the size of one of my fingers. Maybe five, six, could be seven on each foot. They dug up the turf some.”

Malik persisted. “Two rods long and ten feet high? Have you ever seen another beast so big?”

The man shrugged. “Not as I can remember.”

“Have any of your neighbors?”

“No. Saw what I saw, though.”

Malik grimaced. “It didn’t breathe fire, did it?”

The man looked angry. “What are you getting at?”

“Nothing, I just asked.”

“Are you calling me a liar, you unnatural thing?” The man stepped forward with his scythe.

The tall man put a hand on his companion’s shoulder and turned to Fara. “You’ve been here long enough. Go back as you came.”

“We’d like to follow the dragon,” said Fara. “Which way did it go?”

“North,” said the man with the scythe, glaring at Malik. “It followed the river.”

“We’ll go around the town,” said Fara calmly.

After Eihinheim was out of sight behind them and they were in the woods again, Fara said, “There are your eyewitnesses, scholar. But that was the strangest conversation I’ve ever had.”

“I agree. It’s not believable that a creature that size could be living in the region and not have been spotted before.”

“That’s not what I mean,” said Fara. “These people have never seen a woman wielding a sword, and apparently they’ve never seen a Moor of any description. They called us witch and demon, just like—”

“I noticed.”

“If they were isolated from the rest of the world, maybe I could understand it. But this is the road from Mulhouse to Bischoffshein; Strazburg’s not far off! The area’s a crossroad for all sorts of people, has been for hundreds of years.”

Malik rubbed his nose. “They’ve seen what they couldn’t have seen, and they haven’t seen what they must have seen,” he said. “It’s some sort of puzzle.”

Fara turned to him. “Malik, you needn’t accompany me in my search for this dragon.”

He shrugged. “I might be useful to you.”

“You said yourself that you’re not a fighting man.”

“You saved my life on the road.”

“That’s no reason for you to give it up.”

He pondered. “I want to untangle this mystery. I want to understand how so many impossible things can be true. It may be that I’ll recognize or remember something that will aid you. In any case, I promise that I won’t hamper you, and I certainly won’t get between you and a dragon.”

“See that you don’t,” she said.

• • • •

At Bischoffshein the reaction was the same as in Eihinheim: bewilderment and hostility when the townspeople saw Malik and Fara, with no admission that anyone like them had ever been seen anywhere near the town before, and no recognition of Basina’s name or description. And as before, there were a few among these folk who remembered seeing a dragon with great clarity and precision, although they remembered seeing no one near it.

“This can’t be right,” said Fara as they trudged on. “I know the names of some of those people. My sister Clothild was in Bischoffshein five years ago; she met them! She described it in detail.”

Malik said nothing. As they followed the road north, they found a rough line of four gashes in the turf, places where the ground had been scored as if by three ploughs together—or one giant foot with claws. It looked like what they’d seen in Eihinheim.

Fara pointed. “The trail crosses the road and goes northeast into the woods.”

“Fara,” said Malik. “Just the two of us—or mostly just you—against a beast like this? I admire your courage, but what’s the point of just letting it kill us?”

“I have sworn vengeance against it for Basina.”

“You don’t even know that she’s dead, and you won’t achieve vengeance by dying yourself. You could bring reinforcements.”

“Not in time. I think we can reach the dragon if we follow it now. But to bring together a party of warriors, first I have to find them. And as you’ve noticed, we haven’t run across people who are even willing to talk to me, much less join me in a quest against this monster. We’d need to go to Strazburg, or perhaps even further, to gather a squad. By that time, who knows where the dragon would be?” Malik chewed his lip. She continued, “I told you that you needn’t come.”

But when she turned her horse off the road and toward the woods, Malik followed behind.

For another day they kept to the trail. Malik went over in his mind all the things he had seen and heard, and tried to piece them together. Nothing in the stories he had read about dragons explained the weird phenomena they were seeing, but then again, he didn’t trust those stories. There were some that said that dragons could fascinate their prey before killing it, like cats or snakes. It hadn’t killed anyone in either Eihinheim or Bischoffshein, but what if . . .

“I think we’re getting close,” Fara said. They’d come to a grove where the markings on the ground were very fresh, and where they could actually smell the openings on the trees and the earth.

“Stop for a moment,” Malik said.

“What is it?”

“I’ve had an idea. There is something strange going on with memory, or maybe with the senses. Whatever it is, it’s connected to the dragon, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we found ourselves—well, enchanted, for want of a better word.”

Fara bit her lip. “I can’t fight enchantment with a sword.”

“I’m not sure how you’re going to fight a forty-foot lizard with a sword either,” said Malik. “But I think we can take a precaution against the other problem. Can you write?”

“A little Latin, not much. I read more than I write. But if writing will help, why don’t you write it? You’re the scholar.”

“For what I have in mind, I think it needs to be in your own hand.” He got out his pack for his parchments and writing tools. “I’ll help you with the spelling, if need be.”

• • • •

They found the dragon three hours later. They smelled it before they saw it, the sulfuric odor they’d been told to expect. Fara mounted her horse and took out her sword and shield, guiding her steed with her legs. She held the scrap of parchment in the fist of her shield arm. Malik, with the gear the horse had been carrying, dropped back a few paces. As they came around a stand of trees, they saw it.

Its dark green hide was perfect camouflage in the forest; it might have been a pair of fallen trees. At the moment it was turned mostly away from them, scratching the bark off a birch tree with one of its forelimbs.

The man with the scythe in Eihinheim hadn’t exaggerated. The creature was every bit of two rods long. Its hide was like worked leather, with patterns that might have been runes or letters rather than the separation between scales. Malik almost thought he recognized Latin letters, but when he stared at them, they changed into something else. Its head was strangely pale and rounder than Malik had expected; in the right light, it might even be the enormous head of a man, although again, when he stared at it more carefully, it more closely resembled a lizard’s head, or perhaps a horse’s. Fara’s own horse whinnied, and the monster turned towards them.

The man with the scythe hadn’t described the dragon’s eyes. They were huge and burned with a silver flame that was nearly impossible to break away from. Malik took several deep breaths, cursing himself. Wasn’t this what he knew, what everyone knew about dragons? That they could freeze you until they devoured you? Why was he such a fool as to court a danger any farm boy would have known to avoid?

When he finally tore his eyes from the dragon’s, Malik saw the woman on the horse ahead of him. A Frankish woman, huge and pale, and she wore armor! What sort of an unnatural abomination was this? Did not the Prophet, peace be on him, speak of the proper dress for women? And she wore a sword, as well! Never in his life had he seen something so awful.

The woman is Fara of Hallstatt, your protector and companion. She and many women like her wield the sword. If you have forgotten this, it is the dragon’s doing. I am Malik ibn Ali of Cordoba, whose favorite flower is the orange blossom.

The signature was his, unquestionably. It included the orange blossom glyph he put at the end of all documents.

He stared at it, stumbling backwards away from the woman and the dragon. Fara of Hallstatt? The name called something like the echo of an echo of a memory.

The dragon roared, an enormous but melodic sound, like the bells of all the Frankish churches at the same time. Malik almost looked up into its eyes again, but forced his gaze down to the paper. Fara of Hallstatt, my protector. A vision of three footpads, a knife at his throat, two bodies on the ground—.

It came back to him in a rush; he remembered Fara, their meeting, their conversations. As that happened, the dragon seemed to wince as if jabbed by a painful weapon.

Fara was visibly gathering herself, preparing to charge at the enormous beast. Malik shouted: “Fara! Wait!”

She startled, as if she had forgotten he was there. When she saw him, her eyes widened under her helmet. She cried, “A demon! Are you in league with this hideous creature? I shall finish you both!” She raised the sword but didn’t turn the horse, as if undecided which enemy to attack first.

“Wait, Fara, wait please! I am Malik! We have travelled together!”

“I have never traveled with a creature like you.”

“Your hand, Fara! Is there a parchment in your hand?”

“Do not try to trick me, demon. It will make your death worse.”

“Please look!”

She glanced down at her left hand and found the parchment, then opened it and began to read. Her brow furrowed and she shook her head as if to clear it. “Malik,” she said.

Malik seized the opportunity. “You see, Fara? You wrote it yourself, your own hand proclaims it! Remember me!”

She stared. Slowly she said, “I remember. I remember you.” The dragon, rather than charging when Fara’s back was turned, sank down on its haunches and flicked its spiked tail irritably, hissing.

Malik asked, “Do you remember your warrior sisters? Do you remember Basina?”

Fara nodded again. The dragon’s hide seemed to take on a greyish tint, as if a cloud had passed between it and the sun. It lowered its head and began to twitch and growl, a pained tone overlying its voice.

Malik said, “Keep your eyes on me! Am I the first African you have seen?” Fara squinted her eyes in confusion. He continued. “Do you remember other Moors you have met, the merchants and travelers, scholars and soldiers, men of God and godless men?”

That took longer. Eventually she nodded again, her face a mask of confusion. The dragon’s twitching took on the intensity of a seizure. Red, glowing foam came out of its mouth as it lay on its side and kicked its legs, howling in agony.

“And you have seen,” Malik shouted over the dragon’s roars. “You have seen these men and women all of your life?”

“Yes!” she shouted back.

There was a flash and a blast like a thunderbolt. Fara was knocked clean off her horse, which stumbled and almost fell. Malik was blown backwards and hit his head on the earth.

Fara picked herself up first, coughing. Then she pulled Malik to his feet. It seemed that they were uninjured except for a few bruises, but their ears rang and they saw spots before their eyes for the rest of the day. The horse needed considerable calming, and for several minutes would not let either of them touch it, as if they were strangers.

The dragon was gone, and so were most of the signs that it had ever been there. There were no scrape marks on the nearby trees, nor gouges in the turf. When they went back over their trail, they could not find the dragon’s.

But when they returned to Bischoffshein, things were mostly unchanged. People remembered seeing the dragon, and they still treated Fara and Malik as if they were inexplicable oddities. Yet they were no longer so hostile; and let tired pair stay the night in the town. The next day, they decided to head for Strazburg.

“I have a theory,” said Malik during their easy walk up the road.

“Another theory.” Fara rolled her eyes. “Continue to think, Malik of Cordoba. You excel at it.”

Malik smiled. “Have you heard of the Paradox of the Stone?” Fara shook her head. “It is a metaphysical puzzle: Can an omnipotent being make a stone so heavy that even He could not lift it? Some simple-minded folk treat it as a refutation of omnipotence, but in fact it is a demonstration of exclusive definitions. If omnipotence does not include changing logical relationships, then God could not make such a stone, because then God would be willing Himself not to be God, which is tautologically ridiculous. But if omnipotence includes the ability to change the definitions of words, then God could easily create a stone too heavy for Him to lift—and then lift it.”

“Mm,” said Fara. “I see, I think. So what?”

“Well, the Paradox of the Stone demonstrates that, under certain conditions, two things cannot both exist within the same logical system. If there is such a thing as omnipotence, then there is no such thing as an impossible feat. The existence of one cancels out the other.”

“Yes?”

“When the dragon was in front of us, I could not remember that any person like you or any of your sisters existed, and you could remember no such person as me. When the dragon visited a village, the villagers forgot any Moors or women of the sword they had ever seen. But when you and I persevered in our efforts to remember each other and ourselves, the dragon vanished.”

“And if we hadn’t—”

“I see two possibilities: either we wouldn’t exist at all, exploding like the dragon or fading into nothingness, or else we’d forget ourselves as we forgot each other, becoming even in our own minds the oddities and abominations we were accused of being.” He gave a dry laugh. “I wonder how it feels to believe oneself a demon.”

She thought about it. “But if you’re right, then why do we remember the dragon at all? If we remember each other, we shouldn’t be able to remember it.”

Malik frowned. “Do we remember it? What color were its eyes? What sound did it make?”

Fara opened her mouth, then closed it again. “My god.” She looked down. “So then, what has become of Basina? If she met the dragon . . .”

Malik reached up and put his hand briefly on Fara’s shoulder. “If it was the same dragon, then I fear, Fara my friend and comrade, that your sister was unmade.”

“I remember her. You remember me telling you about her.”

“Yes.”

“Then maybe she still lives! Maybe she didn’t meet the dragon at all.”

“Perhaps not.”

• • • •

They continued on to Strazburg, a huge city gathering souls from many leagues in all directions. For the first two days, to their relief, no one treated Malik or Fara with anything but the respect and courtesy to which they had been accustomed before this adventure began. To have some warmth and decent food was a comfort, and Malik inquired about the private libraries of some local scholars as Fara began again to ask after Basina.

In an inn on the third day, they ran across a portly, red-haired seller of cloth who had heard of a dragon killed near Bischoffshien. They asked him the details. The date and location made it clear that it was the pine-green dragon they’d destroyed themselves, but in this man’s telling it was killed by a knight’s spear piercing its eye.

“And the knight?” asked Fara.

“A very brave man, from what I’ve heard,” said the man. “And his pale young squire never left his side.”

Fara and Malik looked into each other’s eyes. They knew what they knew; they remembered what they remembered. Or at least they thought they did.

“What’s more,” the cloth seller said. “I’ve heard there are more dragons further to the north. In Merkingen, in Mainz, in Erphesfurt.”

Over the next few days, they questioned travelers from the north and elsewhere to gather more rumors of these dragons. At least five sightings were reported, though none of their informants had seen one themselves. All these dragons sounded similar to the one they’d killed—as well as they could remember it now.

But although Fara and Malik did not encounter a single person who had seen one of the beasts first-hand, there were three who looked on them with horror and suspicion and would not venture more than a few words. Malik heard one of them mutter the word “witch.”

As they sat alone at a table with cups of the aromatic white wine for which the region was famous, he told Fara, “The dragons don’t need to see people to destroy their memory of us. Apparently it’s enough that they exist at all. If we’re not to forget our own names or wink out of existence, we’re going to have to hunt them all down.”

“Even if we didn’t,” said Fara. “There’s a chance that Basina is still alive, chasing one of them. If we get to her before she gets to the dragon, we can save her.”

“I hope we can.”

So began their long quest to find and destroy the dragons of Europe, to save Fara’s sisters of the sword and Malik’s friends and family from the oblivion these creatures wrought. They never did find Basina, but Fara and Malik had many adventures and touched many lives; always there was another dragon to fight, and always they fought it with their belief in each other.

No tales are told of them nowadays, and this one is probably a lie.

©2015 by Kenneth Schneyer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kenneth Schneyer is a writer, professor, lawyer, actor, project manager, bicyclist, amateur astronomer, feminist, and Jew. He was nominated for the Nebula and Theodore Sturgeon awards in 2014; that same year, Stillpoint Digital Press released his first collection, The Law & the Heart. His 30+ published short stories appear in such venues as Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Analog, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, the Clockwork Phoenix anthologies, Daily Science Fiction, Escape Pod, and Podcastle. He attended the Clarion Writers Workshop in 2009, and now works with both the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop and Codex Writers. Born in Detroit, he now lives in Rhode Island with one singer, one dancer, one actor, and something with fangs. He plays a fair game of stud poker, excels at presidential trivia, reads Tarot, actually understands the stock market, and cooks better than you do. You can find him on Facebook, on Twitter, or at ken-schneyer.livejournal.com.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

The Least Trumps

Elizabeth Hand | 23602 words

In the Lonely House there is a faded framed Life magazine article from almost half a century ago, featuring a color photograph of a beautiful woman with close-cropped blonde hair and rather sly grey eyes, wide crimson-lipsticked mouth, a red-and-white striped bateau-neck shirt. The woman is holding a large magnifying lens and examining a very large insect, a plastic scientific model of a common black ant, Lasius niger, posed atop a stack of children’s picture books. Each book displays the familiar blocky letters and illustrated image that has been encoded into the dreamtime DNA of generations of children: that of a puzzled-looking, goggle-eyed ant, its antennae slightly askew as though trying, vainly, to tune into the signal from some oh-so-distant station.

Wise Aunt or Wise Ant? reads the caption beneath the photo. Blake E. Tun Examines a Friend.

The woman is the beloved children’s book author and illustrator, Blake Eleanor Tun, known to her friends as Blakie. The books are the six classic Wise Ant books, in American and English editions and numerous translations—Wise Ant, Brave Ant, Curious Ant, Fourmi Sage, Weise Ameise, Una Hormiga Visionaria. In the room behind Blakie, you can just make out the figure of a toddler, out-of-focus as she runs past. You can see the child’s short blonde hair cut in a pageboy, and a tiny hand that the camera records as a mothlike blur. The little girl with the Prince Valiant haircut, identified in the article as Miss Tun’s adopted niece, is actually Blakie’s illegitimate daughter, Ivy Tun. That’s me.

Here in her remote island hidey-hole, the article begins, Eleanor Blake Tun brings to life an imaginary world inhabited by millions.

People used to ask Blakie why she lived on Aranbega. Actually, just living on an island wasn’t enough for my mother. The Lonely House stood on an islet in Green Pond, so we lived on an island on an island.

“Why do I live here? Because enchantresses always live on islands,” she’d say, and laugh. If she fancied the questioner she might add, “Oh, you know. Circe, Calypso, the Lady in the Lake—”

Then she’d give her, or very occasionally him, one of her mocking sideways smiles, lowering her head so that its fringe of yellow hair would fall across her face, hiding her eyes so that only the smile remained.

“The smile on the face of the tiger,” Katherine told me once when I was a teenager. “Whenever you saw that smile of hers, you’d know it was only a matter of time.”

“Time till what?” I asked.

But by then her attention had already turned back to my mother: the sun to Katherine’s gnomon, the impossibly beautiful bright thing that we all circled, endlessly.

Anyway, I knew what Blakie’s smile meant. Her affairs were notorious even on the island. For decades, however, they were carefully concealed from her readers, most of whom assumed (as they were meant to) that Blake E. Tun was a man—that Life magazine article caused quite a stir among those not already in the know. My mother was Blakie to me as to everyone else. When I was nine, she announced that she was not my aunt but my mother, and produced a birth certificate from a Boston hospital to prove it.

“No point in lying. It would, however, be more convenient if you continued to call me Blakie.” She stubbed out her cigarette on the sole of her tennis shoe and tossed it over the railing into Green Pond. “But it’s no one’s business who you are. Or who I am in relation to you, for that matter.”

And that was that. My father was not a secret kept from me; he just didn’t matter that much, not in Blakie’s scheme of things. The only thing she ever told me about him was that he was very young.

“Just a boy. Not much older than you are now, Ivy,” which at the time was nineteen. “Just a kid.”

“Never knew what hit him,” agreed my mother’s partner Katherine, as Blakie glared at her from across the room.

It never crossed my mind to doubt my mother, just as it never crossed my mind to hold her accountable for any sort of duplicity she may have practiced, then or later. The simple mad fact was that I adored Blakie. Everyone did. She was lovely and smart and willful and rich, a woman who believed in seduction, not argument; when seduction failed, which was rarely, she was not above abduction, of the genteel sort involving copious amounts of liquor and the assistance of one or two attractive friends.

The Wise Ant books she had written and illustrated when she was in her twenties. By her thirtieth birthday they had made her a fortune. Blakie had a wise agent named Letitia Thorne and a very wise financial adviser named William Dunlap, both of whom took care that my mother would never have to work again unless she wanted to.

Blakie did not want to work. She wanted to seduce Dunlap’s daughter-in-law, a twenty-two-year-old Dallas socialite named Katherine Mae Moss. The two women eloped to Aranbega, a rocky spine of land some miles off the coast of Maine. There they built a fairytale cottage in the middle of a lake, on a tamarack-and-fern-covered bump of rock not much bigger than the Bambi Airstream trailer they’d driven up from Texas. The cottage had two small bedrooms, a living room and dining nook and wraparound porch overlooking the still, silvery surface of Green Pond. There was a beetle-black cast-iron Crawford woodstove for heat and cooking, kerosene lanterns, and a small red hand-pump in the slate kitchen sink. No electricity; no telephone. Drinking water was pumped up from the lake. Septic and grey water disposal was achieved through an ancient holding tank that was emptied once a year.

They named the cottage The Lonely House, after the tiny house where Wise Ant lived with her friends Grasshopper and Bee. Here they were visited by Blakie’s friends, artistic sorts from New York and Boston, several other writers from Maine; and by Katherine’s relatives, a noisy congeries of cattle heiresses, disaffected oil men and Ivy League dropouts, first-wave hippies and draft dodgers, all of whom took turns babysitting me when Blakie took off for Crete or London or Taos in pursuit of some new amour. Eventually of course Katherine would find her and bring her home: As a child I imagined my mother engaged in some world-spanning game of hide-and-seek, where Katherine was always It. When the two of them returned to the Lonely House, there would always be a prize for me as well. A rainbow map of California, tie-dyed on a white bedsheet; lizard-skin drums from Angola; a Meerschaum pipe carved in the likeness of Richard Nixon.

“You’ll never have to leave here to see the world, Ivy,” my mother said once, after presenting me with a Maori drawing, on bark, of a stylized honeybee. “It will all come to you, like it all came to me.”

My mother was thirty-seven when I was born, old to be having a baby, and paired in what was then known as a Boston marriage. She and Katherine are still together, two old ladies now living in a posh assisted-living community near Rockland, no longer scandalizing anyone. They’ve had their relationship highlighted in an episode of This American Life, and my mother is active in local liberal causes, doing benefit readings of The Vagina Monologues and signings of Wise Ant for the Rockland Domestic Abuse Shelter. Katherine reconciled with her family and inherited a ranch near Goliad, where they still go sometimes in the winter. The Wise Ant books are now discussed within the context of mid-century American Lesbian Literature, a fact which annoys my mother no end.

“I wrote those books for children,” she cries whenever the topic arises. “They are children’s books,” as though someone had confused the color of her mailbox, red rather than black. “For God’s sake.”

Of course Wise Ant will never be anything more than her antly self—wise, brave, curious, kind, noisy, helpful—just as Blakie at eighty-two remains beautiful, maddening, forgetful, curious, brave; though seldom, if ever, quiet. We had words when I converted the Lonely House to solar power—

“You’re spoiling it. It was never intended to have electricity—”

Blakie and Katherine were by then well-established in their elegant cottage at Penobscot Fields. I looked at the room around me—Blakie’s study, small but beautifully appointed, with a Gustav Stickley lamp that she’d had rewired by a curator at the Farnsworth, her laptop screen glowing atop a quartersawn oak desk, and Bose speakers and miniature CD console.

“You’re right,” I said. “I’ll just move in here with you.”

“That’s not the—”

“Blakie. I need electricity to work. The generator’s too noisy, my customers don’t like it. And expensive. I have to work for a living—”

“You don’t have to—”

“I want to work for a living.” I paused, trying to calm myself. “Look, it’ll be fun—doing the wiring and stuff. I got all these photovoltaic cells, when it’s all set up you’ll see. It’ll be great.”

And it was. The cottage is south-facing: two rows of cells on the roof, a few extra batteries boxed-in under the porch, a few days spent wiring and I was set. I left the bookshelves in the living room, mostly my books now, and a few valuable first editions that I’d talked Blakie into leaving. Eliot’s Four Quartets and some Theodore Roethke; Gormenghast; a Leonard Baskin volume signed For Blakie. One bedroom I kept as my own, with a wide handcrafted oak cupboard bed, cleverly designed to hold clothes beneath and more books all around. At the head of the bed were those I loved best, a set of all six Wise Ant books and the five volumes of Walter Burden Fox’s unfinished Five Windows One Door sequence.

The other bedroom became my studio. I set up a drafting table and autoclave and light box, a shelf with my ultrasonic cleaner and dri-clave. On the floor was an additional power unit just for my machine and equipment; a tool bench holding soldering guns, needle bars, and jigs; a tall stainless steel medicine cabinet with enough disinfectant and bandages and gloves and hemostats to outfit a small clinic; an overhead cabinet with my inks and pencils and acetates. Empty plastic caps await the colored inks that fill the machine’s reservoir. A small sink drains into a special tank that I bring to the Rockland dump once a month, when everyone else brings in their empty paint cans. A bookshelf holds albums filled with pictures of my own work and some art books—Tibetan stuff, pictures from Chauvet Cavern, Japanese woodblock prints.

But no flash sheets; no framed flash art; no fake books. If a customer wants flash, they can go to Rockland or Bangor. I do only my own designs. I’ll work with a customer, if she has a particular image in mind, or come up with something original if she doesn’t. But if somebody has her heart set on a prancing unicorn, or Harley flames, or Mister Natural, or a Grateful Dead logo, I send her elsewhere.

This doesn’t happen much. I don’t advertise. All my business is word of mouth, through friends or established customers, a few people here on Aranbega. But mostly, if someone wants me to do her body work, she really has to want me, enough to fork out sixty-five bucks for the round-trip ferry and at least a couple hundred for the tattoo, and three hundred more for the Aranbega Inn if she misses the last ferry, or if her work takes more than a single day. Not to mention the cost of a thick steak dinner afterwards, and getting someone else to drive her home. I don’t let people stay at the Lonely House, unless it’s someone I’ve known for a long time, which usually means someone I was involved with at some point, which usually means she wouldn’t want to stay with me in any case. Sue is an exception, but Sue is seeing someone else now, one of the other occupational therapists from Penobscot Fields, so she doesn’t come over as much as she used to.

That suits me fine. My customers are all women. Most of them are getting a tattoo to celebrate some milestone, usually something like finally breaking with an abusive boyfriend, leaving a bad marriage, coming to grips with the aftermath of a rape. Breast cancer survivors—I do a lot of breast work—or tattoos to celebrate coming out, or giving birth. Sometimes anniversaries. I get a lot of emotional baggage dumped in my studio, for hours or days at a time; it always leaves when the customers do, but it pretty much fulfills my need for any kind of emotional connection, which is pretty minimal anyway.

And, truth to tell, it fulfills most of my sexual needs, too; at least any baseline desire I have for physical contact. My life is spent with skin: cupping a breast in my hand, pulling the skin taut between my fingers while the needle etches threadlike lines around the aureole, tracing yellow above violet veins, turning zippered scars into coiled serpents, an explosion of butterfly wings, flames or phoenixes rising from a puckered blue-white mound of flesh; or drawing secret maps, a hidden cartography of grottoes and ravines, rivulets and waves lapping at beaches no bigger than the ball of my thumb; the ball of my thumb pressed there, index finger there, tissue film of latex between my flesh and hers, the hushed drone of the machine as it chokes down when the needle first touches skin and the involuntary flinch that comes, no matter how well she’s prepared herself for this, no matter how many times she’s lain just like this, paper towels blotting the film of blood that wells, nearly invisible, beneath the moving needle bar’s tip, music never loud enough to drown out the hum of the machine. Hospital smells of disinfectant, blood, antibacterial ointment, latex.

And sweat. A stink like scorched metal: fear. It wells up the way blood does, her eyes dilate and I can smell it, even if she doesn’t move, even if she’s done this enough times to be as controlled as I am when I draw the needle across my own flesh: she’s afraid, and I know it, needle-flick, soft white skin pulled taut, again, again, between my fingers.

I don’t want a lot of company, after a day’s work.

I knew something was going to happen the night before I found the Trumps. Sue teases me, but it’s true, I can tell when something is going to happen. A feeling starts to swell inside me, as though I’m being blown up like a balloon, my head feels light and somehow cold, there are glittering things at the edges of my eyes. And sure enough, within a day or two someone turns up out of the blue, or I get a letter or email from someone I haven’t thought of in ten years. Whenever I see something—a mink, a yearling moose, migrating elvers—I just know.

I shouldn’t even tell Sue when it happens. She says it’s just a manifestation of my disorder, like a migraine aura.

“Take your fucking medicine, Ivy. It’s an early warning system: Take your Xanax!”

Rationally I can understand that, rationally I know she’s right. That’s all it is, a chain of neurons going off inside my head, like a string of firecrackers with a too-short fuse. But I can never explain to her the way the world looks when it happens, that green glow in the sky not just at twilight but all day long, the way I can see the stars sometimes at noon, sparks in the sky.

I was outside the Lonely House, cutting some flowers to take to Blakie. Pink and white cosmos; early asters, powder blue and mauve; white sweet-smelling phlox, their stems slightly sticky, green aphids like minute beads of dew beneath the flower heads. From the other shore a chipmunk gave its warning cheeet. I looked up, and there on the bank a dozen yards away sat a red fox. It was grinning at me, I could see the thin black rind of its gums, its yellow eyes shining as though lit from within by candles. It sat bolt upright and watched me, its white-tipped brush twitching like a cat’s.

I stared back, my arms full of asters. After a moment I said, “Hello there. Hello. What are you looking for?”

I thought it would lope off then, the way foxes do; but it just sat and continued to watch me. I went back to gathering flowers, putting them into a wooden trug and straightening to gaze back at the shore. The fox was still there, yellow eyes glinting in the late-summer light. Abruptly it jumped to its feet. It looked right at me, cocking its head like a dog waiting to be walked.

It barked—a shrill, bone-freezing sound, like a child screaming. I felt my back prickle; it was still watching me, but there was something distracted about its gaze, and I saw its ears flatten against its narrow skull. A minute passed. Then, from away across Cameron Mountain, there came an answer, another sharp yelp, higher-pitched and ending in a sort of yodeling wail. The fox turned so quickly it seemed to somersault through the low grass, and arrowed up the hillside towards the birch grove. In a moment it was gone. There was only the frantic chatter of red squirrels in the woods and, when I drew the dory up on the far shore a quarter-hour later, a musky sharp smell like crushed grapes.

I got the last ferry over to Port Symes, me and a handful of late-season people from away, sunburned and loud, waving their cellphones over the rail as they tried to pick up a signal from one of the towers on the mainland.

“We’ll never get a reservation,” a woman said accusingly to her husband. “I told you to have Marisa do it before she left—”

At Port Symes I hopped off before any of them, heading for where I’d left Katherine’s car parked by an overgrown bank of dog roses. The roses were all crimson hips and thorns by now, the dark-green leaves already burning to yellow; there were yellow beech leaves across the car’s windshield, and as I drove out onto the main road I saw acorns like thousands of green-and-bronze marbles scattered across the gravel road. Summer lingers for weeks on the islands, trapped by pockets of warmer air, soft currents and grey fog holding it fast till mid-October some years. Here on the mainland it was already autumn.

The air had a keen winey scent that reminded me of the fox. As I headed down the peninsula towards Rockland I caught the smell of burning leaves, the dank odor of smoke snaking through a chimney that had been cold since spring. The maples were starting to turn, pale gold and pinkish red. There had been a lot of rain in the last few weeks; one good frost would set the leaves ablaze. On the seat beside me Blakie’s flowers sat in their Mason jar, wrapped in a heavy towel; one good frost and they might be the last ones I’d pick this year.

I got all the way to the main road before the first temblors of panic hit. I deliberately hadn’t taken my medication—it made me too sleepy, I couldn’t drive and Sue would have had to meet me at the ferry, I would be asleep before we got to her place. The secondary road ended; there was a large green sign with arrows pointing east and west.

 THOMASTON 
 OWLS HEAD 
 ROCKLAND 

I turned right, towards Rockland. In the distance I could see the slate-colored reach of Penobscot Bay, a pine-pointed tip of land protruding into the waters, harsh white lights from Rockland Harbor; miles and miles off a tiny smudge like a thumbprint upon the darkening sky.

Aranbega. I was off island.

The horror comes down, no matter how I try to prepare myself for it, no matter how many times I’ve been through it: an incendiary blast of wind, the feeling that an iron helmet is tightening around my head. I began to gasp, my heart starting to pound and my entire upper body going cold. Outside was a cool September twilight, the lights of the strip malls around Rockland starting to prick through the gold-and-violet haze, but inside the car the air had grown black, my skin icy. There was a searing fire in my gut. My T-shirt was soaked through. I forced myself to breathe, to remember to exhale; to think You’re not dying, nobody dies of this, it will go, it will go . . .

“Fuck.” I clutched the steering wheel and crept past the Puffin Stop convenience store, past the Michelin tire place, the Dairy Queen; through one set of traffic lights, a second. You won’t die, nobody dies of this; don’t look at the harbor.

I tried to focus on the trees—two huge red oaks, there, you could hardly see where the land had been cleared behind them to make way for a car wash. It’s just a symptom, you’re reacting to the symptoms, nobody dies of this, nobody. At a stop sign I grabbed my cell phone and called Sue.

“I’m by the Rite-Aid.” Don’t look at the Rite-Aid. “I’ll be there, five minutes—”

An SUV pulled up behind me. I dropped the phone, feeling like I was going to vomit; turned sharply onto the side street. My legs shook so I couldn’t feel the pedals under my feet. How can I drive if my legs are numb?

The SUV turned in behind me. My body trembled, I hit the gas too hard and my car shot forward, bumping over the curb then down again. The SUV veered past, a great grey blur, its lights momentarily blinding me. My eyes teared and I forced my breath out in long hoots, and drove the last few hundred feet to Sue’s house.

She was in the driveway, still holding the phone in one hand.

“Don’t,” I said. I opened the car door and leaned out, head between my knees, waiting for the nausea to pass. When she came over I held my hand up and she stopped, but I heard her sigh. From the corner of my eye I could see the resigned set to her mouth, and that her other hand held a prescription bottle.

Always before when I came over to visit my mother, I’d stay with Sue and we’d sleep together, comfortably, not so much for old time’s sake as to sustain some connection at once deeper and less enduring than talk. Words I feel obliged to remember, skin I can afford to forget. A woman’s body inevitably evokes my own small, wet mouth, my own breath, my own legs, breasts, arms, shoulders, back. Even after Sue started seeing someone else, we’d ease into her wide bed with its wicker headboard, cats sliding to the floor in a grey heap like discarded laundry, radio playing softly, Tea and oranges, so much more.

“I think you’d better stay on the couch,” Sue said that night. “Lexie isn’t comfortable with this arrangement, and . . .”

She sighed, glancing at my small leather bag, just big enough to hold a change of underwear, hairbrush, toothbrush, wallet, a battered paperback of Lorca in New York. “I guess I’m not either. Anymore.”

I felt my mouth go tight, stared at the Mason jar full of flowers on the coffee table.

“Yup,” I said.

I refused to look at her. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing how I felt.

But of course Sue wouldn’t be gleeful, or vindictive. She’d just be sad, maybe mildly annoyed. I was the one who froze and burned; I was the one who scarred people for a living.

“It’s fine,” I said after a minute, and, looking at her, smiled wryly. “I have to get up early anyway.”

She looked at me, not smiling, dark-brown eyes creased with regret. What a waste, I could hear her thinking. What a lonely wasted life

I think the world is like this: beautiful, hard, cold, unmoving. Oh, it turns, things change—clouds, leaves, the ground beneath the beech trees grows thick with beechmast and slowly becomes black, fragrant earth ripe with hellgrammites, millipedes, nematodes, deer mice. Small animals die, we die; a needle moves across honey-colored skin and the skin turns black, or red, or purple. A freckle or a mole becomes an eye; given enough time an eye becomes an earthworm.

But change, the kind of change Sue believes in—Positive Change, Emotional Change, Cultural Change—I don’t believe in that. When I was young, I thought the world was changing: there was a time, years-long, when the varicolored parade of visitors through the Lonely House made me believe that the world Outside must have changed its wardrobe as well, from sere black suits and floral housedresses to velvet capes and scarlet morning coats, armies of children and teenagers girding themselves for skirmish in embroidered pants, feathered headdresses, bare feet, bare skin. I dressed myself as they did—actually, they dressed me, as Blakie smoked and sipped her whiskey sour, and Katherine made sure the bird feeders and wood box were full. And one day I went out to see the world.

It was only RISD—the Rhode Island School of Design—and it should have been a good place, it should have been a Great Place for me. David Byrne and a few other students were playing at someone’s house, other students were taking off for Boston and New York, squatting in Alphabet City in burned-out tenements with a toilet in the kitchen, getting strung out, but they were doing things, they were having adventures, hocking bass guitars for Hasselblad cameras, learning how to hold a tattoo machine in a back room on St. Mark’s Place, dressing up like housewives and shooting five hours of someone lying passed out in bed while a candle flickered down to a shiny red puddle and someone else laughed in the next room. It didn’t look like it at the time, but you can see it now, when you look at their movies and their photographs and their vinyl 45s and their installations: it didn’t seem so at the time, but they were having a life.

I couldn’t do that. My problem, I know. I lasted a semester, went home for Christmas break and never went back. For a long time it didn’t matter—maybe it never mattered—because I still had friends, people came to see me even when Blakie and Katherine were off at the ranch, or bopping around France. Everyone’s happy to have a friend on an island in Maine. So in a way it was like Blakie had told me long ago: The world did come to me.

Only, of course, I knew better.

Saturday was Sue’s day off. She’d been at Penobscot Fields for eleven years now and had earned this, a normal weekend; I wasn’t going to spoil it for her. I got up early, before seven, fed the cats and made myself coffee, then went out.

I walked downtown. Rockland used to be one of the worst-smelling places in the United States: There was a chicken processing plant, fish factories, the everyday reek and spoils of a working harbor. That’s all changed, of course. Now there’s a well-known museum, and tourist boutiques have filled up the empty storefronts left when the factories shut down. Only the sardine processing plant remains, down past the Coast Guard station on Tilson Avenue; when the wind is off the water you can smell it, a stale odor of fishbones and rotting bait that cuts through the scents of fresh-roasted coffee beans and car exhaust.

Downtown was nearly empty. A few people sat in front of Second Read, drinking coffee. I went inside and got coffee and a croissant, walked back onto the sidewalk, and wandered down to the waterfront. For some reason, seeing the water when I’m on foot usually doesn’t bother me. There’s something about being in a car, or a bus, something about moving, the idea that there’s more out there, somewhere; the idea that Aranbega is floating in the blue pearly haze and I’m here, away: disembodied somehow, like an astronaut untethered from a capsule, floating slowly beyond that safe closed place, unable to breathe and everything gone to black, knowing it’s just a matter of time.

But that day, standing on the dock with the creosote-soaked wooden pilings beneath my sneakers, looking at orange peels bobbing in the black water and gulls wheeling overhead—that day I didn’t feel bad at all. I drank my coffee and ate my croissant, tossed the last bit of crust into the air, and watched the gulls veer and squabble over it. I looked at my watch. A little before eight, still too early to head to Blakie’s. She liked to sleep in, and Katherine enjoyed the peace and quiet of a morning.

I headed back towards Main Street. There was some early morning traffic now, people heading off to do their shopping at Shaw’s and Walmart. On the corner I waited for the light to change, glanced at a storefront and saw a sign taped to the window.

 ST. BRUNO’S EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
 ANNUAL RUMMAGE SALE 
 SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 7 
 8:00 A.M.–3:00 P.M. 
 LUNCH SERVED FROM 11:30 

Penobscot Fields had once been the lupine-strewn meadow behind St. Bruno’s; proximity to the church was one of the reasons Blakie and Katherine had first signed on to the retirement community. I wasn’t a churchgoer, but during the summer I was an avid haunter of yard sales in the Rockland area. You don’t get many of them after Labor Day, but the rummage sale at St. Bruno’s almost makes up for it. I made sure I had my wallet and checkbook in my bag, then hurried to get there before the doors opened.

There was already a line. I recognized a couple of dealers, a few regulars who smiled or nodded at me. St. Bruno’s is a late-nineteenth century neo-Gothic building, designed in the late Arts and Crafts style by Halbert Liston: half-timbered beams, local dove-grey fieldstone, slate shingles on the roof. The rummage sale was not in the church, of course, but the adjoining parish house. It had whitewashed walls rather than stone, the same half-timbered upper story, etched with arabesques of dying clematis and sere Virginia creeper. In the door was a diamond-shaped window through which a worried elderly woman peered out every few minutes.

“Eight o’clock!” someone called good-naturedly from the front of the line. Bobby Day, the greying hippie who owned a used bookstore in Camden. “Time to go!”

From inside, the elderly woman gave one last look at the crowd, then nodded. The door opened; there was a surge forward, laughter and excited murmurs, someone crying, “Marge, look out! Here they come!” Then I was inside.

Long tables of linens and clothing were at the front of the hall, surrounded by women with hands already full of flannel sheets and crewelwork. I scanned these quickly, then glanced at the furniture. Nice stuff—a Morris chair and old oak settle, some wicker, a flax wheel. Episcopalians always have good rummage sales, better quality than Our Lady of the Harbor or those off-brand churches straggling down towards Warren.

But the Lonely House was already crammed with my own nice stuff, besides which it would be difficult to get anything back to the island. So I made my way to the rear of the hall, where Bobby Day was going through boxes of books on the floor. We exchanged hellos, Bobby smiling but not taking his eyes from the books; in deference to him I continued on to the back corner. An old man wearing a canvas apron with a faded silhouette of St. Bruno on it stood over a table covered with odds and ends.

“This is whatever didn’t belong anywhere else,” he said. He waved a hand at a hodgepodge of beer steins, Tupperware, mismatched silver, shoeboxes overflowing with candles, buttons, Mason jar lids. “Everything’s a dollar.”

I doubted there was anything there worth fifty cents, but I just nodded and moved slowly down the length of the table. A chipped Poppy Trails bowl and a bunch of ugly glass ashtrays. Worn Beanie Babies with the tags clipped off. A game of Twister. As I looked, a heavyset woman barreled up behind me. She had a rigidly unsmiling face and an overflowing canvas bag: I caught glints of brass and pewter, the telltale dull green glaze of a nice Teco pottery vase. A dealer. She avoided my gaze, her hand snaking out to grab something I’d missed, a tarnished silver flask hidden behind a stack of plastic Easter baskets.

I tried not to grimace. I hated dealers and their greedy bottom-feeder mentality. By this afternoon she’d have polished the flask and stuck a seventy-five-dollar price tag on it. I moved quickly to the end of the table. I could see her watching me whenever my hand hovered above something; once I moved on she’d grab whatever I’d been examining, give it a cursory glance before elbowing up beside me once more. After a few minutes I turned away, was just starting to leave when my gaze fell upon a swirl of violet and orange tucked within a Pyrex dish.

“Not sure what that is,” the old man said as I pried it from the bowl. Beside me the dealer watched avidly. “Lady’s scarf, I guess.”

It was a lumpy packet a bit larger than my hand, made up of a paisley scarf that had been folded over several times to form a thick square, then wrapped and tightly knotted around a rectangular object. The cloth was frayed, but it felt like fine wool. There was probably enough of it to make a nice pillow cover. Whatever was inside felt compact but also slightly flexible; it had a familiar heft as I weighed it in my palm.

An oversized pack of cards. I glanced up to see the dealer watching me with undisguised impatience.

“I’ll take this,” I said, and handed the old man a dollar. “Thanks.”

A flicker of disappointment across the dealer’s face. I smiled at her, enjoying my mean little moment of triumph, and left.

Outside the parish hall a stream of people were headed for the parking lot, carrying lamps and pillows and overflowing plastic bags. The church bell tolled eight thirty. Blakie would just be getting up. I killed a few more minutes by wandering around the church grounds, past a well-kept herb garden and stands of yellow chrysanthemums. Behind a neatly trimmed hedge of boxwood I discovered a statue of St. Bruno himself, standing watch over a granite bench. Here I sat with my paisley-wrapped treasure, and set about trying to undo the knot.

For a while I thought I’d have to just rip the damn thing apart, or wait till I got to Blakie’s to cut it open. The cloth was knotted so tightly I couldn’t undo it, and the paisley had gotten wet at some point then shrunk—it was like trying to pick at dried plaster, or Sheetrock.

But gradually I managed to tease one corner of the scarf free, tugging it gently until, after a good ten minutes, I was able to undo the wrappings. A faint odor wafted up, the vanilla-tinged scent of pipe tobacco. There was a greasy feel to the frayed cloth, sweat, or maybe someone had dropped it on the damp grass. I opened it carefully, smoothing its folds till I could finally see what was tucked inside.

It was a large deck of cards, bound with a rubber band. The rubber band fell to bits when I tried to remove it, and something fluttered onto the bench. I picked it up: a scrap of paper with a few words scrawled in pencil.

The least trumps.

I frowned. The Greater Trumps, those were the picture cards that made up the Major Arcana in a tarot deck—the Chariot, the Magician, the Empress, the Hierophant. Eight or nine years ago I had a girlfriend with enough New Age tarots to channel the entire Order of the Golden Dawn. Marxist tarots, lesbian tarots, African, Zen, and Mormon tarots; Tarots of the Angels, of Wise Mammals, poisonous snakes and smiling madonni; Aleister Crowley’s tarot, and Shirley MacLaine’s; the dread Feminist Tarot of the Cats. There were twenty-two Major Arcana cards, and the lesser trumps were analogous to the fifty-two cards in an ordinary deck, with an additional four representing knights.

But the least trumps? The phrase stabbed at my memory, but I couldn’t place it. I stared at the scrap of paper with its rushed scribble, put it aside, and examined the deck.

The cards were thick, with the slightly furry feel of old pasteboard. Each was printed with an identical and intricate design of spoked wheels, like old-fashioned gears with interlocking teeth. The inks were primitive, too-bright primary colors, red and yellow and blue faded now to periwinkle and pale rose, a dusty gold like smudged pollen. I guessed they dated to the early or mid-nineteenth century. The images had the look of old children’s picture books from that era, at once vivid and muted, slightly sinister, as though the illustrators were making a point of not revealing their true meaning to the casual viewer. I grinned, thinking of how I’d wrested them from the clutches of an antiques dealer, then turned them over.

The cards were all blank. I shook my head, fanning them out on the bench before me. A few of the cards had their corners neatly clipped, but others looked as though they had been bitten off in tiny crescent-shaped wedges. I squinted at one, trying to determine if someone had peeled off a printed image. The surface was rough, flecked with bits of darker grey and black, or white, but it didn’t seem to have ever had anything affixed to it. There was no trace of glue or spirit gum that I could see, no jots of ink or colored paper.

A mistake, then. The deck had obviously been discarded by the printer. Not even a dealer would have been able to get more than a couple of bucks for it.

Too bad. I gathered the cards into a stack, and started wrapping the scarf around them when I noticed that one card was thicker than the rest. I pulled it out: not a single card after all but two that had become stuck together. I set the rest of the deck aside, safe within the paisley shroud; then gingerly slid my thumbnail between the stuck cards. It was like prising apart sheets of mica—I could feel where the pasteboard held fast towards the center, but if I pulled at it too hard or too quickly the cards would tear.

But very slowly, I felt the cards separate. Maybe the warmth of my touch helped, or the sudden exposure to air and moisture. For whatever reason, the cards suddenly slid apart so that I held one in each hand.

“Oh.”

I cried aloud, they were that wonderful. Two tiny, brilliantly inked tableaux like medieval tapestries, or paintings by Brueghel glimpsed through a rosace window. One card was awhirl with minute figures, men and women but also animals, dogs dancing on their hind legs, long-necked cranes, and crabs that lifted clacking claws to a sky filled with pennoned airships, exploding suns, a man being carried on a litter, and a lash-fringed eye like a greater sun gazing down upon them all. The other card showed only the figure of a naked man, kneeling so that he faced the viewer, but with head bowed so that you saw only his broad back, a curve of neck like a quarter-moon, a sheaf of dark hair spilling to the ground before him. The man’s skin was painted in gold leaf; the ground he knelt upon was the dreamy green of old bottle-glass, the sky behind him crocus-yellow, with a tinge upon the horizon like the first flush of sun, or the protruding tip of a finger. As I stared at them I felt my heart begin to beat, too fast, too hard, but not with fear this time, not this time.

The Least Trumps. The term was used, just once, in the first chapter of the unfinished, final volume of Five Windows One Door. I remembered it suddenly, the way you recall something from early childhood, the smell of marigolds towering above your head, a blue plush dog with one glass eye, thin sunlight filtering through a crack in a frosted glass cold frame. My mouth filled with liquid and I tasted sour cherries, salt and musk, the first time my tongue probed a girl’s cunt. A warm breeze stirred my hair. I heard distant laughter, a booming bass-note that resolved into the echo of a church clock tolling nine.

Only when he was certain that Mabel had fallen fast asleep beside him would Tarquin remove the cards from their brocade pouch, her warm limbs tangled in the stained bedcovers where they emitted a smell of yeast and limewater, the surrounding room suffused with twilight so that when he held the cards before her mouth, one by one, he saw how her breath brought to life the figures painted upon each, as though she breathed upon a winter windowpane where frost-roses bloomed: Pavell Saved From Drowning, The Bangers, One Leaf Left, Hermalchio and Lachrymatory, Villainous Saltpetre, The Ground-Nut, The Widower: all the recusant figures of the Least Trumps quickening beneath Mabel’s sleeping face.

Even now the words came to me by heart. Sometimes, when I couldn’t fall asleep, I would lie in bed and silently recite the books from memory, beginning with Volume One, The First Window: Love Plucking Rowan Berries, with its description of Mabel’s deflowering that I found so tragic when I first read it. Only later in my twenties, when I read the books for the fifth or seventh time, did I realize the scene was a parody of the seduction scene in Rigoletto. In this way Walter Burden Fox’s books eased my passage into the world, as they did in many others. Falling in love with fey little Clytie Winton, then weeping over her death; making my first forays into sex when I masturbated to the memory of Tarquin’s mad brother Elwell taking Mabel as she slept; realizing, as I read of Mabel’s great love affair with the silent film actress Nola Flynn, that there were words to describe what I did sometimes with my own friends, even if those words had a lavender must of the attic to them: tribadism, skylarking, sit Venus in the garden with Her Gate unlocked.

My mother never explained any of this to me: sex, love, suffering, patience. Probably she assumed that her example alone was enough, and for another person it might well have been. But I never saw my mother unhappy, or frightened. My first attack came not long after Julia Sa’adah left me. Julia who inked my life Before and After; and while at the time I was contemptuous of anyone who suggested a link between the two events, breakup and crackup, I can see now that it was so. In Fox’s novels, love affairs sometimes ended badly, but for all the lessons his books held, they never readied me for the shock of being left.

That was more than eleven years ago. I still felt the aftershocks, of course. I still dream about her: her black hair, so thick it was like oiled rope streaming through my fingers; her bronzey skin, its soft glaucous bloom like scuppernongs; the way her mouth tasted. Small mouth, smaller than my own, cigarettes and wintergreen, tea oil, coriander seed. The dream is different each time, though it always ends the same way, it ends the way it ended: Julia looking at me as she packs up her Rockland studio, arms bare so I can see my own apprentice work below her elbow, vine leaves, stylized knots. My name there, and hers, if you knew where to look. Her face sad but amused as she shakes her head. “You never happened, Ivy.”

“How can you say that?” This part never changes either, though in my waking mind I say a thousand other things. “Six years, how can you fucking say that?”

She just shakes her head. Her voice begins to break up, swallowed by the harsh buzz of a tattoo machine choking down; her image fragments, hair face eyes breasts tattoos spattering into bits of light, jabs of black and red. The tube is running out of ink. “That’s not what I mean. You just don’t get it, Ivy. You never happened. You. Never. Happened.”

Then I wake and the panic’s full-blown, like waking into a room where a bomb’s exploded. Only there’s no bomb. What’s exploded is all inside my head.

It was years before anyone figured out how it worked, this accretion of synaptic damage, neuronal misfirings, an overstimulated fight-or-flight response; the way one tiny event becomes trapped within a web of dendrites and interneurons and triggers a cascade of cortisol and epinephrine, which in turns wakes the immense black spider that rushes out and seizes me so that I see and feel only horror, only dread, the entire world poisoned by its bite. There is no antidote—the whole disorder is really just an accumulation of symptoms, accelerated pulse-rate, racing heartbeat, shallow breathing. There is no cure, only chemicals that lull the spider back to sleep. It may be that my repeated tattooing of my own skin has somehow oversensitized me, like bad acupuncture, caused an involuntary neurochemical reaction that only makes it worse.

No one knows. And it’s not something Walter Burden Fox ever covered in his books.

I stared at the illustrated cards in my hands. Fox had lived not far from here, in Tenants Harbor. My mother knew him years before I was born. He was much older than she was, but in those days—this was long before email and cheap long distance servers—writers and artists would travel a good distance for the company of their own kind, and certainly a lot further than from Tenants Harbor to Aranbega Island. It was the first time I can remember being really impressed by my mother, the way other people always assumed I must be. She had found me curled up in the hammock, reading Love Plucking Rowan Berries.

“You’re reading Burdie’s book.” She stooped to pick up my empty lemonade glass.

I corrected her primly. “It’s by Walter Burden Fox.”

“Oh, I know. Burdie, that’s what he liked to be called. His son was Walter too. Wally, they called him. I knew him.”

Now, behind me, St. Bruno’s bell rang the quarter-hour. Blakie would be up by now, waiting for my arrival. I carefully placed the two cards with their fellows inside the paisley scarf, put the bundle inside my bag, and headed for Penobscot Fields.

Blakie and Katherine were sitting at their dining nook when I let myself in. Yesterday’s New York Times was spread across the table, and the remains of breakfast.

“Well,” my mother asked, white brows raised above calm grey eyes as she looked at me. “Did you throw up?”

“Oh, hush, you,” said Katherine.

“Not this time.” I bent to kiss my mother, then turned to hug Katherine. “I went to the rummage sale at St. Bruno’s, that’s why I’m late.”

“Oh, I meant to give them my clothes!” Katherine stood to get me coffee. “I brought over a few boxes of things, but I forgot the clothes. I have a whole bag, some nice Hermes scarves, too.”

“You shouldn’t give those away.” Blakie patted the table, indicating where I should sit beside her. “That consignment shop in Camden gives us good credit for them. I got this sweater there.” She touched her collar, dove-grey knit, three pearl buttons. “It’s lamb’s wool. Bergdorf Goodman. They closed ages ago. Someone must have died.”

“Oh hush,” said Katherine. She handed me a coffee mug. “Like we need credit for clothes.”

“Look,” I said. “Speaking of scarves—”

I pulled the paisley packet from the purse, clearing a space amidst the breakfast dishes. For a fraction of a second Blakie looked surprised; then she blinked, and along with Katherine leaned forward expectantly. As I undid the wrappings the slip of paper fell onto the table beside my mother’s hand. Her gnarled fingers scrabbled at the table, finally grabbed the scrap.

“I can’t read this,” she said, adjusting her glasses as she stared and scowled. I set the stack of cards on the scarf, then slid them all across the table. I had withheld the two cards that retained their color; now I slipped them into my back jeans pocket, carefully, so they wouldn’t get damaged. The others lay in a neat pile before my mother.

“‘The Least Trumps.’” I pointed at the slip of paper. “That’s what it says.”

She looked at me sharply, then at the cards. “What do you mean? It’s a deck of cards.”

“What’s written on the paper. It says, ‘The Least Trumps.’ I don’t know if you remember, but there’s a scene in one of Fox’s books, the first one? The Least Trumps is what he calls a set of tarot cards that one of the characters uses.” I edged over beside her, and pointed at the bit of paper she held between thumb and forefinger. “I was curious if you could read that. Since you knew him? I was wondering if you recognized it. If it was his handwriting.”

“Burdie’s?” My mother shook her head, drew the paper to her face until it was just a few inches from her nose. It was the same pose she’d assumed when pretending to gaze at Wise Ant through a magnifying glass for Life magazine, only now it was my mother who looked puzzled, even disoriented. “Well, I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

I felt a flash of dread, that now of all times would be when she started to lose it, to drift away from me and Katherine. But no. She turned to Katherine and said, “Where did we put those files? When I was going through the letters from after the war. Do you remember?”

“Your room, I think. Do you want me to get them?”

“No, no . . .” Blakie waved me off as she stood and walked, keeping her balance by touching chair, countertop, wall on the way to her study.

Katherine looked after her, then at the innocuous shred of paper, then at me. “What is it?” She touched one unraveling corner of the scarf. “Where did you get them?”

“At the rummage sale. They were wrapped up in that, I didn’t know what they were till I got outside and opened it.”

“Pig in a poke.” Katherine winked at me. She still had her silvery hair done every Thursday, in the whipped-up spray-stiffened bouffant of her Dallas socialite days—not at the beauty parlor at the retirement center, either, but the most expensive salon in Camden. She had her nails done too, even though her hands were too twisted by arthritis to wear the bijoux rings she’d always favored, square-cut diamonds and aquamarines and the emerald my mother had given her when they first met. “I’m surprised you bought a pig in a poke, Ivy Bee.”

“Yeah. I’m surprised too.”

“Here we are.” My mother listed back into the room, settling with a thump in her chair. “Now we can see.”

She jabbed her finger at the table, where the scrap of paper fluttered like an injured moth, then handed me an envelope. “Open that, please, Ivy dear. My hands are so clumsy now.”

It was a white, letter-sized envelope, unsealed, tipsy typed address.

Miss Blakie Tun,
The Lonely House,
Aranbega Island, Maine.

Before zip codes, even, one faded blue four-cent stamp in one corner. The other corner with the typed return address. W. B. Fox, Sand Hill Road, T. Harbor, Maine.

“Look at it!” commanded Blakie.

Obediently I withdrew the letter, unfolded it, and scanned the handwritten lines, front and back, until I reached the end. Blue ink, mouse-tail flourish on the final e. Very Fondly Yours, Burdie.

“I think it’s the same writing.” I scrutinized the penmanship, while trying not to actually absorb its content. Which seemed dull in any case, something about a dog, and snow, and someone’s car getting stuck, and Be glad when summer’s here, at least we can visit again.

Least. I picked up the scrap of paper to compare the two words.

“You know, they are the same,” I said. There was something else, too. I brought the letter to my face and sniffed it. “And you know what else? I can smell it. It smells like pipe tobacco. The scarf smells like it, too.”

“Borkum Riff.” My mother made a face. “Awful sweet stuff, I couldn’t stand it. So.”

She looked at me, grey eyes narrowed, not sly but thoughtful. “We were good friends, you know. Burdie. Very loveable man.”

Katherine nodded. “Fragile.”

“Fragile. He would have made a frail old man, wouldn’t he?” She glanced at Katherine—two strong old ladies—then at me. “I remember how much you liked his books. I’m sorry now we didn’t write to each other more, I could have given you his letters, Ivy. He always came to visit us, once or twice a year. In the summer.”

“But not after the boy died,” said Katherine.

My mother shook her head. “No, not after Wally died. Poor Burdie.”

“Poor Wally,” suggested Katherine.

It was why Fox had never completed the last book of the quintet. His son had been killed in the Korean War. I knew that; it was one of the only really interesting, if tragic, facts about Walter Burden Fox. There had been one full-length biography, written in the 1970s, when his work achieved a minor cult status boosted by the success of Tolkien and Mervyn Peake, a brief vogue in those days for series books in uniform paperback editions. The Alexandria Quartet, Children of Violence, A Dance to the Music of Time. Five Windows One Door had never achieved that kind of popularity, of course, despite the affection for it held by figures like Anaïs Nin, Timothy Leary, and Virgil Thomson, themselves eclipsed now by brighter, younger lights.

Fox died in 1956. I hadn’t been born yet. I could never have met him.

Yet, in a funny way, he made me who I am—well, maybe not me exactly. But he certainly changed the way I thought about the world; made it seem at once unabashedly romantic and charged with a sense of imminence, as ripe with possibility as an autumn orchard is ripe with fruit. Julia and I were talking once about the 1960s—she was seven years older than me, and had lived through them as an adult, communes in Tennessee, drug dealing in Malibu, before she settled down in Rockland and opened her tattoo studio.

She said, “You want to know what the sixties were about, Ivy? The sixties were about It could happen.”

And that’s what Fox’s books were like. They gave me the sense that there was someone leaning over my shoulder, someone whispering It could happen.

So I suppose you could say that Walter Burden Fox ruined the real world for me, when I didn’t find it as welcoming as the one inhabited by Mabel and Nola and the Sienno brothers. Could there ever have been a real city as marvelous as his imagined Newport? Who would ever choose to bear the weight of this world? Who would ever want to?

Still, that was my weakness, not his. The only thing I could really fault him for was his failure to finish that last volume. But, under the circumstances, who could blame him for that?

“So these are his cards? May I?” Katherine glanced at me. I nodded, and she picked up the deck tentatively, turned it over, and gave a little gasp. “Oh! They’re blank—”

She looked embarrassed and I laughed. “Katherine! Now look what you’ve done!”

“But were they like this when you got them?” She began turning the cards over, one by one, setting them out on the table as though playing an elaborate game of solitaire. “Look at this! They’re every single one of them blank. I’ve never seen such a thing.”

“All used up,” said Blakie. She folded the scarf and pushed it to one side. “You should wash that, Ivy. Who knows where it’s been.”

“Well, where has it been? Did he go to church there? St. Bruno’s?”

“I don’t remember.” Blakie’s face became a mask: As she had aged, Circe became the Sphinx. She was staring at the cards lying face-up on the table. Only of course there were no faces, just a grid of grey rectangles, some missing one or two corners or even three corners. My mother’s expression was watchful but wary; she glanced at me, then quickly looked away again. I thought of the two cards in my back pocket but said nothing. “His wife died young, he raised the boy alone. He wanted to be a writer too, you know. Probably they just ended up in someone’s barn.”

“The cards, you mean,” Katherine said mildly. Blakie looked annoyed. “There. That’s all of them.”

“How many are there?” I asked. Katherine began to count, but Blakie said, “Seventy-three.”

“Seventy-three?” I shook my head. “What kind of deck uses seventy-three cards?”

“Some are missing, then. There’s only seventy.” Katherine looked at Blakie. “Seventy-three? How do you know?”

“I just remember, that’s all,” my mother said irritably. She pointed at me. “You should know. You read all his books.”

“Well.” I shrugged and stared at the bland pattern on the dining table, then reached for a card. The top right corner was missing; but how would you know it was the top? “They were only mentioned once. As far as I recall, anyway. Just in passing. Why do you think the corners are cut off?”

“To keep track of them.” Katherine began to collect them back into a pile. “That’s how card cheats work. Take off a little teeny bit, just enough so they can tell when they’re dealing ’em out. Which one’s an ace, which one’s a trey.”

“But these are all the same,” I said. “There’s no point to it.”

Then I noticed Blakie was staring at me. Suddenly I began to feel paranoid, like when I was a teenager out getting high, walking back into the Lonely House and praying she wouldn’t notice how stoned I was. I felt like I’d been lying, although what had I done, besides stick two cards in my back pocket?

But then maybe I was lying when I said there was no point; maybe I was wrong. Maybe there was a point. If two of the cards had a meaning, maybe they all did, even if I had no clue what their meaning was. Even if nobody had a clue: they still might mean something.

But what? It was like one of those horrible logic puzzles—you have one boat, three geese, one fox, an island: how do you get all the geese onto the island without the fox eating them? Seventy-three cards: seventy that Katherine had counted, the pair in my back pocket; where was the other one?

I fought an almost irresistible urge to reveal the two picture cards I’d hidden. Instead I looked away from my mother, and saw that now Katherine was staring at me, too. It was a moment before I realized she was waiting for the last card, the one that was still in my hand. “Oh. Thanks—”

I gave it to her, she put it on top of the stack, turned and gave the stack to Blakie, who gave it to me. I looked down at the cards and felt that cold pressure starting to build inside my head, helium leaking into my brain, something that was going to make me float away, talk funny.

“Well.” I wrapped the cards in the paisley scarf. It still smelled faintly of pipe tobacco, but now there was another scent too, my mother’s Chanel N°5. I stuck the cards in my bag, turned back to the dining table. “What should we do now?”

“I don’t have a clue,” said my mother, and gave me the smile of an octogenarian tiger. “Ivy? You decide.”

Julia’s father was Egyptian, a Coptic diplomat from Cairo. Her mother was an artist manqué from a wealthy Boston family that had a building at Harvard named for it. Her father, Narouz, had been married and divorced four times; Julia had a much younger half-brother and several half-sisters. The brother died in a terrorist attack in Egypt in the early nineties, a year or so before she left me. After her mother’s death from cancer the same year, Julia refused to have anything else to do with Narouz or his extended family. A few months later, she refused to have anything to do with me as well.

Julia claimed that Five Windows One Door could be read as a secret text of ancient Coptic magic; that there were meanings encoded within the characters’ ceaseless and often unrequited love affairs, that the titles of Nola Flynn’s silent movies corresponded to oracular texts in the collections of the Hermitage and the Institut Francais d’Archeologie Orientale in Cairo; that the scene in which Tarquin sodomizes his twin is in fact a description of a ritual to leave a man impotent and protect a woman from sexual advances. I asked her how such a book could possibly be conceived and written by a middle-aged inhabitant of Maine, in the middle of the twentieth century.

Julia just shrugged. “That’s why it works. Nobody knows. Look at Lorca.”

“Lorca?” I shook my head, trying not to laugh. “What, was he in Maine, too?”

“No. But he worked in the twentieth century.”

That was almost the last thing Julia Sa’adah ever said to me. This is another century. Nothing works anymore.

I caught an earlier ferry back than I’d planned. Katherine was tired; I had taken her and my mother to lunch at the small café they favored, but it was more crowded than usual, with a busload of blue-haired leaf-peepers from Newburyport who all ordered the specials so that the kitchen ran out and we had to eat BLTs.

“I just hate that.” Blakie glowered at the table next to us, four women the same age as she was, scrying the bill as though it were tea leaves. “Look at them, trying to figure out the tip! Fifteen percent, darling,” she said loudly. “Double the tax and add one.”

The women looked up. “Oh, thank you!” one said. “Isn’t it pretty here?”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Blakie. “I’m blind.”

The woman looked shocked. “Oh, hush, you,” scolded Katherine. “She is not,” but the women were already scurrying to leave.

I drove them back to their tidy modern retirement cottage, the made-for-TV version of the Lonely House.

“I’ll see you next week,” I said, after helping them inside. Katherine kissed me and made a beeline for the bathroom. My mother sat on the couch, waiting to catch her breath. She had congestive heart disease, payback for all those years of smoking Kents and eating heavily marbled steaks.

“You could stay here if you wanted,” she said, and for almost the first time I heard a plaintive note in her voice. “The couch folds out.”

I smiled and hugged her. “You know, I might do that. I think Sue wants a break from me. For a little while.”

For a moment I thought she was going to say something. Her mouth pursed and her grey eyes once again had that watchful look. But she only nodded, patting my hand with her strong cold one, then kissed my cheek, a quick furtive gesture like she might be caught.

“Be careful, Ivy Bee,” she said. “Goodbye.”

On the ferry I sat on deck. There were only a few other passengers. I had the stern to myself, a bench sheltered by the engine house from spray and chill wind. The afternoon had turned cool and grey. There was a bruised line of clouds upon the horizon, violet and slate blue; it made the islands look stark as a Rockwell Kent woodblock, the pointed firs like arrowheads.

It was a time of day, a time of year, I loved; one of the only times when things still seemed possible to me. Something about the slant of the late year’s light, the sharp line between shadows and stones, as though if you slid your hand in there you’d find something unexpected.

It made me want to work.

I had no customers lined up that week. Idly I ran my right hand along the top of my left leg, worn denim and beneath it muscle, skin. I hadn’t worked on myself for a while. That was one of the first things I learned when I was apprenticed to Julia: a novice tattoo artist practices on herself. If you’re right-handed, you do your left arm, your left leg; just like a good artist makes her own needles, steel flux and solder, jig and needles, the smell of hot tinning fluid on the tip of the solder gun. That way people can see your work. They know they can trust you.

The last thing I’d done was a scroll of oak leaves and eyes, fanning out above my left knee. My upper thigh was still taut white skin. I was thin and rangy like my mother had been, too fair to ever have tanned. I flexed my hand, imagining the weight of the machine, its pulse a throbbing heart. As I stared at the ferry’s wake, I could see the lights of Rockland Harbor glimmer, then disappear into the growing dusk. When I stuck my head out to peer towards the bow, I saw Aranbega rising from the Atlantic, black firs and granite cliffs buffed to pink by the failing sun.

I stood, keeping my balance as I gently pulled the two cards from my back pocket. I glanced at both, then put one into my wallet, behind my driver’s license; sat and examined the other, turning so that the wall of the engine house kept it safe from spray. It was the card that showed only the figure of a kneeling man. A deceptively simple form, a few fluid lines indicating torso, shoulders, offertory stance—that crescent of bare neck, his hands half-hidden by his long hair.

Why did I know it was a man? I’m not sure. The breadth of his shoulders, maybe; maybe some underlying sense that any woman in such a position would be inviting disaster. This figure seemed neither resigned nor abdicating responsibility. He seemed to be waiting.

It was amazing, how the interplay of black and white and a few drops of gold leaf could conjure up an entire world. Like Pamela Colman Smith’s designs for the Waite tarot—the High Priestess, the King of Wands—or a figure that Julia had shown me once. It was from a facsimile edition of a portfolio of Coptic texts on papyrus, now in the British Library. There were all kinds of spells—

For I am having a clash with a headless dog, seize him when he comes. Grasp this pebble with both your hands, flee eastward to your right, while you journey on up.

A stinging ant: In this way, while it is still fresh, burn it, grind it with vinegar, put it with incense. Put it on eyes that have discharge. They will get better.

The figure was part of a spell to obtain a good singing voice. Julia translated the text for me as she had the others:

Yea, yea, for I adjure you in the name of the seven letters that are tattooed on the chest of the father, namely AAAAAAAA, EEEEEEE, EEEEEEE, IIIIIII, OOOOOOO, UUUUUUU, OOOOOOO. Obey my mouth, before it passes and another one comes in its place! Offering: wild frankincense; wild mastic; cassia.

The Coptic figure that accompanied the text had a name: DAVITHEA RACHOCHI ADONIEL. It looked nothing like the figure on the card in front of me; it was like something you’d see scratched on the wall of a cave.

Yet it had a name. And I would never know the name of this card.

But I would use it, I decided. The least trumps. Beneath me the ferry’s engine shifted down, its dull steady groan deepening as we drew near Aranbega’s shore. I slid the card into the Lorca book I’d brought, stuffed it into my bag, and waited to dock.

I’d left my old GMC pickup where I always did, parked behind the Island General Store. I went inside and bought a sourdough baguette and a bottle of Toquai. I’d gotten a taste for the wine from Julia; now the store ordered it especially for me, though some of the well-heeled summer people bought it as well.

“Working tonight?” said Mary, the store’s owner.

“Yup.”

Outside it was full dusk. I drove across the island on the rugged gravel road that bisected it into north and south, village and wild places. To get to Green Pond you drive off the main road, following a rutted lane that soon devolves into what resembles a washed-out streambed. Soon this rudimentary road ends, at the entrance to a large grove of hundred-and-fifty-year-old pines. I parked here and walked the rest of the way, a quarter-mile beneath high branches that stir restlessly, making a sound like the sea even on windless days. The pines give way to birches, ferns growing knee-high in a spinney of trees like bones. Another hundred feet and you reach the edge of Green Pond, before you the Lonely House rising on its grey islet, a dream of safety. Usually this was when the last vestiges of fear would leave me, blown away by the cool wind off the lake and the sight of my childhood home, my wooden dory pulled up onto the shore a few feet from where I stood.

But tonight the unease remained. Or no, not unease exactly; more a sense of apprehension that, very slowly, resolved into a kind of anticipation. But anticipation of what? I stared at the Lonely House with its clumps of asters and yellow coneflowers, the ragged garden I deliberately didn’t weed or train. Because I wanted the illusion of wilderness, I wanted to pretend I’d left something to chance. And suddenly I wanted to see something else.

If you walk to the other side of the small lake—I hardly ever do—you find that you’re on the downward slope of a long boulder-strewn rise, a glacial moraine that eventually plummets into the Atlantic Ocean. Scattered white pines and birches grow here, and ancient white oaks, some of the very few white oaks left in the entire state, in fact, the rest having been harvested well over a century before, as masts for the great schooners. The lesser trees—red oaks, mostly, a few sugar maples—have been cut, for the Lonely House’s firewood and repairs, so that if you stand in the right place you can actually look down the entire southeastern end of the island and see the ocean: scumbled grey cliffs and beyond that nothing, an unbroken darkness that might be fog, or sea, or the end of the world.

The right place to see this is from an outcropping of granite that my mother named The Ledges. On a foggy day, if you stand there and look at the Lonely House, you have an illusion of gazing from one sea-island to another. If you turn, you see only darkness. The seas are too rough for recreational sailors; far from the major shipping lanes; too risky for commercial fishermen. The entire Grand Banks fishery has been depleted, so that you can stare out for hours or maybe even days and never see a single light, nothing but stars and maybe the blinking red eye of a distant plane flying the Great Circle Route to Gander or London.

It was a vista that terrified me, though I would dutifully point it out to first-time visitors, showing them where they could sit on The Ledges.

“On a clear day you can see Ireland,” Katherine used to say, the joke being that on a Maine island you almost never had a clear day.

This had not been a clear day, of course, and, with evening, high grey clouds had come from the west. Only the easternmost horizon held a pale shimmer of blue-violet, lustrous as the inner curve of a mussel shell. Behind me the wind moved through the old pines, and I could hear the high rustling of the birch leaves. Not so far off a fox barked. The sound made my neck prickle.

But I’d left a single light on inside the Lonely House, and so I focused on that, walking slowly around the perimeter of Green Pond with the little beacon always at the edge of my vision, until I reached the far side, the eastern side. Ferns crackled underfoot; I smelled the sweet odor of dying bracken, and bladderwrack from the cliffs far below. The air had the bite of rain to it, and that smell you get sometimes, when a low pressure system carries the reek of places much farther south—a soupy thick smell, like rotting vegetation, mangroves or palmettos. I breathed it in and thought of Julia, and realized that for the first time in years, an hour had gone by and I had not thought about her at all. From the trees on the other side of Green Pond the fox barked again, even closer this time.

For one last moment I stood, gazing at The Ledges. Then I turned and walked back to where my dory waited, clambered in and rowed myself home.

The tattoo took me till dawn to finish. Once inside the Lonely House I opened the bottle of Toquai, poured myself a glassful and drank it. Then I went to retrieve the card, stuck inside that decrepit New Directions paperback in my bag. The book was the only thing of Julia’s I had retained. She’d made a point of going through every single box of clothes and books I’d packed, through every sagging carton of dishware, and removed anything that had been hers. Anything we’d purchased together, anything that it had been her idea to buy. So that by the time she was done, it wasn’t just like I’d never happened. It was like she’d never happened, either.

Except for this book. I found it a few months after the breakup. It had gotten stuck under the driver’s seat of my old Volvo, wedged between a broken spring and the floor. In all the years I’d been with Julia, I’d never read it, or seen her reading it. But just a few weeks earlier I started flipping through the pages, casually, more to get the poet’s smell than to actually understand him. Now I opened the book to the page where the card was stuck, and noticed several lines that had been highlighted with yellow marker.

The duende, then, is a power and not a construct, is a struggle and not a concept. That is to say, it is not a question of aptitude, but of a true and viable style—of blood, in other words; of creation made act.

A struggle, not a concept. I smiled, and dropped the book on the couch; took the card and went into my studio to work.

I spent over an hour just getting a feel for the design, trying to copy it freehand onto paper before giving up. I’m a good draftsman, but one thing I’ve learned over the years is that the simpler a good drawing appears to be, the more difficult it is to copy. Try copying one of Picasso’s late minotaur drawings and you’ll see what I mean. Whoever did the design on this particular card probably wasn’t Picasso; but the image still defeated me. There was a mystery to it, a sense of waiting that was charged with power; like that D. H. Lawrence poem, those who have not exploded. I finally traced it on my light board, the final stencil image exactly the same size as that on the card, outlined in black hectograph ink.

Then I prepped myself. My studio is as sterile as I can make it. There’s no carpet on the bare wood floor, which I scrub every day. Beneath a blue plastic cover, the worktable is white Formica, so blood or dirt shows, or spilled ink. I don’t bother with an apron or gloves when I’m doing myself, and between the lack of protection and a couple of glasses of Toquai, I always get a slightly illicit-feeling buzz. I feel like I’m pulling something over, even though there’s never anyone around but myself. I swabbed the top of my thigh with seventy percent alcohol, used a new, disposable razor to shave it, swabbed it again, dried it with sterile gauze soaked in more alcohol. Then I coated the shaved skin with Betadine, tossing the used gauze into a small metal biohazard bin.

I’d already set up my inks in their plastic presterilized caps—black; yellow and red to get the effect of gold leaf; white. I got ready to apply the stencil, rubbing a little bit of stick deodorant onto my skin, so that the ink would adhere, then pressing the square of stenciled paper and rubbing it for thirty seconds. Then I pulled the paper off. Sometimes I have to do this more than once, if the customer’s skin is rough, or the ink too thick. This time, though, the design transferred perfectly.

I sat for a while, admiring it. From my angle, the figure was upside down—I’d thought about that, whether I should just say the hell with it and do it so I’d be the only one who’d ever see it properly. But I decided to go with convention, so that now I’d be drawing a reverse of what everyone else would see. I’m a bleeder, so I had a good supply of Vaseline and paper towels at hand. I went into the living room and knocked back one last glass of Toquai, returned to the studio, switched on my machine, and went at it.

I did the outlines first. There’s always this frisson when the needles first touch my own skin, sterilized metal skimming along the surface so that it burns, as though I’m running a flame-tipped spike along my flesh. Before Julia did my first tattoo I’d always imagined the process would be like pricking myself with a needle, a series of fine precise jabs of pain.

It’s not like that at all. It’s more like carving your own skin with the slanted nib of a razor-sharp calligraphy pen, or writing on flesh with a soldering iron. The pain is excruciating, but contained: I look down at the vibrating tattoo gun, its tip like a wasp’s sting, and see beneath the needle a flowing line of black ink, red weeping from the black: my own blood. My left hand holds the skin taut—this also hurts like hell—while my right fingers manipulate the machine and the wad of paper towel that soaks up blood as the needle moves on, its tip moving in tiny circles, being careful not to press too hard, so it won’t scab. I trace a man’s shoulders, a crescent that becomes a neck, a skull’s crown above a single thick line that signals a cascade of hair. Then down and up to outline his knees, his arms.

When the pain becomes too much I stop for a bit, breathing deeply. Then I smooth Vaseline over the image on my thigh, take a bit of gauze and clean the needle tip of blood and ink. After twenty minutes or so of being scarred with a vibrating needle your endorphins kick in, but they don’t block the pain; they merely blur it, so that it diffuses over your entire body, not just a few square inches of stretched skin burning like a fresh brand. It’s perversely like the aftermath of a great massage, or great sex: exhausting, unbearable, exhilarating. I finished the outline and took a break, turning on the radio to see if WERU had gone off the air. Two or three nights a week they sign off at midnight, but Saturdays sometimes the DJ stays on.

This was my lucky night. I turned the music up and settled back into my chair. My entire leg felt sore, but the outline looked good. I changed the needle tip and began to do the shading, the process that would give the figure depth and color. The tip of the needle tube is flush against my skin, but only for an instant; then I flick it up and away. This way the ink is dispersed beneath the epidermis, deepest black feathering up to create grey.

It takes days and days of practice before you get this technique down, but I had it. When I was done edging the figure’s hair, I cleaned and changed the needle tube again, mixing gamboge yellow and crimson until I got just the hue I wanted, a brilliant tiger lily orange. I sprayed the tattoo with disinfectant, gave it another swipe of Vaseline, then went to work with the orange. I did some shading around the man’s figure, until it looked even better than the original, with a numinous glow that made it stand out from the other designs around it.

It was almost two more hours before I was done. At the very last I put in a bit of white, a few lines here and there, ambient color, really, the eye didn’t register it as white, but it charged the image with a strange, almost eerie brilliance. White ink pigment is paler than human skin; it changes color the way skin does, darkening when exposed to the sun until it’s almost indistinguishable from ordinary flesh tone.

But I don’t spend a lot of time outside: inks don’t fade much on my skin. When I finally put down the machine, my hand and entire right arm ached. Outside, rain spattered the pond. The wind rose, and moments later I heard droplets lashing the side of the house. A barred owl called its four querulous notes. From my radio came a low steady hum of static. I hadn’t even noticed when the station went off the air. Soon it would be five a.m., and the morning DJ would be in. I cleaned my machine and work area quickly, automatically; washed my tattoo, dried it and covered the raw skin with antibacterial ointment, and finally taped on a Telfa bandage. In a few hours, after I woke, I’d shower and let the warm water soften the bandage until it slid off. Now I went into the kitchen, stumbling with fatigue and the post-orgasmic glow I get from working on myself.

I’d remembered to leave out a small porterhouse steak to defrost. I heated a cast-iron skillet, tossed the steak in and seared it, two minutes on one side, one on the other. I ate it standing over the sink, tearing off meat still cool and bloody in the center. There’s some good things about living alone. I knocked back a quart of skim milk, took a couple of ibuprofen and a high-iron formula vitamin, went to bed, and passed out.

The central conceit of Five Windows One Door is that the same story is told and retold, with constantly shifting points of view, abrupt changes of narrator, of setting, of a character’s moral or political beliefs. Even the city itself changed, so that the bistro frequented by Nola’s elderly lover Hans Liep was sometimes at the end of Tufnell Street; other times it could be glimpsed in a cul-de-sac near the Boulevard El-Baz. There were madcap scenes in which Shakespearean plot reversals were enacted—the violent reconciliation between Mabel and her father; Nola Flynn’s decision to enter a Carmelite convent after her discovery of the blind child Kelson; Roberto Metropole’s return from the dead; even the reformation of the incomparably wicked Elwell, who, according to the notes discovered after Fox’s death, was to have married Mabel and fathered her six children, the eldest of whom grew up to become Amantine, Popess of Tuckahoe and the first saint to be canonized in the Reformed Catholic Church.

Volume five, Ardor ex Cathedra, was unfinished at the time of Fox’s death. He had completed the first two chapters, and in his study was a box full of hand-drawn genealogical charts and plot outlines, character notes, a map of the city, even names for new characters—Billy Tyler, Gordon MacKenzie-Hart, Paulette Houdek, Ruben Kirstein. Fox’s editor at Griffin/Sage compiled these remnants into an unsatisfactory final volume that was published a year after Fox died. I bought a copy, but it was a sad relic, like the blackened lump of glass that is all that remains of a stained-glass window destroyed by fire. Still, I kept it with its brethren on a bookshelf in my bedroom, the five volumes in their uniform dust jackets, scarlet letters on a brilliant indigo field with the author’s name beneath in gold.

I dreamed I heard the fox barking, or maybe it really was the fox barking. I turned, groaning as my leg brushed against the bedsheet. The bandage had fallen off while I slept. I groped under the covers till I found it, a clump of sticky brown gauze, and I tossed it on the floor, sat up, and rubbed my eyes. It was morning. My bedroom window was blistered with silvery light, the glass flecked with rain. I looked down at my thigh. The tattoo had scabbed over, but not much. The figure of the kneeling man was stark and precise, its orange nimbus glazed with clear fluid. I got up and limped into the bathroom, sat on the edge of the tub and laved my thigh tenderly, warm water washing away dead skin and dried blood. I patted it dry and applied another thin layer of antibiotic ointment, and headed for the kitchen to make coffee.

The noise came again—not barking at all but something tapping against a window. It took me a minute to figure out what it was: the basket the Lonely House used as a message system. Blakie had devised it forty years ago, a pulley and old-fashioned clothesline, strung between the Lonely House and a birch tree on the far shore. A small wicker basket hung from the line, with a plastic zip lock bag inside it, and inside the bag magic markers and a notepad. Someone could write a note on shore then send the basket over; it would bump against the front window, alerting us to a visitor. A bit more elegant than standing onshore and shouting, it also gave the Lonely House’s inhabitants the chance to hide, if we weren’t expecting anyone.

I couldn’t remember the last time someone had used it. I had a cell phone now, and customers made appointments months in advance. I’d almost forgotten the clothesline was there.

I went to the front window and peered out. Fog had settled in during the night; on the northern side of the island the foghorn moaned. No one would be leaving Aranbega today. I could barely discern the other shore, thick grey mist striated with white birch trees. I couldn’t see anyone.

But sure enough, there was the basket dangling between the window and the front door. I opened the window and stuck my hand out, brushing aside a mass of cobwebs strung with dead crane flies and mosquitoes to get at the basket. Inside was the zip lock bag and the notebook, the latter pleached with dark green threads. I grimaced as I pulled it out, the pages damp and molded into a block of viridian pulp.

But stuck to the back of the notebook was a folded square of yellow legal paper. I unfolded it and read the message written in strong square letters.

Ivy—

Christopher Sa’adah here, I’m staying in Aran. Harbor, stopped by to say hi. You there? Call me @ 462-1117. Hope you’re okay.

C

I stared at the note for a full minute. Thinking, this is a mistake, this is a sick joke, someone trying to torment me about Julia. Christopher was dead. Nausea washed over me, that icy chill like a shroud, my skin clammy and the breath freezing in my lungs.

“Ivy? You there?”

I rested my hand atop the open window and inhaled deeply. “Christopher.” I shook my head, gave a gasping laugh. “Jesus—”

I leaned out the open window. “Christopher?” I shouted. “Is that really you?”

“It’s really me,” a booming voice yelled back.

“Hold on! I’ll get the dory and come right over—”

I ran into the bedroom and pulled on a pair of loose cutoffs and faded T-shirt, then hurried outside. The dory was where I’d left it, pulled up on shore just beyond the fringe of cattails and bayberries. I pushed it into the lake, a skein of dragonflies rising from the dark water to disappear in the mist. There was water in the boat, dead leaves that nudged at my bare feet; I grabbed the oars and rowed, twenty strong strokes that brought me to the other shore.

“Ivy?”

That was when I saw him, a tall figure like a shadow breaking from the fog thick beneath the birches. He was so big that I had to blink to make sure that this, too, wasn’t some trick of the mist: a black-haired, bearded man, strong enough to yank one of the birch saplings up by the roots if he’d wanted to. He wore dark-brown corduroys, a flannel shirt and brown Carhartt jacket, heavy brown work boots. His hair was long and pushed back behind his ears; his hands were shoved in his jacket pockets. He was a bit stooped, his shoulders raised in a way that made him look surprised, or unsure of himself. It made him look young, younger than he really was; it made him look like Christopher, Julia’s thirteen-year-old brother.

He wasn’t thirteen any more. I did the math quickly, bringing the boat round and grabbing the wet line to toss on shore. Christopher was Narouz Sa’adah’s son by his third wife. He was eighteen years younger than Julia; that would make him eleven years younger than me, which would make him—

“Little Christopher!” I looked up at him from the dory, grinning. “How the hell old are you?”

He shrugged, leaned down to grab the end of the line and loop it around the granite post at the shoreline. He took out a cigarette and lit it, inhaled rapidly—nervously, I see now—and let his arm dangle so that the smoke coiled up around his wrist.

“I’m thirty-four.” He had an almost comically basso voice that echoed across Green Pond like the foghorn. An instant later I heard a loon give its warning cry. Christopher dropped his cigarette and stubbed it out, cocking his head towards the dory. “Is that the same boat you used to have?”

“Sure is.” I hopped into the water, wincing at the cold, then waded to shore. “Jesus. Little Christopher. I can’t believe it’s you. You—Christ! I—well, I thought you were dead.”

“I got better.” He stared down at me and for the first time smiled, his teeth still a little crooked and nicotine-stained, not Julia’s teeth at all: his face completely guileless, close-trimmed black beard, long hair falling across tawny eyes. “After the bombing? I was in hospital for a long time, outside Cairo. It wasn’t just you—everyone thought I was dead. My father finally tracked me down and brought me back to Washington. I think you and Julia had broken up by then.”

I just stared at him. I felt dizzy: even though it was a small piece of the world, of history, it meant everything was different. Everything was changed. I blinked and looked away from him, saw the birch leaves spinning in the breeze, pale gold and green, goldenrod past its prime, tall stalks of valerian with their flower-heads blown to brown vein. I looked back at Christopher: everything was the same.

He said, “I can’t believe it’s you either, Ivy.”

I threw my arms around him. He hugged me awkwardly—he was so much bigger than I was!—and started laughing in delight. “Ivy! I walked all the way over here! From the village, I’m staying at the Inn. That lady at the General Store?”

“Mary?”

“Right, Mary—she remembered me, she said you still lived here—”

“Why didn’t you call?”

He looked startled. “You have a phone?”

“Of course I have a phone! Actually, it’s a cell phone, and I only got it a year ago, after they put up a tower over on Blue Hill.” I drew away from him, balancing on my heels to make myself taller. “Jeez, you’re all growed up, Christopher. I’m trying to think, when was the last time I saw you—”

“Twelve years ago. I was just starting grad school in Cairo. I came to see you and Julia in Rockland before I left. Remember?”

I tried, but couldn’t; not really. I’d never known him well. He’d been a big, ungainly teenager, extremely quiet and sitting at the edges of the room, where he always seemed to be listening carefully to everything his older sister or her friends said. He’d grown up in D.C. and Cairo, but he spent his summers in the States. I first met him when he was twelve or thirteen, a gangly kid into Dungeons & Dragons and Star Wars, who’d recently read Tolkien and had just started on Terry Brooks.

“Jesus, don’t read that,” I’d said, snatching away The Sword of Shannara and shoving my own copy of Love Plucking Rowan Berries into his big hands. For a moment he looked hurt. Then, “Thanks,” he said, and gave me that sweet slow smile. He spent the rest of that summer in our apartment overlooking Rockland Harbor, hunched into a wicker chair on the decrepit back deck as he worked his way through Sybylla and the Summer Sky, Mellors’ Plasma Bistro, Love Regained in Idleness, and finally the tattered remnants of Ardor ex Cathedra.

“Of course I remember,” I said. I swiped at a mosquito, looked up and grinned. “Gosh. You were still a kid then. How’re you doing? What are you doing? Are you married?”

“Divorced.” He raised his arms, yawning, and stretched. His silhouette blotted out the grey sky, the blurred shapes of trees and boulders. “No kids, though. I’m at the Center for Remote Sensing at B.U., coordinating a project near the Chephren Quarries, in the Western Desert. Upper Egypt.”

He dropped his arms and looked down at me again. “So Ivy—would you—how’d you feel about company? I could use a cup of coffee. We can walk back to town if you want. Have a late lunch. Or early dinner.”

“Christ, no.” I glanced at my raw tattoo. “I should clean that again, before I do anything. And I haven’t even had breakfast yet.”

“Really? What were you doing? I mean, are you with a customer or something?”

I shook my head. “I was up all night, doing this—” I splayed my fingers above the figure on my thigh. “What time is it, anyway?”

He looked at his watch. “Almost four.”

“Almost four?” I grabbed his hand and twisted it to see his wristwatch. “I don’t believe it! How could I, I—” I shivered. “I slept through the whole day.”

Christopher stared at me curiously. I was still holding his wrist, and he turned his hand, gently, his fingers brushing mine. “You okay, Ivy? Did I get you in the middle of something? I can come back—”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head and withdrew my hand from his; but slowly, so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings. “I mean, no, I’m fine, just—”

I looked at my thigh. A thread of blood ran down my leg, and as I stared a damselfly landed beneath the tattoo, its thorax a metallic blue needle, wings invisible against my skin. “I was up all night, doing that—”

I pointed at the kneeling man; only from my angle he wasn’t kneeling but hanging suspended above my knee, like a bat. “I—I don’t think I finished until five o’clock this morning. I had no idea it was so late—”

I could hear the panic in my own voice. I took a deep breath, trying to keep my tone even; but Christopher just put one hand lightly on my shoulder and said, “Hey, it’s okay. I really can come back. I just wanted to say hi.”

“No. Wait.” I counted ten heartbeats, twelve. “I’m okay. I’ll be okay. Just, can you row us back?”

“Sure.” He stooped to grab a leather knapsack leaning against a tree. “Let’s go.”

With Christopher in it, the dory sat a good six inches lower in the water, and it took a little longer with him rowing. Halfway across the brief stretch of pond I finally asked him.

“How is Julia?”

My voice was shaky, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I don’t know. One of my sisters talked to her about five years ago. She was in Toronto, I think. No one’s heard from her.” He strained at the oars, then glanced at me measuringly. “I never really knew her, you know. She was so much older. I always thought she was kind of a bitch, to tell you the truth. The way she treated you—it made me uncomfortable.”

I was silent. My leg ached from the tattoo, searing pain like a bad sunburn. I focused on that, and after a few minutes I could bear to talk.

“Sorry,” I said. The dory ground against the shore of the islet. The panic was receding; I could breathe again. “I get these sometimes. Panic attacks. Usually it’s not at home, though, only when I go off island.”

“That’s no fun.” Christopher gave me an odd look. Then he clambered out and helped me pull the dory into the reeds. He followed me through the overgrown stands of phlox and aster, up the steps and into the Lonely House. The floor shuddered at his footsteps. I closed the door, looked up at him, and laughed.

“Boy, you sure fill this place up—watch your head, no, wait—”

Too late. As he turned he cracked into a beam. He clutched his head, grimacing. “Shit—I forgot how small this place is—”

I led him to the couch. “Here, sit—I’ll get some ice.”

I hurried into the kitchen and pulled a tray from the freezer. I was still feeling a little wonky. For about twenty-four hours after you get tattooed, it’s like you’re coming down with the flu. Your body’s been pretty badly treated; your entire immune system fires up, trying to heal itself. I should have just crawled back into bed. Instead I called, “You want something to drink?”

I walked back in with a bowl of ice and a linen towel. Christopher was on the sofa, yanking something from his knapsack.

“I brought this.” He held up a bottle of tequila. “And these—”

He reached into the knapsack again and pulled out three limes. They looked like oversized marbles in his huge hand. “I remember you liked tequila.”

I smiled vaguely. “Did I?” It had been Julia who liked tequila, going through a quart every few days in the summer months. I sat beside him on the couch, wrapped the ice in the towel, and held it out. He lowered his head, childlike; and after a moment I very gently touched it. His hair was thick and coarse, darker than his sister’s; when I extended my fingers I felt his scalp, warm as though he’d been sitting in the sun all day. “You’re hot,” I said softly, and felt myself flush. “I mean your head—your skin feels hot. Like heatstroke.”

He kept his head lowered, saying nothing. His long hair grazed the top of my thigh. He reached to take my hand, and his was so much bigger, it was as though my own hand was swallowed in a heated glove, his palm calloused, fingertips smooth and hard, soft hairs on the back of his wrist. I said nothing. I could smell him, an acrid smell, not unpleasant but strange; he smelled of limes and sweat, and raw earth, stones washed by the sea. My mouth was dry, and as I moved to place the ice-filled towel on his brow I felt his hand slip from mine, to rest upon the couch between us.

“There.” I could feel my heart racing, the frantic thought It’s just a symptom, there’s nothing to be scared of, it’s just a symptom, it’s just—

“Christopher,” I said thickly. “Just—sit. For a minute.”

We sat. My entire body felt hot, and damp; I was sweating now myself, not cold anymore, my heartbeat slow and even. From outside came the melancholy sound of the foghorn, the ripple of rain across the lake. The room around us was full of that strange, translucent green light you get here sometimes: being on an island suspended in fog, droplets of mist and sea and rain mingling to form a shimmering, glaucous veil. Outside the window the world seemed to tremble and break apart into countless motes of silver, steel gray, emerald, then cohere again into a strangely solid-looking mass. As though someone had tossed a stone into a viscous pool, or probed a limb with a needle: that sense of skin breaking, parting then closing once more around the wound, the world, untold unseen things flickering and diving, ganglia, axons, otters, loons. A bomb goes off, and it takes twelve years to hear its explosion. I lifted my head and saw Christopher watching me. His mouth was parted, his amber eyes sad, almost anguished.

“Ivy,” he said. When his mouth touched mine I flinched, not in fear but in shock at how much bigger it was than my own, than Julia’s, any woman’s. I had not touched a man since I was in high school; and that was a boy, boys. I had never kissed a man. His face was rough; his mouth tasted bitter, of nicotine and salt. And blood, too—he’d bitten his lip from nervousness, my tongue found the broken seam just beneath the hollow of his upper lip, the hollow hidden beneath soft hair, not rough as I had thought it would be, and smelling of some floral shampoo.

It was like nothing I had imagined—and I had imagined it, of course. I’d imagined everything, before I fell in love with Julia Sa’adah. I’d fallen in love with her—her soul, her duende, she would have called it—but in a way it had almost nothing to do with her being another woman. I’d seen movies, porn films even, lots of them, watching with Julia and some of her wilder friends, the ones who were bisexual, or beyond bisexual, whatever that might be; read magazines, novels, pornography, glanced at sites online; masturbated to dim images of what it was like, what I thought it might be like. Even watched once as a couple we knew went at it in our big untidy bed, slightly revved-up antics for our benefit, I suspect, a lot of whimpering and operatic sound effects.

This was nothing like that. This was slow, almost fumbling; even formal. He seemed afraid, or maybe it was just that he couldn’t believe it, that it wasn’t real to him, yet.

“I was always in love with you.” He was lying beside me on the couch; not a lot of room left for me, but his broad arm kept me from rolling off. Our shirts were stuffed behind our heads for pillows, I still wore my cut-offs, and he still had his corduroy jeans on. We hadn’t gotten further than this. On the floor beside us was the half-empty bottle of tequila, Christopher’s pocketknife, and the limes, cloven in two so that they looked like enormous green eyes. He was tracing the designs on my body: the full sleeve on my left arm, Chinese water-dragons, stylized waves, all in shades of turquoise and indigo and green. Green is the hardest ink to work with—you mix it with white, the white blends into your skin tone, you don’t realize the green pigment is there and you overdo, going over and over until you scar. I’d spent a lot of time with green when I started out; yellow too, another difficult pigment.

“You are so beautiful. All this—” His finger touched coils of vines, ivy that thrust from the crook of my elbow and extended up to my shoulder. His own body was unblemished, as far as I could see. Skin darker than Julia’s, shading more to olive than bronze; an almost hairless chest, dappled line of dark hair beneath his navel. He tapped the inside of my elbow, tender soil overgrown with leaves. “That must have hurt.”

I shrugged. “I guess. You forget. All you remember afterwards is how intense it was. And then you have these—”

I ran my hand down my arm, turned to sit up. “This is what I did last night.” I flexed my leg, pulled up the edge of my shorts to better expose the new tattoo. “See?”

He sat up, ran a hand through his black hair, then leaned forward to examine it. His hair spilled down from his forehead; he had one hand on my upper thigh, the other on his own knee. His broad back was to me, olive skin, a paler crescent just above his shoulders where his neck was bent: a scar. There were others, jagged smooth lines, some deep enough to hide a fingertip. Shrapnel, or glass thrown off by the explosion. His long hair grazed my leg, hanging down like a dark waterfall.

I swallowed, my gaze flicking from his back to what I could glimpse of my tattoo, a small square of flesh framed between his arms, his hair, the ragged blue line of my cut-offs. A tall man, leaning forward so that his hair fell to cover his face. A waterfall. A curtain. Christopher lifted his head to stare at me.

A veil, torn away.

“Shit,” I whispered. “Shit, shit—”

I pushed away from him and scrambled to my feet. “What? What is it?” He looked around as though expecting to see someone else in the room with us. “Ivy—”

He tried to grasp me but I pulled away, grabbing my T-shirt from the couch and pulling it on. “Ivy! What happened?” His voice rose, desperate; I shook my head, then pointed at the tattoo.

“This—” He looked at the tattoo, then at me, not comprehending. “That image? I just found it yesterday. On a card. This sort of tarot card, this deck. I got it at a rummage sale—”

I turned and ran into my studio. Christopher followed.

“Here!” I darted to my work table and yanked off the protective blue covering. The table was empty. “It was here—”

I whirled, went to my light table. Acetates and sheets of rag paper were still strewn across it, my pencils and inks were where I’d left them. A dozen pages with failed versions of the card were scattered across the desk, and on the floor. I grabbed them, holding up each sheet and shaking it as though it were an envelope, as though something might fall out. I picked up the pages from the floor, emptied the stainless steel wastebasket and sifted through torn papers and empty ink capsules. Nothing.

The card was gone.

“Ivy?”

I ignored him and ran back into the living room. “Here!” I yanked the paisley-wrapped deck from my purse. “It was like this, it was one of these—”

I tore the scarf open. The deck was still there. I let the scarf fall and fanned the cards out, face-down, a rainbow arc of labyrinthine wheels; then twisted my hand to show the other side.

“They’re blank,” said Christopher.

I nodded. “That’s right. They’re all blank. Only there was one—last night—”

I pointed at the tattoo. “That design. There was one card with that design. I copied it. It was with me in the studio, I had it on my drafting table. I ended up tracing it for the stencil.”

“And now you can’t find it.”

I shook my head. “No. It’s gone.” I let my breath out in a long low whoosh. I felt sick at my stomach, but it was more like seasickness than panic, a nausea I could override if I wanted to. “It’s—I won’t find it. It’s just gone.”

My eyes teared. Christopher stood beside me, his face dark with concern. After a minute he said, “May I?”

He held out his hand, and I nodded and gave him the cards. He riffled through them, frowning. “Are they all like this?”

“All except two. There’s another one—” I gestured at my purse. “I put it aside. I got them at the rummage sale at St. Bruno’s yesterday. They were—”

I stopped. Christopher was still examining the cards, holding them up to the light as though that might reveal some hidden pattern. I said, “You read Walter Burden Fox, right?”

He glanced up at me. “Sure. Five Windows One Door? You gave it to me, remember? That first summer I stayed with you down at that place you had by the water. I loved those books.” His tone softened; he smiled, a sweet, sad half-smile, and held the cards up as though to show a winning hand. “That really changed my life, you know. After I read them; when I met you. That’s when I decided to become an archaeologist. Because they were—well, I don’t know how to explain it—”

He tapped the cards thoughtfully against his chin. “I loved those books so much. I couldn’t believe it, when I got to the end? That he never finished them. I used to think, if I had only one wish, it would be that somehow he finished that last book. Like maybe if his son hadn’t died, or something. Those books just amazed me!”

He shook his head, still marveling. “They made me think how the world might be different than what it is; what we think it is. That there might be things we still don’t know, even though we think we’ve discovered everything. Like the work I do? We scan all these satellite images of the desert, and we can see where ancient sites were, under the sand; under the hills. Places so changed by wind erosion you would never think anything else was ever there—but there were temples and villages, entire cities! Empires! Like in the third book, when you read it and find out there’s this whole other history to everything that happened in the first two. The entire world is changed.”

The entire world is changed. I stared at him, then nodded. “Christopher—these cards are from his books. The last one. ‘The least trumps.’ When I got them, there was a little piece of paper—”

My gaze dropped to the floor. The scrap was there, by Christopher’s bare foot. I picked up the scrap and handed it to him. “‘The least trumps.’ It’s in the very first chapter of the last book, the one he never finished. Mabel’s in bed with Tarquin and he takes out this deck of cards. He holds them in front of her, and when she breathes on them it somehow makes them come alive. There’s an implication that everything that happened before has to maybe do with the cards. But he died before he ever got to that part.”

Christopher stared at the fragment of paper. “I don’t remember,” he said at last. He looked at me. “You said there’s one other card. Can I see it?”

I hesitated, then went to get my bag. “It’s in here.”

I took out my wallet. Everything around me froze; my hand was so numb I couldn’t feel it when I slid my finger behind my license. I couldn’t feel it, it wasn’t there at all—

But it was. The wallet fell to the floor. I stood and held the card in both hands. The last one: the least trump. The room around me was grey, the air motionless. In my hands, a lozenge of spectral color glimmered and seemed to move. There were airships and flaming birds, two old women dancing on a beach, an exploding star above a high-rise building. The tiny figure of a man wasn’t being carried in a litter, I saw now, but lying in a bed borne by red-clad women. Above them all a lash-fringed eye stared down.

I blinked and rubbed my eye; then gave the card to Christopher. When I spoke my voice was thick. “I—I forgot it was so beautiful. That’s it. The last one.”

He walked over to the window, leaned against the wall and angled the card to catch the light. “Wow. This is amazing. Was the other one like it? All this detail—”

“No. It was much simpler. But it was still beautiful. It makes you realize how hard it is, drawing something that simple.”

I looked down at my leg and smiled wryly. “But you know, I think I got it right.”

For some minutes he remained by the window, silent. Suddenly he looked up. “Could you do this, Ivy? On me?”

I stared at him. “You mean a tattoo?” He nodded, but I shook my head. “No. It’s far too intricate. It would take days, something like that. Days, just to make a decent stencil. The tattoo would probably take a week, if you were going to do it right.”

“This, then.” He strode over to me, pointing to the sun that was an eye. “Just that part, there—could you do just that? Like maybe on my arm?”

He flexed his arm, a dark sheen where the bicep rose, like a wave. “Right there—”

I ran my hand across the skin appraisingly. There was a scar, a small one; I could work around it, make it part of the design. “You should think about it. But yeah, I could do it.”

“I have thought about it. I want you to do it. Now.”

“Now?” I looked at the window. It was getting late; light was leaking from the sky, everything was fading to lavender-grey, twilight. The fog was coming in again, pennons of mist trailing above Green Pond. I could no longer see the far shore. “It’s kind of late . . .”

“Please.” He stood above me; I could feel the heat radiating from him, see the card glinting in his hand like a shard of glass. “Ivy—”

His deep voice dropped, a whisper I felt more than heard. “I’m not my sister. I’m not Julia. Please.”

He touched the outer corner of my eye, where it was still damp. “Your eyes are so blue,” he said. “I forgot how blue they are.”

We went into the studio. I set the card on the light table, with the deck beside it, used a loupe to get a better look at the image he wanted. It would not be so hard to do, really, just that one thing. I sketched it a few times on paper, finally turned to where Christopher sat waiting in the chair beside my work table.

“I’m going to do it freehand. I usually don’t, but this is pretty straightforward, and I think I can do it. You sure about this?”

He nodded. He looked a little pale, there beneath the bright lights I work under, but when I walked over to him he smiled. “I’m sure.”

I prepped him, swabbing the skin then shaving his upper arm twice, to make sure it was smooth enough. I made sure my machine was thoroughly cleaned, and set up my inks. Black; cerulean and cobalt; Spaulding and Rogers Bright Yellow.

“Ready?”

He nodded, and I set to.

It took about four hours, though I pretty much lost track of the time. I did the outline first, a circle. I wanted it to look very slightly uneven, like this drawing by Odilon Redon I liked—you can see how the paper absorbed his ink, it made the lines look powerful, like black lightning. After the circle was done I did the eye inside it, a half-circle of white, because in the card the eye is looking down, at the world beneath it. Then I did the flattened ovoid of the pupil. Then the flickering lashes all around it. Christopher didn’t talk. Sweat ran in long lines from beneath his arms; he swallowed a lot, and sometimes closed his eyes. There was so much muscle beneath his skin that it was difficult to keep it taut—no fat, and the skin wasn’t loose enough—so I had to keep pulling it tight. I knew it hurt.

“That’s it, take a deep breath. I can stop, if you need to take a break. I need to take a break, anyway.”

But I didn’t. My hand didn’t cramp up; there was none of that fuzzy feeling that comes after holding a vibrating machine for hours at a stretch. Now and then Christopher would shift in his chair, never very much. Once I moved to get a better purchase on his arm, sliding my knee between his legs: I could feel his cock, rigid beneath his corduroys, and hear his breath catch.

He didn’t bleed much. His olive skin made the inks seem to glow, the blue-and-gold eye within its rayed penumbra, wriggling lines like cilia. At the center of the pupil was the scar. You could hardly see it now, it looked like a shadow, the eye’s dark heart.

“There.” I drew back, shut the machine off and nestled it in my lap. “It’s finished. What do you think?”

He pulled his arm towards him, craning his head to look. “Wow. It’s gorgeous.” He looked at me and grinned ecstatically. “It’s fucking gorgeous.”

“All right then.” I stood and put the machine over by the sink, turned to get some bandages. “I’ll just clean it up, and then—”

“Not yet. Wait, just a minute. Ivy.”

He towered above me, his long hair lank and skin sticky with sweat, pink fluid weeping from beneath the radiant eye. When he kissed me I could feel his cock against me, heat arcing above my groin. His leg moved, it rubbed against my tattoo and I moaned but it didn’t hurt, I couldn’t feel it, anything at all, just heat everywhere now, his hands tugging my shirt off then drawing me into the bedroom.

Not like Julia. His mouth was bigger, his hand; when I put my arms around him my fingers scarcely met, his back was so broad. The scars felt smooth and glossy; I thought they would hurt if I touched them but he said no, he liked my fingernails against them, he liked to press my mouth against his chest, hard, as I took his nipple between my lips, tongued it then held it gently between my teeth, the aureole with its small hairs radiating beneath my mouth. He went down on me and that was different too, his beard against the inside of my thighs, his tongue probing deeper; my fingers tangled in his hair and I felt his breath on me, his tongue still inside me when I came. He kissed me and I tasted myself, held his head between my hands, his beard wet. He was laughing. When he came inside me he laughed again, almost shouted; then collapsed alongside me.

“Ivy. Ivy—”

“Shhh.” I lay my palm against his face and kissed him. The sheet between us bore the image of a blurred red sun. “Christopher.”

“Don’t go.” His warm hand covered my breast. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I laughed softly. “Me? I never go anywhere.”

We slept. He breathed heavily, but I was so exhausted I passed out before I could shift towards my own side of the bed. If I dreamed, I don’t remember; only knew when I woke that everything was different, because there was a man in bed beside me.

“Huh.” I stared at him, his face pressed heavily into the pillow. Then I got up, as quietly as I could. I tiptoed into the bathroom, peed, washed my face and cleaned my teeth. I thought of making coffee, and peered into the living room. Outside all was still fog, dark-grey, shredded with white to mark the wind’s passing. The clock read six thirty. I turned and crept back to the bedroom.

Christopher was still asleep. I sat on the edge of the bed, languidly, and let my hand rest upon my tattoo. Already it hurt less; it was healing. I looked up at the head of the bed, where my mother’s books were, and Walter Burden Fox’s. The five identical dust jackets, deep blue, with their titles and Fox’s name in gold letters.

Something was different. The last volume, the one completed posthumously by Fox’s editor, with the spine that read Ardor ex Cathedra * Walter Burden Fox.

I yanked it from the shelf, holding it so the light fell on the spine.

Ardor ex Cathedra * Walter Burden Fox & W.F. Fox

My heart stopped. Around me the room was black. Christopher moved on the bed behind me, yawning. I swallowed, leaning forward until my hands rested on my knees as I opened the book.

ARDOR EX CATHEDRA
By Walter Burden Fox
Completed by Walter F. Fox

“No,” I whispered. Frantically I turned to the end, the final twenty pages that had been nothing but appendices and transcriptions of notes.

Chapter Seventeen: The Least Trumps.

I flipped through the pages in disbelief, and yes, there they were, new chapter headings, every one of them—

Pavell Saved From Drowning. One Leaf Left. Hermalchio and Lachrymatory. Villainous Saltpetre. The Scars. The Radiant Eye. I gasped, so terrified my hands shook and I almost dropped it, turning back to the frontispiece.

Completed by Walter F. Fox.

I went to the next page—the dedication.

To the memory of my father

I cried out. Christopher sat up, gasping. “What is it? Ivy, what happened—”

“The book! It’s different!” I shook it at him, almost screaming. “He didn’t die! The son—he finished it, it’s all different! It’s changed.”

He took the book from me, blinking as he tried to wake up. When he opened it I stabbed the frontispiece with my finger.

“There! See—it’s all changed. Everything has changed.”

I slapped his arm, the raw image that I’d never cleaned, never bandaged. “Hey! Stop—Ivy, stop—”

I started crying, sat on the edge of the bed with my head in my hands. Behind me I could hear him turning pages. Finally he sighed, put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Well, you’re right. But—well, couldn’t it be a different edition? Or something?”

I shook my head. Grief filled me, and horror: something deeper than panic, deeper even than fear. “No,” I said at last. My voice was hoarse. “It’s the book. It’s everything. We changed it, somehow—the card—”

I stood and walked into my studio, slowly, as though I were drunk. I put the light on and looked at my work table.

“There,” I said dully. In the middle of the table, separate from the rest of the deck, was the last card. It was blank. “The last one. The last trump. Everything is different.”

I turned to stare at Christopher. He looked puzzled, concerned but not frightened. “So?” He shook his head, ventured a small smile. “Is that bad? Maybe it’s a good book.”

“That’s not what I mean.” I could barely speak. “I mean, everything will be different. Somehow. Even if it’s just in little ways—it won’t be what it was—”

Christopher walked into the living room. He looked out the window, then went to the door and opened it. A bar of pale gold light slanted into the room and across the floor, to end at my feet. “Sun’s coming up.” He stared at the sky, shading his hands. “The fog is lifting. It’ll be nice, I think. Hot though.”

He turned and looked at me. I shook my head. “No. No. I’m not going out there.”

Christopher laughed, then gave me that sad half-smile. “Ivy—”

He walked over to me and tried to put his arms around me, but I pushed him away and walked into the bedroom. I began pulling on the clothes I’d worn last night. “No. No. Christopher—I can’t. I won’t.”

“Ivy.” He watched me, then shrugged and came into the room and got dressed, too. When he was done, he took my hand.

“Ivy, listen.” He pulled me to his side, with his free hand pointed at the book lying on the bed. “Even if it is different—even if everything is different—why does that have to be so terrible? Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s better.”

I began to shake my head, crying again. “No no no . . .”

“Look—”

Gently he pulled me into the living room. Full sun was streaming through the windows now; outside, on the other side of Green Pond, a deep-blue sky glowed above the green treetops. There was still mist close to the ground but it was lifting. The pines moved in the wind, and the birches; I heard a fox barking, no, not a fox: a dog. “Look,” Christopher said, and pointed at the open front door. “Why don’t we do this, you come with me, I’ll stay right by you—shit, I’ll carry you if you want—we’ll just go look, okay?”

I shook my head, No; but when he eased slowly through the door I followed, his hand tight around mine but not too tight: I could slip free if I wanted. He wouldn’t keep me. He wouldn’t make me go.

“Okay,” I whispered. I shut my eyes then opened them. “Okay, okay.”

Everything looked the same. A few more of the asters had opened, deep mauve in the misty air. One tall yellow coneflower was still in bloom. We walked through them, to the shore, to the dory. There were dragonflies and damselflies inside it, and something else. A butterfly, brilliant orange edged with cobalt blue, its wings fringed, like an eye. We stepped into the boat and the butterfly lifted into the air, hanging between us then fluttering across the water, towards the western shore. My gaze followed it, watching as it rose above The Ledges then continued down the hillside.

“I’ve never been over there,” said Christopher. He raised one oar to indicate where the butterfly had gone. “What’s there?”

“You can see.” It hurt to speak, to breathe; but I did it. I didn’t die. You can’t die, from this. “Katherine—she always says you can see Ireland from there, on a clear day.”

“Really? Let’s go that way, then.”

He rowed to the farther shore. Everything looked different, coming up to the bank; tall blue flowers like irises, a yellow sedge that had a faint fragrance like lemons. A turtle slid into the water, its smooth black carapace spotted with yellow and blue. As I stepped onto the shore, I saw something like a tiny orange crab scuttling into the reeds.

“You all right?” Christopher cocked his head and smiled. “Brave little ant. Brave Ivy.”

I nodded. He took my hand, and we walked down the hillside. Past The Ledges, past some boulders I had never even known were there, through a stand of trees like birches only taller, thinner, their leaves round and shimmering, silver-green. There was still a bit of fog here but it was lifting, I felt it on my legs as we walked, a damp cool kiss upon my left thigh. I looked over at Christopher, saw a golden rayed eye gazing back at me, a few flecks of dried blood beneath. Overhead, the trees moved and made a high rustling sound in the wind. The ground beneath us grew steeper, the clefts between rocks overgrown with thick masses of small purple flowers. I had never known anything to bloom so lushly, this late in the year. Below us I could hear the sound of waves, not the crash and violent roar of the open Atlantic but a softer sound; and laughter, a distant voice that sounded like my mother’s. The fog was almost gone but I still could not glimpse the sea; only through the moving scrim of leaves and mist a sense of vast space, still dark because the sun had not struck it yet in full, pale grey-blue, not empty at all, not anymore. There were lights everywhere, gold and green and red and silver, stationary lights and lights that wove slowly across the lifting veil, as through wide streets and boulevards, haloes of blue and gold hanging from ropes across a wide sandy shore.

“There,” said Christopher, and stopped. “There, do you see?”

He turned and smiled at me, reached to touch the corner of my eye, blue and gold; then pointed. “Can you see it now?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

The laughter came again, louder this time. Someone calling a name. The trees and grass shivered as a sudden brilliance overtook them, the sun breaking at last from the mist behind me.

“Come on!” said Christopher, and turning he sprinted down the hill. I took a deep breath, looked back at what was behind us. I could just see the grey bulk of The Ledges, and beyond them the thicket of green and white and grey that was the Lonely House. It looked like a picture from one of my mother’s books, a Crosshatch hiding a hive, a honeycomb; another world. “Ivy!”

Christopher’s voice echoed from not very far below me. “Ivy, you have to see this!”

“Okay,” I said, and followed him.

© 2002 by Elizabeth Hand. Originally published in Conjunctions 39, edited by Peter Straub and Bradford Morrow. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Hand (b. 1957) is an award-winning author whose science fiction and fantasy novels include the Winterlong series, Waking the Moon, Last Summer at Mars Hill, and Glimmering. Her novels and short stories have won the Nebula, World Fantasy, and Shirley Jackson Awards, among others. Hand was born in California and raised in Yonkers and Pound Ridge, New York; she now divides her time between London and the coast of Maine. Over the years she has been a regular contributor to the Washington Post, the Village Voice, the Los Angeles Times, and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among many others.

NOVEL EXCERPT: Chimera (Orbit Books)

Mira Grant | 5819 words

NOVEMBER 2027

They kept me inside an unused office for an hour while Colonel Mitchell and Dr. Banks went over what had happened at Dr. Cale’s lab. Three soldiers with USAMRIID patches on their shoulders stood over me, guns in their hands and eyes narrowed with justified suspicion. I looked calmly back at them, trying to pretend that my hands weren’t cuffed behind my back, that my boyfriend and my allies and my dog weren’t being escorted across San Francisco by soldiers who had no reason to let them live. Colonel Mitchell was never going to let me go. If his people wanted to shoot my friends in the head and leave them among the sleepwalkers and the deceased, what was going to stop them? Not me. And certainly not the ghost of Sally Mitchell.

It was starting to occur to me that I would never know if he broke his word and killed them all. I had nothing left to bargain with.

One of the men made eye contact with me. It may have been an accident, but it still happened. I seized the moment, offering him a small, strained smile. I’ve always looked young for my age—Sally left me with an excellent bone structure to call my own, and when people searched my eyes for experience, they didn’t usually find it, since technically I’m only about eight years old. Hopefully he would read my smile as shy, the sort of thing he might receive from any human prisoner under the same conditions.

He paled, and turned his face away when he realized I was looking at him. I let my smile die. These men either already knew who—and what—I really was or they knew me as their superior officer’s daughter, and hence dangerous in a whole different way. I was a mission objective to them, nothing more and nothing less. As long as they brought me back alive, they would win.

Keeping my face neutral, I looked around the office for what must have been the hundredth time. It was small, corporate, and virtually pristine. The only personal touches were a Disneyland snow globe on one corner of the desk and a picture frame next to the computer. The frame faced away from me; if it held anything other than the blank paper from the frame store, I would never know. I felt a strong, irrational urge to ask them to turn that picture around, to let me see, but I didn’t say anything. It was going to be one more unsolved little mystery in a world that was full of them, and had been since the day I made my “miraculous recovery” in the hospital, coming back to life after the doctors had already pronounced me dead.

Only I wasn’t the one who’d been pronounced dead. I wasn’t the one who’d suffered a massive seizure while driving and steered my car into a bus. I wasn’t the one who’d concealed important facts about my own medical history in order to protect my father, whose military career depended upon him not being revealed as a secret epileptic. All those things had been done to and by Sally Mitchell, the human girl whose body I now called my own. I had earned it. I was the one who put her brain back together, however instinctually, creating something that I could use to sustain the body she had left behind. I was the one who had to clean up her messes. Including this one.

My name is Sal. I was born in a lab in the basement of the SymboGen building, where geneticists who thought they were being clever combined a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a whole lot of terrible idea to make a tailored “biological implant” for Sally Mitchell, one that would naturally secrete the antiseizure medication she needed kept off the books and outside of the public eye. I was placed in her body when I was still an egg smaller than the head of a pin, hatching in the hot warm dark of her digestive tract and growing to maturity there. I hadn’t known what I was or where I came from, because those were concepts that didn’t matter to a tapeworm—and all pretty language and marketing nonsense aside, that’s what I was. A tapeworm, a member of the genetically engineered species Diphyllobothrium symbogenesis, designed to improve and promote human health, human well-being, human welfare.

What my creators didn’t bank on was the fact that all living things will seek to improve their own circumstances, and for me—for all the worms like me—that meant taking control of our own lives. I had been migrating through Sally’s body at the time of the accident, which is how I was able to survive the gross physical damage to her abdomen that had crushed at least part of my own long, threadlike body. While she was hooked to life-support systems and her parents were exploring other options, I was working my way through the bones at the back of her skull, following an instinct I didn’t understand until I was able to connect myself to her brain. Normally, that was where things would have gone wrong. Very few worms, even ones as carefully designed as I was, can fully integrate with their human hosts. But I was made to prevent seizures, and I integrated with minimal physiological issues. For all intents and purposes, I became Sally Mitchell the first time that I ordered her body to open its eyes.

For literally years, that’s what I believed I was. I thought I was a human girl suffering from traumatic amnesia, and not a tapeworm wearing a human body like a fancy dress. I let Sally’s parents and Sally’s doctors and Sally’s therapists try to make me into someone I had never been and had no real interest in being. Nothing any of them had to tell me about her made her seem like an appealing person to transform myself into, but still, I tried. I tried for their sakes, and because they said they loved me, and I believed them. How could I have done any different?

They were my family. They were all I had. That’s what I’d thought for a long, long time, and now that I was finally starting to understand what they’d really been to me—what they had done to me, all in the name of trying to bring Sally back—I was right back in their hands.

Or at least, I was right back in the hands of Sally’s father, Colonel Mitchell, and since he was the only member of the Mitchell family who had ever given signs of understanding what was going on with me, that didn’t make me feel any better. His wife, Sally’s mother, hadn’t known, I was sure of that, and I was almost as sure that his other daughter, Joyce, hadn’t known either. She would have told her mother. She would have told me. Instead, she had told me how much nicer I’d become since my accident, and how happy she was that we were finally friends, instead of just people who happened to be related.

No. Joyce couldn’t have known. But Colonel Mitchell had known from the beginning that I wasn’t his daughter. He had looked into the eyes of an alien creature, of a chimera born from the union of tapeworm and human, and he had decided that the appropriate thing to do was try to brainwash it into becoming human after all. Brainwash me into becoming human after all.

And now I was his, to do with as he pleased. That had been the cost of saving Nathan, Fishy, and Beverly . . . and as I remembered the looks on their faces when I turned away from them, I realized I wasn’t sorry. I had lived the first six years of my life going along the path of least resistance and letting other people make my decisions for me. I’d been allowing my tapeworm nature to dictate my decisions. I was a tailored symbiont; I existed to be led. But I was here because I had stood up and said I would go if my friends could be set free . . . and that was an impulse from the human side of me, wasn’t it? That was me struggling to become a person who acts, a person who controls her own fate.

I needed to be that person now. Because the person I had always been wasn’t going to cut it anymore.

The men who had been assigned to watch me snapped to attention as the office door swung open. Colonel Mitchell stood framed in the doorway, holding his hands folded behind his back.

“Who opened the door?” I blurted, before I could think better of it.

Colonel Mitchell blinked at me. “That’s your first question? Not ‘What happens next’ or ‘Where are we going’ or ‘Did your friends make it back to their transport,’ but ‘Who opened the door’?”

“You could lie to me if I asked you any of those questions, but the big thing right now is yes, who opened the door? You can’t have moved your hands that fast. You’d have to be a wizard, and there’s no such thing as wizards.”

“That’s not what you said when you were a little girl,” he said, stepping into the room. Another soldier stepped in right behind him, answering my original question. Colonel Mitchell ignored him. All his attention was on me, even though it didn’t feel like he was looking at me at all. He was seeing Sally. Poor, dead, long-buried Sally.

“You checked the mailbox for your Hogwarts letter every day for an entire year,” he continued. He walked toward me as he spoke, one hand dipping into his pocket. “You were so sure that your owl was coming, and you told me over and over about how you were going to be the greatest witch of your generation. Do you remember which House you hoped to be Sorted into?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. I was supposed to be keeping up the pretense of being Sally Mitchell, somehow returned from the grave and reclaiming ownership of her own body. That didn’t mean that I could somehow recall family trivia and jokes that she had shared with her father long before I arrived on the scene. “We always lived in the same house.”

If Colonel Mitchell was disappointed by my answer, he didn’t show it. “I’ll see about finding you copies of the Harry Potter books,” he said, moving behind me and taking hold of my wrists. I stiffened, but he was just undoing my handcuffs. They hadn’t been tight enough to hurt. There was still a feeling of glorious freedom as they fell away. “I know you’ve had trouble with dyslexia since your accident, but they’re available in audiobook form. You can listen to them, and then we can talk again.”

I bit my lip to keep myself from laughing. The world was crumbling outside the building where we stood. People were dying by the thousands, maybe by the millions; cities were being deserted, and the two sides of my heritage—the humans and the tapeworms—were destroying each other at an unspeakable pace. The human tendency to focus on the inconsequential to avoid focusing on the traumas at hand could be completely ridiculous at times. It was a habit I’d picked up from the humans who’d raised me, but that didn’t mean I really understood it.

The slow, constant beating of the drums in my ears reminded me to stay on guard, no matter how amused I was. They were my compass through a world that seemed determined to destroy me, and they weren’t going to allow me to relax. Not one bit.

“Okay,” I said, keeping my voice meek and low. He seemed to be in good spirits; whatever Dr. Banks had said to him, it hadn’t been enough to make him lose his temper. I decided to risk another question. “Did my friends make it back to their transport okay?”

He paused before walking in front of me, a solemn expression on his face and my newly removed handcuffs dangling from one hand. He held them up like they were a reminder that I needed to stay mindful of my position and the limitations it entailed. “I have no idea whether your friends made it back to their starting point, and to be honest, I don’t care. A group of my people escorted them into the streets, and maintained visual contact until they were approximately one mile from this location. Then my people came back here. The goals of this mission were to retrieve you and to harvest certain essential data from Dr. Cale’s research before she moved again. Both these things have been accomplished.”

I frowned. “How did you get that data? We didn’t give Dr. Banks anything. Dr. Cale had him under guard from the time he stepped into the building. She even took his hard drive away, and we’re sure he didn’t have any tracers or trackers, or—”

Colonel Mitchell was looking at me oddly. The soldiers who shared the room with us weren’t looking at me at all. I stopped talking. I was showing too much interest in the people I had allowed to leave me behind. That sort of thing would indicate that I wasn’t as committed to being his daughter as I was claiming to be.

“I just, I talked to him, but I was still pretending, you know?” I made my eyes as big as I could, trying to sell the part. “To be Sal, and to think that they were on my side, not on the side of the parasites. So I know how thoroughly they searched him.”

“They didn’t search him for wireless sniffers, or for download signals,” said Colonel Mitchell. “If they had, they might have found out how much of their data he was copying. But that’s none of your concern. I’m glad to see that you can still care about people, even if you’re caring about the wrong ones. No matter. That will change soon enough. Gentlemen, prepare her for transport.” Then he turned, and walked back toward the door.

He took the handcuffs with him, which meant I could put my hands up to ward the soldiers away when they started closing on me. Their faces were grim masks, efficient and cold. “No, please,” I said, not knowing what they were about to do, but knowing that whatever it was, I wasn’t going to enjoy it—not when they were looking at me like that.

I was so focused on the ones in front of me that I never saw the one who slipped behind me with the Taser. Electricity arced through my body, stunning and scrambling everything, and then I hit the floor, and if the pain continued, I didn’t know about it anymore.

Everything was warm and dark and perfect. The drums hammered ceaselessly away in the background, and I felt like I was floating on a hot tide of weightlessness and peace. Everything would be perfect forever if the world could just stay exactly the way it was, filled with comforting darkness and the sound of drums.

Only no. Everything wasn’t perfect, because while I was warm and I was dark, this wasn’t the hot warm dark: this wasn’t the comforting sea that had buoyed me up since before I knew what it was to be a person. This was something different, and “different” was another word for “dangerous,” especially now that things were changing again, now that I was back in the hands of people who would use me for their own ends and not allow me to be who and what I really was. Dr. Cale was a scary woman, and the things she wanted weren’t always things it was safe or reasonable to want, but she’d never tried to force me to be anything other than myself, whatever that was. She wasn’t safe. She was safer than this.

With comprehension came the return of consciousness, and with the return of consciousness came the slowly growing awareness of my body, coming back to me an inch at a time, like the power being turned on in an office building. It wasn’t the worst comparison. The connections between me and the body that had been Sally Mitchell were strong, built by science and reinforced by biology, but they weren’t as natural as a human brain’s connection to its own body. Sometimes things were slower than they were supposed to be. I’d attributed that to my accident, right up until I learned that it was really a case of mind over matter—my mind, Sally’s abandoned matter.

When enough of the power had come back on, I opened my eyes and blinked up at a dark, oddly shaped ceiling. There were lights there, uncovered bulbs that were so bright they hurt, yet somehow didn’t manage to illuminate most of what was around them. It was a senseless design. I didn’t understand it, and so I closed my eyes again, willing myself to return to the weightlessness and the dark.

Something nudged me in the ribs. “You dead, girl? Or worse, you turning into one of those things? We’ll kill you before you can hurt any of us, so don’t you even think about jumping up and going for our throats.”

“I don’t think you can reason with monsters, Paul,” said a female voice. It was farther away than the first voice; wherever we were, it was large enough to include things like “distance,” even if there wasn’t all that much of it. “If she’s going to rip your throat out, she’s going to do it no matter how much you kick her. Hell, maybe she’s going to do it because you kicked her. I’d go for your throat if you kept prodding me with your filthy-ass foot.”

“Shut up,” said the man. The nudge to my ribs was repeated. Based on what the woman had said, he was nudging me with his foot. I tried to decide whether I cared, or whether caring would be too much work. Part of me still felt like I was floating, disconnected from myself.

I’d never been hit with a Taser before. I decided I never wanted to be hit with one ever again. The electricity had been enough to disrupt me in ways that were terrifying and invasive at the same time, and I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I felt like myself again. Too long. Even one minute would be too long.

“Look, lady, we don’t actually think they’d throw you in here with us if you were getting sick or some such shit, but we’d really, really appreciate it if you’d do something to indicate that you’re not actually a mindless killing machine getting ready to feast on our tasty flesh, okay? It’s the polite thing to do.”

“Don’t lecture the semiconscious woman on how to be polite,” said the woman.

“Shut up, Carrie,” said the man.

My jaw seemed to be working again. I opened and closed my mouth a few times, reacquainting myself with the motion, before I took the deepest breath my chest could contain and forced it out, resulting in a thin squeaking sound, like a bike tire in need of air. That didn’t seem like enough, so I did it again, squeaking with a bit more vehemence.

“The zombies moan, she’s squeaking, she’s fine,” said the woman.

“They’re not zombies,” said Paul. “Zombies exist in movies and in Haitian folklore. They don’t wander around the streets of San Francisco attacking people.” I tensed, expecting another prod to my ribs. It didn’t come. Instead, a hand was slipped gently under my shoulder while another gripped my wrist, tugging me into a sitting position. “Poor kid’s been zapped.”

“Those soldiers are animals,” said the woman—Carrie, Paul had called her Carrie. Both of them had names. There was something comforting about realizing that, like they had just become real people. And since they were talking to me like I was a real person, that meant their reality was transitive: They existed, and so did I.

Electric shocks were definitely bad for me, if this was how they left me feeling. I moved my jaw again, trying to tell them my name, and succeeded only in making another squeaking sound. My eyes were still closed. I willed them to open. To my sublime relief, they did, and I found myself looking at a skinny woman with bright green hair, folded in on herself like a piece of origami as she sat on the long bench that ran the length of the wall behind her. No, it wasn’t a wall: We were moving. The feeling of weightlessness was coming from the vibrations that passed up through the floor.

As soon as I recognized why I felt so comfortably weightless, the feeling stopped. Sometimes awareness had its downside.

The woman tilted her head, looking me thoughtfully up and down before she said, “Clean, looks well fed, decent haircut . . . where did they find you, honey? Were you in a closed-off survivor’s alcove? Why the hell did you leave?”

“There could be a lot of explanations,” said Paul. “Don’t pressure her. Hey, I know you can’t talk yet, but do you think you could stand if I helped you? I want to get you off the floor. There’s no telling when they’re going to throw somebody else in here, and I don’t want them to land on top of you.”

We were in a truck. This was a covered truck, like the ones the Army used for troop movements. I’d been in one of them once before, shortly after my accident, when they were in the process of transferring all my care over to SymboGen. Colonel Mitchell—who had been insisting I call him “Dad” back then, a habit that I probably needed to get back into if I wanted him to believe I was really his daughter returned from the dead, and not the genetically engineered tapeworm that had stolen her body—had commandeered one of the trucks from the USAMRIID base to move me and the machines that were dedicated to monitoring my health over to SymboGen’s San Francisco office.

I had been younger then; I hadn’t possessed language yet, or fully grasped the complexities of what my newly human mind kept trying to tell me. But I’d been integrating faster than a human child, building on all the work Sally Mitchell had already done to grow neurons and form connections, and my recall of those early days never faded the way a human infant’s recall does. I remembered looking at the walls and finding them soothingly dark in comparison to the white ones at the hospital. I remembered wanting the light to go away. And I remembered Colonel Mitchell holding my hand, telling me it was going to be all right, that they were going to find a solution, that I was going to come back to him just as good as new.

He hadn’t really talked to me that way after the move. I wondered whether that was when he’d learnt about who—what—I was, and that his daughter was never coming back to him. But that thought just conjured more questions. He knew I was a tapeworm. He knew I had shoved Sally out of her own mind, assuming that she’d been left to push aside: The accident had been bad enough, and the brain damage had been severe enough, that it was entirely possible she had been gone before I even managed to squirm through the remnants of her skull.

If he knew those things, why was he asking me to pretend she could have come back?

With Paul’s arms supporting me and pulling when my balance threatened to give way, I was able to climb shakily to my feet and be moved, one halting step at a time, to the waiting bench. By the time we finished the process, I was feeling more like I actually lived inside my own body. I moved my jaw again. This time, what came out was a croaky but distinct “Thank you.”

“It’s no problem.” Paul let go of my arm and retreated to sit down next to Carrie, who unfolded herself just enough to hook one foot under his leg and place one elbow on his shoulder. It seemed less possessive than it was simply a means of seeking comfort in a bad situation, the way the dogs would sometimes pile together when there was a rainstorm. A mammalian instinct, written through the DNA all the way to the masters of the world.

I wondered whether I would have learnt to offer comfort that way, given enough time, given the luxury of learning things on my own and not learning things for the sake of emulating the dead. I liked to snuggle with Nathan, but it was never a matter of comforting him: It was all about comforting myself. It was a way of being close, of allowing for the part of me that was always going to be a little unhappy in wide-open spaces. I was a mammal and I wasn’t a mammal, all at the same time. I still didn’t know what was natural for me and what was learned, and maybe I never would.

“They picked us up down by the ballpark,” said Carrie, mistaking my contemplation for personal interest. “It was stupid. We should never have left the office, but we were running low on bottled water, and Paul remembered that the coaches kept a supply for the players. We both figured we’d be able to get in and get out without anyone noticing us.”

“We didn’t count on an Army sweep happening in the same area,” said Paul wryly. “It didn’t make any sense. They’d cleaned out all the major hot spots last week. We should have been totally fine.”

My heart sank. It made perfect sense, because the ballpark was only a few blocks away from the Ferry Building. We had made land there. We had stirred up the sleepwalkers there. If anything was going to trigger a response from the military, it was the arrival of an unauthorized vessel from the other side of the Bay. These people had been caught in a dragnet that I helped trigger, and nothing was going to save them now.

“Do you know where they’re taking us?” My voice still sounded rusty, like part of me was still remembering how to talk.

“A quarantine facility first, so they can triple-check us for signs of infection,” said Paul. “After that . . .” His expression turned grim. He glanced to Carrie before leaning over and placing a kiss gently on her forehead. She started to cry, burying her face against his shoulder. He looked back to me, and said, much more quietly, “They’re going to take us to the Pleasanton encampment. They’re going to put us with all the other ‘survivors’ of this little science experiment, and fuck us if we don’t like that idea.”

I frowned. “Why don’t you like that idea?” Being under USAMRIID’s control didn’t sit well with me for a lot of reasons, but those reasons were entirely my own. Paul and Carrie seemed like reasonable people. I couldn’t imagine they had the same sorts of issues with my—with Sally’s—father.

To my surprise, Paul’s expression faded slowly into one of pure pity. Carrie buried her face deeper into his shoulder, like she was trying to keep herself from needing to face me. “You mean . . . you don’t know about Pleasanton?”

“I’ve heard the Pleasanton facility mentioned a few times. I understand not wanting to be locked up, but the sleepwalkers are dangerous. Isn’t it a good thing not to have them in the same place?” The sleepwalkers were even dangerous to me. I had scars on one wrist, and a whole lot of nightmares, from my encounters with them.

My encounters with the other chimera—Sherman in particular—had left me with even more nightmares. Sherman thought he knew what was best for me, and didn’t see a need to let me have a vote. He had performed surgery on me without my consent, removing samples of my core. He could have killed me. He hadn’t hesitated. So I guess species wasn’t as big a deal as I tried to make it out to be.

“The Pleasanton ‘facility,’ as you put it, doesn’t exist. We’re going to an encampment. Do you understand the difference?”

I did, a bit. A facility was large and clean and filled with chrome surfaces and clean glass windows. SymboGen was a facility. Even the candy factory that had served as Dr. Cale’s temporary home was a facility, albeit a more sugar-soaked one than was necessarily normal. An encampment . . . I wasn’t completely sure what that was, but it sounded bad. “Not really,” I admitted.

“They fenced off half the neighborhoods in the city,” said Carrie, rolling her face slowly toward me, so that she could watch me as she spoke. She was crying, and her tears drew mascara trails down her cheeks, like she was trying to outline her own bones. “Then they went in and cleaned the sleepwalkers out. House by house. I know a woman who managed to escape, before they reinforced the fences. She said that the Army men removed the bodies, but they didn’t really make any effort to clean up the bloodstains. They’re putting people in houses that still have bloodstains on the walls.”

“Oh,” I said blankly. I didn’t share the normal human aversion for the bodily secretions of others. All living things were just a combination of fluid and rigid structures. Everything bled; everything defecated. I didn’t want to play in sewage, and I was as sensitive to foul smells as anyone with a human olfactory system, but blood generally dried dark and mostly scentless. It shouldn’t have been an issue. Not in a rational world.

But humans didn’t live in a rational world, did they? Not really. I was human enough not to live in a rational world any more than they did. I just sometimes faked it a little better, because I’d been faking it for my entire life.

Carrie appeared to take my confusion for concern, because she said, “They swear everything’s been cleaned to within a ‘reasonable standard,’ and that no one’s going to get sick from being in those houses, but it’s not the houses that people need to worry about. It’s the other people!”

“They’re sleeping upwards of twelve adults to a single-family home. The only way you get more space is if you have children or disabled adults: Then you’ll be put in private apartments in what used to be the bad part of town,” said Paul grimly.

“Pleasanton has a bad part of town?” The question sounded incredibly naive. I still wanted to know the answer. Pleasanton was one of those places that had always struck me as being as innocuous as its name: sleepy and suburban and filled with malls and car dealerships and families, not close enough to San Francisco to really be subjected to population crush, not far enough away to be suffering from a bad economy. Maybe it wasn’t a perfect place to live, but it had always looked that way from a distance.

“The slightly less good part of town,” amended Paul. “It’s the bad part of town now.”

“Everything is the bad part of town now,” said Carrie.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “Aren’t you safer there, with people who you know aren’t infected?”

“Those things will just kill you,” said Paul. “It’s an awful way to die, but that’s all that happens. You change or you die. Humans are worse. Humans are terrifying.”

“Humans will hurt you because they want what you have, not because it’s their instinct,” said Carrie. “We should have stayed hidden. We should have stayed safe. We knew how to survive where we were. Here . . . here, we don’t know anything.” She buried her face in Paul’s shoulder again, and none of us said anything. It felt like there was nothing left for us to say.

© 2015 by Mira Grant. Excerpted from Chimera by Mira Grant. Published by permission of the author and Orbit Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mira Grant was born and raised in Northern California, where she has made a lifelong study of horror movies, horrible viruses, and the inevitable threat of the living dead. Currently, Mira lives in a crumbling farmhouse with an assortment of cats, horror movies, comics, and books about horrible diseases. When not writing, she splits her time between travel, auditing college virology courses, and watching more horror movies than is strictly good for you. Favorite vacation spots include Seattle, London, and a large haunted corn maze just outside of Huntsville, Alabama.

Artist Showcase: John Brosio

Henry Lien | 1193 words

John Brosio was born in 1967. He studied at the University of California, Davis, and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. His website is www.johnbrosio.com.

First off, you work as a fine art painter rather than as an illustrator. However, your works are often surrealist or at least surrealist-adjacent, so they tend to have a strong narrative component as well as fantastical elements. So your work shares some things with science fiction/fantasy illustration, even if its purposes, methods, and ultimate effects are very different. Tell us what you see as the difference between what you are doing and straight-up illustration.

I see what you’re saying, but I don’t feel that much of a distinction. I don’t feel that difference anymore. In school, we were encouraged to take note of what was considered illustration vs. “fine art,” but I think, in the end, an artist just needs to be taking something seriously. And the conviction comes through sometimes as a result. Am I afraid that a final piece will be stupid? Sure! But I can only work with what I know. It was David Mamet (I think) who said something about the audience member being the smartest person in the room, and when someone likes a piece or connects with it, I feel that they may be saying that I got that one “right.” I trust that feedback.

What are some things that influenced your work? I smell aromas of Edward Hopper (stark, graphic silhouettes against memorable skies), the Wyeths, especially Jamie Wyeth (that inexpressible, almost suffocating sense of strangeness), and David Lynch (suburban, American horror). Even a bit of your professor Wayne Thiebaud in there (everyday objects treated with exaggerated lighting and colors to make them appear alien). And The X-Files. Or better yet, Leonard Nimoy’s In Search of . . .

Film, yes, is a huge influence. It is the art form of the day. And Edward Hopper and Wayne Thiebaud are definitely in there. But other artists are Albert Pinkham Ryder, Giorgio di Chirico, Morandi, and Elmer Bischoff. An increasing influence is my first college art professor, Wally Hedrick. Beethoven was a huge influence. I also enjoy the sciences very much: animals, natural phenomenon, the fossil record, astronomy, etc. And I am mournful in my work, too, of the fact that many things like UFOs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, et al., probably do not exist. In Search of . . . was a fun show, though!

Your works also seems to embrace many elements of twentieth-century American culture, as if it were trying to articulate a uniquely American folklore that characterized the culture’s beliefs and anxieties in the twentieth century. Is that fair, or am I reading too much into things again?

I don’t think you’re reading in too much. But not all of it is conscious on my part. There is a lot going on right now that has the whole world anxious. We’re all feeling it. It is almost certainly why so much art these days rests on an apocalyptic theme and many artists are working with what they themselves feel about the whole thing in one way or another.

I know that The Wizard of Oz and Star Wars both rawked your world hard as a kid and that you never fully got over them. If you had to live in a parallel universe where only one of them existed, which one would you choose and why?

I like them both but I would definitely choose Star Wars. It is a bigger place with more places to go. Wizard of Oz was more of an early childhood influence, but I would like to go hang out at the bar in Mos Eisley.

Tell us about your brief but passionate relationship with George Lucas.

Ha! I met him only once, very briefly, crossing paths on a stairway landing. I said hello and he said hello back. But I certainly remember!

What’s the deal with all the tornados?

Hmm. In a way, this goes back to one of your prior questions, about fine art vs. illustration. And maybe tornadoes were a kind of meeting point between what was considered legitimate (a real thing) and nonlegitimate (Godzilla) in art. That might be part of it. But I think, too, that just about everybody has an inherent response and feeling about the power of nature, whether it is the ocean, the Grand Canyon, volcanoes, tornadoes, etc. Matter of fact, there are a number of amazing, if not famous, volcano paintings out there.

Do you listen to music when you paint? My guess is yes and that you listen to anachronistic stuff like the Everly Brothers’ “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” But maybe that’s me reading David Lynch influences into your work again.

I sometimes listen to talk radio, but not always. If I do listen to music, it is often jazz, but I am very fond of modern classical music composers like Ligeti and Penderecki. But you are correct, too: The other day I heard “Candy Colored Clown” (aka Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams” from Blue Velvet) on the radio and turned it up!

LACMA mounts a career retrospective of all of your works. There is a terrible fire. You have time to save only one of your paintings from the inferno. Choose.

Possibly none.

Most overrated artist ever?

I used to have a lot of fun with this question, but the idea of rating artists is falling away. There are so many folks doing art these days, so much imagery afloat. It is hard to spend time attacking anything when you only have to look in a different direction to see something exciting. Beyond that, it is the responsibility of the artist and collector alike to stay in touch with what is possible by visiting the museums and not just the galleries.

Name something you love that most people hate.

Modern classical music!

Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you wished I had?

Not offhand. I’ll probably think of something in a few weeks.

What is your dream project?

I always thought it would be fun to do an art piece that was like a ride. Fortunately, someone like Banksy just did a kind of Disneyland satire called Dismaland that people could attend. Look it up if you have a moment, because it is by all accounts very immersive and successful. But I always thought it would be fun to do something like that, but maybe more like a single ride rather than the whole park.

[To view the gallery, turn the page.]

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Henry Lien is an art dealer and proprietor of The Glass Garage Gallery in Los Angeles. He represents artists from North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. His artists have appeared in ARTnews, Art in America, Juxtapoz, The Huffington Post, and Time Magazine, and been collected by and exhibited in institutions and museums around the world. Henry has also served as the President of the West Hollywood Fine Art Dealers’ Association and a Board Member of the West Hollywood Avenues of Art and Design. Henry also has extensive experience as an attorney and teaches at UCLA Extension. In addition, Henry is a speculative fiction writer. He is a Clarion West 2012 graduate, has sold his work to Asimov’s, Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and Interfictions, and has been nominated for a Nebula. He is originally from Taiwan. Visit his author website at henrylien.com.

Book Reviews: November 2015

Sunil Patel | 2417 words

This month we review Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, Updraft by Fran Wilde, The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard, and Serpentine by Cindy Pon.

Sorcerer to the Crown
Zen Cho
Hardcover/Ebook
ISBN 978-0425283370
Ace Books, September 2015
384 pages

What happens when England’s first black Sorcerer Royal meets a half-Indian young woman with exceptional magical talent? Can magic power and sheer stubbornness overcome centuries of institutional racism and sexism? Is that a unicorn? Where did the unicorn come from? Sorcerer to the Crown seeks to answer these questions in the most delightful way possible.

Zacharias Wythe never asked to be Sorcerer Royal, and the rumors that he murdered his predecessor and his famed familiar certainly don’t make his position any more enviable. He has a secret, though, as only he truly knows what happened that fateful night. Prunella Gentleman also has a secret, gifts from the parents she never knew, and she’ll do whatever it takes to get to London and make use of them. He’s a straight-laced magician and she’s a young firebrand: sparks are going to fly. Their dynamic reminded me of Kell and Lila from V.E. Schwab’s great A Darker Shade of Magic; both Prunella and Lila are amoral and goal-oriented, which generally causes Zacharias and Kell to just bury their faces in their hands.

The world of the book recalls Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell: Regency London, a society of white male magicians concerned with the decline of English magic, a connection to fairies. But Zen Cho diversifies that world immensely, not only with her protagonists, but by acknowledging magicians and magical creatures in other parts of the world, like India, China, and Malaysia. Although the practice of “females” doing magic is frowned upon by English society, Cho doesn’t care; she’ll show us all sorts of women doing magic. She proves there are so many more stories to be mined from that era, and now that Mary Robinette Kowal has concluded her wonderful Glamourist Histories series, I know where to go to get my Regency-inspired fantasy fix.

It’s hard to pinpoint what the “main” plot of the book is, as many different stories are introduced in the first several chapters. The mystery of what happened to the previous Sorcerer Royal, and how it may relate to Zacharias’s strange sickness. A matter of diplomacy involving a Malaysian witch and a plague of lamiae. Prunella’s discovery of gifts and investigation into who her parents were. The mystery of the decline of English magic. Prunella’s desire to find a rich husband. Despite having so many threads, the narrative never lags or gets confusing, and I was impressed by how well Cho tied so many of them together. The resolutions are mostly satisfying, with a few teases for the future.

Zen Cho firmly establishes herself as a fresh, important voice with this book, if her excellent short story collection, Spirits Abroad, hadn’t already. The word “delightful” always comes to mind when I describe her stories; I appreciate how refreshingly non-soul crushing they are. Sorcerer to the Crown sparkles with Austenesque wit, its sly charm making me smile throughout. At times, I was so giddy I hugged the book to my chest. We need more books like this.

Updraft
Fran Wilde
Hardcover/Ebook
ISBN 978-0765377838
Tor Books, September 2015
368 pages

I have read nothing more terrifying this year than the description of skymouths in the first chapter of Fran Wilde’s Updraft. After taking only a few pages to establish a world where people live in giant bone towers and fly around on mechanical wings, she introduces a mouth that opens in the sky that’s full of teeth and tentacles and also the creature is invisible. Though Updraft is not a horror book, the power of that image speaks to Wilde’s ability to immerse us in her world. From the nature of the Laws to the vertical hierarchy of the towers themselves, she conveys information by allowing us to experience it, without infodumps.

In that first chapter, Kirit, a young girl on the verge of taking her wingtest—like a combination driver’s license/citizenship test—breaks one of those Laws, and she attracts the interest of the Singers, the mysterious, tattooed protectors of the city. They want to take her away to train at the Spire, but she doesn’t want to leave her single mom, Ezarit, or her best friend, Nat. Then Nat stumbles upon some strange carvings that raise questions whose answers can lie only in the Spire.

Though not marketed as young adult, Updraft would not be out of place on such a shelf. A teenage girl who discovers she has a special ability. Her male best friend of many years (who, in a welcome change of pace, is not a love interest). A missing parent. A possibly dystopian government with secrets that must be exposed. Tests, initiations, bullies, allies, they’re all here! Though the bones of the story—no pun intended—are familiar, the book engaged my imagination like no other book this year. Because the world is so unlike our own, it challenged all my perceptions: What would life be like if you lived in the clouds, where “ground” is a foreign concept, where the only method of transportation is individual flight? Kirit, the narrator, does not know the reader is used to things like “walking” and “cars”; she speaks as to one of her own. As a result, a few shocking revelations didn’t have as much impact as they ought to because I didn’t share the same baseline of reality as Kirit. What was surprising to her was simply an additional piece of information about an unfamiliar world to me.

Wilde hammers home a few recurring, connected themes that deepen the story. At the center are secrets: both of Kirit’s family history as well as the history of the city itself. Then comes loyalty: once again, to her family and friends, and to the Singers and the city they protect. Finally, the ominous refrain of tradition: What are the dangers of doing things because That’s How They’ve Always Been Done? Things get more and more complex, with secrets upon secrets, and Kirit not knowing who to trust; my head was practically spinning by the time Wilde delivered the fist-pumping climax.

Updraft comes to a satisfying conclusion yet makes it clear this city in the sky will never be the same. I’d like a first-class ticket to book two, please.

The House of Shattered Wings
Aliette de Bodard
Hardcover/Ebook
ISBN 978-0451477385
Roc Books, August 2015
416 pages

The House of Shattered Wings opens with a powerful, striking sequence, as Aliette de Bodard allows us to Fall from Heaven along with the angel Isabelle, the wind whistling, our wings burning, our bones shattering. Capturing us with her language, she then leads us through a turn-of-the-century Paris ravaged by a Great War between angels, introducing the major players. Isabelle, a Fallen angel seeking a sense of purpose. Philippe, a Vietnamese immortal with a magic all his own. Selene, leader of House Silverspires, determined to learn Philippe’s secret. Madeleine, a dying alchemist with conflicted loyalties. And the ever-present specter of the absent Morningstar, first of the Fallen.

This book positively crackles with magic and intrigue, and, like Isabelle, I fell deep into this world. The ruins of a beautiful city. Warring Houses of angels still vying for power. Magical abilities gained through inhalation of ground angel bones. And mysteries! So many mysteries. Each character has a specific mystery associated with them, and that’s even before bodies start turning up and the story shifts focus to the murder mystery that drives the main plot.

The shifting POVs make it difficult to identify a single protagonist, if the book even has one. Though we begin with Isabelle, I found her to be the least developed character; I would have liked to see more about her experience as a newly Fallen angel. Selene, on the other hand, grabbed me immediately, a fierce yet vulnerable leader hoping to live up to her predecessor, the Devil himself. Philippe, the outsider, unwittingly sets off the entire plot, and I enjoyed his journey. But the true heart of the story is Madeleine, the major human character and thus the most relatable, who is not inherently special like the others but tries so hard to do what’s right. I wanted to wrap my angel wings around her and keep her safe.

De Bodard weaves together so many plots that halfway through the book I had no idea where the story was going, which was exciting. The story takes several unexpected turns—an especially notable one thanks to Philippe—and arranges the major players such that they all have a role in the page-turning climax. But even though I enjoyed the energy of the sequence, I thought it was somewhat unsatisfactory. We don’t really get to know the villain. Various interesting elements in play become jumbled, and the nebulous rules of magic allow for some deus ex magica. We’re left with plenty of loose ends and unresolved mysteries to explore in the second book of the duology.

The House of Shattered Wings brings a fresh take on the angel mythos, combining it with post-apocalyptic tropes and Eastern mythology. Filled with characters to love, hate, and love to hate, the book draws you into a world you’ll be sad to leave and happy to return to.

Serpentine
Cindy Pon
Paperback/Ebook
ISBN 978-1942664338
Month9Books, September 2015
300 pages

Being a teenage girl is hard enough, but it’s harder still when you discover you’re a serpent demon. Things get worse when you find out the hot monk boy you’re crushing on is training to kill demons. To top it all off, the girl you’ve known your whole life, whom you care for more than anyone else in the world, is paying a lot of attention to some new girl.

Skybright’s life is a mess.

From the opening chapter of Serpentine, when Skybright climbs a tree to get a better view of a monastery, I was immersed in the world. Even with limited descriptions of setting, I could picture the cloudy mountains, the dark forests, the lavish manors. Cindy Pon spends no time delineating the rules and customs of her fantasy world; rather, she trusts the reader to follow along. Our main character is a handmaid? Okay! Everyone believes the word of a seer? Sure! Ghosts are hanging out in the forest? All right then! I loved how comfortable the worldbuilding felt, which makes sense, given that Pon has written books set in the Kingdom of Xia before, though this story is unconnected.

What really drew me into the book, however, was the characters, especially Skybright. It can’t be easy to wake up with the lower half of a snake and a forked tongue, especially when serpent demons are known to be murderous temptresses. Thus Skybright isn’t only dealing with a physical change but a possible mental one: Is she evil? She must also confront her feelings for Zhen Ni, her mistress, and Kai Sen, a monk, who have secrets of their own. Also creatures from the underworld are tearing through a breach in reality. Pon packs quite a lot into this short novel, and things move swiftly—a little too swiftly, as some developments don’t have enough room to breathe. While I loved seeing Skybright adapt to her serpentine form and start decapitating demons, I wished I’d seen more of her transition, building that confidence and acceptance. Yet the book doesn’t feel overstuffed either, and all of the plot elements come into play by the end.

Although the romance between Skybright and Kai Sen drives much of the narrative in the first half, I was more engaged by the relationship between Skybright and Zhen Ni. Handmaid and mistress, they’re practically sisters, and even though it can feel like Zhen Ni is cruel and Skybright passive thanks to the power dynamic, there’s love there (they do share a kiss in the first chapter, but it’s not that kind of love . . . which is not to say that kind of love doesn’t exist in the book). The power of their friendship drives the narrative in the second half, which had me turning pages as I barreled toward the end, wanting everyone and everything to be okay. There’s some resolution, but mostly it makes me hungry for the conclusion to this duology.

Serpentine features ghosts and demons and queerness and zombies and kissing. What else needs to be said?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sunil Patel is a Bay Area fiction writer and playwright who has written about everything from ghostly cows to talking beer. His plays have been performed at San Francisco Theater Pub and San Francisco Olympians Festival, and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Fireside Magazine, Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, Flash Fiction Online, The Book Smugglers, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Plus he is Assistant Editor of Mothership Zeta. His favorite things to consume include nachos, milkshakes, and narrative. Find out more at ghostwritingcow.com, where you can watch his plays, or follow him @ghostwritingcow. His Twitter has been described as “engaging,” “exclamatory,” and “crispy, crunchy, peanut buttery.”

Interview: Ernest Cline

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy | 6166 words

Ernest Cline is the author of the best-selling science fiction novel Ready Player One, which is currently being adapted for film by Steven Spielberg. Cline also wrote the screenplay for Fanboys, about a group of hardcore Star Wars fans, and he recently appeared in the documentary film Atari: Game Over, about the collapse of the once mighty video game company Atari, which was forced to bury hundreds of thousands of unsold game cartridges in the New Mexico desert. Cline’s new novel, Armada, about video game champs battling aliens, is out now.

This interview first appeared on Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by David Barr Kirtley and produced by John Joseph Adams. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the interview or other episodes.

You’re known for writing these books full of obscure, geeky references from your childhood. Tell us how you got obsessed with science fiction and video games as a kid.

I was five years old when Star Wars came out, and I have a vivid memory of coming out of the movie theater, after seeing Luke blow up the Death Star for only the sixth or seventh time at that point, and going out into the lobby and playing Space Invaders. And it was the first time I had controlled anything on a screen; up until then, television and video screens had been a passive experience. I was lucky to be born in the ’70s, because I got to be part of the first generation to have video games, period, and then also to have home video game consoles; I got my Atari in Christmas of ’79 and that changed my whole childhood. And then getting a VCR changed my life again, being able to re-watch movies and study how they were made and record things off of the television; and then having a home computer—a TRS-80—and being able to make my own video games and program a computer. I was also part of the first generation to have cable television.

Do you think you were a typical kid of your generation? Or would all your friends know you as the kid who was most into video games or science fiction?

I didn’t realize it at the time, because I was the only one in my grade school, but I was a stereotypical nerd; I was interested in electronics and science and video games. I guess I would be one of the first video game nerds. But once all the grade schools poured into the junior high and high school, it turned out that there were one or two kids from every school like me; we just had to find each other. Those were the guys I ended up playing Dungeons & Dragons with, going to local arcades with, and they’ve become my lifelong friends and inspired some of the characters in books and movies.

Speaking of Dungeons & Dragons, I heard you say in an interview that your parents didn’t like you playing. How much pushback did you get on that?

It was forbidden, because my family was very religious. My mother had gotten ahold of this book from someone at church called Playing with Fire; it was fear-mongering about all the dangers of roleplaying games. And she thought that I was really going to try and collect spell components and cast spells and that it was meddling with witchcraft; I was meddling with powers I didn’t understand. That was a part of the appeal; it was almost like heavy metal. I remember sneaking my Dungeons & Dragons books in and out of the house under my jacket.

You mentioned you were programming computer games; were you also writing any sort of fiction at that time?

Some of the first things I ever wrote were skits for my Boy Scout troupe to perform at campfires, and I would write short stories for school, but it wasn’t until high school that I would sit down to try and write things. But it always ended being the thing I was best at in school; I was able to be funny, and be funny on paper. When you’re a kid, you look for what gets you attention or impresses other people, and so I was drawn to doing it.

Did you try submitting stories to any of the science fiction magazines?

I did not; my first published fiction that wasn’t in a school literary magazine is Ready Player One. I started out wanting to be a screenwriter, and then, although it took ten years, I actually got Fanboys made and it was so disheartening to have my work warped and mutilated to the point where there are scenes still in the movie that make fun of the characters or of Star Wars fans. I’m still proud of the movie, but when I see it, I just see all the things that they changed and things that could have been better but were out of my control. I’d always wanted to try writing a novel, but seeing that lack of control really inspired me to sit down and try to do it and stop writing screenplays.

For the people who aren’t disillusioned with screenwriting yet, could you say a bit about how a screenplay actually ends up getting made into a movie?

I’m not completely disillusioned; I’m working on the screenplay for Armada right now. Starting out a screenwriter and trying to get scripts made, you’re not the low man on the totem pole; you’re the part that’s in the ground. Your script is just a blueprint. But adapting your own novel is completely different, because the story already exists the way that you intended. My screenwriting career has a new lease on life, because now I will always write the story in fiction first, and then the story can have its own life. I think that’s one of the frustrating things for most screenwriters; no one gets to see your story as you intended it.

For Fanboys, I was really inspired by Kevin Smith, Richard Linklater, and Robert Rodríguez, guys who used very limited resources to make their first movies and that’s how they launched their film careers. Fanboys has that title because it’s simple, like Clerks, Slackers, or El Mariachi. I was trying to do a small story and I thought it could be dialogue-driven and showcase my writing and that I could make it myself, in Austin, Texas, where I live.

I wrote a part for my friend, Harry Knowles, to play himself. Harry, at the time, had just founded Ain’t It Cool News, and it was the first movie news fansite. For a while he was sitting in with Roger Ebert on At the Movies, and through his own enthusiasm had become a powerful film critic. It was part of what made Austin a cool movie town, that Harry lived here, and the Alamo Drafthouse had just opened, which is movie-geek heaven.

Fanboys is about a group of friends in Ohio who find out that one of their number is dying and he’s not going to live to see Episode I, and so they go on this road trip to break into Skywalker Ranch and see it early. And it occurred to me that, if you were going to do this, and you needed the blueprints and keycards, that Harry Knowles was one of the guys you would go to. He had access to all that stuff; people remember seeing the Episode I script at his house six months before the movie came out, and he had the score, and people were always leaking stuff to him. He actually did have blueprints to Skywalker Ranch. So I wrote him into the script, to be the “wizard” alongside the road that gives them the magic talisman that helps them on their adventure. Harry read the script and he loved it so much that he read it in one sitting, got up, and wrote this glowing review of it on his website, how it was like the best script he’d ever read about what it meant to be a fan of something and how love of some facet of pop culture can bind you together with your friends. It’s still buried on his website from way back in 1998, and everybody in Hollywood reads his website and that was how, even though I’d just quit my job and bought a van and a camera and was going to try to film it all myself, it ended up getting optioned by a young producer named Matt Perniciaro. He helped me develop it and shop it around Hollywood.

It took seven years, but eventually the script found its way to Kevin Spacey, who had just started his own production company—Trigger Street Productions—and he read the script and loved it and decided to become a producer. That changed everything, because up until then they couldn’t ask for George Lucas’ permission to make a movie about breaking into his house and stealing his stuff; there’s a whole group of people in place to make sure he doesn’t get stupid phone calls like that. But Kevin Spacey was able to call him up—I think George Lucas said in an interview that he thought Kevin was calling him about being in one of his movies—and told him he was producing a movie; that it was an homage to Star Wars and Star Wars fandom. He said yes and use Star Wars, and let us shoot at Skywalker Ranch. It took two more years to come out, because in post-production there was a lot of fighting between the producers and the Weinstein Company, who put up changing the dying friend plotline and excising it. I wasn’t even sure if the movie would come out in theaters—I thought it might go direct to video—and we missed the thirtieth anniversary of Star Wars. It finally came out in 2009 and Princess Leia, Lando, Captain Kirk, and Darth Maul all make cameos in it; Kevin Smith is in it, and it blows my mind that the movie ever got made. Still, unless you’re a writer/director/producer who also finances your own movie, filmmaking is very collaborative; if you’re spending millions of dollars to make a movie, it’s a product that they want to sell to as many people as possible, which is not always the goal of art. You have a lot more control and freedom writing fiction than you do screenwriting, but you don’t reach as big an audience. As you know, a lot of people won’t even read a book until they find out there’s going to be a movie.

So you thought Fanboys didn’t really stay true to your vision and had to start over as a fiction writer. What was the process? Did you get an agent?

I didn’t feel like I was starting all over; Fanboys is the only one that’s been made, but I’ve sold several other screenplays and that encouraged me that I could make a living as a writer. Thundercade was a script that I wrote that just never got produced; if I had written it as a novel first, people would have already read that story. And if I had written Fanboys as a novel, the story as I intended it would have existed in a form that people could read, but now all that will exist, unless people dig up some early draft of the screenplay, is just the final movie as it is, and it has my name as one of the writers on it even though I didn’t have final control over the final product.

Ready Player One was just one of the many ideas that I had that I thought might be a movie, initially; I came up with, “What if Willy Wonka was a videogame designer, and what if he held his golden ticket contest inside his greatest video game creation?” That was the initial kernel of the idea, but it didn’t really get going until I figured out what all the riddles and puzzles and clues that this eccentric video game designer would leave behind to find a worthy successor: All the different pop culture of his life. I thought about computer and video game designers that I knew and they’re all geeky guys and love all the stuff that I love: Monty Python, Dungeons & Dragons—the more successful the video game developer, often the bigger the geek. The eccentric billionaire in my story is one-third Willy Wonka, one-third Howard Hughes, and one-third Richard Garriott, who invented all of the Ultima games and he had an online, in-game persona—Lord British—that he would cosplay as at conventions. He had a mansion outside of Austin with all these secret passages and vampire hunting kits and all these other weird things; he used his money to buy a ticket to go into space. He was a real example to me of what a geek with a lot of money and resources could accomplish and I threw all of that into creating the character of James Halliday.

Once I had that idea, for using the pop culture of my life as the ancient mythology in my Indiana Jones story, it became really fun to sit down and work on it. I think that’s the only reason I finished the book; it took me years of working a full day job in front of a computer and then coming home and trying to get back in front of a computer to write my story, and I would stop and write other screenplays and then come back to it. But I always believed in it and I always knew that I wanted to finish it; it was just a really insanely ambitious first novel—it wasn’t just a few characters, but a giant sprawling stage. As I refined the idea, I realized it probably couldn’t be a movie if I wanted to weave all this pop culture into it; in a movie, to use another movie or a song in your story, you’re actually reproducing it so you have to get the rights for it. But in a book, you can have any soundtrack you want; you can have any painting you want hanging on the wall; you can do a lot of things with no budget that you couldn’t do in a big budget Hollywood movie. It was really liberating to geek out as much as I wanted, without any producer telling me that they didn’t get it or to take it out.

When I finished it, I already had an agent and a manager, and I was in the Writer’s Guild because of Fanboys, so that helped me find a lit agent in New York. And then everything you could want to happen happened to me once Ready Player One got out in to the world; there was a bidding war over the book rights and the very next day over the film rights, so my whole life changed in that forty-eight hours, for a book I wasn’t even sure I could get published—I wasn’t sure you could have Mechagodzilla fight Ultraman in your book and not get sued.

That brings us to your new novel, Armada. How did you come up with the idea, and what was it like trying to follow up Ready Player One?

It was a lot of pressure; I would listen to that Billy Joel song—and David Bowie, Queen—“Under Pressure” a lot to keep it in perspective. Ready Player One was such a runaway success and just continued to get bigger and more popular as time went on, even while I was working on Armada. Armada had been an idea that I’d been kicking around for a long time that I thought might be a screenplay, but again—like with Ready Player One—there were elements missing that didn’t feel like a fully fleshed out idea until I started to mix in the idea of quantum data teleportation, which is something I had just started reading at the time.

It’s always hard to synopsize where the idea for Armada came from, but I think it has its origins in this game Battlezone that Atari put out in 1980. It was a groundbreaking game, one of the first with 3D graphics; they were vector 3D graphics, but you could move around this 3D landscape. It was a tank game, and it was so realistic that the US Army bought Battlezone from Atari and then paid the original programmer, Ed Rotberg, to reprogram it and modify it into a training simulator called The Bradley Trainer to teach real soldiers how to operate the new Bradley combat vehicle. They never followed through on it, but just the idea that Battlezone could really teach me how to operate a tank to some degree—that had a powerful effect on my ten-year-old brain. I was already a child of Star Wars, so I grew up building cockpits out of couch cushions in front of my television and playing those first-person shooters like Starship 1 where you had a cockpit view, and I would think of that as a starship simulator in my living room and pretend that I was Luke Skywalker. And the games at the arcade, I loved those, too, where they were cockpit simulators you would climb into and it would make you feel like you were getting into an X-wing. I spent my whole youth imagining, “What if I was really controlling a ship somewhere? What if I was actually training?” When I saw The Last Starfighter—one of my favorite movies—I would go down into the lobby and play video games to recapture that feeling of being in the movie.

I read Ender’s Game around the same time; it was published as a novel in 1985, but it began as a short story that was published in 1977, the same year Star Wars came out. And the short story is very similar to the novel—part of Ender’s training is some early video game simulations of combat. I love that idea of video games being used as a training simulation, but when I got the idea for Armada it occurred to me that I’d never seen that idea used with drones, which is something relatively new but has become, in the past five years, a huge part of our Air Force. They just announced they were going to make Top Gun part two with Tom Cruise, and it’s all about Maverick as a drone pilot. Also, my brother is a Marine and an explosive ordinance disposal technician and they use drones as well, tracked robots with articulated hands that allow them to disarm IEDs or shells from a distance. The controls for both drones look like Xbox controllers, and they do that on purpose because it lowers the learning curve for the soldiers, because they’ve all grown up playing Xbox games.

I combined all my love of Star Wars, Ender’s Game, Buck Rogers, Battlestar Galactica and then the idea of video gamers using their game consoles to control drones, married with this idea of quantum data teleportation, which is using Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance” to transmit data losslessly over infinite space. You wouldn’t have to use radio waves and send a space probe out and wait thirty minutes for the signal to get there and back; you could control it instantaneously. Once I had those ideas, I had the idea of, “What if the video gamers of Earth could use their gaming platforms to control an army of drones to fight off an alien invasion?”

It’s such a natural idea because you sit down and play a videogame and you want those video game skills to have some real world value. All the science fiction movies and video games that I grew up playing, I wove those into the story, made them part of the conspiracy, part of the training and preparation by the government to prepare our hearts and minds for an alien invasion. If an alien invasion happened tomorrow, we wouldn’t be prepared for it, but we would have all these expectations based upon fifty years of War of the Worlds and V and Dark Skies—Independence Day-style alien invasions. I’ve never seen an alien invasion movie where everyone has seen all the alien invasion movies that I’ve seen, so I wanted to do a story like that, too. It involves virtual reality, too; playing a flight simulator on an Oculus Rift will blow your mind, because you’re not pretending to fly your ship through a two dimensional window anymore; now you can look out over your wing and track planes behind you.

You mentioned that, in the story, the US government has been funding the science fiction video game and movie genre as a way of preparing the population for an actual invasion they know is coming. And I don’t know if you know Tim Powers, but he writes all these secret history novels and he said that when you start doing research and making up your own conspiracy theory, you get to the point where you start noticing things and start to wonder, “Wait, am I on to something here?”

For me it was a natural thing; I dressed up like Luke Skywalker three Halloweens in a row. If you’re a five-year-old kid seeing Star Wars, there would be no better propaganda. I was ready to go fight aliens. It seemed like a whole generation around the world was being primed to want to fight aliens and go into outer space and a lot of people, between Star Wars and Star Trek, were drawn to working in science or the space industry. Me, specifically, I just wanted to kill aliens in a cockpit of an X-wing or a Buck Rogers Thunderfighter. It was more fun to imagine that as a conspiracy, but I did do a lot of research into alien conspiracy theories and Roswell and all of that. I remember being struck by one film, Mirage Men, where an ex-government disinformation agent talks about how a lot of people believe that aliens came down and met the US government in a scenario very much like the one depicted in Close Encounters of the Third Kind; by making a movie, if you told the real story, people would just say, “Oh, that’s just like Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” and it immediately discredits them. That idea stuck with me.

Another interesting thing in this book is that the main character, Zack, knows enough about science to know that the alien invasions depicted in movies like Independence Day don’t really make sense, and that the alien invasion he’s facing in this book doesn’t make sense. What are some of the things that don’t make sense about alien invasions we see depicted in pop culture?

One of them is: Why wouldn’t the aliens use drones? When I watch Star Wars now, if they can have real time holographic phone calls between planets and faster-than-light speed, that’s enough information to make a remote control X-wing or TIE fighter; you do not need to send Porkins down to die senselessly. Most alien invasions are sending down real people in real ships to die and try to take over the planet, and movies like V—they always conduct some sort of subterfuge to win our trust and then take us over. Or it’s like Battleship or Battle: Los Angeles, where they just come down and conduct a World War II-style ground invasion, with ship-to-ship combat. They could just hurl a meteor at Earth if they wanted to exterminate us. Why do they even come to Earth to begin with? There’s always the idea that Earth is this perfect, rare blue world, but it’s perfect for us because we evolved to live here; for any other alien, they always have to terraform Earth. Why not terraform a lifeless rock that’s not inhabited by a bunch of nuke-wielding monkey-boys who are going to fight back?

Not only do the invasions and motives often not make sense, there are just so many alternatives: If an intelligent species has the technology to travel light years across interstellar space with these massive warships, they’ve probably reached the singularity and would be beyond the need for anything that we have. But you never see characters stop and talk about any of this, because they’re too busy running from explosions. Which I get; I love those movies.

Say more about the characters in this book; I mentioned Zack Lightman, and then his dad is Xavier, who is a big video game fanatic who’s been missing for years. Is Xavier you? Does he have all your same video game and music tastes?

He’s kind of based on my younger brother, Eric, who’s a year younger and a foot taller and a major in the Marine Corps. He joined the Marines when he was nineteen and has been deployed in all the major conflicts we’ve had over the past couple decades. And he also became a father during that time, and I saw him become a weary battle veteran and have to spend long stretches away from his son and how hard that was on both of them, and how, in some ways, the modern technology we have makes that harder on soldiers; they can be in a battle during the day and then come home and get on FaceTime and have to hear about the phone bill and grade cards. They can’t keep home and war separate anymore. The book is dedicated to my brother; he and I grew up playing video games together and going to arcades.

Speaking of real people who appear in this book, there are a bunch of real scientists who appear, including Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Neil deGrasse Tyson.

And I hope that they, or their estates, don’t come after me. I love all those guys, and there’s an armistice council in the book, a panel of prominent scientists who are tasked with trying to negotiate peace with the aliens. But the alien invaders aren’t really talking and the armistice council isn’t given all the information they need to actually do their job. It always makes the story feel more real if real people are in it, and all of those people that I named were people whose books I had read while I was researching Armada or whose work I had studied, especially Jill Tarter and Seth Shostak. I have been a SETI fanboy for over a decade and those are two of my favorites. Jill Tarter serves as the inspiration for Ellen Arroway, Jodie Foster’s character in Carl Sagan’s Contact, so I thought it would be cool to pay tribute to her. I had to have Stephen Hawking in there. I love the idea of Stephen Hawking also being a drone pilot. He’s a badass.

You also have real video game designers; the fictional video game in the book was made by this unbelievable all-star team, including Chris Roberts, Shigeru Miyamoto, Richard Garriott, Gabe Newell.

Richard Garriott especially, since he went into space; I had a bit more about how his trip into space was part of the conspiracy, but that was too insider. But all those guys have been instrumental in building the amazing video game industry that we all enjoy, and I wanted to pay tribute to each of them and put them on the side of good. If the scenario described in the book actually did go down, I think all those guys would be on the front lines.

Reading the acknowledgments of this book is like a Greatest Hits list of our guests over the years: Patrick Rothfuss, John Scalzi, Felicia Day, Daniel H. Wilson, Richard Garriott—do you know all these people? How did that come about?

I met them all as a result of writing Ready Player One. I met Felicia through Wil Wheaton, who reads the audiobooks of both Ready Player One and Armada. Richard Garriott helped me do the Ready Player One Easter Egg Hunt contest for the paperback; he was mentioned in Ready Player One, too, and inspired the story. John Scalzi came to my book signing in Cincinnati, on my hardcover tour for Ready Player One, and we’ve been friends ever since. I’m so lucky; all these people that I’m huge fans of and whose work I really loved and respected, I’ve gotten to know them as friends. Felicia Day sent me an early copy of her book, which is fantastic and comes out next month.

You mentioned Wil Wheaton did the audiobook: What was that experience like? Were you involved with that at all?

I had done spoken word performances and public speaking stuff before, and they offered to let me read the audio book. But I’m not an actor, and all my favorite audiobooks are always done by an actor who brings the story to life. I always had Wil Wheaton in mind because of Stand By Me and Next Generation. I love Wil’s writing, too; he used to write a column for The Onion, I think, called “Games of our Lives” where he would review old Atari games and they’re just hysterical, and it became clear to me that even though he grew up on a television show, he had the same childhood. He told me he used to play GURPS and program his home computer in his dressing room on the Paramount lot when he was playing Wesley Crusher. So I knew he would be perfect and he blew everybody away; that’s become one of the best-selling audiobooks in history because of his performance. I just got to finish listening to him do Armada this past weekend and it’s amazing; he does Patrick Stewart impressions and video game sounds and he just brings my characters to life; there’s one conversation where he’s doing eight different characters at once. Every book I write, I’m going to see if I can get Wil.

I watched this documentary recently called Atari: Game Over, and you appeared in that. It’s funny, because you’re going to do this pilgrimage with your DeLorean, and you have to pick it up from George R.R. Martin’s house, and I’m just wondering what the story is behind that.

The two biggest video game urban legends are E.T. cartridges buried in the desert and Polybius. Polybius is one that I weave into Armada: a strange, mind control video game. And I knew that was probably not true, but the E.T. cartridges in the desert . . . I’m a big part of the Atari collector online community, so I knew there was proof and articles that it had really happened. Around the time that I was hearing that they were going to make this documentary and actually dig up these Atari games, Zak Penn—who was making that documentary and is also a screenwriter who has written a bunch of the X-Men movies and Last Action Hero—got hired to do a pass on the Ready Player One script. He called me up and was like, “Hey, I’m doing this documentary and, reading the book, it’s clear that you’re a huge Atari fan; would you like to come and be a part of this?”

George R.R. Martin and I had met at a convention here in Texas the year before, and became friends—I interviewed him at a panel—and he had asked to borrow my DeLorean; he owns a movie theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives, and he was going to show Back to the Future. And I was like, “Can I tell people that you’re borrowing it?” He said yes, so—done!

I drove it out there and left it with him and when Zak Penn called me, I realized I could just fly into Santa Fe, pick up my time machine, and drive to Alamogordo, and on the way I could stop at the Very Large Array where they shot Contact and also visit Roswell. New Mexico has got a lot of cool stuff scattered across that desert wasteland. It was one of the greatest adventures; my buddy, Mike Mika, came down, and he’s the guy who’s helped me make video games for Ready Player One and Armada. They’re available online.

You’ve mentioned that Ready Player One and Armada are being adapted into movies; what’s the status of your various film projects?

I just finished Armada, the book, and I’m working on the screenplay adaptation right now; I’m trying to get the first draft done before I leave on tour later this week. Universal is really excited to make it into a movie, and they’ve been chomping at the bit for me to get finished. I’m excited to get to do my own gamer version of Star Wars, even though I have to go up against Star Wars movies.

And then Ready Player One: I’m told Zak is finishing up his changes for Mr. Spielberg on the script, and that they are gearing up for pre-production this fall and would maybe shoot the movie next year and it would be out sometime in 2017. That’s just a gross estimation.

I also heard you say you have a “Classic arcade gamers vs. Xbox gamers” script?

That was Thundercade, which I sold to Lakeshore Entertainment. They ended up not being able to get it made and the rights reverted back to me. That’s one of the screenplays that are in various stages of development; I might make it someday, but other movies have since used that same idea, so I don’t know if it would be as fresh as when I wrote it eight years ago.

Ernest Cline’s new book is called Armada. Ernie, thanks for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast. It is produced by John Joseph Adams and hosted by: David Barr Kirtley, who is the author of thirty short stories, which have appeared in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and Lightspeed, in books such as Armored, The Living Dead, Other Worlds Than These, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and on podcasts such as Escape Pod and Pseudopod. He lives in New York.

Author Spotlight: Rahul Kanakia

Sandra Odell | 1670 words

From the opening paragraph, “Here is My Thinking on a Situation That Affects Us All” establishes the setting, character, and the character’s amazing voice. What inspired such an incredible story?

You know, I don’t really know. According to my records, I wrote it over the course of two and a half hours on January 4th, 2015. I remember that I was at my parents’ house for the holidays, and I was in my childhood bedroom and the first draft of the story just came. The next day I spent about half an hour revising it, of which about twenty minutes were devoted to rewriting the final line. Even now, I’m still not sure the final line is perfect, but it’s okay. It’s done.

With regards to the voice and the first paragraph, the only thing that comes to mind is The Sweetest Thing, which was a 2002 movie starring Christina Applegate, Selma Blair, and Cameron Diaz (it was a female gross-out comedy that was something of a precursor to movies like Bridesmaids). I remember that when I was a teenager, this movie was on HBO all the time, and I watched it a few times, and the line that’s always stuck in my memory is when the three leads are singing a song about how you should always shower compliments on a guy’s penis, and a random woman says, “It’s oozy and green!” (bit.ly/oozygreen). I think that use of the word “oozy,” and the weird gelatinous quality that it gives to the voice, are something you can hear in the first line of my story.

Very few writers can capture such a distinctly non-human point of view as you have with the spaceship. Whether it is in the subtle mentions of physiology and physical form, or the commentary of “dogs and locusts and funguses” sharing the bond of awareness, you never once portray the spaceship as anything other than its own unique self. Why do you feel such changes in perspective appeal to genre readers?

I don’t know that it’s possible to really have a nonhuman point of view. No matter what we describe, we anthropomorphize it. For instance, would an alien spaceship really fall in love with a man? Probably not. However, it’s always tempting to try to capture something that’s other. Paradoxically, I think genre readers like non-human characters because we empathize with the outcaste and the alien. We see ourselves in them. There’s danger in that, I think, since it leads us to ignore the ways that we are powerful and oppressive. Maybe this spaceship is a perfect example. It’s an immense, alien spaceship, but it’s crafted a narrative wherein it’s stuck and powerless.

You make good use of sensory impressions throughout the story: cooling in a bath of molten iron; sizzling on the ocean floor; a journey into the dark; the precision of your visual descriptions. How do you feel such impressions draw readers into a story?

I’m glad you think so! I often feel like I’m the absolute worst at this. Prose fiction is so good at giving you the texture of another person’s thoughts. You really feel in some ways, like you are them. But I often think it’s not very good at putting us in their body and giving us the experience of what it must be like to see through their eyes. Oftentimes, when I write a novel or story, I feel like I’m writing a well-narrated shadow play—all the objects and places exist only in outline—and I have to tell myself that for the reader, all of this will feel much more real.

On your blog, you share your thoughts on rejections, becoming a worse writer, and the pleasure of an exquisitely formed narrative. If you could reach through time and talk to the younger Rahul about the ups and downs of writing, what would you say?

The main thing that’s surprised me in my writing life is how long it’s taken to get anywhere. I wrote and submitted my first story shortly after my eighteenth birthday, and I was certain that story was going to sell, be read widely, and win awards. That was twelve years ago! It took me four years to sell a story to a pro market. Six years to sell a second one. And even now I don’t sell everything I write (not even close). It’s tough, and it takes a very long time. But I really don’t think that would be a helpful thing to say to my younger self. Probably if I’d known, back then, how hard it would be, I’d have given up.

What I really wish I could tell him is how much there is to learn. Writing a story is so difficult! And even now, after selling a novel and dozens of stories, I am continually learning that there are very basic things which I don’t know (and I’m talking basic, basic things, like how to construct a plot that dramatizes a character’s core inner conflict). Writing is half instinct and half very careful thought, but for too many years I thought it was mostly instinct. If I were able to go back and talk to myself at a younger age, I’d tell Rahul to study craft and to pay attention to all the things he thinks he’s too good for (plot, sympathetic characters, symbolism, etc.). But, of course, people did tell me that stuff when I was younger, and I just didn’t listen.

Do you find that your writing process differs when writing novels versus writing shorter works?

My writing process is changing continually, and it’s gotten to the point where I no longer have any idea how I do things. Right now, in particular, it’s going through a lot of flux. I used to write without any outline. I’d just have a character, a situation, and a sense of where I wanted things to end up. But I’ve lately come to realize that when I did this, I’d often leave out very critical elements and end up with weak stories that didn’t have strong character arcs. Basically, with each story I’d set off hoping that it would be like “Here Is My Thinking . . .” (i.e. the kind of story that tells itself), but if it turned out to not be that sort of story, then I’d have zero idea how to turn it into something compelling.

So lately I’ve stepped back and become more analytical. Partly this has been a result of my novel writing. For the second book on my contract with my publisher, I have to submit a synopsis before I can start writing, and lately I’ve been going back and forth with my editor over the synopsis. This has led me to think more deeply about the kinds of stories that can be told. And these insights have, in turn, affected my short story writing. I’ve been trying to be more purposeful, with my stories, in thinking about what the core narrative and character arc are. Which is to say, I no longer really have any strong method for how I write.

Who do you turn to when you want to get your science fiction reading on?

I really like Maureen McHugh. After The Apocalypse is one of the best story collections I’ve read in any genre. It’s full of perfectly human stories about various apocalypses, both major and minor. Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings was one of the most gripping books I’ve read in recent years: It restored to me the feeling I used to get, when I was a kid, from reading David Eddings or Mercedes Lackey. It’s one of the shames of growing up—the fact that old classics no longer have their power (because you see their flaws), and now it takes a much better writer to extract from you the same emotional reaction. But Ken Liu is that writer, and I’m really looking forward to his next. Similarly, Ferrett Steinmetz’s Flex was an amazingly compelling urban fantasy—I’ve rarely seen a better realized magic system, or a book where the personal conflicts were so well integrated with the broader thematic questions.

Finally, I think Jo Walton is one of the best writers working today. Earlier this year I read My Real Children and was absolutely blown away. The intertwined stories were beautiful and affecting, and the book had an interesting broader point to make about fate and about the possibility for human happiness even in the face of global misery. And then immediately afterwards I read Walton’s The Just City, which is a serious take on a premise that is absolutely bananas (the goddess Athena collects together three hundred philosophically minded individuals, from throughout time, for the purpose of creating the ideal state envisioned by Plato’s Republic). The book seems like it cannot possibly be good, but it is. Moreover, the two books are so different and are good in such dissimilar ways—zaniness and high energy of The Just City forms a stark contrast to the precise level of control and distance that makes My Real Children such a delight—that it’s difficult to believe they were written by the same author.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Author Spotlight: Karen Joy Fowler

Sandra Odell | 732 words

Many writers try to create fairy tales anew whether through plot development, narrative, setting, or characterization. With “The Black Fairy’s Curse” you use a unique blend of point-of-view and narrative structure to shatter the preconceived notions of a handful of fairy tales. Can you tell us a bit about what inspired this particular story?

It occurred to me that the one story that might actually be able to pull off the old chestnut “She woke up it was all a dream” ending was the Sleeping Beauty. So this was a retelling that began with the ending and proceeded backwards.

Throughout the narrative, you never name the main character, allowing her identity to flow from story to story while still harkening back to the idea of the feminine. I think it is this concept of identity that intrigued me the most, that of a constant feminine presence with strength and confidence layered beneath the seemingly helpless shell. When writing, how aware are you of your efforts to push the boundaries of the envelope, to re-forge the old into something new?

There is no point and no juice in a retelling that doesn’t cast the original material in a different light. The impulse to retell is simply not there without that sense that something new can be said. So I’m always hoping for a story that surprises, but this desire is central in a retelling.

The story is filled with movement: running, climbing, swimming, sex. Each activity is painted in broad, vivid strokes, allowing the reader to slip into the action if only for a moment. What would you consider the most important elements of the narrative voice when it comes to encouraging reader engagement in a story?

Big question! I imagine there are any number of approaches, all equally successful if done well. I often favor a kind of intimacy in the writer’s voice, a sort of relationship the voice can create with the reader. Austen, of course, is the absolute best at establishing this intimacy. Mystery is also crucial—I try to think of what the reader doesn’t know yet, what she will keep reading in order to find out.

If you could be any fairy tale heroine, which one would you be? How would you rewrite your own story?

I wouldn’t be a fairy tale heroine for anything in this world. I wouldn’t be the heroine in an Austen book. I wouldn’t wish to solve murders or go where no man has gone before or battle cyborgs in order to keep the human race alive or scheme to put myself or my children on the throne. I’m quite happy with my story just as it is. At least so far.

You have an impressive list of publications and awards both in and out of SF/F genre fiction. Do you find yourself writing for a particular audience (“I’ll write this novel for people who like XXXX, and this one for people who like YYYY.”), or do you write stories you would like to read and leave it to others to decide for themselves?

I am always writing for a certain kind of reader, a reader I often identify in my head as the SF reader. This is true even when I’m not writing SF. This reader doesn’t mind grappling with a difficult text, enjoys problem-solving her way out of an initial confusion in a book, likes to be surprised. She is an active reader with eclectic tastes. She is the kind of reader I think that I am.

When you want to get your SF/F on, to whom do you turn? Who sets your reader heart on fire?

I love Ted Chiang, Kelly Link, Molly Gloss, Ursula Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, John Kessel, Sofia Samatar, Kij Johnson, Nalo Hopkinson, Geoff Ryman, and many, many, many others whose names are just not occurring to me at this moment, but will as soon as I send this. I am a great fan of the Game of Thrones books, though if Jon Snow is dead, I’m going to have a problem with that.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Author Spotlight: Brian Stableford

Jude Griffin | 588 words

What was the spark for this story?

I was writing a set of “tales of the biotech revolution,” many of which assumed that if everyone were going to live for a very long time, raising children would have to become a relatively rare endeavour collectively undertaken by groups of adults considerably larger than the traditional two. This was one of the spinoff items in which I tried to envisage alternative scenarios—in this one, artificially extended parenthood.

How did this story evolve from first draft to final version?

The notion of children who remain children permanently inevitably called up the idea of Peter Pan, who inevitably invoked the phantom of the Great God Pan and his seductive pipes. The name Wendy followed automatically (as did the punch line) and once having sketched the initial predicament and introduced the initiating factor of the epidemic of “progeria,” it was just a matter of following the logic of the situation to the end. The second draft only involved a certain amount of tidying up, no significant alterations.

You’ve done a lot of writing about science fiction—what fascinates you most these days/would make for a good topic for a new book?

I’m presently working on an account of the evolution of French roman scientifique [scientific fiction] from Cyrano de Bergerac to the aftermath of the Great War, partly because I’m fascinated by evolutionary processes and partly because I’m very interested in the manner in which different cultural contexts influence them—hence an analysis of the differences between the patterns of evolution in France, Britain, and America.

Whose work has been the most unsettling for you to read?

The most unsettling novel I’ve ever translated (translators get a much more visceral appreciation of texts than casual readers) was The Mutilated Bacchus by André Arnyvelde, which the author began in 1914 in an optimistic mood, mapping out his hero’s attempt to transform a French village into a mini-utopia by means of new technologies and a philosophy of the will to joy, but had to set aside when drafted into the Great War; when he returned to it in 1919 after four years in the trenches, he was in a very different frame of mind, and meticulously devastated all of his own pre-war hopes by subjecting his characters to fates far worse than death; rendering it into English made me feel physically sick and I was deeply upset for days. A work of sheer perverse genius; its publisher described it as “unreadable”; everyone ought to read it.

Any new projects you want to tell us about?

I’ve just finished a novel called Eurydice’s Lament, the fourth item in a series whose previous items were collected in a volume entitled The Wayward Muse. It’s set in an artists’ colony on an island off the coast of France, in an alternate world in which the Roman Empire, organized by an unassassinated Julius Caesar, never collapsed. It features the rediscovery of the suspiric language and the final revelation of the truth behind the myth of Orpheus. I now only have twenty-one more novels to write in order to bring my career total up to a round 100, and hope to complete the set by July 2018, when I turn seventy (if I live that long).

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.

Author Spotlight: Helena Bell

Liz Argall | 1441 words

How did this story come about?

I used to email regularly with a friend of mine from Clarion West. He showed me the cover of a book he was about to redesign and I said it looked like the cover for a weird romance story about a giant woman who lived in the forest and ate tiny men.

. . . I guess it just grew from there.

This story reminded me so strongly of running through the pine forest near my school in primary school. It’s a special kind of feeling where your legs do feel long (and occasionally, in my case, startle a mob of kangaroos!). What were your woods like?

I never really lived near the woods, but I had friends who did. We’d run around and skin our knees and climb boulders and jump into sand pits and it never occurred to us that anything we did was remotely dangerous because little girls are immortal, after all.

Sometimes the magic of the woods exists because of the primal need to be other than what girls are in school, which means if the boys had a woods it might be different because their limitations on complete self-hood are different. Sometimes I think the magic comes from the dynamic tension between Abbey chasing Samantha. How does the magic system work for you in this story?

I saw this story as a tension between acceptable/unacceptable violence. As adults, we would look at the woods as a place of danger, yet in some ways it’s far less destructive than the coded behavior the girls are being taught. My mother went to Sacred Heart, on which I based the school in the story, and Primes was a system of which she spoke highly for how it provided real consequences to conduct. But it’s also an institution designed to reinforce power structures and hierarchies. My grandmother, who also attended Sacred Heart, was the one who told me that there were rules for when and to whom you should curtsey, bow, or do nothing. Only she couldn’t keep the rules straight, so she ended up bowing to everyone, yet another detail I stole for the story. So I suppose I saw the magic system in the story as both a literalization and a bastardization of the school’s structures. The girls don’t question why it exists for the same reason they don’t question Primes or any of the other seemingly arbitrary rules for their lives. They simply react.

At the two extremes, we have Abbey and Samantha. Samantha has the more romantic outlook: She wants to explore and sees the woods as a way of building community bonds. Abbey sees it as just another tool that can be as easily manipulated as the rules within the school. In some ways Abbey has a better understanding of what the forest is and what it could mean, but she also immediately jumps to the question of how she can use it for her own ends.

There’s a way to look at the story and believe that as soon as the girls make their choice to stand with Abbey instead of Samantha, that the forest will cease to work because they broke some arbitrary rule they didn’t know about. But honestly I think the forest just is. Abbey will stop going in simply because she doesn’t need to: She has all the power she wants in the outside world, so going into a place where she might be challenged would be foolish. Most of the other girls will follow suit because they want to all fit in. The narrator will probably never go back out of some guilt she doesn’t really understand, and so the woods will simply fade from their memory until the next group of girls happens to discover it.

It’s interesting to me that structured exploration is a dynamic tension that splits the group, a sort of ending of the age of innocence. Why is this the leadership moment that brings divisions to the surface?

These are girls that thrive on familiarity and structured rules/expectations (even if they decide not to follow them). Both Abbey and Samantha are a bit ahead of them in the sense that they’re willing to take more risks, and the other girls will follow right along because as leaders, Abbey and Samantha are providing the structure they need . . . but since Abbey and Samantha are opposed, eventually the group has to split up. In some ways, the forest is actually something that delays the inevitable, rather than causes it.

How you decide when something should be a story and when it should be a poem?

Sometimes it’s just a matter of what have I written lately—if I’ve written more poetry (which hasn’t happened in a while), every idea tends to want to be a poem. If I’ve written more fiction, then every idea wants to be a story. It’s cyclical rather than dependent on the actual thing I want to write.

How are you so prolific?

. . . Am I? I think I finish maybe three or four stories a year—maybe more if I happen to be in the midst of an MFA (or Clarion West—that was a good year). I think that’s pretty low on average, but one advantage I think I have is that I don’t waste a lot of time on drafts that don’t go anywhere. Typically if I’m going to finish a story, I finish it within twenty-four hours. Revision and rewrites can take longer than that, of course, but it means that I don’t spend months and months putting off other projects because I’m trying to get the second half of something written.

How would you compare your MFA in poetry to Clarion Writers Workshop to your current MFA in Fiction? How are you brave enough to do two creative MFAs?

I wouldn’t call it bravery so much as a strong preference for getting people to pay me to write. The fully funded MFA program is one of the best things you can do for yourself as a writer: two to three years where people give you money to write, read, and discuss stories (and also to teach, but that’s not so bad). It’s definitely not for everyone—the stipends aren’t that high at most schools and it doesn’t have a terribly high return on investment in terms of employment after the MFA, but it’s a pretty great deal if you can manage it.

In terms of comparing the MFA experience to Clarion West . . . that’s tricky. I had the advantage that I did Clarion West right before starting at NC State, so Clarion West was almost like a pre-MFA bootcamp. It helped me generate a lot of stories, many of which ended up in my thesis, and then the MFA gave me the time and space to slowly process everything I’d learned at Clarion West. On the downside, when I got to NC State, I was so mad at the members of my cohort for not being my Clarion West class that I was vehemently anti-social the first semester.

Ultimately I think that Clarion West results in a better cohort experience—you bond so quickly and in such intense circumstances, and that really can’t be replicated. But the MFA gives you more time with your instructors, and more time to read books and collections while writing (and being immersed in that writing culture).

If someone were to ask me which one they should do, Clarion West/UCSD or an MFA, I would probably tell them to do a Clarion workshop for the simple reason that it’s a much shorter time commitment and with six instructors, they have a better chance of finding one they click with. But if they wanted my real opinion on what they should do: Clarion followed by an MFA (preferably at NC State).

Do you have any projects you’d like to tell us about?

My Masters of Accounting degree . . . but I assure you that you don’t want to hear about it.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Liz Argall’s short stories can be found in places like Apex Magazine, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and This is How You Die: Stories of the Inscrutable, Infallible, Inescapable Machine of Death. She creates the webcomic Things Without Arms and Without Legs and writes love songs to inanimate objects. Her previous incarnations include circus manager, refuge worker, artists’ model, research officer for the Order of Australia Awards, farm girl, and extensive work in the not–for–profit sector.

Author Spotlight: Caroline M. Yoachim

Laurel Amberdine | 771 words

I love this story, but you already know that, because I told you so during many stages of its existence! Can you tell the Lightspeed readers how “Rock, Paper, Scissors, Love, Death” came about?

Thank you! The story was really fun to write.

I do a writing contest on Codex (an online writing group) called Weekend Warrior. Participants write a flash fiction story every weekend for five straight weekends, and it’s a great way to get a lot of stories drafted in a short amount of time. Over the years, I’ve written around thirty-five stories for Weekend Warrior.

This year I decided to try something a little different—I wanted to write a freestanding flash story that I could use as the beginning of a longer piece. One of the contest prompts asked “what do you keep returning to, story after story, year after year?” and I noticed that I often write about love and/or death. I got the idea to structure the story as rock-paper-scissors-love-death, and I wrote the first section (ROCK) for the contest. I think it works pretty well as a stand-alone flash, although I definitely do like the longer version better.

Using a Pacific Northwest setting is unusual for you. What inspired that location, and how did it affect the story?

This question got me thinking about why I don’t use the Pacific Northwest as the setting for more stories, and I think part of it is that as both a reader and a writer, I like to escape into other worlds. Stories set where I live can feel a little too familiar, a little too comfortable.

But most of my story ideas come from mashing together whatever I’ve got in my head, and sometimes the things in my head are close to home. Around the time I was drafting this story, there was a rockslide at Snoqualmie Pass. That particular slide involved relatively small rocks, but in the past there have been rockslides involving boulders the size of cars.

The time travel loops are complex, as is the “Rock Paper Scissors” motif. Did any of that give you trouble while writing?

The hardest thing for me to keep track of was the pair of red-handled scissors. The scissors make three jumps on the time machine, and change hands five times. I had to be careful not to introduce continuity errors, and I also needed to make sure that the oldest pair of scissors were the ones that got destroyed by the rock.

I also had a hard time remembering which things beat which other things in rock-paper-scissors-love-death, so I had a rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock image that I used as a reference to make sure I had the correct winners for each pairing.

You’ve had a lot of success lately with short fiction. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers admiring your path?

It’s hard to give general advice to new writers, because everyone’s path is different. For instance, many people swear by “write every day,” which has never worked for me. I write best in bursts, with breaks in between.

With that said, here is my advice:

Write, revise, submit, repeat. Find a good critique group to get feedback on your work. Be persistent. Remember that a rejection isn’t personal, all it means is that a story wasn’t right for that particular market. Write what you love, and find whatever process works for you.

Finally, what are you working on lately? Any chance for a Caroline Yoachim novel one of these days?

Right now I’m focused on short fiction, with no novels coming out any time soon. But I will have a book out next year! I’m currently putting together stories for my collection, which will be out with Fairwood Press in 2016. It’s been fun reading over all my published work to find the right mix of stories. The collection will also include one or two original stories, so I’m working on getting those written and polished.

For readers interested in seeing more of my work before mid-2016, I have stories in recent issues of Fireside Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Daily Science Fiction. A complete list of my fiction is available on my website at http://carolineyoachim.com

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She recently moved to San Francisco with her husband, and is enjoying its vastly superior weather. Between naps she’s working on polishing up a few science fiction and fantasy novels, and hopes to send them out into the world soon.

Author Spotlight: Toh EnJoe

Jude Griffin | 664 words

What was the seed for “Printable”?

A news story I saw about being able to print a gun with a 3D printer. I just didn’t realize it would happen for some reason, even though it was obvious that we’d end up being able to print guns down the line.

What is your answer to: “Which is scarier: that the past could actually change or that you could just think it did?”

“I just think it did”!

I don’t really trust our ability to remember things and I’m really fed up with how much people try their best to justify themselves.

More than a Cartesian story, “Printable” felt to me like a literary representation of the Escher staircase: returning always to its beginning, but forever going up in space which makes that impossible. What was your goal for this story? Something more than an examination of Descartes’ demons and brains in vats, I think.

I often think about the discussion surrounding “brains in vats.” You know, lately I find myself having a hard time telling the difference between a brain that floats in a tank and a brain that floats in a skull. To say something geometrical . . . I think it would be amazing if a new geometrical structure not known to anyone was discovered while I was writing.

I did not expect Kant to show up in the last line. Did you?

I realized it when I finished writing, like “Huh, this was probably a story about Kant’s ‘thing-in-itself.’”

What are the challenges of punctuation and paragraph breaks in translation to/from English/Japanese?

David Boyd did the translation. I think the translator should be able to translate as they like. If that means better quality, then having them change the order around is good enough for me.

A widely quoted summary characterizes your work as known for its “scientific lucidity and literary impenetrability”—do you think that’s accurate?

That may be the correct expression. But novellas are firstly lines of words and lucidity and impenetrability are characteristics that those lines of words have . . . I can’t say whether that kind of sentence is lucid or impenetrable.

What’s been the most interesting reader interaction around “Printable”?

I don’t get any . . . reactions.

I don’t read any . . . reviews.

What else would you like readers to know about this story or take away from it?

That there is an author. But that the author is writing this novella in a different language and that the translation may not be correct.

It is correct, though. But you could say that even the sentence “this translation is correct” has been translated. This answer, too, has been translated by someone else. But I exist. Maybe.

Whose story made you work the hardest to appreciate it?

I had a lot of trouble with Jacques Roubaud’s “Our Beautiful Heroine”, but it was fun to read. The most fearsome writer out there is Marguerite Yourcenar. It took me 15 years to finish reading “The Abyss” . . . I don’t even feel like I understood it at all, though.

Who is your favourite author to read in translation?

James Joyce, if you’re talking about English to Japanese. For Japanese to English, Murasaki Shikibu. The Tale of Genji translated by Arthur Waley is a good one.

Any projects or news you want to tell us about?

I’m thinking about writing novellas that are a bit easier to translate. But the story I’m working on now is about creating new Chinese characters . . .

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.

Author Spotlight: Kameron Hurley

Sandra Odell | 1081 words

“The Light Brigade” has a very distinct narrative voice, one reminiscent of the “every man/woman,” a voice immediately identifiable as someone the reader may well know. How do you feel an author’s choice of narrative voice affects overall story structure and its impact on readers?

I wanted this story to have a very accessible point of view character—someone we could recognize and empathize with whether they were male, female, or other. Choosing the right narrator—and right distance from that narrator, whether it’s first person, third person, close third person, or omniscient—changes the overall emotional effect of the story, so I think that’s key. I’ve changed first person stories to close third person and third person stories to first person after I’ve gotten a few chapters in and realized I was either too close or too distant from the narrator. Sometimes this has to do with the kind of person they are. I had an especially brutal heroine in my God’s War novels—which started out as first person—but my heroine was so belligerent and ruthless that I felt I needed more distance from her, so I switched to third person and broke up the narrative with other point of view characters, too.

That said, this story started and ended in first person. I nailed the voice pretty early on, and they carried me through to the end.

There is just enough scientific theory to provide a solid foundation for your story. What inspired “The Light Brigade”?

This question is terribly funny because the answer is: World of Warcraft. There’s this way to port between places in the game that turns you into a globe of spinning light and I was like, “What if you were aware and conscious when this was happening? Wouldn’t that be a great way to get troops to a battlefield, since they couldn’t be shot down?” And the story just took off from there.

I did see the same idea (with different results) used in a book I just read called Dark Orbit, where they use “lightbeam” transfer to move people from ships to the surface of planets, so it’s certainly a thing; a spin on transporter technology. The time travel aspect was all mine, though, and happened organically as I was writing the story. It wasn’t until I’d written it that I realized I could spin this as science fiction instead of fantasy. But it’s like that for all my work—I consider myself a speculative writer walking on the SF/F tightrope.

The story touches on the intimate horrors. Many critics say that we should not dwell on the grittier, darker side of war, that we need to focus instead on the big picture. Others feel that shedding light on the true nature of combat can serve to promote better support systems for combat veterans. When writing, are you conscious of any social message the story might convey?

I’m not sure who those critics are, but I come from a long line of war and military veterans, and was raised on war stories from WWII where my grandparents met in Nazi-occupied France. One of my grandfather’s tasks while overseas was to fill up and drive away trucks full of bodies from concentration camps. My uncle was in the Air Force, and had stories of flying weapons to both Iran and Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. Those personal stories are all part of the bigger picture, and I’d say you can’t understand the real impact of the big picture without those personal stories.

I also try to be very aware of what I’m putting down on the page, and the text and subtext of every story. As someone surrounded by war and military vets who also has an academic background in the history of conflict, I certainly have both my opinions about conflict and an interest in exploring different ways we could resolve conflicts without resorting to conflict. It’s a grim sandbox passion of mine, imagining how we could achieve the creation of a world without violence. I know what violence does to people, and societies, and it doesn’t make us better, no matter what propagandists say. It absolutely makes us worse; it’s designed to bring out the worst in us to achieve what it considers success.

“The Light Brigade” is also subtly subversive: the matter of gender; the casual mention of Spanish vs. English when the narrator approaches the aliens; how the aliens themselves are human yet never identified specifically as such. Are there any particular examples of subversive fiction that appeal to your as both a reader and writer?

I admit I’m sad that stuff like default-Spanish and non-specified genders are considered “subversive” these days, but I recognize that we’re swinging back around from a pretty substantial backlash in both fiction and our wider culture (I’ve likened our current revival of subversive work with the work of the New Wave in the ’‘70s and maybe even the New Weird in the early ’‘00s). As far as recent subversive fiction goes, I’ll have to recommend Elysium by Jennifer Marie Brissett. It does some astonishingly brave things with narrative and point of view that are worth studying.

Your essay “We Have Always Fought” became a much needed center point for the ongoing struggle of representation of women writers in genre fiction. Given the recent conflicts in the field of SF/F/H, what, if anything, would you add to the article today?

Not a thing. It all still applies, and will for a good long time, I expect. Alas.

What’s next for Kameron Hurley? What can readers expect from you in the coming months?

My essay collection, The Geek Feminist Revolution, will be out from Tor books in May or June of 2016. And my first space opera, The Stars are Legion, is coming from Saga Press in October of 2016 as well. I’ll also have an original story in Jonathan Strahan’s Meeting Infinity anthology, which is out this December.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Author Spotlight: Kenneth Schneyer

Jude Griffin | 1153 words

What was the spark for this story?

In recent years there’s been a lot of good conversation about representation in adventure fantasy. One of my favorite critiques has been a response to people who claim erroneously that the presence of nonwhites and combatant women in medieval Europe isn’t “plausible.” As Dennis R. Upkins says: “Talking animals, elves, dragons, gnomes, all totally plausible. Black people in Europe? Too many people can’t suspend disbelief at that.” There is always a part of me that wants to take the most serious issues and twist them absurdly, and so, sometime later, I found myself saying, “Well, obviously it’s the dragons’ fault.” And since dragons aren’t anywhere in the same astral plane as “plausible” (unless you’re talking about some sort of biological memory of dinosaurs (“We are all simply afraid of snakes”)), I thought it would be fun if a realistic Moor and a realistic woman knight were faced with an absurd dragon.That was the first idea, anyway; the story didn’t come until I had met Malik and Fara and seen them interact.

Are the dragons metaphors? Their effect on memory and the way it was discussed in the story felt like they were being set up as metaphors for another phenomenon.

Ah well, you know, everything’s a metaphor and nothing’s a metaphor.

Apart from the snarky one-liner that I mentioned above, the dragon wasn’t supposed to represent anything apart from its own silliness. Now the Parable of the Stone, which an the older version of the familiar “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object,” and is often quoted by people who never got past freshman philosophy and think they have an airtight refutation of divinity, has been knocking around my head for decades. It was a pleasure finally to put it in fiction. But also, it made my one-liner (“It’s the dragons’ fault”) more interesting—What if we believe in dragons and a whitewashed Europe because something about those beliefs require each other? (I will admit that, in an early draft, Malik suggested that the dragons were generated by the minds of men, and would always exist so long as men felt the way they did; but that tied me into too many causality loops and drained away a lot of the dramatic tension.)

But as I read the story now, I’m struck by the specific way in which the dragon affected Malik and Fara. Neither of them forgot his or her own reality, although that’s a reasonable consequence of the memory-altering power these things seem to have. Rather, she forgot him (and anyone like him) and he forgot her (or anyone like her). At this distance, I wonder if the dragon isn’t a stand-in for the way one’s own individual privilege enables him to see the privilege of others with great clarity, but never his own.

What have been the benefits/challenges of being part of the Cambridge Science Fiction Workshop?

CSFW is run like the Milford-style writers workshops (Clarion, Odyssey): The author listens silently as each member gives a critique of the story that centers around what works and what doesn’t. We meet once a month, usually for dinner at someone’s house, and it’s all quite friendly.

The benefit from such a process is incalculable. I know some people have been badmouthing the workshop process of late, but they’re wrong. If all eight of your colleagues see the same problem, a problem you yourself didn’t see, it can alter your whole outlook on the story. I can think of at least two stories of mine (“Keeping Tabs” and “Selected Program Notes from the Retrospective Exhibition of Theresa Rosenberg Latimer”) which would have been entirely different if not for the wise observations of my classmates or workshop colleagues. On the other hand, when the group can’t agree about the story (I’ve had stories where they split half-and-half with diametrically opposed views), you have to shrug and go back to your own instincts.

The challenge, for me, is that nearly everyone in the group is more experienced than I am. They have long publishing histories in prominent markets, multiple novels, etc. So I always feel I have to work twice as hard to hold my own. Also, although I don’t know how much this matters, we’re mostly on the older side and have had some difficulty getting younger members, and I wonder whether this hampers the freshness of our perspective and the possibility of iconoclastic energy. (Although, what do I know? Maybe younger groups are no different.)

Your faculty page lists a wonderful range of expertise: constitutional law and contracts; cyber law; employment discrimination; fantasy writing; science fiction. Do you teach both law and literature at the same time?

I do! I was originally hired as a legal studies teacher, and most of my classroom work over the years has been about some sort of law. But when the legal studies faculty merged into the Humanities Department, my new department chair looked at my publication list and pointed out that no one had taught the science fiction lit course for five years, and would I consider . . . ? I didn’t even let her finish the sentence. “Are you kidding? Of course!” I’ve been teaching it since 2011; it runs once a year, usually in the spring, and it is my favorite time as an instructor: to sit and talk about stories for two hours! I also get the fun of using brand-new stories by my friends (Ken Liu, Helena Bell, Cat Valente, Matt Kressel) and sometimes I can get them to come to campus and speak to the kids. Jim Kelly did that the first time I taught the class, when we read “Think Like a Dinosaur.”

There’ve been some noises about having me teach the short fiction lit course, and maybe even a new course in short-story writing, but that’s far in the future, if it ever happens.

Any new projects you want to tell us about?

I’ve begun the worldbuilding for what I hope will be my first novel. The working title is Reformation, and it grows out of my complaint that SFF writers are never especially imaginative in the legal systems they create for their universes. In this secondary world, the abilities of some members of the population make a legal system superfluous in one society, whereas they alter its nature in a different culture in the same world. I also have a bunch of short stories in various stages of readiness.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.

Author Spotlight: Elizabeth Hand

Moshe Siegel | 1404 words

You mentioned in a past interview that one of your own tattoos inspired your 2002 novella, “The Least Trumps.” Can you share with us the particulars of that genesis?

I got my first tattoo in 2001, after Joey Ramone died. I’d wanted one since I was nineteen, and I thought, Life is short—what the hell am I waiting for? A friend recommended a tattoo artist named Julie Rose, who is absolutely amazing. She’s an artist first and foremost, and didn’t rely on flash art (the stock images that many tattooists use) but her own imagery. She had a consultation with me a week or so before she did the actual work, and I was really struck by her intensity and commitment to what she was doing, and also by her background—she played pickup guitar for the Cramps and fronted her own band, the Mad, back in the day (which is my day, too).

Your attention to detail on both the practical and emotional aspects of tattoo artistry is compelling; did you have to do much research—beyond your own participation, as canvas—to portray the artist’s experience? Have you ever wielded the gun, yourself?

While [Julie] worked on me, we talked a lot about how tattooing works, how the artist thinks, the emotional connection to another person whose body has become a canvas. Ivy in “The Least Trumps” is nothing like her in real life, but Julie gave me a strong sense of what it must be like to be this kind of visual artist. Afterward, on her recommendation, I got some books on tattooing, including a how-to that’s sort of the bible for the trade. So I did quite a bit of research (and eventually got three more tattoos from Julie), and then just dove into the story. Most of the details of how tattooing actually works—what it’s like to hold a tattoo gun, changing and cleaning and sharpening the needles, how the ink interacts with your skin—I got those either from conversation with Julie or through research. This was more than a dozen years ago, so there wasn’t the wealth of information online that there is now.

And tattooing itself hadn’t exploded culturally the way it has in the last decade. Julie, alas, hung up her tattoo gun a few years ago. I’ve decided not to get any more unless she comes out of retirement.

In “The Least Trumps,” your nature and landscape descriptions have an Audubon authenticity, tempered by a poet’s sensibility. Ivy is aware of a diversity of plant and animal life (her closest neighbors) on Aranbega, all by name. Did you come to this story equipped with such advanced knowledge of coastal Maine biology, or did you study along the way? I know I, for one, would be hard-pressed to identify the shrubbery in my own backyard . . .

I’ve loved animals since childhood, and have always been fascinated by small things—insects, amphibians and reptiles, birds, mice, seashells and horseshoe crabs and even slugs. Once I moved to Maine, I just sort of absorbed whatever I could about the local wildlife.

And I was fortunate enough to buy a tiny lakefront cottage that abuts a beautiful wetland. Over the years I’ve seen moose, bobcats, foxes, otters, mink, coyotes, great blue herons, kingfishers, bitterns, owls, frogs and toads and turtles and salamanders, and once even a grey wolf. Sadly, I don’t think the wildlife is as abundant as it used to be, because of the effects of climate change.

As a kindred spirit in the world of panic attacks, I found your portrayal chillingly impeccable. The accuracy, and horror, of the experience is such that Ivy’s catharsis—post-coital, post-tattoo, and, eventually, post-fabulist epiphany—is all the more satisfying. May I ask, did you find the experience of writing a story that explores, and, arguably, triumphs over, a panic disorder cathartic? (It certainly was cathartic for me, in the reading.)

I think it was kind of cathartic. For decades I suffered from PTSD due to a sexual assault in my early twenties, and I had a few devastating panic attacks over the years. They were horrible. The worst was in 2000 or 2001, when I actually canceled a trip to London because of an attack. When I wrote this story, I tapped into that memory. In the last ten years or so both the PTSD and panic have gradually diminished. Not sure if that’s a natural result of getting older and coming to grips with past events, or if writing about these things in my fiction has helped. Probably it hasn’t hurt.

Edward St. Aubyn has a great riff in one of the Patrick Melrose novels, in which the narrator (who, like St. Aubyn, suffered from horrific childhood abuse and later addictions) talks about going to twelve step meetings and how after telling and retelling the story of one’s own addictions and past traumas, a sort of “narrative fatigue” sets in, and one is no longer so controlled by memories of past trauma. I’m not an attendee of twelve step programs, but I wondered if that same narrative fatigue might kick in if one writes about this kind of thing.

For the fun of speculation (or if you have some secret canon to share), what do you think about Blakie’s ambiguous reaction to the blank tarot deck? What about the implied missing seventy-third card?

I am ashamed to admit that I have no secret canon, though I do have a meta-story for what’s going on in “The Least Trumps.” I love ambiguity in stories—that sort of open-endedness when one can imagine What Happens Next—and I love to play off that. I had two endings for “The Least Trumps”: One involved horrible events, which would have made it a horror story; the other is the ending it has now. Until the day I finished it, I wasn’t sure which I’d go with, but I decided to opt for transcendence.

As for that seventy-third card, it wouldn’t be a mystery if I told you what it means. But I definitely want to know if someone ever finds it on the sidewalk.

Blakie’s Wise Ant series brings to mind Proverbs 6:6, “Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise”; a bit of extrapolation can trace Ivy’s journey from shut-in to explorer as Ivy at last following the example of her jet-setting faux-aunt, Blake Eleanor “The Wise Ant Is Me” Tun. Was this an intentional Biblical wink, or have I simply read way too much into Ivy knowing which Christian denomination—Episcopalians!—hosts the superior Rummage Sale?

Ha! I love that theory! But no, the Wise Ant books were inspired in equal parts by the Ant and Bee books, which were British learn-to-read stories, and by the work of Margaret Wise Brown. Brown lived on an island off the coast near here, and the tiny house where she wrote was inherited by the family of a friend of mine. I visited the Only House once, and that inspired Ivy’s cottage. And I love the Maine islands and have spent a lot of time on various islands over the years.

But mostly Ivy’s cottage is based on my Tooley Cottage, which isn’t on an island, but feels like it could be.

Do you have any projects upcoming, or in the works, that you would like to share with us?

Well, my short novel Wylding Hall came out this past summer, and early next year Hard Light, the third Cass Neary novel, will be out. I’m excited about that, as it draws on a lot of things that have long fascinated me, in particular British prehistory and the unearthly landscape of Cornwall’s West Penwith region. I’m presently working on the fourth Cass novel, The Book of Lamps and Banners, and hope to get back to some short fiction soon.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Moshe Siegel interviews at Lightspeed, works in the New York State library system, and hatches indie publishing plots from his Hudson Valley home office. Follow tweets of varying relevance @moshesiegel.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 155 words

Coming up in December, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by A. Merc Rustad (“Tomorrow When We See the Sun”) and Aidan Doyle (“Beneath the Silent Stars”), along with SF reprints by Hugh Howey (“Beacon 23: Little Noises”) and Charlie Jane Anders (“The Time Travel Club”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Rachel Swirsky (“Tea Time”) and Jay Lake (“Ex Libris Noctis”), and fantasy reprints by Richard Parks (“The Queen’s Reason”) and Mark Rigney (“Portfolio”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with a feature interviews, and our latest book review column.

For our ebook readers, we also have a novella reprint by Kelly Link (“The Surfer”) and a pair of novel excerpts.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out.

Thanks for reading!

Upcoming Events

The Editors

Want to meet our editor John Joseph Adams and/or contributors to the magazine? Here’s a list of upcoming events at which you can find us:

World Fantasy Convention | Saratoga Springs, NY | Nov. 5-8

Convention | Panel Discussions, Signing | Featuring: John Joseph Adams.

Forbidden Planet | New York, NY | Nov. 9 (7pm)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 event | Panel Discussion, Signing, Q&A | Featuring: John Joseph Adams, Joe Hill, and Seanan McGuire (additional contributors TBD). Moderated by David Barr Kirtley of The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy.

NYRSF Reading Series | New York, NY | Nov. 10 (7pm)

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2015 event | Readings | Featuring: John Joseph Adams, Seanan McGuire, and Carmen Maria Machado.

WORD Bookstore | Jersey City, NJ | Nov. 11 (7:30pm)

Press Start to Play event | Readings, Signing, Q&A | Featuring: John Joseph Adams, Robin Wasserman, Seanan McGuire, and David Barr Kirtley.

Bluestockings Bookstore | New York, NY | Nov. 15 (7pm)

Destroy event | Discussion, Readings, Q&A, Signing | Featuring: Christie Yant (guest editor, Women Destroy Science Fiction!), Seanan McGuire (guest editor, Queers Destroy Science Fiction!), and Liz Gorinsky (guest reprint editor, Queers Destroy Fantasy!), plus contributors Merav Hoffman, Richard Bowes, Lisa Nohealani Morton, and artists Odera Igbokwe and Orion Zangara.

Columbia University Science Fiction Society | Columbia University, New York, NY | Nov. 17 (6pm)

Talk and Q&A (Open to the Public) | Featuring: John Joseph Adams and Christie Yant (editor of Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction! special issue).

Stay Connected

The Editors

Here are a few URLs you might want to check out or keep handy if you’d like to stay apprised of everything new and notable happening with Lightspeed:

Website

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Newsletter

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/newsletter

RSS Feed

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/rss-2

Podcast Feed

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/itunes-rss

Twitter

www.twitter.com/LightspeedMag

Facebook

www.facebook.com/LightspeedMagazine

Google+

plus.google.com/+LightspeedMagazine

Subscribe

www.lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe

Subscriptions and Ebooks

The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed includes 96 stories (about 480,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $35.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! For more information, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.

Ebooks & Bundles: We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors ($3.99 each), and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Lightspeed ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! We currently have a number of ebook bundles available: Year One (issues 1-12), Year Two (issues 13-24), Year Three (issues 25-36), the Mega Bundle (issues 1-36), and the Supermassive Bundle (issues 1-48). Buying a bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. So if you need to catch up on Lightspeed, that’s a great way to do so. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

• • • •

All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots of ebooks available from our sister-publications:

Nightmare Ebooks, Bundles, & Subscriptions: Like Lightspeed, our sister-magazine Nightmare (nightmare-magazine.com) also has ebooks, bundles, and subscriptions available as well. For instance, you can get the complete first year (12 issues) of Nightmare for just $24.99; that’s savings of $11 off buying the issues individually. Or, if you’d like to subscribe, a 12-month subscription to Nightmare includes 48 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction), and will cost you just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price).

Fantasy Magazine Ebooks & Bundles: We also have ebook back issues—and ebook back issue bundles—of Lightspeed’s (now dormant) sister-magazine, Fantasy. To check those out, just visit fantasy-magazine.com/store. You can buy each Fantasy bundle for $24.99, or you can buy the complete run of Fantasy Magazine— all 57 issues—for just $114.99 (that’s $10 off buying all the bundles individually, and more than $55 off the cover price!).

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

Henry Lien

Assistant Editor

Robyn Lupo

Editorial Assistants

Laurel Amberdine

Jude Griffin

Book Reviewers

Andrew Liptak

Sunil Patel

Amal El-Mohtar

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Kevin McNeil

Illustrators

Galen Dara

Elizabeth Leggett

Reiko Murakami

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, you might also enjoy these anthologies edited (or co-edited) by John Joseph Adams.

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 [forthcoming Oct. 2016]

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Dead Man’s Hand

Epic: Legends Of Fantasy

Federations

The Improbable Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects

Lightspeed: Year One

The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2

Loosed Upon the World

The Mad Scientist’s Guide To World Domination

Operation Arcana

Other Worlds Than These

Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen)

Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Seeds of Change

Under the Moons of Mars

Wastelands

Wastelands 2

The Way Of The Wizard

What the #@&% Is That? (with Douglas Cohen) [forthcoming Aug. 2016]

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above. Each project also has a mini-site devoted to it specifically, where you’ll find free fiction, interviews, and more.