TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 77, October 2016

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial, October 2016

SCIENCE FICTION

Game Night at the Fox and Goose
Karen Joy Fowler

Fade To Red: Three Interviews About Sebold’s Mars Trilogy
Stephen S. Power

A Moment of Gravity, Circumscribed
Fran Wilde

Plea
Mary Anne Mohanraj

FANTASY

The Cavern of the Screaming Eyes
Jeremiah Tolbert

The Dragon’s Tears
Aliette de Bodard

The Key to St. Medusa’s
Kat Howard

October’s Son
Will Kaufman

NOVELLA

The Stars Do Not Lie
Jay Lake

EXCERPTS

Faller
Will McIntosh

NONFICTION

Media Review: 12 Monkeys and Mr. Robot
Christopher East

Book Reviews: October 2016
Andrew Liptak

Interview: Allen Steele
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Karen Joy Fowler

Jeremiah Tolbert

Stephen S. Power

Aliette de Bodard

Fran Wilde

Kat Howard

Will Kaufman

Mary Anne Mohanraj

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2016 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Sam Schechter

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial, October 2016

John Joseph Adams | 437 words

Welcome to issue seventy-seven of Lightspeed!

We have original science fiction by Stephen S. Power (“Fade to Red: Three Interviews About Sebold’s Mars Trilogy”) and Mary Anne Mohanraj (“Plea”), along with SF reprints by Karen Joy Fowler (“Game Night at the Fox and Goose”) and Fran Wilde (“A Moment of Gravity, Circumscribed”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Jeremiah Tolbert (“The Cavern of the Screaming Eyes”) and Kat Howard (“The Key to St. Medusa’s”), and fantasy reprints by Aliette de Bodard (“The Dragon’s Tears”) and Will Kaufman (“October’s Son”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns.

For our ebook readers, we also have an ebook-exclusive reprint of the novella “The Stars Do Not Lie,” by Jay Lake, and an excerpt from Will McIntosh’s new novel, Faller.

Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016

As you may recall, in addition to editing Lightspeed and Nightmare, I am also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, which launched last year. The first volume was guest edited by Joe Hill, and the 2016 volume (which comes out October 4) is guest edited by Karen Joy Fowler. The table of contents for the 2016 volume was recently announced over on io9, which includes two stories from Lightspeed (“Things You Can Buy for a Penny” by Will Kaufman and “Tea Time” by Rachel Swirsky), as well as many authors familiar to Lightspeed readers. Visit johnjosephadams.com/basff to see the full table of contents and/or to order!

People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror!

This month, our “Destroy” series continues over at our sister magazine, Nightmare, where Silvia Moreno-Garcia serves as the guest editor of People of Colo(u)r Destroy Horror! She’s collected original fiction from Nadia Bulkin, Gabriela Santiago, Valerie Valdes, and Russell Nichols to help celebrate the work of creators of color in the horror field. Reprints editor Tananarive Due brings us four horror classics, including one from Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Díaz, and nonfiction editor Maurice Broaddus has put together a stellar line-up of essays and interviews. Be sure to catch it at DestroySF.com.

• • • •

That’s all we have to report this month. I hope you enjoy the issue, and thanks for reading!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor-in-chief of Lightspeed, is the editor of John Joseph Adams Books, a new SF/Fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, as well as the bestselling editor of many other anthologies, including The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Robot Uprisings, Dead Man’s Hand, Armored, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, and The Living Dead. Recent and forthcoming projects include: What the #@&% Is That?, 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 ten 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.

Game Night at the Fox and Goose

Karen Joy Fowler | 4620 words

The reader will discover that my
reputation, wherever I have lived, is
endorsed as that of a true and pure woman.

—Laura D. Fair

Alison called all over the city trying to find a restaurant that served blowfish, but there wasn’t one. She settled for Chinese. She would court an MSG attack. And if none came, then she’d been craving red bean sauce anyway. On the way to the restaurant, Alison chose not to wear her seat belt.

Alison had been abandoned by her lover, who was so quick about it she hadn’t even known she was pregnant yet. She couldn’t ever tell him now. She sat pitifully alone, near the kitchen, at a table for four.

YOU’VE REALLY SCREWED UP THIS TIME, her fortune cookie told her. GIVE UP. And, in small print: CHIN’S ORIENTAL PALACE.

The door from the kitchen swung open, so the air around her was hot for a moment, then cold when the door closed. Alison drank her tea and looked at the tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. They were easy to read. He doesn’t love you, they said. She tipped them out onto the napkin and tried to rearrange them. YOU FOOL. She covered the message with the one remaining wonton, left the cookie for the kitchen god, and decided to walk all by herself in the dark, three blocks up Hillside Drive, past two alleyways, to have a drink at the Fox and Goose. No one stopped her.

Alison had forgotten it was Monday night. Sometimes there was music in the Fox and Goose. Sometimes you could sit in a corner by yourself listening to someone with an acoustic guitar singing “Killing Me Softly.” On Monday nights the television was on and the bar was rather crowded. Mostly men. Alison swung one leg over the only empty bar stool and slid forward. The bar was made of wood, very upscale.

“What can I get the pretty lady?” the bartender asked, without taking his eyes off the television screen. He wore glasses, low on his nose. Alison was not a pretty lady and didn’t feel like pretending she was. “I’ve been used and discarded,” she told the bartender. “And I’m pregnant. I’d like a glass of wine.”

“You really shouldn’t drink if you’re pregnant,” the man sitting to Alison’s left said. “Two more downs and they’re already in field goal range again.”

The bartender set the wine in front of Alison. He was shaking his head. “Pregnant women aren’t supposed to drink much,” he warned her.

“How?” the man on her left asked.

“How do you think?” said Alison.

“Face mask,” said the bartender.

“Turn it up.”

Alison heard the amplified thwock of football helmets hitting together. “Good coverage,” the bartender said. “No protection,” said the man on Alison’s right.

Alison turned to look at him. He was dressed in a blue sweater with the sleeves pushed up. He had dark eyes and was drinking a dark beer. “I asked him to wear a condom,” she said quietly. “I even brought one. He couldn’t.”

“He couldn’t?”

“I really don’t want to discuss it.” Alison sipped her wine. It had the flat, bitter taste of house white. She realized the bartender hadn’t asked her what she wanted. But then, if he had, house white was what she would have requested. “It just doesn’t seem fair.” She spoke over her glass, unsure that anyone was listening, not really caring if they weren’t. “All I did was fall in love. All I did was believe someone who said he loved me. He was the liar. But nothing happens to him.”

“Unfair is the way things are,” the man on her right told her. Three months ago Alison would have been trying to decide if she were attracted to him. Not that she would necessarily have wanted to do anything about it. It was just a question she’d always asked herself, dealing with men, interested in the answer, interested in those times when the answer changed abruptly, one way or another. But it was no longer an issue. Alison was a dead woman these days. Alison was attracted to no one.

Two men at the end of the bar began to clap suddenly. “He hasn’t missed from thirty-six yards yet this season,” the bartender said.

Alison watched the kickoff and the return. Nothing. No room at all. “Men handle this stuff so much better than women. You don’t know what heartbreak is,” she said confrontationally. No one responded. She backed off anyway. “Well, that’s how it looks.” She drank and watched an advertisement for trucks. A man bought his wife the truck she’d always wanted. Alison was afraid she might cry. “What would you do,” she asked the man on her right, “if you were me?”

“Drink, I guess. Unless I was pregnant.”

“Watch the game,” said the man on her left.

“Focus on your work,” said the bartender.

“Join the Foreign Legion.” The voice came from behind Alison. She swiveled around to locate it. At a table near a shuttered window a very tall woman sat by herself. Her face was shadowed by an Indiana Jones-type hat, but the candle on the table lit up the area below her neck. She was wearing a black t-shirt with a picture on it that Alison couldn’t make out. She spoke again. “Make new friends. See distant places.” She gestured for Alison to join her. “Save two galaxies from the destruction of the alien armada.”

Alison stood up on the little ledge that ran beneath the bar, reached over the counter, and took an olive, sucking the pimiento out first, then eating the rest. She picked up her drink, stepped down, and walked over to the woman’s table. Elvis. That was Elvis’s face on the t-shirt right between the woman’s breasts. ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT? the t-shirt asked.

“That sounds good.” Alison sat down across from the woman. She could see her face better now; her skin was pale and a bit rough. Her hair was long, straight, and brown. “I’d rather time travel, though. Back just two months. Maybe three months. Practically walking distance.”

“You could get rid of the baby.”

“Yes,” said Alison. “I could.”

The woman’s glass sat on the table in front of her. She had finished whatever she had been drinking; the maraschino cherry was all that remained. The woman picked it up and ate it, dropping the stem onto the napkin under her glass. “Maybe he’ll come back to you. You trusted him. You must have seen something decent in him.”

Alison’s throat closed so that she couldn’t talk. She picked up her drink, but she couldn’t swallow either. She set it down again, shaking her head. Some of the wine splashed over the lip and onto her hand.

“He’s already married,” the woman said.

Alison nodded, wiping her hand on her pant leg. “God.”

She searched in her pockets for a Kleenex. The woman handed her the napkin from beneath the empty glass. Alison wiped her nose with it and the cherry stem fell out. She did not dare look up. She kept her eyes focused on the napkin in her hand, which she folded into four small squares.

“When I was growing up,” she said, “I lived on a block with lots of boys. Sometimes I’d come home and my knees were all scraped up because I’d fallen or I’d taken a ball in the face or I’d gotten kicked or punched, and I’d be crying and my mother would always say the same thing. ‘You play with the big boys and you’re going to get hurt,’ she’d say. Exasperated.” Alison unfolded the napkin, folded it diagonally instead. Her voice shrank. “I’ve been so stupid.”

“The universe is shaped by the struggle between two great forces,” the woman told her. It was not really responsive. It was not particularly supportive. Alison felt just a little bit angry at this woman who now knew so much about her.

“Good and evil?” Alison asked, slightly nastily. She wouldn’t meet the woman’s eyes. “The Elvis and the anti-Elvis?”

“Male and female. Minute by minute, the balance tips one way or the other. Not just here. In every universe. There are places”—the woman leaned forward—“where men are not allowed to gather and drink. Places where football is absolutely illegal.”

“England?” Alison suggested and then didn’t want to hear the woman’s answer. “I like football,” she added quickly. “I like games with rules. You can be stupid playing football and it can cost you the game, but there are penalties for fouls, too. I like games with rules.”

“You’re playing one now, aren’t you?” the woman said. “You haven’t hurt this man, even though you could. Even though he’s hurt you. He’s not playing by the rules. So why are you?”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with rules,” Alison said. “It only has to do with me, with the kind of person I think I am. Which is not the kind of person he is.” She thought for a moment. “It doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to see him get hurt,” she added. “Something karmic. Justice.”

“‘We must storm and hold Cape Turk before we talk of social justice.’” The woman folded her arms under her breasts and leaned back in her chair. “Did Sylvia Townsend Warner say that?”

“Not to me.”

Alison heard more clapping at the bar behind her. She looked over her shoulder. The man in the blue sweater slapped his hand on the wooden bar. “Good call. Excellent call. They won’t get another play in before the half.”

“Where I come from, she did.” Alison turned back as the woman spoke. “And she was talking about women. No one gets justice just by deserving it. No one ever has.”

Alison finished off her wine. “No.” She wondered if she should go home now. She knew when she got there that the apartment would be unbearably lonely and that the phone wouldn’t ring and that she would need immediately to be somewhere else. No activity in the world could be more awful than listening to a phone not ring. But she didn’t really want to stay here and have a conversation that was at worst too strange and at best too late. Women usually supported you more when they talked to you. They didn’t usually make you defensive or act as if they had something to teach you, the way this woman did. And anyhow, justice was a little peripheral now, wasn’t it? What good would it really do her? What would it change?

She might have gone back and joined the men at the bar during the half. They were talking quietly among themselves. They were ordering fresh drinks and eating beer nuts. But she didn’t want to risk seeing cheerleaders. She didn’t want to risk the ads with the party dog and all his women, even though she’d read in a magazine that the dog was a bitch. Anywhere she went, there she’d be. Just like she was. Heartbroken.

The woman was watching her closely. Alison could feel this, though the woman’s face remained shadowed and she couldn’t quite bring herself to look back at her directly. She looked at Elvis instead and the way his eyes wavered through her lens of candlelight and tears. Lonesome tonight? “You really have it bad, don’t you?” the woman said. Her tone was sympathetic. Alison softened again. She decided to tell this perceptive woman everything. How much she’d loved him. How she’d never loved anyone else. How she felt it every time she took a breath, and had for weeks now.

“I don’t think I’ll ever feel better,” she said. “No matter what I do.”

“I hear it takes a year to recover from a serious loss. Unless you find someone else.”

A year. Alison could be a mother by then. How would she find someone else, pregnant like she was or with a small child? Could she spend a year hurting like this? Would she have a choice?

“Have you ever heard of Laura D. Fair?” the woman asked.

Alison shook her head. She picked up the empty wineglass and tipped it to see if any drops remained. None did. She set it back down and picked up the napkin, wiping her eyes. She wasn’t crying. She just wasn’t exactly not crying.

“Mrs. Fair killed her lover,” the woman told her. Alison looked at her own fingernails. One of them had a ragged end. She bit it off shorter while she listened. “He was a lawyer. A. P. Crittenden. She shot him on the ferry to Oakland in November of 1870 in front of his whole family because she saw him kiss his wife. He’d promised to leave her and marry Mrs. Fair instead, and then he didn’t, of course. She pleaded a transient insanity known at that time as emotional insanity. She said she was incapable of killing Mr. Crittenden, who had been the only friend she’d had in the world.” Alison examined her nail. She had only succeeded in making it more ragged. She bit it again, too close to the skin this time. It hurt and she put it back in her mouth. “Mrs. Fair said she had no memory of the murder, which many people, not all of them related to the deceased, witnessed. She was the first woman sentenced to hang in California.”

Loud clapping and catcalls at the bar. The third quarter had started with a return all the way to the fifty-yard line. Alison heard it. She did not turn around, but she took her finger out of her mouth and picked up the napkin. She folded it again. Four small squares. “Rules are rules,” Alison said.

“But then she didn’t hang. Certain objections were made on behalf of the defense and sustained, and a new trial was held. This time she was acquitted. By now she was the most famous and the most hated woman in the country.”

Alison unfolded the napkin and tried to smooth out the creases with the side of her palm. “I never heard of her.”

“Laura D. Fair was not some little innocent.” The woman’s hat brim dipped decisively. “Mrs. Fair had been married four times, and each had been a profitable venture. One of her husbands killed himself. She was not pretty, but she was passionate. She was not smart, but she was clever. And she saw, in her celebrity, a new way to make money. She announced a new career as a public speaker. She traveled the country with her lectures. And what was her message? She told women to murder the men who seduced and betrayed them.”

“I never heard of her,” said Alison.

“Mrs. Fair was a compelling speaker. She’d had some acting and elocution experience. Her performance in court showed training. On the stage she was even better. ‘The act will strike a terror to the hearts of sensualists and libertines.’” The woman stabbed dramatically at her own breast with her fist, hitting Elvis right in the eye. Behind her hand, Elvis winked at Alison in the candlelight. “Mrs. Fair said that women throughout the world would glory in the revenge exacted by American womanhood. Overdue. Long overdue. Thousands of women heard her. Men, too, and not all of them entirely unsympathetic. Fanny Hyde and Kate Stoddart were released in Brooklyn. Stoddart never even stood trial. But then there was a backlash. The martyred Marys were hanged in Philadelphia. And then . . .”

The woman’s voice dropped suddenly in volume and gained in intensity. Alison looked up at her quickly. The woman was staring back. Alison looked away.

“And then a group of women hunted down and dispatched Charles S. Smith in an alley near his home. Mr. Smith was a married man and his victim, Edith Wilson, was pregnant, an invalid, and eleven years old. But this time the women wore sheets and could not be identified. Edith Wilson was perhaps the only female in Otsego County, New York, who could not have taken part.” Alison folded her napkin along the diagonal.

“So no one could be tried. It was an inspiring and purging operation. It was copied in many little towns across the country. God knows, the women had access to sheets.”

Alison laughed, but the woman was not expecting it, had not paused to allow for laughter. “And then Annie Oakley shot Frank Butler in a challenge match in Cincinnati.”

“Excuse me,” said Alison. “I didn’t quite hear you.” But she really had and the woman continued anyway, without pausing or repeating.

“She said it was an accident, but she was too good a shot. They hanged her for it. And then Grover Cleveland was killed by twelve sheeted women on the White House lawn. At teatime,” the woman said.

“Wait a minute.” Alison stopped her. “Grover Cleveland served out two terms. Nonconsecutively. I’m sure.”

The woman leaned into the candlelight, resting her chin on a bridge she made of her hands. “You’re right, of course,” she said. “That’s what happened here. But in another universe where the feminine force was just a little stronger in 1872, Grover Cleveland died in office. With a scone in his mouth and a child in New York.”

“All right,” said Alison accommodatingly. Accommodation was one of Alison’s strengths. “But what difference does that make to us?”

“I could take you there.” The woman pushed her hat back so that Alison could have seen her eyes if she wanted to. “The universe right next door. Practically walking distance.”

The candle flame was casting shadows which reached and withdrew and reached at Alison over the table. In the unsteady light, the woman’s face flickered like a silent film star’s. Then she pulled back in her chair and sank into the darkness beyond the candle. The ball was on the ten-yard line and the bar was quiet. “I knew you were going to say that,” Alison said finally. “How did I know you were going to say that? Who would say that?”

“Some lunatic?” the woman suggested.

“Yes.”

“Don’t you want to hear about it anyway? About my universe?” The woman smiled at her. An unperturbed smile. Nice even teeth. And a kind of confidence that was rare among the women Alison knew. Alison had noticed it immediately without realizing she was noticing. The way the woman sat back in her chair and didn’t pick at herself. Didn’t play with her hair. Didn’t look at her hands. The way she lectured Alison.

“All right,” Alison said. She put the napkin down and fit her hands together, forcing herself to sit as still. “But first tell me about Laura Fair. My Laura Fair.”

“Up until 1872 the two histories are identical,” the woman said. “Mrs. Fair married four times and shot her lover and was convicted and the conviction was overturned. She just never lectured. She planned to. She was scheduled to speak at Platt’s Hotel in San Francisco on November 11, 1872, but a mob of some two thousand men gathered outside the hotel and another two thousand surrounded the apartment building she lived in. She asked for police protection, but it was refused and she was too frightened to leave her home. Even staying where she was proved dangerous. A few men tried to force their way inside. She spent a terrifying night and never attempted to lecture again. She died in poverty and obscurity.

“Fanny Hyde and Kate Stoddart were released anyway. I can’t find out what happened to the Marys. Edith Wilson was condemned by respectable people everywhere and cast out of her family.”

“The eleven-year-old child?” Alison said.

“In your universe,” the woman reminded her. “Not in mine. You don’t know much of your own history, do you? Name a great American woman.”

The men at the bar were in an uproar. Alison turned to look. “Interception,” the man in the blue sweater shouted to her exultantly. “Did you see it?”

“Name a great American woman,” Alison called back to him.

“Goddamn interception with goal to go,” he said. “Eleanor Roosevelt?”

“Marilyn Monroe,” said a man at the end of the bar.

“The senator from California?” the woman asked. “Now that’s a good choice.”

Alison laughed again. “Funny,” she said, turning back to the woman. “Very good.”

“We have football, too,” the woman told her. “Invented in 1873. Outlawed in 1950. No one ever got paid to play it.”

“And you have Elvis.”

“No, we don’t. Not like yours. Of course not. I got this here.”

“Interception,” the man in the blue sweater said. He was standing beside Alison, shaking his head with the wonder of it. “Let me buy you ladies a drink.” Alison opened her mouth and he waved his hand. “Something nonalcoholic for you,” he said. “Please. I really want to.”

“Ginger ale, then,” she agreed. “No ice.”

“Nothing for me,” said the woman. They watched the man walk back to the bar, and then, when he was far enough away not to hear, she leaned forward toward Alison. “You like men, don’t you?”

“Yes,” said Alison. “I always have. Are they different where you come from? Have they learned to be honest and careful with women, since you kill them when they’re not?” Alison’s voice was sharper than she intended, so she softened the effect with a sadder question. “Is it better there?”

“Better for whom?” The woman did not take her eyes off Alison. “Where I come from the men and women hardly speak to each other. First of all, they don’t speak the same language. They don’t here, either, but you don’t recognize that as clearly. Where I come from there’s men’s English and there’s women’s English.”

“Say something in men’s English.”

“‘I love you.’ Shall I translate?”

“No,” said Alison. “I know the translation for that one.” The heaviness closed over her heart again. Not that it had ever gone away. Nothing made Alison feel better, but many things made her feel worse. The bartender brought her ginger ale. With ice. Alison was angry, suddenly, that she couldn’t even get a drink with no ice. She looked for the man in the blue sweater, raised the glass at him, and rattled it. Of course he was too far away to hear even if he was listening, and there was no reason to believe he was.

“Two-minute warning,” he called back. “I’ll be with you in two minutes.”

Men were always promising to be with you soon. Men could never be with you now. Alison had only cared about this once, and she never would again. “Football has the longest two minutes in the world,” she told the woman. “So don’t hold your breath. What else is different where you come from?” She sipped at her ginger ale. She’d been grinding her teeth recently—stress, the dentist said—and so the cold liquid made her mouth hurt.

“Everything is different. Didn’t you ask for no ice? Don’t drink that,” the woman said. She called to the bartender. “She didn’t want ice. You gave her ice.”

“Sorry.” The bartender brought another bottle and another glass. “Nobody told me no ice.”

“Thank you,” Alison said. He took the other glass away. Alison thought he was annoyed. The woman didn’t seem to notice.

“Imagine your world without a hundred years of adulterers,” she said. “The level of technology is considerably depressed. Lots of books never written because the authors didn’t live. Lots of men who didn’t get to be president. Lots of passing. Although it’s illegal. Men dressing as women. Women dressing as men. And the dress is more sexually differentiated. Codpieces are fashionable again. But you don’t have to believe me,” the woman said. “Come and see for yourself. I can take you there in a minute. What would it cost you to just come and see? What do you have here that you’d be losing?”

The woman gave her time to think. Alison sat and drank her ginger ale and repeated to herself the things her lover had said the last time she had seen him. She remembered them all, some of them surprisingly careless, some of them surprisingly cruel, all of them surprising. She repeated them again, one by one, like a rosary. The man who had left was not the man she had loved. The man she had loved would never have said such things to her. The man she had loved did not exist. She had made him up. Or he had. “Why would you want me to go?” Alison asked.

“The universe is shaped by the struggle between two great forces. Sometimes a small thing can tip the balance. One more woman. Who knows?” The woman tilted her hat back with her hand. “Save a galaxy. Make new friends. Or stay here where your heart is. Broken.”

“Can I come back if I don’t like it?”

“Yes. Do you like it here?”

She drank her ginger ale and then set the glass down, still half full. She glanced at the man in the blue sweater, then past him to the bartender. She let herself feel just for a moment what it might be like to know that she could finish this drink and then go home to the one person in the world who loved her.

Never in this world. “I’m going out for a minute. Two minutes,” she called to the bartender. One minute to get back. “Don’t take my drink.”

She stood and the other woman stood too, even taller than Alison had thought. “I’ll follow you. Which way?” Alison asked.

“It’s not hard,” the woman said. “In fact, I’ll follow you. Go to the back. Find the door that says WOMEN and go on through it. I’m just going to pay for my drink and then I’ll be right along.”

VIXENS was what the door actually said, across the way from the one marked GANDERS. Alison paused and then pushed through. She felt more than a little silly, standing in the small bathroom that apparently fronted two universes. One toilet, one sink, one mirror. Two universes. She went into the stall and closed the door. Before she had finished she heard the outer door open and shut again. “I’ll be right out,” she said. The toilet paper was small and unusually rough. The toilet wouldn’t flush. It embarrassed her. She tried three times before giving up.

The bathroom was larger than it had been, less clean, and a row of urinals lined one wall. The woman stood at the sink, looking into the mirror, which was smaller. “Are you ready?” she asked and removed her breasts from behind Elvis, tossing them into a wire wastebasket. She turned. “Ready or not.”

“No,” said Alison, seeing the face under the hat clearly for the first time. “Please, no.” She began to cry again, looking up at his face, looking down at his chest. ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT?

“You lied to me,” she said dully.

“I never lied,” he answered. “Think back. You just translated wrong. Because you’re that kind of woman. We don’t have women like you here now. And anyway, what does it matter whose side you play on? All that matters is that no one wins. Aren’t I right? Aren’t I?” He tipped his hat to her.

©1989 by Karen Joy Fowler. Originally published in What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires , edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg. 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

Fade To Red: Three Interviews About Sebold’s Mars Trilogy

Stephen S. Power | 4375 words

Fade to White:
An Interview with Bryan Sebold, Director of The Mars Light

Stephen S. Power
Posted March 16, 2018 3:40 PM EDT

The Mars Light began as a ten-minute short that Bryan Sebold made without a crew after wrapping his Google fantasy series Anvil of the Sun. Now it’s a five-part documentary, which NASA Films released today online and in select theaters. Mr. Sebold spoke with me via Skype about shooting remotely on Mars; about working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which runs the Mars Rover project for NASA; and about what the Mars Light is, which the documentary reveals for the first time. Warning: Spoilers below.

How did your short film Curiosity lead to you directing The Mars Light?

It wasn’t so much the short, Stephen, as the research and techniques that went into it. I’ll be the first to admit that my homemade rover didn’t do the original justice and my color treatment was a better reflection of my Hollywood thinking than of the Martian landscape. What appealed to JPL was how I captured the tension of driving the rover across Gale, where every pebble can put years of training to the test. They were also impressed that I left my Curiosity outside Hanksville, Utah, not far from the Mars Desert Research Station, then controlled it and its cameras from a van several miles away. And they were amazed that my route for approaching the Mars Light almost perfectly mirrored their own.

But the short isn’t really about the Light.

No, and that’s the most important reason I got the gig. Like many, I really wanted to believe the flashes on Mount Sharp were something fantastic, but I knew deep down that, once we took a closer look, the Light would turn out to be nothing, just another pile of rocks that looks like a face. To me, that disappointment is the essence of ugliness, and I wanted to make something beautiful. Then it dawned on me: What if the real story of the Light was the curiosity it inspired and the journey it impelled? The desire to know, not the knowing?

So the Light’s a MacGuffin?

Yes! I’d have put it in a suitcase, but figuring that anything I showed would have been disappointing—or, worse, cliché—I simply ended with sunlight blooming in the lens.

But now everyone’s seen Curiosity’s first images of the Light.

Yes, which allowed me to take a similar approach, focusing on the climb, instead of the summit. That said, unless you’re Kubrick, you can only get away with something as imagistic as Curiosity for ten minutes. Otherwise you’d end up with one of those Norwegian slow TV shows where the camera sits on the bow of a ship for thirteen hours. Fortunately, with JPL’s cooperation, I was able to create more than enough compelling footage from Earth, and by stitching together still images from Mars like animation. The only thing JPL didn’t provide was a second rover so I could get two angles on each scene.

Did they ever let you steer the real rover?

The closest I got was putting my hand on a driver’s shoulder—briefly, because it annoyed her. I did plan out all the shots, though, first storyboarding, then working with mission control to get what I needed.

What was it like to shoot remotely?

Nerve-racking at first, but, well, Hitchcockian later. Hitch considered shooting a movie a chore because he’d already made the movie in his head while planning it. Similarly, so much planning went into what we did that the execution felt anticlimactic. That said, Curiosity was well-beyond its operating life and we could never be sure the rover wouldn’t get stuck at any moment while crossing Gale, so I was able to ratchet up the tension, like sending that Norwegian TV ship through a minefield. Playing off the drivers’ tensions made this easier. Several were upset they weren’t at the center of the documentary.

JPL did bring some experience to the table, too.

Absolutely. America’s been at this a long time. You know the footage of Apollo 17’s Lunar Module taking off? That was taken remotely. Ed Fendell had Gene Cernan park the lunar buggy a certain distance from the module, then, seconds before liftoff, Fendell started sending commands at pre-arranged times to the camera mounted on the buggy so it would tilt up and follow the stage toward the mothership. Sadly, Cernan parked the buggy closer than he should have, and the module escaped what would have been an amazing tracking shot.

So let me follow up my first question: If JPL could already shoot remotely, why bring you on?

Because they didn’t want a film that looked like a home movie or, worse, security camera footage. They wanted a story with the rover as a character, an explorer, a knight errant, something to help reinvigorate the wonder of space adventure that people had before Star Wars made space feel familiar. I already knew what that story would be, and we both thought it would keep people from fast forwarding through the journey to get to the new information about the Light. Or not watching, reading some tweet about the Light instead, and going, “Huh, isn’t that interesting.”

Before we get to the new information and, I have to confess it’s been killing me not to go there first—

Stretch that feeling over several years and you’ll know what it was like to have made this film.

Let me ask you about the three pivotal moments in Curiosity’s journey.

The Crossing, The Rock, and the Face.

Yes. At the first two obstacles, there’s talk of turning back, but when the rover approaches the third, and it’s clearly wearing down, JPL decides they have to press on. There is no turning back. Were you a part of these decisions?

No. I didn’t steer the mission either, and to be honest I didn’t want to get in the way of what would be great moments in the film. The hero has to doubt, right? The Face worried me, though. It was the rover’s steepest, toughest climb, magnitudes more difficult to navigate than crossing the field of rocks and getting half-over, half-around that boulder. That was the only time I thought, well, I guess this really is about summiting, because if the rover falls here, we don’t have much of a film.

Then, right as Curiosity got over the Face, the main computer gave out.

I’ve never seen joy turn to horror faster, and I’m from Boston. I remember Buckner. But that’s why the rover has a backup ready to kick in. It turned into the funniest moment in the film, and the release of tension prepared the audience for the rover finally reaching the Light.

JPL was fairly confident the flashes were the result of something reflecting sunlight. What if the reflector had been a piece of metal broken off the entry vehicle? The Orbiter did determine that the ground around it had been recently disturbed.

We’d still have a great documentary, ending with the question: What else is lying around on the surface of Mars?

You’re already coming under a lot of heat because JPL didn’t release all the images you had, especially those with better definition. People feel cheated. Manipulated. To use your word, disappointed.

That wasn’t my decision. I didn’t agree with it, but I did agree to an NDA, so I can’t discuss it. JPL’s made their position clear. As it turns out, they played everything, especially those senators, perfectly.

Because of your NDA—and those senators—can you respond to critics who think the documentary is propaganda for maintaining funding for the Mars programs?

My NDA only covers internal JPL affairs. I had full artistic control over the film, provided it remain scientifically accurate, which I felt it must be, too. Nothing was faked. I used no CGI. As to the programs, of course I’m for keeping them alive. What’s the point of being the richest country in the world if we don’t spend some of that wealth on the big things?

Do you agree with JPL’s findings?

The director in me says they might have gone further in their speculations. I can’t imagine a natural reason for there to be a perfectly square gold tile on Mars. It didn’t crash there, although a small meteor apparently uncovered it. Was it dropped, set, or buried? By who? Or what?

When the rover’s arm flipped the tile, I gasped. Do you think the marks on the other side are writing?

If they are, it’s unlike any writing on Earth. It wasn’t etched into the metal or deposited onto it like ink. Most likely it’s a deformation in the metal that we’re reading our own dreams into.

You made The Mars Light to stimulate wonder, yet, despite everything, you seem to resist it.

Maybe some scientist rubbed off on me. They let wonder call the game, but doubt cuts the cards. Or maybe I can’t help waiting to be disappointed. It’s tough to give up that expectation, however beautiful I find the tile, because sooner or later we’ll know what it is, and can its reality ever match my imagination? Sometimes I wish we’d found nothing and the flashes remained unexplained.

Will analyzing the tile be the subject of your next documentary?

If I had my way—and five or ten billion dollars—it’d be about bringing the tile home. It’d be about discovering its origins. Whether we do so, sadly, is up to those senators.

Fade to Gold:
An Interview with Bryan Sebold, Director of The Gold Book

Stephen S. Power
Released April 21, 2027 8:15 PM EST

Nine years ago I spoke with Bryan Sebold about his film The Mars Light. His new seven-part documentary, The Gold Book, released worldwide today via cellnet, picks up the story by intercutting the retrieval of the Mars Tile with its analysis on Earth. He spoke to me from Moscow, where the film was produced by the Russian Federal Space Agency in collaboration with the European Space Agency. Warning: Spoilers below.

The first film, you said, was about wonder. What’s this one about?

The hard work of wonder. Anyone can say, “I want to go to Mars.” Or, “I want to make a movie about going to Mars.” But to do it? Agony.

Is that why you made one film instead of two, to reinforce the agony? You could have released the Retrieval sections much sooner.

Yes, but that part was seen live (with a lag), and half the mission controllers have written books about it. By intercutting the two stories, I think I’ve provided a new perspective on the retrieval—the stakes—while showing that the analysis is no less epic. That hasn’t stopped people from separating the movie into two parts, of course.

I’ve read all those books and most everything else about the retrieval, so I was surprised by how many new details you had, such as how close the rover cannon came to failing.

And I still left out half that story for security reasons. You can understand why. On the one hand, when you electrify a few cubic inches of hydrogen the way a hammer sparks gunpowder, you can fire a cartridge with a small gold tile out of a nanotube pipe at the escape velocity of Mars. On the other hand, were you to employ the same technology on Earth, you would have a gun that could kill a house.

Was the muzzle flash, that white bloom in the rover’s navcam, a nod to your original short?

Absolutely. It made for a nice fade to the tile being loaded into the CT scanner.

Let me backtrack a little. In this film, you had to use CGI.

Only for the two things not directly filmable: the Mars Relay Vehicle capturing the cartridge, then the MRV flinging it into Earth’s atmosphere the way Stardust sent home its sample of comet. The pictures from the MRV’s cameras were darker and grainier than we’d hoped for.

Prompting endless conspiracy theories.

Which owe less to bad lighting than they do to the jingoism of those who sat out the greatest endeavor of our age. After all, the conspiracies began with the MRV shots, not the leaked rough cut of that scene.

Why didn’t you address the political controversies surrounding the mission?

They’d have made it a different film, a mundane film, not one about the heavens. Besides, I had enough to cover already. Early on I decided to cut anything not about getting the tile home.

How have you dealt with the controversies personally? Your citizenship—

Stephen, I’d like to talk about the film.

Then let me ask you this: How has making the film changed you?

Like most people, the shock of knowing there’s an extraterrestrial intelligence wore off pretty quickly. Now that it’s normal, it doesn’t bear thinking about. That’s probably key to our survival as a species. We tune in the unusual, the different, because they’re potentially dangerous, but once intimacy defangs the strange, we tune it out. The downside is, we then start looking for new dangers.

Or old ones. A troublesome film. A troublesome filmmaker.

Precisely. I can be understood in human terms. But can we understand whatever made the tile? If they’re dangerous, would we recognize that? If they aren’t, would we misjudge them? And can we even imagine how they’ll see us—figuratively and literally?

Which brings us back to the tile. You lit the lab to look stark, sterile, while you gave Mars a bronze warmth.

I wanted the lab to seem the more alien place because, to them, we are the aliens. We need to start seeing ourselves from their point of view.

Because they’re coming?

No. Because they are. Whatever they are.

So there’s no warning, no threat in the tile?

Don’t get Hollywood. We’re not yet sure what’s in the tile. All we know is what’s shown in the film: that it’s not a solid mass, but a stack of individual sheets of gold, thousands of them, each as thin as leaf, each bearing an even thinner layer of gold that looks like writing. We’re not sure how the tile was created, how old it is, and how it holds together. And we didn’t use CGI for the scans either. Those are the real images, just separated digitally to make what’s on each page easier to see.

In the film, you interview half a dozen experts who speculate what kind of book it could be: a bible, a manifest, a manifesto, a cookbook—

Naturally.

What if it’s none of those? What if it’s totally insignificant. Alien ephemera?

Archaeologists spend their lives sifting through trash. Seems like a good place to start.

How will Russia react if they find technological secrets in the tile? They say they’re committed to open—

As are England and half the European Union, who are supervising the analysis with them. I’ve seen no indication that they’d betray their allies. They remember the Cold War. Nothing good came of it. Secrets will be shared, hence this movie and the crowd-sourced effort to decode the tile that we’re launching alongside it.

No pages will be held back?

What would be the point? We don’t know what’s significant. And for all the power of our computers, they can’t replicate what hundreds of millions of creative minds can do together.

At least those minds who are allowed to participate.

Once America sees how this project brings the rest of the world together, they’ll jump in, too. For all the hard work that went into retrieving the tile, the more important and far harder work lies ahead: bringing ourselves together to meet the tile maker someday. Learning their language at the same time, making it our language, too, will do that.

Are you prepared to be disappointed?

Of course. I’m an idealist. I believe in beauty. I believe beauty can be realized. But I know it never truly can.

Fade to Red:
An Interview with Brynne Sebold, Director of The Floating Earth

Stephen S. Power
Broadcast November 22, 2039 18:15 UST

Brynne Sebold’s documentary The Mars Light is about the discovery of the Gold Book, and its sequel, The Gold Book, is about the book’s retrieval from Mount Sharp and its analysis on Earth. For her third film in the series, she collaborated with Musion Holographic’s 3D Studio to bring the book’s contents to life. Ms. Sebold spoke to me from her home in Chartres, France, about the changing nature of film, depicting alien viewpoints and the elusiveness of beauty.

In our interview about The Mars Light, you mentioned slow TV and how filmgoers would never go for that pacing, yet—

Now I’ve made the slowest film ever? A lot has changed since then, including what’s a film. When was the last time a film was even shot on film? Mine’s mostly code. And who watches them in a theater facing forward? I think escaping old terms and ways of seeing are half of what Floating is about.

What’s the other half?

Not expecting. In a traditional film, however convoluted its narrative, however errant its hero’s journey, there’s a beginning, middle, and end with various markers along the way. You might not know what’s coming, but you know something must be. Floating, on the other hand, focuses mostly on the time between gatherings.

That is, on the vastness of space.

That’s when the whale was most alert. According to the Gold Book, it estivated while rounding the Sun to protect itself, absorb energy, and create a new page.

Whale. Page. Book.

Putting aside old terms is a long, painful process. Besides, cosmicum, layer, and scale are homely words and no less anthropomorphic, albeit better than “bag of mostly gas.”

Viewers can, however, skip the journey to get to the destination. Why didn’t you disable that functionality on people’s projectors?

The viewer’s the real director now. If viewers want to miss the heart of the film, so be it. People have told me, though, that the gatherings frustrate them because they disrupt the flow of floating through space the way winning aggravates people who play slots. Did you skip ahead?

I had to, to prep for this interview.

Did you feel like you were cheating?

Yes, actually. I chose the third-person option to start so I could inspect the whale. It’s beautifully rendered. How its gold skin shimmered and ever so slightly rippled . . .

Thank you.

I left the projector on for days so the whale could keep me company before I switched to first-person. That point of view was so soothing. The hours fell away. At first I wanted to see the stars sliding past me, then I found comfort in their apparent stasis.

Our world is so well-lit, we don’t get to see the night sky as you would in space. And it’s so fast, going slow is a luxury.

When I fast-forwarded, I felt like I was being shot out of a cannon. Like I might go through my front window. After rounding the Sun, which was hugely fun, I approached the first gathering at regular speed. There’s nothing like watching Mars go from gray to red.

It never gets old.

How many orbits does the film depict? Not all 6,500-something from the book.

No, only the first 350. We’ll add more in the coming years, but those are the best documented orbits, people having decoded them in their linear fashion.

How did you determine what to depict at each gathering? The book is more suggestive than detailed.

I disagree. Each page notes how many whales ours met at Mount Sharp and how many unions it engaged in. Each page also records, we suspect, the amount of gaseous material exchanged, so it was only the mechanics of the exchange I had to decide on. There are many theories, as many as there are about the morphology of whales. I realized all could be correct, so I used them all at various gatherings, depending on the inclination and physiques of the whales. I admit that the whales with longer tails are randier than most and prefer threesomes.

I’d expected the exchanges to be more mechanical, like propane tanks linked by self-extending pipes, but I found them surprisingly intimate, the way the whales’ skins melded, sealed, then opened to one other. I put on a VR suit on for the gathering, and I really felt part of me being siphoned away while I was accepting another’s essence.

That bothers some people. Human exchanges are one way. When we say we share ourselves, really one person is just along for the ride. The whales literally lose themselves in each other’s skins. It makes a person reconsider his own skin and whether it’s really his or the VR suit he was born with.

The parting afterwards was sudden and terribly wrenching.

The book doesn’t indicate whether the whales lingered at Mount Sharp after exchanges or went their own ways. I think the “cuddlists” are overly sentimental and the “animalists” trying hard to be objective, but I had to side with the latter because I wanted to follow the book and bring people the life of the whale as it had recorded it. Personally, I imagine the exchanged material fuels them emotionally, if whales have something analogous to our emotions, during their orbits.

Me, I don’t think I’ve been so lonely. I could feel each bead of cold sweat in my suit. I wanted to tear it off, like a used condom, but that seemed disrespectful. The slowness became agony.

And our whale had a short migratory period, orbiting the Sun in fewer than 200 years. It only met other whales at Mount Sharp on one in seven orbits overall, but at least it had a greater chance to gather than those whales which have longer periods.

Imagine going millennia without touching another person. In human terms that would be like years of solitary confinement.

That’s another thing people have a problem handling, the timescale of the film.

I compressed each of the film’s orbits to ninety-four days, so a viewer could theoretically spend their entire natural life watching this one film.

Apparently a few kids have already started to do this.

I wonder how long they’ll be able to live on whale time.

Probably just long enough to get a book deal, although the ending is one of the best parts.

In retrospect, I wish I hadn’t included it. Musion insisted, and I saw their point: The whale lived for more than 1.3 million years. It might seem immortal. But we aren’t. We need endings, and showing its death would make it more relatable. I’d rather have left viewers disturbed, but Musion was paying the bills.

You had to do a fair amount of speculation, too.

More than I was comfortable with. In the last pages of the book, the whale encounters fewer and fewer other whales, only four during its final hundred orbits and one in its final fifty. We can’t tell whether the whales were dying out, whether our whale was in a cycle that didn’t synch with those of others, or whether the whales had begun gathering elsewhere and ours hadn’t been told. It’s also possible that our whale was attending gatherings but not exchanging anymore, perhaps due to age, infirmity, or sickness, which the coding in the book, as we understand it, would misleadingly indicate as no meeting at all. We don’t know.

And we can’t, at least until we find another Gold Book.

All we do know is that the final page describes the whale beaching itself on Mars. It wrote the final page of the book, using markings unseen on all the other pages, but reminiscent of those on the first. Then its gasses must have leaked away and its body disintegrated, leaving only the layered gold scale that is the book.

It was writing Goodbye.

Better, I think: an epitaph. It says, to me, “I made this. I am this. This is my life.” And the book will never molder into dust like its body. I find that beautiful.

That’s what you’ve been striving for through three films, beauty.

The more I consider the Gold Book, though, the more I feel diminished.

Not disappointed?

No. I was disappointed in the face of beauty failing. I feel diminished in the face of beauty succeeding, because one of us couldn’t achieve it. We don’t endure. We don’t make things that endure like the Gold Book. Even our greatest works last an eyeblink compared to the life of the whale. And this film’s an eyeblink to an eyeblink. The technology that makes it revolutionary today will become obsolete three times over in the few decades I have left. When I’m moldering, it’ll seem as quaint as a rotary phone.

Will you make more films then?

Yes, I have to. What I take away from the whale’s exchanges is that the one way anyone might endure is by influencing others. Certainly my work records the ideas of those who came before me, and later artists, I hope, will pass along my ideas. And maybe the last work made will be the Gold Book for all humanity.

So what are you working on?

Oddly enough, I’m in the same situation I was in after The Mars Light. I need us to go back to Mars. If our whale died on Mount Sharp and left its Gold Book behind, I bet others did too. It could be a whale graveyard. In fact, maybe that’s why they gathered there. I want to find their books and assemble a history of this great race. Hopefully, if the whales still exist, an orbiter will spot a gathering, which will surely spur the financing. America might even get back in the game.

In that case, I’ll put a fourth interview on my calendar, let’s say, ten years from now.

I’d enjoy that, Stephen. We can add another page to our books.

©2016 by Stephen S. Power.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen S. Power’s first novel, The Dragon Round, was recently published by Simon451. His stories have recently appeared or are forthcoming in AE, Daily Science Fiction, Nature, and Stupefying Stories. He’s also a Pushcart-nominated poet with work that has been read on StarShipSofa. He tweets at @stephenspower, his site is stephenspower.com, and his home is in Maplewood, New Jersey.

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

A Moment of Gravity, Circumscribed

Fran Wilde | 4540 words

Djonn’s father owned the last ticker in the city and made sure everyone knew it. Brass-bodied, the ticker looked fragile and cold, its clouded glass face obscuring the dark symbols beneath. Despite its age, it ticked loud and regular, breaking the arc of a day into increments.

“You have thirty ticks to decide,” Djonn’s father said when he made a deal. Djonn loved that Father knew how long a person took to make up their mind.

He longed to open the ticker, to find what made the “yes-no-yes-no” rhythm inside. After their dependent, Raeda, found the ticker far downtower a year ago, Father’s deals went “yes” more often than “no.” The ticker was a treasure. Father hung it high on their wall and wouldn’t let Djonn’s brothers fly with it. Djonn wasn’t even permitted to wind the ticker. Djonn was clumsy.

Father said so that morning before he took to wing, his satchel strapped to his chest, lumpy with small treasures.

Djonn’s three irritable brothers shook their heads and elbowed Djonn. They’d stayed up all night talking beneath the ticker’s sturdy rhythm. Now, they pushed Djonn out of their way, pocketed six noisy fighting birds, and flew to the market on the city’s southern edge.

Then Djonn’s mother climbed the ladder uptower to scour the roof with the other women. Raeda disappeared. Finally alone, Djonn teetered on a three-legged stool. The ticker said “yes-no-yes,” cold in his hands.

When the stool’s leg snapped, Djonn toppled and the ticker cracked beneath him like a dropped egg. Bent metal pieces spilled golden across the floor. Djonn’s home fell silent.

When Father returned, he would hang Djonn from Harut tower by his toes until his nose bled.

Unless.

“Raeda!” Djonn shouted, hoping she lurked nearby. Raeda would help. Djonn scooped up metal pieces and bits of broken glass. Held them out to her when she straightened from the family’s small garden on the ledge.

“You unlucky boy,” she said. “Gravity’s own monster.” She sounded like Mother, which annoyed him. He’d turned twelve and deserved more respect, especially from someone younger.

Raeda’s robe was faded at the shoulders and she’d hemmed the sleeves to her elbows. Her sunstruck skin looked green beneath the yellow cloth Djonn’s mother favored. She’d patched her wingstraps with spare spider silk; wore them crisscrossed over her still-flat chest. But she owned no wings: her only pair had ripped months ago.

Raeda took the ticker pieces. She paced back to the ledge and the better light, muttering.

“What do we do?”

She answered him by holding her hands out toward the empty sky. The sun played light across the shards. Djonn imagined them falling towards the distant clouds.

“No!” he shouted, moving fast. He yanked her away from the ledge. “Raeda, you’ll make it worse!”

Djonn grabbed the pieces. Hurried to hide them in his sleeping mat. The thick down pad sat folded atop a basket that held his things.

On a basket handle, Djonn’s messenger bird ruffled feathers in protest, then settled back to hooded sleep.

“You’d greet your father with handfuls of garbage?” Raeda teased him. “Your brothers will never let you live it down.”

She was right, but Djonn bristled. “They’ll blame you too. You’re meant to look after me.”

“You’re old enough to mind yourself,” she said. With her back to the ledge Raeda watched Djonn and waited. The city’s towers rose bone white behind her, set off by blue sky. Djonn looked at the hook where the ticker once hung on their home’s central wall, behind the circle of three-legged bone stools and bright yellow cushions. Where the family crowded for dinner. Where Father made deals with friends like Raeda’s uncle Maru, and the wingmaker, and others who gambled on fighting birds, or needed a helping hand.

His heart did a pitterpat imitation of the ticker. Yes-no-yes. Djonn met Raeda’s eyes. “You can help me.”

Raeda mended clothes. She cleaned. She weeded the family garden and mulched it with guano from the roof. She looked after Djonn and told him stories. She scavenged treasures from downtower and brought them to Father. Or she had, until her wings ripped beyond all repair.

Djonn cleared his throat. “You must help me find another ticker, Raeda, before Father comes home.” He said the words firmly, as Father would. He thought about counting to thirty.

Raeda shook her head. “There are no more. I’ve looked.”

“There must be! Somewhere!” He thought of all the tiers where his ancestors had lived, descending into the clouds.

Treasure came from below, Djonn knew, passed one generation to the next up the city’s bone towers until something broke or disappeared. Father kept an eye out for metal and glass, to keep it from being lost. “The weight of things drags folks down until they lose everything,” he said. “No one falls or starves downtower if I can help it.” He’d say that and nod at the ticker.

He liked lenses and tools especially. And knives. Raeda, whom Father sheltered when trouble befell her uncle Maru, had proven especially good at finding those. Plus a few rarer treasures, like the ticker. But finding treasures had grown difficult. Metal and glass were rare in a city of bone and birds, clouds and sky.

Last night, Djonn’s brothers had whispered about the clouds below. How treasure hid far downtower. Yes, for those strong enough to fly that low, strong enough to carry it up. How Raeda knew more than stories. Yes. How she knew what hid in the clouds, yes, maybe even in the broken tower, Lith.

Father had shushed them, furious. No. The clouds hid many dangers. Were too far down. Lith was a story. No. Leave Raeda alone.

Now, if Djonn could win Raeda’s help, perhaps he’d find a treasure better than the ticker before Father returned.

Raeda crossed the bone floor near the yellow cushions and knelt, pressing her back against the central wall where the ticker had hung. She tucked her feet beneath her in a posture entirely made of “no.”

“He’ll blame you too,” Djonn said. She looked at him, her brown eyes calm. “He knows I do not drop things.”

Djonn always dropped things. But Djonn paid attention when Father made deals. He knew give and take, the importance of speed. “My old wings, Raeda. They’re yours if you take me down to salvage.”

At this, she looked out to the ledge, out at the sky, the city’s towers. She flexed her fingers, worn rough on the fibrous ladders she used to climb from one tier to the next on their tower.

The city’s fifty-eight spires were beyond her reach. Without wings, she could only climb up and down, never to another tower, never far away.

Djonn silently counted to ten, then walked to where she sat and held out his hand, as he’d seen Father do. She put her hand in his and they clasped the deal.

Her lips parted in a smile, too quickly.

Perhaps, Djonn worried, she knew he’d kept his old wings to take apart, to see how they worked. Perhaps he’d decided wrong, or too fast. But a deal was a deal. Raeda would take him downtower on the ladders to salvage and when they’d found something to replace Father’s ticker, they’d come back up and he’d give her the wings.

He found a soft silk satchel in his basket; bound it over his shoulder and to his hip. Reached for a spare coil of rope ladder.

“You’ll give me my wings now.” She said it softly, still kneeling. Djonn felt the moments slipping away. When he nodded, Raeda smiled. “And I will take you into the clouds to find a treasure.”

“What?” Djonn’s pride at his first deal crumpled. Not even his father dared the clouds, their storms, the giant birds that prowled there. Yet Djonn’s brothers thought Raeda knew more about the clouds than she was telling.

And yes, Djonn needed a treasure that would save him from Father’s rage and his brothers’ ridicule. So he swallowed his doubts and retrieved the old gray wings from his basket for Raeda. Gave them to her.

He lifted his new wings, all gold spidersilk and fine bone battens, from the basket. He slipped the straps over his shoulders. At the last moment, he lifted his bird from its perch, removed its hood, and fed a piece of dried goose into its sharp beak. The bird stretched its wings, flew to the ledge and waited for him there.

Raeda secured the gray wings to her wingstraps, and checked Djonn’s to make sure those were tight. Then she turned and leapt from Djonn’s family’s ledge, snapping the wings open as she jumped.

An updraft filled the wings’ faded silk and Raeda laughed.

Djonn unfurled his new wings carefully and checked the grips and battens as he’d been taught to do. The wingmakers were skilled, but tears could happen, even on new wings.

“Come on!” Raeda shouted, now gliding just beyond the balcony. She’d found a fine vent, and let it lift her to glide in a near-perfect circle.

Djonn swallowed his nerves and leapt after her.

• • • •

Raeda glided away from the tower, then raked her wings back. Djonn took a deep breath. When she dove, he followed, though he hated the steep plummet.

They dropped past tiers where families like Djonn’s crowded, down the cold drafts to dingier levels streaked with the garbage of those living above. In the neighboring towers’ shade, Djonn could see evidence of Harut’s central walls thickening, pushing the living spaces toward the tower’s ledges and the inevitable drop.

In Raeda’s stories, told while she cleaned or hemmed or tended the garden, people sometimes went into the clouds and didn’t return.

“They’re not strong enough, or they lose track of time, maybe.”

She’d told the stories with a smile, teasing Djonn about his skinny arms. “Your bones need to fill in. You’d get blown off the towers in the clouds.” She’d poked at him, but been careful around the bruises. His brothers had sharp elbows.

The city grew away from the clouds and people rose with it, she said. New bone tiers grew atop old ones, and, below, the central walls grew out, filling the towers. Even as the tools of Djonn’s grandfathers’ grandfathers pitted thin and dull, the city rose. The people rose out of the clouds, with the city, and were safer for it.

She hadn’t told stories since her wings ripped.

When Raeda pulled up and began to glide the city’s drafts again, Djonn prepared to circle the wide tower. They’d fly below the occupied tiers, beyond the places Djonn was allowed to go. Djonn breathed faster as they made the long glide around. He hoped no one saw them.

But with her wings spread full, Raeda dipped to the left and disappeared into the sun’s glare.

Djonn twisted his head from side to side, frantic. His wings wobbled. Above, a class of young fliers, five and six years old, flew tiny, ambitious arcs on patchwork wings over a net held by their teachers. Beyond the tower, an older group dove and mock-battled in the breeze. Below, only birds skimmed the air near the older tiers. The wind whistled in Djonn’s ears.

He looked up to the tower’s full height. He couldn’t see them, but he knew his mother, her friends, and their youngest children were still on Harut’s roof. They scrubbed at the bone with the rough scourweed that grew in the moist joins between tiers, hoping to make the tower grow higher.

Djonn’s message bird slowed beside him, knowing it wouldn’t get another piece of goose if it lost its master.

He scanned the thick clouds far below. Was she already down there? He saw no sign of it. Had she skipped out on him? Stolen his wings? Father would blame Djonn for much more than the ticker.

A low whistle made Djonn peer under his left wing. Between the shadows of the thick towers, gray wings flashed in the sun. Raeda banked towards the city’s eastern edge.

“Come on!”

Raeda turned to shadow as she used the neighboring tower’s windshear to accelerate.

Djonn struggled to do the same, whispering, “Wait!” He wobbled in the shear. Then he too pushed beyond his home towers.

A long glide later, he saw their destination: a gap carved in the city’s horizon by a blackened stump. Lith.

Djonn had thought it only one of Raeda’s stories. Even neighboring towers had risen far beyond the broken tower, had begun to forget.

They passed these towers, tiers long abandoned. Lith grew larger and darker.

The smell of it, Djonn realized, was more than Raeda’s dramatic talk. Rot, like a bird had crawled into a basket to die, but much worse. The tower itself, broken, she’d said, somewhere far below, made the stench.

Raeda slowed her approach, lifted a foot from the wings’ footsling, and landed on Lith in a cloud of dark dust. Djonn heard her coughing as he tried his own approach, wobbling and flying way too fast to step out.

“Careful!” Raeda shouted.

Djonn furled his wings in desperation, dropped hard to the tower’s splintered bone lip, and scrambled for purchase. His wings banged the tower’s edge before Raeda grabbed his arm to steady him. Blood bloomed through the knees of his robes.

“You’re too clumsy for this, Djonn,” she said. “You should wait up here.” Wait. On the blackening bones of Lith. No.

“What are we doing here?” he asked.

“You need a treasure, right?”

Djonn nodded. His message bird landed on his shoulder and poked at his ear, demanding food. He obliged, absently.

“Then you must go where the center isn’t grown out, way down, where no one comes to salvage.” She said it matter-of-fact and held her arms out. Lith.

“How did you know?” They stood far below the occupied city.

“Heard my uncle talk about it once with my gran.”

Djonn frowned. His father had helped her uncle with a gambling debt, but the price had been steep.

“What did your gran say?”

“That this place is very old. People died here when the tower cracked. There are ghosts.” Djonn looked around. All he saw was dead bone, rotting while the city grew past it. His knees pulsed with pain. “You can stay up here,” she said again.

He shook his head. “I broke the ticker. I’ll find something better to replace it with, or I won’t go back.”

“You broke something else, too,” Raeda said, her voice filled with regret. Djonn looked over his shoulder. His clumsy landing had bent his left wing. Two bone battens poked through the silk at odd angles. Father would skip the hanging and throw him right into the clouds.

“It’s alright,” he lied, hoping his voice wouldn’t break. “Maybe we’ll find something to patch them with downtower.”

Raeda watched him. She’d seen Djonn’s brothers yank him back from near-disastrous falls. Heard them laugh at how clumsy he was and threaten to tether him like a baby, so they could reel him up. Djonn looked away from the pity in her eyes.

“You can send the bird, call for help.”

He shook his head. “Let’s go,” he said, determined not to trip or stumble in front of her. His broken wing dragged behind him with a skittering sound.

He uncoiled the ladder and looked for something to tie it to. The uneven roof presented cracks and rough spurs, but he didn’t think it would hold two climbers.

Raeda saw it too. “You go down. I’ll hold the rope. Then I’ll fly down.”

“How far?”

She shrugged. “Ladder won’t reach more than four tiers.”

Djonn thought about the clouds. About his brothers, the ticker, his broken wing. “We should go farther.”

Raeda grumbled. “Would be faster if you stayed up top.”

“No.”

The tower creaked and groaned as he climbed down the ladder’s knots. He passed tier after blackened tier. Each smelled worse than the ones before. But Raeda was right, the central core hadn’t grown out. Among the tossed and broken walls of the living quarters he passed, Djonn saw shadows piled high.

“This is good enough,” Raeda said at the eighth tier.

“It isn’t,” he answered and lowered the rope again. Her stories always began long, long ago. They argued until they’d descended sixteen tiers.

“Lower than our great-grandparents,” he whispered. His calves and shoulders throbbed.

“Much,” Raeda agreed.

Lower and darker. Tendrils of cloud curled over the tier’s dark bone floors. Something rattled in the shadows. Only a bird, Djonn thought. We’ll get the treasure and get out.

Raeda spoke, not looking at him. “Do you know a story called ‘bone forest’?”

He shook his head. Focused on her words, rather than listening for sounds from the tower.

“My gran knew it. She’d lost everything but the story’s name by the time I knew her. I thought maybe your brothers—since they go to the markets.”

“What’s a forest?”

“Dunno.”

Raeda, distracted by the lost story, fell silent. She walked across the filthy floor. Djonn watched her feet, lost in their whispers. When she stepped on a goose-sized pile of feathers, dry bones cracked. Raeda cried out once and fell to her knees. A splintered goose rib pierced her left footwrap.

Djonn looked around for help. Lith, he remembered, held only ghosts. Then he knelt beside Raeda. He placed his hand flat against her heel and tugged at the splinter. She bit her lip and stayed silent. Djonn pulled again and the splinter came loose. Raeda lay down with her foot raised above her head.

“Bad luck,” Djonn said. His voice cracked. “We’ll get help now.” His bird shifted on his shoulder.

“No. Get your treasure, then we’ll send the bird.” Raeda’s voice wavered. “Look,” she pointed. Something glinted on the floor beyond her reach, under layers of dust and grime.

Djonn bent to brush at the dust. His fingers touched cold metal, a bone handle. A knife. Father had many knives.

He stepped over it. Brushed at the dust beyond with his fingers. Uncovered small bones, knobby and jumbled, then long bones, bigger than his arm. A pile of curved bones and tiered bones. Djonn cleaned off the last of them and realized they’d make a grown man, though the skull was missing. He yelped.

His message bird startled and flew away. Djonn cursed after it, and at his own clumsiness.

Raeda crawled over. “Sat down and died, looks like. No one around to throw him over the edge.”

“What happened to his head?”

“A bird took it for the eyeballs, like as not,” she made a gnashing sound with her teeth and Djonn paled.

“Aw, Raeda!” He felt sick and bent over, his back turned to her. He stared at the tower’s dark wall, not really seeing anything. Stared at the dark shadow against the wall for a heartbeat, two. Then he blinked. Rust-rimed metal, a bone handle on the lid, half hidden by rags and piles of rotting feathers. “Oh,” he whispered.

Raeda followed his glance and whistled. “Look what we found.”

She crawled faster than he could scramble, and beat him to it. She fingered the rusted latches, then rubbed them with scourweed pulled from a pocket of her robe. A shadow passed by the tower. Another bird, Djonn thought. Long-sealed hinges squealed as the box’s top swung open. Inside was more metal than Djonn had seen in his life. Long pieces of it, sharp at the ends. Short bits, clawed bits, a long strip with symbols like the ticker. He’d seen Father hold one of the clawed things, once. Saw him cradle it like a bird, call it a tool, the rarest kind of treasure. There were nails too, plenty of them. Metal needles. And a strange two-legged thing with a piece of charcoal clamped to one leg. He snatched that from the box before Raeda slammed the lid down.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Thinking.” She sat on the box and looked out at the blue sky beyond the black tower. The sun was high in its arc now.

Djonn tried to guess Raeda’s thoughts. He wasn’t sure what to think himself, except that she sat on his treasure. Metal. A pile of it.

“It’s mine,” he finally said. “I gave you my wings for it.”

She looked at him a long time. “And you don’t have any way to get it out of here, do you, sad-face brokenwings?” Djonn’s brothers called her that, when they thought she couldn’t hear. She rose, favoring her heel, and pulled at the box handle. The contents rattled. “It’s too heavy to fly.”

“We have to try,” Djonn said with a screech. “It’s mine.”

“And what is mine, Djonn?” Raeda’s chin tilted up. Djonn nearly whispered “What could you possibly want?” because his mother had said it to him so often, but he knew. Raeda wanted to leave. With the box and his wings, she’d be free. Djonn wanted to say, “Yes, take me with you,” and “No, you can’t,” all at the same time. His fingers tightened around the tool that held the charcoal. One leg ended in a sharp point.

“You have your wings. Help me get this back home and I’ll give you some of what’s inside.”

She shook her head slowly. “I’m not going back. I’ll make my own luck in the city, somewhere your father and my uncle can’t find me.” She had the box open again and began picking through the metal.

A shadow, backlit by the sun and bright sky, fell over her. “That’s exactly what you won’t be doing.” A man stood on the ledge, furling his dark wings. He cracked his knuckles and stared at the box, and at both of them. “Uncle,” Raeda whispered.

• • • •

Despite her uncle blocking the light, Djonn could see Raeda’s face. Her eyes narrowed and she looked from Maru to the box and back. Any hope Djonn had that this was a rescue evaporated.

“Been watching you, Rae,” Maru said. He jerked his chin at Djonn. “Boy’s dad says you haven’t brought in near enough salvage lately. Been putting a lot of pressure on me. So I saw you launch that bird.”

Djonn’s mouth formed an “o.” Father’s story about helping Raeda was a lie. Still, Maru was a way out. Djonn could make a deal.

“Help us get the box back,” Djonn said, speaking forcefully, like his father would. “And my father will forget your debt, I know it.”

Maru laughed. “Boy, you don’t know your father. Let’s see what you found.” He eyed the box and whistled like Raeda had. “The whole tower saw you two fly off, Rae,” he muttered. “Won’t be long before half the city is searching Lith for treasure. What else did you find?”

“Only that. And him,” Raeda pointed at the skeleton. “And this,” she raised the knife, pointed towards her uncle.

“Ingrate girl,” Maru growled. He lunged for Raeda and she dodged, but kept her grip on the box. The box slowed her, and he knocked the knife to the ground. It skittered on the floor, stopping at Djonn’s feet.

Djonn looked at the knife, remembering the times his brothers had taken bone knives away from him. “You’d kill yourself with something that sharp,” they’d laughed.

Maru grappled with Raeda and stepped hard on her hurt foot. She howled and crumpled. He dragged her up with one arm, her hand pinned behind her, against her furled wings. He reached for the box.

Djonn wrapped his fingers around the knife while Maru wasn’t looking.

“You’re not worth much, you lying sack of bones,” Maru hissed at Raeda. He spun on Djonn, who barely managed to hide the knife in his robes, next to the pointed tool. “And you, you wingbroken fledge. Your father and brothers have taken the lifeblood of half my people. What should be done with you?”

Djonn thought for two heartbeats. “You have to let us go. People will come, they’ll see. You said so yourself.”

“They’ll see what? A broken-winged boy. Maybe that’s something your father will take as full payment.”

Bad to worse. Djonn wrapped his hand around the knife.

Maru swung the box of metal and Raeda towards the tower ledge. “Can’t fly with both,” he laughed, and changed his grip on the girl.

Djonn’s heart pounded now-yes-now. He rushed Maru, blade held as Raeda had, all his weight behind the knife.

Maru heard him coming. He dropped the box, grabbed Djonn’s arm and squeezed. The knife clattered to the ledge, wobbled, and flipped. It fell end over end towards the clouds. Djonn whimpered.

Maru pinned Djonn’s hand by his shoulder blade, as his brothers did. Raeda shouted as her uncle turned once again to hold her out over the ledge.

Djonn’s other hand shot out from his robes on its own, holding the tool with charcoal and the sharp point. He didn’t think. He drove the point hard into Maru’s ear until he heard a crack. The man dropped to the floor, thrashing, and Raeda fell, catching herself by one hand on the ledge.

Djonn dove to the floor and clasped her hand. “I won’t drop you,” he said.

Maru kicked behind them once more and stopped. Djonn pulled hard while Raeda scrambled and, soon, they both knelt on the ledge. In the distance, Djonn could see flyers headed towards Lith: four pairs of yellow wings still high in the sky. His father and brothers.

Djonn drew a deep breath and opened the box. Picked out five sharp tools and one metal strip. Held them out to Raeda.

“Go fast. Before they come.”

Her eyes widened. She straightened her yellow robes and secured the tools in a hidden pocket. She put her hand out, and pulled him up to standing. “Thank you for catching me,” she said. She took a hesitant step forward on her injured foot, then another, until she limped across the tier to a ledge on the far side of the tower’s circumference. She leapt from the edge, snapping her gray wings open at the last minute.

Djonn bent to pull the weapon from Maru’s ear. The tool wasn’t meant for that. He could tell.

By the time Djonn’s father and brothers landed, he’d figured out what the tool was for: drawing circles. He’d traced small and large circles on the dark bone floor, the charcoal invisible against the rotting tower.

He tucked the tool away in his robes and showed his father the metal box. He showed him the skeleton.

“Box was too heavy for him. Dragged him down.”

Djonn’s father clasped his shoulder. “And Raeda?” one brother asked. His other brothers looked around the dark tier, at the dead man, at Djonn, who stood with one foot on the box. Djonn peered over the ledge, to the clouds below, counted three calm heartbeats, then met their eyes for five more.

“I couldn’t hold her,” he said.

He watched them shift uncomfortably, caught between him and the clouds.

©2013 by Fran Wilde. Originally published in Impossible Futures , edited by Tom Easton and Judith K. Dial.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Fran Wilde is the Andre Norton and Compton Crook Award-winning and Nebula-nominated author of Updraft and its sequel Cloudbound (September 2016). Her short stories appear in Asimov’s, Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Shimmer, and her novella, The Jewel and Her Lapidary, was published by Tor.com in May 2016. Fran writes nonfiction and essays for publications including The Washington Post, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, and iO9.com and interviews authors, editors, and agents about the intersection of food and fiction at the Cooking the Books podcast. You can find her online at franwilde.net & Twitter: fran_wilde.

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

Plea

Mary Anne Mohanraj | 3860 words

Three families ahead of them in line. Many more behind, stretching along the beach; it had taken most of the day to get this far, and Eris’s sun was now setting, casting red-gold rays across the sand. Gwen resisted the urge to remind Jon to stand up straight. Their hosts—potential hosts—couldn’t stand up at all, and there was no reason cetaceans would even notice a human’s posture, much less care. The only bodily attributes the Erisians might care about would be whether the humans had the added blubber and other genetic modifications to sustain them in a mostly watery environment. Though if they didn’t have those modifications, then there’d be no reason for any humans to be standing in this line, begging refuge of aliens. No, the Erisians wouldn’t be paying attention to their bodies at all—all of their attention would be focused on the humans’ minds.

Which reminded her—Gwen started humming again. A strange, deliberately atonal pattern that she had memorized—that her whole family had memorized, and in fact, the entire long line of human families had memorized, it seemed, as Gwen could hear the hum rising around her. Oh, the patterns weren’t identical, and some people were whispering rhymes under their breath, but the general concept was the same. Keep the hum going, and they won’t be able to read your minds.

Her wife, Rose, had paid five thousand credits to the shark for this pattern. Not an actual shark—there were no actual sharks on Eris, just as there were no actual whales, or dolphins. Their hosts, the Erisians, were somewhere between whale and dolphin in size, and far smarter than either. But the shark they’d paid the bulk of their savings to was a human one, one who swore that he knew how to get them to safe waters. Knew how to beat the system.

Jon and Matthew were dutifully humming along, their teenage faces set and determined. They’d practiced for weeks, and the boys had it down now. They understood what was at stake here, and while they’d caused their parents plenty of trouble in the raising of them, they were good children at heart. And to be fair, Gwen and Rose hadn’t really known what trouble was, before the last few months. Rose’s round features were drawn with anxiety, and her skin had a greyer-than-usual tinge.

“Did you eat breakfast?” Gwen couldn’t help asking.

Rose shook her head, fine strands of hair flying, tangling, in the light ocean breeze. “I couldn’t.” The wind blew grains of sand around them, erasing the humans’ footprints almost as soon as they made them.

“That’s just going to make it harder to concentrate.” Gwen could feel the knot of tension in her back drawing tighter, harder. As if in counterpoint, the churning in her stomach intensified.

“Gwen, please. Don’t harass me. Not now.” Rose whispered the words.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” An essential skill in any marriage, the ability to apologize, quickly and freely. Gwen was sorry, and even more so when a small voice piped up from near her knees.

“I ate breakfast, mama!”

“Good girl!” Gwen said, bending down to give Ciara a quick kiss on the cheek. “Now, back to your song, sweetheart, just like we practiced.” She could tell the child wanted to chatter on, which was entirely developmentally appropriate at age six, but not now, not now, and it was Gwen’s own fault for starting to talk. Thankfully, after a brief, mutinous look, Ciara settled down to her humming again, hugging her stuffed bear to her chest. She rocked back and forth on bare feet, wide and flattened, webbed toes digging into the sand. They wouldn’t need shoes where they were going.

• • • •

It had all sounded so foolish, when their neighbors had first mentioned the possibility, more than six months ago.

Rose had protested, over their shared breakfast cuppa. “But there’s nothing there! Those islands in the southern sea—they’re just big humps of grass and dirt. Barely any trees, nothing developed—it would take generations to build up any kind of civilization there; you’d spend all your time just trying to survive.”

Sarah and Stephen exchanged a look, one of those long-married looks that said they could read each others’ minds. Gwen was briefly envious of that look; Ciara had been fractious lately, in the throes of some developmental shift, and between minding her and keeping their joint fishing business going, she and Rose hadn’t had much time together. She was feeling . . . distant, disconnected from her wife. Maybe the neighbors could watch the kids for a weekend, and she and Rose could take a little vacation. Just strip down, dive under the waves, and go. Rose stood up to pour some more hot water in the pot, and her long dark hair fell forward as she bent over the table. Gwen resisted the urge to reach out, gather a thick handful, and pull her wife closer. Not now. There’d be time later.

It was Stephen who finally spoke, and his tone had turned grim. “It may not be so easy for us to survive here.”

Gwen frowned, distracted from her Rose-fantasies. “Now you’re being ridiculous. Surely you’re not taking those rumors seriously? Those pure human propagandists aren’t going to make any headway here.”

Rose chimed in, “We’ve lived together for decades, modified and unmodified, side by side. The idea that we could be in danger from people like Joe and Jamie—be sensible, Stephen. This isn’t Old Earth, you know. Eris is a peaceful planet—it always has been.”

Sarah shook her head. “All I know is, people are leaving, heading off to the islands. The ones the Erisians will accept, anyway. We’re going to look into it.”

Humans, going off to live with the Erisians. Bizarre. It was one thing to share a planet with them, and kind of them too, to give humans permission to settle on the large, unused continent. The Erisians had no use for it, after all, and on this mostly-water world, no other sentient species had evolved. The Erisians didn’t even speak, but their projective empathy made their feelings clear. Welcome, welcome, they’d beamed, when the humans first arrived. A palpable warmth.

The adult Erisians had mostly ignored them after that first welcome, but their adolescents had taken a real interest in the humans. They’d shown the colonists where the best fishing spots were, and had warned them of oncoming storms, so they’d have plenty of time to batten the hatches and hunker down. The humans hadn’t been able to do much in return, but the Erisians didn’t seem to mind. And when the first generation of fully-modified humans had taken to the seas, with bigger lungs, splayed, webbed feet, and scales all adapted to spending much more of their lives underwater, the Erisian adolescents had greeted them with joy.

Gwen had grown up living on the beach, never more than a hundred paces from the ocean. She’d blissfully flung herself into the waves, and it was there that she’d met Rose, actually under the water. That had always seemed a sign of good luck for them, for their marriage. They’d been blessed with twenty years of happy life together, and eventually, three healthy children, equally at home on Eris’s sandy shores and in its deep waters. It was bewildering to think that could all be snatched away in an instant.

• • • •

She’d been home alone with Jon when it happened. They were working on the nets, fingers tangled in knots, pulling and tugging, testing for strength. Some would need mending. There were times in the water when Gwen wished for fins instead, to be able to cut through even more cleanly, swiftly. But fingers were too useful to give up, as the first generations of experimenting humans had discovered. Most who chose to modify followed a similar path for themselves and their children, a now well-trodden path, three generations into colonization. It wasn’t an easy life, settling a colony planet—none of the technological luxuries of Old Earth, or even the Seven Daughters, the first planets to be colonized. But Eris, beautiful Eris with its wide, warm oceans, had its own charms. Kneeling there in the sand, with her tall, handsome son working beside her, his own callused fingers as skilled with the knots as hers, Gwen couldn’t imagine a better home, a better life.

“Fish-lickers! Greyskins!” The shouts warned her, when the—mob was the only word for it, as much as it shocked her to admit it—the mob was still several yards away on the beach. At least a dozen people, all adults, all with skin colors characteristic of the unmodified, an array of creams and pinks and browns. As for her and her son—she wouldn’t have called their skin grey. Oh, it was grey in parts, but more of a grey-green, or grey-blue, like the water on a cloudy day. And shimmered with silver scales, gauntlets along their arms, and sheathing chest and back and legs as well. Some gene-modded with more scales, some with less—as with hair, you were never quite sure what you’d end up with. But she’d always thought their scale-skin was beautiful. The mob clearly disagreed.

Her gut clenched; no weapons, not that Gwen could see, but the ugly rage on their faces was clear enough, and frightening enough. What had she ever done to them? Or her sweet, innocent son? At thirteen, Jon was still a child—still a decade and a half from full majority. He couldn’t have done anything to offend them, but now wasn’t the time to argue with a rabid crowd, no matter what her stupid, stubborn brain wanted. Mama-instincts kicked in; she grabbed Jon’s hand and without even speaking, they were moving, in sync, the few short steps to the surf. And then they were in, first running into the shallow waves, then, when the water grew deep enough, diving in, taking refuge in those cool depths. With the first faceful of cold water, she could feel her breathing begin to slow, mammalian diving reflex kicking in.

Old-stock humans could swim too, of course, so she urged Jon deeper, with silent gestures. They couldn’t go as deep as an Erisian might, of course, but much further than the unmodded. She took them down, into the cold and darkness, a deeper world than she usually ventured into. Nictitating membranes slid down, protecting her eyes, though there was little to see here. Peaceful, a cold, quiet expanse. Even with the thick, insulating layer of blubber under her skin, Gwen began to feel chilled. They stayed down until her lungs, finally, began to burn. Their systems were far from base human—better oxygen-carrying capacity in the blood, altered urinary system to help with the bends. Better, much better, but not nearly efficient enough; living entirely underwater was still only a dream. Jon could stay down longer, with his young, powerful body, but safer if he came with her. At least for long enough to surface, grab a breath, assess the situation.

The sun was setting, and the water around them was deserted. The beach as well. It was late; they’d been down longer than she’d realized. Gwen had a sudden panicked thought—Rose was due back at dinnertime with the other children. What if they’d come back already? What if the mob had caught them? Terror lent power to her strokes, and she raced back, outpacing even Jon’s strong shoulders. Their nets lay scattered on the sand, shredded. But she couldn’t look at that now—she was staggering through the sand, her legs trembling beneath her. Great, shaky strides until she was almost at the door—but there, there was Rose. Walking down the shore path, Ciara on her shoulders and Matthew beside her. Safe. Gwen fell to her knees in the sand. She seemed to have forgotten how to breathe.

• • • •

They hadn’t decided to leave right away. A few destroyed nets—those weren’t enough to convince them to abandon the home they’d built together, their community, all the conveniences of modern life. At first, Gwen couldn’t imagine a life without the net, that stream of news and education and entertainment that was the birthright of every colonist—they’d worked so hard to ensure that every child born on Eris had access. To walk away from that felt like walking away from their shared history, their humanity. Felt far more of a break than a few simple genetic modifications.

But when Stephen and Sarah came home to find their beloved pet siball dead in the road, his tail chopped off and his throat sliced open—that was when Rose started making calls in earnest. She had always been the communicator in the marriage, the one who talked to strangers, who made friends easily. Gwen was slow to warm, slow to trust. So she focused on getting things in order, trading what she could for settling supplies. The basics that they would need to survive—tents and bedding, tools, portable computers, seeds. There was only so long you could live on fish before humans would start to get sick. And they were still human, no matter what those people thought.

The shark came to their living room, sat at the broad dining table that Gwen had shaped herself out of long planks of native wood. He spoke with a strange accent—didn’t sound like he was from around here. But he had the information they needed, and a plan.

“The problem,” he explained, “is that they’re pacifists. That’s why some people get turned away.”

“We’re pacifists, too,” Rose said. “So we’ll be all right then?”

“Nah. When you say pacifist, you mean you like things peaceful. But that’s nothing like what an Erisian means. They have no natural predators, you know, and they don’t fight each other. Just didn’t evolve that way. They eat their algae, swim and sing, have long, philosophical debates with each other. It’s a nice life. They don’t understand about violence. How sometimes, it’s the only choice a human has left.”

Gwen said, mindful of the children listening from the other room, “There are always other choices.”

He laughed shortly. “You think so. Bet you’ve never had to make those choices.”

Gwen would have to admit that she hadn’t, if pressed, so she kept silent instead. Her life had been uneventful for its forty-seven years. Aside from the last few months, she had never had a fist raised to her in anger—well, not unless you count her big brother, who had taken a swing at her a few times when they were kids. Luke was gone now, had taken the retro-genes and gone back to stock human, spending every penny he had to afford it, and then some, indenturing himself to a starship crew in order to pay the last doctor bills. He’d never been happy in the ocean, and the brightest smile she’d ever seen on his face was when he stepped onto that ship. A different path. Not the one for her, or for Rose. Even if they would choose it for themselves, they couldn’t bargain away their children’s futures. And to leave the sea . . . the very thought broke her heart.

“They’ll read your mind, and they’ll find whatever dark secrets you’ve kept hidden, whatever violent urges. They don’t like what the humans are doing to each other; they don’t want any of that on their islands, in their waters. And no one knows exactly what’s going to set them off, so safer to think of only peaceful things.”

“But how can anyone do that?” Like not thinking of pink elephants.

“I’ll teach you—I’ll teach all of you. For the right price.”

Gwen didn’t like the shark, didn’t want to spend another minute in his company, didn’t want him near her children. But she met Rose’s soft brown eyes, and saw in them the same steely conviction she felt herself. They were both convinced. They’d give him what he asked, and try not to count the cost.

• • • •

The line shifted, and now there was only one family ahead of them. The sand was wet beneath Gwen’s feet, and occasionally, a little wavelet would run up and touch her toes. The boys were being so good—Rose was fussing around them, straightening their tunics, as if that mattered, and aside from a few eyerolls, they were tolerating her nervous movements. Gwen couldn’t believe how Matthew had shot up in the last few months—at fifteen, he was taller than both his mothers, strong enough to catch enough fish to feed the whole family by himself, if need be. Thank god this hadn’t come on them when the boys were small, or even five years earlier. Trying to settle a new land with a ten-year-old, eight-year-old, and nursing infant—impossible. Now, Gwen had some confidence in her family. Together, the five of them could build a good life for themselves, if this madness lasted. And if not, as she fervently hoped, maybe in a year or two, they could go home again. Although home would never be the same.

She’d told the shark that she was a pacifist, and she supposed she still was, in some weak sense. But two days before their number came up in the Erisian lottery, their chance to beg for a place on the islands, Gwen had come home to find devastation. They hadn’t come into the house, whomever they were, but her garden was destroyed. Trees hacked down, shrubs as well, chopped into chaotic bits. Perennials dug up, vegetables stomped into mush, tender annuals shredded underfoot. They’d gorged themselves on her berry bushes, and one of them must have had a taste for fruit, since the trees had been picked bare. That was perhaps the most chilling part—it wasn’t just some mad mob, but someone who still had sense in their head, enough to pick fruit and carry it away. That someone had come and joined in tearing her garden to pieces.

And still, they’d been lucky. They hadn’t been home when the mob came. The Andersons, across the shore road, hadn’t survived. Rose had told the boys that night, though Gwen had hesitated. But Rose had insisted. “They have to know. They have to understand how important it is, that they do as they’re told.” And there they stood, her boys, Jon and Matthew shoulder to shoulder, waiting quietly, humming their tune. Meditating on something calm, peaceful, as she should be, instead of reliving that moment when she first saw her garden, the ruin of all those hours of patient labor. In that moment, she could have picked up her machete and taken a swing at any intruder. To defend her own—surely, that was justified, was understandable.

But who knew what alien sea creatures understood? It was terrifying, thinking that so much depended on someone, some thing, she didn’t really understand. For a moment, she felt the sharp shock of thinking like a human firster, of being terrified of the strange, the other. Safer, surely, to be surrounded by your own.

The line was moving—and here it was, their turn. Some had gone through quickly; others had taken a long time. Gwen took a deep breath, and focused her eyes past the Erisians in the bay, looking out, to the open water. There was her peace, there, where the rising moons cast a serene glow across the white-capped waves. That was what brought her back to herself—this ocean that she loved. If humans had never come to Eris, never taken that fateful step into the unknown, she couldn’t be here, falling in love with the waters all over again. There—that was something the cetaceans could read, and gladly. Gwen would give them her love for this planet, and surely, they would embrace her, as they’d embraced ancestors, crying “Welcome, welcome!”

Rose was through, and the boys—one, then the other, stepping into the water in response to some silent signal. Gwen turned to collect Ciara, and that was when it happened. Another child, a younger child, grabbed at Ciara’s stuffed bear, the one thing she had insisted on packing, that she had clung to through the long day, into this fateful night. The child grabbed at the bear, and Ciara screamed, “No!” and slung an angry fist into the child’s arm, and then another, and another. The tensions of the day, of the past weeks and months, leading perhaps inevitably to this moment, when six years old was not nearly old enough to hold back in the face of such impossible provocation.

Gwen grabbed Ciara up, pulling her away from the child whose father was doing exactly the same, sharing an appalled glance with that father before turning back to the grey shape bobbing in the waves. She’d avoided looking at it before, but now, she faced it squarely. Surely, it would understand. She was only young.

But without words, the Erisian made its decision clear. Gwen had passed, but Ciara had failed. Oh gods. Nothing to be done about it—best to make the cut swift, in hopes of bleeding as little as possible. A quick, final look at Rose and the boys, pressing the memory of them into her mind and heart. Rose’s face was even greyer now, and she was hunched over, as if she’d been punched in the gut. She knew.

Gwen was so proud of her wife in that moment, as Rose straightened, squaring her shoulders, gathering their sons to her, turning them away. Permission had been given, but could be revoked. She needed to get the boys out, quickly, get them moving past the judge and jury, out to the open sea. Perhaps some adolescent Erisians would help them. Perhaps they would be kind, as their parents, apparently, could not.

“Mama, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Ciara never apologized, would dig her heels in, insisting that whatever had happened, someone else had started it. She was only defending herself. But now, the child seemed to have some sense of the magnitude of what had happened, because she was sobbing. Exhaustion, frustration—what an impossible day for six years old. Gwen couldn’t even be angry. She picked up the little girl in her arms and started walking back up the beach.

“Shh . . . shh, little one. Be quiet, and I’ll tell you a story. About how there was a big battle, and some people ran away and hid, but others stayed and fought. I bet you’re the kind of person who would stay and fight, aren’t you? Yes, that’s what I thought.” She sent her love to Rose and Jon and Matthew, starting their long journey to the islands. Maybe they would meet again, someday soon. Maybe not.

“So it was long ago and far away, when a mommy and her daughter lived in a little house by the sea . . .”

©2016 by Mary Anne Mohanraj.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of Bodies in Motion (HarperCollins), The Stars Change (Circlet Press) and twelve other titles. Bodies in Motion was a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards, a USA Today Notable Book, and has been translated into six languages. The Stars Change is a science fiction novella, and finalist for the Lambda, Rainbow, and Bisexual Book Awards. Previous titles include Aqua Erotica, Wet, Kathryn in the City, The Classics Professor, The Best of Strange Horizons, Without a Map, The Poet’s Journey, and A Taste of Serendib (a Sri Lankan cookbook). Mohanraj founded the Hugo-nominated magazine, Strange Horizons, and was Guest of Honor at WisCon 2010. She serves as Executive Director of the Speculative Literature Foundation (speclit.org), has taught at the Clarion SF/F workshop, and is Clinical Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago. www.maryannemohanraj.com

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

The Cavern of the Screaming Eyes

Jeremiah Tolbert | 9140 words

“Is that the collapsible, carbon fiber ten-foot pole from TrunchCo—” I slammed my locker door and spun the combo lock, but it was too late; the fanboy already seen my gear. I didn’t know what his interest was, but I didn’t want to encourage him. I said nothing.

He continued: “I’ve got the one from a couple of years ago that folds up. It sucks. I wish I had the new one.”

I stared at him over the rims of my glasses in my best glare. He didn’t flinch.

The fanboy was a transfer student, new this year. I couldn’t remember his name—I wasn’t really in the habit of making friends lately. He ignored my signals and smiled, braces flashing in Braxis West High’s fluorescent lights. He wore a stocking cap embroidered with an Alpha Response logo that failed to contain his ample dreadlocks and a vintage Alpha Response t-shirt under a hooded sweater. That told me everything about him I cared to know. D-space fanboy, and definitely new to Braxis City. Nobody liked Alpha Response anymore. All the founding members were dead or retired, and the new crew didn’t have half the talent.

I shrugged and walked towards the exit. He followed, continuing his one-sided conversation. “Rockin’. I didn’t know you crawled. You don’t sit with the others at lunch. They won’t let me sit with them yet, but I get a table nearby and listen to their conversations and it’s almost as good. Do you run solo?”

I looked up and down the hall for some way to ditch him, but the school was deserted this late in the day. I’d fallen asleep in seventh period, probably because Mom’s crying had kept me up all night again. Thankfully, Mr. Grobson had my brother in AP Spelunking last year, so he didn’t make a deal about me sleeping through his lessons. His understanding didn’t go as far as grades, though. I was still getting a D+. I could have aced it, if I had bothered to do the work, but I had other things on my mind.

The new kid reminded me of my brother, so you can understand why I didn’t want to talk to him. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone. But I couldn’t figure out a good way to get away without coming across as a complete asshole. Maybe honesty would work?

“I’ve never been in d-space,” I said. “I don’t know why I bought that stuff.” I really didn’t know—I’d gone to the Ninth Street Bazaar to buy new clothes, but I’d found myself in Fischer & Sons Outfitting picking out a basic delving kit. Maybe it was because the girl working the counter had been cute.

The new kid laughed, but not in a mean way. “Hey, I get it. I’m still trying to work up the nerve, too. I was really pumped when CCS transferred my dad to the city. It’s so boring where I’m from, hardly any dungeons at all, which I guess was why CCS had their computing research facility there, but anyway, I was thinking about losing my dungeonspace v-card with a level one a couple of blocks from here.” He paused. “Do you maybe want to come along? It’s rated non-lethal. I’ve got some mid-tier gear that should make it cake.”

“What’s it called?” I asked, even though what I wanted to say was, leave me alone. I hadn’t been following the new dungeons for a while, so I wasn’t going to have heard of it anyway.

“The latest Frobisher’s Guide identifies it as ‘Cavern of the Screaming Eye.’ I’m Domino, by the way. Well, that’s not my real name, but that’s my crawler handle. My real name is Jimmy.” He rolled his eyes, like “Jimmy” was the worst possible name ever. “What’s yours?”

I pulled a total brain blank and stammered like a space-ruined drooler. All that time I’d spent when I was a kid dreaming up swank names, gone when it counted. “Rash,” my brother’s nom de dungeon, was all I could think of in that moment.

“Rash,” I blurted, then felt my cheeks burn.

Domino whistled. “You’ve got level ten balls to use that one.”

“Forget it. Just call me Ivan.” Then I added, “But Rash was my brother.”

“Rash was your brother?” I winced at the reverent tone in his voice. “No wonder you’ve never gone in d-space, huh? Don’t worry about it. You can think up a better handle later.”

That was . . . surprisingly chill of Domino. As much as I wanted to him to get lost, disliking him was as hard as hating a puppy. I wasn’t sure I could manage it.

“So you want to check this place with me?”

“I . . .” Did I? My heart was beating faster just thinking about it, like I’d just tried to run a kilometer. Mom would literally kill me, like a total murder/suicide situation if she found out I was getting involved in d-space crawling. But what the hell . . . it wasn’t like a level one non-lethal was going to kill me, obviously.

I spun in my combination again. “Let me get my stuff.”

• • • •

We’d walked less than half a city block before Domino started in asking questions about Rash. He was totally oblivious to the signals I was throwing off to drop the subject.

“So you must have gotten all his swank artifacts and gear when he didn’t come back, huh?”

“Nah,” I said.

“Really?”

I sighed. “He carried the good stuff with him. Anything he didn’t have, my mom boxed up and sent over to the research division of Municipal Anomaly Control. I think the new Alpha Response uses the really flash stuff.”

“So you don’t have any loot?” Domino was trying to keep from sounding disappointed, but I could hear it. Here he had found a famous dungeonspace crawler’s kid brother and he’d never been into d-space, didn’t even inherit anything chill after he died. He wanted to think I was flash. Weird thing was, I wanted him to think it, too.

“I have this one piece of art,” I said, pausing in our walk. I took a deep breath. “Just this stupid silver coin, like an old quarter. The only way you can tell it’s d-space art is that when you flip it, the face on it changes and it always lands heads-side up.”

Domino’s eyes widened. “A probability-modifier? That’s practically a full-blown ’fact. Can I see it?”

I dug into my hip pocket. The metal of the coin was just warm enough that I could always feel it through the fabric of my jeans. I’d only started carrying it with me after Jonah aka “Rash” was officially declared killed-in-crawl by the MAC. I was afraid Mom would send it away, too, if she found it in my room. She had accused me a couple of times of crawling, and we’d had huge, screaming fights about it. Maybe that’s why I had geared up. If she was going to accuse me of something, I might as well give her a reason? I was so tired of paying for my brother’s mistakes. But then, going into d-space, that was like following in his footsteps in the worst way, wasn’t it?

“It’s not worth more than a couple hundred lootbucks,” I said as I passed it to him. “Not that I wanna sell it.”

Domino took the coin into his thin hands and cradled it like a stick of unstable dynamite. He held it up to his face, carefully examining both sides.

“Do you mind?”

I shrugged. “Go for it.”

He flipped the coin and caught it in his clenched palm. He opened his fingers slowly. It was heads-up, of course. The man on the coin had a high, regal collar, two pairs of eyes, and a condescending smirk.

“That’s so chill,” Domino said. He reluctantly returned the coin to me.

“Nah, it’s vendor trash,” I said, and put the coin back in my pocket. “But I kind of like it.” It was the only thing of Jonah’s—Rash’s—that I had left.

Domino looked up and down the street theatrically, then put his hand on my shoulder before I could step back.

“Let’s form a team. You and me. We can train on low-level dungeons, build up our gear, skills, and maybe even develop d-space talents. Me, I’m hoping to develop as an escapist, but I’m not dumb, I know we don’t get to choose.”

I felt the panic rising like bile in my stomach. “I don’t think—” I managed, but he was worked up into a fanboy frenzy and I couldn’t stop him.

“Your brother was great, but maybe you could be greater. When we’re ready, we’ll succeed where he failed, and conquer the Black Hole itself!”

He looked so earnest when he said it, I felt bad immediately after I punched him. He fell backwards onto the pavement, silent for once. Luckily, his gear pack softened his fall.

He stared at me, wide-eyed, and a trickle of blood ran down from his right nostril onto his upper lip.

I wanted to say that I was sorry, that I over-reacted, that it was all too much, too fast. I opened my mouth and what came out instead was, “No thanks.”

I walked away as fast as I could, and when he finally called out to me, I pretended I couldn’t hear him.

• • • •

The school was locked up, so I stowed my gear in the alley behind our building in the West Barrio. I didn’t want to go up to our apartment, but I hadn’t eaten anything all day and if there was one thing that could convince me to brave Mom’s presence, it was food. I didn’t have the cash to buy something from a street vendor. Mom wasn’t working much lately.

I expected I would have to make up an excuse about why I was so late, but she didn’t look away from the projector screen when I dropped my school bag on the kitchen table. The silhouette of where my Alpha Response patch had been sewn on the bag seemed to stare at me like an eye of accusation. I turned away.

“Anything to eat?” I asked.

“Leftover noodles in the ice box,” she said, voice barely loud enough to hear over the voice of the news man talking about a level three d-space anomaly appearing in the middle of the Holson Freeway. Not to worry though; MAC was dispatching Alpha Response to loot-and-banish. Hurray for everyone.

I popped the leftovers in the oven and sat at the kitchen table while I waited for them to warm up. I wasn’t really thinking about anything special when the delivery tube bell rang out. Mom didn’t react, so I shuffled over to the receiving box and took out the capsule to a rush of pneumatic air. I unrolled the piece of paper tucked inside.

“If it’s another bill, put on the pile,” Mom said.

“It’s not,” I said as I scanned the note. Jimmy had pretty good handwriting. I could barely read my own. “It’s from someone at school. About homework.”

The note actually read:

Sorry I came on so strong. You seemed really chill until I insulted your brother. Can we maybe still be friends? I don’t know a lot of people here.

I tore a sheet of paper out of one of my notebooks and did my best to scrawl a reply.

Sorry I punched you. I’m not my brother. If he was still alive, you’d like him better than me. I don’t know that much about dungeonspace crawling. I don’t want to be a crawler.

I sent the message into the tube, and went to eat my chicken. As I finished washing my plate, the reply whooshed in. I dried my hands and read it.

The collapsible carbon fiber ten-foot pole in your locker says otherwise. Meet me at the Speakeasy tonight? If I say anything dumb, you can punch me again.

I looked over to Mom. She was slumped over, passed out, empty wine bottle at the foot of the couch. The newstape flick-flicked softly in the projector, casting pale, confusing shadows against the screen.

Okay, I wrote back. Give me an hour.

• • • •

I’d thought about visiting the Speakeasy about a million times before and after Jonah died, but I could never work up the guts. It was completely harmless, really, but it was still d-space. Bad things happened in d-space. The unexpected could happen there. Literally anything.

The entrance was behind a Q-Mart in the South Barrio. It manifested in the visual spectrum as a quarter-meter glassy orb floating in midair. I stared into it, watching the scene around me reflected and distorted. A couple of trollers doing bouncer duty watched over the scene with disinterest—mostly only there to keep out the MAC-payroll teams who had their own official d-space clubhouses around the city. The Speakeasy was neutral territory for a lot of different cliques and factions that agreed on only one thing: Municipal Anomaly Control were a bunch of no-chill swoleheads.

The flashiest d-space crawlers and thrilljunkies came and went, laughing and talking. The crowds were made up of mundanes, eggheads, mugs, and wind-ups—a parade of sub-subcultures around the whole d-space scene. Three girls dressed in identical green jumpsuits wearing silver wigs carried instrument cases inside at one point. One of them winked at me when they walked past, and I wondered if I knew her from school. If I did, the wig and makeup made her unrecognizable.

I puzzled over the wink. I wouldn’t have thought I was worth notice, dressed in faded jeans and a button-down shirt. My hair wasn’t even dyed a swank color like my brother always sported, just its ordinary dirty blond. My swankness was level zero.

As I was about to give up and go home, I felt a tap on my shoulder and nearly bolted. “Woah,” Domino said and jumped back a step. His nose was badly swollen. I winced.

“Agh. Sorry about that,” I said and waved my hand in the general direction of his face.

“Forget it; I was kind of a jerk.” He pointed at the entrance. “You ready to go in?”

I shook my head. “No, but let’s go in anyway.”

“This should be easier than the Cavern.” Domino dug around in his backpack and withdrew a pair of chrome-plated timer watches. He set the dials for five minutes shy of two hours and handed me one. “The guide says we should leave before de-sync, unless we want gut-twisting diarrhea.”

“Yeah, let’s avoid that.”

I took a step forward and closed my eyes. My fingers turned to ice as they grazed the surface of the space-time anomaly, and then I felt the weirdest sensation of being squeezed into a microscopic tube and squirted back out in a long string of spaghetti. It didn’t really hurt, but for a very long few seconds I was afraid I would never feel normal again.

When I opened my eyes, I was standing in the doorway of a smoky tavern. Along one wall was a surprisingly well-stocked bar. On the other side of the room, a small stage where the silver-wigged girls were playing a cello, a guitar, and a flute. The song was some ragged weird piece that sounded like a cover but I couldn’t place it, the notes were just all over. Above us, an alien starscape shimmered. The sky seemed warped, smaller somehow, bending near the edges of the very small dungeonspace universe.

The place was about half-full of people sitting at an array of mismatched tables and chairs. I recognized maybe one out of every four or five of the faces. Some of Braxis City’s best crawler teams and gangs were gathered for some downtime. Nobody was paying any attention to the music.

In the corner, a recently successful party made up of freelancers with no discernable team identifiers haggled over divying up the art and ’facts from their run. A spinning gem, floating and glowing green, stood out among the knickknacks and vendor trash—clearly the prize ’fact that had been the heart of an anomaly. Once captured, the anomaly had collapsed, ridding our shard of the prime world of the anomaly’s dangers.

Near the entrance, I spotted Maligna, one of the highest ranked formulists in the city. She studied her notes and scribbled on a roll of paper, probably working out the calculations and formulas for her next crawl—something that would negate gravity or turn a d-space beast’s bones to jelly. Her left arm was in a sling. Walthen, an equally skilled sympath, poked and prodded at the arm with a glowing finger. Walthen could cut down the healing time on injuries from weeks to hours with his d-space talent. Both were members of the Braxis City Brawlers. My brother had hated them, which meant they were good.

Domino pressed a beer into my hand and led me to an empty table nearby, surprisingly chill in the face of the legends around us. “This has got to be the best use for a nonlethal dungeon ever! Maybe not as chill as the Coliseum. You ever— right, I keep forgetting. Sorry. How come the dungeon nannies don’t barricade this place? Where I’m from, adults aren’t big fans of underage drinking or smoking—” he took a deep whiff of what passed for air in the Speakeasy, “—whatever that is.”

“Blood alcohol resets the minute your timer runs out or you leave via the exit, so the nannies look the other way,” said a heavy-set, brown-haired girl dressed in last season’s Kevlar body armor. She was sitting at the table next to ours. Her face was familiar—I thought I recognized her from my ’zine collection—but there were so many crawlers working in the city that they were hard to keep track of unless they were top-tier.

“Sorry, couldn’t help eavesdropping. You guys new?” She pointed at me. “You look familiar, but you,” she pointed at Domino, “look like a country bumpkin in those shitkickers. Let me guess; recent transplant into the city, huh?”

Domino frowned. “You can tell from my boots?”

“I can spot you farm country kids from a mile away. Got cousins out there. Don’t sweat it. One thing you should know, though—”

“You’re sitting at our table. So you better move if you know what’s good for you,” a deep voice said from over my shoulder. It wasn’t a normal voice—I could tell by how I felt it not just in my ears but in deep in my bones.

Domino started to mouth off but I grabbed his arm and stood up before he could make a bigger mess of things. I mean, I already knew he couldn’t take a punch.

“Sorry,” I said, turning to address the seven-foot-tall troller with blue-green skin looming behind us. He was flanked by a younger boy and a girl; they were shorter, still, and still had mostly the normal brown skin, but their ears had started to sharpen, their features harden. It looked like they had only recently started their treatments.

“We didn’t know. Now we do,” I said, and took a step back.

The lead troller laughed. “Just messin’ with you. No violence in here, dude. Jules has a bum rush staff that de-syncs anyone who starts shit. And then they shit themselves. Calls it Karmic Justice.”

“Wow, a trollboy,” Domino said, and I took another step back. Violence not allowed or not, you just didn’t say some things.

The lead troller shot me a look. I shrugged.

“He’s just some hick, Francisco,” the brown-haired girl said. “He probably doesn’t know.”

“Know what?” Domino asked. “Sheesh, do I really look that out of place?”

“We don’t like to be called ‘trollboys,’” Francisco said. “We’re trollers, my man. That shit is sexist.” He turned to Kevlar girl. “And you, you wanna be called Doom Maiden, or should I call you ‘Maggie?’ In here, I’m Bloodaxe.” I tried not to roll my eyes. A bit too “on the nose” for a troller, given that most of them specialized in solving problems that required strength and more than a little brutality.

Bloodaxe and his pals took a seat at our table and invited us to stay. “I guess my friends aren’t gonna make it,” Doom Maiden said by way of explaining why she pulled her chair over to join us.

“This is just so chill,” Domino said. He couldn’t stop grinning.

I felt like smiling, too, so I did. And the world didn’t end. Go figure.

“How many beers has this guy had?” Bloodaxe asked.

“Like, half of one,” I said. “He’s made of pure enthusiasm. It grows on you.”

“You two developed any talents yet?” Doom Maiden asked.

“This is our first time in d-space,” Domino admitted. “I’ve been training a lot though. I’m good at lock picks and I’m not bad at hand-to-hand. I also have this ’fact I bought, like, it’s how I came up with my name. Supposedly if I wear my mask in d-space, I’m harder to see. But, uh . . . I haven’t tried it yet.”

Doom Maiden nodded. “Not bad; you sound like a natural pick as an escapist, but don’t force it; it’ll come naturally with exposure to dungeonspace.”

I realized she was staring at me with impressively blue eyes. “What about you?”

“No talents.” I said, and took a long drink of beer so I wouldn’t have to keep making eye contact.

“No special skills?”

“He doesn’t need special skills,” Domino said. “He’s got pedigree.”

I slammed my stein down. “Really? You couldn’t go a minute without bringing that up?” I started looking for the exit.

Doom Maiden’s eyes narrowed. She nodded. “That’s why you look so familiar.”

“Someone bring me up to speed?” Bloodaxe asked.

“Rash was my brother,” I said. Everyone stared.

“I should probably go.”

Bloodaxe clapped me on the back, nearly knocking me back into my seat. “Hey, dude. Sorry to hear. Your bro was a good one.”

I’d finally had enough of it. “That’s what everybody says,” I snapped. “He was a huge dick to me, though.”

It spilled out, like I’d needed to tell someone. I couldn’t tell Mom. She would have never listened to a negative word about her fallen hero. So I told these strangers; I told them how my brother picked on me, calling me lard ass or fatty every day. How when I had begged him to take me along on a milk run some time, he’d said I probably wouldn’t fit through the dungeon entrance.

An awkward silence settled on our table. I stared at my drink.

“Ivan, I’m so sorry,” Domino said. He had tears in his eyes. Probably felt dumb for picking a loser like me to befriend.

“I take back what I said,” Bloodaxe rumbled. “Your bro wasn’t a good one if he treated you like that.”

I nodded. I was going to leave, but then, Doom Maiden changed the subject.

“Are you hoping to get recruited to one of the bigger crews?”

“I want to build my own team. Sounds like more fun.” The fog of my bummer attitude lifted from the table thanks to Domino’s enthusiasm for everything d-space. “Climb the ranks from the bottom. Seems like cheating just to get recruited at the top.”

“So are you rich, or just crazy?” Bloodaxe asked.

“Wh-what do you mean?”

He pointed around the room. “Most everyone in here is in this for the loot. Some of ’em even support their families, at least until their brain chemistry matures and they can’t interface with the anomalies anymore, or d-space wins and they don’t come home. Any time I meet somebody and all they talk about is how much ‘fun’ d-space is, they’re either deranged, or their parents are loaded. So which is it with you?”

I thought about intervening, but I wanted to know how Domino would react to being cornered about his optimism. He took it better than I thought.

“Maybe a little of both,” Domino admitted. “My dad’s a scientist, and he’s made some discoveries about why electronics don’t work in or around the d-space entrances. Sorry—I know this is serious. But this is what I’ve dreamed of all my life. I can’t help it if I’m excited.”

“Just remember to have some respect.” Bloodaxe laughed. “So your dad works with computers, huh? He one of those old farts that wants to bring back the ‘good old days’? My granddad told me stories. Did you know there were these things called ‘cell phones’? Communication device you could carry around in your pocket, and anybody could talk to you at any moment of the day no matter where you were. What idiot wants a thing in their pocket that lets their boyfriend talk to you whenever he wants, no matter where you are?”

Doom Maiden rolled her eyes. “An idiot with a boyfriend. Something you don’t know anything about.”

Bloodaxe chuckled. “I’m just picky.”

“How come you don’t have the latest, greatest gear?” I asked, turning back to Domino’s apparently loaded parents. “You were so excited about my stupid ten-foot pole.”

“My allowance is like fifty loot bucks a month. Just because Dad has a good job doesn’t mean they give me much to spend. I blew all my savings on my ’fact.”

“How do they feel about you crawling?” I asked.

“My dad thinks I’ll piss myself in my first dungeon and give it up.”

Bloodaxe laughed loudly enough to make my ears ring. “You’re not so bad, kid. I really hate the thrilljunkie delvers. All kit and no brains to use it.” He looked around the table. “Who do I have to threaten for a drink around here?”

“Get it yourself, you oaf,” Doom Maiden snarled. They sounded kind of like how couples talked, I thought, but that probably couldn’t be the case given their cracks about boyfriends earlier. I couldn’t figure out their status—maybe she was just into him, preferences be damned? What she saw in a troller, I wasn’t sure about. Bloodaxe’s metamorphosis was nearly complete—his skin was four times as thick as before, covered in gross moles and gnarls, and he sported a mouth full of tusks and fangs. I couldn’t imagine kissing a mouth like that.

But who knew what girls liked? Sure as hell not me.

Bloodaxe grumbled and left for the bar.

“I’m Cindy,” said the girl troller once he had left. I’d almost forgotten they were there; they had been so quiet before. “This is Sam. We’re new, too.”

“Does it, you know, hurt?” Domino asked. “To go through the treatments?”

Doom Maiden and I exchanged a glance of “can you believe this guy?” But Cindy was chill about it.

“Yes. My whole body is stretching out, so I’m sore, like, all the time. I grew ten centimeters this month. It’ll be worth it when it’s over. I’ll be able to handle any threat, and it’s better than hoping I live long enough to develop a d-space talent.”

“No thanks,” I said. “No offense. I went through a transformation of my own getting fit and that was enough for me.”

“Oh.” Doom Maiden raised an eyebrow. “You said your brother called you names, but you seem pretty slim now.”

I shifted in my seat and looked away. I wasn’t used to being around other people and I kept sharing stuff that I didn’t want to share. “After Rash died, my mom fell apart. My dad died in an incursion when we were little, and Rash’s death just . . . broke her, I guess. She cried all the time. I couldn’t take it anymore.” I finished my beer in one long gulp. Maybe it was the beer that made me talk so much? Or maybe I was just lonely. “I took walks around the city for hours, every night. Anyway. Now I’m not so fat.”

“Good for you, man,” Domino said. “My mom believes it’s good to take tragedy and spin something positive out of it.”

“You know, your brother might not actually be de—” Doom Maiden began to say, but Domino waved her off, to his credit. Maybe his enthusiasm was something I needed.

I felt like I owed him in return, and I knew Domino wanted one thing more than anything else. The Speakeasy hadn’t been so bad. Maybe I could handle a wild, untamed anomaly.

“How much time before you have to be home tonight?” I asked him, mostly to change the subject.

“I’ve got a few hours, why?”

“Let’s take a run at the Cavern of the Screaming Eye.”

“Right now?” I couldn’t help it—I grinned, too. I was tired of all the talking. Maybe it was time to hit something and not feel bad about it afterwards.

“Right now, before I lose my courage.”

Bloodaxe returned to the table as we stood up. “You two leaving already?” Domino explained where we were headed. “We’ll tag along. It’ll be a good experience for my young protégés. Doom Maiden, you in?”

She nodded. “If it’s okay with you guys.”

“Sure. Let’s party up,” I said. It made me feel better to know we would have some experienced crawlers on hand.

• • • •

I was the last one of us off the Yellow Line bus. I’d already lost my nerve again.

“The entrance is just a block away,” Domino said. “Oh, man, I can’t wait to get inside and kick butt.”

“Maybe we should come back in the morning,” I said. “I should read up on what the ’zines have to say. My brother always researched his runs.”

Bloodaxe placed his massive hand my shoulder and guided me forward, step by step, with a grip that said it wasn’t worth arguing. “Gotta relax, dude. The Cavern’s an easy one. Nobody’s ever died in there.”

Doom Maiden had a timer in her hand. It was pretty flash, crusted with all kinds of fake gems, totally out of character with her armor. “What’s the duration for this place?”

“The Guide says forty-two minutes,” Domino removed something from his pack, a weird little white mask with a black mask painted around the eyes. He adjusted some straps and placed it over his face. It made him look ridiculous, but also kind of chill.

“Okay, I’m ready to go now—hey, what’s so funny?” He slid the mask up over his head.

“Nothing,” I said, smothering my grin. “What else does the guide say?”

“The reason I picked this one is I think my mask will get us past some of the defenses. There are these cave tunnels, filled with these things, uh, big eyes, I guess, that watch over sections like guard dogs. If they see you, they start screaming, which hurts like hell and then you’re de-synced from the dungeon,” Domino said.

Bloodaxe flipped through a pocket guide and read a few pages before smirking. “Your whole body’s covered in purple spots for a week after de-sync. That’s not so bad. I went blind for a week after bouncing hard outta level two once.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” I said, but I wondered what my Mom would say if she found me covered in head-to-toe hickeys?

Better not think about it. I had to do this. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I liked these people and I didn’t want to them to know how zero-swank I was in real life.

“Bloodaxe and I are going to hang back at the entrance unless you guys get into trouble,” Doom Maiden said.

The troller nodded. “We’ll help only if you really need it. Purple welts aren’t going to do anything for my complexion right now.”

“I’m not very good at sneaking,” Sam, the young troller boy, said. The guy was terrible at conversational segues, but I kind of liked him more for it. Everyone else was witty and fast on the feet.

Bloodaxe shrugged. “You gotta learn. This’ll be good practice for you.”

Sam didn’t look happy with that, but what could he do? I’d watched Cindy and Sam on the bus ride, and I was pretty sure that they actually were a couple. I figured they had decided to take the troller artifact transformation together. I wasn’t sure whose idea had it been, though. Probably Cindy’s? They were from the poorer West Barrio, which explained why they had agreed to sell BodyMods Inc. twenty percent of their loot proceeds. I’d always thought it was a raw deal, but I couldn’t judge them for it. We all did what we had to do.

“Ready?” Domino asked. Everyone nodded.

The Cavern entrance was in the far back stall of the women’s restroom in a Java Palace franchise. The JPs had popped up around the city like caffeinated zits lately, buying up cheap disused property in manifestation zones. That made them popular crawler hangouts, but this one was null excitement. Experienced teams probably wouldn’t be caught dead near a Cavern instance.

The barista didn’t look up from her newspaper when we walked in carrying our packs of gear. She pointed to the sign-in sheet and MAC disclaimer forms. “Sign in first.”

We wasted a few minutes filling out the paperwork and then Doom Maiden went in first to make sure nobody was using the toilets. She signaled that the coast was clear.

This anomaly’s entrance manifested a fiery rock embedded in the floor. A slitted ember iris stared, unblinking, from below. Totally creepy, but not enough to stop me now.

Domino and I went in first, then Sam and Cindy followed. Bloodaxe and Doom Maiden followed a second later, and when they appeared in the damp, dimly lit cavern of the dungeonspace, they were laughing like one of them had just told a really funny joke.

Somehow I just knew they had been making fun of me. The trollers and Domino brought something to the crawl, but I didn’t have any training or talents. I was in moderately decent shape, but still flabby in the middle. The only thing I had going for me was all the stories my brother had told me of his dungeonspace adventures. Every dungeon was a little different, even within the different established variants, so that information was of limited use. I was this team’s dead weight.

Too late to back out now. I took a deep breath and had a close look at the dungeonspace around us. We’d appeared in a ten-meter-wide space carved out of rough-hewn rock. Light seemed to be coming from somewhere, just a little bit of it, but as much as I looked around, I couldn’t find a source. Physics was notoriously weird in d-space. The light was coming from everywhere, I realized, like darkness just wasn’t totally dark here.

The floor slanted downward slightly, almost aiming us towards the passageway that curved away from the room. We couldn’t see very far down it, the light fading fast in the distance. The air smelled like a moldy basement, and the only sound beyond our own breathing and shuffling was a persistent drip of water.

“Kind of anticlimactic—” Domino began. Something shifted along the wall. I was startled by how fast Sam moved at it, swinging with a meaty fist. The beast was the size of a large rat: slimy, four-legged, with a torso made mostly of an enormous eyeball. The iris swiveled in our direction, fixing on Sam, who was now closest to it. A tiny little mouth opened and let out an ear-shattering scream, answered by faint screaming further within the cavern.

Sam managed a weak “oh shit” before evaporating. I hadn’t taken a single step. Cindy, on the other hand, had already crossed the space between the entrance and where Sam was attacked. The little d-space beast whole-body blinked, seeming as surprised as Sam when he vanished. With an open-palmed slap against the cavern wall, the troller girl reduced the creature to a vitreous jelly sludge.

“Good reflexes, Cindy,” Bloodaxe called out. “I’d better go console poor Sam,” and he popped out of d-space.

Doom Maiden grinned. “Sixty seconds in and you’ve only lost a quarter of your party. Not bad.”

“I didn’t have time to react,” I mumbled.

“I barely saw that thing before Sam was toast,” Domino said, sounding shaken. “They’re too quick. Not sure what we’re going to do. I can probably sneak past them with my mask, but the rest of you won’t make it.”

“We might as well try,” Cindy said with a shrug. She had a slight smile; I guessed she was really going to rub it in with Sam that she lasted longer than him. I hoped he wouldn’t take it too hard; he’d saved the rest of us from a similar fate by taking the first sonic blast.

A quick scouting mission by Domino revealed the path ahead crawling with a dozen of the eye screamers. Basic stealth wasn’t going to cut it.

“Let’s review what we know,” I suggested. “They have to see us, and they have to scream, right? A silence artifact would be useful, if we had one.”

“Maybe we can try blinding them somehow,” Domino suggested. “But I don’t have any smoke bombs and the cave floor is pretty uneven. I wouldn’t want to fall down in there.”

“Can we splat them before they scream?” Cindy asked.

I frowned, shook my head. “We need to get the drop on them a dozen times. You’re fast, but not that fast. What if there’s a group of them together?”

She had the right idea. I took a burlap sack out of my pack, standard delver gear. “Here’s something. Domino, activate your mask, and instead of just sneaking past, you pick up each one of the little bastards and shove them in this bag. Repeat until we’re clear.”

“Not bad,” Cindy said.

“Yeah, that could work. Let’s give it a try.” Domino slid the mask over his face again and vanished.

Cindy and I waited while Domino advanced down the passage, his footsteps fading away with distance.

“Sorry about your brother,” Cindy said after a minute. “Even if he was a jerk, I bet it’s been hard to lose him.”

I stared off into the dimly lit passage, hoping Dom would get back soon. “Can I ask what the story is with you and Sam? Are you guys . . . together?”

She laughed. “Sam told me he loved me in the fourth grade.”

“The feeling’s not mutual?”

She looked away. “It’s complicated.”

I dropped the subject, and was thankful to whatever demon gods ruled over this d-space that Domino reappeared with a squirming, squeaking bag.

“I think that’s all of them,” he said. He handed the bag to Doom Maiden. She took it reluctantly, holding it away at arm’s length.

“Onward then?” I asked.

“Good luck, kiddos.” Doom Maiden fixed me with that odd stare of hers. “That was a good play, Ivan. Most people would have tried the attack route and fail.”

I did the best I could with a compliment and ignored it. “Okay, no time to waste. Let’s move forward.”

We traveled through the screamer passage into a junction with three branching passages. We quickly agreed to split up and scout each path.

About halfway down my tunnel, I realized that the dim light I had been navigating by was nearly gone. I felt colder, too.

“Shit,” I said under my breath.

“A voice? Do I hear a voice?” something answered up ahead.

“Who’s there?” I called out.

“‘Who’s there?’ it asks. I could ask the same of the voice, and so I do. Who are you?”

Everyone knew the stories about what could happen if you told a dungeon native your real name. So I did the stupid thing again. “Rash,” I said.

“Rash? Back again? You sound unwell. Still troubled? No matter. Come into the darkness. It’s safe here for now. The guardian yet sleeps, but I sense more intruders in this space. I will watch their struggle soon, but first I favor conversation.”

The voice knew my brother? He had been here? He’d never mentioned the Caverns to me that I could remember.

I took a step into the darkness. The voice continued.

“I’ve missed our talks,” the voice said. It had a soothing quality, but not unnaturally so. It was like a grandmother; old, wise. I wasn’t afraid of it.

“Uh . . . remind me what we talked about last time.”

“Hah. I am supposed to be the forgetful one, child. The nature of things. Mysteries within mysteries. The solution to the ultimate puzzle.”

“Oh. Yeah. I remember now,” I lied.

The voice chuckled, and its tone took a harder edge. “No, no. I hear it now. Not him. Someone close, though. The brother, perhaps?”

“He told you about me?”

“Ahh, yes. I am observant, am I not? Rash spoke of you. You do not resemble the picture he painted with his words, however.” Something sniffed. “Unseasoned, you are. But there is potential . . .”

Then a sound of distant footsteps approaching.

“Shame. I would have liked to learn more about you, but I care not for additional company.” And the darkness lifted, leaving me standing before a great stone door carved with an enormous eyeball.

I flinched, feeling silly immediately. It didn’t scream. I examined the door for buttons or keyholes.

“My passage was a bust. Just nests of more eye screamers,” Domino said. He flickered into view beside me. “Did I hear you talking to someone a minute ago?”

I frowned, shook my head. I wasn’t ready to tell anyone what I’d experienced. “Just myself—”

I touched the door. It was cool and hard. I gave it a push. It didn’t budge.

“This looks promising. I’ll get Cindy,” Domino said and disappeared. I continued to put the door through the standard paces while I waited. A moment later, Domino returned with Cindy in tow.

“Standard impassible?” Cindy asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I tried asking it a riddle, knocking, and searched for hidden buttons. There’s no lock to pick that I can see.”

Cindy cracked her knuckles. “Did you try brute force?”

“I was waiting for the brute,” I said. “Have at it.”

Cindy threw herself against the door hard enough that it practically winded me. The door budged a few centimeters.

“This whole space has to be designed,” Domino said thoughtfully.

I groaned. “You’re one of those?”

Domino rubbed his face where the mask had left faint lines along the edges. “It’s not such a crazy idea. Something has to be responsible for the dungeons. This one seems planned out. What, do you think this door happened naturally?”

I leaned in close to the door, put my ear against the crack. “I’m not worried about the door as much as I am about what’s behind it. Listen.”

I could make out heavy, slow breathing beyond the door. Domino pressed his eye against it, staggered back and waved me forward. I peeked inside.

I saw the largest dungeonbeast I could imagine. I mean, I’d never seen one before, but this had to be the biggest. The room on the other side of the door was a vast cavern, so big it was like a skyscraper laid on its side. It was barely large enough for the bulk of the beast. At first, I thought it resembled a snake, but as I stared, the body resolved as a thing composed of enormous, muscle-rippled arms with hands at both ends. The hands clasped together, forming a long chain. Coils and coils of folded, bent arms wove in loops on the cavern floor. Resting atop the coils was a hand that served as the head. A mouth of horrible teeth bisected the palm and blood-red eyeballs tipped each long, bony finger.

“Non-lethal my ass,” I muttered. I stepped back from the door so Cindy could look. She gasped loudly at the sight of the beast, and was met with a low rumbling inside.

“I think this might be the prime,” Domino whispered. The ultimate of its variant, he meant, the one that, if defeated, would close other Cavern anomalies. The anomalies came in two varieties; primes and shadows. Shadows were good for practice. Primes were the real deal, and often deadlier.

Cindy hissed for silence, but it was too late.

“Who prowls outside my den?” the beast asked.

“I mean, why does it even speak our language, huh, explain that?” Domino said. I rolled my eyes.

“Let’s continue that conversation later when we’re not about to be eaten by a giant hand.”

Cindy threw the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside before I could stop her. “Adventurers, come to slay monsters and loot their treasures,” she shouted.

Bad. Ass. At least she’d die chill as anyone who ever lived. I expected a blast of fire or a gnashing of giant teeth in answer, but the beast only laughed.

“Guests! I haven’t had a good game in ages. What have you brought to gamble? I warn you, I am nothing if not fair . . .”

“Gamble?” Cindy asked, taken aback.

“We could do . . . violence instead. If you wish.”

“No!” I said loudly, and stepped inside. “Gambling is agreeable. We have fine treasures for stakes.”

“Eh?” The beast swiveled its finger eyes to look at me. “Such as?”

I took out my collapsible ten-foot pole. I expanded it with a flip of my wrist. “How about this?”

The beast snorted. “A stick? You insult me.”

I patted myself down. The timer? No, that’d be equally insulting, as would my multi-tool and my rope. What could I possibly—

“I grow bored,” the beast said, and a long, purple tongue licked at its palm-maw.

I took out my coin. “What about this?”

The beast growled with pleasure. “Yes. Let’s play for that. What game would you like? Shall we throw the bones? Spin a wheel? Cards, perhaps.”

“Let’s flip for it,” I said. I had no idea where this confidence was coming from, but inside I was terrified it would leave me at any moment.

The beast’s face swung closer to us on its neck of interlocking arms. “Let me see it. Show both sides,” it said. I held up the coin so he could see that it looked perfectly ordinary.

“Very well. I call . . . heads.” And its horrible mouth twisted into a smile.

Somehow, the monster knew. Had it read my mind? Had it seen the coin before somehow?

I looked to Domino. He held his hands up as if to say, “I’ve got nothing.” Neither did I.

I flipped the coin. Caught it, and held it in my clenched fist.

“Are you sure you want to call heads?” I asked. But the beast merely smiled, and its body of arms rippled and flexed.

I opened my palm. The beast leaned in to look. The coin was heads. I groaned.

The beast laughed. A child’s hand appeared from within its coils, pinched the coin between two talons, and withdrew amongst the mass of biceps. “I win. Shall we play again? What else have you brought to gamble?”

Domino removed his mask and offered it. “No,” I said. “Let’s forget this.”

“I’ll gamble my mask for your treasure, but you have to give back the coin, too,” he said. “My ’fact is worth a lot more than the coin.”

“Of course. I am a fair guardian, as I said . . .,” the beast said. “Choose your game.”

“If you are fair, then you won’t mind another flip of the coin,” Domino said. The beast began to protest, but Domino, to his credit, held his ground. “It’s my choice, isn’t it?”

“Fine,” the beast said. “We shall toss a coin again.”

The beast retrieved the coin again from its hidden folds, presented it for examination.

“If you’re truly fair, then you will let me call the toss?” Domino asked.

“Of course,” the beast said.

“Let’s talk this thr—” Cindy said, but the coin was in the air.

“We call tails,” I shouted, cutting off Domino. He shot me the angriest look I’d seen him manage so far. I held my breath as the coin spun on the floor, rattled, and then fell . . .

Tails.

The beast let out a huff that smelled like raw steak. “Well played. How did you know I switched the coin for one of my own?” it asked.

“A truly fair guardian would meet our cheat with one of its own.” It was dungeonspace logic— the kind my brother used to justify picking on me no matter what I did. Cruel. Crafty. I guess I had learned something from him after all.

“Clever,” the beast said. It uncoiled and slipped away into the dark recesses of its cavern. Where the beast had been knotted there were two things: my coin, and a red box the size of a jewelry case.

“That was genius!” Cindy clapped.

I shrugged and turned my head away to hide a smile and my embarrassed flush.

“Just one artifact,” Domino said with a sigh. “How are we going to split this up?”

“If it’s just art, we’ll sell it and split the money,” Cindy said. “But if it’s a ’fact, one of you two should have it. I don’t feel like I contributed that much.”

“That’s really nice of you, but we would have never gotten through that door without you. How about you can have pick next time?” Domino said, and I didn’t argue because I was too busy thinking: Next time? Would there be a next time?

“How are we going to decide between us?” Domino asked.

“Flip you for it!” We laughed.

“Grab the box and let’s get out of here,” Cindy said. “We would be the lamest ever if we lapse out before taking the loot.”

I pocketed my coin and picked up the box. I offered it to Domino. “You take it. You were willing to risk your namesake to get back my coin. Thank you.”

“Fine, we can argue about it when we get out.” And he opened the box.

I expected a rush of energy, an explosion, something. Instead, we were instantly back in the women’s bathroom at Java Palace. Poor Sam stared in the mirror and rubbed at purple welts on his cheeks with a bemused grin.

Bloodaxe and Doom Maiden started as the anomaly collapsed. I felt pretty good at the sight of their shock.

“How in the hell did you pull that off?” Bloodaxe asked.

“Excellent teamwork with fine leadership from this guy,” Domino said, slapping me on the black. “The loot’s weird, though. Never seen anything like this, have you?” He held up a jagged, black shard. Black didn’t really describe it. It was made of some kind of material so dark that light couldn’t escape it. Almost like . . .

“I have seen something just like that,” Doom Maiden said, lips curled in a grimace. She looked at me. I nodded. I knew the material, too.

“The entrance to Black Hole looks like that,” I said. “It must be tied to it somehow.”

“I think it’s a key,” Bloodaxe said, nodding.

“A key?” Domino asked. “Is it worth much?”

“Keys are very rare, but this one’s worthless now.” I sighed. “The Black Hole is locked down by MAC as an ultra-lethal. Nobody’s ever come back out, so they’ve written it off. Maybe a high-rated team could score entrance, but that’s only after signing like a thousand pages of consent forms.”

“I guess we had better start training you newbies up then,” Bloodaxe said. He cocked his head to Doom Maiden. “Try Tower of the Repeating Phantasm, next, maybe?”

She nodded. “For starters, yeah.”

I blinked, confused. “Why help us? We got lucky in there. I’m sure you have better things to do.”

Doom Maiden shook her head. “You didn’t get lucky. You made sharp calls in there. A good head on your shoulders in d-space is worth more than all the talents and artifacts in the city.”

“I’m already mentoring these two knuckleheads,” Bloodaxe said. “What’s two more? And to make it fair, we’ll take, say, ten percent of your loot in return. I’m not long for this game anyway. Gonna age out soon.”

“That’s fair,” Domino said, nodding and grinning.

“I thought you were making fun of me when we first went through,” I mumbled. I felt tears running hot down my face. Why was I crying now? I hadn’t cried in months. I thought I wouldn’t ever cry again.

Doom Maiden’s perpetual scowl softened. “That’s not it at all. I laughed because I forgot what it was like in the beginning.”

Bloodaxe grinned. “When crawling was about more than the bucks, bruises, and broken bones. It’s serious business, of course, but there was a time for us all when it was also exciting and not just a job.”

Bloodaxe put his arm around my shoulder. “After solving the Cavern on your first try, I don’t think anybody’s going to be making fun of you. Unless you say something really dumb. Okay?”

“Thanks,” I mumbled. “That means a lot.”

“Now we need to get you kids on a training regimen quick. I know a gym we can use cheap. And we’ll need better gear . . .” Bloodaxe took out a pocket notebook and began to scribble in it as he rambled.

Domino looked to me. “What do you say, Flip?”

“Flip?”

“I dunno, it just seemed right.” He smiled.

“I like it,” Cindy said. “You can call me ‘Basher.’”

“That’s a good one,” I said. “And I like Flip. Yeah. Thanks, Dom.”

“I’m in, too, but I can’t think of a good name yet,” Sam said. Cindy shot him a look that I could only read as “we’ll talk about it.” Poor Sam.

“What do you say? Team up for real next time?” Domino asked.

What did it mean, I wondered, that we’d looted a key to the dungeon I feared more than anything in the city? Was Domino right? Was there an intelligence behind the anomalies? Did the voice in the shadows have something to do with it? I had more questions than I’d started with. But I had at least one answer worth giving.

“Yeah . . . I’m in.”

©2016 by Jeremiah Tolbert. | Art © 2016 by Sam Schechter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jeremiah Tolbert has published fiction in Lightspeed, Fantasy Magazine, Interzone, Asimov’s, and Shimmer, as well as in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Seeds of Change, Federations, and Polyphony 4. He’s also been featured several times on the Escape Pod and PodCastle podcasts. In addition to being a writer, he is a web designer, photographer, and graphic artist. He lives in Kansas, with his wife and son.

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

The Dragon’s Tears

Aliette de Bodard | 5200 words

Huan Ho sealed the last window, leaving only a crack in the shutter. Tonight, he thought, his eye on the empty streets, the neighbours’ barred shutters. Tonight he had to pass the door on the hill, or let the sickness take his mother.

She had been watching him from her bed. “They ride tonight,” she said, when he was done.

“Yes,” Huan Ho said. As on every year, the three horsemen would scour the city of Fei Weng, taking what and whom they pleased. “I’ve closed the house.”

His mother smiled, wanly. “We have nothing worth their notice.”

No riches, Huan Ho thought. The only room of the house was bare: a bed, a table, and two chairs were its sole furniture. He had sold everything of value to the pawnbroker, to pay the apothecary. Not that the drugs had done more than dull her pain. The apothecary himself had admitted defeat, had jokingly said only the Dragon’s Tears could help her now. Huan Ho had not laughed. He had taken the drugs, and waited until year’s end, for the return of the riders, praying every day that his mother would remain alive until then.

“No one knows what is worth their notice,” Huan Ho said, more dryly than he had intended. “Or why they take some, and leave some unharmed.”

His mother did not move. She said at last, “It doesn’t matter.”

If they wanted to seize her . . . then there was nothing he could do. They had been known to take the sick and the aged, as well as the mighty and the rich. They could not be stopped. Let them pass this house tonight. Let them move on, to roam the rest of the empire and seize what caught their fancy.

And then he would be free to enter the place where they came from, to find the Dragon’s Tears and heal his mother.

The bell of the Taoist temple struck midnight. He heard it echo through the house, peal after peal, like a voice calling the dead. Midnight of the last day of the year. The time of the riders.

His mother’s face was paler than usual. “Huan Ho.”

“They will not come here,” he said. The last peal of the bell faded into silence; all of Fei Weng lay waiting, the streets deserted, the wine shops closed, every opening barred so tightly an insect could not have crawled through.

The door on the hill above Fei Weng, the door of lacquered wood that was always closed, would be opening now, as the moon rose higher and higher in the sky. They would pass through it into the mortal world.

Huan Ho, his eye against the hole in the shutters, watched the empty street. Waiting.

They came without a noise, a blur of movement against the night. The hooves of their horses struck the ground, silently, raising sparks like thousands of fireflies. One wore golden clothes, and his bridle and saddlebags were golden as well; one dressed in silver, riding a silver horse, and the last one wore purest black, and a black hood covered his face.

They flowed into the street, stopping only once to enter a house, the sound of the door bursting into splinters the only noise breaking the silence. Huan Ho did not move. He prayed to every one of the Eight Immortals to make them forget this house, to pass it by. Only tonight. Afterwards it would not matter.

Two of them rode past the house, hardly glancing at the windows. But the third one, the one of purest black, stopped.

No.

The horseman raised his head, stared straight at Huan Ho as if he could see through the shutters. There was nothing within the hood but a deeper darkness.

Please, no. Huan Ho could not move, transfixed, knowing there was no charm that would keep the rider at bay. No one knew what happened to those the horsemen took. They simply were never seen again.

At length, the rider wheeled his horse round, and rode down the street to join his brothers.

Huan Ho’s heart still beat madly in his chest. There is time, he thought. Still time to renounce. He could not hope to fool any of the riders.

His mother was watching him. Her face was gaunt, with sallow, papery skin stretched taut over her bones. She had not risen from her bed for three years.

“They passed us by,” he said.

She raised her head. He saw her grimace of pain as she moved, and knew not even the drugs made a difference now. He thought of the Dragon’s Tears, stolen by the riders from the depths of the sea, a long time ago: a flask of enamel which held the full power of the Dragons. And any child knew that Dragons could heal mortals with a touch. This would cure her. It had to.

“You should sleep now,” he said. It was all he could do to keep his voice expressionless.

• • • •

He watched her until she fell asleep. The house was utterly silent; only her laboured breathing could be heard. He knew that the riders would not come back to Fei Weng until the moon had set. The door would close then, for another year.

Time to go.

He stroked her cheek one last time, wincing as his hand caught on her protruding bones. With the drugs she took at night, she would not wake before dawn: He hoped to be back by then, or dead. None of it mattered anymore.

The door, unbarred, opened onto the deserted streets. Fei Weng cowered, awaiting the return of the riders with their plundered wealth. In moonlight, he walked past familiar buildings, all eerily closed and silent, as if the whole city had died in one night.

He carried nothing but a lantern: No mortal weapon would avail him against the riders. Take their names, said the old wives. Tell them their names, and they will have to do one thing for you. But no one knew anymore what the riders were called, least of all Huan Ho, who was neither wise nor rich nor powerful.

He had sought the names; had scoured graveyards and temples for any scrap of knowledge about the riders, had listened to countless legends by storytellers. But he had little to show for it, only heightened fears. The riders had scoured the world since the dawn of time: From the moment mankind had appeared, so had they, taking anything they pleased.

Their names are those of brothers: entwined one with the other, said the Taoist texts. They wear human shapes, yet are our greatest fears, said the inscriptions on the graves. We cannot be rid of them.

Huan Ho passed through the gates, which lay open for fear the riders would tear them down to enter the city, and took the long, winding road that led past the rice fields into the hills above Fei Weng. The air was crisp and cold, and stung his exposed skin. He walked on.

The door through which the riders came stood a little way from a fork in the road. Its wood was old and weathered, and the lacquer had cracked in many places. Faded pictures of phoenixes and dragons adorned its huge panels.

Everyone in Fei Weng knew where it was. For most of the year, it was nothing but an oddity: standing in the shadows of the hills, a door with no building, a door which would never yield no matter how hard one pushed on the panels.

But now it was open, revealing only darkness within its frame.

Huan Ho stood before the door, watching the moon above. He knew the rules: He knew what time he had, before the door closed in the wake of the riders’ passage. Not much, not even a whole night, but it would have to be enough to find the Dragon’s Tears.

Still time, part of him said. Still time to come back, and pretend nothing has happened.

He could not turn back. He could no longer watch his mother dwindle, becoming a ghost of the woman who had sung him to sleep and comforted him every year as the riders flowed past their house. He could not watch her die.

He stepped forward, into the darkness of the door.

A cold deeper than any winter’s night seized him as he passed the threshold. He felt as if he had passed into the Courts of Hell themselves. His hand, opening in a convulsive shudder, released the lantern, which shattered on the ground. Its shards crunched under his feet. Shivering, he forced himself to move forward, even though he saw nothing but shadows, heard nothing but the mad beating of his heart.

He emerged on the other side of the door on a windless, starlit plain. The constellations in the sky were the same as the ones above Fei Weng, and yet distorted in some way he could not quite identify.

So this is their world, he thought, gazing at the flat expense before him. There were shadows of rice paddies on the plain, hints of transparent trees: things not yet real, as if he stood gazing at the place where everything was born. Far away from him, a hazy palace broke the horizon line.

Huan Ho walked on the plain. As in Fei Weng, there was silence before and after him. The light of the stars traced a ghostly path for him, through the fields, towards the horizon. Once, he turned and saw the open panels of the door, and through them the white orb of the moon, like a pitiless eye to watch his trespassing. Still he walked.

He reached at last the gardens of the palace, and then stood before the gates. Embossed phoenixes covered the walls: In the dim light it seemed as if they were only sleeping, and any noise could scatter them into the sky.

The gates stood open. Ghost images drifted past him, whispering words he could not understand. A chill ran down his back, would not leave him: This was what had happened to those the riders took. This was what would happen if they found him.

The sky above held no moon: He had no way to judge what time remained to him. He hurried through the gates, and climbed the stairs to the main entrance. That also was open, and large enough to fit a dozen riders, side by side. He wondered, briefly, whether there were other riders, who exited this ghost world in other places than Fei Weng. He discarded the thought. It only wasted time.

He entered a hall so vast he could not see the end of it. The whole room was shrouded in darkness, and his footsteps echoed as if the ceiling were the height of Fei Weng’s pagoda tower.

A single door was open, on his right. Not knowing what else to do, he passed through it.

Time flowed past him, found him wandering in room after room, losing himself among shadows. He walked through lacquered corridors, with the voices of ghosts on the cusp of hearing, the slats of the floor squeaking under his steps. Empty, everything was empty. They do not live, he thought, staring past door after door. They are something else.

He found at last stairs leading downwards. His eyes had grown used to the shadows, and he could see the steps, and the decorations on the walls: turtles and phoenixes, dragons and lions, landscapes with willow trees, with hazy mountains.

At the foot of the stairs were three huge doors, one of gold, one of silver, and one of black, lacquered wood. He laid his hand on the first door, and pushed as hard as he could. The panels swung open without a noise.

Inside, shadows covered heaps of gold and pearls: everything that the gold rider had taken from the world, hoarded in this room. Riches without counting.

Huan Ho wandered in a daze through the room, lifting one thing, and then another, hoping his hand would stray towards the thing he sought. There were things from tales here: the Phoenix Pearl that would show a man his heart’s deepest desire, a chest of glowing moon-wood that would never empty, the Golden Bird that could recite a thousand stories. And swords with hilts inlaid with jewels, statues of jade so tall one of them would have paid the whole of Fei Weng for a year, pearls, porcelain, diamonds, all casually tossed inside the room.

He could not find the Dragon’s Tears. The night wore on—and still he had no idea where the moon was, or even if dawn had not broken—and he could have lost a thousand lifetimes in this room, and not seen a thousandth of the things lying there.

In the second room, Huan Ho thought, and went back to open the doors of silver. Here, no gold, no pearls, but bolts and bolts of the finest yellow silk, embroidered with dragons and phoenixes—the colour and the attributes of the imperial couple. Books of magic were piled near the back of the room, and the air throbbed with residues of spells. Huan Ho lifted one of the books, and a cloud of dust washed over him: The binding had disintegrated.

“What are you looking for?” a faint voice asked, behind him.

Huan Ho dropped the book, and wheeled round. His heart was threatening to burst out of his chest. He had thought the palace utterly deserted.

A ghostly boy with ample robes of silk stood before him. Unlike the other ghosts, he seemed to have retained much of his essence.

“Who are you?” Huan Ho asked.

“I am Eu Lang, emperor of the Undying Islands,” said the boy. He wore on his head a velvet cap topped by three golden balls: the mark of a ruler.

“How did you come to be here?”

The boy’s face twisted. “They came, last year, the horsemen, to the Undying Islands. They crashed through the gates and rode through the ranks of my army. I was mighty among the rulers of this world, but they took me from my palace, and bound me here so he could gloat over my defeat.” He raised his arms: Thin chains of silver extended from his wrists to the floor.

“He?”

“The rider of silver,” Eu Lang said. “Why are you here? If they catch you, they will bind you as they did with me.”

“I need to find the Dragon’s Tears,” Huan Ho said.

“They are not in this room. Go,” Eu Lang said. “If you do not know the riders’ names, go. The moon will set soon, in your world.”

“Eu Lang, what are they? What are their names?”

“I don’t know,” the boy cried. “He taunts me, every time he comes here. He says that everything to know his name is in that room. He says I could be free if I told him. I don’t know,” he said, and hid his face. The sound of his weeping was the only noise in the room. There was something horrible about it, as if his tears did not quite belong here, but were still worth hoarding.

“I am sorry,” Huan Ho said. He took a step backwards, with the weeping sound still tearing at him.

He left Eu Lang in the room, feeling ashamed of himself for leaving, but not knowing what he could have done.

The last doors opened with a creaking noise, as if they had fallen into disrepair. Inside, it was darker than in the other rooms, and Huan Ho stood for a while on the threshold, waiting for his vision to clear. He knew time was running short. This room, he thought. It has to be this room.

The room was empty.

He could see the walls from where he was, and see that the floor was bare. Disbelieving, he stepped inside. And almost gasped as indistinct shapes, like wisps of incense, rose to follow in his footsteps. They passed through him, chilling his heart; they whispered words he could not understand, an endless lament.

In his mind rose images, of his life with his mother, and the house they shared: her playing with him when he was a child, visits to the temple to pray to the Lady of Fortune, red lanterns hanging from the rafters to celebrate New Year’s Eve, her face, lit by the fireworks above Fei Weng. But everything was shadowed with the bitter knowledge of her sickness, until his childish joys seemed meaningless, doomed to fade.

What was he looking for? A miracle? All mortals were fated to die. Nothing could save her.

No, he thought, fighting against the rising wave, against the images the ghosts conjured in him. For you, whom the riders took and bound here, there is nothing but despair. But I am stronger. I have lived five years with the knowledge she was dying. I am stronger.

Something shone, at the end of the room, so faint it was almost invisible. He walked towards it, tottering on the edge of weeping. I am stronger.

The glow came from a flask of enamel, inlaid with dragons and turtles on a background of sea waves. Shadows moved over him as he knelt. His hand closed over the flask: Its coldness released a tingle of power that went up his arm. A sip of it, and he would have the power to make rain fall. A sip of it, and death would have no hold over him; he would laugh at the passage of centuries.

No. He had come to save his mother, not to drink them himself. He had to bring them back. To let her taste of them, and be saved.

He walked back towards the door, slowly. As soon as he was free of the ghosts he broke into a run. Eu Lang had warned him: The moon was setting in the other world, his world. The riders were coming.

On the plain before the palace, the stars had dimmed, and a diffuse glow had spread to the sky, as if dawn were about to break.

Huan Ho saw the panels of the door long before he reached it. They were still open. Time, he thought, elated with his success. I still have time. Let the door remain open.

They were waiting for him past the threshold of that door, the three horsemen, one of gold, one of silver, and one of purest black. Their faces held no expression in the growing light. The moon, he thought, looking past them at the real sky, and seeing that it had almost vanished. The panels of the door were quivering, hazy.

“What have we here, brothers?” said the one of gold. His voice had the silkiness of a drawn blade.

“A thief,” said the one of silver.

“You are the thieves,” Huan Ho shouted. “You take and take from all of us and hoard things like misers, in rooms no one will ever see.”

“You are unwise to insult us,” said the rider of gold. “Many are those who tried to steal from us.” His teeth were white, pointed, like the fangs of some monstrous animal.

“Few are those who lived,” said the rider of silver. “You know the stories, boy. You know the price.”

“Name me,” said the first rider, “and I shall move aside to let you pass.”

“Name me,” said the second rider, “and I shall hold the door open for you.”

The third rider, the one of purest black, had not said a word. He was bent low over his horse, and his hands were empty, his saddlebags did not bulge as much as those of his brothers. Wisps of smoke, like those in his chamber, clung to him, and whispered eerily familiar words.

Eu Lang had said that they could be named. That everything that made them was in their treasure chambers. Huan Ho knew them to be immortal, riding out to steal.

Huan Ho did not know their names. But if he did not speak, he would die all the same. No, not die, merely join the thousands of ghosts slowly dwindling to nothing in those rooms, leaving his mother to end her life in solitude.

He remembered everything that the stories said, everything he had seen in their palace.

They do not live. They are something else.

Their names are those of brothers.

They are our greatest fears. We cannot be rid of them.

Our greatest fears. For as long as there had been men, the riders had scoured the world. No, not our greatest fears, Huan Ho thought, seeing again the contents of the three treasure rooms aligned before him, like so many temptations. Our greatest weaknesses.

We cannot be rid of them.

They were not human, but mankind had given birth to them, all the same. Brothers, born of the same source.

He said, to the first rider, whose hands were full of pearls and jade and the most valuable things of the world, “You are Greed that takes things and hoards them, all for its own sake. You are Greed that feeds itself.”

The rider smiled, and a weight was lifted from Huan Ho’s chest. “Well said.” He moved aside to let Huan Ho pass. “You may have the answer to one question.”

He had come all this way on nothing but the hollow in his stomach, and the rapid beating of his heart. He had to know. “How will these tears heal my mother?”

“These tears have no power to heal,” the rider of gold said.

Huan Ho turned aside, then, to go back into those rooms, and find within the treasures piled there something that might be worth his terror. But the first rider had moved to block his path, and there was no other path than to the door, towards the second rider and his silver horse.

Their names are those of brothers. Which meant, since he had guessed right the first time, that the second rider’s name would follow the same logic as the first.

That told Huan Ho where to search, but did not eliminate the countless possibilities. He saw, again, the books of spells, the imperial silk, the bound shade of Eu Lang over whom the rider of silver would gloat, revelling in the misery of his captive, and the inkling of an answer came to him.

His voice shaking, he said, to the second rider, “You are Power that seeks to hoard knowledge so that it may rule over all. You are Power that delights in the enslaving of others.”

The second rider smiled. “Very well,” he said, and laid his hands on the door, keeping the panels from closing. “I, too, will give you one answer, and one only.”

He hesitated, remembering the room with the silver doors, and the ceaseless, horrible weeping. What could he do for one ghost, which would matter? Did he dare waste a question? Still he had nothing to heal his mother.

“I want a favour instead,” he said, slowly. “Free the ghost named Eu Lang. Let him pass into the Courts of Hell, to be reborn.”

The rider laughed. “You are a bold one.”

“I hold your name,” Huan Ho said, simply.

“Yes,” the rider said, almost a hiss.

“Free him.”

“Done,” the rider said. “Do not cross my path again, boy.” His eyes glittered with malice.

Huan Ho walked past him, onto the hills above Fei Weng, where he had stood at the beginning of the night, and it had all been for nothing. He had nothing but the flask, warm against his flesh, the flask that would cure no one, that would do nothing.

He could have gone home, then. He lived, and few were those who could boast of such a thing. But he could not endure the thought that all had been in vain. And so he turned to the last rider, the one of purest black, the one who had almost entered their house.

“You have not challenged me,” he said.

“It is not my way,” the rider said. His voice was low, and not unkind.

“What if I name you?”

The rider did not speak for a while. He reached out, and threw his hood back, so that his face was bathed with the last of the moonlight. His flesh was the colour of winter snow, and his eyes depths without ends. “If you name me,” he said, “I, too, will answer a question. Or do you a favour. Choose well, boy.”

The rider’s hands held only the reins of his horse. His saddlebags held treasures, but did not bulge as those of his brothers, and his room in the other world had been empty, save for the Dragon’s Tears. No, not empty. There had been ghosts, and the memories of joy. Huan Ho realised that he knew the rider, all too well.

“You are Sorrow,” he said, “Sorrow that takes from us our loved ones and our moments of happiness, and feasts on our tears.”

The rider was silent. His eyes rested on Huan Ho’s face, holding no expression.

“For years without counting we have opened the door at midnight on the last day of the year, and ridden through Fei Weng, and to the world beyond, and come back with our fill. We have been challenged, and my brothers’ names sometimes guessed correctly. But in all that time not one person has been able to say my name.” He bent down, breathing into Huan Ho’s face the smell of winter nights. “You know me.”

“Yes,” Huan Ho said, standing his ground.

“And you fear me.”

“Yes.”

“And hate me.” He said it like a familiar litany, the words coming one after the other, without so much as a breath between them.

“No.”

“No? Why is that, boy?”

Huan Ho said nothing for a while, remembering the ghosts of joy whirling in the empty room beyond the door. “Because,” he said at last, “without you, joy means nothing.”

“You are wise,” the rider said, with a cheerless smile. “What do you want to know?”

“Tell me how I can heal my mother.”

The rider shook his head, amused. “You should have stopped us before you went searching in our treasure rooms, boy, and asked this. Long ago.”

“I did what I could,” Huan Ho said.

“You named me,” the rider said, his voice quiet, almost filled with wonder. He sat in the saddle, staring at the open door. The moon above them was slowly vanishing. At last he said, “Understand me,” he said. “Just as I cannot exist without joy, so there are no miracles without a price to be paid.”

“Tell me the price,” Huan Ho said. “Do you think I haven’t given enough?”

“You,” the rider said, “have gone on an adventure. An unpleasant one, sometimes, but still, you came back through that door much the same as when you entered it. You gave nothing.”

“There is a way,” Huan Ho said, stubbornly. “Tell me.”

“You want the powers of the Dragons, to heal. Power changes things to its shape,” he said, with a nod towards his brother of silver.

“You make no sense.”

“You do not think,” the rider said, softly. He dismounted, and stood before Huan Ho. He was neither as tall nor as terrifying as he had appeared on his horse. There was something almost comforting about him.

Gently, he closed Huan Ho’s hands around the flask. “Whoever drinks of this shall have the power of the Dragons.”

Huan Ho saw, then, the price he had to pay, the change he had to undergo. Power changes things to its shape. There was no other choice. No other way for him to accomplish what he had set out to do. It is too much, he cried out in his mind. I wanted . . .

A miracle, the voice of the rider said in his mind. Yes, and did he think he could do otherwise? Just as he had squandered his second question to free Eu Lang, so he could not live, knowing he could have saved his mother.

“You have your answer,” the rider of purest black said.

“Yes.” He held the flask, feeling the warmth of it beneath his fingers. The moon was almost gone now. A choice. A sacrifice.

Slowly, he unstoppered the flask, and raised it to his lips. He held it for a while, in an ironic salute to the rider named Sorrow. And then he drank every drop of it.

It tasted of salt, at first, of brine and of the depths of the sea. And then it started to burn. He fell to his knees, clawing at his throat. The moon, growing dimmer and dimmer, loomed over him, taunting him with its coolness. The world was spinning, beating on the rhythm of his heart.

He felt himself expand, his body twisting to accommodate a new shape, new thoughts moving within his mind. Kindred. He would find his kindred in the realm under the sea. He had to. Dragons were not meant to prowl the mortal world.

Deep, deep within the deluge of changes, the ghost of Huan Ho sought to speak. A healing? What did he care for mortal lives, he who was immortal and could make rain fall with a thought?

He twisted on himself, his body writhing, longing to fly, and saw the rider of purest black, still watching him, with a faint smile on his lips.

“I am always bitterest when I come mixed with joy,” the rider said, and the echoes of his voice reminded Huan Ho of something, something that had once been his, a feeling that even now could take hold of his heart like an icy hand, and squeezed until he cried for release. This is what it felt like, to know I would lose Mother.

The rider raised a hand. “Enough,” he said, and the feeling was gone, but still Huan Ho remembered. He remembered everything that had happened since the door on the hill had opened.

The rider was still smiling. “Go to her. Use your powers to heal her, before you leave. Your place is no longer here.” And he remounted, before passing the door.

Silence filled the hills above Fei Weng. Huan Ho watched the rider of purest black through the threshold, watched him guide his horse towards his palace of stone. As the light of the moon dimmed to nothing, the panels of the door slowly drew together, and then they closed, sealing the riders from the world for another year.

In the darkness, Huan Ho thought of his mother, of the goodbyes he would have to make. He had had his wish, his miracle. It was enough. It had to be.

He sprang into the sky, towards Fei Weng, to do one last favour before taking his place within the depths of the sea.

©2008 by Aliette de Bodard. Originally published in Electric Velocipede . Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Engineer. She studied Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, but moonlights as a writer of speculative fiction. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories, which garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award. Works include The House of Shattered Wings (Roc/Gollancz, 2015 British Science Fiction Association Award), a novel set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, and its upcoming sequel The House of Binding Thorns (April 2017, Roc/Gollancz). She also published “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls” (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2015), a novella set in the same universe as her Vietnamese space opera “On a Red Station Drifting”. She lives in Paris with her family, in a flat with more computers than warm bodies, and a set of Lovecraftian tentacled plants intent on taking over the place.

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

The Key to St. Medusa’s

Kat Howard | 3710 words

My parents knew I was a witch before I was born. The signs were there, they told me. They were unmistakable.

Well. Not all of the signs, or they never would have kept me as long as they did. But enough: My mother’s hair, previously sedate and well-mannered, turned curly and wild during her pregnancy, sometimes even grabbing forks from other people’s hands at meals. Clocks ran backward when she went near them, and thirteen grey cats took up residence in our front yard for the last month before I was born.

Also, I was born on a Tuesday.

• • • •

They named me Agatha, which was not at all a witch’s name, because they wanted me to be good.

When I was five, I asked my father what a witch’s name might sound like. He smacked my mouth, and told me such things weren’t spoken.

• • • •

As far as I could tell growing up, being a witch was a curse. Or at least my being one was—my whole childhood was made of lists of things I could not do if I wanted to be a good girl. It was imperative to be a good girl, otherwise my witchiness would take over. Good girls did not walk backward. Neither did they walk in the forest at night. They did not leave the house when the moon was full. Good girls did not talk to any of the grey cats. Or the black ones. Speak in rhyme. Wear red. Dance.

There were other forbidden things. More and more each year. An ever-growing list of mustn’ts and don’ts and shouldn’ts that bound around me tighter and tighter, until it seemed like “cautious” and “safe” and “good” were as much curses as “witch.”

I tried to follow my parents’ rules. They only made them, they said, out of concern for me. If I was a witch, I would never have a home. Never be allowed to live in civilized society. No one would be my friend. I’d never be able to get married, have a family. They were only trying to make things easier for me. I never asked why what was supposed to be easier felt so hard.

I wanted to be good. I truly did.

Until the day I didn’t.

It would be a better story, I know, if there had been a reason. If my parents had inflicted one final unfairness, done something so cruel that it left me with no reasonable choice but to undo all they had so carefully tried to prevent. But that’s not what happened.

The truth was, I was simply tired. Tired of the effort it took to remember all of the things that good girls didn’t do, tired of being afraid that one wrong step would be all it took to cancel out all of the proper ones that had come before, and render me not a good girl. I didn’t want to be tired like that, not anymore.

So I stole a red dress from my mother’s closet—red, it seemed, was safe for mothers in a way it was not for witches—and ran to the forest, under the full moon. I spent the night out there, dancing.

I didn’t even do any magic. Not then. Not that it mattered—as far as my parents were concerned, I had gone full out witch, and it was off to St. Medusa’s with me.

• • • •

This is what I had been told about St. Medusa. She had been a witch once, too. A terrible, notorious one. Even her name from that time was so dangerous that it was no longer spoken. She had done a spell so dark, so dire, it had turned her hair to venomous snakes, snakes that would whip out and sink their fangs into anyone in reach.

But she had repented her actions. Had mortified her flesh, and done all the proper penances. She achieved control of all those wild snakes. She bound them down, every day, with a scarf of red, so that anyone who saw her would know, and would learn from her example.

And she opened up a home for witches.

I sat with my parents in her office. I could see her snakes beneath the scarf. They made the fabric bump and ripple like waves. They were beautiful.

“I do have space here for Agatha,” St. Medusa said. “But you must know this is not a temporary solution. Once you leave your daughter here, you cannot reclaim her. Do you understand?”

“She’s a witch,” said my father, as if those were the only words necessary.

My mother said nothing, only smoothed her hands over her hair, kept very short now so that errant strands could not be tempted to acts of thievery.

St. Medusa looked at me. “Agatha, do you want to live here?”

“I didn’t realize I had a choice,” I said. There had been no discussion. I hadn’t even been allowed to change out of my stolen red dress. I had come home, been told I was a witch, and we had come here.

“You don’t—” began my father, but St. Medusa held up her hand, silencing him. In seventeen years as his daughter, I had never seen such a thing happen before, that someone could keep my father from speaking when he wished to. I wondered if perhaps the stories that St. Medusa had renounced her witchery weren’t quite true.

“There is always a choice,” St. Medusa said.

I looked at my parents. My mother wouldn’t meet my eyes. My father’s face was hard as stone. He had spat on me when I came home that morning.

I didn’t think that was my home anymore.

I looked at St. Medusa, who had said that what I wanted mattered.

“Yes,” I said. “I want to stay.”

• • • •

Neither of my parents said goodbye. My mother would have, I think. She paused in the door, and turned toward me. But my father grabbed her arm, and pulled her with him, and the last I saw of them was their backs.

I don’t miss them.

• • • •

St. Medusa gave me a key, that first day. “I give one to everyone, so that you will know it is your choice to stay here, or to leave, and if you leave, that you may return. This place will always be your home, and there is no one who will force you from it, or bar its door to you.”

It was a small key, bronze and many-toothed, hung on a chain. “Turn it to the right, and it will open a door anywhere. Turn it to the left, and that door will bring you back here, safely home.”

I wasn’t sure that I believed in home, but I wore the key around my neck, that day and every one after. It made me feel safe.

• • • •

St. Medusa’s was not what I had been expecting.

“Certainly you can learn to use magic while you’re here, Agatha. There are a number of people who will be happy to teach you.”

“But I thought that I was here to learn how not to do that. How to be good. How to—” I waved my hand over my head, a scarf binding snakes that weren’t there. The ends of my hair reached up, witch-like, toward my fingers, and I blushed.

“We can teach you that as well, if you like. There are girls and women who come here because they want to move more easily through a fearful world. Learning how to bind your power down, to hide it, to give it up altogether may make that easier, and for some, it is the right choice.

“But that does not have to be your choice. You are the one who gets to choose, Agatha.”

I wanted power. I wanted magic. I wanted to fill myself full of both until my hair crackled with it. “But if I choose to be a witch, I can’t ever go back and live with civilized people.”

The snakes of St. Medusa’s hair curled and hissed under her scarf. “And did you enjoy living with civilized people?”

I hadn’t particularly thought about it like that. “I want to be a witch.”

• • • •

And so I was.

I remember the first time I did magic, real magic.

“It’s customary,” St. Medusa said, “to begin the study of magic with the lighting of a candle. It is a request for illumination as well as a demonstration of power. And so.”

She had set a circle of candles around us, and as she looked at each, a flame flickered into being. She didn’t need to speak words, or make gestures. She just looked, and there was light.

It was not what I had been told magic was: lies, trickery, evil. Rather, it was beautiful, so beautiful I felt like I might cry. My hands tingled like flames flickered and burned on the ends of my fingers.

“Do you see?” she asked, and extinguished the candles.

I nodded. I turned, once, slowly, all around the circle. Seeing that it was whole, no beginning, no end. Seeing the candles, and understanding that they wanted to light—that was their purpose. In seeing theirs, I knew mine.

I felt magic rise up in my blood. With a look, I set them all alight. Power burned through me. In that moment, I finally felt the truth of what I had been told my whole life: I was a witch.

I learned more things, after that. I drank in magic like I had been dying of thirst. I learned how to call cats and how to tell the future on the petals of a rose. How to dance a storm into calmness, and how to turn it the other way and dance it hurricane-strong. How to speak to the dead and how to bind them to silence with silver and salt. How to wrap a curse like ivy around someone’s house without their notice. How to set wishes, burning, inside of stars.

I learned that not everyone who lived at St. Medusa’s was a witch, even if that’s what those who lived on the outside called them. There were banshees and oracles. There were women who lived on others’ blood and women who lived on others’ memories. There was a pack of girls that slid into wolfskin once a month. There was Lucy, who knew everything about St. Medusa’s, who had been abandoned at its gates when she was five, lived here until she died at thirty-seven, and had been a resident ghost ever since. “Forty-two years now. Or forty-three. Counting gets hard when you’re noncorporeal.”

While I was there, I did something I never had before: I made friends. Saoirse, who looked like a storm, all cloud-white and rain-grey, and her hair a blood-red tangle on her head. Her voice, when she spoke, had the clarity of glass. A banshee. Irena, who was a seer, petite and dark and lion-hearted. You could see universes spinning in her eyes. From them, I learned what it was to share secrets, to feel like I was part of a family. To be loved.

I began, slowly, to make a home in that love. Not a civilized one, but one rough-shaped and outsized and beautiful. The key around my neck had a door that it would open.

• • • •

When Irena had the visions of the murdered brides, Saoirse and I were the first ones she told. “I see a wedding in bits and pieces. White and candles and a grand cathedral. I see his hands. A door, a key. Then blood, blood everywhere, on the white, on the door, on the key.

“He’s killing them.” She turned to the side and vomited. “Sorry. Visions make me seasick, and these are foul beyond that.”

We went with her to tell St. Medusa. “I want to help—I don’t want to have to watch another girl die,” Irena said.

“I can help you focus your magic,” St. Medusa said. “It may not be pleasant.”

“Neither is this,” Irena said.

That was the day I saw St. Medusa take off her scarf.

She unbound the red and loosed the snakes. They slithered and hissed, a wild tangle. One detached itself from the rest. It crawled down, and bit Irena’s wrist.

Irena cried out and clutched at Saoirse’s and my hands. The universes spun in Irena’s eyes, faster and faster, and her visions came clear from Saoirse’s mouth. She told us where to find him. She told us that he had married four women. That they had all been called witches. That they were dead, and their ghosts were bound.

The snake, turned white with the force of the magic, crawled back to St. Medusa, and nested itself with the others. She rebound her scarf.

“I’m going to be number five,” Saoirse said. She sat, calmly, as Irena and I babbled out warnings, begged her not to.

“I saw them. The visions in your head. What he did. I don’t mean to let him kill me, but someone needs to stop him. To be their voices if they can’t speak. Who better than a banshee?” She was unmovable.

“You don’t need to do this,” St. Medusa said. “No one will ask it of you.”

“Four dead women,” Saoirse said. “Four dead witches. Who will care enough to stop this, if we don’t?” There was no arguing with that.

So we dressed her in red and equipped her with spells and we kissed her and sent her off to her wedding.

• • • •

I knew the moment Saoirse died. We all did. A great keening filled the air, a voiced that cried out, that rang through us like bells, that set hair on end, and even the clouds to weeping.

They cried tears of blood.

“He’s killed her.” The voice low, rough, like it had walked up out of a grave. Irena.

“Did you see?” I asked.

“Everything,” she said. She couldn’t speak, just clawed at her throat, trying to let Saoirse’s words out. But Saoirse’s voice was too far away to be heard.

I stood, red rain pouring over me. My heart felt empty, its beat the rattle of a broken door. There was no magic I knew for this.

• • • •

The problem wasn’t just the serial-killing husband. There are any number of ways to kill effectively at a distance. None of us would have needed to put ourselves in danger if his death had been the only necessary thing.

The issue was the women. As those of us at St. Medusa’s knew, dead didn’t necessarily mean gone. We lived with ghosts, those who had chosen to linger, to stay. They were our friends, our family. We had made a home for them. But ghosts can’t come back on their own. They need to be called, to be given the choice. If there was a chance, even a piece of one, that we could get any of those women back, that we could help them choose the place they would be after their death, we would take it.

Irena went next. You don’t need to be a seer to know how her story ended.

• • • •

“I need to go,” I told St. Medusa. “To fix this.” As if Saoirse and Irena and the other wives were broken things I could put back together.

Her snakes hissed caution at me. “I am going to tell you two things that you already know: You don’t have to, and it will be dangerous.”

“I do. Have to. He has to be stopped, and I can’t bear the thought of sitting here, doing nothing, and then hearing he’s murdered another one of us. Plus, Saoirse, Irena. I have to bring them home.”

• • • •

I left St. Medusa’s then, for the first time in years. For a moment, my heart clutched in my chest, warning me to go back, to be safe, to not walk in a world that had told me the only good thing I could do was shut myself away.

Saoirse. Irena. Four names I didn’t yet know. I clutched the key around my neck and kept walking.

I rented a room in a house near his. I wore a red dress, so he would know I was a witch. I caught his eye, and I flirted and enchanted.

“You should be careful of that one,” my landlady said.

“Why?” I asked. I was curious—did she know that a monster was her neighbor?

“It was my daughter that was his second wife. Anna. She told me that he would be a home to her, and so I gave her my blessing. But she never came back to visit, and then she never came back at all, and then there was another girl in a white dress in the cathedral and I knew.

“That’s why I have a room to let out.” She turned away from me and into silence. I set my hand, gentle, on her shoulder.

“She was a good girl, and I miss her. You remind me of her a bit. You have a smile like she did, a kind one. Be careful of him.”

I was not here to be careful. He asked. I said yes.

• • • •

I am not going to tell you about him. He does not even deserve a name.

• • • •

I found Saoirse the first night I spent in his house.

When I turned on the tap to run a bath, wash myself clean of the dust of travel and the feel of his hands on my body, her voice poured out with the water. There is nothing like water to hold the spirit of a banshee, nothing that carries their voices, all tears, so well.

I sank below the surface, and let her words pour over me.

They were all together, she said, all the dead wives. Trapped, their ghosts unable to free themselves. Forced to linger and bear witness each time he brought in a new wife.

They were in a room, she said. A room that he would tell me not to enter, and as soon as he warned me, I would want to go into that room like I had wanted nothing before. A curse, she said. A compulsion. I wouldn’t be able to eat or sleep until I had taken down the key from the way, and turned it in the lock.

Once I did, the key would turn from silver to red, the rust-red of blood.

That was how he would know. That was why I would die.

She told me to get out, to run from the bath, to go now, before he forbade me the room and set the curse in motion. There was no magic, she said, that would break it.

I did climb from the bath and I did run, but not out of the door and away. I ran down. Down to the room where the wives were. To where Saoirse and Irena were.

At the door, I reached for a key. Not the one that hung beside it, that would bleed and give away my guilt, but the one around my neck. I set it in the lock, and turned it to the right. The door opened.

He’d kept the bodies.

I clapped my hands over my mouth, holding back the sob, the bile, the rage that bubbled up through my throat. Beyond horrible. I should have known—it is easier to bind a ghost when its body remains. Still. Knowing someone is a monster is one thing. Seeing the proof of it is another.

This is how you bring back a ghost, if you are a witch: You call their name. If the body is there, you place your hands on it, so it will remember having a body, being touched. You look. You see. You remind them of what it is to be seen. You call their name a second time. You offer them reasons to return. Vengeance. Love. Unanswered questions.

You call their name one final time. You give them a choice.

Irena returned first. “I saw. I knew you would come. Thank you.” She passed her fingers through me, a ghost of an embrace.

I turned the key to the left, and opened the door to St. Medusa’s. Irena walked through. Home.

In the end, I sent the ghosts of two of the other wives, Eva and Larissa, to St. Medusa’s with Irena. There were two who chose not to return. Tania was one of them. My landlady’s daughter, Anna, was the other.

And Saoirse. Saoirse had chosen to bind herself to the water in order to preserve her voice, to be able to speak a warning to anyone else who followed after her. She had known what that choice meant when she made it. “It won’t be so bad,” she said, “being here now. It was my choice to stay.”

St. Medusa stood on the other side of the door. “Agatha. It’s enough. Come back.”

We could, I knew, see him dead after I was safely away. But I had put my hands on their bodies. I had seen what he had done. And a ghost will linger where it dies. “It’s not enough,” I said. “Not yet.”

I closed the door to St. Medusa’s, and I left that room. The silver key that hung in the hallway dripped with blood.

He stood at the top of the stairs, smiling as he watched me walk up. I smiled, too. I smiled as I stabbed my key between his ribs, and turned it. I smiled as a door opened, and his life walked through. I closed the door behind it—I couldn’t bring Saoirse home, but I could make sure he wasn’t here with her.

The coils of my hair hissed. Snakes now, after such magic. I turned the key to the left, opened the door to St. Medusa’s, then dropped the key into the water with Saoirse’s ghost. I couldn’t bring her home, but I could leave this piece of it with her.

I stepped through the door.

©2016 by Kat Howard.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kat Howard is the author of Roses and Rot, named one of the best SFF books of Summer ’16 by Publishers Weekly. Saga Press will also be publishing her next novel in late summer ’17, and a short fiction collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone, in early 2018. Her novella, “The End of the Sentence”, co-written with Maria Dahvana Headley, is available from Subterranean Press. Her short fiction has been published in a variety of magazines and anthologies, a finalist for the World Fantasy Award, and performed on NPR.

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

October’s Son

Will Kaufman | 3410 words

When my wife began to swell, I wondered what seed infected her womb, my own having long proved fruitless. As she grew, her cravings turned to dirt and water and long spells naked in the yard under the bare trees and what sun pierced the clouds, and I asked her, Who have you loved? Who have you fucked? Why is your belly growing round?

She told me she had only loved me, had only fucked me, and if she was fucking pregnant then I was not the one owed an explanation.

I threw her precious record player out the window, scattered gears and belts across our lawn, and she shed her clothes and went to lie in the yard, walking over the sharp wreckage. After an hour I went outside with a bag and collected all the belts and gears, including one I picked off the sole of her foot, where it had stuck. I bent to the ground over and over, a clucking hen pecking for poor food among the grass, and she lay down on the chill concrete, smiling when sunlight shafted over her body despite her goose bumps, her stiff nipples.

• • • •

My wife expanded with remarkable haste, growing so like a pumpkin that I joked she must have fucked a pumpkin and she asked if I would like to feel the baby kick. I put my hand on her stomach and realized it was the first time we had touched in days. I felt no movement, only her taught skin and my own partial erection.

I asked if she wanted to go to Lamaze class, she told me she damn well knew how to breathe.

Then my wife screamed, she hollered and beat whatever was in reach: tables, chairs, cabinets, doors, me. I said that we should go to the hospital. No, she said, no hospital, dirt. She stumbled into the yard, trying to hold her belly and the walls at the same time, leaving a trail of mucous and blood on the floor.

She squatted down on the lawn, digging with her fingernails while she grimaced and groaned. I told her not to fuck up the grass, it took me months to get that shit green and lush, and she screamed that she was squeezing a fucking pumpkin through her vagina and best she knew it was my fucking pumpkin and could I shut the fuck up.

I don’t know. I got down on my knees and held her hand, and I was sweating all over, maybe even more than she was, and there were sounds and smells I was unprepared for. I said we should have gone to Lamaze and she told me to get some scissors for the umbilical cord.

By the time I came back outside, my wife was limp on the ground, blood and shit streaked down her thighs and a bright orange pumpkin slick with afterbirth between her legs. The pumpkin stem was part and parcel of a woody vine that led into her torn sex. She told me to cut the umbilical, but the scissors were meant for paper, not the tough cellulose of a pumpkin stem. I hacked at it while my wife faded and wilted and paled.

Yes, we had used that word, both said pumpkin, formed the shape with our mouths, but to see the thing come true shook me. Had my wife known all along, or was she just as lost as me?

Finally I cut the pumpkin free and I picked up my wife and carried her, with the stem that hung from her slapping against my knees, to the car. The blood that poured from her had become a rich red, and something was wrong.

• • • •

I returned from the hospital, alone, to find the pumpkin sitting where I had left it on the lawn, the last of my wife’s living blood dried in its ridges and caked in its dents. It was not a well-shaped pumpkin, but flat on one side. I kicked at it, and it rolled a short distance, and what hollow anger I felt turned to shame. This was, after all, the fruit of my wife’s body, a body I had loved and held.

Felix for a son, Anna for a girl. That’s what we’d decided. In happier times. Times when I would pack us a picnic but forget the forks so we’d eat potato salad with our fingers and lick them clean, and a small brown bird decided my wife’s hair would be perfect for nesting and darted at her head again and again no matter how my wife yelped and ducked or how I tried to shield her with a paper plate or how we fell about laughing at the seriousness of our upset in the face of such a foe. The bird finally triumphed and carried off the strand it had plucked to line its nest, and somewhere birds are singing that were hatched into my wife’s hair.

The pumpkin’s weight surprised me. I held it, and the blood flaked from its hard skin, and fell into the grass, into the dirt.

In happier times, before my wife had been my wife, when she was just Emelia, and we only suspected that we might love each other, and found ourselves more and more together on one couch or another, leaning against each other, and she traced a heart in the dust on my television screen, and when we lay in bed spent and naked she told me about her mother and her father and the time she went to Greece and stood before the Parthenon and thought it was a building she had walked by in some earlier life when it was young and painted bright colors and that night a boy in a dance club grabbed her breast and she punched him in the ear, I was jealous of whatever lives she’d had before we’d met, of any person who shared that time with her I could never touch. I still am.

I held the pumpkin to the sharp stubble on my cheek and I cried so that for a last time I would share fluids with my wife, and we would both touch the life she’d made, and I thought that here, with tough skin and woody stem, was a Felix in my arms.

• • • •

My neighbors brought me pots of soup and pans of lasagna burnt black as asphalt around the edges, and when they saw Felix on my kitchen table they said, How good that you are getting into the spirit of the season. How good for you. I screamed at them and chased them from my house and threw their food into the garbage.

My lawn grew ragged and weeds took hold. Was the last thing I said to my wife truly an admonition concerning the grass? I could no longer remember what I’d muttered and yelled to her in the car as I brought her, running stop signs and red lights and yet still too slowly, to the hospital. Whatever I might have said, whatever she might have still been able to hear, in my memory all of it became don’t hurt the grass, don’t hurt the grass, don’t hurt the grass. So I let her have the lawn, whatever of her remained soaked into the soil, I let her nurture what she chose while I struggled to understand how I should care for this child we had wrought.

• • • •

I walked Felix through our neighborhood, among the clean houses with their leaf-blower clean driveways, the first paper skeletons beginning to appear in windows, plastic tombstones in the hedges, and I said to Felix, We are not always so nonchalant about death, so willing to welcome it to our doors. I said, I miss her, too. I said, I have to figure out the funeral.

I said, But you don’t have to worry about that, leave it to me.

I miss her, too.

A boy from the neighborhood asked what I was doing, and I said that I was talking to my son, Felix. He asked if I was teasing him, and I said no. He asked how my son could hear me, being a pumpkin, without ears, and I said I did not know, but I was sure he did. The boy asked how I could be sure, and he asked where my wife was, and he asked and asked and I looked him over, his skinny legs and tangled hair and dirty fingers, and I interrupted his inquiry. Felix is younger than you, I said, but perhaps you could still be his friend. A boy needs friends, and my son more than most, his mother being gone.

The boy asked if I was crazy, and ran off.

I said to my son, He had so many questions. Have you no questions, Felix? Isn’t there anything you want to know?

Felix shone orange amongst all the black, all the grey of the headstones, and compared to him, even the green of the grass seemed drab and dry. My wife’s relatives did not comment on his presence, even when I held him over the open grave so he might see his mother planted.

The hole dug for my wife was lined with concrete, and I almost panicked. If I had not had Felix to clutch to me, to comfort me with his bright calm, I would certainly have thrown myself into the pit to keep my wife from being lowered in. She had always told me to cremate her, to spread her ashes by the ocean. She said, I never want to go in a box.

But the nature of her child, the nature of her death, these were not things of the ocean, not things of dust and wind. Her nature was of the earth, rich as dirt, and it was dirt to which she belonged. When I arranged for her burial, I bought the meanest pine box in the hopes that it would decay all the sooner. I had not been warned about the concrete.

Don’t worry, I whispered to Felix, while some priest of my wife’s family’s choosing lied prettily about a woman he had never met. Don’t worry, it may take longer, but the concrete too will rot, the concrete will crack and split and crumble. No box can keep your mother’s spirit trapped forever.

Did I ever tell you, I whispered, about the time a cabbie tried to cheat us by driving three or four blocks out of the way, thinking we were too lost in each other’s company to notice, or strangers to that city, or some such thing, and your mother refused to pay the man a penny more than she thought he deserved, which was nothing, so he locked the doors and said he would not let us out until we paid, and your mother so cursed at him, so pelted him with words that he opened the doors just to escape from her.

My wife’s relatives shushed me, gave me dark stares and stern brows. I said, loudly, And you all built a box around her of your god and his strange rules, but she broke that, and found meaning elsewhere in the world. And I know you blame me for that, but I could not control her, could never make her change her mind. Once she threatened to leave me, so I locked her in our bedroom. She said if I did not let her out she would truly leave, and I did not want to be a broken box, so I opened the door. Even death is broken through by her, for she left me with a new life that holds some part of her life.

I held Felix up for them all to see and I cried, She left me a son, in defiance of all nature, because nothing could hold the force of her. Then I took my son and left those people to the confines of their ceremony.

• • • •

The month wore on and more and more other pumpkins on the street and on the television were carved with faces, some with the loving intricacy of a Fabergé egg and some clumsy as a toddler’s finger-painting, and lit with flickering candles, their skulls all charred and smoke-stained on the inside in payment for the light that poured from their eyes and mouths and filled darkness with life.

Felix met this change in the world with silence and constancy, and I realized he had not changed since the day of his birth, and I knew this was not the way a child should be. A child must change.

What choice did I have but to sit Felix down at the kitchen table and take a sharp knife to his flesh? The face that waited to be revealed already seemed obvious to me, so I did not mark him, did not draw my intentions as though my own son’s appearance might be a mystery to me. I told him, Tell me if you want me to stop. I pressed the point of the knife into a spot some three inches from Felix’s stem.

My hand shook, but I would not have passed that happy duty to any other living man. This was a rite of passage, a becoming, and Felix’s mother would not have wanted anything but this, anything but her husband and her son together, moving on, moving forward. I felt her there, felt her fingers steadying mine, felt her breath on my cheek, smelled her lilac shampoo, as I had any day I cared to take her in my arms, any moment I cared to bury my nose in her neck, let her hair catch in my stubble, and how she was warm, and how we would hold each other, how we would wait for some signal we should part, and no signal ever came, and the end of every embrace was awkward, was an awkward, tiny death, like a spider caught in a tissue by its legs and broken apart, and how unlike a candle, how unlike a flame, how unlike a fire was every moment we consumed each other. I felt her hand on mine, and I plunged the knife into our son.

Felix was tough, Felix was strong, and I sawed into him, and he did not tell me to stop, because what else could he want but to become?

The prodigious, slick fiber, heavy with seeds, heady with stink, that I scooped from my son, filled a metal mixing-bowl first, then a blue coffee mug, a wine-glass, and the tureen my wife and I received for our wedding but never used. I thought it might be endless, that my son might never be emptied. Eventually he was. I took this part of his flesh and I scattered it on the lawn where his mother had bled and birthed him, which made some circle whole and bound tight, and seemed right to do.

Then it was time to reveal his face. With a paring knife I began the tear duct of his left eye, which I would make almond shaped, and though it could not be brown like mine nor green like my wife’s, it would be filled with light, and that was enough.

I cut his right eye too high, and slanted as though in anger, and his mouth smiled too much, because perhaps my hopes guided my hand. Perhaps I wanted him to smile, even, after all the loss and pain we had shared, needed him to smile, to be happy in his life, but that choice was not rightfully mine to make.

So again I took up the paring knife, carving away more meat to make his eyes even, neutral, perhaps inquisitive, as that was a fair influence for a father to have, to lend his son an inquisitive nature. I tried to open his mouth into speech, something intelligent, unforced, but now his eyes were too round, as though surprised, and is mouth gaped as though in hunger. This was not work I could be proud of, not a child I wanted to send into the world, a creature shocked by his own appetite.

I took the knife to my son over and over, but no matter how much I cut from him I could not find the shape I knew he deserved, and finally the moment came when I could cut no more away without risking the complete loss of any face at all. I said, I’m sorry. I said, I’m so, so sorry. Your mother would have done it right, would have known just how to make you what you were meant to be. I’m sorry I failed.

I put a candle in his empty head and lit it with a match, but when I looked into his face, all I saw were three, gaping holes and a candle in a pumpkin.

The next night all the children of the neighborhood donned masks. It was that night when a parent’s sins might be hidden by the visage of some ostensibly greater horror, and that in the name of fun, rewarded with sweets. What a trick we play upon our offspring every autumn.

This might have proved the one night Felix could go unnoticed, be nothing more than a boy, but he had no mask to wear to hide the face I had inflicted upon his unspoiled skin. The doorbell rang, and I answered it, Felix held in my arms. The child at the door wore a grinning, plastic skull, and said, You’re that crazy man. Do you have any candy?

Maybe I did, I told him, but I would want his mask in return. My son needed the mask more than he did. The boy said that it was his mask, and he needed it to get candy, and if I didn’t have any I should just say so, and he would leave.

Don’t, I said, please, look, and I held out Felix for the boy to see. My son needs a mask so he can be like any other boy, like you, if only for tonight.

The boy ran, ran away into the street, into the trickle of witches and princesses and knights and demons carrying pillowcases and buckets. I followed him, holding Felix before me, the other children shying away from me even as I entreated them, Please, please he just needs a mask, and then he might be like any one of you, and you would not know that you were not like him. All that separates you is a few strokes of a knife, and that is no great thing, and so easily hidden, at least on this night, of all nights.

They fled, those children, and left us alone, and I thought Felix might be angry with me, or embarrassed, but he remained still, and silent.

• • • •

Within days of my failure, Felix began to soften. His face, weak where I had taken too much, sank, folding into itself. Spots of purple mold erupted on his skin. I scrubbed at them with a cloth, but his skin sloughed off to reveal the greying meat underneath.

I had turned his body into a box he would not be held by. He had his mother’s spirit in him.

What had I contributed?

Soon there was nothing left of my son but a reeking mush that I gathered into a blanket. I wrapped him tight, my vision clouded with tears and guilt and terrible fear. I had lost what little my wife had left me. I meant to take Felix to the yard and bury him there, bury him in dirt so that he would share dirt with his mother and at least they might be together and she might do better by him than I ever could. I opened the door to the yard and fell to my knees before what I saw, and what I saw was many shoots and sprouts, many young vines growing up among the grass on the lawn.

And I saw what a harvest of futures my wife had provided for, how every time I put a knife to one of our children I would feel her hand on mine, and she would birth me endless opportunities to carve the legacy we were always meant to have.

©2015 by Will Kaufman. Originally published in Wag’s Revue . Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Will Kaufman’s work has appeared in Unlikely Story, Unstuck, Daily Science Fiction, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among other places. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Utah in 2011, and attended the Clarion Workshop in 2013. Currently, he is working on a collection of short stories and a novella. You can find Will online at www.kaufmanwrites.com, or in real life in Los Angeles, CA. If you’d like to follow Will, please do it on Twitter (@specwill), and not in Los Angeles.

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

The Stars Do Not Lie

Jay Lake | 22190 words

In the beginnings, the Increate did reach down into the world and where They laid Their hand was all life touched and blossomed and brought forth from water, fire, earth, and air. In eight gardens were the Increate’s children raised, each to have dominion over one of the eight points of the Earth. The Increate gave to men Their will, Their word, and Their love. These we Their children have carried forward into the opening of the world down all the years of men since those first days.

—Librum Vita, Beginnings 1:1-4; being the Book of Life and word entire of the Increate

Morgan Abutti; B.Sc. Bio.; M.Sc. Arch.; Ph.D. Astr. & Nat, Sci.; 4th degree Thalassocrete; Member, Planetary Society; and Associate Fellow of the New Garaden Institute, stared at the map that covered the interior wall of his tiny office in the Institute’s substantial brownstone in downtown Highpassage. The new electricks were still being installed by brawny, nimble-fingered men of crafty purpose who often smelled a bit of smoke and burnt cloth. Thus his view was dominated by a flickering quality of light that would have done justice to a smoldering hearth, or a wandering planet low in the pre-dawn sky. The gaslamp men were complaining of the innovations, demonstrating under Lateran banners each morning down by the Thalassojustity Palace in their unruly droves.

He despised the rudeness of the laboring classes. Almost to a man, they were pale-faced fools who expected something for nothing, as if simply picking up a wrench could grant a man worth.

Turning his attentions away from the larger issues of political economy and surplus value, he focused once more on history.

Or religion.

Honestly, Morgan was never quite certain of the difference any more.

Judging from the notes and diagrams limned up and down the side of the wide rosewood panel in their charmingly archaic style, the map had been painted about a century earlier for some long-dead theohistoriographer. The Eight Gardens of the Increate were called out in tiny citrons that somehow had survived the intervening years without being looted by hungry servants or thirsty undergraduates. Morgan traced his hand over the map, fingers sliding across the pitted patina of varnish and oil soap marking the attentions of generations of charwomen.

Eufrat.

Quathlamba.

Ganj.

Manju.

Wy’east.

Tunsa.

Antiskuna.

Cycladia.

The homes of man. Archaeological science was clear enough. Thanks to the work of natural scientists of the past century, so was the ethnography. The Increate had placed the human race upon this Earth. That was absolutely clear. Just as the priests of the Lateran had always taught, nothing of humanity was older than the villages of the Gardens of the Increate.

Nothing.

Sick at heart, Morgan turned back to his photographic plates, their silver salts bearing indubitable evidence of the ephemeral nature of such faith in the Increate.

The stars do not lie.

• • • •

“Gentlemen of the Planetary Society . . .” Morgan Abutti let his voice trail off a moment. His next words, once uttered, could never be taken back. Not before this august assemblage of the greatest scientific minds of the modern era. He drew in a deep breath and plunged recklessly onward. “On examination of considerable evidence from fields as varied as paleontology, archaeology, and astronomy, I have been compelled to confront the distinct likelihood that we, the human race, are not of this world.”

He paused to give the audience a moment to consider the proposition. The racket of the city of Highpassage echoed from outside the Society’s Plenary Hall—steam whistles, horses, motorcars, the grumble of the new diesel engines powering the latest generations of airships. The seven hundred faces staring at him included a scattering of the paler-skinned northern folk, who were finally entering academe and the sciences thanks to the same progressive policies that had helped pave Morgan’s own way to the exclusive University of Highpassage. That women had been allowed to study a generation earlier had cracked open the door that later admitted the traditionally inferior white race.

The world was growing more open-minded by the decade in spite of itself. Were his colleagues in the Planetary Society ready for this, his grand conclusion?

What he’d thought to be shocked silence degraded into murmuring, muttering, even outright laughter in a few corners. Some delegates rose from their seats, ready to move onward to more fruitful pursuits. Others struck up conversations with their seatmates, or commenced making notes, in some cases with deliberate ostentation.

Morgan had lost the audience, waiting for their reaction to his news.

“I have . . . have assembled a précis of the evidence . . .” he began, but his voice trailed off. A moment later Doctor Professor the Revered Lucan Matroit, Secretary-General of the Planetary Society, plucked at Morgan’s sleeve.

“My deepest regrets, ah . . . Doctor Abutti,” Lucan said quietly, his tone as formal and disinterested as if the two of them had never met before. “The Society thanks you for your contributions.” He quite effectively twisted Morgan’s arm and propelled him toward the heavy maroon velvet curtains marking stage left.

“Dear ones,” Lucan called out to the audience, which immediately stilled its unrest at his piercing voice. “Let us now offer praise to the Increate, as redress to Them for the caprice and irresponsibilities of free will . . .”

Morgan did not hear the rest of the invocative prayer. Two of the Society’s burly porters—like most of their fellows, former Thalassojustity Marines—seized him by the upper arms, shoved his despatch case into his hands, jammed his bowler hat upon his head, and escorted him to a service entrance from which he was summarily ejected into a dung-spattered alley under the doleful gaze of a brace of hinnies hitched to a rag man’s cart.

At least they had not thrown him bodily into the muck. No, even that embarrassment had been trumped with a few mere words from Lucan Matroit.

Gathering the shreds of his dignity, Morgan resolved to retreat to the shelter of his office at the New Garaden Institute. The Avenida Tram line ran past the Plenary Hall, and would deposit him within two blocks of his destination.

Waiting for the next street car to arrive, Morgan noticed one of the porters watching him. The man leaned on a pillar of the rococo façade of the Plenary Hall, smoking a fat cigar and making no effort to hide himself or pretend interest in anything but Morgan. After adjusting his collar tabs and fussing with his shirt front, Morgan held his leather case to his chest as if it could armor him, and waited among the ladies’ maids and bankers’ daughters for the tram.

• • • •

Riding among a crowd consisting mostly of servants summoned memories that Morgan had expended some effort setting aside. The human odor of painfully starched cleanliness and faint malnutrition within the tram was far too reminiscent of his own childhood. He stared out at the streets of Highpassage, ignoring the people around him with their muted gossip, and wondered what he’d been about.

Seeking truth, science, had been his path out of ungenteel poverty. That the good universities admitted scholarship boys at all was still a strange novelty when Morgan had first enrolled. He’d studied beyond reason to qualify, understanding perfectly clearly he would have to do twice as well to be thought half as good as someone of monied birth and good family.

Even now, with his doctorate and his post at the New Garaden Institute, far too few listened with ears of reason. People only saw and heard what they wished. If he’d been a titled scion of some ancient house, Matroit would not have been able to rush him out of the Planetary Society.

The most important discovery of the modern age was being crushed by pettiness. No different from the rough back alley games of his youth. The strongest ones, the ones with the most friends, always prevailed.

Head pressed against the glass, feeling the shudder of the tracks through the tram’s iron wheels, Morgan almost wept to realize the world’s unfairness had no end. He could never be good enough, never have possession of enough facts, to surpass that barrier.

The New Garaden Institute’s offices occupied the majority of an elegant building that had been designed and constructed during the height of the Neoclassical Revival at the beginning of the previous century. It had been one of the first structures in Highpassage built with the intention of being gas lit and centrally heated. Plumbing stacks, gas valve closets, ventilation shafts for the introduction of fresh air to the innermost precincts of the structure—the building had been a truly visionary project from the century’s most famous architect, Kingdom Obasa. A brilliant Iberiard educated outside the top-ranked university system, Obasa had very much gone his own way in both engineering and aesthetics. As a result, for all of its brownstone glory, the New Garaden Institute nonetheless resembled nothing so much as a cathedral that had been partially melted.

The recent addition of an array of rooftop electrickal signaling devices for the propagation and reception of radio waves had done nothing to alleviate the building’s strangeness.

Stung, embittered, saddened by his setback, but firmly in command of himself once more, Morgan stumbled through the vestibule into the receiving parlor only to find the Desk Porter in close consultation with a pair of on-duty Thalassojustity Marines. His view of the wide expanse of maroon carpet, delicate settees, and brass rails telescoped into a horrified vision of another ejection from his barely attained positions of privilege. The Marines’ formal red tunics contrasted oddly with the firearms borne by both of the large men. While Morgan had little familiarity with weapons, even he could see that these were not the long-barreled, wooden-stocked rifles carried on parade, but rather short, snub-nosed bits of machined steel slung tight on well-worn leather straps. Businesslike tools of violence, in other words.

“Ah, Dr. Abutti,” one of the Marines said, even before he’d turned from the Desk Porter’s podium. The man’s purple-blue eyes were like grapes squeezed into the unnaturally pale, ruddy flesh of his face.

Morgan was impressed for about three beats, until he realized the Marine had seen his reflection in the glassed-over painting of the Battle of Mino Harbor behind the podium.

“Indeed. I do not believe we have been introduced.” Morgan glanced pointedly at the Desk Porter. The Desk Porter—was his name Philas? Phelps?—just as pointedly failed to meet Morgan’s eye.

“No need, sir. You’re to come with us. Thalassojustity business. You’re being called before the Lesser Bench, sir.” The Marine favored Morgan with a warm smile that did not meet the eyes. His fellow favored Morgan with the blank stare of a gun barrel casually swung to bear.

“Now?” Morgan asked with an involuntary swallow.

“Now.” And after a moment too long, “Sir.”

“I may be some time,” Morgan told the Desk Porter.

“I’ll make a note, Doctor.” This time he did raise his eyes with a faint flash of malice.

• • • •

When first they hanged the pirate Black upon the beach
Little did the captains trow what they set upon the sea
Neither haunt nor hollow, down the long years between
Justice for the open waves, and a fire upon the deep

—Lords of the Horizon, Ebenstone (trad. attrib.)

By sharp contrast with the New Garaden Institute, the Thalassojustity Palace was arguably the oldest building in Highpassage. It was certainly the oldest building still in regular use. The legal and sovereign relationship between the Thalassojustity and its host city was ambiguous, strained by two millennia and more of precedent, treaty, and occasional open warfare.

In other words, arguably not in Highpassage proper. The Increate, as always, manifested Their power on the side of the big battalions.

Morgan Abutti was treated to a close view of the Pirate’s Steps, the ancient risers that led to the formal portico. A temple of the sea, the palace had been looking out across the Attik Main for over a third of recorded history. He knew the building well—impossible not to, as a fourth-degree Thalassocrete. The initiation ceremonies stressed history above all else.

Normally he used a discreet side door for the alternate Thursday lodge meetings. Only criminals and heads of state paraded up the Pirate’s Steps. He knew which he wasn’t.

“What have I done?” he asked of the two Marines for at least the sixth time. For at least the sixth time, they gave him no answer. Even the false smiles had vanished, to be replaced by a firm grip on each arm and the banging of one Marine’s firearm against Morgan’s hip.

At the top of the steps, he was hoisted around and faced outward, so that he stared at the bottle-green waters of the Attik Main. Shipping crowded the waves, as always at Highpassage, one of the busiest ports in the world. Great iron steamers from the yards at Urartu far to the east passed above dish-prowed fishing boats whose lines had not changed in a thousand years of beachfront ship building. A white-hulled Thalassojustity cutter cruised past barges and scows waiting for their dock pilots. Overhead, a pair of the new Iberiard dirigibles beat hard against the wind, engines straining as they slung urgent deck cargo to landfall from a vessel waiting too long for a slip.

Highpassage, crossroads of the world.

But the message wasn’t that, Morgan knew. He’d sat through too many initiations not to see the point the Marines were making. The hanging tree, the ultimate symbol of both justice and power across the world’s maritime extents, stood on the beach below him, memorialized as a granite monument to the largely legendary death of the largely legendary pirate Black. That angry court of captains and bosuns had met on a firelit beach in the teeth of a rising storm over two thousand years past to take justice in their own hands after the King of Highpassage had declined to act. The sailors had broken Black, so the story ran, and unintentionally founded a line of power that controlled the high seas to this day, serving as a pragmatic secular counterbalance to the widespread spiritual and temporal influence of the Lateran Church.

Drawing on that tradition to this day, justice, as untempered by mercy as the sea itself, was the purpose of the Thalassocretes.

“You’re a man of keen wit and insight,” said the pale Marine in a surprisingly soft tone, to Morgan’s surprise.

“I am likely blind to much in this life.” He felt as if he were uttering his last words. “Science is both my mistress and my muse. But even I can still see history.”

Like estranged lovers met on a sidewalk, the moment swiftly passed. A rough adversity resumed. Morgan found himself pushed within, toward the upper halls and the quiet, incense-reeking rooms of the Lesser and Greater Benches of the Thalassojustity.

• • • •

The Most Revered Bilious F. Quinx; B.Th. Rhet.; M.Th. Hist. & Rit.; Th.D. Hist. & Rit.; 32nd degree Thalassocrete; and master of the Increate’s Consistitory Office for Preservation of the Faith Against Error and Heresy, watched carefully as His Holiness Lamboine XXII paged through one of the prohibitora from the Consistitory’s most confidential library.

The two of them were alone—unusually so, given His Holiness’ nigh everpresent retinue—in the aerie of the Matachin Tower of the Lateran Palace. This room was Quinx’ private study and retreat, and also where his most confidential meetings were held. The latter was due to the architecture of the tower walls that rendered the usual methods of ecclesiastical eavesdropping futile.

Quinx, in both his official capacity and from his well-developed personal sense of curiosity, worried about the possibility of spying via the new electricks. For that reason, he had thus far forbidden any lights or wires to be installed in the Matachin Tower. He preferred instead to rely on traditional oil lamps tended by traditional acolytes who damned well knew to keep their ears shut. And besides which who wore nubble-soled slippers so they could not sneak.

Privacy was both a commodity and a precious resource within these walls of the Increate’s highest house. Quinx made it his business to control the available privacy as much as possible.

Still, having His Holiness leaf so casually through a prohibitorum was enough to give a thoughtful man a galloping case of the hives.

Lamboine—who had once been called Ion when they were boys together in a mountain village plentifully far away from the Holy Precincts—raised his eyes from the page. “There is nothing in this world I am not entitled to know, Bili.”

“You understand me perfectly as always.”

Those words summoned a small, sad smile, one that Quinx also remembered far too well from a youth lost six decades past. “That is why I am the Gatekeeper and you are my hound,” Lamboine replied. As ever, his voice was preternaturally patient. “I have always wondered why our friends among the Thalassocretes have never sought to place a man on the Footstool of the Increate.”

Ion was one of the few remaining alive who could provoke Quinx to unthinking response. “Do you honestly suppose they never have done so? I am numbered among their rolls, after all.”

“They think you their spy in the house of the Increate.” Another small smile. “In any event, I should think I would know if one of them had ever held my throne. My opinion is that they have never felt a need to. Truth is a strange commodity.”

“Much like privacy,” Quinx almost whispered, echoing his own, earlier thoughts.

The Gatekeeper shook his head. “Privacy is just a special case of truth, or its withholding. This . . .” His hand, palsied with the infirmity of age that had yet to overcome Quinx, swept over the open book. “This is truth of a different sort.”

“No, Your Holiness. It is not. It is only the Thalassocretes’ story. We have the Increate and the evidence on our side.”

“What makes you think there are sides, Bili?”

In that moment, Quinx saw Lamboine’s death. Flesh stretched tight and luminous across his face, the deep, natural brown of his skin paling to the color of milk in coffee, his eyes brittle as cracked opals. The man’s fires were guttering. “There are always sides, Ion. That has been my role these long years here, preserving and defending your side.” He paused a moment, then added: “Our side.”

The Gatekeeper waited several measures of silence too long for comfort before replying. “I am glad you did not claim a side for the Increate. They are all, and They are everything.”

“Of course.” Quinx bowed his head.

A trembling hand descended in surprising blessing. Quinx had not even realized that the Gatekeeper had set the book down. “Do not rely too much on evidence, my oldest friend. It has a way of turning against you in time. Proof can change with circumstance. Faith is the rock upon which we must always build.”

Quinx remained bowed until the Gatekeeper had departed, shuffling far enough down the spiral stairs to summon his attendants, who bore him away on a wave of soft whispers and perfume. After a time, he rose and set some incense alight before kneeling on a bolster with a small rice paper copy of Librum Vita in his grip. It had been made in distant Sind, something of a curiosity, copied out in a firm hand by a man wielding a brush comprised of only a single hair. Act of faith? Dedication to art?

It did not matter. The Increate’s words fit in the palm of Quinx’ hands. From there, he drew comfort as surely as he had from his mother’s grasp once so long ago.

Or Ion’s.

The relief of prayer drew him in then, toward the dim inner light that always filled Bilious Quinx when he sought the Increate in honest, faithful silence with open heart and empty thoughts.

• • • •

Much later he trimmed the wicks in his office and lit the night lamp. Darkness had descended outside, the evening breeze bearing the itching scent of pollen and spring chill off the mountains to the east and south. Quinx opened his windows, their red glazing parted to let the tepid lamplight spill out and compete with the distant stars.

The Lateran Palace had its own observatories, of course. Someone must demarcate the lines of the world. Even the almighty Thalassojustity had in the past been willing to leave the skies to the Church. The irony of that was not lost on Quinx in these late days. He was certain it was no less lost on the Thalassocretes in Highpassage and elsewhere.

No matter his own initiation into their ranks; the Thalassojustity had always known who and what Quinx was, and whose creature he had been, body and soul. That Ion was dying now changed nothing of Quinx’ loyalties.

He considered the prohibitorum, lying so carelessly open where the Gatekeeper had left it on one of the round room’s several curve-backed writing desks. The book was open to a map of the Garden of Ganj, annotated only as the heretics of the Thalassojustity would bother to do. This particular volume was a first printing of the Revised Standard Survey, Th. 1907. Almost a hundred years old, and their color plates a century past were as good as anything the Lateran presses could manage even today.

Ion had left a scrap tucked in the center crease. Quinx plucked it out, his own hand trembling. It was a short note that must have been written before the Gatekeeper had come up to see him, in Ion’s lifelong careful copperplate hand, rendered edgy and strange by the exigencies of age.

Dearest—

Do not let them elect you to the Gatekeeper’s throne after me. And do not be afraid of what may be proven. Farewell. I regret that I must go before.

Always yours.

So he had seen truly into the Gatekeeper’s face. And Dearest. They had not used that word between them in over five decades. Quinx carefully burned the note, then stirred the ashes. After that he trimmed his night lamp back to darkness, closed and sealed the prohibitorum with a black ribbon, and took a chair by one of the open casements to watch the stars wheel slowly until just after midnight when the Lateran tower bells began to ring their death knells.

When the great, iron bell of the Algeficic Tower tolled last and slowest of all, his tears finally flowed.

• • • •

Love is the sin that will not be denied.

—Librum Vita, Wisdoms 7:23; being the Book of Life and word entire of the Increate

The funerary rites for His Holiness Lamboine XXII began at Matins as the first flickering sweep of dawn glowed like coals in the eastern sky. In his role as Preserver of the Faith, and therefore fourth-ranking priest in the Lateran hierarchy, Quinx could have insisted on being the celebrant. The two men above him were already closeted deep in the electoral politics of the Primacy, those same delegates from around the world having received the Gatekeeper’s death notice by telelocutor for the first time in Church history.

Quinx had a sick feeling that he would soon grow very weary of that last thought: the first time in history.

Instead of celebrating, he chose to attend as a congregant, a man, a priest, a mourner. The Deacon of the Lateran High Chapel led the first round of services. He was a young man with a perpetually surprised expression, now properly dressed in a sweeping black cassock embroidered in gold and silver thread, though he’d begun the services in a nightshirt before being rescued by an acolyte with the right set of chamber keys.

Incense, again, and the familiar tones of the chimes indicating the order of service. As the deacon struck them in turn, Quinx tried to put the memory of the tower bells away. Not to forget, for nothing could be forgotten by a man in his office, but to be set aside.

Prayer was a valve opened to the comfort of the Increate, from Whom all things sprang and to Whom all things flowed. There were times when he could understand the attraction of the Aquatist Heresies, for all that their pernicious metaphors had nearly fatally tangled the Lateran Church in its own liturgies. There were times when he wondered what the Increate truly intended, as if They would speak directly to him in response. There were times when quiet refuge was the greatest gift They could give him. Quinx let the deacon’s droning voice lead him from grief to some other place where his cares could wait on the attentions of his heart.

Somewhere in memory, two young men on a hillside scattered with sheep, goats, and bright blue flowers laughed under a summer sky and spoke together of all things great and small.

• • • •

When fingers touched his shoulder, Quinx was briefly startled. He’d gone so far into meditation that he’d lost himself in the well-worn rituals of the service. Become the liturgy, as they used to say in seminary.

He looked around. Brother Kurts, his lead investigator, stood as always just a bit too close.

“Sir,” the monk growled. A big man, one of those pale northerners who somehow never seemed to advance far in the Church hierarchy, Kurts carried far more than his own weight. The man was a boulder in a snowfield. Here, in the midst of service, his blocky frame and the dark brown rough-spun habit of his Sibellian Order made him a brutal shout against the soaring of the silk-robed choir who must have filed in to the loft while Quinx had been meditating.

“Kurts?”

“You must come, sir. We have an urgent dispatch from Highpassage. By air.”

“By air?” Briefly, Quinx felt stupid—an unusual sensation for him. Of late, matters of great urgency were transmitted via telelocutor. His own office had approved such innovation only three years earlier, well after the undersea cable had been laid between Highpassage and the Lateran, crossing beneath the Attik Main. Matters of great secrecy were handled quite differently, and always with utmost discretion.

Sending an airship across the sea the night of His Holiness’ death was tantamount to lighting a flare.

“By air, sir,” Kurts confirmed. “Matroit dispatched the messenger.”

Matroit. The man was the very model of probity, and no more likely to panic than he was to fly to the moon. But the timing of the thing . . . It stank of politics. Quinx felt briefly ill. “Was the vessel a Thalassojustity airship?”

The monk shook his head. “A racing yacht. I understand it was put about to have been sent on a dare by some of the young wastrels of the city.”

Not an utterly unreasonable cover story, Quinx had to admit, for all that such defiance of the Thalassojustity was outrageous. Outrageous served as the stock in trade of a certain set in Highpassage. He set aside for later consideration the issue of how Lucan Matroit was connected to that set in the first place. For now, a dispatch this urgent would be a distraction to his grieving heart.

How welcome or unwelcome remained to be seen.

He did not bother to ask if Kurts had read it. The man would not have done so. In his entire life, Quinx had only ever trusted two men utterly. The first of those had passed on into the hands of the Increate last night. The other was here before him. Whatever Kurts’ many flaws, the monk was loyal to the bone. Blood and vows, vows and blood, as they used to say.

Quinx gathered the skirts of his cassock and rose from the prayer bench. He gave an approving nod to the deacon, now well into the third iteration of the funerary mass and looking distinctly tired, before withdrawing from the High Chapel in the wake of his man.

• • • •

They closeted themselves in a tiny dining room from which Quinx had by virtue of his office ruthlessly evicted four hungry priests. Plates of plain eggs and blackbread toast still steamed. He considered the contents of the envelope presented by Kurts. The seal had been genuine enough, to the best of Quinx’ rather well sharpened ability to determine. For something that had come rushing over hundreds of miles of open water, the letter within was sufficiently sparse as to seem laughable. A single sheet of crème-colored Planetary Society paper, with that slick finish favored by the very wealthy, though it would take few inks. A rushed hand, script rather than copperplate, the pigments a curious green that was one of Matroit’s affectations. And only a very few words indeed.

But such dangerous ones.

It was dated the previous day though no time was given. He realized on reflection that this missive must have been written before Ion’s death could have been known, just by judging the miles the message had flown even at the speed of the fastest air-racing yacht.

Revered—

The Externalist heresy was proclaimed again today in the Plenary Hall. To my surprise, the Thalassocretes have taken custody of the young man in question, but I have secured his work for the nonce. There is a possibility of empirical evidence.

M.

Evidence.

Proof.

Had Ion known last night this letter was coming, known as he was dying? Or was it simply that now happened to be the world’s time for such trials? The cloying smell of cooling eggs provided no answer.

Still, Quinx felt a swift trip to Highpassage would be in order. With their profound challenge to the roots of Lateran doctrine, Externalists were a far more troublesome heresy than the dissenters such as the Machinists or the Originalists. Putting paid to this renewed outbreak of Externalism before it had a chance to establish and multiply was an utmost priority. And that errand in turn would keep him safely away from the deliberations of the Assemblage of Primates, who would surely be meeting in camera the moment the Gatekeeper’s body had been sufficiently blessed. Death was an unfortunate pause in events, but politics continued forever.

There was a young man to see, and a Thalassojustity to face down. Again.

Why people insisted on resisting the obvious and holy truths of the Increate was one of those mysteries of free will that a priest could spend his lifetime contemplating without any success. If all the saints of ancient days could not answer such a question, surely Bilious Quinx would be no wiser.

Questions he could not answer, but problems he could solve.

“Brother Kurts . . .”

“Sir?”

“Does the airship pilot perhaps await our pleasure?”

There was the briefest pause, then the slightest tone of satisfaction in the monk’s reply. “I have already made certain of it, sir.”

• • • •

The advantages of the reflecting telescope over the refracting telescope cannot be overstated, and should be obvious to any thinking man. While the great refractors of the past century have multiplied our understanding of the Increate’s work amidst the heavens, the practical exigencies of glass-making, gravity, and the engineering arts limit the refracting mirrors to less than fifty inches of diameter. Advances in the philosophy of the reflecting telescope have produced designs by such luminaries as Kingdom Obasa’s son and successor, Brunel, for mirrors of a hundred inches or greater! Even now, the Planetary Society raises a subscription for such a heavenly monster to be placed upon Mount Sysiphe north of Highpassage, that we might enumerate the craters of the moon and count the colors of the stars to better understand the glories of Creation. A true union of Science and Faith can only prosper from such noble endeavors.

—Editorial in the Highpassage Argus-Intelligencer, November 2nd, H.3123, Th.1997, L.6011

“Lesser Bench” was a misnomer. Morgan knew that. Everybody knew that. The Greater Bench met only in solemn conclave on the beach to hear capital cases, and certain classes of piracy accusations. Everything else that transpired in the Thalassojustity took place under the purview of the Lesser Bench.

The question was which of those benches.

The two Marines dragged Morgan into the interior of the Thalassojustity Palace. The main nave soared to the roof, some eighty feet above, and was lined with enormous statues of sea captains and Thalassocretes through the ages. The joke ran that the bodies remained the same and the heads were switched from time to time. Whatever the truth, the sculpture represented one of the greatest troves of Classical art in the world, with continuous provenance stretching back well before the onset of consistent recordkeeping.

Glorious, strange, and too large for the world—that was the majesty of the Thalassojustity, encapsulated in the dialectic of art.

At the moment, Morgan was feeling inglorious, ordinary, and far too small. Even the marble flags here were oversized, designed to intimidate.

He was scooted a bit too fast past the massive altarpiece at the far end of the nave, through a bronze door wrought with an overly detailed relief of some long-forgotten naval battle, and into a far more ordinary hallway that could have been found in any reasonably modern commercial building in Highpassage. Electricks flickered overhead, giving a reddish-yellow cast to the light. Entrances lining each side of the hallway were so mundane as to be aggressive in their plainness—dark brown, two-paneled doors, each relieved with frosted glass painted with the name of some bureau or official. Cocked-open transoms above each provided some relief from a warmth that must be stifling in high summer.

Only the carpet, a finely napped deep blue that Morgan could not put a name to, betrayed the true wealth of this place.

Well down the hall he was propelled into an intersecting corridor with doors set much farther apart. Larger rooms for larger purposes? The Courts of the Lesser Bench, he realized, as they passed a door where gold-flecked lettering proclaimed “EXCISE BENCH.”

The door he was pushed through was marked “LOYALTY BENCH.”

Morgan’s heart stuttered cold and hard. The treason court. Where offenses against the Thalassojustity itself, or against the common good, were tried.

The door slammed behind him. No Marines. Morgan whirled, taking in the small gallery, the judge’s podium, stands for witness and examiner, the interrogation chair, glass cabinets where evidence or exhibits might be stored.

And no one present. No judge, no advocates, no clerks of the court, no bailiffs, no witnesses, no one at all but himself. Defendant?

The walls rose high, two or three stories, though not as tall as the nave. These were paneled with inlays of half a dozen different colored woods to create a pleasing abstract pattern. Electrick chandeliers dangled overhead. Their fat iron arms signaled their gaslamp history.

Morgan ceased gaping and sat down in the gallery. He had no desire to approach the front of the courtroom. As nothing seemed to be taking place, he simply closed his eyes for a moment. His heartbeat calmed for the first time since stepping to the podium back at the Plenary Hall of the Planetary Society.

Without sight, other senses sharpened. He smelled the furniture polish and floor wax of the courtroom, along with the faint ozone scent of the electricks. All of it masked the underlying accumulation of human stress and fear. Perspiration had left its indelible mark in the air.

The sounds of the room were similar: a faint buzz from the lights, the creak and sigh of old wood, the footfalls of someone approaching.

Morgan’s eyes shot open and he stiffened.

The newcomer—no door had opened, had it?—was gloriously dark-skinned as any king of old, gray eyes almost silver in a cragged and noble face. His hair was worked back in prince-rows, each set with tiny turquoise and silver beads so that he seemed almost to be wearing a net upon his head. A silver hoop hung from his left ear, the conciscrux of the Thalassojustity tiny in his right. Barefoot, he wore a laborer’s canvas trousers and shirt, though dyed a deep maroon rather than the usual blue or grubby tan. Despite the attire, this one would not have fooled any thinking observer for more than a moment, not with his bearing.

After a moment, Morgan finally registered how small the man was. Barely shoulder high, four foot nine at the most. That was when he knew who he faced—Eraster Goins, presiding judge of the Lesser Benches. The Thalassocrete.

“Pardon my state of undress,” Goins said politely. “I was attending to some physical matters when I was informed of the requirement for my presence.”

“I . . . Sir . . .” Morgan made the hand-sign of his lodge.

A crinkling smile emerged that was entirely at odds with the power of this man’s word. Goins could summon fleets, lay waste to cities, claim the life of almost anyone, at his mere whim. “Of course I know that, Dr. Abutti. You do not need to demonstrate your loyalty or training at this time.”

At this time.

“Wh-what, then, sir?”

“Well . . .” Goins cracked his knuckles, took a moment to find great interest in the beds of his nails. Morgan did not think this was a man ordinarily at a loss for words. “So far as anyone in the city of Highpassage is concerned, you are in here being thrashed within an inch of your now-worthless life. This matter will be of specific interest to certain Lateran observers.”

Morgan was moved to briefly study his own hands. He was under threat, certainly. No one talked to Goins or his ilk without placing themselves at great risk. A single false word could misplace an entire career, or a lifetime’s work. Or freedom.

“This is about my speech at the Planetary Society, isn’t it?”

“Your perspicacity shall soon be legendary.” Goins’ tone managed to be simultaneously ironically airy and edged with a whiff of fatality. “Perhaps you would care to explain to me what you thought you were about?”

“Am I on trial?” Morgan regretted the words the instant he’d blurted them out.

“No, but you certainly could be.” Goins’ eyes narrowed, his smile now gone to some faraway place. “You would enjoy the process far less than you’re enjoying this discussion, I shall be pleased to assure you.”

“No, I didn’t mean . . .” Morgan stopped stumbling through reflexive excuses and instead summoned both his courage and his words. Proof was proof, by the stars. He couldn’t explain everything, but he could explain a great deal more than was comfortable. “I have new evidence concerning the Eight Gardens, and the origins of man.”

“I do not believe that is considered an open question. Are you a Lateran theologian, to revisit Dispersionism? That is a matter for our contemplative competitor on the southern verge of the Attik Main.”

Morgan made the sign of the Increate across his chest. “I do not presume to challenge faith, I just—”

“No?” Goins’ voice rose. “What precisely did you intend to present to the Planetary Society, then?”

He was sweating now, his gut knotted. This had always been the crux of the matter. The world was so true, so logical. Until it wasn’t. His newly summoned courage deserted Morgan, apparently to be followed by a fading sense of self-preservation. “A mistake, sir. I intended to present a mistake.”

“Hmmm.” Goins took Morgan’s attaché case from his unresisting hands, tugged open the flap. “A mistake. That’s better. You still haven’t answered my question, however.” The presiding judge leaned close. “What was the mistake?”

Morgan opened his mouth, to have his lips stopped by the single tap of his inquisitor’s finger.

“Heed me carefully, Dr. Morgan Abutti. We have no copyist present. No autonomic locugraphitor hums nearby. No clerks of the court labor at my elbow to give later inconvenient testimony. I do not ask you this from my seat of responsibility at the head of the Pirate’s Steps. I do not wear my robe and chain of office. No oaths have been sworn beyond those we both live under every day of our lives.” Goins leaned close. “At this moment, I am merely a man, asking a simple question of another mere man. Both of us stand before the Increate now as always clad only in our honor. After you have answered, we may make other decisions. Other testimonies may be required, each suitable to their intended audiences. For now, I only listen. To the truth entire as you understand it.

“So tell me. What was the mistake?”

“I believed something I saw of significance in the heavens,” Morgan said simply. “Though what I found runs against the word and the will of the Increate, and everything that has been taught to us in the six thousand years since They first placed man in the Eight Gardens and awoke us to Their world.”

“Mmm.” Goins stepped away from Morgan, paced briefly back and forth before turning to face him again. “I trust we are not so lucky that this mistake in the heavens was presented to you by an eight-winged angel with glowing eyes? Or perhaps the voice of the Increate Themselves whispering in your sleeping ear? I am going to assume that your . . . mistake . . . arrived borne on the back of evidence derived from the latest and most pleasing artefacts of Dame Progress, objective and empirical in the hand.”

Morgan stared at Goins, appalled. “Had an angel told me what I have learned, you could call me both blest and crazed. Almost all would smile behind their hands and carry on.”

“Precisely.”

“’Twas no angel, sir. No miracle at all, except that of optics, patience, and an emulsion of silver salts painted onto a glass plate to be exposed to the night sky before moonrise could flood the world with pallid light.”

“Mmm.” This time Goins did not pace, but stared instead at Morgan. “And what do you think this photographic truth signifies? Speaking in your professional capacity, of course.”

Morgan’s heart sank further. He was close to tears, torn. “I c-cannot deny the Increate.”

“Why not? You were prepared to do so in front of seven hundred people in the Plenary Hall not two hours past.”

“Forgive me. I . . . I did not understand what it was I was about.” He wanted to groan, cry, shriek. It was as if he were being torn apart. “Is not truth part of Their creation?”

Goins leaned close. “What you did was take some photographs of the night sky, study them, and draw conclusions. You did this being the good scientist that you are, trained at the University of Highpassage and the New Garaden Institute. One of our New Men, concerned with the evidence of the world before them rather than the testimony of tradition. I don’t want to know what the innocent boy who prayed to the Increate every night believes. I want to know what the educated man peering into the telescope thinks.”

The words poured out of Morgan Abutti with the strength of confession. “There is something artificial at the Earth’s trailing solar libration point. A small body, similar to one of the asteroids. I believe it to be a vessel for traveling the aether. I speculate it to be the true home and origin of mankind. Whatever I believe does not matter, for all will be revealed in due time. This artificial world has begun to move, and will soon be visiting us here in our own skies.”

Goins’ response shocked Morgan. “It has begun to move?” he asked in a voice of awed surprise.

Morgan’s heart froze. The presiding judge’s words implied that he’d already known of this. He fell back on the most basic refuge of his profession. “The stars do not lie, sir. We may misunderstand their evidence, but the stars do not lie.”

Goins sat heavily, his face working as if he too sought to avoid tears. Or terror. “You have the right of that, my son. But we may yet be forced to lie on their behalf.”

• • • •

The racing aeroyacht Blind Justess was so new that Quinx could smell the sealants used to finish the teakwood trim of the forward observation cabin. Her appointments were an odd combination of luxurious and sparse. Like the airship’s rakish exterior form, the interior of fine craftwork minimally applied stood in strong contrast with the lumbering, gilded monsters of the Lateran’s small aerial fleet. Those wallowing aerial palaces served as ecclesiastical transports and courts-of-the-air for peregrinations to distant sees where the dignified estate of the Gatekeeper might not be so well honored.

Quinx had claimed the forward observation chair by sheer presence. The captain-owner of Blind Justess, one young gallant by the name of Irion Valdoux, was a scion of the Massalian aristocracy, and very much a traditionalist when it came to handling his own weapons and equipage.

And doubtless his women, too, Quinx thought with a distinct lack of charity.

Valdoux was as dark-skinned as any comely lass might hope for in a suitor, with a smile unbecoming a man of serious parts. He had bowed Quinx into the button-tucked seat, upholstery so well-stuffed that a horse could likely have taken its ease there. A glass-walled pit opened between Quinx’ feet. At the time of boarding this curious portal revealed a view of dawn over the Attik Main, the ocean opaque with night’s last shadows as they plucked at the tumbled ruins along the shoreline beneath the Lateran’s airfield masts. Though his head for heights was excellent—Quinx had lived in a tower for some decades now—he found the open space beneath him a trifle unnerving.

“When we’re racing for pips under Manju rules,” Valdoux explained, “I keep a spotter here with the grips for the electrick harpoons.” He cleared his throat. “Open class, no restrictions.’ Justity hates it, they does.”

“I do not suppose the Lateran entirely approves either,” Quinx replied.

Valdoux, who knew perfectly well that the word of the Consistitory Office was quite literally ecclesiastical law, and that the word of Quinx was quite literally the word of the Consistitory Office, fell silent.

“Long explanations wear on the soul,” Quinx supplied a few moments later. “I shall oversee our progress from here.” He favored Valdoux with the sort of smile that reminded some men of small bones breaking. “It would please me to examine your harpoon grips, however.”

“N-not running under Manju rules here over the Attik Main, sir,” Valdoux managed. “But I’ll send the boy for’ard with ’em, sir. Will that be all?”

“No.” Quinx withdrew his smile. “I expect you to break airspeed records bringing me to Highpassage. The Lateran will be most . . . grateful. As will my office. Brother Kurts shall assist you as necessary.”

Valdoux wisely withdrew to the bridge, which was a deck below the observation cabin.

Quinx had managed a decent view of Blind Justess on the way up the airship’s mooring tower. Her envelope was of very unusual design, more of a flattened vee shape than the usual billowing sausage of an airship. Though he was no engineer, he could appreciate the effort at linestreaming in a racing vessel. Some of the fastest water yachts shared that look. Likewise the high-speed locomotive that ran the express routes between the Lateran and Pharopolis far to the east, the largest city on the south shore of the Attik Main.

The gondola below the envelope was just as unusual, resembling nothing so much as a sleek wooden knife. She boasted a sharp keel that split the air, a fine array of viewing ports in smoked glass, and very few of the usual utilitarian protrusions so common on airships. Just before boarding, he’d noted a profusion of small hatches and ports along the outside of the gondola’s hull—clearly this vessel kept many of her secrets from prying eyes.

Within was that odd combination of wealth and efficiency. The carpets felt thick and cool, of the finest wool and not yet showing any signs of wear. Grab rails and spittoons were brass polished to a painful brightness. Most furniture was gimbaled and latched away against violent maneuvers, or possibly just to save space. Her most salient characteristic was narrowness.

He wondered what to make of that.

Narrow or not, the great diesels encapsulated into nacelles along the lower curve of the gas bag coughed swiftly to life before growling deep in their throats. Blind Justess cast off from the tower smoothly enough, but within minutes she was moving faster than Quinx ever had done while airborne, nearly to railroad speeds.

Kurts had reported a promised velocity of over fifty miles per hour through the air. Quinx had considered his man to be mistaken or misinformed, but as the Attik Main slipped by beneath his feet, his mind was changing.

How much progress had taken place in the factories and laboratories of High Passage, Massalia and the other great cities of the world while he’d spent his life laboring among books and sweating priests and accusations of error? A ship like this, any airship in truth, had been inconceivable when he and Ion were boys. That he could now fly with the speed of storms was . . .

A miracle?

Perhaps the Increate had always intended this for Their creation. Another generation would have to answer that question, Quinx knew. His was growing old and become too tired to look much further ahead.

Externalism.

His mind had avoided the point of this journey, dwelling on the mysteries of a machine in which Quinx in truth had no interest.

Heresies were for the most part quite boring, even mundane. And the Lateran of these later days was nothing like the Lateran of centuries past. His own predecessors in office had routed out sin and error with a vigor at which Quinx could only marvel. And sometimes shudder at.

Not that he hadn’t broken more than a few men, some of them quite literally. But peculation and sins of the flesh seemed to be the flaws in his generation. Not the bonfires of the heart that had sent armies marching across entire continents in ages past, not to mention setting the Lateran time and again in opposition to the Thalassojustity.

No one cared so much any more. The role of the Increate in man’s tenure on Earth was undeniable—even the poor, deluded atheists were little more than dissenters against a preponderance of evidence from scriptural to archaeological. The rise of science had only reinforced what the Lateran had always taught.

Except for the damned Externalists.

Every time that heresy had arisen, it had been viciously suppressed. Somewhat to Quinx’ continued surprise, even the Thalassojustity had cooperated in the panicked months over the winter of L.5964 and L.5965, when he was new in his place as head of the Consistitory Office and Brother Lupan had grown regrettably public in his insane claims of having found the Increate’s Chariot on an island in the Sea of Sind.

There were a dozen theological problems with Brother Lupan’s theory, but the most practical problem was that he’d had such a vivid, imaginative presentation of his claims that the human race, already birthed elsewhere, had descended from the skies in the hand of the Increate. People listened, at least at first.

Quinx still believed that the Thalassojustity had intervened in what was logically a Lateran internal dispute simply to protect their Insular Mandate. Trade flowed over the world’s oceans under their protection. In return, unless otherwise ceded by treaty, islands belonged to the Thalassojustity. All of them, from the smallest harbor rock to the great, jungled insulae scattered across the eastern verges of the Sea of Sind.

Brother Lupan had been trespassing not only on theology, but also on the private property of the greatest military and economic power on Earth.

Quinx examined the electrick grips the boy had brought forward. Huge things, built into oversized rubber gloves lined with some felted mesh. He wondered where the harpoons were, how one aimed. Was there a reticule to be used here?

It was a silly, juvenile fantasy, and beneath him as a servant of the Increate. No Lateran vessel had sailed armed since the Galiciate Treaty of L.5782, over two centuries ago. In that document the Thalassojustity had guaranteed the safety of all Lateran traffic, as well as the persons of the Increate’s servants here on Earth. Blind Justess, not being a Lateran vessel, and practically papered over with the money required to build her, doubtless carried a somewhat more robust defensive proposition to accompany her rakish lines and inhuman speed.

Quinx let his thoughts go and stared into the wave-tossed sea swiftly passing far below his feet. Externalism was the worst sort of heresy, because it denied the very basis of the relationship between man and the Increate. That Lucan Matroit had seen it openly declared was frightening. From where did such evil arise, and how so swiftly?

Ever was that the nature of his office. To seek out evil and lay it to rest.

Still, he wondered what Ion had known. Now was not the time for a crisis, not with a new Gatekeeper to be elected and elevated and begin setting his own mark upon the Church of their fathers.

• • • •

It is the considered opinion of this subcommittee that the study of astronomy and the related arts be placed under much closer supervision than has heretofore been believed advisable. The impressionable minds and irresponsible imaginations of some of our younger researchers may be influenced toward paths of thought not consonant with this institution’s devotion to the spirit of scientific inquiry. A Review Committee is proposed as an adjunct to the Board of Governors, consisting of senior faculty, a representative of the Planetary Society, and by invitation if they so desire to accept, representatives from both the Thalassojustity and the Lateran. We may thus guide the research and observations of our more impetuous young faculty and students along lines fit for men of good social standing, character, and faith.

—Undated memorandum, University of Highpassage faculty senate

“Show me,” Goins said quietly.

“Show you what?” A surge of recklessness overtook Morgan. “I thought you were forcing me to silence.”

The judge grimaced. “Show me what you found. Because if you can find it, anyone can find it.”

Morgan paused, attempting to sort out if he’d just been insulted. “I hardly think that just anyone could—”

Goins interrupted. “I cast no aspersions, merely indicate that you are not unique. Rather, a man of your time. Or possibly your technology.”

“May I please have my case back then, sir?”

Morgan took the leather bundle from Goins, opened the clips, and slipped out the beribboned folder he’d meant to present for review at the end of his failed lecture. Such a mistake it had been to surprise the Planetary Society. His presentation had been posted as an overview of new observational techniques with attention to some exciting discoveries. Morgan had slyly left all the critical information out of both the proposal and the abstract.

He’d wanted his moment.

Well, now he had his moment.

“You are familiar with the idea of astronomical photography? That we can expose a plate coated with silver salts through a telescope to study the night skies?”

Goins favored Morgan with a flat stare. “Yes.”

“Good.” Morgan tugged the ribbon’s knot loose. “Some astronomers study the planets and their satellites this way. Arguing over the true count of moons about Deiwos Pater is very nearly a club sport among my colleagues.”

“Yes.”

Glancing at Goins again, Morgan saw something very flat and dangerous in the man’s eyes. Here was someone who could start a war on the far side of the world with a mere word. Power was his beyond reckoning. “I am not stalling, sir. Rather, leading you to the point.”

“Yes.”

No more stalling, he thought. “I have been studying the Earth’s libration points, both with respect to the moon and the sun. You are, ah, familiar with the concept?”

“First described by LaFerme in 1873.”

Thalassocratic reckoning, of course. “I did not realize you were an astronomer,” Morgan said, surprised.

“A presiding judge must be many things, Dr. Abutti. Not the least of which is a step ahead of the ambitious and rebellious men around him.”

Which of those categories did Goins consider him to fall into? “Very well.” Morgan held out a series of photographic prints. “The first two are the trailing and leading libration points in the Earth-Moon system, traditionally accounted the fourth and fifth positions. Each is sixty degrees in advance or in retard of the Moon. Note the photographs show only clouds of dust.”

Goins frowned as he studied the images. “I shall have to trust your word on this. A man can only be so far ahead. With what instrument were these photographs taken?”

“The eighty-eight inch refractor at Mount Sysiphe,” Abutti said, pride leaking into his voice.

“Of which you were one of the principal architects, is that not the case?”

A combination of natural modesty and self-preservation governed Morgan’s reply even in the face of a flush of pride. The Mount Sysiphe project had been much of his doctoral work. He’d even put time in on the manufacturing of the mirrors themselves, as well as supervising the great instrument’s initial installation at the site, beneath the enormous iron dome delivered by the shipwrights. “I would hardly say ‘principal,’ sir. Far more learned and experienced men than I sat as members of the project’s Board of Governors.”

A wry smile flitted across the judge’s face. “I am aware of the distinction, Dr. Abutti. Carry on, please.”

“Your question was important to understanding my . . . evidence. No one has ever seen the heavens so well as those of us with access to Mount Sysiphe.”

“Which has been restricted these past three years.” Goins’ tone made it clear he was in full support of such scientific censorship.

“Yes. Even my access was challenged, as an associate fellow of the New Garaden Institute rather than a University faculty member.” The very mention of the incident recalled all too vividly his stung pride.

“Still, you no doubt persevered in the face of great pressure.”

Once more, Morgan found himself wondering if he were being mocked. “As you say, sir. In the end, the Board of Governors found it difficult to deny one of the principal architects access to his own work.”

“Ever has common decency paved the way to uncommon folly. You are forestalling your revelation, Doctor Abutti.”

“I show the Earth-Moon libration points in order to set the expectation. Of interest to orbital mechanicians, but consisting only of a few clouds of dust, and perhaps small rocks. Now, here are the Earth-Sun libration points the fourth and fifth.” He handed another set of photographic prints to Goins, then fell silent.

The presiding judge studied the new images, then compared them to the first set. He was silent a while, but Morgan did not mistake this for confusion or hesitation. Eventually, Goins looked up from the sheaf of prints in his hand.

“The fourth libration point appears to me to be little more than dust.”

Morgan nodded.

“A body is present at the fifth libration point.” Goins’ tone had gone dangerously flat again.

The man truly had known all along. “Yes.”

“What can you tell me about that body?”

“Two things,” Morgan said slowly. “First, that spectrographic analysis of its reflected light tells us that the body is a composite of metals and carbon compounds. A composition that is literally unique among observed bodies in the solar system.”

“And second . . .?”

“Sometime in the past three weeks, the body has begun to move in contravention to its known orbit. Without the influence of any observable outside force.”

Goins simply stared.

Eventually Morgan filled the silence. “Under its own power, sir. Toward Earth, as best as I can determine.”

“What does that mean to you? As a scientist?”

“That . . . that there is an artificial object at the fifth libration point. It has been there for an unknown amount of time. It is now coming to Earth.”

“Is that all?”

“I . . . I have deduced that this artificial object is an aetheric vessel, a ship of space, as it were. Achman’s Razor compels me to believe that six thousand years ago it brought us to this Earth. Otherwise I must conclude the Increate placed two intelligent species here in our world, ourselves and some other race to build this aetheric vessel. I find that even less likely than the deduction I reached from the evidence before me.”

In the silence that followed, Morgan’s own heartbeat thundered.

Finally: “And you were going to announce this to the Planetary Society?”

“Yes, sir. I told them we were not of this Earth, originally.” He took a deep breath, and added in a rush, “All of the scientific evidence that points to the Increate just as logically points to my hypothesis. It is well established across many disciplines of science that humanity simply arrived six thousand years ago. The question is how. Created whole from the dust of the world by the hand of the Increate, or aboard this aetheric vessel?”

Goins studied him carefully. “You expected to leave the building alive?”

Morgan stopped a moment. “We are all scientists there.”

“Of course.” Goins shook his head. “You are what, a fifth-degree Thalassocrete?”

Taken aback by the swift change of subject, Morgan shook his head. “Fourth-degree, sir. Alternate Thursday meetings of the Panattikan Lodge here in Highpassage.”

Goins made a flicking motion with his left forefinger and thumb. “Congratulations, you’re now a thirty-second degree Thalassocrete. By the power invested in me as Presiding Judge I so declare. Someone will teach you the secret handshake later.”

Morgan was stunned. “Sir?”

“There are some things you need to know, right now. Truths that carry the death penalty for those not of rank.” Goins leaned close. “You are now of rank. Second-youngest ever to reach this height, I might add.”

Still grasping at the change in the conversation, Morgan stammered the first question that came into his head. “Who . . . who was the youngest?”

“That is left as an exercise for the astute observer.” Goins’ swift, savage grin left no doubt in Morgan’s mind as to the answer.

• • • •

Though sea piracy has long been largely the stuff of legend, air piracy is a novel menace for which our society has not yet developed an appropriate response. The terrestrial powers are rightly jealous of their prerogatives with respect to the Thalassojustity, so the solutions that have long kept the sea lanes clear and active do not translate well to the requirements of this new century, where an enterprising rogue with some funds and a few good mechanics and sharpshooters may set up an illicit aerie in rough country, then cross national borders and Thalassojustity waters to raid shipping and towns with impunity. The White Fleet may not pursue our villain overland away from the coastlines, while few nations yet have the resources to mount their own aerial response, or the willingness to allow their neighbors to pursue miscreants under arms across their own skies.

—Editorial in the Highpassage Argus-Intelligencer, January 18th, H.3124, Th.1998, L.6012

Blind Justess approached Highpassage from west of south. They’d swung their course that way, Valdoux had explained to Quinx and Brother Kurts, to make best use of the shore breeze in their approach to the masts at the airfield.

All three of them were on the bridge now, which was crowded as a result. Admittedly, Brother Kurts was a crowd all to himself, with his looming height, muscled breadth, and glowering pale visage. Still, the man’s loyal service to the Lateran and especially to the Consistitory Office made him a credit to his race.

Quinx studied the duty stations of the bridge. As a racing yacht, Blind Justess was designed to be operated with a minimal crew—as he understood it, the captain-pilot, an engineer up in the gas bag tending to the temperamental high-performance diesels on their wide-slung cantilevers, and a ship’s boy to serve as runner and temporary relief.

Yet here were a navigator’s station, a wireless telegrapher’s station, two weapons stations, and the pilot’s station. Compact, almost ridiculously so, but elegant in their gleaming brass instruments, the lacquered loudspeaker grills, bright bells, and tiny colored electricks signifying the state of more parts and processes than he’d imagined one airship to have. Except for the pilot, all the stations had small leather saddles for their now-absent operators, presumably to economize on space. The pilot had a real chair, meant for long, comfortable occupation, though it was currently clipped back as Valdoux stood at the helm. His head nearly brushed the cabin roof as he made a great study of Highpassage from their position about two miles offshore.

“See,” the captain said, pointing toward a cluster of multistory buildings connected by an aerial tramway, “since the Pharic Mutual Assurance put up that blasted office tower near the airfield, the approach has been tricky. It breaks the wind off the hills, and we sometimes get a rotten shear. Old Piney’s widows are suing them over the crash of Unfettered last year.”

Quinx had no idea who Old Piney was, but he vaguely recollected reading of an airship crash in Highpassage. There had been a scandal—that he did remember. He’d spent little time in this city the past few years, which might have been a mistake. If nothing else, it had grown taller.

Something still bothered him. Why did a racing yacht have two weapons stations, in addition to the gunner in the forward observation cabin?

The instrument and control labels were unmistakable. Forward battery. Aft battery. Long chasers. Port bomb rack. Starboard bomb rack.

There must be observers as well, to guide these releases.

“Highpassage is your home port?” he asked casually. Where had Lucan Matroit found this pilot? And with what had Valdoux been bribed? The man was clearly not one of the Planetary Society’s operatives. His connection to the Lateran was nonexistent.

Quinx would have known otherwise.

“No, the Racing Society has got a private field a few miles up the coast. Well away from buildings and such.”

He sat down in one of the weapons saddles and began to regret spending most of the trip in the observation cabin. There was more to be learned here. Quinx’ blunt, manicured fingers caressed the port bomb rack release.

“Those don’t do nothing now,” Valdoux said without turning his attention from their approach.

“Then why are they here?” asked Quinx.

“Because when we run with a full load and all her crew, they do just what you think.”

Quinx heard a hardness in the young bravo’s voice. “Because sometimes you’re racing for pips under Manju rules,” he said softly. Whatever that argot was intended to actually signify.

“Exactly.”

An air pirate didn’t need a hidden mountain base, Quinx reflected. That made good copy in those scientific romances that sold so well at street corner kiosks, but the logistics of fuel and spare parts were improbable. All a pirate really had to do was keep an honest face. With that he could hide his airship in plain sight. Who knew, later?

Then they were pitching and turning to approach the mast. “Have you down in ten, sir,” Valdoux called out.

• • • •

“I want you to stay aboard,” Quinx quietly told Kurts as the ship’s boy laid out a narrow board to connect Blind Justess to the mooring mast. “At the least, I shall require a swift return to the Lateran, possibly quite soon, depending on what Matroit is able to tell me. I can imagine several other outcomes as well, for which a fast ship might be of service.”

“Sir,” Kurts said, quiet acknowledgement.

“And one more thing. Tell Valdoux that he can ready his ship under Manju rules. I may be playing for pips myself shortly.”

“What precisely is a pip, sir?’ Kurts asked.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Quinx replied. “But it’s something Valdoux and his set are willing to kill for. If Lucan hasn’t already suppressed this outbreak of Externalism, we may be pressed for hard solutions ourselves.”

“Yes, sir.” Kurts stepped back into the cabin as Quinx left the ship for the platform.

He didn’t bother to count the steps in the mooring mast. Far too many, to be sure. Quinx lived in a tower for several reasons—privacy had been the original, of course—but he’d long since recognized the value of having to ascend and descend one hundred and twelve steps every time he wished to do more than stare out the window or piss in a chamber pot. He didn’t think he was old, but his body had other ideas after a sleepless night, a long day aboard a speeding airship, and now this.

Ion is dead, which is as old as one ever gets.

At least he was still walking. By the time he reached the soil, Quinx’ heart was pounding like a fist inside his chest. His knees had become rubber. He rather thought he might be joining Ion soon.

Instead he found awaiting him a rat-faced young man with an unfortunately pale cast of skin, wearing an ill-fitting maroon suit. “Dr. Matroit sent me, your worship,” the fellow said, bobbing about like a cork slipped down into a wine bottle. The motions made Quinx vaguely ill, which in turn reminded him that he’d not eaten all day.

He did not even have the energy to put this fool in his place. “Please take me to him.”

The quadroon led Quinx to a motorcar. The priest groaned inwardly. Those beastly things were never comfortable, and tended to break down as often as they ran. This one was an open-topped steamer, already stoked up from the sound of the boiler. It was pretty enough, he had to admit, with the deep blue lacquer on fenders, hood, and body, and a pleasing amount of brightwork for trim.

“Here, sir, in the back. I gave you some cushions. No luggage being sent down?”

“Just myself.” Quinx carried a small satchel, but this trip had been so sudden that he’d brought no trunks or wardrobes. “Please, take me to Matroit.”

A few minutes later, they rumbled off to the accompaniment of an ear-piercing shriek of a release valve. Quinx looked up and back at Blind Justess now shadowed in the encroaching dusk. She was just a shape in the last light of day, a hawk hovering over the city searching for her next prey.

• • • •

Lucan Matroit had the good sense to arrange a meal for Quinx at the Plenary Hall. The foolish steamer driver had managed not to kill them or anyone else on the way, and kept the thing running smoothly enough to avoid destroying Quinx’ appetite, so he tucked into the cold pickle and pudding as soon as possible after the basic pleasantries were dispensed with.

The matter at hand was so critical that they met alone, without the nigh ubiquitous secretaries, clerks, or servants. Quinx briefly regretted leaving Kurts aboard Blind Justess, but he’d wanted badly to keep Valdoux under observation. He also truly had foreseen several potentially critical uses for the airship and her equipage.

Lacking servants, the meal was sparse and strange, something that novices in the seminary might have prepared for themselves. Quinx had grown up on fresh cabbage, preserved peppers, and the occasional bit of goat meat, so even this was welcome. The cold pickle was a fairly ambitious tray of vegetables along with a few regrettable cheeses. The pudding was one of those curious northern dishes that had become popular in Highpassage the past few years, all chewy breading around plums and bits of organ meat.

Still, he ate, and listened to Lucan’s sadly incomplete story.

“. . . so I had Dr. Abutti shown out immediately,” the Secretary General was saying. “In the moment, I was somewhat concerned for his safety, but far more concerned with settling the audience.”

“Would they have done him a mischief?” Quinx asked around a mouthful of pungent eggplant.

“In the Plenary Hall?” Matroit shrugged. “Unlikely. But anything is possible. There have been three murders in this building since its dedication, and almost a dozen suicides. The Planetary Society itself is not ordinarily a risk to life and limb. Passions here tend to be more, ah, individualized.”

“Three murders?”

“Surely you recall the death of Drs. Messier and Ashbless? They fought a duel on the rooftop over a dispute concerning the orbits of the moons of Mars. We had only the twenty-eight inch reflector back then, and observations were inconclusive.”

“I take it both men lost.”

“Or won, as it may be. Choice of weapons went to Dr. Ashbless, who unaccountably decided on carboys of high molar sulfuric acid fed into spray pumps.”

“Never mind,” Quinx said. “I believe I’d prefer to finish my dinner. Please continue your tale.”

“Well, I quickly realized I should have detained Dr. Abutti rather than sending him out into the city. I sent two of our porters over to the New Garaden Institute, where they determined that Dr. Abutti had been taken away by Thalassojustity Marines.”

Oh Increate, grant me strength now. “That would not be the outcome I might have prayed for.”

“Nor I, sir.”

If the Thalassojustity held Abutti, anything was possible. Their concerns were largely orthogonal to those of the Lateran—the two institutions had co-existed in varying states of competition for the better part of two thousand years, after all—but this was not the Externalist crisis of L.5964, when the Thalassojustity’s interests had been directly compromised.

Presiding Judge Eraster Goins was in charge these days. The Consistitory Office had little information on him, none of it sufficiently damning to serve as any leverage. And under his leadership, the Thalassojustity had showed some remarkable innovations.

Quinx’ heart grew leaden at the thought of what innovations Goins could derive from Abutti’s madness. “I am a Thalassocrete of the highest degree,” he said, something very unusual for a Lateran priest, and in his case rarely spoken aloud. “I believe I shall have to pay my respects at the Thalassojustity Palace quite shortly.”

His body cried for sleep, but his soul cried panic. Despite what Ion had told him, Quinx was very much afraid of what might be proven.

And by whom.

• • • •

The quadroon managed to navigate the steam car from the Plenary Hall to the outer entrance of the Thalassojustity Temple, once more without actually inflicting material harm on Quinx or anyone else. The hour was nearly nine o’clock when they chuffed to a shuddering halt outside the tall, studded gates.

Prior centuries had brought more than one angry mob here. Not to mention a few armies. Though most of the old walls were long gone, replaced with timber lots and gardens of roses and blackberries, the fortified gatehouse itself still blocked the only public road connecting Highpassage to the Thalassojustity’s territory. This was an international border, and by and large, casual tourists were neither welcomed nor wanted.

The Revered Bilious Quinx was neither casual, nor a tourist. And he was exhausted.

Staggering from the car over the protestations of the driver, he yanked on the bell pull beside the main gate. A pale, idiot face peered from a darkened window in the gatehouse proper.

“Public hours is closed!” the man shouted through the glass.

Quinx leaned close, gathered his fist inside his vestments, and punched out the glass. Cursing rose from within, as the priest leaned close and spoke in the low, calm voice that he’d used for delivering judgments these past forty years. “I am a thirty-second degree Thalassocrete on urgent business to the Presiding Judge. I do not have time for visiting hours, and I will have you swabbing decks in frozen Hyperborea if you do not open the gates now.”

Scrambling noises emitted from within, followed by the distinctive whir of a telelocutor. A few hushed words, then more scrambling, then the gates creaked open.

Resuming his seat in the back of the steamer, Quinx told the quadroon, “Drive on, boy.”

“Yes, sir!” The man’s voice quavered somewhere between horror and awe.

Their tires crunched up the crushed coral drive that led to the Thalassojustity Temple. The New Buildings lurked beyond, thousand-year-old fortifications that served as an office complex. Two more recent, taller structures rose past them. Those contemporary buildings were simply referred to as “the towers.”

Know your friends; know your enemies better. The Thalassojustity had been both to the Lateran over the centuries.

Otherwise the grounds were as gardened as any cemetery of the wealthy. Cypress trees spread low in the moonlight, hares and deer cropped, barely attending to the wheezing of the steamer as it passed. The sea lay to Quinx’ left, its murmuring unheard over the racket of the steam car as the waters lapped at the bottom of a sharp decline down which a man might easily lose his footing. The crescent of Black’s Beach, at the foot of the stairs from the Temple, gleamed pale ahead of him.

No one was around. Not a Marine, not a night watchman. The lights of the Temple portico were doused, and only a few stray glimmers showed from shuttered windows in the New Buildings or the towers.

Which was odd. Lodge meetings tended to run into the evenings. There were always late-working bureaucrats scurrying about, along with the servants who tended them. Quinx had visited the Thalassojustity Temple more than a few times over the decades, on a variety of errands from the deeply secretive to the bloodily public. He’d never seen it look so, well, abandoned.

The quadroon slowed his steamer to a halt where the drive met the Temple steps. Quinx climbed out of the car again, regretting his long walk down the airship mooring mast. He was desperately tired, he realized.

Where was everyone?

One step at a time. Up. And up. And up.

The great doors at the top, bronze castings forty feet high chased with elaborate friezework, stood open as they always did. Lore held that the doors would only be closed in times of utmost crisis. Quinx had always figured it for a problem with the hinges. A slight man in a crisp, dark suit sat just within the threshold on an office chair that very much did not belong in the nave. “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for Goins,” Quinx said, too much of his irritation creeping into his voice.

“The Presiding Judge is not available. Who is asking?”

“Me.” Quinx glared at him. “Get a lot of men in red and white robes calling late at night?”

“You are clad in the sartorial estate of a prince of the Lateran, sir, but I have not had the prior pleasure of your acquaintance, so for all of my knowledge you might be a lad about on a lark.”

“With this hair?” Quinx had to laugh, his foul mood broken for a moment. “It’s been fifty years since I could pass for a lad. And believe me, Eraster will talk to me once he knows I’m here. I am the Revered Bilious Quinx, and I am pursuing some very dangerous questions.”

“Revered Quinx.” The door warden gave the name some thought. “Your fearsome reputation precedes you, sir. If memory serves, you are also an initiate of our own Lodges, and as such should not be required to seek admittance at the public portals.”

“I did not arrive by the hidden paths, and time may be of the essence.” He moved his hands in the recognition signs of a thirty-second degree Thalassocrete. “And yes, I am the highest level initiate who also serves in the Church’s senior hierarchy.”

“Who is known to serve,” the door warden corrected mildly, words that gave Quinx serious pause. “You were answering the Presiding Judge’s call, then? I am afraid you are too late by hours. All of the available senior initiates sailed on the afternoon’s tide, aboard Th.S. Clear Mountain.”

“With Dr. Morgan Abutti aboard?”

“Of course.” The man seemed surprised. “Who else?”

Quinx leaned close. “And where were they bound?”

“Thera, I believe. But rumors are often put out to obscure the truth of such missions as this.”

Quinx’ heart sank. The entire leadership of the Thalassojustity had just abandoned their headquarters. Why? Such a thing had never happened, even during the worst wars of the last century.

Whatever Abutti had found must have proven extremely convincing. Ion’s prophesied proof was happening, almost before his very eyes. Externalism . . .

Even his thoughts failed. “I must to Thera, and swiftly,” he said.

“Clear Mountain is very nearly the fastest of ships.”

“Oh, I can travel faster.”

Stumbling down the steps to the quadroon’s steamer once more, Quinx wondered how difficult it would be to convince Valdoux to mount his weapons on Blind Justess.

• • • •

The traditional association between vulcanism and the Eight Gardens is a folk myth not borne out within the received text of the Librum Vita. Neither do any of the Lateran’s formal teachings support it. Yet like most folk myths, it likely arises from some transmuted memory of history. Each Garden is seen to be paired with a smoking mountain—Cycladia has its Thera, for example, Wy’East has the volcano of the same name. The Thalassojustity has been notoriously reluctant to permit full surveys of the relevant sites under their control, so most of what can be said about this association arises from ethnography and the study of more primitive folkways than the modern world can boast. Still, it does not require much speculation to see how the Increate’s children, early in their tenure upon this Earth, might have associated Their power with the world’s own fiery exhalations.

—“Contemporary Survey of Myths and Legends Concerning the Eight Gardens”; B. Hyssop, F. Jamailla, A. Serona; Ouragan Journal of Ethnographic Studies, Vol. XCVII, Issue 7

Morgan sat in Clear Mountain’s forward lounge, a gin fizz in hand, and marveled at the events of the past day. Goins had wasted no time in calling his entire senior hierarchy to witness this . . . unfolding? Apparently the Thalassojustity had been waiting for his revelation for a very, very long time. Ancient secrets indeed, to bring all these old, powerful men so swiftly to arms. Even this vessel was something between a warship and a royal yacht, as the wide, forward facing windows with their armored shutters testified.

The Attik Main by moonlight was dark as an old grave and restless as risen lust. He watched the sea move as if lifted by a thousand submerged hands, and wondered whether land or clouds occluded the horizon. Within, all was as lush as man might ask, better appointed than a fine gentlemen’s club, but still with that certain rough readiness of any ocean-going vessel.

The Thalassojustity treated its leaders very well indeed. Even the upper halls of the Planetary Society were not so nice as this, and at the University of Highpassage one would have to ascend to the Chancellor’s estate to find similar quiet luxuries.

He could grow accustomed to the privileges of a thirty-second degree Thalassocrete, if only he better understood the associated duties.

After their initial conversation, Goins had pressed Morgan to provide his evidence and theories to several more audiences. Almost all of the men with whom he spoke were as engaged as the judge had been. No one was shocked, or even surprised.

He felt like a prophet speaking in tongues only others could understand.

Still, it was not his place to ask. Not when serious-faced men with sword-sharp eyes kept questioning him about everything from the construction of refracting telescopes to the proper maintenance of spectrographic analyzers. Oddly, none of them questioned his basic observations, or his conclusions.

It was increasingly clear to Morgan that he was telling some of these men a secret to which they were already privy. That was frightening. The rest simply took in what he said, then moved on.

Within hours, the ship was readied, and his impromptu seminars on astronomy, photography, and light had moved aboard Clear Mountain. Then suddenly, shortly after dusk, they were done with him. Everyone retreated to some meeting room belowdecks. Morgan was left to drink alone, attended only by a handful of solicitous stewards who went conspicuously well-armed as they brought him drinks, canapés, and cigars.

He’d never even learned any name but Goins’. He did not know where they were bound, or why. No one had told him anything. Only asked him endless questions, which had swiftly become repetitive.

The experience so far was in many respects much like being an undergraduate.

Goins finally found him, somewhere near midnight.

“We will make landfall shortly after dawn.”

“Where?” Morgan asked, not particularly expecting an answer.

“Thera.”

The name sounded familiar. “That’s near the Garden of Cycladia, yes?”

The Presiding Judge appeared vaguely pained. “Yes. A volcanic island under Thalassojustity jurisdiction.”

“If I may be permitted a further question, why?”

“So we can show you something.”

“All of you? There must be three dozen senior Thalassocretes aboard.”

“All of us.” Goins sighed. “This matter lies at the heart of our historical purposes. It must be witnessed.”

This time, Morgan heard the grim tone in Goins’ voice. Had it been there all along? “So close to one of the Gardens,” he began, then stopped. His thoughts were tangled by the lateness of the hour and the alcohol, but there was a next link in this chain of logic that was decidedly unpretty.

“You are a very intelligent man, Dr. Abutti. Pray that on the morrow you are wise enough for what will come next.”

With that, Goins departed. Lacking a stateroom, or even a bunk, Morgan kicked off his shoes, propped his feet on the ottoman, and proceeded to drink himself into sleep.

• • • •

Valdoux was at the base of the mooring mast, negotiating with a small whippet of a man who managed to look furtive while standing still and empty-handed. The moon had risen, lambent through a veil of clouds that rendered the night sky into a dark rainbow. The scent of water rode the wind as well, harbinger of a distant storm.

Reluctantly dismounting from the steam car, Quinx dismissed the quadroon and his device. The whippet, who had ignored the vehicle’s chuffing approach, turned to take note of the priest. The man was another pale-skinned northerner.

Quinx was too tired to wonder why the airship captain surrounded himself with inferior servants. “Valdoux, dismiss your man and take me aboard,” he said firmly. Where was Brother Kurts? “We have urgent business to attend to.” And I need to lie down, he thought. From lifelong habit, he would never confess a weakness before others.

Such confessions were something Ion had never seemed troubled by. Somehow his oldest friend had still managed to become the Increate’s vicar here on Earth. Quinx swallowed a shuddering breath that threatened to become a sob.

Tired, too damned tired.

“I don’t think—” Valdoux began, but the whippet raised a hand to silence the captain. “Do you know who I am, Revered?”

“No,” Quinx said shortly. “Nor do I particularly care.”

“Perhaps you should care,” the whippet said in a quiet, almost wondering voice. “For I do know who you are. I am all too sadly familiar with the mission of the Consistitory Office. Once I was a novice, Revered, before being turned out upon the path of what you call the Machinists’ Heresy.”

“Then I sorrow for you, my son, that you have strayed so from the Increate. But still, I must aboard with Captain Valdoux.”

“You will not go without me,” the whippet warned. “A man in your hurry is always in want of weapons. I am master gunner of Blind Justess.”

Quinx, who had apologized to no one but Ion in at least five decades, held back his next words. What this Machinist deserved and what the priest was in a position to mete out to the man were far different things. He had his priorities. After a moment, he found suitable alternatives. “That is between you and the captain, master gunner. My hurry is my own, and all too real.”

“Speak, then,” Valdoux said, finally in voice again. “There ain’t nothing you can say that I won’t tell to Three Eighty Seven here. He’s got to know what it is I hire us out to do.”

“You are already hired,” Quinx pointed out.

“Not to push off into the sky armed and rushing.” Valdoux’s eyes narrowed. “East, I reckon. I’ve heard talk of who took ship today and where their course was laid to.”

Enough, thought Quinx. There was small purpose in fencing with these two. And he was exhausted besides. If they crossed him over much, he could have them taken on an ecclesiastical warrant later. The Thalassojustity would simply laugh at such paper, but the government of Highpassage recognized Church writ.

“Yes, east. I must to Thera, and quite promptly. And we should fly under arms.”

“Afraid of pirates?” The thrice-damned Machinist was positively smirking.

“Afraid we might need to become pirates,” Quinx admitted.

“Sailing into the red under the banner of Holy Mother Church?” Three Eighty Seven touched himself forehead, mouth, and navel; the sign of the Increate. “We should ever be so honored.” He turned to Valdoux. “Are you planning to take this commission? Ninety Nine will be here shortly, but I must go see to the armaments, unless you think the churchman here cannot afford your hire.”

Valdoux laughed aloud. “The Revered here could buy me out ship, sail, and shoes, if he set his sights on that. The question is whether I figure to take his coin.” He winked at Quinx. “Best go to your station, master gunner. One way or another, we’ll be playing at the hardest game soon enough, I reckon.”

The whippet grinned and trotted up the stairway that wound foursquare around the interior of the mooring mast.

“There are no pirates, are there?” Quinx said. “Just airships and more airships.”

“The lines on the map ain’t visible from up in the sky.” Valdoux cocked his head. “But someone of your experience can’t possibly be surprised at what is true being hidden in plain sight.”

“No one raids the Gatekeeper’s air fleet, so the Gatekeeper’s minions do not attend so closely to such matters as others doubtless must,” the priest admitted. “Besides which, we have been disarmed these many years, and would be required to apply to the Thalassojustity for relief.”

“Their borders are perfectly clear from above. More’s the pity. Ain’t too many would make such a fight as a Thalassojustity crew trained and ready for action.” Valdoux squatted. “You look like the death of a priest. Even the Grand Inquisitor must sleep sometimes.”

“This is the hour I would pass over into sleep, yes,” admitted Quinx. As if it were not too obvious from his face, surely. “But I need you to take me to Thera, swiftly. And I need to be certain you will attend to my orders, should that become necessary.”

“You won’t have no say over my weapons. No one does. But I’ll take you to Thera. We’ll fly armed and ready.” Valdoux paused, chewing his lip. Something warred within. Then: “I will also listen to your counsel, should we come to be fighting.”

“And . . .? There is always an ‘and’ at the end of such sentences.”

“More of a ‘but’, I reckon.” This time Valdoux smirked, while Quinx pretended to misunderstand the jest. “But I got to know why you want to chase after the Thalassojustity’s biggest brass. All hot up and ready to fight, at that. This ain’t something a thoughtful priest would be doing. Or even a thoughtless priest.”

“I fear a great heresy is about to be unleashed. Tonight. Or perhaps tomorrow. And it may sweep the world. If I can reach one man aboard Clear Mountain and stop him, I may be able to halt a rising tide before the damage is done.”

“Ain’t no one stops the tide,” Valdoux observed. “That’s why I fly over the waters. Let the Thalassocretes argue with the waves. Storms don’t trouble the top of the sky.” He stuck his hand out. “I’ll take you for a single silver shekel. That seals a contract. Learning what comes next will pay your balance. You’re a mighty strange man, Revered, on a mighty strange errand.”

“A shekel it is.” Despite the process, Quinx was afraid he’d somehow got the wrong end of the bargain nonetheless.

“Look at it from my bridge.” Valdoux grinned again. “Either I’ll get to see the beginning of a tide that floods the world, or I’ll get to see a lone man stop the tide. History before my eyes either way, no matter how the play lands. Or maybe you’re a madman. Even so, I reckon you’re mad with the entire power of the Lateran behind you. Watching that should be good sport, likewise.”

Ninety Nine loomed out of the darkness at those words. Quinx was startled again—from the name he’d expected another Machinist, but not a female. She was clad immodestly in a tunic and sailor’s dungarees.

Valdoux bowed her wordlessly up the tower. She favored Quinx with one cold, incurious glance, then clattered upward.

He stared after her a long moment, trying to sort his feelings from his fatigue, then surrendered the effort and began the slow, aching climb himself.

As Quinx mounted the stairs, Valdoux called after him. “We sail under Manju rules now, Revered. Be sure you really want what you’re asking after.”

• • • •

Quinx slept the remainder of the night away while Blind Justess set her course and left Highpassage ahead of the impending storm. He awoke to a pearlescent pink dawn gleaming through the tiny porthole of his tiny cabin. Most of the available space not occupied by his bunk was filled with Brother Kurts, who snored gently while sprawled upon the deck.

He could not remember ever having seen the monk asleep.

There was no getting up without disturbing the other man, so Quinx lay still a while and watched the sky shift tone from pink to blue. They would be heading very nearly into the sun, he realized, and surely not so far from Thera now unless the winds had been notably unfavorable.

Tiny though the cabin was, it had been appointed with the same odd combination of frugality and luxury as the rest of the airship. The paneling was some wood he did not recognize, doubtless a rare tree from the waist of the world. Brightwork and electricks ran across the walls like veins. Even the sheets were silk, which seemed a bit perverse.

Soon he realized he must be awake and about. Valdoux was mercurial, likely to take any number of strange actions in the absence of his direction. “Brother Kurts,” Quinx whispered.

The monk’s head snapped forward with a gust of garlicky breath. “Revered,” he said, his hand falling away again from something beneath his robes.

A weapon, of course, though such was forbidden by the Galiciate Treaty. Kurts worked for Quinx, not the Thalassojustity. The Consistitory Office had its own requirements, for all that he must at times pretend to a long lost innocence as to means and methods.

“Everything is well, Brother Kurts. I must have some coffee, and mount to the bridge to consult with our fair captain.”

“Six others aboard, sir,” Kurts replied. “Two of them Machinists. The captain, his ship’s boy from before. An engineer and his boy as well. The heretics serve as gunners and artificers, best as I can tell.”

“I met one of them last night. He styled himself Three Eighty Seven.”

“The master gunner.” The monk nodded slowly. “Gunner’s mate is a female name of Ninety Nine.”

“I briefly saw her yesterday evening.” Somehow Ninety Nine’s dubious femininity seemed doubly blasphemous by the light of day, though in truth, Quinx was rapidly losing his capacity for surprise at what might transpire aboard Blind Justess.

“I doubt she will challenge anyone’s virtue. She is both offensive and unlovely.”

“And what do you know of a woman’s loveliness, Brother Kurts?” Quinx asked with a small smile.

The monk was not amused. “As little and all as the Increate allows a man of my vows.”

“Fair enough. I apologize for troubling you. But I must find my way to coffee before I become more trouble.”

They slipped into the short companionway on this upper deck. Brother Kurts led Quinx the half dozen steps to the tiny galley. This was indeed a racing yacht, not intended for full meal service. Or really, any other full service. The coffee machine, however, was an elegant marvel of brass and copper, festooned with a maze of pipes and valves and small, decorative metal eagles screaming for their freedom.

It smelled like a slice of heaven.

“Truly the Increate did bless mankind when They caused the coffee bean to grow,” said Quinx.

Kurts grunted, studying the machine for several long moments before launching into a rapid set of seemingly random manipulations that shortly produced a steaming cup of coffee so deep brown Quinx thought he might be able to see the reflection of last year’s breakfasts in it.

Five minutes later, fortified by caffeine and a rather stale sticky bun of dubious provenance, Quinx headed for the bridge on the deck below. He was trailed by a bleary-eyed Brother Kurts.

• • • •

“Good morning to you, Revered.” Valdoux seemed as chipper as if he’d just had a week at a Riveran resort. The ship’s boy was present, as well as another lad whom Quinx took to be the engineer’s boy. To his profound relief, neither Machinist was on the bridge.

“Captain, the pleasure is all mine.” Quinx slipped up to the fore, where Valdoux piloted Blind Justess with a wheel and a set of levers. Gauges were arrayed to either side of him, but before and sweeping down to his feet was a wall of curved glass. The pale green of the Attik Main loomed vertiginously below, the ripples of waves like crumpled foil.

An oblong island with a sharp-peaked central mountain lay before them. A small settlement nestled on one shore—the south?—dominated by its docks. The rest of the island was heavily forested. Clearly not settled, beyond whomever lived there to service the sea traffic.

“Thalassojustity territory,” Quinx observed.

Valdoux made a tsking noise. “Ain’t no airship masts. They’re behind the times, our naval friends.”

Quinx glanced sideways. “You hold no brief for the Pax Maria?”

“What do I care for the sea? The air is my place. They can’t make neither peace nor war in the skies. And they ain’t made no real effort to claim what power might be theirs up here.”

“Where one grasp fails, another will reach,” muttered Brother Kurts behind them.

“Exactly,” said Valdoux. “And here is Thera, Revered. We overflew a fast ship on the water late in the night. I reckon they’ll be here by midmorning.”

“Clear Mountain?”

“I didn’t figure on stopping to ask. But that does seem to be a sensible thing to assume.”

How to proceed? Quinx badly wanted to confront this fool Morgan Abutti before more damage could be done, but the man had spent almost an entire day closeted with the senior Thalassocretes. A more focused assemblage of the powers in the world he had trouble imagining, short of another Congress of Cities and States being called.

How much harm had already been levied? Was the Externalist heresy loose for good and all? Or had the Thalassojustity seen through the madman and contained him?

Valdoux’s voice interrupted Quinx’ whirling thoughts. “No.”

“No? No what?”

“I can’t land you in force aboard Clear Mountain.”

“That was not my . . .” Quinx let his voice trail off. He didn’t know what he should do next. He thought quickly. “I would meet them at the dock. Brother Kurts will guard my back.”

“With Blind Justess circling overhead? Or standing off?”

That took a long moment of consideration. Aerial force was not a strength of the Thalassojustity, especially not in this place. “Overhead. Awaiting my signal.”

Valdoux reached down to the bottom of his wheel column and unclipped a fat-barreled pistol. “Fire this. I’ll come down hot and fast, guns at the ready.”

Quinx looked in wonder at the weapon in his hand. He’d never held a firearm before, any more than he’d ever held a viper.

Brother Kurts reached around and took it from him. “A flare gun,” he explained. “But you can still harm yourself with it.”

“Or someone else,” Valdoux offered cheerfully. “A shot to the chest from that won’t likely kill nobody, but the other fellow might wish it had.”

“Give me back that flare, Brother Kurts,” Quinx said, suddenly tired all over again. “Only I can decide when to use it.”

The monk looked unhappy, but he returned the weapon.

It fit awkwardly within Quinx’ robes. “Take me down,” he told Valdoux.

“I can’t land here. You got to go down by rope. I’ll send Ninety Nine along to look after your safety.”

Quinx’ fatigue shifted to a sense of nausea, or perhaps outright illness. He would be confronting heresy under the protection of a female Machinist. Any priest who came before the Consistitory Office with such a story would spend long months under the Question, or at the very least in quiet confinement to pray over his errors of judgment and resultant sins.

The expression on Valdoux’s face made it clear the captain was testing Quinx. And Quinx knew that here and now, he held no leverage.

“Let us do this thing,” he gasped, forcing out the words before the last tatters of his certainty vanished.

Holy Mother Church was infinitely patient. There was always a later. Even for a man such as Captain Valdoux.

Especially for a man such as Captain Valdoux.

• • • •

The Thalassojustity has served for centuries as a check upon the powers of the Lateran. Church history documents a much earlier era when the Gatekeepers asserted economic, political, and even military dominance over many of the societies of the Earth. The aggressively secular founders of the Thalassojustity held no patience for the divine right that many of the kings and princes of Earth claimed for their power, and less patience for the generations-long schemes of the Lateran to convert or subvert them. Indeed, there is considerable evidence that the establishment of the secret societies of the Thalassocretes was precisely a countermove against Lateran infiltrations as well as more overt cozenings of their rivals. For make no mistake: this tension between lords spiritual and the lords of the sea is two thousand years in the making, but neither of them has ever misunderstood who their true competition is. Should a significant number of the land-based states around the world ever achieve meaningful confederacy, the power of Thalassojustity and Church alike would be undermined much more deeply than anything either rival could do to the other.

—From the introduction to Common Interests, Uncommon Rivals, P.R. Frost, University of Massalia Press, M.2991, Th. 1994, L.6008

• • • •

There was a great deal of excitement aboard Clear Mountain as they approached Thera. Morgan was not sure what the fuss was, as no one had paid him much attention since he’d finished explaining his thesis the night before, but he eventually padded out to the foredeck to find a number of the Thalassocretes staring at the clouds above the island.

Goins wordlessly handed him a set of field glasses. “See for yourself,” the Presiding Judge growled. “Watch the cloud formation that rather resembles a camel.”

Morgan scanned the sky, not seeing anything he would consider a camel, but pointing his instrument in the direction everyone else was looking. He caught a glint and sense of motion.

“Bastard’s hiding in the cloud bank,” someone else said, then cursed in a language Morgan did not speak, though the intent of the words was clear enough from the tone.

“Airship?” he asked.

“Anyone care enough about you to chase you out here?” Goins made the question sound casual, but the rapid silence around them told Morgan quite clearly what was at stake.

“Not even my own mother,” he said. “Not this place.”

“Hmm.” Goins sounded unconvinced. “The area is under absolute prohibition.”

“Can you not force them down?”

“We don’t even allow our own airships here.”

“Mistake.” That was someone behind Morgan.

“The question will be re-opened, you may be sure,” Goins said loudly. “Unless it has been rendered irrelevant in the meantime.”

“Why are we here?” asked Morgan. “Why do we care about an airship?”

Goins reached up to grab Morgan’s shoulders. His fingers were vises, his eyes drills. “I am about to show you the deepest, darkest secret known to mankind.”

“Me?”

“It is a puzzle, to which you may have found the key.”

Morgan only knew one secret of his own, and he’d already shared it. “My photographic plates. The aetheric vessel at the libration point.”

“Precisely.”

“Precisely what?”

Another senior Thalassocrete snatched Morgan’s arm even as Goins released him. “Precisely shut your yap and see what is to come,” growled the other man.

It took Morgan only a moment to realize these very powerful men were all frightened.

• • • •

Clear Mountain approached the dock at Thera at dead slow. Waves slapped her hull, while mewling gulls circled overhead. Someone waited at the end of the pier, but beyond them was a puzzling scene. Several people sprawled at the head of the pier, while two more stood guard, their backs to the sea. A smaller crowd clustered inland, at the village, in a standoff with the guardians.

A fight had taken place, though Morgan could not imagine who would fight here, or over what. Not in this place. Presumably anyone here was in on Goins’ great secret.

A great racket arose around him. Crewmen rushed to the teakwood foredeck with rifles. Two set up a Maxim gun on a pintle at the bow. Several relatively junior Thalassocretes were directing preparations for a possible offense.

Morgan debated going below, or at least retreating to the lounge where he could fortify himself with alcohol and be out of the line of fire. But Goins was at his side again. “This is your fault,” the Presiding Judge said with a growl.

“Mine?” Morgan was astonished. “What does this have to do with me?”

“Everything.” Goins gave him another of those long, hard stares. “What did you think would happen when you presented your evidence?”

“I dreamt that my reputation would have been made,” Morgan said sadly. “The spirit of scientific inquiry is one of the most powerful forces known to man. With a bit of luck, I could have launched a generation of research.”

“Fear is one of the most powerful forces known to man,” retorted Goins. “And nothing inspires fear like attacking people’s faith. Doesn’t matter what kind of faith—faith in the order of the world, faith in themselves, faith in the Increate. And you, Dr. Morgan Abutti, are attacking all of those faiths.”

Amid a swash of saltwater, Clear Mountain growled to a slow, rolling halt by the pier without any gunfire being exchanged. Goins didn’t look to shore, just kept staring down Morgan.

“I . . .” Morgan’s voice faltered. “No. People are better than that.” His heart fell. “The Increate did not put us on this Earth so that we could pretend away the natural world.”

“You, sir, have averred that the Increate did not put us on this Earth at all,” Goins said. “And though everyone will cry you down for saying that, the damnedest thing is that you are correct.”

He turned and looked over the rail, at the man on the pier. Abutti looked with him to see a priest waiting. Two dozen rifles and the Maxim gun were trained down on the Revered, who seemed unperturbed. He stared back up at them, clearly identifying Goins as the authority aboard ship.

“If it is not the Presiding Judge,” the priest called up.

Goins appeared positively sour. “Revered Quinx.”

“Quinx!?” hissed Morgan. “The Inquisitor?”

“The Lateran refers to that as the Consistitory Office,” Goins told him quietly. “And I know what that oily little bastard is doing here. I just don’t know how or why.”

Morgan nodded. “The airship your people were looking at.”

“Do you have a Dr. Morgan Abutti aboard?” Quinx called up. “I am very much fain to speak with him if so.”

“How—” Morgan began, but Goins cut him off. “Don’t be an ass, man.”

“Ah, I see you have him with you,” Quinx said. “I would be much obliged if you’d set the doctor ashore for some private discussions with me.”

“On whose authority?” Goins waved the riflemen to port arms.

“I could claim the authority of the Lateran, but our writ does not run here.”

“No.” This time Goins grinned. “Have a better offer?”

“Remember your history, Judge. Brother Lupan died not so long ago.”

Goins shook his head. “This tale does not fly on wings of madness, Revered. It creaks atop the edifice of science.”

“Are they truly so different in the face of the Increate?” Quinx stared at Morgan. The man’s eyes were like steel, even from this distance. Morgan shuddered at the thought of being alone with him in a small room, under the Question.

“I . . . I have never denied the Increate,” he shouted. “Nor did I intend to.”

Goins jabbed Morgan in the ribs. “If you are so eager to treat with the Revered, I can put you ashore. Alone.”

Courage seeped back into Morgan’s heart like the tide rising beneath a sandbar. “Bring him aboard.”

“What?”

“You made me a thirty-second degree Thalassocrete. That means I have voice in this floating conclave. Bring him aboard.”

“Well, well,” said Goins. “Who realized you would have such backbone, Dr. Abutti? No, despite your entreaties, I believe we shall put you ashore. But in company. We did come here for a reason, in all good haste. I do not propose to abandon our mission for the sake of a chaffer with a single churchman, no matter how highly placed. As he is also a thirty-second degree Thalassocrete, the Revered may accompany us up the mountain and amuse himself in discourse with you along the way.”

“Where?”

“To where the stars do not lie.”

• • • •

Abutti followed Goins down the gangplank. A line of armed men observed from Clear Mountain’s rail, but no one among the assembled Thalassocretes or ship’s crew objected when the Presiding Judge ordered them to stand down and remain aboard.

Morgan couldn’t see how one priest would be so immediately dangerous, even this one. Still, people were sprawled at the head of the pier. Injured? Dead?

“Bilious,” Goins said, shaking hands with the priest, then embracing him.

“Eraster.” The Revered wore a grudging smile that bespoke the bond that only two ancient enemies could share.

“You know one another?” Morgan asked.

The priest turned to him. “The most powerful man in the Thalassojustity and the most feared man in the Lateran? Of course we know one another, Dr. Abutti.” He extended his hand. “The Revered Bilious Quinx.”

“Revered,” said Morgan, shaking the man’s hand. Though rather larger than Goins, Quinx was still a small man, in that compact way that suggested strength, even at an age that must be approaching seventy. His eyes were sea-gray, set deep in a face dark-skinned enough for any debutante’s ball in Highpassage. He wore a cassock, faded with wear and laundering, but highly serviceable. A small silver Lateran orbicrux hung around his neck. He was otherwise unadorned with the Earthly riches that Morgan associated with high churchmen. “And now I am acquainted with the both of you.”

“To our great mutual pleasure,” Quinx said in a tone of voice that promised quite the opposite.

Goins nodded sharply, glancing down the pier. “Enough. We are on an errand of some urgency. Call off your men down there, and you may accompany us. If you simply must interview Dr. Abutti, feel free to do so on the march.”

“Amid your mob?” Quinx’ voice dropped to a very soft, easy threat. “I am far more accustomed to my own chambers, and tools, for such interviews.”

“This island is my chamber, Bilious,” Goins snapped. “I’ll thank you not to soil it with my colleague’s vital fluids.”

“Oh, we gave up soiling with vital fluids generations ago,” Quinx replied. “Our tools are more subtle now. The arts of the mind are powerful.”

“Call off your men, or the arts of the mind will be powerless this day.”

Quinx nodded, then walked up the pier toward his guardians.

“He’s mighty energetic for such an old man,” Morgan said.

“That old man is the sharp point of a very long blade. We do not fear him, but we have immense respect for his power.”

Morgan thought for a moment. Then: “I am too young to remember Brother Lupan. But I have read of him.”

“They teach that in history classes now?” Goins sounded surprised.

“Not in public school, or even when I was working to my baccalaureate. But in my graduate days, we covered him in a seminar on science, myth, and the public mind. The book about him was in manuscript. It had not yet passed before the censors.”

The Presiding Judge snorted. “I marvel that you learned nothing from that.” Ahead of them, the priest had reached his deadly minions. Goins tugged on Morgan’s arm again, a habit that was quickly wearing in its novelty and charm. “We go now.”

They walked up the pier, followed by a parade of Thalassocretes and servants. Approaching Quinx, who was deep in hurried converse, Morgan was shocked to see that his servants were a pair of white people—a hulking, brutish male and a hard-looking female.

She glanced up at him. Her eyes were reptile cold, and seemed preternaturally alert. Danger, they said, though Morgan had never thought to encounter such menace in any woman born.

His capacity for astonishment had been played out. “Strange company the Revered Quinx keeps, for a priest.”

“Oh, the Lateran is blind to the color of a man’s skin.” Sarcasm ran thick as mud in Goins’ voice. “But I cannot possibly explain the woman, given the Church’s view on their proper role in society.” His hand dropped, flickering through a quick series of motions signaling someone behind them.

“What of your people?” Morgan pointed toward the bodies beyond.

“There will be a reckoning,” Goins said. “Quite soon. But not in this moment.”

The priest and his servants hurried ahead of them, so that Morgan was the first of the Thalassocratic party to reach the downed men. They were four, two with broken necks and the pallor of death upon them already, the other two groaning and bloody.

He bent to look, but a squad of sailors pushed past him, a pair of them medics with canvas bags bearing the Red Orb.

Morgan straightened again and followed Goins.

• • • •

Fuming, Quinx fell into step beside the heretic Abutti. They were already well above the tiny dockside village, following a path that was not much more than a goat track up the slopes of the island’s central mountain. He could do little about whatever foolishness Goins had in mind. The closer they came to the top of the mountain, the closer they were to rescue—or brute force—courtesy of Blind Justess. Brother Kurts and the woman were under close guard behind him, but the Thalassojustity party did not seem to be armed.

When this business was over, all he needed was a shot from the flare gun. And perhaps a convenient fall for Dr. Abutti.

“Revered,” said the heretic. Polite but nervous.

Quinx had a lifetime of working with those cues. “Dr. Abutti.” And to hell with the listeners crowded not so subtly close around them.

The path ahead narrowed to little more than a foot’s width, rising sheer on the left and dropping sheer on the right. A chain was fastened to the rock, to which the party clung as they climbed. Almost thirty of them, strung out like flies on a wall.

“H-how may I be of service to you?”

Quinx took the matter by the knob. “This is a complex affair. Much history and passion is caught up in what I understand you are even now pursuing. I would have liked to invite you to present your findings at the Lateran before making your thesis public.”

“I am not yet so public, Revered.” Abutti sounded oddly sad. “I was ejected from the Planetary Society. And, well, these Thalassocretes are not so indiscreet with their confidences.”

Honeyed words flowed from Quinx’ lips. “So you are saying we could put this affair to rest without widespread comment?”

A moment of rough breathing and dizzying fear as they crept around a bulge in the side of the mountain. Then Abutti responded. “Would that be a permanent rest for me, Revered? I saw those men at the dock. I know who you are in the hierarchy.”

“No fool you,” Quinx replied. “To be blunt, you have poked your telescope into matters much better left undiscussed. Externalism is no trifling affair.”

“So I’ve been told.” Abutti’s breath huffed a bit. “Should you wish your thugs to shove me off a cliff top, Revered, I surely cannot stop you. But I am not the only astronomer on Earth with a telescope. The facts will out. Even your Increate cannot deny this truth written in the skies.”

“My Increate?” Quinx was both amused and frustrated by the assumptions embedded in that phrasing. “And yes . . . I can hardly ban telescopes across the world. Regardless of whatever you think your truth is.”

Abutti stopped, turned back to Quinx, clinging to a stanchion as pines whispered in the wind hundreds of feet below him. “Do you not know what I have found?”

“Not precisely, no,” Quinx admitted. “And in fact, it does not matter. You seek to unseat the holy truth of the Increate and reinstate the Externalist heresy. That is enough for me.”

“You accuse me of ecclesiastical crimes when all I pursue is the objective truth!”

“Move it along,” shouted one of the Thalassocretes from behind them. Abutti turned and hurried along to where the path widened to a ledge, then waited in ankle-high grass for the priest to catch up.

Quinx did, breathing hard as much from the stress of the heights as anything. “Do you not fear I will toss you off myself?” he asked, glancing past Abutti at the slope beyond.

“No. Men like you do not toss people off cliffs. You have people tossed off cliffs. That’s why you have that monster monk and the dreadful woman.” Abutti paused, obviously chewing on his next words. “Not so long ago, you would have had a tall stake and a hot fire awaiting someone like me.”

“Holy Mother Church never burned anyone,” Quinx replied, stung.

“No, you merely passed sentence and had the secular authorities carry it out. I have trained in logic, Revered. I know who holds the responsibility there.”

A line of Thalassocretes pushed past them, though both Brother Kurts and the woman were pulled aside by their guards rather than go ahead of Quinx and Abutti.

“When one raises rebellion against the Increate, one bears responsibility for one’s penalty.”

“Rebellion against the Church is not rebellion against the Increate,” Abutti grumbled. “And I raise neither. Only truth.”

Quinx had no answer to that, but he knew he had the measure of this man now. Smart but weak. Too willing to be turned aside.

Still, the astronomer had the right of it. There were more telescopes in the world.

“What did you find?” he asked as they began following the line of march again, finally drawn back to the question despite himself.

“Evidence of an aetheric vessel.” A stubborn pride swelled in Abutti’s voice. “The Increate’s ship of space, that brought us to this world.”

“I do not believe you,” Quinx replied. “Simply not possible.”

“Then why are we tramping up the side of Thera?”

They both looked ahead, to where Goins was long vanished at the head of a receding column of Thalassocretes variously in their blue-green robes and khaki excursion wear.

• • • •

Archaeology represents one of our greatest challenges in unraveling the mysteries of the human experience. Geology tells us much about the age of the world, and through the sciences we understand that the Creation narrative of the Librum Vita is a grand metaphor for the natural processes of the universe. Yet archaeology shows us a literal view of the Increate’s placement of human beings upon this Earth. How to integrate the inarguable inerrancy of the Increate’s word with the interpolations of the geological sciences remains one of the greatest doctrinal challenges of our century, and perhaps centuries to come.

—His Holiness Lamboine XXII, Posthumous Commentaries

Morgan drew away from the priest as the group summited the crest of Thera and began clambering down into the crater within. Quinx’ retainers, for all that they were under guard, frightened him. He was certain that at a word from the Revered, the two would tear free of their bonds and throw him from the cliffs.

Goins gathered his group in a sloping meadow a few hundred feet below the rim. Already the Presiding Judge was talking, urgently and low. Not an exhortation. Morgan hurried to catch up and hear. They knew his evidence already, everyone who had been in the lounge of Clear Mountain the night before.

Whatever Goins had to show them here fit with Morgan’s own work like a ratchet into a gear.

“. . . passed into our trust with the foundering of the Bear Cult at Truska.”

Thalassocretes nodded in return.

“Only certain among you know anything of this secret. None of us, not even me, have ever come to this place. Even those who maintain the upward path along the outer face of the mountain are forced to spend their lives on this island.” His voice dropped. “Until Dr. Abutti’s telescope opened the heavens to our eyes, this was without doubt the deepest truth upon this Earth. Brother Lupan had the right of it.”

“The Increate’s Chariot?” Quinx stepped up next to Morgan. “A ridiculous fantasy embedded in a foolish heresy.”

“A truth, embedded in the heart of each of the Eight Gardens,” Goins replied, his voice booming now. “I give you the Chariot of Cycladia.”

He turned, walked across the meadow, and began tearing at the vines that draped a grove there.

Quinx reached into his robes and pulled out a firearm. A fat-barreled gun. Morgan stared a moment, incredulous, then tackled the priest as he raised his weapon and fired it into the sky.

The next few moments were blinding confusion. Something hissed high before popping—fireworks? Shouting echoed around Morgan as the enormous monk and the woman with him broke free of their guards as he’d feared. Morgan stumbled back to his feet, fleeing the priest and the lopsided fight behind him toward the dubious safety of Goins and the Thalassocretes who were tearing down plants to reveal a mottled wall of . . . something?

Engines strained overhead as an airship circled low in the sky. He looked up to see a narrow bag with a knife hull beneath. Copper lances protruding from the hull crackled with visible energy.

Morgan ran toward the Chariot. “Judge Goins, we are betrayed!”

Goins turned, stared into the sky a moment, watching in apparent disbelief as lightning forked across the heavens to ground into the trees behind him with a series of explosive cracks. He began to laugh as smoke rose. Now his voice boomed like a parade sergeant’s. “Quinx, you are a greater fool than even I thought. Do you doubt the Increate’s Chariot can defend itself?”

Another bolt lanced from the airship, striking down half a dozen shrieking Thalassocretes in a groaning mass. Quinx scuttled toward Goins, trailed by his dangerous guardians. Above them, the airship strained lower, barking bullets that sprayed across the meadow in a scythe of flying dirt that somehow claimed no lives on the first pass.

The flash of light erupting from the trees blinded Morgan for a moment. A sizzling noise followed, which terminated in a thunderclap. He rolled over, rubbing his eyes, to see the airship aflame and lurching toward the other side of Thera’s crater. Quinx was still on his feet but stumbling. The monk was down, while the woman howled at the sky a long moment before rushing toward Morgan and Goins.

“You are all mad,” the doctor shouted. “All of you!”

The woman headed straight for him. Her eyes glowed with a death-madness that Morgan had never before witnessed, having only read of such things in his scientific romances. Goins simply stood, staring down a hundred and fifty pounds of racing anger. Above them, something exploded aboard the airship.

Still running, the woman caught up to Quinx, grabbing the priest by the arms. She continued to sprint toward Morgan and Goins, carrying the shuddering Quinx over one shoulder. Instead of plowing into them, she pulled up short, her breath a bellows.

“Show me the Chariot,” she demanded. Her voice was a deep, threatening growl. Behind her, the monk arose and stumbled toward them.

“Who are you to ask?” Goins asked.

“A Machinist.” Her voice was a growl. “This is my future. The future of my faith.”

“The past,” Morgan said, correcting her. “The future is coming in the sky.”

Behind them, the mottled wall whirred. He turned to see a section slide upward to create an opening. Faint crimson light glowed beyond. The airship crashed in the distance with another whoosh of flame and heat.

The Machinist continued to stare them both down. “My lover is dead, as is my captain. You allowed them to die. You owe me this.”

The monk caught up to her, tackling her from behind with his hands spread wide to catch her eyes and the edges of her mouth. The woman dropped Quinx, who bit off a scream as he hit. Then she bent to seize the monk and wrestle him to the ground in front of her.

He bounced up, obviously rattled, but ready to engage. Goins tugged Morgan’s arm. “Back,” he hissed. “This is not our fight.”

“None of this is my fight,” Morgan growled.

Goins tapped the wall of the Increate’s Chariot. “This is one of eight aetheric ships here on Earth. You have found their origin, the great ship that is their mother. You were right all along. Do you now doubt that our history is coming home in the sky, from your libration point?”

“No, I do not doubt.” Behind them, a screech. The monk and the Machinist were circling dangerously as Quinx staggered to his feet.

Strangely, Goins was ignoring the battle, focusing his entire attention on Morgan. That in turn drew Morgan’s gaze back to the judge. For all his curiosity, he was terribly loath to step within. He hadn’t wished to be this right, to confront the meaning of his discovery so personally. “But I did not summon it.”

“Then who did?” the judge asked impatiently.

That, in a moment of inspiration he could answer. “All of us. With our telelocutors and our airships and our engines, sending rays of energy into the aether as surely as if we’d lit a bonfire in the night. If this Chariot knows enough to defend itself, doubtless the mother ship can watch our Earth for us to rise high enough to see it in return. We have had electrickifcation for a generation. It can see that.”

With a flicker of his eyes, Goins drew a gun of his own and shot past Morgan in one motion. Startled, Morgan turned to see the monk falling to the ground, his face bloody. The woman was on her hands and knees. Quinx lurched slowly toward the two of them with a slightly unfocused look on his face.

The Presiding Judge handed the pistol to Morgan. “You choose. The past, or the future.”

Morgan promptly dropped the weapon into the grass. He’d wanted the truth, by the Increate, not such a mess of power and violence. “I am a scientist. I do not have people thrown off cliffs.”

Quinx reached for Morgan’s hand. “Ninety Nine,” he gasped. “Brother Kurts. Please . . . Stop it. You didn’t need to do this.”

The Machinist shuddered to her feet. One eyeball was gouged loose, and her mouth bled. Morgan glanced at the dying monk and wondered just how tough a human being could be.

Her eyes were no longer mad. Instead, they were haunted. “Stop,” she said, echoing Quinx’ words.

“Go,” Morgan replied. He had just lately learned the measure of his own courage, and was not sure he could step into the chariot himself. “Go into the future. It cannot be stopped. The stars do not lie, and they are coming toward us.”

“They are my stars.” She stared at them with her remaining eye. “Ours. Not yours.”

The woman stumbled weeping through the opened door. Quinx turned away from Morgan. “It cannot be,” the priest gasped. “I must go where Ion has already led.” Face twisted in some inner agony of the spirit, he followed after her.

“And you?” asked Goins. “Do you choose the future as well?”

Afraid, he stood unmoving a moment. Then: “I would have thought to . . .” The doctor’s words ran out as he marshaled his thoughts. “No. I’ve come to understand that the future is here with us. Whatever comes, comes.”

• • • •

Morgan Abutti looked up at the smoke trailing into the blue sky from the ruined airship. Goins squatted next to him, pistol still in hand. The door into the Chariot had slid shut.

“What next?” the scientist asked.

“Surely the Increate knows,” said Goins.

“Quinx would have said that the Increate knows all.” Morgan thought about those words. “It seems to me that They do not think to warn us of the truth.”

The remaining Thalassocretes gathered around. Some tended the wounded and the dead, others discussed the advisability of sending a party to look into the crash of the airship.

The Chariot began to whine, a low hum that built slowly in volume. Goins rose, gestured for a general retreat. It seemed wisest.

Morgan was slow to move, staring at the chance of greatness that he’d abandoned. He was the first to see the Chariot break from the trees and rise into the sky. The rest stopped to watch as clouds of dust and steam spiraled beneath it.

“Good luck, Revered Quinx,” muttered the doctor.

Goins tugged at his arm. “The choices are made. You were correct. We must go.”

“You have it almost right,” said Morgan. “His choices are ended. Ours are just begun.” His courage returned to him once more, like a whipped dog coming home. “This is what I get for uncovering the truth. What I had declined to see clearly before. There are great consequences to be accounted for.” He glanced away from the departing chariot. “Are you ready to face those, Judge? I am.”

“Remember, your aetheric vessel was coming anyway, whether or not you had seen it first. You did not cause this.” Goins paused a moment, searching Morgan’s face as if for some truth. “Science finds the path where the light of faith has shown the way.”

Morgan could not tell if the judge meant to be ironic or not. That did not matter. He patted the other man’s shoulder. “Let us go, then. There is work to be done.”

Above them, the future rose ever higher, shedding six thousand years of mud and plants and tradition as it climbed to meet the oncoming stars.

© 2012 by Joseph E. Lake, Jr., writing as Jay Lake. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of Mary Elizabeth Lake, Trustee Lake Family Trust.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jay Lake was a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple nominee for the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. He lived in Portland, Oregon and lost a six year battle with colon cancer on June 1, 2014. Jay was a prolific writer and editor and blogged regularly about his cancer at his website jlake.com. He was well known for his novels featuring the character Green (Green, Endurance, and Kalimpura, published by Tor Books) as well as several other novels and collections. His final collection The Last Plane to Heaven was released by Tor Books in 2014. His work has been translated into several languages including Czech, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese and Russian.

EXCERPT: Faller (Tor Books)

Will McIntosh | 1429 words

1

He tried to open his eyes, but they felt glued shut, so he just lay there, exhausted, listening to the screams. His cheek was against a hard surface, pebbles pressed into his skin. A dog barked nearby.

Dog. The word burst in his mind, fresh, like he was giving birth to it. Yet, he knew what a dog was. When he thought the word, a picture formed. Four-legged animal, fur, wagging tail.

His mind felt slightly clearer, his energy returning. He dragged his eyes open.

The world was incredibly bright, remarkably colorful. Someone ran by in green and white sneakers, sideways, as if running on a wall. Except he was the one who was sideways.

As he managed to sit upright, the world tilted and spun for a moment before settling into crisp focus. He was surrounded by tall buildings; cars and trucks were scattered on a street. None were moving. Thick black smoke rose from behind the closest buildings.

A few feet away a pink-haired woman was doubled over, clutching her head in her hands. There were colorful tattoos of flowers on her forearms.

“What is happening?” she wailed.

“I don’t know.”

The woman looked up, startled. “Do you know me? Do you know who I am?”

“No. Do you know who I am?”

The woman shook her head.

Something had happened. The confusion he felt, the screaming, this wasn’t normal. He needed to figure out what was going on. Maybe he could find help. Police.

When he pressed his palm to the pavement to try to stand, lancing pain shot down his thumb and into his wrist. There was a deep slash across the pad of the thumb, caked with dried blood. There was more dried blood on the tip of his index finger and under the fingernail. This must have happened before, he realized.

Still shaky, he stood, looked around. There was a little silver cart with a yellow umbrella nearby. The word for it sprang to mind: hot-dog stand. A red and white bus sat parked along the curb. A few blocks away, a cluster of people stood with their backs to him.

He went to see what they were doing.

There were no buildings beyond the place where the crowd was standing. The sky grew wider as he approached, until he merged into the crowd and saw that the world simply ended a few feet from where they stood.

There was nothing beyond but sky.

Ragged asphalt and concrete marked the edge of the world. A concrete sewer pipe jutted from the dark earth below, spewing water.

He couldn’t say how, but he sensed this, too, was wrong. The sky felt too big, although he knew skies were enormous.

A white-haired man knelt off to one side of the crowd on a stoop that led up to thin air. He was studying a small photograph, the contents of a wallet spread beside him. The old man looked up as he approached, held the photo up for him to see. It showed the man in a black suit, smiling, clutching an old woman’s hand.

“I found this in my pocket. They must be people I know.”

It took him a moment to realize the old guy didn’t know he was one of the people in the photo.

“That’s you,” he said, pointing.

“That’s me?” The old man held the photo closer, studied it. “That’s me.” He sounded surprised.

He wondered if there was anything in his own pockets. Checking the front ones first, he pulled out a folded food wrapper and a toy soldier.

There was a photo in one of his back pockets: a dark-haired woman with freckles, grinning, hugging a round-faced, sandy-haired man. They looked happier than anyone could possibly look.

He showed the picture to the old man, who pointed. “That’s you.”

He studied the man in the picture. How could that face be his? It was a stranger’s face. He preferred looking at the woman. She had bright, intelligent green eyes that looked ever so slightly crossed, arms like flamingo legs.

He scanned the faces in the nearby crowd, hoping to spot the woman among them. His gaze paused on an old woman, hands buried in the pockets of a black sweater, standing at the edge of the crowd. He glanced at the picture in the old man’s lap.

“Hey, there she is.”

The old man stood, squinted into the crowd. “Where?”

“There.” He grasped the man by the elbow, led him to the woman. She turned as they approached, her eyebrows pinched.

The old man studied the photo, looked at the woman, studied the photo again. He held the photo up so the woman could see it. “I think that’s you in the photo. With me.”

Relief spread across the woman’s face. “Do you know me?”

“I don’t,” the old man admitted. “But we must be something to each other, don’t you think? In the picture we’re holding hands.”

“I don’t understand what’s happening.” She touched her face. “Am I dead? Is that it?”

“I don’t think we’re dead. No,” the old guy said.

He was glad these people had found each other. He wished he could find the woman in his photo, so they could face whatever was happening together.

“I’m going to look for this woman.” He held up his photo.

The old man nodded. “Thank you. I won’t forget the kindness you showed a total stranger.”

As he set off along the edge, he took a closer look at the other things in his pocket. The thumb-sized green toy soldier was connected to a toy parachute by a half-dozen threads.

As he opened the folded-up food wrapper, he stopped walking. There was something drawn on the back in rusty brown, the crude shapes smeared and splotched. A series of ovals ran down the length of the page, with an X over the bottom one. He moved his thumb, which was obscuring a second image in the bottom right-hand corner of the page: a triangle with two numerals in it—a one, followed by a three.

He studied the dried blood caking his thumb, set it beside one of the shapes. It was the same rust color as the writing. He’d cut his thumb and scrawled those ovals on the food wrapper with his own blood, then put it in his pocket. He’d left a message to himself. If he’d sliced open his thumb to write it, he must have known something was about to happen, and the message must be important.

He studied the ovals, the triangle with the numerals inside, and tried to make sense of them, but it meant nothing to him. Carefully folding the wrapper, he put it back in his pocket and walked on.

Crowds were gathered along the edge on every street. He searched the faces, seeking the dark-haired woman.

The crowds thinned with each block, and eventually he came upon a deserted, ruined part of the world. Only a few buildings stood; the rest had been reduced to piles of steel and concrete. Wading through the wreckage, he picked up blackened bricks, melted electronics. Vehicles had been crushed flat, fires had raged. There were no bodies, at least none he could see, and no smoke, so the destruction wasn’t recent.

Feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, he squatted, closed his eyes. He was in serious trouble. All of them were. But he didn’t understand the trouble; nothing made sense, none of it fit together.

What was there to do but keep looking, both for the woman in the picture and for answers? He moved on, staying close to the edge.

• • • •

Hungry, his throat dry, he found himself back where he’d started.

The world was a circle, and smaller than he’d imagined.

Most of the crowd was gone, including the man and woman he’d reunited. They’d all no doubt gone to find food and a place to sleep. He decided he’d better do the same.

Copyright © 2016 by Will McIntosh. Excerpted from Faller by Will McIntosh. Published by permission of the author and Tor Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Will McIntosh’s story, Defenders, was the basis for a novel published by Orbit books in 2014, and was recently optioned for film. Will’s third novel, Love Minus Eighty, was based on the Hugo Award winning short story, Bridesicle. His debut novel, Soft Apocalypse, was a finalist for both a Locus award and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Will lives in Williamsburg, Virginia with his wife Alison and twins Hannah and Miles. He teaches psychology as an adjunct professor at the College of William and Mary, after leaving his career as a psychology professor in southeast Georgia to write full time.

Media Review: 12 Monkeys and Mr. Robot

Christopher East | 1801 words

The real world may seem increasingly dystopian lately, but that doesn’t seem to have quenched our thirst for dystopian visions. Two current shows—one that reaches into the cinematic past, the other straight into the modern zeitgeist—are leveraging the science fictional furniture of dystopia to powerful, if decidedly different, effect.

Based on the visionary 1995 Terry Gilliam film, Syfy’s 12 Monkeys may seem like a curious property to adapt for episodic TV, but it’s surprisingly good. Certainly the initial premise is topical; the idea that scientists from the future, trying to prevent a global disaster, would target our present . . . well, sounds like plausible timing to me! The initial focus is on James Cole (Aaron Stanton), a test subject from 2044 who is sent back to 2015, his mission to prevent a deadly, global epidemic from starting. But he’ll need help from a temporal local: Dr. Cassandra Railly (Amanda Schull), a renowned virologist whose messages to the future, according to Cole, directly led to his mission. Together, they face off against the Army of the 12 Monkeys, a mysterious underground group that’s conspiring to bring about the end of the world. But how, and why? Together Cole and Cassie need to find out, and stop it.

For anyone familiar with the film, 12 Monkeys the series starts off in fairly expected ways, and suffers a bit from the comparison. Even at his darkest, Terry Gilliam is a playful and striking director, and an infectious visual energy infuses his film; by contrast, the series opens in gritty and bleak fashion, looking initially like a poor man’s remake. Stanton’s gruff rogue act is competent and Schull is credible, but both are one-note in the early going, and in terms of charisma, they’re no match for Bruce Willis and Madeleine Stowe—a comparison that’s hard not to make if you remember the film fondly. (Similarly but less distractingly, Emily Hampshire struggles to match Brad Pitt’s nutzoid energy as the crucial plot figure Goines, here refreshingly gender-swapped.)

Fortunately these touchstone comparisons matter less and less as the series progresses and, more importantly, deviates from the source material. The actors find their voices, the characters come into their own, and a nice ensemble feel develops. The first hint of potential greatness comes from Kirk Acevedo, who plays Cole’s best friend José Ramse. Initially a minor character, Ramse’s screentime gradually increases; as the characters play God with the universe, he starts to serve as the show’s conscience, if not the key to the show’s later, thematic exploration of causality and fate. Acevedo is light years ahead of the rest of the cast in terms of sheer screen presence, so much so that I spent the first several episodes baffled that he wasn’t the lead. Fortunately, once the show realizes Acevedo’s value, he becomes more central, first in a charming Cole-Ramse bromance, and later as a key figure in its time-bending season arcs.

Science fictionally, oh, it has its imperfections. There’s plenty of handwavey science, and other iffy logistics. (How is it their time machine can send them anywhere on Earth? Where are they getting their supplies in this post-apocalypse world? Who’s manufacturing Dr. Jones’ cigarettes?) Even so, season one is a confident and stylish reimagination of the film, full of clever loopbacks and continuity details.

The series manages to improve even further in season two, however, when it goes in more unexpected and interesting directions. Throwing off the shackles of its source plot, season two embraces the greater possibilities of time travel, transporting its characters to many more eras, from World War II to the Cold War to the grungy fashions of the 1970s. The personas of the characters become more loreworthy, and the ensemble is bolstered by shrewdly cast guest stars like Battlestar Galactica’s Michael Hogan and The Shield’s Jay Karnes. Midway through the season, the show turns a creative corner with a number of stellar setpiece hours, including an inevitable, but superbly executed, riff on Groundhog Day. In a way, 12 Monkeys’ second year reminded me of Fringe in season three, when it transformed from a serviceable skiffy procedural to truly epic SF television. (Is the “Acevedo Factor” a thing?) 12 Monkeys’ change is more modest, but similarly impressive. While I’m nervous about certain developments in the finale, it does set up a potentially intriguing new paradigm for season three. All in all, for such an unlikely serial reboot, 12 Monkeys does well for itself.

Even more rewarding is the stylish, scathing USA series Mr. Robot, a contemporary drama that, among other things, brilliantly examines the science fictional nature of the present. If 12 Monkeys bounces back and forth over a world-altering cataclysm, Mr. Robot is rooted squarely in the cataclysm itself, a dystopia-in-progress that presents a chilling alternate version of now. The sensational Rami Malek stars as Elliot Alderson, a disaffected internet security expert whose bland exterior masks a genius-level hacker. At first, Elliot’s goals are edgy but modest: using his brilliant technical skills to right society’s wrongs, one creepy jerk at a time. But when Elliot crosses paths with a shifty man known only as “Mr. Robot” (Christian Slater), he’s drawn inexorably into a revolutionary hacker group called fsociety. Its goal: take down the world’s largest and most powerful financial conglomerate, E Corp, and create an economic revolution.

Right out of the gates, Mr. Robot is riveting stuff; the pilot is a masterpiece, each shot a carefully composed work of art, and the high quality continues throughout. It’s cyberpunk by way of the 1970s conspiracy thriller, an irresistible blend of day-after-tomorrow technoparanoia and artful, old-school filmmaking. It’s also blisteringly political, with a cynical, misanthropic worldview that’s given unforgettable voice by Malek’s intense performance. The political content is on the in-your-face side, but it’s no less penetrating for it; the rant is shrill but effective, taking aim at the ugly underside of capitalism and the dispiriting subtexts of modern reality. That may sound like miserable subject matter for entertainment, but this highly critical portrait of the status quo is painted largely in order to set its heroes in opposition to it, which is rallying. This is, like many conspiracy thrillers, a David-versus-Goliath story, with a clandestine rabble pitted against a massively powerful corporate monolith. The stakes are world-changing, and you feel it.

Another element in Mr. Robot’s arsenal is a glorious meta streak. Did I mention you’re a character on the show? Malek’s chilling monotone narration, outwardly reminiscent of Michael C. Hall’s murderous mutterings on Dexter, is directed straight at the viewer: you are Elliot’s imaginary friend. If it were less sure-handed, this playful touch of fourth-wall breaking would be a risk to the suspension of disbelief. But the execution is perfect, and in the context of this paranoid scenario, it’s chillingly immersive. The device is deployed sparingly, but never abandoned; a casual, self-aware joke in the pivotal fourth episode, “eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4,” even critiques TV distortions of hacker culture. I keep waiting for these touches to rip me out of the story, but even in the most extreme case—season two’s disturbingly funny “eps2.4_m4ster-s1ave.aes,” which possesses a premise too outrageous to spoil—it works in the show’s favor.

Mr. Robot is so unique, and pushes my serial-viewing buttons so well, that even the devil’s advocate side of my brain struggles to find fault with it. For example, I want to protest the presence of Christian Slater, whose persona is so distinct it can often overwhelm his characters. But here, that heightened persona actually works to both the character’s and the show’s benefit. I also want to challenge the credibility of its supporting female heroes, Elliot’s childhood friend Angela (Portia Doubleday) and fellow fsociety hacker Darlene (Carly Chaikin). But while they can’t match Malek for acting chops, they ultimately mesh so thoroughly with the show’s style that I now can’t imagine replacing them. Even the show’s more predictable plot twists are cleverly subverted.

Most strongly, I want to recoil from the show’s proclivity for transgressive shock tactics and toxically masculine worldbuilding. This is the show’s most troubling element, and probably its least defensible. And yet, it does goes a long way to establishing the sky-high stakes of the secret war that’s being fought, and the ruthless formidability of Elliot’s enemies. It depicts, without condoning, male brutality. Meanwhile, it possesses a refreshingly diverse cast. It’s no coincidence, I think, that Mr. Robot’s more sympathetic figures are women, minorities, members of the LGBT community: from Elliot’s kind psychiatrist Krista (Gloria Reuben) to his earnest boss Gideon (Michel Gill), from his drug-dealing neighbor Shayla (Frankie Shaw) to his fellow fsociety hackers Romero (Ron Cephas Jones), Mobley (Azhar Khan), and Trenton (Sunita Mani). Meanwhile, the primary villains are white men in suits, particularly the ambitious and sinister junior executive Tyrell Wellick (Martin Wallström) and, later, the mega-powerful Philip Price (the scene-stealing Michael Cristofer, basically reprising his memorable Rubicon turn as the scheming Truxton Spangler). This is a show that wears its political heart on its sleeve, and let’s face it, it’s the left sleeve. Still, there’s enough rough-edged fare here, particularly in regards to violence and mental health, to justify multiple trigger warnings; I wouldn’t feel right not mentioning that.

Season one is such a compelling and seamless blend of style, substance, and structure that it’s tempting to be more dismissive of the fuzzier, less driven second season. But, while different, I found the second year equally engrossing. Its focus is more internal than external, more psychological than mechanistic. And yes, structural finesse takes a back seat to stylish extravagance, as creator Sam Esmail gains authorial confidence, possibly dangerous levels of it. But cleverly enough, the show’s meta streak plays neatly into interpreting season two: its arc, one can argue (and the show slyly does), is necessarily messier, as the characters struggle to cope with the consequences of their world-shaking actions. Emboldened by critical achievement, Mr. Robot leans further into artistic risk-taking in its second year, often to eye-widening and jaw-dropping effect. It comes at the expense of a more streamlined narrative, perhaps, but that’s a price I’m willing to pay if it makes for a singular TV viewing experience—and Mr. Robot is most certainly that.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Christopher East is a writer, editor, reviewer, and avid consumer of science fiction, fantasy, and spy fiction. His stories have been published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Cosmos, Interzone, Talebones, The Third Alternative, and a number of other speculative fiction publications. He’s attended the Clarion and Taos Toolbox writing workshops, and served for several years as the fiction editor for the futurism, science, and technology blog Futurismic. He blogs extensively about writing, fiction, film, television, music, comics, and more at www.christopher-east.com. Currently he lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works for an occupational and environmental health and safety consultancy.

Book Reviews: October 2016

Andrew Liptak | 1479 words

In my last couple of columns, I’ve been going with a sort of theme for each group of books that I’ve put together. However, for this month, I’ve decided that sometimes, you just have to read what catches your eye. In this instance, I picked up a cyberpunk murder mystery, a debut space opera, and a Lovecraftian horror novel that fittingly takes place at a Lovecraftian horror convention.

Behind the Throne
K. B. Wagers
eBook / Paperback
ISBN: 978-0316308601
Orbit, August 2016
432 Pages

Starting a new series can be a daunting task, especially when you are playing with space opera. There’s an entire world to construct, in which you need to dump a compelling story. Science fiction’s history is littered with all sorts of false starts, but K.B. Wagers seems to be off to a good one with her first installment of her Indranan War trilogy.

The novel follows Hail Bristol, a gun runner who fled her royal past only to be dragged back by a team from the Indranan Empire. They come with bad news: her sisters, heirs to the throne, have been assassinated, while her mother is growing sicker. Bristol will soon inherit the throne that she wanted nothing to do with. As she tries to navigate the halls of the palace, another plot is afoot that could change the course of the Empire.

There are some rough patches as the book starts off, in that Wagers essentially lays out two interesting stories, joined in the middle by something that is less so. The beginning is fantastic, setting up a vivid world and some interesting characters, which quickly slows down as Bristol is returned to her home.

It’s here where things get tricky: Bristol cut ties from home for several specific reasons, and it’s difficult to parse her motivations as she’s thrust into a place that she essentially doesn’t want to be. We see her go back and forth between protecting her family and longing for escape, all within the confines of palace intrigue. For most of the first half, I wish that Wager had adopted Ann Leckie’s structure from Ancillary Justice, to provide any sort of context for her actions, and that Bristol had been allowed to carry over her experience as a gun runner to running an empire.

However, once the palace intrigue is settled, the real plot begins to kick in, and the book races to the finish. The plot at hand is essentially one in which external parties to the throne have conspired to topple the matriarchal line, using one of the Indranan Empire’s sort-of-kind-of enemies as cover for their actions. What Wagers has set up is smart and intriguing, and lays the groundwork for the next installment of the series, After The Crown, which comes out later this year. Getting to the end of Behind The Throne was rewarding, but what it really did was get me excited for the next installment.

I Am Providence
Nick Mamatas
eBook / Paperback
ISBN: 978-1597808354
Nightshade Books, August 2016
256 Pages

I picked up Nick Mamatas’s latest novel at what was likely the best time in the world for this book. One of fandom’s numerous squabbles about the state of a convention had just flared up, something that began filling up Twitter, Facebook and blogs with reactions, think pieces, and the like. I Am Providence is possibly the best book to read if you’ve ever wanted to understand the arcane and byzantine nature of fandom, expertly skewering the Lovecraft community while at the same time recognizing that it’s part of it.

I Am Providence takes place as the annual Summer Tentacular starts up in Providence Rhode Island, a convention dedicated solely to the legacy of H.P. Lovecraft. New, up and coming horror author Colleen Danzig is appearing for the first time, and she’s amused and disturbed by the mix of people that she finds there. Her roommate is an eccentric author who has pissed off his fair share of the Lovecraftian community and turns up dead, with his face removed.

What follows is an absurd comedy of an investigation as the police swoop in to track down the murderer, while the convention continues on, almost as though nothing happened. There are detours as Lovecraft devotees argue and bicker over the legacy of the author they so admire, attempt to track down his long-dead cat, and perform strange rituals.

Mamatas spins out a razor sharp story that is all too much fun to read, even as it’s a book that can generously be described as “inside baseball.” There are in-jokes and memes aplenty, and even though he has made an effort to change up some characters, the real Lovecraft community contains a number of strong personalities that come through pretty clearly.

As we’ve all watched or even participated in any number of these fandom dustups over the last couple of years, I Am Providence shines a light on the absurd scale of it: they’re tiny fights waged by outsized personalities with stakes that are inflated so high that parodying them takes little effort at all.

False Hearts
Laura Lam
eBook / Hardcover
ISBN: 978-0765382054
Tor, June 2016
384 Pages

I kept stumbling on Laura Lam’s latest novel, in part because of the cover: it’s a beautiful, minimalist piece of work, but nothing that screams the word cyberpunk.

And this is totally a cyberpunk novel, one with all the trappings of the mobile phone age.

Set in far-future, utopian San Francisco, it features Taema and Tila, who were a pair of conjoined twins who had grown up in an isolated cult amidst California’s Redwoods. As teenagers, they had escaped and fled to the modern world, where they were separated and forged new lives. Ten years later, Tila appears, covered in blood and swiftly arrested—a rare occasion in a city that hasn’t seen a murder in years. Taema finds herself in a unique situation, where she can save her sister by taking her twin’s place within a vicious criminal gang that is attempting to take over the city with the use of a potent drug.

Lam does a lot of heavy lifting to make a ton of separate elements come seamlessly together through an exciting murder mystery. Central to this story is the relationship between two conjoined sisters who suddenly discover that they have secrets between one another. Teama and Tila find themselves deep in a criminal plot that goes all the way back to their home in the cult, and in a situation that they are uniquely suited to take control of. As Teama takes Tila’s place in the criminal underworld, she discovers that there’s more to her sister than she thought, and that they might have become unrecognizable to one another.

Another layer to this story is one of beauty. Lam puts together an intriguing, technologically advanced society, where everyone is beautiful because everyone has the means to do so: Technology has removed scarcity, and everything is perfect. By contrast, Teama and Tila are not, by San Francisco standards. They’re conjoined, a byproduct of their upbringing and genetics in the isolated cult, and while they’re accepted there, they attract stares after leaving. Even once they’re separated, they’re different.

Lam’s technological utopia has its downsides. The local government helps to maintain order and peace through the use of a drug called Zeal, which allows users to act out their aggression in an Inception-like dream state. It’s this system that the Ratel gang is looking to exploit, with a dangerous variation that threatens to undermine society.

Each of these plot lines come together with a single murder, and as a straight-up murder mystery, False Hearts hits all the right buttons: it’s loaded with excellent characters, it has a wonderfully conceived of world and all the right stakes.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Liptak is the Weekend Editor for The Verge. He is the co-editor of War Stories: New Military Science Fiction, (Apex Publications, 2014). His writing has also appeared in io9, Gizmodo, Kirkus Reviews, Tor.com, BN Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Clarkesworld and others. He lives in Vermont.

Interview: Allen Steele

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy | 7865 words

Allen Steele is the author of such novels as Orbital Decay, V.S. Day, and Ocean Space, as well as the eight-volume Coyote series about colonizing a habitable moon in the 47 Ursae Majoris system. His short story collections include Rude Astronauts, The Last Science Fiction Writer, and Sex and Violence in Zero G. He’s also a highly regarded expert on space travel who has testified before the House subcommittee on space and aeronautics. His new novel, which is out now, is called Arkwright.

This interview first appeared in March 2016 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.

• • • •

Tell us about your new book Arkwright. What’s that about?

Arkwright is a story about a family, the descendants of a science fiction writer of the twentieth century, Nathan Arkwright, and their effort over many generations to build the first starship and launch it to a world twenty-two light-years from Earth. Nathan Arkwright was one of the four great science fiction writers of the twentieth century. There was Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein, and Nathan, who is fictional, of course. I credit him as being the grandmaster of space opera. He created the Galaxy Patrol series, which the name, right there, is kind of an homage to E. E. Doc Smith. These stories, which first were a series of novels, and then a radio series, and then a TV series, and finally movies, made him a very wealthy man. At the end of his life, he decided to bequeath his fortune to a foundation with the goal of building that first starship. It’s really a story about, not just a long-term effort to build the ship itself, but the family keeping itself together and trying to preserve the old man’s vision. In a way, it’s kind of a story about faith—not religious faith, but faith in ideas.

You mention the story takes place over a long span of time, and so you’ve actually structured it as a series of short stories, each of which jumps ahead into the future.

Right. It begins in 2006, and then it goes back to 1939, where Arkwright meets three other people at the first World’s Science Fiction Convention in New York. The four of them comprise a clique or a club. They call themselves “The Legion of Tomorrow.” And they form the backbone of the Arkwright Foundation. So, the stories that make up Arkwright move forward in time through the twentieth century, into the twenty-first and twenty-second until we finally end in about the twenty-fifth century with the genetically modified descendant of not only Arkwright himself, but also the other people who were involved in building that first starship on this planet many, many light years from Earth.

You mention that the book starts out with the first Worldcon, and kind of goes through the greatest hits of golden age science fiction moments. How did you decide which moments to include in the story?

I’ve always been interested in the history of science fiction. The novel was originally conceived as being about the history of SF, but after a while I came to realize that it would best be told as an SF story itself. One of the most interesting events in SF history is that first 1939 convention, which they called “The World’s Science Fiction Convention,” and when I say “world’s” that’s with an apostrophe S. It was meant to tie into the World’s Fair that was being held in New York that year. It really was kind of a small affair. It was only about a hundred people who showed up, mostly teenage boys. It was held not even in a hotel, but in a Boy Scout caravan hall in Midtown Manhattan. There was kind of a fan feud going on at the time between one clique, the Futurians, who would later include some of the founding fathers of SF, people like Frederik Pohl, and Don Wollheim, and Cyril Kornbluth, and the more conservative New Fandom, which were led by Sam Moskowitz. Which led to the New Fandom trying to lock out the Futurians. That was a pivotal moment in the novel that allowed me to show not only where these guys met, but where they were coming from, that these four major characters weren’t just science fiction fans, but were visionaries.

When I went forward in time, I went to other key events that occurred during SF history, like for instance, the cruise that occurred right before the Apollo 17 launch, when a cruise ship with a lot of key players like Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein, and various other people, went and anchored off the Atlantic coast and watched the final Apollo moon ship take off. And then, progress forward into 1989 at the WorldCon in Boston, which, in fact, I was at. That was where I made my professional debut. So sort of carrying these characters forward to there. There was a lot of research, and actually, I think I probably could have written a lot more scenes. I just pulled up stuff that I thought was particularly interesting and would carry the story forward.

Going back to the first World’s Con, this is true, I assume, that Cyril Kornbluth punched Forrest Ackerman?

What I was told was that Cyril Kornbluth liked to punch people in the stomach because it would help them remember who he was. Yeah, that was one thing that I learned that was kind of a weird personality trait. Yep, that happened. The only thing in that part of the story that is made up was that John W. Campbell played in the baseball game that occurred on the last day of the convention. I have no idea whether John Campbell was there. I do know for certain that Ray Bradbury was there, and that he was the scorekeeper. History doesn’t record exactly where Campbell was on that particular day, but I decided that it was too much of a temptation to not have Campbell play baseball and strike out.

Reading about that softball game, you’re just like, “Oh, man, I would like to be there so much.” Also, with the Apollo 17 launch, like you mentioned, I just wanted to read this part here, you say, “Fred and Carol Pohl chatted with Isaac Asimov and his new wife, Janet. Seated at a table beside the pool was an unholy quorum of Art Clarke, Marvin Minsky, and Carl Sagan. Ted Sturgeon was huddled with Analog’s new editor Ben Bova, while former astronaut Ed Mitchell and NBC anchorman Hugh Downs were having a drink and a laugh with Bob and Jenny Heinlein.” That just sounds like one awesome party, right there.

That would have been a great party. I would have loved to have been there. And that’s all drawn from fact. All of those people were on that boat. The odd thing about it was that not too many people went on that trip. It was supposed to be something that they would sell tickets to not just science fiction fans but to space buffs, and so you were supposed to go out on this cruise with all of these luminaries and watch the Apollo launch, and very few tickets were sold. They ended up losing money on that.

I guess that’s an argument against time travel, right? Because if they invent time travel in the future, people are going to want to go back in time and visit.

Oh yeah, absolutely.

One thing that really struck me was when you’re talking about the Futurians versus the New Fandom, where you have these people who want to use science fiction for social progress versus these people who just think it should be about monsters and mad scientists and think that the other people are all communists. You don’t have to change that very much to have it sound like it’s about conflicts going on in science fiction today.

No, you really don’t. It’s really ironic. I wrote that scene before the whole Hugo kerfuffle of this last year happened with the Sad Puppies and so forth, so it wasn’t written in direct reference to that, but it is rather odd and very coincidental that the same arguments are being repeated. And, not only that, but I think most of the people who are involved in all that and had something invested in this were probably completely unconscious of the fact that it does echo the past. History tends to repeat itself.

I understand that you actually stepped on Robert Heinlein’s foot one time?

That was an embarrassing incident. I’ll tell you the story. Yes, I did. When I was eighteen years old, I was at the World Science Fiction Convention in 1976 that happened in Kansas City, MidAmeriCon I. We’ve got MidAmeriCon II coming up later this year. Heinlein was the Guest of Honor. It was almost impossible to meet Heinlein. Whenever he was in public, there was a solid knot of people always around him. There were people, I understand, who literally camped outside of his hotel suite waiting for when he would emerge. He had fan security people always around him, and they were keeping people away, when Heinlein himself, I think, really wanted to meet more people.

After a day or two, I realized that my chances of meeting him were probably impossible, and so I pretty much gave up on it. But, Saturday night of the convention, a party was held in the penthouse suite of the convention hotel, the Muehlebach. It was Kelly Freas’s birthday party, Kelly Freas the illustrator. It was an invitation-only party, and a couple of dear friends of mine from the Nashville Science Fiction Club, both of them no longer with us, Ken and Lou Moore, had been invited, and I begged them to let me tag along. They did, and I sort of snuck in the door with them.

It was an absolutely jam-packed party. It was literally shoulder-to-shoulder and chest-to-back. You could not walk, you could not breathe. I was in there for about ten or fifteen minutes, and I decided that I wasn’t really having a lot of fun, so I began to try to make my way back across the three rooms to the front door. I’d gotten about halfway there when the door opens up, and in walk Robert and Jenny Heinlein. They’d come late to the party. They’d been at the opera that evening.

I’ve never seen anything like this ever again in my life. I mean, the whole party just dropped dead. Everybody stopped talking at once, and just looked and went, “Oh my god.” And Heinlein very graciously just said, “Proceed. We just wanted to stop in and give our birthday greetings to Kelly.” And the party picked up again. So I began considering making my way towards the door, not intending to meet Heinlein at all. I had given up on that idea. But he was heading my way, and I was heading his way, and quite abruptly I found myself quite literally face-to-face with him. I realized, okay, it’s now or never. I said, “Mr. Heinlein, pardon me, my name is Allen Steele, and I’ve been reading your work all of my life. Rocket Ship Galileo was the very first novel I ever read. I’ve read most of your books, and I just wanted to tell you thank you so much for all the hours of pleasure that you’ve given me.” It was something like that. It really came out as much more of a babble than that.

At one point he said, “Excuse me, I can’t quite hear you.” And I had to step a little closer so that he could clearly hear me. He heard me out, and he nodded, and he said, “Thank you very much, young man. I greatly appreciate it. Now, would you kindly get off of my foot.”

And, I looked down, and sure enough, there was my grimy Adidas sneaker standing on top of his perfectly spit-and-polished brogues. Oh god, I felt horrible. I just shrank. I apologized profusely.

The thing about it is that I’ve told this story a number of times, and two people who knew Heinlein personally, who knew him well, one is Jerry Pournelle and the other is Spider Robinson, told me that Heinlein didn’t take crap from anybody. And if he had not been genuinely flattered by what I had to say to him, then he wouldn’t have put up with that for a second. The fact that he was actually willing to put up with physical pain while I spoke to him meant that he must have been complimented, so it made me feel a little better.

Did you save that sneaker?

I should have! I would like to say that something wore off during that.

That might be worth something these days.

Yeah, this sneaker touched Robert Heinlein’s foot. I wish I had something like an autograph or something like that, but I think the story is even better.

Do you think that there’s a big Heinlein influence on Arkwright?

I think so. Of course, I think there’s a Heinlein influence on a lot of what I write. Heinlein was somebody who has influenced everybody. He’s science fiction’s Hemingway. He was the person who changed the rules of the game and altered science fiction forever. Even if you’re not consciously emulating what he’s doing or walking in his shoes, even if you’re completely rejecting it, in some way or another, you’re being influenced by him.

This reminds me a little bit of Time for the Stars and a little bit of Orphans of the Sky toward the end.

That’s very complimentary. Thank you. I was thinking a little more along the lines of “The Man Who Sold the Moon” in the way that this is a story not so much about the trip itself, but the preparation for the trip, about the effort that it takes to go into building the starship. And not to spoil things for anybody who might read the book, but we don’t actually get to the planet until the last quarter of the book, and that’s a very deliberate thing. It’s about the trip. It isn’t about the destination.

I also thought this idea of this wise person who puts a plan in motion to safeguard the human future obviously has echoes of Asimov’s Foundation in it.

Oh yeah. In fact, there’s a scene in there, again without giving things away too much for anybody who might want to read the book, but there’s a scene in Arkwright which is a very deliberate emulation of a very famous scene in Foundation with Hari Seldon.

I was thinking very much about the golden age of science fiction as I was writing this novel, and there’s lots of little things hidden away that readers who know much about SF are going to be able to pick up on.

One thing in the book that’s quite different from the typical golden age science fiction story and from the starships we see in movies and TV shows is the starship itself. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with that?

The novel came out of a conference that I went to a few years ago at the University of California at San Diego called the Starship Century Conference. It was really a unique conference. Greg Benford and his twin brother Jim organized the thing, and they brought together scientists and science fiction writers to sit together on two days of panels and discuss the possibilities of building a starship in this century. They basically threw out the idea that interstellar travel is something that we’ve got to wait until some kind of exotic technology comes available to us in the twenty-third century, and only then can we build the Starship Enterprise. The conference was talking about near term prospects for this.

So, I was a participant, but most of the time I was actually listening, and while I was listening to what other people were saying, I began to see a way of mating this story that I had had in the back of my head for a long time about the history of science fiction to a novel about the building of the first starship. Because one of the things that struck me was the fact that this conference was a clear example of how science and science fiction influence each other. That science, just as much as science fiction writers are looking over the shoulders of scientists for their ideas—that a lot of science and technology is inspired by science fiction. There’s a feedback loop that’s always in place, and it’s been there for quite a long time.

The starship itself was based on ideas that were put forth during this conference by Greg and Jim about microwave propulsion systems, microwave solar sails. And also coupled with Freeman Dyson’s paper that he delivered at the conference where he pointed out that one of the most difficult aspects of interstellar travel is keeping people alive for the journey, and perhaps we should not even bother with that. Perhaps we should send out seed ships, as it were, to use the old-fashioned term for this. We should have DNA instead and have people basically cloned in situ at a planet which could even be transformed to make it into a habitable world. The novel was sort of a synthesis of a lot of different ideas that were thrown out during this time, and so the Galactique, the ship which is built and launched in my novel, came out of that.

Just to give listeners a bit more detail about this ship, it’s kind of this long rod, and it has this solar sail that’s over a hundred miles wide.

Basically, the ship is comprised of four modules that are assembled on the ground and launched by reusable unmanned rockets. They’re assembled in high Earth orbit, and then an additional module contains the solar sail. I keep confusing solar sails. It’s actually a microwave sail, which is in turn pushed by a beam or a microwave satellite which is parked in a Lagrange orbit, so you effectively leave your engine behind. The microwave beam from the satellite propels the craft once the sail is deployed, and you have a boost phase, which lasts—I forget what it was in the novel.

It’s two and a half years.

Until it reaches half of light speed, at which point it has reached cruise velocity, and it continues to its destination.

I think most people think of interstellar planets as being so far away it’s impossible to reach them, but you say in this book, if you could get a ship up to half of light speed, you could get to some realistic prospects for human settlement in a reasonably feasible amount of time.

During this conference it was postulated that the minimum cruise speed that you would need to make something viable would be about twenty percent of light speed. This particular proposal, which Jim Benford and his company Microwave Sciences have come up with for microwave propulsion systems basically has it in theory that you could get a craft up to half the speed of light, and at which point it would be possible to reach a star within about twenty to thirty light years from Earth in about a half century or so.

The planet that they’re going to in this book is Gliese 667C-e. Could you talk a little bit about that?

The planet itself is now only theoretical—the star system exists, the planets have been pretty much ascertained to exist, but that particular one is still kind of controversial, and I mention that in the book. That one may or may not actually exist, but if it exists, it would be in a kind of a Goldilocks position considering it is in orbit around a red dwarf. See, that’s one of the interesting things about the recent discovery of exo-planets, the realization that habitable zones may be a lot more flexible than originally thought. That what is considered to be habitable may not necessarily be the same thing as what we thought years ago, that habitable planets could only exist around G-class suns like our own. You may well be able to have habitable worlds around N-class red dwarfs like Gliese. So I was postulating the idea of a world that would not be like Earth when we get there, but which a probe could terraform, and then once the planet is transformed into something that would be habitable, then you would take the genetic material of your colonists-to-be that are aboard your ship, and then you tinker with them so that you have a race that is suitable for this particular planet. They may not be suitable for life on Earth, but they would be perfectly suitable for that particular planet.

A couple of years ago I interviewed Annalee Newitz, and she had written a book where she had interviewed a bunch of scientists and a bunch of science fiction authors, and all the scientists said, “Oh, we’ll never do genetic engineering on humans,” and all the science fiction authors said, “Of course we will.”

This is one of those things that seems to be a little bit of a disagreement between scientists and science fiction writers. Again, we have to remember something that Arthur C. Clarke said many years ago, and that was that when a respected senior scientist says something is impossible, generally speaking, they usually turn out to be wrong. I think that if the technology is there, it may well be possible that we may do it. We may do it for those particular reasons. I’ve been playing with the idea of genetically modifying people for living in space for a while now, and in fact, the next book that I’ve got coming out, I deal with it quite a bit, and that’s here in our solar system. I think that that’s something that is not only possible, but as we go out into space, and not necessarily to go to interstellar worlds, but going to worlds within our own solar system, it may actually be desirable.

One challenge, too, you mention, of settling these alien worlds is you say that the DNA of its organic molecules may have the wrong chirality.

Right, that would be the showstopper, and there’s no way of determining in advance whether or not your molecules are left-handed or right-handed. So that part of it is going to be a roll of the dice. Without sending probes in advance, which would take a very long time to get the results back to Earth, you’re casting your fate to the wind.

Right, so basically, if they had the wrong chirality, Earth organisms would be poisoned by them.

Exactly. At which point all of your efforts have come to naught. Game over. But I think that’s probably a risk that is not only one we’d have to take, but I think, a risk that a number of people would be willing to take.

Do we have any idea of what the chances are, or is that something that’s impossible to calculate?

Theoretically, it’s fifty/fifty. It may be more or it may be less than that; again, it’s entirely theoretical.

Given that Nathan Arkwright is a fictional character, how are we going to make this happen in real life?

Okay, for one thing, science fiction is about predicting the future, as we know. I wasn’t trying to set out a blueprint for interstellar travel in this; as most SF does, I was performing a thought experiment. Having said this, something like an Arkwright Foundation may be the way to go.

One of the things that has gone wrong in the exploration of space is that we’ve adopted a mindset since the success of the Apollo program that this is the way it should be done. That it’s got to be done by big government agencies, tax payer-supported, and done as crash programs, because that was how Apollo was done and Apollo was successful. I think that the way to go about this is taking the long view. That we should be doing this by public-private endeavors by foundations that are set up to fund the research and development leading to building the craft itself and doing this over very long periods of time. In the book, it takes generations. It’s going to be something that’s going to be very much akin to building cathedrals. That’s an analogy that John Cramer made at the Starship Century Conference, was that starships may be like cathedrals, that they take generations to build. I think that that may well be the way to go with it.

The way that we’re doing it now isn’t getting us anywhere. NASA is grossly underfunded. It’s like .6 percent of the federal budget. The way to think about that is that if you have a dollar, and that represents the entire federal budget, then NASA’s share of that is half of a penny, and that’s the way that it’s been for time immemorial. It’s been stuck at that level for what, twenty or thirty years now? We’re not going to get to the moon, even, with that kind of money. Let alone to Mars. We’ve got to take another approach. Arkwright was sort of a way of suggesting another kind of approach. Now, I don’t think it’s necessarily going to be a science fiction writer who’s going to be able to do this. Most SF writers I know don’t make that kind of money. On the other hand, it sure would have been nice to see George Lucas take some of the money that he earned from selling Star Wars to Disney, and he could take some of that four billion dollars and put it into a foundation, and you could call it the Skywalker Foundation, and it would be a great thing.

It’s interesting because you actually say in the book, you mention a scene where Nathan goes back to WorldCon in the ’80s and feels that science fiction fans aren’t interested in space anymore. How much truth do you think there is to that?

It’s unfortunate, but, yes, I think there is. I think that at some point I noticed that there was a turning away from that in the late ’80s and into the ’90s, where people stopped being interested in space exploration. Stopped being interested in science. And in the last decade or so, it really got to be widespread. Science fiction fans kind of went off to happy-Harry-Potter-land of boy wizards and talking dragons and wise old elves and abandoned futuristic thinking. It seems to me it’s swinging back again. There is now a resurgence of interest in a more realistic science fiction. I’m glad to see that. So, those scenes were kind of reflecting on that a bit.

One thing I saw you say related to that, that I thought was really interesting, was that when cyberpunk was really popular in the ’80s, a lot of authors jumped on that bandwagon, and then their careers suffered when the fad ended.

That’s one of the things that can happen, is that SF writers can jump on bandwagons, as you say, and follow a trend, and trends only last for a certain amount of time. You know, cyberpunk was predicting a particular kind of future, and, yeah, well, we got that future, and it lasted for about fifteen minutes, and then we moved on. The idea that we were all going to be living in a world where we were plugging ourselves directly into computers and walking into these virtual reality worlds didn’t really happen the way that it was postulated. Computers became widespread, and my mother knows how to operate a computer. She’s ninety-seven years old. But she’s not a cyberpunk. We got that kind of digital revolution, but it didn’t come the way that the cyberpunks thought it was going to happen.

But, on the other hand, space exploration didn’t happen the way that science fiction writers thought it was going to happen. Science fiction writers are very bad at predicting the future. On the other hand, we’re really quite good at influencing things.

You’ve said that you’ve been to NASA and that ninety percent of the people got into it because they were science fiction fans.

I went to NASA, to the Johnson Space Center, several years ago for a visit. I was there because I was the Guest of Honor at an SF convention, ApolloCon in Houston. A friend of mine who works for a NASA subcontractor arranged for me to have a VIP tour. It was terrific. I got to fly the space shuttle simulator, and I went to mission control and the historical mission control, and I saw the big pool where they practice zero-G training and so forth. The thing that struck me was the youth of most of the people who were working there. Most of the NASA people who I talked to were younger than I am. Most of the median ages seemed to be in the twenties and thirties. Almost every person I talked to told me that they were science fiction fans, and a couple of them told me that they were fans of my work, which is awfully flattering. I think that this is one of those places where science fiction has very much influenced the shape of things that have come around.

I’ve actually seen in some of your bios that you’re almost a consultant sometimes, drawing on your experience as a science fiction writer to help advise government agencies and things like that?

I belong to a group called Sigma, which is comprised of a couple of dozen SF writers who sometimes act as unpaid consultants to the government on matters of national security, and I’ve also been to a defense conference that was held overseas in England. A number of SF writers were brought there some years ago to participate in a three-day think tank on future weapons of mass destruction and things that we should be on the lookout for after the atomic bomb. In the past, I was a consultant with the Space Frontier Foundation, but they put an end to that without telling me, so I no longer do that. Those are the organized things. I think most of my work is really involved in sitting here and writing science fiction novels and stories and putting them out into the world and sometimes they catch fire.

Speaking of national security threats, you talk in the book about climate change and the impact that that’s going to have. A bunch of the cities are flooded in your future, and you say that the world lost over a billion people as a result?

It’s unfortunate, but I think that we’re going to be seeing that, and I think yes, we are going to see a lot of lives lost, and I think we are going to see a lot of loss of property, and entire nations may fall as a result of this. But I don’t think it’s the end of the world. We—“we” being the human race—have a remarkable ability to adapt. We’ve done it many times in the past, and I think that climate change is real. It is coming. But I don’t think it’s going to crush us. If there’s anything that kills us, it’s going to be our own stupidity. And that is the worst enemy. It isn’t the climate. It’s us being real dumb about things. But, on the other hand, again, I’m optimistic enough to think that there’s more smart people in the world than stupid people, and I think in the end, the smart people will rescue us from the stupid people.

You say that space exploration might actually give us the solution to climate change, or at least to surviving it.

I think, for one thing, one near-term solution that I would certainly like to see revived is the idea of solar power satellites. A lot of climate change is a result of our overuse and overreliance on fossil fuels. If we could move large-scale energy production off the planet and into orbit, that would go a long way to solving this in the long run. I’ve written extensively about solar power satellites in the past. My first novel, Orbital Decay, was about this.

I’m a bit disappointed that the future that was forecast in Orbital Decay has not come to pass. That novel was published in 1989, and I had SPS1 being built in orbit in 2016. Obviously that’s not happening. But I don’t think that it’s an idea that can be tossed out either. I think that there is still being some work done in that direction, and I would certainly like to see more being done.

You say as well that there’s a strong potential for lunar helium-3 to be used as a fuel source for fusion reactors.

I’m not sure if there is a strong consensus for that. It is problematic in the fact that it would take a lot of mining and a lot of refinement to get even a small amount to be used. There’s also the fact that fusion seems to be one of these technologies that’s always ten years down the road. It’s “Soon come, mon.” If we could make fusion work, and if we could set up economic lunar mining facilities, then yes, it could be the energy resource of the future, but in the short term, I think SPS may be more viable.

Is there a limited time window for this, where we need to set up some of this near-space infrastructure before global warming swamps us and our natural resources to do some of this stuff starts running out?

I think sooner is better than later. Martin Rees gave us about a fifty percent chance of surviving in this century unless we make some fundamental changes. I certainly hope that Sir Martin is a pessimist, but I’m also afraid that he may be right, that we need to get off our collective dead ass and get up and do something about some of these things. Again, this goes back to the smart people in the world having to save us from the dumb people.

On a lighter note, I wanted to mention this story. In 2001, I attended the Odyssey Writing Workshop, and you were one of the instructors who came and visited, and you told this story about how you got your first short story published that has always stuck with me. I was wondering if you could tell that story?

Well, the first short story published was “Live from the Mars Hotel,” which was in the mid-December 1988 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, and I’ll add incidentally that that short story is now on Mars itself. It was included on a disc that contained a whole bunch of science fiction stories and novels about Mars that the Planetary Society put on one of the Mars probes and sent up there. It actually is on Mars now. Anyway, the short story was written after I had sold my first novel, Orbital Decay. I wrote Orbital Decay because I had been trying for years and years to sell short stories and couldn’t get anywhere, so I tried my luck with a novel instead, and the novel was more successful, even though it took much longer to write.

I was at the science fiction convention Boskone 1987. I was having coffee with my editor Ginger Buchanan, who had just told me that Ace wanted to buy the book, and she also told me because they had such a publishing backlog at that moment that it was going to be two years before the book was published. I said, okay, I can live with that.

She said, “You should go out there and write a few short stories and sell them to get your name out there.” I said, “Well, it’s a little easier said than done. The reason why I wrote this novel is that I was unable to sell any stories, so asking me to go out there and casually sell a few short stories . . . that’s really kind of hard to do.”

She said, “It shouldn’t be too hard. Just a moment.” And she raises her hand and said, “Hello, Gardner, would you come over here please?” And who comes walking over but Gardner Dozois, who was then the editor of Asimov’s Science Fiction, and she introduced us. She said, “This is Allen Steele. He’s a wonderful new writer. We’re buying his first novel, Orbital Decay.”

And he said, “Oh, very pleased to meet you.” We shook hands, had a little small talk, and he walked off. I said, “Well, what was that all about?” Ginger said, “What I want you to do is, as soon as you get home from this convention, I want you to write a new short story. Write the best short story that you can, and send it to Gardner, and remind him that you met over the weekend.” So I did. And that short story was “Live from the Mars Hotel.”

Gardner didn’t automatically accept it. He said it was a little long, and I needed to cut it from 10,000 words to 6,000 words. And I did, and then he bought it. That was my first sale. The moral to this story is sometimes it takes a little bit of face-to-face contact to get things done in publishing.

See, I’m always afraid I’m going to step on the editor’s foot or something and it’s going to do more harm than good.

Yeah, you should not emulate what I did with Robert Heinlein, no. And you should always be on your best behavior and so forth. But the fact of the matter is it’s an editor’s fondest wish to discover the best big new talent . . . I mean, that’s what makes editing such a dream job for some people. Everybody wants to discover the next Heinlein, or the next Neil Gaiman, or the next Bruce Sterling, or the next Hugh Howey, or the next Charlie Stross, or whatever. You want to be able to find this brilliant story by a previously unknown writer and put him in your magazine or website or publish their first book. If they meet somebody like that in public, it doesn’t matter too much if they’ve got spinach stuck between their teeth; as long as they don’t make a royal ass out of themselves, they’re willing to forgive a lot.

I’ll give that a shot then.

[Laughter] Well, you should.

There was another line in the book I wanted to ask you about, this part where one of the characters says, “When I let one of my professors at MIT know that I read science fiction, he asked me why I was wasting my time with that trash.”

That actually comes from a point of fact. I had an astronomy professor in college. When I brought my first novel to him and showed it to him, he got very upset, and he said, “Dammit, I thought I was training an astronomer, and you became a science fiction writer instead.” There is sometimes a bit of that, I’m afraid.

Right, because he said that he didn’t think the science in science fiction was accurate enough for him.

I’ve heard that a couple of times in academia. I’ve heard academic science professors profess to hate SF because SF writers make mistakes. Well, yeah, they do, but they should be honest, so do scientists. Nobody is perfect, honestly.

The other thing is that the purpose of science fiction is not to teach science. It’s not really even to explain science. It’s speculation. We’re playing mind games. Expecting absolute, rigorous adherence to scientific facts at all times in a work of science fiction is kind of a mug’s game. There are very, very, very few works of SF that are going to meet that standard. Even some of the best SF writers in the world make mistakes. I’ve spotted errors in the works of people like Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. People make mistakes. Sometimes it’s mistakes of convenience. It happens.

I think one thing that’s interesting, though, is it seems like sometimes the science fiction is right and the science is wrong. I remember when I was growing up, I watched Star Wars, and Luke Skywalker is watching the two suns set, and I remember scientists telling me that was impossible for a planet to be orbiting a binary star like that, and that turned out to be right.

No, it turned out to be very possible that we could have planets around binary systems. This is one of the places where the discovery of exoplanets has caused us to rethink our idea of habitability. It was thought that habitable planets would not exist around red dwarves, and now it seems like, yes, they could.

I recently read an old SF novel, The Skylark of Space by E. E. Doc Smith, and I read its original version that was serialized in Amazing in 1928, and it is stated there that in the original version the solar system has eight planets, with Neptune being the one that was farthest away. This was before, of course, the discovery of Pluto. So I got curious about this, and knowing that The Skylark of Space was revised later on, I found the revised version, and yes, it’s stated there that the solar system now has nine planets including Pluto. Now we know that the original version was right all along. The solar system has eight planets and Pluto is a Kuiper Belt object. It’s a minor planet. Sometimes the things that are thought to be wrong are right and vice versa.

One last line I wanted to ask you about is there’s a part where one of the characters thinks back over the classics of literature, and these names include Shakespeare, Poe, Hemingway, Márquez, Clarke, Swanwick, and Le Guin.

I was making a nod to some of my friends.

Do you think though that those are the authors that will be considered the classics in a hundred or two hundred years?

I do. Absolutely. I think that people are still going to be reading Arthur’s, Ursula’s, and Michael’s work. I think those people are going to be stacked right up alongside the great classic writers. One thing, although some of these writers are considered to be popular fiction today, writers that were considered to be classic writers now were popular fiction in their time. Ernest Hemingway wrote best sellers. Raymond Chandler is considered to be a classic novelist now. His work appeared in pulp magazines. You can find stories by writers like Tennessee Williams in Black Mask and other pulps of the 1930s. I think that a lot of SF writers are going to be considered authors of classic literature as we go into the twenty-first century. I honestly hope I’m one of them.

Yeah, I totally agree with that sentiment.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, we’re out of time, so to wrap things up, are there any other books you’re working on or projects you want to mention?

I can tell you that the next novel is going to be called Avengers of the Moon. It is going to be the first new Captain Future novel since 1946. I got the rights from Edmond Hamilton’s estate to reinvent this seminal space opera hero of the pulp era. I had a great deal of fun. It’s very much a different kind of book than Arkwright is. I’m trying to reinvent space opera. So it’s the first novel of a projected trilogy, and as always, I’ve got a number of short stories that are in various different anthologies that will be coming out over the next year.

Great. We’ve been speaking with Allen Steele. His new book is called Arkwright. Allen, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, David. It’s been a pleasure.

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: Karen Joy Fowler

Robyn Lupo | 440 words

You wrote “Game Night at the Fox and Goose” in the late ’80s. How do you think the story’s resonance has changed, if at all? It’s been a while, but can you tell us how it came together?

As you say, it’s been awhile! I can hardly remember what I did yesterday. But I think I had a bunch of research left over from my novel Sarah Canary, research about cases of victim-blaming in rape and child molestation cases (in the 1870s, and yet that topic remains ever-green) as well as the story of Lydia Fair, the first woman sentenced to execution in the state of California.

My feminist interests have moved since the days of writing that story from the binary, the story of men and women, into something more complicated and more accurately reflective of the many gender and sexual possibilities and histories. But I do think, with the Clinton campaign fully underway, we are already seeing a return to that simple old-fashioned misogyny, that was such a popular feature of my youth and has never gone away. Ask any woman on the Internet.

Your work frequently engages with gender politics and you co-founded the James Tiptree Jr. award in the ’90s. What advice do you have for authors who want to engage with their personal and political struggles creatively?

Challenge your own assumptions. Concoct the strongest case you can against the things you believe and engage with that case—no one is interested or moved or persuaded by the flattening of straw men.

Alison’s story is pretty SF with some personal horror creeping in. When you’re digging into these sorts of themes, do you tend to read the same stuff you’re writing, or do you like to separate those rest/work headspaces?

I don’t seek out similar work, but whatever I’m reading is suddenly strangely pertinent. So I can be writing about the genetic modification of potatoes and reading about the engineering of the Parisian sewers and there will be all sorts of useful and thought-provoking material for my potato piece in the Parisian history. Unlike some writers, I cannot write if I’m not reading and reading freely as opposed to doing research. The two activities absolutely depend on each other.

What was your experience like editing Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2016?

It was great. John Joseph Adams had already done the hard lifting and all that remained for me was the enormous pleasure of reading so many wonderful stories.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Robyn Lupo lives in Southwestern Ontario with her not-that-kind-of-doctor partner and three cats. She enjoys tiny things, and has wrangled flash for Women Destroy Science Fiction! as well as selected poetry for Queers Destroy Horror! She aspires to one day write many things.

Author Spotlight: Jeremiah Tolbert

Sandra Odell | 863 words

“The Cavern of the Screaming Eyes” is a wonderful story with an intricate, solid world both in and out of d-space. Tell us about the inspiration behind the tale.

A large inspiration for the story was the comic book Scott Pilgrim. I’d been wanting to try something similar, taking video game elements and projecting them onto the real world, but perhaps with tabletop RPG elements as well. As kids, we often talked about how great it would be if we could transport ourselves into a fantasy world to be our characters. It only took me thirty-plus years to get around to writing a story about what that might be like.

One facet of the story I particularly enjoyed was the economic and social issues of entering d-space: how electronics will not work; why people delve; the views on ability, sexism, and prestige; the economy behind selling d-space loot for biological upgrades. Many people object to the mingling of genres, feeling that it “taints” a story. What are your thoughts on genre labels? Do you feel they continue to serve a purpose, or are labels meant to be marked out and written over?

Genres are useful marketing labels. They’re shorthand to help publishers connect with readers. As a writer, I only find them useful when figuring out where I should send finished stories, to be honest. Most of my life, I’ve made next to no distinction between fantasy and science fiction genres, so it’s only natural to me to blend them as I like. I find mixing ingredients can sometimes result in something that feels fresher than if you stick to the tropes of just one. There are a million and one ways to go about writing an original story, but I continue to be obsessed with the art of the mash-up.

Both Jimmy and Ivan are fully realized characters. Neither boy is particularly heroic, and I knew many kids like Jimmy in high school, eager to please yet uncertain how to fit in at first. As a writer, what would you say is the most important element of creating a believable character?

Empathy for the characters. I feel like I’ve been and known both these characters at times in my life, and putting myself in their shoes seems like the first and most important step. They may not seem particular heroic, but ultimately, each one of them is the hero of their own stories, from their point of view.

Where are you in this story? How much of Jeremiah Tolbert made it onto the page?

Jeremiah Tolbert first learned to play roleplaying games at the age of seven. I think most of where you find him this time around is in the worldbuilding, in the idea of dungeonspace itself. But there are pieces of me in each character. The most of me is in Jimmy, I suspect. That kind of eagerness and fanboy enthusiasm is something I had more of at his age than I do now. And I always felt just outside the loop of what was cool, like Jimmy.

You are a writer, photographer, web designer, father, and self-proclaimed geek. How do these elements intersect? Does photography ever influence your writing? Are there geekish elements that come through in your web-design?

Geekish elements come through in my web design primarily through the fact that ninety percent of my clients are science fiction and fantasy authors and publishers. I could pretty easily go build corporate websites and such for a lot more money, but it’s not as much fun. I enjoy working with the “industry” in any way I can, even if that means I’m just a twenty-first-century digital plumber to authors much better than myself.

Photography is something that fatherhood has left me with little time for, but when I was more active, my interest there definitely blended with other ones. I had a steampunk photography project you can still find called Dr. Roundbottom, found at www.clockpunk.com/. Although it hasn’t been updated in years, I still think of it fondly. I have other, similar ideas for projects that blend the interests, but I think my son will have to be older before I have the free time to experiment with them.

What’s next for Jeremiah Tolbert? What can readers look forward to in the coming months?

I have another half-dozen stories circulating and in progress. There are a couple of novels underway, but I don’t want to say too much about those just yet. “The West Topeka Triangle” will be coming out from either Nightmare or Lightspeed in the next year or so, I believe. I’m really hoping that audience connect with and enjoy dungeonspace as much as I do, because I have a seemingly endless supply of ideas for more stories about Flip and Domino and the whole gang as they delve into the mysteries of their worlds.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra Odell 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: Stephen S. Power

Laurel Amberdine | 988 words

A series of interviews about a sequence of movies is an unusual way to relate a story about the discovery of alien life. How did you decide on that structure?

I like the challenge of writing stories in non-story formats, such as a legal vetting letter (bit.ly/2c66A4t) or a Buzzfeed listicle (forthcoming at Daily Science Fiction). One of my personal projects is creating a spec fic version of The New York Times Magazine. For instance, my story in AE, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” is modeled on the “Diagnosis” column. I have another story on submission that’s structured like a feature piece. “Fade to Mars” is based on my friend Bruce Fretts’s interview with Andrew Jarecki after the finale of his HBO documentary The Jinx. I began writing the last interview first, then realized that I needed two previous interviews to set it up, thereby creating a lifelong interview that paralleled the lifelong movie in the story.

I’ve read this story at least four times now for various purposes, and I only noticed in the most recent reading that you put yourself in as a character in the story! And there are only two characters, really . . . so I might just be oblivious. But in any case, that’s a surprising choice. What influenced it?

Someone had to be the interviewer, so I figured, why not me? I love cameos, such as Vonnegut walking into his novels or, more prominently, Rob Reiner directing and playing the director in Spinal Tap. It certainly made things less complicated. I’m glad you didn’t notice story-me, though, because an interviewer should be invisible, like the never-named reporter in Citizen Kane. The story isn’t mine. It’s Brynne’s, although she and story-me did build up a rapport over the years. They try to meet at film festivals whenever they . . . Cannes.

That’s awful.

It’s Brynne’s joke, not mine. I just can’t resist using it.

Do you have any familiarity with how movies are directed, or did you have to do research for the story?

I’m fascinated by how movies are made. One of my favorite shows on YouTube, for instance, is Every Frame a Painting. For me, DVDs are all about the commentaries, much to the dismay of my family, for whom they are not, especially the thirty-six or so hours of commentary to The Lords of the Rings extended editions. And as a book editor, I’ve worked on several film books, such as Dan Auiler’s Hitchcock’s Notebooks. So a lot of the movie material came from me stitching together stuff I happened to know. I even threw in a few Easter eggs. Byrnne’s line, “Early on I decided to cut anything not about getting the tile home,” mimics Peter Jackson’s strategy of cutting everything from Tolkien that didn’t get the ring to Mordor.

I figured the science would be much tougher to devise, but the Google kept shining on me. I can’t believe I found that story about Cernan filming the lunar module. And the rover cannon is based on technology developed in the ’60s. Oddly enough, in looking for the link to the source I used, I found a piece in Universe Today from April 2016, long after the story was written, about using a hydrogen cannon to launch payloads into orbit. So maybe I’m prescient. “Fade” also seems to have predicted Brexit.

Could you tell us about your recently released novel, The Dragon Round?

It’s The Count of Monte Cristo with a dragon. My hero, though, makes some choices that differ from Edmond Dantès’s.

You wrote poetry previously—

Yes, for fifteen years.

So why shift to writing a novel?

I’d always wanted to write a novel, but I’d never had a decent idea until one day at Wiley, where I was a senior editor. My colleague, Eric Nelson, and I were talking about a book his son, Asa, was reading, and he said, “Why would anyone write a book for kids without a dragon?” And I said, “Why would anyone write a book for anyone without a dragon in it? Wait . . .” Then I went back to my office and quickly outlined a series of six books, each of which would cover a pivotal moment in human-dragon interactions in the same way that each chapter of World War Z covers a pivotal moment in the zombie war. I showed this to Eric, who said, “So what’s in Book Two for someone who’s read Book One?” the second taking place long after the first. I realized I’d actually outlined a series of series, went back to my office and wrote a short outline to the sequel to The Dragon Round, which will be called The Dragon Tower.

I should add that, at the time, Eric and I knew we’d be laid off in a few months because Wiley was selling our editorial line. Afterwards, Eric became my agent, and sold the book to S&S, which was only fitting because, without him, there would’ve been no book. And if I hadn’t been laid off, there might not have been a book either. I received a fantastic severance package, and given that The Dragon Round is about a ship captain screwed over by his company, Wiley thus provided both the impetus and the means for me to write it.

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 currently lives in San Francisco where she writes science fiction and fantasy and works for Locus Magazine. Her YA fantasy novel Luminator is forthcoming from Reuts Publishing in 2017. Find her on Twitter at @amberdine.

Author Spotlight: Aliette de Bodard

Christie Yant | 876 words

Welcome back, Aliette! Can you tell us what inspired your lovely folkloric story “The Dragon’s Tears?”

I had a book of Chinese fairytales I read from cover to cover incessantly when I was a child (that and the Vietnamese fairy tales book were probably the most well-thumbed items in the house!). One of the stories in that book was about a dragon who gifted a poor family with a magic pearl (the pearl that nearly all dragons have under their chins) that caused their jar of rice to always be full. Eventually word got out, and a rich man tried to steal the pearl from them, and the son of the family swallowed it rather than give it up. He meant to spit it out later, but swallowing it caused him to transform into a dragon, and leave the world of men (and his aged mother) behind. It’s a pretty thing because taking care of your parents when they’re old is a cardinal Confucian value, so having to leave an aged and sick mother is particularly heart-wrenching on that level. This made a huge impression on me, and I wrote “The Dragon’s Tears” partly as a homage to it, and also partly as a collage of the other tales in those books.

I loved that the rider—who we later learn is Sorrow—lingers at Huan Ho’s door, but eventually moves on. Huan Ho had a charm against sorrow after all, in the form of hope. Is the theme of hope as a talisman against sorrow one that speaks to you personally, and have you explored it in your work before in different ways?

To me, hope isn’t so much a talisman against sorrow as its dual expression—it’s what gets us through sorrow, but also what sharpens it and makes it almost unbearable, very much a double-edged sword. The idea of opposite things giving meaning to each other is definitely something I try to explore in my work. My novel The House of Shattered Wings is about finding beauty and hope (but also sorrow) in the ruins of a Paris devastated by a magical war.

Your story also explores the idea of sacrifice, and its relationship with transformation—cause, effect, or both. It made me reflect on how when we experience a major change in who we are, we are then drawn to others more like our new selves—as Huan Ho is, when he leaves to join the other dragons. Have you experienced or observed that kind of sacrifice/transformation relationship in life, personally or professionally?

I think there’s always a balance to be struck between being with people like yourself, which is really comfortable and restful and can feel like coming home, and being with people who are not, because they can challenge you and open your mind to different possibilities lest you become complacent. After major changes, yeah, very often it happens that people don’t quite fit together the way they did, and sometimes that leads to relationships breaking off. But those that don’t break off—they end up very strong, in my experience.

I wondered, as Huan Ho did, whether there might be other riders apart from the three he ultimately names in the story: Greed, Power, and Sorrow. Who might the others be?

Ha, I think you could have a lot of them, but I didn’t really give it much thought. Lust, I think (in the sense of loving material things too much—there’s a Buddhist word for that but no proper translation I can think of that covers it. Attachment, maybe? but it doesn’t have that negative connotation in English. It’s a bit of a mix between Power and Vanity).

We’re excited about your new stand-alone novel, The House of Binding Thorns, due out in April of 2017 from Roc/Gollancz. Can you tell our readers a little about it, and what’s next for you?

The House of Binding Thorns is the standalone sequel to The House of Shattered Wings. It picks up a few months after the events of book one, which changed the balance of power in the devastated city of Paris, and follows characters from the first book (Madeleine and Philippe) as well as a bunch of new ones. It’s got a host of dragons in human forms, diplomatic intrigue, drug trafficking, kissing and stabbing (maybe not all in that order though!). And I think it’s a better book than the previous one, so if you liked that you should definitely try it (and if you didn’t like that it’s a bit of a different one as well, a more ensemble cast and a less claustrophobic setting, though it’s still full-on ruined Gothic Nineteenth Century!).

I’m writing short stories for the moment: I have a couple forthcoming in anthologies like The Starlit Wood and Legendry, and I’m in the beginning process of outlining a space opera based on a genderbent Count of Monte Cristo in a Vietnamese dynastic setting.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Christie Yant is a science fiction and fantasy writer, Associate Publisher for Lightspeed and Nightmare, and guest editor of Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction special issue. Her fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 (Horton),  Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9, Wired.com, and China’s Science Fiction World. Her work has received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Science Fiction (Dozois) and Best Horror of the Year (Datlow), and has been long-listed for StorySouth’s Million Writers Award. She lives on the central coast of California with two writers, an editor, and assorted four-legged nuisances. Follow her on Twitter @christieyant.

Author Spotlight: Fran Wilde

Robyn Lupo | 776 words

The world captured in “A Moment of Gravity, Circumscribed” is a complex hierarchy, evocatively built on a city of living bone high above the clouds; what an image! There’s a lot of family secrets and deceptions, what drove you to tell us about such young protagonists with such gothic themes? You’ve written several novels set in this amazing setting, but is there a chance you’d revisit these particular characters again?

There many more stories and characters in the Bone Universe than can fit in the novels. I love writing some of those as short stories—especially this one—and  exploring the connections, seen and unseen, between the eras and characters. For instance, Djonn’s brothers from “A Moment of Gravity” appear in another Bone Universe short story, “Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” set a few years earlier, and other characters from Updraft appear in “Bent the Wing” as well. And Djonn appears, much older, in Cloudbound.  “A Moment of Gravity” was the first story to appear outside of the novels. In it, I was exploring a character’s history when I already knew he’d be important, and much changed, later.

As for the gothic themes—I think awareness of surroundings, truths, and deceptions are part of a young person’s survival kit—even if it’s subconscious. Djonn’s just becoming aware that there are multiple layers of truths, and that’s a really interesting moment to explore.

I think I’ll probably come back to some of these characters, as well as exploring others. Not quite sure how, yet, but I’ll keep everyone posted.

Where can we find other stories set in the Bone Universe?

“Bent the Wing, Dark the Cloud,” is available at Beneath Ceaseless Skies (bit.ly/2cyOcAB), as well as in the Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Year Seven Anthology.

Tor.com has published excerpts from both Updraft (bit.ly/1EwcDdA) and Cloudbound (bit.ly/2bWdDgQ). And the 2016 Nebula anthology will include an excerpt from Updraft.

Is there anything new or forthcoming?

Cloudbound came out September 27 at all the bookstores and online! I’m struggling to keep away from the capslock, but it’s REALLY hard!  I’m finishing the next book in the Bone Universe, tentatively titled “Horizon” right now.

I read you’ve gone indoor skydiving; how much difference was there between how you pictured flying versus experiencing it?

I did go indoor skydiving at SkyVenture New Hampshire while I was working on Updraft. I’m an experienced sailor, and I wanted to make sure I wrote my wings and flying physics as best I could. So I talked with a lot of engineers, hang-gliders, and became a little obsessed with base jumpers and wing suit flyers like Jeb Corliss and Ellen Brennan. I also did a lot of research into man-made wings throughout history, which I wrote about at iO9 (bit.ly/2cyOCXH) and spoke about at the Library of Congress (that was a blast).

What I noticed most when I got into the wind tunnel to try it out myself was how much impact event the smallest movement had on motion. And how fast things changed. That was really cool, and also very dizzying!

You’ve written in a variety of media; do you have a preference for a style? How far along in the creative process do you discern the project’s length?

I love both short and long lengths, and style tends to emerge as the story does. I like to play with formats too, so it’s always a discovery process. Sometimes, though, the story drops fully formed, and that’s even better.

What’s next for you?

I’m working on several very different projects, including Horizon. In October, I’ll also be busy launching Cloudbound for a little bit, and I’m guest writing an episode of the Serial Box series The Witch Who Came In From The Cold. I’m also continuing my interview series, Cooking the Books (bit.ly/2bWfm61), with a new co-host, Aliette de Bodard. Probably there will also some new short stories that may or may not turn into novels, because sometimes they do that . . .

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Robyn Lupo lives in Southwestern Ontario with her not-that-kind-of-doctor partner and three cats. She enjoys tiny things, and has wrangled flash for Women Destroy Science Fiction! as well as selected poetry for Queers Destroy Horror! She aspires to one day write many things.

Author Spotlight: Kat Howard

Sandra Odell | 819 words

You have a knack for writing works that grab a reader’s full attention from the first paragraph, and “The Key to St. Medusa’s” is no exception. Tell us of the inspiration behind the story.

Thank you so much! I’m a writer who very much writes sequentially, and who doesn’t often do a lot of planning before I write. For short fiction in particular, I often just start with a phrase or an image or a feeling, so those first moments are often me trying to grab my own attention as a writer—trying to set up enough that I can feel like there’s a story there.

This story in particular came about because of the different ways the word “witch” gets thrown around. In some cases, it’s a specific word used to describe a woman with magic—a woman with power. In others, it’s used as a pejorative term, used to describe a woman who isn’t liked. Who doesn’t behave as people think she should. So I wanted to play with the idea of being a witch as being a status crime.

The story has its roots in all women’s stories, those told before and after the rise of written language, up to and including the silencing of women by the rise of a patriarchal culture. There are also elements of the story of Bluebeard and his multiple, ghostly wives. Many of your works hearken back to myth and legend, calling on folklore to enrich the narrative. What is it about the older stories that appeals to you as a writer and reader?

Some of it is that these stories are the ones I grew up on. I remember getting out so many collections of fairy tale and myth at the library, just hungering for that sort of story, trying to find as many version of each as I could. I think there’s a power in a story that lasts, and when we retell those stories, when we write new versions, we as writers draw on that power.

But also: yes. Sometimes these stories make me angry. The way, just as an example, that women get treated—silenced, stereotyped, erased from the narrative. And so sometimes a retelling is a way for me to address that anger. A way for me to say, “Here is what the story could have been.” So I am writing as a type of correction.

We saw the release of Roses and Rot earlier this year (and I will admit a fangirlish moment of glee) and you have another novel slated for release in 2017. You are also a vocal proponent of women writers in SF/F/H, as well as speaking out against those who insist women writers are few and far between. If you could speak to all the aspiring women writers out there, what would you tell them about taking pride in, and supporting, their own works?

Your voice matters, and there’s power in it. Tell your story, even if they call you a witch.

All good writers read. Who tickles your fancy when you want to get a good book or story on?

Okay, I’m going to limit myself to ten, because otherwise I could be here all day. I’ve been recently stunned by the elegance of Sofia Samatar’s The Winged Histories. Ken Liu’s collection, The Paper Menagerie, was an exquisite example of the power of short fiction. Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night was beautiful and immersive and rich. I’ve just flat-out loved Zen Cho’s Sorcerer to the Crown, Maria Dahvana Headley’s Magonia, Fran Wilde’s Updraft, and Cat Valente’s Radiance—they’re all on my reread pile right now. I read Seamus Heaney’s poetry when I need to clear my head, Kelly Link’s short fiction when I need to remind myself to be weird, and Sarah McCarry to remind myself of how the old stories can be changed.

Writers also can’t spend all of their time behind a keyboard (or hunched over a notebook). What do you like to do when you step away from words on a page? How does Kat Howard recharge her writing batteries?

The thing that’s most inspirational to me, in terms of refilling the creative well, is other art. If I feel like I’m stuck or sputtering, I try to got to a museum, or hear some great music, or watch dance. I also find a lot of inspiration in learning about things—I try to always be reading some sort of nonfiction. Really, anything that helps my brain see things, and feel things differently, I love.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra Odell 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: Will Kaufman

Arley Sorg | 794 words

Seriously, what a cool story. The structure is simplistic and the subject is fantastic, but the tale itself has clever, well-presented, emotionally resonant elements, and (for me at least) becomes something quite touching and real. In your writing process, what sorts of techniques or practices do you use to so effectively marry the “weird”/ fantastic with well-grounded, easily relatable moments and circumstances?

Honestly, I pillaged my real life pretty mercilessly. After my wife read this she said, “So you want me to die giving birth to a pumpkin?”

Of course, I made up most of it, but a handful of the things are True, and once a writer is willing to put a little True on the page—without flinching—it becomes that much easier to make the rest feel true. It helps you find that place of naked ambivalence that’s the core of lived experience. At least for me . . . I guess there are maybe people in the world who can look at their lives without ambivalence.

I love when the main character carves up the pumpkin-son and it just doesn’t quite turn out how he thinks it should. This is almost always the case with carving pumpkins, so it has the weight of the probable; but it also feels like a powerful metaphor. Am I reading too much into this? Or do you see this moment as pregnant (yes, I went there) with meaning, and what does it mean to you?

 My dad used to sit me down at the kitchen table so he could tutor me in math and science. He never understood how I couldn’t grasp concepts, which immediately created some friction. I also had a habit of jumping to conclusions (a very writerly trait, I think: looking at a problem and trying to intuit all the ways it might work out) and skipping all those fiddly, important intermediary steps. It drove him nuts.

He had very specific ideas about the kind of person he wanted me to be, and I know, even at the stage where I’m only considering having children, that I have very specific ideas about the kind of person I want my child to be. I like to think that my ideas are qualitatively different than my own father’s, and somehow better. Obviously, though, it is not so easy to shape our children, or know exactly what impact our actions will have on them.

Beyond that, though, I think it’s a metaphor for creative processes in general. We sit down with our tools and our hopes, but it doesn’t always work out.

This piece is full of surprises and frank, unsettling images, which is part of what makes it so effective. To me, it never goes too far or becomes gratuitous. What, for you, are the benefits and the hazards, or perhaps the challenges, of surprise and shock?

In a short story, visceral imagery can be a great tool. Short stories don’t give the writer a lot of time to work a wedge into the reader’s brain so you can split it open and fiddle around inside. A solid visceral image is a very fast, effective way to do that. Reading is often portrayed as an intellectual activity, but it can also be very bodily. Nothing reminds people of that, or grounds them in their bodies and short-wires the defenses that separate mind from body, quite like a little body horror.

It is risky, though. Go about it the wrong way, fail to understand the nature or consequences of the violence you’re doing, fall into the trap of paying pornographic attention to the violence, and your wedge becomes a wall the reader will just bounce right off.

A lot of works, movies in particular, have a real affection for violence. Sometimes that’s okay, especially in something that’s making a commentary or exploring a certain type of humor. But in a lot of work, you see an affection for the suffering of others, reveling in the specific ways and means by which people are hurt and killed. I dislike that. So if I’m not being gratuitous, then I’m succeeding at what I set out to do, which is to grab the reader and ground them in their body, not to titillate or excite.

Is there anything else you want to people to know about this piece? What are you working on now that we can look forward to?

Right now, I’m working on a novel. I don’t have anything else in the pipeline at the moment, aside from those few hundred pages of very rough draft.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Arley Sorg grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado. He studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and usually writes in local coffee shops. A 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate, he is an assistant editor at Locus Magazine. He’s soldering together a novel, has thrown a few short stories into orbit, and hopes to launch more.

Author Spotlight: Mary Anne Mohanraj

Arley Sorg | 1076 words

At heart, for me, this piece is as much about the nature of human violence as it is about family. It challenges the ways we define violence, and asks whether or not we can exist without it. How does the concept of non-violence factor into your own life, and how is that represented in your stories?

The seed of this story actually came from watching my young son navigate kindergarten. Anand was having a really difficult time for much of the year; his instinctive response to frustration was often to lash out, and while he rarely actually hurt anyone (he’s quite small), that kind of behavior is obviously challenging in a public classroom setting, when you don’t have enough adults to easily manage the number of kids they’re being asked to supervise. The challenge of trying to help him moderate his natural impulses towards physical violence intersected with my ongoing obsession with the civil war in Sri Lanka (starting most directly with the ’83 Black July riots that caused many of my Tamil relatives to flee the country after thousands of Tamils were killed in the capital). Many of my relatives gave money and support to the Tamil Tigers—people who some considered freedom fighters, and whom others (especially after 9/11 and the U.S. government’s restructuring of its categories) considered terrorists. I’m generally a peaceful person, but I couldn’t call myself a pure pacifist—if it came down to defending myself, my family, my community—I think I’d pick up a weapon if necessary. So it’s those questions of when violence is justified, when it’s appropriate, when it’s unavoidable or even desirable—those questions fascinate and disturb me.

I really enjoyed the ideas and visuals around amphibious colonization, and the resulting modifications. Where did the inspirations for these elements come from?

Facebook! Seriously, all of my research seems to start on Facebook these days—I throw out a question, and my clever friends (and total strangers) give me a host of ideas and information to consider. They gave me many possibilities for the genetic modifications in this story, and I narrowed it down to the ones I wanted to work with.

At the end, as Rose and Gwen are separated physically, they are also (possibly) separated philosophically, perhaps even ideologically, as Gwen is about to (potentially) enter into a life of violence—suggested by the line “others stayed and fought”—and Rose is about to enter into a life of total pacifism. Despite the circumstances, the ending has a hopeful, positive tone. Does this suggest that happiness can be achieved despite being thrust into violent circumstances? Or do you see this more as Gwen’s courage in the face of adversity, not to mention a determination to raise her child a certain way?

I’m not sure I’d read the ending as hopeful, exactly—that might be more bravado, and a determination not to frighten the child, to make the best of a terrible, heartbreaking situation. Though that said, I do think Gwen was, perhaps, always a little ambivalent about this flight to a pacifist refuge. She would have done it, for her children’s sake, but when circumstances force her to stay, there’s at least a small part of her that wants to stay and fight for her home. Is she right to want that? I don’t know.

The concepts of nonviolence, pacifism, justified violence, and so on, are important parts of the discourse of SF. Who are some of the authors, or what are some of the pieces you’ve discovered, that really resonate with you along these lines?

To be honest, most of my thinking on this was formed not by SF authors, but by South Asian writers. Nonfiction books like Stanley Tambiah’s Buddhism Betrayed?, which interrogate the question of how Buddhists who are supposedly committed to a philosophy of non-violence can nonetheless become ardent, violent nationalists. Fiction like Bapsi Sidhwa’s beautiful novel, Cracking India, which examines the Partition of India and Pakistan through the eyes of a small child. Films that examine the legacy of the Tamil Tigers, and the war’s effect on my country, such as Santosh Sivan’s The Terrorist. An essential book arguing for the need for revolutionary violence against colonial oppression is Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth. I’ve been tremendously moved by soldier’s stories, such as Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, and as a parent now, I am particularly disturbed by the fact that so often we send youngsters barely out of childhood to fight our wars.

There are certainly some in-genre works that have affected me as well. Delany and Le Guin both have work that considers these issues, and I’m sure they’ve influenced my thinking deeply. There’s a slew of ’70s feminist SF writers who worked in this area, and I’ve read a fair bit of military SF from authors like Elizabeth Moon and Lois McMaster Bujold, which often touch on these issues, though they’re more likely to take the periodic need for violent military intervention as a given.

Thanks so much for your story. Do you have any forthcoming projects you’re excited about?

This story is part of a series that started with a short story, “Jump Space,” was followed by my novella, The Stars Change, and then the stories “Communion” (Clarkesworld, 2014) and “Webs,” (Asimov’s, July 2016). I’ve been working on a war novel in that same universe, so my main hope is to finish that soon and send it out into the world; I think it has the potential to become a series.

There are a host of other projects, including a nonfiction memoir titled Arbitrary Passions, exploring the connections between love and nationalism. I’m also currently writing for Tremontaine (through Serial Box), in Ellen Kushner’s Swordspoint universe, and for George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series—I have stories in the anthologies Fort Freak and Lowball, and another coming soon in Low Chicago. Both of those are lots of fun, though perhaps unsurprisingly, war and violence end up in my stories for those universes as well.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Arley Sorg grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado. He studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in Oakland, and usually writes in local coffee shops. A 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate, he is an assistant editor at Locus Magazine. He’s soldering together a novel, has thrown a few short stories into orbit, and hopes to launch more.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 132 words

Coming up in November, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Chris Kluwe (“Dinosaur Killers”) and Alyssa Wong (“Natural Skin”), along with SF reprints by Lavie Tidhar (“Under the Eaves”) and Mary Robinette Kowal (“For Solo Cello, op. 12”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by J.B. Park (“Shooting Gallery”) and Helena Bell (“I’ve Come to Marry the Princess”), and fantasy reprints by Alex Jeffers (“Two Dead Men”) and Catherynne M. Valente (“A Dirge for Prester John”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns.

For our ebook readers, we also have our usual ebook-exclusive novella reprint and a book excerpt.

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

Thanks for reading!

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The Editors

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• • • •

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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

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Robert Barton Bland

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Rich Horton

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Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

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Henry Lien

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Robyn Lupo

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Laurel Amberdine

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Andrew Liptak

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Dana Watson

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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 (with Karen Joy Fowler) [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 Nov. 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.