TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 92, January 2018

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial: January 2018

SCIENCE FICTION

The Streets of Babel
Adam-Troy Castro

Golubash, Or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy
Catherynne M. Valente

The Eyes of the Flood
Susan Jane Bigelow

Someday
James Patrick Kelly

FANTASY

Auburn
Joanna Ruocco

The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births
José Pablo Iriarte

Divine Madness
Roger Zelazny

The Court Magician
Sarah Pinsker

NOVELLA

A Thousand Nights Till Morning
Will McIntosh

EXCERPTS

Jonathan Moore | The Night Market
Jonathan Moore

NONFICTION

Book Reviews: January 2018
Christie Yant

Media Reviews: January 2018
Christopher East

Interview: Fonda Lee
Christian A. Coleman

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Adam-Troy Castro

José Pablo Iriarte

Susan Jane Bigelow

Sarah Pinsker

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2017 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Alan Bao

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial: January 2018

John Joseph Adams | 1540 words

Welcome to issue ninety-two of Lightspeed!

Our cover art this month is by Alan Bao, illustrating a new science fiction short by Adam-Troy Castro (“The Streets of Babel”). Susan Jane Bigelow gives us our other piece of original SF (“The Eyes of the Flood”). We also have with SF reprints by Catherynne M. Valente (“Golubash, or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy”) and James Patrick Kelly (“Someday”).

Our fantasy originals are from José Pablo Iriarte (“The Substance of My Lives, The Accidents of Our Birth”) and Sarah Pinsker (“The Court Magician”). Our fantasy reprints are by Joanna Ruocco (“Auburn”) and Roger Zelazny (“Divine Madness”).

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

For our ebook readers, our exclusive novella is by Will McIntosh (“A Thousand Nights Till Morning”). And of course we have a book excerpt just for our ebook readers, too—it’s a snippet from The Night Market, by Jonathan Moore.

John Joseph Adams Books News for January 2017

One new acquisition to report:

Micah Dean Hicks’s Break the Bodies, Haunt the Bones, a debut novel in which dangerous machines and unnatural beastmen mysteriously arrive in a dying town already filled with ghosts, forcing a haunted brother and sister to figure out how to save their family before tortured spirits tear the town and the newcomers apart. (Spring 2019)

Aside from new acquisitions, here’s a quick rundown what to expect from John Joseph Adams Books in 2018:

In April, we have Bryan Camp’s The City of Lost Fortunes, about a magician with a talent for finding lost things who is forced into playing a high stakes game with the gods of New Orleans for the heart and soul of the city. Here’s some early buzz for the book:

“Camp’s fantasy reads like jazz, with multiple chaotic-seeming threads of deities, mortals, and destiny playing in harmony. This game of souls and fate is full of snarky dialogue, taut suspense, and characters whose glitter hides sharp fangs. [. . .] Any reader who likes fantasy with a dash of the bizarre will enjoy this trip to the Crescent City.” —Publishers Weekly

“Take a walk down wild card shark streets into a world of gods, lost souls, murder, and deep, dark magic. You might not come back from The City of Lost Fortunes, but you’ll enjoy the trip.” —Richard Kadrey, bestselling author of the Sandman Slim series

“In The City of Lost Fortunes, Bryan Camp delivers a high-octane tale of myth and magic, serving up the best of Neil Gaiman and Richard Kadrey. Here is New Orleans in all its gritty, grudging glory, the haunt of sinners and saints, gods and mischief-makers. Once you pay a visit, you won’t want to leave!” —Helen Marshall, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Gifts for the One Who Comes After

“Bryan Camp’s debut novel The City of Lost Fortunes is like a blessed stay in a city both distinctly familiar and wonderfully strange, with an old friend who knows just the right spots to take you to–not too touristy, and imbued with the weight of history and myth, populated by local characters you’ll never forget. You’ll leave sated with the sights and sounds of a New Orleans that is not quite the real city, but breathes like the real thing, a beautiful mimicry in prose that becomes its own version of reality in a way only a good story—or magic—can. You won’t regret the visit.” —Indra Das, author of The Devourers

“With sharp prose and serious literary chops, Bryan Camp delivers a masterful work of contemporary fantasy in The City of Lost Fortunes. It reads like the New Orleans-born love child of Raymond Chandler and Neil Gaiman, featuring a roguish hero you can’t help but root for. It’s funny, harrowing, thrilling—the pages keep turning. The City of Lost Fortunes establishes Bryan Camp as the best and brightest new voice on fantasy literature’s top shelf.” —Nicholas Mainieri, author of The Infinite

“Anyone who loves New Orleans will love this mystical adventure where gods, magicians, vampires, zombies, angels, and ghouls clash in the only city where a story like this is actually possible. The City of Fortunes expertly blends the real and the surreal, capturing the essence of New Orleans in such a unique way. In this city, just as in this story, the line between fact and fiction blurs, and your imagination is set free.” —Candice Huber, Tubby and Coo’s Bookstore (New Orleans, LA)

“Myth and archetype combine with the gritty realism of modern post-Katrina New Orleans in this fast-paced novel. Throughout the twists and turns of a clever, compelling plot, the soul of the city and strength of its survivors shine through. As a southern Louisiana resident, Bryan Camp saw firsthand the devastation and impact on people’s lives caused by Katrina, and the emotion of that experience fuels the power of the story and its unique, well-crafted characters. If you like the work of Neil Gaiman and Roger Zelazny, you’ll enjoy this book. A fun, engaging read. Highly recommended.” —Les Howle, director of the Clarion West Writers Workshop

In June, we have Todd McAulty’s The Robots of Gotham, a debut novel about a future where the world is on the brink of total subjugation by machine intelligences when a man stumbles on a sinister conspiracy to exterminate humanity and a group of human and machine misfits who might just be able to prevent it. Here’s what some early readers are saying about this one:

“When the robot apocalypse comes, I hope it’s this much fun. Like The Martian and Ready Player One, Robots of Gotham is set in a high-tech near-future where something has gone terribly wrong, and it’s navigated by a hero who’s quirky, resourceful, and as likable as they come. Read it for the rock’em-sock’em-robot action—read it for the deft world-building with its detailed taxonomy of intelligent machines—read it for the sobering parallels to modern-day issues and threats. Or just read it because it’s a helluva good ride.” —Sharon Shinn, author of the Elemental Blessings series

“The Robots of Gotham is a crackling good adventure, stuffed with cool action sequences. It also features serious and intriguing speculation about the potential of Artificial Intelligence, for good and bad. And it’s an engaging read, with absorbing characters, and, of course, lots and lots of nifty robots.” —Rich Horton, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy

“Todd McAulty has imagined a fascinating geopolitical future, filled it with some very cool technology, and thrown in healthy helpings of intrigue and action. The result is a page-turner that kept me riveted from the opening lines to the final chapter. Highly recommended!” —David B. Coe, author of The Case Files of Justis Fearsson

“If Johnny 5 had a baby with the Terminator, the result would be Robots of Gotham: a book that explores the consequences of world domination by our Robot Overlords. (And, lest we forget the badassiest of them, our Robot Overladies.) Drones, dinosaurs, and doggies—with a plague thrown in for good measure!—the barter is banter, and death is cheap. With man against machine, machine against machine, man against man, unlikely alliances must be forged across all species, rational or otherwise. For all its breakneck world-building, constant questing, and relentless wheeling and dealing, Robots of Gotham is deceptively deep-hearted: a novel about, of all things, friendship.” —C.S.E. Cooney, author of World Fantasy Award-winning Bone Swans: Stories

“Soldiers, spies, diplomats—and that’s just the machines. Wait until you meet the wise-cracking hero and his dog. Wildly inventive, outrageous fun.” —Kay Kenyon, author of At the Table of Wolves and Serpent in the Heather

“Adventure, mystery, action, sinister intrigue, clever heroics, and robots—what more do you need? I couldn’t put it down.” —Howard Andrew Jones, author of The Desert of Souls

Further out in 2018, we’ll have The Wild Dead—Carrie Vaughn’s sequel to Bannerless—in July; Dale Bailey’s In the Night Wood in October; and then Molly Tanzer’s Creatures of Want and Ruin in November. We’ll provide more details about those as the publication dates draw nearer, but as always if you want more information about these or any other John Joseph Adams Books titles, just visit johnjosephadamsbooks.com.

That’s all the JJA Books news for now. More soon!

• • • •

Well, that’s all there is to report this month. Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the issue!

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, the SF/Fantasy imprint from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He is also the series editor of Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, as well as the USA Today 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 projects include: Cosmic Powers, 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 a finalist eleven 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.

The Streets of Babel

Adam-Troy Castro | 6700 words

The city surrounded him while he slept. He had been fleeing it for four days. Long before its walls became visible, it was a grayish smudge on the horizon, beneath which the air shimmered in silent testimony of its radiant heat. It was one of about ten living cities he knew of and he had avoided it for as long as he could, staying out of their usual migratory paths, contenting himself with the company of the small tribes who had also managed to keep out of the reach of the cities, living on roots and the small animals that fell to his bow. For years he had managed to go months at a time without even laying eyes on any of the cities, and had even managed to pretend to himself that they didn’t exist, that it was possible to live indefinitely without ever finding himself a resident of one.

When he saw the smudge in the distance, he just changed course and headed in the opposite direction, figuring that it hadn’t sensed him. But then it followed, extending its pseudopods of brick and steel and pavement into the grass in its path, pulling itself out of the ruined landscape it left behind, its shifting skyline gradually becoming sharper and more visible as it literally gained ground, in a determined pursuit that no barefoot man, no matter how tireless or swift of foot, could possibly evade. After one day, he knew that it was after him; after two days, he knew that he was doomed to capture; after three, he gave up all stops for rest or sustenance; after four, he breathed in ragged gasps, in terror of the hungry sounds that grew louder, ever louder, just behind him.

When he finally collapsed, his only hope was the forlorn one that it might decide that it did not want him after all. But as he slept, a pair of brick walls rose from the dirt on either side of him, forming an alley, and at the end of the alley the grass withered to make room for the sidewalk, and just beyond the sidewalk there came a street, and soon buildings, and finally, as the sun rose, people, fleeing whatever the city concocted to drive them wherever it wanted them to go; entire multitudes of them, already trapped and imprisoned and terrified and enslaved to its whims.

The sleep the city provided him was not enough to counter his exhaustion. He did not hear the brick wall rise behind him, turning his alley into a blind one, and he did not register when that wall began to slide forward, nor even when it was pressing against his back.

When it began to shove him across the filthy, somehow already garbage-strewn concrete, he mumbled and muttered and attempted to hold on to unconsciousness a little while longer, but then it picked up speed and he felt the heat of that abrasive ground against his skin.

He scrambled to his feet, saw with fresh dismay that the worst had finally happened, that the city had him, and for a moment or two just stood before the advancing surface with the paralysis of all those faced with the knowledge that they no longer belong to themselves. Then the wall jerked forward, striking him in the face in what amounted to a stern reminder that he was not in charge. His nose bled. He backed up, looked around for his bow, saw that it had been half swallowed up by the wall, considered trying to retrieve it anyway and then gave up, heading for the alley’s mouth, which started sealing up even as he approached.

The city had no intention of crushing him between the wall advancing on him from behind and the one that was forming, brick by brick, ahead of him. Before he even had a chance to fear that fate, the wall to his left began to rise, granting the building on that side an extra two stories and not incidentally providing him with a door that rose from the ground with it. Dented and grimy and shining a yellow light through its upper panel of fogged glass, it swung open at the lightest touch, revealing a set of narrow stairs leading upward. He had just enough time to duck into the opening before the alleyway was swallowed up behind him. He climbed the stairs just ahead of the advancing wall that ate up every riser at the instant he no longer needed it, and reached a dim hallway to nowhere with one more door at the midway point.

This he went through, to find a cramped little apartment with ugly wallpaper and a flickering lamp and a sooty window looking out at the city. Upon investigating the view, he found out that he was much higher up than he should have been after climbing only one flight, but the floor was still ascending, and as it achieved an altitude higher than that of the surrounding buildings he was able to look out upon the cityscape and confirm that he was now fully encircled, the grid of its streets extending for miles before the advancing membrane that was the city, claiming more territory for itself. He could just barely make out grasslands in the far distance, but they were clearly lost to him. No man could head for the outskirts of a city in the face of all the opposition the city would place in his path and hope to exit unless it wanted him to go; not even if he ran like the wind.

Then a gleaming glass skyscraper erupted upward and erased his view, providing him instead with a mirror reflection of the building in which he was now imprisoned, a dull gray monstrosity with gargoyles and cornices and, there, his own naked and blurry form, standing at one window looking out: a man in a box that was just like all the other boxes around it, which were themselves contained in a building that was a stack of boxes. He was not the only one looking out, he saw; there were similarly forlorn figures in the windows above and below his, though it was possible to look past them to the patterned walls of the chambers in which they were trapped and see that those walls had advanced more cruelly than his own, effectively pinning them against the glass. He took from this the lesson that the city could always punish him for not hurrying in whatever direction it wished to hustle him. It could make of him even more confined a prisoner than he was now.

He looked down at the streets and saw hundreds of people, heading in all directions, their clothing differing from those that surrounded him in only the slightest details. Most were hurrying, and looked like they were used to hurrying, the sidewalks nipping at their heels with little bulging ripples that pursued them and drove them forward, on whatever errands the city found fitting for them. There were collisions: one rebounding against another, others colliding head-on, trying to avoid a direct confrontation whenever possible, except in those cases where, clearly, the city wanted them to fight. One man hesitated for some reason known only to him and the pavement reared up on all sides of him, forming an egg-shaped protrusion that sat undisturbed for a moment before it sank down into the earth, taking that unfortunate pedestrian into the depths. Whether he’d just been devoured or was simply being shuffled to some other location at the city’s behest was impossible to say. Either way, nobody around him had the time to notice. They had their own errands, their own destinations, whether known to them or not.

His window tilted sideways, becoming a parallelogram that blinked like an eye and was gone. The wallpaper bubbled, lost its pattern, and became tile. A drain opened up in the floor, between his bare feet. Hot water showered down on him. He found soap in a dish that wasn’t there before, was gifted with the knowledge of its purpose, and lathered up, turning his face toward the spray. It tasted bad. It was water and it was hot but it had a nasty, rusty quality, as if the city was now sick in some way, and the sickness was carried by the very pipes. He still took pleasure in cleaning himself. He was a man who had avoided the company of other men for much of his life, a man who for months out of the year slathered himself with grease to protect himself from the insects that at some times covered the grasslands in swarms like black clouds, a man who only rarely had cause to consider his own stench, but the city would not allow him to persist in such unsanitary habits and had now afflicted him with the awareness that here he was expected to do better. So he washed, and the water puddling at his feet turned first black, then brown, then clear, before the water stopped without any input from him. He felt disappointed. It had been pleasurable.

He left the shower, instantly dry, and the room shifted again, becoming a closet with many identical hanging outfits. After some trial and error, he figured out how to put on the white shirt and the gray slacks, but the city grew impatient with his dawdling and a red tie burst from a hanging rack of identical ties and wrapped itself around his neck, like a constricting snake. Further firm guidance provided him with shoes, a jacket, and a brimmed hat, which adjusted itself for size before the apartment constricted and forced him back into the hallway, which itself constricted and forced him down the stairs to the street.

By the time he had joined the flow of humanity his neighborhood did not look the same as it had when he’d viewed it from the window. The buildings had become squatter, the avenues narrower. The gleaming glass towers had become smaller buildings with storefronts, each identified with lettering in a language he was disturbed to discover he could read. One place provided clothing of a sort somewhat different than the outfit he wore, another produced music, a third intoxicating beverages, and a fourth hot food, which it occurred to him that he wanted; but when he hesitated at the enticing scent that came from that one open doorway, the pavement at his feet pricked him with fangs of stone and he was driven onward, forced to ignore the stabbing pains in his feet.

He picked up the pace and saw that he was approaching a corpse lying half in and half out of the gutter, the upper half of his head flattened as if from the impact of some falling object, but there was no object and the source of the unfortunate’s wound remained mysterious. Every impulse in his own body argued that he should slow down, kneel before this victim of the city’s arbitrary pace, and show the respect that such a tragedy deserved, but the little ripple guiding him onward would not have it, and so he found himself stepping over the body, ignoring it, leaving it behind for someone else to deal with. Everybody around him did the same thing. He wanted to ask them whether it was always like this, but he was not given enough time for such a conversation; he was just driven on, down that street and left onto another and then right onto still another, the pace picking up, the sense of urgency growing.

After hours of this, which amounted to nothing more than walking in circles as far as he could see, he was directed toward one of the storefronts and into a room lined with shelves on which sat dusty glass jars bearing liquids of varying colors, which might have been balms or beverages or any other damned thing, not that it mattered, because he was no more than four steps into the room before the walls swallowed the containers and the shelves became bare. The room darkened but for a wedge of light leading to a brightly lit hallway in the back, and he headed that way, hoping at least for some point to the long day of racing around like a fool, but the hallway turned out to be almost the length of a city block itself, and he had enough time to despair of any such conclusion before he emerged into a room where many different men and women sat typing at workstations.

No sooner did he rest his weight on the unoccupied chair than cubicle walls sprung up, and up, and up, four of them, rising to the tiled ceiling and thus shutting him in with nothing to do but respond to the machine’s demands of him. It was a minor math problem. He was not a man who had ever had any real use for numbers, had indeed been so primitive that he’d never had any need to understand any more than he could count on his fingers on toes, but now survival dictated that he cooperate. So he did the problem, using the keys on the device before him to make the same numbers appear on the glowing screen he’d been provided, complete with answer. Another problem appeared. He solved that one, and the one that came after that, and the one that came after that, hundreds, it seemed, in rapid succession, all pointless, all coming faster the better he became at answering them.

Only gradually did he become aware that his hands were now shackled together and to the table surface and that he grew unpleasantly warm when he attempted to take a break for himself. Only a little while after that he found that he needed to relieve himself and had no means of satisfying that need without disgrace. He could only hold it in and continue what he was doing until the city decided that it could afford him the privilege.

By the time the walls lowered around his workstation, his cramps were horrific. He fled ahead of the city’s prodding and found the same room that everybody else was fleeing for, where by heroic effort he managed to deny his pressing need until those in front of him were done. An empty space opened up for him. He sat and did what he had to do, feeling a vast nostalgia for the free life he had lived up until a few days ago. He wanted to linger. But he was presented with the knowledge that he had to go back to his little cubicle and return to inputting his numbers, so he got up, washed his hands as per the city’s wishes, and went back to multiple hours trapped in an activity he found nonsensical and without merit, wondering if there would ever come a time when he could eat, when he could sleep, when he could scratch his ass without interference.

The answer, it turned out only when he had worked to a time that he could only think of as eventually, was “yes.” The glowing screen receded into his cubicle wall and he prepared himself to be released, but it seemed that the city did not want to him to exit on his own two feet, not at all. It would take care of moving him. His desk remained in place, but his chair descended through what seemed like an endless vertical shaft, while he pounded at the walls. Then the chair tilted forward and deposited him into a chute, which he slid down at dizzying speed until he found himself on the sidewalk again, driven forward, ever forward, through mobs of terrified others.

He had returned his thoughts to whether the city ever had any intention of feeding him when the pavement nipping at his heels steered him to his left into a storefront, which turned out to be a place for the distribution of food. The lights were down lower than made sense. The little tables were all covered with tablecloths. There were people seated at the tables, two at each, all jittery. There were women with men, men with men, women with women, and one table where a single woman sat, her eyes little circles in which smaller circles bounded about, as if searching for a means of escape. He was prodded to the other side of that table. A chair popped out of the floor, jabbing at his thighs and demanding his occupancy. He collapsed into it with an audible whuff, whereupon a strap whipped across his midsection, buckling him in.

The city spoke to him. “This is your wife.”

This was the strangest thing of all, because while such pairings were not unknown in the tribes that roamed the grasslands, it was normally expected that mates were provided at least a little basic familiarity with one another before any formal connection was declared. But the city didn’t have time to waste on such folderol. It needed him paired with her, just as it needed all these other people paired with the other strangers sitting across from them, and it was not willing to brook argument.

So he offered a little crooked half-smile as apology and she offered the same, though there was more resignation in her expression than he would have liked. She uttered a number of words in a language he didn’t know, that to him sounded like she’d stuffed her mouth with pebbles and was gagging on them. He spoke to her in his own tongue, a businesslike dialect of few words and no appreciable poetry that had always gotten right to the business of whether anybody in the immediate vicinity knew how to make fire and where all the tastiest grubs were. She grimaced at the sounds coming out of his mouth. Whatever she said next remained a mystery to him, but was clearly not very nice. Whatever calculus she used to define the attractiveness of males, he clearly did not add up to very much. This was also a familiar situation to him, unfortunately. The sad thing was that by his own matching calculus she really wasn’t all that bad, her specific allotment of facial features combining to convey what would have been an inviting impression, if she wasn’t so scared and despairing and pissed off. But her hair was ridiculous. It was all combed and shiny.

A pair of swinging doors slammed open in the rear of the chamber and a parade of men and women in identical outfits burst in at the hurried pace of antelope being driven off the edge of a cliff. They were all carrying trays of food, which they dropped off at every table in the room before the floor ushered them all back out of an exit that sealed behind them. The meals appeared to be cooked meat, covered with some kind of sauce. There were also vessels filled with water. His wife, ravenous, grabbed the slab of meat with both hands, jamming it into her mouth as if experience had taught her that taking any more time with it risked its removal before she’d had enough. He followed her example, digging into his own course, and discovering within his very first few bites that whatever the city did in order to prepare food also robbed it of everything that made food pleasurable. It was like chewing on sand, and he almost choked on it before sternly advising himself that if he wanted to live he should take what was offered.

He ate four bites and he gulped a taste or two of the water before a bell rang and the chairs belonging to every diner all swiveled on their axes and slid forward on invisible tracks, forming a train that proceeded single-file through a fresh opening in the wall, where they chugged along for a while until the couples began to peel off into side passages. The ride was bumpy and the resulting motion sickness almost made him lose his meal, before the chairs tipped forward and ejected him and his wife onto a bed large enough for the two of them.

If they were meant to mate now, the city needed a little refresher course in what put human beings in the mood, because his wife still wanted nothing to do with him. She recoiled and hissed at the sight of him, retreating as far as she could without leaving the mattress, not that she could because it was precisely the same size as the surrounding chamber and there was no place for her to go except back up the chute, which closed too quickly for her to do such a thing. He did not pursue her. He was still too dazed from his first city to exercise any carnal urges, and indeed wanted nothing more than to pass out and sleep for however long the city would permit unconsciousness.

But sleep was still not on the agenda, it seemed: not with the rectangular screen descending from the ceiling and positioning itself where he and his wife had no option other than looking at it. The first projected images were of people, doing things around the city; people of extraordinary health and charisma, rushing about at the same pace he had been rushed through his day, except out of what in their case appeared to be personal volition. They had purpose and they had urgency and they emoted the importance of it at all with an insistence that rendered their activities strangely compelling, even though he understood none of it. It was not just that it all occurred in a language he did not speak, but that everything they did made no sense to him. At one point, they sat around a round table and had some kind of frenetic argument. At another point, they simulated orgasm while eating semi-liquid glop out of cups. At a third point, they were replaced by other people who rolled their eyes and shoved food in each other’s faces, while unseen other people guffawed with delight. He turned toward his wife in search of an explanation and was dumbfounded to see that she was not just fascinated by these occurrences but hypnotized by them, the light from the screen playing across her face and the dried food around her lips.

Maybe that was the whole point. Maybe this was the city’s last attempt at communication with him. Maybe if he could wring forth some understanding of what it showed him now, he could finally understand what the city wanted from him, and how he could persuade it to treat him with more mercy. So he turned his attention back to the projected people, who were now being depicted running from a great conflagration.

This lasted for hours, while his clothing and the woman’s gradually evaporated and returned them to a state of nakedness. The activities on screen never stopped. Some random good-looking people ran about doing incomprehensible things, only to be replaced by some other random good-looking people doing other incomprehensible things, and none of it seemed to make any sense, and there did not seem to be any way to stop the images from coming. It was only after soft feminine snores began to rise from the other side of the mattress that he understood that the city intended the images as some form of narcotic, and this appalled him, because they were having the opposite effect, keeping him awake despite his state of total exhaustion. Maybe it was something he would get used to.

As an experiment, he tried closing his eyes, but the wall grew a needle and jabbed him awake. Sleep, it seemed, was permitted for his wife but not for him. He groaned in dismay, hurled a few choice curses that would sear the ears from anybody who understood the language, by trial and error found an altitude for his eyelids that he could be permitted to maintain without further punishment, and in that way dozed until gradually becoming aware that the lighting had changed. He woke and found a wall had descended and sliced the room in half, separating if not permanently divorcing him from his wife. The screen was now showing more sexual images, ones that happened to appeal to his preferences as a man of the grasslands; there was darkness, there was a fire, there was a woman covered with a pleasing sheen of grease to repel blood-drinking insects, there was a familiar and welcoming look in her eyes, and there she was, kneeling on hands and knees so that he, the observer implied by the image, could rut with her. He was erect at once, with an intensity he hadn’t known since he was young and first discovered that the part of his body he used for urination could also do this wonderful thing.

He was about to use his hand to achieve release when he discovered that the city took care of even this. A tube had extended from the wall, claimed his penis in a grip as tight as he could possibly desire, and fortunately no tighter, and begun to pump away. He almost succumbed to panic, because where he came from, things grabbing him there without permission were nothing to take pleasure in, but before he could offer much rebellion, it clarified that it knew exactly what it was doing, and was as skilled at the task as it needed to be. It was also efficient, not allowing him to soften, much as the circumstances suggested just that. In a matter of minutes, he released and it did too, retreating into the wall with a total lack of concern for his dignity. Nor was dignity fast in returning. For five full seconds, he was deluged with warm water, then with hot air. He was dried in seconds. Then the images on the screen stopped and the wall separating him from his wife rose back into the ceiling. Something was off about the timing of all these actions, though, because just before the intervening wall completed its retreat into the ceiling, he was able to catch a glimpse of something, some unknown thing, disappearing into the wall on his wife’s side of the bed. But if he had been tired before, he was now even more so, too much to consider anything that had happened. He closed his eyes and was this time permitted sleep.

His wife was gone by the next morning, when his mattress tipped to roll him out of bed. Once again, the city coordinated his bathing and dressing. He was a little slower at obeying its commands than he’d been yesterday, because by now he was really getting sick of this shit, and this time, when one of the city’s limbs prodded him in the small of the back, he whirled around and slapped it away, something that only resulted in it slapping him harder. He knew a curse-phrase from childhood, one that translated as a helpful suggestion that its target enjoy sexual relations with itself, and he shouted it now, not caring that this could not possibly help. A long object emerged from the wall and jabbed him once, causing a pain that impossibly involved not just the point of impact but seemingly every nerve in his body. He bit his tongue. It jabbed him again and this time he retreated, onto a platform that had come into being just that moment and which carried him downward and to the street.

The angry pavement drove him via a different route—and it had to be a different route, because the streets had a completely different layout than the one they’d possessed when last he traveled them—to a room very much like the one where he’d been enslaved the day before, and this led to many more hours of jabbing at his keyboard in response to prompts that gave him time to despair about whether his life would now always be like this, being driven from place to place in order to pursue these tasks that meant nothing to him. Why would anybody build a city if this was what they were like?

The force of that thought built up inside him until he was ready to explode, only to be forestalled when one of his fellow slaves beat him to it: a pale young woman a few cubicles over, who started shrieking in yet another unknown language, words that probably translated as a plea to be either freed or put out of her misery. The cries went on for almost a full minute before the ceiling came down like a hammer and erased her with a wet splat. There were some gasps and cries of dismay from around the room, but within a very few seconds alarms went off, and everybody returned to their assigned tasks lest the same end come for them.

An eternity later, the reprieve arrived, and he was transported through a series of tubes and conveyer belts to the street, a brightly-lit place that no longer seemed to be a route to a definable destination but a means of keeping him in motion for however long the city wanted to delay his delivery to somewhere he might have been permitted to rest. It gave him food, something greasy and coagulated that made him gag on its way down, and a beverage, something intoxicating that left him reeling and unable to focus, but beyond that it permitted no refuge, not in the places where people were made to dance to drumbeats so loud that their ears bled, and not in the dark and cramped crawlspaces that he was forced to visit, where emaciated figures lay staring at the darkness with fogged eyes, while tubes pumped colorful fluids into their arms.

He got what rest he could aboard a crowded vehicle that circled those streets in jerks, finding what path it could through landmarks that changed with lightning speed, making any thought of a defined route ridiculous. He felt compassion for the man at the front of the vehicle, who gave the impression of being seated but could have been an amputee as the lower half of him was firmly imbedded in the machinery. It was clear that this man was supposed to be controlling it somehow, but it was just as obviously controlling him, as his wrists were shackled to the wheel he held and its sudden movements tugged his arms along, prompting a series of pained grunts. There was no way any man could have directed a vehicle through the constantly changing madness, but it was nevertheless work that was demanded of him, and so the captive driver sat, his eyes desperately fixed on the road ahead.

In the morning, he was directed back to work, and spent another day in drudgery there, and from there was sent back out into the city streets, and from there to an apartment not quite his old one but similar to it in its utter lack of character, there to spend another night watching the images on the screen.

He realized that the city never stored anybody in the same place twice, that it instead found whatever was convenient to its own needs, which made sense given that its constant shifting meant the destruction and reconstruction of all old places once they were no longer of use. But it also meant that no place was ever familiar, and that no place was ever home. It meant that he was unable to form friendships or alliances with anyone he met, never feel himself any more than a part of the machine, never know anything but the constant disorientation and exhaustion. No wonder the faces he saw on his fellow cogs in the machine were always teetering on the edge of madness! No wonder half of them mumbled to themselves, or, given a few seconds of freedom, tore at their own flesh! No wonder that the simple problems he daily faced at his workstation constantly grew more and more difficult for him, why even the constant prodding of metal fingers could not stop the time it took him to perform his simple tasks from elongating, until the day he was unable to contribute at all, and that day the floor beneath him opened up and he slid down a chute that eventually deposited him in a filthy alley very much like the one from his first day here.

On that day, he found himself serving the city in yet another capacity: as abject example. For clothing, he was provided rags that appeared to have marinated in the stench of unwashed human being; for food, he was provided whatever garbage the mechanisms of the city deposited on the curb beside him; for activity, he was provided substances of various sorts that kept him stinking and unthinking. This was actually preferable to doing something more obviously useful, because it slowed his thoughts down to a mere trickle and allowed for self-awareness only when his next dose of oblivion drew near. Oh, occasionally he became aware that he’d soiled himself again, or that somebody dressed almost as shabbily as himself was being directed by prods from the surrounding architecture to steal his shoes, but for the most part he lay wherever he was placed, heavy-lidded, staring up at the day or night sky, muttering incomprehensibly whenever the fresher and more respectable citizens of the city were driven to step over him or to recoil at the sight of him.

Even lying in his stupor, he knew exactly what was going through their heads when they encountered him: that he was there as warning, as a vivid illustration of what could happen to anybody who didn’t serve the city’s needs. He smiled up at them and said, in various levels of sobriety, that this honestly wasn’t too bad, compared to doing the problems in the cubicles. But his language was not their language and they heard what he said only as unintelligible muttering, which was also the point.

This, too, lasted for months.

And then one day a metallic arm extruded itself from the wall, formed a noose that circled him by the neck, and yanked him upward. Standing, steadied until he could manage the balance on his own, he was then directed through an opening that was first a shadowed alleyway like the one where he’d lived for so long and then, the further he walked, more and more a respectable corridor with white walls and bright lights. He was forced into another room where his rags were torn from his body by more metal arms and then into a shower stall where the accumulated filth of months was washed away. After a few more clarifying substances were pumped into his veins, unwanted sanity returned, and he wanted to scream at the city for giving him a gift of such little use. But, as always, his protests were useless, and he endured being groomed, dressed, and propelled back into the corridor, where another trudge of what felt like multiple miles awaited.

What he eventually encountered was a long rectangular glass window breaking up the monotony of the wall to his right, and as he drew closer, the sight on the other side of that window: a vast room filled with dozens of cribs in which dozens of tiny newborn infants lay sleeping or squirming or bawling their lungs out, while various metallic servitors tended to them.

For the second time, the city spoke to him. “These are your children.”

For the first time in months, he thought of the woman he had known for one day, and he stared through the clear glass at all the babies who he had fathered and who would now be raised by the city to fulfill their places there. They would spend their whole lives being controlled at every moment, never knowing free will at any moment, never getting to experience the satisfactions of a full life. He began to pound on the glass, not having a plan, knowing only that this could not be allowed. His first blow inflicted spidery cracks on the glass, and his second made those cracks worse, but then the window slid to his right, and he found himself pounding on the solid wall where none of his blows could do any damage.

The city spoke again. “Your services are no longer required.” He turned his head and saw the window sealing up as it receded up the corridor, and he began to run, even as it picked up speed and began to recede faster than he could possibly follow, as desperately as he ran, as much as he punished legs grown weak from months of near-inactivity by forcing them to propel him on what he already knew to be a futile chase.

He was running for less than a minute before he felt a fresh and almost forgotten sensation against the soles of his feet: grass. He had not noticed when his shoes evaporated off his feet nor when the floor retreated in a semicircle where he stood, and now that he did, he understood that the city had gotten what it wanted from him and now desired nothing more to do with him. From his perspective, it was packing up, folding itself away, the walls sliding shut and releasing more and more of the landscape it had usurped, now a few arm’s-lengths from him and now a distance farther than he could run in a sprint, the walls churning and mixing and pulling away and abandoning. The white corridor was buried now, separated from him by little bits and pieces he recognized as roadway or dining room or mattress or workplace, by windows and brickface and alley and moving figures on screens, all fleeing him, as if he were an infection that it needed to escape as soon as possible.

The city-free hole he occupied grew in diameter no matter how hard he tried to catch up with the churning maelstrom of grinding gears and building parts, until a gap opened up behind him, revealing bare earth. The neighborhoods to his left and right rushed past him with a speed he could not begin to match, until they were just elements of that ever-changing, amorphous wall of activity now heading into the far distance faster than any man could run.

In minutes, it was just an undifferentiated gray blob in the distance, only recognizable as a city by the spires that rose and fell with every heartbeat; not long after that, it was gone, driven by an urgency that must have made sense to itself but not to him or to anyone unlucky enough to be desired as a permanent citizen.

He ran until his lungs failed him, and then he walked, until he encountered the one thing other than himself that the city had left in its wake: his spear.

He picked it up. It weighed the same. The city had even repaired its sole defect, a chip that had formed when it had once struck ribs instead of soft flesh. That was, he decided, a considerate gesture, even if one not worth everything he had been through.

Of what had happened to him in all that time, he understood almost nothing.

Of what would happen now to his “wife” and to his children, he understood even less, and it was with the practicality of a solitary man of the grasslands that he shook his head and wrote them off as tragedies that he could not help, that if he wanted to survive from now on, he would now have to work on forgetting.

But now that the beast responsible for consuming so many months of his life was but a dot in the distance, he could only sum up the experience in one crystal epiphany, that he’d return to many times in the days to come.

He was not made for life in a big city.

©2018 by Adam-Troy Castro. | Art © 2018 by Alan Bao.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Adam-Troy Castro made his first non-fiction sale to SPY magazine in 1987. His 26 books to date include four Spider-Man novels, 3 novels about his profoundly damaged far-future murder investigator Andrea Cort, and 6 middle-grade novels about the dimension-spanning adventures of young Gustav Gloom. The penultimate installment in the series, Gustav Gloom and the Inn of Shadows (Grosset and Dunlap) came out in August 2015. The finale appeared in August 2016. Adam’s darker short fiction for grownups is highlighted by his most recent collection, Her Husband’s Hands And Other Stories (Prime Books). Adam’s works have won the Philip K. Dick Award and the Seiun (Japan), and have been nominated for eight Nebulas, three Stokers, two Hugos, and, internationally, the Ignotus (Spain), the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire (France), and the Kurd-Laßwitz Preis (Germany). He lives in Florida with his wife Judi and either three or four cats, depending on what day you’re counting and whether Gilbert’s escaped this week.

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

Golubash, Or Wine-Blood-War-Elegy

Catherynne M. Valente | 4570 words

The difficulties of transporting wine over interstellar distances are manifold. Wine is, after all, like a child. It can bruise. It can suffer trauma—sometimes the poor creature can recover; sometimes it must be locked up in a cellar until it learns to behave itself. Sometimes it is irredeemable. I ask that you greet the seven glasses before you tonight not as simple fermented grapes, but as the living creatures they are, well-brought up, indulged but not coddled, punished when necessary, shyly seeking your approval with clasped hands and slicked hair. After all, they have come so very far for the chance to be loved.

Welcome to the first public tasting of Domaine Zhaba. My name is Phylloxera Nanut, and it is the fruit of my family’s vines that sits before you. Please forgive our humble venue—surely we could have wished for something grander than a scorched pre-war orbital platform, but circumstances, and the constant surveillance of Château Marubouzu-Débrouillard and their soldiers have driven us to extremity. Mind the loose electrical panels and pull up a reactor husk—they are inert, I assure you. Spit onto the floor—a few new stains will never be noticed. As every drop about to pass your lips is wholly, thoroughly, enthusiastically illegal, we shall not stand on ceremony. Shall we begin?

2583 Sud-Côtê-du-Golubash (New Danube)

The colonial ship Quintessence of Dust first blazed across the skies of Avalokitesvara two hundred years before I was born, under the red stare of Barnard’s Star, our second solar benefactor. Her plasma sails streamed kilometers long, like sheltering wings. Simone Nanut was on that ship. She, alongside a thousand others, looked down on their new home from that great height, the single long, unfathomably wide river that circumscribed the globe, the golden mountains prickled with cobalt alders, the deserts streaked with pink salt.

How I remember the southern coast of Golubash; I played there, and dreamed there was a girl on the invisible opposite shore, and that her family, too, made wine and cowered like us in the shadow of the Asociación.

My friends, in your university days did you not study the manifests of the first colonials, did you not memorize their weight-limited cargo, verse after verse of spinning wheels, bamboo seeds, lathes, vials of tailored bacteria, as holy writ? Then perhaps you will recall Simone Nanut and her folly: She used her pitiful allotment of cargo to carry the clothes on her back and a tangle of ancient Maribor grapevine, its roots tenderly wrapped and watered. Mad Slovak witch they all thought her, patting those tortured, battered vines into the gritty yellow soil of the Golubash basin. Even the Hyphens were sure the poor things would fail.

There were only four of them on all of Avalokitesvara, immensely tall, their watery triune faces catching the old red light of Barnard’s flares, their innumerable arms fanned out around their terribly thin torsos like peacocks’ tails. Not for nothing was the planet named for a Hindu god with eleven faces and a thousand arms. The colonists called them Hyphens for their way of talking, and for the thinness of their bodies. They did not understand then what you must all know now, rolling your eyes behind your sleeves as your hostess relates ancient history, that each of the four Hyphens was a quarter of the world in a single body, that they were a mere outcropping of the vast intelligences which made up the ecology of Avalokitesvara, like one of our thumbs or a pair of lips.

Golubash, I knew. To know more than one Hyphen in a lifetime is rare. Officially, the great river is still called New Danube, but eventually my family came to understand, as all families did, that the river was the flesh and blood of Golubash, the fish his-her-its thoughts, the seaweed his-her-its nerves, the banks a kind of thoughtful skin.

Simone Nanut put vines down into the body of Golubash. He-She-It bent down very low over Nanut’s hunched little form, arms akimbo, and said to her: “That will not work-take-thrive-bear fruit-last beyond your lifetime.”

Yet work-take-thrive they did. Was it a gift to her? Did Golubash make room, between what passes for his-her-its pancreas and what might be called a liver, for foreign vines to catch and hold? Did he, perhaps, love my ancestor in whatever way a Hyphen can love? It is impossible to know, but no other Hyphen has ever allowed Earth-origin flora to flourish, not Heeminspr the high desert, not Julka the archipelago, not Niflamen the soft-spoken polar waste. Not even the northern coast of the river proved gentle to grape. Golubash was generous only to Simone’s farm, and only to the southern bank. The mad red flares of Barnard’s Star flashed often and strange, and the grapes pulsed to its cycles. The rest of the colony contented themselves with the native root-vegetables, something like crystalline rutabagas filled with custard, and the teeming rock-geese whose hearts in those barnacled chests tasted of beef and sugar.

• • • •

In your glass is an ’83 vintage of that hybrid vine, a year which should be famous, would be, if not for rampant fear and avarice. Born on Earth, matured in Golubash. It is 98% Cabernet, allowing for mineral compounds generated in the digestive tract of the Golubash river. Note its rich, garnet-like color, the gravitas of its presence in the glass, the luscious, rolling flavors of blackberry, cherry, peppercorn, and chocolate, the subtle, airy notes of fresh straw and iron. At the back of your tongue, you will detect a last whisper of brine and clarygrass.

The will of Simone Nanut swirls in your glass, resolute-unbroken-unmoveable-stone.

2503 Abbaye de St. CIR, Tranquilité, Neuf-Abymes

Of course, the 2683 vintage, along with all others originating on Avalokitesvara, were immediately declared not only contraband but biohazard by the Asociación de la Pureza del Vino, whose chairman was and is a scion of the Marubouzu clan. The Asociación has never peeked out of the pockets of those fabled, hoary Hokkaido vineyards. When Château Débrouillard shocked the wine world, then relatively small, by allowing their ancient vines to be grafted with Japanese stock a few years before the first of Salvatore Yuuhi’s gates went online, an entity was created whose tangled, ugly tendrils even a Hyphen would call gargantuan.

Nor were we alone in our ban. Even before the first colony on Avalokitesvara, the lunar city of St. Clair-in-Repose, a Catholic sanctuary, had been nourishing its own strange vines for a century. In great glass domes, in a mist of temperature and light control, a cloister of monks, led by Fratre Sebastién Perdue, reared priceless Pinot vines and heady Malbecs, their leaves unfurling green and glossy in the pale blue light of the planet that bore them. But monks are perverse, and none more so than Perdue. In his youth, he was content with the classic vines, gloried in the precision of the wines he could coax from them. But in his middle age, he committed two sins. The first involved a young woman from Hipparchus, the second was to cut their orthodox grapes with Tsuki-Bellas, the odd, hard little berries that sprang up from the lunar dust wherever our leashed bacteria had been turned loose in order to make passable farmland as though they had been waiting, all that time, for a long drink of rhizomes. Their flavor is somewhere between a blueberry and a truffle, and since genetic sequencing proved it to be within the grape family, the monks of St. Clair deemed it a radical source of heretofore unknown wonders.

Hipparchus was a farming village where Tsuki-Bellas grew fierce and thick. It does not do to dwell on Brother Sebastién’s motives.

What followed would be repeated in more varied and bloodier fashions two hundred years hence. Well do I know the song. For Château Marubouzu-Débrouillard and her pet Asociación had partnered with the Coquil-Grollë Corporation in order to transport their wines from Earth to orbiting cities and lunar clusters. Coquil-Grollë, now entirely swallowed by Château M-D, was at the time a soda company with vast holdings in other foodstuffs, but the tremendous weight restrictions involved in transporting unaltered liquid over interlunar space made strange bedfellows. The precious M-D wines could not be dehydrated and reconstituted—no child can withstand such sadism. Therefore, foul papers were signed with what was arguably the biggest business entity in existence, and though it must have bruised the rarified egos of the children of Hokkaido and Burgundy, they allowed their shy, fragile wines to be shipped alongside Super-Cola-nade! and Bloo Bomb. The extraordinary tariffs they paid allowed Coquil-Grollë to deliver their confections throughout the bustling submundal sphere.

The Asociación writ stated that adulterated wines could, at best, be categorized as fruit-wines, silly dessert concoctions that no vintner would take seriously, like apple-melon-kiwi wine from a foil-sac. Not only that, but no tariffs had been paid on this wine, and therefore Abbé St. Clair could not export it, even to other lunar cities. It was granted that perhaps, if taxes of a certain (wildly illegal) percentage were applied to the price of such wines, it might be possible to allow the monks to sell their vintages to those who came bodily to St. Clair, but transporting it to Earth was out of the question at any price, as foreign insects might be introduced into the delicate home terroir. No competition with the house of Débrouillard could be broached, on that world or any other.

Though in general, wine resides in that lofty category of goods which increase in demand as they increase in price, the lockdown of Abbé St. Clair effectively isolated the winery, and their products simply could not be had—whenever a bottle was purchased, a new Asociación tax would be introduced, and soon there was no possible path to profit for Perdue and his brothers. Past a certain point, economics became irrelevant—there was not enough money anywhere to buy such a bottle.

Have these taxes been lifted? You know they have not, sirs. But Domaine Zhaba seized the ruin of Abbé St. Clair in 2916, and their cellars, neglected, filthy, simultaneously worthless and beyond price, came into our tender possession.

What sparks red and black in the erratic light of the station status screens is the last vintage personally crafted by Fratre Sebastién Perdue. It is 70% Pinot Noir, 15% Malbec, and 15% forbidden, delicate Tsuki-Bella. To allow even a drop of this to pass your lips anywhere but under the Earthlit domes of St. Clair-in-Repose is a criminal act. I know you will keep this in mind as you savor the taste of corporate sin.

It is lighter on its feet than the Côté-du-Golubash, sapphire sparking in the depths of its dark color, a laughing, lascivious blend of raspberry, chestnut, tobacco, and clove. You can detect the criminal fruit—ah, there it is, madam, you have it!—in the mid-range, the tartness of blueberry and the ashen loam of mushroom. A clean, almost soapy waft of green coffee bean blows throughout. I would not insult it by calling it delicious—it is profound, unforgiving, and ultimately, unforgiven.

2790 Domaine Zhaba, Clos du Saleeng-Carolz, Cuvée Cheval

You must forgive me, madam. My pour is not what it once was. If only it had been my other arm I left on the ochre fields of Centauri B! I have never quite adjusted to being suddenly and irrevocably left-handed. I was fond of that arm—I bit my nails to the quick; it had three moles and a little round birthmark, like a drop of spilled syrah. Shall we toast to old friends? In the war they used to say: Go, lose your arm. You can still pour. But if you let them take your tongue, you might as well die here.

By the time Simone Nanut and her brood, both human and grape, were flourishing, the Yuuhi gates were already bustling with activity. Though the space between gates was vast, it was not so vast as the spaces between stars. Everything depended on them, colonization, communication, and of course, shipping. Have any of you seen a Yuuhi gate? I imagine not, they are considered obsolete now, and we took out so many of them during the war. They still hang in space like industrial mandalas, titanium and bone—in those days an organic component was necessary, if unsavory, and we never knew whose marrow slowly yellowed to calcified husks in the vacuum. The pylons bristled with oblong steel cubes and arcs of golden filament shot across the tain like violin bows—all the gold of the world commandeered by Salvatore Yuuhi and his grand plan. How many wedding rings hurled us all into the stars? I suppose one or two of them might still be functional. I suppose one or two of them might still be used by poor souls forced underground, if they carried contraband, if they wished not to be seen.

The 2790 is a pre-war vintage, but only just. The Asociación de la Pureza del Vino, little more than a paper sack Château Marubouzu-Debrouillard pulled over its head, had stationed . . . well, they never called them soldiers, nor warships, but they were not there to sample the wine. Every wine-producing region from Luna to the hydroponic orbital agri-communes found itself graced with inspectors and customs officials who wore no uniform but the curling M-D seal on their breasts. Every Yuuhi gate was patrolled by armed ships bearing the APV crest.

It wasn’t really necessary.

Virtually all shipping was conducted under the aegis of the Coquil-Grollë Corporation, so fat and clotted with tariffs and taxes that it alone could afford to carry whatever a heart might desire through empty space. There were outposts where chaplains used Super Cola-nade! in the Eucharist, so great was their influence. Governments rented space in their holds to deliver diplomatic envoys, corn, rice, even mail, when soy-paper letters sent via Yuuhi became terribly fashionable in the middle of the century. You simply could not get anything if C-G did not sell it to you, and the only wine they sold was Marubouzu-Débrouillard.

I am not a mean woman. I will grant that though they boasted an extraordinary monopoly, the Debrouillard wines were and are of exceptional quality. Their pedigrees will not allow them to be otherwise. But you must see it from where we stand. I was born on Avalokitesvara and never saw Earth till the war. They were forcing foreign, I daresay alien liquors onto us when all we wished to do was to drink from the land which bore us, from Golubash, who hovered over our houses like an old radio tower, fretting and wringing his-her-its hundred hands.

Saleeng-Carolz was a bunker. It looked like a pleasant cloister, with lovely vines draping the walls and a pretty crystal dome over quaint refectories and huts. It had to. The Asociación inspectors would never let us set up barracks right before their eyes. I say us, but truly I was not more than a child. I played with Golubash—with the quicksalmon and the riverweed that were no less him than the gargantuan thin man who watched Simone Nanut plant her vines three centuries past and helped my uncles pile up the bricks of Saleeng-Carolz. Hyphens do not die, any more than continents do.

We made weapons and stored wine in our bunker. Bayonets at first, and simple rifles, later compressed-plasma engines and rumblers. Every other barrel contained guns. We might have been caught so easily, but by then, everything on Avalokitesvara was problematic in the view of the Asociación. The grapes were tainted, not even entirely vegetable matter, grown in living Golubash. In some odd sense, they were not even grown, but birthed, springing from his-her-its living flesh. The barrels, too, were suspect, and none more so than the barrels of Saleeng-Carolz.

Until the APV inspectors arrived, we hewed to tradition. Our barrels were solid cobalt alder, re-cedar, and oakberry. Strange to look at for an APV man, certainly, gleaming deep blue or striped red and black, or pure white. And of course they were not really wood at all, but the fibrous musculature of Golubash, ersatz, loving wombs. They howled biohazard, but we smacked our lips in the flare-light, savoring the cords of smoke and apple and blood the barrels pushed through our wine. But in Saleeng-Carolz, my uncle, Grel Nanut, tried something new.

What could be said to be Golubash’s liver was a vast flock of shaggy horses—not truly horses, but something four-legged and hoofed and tailed that was reasonably like a horse—that ran and snorted on the open prairie beyond the town of Nanut. They were essentially hollow, no organs to speak of, constantly taking in grass and air and soil and fruit and fish and water and purifying it before passing it industriously back into the ecology of Golubash.

Uncle Grel was probably closer to Golubash than any of us. He spent days talking with the tall, three-faced creature the APV still thought of as independent from the river. He even began to hyphenate his sentences, a source of great amusement. We know now that he was learning. About horses, about spores and diffusion, about the life-cycle of a Hyphen, but then we just thought Grel was in love. Grel first thought of it, and secured permission from Golubash, who bent his ponderous head and gave his assent-blessing-encouragement-trepidation-confidence. He began to bring the horses within the walls of Saleeng-Carolz, and let them drink the wine deep, instructing them to hold it close for years on end.

In this way, the rest of the barrels were left free for weapons.

• • • •

This is the first wine closed up inside the horses of Golubash: 60% Cabernet, 20% Syrah, 15% Tempranillo, 5% Petit Verdot. It is specifically banned by every planet under APV control, and possession is punishable by death. The excuse? Intolerable biological contamination.

This is a wine that swallows light. Its color is deep and opaque, mysterious, almost black, the shadows of closed space. Revel in the dance of plum, almond skin, currant, pomegranate. The musty spike of nutmeg, the rich, buttery brightness of equine blood and the warm, obscene swell of leather. The last of the pre-war wines—your execution in a glass.

2795 Domaine Zhaba, White Tara, Bas-Lequat

Our only white of the evening, the Bas-Lequat is an unusual blend, predominately Chardonnay with sprinklings of Tsuki-Bella and Riesling, pale as the moon where it ripened.

White Tara is the second moon of Avalokitesvara, fully within the orbit of enormous Green Tara. Marubouzu-Débrouillard chose it carefully for their first attack. My mother died there, defending the alder barrels. My sister lost her legs.

Domaine Zhaba had committed the cardinal sin of becoming popular, and that could not be allowed. We were not poor monks on an isolated moon, orbiting planet-bound plebeians. Avalokitesvara has four healthy moons and dwells comfortably in a system of three habitable planets, huge new worlds thirsty for rich things, and nowhere else could wine grapes grow. For a while Barnarders had been eager to have wine from home, but as generations passed and home became Barnard’s System, the wines of Domaine Zhaba were in demand at every table, and we needed no glittering Yuuhi gates to supply them. The APV could and did tax exports, and so we skirted the law as best we could. For ten years before the war began, Domaine Zhaba wines were given out freely, as “personal” gifts, untaxable, untouchable. Then the inspectors descended, and stamped all products with their little Prohibido seal, and, well, one cannot give biohazards as birthday presents.

The whole thing is preposterous. If anything, Earth-origin foodstuffs are the hazards in Barnard’s System. The Hyphens have always been hostile to them; offworld crops give them a kind of indigestion that manifests in earthquakes and thunderstorms. The Marubouzu corporals told us we could not eat or drink the things that grew on our own land, because of possible alien contagion! We could only order approved substances from the benevolent, carbonated bosom of Coquil-Grollë, which is Château Marubouzu-Débrouillard, which is the Asociación de la Pureza del Vino, and anything we liked would be delivered to us all the way from home, with a bow on it.

The lunar winery on White Tara exploded into the night sky at 3:17 a.m. on the first of Julka, 2795. My mother was testing the barrels—no wild ponies on White Tara. Her bones vaporized before she even understood the magnitude of what had happened. The aerial bombing, both lunar and terrestrial, continued past dawn. I huddled in the Bas-Lequat cellar, and even there I could hear the screaming of Golubash, and Julka, and Heeminspr, and poor, gentle Niflamen, as the APV incinerated our world.

• • • •

Two weeks later, Uncle Grel’s rumblers ignited our first Yuuhi gate.

• • • •

The color is almost like water, isn’t it? Like tears. A ripple of red pear and butterscotch slides over green herbs and honey-wax. In the low range, you can detect the delicate dust of blueberry pollen, and beneath that, the smallest suggestion of crisp lunar snow, sweet, cold, and vanished.

2807 Domaine Zhaba, Grelport, Hul-Nairob

Did you know, almost a thousand years ago, the wineries in Old France were nearly wiped out? A secret war of soil came close to annihilating the entire apparatus of wine-making in the grand, venerable valleys of the old world. But no blanketing fire was at fault, no shipping dispute. Only a tiny insect: Daktulosphaira Vitifoliae Phylloxera. My namesake. I was named to be the tiny thing that ate at the roots of the broken, ugly, ancient machinery of Marubouzu. I have done my best.

For a while, the French believed that burying a live toad beneath the vines would cure the blight. This was tragically silly, but hence Simone Nanut drew her title: zhaba, old Slovak for toad. We are the mites that brought down gods, and we are the cure, warty and bruised though we may be.

When my uncle Grel was a boy, he went fishing in Golubash. Like a child in a fairy tale, he caught a great green fish, with golden scales, and when he pulled it into his little boat, it spoke to him.

Well, nothing so unusual about that. Golubash can speak as easily from his fish-bodies as from his tall-body. The fish said: “I am lonely-worried-afraid-expectant-in-need-of-comfort-lost-searching-hungry. Help-hold-carry me.”

After the Bas-Lequat attack, Golubash boiled, the vines burned, even Golubash’s tall-body was scorched and blistered—but not broken, not wholly. Vineyards take lifetimes to replace, but Golubash is gentle, and they will return, slowly, surely. So Julka, so Heeminspr, so kind Niflamen. The burnt world will flare gold again. Grel knew this, and he sorrowed that he would never see it. My uncle took one of the great creature’s many hands. He made a promise—we could not hear him then, but you must all now know what he did, the vengeance of Domaine Zhaba.

The Yuuhi gates went one after another. We became terribly inventive—I could still, with my one arm, assemble a rumbler from the junk of this very platform. We tried to avoid Barnard’s Gate; we did not want to cut ourselves off in our need to defend those worlds against marauding vintners with soda-labels on their jumpsuits. But in the end, that, too, went blazing into the sky, gold filaments sizzling. We were alone. We didn’t win; we could never win. But we ended interstellar travel for fifty years, until the new ships with internal Yuuhi-drives circumvented the need for the lost gates. And much passes in fifty years, on a dozen worlds, when the mail can’t be delivered. They are not defeated, but they are . . . humbled.

An M-D cruiser trailed me here. I lost her when I used the last gate-pair, but now my cousins will have to blow that gate, or else those soda-sipping bastards will know our methods. No matter. It was worth it, to bring our wines to you, in this place, in this time, finally, to open our stores as a real winery, free of them, free of all.

• • • •

This is a port-wine, the last of our tastings tonight. The vineyards that bore the Syrah and Grenache in your cups are wonderful, long streaks of soil on the edges of a bridge that spans the Golubash, a thousand kilometers long. There is a city on that bridge, and below it, where a chain of linked docks cross the water. The maps call it Longbridge; we call it Grelport.

Uncle Grel will never come home. He went through Barnard’s Gate just before we detonated—a puff of sparkling red and he was gone. Home, to Earth, to deliver-safeguard-disseminate-help-hold-carry his cargo. A little spore, not much more than a few cells scraped off a blade of clarygrass on Golubash’s back. But it was enough.

Note the luscious ruby-caramel color, the nose of walnut and roasted peach. This is pure Avalokitesvara, unregulated, stored in Golubash’s horses, grown in the ports floating on his-her-its spinal fluid, rich with the flavors of home. They used to say wine was a living thing—but it was only a figure of speech, a way of describing liquid with changeable qualities. This wine is truly alive, every drop, it has a name, a history, brothers and sisters, blood and lymph. Do not draw away—this should not repulse you. Life, after all, is sweet; lift your glasses, taste the roving currents of sunshine and custard, salt skin and pecan, truffle and caramelized onion. Imagine, with your fingers grazing these fragile stems, Simone Nanut, standing at the threshold of her colonial ship, the Finnish desert stretching out behind her, white and flat, strewn with debris. In her ample arms is that gnarled vine, its roots wrapped with such love. Imagine Sebastién Perdue, tasting a Tsuki-Bella for the first time, on the tongue of his Hipparchan lady. Imagine my Uncle Grel, speeding alone in the dark towards his ancestral home, with a few brief green cells in his hand. Wine is a story, every glass. A history, an elegy. To drink is to hear the story, to spit is to consider it, to hold the bottle close to your chest is to accept it, to let yourself become part of it. Thank you for becoming part of my family’s story.

• • • •

I will leave you now. My assistant will complete any transactions you wish to initiate. Even in these late days, it is vital to stay ahead of them, despite all. They will always have more money, more ships, more bile. Perhaps a day will come when we can toast you in the light, in a grand palace, with the flares of Barnard’s Star glittering in cut crystal goblets. For now, there is the light of the exit hatch, dusty glass tankards, and my wrinkled old hand to my heart.

A price list is posted in the med lab.

• • • •

And should any of you turn Earthwards in your lovely new ships, take a bottle to the extremely tall young lady-chap-entity living-growing-invading-devouring-putting down roots in the Loire Valley. I think he-she-it would enjoy a family visit.

©2010 by Catherynne M. Valente. Originally published in Ventriloquism, PS Publishing. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over two dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, Radiance, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus, and Hugo awards. She has been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of which are human.

The Eyes of the Flood

Susan Jane Bigelow | 1830 words

The river’s in flood again, and it feels like a blessing from God. You emerge from your home, built with wood and plastic scraps of ancient towns, and stand on the green hill high above the rushing waters.

You remember from when you were young that the river would spill over its banks every year, submerging the low-lying land, turning fields that had lain fallow through the darkness and bitter cold of winter into lakes of rushing, wild water. And then when the waters had drained away, the corn could be planted in the deep sediments left behind. The river’s gift.

The first flood after the war had brought black water choked with bricks, scorched wood, crumpled cars, and corpses. You remember the smell of it all during those rare days when the sun came out and the temperature rose and you could venture hesitantly, like a mouse creeping out from under the sofa, from the concrete bunker. You gagged and wept and sighed and raged, but your family below needed food and supplies, so you went to the bloody banks of the river to scavenge what you could. It hadn’t been much.

In the end the radiation and the plague killed them anyway, leaving you alone.

• • • •

You have canoes you’ve made by hollowing out the thick trunks of fallen trees, and you set your newest and sturdiest in the water. Today you will drift south to see what the floods might give you easy access to that you couldn’t reach before. You have your camping supplies—you can stay in the south for weeks until the floods recede. Then you’ll paddle north, against the current, back to your home.

As you set the canoe in the water and shove off, you feel the insistent tug of the far south. You once ventured down to the briny expanse of the Sound, and then west to where the Sound narrowed and the great city began. You turned back at the sight of one of the bridges; it was somehow still intact, but now wrapped in climbing vines. Gnarled trees rose from the roadbed, their branches twisting around the cables.

But barely visible on one of the towers were two faded words painted in red—Go Back.

The words were old, the ones who had scrawled them there long dead, but it had felt like a sign to you. You are careful; it’s why you’ve been alive for so, so long. Or so you believe.

So you turned back.

And as you paddled away, delicate fingers grasped the rusted railings of the bridge, and hungry eyes followed your slow, curving wake.

• • • •

You paddle softly out into the middle of the river, and you wonder about what lies far to the south, in the lands you’ve never seen. Maybe the people there had been better able to survive the winters, the years without sun, the blight, and the poison water and sky. Maybe there or far to the west you might find pockets of survivors like yourself.

That’s the marvel of the Earth, you think, your mind moving in slow, familiar patterns: Life survives. Even now, the trees grow tall and birds sing as your canoe slips by. They are not the same trees, not the same birds. These trees have long, delicate leaves, almost like pine, and the birds are smaller and meaner. The creatures in the vast forest stretching from the ocean to the mountains are different, too, in subtle and strange ways. You leave them alone, and they return the favor, but at night you can sometimes hear their high, eerie calls.

• • • •

The ruins of the small river city are just beyond the rapids. The feeder stream there has finally burst free of the concrete that once encased it, and you paddle up until you find a patch of high ground to camp on for the night. You need little food, but still you build a fire and deliberately chew the bark of one of the trees.

When night comes, the sky is full of stars. You watch them, your thoughts slowing to a crawl, and you train your gaze on the new, dazzlingly bright one that appeared only three seasons ago. There was a time when you would have wondered what it was. But now you only accept it. It is. It is here.

Strange things happen in the heavens, they come and they go. They rarely concern you, though they make you feel small and grateful for your life. Once, your life ran with the phases of the moon, but the moon is rarely visible these days, and you stopped bleeding long ago.

You form a picture of God in your mind and you circle your arms above your head in prayer. Then, warmed by the fire, you drift away.

As you dream, you are watched.

• • • •

The flood has grown in the night, and by the time the morning dawns, gray and rainy, it has come halfway to your shelter. You are glad. You decide to venture further up the narrow lake made by the swollen stream, paddling silently between the whip-thin trunks of the young trees.

Then, suddenly, you draw in your breath and ease your paddle out of the water, all senses alert. There are long, narrow, parallel tracks in the mud by the water.

The canoe drifts, just wood borne by the stream, as your mind spins. This is new. You don’t recognize this.

But some part of you, some ancient memory combined with new insight, does know. A vehicle has been here.

You are not alone.

You float on the water, paralyzed, and for the first time in many, many years, you are afraid.

• • • •

The last time you were not alone was when the few remaining survivors from the eastern farm towns came to your shelter, their eyes hollow and hungry, begging for food. You gladly gave them what little you had; they tried to kill you anyway. You were impossibly alive, impossibly healthy. Your eyes shone with something they didn’t recognize, something they were afraid of.

They were easy to fool, and easy to outrun. They were half dead already. The world was extinguishing humanity’s light, a desperate act of self-preservation.

You have not seen anyone since, and you have been alive for a very, very long time.

• • • •

You are careful. You want to flee, to let the current carry you back to the river, to hide and let the floodwaters rise and cover the bank.

But you cock your head, looking and listening. You see and hear nothing new, nothing moves in the distance, there is no sound of an engine or a voice. You dip your paddle in the water and redirect the canoe ever so slightly in the direction of the shore. The canoe runs aground, hitting the mud with a dull, scraping thunk.

You take what you need, including a sharpened piece of rock, and follow the tracks.

• • • •

You don’t know why you are still alive. Your husband, your children, and everyone else died so long ago that their bones are dust. But instead of being burned by acid rain, poisoned by the air and water, or rotted away by the fast, relentless, and pitiless plague, you remained yourself. You lived.

You know you’re different, that you somehow in the moments after the blast became something else, but you don’t know why or what. You used to spend long days by the river staring at your reflection, wondering, as your jaw lengthened, your hair receded, your eyes changed color, and your ears grew scaled and long.

It occurs to you that the person with the vehicle might know why. You are not certain you want to know, though, after all this time has passed. You’re not happy, exactly, nor are you sad or worried. But you are calm, and you are balanced. You have few needs. You exist, and you will endure.

You are careful. You aren’t sure that you should risk what you have. What good would knowing do, anyway?

Yet still you follow the tracks carved into the muddy ground as they lead into the forest.

• • • •

The trees here grow thick; this is high ground and good soil, so they are ancient. Some of them, the tallest with the thickest trunks, have been here nearly as long as you. You place a fond hand on one as you pass. It is good to endure.

The tracks lead into a clearing ahead. You know there was no clearing there before, and you hide behind one of the huge, old trees to decide what to do next. To endure is good; to risk and perhaps be cut down is wasteful, wrong, and too like the past.

Isn’t it?

You listen. And then you hear a voice.

• • • •

You remember voices, and you remember language. You used to talk to yourself, endless streams of thought given voice, but you fell silent long ago. You are not sure what your voice sounds like, or even if you can still use it. You think not in spoken or written language, but in grand pictures and emotions and scenes. To you, God is a flowing river, a bright sun, and life pushing up from beneath the once-tainted ground. God is a bomb, a plague, a shower of rain that stings, a beach choked with bodies and rubble. God is fresh air and putrescence, a fish in the water and the spear that pierces its scaly sides.

But God is not a voice. You listen. You do not know the sounds. You dare to look, and you see movement.

You see the vehicle, narrow and silver and graceful. And beside it, you see yourself.

• • • •

But this is not you.

This is like you, but taller, more graceful, and, you think, older. This one has scaled ears, a long jaw, a shining bald scalp, and wide eyes the color of sunset. They are beautiful.

They turn to where you are hiding, and speak.

You want to run. You are careful! This is danger! You must be like the tree, you must endure, you must get away.

But something, some older impulse, some piece of you that existed before the first bomb put the first city to the fire, keeps you rooted where you are.

They walk toward you, and you are afraid.

But you stand your ground. You finger the sharp rock you have.

They hold out a webbed hand, so like your own. Your grip tightens on the rock.

They do not move. The trees blow in the breeze. Behind you, the river’s flood begins to recede.

You make a decision. You are not a tree, and you are not a bomb. You drop the rock.

Then you reach out, and at last, after so long, your hand closes on mine.

©2018 by Susan Jane Bigelow.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Susan Jane Bigelow is a writer, librarian, and political columnist from Connecticut. She is the author of five science fiction novels from small press Candlemark & Gleam, including the Extrahumans and Grayline Sisters series. Her short fiction can be found in the magazines Strange Horizons, The Toast, and Apex Magazine, and in the anthologies War Stories and the Lambda Awards-winning The Collection: Short Fiction From the Transgender Vanguard. Her weekly column on Connecticut politics can be found at CTNewsJunkie.com. She lives in northern Connecticut with her wife and a herd of very fuzzy cats, where she spends her days writing and playing video games.

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

Someday

James Patrick Kelly | 4950 words

Daya had been in no hurry to become a mother. In the two years since she’d reached childbearing age, she’d built a modular from parts she’d fabbed herself, thrown her boots into the volcano, and served as blood judge. The village elders all said she was one of the quickest girls they had ever seen—except when it came to choosing fathers for her firstborn. Maybe that was because she was too quick for a sleepy village like Third Landing. When her mother, Tajana, had come of age, she’d left for the blue city to find fathers for her baby. Everyone expected Tajana would stay in Halfway, but she had surprised them and returned home to raise Daya. So once Daya had grown up, everyone assumed that someday she would leave for the city like her mother, especially after Tajana had been killed in the avalanche last winter. What did Third Landing have to hold such a fierce and able woman? Daya could easily build a glittering new life in Halfway. Do great things for the colony.

But everything had changed after the scientists from space had landed on the old site across the river, and Daya had changed most of all. She kept her own counsel and was often hard to find. That spring she had told the elders that she didn’t need to travel to gather the right semen. Her village was happy and prosperous. The scientists had chosen it to study and they had attracted tourists from all over the colony. There were plenty of beautiful and convenient local fathers to take to bed. Daya had sampled the ones she considered best, but never opened herself to blend their sperm. Now she would, here in the place where she had been born.

She chose just three fathers for her baby. She wanted Ganth because he was her brother and because he loved her above all others. Latif because he was a leader and would say what was true when everyone else was afraid. And Bakti because he was a master of stories and because she wanted him to tell hers someday.

She informed each of her intentions to make a love feast, although she kept the identities of the other fathers a secret, as was her right. Ganth demanded to know, of course, but she refused him. She was not asking for a favor. It would be her baby, her responsibility. The three fathers, in turn, kept her request to themselves, as was custom, in case she changed her mind about any or all of them. A real possibility—when she contemplated what she was about to do, she felt separated from herself.

That morning she climbed into the pen and spoke a kindness to her pig Bobo. The glint of the knife made him grunt with pleasure and he rolled onto his back, exposing the tumors on his belly. She hadn’t harvested him in almost a week and so carved two fist-sized maroon swellings into the meat pail. She pressed strips of sponge root onto the wounds to stanch the bleeding and when it was done, she threw them into the pail as well. When she scratched under his jowls to dismiss him, Bobo squealed approval, rolled over, and trotted off for a mud bath.

She sliced the tumors thin, dipped the pieces in egg and dragged them through a mix of powdered opium, pepper, flour, and bread crumbs, then sautéed them until they were crisp. She arranged them on top of a casserole of snuro, parsnips, and sweet flag, layered with garlic and three cheeses. She harvested some of the purple blooms from the petri dish on the windowsill and flicked them on top of her love feast. The aphrodisiacs produced by the bacteria would give an erection to a corpse. She slid the casserole into the oven to bake for an hour while she bathed and dressed for babymaking.

Daya had considered the order in which she would have sex with the fathers. Last was most important, followed by first. The genes of the middle father—or fathers, since some mothers made babies with six or seven for political reasons—were less reliably expressed. She thought starting with Ganth for his sunny nature and finishing with Latif for his looks and good judgment made sense. Even though Bakti was clever, he had bad posture.

Ganth sat in front of a fuzzy black and white screen with his back to her when she nudged the door to his house open with her hip. “It’s me. With a present.”

He did not glance away from his show—the colony’s daily news and gossip program about the scientists—but raised his forefinger in acknowledgment.

She carried the warming dish with oven mitts to the huge round table that served as his desk, kitchen counter, and sometime closet. She pushed aside some books, a belt, an empty bottle of blueberry kefir, and a Fill Jumphigher action figure to set her love feast down. Like her own house, Ganth’s was a single room, but his was larger, shabbier, and built of some knotty softwood.

Her brother took a deep breath, his face pale in the light of the screen. “Smells delicious.” He pressed the off button; the screen winked and went dark.

“What’s the occasion?” He turned to her, smiling. “Oh.” His eyes went wide when he saw how she was dressed. “Tonight?”

“Tonight.” She grinned.

Trying to cover his surprise, he pulled out the pocket watch he’d had from their mother and then shook it as if it were broken. “Why, look at the time. I totally forgot that we were grown up.”

“You like?” She weaved her arms and her ribbon robe fluttered.

“I was wondering when you’d come. What if I had been out?”

She nodded at the screen in front of him. “You never miss that show.”

“Has anyone else seen you?” He sneaked to the window and peered out. A knot of gawkers had gathered in the street. “What, did you parade across Founders’ Square dressed like that? You’ll give every father in town a hard on.” He pulled the blinds and came back to her. He surprised her by going down on one knee. “So which am I?”

“What do you think?” She lifted the cover from the casserole to show that it was steaming and uncut.

“I’m honored.” He took her hand in his and kissed it. “Who else?” he said. “And you have to tell. Tomorrow everyone will know.”

“Bakti. Latif last.”

“Three is all a baby really needs.” He rubbed his thumb across the inside of her wrist. “Our mother would approve.”

Of course, Ganth had no idea of what their mother had really thought of him.

Tajana had once warned Daya that if she insisted on choosing Ganth to father her baby, she should dilute his semen with that of the best men in the village. A sweet manner is fine, she’d said, but babies need brains and a spine.

“So, dear sister, it’s a sacrifice . . .,” he said, standing, “. . . but I’m prepared to do my duty.” He caught her in his arms.

Daya squawked in mock outrage.

“You’re not surprising the others, are you?” He nuzzled her neck.

“No, they expect me.”

“Then we’d better hurry. I hear that Eldest Latif goes to bed early.” His whisper filled her ear. “Carrying the weight of the world on his back tires him out.”

“I’ll give him reason to wake up.”

He slid a hand through the layers of ribbons until he found her skin. “Bakti, on the other hand, stays up late, since his stories weigh nothing at all.” The flat of his hand against her belly made her shiver. “I didn’t realize you knew him that well.”

She tugged at the hair on the back of Ganth’s head to get his attention. “Feasting first,” she said, her voice husky. Daya hadn’t expected to be this emotional. She opened her pack, removed the bottle of chardonnay, and poured two glasses. They saluted each other and drank, then she used the spatula she had brought—since she knew her brother wouldn’t have one—to cut a square of her love feast. He watched her scoop it onto a plate like a man uncertain of his luck. She forked a bite into her mouth. The cheese was still melty—maybe a bit too much sweet flag. She chewed once, twice, and then leaned forward to kiss him. His lips parted and she let the contents of her mouth fall into his. He groaned and swallowed. “Again.” His voice was thick. “Again and again and again.”

Afterward they lay entangled on his mattress on the floor. “I’m glad you’re not leaving us, Daya.” He blew on the ribbons at her breast and they trembled. “I’ll stay home to watch your baby,” he said. “Whenever you need me. Make life so easy, you’ll never want to go.”

It was the worst thing he could have said; until that moment she had been able to keep from thinking that she might never see him again. He was her only family, except for the fathers her mother had kept from her. Had Tajana wanted to make it easy for her to leave Third Landing? “What if I get restless here?” Daya’s voice could have fit into a thimble. “You know me.”

“Okay, maybe someday you can leave.” He waved the idea away. “Someday.”

She glanced down his lean body at the hole in his sock and dust strings dangling from his bookshelf. He was a sweet boy and her brother, but he played harder than he worked. Ganth was content to let the future happen to him; Daya needed to make choices, no matter how hard. “It’s getting late.” She pressed her cheek to his. “Do me a favor and check on Bobo in the morning? Who knows when I’ll get home.”

By the time she kissed Ganth goodbye, it was evening. An entourage of at least twenty would-be spectators trailed her to Old Town; word had spread that the very eligible Daya was bringing a love feast to some lucky fathers. There was even a scatter of tourists, delighted to witness Third Landing’s quaint mating ritual. The locals told jokes, made ribald suggestions and called out names of potential fathers. She tried to ignore them; some people in this village were so nosy.

Bakti lived in one of the barn-like stone dormitories that the settlers had built two centuries ago across the river from their landing spot. Most of these buildings were now divided into shops and apartments. When Daya finally revealed her choice by stopping at Bakti’s door, the crowd buzzed. Winners of bets chirped, losers groaned. Bakti was slow to answer her knock, but when he saw the spectators, he seized her arm and drew her inside.

Ganth had been right: she and Bakti weren’t particularly close. She had never been to his house, although he had visited her mother on occasion when she was growing up. She could see that he was no better a housekeeper than her brother, but at least his mess was all of a kind. The bones of his apartment had not much changed from the time the founders had used it as a dormitory; Bakti had preserved the two walls of wide shelves that they had used as bunks. Now, however, instead of sleeping refugees from Genome Crusades, they were filled with books, row upon extravagant row. This was Bakti’s vice; not only did he buy cheap paper from the village stalls, he had purchased hundreds of hardcovers on his frequent trips to the blue city. They said he even owned a few print books that the founders had brought across space. There were books everywhere, open on chairs, chests, the couch, stacked in leaning towers on the floor.

“So you’ve come to rumple my bed?” He rearranged his worktable to make room for her love feast. “I must admit, I was surprised by your note. Have we been intimate before, Daya?”

“Just once.” She set the dish down. “Don’t pretend that you don’t remember.” When she unslung the pack from her back, the remaining bottles of wine clinked together.

“Don’t pretend?” He spread his hands. “I tell stories. That’s all I do.”

“Glasses?” She extracted the zinfandel from her pack.

He brought two that were works of art; crystal stems twisted like vines to flutes as delicate as a skim of ice. “I recall a girl with a pansy tattooed on her back,” he said.

“You’re thinking of Pandi.” Daya poured the wine.

“Do you sing to your lovers?”

She sniffed the bouquet. “Never.”

They saluted each other and drank.

“Don’t rush me now,” he said. “I’m enjoying this little game.” He lifted the lid of the dish and breathed in. “Your feast pleases the nose as much as you please the eye. But I see that I am not your first stop. Who else have you seen this night?”

“Ganth.”

“You chose a grasshopper to be a father of your child?”.

“He’s my brother.”

“Aha!” He snapped his fingers. “Now I have it. The garden at Tajana’s place? I recall a very pleasant evening.”

She had forgotten how big Bakti’s nose was. “As do I.” And his slouch was worse than ever. Probably from carrying too many books.

“I don’t mind being the middle, you know.” He took another drink of wine. “Prefer it actually—less responsibility that way. I will do my duty as a father, but I must tell you right now that I have no interest whatsoever in bringing up your baby. And her next father is?”

“Latif. Next and last.”

“A man who takes fathering seriously. Good, he’ll balance out poor Ganth. I will tell her stories, though. Your baby girl. That’s what you hope for, am I right? A girl?”

“Yes.” She hadn’t realized it until he said it. A girl would make things much easier.

He paused, as if he had just remembered something. “But you’re supposed to leave us, aren’t you? This village is too tight a fit for someone of your abilities. You’ll split seams, pop a button.”

Why did everyone keep saying these things to her? “You didn’t leave.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I wasn’t as big as I thought I was. Besides, the books keep me here. Do you know how much they weigh?”

“It’s an amazing collection.” She bent to the nearest shelf and ran a finger along the spines of the outermost row. “I’ve heard you have some from Earth.”

“Is this about looking at books or making babies, Daya?” Bakti looked crestfallen.

She straightened, embarrassed. “The baby, of course.”

“No, I get it.” He waved a finger at her. “I’m crooked and cranky and mothers shut their eyes tight when we kiss.” He reached for the wine bottle. “Those are novels.” He nodded at the shelf. “But no, nothing from Earth.”

They spent the better part of an hour browsing. Bakti said Daya could borrow some if she wanted. He said reading helped pregnant mothers settle. Then he told her the story from one of them. It was about a boy named Huckleberry Flynn, who left his village on Novy Praha to see his world but then came back again. “Just like your mother did,” he said. “Just like you could, if you wanted. Someday.”

“Then you could tell stories about me.”

“About this night,” he agreed, “if I remember.” His grin was seductive. “Will I?”

“Have you gotten any books from them?” She glanced out the dark window toward the river. “Maybe they’d want to trade with you?”

“Them?” he said. “You mean our visitors? Some, but digital only. They haven’t got time for nostalgia. To them, my books are as quaint as scrolls and clay tablets. They asked to scan the collection, but I think they were just being polite. Their interests seem to be more sociological than literary.” He smirked. “I understand you have been spending time across the river.”

She shrugged. “Do you think they are telling the truth?”

“About what? Their biology? Their politics?” He gestured at his library. “I own one thousand, two hundred and forty-three claims of truth. How would I know which is right?” He slid the book about the boy Huckleberry back onto the shelf. “But look at the time! If you don’t mind, I’ve been putting off dinner until you arrived. And then we can make a baby and a memory, yes?”

By the time Daya left him snoring on his rumpled bed, the spectators had all gone home for the night. There was still half of the love feast left but the warming dish was beginning to dry it out. She hurried down the Farview Hill to the river.

Many honors had come to Latif over the years and with them great wealth. He had first served as village eldest when he was still a young man, just thirty-two years old. In recent years, he mediated disputes for those who did not have the time or the money to submit to the magistrates of the blue city. The fees he charged had bought him this fine house of three rooms, one of which was the parlor where he received visitors. When she saw that all the windows were dark, she gave a cry of panic. It was nearly midnight and the house was nothing but a shadow against the silver waters.

On the shore beyond, the surreal bulk of the starship beckoned.

Daya didn’t even bother with front door. She went around to the bedroom and stood on tiptoes to knock on his window. Tap-tap.

Nothing.

“Latif.” Tap-tap-tap. “Wake up.”

She heard a clatter within. “Shit!” A light came on and she stepped away as the window banged open.”

“Who’s there? Go away.”

“It’s me, Daya.”

“Do you know what time it is? Go away.”

“But I have our love feast. You knew this was the night, I sent a message.”

“And I waited, but you took too damn long.” He growled in frustration. “Can’t you see I’m asleep? Go find some middle who’s awake.”

“No, Latif. You’re my last.”

He started with a shout. “You wake me in the middle of night . . .” Then he continued in a low rasp. “Where’s your sense, Daya, your manners? You expect me to be your last? You should have said something. I take fathering seriously.”

Daya’s throat closed. Her eyes seemed to throb.

“I told you to move to the city, didn’t I? Find fathers there.” Latif waited for her to answer. When she didn’t, he stuck his head out the window to see her better. “So instead of taking my best advice, now you want my semen?” He waited again for a reply; she couldn’t speak. “I suppose you’re crying.”

The only reply she could make was a sniffle.

“Come to the door then.”

She reached for his arm as she entered the darkened parlor but he waved her through to the center of the room. “You are rude and selfish, Daya.” He shut the door and leaned against it. “But that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person.”

He turned the lights on and for a moment they stood blinking at one another. Latif was barefoot, wearing pants but no shirt. He had a wrestler’s shoulders, long arms, hands big as dinner plates. Muscles bunched beneath his smooth, dark skin, as if he might spring at her. But if she read his eyes right, his anger was passing.

“I thought you’d be pleased.” She tried a grin. It bounced off him.

“Honored, yes. Pleased, not at all. You think you can just issue commands and we jump? You have the right to ask, and I have the right to refuse. Even at the last minute.”

At fifty-three, Latif was still one of the handsomest men in the village. Daya had often wondered if that was one reason why everyone trusted him. She looked for some place to put the warming dish down.

“No,” he said, “don’t you dare make yourself comfortable unless I tell you to. Why me?”

She didn’t have to think. “Because you have always been kind to me and my mother. Because you will tell the truth, even when it’s hard to hear. And because, despite your years, you are still the most beautiful man I know.” This time she tried a smile on him. It stuck. “All the children you’ve fathered are beautiful, and if my son gets nothing but looks from you, that will still be to his lifelong advantage.” Daya knew that in the right circumstance, even men like Latif would succumb to flattery.

“You want me because I tell hard truths, but when I say you should move away, you ignore me. Does that make sense?”

“Not everything needs to make sense.” She extended her love feast to him. “Where should I put this?”

He glided across the parlor, kissed her forehead, and accepted the dish from her. “Do you know how many have asked me to be last father?”

“No.” She followed him into the great room.

“Twenty-three,” he said. “Every one spoke to me ahead of time. And of those, how many I agreed to?”

“No idea.”

“Four.” He set it on a round wooden table with a marble inset.

“They should’ve tried my ambush strategy.” She shrugged out of her pack. “I’ve got wine.” She handed him the bottle of Xino she had picked for him.

“Which you’ve been drinking all night, I’m sure. You know where the glasses are.” He pulled the stopper. “And who have you been drinking with?”

“Ganth, first.”

Latif tossed the stopper onto the table. “I’m one-fourth that boy’s father . . .” He rapped on the tabletop. “. . . but I don’t see any part of me in him.”

“He’s handsome.”

“Oh, stop.” He poured each of them just a splash of the Xino and offered her a glass. She raised an eyebrow at his stinginess.

“It’s late and you’ve had enough,” he said. “It is affecting your judgment. Who else?”

“Bakti.”

“You surprise me.” They saluted each other with their glasses. “Does he really have Earth books?”

“He says not.”

“He makes too many stories up. But he’s sound—you should have started with him. Ganth is a middle father at best.”

Both of them ran out of things to say then. Latif was right. She had finished the first two bottles with the other fathers, and had shared a love feast with them, and had made love. She was heavy with the weight of her decisions and her desires. She felt like she was falling toward Latif. She pulled the cover off the warming dish and cut a square of her love feast into bite-sized chunks.

“Just because I’m making a baby doesn’t mean I can’t go away,” she said.

“And leave the fathers behind?”

“That’s what my mother did.”

“And did that make her happy? Do you think she had an easy life?” He shook his head. “No, you are tying yourself to this village. This little, insignificant place. Why? Maybe you’re lazy. Or maybe you’re afraid. Here, you are a star. What would you be in the blue city?”

She wanted to tell him that he had it exactly wrong. That he was talking about himself, not her. But that would have been cruel. This beautiful, foolish man was going to be the last father of her baby. “You’re right,” Daya said. “It’s late.” She piled bits of the feast onto a plate and came around to where he was sitting. She perched on the edge of the table and gazed down at him.

He tugged at one of the ribbons of her sleeve and she felt the robe slip off her shoulder. “What is this costume anyway?” he said. “You’re wrapped up like some kind of present.”

She didn’t reply. Instead she pushed a bit of the feast across her plate until it slid onto her fork. They watched each other as she brought it to her open mouth, placed it on her tongue. The room shrank. Clocks stopped.

He shuddered. “Feed me, then.”

Latif’s pants were still around his ankles when she rolled off him. The ribbon robe dangled off the headboard of his bed. Daya gazed up at the ceiling, thinking about the tangling sperm inside her. She concentrated as her mother had taught her, and she thought she felt her cervix close and her uterus contract, concentrating the semen. At least, she hoped she did. The sperm of the three fathers would smash together furiously, breaching cell walls, exchanging plasmids. The strongest conjugate would find her eggs and then . . .

“What if I leave the baby behind?” she said.

“With who?” He propped himself up on an elbow. “Your mother is dead and no . . .”

She laid a finger on his lips. “I know, Latif. But why not with a father? Ganth might do it, I think. Definitely not Bakti. Maybe even you.”

He went rigid. “This is an idea you get from the scientists? Is that the way they have sex in space?”

“They don’t live in space; they just travel through it.” She followed a crack in the plaster of his ceiling with her eyes. “Nobody lives in space.” A water stain in the corner looked like a face. A mouth. Sad eyes. “What should we do about them?”

“Do? There is nothing to be done.” He fell back onto his pillow. “They’re the ones the founders were trying to get away from.”

“Two hundred years ago. They say things are different.”

“Maybe. Maybe these particular scientists are more tolerant, but they’re still dangerous.”

“Why? Why are you so afraid of them?”

“Because they’re unnatural.” The hand at her side clenched into a fist. “We’re the true humans, maybe the last. But they’ve taken charge of evolution now, or what passes for it. We have no say in the future. All we know for sure is that they are large and still growing and we are very, very small. Maybe this lot won’t force us to change. Or maybe someday they’ll just make us want to become like them.”

She knew this was true, even though she had spent the last few months trying not to know it. The effort had made her weary. She rolled toward Latif. When she snuggled against him, he relaxed into her embrace.

It was almost dawn when she left his house. Instead of climbing back up Farview Hill, she turned toward the river. Moments later, she stepped off Mogallo’s Wharf into the skiff she had built when she was a teenager.

She had been so busy pretending that this wasn’t going to happen that she was surprised to find herself gliding across the river. She could never have had sex with the fathers if she had acknowledged to herself that she was going to go through with it. Certainly not with Ganth. And Latif would have guessed that something was wrong. She had the odd feeling that there were two of her in the skiff, each facing in opposite directions. The one looking back at the village was screaming at the one watching the starship grow ever larger. But there is no other Daya, she reminded herself. There is only me.

Her lover, Roberts, was waiting on the spun-carbon dock that the scientists had fabbed for river traffic. Many of the magistrates from the blue city came by boat to negotiate with the offworlders. Roberts caught the rope that Daya threw her and took it expertly around one of the cleats. She extended a hand to hoist Daya up, caught her in an embrace, and pressed her lips to Daya’s cheek.

“This kissing that you do,” said Roberts. “I like it. Very direct.” She wasn’t very good at it, but she was learning. Like all the scientists, she could be stiff at first. They didn’t seem all that comfortable in their replaceable bodies. Roberts was small as a child, but with a woman’s face. Her blonde hair was cropped short, her eyes were clear and faceted. They reminded Daya of her mother’s crystal.

“It’s done,” said Daya.

“Yes, but are you all right?

“I think so.” She forced a grin. “We’ll find out.”

“We will. Don’t worry, love, I am going to take good care of you. And your baby.”

“And I will take care of you.”

“Yes.” She looked puzzled. “Of course.”

Roberts was a cultural anthropologist. She had explained to Daya that all she wanted was to preserve a record of an ancient way of life. A culture in which there was still sexual reproduction.

“May I see that?”

Daya opened her pack and produced the leftover bit of the love feast. She had sealed it in a baggie that Roberts had given her. It had somehow frozen solid.

“Excellent. Now we should get you into the lab before it’s too late. Put you under the scanner, take some samples.” This time she kissed Daya on the mouth. Her lips parted briefly and Daya felt Roberts’ tongue flick against her teeth. When Daya did not respond, she pulled back.

“I know this is hard now. You’re very brave to help us this way, Daya.” The scientist took her hand and squeezed. “But someday they’ll thank you for what you’re doing.” She nodded toward the sleepy village across the river. “Someday soon.”

©2014 by James Patrick Kelly. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Patrick Kelly has won the Hugo, Nebula and Locus awards. His most recent publication is the novel Mother Go; a new collection, The Promise of Space, is forthcoming from Prime Books in 2018. In 2016, Centipede Press published a career retrospective in its Masters of Science Fiction series entitled James Patrick Kelly. He has published over a hundred stories and his fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. With John Kessel he is co-editor of Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology, Kafkaesque: Stories Inspired by Franz Kafka, The Secret History Of Science Fiction, Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology, and Rewired: The Post Cyberpunk Anthology. He writes a column on the internet for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.  Jim’s website is
jimkelly.net.

Auburn

Joanna Ruocco | 6740 words

The unhappily married Lady Abergavenny sat alone at the banquet table waiting for her husband. Her husband, of course, was Lord Abergavenny. The big, brave, handsome Lord Abergavenny. The night was dark. Supper had gotten a bad chill on the banquet table. The goose had goose bumps (this was unsurprising), but so did the potatoes and the turnips and the hunks of dark, sour bread, the region’s specialty.

“Ghastly,” said Lady Abergavenny. It was a word she used often. She stood to gaze out the window at the region. Somewhere in the thick, forested hills of the region, Lord Abergavenny was striding bravely, leading a black horse loaded down with nets and guns and jars of pickling liquors and cameras and tripods and astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamps for which Lord Abergavenny was soon to apply for a patent.

Lord Abergavenny. Explorer. Inventor. Never back in time for supper.

It was difficult for Lady Abergavenny to pronounce the name of the region. The name sounded guttural and slightly wispy, like choking in the morning on the flakes of a scone. It was in the bleakest corner of the tsardom. In letters to her sister, the humble Mrs. Cottenham, Lady Abergavenny called the region “the Cold and Quaggy Waste and Woodland” and she called her situation there “that Most Unfortunate Circumstance” or “the Plight of Which You Know.” When she finished a letter she blotted her tears on the paper and signed off thusly:

Fondest Love from your Too Wretched for Further Words Sister,

The Unhappily Married Lady Abergavenny

The Abergavennys were newly arrived in the region. They had taken up residence in the summer house of an Imperial officer in a village on the edge of the forest. The Imperial officer was dead. The house was drafty and dank. The wind made it shudder and wheeze and filled the rooms with the sound of muted sobbing. Lord Abergavenny had claimed the master bedroom as his study and had taken the next largest room, the saber room, as his sleeping chamber. Lady Abergavenny slept in the attic, which wasn’t as moldy as the cellar.

Lady Abergavenny returned to the table, ate a few skinned potatoes and a dry piece of bread (the butter was too cold for spreading) and a mouthful of the lightest dark meat she could find on the goose. Then she took up the candle.

“I am quite finished,” said Lady Abergavenny to the footman. He was very large for a footman, with long, dirty nails tipping his wide, hairy hands, but footman he must be for every night he put the plates on the table and cleared them when Lady Abergavenny retired. The evening jacket he wore was rather like a footman’s jacket and his hair was heavily powdered (although perhaps it was floured). He nodded his head and Lady Abergavenny left the dining hall and ascended the winding stair. The guttering candle threw shadows up and down and all around.

“Ghastly,” she murmured as the shadows wheeled and swarmed. “Ghastly.”

In the attic, she put the candle on the windowsill. She lit another candle on her writing desk. The candles cast far more shadows than lights and the lights they cast were very wan indeed. When Lady Abergavenny counted her troubles (sometimes she called them her “Woes” or “Regrets”), she counted among them the fact that Lord Abergavenny’s astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamps were not for domestic use. This was a rule of Lord Abergavenny. He used them in his research only, which is to say (as he did say), “in pursuit of science and in service to the crown.” Lady Abergavenny sat down in a rickety chair to perform her nightly labor. One hundred strokes with the boar-bristle brush through her long and shining auburn hair. This too was a rule of Lord Abergavenny.

Lady Abergavenny’s long and shining auburn hair was her one beauty. Her sole attraction. She had been born Malvina Potts, daughter of Dunston Potts, fruit and nut seller, and of Georgina Potts, wife of Dunston Potts, fruit and nut seller. The Pottses had many hard little nuts and many more hard little fruits (they didn’t sell as well as the nuts) but not very much in the way of money, living space, or good countenance to split between them. Lady Abergavenny nee Potts had crooked teeth and a snub nose and hard, little eyes (this last she had inferred from a customer who compared her eyes to filberts) and she was rather freckled and short in the bargain. She was not a lovely girl after any fashion, but she was a friendly, lively sort of girl, and she had always been a great favorite in the neighborhood. It was widely agreed, to her credit, that she never bagged a light pound of nuts. No one ever expected her to marry below a coal-heaver. But then no one expected her to marry above a clerk.

That she married Lord Abergavenny is still the talk of Market Street and of the wives of fruit and nut sellers everywhere.

Their courtship was brief. Lord Abergavenny stopped at the corner where the future Lady Abergavenny stood selling fruits and nuts and asked for a lock of her hair.

“Oh no, sir,” the future Lady Abergavenny had said. “It’s attached to me head!” In those days, she was less refined in her speech.

“Very well,” replied Lord Abergavenny. “I’ll take the head as well.” And he married her straight off. The wedding was a happy event (the marriages of even the unhappily married often are) and even though Lady Abergavenny didn’t know very much of her Lord, she knew he was big, brave, and handsome and that was plenty. On the wedding night, Lord Abergavenny had handed Lady Abergavenny out of the carriage in front of his mansion in Belgravia (a rolling stop) and the carriage, with Lord Abergavenny inside of it, rattled away across the cobblestones. Lady Abergavenny had sat up waiting for him, eating wedding cake in the kitchen with Mrs. Howard, the housekeeper.

“I never expected my husband to carry me across the threshold,” said Lady Abergavenny as Mrs. Howard polished a set of silver eggcups. “But I did expect that he’d cross the threshold himself and not disappear into the night as soon as the vows were spoken without so much as a by your leave. Maybe I’m over-sensitive?”

Mrs. Howard frowned.

“I’m not over-sensitive?” asked Lady Abergavenny.

“That’s your fourth piece of cake, my lady,” said Mrs. Howard.

“I have heard a lady should eat a like a bird,” said Lady Abergavenny thoughtfully. “But I’ve also heard a lady should do what she wants. I’m not sure how to reconcile those two principles. Perhaps once I’ve been a lady for longer . . .” She picked an icing flower from the top of her cake and popped it in her mouth.

“You might not be a lady for long,” said Mrs. Howard. She gave Lady Abergavenny a significant look. “But it’s not for me to say.” She dropped her polish rag and stood, rattling her keys.

“You shouldn’t be downstairs,” she said. “I will take you to your chambers.”

“There’s still more cake,” said Lady Abergavenny. “And if Lord Abergavenny returns, I want to know right away.”

“He won’t return,” said Mrs. Howard curtly. “Not tonight. He’s gone to his country estate to set his affairs in order. He’ll meet you on the steamer tomorrow evening.”

“The steamer,” echoed Lady Abergavenny.

“To America,” said Mrs. Howard, staring at her with something like pity. “You do seem rather stout . . .”

Lady Abergavenny snorted and cut another, even larger wedge of cake.

“Of heart,” continued Mrs. Howard. “You may last longer than I’d imagine. Longer than the previous Ladies Abergavenny.”

Lady Abergavenny examined her fork.

“Longer than all of them?” she asked, licking the tines with a great show of unconcern. “Surely not all of them.”

“I said may,” said Mrs. Howard.

“But there were quite of few of them?” prodded Lady Abergavenny. “Four?”

“Nine,” said Mrs. Howard.

“Oh yes, now I remember,” said Lady Abergavenny. “That’s what Lord Abergavenny had told me.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Howard. “I’ll see if your fire has been properly laid. Betty will bring you up when you’re ready.”

And so began the unhappy phase of Lady Abergavenny’s marriage. Betty never came to fetch her and Lady Abergavenny slept at the kitchen table and finished the wedding cake for breakfast. At eleven, the carriage arrived and she was whisked away to the steamer and off to America.

Now, a year later, Lady Abergavenny had no idea whether or not she had lasted longer than the other Ladies Abergavenny. Lord Abergavenny didn’t mention them, or much of anything else.

Ninety-nine, one hundred. Lady Abergavenny laid down the boar bristle brush. She blew out the candle on the windowsill, changed out of her high-necked gown into an equally high-necked nightdress, and climbed into bed. Somewhere in the region, Lord Abergavenny was still striding. A wolf howled. Lady Abergavenny slept.

When she woke, the cold summer sun was sending pale rays through the attic window. She rose. She performed her morning labor. One hundred strokes with the boar-bristle brush through her long and shining auburn hair. She changed from her high-necked nightdress into an equally high-necked gown, and descended the stair to breakfast alone at the banquet table on goose croquettes and tea that tasted of smoke.

“It’s a fine day,” said Lady Abergavenny to the footman. He was standing exactly where he had been standing the night before. He had large, wet sea-green eyes that he blinked at her as he scratched his beard with his long, dirty nails. His beard was powdered white as his hair, which struck Lady Abergavenny as excessively formal given his generally uncleanly and disheveled appearance.

“You never can tell what counts as propriety in foreign lands,” thought Lady Abergavenny. “In some places a footman’s livery includes beard powder, in other places it really doesn’t do to have any beard at all.” The footman’s chest was very broad and he must have once attempted to button his coat and so popped the buttons off. His undershirt was white and looked puffed up like a freshly filled down pillow.

“Sun,” said Lady Abergavenny. “The rays of the sun are so heartening, a boon to the soul in despond.” She smiled a non-desponding smile (unconvincing) at the footman, but he was not looking at her. He never looked at her. He plucked a louse from his beard and crushed it beneath his boot. Lady Abergavenny sighed. When she counted her Woes, she counted “dearth of conversation” among them. As Malvina Potts, daughter of Dunston Potts, fruit and nut seller, she had conversed on many topics of interest to the buyers of fruits and nuts, on the qualities and availabilities of various fruits and nuts certainly, but also on other things, horses, rakes, music hall stars, the weather, hair oils, steamships, crime, the Protestant succession, what have you. It had been so enjoyable.

She heard creaking above her head and knew that Lord Abergavenny was pacing in his study, dictating the findings from the previous night to his secretary, Mr. Middleton. It was Lord Abergavenny’s habit to dictate in his study before heading out again into the region to recommence his striding.

“I believe Lord Abergavenny suffers from the monomania,” said Lady Abergavenny to the footman. She usually reserved this type of commentary for her letters to her sister, the humble Mrs. Cottenham, but the footman was in closer proximity than her sister. Plus he never scolded her for complaining of life with a lord.

“Pardon me, Malvina,” the humble Mrs. Cottenham had written in her last letter. “But how you can go on and on about your Unfortunate Circumstance and your Woes and the Bitter Draughts that Blast the Buds on the Nuptial Bower is quite beyond my humble powers of comprehension. You are married, let me remind you, to a PEER of the realm and though he has taken you beyond the boundaries of said realm you are nonetheless maintained in a state of LUXURY and INDOLENCE unimaginable to your poor relations who are, let me remind you, working their fingers to the bones to make ends meet as this has been an IMPOSSIBLE YEAR FOR NUTS and your very own father has been reduced to selling ballads he writes himself about LURID EVENTS and your very own mother his wife is dying of shame and Mr. Cottenham and James and Matilda and I are working downriver for the aniline dyers and our hands are a dreadful PURPLE color that can’t be washed off and Matilda is always itching her face and her face is now SPOTTED WITH PURPLE. When you are sitting to your supper at a great big table laid with turbots and turtles and lobsters and truffles and sauces and jellies and creams and pasties and clarets and coffees and everything nice and Regretting this and Lamenting that remember if you can that you might be BREAKING YOUR TEETH on old nuts and that your face and hands are not purple and remember your sister who bears her own WOES without so much as a fiddle-dee-dee.”

The humble Mrs. Cottenham had written this letter in purple ink and enclosed a ballad. The ballad was very lurid, about a woman in Newcastle who fell in love with a veal cutlet.

Moving on.

“He is singularly focused on his research,” continued Lady Abergavenny to the footman. “Even among naturalists, explorers, and inventors, I do believe such dedication is uncommon. Before we arrived in this region, we spent two months in the Amazon jungles, and before that we spent two months in the Himalayas and before that two months in the North American forests. Lord Abergavenny is searching for a particular kind of bird, of course. The Boffin bird.”

Lady Abergavenny more or less believed this. Why not a Boffin bird? Monomaniacs could fixate on just about anything. Lord Abergavenny had shipped several corrugated, perforated black metal crates back to London over the course of their travels and when she had once asked him, “My lord, what creature bellows so horribly to find itself enclosed in that crate?” he had answered immediately, “The Boffin bird,” and gone striding off to attend to a windlass. Lady Abergavenny had never dared to press her eye to a perforation in the crate, but she gathered from the din that Boffin birds were very, very big. Big and not too pleased with the accommodations the big, brave, handsome Lord Abergavenny had seen fit to provide.

The footman’s nose was slightly askew and he had a finger in his ear but the ear without the finger inside of it was cocked in her direction. Lady Abergavenny felt encouraged.

“The Boffin bird is of great value to science,” she said. “Lord Abergavenny hunts this bird on royal commission. Why, you ask?”

The footman had not asked. He never asked. He was the silent type. But Lady Abergavenny was warming to her theme. “Something about its wings is of the utmost importance.” She hooked her thumbs and flapped her fingers to emphasize the point. She was proud of the point, as it was entirely of her own surmise. “Examining the wings of live Boffin birds will enable humans to unlock the mystery of flight.”

“Lady Abergavenny!” A deep baritone interrupted Lady Abergavenny’s speech, the deep baritone that issued from the chest of Lord Abergavenny. He was standing in the doorway in his dun-colored research jacket and buff-colored trousers and kid-colored boots of soft kid. His black hair waved around his handsome face and his blue eyes were narrowed. “It is half ten. You should be in the clearing in the forest, not yammering to a Mongolian butler.”

Lady Abergavenny stood quickly and fell back into the chair with a cry. Tears leapt to her eyes. She had been sitting on her long and shining auburn hair and it had jerked her neck horribly.

“You were sitting on your hair,” observed Lord Abergavenny.

“I wasn’t,” said Lady Abergavenny.

“You were,” said Lord Abergavenny. “Did you loosen any strands?”

“Not a one,” said Lady Abergavenny standing slowly with an odd torsion of her hips. Her hair swung free behind her. Lord Abergavenny was still regarding her narrowly, his finely modeled lips pressed together.

“Perhaps you would like a croquette?” asked Lady Abergavenny. “And some tea? The footman,” she hesitated.

“Max,” she said. She rather thought his name would be something like Max.

“Max our first footman could pour you some tea.”

Lord Abergavenny now chose to curl his finely modeled lips. “I have a flagon of tea and a tin of biscuits in my saddlebags. A man does not pursue science and serve the crown by taking tea in a drawing room and neither does a man’s wife.” He waved to the footman who was hanging his head, playing with the buttonholes in his jacket. “Clear these plates,” said Lord Abergavenny. “Lady Abergavenny is off to the forest.” And he strode into the room, gripped her am, and steered her through the door. He released her in the front hall where she donned her green cloak and picked up The Foxes of Silicon Fen, a sentimental novel that kept her company throughout her long, dull hours in the forest.

Outside, Lord Abergavenny bowed abruptly.

“Good day, Lady Abergavenny,” he said and mounted his horse and thundered away down the road through the dark wooden houses of the village, toward the mountains.

The day really was fine by the standards of the region. The sky was cloudless and white and the wind was blunt and harmless and didn’t claw at the throat of Lady Abergavenny’s cloak.

“I am happily married,” thought Lady Abergavenny as she walked through the village, turning off on a footpath into the forest. “My hands are not purple and my face is not purple and my husband is a peer of the realm. He loves me in his way, or at least he loves my hair, which is rather my crowning glory. While he strides in search of the Boffin bird, I bask in luxury and indolence, which is preferable to standing on cobbles shelling walnuts. I never eat mincemeat but instead exotic foods such as geese and bison and fermented fish and creamy rice dishes richly spiced. My husband requires me to sit each day for hours in a wooded place so that my constitution is improved by the strengthening vapors of the forest. It is all perfectly lovely and I couldn’t be happier. I do rather miss green plums and almonds and I do rather miss long chats with Minda Travers and Jill Baker on Market Street and I do rather miss book shops and sweet shops and music halls and the circus, but I am of course very grateful that I am peeress Lady Abergavenny and not plain Malvina Potts. I do rather miss Malvina Potts.”

This last thought struck Lady Abergavenny like a thunderbolt. It was true. It was ghastly. She missed Malvina Potts.

“No use crying over spilt milk,” said Lady Abergavenny aloud and pushed the thought away. She could be very practical when she needed to be. The trees began to thin and Lady Abergavenny sat on a mossy log in a small clearing to breathe the strengthening vapors of the forest. The trees creaked. The pale rays of sun poked through the dark canopy.

“O the feel of the veal,” hummed Lady Abergavenny. She opened her book, then put it down. She had read The Foxes of Silicon Fen a dozen times and the story was wearing thin.

“It was more than a meal,” hummed Lady Abergavenny. The pale rays of the sun lit up green moss and yellow needles and wet, black bark. Suddenly, she saw it. Between two trees across the clearing. A flash of auburn. Deep, shining, red-gold, unmistakable auburn the same exact shade as Lady Abergavenny’s hair. She caught her breath.

This was not the first time she had seen it, the thing she called The Auburn. She had glimpsed The Auburn in the mountains of India, in the jungles of the Amazon, in the forests of North America. The Auburn peeking from behind a tree or rock or vine or frond. She would wait, holding her breath, for something more to happen. The more that happened had never been much. She might see The Auburn wink out of sight and reappear, yards away, another flash above a berm. She might hear rustling, snapping branches. She might hear, far off, an eerie bellowing. What did she expect to happen? The Auburn to come forward, to take shape, to charge toward her . . .

She tried to remember another line of her father’s ballad. It was Lurid but not without Literary Merits.

“She had her way with the veal on a table of deal . . .” hummed Lady Abergavenny. She picked up her book and pretended to read, peering at the trees over the top of the book. The Auburn had vanished. She heard rustling, snapping branches. The pale rays of sun became paler and the clearing grew dark. She drew her cloak tightly about her. She saw something buff-colored and dun-colored and kid-colored leap between trees.

“My lord?” she called. Sometimes Lord Abergavenny came to check on her during her hours in the forest. He always seemed annoyed when she spotted and hailed him. Perhaps he did not want her to know that he cared. Lords were notoriously reticent with their Ladies about tender feelings. It was the main problem with Lords according to The Foxes of Silicon Fen. That and the pastime of slaughtering foxes.

At that moment, Lord Abergavenny came crashing through the trees. He held something similar to an astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamp but instead of shooting a ray of light it was shooting a snapping blue beam. His black hair was standing on end.

“Lady Abergavenny,” he panted. He fumbled with the device in his hand. The beam vanished. His hair began to drift down around his aristocratic brow.

“Stay where you are,” he said as he backed away again into the trees. “It is only half eleven. You have several more hours to inspire the sweet airs of the forest.”

When she was quite certain he was gone, Lady Abergavenny stood.

“I would rather be married to a veal cutlet,” she said. “There are no two ways about it.” She walked hastily back to the house. The staff did not expect her to return before the usual hour and so she opened the heavy door herself. The hall smelled different than usual. She sniffed. The smell was faint and faintly familiar. What was it? Not one of the regular reeks. Not dark, sour bread and not goose. Not turnips, not beets, not fish, and not stew. It was different, not really even a reek, but a hint of a reek. A light musk. She peeked into the dining room but Max the footman was not there. Instead, Mr. Urquhart, the tiger hunter, was seated at the head of the table with Karthik, his Hindoo servant, standing at attention behind him. Mr. Urquhart was tucking into a goose while supporting his long mustache on a little silver platform attached to a slender silver handle (his own invention, nothing to do with Lord Abergavenny).

“Mr. Urquhart,” cried Lady Abergavenny. “My word, what brings you to—” and she made a noise like choking in the morning on the flakes of a scone. Mr. Urquhart was a childhood friend of Lord Abergavenny. They had stayed in his hunting villa at the foot of the Himalayas. He was most often out hunting tigers, and during the hours she had sat on a stool in the shrubby meadow strengthening her constitution, she had spied him with her husband circling the area, stalking tigers while Lord Abergavenny stalked Boffin birds, Karthik stalking behind them.

“My dear Lady Abergavenny,” said Mr. Uquhart. “I had a run-in with a real man-eater and he did a bang-up job on me. I thought I’d take a break from hunting for the season and ride the engine across the continent. Shouldn’t you be out in the forest? Is it a holiday? I suppose Lord Abergavenny will back soon as well?”

Lady Abergavenny could not answer. Her mouth felt dry and her heart thudded in her chest. She took the glass Karthik handed her and gulped the water. It was a tall glass and she gulped for quite awhile. Finally she finished. She gasped for air and wiped her mouth, staring at Mr. Urquhart. He put down his fork and his mustache platform. His mustache lowered over his mouth like a Venetian blind.

“Karthik,” said Mr. Urquhart. “Help me with my leg.” The Hindoo servant pulled back Mr. Urquhart’s chair. Mr. Urquhart’s left leg stuck out at a straight angle.

“I hope you don’t mind Karthik’s serving luncheon,” said Mr. Urquhart as Karthik rolled up his trouser. “I dismissed your footman. He gave me the willies. There!” Mr. Urquhart rapped on his leg. “Sandalwood! Teak is stronger but this one smelled so wonderful I couldn’t resist. Sniff it.”

Lady Abergavenny bent over and sniffed the wood.

“Wonderful,” she agreed.

“Mr. Urquhart . . .” she hesitated. “I’ve been married to Lord Abergevenny a year now. Happily married,” she added. “What joy!”

Mr. Urquhart winked at her. “Nothing brings the bloom to a lass’s cheek like conjugal harmony.”

Lady Abergavenny grinned in what she hoped was a blooming manner. “And I want to do something special for my husband. He’s known such tragedy.”

Mr. Urquhart nodded at Karthik, who rolled his trouser down and pushed him back toward the goose.

“Nothing steels a man’s resolve like tragedy,” he said and swept up his mustache with the mustache platform so he could once again tuck into the goose.

“Nine tragedies,” said Lady Abergavenny. “All those poor Ladies Abergavenny.”

“Hmmphh,” said Mr. Urquhart around his mouthful of goose.

“Did you know them?” asked Lady Abergavenny in a rush.

“I believe I met some of them,” said Mr. Urquhart, swallowing. “But one was much like another.”

“Oh,” said Lady Abergavenny.

“All that shining auburn hair,” said Mr. Urquhart. “Spectacular.” Lady Abergavenny raised a hand to her own shining auburn hair. She shuddered.

“He adores auburn,” she whispered.

She heard footsteps behind her and whirled around, heart hammering harder than ever. It was only the footman passing by. In profile, his nose seemed straighter than before, but much darker than the rest of his face. He had perhaps been drinking. Lady Abergavenny felt herself in need of a drink as well. Something with more of a kick than just water.

“I’m going to see the cook,” she said to Mr. Urquhart. “To let her know we’ve a guest for dinner.” She hurried after the footman into the kitchen. He really was uncommonly tall. He had to duck or his head would have struck the hanging pots. The kitchen door was open. The cook sat in the yard plucking a goose. She looked up and yelled something. It didn’t sound anything like “Max” but the footman ducked out the kitchen door and trotted over to her. He grabbed a live goose by the neck.

Lady Abergavenny turned quickly away. She rummaged through the kitchen cupboards until she found what she was looking for. She poured a glass of potato wine and guzzled it. She sat down at the narrow table in front of the fire with the empty glass and the bottle in front of her. She took a pull from the bottle. She lifted a lock of her hair and studied it in the firelight. It shone red-gold. It shone like a hearth. Like a beacon. It had attracted a Lord. But what did he want with it? Why did he drag her from forest to jungle to mountain to woodland and waste? She returned the bottle to the cupboard and fixed herself a plate of gingerbread cookies. The cookies were moist and rich and peppery sweet.

“I would most like to be married to a gingerbread cookie,” thought Lady Abergavenny. “Or to a lemon tart. Or to nothing at all.”

She was just stepping out of the kitchen, when the front door banged open and Lord Abergavenny strode through the hall. She hid behind the doorframe. Soon baritone shouts resounded.

“Urquhart!”

“Abergavenny!”

She crept along the hall toward the voices. She had just reached the open door when a tap on her shoulder made her whirl about. Karthik stood behind her. He had a fragrant leg of smoothed sandalwood on one shoulder, a rifle on the other, and a heavy leather valise in one hand.

“Mr. Urquhart’s things,” said Lady Abergavenny, recovering her composure. “You must put them in the spare bedroom.” There was no spare bedroom and so she pondered this conundrum.

“On the second floor,” she said. “It’s really the library. The books have rotted in the damp, but there’s a chesterfield in quite good condition.”

Karthik was exactly her height and he met her eyes evenly.

“Have you seen one?” he whispered.

“Seen one what?” she whispered back, but even as she whispered she thought of it, The Auburn, how it showed itself in flashes. She thought of The Auburn flashing in the fronds on the other side of the river and The Auburn flashing inside the cave mouth in the mountains and The Auburn flashing between quivering conifers in the forest and The Auburn she had seen just that morning flashing across the clearing. She thought of how her husband often appeared as it vanished. The Auburn peeked at her, but it fled from him.

“What is it?” she breathed, but Karthik gave a slight frown. A warning. Lord Abergavenny poked his head into the hall.

“Lady Abergavenny,” he said. “By all means, join us at the table.” He gripped Lady Abergavenny’s wrist and she was jerked into the room. He dragged her to the banquet table and threw her into a chair. She hit the seat hard with her bum and yelped. She whipped her head around furiously and saw Karthik framed in the doorway.

“Steady now,” Karthik’s look seemed to say as he turned to continue on down the hall. Leaving her with Lord Abergavenny and Mr. Urquhart and the cold carcass of a goose. Abandoning her to her Fate. She straightened and glanced at her husband.

“You’re not at the table,” she said. He wasn’t. He was leaning against the wall lighting a cheroot.

“Would it kill you to sit to a meal with your wife?” she asked.

“I like this one,” chuckled Mr. Urquhart. His teeth winked through a gray slat of mustache. “She’s stout . . .”

Lady Abergavenny glared.

“Of heart,” he finished. “I would wager she doesn’t spook easily in the forest. I wonder if the others ran. That might have been what did it. The running.”

“Enough,” said Lord Abergavenny. He had scratches across his high cheekbones and a tear in his dun-colored trousers. He drew back his chair and sat down facing Lady Abergavenny.

“Goose?” She hacked at the goose with the serving knife and tilted the platter so a hunk slid off onto a plate. She was not feeling very ladylike. She was feeling like Malvina Potts. Lord Abergavenny blinked as she shoved the plate toward him.

“Eat,” she said. He lifted a brow and folded his arms across his chest.

“Eat,” she said. “Or I’m through with brushing my hair. I’m through with sitting in the forest. I’m through with traveling from bleak to bleaker to bleakest regions.”

“What would you do instead?” asked Lord Abergavenny. He took a bite of goose. “Where would you go?”

“Home,” said Lady Abergavenny, although she knew she couldn’t go home. No one on Market Street would take kindly to a woman who left a Lord to sell fruits and nuts.

“Ahh,” said Lord Abergavenny. “Home.”

“You could stay with me in Darjeeling,” offered Mr. Urquhart. “Except I’m not there. My leg is there, buried in the garden under the mango tree. You could go and shed tears over the grave of my leg.” He laughed again, unpleasantly. “The tiger is still prowling though. You’d have to be very stout indeed to face the tiger.”

“This is the first time we’ve eaten a meal together,” said Lady Abergavenny to her husband. She picked a glistening black strip of flesh from a bone and chewed it slowly. “It’s our first anniversary. Give or take a day.” It wasn’t easy to keep track of the days in the region. She leaned forward.

“Tell me, my Lord, have I lasted longer than the other Ladies Abergavenny?”

Lord Abergavenny looked at Mr. Urquhart. “What have you been telling her?”

Mr. Urquhart held up his hands. “Nothing, I swear it.”

Lady Abergavenny shrugged. “Happy anniversary,” she said. “I hope you get pecked in the eye by a Boffin bird.”

“I doubt I will,” murmured Lord Abergavenny, looking at her speculatively.

“I am beginning to doubt it as well,” said Lady Abergavenny. And left the room. She almost banged into the footman in the hall. He blinked at her. His eyes were larger and softer than hers but the sea-green shade was really very like.

“I’m sorry, Max,” she said. “I wasn’t looking.” He sketched a slight bow. A flurry of white shook down from his hair. She sneezed. Definitely flour.

“I don’t think they’re ready to have the plates cleared away,” she said. “But if you would clear them away I’d be greatly obliged.”

As she hurried past him, she heard a low rumbling that sounded something like a laugh.

That night the wind sobbed in the attic and in the distance, mingling with the wind, came howls and bellows and wails. Lady Abergavenny sat at her writing desk. She looked at the quill and she looked at the comb. She could write to her sister, the humble Mrs. Cottenham. She could brush her hair, one hundred strokes with the boar-bristle brush. She did neither. She picked up her candle and snuck down the stairs and tiptoed to Lord Abergavenny’s study. The door was shut tight. The light that came through the crack below the door was strong and bright white and did not flicker. That could mean one thing only. He was using the astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamp for domestic illumination.

“Hypocrite,” she muttered. She pressed her ear to the door.

“. . . miracle she hasn’t been ripped limb from limb,” Mr. Urquhart was saying. “She has lasted longer than your other ladies. Do you think it is because she’s stouter of heart? Purer of soul? Simpler? More childlike? I find her a nasty piece of baggage, assuming and shrewish, but their standards are bound to be different.”

“It’s convenient whatever the reason,” said Lord Abergavenny. “Bloody pain in the arse finding replacements. The color has to be just right and they don’t respond to a wig on a gourd, more’s the pity. She’s working out marvelously. They come close enough for me to shock them and net them and ship them off. That’s what matters, isn’t it?”

“Wish a tiger had bitten my leg off,” said Mr. Urquhart. “I can’t tell you how awful . . . the bellowing, the twisting . . .”

“Have some more brandy.” Footsteps, clink of stopper in decanter.

“Cheers.” A glugging sound.

“It must have been awful for the nine of them,” said Mr. Urquhart. “Losing the leg gives me a new appreciation. You’re a cool one, Abergavenny, to bait a trap with your own wives.”

“I marry bait,” came the reply. “What else would I use?”

Lady Abergavenny had had quite enough. She flew down the rest of the stairs and into the kitchen for a knife and into the front hallway for her cloak and out the front door as quickly as she could. The wind tore at the throat of her cloak and blew her long and shining auburn hair behind her like a flame. She ducked her head and ran into the wind. She ran through the village and turned off onto the path through the forest, stumbling over rocks and branches until she half fell into the clearing. She had no candle. She had no astoundingly powerful truncheon-shaped gaslamp. She had no gun or blue shocker to protect her. She had a knife and she raised it high in the night with one hand and held taut a lock of her hair with the other. She struck and she sawed and in one hundred blows she had shorn herself of every auburn strand. Her scalp stung and the cold wind filled her ears like black water.

She gathered the masses of hair and scattered them through underbrush and overgrowth and hung them on thorns and she trampled and kicked at the earth and stamped on the briars until she was satisfied it looked as though her hair had been ripped quite off her body and her body dragged with great violence away through the woodlands and into the waste. Never to be seen again.

She wondered suddenly if the other Ladies Abergavenny had in fact met grisly ends in the forest or if they too had struck and sawed themselves free and fled into the hills. Maybe whatever creatures her husband hunted were gentle and had never hurt any woman at all. Maybe they only ripped the limbs from tiger-hunters and explorers and Lords and other enemies of the natural world. Maybe they only bellowed when pursued or captured.

What were they? All she knew is they were auburn, like she was, and that was plenty. Maybe they weren’t her friends, but they certainly weren’t her enemies.

She stood in the clearing peering about her but it was dark and no direction looked better than any other. She took a step. Then another. She stopped. She heard a step. Then another. Not hers. She saw a light, a candlelight flickering. The footman was creeping toward her across the clearing. His nose was further askew than ever and his sea-green eyes gleamed and so did his hair where the flour had blown away in the wind. His hair gleamed auburn. Lady Abergavenny was stout (of heart) and did not run. She clutched her green cloak about her as he approached. When he was right in front of her, she reached out her hand. Her hand trembled slightly but she reached with steadfast purpose. She ripped off his nose. It was made of putty and tied to his face with thin string. Beneath the fake nose his real nose was flat. Two wide nostrils set in the slope of his face. It wasn’t a human nose. She was very glad, very glad to see it.

“Max,” she said. “You’re one of them.” And then, because, she wasn’t sure what she meant by “them,” and she didn’t want to think of herself and any other as an “us,” she said, “You? And me?”

He held out his wide, filthy, hairy hand and she took it.

“Do you know where we can go?” she asked and he nodded. Flour flurried. She sneezed. Smiled.

“Let’s go there then,” she said. She saw a glimmer of auburn, but it was only a lock of her own hair sailing through the candlelight on the wind. Max started after it and she followed, the two of them chasing after the flashing auburn with the wind at their backs. They left the clearing and the trees closed behind them. The wind extinguished the candle. It was utterly dark, but Max was sure-footed and Lady Abergavenny was, too, and they leaped over tussocks and hummocks and traveled quickly through the woodlands. The village and Lord Abergavenny were every moment farther and farther behind them.

Lady Abergavenny supposed she wasn’t the unhappily married Lady Abergavenny any longer. But she wasn’t plain Malvina Potts again either. She was something different. She held tight to Max’s hand and they leaped faster and faster. She wondered what lay ahead. She wondered who she would find.

©2015 by Joanna Ruocco. Originally published in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joanna Ruocco is the author of several books, including Dan (Dorothy, a publishing project), The Week (The Elephants of British Columbia), and Another Governess / The Least Blacksmith: A Diptych (FC2). She also works pseudonymously as Alessandra Shahbaz (Ghazal in the Moonlight, Midnight Flame), Toni Jones (No Secrets in Spandex), and Joanna Lowell (Dark Season). She is an assistant professor in the English Department at Wake Forest University.

The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births

José Pablo Iriarte | 7540 words

I seem to make an outcast of myself every time I’m a teenager. Which is fine, I guess. I’ll take one good dog and one good friend over being a phony and fitting in.

Alicia points. “There he is, Jamie!”

A couple hundred feet away, our trailer park’s newest resident grabs a box from the van parked in front of his single-wide. He’s gray-haired and buff, like if The Rock were an old man.

Alicia and I are sprawled on top of a wooden picnic table in the park’s rusted old playground.

She frowns, her eyebrows coming together to form a tiny crease above her nose. “I’ve never known anybody who killed someone before.”

I shrug.

“I mean, maybe I have, I guess, but I’ve never known I’ve known them. Know what I mean?”

“No.”

I don’t really care about the new guy, even if he did murder someone once. I’m mostly just out here to not have to listen to old Mrs. Francis concern-trolling my mom. When I was a kid who sometimes acted like a boy and sometimes like a girl, it was “just a phase.” Now that I’m sixteen, it’s “worrying” and “not safe for the younger children” and something we should “talk to a therapist about.”

What Mrs. Francis doesn’t know is that I remember every life I’ve lived for nearly four hundred years—not in detail, but like a book I read once and have a few hazy recollections about. In over a dozen lifetimes I can recall, I’ve been male and female enough times for those words to mean little more to me than a particular shirt—not who I am.

My mom’s too polite to tell a neighbor what she can do with her un-asked-for parenting advice. Trailer walls are thin, though, and if I have to hear it too . . . well, Sabal Palms Trailer Park might end up with two murderers living in it.

Next to me, my dog Meetu nudges my hand with his head, asking for more scritches. He’s supposed to protect me from people who are as bothered by me as Mrs. Francis is, but would rather use their fists to try and fix me. People like Connor Haines, the biggest asshole in the eleventh grade. But the reality is that Meetu is basically a teddy bear trapped in a pit bull’s body.

Alicia shifts on the table. “I can’t believe my mom let him rent here.” Her mother manages the park, so I guess she could have blocked him if she’d wanted to.

“Even ex-murderers gotta live somewhere.”

She gives me her patented don’t-be-an-idiot combination eye roll and headshake that I’ve never seen anybody else quite match. Even when it’s directed at me, I can’t help but grin.

“There’s no such thing as an ‘ex-murderer,’” she says. “Once you kill someone, you’re a murderer.”

I brush my hair out of my face. “He went to jail. He did his time, right? They let him out, so where else is he gonna live?” We’ve certainly had other people with checkered pasts here.

“They shouldn’t have let him out. You take somebody’s life, you ought to rot for the rest of yours.”

Meetu shoves his giant head under my arm and rests it on my lap. Guess I’m not going anywhere for a while.

“There’s no heaven,” Alicia declares. “The Jesus freaks are wrong about that. There’s nothing but this. If people realized that, they’d take this life more seriously. You only get one.”

She’s wrong, but I can’t explain to her how I know, so I don’t bother trying.

A woman about my mom’s age helps the man unpack, while a toddler stumbles around the grassy area in front of the trailer. He seems kind of old to have a little kid, but maybe he’s making up for lost time.

“I can’t understand what kind of woman would want to live with a killer, much less have a child with him.” She peers at the table beneath her and runs a fingernail along a carved heart that’s older than we are. “Not that I get wanting to be with any man.”

The new neighbor comes out for another load. He glances our way, and even at this distance, our eyes lock, and a cold itch runs from the small of my back to the top of my scalp.

I know him. I know him from before.

I don’t mean I know his soul. I know him.

Alicia gives me a little shove, and I realize she’s been talking at me for a while.

“Are you okay?”

I blink. Even Meetu looks concerned, his muscular head cocked.

“I’m fine.”

“Are you sure?”

I nod, but she doesn’t stop staring and looking worried, so I add, “You’re right. It’s weird living next to a murderer.”

Her face softens. “I didn’t hurt your feelings, did I? When I said . . . that? I wasn’t talking about you.”

“Nah,” I say. “I know you weren’t.”

The new guy goes back into his trailer.

“What did you say his name was?” I ask.

“Benjamin,” she answers softly. After a few quiet seconds, she adds, “You did a really nice job on your nails.”

I glance down at my newly red nails. She’s painted them for me a couple times before, but this is the first time I’ve done them myself. I’m grateful that she doesn’t qualify the compliment. Doesn’t add, for a guy. But of course she wouldn’t—that’s why I—that’s why she’s my best friend.

• • • •

I try to let it go. So I’ve got a neighbor that I knew in a past life. So he’s a convict. The past is dead. Who cares.

Over the next couple days, though, my mind keeps returning to Benjamin. I feel like he was important for some reason. By the middle of the week, I admit to myself that I’m not going to move on until I figure out what role he played in my life.

I’m not quite sure how to do that, though. I could ask Alicia for help. She’s got a laptop and internet. I don’t even have a smartphone. I don’t want to open up the can of worms that is my past lives, though, so instead I decide to see what I can find out at the library.

I feed Meetu an early dinner while Mom’s still at work, grab my backpack and bus pass, and head out.

Once I’m there, I have to face the fact that I don’t have the first idea how to research anything about this guy. I don’t even know his full name.

What’s B’s last name? I text Alicia.

Avery. Why?

What do I say that won’t make her ask a thousand questions I don’t want to answer? Just wondering.

UR totally gonna snoop arent you?

I consider possible deflections. Lying to Alicia feels scuzzy, though, and anyway, I can’t think of any lies to tell. maybe just a little

I stare at my tiny screen, worried that she’s going to offer to join me. After a minute her reply shows up, though, and it’s just haha well lmk what you dig up.

I sigh, feeling both relieved and ashamed of my relief.

Even with his last name, I struggle. I don’t know how to weed out other people named Benjamin, other people named Avery, other murderers. I don’t even know when he went to jail—how long is a sentence for murder, anyway?

Finally I stumble across what I’m looking for—a news archive from the 1970s, with a grainy black and white photo of a man that looks a lot younger, but that’s definitely him.

A Vietnam War veteran, possibly shell-shocked and deranged since coming back. A crime of passion—the victim, his best friend’s wife. A body dug up by the shore of Peace Creek, not far away at all. Then I come across a photo of the formerly happy couple: Larry Dearborn and his wife Jamie.

Janie. Not Jamie. Janie. But the name doesn’t matter.

It’s me.

• • • •

It’s raining when I stagger out of the library. On the bus ride home, I lean my head against the window and watch the torrents sheeting down the glass.

Janie would be in her sixties, if she’d lived. I don’t remember ever being old. I always seem to die young. I don’t remember dying. End-of-life memories are hazy, same as beginning-of-life memories.

I glance away from the window and notice a little girl staring at me from the seat across the aisle. Her father sits next to her, but he’s focused on his phone.

“Are you a boy or a girl?” she asks.

Before I can catch myself, my stock answer comes out. “No.”

She tilts her head in confusion.

I imagine how I must look to her. Rain-soaked long hair, purple V-neck, red nails. Hell, she’s just a kid. “I’m a little of both,” I add.

Her eyes widen. “Oh!”

I turn back toward the window. Now that I’ve seen the photos and read the articles, bits and pieces of that life are coming back to me.

Benjamin looks like I imagine a murderer would—big and tough and unhappy. The newspaper says he killed me.

So why does that feel wrong?

• • • •

The next day, school drags on more than usual. I can’t focus on Henry James or rational functions when my alleged murderer just moved into the neighborhood.

My walk home is the vulnerable spot in my routine, because Meetu’s not with me. So of course that’s when Connor Haines ambushes me.

He’s sitting on the concrete Sabal Palms sign outside the trailer park. His sycophant friend Eddie stands by his side.

A spike of fear travels through my body.

“What’s up, Jimmy,” he calls.

I don’t bother correcting him. I was “Jimmy” when he met me—it was only four years ago that I decided “Jamie” fit better. More importantly, Connor doesn’t care.

I consider my options. I could turn around. Go inside the Steak ’n Shake one block down and wait him out. Or I could run and try to reach my trailer ahead of him, and hide out there. But if I wanted to hide, my hair would be shorter and my nails wouldn’t be red. It may cost me, but I won’t start running or hiding now.

They fall in step with me as I pass the sign.

“Where’s your dress, Jimmy?” Eddie asks.

Eddie is smaller than I am. I’m not a fighter, though, and he can be brave knowing he’s got Connor backing his play.

“It was too ugly for me, so I gave it to Connor’s mom.”

I barely see Connor’s fist before it hits my face. I stagger sideways, tasting blood.

“Why you gotta be such a freak, Jimmy?” Connor asks. “I don’t care if you like guys, but why you gotta act like a girl?”

My clothes aren’t particularly girlish today: blue jeans and a teal polo. And I’m neither a gay boy nor a trans girl. Trying to explain is a losing game, though, so I just try to push past.

Eddie’s fist lands in my stomach, driving the air out of me.

Connor grabs my arm. “Don’t walk away when we’re talking to you, Jimmy. It’s rude. A real lady would know better.”

“What’s going on, fellas?”

Benjamin’s standing a dozen feet away. His arms are crossed, his sleeves barely making it halfway down his bulging biceps.

“We’re just talking to our friend,” Connor says.

“You’ve talked enough. Unless you want me to talk too.”

Connor releases my arm and backs away. “See you at school tomorrow, Jimmy,” he sneers.

“Yeah,” Eddie adds. “Don’t forget to wear your dress.”

I watch them walk away. I understand what they’re saying—sooner or later they’ll find me when I have nobody to protect me.

“You’re bleeding,” Benjamin says. “Is your mom home?”

“She’s at work.”

I probably shouldn’t say that to the convicted murderer.

“Why don’t you let me help you?”

My instinct is to mumble some excuse, but I don’t believe he’s a murderer. Anyway, I want to know how he fit into my old life and why everybody thought he killed me, so I follow him.

His trailer’s one of the first ones, and I see his windows are open. Probably how he noticed Connor and Eddie harassing me.

I’ve seen dumpier trailers, but not often.

The previous tenant had been a hoarder. When she died in her trailer last year, Alicia and her mom had to clean the place out, and I helped. The place had been full of arts and crafts junk and half-eaten containers of food. We’d worn masks, and no amount of vacuuming and Lysol had made it tolerable inside.

Just goes to show there’s always somebody desperate enough to settle for anything.

I don’t smell the death smell anymore—what I smell is about a half dozen Plug-Ins, all churning away at once. I guess that’s an improvement.

Benjamin and his family don’t have much furniture. A worn futon backs up against one wall of the living room, and a rickety table leans awkwardly under the kitchen light. A makeshift bookshelf sags with paperbacks and magazines. I wonder if they’re his wife’s—girlfriend’s?—and then my face heats up. I’m the last person who should be making assumptions.

His toddler lies in a playpen, her thumb in her mouth, snoring gently. I almost comment on him leaving her unsupervised—then I remember that he did it to save my judgmental ass from getting beaten even worse.

“I’ll grab some cotton and peroxide. They split your lip.”

I follow him to the table and sit on the edge of a vinyl chair. I will myself to keep still as he approaches, dripping cotton in hand. He’s a heavy breather, and his thick fingers smell like peanut butter. Lucky I’m not allergic. This time.

My shoulder blades tingle as he sits across from me and begins dabbing at the blood on my face. His fingers are rough but his touch is gentle.

“Some people are just driven to destroy what they don’t understand,” he says. He gets up and runs a washcloth under the tap. “Hold this against your lip until the bleeding stops.”

I feel silly having him take care of me; I can clean a cut for myself. It’s not like I haven’t been beat up before.

“Anyway,” he adds, “I’m Benjamin.”

“Yeah,” I blurt out. Crap.

He glances up. “You know?”

“Sorry. My best friend’s mom manages this place.”

“What else do you know?”

I swallow, and it’s all the confirmation he needs.

He sighs.

“I’m so sorry,” I say. “Please don’t tell? She wasn’t supposed to say anything to me, but that’s the kind of thing that’s hard to keep to yourself.”

Benjamin just grunts and sweeps up the bloody cotton balls.

“Anyway,” I add, “I know you’re not guilty.”

He raises his eyebrows. “You what now?”

I study my fingers. “I can tell things about people.”

He snorts.

I shrug. “Anyway, I’m Jamie.”

“Short for James?”

“No. Short for Jamie.”

“Well, I’m glad to meet you, Jamie.”

I press the rag to my lip for a couple minutes, and then, to break the silence, I ask, “Who did do it?”

He frowns. “Not something I wanna go into, kid.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s funny though. You remind me of her. You look like you could be her kid. I mean, if she’d ever had one.” Another awkward moment passes, and he clears his throat. “So the landlady’s kid . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I saw the two of you sitting together. The way you look at her. She your girlfriend?”

“We’re just friends.”

“Ah.”

“We can be friends, you know. You can just be friends with people you’re—you can be friends with people without dating them.”

“’Course you can.”

I bite my lip, and flinch when I catch the split part. “Anyway, I don’t think she sees me that way.”

“Fair enough.”

“Right.”

“Right.” He gets up from the table and begins washing some dishes while I continue putting pressure on my lip.

My mind wanders, trying to stitch together the bits of my last life that I remember. Being a little girl. Going to college. Dropping out to get married.

And I remember my husband turning mean. I remember going to our best man over and over again for advice—the only man Larry trusted me with. I remember deciding that I had to leave. I remember Larry—

Oh God. Larry did it. Larry was the killer.

Benjamin knocks a glass off the counter. He’s not paying attention to the glass, though. He’s staring at me, and he looks like he’s glanced into hell itself.

Did I say that out loud?

“How do you know about him?”

Oops. Apparently I did. “Uh, lucky guess?”

“Right.” He takes the rag from my hand, ignoring the still-running water. “Well, the bleeding’s pretty much stopped now. It was good to meet you. You’d probably best be getting on home now.”

He doesn’t seem to breathe at all as he talks, and before I fully realize what happens I am escorted out the door.

“You take care, now,” he says, once I’m safely outside.

“Thanks, Benjamin,” I say, but the door closes before the last syllable leaves my mouth.

Making my way home, I feel like I can hear all my past selves in my head, and they’re all furious. That bastard Larry killed me, and he got away with it.

I want to punch something. I want to scream. I want to take my notebook out of my backpack and rip out every sheet of paper and crumple each one up. I want to break some pencils. I want to scream.

I want to cry.

What does it say about me if I was murdered and nobody cared enough to find out who really did it? They just found the handiest fall guy to pin it on and went on with their lives, and Larry Dearborn lived happily ever after.

I run through imaginary confrontations with Larry as I walk up to my trailer. I’ve never been violent—not in any of the lives I can recall—but right now I wish I had the talent for it.

Meetu wants to play when I open up the door—Meetu always wants to play. “Not now,” I say, snapping the leash onto her collar. She understands lots of things, but “Not now” isn’t one of them. Still, she’s happy enough to go out for her walk.

I daydream about running into Connor and Eddie again while I’m out with Meetu. See how they like being threatened. Then I play out the rest of that scenario in my head—Meetu’s fifty-eight pounds of love, but all anybody sees when they look at her is a scary, vicious killer dog. I imagine how people would react to another story about a pit bull attack. I imagine them calling for her to be destroyed.

No, if I do see those guys, I’ll keep a tight grip on Meetu’s leash, even if they’re messing with me, because I don’t want to lose her.

That’s what pisses me off—me and Janie and the other voices in my head. The Connors and the Larrys of the world always get away with the things they do.

There must be some way to make Larry pay. He doesn’t know I exist. Has no idea that I know what he did. That I keep remembering more and more with each step I take.

He’ll never see me coming.

“Watch your back, Larry,” I murmur. “I’m coming for you.”

Meetu thumps my knees with her tail. She doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but she’s game. She’s always game.

• • • •

“I’m telling you, he didn’t do it!”

Alicia snorts. “You know this how? Because he told you?”

We’re sitting on her bed. I avoid her eyes by focusing on her posters. Harley Quinn. Black Widow. Imperator Furiosa.

Alicia is into kick-ass women. I’m into her—something I’m better off keeping to myself.

“Listen,” I say, “I’m pretty good at reading people. I believe him. He’s already done his time, so he has no real reason to lie.”

“His reason is to get people like you to trust him. Jesus, you went into his trailer?”

“I was bleeding.”

“So?”

I pull my legs under me and face her. “Listen, enough people think I’m a flake. That both of us are. I’ve always had your back. Will you just go with me on this?”

She chews her lip. After a moment she sighs and says, “I’m not sure what you want me to do.”

“You’ve got a computer. Do a search for this Dearborn guy. See what you can find out about him.”

“What for?”

I smooth a wrinkle on her bedspread. Any answer would be impossible to explain. “I don’t know yet.”

She rolls her eyes, but she pulls her laptop off the nightstand and begins clicking around. For several minutes she makes random frustrated sounds as she repeats the same research I already did at the library. I don’t want to admit to how much I’ve already obsessed about this, so I let her retrace my steps.

Finally she chuckles ruefully. “Good luck.”

“What?”

“Larry Dearborn is the Dearborn in Dearborn Automotive. He owns that huge car lot out on Auburndale Highway. The football stadium at Lakeside High is named after him. He’s loaded.”

I frown. So he’s rich, too. Must be nice to literally get away with murder.

“Let’s go see him,” I say.

She scowls. “And do what?”

“We can pretend one of us is buying a car.”

“Look, if you’re right, then Dearborn’s the dangerous one.”

“He was dangerous forty years ago.”

She shakes her head.

I try a different tack. “You’re always saying you’re bored here, surrounded by people who aren’t going anywhere. You always say you want to do something adventurous, like join the Air Force. Well fine: let’s have an adventure. I’m not saying to confront him or anything. I just want to see my—I just want to see Janie Dearborn’s killer with my own eyes. He won’t know that we know, so there’s no reason to be afraid of him.”

She narrows her eyes. Before she can raise an objection, I spit out, “What would Furiosa do?”

She makes a face. “I’m not twelve, Jamie.”

“Sorry.” I get up from her bed.

“Where are you going?”

“I’ll go on my own,” I say. “I’ll take the bus.”

“Don’t,” she says. “I think you’re nuts, but I’ll drive.”

We tell her mom we’re going to the library and breeze out before she can question us. Once on the road, we roll down the windows and turn north on state road seventeen. Alicia’s mom’s car is a beat up Saturn station wagon that’s almost old enough to go to bars. It’s sticky and hot and I almost think I should’ve gone by bus, except then I would have been alone.

The car salesmen close in like hyenas when we park, and immediately lose interest when we step out. I guess without an adult with us, they figure we’re not car shopping.

I lead the way into an over-cooled lobby and cast about until I find a receptionist’s desk.

“Hi,” I say to the lady on the other side. “Is Mr. Dearborn here by any chance?”

She inclines her head. “And you are?”

“We are, uh . . .”

“We go to Lakeside High School,” Alicia blurts out. “And, uh, we’re on the yearbook staff. And since Mr. Dearborn’s been so generous to our school in the past, we were wondering if he maybe wanted to take out a page in this year’s edition.”

I fight the urge to stare at Alicia. We actually are in yearbook, but at Pickens High, not at Lakeside. They’ve been leaning on us to sell advertising, and the last thing I’ve wanted to do is cold call on a bunch of local businesses so they can all treat me like some kind of freak. So here we are instead doing it for an entirely different high school.

I have to give her credit, though—that was some quick thinking.

The receptionist’s expression softens. “Ah, yes. Well, he doesn’t really come in to the showroom anymore, but you’re right, he might want to sponsor a page.” She takes a random salesperson’s card from a holder on the counter, turns it over, and writes something on the back. “You can visit him here. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to have visitors from Lakeside.”

Something about the way she said that feels off to me, but I can’t quite figure it out until twenty minutes later, when Alicia pulls up in front of the address on the card: Landmark Hospice.

“What’s a hospice?” Alicia asks. “Isn’t that like a cheap hotel for backpackers?”

“No, it’s a place where people go to die.”

“Oh.”

We park for several minutes under the shade of an oak tree, until Alicia asks, “Can we go home now?”

I nod dully, staring out the window.

It’s all so unfair. Larry Dearborn killed his wife—killed me—and he’ll never face judgment for it. Never spend a day in prison. He made a ton of money, lived out his life, and got to the end without any consequences. Even if I found some way to prove he did it, nobody would prosecute him. Why bother?

• • • •

The riverbed where the news said my body was discovered is just over a mile away. I take Meetu out after school a couple days later and wander around. Meetu runs back and forth between the creek and me, getting all muddy and messy.

I guess I have this idea that Meetu might dig up some bit of evidence, or I’ll remember something about how I died that would lead me to discover something. Meetu’s not that kind of dog, though, and anyway the police already went over this area when they found the body. What could I hope to uncover all these decades later?

And what would I do with it if I found it?

I don’t actually have any memories of this place. I was probably dead or unconscious before Larry ever brought me here. I do remember more and more about our relationship. How his dark moods got darker and more frequent and how even getting promotions at work only made him happy for a day before he’d brood again. I remember the only place I felt safe being with his buddy Benjamin, and I remember Benjamin convincing me I needed to leave, and helping me pack. I remember taking my suitcases to his house one night, and trying to figure out where to go next.

I remember Larry showing up at Benjamin’s place, enraged, and that’s about all I remember. He must have killed me there, leaving plenty of evidence pointing at Benjamin.

Benjamin.

In all of my fury at Larry killing me and getting to live out his life without ever paying for his crime, I’ve hardly given thought to the man who did pay for it. I’ve been so focused on the unfairness of my death that I haven’t thought about the unfairness of his life. I can’t do anything about Larry, but can I do something for Benjamin?

I call Meetu to me and we start to walk back home. About halfway there, Alicia’s Saturn shows up and pulls off the road on the grassy shoulder.

“I had a feeling you might have gone out this way. You’re obsessed, Jamie. I’m worried about you.”

She helps me get Meetu into the back of the station wagon. There’s one thing to be said about having a piece of crap car—you don’t much care if it gets dirty anymore.

“I think I have an idea for how to clear Benjamin’s record,” I say.

She doesn’t take her eyes off the road. “Oh?”

“Yeah. Can I borrow a dress?”

• • • •

Alicia doesn’t wear dresses much, and her fashion style is not quite what I’m looking for. She is close to my size, though, and she’s willing to help, which counts for a lot.

She opens up her laptop and brings up a picture of Janie Dearborn—of her and Larry in better times. She’s wearing a long denim skirt and a turtleneck and throwing her head back and laughing. I think I can remember that day.

“Freaky,” Alicia murmurs. “She could be your older sister.”

“Do you have anything like what she’s wearing here?”

“Janie seems like the wholesome type. That’s not me.”

“Do you have anything that might be kind of close?”

She frowns, then straightens. “Actually, I might.”

She heads not for her closet, but for the chest at the foot of her bed. She digs inside and tugs out a balled up wad of cloth.

“It’s from my Aunt Hilda,” she says, as if that explains everything.

She unrolls the bundle on her bed. It turns out to be a brown dress, with little pink flowers and ivory accents. It’s nothing like the outfit in the news photo, but I understand why Alicia picked it. It’s equal parts Brady Bunch and Sunday brunch.

“My aunt doesn’t really get me,” she says.

“No kidding.”

“Mom made me wear it last time Aunt Hilda visited and then I dumped it here and haven’t thought about it again.” She holds the dress up to my shoulders and cocks her head appraisingly.

I quirk my lip. “It’s . . . really ugly.”

Alicia giggles. “You asked for a dress. You didn’t say it had to look good.”

I go to her bathroom to try it on. I stare at the mirror, trying to form my own opinion before I ask Alicia for hers. I worried that the dress was going to bulge and gap in the wrong places, but it’s a modest cut, so it pretty much works.

I remember looking like this before. It looks like me in the mirror. Just a different me.

I try to imagine how Connor Haines would react if he ran into me like this. He and Eddie would probably go berserk.

Well, fuck them. They don’t get a vote.

I pull the door open and cross the hall back into Alicia’s room. She paces all the way around me, nodding slowly.

“Now let’s add some makeup,” she says.

When I’ve worn makeup before, I’ve always gone for subtle. Some foundation, a touch of eyeliner. Not trying to look like I have makeup on. After some false starts, Alicia and I manage to get a more blatantly feminine style that I’m satisfied with.

“Stand up,” she says. “Let me see.”

I stand by her dresser, suddenly self-conscious.

She raises her eyebrows. “I still hate that dress, but damn, you—” She bites her lip. “You’re really pretty.”

My neck and face heat at that. I know she doesn’t mean . . . I know she’s just trying to build me up. It’s nice to imagine that she’s serious, though.

The moment is interrupted by her mom coming home. When I see her car pulling into the gravel driveway outside, I want to grab my own clothes and hide in her bathroom until the danger passes. But I steel myself and stay right where I am. I’ve always figured that once you start hiding, it’s hard to stop.

Alicia makes eye contact as the front door clicks unlocked, and I wonder if what I’m thinking is plastered all over my face.

“I’m home,” her mom calls out, as if that weren’t obvious.

A moment later she passes by the open door. “Oh, hey, I didn’t realize you had somebody—” She blinks a couple times. “Oh. Hi, Jamie. Alicia, can I talk to you?”

Alicia follows her to the master bedroom and closes the door. I pad out to the hallway in my bare feet. Sound carries pretty clearly through the thin walls of a trailer, and I don’t have to put my ear up to the door or anything to listen to their conversation, even though her mom is obviously trying to keep it down.

“Honey, I know you like girls and not boys, and I know Jamie’s confused about his gender anyway, but I’m not comfortable with a boy playing dress-up in your bedroom.”

“Jamie’s not confused about a thing,” Alicia replies. “And anyway, they changed in the bathroom.”

I step back into her room and close the door behind me, because I really don’t want to hear the rest. I don’t want to hear Alicia reassure her mom that she doesn’t think of me “that way.” I don’t want to hear Alicia’s mom—who has always been cool to me—say something I won’t be able to forgive.

Some people have a hard time adjusting to me—I get that. I don’t care what their process of working things out looks like if in the end they treat me like a person. But I don’t want to test that resolution by knowing too much.

Alicia doesn’t ask me to leave when she returns; she doesn’t talk about the conversation at all. I don’t either. I figure everything’s fine until somebody tells me otherwise.

“We ought to buy you some shoes to go with that, instead of those flip-flops. I could drive you to the mall in Sebring. It would be fun.”

I meet her eyes, wondering where she’s coming from. Alicia’s not usually into shopping.

“It would,” I agree. “But I don’t think anybody’s going to be looking at my shoes where I’m going. Some other time?”

She smiles. “Definitely.” She raises both her eyebrows. “You gonna tell me what your plan is?”

If I did, I’d have to explain all sorts of things I’m not ready to. I shake my head. “You might try to talk me out of it.”

She chews her lip; I can’t tell if she’s suspicious or hurt.

“I really appreciate your help,” I say. When she doesn’t reply, I add, “I better get on with this.”

She finally meets my eye, and pulls me into a hug. “Be careful, whatever you’re planning.”

“I will,” I say, and then I head out the door.

I should have asked for a ride—it would make things easier than taking public transportation dressed like this. But riding the bus will give me time to get used to the way I’m presenting.

All the way to Larry’s street, I keep waiting for somebody to say or do something either because they’ve clocked me or because they think I am a girl. I wish I’d brought my ear buds, so I could block out the sounds of traffic and random conversation going on around me. That’s stupid, though—what it would actually do is make me less likely to hear trouble coming.

Somehow I manage both legs of the ride and the transfer between. Everybody’s too wrapped up in their own phones and music and worries to bother me.

At the hospice, I use the same story at the front desk that we used at the dealership. They give me directions to his room, and I walk past a courtyard garden, a nurse’s station, and about a dozen doors with patient names written next to them in dry-erase ink.

I almost pass the door with Larry’s name. I turn abruptly when I spot it, trying to project confidence, like I’ve been here before. I quietly close the door as I enter, and then blink as my eyes adjust to the darkness inside.

The curtains are drawn to block the low-hanging sun. Apart from the dim light slipping around the edges, the only illumination comes from a flat-screen television on the wall, bathing the room in a blueish glow. Flowers on a dresser cast sinister shadows that move with every flicker of the screen. In the center of the room, an oversized hospital bed dominates the space, undercutting the semblance of ordinary life somebody went through a lot of effort to create with the decor.

Larry lies on the bed, his head lolling to the side. I take in my first sight of him this lifetime. In my memories, he is a giant, angry and frightening, out of control. He appears so weak and emaciated here that I can almost pity him—until I think about the lives he’s destroyed. Mine. Benjamin’s. Who else? Somebody like Larry probably didn’t stop at one victim.

I walk up to the edge of the bed. I could take my revenge right now; nobody could stop me. I don’t think it would make me feel better, though, and it wouldn’t do anything for Benjamin.

And I didn’t come here for revenge.

A television remote and call device is tethered to his bedsheet with an alligator clip. I loosen it, turn the sound down, and place it on the floor.

“Larry,” I call out.

He makes a gross snot-clearing sound, but doesn’t wake up.

“Larry!”

He blinks awake and looks at me, wild-eyed.

“Who the hell are you?” he croaks, scratchy and barely intelligible. More memories come flooding back—Larry suspicious, Larry dismissive, Larry belligerent. I feel this weird contrast, like a double-exposed photograph. Part of me remembers that I’m supposed to be scared when Larry’s voice takes this dangerous tone, but he’s not scaring anyone anymore.

“You don’t remember me, Larry? I’m hurt. I remember you.”

“I’ve never met you in my life,” he says, and starts patting around where his controller used to be.

“I remember that night at Peace Creek. You, me, and Benjamin. I bet he remembers it, too.”

He pauses in his search and stares at me again. Shaking his head, he gasps. “You can’t be.”

I stand over the bed. “Look at me.”

“Janie,” he whispers. His gaze flicks between me and the edge of his bed. Probably still looking for his call button. Then he reaches for something on the other side of him, which I hadn’t noticed before. For a moment I think it’s some kind of back-up call device and my heart seizes, but it doesn’t have a speaker or anything that appears to be a microphone.

I pluck the object out of his reach; it looks like some kind of self-dosing painkiller.

“Nuh uh, Larry. I’m talking to you. It wouldn’t be very polite of you to check out.”

“You’re dead,” he croaks.

“That’s right. Soon you will be, too, and I’ll be waiting for you.”

He stiffens, and I have this momentary worry that I will inadvertently cause a fatal heart attack or something right here.

I lean in a little closer. “I promise you it won’t be pleasant. You let an innocent man pay the price for my death, but there’ll be nobody to pay for you in the afterlife.”

This seems to spark some fight back into him. “Benjamin wasn’t innocent! He betrayed me! He had an affair with you!”

“Benjamin and I never had an affair,” I say. I’m pretty sure that’s true. “He tried to convince me to go back to you on the day you killed me.” That part’s definitely not true.

He clutches the bed railing. “What are you talking about?”

“I hitched a ride to the Greyhound station in Winter Haven, because I was afraid of you, Larry. Then I had second thoughts, so I called Benjamin from a payphone. He told me you were a good man, that you were just going through a hard time. He told me I should give you another chance, and he drove all the way out there to bring me back.”

Larry sinks back in the bed and his face seems to cloud over.

“Listen to me!” I command. Then I remember that there are all sorts of nurses and other patients around, and lower my voice. “He wasn’t taking me away from you. He was bringing me back.”

Larry moans, his expression stricken.

“He was your friend right up until the end, and you took his life for it, as surely as you took mine. He deserved better, Larry. So did I.”

He grips my wrist; his skin is soft as tissue paper, but his grip is hard and a little painful. “You look so beautiful, Janie. Please don’t leave me again!”

“I can’t stay. My time is past, and you can’t give me back what you took from me.” I glare, and he tries to edge back from me. “But you can give Benjamin back some of what you took from him. You can talk to the police and recant. Tell them Benjamin didn’t kill me. Tell them, Larry, or you’ll see me every night in hell. I’ll make you sorry. Believe me.”

He raises a hand in front of his face. “Stop! I’ll tell them! Please, Janie!”

I take the phone from the bedside table and dial. As soon as I navigate my way to a human being, I pass the handset over.

“Don’t let me down,” I say, “I’m watching you.”

He’s sobbing as I give it to him, but he’s coherent enough once he starts talking. When he does, I make my way from the room before anybody can show up and start asking me awkward questions.

• • • •

I’m walking Meetu a week later when I pass Benjamin out in front of his trailer with his little girl, planting flowers, of all things. He waves, and I wave back before realizing he’s actually calling me over.

“Damnedest thing happened,” he says, getting up and brushing his hands on his jeans. “I got a call from my parole officer today. Larry Dearborn recanted. One of those deathbed confession things. They say that’s how a lot of false convictions are overturned.”

I do my best to feign surprise. “That’s terrific!”

Meetu’s tail thumps like Larry’s a long lost friend.

“Yeah,” he says. He pets Meetu, but his eyes stay on me. Looking hard, like he’s trying to peer into me.

I’m not sure what to do, so I just shrug and say, “I’m glad you’re finally getting some justice.” The words feel stupid as they leave my mouth. He already served the sentence for this crime, and nothing can give that back to him.

As if he’s read my mind, Benjamin says, “It’ll make it easier to find work. Lot of people wouldn’t look beyond that one line on a job application, before. Once people get a word for you—like convict—they think that word is all there is to know.”

I nod.

His little girl makes mud pies in the dirt, and I think about how clearing her father’s name will affect her future.

“I could watch her for you,” I blurt out. “While you look for work.” My face heats up. He may treat me like a person, but that doesn’t mean he wants me watching his kid.

“That would be great.”

I scratch Meetu, trying to act like it’s no big deal.

“So.” He nods toward Alicia’s trailer. “You gonna ask that girl out? Don’t tell me you’re not interested.”

“I’m . . . not uninterested.” I take a slow breath. “I guess I’m afraid.”

“Afraid she sees you different from how you see yourself.”

I sag. “Yes.”

“I hear you,” he says. “But if you don’t take a chance on somebody disappointing you, you never give them a chance to surprise you either.”

When I don’t respond, he adds, “Will you stop being her friend if she says no?”

I shake my head.

“Then there’s no sense wanting something and not at least trying.”

I glance at the trailer. At the rainbow blinds that mark her bedroom window. “Maybe I will.”

He claps a hand on my shoulder. “Good luck.”

It feels more like a command than anything else, and I take a couple automatic steps toward her trailer. By the time my brain figures out what my feet have done, it seems more awkward to stop than to keep going.

Anyway, Benjamin’s right. He sees right through me, the same way I know the real him.

The same way Alicia has always seen the real me, I realize. My pace picks up a bit, and Meetu responds by bounding forward, dragging me along, like everybody’s figured out my destination before me.

She comes to the door as soon as I knock. “Hey,” she says.

“You doing anything?”

She shrugs. “Watching TV.”

“Wanna come for a walk?”

“Sure,” she says, stepping out onto the deck. “Did something happen? Is something wrong?”

“Nope,” I say, leading her down the steps. “Nothing’s wrong at all.”

We head down the street, quiet, like we don’t need to babble to fill the space between us. To anybody watching us, we probably look like we’re already a couple. Maybe by the time we come back, we will be. Maybe we won’t.

Either way, we’ll be okay.

©2018 by José Pablo Iriarte.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

José Pablo Iriarte is that rarest of all things–a native Floridian. He has worked as an editor, a computer programmer, a government researcher, a tutor to the rich and/or famous, a pizza delivery guy, a summer camp counselor, and as a teacher. His latest publication is from Book Smugglers Publishing: a short story called “Duck Duck God.” His website is Labyrinth Rat.

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

Divine Madness

Roger Zelazny | 2200 words

“. . . I is this ?hearers wounded-wonder like stand them makes and stars wandering the conjures sorrow of phrase Whose . . .”

• • • •

He blew smoke through the cigarette and it grew longer.

He glanced at the clock and realized that its hands were moving backwards.

The clock told him it was 10:33, going on 10:32 in the p.m.

Then came the thing like despair, for he knew there was not a thing he could do about it. He was trapped, moving in reverse through the sequence of actions past. Somehow, he had missed the warning.

Usually, there was a prism-effect, a flash of pink static, a drowsiness, then a moment of heightened perception . . .

He turned the pages, from left to right, his eyes retracing their path back along the lines.

“?emphasis an such bears grief whose he is What”

Helpless, there behind his eyes, he watched his body perform.

The cigarette had reached its full length. He clicked on the lighter, which sucked away its glowing point, and then he shook the cigarette back into the pack.

He yawned in reverse: first an exhalation, then an inhalation.

It wasn’t real—the doctor had told him. It was grief and epilepsy, meeting to form an unusual syndrome.

He’d already had the seizure. The dialantin wasn’t helping. This was a post-traumatic locomotor hallucination, elicited by anxiety, precipitated by the attack.

But he did not believe it, could not believe it—not after twenty minutes had gone by, in the other direction—not after he had placed the book upon the reading stand, stood, walked backward across the room to his closet, hung up his robe, redressed himself in the same shirts and slacks he had worn all day, backed over to the bar and regurgitated a Martini, sip by cooling sip, until the glass was filled to the brim and not a drop spilled.

There was an impending taste of olive, and then everything was changed again.

The second-hand was sweeping around his wrist-watch in the proper direction.

The time was 10:07.

He felt free to move as he wished.

He redrank his Martini.

Now, if he would be true to the pattern, he would change into his robe and try to read. Instead, he mixed another drink.

Now the sequence would not occur.

Now the things would not happen as he thought they had happened, and un-happened.

Now everything was different.

All of which went to prove it had all been an hallucination.

Even the notion that it had taken twenty-six minutes each way was an attempted rationalization.

Nothing had happened.

. . . Shouldn’t be drinking, he decided. It might bring on a seizure.

He laughed.

Crazy, though, the whole thing . . .

Remembering, he drank.

• • • •

In the morning, he skipped breakfast, as usual, noted that it would soon stop being morning, took two aspirins, a lukewarm shower, a cup of coffee, and a walk.

The park, the fountain, the children with their boats, the grass, the pond, he hated them; and the morning, and the sunlight, and the blue moats around the towering clouds.

Hating, he sat there. And remembering.

If he was on the verge of a crackup, he decided, then the thing he wanted most was to plunge ahead into it, not to totter halfway out, halfway in.

He remembered why.

But it was clear, so clear, the morning, and everything crisp and distinct and burning with the green fires of spring, there in the sign of the Ram, April.

He watched the winds pile up the remains of winter against the far gray fence, and he saw them push the boats across the pond, to come to rest in shallow mud the children tracked.

The fountain jetted its cold umbrella above the green-tinged copper dolphins. The sun ignited it whenever he moved his head. The wind rumpled it.

Clustered on the concrete, birds pecked at part of a candy bar stuck to a red wrapper.

Kites swayed on their tails, nosed downward, rose again, as youngsters tugged at invisible strings. Telephone lines were tangled with wooden frames and torn paper, like broken G clefs and smeared glissandos.

He hated the telephone lines, the kites, the children, the birds.

Most of all, though, he hated himself.

• • • •

How does a man undo that which has been done? He doesn’t. There is no way under the sun. He may suffer, remember, repeat, curse, or forget. Nothing else. The past, in this sense, is inevitable.

A woman walked past. He did not look up in time to see her face, but the dusky blonde fall of her hair to her collar and the swell of her sure, sheer-netted legs below the black hem of her coat and above the matching click of her heels heigh-ho, stopped his breath behind his stomach and snared his eyes in the wizard-weft of her walking and her posture and some more, like a rhyme to the last of his thoughts.

• • • •

He half-rose from the bench when the pink static struck his eyeballs, and the fountain became a volcano spouting rainbows.

The world was frozen and served up to him under a glass.

. . . The woman passed back before him and he looked down too soon to see her face.

The hell was beginning once more, he realized, as the backward-flying birds passed before.

He gave himself up to it. Let it keep him until he broke, until he was all used up and there was nothing left.

He waited, there on the bench, watching the slivey toves be brillig, as the fountain sucked its waters back within itself, drawing them up in a great arc above the unmoving dolphins, and the boats raced backward over the pond, and the fence divested itself of stray scraps of paper, as the birds replaced the candy bar within the red wrapper, bit by crunchy bit.

His thoughts only were inviolate, his body belonged to the retreating tide.

Eventually, he rose and strolled backwards out of the park.

On the street a boy backed past him, unwhistling snatches of a popular song.

He backed up the stairs to his apartment, his hangover growing worse again, undrank his coffee, unshowered, unswallowed his aspirins, and got into bed, feeling awful.

Let this be it, he decided.

A faintly remembered nightmare ran in reverse though his mind, giving it an undeserved happy ending.

• • • •

It was dark when he awakened.

He was very drunk.

He backed over to the bar and began spitting out his drinks, one by one into the same glass he had used the night before, and pouring them from the glass back into the bottles again. Separating the gin and vermouth was no trick at all. The liquids leapt into the air as he held the uncorked bottles above the bar.

And he grew less and less drunk as this went on.

Then he stood before an early Martini and it was 10:07 in the p.m.

There, within the hallucination, he wondered about another hallucination.

Would time loop-the-loop, forward and then backward again, through his previous seizure?

No.

It was as though it had not happened, had never been.

He continued on back through the evening, undoing things.

He raised the telephone, said “good-bye,” untold Murray that he would not be coming to work again tomorrow, listened a moment, recradled the phone, and looked at it as it rang.

The sun came up in the west and people were backing their cars to work.

He read the weather report and the headlines, folded the evening paper and placed it out in the hall.

It was the longest seizure he had ever had, but he did not really care.

He settled himself down within it and watched as the day unwound itself back to morning.

His hangover returned as the day grew smaller, and it was terrible when he got into bed again.

• • • •

When he awakened the previous evening the drunkenness was high upon him again. Two of the bottles he refilled, recorked, resealed. He knew he would take them to the liquor store soon and get his money back.

As he sat there that day, his mouth uncursing and undrinking and his eyes unreading, he knew that new cars were being shipped back to Detroit and disassembled, that corpses were awakening into their death-throes, and that priests the world over were saying black mass, unknowing.

He wanted to chuckle, but he could not tell his mouth to do it.

He unsmoked two and a half packs of cigarettes.

Then came another hangover and he went to bed. Later, the sun set in the east.

• • • •

Time’s winged chariot fled before him as he opened the door and said “good-bye” to his comforters and they came in and sat down and told him not to grieve overmuch.

And he wept without tears as he realized what was to come.

Despite his madness, he hurt.

. . . Hurt, as the days rolled backward.

. . . Backward, inexorably.

. . . Inexorably, until he knew the time was near at hand.

He gnashed the teeth of his mind.

Great was his grief and his hate and his love.

• • • •

He was wearing his black suit and undrinking drink after drink, while somewhere the men were scraping the clay back onto the shovels which would be used to undig the grave.

He backed his car to the funeral parlor, parked it, and climbed into the limousine.

They backed all the way to the graveyard.

He stood among his friends and listened to the preacher.

“.dust to dust; ashes to Ashes,” the man said, which is pretty much the same whichever way you say it.

The casket was taken back to the hearse and returned to the funeral parlor.

He sat through the service and went home and unshaved and unbrushed his teeth and went to bed.

He awakened and dressed again in black and returned to the parlor.

The flowers were all back in place.

Solemn-faced friends unsigned the Sympathy Book and unshook his hand.

Then they went inside to sit awhile and stare at the closed casket. Then they left, until he was alone with the funeral director.

Then he was alone with himself.

The tears ran up his cheeks.

His shirt and suit were crisp and unwrinkled again.

He backed home, undressed, uncombed his hair. The day collapsed around him into morning, and he returned to bed to unsleep another night.

• • • •

The previous evening, when he awakened, he realized where he was headed.

Twice, he exerted all of his will power in an attempt to interrupt the sequence of events. He failed.

He wanted to die. If he had killed himself that day, he would not be headed back toward it now.

There were tears within his mind as he realized the past which lay less than twenty-four hours before him.

The past stalked him that day as he unnegotiated the purchase of the casket, the vault, the accessories.

Then he headed home into the biggest hangover of all and slept until he was awakened to undrink drink after drink and then return to the morgue and come back in time to hang up the telephone on that call, that call which had come to break . . .

. . . The silence of his anger with its ringing.

She was dead.

She was lying somewhere in the fragments of her car on Interstate 90 now.

As he paced, unsmoking, he knew she was lying there bleeding.

. . . Then dying, after that crash at eighty miles an hour.

. . . Then alive?

Then re-formed, along with the car, and alive again, arisen? Even now backing home at terrible speed, to re-slam the door on their final argument? To unscream at him and to be unscreamed at?

He cried out within his mind. He wrung the hands of his spirit.

It couldn’t stop at this point. No. Not now.

All his grief and his love and his self-hate had brought him back this far, this near to the moment . . .

It couldn’t end now.

After a time, he moved to the living room, his legs pacing, his lips cursing, himself waiting.

The door slammed open.

She stared at him, her mascara smeared, tears upon her cheeks.

“!hell to go Then,” he said.

“!going I’m,” she said.

She stepped back inside, closed the door.

She hung her coat hurriedly in the hall closet.

“.it about feel you way the that’s If,” he said shrugging.

“!yourself but anybody about care don’t You,” she said.

“!child a like behaving You’re,” he said.

“!sorry you’re say least at could You”

Her eyes flashed like emeralds through the pink static, and she was lovely and alive again. In his mind, he was dancing.

The change came.

“You could at least say you’re sorry!”

“I am,” he said, taking her hand in a grip that she could not break. “How much, you’ll never know.”

• • • •

“Come here,” and she did.

©1966 by Roger Zelazny. Originally published in Magazine of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Roger Joseph Zelazny (May 13, 1937 – June 14, 1995) was an American poet and writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for The Chronicles of Amber. He won the Nebula award three times (out of 14 nominations) and the Hugo award six times (also out of 14 nominations), including two Hugos for novels: the serialized novel …And Call Me Conrad (1965), subsequently published under the title This Immortal (1966) and then the novel Lord of Light (1967). — via Wikipedia

The Court Magician

Sarah Pinsker | 3160 words

The Boy Who Will Become Court Magician

The boy who will become court magician this time is not a cruel child. Not like the last one, or the one before her. He never stole money from Blind Carel’s cup, or thrashed a smaller child for sweets, or kicked a dog. This boy is a market rat, which sets him apart from the last several, all from highborn or merchant families. This isn’t about lineage, or even talent.

He watches the street magicians every day, with a hunger in his eyes that says he knows he could do what they do. He contemplates the tawdry illusions of the market square with more intensity than most, until he is marked for us by his own curiosity. Even then, even when he wanders booth to booth and corner to corner every day for a month, begging to learn, we don’t take him.

At our behest, the Great Gretta takes him under her tutelage. She demonstrates the first sleight of hand. If he’s disappointed to learn that her tricks aren’t magic at all, he hides it well. When he returns to her the next day, it is clear he has practiced through the night. His eyes are marked by dark circles, his step lags, but he can do the trick she taught him, can do it as smoothly as she can, though admittedly she is not as Great as she once was.

He learns all her tricks, then begins to develop his own. He’s a smart child. Understands intuitively that the trick is not enough. That the illusion is in what is said and what isn’t said, the patter, the posture, the distractions with which he draws the mark’s attention from what he is actually doing. He gives himself a name for the first time, a magician’s name, because he sees how that, too, is part of the act.

When he leaves Gretta to set out on his own, the only space granted to him is near the abattoir, a corner that had long gone unclaimed. Gretta’s crowd follows him despite the stench and screams. Most of his routine is composed of street illusions, but there is one that seems impossible. He calls it the Sleeper’s Lament. It takes me five weeks to figure out what he is doing in the trick; that’s when we are sure he is the one.

“Would you like to learn real magic?” I send a palace guard to ask my question, dressed in her own clothes rather than her livery.

The boy snorts. “There’s no such thing.”

He has unraveled every illusion of every magician in the marketplace. None of them will speak with him because of it. He’s been beaten twice on his way to his newly rented room, and robbed neither time. He’s right to be suspicious.

She leans over and whispers the key to the boy’s own trick in his ear, as I bade her do. As she bends, she lets my old diary fall from her pocket, revealing a glimpse of a trick he has never seen before: the Gilded Hand. He hands it back to her, and she thanks him for its safe return.

By now he’s practiced at hiding his emotions, but I know what’s at war within him. He doesn’t believe my promise of real magic, but the Gilded Hand has already captivated him. He’s already working it out as he pockets the coins that have accumulated in his dusty cap, places the cap upon his head, and follows her out of the marketplace.

“The palace?” he asks as we all near the servants’ gate. “I thought you were from the Guild.”

I whisper to my emissary, and she repeats my words. “The Guild is for magicians who feel the need to compete with each other. The Palace trains magicians who feel compelled to compete against themselves.”

It’s perhaps the truest thing I’ll ever tell him. He sees only the guard.

The Young Man Who Will Become Court Magician

Alone except for the visits of his new tutor, he masters the complex illusions he is shown. He builds the Gilded Hand in our workshop, from only the glimpse I had let him see, then an entire Gilded Man of his own devising. Still tricks.

“I was promised real magic,” he complains.

“You didn’t believe in it,” his tutor says.

“Show me something that seems like real magic, then.”

When he utters those words, when he proves his hunger again, he is rewarded. His hands are bound in the Unbreakable Knot, and he is left to unbind them. His tutor demonstrates the Breath of Flowers, the Freestanding Bridge. He practices those until he figures out the illusions underpinning them.

“More trickery,” he says. “Is magic only a trick I haven’t figured out yet?”

He has to ask seven times. That is the rule. Only when he has asked for the seventh time. Only then is he told: If he is taught the true word, he has no choice but this path. He will not likely return to the streets, nor make a life in the theaters, entertaining the gentle-born. Does he want this?

Others have walked away at this point. They choose the stage, the street, the accolades they will get for performing tricks that are slightly more than tricks. This young man is hungry. The power is more valuable to him than the money or the fame. He stays.

“There is a word,” his tutor tells him. “A word that you have the control to utter. It makes problems disappear.”

“Problems?”

“The Regent’s problems. There is also a price, which you will pay personally.”

“May I ask what it is?”

“No.”

He pauses, considers. Others have refused at this point. He does not.

What is the difference between a court magician and a street or stage magician? A court magician is a person who makes problems disappear. That is what he is taught.

There is no way to utter the word in practice. I leave it for him on paper, tell him it is his alone to use now. Remind him again there is a cost. He studies the word for long hours, then tears the page into strips and eats them.

On the day he agrees to wield the word, the Regent touches scepter to shoulder, and personally shows him to his new chambers.

“All of this is yours now,” the Regent says. The Regent’s words are careful, but the young court magician doesn’t understand why. His new chambers are nicer than any place he has ever been. Later, when he sees how the Regent lives, he will understand that his own rooms are not opulent by the standards of those born to luxury, but at this moment, as he touches velvet for the first time, and silk; as he lays his head on his first pillow, atop a feather bed; he thinks for a moment that he is lucky.

He is not.

The Young Man Who Is Court Magician

The first time he says the word, he loses a finger. The smallest finger of his left hand. “Loses” because it is there, and then it is not. No blood, no pain. Sleight of hand. His attention had been on the word he was uttering, on the intention behind it, and the problem the Regent had asked him to erase. The problem, as relayed to him: A woman had taken to chanting names from beyond the castle wall, close enough to be heard through the Regent’s window. The Court Magician concentrates only on erasing the chanting from existence, concentrates on silence, on an absence of litany. He closes his eyes and utters the word.

When he looks at his left hand again, he is surprised to see it has three fingers and a thumb, and smooth skin where the smallest finger should have been, as if it had never existed.

He marches down to the subterranean room where he’d learned his craft. The tutors are no longer there, so he asks his questions to the walls.

“Is this to be the cost every time? Is this what you meant? I only have so many fingers.”

I don’t answer.

He returns to his chambers disconcerted, perplexed. He replays the moment again and again in his mind, unsure if he had made a mistake in his magic, or even if it worked. He doesn’t sleep that night, running the fingers of his right hand again and again over his left.

The Regent is pleased. The court magician has done his job well.

“The chanting has stopped?” the court magician asks, right hand touching left. He instinctively knows not to tell the Regent the price he paid.

“Our sleep was not disturbed last night.”

“The woman is gone?”

The Regent shrugs. “The problem is gone.”

The young man mulls this over when he returns to his own chambers. As I said, he had not been a cruel child. He is stricken now, unsure of whether his magic has silenced the woman, or erased her entirely.

While he had tricks to puzzle over, he didn’t notice his isolation, but now he does.

“Who was the woman beyond the wall?” he asks the fleeing chambermaid.

“What were the names she recited?” he asks the guards at the servants’ gate, who do not answer. When he tries to walk past them, they let him. He makes it only a few feet before he turns around again of his own accord.

He roams the palace and its grounds. Discovers hidden passageways, apothecaries, libraries. He spends hours pulling books from shelves, but finds nothing to explain his own situation.

He discovers a kitchen. “Am I a prisoner, then?”

The cooks and sculleries stare at him stone-faced until he backs out of the room.

He sits alone in his chambers. Wonders, as all court magicians do after their first act of true magic, if he should run away. I watch him closely as he goes through this motion. I’ve seen it before. He paces, talks to himself, weeps into his silk pillow. Is this his life now? Is it so wrong to want this? Is the cost worth it? What happened to the woman?

And then, as most do, he decides to stay. He likes the silk pillow, the regular meals. The woman was a nuisance. It was her fault for disturbing the Regent. She brought it on herself. In this way, he unburdens himself enough to sleep.

The Man Who Is Court Magician

By the time he has been at court for ten years, the court magician has lost three fingers, two toes, eight teeth, his favorite shoes, all memories of his mother except the knowledge she existed, his cat, and his household maid. He understands now why nobody in the kitchen would utter a word when he approached them.

The fingers are in some ways the worst part. Without them he struggles to do the sleight of hand tricks that pass the time, and to wield the tools that allow him to create new illusions for his own amusement. He tries not to think about the household maid, Tria, with whom he had fallen in love. She had known better than to speak with him, and he had thought she would be safe from him if he didn’t advance on her. He was mistaken; the mere fact that he valued her was enough. After that, he left his rooms when the maids came, and turned his face to the corner when his meals were brought. The pages who summon him to the Regent’s court make their announcements from behind his closed door, and are gone by the time he opens it.

He considers himself lucky, still, in a way. The Regent is rarely frivolous. Months pass between the Regent’s requests. Years, sometimes. A difficult statute, a rebellious province, a potential usurper, all disappeared before they can cause problems. There have been no wars in his lifetime; he tells himself his body bears the cost of peace so others are spared. For a while this serves to console him.

The size of the problem varies, but the word is the same. The size of the problem varies, but the cost does not correspond. The cost is always someone or something important to the magician, a gap in his life that only he knows about. He recites them, sometimes, the things he has lost. A litany.

He begins to resent the Regent. Why sacrifice himself for the sake of a person who would not do the same for him, who never remarks on the changes in his appearance? The resentment itself is a curse. There is no risk of the Regent disappearing. That is not the price. That is not how this magic works.

He takes a new tactic. He loves. He walks through his chambers flooding himself with love for objects he never cared for before, hoping they’ll be taken instead of his fingers. “How I adore this chair,” he tells himself. “This is the finest chair I have ever sat in. Its cushion is the perfect shape.”

Or “How have I never noticed this portrait before? The woman in this portrait is surely the greatest beauty I have ever seen. And how fine an artist, to capture her likeness.”

His reasoning is good, but this is a double-edged sword. He convinces himself of his love for the chair. When it disappears, he feels he will never have a proper place to sit again. When the portrait disappears, he weeps for three losses: the portrait, the woman, and the artist, though he doesn’t know who they are, or if they are yet living.

He thinks he may be going mad.

And yet, he appears in the Regent’s court when called. He listens to the description of the Regent’s latest vexation. He runs his tongue over the places his teeth had been, a new ritual to join the older ones. Touches the absences on his left hand with the absence on his right. Looks around his chambers to catalogue the items that remain. Utters the word, the cursed word, the word that is more powerful than any other, more demanding, more cruel. He keeps his eyes open, trying as always, to see the sleight of hand behind the power.

More than anything, he wants to understand how this works, to make it less than magic. He craves that moment where the trick behind the thing is revealed to him, where it can be stripped of power and made ordinary.

He blinks, only a blink, but when he opens his eyes, his field of vision is altered. He has lost his right eye. The mirror shows a smoothness where it had been, no socket. As if it never existed. He doesn’t weep.

He tries to love the Regent as hard as he can. As hard as he loved his chair, his maid, his eye, his teeth, his fingers, his toes, the memories he knows he has lost. He draws pictures of the Regent, masturbates over them, sends love letters that I intercept. The magic isn’t fooled.

All of this has happened before. I watch his familiar descent. The fingers, the toes, the hand, the arm, all unnecessary to his duty, though he does weep when he can no longer perform a simple card trick. He loses the memory of how the trick is performed before the last fingers.

His hearing is still acute. No matter what else he loses, the magic will never take his ability to hear the Regent’s problem. It will never take his tongue, which he needs to utter the word, or the remaining teeth necessary to the utterance. If someone were to tell him these things, it would not be a reassurance.

For this one, the breaking point is not a person. Not some maid he has fixated upon, not the memory of a childhood love, nor the sleights of hand. For this one, the breaking point is the day he utters the word to disappear another woman calling up from beyond the wall.

“The names!” The regent says. “How am I supposed to sleep when she’s reciting names under my window?”

“Is it the same woman from years ago?” the magician asks. If she can return, perhaps the word is misdirection after all. If she can find her voice again, perhaps nothing is lost for good.

“How should I know? It’s a woman with a list and a grievance.”

The magician tests his mouth, his remaining arm, with its two fingers and thumb. He loses nothing, he thinks, but when he goes to bed that night he realizes his pillow is gone.

It’s a little thing. He could request another pillow in the morning, but somehow this matters. He feels sorry for himself. If he thinks about the people he has disappeared—the women outside the wall, the first woman, the entire population of the northeastern mountain province—he would collapse into dust.

I can tell he’s done before he can. I’m watching him, as always, and I know, as I’ve known before. He cries himself out on his bed.

“Why?” he asks this time. He has always asked “how?” before.

Then, because I know he will never utter the word again, I speak to him directly for the first time. I whisper to him the secret: that it is powered by the unquenched desire to know what powers it, at whatever the cost. Only these children, these hungry youths, can wield it, and we wield them, for the brief time they allow us. This one longer than most. His desire to lay things bare was exceptional, even if he stopped short of where I did. I, no more than a whisper in a willing ear.

I wait to see what he will do: return to the marketplace to join Blind Carel and Gretta and the other, lesser magicians, the ones we pay to alert us when a new child lingers to watch; ask to stay and teach his successor, as his tutor did. He doesn’t consider those options, and I remember again that I had once been struck by his lack of cruelty.

He leaves through the servants’ gate, taking nothing with him. I listen for weeks for him to take up the mourners’ litany, as some have done before him, but I should have known that wouldn’t be his path either; his list of names is too short. If I had to guess, I would say he went looking for the things he lost, the things he banished, the pieces of himself he’d chipped off in service of someone else’s problems; the place to which teeth and fingers and problems and provinces and maids and mourners and pillows all disappear.

There was a trick, he thinks. There is always a trick.

©2018 by Sarah Pinsker.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sarah Pinsker is the author of the novelette In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind, winner of the 2014 Sturgeon Award and 2013 Nebula Award finalist, and 2014 Nebula finalist, A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide. Her fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Lightspeed, and in anthologies including Long Hidden, Fierce Family, and The Future Embodied. She is also a singer/songwriter and has toured nationally behind three albums; a fourth is forthcoming. In the best of all timelines, she lives with her wife and dog in Baltimore, Maryland. She can be found online at sarahpinsker.com and on Twitter @sarahpinsker.

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

A Thousand Nights Till Morning

Will McIntosh | 23730 words

Chapter 1

Shakia slid a thick folder across the table to Aiden while the rest of the colony leadership sat hollow-eyed and silent.

“What is this?”

No one answered.

Aiden flipped the folder open, wishing he could have a shot of scotch—or what passed for scotch on Mars colony—before he read it. He knew it must be bad, but with two plagues currently tearing through Earth’s population, killing billions, he couldn’t imagine how things could get any worse.

He took a deep breath and leaned in toward the printout.

They weren’t direct communications—they were intercepted radio communication, both civilian and military. A buzzing numbness, like a full-body shot of Novocain, settled over Aiden as he flipped through the pages.

Transparent beings, releasing biological weapons that collapsed lungs, dissolved tissue, interrupted neurological function.

Two-legged, four-legged, eight-legged; insect-like, yet humanoid.

Overwhelming force. Staggering losses.

Attempts at surrender unsuccessful.

No response from Moscow.

No response from Shanghai.

No response.

No response.

Aiden pushed the printout across the table and lurched to his feet. He’d just been thinking about Chicago, pining for a slice of deep-dish pizza, missing his sister, his friends.

They were all gone. All dead. He had no home to return to. He was trapped in these tunnels.

Commander Manes looked up at him. “You have to tell them.”

“What? Who?”

“Everyone who’s not in this room. You have to find a way to break this to them that won’t send half the colony racing for the airlocks without pressure suits.”

“I can’t do that.” No way. There was no way.

Manes raised his chin until Aiden could see into his hairy, flaring nostrils. “You’re the only mental health professional on this mission. You need to take care of the emotional side of things while we take care of everything else, including figuring out how we’re going to stay alive with a poisonous environment outside and no one coming with fresh supplies.” Manes stood. “I’ve called an assembly. You have thirty minutes to figure out how to deliver this news.”

Chapter 2

Staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, shirt already damp under the armpits, Aiden took another shot of scotch. He’d already taken a hundred milligrams of Xanax, washed down with his first shot.

He’d prefer to face this feeling sharp-witted and clear-minded, but that was out of the question. There was no way he could do this in an unmedicated state.

Everyone was probably already in the common room, or one of the other two largish rooms in this hellish habitrail, waiting for Aiden to perform a psychiatric miracle. The thing was, depression and suicide were perfectly rational responses to their situation. Everyone they’d ever known, everyone they’d ever loved, was dead. His sister Eva, his godson Calvin, were dead.

Aiden unscrewed the top and took another shot of scotch, then rinsed with mouthwash.

The insane part of this was, objectively speaking, he’d been just as anxious on his first date with Penelope Lassaly as he was at the thought of conducting this intervention. His heart was always racing, his colon always cramping.

Even the despair of losing everyone he’d ever loved couldn’t drown out the relentless anxiety. It made his anxiety worse, in fact. Knowing he’d never again sit in Eva’s kitchen drinking coffee, laughing, drawing courage from each other . . . that made it much worse.

• • • •

The room was packed, yet utterly silent. Aiden’s footsteps were audible as he climbed to the raised platform assembled in the corner of the common room and stood behind a folding table.

Aiden looked into the hollow-eyed faces of the surviving members of the human race. Gage and Shakia were at the front. He knew they thought seeing friendly faces would help him get through this, but the truth was, having his closest friends watching only made his anxiety worse.

Heart racing, he cleared his throat. “Good morning. I’m not sure—” His mouth was so dry he had to stop to take a drink. Only, when he lifted the glass, the water in it sloshed so violently that he set it back down immediately. He would spill the water all over himself if he tried to drink.

Licking his parched lips, he cleared his throat again. “I’ve been trying to think of how to say what I have to—”

Aiden unbuttoned the top button of his shirt. He couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t enough oxygen in these tiny rooms.

“We’ve suffered a loss of such magnitude . . .”

A bead of sweat dripped from his eyebrow onto the table. He looked at the camera, which was transmitting this to the other two large rooms.

Only they weren’t large rooms. There were no truly large rooms in the entire settlement. He watched as the beige walls around him seemed to squeeze in, in, before releasing back to their original position, as if the room itself was struggling to breathe.

Aiden bolted down the steps, jogged to the door.

“Aiden?” Shakia called after him as he headed down the cramped hallway.

When he got to his room he locked the door behind him, fell on his bed face-first. He wanted to go home. He wanted to go home to Chicago.

Chapter 3

“There he is.”

Aiden turned. Gage was heading toward him, eyes bright, arms swinging like he didn’t have a care in the world.

“Dinner? Assuming you have any appetite.”

Aiden made a face. “I haven’t had an appetite since I got here.”

Gage clapped him on the shoulder. “Hang in there, my friend. We’ll get through this.”

“There’s no getting through this.” Aiden winced at the whiny tone of his own voice.

A dozen people were milling around the cafeteria when they arrived, including Shakia. The kitchen staff was missing. No dinner was prepared. Aiden wasn’t surprised.

They foraged, grabbed a loaf of bread, olive oil, raw carrots, and a scoop of vat meat.

Shakia and Gage sat across the table from him, so close their shoulders were almost touching. Aiden suspected their newfound friendship was of the “with benefits” variety. It would be Gage’s second affair since leaving his wife and two-year-old daughter eight months earlier, although at this point it was no longer infidelity, because his wife and daughter were dead. Still, the affair stung Aiden. It would be so much easier to get through this with someone to lean on, someone to hold, and Aiden had met Shakia first.

Gage bit into a Mars-grown carrot. “Well, thank God for this mission. If it wasn’t for TV-188—”

Aiden raised his fork. “Before you say it: I doubt there are anywhere near enough people here to stave off the extinction of the human race.”

Gage stopped chewing. “What do you mean? Why not?”

Shakia didn’t look surprised. She chewed slowly, and swallowing looked like an effort. Setting down her fork, she said, “Less than three hundred people? We’d have to be awfully lucky. One bad flu season, or a war, could wipe us out.” She was so obviously brilliant. A security expert who could converse about genetics, sociology, psychology. She was also beautiful. Her skin was incredibly, strikingly dark, her cheekbones sharp, her eyes catlike.

Gage looked skeptical. “A war?”

“We weren’t far from a war a couple months ago, when the pub was getting too crowded, and the scientists and meteor cowboys wanted to make it professionals only.” Aiden still got chills, remembering the first time he’d come across protest graffiti scrawled in black spray paint down the length of a hallway: No Fucking Country Club on Mars.

Graffiti. On a life-or-death mission to Mars. The sort of people willing to sign on to four years in a hamster run weren’t necessarily the most highly functioning and psychologically healthy individuals.

“We’re trapped on a planet with a hostile environment,” Aiden went on. “Not exactly optimum conditions. On top of that, the risk of passing on genetic mutations skyrockets in such a tiny population.”

“Paula Peavy would be the one to ask about the numbers,” Shakia said.

Aiden pointed his fork at Shakia. “That’s true.” Paula could come up with an estimated range. Aiden would bet anything her magic number for species survival would be higher than three hundred under these conditions.

Gage looked like he was going to vomit. That made two of them. Three, probably.

“It’s still ironic, though. We volunteered to risk our lives, came all this way to deflect an asteroid so it wouldn’t wipe out the human race, and we’re the ones who end up alive.” Gage covered his eyes. “And have you heard the cherry on top yet?” He looked at Shakia. “Have you told him?”

“I haven’t gotten a chance yet.” Shakia turned to Aiden. “TV-188 is going to miss Earth. At least, the odds of a hit plunged on the last assessment.”

Aiden barked a dry, bitter laugh. “So we came all this way for nothing. If there was a human race to return to, we wouldn’t have returned as heroes, only as an insurance policy that turned out to be unnecessary.” People would have started going home now. Not everyone, but some. If not for the Nunki. That was the star system the invaders apparently came from, so that’s what people were calling them.

“It’s a shame the asteroid is going to miss Earth, actually,” Aiden said. “Not that I’d want to see nearly every plant and animal on the planet wiped out, but it would sure ruin the Nunki’s day.” He raised a finger. “Wait, I know! We could deflect it into Earth, instead of away from it.” Aiden laughed, but Gage and Shakia didn’t laugh along, so he stopped. Maybe the joke was in bad taste. He’d thought it was funny, if in a dark, gallows humor sort of way.

“That’s a marvelous idea,” Gage said.

“I—wait, what?”

Gage was staring at the ceiling, nodding ponderously. He looked at Shakia. “Don’t you think?”

Shakia, who was sitting very still, just stared down at her hands.

Aiden leaned forward. “I was joking. If we did that, the Nunki would immediately know we’re here. They’d come and kill us all.”

“It would be worth it.” Gage leaned in, lowered his voice. “And maybe they wouldn’t come after us. What if the impact brought them to their knees? I mean, they’d be in darkness, dealing with freezing temperatures, their food supply drying up whether they eat animals or plants—”

“Maybe they eat dirt,” Shakia said.

“Maybe they do. And if they do, they wipe us out.” He gestured at Aiden. “You said it yourself: We’re going to die anyway. Let’s go out fighting.”

“Our species is going to die. That doesn’t mean we won’t live another forty years, and our children another sixty after that, and their children—”

Gage folded his arms. “Sixty years? With no antibiotics? No aspirin?” He shook his head. “Not a chance.”

Gage was right about that, at least. They had seeds, could grow vat meat. Their crops provided oxygen. But they’d quickly be living in painfully primitive conditions. How would they make shoes, or toothbrushes?

Jesus. There’d be no more Xanax.

Gage stood. “I’m going to suggest it to leadership.”

“Go ahead,” Aiden said. “They’re not going to get behind something that amounts to mass suicide.”

Chapter 4

Aiden knocked on the door to Commander Manes’ office.

“Yep,” the commander called through the door.

Aiden had to walk around Manes’ desk to see him. Manes was sitting on the floor with a book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, open beside him. He was looking out the window at gunmetal gray stones scattered across a rust-colored desert. It looked as if he hadn’t shaved in about three days, but as he turned, his eyes were alert. The unfocused stare and stunned, haunted look was gone.

“You’re not seriously going through with this,” Aiden said.

Manes smiled. “From what I understand, it was your idea.”

“I was joking.”

“Well, some of the best ideas and the meanest insults come disguised as jokes.”

Aiden leaned against the edge of Manes’ desk. “If you let them do this, it’s not only us who’ll die. What about elephants, and dogs? Trees. Grasshoppers. We’re going to wipe them all out, along with ourselves, for revenge?”

Manes picked up the book, opened it at random. “I found this in Kaisa Puhakkah’s room, after we cut her down. It’s helped me make sense of things.” He thumbed through a few pages. “One thing it taught me is that nothing is not a bad thing. Sometimes nothing is better than something.”

“No it isn’t. Art is better than a blank wall. Music is better than silence.” Aiden pointed at the book in Manes’ hands. “That philosophy you’re quoting isn’t nothing, it’s something.”

It was predictable for people to seek meaning when faced with despair. Manes was simply finding a way to cope. But his coping mechanism was leading them all toward oblivion. Of course, if he’d picked up a Bible instead of a Zen primer, he’d be saying everything was fine, because they were all going to heaven.

“The universe will survive without us.” Manes pointed at the Martian landscape outside the window. “There’s art right out there.”

And poisonous air.

Aiden envied his peace. He wished he could find serenity in this stifling habitrail. He wasn’t capable of that degree of self-delusion, though.

“If you want something more concrete, let me offer you this: Even if I wanted to stop this, I couldn’t.”

That didn’t surprise Aiden. Alliances were forming; there were rumors that some of the asteroid cowboys wanted to take charge, and force every woman in the colony to pair up with a man and discontinue birth control. Regardless of her wishes, or sexual orientation.

Maybe he should work on the scientists first. The asteroid wouldn’t pass Mars for another two months. Still time to talk them out of it.

Chapter 5

The pub was packed. It was always packed. The floor was awash in spilled beer, and people were sitting under and on top of tables. The stink of unwashed bodies in seldom-washed clothes was gag-inducing. Normally it would have been impossible for Aiden to tolerate such claustrophobic conditions, but because it was a bar Aiden could compensate by drinking heavily, and thus dampen his anxiety. Somewhat.

He took a swig of scotch and wondered how long it would be before the Nunki came for them, after the asteroid hit. Twenty-four hours? Less? Some people thought the Nunki might not even notice the nuclear explosion that would nudge the asteroid’s path. That seemed wildly optimistic to Aiden. A species capable of interstellar travel would have noticed the asteroid and calculated its trajectory to the inch. When it suddenly changed course and hit them, they’d notice.

How would they be killed, Aiden wondered? Nunki technology was heavily biological in nature. They’d engineered and released two separate plagues, allowing them to devastate the world’s population, bringing Earth to its knees before humanity even knew they existed. Everyone had thought the plagues were the work of some rogue nation or heavily financed terrorist group. But that had never made sense, really. The plagues were too perfect to be the work of humans.

If he was going to die, he so wished he could die on Earth, in Chicago. He missed his city, his friends, the smell of auto exhaust mingled with hot dogs and soft pretzels from sidewalk vendors’ carts. But mostly he missed Eva, and his godson Calvin. Calvin had been more than a nephew to Aiden. More like a son.

Aiden looked across at Gage and Shakia, who were making out like teenagers. If he wasn’t so drunk, he would be jealous, but all he felt now was a melancholy affection for his two doomed friends.

“You know, Gage,” he shouted over the din, “I’ve never thanked you for talking me into volunteering for this. If not for you I’d be dead right now.”

Gage raised an eyebrow, his head weaving drunkenly. “Don’t thank me, thank Penelope Lassaly.”

The name startled Aiden. “What are you talking about?”

Gage looked at him as if he was an idiot. “In a million years I couldn’t have talked you into signing up. You were dead-set against it until Penelope dumped you, then, suddenly, you had a change of heart.”

Shakia reached across the table, stroked Aiden’s head. “Aw. Did someone break your heart?”

Aiden jerked his head out of her reach. “You’re suggesting I signed up for a five-year mission, to Mars, because a woman dumped me? How neurotic and insecure would I have to be to make that enormous a decision based on something so trivial?”

Gage burst out laughing. “Pretty damned neurotic and insecure.”

Aiden stood, his chair bumping to a stop against someone standing behind it. “Fuck you, Gage. Where did you get your psychiatry degree again?”

Aiden turned to leave.

“Aiden.” Gage jumped up, grabbed his shoulder. “Come on, don’t get mad.” He spread his hands. “I’m drunk. I say dumb things when I’m drunk.”

Aiden sat, mostly because he didn’t want to look like a giant baby in front of Shakia. But he was still fuming. Of course it had been Gage. Gage had painted such a glorious picture. He could still see Gage’s eyes shining with excitement, could hear the crack of emotion in his voice. Carpe diem, buddy. Let’s save the world. They’ll carve our faces on Mount Rushmore. All three hundred and six of us.

Gage hadn’t talked him into this? Bullshit. Gage had always been able to talk Aiden into things, ever since they were kids.

They were best friends until seventh grade, when Gage became too cool for Aiden. When just about everyone became too cool for Aiden. He didn’t speak to Gage again until they were almost thirty, when they bumped into each other at the dentist’s office, of all places, and dusted off their atrophied friendship. Hard to believe that had been almost ten years ago.

“So who was this woman?” Shakia leaned forward, rested her chin on folded hands.

“Oh, just one of many women who couldn’t handle my disorder.”

“How do you know it was your disorder?” Gage asked. “Has it occurred to you that some women may not be interested in you because you’re short and hairy?”

“Oh, I know a lot of women aren’t interested in me because of my physical appearance. But those are easily observable features, so if they’re the issue, a woman will reject me on the spot.”

Gage reached up, feigned wrapping his hands around Aiden’s throat. “Jeeze, would you lighten up? I’m joking. What I’m trying to say is, you have no idea why Penelope broke up with you.”

Either Gage was trying to make him feel better, or he was incredibly naïve when it came to human motivation. Probably a little of both.

Chapter 6

For some reason Aiden noticed how filthy the floors in the hallways were. A thick layer of dust lay along the edges, where people didn’t walk. He passed a tray, dirty dishes and utensils strewn in a corner. Small things like cleanliness understandably fell away when you were committing mass suicide by dropping a ten-kilometer-wide rock on an aggressive, highly advanced species.

It would be a relief, in many ways, to be dead. He would be truly at peace for the first time in his life, feeling not the slightest twinge of anxiety. What he was most afraid of was that dying would hurt. If the Nunki blasted a hole in their habitat, the air would rush out, and the moisture in Aiden’s eyes, mouth, and most importantly the alveoli of his lungs, would boil away. It would take one to two excruciating minutes for him to die.

If he could time it right, he could kill himself with the last of his Xanax before the Nunki got him. He’d need some warning that they were coming for that to work, though.

As he passed across Main Street—the central tunnel in the habitat—music and laughter drifted down the tube from the pub. Another party, in celebration of a direct hit. In celebration of the death of their planet. Every night, a new party. It seemed as if everyone had been drunk for the past eight days.

As Aiden passed the closed door to the Command Room, he heard talking inside. Bursts of static accentuated the speaker’s S’s, as if it were a radio transmission instead of a live person. There was no one to send radio transmissions now, though. Unless the Nunki were sending a message to say they were on their way.

The door was unlocked, the room dark except for the red and white lights on the radio.

A woman’s voice was coming from the radio.

“We’ve had no contact with the Nunki since the impact event. No idea how it’s affecting them. All we know is, they’re no longer sending food in through the wall. The wall appears to be dying, in fact.”

“Before the impact we didn’t dare contact you. We didn’t want to give you away, and anyway there wasn’t much point. But if anyone is still alive up there: There are survivors in Chicago—”

Aiden grasped the doorframe to keep from falling down.

Chicago?

He looked out the door as the transmission went on. A couple, arm-in-arm, were weaving down the hall.

“Hey.”

They kept walking.

He ran into the hall. “Hey!”

The couple stopped, turned.

“Get the commander, or Mahajan. Anyone you can. There’s a transmission coming in from Earth.”

The couple took off running. Aiden turned back to the transmission. He should be recording it, but he didn’t know how to turn on the recorder. Hopefully whoever had sent it was standing by for a reply.

“—some way, any way, to transport survivors there? Otherwise, I don’t think we’ll live much longer.”

A rescue mission? That’s what they were hoping for? Aiden couldn’t imagine how Mars colony could support more than a handful of additional people. If they did send a mission down, though, Aiden was going. Eva and Calvin were in Chicago. Plus, friends. Even if it hadn’t been Chicago, he would want to go. He bore some responsibility for what they were going through.

Chapter 7

Even at age eight, Aiden’s godson Calvin had been an athlete, the star of his peewee league baseball team. It had astonished Aiden to watch someone who shared his genetic material excelling in a sport, because he, Eva, and their parents had all been alarmingly uncoordinated. Once, when Calvin hit a triple down the line, Aiden had felt such a rush of exhilaration watching Calvin sprint around the bases he’d begun to hyperventilate, and had to find a plastic bag. In a day or two, Aiden would know if that little athlete was still alive.

When Red Two touched down, Aiden unstrapped himself and hurried into the hall to a view screen. All he could see was the silhouette of a row of buildings in the darkness. If they’d landed in Grant Park, on the edge of Lake Michigan as planned, that would be South Michigan Avenue. As dark and uninformative as the scene was, he preferred it to the views they’d been getting on their voyage, of Earth as a hazy grayish beach ball, the swirling blue and white all but obscured by the dust cloud.

How many Chicagoans had died since the asteroid strike, he wondered? Each of those deaths was on his head, or, more accurately, on his big mouth.

“There he is.”

Aiden turned. Gage was heading down the hall. “I’ve been looking for you.” Gage clapped Aiden on the shoulder, considered the view screen. “Ready?”

Would the survivors be grateful to Mars Colony for crashing an asteroid into Earth, or hate them for it? The strike had snuffed out ninety-nine point nine percent of life on Earth. Maybe they’d brought the Nunki to their knees, but they’d also wiped out every tree, every flower, every turtle and giraffe and chipmunk, to say nothing of a large percentage of the surviving human population.

“You ready?” Gage repeated.

“No.”

Gage’s brow clenched. “Me, neither.”

Somehow Aiden had forgotten for a moment. Gage’s family lived in Chicago. Hiromi, and his daughter Lilly. During the year they were on Mars, Gage hadn’t acted as if he had a wife and child at home, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care about them.

• • • •

Aiden had known there would be no stars or moon visible; what he hadn’t expected was how low the sky felt. It was as if they were in a freezing-cold cave, the roof just out of sight. It was so damned dark. If not for the spotlights, Aiden would have to hold his arms in front of him to keep from walking into things. If Mark Adlerberg was right, daytime would be slightly better, but not much.

The silence was startling as well. No birds, no crickets, no distant whoosh of traffic or hum of streetlights.

Someone turned a spotlight toward the tree line that bordered the snow-covered ball field they’d landed on. The ground was covered in a layer of black dust, particulate matter kicked up by TV-188, settling to the ground. The trees were branchless skeletons, knobby exclamation points. The sight made Aiden sick.

Dead. Almost everything was dead. Their climatologists and biologists suspected rats were hanging on, and small numbers of hay-eating animals that could dig through the snow to reach dead grass and vegetation, but not much else. It was going to take time to adjust to that reality.

“Captain?” Anatoly Belikovsy called.

Captain Mahajan, who looked like she’d been in a trance, turned to Anatoly, who was pointing toward South Michigan Avenue.

Three people were approaching out of the darkness. They were gawking at the ship, which always reminded Aiden of a giant red water bug.

“You’re from the Mars colony?” a woman asked. She had long black hair, brown skin.

Dozens of crewmembers converged on the trio, everyone asking questions at once. Captain Mahajan pushed her way through, calling for everyone to quiet down.

“We are, yes. Are we safe from the Nunki here?”

“Do you have food?” the man asked. He had a thick gray beard, a pocked nose.

The Captain turned. “Someone get them food.” When no one moved, the captain scanned the faces around her. “Joshua, get some rations, please.”

Sighing audibly, Joshua headed toward the ship. When he was clear of the crowd he began to jog. Aiden couldn’t blame him—no one wanted to miss this moment. They were about to find out whether there was any chance the human race could survive.

“Come on, tell us what’s happening,” Gage called from the periphery.

“The Nunki are a mess,” the dark haired woman said. “The wall is dead. All of their buildings are dead—”

“Hold on,” the Captain said in her clipped Indo-British accent. “What do you mean, dead?” The original transmission had mentioned a dying wall as well. None of them had been sure what to make of that, and they hadn’t received any more transmissions.

The woman pushed the end of the scarf she was wearing over her shoulder. “Dead. Everything they build is alive. The wall was alive, and now it’s not.”

Mahajan frowned, waited for her to go on.

“A lot of the Nunki headed south where it’s a little warmer, but there are still some around. Mostly they stay away from the city. When they catch people foraging out there, they kill them, as likely as not, or drag them off and do who knows what to them, but there isn’t much food left inside the city, so what choice do we have?”

Some of the crewmembers had peeled the other woman away and were speaking with her in low voices a few yards from the main group. Aiden sidled over to listen.

“No. They killed everyone, except they left Chicago alone for some reason.”

“Why Chicago?” Mark Adlerberg asked. He was standing closest to the woman, looked to have initiated the splinter group.

“I don’t know.” She was a tall, big-boned white woman. “Chicago was hit hard by the first super-virus, but half or more of us were still alive before the asteroid hit.” She raised her eyebrows. “Some people thought you did it on purpose.”

“We did,” Aiden said. “Did it help, do you think?”

The woman’s lips were cracked and pitted. “It didn’t make things any easier, if that’s what you’re asking. It hurt the Nunkis bad, though. I guess it depends on your point of view.” She looked up. “Is the sun ever coming out again?”

Mark nodded. “The debris should start clearing in another two to three years.”

The woman inhaled raggedly, let her head sag. “I’d give anything to see the sun. Just for an hour. I hate the dark.” As Aiden turned to return to the larger group, she added, “I used to be such a carefree person. I used to joke and laugh all the time.”

A hand rested on Aiden’s shoulder. It was Gage.

“I’m going to look for Hiromi and Lilly. Come with me?”

The idea startled Aiden. “Mahajan isn’t going to let us wander off. She’ll want to organize teams.”

“Fuck the teams.” Gage looked off into the blackness. “If my family is out there, I want to reach them as soon as I can. There are plenty of rifles for everyone.” He clapped Aiden’s shoulder. “Come with me. We’ll look for your sister, too.”

He wanted to find Eva and Calvin as soon as he could, but the idea of venturing into that freezing darkness with just him and Gage opened a pit of dread in his stomach. There were aliens out there who, “as likely as not,” would kill him and Gage if they crossed paths.

Gage jerked a thumb toward the ship. “You think you’re safer here, hanging around a ship that just landed on an alien-occupied planet? Or maybe you’d rather join one of the larger exploration teams, which are bound to draw attention if they encounter Nunki.”

Aiden eyed the survivor they’d been listening to. She was still alive after all this time. Maybe appearing to be one of them was a better strategy than appearing to be part of the colony that knocked an asteroid into Earth.

A gust of wind kicked up, cutting right through Aiden as he nodded. “Okay. We find your family, then we find mine.” It was hard to form the words; his mouth was stiff from the cold.

“I’ll get some rifles and supplies. You tell the captain.”

Aiden barked a laugh. “Oh, I tell the captain.”

Although she’d never admit it, Captain Mahajan had treated Aiden with an undercurrent of disdain since the day Aiden had fled the stage in the middle of that colony-wide intervention. Aiden flinched with embarrassment recalling it.

Mahajan was still talking with the dark-haired woman as a small crowd listened. The woman was wolfing trail mix from a plastic container while she talked.

“They do even worse in the cold than we do. Someone on the short wave said it’s because everything they do is built around the sun, around solar. They don’t build nothing—they grow it. Their buildings and such need sun, and food and water, so it all died.”

The words brought joy to Aiden’s heart. They’d hurt the fuckers. They’d really hurt the monsters responsible for wiping out seven billion souls. Good.

As he marinated in the moment, Aiden realized he still didn’t know what the Nunki looked like. Maybe the captain had already asked? The transmissions they’d received before they stopped altogether said some were fifteen feet tall, others four, that some walked on two legs, some on ten. Also, you could see inside them, and sometimes they glowed in the dark. None of that was terribly helpful in drawing a mental picture. Aiden wanted to be prepared for the sight of them, if he did in fact ever see one. Any concrete picture would be better than the nightmare images his imagination conjured in this dark, dead place.

“What sort of weapons do they have?” Captain Mahajan asked.

The woman stuffed a handful of nuts and raisins into her mouth with trembling fingers. “Most don’t have any. Those that do got rifles, mostly.”

Exclamations of surprise rang out from the crowd.

“Rifles?” the captain asked.

The woman nodded. “They didn’t bring weapons; they brought diseases. Flesh-eating bacteria. Spores that suffocate you. Shooting, they learned from watching us. They’re not very good at it.”

Aiden turned away. There was no way he could interrupt the captain to tell her he and Gage were leaving, and while he needed to know everything he could about the Nunki if he was going to stay alive, hearing how everyone on Earth had died was making him queasy. It conjured images of Eva and Calvin dying horribly.

Nunki technology was all biologically-based. They’d known some of it was, even most of it, but it had seemed inconceivable that they had no hard technology whatsoever. What an incredible stroke of luck. The asteroid had completely neutralized them.

He spotted Shakia, supervising people unloading supplies. He could tell Shakia where he and Gage were going, and she could tell the captain later. That way Aiden could avoid the inevitable confrontation with the captain.

Aiden called Shakia’s name.

She headed over. “Welcome home.” She was wearing knee-high black boots, a big black and white checkered scarf that reminded Aiden of the floor of a diner. How she’d fit her wardrobe into the draconian weight restrictions of the Mars mission baffled him.

Aiden jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “When you have a chance, can you tell the captain Gage and I went to look for his . . .” He choked on the last word, realizing what a dumb thing he’d just done, given Shakia’s relationship with Gage.

“I’m coming with you.” Shakia turned. “Let me get some things.”

“You want to come with us?” Aiden couldn’t keep the astonishment out of his tone.

Shakia turned back. “I want to take a look around anyway, why not go with you and Gage?”

Aiden shrugged. “Okay.” He was glad to have her company. Plus she’d shot a rifle before. Aiden wished he could say the same.

Not knowing what else to do, Aiden headed back toward one of the crowds interrogating the survivors. The snow under the thin layer of soot was mostly frozen solid, so they were able to walk on top of it instead of slogging through it, but despite two pairs of socks and heavy lined boots, his toes were already freezing. What were they going to feel like after a few hours of hiking through the city? He wondered if he should go back and change into new socks, maybe put on a third pair.

As he turned back, he spotted Gage heading toward him.

“Give me a hand, will you?” He was carrying two huge packs.

“What the hell did you put in there?” Aiden grabbed a pack from Gage, his biceps flexing under the weight.

“Food, cookware, first aid kit. I figure we can pilfer bedding—”

“Bedding?” A surge of adrenaline shot through Aiden. “No. Absolutely not. I can’t camp out. I hate camping out.” He’d learned from a young age that he absolutely could not sleep outdoors. The outdoors just felt foreign at night. There were no familiar touchstones to draw comfort from.

Gage spread his open palms. “We’re not going to make much progress if we scurry back to the ship each night. And we won’t be camping out. There are plenty of empty houses.”

Aiden didn’t do well sleeping in unfamiliar environments of any sort. He didn’t do well sleeping, period, but away from his own bed it became all but impossible.

“Ready?” Shakia came up behind them, a pack on her shoulders.

Aiden panicked. He didn’t want to sleep in some poor dead family’s home, but he also didn’t want to admit to Shakia that he was afraid. It shouldn’t have mattered what Shakia thought of him, but it did.

Aiden took a big, huffing breath. “I need to get some things first.”

“What?” Gage patted his pack. “It’s all in here.”

Except for Aiden’s medications, his alcohol, the ancient I-phone he used to listen to big band music to calm him while he tried to sleep. His special tube-shaped pillow, extra underwear. “I just need to grab a few things.” Aiden took off before they could insist on specifics.

Chapter 8

Aiden’s toes ached with cold before they’d gone a mile. Cold mimicked the physical symptoms of anxiety—clenched muscles, trembling, shortness of breath—and while consciously he knew it was the cold piling on those symptoms, the darker corners of his mind were unimpressed by logic. So cold magnified his anxiety.

A woman, hunched against the frigid wind, one hand pressed to her chest, passed on the other side of the street. She was carrying a makeshift torch—a two-by-four burning at one end. They’d seen a few people with flashlights, but mostly it was torches. The woman didn’t give Aiden, Gage, and Shakia a second look. There was nothing to mark them as Mars mission personnel. If the light was better, or she came closer, she might notice how clean they were, how well-fed.

A high, yipping bark startled Aiden. He turned, watched the woman hurry around a corner. “She must have a little dog in her coat.”

“Well, at least we know dogs aren’t extinct.” Gage sounded almost flip.

Aiden studied his profile as they walked. “Don’t you feel at all guilty about this?”

Gage glanced at him, his face half-buried by scarves and the hood of his coat. “Why should I feel guilty? We made the right decision.”

“You should feel guilty because people died from that decision. We turned Earth into a moon. Even if you think we did the right thing, it doesn’t absolve you. You’re still responsible. In fact, you’re more responsible for this than I am.”

Gage shrugged. “I’m not asking to be absolved. I’ll gladly accept my share of the responsibility. I’m not going to wallow in guilt, though.”

Aiden looked at Shakia, waiting for her to weigh in, but she kept her eyes on the ash-covered ground.

Maybe they’d done the right thing in deflecting that asteroid—it was a complex ethical question with no simple answer—but even if they had, the cost had been staggering. It had been knee-buckling. Aiden felt like he was carrying the weight of every life that had blinked out because of their action, and that was how it should be. Gage, on the other hand, didn’t look to be carrying any weight except the pack on his back.

As they turned left on West Harrison Street, past the financial district, Shakia’s walkie-talkie beeped. She unhooked the silver slab from her belt. “Go ahead.”

It was the captain. “Where are you?”

“Taking a walk with Gage and Aiden. Gage wants to find his family.”

“I need you back here.”

Shakia looked toward the sky. In the darkness Aiden couldn’t see her eyes roll, but he didn’t have to. “Whatever it is, get Mark to do it.”

“It’s not one thing. More survivors are showing up. They all want food, and if we feed everyone, we won’t have enough for the return trip.”

Gage put a hand on Shakia’s shoulder, whispered, “Let me talk to her.” She handed him the walkie-talkie.

“Look, Sangita, someone’s got to do some deep reconnaissance. It might as well be us. We need at least one person with us who can shoot straight.”

The captain argued, but really, her authority was limited. Since the quiet, bloodless coup that ousted Manes as leader of the colony, orders had become more advisory than compulsory. In the end, Mahajan relented rather than suffer the embarrassment of having her order defied.

Once they crossed over to the Eisenhower Expressway, Gage picked up the pace. Aiden and Shakia struggled to keep up.

“Tell me you can’t hear them,” Shakia said.

Shivering uncontrollably, Aiden lifted his face, strained to pick up some sound beyond the crunch of their feet on the snow. “What?”

Shakia sighed. “You’re so adept at tuning in to the thoughts of the living. You could hear them, if you listened properly.”

“Ah, the dead.” Aiden was fascinated by people who could so effortlessly straddle the worlds of science and mysticism. He could never hold both views simultaneously. Somehow, though, he had no problem simultaneously admiring Shakia’s tangled belief system and thinking her belief in the mystical was nonsense.

“The air is thick with them.” She pressed her palm against the center of her chest. “You can hear them here.”

“I’m afraid I’m never going to hear them. You’ll have to tell me what they’re saying.” Although honestly, he didn’t want to know what they were saying.

• • • •

Aiden wondered what Gage must be feeling, minutes from knowing whether his family was alive or dead. Based on the number of people they’d seen, the fireplaces glowing through windows, Aiden guessed eighty or ninety percent of the population was dead. The odds were not in Gage’s favor. Or Aiden’s, for that matter.

He glanced at Shakia, wondered what she was feeling. Deep down, did she hope Gage’s wife was dead? Did she love Gage, or was he just convenient companionship?

Aiden would have walked right past Gage’s house, with the trees naked poles, all the ground a uniform gray-black.

Through the living room window, a soft red glow danced among the shadows.

Gage took off running, his feet breaking through the frozen crust, sinking to his shins with each step. “Hiromi? Lilly?”

Aiden might have seen disappointment cross Shakia’s face, but it might have been the shadows. She trotted after Gage, moving more slowly. Aiden trailed behind her.

Angry shouts erupted inside. “Shit.” Aiden drew his pistol, rushed through the open front door on Shakia’s heels.

“Chill. Right now. Chill,” a scraggy-looking kid with a patchy brown beard shouted at Gage, who couldn’t decide where to point his handgun, because six or seven people were pointing weapons at him. A few of those weapons now shifted to point at Aiden. They had pistols, a nail gun. One held what looked like a flamethrower.

“What are you doing in my house?” Gage shouted.

“I said, chill,” the scraggly kid said. “What the hell is wrong with you? It was vacant. It had a fireplace. So we crashed.”

“Gage, put it away.” Shakia put a hand on Gage’s extended arm. Gage lowered his gun. The band of what Aiden could now see were all teenagers lowered their weapons as well.

“Well. That was exciting,” a girl, maybe fifteen, said.

Gage ignored the comment. “You said the house was vacant. Did you find a note, maybe pinned to the front door? On the kitchen table?”

The scraggly kid shook his head. “No note.”

Holstering his handgun, Aiden stepped forward, offered the kid his hand. “Aiden.”

“Zeus.”

They were beyond filthy, like a band of chimney sweeps. A tall, skinny, pimply kid introduced himself as Monty. He was wearing a knitted cap that had two long tassels, like tails dangling at his ears.

The girl who’d made the wiseass remark, her bleached-blonde hair cut short and uneven, was Beltane. Even before she offered her hand and he saw cuts along her forearm, Aiden was instinctively thinking borderline personality disorder.

As Aiden studied her, Beltane turned to Gage. “So, if your wife and kid were here, where’ve you been, Dad?”

“Mars.”

A few of the kids chuckled.

“Mars,” Gage repeated. He disappeared into another room, evidently to search for a note from Hiromi.

Aiden pulled his laminated colony ID card from his front pocket, showed it to each of the kids in turn.

“Holy shit,” Beltane said as he showed her the card. “Mind. Blown. You’re seriously from the colony?”

“I can’t believe I’m here, either,” Aiden said.

Gage reappeared. “I’m going to see if any of the neighbors are still around. They might know where Hiromi is.”

That was an optimistic way to put it.

“Are you here to take us back to Mars?” Zeus asked.

“At this point we’re trying to figure out what’s the best course of action,” Shakia said. It would be impossible to transport thousands of refugees to Mars, and there wasn’t enough space in the colony anyway. Their plan was to cherry-pick people with valuable skills (plus Gage and Aiden’s relatives, if they were still alive) and bring back crucial technology and supplies.

Shakia went to the fire, pulled off her gloves and held them toward the flames. “How are you surviving?”

“We’re not,” Zeus said. “There used to be sixteen of us.” Aiden counted seven.

“I’m sorry,” Shakia said.

Zeus nodded.

Aiden joined Shakia by the fire. Heat had never felt so good; he wanted to climb right into the flames.

“We keep moving to find food,” a lanky Asian boy who’d introduced himself as Good Boy said. “You have to do the scavenger thing, find new neighborhoods outside the wall, try to avoid the Nunkis.”

“What’s this wall?” This was the third time Aiden had heard it mentioned.

“It’s not a wall any more, just a perimeter,” Good Boy said.

“It used to run all the way around the city, forty feet high. It died after the asteroid hit,” Zeus said.

“How did you get food, if there was a wall around you?” Shakia asked.

“The Nunkis sent it in. Every morning.”

“They were feeding you?” Shakia said. Aiden recalled hearing that on the transmission they’d received, so he wasn’t surprised.

Zeus nodded. “The best anyone could figure, we were pets. They’d come and watch us. Otherwise they left us alone.” He squinted. “You really are from Mars?”

Before Aiden could answer, the front door banged open and Gage appeared, looking shaken. “Aiden, Shakia, can I speak to you?”

Aiden followed him into the kitchen, where the firelight provided only a deep red gloom.

“They’re alive. They left with some man named Warren about two months ago.” He made the name Warren sound like a particularly pussy venereal disease.

“Do you know where they went?” Shakia asked.

Gage shook his head. “Outside the city. Maybe north.” As Aiden digested this, he added, “I have to go after them.”

For a moment, Aiden thought he’d misunderstood. “Outside the city? That’s where the Nunki are. Plus, the commander isn’t going to wait for us. Three days, tops, then we head back.”

“I know. I’m not asking either of you to come with me.”

It was a terrible idea. How was he going to find three people in the dark when all he knew was they’d headed north? Maybe more to the point, how would he stay alive out there, alone among the Nunki?

He wouldn’t. He’d be dead in a matter of days.

“You said you’d help me find my sister after we went to your house—”

Gage glared at him. “I said I’d help you after I found my family. I haven’t found them yet.”

“Jesus, Gage, they’ve been gone for two months.” Aiden paused, summoned his calm, soothing therapist voice. “Take a breath. Think it through before you go charging off.”

“It’s my family. I don’t need to think it through.”

Gage seemed almost panicked. Some of that emotion was probably about Hiromi going off with some man. That was understandable, if somewhat ironic.

“If you go out there unprepared and get yourself killed, that’s not going to help them.” Shakia sounded like someone who had no stake in the outcome.

“Let’s do a little more reconnaissance, at least. Get the lay of the land,” Aiden said. “You need to know what’s out there before you go.”

Gage sighed through his nose. “Fine. I’ll leave tomorrow morning.” He looked out the window, into the blackness. “Do you even call it morning any more?”

In the living room, the kids watched as Aiden, Gage, and Shakia gathered their packs.

“We’re going to move on,” Gage said. “Aiden and I lived in Chicago before the mission, and there are people we want to find.”

Zeus hopped out of a stuffed chair. “We’re coming.”

Gage did a double-take. “What? No, you can’t come with us.”

“We can go wherever the hell we want,” Beltane said.

Traveling with survivors seemed like a great idea to Aiden. They could learn how to avoid making stupid blunders that might get them killed.

“Why do you want to come with us?” Shakia asked.

“You’re from Mars,” Zeus said. “You’re the closest thing to a rescue party we’re going to see. Of course we want to stick close.”

Red Two was the cavalry. What a depressing thought.

“So where are we headed?” Beltane asked.

Gage looked at Aiden, eyebrows raised. “Where does your sister live again?”

Everyone turned to look at Aiden. “West Madison.”

Zeus nodded. “That’s inside the perimeter, at least. If it was outside, there’d be no chance.”

Aiden closed his eyes. A little good luck. Finally.

Chapter 9

Monty, the skinny kid, was walking beside Aiden. Despite being a clinical psychologist whose job purportedly included knowing how to put people at ease, Aiden had never been adept at initiating conversations with strangers. At the same time, it felt awkward to walk beside this kid in silence.

“Is your name really Monty?” he ventured.

The kid looked up. “We all picked new ones. Except Beltane, who had a good one to begin with.”

“Why Monty?”

Monty shrugged. “I love The Holy Grail.”

Aiden couldn’t argue with that. Monty Python and the Holy Grail had kept him company through many sleepless nights.

Up ahead, Zeus opened the door of a huge SUV and slipped into the driver’s seat. He started it, rolled down the window as others climbed into the back. “It’s going to be a tight fit.”

Aiden had assumed they would walk. He was thrilled at the prospect of avoiding a three- or four-mile slog through the cold dark. On the other hand, the van was horribly crowded.

He ducked his head and climbed in. “Where do you get gas for this?”

Beltane got out of her seat, patted it. “Here you go.”

“Oh, I don’t want to take your seat.” He squatted between the two middle seats, Shakia’s knees pressing his lower back.

“You’re not taking it. We’re gonna share.” She took Aiden’s wrist, pulled him into the seat, then sat in his lap. “You can still find gas if you go far enough away from the city. Sucks getting it out of the storage tanks, though.”

A few of her companions chuckled at this.

“Why does it suck?” Aiden cleared his throat. His voice was an octave too high. He was getting an erection, could feel his face burning.

“You have to suck it out, a hoseful at a time.” Beltane wriggled in his lap, her butt rubbing against his crotch. “You like that?”

One of the classic symptoms of borderline personality disorder was sexual promiscuity, so Beltane’s behavior wasn’t surprising, but this wasn’t his office and she wasn’t his client, so he was at a loss for how to respond. His heart was racing with embarrassment, yet his erection hung on doggedly as they drove. How many times had he wanted to maintain an erection, only to have anxiety deflate it?

His bowels were roiling, a gastro-intestinal storm brewing. It was just a few miles; he only had to hold on for, what, ten minutes? Zeus was flying down the pitch-black road.

“Wait. Why don’t you have the headlights on?” Aiden tried not to sound breathless. They were driving by the light of a flashlight Good Boy was pointing through the windshield.

“Headlights are a great way to attract Nunki. Make a note of that,” Zeus said.

They passed signs for a strip mall: Office Depot, Wendy’s, Verizon. They were on Desplaines Avenue, Aiden realized. Penelope had lived right around the corner.

A pang of wistful sadness penetrated the metallic dread of his anxiety. He ran with it, summoning images of Penelope. If he could get lost in his head until the ride was over, he might stave off the panic attack.

She’d been exactly the kind of woman he’d always dreamed of meeting. Funky and free-spirited, but not so funky and free-spirited that she was unemployed, heavily into illegal substances, or suffering from borderline personality disorder. She’d worn bright outfits put together from thrift store finds, but still shaved her legs. She was an outlaw who behaved, just what Aiden aspired to be if he ever got his anxiety under control. Even her name was perfect. Penelope. Whimsical and musical, yet if you wanted to bring it down to Earth, temporarily remove some of the whimsy, just shorten it to Penny. They’d only been seeing each other for a few months, but he’d fallen for her hard.

Aiden had thought things were going well, then the day after he’d had an epic panic attack in her kitchen, he’d gotten the text. He still remembered her words verbatim.

I have to say goodbye. I’m having issues I need to sort out. I’m so sorry. Please don’t call.

Issues she needed to sort out. It was an ironic way to tell a clinical psychologist that he was way too fucked up for you.

Was she in her apartment at this very moment? It was hard to imagine Penelope alive in this black world. Maybe he would have time to look for her, once he found Eva and Calvin. Would that be cruel, though? He only had permission to bring back his two blood relatives. He doubted there was room for negotiation on that front.

“There’s what’s left of the fence,” Good Boy called from the front. He diverted the flashlight to the right, at a towering, gargantuan white pillar that disappeared up into the darkness. The base was almost as wide around as the Wendy’s restaurant beside it.

“What is that?” Gage asked from the way back.

“A bone,” Monty said. “That’s all that’s left of the wall. A ring of bones around the city.”

“Take the next left,” Good Boy said to Zeus. He had an old fold-out map in his lap.

Zeus barely slowed.

“The transmission we received mentioned the Nunki laying down rules,” Aiden said. “You’re able to communicate with them?”

Beltane formed an L with her arms. “Sign language. Everyone was required to learn it.”

They pulled to a stop. “Here we are,” Zeus said.

Aiden fumbled with the door handle, feeling as if every second in reaching Eva was suddenly crucial.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Zeus called as Aiden climbed out. “If they’re alive, chances are they moved.”

He drew a flashlight from his pack. The front door to the complex was unlocked, the expansive lobby dark. He found the stairwell leading up.

“Aiden, wait for me,” Gage called as the door clicked shut behind Aiden. He started climbing. He needed to do this himself, alone.

Winded, he reached the seventh floor and jogged down the hall to Eva’s door.

“Eva.” Aiden pounded on the door, than waited.

Nothing.

He pounded once more, then tried the door. It was unlocked.

“Eva? Calvin?” There were dirty dishes in the sink, empty food wrappers and boxes piled on the kitchen table.

“Calvin?” It was difficult to shout, because he was breathless.

Aiden shined the flashlight into Calvin’s bedroom, glimpsed two faces in the bed, above a hill of blankets. He cried out, rushed toward them, hoping against hope that they were only sleeping.

They weren’t sleeping.

Of course they weren’t; his pounding on the door and shouting their names would have waked them if they’d been sleeping. Their faces were ghostly white in the flashlight’s harsh light.

Aiden pulled off his glove, touched Calvin’s cold forehead, still hoping he would open his eyes, irrational as that hope was. They’d died after the cold set in. Otherwise there would be signs of decomposition.

He spotted a half-empty glass of bright purple liquid on the nightstand. A white film caked the frozen surface.

“Oh, no.” Aiden picked up the glass, studied the white film before pointing the flashlight into the adjoining bathroom. A prescription bottle sat open on the counter, which was smeared with white powder. “I was coming for you. You just needed to hold on a little longer.”

They’d made it through the plagues, the invasion. The asteroid had killed them. Aiden’s stupid attempt at humor had killed them.

Aiden kissed Calvin’s cheek, then went around and kissed his sister’s cheek.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

• • • •

Gage and Shakia were waiting in the lobby.

“The Captain called. We have to get back to Grant Park right away,” Shakia said. “People just keep coming. It’s getting tense.”

Aiden nodded.

When they climbed back into the van, Beltane took up her spot on Aiden’s lap, and Zeus pulled out and hung a U-turn.

“Hurry,” Shakia said.

Beltane patted his knee. “Not there?”

It took Aiden a moment to realize she was asking about Eva and Calvin.

“They were there.”

“Shit. Sorry.”

All Aiden could manage was a nod, which was useless because it was dark, and Beltane was facing the other way.

“Good Boy, how about some music?” Beltane said. A moment later, the silence was broken by a shrieking guitar. Aiden didn’t recognize the song, although the odds that these kids would possess any music Aiden might recognize was miniscule.

He was glad to be heading back to Red Two, eager to be back among familiar faces, away from these Lord of the Flies cast members. He knew that characterization was wildly unfair, but he was tired, and stressed. He could still feel Calvin’s cold forehead on his fingertips.

“Look out,” Good Boy shouted.

The brakes screeched.

The van slammed into something. Aiden was hurled into the seat back in front of him.

• • • •

When Aiden came back to the world, he was on the floor with his cheek pressed to the carpet. Someone was on top of him. With each ragged in-breath, it felt as if knives were being shoved into his ribcage.

“Good Boy? Where’s Good Boy?” Beltane stepped on Aiden’s leg, climbed into the front seat. Whoever was on top of him struggled to get up, slipped, landed on him again. Fresh, blinding pain lanced his ribcage.

Warm fluid was dribbling onto the back of his head. Blood.

“What did we hit?” someone asked.

The door rolled open; a blast of icy air and snow flurries hit Aiden. The pressure on his back eased; Shakia rolled off of him, to one side. She groaned, semi-conscious.

Aiden got his knees under him.

Beltane was in the front passenger seat staring through the wrecked, mostly missing windshield. Good Boy had gone through it with the flashlight, which was casting a tight beam of light across the road.

A deep, mournful, rolling bass filled the air. Aiden felt it as a vibration deep in his belly.

Suddenly everyone was scrambling.

“Nunki,” Zeus said. “Jesus, we hit a bus full of Nunki.”

A bus of Nunki? Aiden grabbed Shakia’s shoulders and dragged her out of the van. He fell backward, dropped to the road, grit his teeth to keep from crying out. He lifted Shakia as people rushed past.

Figures loomed in the periphery, outside the school bus they’d collided with. Aiden did not look at them.

A body landed a dozen feet away and lay motionless. Aiden couldn’t tell who it was. He stumbled blindly into the darkness, carrying Shakia, his ribs in agony as that terrible booming went on, a tuba from hell. The Nunki were making the sound; he had no doubt. He stumbled across a dozen yards of snow, then reached a raised surface. Probably a sidewalk.

Behind him, someone screamed. It went on in sharp staccato bursts—the sound of someone in agony—as Aiden dropped off a curb and fell, landing on Shakia, scraping his knees on the ice and sending a fresh stab into his ribs. The darkness was just about complete, the only light coming from the flashlight Good Boy had taken through the windshield, now a hundred feet behind them.

He bumped into a smooth concrete wall. A building. Probably a store. Turning, he ran an elbow along the wall to guide him until he reached an open space. His elbow brushed the sharp edge of a broken-out store window. He ducked, stepped through, walked forward until Shakia bumped the counter of one of the registers. He ducked into the cashier’s station, laid Shakia on the floor and collapsed beside her.

The screaming had stopped. Only the deep metallic boom of the Nunki broke the silence.

Orange light flashed outside, illuminating the street. Suddenly Aiden could make out the front of the store, the parking lot, abandoned vehicles . . .

The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees as five Nunki carrying torches stepped into view. Aiden clenched his teeth to stifle a moan.

They were so close together it was difficult to tell where one ended and another began. They were angular, barbed; some of the firelight passed right through, refracting, casting beams into the air. Some walked upright, others on all fours, or sixes. One seemed to have a dozen limbs. They wore haphazard layers of human clothes—coats, shirts, swatches of fabric draped across their narrow frames. Only their faces and limbs were similar from one to the next, with deep-set eyes and two long teeth like tusks, limbs that were mostly blade-shaped bone and rough skin.

The sight made the Nunki real to Aiden in a way they had not been before. Knowing they were all over the planet, while humans occupied this one tiny spot, filled him with such black despair that he wanted to put a gun to his head and end this sickening story right then and there. If the handgun he’d been issued hadn’t been in his pack in the wrecked van, he would have done it, and fuck his responsibility to keep the human race going. The sooner they were all gone, the sooner this nightmare would end for them.

“Aiden.”

He helped Shakia sit up. The blood on her forehead and ringing her mouth looked black in the dim light. She’d broken her nose, had a deep gash above one eye.

“What happened?” she asked, far too loud.

Aiden shushed her. “We hit a bus full of Nunki.”

Outside, the light grew suddenly brighter. Aiden rose just high enough to see over the counter.

A Nunki holding a torch passed in front of the store. Aiden froze as it turned in their direction. The sleeve torn from a heavy winter parka covered the alien’s right arm, but its shoulder and part of its chest were bare. Aiden could see blood vessels, a beating heart, three bones running horizontally under rough skin.

It moved on.

The Nunki in the street were bent over something. Aiden squinted, trying to make out what it was.

One reached down and lifted a can, examining it. It was a can of fruit. Peaches, or maybe apricots. They were opening it with a knife. Another was rifling through a backpack, no doubt from the van. It pulled out a tube-shaped cellophane package. Ritz crackers.

“We have to get out of here,” Shakia said.

Aiden nodded, transfixed by the scene. They were eating Ritz crackers and fruit from a can. He even recognized the brand from the label. Del Monte. They’d been driving a school bus.

Shakia touched his shoulder. “Out the back.” Her voice was shaky, slurry, like someone drifting off to sleep.

He followed her, the two of them crawling down an aisle toward the back of what looked to be a Walgreens or CVS drug store. His side screamed with each forward slide of his right knee. They pushed through a door, into the total darkness of the employees-only area.

Shakia took his clammy hand. “Do you know the way back to Red Two?”

“In theory.” It would be difficult to navigate in pitch dark.

They felt their way along the wall to the exit, opened the fire door as quietly as possible.

The Nunki must still be having their meal; ambient light from their torches allowed Aiden to make out a dumpster, and beyond it a paved lot that tilted and rolled, because Aiden was suddenly dizzy.

He couldn’t catch his breath; his heart was racing. He dropped to his knees. “I need a minute. Just let me . . .”

Shakia touched his shoulder. “Are you hurt?”

“I think I broke some ribs.” If he took shallow breaths it hurt less, but right now taking shallow breaths made him feel like he was suffocating. He lay on his side in the ash-covered snow, curled his knees up and hugged them.

“I’m sorry. Just give me a minute.”

Shakia put her hand on his back. “We’re okay now. We’re safe.”

Even if they’d really been safe, even if he were back in his room on Mars, it wouldn’t matter.

“A panic attack. Right?” Shakia asked. Her voice had grown clearer, less slurry.

He looked up at her. It was hard to concentrate, hard to speak. “You sound like you know them.”

“My son used to get them. Acute anxiety disorder.”

Aiden nodded. It went without saying that her son was dead.

“Even as a child,” Shakia said. “Anxiety, all the time. It was so hard for him.”

Aiden felt grateful for her words. It made him feel less foolish, less weak. “It’s like crawling through broken glass, every moment of your life.”

“You hide it well.”

“Do I?” The attack was dissipating a bit, his chest loosening. “I think I’m okay to walk now. Thanks for talking me through it.” He got unsteadily to his feet.

“Thanks for pulling me out of that van. That’s how I got out, isn’t it? You carried me?”

“Yeah.”

Aiden snapped a branch off a dead shrub on the edge of the parking lot, and when it grew too dark to see, he tapped it in front of them the way people who were blind used canes. He doubled back onto Desplaines a half mile beyond the Nunki picnic.

“Do you have a headache?” he asked.

“Big time.”

“Dizziness? Nausea?”

“A little.” Shakia said. “You’re thinking I have a concussion.”

“I can evaluate you when we get back.”

They leaned on each other like drunken buddies stumbling home from a bar.

The silence of the world was startling. Between the darkness, the silence, the limited palette of scents to pick up on the freezing wind, it was as if this world had closed down Aiden’s senses.

Would someone else have come up with the idea to divert TV-188 if he hadn’t? It would be nice to believe that. Maybe he’d just thought of it first.

“Did you see that?” Shakia asked.

Aiden scanned the wall of blackness surrounding them. “More of the dead?”

Shakia swatted his forearm. “Don’t be smart. A light. Just a flash, straight ahead.”

Aiden didn’t see anything, but he picked up his pace.

“How far ahead?”

“Hard to say. Maybe a quarter of a mile?”

Aiden squinted into the darkness, but there was nothing. It was possible the flash Shakia had seen was a symptom of her head injury.

“Why don’t you talk a little louder,” a voice to their left said. “I’m not sure the Nunki can hear you.”

White light flashed, revealing Beltane, Gage, and Monty. An instant later, Beltane flicked off the flashlight she was pointing at the ground, and they were in darkness again.

Aiden felt a hand on him, then Gage was hugging him. “I thought you were dead.”

“So did I.” He raised his voice. “What about your companions?”

“Good Boy and Magdalene are dead,” Monty said. “We don’t know about the rest of them.”

“They were driving a school bus,” Shakia said. “Why were they driving a school bus?”

“Because they had somewhere to go, I would imagine,” Beltane shot back.

“They had mind-blowing technology—stuff from out of your nightmares,” Monty said. “There used to be these tubes around, like big veins. The Nunki squeezed right into them. There were no openings—they just pushed through like they were stepping inside a soap bubble, and then they would shoot off.”

Veins as transportation. Aiden was so grateful he hadn’t been here to see it.

“The wall was so bizarre,” Monty went on. “See-through, just like the Nunki; the same barbs. Zeus thought all of their technology was based on their own DNA.”

“We were surrounded by a wall of Nunki flesh and bone,” Beltane said. “That sounds about right.”

• • • •

As they crossed the bridge on West Lake and headed downtown, fires warming people inside houses gave the darkness a softer hue, more gray than black. Aiden could make out silhouettes of buildings and light poles. The occasional figure hurried past, hunched against the bitter cold.

The ambient glow grew stronger as they approached Grant Park. Someone ran past carrying a cardboard box.

“What’s that smell?” Beltane asked as they headed down Lakeshore Drive toward Grant Park.

“Smoke,” Aiden said. The smoke had an undertone of something else. Something bitter, acrid, like burned rubber.

In the direction of the park, the air glowed dark red. A thick plume of black smoke rose.

“Oh, no.” Aiden had forgotten about the Captain’s call. Despite the pain, he jogged, praying the smell was not coming from Red Two.

Hundreds of people were milling around the park. Smoke poured from the open main hatch of Red Two. Around it, the red carbon fiber hull was singed black.

A man and woman standing with two children were watching nearby.

“What happened?” Aiden asked.

Scowling, the man gestured toward Red Two. “A bunch of idiots stormed the ship to get the food in there. Something inside must have caught fire from their torches.” He stared at Red Two, his eyes flat. “Half an hour ago, flames were all up the sides of it.”

Bodies lay scattered around the main hatch, people Red Two security must have shot trying to protect the ship, in the process bringing them all a few baby steps closer to extinction. Personnel were hurrying in and out, hauling salvage from Red Two.

Aiden limped toward the ship, following Gage and Shakia, wanting and not wanting to know the status of the ship.

Captain Mahajan was standing amid salvaged equipment. When she saw them her shoulders slumped and she started to turn away. Then Shakia’s bloodied face registered and she turned back.

“We were on our way,” Shakia said. “We were in an accident.”

“What’s the ship’s status?” Gage asked.

Captain Mahajan looked up at him. “The status is, it’s fucked.”

Chapter 10

Aiden nudged the charred skeleton of his suitcase with his foot. There was no need to touch it; everything that had been inside was ash. Everything that had been in his room was ash, including his supply of Xanax and Paxil. The walls were singed charcoal gray, the smoke stench overwhelming, even through the towel he was holding over his nose and mouth.

There were situations that reliably threw Aiden into a state of icy panic. Public speaking. First dates. Other situations were less predictable. Traveling. Performance evaluations. Aiden would have bet his life that becoming stranded in a perpetually dark city surrounded by hostile aliens with no pharmaceuticals belonged in the former category, but there he stood, his overriding emotion despair rather than terror. Maybe he was in shock, and the real onslaught of anxiety would come later.

Or maybe his adrenal glands had finally given up.

He headed back outside.

Half a dozen bonfires burned around the perimeter of Red Two, keeping the darkness at bay, providing the illusion that this was an organized operation, distinct from the anarchy and starvation surrounding it. Aiden knew better. They had no food, little energy. Soon they would be indistinguishable from the desperate souls looking to them for salvation.

“Aiden.” Mark Adlerberg was coming toward him. “Someone was looking for you.” Mark looked around, pointed out beyond the bonfires. “There she is.”

She was a frail-looking woman in jeans, a heavy blanket draped over her shoulders. Short hair, sharp cheekbones. It wasn’t until she spotted Aiden and smiled that he recognized her.

“Penelope?”

She rushed toward him. “Aiden? Oh my God, I can’t believe it.” Penelope hugged him until his broken ribs shrieked. She took a step back and looked at him. “In a million years, I never would have guessed I’d see you again.”

She’d lost thirty pounds and an incisor, but her eyes were still bright, expressive, her smile a big, enthusiastic rectangle.

“Wow. I was beginning to think everyone I knew was dead.”

Penelope raised her arms like she was showing off a new dress. “Here I am. Can’t say it’s been a blast. Want to know what rat tastes like?”

“Well, I’ll be re-opening my practice in a couple of days, if you want to make an appointment.”

She folded her arms, looked off into the dark. “No, I’ll be all right.”

He put a hand on her shoulder. “Penny, I’m joking.”

“No, you should go back to work. People can use your kind of help.”

I can’t help these people, he wanted to say. The thought of sitting in an office across from one of these survivors trying to process everything that had happened made him queasy. No one was going to ask him to do that, though. They were too focused on finding enough to eat, gathering fuel for fires, to worry about their broken minds. No, Aiden was sure he was off the hook on that front. His days would be filled with healing people’s bodies, using what he could recall from his days in med school.

Over Penelope’s shoulder, Aiden spotted Shakia, head down, heading for him. The gash in her forehead had been stitched, an ice pack lashed over her broken nose.

She stepped close, kept her voice low, although there were far fewer people in the park than there’d been a few hours earlier. “A reconnaissance team spotted Nunki in vehicles heading this way.”

Penelope gasped. “They never come into the city.”

“That’s what we keep hearing,” Shakia said. “We’re setting up a defense, in case—”

The squeal of brakes stopped her cold. On South Michigan, a school bus came to a stop. Its doors folded open.

A Nunki stepped out.

Aiden, Penelope, and Shakia ran for Red Two.

Two more buses followed, one a city bus. Aiden wondered if the school bus they’d collided with had been heading for Red Two as well.

The Nunki fanned out, disappearing into the darkness. Aiden couldn’t see them, but he could hear them. Aiden and the rest of them were pinned, their backs to the frozen lake.

“What do we do? What do we do?” someone was shouting.

“Set up a perimeter,” Captain Mahajan shouted. “Pile equipment every thirty feet for cover. If you don’t have a firearm, get one.”

They met Gage, with Monty and Beltane, while running to get weapons. The six of them got to work piling electronics components until they had built a low wall.

“They’re so hard to kill,” Monty said. “They have, like, six hearts, no vital organs except their heads. If you take off one of their limbs, the bleeding just stops after a couple of seconds.”

“I’ve never shot a gun.” Penelope stared down at the rifle in her hands.

“I haven’t either,” Gage said. “Just do your best.”

He was about to die. This moment, this was the moment of his death. The relentless flurry of his thoughts and worries would stop spinning, and everything would go black. He felt strangely ambivalent about it.

“Someone should try to talk to them,” Beltane said. She stayed behind the barricade. Talking to them would require standing clear, an easy target.

The baritone bass rumble grew louder, a war cry, an obituary.

Aiden guessed this was about revenge. The Nunki had to know the people who’d arrived on Red Two were responsible for the asteroid. Why else would they suddenly gather to attack the ship after leaving Chicago alone for so long?

Gage was staring at him, his teeth chattering despite the bonfires.

“What?”

Gage shook his head. “Nothing.”

Beside him, Beltane was hopping from foot to foot like she needed to pee.

The buses lurched forward, swung around and rolled across the frozen ground toward Red Two, spreading as they approached. Aiden felt a dread that superseded fear, drilling into his spine like black poison, freezing him solid.

“They’re using the buses for cover,” someone shouted. Aiden could see footfalls behind the buses.

“Shoot the tires,” Gage shouted.

Aiden closed one eye and opened fire as gunfire filled the air, the rattle of automatic weapons accompanied by the crack of handguns. Windshields shattered as some shot at the drivers, although Aiden didn’t see drivers.

The buses kept coming. Unless someone hit the tires and that actually stopped the buses, the Nunki would ram right through their pathetic cover.

Suddenly someone was running toward the buses. Beltane—it was Beltane in her jeans and filthy ski jacket. Aiden hadn’t seen her go, but she was in the open, her arms waving like a signaler directing a jet to its gate.

“Stop shooting,” Aiden screamed.

Behind him, Mahajan was shouting, “Cease fire.”

Beltane ran right at the closest bus, waving her arms in the same pattern over and over.

It looked as if the bus was going to run right over her; then it slowed, rolled to a stop. Beltane went on signing. The pattern shifted to a new message.

A lone Nunki appeared from behind the bus—a big one with six limbs, holding what looked like a human-made RPG. The Nunki waved its free limbs.

Monty muttered under his breath. “Ship. Ice.”

“What?” Aiden looked at Monty. “What’s it saying?”

Monty shook his head violently, signaling Aiden to shut up as he went on mumbling. “Leave. Ice.” Monty inhaled sharply, shouted, “They want the ship. All they want is the ship.” He stepped into the open. “If we walk away, out onto the ice and away, they say they won’t kill us.”

The ship? The ship was scrap.

How would the Nunki know that, though? They must have seen it land, and the smoke had stopped billowing from it three or four hours ago. They probably didn’t know about the fire.

Aiden chuckled to himself. They wanted off this frozen rock as badly as he. Though even operational, Red Two wouldn’t get them out of the neighborhood. Maybe they thought they could improve it.

“Tell them we agree,” Mahajan called to Beltane. “Tell them we’ll leave.”

Beltane waved her arms. The Nunki signaled back.

“They want two people to stay behind to show them how to operate it,” Monty called to the captain.

“Shit,” Gage hissed.

The Captain glanced around. “Welch. Will you stay behind with me?”

After a long pause, Welch called, “No. I’m sorry, no.” Allen Welch was their chief engineer, so he made sense. Aiden couldn’t blame him for balking, though. Who wanted to tell these Nunki they’d taken possession of junk?

Beltane looked back at the Captain, hands on her hips. “Get a clue, lady. You need someone who knows how to talk to them.” She signed something to the Nunki, took a few steps back. “I’ll stay.”

People began breaking ranks, jogging toward the frozen lake. Shakia stepped out from behind their makeshift wall. “I’ll be the second. You go on, Captain.”

Startled, Aiden said, “You’re not an engineer.”

“What’s to know?” Shakia looked the ship up and down. “It doesn’t work.” She turned to the captain. “Get everyone out of here before they change their minds.”

Mahajan nodded. “Thank you, Shakia.” She raised her voice. “Let’s go.” Half the crew were already a hundred yards out on the lake and heading along the shoreline.

Aiden watched people hurry past. He desperately wanted to join them, but his feet wouldn’t budge.

What would he say to Shakia as he left? Bye. Good luck. I’m out of here?

No one would be surprised. At one time or another, they’d all seen him curled in the fetal position, shaking. Certainly Penelope wouldn’t be surprised.

He turned to Penelope, who was looking at him expectantly, and put a hand on her shoulder. “You go on. I’m going to stay.” His own words shocked him.

Maybe unconsciously he really did want to die, to escape this hellish place. Or maybe he thought he deserved to die, for the part he played in making it this way.

Penelope opened her mouth to say something, but Aiden nudged her. “Go on. Get out of here.”

He watched her for a second, to make sure she went. Gage was standing, rifle in hand, halfway between Red Two and the lake, looking uncertain. Aiden waved for him to go, then turned to catch up to Shakia, who was walking through the well-trampled snow, out to where Beltane waited.

Aiden wasn’t sure he could make it. His legs were rubbery, and he needed a bathroom.

Four Nunki came out from behind the buses, three more clambered out through the doors. No wonder they’d agreed to the armistice so quickly. It wasn’t much of a force.

Their black, sclera-less eyes were ringed by a ridge of bone or muscle that made them appear deeply inset. One turned at just the right angle, and Aiden caught a glimpse of red flames from the bonfire, right through the center of its chest.

As they led the Nunki toward the ship, Beltane began signing.

“What are you saying?” Shakia asked.

“I’m telling them about the ship.” She went on signing.

“What exactly are you saying,” Shakia said.

Beltane cursed. “Ship burned.” Her words dripped impatience, contempt. “Hungry people. Torches. Accident. Now let me do this. They’ll kill us in a second if I upset them. They’ll probably kill us anyway once they realize we fucked them over.”

The big Nunki replied.

“They want to see for themselves,” Beltane said.

As they stepped into the dark, burned-out interior, one of the smaller Nunki began to glow. Aiden watched their faces by the Nunki’s bluish light. The thick muscles around their eyes stretched into a ridge, but he had no idea what that meant. They could be sad, or furious; it could even be a means of communication.

They walked the Nunki through the bridge and the propulsion room.

The big Nunki signed again.

“Big rock sky,” Beltane translated.

Somehow, Aiden’s heart found a higher gear.

More signing from the Nunki.

“You pushed big rock.”

“Tell it, we were trying to deflect it away, but weren’t able to,” Shakia said.

Beltane gave her a poisonous glare. “I have a couple hundred really basic words to work with.” She took a deep, whooshing breath. “Should I tell them, no? Just, no?”

“Tell them yes,” Aiden said.

Shakia and Beltane turned.

“They’re not stupid. They made the same calculations we did and figured out it was going to miss. By the time we deflected it, it was too late for them to react, but they know what happened.”

“I didn’t do it, though,” Beltane said. “You did. Only, I don’t know how to tell them that, so they’re going to kill me, too.”

“How do I sign ‘me’?” Aiden asked. “‘I did it’?”

Beltane’s mouth fell open. “You just make an ‘L’ with your forearms for ’me’.”

“Hang on,” Shakia said, grasping Aiden’s upper arm. “You didn’t do it.”

Aiden turned to the Nunki and made an L. Then he shit his pants. If anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything.

The Nunki stared at the L, then raised its eyes to meet Aiden’s. Aiden kept his arms in position, waited for it to raise the rifle clutched in one of its seven- or eight-fingered limbs.

It signed something.

“What did it say?” Aiden asked.

“Bad,” Beltane said.

Aiden wiped sweat from his eyes with the back of his hand. “What’s the sign for ‘yes’?”

“Press your fists together.”

Aiden pressed his fists together and held them there. There were a lot of other things he’d like to add—that it had been bad of the Nunki to slaughter humanity, for instance—but given the constraints of this system of communication, ‘yes’ seemed sufficient.

The Nunki signed again.

“Give me food,” Beltane translated.

“Christ, does anyone have any food?” Shakia asked, patting her pockets.

“Here.” Aiden dug into a pocket of his coat, pulled out a bag.

“It’s not meat, is it?” Beltane asked. “They get angry if you try to give them meat.”

“Trail mix.” Aiden approached the Nunki, set the bag in its open hand.

“No more,” Beltane said as she signed.

The Nunki with the trail mix headed for the door. Its companions followed.

Aiden, Shakia, and Beltane stood perfectly still. The glow of the Nunki receded until they were standing in darkness. The cabin reeked from Aiden’s shit, but for once Aiden was beyond embarrassment. All he felt was relief.

Nunki were pragmatic. Aiden thought he could conclude that much. They weren’t interested in revenge, only survival. They’d avoided a fight when offered the opportunity. Even with their enemy right in front of them, they’d walked away because there was nothing to gain from killing them.

Of course, all of that could be completely wrong. They had, after all, killed people after the bus crash.

“Come on.” Shakia took Aiden’s hand. Aiden reached out and found Beltane’s. Slowly, carefully, they inched their way outside, where the fires had become embers and the darkness was pushing down from above.

“Aiden.” It was Penelope, her low call coming from the direction of the lake.

Aiden followed her voice, stepping gingerly because of the crap in his pants. He raised a hand when he spotted her coming out of the darkness. As she drew close she stopped, folded her arms and considered him. “Wow. Never in a million years would I have pegged you as the hero type.”

Maybe she meant it purely as a compliment, but there was a backhanded insult embedded in her praise. “Penelope, I have a disorder. A disease. It cranks up the volume on my fear. Sometimes that volume is so loud I can’t hear myself think, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a spine.”

Penelope looked surprised. “Where did that come from? Who said you had no spine?”

“You called it off between us after I had a panic attack in your apartment. You didn’t have to say it.”

Penelope threw back her head and shrieked with laughter, startling Aiden.

“What?” Aiden could feel his face turning red. “What part of that is funny to you?”

She covered her mouth, crippled with laughter, a tear trailing down her cheek. The others, who’d moved away to give them some privacy, looked back, unused to the sound of laughter.

“I don’t understand what’s so funny.”

Penelope struggled to control herself. She straightened to face him. “I have cancer. I dumped you when I found out. We’d only known each other a few weeks, and I didn’t have the energy for someone new. I wanted to be with my friends and family.”

Aiden’s pounding heart felt as if it suddenly stopped beating altogether. He put a hand over his mouth, feeling like such a jackass, like a self-centered, self-absorbed, narcissistic jackass.

“Are you all right now?” he asked.

Penelope folded her arms, looked at the ground. “No, Aiden, I’m not all right. I was supposed to get all of these fancy treatments, stem-cell this and chemo that, and then the Nunki came and that was that.” She shrugged, lifting her shoulders nearly to her ears before letting them drop. It was one of her little mannerisms Aiden had so cherished during their brief time together.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well, odds are the Nunki will get me before the cancer does. Or the cold, or starvation.” She gave him a deadpan look. “I may outlive you, given your penchant for heroics.”

This time the words made him flush. His penchant for heroics. The phrase was the sweetest music coming from Penelope. That goodbye text from her really had been a tipping point, he realized. It had been the last straw, the indignation that pushed him over the edge. He’d built her up as some sort of in-absentia arbiter of his worth as a human being.

She’d been the reason he volunteered to go to Mars, wasn’t she? He wanted to prove to her, and consequently himself, that he wasn’t a coward. Gage had said as much.

How had he not seen it before?

“What?” Penelope was watching his face.

“I’m just now realizing that I volunteered to go to Mars to prove to you I wasn’t a coward. I signed up for a mission to outer space, all because of my own insecure, neurotic interpretation of why you ended our very brief relationship. How fucked up is that?”

Penny nodded. “That’s pretty fucked up. Although whatever the reason, you were lucky to get out of here. You have no idea.”

Aiden considered. It was possible his anxiety had saved his life. That seemed strangely appropriate. It owed him.

Penny looked up at the dark sky. “Do you know how long it’s going to be before the sun comes out?”

“Two or three more years. Figure a thousand days.” Right now that seemed an eternity, like a thousand-foot-high wall Aiden would have to scale if he was going to survive. When had his life not felt that way, though?

Chapter 11

Penelope was buried under so many blankets it was difficult to tell for certain that she was breathing. Not that Aiden thought she was at risk of respiratory failure or cardiac arrest at this point; it just seemed if you went to check on someone, you should make sure she was breathing.

Penelope rolled to face him. He pointed the little flashlight away so it wouldn’t hurt her eyes.

“Hey.” Her voice was blurry with sleep.

“Just checking on you.”

“You’re sweet. I’m okay. Just tired.”

She’d been sleeping for twelve hours straight. Every day she seemed more fatigued. Aiden wasn’t an oncologist, but without treatment he didn’t think she had more than a few months.

“You need more water?” He lifted her cup; it was almost empty.

“My guardian angel. What an idiot I was for breaking up with you. Worst mistake of my life.”

The words felt good. He’d never had someone to take care of before, unless you counted Wilhelm, the Basset Hound he owned in his twenties. It took the focus off his own fear, to worry about Penelope.

By the time he refilled the water cup on her night table from the pitcher, she was asleep again. He closed the door behind him as gently as he could.

In the living room the fire was roaring, rendering the room toasty-warm. Aiden sat on the floor in front of the fire while Beltane talked about being assaulted by Nunki before the invasion began. Aiden had heard the condensed version a couple of days earlier: the Nunki had grabbed her in the woods when she snuck out of a drug rehab facility to get drunk, took blood and tissue samples, then released her. No one believed her outlandish story until the invasion began.

“I found seven other people online who had the same thing happen to them,” Beltane was saying. “No one believed them, either.”

The Nunki had obviously used the blood and tissue samples to create the plagues they released—one viral, the other prion-based, both efficient enough to kill billions. The Nunki were centuries ahead of humans in terms of biotechnology. They could probably cure Penelope in a few minutes if they wanted.

Aiden inhaled sharply. They could, couldn’t they? They could restore her to the spark plug she’d been when he first met her at Gage’s party.

They wouldn’t, though. They’d wiped out ninety-nine point nine percent of the human race; why would they make the slightest effort to save one person?

Gage settled on the floor next to him. It was amazing how well-groomed he looked—clean-shaven, hair combed. Hell, his hair looked freshly trimmed.

“I’m leaving tomorrow, seven a.m. Shakia’s coming with. We could use your help—”

“With what? Fighting off Nunki?” Aiden pointed at Beltane. “It’s her help you need.”

“I’m going to ask her next, but right now I’m asking you.” Gage shifted so he was facing Aiden more directly. “The thing is, I want to see my daughter again. I don’t know if you can truly understand what it feels like, to know my little girl is out there in the dark. I have to find her.”

Aiden stood. Yes, how could he possibly understand what it felt like to love someone? “Well, good luck.” He went into the library that adjoined the living room. He studied book spines on the built-in bookshelf by the orange light filtering in from the living room, pulled a book at random, took it to a leather chair, and opened it.

He kept reading the first sentence over and over, unable to make it stick. He couldn’t shake the idea that the Nunki could cure Penelope, if they chose.

A hand settled on the armrest. Aiden looked up to find Shakia standing over him.

“How is Penelope?”

Aiden considered how best to answer. “I’d say she’s a month or two away from becoming very sick, when she’ll need morphine, assuming there’s any to be found.”

Shakia pressed her hand to his cheek. “Are you in love with her?”

The question startled Aiden. “I don’t know her well enough to know if I’m in love with her or not. I’m caring for her because I’m a doctor, and she needs my care.”

Shakia gave him an impatient look. “Of course you know. Do you love her, or don’t you?”

Aiden shook his head. “I’m not going to let myself go there. Falling in love with her would only make it harder to lose—”

Shakia smacked him in the side of the head, just above his ear.

“Ow.” He pressed his hand over the spot. “That hurt.”

“You’re tied up in knots. Your heart is so good, but you’re tied up in knots. Do you love her? Yes or no.”

“Yes.” The word burst out without Aiden knowing it was coming, but it felt right. He loved her. Yes. Fine. That was accurate, or at least as accurate as emotions got.

“Say it.”

It was hard to get the words out. He felt oddly ashamed forming them, letting them reach his lips. Why was that? If he felt it, why did he feel ashamed to say it aloud?

Because he felt unworthy. Not just unworthy of Penelope’s love, but unworthy to love her, whether she loved him back or not. He felt unworthy to love someone.

Aiden closed his eyes, and forced the words out. “I love her. I love Penelope.”

Shakia nodded. “Good. I know she’s dying, and I know you believe there won’t be anything left of her after she dies, but love her while you can. That’s a gift you can give her. And yourself.”

Aiden’s chest hitched, his throat clenched. She was right. Of course she was right.

Shakia pointed at his nose and, more gently, said, “And let those tears come if they want to. You’re all tied up in knots.”

As his tears flowed, Shakia held him. He thought he could feel just a few of the knots untangling.

He should be taking notes, he thought. Shakia was a better psychiatrist than he was.

Chapter 12

As soon as he closed his eyes, images of Nunki loomed. He never wanted to see one again. He wanted to stay by this fire and eat canned pork and beans until the sun came out.

If he did, though, Penny would die. She had one chance, and that involved Aiden walking up to one of those monsters and asking for help.

Why would they help him, though? Could he offer a trade? Food in exchange for healing her? He didn’t know for sure they could heal her in their current post-apocalyptic state, didn’t know if they were so advanced that any one of them would know what to do, or if he needed to find the Nunki equivalent of an MD. Or a vet.

Nunki loomed in the corners of his vision. He saw them tearing Beltane and Monty’s friends apart after the bus accident, heard the thud of a body landing in the black snow.

He was exhausted from thinking about this, but the train of thought was locked in now; he couldn’t stop it. There was a chance he could save Penelope, but it involved doing something he could not, in a million years, do. It was the ultimate approach-avoidance conflict, and it had him paralyzed.

Penelope appeared in her doorway, looking pale but rested.

Aiden’s heart fluttered. The feeling was familiar in a nostalgic way, from a thousand unrequited teenage crushes. It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to feel such unfettered love for another human being.

He loved her. He did. She didn’t have to love him back; he didn’t even have to tell her, but he was allowed to feel it.

“How are you?” he asked as she sank onto the couch beside him.

“Better. Normal, almost.” Her eyes grew comically wide. “Want to go dancing? I know this great club.”

Aiden laughed. “I’ve got a better idea. You up for a road trip?”

Penelope tilted her head. “Where to?” She thought he was joking, like her.

“Straight to hell, actually.”

He explained his idea, the words rushing out in panicked breaths as he realized he was giving himself no chance to back out.

Chapter 13

Aiden kept his eyes on the tight tunnel of light cutting through the blackness. He was clutching the armrest in a death grip as the road flew by. Who in God’s name had decided Beltane should take a turn driving?

Beside him, Penelope was leaning her head back on the headrest, her eyes closed. She wasn’t well; the last time he’d checked she had a fever of one hundred point five. He was worried she might have developed an infection in her compromised state.

“I’ve been thinking about this movie I saw when I was a kid,” Beltane said, one hand on the wheel. “I don’t remember the name. Billy Bob Thornton was in it. He played a guy who built his own rocket ship from scrap metal and flew to the moon.”

“I saw that,” Penelope said without opening her eyes. “I don’t remember the name, either. The government tried to stop him.”

“That’s the one. So, I get that the ship you guys flew in is fucked. What I don’t get is why you can’t build another.”

Gage chuckled from the back. “Because this ain’t a movie.”

“No, but in the movie one guy did it, and we have a hundred. And we wouldn’t have to pay for anything. We can take what we want. We can’t make one rocket out of everything in Chicago?”

Aiden couldn’t see anything out the side window. It was a solid wall of black.

“I guess theoretically you could do it, but without a trillion dollars’ worth of quality control and technical support, you’re going to make a dozen mistakes. It would just be a matter of which killed you first.”

“So what you’re saying is, better to sit tight and wait till the sun comes out and the Nunki rebuild the wall,” Beltane said.

“You heard the population estimate from the census team, didn’t you?” Shakia said. “Four to five thousand. That’s a lot of ships, unless we’re only looking to save ourselves.”

“Hell, yes, I’m looking to save myself,” Beltane shot back.

Four to five thousand. Even if they combined the surviving population on Earth with the population on Mars, it was barely enough to have an outside chance at saving the human species, based on Paula Peavy’s analysis. And dozens of people were dying in Chicago every day.

He glanced at Penelope. It wasn’t only about the species, though; individuals mattered, too.

Penelope noticed him looking at her. She reached over, laced her fingers with his and squeezed. Aiden squeezed back. A warm shiver ran through him. It was the first sign Penny had given that there was something between them, that perhaps she loved him, too.

The van slowed. Beltane leaned forward, peered into the darkness. “We need to find gas pretty soon.”

Monty pointed the flashlight to one side, painting light across apartment buildings set on a snow-covered rise.

They found a station a few miles on. Monty got the hose and ice pick out of the back and got to work filling the tank.

Aiden watched as he chipped away frozen snow, exposing the circular hatch leading to the underground tank. He began feeding the hose into the tank. Once it was in place he’d have to suck the gasoline up the hose.

A moment later he was reeling the hose back out, double-time. He hurried back to the van.

“Flashes of blue light up the street. Nunki.”

It was the opportunity Aiden had been waiting for, but the news made him feel as if was falling into a black pit. He squeezed Penelope’s hand, then let it go and opened the door. “Here we go.”

“Guys, I know you’re sick of hearing me say this, but this is a terrible idea,” Gage said. “These are monsters. They’re not going to play doctor, they’re going to cut you both down in your tracks.”

“I agree with Gage,” Shakia said. “Bad, bad idea. Just get in. We’ll make a run for it.”

Head down, Aiden went around and swung open the rear hatch. “Somebody help me with this, please.”

Sighing, Gage helped him lift down the laundry basket filled with food. It seemed like a meager offering in exchange for someone’s life, but it was all they could afford.

As they set it down, Penny strained to lift it. “I told you: You don’t have to come. Either they’ll help or they won’t; there’s no point in you risking your life as well.”

Aiden pulled his pack out of the back, shrugged it on. “You ready?”

Shakia gave him a fierce hug, then Gage offered a hand. “We’ll swing back around tomorrow.” He pointed into the dark. “There’s a Holiday Inn over there. Try to find that, and wait inside.”

If they made it. That went without saying.

Monty handed Aiden a flashlight. They set off toward the approaching sound of Nunki, each carrying one handle of the basket. Aiden aimed the flashlight high, creating a beacon the Nunki couldn’t miss. His heart was racing, his stomach a sick knot.

The mournful bellow of a Nunki was met by a second, joining almost in harmony.

“I’m so scared,” Penny said.

Aiden spotted a diffuse blue glow ahead and to their left.

“There they are. I’ll carry the basket, you sign ‘food’ and ‘sick.’”

As Penelope handed over the basket and began signing, the blue glow was joined by two others—one to their right, the other straight ahead. They’d fanned out.

A Nunki appeared from behind a Ruby Tuesday restaurant, moving on all four of its limbs, half a thrift-shop’s worth of clothes hanging from it. At one moment it seemed to Aiden like a giant insect, the next it appeared startlingly humanoid. It raised up on its hind legs and signed. Penny and Monty had taught Aiden a few hundred signs, but his mind was a blank.

“It says to stop,” Penelope said.

Aiden set the basket down and raised his hands.

He managed not to cry out when the crunch of footsteps in the snow was suddenly right behind them. He turned, arms still raised.

A huge Nunki—ten feet tall at least—loomed over him. It lashed out with one of its eight limbs, grabbed Aiden by the forearm and lifted him into the air. It grabbed Penny as well, then carried them off.

Even if Aiden could remember a single sign, he only had one free hand, so he grit his teeth against the lancing pain radiating from his forearm and waited. It hadn’t killed them on the spot. That seemed a good sign. It made little sense for it to carry them away just to kill them somewhere else.

It took them to the Ruby Tuesday’s, entered through a broken-out section of the front windows, and set them down among upended tables and chairs, where three more Nunki waited.

As soon as her arms were free, Penelope began signing.

Sick, Aiden recognized. Then another word, then me. Help— the second word was help.

The smallest Nunki responded, the ridge around its eyes flexing as it did so. Aiden couldn’t follow; he looked to Penny.

“‘Fix machines?’ It wants to know if we know how to fix machines.” Penny signed, No.

It signed again.

“‘Question mark.’ I think it wants to know what we can do. Like, ‘What good are you? Tell us why we shouldn’t kill you.’” She signed again. “I’m telling them I do ‘computer talk.’ Though, I don’t know what good that is to them.”

With trembling hands, Aiden tried to sign himself. Fix people.

The Nunki signed at him. He looked at Penny. “What did it say?”

“‘You fix people?’”

Aiden signed, Yes. No fix her. You fix her?

Go vehicle, it signed.

The big one grasped his arm, turned him around and led him toward a Hummer parked beside the restaurant. They directed Aiden to the driver’s seat, and Penelope into the back. A four-limbed Nunki climbed into the passenger seat, a six-legged one squeezed into the back, crowding Penny into a corner of her seat. Their limbs were bony, with hooked spurs at the joints that looked sharp. Flaps of parchment-like skin stretched between their limbs and torsos like webbing.

“They want you to drive,” Penny said. “Turn left out of the parking lot.”

Aiden started the Hummer, put it in drive. He could barely feel his fingers, partly because of the cold but mostly because he was terrified. He was in a vehicle with Nunki; it felt like being in a vehicle full of spiders and snakes.

As he turned, he risked the slightest glance at the Nunki in the passenger seat. It didn’t look comfortable—both sets of joints in its lower limbs bent the opposite way, so it couldn’t sit and have what passed for its legs on the floor at the same time.

He’d driven about a mile before he mustered the courage to turn on the heat.

Chapter 14

At first Aiden thought he might be hallucinating the glow of light in the distance. He felt like he’d been driving for days, although based on the ebb and flow from gray skies to black it had been more like twenty-four hours. As they cleared a rise, streetlights shone white in a vast, empty parking lot surrounding a long, modern-looking orange-brown building.

“Turn right.” Penny sounded exhausted. She’d slept some, but sleeping upright in an SUV was hardly the kind of rest a cancer patient needed, especially one who had a secondary infection. And she did. Aiden hoped it was just a cold, or something else innocuous.

They came to an open gate, passed a sign that drew Aiden fully alert.

J. Craig Venter Institute for Genomic Research.

Finally, he knew where they’d been heading, although he still didn’t understand why.

Unless. His flagging hopes soared. Unless they needed instruments here to heal Penelope? Would they go to all this trouble to help a human? Aiden had no idea.

They were led inside, through dark hallways, up a flight of steps, to a clean, well-lit lab where wheeled stools had been stacked in a corner and Nunki of all shapes and sizes moved about with purpose.

Aiden spotted a human—a woman in her sixties or seventies wearing a white lab coat, bent over a printout.

“Hello,” Aiden called.

The woman flinched in surprise.

Her name was Valerie Hearst—she’d been a physiologist at the University of Chicago. As she shook Aiden’s hand, she looked from Aiden to Penelope, who was feverish, her forehead damp. “Are either of you geneticists?”

“No. I’m an MD. A psychiatrist. Penelope is a web designer. She has cancer—late-stage non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

Aiden looked around. “What’s going on here?”

Valerie followed his gaze. “I’ll tell you what I know, or what I think I know. The Nunki aren’t exactly chatty.” She gave him a tight, humorless smile. “I think they were struggling to survive in this environment even before the asteroid hit. I’m not sure if it’s the temperature alone, the composition of our atmosphere, or what. They were working on incorporating human DNA into their physiology. That’s why they let everyone in Chicago live—to serve as a gene pool. Then the asteroid hit, and killed off most of their technology. It knocked them back a thousand years. They have the knowledge, but not the equipment to adapt themselves. So now they’re trying to adapt human technology.”

“They’d introduce an alien race’s DNA into their own bodies?” Aiden tried to imagine how he’d react if someone suggested introducing Nunki DNA into his genome. Nothing was more him than his DNA.

“They alter their DNA routinely.” She gestured toward the Nunki hard at work around the lab. “That’s why they’re all so different from one other. Their children choose their own morphology when they reach a certain age, as a rite of passage. At least they did until the asteroid hit.”

They altered their own structure at the DNA level. It was remarkable, and repulsive.

He glanced at Penelope. Her eyes were glassy. Whatever she had, it was getting worse. “If they can do all that, surely they can help Penelope.”

Aiden’s words seemed to startle Valerie. “How exactly did you end up here? They took you from Chicago, right? Someone told the Nunki you were a doctor?”

Aiden shook his head. “We went to them. They’re Penny’s only chance.”

Valerie raised one eyebrow. “You’ve got iron balls, doctor. I’ll give you that. As far as I can tell, the Nunki aren’t in the healing business.” She shrugged. “But you can ask.”

Aiden looked around. “Who would I ask?”

She chuckled dryly. “I’ve been here for three months and I still have no idea who’s in charge.”

Swallowing, Aiden chose a Nunki at random, walked up to it, pointed at Penelope and signed, Her sick. You fix?

The Nunki signed, No.

Who fix? He signed back.

The Nunki came toward him. Aiden raised his hands defensively, sure it was going to attack, but it brushed past and went to Valerie, signing furiously. Aiden couldn’t follow it.

“It wants me to give you work to do. You’re going to have to get up to speed on sign language, then you’ll be translating journal articles and locating medical equipment.”

“What about Penny?”

Valerie fixed him with a hard stare. “It said no. Don’t ask again, at least for a few days. They will kill you if you get under their skin. Believe me. They killed my husband.”

• • • •

By the next morning, Penelope’s breathing was labored, her fever high. Aiden and Valerie had set her up on a couch in an administrative office, and Aiden found IV bags in one of the unused labs and set one up. Valerie offered a packet of Amoxicillin; he gave Penelope two tablets.

Then he went to work, learning Nunki sign language. Valerie taught him while simultaneously working on her primary project, whatever it was. Aiden didn’t really care.

He watched the Nunki out of the corner of his eye, trying to figure out which seemed to know what was going on, and which were workers taking directions. The problem was, he didn’t even know how they communicated. His guess was it had to do with those ridges around their eyes.

They moved around a great deal, but most of them, regardless of their size or the number of limbs they possessed, seemed to have one lab station they kept returning to. Except one, who seemed to spend a more or less equal amount of time at each station. It was large, with eight limbs. Aiden figured it must be either higher status than the others, or lower.

It took Aiden about an hour to muster the courage to approach it.

When the Nunki moved close to his station, Aiden went up to it and signed, Person sick. Will die soon. You fix person? He’d learned a few new key words from Valerie.

The Nunki turned away. Heart pounding, Aiden followed. He positioned himself in the Nunki’s field of vision and repeated the message.

No, it signed.

Aiden had learned another crucial word from Valerie. He signed it now.

Why?

Fix Nunki, the Nunki signed back, and turned away.

“Aiden,” Valerie called. She waved him over emphatically. “It won’t give you any warning. You see the barb on its limb, between the wrist and the elbow?”

Aiden nodded.

“It will shove that barb into your throat, as casually as you would pick a daisy.”

Aiden watched the Nunki, hope draining from him, like his blood would if he persisted.

Fix Nunki. Those two words spoke volumes to Aiden.

“I’m going to check on Penelope.”

“Don’t be long.” As Aiden turned away, she added, “I’m sorry, Aiden.”

Penelope was awake. Her breathing was labored, her temperature over 103. She wasn’t responding to the antibiotics.

“Am I dying?” she asked as he checked her pulse.

“It’s just a respiratory infection.” He fiddled with her IV line, although it was working perfectly.

Penelope reached out, took his hand and drew it to her. He stopped fiddling.

“I do want the truth. You know, in case you’re being kind.”

Aiden nodded. If she wanted the truth, she had the right to hear it. “You could still beat this, but . . .”

She nodded, her eyes shining with tears. “But I probably won’t. That’s what I figured.”

“I’m working on the Nunki. I’m going to ask again as soon as I leave here. They could still come through.”

Penelope reached up and pressed her hand to Aiden’s cheek. “Just stay with me, as much as you can. That’s all I want. I feel so much better when you’re here. Almost not afraid at all.”

Aiden wiped tears from his cheek with the back of his sleeve. “Let me try once more. I’ll be right back, and I’ll stay unless they drag me away.”

He ran down the hallway, up the stairs to the lab, spotted the eight-limbed Nunki by the bank of windows. Aiden stepped right in front of him, signed, Fix person.

No.

If there was a sign for “please,” Aiden didn’t know it, so he kept signing, Fix person, Fix person, Fix person—

The Nunki clubbed Aiden in the side of the head, knocking him into a table. His legs buckled and he dropped to the floor.

Aiden tried to climb to his hands and knees, but his arms kept giving out. His ears were ringing, and blood was dripping onto the white tile floor.

The ringing in his ears receded. Aiden managed to rise to his hands and knees and crawl away, leaving a trail of blood.

“Are you all right?”

Aiden crawled right past Valerie, into the hall. A Nunki passed him without a glance.

When it was gone, Aiden struggled to his feet, using the wall for support. He touched the side of his head, found a deep gash above his ear, a few inches long.

In the medical supply room, where he’d found the IV bags, he located pressure bandages. After washing the cut in a basin of dishwater left in the hall, he bandaged the wound.

When he got back to the room Penelope was either sleeping or unconscious. Her breathing was shallow, ragged. He wondered if there was a respirator in the building somewhere. This was a research facility, though, not a hospital.

When he dabbed her forehead with a damp hand towel, her eyes fluttered open.

“Good,” she whispered. She reached up, took his hand.

Aiden expected a Nunki to show up at the door any moment, but he stayed.

She had to pause every few words when she spoke. “I overheard you talking about big band music. That’s why I came up and introduced myself. In case you were wondering.”

It took Aiden a moment to follow what she was talking about. Gage’s party, where they’d met. Penelope had come up to him out of the blue.

“You don’t like big band music, though. Do you?”

Penelope shook her head. “But I knew you’d be interesting. Different. A guy your age, going on about Brazilian big band and Marlene Dietrich.”

“Most people don’t see those interests as a plus.”

“Yeah, well, most people are dufuses.” She closed her eyes. “I’m going to sleep now. Love you.”

“I love you, too,” he said, but Penelope was already asleep, and Aiden wasn’t sure if she heard him.

Her breathing grew shallow, more labored.

Aiden watched her sleep. She sank to a point where Aiden knew if he tried to wake her, he wouldn’t be able to. He dabbed her face with the towel, spoke to her softly so she’d know he was still there.

She took one last breath, big and full like a gasp, then exhaled slowly and was still. Aiden held her hand as numbness enveloped him.

What was there left to worry about? He’d lost Eva and Calvin. Now Penelope. Chicago’s population had dwindled well below the threshold where there was any hope of the species surviving, so even his personal survival meant nothing in the end. So what was there now?

He kissed Penelope’s cheek and drew the sheet over her head.

Chapter 15

The eight-legged Nunki signed to him:

Centrifuge broken. We find another.

Which meant Aiden find another, while OctoNunki watch him. Aiden didn’t understand why the Nunki didn’t send a lackey to guard Aiden when he left the premises to locate equipment. Maybe his buddy Octo wanted to learn how to salvage without relying on Aiden.

Aiden signed Yes, and followed the Nunki into the parking lot, trying to think of the nearest hospital that would have a full-sized centrifuge, while simultaneously seething with hatred for this creature. For this creature in particular, who’d had the power to save Penelope’s life.

It was an effort to climb down the three flights of steps, even more of an effort to think about centrifuges. For the first time in his life, his anxiety had serious competition: depression. It was as if the darkness of the world had poured in and filled his heart and soul.

He burned with guilt for helping Nunki survive in exchange for his own life. The Nunki would solve their own problems and bask in the sun’s return, while the human race died out.

The Nunki stowed a duffel bag of tools in the back seat as it squeezed into the Hummer’s passenger seat. Aiden was certain the Nunki had the knowledge to save humanity from extinction even now, past their natural population tipping point, if they chose. Aiden’s eight-legged chaperone might know enough to do it singlehandedly. But it wouldn’t. Fix Nunki. That was all that mattered to them. If they’d placed any value on human life, they wouldn’t have invaded in the first place.

They could rewrite their own genome, add limbs and hearts, make themselves luminescent, and not just in the womb but after. It was astonishing. If humans could do the same, they could engineer their physiology to survive in Mars’ atmosphere and be free of those damned suffocating habitrails. Now that would increase their chances of survival. Hell, theoretically they could engineer themselves to photosynthesize sunlight rather than eat.

What if Aiden could somehow get a message back to Gage and Shakia, and convince them to muster a small force and attack the Venter Institute? They could take hostages back to Chicago and force them to help humans, just as the Nunki were forcing Aiden to help them. They could send tutorials up to Mars. Of course, the Mars Mission wouldn’t have the equipment necessary to carry out such incredibly advanced genetic engineering. Maybe they could ship equipment to Mars on a small, unmanned ship.

He tried to imagine a handful of humans storming the Venter Institute and overpowering the Nunki. It felt like a fantasy, something out of a Hollywood film. And it rested on the assumption that Aiden could somehow contact his friends in Chicago. As far as he knew there was no short-wave radio at the Venter Institute, and he was never allowed to leave without a chaperone.

Aiden glanced at the Nunki, crammed into the space beside him. The only vaguely realistic plan would be for Aiden to bring a Nunki genetic engineer to Chicago himself. And how realistic was that? He tried to imagine overpowering this creature looming beside him.

Maybe he could inject it with an elephant-sized dose of Haloperidol? If he could locate Haloperidol. If a syringe could penetrate the Nunki’s thick skin.

This line of thought got Aiden’s heart pumping, giving his anxiety an edge in its wrestling match with his depression. He preferred anxiety. It was familiar, and it energized rather than sapped energy, if in a sickening way.

He tried to calm himself by acknowledging that he would never actually carry out such a plan. Despite what Penelope thought, he was no hero. He wasn’t a coward either, but there was a lot of space between a coward and hero. He fit neatly into that middle ground.

As they passed under an overpass, Aiden eyed the massive concrete pillars supporting the road above. Could he drive the right side of the Hummer into one of those, slamming it into the Nunki, while leaving himself relatively unharmed? He’d buckled his seatbelt out of habit, while it wouldn’t have been possible for the Nunki to do so even if it wanted to. Of course the Nunki was a genetically-engineered biological super-species. The thing would probably walk away from the impact.

After filleting Aiden, of course.

Another way to look at it was that this was humanity’s last chance for survival. All the centuries of history, from ancient Mesopotamia to the Roman Empire, the Renaissance to the industrial revolution, all the art, music, literature that was humanity, funneled down to this one moment in time, to whether one short, hairy, anxious man had the guts to steer his vehicle into a concrete pillar.

Aiden wasn’t sure he liked looking at it from that perspective. Placing the weight of human history on his shoulders did nothing to help his nerves. It could lead right into a panic attack.

He nudged the accelerator, picking up speed.

Was he really contemplating this?

Evidently he was. But if he thought about it too carefully, he’d lose his nerve.

If he did it, he’d have to accelerate quickly, in the last few hundred yards, so the Nunki didn’t have time to stab him in the throat with that transparent barb on what passed for its forearm. It was telling, that a species creating their own appearance would put barbs all over themselves.

An overpass appeared a quarter of a mile ahead, just visible in their headlights. Heart hammering wildly, Aiden nudged the accelerator up to forty, wondering if he could gain enough speed, driving in snow.

Was he really going to do this?

It felt as if someone else was clutching the steering wheel, and he was watching to see what those hands would do. Aiden eased the Hummer toward the shoulder. Snow mixed with black dust pelted the windshield.

The Nunki signed something as they picked up speed. Aiden stared straight ahead, as if he didn’t see it.

The Hummer barreled toward the overpass.

Was he really going to do this? Suddenly he felt violently nauseous. He was going to vomit.

He floored the Hummer, aiming to shear it in half.

Yes, evidently he was really going to do this.

The Nunki grabbed the steering wheel. Aiden struggled to steady it.

• • • •

He was in Penny’s apartment, eating shepherd’s pie with lamb and a glass of Pinot. Penny was wearing a brightly colored shift with ruffles that had a Mexican or South American flair. Her eyes were bright, and she was speaking between bites, but Aiden couldn’t hear what she was saying. Her words were drowned out by a deafening hum. Aiden wanted to hear what she was saying, because even though she was here with him, he knew she was dead, so it was important that he hear these words no matter how trivial they might be. The humming drowned out everything, though. Even the pain.

Aiden opened his eyes. The white balloon of the airbag partially blocked his vision. To his right was the concrete pillar, close enough that he could touch it.

Gradually he became aware of pain radiating from his nose and mouth. When he lifted his head, the world tilted wildly before settling down. He was tempted to touch his nose to see how bad it was, but wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Exploring with his tongue, he discovered one of his front teeth was loose.

The Nunki stirred, back and to his right. It was still alive. Slowly, carefully, Aiden turned.

It was jammed between the concrete piling and the passenger seat, which was now more like a back seat. It was straining to free itself.

He tried to remember what his plan had been, to restrain the Nunki so he could take it prisoner and bring it to Chicago. Bind its limbs? Had he even had a plan? He couldn’t remember.

Aiden so wished he could go back to that dinner with Penelope. It was cold and dark here, so warm and bright in Penelope’s apartment. Plus there was a monster here.

It was going to free itself soon. He wondered if he should kill it and go back to Chicago alone.

Yes. Kill it.

Except he had no weapon. He looked around for something sharp or heavy, maybe a piece of shrapnel from the wrecked Hummer.

He spotted the duffel bag. The Nunki’s tools. There was a fire axe in that bag, which the Nunki used to break through locked doors. As Aiden reached for it, agony shot through his hip. He grit his teeth, which triggered shooting pain in his mouth. Dragging the duffel to him, he reached inside. His fingers brushed the handle of the axe.

Aiden couldn’t see the Nunki’s face, but based on its redoubled efforts to break free, it could see that he had an axe. Only, the thought of hacking the Nunki to death had him hyperventilating. The Nunki deserved it, but how could Aiden possibly carry out such a grisly act?

The Nunki jerked partially free. Now Aiden could see its face. He knelt on his seat facing backward, lifted the axe to the ceiling, aimed to bring it down in the center of the Nunki’s torso. Monty had said it was hard to kill a Nunki, because it had duplicates of vital organs, and could staunch its own bleeding at will—

He hesitated.

Could it survive the amputation of its limbs? If it had no limbs, it wasn’t a threat. He could take it back to Chicago alive.

The thought horrified Aiden. It would be bad enough to kill it, but hacking its limbs off? He was so close, though. If he backed off now, he’d never forgive himself. Humanity would never forgive him.

The Nunki redoubled its efforts to break free as Aiden raised the axe. His eyes squeezed almost shut, Aiden brought the axe down on the nearest limb.

The Nunki let out a deep, deafening foghorn bellow.

Aiden pulled the axe free. He chopped again. The limb bent at a horrible angle; thick blood poured from the wound. In the dim light it looked greenish-black.

Suddenly, the bleeding stopped, as abruptly as a shut faucet.

The Nunki lashed out, speared Aiden’s forearm, digging deep. Shouting in pain, Aiden swung the axe awkwardly with his other hand, drove the limb against the concrete piling, leaving a deep wound in it. He hit it again. The limb cracked, bent at a sharp angle as the Nunki bellowed. Aiden shifted his attention to another, swinging the axe frantically.

• • • •

He could reach only five limbs. At that point he had no choice but to go outside and try to cut the Nunki free of the Hummer using the axe and a crowbar. The steel toward the rear of the Hummer was mostly intact, and Aiden was able to slowly hack and pry the rear door out of the frame. His hip was in agony; blood from the wound in his left forearm soaked his sleeve from wrist to shoulder.

Once the door was out, he worked on the roof, taking care not to hit the Nunki, who was tensing and relaxing the stumps of its severed limbs, maybe in the Nunki version of shock.

He cut through a section of the steel roof support. The Nunki came rolling out so abruptly Aiden had to jump out of the way.

The Nunki scrambled, raised itself onto two of its three remaining limbs. It lunged at Aiden, slashed him across his stomach with the barbs on its free limb, shredding his shirt.

Aiden swung the axe wildly, striking the free limb down low, opening a deep wound just below its fingers. Before it could recover, Aiden hit the limb farther up. He kept swinging, hitting it again and again, slashing the limb open in half a dozen places. Finally the Nunki couldn’t hold the limb up any more and it sagged to the snow. Aiden stomped on the end and hacked it off with four swings of the axe.

The Nunki collapsed, its two remaining limbs splayed. Aiden eyed those limbs. It would be easy to remove them now, but without them the Nunki couldn’t communicate with him.

Breathless, puffs of mist spewing from his mouth, Aiden looked around, tried to get his bearings. He needed transportation.

He opened the Hummer’s rear hatch, pulled out the portable battery charger the Nunki kept back there in case of a breakdown, retrieved a flashlight from the duffel bag, and limped up the steep incline that led to the road above.

Once there, he shone the flashlight on the Nunki. It was writhing in the snow, in obvious pain. It wasn’t going anywhere on two limbs. There were no vehicles in sight, so Aiden set out walking.

He was fairly sure his hip was fractured. His entire face was throbbing, and the gouge in his forearm was deep and wide, like a second mouth. He thought he could see bone, and looked away.

He limped along, head down, one hand clamped on the neck of his coat to keep the wind out.

After what seemed an eternity of walking, he spotted a house with an SUV in the driveway. The SUV was unlocked. While the battery was charging he broke into the house using the axe, and found a ring of keys lying on the kitchen counter. He also found matches, and a needle and thread.

The Nunki watched from the ground as Aiden pulled the SUV behind the wrecked Hummer. Doubled over, Aiden approached the creature, shone the flashlight at its face.

Why? it signed with its remaining limbs.

Fix humans, Aiden signed back. He turned away before the Nunki could answer, if it intended to, and backed the SUV as close to it as he could.

Aiden opened the hatch, then backed away.

Get in, he signed. No way was he going near the thing.

While the Nunki dragged itself into the back, Aiden stitched the wound in his forearm. He hadn’t stitched a wound since med school, and had never stitched with one hand while dealing with the pain of being stitched without anesthesia. He was exhausted. His mind roiled with worries of the Nunki attacking him while he drove, of getting lost, of breaking down.

As he drove, he watched the rear view mirror more than the road, but either the Nunki was too incapacitated to reach him, or it was wary of the axe propped against the passenger seat.

• • • •

The SUV idling in the middle of I-90, Aiden tossed a bag of Snyder’s sourdough pretzels into the back. The Nunki retrieved them, opened the bag, and began to eat them one at a time.

His head pounding, wounds throbbing, Aiden signed to the Nunki. Sun comes out. Nunki go to— Aiden paused. There’s was no sign for Mars. —Not Earth, kill humans?

Why? The Nunki replied.

There was also no sign for revenge. We pushed big rock.

The Nunki didn’t reply.

Aiden repeated the question.

No, the Nunki signed.

It was possible it was lying, but it was also possible they had a different way of reasoning than humans. If revenge was part of their psyche, they would have killed Aiden in Red Two, when he admitted to diverting the asteroid.

Sleep picture bad, the Nunki signed.

Aiden didn’t understand. Sleep picture?

Then, with a jolt, he got it. Sleep picture. Dream. The Nunki had had a nightmare. Not surprising, given the trauma it had experienced.

Aiden wasn’t sure how to respond. The Nunki deserved nightmares, after what it and its kind had done. Yet Aiden couldn’t help feeling sympathy for it, because of what Aiden had done to it. If it were a human client, he would ask it to describe the dream, and Aiden would help peel back the layers, to understand the message behind the dream.

What sleep picture? he signed.

Darkness.

The universal boogeyman. Only, darkness was probably more terrifying to Nunki than to humans, because Nunki relied on the sun for everything.

By the light of his flashlight, Aiden could see two of the Nunki’s hearts, beating away. Were they racing faster than usual? Did it feel alone, and afraid?

Chapter 16

When his headlights painted their house in Chicago with light, Aiden cried out in relief. He slumped across the steering wheel, his chest sounding the SUV’s horn in one continuous, deafening honk.

Seconds later, Shakia opened his door. “Oh my God. Aiden.” She raised her voice. “Hurry. It’s Aiden. He’s a mess.”

She tried to ease him out of the SUV. Aiden clutched her hand. “There’s a Nunki in the back. Whatever you do, don’t let anyone hurt it.”

Eyes wide, Shakia lifted her head, peered into the back of the SUV.

“It’s incapacitated,” Aiden whispered.

“Whatever you say.” She brushed Aiden’s face with her fingertips. “You look like you’ve been through a war.”

“Oh, jeeze.” Gage reached across Shakia and rested a hand on Aiden’s shoulder. “I got him.”

Shakia stepped aside. Gage slid one hand under Aiden’s knees, the other behind his back, and lifted him out.

As they headed toward the house, Aiden heard Shakia call out, “I need help here. There’s a live Nunki back here.” Then she gasped. Aiden guessed she’d just noticed the amputated limbs.

Chapter 17

The fireplace was heaven. The warmth on his face, his fingertips, his bare toes, was ecstasy.

Gage appeared holding a steaming bowl. “Soup. Chicken noodle. Progresso—not that weak-ass Campbell’s crap.”

Aiden sat up, accepted the bowl.

“How you feeling today?” Gage asked. Aiden was fairly sure it had been day three since his return, but it was easy to get confused with all the darkness. Plus he’d been high on OxyContin and sleeping most of the time.

“Better. I may try laying some groundwork with the Nunki in a while.”

“I’m still trying to wrap my head around what you’re suggesting,” Gage said. “You’re proposing we let a Nunki turn us into Martians?”

“That’s exactly what I’m proposing.” Turn some of them into Martians, anyway, and not all at once, but Aiden wasn’t in the mood to equivocate. “If we’re going to survive, we have to adapt.”

Gage looked skeptical. It wasn’t going to be up to Gage, though, so let him be skeptical.

“Has anyone communicated with the Nunki? Does it seem at all open to cooperating?” Aiden asked. The alternative would be to torture it, and it seemed unlikely they could torture it into providing the elaborate tutorial they needed.

Gage nodded. “They’re pragmatic bastards, I’ll give them that. Unless it’s lying, it’s willing to help in exchange for food and a decent quality of life. It said helping people live on Mars won’t hurt Nunki on Earth.”

That was encouraging. Aiden wanted to get started right away, but it could wait until he finished his soup.

“You think you can handle more good news?” Gage asked. “It’s been so long since we’ve had any, I don’t want you to overdose.”

“No, I’m definitely suffering from a good news deficiency.” He thought of Penelope. “Go ahead, shoot.”

Gage grinned. “Remember Beltane’s idea, to build a ship from scratch?”

Aiden nodded. That seemed like a hundred years ago.

Gage waited a beat. “We have three under construction.”

Aiden nearly dumped his soup. If even one was functional, they could take the Nunki to Mars, along with the necessary equipment. Assuming the Nunki really would cooperate. It was a chance, though.

“We haven’t been sitting around on our asses while you were out playing Batman.”

“That’s great news. Fantastic.”

As Aiden ate his soup, Gage studied Aiden’s face, frowning in concentration. Aiden realized it was the same look Gage had given him in Grant Park as the Nunki were bearing down on Red Two.

Aiden paused, spoon hovering halfway between bowl and mouth. “What?”

Gage sat on the arm of the couch. “You crap your pants when you have to speak in front of eight people. You can’t sleep without your big band recordings to settle your nerves, even when all you’ve got to worry about is absolutely nothing. How the hell did you hold it together and do what you did out there?”

Aiden shook his head. “You still don’t get me. I didn’t hold it together. Most of the time I felt like I was having a heart attack. But I’m used to being terrified at the prospect of doing something, then plowing ahead and doing it anyway. It’s the only way I can ever do anything.” He could have added that death was far down the list of things he feared. Death had an upside. Living terrified him much more than dying.

Gage nodded, still studying him. “I guess I get what you’re saying. A little, anyway.” He squeezed Aiden’s shoulder before heading off.

Aiden wondered if the trauma of the past few days might recalibrate what his brain considered terrifying. Maybe speaking in front of eight people would no longer set off his anxiety now that he’d vanquished a monster with nothing but an SUV and an axe. He doubted it, but it was nice to dream. More likely he’d go back to dosing himself with Xanax and booze to get through the days.

Shakia joined him on the couch, examined his face as a doctor might before nodding, satisfied. Shakia and Gage were keeping their distance from each other since their unsuccessful journey in search of Gage’s family. Maybe Beltane was the one to ask, if he wanted to find out what had happened out there.

Her gaze on the flickering flames, Shakia patted Aiden’s knee. “You’re a remarkable man, Aiden. You’re still all tied up in knots, but you’re remarkable.”

“That means a lot coming from you.” And it did, it truly did.

Chapter 18

Gage followed the arc of the bottle of Highland Park Islay scotch as Aiden took a swig, then set it back down beside his reclined, cushioned liftoff chair.

“What?” Aiden had trouble forming the word, because he was soused.

“Let me have some of that.”

Aiden walked the bottle over to Gage. The other eight people in the ship’s cabin—and even the Nunki—watched as Gage, who was about to pilot their homemade ship to Mars, took a long pull from the bottle.

Letting out a satisfied gasp, Gage handed the bottle back to Aiden. “We might as well strap in and get on the road. Man, are we gonna be sick of each other by the time we get there.”

As Aiden strapped in, he reminded himself that the first two ships had launched successfully and were on their way. If a ship was going to fail, odds were it would be the first, not the third. Yet as Gage went through preflight checks, Aiden’s bowels were roiling.

“You all right?” Shakia asked.

“Of course not. When am I ever all right?”

Shakia gave him a reassuring smile. “We’ll be fine.”

Aiden watched the Nunki as it strapped itself into its custom-made seat with its two remaining appendages. They still had a long way to go, but maybe they would be fine, after all.

Aiden took one more swig from the bottle to calm his bitter enemy, his old friend.

© 2015 by Will McIntosh. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Will McIntosh is a Hugo award winner and finalist for the Nebula and eleven other awards. His most recent novel is Burning Midnight (Penguin Random House). His previous book Defenders (Orbit Books) was optioned by Warner Brothers for a feature film, while Love Minus Eighty was named the best science fiction book of 2013 by the American Library Association. Along with six novels, Will has published around fifty short stories in Asimov’s Science Fiction (where he won Reader’s Awards in 2010 and 2013), Lightspeed, Science Fiction and Fantasy: Best of the Year, and elsewhere. Up next is Faller, a wild SF adventure novel to be published by Tor Books. Will lives in Williamsburg, Virginia with his wife Alison and twins Hannah and Miles. He left his position as a psychology professor in Southeast Georgia to write full time, and still teaches as an adjunct, at the College of William and Mary. Will is represented by Seth Fishman at The Gernert Company. Learn more at his website.

EXCERPT: The Night Market (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Jonathan Moore | 1963 words

From an author who consistently gives us “suspense that never stops” (James Patterson), a near-future thriller that makes your most paranoid fantasies seem like child’s play.

It’s late Thursday night, and Inspector Ross Carver is at a crime scene in one of the city’s last luxury homes. The dead man on the floor is covered by an unknown substance that’s eating through his skin. Before Carver can identify it, six FBI agents burst in and remove him from the premises. He’s pushed into a disinfectant trailer, forced to drink a liquid that sends him into seizures, and then is shocked unconscious.

On Sunday he wakes in his bed to find his neighbor, Mia—who he’s barely ever spoken to—reading aloud to him. He can’t remember the crime scene or how he got home; he has no idea two days have passed. Mia says she saw him being carried into their building by plainclothes police officers, who told her he’d been poisoned. Carver doesn’t really know this woman and has no way of disproving her, but his gut says to keep her close.

A mind-bending, masterfully plotted thriller that will captivate fans of Blake Crouch, China Miéville, and Lauren Beukes, The Night Market follows Carver as he works to find out what happened, soon realizing he’s entangled in a web of conspiracy that spans the nation. And that Mia may know a lot more than she lets on.

Forthcoming from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on January 16, 2018.

1

Carver pulled to the curb behind the chassis of a burned-out car.

Across the intersection was the billboard, six spotlights along the bottom. They shined upward, lighting the sign, throwing its shadow across the vacant building behind it. The rest of the neighborhood was dead. A moonscape of abandoned warehouses, everything picked over twice. Walls punched in with crowbars, wires and plumbing stripped out. Even the streetlights were gone; in Bay View and Hunter’s Point, copper was worth more than light. Kids were creeping in from the edges to steal bricks now. They could take them by the bucketload to the salvage yards south of town and trade them for day-old bread. He knew about that from last night.

But no one had touched the sign. Maybe it made them feel better, having it lit. He turned on the windshield wipers so he could see it clearly. He thought about getting out of the car. He’d be able to see all of it if he walked to the middle of the intersection. He’d almost done that last night, too, when he’d been lost in the dark, driving back from the scene. Shaking still, from the gunfire. Tonight he’d driven this way just to see it again. He didn’t have any business here. No one did.

The sign was brand new, but he couldn’t imagine who would have put it here. A place like this? They might as well have buried it in the desert.

It was selling perfume, a fragrance called Black Aria. The woman in the ad was an actress. He knew her face but not her name. His grandfather might have known. Elizabeth something? Or Audrey, maybe. She lay on her stomach, her chin propped in her hands. Her knees were bent so that her bare toes pointed straight up. She was surely nude underneath the black sheet that was draped over her, covering no more than it had to. Sheet or not, every curve was there, defined in bare skin or beneath the indents and contours of satin.

It was all digitized, of course. Just another seamless fake. The real Elizabeth, or Audrey, wouldn’t have posed like this. Not back then, whenever she was alive, and not to sell perfume. People used to have standards. But those were gone now and they weren’t coming back. Like the burned-out car, like the whole of Hunter’s Point. The bottle hovered above her bare shoulder blades, the crystal vial so thick it looked like ice. The liquid inside was the color of old blood.

The warmth started while he was looking at the sign. It began somewhere near the base of his skull and followed along his spine until it had spread through him entirely. Then the feeling inverted and his skin went cold. The hair on his arms stood straight out. It was thrilling, ranking right up there with the rush he’d felt last night after the shooting had stopped and he’d realized he hadn’t been hit. If anything, it was better.

It was so quiet that he could hear the low hum coming from the billboard’s spotlights. Six slightly different tones combining into a curious chord. It might have been engineered to draw him closer.

He remembered television advertisements he’d seen as a kid. A Saturday-morning parade of things he’d wanted desperately and then forgotten about. He didn’t think he was going to forget about this. Of course, he had no use for perfume. He didn’t wear it, and he had no woman to give it to. But that didn’t seem to matter, because what he was feeling was far beyond desire. It was the crushing need a drowning man has for another breath.

He stepped out of the car and looked across the intersection. A flock of small birds, sparrows maybe, came swirling out of the darkness like a storm of leaves. They landed in unison on the roof of the scorched car, then turned toward him. He heard tiny claws tapping on the steel, felt a hundred pairs of black eyes watching him.

He was standing in a neighborhood that was waiting for a wrecking ball. Bulldozers had been idle on its perimeter for months. When the last condemnation orders came, they’d lower their blades and roll. The demolition teams meant to wipe away everything the thieves hadn’t already taken. They would knock down row houses and wire C-4 into century-old factories to make way for the sparkling future. He’d seen the model in City Hall. White concrete and black glass transforming the neighborhood into an autonomous shipping center. An unpopulated city from which driverless delivery trucks would glide north on pavement so smooth, their tires would barely whisper. Drones would hum upward from rooftop landing pads, packages dangling beneath them as they sped over the blocks of unlit tenements and into San Francisco. In City Hall, he’d seen no plan in the models for the residents who would be displaced. Maybe they were supposed to sell bricks.

He reached into the car and switched off the headlights, and then the street was blackout dark. The ruins around him disappeared. There was just the sign.

Finally, he let himself walk out into the intersection. He stared up at the dead actress and the perfume she’d been enlisted to sell. It wasn’t just the woman, wasn’t just the suggestion of her naked body under the sheet. It was the bottle and the lettering and the way the spotlights fell onto the black background, making something so bright out of a void. As if he’d struck a match in a mineshaft, and diamonds in the thousands came glittering back from the walls.

He couldn’t say where the peace came from, but he knew exactly what it was doing. It was cleansing him. Each swell took away a layer of darkness. In a moment he’d be bare; last night would be gone. He stood in the rain and savored that.

He only turned away when his phone rang.

2

He answered it in the car, wanting to be out of the sign’s reach before he spoke to anyone.

“It’s me.”

“You coming, or what?”

It didn’t matter what Jenner was saying. He could be dictating a form over the phone, or telling a kid to drop a gun. His voice never rose above dead calm. That made Jenner the kind of man people usually listened to, but the kid last night hadn’t. He hadn’t dropped his gun, either.

“I lose you, Carver?”

“Sorry — on my way.”

“Call came in and we’re up,” Jenner said. “You knew we were up again, right?”

“Sure.”

“Where are you?”

“Close to last night’s scene,” Carver said, after a pause. “There was something I wanted to see again. The call, it came just now?”

“Just now. I hung up, I called you.”

“Be out front in five. We’ll go in my car.”

“You were out there?” Jenner asked. “You got questions about last night?”

“Not about you — you did just right. Plus there’s video,” Carver said. “So don’t worry about it.”

“Okay.”

Carver could see the expressway ahead. No one had stolen the wiring up there — the commissioners and the mayor could ignore Hunter’s Point until the redevelopment was done, but not the new expressway. Its art deco streetlights glowed in a curving run toward the city center, where there was enough midnight light to make a false dawn beneath the fog.

“Tell it to me,” Carver said.

“I talked to the lieutenant first. It started with 911. Some lady called from Filbert Street. Said her neighbor’s screaming. Patrol comes, front door’s locked.”

“Okay.”

“When she tells me this, the lieutenant, she’s got the patrol guys on hold. So she patches them in, and they tell me from there,” Jenner said. “I got it straight from them. They’d knocked on the door, shouted Police, the whole thing.”

“Nobody home?”

“Nobody.”

“What time was that, they knocked? We could establish —”

“Jesus, Ross, you told me to tell it. I’m telling it. You want to let me?”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re throwing me off,” Jenner said. “They knock just after midnight. How do I know? They radio dispatch at 12:05. Say they’re getting out of the vehicle, going to the door. They make enough noise knocking and yelling, and after five minutes the neighbor lady comes out.”

Carver steered onto the entrance ramp. The pitted asphalt gave way to the new expressway. It was like driving on a black mirror.

“The lady tells them she’s never heard anything like it,” Jenner said. “The screams, I mean. Said he was so loud, it was like he was in the room with her.”

“She know him?”

“Ross, I don’t know. I’m telling it. I’m not leaving anything out,” Jenner said. “So, he’s screaming. Like a madman, she says. Makes her blood go cold, all that. She goes to her window, peeks through the curtain. It’s dark over there, across the street. But she sees someone in an upstairs window. He’s beating on the glass. Naked and bloody, and beating on the glass.”

“Just one guy? Not two?”

“She just sees him, the one guy. So when patrol hears this, what she saw in the window, they come off the porch and go back to the street. One of them gets the spotlight out of the vehicle, and asks her which window. She points, and they light it up. Then they see it.”

For the second time that night, Carver felt his skin tighten, felt his hairs stand up.

© 2018 by Jonathan Moore. Excerpted from The Night Market by Jonathan Moore. Published by permission of the author and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jonathan Moore is a Bram Stoker Award nominated author of five novels. His third novel, The Poison Artist, was a selection of the BBC Radio 2 Book Club. His novels have been translated into seven languages. Before graduating from law school in New Orleans, he lived in Taiwan for three years, guided whitewater raft trips on the Rio Grande, and worked as an investigator for a criminal defense attorney in Washington, D.C. He has also been an English teacher, a bar owner, a counselor at a wilderness camp for juvenile delinquents, and a textbook writer.

Book Reviews: January 2018

Christie Yant | 1613 words

Tor.com’s series of novellas is a breath of fresh air. These slender volumes are quickly becoming favorites of mine—the novella is an under-published form that for me perfectly hits the sweet spot between the satisfaction of finishing a book fairly quickly and feeling that I got my time and money’s worth. Here I review three of my favorites. I look forward to seeing more of these in the future.

Beneath the Sugar Sky
Seanan McGuire
Hardcover / Ebook
ISBN: 978-0765393586
Tor.com, January 2018, 176 pages

“Children have always tumbled down rabbit holes, fallen through mirrors, been swept away by unseasonal floods or carried off by tornadoes,” begins the third book in Seanan McGuire’s Wayward Children series. “Children have always traveled, and because they are young and bright and full of contradictions, they haven’t always restricted their travel to the possible.”

Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children is part boarding school, part safe-house, and part half-way house for those unfortunate children who at some point found their looking glass or wardrobe door—and the life they were meant to live behind it—and have now been pulled back into the mundane world, to wait for the moment when their doorway returns again, or until they lose hope and decide to build whatever lives they can for themselves here. For a reader like myself whose most desperate pre-teen wish was to live in Narnia (preferably while wielding a purple light-saber, an idea I didn’t find incongruent at the time), this premise is everything I could want or hope for.

Our protagonist, Cora, is still readjusting to the mundane world and having a difficult time of it. In the watery world where she belongs, her physique makes her a formidable hero, a swimmer inured to the cold waters, sleek and strong, a destiny that her previous life on Earth hinted at as she excelled in endurance swimming while enduring the pressures and ridicule of a world that demanded that she take up less space. When the girl who drops from the sky into the pond behind the Home turns out to the be the daughter of Sumi, a deceased former resident of the Home, Cora finds herself a member of an inter-world search party and forced to forge a reluctant trust with her new schoolmates.

The search ultimately takes them to the world of Confection—a Candyland-esque place that falls on the Nonsense axis of the rabbit-hole spectrum—where they must defeat the Queen of Cakes, find the final missing essence of Sumi, and return her to life so that her daughter can be born. Which is all exactly as delightful as it sounds.

Apparently I’ve been living under a rock, because I actually didn’t realize this was part of a series until I was nearly done with it. McGuire merges her characters’ backstory so seamlessly into the immediate tale that it stood perfectly well on its own, which is good news for anyone else who might want to jump in with Beneath the Sugar Sky, and great news for me, because now I know there’s more!

Mandelbrot the Magnificent
Liz Ziemska
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 978-0765398055
Tor.com, November 2017, 128 pages

This imagined memoir of the discoverer of fractals sets the joy of discovery against the horror and desperation of the Second World War. A prodigy born to a Jewish family in Warsaw ghetto, Benoit Mandelbrot learns his love of mathematics from an uncle who flees the war for an academic position in the US, leaving his family to walk the tightrope between being invaluable and being conspicuous. While trying to build a new life in a France now under German occupation, young Benoit pursues his passion for mathematics while resisting the desire for any recognition from his teachers and classmates that might call attention to his family. When he risks a visit to the library—risky in that he is searching for books that are well beyond his expected level of mastery—he discovers The Book of Monsters, a collection of mathematical wonders, and a quotation from his uncle’s favorite mathematician:

“These functions are an outrage against common sense, an arrogant distraction. But logic can sometimes make monsters, and it is the beginner that would have to be set grappling with this teratologic museum. —Henri Poincaré, 1899.”

The puzzles presented therein—Cantor dust, the Koch snowflake, the Sierpinski triangle—are finally enough to challenge him, and he devotes himself to understanding their mysteries.

As the Gestapo’s net draws tighter around his neighborhood and his school rival grows bolder in his cruelty, Mandelbrot is introduced to another mystery that reaches the very heart of his heritage as a Jew and as a natural pursuer of underlying truths: the serifot. His rabbi explains: “Serifot is Hebrew for ‘emanations.’ According to the Kabbalah, it is the filter through which the Ein Sof, the Infinite, reveals Himself into the physical and metaphysical realm.” Between The Book of Monsters and the serifot, Mandelbrot’s view of the world is fundamentally changed. As he begins to penetrate the truth of the endlessly repeating patterns that we have come to know as fractals, he finds himself able to influence the world around him in surprising ways—and hopes that he can use this new power to protect his family.

Ziemska, born in Poland herself, brings a literary and scholarly quality to what is inarguably a fantasy tale—or maybe it’s a fantastical quality to a scholarly tale. For all of my Googling, I couldn’t find a reference to a real mathematical collection called The Book of Monsters, but I was completely convinced of its existence during my reading of Mandelbrot the Magnificent. A grounding in the hard science of numbers, the immersion into a tragic history from the point of view of the young man living it, and a twist into fantasy makes this an excellent read for both genre and literary readers alike.

The Murders of Molly Southbourne
Tade Thompson
Paperback / Ebook
ISBN: 978-0765397133
Tor.com, October 2017, 128 pages

Tade Thompson’s The Murders of Molly Southbourne is grim, ghoulish, and utterly gripping.

Molly’s Southbourne’s parents have made her memorize the rules. Some are easy to follow; some are not.

If you see a girl who looks like you, run and fight.

Don’t bleed.

If you bleed, blot, burn, and bleach.

If you find a hole, find your parents.

A skinned knee, a paper cut, her first period—bad things happen when Molly Southbourne bleeds, things her parents are desperate to protect her from. Things that emerge from holes in the ground; things that look just like her.

The mollys are drawn to her, no matter where she is, and are always her own age at the time they appear, whether she’s five or twenty-five. Some try to kill her right away, while others start out friendly, even needy—but eventually, they all go bad. If she’s particularly careless after some accident, there will be more than one. And as Molly grows up and craves independence, it will be up to her to eliminate the mollys that will inevitably follow. Her parents prepare her well, teaching her a hundred ways to kill them and dispose of them. Only the real Molly may live.

This reader’s curiosity followed Molly’s own—what happens if she doesn’t kill them? Or if she makes one on purpose? What if she tells someone about them? Her questions and experimentation change as she matures and tries to separate herself from the sheltered life that her parents thought best and forge new relationships. Her evolving relationship with the mollys carries her from merely preventing and coping with them to trying to understand them. Are they separate from her, or part of her? Should she treat them with compassion? Would it matter if she didn’t?

If there is a weakness in the story, it’s around the why of Molly’s condition—not a lack of explanation, but rather the opposite: We get one, but I never really felt I needed to know. I enjoyed the hints at her mother’s past, and her parents’ talents for everything from butchery to forgery, and felt that the hints were enough for me to build my own hypothesis. A science-y reason for someone like Molly’s existence gave it a Firestarter/Stranger Things feel and gave us a peek at the larger world beyond, but it came late in the story and had the effect of also piercing the hypnotic veil that Thompson had drawn around Molly and her predicament.

That aside, I thoroughly enjoyed Molly and her many murders, and look forward to more skin-crawling stories from Thompson in the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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.

Media Reviews: January 2018

Christopher East | 1502 words

There’s always a risk of being critically dismissive of comedy. I think we’re conditioned react to it as a genre that favors style over substance, shallowness over depth. It’s perhaps even easier to be dismissive of comedy that combines with science fiction and fantasy; the genres share, I think, a checkered collaborative history. But occasionally shows come along that effectively combine laughter and unfettered imagination, to deliver not just humor and diversion, but innovative worldbuilding, thought-provoking themes, and powerful emotional content.

BoJack Horseman
Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg.
Produced by Tornante Company, ShadowMachine
First season released August 2014.

Never has this been more true, I think, than with Netflix’s brilliant animated comedy BoJack Horseman, now four seasons deep and renewed for a fifth. On first blush, BoJack may seem like an odd choice for a genre television review; it’s not a series that outwardly screams fantasy and science fiction. But I would argue that with its fantastical worldbuilding and anything-goes sensibility, it lands solidly in the field’s inventive wheelhouse. In many ways a conventional sitcom, the show tells the story of former sitcom star BoJack Horseman (voiced perfectly by Will Arnett), a washed-up has-been who found fame and fortune on the critically reviled ratings monolith Horsin’ Around in the 1990s. For all the show’s success, celebrity hasn’t been kind to BoJack. He may live in a posh mansion in the Hollywood Hills on a pile of money, but he does so in relative obscurity, unfulfilled, with an appalling track record of ethical catastrophes littering his career history. Twenty years out of the limelight, BoJack pushes through his lethargy in search of a comeback when his on-again, off-again girlfriend and agent Princess Carolyn (Amy Sedaris) negotiates the publication of his biography. Enter disaffected liberal ghost writer Diane Nguyen (Alison Brie), who starts shadowing BoJack with the goal of conveying his story of stardom to the world in a tell-all, bestselling bio. BoJack goes along with it in the hopes that it will reignite his career, but the process of examining his past forces him to confront the damage he left in his wake during a lifelong pursuit of external validation, and eventually sets him on a slow, painstaking path toward redemption.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: BoJack is an actual horse. And Princess Carolyn is a cat. And BoJack’s celebrity rival, Mr. Peanutbutter (Paul F. Tompkins), is a dog. Indeed, the colorful world of BoJack Horseman is rife with anthropomorphized animals, who casually intermingle with humans—Diane, for example, or BoJack’s ne’er-do-well, unofficial housemate Todd (Aaron Paul)—in a manner that both comically plays up and ignores each character’s species. This leads, of course, to loads of animal puns and hilarious, species-specific sight gags. (In these ways, BoJack resonates strongly with the quirky, wordplay-addicted history of SF humor.) The surface is bright, fast-paced, silly, and diverting. But the show’s emotional core is, in fact, deeply serious, and the singular way BoJack places humans and animals on a level playing field has a peculiar, unexpected power, affording the show a unique method of commenting darkly on the human condition.

Some may bemoan the fact that as a protagonist, BoJack is a clear descendant of the antiheroes of new golden age prestige drama: offensive, toxic, criminally self-interested. But unlike, say, Walter White or Vic Mackey—misguided villains who see themselves as the heroes of their own stories—BoJack is a self-aware prick, who occasionally sees through his own self-destructive bullshit and aspires to be a better horse. As his comeback attempt progresses through several unpredictable contortions over the years, he rarely makes a good decision, but his problematic personality does undergo painstaking, incremental transformation. It is, perhaps, a more realistic version of character change than we usually see in TV, giving the series a sense of gradual, collective momentum—and leading to just enough moments of insight and grace to make the (often surprisingly intense) darkness bearable. A similar cloud of artistic, emotional, and ethical struggle surrounds the other major characters as well. Lightning-quick visual humor and biting satire gives the show a flashy, bracing surface, but the viewer needs to keep their guard up, because the laughs are slippery, often disguising emotional gut-punches that really get at the heart of emotional and creative struggle. In short, there’s a lot more than meets the eye in BoJack Horseman, an uncommonly addictive show that can leave the viewer crying tears of laughter one moment and sadness the next. Not bad for a cartoon about a talking horse.

The Good Place
Created by Michael Schur.
Produced by Fremulon, 3 Arts Entertainment, and Universal Television.
First season released September 2016.

If you prefer genre comedies to be of the live-action variety, but still want to see compelling characters striving for personal improvement, check out The Good Place, now in the middle of its second season. Created by the ever-reliable Michael Schur, The Good Place is an afterlife fantasy that leverages the tools of genre to both comedic and surprisingly philosophical effect. A perfectly cast Kristen Bell stars as Eleanor Shellstrop, who awakens after her death in “the Good Place” to be greeted by the cheerful Michael (a spot-on Ted Danson), who welcomes her to eternity. Hailed as one of Earth’s best-ever people, Eleanor is introduced to her soul mate, an ethical philosophy professor named Chidi (William Jackson Harper), as well as neighboring couple Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and Jianyu (Manny Jacinto), and tries to get acclimated to the idea that she’s dead. But there’s another, bigger problem: Eleanor is in the wrong place. She was, in fact, a terrible person during her life on Earth. Since owning up to her true nature means being sent to “the Bad Place,” she decides to live the lie of her own goodness—a scheme she ropes her conflicted partner Chidi into abetting. But her attempts to put one over on the angels morph, unexpectedly, into a struggle to actually become a better person, and try to earn her place in Heaven.

Like BoJack, The Good Place presents as more comedy than fantasy. But the technicolor backdrop of this little corner of Heaven delivers plenty of skiffy thought experiments and fantastical eyeball kicks, thanks to the anything-goes possibilities of its premise. As the “architect” of Eleanor’s neighborhood, for example, Michael can shape reality with a snap of his fingers—even if Eleanor’s mistaken presence, it seems, is causing his mysterious afterlife to go spectacularly haywire from time to time. There’s also Janet (D’Arcy Carden), something of a cosmic artificial intelligence who can be summoned and dismissed at will to deliver comical infodumps to aid the characters as they confront dilemmas and develop schemes. The imaginative potential of the scenario is limitless, making it a show that regularly delivers the unexpected—and also isn’t afraid to fearlessly reinvent itself. Considering Schur’s track record of creating cozy, comfortable fictional worlds—his CV boasts The Office, Parks and Recreation, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine—The Good Place is something of a departure in its restless transformations. Yet it also somehow retains Schur’s characteristic upbeat worldview, even if it’s presented through the eyes of Eleanor—that worldview’s antithesis.

Which brings up another similarity to BoJack, which is The Good Place’s use of a wildly imaginative setting to depict the struggles of living ethically and responsibly in an ugly, unreasonable world. Like BoJack, Eleanor is a toxic tire-fire of a person, but The Good Place is not a celebration of her awfulness so much as a hopeful speculation on the idea that even the worst of us can aspire to change. Many great shows of the twenty-first century revel in the evil misdeeds of their lead characters, sometimes to the point of glorification, but The Good Place doesn’t make that mistake. Constantly raising philosophical and ethical questions, the show possesses Schur’s progressive, positive worldview, even if its hero does not. Bonus: It may well be the fastest half-hour comedy in history, blazing past so quickly that the end credits often feel like an unwelcome act break.

With so many comedies wallowing in dubious messaging, merciless punching down, or pitting their characters against each other in mean-spirited competition, it’s refreshing to see shows that buck that trend to show people trying to transcend their worst tendencies, develop empathy, and improve as people. BoJack Horseman and The Good Place, two shows that might at first glance slip under a genre fan’s radar, are comedies that both deliver consistent laughs and do the interesting, creative work of genre fiction.

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.

Interview: Fonda Lee

Christian A. Coleman | 2898 words

Fonda Lee is the award-winning author of the YA science fiction novels Zeroboxer and Exo. Born and raised in Canada, Lee is a black belt martial artist, a former corporate strategist, and action movie aficionado who now lives in Portland, Oregon with her family. Jade City is her adult debut.

Jade City is the start of an epic gangster fantasy saga centered on a family of Green Bone warriors, the Kauls, and their involvement in a clan war over magic jade that amplifies their fighting powers. All of this takes place on the island of Kekon, a modern, Asia-inspired metropolis. How did the premise come together for you?

In one of my old writing notebooks, there are a few lines that date to mid-2013 when I was brainstorming ideas for what I would write as a submission piece to the Viable Paradise writers workshop. I scribbled, “A city. Jade City.” And then I called it a “wuxia gangster saga” that “takes place in a modern world with guns and cars, but where combat is hand-to-hand and power rests with those that have jade.” That was all I had: just a concept, no characters or plot. I ended up writing another story as my submission piece and the premise for Jade City remained in my notebook along with many other unused ideas. But I kept thinking about it off and on for another year. When an idea lodges in your mind and doesn’t go away, that’s when you know, as an author, that you really ought to pay attention. I had a vision of what Jade City would be: a heady blend of gangster epic, family saga, and martial arts fantasy. An oft-quoted piece of writing advice is to write the book you can’t find but want to read. That was certainly the case for me.

Tell us about where your fondness for mafia and gangster stories comes from. What about them captured your imagination?

I can’t resist the mythos of the fictional gangster: a character who lives not in accordance with the laws of ordinary society but by a harsh code of honor and brotherhood. Almost every major organized crime society has a strongly enforced culture of obedience, loyalty, and adopted kinship. It’s why the Sicilian mafia call their leader “godfather,” why the Chinese Triads have ceremonies where they swear oaths to their “brothers,” and why the Japanese yakuza cut off the tips of their little fingers if they cause shame to their superiors. It makes gangsters in stories far more compelling and relatable than criminals motivated by simple greed, and it offers up all sorts of opportunities for human drama—for stories that can encompass brutal violence yet also devotion and connection.

Were there any gangster stories that inspired you for this novel?

I’m a fan of mafia stories from both American and Asian cinema and television: Goodfellas, The Untouchables, Once Upon a Time in America, and The Sopranos are up there alongside Infernal Affairs, Election, The Killer, and Battles Without Honor and Humanity. The Godfather (the film and the novel) stands heads and shoulders above the others as an inspiration because it made me care deeply about the family at the heart of the story—something that I wanted to create in my own fantasy take on the genre.

Jade City incorporates Eastern and Western influences. In your Powell’s essay about blending Eastern and Western story elements (bit.ly/2jNC43O), you write about the difference between borrowing another’s cultural traditions for exploitative purposes in a work of art and cross-cultural inspiration. What’s your approach to bringing these influences together?

For me, it’s about thoughtfully combining things that I love. As a second generation Asian American, that means finding inspiration from both Western and Eastern stories. I grew up surrounded and engrossed by Western fiction—Star Trek, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, and so on—stories where there were rarely, if ever, any characters that looked like me and my family members. Only in early adulthood did I start really seeking out fiction from Asian sources—kung fu films, Hong Kong crime dramas, wuxia comic books. I found a lot to love, and that cross-cultural pollination in my brain is a wonderful source of ideas for me. In that sense, I think Jade City is a very Asian-American work.

How did you choose jade to be the bedrock of Kekonese society? Not only does it amplify the powers of the Green Bones, it also structures the social hierarchy of the Kekonese and fuels their economy.

The idea of magical gemstones or ores is certainly not anything new in fantasy fiction. Usually, it’s gold or crystals or diamonds. But in Asia, especially China, jade is considered more precious than any of those. For thousands of years, the Chinese have referred to jade as the “stone of heaven.” It was considered a link between the earthly and divine realms and thus used in ceremonies and rites. It was associated with virtue and prized as a symbol of status and wealth. Jade was already figuratively magical in our world; I simply made it literally so in my fictional one.

The Green Bones that wield this magic jade enforce an elaborate chain of command in their clans. How did you come up with the hierarchy and the terms that designate clan roles? I’m especially curious about the terms Lantern Man, Weather Man (strategist and brains behind the scenes), and Horn (tactical warrior). The others—Pillar, Fist, Finger—are pretty self-explanatory.

I was inspired by the flowery, esoteric titles used by the Chinese Triads, which have title ranks such as “Incense Master,” “Straw Sandal,” “Red Pole” and “49er”—but of course I wanted to make up my own hierarchy and titles for the Green Bone clans. From the start, I envisioned there being two sides to the clan—a military side and a business side—so I brainstormed lists of words that were not obvious titles but evoked a sense of the nature of the role. A “Pillar” is foundational, central. I settled on “Horn” as a title that connotes strength—a natural weapon. “Weather Man” suggests a person whose job is to be perceptive of the environment, to forecast the future. Fictional words and titles also reinforce worldbuilding; the “Lantern Men” are so named because of their historical role as civilian collaborators who hung lanterns as secret signals of support and allegiance to the Green Bone warriors during the years of foreign occupation a generation ago.

In the novel’s structure, I like how the three interspersed interludes tell short creation myths and tales of Deitism, the religion that lays the foundation for the Kekonese way of thought and warrior culture. They add yet another rich layer to the worldbuilding. How did you come up with these passages?

I really enjoyed creating the Deitist mythology that’s interspersed as interludes in the novel. The first function they serve is to make the island of Kekon and the culture of the Kekonese people that much more real. Often in fantasy novels, we’re presented a fictional society as it is now, but not told how it got to be that way. I wanted to give Kekon a sense of history. The short myths explain a great deal in a very economical way; they tie into sayings and attitudes and cultural references in the main story. The other thing they do is punctuate crucial moments in the novel. In an early draft of Jade City, I wrote an extended and rambling passage of mythology as part of my worldbuilding work, but didn’t know if and where to include it in the book. Later, I figured out that I could turn it into these short interludes and use them strategically to reinforce the narrative.

This is your first novel written for adults. Your previous ones are for young adult readers. In your experience, what has been a major difference between writing for adults and young adults? Some authors have talked and written about how YA novels make more allowances for violence while keeping out as much sexual content as possible.

I enjoy writing both young adult and adult novels, but I must say that I’m reveling in the sense of freedom I feel writing adult fiction. Not merely in terms of content (while there certainly is sexual content in young adult literature, my novels are sold directly into schools, so my publisher is more stringent), but because, frankly, looking at YA shelves, you’d think that everything interesting in the universe happens only to sixteen-year-olds. Obviously, that’s not true, and furthermore, there’s only so much life history that a sixteen-year-old can have. In my adult fiction, I can have a cast of adult characters of different ages, each with their own history, relating in all sorts of interesting ways.

You said in a previous interview about your first novel Zeroboxer that you prefer young adult novels because they’re centered and grounded in the struggles of one main protagonist. Jade City is a multi-narrative with several intersecting character arcs. What made you change your mind about centering the story on one main protagonist?

Part of it is my development as a writer—I simply couldn’t have successfully tackled a narrative with the complexity of Jade City earlier on in my career. I’m very glad that I wrote young adult novels that trained me to tell tightly-paced, single protagonist stories; it helped me immensely to stay narratively focused in a project like Jade City that might have sprawled out of control if I had been less experienced. In contrast to my previous novels, I knew from the outset that Jade City would be about a family, and that demanded a different approach—a strong cast of characters as well as a leveling up in my writing.

I noticed that Jade City shares in common with your previous books, Exo and Cross Fire, the setting (and theme) of a peacetime era coming to an end with the start of a war.

There’s even more to it than that; the other thing that both Jade City and Exo have in common is the legacy of a devastating prior war hanging over the society. The social scars and consequences of that have festered for a long time and are now inciting the start of new conflicts. I’m very interested in creating worlds that feel as though they’ve been around for a long time and are now on the cusp of another chapter in history. I think it creates a lot of fertile ground to explore all sorts of analogs of in our own world—something that I love to do as a writer—and it also helps to give the story a propulsive momentum that is going to sweep up the characters whether they want it to or not.

Speaking of analogs, the action of the novel takes place a generation after the Many Nations War, the devastating prior war in which Kekon fought for independence. Is there a historical reference point for it?

Yes, the Many Nations War is analogous to World War II in our world, which is why the technology level in Jade City corresponds closely to that in the 1960s-’70s.

Early in the novel, Hilo, one of the Kaul siblings and Horn of the No Peak clan, comments that the changes taking place in Kekon’s capital city of Janloon are too fast. Is there a historical analog for Kekon’s growth?

Kekon’s growth was inspired by the rise of the four “Asian Tigers” of Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and South Korea in the latter half of the twentieth century. Times of economic development and social change are also times of opportunity and prosperity for organized crime—think of the Chicago Mob during the Roaring Twenties and the heyday of the Five Families of New York during the 1950s-’60s. Although the Green Bone clans are not technically crime groups, I wanted to evoke a sense of increasing wealth in a city that’s on the ascent, and the battles for turf and profit that invariably spring from that.

One of the themes I saw emerge in the novel was the illusion of choice. Kaul Lan, Pillar of the No Peak clan, tells his adopted cousin Anden that he doesn’t have become a Green Bone after graduating from the training academy if he doesn’t want to. When Lan’s sister, Shae, returns to Janloon after spending years abroad in Espenia, he tells her she doesn’t have to get involved in clan politics if she doesn’t want to. But Lan’s rule of the clan takes place primarily during a period of peace. Then No Peak’s rival, the Mountain clan, begins a war over jade with them. Do you think choice is only possible during periods of peace?

One of my beta readers noticed that a common theme in Jade City is characters being forced to do what they don’t want to do. They want to believe they have a choice, but often that choice turns out to be an illusion when life doesn’t go as planned. I think this is true for all of us. For example, today I can say, “I choose to make my living as an author instead of working a salaried job.” But what if, God forbid, my spouse fell sick and lost his job and needed medical care? To meet the needs of my family, I would do whatever I had to, including things I wouldn’t want to do. That’s what war does in Jade City—it forces the characters away from the options they have in peacetime, and into positions and roles they don’t want to assume. But they do it because they feel they must.

The martial arts fighting in the war, as well as the other action sequences, have high emotional stakes for the characters. How do you strike a balance between choreography and characterization when fight scenes usually take place in a very short time span?

I don’t think of the fight scene as being just the physical action. I consider the lead-up to the scene and the aftermath of the scene to be vital to making the fight itself work. A fight scene shouldn’t detour or pause character development; it is character development. There are scenes of violence in Jade City where my hope is that when they occur, they come as a surprise yet they feel entirely inevitable because by that point, the reader should know exactly what the stakes are for the characters and why this is happening.

The fight itself needs to have a tone. There’s one fight in the book that’s a vicious, sudden ambush. Another that has the feel of a very formal and deliberate ritual. And yet another that’s a planned act of war. I’m trying to evoke all that in the fight itself. And then the consequences of those acts of violence reverberate through the rest of the story.

Jade City is the first book of the Green Bone Saga. When can we expect the second book to come out and what can you tell us about it?

The next book of the Green Bone Saga is scheduled to come out in 2019. I’m hard at work on it now. I normally write a book a year, but the Green Bone novels are twice as long and about five times more complicated than my previous books, so readers will have to be a little patient. I can tell you that there will be new threats to the No Peak clan and to the country of Kekon; you’ll get to see other parts of the world impacted by jade; and there will be more scheming, betrayal, vengeance, and bloody jade-enhanced fights. The story will remain centered on the Kaul family, however; that’s a very strong part of my vision for this trilogy: that it be, at its core, a story about this family.

What other projects are you working on that you can tell us about?

Cross Fire, my next YA science fiction novel and the sequel to Exo, will be released in June 2018. I’m excited to be continuing my alien occupation story. I have several ideas for future projects as well, but I’ll be focused on the Green Bone Saga for some time.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Christian A. Coleman is a 2013 graduate of the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. He lives and writes in the Boston area. He tweets at @coleman_II.

Author Spotlight: Adam-Troy Castro

Sandra Odell | 858 words

From the opening line, “The Streets of Babel” catapults the reader into the story. What inspired this tale of sensory and social extremes?

 I had the essential image, a metropolis as amoeba, extending pseudopods to locomote across a landscape, while sucking up people to function as its citizenry. I have absolutely no memory of this image entering my head, but everything else in the story proceeded from that genesis.

I find the story a surreal blend of a dystopian future and primitive hunter gatherers: AM from Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream”; the wedding scene in Ellison’s “A Boy and His Dog”; the landscapes and struggles from Quest for Fire. Do you have any particular thoughts on blending genres? Are there elements from other genres that you feel would work well together?

 Oh, I blend genres all the time. I have completed stories and sought out help as to where they belong on the graph. Sometimes it’s not quite clear. One story I wrote as science fiction, “In the Temple of Celestial Pleasures,” was meant for Lightspeed but ended up at Nightmare, though I considered it an uneasy fit. Boxes are for things that fit easily on shelves.

There is no direct conflict in this story. Instead, “The Streets of Babel” peels back layers of assumption to reveal certain societal pressures as seen through the eyes of the outsider: sexism; the nine-to-five work drive; the differences between the sexes; television; a sense of despair and powerlessness. What is it about these everyday stressors that appeals to genre readers? The familiar amidst the unknown? A matter of presentation?

 Sometimes it’s enough to just illustrate a situation. Another writer (and certainly most moviemakers) would have resolved this particular story with our protagonist, the unnamed savage, leading a successful revolt against the churning metropolis. I find that a lot less interesting than the diagnosis. Many genre readers understand that at this length, at least, it can be as useful as what plot would provide, a course of treatment. (And they like having their assumptions tested; at least, those I court do.)

You regularly post on social media of your love of movies, often sharing Asian movies, most notably Korean and Japanese. Setting aside other cinematic styles, is there anything in particular about the various Asian cinemas that speaks to you as a viewer? As a writer?

 One factor that makes Asian cinema, specifically Japanese, Hong Kong, and Korean cinema, feel so fresh to this viewer’s eyes is that these traditions have not completely internalized the rhythms and patterns which so many American movies fall into, to the point where it is possible to watch many of our own films while not fully paying attention: to wit, the strict three-act structure where you can see the various story complications lining up according to page count, the final act where story reversals appear on cue, the return to status quo even when any trauma experienced during the tale would render that unlikely.

One thing I appreciate as both an audience member and as a storyteller is that the best Korean films (in particular) play for keeps. They have little observable fealty to the way a story “should” go, will not pull back when the time comes to horrify—even in non-horror films, will twist the knife at times when many American films would have would paused for a tension-relieving joke. You don’t know, as you do with many homespun movies, that it’s safe to go to the popcorn stand now, because something of importance just happened and that nothing else of importance will happen for the approximately seven minutes that will take.

By contrast, too many American films are wholly consequence-free. Even if the characters go through absolute hell in a battle for survival, they will often be laughing and telling jokes to assure us, in the last five minutes, that we can go back out to the parking lot feeling good. I am not saying that this is a universal failing; far from it. I am saying that one key way to make a story feel like it doesn’t matter is to return the characters to their starting positions, without effect. (This may be an odd note to append to a story where that basically happens, but it’s okay for that to happen occasionally, less so for that to become default formula.)

To date I have seen extraordinary Korean films in the genres of Horror, Disaster Film, Science Fiction, Police Drama, Thriller, Western (or “Eastern,” I suppose), and Romantic Comedy. Want a great recommendation? Check out the Korean romantic fantasy The Beauty Inside. See it with someone you love. Or Castaway On The Moon. Beyond beautiful.

When not writing, how do you rest and reconnect with the world? What does Adam-Troy Castro do to recharge his batteries?

 I tell the cats to put that down, whatever “that” is, in context.

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: José Pablo Iriarte

Arley Sorg | 1390 words

I feel like Jamie’s resilience, an individual who is “different” from socio-cultural expectations/definitions, is beautifully portrayed here, in a layered, meaningful way. There’s this raw authenticity throughout the story. What helps you create moments and emotions that feel real?

I’m so pleased that Jamie came through this way for you! Jamie felt very real to me—not just Jamie, but Alicia, too. These are the first characters I’ve written where I thought afterward, I’m not done with these two. I want to write about them again.

Beyond that, though, I wanted to write about somebody who was very much not taking any shit from the world around them. There are people who judge Jamie and don’t accept them, but I wanted this story to not be about those people, so they’re on the periphery. Jamie has people who love them and have their back. I wanted to show that, and I wanted to show a character living their life without fear.

There’s also a sense of darker possibilities at various turns in the plot. But Jamie’s decisions bring us around to hopeful/positive/empowered results, without being escapist (in other words, there are still things about life that suck—problems don’t magically vanish; and those problems take their toll. But Jamie makes the most of it). Was the choice to not go too dark deliberate? Did you play with other possibilities?

Well, I definitely didn’t want to write anything tragic. I think in our world we always know that tragedy is right around the corner and always a possibility, and so it looms over Jamie like it looms over us all. But there are enough tragedies about transgender kids and adults, both in fiction and in reality. This didn’t need to be another one.

I also didn’t want to focus too much on Jamie getting vengeance for their own sake, because that felt very linear to me. Jamie discovers their murderer living the good life nearby and goes after him and . . . does what? That story could have turned dark, but my main problem with it was it felt obvious. Jamie finding Larry Dearborn too close to death to be worth getting even with—that felt both surprising and inevitable, given that it’s been decades since Janie’s murder.

You hear a lot about endings that surprise you but feel inevitable in hindsight. For me, I’ve found that an effective way to lead the reader to this place is to focus on a tangible character need but have a more emotionally resonant one hiding right underneath that. So when Jamie wants some sort of justice for themself but realizes they can’t really get what they crave, I at least found it satisfying for Jamie to get some measure of justice for Benjamin.

You mentioned (in another conversation) that this is a very personal story for you. Can you talk a bit about what makes this personal—as much as you are comfortable sharing, in any case?

Yes. This story is personal for me because I am nonbinary. I don’t queer gender in the way that Jamie does, but maybe if I’d grown up with the confidence that being myself was an option, who knows? So maybe Jamie is some alternate universe braver version of me.

I’ve long had a fascination with gender and what was “allowed” and not for certain people, and how utterly arbitrary these rules always felt to me. Anybody who’s known me long enough should be able to see that in my writings and interactions.

I’ve wanted to explore this in fiction for a long time, but it’s so hard to work past the same tropes you see done over and over again—shapeshifting or aliens as a way to explore being transgender, or stories that are all about being closeted and coming out, or all about being a victim. I had to grow a lot as a writer to be able to tell this story, to avoid the obvious directions. Even once I wrote it, it was hard to trust myself to have gotten it right—even when writing about things I have personally felt!

What excited you and what challenged you most about writing this piece? What are the pitfalls of writing something that is deeply personal? Or is personal where your writing usually happens?

I think knowing that telling this story right was going to require an honest touch, and that was going to require me to make myself vulnerable. Personal absolutely is where my writing usually happens, but there are pitfalls. I’ve written stories about experiences that I was too close to to be able to fictionalize well. When you bare yourself in your writing, there is always the possibility that people will recoil from what they see, and when they do, it’s hard not to feel as though they’re recoiling from you.

With this story, I’m extra afraid. I’m afraid because art is self-revelatory, and I worry about having to explain or justify my truths. I’m also afraid that the community I see myself in solidarity with will not see me as one of their own.

Identity and representation are big discussions in the publishing industry. Do you feel like the industry is changing? Or are we only seeing change in specific pockets and circles? Moreover, where do we need to go next, as writers, publishers, and readers?

¿Porqué no los dos? I feel like the industry is changing slowly, but certain pockets are leading the change—maybe because they have less to lose. I see more diversity in short fiction and in young adult fiction. I see a lot of agents and editors saying they seek diversity, but then you look at the statistics about publishing, especially novel publishing, and wonder where the disconnect is.

On the other hand, I see five or six specific voices thrown out there as the go-to voices when somebody wants to show that they’ve heard of a Black writer, a Latino writer, a queer writer. And they’re good voices, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not really diversity yet.

Who are the writers that inspire you (or which stories/books)?

Young adult novelist A. S. King is the writer that inspires me most. She writes terrifically honest portrayals of teenagers who are smart and who are going through genuine moral and emotional challenges—basically, she shows teenagers as real people. My favorites of hers are Ask the Passengers and Please Ignore Vera Dietz.

Among short story writers, Sam J. Miller (check out “57 Reasons for the Slate Quarry Suicide”), Sarah Pinsker (I think my favorite is “The Transdimensional Horsemaster Rabbis of Mpumalanga Province”), Caroline Yoachim (give “Five Stages of Grief After the Alien Invasion” a read), Sandra McDonald (“The Ghost Girls of Rumney Mill” is my favorite), Ken Liu (“The Paper Menagerie,” of course), and Elizabeth Bear (check out “Tideline”) are the people I can always count on to move me. That’s what I want more than anything else—stories that will give me a profound emotional experience.

On your website (labyrinthrat.com) you mention novel-length fiction . . .! There’s so much to appreciate and admire about this piece. Your new fans are wondering: What are you working on that they will get to sink their teeth into?

Right now I’m working on a novel about a Cuban-American teenager who begins having blackouts during which she flashes out of her own life and into her long-deceased abuela’s body, forty years ago in Havana. She knows that her grandmother died giving birth to her mother very shortly after immigrating to this country; now she’s got to learn how to navigate life as a pregnant teenager in a communist country decades ago. In order to keep her own timeline intact, she’ll have to get her pregnant grandmother to the United States during the Mariel exodus, while also working to bring to justice a serial murderer from both timelines.

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: Susan Jane Bigelow

Jason Ridler | 673 words

I enjoyed the use of second person narration, which played with our expectations of the story and the feeling of loneliness. Why did you choose this particular POV (feel free to drop spoilers!)?

 This was actually my first attempt at creating a story with second person narration. I was reading some of A. Merc Rustad’s work, I think it was “Monster Girls Don’t Cry,” and they’re just brilliant in what they can do in second person. I also liked the feel of the work that second person helps to create, which is removed, remote, and lonely—but also connected, in a way. The present tense of the story amplifies that feeling and makes it a little foggier, a little more surreal. The combination worked perfectly for this story, which is about someone who lives very much in the present, is quite alone, but is also at peace with that.

There seems to be a theme between solitary existence and being surrounded by life and watchers. I liked how solitude didn’t make “you” feel alone, but in fact, watched and connected (sometimes with nature, sometimes with threats). I’m curious how you think of solitude as a value.

 I love being alone, especially when I’m alone in the middle of nature. One of my favorite things to do is to get up early and go climb a nearby ridge, so I can sit on top of the rocks overlooking the valley below, and be entirely alone. I’ve always liked going for long walks in the woods or wherever I might happen to be. Being alone like this is, for me, very peaceful. My body sheds any sort of social weight society puts on it, and becomes the machine I inhabit that moves me to where I want to be. When I do this, I feel connected to the world around me, to nature, and to my own physicality and consciousness.

I was once something of a chameleon; I would change based on who I was interacting with or who I was near. Being alone helped me understand who I am when no one is watching. I like that person: She climbs a lot of mountains and swears constantly.

Survivors’ stories tend to generate sympathy from the get-go, yet there’s also the subtext of “why them?” which creates dread and curiosity. Do you have any favorite stories of this type?

 When I was a kid, I had this illustrated, for-kids version of Robinson Crusoe that came with a cassette tape with someone reading the story. I listened to it over and over. I’m pretty sure that’s where my interest in both survivor stories and stories about being alone in the wilderness come from. I realize that this is probably not how I was supposed to interpret the story, but I thought being totally alone on an island would be great. I wouldn’t even need to make a volleyball friend like Tom Hanks!

How did your own views on the relationships between people and the environment shape your telling of the story?

 Humans can obviously be connected to the environment and/or incredibly destructive towards it. But even if humans stop existing, if we wipe ourselves out, are driven to extinction, or just up stakes and leave, the environment will go on. It doesn’t need us nearly as much as we need it.

I wrote this story in response to my own fears of nuclear war, which are a primal thing for me. I grew up in the 1980s when the possibility of a nuclear exchange with the USSR was still quite real, so that has lurked in my own psyche for many, many years. After I wrote this story, though, I felt a lot better, in a strange sort of way. It’s comforting to know that even after we’re all gone, the planet spins on.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jason S. Ridler is a writer, improv actor, and historian. He is the author of A Triumph for Sakura, Blood and Sawdust, the Spar Battersea thrillers and has published more than sixty stories in such magazines and anthologies as The Big Click, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Out of the Gutter, and more. He also writes the column FXXK WRITING! for Flash Fiction Online. A former punk rock musician and cemetery groundskeeper, Mr. Ridler holds a Ph.D. in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada. He lives in Richmond, CA.

Author Spotlight: Sarah Pinsker

Gordon B. White | 1102 words

“The Court Magician” feels like a rediscovered fable. Although close attention reveals this story’s layers, on the surface it reads like a straightforward fantasy narrative that culminates in a distinct moral lesson. What was the initial inspiration behind this story? Were there any explicit sources or other works that you intended to draw from or play against?

 I wasn’t playing with any specific works. I wanted a title that was more fable-like than contemporary story, especially since the title of the piece refers not just to the boy at the center of the story, but to other people who have filled the same role and made different choices. I wanted the characters to mostly be nameless, the town and the ruler and the country to all be nameless. I started writing this in January 2017, and the political origins are probably pretty obvious.

The story tells readers that, in magic, “the trick is not enough,” but that “the illusion is in what is said and what isn’t said, the patter, the posture, the distractions.” “The Court Magician” operates much the same way—it presents a seemingly simple story, but under that guise, it is introducing and exploring deeper themes. Do you see similarities between writing and stage magic, such as both forms’ reliance on the audience to suspend disbelief, but to also still be curious enough to try to work out what’s really going on? Did the concepts of magic and misdirection influence the story’s structure or the choice to use unembellished prose?

 I’m fascinated by stage magic. There’s definitely a similarity between stage magic and fiction, not just in the reliance on the audience to suspend disbelief, but also in the power of misdirection. Writers choose what readers see, and when they see it. What’s background or set, what detail will be important to the story? We control the timing of what is revealed when, and if we do it right, we reward the careful reader. Style is just one of the tools.

One theme that seems nestled within the story is a very timely examination of the cost of complicity. Here, the Regent decides which problems he wants to “disappear,” and although the court magician has no decision-making role and takes no direct physical action, his uttering of a single word enables all these problems to “go away.” The reader is never privy to that magic word, which could be as esoteric “Abracadabra” or as simple as “Okay.” Although the magician never sees the direct aftermath and never feels physical pain, after every instance of acquiescence he loses a piece of himself (often literally), his comfort, or something that he loves, until he is mangled and isolated. What is it about this theme that interests you, and what made this story the right venue to explore that?

 The cost of complicity—and the willingness to be complicit—were the germs of the story. I started writing this last January, when it became obvious that the guy in the White House was going to surround himself with the worst humans possible, and people were saying, “Oh, at least ___ will humanize him.” “___ will mitigate his tendencies,” all of which was wishful thinking. And then a few months later, people were asking “Was ___ bad to begin with, or was it the job that made him bad?” And I’m not sure it matters, given what they’re doing. Does it matter if you were evil or just ambitious if the result is the same? Does it matter if you signed on with a corrupt regime to be the voice of reason if you end up doing unreasonable things? Are you redeemable? Do you deserve redemption if your remorse is based on a personal connection (“As a father of daughters . . .”) as opposed to an actual rejection of the system? Does it matter if one person resigns in personal protest if the system is still in place? I’m leaving blanks in some of those sentences because they apply to so many people. The beauty of SFF is in the way we can make these things literal.

We’re also always told that there has to be a cost to magic, so I enjoyed making the cost of magic so literal.

When readers first meet the boy who will become the court magician, what sets him apart from everyone else isn’t his lineage or innate talent, but rather his drive to understand how things work. As he ascends the ranks of the market magicians and then under the palace magicians’ tutelage, his accomplishments are like symptoms of this hunger. He turns at the end, however, when he thinks back to all the problems he has made disappear and all that he has lost, to asking “Why?” rather than “How?” Even the platitude that his “body bears the cost of peace” is no longer enough. What do you see as the relationship between power and understanding? Is the magician’s hunger for knowledge dangerous within itself, or only because he was used as a tool for the Regent?

 I don’t think hunger for knowledge is dangerous; I think hunger for anything is dangerous when it allows you to be manipulated. And of course, what matters more than knowledge is what you do with it once you’ve acquired it.

In the end, our protagonist abandons his position as court magician and refuses to participate in recruiting or training the next generation of court magicians (although it appears unlikely that his mere absence will have any lasting effect). Instead, our protagonist goes off into the unknown, seemingly still looking for the answer to the trick. Even if he finds the answer, is there hope for him? What about for the rest of that society?

 I’m going to leave those questions unanswered, though I’ll say that the narrator is still narrating.

Finally, what can readers anticipate seeing from you next? In addition to concrete projects and releases, are there any new and nebulous ideas that you’re just starting to explore?

 I’ve got a novelette in the Twelve Tomorrows project from MIT Press, out in May, and a story in the Catalysts, Explorers & Secret Keepers: Women of Science Fiction anthology, which just came out. I’ve got some other big projects I’m excited to announce, too, but I can’t quite talk about them yet.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Gordon B. White has lived in North Carolina, New York, and the Pacific Northwest. He is a 2017 graduate of the Clarion West Writing Workshop, and his fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in venues such as Daily Science Fiction, A Breath from the Sky: Unusual Stories of Possession, Nightscript Vol. 2, and the Bram Stoker Award® winning anthology Borderlands 6. Gordon is also an Assistant Editor with Kraken Press and conducts reviews and interviews for various outlets. You can find him online at gordonbwhite.com or on Twitter at @GordonBWhite.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 142 words

Coming up in February, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Ashok K. Banker (“The Goddess Has Many Faces”) and Bogi Takács (“Four-Point Affective Calibration”), along with SF reprints by David Brin (“The Crystal Spheres”) and Nalo Hopkinson writing with Nisi Shawl (“Jamaica Ginger”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Cassandra Khaw (“The Quiet Like a Homecoming,” with a cover by Sam Schechter) and Rahul Kanakia (“A Coward’s Death”), and fantasy reprints by Jeffrey Ford (“The Seventh Expression of the Robot General”) and Malinda Lo (“One True Love”).

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.

Stay Connected

The Editors

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Subscriptions and Ebooks

The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed includes 96 stories (about 480,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $35.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! For more information, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.

Ebooks & Bundles: We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors ($3.99 each), and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Lightspeed ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! We currently have a number of ebook bundles available: Year One (issues 1-12), Year Two (issues 13-24), Year Three (issues 25-36), the Mega Bundle (issues 1-36), and the Supermassive Bundle (issues 1-48). Buying a bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. So if you need to catch up on Lightspeed, that’s a great way to do so. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

• • • •

All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots of ebooks available from our sister-publications:

Nightmare Ebooks, Bundles, & Subscriptions: Like Lightspeed, our sister-magazine Nightmare (nightmare-magazine.com) also has ebooks, bundles, and subscriptions available as well. For instance, you can get the complete first year (12 issues) of Nightmare for just $24.99; that’s savings of $11 off buying the issues individually. Or, if you’d like to subscribe, a 12-month subscription to Nightmare includes 48 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction), and will cost you just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price).

Fantasy Magazine Ebooks & Bundles: We also have ebook back issues—and ebook back issue bundles—of Lightspeed’s (now dormant) sister-magazine, Fantasy. To check those out, just visit fantasy-magazine.com/store. You can buy each Fantasy bundle for $24.99, or you can buy the complete run of Fantasy Magazine— all 57 issues—for just $114.99 (that’s $10 off buying all the bundles individually, and more than $55 off the cover price!).

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

John Joseph Adams

Assistant Editor

Laurel Amberdine

Editorial Assistant

Jude Griffin

Reviewers

Arley Sorg

LaShawn Wanak

Christie Yant

Carrie Vaughn

Christopher East

Joseph Allen Hill

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

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Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading Lightspeed (and/or Nightmare), you might also enjoy these works edited by John Joseph Adams:

ANTHOLOGIES

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)

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2017 (with Charles Yu)

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Cosmic Powers

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)

NOVELS and COLLECTIONS

Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey

Shift by Hugh Howey

Dust by Hugh Howey

Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn

Sand by Hugh Howey

Retrograde by Peter Cawdron

Machine Learning: New and Collected Stories by Hugh Howey

Creatures of Will and Temper by Molly Tanzer

The City of Lost Fortunes by Bryan Camp

The Robots of Gotham by Todd McAulty

The Wild Dead by Carrie Vaughn

In the Night Wood by Dale Bailey

Creatures of Want and Ruin by Molly Tanzer

Upon a Burning Throne by Ashok K. Banker

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above.