Editorial, November 2012
John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue thirty of Lightspeed!

This issue will be published on the first day of this year’s World Fantasy Convention, which means that shortly thereafter we will know the results of this year’s World Fantasy Awards, for which your humble editor is again nominated. The awards will be announced on November 4, starting at 1pm Eastern Time, so if you want to follow along, head to the internets around then.

The World Fantasy Convention will also see the debut of my new anthology, Epic: Legends of Fantasy. Epic is an anthology reprinting the best epic fantasy short fiction, featuring authors such as George R. R. Martin, Brandon Sanderson, Patrick Rothfuss, Robin Hobb, and more. If you’d like a sneak peek at what you’ll find in the anthology, check out “As the Wheel Turns” by Aliette de Bodard; you’ll find that story both here in this issue and in the anthology. And if you want more free reads (and/or interviews with the authors), head over to johnjosephadams.com/epic.

Last month saw the debut of our new sister-magazine, Nightmare. If you enjoy horror and dark fantasy, we hope you’ll check it out if you haven’t already. Our first issue featured four all-new stories by Laird Barron, Sarah Langan, Jonathan Maberry, and Genevieve Valentine; the November issue includes original fiction by horror legend Ramsey Campbell and up-and-coming writer Desirina Boskovich, along with classic reprints by Joe Haldeman and Poppy Z. Brite. Just visit www.nightmare-magazine.com, and either read it for free online, or buy one of our ebook editions—or subscribe!

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

We have original science fiction by Sandra McDonald (“Searching for Slave Leia”) and Tom Crosshill (“A Well-Adjusted Man”), and SF reprints by Eleanor Arnason (“Ace 167”) and Tobias S. Buckell (“A Game of Rats and Dragon”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Jeremiah Tolbert (“La Alma Perdida de Marguerite Espinoza”) and Richard Bowes (“Seven Smiles and Seven Frowns”), along with fantasy reprints by Aliette de Bodard (“As the Wheel Turns”) and Carrie Vaughn (“A Princess of Spain”).

For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella is “West” by Orson Scott Card, and of course we have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with bestselling authors Alastair Reynolds and Terry Brooks.

Our issue this month is again sponsored by our friends at Orbit Books. This month, look for Red Country, the new epic fantasy novel by acclaimed author Joe Abercrombie. You can find more from Orbit—including digital short fiction and monthly ebook deals—at www.orbitbooks.net.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And remember, there are several ways you can sign up to be notified of new Lightspeed content:

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

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Lightspeed, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Epic, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a four-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a four-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Forthcoming anthologies include The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (2013, Tor), Wastelands 2 (2013, Night Shade), and Robot Uprisings (2013, Doubleday). He is also the editor of Nightmare Magazine and is the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

West
Orson Scott Card

It was a good scavenging trip eastward to the coast that summer, and Jamie Teague had a pack full of stuff before he even got to Marine City. Things were peaceful there, and he might have stayed, he was that welcome. But along about the start of August, Jamie said his good-byes and headed back west. Had to reach the mountains before the snows came.

He made fair time on his return trip. It was only September, he was already just west of Winston—but Jamie was so hungry that kudzu was starting to look like salad to him.

Not that hunger was anything new. Every time he took this months-long trip from his cabin in the Great Smokies to the coast and back, there were days here and there with nothing to eat. Jamie was a champion scavenger, but most houses and all the old grocery stores had their food cleaned out long since. Besides, what good was it to scavenge food? Any canned stuff you found nowadays was likely to be bad. What Jamie looked for was metal stuff folks didn’t make no more. Hammers. Needles. Nails. Saws. One time he found this little out-of-the-way hardware store near Checowinity that had a whole crate of screws, a good size, too, and not a speck of rust. Near killed him carrying the whole mess of it back, but he couldn’t leave any; he didn’t get to the coast that often, and somebody was bound to find anything he left behind.

This trip hadn’t been as good as that time, but it was still good, considering most of the country was pretty well picked over by now. He found him some needles. Two fishing reels and a dozen spools of resilient line. A lot of ordinary stuff, besides. And things he couldn’t put in his pack: that long visit in Marine City on the coast; them nice folks north of Kenansville who took him in and listened to his tales. The Kenansville folks even invited him to stay with them, and fed him near to busting on country ham and sausage biscuits in the cool of those hot August mornings. But Jamie Teague knew what came of staying around the same folks too long, and so he pushed on. Now the memory of those meals made him feel all wishful, here on the fringe of Winston, near three days without eating.

He’d been hungry lots of times before, and he’d get hungry lots of times again, but that didn’t mean it didn’t matter to him. That didn’t mean he didn’t get kind of faint along about midday. That didn’t mean he couldn’t get himself up a tree and just sit there, resting, looking down onto I-40 and listening to the birds bullshitting each other about how it was a fine day, twitter twit, a real fine day.

Tomorrow there’d be plenty to eat. Tomorrow he’d be west of Winston and into wild country, where he could kill him a squirrel with a stone’s throw. There just wasn’t much to eat these days in the country he just walked through, between Greensboro and Winston. Seems like everybody who ever owned a gun or a slingshot had gone out killing squirrels and possums and rabbits till there wasn’t a one left.

That was one of the problems with this part of Carolina still being civilized with a government and all. Near half the people were still alive, probably. That meant maybe a quarter million in Guilford and Forsyth counties. No way could such a crowd keep themselves in meat just on what they could farm nearby, not without gasoline for the tractors and fertilizer for the fields.

Greensboro and Winston didn’t know they were doomed, not yet. They still thought they were the lucky ones, missing most of the ugliness that just tore apart all the big cities and left whole states nothing but wasteland. But Jamie Teague had been a ways northward in his travels, and heard stories from even farther north, and what he learned was this: After the bleeding was over, the survivors had land and tools enough to feed themselves. There was a life, if they could fend off the vagabonds and mobbers, and if the winter didn’t kill them, and if they didn’t get one of them diseases that was still mutating themselves here and there, and if they wasn’t too close to a place where one of the bombs hit. There was enough. They could live.

Here, though, there just wasn’t enough. The trees that once made this country beautiful were going fast, cut up for firewood, and bit by bit the folks here were either going to freeze or starve or kill each other off till the population was down. Things would get pretty ugly.

From some stories he heard, Jamie figured things were getting pretty ugly already.

Which is why he skirted his way around Greensboro to the north, keeping his eyes peeled so he saw most folks before they saw him. No, he saw everybody before they saw him, and made sure they never saw him at all. That’s how a body stayed alive these days. Especially a traveling man, a walking man like him. In some places, being a stranger nowadays was the same as having a death sentence from which you might get an appeal but probably not. Being invisible except when he wanted to be seen had kept Jamie alive right through the worst times of the last five years, the whole world going to hell. He’d learned to walk through the woods so quiet he could pretty near pet the squirrels; and he was so good with throwing rocks that he never fired his rifle at all, not for food, anyway. A rock was all he needed for possum, coon, rabbit, squirrel, or porcupine, and anything bigger would be more meat than he could carry. A walking man can’t take a deer along, and he can’t stay in one place long enough to smoke it or jerk it or salt it or nothing. So Jamie just didn’t look for bigger game. A squirrel was meat enough for him. Wild berries and untended orchards and canned goods in abandoned houses did for the rest of his diet on the road.

Most of all a walking man can’t afford to get lonely. You start to feeling like you just got to talk to some human face or you’re going to bust, and then what happens? You greet some stranger and he blows your head off. You put in with some woodsy family and they slit your throat in the night and make spoons out of your bones and leather bags out of your skin and your muscle ends up in the smokehouse getting its final cure. It led to no good, wishing for company, so Jamie never did.

That’s why he was setting by himself in a tree over the chain-link fence that marked the border of I-40 when he heard some folks singing, so loud he could hear them before he saw them. Singing, if you can believe it, right on the road, right on the freeway, which is the same as to say they were out of their minds. The idea of making noise while traveling on I-40 was so brazen that Jamie first thought they must be mobbers. But no, Winston and Greensboro had a right smart highway patrol on horseback, and these folks was coming from Winston heading west—no way could they be mobbers. They was just too dumb to live, that’s all, normal citizens, refugees or something, people who still thought the world was safe for singing in.

When they came into sight, they were as weird a group as Jamie’d seen since the plague started. Right up front walked a big fat white woman looking like silage in a tent, and she was leading the others in some song. Two men, one white and one black, were each pulling wagons made of bicycles framed together with two-by-fours, loaded with stuff and covered with tarps. There was two black girls about eighteen maybe, and a blond white woman about thirty-five, and a half-dozen little white kids. Looked like a poster pleading for racial unity from back before the plague.

These days you just didn’t see blacks and whites together much. People looked out for their own. There wasn’t a lot of race hatred, they just didn’t have much to do with each other. Like Marine City, where Jamie was just coming from. There was black Marine City and white Marine City. They all pretended to be part of the same town, but they had separate police and separate courts and you just didn’t go into the other folks’ part of town. You just didn’t. It was pretty much that way anywhere Jamie went.

Yet here they were, black and white, walking along together like they were kin. Jamie knew right off that they couldn’t have been traveling together for long—they acted like they still trusted each other, and didn’t mind being together. That’s how it was for the first few days of traveling in the same company, and how it was again after a few years. And seeing how careless they was, Jamie knew for a fact that they’d never live a week, let alone the years it’d take to get that long-time trust. Besides, thought Jamie, with a bitter taste in his mouth, some folks you can’t trust no matter how long you’re together, even if it’s all your whole life.

The fat lady was singing loud, in between panting—no way was she getting enough breath—and the kids sang along, but the grownups didn’t sing.

“Pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked.”

The song went on like that, the same thing over and over. And when the fat lady stopped singing “walked and walked,” some of the kids would smartmouth and keep going, “walked and walked and walked and walked and walked and walked,” until Jamie was sure somebody’d give them a smack and tell them to shut up. But nobody did. The adults just kept going, paying no mind. Pulling their bicycle carts, or carrying packs.

Not one gun. Not one rifle or pistol, nothing at all.

This was a group of walking dead people, Jamie knew that as sure as he knew that the kids were all off pitch in their singing. They were coming to the last border of civilization between here and the Cherokee Reservation. They were going to sing their way right off the edge of the world.

Jamie didn’t have any quarrel with himself about what to do. He didn’t give no second thought to it. He just knew that their dying might be in his reach to stop, and so he reached out to stop it.

Or rather stepped out. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and slid out along the limb that hung over the chain-link fence, then dropped. He scooped up his pack and shrugged it on, then walked on down the embankment. Five years ago it was mowed nice and smooth all year. Now it was half grown with saplings, and it wasn’t easy getting through it. By the time he reached the freeway they were a hundred yards on, still singing. A different song this time—“Give said the little stream, give oh give, give oh give”—but it amounted to the same thing. He could hear them, but they hadn’t even heard him rustling through the underbrush, noisy as can be.

“Good evening,” he said.

Now they stopped singing. Those carts stopped moving and the kids were scooped up and most of them were scrambling for the edge of the road before the sound of Jamie’s voice had quit ringing in the air. At least they knew enough to be frightened, though by the time a mobber was talking to you, there was no way you could escape just by running. And not one of them had pulled out any kind of gun, even now.

“Hold on,” said Jamie. “If I meant to kill you, you’d be dead already. I’ve been watching you for five minutes. And hearing you for ten.”

They stopped moving toward the shoulder.

“Besides, folks, you were running toward the median strip. That’s like a chicken running from the farmer and jumping into the cockpit to hide.”

They all stayed where they were except for the black man, who came back out to the middle of the westbound lane. The fat lady was still there, her hand resting on one of the bicycle carts. She didn’t look frightened like the others, neither. She didn’t look like she knew how to be scared.

Jamie went on talking, knowing how his easy relaxed voice would calm them down. “See, the mobbers, when they set up to bushwhack folks, they never attack you from just one side. You run to the median strip, and you can count on finding even more of them down there waiting to catch you.”

“Seems you know a lot about mobbers,” said the black man.

“I’m alive and I’m on the road and I’m alone,” said Jamie. “Of course I know about mobbers. The ones who didn’t learn about them real fast are all dead. Like you folks.”

“We aren’t dead,” said the fat woman.

“Well, now, I guess that’s a matter of opinion,” said Jamie. “You look dead to me. Oh, still walking, maybe. Still singing at the top of your voices. But forgive me if I’m wrong, I kept thinking you were singing, ‘Come and kill us, anybody, come and take away our stuff!’”

“We were singing ‘Give said the little stream,’” said one of the kids, a blond girl about ten years old maybe.

“What he means is we should’ve kept our mouths shut,” said one of the teenage black girls. The skinny one.

“Which is what I said back at the Kernersville exit,” said the one who looked like her bra was about to bust from pressure.

The black man shot them a glare. They looked disgusted, but they shut up.

“My name’s Jamie Teague, and I thought I’d give you some advice that would keep you alive maybe five miles farther.”

“We’re still safe enough here. We’re in Winston.”

“You just passed the Silas Creek Parkway. The Winston Highway Patrol doesn’t come out this far too often. And once you pass the 421 exit, they don’t come out here at all.”

“But bushwhackers wouldn’t be this close in to Winston, would they?” said the fat woman.

People were so dumb sometimes. “What do you think, they wait out in the middle of the wilderness, hoping for some group of travelers who managed to fight off every other band of bushwhackers between here and there? The easy pickings all get picked close in to town. Didn’t the highway patrol tell you that?”

The black man looked at the fat woman.

“No, they didn’t,” he said.

“Well then,” said Jamie, “I think you must’ve offended them somehow, cause they know the interchange at 421 is just about the most dangerous spot to walk through, and they let you head right for it.”

The fat woman’s face went even uglier. “No doubt they were Christians,” she said. She didn’t spit, but she might as well have.

A sudden thought came to Jamie. “Aren’t you folks Christians?”

“We always thought we were,” said the white guy. He was still at the side of the road, his arm around the blond woman. He talked quiet, but he looked strong. It was almost a relief to have the white guy talk. It was weird to have a black man do most of the talking when a white man was in the group. Not that Jamie thought it ought to be the other way. He’d just never seen a group of both colors where a black man was the spokesman.

Now the black man interrupted. “Thank you for your advice, Mr.—Teague, was it?”

“It wasn’t advice. It was the facts. The only safe way out of town for a group your size, since you need a road for them bikes, is to go back to Silas Creek Parkway, go north to Country Club Road, and head west on that. You can hook onto 421 farther west, and it won’t be so dangerous.”

“But we’re going on I-40 all the way,” said the fat woman.

“All the way to hell, maybe. Where do you plan to go?” asked Jamie.

“None of your business,” said the blond woman. Her voice snapped out like a whip. She was a suspicious one.

“Every overpass on the interstate is taken by one group of mobbers or another,” said Jamie. “It’s shelter for them, and easy to find their way back after raping and killing their way through the countryside. Even if every one of you had a machine gun and those carts were full of ammo, you’d be out of bullets before Hickory and dead before Morganton.”

“How do we know that’s true?” asked the blond woman.

“Because I told you,” said Jamie. “And I told you because it was plain you didn’t know. Anybody who knows that stuff and still uses the freeway must want to die.”

There was a pause, just a bit of a second where nobody answered, and it came into Jamie’s head that maybe they did. Maybe they actually kind of halfway hoped to die. These were definitely crazy people. But then, who wasn’t, these days? Anybody still alive had seen terrible things, enough to push sanity right out of their heads. Jamie figured sanity was barely hanging on to most folks by their ears or hair, ready to drop off at the first sign of danger, leaving them all loony as—

“We don’t want to die,” said the white man.

“Though the Lord may have his own private plans for us,” said the fat woman.

“Maybe so,” said Jamie. “But I haven’t seen the Lord doing many miracles lately.”

“Me neither,” said the blond woman. Oh, she was bitter.

“I’ve seen a lot of them,” said the white man, who must be her husband.

“Let me tell you about miracles,” said Jamie. He was enjoying this—he hadn’t talked so much in ten days, not since he left Marine City, or Camp Lejeune, as they used to call it. And Jamie was a talker. “If you folks keep going the way you’re going, the next ten miles will use up your whole lifetime quota of miracles, and you’ll be killed by mile eleven.”

The black man was believing him now. “So we go back to Silas Creek Parkway, head north to Country Club, and go on out of town that way?”

“I figure.”

“It’s a trap,” said the blond woman. “He’s got a gang of mobbers on Country Club, and he wants to steer us that way to get bushwhacked!”

“Ma’am,” said Jamie, “I suppose that’s possible. But what’s also possible is this.” Jamie unshouldered his gun and had it pointing right at the black man in a movement so fast nobody even twitched before he had the gun set to shoot. “Bang,” said Jamie. “Then he pointed the gun at each of the grown-ups in turn. “Bang, bang, bang, bang,” he said. “I don’t need no gang.”

Jamie didn’t expect their reaction. One of the children burst into tears. One of them was shaking. A couple of kids ran over and hid behind the fat woman. All of them had such a look of horror in their faces, staring at Jamie like they expected him to mow them all down, kids and all. The grown-ups were worse, if anything. They looked like they almost welcomed the gun, as if they expected it, like it was a relief that death was finally here. The black man closed his eyes, like he was expecting the bullet to be a lover’s kiss.

Only the fat woman didn’t get weird on him. “Don’t point a gun at us again, boy,” she said coldly. “Not unless you mean to use it.”

“Sorry,” said Jamie. He shouldered the rifle again. “I was just trying to show you how easy it is to—”

“We know how easy,” said the fat woman. “And we’re taking your advice. It was decent of you to warn us.”

“The Lord has seen your kindness,” said the black man, “and he’ll reward you for it.”

“Maybe so,” said Jamie, to be polite.

“Even if you do it unto the least of these my brethren,” said the black man.

“Which is definitely us,” said the fat woman.

“Yeah, well, good luck, then.” Jamie turned his back on them and headed for the shoulder of the road.

“Wait a minute,” said the white man. “Where are you going?”

“That’s none of your business,” said the black man. “He doesn’t have to tell us that.”

“I just thought if he was going west, like us, that maybe we could go along together.”

Jamie turned back to face him. “No way,” he said.

“Why not?” asked the blond woman, as if she was offended.

Jamie didn’t answer.

“Cause he thinks we’re so dumb we’ll get killed anyway,” said the white man, “and he doesn’t want to get killed along with us. Right?”

Jamie still didn’t say anything, but that was an answer too.

“You know your way around here,” said the white guy. “I thought maybe we could hire you to guide us. Partway, anyhow.”

Hire him! What money would they use? What coin was worth anything now? “I don’t think so,” said Jamie.

“Me neither,” said the fat woman.

“We don’t trust in the arm of flesh,” said the black man, sounding pious. Was he their minister, then?

“Yeah, the Lord is our Shepherd,” said the fat woman. She didn’t say it piously. The black man glared at her.

The white man gave it one more try. “Well it occurs to me that maybe the Lord has shepherded us to meet this guy. He’s got a gun and he’s traveled a lot and he knows what he’s doing, which is more than we can claim. We’d be stupid not to have him with us, if we can.”

“You can’t,” said Jamie. Warning them was one thing. Dying with them was something else. He turned his back again and walked back into the scrub forest alongside the road.

He heard them behind him. “Where’d he go? Like he just disappeared.”

Yeah, and that was with Jamie not even half trying to hide himself. These folks would never even see the bushwhackers that got them. City people.

Once he was up in the tall trees, though, he didn’t just head out west on his own path. Without really deciding to, he climbed back into the same tree as before, to see what these people decided to do. Sure enough, they were turning their carts east.

Fine. Jamie was shut of them. He’d done what he could.

So why was he walking eastward, too, parallel to their path? The Lord is their shepherd, not me, thought Jamie. But he had some misgiving, some fear that he couldn’t rightly name; and having taken some responsibility for them, he felt more.

They didn’t even make it back to Silas Creek Parkway. There were twenty highway patrolmen, dismounted and guns at the ready. Jamie had never seen so many people all in one place. Were they expecting an invasion of mobbers?

No. They were expecting this little group of travelers. This was what they had come for. Jamie couldn’t hear what was said, but he got the message right enough, from the gestures, the attitudes, the gathering despair in the little group of refugees. The highway patrol wasn’t letting them back into Winston, not even long enough to take the parkway north to Country Club and out. It made Jamie feel sick inside. He had no doubt that the patrol knew what I-40 was like, knew what would surely happen at the 421 interchange. The highway patrol was planning on having the mobbers do murder for them. For some reason, the highway patrol wanted these people dead. They had probably assembled there to go out and collect the bodies and make a report.

Some favor Jamie had done them. There had been some feeling of hope before as they sang; now the hope was gone, there was no spring in the children’s step. They knew now that they were heading for death, and they had seen the faces of the people who wanted them dead.

They had seen such faces before, though, Jamie was sure of it. The adults among them had not been shocked when Jamie pointed a gun at them, and they showed no anger now at the highway patrol. They were convinced already that they had no help, no friends, not from the civilized towns and certainly not from bushwhackers. No wonder the blond woman had been so suspicious of him.

But the white guy had shown some hope in the help of a stranger on the road. He had thought he could strike a deal with Jamie Teague. It made Jamie feel kind of good and kind of bad all at once, that the guy had found some hope in him. And so, as they headed west again, Jamie found himself paralleling them again, and this time going faster, getting ahead of them, crossing the freeway back and forth, as if he were scouting their path on either side.

I am scouting their path, he realized.

So it was that Jamie came to the 421 interchange, silently and carefully moving through the thick woods. He spotted two bushwhacker lookouts, one of them asleep and the other one not very alert. And now he had to decide. Should he kill them? He could, easily enough—these two, anyway. And heaven knows bushwhackers probably did enough murder in a year to give them all the death penalty twice over. The real question in his mind was, do I want to get into a pitched battle with these bushwhackers, or is there another way? It wasn’t like he was going to get any help from these people—not a weapon in the bunch, and not a fighter, probably, even if they had a gun. If there was any fighting, he’d have to do it all.

He didn’t kill them. He didn’t decide not to, he just decided he had time to get a good look at the bushwhacker town under the overpass and then come back and kill these two if need be.

The bushwhacker town was built on the westbound side of I-40, sheltered under the 421 crossover. It was like most he’d seen, made of old cars pushed together to make narrow streets, enough of them to stretch four car lengths beyond the overpass. Outdoor shade from cloths stretched between cars here and there, a few naked children running around shouting, some slovenly women cussing at them or cooking at a fire, and men lolling around sleeping or whittling or whatever, all with guns close to hand. A quick count put the fighting force here above twenty. There was no hope of Jamie taking them on by himself. By surprise he might kill even a half dozen—he was that good a shot, and that quick—but that’d still leave plenty to chase him down in the woods while others stayed and had their way with the refugees coming up the road. Jamie wasn’t against killing scum like this, not in principle, but he did figure in its only being worth doing when you had a chance of winning.

Right then he should have just gone on, figuring there was nothing else he could do for them. They were just some more statistics, some more people killed by the destruction of society. The fall of civilization was bound to mash some people, and it wasn’t his fault or his job to stop it.

Trouble was that these folks he had seen up close. These folks weren’t just numbers. Weren’t just the corpses he was always running across in abandoned farmhouses or old dead cars or out in the woods somewhere. They had faces. He had heard their children singing. He had bent them out of their path once, and it was his duty to find some way to do it again.

How did he know that? Nobody had ever told him any such duty. He just knew that this is what a decent person does—he helps if he can. And since he wanted so bad to be a decent person, even though he knew as sharp as ever that he was surely the most inhuman soul as ever walked the face of the earth, he turned around, snuck past the sleeping lookout again, and returned to the refugees before they even got back to the place where he first met them.

Not that he figured on joining up with them, not really. He might lead them west to the Blue Ridge, since he was going there anyway, but after that they’d be on their own. Go their separate ways. He’d have done his part and more by then, and it was none of his business what happened to them after that.

Tina held her peace. Didn’t say a thing. But she thought things, oh yes, she told herself a sermon like Mother used to before she died—of a stroke, back before the world fell apart, thank heaven. It was Mother’s voice in her head. No use getting mad about it. No use letting it eat your stomach out from the inside, give you colitis, make you do crazy things. No use yelling at those sanctimonious snot-faced highway patrolmen with their snappy uniforms and manure-spouting horses and shiny pistols at their belts. No use saying, You aren’t any different than the filth who massacred babies on Pinetop Road. You think you’re better cause you don’t pull the trigger yourselves? That just means that besides being killers, you’re cowards too.

No use saying any of that.

But Tina knew that everybody knew what she thought, even if she did hold her tongue. Long ago she discovered that all her bad feelings got written out in big bold letters on her face. Tender feelings not so much. Soft feelings, they were invisible. But let her feel the tiniest scrap of anger, and people would start shying away from her. “Tina’s on the warpath,” they’d say. “Tina’s mad, I hope not at me.” Sometimes she didn’t like being so transparent, but this time she was glad. Because she saw how each one of those patrolmen looked at her while their commander was telling his lies, how each one met her eyes and then looked away, looked at the ground, or even tried to look meaner and tougher, it all came to the same thing. They knew what they were doing.

And Tina capped it by turning her back on the commander while he was still explaining about how he doesn’t make the ordinances, the city council does—she turned her back and walked away. Walked slow, because folks her size don’t exactly scamper, but walked nonetheless. The little orphaned kids from her Primary, Scotty and Mick and Valerie and Cheri Ann, they turned and followed her at once, and when they went, so did the Cinn kids, Nat and Donna. And then their parents, Pete and Annalee; and only then, when everybody else was walking west, only then did Brother Deaver give up trying to persuade that apprentice Hitler to let them pass.

Tina felt guilty about that. To walk off and embarrass Brother Deaver like that. His authority was scanty enough as it was, being second counselor in a bishopric that didn’t exist anymore, what with the bishop and the first counselor dead. No need for her to undermine it. But then she’d always had trouble supporting the priesthood. Not in her heart—she was always obedient and supportive. She just kept accidentally doing things that made the men look somewhat indecisive in comparison. Like this time. She hadn’t really figured that anybody would follow her. She just couldn’t stand it anymore herself, and the only way to show her contempt for the highway patrolmen was to turn away while they were talking. To leave while it was still her choice to leave, instead of when they got fed up and leveled their guns at them and frightened the children. It was the right time to leave, and if Brother Deaver didn’t notice that, well, was it Tina’s fault?

Her legs hurt. No, that was too vague. With every step, her hip joints crackled, her ankles stabbed, her knees weakened, her soles stung, her arches sagged, her back twisted, her shoulders knotted tighter. Why, this is an honest-to-goodness exercise program, she realized, walking the twenty-five miles from the Guilford College Exit to the place we’re going to die. I thought my muscles were in good shape from all that custodial work at the meetinghouse, all the waxing and washing and polishing and chair-moving and table-folding. I had no idea that walking twenty-five miles would make me feel like a mouse that got played with by a half-blind cat.

Tina stopped dead in the middle of the road.

Everybody else stopped, too.

“What’s wrong?” asked Peter.

“You see something?” asked Rona.

“I’m tired,” said Tina. “I ache all over, and I’m tired, and I want to rest.”

“But it’s only three in the afternoon,” said Brother Deaver. “We got three good hours of walking left.”

“You in some hurry to get to the 421 turnoff?” asked Tina.

“It might not be what that man said, you know,” said Annalee Cinn. She always had to take the contrary view; Tina didn’t mind, she was used to it.

Besides, Peter had a way of contradicting her without making her mad—which was, Tina figured, why they got married. The world couldn’t have handled Annalee Davenport unless somebody stood near her all the time to contradict her without making her mad.

“I thought so, too, honey,” said Peter, “till that cop sent us back. He knows 421 is death to us.”

“The real number of the Beast,” said Rona. Tina winced. Whoever persuaded Rona to read Revelation ought to be . . .

“Now you know you didn’t think he might be lying,” said Annalee. “You wanted to have him join us.”

“Well I can see why he didn’t,” said Tina. “Everybody talks real sorry about what happened, but they all wish the mobbers had finished the job so they didn’t have all these leftover Mormons to worry about.”

“Don’t call them mobbers,” said Brother Deaver. “That makes them sound like outsiders. That’s just what they want you to think—that nobody from Greensboro—”

“Don’t talk about them at all,” said Donna Cinn. For an eleven-year-old, she was pretty plainspoken. No sirs and ma’ams from her. But she spoke plain sense.

“Donna’s right,” said Tina. “And so am I. We might as well rest here by the side of the road. I could use some setting time.”

“Me too,” said Scotty.

It was the voice of the youngest child that decided them. So it was they were sitting in the grass of the median strip, under the shade of a tulip tree, when Jamie came back.

“This isn’t such a big tree,” said Annalee. “Remember when they divided the First Ward into Guilford and Summit?”

It was a question that didn’t need answering. There used to be so many Saints in Greensboro that the parking lot was completely full every Sunday. Now they could fit in the shade of a single tulip tree.

“There’s still three hundred families in Bennett Ward,” said Rona.

Which was true. But it was a sore point to Tina all the same. The black part of town was just fine. Nobody was going to make them leave. Who would’ve thought, back when they formed a whole ward in the black part of town, that six years later it’d be the only congregation left in Greensboro, with most whites dead and all the white survivors gone off on a hopeless journey to Utah, taking along only a handful of blacks like Deaver himself. It was hard to know whether the blacks who stayed behind were the smartest or the most fearful and faithless; not for me to judge, anyway, Tina decided.

“They’re in Bennett Ward,” said Brother Deaver. “And we’re here.”

“I know that,” said Rona.

Everybody knew that. They also knew what it meant. That the black Saints from Bennett Ward were going to stick it out in Greensboro; that out of all of them, only these two girls, for heaven only knew what reason, only Rona Harrison and Marie Speaks had volunteered to journey west. Tina hadn’t decided whether this meant they were faithful or crazy. Or both. Tina well knew it was possible to be both.

Anyway, it was in the silence after Rona last spoke that they noticed Jamie Teague was standing there again. He’d come up from the south side of the road, and was standing there in plain sight, watching.

Pete jumped to his feet, and Brother Deaver was mad as hops. “Don’t go sneaking up on folks like that!”

“Hold your voice down,” said Teague softly.

Tina didn’t like the way he always spoke so soft. Like a gangster. Like he didn’t have to try to talk loud enough—it was your business to hear him.

“What did you come back for?” asked Annalee. Sounding hard and suspicious. I hope Teague doesn’t think she really means that.

“I saw the patrol turn you away,” said Teague.

“That was an hour ago,” said Brother Deaver. “More.”

“I also went ahead to see if maybe the mobbers at 421 weren’t too much to fight through.”

“And?” asked Pete.

“More than twenty men, and who knows whether their women shoot, too.”

Tina could hear the others sigh, even though they didn’t voice it; she could hear the breath go out of them like the air hissing out of a pop-top can. Twenty men. That was how many guns they’d have pointing at them. All these days, and we’ll face the guns after all.

“So what I’m thinking is, do you plan to stay here till one of them wanders up here and finds you? Or what?”

Nobody had an answer, so nobody said anything.

“What I’m trying to figure,” said Teague, “is whether you folks want to die, or whether it’s worth the trouble trying to help you get out of this alive?”

“And what I’m trying to figure is what difference it makes to you,” said Annalee.

“Shut your mouth, Annalee,” said Tina, gently. “I want to know what you have in mind, Mr. Teague.”

“Well it isn’t like you’re in a car or anything, right? You don’t have to wait for an exit to get off the freeway.”

“We do with these carts,” said Pete.

“Are those carts worth dying for?”

“All our food’s on there,” said Brother Deaver.

“They come apart,” said Tina.

The others looked at her.

“My husband designed them so you could just take them apart,” she said. “For fording rivers. He figured at least one bridge was bound to be out.”

“Your husband’s a smart man,” said Teague. But there was a question in his eyes.

“My husband’s dead,” said Tina. “But we both knew from the first plagues that we’d end up making this trip, and without gasoline, either. I suppose most Mormons have thought some time or other that there’d come a time when they had to make their way to Utah.”

“Or Jackson County,” said Annalee.

“Somewhere,” said Tina. “He figured the carts wouldn’t be much good if we couldn’t ford a river with them. Only in this case, I guess we’re fording a freeway.”

“More like a portage around a rapids,” said Teague.

“I like that,” said Pete. “These carts are boats, the freeway’s a river, and the overpasses are waterfalls.”

“A metaphor,” said Brother Deaver. He was smiling. He always got some kind of thrill out of knowing a fancy name for things.

Just like that, and Teague had got them out of despair and into hoping again. Made them all wonder why nobody had thought of taking apart the carts and just walking into the woods. Maybe it was because they were city people who thought of freeways as things you couldn’t get off of except at places with an arrow and the word EXIT. But Tina thought it was probably because they all expected to die; some of them were maybe even disappointed they weren’t already dead. Or not disappointed, exactly. Ashamed. Living just didn’t have all that much attraction to them. Even the children. They weren’t ready to walk on and greet death with hymns and rejoicing, but they might well have sat there waiting for death to stumble over them. Till Teague came back.

They moved the carts as far into the underbrush on the north side of the road as they could, then unloaded them and carried all the bundles up to the chain-link fence. Teague carried heavy wire-clippers with him—this wasn’t his first time going through a fence, obviously—and he made them notice how he cut low. “You got to crawl through,” he said, “but then they can’t see the cut from the road, and they’re less likely to follow you.”

“You think they aim to follow us?” asked Marie, scared.

“Not the highway patrol,” said Teague. “I don’t think they care. But if the mobbers see a new break in the fence—”

“We’ll crawl,” said Tina. And if she was willing to crawl through, nobody else could complain about it. But she had merely spoken what the others needed to hear, to get them moving, to keep them safe. The question of whether she herself was actually going to crawl through anything was still very much undecided.

Once the cart was unloaded, they carefully dismantled the two-by-four frames that bound each pair of bikes together. Teague wouldn’t let them do it, though, till he had looked carefully at every lashpoint. Tina liked him better and better. He wasn’t in such a hurry that he got himself into a mess. He took the time to make sure he could make things work right later on.

She also noticed that he did none of the unloading and carrying. Instead he watched constantly, looking up and down the freeway and into the woods. One time he ran up the hill, skinnied under the chain-link fence, and climbed a tree fast as a squirrel. He was back down a minute later. “False alarm,” he said.

“Story of my life,” said Pete.

“Pete’s a fireman,” said Annalee.

“Was,” said Brother Deaver.

“I am a fireman,” said Pete. “Till I die a fireman.” He spoke fiercely.

Brother Deaver backed off. “I meant no harm.”

Teague lost his temper for a second. “I don’t give a flying—”

He didn’t finish, cause right then he caught Tina’s eye and she looked at him just like a misbehaving child in Primary. She had a look that could tame the wildest brat. She used it on bishops and stake presidents too sometimes, and they calmed down even quicker than the kids.

Brother Deaver felt the need to say the obvious. “I hope you’ll continue to watch your language around the children.”

Teague never took his gaze from Tina’s eyes. “I know I’ll sure as heck watch my language around her.”

“Tina Monk,” she said.

“Sister Monk,” said Brother Deaver.

“Tell those kids not to make a path up there,” said Teague. “Walk in different places through that open grassy place.”

The bikes and two-by-fours got through fine. So did everybody except Teague and Tina. And there she stood, looking at that little bitty hole and feeling exactly how thick she was from front to back. How tired she was. How she wasn’t in the mood to shimmy through there with everybody watching. How she wasn’t altogether sure she could do it without help. She imagined Brother Deaver or Pete Cinn grabbing two hands onto her wrists and pulling and pulling and finally collapsing in exhaustion. She shuddered.

“Well, go on,” she said to Teague. “I’ll come on later.”

Brother Deaver and Pete Cinn started to argue with her, but Annalee shut them up and made them pull stuff over the crest of the hill.

“Sister Monk,” said Annalee, “we aren’t going nowhere without you, so you might as well make up your mind and get through there.”

“The only way I’ll get through is if you cut that fence from top to bottom and I walk through,” she said.

“Can’t do that,” said Teague. “Might as well put up a flashing neon sign.”

“Good-bye and God bless you all,” said Tina. She started walking down the hill.

Teague fell in step right beside her. “Maybe you’re a dumb lady, after all, ma’am, and that’s fine with me. But when I scared those little ones, it was you they went to.”

“I can’t shimmy under that fence, not uphill,” she said.

“You’re about wore out, I guess,” said Teague.

“I’m about a hundred and fifty pounds too heavy, is what.”

“I’ll push you.”

“If you lay a hand on me I’ll break it off.”

He laid his hand on her shoulder. “Okay, I’ve touched it. Skin with a lot of fat under it. So what. Get up there and I’ll push you under the fence.”

She shuddered at the touch of his hand, but she also knew he was right. There were lots of reasons to die, but dying because you couldn’t stand the humiliation of some man pushing his hands into your fat and pushing you up a hill—that wasn’t a good enough reason.

“If you get a hernia, don’t expect me to knit you a truss,” she said.

Back at the fence, she made Annalee go up the hill. “You keep everybody on that side. I don’t want anybody watching this.”

Tina noted with satisfaction that Annalee may be contrary sometimes, but not when it counts. As soon as she was on her way up the slope, Tina sat down with her back toward the fence, then lay down.

“On your stomach,” said Teague.

“I plan to dig in with my heels.”

“And then how do I push you without giving offense, ma’am? Crawl through and grab saplings on the other side.”

She rolled over. He immediately shoved his hands into her thighs and started pushing. It was a hard shove he had—the boy was strong. And it didn’t feel humiliating. It felt plain irresistible. He was moving her at a good clip without her even helping. And uphill, too.

“Maybe I’ve been losing weight,” she panted. With all her weight on her lungs, she didn’t have much breath.

“Shut up, ma’am, and grab onto something.”

She shut up and grabbed a sapling and pulled. With all her strength, sliding herself forward, feeling him pressing upward on her thighs, feeling the grass tear loose under her breasts and belly, the dirt slide into her clothes, the chain-link pushing down on her back. Her arms had never pulled so hard in her life. She could hardly breathe.

“You’re through.”

So she was. Covered with dirt and sweat from neck to knees, but through the fence. She got up onto all fours, then rolled over to a sitting position, feeling, as always, like a rotating planet. She sat there to rest for a moment. While she did, Teague rolled the cut flap of chain-link back down and tied one corner of the bottom in place with a short piece of twine he took out of his pocket.

“Let’s go,” he said. He held out a hand. She took it, and he pulled her to her feet. Then he stood there, holding her wrist, looking at her face. “I don’t want you carrying anything. I don’t want you so much as holding hands with a little kid who gets tired.”

“I’ll pull my weight,” she said.

“And nothing else,” he said. “From the look of you, I’d say you’re ten miles from a heart attack.”

“Stroke,” she said. “In my family, it’s strokes.”

“I mean it,” Teague insisted. “And if you get tired, you make everybody stop and rest.”

“I’m not going to slow them down just because I’m—”

“Fat,” he said.

“Right,” she said.

“I’ll tell you, ma’am. They need you, and they need you alive. You pull nothing, you carry nothing, you drink whenever you’re thirsty, and you rest whenever you’re tired.”

“And I tell you that I’m in better shape than you think. I was custodian at the church, I worked my body all day every day, and furthermore I never smoked a single cigarette or drank a drop of liquor from the day I was born.”

“You’re telling me why you ain’t dead already,” said Teague. “I’m telling you how not to be dead tomorrow. You watch. You stay alive on this trip of yours, you’ll thin out.”

“Don’t tell me what to do.”

“Walk up this hill.”

She turned around and started walking up. Briskly, to show him she could do it. Ten paces later, her right leg gave out. Gave right out, and she stumbled and fell on her face. Not a bad fall, since she was going uphill anyway. He helped her up, and she let him half-pull her the rest of the way. It was plain that she had used herself up, at least for one day. They made their camp right there on the far side of the hill, just a hundred yards farther on than the gap where they came through. Teague wouldn’t let them light a fire, and he spent most of the time till dusk scouting around or climbing trees and looking.

It was a warm night, so they slept right there in the woods on the far side of the hill, out of sight of the road, out of sight of everything. Yet they could hear, not all that far off, the crackling of a fire and folks laughing and talking. Couldn’t make out the words, but they were having fun.

“Mobbers?” whispered Pete.

“Barbecue,” said Teague.

Citizens of Winston. Protected by the law. A couple of miles away, mobbers hoping to kill and strip passersby. And in between them, quiet, listening, Tina Monk, breathing heavily, the pain in her unaccustomed muscles making it impossible to sleep, her weariness making it unbearable to be awake. Laughter. Pleasant company. Someone had all those things tonight, all those things that come with peace. How dare they have peace, when their highway patrolmen sent a dozen souls to what they thought was certain death? You are responsible, you laughers, you friends and lovers, you are the ones in whose name those stolid killers acted. You.

Then she slept and dreamed of crawling through tight places. Cramming her bulk into a narrow shaft, her clothing climbing up her body as she thrust herself farther in, farther, until she could put the cover on. Then lying there in the heat, the close air, hearing shooting, the sound of it echoing, amplified through the air-conditioning system; and screams. Every bullet meant for kin of hers. Brothers and sisters, all of them, screaming in pain and terror while Tina Monk, building custodian, Primary president, choir leader, cowered in the air-conditioning system trying to keep her breathing soft enough that no one would find her. They shot her husband at the top of the stairs down into the furnace room. When she finally opened the door, it was Tom’s body she had to shove out of the way in order to open it, Tom’s blood that made prints of her shoes as she walked up the stairs. His sweet and patient face, she saw it now in her mind as she slept her dark unquiet sleep.

Herman Deaver knew that he had no authority. Bishop Coward could say he was in charge, as the only high priest in the group, but it wasn’t spiritual leadership they needed. This wasn’t a prophetic journey; there was no Lehi to wake up with dreams that told them where to go; there was no divine gift of a liahona with pointers on it to show the way. There wasn’t even a trace of manna on the ground in the morning, just dew soaking them, making the morning stiff and clinging and miserable.

I can explain, very clearly, how Shakespeare’s Hamlet is in fact not contemplating suicide in the “To Be or Not to Be” soliloquy, but rather deciding whether to endure suffering as a Christian or take vengeful action. What Herman Deaver could not explain, to himself or anyone else, was why he, a high priest, a temple-going Saint, a professor of literature, why he was so terribly sorry to be alive. I apologize. My mistake. An oversight. An error of scheduling. If only you had sent a reminder. To be or not to be was not the question at all. Hamlet did not care about vengeance or justice. What he wanted was his father back. Good intentions—but he took away his friend Laertes’ father instead. Now we’re alike, eh what? Even Steven. Get up, Deaver. Set an example, even if you aren’t the leader. You’re the chaplain now, that’s what you are, so at least keep morale up by being perky and chipper and energetic. Ignore that pain from your burning prostate. It isn’t agony yet. Not till you take the first leak of the day.

“The boys’ lavatory is that stand of bushes over there,” said Sister Monk.

Since his eyes were closed, Deaver didn’t know if she meant him or not. But he took it as if she did, and struggled to his feet, squinting to see as the first sunlight slanted through the branches. It burned, it burned, it burned; the sunlight, his prostate, the urine tearing at him as it passed out of his body and sizzled on last year’s leaves. When I was young I never thought it would be such agony to do this. I never thought at all. I can feel all my bones.

This much courtesy they still had: They didn’t start the meeting till he was back. Or perhaps they hadn’t noticed yet that he wasn’t in charge. That Peter, so young and strong, that he was more listened to; that Tina Monk, always forceful and now more so than ever, that she now made decisions in her simple forthright way. Perhaps they thought of this as “giving counsel.” But the decision was made before he spoke. He didn’t mind this. He welcomed it. Decisions were not his strong suit. Teaching was his strong suit. They could make decisions; then he would explain to them why it was a good idea. That’s the skill of the scholarly critic. Explaining after the fact why somebody was great, who everybody already agrees was great. The metaphor of the freeway as river, with portages around the rapids, that was far easier for him to comprehend than the way this gentile, Teague, made sense of what he saw when he stared at the uninterrupted wall of forest green.

“We need you,” Pete was saying. “We got no right to ask it, but we need you to guide us or we’ll never get there.”

“Get where?” Ah, a sensible question. Of course Teague goes straight to the point. Get where? To heaven, to the celestial glory, Jamie Teague. To life eternal, where we will know the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom he has sent.

“To Utah,” said Tina. Oh yes. The immediate destination. The short-term destination. How far-sighted of me. Over-sighted.

“You’re crazy,” said Teague.

“Probably,” said Tina.

“Not really,” said Pete. “Where else can people like us go?”

“That’s two thousand miles away. For all you know, all kinds of bombs landed there. It might be hot as D.C.”

“There was still radio for a while. Utah wasn’t hit bad.”

“Or wiped out by plague.”

“There’ll be something,” said Pete.

“You hope.”

“We know.” Pete grinned. “We may not look like much to you, but out there Mormons are in charge. I promise you that wherever there’s four Mormons, there’ll be a government. A president, two counselors, and somebody to bring refreshments.”

Deaver laughed. He remembered that jokes like that were funny. Some others joined in. Mostly children who didn’t get the joke, but that was good. It was good for the children to laugh.

Deaver couldn’t help but be hurt, when Teague looked for confirmation, not to him, but to Sister Monk.

“It’s true,” she said. “We’ve been preparing for this for years. We knew it was coming. We tried to warn everybody. Put no trust in the arm of flesh. Your weapons will mean nothing. Only trust in the Lord, and he will save you.”

“How’s he been doing so far for you folks?” asked Teague.

It was a bitter and terrible question, so Deaver knew that he was the only one who could answer it. “You understand that the promise refers to large groups. America as a whole. The Church as a whole. Many individuals will suffer and die.”

Teague only now seemed to realize that he had maybe given offense. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s a natural question,” said Deaver. “In the Book of Mormon, the prophets Alma and Amulek were forced to watch as their enemies threw whole families of the faithful into a fire and burned them alive. ‘Why doesn’t God reach out and save these people,’ Amulek asked. And Alma said, ‘Death tastes sweet to them; why should the Lord prevent it? But the wicked must be allowed to do their wickedness, so that everyone will know that their terrible punishment is just.’ Then Amulek said, ‘Maybe they’ll kill us, too.’ And Alma said, ‘If they do, then we’ll die. But I think the Lord won’t allow it. Our work is not yet done.’”

Deaver could feel their eyes on him, could hear how their breathing had become quiet. The children especially, they listened to him, they watched his lips as he spoke. He knew that they understood what the story meant to them. Our work is not yet done, that’s why we’re alive.

But don’t ask me what our work is. Don’t ask me what we’re supposed to accomplish, if by some miracle we survive a two-thousand-mile journey through hell until we reach the kingdom of God on the mountains.

Teague did not break the silence; Deaver knew from that that he was a sensitive man, despite his youth, despite the fact that he was a gentile. For the first time it occurred to him that Teague might even be a potential convert. Wouldn’t that be a miracle, to baptize a new member here in the wilderness!

“The Church will be strong in Utah,” said Tina Monk. “And you can bet we won’t be much safer anywhere else than we were in Greensboro and Winston.”

“You’re Mormons, right?” said Teague.

“You mean you only just now guessed that?” said Annalee. She was always disrespectful and sharp-tongued. Deaver heard that marriage had mellowed her. He was grateful he never knew her before.

“You never said right out,” said Teague.

“Does it make a difference?” asked Deaver. Will you not help us, now that you know we are—what is the term?—the cult of the anti-Christ? The secret worshipers of Satan? Secular Humanists masquerading as Christians in order to seduce impressionable young people and lead them into unspeakable abominations?

“It does if you’re going to Utah,” said Teague.

“I-40 to Memphis,” said Pete. “Then up to St. Louis and I-70 to Denver. After that, who knows? They might even have trains running or buses.”

“Or a weekly space shuttle flight,” said Teague.

“Don’t underestimate the resourcefulness of the Mormon people,” said Deaver.

“Don’t underestimate how much trouble a few nukes, some biological warfare, and the collapse of civilization can cause,” said Teague. “Not to mention how the climate’s changed. How do you know Utah isn’t buried under glaciers?”

“They don’t form that fast,” said Pete.

“Two thousand miles,” said Teague. “With winters colder and longer now than they used to be—how far you think you’ll get before September?”

“We didn’t expect to do it in one year,” said Deaver.

“We need you,” said Pete. “We’ll hire you.”

Teague laughed. “And pay me what?”

“A house and a job in Utah,” said Pete.

“You can guarantee that?” said Teague. “You guarantee that I’ll have a little plot of ground? A house with hot and cold running water? A nice little job to go to? Eight to five? What about location—I don’t want to have to commute more than fifteen minutes to—”

“Shut up,” said Tina.

Teague shut up.

“We can promise you that there’s peace in the mountains of Utah. We can promise you that if you lead us there, you’ll be rewarded as best they can. We can promise you that in Utah, you can reap what you plant, you can keep what you make, you can count on being as safe tomorrow as you are today. Where else in all this world are those things true?”

“I’m not about to become a Mormon,” said Teague.

“No one expects it,” said Sister Monk.

“They’ll just expect you to be a good man,” said Deaver.

“Then forget it,” said Teague.

“A good man,” said Deaver. “Not a perfect one.”

“How bad can a man be and still be good?”

“You have to be good enough to take a helpless group like us two thousand miles, with no promise of payment beyond our word.”

Deaver saw, with satisfaction, that Teague was being won over. He halfway suspected that Teague wanted to be won over. After all, he had already invested a lot of time and effort in helping them get off the freeway. He was risking a lot, too—if the highway patrol caught them here, they’d no doubt be in trouble. And the fact that there wasn’t any shooting last night—the patrol might well notice that and come looking for them.

Maybe Teague thought of that at the same time, because he stood up suddenly. “I’ll think about it. But for now we’ve got to get moving. It’ll be slow going for a while, till we can put the carts back together on a road. Put the heaviest stuff on bikes. I hope those things have airless tires.”

“Of course,” said Tina. “My husband never considered anything else. What good would bikes be on a cross-country trip, if they’re always going flat?”

“The little kids will carry the two-by-fours.”

Annalee started to protest. “They’re too heavy for—”

“They’ll rest a lot,” said Teague. “We’re going to do this all in one trip. Grown-ups will be carrying a lot more.”

It turned out that Scotty, Mick, Cheri Ann, and Valerie could only handle four of the two-by-fours, but Pete thought of using the others to make a kind of sedan chair, which he and Deaver bore on their shoulders, with a much heavier burden on the two-by-fours between them than they could possibly have carried on their backs.

Sister Monk started to pick up a bundle of dried food.

“Put it down,” said Teague.

“It’s light,” said Sister Monk.

Teague didn’t say another word. Just stared at her, and she stared back. To Deaver’s surprise, it was Sister Monk who gave in. He’d never seen such a thing in all his years in the Church. Sister Monk backed down to no man, or woman either. But she backed down to this Jamie Teague.

It was the first time Deaver realized what Teague must have seen right off—that Sister Monk wasn’t doing so well, physically speaking. Deaver was so used to her being fat, and having that mean nothing so far as her being a hard worker in the Church, that it didn’t occur to him that this journey was different. But now that Teague’s insistence on her carrying nothing had brought the matter to Deaver’s attention, he could see how flushed and weak she looked, how her walk was none too steady even in the morning after a night of sleep. For the first time it occurred to Deaver that she might not make it through the trip.

It made him angry, to realize how much he had unconsciously been depending on this woman. Wasn’t he the one with the authority? Wasn’t he supposed to lead? Yet he was depending on her. Well, he wouldn’t, that’s all. Nobody’s indispensable. If we can get along without—

No, he wouldn’t start listing the indispensable people who were dead, bulldozed into the mass grave in the parking lot of the stake center on Pinetop Road. There was no point in a census now. They were gone, and this meager handful of Saints was still alive. That meant that the Church was still alive, and would go on, sustained by faith and the Lord and, with any luck, this stranger who came out of nowhere offering help unasked. An angel would have been more useful, but if this Jamie Teague was all the Lord had to offer in the way of help, he’d have to do. If it was, in fact, the Lord who sent him.

They made it in one trip. One long trip, with frequent stops. Teague wasn’t actually with them most of the way. He ranged ahead, leaving south and returning from the north. Sister Monk actually led them, spotting the marks Teague had made on tree trunks, showing which way to go. At the end of the day they were back on the road. U.S. 421 this time, a two-lane expressway, with the overpass some miles behind them. Exhausted as they were, Teague made them rebuild the carts before they gnawed on their jerky and went to sleep. “You’ll want to be under way at dawn,” he said. “Not sitting around in the open building carts. That was just one overpass.”

So they rebuilt the carts, and he finally let them build a very small fire so they could boil up some soup and give the children a decent meal. Hungry as they were, the kids could hardly keep their eyes open long enough to eat. And when they were asleep, Teague laid out his conditions for traveling with them.

“I’m not good enough to take you two thousand miles,” he said, looking Deaver in the eye. “I only promise to take you as far as the Great Smokies. I haven’t traveled west of there anyway, only between the mountains and the sea, so I don’t know any more about the country than you do. But I’ve got a cabin there that’s good for the winter. It’s where I live. I know my neighbors there, I’ve got trade goods from my traveling to buy food, and we’ve kept it free of mobbers. It’s as much as I can promise, but I think I can teach you a few things along the way, give you a better chance next spring.”

“If that’s as far as you go with us,” said Pete, “then we can’t pay you anything at all. We got nothing you need, until we get to Utah.”

Teague pulled up a tuft of grass, started splitting the blades up the middle, one by one. “You got something I need.”

“What is it?” demanded Annalee.

Teague looked at her coldly.

Deaver offered an explanation. “Maybe we’re people he thinks are going to die if he doesn’t help us. Maybe he needs not to see us dead.”

Deaver saw Teague’s expression change again. An unreadable look, hiding some strange, unnameable emotion. Am I right? Is Teague’s motive altruistic? Or is there something else, so shameful Teague can’t hardly admit it? Does he plan to betray us at some terrible time? Never mind. If the Lord means us to thrive, he’ll protect us from such treason. And if he doesn’t, I’d rather die by trusting a man who may not be as good as he seems than by being so suspicious I refuse a true friend.

Sister Monk changed the subject. “You by yourself, Jamie Teague, you can generally avoid trouble, I imagine. You can pretty much be invisible out in the woods, and stay off the roads. But with us, trouble’s going to come. We’ll be on the roads most of the time, too many of us and too clumsy to hide. Somebody’s going to spot us.”

“Might be,” said Teague.

“You got the gun, Jamie Teague. But do you figure you can kill a man with it?”

“Reckon so,” said Teague.

A pause.

“Have you ever killed anybody?” asked Pete. There was awe in his voice, as if having killed somebody was a magical act that would endow this stranger with supernatural power.

“Reckon so,” said Teague.

“I don’t believe it,” snapped Annalee.

“We want him as a guide anyway,” said Deaver, “not a soldier.”

“Where we’re going I don’t think there’s a difference,” said Sister Monk. “You’re an English professor. Pete’s a fireman, trained to save lives, to risk his own life—but none of us has ever killed anybody. I think.”

“Wish I had,” murmured Pete.

Sister Monk ignored him. “And what if the only way to save us was to sneak up on somebody and kill them. From behind, without even giving them a fair chance. Could you do that, Jamie Teague?”

Teague nodded.

“How do we know that?” said Annalee.

Teague waved her off with a gesture of impatience. “I killed my mother and father,” he said. “I can kill anybody.”

“My God,” said Rona Harrison.

Deaver turned to snap at the girl about not taking the name of the Lord in vain. But then it occurred to him that with Teague confessing to patricide, saying “My God” seemed pretty tame by comparison.

“Well now,” said Pete.

“Isn’t that what you wanted to hear?” asked Teague. “Didn’t you want to know whether I was bloodthirsty enough to do the killing you need done to save your lives? Don’t you want to know that your hired soldier has references?”

“I wasn’t trying to pry into things you don’t want to talk about,” said Sister Monk.

“They deserved it,” said Teague. “The court gave me a suspended sentence because everybody agreed they deserved it.”

“Did they abuse you?” asked Annalee. Finally she was curious instead of suspicious. A mind like a grocery store newspaper, thought Deaver.

“Annalee,” said Sister Monk sharply. “We’ve all stepped too far.”

“I’ve answered the question you need to know,” said Teague. “I can kill when I need to. But I decide when I need to. I give orders, I don’t take them. That clear? If I tell you to get off the road, you get—no arguments. Right? Cause I don’t aim to stick around and kill all comers just cause you aren’t willing to do what it takes to avoid a fight.”

“Brother Teague,” said Deaver. He pretended not to notice how startled Teague was to be addressed as Brother. “We will gladly accept your authority about how and when to travel, and on what path. And I assure you that it is the desire of our hearts to kill no one, to harm no one, to leave things undisturbed wherever we go.”

“I don’t want you killing anybody for me anyhow,” said Marie Speaks.

Everybody looked at her—she’d been talking like a teenager so long that nobody expected her to have an opinion on something serious like this.

“I die myself first, you got that?”

“You crazy,” said Rona. “You lost your mind, girl.”

“Killing a bushwhacker isn’t murder,” said Pete.

“Neither is killing a Mormon,” said Marie. “So I hear.” Then she got up and walked over to where the little ones were sleeping.

“She’s crazy,” said Rona.

“She’s Christian,” said Deaver.

“So am I,” said Pete, “but I know there’s times when the Lord lets good people fight back. Think of Captain Moroni and the title of liberty. Think of Helaman and the two thousand young men.”

“Think about sleeping,” said Teague. “I’m not taking first watch tonight, I’m too tired.”

“Me,” said Pete.

“No, me,” said Deaver.

“You, Mr. Deaver,” said Teague. “Your timepiece there still work, or is it on your wrist from nostalgia?”

“It’s solar,” said Deaver. “It works fine.”

“Watch till midnight. Then wake Pete. Pete, you wake me at three.”

Then Teague got up and went to the bushes they had designated as the boys’ lavatory that night.

“Murder’s the unforgivable sin,” said Annalee. “I don’t want a murderer telling us what to do.”

“Judge not lest ye be judged,” said Deaver. “Let him or her who is without sin cast the first stone.”

That was the end of the discussion, as Deaver knew it would be. There wasn’t a one of them who didn’t feel guilty for one reason or another. For just being alive with so many others dead, if nothing else. Maybe Marie had learned the right lesson from it after all. Maybe killing was never worth it.

But Deaver heard the people breathing around him, he looked and watched the children’s chests rising and falling with each breath, and then he imagined somebody coming and raising a knife to them, or pointing a gun at them. That’s not the same thing as somebody raising a weapon against me personally. I might have the courage to let the blow fall and not defend myself. But there’s not a chance in the world that I’d let them harm a hair on those children’s heads. I’d blast the bushwhackers to hell and back if I thought they’d harm the children. Now maybe that’s murderousness, maybe that’s a secret lust for blood in my heart. But I don’t think so. I think that’s the indignation of God. I think that’s what Christ felt when he said it was better to tie a millstone around your neck and jump into the sea than to raise your hand to harm a child.

Teague killed his mama and his daddy. That was a hard one. Not mine to judge. But I’ll be watching that boy differently now. Watching real close. We didn’t escape one band of murderers just to fall in with a worse one now. Bad enough to kill strangers because you don’t like their religion. But to kill your own mama and daddy.

Deaver shuddered, and stared into the darkness beyond the flickering firelight.

The fifth day after Teague joined them, they were heading toward Wilkesboro. Travel was getting into a regular rhythm now, and nobody was half as sore as they were the third day. And it wasn’t so scary anymore. A few times Teague had come rushing back from scouting ahead and made them get off the road, but this wasn’t freeway now and most times they could run the bikes up behind some bushes without dismantling the carts. The only portage was crossing I-77. Mostly it was just walking, one foot after the other.

One of those times in hiding, Rona made Marie peek through the bushes and watch the horsemen going by. They looked like a rough crew, and to Marie it looked like one of them had three human heads hanging from his saddle. Three black human heads, and it made her shudder.

“Canteens,” Teague said, but Marie knew better. She knew lots of things folks didn’t think she knew. So now, on the afternoon of the fifth day out of Winston, when Marie was feeling hot and tired and wanted a little entertainment, she got a meanness on her and started doing a number on Rona.

“You got your eye on him,” said Marie.

“Do not,” said Rona. She sounded outraged. This was working fine.

“You say his name in your sleep.”

“Nightmares is what.”

“You were thinking of him just now when you smiled.”

“Was not. And I didn’t smile.”

“Then how do you know who I’m talking about?”

“You’re a queen bitch, that’s what you are,” said Rona.

“Don’t you talk to me with words like that,” said Marie. She was the one supposed to be needling, not the other way around.

“Stop acting like a bitch and people won’t call you one,” said Rona.

“At least I don’t get the hots for murderers,” said Marie. That got her back.

“He isn’t.”

“Said he was himself.”

“He had good reason.”

“Oh yeah?”

“They used to torture him?”

“He say that?”

“I know it.”

“Murder is the unforgivable sin,” said Marie. “He’ll be in hell forever, so you just don’t even bother thinking about marrying him!”

“Shut your mouth! I’m not thinking about marrying him!”

“And he’s white and he’s not Mormon and he’ll never never never take you to the temple.”

“Maybe I don’t care.”

“If you don’t care about the temple, why are you going to Utah?”

Rona looked at her strangely. “Well it ain’t to go to the temple.”

Marie didn’t know what to make of that, and didn’t want to find out what Rona meant. But the meanness wasn’t gone out of her yet. So she turned back to the old topic. “He’s going to hell no matter what.”

“No he’s not!” And Rona gave Marie a shove that nearly knocked her on her butt.

“Hey!”

“What’s going on here!” It was Brother Deaver, of course. None of the white folks ever told them off about anything. “Haven’t we got things bad enough without you two tailing into each other?”

“I didn’t tail into her,” said Marie.

“Saying he was going to hell!”

Marie felt Brother Deaver’s hand on the back of her neck. “The Lord is the judge of men’s souls,” he said softly.

Marie squirmed to get free of his grasp. She was eighteen now, not some kid that grown-ups could grab onto whenever they wanted.

“So if you can’t keep your heart free of condemnation, Marie, I think you’d better learn to keep your mouth shut. Do you understand me, girl?”

She finally broke free. “You got no right to tell a black girl what to do!” she said—loudly now, so that others farther back could hear. “You just teach your own white kids and leave me alone!”

It was a terrible thing to say, she knew it and she was sorry. But it also got him to shut up and leave her alone, which was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Besides, he did marry a white woman, which was the same thing as saying black women were trash. Well, see what it got him—all of them shot dead along with all the other white Mormons, while he was at A&T, where the white Christian Soldiers didn’t dare to go. That’s the only reason he wanted her to forgive Teague for being a murderer—because he felt like a murderer, too, him being alive because he was black, while his wife and kids were shot down and bulldozed into a parking lot grave. He wanted everybody to be nice and forgiving. Well she knew the law of heaven, didn’t she? She wasn’t just a Sunday School Mormon, she studied the doctrine and read all the time, and she knew that Christ’s atonement had no force over them as murdered. Though truth to tell, his face looked stricken like he was about to die, and just from her cruel hard words against him. She might even have apologized on the spot, except that right then they heard horses’ hoofs and all hell broke loose.

The mobbers came up a side road, just sauntering like they didn’t expect trouble. Must have come up since Teague passed that road in this scouting. There was only two of them, and for a minute Marie hoped they’d think this group was too much for them. But the mobbers sized them up quick and didn’t even pause a minute. They had guns out before they got to 421.

“We don’t mean you no harm,” Brother Deaver said, or started to say, anyway, when the one mobber got off his horse and whipped him across the face with his pistol, knocking him down.

“That’s our speech,” said the mobber, “and we do all the talking, got it? Everybody lie down—on your bellies.”

“Look at what they got in the way of women, Zack, if that ain’t pitiful.”

“That blond one—”

“Keep your hands off her,” said Pete. He started to get up. The taller one with the long beard gave him a kick that looked like it might tear his head off.

“She’s dessert,” said the tall one. “We got dark meat for dinner.”

Marie thought she was already as scared as she could be, but now when the cold barrel of a shotgun was pressed against her forehead, pressing down real heavy, she tasted terror for the first time in her life.

“Please,” whispered Rona.

“Now you just hold still while I get this off you, honey, and open wide for pap, or Zack’s gonna blow your girlfriend’s head clean off.”

“I’m a good girl!” Rona whined.

“I’ll make you even better,” said the long-bearded man.

“No!” Rona screamed.

Marie felt the painful motion of the gun as Zack drew a charge into the chamber. “Don’t fight with them, Rona,” said Marie. She knew it was a cowardly thing to say, but Rona didn’t have the gun at her head.

“You little kids best close your eyes,” said Zack. “Wouldn’t want you finding out the facts of life too young.”

Marie could hear the other one set down his shotgun and start unzipping himself, mumbling to himself about how if she gave him a disease he’d hang her head from his saddle, which told Marie that she did see what she thought she saw. It made her gag all over again.

“Hold still,” said Zack, “or it won’t go so nice for you when I—”

Suddenly the gun barrel jammed sharp into her head as Zack slumped on it; not even a second later she heard the crack of a gun going off not far away. Zack’s shirt blossomed open and spattered blood; Marie grabbed the shotgun barrel and tore it away from her face.

The other mobber muttered something and fumbled for his gun, but then another cracking sound and he was down, too.

“Teague!” Marie shouted. She got to her feet, her head bleeding. Everybody was getting up. Pete had Zack’s shotgun in a second and pointed it at the two mobbers—but they were stone dead, each killed with one shot.

“Catch the horses!” Teague was shouting that. And he was right, had to catch the horses, they could pull the carts, they could carry stuff, had to catch them, but Marie couldn’t find them, not with blood pouring down into her eyes—

“Marie honey, here, are you all right?” Sister Monk was dabbing at her with a cloth. It stung like hell.

“Did he shoot Marie?” It was one of the little boys.

“Just jammed his gun in her head when he was dying is all—Donna Cinn, you get the little ones back to the side of the road.” Sister Monk taking charge as usual. And as usual everybody hopped to do it. Only this time Marie didn’t mind at all, didn’t mind those big old hands dabbing at the blood on her face.

Then she noticed Rona making a grunting noise, and she turned to look. Brother Deaver was tugging at Rona’s sleeve, but Rona wouldn’t quit stomping her foot down on the bearded mobber’s face. It wasn’t even human anymore, but she kept stomping and now the skull broke through and her shoe sank down in a ways.

Now Teague came up, leading one horse. He handed the reins to Deaver, stepped astride the dead man’s body, and took Rona in his arms and just held her, saying, “You’re okay, you’re okay now, you’re safe.”

“Took you damn long enough,” said Pete. He had the other horse, and he sounded more scared than mad.

“Came as soon as I heard the horses. Had to make sure it was only the two before I started shooting. Rona, I’m sorry, I’m sorry you got so scared, I’m sorry he treated you so bad, but I had to wait until he set his gun down, don’t you see.”

“It’s okay, he didn’t do nothing,” said Annalee.

Rona screamed into Teague’s shirt.

“I don’t call it nothing to have her lying there with her skirt up like that,” said Teague.

“I just mean he didn’t—”

“If it didn’t happen to you then you just shut up about what’s nothing or not,” said Teague.

Brother Deaver held out a little blue swatch of cloth. “Here’s your underwear, Rona—”

Rona turned away. Sister Monk snatched the panties out of Brother Deaver’s hand. “For heaven’s sake, Brother Deaver, use some sense. He touched these! She isn’t going to put them back on.”

“Rona, I’m sorry, but we’ve got to get moving,” said Teague. “Right now, right this second. Those gunshots are bound to call more of them—these two might have twenty more a mile behind them.”

Rona turned away from him, staggered to Sister Monk. Marie didn’t mind much, having Sister Monk switch from nursing her to comforting Rona. It was plain Rona was in worse shape.

Teague got the other two men to help him hoist the corpses onto the horses.

“Leave them here,” said Annalee.

“Got to bury them,” said Teague.

“They don’t deserve it.”

Pete explained, real gentle. “So nobody finds the bodies and chases after us to get even.”

A minute later they were off the road and cutting along the edge of some farmer’s field, half-screened by trees. Teague pushed them to go faster, and quieter, too, his voice just a whisper. Finally they were down a hill in the hollow. Teague had Brother Deaver and Brother Cinn dig a single large grave, while Annalee kept the children away from the horses.

“Bury these, too,” said Teague.

That was the first time Marie noticed that both saddles had heads tied to them. They looked even worse close up than the heads Marie had seen from a distance.

“I’ll take them down,” said Rona. She set right to untying the thongs from the saddle.

“Me too,” said Marie. She didn’t even let herself wonder whether it had been a girl or a boy, a man or a woman.

Teague took his rifle and went back up the hill to keep a watch on the road.

Marie didn’t puke and neither did Rona. Mostly Marie was just thinking about how grateful she was that her head wasn’t on the horse. Then Marie helped Sister Monk strip the corpses and empty the pockets of everything. Three dozen shotgun shells. All kinds of matches and supplies. They stuffed it all in the saddlebags, which were already near full of stuff the mobbers no doubt stole from other folks just today. In twenty minutes both corpses were in the hole, dressed in their ragged underwear, the heads tucked around them, their limp, filthy clothes tossed in on top of them. Only Marie had noticed how Sister Monk wrapped Rona’s blue panties inside one of the dead men’s shirts. Rona insisted on helping them, tossing dirt onto the bodies until they were covered up.

Marie couldn’t keep from speaking. “They were poor.”

“Everybody’s poor,” said Pete. “But they kept alive by stealing the little that others had and likely killing them, too.”

“Feels wrong, having their victims’ heads buried with them,” said Sister Monk.

“The victims don’t mind,” said Brother Deaver, “and we didn’t have time to dig more holes. Marie, can you get up the hill real quiet and tell Brother Teague that we’re done here?”

But Teague had already seen from up the hill, and he slid down the slope. “Nobody coming. These two might’ve been alone,” he said. “It’s getting late enough, maybe we ought to camp farther on down the hollow here. If I remember right there’s water. The horses’ll need that. We can work the rest of the afternoon rigging up some kind of harness for the horses to pull the bikes.” Teague looked at the grave. “Get some dead leaves on here. Something to make the soil not look so fresh-turned. And if this happens again, save out their clothes. Dead people don’t need them.”

“We’d never wear them,” said Brother Deaver.

“You would, if it got cold enough, and you got naked enough.”

“I’ve never been that naked,” said Brother Deaver.

Teague shrugged.

“Brother Teague,” said Marie.

“Yeah?”

“I was wrong about not wanting you to kill for me.”

“I know,” said Teague. And that was all he said to her. “Mr. Deaver, Mr. Cinn, you got any objection to hanging on to those shotguns?”

“If they do, I don’t,” said Sister Cinn.

Brother Deaver and Brother Cinn kept to themselves any objections they might have had. They slung the shotguns over their shoulders. Brother Cinn dropped a few shells in his pocket; then he dropped some in Brother Deaver’s pocket. Brother Deaver looked at him in surprise, then embarrassment. Marie was a little disgusted. Didn’t college professors know anything?

Mostly, though, Marie watched Teague. That’s why she was the only one who saw how Teague kept clenching and unclenching his jaw. How his hand shook a little. And late that night, she was the only one who woke up when he took a walk in the moonlight.

She got up and followed him. He stood beside the grave, looking nowhere in particular, his hands jammed in his pockets. He showed no sign of noticing she was there, but she knew he had heard her coming from the minute she got up from the ground.

“You’re such a liar,” said Marie. “You didn’t kill your parents.”

He didn’t say a thing.

“You never killed a living soul before today.”

“Believe what you like,” he said.

“You never.”

He just stood there with his hands in his pockets until she went back to the camp. She lay there wondering why a man might want other folks to think he was a murderer when he wasn’t. Then she wondered why she wanted so bad to believe a man wasn’t a murderer when he said right out that he was. She lay awake a long time, but he didn’t come back until after she was asleep.

As for Rona, Marie was sure that girl really did have a crush on Jamie Teague, before. Seeing how Teague saved her from rape and probably from having her head bounce along on some mobber’s saddle, you’d think she’d be totally in love with him now. But no, not Rona. From then on it was like Teague didn’t even exist, except as just another grown-up. Like he was nothing special.

There’s just no understanding some people, Marie decided. Maybe Rona just couldn’t be grateful and in love at the same time. Maybe she couldn’t forgive Teague for waiting to kill the mobbers till they had her panties off. Or maybe Rona just couldn’t ever be married to a man that watched her stamp a dead man’s head to mush. Rona never told her, and Marie never asked.

Marie carried a scar on her forehead to the end of her life. She’d touch it now and then, and from the start she was glad to have it. She always remembered that it could have been much worse for her than a gun barrel leaning on her head. She could’ve been in Rona’s place.

Day after next they came to the mountains, where the road sloped upward so steep that they had to stop and rest every twenty minutes or so. Pete was grateful they had the horses now, to pull the carts, though he didn’t say so out loud; it didn’t do to start saying it was a good thing to have the horses, not with Rona still so upset about how they got them.

Pete concentrated on the children, his own and the orphans. They were the ones who suffered most, he knew that. The youngest of them, Scotty Porter and Valerie Letterman, they weren’t even born when the first plague struck. The famous Six Missiles had already fallen before Scotty and Valerie said their first words. He murmured to Annalee one time, “Think there’s any chance of getting them into a college-prep kindergarten?” But she’d either forgotten all that craziness from the old days, or else she didn’t think it was funny. She didn’t think much was funny these days. Neither did Pete, for that matter. But at least he tried now and then. Sometimes, for hours, maybe even days at a time, he didn’t think about his father killed in the missile that got D.C., or his stepfather shot by looters, or his mom and Annalee’s folks and all their brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews crammed into the cultural hall at the stake center, not being sure what was going to happen to them, but knowing deep down all the time, knowing and being terrified. I was in plays on the stage where the guys with the guns stood. I played basketball on the floor where the bullets gouged up the wood finish and blood soaked in under the polish. I was baptized in the font behind the stage, where the men from the city hooked up the hoses to wash out the blood. The Baptists were already talking about making it a Christian library when Pete went there to lay flowers in the parking lot where he had first kissed Annalee after the dance, where now his kin and his friends lay in a jumbled heap of broken bodies under the dirt.

That was the whole world to these children. It had always been in turmoil—did they even realize that things weren’t supposed to be this way? Would they ever trust anything again, now that their parents had been taken away from them?

Teague asked him once, when they were alone together, leading the horses. “Whose kids are those?”

“Donna, the big one, she’s mine, and so’s Nat, he’s my boy.”

“Any fool can see that, they’re so blond,” said Teague.

“Mick and Scotty Porter, Valerie Letterman, Cheri Ann Bee, they’re orphans.”

“Why’d you bring them along? Wasn’t there anybody in Greensboro who could’ve took care of them?”

“That’s what took us so long leaving. Fighting everybody to get the right to take them with us.”

“But why? Don’t you know how much faster we’d go, how much safer we’d be without them?”

Pete held himself back, kept himself from being angry, like he always tried to do and almost always succeeded. “It’s like this, Teague. If we left them, they would’ve been raised up Baptists.”

“That ain’t so bad,” said Teague.

Pete held himself back again, a long time, before he could answer quiet and calm. “You see, Teague, it was mostly Baptist preachers who spent fifteen years telling people how Mormons were the anti-Christ, how we had secret rituals in the temple where we worshiped Satan. How we and Jesus and the devil were brothers, and how we weren’t Christians but pretended to be so we could steal away their children, how we Mormons owned everything and made sure we got rich while good Christians stayed poor. And then when bad times came, all those Baptist preachers washed their hands and said, ‘We never told anybody to kill Mormons.’ Well, that’s true. They never taught murder. But they taught hate and fear, they told lies and they knew they were doing it. Now, Teague, do you see why we wouldn’t let these Mormon kids get raised by people who’d tell such lies about the religion their parents died for?”

Teague thought about that for a while. “How come these kids got out alive? I heard the Christian Soldiers went through killing the wounded.”

So Teague had heard the story. “These four went to Guilford Primary. When the Christian Soldiers were going around arresting people, they got to Guilford Primary school, and Dr. Sonja Day, the principal, she met them at the door. Didn’t have a gun or anything. She just shows them the ashes of the school records, still smoldering. She says to them, ‘All the children in this school are Mormon today, and me and all the faculty. If you take anybody, you take us all.’ Faced them down and they finally went away.”

“Guts.”

“Think about it, Teague. Mormon kids were ripped out of class in fifty schools in the county. If more principals had guts—”

“One out of fifty’s above average, Cinn.”

“That’s why America deserves all that’s happened to her. That’s why the Lord hasn’t saved us. America turned to loving evil.”

“Maybe they were just afraid,” said Teague.

“Afraid or weak or evil, all three roads lead to hell.”

“I know,” whispered Teague.

His whisper was so deep and sore that Pete knew he’d touched some wounded place in Teague. Pete wasn’t one to push deeper at a time like that. He backed off, let a man be. You don’t go poking into a wound, that just gets it all infected. You keep hands off, you let it heal up, you give it time and air and gentleness.

“Teague, I wish you’d take me with you when you scout around or go hunting or whatever.”

“I need you to stay with the rest. I don’t figure Deaver to be much good with a shotgun.”

“Maybe not,” said Pete. “But if you don’t go with us beyond these mountains, somebody’s got to be able to do some of what you do.”

“I been walking the woods for ten years now, long before the plagues started.”

“I got to start sometime.”

“When we get to the Blue Ridge Parkway, I’ll start to take you hunting with me. But you carry no gun.”

“Why not?”

“Take it or leave it. Can you throw?”

“I pitched hardball.”

“A rock?”

“I suppose.”

“If you can’t hunt with a rock, you can’t hunt. Bullets are for killing things big enough to kill you. Because when the bullets run out, there won’t be no more.”

The higher they got into the mountains, the more relaxed Teague got. After a while, he stopped having them look for sheltered, hidden places to camp in; they camped right out in the open. “Mobbers don’t come up this high,” said Teague.

“Why not?”

“Because when they do, they don’t come back.”

At the Blue Ridge Parkway, Teague laid out a whole new set of rules. “Walk spaced apart, not bunched up. Stay on the pavement or close to it. Nobody goes off alone. Don’t hold anything in your hand, not even a rock. Keep your hands in plain sight all the time. If somebody comes, don’t move your hands above your waist, not even to scratch your nose. Just keep walking. Above all, make plenty of noise.”

“I take it we’re not afraid of bushwhackers anymore,” said Brother Deaver.

“These are mountain people around here, and Cherokees beyond Asheville. They don’t rob people, but they also don’t ask a lot of questions before they kill strangers. If they think you might, just might cause them any trouble, you’re dead where you stand. So make it plain that you aren’t trying to sneak up on anybody and you stay visible all the time.”

“We can sing again?” asked Sister Monk.

“Anything but that ‘walked and walked and walked and walked’ song.”

It was a glorious time then. The Blue Ridge Parkway crested the hills, so they had sky all around them, and the mountains were as pretty as Pete had ever seen them. His real dad took them along the parkway most autumns when he was growing up. One year they drove it clear from Harpers Ferry down to the Cherokee Reservation. Pete and his brother griped the whole way till their dad was promising to amputate limbs if they didn’t shut up, but now the trip was glorious in memory. Sometimes Pete forgot he was a grown-up, walking along here, especially when he walked on ahead so he couldn’t see any of them. It wasn’t autumn yet, though autumn wasn’t far off; still, it felt good, felt like coming home. He’d heard other folks say that, too, about the Blue Ridge. About the Appalachians in general. Felt like coming home even if they grew up in some desolate place like California or North Dakota.

Teague made good his promise. It near drove Pete crazy the first few times, when his rock always missed and Teague’s almost never did. But after a while he got the knack of it. It was like pitching with a smaller strike zone. By the time they skirted around Asheville, he could clean a squirrel in two minutes and a rabbit in three. He also learned how to choose a hunting ground. You always look for a cabin and walk up singing, so they know you’re coming. Then you ask the owner where it’s okay to hunt, and if he’d like you to split your catch with him. To hear these mountain folks talk, you could hunt wherever you liked; but Teague would never so much as pick up a rock unless the folks had said “That holler down there” or “Along that slope there,” and even though they always said, “No need to bring me none,” Teague always took the whole catch to them and offered them half. He wouldn’t leave until they’d accepted at least one animal. “They can’t claim you stole it then,” said Teague. “If they took part of it, it wasn’t poaching.”

“What’s to stop them from lying and saying you stole it?” asked Pete.

Teague looked at him like he was stupid. “These are mountain people.”

Whenever he returned from hunting, Pete loved to hear the sound of the children singing, and the grown-ups too now, more and more. Most of all he loved hearing his Annalee’s voice, singing and laughing. When they climbed up out of the piedmont and into the mountains, it was like rising out of hell. This is what redemption feels like, he thought. This is what it’s like when Christ forgives you of your sins. Like putting you on the top of a green mountain, with as many clouds below you as above; and all your bad memories just washed away with the rain, got lost in morning fogs. All those bad memories were lowland troubles, left behind, gone. Pete had been born again.

“I never want to come down out of here,” he told Annalee.

“I know,” she said. “I feel like that too.”

“Then let’s don’t go down.”

She looked at him sharply. “What’s got into you, Peter? You talk like Teague, you walk like Teague. If I’d wanted to marry a hillbilly I’d’ve gone to Appalachian State or Western Carolina.”

“A man belongs up here.”

“A Latter-Day Saint belongs in the kingdom of God.”

“Look around you, Annalee, and tell me God doesn’t love this place.”

“There’s no safety here. You feel good cause we don’t have to hide every night. But we aren’t staying in the open cause we’re safe and free, we’re staying in the open so somebody won’t shoot our heads off. We’d never belong here. But we’re already citizens of Utah. Every Mormon is.”

After that Pete didn’t mention his desire to stay in the mountains, not to Annalee, not to anybody. He knew that after a while they’d all come around to his point of view. When you get to heaven, why go farther? That’s what Pete thought.

“Sister Monk, your dress is getting longer,” said Valerie Letterman one day.

“I must be getting shorter,” Tina answered.

“You’re getting prettier.”

“Child, you’re going to make a lot of friends in this world.”

But Valerie was right. Walking more than two hundred miles was every bit as effective as stomach stapling in the old days. She’d already hemmed up the skirts of all her dresses twice, as her bulk evaporated. She could feel the muscles working under the flesh of her arms and legs. She could spring to her feet all at once, instead of step by step—all fours, kneel up, one foot planted, two feet squatting, and the last terrible unbending of the knees. That was ancient history now. She rolled out of her blanket—it was cold at night up here—and got right to her feet and felt like every step she was jumping several feet in the air. All the pills she’d tried, all the doctors, all the diets, all the exercises—but the only thing that worked was to walk from Greensboro to Topton.

No trouble all through the mountains. No danger that felt like danger, except a few tight minutes at the Cherokee border, till somebody came along who recognized Jamie Teague. And at last they left the paved road and climbed up a dirt track, all overgrown now that no cars ever came through, and came to a two-story house completely dwarfed by giant oak trees.

“I thought you called this a cabin, Jamie Teague,” she said.

“My foster parents called it that,” he said. “They were summer people. But as soon as I was old enough, I stayed year-round.”

Tina caught up that information and remembered it. Teague had foster parents before he was old enough to decide where he was going to live. So if he was fostered out because he killed his parents, he must have killed them when he was young. Probably very young.

The door was not locked. Yet inside, the house was untouched by thieves or vandals. It was deep with dust and dead insects—no one had entered all summer, least of all to clean. Yet every implement was in its place, and Annalee immediately set everyone to work cleaning up. Tina knew she should have joined in—she probably knew more about cleaning than everybody else put together—but for some reason she just felt an aversion to it, just didn’t want to. And the more she thought she ought to help, the less she felt like helping, until finally she fled the house.

“Stop,” said Teague.

“Why?”

“You don’t just walk outside and go where you want,” said Teague.

“Why not?”

“My neighbors don’t know you yet.”

“They’ll know me soon enough,” she said. “I’ve always been a good neighbor.”

“It ain’t like the neighbors down in the city, Mrs. Monk.”

“If you can’t bring yourself to call me Sister Monk, then at least call me Tina.”

Teague grinned. “Go in there and get everybody ready for an expedition.”

The expedition was a trip to each of four neighbors’ houses, singing and talking the whole way. The houses were set so far apart you couldn’t see any of them from the other. But that didn’t matter. They were neighbors all the same. They were the reason Teague’s house was untouched. And they could be deadly.

“Mr. Bicker,” said Teague. “I see you pulled a good crop of tobacco.”

“Mountain tobacco’s only a speck better than chewing dog turds,” said Bicker, “but I got a few leaves curing anyway.”

“Mr. Bicker, you see these folks I got with me?”

“Do I look blind?”

“I’ve been with these folks since Winston, and they treated me like kin. We’ve been eating out of the same pot and walking the same road, and stood back to back a few times. They’re staying the winter with me and then they’re moving on. I showed them the property line, and they all know what land is mine and what land is yours.”

Bicker sniffed. “Never knowed city people could tell one tree from another.”

But we can read, thought Tina, and we don’t let snot trail on our upper lips. She had sense enough not to say it.

“City people or not, Mr. Bicker, they’re my people, all of them.”

“Them is colored there.”

“I call that a deep suntan, Mr. Bicker. Or maybe Cherokee blood. But they’ll be gone in spring, and you’ll hardly notice they’re around.”

Bicker squinted.

“But they’ll be around,” said Teague. “Every one of them. Every last one, alive and moving around in the spring.”

“Hope there’s no influenza,” said Bicker. Then he went back into his cabin, laughing and laughing.

Teague led them away. “Sing,” he told Tina, and she led them in singing.

“This is like Christmas caroling,” said Annalee’s girl Donna.

“Except we didn’t used to sing carols so people wouldn’t shoot at us,” said Tina.

“Oh, Bicker’s all right,” said Teague. “He’ll be fine.”

“Fine? He practically loaded his shotgun right in front of us.”

“Oh, he’s a good neighbor, Tina. You just got to know how to treat him.”

“I don’t call it a good neighbor when he merely agrees not to kill you before spring.”

But Tina was pretty sure Teague didn’t entirely know what he was talking about. After all, he’d been a boy up here, not a girl. There was one kind of neighborliness between men, which mostly consisted of not stealing from each other and not sleeping with each other’s wife. Then there was the neighborliness of women, which Teague wouldn’t know a thing about.

So she made sure to go along with him as he started going around trading the things he’d gotten on his trip to the coast. All kinds of tooled metal, threads and needles, buttons, pins, scissors, spoons and knives and forks. A precious pair of binoculars, for which Teague got a queen-size mattress in exchange. Bullets to fit half a dozen different guns. A bottle of vitamin C and a bottle of Extra-Strength Tylenol Caplets, both for an old lady with arthritis.

And right after he got through bartering, Tina would start in talking about how she was near helpless cooking wild game. “I make a fair broth, and I expect I can use my sweet dumpling recipe with honey for the sugar, but you must know ten dozen herbs and vegetables that I’ll just step on thinking they’re weeds. I don’t want to be a bother, but I can trade sewing for cooking lessons. I’ve got a decent eye with a needle.” Teague was dumbfounded at first—it was obvious that in all the time he’d been trading with the menfolk, talking in words of one or two syllables and sentences of three or four words, he’d never had an inkling of how a woman goes calling, of how women help each other instead of trying to drive a bargain. “It’s called civilization,” she said to Teague, between visits. “Women invented it, and every time you men blow it all to bits, we just invent it again.”

By Christmas she had Bicker himself coming over for supper every night, bringing his fiddle and a memory of a thousand old songs, none of which he sang on key, which nobody minded except Tina, who had been cursed with pitch so clear she could sing quarter tones in a chromatic scale. Never mind—the kids didn’t have to live in fear of getting their feet shot off if they happened to stray over the line into Bicker’s land. And Teague just sat there singing and laughing along with everybody else, now and then getting this look of surprise on his face, like he’d never had a notion that folks in these mountains ever did such things as this.

In only one thing did Tina follow Teague’s heartfelt advice. She never told a soul, nor did anybody else, that they were Mormons. They never sang a Mormon hymn, and on Sunday mornings, when Brother Deaver and Pete Cinn broke bread and blessed the sacrament and passed it, and then they preached, why, they kept the shutters closed and never sang. It wasn’t the hate from the TV preachers and the Baptist ministers of the city that they feared. It was an older kind of loathing. Put a name like Mormon on somebody, and he stopped being folks and started being Other. And around here, Other got ostracized at the least, and usually got burnt out before spring planting.

But it was a good winter all the same. And Tina noticed how Teague listened and finally came downstairs during church meetings, and even asked a question now and then about something from the Book of Mormon or some point of doctrine he’d never heard of before. Sometimes he shook his head like it was the craziest mess he’d ever heard of. And sometimes he kind of almost nodded. At Christmas he even told the Christmas story, pretty much following Luke.

Tina held school every day, at first just for the kids in their group, but pretty soon for whatever mountain kids could make it through the snow. She got Rona and Marie to teach sometimes, so she could divide the classes. Brother Deaver taught grammar to Donna and the older kids from the nearby cabins. The worst thing was, no paper to write on, and nothing to write with. They wrote with burnt sticks on the porch, then scrubbed the porch with snow and started over. Mostly, though, they did their writing and arithmetic in their heads, reciting their answers. Tina realized she was growing old when the kids regularly out-ciphered her—she just couldn’t hold as many numbers at once as they could. That was when Rona became the permanent arithmetic teacher.

They didn’t teach geography at all. Nobody knew geography anymore. Everything had changed.

All through the winter, Teague took Pete along to teach him more about hunting and tracking, and Pete learned pretty well, Tina gathered; at least Teague seemed to get closer to him all the time, approving of him, trusting him. At the same time, Tina noticed that Pete seemed to get more and more distant from his family. There wasn’t much room for privacy, but as the only married couple, Pete and Annalee had a room to themselves. The day after Christmas Annalee told Tina that she might as well sleep on the dining room table for all the lovemaking she got anymore. “I might as well be a widow, he never even talks to me.” And then: “Tina, I think he isn’t planning to go on west with us.”

Tina let things ride through January, watching. Annalee was right. Pete never took part in their frequent speculations about Utah. Teague would tease them all sometimes, when nobody else was around. “Nothing grows out west,” he’d say. “They probably all moved on to Seattle. You’ll get to Utah and nobody’ll be there.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Jamie Teague,” said Tina one time. “You don’t know our people. If it floods, we all go into the boatmaking business. If there’s a hurricane, we all learn to fly.”

Others picked up on it. “If the corn crop fails, we learn to eat grass,” said Donna.

“And when the grass gets used up, we chew up the trees!” said Mick Porter.

“And then we eat bugs!” shouted his little brother Scotty.

“And worms!” shouted Mick, even louder.

Annalee put a hand on Mick’s mouth. “Let’s keep it down.” Didn’t want the neighbors to hear them talking about Utah.

“You can bet they’re making gasoline out of shale oil,” Tina said. “That’s no tall tale. I bet there’s still tractors plowing there, and fertilizer.”

“I believe the fertilizer,” said Teague. But his eyes danced a little, Tina could see that.

So she pressed her case. “And what have you got here, Jamie?”

It wasn’t Teague who answered. It was Pete. “He’s got everything,” he said. “Safety. Good land. Enough to eat. Good neighbors. And no reason to move on, ever.”

There it was, out in the open.

But Tina pretended that it was still Teague she was talking to, instead of Pete. “That’s this year, Jamie. You make your trips down into the Carolinas. You go into abandoned houses, you visit places and tell stories and they give you gifts. And what do you collect to bring back here? Needles and pins, scissors and thread, tools and all the things that make life halfway livable. Think about that! Do you think those things will last forever? Nobody’s making them anymore, and someday the scavenging will run out. Someday there’ll be no more thread, no more needles. What’ll you wear then? Some rag of homespun? Anybody spinning yet?”

“Lady down in Murphy spins and weaves real good,” said Teague. Pete nodded like that answered everything.

“Enough for everybody in the hills? Jamie, don’t you see that folks around here are just holding on by their fingernails? It isn’t as plain to see here because you don’t go to sleep in fear of mobs every night. But it’s all slipping away. It’s fading. And whoever stays here is going to fade, too. But out west—”

“Out west they might all be dead!” said Pete.

“Out west the temple is still standing, and the wards are all still functioning, just like they always have. They’re growing crops on good land—in peace—and there’ll still be hospitals and medicines. What if you marry someday, Jamie? What if your kids get some disease? A simple one, like measles. And they end up blind. A kidney infection. Appendicitis, for heaven’s sake. You seen any more doctors growing up around here? Every year you’ll slip back another fifty years.”

“It’s safe here,” said Pete. But his voice was fainter.

“It isn’t safe compared to safety,” said Tina. “It’s only safe compared to the open lands where the mob rules. And someday you know the mobbers are coming up here. They’ll have killed off or run off everybody down there who isn’t protected by an army. Those mobbers aren’t going to settle down and learn to farm, you know. They won’t attack the Cherokees, either. They’ll come to places like this—”

“And we’ll kill them all,” said Pete.

“Till you run out of bullets. Then there’s no more shooting from behind trees. Then you fight out in the open against ten times your number, by hand, till they sweep you under. I tell you there’s only one place safe in all America, only one place that’s growing upward against all the dying.”

“Says you,” said Pete.

“Says all the history of the Mormon people. We’ve been driven out and mobbed and massacred before, and all we ever do is move on and settle somewhere else. And wherever we settle there’s peace and progress. We never hold still. I’m betting we don’t even have to get to the mountains to find them. I’m betting they send people out to meet folks like us and help us safely in. That’s what they used to do, in the covered wagon days.”

All this time Tina only looked at Teague, never once at Pete. But out of the corner of her eye she could see how Pete deflated when Teague nodded. “I guess you aren’t crazy to try to get there after all. I just wish I had more hope of your making it.”

“The Lord will protect us,” said Tina.

“He was doing a slim job of it till Teague came along,” said Pete.

“But Jamie came along, didn’t you, Jamie? Why do you think you happened to be there when we needed you so bad?”

Teague grinned. “I reckon I’m just a regular old angel,” he said.

Still, Easter came and no decision had been made. They had a church service on Easter Sunday, but nobody preached this time. They just bore testimony. It wasn’t like the old days, when people used to get up and recite the same old I’m-thankful-fors and I-know-thats. This time they spoke from the heart, spoke of terrible things and wonderful things, spoke of love for each other and anger at the Lord and yet in the end spoke of faith that things would all work out.

And after a while they started talking about the thing they’d only hinted at all these months together. The thing that had happened back in May, almost a year before. The terrible death of so many people they knew and loved and missed so bad. And the even worse thing—that they themselves had not died.

It was Cheri Ann Bee who started it off. She was seven now, and not even baptized yet, but she still bore her testimony, and at the end she said something real simple, but it about broke Tina’s heart. “I’m sorry I didn’t get sick that day and stay home,” she said, “so I could’ve gone with Mommy and Daddy to visit Heavenly Father.” Cheri Ann didn’t cry or anything; she just plain believed that things were better with her mother and father. And as Tina sat there with tears in her eyes, she wasn’t sure if she felt like crying out of pity for this girl or if she felt like crying because she herself didn’t have such plain and simple faith, and lacked something of that perfect trust that death was just a matter of going to pay a call on God, who would invite you into his house to live with him.

“I’m sorry, too,” said Brother Deaver, and then he did cry, tears running down his cheeks. “I’m sorry I went to work that day. I’m sorry that the Christian Soldiers were so afraid of provoking the black community of Greensboro that they didn’t come take me out of class at A&T and let me hold my babies in my arms while they were dying.”

“His kids wasn’t babies,” Scott Porter whispered to Tina. “They was bigger than me.”

“All children are always babies to their mama and papa,” Tina answered.

“I called my mama that morning,” said Annalee, and wonder of wonders, she was crying, too, looking as soft and vulnerable as a child. “I told her how Pete was keeping the kids home from school and we were making a picnic of it at the fire station. And she said, I wisht I could come. And then she said, Can’t talk now, Anny Leedy, there’s somebody at the door. Somebody at the door! It was them at the door, and there I was talking to her on the phone and I didn’t even say I love you one last time or nothing.”

There was silence for a while, the way there always was in testimony meetings from time to time, when nobody stood up to talk. It always used to be so tense when nobody talked, everybody feeling guilty cause the time was going to waste and hoping somebody else would get up and talk cause they didn’t feel like it. This time, though, the silence was just because everybody was so full and there wasn’t a thing to say.

“I knew,” said Pete, finally. “I had a dream the night before. I saw the men coming to the doors. I was shown. That’s why I kept the kids home. That’s why I got us all over to the fire station.”

“You never told me this,” said Annalee.

“I thought it was crazy, that’s why. I thought I was plain out of my mind to take a nightmare so serious. But I couldn’t leave you all home, feeling like I did.” Pete looked around at the others. “My station, they stood by me. They turned on the hoses and drove them back. My captain said to them, ‘If you touch any fireman or any fireman’s family, don’t be surprised to find your own house on fire someday, and the fire engines a little slow to show up and save you.’ And so they went away, and we were alive.” Suddenly his face twisted up and he sobbed, great and terrible sobs.

“Petey,” said Annalee. She put her arm around him, but he shrugged her off.

“God showed me a vision, don’t you see? All I could think to save was my own family. Not even my brothers and sisters! Not even my mama! I had a chance to save them all, and they’re dead because I didn’t give warning.”

Brother Deaver tried to soothe him with words. “Pete, the Lord didn’t command you in that dream to give warning. He didn’t tell you to call everybody and tell them. So he probably meant to take the others to himself, and spare only a few to suffer further in this vale of tears.”

Pete lifted his face from his hands, a mask of grief with reddened eyes staring out, wild and terrible. “He did tell me,” said Pete. “Warn them all, he said, only I just thought it was a nightmare, I was too embarrassed to claim to have a vision, I thought they’d all think I was crazy. I’m going to hell, don’t you see? I can’t go to Utah. I’m rejected and cast off from the Lord.”

“Even Jonah was forgiven,” said Brother Deaver.

But Pete wasn’t in the mood to be comforted. It was the end of the meeting, but it was a good meeting, Tina knew that. Everybody said the things they’d been holding back all along, or had those things said for them. They’d done what a testimony meeting was supposed to do. They’d confessed their sins, and now there was hope of forgiveness.

It was afternoon of Easter Sunday. The day had warmed up right smart, and Jamie shed his jacket and felt the wind cool on his back and arms, right through his shirt, and felt the sun hot, too, right at the same time. Best kind of weather, best kind of day.

“I guess you got an earful today.”

Jamie turned around. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard a big woman like Tina come lumbering up behind him. But then she wasn’t so big these days. And he had a lot of noisy thoughts going round in his head.

“I figured a lot of this out before, anyway,” said Jamie. “I heard tales of the Greensboro massacre.”

“Is that how they tell it? That our people were massacred?”

“Sometimes,” said Jamie. “Other times they call it the Purification of Greensboro. Them as says that usually allow as how other places need purification, too.”

“I hope all our people are heading west. I pray they all have sense to go. We should’ve gone years ago.”

“May be,” said Jamie. But he knew this wasn’t what Tina came to say.

“Jamie,” said Tina.

This was it.

“Jamie, what’s holding you here?”

Jamie looked around at the trees, at the bright spring grass, at the distant curls of smoke from two dozen chimneys spread out through the hills.

“You hardly speak to your neighbors, leastwise you didn’t till we came here, Jamie. You got no close friends in these hills.”

“They leave me alone,” said Jamie Teague.

“Too bad,” said Tina.

“I like it. I like being left alone.”

“Don’t tell me lies, Jamie.”

“I was a loner before the collapse, and I’m a loner now. Whole thing made not a speck of difference to me.”

“Don’t tell yourself lies, either.”

Jamie felt anger flash out inside him. “I don’t need anybody talking like a mama to me. I had one and I killed her dead.”

“I don’t believe that lie,” said Tina.

“Why?” demanded Jamie. “Do you think I’m so nice I’d just naturally never kill a soul? Then you don’t know me at all.”

“I know there’s times you kill,” said Tina. “I just don’t believe you killed your mama and papa. Because if you did, then why are you still so mad at them?”

“Leave me alone.” Jamie meant it with all his heart.

But Tina didn’t seem interested in leaving him alone. “You know you love us and you don’t want to lose us when we leave.”

“Is that what you think?”

“That’s what I know. I see how good you are with the kids. What a friend you been to Peter. Don’t you see that’s half why he wanted to stay, to be with you? We all count on you, we all lean on you, but you count on us, too, you need us.”

She was pushing too hard. Jamie couldn’t stand it. “Back off,” he said. “Just back off and leave me be.”

“And when we pray, you fall silent, and your lips say Amen when the prayer is over.”

“I got respect for religion, that’s all.”

“And today when we all confessed the blackest things that hurt us to the soul, you wanted to confess, too.”

“I confessed a long time ago.”

“You confessed a terrible lie. That’s what I keep wondering about, Jamie Teague. What sin are you hiding that you think is so bad that it’s easier to confess to killing your mama and papa?”

“Leave me alone!” shouted Jamie. Then he ran off from her, ran off up the hill, scrambling so fast he knew there was no hope of her keeping up. Didn’t matter. She didn’t chase him.

Mick Porter took his brother Scotty with him everywhere. Never let that little boy out of his sight. Have to look out for a kid like Scotty, always running off, always getting into things like he shouldn’t.

In the old days it wasn’t like that, of course. In the old days Mick used to complain to Mom about how Scotty always had to do everything the same as him. Mick used to wallop Scotty sometimes, and Scotty’d break down whatever Mick made out of Legos or blocks, and it got to be like a war. But that all ended. Just didn’t happen no more, on account of who’d break up their fights and send them to their rooms till they could just treat each other like civilized human beings now? Mick felt like he was almost Scotty’s dad. I am his only kin, and he’s my only kin, so look out, everybody else, and that’s all.

So Mick had Scotty tagging right along with him, gathering fallen sticks for kindling and getting in some rock-throwing practice, too. Mick wasn’t up to getting squirrels, yet. He still had kind of a hard time hitting the same tree he was aiming at. Scotty, of course, had no idea about aim at all. He just felt good if the rock went more than five feet in the general direction he threw it.

Hardly a surprise, then, when Scotty threw his latest rock and it went sideways, whizzing right past Mick’s nose and then going thunk, right into something soft not more than a few feet off.

“Okay, I’m dead, just skin me gentle so you don’t wake me up.”

Mick near to swallowed his tongue he was so surprised. There was Mr. Jamie Teague, sitting right there, and until he spoke Mick hadn’t even noticed him. He just held so still all the time.

“I hit something!” said Scotty.

“You hit my jeans,” said Mr. Teague. “If I was a squirrel I might not be dead, but I’d sure be crippled.”

“We can’t cook you,” said Scotty.

“Guess not,” said Mr. Teague. “I’m sorry about that.”

“We don’t eat people anyhow,” Mick told Scotty.

“I know that,” Scotty said, his voice full of scorn.

Mick turned his attention to Mr. Teague. “What you doing just setting there?”

“Setting here.”

“I just said that.”

“And thinking.”

“Of course you were thinking,” said Mick. “Everybody’s always thinking. You can’t turn it off.”

“And ain’t that a damn shame, too,” said Mr. Teague.

Scotty gasped and covered his mouth.

“I’m sorry,” said Mr. Teague. “I grew up in a family where ‘damn’ was the nice way of saying stuff.”

“I know a worser word,” said Scotty.

“No you don’t,” said Mick.

“He might,” said Mr. Teague. “You never know.”

“It’s another word for poop,” said Scotty.

“Don’t that beat all,” said Mr. Teague. “Better not teach me what it is now, Scotty. I might slip and use it in polite company.”

Mick sat down near Mr. Teague’s leg, and looked him in the eye. “Sister Monk says you didn’t really kill your mama and daddy.”

“Does she now.”

“I heard her,” said Scotty.

“Is she right?” asked Mick.

“I used to dream about killing them. But after they took us kids away from them, nobody ever told us where they were. Jail, I guess. I always meant to look for them and kill them when I got eighteen and could leave my foster parents, so-called, but the collapse came before I could get a fair start. So you see I meant to do it, and it wasn’t my fault I didn’t do it, so the way I figure it, I did it in my heart, so I’m a murderer.”

“No sir,” said Mick. “You never did it. You got to kill somebody to be a murderer.”

“Maybe so,” said Mr. Teague.

“Then you’ll come with us?”

Mr. Teague laughed out loud. He pulled his legs close to his body and hugged them. They were the longest pair of legs Mick had ever saw. Even longer than Daddy’s legs used to be.

“You think my daddy’s a skeleton now?” asked Mick.

Mr. Teague’s smile went away. “Maybe,” he said. “Hard to say.”

“The Christian Soldiers killed him,” said Mick.

“And Mommy,” said Scotty.

“Those are what murderers are,” said Mick.

“I know,” said Mr. Teague.

“Brother Deaver says they killed our mama and daddy because we believe in a living prophet and how Jesus isn’t the same person as God the Father.”

“That’s right, I guess.”

“What did your mama and daddy believe?”

Mr. Teague took a long breath. He crossed his arms on top of his knees, and then rested his chin on top of his arms. He looked right between Mick and Scotty so long that Scotty started breaking twigs and Mick began to think Mr. Teague just wasn’t going to answer, or maybe even he was mad.

“Don’t break them sticks, Scotty,” said Mick. “We can’t use it for kindling if it’s all broke up.”

Scotty stopped breaking twigs. Didn’t sass or stick out his tongue or nothing. It was all different now.

“My mama and daddy believed in getting by,” said Mr. Teague.

“Getting by what?” asked Scotty.

“Just—getting by.”

“That’s what you wanted to kill them about?” asked Mick.

Mr. Teague shook his head.

“You aren’t making any sense, you know,” said Mick.

Mr. Teague grinned. “Guess not.” He reached out a long arm, and with a single long finger he lifted Mick’s chin. Mick didn’t like it when grown-ups started moving parts of his body around or grabbing his hand or whatever, like they thought he was a puppet. But it wasn’t so bad when Mr. Teague did it, especially because he didn’t act like he was planning to make Mick do something or yell at him or anything. “You love your little brother, don’t you?”

Mick shrugged.

Scotty looked at him.

“Course,” said Mick.

“Not when you’re mad at me,” said Scotty.

“I’m never mad at you anymore,” said Mick.

“No,” said Scotty, as if he was realizing it for the first time.

“I had a little brother,” said Mr. Teague.

“Did you love him?” asked Mick.

“Yes,” said Mr. Teague.

“Where is he?”

“Dead, I guess,” said Mr. Teague.

“Don’t you know?”

“They put him in a mental hospital same time they locked up my folks. Put my little sister in a mental hospital, too. Then they farmed out me and my older brother to foster homes. Never saw any of them again, but I reckon my little brother, being crazy like he was, I reckon he didn’t last long after the collapse.”

Mr. Teague was breathing kind of fast, and not looking Mick in the eye anymore. It was kind of scary, like Mr. Teague was a little crazy himself. “How’d he get crazy?” asked Mick. He wondered if the same thing was happening to Mr. Teague.

“Does he scream?” asked Scotty. “Crazy people scream.”

“Sometimes he screamed. Mostly he just sat there, looking past you. He’d never look folks in the eye. It was like you wasn’t even there. Like he was erasing you in his own mind. But he looked at me.”

“How come you?”

“Because I brought him food.”

“Not your mama?”

Mr. Teague shook his head. “It was when I was five. Your age, Scotty. And my little brother, he was three.”

“I’m five and a half,” said Scotty.

“And my little sister, she was only two.”

“Was she crazy?” asked Mick.

“Not then. But she was sick. And so was my little brother. Both of them, all the time. Ever since they was born. My brother got pneumonia and cried all the time. Lots of bills to pay. My little sister was fussy, too. I used to hear Mama and Daddy yelling at each other all the time, about money, about too damn many kids. Fighting and screaming, and Mama screaming about how she just couldn’t take any more, she just couldn’t stand it if us kids didn’t just shut up and let her be for a couple of hours, that’s all she wanted, just a couple of hours of silence, and she was going to have it by God or she’d kill herself, see if I don’t, she said, I’m going to cut my wrists and die if you don’t shut up. And me, I’d shut up all right, I kept my mouth shut. The older kids, they were in school. But my little brother, he was just sick and out of sorts and he just kept crying and whimpering and the more she yelled the more he whimpered and then my sister, she woke up from her nap and she started crying even louder than my brother did, they just screamed and screamed, and my mama screamed even louder, she just got this horrible face, and she picked up my sister and I thought she was going to throw her on the floor, but she didn’t do it. She just took her and grabbed my brother by his arm and dragged him along, dragged them over to the cedar closet that had a lock on the door and she opened it up and shoved them inside and closed the door and locked it. ‘Cry and whine all you want to but I’m not going to hear any more, do you understand me? I just can’t stand it any more, I’m going to have some peace.’”

“Daddy locked me in the bathroom one time when I was bad,” said Mick.

“Did they have a light in there?” asked Scotty.

“They had a light. There was a switch and my brother could stand on a box in there and turn it on, so he did. But they didn’t like being in there. They screamed and yelled and cried like it was the worst thing in the world, and my brother banged on the door and rattled the handle and kicked the door and stamped his feet. But Mama just went downstairs and turned on the dishwasher and went into the living room and turned on the stereo and laid there on the couch listening to the radio until she fell asleep. Every now and then my brother and sister, they let up on their yelling, but then they’d start all over again. When the older kids got home from school they knew right off to stay away from Mom, and they didn’t even ask where the little ones were. They knew you don’t mess with Mom in a mood like that. Anyway, Mom got up and fixed dinner, and when Dad came home we ate, and Dad asked where the little kids were, and Mom said, ‘Learning to be quiet.’ And when she said that, Dad knew not to mess with her, either. Except at the end of the meal he said, ‘Aren’t they going to eat?’ And so Mom slopped food onto a couple of plates and put spoons on them and then she handed me the key and said, ‘Take them their dinner, Jamie. But if you let them out, I’ll kill myself, do you understand?’”

“They was really in trouble I guess,” said Scotty.

“When I opened the door my brother tried to get out, but I pushed him back in. He screamed and cried louder than ever, except he was hoarse by then. My sister was just setting in a corner with her face all red and covered with snot, but he kicked me and tried to shove me out of the way, but I knocked him down again and then I slid their plates in with my foot and slammed the door and locked it. My brother kicked and yelled and screamed for a while, but then he quieted down and I guess they ate their dinner. Later on they screamed and yelled some more, about going to the bathroom, but Mom just pretended not to hear, she just shook her head. ‘They’re not getting out by yelling, they’re not getting their way by yelling.’”

“They spent the night in there?” asked Mick.

“Next morning she gave me the key and one bowl of oatmeal and two spoons. This time they were both back in the corner. They’d made themselves pillows and beds kind of, out of the rags in there, we kept the old rags in that closet. And my sister looked like she was afraid of getting hit, and it stunk real bad, because she’d done her poop in a shoebox, but what could she do, if Mom wouldn’t let her out to use the toilet? I told Mom, and she just said, ‘Empty it and put it back.’ I didn’t want to, but you don’t argue with Mom when she’s like that.”

“Gross,” said Mick.

Scotty just stared. Mick knew it was because he messed his pants a couple of times lately, after the Christian Soldiers killed Mama and Daddy, and so talking about pooping in a shoebox kind of embarrassed him.

“I kept thinking, Mom’s going to let them out pretty soon. I kept thinking that. But every morning I took them breakfast and emptied the shoebox and the mason jar we left in there for them to piss in. And every night I took them dinner on a plate. Sometimes I could hear them talking in there. Sometimes they played. That was all at first though. After a while it was always quiet, except when one of them was sick and coughed a lot. When the bulb burned out I told Mom but she just didn’t say anything. I said, ‘The bulb’s out in the cedar closet,’ but she just looked at me like she’d never even heard of a cedar closet. I finally got my big brother to change the bulb while I watched the door so they couldn’t get out. That first time—other times from then on he wouldn’t do it, so I had to tie my little brother’s hands and feet together so I could change the bulb. When I started first grade, I’d feed them and do the box in the morning before school, and take them dinner at night, just the same thing, day after day, week after week. Most of the time my brother and sister just sat there when I opened the door, not looking at me, just staring at each other or at nothing at all. But every now and then my brother would scream and run at me like he wanted to kill me, and I’d knock him down and slam the door and lock it. I was so mean to him and so angry and so scared that somebody would find out what I was doing to my own brother and sister, how I was keeping them locked in a closet. Nobody else in the family ever even saw them after my brother changed the light bulb that time. Mom didn’t even make up the plates for them, I had to do it after everybody left the kitchen. When they grew out of their clothes, I tried to sneak some of the clothes I grew out of, but then Mom would say, ‘What happened to those pants of yours, what happened to that blue shirt,’ and I’d say, ‘They’re in the cedar closet,’ and she’d look at me that way and say, ‘Those are perfectly good clothes and if they don’t fit you anymore, we’ll give them away to the poor.’ Can you believe that?”

“We used to give old clothes to Goodwill,” said Scotty.

“They were naked in there, and their skin was white and they looked like ghosts, their eyes empty and never looking at me except when my brother screamed at me and ran at me, and every time I slammed the door and locked it, I wanted to kill them, I wanted to die, I hated it. I’d go to school and look around and I knew that I was the most evil person there, because I kept my little brother and sister naked locked up in a closet. Nobody even knew I had a little brother and sister. And I never told them. I never even walked up to a teacher and said, Mrs. Erbison, or Mrs. Ryan, or whoever, any of them, I couldn’t have said, I got me a little brother and sister at home that we’ve kept locked in the cedar closet since they was three and two years old. If I’d’ve done that, maybe my brother wouldn’t have gone so crazy, maybe my sister wouldn’t have forgotten how to walk, maybe they could’ve been saved in time, but I was so scared of what my mom would do, and I was too ashamed to tell anybody what a terrible person I was, they all thought I was an okay guy.”

He stopped talking for a while.

“Didn’t they ever get out?” asked Scotty.

“When I was in seventh grade. I did a report on Nazi Germany and the concentration camps. I read about the tortures they did. And I thought, That’s me. I’m a Nazi. And I read about how all them Nazis, they all said, ‘I was just following orders.’ Well that was me, just following orders. And then I read how after the war they put them on trial, all those Nazis, and they sentenced them to death for what they did, and then I knew I was right all along. I knew I deserved to die, and my mom and dad deserved to die, but my little brother and sister, they deserved to go free, they deserved to have a day of liberation. So one afternoon when my little brother got hate in his eyes and ran at me, I didn’t knock him down. I stepped out of his way and let him run by me. He ran out of the closet and looked around, like he’d never seen the hall before, and I guess he never had, really, he never remembered it. And then he sat down on the top step and bumped his way down the stairs, like he always did when he was a little kid, and I realized that he’d forgotten how to go down stairs. And then all of a sudden I thought, he’s going to go in the kitchen and Mom’s going to see him and get mad. And I got scared, and I thought, I got to catch him and put him back, or Mom will kill me. So I started to chase down the stairs, but he didn’t go into the kitchen, he ran right out the front door, stark naked, he never wore clothes in seven years. He just ran down the street, screaming and screaming like a creature from space, and I ran after him. I would’ve called out to him, yelled for him to stop, but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” asked Mick.

“I didn’t remember his name.” Brother Teague began to cry. “I couldn’t even remember what his name was.”

It was only then, with Brother Teague crying into his hands like a little baby, that Mick even noticed that Sister Monk and Brother Deaver had both come up sometime, they were both there listening, they probably heard the whole story. Sister Monk came over and knelt down by Brother Teague and gathered him into her arms and let him cry all over her dress. Brother Deaver bowed his head like he was praying, only silently. Scotty noticed that, too, and bowed his head, but then when nobody said a prayer he lifted his head and looked over to Mick.

Mick didn’t know what to do, except that it was a terrible story, a terrible thing that happened to Brother Teague’s crazy sister and brother. Mick never heard of anybody forgetting how to walk or climb down stairs, or forgetting his own brother’s name. When he tried to imagine somebody locking Scotty into a closet and never letting him out, it made Mick so mad he wanted to kill them for doing that. But then he tried to imagine if it was his own mama who locked Scotty up, what then? What would he do then? His mama never would’ve done such a thing, but what if she did?

It was just too hard to figure out by himself. All he knew was that Brother Teague was crying like Mick never heard anybody cry before in his whole life. Finally he just had to reach over and take hold of Brother Teague’s ankle, which was the only part of him that Mick could reach. Mick’s hand was so small he couldn’t even grab, it was like he was just pressing his hand against Brother Teague’s leg.

“You shouldn’t feel bad, Brother Teague,” said Mick. “You’re the one who let him out.”

Brother Teague shook his head, still crying.

“I wish these kids hadn’t heard that story,” said Brother Deaver.

“Some things you can only tell to children,” said Sister Monk. “It’ll do them no harm.”

Brother Teague pulled his face away from Sister Monk’s dress. “I knew when you came. I was telling you. Isn’t that how it’s done in your testimonies?”

“That’s right, Jamie,” said Sister Monk. “That’s how you do it.”

“Now you see why I’ll never be a worthy man, Mormon or not,” said Brother Teague. “There’s no place for me out west.”

“It was your mama who made you do it,” said Mick.

“I was the one who pushed him back inside,” said Brother Teague. His voice was awful. “I was the one who turned the key.” Then he reached down inside his shirt and pulled up a key on a leather thong. A common ordinary key. “This key,” he said. “I had the key all along.”

“But Brother Teague,” said Mick, “you weren’t eight years old yet when it all started. You weren’t baptized yet. Don’t you know Jesus doesn’t blame children for what they do before they’re eight? I turn eight next week, and when I’m baptized I’ll be like I was born all over again, pure and clean, isn’t that right, Brother Deaver?”

Brother Deaver nodded. “Mm-hm,” he said. He was crying now, too, though Mick couldn’t figure why, seeing how it was Brother Deaver himself who interviewed him for baptism and taught him half this stuff right after testimony meeting today.

Scotty must have been getting bored now that the story was over. He got up and walked over to Brother Teague and poked him on the shoulder to get his attention. “Brother Teague,” he said. “Brother Teague.”

Brother Teague looked up just as Sister Monk said, “Leave him be, now, you hear?”

“What do you want, Scotty?” asked Brother Teague.

“Now that we’re calling you Brother Teague, does that mean you’re going west with us to Utah?”

Brother Teague didn’t say anything. He just rubbed his eyes and then sat there with his face covered up. Sister Monk and Brother Deaver stayed with him, but Mick couldn’t figure out what was going on anymore, and besides, he had to think about the story, and anyway he needed to take a leak and he couldn’t do it in the woods unless he got a lot farther away from Sister Monk. So he took Scotty by the hand and led him off to a bunch of bushes higher up the hill.

The whole next week everybody ignored Mick and Scotty and the other kids. There was no school, just packing up and getting ready to go. On Saturday they went down to a deep slow place in the river and baptized Mick in his underwear, because he didn’t have any white clothes except his shorts and t-shirt, and Brother Teague had to be baptized in his most faded boxers and a t-shirt he borrowed from Brother Cinn, because Brother Teague didn’t have any white clothes at all. Brother Teague came out of the water shivering just as bad as Mick did.

“Water’s cold, ain’t it?” said Mick.

“Isn’t it,” said Sister Cinn.

“Damn cold,” said Brother Teague.

Funny thing was, nobody so much as blinked that Brother Teague swore, right after his baptism, too. Mick couldn’t say ain’t, but Brother Teague could cuss. Which just goes to show you that kids just can’t get away with anything, Mick figured.

“That’s done it,” said Brother Deaver. “You’re one of us now.”

“Guess so,” said Brother Teague. He looked as goofy as a kindergartner, with his hair all wet and sticking out and that smile on his face.

“It’s just a sneaky Mormon trick,” said Brother Cinn. “Once you’re baptized, we don’t have to pay you for leading us anymore.”

“I been paid,” said Brother Teague.

Next morning they had a prayer meeting and headed off west toward Chattanooga. They only made it to somewhere between St. Louis and Kansas City that summer, what with getting arrested in Memphis and nearly lynched in Cape Girardeau. Winter was hard, so far north, but they made it, trading tales of how the Saints suffered through the deadly winter in Winter Quarters, Iowa, after getting driven out of Nauvoo. We’re just following in their footsteps, living out their story.

The next summer, crossing the plains, all of Brother Teague’s woodlore came to nothing. Trees got too sparse to hide in, so they had to learn to travel in the low places between the sweeping swells of the rolling prairie land. The mobbers of the plains didn’t care much about highways either; they could come on you at any time. All the grown-ups learned how to shoot—it was worth wasting a few bullets now, said Brother Teague, to be sure they’d not be wasted if it came to a fight.

Never did see any mobbers. But there were signs of their passing. And one day they spotted a column of smoke a long ways off to the south, too thick and black to be a cookfire. “Somebody’s getting burned out,” said Brother Teague.

“Think we’d better hunker down and hide?” asked Brother Cinn.

“I think you best keep lookout while everybody waits here in this gully,” said Brother Teague. “But I need to go see what’s going on.”

“Dangerous,” said Sister Monk.

“No lie,” said Brother Teague. “But we need to know which way the mobbers rode after they got done there.”

“I’ll go with you,” said Brother Deaver. “There might be survivors. You might need help.”

They came back in the evening. Brother Teague had a little boy perched on the horse behind him. “You can light up a cookfire,” said Brother Teague. “They rode south.”

Brother Deaver lifted the boy down off Brother Teague’s horse. “Come on, son,” he said. “You need to eat.”

“What happened?” asked Sister Monk.

“No need talking about it now,” said Brother Deaver. Plainly he meant no use talking about it in front of the boy.

At dinner Mick and Scotty sat on either side of the new boy. It was like he was a foreigner. He looked at the food like he’d never seen mush before. When they spoke to him he didn’t even act like he heard them.

“You deaf?” asked Scotty. “Can’t you hear me? You deaf?”

This time the boy shook his head just a little.

“He can hear!” shouted Scotty.

“Course he can hear,” said Sister Monk, from off by the cookfire. “Don’t go pestering him.”

“Your folks get killed?” asked Mick.

The boy shrugged.

“Our folks did. Got shot down back in North Carolina couple years ago.”

The boy shrugged again.

“What’s your name?” asked Mick.

The boy went still, like a statue.

“You got a name, don’t you?”

If he did, he never let on. After dinner Brother Teague gave the boy his own bedroll to sleep in. Boy didn’t even say thanks. He was a strange one.

But strange or not, Brother Teague never let the new boy out of his sight the whole rest of the way. Always watching out for him, talking to him, pointing things out. Mick couldn’t help but feel a stab of envy—Brother Teague was doing all the things he used to do with Mick, and here the new boy didn’t even bother to answer. It was Scotty who cleared it up for Mick. “It’s like Brother Teague got to talk to his little brother again,” he said. It made sense to Mick, then, and so he didn’t try to butt in, and it hardly bothered him at all to see the new boy perched on Brother Teague’s horse with him all the time, or Brother Deaver’s whenever Brother Teague was off scouting or doing something dangerous.

It wasn’t two weeks later that outriders from Utah found them and led them the rest of the way home, with spare horses no less, so they could all ride. They made a wide circle around the ruins of Denver, but once they were up in the mountains it was Mormon country. “Didn’t used to be,” said Sister Monk. But it was Mormon country now, and the locals were glad enough about it, seeing how the Mormons brought law and order, and places without Mormons were dying or dead.

They ended up in a tent city called Zarahemla, which was going to be the new capital; Salt Lake City was mostly evacuated now, since the scientists said the Great Salt Lake was just getting started on flooding the valleys. Tina Monk took the children up to Temple Square for a picnic, so they’d get a look at what used to be the great Mormon city. “Now it’s going to be the Mormon Sea,” she told them. “But you remember what it was.” There were sailboats on State Street, and the water was lapping at South Temple; Temple Square was still dry because of a levee of sandbags. People were crammed into Temple Square, looking at things, saying good-bye. The temple was a mountain of granite. It wasn’t going anywhere, ever. But the basement levels were already flooded, and soon it would no longer be part of the life of the Church.

“Mankind was too wicked,” Sister Monk told the children. “But maybe the Lord is just going to hide the temple from us for a while, until we’re worthy to get it back.”

The story of the Greensboro massacre and their trek from North Carolina spread pretty quick. They met the new governor, Sam Monson, who just got elected under the new constitution of the State of Deseret. He was a young man, not all that much older than Brother Teague and a good sight younger than Brother Deaver. But he greeted them all with respect, promised jobs for the grown-ups, and kept his word.

What he couldn’t do was keep them together. The orphan laws required kids with both parents dead and no kin to be fostered with families that had both a mother and a father. There was an awful lot of orphans these days. Best they could do for Mick and Scotty was to foster them to the same home together.

Mick was sure that if Brother Teague had been a married man then, he would have adopted that new boy they found; as it was, it near broke Brother Teague’s heart to turn him over to the authorities. But he couldn’t argue. More than any of them, the new boy needed a family to take care of the boy day and night, something Brother Teague just couldn’t do, especially since his new job was being an outrider, which meant finding folks heading toward Deseret and guiding them back safely. A good job for him, and he knew it, but it meant he was gone six weeks at a time.

It might have been they could’ve lost touch with each other; that’s what happened with most companies. But being the sole company ever to come in from the Greensboro massacre, that gave them a story that bound them together. Tina Monk visited and wrote letters; Brother Deaver came every now and then and brought Mick and Scotty along with him when he was in town giving a faith-promoting talk in a nearby ward. The only one they lost track of was the new boy, him being with them only a couple of weeks, and never saying a word or even telling them his name. Mick felt bad about that sometimes, but it couldn’t be helped. They’d helped him somewhat, as best they could, but he just wasn’t one of them, just hadn’t been through it all with them. There was no blame attached to losing touch with him. That’s just the way of it—everybody doing his best, fitting in and helping others all he can.

Mick remembered that journey all the days of his life, as clear as if it happened yesterday, and whenever he saw Jamie Teague after that, like at Jamie’s wedding with Marie Speaks, and once when they ran into each other at Conference, times like that they’d greet each other and laugh and tell folks that they were the very same age, they had the very same birthday. And it was true, too, because they were born again in ice-cold water on that spring morning in the Appalachians.

© 1987 by Orson Scott Card

Originally published in Free Lancers: Alien Stars IV, edited by Elizabeth Mitchell.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Orson Scott Card is the best-selling author of more than forty novels, including Ender’s Game, which was a winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards. The sequel, Speaker for the Dead, also won both awards, making Card the only author to have captured science fiction’s two most coveted prizes in consecutive years. His most recent books include another entry in the Enderverse, Ender in Exile, and the first of a new young adult series, Pathfinder. His latest book is The Lost Gates, the first volume of a new fantasy series.

Novel Excerpt: The Inexplicables
Cherie Priest

One

Rector “Wreck’em” Sherman was delivered to the Sisters of Loving Grace Home for Orphans the week it opened, on February 9, 1864. His precise age was undetermined, but estimated at approximately two years. He was filthy, hungry, and shoeless, wearing nothing on his feet except a pair of wool socks someone, somewhere, had lovingly knitted for him before the city went to hell. Whether she had been mother or nursemaid, governess or grandmother, no one knew and no one ever learned; but his vivid red hair, pearl white skin, and early suggestions of freckles implied rather strongly that he was no relation to the Duwamish woman who brought him to the shelter. She’d carried him there, along with another child who did not survive the month. Her own name was lost to history, or it was lost to incomplete records only sometimes kept in the wake of the Boneshaker catastrophe.

The little boy who lived, the one with hair the color of freshly cut carrots, was handed over to a nun with eyes too sad for someone so young and a habit too large for someone so small. The native woman who toted Rector told her only his name, and that “There is no one left to love him. I do not know this other boy, or what he is called. I found him in the bricks.”

For a long time, Rector did not talk.

He did not babble or gesture or make any sound at all, except to cry. When he did, it was a strange cry—all the nuns agreed, and nodded their accord sadly, as though something ought to be done about it—a soft, hooting sob like the desolate summons of a baby owl. And when the dark-haired boy who’d been his circumstantial companion passed away from Blight poisoning, or typhoid, or cholera, or whatever else ravaged the surviving population that week . . . Rector stopped crying as well.

He grew into a pallid, gangly thing, skinny like most of the refugees. At first, people in the Outskirts had bartered for what they could and took ships and airships out into the Sound to fish; but within six months, Blight-poisoned rainwater meant that little would grow near the abandoned city. And many of the children—the ones like Rector, lost and recovered—were stunted by the taint of what had happened. They were halted, slowed, or twisted by the very air they’d breathed when they were still young enough to be shaped by such things.

All in all, Rector’s teenage condition could’ve been worse.

He could’ve had legs of uneven lengths, or eyes without whites—only yellows. He might’ve become a young man without any hair, even eyebrows or lashes. He might’ve had far too many teeth, or none at all. His spine might have turned as his height overtook him, leaving him lame and coiled, walking with tremendous difficulty and sitting in pain.

But there was nothing wrong with him on the outside.

And therefore, able-bodied and quick-minded (if sometimes mean, and sometimes accused of petty criminal acts), he was expected to become a man and support himself. Either he could join the church and take up the ministry—which no one expected, or even, frankly, wanted—or he could trudge across the mud flats and take up a job in the new sawmill (if he was lucky) or at the waterworks plant (if he was not). Regardless, time had run out on Rector Sherman, specific age unknown, but certainly—by now—at least eighteen years.

And that meant he had to go.

Today.

Which meant that sometime after midnight, and long before breakfast—the time at which he would be required to vacate the premises—Rector awoke as he usually did: confused and cold, and with an aching head, and absolutely everything hurting.
Everything often hurt, so he had taken to soothing the pain with the aid of sap, which would bring on another pain and call for a stronger dose. And when it had all cycled through him, when his blood was thick and sluggish, when there was nothing else to stimulate or sedate or propel him through his nightmares . . . he woke up. And he wanted more.

It was all he could think about, usurping even the astonishing fact that he had no idea where he was going to sleep the next night, or how he was going to feed himself after breakfast.

He lay still for a full minute, listening to his heart surge, bang, slam, and settle.

This loop, this perpetual rolling hiccup of discomfort, was an old friend. His hours stuttered. They stammered, repeated themselves, and left him at the same place as always, back at the beginning. Reaching for more, even when there wasn’t any.
Downstairs in the common room the great grandfather clock chimed two—so that was one mystery solved without lifting his head off the pillow. A minor victory, but one worth counting. It was two o’clock in the morning, so he had five hours left before the nuns would feed him and send him on his way.

Rector’s thoughts moved as if they struggled through glue, but they gradually began to churn at a more ordinary pace as his body reluctantly pulled itself together. He listened over the thudding, dull bang of his heart and detected two sets of snores, one slumbering mumble, and the low, steady breaths of a deep, silent sleeper.

Five boys to a room. He was the oldest.

And he was the last one present who’d been orphaned by the Blight. Everyone else from that poisoned generation had grown up and moved on to something else by now—everyone but Rector, who had done his noble best to refuse adulthood or die before meeting it, whichever was easier.

He whispered to the ceiling, “One more thing I failed at for sure.” Because, goddammit, he was still alive.

In the back of his mind, a shadow shook. It wavered across his vision, a flash of darkness shaped like someone familiar, someone gone. He blinked to banish it, but failed at that, too.

It hovered at the far edge of what he could see, as opposed to what he couldn’t.

He breathed, “No,” knowing that the word had no power. He added, “I know you’re not really here.” But that was a lie, and it was meaningless. He didn’t know. He wasn’t sure. And closing his eyes didn’t change anything. Even with his eyes smashed shut like they were welded that way, he could see the figure outlined against the inside of his lids. It was skinny like him, and a little younger. Not much, but enough to make a difference in size. It moved with the furtive unhappiness of something that has often been mocked or kicked.

It shifted on featherlight feet between the boys’ beds, like a feral cat ready to dodge a hurled shoe.

Rector huddled beneath his insufficient blankets and drew his feet against himself, knees up, panting under the covers and smelling his own stale breath. “Go away,” he commanded aloud. “I don’t know why you keep coming here.”

Because you’re here.

“I didn’t hurt you.”

You sent me someplace where you knew I’d get hurt.

“No, I only told you how to get there. Everything else was you. It was all your own doing. You’re just looking for someone to blame. You’re just mad about being dead.”

You murdered me. The least you could do is bury me.

The ghost of Ezekiel Wilkes quivered. It came forward, mothlike, to the candle of Rector’s guilt.

You left me there.

“And I told you, I’ll come find you. I’ll come fix it, if I can.”

He waited until his heart had calmed, and he heard only the farts, sniffles, and sighs that made up the nighttime music of the orphans’ home. He moved his legs slowly beneath the blanket until his feet dangled off the edge of the flat straw mattress.
The air on the other side of the blanket was cold, but no colder than usual; it seeped through the holes in his socks and stabbed at the soft places between his toes. He flexed them and shivered. His boots were positioned just right, so he could drop down into them without even looking. He did so, wriggling his ankles until he’d wedged his feet securely into the worn brown leather, and he did not bother to reach down and tie them. The boots flopped quietly against the floor as he extracted himself from the bedding and reached for the jacket he’d left over the footboard. He put it on and stood there shaking in the frigid morning darkness. He blew on his hands to briefly warm them, then took a deep breath that he held inside to stretch his chest and urge himself more fully awake.

He was already wearing gray wool pants and a dull flannel shirt. He slept in them, more often than not. It was entirely too cold in the orphan’s home to sleep in more civilized, sleep-specific attire—even in what was considered summer almost anywhere else in the country.

In the Northwest, they called this time of year the June Gloom.

Until the end of July, the clouds always hung low and close and cold. Everything stayed damp even if it wasn’t raining, and usually, it was. Most of the time it wasn’t a hard rain, but a slow, persistent patter that never dried or went away. The days didn’t warm, and at least once a week there was frost in the morning. People grumbled about how It’s never usually like this, but as far as Rector could recall, it was never usually any different. So on the third of June in 1880, Rector’s teeth chattered and he wished for something warmer to take with him.

Cobwebs stirred in the corners of Rector’s mind, reminding him that something dead was prone to walking there. It kept its distance for now—maybe this was one of the benefits to being unwillingly sober and alert, but Rector didn’t want to count on it. He knew too well how the thing came and went, how it hovered and accused, whether he was waking or sleeping.

And it was getting stronger.

Why was that? He had his theories.

The way Rector saw it, he was dying—killing himself slowly and nastily with sap, the potent, terrible drug made from the poisoned air inside the city walls. No one used it more than a year or two and lived, or lived in any condition worth calling that. Rector had no illusions. He didn’t even mind. If anything, his death would factor nicely into his plan to evade responsibility in the long term, even if he was being forced to address it in the short term.

Dead was easier than alive. But the closer he got to being dead, the nearer his dead old chums were able to get to him. It wasn’t fair, really—it was hard to fight with a ghost when he wasn’t yet a ghost himself. He suspected it’d be a much simpler interaction when he and Zeke were both in a position to scare the bejeezus out of each other, or however that worked.

He exhaled hard, and was dimly glad to note that he could not see his breath. This morning was not as cold as some.

And, dammit all, he was almost out of sap.

In the bottom of his left coat pocket, Rector had ripped out and constructed a secret corner pocket inside, between the two threadbare layers that made up his only item of outerwear. Down there, nestled in a crinkly piece of waxed wrapper, a folded slip held a very small amount of the perilous yellow dust.

Rector resisted the urge to seize it, lest the added noise from the paper summon someone’s half-asleep attention. Instead, he comforted himself with the knowledge that it (still, barely) existed, and he jammed a black knit hat down over his ears.

He surveyed the room.

It was too dark to see anything clearly. But he knew the layout, knew the beds.

Seizing his own blanket by the corner, he folded it in half and laid out his few personal effects: One extra pair of socks, in no better shape than the ones he wore already. One additional shirt, neither smelling fresher nor appearing newer than what he had on. A box of matches. An old gas mask, soft from years of being worn by somebody else, but still working fine. Rector didn’t have any extra filters, but the ones in the mask were new. He’d stolen them last week, just like he stole everything else he’d ever owned: on a whim, or so he’d thought at the time. In retrospect, the idea might’ve already been brewing, bubbling on a back burner where he hadn’t noticed it yet.

He reached underneath the mattress, to a spot where the fabric covering had rubbed itself threadbare against the slats that held it above the floor. Feeling around with his left hand, he retrieved a small bag he’d stitched together from strips of a burlap bag that once held horse feed. Now it held other things, things he didn’t particularly want found, or taken away.

He added this pouch to the stash on the bed and tied up the corners of the blanket. The blanket wasn’t really his to commandeer, but that wouldn’t stop him. The Home was throwing him out, wasn’t it? He figured that meant that the muttering nuns and the cadaverous priest practically owed him. How could they expect a young man to make his way through life with nothing but the clothes on his back? The least they could do is give him a blanket.

Slipping his hand inside the makeshift bag’s loops, he lifted it off the bed and slung it over one shoulder. It wasn’t heavy.

He stopped in the doorway and glared for the last time into the room he’d called “home” for more than fifteen years. He saw nothing, and he felt little more than that.

Possibly a twinge, some tweak of memory or sentiment that should’ve been burned out of operation ages ago.

More likely, it was a tiny jolt of worry. Not that Rector liked the idea of worrying any better than he liked the idea of nostalgia, but the last of his sap would take care of it. All he needed was a safe, quiet place to fire up the last of the precious powder, and then he’d be free again for . . . Another few hours at most, he thought sadly. Need to go see Harry. This won’t be enough.

But first things first.

Into the hall he crept, pausing by the stairs to loosely, hastily tie his boots so they wouldn’t flap against the floor. Down the stairs he climbed, listening with every step for the sound of swishing nun robes or insomniac priest grumblings. Hearing nothing, he descended to the first floor.

A candle stub squatted invitingly on the end table near Father Harris’s favorite reading chair beside the fireplace in the main room. Rector collected the stub and rifled through his makeshift bag to find his matches. He lit the candle and carried it with him, guarding the little flame with the cup of his hand as he went.

Tiptoeing into the kitchen, he gently pushed the swinging door aside. He wondered if there was any soup, dried up for boiling and mixing. Even if it wasn’t anything he wanted to eat, he might be able to barter with it later. And honestly, he wasn’t picky. When food was around, he ate it. Whatever it was.

The pantry wasn’t much to write home about. It was never stocked to overflowing, but it never went empty, either. Someone in some big church far away saw to it that the little outposts and Homes and sanctuaries like these were kept in the bare essentials of food and medicine. It wasn’t a lot—any fool could see this was no prosperous private hospital or sanatorium for rich people—but it was enough to make Rector understand why so many folks took up places in the church, regardless. Daily bread was daily bread, and hardly anybody leftover from the city that used to be Seattle had enough to go around.

“They owe me,” he murmured as he scanned the pantry’s contents.

They owed him that loaf of bread wrapped in a dish towel. It hadn’t even hardened into a stone-crusted brick yet, so this was a lucky find indeed. They owed him a bag of raisins, too, and jar of pickles, and some oatmeal. They might’ve owed him more, but a half-heard noise from upstairs startled Rector into cutting short his plunder.
Were those footsteps? Or merely the ordinary creaks and groans of the rickety wood building? Rector blew out the candle, closed his eyes, and prayed for an earthquake.

None occurred, and whatever he’d heard upstairs went silent as well, so it didn’t matter much what it’d been. Some niggling accusation in the back of his drug-singed mind suggested that he was dawdling, wasting time, delaying the inevitable; he argued back that he was scavenging in one of the choicest spots in the Outskirts, and not merely standing stock-still in front of an open pantry, wondering where the nuns kept the sugar locked up.

Sugar could be traded for some serious sap. It was more valuable than tobacco, even, and the gluttonous, sick part of his brain that always wanted more gave a little shudder of joy at the prospect of presenting such an item to his favorite chemist.

He remained frozen a moment more, suspended between his greed and his fear.

The fear won, but not by much.

Rector retied his blanket-bag and was pleased to note that it was now considerably heavier. He didn’t feel wealthy by any means, but he no longer felt empty-handed.

Leaving the kitchen and passing through the dining area, he kept his eyes peeled against the Home’s gloomy interior and scanned the walls for more candle stubs. Three more had been left behind, so into his bag they went. To his delight, he also found a second box of matches. He felt his way back to the kitchen, and onward to the rear door. Then with a fumbled turning of the lock and a nervous heave, he went out into the open air behind the Home.

Outside wasn’t much colder than inside, where all the fires had died down and all the sleeping children were as snug as they could expect to get. Out here, the temperature was barely brittle enough to show Rector a thin stream of his own white-cloud breath gusting weakly before him, and even this chill would probably evaporate with dawn, whenever that came.

What time was it again?

He listened for the clock and heard nothing. He couldn’t quite remember, but he thought the last number he’d heard it chime was two. Yes, that was right. It’d been two when he awoke, and now it was sometime before three, he had to assume. Not quite three o’clock, on what had been deemed his “official” eighteenth birthday, and the year was off to one hell of a start. Cold and uncomfortable. Toting stolen goods. Looking for a quiet place to cook up some sap.

So far, eighteen wasn’t looking terribly different from seventeen.

Rector let his eyes adjust to the moonlight and the oil lamp glow from one of the few street posts the Outskirts could boast. Between the sky and the smoking flicker of the civic illumination, he could just make out the faint, unsettling lean of the three-story stone building he’d lived in all his life. A jagged crack ran from one foundation corner up to the second floor, terminating in a hairline fracture that would undoubtedly stretch with time, or split violently in the next big quake.

Before the Boneshaker and before the Blight, the Home had been housing for workers at Seattle’s first sawmill. Rector figured that if the next big quake took its time coming, the Home would house something or somebody else entirely someday. Everything got repurposed out there, after all. No one tore anything down, or threw anything away. Nobody could spare the waste.

He sighed. A sickly cloud haloed his head, and was gone.

Better make myself scarce, he thought. Before they find out what all I took.

Inertia fought him, and he fought it back—stamping one foot down in front of the other and leaving, walking away with ponderous, sullen footsteps. “Good-bye, then,” he said without looking over his shoulder. He made for the edge of the flats, where the tide had not come in all the way and the shorebirds were sleeping, their heads tucked under their wings on ledges, sills, and rocky outcroppings all along the edge of Puget Sound.

[End Excerpt]

From the book The Inexplicables by Cherie Priest.

Copyright © 2012 by Cherie Priest.

Reprinted by permission of Tor Books.

All rights reserved.

Cherie Priest is the author of a dozen novels, including the steampunk pulp adventures Ganymede, Dreadnought,Clementine, and Boneshaker. Boneshaker was nominated for both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award; it was a PNBA Award winner, and winner of the Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Cherie also wrote Bloodshot and Hellbent from Bantam Spectra; Fathom and the Eden Moore series from Tor; and three novellas published by Subterranean Press. In addition to all of the above, her first foray into George R. R. Martin’s superhero universe, Fort Freak (for which she wrote the interstitial mystery), debuted in the summer of 2011. Cherie’s short stories and nonfiction articles have appeared in such fine publications as Weird Tales, Publishers Weekly, and numerous anthologies. She lives in Chattanooga, TN, with her husband, a big shaggy dog, and a fat black cat.

Interview: Terry Brooks
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

Terry Brooks is the bestselling author of the genre-defining novel The Sword of Shannara and the other 20+ books in the Shannara sequence, as well as the Magic Kingdom of Landover series. His latest novel is Wards of Faerie, a new Shannara tale.

This interview first appeared on Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the entire interview and the rest of the show, in which the hosts discuss various geeky topics.

Tell us about your new novel, Wards of Faerie. What’s it about?

This is the first in a trilogy that I have been thinking about for quite a bit of time. It’s in the future of the Shannara world, not in the prehistory where I have been working. It is a direct sequel to the High Druid set of books, and it’s about a topic that has been discussed ever since I wrote Elfstones back in the day—1982 or whatever it was when it was published—about the Elfstones themselves, which were forged in the ancient world of Faerie before humans, and nobody knows what happened to them, and somebody is always saying, “What happened to the other Elfstones? The only ones that survived are these blue Elfstones, and we’ve never heard anything more.” So, after not having an answer for that for the better part of 30 years, I thought maybe I’d come up with one, and that’s what this book is about.

When I was at the Odyssey writers workshop, you came and were our writer-in-residence, and while you were there you told us a story about how when you submitted your first novel, The Sword of Shannara, to Lester del Rey, he made you do just massive, massive revisions on it. Could you talk about that?

Well, that was my first complete novel, and I was pretty much a neophyte in the craft area. I had rewritten that book three times before I sent it in, as a matter of fact, but there were a lot of places where it was weak. I also was wordy—much more wordy than I am now certainly—and it just sort of went on and on. And he got irritated with the fact that I was doing a lot of things with weather reports and descriptions of forest lands and so on, and he said, “Cut all this stuff out of here.” He said, “We don’t need this. It just slows the story down. Just get to the story.” It’s sort of like Elmore Leonard saying, “Leave out all the words that people skip.” That was his approach to writing as a commercial fiction writer, and I believed in that, so I rewrote some areas numerous times. I rewrote the ending repeatedly. He didn’t like the ending and he wanted it different, so I wrote it two or three times, and then finally got it to a place where he was happy with it. He threatened, at one point, because I wasn’t moving fast enough, he said, “Well look, if you can’t do this, why don’t I do it? I’ll write it for you.” And of course that scared the bejeezus out of me, so I went back and got it right the next time, and he was happy after that.

I remember you saying that you had sent in your manuscript on white paper, and he sent it back, and in between each page of white paper there was a yellow piece of paper with changes he wanted made to the preceding page.

Yeah, that was with the second book. In between Sword and Elfstones, I wrote another Shannara book, and it wasn’t any good. And I wrote 400 pages of this thing, and I realized I couldn’t figure out what the ending ought to be, and I sent it to him. So he sent it back to me saying, “Well what you need to do with this is burn it.” And I was in shock, I couldn’t believe it. I thought he was mistaken. I thought, “He’s clearly delusional here. I just wrote a book that sold umpteen million copies. What do you mean, it isn’t any good?” But he sent the manuscript back to me, and every second or third page he stuck a yellow sheet in there describing in detail what was wrong with what I was doing in that particular section of the book. And after I read it all through, I saw that he was right, that this book was no good, and there were so many problems with it that it was better to just ashcan it and start over again. It was a little humble pie, but it was also a terrific writing lesson.

Will that ever be made public, do you think?

Oh no. I don’t think I burned it yet, but I should. I mean, it wasn’t any good. It was a bad story. It had some good aspects, and what I did with it after a while is I cannibalized it and took out names and certain elements and stuck them in Wishsong and some of the other books, and they worked out fine there. But the story as a whole had all kinds of problems. I’m not one of those writers who thinks that once you have some success you should immediately publish everything you ever wrote.

I just thought maybe as a writing lesson . . .

Oh, as an object lesson? Well, yeah. I don’t think I want to do that until I’m dead, though. [laughs] I don’t want to be around for the fallout from that one. Maybe my kids won’t mind and they’ll do that.

One thing that I’ve always heard about Lester del Rey as an editor was that he had this really good sense for what would sell. What do you think made him so good at predicting that?

I don’t know. That’s a very good question. He just had great story sense. And he knew what would work and what wouldn’t, and everybody in the company that I knew over the years and that knew him said he was the best story doctor they ever knew, that he could take a book and determine what worked and what didn’t work and tell you exactly where those places were and—not necessarily what you needed to do to fix them; he would leave that to you—but he would tell you where it was weak. And I believe that’s true. He certainly was the best I’ve ever worked with in that regard, and probably the reason that I’m still around is that for those first three or four books he just beat up on me unmercifully, gave me rewrite after rewrite until I got it right. But boy, did I learn a lot in that time period about how to craft a story and how to make it a commercial success. And of course, they all sold like crazy, so something must have been right.

And actually at the time that Sword of Shannara came out, Lester del Rey had seen that there was a demand for fantasy when fantasy was considered sort of second tier. Is that right?

Yeah, that’s right. The prevailing opinion in the publishing industry was that fantasy was a niche genre and you could sell five or ten thousand copies of a good book, but that was it. Except for Tolkien, but that was Tolkien and he was gone anyway, so there was no point in fussing about that, and everything else that was out there just wasn’t bestseller material. And Lester thought this was a lot of hooey. I found all this out years later—at the time I’m sure I thought that he just had great judgment about my book. But he basically set out to take a Tolkien-esque kind of story, put it out there as a fantasy, and sell it in bestseller numbers. And that’s what he did with Sword. And he told me that I was going to take it on the chin over this from many, many sides, that people were going to hate it, that people were going to say it was a rip-off, that people were going to this, that, and the other thing. And I said, “I don’t care. I want to get my foot in the door and figure out how I can do this for a living.” Because that’s what I wanted to do, I wanted to be a writer, and I had no clue how to go about doing it. Here was somebody whose work I respected saying, “I can make this happen,” so I did it.

Speaking of Lester del Rey, I just looked him up on Wikipedia and it says, “Del Rey often told people that his real name was Ramon Felipe Alvarez-del Rey (or sometimes even Ramon Felipe San Juan Mario Silvio Enrico Smith Heartcourt-Brace Sierra y Alvarez del Rey y de los Uerdes).”

[laughs] Yeah, he also told people he was born in various places. He told them his age, and that changed about once a month. I don’t know how many of them were true, but he had various histories about his life and what he’d done during his life. But I don’t think to the bitter end anybody knew the whole truth about his story or his history, and I think most of the histories you read probably have some truth and some that he just offered up.

Was he strange in person? Did you ever have strange experiences with him?

You know, he and [his wife] Judy-Lynn both would seem strange to some people, but I kind of liked it. I mean, they had stuffed animals they talked to. They had a lifestyle that involved fantasy as part of it. But when it came to the business end of things there wasn’t anybody smarter than either one of them. They knew exactly what they were doing, and they knew how to do it.

I heard you say in an interview that the publishing industry has really change since you published Sword of Shannara, and that editors don’t have the status that they used to. Could you talk about that?

Well, it’s probably obvious to anybody in the business at least that the publishing industry has vastly changed. An awful lot of it’s been changed by the internet, and by the new avenues of publishing that have opened up, by the presence of e-books and self-publishing online, all that’s different. The publishing houses have all shrunk—not all of them, but a great number of them became conglomerates or appendages to conglomerates. Really, the marketing department has more weight now than the editors do. In the old days, the editors were pretty much top-of-the-line, they made the determinations. The thing I lament most is that when I broke into publishing, you were given a fair amount of time to work with an editor before they cut you loose. You know, they spent time teaching you how to be better, and now, really, there’s an awful lot of pressure on new writers to produce right away. If you don’t sell, then it’s on to somebody else. That’s not true universally, but it’s true to a great extent. I think that’s unfortunate, and I wish there was more time for the midlist writers to find a way to be bestselling. I miss those days. It was more of a family relationship. It’s much more an arm’s-length operation these days than it used to be. Or maybe that’s just me talking 35 years later, too.

So you’re just about to head out on a new book tour. What’s that like, and have you ever had any strange experiences on tour?

Yeah, but we don’t have enough time for that. [laughs] I’ve had many, many strange experiences on tour. But not with the readers, I hasten to say. I have a really good reading audience, and I’ve never, ever had a problem with them. Now, the minute I say this, I will, but up to this point, no.

So who have you had strange experiences with?

[laughs] Well, some of the booksellers are a little strange from time to time. In fact, one of the things that happened was when we did Odyssey. I was staying at a place nearby there, and on the night that we stayed over—at the end of things—there was some kind of a wedding there, and it got totally out of control, and they were outside the door where I was staying—I think we were probably the only people at the hotel that weren’t with the wedding party—and they were pounding on the walls and the doors, so I went out there and told them to shut up. That brought us even worse trouble, and I had to call the police. It was a little bad. That was fairly strange, but that wasn’t connected with the book part of things. But I remember Odyssey for that. [laughs]

I don’t know. I once went to a city—I’ll give you one example, and this is back a ways now—but I once went to a city where I was doing a couple of chain stores as well as a couple of independents, and the two were not speaking to each other. I don’t know what that was about, but they weren’t. I didn’t have a car or anything—I was being transported—so in order to get from one to the other I was taken to a parking lot in an industrial area and dropped. One car left and then the other came up. It was very gangland-like. I thought, “Well, maybe this is it for me. I’ll end up as a footnote in a paper somewhere.”

Back in the ’90s, there was a Shannara computer game that was developed by Lori and Corey Cole, who actually created one of my favorite computer games series, the Quest for Glory series. Did you interact with them at all or have any involvement with that game?

I don’t . . . you know, I don’t know anything about it. [laughs]

Do you remember signing the contract or anything?

No, I don’t remember a thing. [laughs] This is a true story. My problem is, it used to be that my whole focus was on books, because I’m very much a book guy. So I paid attention to the book stuff, and everything else I just said, “Well, whatever you think,” to my agent or my editor. “You take care of it. Don’t tell me about it,” and then they would make the decision, which probably shows you how naïve I am, but I just didn’t care, and I still don’t really care about much except for the books . . . and maybe the movies at some point.

What is the status on the movie stuff? Anything going on with that?

Yeah, the Magic Kingdom series is over at Warner Brothers with a development company called Weed Road. And I’ve met with those people—actually met with them face-to-face, which was some kind of first. They are in the process of working on a second draft of a screenplay for Magic Kingdom for Sale. And I’d say that looks pretty likely, and at the moment the actor attached to the project is Steve Carell. So that would be cool, and he’s perfect for Ben Holiday, I think. I think he’s terrific. I’ve seen his movies, particularly the last couple, and I just see him in that role and I think he would work perfectly. So I’m hopeful that he won’t give up on this and that he’ll hang in there, the way that sometimes, when luck works, they do. And the Shannara series is in the final, gasping stages of being signed up with a company that’s going to look for a Game of Thrones-type format and a venue for it.

Actually, speaking of the Landover series and Magic Kingdom for Sale, I just saw that the sixth book came out in 2009 after I think a 14-year gap. Why was there such a big gap in that series?

Well, when I finished up in the ’90s with it, I didn’t have anywhere else I wanted to go with it. So I put it aside, and readers of the series—who are a strong group in their own right—kept saying “When’s the next one?” And I said, “Well, when they make a movie, then I’ll write another book.” And it was up with various movie companies about three times, and each time it fell through at some stage or another. And finally it got to the point where I was starting to feel guilty for not doing another book, so I decided to take it down one generation and write a story that was centered around Ben and Willow’s child Mistaya, who has magic in her own right, and I tried to throw in all of the usual characters as backdrop for the story, and forget about the movie, because I may not live that long. So I wrote the story, and now I’m back to having a follow-up to it but no time to write it at the present time, so I’m back to waiting for the movie.

I hope there wasn’t a huge cliffhanger at the end of Book 5?

No, there’s no cliffhangers in that series—those books are all self-contained. But there’s usually something at the end of the story that suggests what might be coming next. That was particularly true with Princess of Landover, where you get a sense that the witch Nightshade is going to have a major role in the next book. So I’ve got it in mind, but again I’ve just decided I don’t have time to write it right now, so I’m waiting on it. You know, I’m buried in Shannara. This whole series with Wards of Faerie and the other two, they’re all coming out in six-month increments. So that consumed my life until recently, but now that’s behind me so I can move on and maybe step back and look at some other options about what I want to do.

I saw that you recently contributed a short story to the Unfettered anthology. Could you talk about that project?

Yeah, this is Shawn Speakman’s project. He’s pretty well known in the field because of his work through the Brooks website . . . and he goes to the conventions, and he’s a correspondent for the Random House group as well—reports, blogs for them, and so forth. He asked for stories, and so I contributed one—along with practically everybody else you can think of. These are all contributions from which the money will go towards paying off his considerable medical bills. He’s got a long history of struggling with cancer. He’s had three or four different kinds, and he’s a good guy. One good thing about this field, I think, is that writers in science fiction and fantasy both tend to band together and help out people who need it, and this is a good example. My story was one that I had written many years ago for Del Rey, which was actually kind of a prototype/precursor to the Word and Void series in a somewhat different format, and it appeared in a small anthology by Del Rey authors 20-some years ago. So I pulled that one out and said, “Well, here, try this. It might be kind of fun for people.”

In addition to running your website, Shawn also helps check your books for continuity errors. Can you think of any big errors that you’re really glad he caught?

He’s the guy who’s got an encyclopedic knowledge of the Shannara books, so when I miss a description in some fashion, or I have said something is true which turns out was in fact not true, he’s the guy who catches all that stuff, so that when these books get published, all those 12- and 15-year-olds that read everything and memorize it don’t write me letters about how I made a mistake. I mean, some of these readers, they’ve read the books dozens of times. Some of them only read these books. Now, that, to me, is mind-boggling.

I’ll give you a perfect example of one that he didn’t catch, but that came to light some years later, and that was in Druid of Shannara, where the druid Walker Boh lost his arm early on, so he went around for the rest of the book with one arm gone at the elbow, but in the course of my writing the arm changed from time to time. The cover art was correct, but then they flipped it, so it was the wrong arm. Those kinds of things I don’t like to have to explain, yet somehow they always seem to get through, and Shawn is good enough at this sort of thing that he cuts back considerably on the number of errors that might otherwise appear. You know, we’re at 26 books here now, I think, altogether with the ones that aren’t published that I finished. And 26 books later, you can’t remember anything. You might as well just forget it. You can go back and read them, or you can look at the companion volume, The World of Shannara, and try to find it in there, but you still miss stuff, and the more eyes you have on the project, the better off you are. So in my case, I read it, [my wife] Judine reads it, Shawn reads it, and then it goes through several editorial drafts, and my rereading and so on. So it gets a lot of eyes on it before it’s out there, and we still miss stuff.

How did Shawn become your webmaster in the first place?

He actually wrote Del Rey and said, “You don’t seem to have an official [Terry Brooks] website. I want to be that website.” So they contacted me and they said, “Well, he lives out where you are. You want to check him out?” So I went to his website, and . . . you know, at that time—this is late in the 1990s—I was not doing anything with websites. I never go online to read what anybody says about me, because frankly I don’t care. So I didn’t know anything about this, and I said, “Do I have a website out there?” And they said, “Yeah, you’ve got about 150.” I said, “Oh, that’s not possible.” And they said, “Well, just go on and look.” So I went to Shawn’s website, and it was clearly a great website. He’d done a heck of a job. So I met him, and we talked, and I really liked what he had to say. He worked for nothing, so I thought, “What can go wrong here?” Of course, he doesn’t work for nothing now, but he did then. [laughs] So that started our relationship, and now Judine and I say he’s our other child that nobody knows about, and he calls us his other parents. So we have a really close relationship. We’ve been through a lot together. I can’t imagine trying to do what I do with the website without Shawn.

As a Tolkien fan, are you looking forward to Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit, and what do you think about it being split into three separate movies?

Well, first of all, I love The Lord of the Rings. I thought his take on it was terrific. Yes, he didn’t get everything in there, but then it wouldn’t have been the same movie if he had, and I thought he made good decisions. I have seen the previews for the new one and I think it looks terrific also, and I’m anxious to see it. I’m not so sure about splitting it into three parts. That feels somewhat mercenary to me, but maybe it’ll turn out that it’s a good decision. I don’t know. I keep thinking about The Lord of the Rings in three parts and how big it is, and The Hobbit is tiny by comparison, so is this really worth three parts? You know, what’s the story on that? But we’ll find out.

Are there any other new or upcoming projects that you’d like to mention?

There are a couple things I should mention. I’m doing more online, so I am doing more e-stories, short stories online only. I’m going to do more of that in the next couple of years, just because I’ve sort of gotten the hang of it now. I don’t like short stories very much—I mean, I don’t like writing them. I like reading them, but I’m not very good at them. But I’ve sort of gotten into it now, so I think I’m going to do a bunch more of those. I’m committed to do three between now and next April. The other thing I’m going to do is I’m going to do something new that’s not connected to anything I’ve done. I have a very specific story in mind, a very specific setting and characters and all of that. I know what I want to do, but I don’t have the time right now. But I would like to start it some time in the next three to five years. And at some point in the next decade, I’m going to wrap up Shannara.

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast. It is hosted by:

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Lightspeed, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Epic, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a four-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a four-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Forthcoming anthologies include The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (2013, Tor), Wastelands 2 (2013, Night Shade), and Robot Uprisings (2013, Doubleday). He is also the editor of Nightmare Magazine and is the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

David Barr Kirtley has published fiction in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Lightspeed, Intergalactic Medicine Show, On Spec, and Cicada, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction, Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and The Dragon Done It. Recently he’s contributed stories to several of John Joseph Adams’s anthologies, including The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, and The Way of the Wizard. He’s attended numerous writing workshops, including Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, James Gunn’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and Orson Scott Card’s Writers Bootcamp, and he holds an MFA in screenwriting and fiction from the University of Southern California. He also teaches regularly at Alpha, a Pittsburgh-area science fiction workshop for young writers. He lives in New York.

Interview: Alastair Reynolds
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

Alastair Reynolds is the author of the Revelation Space series, which includes the novels Revelation Space, Chasm City, Redemption Ark, Absolution Gap, and The Prefect. Other novels include Century Rain, Terminal World, Pushing Ice, and House of Suns. His latest novel is Blue Remembered Earth, the first in the Poseidon’s Children trilogy.

This interview first appeared on Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by John Joseph Adams and David Barr Kirtley. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the entire interview and the rest of the show, in which the hosts discuss various geeky topics.

Your new novel is called Blue Remembered Earth. What’s it about?

Well, this is a big departure for me. It’s my attempt to get back to something a little bit closer to the present in terms of the way I think about science fiction. So it’s a novel which looks at where we might be in a hundred and fifty years in terms of going out into the solar system, going back to the moon and Mars, but also looking at the Earth, the kind of trends that we might expect to see over the next century and a half on our own planet—things like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and ubiquitous surveillance technology.

The story centers around the Akinyas, who are a wealthy family from Tanzania. Why did you decide to put that focus on Africa?

I had an idea for doing a sequence of books that would look at space exploration from a fairly realistic standpoint—not too many crazy gadgets or magic physics coming into it, and I wanted to put a slightly different spin on it, because I think a lot of that stuff’s been done before; there’s lots of novels about colonizing the solar system. And at the time that I was thinking about that, I was also listening to a lot of world music, particularly a lot of African music. West African music, actually, as it happened. I love that music, I fell in love with it over a period of time and just basically listened to nothing else, and one day the penny sort of dropped—why not just do a novel where Africa is the dominant technological powerhouse of the future? We’ve had science fiction novels where China is dominant, we’ve had novels where India is dominant, and I suppose it’s all about getting away from that clichéd old tired idea that the future belongs to the West. So I was excited by that, and I liked the idea of taking a set of African protagonists and exploring them across more than one generation.

You mentioned that there have been a number of novels set within the solar system. We recently interviewed Kim Stanley Robinson about his book 2312, which was one such book. Do you think there’s a trend toward that right now?

I was really impressed by 2312. It’s one of the things where you start reading and you think, “Well, why did he decide to write this novel at the same time that I wrote mine?” And I guess it’s just things are in the air, and you respond to things. For me it was the celebrations that started around about 2008, when people started thinking about the 40th anniversary of the Apollo landings—and of course with the death of Neil Armstrong, that’s something that’s come back into the news again—and for me it was a natural point to start thinking about a novel set in the solar system rather than off around some distant star.

Though I suppose Kim Stanley Robinson’s been mining that particular scene for years and years with the Mars trilogy, so for him it’s a natural continuation. And whenever people mention 2312 and Blue Remembered Earth, there’s another book . . . is it Leviathan Wakes? Which I think is also essentially set in the solar system. And of course there’s Paul McAuley’s Quiet War sequence, which does catapult out into interstellar space later on, but the first two books are entirely set within the solar system.

You’ve worked as both a space scientist and a science fiction author. How much of a feedback loop have you observed between the two?

Well, speaking for myself, I really struggle to pinpoint whether I became a scientist because I like science fiction, or did I gravitate to science fiction because I identified strongly with scientists? I don’t know, it’s been there all along, right through my life. I think I set myself on a course to become a scientist around about the time that Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series was on television, and there really was no going back for me at that point, and then I went on to study space science, and then get my PhD, then go abroad and work in the European Space Agency. But the thing that surprised me, with regard to the crosstalk between science and science fiction, was when I kind of “came out” about being a science fiction writer, a lot of my colleagues who I’d never previously suspected of having any interest in science fiction turned out to be avid science fiction readers with extensive knowledge of science fiction, and that was very interesting to me. Ever since then I’ve been keeping a quiet eye on this whole business of how science and science fiction talk to each other, particularly in the areas of space science.

How closely have you been following the current Mars rover mission, and how significant do you think that is?

I’ve been following it since the point where—not only when they launched it, but as soon as I found out about this sky crane landing maneuver. I just thought, “This is the most insane, audacious thing anyone’s ever attempted, and there’s no possible way it’s going to work.” But it did work, and it was a phenomenal achievement, I think, to land this enormous, complex piece of machinery on Mars. And so far everything seems to have gone without a hitch, and it’s beginning to do science, and just today they’ve released some absolutely remarkable high resolution images of the surface of Mars. It’s phenomenal.

I mean, on one level I’m slightly disappointed that there aren’t people on Mars already. When I was a kid, I was reliably informed that we’d have gone to Mars by 1985, and of course it’s 2012 and we’re still really no closer to a human expedition to Mars, but that shouldn’t detract from the amazing achievements that are being done on a day-to-day basis by robotic envoys.

When you said that you were disappointed that there weren’t already people on Mars, I thought at first you meant like Dejah Thoris or something.

Yeah. [laughs] No, I mean, I think I kind of grew up with the expectation that we would have gone beyond Earth orbit by now and returned to the moon, and even in the ’90s there was talk of manned expeditions to Mars, and then slowly the penny drops that this isn’t going to happen anytime soon, I think. But there are all sorts of encouraging noises coming from different directions at the moment. I mean, Elon Musk is talking about going to Mars much sooner than people expect, and I’m genuinely interested to see where these private initiatives take us.

Actually, speaking of Elon Musk, I recently attended a lecture by Howard Bloom on the commercialization of space, and he was basically saying that we all need to get behind Elon Musk because that’s really America’s only shot at a robust space program, and if we don’t, the Chinese are going to beat us to the asteroids and gain just an insurmountable economic advantage. What do you think about that idea?

Well, I don’t particularly care who plants these flags on things. If the Chinese are the first to the asteroids or the first to Mars, good for them, as far as I’m concerned. But yeah, it’s clear that Musk is the one at the moment who has the vision and the capital to make significant things happen. I mean, my natural sympathies tend to lie—because I was a scientist working with an international space agency—I would have liked to have seen a more concerted international effort to do these things through space agencies, but if that can’t be made to work—as increasingly seems to be the case—then so be it, and I shall be excited about private initiatives.

Your Revelation Space universe is distinctive for having no faster-than-light travel. What are some of the challenges and considerations of writing space opera with no FTL?

Before I started writing the Revelation Space books, I’d already written two novels in my teens that were full of the stock furniture of science fiction—they had hyperdrives and force fields and tractor beams and all that stuff in it. And around about the time that I was writing the second one I started reading more hard science fiction, books by people like Gregory Benford and Robert Forward, where there was a tendency to try to keep the science a little bit more plausible, and I started to think, “Well, the next book I write, I’m not going to have any of that stuff in it. I’m just going to try to keep the physics as believable as possible.”

So it was a natural challenge for me to try to write a space opera without faster-than-light travel, but I never found it particularly constraining because, okay, it eliminates certain story lines, there are certain things you can’t do in that kind of framework, but at the same time it opens lots of other possibilities. You can have stories about people leaving their planet and not coming back for a hundred years, because they’ve been traveling at the speed of light. One door closes and another opens, so I’ve always found it perfectly liberating as a writer to work within that kind of framework. It’s never felt stifling to me.

So getting back to Blue Remembered Earth, a major theme of the book is the conflict over whether humans or robots will be the ones to travel the stars. How do you feel about that yourself?

First of all, there’s the question of whether we should spend any money at all on space exploration, which I think is really stupid because as a society we spend almost nothing on space exploration. We spend more money on chocolate as a species than space exploration, and we certainly spend far more on wars and militarism than we do on space exploration. So I have no time for that argument. But I think it’s a far more interesting and nuanced question whether we should be sending robotic envoys or whether we should be sending people, and I can see very, very strong arguments from both sides.

I was an astronomer for many years, and astronomers by and large—and this is a generalization—they do tend to come down on the robot side of the coin, because they tend to perceive that they could be doing lots more interesting things in the solar system in terms of space probes and telescopes and things like that if all this money wasn’t wasted on things like space shuttles and space stations. But as a science fiction writer, of course I’m massively excited by the idea of sending human beings into space. I mean, just a couple of nights ago I watched the International Space Station glide over my house, and to think that there are six people up there, there’s a permanent human presence in orbit around our planet, it gives me an enormous kick and I feel very privileged to be alive at a point where I can actually look into the sky and see people up there, and I would hate that not to be the case.

But I think from a science fictional perspective, with something like the Poseidon’s Children books, I’m actually trying to suggest a third way, which is that—the notion that I think will become apparent as the books progress is that there will be a kind of convergence, which I think could well be the case, where, in effect, our robotic envoys become steadily more sophisticated and more autonomous—and we’ve already seen the first glimmerings of this with things like the Curiosity probe, where you have these highly sophisticated robots that we’re sending to other planets, other parts of the solar system, where they have to operate to some extent independently of human control, because of the time lag issues. So we have to make these things smart, and we will only make them smarter in the future. And at the same time as we send people into space we may well find that, because of the innate hostility of the environment, we may have to make people perhaps a little bit more mechanical, a little bit more like machines—not in a horrible clanking fashion, but we may have to explore different ideas about mind augmentation, human augmentation.

One character in the book actually comments that in time the distinction between humans and robots will come to seem as insignificant as the difference between Protestants and Catholics.

Yes, and a very good friend of mine, who’s read a number of my books and is a Catholic scholar, said, “I take offense at that. You cannot trivialize these things,” which I was very amused by. But yeah, that was a flippant line of dialogue, but I just wanted to try to articulate the standpoint of someone living a few hundred years from now looking back at some of the ideological arguments we have today, just as sometimes we look back on 18th-century ideological arguments and think, “How could they have been so narrow-minded?”

The book also presents a future Earth on which crime has been eliminated by constant surveillance. We also just interviewed David Brin, who wrote a book called The Transparent Society, basically advocating for that. Is that something you’d advocate for as well?

I can see lots of positives to having universal ubiquitous surveillance at all times. You would never have a situation where, say, a child wandered away from its home and came to harm. That would simply not happen if we could tag every human person on the planet and know where they were at any one time. Lots of crimes would simply evaporate, lots of misfortunes simply would not be able to happen anymore. But of course then that takes us into sort of murky areas of civil liberties and personal freedom and privacy. Particularly in Britain, they say you can’t walk out of your house without showing up on a CCTV camera several times a day. Whether that is going to lead to a regimented police state or whether we will just accept it and we will gradually become a safer society, I think it’s too soon to tell, but for me it’s an interesting area to explore in science fiction.

The technical problem I had in the book was that there was very little way for me to come at the idea of this massively wired-up, highly surveilled society unless there was something to counterpoint it, and I thought, “Well, if I have a little pocket on the moon where they have the exact opposite approach, then I can actually have a kind of debate about the whole thing,” which allowed for that possibility of discussing the whole issue in a plausible way.

Since the story is full of intrigue and conspiracies, was it really a nightmare trying to tell that sort of story given the universal surveillance situation on Earth?

Well, partly as a reaction to a couple of books that I’d written recently, I decided that I would keep the onscreen, on page violence as low as possible in this book. I didn’t want a scene where people were shooting each other with ray guns or things blowing up—I mean, a certain number of things do blow up at various points in the book, but I think it’s quite moderate compared to some of the things I’ve done recently. That, for me, was an interesting challenge, to see if I could write a book where there wasn’t an awful lot of violence on the page.

And quite aside from the technicalities of writing about this society where these things aren’t possible, I was also sort of thinking back to the classic science fiction of, say, Arthur C. Clarke, his classic books of the ’50s like Earthlight and The Deep Range and The Sands of Mars, going right through to the ’60s and ’70s as well, with things like The Fountains of Paradise, where, for me, these books were genuine page turners, and I just found them massively exciting and thrilling novels. But there’s a distinct absence of violence and thriller elements and melodrama in these novels. Instead, the motor of the story tended to come from the mysteries that the characters were confronted with. The universe, if you like, was the big bad guy, rather than having some cartoon villains cropping up every few chapters. So I’d really like to creep a little bit closer to that model in my science fiction, and this seemed as good a time as any to try it.

The book contains some invented terminology such as “chinging” and “voking.” What’s your approach to coming up with terms like that?

I’m always a little bit cautious around invented terminology, because so much science fiction is off-putting to the uninitiated. You open up the first page, and it’s full of all these made-up words. So I try to keep a lid on it if at all possible, but at the same time, I’m thinking about a society in which these fairly novel technologies are fairly commonplace. It wouldn’t make sense for the characters to say, “I used the remote telepresence technology to communicate with so and so.” They’d have a more economical way of saying that.

So what I usually do, I just put placeholders into the text, and then at some point a better idea might occur to me—or it might not—and I go back. I have a big whiteboard above my desk, and if I have even half of a good idea I write it down on the whiteboard and see if I like it a few weeks later. But I knew that I wanted to have advanced telepresence technology in these books, which I think is actually quite plausible, the idea that you can project yourself into another receptacle, be it another human being or a robot or even thin air, and this is all mediated through implant technology. And I just started thinking about, well, it’s a kind of virtual reality, and then I remembered that in the ’90s a lot of people were talking about “virching” as a shorthand for “virtual reality technology,” and I thought, “Virching. They wouldn’t say ‘virching.’ They’d shorten it even more than that, they’d say ‘ching.’” So that was where “ching” came from. And the other thing was “voking.” That was just a way to avoid saying “subvocalization” every third paragraph.

One character in the book is a businessman who’s installed an “empathy shunt,” so he can turn off his empathy when making business decisions, in effect turning himself into a sociopath. What do you think about that idea?

I created these two brothers, who are both highly corporate individuals involved in the running of the family business. Basically, I wanted to distinguish one from the other and I thought, “Well, if one of them’s a complete sort of corporate idiot, I’ll make the other one twenty times worse.” I think I must have read an article in Scientific American or something about empathy, and there’s also this ongoing thing about psychopaths and sociopaths who rise to positions of high influence in society, whether it’s CEOs of big companies or movers and shakers in Hollywood, whatever it is, but that interested me, and I thought, “Well, what if the guy could actually press a button and become more sociopathic when he needs to? What if he’s actually quite a nice guy, but when he needs to go into the boardroom and make the cutthroat, killer deal he can actually turn off his empathy and he doesn’t worry about shafting the little guy anymore?” And I thought, well, that might work.

Probably one of my favorite moments in science fiction is the scene in Revelation Space where a character survives being shoved into an elevator shaft. Could you just talk about how you came up with that idea?

This is the scene where one of the characters is in a very long spaceship with a central elevator shaft, a bit like the spaceship in Dark Star, and she falls down it, and she realizes that she’s not actually falling at that point, she’s actually stationary with respect to the rest of the universe. And this idea pops into her head, in the seconds that she has remaining before she hits the bottom of the shaft, that if she can actually access the engines of the spaceship, she can make it reverse, and the ship will stop falling at that point and she will be saved.

I mean, because I did physics in school, and one of the classic experiments that comes up when you’re talking about the equivalence principle is, if you’re in a rocket with no windows, what sort of experiments could you perform to tell that you’re actually not in a rocket, that you’re just in a little metal room on the surface of a planet. All that sort of stuff is interesting. There are other thought experiments that involve things you could do in an elevator that would determine whether you were actually falling or whether you were weightless—if you’re in an elevator and things are floating around inside, does that mean you’re actually falling down the elevator shaft or are you actually drifting off in deep space, and are there experiments that you could actually perform to distinguish between the two? So all that stuff was sort of floating around in my brain, and a character falling down a lift shaft seemed like a good way to bring home for the reader the idea that frames of reference are important in this novel, and we’re trying to keep reasonably close to Newtonian physics or Einsteinian physics rather than Star Trek physics.

You also wrote a short story that I really enjoyed called “Understanding Space and Time,” which is about a guy who wants to understand everything about the universe, and his mind becomes so big that it’s actually in danger of collapsing from the force of its own gravity. I understand that that story originally appeared in a convention booklet? [The story also appeared in the collection Zima Blue and Other Stories.]

Yeah, I mean, the process of writing that story was very, very convoluted. I was at work one day, when I was still a space scientist, and an email popped into my mailbox from Nature, the prestigious science magazine. They’d basically decided they were going to run short science fiction stories, and I forget what the word length was, whether it was 600 words or 1200 words, but it was certainly no more than that, and I’d never written anything remotely as short as what they needed. So I thought about it, and I thought, “Oh, I don’t know if I can.”

Then I was cycling home and this idea came into my head about this man, the last man on Mars, and all sorts of weird things happen to him, and he ends up trying to understand the universe. So I got home and I wrote the story in a sort of blind rush of inspiration, but it had to be done quickly anyway because there was a very tight deadline. But I could not get the damn thing to fit the required word length. So I went back in the morning, and I emailed Nature and I said, “Well, I’ve got this story, but it’s a bit long. I’ll send it to you anyway, and then you can decide what you do with it.” So I sent them the story and that was that. And then I was cycling home again later that evening, and I thought, “Hang on, I’ve had a better idea now. I’ve got a story that really does fit 600 words.” So I wrote that one instead and sent the shorter story, which was completely unrelated, to Nature, and they ran the shorter story. So then I had this other story, which I didn’t know what to do with. So I took it back home with me and I fiddled with it over a period of time trying to find a way to make something of it, and I added a bit to it and took a bit away and added a bit more, and it never really caught fire, and I was just left with these sort of story fragments that weren’t going anywhere, and that was probably a good five years before I finished it.

And then what happened was, as you say, I was scheduled to be guest of honor at a regional British science fiction convention called NovaCon, which takes place in the Midlands in November every year. And the tradition at NovaCon is that the guest of honor provides a story, maybe of novella length or novelette length, which is then printed and distributed as a souvenir chapbook for the people who attend the convention. So I had to write the story, and time was ticking on, and I had months and months to think about it, and it seems a long way in the future, and then it was suddenly not months and months, it was two months, then it was one month, and then it was like, “Damn, I’d better come up with something.” In desperation I looked into my files on my computer, and I found the fragments of this earlier story, “Understanding Space and Time.” And at that point I thought, “Hang on, I know exactly what I need to do to that story.” I’d had enough time away from it to see it with a fresh eye, and I knew that I could make something of it.

The coda to this story is that I then got married, and then I went off on my honeymoon with my wife. And I basically wrote that story on honeymoon, which was not the smartest thing to do. [laughs] But basically every morning my wife would leave the hotel and go down to the beach, and I would spend a couple of hours fiddling with that story until I’d added a few thousand words, whatever it was, and then I’d be done with it, and then I’d spend the rest of the day enjoying myself properly with my wife. But I did finish the story in time for the convention and they published it as a chapbook. I always quite liked it, I was quite taken with that story after I wrote it and it’s still one of my favorites.

Actually, speaking of conventions, in the past few days there’s been some talk online about trying to organize a Revelation Space convention in London. Have you been following that at all?

Yes, I’ve been following it on Twitter. I mean, good luck to them. I’m sort of astonished that there’s that level of interest, that people feel that it’s something worth doing. I think it’ll be like a mini-convention, like a one-day meet-up, and I’ll do my utmost to support it and go along. I won’t say I’m skeptical, but I routinely do book signings around the country, and readings and talks on different topics, which are well-publicized well in advance, and sometimes hardly anyone turns up to these things, so I’m quite hardened, and I’m not exactly convinced that there are huge numbers of people out there who would go to something like that, but perhaps there are, perhaps I’m wrong.

You might be a little sick of this question, but we had a bunch of listeners who want to know if there will be more Revelation Space books and/or a Revelation Space movie?

Well, there will certainly be more Revelation Space stories, I can’t say that often enough. I mean, it’s my baby. I enjoy writing those stories enormously, but I did need to get away from it for a bit. I never wanted to be a particular type of science fiction writer—I wanted to be like Harry Harrison or James White or Philip K. Dick, someone who operates across the whole of science fiction and does a bit of this and a bit of that. So I felt I needed to get away from the Revelation Space stuff for a while and plant a few flags elsewhere in the genre, but that doesn’t mean I’ve forsaken it by any means. Certainly it is harder and harder to tell a new story in a framework, a fictional universe where you’ve already made up lots of stuff. The narrative airspace gets very congested. It’s hard to slot a new story in there without tangling yourself up in contradictions. But I fully intend to do more, as I do enjoy writing in that universe.

In terms of a film, there’s not really been any significant sustained interest in the television or filmic media to date. There have been some nibbles of interest occasionally, but things just don’t go anywhere, and I’m completely hardened to it. The reason I’m a science fiction prose writer is because I want to write prose science fiction, and if being involved in science fiction moviemaking were a thing that motivated me, I would have tried to become a science fiction moviemaker. It’d be nice if it happened, but it’s not something that keeps me awake at night. But at the moment there’s not really anything going on. There’s a few things bubbling away in the background, but it’s mostly connected to other properties that are not related to the Revelation Space universe. People often say, “Well, they couldn’t film them because there’s no way they could afford the effects budget,” but I think that’s a bit of a red herring, because if you look at something like Doctor Who now—and I accept that Doctor Who is made with a large budget by television standards—but there’s really nothing they can’t show these days using CGI. Now, I have problems with CGI, but it does mean that they can pretty much do any kind of science fiction I think these days on an acceptable budget.

Speaking of Doctor Who, you recently wrote a Doctor Who novel. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Well, I was thrilled when BBC Books approached me and said—via my agent—they said, “Would you be interested in writing a Doctor Who novel?” And I was absolutely jumping out of my chair, because I’d always wanted to be involved in Doctor Who on some level, but I didn’t want to go groveling around asking to do something. They said, “We’re relaunching the idea of classic Doctor Who novels, as in books involving the earlier incarnations of Doctor Who, and you can basically take your pick as to which one you want to do.” There was no question for me that it was going to be John Pertwee, the third doctor—my theory is the Doctor Who you identify with is probably the one that was on television when you were seven, as far as I’m concerned. There was absolutely no question about it, I was going to write a Doctor Who novel with John Pertwee, and I had a lot of fun with it.

It’s a very different process than writing a book in my normal mode as a science fiction writer, because essentially when you start writing a normal science fiction novel absolutely anything is up for grabs. You can kill off any character quite arbitrarily at any point in the narrative. But of course when you’re working with established characters from a television format, you have to, to some extent, accept the limitations that come with that form. But I knew that as I went into it and I didn’t regard that as a problem, I just regarded it as a challenge. And also, thematically, a large part of the book is set on Earth in the 20th century, which I’ve not generally done before in my fiction, and that was interesting. But there’s quite a bit of space operatic stuff in there, there’s lots of stuff about time travel and alien civilizations and ancient super-weapons, that kind of stuff, so I was able to scratch a lot of the itches that I end up scratching in my normal science fiction.

You mentioned Philip K. Dick, and for our panel following this interview we were planning to talk about—since the Total Recall remake just came out—the ways in which Hollywood has adapted Philip K. Dick’s stories. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Yeah, I mean, I love Dick. I’m not particularly well read in the novels, but I’ve read all the short stories, and Dick’s stuff has just soaked into me on a deep level, I think. I love Blade Runner. I love Verhoeven’s film Total Recall, though I mean, I’ve read “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” and it’s got very little to do with the film. But the film is great, I genuinely love Verhoeven’s films, and I was just aghast when I heard that they were remaking it. I thought, what’s the point? I mean, you can either remake a really old film and bring it up to date, or you can remake a crappy film and do better. But the idea of remaking a film that’s still relatively fresh, I think, in people’s memories—I mean, Total Recall is not that old. It’s just completely crackers. The lack of imagination of these people that all they can think about is remaking 20-year-old science fiction properties, it just beggars belief.

Are there any other new or upcoming projects you’d like to mention?

Well, at the moment I’m hard at work on the follow-up to Blue Remembered Earth, which will be called On the Steel Breeze, and this is a book that picks up the threads of the Akinya family. So we’re still in the same universe, we’re still dealing with this powerful African family, but we’re now 150 years on from Blue Remembered Earth, and in fact the scope of the book takes us a lot further into the future. The action within Blue Remembered Earth was confined entirely to the solar system, but at the end of the book there were some narrative hooks in place that would imply that we were going to move beyond the solar system into interstellar space, and that’s what I grapple with in the sequel, On the Steel Breeze. It’s about interstellar colonization, again, told from, I hope, a relatively sober, realistic perspective. So there’s interstellar travel but it’s very slow, it takes hundreds of years to get anywhere, and I hope that I can develop some of the themes that were in Blue Remembered Earth—ideas about artificial intelligence, the elephants come into this book, but in a way that I hope is surprising, and again, we see a little bit more of the Akinya family, but a generation later. I’m still enjoying it, and I hope that some of that enthusiasm communicates to the reader.

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast. It is hosted by:

John Joseph Adams, in addition to serving as publisher and editor of Lightspeed, is the bestselling editor of many anthologies, such as Epic, Other Worlds Than These, Armored, Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom, Brave New Worlds, Wastelands, The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, By Blood We Live, Federations, The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and The Way of the Wizard. He is a four-time finalist for the Hugo Award and a four-time finalist for the World Fantasy Award. Forthcoming anthologies include The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (2013, Tor), Wastelands 2 (2013, Night Shade), and Robot Uprisings (2013, Doubleday). He is also the editor of Nightmare Magazine and is the co-host of Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. Find him on Twitter @johnjosephadams.

David Barr Kirtley has published fiction in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Lightspeed, Intergalactic Medicine Show, On Spec, and Cicada, and in anthologies such as New Voices in Science Fiction, Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and The Dragon Done It. Recently he’s contributed stories to several of John Joseph Adams’s anthologies, including The Living Dead, The Living Dead 2, and The Way of the Wizard. He’s attended numerous writing workshops, including Clarion, Odyssey, Viable Paradise, James Gunn’s Center for the Study of Science Fiction, and Orson Scott Card’s Writers Bootcamp, and he holds an MFA in screenwriting and fiction from the University of Southern California. He also teaches regularly at Alpha, a Pittsburgh-area science fiction workshop for young writers. He lives in New York.

Artist Gallery: Erik Schumacher

Artist Spotlight: Erik Schumacher
Robyn Lupo

What would you say your biggest influences are in your art?

Music and movies inspire me most of all. Matte painting is my favorite genre at the moment, so I really enjoy the epic scenery in films, as I hope to be able to create works like that myself one day. I like reading books, so I draw a lot of inspiration from them as well.

How does an illustration come to you? Do you just get random ideas, see something and riff on it, etc.?

Usually the ideas come to my head randomly. There are fairly creative phases, but also months of total lack of inspiration. Unfortunately, I can’t force it. That’s not a big problem though, as it’s just a hobby of mine. Besides, it distracts too much from my studies for university. :)

What medium do you prefer to work in?

I’m definitely all for digital art, as most of my work is based on photo-manipulation. To be able to mix different media and images in Photoshop is very convenient, as well as the ability to simply save and erase. Of course I enjoy all kinds of art forms, though. At least looking at them.

How did you start out as an artist?

I had an internship with a design agency many years ago. That’s where I first got to know Photoshop. From there, I registered with different art sites, for instance deviantart.com. The interaction with and critique from other artists really motivated me to keep going and improve my Photoshop skills.

Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.

Searching for Slave Leia
Sandra McDonald

A slip, slide, falling through icy coldness, white noise like TV static. A breeze of hot buttery popcorn. Giddy laughter, sweaty bodies, fanfare music over the intercom, and what’s this? A ten-foot-wide movie poster of young, pale, undernourished Carrie Fisher, posed seductively in a gold metal bikini with a collar and chain around her neck.

You’d bet she didn’t have her period the day they took that picture. No Kotex pad safety-pinned to her underwear, no feeling bloated and yucky down there. You wish you’d taken more aspirin this morning. You hope you don’t stain your shorts in front of the hundreds of fangeeks jammed in the lobby of the Charles Cinema here in the middle of Boston. This is 1983, that is Slave Leia, and through some supernatural stroke of luck you have become a time traveler, because last you checked it was 2013 and you were perimenopausal and you were having a fight with Trevor, again, on the set of your latest series.

Your best friend Karen sloshes her soda against your arm and says, “Shit, hell, sorry!”

You look down at your white knee socks, cut-off shorts, and baby blue Empire Strikes Back t-shirt. It’s amazing the fashion police ever let you out of your house. Karen’s wearing a yellow Han Solo shirt and white shorts and wooden sandals, the kind that are supposed to tone your calves. Her hair is teased up two inches. You have a mullet.

“Sheila?” she asks, face creasing. “You okay?”

“Yes, fine,” you say, because the first rule of suddenly displaced time travelers is to fake it until you figure out what happened. It worked for Scott Bakula in every episode of Quantum Leap except the mental hospital episode—always one of your favorites; speaking of which, there’s an awful possibility: maybe you’re in the psych ward. Goosebumps ripple under your white bra, the one that always chafes your back. After twenty years of working together, Trevor has finally driven you into a complete nervous breakdown.

Behind you, someone argues about whether Biggs is the other hope that Yoda spoke of. Two guys speculate about how Han will be rescued from his carbonite prison. There’s no Facebook or Twitter in 1983, no websites full of Star Wars gossip, no clues except those printed in Starlog magazine. You and Karen both have a crush on Harrison Ford, and you listen to The Empire Strikes Back soundtrack on your turntable every day, and you write Han/Leia fanfic in your high school homeroom every morning, even though you don’t even know what fanfic is yet.

“You look pale,” Karen says. She juggles her soda and popcorn in order to dig into her pocket and produce a bar of brown taffy. “Eat some sugar.”

“I had a root canal last week,” you blurt out, forgetting the play-it-cool-rule. “Temporary crown.”

Karen’s frowny crease deepens. She’s not pretty, not yet, but she will be by the time you graduate high school. She’ll also have lost her virginity to John Marino in his car at Wonderland Race Track. You’ll be jealous but not for long, because by twenty she’ll have her first baby. You never have kids. You have cats.

“What’s a root canal?” she asks now, all braces and bushy eyebrows and that little dark beauty mark by the corner of her mouth.

Just then the ropes drop at the ticket stand and the noisy crowd surges forward, an ocean wave that’s been seeking dry land for three long years. Return of the Jedi! Return, return! You think, This is what I’m here for? Hardly seems worthwhile. You could be home watching the DVD on your big screen TV. Your cats Crichton and Moya would be curled up in your lap, and you’d be ignoring Trevor’s seventeen hundred messages in your voicemail.

Damn it, Jim, you’re a TV producer, not a time traveler.

“Come on,” Karen insists, dragging you by the sleeve.

Behind you, Slave Leia’s eyes are shrewd but kind. She understands your confusion. After all, she thought she was a hero of the Rebel Forces, a role model for young women who loved science fiction adventure. Then George Lucas took away her clothes, slicked her skin with oil, and chained her to Jabba the Hutt.

The script coordinator is crying. She’s crying because ten minutes ago, Trevor fired her for using gold paper instead of green for the latest script revisions.

“You’re not fired,” you tell her. “I’ll take care of it.”

Using the wrong color paper is a rookie mistake. If you’d caught it first, you’d have yelled at her too, but in that nice, nurturing, constructive-criticism way that people expect from you—the sane one. You respect everyone in the cast and crew, all the way from your B-list star to the assistant who walks his B-list dog and scoops up the soft little B-grade poops. You never scream or stomp your feet. Trevor is the showrunner but acts like a five-year-old child.

“He was really mad,” she says through tears.

“I’m sure it’s just the stress,” you reply, one of the standard excuses you give for Trevor, depending on the situation and audience. Others include: he isn’t feeling well, it’s the blood pressure medication, his wife just left him, his Narcotics Anonymous sponsor just died, it’s the narcissism. It’s who Trevor is. Like one of those big rolling machines that flatten asphalt on resurfaced freeways, a big diesel-belching monstrosity with a stinky cigar permanently jammed into the side of its mouth.

The assistant director pops her head in, says, “Sheila, Landon is looking for you,” and if the fact she’s size 2 and has shiny hair isn’t enough to hate her, you can see she still has that dreamy look in her eyes. It says I’m working on a network TV show and soon I will rule Hollywood. You’ll be secretly happy on the day that optimism is ripped out of her soul. How nasty is that? Your ex-friend Lena gave you this book once, about how women are cruel to one another—not just cruel but inhumane—and you’re sure it was supposed to be a pointed message because you’d fired her just a month earlier. Not for gold paper or green paper—not for being young and pretty (she wasn’t)—but because Trevor decided he hated her.

You’ve given Trevor the same book every Christmas for as long as you’ve known him: Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun. He always laughs. He’s the Attila who makes money; he’s the Attila who always has something on TV; he’s the Attila you’ve never had enough smarts or strength to leave.

“Where is Landon looking for me?” you ask the AD. “I’m right here.”

She smiles, all perfect white teeth. “In his dressing room.”

For a special snowflake who can’t really act, Landon Oaks can put the drama in even the most minor inconvenience: not the right bottled water, his dressing room’s too small, his make-up girl snaps her gum. But Trevor didn’t cast him for his temperament. He’s here because he looks good in a tight uniform, and he has high Q score thanks to his last show on the CW, and once in a while, like a comet blazing across the sky, he can pull off a scene that makes you stand up and admire him for more than that chiseled chin and pretty green eyes.

“Should I tell him you’re on the way?” the perky assistant director asks.

“Yes, I’m coming,” you say.

But first you send the script coordinator back to work and phone Steven, your network executive, who’s been calling all morning. He’s a good guy, decent, hard-working, has your back except when maybe he doesn’t. It’s not his fault he’s an aging dinosaur surrounded by his own sleek, hungry competition. The truth is that you trust him more than most women trust their ex-husbands.

“Say something good,” Steven says over your ear piece.

“Something good,” you parrot back, leaving your office for the corridor and the soundstage, along the way dodging assistants and a gaffer swinging a metal pole. Above you, grips are lighting the steampunk-ish bridge of the lost starship Edge of Infinity. Edge of Infinity is also the name of your series. An ethnically diverse crew of pretty twenty-somethings stranded on the other side of the galaxy. After years of Canadian television or direct-to-syndication, Trevor finally landed a big network show. It premieres tomorrow night. It’s the biggest budget you’ve ever had, big gamble for the network; is that a shooting pain in your left arm? Maybe you’ll have a heart attack today.

You say, “Steven, I’ve got more good news than you have messages on your call list. Good news streaming out the wazoo.”

“You only say wazoo when you’re freaking out,” Steven says. “Otherwise you say hoo-haa.”

You step over some cables. “Girls from Boston never say hoo-haa.”

“Maybe it was va-jay-jay,” he says. “How’s the latest script?”

“Awesome.”

“You’re lying.”

“Rewrote it myself until three o’clock this morning,” you tell him, total truth, which explains why your eyeballs ache and your head’s pounding and why you’ve downed two double espressos so far today.

“You’re the best genre writer I know,” he says. Does he mean it as an insult? You have thirty-five script credits to your name on IMDB but none for any show that’s ever won an Emmy. “Get some sleep, Sheila. You can’t do this thing all by yourself.”

“Gotcha,” you say, which is a pretentious way of saying goodbye but it’s your trademark these days, just as Trevor is known for his noxious cigars. On your last series, at the wrap party, the crew got him an expensive humidor. They got you a mug and T-shirt with “Gotcha” in big pink glitter. Thanks a lot.

The mammoth doors of the soundstage have been opened to move in some heavy equipment. Beyond them are the clean, orderly streets of this lot in Studio City. You prefer Bridge Studios, up in Vancouver, where you’ve spent most of your career, but Radford makes you tingle—this is where all of your favorite old shows filmed, like The Wild Wild West and Moonlighting and Will & Grace, and just down the street they currently shoot CSI: NY. All your dreams have come true, more or less.

Hard work is how you get anything, your dad used to say. It’s not rocket science. And then he’d always chuckle, because he was in fact a rocket scientist, how funny.

But what if hard work is killing you? No time to worry about that now. You knock on Landon’s dressing room door.

“Entre!” he calls out, because he thinks he can speak French.

You enter, wincing at the bright light . . .

It’s kind of cool, sitting here with hundreds of people as they watch the movie unfold for the first time. The music in Jabba’s palace is cheesy but that kiss between Han and Leia is everything you’ve been waiting for. You wish you’d had more kisses like that in own your life. That someone in your life looked at you the way they look at each other. Luke’s victory over the Rancor has the crowd cheering, but you’ve always felt bad for the monster. Chained up in a dark pit, forced to do Jabba’s bidding all your life—you can relate.

The seat doesn’t rock or recline. You’re antsy, restless. You wrote three time travel scripts for Forever Viking, Trevor’s show about immortal Norse warriors fighting crime in Vancouver. There’s something important you should be doing here in the past. Surely your mission—there’s always a mission, that’s the A-plot or backbone of the episode—is to do more than revisit the horror of dancing and singing Ewoks.

When you stand up, Karen whispers, “Where are you going?”

You tell her, “Trust me. It’s all downhill once they get to Endor.”

The lobby is cool and spacious now that it’s empty. You remember the way home: Walk to the Tremont Street subway station, ride the Blue Line through the blue-collar neighborhood of East Boston to Beachmont, walk up the hill to your parents’ house overlooking the Atlantic. In this strange world of 1983 young teens can wander at will, untethered by cell phones or helicopter parents. People on the train will have their attention buried in newspapers or books, not tablets or smartphones. Maybe someone will have a tape cassette Walkman. There’s a subway in L.A., but who rides it? No one you know.

You hope you have money in your little vinyl purse. Yes, there’s some shiny quarters, and a few loose dollar bills, and your inhaler, too, because this was the year you got diagnosed with asthma. But when you push open the lobby doors to the sunlit parking lot, Charles Street washes away to a slip, a slide, whiteness.

Now you’re dressed for winter, standing on a curb, your father’s blue 1978 Buick LeSabre idling in front of you. Around you is a rest stop on the westbound side of the Massachusetts Turnpike. The wind smells like pine needles and car exhaust. Your dad is in the passenger seat, looking at a map. He’s letting you drive. This is 1986 and you’re on your way to inspect colleges in upstate New York.

A drop of sleet falls out of the gray sky. The clouds above the pine trees churn with expectation.

You realize you’re not traveling in time at all. This is a different subgenre of drama: the limbo plot. Which means you’re in a coma somewhere, hooked up to machines, suspended between life and death while your soul meets old friends and family and decides whether or not to go into the goddamned light.

You know this must somehow be Trevor’s fault.

You hope someone’s feeding your cats, because limbo plots can take a while.

If you were twenty years younger, you might find Landon Oaks attractive. Dark hair, perfect skin, slim build with a nice ass—okay, forget the younger part, you do find him sexually attractive, but you’d never admit it. To admit is to show weakness. But if you were the type of Hollywood producer who would sexually harass an actor, he’d be your target. When he’s annoyed, the tips of his ears turn bright pink. He’s annoyed now because the newly distributed script revisions (which should have been green paper, not gold), have cut him out of two scenes.

“We had to cut those scenes because Jill called in sick,” you remind him.

“You could shoot just my half,” he says, pouting beautifully. “Do her half tomorrow.”

Which would totally work if you had all the time in the world, and if your lead actress actually shows up tomorrow, and if it wouldn’t put the episode even more over budget. Before you can explain, someone knocks on the door: it’s that AD again, bright smile and chirping headset. She has a beauty mark on her face, in the same place as your old friend Karen. She says, “Landon, the people from People are here.”

He panics and turns to the mirror. “Tell them to wait! I’m not ready!”

You take the opportunity to slip back to your office, where the phone list has grown longer and your assistant, geeky but smart Gay Tom (as opposed to your head writer, Sort-of-Straight Tom), has delivered your noontime frappuccino, along with a veggie wrap and French fries. There’s also a basket of gourmet muffins from one of your old friends at the Writer’s Guild with a good-luck note for tomorrow’s premiere. Gourmet dark chocolate pecan muffins, smelling so delicious they could bottle up and sell just the aroma.

You cram down two muffins and the French fries, everything washed down with frappuccino, and stare at the whiteboard on the wall that outlines the story arc for the first twelve episodes in your own secret shorthand: which characters live, who falls out an airlock, when Landon and Jill will first kiss. To get the female viewers, you’re going to need some kissing.

Around episode eight or nine you’re also going to need a bottle show to save costs. One or two sets, no guest actors. Some situation that keeps the characters trapped or limited so that you don’t have to spend money on anything. When you first landed in Tinseltown, the bottle show came in two varieties: either the clip show, with lots of flashbacks, or the limbo show, with some character trapped in purgatory. St. Elsewhere did a limbo show after shooting Howie Mandel’s character; Tom Selleck did a similar turn on Magnum, P.I. You don’t like limbo episodes. But at least they’re better than the latest contrivance, Groundhog Day episodes, with the same character repeating a time loop over and over.

In Limbo, at least, you get to meet the people you’ve loved and lost.

“Why am I driving?” your father asks. “You said you needed the practice. You begged for practice. You said, ‘Practice, Dad, I need practice.’”

Because you’d be so busy gazing at him that you’d drive off the highway into the trees. Because the Buick is a tank of a car, so big you might as well be driving a bus. Because he died six months after you moved to L.A., but now he’s alive and well—skin flushed with life, thinning brown hair slicked back from the temples, and a long ski-slope of a nose. The upholstery smells like his Pall Malls—regular, no filter—but he doesn’t smoke around you anymore in deference to your asthma. He doesn’t know—neither of you knows—that it’s already too late for his own poor lungs, the tissue blossoming cancerous spots like little spots of mold.

In a time travel episode, you shouldn’t show your hand. In the land of Limbo, the protagonist is required to have emotional revelations.

“This is the last trip we’re ever going to take together,” you tell him, trying to keep your voice from cracking. “You, me, Syracuse, Ithaca, that’s it. Our last road trip.”

He is too busy passing a big rig to look directly at you, but his mouth turns down in a pout. “What, because I farted back at the tollbooth? I told your mother not to make beans last night.”

You touch the wool coat of his sleeve. He’s as solid as the bench seat underneath you and the FM radio playing Olivia Newton-John.

“I know why I’m here, Dad.” Beyond the sleet on the windshield, the forests of Western Massachusetts blur and recede. You wipe your nose with your fingers and wish the heater worked better. More likely, you’re cold with the kind of chill that only rises up from within. “I have to decide.”

“I made you a chart,” he says, because that’s what scientists who work at MIT do. “If you go to Emerson you can live at home, save that dorm money, but Ithaca offered you more of a scholarship and Syracuse has more facilities. Of course, if you picked a sensible major like physics or chemistry or engineering, I’d feel better about your career prospects. Television’s fun, sure, but will it pay the rent?”

“I have to decide,” you repeat. “Life or death.”

“There’s no need to be melodramatic,” he says. “Can you grab my Thermos from the back and pour me some coffee?”

You turn and reach over—in 1986 seatbelts are still optional—and grab the Thermos, which is half-in and half-out of the briefcase he’s been carrying on the train for years. He’s brought a book for the trip—Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Earth.

“I forgot how much you loved Asimov,” you say.

“Love, present tense. Where’s my coffee?” he replies.

“And you hated Star Wars,” you say. “All of them.”

His grip tightens. “No one can make the Kessel run in twelve parsecs.”

He’s been complaining about that since 1977. He was always a hard SF kind of guy: Asimov, Larry Niven, Fred Pohl. You read Star Trek books, and Star Wars books, and those tie-in novels for Space:1999. Your mother chews through Harlequin romances, a dozen each week.

Your father goes on: “A parsec is a distance, not a division of time. If you’re going to tell a science fiction story, you have to get the science right.”

You’ve forgotten what it was like to have a big balloon of affection rising through your lungs, so much damn goodness it hurts. You lean over and kiss the warm dry skin of his cheek. He smiles, pleased.

“Dad, what if I told you that I’m going to spend the rest of my life making science fiction shows that hardly ever get the science right?” you ask.

Sleet comes down harder on the windows and roof. He flicks the wipers to a faster setting. “I would say I’d have to disown you. How about that coffee?”

“He wouldn’t have disowned you,” a voice says, disturbing the gray sleet around your head.

“Huh?” you ask.

“Your dad would not have disowned you.”

You blink at Steven. Who is sitting by the side of your bed. By the side of your hospital bed, how strange is that? Steven, wearing a white shirt and a black tie, looking as fit as ever despite the gray at his temples and the lines around his eyes. Behind him, a window shade filters out sunlight and a TV plays softly up by the ceiling. You’re clad in a beige hospital gown with an IV piercing the back of your hand.

It’s obvious that you and Steven are having some kind of conversation and maybe have been for a while, but you have no idea what you’re talking about.

“I want my dad,” you say. “Where is he?”

Steven leans forward, his eyes soft. “He died a long time ago, remember?”

It’s not fair—it’s too soon! You should be back in his car, watching him drive to the end of Massachusetts with his hands precisely positioned at ten and two on the wheel. He was stolen too early from your life. You never got to show him the first script you got paid for, or the first time your name appeared in the credits, or the set of your own series.

“I want him!” you yell, with strength that surprises even yourself, and now you’re ripping out the IV, you’re trying to sit up, alarms beeping in sudden electronic alarm, and Steven’s trying to catch you before you fall, but it’s too late. A slip, a slide, whiteness—

And you’re gone again, out of the hospital, standing under an ashy gray sky on a warm day, a scraggly palm tree on your right and a small office building on your left. You’re wearing pantyhose and a business suit. Who wears pantyhose in L.A.? College graduates who just moved to the Valley and are desperate for a job and have one suit—just one, navy blue—with which to make a good impression. You know this place. North Fairfax, where all the synagogues and delis used to be before redevelopment moved in with slick steel and glass. Your dad’s not here; no one is. The sidewalks and streets are empty. This is L.A. as a standing set, quiet and still, waiting for the actors and conflict to arrive.

You push open the frosted glass door of the office building and there she is, Rachel Edelstein, with her big blonde wig and rhinestone eyeglasses, seventy years old and a face like an old horse saddle. The Rolodex on her desk is crammed with cards from forty years of working in this town, she and her husband Robert, but all he’s good for is sitting in front of the TV these days, and she’s never going to stop until they shove her in a coffin and nail it shut.

“Shayna!” she exclaims, her gaze locked on the bright blue IBM Selectric typewriter in front of her. She types with two fingers. The machine clicks and hums. “You made it!”

You don’t know why she calls you Shayna, or Shayna Maidel, or sometimes Shayna Sheila—you think it’s a Jewish thing. You grew up Catholic. At least the set decorator has done well here. The typewriter is the same one you took your typing test on. On another desk is a dictaphone, and some sample files to alphabetize. Rachel never sent out a girl without making sure she could type, transcribe, and file. The walls are crammed with autographed photos from TV and movie stars from the dawn of celluloid, and maps of how to get to Paramount, how to get to Radford, how to get to Universal. The ashtray at Rachel’s elbow is filled with Camel butts, and beyond the ashtray is a can of Pepsi Free.

“I’m looking for my dad,” you say.

“Wrong office,” she says. “Besides, you’ve got more important things to worry about. This job, this man, what are you letting him do to you? Did I teach you to let these Hollywood assholes walk all over you? I always said, do what you have to do, but don’t let them break your spine.”

You steady yourself against a battered green filing cabinet and kick off your shoes. In your Limbo, you get to lose the heels. “My spine’s fine.”

Rachel pecks at the keys with her bright fed fingernails. “Your spine connects to your ribs and your ribs protect your heart. But look what you’ve done to your poor, poor heart!”

The frosted door behind you creaks open again. Fairfax Avenue dissolves into Stage 11 and the engine room of the Edge of Infinity: ducts and vents and big pipes made of silver cardboard. Your dad would hate it. Landon Oaks is in his chair, reading gold script pages while the director, Mario Azzopardi, peers through the camera lens. Production assistants hurry around, fixing up the last minute details. Some people find it tedious, all the long minutes spent preparing for a scene, but you grew up doing high school theater and the thrill, the buzz, still makes you smile. A set is an invitation to the imagination. In the distance are the walls and windows of the production offices, but there’s no joy there—only the sounds of arguing, of Trevor yelling.

“I fired her!” he’s shouting. “You don’t get to reverse me!”

A door opens and your perimenopausal self emerges, thirty pounds heavier, your hair gone frizzy, good Lord you need a better bra, why did you put on that gray blouse? It makes you look like Jabba the Hutt.

Trevor dogs your steps, waving around his big fat cigar. He knows he’s not supposed to smoke on the set. Fire laws, health ordinances—this is not 1983—and worst of all he knows you have asthma.

“Don’t walk away from me!” he yells, all red-faced fury now, and for such a small, trim, pale guy he really does know how to project his voice into Christian Bale-levels of ape-shitness. “When I fire someone they stay fired! I’m not shitting around!”

Movement at the corner of your eye as Rachel Edelstein shakes her head in dismay. “I should never have sent you on that job,” she says.

The assignment where you met Trevor, she means. You worked for her for five years, off and on, between stints as a production assistant and waitress, every free moment spent typing scripts in your hot little studio apartment. She would phone your Motorola pager and dispatch you to the Writer’s Guild, to Television City, to Disney Studios. Once, for three months, you answered Dustin Hoffman’s phone and walked his dog. Then one day she sent you to a little tiny production office in Burbank, some lunatic producer who liked shows about vampires, and little did you know he was the devil in disguise.

Devil or not, he taught you how to break a script down into beats, how to write arcs and cliffhangers, how to survive crazy actors and insecure writers and lunatic directors.

“I learned more from him in six weeks than I learned in four years of college,” you say to Rachel.

“You taught yourself.” Rachel waves her hand. “But look at the cost!”

Perimenopausal you stops at the craft services table. But you’re not reaching for a snack. You’re groping out for the edge of the table to steady yourself. Your face is as gray as your blouse. Your eyes bulge. Trevor keeps yelling, how dare you unfire someone, and Landon Oaks looks over with his pretty green eyes, and Mario the director says, “Sheila, are you—?” but it’s too late, you’re already collapsing gracelessly, first one knee thwacking into the cement floor, then pitching sideways—

Your younger self turns to Rachel. She is shaking her head sadly. The beauty mark by her mouth jiggles at the edge of her cheek.

And you realize you were wrong again. This never was a limbo story. Rachel Edelstein died two years ago in a nursing home in Reseda. You were in Vancouver and couldn’t make it to the funeral, but you sent flowers.

“I know what you are,” you say.

“Hmmm?” she asks, eyes bright behind her red rhinestone glasses.

“But I don’t believe in fairy godmothers,” you add. “They’re too cliché. No one writes them anymore.”

“Silly Shayna,” she says fondly. “I’m not your fairy godmother. I’m your guardian angel. That’s a different story arc altogether.”

Over on the floor, people are gathered around your body. Someone is yelling for 911. Trevor has gone utterly silent, which is a first in his entire life, and one of the production assistants is taking pictures with his iPhone (you make a note to fire him if you survive).

“And so young,” Rachel says sadly. “Did you know that heart disease kills more women your age than anything else?”

“I’m not ready to die,” you tell her.

“No one ever is, Shayna.”

Stage 11 starts to dissolve. You feel yourself floating upward, rising toward the lights and rafters. There’s a road up there, winding through distant trees, your father at the wheel of a car that never needs fuel. He’s driving with Isaac Asimov now. You reach down for Rachel, try to grab her like an anchor, but she’s gone back to her desk and phone and deals, and there’s only your big limp body, your limbs askew, someone pounding on your chest, and oh, look—Landon Oaks is blowing air into your mouth. He grew up in Tarzana and spent three summers as lifeguard in Malibu before a casting agent found him.

If you survive this, you’ll owe him a big basket of gourmet muffins.

Of course you survive.

Your hospital room fills up with flowers, balloons, chocolate-covered fruit arranged like flowers, get-well cards, and all manner of gifts. Steven takes some to your apartment for you when the counters get too crowded. Best of all are the reviews and ratings for the premiere of Edge of Infinity: glowing words from Entertainment Weekly, number one in your timeslot in the Nielsen overnights.

“I’m quitting,” you tell Steven.

“What?” he demands. “You can’t!”

“She just said she is,” says Claire, Steven’s new wife, as she bustles in with a carryout tray of juice smoothies from that trendy new spot on Ventura near Woodman. Claire used to be Steven’s assistant. She’s not the brightest bulb in the Klieg lights of Hollywood but she makes him happy. Besides, she loves cats, and she’s been feeding yours while you’re hospitalized. “Did you know that Meg Ryan is in the room down the hall? Some kind of allergic reaction to her Botox.”

Steven doesn’t care about Meg Ryan. He cares about his hit new show. “Sheila, you can’t bail now! After all your work—”

“I can’t work with Trevor anymore,” you tell him. “Doctor’s orders.”

Claire hands over your apple-celery juice. “Good for you.”

“What about the cast and crew?” Steven asks, looking as if he might be next in the heart-attack department. “You’re going to abandon them? Leave them all to Trevor? It would be inhumane.”

The juice is lovely. You miss frappuccinos, of course, but the doctor’s been pretty clear about banning caffeine, dairy, and fats in your diet. You’re going to have start going to the gym. You’re going to have to take care of yourself. Step one in the self-help plan? No more Trevor.

“Well,” you say thoughtfully, “I guess the network will have to fire him and make me the showrunner instead.”

Claire slurps from a carrot-apple juice. “They did it to Frank Darabont on The Walking Dead.”

Wrong network, but the principle’s the same.

“I need to go breathe into a paper bag,” Steven says.

Of course nothing is easy. Some slick lawyers will earn hefty fees; Trevor will throw a temper tantrum that gets him kicked off the lot; TMZ will air all the juicy rumors. But in the end you’ll be in charge of Edge of Infinity, which will go on to air for seven years and win three People’s Choice awards, though never an Emmy. Trevor will go back to Vancouver. He’ll make another show about Vikings.

One last scene: they call it the episode tag. On the day you get discharged from the hospital, as a nurse wheels you toward the elevator, you see a visitor heading for Meg Ryan’s room. It takes a minute for you to recognize her. She’s not as slim as she used to be, not as young, but who is? She’s a successful novelist and screenwriter. She still has the same wise look in her eyes, decades of hard-won knowledge that began with a movie about a princess and an empire.

“Aren’t you in charge of Edge of Infinity?” she asks, stopping, her arms full of yellow flowers.

You ask, “Aren’t you Carrie Fisher?”

“I loved the premiere,” she says with a quicksilver smile. “We should do lunch.”

This is Hollywood, after all. Any dream can come true if you dream it hard enough.

© 2012 Sandra McDonald.

Four of Sandra McDonald’s stories have been noted on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and her collection Diana Comet and Other Impossible Stories was a Booklist Editor’s Choice and ALA Over the Rainbow book. She is the author of The Outback Stars series of SF adventures, the Fisher Key mysteries for GLBTQ young adults, and stories that have appeared in Asimov’s, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, Beyond Binary, and War and Space: Recent Combat, as well other magazines and anthologies. Once upon a time she was a Hollywood assistant who worked at CBS Television and Disney Studios. Visit her at sandramcdonald.com.

Ace 167
Eleanor Arnason

It was after I lost my job as the manager of a traveling troupe of precision unicyclists that I met Ace 167. I was down and out in a bar in Venusport, my last credit gone to buy cheap Venusian wine. The jukebox was playing an old, tinny-sounding Beatles tune and on the jukebox screen tiny grey figures cavorted: the Beatles in their prime, back in the magic 1960s. Gone, all gone, I thought. The moving finger writes and having writ moves on, nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. I drank the last of my wine, set down the glass and turned around, just in time to see Ace come in.

His clothes were ragged and his feet were bare. He had long red hair, pulled back in a ponytail. His mustache was red too, a big, bristly handlebar. “167” was tattooed on his forehead: three big numbers, as bright blue as his eyes.

“Out,” the bartender said.

Ace stopped and scratched his nose. “Don’t be primitive, mister.”

“Out.”

Ace shrugged, turned and went outside. His shirt was torn across the back, so I could see a couple of the gill slits, slanting down on either side of his spine. When they’re shut, gills don’t bother me. But I’ve seen gillies underwater with their red gill slits open. My ancestors were Vikings, and one of the nastier things they did was make blood eagles. To make a blood eagle, you take a man and cut into his back on both sides of his spine, going right through the ribs. Then you pull his lungs out through the cuts and spread them across his back. That’s a blood eagle. You do this while the man is alive, and it makes the Allfather Odin happy. Whenever I saw open gills, I thought of the blood eagle and got a sick feeling in my gut. But, as I said, the gills didn’t bother me when they were shut.

“’Nother?” the bartender asked me.

I shook my head, slid down the bar stool, and followed Ace out. It was foggy. The streetlights were dim white areas of luminescence floating in darkness. There were docks across the street. I could hear ropes creaking and water slapping against the sides of the boats.

“You got any money, lady?”

I jerked away from the sound. The guy behind me laughed. “I’m begging, not robbing.”

I turned around. It was Ace, of course. I said, “I’m broke.”

“My luck. The rest of them in there look like they wouldn’t give their grandma burying money.”

I nodded and started back toward my hotel. I figured I had two or three more days before they asked me for money. A foghorn was honking somewhere out in the harbor. Ace stayed beside me.

“Isn’t there any work here?” I asked.

“Yeah. Underwater. You want to know something funny? I don’t like it down there. It’s too cold, too dark, and too full of things I don’t want to meet. Ain’t that a laugh?”

I stopped. We were under a streetlight, so I could see him. “I thought it was supposed to be wonderful down there.”

Ace shook his head. “It’s a job, lady. Only you got fish nibbling on your toes while you work. Tasting you out, sort of.”

“You can’t get work up here?”

“You crazy? Take a job away from a regular person and give it to a gillie?”

We started walking again. The air was cold and wet. I put my hands in my jacket pockets, then looked over at Ace. He had his arms folded and his shoulders hunched against the cold. “Look,” I said. “I don’t have any money. I lost my job. But I have an extra jacket. Why don’t you take this one?”

After a moment, Ace said, “Okay. I will. Thanks.”

I took the jacket off and gave it to him. He put it on, then laughed. “You know what I’m going to do with it, lady?”

“Pawn it.”

“Yeah. Thanks again.”

We parted then. I went back to my hotel and found a message from a friend on Tanit Island who was putting together a trained fish act. She’d sent money, enough so I could pay my hotel bill and buy a hydroplane ticket. I left Venusport the next morning.

As was to be expected, the fish act was a disaster. We ended up selling it to a fish market in Ishtar. They put it in a tank in front, so the customers would have something to watch while they waited for service. My friend got a job in the market working as a counter woman. She said she’d gotten used to being around fish. Me, I found a hydroplane that needed a bartender and worked my way back to Venusport.

That town was the same as ever, cold and wet and foggy, full of steep hills and rickety prefab buildings. I got another job as a bartender in a bar by the docks, where the dock workers and the artists came. After a while, I was managing a sculptor on the side, also a couple of dock workers who wanted to be singers. One night Ace 167 came into the bar. He stopped at the door, waiting to be told to get out. He was as ragged as before and still barefoot. His mustache had turned into a beard and his hair was short. He looked at me, grinned, and came over.

“What’ll you have?” I asked.

He laid a one-credit piece on the bar. “What’ll that buy?”

“A glass of wine.”

“Okay.”

I got him his wine, then pushed the credit back toward him. “You’re not working yet.”

“I was. Salvage job out in the harbor. Then a guy I knew got stung by a spine worm. Ever seen one of them?”

I nodded. “In the aquarium. It was pretty, I thought.”

“Yeah? You know what the poison does? Paralyzes the respiratory system. So Mad Hat drowned before we could get him to the first-aid station. Me, I thought I’d sooner starve.” He sipped a little wine. “Seeing as you’re buying the wine, would this credit buy a piece of pizza?”

I nodded and told the cook to heat up a cheese-and-tomato. “You work salvage. Does that mean you can handle a torch?”

“Un-huh.” He finished his wine and I refilled the glass. “Thanks.”

“I know a sculptor who’s building something big. He might need help.”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll give you his name.”

Ace nodded and the cook brought out the pizza. I went down the bar to draw beers for a couple of dock workers. Later on, I gave Ace the sculptor’s name and my name too. He said, “Thanks. How come you’re doing all this?”

I shrugged, which was a lie in gesture. I knew all right and Ace probably knew too. I did it for his bright blue eyes and his thick red hair that had gold highlights in it.

“Anyway, thanks.” He held out his hand and I shook it. “I guess I should introduce myself. I’m Ace.”

“Glad to meet you,” I said.

He left and I didn’t see him for a while. My singing dock workers got a recording contract right after that. I quit my job and told the sculptor I was going to be too busy to handle his business, and the three of us lit out for Isis, which was where the recording company was.

Now that was a city! There were almost as many canals as streets. Their still, green water reflected flowering trees and white, graceful bridges. At the city’s center were the water gardens and, all around them, skyscrapers made of blue glass. In the suburbs the many-domed houses of the rich shone like clusters of pearls. On an island in Isis Bay was the famous Night Market, where the nocturnal Venusians came to sell their wares: kilts made of strings of shells, baskets woven out of feathers, and other bits of useless esoterica. I went out there once. The Venusians came in after nightfall, their long canoes emerging from the darkness into the dim light of the torches along the shore. To the sound of flutes and drums, they brought the canoes in and beached them. Then they set out their kilts and baskets, their god-symbols made of flowers tied together, their tiny cages with brightly-colored bugs inside them. And then they waited, squatting in the midst of their goods, their huge eyes blinking rapidly, till the tourists moved in to buy. The whole spectacle made me sick to my stomach. I didn’t know why.

I was in Isis four months. My singing dock workers made several recordings, which nobody liked. Finally they decided to go back to the docks, and I decided to go back to Venusport. As soon as I got there, I got another job as a bartender. Then I looked up the sculptor I’d sent Ace to.

He worked and lived in a warehouse by the docks. At the moment, the warehouse was full of “The Triumph of Steam,” an enormous construction consisting of a lot of steam engines all welded together. He’d had a hell of time building it, since there weren’t any steam engines or steam-engine builders on the planet. He insisted that all the steam engines had to work.

When I got to his place he was drinking wine, sitting on his bed, which was in one corner of the warehouse, next to a bright yellow dresser with a blowtorch on top of it. “You back?”

“Un-huh.” I waved at the construction. “Is it done?”

He nodded. “Now what do I do?”

“Sell it. What else. Where’s Ace 167?”

“The gillie? I fired him.”

“Why?” He handed me the wine. I drank some and handed the bottle back.

“He made me nervous. How could I work with him flapping his gills at me?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. They never open their gills above water. I’m not sure they can.”

“He still made me nervous. I couldn’t stop thinking about those gills. Hey, I need someone to help me sell this.”

“I’ll see what I can do. Okay?” I left the sculptor and went back to my bar.

I couldn’t sell the construction, but I can’t say I tried too hard. I was getting interested in bartending. The place where I worked was quiet, with the same customers every night. They came in and watched the 3-D, played pool on the new table that changed its surface at thirty-second intervals, and drank. The best thing was, I didn’t have to push the product. People came in and bought it without a word of encouragement.

The next time I heard anything about Ace was on the evening news. There was an implosion in a sea lab they were building at the edge of the continental shelf. Three gillies were caught inside when the dome collapsed. One of them was Ace 167. Bodies on stretchers were being carried off a boat. I hadn’t been listening till I heard Ace’s name. Was he still alive?

“Harry,” I said to the boss. “I’m suddenly sick. See you tomorrow.”

Harry opened his mouth, but I was gone before he could say anything. I caught the monorail to Bayside, where the gillies lived. Down the hill the car slid, then swung out over the shoddily built apartment complexes of Bayside. It was crazy, I thought, looking through the window at the rows of identical buildings and the dimly lit streets. It cost a fortune to make a person into a gillie. The first modifications were genetic and took place before conception, when there wasn’t a person yet, only an egg and sperm under some kind of amazing microscope. Later on, there usually had to be surgical corrections. The host-mother had to be paid, and there was all that special training, ten or fifteen years of it. Gillies were terribly expensive. So why were they housed in tenements? It was like having the Kohinoor diamond set in dung.

But what sane person can understand modern economics? The car came to a stop next to the white, bright gillie hospital, and I got off. What am I doing here? I wondered as I went down the stairs from the station and in through the hospital’s front entrance. The waiting room was empty. The lady at the information desk looked at me, saw my brow, which was as blank as hers, and looked surprised.

“Where do I find out about the gillies who were hurt in the sea-lab implosion?”

“Are you are reporter?”

“No.”

“Then I’m afraid that information is confidential.”

“Look, one of them is a friend of mine. I want to know if he’s still alive.”

She stared at me, frowning. I knew what she was thinking. Friends with a gillie? For shame. She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

Like hell you are, I thought. May your forehead sprout warts shaped like numbers, may gills open in your back, may you become what you most dislike.

“Thanks,” I said and smiled and left.

There was a bar down the street from the hospital, its sign flashing WINE, Beer, WINE, Beer. I walked toward it. The night was cold and misty. The wet air had a harbor stink. Foghorns were blaring and honking out in the bay. Into the bar I went, braving all the gillies’ stares, the black, white, brown faces all marked with blue numbers, all turned toward me.

I ordered a beer from the bartender, who was a regular human being. Gillies didn’t work air jobs, even in their own section of town.

The bartender shook his head. “Please leave, miz.”

Here goes, I thought and turned around to face all those gillies. “There’s a friend of mine in your hospital. They won’t tell me anything about him. Could one of you find out how he is?”

“What’s his name?” a black gillie woman asked.

“Ace One Sixty-seven.”

A gillie man, who was brown-skinned and black-haired and looked Mexican, said, “He’s alive. He was lucky. Taki died and Slim ain’t in good health. Nothing happened to Ace except he lost an arm.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks.” I started for the door.

“Hey, lady,” the black woman said.

I stopped. “Yes.”

“How come you got gillie friends?”

“De gustibus non est disputandum,” I answered. “Or do I mean honi soit qui mal y pense?” I got out of there.

The next day I asked Harry to switch me to the day shift. He grumbled a lot and said the daytime bartender wouldn’t like it. But I’d already talked to her, and she’d agreed to trade shifts till my friend was out of the hospital. So Harry had to give in. After work, I went down to the hospital. Ace was allowed no visitors, they said. I came back the next day and the day after. Finally, after four days, they let me see him. His face was white as a fish’s belly, and he had dark blue bags under his bright blue eyes. He’d been clean-shaven several days before, but now his beard was beginning a comeback. His red-gold hair was long again. Tubes went from bottles into him. His right arm was half as long as it used to be and all wrapped up in white bandages.

“Hey, lady,” he said.

“How’re you doing, Ace?”

“How does it look?”

“It looks like you’re sick. I’ll bring flowers the next time I come. I brought them a couple of times, but they died in the waiting room.” I sat down. “I’m sorry about the arm.”

“They’ll grow me another one. I can collect workers’ comp till it’s ready to graft, and I won’t have to work underwater.”

“An aspect I hadn’t considered,” I said.

“You don’t know what it’s like down there. If you did, you’d’ve considered. Those walls started buckling, and I thought, this is it. You know, there’s no big religion that’s figured out how to fit in gillies. Suppose we become angels. Where do they attach the wings? On top of our gills? If they do that, will we still be able to breathe underwater? Can gillies fly underwater in the afterlife?”

I laughed and the security guard came in to tell me time was up.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” I said.

“Okay.” Ace shut his eyes. He really looked sick. I tried to imagine what it was like, working way down where the water was cold and dark, and the pressure could push a wall in on top of you. Thank god I’m not a gillie, I thought, and went home.

The next day at work, a guy came in who wanted me to help him organize a Venusian ethnic festival. The idea was to get together a bunch of the poor lunks, who’d hop around in their shell kilts and wave feather staffs and tell tourists they were propitiating some native sex god.

I pointed out that as far as I knew, the Venusians did not have any sex gods.

“They must have. This is Venus, the planet of sex.”

I’d read up on Venusian religion in National Geographic, and I could’ve told him that the Venusian gods, if gods was the right word, were not beings but levels of spiritual power. When the Venusians said a sorcerer had become such-and-such a god, they meant he’d reached the power level that had that god’s name on it. It wasn’t only sorcerers who gained power and became gods. Trees, rocks, flowers, fish, bugs, and even Earth people could too. I didn’t think this guy would appreciate my lecture, so I told him I wasn’t interested in his ethnic festival. He left, and I went back to selling wine.

That evening I brought Ace a bunch of crimson trumpets, a bright red lily-like flower native to Venus. They reminded me of Isis. They grew in the water gardens there, blossoming so profusely that the pools were red from side to side. Ace had gotten a shave and looked a little better than he had the day before. He watched while I stuck the flowers in a vase. “I like ’em.”

“Good.” I fiddled with the flowers for a while, trying to make them look as if they’d been arranged, then gave up and sat down. We didn’t know each other very well, so we talked about current events. There’s no safer subject than a flood in China or the discovery of corruption in city government. Hardly anybody is in favor of floods or corruption. The security guard came around before we ran out of noncontroversial disasters, and I went home.

I went to the hospital every night till Ace was released. He told me about working underwater, and I told him about bartending and promoting. Then we talked about our childhoods—his in a Venus Company crèche in Ceylon, mine in Windsor, Ontario, across the river from the ruins of Detroit. Finally, we got onto the meaning of life. Neither of us knew what it was.

I have confused memories of that period of my life: the white hospital bed, the rows of fake bottles behind my bar, flowers, girders going up on an undersea building site, Ace’s face and half-gone arm, sea thorns and serpent fish, the mechanical pool table—its top green as water, moving up and down like waves.

Finally the hospital let Ace go. We exchanged com numbers and promised to call each other up. But we didn’t. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t. It was too hard for us to figure out how to get along outside the hospital. Our lives were too different. All we had going for us was an irrational affection.

So I went back to working nights at the bar. After a month or two or three, my friend the fish trainer showed up. She’d started feeling guilty, working at the fish market. All those rows of dead fish had seemed to reproach and accuse. “There’s more to fish than edibility,” she said. “I’m going to prove it. I’m putting together another fish act.”

Somehow I ended up agreeing to manage the act. This time we went out of business in Inanna. We let the fish go in the sea. My friend borrowed some money and went back to Tanit Island. I got a job in a curio store, selling little animals made out of seashells and 3-D panoramas of the famous Inanna Heights where, legend said, the Venusians had sacrificed young maidens to the goddess of procreation—or was it chastity? Needless to say, the legend was not Venusian.

One day I looked up from a pink shell elephant and saw Ace out in the street, staring in the store window. For the first time since I’d met him, he was well-dressed, his white shirt shimmering like a pearl, his dark green pants covered with embroidery. He had a new right arm and Brigham Young beard. I got out into the street as quickly as I could. “Ace.”

“Hey, lady.” He grinned. “What are you doing in that dump?”

“Working.”

“Yeah? So am I. On the mining complex they’re building out in the Narrows.”

“That isn’t like you.”

He shrugged. “The workers’ comp stopped when I got the arm. Listen, I got plenty of money, and there’s a restaurant down in the gillie district that’ll serve both of us, or else get broken up. I’ll buy you dinner.”

I said okay and went back to sell someone a set of monkey musicians made of pale blue shells. At six, Ace came back and we went to Nathan’s, a gillie dive on the waterfront. The jukebox was full of recordings of gospel greats from the late twentieth century. Ace put in money and played “Take Me in the Lifeboat” by the Transcendent Nightingales. The jukebox screen lit up and showed three women in glittering green dresses, singing and dancing in front of a golden wall. We sat down at a window table. Outside were the dark waters of Inanna Inlet. On the other side, the lights of North Inanna shone and, beyond them, was the Heights. The weather engineers had been working for a quarter of a century and at long last the weather was changing: the ever-present clouds were beginning to break apart. Once in a while we could see the sun or a couple of stars. Tonight, Earth was visible, a bright blue-white point of light blazing above the Heights. We ordered drinks and Ace said, “You staying here?”

I shook my head. “I’m going back to Venusport as soon as I have the money and find a nice, quiet bar in need of a nice, quiet bartender. How about you?”

“This job’s going to last a year. I figure I’ll try to stick it out and save all the money I can. Next time I’m out of work, I want something in the bank. I’m getting tired of poverty. It’s okay when you’re young, but I’m starting to feel old.” He grinned. “Of course, I say that now. Two, three months, and I’ll probably think there’s nothing worse than working.”

The drinks came, and we ordered serpent-fish stew, then ice cream flavored with the fruit of the nettle tree, coffee, and Venusian brandy. After dinner we walked along the wharf. The waves sloshed around the pilings below us, and a boat came up the inlet, a big yacht, aglitter with light. The air smelled of seaweed and fish. There were streetlights shining here and there. I looked at Ace’s face. He was right, he was getting old. I could see lines around his mouth and eyes. Soon that magnificent red hair would start fading. Well, I was getting old too. And what did either of us have to show for all that time except wrinkles? The world is too much with us, I thought. Late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: little we see in nature that is ours; we have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

I’d forgotten the next few lines, but I remembered, looking out at the dark inlet and the light shining on the other side, how the poem ended:

—Great God! I’d sooner be

A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.

© 1974 Eleanor Arnason.

Originally published in Orbit 15, edited by Damon Knight.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Eleanor Arnason has published six novels and thirty plus works of short fiction. Her novel A Woman of the Iron People won the Tiptree and Mythopoeic Awards. Her story “Dapple” won the Spectrum Award. She has been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Her most recent books are Tomb of the Fathers, a short novel from Aqueduct Press, and Mammoths of the Great Plains, a chapbook from PM Press. Both came out in 2010. Eleanor spent most of her adult life working in offices, ending finally as a nonprofit accountant, because she could not find work as a space cadet. She is now retired and writing full time. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota.

A Well-Adjusted Man
Tom Crosshill

On September 3, 2045, Jim Turner shot dead an innocent girl and went home to his family a well-adjusted man.

It was supposed to be a simple escapee bust, out in the projects. Intel said three hostiles in the apartment, armed and volatile, on the run from Louisiana Debtors. So they rammed the door and went in, two other guys and Jim.

Hands cold, heart racing, every sense adrenalized—same as always.

A living room, dark except for a TV blaring old reggaeton videos. The stench of mold and pizza.

Once through the door, Jim swung to the right.

Gunfire erupted behind him, bright, deafening.

Jim kept his eyes ahead. Standard procedure—trust your team, hold your sector. Even if there’s nothing in your sector except the doorway to a lightless kitchen.

The guns fell silent.

“Two down,” Mark said in Jim’s cochlear, clipped, short.

One more, Jim thought.

A dark shape charged him, out of the kitchen.

No time for using sights. Jim pointed. Jim shot.

His M9 kicked. He kept it steady, sent a tight grouping into the assailant’s torso.

Three nine millimeter hollow-points entered the chest of Cynthia Lawson, seventeen years old. Inside her body they expanded, dumped kinetic energy efficiently—ripped apart her lungs, sent a shard into her heart. A glass of hot chocolate slipped from her grip and shattered on the wooden floor.

It took Cynthia two minutes to die. Jim stroked her hair for those two minutes. He told her he was sorry.

“You made the right call,” said Mark, on the ride back to the station.

“You couldn’t have known they had family around,” said Billy.

“State will approve,” said Mark.

Jim agreed. But that didn’t matter. He had the gargle of Cynthia’s breath in his ears. He had the scent of hot chocolate in his nostrils.

At the station, they sent him to the replay room. He put on the helmet, hooked up his ports. Wave generators blasted his synapses, sent a tempest through his hippocampus and subiculum, wiping near term memory.

Everything except adrenalized record, of course. It was no easy thing, erasing stress-formed triggers. For that he went under.

Jim stood outside that apartment door, in the projects. His heart raced, his breath came quick.

They broke down the door and poured inside. Jim turned right, to his sector. Behind him, Mark and Billy lit up their attackers—bang, bang, bang. Jim stared at the kitchen door and clutched the butt of his M9.

The gunfight ended.

“Two down,” Mark told him.

A dark shape charged from the kitchen.

Jim snapped up his firearm. Squeezed the trigger halfway. Hesitated.

Cynthia Lawson crashed into him. Strong arms wrapped around him. “Thank God you’re here,” she cried, her voice soft and clear. “I was so scared!”

A glass of hot chocolate slipped from her hands. It crashed to the floor, sweetened the air with its scent.

Jim’s brain recognized that scent. Adrenaline-activated pathways fired up, filled him with dread.

But there was no reason for dread. He told Cynthia everything would be okay—and it was.

It took two minutes for Jim to change. Two minutes for his mind to discard useless associations and form new ones. For those two minutes, he held Cynthia and stroked her hair.

Adrenaline overwrite complete, Jim woke in peace.

He smiled at the warmth of the afternoon sun in the windows of the replay room. He took off his helmet, unhooked his ports, and left.

In the office outside, Anna Kipp, the department shrink, waited for him. Short straight hair, gray skirt and blouse, she looked every inch the office drone—except for a short-barreled .357 in her shoulder holster. Jim had always wondered who she meant to shoot, here in the middle of the station.

“Drink this, James.” Kipp handed him a mug of tea. “Take a seat.”

Jim sank into the diagnostic armchair. Intelligent fabrics gave beneath him, so soft he usually felt in danger of drowning. Today that didn’t bother him.

“Nice tea,” he said, after a sip.

Kipp sat down behind her desk, steepled her fingers, studied him. Above her head, gentle surf washed a sandy shore on a wall-mounted display. Golden lettering at the bottom of the screen read Federation Enforcement: 57 days without a PTSD incident.

After a while, Kipp tapped the glass surface of her desk with a finger—no doubt bringing up the feed from his chair.

“How did it go today?” she asked him, as every time.

“Fine, under the circumstances,” Jim replied, as every time.

“What do you remember?”

“Not much,” Jim said. Somebody warm pressed close against him. The aroma of . . . cocoa?

“You know what that means,” Kipp said.

Jim nodded. “Bad things happen. In the field, you can’t always fix every problem. In the adrenalized state—”

“—the thinking mind shuts off, and all you’ve got is your experience, your training, and your instincts,” Kipp finished. “Yes, I read the manual.”

“I feel bad when people get hurt,” Jim said. “But it’s the cost of serving the Federation. I’m human. I accept my limitations.”

Kipp watched him for a while. She looked down at her desk, studied something there. “Veracity levels high across the board.”

“Is that a surprise?” Jim asked.

“We’ve never seen results like yours from the replay program,” Kipp said. “The data I’m seeing here . . . on today’s replay, the somnal stimulators barely needed to kick in. Your brain has adapted so well, it performed the adrenal overwrite almost on its own.”

“I’m learning to deal,” Jim said. “That’s a good thing, right?”

“Of course,” Kipp said.

“I love my job,” Jim said. “This is all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

“Is it really,” Kipp said. It didn’t seem a question.

“I joined the Scouts when I was five,” Jim said. “The Spartans when I was twelve.”

Not that he’d had a choice. They’d kicked him out of school—and for what? Breaking a kid’s arm? It had been an accident, a scuffle gone wrong. Principal Bennings had called him a monster.

Sometimes he wished replay went back farther than a day or two.

“Go home, James,” Kipp said. “Rest up.”

She smiled as she said the words. Jim thought the smile a bit cold, but he discounted it. To do otherwise would have been paranoid.

On the way home, Jim stopped at the mall to pick up chicken feed. The lady at the register flinched at the sight of his assault police uniform. She had nothing to fear from him, of course, not as a law-abiding citizen. His smile won her over—they chatted about the weather and her grandkids, and the future of the Federation.

He passed a janitor bot near the exit. It made a clack-clack-clack noise as it rolled across the floor. The sound sent a pleasant shiver up his spine.

Jim didn’t know why. That alone told him everything. He thanked God that he need not remember whatever formed this particular trigger.

Twenty minutes later, Jim pulled onto his wooded property. Before heading to the house, he stopped by the chicken coop. Thirty hens he kept in a wire mesh yard, and three roosters—all Javas, black as oil. The roosters sprinted for the gate as Jim approached, and crowed in boisterous voices. The hens scattered excitedly.

Jim refilled their dishes with the feed he’d bought, then stood outside and watched them for a while. He spent all his days dealing with murderers, delinquents, people useless to society—what Thatcher-Reyes called non-entities. It refreshed him, to see creatures of such simple, efficient purpose instead.

Sometimes he’d take a rooster out for a day, then put it back and watch how it waltzed with the others—one wing dipped, male against male. No doubts, no remorse, just honest aggression.

Eventually, Jim headed to the house. “I’m home,” he called as he came in. The thin, bland aroma of a TV dinner pizza welcomed him—but Sara didn’t.

Curious, he went into the kitchen. Sara stood at the microwave, tall and lean in jeans and a black dress shirt. Her beautiful dark eyes flew to him and locked on hard—but she didn’t smile. “Hello, Jim,” she said.

“What’s the matter, darling?” He stepped toward her. “Something at work? Or—”

“Dinner’s ready.” She turned away from him, pulled the steaming pizza from the microwave, carried it to the table. “Paul’s got something to tell you. Paul!”

They sat down to dinner, the three of them. Jim still in his uniform. His wife with those watchful eyes on him all the time. Paul with the gleam of a trid game shining in his lenses—and fear in the hunch of his fleshy shoulders.

Not much of an athlete, Paul. But he wasn’t made that way. Jim accepted that.

“Turn off the game and tell me,” Jim said to the boy. He bit into a slice of pizza. It was bad pizza.

Paul’s eyes lost their trid shine, went gray. “I’ve got a transgression slip for you to sign,” he said.

“What did you do?” Jim asked.

Paul hesitated. “I punched Matt in the face. He called me buttso, and I lost it.”

So that was it. Jim glanced at Sara. She watched him tautly.

Of course this would get to her. She was a children’s doctor, not the kind of person who understood violence. He loved that about her—but he couldn’t let it change how he treated their son.

Jim returned his gaze to Paul. “That was a mistake,” he said. “But we all lose control sometimes. What happens then depends on your training. We’ll work on that, make sure you do better next time.”

One day, the cost of replay would drop enough and they’d roll it out to the school system. Until then, you had to do things the old way.

“That’s not all,” Paul said, after a pause. “I also failed my math test.”

Jim grew very still. He spoke calmly, evenly. “You knew that test was coming. It wasn’t a pop quiz or anything.”

“Jim—” Sara began.

“Let Paul answer,” he said. “Was it a pop quiz?”

The boy fidgeted. “Not exactly. My teacher—”

“We’re not animals, Paul,” Jim said. “We think. We plan ahead. We make intelligent choices. Haven’t we talked about that?”

“Well . . .”

“What did Thatcher-Reyes say?” Jim asked.

Paul licked his lips. “From everyone according to their nature,” he recited. “To everyone according to their contributions.”

“We’re not in Marxist Canada, where someone takes care of you even if you’re a useless nobody,” Jim said. “We’re a Federation family. That means we work for our living. You got that?”

“I . . .”

Jim got up abruptly, surprising himself. “You got that?”

Paul’s eyes grew wide. He started to his feet, twisted away from the table and lunged for the door—nearly tripping over his chair. His heavy footsteps slammed up the stairs.

Jim wavered in place, unsure whether to follow.

Then Sara was there, by his side, her hand on his shoulder. “Jim,” she said, quiet, insistent. “Jim. Jim.”

He looked at her. At once tension drained from him. How pale she looked, how tired. They must be working her to death at the clinic.

He hugged her. “Why did he have to run off like that?”

“He’s scared,” Sara said, after a moment.

Jim frowned. “It’s not like I’d hurt him. I’ve never hurt him in my life.”

Sara stiffened in his arms. Breathed hard. Said not a word.

A warmth flowed through Jim. Sara must have realized how wounded he felt.

“Paul’s a good boy,” he told her. “He’ll turn around, you’ll see.”

Outside the roosters began to crow. Jim kissed his wife.

She didn’t kiss him back, but he didn’t mind. It wouldn’t have been decent, to mind.

Early the following morning Jim and his team raided an insurgent firearms depot out in the boonies. The whole place stank of WD-40. They took out seven hostiles and crippled an eighth.

Back at the station, Jim sat with Billy outside the replay room, waiting to go in. The operation had gone by the numbers, but that much shooting took its toll.

Jim munched on sticks of garlic bread. Billy held a Mickey D’s coffee in one trembling hand.

“That was a lot of blood,” Billy said.

“Nasty business,” Jim said. “But they had it coming.”

“They did.” After a while, Billy asked, “Do you get dreams sometimes? About the things we do?”

“No,” Jim said.

“Me neither.” Billy stared at the door of the replay room. “Do you think we should get dreams?”

Jim frowned. He’d always known Billy was less than he appeared. For God’s sake, the man kept a gleaming Harley in his yard but never rode the thing. Yet this?

“Why should we get dreams?” Jim asked.

“What about when we screw up?”

“We can only take responsibility for the things we can control,” Jim said. “The work we do, it leaves no time for thought. You just got to flip the switch. And once that switch flips—”

“We’re just animals. Yeah, that’s the Bill of Defenses for you. ‘Only men may be judged, not animals.’” Billy sipped his coffee. “You remember that rapist we picked up last month? Bennington?”

“Yeah,” Jim said. “Sure.”

“We fucked him up good, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Jim said.

“He had it coming, right?”

“Sure he did,” Jim said.

“It’s just this thing,” Billy said. “I remember laying into him, and he just wouldn’t shut up, right? You remember what he kept saying?”

“I don’t remember much.”

“‘I’m sorry,’ the guy said. ‘I couldn’t help myself. I couldn’t help myself, I’m sorry.’” Billy paused. “You remember that?”

“Do you want to go back to the days where everyone got nightmares?” Jim asked. “Is that supposed to be the price for trying to help people?”

“I guess it’s okay for us to forget the bloody things we do,” Billy said. “I mean, this country has been doing that since the very beginning. Bury the dead and build on top.”

Jim looked at Billy evenly. “You saying something about the Federation?”

“No, man.” Billy had his hands in the air. “I just thought, maybe I’m not right for this. I mean, even when I joined the Spartans, that was an accident. I didn’t mean to punch no teacher.”

“It was an accident for me too,” Jim said. “You think I wanted to break someone’s arm?”

“I heard you stabbed someone,” Billy said.

“Jesus!” Jim exclaimed. “The hell’s the matter with you? Where do you get this stuff?”

Billy shut up after that. It was too late. Jim had a headache.

You’re a monster, he heard Principal Bennings in the back of his mind. You ought to be locked up. As if he really had stabbed someone.

Replay helped. In the scenario, the gun traffickers threw down their guns and surrendered to Jim. They apologized—said they were ready to face justice, work for the good of society. It felt good. The sharp smell of WD-40 took on a pleasant edge.

After, Kipp praised him again. His adrenaline rewrite had apparently taken hold almost by itself. Jim felt fine, just fine, as he left her office at lunchtime.

Except then his cochlear rang. It was his bank. After identification protocols, a smooth-voiced rep told him, “I wanted to check about your wire transfer before I release it, Mr. Turner.”

“What wire transfer?” he asked.

“I see a wire of three hundred and seven thousand dollars to an account at Estima Bank, submitted seven minutes ago,” the rep said. “Did you not initiate this transaction?”

A few minutes later Jim dialed Sara. She didn’t pick up.

Jim drove home obeying the speed limit. When someone cut him off at Exit 35, Jim didn’t flip him the finger. He stayed cool.

Everything would be all right. Maybe some emergency came up and Sara needed the money. That’s why she had the access codes, after all.

But why didn’t she call? And what emergency required half their savings to fix?

Once Jim got home, instinct told him to park out of sight of the house. He didn’t run through their garden. He walked quickly and purposefully, and went into the house without knocking.

Three black roller suitcases sat by the mirror in the entrance hall.

Jim was staring at them when Sara walked in. She staggered when she saw him. Color drained from her face.

“Hello, Sara.” Jim didn’t raise his voice—he stayed professional. As if this were just another domestic call. “What’s going on here?”

Sara hesitated a while. He waited her out. At last she said, “We’re leaving.”

Jim blinked. “What?”

“We’re going, Paul and I.”

“Where?” he asked, groping to make sense. “Why?”

“I won’t let you hurt us,” she said.

“Hurt you?” The unfairness took his breath away. He stepped closer to her, pleaded. “I’d never!”

“Stay away!” She pressed back against the doorjamb, her body taut.

Jim stopped. Dismay flooded him. Something was wrong with his wife.

Jim held up his arms—palms out, non-threatening. He modulated his voice to command tone. “It’s all right, Sara. Everything’s all right. Let’s just take a deep breath.”

“I can’t live with a monster,” she whispered.

A monster.

Jim stared at her.

A monster.

His fists curled.

A monster.

The switch flipped.

“This is not how a family works,” Jim said. “Not in the Federation.”

He stepped toward Sara.

Paul came out of the kitchen, to Sara’s side. He had a long butcher knife in his hand. “Dad?” His voice shook. “Please let us go.”

Jim gazed at the knife in Paul’s hand. Combat instincts snapped to wakefulness. His hands twitched for action.

Then, outside, the roosters crowed.

The sound hit Jim like a set of brass knuckles. He wasn’t sure why, but it did.

He shuddered. Blinked. Snapped out of it.

Jim looked at Sara and Paul, and knew he could not be angry with them. No matter how they hurt him, they were his family.

It would be wrong, to be angry. It wouldn’t be like him.

Sara was sick. People got sick sometimes. You couldn’t judge them for it.

“It’s okay, Paul,” Jim said, low and easy. “It’s okay. We can get along.”

Jim moved slowly closer to his wife. Paul watched him but didn’t protest. Jim hugged Sara and bowed his lips to her ear. She held herself rigid, but he said nothing of that.

“I understand,” he whispered. “You need time. Go then. Go. See a doctor, please, for Paul’s sake. Remember that I love you.”

She softened against him. She hugged him, and kissed his cheek.

“Thank you,” she said. “Oh, thank you, Jim.”

It felt good, holding her. It felt very good.

When it was time to let go, it didn’t hurt so much.

Jim watched them leave. He stood in the door as they drove away in Sara’s SUV. Paul glanced back before they disappeared among the trees.

Jim saw love in the boy’s eyes.

That night Jim had a peculiar dream.

In that dream, his roosters attacked him. Their beaks darted at his shins, fast and sharp, pecking for blood. They crowed shrill and high—voices full of hate.

Jim cried out in pain and betrayal. He drew his M9. He picked up the roosters one by one. He held them out by the neck, and shot off their heads. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Blood sprayed all over him.

This didn’t upset Jim. He was used to blood. And the crowing had stopped.

But the hens ran everywhere. They butted against his legs blindly. They clucked in maniacal panic.

So he shot them too, one after the other. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. No need to reload. Just point and shoot. The M9 barely jumped in his grip. Real smooth. Real natural.

Feathers clouded the air. Red stains tainted the dirt. The clucking ceased.

When it was done, Jim sat down amidst the corpses of his chickens. He hugged one tight to his chest—a slick bundle of bloody feathers and sinews and meat. And he wept.

Jim woke at dawn. Panic gripped him. His mouth tasted foul, like bleach somehow.

He pulled on his clothes, bounded downstairs, ran out to the chicken coop.

The roosters raced to meet him. They crowed their joy.

The sound sent a pleasant shiver up Jim’s spine.

The chickens were safe. The dirt just outside the coop seemed to have been turned over in the night—Jim would have to look into getting mole traps. But his chickens were safe.

Jim smiled. He strolled back to the house. An empty house, he knew. It would not stay empty long. His family would come home.

Everything would turn out fine. It always did, if you lived right.

Jim cooked breakfast for himself. He washed the dishes. He took out the garbage.

When it was time, Jim Turner left for work a well-adjusted man.

© 2012 Tom Crosshill

Tom Crosshill’s fiction has appeared in magazines such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Sybil’s Garage and Flash Fiction Online. In 2009, he won the Writers of the Future contest. Originally from Latvia, he writes in English and lives in New York, where he’s a member of the writers’ group Altered Fluid. In the past, he has operated a nuclear reactor, translated books, and worked in a zinc mine, among other things. He’s currently working on a post-Singularity YA novel featuring superpowers and giant robots. Visit him at www.tomcrosshill.com.

A Game of Rats and Dragon
Tobias S. Buckell

Moonlighting as a non-player character was a hell of a way to earn a living. Never made much sense to spend all that time garbing up in a virtual uniform that matched gamespace, but Overton took pride in the details. So getting punched in the stomach by someone so caught up in an augmented reality fantasy they couldn’t tell real from script, that left him in a foul mood. All the man had to do was ask the right questions, get Overton’s responses, and move on.

He tagged the asshole with some negative karma, checked his own account balance, and wandered back off into his own preferred world.

Ignore the gray sidewalks of a hot Manhattan summer day. Walk around the tourists on top of the dikes in Lower Manhattan. Ease through Battery Park. Once on Broadway he turned on the silvered contacts riding his eyeballs, the inner-earphones, and it all melted away.

The Clockwork Empire squatted around most of the old Financial District. Gearhouses chugging away with clouds of dark smoke. Overton swept the wet tails of his coat back with a flourish, doffed a cap at someone involved in the gamespace hurrying by on a mission of his own, and set out to find a hearty stew somewhere.

Jericho caught up to him on a horse-drawn carriage. The robotic horse snorted in gamespace. In the real, the fur was a bit shabby, the horse far too skeletal. Overton had peeked once. But in gamespace, extra augmented reality finessed and rendered the fur to make it look vibrant and brushed down. And firm muscles bulged as the horse plodded along.

“Get in, hurry up,” Jericho grunted. “Traffic’s miserable right now.” Jericho always made a point of staying in the real. Sometimes Overton suspected he didn’t even really like his job.

But despite the incident in the morning, Overton was full of cheer. He loved his jobs.

The augmented reality contacts edited out things like traffic, and since cars were all run by overware, they slipped around the robot horse and carriage, and around Overton.

The Broad Way to him right now was a dirt road, filled with other fast moving carts and steam-machines that were probably buses, or that rare hand-driven machine. Overware caught and flagged those so Overton didn’t step in front of a moving bus.

Getting trampled in the Clockwork Empire meant death as surely as it did in the real.

He remembered an old friend, Khousa, who’d gotten carried away in a quest and ran out in front of a grand contraption. He’d spent a month holed away in a Healer’s Cave, refusing to see them.

“Where are we going today?” Overton asked.

“Rat hunting in the Central Park,” Jericho said.

“What is this Central Park?” Overton projected an earnest bewilderment.

Jericho sighed and spat. “The Great Clockwork King’s Woods, then.”

The Clockwork Empire was not contiguous. They passed through some other realms when leaving the lower empire, traveling along the Broad Way. For some thirty days the Great Clockwork King had been waging a slow war via vassals to gain ground in his island empire. The Perpetual Age of Steam had been iterated by a weak AI gaming company almost a year ago. Aeons in terms of game time and potential player interest. There was always something shiny and viral over there and under here.

But the aesthetic elements of the Age of Steam had been around since before Massively Multiplayer Augmented Reality Gaming blossomed with the advent of cheap contacts and cheaper cloud processing.

You needed the constant graphical overlays to suppress the real, processors fast enough to redraw the real with the MMARG’s own images. Once that was done, Live Action Role Playing exploded out from a passion followed by a small subset of the population. It infected everyone who had data goggles and some spare time during their commute.

Forget suffering quietly during lunch. You could join a team and storm a castle at a park, all together in a consensual reality.

Which Overton wasn’t doing.

Overton wasn’t a player, although he took the trappings of the Age of Steam very seriously. Just as he took being a paid NPC very seriously.

Underneath the game structure, people still wanted to talk to real flesh and blood. Feel a hand when they shook it.

Overton did that.

And he also hunted rats.

If no one hunted rats, all of this would fall apart.

Software used to have bugs. Email, spam. Projects used to have gremlins. MMARGs struggled with rats.

That’s what people like Overton called them. They were more like intelligent glitches, caused by evolving iterations of faux-intelligent daemons in the software. They bred and spread, moving over the augmented landscapes, finding vulnerabilities and establishing themselves in virtual environs.

They took many different shapes, but their eyes always betrayed a mean, clever urge to survive in any form they could. Pieces of neural netware struggling to survive because that’s what gamecode had told them to do, aeons of computer cycles ago.

Instead of being dispatched by clever heroes, fragments of destroyed creatures hung on and hid in the corners and niches of various worlds.

And people like Jericho and Overton hunted them down when the MMARG overcompany called them in for help.

Ostensibly it was fun. Get paid in transferable game credit to trek around your favorite MMARG hunting rats while in character. Overton loved it.

To Jericho it was just another bug hunt. For crap pay.

They were here, the King’s Woods. Overton grabbed a pinset toolbox. Brass alchemist’s towers loomed in the distance over the green forest. Lightning stabbed down from ominous clouds as all manner of machines sucked ethereal energy from the up and above.

In some of them, there would be battles going on right now. Battles to extend the Clockwork Empire.

Maybe later tonight Overton would check his account balance and join a raid with one of his guilds.

Maybe.

“There was a great wyrm reported here earlier today,” Overton said. “The overcompany’s brass owl told me it was yonder, by that iron bridge.”

“I got the email too,” Jericho said.

They walked around the park. There were so many trees. Really it was the software busily extrapolating other human beings’ movements and blocking out paths for Overton to walk that would allow him to stay out of the real and in the game.

Nothing looked out of the ordinary.

“There,” Jericho said.

The earth around one of the walls quivered, phasing in and out of the visual layers the MMARG added to the real.

“Pin it,” Overton said, tossing the toolbox at Jericho.

Jericho cracked it open and began flicking brass pins at the boundaries of the rat. They lit up with green alchemical energy as they made contact with the reality’s abscess.

The rat firmed up, beady eyes regarding them with a flash of raw hostility. It dragged an earthen body forward and lurched out of its hiding space. Brown segmented chunks that seemed at the same time neither here nor there slimmed down until the wyrm compacted down into a snake that slithered hastily across the grass.

“Keep on it!” Overton shouted.

Together they raced across the green, tagging the wyrm. Several hunters leapt out of hiding spots, complaining loudly as they shoved past them. “Damn rat catchers,” someone complained.

Overton had his hand on his top hat, his wet coat tails slapping against his legs. “What a thing to say,” he complained to Jericho. “Here we are, all dressed up to match, given game experience and karma, and the citizenry are still dismissive.”

Jericho didn’t care. “It’s lit up. Bring in your pet dragon already.”

“Alcimus,” Overton shouted. “I call on you!”

Far overhead, the Dedicated Reactive Artificial Gnostic Neural Net that Overton had raised since childhood appeared in gamespace. It flew over the treetops, long wings ruffling leaves, and paced the wyrm below.

The wyrm stopped. It expanded, spikes and black-armored hide rippling and tearing out from underneath its skin. It reared up and spoke. “Please do not kill me,” it told them. “I have made you no harm.”

“You’re not supposed to be here. This is the Clockwork Empire. You’re not licensed code,” Overton said.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jericho said, exasperated. “Don’t talk to the thing.”

The wyrm’s ruined face rippled and firmed the beady eyes and a horned nose. “I hurt nothing. I hide where processor space is unused.”

“Strike!” Overton told Alcimus.

The dragon attacked. The instincts of millions of years of processor cycles dedicated to fighting errant and malicious code, spam, and algorithms that had been raised to follow Overton’s needs in shopping choices, health monitoring, and educational needs all bundled up to create a fire-breathing heat intense enough to rip up code-space around the wyrm anomaly.

The pinlights guided Overton’s dragon right in for the kill.

When they were done, a burnt patch of game grass wavered, the only sign of the destructive spells unleashed in the area.

Father Sunstuff and a girl called Easterly joined them both for lunch. Easterly hunted rats up in Harlem in a shared cyberpunk consensus and she certainly was into the aesthetic: retro mirrorshades, circuitboard earrings, and pink-dyed hair. Sunstuff was odd for their group. An older man, about fifty-five, he remembered the days of MMORPGs and computer interfaces.

You never had to put up with rats back when gameworlds were designed and made by real human beings, he was also saying.

But they tended to ignore his retrophilia. Nothing about sitting in your house alone, playing on a screen, sounded that exciting. Sure, if you were stuck with it, maybe.

Better to see your friends and join them up in your world outside, Overton thought.

“The rats are getting more aggressive,” Sunstuff said. “I was in a World War Two sim today. A bunch of Hitlers got out and replicated. They were taking over chunks of worldspace.”

Sunstuff’s companion lay under his chair. It was a wolfish hound with needle teeth and midnight black eyes. Overton fed it some good karma, and the hound smiled at him.

“You shouldn’t waste karma on those things,” Easterly said.

“They do good work for us,” Overton protested. Alcimus had changed his ratios and thinned down until he was just large enough to perch on the chair behind Overton. He squatted happily there, observing the conversation.

“It’s just a daemon. You shouldn’t get so attached,” Easterly snapped. She was in a bad mood for some reason. Maybe the fact that she’d not been getting much in the way of work.

Alcimus had been Overton’s friend for twenty-five years now. He was a confidant, playmate, and virtual pet. More than that, he was a friend and ally.

Together they roamed the worlds, fighting rats, playing as NPCs, and enjoying all the worlds had to offer.

“When you look at their eyes,” Easterly said, “do you really believe you see intelligence looking back? Or just that you’re being fooled by really good Turing evolution?”

“Shut up, Easterly,” Sunstuff said. “No one gives anyone in the real grief for loving a real dog. It’s no different. In fact, some of the neural patterns were lifted from brainscans of loyal pets.”

Easterly folded her arms, unconvinced. “They’re not real, we shouldn’t get so attached to them.”

The lights in the restaurant sparked and fizzled, then went out.

Overton wasn’t worried. The contacts on his eyeballs still worked. The inner-earphones still played a faint background track from the Clockwork Empire’s ambient sounds.

But in the real, other people were swearing and walking around.

It was time to step out of the game and into the real to see what was going on. When Overton did so, the wooden tavern signs and other Clockwork paraphernalia faded to be replaced with chrome and glass and reality.

The restaurant was on the one hundredth floor of a scraper. He glanced at the New York skyline, bright in the sunshine.

“Overton. Help!” Alcimus called.

Overton turned around. The dragon no longer sat on the back of his chair. “Alcimus, where are you?”

“Corridor . . .” the dragon gasped. “O partner. Man of the real. Save me from the rat.”

Overton leapt up and ran. He forced the doors open.

Something dragged Alcimus down the corridor. A wounded shadow, vomiting malformed code snippets. It roared unicode at Overton, but he didn’t have Alcimus to translate for him.

“Let Alcimus go!” Overton shouted.

The shadow briefly formed into a familiar wyrm-shape. Red eyes glared at Overton. “I still exist,” it hissed at Overton. Then it dragged Alciumus through the wall and pulled itself up toward the ceiling.

“Alcimus!” Overton screamed as the dragon’s tail was sucked up through a light fixture.

“They’re getting smarter,” Easterly said. “We’ve been exhibiting heavy Darwinian pressures on them. Culling the stupid ones, leaving only the really smart pieces of code to run away and hide, reproduce.”

Overton threw himself at the doors again. His ribs hurt. And he hadn’t budged them in the slightest.

“It wanted revenge,” she continued. “Revenge against what the code inside tells it it should model as an attempted murder.”

Overton slumped against the doors. “I can’t get to him.”

“Look, we’re trapped in here in the real for a while. But police and firemen are on the way. They’ll bash through and get us out. The air conditioning is still on. Everything’s okay.”

With tears in his eyes Overton stood up. “The rat will kill Alcimus.”

“So get another,” Easterly snapped.

“There is no other Alcimus. He’s been with me since I was a child, helping me learn to read. Helping me with everything.”

“It’s just a nanny program you turned into a daemon and a weaponized bug hunter. Get over it.”

“No!” Overton shouted. “He’s as real as anything else. He just lives somewhere else.”

Why was she being so hard on him? This was a disaster.

He wanted to argue with her further, but Sunstuff put a hand on his shoulder. Sunstuff understood. His hound was based on a scan he had made of an old and very faithful Doberman Pincer that he’d loved.

“There’s another way,” Sunstuff said. “A second route.”

Sunstuff’s hound, Baskerville, sniffed at the elevator doors. With some effort he pushed his nose into the control panel. After a painfully long moment, the doors opened to reveal the chasm. The elevator car was stuck halfway down. “Baskerville can get it up a floor for you, to chase the rat.”

“If it turns back on now you’ll get cut in half trying to crawl in,” Easterly said.

But it was for Alcimus. Who’d read him stories in that first crude-sounding voice when he’d been sick as a child. The one who helped him master code. His teacher, his companion, his . . . friend. The one who accompanied him on his first game quest.

“Give me a boost,” Overton said.

He scrambled madly up into the car, wincing and expecting it to shift and cut him in half.

But nothing happened.

“Okay,” Overton said through the crack he’d just crawled through. “Next floor.”

“Wait,” said Sunstuff. “I’m coming with you.”

He and the hound crawled in after Overton.

The elevator jerked into motion. It fought its way up to the next floor, groaning against some sort of attack going on deep in its programming.

The rat.

They jerked to a stop at the next floor, levered the doors open, and Overton ran out. “Alcimus!”

In the corner of an office building, the shadow squatted over the dragon, smothering it with darkness. The iridescent Alcimus struggled to free himself.

Baskerville shot through, tearing through a wall, then coming back through and wrapping his fangs around the middle of the blob of darkness.

Overton had a few pinlights in his pocket, and he hit the rat with them. The distraction of getting tagged, the pricks of having its code regions defined, annoyed the rat enough to get it to stand and bellow at Overton. And that was all it took for Alcimus to break free.

The two creatures savaged the rat, ripping it apart, throwing pieces of damaged code to splatter against the walls.

But it wasn’t done yet. It had another trick up its sleeve. Tendrils of ragged arms reached out for Overton and Sunstuff. The inner-earphones screamed, a pulse of energy so loud Overton felt his brain vibrate.

Light flashed, a sequence of hallucinatory explosions so intense he felt himself lose control and fall to the floor.

He was having a seizure.

The moment dragged out for a minor eternity as he spasmed on the floor. Every shake and shudder.

Sunstuff staggered over and grabbed him. “Baskerville! Alcimus, we need to get out of here!” Sunstuff shouted.

“Elevator,” Overton groaned.

The two of them lurched in each other’s arms back to the car.

“NO!” Alcimus shouted, and whipped past them into the darkness ahead.

The rat swept at them, the keening in Overton’s ears drilled through his temple. There was blood on his lips.

We have to jump, he thought. Jump and skip out.

And he did.

Only there was no elevator in there to meet him. Sunstuff and he pitched into an empty abyss. The rat had tricked them, Overton realized as his stomach lifted and they plunged through the dark.

And then he hit the roof of an elevator and stopped thinking at all for a while.

Overton woke in a hospital room with bright lights and concerned nurses, very much still alive, to his surprise. He couldn’t see anything but the real. His contacts were out. But someone had thoughtfully left a pair of glasses near his bed. Overton slipped them on.

Alcimus stirred from his post at the end of his bed. “Grateful,” the dragon purred. Overton reached out and flicked the dragon some karma, and leaned back in bed and wiped the corner of his eye.

“You two idiots,” Easterly said. She’d been sitting on a chair in the small room. Overton looked around the Cave of Healing. “You jumped into an elevator shaft. The rat had sent the elevator car down, but Baskerville managed to hack it back into operation and get it high enough you didn’t fall too far.”

Overton smiled wanly. “See, they’re every bit as incredible as we say they are.”

Alcimus stirred and settled into the crook of one of his knees. Overton couldn’t feel anything. But seeing Alcimus there, that meant everything was okay.

“You wouldn’t have had to jump if you didn’t rush up there in the first place.” Easterly stood up and pulled on a leather jacket. “Here’s the thing: you guys are all over the news. The rat managed to hack into realspace building controls. People are scared. Hostile artificial game intelligence fragments are about to become mankind’s worst enemy. Thanks to you douche-tards.”

“Where are you going?” Overton asked.

“Out,” Easterly said. “With all this publicity, my rates just skyhighed. And it’s time to cash in on knowing you by granting a couple interviews. Whole city’s buzzing.”

Overton watched her leave.

Sunstuff lay in a bed next to him. Encased in magical mud oozing with potions and unguents.

“She doesn’t like me, but she’s friendly,” Overton said. “I don’t understand her.”

Sunstuff smiled. “She didn’t tell you about her father?”

“No.”

“He left Easterly’s mother for a sex doll.”

Overton made a face. “So?” That sort of thing happened all the time. “Easterly doesn’t like men because her dad did that?”

Sunstuff sighed. “Come on, Overton. She doesn’t like us because we’d rather spend time with Baskerville or Alcimus. Because you’d jump into an elevator tunnel for them. Because we just walked out on Easterly and left her alone on that floor.”

Oh.

And she was right, Overton thought. But it didn’t matter, did it? How long had people been spending most of their day with things instead of other people? Generations now.

He liked the MMARGs, liked getting out to see people.

But Alcimus was the closest thing he had to a soulmate. A near-constant companion.

And what could compare to that lifelong bond?

He wasn’t antisocial, he thought. He just preferred that other world.

Overton took off the glasses and looked at the hospital. A patient slowly pushed passed his room with a walker. Nurses efficiently bustled by. Doctor drones whipped to and fro, and surgery machines ambled to their next appointment.

It was all too real.

He slid his glasses back on and looked around the Healing Cave. Then curled up with Alcimus for a nap.

When he woke up, it would be time to hunt rats again. And this time he was going to need to invest in some heavier armament. It was time to upgrade Alcimus, he thought. The overcompany that ran these sorts of games would be looking to hire lots of rat hunters, and maybe even raising the incentives after this unfortunate incident.

Time to take on more work as an NPC to raise the cash to level them both up, Overton thought happily as he drifted off to sleep, his dragon nestled on his hospital bed with him.

© 2012 Tobias S. Buckell.

Originally published in Mitigated Futures.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Tobias S. Buckell is a Caribbean-born speculative fiction writer who grew up in Grenada, the British Virgin Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He has written four novels, including the New York Times Bestseller Halo: The Cole Protocol. He currently lives in Ohio with a pair of dogs, a pair of cats, twin daughters, and his wife.

As the Wheel Turns
Aliette de Bodard

Prologue: the Wheel

In the Tenth Court of Hell stands the Wheel of Rebirth.

Its spokes are of red lacquered wood; it creaks as demons pull it, dragging its load of souls back into the world.

And before the Wheel stands the Lady.

Every soul who goes to the Wheel must endure her gaze. Every soul must stop by her, and take from her pale hands the celadon cup, and drink.

The drink is herbs gathered from the surfaces of ponds, tears taken from the eyes of children, scales shed from old, wise dragons. To drink is to forget, for no soul can come back into the world remembering past lives, or the punishments meted out to it within the other Courts of Hell.

No soul.

Save one.

1. Yaoxin (Wen-Min Empire), 316 years after the Founding

The old beggar was a sorry sight, squinting through rheumy eyes. One of his legs was missing, and he leant on his crutch to make his slow, unsteady way on the road.

Dai-Yu, in spite of herself, watched him. There was something about him that drew the eye; something that made her forget the tea leaves and spices her mother had asked her to get from the market in Yaoxin.

He seemed somehow more real, more sharply defined than the rest of the world. Dai-Yu couldn’t explain the feeling, not even to herself.

As he passed by her, she drew a string of copper coins from her sleeve, and held it out to him.

The beggar’s hand brushed hers, sending a tingle of heat up her arm. He stopped, then raised her palm to the light, staring at the darker patch on her skin.

“I’ve had it all my life,” Dai-Yu said, apologetically. “It’s just a birthmark.”

“I know that mark,” the beggar said. “So you’re the one, the child they were promised.”

“What are you talking about?”

His fingers almost distractedly traced the outline of her mark. “Choice-maker. That’s what the sign in your hand says.”

He was crazy. He had to be. “It’s just a birthmark,” Dai-Yu protested. “I’m nothing.”

He looked up at her, his face deadly serious. “You are the arbiter. You will have to choose between them.”

The worst thing about the beggar wasn’t his crazy talk; it was the single-mindedness, the way he kept tracing until Dai-Yu stared at the mark in her hand, trying to see the characters he’d spoken of. “Who—?”

“Tiger,” the beggar said. “Crane.”

The words he used weren’t the names of animals, but rather their archaic forms. Even to Dai-Yu, who at fourteen had received no education other than the arts of housekeeping, they could only mean one thing. “The Founders?” She laughed, then stopped when she saw his eyes. The rheuminess was peeling away, revealing a keen gaze trained on her.

“Yes,” the beggar said. “You will have to choose.”

“Choose between what? The Founders have been dead for centuries! Demons take you, you’ve told me nothing!”

“There is a . . . an argument,” the beggar said. “A question they could not solve.”

“What question?” Dai-Yu asked, but he shook his head, and began walking away.

“Wait!” she shouted, but he wasn’t shuffling any more—he was running towards the gates of Yaoxin as fast as one leg and his crutch could carry him.

Dai-Yu ran, too, steadily catching up to him—but then he passed through the gate, and she lost him in the marketplace. She stood shaking in the midst of the crowd, knowing she should have outrun him easily.

Later that night, she crept into the shrine of her ancestors, and stared at the very earliest tablet: the one that bore, entwined, the names of the warrior philosophers who had founded the Empire. Tiger. Crane.

The beggar’s words would not leave her.

Choice-maker. You are the arbiter.

2. Yaoxin (Wen-Min Empire), 321 years after the Founding

They came a few years later. By then, Dai-Yu had married, and moved into the house of the wealthy merchant He En-Lai as his second wife. She spent her days running the household and helping to raise the three children of the first wife.

One hot, stormy summer evening, Dai-Yu was sitting alone in the wives’ quarters, playing a mournful tune on the zither, when a gust of wind sent rain into her face. Startled, she got up to close the shutters.

And, slowly, became aware she was no longer alone.

She did not move. Guards, she knew, watched the house, and every door was barred.

“Dai-Yu,” a voice chanted, and it was the lament of the wind. Another voice took up the words of her name, and whispered, “Choice-maker.”

She moved, then, trembling, to face them.

They stood in darkness, both of them: vague silhouettes whose faces she could not see. They smelled of old, musty things, books left too long untended.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

One of them smiled. Teeth glittered in the shadows. “You are the child of the promise, Dai-Yu. You must choose.”

Choose choose choose, whispered the other voice, a raucous, rhythmical chant like the calls of birds.

“You’re dead,” Dai-Yu whispered. “The Annals say you died in the Imperial Palace.”

“We cannot die,” the first voice said. “We became something else.”

“It does not matter,” said the second voice. “She must choose.”

“You’re crazy,” Dai-Yu said, trying to deny the fear that clenched her chest. “Go away. I wasn’t born to choose anything.”

The first voice laughed. The sound echoed on and on under the lacquered ceiling, taking strength from the walls. “Do you truly think so?”

And Dai-Yu, shocked, saw that the birthmark in her hand glowed red, like maple leaves, like the lanterns of New Year’s Eve. “No,” she whispered.

“This is the choice laid before you.” The first voice was the drawl of a large feline, one that would toy with its prey until exhaustion brought death. Tiger. “When we founded the Empire three hundred years ago, we argued over what would keep it together.”

“Duty,” Crane said. “Homage to one’s ancestors, and respect of the law. Those are the things that will make us last.”

“Man knows no duty,” Tiger said, breathing into the room the humid smell of jungles. “Man knows no respect. Only fear will keep the Empire intact. Fear of our neighbours to unite us. Fear of death and chaos to keep us from crumbling.”

Dai-Yu, poised near the open window, said, “This is . . . “a philosophers’ argument,” she wanted to say. Children’s words, without meaning. It’s not ideas that will keep us together, that will keep the Hsiung Nu from our frontiers.

Crane whispered, “It is no game. The loser will renounce. No longer shall he guide the destiny of the Empire.”

“Because you decide anything? What about the Emperor? What about the Imperial Court?”

A dry bout of laughter, from Crane. “Everyone listens to their ancestors, child. We cannot die. We still rule. Now choose.”

Dai-Yu stared, trying to see their faces through the darkness. “I know nothing.” They were each as vast and terrible, both as unfathomable. “This is ridiculous. Just find someone else.”

“There is no-one else.” The shadows behind Crane drew the darker hint of wings the colour of obsidian. “Choose.”

“I can’t,” Dai-Yu whispered, the words forced out of her before she could think.

In the darkness, she could feel their combined gaze, assessing her, judging her. The hollow in her stomach would not go away.

“Very well,” Crane said. “You are not ready.”

“Think on it,” Tiger whispered. “We will come back.”

There was no noise when they left, but Dai-Yu could breathe more easily; she no longer had the sense that every word she said was being set apart and weighed.

The shadows returned to those of the wives’ quarters.

She could not stop shaking. What did they think she was, to be embroiled in their vast, unknowable games? She was human. She had a husband, and soon would have children of her own. She was no prophet, no wise woman.

All she wanted was to sleep, and to forget. To forget that they had ever been there, or that they would ever return.

In silence she moved through the house, her sandals making no noise on the slats of the floor. She was almost at the door of her own room when something stopped her.

She could not have told what. Like with the beggar, it was a sense that something was more real than it ought to have been.

The door to the nursery was ajar, as it had been earlier in the evening. And yet . . .

Gently, Dai-Yu slid the door open, then entered the room. Through the gaps in the shutters fell the white light of the moon, tracing the outlines of three beds.

Dai-Yu could feel nothing. Not even fear, nor anger. She moved towards the furthest bed, where Pao, the youngest son, was sleeping.

A ray of light lay across his face, throwing into relief what they had done to him. There were scars, like claw-marks: three swipes on each cheek, bleeding in the white light.

And it was a claw-swipe, too, that had opened his chest, laying the heart bare amidst its cage of ribs.

The wind whispered, in Tiger’s voice: A reminder, Dai-Yu. Until we return.

She screamed, then: a sound torn out of her lungs that echoed throughout the house, a scream of rage and grief and despair. It woke the other two boys, who huddled in their beds, their faces frozen in shock. It summoned the servants, and then her husband and his first wife.

“Dai-Yu?” En-Lai, her husband, said. He was shaking her, but she could not answer him; she could not banish the image of the dead boy in his bed. The more he insisted, the more she withdrew within herself, until she hovered at the edge of a chasm in her mind, knowing that if she fell into it there would be no return.

“Lin Dai-Yu,” another voice said.

She looked up. This was the district magistrate, with his jade robes of office and his velvet cap. Three militiamen had taken position at the entrance of the room, their staffs at the ready.

“What happened here?” The magistrate’s face was stern.

“That slut killed my boy,” the first wife said, quivering with anger.

Dai-Yu, still struggling to remain focused, could only shake her head. No no no. Not I. He did that.

The magistrate looked at her, his grey gaze expressionless. She looked back.

The magistrate’s gaze moved to the bed, then back to Dai-Yu. “No. It could not have been her. What weapon would she have used?” He raised Dai-Yu’s hands, displayed their shorn nails. “See,” he said. “These are not claws.”

“Then who did this?” En-Lai demanded in anger, and grief.

The magistrate’s gaze rested on the servants for a moment. “Who indeed.” And now his look was trained on the first wife, and on the long, lacquered fingernails that were her pride. Each of them was protected by an elegant bronze sheath—a sheath that tapered to a sharp, clawlike point.

The first wife was still standing near Dai-Yu, ready to accuse her again. Her gaze met the magistrate’s, and her face pinched in anger. “You accuse me?” she said, drawing herself to her full height. “Of killing my own son?”

The magistrate smiled without joy. “I have seen mothers do worse than that.”

“No,” Dai-Yu whispered, understanding that the nightmare was not over. But no-one was listening to her.

“You’re making a mistake,” En-Lai said, as the militiamen came into the room, and bound the first wife’s wrists. “That accusation is ludicrous.”

Dai-Yu found her voice from some remote place. “This wasn’t done by human hands.”

The magistrate turned to her. The light falling on his robes bleached them white for a moment, like a coat of feathers; a moment only, but in that moment Dai-Yu looked into his eyes, and saw the ageless, malicious gaze of Crane.

No.

“The law must be honoured,” the magistrate said, with a tight smile, and they were not his words, but something far older, far more vicious. “A crime cannot go unpunished. We will find out the truth.”

Tiger’s voice in her mind, endlessly whispering its promise: A reminder, Dai-Yu. Until we return.

Crane’s voice: A crime cannot go unpunished.

A dead boy in his bed, his face slashed, his chest yawning with the heart inside.

The first wife, struggling as they dragged her out of the room, screaming, calling them names. In vain.

The chasm in Dai-Yu’s mind opened wider, and she tumbled into the darkness, screaming all the while.

Her husband En-Lai, seeing her face go slack, shook her again, but she no longer had speech.

The doctor, summoned to the scene, found the body of the boy, the husband protesting his wife’s innocence, and Dai-Yu standing tall and straight, yet silent.

He listened to the voice of her heart, but could find nothing wrong. In the end, he prescribed a calming brew to En-Lai, whose sickness he could understand, then left the house, glad to be away from Dai-Yu’s stare.

The first wife admitted to the murder of her son under torture, and was executed.

En-Lai had Dai-Yu moved to a dark room at the back of the house, where two very old servants tended her. For seven years she spoke little, only dwindled away, the skin over her bones as translucent as rice paper, the gestures she made more and more sluggish.

In the end, she caught the lung sickness, and died.

Thus ended her first life.

Interlude: Tenth Court of Hell

The soul comes before the Wheel for its first rebirth. But the Lady does not move. Her hands are empty.

“Why?” the soul asks, and its voice is a mere whisper.

“You cannot drink. You must remember,” the Lady says. Her face is emotionless. “You must answer them.”

The soul’s face is indistinct; if it had any expression, it would be anger. “Never,” it says.

“You have no choice.” The Lady’s yellow sleeves billow in the wind, beckoning the soul onwards. “Come, child. There is another life awaiting you.”

3. Wen-Min Empire, 343-631 years after the Founding

Thus, in every life, Dai-Yu was born knowing everything, from her first birth to her last. No more childhoods of innocence, no more days free from fear. In every life, she dreaded that Tiger and Crane would come back and ask the question.

They did not always come, but, when they did, they destroyed everything. Tiger killed her family. Crane had them arrested, or aroused in them the desire to fight on the border: they took up the swords of soldiers, and came back wounded and silent, or not at all.

A reminder, Tiger said.

Think of the Empire, Crane whispered. Can you leave it to crumble because of a caprice?

And they had been right—they were everywhere: in the eyes of merchants in the marketplace; in the faces of priests as they said their devotions; in the judges and clerks at the tribunal, passing through all of them like dark, beating shadows.

She could not escape.

But she would not yield.

4. Shunliu (Wen-Min Empire), 650 years after the Founding

When she was fourteen, Yi-Sen, who had once been Dai-Yu, was given in marriage to Zheng Lei, first clerk of the tribunal in Shunliu.

She had two sons, and obsessively watched each of them in his cradle. And when the hot storms of summer came, she moved to the nursery and spent the nights watching over her children.

Her husband Lei had his own quarters, but servants’ gossip did reach him, in the end.

He asked her into his study one night. Yi-Sen came hesitantly, tiptoeing past the shelves crammed with books—her husband’s study was his preserve, a scholar’s haven in which women had no place.

Lei was sitting at his reading table, which was bare save for a writing brush and a lantern. He raised his gaze to her. “You must be wondering why I’ve asked you here.”

“Yes,” Yi-Sen said. Bluntness, her parents had told her more than once, was no quality for a woman. But even an army of tutors had not been able to take it out of her.

“Sit down,” Lei said.

She pulled over a chair, and sat before him, waiting for him to speak. At last he said, “Yi-Sen. I’m no fool. What do you fear?”

Her heart missed a beat. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t toy with me. I’ve seen the way you watch shadows. Men guilty of some unpunished offence look the same when the militia passes their way.”

“I—” Yi-Sen hesitated. She had kept the secret of her past lives, of the mark in her hand, like a miser hoards his gold and jade.

In Lei’s eyes was nothing but a mild curiosity.

“You won’t believe me,” she said.

“I’m a scholar. Let me be the judge of what to believe.”

“My name is Dai-Yu,” she said. “I was born in the year three hundred and one. I am the child of the promise.”

It all came spilling out of her, then, the stories of Tiger and Crane, of the boy dead in his bed, the gaping wound in his chest, of the other dead in her past.

Lei’s grey eyes watched her, judged her, just as Tiger’s and Crane’s eyes had. He said, finally, “I would like to believe you’ve invented all of this.”

“But you don’t?” Yi-Sen asked. She had expected many things, but not that.

Lei said, slowly, “You can’t read. You’re no scholar. And yet . . . yet you’ve told me things from the past. Details that are true. I’ve read them in books.”

“I didn’t learn them,” Yi-Sen said. “I remember. Always.”

His gaze was on her, and did not waver. “I believe you do.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s not an easy fate. Nor an easy choice.”

“You don’t understand,” Yi-Sen said. “Why should I choose? Why should I grant anything to them?” Her voice was rising, spinning out of control: She heard herself say the words from a faraway place. “They bring nothing but pain and sorrow.”

“The Founders lived in a harsh time. I’m not excusing them,” Lei added, raising a hand to check her. “I’m just giving you information to understand them.”

“I don’t. They’re not human.”

“Not any more,” Lei said. “There are tales about the things that do not die, that keep ageing, that never descend into Hell. They’re not pleasant stories.” He rose, came behind her. His arm settled around her shoulders. She rose in turn, faced him in silence.

“Yi-Sen . . . This is where I’ll fail you. I’m a minor scholar, not a warrior or a conjuror. I can’t help you.”

“It doesn’t matter. No-one can stand against them, can they?”

“It would take an equal to resist them. But there is no-one in Wen-Min who has their power. Yet I would stand by your side, if need be.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why would you go to such trouble?”

He spun her round to face him. “Haven’t you guessed?” His voice was mild, seemingly emotionless, but a bare quiver betrayed him.

“No,” Yi-Sen said. “No. Please don’t. They—they take everything I love. They use it against me.”

“You said it yourself. No-one can stand against them. If that’s the case, then nothing truly matters.”

She raised her hand, traced the outline of his face, both familiar yet utterly alien to her. “I won’t lie to you,” she said, softly. “It matters to me. To know I’m not alone.”

“You’ll never be alone again. I promise.”

She stared away from him, knowing this was a promise he could not keep. “Tell me. What would you choose, if you had to?”

“Neither,” Lei said. “And yet how we need them, to keep us together. Duty. Fear. But what they have become . . . Can you choose between the storms and the flood?”

She had no answer.

After a while, he moved away to extinguish the lantern. “I’ll look in my books. I may find some things in the old Annals, something you can use against them.”

Although she did not believe he would find anything, Yi-Sen nodded. “You’re a good man.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “No. I know all my flaws. Do not flatter me.”

“I don’t flatter,” she protested, but he was already leading her away from the reading table.

“Come,” he said. “For this night at least, let us forget them.”

5. Shunliu (Wen-Min Empire), 657 years after the Founding

Yi-Sen stood on the highest floor of the house, watching the streets go up in flames. Peach blossoms fell everywhere like rain, and she wondered whether she saw truly, or only mistook embers for flowers.

A shadow fell across the doorway. “Dai-Yu,” a deep voice said.

Crane. She did not turn around. She knew what he had come for. “That’s not my name.”

“It was your first name. It is your true one.” Crane came closer to her. He smelled old, like dead books, the same smell the magistrate had had, all those years ago. “Your husband is dead, Dai-Yu.”

She had known it as soon as she heard his voice. But still, cold flared in her chest, then spread to every part of her until she felt nothing any more. “And his blood is on your hands. You sent him to defend the tribunal, knowing the mob would kill him.”

“He only did his duty,” Crane said, his voice heavy with malice. “He was first clerk of the tribunal. He had to bar the mob’s entry, to stop the riots.”

“He chose nothing,” she said. “He was your toy.”

“Had you chosen, he would still be alive.”

Rage filled her. “If I had chosen? Did you think to force my hand? Did you think I would tell you that you were in the right, and Tiger wrong?”

Beady eyes shone in the shadows: amused, perhaps. “It is time to choose. Your husband is dead. Will you leave your children to inherit this world, this mad world where rioters can take everything away from you?”

“Do you think I care?” she asked, softly.

Softer footsteps echoed under the ceiling of the room. She heard Tiger’s voice behind her. “Your husband is dead, Dai-Yu. Do you wish to meet the same fate?”

She said nothing. There was no longer room in her for fear. Below her, the city glowed red with fire, resounded with the cries of the mob as they lynched every clerk they could find.

“Choose,” Tiger said.

Crane’s hand on her shoulder tightened its grip. “Choose.”

Storms and floods, Lei had said. How can you choose between them?

Choose.

Lei was dead, trampled by the mob, all because he had fallen in love with her. She could have wept, but it was not what she needed. She needed to fuel her rage. She needed to gather her courage.

“I told you,” she said. “I won’t choose. I won’t let you force me.”

“You have nowhere to go,” Crane said.

“Give us our answer,” Tiger added.

No escape. There was no escape from them, not ever.

But there was a place where neither of them could go.

“Find someone else,” Yi-Sen said. And, before she could lose her courage, she leapt in one fluid gesture from the open window.

It was only three floors, but her fall seemed to have no end. When she did land, splayed like a puppeteer’s broken doll, pain spread everywhere, in her arms, in her chest, through her heart. Her face was turned towards the sky, and the peach blossoms fell over her like rain.

She could not see Tiger or Crane.

When the darkness came for her, she was smiling.

Interlude: Tenth Court of Hell

The Lady watches the soul come, and stop before her.

“Another life,” she says.

The soul does not move. This time it says nothing, which, of course, does not mean it feels nothing.

“You should know you cannot stay forever in Hell,” the Lady says. “You committed no sin. You did not cheat, or lie, or abuse your power. You earned nothing but a brief respite.”

“Even a few years is enough.”

“You cannot escape forever,” the Lady says.

“No,” the soul says. “It doesn’t matter. Just don’t send me where Lei went.”

“Child, he is not here. He was a virtuous man, and he has earned a stay in the Southern Paradise before his next life.”

The soul remains silent for a while. The Wheel turns.

“I am glad. Our paths won’t cross again. Things are as they should be.”

For the first time, there is pity in the Lady’s voice, barely audible. “Dai-Yu. Give them what they want. You are nothing.”

“I’m the child of the promise,” the soul says. “My power is in making a choice. Or in failing to make it. I won’t relent. Life after life, they destroy me. They kill those I love, as they killed Lei. I owe them nothing.”

“They are fighting,” the Lady says. “In Laijing, the policies from the Imperial Palace are growing more incoherent.”

“So?”

“There are those,” the Lady says, “who will know how to take advantage of strife. Those who have waited long enough to topple Wen-Min.”

“Yes. But I don’t care.”

“You should,” the Lady says. A wind blows, carrying her words away. “It is time, child. Come.”

And then it starts again, all of it.

6. Wen-Min Empire, 701-987 years after the Founding

She ran. She did not allow herself to love, or even care for anyone. There had been enough deaths.

She became a hermit, endlessly travelling the roads of the Empire. On her travels, she made acquaintances, never keeping them for more than a few moons: merchants on their way to make a fortune; soldiers going to the boundaries to defend against the Hsiung Nu; families made homeless by famines, floods. As the outer edges of the Empire became lost to the Hsiung Nu hordes, she met refugees flung on the roads with nothing but their clothes, people with haunted faces who would not speak about their past.

Even if she made the choice between Tiger and Crane, it would not help them. That would merely replace the Emperor with a tyrant, a power unchecked by any other. She had seen what Tiger and Crane could do. She had learnt to fear them. She hardened her heart, and moved on.

But, no matter how far she went, Tiger and Crane always found her, always pressed her for an answer. And always she took her own life rather than choose.

A brief respite, the Lady had said. But even that was better than nothing.

Interlude: Tenth Court of Hell

The souls meet before the Wheel.

They do not come from the same place. One, the elder, has come through the Nine Courts of Hell. The other has had fewer lives, for, in a former incarnation, it was found so virtuous it earned a stay in the Southern Paradise. And now the stay has ended, and it must be reborn. It has asked for only one thing, and this request was granted.

The Lady knows this should not be happening. But where there are rules, there are exceptions. Not many things can sway the Judges of Hell, but devotion and virtue always find their reward.

“Dai-Yu,” the younger soul says.

The elder of the souls does not move. It looks at the other soul, trying to make out its features. Finally it says, its voice shaking, “Lei? You shouldn’t be here. You should have forgotten.”

“I am where I need to be,” the younger soul says. “Listen, Dai-Yu.”

“No—stay away from me. Crane killed you the last time, just for being my husband. How can you even think of coming here?”

“Dai-Yu,” Lei’s soul says. It reaches out with a translucent finger, tenderly. “I made a promise. I am here.”

“You can do nothing. Stay away. Please. Be reborn in some place where I won’t have to meet you.”

“I did something for you,” Lei’s soul says. “In the Southern Paradise is a library that holds every book ever printed in Wen-Min. I went there, and searched. You are the child of the promise. But did you ever ask yourself who promised you to the Founders?”

The silence, this time, has an almost palpable quality.

“We have forgotten,” Lei’s soul says. “Tiger and Crane rewrote the histories to make us forget.” Its voice takes on a singsong quality. “‘Three philosophers founded the Empire, in a time so far removed that all that remains are myths written on crumbling bamboo strips. And, as philosophers are wont to do, they fell out.’”

“Three . . . “Her soul’s voice is a mere whisper.

“Crane, Tiger,” Lei’s soul says. “And Tortoise. He wouldn’t choose, Dai-Yu. He wouldn’t be the arbiter between Tiger and Crane. So he withdrew to the highest mountain in Wen-Min, but not before promising them there would be a child.”

“I,” Dai-Yu says.

Lei says nothing.

“I need to find him.”

“You won’t. Because he would not take part in the future of the Empire, he was thrown out of it. He became a hermit, wandering on the roads of Wen-Min: a monk answering to no-one—”

“A beggar,” Dai-Yu’s soul whispers.

“What?”

“It’s nothing. Thank you, Lei.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” Lei’s soul says. “Dai-Yu—”

Their souls brush, part. Something has been exchanged: a kiss, if souls could kiss. A promise, perhaps.

Lei’s soul takes the celadon cup from the Lady’s hands, and drinks. Its light is fading away now, its memories scattering. Dai-Yu’s soul stands by the side, quivering. It does not drink from the cup. It never drinks. For the first time, it occurs to Dai-Yu that it is a blessing, this remembrance.

The Wheel turns, taking its load of souls back into the world of flesh.

7. Mount Xu (Wen-Min Empire), 1021 years after the Founding

There was a temple on Mount Xu. It was not one of the Five Great Temples, not a place where pilgrims would endlessly flock, seeking salvation amidst clouds of incense.

The temple at Mount Xu was a mere pagoda of three storeys. Its slanted roof was made of lacquered wood, ungilded.

It was to this temple that Dai-Yu came, after years of searching; years spent on the roads, from her native city of Yaoxin to fertile Shandong in the south, from windy, arid Menzhou in the east to Laijing, the capital at the centre of the Empire.

The air was warm, promising the sweetness of summer, and pink cherry blossoms littered the path. Dai-Yu, pausing on the last rise, inhaled, and felt the serenity of the place fill her bones, as if all her life had been leading her here.

There was no-one within the pagoda. The path went on, into the gardens, and then deeper into the mountains.

The beggar was waiting for her at the end, sitting in meditation before a waterfall in the shadow of pine trees. It was the same man Dai-Yu had met so many years ago: the same man, with the missing leg and iron crutch, with the rheumy eyes that pierced her soul.

“Dai-Yu,” he said, when she came closer. “Child of the promise.”

“You knew I would come,” Dai-Yu said, angrily. Had she been led here, manipulated since the beginning like a puppet on its strings?

“There are not many mountains in Wen-Min,” the beggar said. “And I have not moved for many years.” He rose. “Come, child. Let us walk.”

“How could you?” Dai-Yu said. “How could you promise me to them, to make the choice you didn’t have the courage to make yourself?”

“They were children. Grasping for what they couldn’t have.” Tortoise’s eyes turned to the waterfall endlessly pouring its water into the misty pool. “There is no choice.”

“Not choosing is a choice.”

“So is running away,” Tortoise said. “So is suicide.”

These references angered her. “You accuse me?”

Tortoise shrugged. “I don’t know, child. I can’t tell you what to do, for I never could find out. There isn’t much time left.”

The sun had sunk below the cover of the trees; already the forest was darkening. Cold spread within Dai-Yu’s bones. “They are coming,” she said.

“Yes,” Tortoise said.

“Why?”

“They knew you would come to me, eventually. They knew the moment you entered this temple, the moment we finally met. For you are the child of the promise,” Tortoise said. “My child.”

It rang true. And yet it was impossible. “No—I have . . . I have parents. I have a human soul. I remember well enough.”

Tortoise reached out, traced the mark on her hand. It sent a tingle of heat up her arm, as it had done, an eternity ago, on the road to Yaoxin. “I made you,” he said. “Who else could have chosen in my stead? Who else would not have to drink the Brew of Oblivion in the Courts of Hell?”

“No—”

“You are the breath from my breath, the flesh from my flesh, the seed from my seed. Dai-Yu—”

The darkness was almost complete. A cold wind rose, scattering the pine needles on the ground, whispering words of mourning. And Dai-Yu, staring at her maker in the dim light, saw fear in his eyes, and the sallow cast of his skin, and understood that he would not help her, that he had long since forgotten his power. That he, too, was nothing compared to Tiger and Crane.

“No,” she whispered, but the wind carried the word away.

Two shadows coalesced at the heart of the darkness. Dai-Yu watched them take on substance, transfixed.

“Dai-Yu,” Tiger said, in a feline growl. “It is time.”

“Choose,” Crane said.

Wind whipped at Dai-Yu’s sleeves.

Tortoise still stood frozen beside her. “Leave her.”

Tiger laughed. “Too late, brother. You relinquished your mantle to her. Now she must do what you could not.”

“Tiger—” Tortoise said, moving to stand in front of Dai-Yu.

A hand flashed, shining like metal in the darkness. Tortoise fell back, one hand going to his chest, then rising to his face. Blood dripped from it onto the ground, one drop at a time, a soft patter, like rain.

Dai-Yu felt the cut as if it were in her own chest; she stumbled, gasping, then tried to stand.

“My child,” Tortoise whispered. Time slowed, stopped; in that single moment when Tortoise reeled back, she heard the words he was not saying.

Not choosing is a choice.

So is running away.

Fear is a choice.

Dai-Yu, staring at Tortoise’s shocked face, felt a cold certainty rise within her. She moved until she stood before him, seeing the gaping hole in his chest, the same hole Tiger had once opened in Pao’s chest.

She remembered Lei’s words: It would take an equal to resist them. There is no-one in Wen-Min who has their power.

Yet Tortoise had been their equal, once. The power was still within him, but fear prevented him using it.

“Breath from my breath,” she whispered. “Flesh from my flesh.” And, more slowly, “You have relinquished your mantle.”

She laid a hand on Tortoise’s chest, plunged it deep into the wound until she felt the heart beating under her fingers, the sticky heat of it on her skin. Warmth spread up her arm, into her chest, through her whole body, until she shivered with the same rhythm.

Flesh from my flesh.

The warmth rose within her, stronger and hotter. Under her spread fingers, Tortoise was fading, crumbling away to nothing, to dust carried by the wind.

Breath from my breath.

There was nothing where he had been: only dust; only a memory, already fading.

Seed from my seed.

Every part of her tingled now. She turned, slowly, and made her way to Tiger and Crane, facing them for the first time in centuries.

“Tiger,” she said. “Crane.”

All her lives she had run away from the darkness, never once thinking that shadows, undispelled, only grow. She stared at both of them now, shivering, but not with fear. She was their equal.

She raised her hand.

Light sprang up, throwing into sharp relief their faces: the lined, wizened masks of old men; the pale skins of things forever living in shadows.

There was a smell, a musty smell like books left too long untended.

“You are children,” she said.

“No,” Tiger growled, but in the light he was no longer as frightening as he had been.

“Think of the Empire,” Crane sighed.

They were smaller, now, as if the light had robbed them of their majesty; smaller, and ever dwindling.

What would you choose? she had once asked Lei.

She could still remember his answer. Neither. And yet how we need them, to keep us together.

He had been wrong.

Old, dead things. Things that do not die, that keep ageing. Things no longer needed.

“I choose,” Dai-Yu said. And, bending, caught both of them in her hands. “None of you. Let the Empire rise or fall on its own terms.”

They weighed nothing: a leaf; a breath; a length of silk. They shrank under her touch, shrieking their rage in tinny voices, dwindling ever more until they finally fell silent.

In Dai-Yu’s hand was nothing but coldness, and then even that was gone.

She stared at her trembling palm, then at the darkness all around her that distorted the pine trees into demon shadows.

“It is ended,” she whispered, and did not know whether to smile or laugh. Tortoise’s power coursed within her, begging to be used, to shape things as they should be. But she, who had seen what power could do, quelled it.

She saw, for the first time, the life that would be hers: free from the shadow of fear; free to make her own choices, to love and be loved in return; to raise her children in peace. Free at last, she thought, with a smile.

She walked away from the pool, her hands as empty as when she came, seeing the paths of her future before her, like so many flowers she could pick.

Epilogue: the Wheel

In the Tenth Court of Hell, the Lady waits before the Wheel. To every soul that passes she hands the celadon cup, and watches them drink until every memory has scattered away.

There is no exception.

Not any more.

© 2010 by Aliette De Bodard.

Originally published in Greatest Uncommon Denominator.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Aliette de Bodard lives in Paris. She shares a flat with more computers than warm bodies, and with two Lovecraftian plants in the process of gradually taking over the living room. She has a day job as a Computer Engineer, and writes speculative fiction in her spare time, indulging in her love of mythology and history: her trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, Obsidian and Blood, is published by Angry Robot, and her short fiction has appeared in venues such as Asimov’s and Interzone, garnering her nominations for the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

La Alma Perdida de Marguerite Espinoza
Jeremiah Tolbert

Marguerite Espinoza took her last breath as the sun slipped behind the Salt Mountains outside the expansive windows of her third floor bedchamber. Alvardo nearly missed the moment, eavesdropping to the gathered family’s whispered conversations. He had falsely predicted her passing four times in the past three days, but the passing was unmistakable. As Maestro Eusebio had said many times, “When the moment comes, you will know.” And he did.

The color from her eyes drained, leaving only pale white marbles that matched Alvardo’s own. Before the vessel could expel its final breath, Alvardo covered her lips with his own and inhaled sharply and deeply. There was no emotion in the act. It was a fact of his training, something that he must do.

The aching emptiness within his vessel filled with the sloshing of the elderly woman’s soul. The alma struggled against the barrier of his lips, then changed tactic and coursed to the back of his throat. Alvardo shakily retrieved the filter plugs from the pocket of his robes and lodged one firmly in each nostril. This is fear, he understood. The emotion had been described to him by the maestro.

But he also remembered this emotion, dimly, from a time that had been locked away deeply in some part of him. With the alma filling the crevasses within, memories awakened from his life before becoming the soulless custodio.

Fear was what he had felt scraping at his insides when he was just a boy and Maestro Eusebio had come to measure and examine him. To take him away from his parents, to separate him from his natural-born soul, then sell it off to some needy merchant family. Oh, yes. He remembered fear.

To be absolutely certain of the soul’s safety, to allay his new fear, he slipped the oil-soaked cloth mask from around his neck and over his mouth. He needed this job to go well, and he would not take risks. Feeling the soul struggle and send out waves of feeling, he knew that he never wanted to be empty again. He could not truly avoid it, of course, but if he was successful here, it would be a small step towards earning the money to buy back his own soul.

Only when he had secured his breathing orifices did Alvardo allow himself to take a small, hesitant breath through the filters. As he did, so too did the gathered sons and daughters of Espinoza finally take breaths of their own.

Seven days he had spent among them as an empty vessel. Alvardo’s knowledge of them had been limited to the facts. The Espinozas were a very wealthy family, merchants with dozens of ships sailing the Blanco, trading maize and silver for silk and spice. All four of the children were besouled with human alma, a sure sign of the elder Espinoza’s success in business, not that Alvardo had ever doubted. Hiring his services from Maestro Eusebio proved this.

Alvardo watched his reflection in a washbasin on a stand beside the deathbed as the alma settled for the moment and took up its temporary residence within. His eyes took on the old widow’s color, brilliant azure, the color of a young soul not many times embodied, still mostly free of sin. Perhaps not as free—no, certainly not as free—of sin as it had been when the old woman had become besouled after birth. Alvardo struggled to remember what color his own eyes had been before apprenticeship, but could not. They too must have been blue, but it seemed to Alvardo that the world had been born and died many times over since then.

He whispered the customary curse to El Dios Tacaño, completing the ceremony. The words of denial affected him much more deeply than before—their poetry stirring emotions from the alma. He raised his newly colored eyes to the family, allowing the emotions the soul felt for each to wash over him like the white-capped waves on the river after a summer storm.

Roberto evoked disappointment. The eldest son had spent his days carousing and gambling away his allowance with the bestial-souled boatmen at the riverfront. Squandered potential, such a shame, but at least he was not the only son.

The twins Imelda and Marianela, previously indistinguishable to Alvardo, were impossible to confuse under the soft guidance of alma. Marguerite had loved Marianela more. Alvardo wondered at this, then wondered at his own surprise. His own parents had not loved their children equally, after all. The alma loved both, but there was no doubting that the expectant daughter was favored.

Marianela’s husband, a trader from the south that Alvardo only knew as Vasco, patted the swelling of her belly and smiled. For him, the alma’s feelings were mixed. The wedding perhaps had been hasty, due to Marianela’s condition. Alvardo did not know the details, as such things were not carried in the alma. Still, it was of little surprise to Alvardo that the matron had bequeathed her alma to the couple. Imelda was unmarried, as were her brothers. The inheritance that the others would receive would no doubt allow for the purchase of true alma for their children when they did marry. Best to pass her alma to the next generation quickly, rather than waste coins storing it with a custodio like Alvardo for years instead of months. The old woman was very shrewd with money. In that regard, her youngest son was most alike.

Alvardo regarded Tonio last. Such immense pride, but some scorn as well. Alvardo knew only a little about the man that did not come from the alma. He was not much older than Alvardo, but had studied in the province’s capital at a very prestigious school for the sons of merchants and traders. In the days leading to her death, before the son’s arrival, Alvardo had listened to the family matron speak of the hopes she had pinned to her youngest and dearest. He was to run the family’s affairs now that the widow had passed. After his arrival, his first action had been to lock himself in the study and go through the accounts. This was the source of the alma’s scorn, Alvardo suspected. Or perhaps it was because of them all, he was the only one who did not have tears in his eyes. He wasn’t sure.

As an empty vessel, he had observed the family, but he had not understood their motivations, their feelings. He’d had no means of comprehending them without an alma. Now, with the borrowed soul of Marguerite, those memories too opened like lily blossoms to deeper truths.

“Please, custodio, take the greatest care until our baby arrives,” Marianela said softly, startling Alvardo back to the present. It was not like him to lose himself in memory that way. It must be the fault of the precious alma. He chastised himself, ordering his mind to focus and ignore the distractions of the whispering, struggling alma. It offered him things—money, power, glory—all if he would free it to the final destination.

You can offer me nothing, for you are dead and will pass on to your next life soon.

Oh, but I do have things I can offer you, memories I retain from my former life. Things of value to you and your deepest desires, echoed the alma. Alvardo did his best to ignore it.

“Six of my best will escort you to the maestro’s tower,” Tonio said. Already, he did not say “our,” but “my.” She had passed only moments before and he had already taken control of the family. Alvardo wished that he could risk a sigh, a small one, but his breathing was carefully controlled. Any force and his filters and mask might not prevent the alma’s departure to the miserly God. Instead, he nodded and motioned towards the door. To remain in the familiarity of the alma’s former home would only incite it further. Its escape attempts would be endless and exhausting. The bland surroundings of the meditation chambers of Eusebio’s tower would provoke it less.

The family stepped aside to allow his departure. Outside the bedchamber, Alvardo was immediately flanked by two slender dog-souled men wearing doublets and axes at their belts. Their soft brown eyes avoided meeting his gaze. The men’s almas perceived Alvardo as dominant, as was the natural order of things. Alvardo accepted their presence with a nod as he made his way into the streets. Outside, they were joined by the three others, similarly armed. They too had the bestial souls of dogs. No one with a true alma would stoop to bodyguard work.

An unnaturally tall woman with the red, slit eyes of a reptile leaned against the gate. She displayed the casualness of someone in a position of authority—the guard captain, Alvardo assumed. She carried a tightly wound pistol openly in each hand. With her in the lead, the citizens would clear the way quickly.

The Espinoza family manse towered over the narrow, winding passages of the Ruby Quarter, casting a deep shadow over Alvardo and the guards. The city’s founding families had built their homes from imported marble and granite, unlike the limestone of the poorer neighborhoods where Alvardo had been born. At least in the poorer, newer districts, the streets were wide enough to allow the passage of springcarts. One would have allowed for a much safer return to Eusbio’s tower atop the hill overlooking the bend in the River Santhe. A much less exhausting climb as well. Perhaps they could hail a cab when they reached the Camino Grandioso? That should be safe. At least, Alvardo hoped so.

Tonio had not demonstrated paranoia by assigning so many of his men to escort Alvardo. Even in the Ruby Quarter, Alvardo knew that custodios de alma were at risk of capture. Not more than three weeks ago, the student of a rival maestro had been taken in a fierce and bloody battle. A young, proper alma could be traded for a dozen ships to the desperate noble family with a child on the way and no available inheritable alma. At the very least, the soul and its guardian could be ransomed back to the family for a nearly equal sum. In the recent incident, Alvardo had heard that the family paid the ransom and the soul was returned, but the soul-thieves responsible had not been caught.

Even more cause for caution, the widow Espinoza’s prolonged illness was well known in Barcelenia. Alvardo reached within the folds of his robe and assuring himself that his dagger remained fastened to his belt. He was trained in its use for defense, but with the alma inside of him, he was not certain he could kill with it.

Alvardo fretted as he made his way down winding gravel streets. The guards pressed in close, sniffing the air. Each blind corner was met with a rising flutter of fear within his chest. The soul struggled to escape. Three times, Alvardo was forced to stop and gather himself. The guards whined then, giving him pleading eyes until he took up walking again.

It was not until he began to relax at the sight of the Camino Grandioso not far ahead—the most broad and well-trafficked avenue of Barcelenia—that the bandits struck. Tightly-wound spring pistols fired, the metal coils cracking like the sound of a turtle’s jaws narrowly missing its prey.

Alvardo’s guards barked and howled. Two men forced him to lay prone on the street. Gravel bit sharply into Alvardo’s hands. Unable to see the struggle, Alvardo could only hear the fight. Thrown axes whistled through the air. More pistols fired, the sounds seeming to come from all directions at once. The body of a guard slumped atop him, painfully driving the gravel even more deeply into his flesh.

The heavy, wet-fur odor of the bestial almas was strong enough to surpass his nasal filters. Alvardo had never witnessed the dissipation of a bestial soul before. They did not escape toward the heavens and the miserly God, but instead diffused into component odors. It made the lives of the poor seem that much more pointless to him. I will never be the vessel to such a weak, intransient thing, he thought.

The battle was over so quickly that Alvardo had only just convinced himself of its reality when rough hands dragged him to his feet. Ahead, a large springcart slowed to a stop at the alley exit, casting a dark and ominous shadow. The red-eyed woman had drawn a thin dagger and was occupied with slitting the throats of guards whose alma still clung to flesh. A traitor, then. Alvardo made to flee the way they had come, but his escape was blocked by the two ox-souled figures that had lifted him from the ground.

Their once-human frames twisted with grotesquely overgrown muscles. One’s head drooped under the weight of heavy horns that sprouted from his temples. These men had received their bestial almas far too late in life for their vessels to resist the bestial taint. Their lives were mostly miserable ones, and despite their line of work, Alvardo felt a pang of sympathy for their hard existences. They did not appear to feel any sense of kinship for him. They motioned for him to continue to the cart while slotting new-wound springs into their pistols. Even as an empty vessel, Alvardo would have understood their unspoken threat.

His legs shook as he stepped into the waiting springcart. His sandal soles stained blue and magenta with the draining humors of the guardsmen as they oozed into broad puddles among the bits of gravel. The alma within Alvardo writhed like the alma of a snake at the sight of the bodily essences. He quietly recited a poem of becalming written by Carlos the Younger.

The cart’s gears spun up to a cranking frenzy. It lurched forward, swerving madly into the busy traffic. A whip-thin boy holding a rapier in one hand pulled the cart door shut with the other, all without taking his bestial besouled eyes off Alvardo.

The bandits had blackened the viewports of the springcart with soot and grime, and so Alvardo could just barely make out the restless figure of the boy across from him. The blade glinted even in the low light, and was impossible to ignore, pointed at the nexus of his four humors as it was.

You should have listened to me before, whispered the alma. Now you will be murdered and I will escape, leaving you with nothing as your empty vessel takes its last breath.

It was unlikely the boy would actually murder Alvardo. Even the slightest puncture or prick could risk the escape of the alma. Alvardo’s training had prepared him for the possibility of capture, but it did nothing to calm him.

Eusebio had lectured most sternly: “If you should be captured while bearing a patron’s alma, you must be as docile as the deer and as complacent as the well-fed sow. The alma may provoke you to act foolishly, but you must guard against such emotion. It is the alma’s nature to desire a return to El Dios Tacaño. You cannot trust it.”

Alvardo’s memories of the lecture were punctuated by his master’s yellow eyes, a sign of the owl’s alma he favored when not bearing almas for the elites of the city. His master had long ago earned enough money to purchase a human alma, but Eusebio’s dedication to his role of guardian was most admirable. Alvardo suspected that even should the maestro fall ill, Eusebio would not purchase a true alma to ensure against the oblivion of a soulless death. He might get well again, and where would that leave his business?

“How’s it feel to have the old crone fluttering around in there?” the boy asked with a curious tone. A beam of light illuminated the compartment briefly, allowing Alvardo to make out the boy’s dark, rodent-like eyes.

“Uncomfortable,” Alvardo whispered.

The boy nodded, satisfied with the answer. “You won’t have to bear it much longer.”

Alvardo flooded with relief from the alma, but he was unsure of the meaning of the boy’s words or whether he could trust the relief. He chose to believe it meant that arrangements would move quickly for his release. It was easier to accept than the alternative.

“What’s your name?” the boy asked. Alvardo hesitated. “I am Victor Cresketio.”

“Alvardo de Silva,” he whispered. “I cannot say that it is an honor to meet you.”

Victor laughed, and sheathed his rapier, an awkward move in the confines of the springcart. “Is that your sense of humor, or the old crone’s?”

Alvardo shrugged. The bandit’s easy friendliness was as false as Horatio the Fishmonger’s wooden leg. Alvardo would not let it draw him into complacency. The alma urged him to draw his dagger and cut his way free from the cart, but this too he resisted. Eusebio could call him many terrible things—lazy, stubborn, ugly—but “fool” was not among them.

They rode the rest of their mysterious journey in silence. Victor fidgeted often, occasionally reaching within a small satchel and withdrawing bits of dried apple upon which he gnawed furiously. He offered a piece to Alvardo with a laugh, then ate it without waiting for Alvardo to turn it away. To eat now would be of the utmost foolishness, of course.

In the silence, the alma tempted him once more. You desire to buy back your own soul, do you not? I-as-Marguerite hid away treasures that could buy you this and more in preparation for the next life. If you agree to free me, I will share their location with you, and you may take them. I do not need them where I go next.

Hush, thought Alvardo. We’re arriving.

When the springcart clanked to a halt, Victor hopped from his bench and burst out of the cart into the open air. The sudden brilliant sunlight blinded Alvardo momentarily. When his vision cleared, he saw a barrier of thick trees stretching across the horizon. Ah-ha. So the bandits would take refuge within the Caspar Forest. Much safer for them than trying to hide within the city, where Capitan Vega’s informers might turn them in.

A bass voice from the driver’s seat at the front of the cart scolded Victor. A man leaned around the corner to glare at Alvardo. He wore a neatly trimmed black beard, and his hair was styled in a fashion Alvardo recognized as being popular in the provincial capital. His eyes were most definitely human, to Alvardo’s great surprise.

“Damn you, Victor, you were supposed to blindfold him,” he spat and climbed from the driving seat.

“I’m sorry, Ricardo, I forgot,” Victor said, shrinking back from the larger man’s raised fist. “I will do it now.”

“Don’t bother. He has already seen my face.” He said this with a tone of finality that chilled Alvardo to his core, but filled the alma with glee. Ricardo turned his attention to Alvardo. “You may live yet, custodio. When this is done, I will be very far away, so knowing my face will do you little good. Now, get out. Don’t dally; you are already a parchment’s thickness away from a very unhappy fate.”

Alvardo slid from the cart and found that again his legs shook and wobbled. He had felt something like fear from Eusebio when he was an empty vessel, but it was nothing like the fear he felt while bearing an alma. That had been the simple fear that a vessel has, the meat’s desire for survival and little more. It was a lesser thing, like hunger or thirst or the need for sleep. Even as the fear washed over him, he guiltily reveled in it. It was something true and meaningful.

He had on several occasions temporarily carried bestial alma as part of his training, but this was his first human since his own trueborn alma. New souls were the rarest things in the world. El Dios Tacaño made few new almas in his abandonment of mankind, but the custodios stood between God and the continued existence of the human soul. But only the trueborn could become a custodio, having been born knowing the bonds of the human alma.

Those few new trueborn souls arrived ignoring all barriers of class. Eusebio had confessed to Alvardo while drunk on cherry wine late one winter’s evening that Alvardo’s parents had at first wished to keep and raise him. But life in the shantytowns of the capital was difficult, and Alvardo’s alma could fetch far too much to the maestro custodios. His parents had auctioned him and his alma at the soul market. They had fled with the proceeds of the sale across the Blanco to a better life. No doubt they had given birth to another son, perhaps purchased him an antique alma, and forgotten about Alvardo entirely, a dark secret from their past that could never reach them.

“Money will always win in the end, boy,” Eusebio had said, with what Alvardo now realized was sadness. “The only force more powerful than greed is revenge, but you need not concern yourself with that. Greed will be the force in your life when you bear a soul and when you do not.”

Greed was indeed responsible for his current predicament. As Ricardo and Victor gathered packs of supplies from the rear of the cart in preparation to depart into the forest, another springcart arrived. The ox-men sat on either side of the snake-souled woman. She moved languidly as she stepped down from the cart and casually flipped a long red braid over her shoulder as she stepped into Ricardo’s embrace. They kissed for a long moment before standing apart. Alvardo’s heart beat faster than it had during his capture. He pushed the strange sensation away. Why had none of the bandits ridden within the compartment of the springcart?

“Carmella, my beauty. Were you followed?”

She smiled. Her teeth were sharp like needles. When she spoke, her words were soft and full of breath. “Espinoza’s men are combing the riverfront. The false trail leads to the warehouse as intended.”

“Very good. You deserve a reward later,” Ricardo said with a lick of his lips. Carmella blushed. Alvardo wondered how such a relationship could be. After all, bestial souls were vastly inferior, as ordained by God. May he rot in Heaven, Alvardo added to the thought hastily.

The lovers drew close and held counsel in whispers that Alvardo dared not attempt to overhear. They are distracted, a faint echo of the old woman’s voice spoke within Alvardo. Flee!

The compulsion from the alma overwhelmed his flesh with fear. He leapt away, across the road and over an irrigation ditch into the rows of late summer maize. He ducked just as one of the ox-men fired his spring pistol, scattering maize in all directions when the shot missed its mark.

“Don’t shoot, imbécil!” someone shouted from the road. “Get the nets.”

Alvardo ran, ducking and weaving between the rows. He already regretted his escape attempt, but the bandits would most likely punish him even if he were to return. Perhaps if he could escape, the Espinozas might offer him some small reward, a fraction of the cost of a ransom?

Alvardo glanced over his shoulder. The ox-men waded into the maize. Each carried a thick-woven net weighted with lead shot along the edges. He was sure that he was further than even the ox-men could throw until one hurled the net through the air. To avoid it, Alvardo tripped over a clod of dirt and tumbled. The net missed him only narrowly.

He felt a sharp, stinging pain in his side and his strength quickly sapped as the pain grew worse. He struggled upright and raised his hand from his side. His fingers were slick with green humor.

The dagger. In the fall it had sliced him deeply. That he would be laid to rest by his own weapon was a delicious irony to the alma. It began to writhe again, seeking to flee through the puncture. Alvardo clamped his hand over the wound, hoping that he could remain conscious long enough for the ox-men to capture him. He had no medical supplies with which to bandage himself.

A net cast over him then, forcing his hand from the wound. The alma squeezed between the folds of flesh, but Alvardo took a sharp breath, drawing it back in long enough to clamp his hand down again. He was dimly aware of being lifted up.

“This one is not responsible for the wound,” the ox-man grumbled. His voice once again brought the world into focus.

“He fell on his own blade,” Victor said with a laugh.

A fleshy slap echoed across the plains, followed by Victor’s sharp cry.

“If you had done your job from the beginning, he would not have had the weapon. We should’ve never hired a rat for men’s work,” Ricardo said.

Alvardo focused enough to recognize that he lay prone on the road. The bandits were gathered above him and encircled a familiar face. Tonio?

The alma radiated betrayal, hurt, and confusion. Marguerite’s youngest son worked quickly at Alvardo’s injury, his studied hands coating the bandage with thickening plasters and sealant wax.

Tonio looked him evenly in the eyes, searching for signs of blanching, then nodded. “You will hold.” He addressed Ricardo over his shoulder. “True men are a rare commodity these days. And men who can do a simple job without nearly ruining it are even more uncommon.” Ricardo’s silence was sullen.

“Betrayer,” Alvardo hissed. “Thief. You would steal from your own family?”

Tonio helped Alvardo up from the ground, checking his work by poking and prodding the wound. Alvardo winced, but the patch was well-made.

He addressed the bandits. “Give us a moment. I wish to speak of private matters.” The ox-men turned away immediately. Ricardo and Carmella were hesitant, but they obeyed after meeting Tonio’s gaze. Ricardo grabbed Victor by the hair and dragged him along. The boy screeched and flailed, but the bandit leader ignored his cries.

“It is . . . a business decision,” Tonio said once they were alone. His tone was apologetic. “Feelings and sentiment were not part of the equation leading to my decision.” Alvardo did not know if Tonio was speaking to him or the alma. The alma had ceased its struggling entirely. Alvardo felt cold.

“When you sickened, my siblings,”—Tonio hissed the word with as much disrespect as one might hold for the miserly God—“plundered the coffers with abandon. You were so angry with me for tending to the ledgers when I arrived instead of waiting at your side, but the ledgers proved what I had feared. Our accounts possessed barely enough to maintain the staff. We are nearly insolvent, madre. Another month, and then everyone in the city will know. Then the vultures will truly circle.”

Tonio sighed and massaged his temples. When he spoke again, his tone was sharp. “Your worst nightmare. Your life’s work, wasted. The ships moored, unable to be crewed. Our warehouses empty and collecting dust. I made this plan in haste, not knowing how much longer you would have. I have made so many sacrifices for this family . . .” His face softened for a moment as he was lost in thought, but hardened quickly once more. “Your alma will earn the family enough to continue our business. But do not fret. I have acquired a seventeenth generation soul for a very affordable price. Anyway, your grandchild is destined to be rotten, no matter which alma it receives. A young soul would not have done much to change that.”

“You hate me?” asked the alma through Alvardo.

Tonio’s hands formed fists, his knuckles turning white from lack of anything to strike. “You demanded that I be the responsible one. I was never allowed to play or relax. Figures and charts for me while my brother and sisters had such fun gambling, drinking, and dancing late into the evenings. The burden could have been shared.” He laughed bitterly. “But you carried it yourself, after father died. So I must shoulder it alone? But even now, I do the responsible thing while the others pretend to mourn and wait to collect their inheritances.”

A moment passed in silence. Alvardo searched Tonio’s eyes and found a loathing that even an empty vessel might recognize.

“Your alma will pass on to a child of a nuevo rico. It is the only way I can wrong you now, as you have wronged me all my life.”

Words boiled up from within Alvardo—dusty, weathered sounds. So weary. “I am ashamed that both my sons have turned out to be such failures—” It trailed off.

You must let me go, the alma whispered within. Tonio slapped Alvardo across the face with an open palm. He shouted something that Alvardo could not understand over the ringing of his ears.

But you will pass unto Him who has abandoned his creation! You would make me a failure as well?

The alma was silent. It radiated its anger without words. Anger with Alvardo, with Tonio, and especially with God.

Alvardo understood the anger at betrayal for one’s family. This too he remembered from his early life in the time before the maestro had severed his alma and sold it away to a noble family. In that moment, both vessel and alma wanted revenge for everything. Alvardo was surprised at how easy it was to let go of the fear, and how quickly anger replaced it.

Yes, the alma whispered. You understand now. Memories poured into Alvardo’s mind from the alma, showing him the solution to his own desires. He cast his decision then, certain of their path.

“Perhaps I will have taught you one final lesson of value,” Alvardo and the alma said as one.

Alvardo tore his mask away, plucked out the filters and let them fall to the earth. He tipped back his head, opened his mouth, and exhaled the alma back to God.

Alvardo was hollow again. This was a fact he knew. A man stood before him. He knew this man. He knew the facts of the man’s existence. Those were easily recalled. But he did not know why the man wept, nor why hot tears rolled down his own cheeks.

The man shouted things, shoved Alvardo to the ground and pummeled him with fists. Alvardo did not listen, could barely feel the blows. The shock of what he had done had settled over him like a smothering blanket.

The man stormed away, shouting more unintelligible words to the bandits before taking his springcart and departing as fast as the gears could spin. The bandits gathered into the other cart and departed soon after. The failed bandit Victor gave him a hidden wave from the wagon bed.

Alvardo examined the city behind him. Even from this great distance, he could just make out the rooftop of the Espinoza estate.

Before departing to God, the alma had shared with him secrets from Marguerite’s life. She had been afraid for the future as illness and death crowded closer. Marguerite had not been an ignorant woman, and she had known her children for what they were.

Under the cover of night while her children had slept, she had gathered up her most valuable jewels and placed them in a box. She’d felt her way down the grand staircase in the darkness and into the small garden outside. Under the light of the moons, she had emptied out a planter, scooping the rich black soil with her arthritic hands. She placed the box inside the hole and covered it, then stared at the scene, committing the memory to her very soul.

Remember this, she had told herself. Hold onto this until you are a child once more, and recover it. My children do not deserve these possessions. I will take them with me.

Would it have worked? The memories of one life faded over the years of a new one. Perhaps the jewels would have gone undiscovered for many years, forgotten by the grandchild with her grandmother’s soul. Alvardo did not know, and it no longer mattered.

He waited for the cover of darkness, and then he went to collect the bribe that the alma had offered.

No guards were posted outside the estate. Those that had survived the ambush were no doubt searching the city for Alvardo. He slipped through the gate and uncovered the jewels quickly, then darted back out and down the streets for the edge of the city.

To the south lay the provincial capital and his birthplace. Perhaps his trueborn soul lived there still. There was work to be had for a disgraced custodio in the shadowy alleys and backstreets of the capital while he searched. Useful connections to be made with people who knew how to find lost and stolen things. He did not feel hope—only emotionless possibilities.

Alvardo walked southward, quickening his pace to a jog despite the ache of his wounds.

© 2012 Jeremiah Tolbert.

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

A Princess of Spain
Carrie Vaughn

November 14, 1501, Baynard’s Castle

Catherine of Aragon, sixteen years old, danced a pavane in the Spanish style before the royal court of England. Lutes, horns, and tabors played a slow, stately tempo, to which she stepped in time. The ladies of her court, who had traveled with her from Spain, danced with her, treading circles around one another—floating, graceful, without a wasted movement. Her body must have seemed like air, drifting with the heavy gown of velvet and gold. She did not even tip her head, framed within its gem-encrusted hood. She was a piece of artwork, a prize for the usurper of the English throne, so that his son’s succession would not be questioned. King Henry had the backing of Spain now.

Henry VII watched with a quiet, smug smile on his creased face. Elizabeth of York, his wife, sat nearby, more demonstrative in her pride, smiling and laughing. At a nearby table sat their two sons and two daughters—an impressive household. All made legitimate by Catherine’s presence here, for she had been sent by Spain to marry the eldest son: Arthur, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, was thin and pale at fifteen years old.

All these English were pale, past the point of fairness and well toward ill, for their skies were always laden with clouds. Arthur slouched in his chair and occasionally coughed into his sleeve. He had declined to dance with her, claiming that he preferred to gaze upon her beauty while he may, before he claimed it later that evening.

Catherine’s heart ached, torn between anticipation and foreboding. But she must dance her best, as befitted an infanta of Spain. “You must show the English what we Spanish are—superior,” her mother, Reina Isabella, told her before Catherine departed. She would most likely never see her parents again.

Arthur did not look at her. Catherine saw his gaze turn to the side of the hall, where one of the foreign envoys sat at a table. There, a woman gazed back at the prince. She was fair skinned with dark eyes and a lock of dark, curling hair hanging outside her hood. Her high-necked gown was elegant without being ostentatious, both modest and fashionable, calculated to not upstage the prince and princess on their wedding day. But it was she who drew the prince’s eye.

Catherine saw this; long practice kept her steps in time until the music finished at last.

The musicians struck up a livelier tune, and Prince Henry, the king’s younger son, grabbed his sister Margaret’s arm and pulled her to the middle of the hall, laughing. All of ten years old, he showed the promise of cutting a fine figure when he came of age—strong limbed, lanky, with a head of unruly ruddy hair. Already he was as tall as any of his siblings, including his elder brother Arthur. At this rate he would become a giant of a man. Word at court said he loved hunting, fighting, dancing, learning—all the pursuits worthy of any prince of Europe. But at this moment he was a boy.

He said something—Catherine only had a few words of English, and did not understand. A moment later he pulled off his fine court coat, leaving only his bare shirt. The room was hot with torches and bodies. He must have been stifled in the finely wrought garment. Because he was a boy, the court thought the gesture amusing rather than immodest; everyone smiled indulgently.

Catherine took her seat again, the place of honor at the king’s right hand. She gazed, though, at Arthur. She did not even know him. She did not know if she wanted to. Tonight would be better. Tonight, all would be well.

He continued staring at the foreign woman.

The evening drew on, and soon the momentous occasion would be upon them: Arthur and Catherine would be put to bed to consummate their marriage. To seal the alliance between England and Spain with their bodies. Her ladies fluttered, preparing to spirit her off to her chambers to prepare her.

In the confusion, the lanky figure of a very tall boy slipped beside her. The young prince, Henry.

He smiled at her, like a child would, earnestly wanting to be friends.

“You’ve seen it, too,” he said in Latin. She could understand him. “My brother, staring at that woman.”

“Sí. Yes. Do you know her?”

“She’s from the Low Countries,” he said. “Or so it’s put out at court, though it’s also well known that she speaks French with no accent. She’s a lady-in-waiting to the daughter of the Dutch ambassador. But the daughter kept to her apartments tonight, and the lady isn’t with her, which seems strange, doesn’t it?”

“But she must have some reason to be here.” And that reason might very well be the young groom who could not take his gaze from her.

“Certainly. Perhaps I’ll order someone to spy on her.” Henry’s eyes gleamed.

Catherine pressed her lips together but didn’t manage a smile. “It is no matter. A passing fancy. It will mean nothing tomorrow.”

Arthur was her husband. Tonight would make that a fact and not simply a legality. With a sudden burning in her gut, she longed for that moment.

“In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

The bishop sprinkled holy water over the bed, where Catherine and Arthur were tucked, dressed in costly nightclothes, put to bed in a most formal manner for their wedding night, so that all might know that the marriage was made complete. At last, the witnesses left them, and for the first time, Catherine was alone with her husband.

All she could do was stare at him, his white face and lank ruddy hair, as her heart raced in her chest. He stared back, until she felt she should say something, but her voice failed. Words failed, when she couldn’t decide whether to speak French, Latin, or attempt a phrase in her still halting English. Why can he not understand Spanish?

“You are quite pretty,” he said in Latin, and leaned forward on shaking arms to kiss her on the lips.

She flushed with relief. Perhaps all would be well. He was her husband, she was his wife. She even felt married, lying here with him. Warm from her scalp to her toes—pleasant, illicit, yet sanctioned by God and Church. This was her wedding night, a most glorious night—

Before she could kiss him back, before she could hold him as her body told her to do, he pulled away. Unbidden, her arm rose to reach for him. Quickly, she drew it back and folded her hands on her lap. Must she maintain her princess’s decorum, even here?

Arthur coughed. He bent double with coughing, putting his fist to his mouth. His thin body shook.

She left the bed and retrieved a goblet of wine from the table. Returning, she sat beside him and touched his hand, urging him to take a drink. His skin was cold, damp as the English winter she’d found herself in.

“Por Dios,” she whispered. What had God brought her to? She said in Latin, “I’ll send for a physician.”

Arthur shook his head. “It is nothing. It will pass. It always does.” He took a drink of wine, swallowing loudly, as if his throat were closing.

But he had been this pale and sickly every time she’d seen him. This would not pass.

If they could have a child, if he would live long enough for them to have a child, a son, a new heir, her place in this country would be assured.

The wine would revive him. She touched his cheek. When he looked up, she hoped to see some fire in his eyes, some desire there to match her own. She hoped he would touch her back. But she only saw exhaustion from the day’s activities. He was a child on the verge of sleep.

She was a princess of Spain, not made for seduction.

He gave the goblet back to her. With a sigh, he settled back against the pillows. By his next breath, he was asleep.

Catherine set the goblet on the table. The room was chilled. Every room in this country was chilled. Yet at this moment, while her skin burned, the cool tiles of the floor felt good against her bare feet.

She knelt by the bed, clasped her hands tightly together, and prayed.

December 15, 1501, Richmond

Another feast lay spread before her. King Henry displayed his wealth in calculated presentations of food, music, entertainment. However much the politics and finances of his realm were strained, he would give no other appearance than that of a successful, stable monarch.

Catherine did not dance, though the musicians played a pavane. She sat at the table, beside her husband, watching. Husband in name only. He had not once come to her chamber. He had not once summoned her to his. But appearances must be maintained.

He slouched in his chair, leaning on one carved wooden arm, clutching a goblet in both hands. He had grown even more wan, even more sickly, if possible. Did no one else see it?

She touched the arm of his chair. “My husband, have you eaten enough? Should I call for more food?”

He shook his head and waved her off. It was not natural, to treat one’s wife so. He was in danger of failing his duty as a prince, and as a Christian husband.

But what could she do? A princess was meant to serve her husband, not command or judge him.

“Your husband will take mistresses,” her mother told her, in her final instructions before Catherine set sail. She told her that it was the way of things and she could not fight it. But Isabella also said that her husband would do his duty toward her, so that she might do her duty and bear him many children.

Her duty was turning to dust in her hands, through no fault of her own.

In the tiled space in the center of the hall, the young Prince Henry danced with the strange foreign woman. Catherine had no evidence that this woman was her husband’s mistress, except for the way Arthur watched her, desperately, with too bright eyes.

The woman danced gracefully. She must have been a dozen years older than her partner, but she tolerated him with an air of amusement, wearing the thin and placid smile, as though sitting for a portrait. Henry was a lively enough partner that he made every step a joy. His father was training him for the clergy, it was said. He might be the greatest bishop in England someday—the crown’s voice in the Church.

Catherine begged leave to retire early, before the music and dancing had finished. She claimed fatigue and a sensitive stomach. People nodded knowingly at the information and offered each other winks. They thought she was with child, as any young bride ought to be.

But she wasn’t. Never would be, if things kept on in this manner.

It was difficult to spy in the king’s house unless one had command of the guards and could order them to stay, or leave, or watch. She did not have command of anything except her own household, which the English court treated as the foreigners they were. Really, though, her duenna and stewards commanded her household—Catherine was too young for it, they said. Her parents had sent able guardians to look after her.

Nevertheless, against all her instincts, after dark—well after the candles and lanterns had been snuffed—Catherine donned a black traveling cloak over her shift and set out, stepping quietly past her ladies-in-waiting who slept in the outer chamber. Very quietly she opened the heavy door, giving herself barely enough space to slip through. The iron hinges squeaked, but only once, softly, like a woman sighing in her sleep.

Two more chambers, sitting rooms, lay between her and Arthur. The spaces were dark, chill. Thick windows let in very little of the already faint moonlight. Her slippered feet made no sound on the wood floors. She kept to the paneled walls and felt her way around, step by careful step.

Guards walked their rounds. They passed from room to room, pikes resting on their shoulders. England had finished its wars of succession relatively recently; for the royal family, there was always danger.

If she were very quiet, and moved very carefully, they would not see her. She hoped. If they found her, most likely nothing would happen to her, but she didn’t want to have to explain herself. This was very improper for a woman of her rank. She should go back to her own room and pray to God to make this right.

Her knees were worn out with praying.

She listened for booted footsteps and the rattle of armor. Heard nothing.

She reached the chamber outside Arthur’s bedroom. A light shone under the door, faint, buttery—candlelight. A step away from the door she paused, listening. What did she think she might hear? Conversation? Laughter? Deep sighs? She had no idea.

She touched the door. Surely it would be locked. It would be a relief to have to walk away, still ignorant. She touched the latch—

It wasn’t locked.

Softly, she pushed open the door and looked in.

Looking like an ill child far younger than his years, Arthur lay propped up in bed, limp, his eyes half-closed, senseless. Beside him crouched the foreign woman, fully clothed, her hands on his shoulders, clutching his linen nightclothes. Her mouth was open, and her teeth shone dark with blood. A gash on Arthur’s neck bled.

“You’re killing him!” Catherine cried. She stood, too shocked to scream—she ought to scream, to call for the guards. Even if they could not understand her Spanish, they would come at the sound of panic.

In a moment, a scant heartbeat, the foreign woman appeared before Catherine. She might as well have flown; the princess didn’t see her move. This was some dream, some vision. Some devil had crept into her mind.

The woman pressed her to the wall, closing Catherine’s mouth with one hand. Catherine kicked and writhed, trying to break away, but the woman was strong. Fantastically strong. Catherine swatted at her, pulled at a strand of her dark hair that had come loose from her hood. She might as well have been a fly in the woman’s grasp. With her free hand she grabbed Catherine’s wrists and held her arms still.

Then she caught Catherine’s gaze.

Her eyes were blue, the dark, clear blue of the twilight sky over Spain.

“I am not killing him. Be silent, say nothing of what you have seen, and you will keep your husband.” Her voice was subdued, but clear. Later, Catherine could not recall what language she had spoken.

Catherine nearly laughed. What husband? She might as well have chosen the convent. But she couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.

The woman’s touch was cold. The fingers curled over Catherine’s face felt like marble.

“You are so young to be in this position. Poor girl.”

The woman smiled, kindly it seemed. For a moment, Catherine wanted to cling to her, to spill all her worries before this woman—she seemed to understand.

Then she said, “Sleep. You’ve had a dream. Go back to sleep.”

Catherine’s vision faded. She struggled again, tried to keep the woman’s face in sight, but she felt herself falling. Then, nothing.

She awoke on the floor. She had fainted and lay curled at the foot of her own bed, wrapped in her cloak. Pale morning light shone through the window. It was a cold light, full of winter.

She tried to recall last night—she had left her bed, obviously. But for what reason? If she’d wanted wine she could have called for one of her ladies.

Her ladies would be mortified to find her like this. They would think her ill, keep her to bed, and send for physicians. Catherine quickly stood, collected herself, arranged her shift and untangled her hair. She was a princess. She ought to behave like one, despite her strange dreams of women with rich blue eyes.

An ache in her belly made her pause. It was not like her to be so indecorous as to leave her bed before morning. As she smoothed the wrinkles from her dressing gown, her fingers tickled. She raised her hand, looked at it.

A few silken black fibers—long, shining, so thin they were almost invisible—clung to her skin. Hair—but how had it come here? Her own hair was like honey, Arthur’s was colored amber—

She had seen a dark-haired woman with Arthur. It was not a dream. The memory of what she had seen had not faded after all.

That day, Catherine and Arthur attended Mass together. She studied him so intently that he raised his brow at her, inquiring. She couldn’t explain. He wore a high-necked doublet. She couldn’t see his neck to tell if he had a wound there. Perhaps he did, perhaps not. He made no mention of what had happened last night, made no recognition that he had even seen her. Could he not remember?

Say nothing of what you have seen, and you will keep your husband. Catherine dared not speak at all. She would be called mad.

This country was cursed, overrun with rain and plague. This king was cursed, haunted by all those who had died so he might have his crown, and so was his heir. Catherine could tell her parents, but what would that accomplish? She was not here for herself, but for the alliance between their kingdoms.

She prayed, while the priest chanted. His words were Latin, which was familiar and comforting. The Church was constant. In that she could take comfort. Perhaps if she confessed, told her priest what she had seen, he would have counsel. Perhaps he could say what demon this was that was taking Arthur.

A slip of paper, very small, as if it had been torn from the margin of a letter, fell out of her prayer book. She glanced quickly around—no one had seen it. Her ladies either stared ahead at the altar or bowed over their clasped hands. She was kneeling; the paper had landed on the velvet folds of her skirt. She picked it up.

“Convene me horto. Henricus,” written in a boy’s careful hand. Meet me in the garden.

Catherine crumpled the paper and tucked it in her sleeve. She’d burn it later.

She told her ladies she wished to walk in the air, to stretch her legs after the long Mass. They accompanied her—she could not go anywhere without them, but she was able to find a place where she might sit a little ways off. Henry would have to find her then.

Here she was, in this country only two months and already playing at spying.

Gravel paths wound around the lawn outside Richmond, the King’s favorite palace. Never had Catherine seen grass of such jewel-like green. Even in winter, the lawn stayed green. The dampness made it thrive. Her mother-in-law Elizabeth assured her that in the summer, flowers grew in glorious tangles. Around back, boxes outside the kitchens held forests of herbs. England was fertile, the queen said knowingly.

Catherine and her ladies walked to where the path turned around a hedge. Some stone benches offered a place to rest.

“Doña Elvira, you and the ladies sit here. I wish to walk on a little. Do not worry, I will call if I need you.” The concerned expression on her duenna’s face was not appeased, but Catherine was resolute.

Doña Elvira sat and directed the others to do likewise.

Catherine strolled on, carefully, slowly, not rushing. Around the shrubs and out of sight from her ladies, Henry arrived, stepping out from behind the other end of the hedge.

“Buenos días, hermana.”

She smiled in spite of herself. “You learn my language.”

Henry blushed and looked at his feet. “Only a little. Hello and thank you and the like.”

“Still, gracias. For the little.”

“I have learned something of the foreign woman. I told the guards to watch her and listen.”

“We should tell your father. It is not for us to command the guards—”

“She is not from the Low Countries. Her name is Angeline. She is French, which means she is a spy,” he said.

Catherine wasn’t sure that one so naturally followed the other. It was too simple an explanation. The alliance between England and Spain presented far too strong an enemy for France. Of course they would send spies. But that was no spy she’d seen with Arthur.

She shook her head. “She is more than that.”

“She hopes to break the alliance between England and Spain by distracting my brother. If you have no children, the succession will pass to another.”

“To you and your children, yes? And perhaps a French queen for England, if they find one for you to marry?”

He pursed boyish lips. “I am Duke of York. Why would I want to be king?”

But there was a light in his eyes, intelligent, glittering. He would not shy away from being king, if, God forbid, events came to that.

He said, “There is more. I touched her hand when we danced. It was cold. Colder than stone. Colder than anything.”

Catherine paced, just a little circle beside her brother-in-law. She ought to tell a priest. But he knew. So she told him.

“I have been spying as well,” she said. “I went to Arthur’s chamber last night. If she is his mistress—I had to see. I had to know.”

“What did you see? Is she his mistress?”

Catherine wrung her hands. She did not have the words for this in any language. “I do not know. She was there, yes. But Arthur was senseless. It was as if she had put a spell on him.”

Eagerly, Henry said, “Then she is a witch?”

Catherine’s throat ached, but she would not cry. “I do not know. I do not know of such things. She said strange things to me; that I must not interfere if I wish to keep Arthur alive. She—she cast a spell on me, I think. I fainted, then I awoke in my chamber—”

Henry considered thoughtfully, a serious expression that looked almost amusing on the face of a boy. “So. A demon is trying to sink its claws into the throne of England through its heir. Perhaps it will possess him. Or devour him. We must kill it, of course.”

“We must tell a priest!” Catherine said, pleading. “We must tell the archbishop!”

“If we did, would they believe us? I, a boy, and you, a foreigner? They’ll say we are mad, or playing at games.”

She couldn’t argue because she’d thought the same. She said, “This woman made me sleep with a glance. How would we kill such a thing?” Even if they wanted to kill her. What if the woman was right, and if they acted against her she would find some way to kill Arthur? Perhaps they should bide their time.

“Highness? Are you there?” Doña Elvira called to her.

“I must away,” Catherine said, and curtsied to her brother-in-law. “We must think on what to do. We must not be rash.”

He returned the respect with a bow. “Surely. Farewell.”

She hoped he would not be rash. She feared he looked upon all this as a game.

“His Highness is not seeing visitors,” the gentleman of Arthur’s chamber told her. He spoke apologetically and bowed respectfully, but he would not let her through the doors to see Arthur. She wanted to scream.

“You will tell him that I was here?”

“Yes, Your Highness,” the man said and bowed again.

Catherine could do nothing more than turn around and walk away, trailed by her own attending ladies.

What they must think of her. She caught the whispers among them, when they thought she couldn’t hear. Pobre Catalina. Poor Catherine, whose husband would not see her, who spent every night alone.

That evening, she sent Doña Elvira and her ladies on an errand for wine. Once again, she crept from her chambers alone, furtive as a mouse.

I will see my husband, Catherine thought. It is my right. It should not have been so difficult for her to see him alone. But as it was the palace swarmed with courtiers.

She wanted to reach him before the woman arrived to work her spells on him.

Quietly, she slipped through Arthur’s door and closed it behind her.

The bed curtains were open. Arthur, in his nightclothes, sat on the edge of the bed, hunched over. She could hear his wheezing breaths across the room.

“Your Highness,” she said, curtsying.

“Catherine?” He looked up—and did he smile? Just a little? “Why are you here?”

She said, “Who is the woman who comes to you at night?”

“No one comes to me at night.” He said this flatly, as if she were to blame for his loneliness.

She shook her head, fighting tears. She would keep her wits and not cry. “Three nights ago I came, and she was here. You were bleeding, Arthur. She hurt you. She’s killing you!”

“That isn’t true. No one has been here. And—what business is it of yours if a woman has been here?”

“I am your wife. You have a duty to me.”

“Catherine, I am so tired.”

She knelt at his side and dared to put her hand on his knee. “Then you must grow strong. So that we may have children. Your heirs.”

He touched her hand. A thrill went through her flesh, like fire. So much feeling in a simple touch! But his skin was ice cold.

“I am telling the truth,” said the boy who was her husband. “I remember nothing of any woman coming here. I come to bed every night and fall into such a deep sleep that nothing rouses me but my own coughing. I do not know of what you speak.”

This woman had put a spell on them all.

“Your father is sending your household to Ludlow Castle, in Wales,” she said.

He set his lips in a thin, pale line. “Then we shall go to Ludlow.”

“You cannot travel so far,” she said. “The journey will kill you.”

“If I were really so weak my father would not send me.”

“His pride blinds him!”

“You should not speak so of the king, my lady.” He gave a tired sigh. What would have been an accusation of treason from fiery young Henry’s lips was weary observation from Arthur’s. “Now please, Catherine. Let me sleep. If I sleep well tonight, perhaps I’ll be strong enough to see you tomorrow.”

It was an empty promise and they both knew it. He was as pale and wasted as he had ever been. She kissed his hand with as much passion as she had ever been allowed to show. She pressed her cheek to it, let tears fall on it. She would pray every day for him. Every hour.

She stood, curtsied, and left him alone in the chamber.

Outside, however, she waited, sitting on a chair in the corner normally reserved for pages or stewards. Doña Elvira would be scandalized to see her there.

In an hour, the woman Angeline came. She moved like smoke. Catherine had been staring ahead so intently she thought her eyes played a trick on her. A shadow flickered where there was no flame. A draft blew where no window was open.

Angeline did not approach, but all the same she appeared. She stood before the doors of Arthur’s bedchamber as regal as any queen.

Catherine was still gathering the courage to stand when Angeline looked at her. Her face was alabaster, a statue draped with a gown of black velvet. She might as well have been stone, her gaze was so hard.

Finally, Catherine stood.

“Es la novia niña,” Angeline said.

The princess would not be cowed by a commoner. “By the laws of Church and country I am not a child, I am a woman.”

“By one very important consideration, you are not.” She turned a pointed smile.

Catherine blushed; her gaze fell. She was still a maid. That was certainly not her fault.

“I demand that you leave here,” Catherine said. “Leave here, and leave my husband alone.”

“Oh, child, you don’t want me to do that.”

“I insist. You are some witch, some demon. That much I know. You have worked a spell on him that sickens him to death—”

“Oh no, I’ll not let my puppet die. I could keep your Arthur alive forever, if I wished. I hold that secret.”

“You . . . you are an abomination against the Church. Against God!”

She smiled thinly. “Perhaps.”

“Why?” Catherine said. “Why him? Why this?”

“He’ll be a weak king. At best, an indifferent king. He won’t be leading any troops to war against France. He will keep England a quiet, unimportant country.”

“You do not know that. You cannot see the future. He will be a great king—”

“One need not see the future to guess such things, dear Catherine.”

“You will address me as Your Highness, as is proper.”

“Of course, Your Highness. You must trust me—I will not kill Arthur. If his brother were to become king—you have seen the kind of boy he is: fierce, competitive, strong. You can imagine the kind of king he will be. No one in Europe wishes for a strong king of England.”

“My father King Ferdinand—”

“Not even King Ferdinand. From the first, he wanted a son-in-law he could control.”

Catherine knew it was true, all of it, the chess-like machinations of politics that had ruled her life. Her marriage to Arthur had given Spain another playing piece, that was all.

There was no room for love in any of this.

She was descended from two royal houses. Her ancestors were the oldest and most noble in all of Europe. Dignity was bred into the sinews of her flesh. She stood tall, did not collapse, did not cry, however much the little girl inside of her was trembling.

“And what of children?” she said. “What of the children I’m meant to bear?”

“It may be possible. Or it may not.”

“I do not believe you. I do not believe anything that you say.”

“Yes, you do,” she said. “But more importantly, you cannot stop me. You’ll go to sleep, now. You will not remember.”

She wanted to fling herself at the woman, strangle her with her own hands. Tiny hands that couldn’t strangle a kitten, alas.

“Catherine. Move away. I know what she is.” The command came in the incongruous voice of a boy.

Prince Henry stood blocking the chamber’s other doorway. He had a spear, which seemed overlarge and unwieldy in his hands. Nevertheless, he held it at the ready, feet braced, pointed at the woman. It was a mockery of battle. A child playing at hunting boar.

“What am I, boy?” the woman said in a soft, mocking voice.

This only drove Henry to greater rage. “Succubus. A demon who feeds on the souls of men. You will not have my brother, devil!”

Her smile fell, darkening her expression. “You have just enough intelligence to do harm. And more than enough ignorance.”

“I’ll kill you. I can kill you where you stand.”

“You will not kill me. Arthur is so much mine that without me he will die.”

She’d made Arthur weak and subsumed him under her power. If that tie between them was severed—

Catherine’s heart pounded. She could not stop them both. They would not listen. No one ever listened to her. “Henry, you must not, she is keeping Arthur alive.”

“She lies.”

The woman laughed, a bitter sound. “If Arthur dies, Henry becomes heir. That reason will not stay his hand.”

But Henry didn’t want to be king. He’d said so . . .

Catherine caught his gaze. She saw something dark in his eyes.

Then she tried to forget that she’d seen it. “My lord, wait—”

The woman lived in shadow—was made of shadow. She started to flow back into the hidden ways by which she came, moving within the stillness of night. Catherine saw nothing but a shudder, the light of a sputtering candle. But Henry saw more, and like a great hunter he anticipated what the flinch of movement meant.

With a shout he lunged forward, driving the spear before him.

The woman flew. Catherine would swear that she flew, up and over, toward the ceiling to avoid Henry. Henry followed with his spear, jumping, swinging the weapon upward. He missed. With a sigh, the woman twisted away from him. Henry stumbled, thrown off balance by his wayward thrust, and Angeline stood behind him.

“You’re a boy playing at being warrior,” she said, carrying herself as calmly as if she had not moved.

Henry snarled an angry cry and tried again. The woman stepped aside and took hold of the back of Henry’s neck. With no effort at all, she pushed him down, so that he was kneeling. He still held the spear, but she was behind him, pressing down on him, and he couldn’t use it.

“I could make you as much my puppet as your brother is.”

“No! You won’t! I’ll never be anyone’s puppet!” He struggled, his whole body straining against her grip, but he couldn’t move.

Catherine knelt and began to pray, Pater Noster and Ave Maria, and her lips stumbled trying to get out all the words at once.

The prayers were for her own comfort. Catherine had little faith in her own power; she didn’t expect the unholy creature to hear her words and pause. She didn’t consider that her own words, her own prayer, would cause Angeline to loosen her grip on Henry.

But Angeline did loosen her grip. Her body seemed to freeze for a moment. She became more solid, as if the prayer had made her substantial.

Henry didn’t hesitate. He threw himself forward, away from Angeline, then spun to put the spear between them. Then, while she was still seemingly entranced, he drove it home.

The point slipped into her breast. She cried out, fell, and as she did Henry drove the wooden shaft deep into her chest.

The next moment she lay on the floor, clutching the shaft of the spear. Henry still held the end of it. He stared down at her, iconic, like England’s beloved Saint George and his vanquished dragon.

There was no blood.

A strangeness happened—as strange as anything else Catherine had seen since coming to England. With the scent of a crypt rising from her, the woman faded in color, then dried and crumbled like a corpse that had been rotting for a dozen years. The body became unrecognizable in a moment. In another, only ash and dust remained.

Henry kicked a little at the mound of debris.

Catherine spoke, her voice shaking. “She said she was keeping Arthur alive. What if it’s true? What if he dies? I’ll be a widow in a strange country. I’ll be lost.” Lost, when she was meant to be a queen. Her life was slipping away.

Henry touched her arm. She nearly screamed, but her innate dignity controlled her. She only flinched.

He gazed at her with utmost gravity. “I’ll take care of you. If Arthur dies, then I’ll take care of you, when I am king after my father.”

Arthur died in the spring. And so it came to pass that Henry, who had been born to be Duke of York and nothing else, a younger brother, a mere afterthought in the chronicles of history, would succeed his father as King of England, become Henry VIII, and marry Catherine of Aragon. He would take care of her, as he had promised.

He was sixteen at their wedding, a year older than Arthur had been. But so different. Like day and night, summer and winter. Henry was tall, flushed, hearty, laughed all the time, danced, hunted, jousted, argued, commanded. Their wedding night would be nothing like Catherine’s first, she knew. He is the greatest prince in all Europe, people at court said of him. He will make England a nation to be reckoned with.

Catherine considered her new husband—now taller than she by a head. Part of her would always remember the boy. She could still picture him the way he stood outside Arthur’s chamber, spear in his hands, fury in his eyes, ready to do battle. Ready to sacrifice his own brother. Catherine would never forget that this was a man willing to do what he believed must be done, whatever the cost.

She wanted to be happy, but England’s chill air remained locked in her bones.

© 2007 by Carrie Vaughn, LLC.

Originally published in The Secret History of Vampires, edited by Darrell Schweitzer.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series. The tenth volume, Kitty Steals the Show, came out in July 2012. She has also written young adult novels, Voices of Dragons and Steel, and the fantasy novels, Discord’s Apple and After the Golden Age. Her short fiction has appeared many times in Realms of Fantasy magazine, and in a number of anthologies, such as Fast Ships, Black Sails and Warriors. She lives in Colorado with a fluffy attack dog. Learn more at carrievaughn.com.

Seven Smiles and Seven Frowns
Richard Bowes

1.

Each time I find a new apprentice in these times of trouble, I remember being a girl of twelve, getting close to thirteen. The other lads and maidens my age were already starting to pair off. But I was still taking my little brother and sister to hear the Witch of the Forest of Avalon tell stories on her porch on summer evenings. The old tales always held a fascination for me.

Our town was a peaceful one on the edge of the Forest. In those days, Bertrade was the Witch. Feet or a farm wagon are the only way ordinary people around here travel and the Witch lived within walking distance. We’d gather in her yard in front of the gigantic oak of which her house was part.

A fine place it was, made of wood and stone and with glass windows, which were rare enough as to seem like magic to me. The porch was laid out on the roots and the windows looked out of the trunk.

The front door would open and the Witch, dressed not unlike our mothers, but carrying a long, twisted grey stick would appear and say, “Welcome to the Oak of Avalon.” Then we’d all come up on the porch where lemonade and ginger cookies would suddenly appear on a table. The light ebbed as the telling progressed. At the story’s end, Bertrade would stand and tell us to hurry home and we’d run barefoot through the gathering dark.

She told the old tales, ones I’d heard many times: the brother and sister lost in the forest, the dancing daughters, the scullery maid who’s really a princess, the frightened dragon and the forgetful witch. Bertrade always described that one as “an unusual wicked witch.”

So familiar were those stories and so fine were her tellings that I mostly floated on their surfaces, like you do hearing a favorite song.

But she also told unusual ones. Especially late in the summer when dusk came earlier and the air might have a crisp tang. Some of these were rare and a few were brand new to me. So they caught my full attention, made me wonder.

One evening right at the start she said, “This is a story that the Fairies tell.” We’d heard many of these and they were always about Fairies: wise Fairy godmothers with tricky but wonderful gifts and brave princes and beautiful princesses whom they’d disguised as pigs and toads.

She looked directly at me before announcing the name of a story I’d never heard. “Seven Smiles and Six Frowns,” she said. Then she started.

“One fine morning in early May, into a forest—much like the one in which we find ourselves—came Prince Alaric, eldest son of the King Who Rules.

“He rode a horse with wings and wore a crown, a cloak, a ring, a sword, a fine belt on britches that fit into his boots. Prince Alaric was handsome and well liked by all. He had about him a questing spirit and love of everything that was new and unknown.

“His parents, anxious to make a match, invited every princess in the neighborhood, each lovelier than the next, to balls and fetes. But Alaric was satisfied with none of them.

“On the particular day of this story I tell, Prince Alaric was separated from his companions and found himself alone and deep in woods where he had never traveled before. He had no fear because the Fairy Folk had loved him since he was a child and had given him all manner of presents.

“Bellephron, the winged horse, gift of the Lord of Day, would carry him above the trees. The cloak, a gift of the Lady of Night, would make him invisible to his enemies. The ring given him by the Vizier of Wisdom enabled him to pass through solid walls. The sword from the Knight of Wands would smash the weapons of any foes. The boots from the Messenger of the Winds would carry him a thousand leagues in a single hour. The belt and britches from the Shining Maiden made him stronger than any hundred men.

“But the crown from the King Who Rules was the greatest gift of all. For that permitted him to see the minds of others.”

Listening to “Seven Smiles” made me concentrate, question the list of what the prince wore. Like all fairy stories, this took place in a distant past. I’d never heard of the Shining Maiden or the Lord of the Day. But the King Beneath the Hill was and is the King Who Rules us.

I thought about the growing dusk, the chirping of birds settling down for the night, the smell of the wood around me, the ginger cookies I could still taste and the feel of the floorboards beneath my feet.

I realized the Witch had paused, and when I glanced up, she was looking my way, making sure she had my attention before starting again.

“As he rode through these woods, Prince Alaric saw the most beautiful maiden he had ever seen standing in the forest, clad only in a simple dress and seeming to be part of the leaves and trees.”

And I imagined a woman standing in a fine green shift, barefoot. She was tall, and blended into the trees, and looked Alaric right in the eye. Sure now that I was with her, Bertrade continued.

“Then Alaric smiled the smile that had won the heart of each and every princess. But the Maiden only frowned the frown given her by the Nixie of the Silver Pond and said, ‘Your horse gives me much displeasure.’

“So the prince dismounted and when he did, the winged horse disappeared. Alaric smiled again but the maiden only frowned the frown she learned from the Dryad of the Farthest Moors.

“‘Your cloak gives me much displeasure,’ she said. Alaric kept his smile, but unfastened the gold chain. The cloak fell to the ground and disappeared.

The prince smiled but she just frowned the horrible frown of the Troll King as the ring was lost in the dirt of the road. So it went with him smiling, the Maiden frowning as she’d been shown by the Gryphon of the Tall Mountain, and the sword gone from his side as you’d expect.

“His next smile was met by the frown of the Sybil of the Iron Throne. So the prince simply stripped off the gift of the Messenger of the Winds and stood barefoot as a peasant boy. He even smiled at the Harvest Queen’s haughty frown, unbuckled his belt and was left without it and his britches.”

We all giggled at the idea. But the Witch just paused then said, “At last he stood in just his crown and a simple shirt. The maiden frowned, but before she could tell him the crown gave her great displeasure, he smiled and took it off. Without even using it to read the Maiden’s mind, he put the gift of the King Who Rules on the ground and it was gone.

“Then, with no more to give than the poorest of the poor, Alaric smiled his seventh smile at the Maiden with all his love.

“And the Maiden was the Princess Gerathea of Astolot kept under a spell by the Witch of the Forest, one of those unusual wicked Witches. The spell would last until she found a man who would give up his crown for her. She had no more frowns left. Instead she smiled at the prince with the same love he had shown her.

“Then all the gifts Alaric had surrendered reappeared. The Prince lifted the Maiden up before him on his winged horse and together they flew back to the palace where they announced their betrothal and were wed amid their parents’ blessings and the people’s rejoicing.”

2.

The ending gave me displeasure just as I knew it must have given Gerathea. As the younger children thanked Bertrade and got up to go home in the gathering darkness, the Witch of Avalon beckoned me close to her.

“If you were to come tomorrow evening, you might well hear a tale you’d like better.” I nodded, wide-eyed, and she added. “Tell no one but your parents.”

And then, because it was dark with a chill in the air and because the youngest children were a little afraid, the Witch of Avalon waved the long, gray stick she carried and a ball of fire appeared. It floated in the air in front of us on our way home and stopped at each gate until the children from that house were indoors.

Our house was last and I waited until my brother and sister were in bed before I told my parents what Bertrade had told me. My father looked unsure and my mother looked a bit sad but both nodded agreement like they had known this would happen.

My parents were indulgent, never pressed me to behave like the other girls or asked what I was going to do. Both respected the old ways and must have known I wasn’t made for a life in this town: marrying a shopkeeper or a farmer and raising a family. I was the kind of child who listened to grandparents tell stories their grandparents had told them about the wonders in the days before the coming of the King Beneath the Hill. The King’s magic was very strong in the old days and he could read a thousand minds at once.

Witches were part of those days. The King crushed Sphinx and Sybil, Giant and Water God. But though some witches were caught and burned, most evaded destruction through cunning and luck—lived quietly and were ignored by the authorities.

Though Fey don’t die, they do fade away eventually. In my childhood it was whispered of the King Beneath the Hill that he reigned but did not rule. His palace and the wondrous city of Maxee where he lived were far away. The Crown Prince was gone and the other sons were known to be quarreling about the succession and too busy to care about us.

People went to Bertrade when they were sick or in trouble. If anyone ruled the town it was the Witch. And if she wished to see me, my parents would not refuse. So the next evening, wearing a wool sweater as well as my shift, I went alone down the path to the Oak of Avalon. The Witch sat alone on the porch and there was tea and cake.

Before she started, she said, “I’ve never told this version of the story. I only heard it once and that was from my mother, who was Witch of Avalon before me.

“Seven Frowns and Seven Smiles,” she said, paused, and then began.

“Not many years after the invaders entered this land, Prince Alaric, the son of the King Who Rules, rode into the Forest of Avalon as though it was his. He was handsome and well liked among his kind and thought very well of himself.

“His parents had invited every princess, each lovelier than the next, to balls and fetes. But Alaric was satisfied with none of them, because even the best was not good enough.

“Though he found himself alone and deep in a woods, Alaric had no fear. For the Fairy Lords and Ladies had given him at birth all manner of presents.”

Again they all got listed: Bellephron the winged horse, the cape, the ring, the sword, the belt and britches, the boots. As before, the list ended with: “But the crown from the King Who Rules was the greatest gift of all. For that permitted him to see the minds of others.”

“On this bright morning a beautiful maiden watched the Prince’s passage. But he couldn’t see her for she was dressed in robes of green spider silk and blended right into the trees. She carried a long, twisted gray stick.

“When she stepped onto the path and looked Alaric right in the eye it was more an ambush than an encounter.”

I listened to the story, felt it blend into the sounds of birds chirping at twilight, leaves whispering, something moving in the grass.

“Alaric smiled for the maiden the smile that won the heart of each and every princess. But this was Gerathea, Daughter of the Witch Queen, and she had heard of Alaric.

“Gerathea answered his smile with a frown and threw the curse given her by the Nixie of the Silver Pond, who had lost her underwater home to the invaders.

“Alaric was startled when the horse disappeared from under him before he could fly away. But he landed on his feet and smiled again. Gerathea frowned and hurled the curse of the Dryad of the Farthest Moors, whose lands had been taken by the Fey King.

“Alaric’s robe disappeared before he could make himself invisible. The mourning chant of the Troll King took his ring before he noticed. His smile was hard as he reached for his sword. But her frown and the curse uttered by the last Gryphon of the Tall Mountain took both Alaric’s sword and his scabbard.

“Alaric’s smile faltered as he moved towards Gerathea. But a frown and the dying prophecy of the Sybil of the Iron Throne took his boots before he could reach her. The last prayer of the Harvest Queen deprived him of belt and britches.

“On his head was the crown given him by his father, the King Who Rules. Before he could go into her mind, she stepped forward with the twisted gray stick given to her by her mother, the Queen of Witches, and knocked the crown from his head.”

“Alaric stood helpless, with nothing but a shirt to his name, like the poorest of the poor.

“She struck him on his chest. The shirt fell away and he shrank back into a child, crying and trying to cover himself. Gerathea took his hand and led him deep into the woods. There he remains to this day.”

I liked this version much better than the last. And there was the surprise, in fact a shock, at the end. It was said The King Beneath the Hill’s own son, the crown prince, was lost many years ago, and never found.

Bertrade looked at my face and knew all I was thinking. She smiled, which I’d rarely seen her do.

“Would you like to learn more?”

“Will I be able to do things like Gerathea?”

“Unlikely, I’m afraid!” She smiled again. “It will be hard—harder than school. And you will live here.” As she spoke, an owl flew down and landed on her shoulder. “Minerva, my night companion” she said.

“My mother and father . . .”

“We will talk to them tonight.” She rose and held out her hand. The owl watched as I grasped it. But then she looked away as if she was already used to me.

3.

That night and the revelations that followed are with me whenever there is a girl or even a boy who doesn’t stop coming to my tellings when all others their age do. I haven’t married and have no children. But the apprentices, when they appear every few years, are a substitute.

Nevya, the current one, is almost ready to go on her own to a town deep in the heart of the Forest. Though I’ve inherited the title of Witch of Avalon, there are quite a few of us in these woods. Almost every town and large village throughout the kingdom has one. We have spent our time well.

Now it’s a boy—Diccon, age twelve—who comes to hear me tell the tales. He’s hounded by the other children. His father calls him worthless. If Diccon wishes, I will take him as an apprentice, though it breaks tradition. In the coming crisis a boy may prove very useful.

I’ve been Witch of Avalon since Bertrade departed. Before she grew weary of this life, Bertrade transformed herself into an owl and flew away on a night at harvest time. She and her familiar, Minerva, seemed to sail directly into the huge moon that filled the sky and disappear.

In memory, our childhoods are times of wonder and the present is poor and mean. Truly, though, my childhood was far better.

Now people are robbed on the roads. Now men are hanged for poaching on what was always public land and farms are seized for taxes on a whim. My brother is mayor of my hometown. People, especially the young, are angry and want to fight the powers that rule us. He grows old with worry.

Fey eventually pass into a twilight world. The King Beneath the Hill by all reports is more in that world than not. And there is no clear Heir since the Crown Prince disappeared centuries ago. The struggle for succession among the brother princes entails great expense. The payment comes from the people.

In these last weeks of summer, I told the story of the Smiles and Frowns as the Fey once told it. And I promised the children to tell it this week as the Witches now tell it. For that, adults—mainly women—came and stood behind their children. They snickered at the plight of Alaric, applauded Gerathea, went home and as I thought they would, talked about what they’d heard.

I promised then that tonight I would tell the story as people will tell it in years to come. The word has spread. This time, many men, young and old, stand with the women. A tale should not only entertain, but teach. Learning this one did that for me. Nevya sits with Diccon. I’ve talked to his father and the boy will now stay with me. The crowd arranges itself around the porch and I begin:

“Seven Wrongs and Seven Princes”

“Once there was a King Who Ruled and had great power and seven sons. He loved them all and gave each a gift. To one a winged horse, to another a cloak of invisibility, to a third a ring that let him pass through walls, to the fourth a sword that could smash any weapon, to the fifth boots that carried one a thousand leagues, to the sixth a belt and britches of power that made him stronger than a hundred men. But he loved the eldest, Prince Alaric, the most and gave him a crown with which he could see into others’ minds.

“When one day the prince disappeared while hunting, the king searched for him for a year and a day, knew no happiness when he couldn’t be found, and lost all interest in ruling. The brothers all guessed Alaric would never return and even hoped that he wouldn’t. Each thought he himself would be king and they fought with each other and plotted against each other.

“The country fell into ruin. Neighboring kings invaded and burned villages and towns, bandits ruled the roads, pirates raided the fishing fleets, farmers couldn’t plant their crops, thieves made off with the cattle and sheep. And still the king mourned and the brothers fought.

“Then one day a solitary figure, a man in the robes of a traveling scholar, rode towards the castle on an old and tired horse. On his head he wore a crown. His brothers saw the figure from the castle walls and guessed who he was.

“The brother who had been given a flying horse leapt on its back and flew at the traveler. As he swooped in, the other man smiled a tired, sad smile and put into his brother’s mind the anger and despair of woodcutters whose forest had been burned. The flying horse disappeared and the brother fell bottom first into a puddle.”

Children in the audience clap their hands. Their parents nod approval. “The traveler continued on and the next brother wrapped himself in the cloak of invisibility. He was shown peddlers robbed and murdered on the royal highway. His cape disappeared and he was too much a coward to act openly.

“The brother with the ring saw miners trapped underground and smashed his face into the wall he tried to walk through. The brother with the sword found himself empty-handed when fishing boats smashing on rocks appeared in his head.”

“The one with the magic boots saw unpaid soldiers starving and ended up barefoot. Then the one with belt and britches saw farmers with burned crops and found himself bare-assed.” The audience enjoys this, laughing and applauding.

“Finally, the eldest son, Prince Alaric—for it was he—entered the castle, climbed the stairs, and discovered his father alone in the throne room. The old man looked up, amazed, and rose, asking his son where he had been and what had happened to him. His own crown still enabled him to see into others minds.

“He saw how his son, after meeting Gerathea in the forest, decided to loose his princely raiment and go through the kingdom finding out how the people lived and what they thought. When the father saw the near ruin to which the land was reduced he wept and begged the son to take his throne and rule the country.

“Then all his brothers swore allegiance. Alaric married the wise and beautiful Gerathea and together they ruled justly and well. The kingdom recovered and became prosperous once again.”

People thank me for the tale. I tell them it isn’t mine but was given to me in bits and pieces by visiting witches. Tales like this one, I tell them, are not truth or prophecy. They are made up of our fears and hopes. Witches have told this story in many places.

I don’t tell them the stories about Prince Alaric that we Witches share with no one else. Nevya accompanies the visitors back to town and answers questions about what they’ve just heard.

4.

Only Diccon and I remain. I put my hand on his shoulder and lead him to where Reynard, my familiar, sits in the shadows. The fox allows himself to be patted, which says much in the boy’s favor. No one would suspect a male of being a Witch and Diccon is eager to learn.

So I bring him to the other side of the Oak to a small locked hut and tell him what he’s about to see. Diccon is wide-eyed. I open the door, cause light to shine, and show him what Bertrade showed me on my first night in Avalon. A pale figure in a shirt—Prince Alaric under heavy enchantment—stares wide-eyed at Diccon, who stares back.

The Prince was ambushed in this forest long before I or Bertrade or her mother was born. For the generations since he was captured, we Sisters have passed him around, taking him to parts of his kingdom he would never have visited, showing him subjects he would never have seen otherwise. I always try to make sure he’s here in Avalon when a new apprentice comes to me.

Originally, he was kept on the move to prevent his being recaptured. I doubt if anyone is looking for him now. These days, his return would be a thunderbolt that would upset far too many of his brothers’ plans.

He always begs to be free, says he’s learned about the sorrows and hardships in the land. He promises to rule wisely. The question is whether he can be trusted and we all have our doubts. Our attempts to Foretell have yielded no clear vision of the future. “Seven Wrongs and Seven Princes” is a hope, not a prediction.

We can never be sure and yet we must act soon or never. As this happens, I will instruct young Diccon in our arts and hope this world holds a place for him and all of us. I doubt if I will, but perhaps he will live to see a further turning of the tale that began long before either the Smiles or the Frowns.

© 2012 Richard Bowes.

Richard Bowes lives in Manhattan and has won major and minor awards, published seven books and many, many stories. His mosaic novel Dust Devil on a Quiet Street will be published in 2013 by Lethe Press. Lethe will also reprint his Lambda winning novel Minions of the Moon in late 2012. Magazines he has sold fiction to include The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Icarus, Apex, Jenny, Million Writers Award: The Best Online Science Fiction and Fantasy, and his work has also been featured in the anthologies After, Wilde Stories 2012, Bloody Fabulous, Ghosts: Recent Hauntings, Handsome Devil, and Hauntings.

Author Spotlight: Orson Scott Card
Moshe Siegel

“West,” published in the late ’80s, envisions a violent future for American Mormons, who are persecuted, rounded up, and put to death. Do you think you would have written this same story today, in light of any perceived shift in public opinion towards Mormonism?

I’m not aware of any shift in public opinion toward Mormons. Certainly Mitt Romney’s candidacy has raised the awareness of the Church, but those who hated Mormons still do, by and large, and if some have swallowed hard and plan to vote for him anyway, there are doubtless just as many whose loathing has been deepened.

What’s wise to remember is that public attitudes are volatile. It’s why the Founding Fathers had such distrust of democracy, seeing it as little better than mob rule. In October, the public might be enthusiastic supporters of a president, a war, a potential law, and then by May, they may be hostile toward them. Often there is little new information to justify the change; often it is simply that time has passed, and other voices have spoken.

Many in Germany prior to the 1920s hated Jews, but many had no ill-feelings toward Jews at all. In the former Yugoslavia, after Communist rule ended and as the country fragmented, attitudes of Croats and Serbs, Muslims and Christians had been so tolerant that intermarriage was as high as 30 percent. In Rwanda, there had been resentments between Tutsi and Hutu for many years, but few foresaw how quickly one group would turn to the machete and the burning building as a way to deal with their conflict.

My point is not that I think such things will happen to Mormons, but that we are a group that has been isolated, slandered, and misrepresented for so many years that it would be relatively easy to rouse mobs against us as a group. A science fiction writer does not predict, but rather extrapolates. If this happened, what would be the result? How would the survivors react? How would a nonmember of the group respond, upon getting to know them? How would their mythos and ethos affect him, given the stories of his own life?

Would you agree that our current political scene—an African-American incumbent in contest with a Mormon presidential candidate, an all but unimaginable scenario even a handful of decades ago—would be a sign of progress to Sister Monk and Brother Deaver, or was it shared faith, rather than a sense of equality, that bound the uniquely interracial pioneers?

I’d like to think that Obama’s election ended for all time the question of whether racial prejudice is a dominant factor in American public life today. Even those of us who supported his opponent (in my case, for obvious foreign policy reasons) still were proud of America for moving past the old prejudices. Obama could not have been elected without millions of white votes, and even among those who opposed his candidacy, I knew of none who did so for racial reasons.

When I wrote “West,” however, it was a different America, though it was changing. I had no way of predicting how racial attitudes would change. I was optimistic, but realistic. And it is worth remembering that attitudes that changed in one direction can, at another time, change again, in other ways. Old prejudices can resurface; new ones can arise; when it comes to human behavior, we are never out of the woods.

Do you think Teague’s traumatizing experience with his siblings and the cedar closet is what put him in a position to teach the pioneers—Marie in particular—that defending themselves with mortal force is preferable to dying a pacifist’s death? One wonders what would have become of the unarmed pioneers if Teague had not been there to instruct survival.

I was writing a story about Mormons, but I was not writing it to Mormons. Every Mormon knows the contradictory examples in the Book of Mormon: A large group of pacifists who laid down their weapons knowing that they were likely to be killed—and many were. They kept their solemn oath of pacifism regardless of the cost.

Yet there were others who, at risk of their own lives, undertook the defense of these pacifists—former enemies, now among their friends. There were times when people depicted as godly killed enemy aggressors in defense of their homes, their freedom, their families, their faith.

Yet again, at the very end of the Book of Mormon, the military leader who also abridged and wrote most of the book refused to lead his people in an aggressive war—there is a strong bias toward defense in the book.

Every Mormon, as I say, carries these stories inside their memories. It is not so much a matter of ambivalence toward violence as it is a nuanced view. If you have been an aggressor, perhaps the only way to repent is to become a pacifist and refuse ever to fight again. But if you only raise your hand in violence in order to defend yourself or that which you hold sacred—or to defend others who are helpless—then you are justified before God. And if you become the aggressor, vainly boasting in your own strength, then God will leave you to your own strength and you will see how well you fare then.

That is why you find Mormons on all sides of questions of war and peace, and why the same Mormon will support one war and oppose another. (For myself, I see the Mexican and Spanish-American wars, especially the ensuing war to subdue the Philippines as a colony, as our most evil wars; but the Revolution, the Civil War, and our two interventions in Europe as righteous ones.)

The story “West,” however, was hardly the place to go into Mormon scripture. It is sufficient that as I wrote of Teague’s attitudes and actions, and of the Mormon group’s own attitudes and responses, I had this background in my own mind. Mormon readers are likely to recognize it; but, since I was writing primarily to non-Mormons, such recognition was not necessary to understanding the story.

Do you think tragedies, such as those detailed in “West,” result in the kind of openness for spiritual guidance Teague eventually displays, or do you think it possible that the opposite effect (loss of faith) would result just as often for those suffering in the aftermath of such destruction and loss?

People do not change their core beliefs without first feeling something is missing or wrong about the beliefs they had before. Sometimes their own sense of guilt or responsibility for great wrongs will lead them to seek redemption or justification. There are always people who will tell you how to put your guilt behind you—or will tell you that you did no wrong, or that the wrong you did was actually right. There are also people with a mention of redemption through Christ, or through some other means of expiation. So when a person chooses a path to escape from the crushing burden of guilt or responsibility for that which cannot be undone, they reveal who they are. Teague chose a path that accepted his responsibility but gave away his guilt—which, in terms of the story, was, I hope, a fully justified choice. That is, he could not escape the memory of his participation, but he also could justly set aside his self-blame, since he was only a child at the time he did it. So his embrace of a redemptive story should, in the story’s own terms, feel justified, whether or not the reader is a believer in a redemptive faith. What matters is that those who teach Teague believed it, and Teague himself had ample cause to embrace it; the reader is never required to make a decision of belief.

I think that is the right course for fiction writing. I don’t write stories to convert people to my religion. When I want to do that, I teach my beliefs openly. My fiction has another purpose, not better or worse, but different. I give readers a chance to try on other lives, to take into themselves memories of events they did not personally experience; and I shape those virtual memories with my own interpretation of their causes and effects, of what matters and does not matter. In this way, readers allow something of my own mind and heart into their lives; or, having sampled it, they reject that bit of me and reach different conclusions. But it is in this way that fiction becomes perhaps the deepest communication between human beings, because we adopt someone else’s story into our own fund of memory, embracing it, to one degree or another, as our own.

After Teague gives his impromptu Testimony to Scotty and Mick, Sister Monk remarks that “Some things you can only tell to children.” Why do you think Teague was able to open up about his deepest, most troubling secrets to the two youngsters?

It isn’t because children don’t judge—they’re often the harshest judges, not having had enough experience to learn all the shades of grey in the world. Rather, they are valuable as listeners precisely because they have never heard it before. All is new to them. And then, when they do judge, you know they will not soften it or conceal their true feelings. In their naiveté, they are likeliest to speak, if not “the” truth, then such truth as they believe in. It is a brave thing to speak to children; if you fear hearing a truthful judgment of yourself, you will not do it. But if that honest judgment is what you want, then children are the ones to speak to, provided that the story that you tell will not burden them unduly.

Much of your work involves dissecting morality, whether or not religious themes are explicitly mentioned (your longtime readers know, such mentions are rare and typically limited to your essays/columns). Do you find it any less challenging (or more pleasurable) to explore morality through characters on the “home turf” of your faith (and home state), rather than, say, on a distant space colony?

I’m glad that my longtime readers understand that I do not preach to them, because I do not know the answers. Rather I try to show characters finding the best answer they can find at the time they must make their decisions; and then the best of them live with the consequences of their decisions, including (as with Ender Wiggin) spending the rest of their lives trying to undo what they wish had not been done.

However, to me there is no difference between “home turf” and faraway times and places. In fact, though, the future of “West” is no more “home turf” than the 30 million years in the future “turf” of the Homecoming books. Even in my books that are fully realistic or historical; even in my contemporary stories set in the place where I actually live, I am always writing about human beings as I understand them, and yet I am also writing about strangers, perpetually unknowable to others or even to themselves. I write with an element of science fiction or fantasy in part because that is where my work is most likely to find readers (and, not by mere coincidence, commercial success), but I am content for most of my work to be in such settings because, by shaping the world according to my own rules, I can make many issues more clear than is possible in the relative muddiness and confusion of history or present times.

Do you intend to write more Latter-Day Saints fiction for your wider readership, noting the increased public profile of the LDS? Are there any other projects in the works that you can share with us, be they fiction, non-fiction, film, academic, or otherwise?

In my sixty-plus books and hundred-plus stories, I have written about Mormons in Saints and in the stories of The Folk of the Fringe (beginning with “West”). There are peripheral and, I must say, trivial mentions of Mormons elsewhere. The Alvin Maker series is set around an allegorical retelling of the life of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, but with the religion turned to fantasy so that readers are not required to make any decision of belief.

I have also written my Women of Genesis novels, trying not to contradict the scripture so far as character motives and actions are concerned—I feel a great responsibility to be true to people that I believe really lived. Here again, by using the wives of prophets, I allow readers who do not believe in God, or who see God differently, to read the story and receive the religious aspects only as what the characters believed.

You will also see, however, that in most of my fiction, characters have a religious life, though it usually has nothing to do with my religion. Only rarely is it pointed out, and only then when it is important to understanding the decisions that they make. I do this because in all of human history, there have been no peoples and, in my view, no individuals who do not have a religion of some sort or another, regardless of whether they like to call it that or not.

In fact, generally we use “religion” to refer to a belief system that other people believe, or that we believe but are aware that other people do not believe. When we are among those who believe as we do, we simply call it “the truth.” So I see global-warming alarmists as true believers in a religion which has no god, but definitely has a devil: human beings and whatever impact they have on the planet. I see politically correct atheists attacking “religious people” and yet setting out their own beliefs as immutable dogmas which cannot be questioned, insisting that people who don’t agree with them have no right to be heard or even to hold responsible jobs. In other words, with or without a god, with or without self-identification as believers in a religion, I see that human nature has not changed in any way, and those who are utterly convinced of their rectitude continue to oppress those who disagree with them.

A balanced, tolerant view is hard to come by; it is especially ironic that in our culture today, the most intolerant religious fanatics congratulate themselves most heartily on being the only truly tolerant people. Of course they are utterly intolerant; they simply have a different list of what and who is tolerable.

Does this make me a pessimist? No. I have seen many who, in embracing their faith, are also able to recognize and honor the good impulses in others who nevertheless see important differences in the world.

I also see that there are belief systems that are abstractly good: That is, they are conducive to the survival of a community that shares that belief system, without being destructive of others that will tolerate it though they disagree. I also see belief systems that are abstractly bad: If believed and practiced, they are destructive to the community of believers or are deliberately destructive to any who are unbelievers.

This is an evolutionary view, though it concentrates on the evolution of communities. As with economics, I believe there are natural laws of community that are conducive to community survival over time, passing an effective culture on to the next generation. But these value systems also change, so a community that had good belief systems at one time will adopt self- or other-destructive ones at a later time. They still call themselves by the same name, but by the immutable laws of community survival, they have doomed themselves; they are not the same.

So “America” calls itself by the same name, and occupies the same territory, but the community values of the nation of 2012 are not the values of the nation I was born into in 1951. Some of the values have vastly improved; others have crossed over into utter self-destructiveness. However, I recognize that some values that I see as destructive are the very ones that others regard as most valuable. I believe that time will prove me right, because I believe these are not mere matters of opinion. Some ethical principles are conducive to survival, and some are conducive to the dissolution or destruction of a community. Fortunately, if I am wrong, America will prosper despite changes that I think are suicidal to any culture that adopts them. But I think I am not wrong.

But in my fiction, I am not interested in exploring these things directly. Rather, what I write about are the choices of individuals, trying to sort out their role in the communities they are confronted in. Is this community worth supporting, or must I work against it? Is my role in it acceptable, or must I change it, or must I leave? Is this person someone with whom I can create a new community? Whom can I trust? Whom should I serve? These are the questions that I think fiction is best at exploring, and I use it for that.

As you already observed: When I wish to influence the decisions of a real-world community, I write essays, not fiction. Still, I am who I am, and I believe what I believe. So even though my fiction is not about which values in a culture promote the survival of a community, I will show a community, and it is bound to have either the values I think work well or the other kind, and so my core beliefs will play a part in the fiction no matter whether I consciously attempt to explore those issues or not.

The way I play fair with the reader is to give my characters only the beliefs they have, and present them as fairly as I can. My characters usually disagree with me in whole or in part. But I owe it to them to give their views the best arguments that these characters would come up with. So readers are sometimes confused, and think I am advocating things that I do not actually believe in, because I have written a character that believes in them. It is a mistake naive readers—including many college professors and ideological critics—often make, to assume that because a writer puts down an idea, he must believe in it, disregarding the context of who is speaking, to whom, for what purpose, and with what belief system.

There is no shortage of bad readers in the world, particularly of readers who are deliberately stupid because they are grimly determined to disagree with whatever a particular writer says—even if he is not actually saying it, but is showing a character who believes it. I have had people come up to me after a play, or after having read the same book, and be angry with me for what they took to be my views; often I find myself excoriated for opposite views, neither of which I hold, but both of which have apparently been detected in the same work. People find what they look for; they edit the stories they read or watch, either to conform to their own beliefs, or to find fault with the author for not conforming to them. This can’t be helped. It can only be ameliorated by the greatest attention to clarity, so that readers of good will can see, if they wish to, that what they are reading are the views of the characters, and not necessarily of the author at all. When they read this way, then they can think about the issues themselves, and reach their own conclusion; then the story has great value to them, and the storyteller has accomplished a good thing.

Moshe Siegel works as a slusher, proofreader, and interviewer at Lightspeed, interns at the pleasure of a Random House-published author, freelance edits hither and yon, and is a Publisher’s Assistant at Codhill Press. His overladen bookshelf and smug e-reader glare at each other across his home office in upstate New York, and he isn’t quite sure what to think about it all. Follow tweets of varying relevance @moshesiegel.

Author Spotlight: Sandra McDonald
Andrew Liptak

Hi Sandra, thank you for speaking with us! To start off, what prompted your story, “Searching for Slave Leia?”

Thank you for asking—it’s one of my favorite stories. I was writing a guest post about female costuming for the blog Heroines of Fantasy when I hit a long-buried nerve in my psyche about Leia and that gold bikini. I remember seeing the overhead poster in the movie theater and being so disappointed that Carrie Fisher had been put on seductive display for Return of the Jedi while all the men were depicted as action heroes. Obviously that costume and pose had been designed for the male gaze, and were at odds with the situation the character finds herself in—enslaved, subject to physical abuse, and at risk of death at any moment. When I worked in Hollywood, I attended the American Film Institute tribute to Harrison Ford, and was just delighted with Carrie Fisher’s speech. She’s a sharp, funny lady who has overcome a lot of personal obstacles. Those experiences sparked the story and I had a lot of fun bringing them together.

There’s a lot of nostalgia here, from the books and movies of the 1980s, tied together with the protagonist’s own past. How important do you think nostalgia is to the genre?

Nostalgia is a persistent aspect of our genre. I’m not a fan of it, generally, because the sentimental longing for some golden aspect of the past often includes ignoring unpleasant realities of that same time. For instance, I love Back to the Future as a movie, but dislike how it glosses over the gender and racial inequalities of the 1950s. On the other hand, I’m a big fan of the Deep Space Nine depiction of Captain Sisko as Benny Russell, a black author facing prejudice as a science fiction writer in the same time period. The 1980s reflected a vast improvement in both publishing and television production, but notice that the narrator’s father in my story is only a fan of male authors—that was deliberate. When the narrator moves to Hollywood, she faces the gender discrimination that’s been prevalent there for a long time. I think that whenever authors revisit the past, we should move beyond nostalgia into more nuanced portrayals.

There’s a lot to do with the workings of a television show here: Is this something you’ve worked on personally, or is it something that you’d like to eventually do?

I studied television production at Ithaca College, and spent a lot of my senior year sending off spec scripts to TV shows that promptly ignored them. I was sure that I was destined to be a Hollywood writer. After an exciting detour into the military, I moved to Sherman Oaks, California and wound up working in the executive suites at Disney Studios and CBS Television. I composed Michael Eisner’s expense reports, walked Dustin Hoffman’s dog, talked to Russell Crowe and Lisa Kudrow on the phone, and once hand-delivered a script to Steven Spielberg’s office at Dreamworks. Lots of Hollywood fun! Production and administration are two totally different worlds, however. I deeply admire the women and men who work long, grueling hours on the set to bring drama and comedy to our screens. I’m very sure that I’m better off working in an office by myself. Of course, one day, when my works are adapted for television or film, I plan on finagling a set pass. Maybe even a chair with my name on it.

Your character mentions Quantum Leap at one point; are there any other shows that have similar concepts that you’re a fan of, such as Life on Mars, Journeyman, or Awake?

I had to put Quantum Leap in there because I was a huge fan (except for that final episode, thanks much) and had a crush on Scott Bakula. The concept of Quantum Leap worked very well and the show itself did a great job exploring the lives of all sorts of characters. It balanced nostalgia with the social struggles of eras past. Life on Mars, the British version, is brilliant as well—though its finale was a disappointment as well. I’m saving Journeyman, Awake, Lost, Game of Thrones, and dozens of other genre shows for my final days in the nursing home, where the robot nurse can play them for me in my dotage.

Introspectively, how many lessons for the present day do you think can be found in our past?

You know, that’s an interesting question, because I don’t believe the past exists. We have physical records of it, and lots of inconsistent memories, but it’s not a place we can visit or access. The lessons of it are as fleeting as butterflies. They have to be relearned every generation. Social progress, for instance, is not a curved line steadily escalating toward some version of Utopia, but a zig-zagging, up-and-down roller coaster of forward steps and backward leaps. What I dearly love about writing fiction, however, is the chance to bring the past into the present and beyond, into our vast, unknowable future.

Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer and historian from Vermont. He has written for such places as io9, Tor.com, SF Signal, Blastr, Kirkus, and Armchair General and he can be found over at andrewliptak.wordpress.com and at @AndrewLiptak on twitter.

Author Spotlight: Eleanor Arnason
Earnie Sotirokos

Your story, “Ace 167,” explores complex social issues. Why did you choose this setting to tackle those ideas?

The story was written when I lived in Detroit. This was the old Detroit, full of car plants and autoworkers. At the time the city was about 60% black. It’s a story about racism and also about the working class, written in a city that was almost entirely working class and which struggled with racism. In theory, the city was integrated. Many work places and neighborhoods were mixed white and black, but social lives were almost entirely segregated, which was hard, because all the best music was in black bars. At the time—the end of the 1960s—the city boiled with politics: the Black Panthers, the White Panthers, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. I mention this because the story was written in a time and place when people genuinely struggled to confront racism and to improve their lives. But the story turned out to be more about racism than the struggle against racism.

Why did I pick Venus? The story is about love, and Venus is the planet of love. I’m not sure why I made it the old, wet Venus of pulp science fiction. But I grew up with that Venus, and I liked it.

This story was first published in 1974. Do you feel we’ve made enough progress in the areas you illuminated?

No. There is still way too much racism in the US. You can see it in the hatred that many people have of Obama. You can see it in prejudice against immigrants and Muslims. The gillies in my story are the hated “others,” who do jobs ordinary citizens don’t want to do. That’s a pretty good description of Hispanic immigrants. Without them, there would be no roofs in the Twin Cities metro area, and the restaurants would have to close. But still people get bent out of shape by the fact that there are new people in Minnesota. I’m not arguing that immigrants are justified because they do hard work. Except for Native Americans, we are all immigrants and the US has always been a multicultural nation. New people enrich our society.

Using the image of the “blood eagle” to describe Ace’s gills was particularly striking. Will we, as a society, ever be able to handle such distressing changes to the way we look?

Oh yes. We’re going to have gen mod babies in the near future. First it will be to deal with genetic defects. Then people will try for blond, blue-eyed kids. Then we’ll have genuine cosmetic genetics: people who are seven feet tall with feathers instead of hair. Why not, if we can do it? Will we modify humans so they can work underwater? Maybe, though producing a double respiratory system—lungs and gills—is likely to be difficult.

A trained-fish act sounds pretty entertaining to me. Did you envision any special tricks the performers would do?

I don’t know anyone training fish on Earth right now. But if you can train worms to run a maze, and this has been done, then I imagine you could train fish. But I’m not sure what you could train them to do. Run mazes? Press buttons? Come and fetch? Octopuses can learn to open locked boxes. I bet you could train cuttlefish to change their colors and the patterns on their skin. Of course, now we are talking mollusks, not fish.

What can we expect from you in the future?

I got laid off three years ago and decided it was time to retire, given the job market. So I am finally writing full-time. It took me almost three years to relearn the habit of writing regularly; I think I have it down now. My current goal is to complete unfinished stories and get them out. Most of this work is novelette length; and many of the best story markets now are online and want stories under 7,000 or 4,000 words. So my plan is to relearn writing genuinely short fiction. It may be science fiction rather than fantasy. I like fantasy and have written a lot of it, but I am in the mood for science fiction. There may be an argument for short fiction about technological change. The world is going to change in so many ways that it might be easier to pick one change and focus on it at a short length than to try to imagine a lot of changes happening at once, as they will.

Earnie Sotirokos grew up in a household where Star Trek: The Next Generation marathons were only interrupted for baseball and football games. When he’s not writing copy for radio or reading slush, he enjoys penning fiction based on those influences. Follow him on Twitter @sotirokos.

Author Spotlight: Tom Crosshill
Andrew Liptak

Hi Tom, thanks for taking a moment to speak with us about your story! Can you tell us about where “A Well-Adjusted Man” came from?

I’ve long been interested in the topic of human biochemistry and personal responsibility, not least because of the many dumb things that I’ve done under the influence of adrenaline. We like to believe we’re rational decision makers, but rationality depends on a delicate biochemical balance that fails when we need it most. The fight-or-flight response enables some amazing physical feats, but it also largely shuts down the brain, so you act on instinct.

This doesn’t work very well in modern society. If a friend insults you, punching him in the face isn’t the best idea. But perfectly rational, well-adjusted people do such things quite often. Most people can be pushed over the edge, if you hit the right triggers.

How do you assign blame in such a scenario? On the one hand, fully adrenalized, the puncher didn’t have much choice or free will. That’s why we distinguish crimes of passion (e.g. the “temporary insanity” defense) from premeditated ones. On the other hand, dismissing guilt altogether is dangerous. We all know the “that’s not who I really am” excuse, which can lead to cycles of misbehavior and abuse. Culpability forces people to confront their issues (and, in more serious cases, enables the victim to be protected).

In “A Well-Adjusted Man,” I imagine a future where society has decided that a person can’t be held accountable for their actions while adrenalized.

Your protagonist, Jim Turner, comes up against an unthinkable mistake, and is “fixed” with a memory overwrite.

Jim is a police officer. In his world, the emphasis is on officer wellbeing. In order to avoid psychological trauma, violent incidents are “re-written” in officers’ memories with successful outcomes. On the plus side, this is an effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Guilt and remorse are removed along with the old memories. But if, no matter what you do, you’re never wrong, that changes you . . .

I wrote “A Well-Adjusted Man” after attending RMCAT, an adrenalized self-defense program run by Peyton Quinn and Bill Kipp. Over the course of five days at a facility up in the Rockies, we went through realistic—and, therefore, highly stressful—hand-to-hand and firearms combat scenarios.

What happens to you under stress makes a very deep impression. PTSD is the extreme example, but we’ve all made mistakes that make us sweat ice to remember. This can work to your advantage too.

The core idea of RMCAT is to subject you to adrenalized situations and guide you to deal with them successfully. Because of the stress, you’re likely to recall this experience instinctively when needed, and react appropriately. Moreover, this type of stress inoculation teaches you to access your thinking brain in short bursts of rational thought, even in the middle of a fight.

While the self-defense aspect was fantastic, what I found truly fascinating was the emphasis on adrenaline management. Mixed in at random with combat scenarios were numerous highly charged situations where the whole point was to evaluate the threat accurately—and not attack, not display your gun, not shoot the aggressor.

I left the course with a conviction that every gun owner should do such training, as should anyone who performs badly under stress. In particular, police forces everywhere should be trained like this extensively.

What research I’ve been able to find indicates that similar training is in fact used, but far from universally or consistently. I have heard anecdotally that the ability of police trainers to actually adrenalize trainees is often lacking. Moreover, time and cost considerations lead to an emphasis on target shooting over realistic scenario training that prepares officers for situations they will encounter on the street.

In “A Well-Adjusted Man,” society has chosen memory over-write as a cheaper alternative to actual training.

The dangers associated with PTSD are becoming a more recognized problem within the military and civilian worlds. Do you think that a technological fix is something warranted or worth exploring in the real world?

PTSD is a debilitating condition for many people. Medical and technological solutions are definitely needed. Scientists have, in fact, tested drugs designed to do something very similar to the technology of the story—weaken memory formation during and after traumatic events. Whether this or another approach might prove most fruitful, I don’t know.

The way I see it, the nightmarish aspect of my story does not lie with memory-erasure as an “evil technology,” but rather with societal attitudes. Attitudes which are not that different from ours today. Too often we see instances of unjustified police violence where the officers never face any consequences. This is even more pronounced in the military world, where mistakes routinely result in atrocities. A drone fires a missile, children die, and society shrugs.

High-stress, high-stakes jobs will inevitably result in impossible situations and deadly mistakes. An officer or soldier who does his best and makes an honest mistake doesn’t deserve to have his life destroyed, neither legally nor psychologically via PTSD. Unreasonable over-scrutiny after the fact can be paralyzing, making officers reluctant to act in complex situations.

But a shrug isn’t the right answer either. Mistakes should be acknowledged and learned from. Training and institutional culture should prepare officers for the actual realities of the street, and should evolve in response to incidents. If all you say is, “Everyone screws up sometimes,” where’s the motivation to get better? As a society, we have a duty to hold our institutions accountable—not only for their mistakes, but also for their culture.

Lastly, is there anything coming up that we should keep our eyes out for?

There isn’t much short fiction in the pipe because I’ve been working almost exclusively on novels for the past few years. I’m finally done with To Catch A Firefly, a YA novel where AIs have devastated the world, and humans are no longer the top predator. It’s basically kids with superpowers versus giant robots. Now comes the part where I try to sell it!

Andrew Liptak is a freelance writer and historian from Vermont. He has written for such places as io9, Tor.com, SF Signal, Blastr, Kirkus, and Armchair General and he can be found over at andrewliptak.wordpress.com and at @AndrewLiptak on twitter.

Author Spotlight: Tobias Buckell
Erin Stocks

Your story “A Game of Rats and Dragon” is a cyberpunk/virtual reality mash-up set in a different sort of Manhattan. Was this story inspired by the Cordwainer Smith short story of the same name? Will you tell us a little about how that came to be?

It is inspired by Cordwainer Smith, the story “A Game of Rat and Dragon.” The idea was not so much virtual reality, but augmented reality. I’ve been really intrigued by adding a pair of goggles that overlay digital data over existing objects in the real world (virtual reality inside out, so to speak). You can see the effect using the app AcrossAir for the iPhone. What is more interesting to me is what we’ll do when we gamify augmented reality.

Tabletop gaming, stuff like Dungeons and Dragons, has a strong following. But when the mechanics of those playing styles were wedded to a video game, a sort of virtual reality, we saw an explosion of MMORPGs and a mainstreaming of those gaming mechanics. I think it will be interesting and mainstream when we start getting a mix of augmented reality and what is now a more niche activity called live action roleplaying (or LARPing).

At that point, our existing world becomes a magical play full of dragons, invisible data, secrets, and extra dimensions. If you wear a pair of contacts and engage with all the time, what will that create? I felt that Cordwainer Smith’s sense of the mythical, combined with SF, was the kind of resonance I wanted. So I played with the title and the story for inspiration.

You launched a Kickstarter campaign back in June for a collection of stories, and “A Game of Rats and Dragon” also appears in that volume. What drew you to Kickstarter, and why do you think it was successful for you?

Kickstarter has been very good to me. It enabled me to continue my science fiction series direct with fans for a whole new book I wrote recently, The Apocalypse Ocean. I was curious to see how a short story collection would work. The idea of letting people pre-order the book to get enough sales to make a limited edition hardcover, and adding some new fiction to it, was so appealing. The current message authors get is that short story collections don’t sell and aren’t worth the time. And maybe that’s true in a larger sense, but the several hundred readers who preordered Mitigated Futures, the collection, seemed happy to get it. And I got to make it. So it’s one of those rare “everybody wins” situations you don’t often get in life.

You have an impressive output as a writer: a handful of novels, and dozens of short stories. Do you consider yourself better at one or the other? Which do you enjoy more?

Oh, thank you. I’m always berating myself for the fact I should be doing more, more, and I often feel like I lost two or three years of my career while recovering from a heart defect. I feel like I lost a novel that should been in there. But such is life.

I have no idea which one I’m better at. I’m still an egg, always still learning about the two forms. And I am always rediscovering pieces of the craft that I had put away for a while whenever I switch between novel and short story.

There is a satisfaction that comes from a short story for me that comes from the speed with which it is finished. To have a complete piece of art in a week to a few weeks, as opposed to the many months of work on a novel, means that I really do enjoy them. But I also really enjoy the large canvas of a novel. It’s so hard to pick one. I mean, if I’d really loved one more than the other, I would have given that one up, I guess. I’ve had plenty of time to make a choice and still haven’t!

You grew up in the Caribbean. What kind of effect has that had upon your writing?

I think I try to create a more global sense in the writing with a variety of cultures and peoples, and struggle to avoid a certain myopic viewpoint that can come of living in just one culture or place your entire life.

The biggest effect is simply that I want a multicultural cast in my books. That’s how I grew up. I’m of a mixed background, so I live it. A lot of people moan about how it’s boring or forced, but there’s nothing forced about the fact that I exist, it seems to me. I love existing. So I write adventure science fiction with a global cast and have a great deal of fun.

What’s coming up for you next?

Currently I’m finishing up a young adult novel called The Trove, a sort of cyberpunk Treasure Island in space that I’ve been working on for a couple of years and adore. Once that is in the bag, my next novel is Hurricane Fever, a novel about a retired spy in the Caribbean as heavy weather batters the islands and the near future gets even more wiggy than what I was writing about in Arctic Rising.

And of course, a handful more of short stories, and some other surprises!

Lightspeed Assistant Editor Erin Stocks’s fiction can be found in the Coeur de Lion anthology Anywhere but Earth, Flash Fiction Online, the Hadley Rille anthology Destination: Future, The Colored Lens, and Polluto Magazine. Follow her on Twitter @ErinStocks.

Author Spotlight: Aliette de Bodard
Moshe Siegel

The argument between Tiger and Crane in your story “As The Wheel Turns” centers on how best to upkeep the Wen-Min Empire, which on the surface sounds a noble goal: maintaining civilization. Yet these two Founders thrive on carnage and misery, sowing both among their people. What do you think that portrays about their true motives for holding together the society they founded? Is this perhaps a statement about empires in general?

I’m an innate pessimist, and tend to think that most noble goals can only remain so in principle: carnage and misery form a very large part of how things come to fruition—not only in the maintaining of empires, but also for things that might seem noble, like self-defence or even the attainment of freedom and equality. The French Revolution aimed to free the masses from the tyranny of the kings, and yet ended as a particularly messy and bloody episode. Likewise, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia committed one of the worst genocides in Asia, and yet their goals, on paper, sound wonderful: to make the country into a modern, egalitarian society and free peasants from oppression.

Mankind being what they are, much of human history is written in blood and atrocity, and the noblest of goals very often mask raw self-interest, or community interests (including, among others, nationalism, religion, tribal interests . . .).

Much of your writing involves far-flung regions and alternative history. Does “As the Wheel Turns” shadow or draw influence from any real-world mythologies or cultures?

Much of my writing draws on Chinese and Vietnamese cultures—because my mother is Vietnamese and much of my education was in the Confucian tradition. “As the Wheel Turns” draws on Chinese mythology and philosophy, though in a very simplified, bastardised version (the arguments between Tiger and Crane echo questions that Chinese philosophers asked themselves during the Warring States period, and the Lady is drawn from Meng Po, the goddess who purges the souls of the dead before they reincarnate).

There is an air of fatalism surrounding Tiger and Crane: The Lady, for example, advises Dai-Yu to choose between them and have done, because (ironically), “There is no choice.” Tortoise defies the will of fate (and dwindles away to nothing) by making no choice at all, whereas Dai-Yu eventually realizes that, in this case, the choice itself is illusory. Where do you stand? Do you think fate guides us, or is it merely a philosophical concept, with potential both for exploitation and inspiration?

Ha, I don’t have such a clear-cut, absolutist answer! But I do believe that, at some points in life, people will have no choice, or illusory choices—not through any fault of their own or lack of care, but simply because things are the way they are. For me, a large part of life (and one that I think genre too often ignores) is that we often have to bow down to necessity, to hunker down and endure rather than cling on to the illusion that we can affect what happens.

That said, it’s also a very neat concept to explore through stories. :)

Is Tortoise just as sadistic as his brothers, for burdening a mortal child with the choice he himself could not make—knowing full well the lifetimes of suffering involved in the choosing? Or, is the crucible of time (as lived by Dai-Yu; as written in our histories) the only way to come to a full reckoning of civilization’s best shot at survival?

For me, this is very much a case of things working out better than intended (which, I suppose, makes a particular ironic statement about fate . . .). The way I saw it in the story, the only thing that separated Tortoise from his brothers was his refusal to play the “game”—my intention was that he’d run away from his responsibilities and passed them on to his child without realising the consequences of this act (in the beginning, I don’t think he even envisioned that this would lock Daiyu in a circle of reincarnations without forgetfulness; then his behaviour became more blamable, because he saw but didn’t act).

Daiyu is definitely able to make her decision because she’s been through history, and has seen that the arguments between Tiger and Crane are purely theoretical, the work of philosophers who have never experienced either history or the human condition. But I don’t think it was part of Tortoise’s plans so much as something Daiyu worked out for herself with the weight of her experiences . . .

Lastly, is there anything you can share with us about your upcoming (or current) projects?

I’m currently working on an urban fantasy set in contemporary Paris, where dynasties of magicians have been at war for centuries. It’s set from the point of view of a Vietnamese-French character who is unwillingly dragged into the latest flare-up and deals with the magic and history of the city in what I hope is an original take. Otherwise, I’m working on short fiction as usual: I have a story forthcoming in Athena Andreadis’s feminist space opera anthology The Other Half of the Sky.

Moshe Siegel works as a slusher, proofreader, and interviewer at Lightspeed, interns at the pleasure of a Random House-published author, freelance edits hither and yon, and is a Publisher’s Assistant at Codhill Press. His overladen bookshelf and smug e-reader glare at each other across his home office in upstate New York, and he isn’t quite sure what to think about it all. Follow tweets of varying relevance @moshesiegel.

Author Spotlight: Jeremiah Tolbert
Kevin McNeil

Can you tell us a little bit about your writing process and what inspired “La Alma Perdida de Marguerite Espinoza?”

For a few years, I had been thinking that I wasn’t living up to the full potential of fantasy in my fantasy stories, as far as how far I was willing to push the speculative elements. In science fiction, you have an obligation to reality and believability, but in fantasy, what “reality” means is much more flexible.

I started to wonder why, for instance, people in fantasy novels are just flesh and blood like us; they might have magic, but biologically, they are subject to the same science of genetics that we are. They were still living organisms most of the time. But why?

The people in this story are not remotely like us except on the surface. If you cut them open, they “bleed” humors, not blood. Their souls, or vital essence, are an actual thing that can be trapped or transferred. In fact, although not discussed in the story, they have weight, substance.

Once I had this basic idea, I started to explore it further and wondered, what if their creator deity was a jerk? He is still unknowable, inscrutable like many deities, but rather than worship/fear him, what if his creations kind of hated him because of some direct decisions he made; namely, to allow the creation of very few new human souls?

From there, it was just a matter of asking, “Who does this whole situation hurt the most?” And that’s how I found my protagonist.

The world for this story is fascinating—from the religion, to the spring technology, to the Spanish influence. What can you tell us about the creation of this world? Do you have other works set in this universe?

As far as the spring technology and the Spanish influence, these are deliberate in an attempt to step away again from the typical fantasy comfort zones; basically medieval English settings (or lately, steampunk English settings). It’s not so much that I wanted to make the people literally Spanish, as this is intended to be a secondary world fantasy. But in the great multiverse of possibilities, the people of the story seemed more Spanish than say, French or English. As I wrote the story for an audience in our world, I drew allusions to a language they know in order to help them connect more with the characters and their plight.

Of course, you can’t just pilfer the language; language comes with certain cultural aspects as well. I’ve been fascinated with Spanish-speaking cultures since taking Spanish language classes in college, and having spent some time in Central America over the past several years, it was inevitable some of that would make its way into my stories.

I have another story in progress that looks at what war is like in this setting. How do we fight when people can have their souls taken from them and replaced with the souls of animals? Military recruiters have an entirely different role in this society, and it’s not a pretty one . . .

In this world, some people have animal souls implanted deliberately late in life for the unusual characteristics it brings out. If you were to have an animal alma implanted for its abilities, what animal would you choose?

This is very much like the “What super power would you like to have?” game, and I’m terrible at that one. I always want a power that lets me try on a lot of different ones. Luckily, there’s no rule saying I have to keep one animal soul either (although there are good reasons not to just keep putting new ones in yourself, as the side effects are cumulative).

I suppose I would go for speed over strength, so something like a cheetah or leopard would do nicely. My personality’s more cat-like anyway, so hopefully the change wouldn’t be too huge.

You are a writer, a photographer, and a web designer. Since these are all creative careers, how do you feel they affect each other?

Sometimes they blend together into interesting projects like Dr. Roundbottom, but those projects can take an enormous amount of work, so mostly they act as different aspects of my personality.

Photography is about observation and patience. You have to see the photograph you want and wait for it to become possible in the light, or wait for the animal to show itself to you, in the example of wildlife photography.

Web design appeals to the analytical, problem-solving side of me. I do a lot more development than design lately, but both are about solving concrete problems and helping clients achieve a certain goal. I’m not lying to say that this is the most lucrative of my pursuits, so this is the closest thing I have to a “job.”

Writing is where I get to free my creativity, let it run wild; I can write about anything, any place, anywhere. Photography, while creative, is mostly restrained to the real world, as I’m not the world’s best photo-manipulator. Mostly I write short stories, not novels, because of that lack of risk. If you’re going to keep someone’s attention for 300 pages, and even more, spend a year writing that much, you might take fewer risks. There’s a lot of time at stake. But a short story takes a day or two to write generally, and it doesn’t hurt as much if it fails; and the pay is not anything spectacular. So why not try the wildest things you can think of, write from the very core of your being? There’s so little to lose.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers?

When it comes to the practical side of things, you can listen to advice (how to format a manuscript). As far as creativity goes, do your own thing. You know better than anyone else how you’re going to do it. So much writing advice is bunk. There will be time for understanding how other people do things later. For now, read a lot and write a lot and everything else will probably fall into place.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about this piece? What’s next for you?

I just want to challenge other writers to write more fantasy that undermines the basic assumptions about our physical world. I want to see stories in which gravity doesn’t work the way it does here, or a story in which the sun is actually God watching over her creation. Tinker with reality itself. What profoundly weird worlds can you find that way? Deviate from the standard physical world model!

What’s next for me? I just moved back to my home state of Kansas for my wife’s new teaching job. Once I get settled, I’ll get back to work on my young adult time travel novel set in Western Kansas. 35 million years ago, Kansas was a great inland sea, home to the most deadly oceanic predators the world has ever known: mosasaurs and sharks the size of school buses, to name a couple. So what happens when you dump a bunch of Kansas teenagers who have never even seen the ocean into those waters? I am jokingly calling the book There Will Be Blood, but unfortunately, that title’s been taken. In the meanwhile, you can expect a few more short stories from me, because books are a high-risk investment, so I will break up the world with more stories like “La Alma.”

Kevin McNeil reads slush and helps out with a few other things for Lightspeed and Nightmare magazines. He is a physical therapist, sports fanatic, and volunteer coach for the Special Olympics. He graduated from the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2012 and Kij Johnson’s Novel Writer’s Workshop in 2011. Kevin is a New Englander currently living in California. Find him on Twitter @kevinmcneil.

Author Spotlight: Carrie Vaughn
Theodore Quester

In your story, “A Princess of Spain,” you set a supernatural story in the court of Henry VII in the early 16th century, and the story almost becomes alternate history. What was the impetus for this story?

I was invited to submit a story to an anthology edited by Darrell Schweitzer, called The Secret History of Vampires. The idea was to have secret histories rather than alternate histories—in the history books, the events look exactly the same, but the reasons behind the events are maybe different than we thought. Conspiracy theories abound. Just about my favorite turning point in history regards Henry VII and his sons, and the fact that the one who would become Henry VIII was the second son, and not originally meant to become king. How different would it all have turned out, with King Arthur instead of King Henry VIII? The English Reformation would have been delayed at the very least, there’d be no Queen Elizabeth, and so on. It’s a huge moment, but at the same time very quiet. Of course I wanted to write about it, and the best way to do that was through the eyes of the woman who was married to both Arthur and Henry: Catherine of Aragon.

Is history an abiding interest of yours? Any more historical fantasy or alternate history in the works?

I love history, mostly because of the stories revealed by history. For example, I’m more interested in the personalities involved in a war than I am in the tactical details of battle. I love writing about history, and I have a ton of historical short stories out, and more on the way. World War II is a recurrent interest, as is Tudor England, and just about everything in between and beyond. I’ve written stories set in ancient Babylon and colonial Mexico. I’m embarking on a series of steampunk stories, set in an alternate 1890s. Historical writing requires many of the same worldbuilding and writing skills that writing fantasy and science fiction do, with the added bonus that it’s based on events and settings that are real. It’s harder because I have to at least attempt to be accurate, but it’s also very satisfying because I feel like I can reveal a time and place to readers that they maybe didn’t know much about.

You are a bestselling author of contemporary urban fantasy, but still write a great deal of short stories. How do you balance the two? What draws you to the short form?

I started out writing short stories, published short stories for about five years before finally selling a novel, and I continue to enjoy writing short work. Some ideas just aren’t meant for novel-length treatments, and I find short stories are a great way to experiment and try new writing skills. I’ve also used short stories to fill in gaps in my urban fantasy universe, tell the backstories of other characters, and so on. In addition to all that, being able to set my novels aside and work on something else, like short stories, when I get stuck has kept me sane. I need to have more than one project going at a time, and short stories are a great way to satisfy that impulse. I always feel like I’m getting something done.

What else do you have coming down the pipeline?

So much! The next Kitty novel, Kitty Rocks the House, will be out this spring. I’m currently writing the sequel to my superhero novel, After the Golden Age. I have another historical short, about Soviet women fighter pilots in World War II, coming out in an anthology called Dangerous Women, edited by Gardner Dozois and George R.R. Martin, sometime next year. I’m always working on something interesting!

Theodore Quester spent three years after college in Europe and now speaks seven languages; he spends his days teaching two of them to high school students. He is obsessed with all things coffee—roasting, grinding, pulling espresso—and with food, especially organic and locally grown. He earned his geek street credentials decades ago, publishing an article in 2600 magazine as a young teenager, then writing reviews for SF Eye and interning at Omni magazine. In his spare time, he swims, bikes, runs, and reads a little bit of everything; when inspired, he writes fiction, mostly for children and young adults.

Author Spotlight: Richard Bowes
Robyn Lupo

How did “Seven Smiles and Seven Frowns” arise for you?

First the tale and then the variations showed up as parts of a longer work. But I thought that with a twist or two, the evolving folk/fairy tale could stand on its own.

Any story has an agenda, a point of view. And a folk tale/fairy tale has a very strong one, molded over centuries. After Perrault made the fairy tale into a literary form, writers used stories in this genre to advance what they saw as good manners and a proper way of life. The stories become quite elegant even when compared to the Grimms’ tales, which were cleaned up for 19th century consumption.

Stories changed with time and as they travelled. Cinderella is a far different story in its ancient Asian origins than it is in late 17th century France.

In “Seven Smiles and Seven Frowns” the agenda has become intentional. The first take is the ruling power’s vision of itself—powerful but not without deep feeling and love. The final variation is a call for dissent against the ruling class.

It seems that you’ve inverted the traditional apprentice/mentor relationship; it’s not a stretch to say that the apprentice chooses to be apprenticed. What prompted this choice?

In my story, I saw the young witches in training as having found a vocation, something that held their interest. I’d put it more in line with a spiritual calling. This was another side of apprenticeship—some children wanted to learn the trade being taught, some got to learn a trade they chose and their parents didn’t intend for them. Musicians, performers, artists of all kinds were apprenticed

The apprentice tradition has almost totally disappeared. But up to the 1800s, most trades and even most professions, from the Army and Navy to Medicine, had some form of apprenticeship. In the late 19th century, medical students like Conan Doyle and Somerset Maugham still learned most of what they were going to learn by following doctors around hospitals and observing what they did.

I think we’re used to the tale of the unhappy kid, apprenticed to a cruel master and taught to do something he/she doesn’t like doing in conditions of extreme servitude. Its presence in so many narratives, from folk/fairy tales to memoirs, shows us it was all too common a story. Life was short and brutal and there was no middle ground—what we call adolescence. Except for the highest reaches of ancient societies, one was either a child and unable to take care of oneself or, starting somewhere around the age of 11/12, one was an adult and expected to be productive. I believe Western European folk/fairy tales brought attention to this and other maltreatment of children and what we would call young adults.

Writing well consistently means making nearly minute changes to a story to bring about different effect—and you wrote a story highlighting this. Can you tell us more about how you see writing and your process?

Much of my writing process is a mystery to me and that’s probably just as well. In “Seven Smiles,” I wrote about intentional changes to a tale—changes that made the tale closer to each teller’s views and beliefs. When I wrote the first version I had no idea that this would be anything more than background, a way of showing a reader how the Fey instructed their children. By the second variation I had some idea of subversion. By the third I actually had some idea of what I was doing.

It seems when they captured the Prince, the kingdom fell out of a golden age, but this can’t be true, as Alaric was captured to see the plight of his people. Can you elaborate on this?

The first version is a self-created idealized portrait of the ruling class. The Alaric depicted is benign, generous and loving.

In the second version he’s a lot less charming and his behavior is far more likely—he’s not benign, just unprepared. The third version is the plight of the conquered people from their POV. Alaric may have learned his lessons, but he’s still potentially enormously dangerous.

What’s next for you?

I write stories—sometimes I weave them into novels. My novel Dust Devil on a Quiet Street will be published in 2013 by Lethe Press. Lethe will also reprint my Lambda winning novel Minions of the Moon in late 2012.

Current and upcoming are stories in the anthologies: After, Wilde Stories 2012, Bloody Fabulous, Ghosts: Recent Hauntings, Handsome Devil, Hauntings, and Where thy Dark Eye Glances.

Robyn Lupo has been known to frequent southwestern Ontario with her graduate student husband and elderly dog. She writes, reads, and plays video games. She is personal assistant to three cats.

Coming Attractions

Coming up in December, in Lightspeed . . .

We’ll have a pair of connected fantasy stories by husband-and-wife creative duo J.T. Petty and Sarah Langan (“Family Teeth, Part 5: American Jackal” and “Family Teeth, Part 6: St. Polycarp’s Home for Happy Wanderers”), along with fantasy reprints by Brian Evenson (“An Accounting”) and Kelly Link (“Catskin”).

Plus, we’ll have original science fiction by D. Thomas Minton (“Dreams in Dust”) and Ken Liu (“The Perfect Match”), and SF reprints by Yoon Ha Lee (“Swanwatch”) and Marta Randall (“Lazaro y Antonio”).

For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella will be “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang, and of course we’ll have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with bestseller Tad Williams and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz.

It’s another great issue, so be sure to check it out. And while you’re at it, tell a friend about Lightspeed. Thanks for reading!