Editorial, February 2013
John Joseph Adams

Welcome to issue thirty-three of Lightspeed!

Sometime in early February, we hope to have our custom-built ebook store launched and ready to take orders on lightspeedmagazine.com. This will replace our current ecommerce software, which has been giving us some trouble the last several months. But the big news is that Lightspeed will now offer direct subscriptions as well. So in addition to being able to subscribe via Amazon and Weightless Books, you’ll now also be able to subscribe directly from us. As always, you can go to lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe to see all of our subscription options.

In case you missed the news last month, just a reminder that the nomination period for the 2012 Hugo Awards is now open. The 2012 Hugo Awards will be presented in San Antonio, TX during LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention (Aug. 29-Sep. 2). Nominations close on March 10, 2012. Anyone who has a supporting or full membership of LoneStarCon 3 as of January 31, 2013 and all members of Chicon 7 (last year’s Worldcon) may nominate works. If you didn’t attend Chicon 7, and you don’t plan to attend LoneStarCon 3, you can still nominate by purchasing a supporting membership. Nominations may be submitted through the online ballot at lonestarcon3.org/hugo-awards.

If you’d like to reference a list of all Lightspeed stories (and other material published by yours truly in 2012), visit my personal website at johnjosephadams.com/blog. There, I’ve sorted everything into their proper categories (short story vs. novelette, etc.), including material from my 2012 original anthologies, Armored and Under the Moons of Mars.

Also, if you are planning and eligible to vote for the Hugos this year, you’re eligible for some free stuff! Just visit johnjosephadams.com/blog for details.

And just one more thing before we get to this month’s stories. I wanted to briefly mention some staff changes we’ve had at Lightspeed.

Late last year, we said goodbye to two of our long-time staffers: assistant editor Erin Stocks and editorial assistant Jennifer Konieczny. Replacing Erin is one of Lightspeed’s original assistant editors, Christie Yant, and we’ve uplifted one of our slush readers, Earnie Sotirokos, to take over for Jennifer. So salutations to Erin and Jennifer for their years of service, and a hearty welcome to Earnie and a hearty welcome back to Christie.

Another new hire is Rich Horton, whose name you might recognize as the editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy series published by Prime Books. Finding the reprints we run in the magazine every month is a lot of work, so we’ve brought Rich on board as our reprint editor to assist me in that endeavor. Working with him behind the scenes has been great so far, and I think our readers will enjoy the magazine even more thanks to his contributions.

That about does it for staff changes. If you want to learn more about any of these folks, or any of the rest of our staff, you can always visit our Staff page at lightspeedmagazine.com/about/our-staff. But in any case, I hope you’ll join me in welcoming our new staffers and thanking our former employees for their dedication and service . . . not to mention all of the hard-working diligent folks who are neither “new” nor “former” and are simply “current”!

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

We have original science fiction by C.C. Finlay (“The Infill Trait”) and Carrie Vaughn (“Harry and Marlowe Escape the Mechanical Siege of Paris”), and SF reprints by Robert Reed (“Eight Episodes”) and Maureen F. McHugh (“Interview: On Any Given Day”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Genevieve Valentine (“Abyssus Abyssum Invocat”) and M. Bennardo (“The Herons of Mer de l’Ouest”), along with fantasy reprints by Marly Youmans (“Prologomenon to the Adventures of Chílde Phoenix”) and John Crowley (“Exogamy”).

We also have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, and feature interviews with bestselling authors Lois McMaster Bujold and Steven Erikson. And for our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive content this month is: the novella “The Happiest Dead Boy in the World” by Tad Williams; an excerpt of the new novel The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord; and a special feature article by Jamie Todd Rubin, “Hat Tip to the Masters: Homage in Science Fiction.”

Our issue this month is again sponsored by our friends at Orbit Books. This month, look for Fade to Black by Francis Knight. 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 The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, Oz Reimagined, Epic: Legends of Fantasy, 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 the World Fantasy Award. 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.

The Happiest Dead Boy in the World
Tad Williams

Tharagorn the Ranger was deep in conversation with Elrond Half-elven in the quiet shadows of Rivendell’s Hall of Fire. The man of the west had just returned from roaming through the world, and he and the elven lord had not spoken together in a long time. Things of moment were in their minds, not least of which a sudden rash of goblin raids near the Misty Mountains. Thus it was that the elven messenger, with the graceful diffidence of his kind, waited for some long moments in the doorway before either of them noticed him.

“A visitor is here who wishes to speak to Tharagorn,” the elf replied to Elrond’s question. “He seems to be a halfling.”

“Yeah, that would be me.” The voice was louder and, it had to be said, a bit less cultured than what was normally to be heard in the house of the great elven lord. The figure in the doorway was half the size of anyone else present, his feet covered in hair so thick and matted he appeared to be standing ankle-deep in the corpses of two small mountain goats. “Bongo Fluffernutter, at your service,” he said with a sweeping bow. “Nice place you got here, Elrond. Love the old-world craftsmanship. Tharagorn, can you spare a second?”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Beezle,” the ranger said under his breath. “I am truly sorry,” he told the master of the house. “Will you excuse me for a moment?”

“Of course.” Elrond looked a little puzzled, although the simulation was adept at incorporating or simply ignoring anomalies. “Is it really a halfling? We have not seen such a one, I think, since Gandalf brought his friend Bilbo Baggins to us from the Shire some years ago.”

“Yes, well, this . . . this is a different sort of hobbit.” Tharagorn lowered his voice. “A less successful branch of the species, if you get my drift.”

“Hey! I heard that!”

Elrond and the messenger withdrew, leaving Tharagorn, also known as Orlando Gardiner, alone in the high-raftered hall with his small, shabby visitor.

“Beezle, what the hell are you doing?”

“Don’t blame me, boss, you’re the one who said I couldn’t show up here unless I was in character.” He lifted a foot and admired it. “Whaddaya think? Nice pelt, huh?”

“Bongo Fluffernutter?”

“Isn’t that the kind of name they all have? Jeez, I’ve only got so much room for Tolkien trivia, y’know.”

Orlando stared at the pint-sized horror in front of him. Whether it was a better fit with the simulation than Beezle Bug’s normal, multi-legged, cartoonish appearance was open to debate, but there was no doubt he was looking at the world’s ugliest hobbit. Orlando was beginning to suspect the software agent’s sense of humor had moved on a bit beyond what was covered by the original warranty. Maybe he’d given Beezle a bit too much freedom over the years for self-programming off the net.

“I mean, really,” Beezle said, “look at which pot’s calling which kettle black, boss—Tharagorn? Tharagorn? Are you just waiting around here for the Return of the Thking or something?”

“Ha ha. Oh, you’re one funny piece of code. I picked it because it sounds like ‘Thargor.’” Who had been, of course, Orlando’s online avatar for most of his childhood, the brawny barbarian swordsman who had conquered so many gameworlds back in the old days, when Orlando Gardiner had still had a real world to return to at the end of the adventure. Not that he wasn’t a little embarrassed by it all now. “Look, I wanted something easy to remember. Do you know how many names I have on this network?” He realized that he was justifying himself to an entity that had once been a birthday present, and not even the most expensive present he had received that year. “What was it you wanted, anyway?”

“Just to do my job, boss.” Beezle actually sounded hurt. “I’m only serving as a furry-footed link to your busy social calendar. We already talked about dinner with your folks, so I know you remember that. You know you’ve got Fredericks scheduled in first, right?”

“Yeah. She’s meeting me here.”

“Oh, good, I’m sure that’ll be fun for everyone. May I recommend the Hall of Endless Nostalgic Singing? Or perhaps the Silvery Giggling Lounge?”

“Your sarcasm is noted.” It wasn’t as though Orlando didn’t harbor occasional less-than-reverent thoughts about the Tolkien world himself, but it was still the closest thing he had to a home, after all. Back in the beginning of his full-time life on the network, when Orlando had been overwhelmed by all that had happened to him, Middle Earth—and Rivendell in particular—had been a blessed haven for him, a familiar, much-loved place where he could relax and heal and come to terms with his responsibilities and even with the possibilities of immortality, a subject that surrounded him on every side in Elrond’s ancient residence.

“By the way, tonight’s also the first Friday of the month in Wodehouse World,” Beezle went on. “Did you remember that too?”

“Oh, fenfen. No, I forgot. How long do I have?”

“Meeting’s in about three hours.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there.” But Beezle just stood, waiting expectantly, forcing Orlando to ask, “What is it now?”

“Well, if I have to stay in character and walk out of this overgrown bed and breakfast and all the way across the bridge just so I can leave the simulation, you could at least say, ‘Fare thee well, Bongo Fluffernutter!’ or something.”

Orlando glowered. “You’re joking.”

“It’s only polite.”

“Fenfen.” But Beezle showed no signs of leaving without it. “Chizz, then. Fare thee well, Bongo Fluffernutter.”

“Don’t forget, ‘And may your toes grow ever more curly.’”

“Just get out of here.”

“Okay. Fare thee well, also, Tharagorn, Cuddler of Elves.”

It turned out Beezle could move quickly on those furry feet when he had to.

Sam Fredericks was almost an hour late, but that was all right: guests could get something to eat and drink at pretty much all hours in Rivendell if they didn’t mind the limited menu. The people who had programmed this simworld years ago—a team from the Netherlands, as Orlando had discovered—had stuck to the original very carefully. There was no specific mention in the books of meat being served in Imladris, the elven name for Elrond’s sumptuous house, so what the kitchen offered was pretty much limited to bread, honey, fruit, vegetables, and dairy products. Orlando, who had spent a lot of time in the Tolkien simulation during his early days living in the network, could remember more than a few times when he would have been willing to crawl to Mordor for some pepperoni.

When she showed up, she looked exactly the same as she had on her last visit, dressed in the manner of a male elf, her coffee-and-cream skin radiant, her frizzy hair a glorious confusion held only by a cloth band that made her look slightly piratical. She and Orlando hugged. Sam let go first.

“Something to eat?”

“I’m not really hungry,” she said. “You go ahead if you want to.”

“Sam, the food here won’t fill you up, and I don’t need to eat at all. It’s just social.” He led her onto one of the covered balconies instead. They could hear the river ringing in the valley below them, although the lanterns of Rivendell only illuminated the tops of the trees.

Sam slid onto a bench. Orlando sat down beside her and stretched his long legs. That was one of the holdovers from his illness that even he recognized: he was never going to be in a sick or crippled body again if he could avoid it. “So, you,” he asked. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“Oh, you know. Getting around, keeping an eye on things. This whole job has turned out a lot different than I expected. When I first agreed to be the sort of head park ranger, I thought I’d be, I don’t know, stopping wars or something.”

Sam smiled. “Like Superman?”

“Or God, yeah. I try not to limit my ambitions.” He waited; Sam’s laugh was a little late. “But since Sellars and Kunohara convinced all the others to let the whole simiverse go free-range, I’m kind of more like an anthropologist or something.” Patrick Sellars had brought together the group of people who had prevented the network from being used for its original purpose, which had been to give immortality within its confines to the Grail Brotherhood, a group of people as unpleasant as they were rich. Kunohara, a former minor member of the Grail who had changed sides, joined Sellars at the end in saving the network—and in essence, saving the lives of all the network’s complex sims, as well as Orlando himself, who had been copied into the network before his physical death and now existed only as information. Sellars, too, had soon after left his own dying body behind to take up existence on the Otherland network, but unlike Orlando, his move had been voluntary.

“Anthropologist?” Sam prompted.

“Yeah, well, except for fixing obvious code errors, which don’t happen much, I mostly make a lot of reports and keep an eye on the interesting, unexpected stuff. But since Sellars is gone now and Kunohara’s so majorly busy, I kind of wonder who I’m making reports for.”

“The rest of us, I guess. And other people who might study it someday.” Sam shrugged. “Do you miss him? Sellars?”

“Yeah. I can’t say we were utterly friends or anything. Not like you and me.” He hoped to see her smile, but she only nodded. “He was just too . . . something. Old. Smart. But I liked him a lot once I got to know him. And he was the only person who lived here with me, Sam. I knew he wasn’t going to be around forever—that he was tired, that he wanted to follow his information-people out into the great whatever. But I sort of thought we’d get to have him for a few more years.” He was playing it down, of course, for Sam’s benefit. It had been even more devastating than he had expected when Sellars moved on: Orlando had felt deserted, bereft. After all, the crippled ex-pilot had been the only other person in the universe truly to understand the strangeness of knowing you were alive only on a network, that your real body was ashes now, that most of the people who had known you thought you were dead . . . and were more or less right.

Also, Sellars had been a kind person, and—either because or in despite of his own suffering—a good listener. He had been one of the only people who ever saw Orlando Gardiner cry. That had been back in the earliest days of living on the network, of course. Orlando didn’t cry anymore. He didn’t have the time for things like that.

Sam and Orlando sat on the Rivendell balcony another half an hour, talking about all manner of things, even sharing a few jokes, but Orlando continued to feel something awkward in his friend’s behavior. It touched Orlando with something he had never expected to feel around Sam Fredericks; it took him long minutes to recognize it as fear. He was almost terrified by the idea that she might not want to be here with him, that their friendship had finally become no more than an obligation.

They had wandered back to the subject of the network. To his surprise, she seemed to think he was the one who needed cheering up. “It’s still an amazing job you have—the ranger for a whole universe. All those worlds, your responsibility.”

“Three hundred and ninety-eight at the moment, but a few others have just temporarily collapsed and they’ll cycle back on again. That’s like a quarter of what there used to be, but Sellars just switched a bunch of them off because they were too scanny, too violent or creepy or criminal.”

“I know, Orlando. I was at that meeting, too.”

“Are you sure you’re okay, Sam? You seem . . . I don’t know, sad.” He looked her up and down. “And now that I think about it, you haven’t changed sims in like a year’s worth of visits.”

“So? Jeez, Gardiner, you’re the one who wants everyone to dress up all elfy-welfy here.”

“I don’t mean the clothes.” He almost told her about Beezle’s version of Rivendell chic, but he could not get past what was suddenly bothering him. “Sam, what’s going on? Is there a reason you won’t change your sim? You must have something more up-to-date you use for remotes and friendlines and all back home.”

She shrugged—she was doing it a lot—but would not meet his eyes. “Yeah. But what does it matter? I thought you were my friend, Orlando. Is it really that important to see if . . . if my boobs have grown since the last time you saw me?”

He flinched. “You think that’s why I want to see the real you?”

“No. I don’t know. What’s your problem?”

He swallowed down the anger, mostly because it scared him to be angry at her. There were times when it felt like his friendship with Salome Fredericks was the only thing that kept him connected to the world he had been forced to leave behind. His parents were different—they were his parents, for God’s sake, and always would be—and the other survivors of the Otherland network would always be his friends as well, but Sam . . . “Damn it, Fredericks, don’t you get it? You’re . . . you’re part of me.”

“Thanks a lot.” Despite the mocking words, she looked more unhappy than angry. “All my life I wanted to be something important, but part of the great Orlando Gardiner? I never even hoped . . . !”

“That’s not what I mean and you know it. Fenfen, I mean you’re in my . . . okay, you’re in my heart, even though that sounds utterly drooly. You’re why I still feel like I’m a living person when, well, we both know I’m not.”

Now she was the one to flinch, but some kind of wall still loomed between them. “What does that have to do with my sim? When you first met me, you thought I was a boy!”

“But this is different, Sam.” He hesitated, then put his hand on her arm. The world’s most powerful simulation engine made it feel just as it was supposed to feel, the warm skin on her wrist, the velvety folds of her sleeve over muscle and tendon and bone. “I know I’m never going to grow up, not in the normal way. I may not have a real body anymore, but that doesn’t mean I expect everyone else to play with me forever here in the Peter Pan Playground. Look at me, Sam.” He knew it was mostly guilt that kept her eyes on him, but just now he was willing to use whatever he had. “If you hide things from me, especially the normal stuff, because you think I can’t take it—well, that’s the worst thing I can think of. I was a cripple my whole life. Having progeria wasn’t just knowing I was going to die young, it was having every single person who saw me for the first time look at me and then look away real fast, like I was some kind of horrible human car accident. Even the decent ones who tried to treat me like anyone else . . . well, let’s just say it was obvious they were working at it. I don’t want to be pitied ever again, Sam.”

She looked miserable and ashamed. “I still don’t understand, Orlando. What does that have to do with my sim?”

“You don’t want me to see the way you look now, but it’s not because you’ve got a zit or something and you’re embarrassed. It’s because you know you look different, that you’re growing or changing or whatever. Tell me I’m wrong. Jeez, Fredericks, I’ve been living on this network almost three years, do you think I expect things not to change? It’s not going to hurt me. But if you can’t show me, then . . . well, it’s like you don’t trust our friendship. Like we can only be the kind of kid-buddies we used to be back in the Middle Country game.”

She looked at him with something of the familiar Sam in her expression again, amused even though she was irritated. “Same old Gardiner. You still know everything.” She took a long breath. “Okay, you want to see how I look now? Fine.” For a moment her Rivendell-self froze as she reselected her appearance, the new information passing through the series of blind relays that kept the very private Otherland network isolated from the real-world net. Then, suddenly, like a hardcopy picture dropped onto the top of a stack, Sam’s image changed. “Satisfied?”

“You don’t look that different,” he said, but it wasn’t really true. She was an inch or two taller, but also more curved and womanly—she had wider hips that the elven breeches only emphasized. The Sam he had known had been a greyhound-slender athlete. She also had a length to her face that he hadn’t seen before. She was really lovely, and not just because she was the Sam he loved. He also realized he hadn’t told the truth about something else: Seeing her suddenly a year older, seventeen instead of sixteen, did hurt. It hurt like hell. “Thanks.”

“Oh, Orlando, I’m sorry. I’m being utterly jacked. It’s not that, it’s not any of that.” She slumped on the bench, leaned forward until she could rest her elbows on her knees. She had stopped meeting his eye again. “It’s just . . . I’m seeing somebody.”

For a moment he didn’t understand what she meant, thought she was still talking about sims and images. “Oh. Is it . . . serious?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, I guess. We’ve been going around together for a couple of months.”

Orlando took a breath. “Well, I hope it works out. Fenfen, Frederico, is that what’s been bothering you all day? We’ve been past that jealousy stuff for a long time.” In part, he had to admit, because Sam had made it clear from the beginning of their real friendship, after he knew she was a girl and she knew about his illness, that although she loved him as much as he loved her, it was never going to be the romantic kind. Which was just as well, he had decided, because what they had was going to last their whole life and not be messed up by sex.

He often wondered if real, living teenagers told themselves the same kind of pathetic lies he did.

“I don’t know, it just . . . scares me. Sometimes I feel like . . .” She shook her head. “Like I’m not a very good friend for you. To you,” she amended hurriedly. “I don’t see you as often as I should. You must think I’m terrible.”

He laughed, surprised. “It never even occurred to me. You know, Sam, no offense, but it’s not like when you’re not here I just sit around waiting for your next visit. Two days ago I was dodging arrows in Edo while a bunch of warlords tried to overthrow the Tokugawa shogunate. The week before I spent a few days with Captain Nemo exploring some undersea ruins.”

“So . . . so you’re okay? With everything? Not bored or . . . or lonely?”

He gave her arm another squeeze before letting go. The elves were singing again in the Hall of Fire, a meditation on the light of the Two Trees. The voices seemed almost to belong to the valley itself, to the night and the forest and the river singing together. “Bored? Not when I consider the alternatives. No, don’t fret about me, Frederico—I always have places to go, things to do, and people to see. Why, I must be the happiest dead boy in the whole wide world.”

It wasn’t really so much that Sam was dating someone that was bothering him, he thought as he got ready to connect to his parents’ house, or even that she’d kept it a secret for a while. In fact, now that he thought of it, he still didn’t know if her new soulmate was male or female. Sam had always been funny that way, not wanting to talk about those sort of things, irritated by questions, as if Orlando might think differently about her if she ever clarified her gender and sexual issues. No, it wasn’t so much that she was dating someone, or even that she was growing up. He loved her, he really, truly did, and he wanted her to have a happy life no matter what. Instead, it was the sudden worry that he might not be growing up himself, as he had always assumed he was, however weird his situation. He felt a chill and wondered whether he was becoming irrelevant to everything, not just to Sam, whether despite the fact that years were passing for him in Make-Believe Land just as they did for her in the real world, his experiences here might not be the same as growing up at all.

Maybe you have to be real to do it. Maybe you have to do real things, make a fool of yourself at a party, trip and skin your knee, fall in love, or just . . . just . . . have a heartbeat. Maybe I’ll never really change. I’ll be like one of the sims—a sim of a fourteen-year-old kid. Forever. He pushed away the sickening thought. He had enough to deal with right now: Tonight was Family Night, which was hard enough to get through at the best of times.

It didn’t really seem fair, being dead and still having to go home for visits. Not that he didn’t love Conrad and Vivien. In fact, it was because he loved them so much that it could be so difficult.

He took a deep breath, in a metaphorical sort of a way—he felt as if he was taking a deep breath, anyway—and as he did so, he remembered that his mother and father apparently had a surprise for him tonight. They had asked him to connect to a different location in the house for his visit instead of the wallscreen. “Well, actually, it’s really Conrad’s surprise,” his mother had explained. She had smiled, but she hadn’t seemed entirely pleased with whatever it was going to be. Orlando had seen that expression before: she had worn it when Conrad had given him the bike for his eleventh birthday. Anyone, even Orlando himself, could have told his father that his bones were too brittle and his muscles too weak even to think of riding a bicycle, but Conrad Gardiner had insisted that his son should have every chance to be normal.

When Orlando had become more or less bedridden in the last year, they had finally got rid of it to make more room in the garage for medical equipment, spare filters, and oxygen pods. He had never ridden it, of course.

As he made the connection, Orlando wondered why he couldn’t just join them through the wallscreen, as usual. He liked doing that, because it felt no different than an ordinary kid-to-parents call, as though he were simply away at school in a different state instead of living in what was functionally a different universe.

Maybe Conrad swapped in the old screen for one of those deep-field things. He was talking a while back about investing in one of the solid-crystal ones.

The connection opened and he was looking at his parents, who looked back at him. His mother was teary-eyed, as she always was when they first saw each other. His father was beaming with what looked like pride. But there was also something unusual about the way they both appeared; it took him a moment to process what it was.

I’m looking through a different imager, he decided. I guessed right—it’s a new screen. But if his parents had indeed bought a new unit, he suddenly realized, they had installed it in the dining room instead of the living room: He could see the old oak sideboard behind their heads, with the poster of the French can-can dancers next to it that had hung on the wall there for years.

“Hi. What’s up—new screen?” Without thinking, he raised his hand to blow his mom a kiss as he always did—yes, it was embarrassing, but you had to do things differently when you couldn’t actually touch—and something shadowy rushed toward him. Even after years without a real body, he could not help flinching a little. The new thing stopped and hung in his view in the same way a simulated hand would.

It was a hand, but not being simulated on his end. Instead, it seemed to be looming in front of his parent’s screen and thus effectively hanging in front of his eyes, a weird-looking, smooth, maroon hand made of what appeared to be shiny plasteel. Half-forgetting his bodiless state, he reached out to touch it. The hand reached out too, extending away from his viewpoint, just as if it were his own hand, responding to his thoughts. Fascinated and troubled as he began to catch on, he tried to make the fingers wiggle as he would with one of his own simulated hands. The fingers wiggled. But these fingers weren’t on one of his sims, and weren’t even in the network—they were in Conrad and Vivien’s dining room in the real world.

“What the hell is this?”

“Do you like it?” His father was nodding, the way he used to nod when someone was trying out his home-brewed beers, back when they had still had visitors.

Well, that’s one thing, Orlando thought. Now that I’m gone, at least they can have people over again. “Like it? What is it? Some kind of robot arm attached to the new screen?”

“It’s not a new screen, it’s a whole body. So you can, you know, be here. Inside the house with us. Whenever you want.”

Orlando had discovered the other arm. He flexed it, held the two hands up together, then looked down. The viewpoint swiveled, showed him the cylindrical, beet-colored torso, the jointed legs. “A . . . body?”

“I should have thought of it before,” his father said. “I don’t know why I didn’t—your software agent used to have that little body with all the mechanical legs so it could crawl around the house, remember? I looked around until I found something that seemed like it would work. It’s a remote figure they use for certain kinds of reconnaissance operations—I think it was built for Antarctica originally, maybe military or something. I found a collector and bought it. I had to get different feet put on it—it sort of had hands at the end of the legs.” He was clearly a little nervous: when he was nervous, he babbled. “Better for climbing and moving on ice or something. I’m surprised they weren’t skis or tractor-treads or maybe . . .”

“Conrad,” Vivien said, “that’s enough. I don’t want to hear about hands on legs. It’s . . . disturbing.” She darted a quick look at Orlando, who was more than a little stunned.

“What . . . what am I looking out of?”

“The face,” his father said. “Well, it should be, but we’ll have to change what you’re putting out from your end. I didn’t want to spoil the surprise, so right now there’s a whole little Orlando standing there in the face-screen.”

“I’m still trying to figure this out. You mean, I’m supposed to . . . move around in this?”

“Sure, go ahead!” Conrad was delighted by the question. “Walk! You can go anywhere in the house!”

“He doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to,” said his mother.

Orlando flexed his muscles, or performed the mental actions that flexed muscles in the real world and the better virtual worlds. The cartoon fingers reached out and gripped the tabletop. He put his feet under him and stood; the point of view rose, not altogether steadily. Now that he was listening for it, he could hear the faint wet hiss of fibromotors bunching and relaxing.

“Do you need some help?”

“No, Conrad. I’ll be okay.” He got up and took a few swaying steps, then stopped to look down at the feet—they were huge ovals, like Mickey Mouse shoes. It was strange to be in a body as clumsy as this: His Otherland network bodies all responded exactly as though they were his own, and made him stronger, faster, and far more nimble than he had ever been in real life.

He hadn’t been in the bathroom since his death. It was interesting, even strangely touching, to have movement around his old house restored to him, but he wasn’t certain about any of this. He looked at his reflection in the mirror, the strange stick-figure shape of the thing. The screen in the faceplate showed Orlando’s full-body sim, so that he looked like one of those giant Japanese robot-monsters with a human controller rattling around inside its head. He scaled his sim’s output so that only the face appeared, and suddenly, even though it wasn’t his real face, not by a long shot—no one including Orlando himself had seen that since his physical body had been cremated—it made the whole thing more real and also far more disturbing.

Is this what they want for me? This . . . thing? He knew that Conrad meant well, that his parents were only trying to find a way to make his continued presence in their lives more real, more physical, but he didn’t know if he could stand to live for even short periods as this stalking, plasticized scarecrow.

He looked at the face he used with his parents, a teenage face appropriate to his age, made with help from various police forensic illustration nodes, scaled up from scans of his own skull and incorporating features from both his mother and his father. Not even a real face to begin with. The face of the kid they should have had, he thought. Stuck on this thing, now, like a lollipop on a stick.

Orlando did his best. He sat through dinner and tried to concentrate as his parents told him things about friends and relatives, about their jobs and the small annoyances of life in security-walled Crown Heights Community, but he felt even more like an alien than he usually did. The servo-muscles on the body were clumsy and the tactors less advanced than what he was used to: He knocked over his mother’s glass twice and almost tipped the table over when he stood up at the end of the meal.

“I’m going to have to make it an early night,” he said.

“Are you all right?” his mother asked. “You seem sort of down.”

“I’m fine, I’ve just got a meeting to go to at the Drones Club.”

“That’s that 1920s English place you told us about?” Conrad asked. “That must be interesting. Didn’t you say there was a war there?”

“Sort of.” It was still hard to make his parents understand about John Dread, about the terrible destruction the killer had wrought in so many of the Otherland network worlds in the brief days he had ruled over the system as a kind of evil god. “The simulation is coming back, but we’re letting things sort themselves out instead of just wiping out what’s happened and starting the cycles over, so there’s some pretty scanny stuff going on in some of them. Adaptations, almost like after a forest fire has changed an ecosystem. Very barky.” He noticed their puzzled faces. “Barky? It means funny. The weird kind of funny.”

“You know so much about these things,” his mother said. “This complicated network. You’ve learned so much. And you’ve really worked hard to make something out of . . .” Vivien Fennis was about to say something like your terrible situation, but of course she was too much of an old hand for that, too smart and too kind to mess up this proud-mom moment she was giving him. “Out of your life in this new world. New universe, really. It’s still so hard to believe or even understand.”

“You have the makings of a first-class scientific education there,” Conrad chimed in. “Even if it’s not the accredited type. Life experience has to count for something, doesn’t it? Maybe someday . . .”

“This all has to stay secret, Conrad—me, the Otherland network, everything. If it ever becomes public, there will be lawsuits for decades over who owns the network. It’s worth gazillions—it’ll be torn apart by the military looking for weapons-quality code, at the very least. You know that.” Orlando tried to puncture his dad’s fantasies gently, but they did have to be punctured: Conrad came up with hopeful, impractical plans every few months, and some of them made the maroon robot body seem positively normal. “Look, the chances are that I’m not ever going to live in the real world again. I’m sorry. I wish I could have had a grown-up life here and done all the things you guys wanted for me.” He took a breath: He found himself getting angry and he didn’t want to, but why did everyone keep projecting their ridiculous expectations and ideas onto him? He more or less figured on getting it from his parents, but Sam’s lack of trust in him was still hurting. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. This is a lot better than being dead. Don’t worry about me. Like you said, the network’s a whole new universe and I’m the one who gets to explore it. I’m happy.”

Happy or not, he was beginning to feel like he couldn’t breathe. He did his best to be cheerful as he said his goodbyes, even allowing his mother and father to give the robot-body a hug, although it was a weird and uncomfortable experience, probably even for Conrad. As he sat the mechanical form down in a chair so it wouldn’t fall over when he was no longer animating it, Orlando was finding it harder and harder to hide his ugly mood. Getting out of that horrible, whirring prison and back into the freedom of the network was like finally being allowed to take off a scratchily ill-fitting Christmas sweater after the aunt who gave it to him had finally gone home.

He had half an hour to kill before the meeting of the Worldwalkers Society. He wandered the streets of P. G. Wodehouse’s London, thinking.

Before Dread, this simulation world had been a shiny little confection of unadulterated good cheer, a London where the poor were content to be that way and the unguilty rich could concentrate on important things, like eating a really good breakfast and avoiding dragonish aunts (who could pop up and spoil the aforementioned breakfast, not to mention zillions of other innocent pastimes, with amazing swiftness). Now this particular London had become a much different place. Like some Socialist demagogue that even the most paranoid Tory could barely have imagined, John Dread had first enraged and then armed the city’s working class—a group in short supply in Wodehouse, but not entirely absent. A horde consisting mostly of gardeners, butlers, chauffeurs, deliverymen, maids, and cab drivers had stormed the haunts of the upper crust, besieging and attacking the rich in their mansions, Kensington flats, and clubs. Whole blocks had been put to the torch as some of Wodehouse’s wild-eyed Socialists and anarchists, rumored but scarcely ever seen, turned out to be more than merely rumor, and a few turned out to be dab hands at arson as well. There had even been some massacres, public slaughters of the class enemies—the class of the victims depending on which side was top of form at that particular moment of the struggle—although because of the happy-go-lucky nature of the Wodehouse world, even Dread’s malign influence had waned quickly once his direct supervision ended. Still, by the time Sellars and Kunohara had got round to shutting down the particulars of Dread’s intervention, some weeks after Dread himself had been dethroned, the city had descended into a sort of weird twilight state, something that combined the ruination of post-Blitz London with the freewheeling lawlessness of its earlier Elizabethan incarnation and more than a touch of the fearful shadows that had clung to the 19th century city during the Jack the Ripper crimes.

Curzon Street was full of horses and wagons these days—very few cars had survived the Unpleasantness, as the reign of terror was referred to—and Orlando had to watch what was under his feet as he made his way to Hyde Park. The squatter camps that had appeared in the first few weeks of the upheaval had become more or less permanent settlements, and with the chill evening coming down, bonfires burned everywhere. It didn’t do to walk too obliviously through the park—desperately cold and hungry people had long ago obliterated the park squirrels and the waterfowl of the Serpentine, and chopped down most of the beautiful old trees for fuel. Many wealthy folk who supposed that now the Unpleasantness had ended they could return to riding along Rotten Row had discovered that although horsemeat might come into the park on its own hooves as in the old days, the only way it was leaving again was inside someone’s stomach.

However, if anyone could walk heedless of personal safety in Hyde Park these days, it was Orlando Gardiner, the system’s bashful demigod, and the demigod had a lot to consider.

Is it just me? Conrad and Vivien mean well. Why is it so hard to humor them? After all, I’m their only kid and it’s pretty obvious things aren’t going to work out the way they hoped—no graduation, no girlfriends, no marriage, no grandkids . . . But no matter how he thought about it, he couldn’t feel anything but resentful horror at the idea of wearing that remote body. Instead of making him feel more natural it did the opposite, made the distance between his new life and his old one more acute, as though the real world had become some kind of alien planet, a toxic environment he could only enter dressed in a clanking robot-suit. The fact that the real world had become exactly that for him, and had been that way for going on three years, didn’t matter: As long as he only visited his folks by phone he could half-pretend he was just putting in a year in Africa with the UN Service Corps or something, but now Conrad’s compulsion to fix things was going to put a serious crimp in Orlando’s hard-earned denial.

It was the stuff with Sam, though, that really got to him. He didn’t want to be someone that never grew up, never changed no matter what he experienced. That was worse than the suit—that was like being truly dead. He would be a sort of ghost.

A ghost in a dead universe. Nothing changing, not me, not these worlds.

He turned back across the park toward Dover Street and the club. Crews of young toughs were gathered around rubbish-bin bonfires, singing mocking serenades to their rivals. It sounded like they might be working up to a reading, as in a “read and write,” local slang for a gangfight.

They’re free range, he reminded himself. None of my business. Happens all the time, anyway, and I couldn’t be here to stop them all.

He looked at the laughing young men in scarves and fingerless gloves and stolen top hats, dapper as Dickensian urchins. Some were openly sharpening knives and razors. In the simworld’s more normal operation they would be prone to no worse mischief than flinging snowballs at unsuspecting vicars and fat uncles, but even this evidence of a certain flexibility of ambition allowed by the system didn’t change Orlando’s feelings. They might have adjusted to the high level of local chaos, but these hooligans were still essentially the same kind of minor characters they had been in the world’s earlier incarnations. It was becoming obvious that for all Kunohara’s and Sellars’s florid early predictions, a certain depth of reality, a flare of unpredictability, had gone out of the Otherland network for good with the death of the operating system. What was left was still fabulously complex, but ultimately lifeless.

No wonder everyone keeps asking if I’m okay. It’s not me that’s the problem, it’s this network. Nothing really changes, or if it does, it’s just like ivy growing wild in someone’s yard or something—the same kinds of changes over and over and over. It’s not an evolving universe, it’s a big, broken toy, and even if it’s more complicated than anything anyone ever made before, it’s still never going to be like living in the real world. It wasn’t so much a lack of other people that was depressing him, he realized—the sims who inhabited the various worlds were astonishingly diverse and self-actualized, their interactive programming so flexible and their canned histories so comprehensive that in most cases you could never get to know any of them well enough to see the gaps in their near-perfect mimicry of life. But Orlando knew they weren’t real, and that was a very big part of the problem. He was also the most powerful person in this pocket universe now that Sellars was gone and Hideki Kunohara was so frequently absent, which added to the imbalance between himself and his cohabitants.

Yeah, that’s it—that’s who I am, he realized. I’m not Aragorn or the Lone Ranger, I really am Superman, like Sam said. I’m one of a kind in these worlds and I’m going to spend my life doing things for people who are lesser beings—who won’t ever seem quite real to me. And that’s a long time to do something, because I just might live forever.

For the first time since he had been reborn into the system, his potential immortality felt more like a burden than a gift.

The meeting was underway, but a few other latecomers were still wandering into the Bertram W. Wooster Memorial Salon—a chamber dedicated, Orlando had gathered, to a former Drones Club member who had been smothered to death by a mob of crazed railway porters during the Unpleasantness. Orlando took his Coca-Cola and sat at the back of the room. His first requests for the beverage had baffled the club’s bar staff, but the proprietor had stepped in and now a bottle of syrup and siphon of soda water was waiting for him whenever he dropped in.

That was only on meeting nights, of course—the Wodehouse simulation was not really his kind of world in the first place, and Orlando had never been interested in joining clubs even when he was alive, but the Society was different.

“Before we welcome tonight’s speaker,” the chairman was saying, “we have a few orders of business—messages sent by members who were not able to attend tonight, but who nevertheless have information of importance to share.” The chairman, Sir Reginald de Limoux, was a handsome man in his middle thirties, hawk-nosed, lean, and tanned in a way that proclaimed him in this world as a laborer or an adventurer. He was clearly not a laborer. “The gateway between Chrysostom’s Byzantium and Toyland is no longer safe. Toyland is still unstable, and some kind of military group has captured the shop where the portal operates and made it their headquarters. They are wooden soldiers, I am told, so unless you are a termite, it is suggested you avoid that gateway for now.” A few of the club members laughed politely. “Visitors to Toyland can still use the forest gate, which is protected by factions more sympathetic to free travel. Now, still on the subject of gateways, we have a report of a new one discovered in Benin, at an oasis just outside the city . . .”

As de Limoux continued with the announcements, Orlando sipped his Coke and studied him, wondering how much of the chairman’s source personality remained. He was one of the Jongleur-shadows, based on copies that had been made of Felix Jongleur, the Otherland network’s original master, at a time when the ancient industrialist was planning to live forever within its circuits, a god ruling over many worlds. Jongleur had indeed achieved immortality of a sort (as had many of the network’s other wealthy, powerful, and largely amoral founders from the Grail Brotherhood) but not in the way he or any of them had hoped.

Instead of serving the purpose for which they had been intended, these copies, meant to be the basis for what would be immortal information-based incarnations, had been warped and changed during the last mad days of the original operating system, then the copies had been allowed to scatter and disperse through the system. Nobody knew how many of them existed, or what they had become, since there was no foolproof way to track individual sims in the huge network. One of the reasons Orlando Gardiner, in his role as the network’s conservator, had become involved with the Worldwalkers Society was so that he could keep tabs on these various Grail Brotherhood clones, many of which seemed drawn to the club by a compulsion that might have been subconscious—their hidden psychological DNA at work.

Orlando had been surprised at first that Kunohara and Sellars, the two men who best understood the Otherland system, had never even tried to remove these remnants of the network’s original masters, but they had pointed out to him that even if all the shadow-copies could be found and identified, they were not automatically criminal themselves, any more than the children of a thief could be assumed to be inherently dishonest, and that even the least pleasant of the Grail Brotherhood originals were no worse than many other nasty sim personalities that were original inhabitants of some of the network worlds. It had been the Grail masters’ personal wealth and power, and also their control over the network from the outside, that had made them dangerous. Inside the network these clones and imitations started over from scratch, some with admitted personality defects, which cropped up in most incarnations, but others with a surprising capacity to become decent citizens. As he watched the Society’s chairman at work, Orlando thought that this particular version of Jongleur, Sir Reginald de Limoux, seemed somewhere in the middle—sharp-tempered and obviously ambitious, but certainly no out-and-out villain.

The other legacy granted to the Grail shadows and a few similar beings that the old operating system had created—some based on Orlando’s real friends and acquaintances, like the Englishman Paul Jonas—was that they alone of all the simulated souls on the network could travel with relative freedom between the network worlds, or even knew that there were worlds outside the simulation in which they lived. Unlike Orlando, most of these travelers did not understand what they were, or what kind of universe they lived in, but they did have a freedom of thought that set them apart from the rest of the sims. In fact, they were the closest thing to equals Orlando Gardiner had these days. Sitting around in the Drones Club bar after a Worldwalker meeting, listening to the humorous stories and impossible boasts of Society members, was the closest thing to the happiness he had once found in the adventurers’ taverns of his old Middle Country game.

And, of course, even in their wildest stories, these walkers-of-worlds brought back gems of information that Orlando found very useful. He might be a ranger with godlike powers, but he still couldn’t stamp out every untended campfire in four hundred different worlds.

When the chairman had finished his announcements, the featured speaker took the lectern and began to describe the findings from his most recent expedition. This gentleman seemed to have spent most of his time in Troy and Xanadu, two simworlds Orlando knew well, so he let his attention drift to other things. He became so caught up in wondering how to re-connect with Sam that he did not realize for several moments that someone who had harrumphed significantly several times behind him had given up on subtlety and was now tapping on his shoulder.

“Mr. Roland? Someone urgently wishes to speak with you.” The tapper was the proprietor of the Drones Club, a tall, poker-faced fellow named Jeeves who, rumor suggested, had been in some kind of domestic service before the Unpleasantness, but had risen very high, very quickly during those unstable times. “Did you hear me, Mr. Roland?”

Orlando had almost forgotten his local pseudonym. “Sorry, sorry. Someone to see me?” Could it be Beezle again, dressed for maximum embarrassment value in a cummerbund or pith helmet? But it was only when Orlando was in Rivendell, the closest thing to a refuge he had, that the agent wasn’t allowed to contact him directly: it was hard to relax and enjoy the peaceful singing of the elves and the flickering of firelight when you were getting four or five calls an hour from a virtual bug with the raspy voice and abrupt manners of an old-school Brooklyn cabbie.

“Yes, a visitor, sir,” said Jeeves, leaning close. “A young lady. Very attractive, if I may say so, but perhaps a bit . . . confused. I’ve taken the liberty of installing her in one of the unused lounges—some of the older members are less than open-minded about women in the club, even now. I do beg pardon for interrupting you—she said it couldn’t wait, and it seemed from her conversation that it might be something with which you would wish to deal . . . discreetly.”

Orlando looked at the man’s somber mouth, his tall, intelligent brow. Jeeves was not supposed to know who the Worldwalkers really were—on the surface, they were only a stuffily ordinary club of travelers and adventurers who met at the Drones Club once a month—let alone have even an inkling of Orlando Gardiner’s true nature, but he had always treated Orlando with extra care and a certain glint in the eye, as though he suspected him of being more than he appeared. Orlando in turn had often wondered whether the club’s new owner weren’t a Worldwalker himself, albeit an undiscovered one. If so, he had found the perfect place to hide, right under the Society’s nose. Orlando made a mental note to do some research on this Jeeves fellow when he had some spare time.

The Society members in the Wooster Salon had fallen into civilized but contentious discussion about a proposed new expedition. Orlando knew they would be batting it around for at least half an hour, and probably wouldn’t finish the discussion this month. Expeditions took resources, and those Worldwalkers who were independently wealthy in one simworld could seldom move valuables or tangible resources from one simulation to another. In fact, the only really certain, completely portable capital was knowledge, and that was one of the reasons most Society members valued their membership above anything except their lives. Orlando hated to miss the rest of the meeting, but nothing was going to happen here tonight he couldn’t pick up later, in the bar.

Jeeves led him to the doorway of the lounge before sliding away down the corridor, silent as a cat burglar. Orlando stepped into the snug room and almost knocked over a young woman dressed in a pale frock who was warming herself before the coal fire. It was only as he put out a hand to steady himself that he realized he was still carrying his Coca-Cola.

“Sorry,” he said and balanced the glass on the narrow mantel. “My name is Roland. I’m told you were looking for me.”

She was pretty, as Jeeves had suggested, in a wide-eyed, consumptive sort of way, the darkness of her curly hair and the blush on her cheek only emphasizing the almost translucent pallor of her skin. She returned his stare a little wildly, as though at any moment he might lunge at her—or, worse, laugh at her. “Perhaps I am mistaken,” she said. “I was told . . . I understood the person I was seeking could be found here. The name Roland was given to me. I’m looking for Orlando Gardiner.” She peered at him as though she might be nearsighted, or as though she were looking for a resemblance in a newly-met, very distant relative, then her face fell. “But you are not him. I have never seen you before.”

He was astonished to hear his real name spoken aloud by a sim, and almost equally surprised to be told he was not himself, but hearing her voice confirmed what he had guessed when he had first seen her. This young woman was another Avialle Jongleur shadow, either one of the original copies of Felix Jongleur’s dead daughter or a variant coined from those copies in the last days of the operating system. The original Avialle had been obsessively in love with the Englishman Paul Jonas, and most of the copies, certainly all those that had been made from the living Avialle after she met Jonas, had continued this infatuation. They had popped up in numerous guises during Jonas’ amnesiac wanderings through the Otherland network, sometimes encouraging him, sometimes actively aiding him, other times brokenly pleading for his love or understanding.

But none of them had ever had much or anything to do with Orlando, and he had no idea why one should be seeking him now, especially under his real name.

“You say you haven’t seen me before.” He gestured for her to sit down—she seemed prepared to bolt like a rabbit at the slightest noise, and he was curious now. “I have to admit, I don’t recognize you either. I do know someone named Orlando Gardiner, however, and I might be able to get a message to him. Can you tell me something of your problem?” The surroundings were beginning to get to him, he realized: he was starting to sound like one of this Wodehouse simworld’s native characters.

“Oh. You . . . you know him?” She looked a little more hopeful, but it was a miserable sort of hope, as though she had been told that instead of torture she would be given a mercifully swift death. “Where can I find him?”

“You can give me a message. I promise he’ll hear it.”

She brought a hand to her mouth, hesitating. She was very pale, shaking a little, but Orlando could see now that there was a determination behind the doe-eyes that belied her outward appearance. She’s taken some risk to come here, he thought. She must want to get this message to me very badly. “Very well,” she said at last. “My shame could not be any greater. I will trust to your discretion, Mr. Roland. I will trust you to behave like a gentleman.

“Please tell Mr. Gardiner that I need to see him as soon as possible. I am in terrible straits. Terrible. If he does not come to me I do not know what I shall do.” Her reserve suddenly fell apart; tears welled in her eyes. “I am desperate, Mr. Roland!”

“But why?” Orlando hunted vainly for a handkerchief, but she had already produced one of her own from her sleeve and was dabbing at her face. “I’m sorry, Miss . . . Mrs. . . . I’m afraid I don’t know your name. Look, I don’t want to make things worse, but I really do have to know why you want to speak with him before I can pass along your message.”

She looked at him, eyes still wet, and seemed to come to a decision. Her lip stopped trembling. “It is not such an unusual story in this wicked world of ours, Mr. Roland. My name is Livia Bard. I am an unmarried woman and I am with child. The child is Mr. Gardiner’s.”

Then, as though they had reached the climax of a particularly good magic trick, the young woman simply vanished into thin air.

####

Find one single woman in only four hundred or so different simworlds, each world with life-size geography, maybe a few million simulated citizens, and no central tracking system? Yeah, problem not. Piece of cake. He couldn’t even amuse himself these days. “Beezle? Any word back on that Amazon place, that Lost World thing with the dinosaurs? What’s it called?”

“Maple White Land, boss. Yeah, we got a confirmed sighting. It seems like another Avialle Jongleur shadow, awright, but she looks different and she’s using a different name—Valda Jackson, something like that. Older, too, if our informant’s right. And she don’t act much like a pregnant lady, either. She leads expeditions into the interior and she drinks like a fish.”

“Fenfen.” He looked around the spacious room, frowning. The river was loudly musical outside and the air smelled of green things, but it wasn’t as soothing as it usually was. He was beginning to find Rivendell less comfortable than it had been, and even though he now permitted Beezle to contact him inside the simulation without having to make an actual appearance, it seemed less and less like the best place for this kind of work. After all, he didn’t want to turn the Last Homely House, the ideal of his childhood, into the permanently busy capitol of Orlando Gardiner Land. Maybe he needed to think about moving his base of operations. “Three months now and this woman might as well have been drezzed right out of the network code for all I can find out about her. Where is she?”

“It’s just a search operation, boss. Like you always say, there ain’t no central registry office. It takes time. But seems to me, time’s one thing you definitely got plenty of.”

“When I want philosophy, I’ll buy a plug-in module. When you get hold of Sam, ask if we can meet somewhere different this time. Her choice.”

“Your wish is my command, O master.”

“It’s really pretty, isn’t it? I always liked Japanese teahouses and stuff.”

Orlando wrinkled his nose. “I think that’s the first time I ever heard you use the word ‘pretty’ except when you’re on something like, ‘That’s a pretty stupid idea, Gardiner.’”

Sam Fredericks frowned a little, but her samurai sim turned it into a scowl that might have graced a Noh mask. “What’s that supposed to mean? That I’m turning all girlie or something?”

“No, no.” He was depressed, now. He had only had a few brief visits with Sam since the whole Livia Bard thing had started, and he had missed her, but they still seemed to be out of rhythm with each other. “I just didn’t expect you to pick a place like this for us to meet.”

“You’re always talking about how much you like it.” She looked out from the teahouse. Beyond the open panels of the wall and beyond the tiny, orderly garden of rocks and sand and small trees, the wooden roofs of the city stretched away on all sides. On the far side of the Nihon-Bashi, the stately wooden arch across the Sumida, Edo Castle loomed proudly.

“Well, I like the war part, although that’s mostly over for this cycle—the shogun has pretty much settled in for good. The armor is ho dzang, too.”

“Ho dzang! I haven’t heard anyone say that for a long time.” She saw the look on his face and went on with nervous haste, “Yeah, that armor is great, especially those helmets with the sticking-up things—makes your elves almost look dull. I’m not crazy about the music, though. I always thought it sounded like unhappy cats.”

Orlando clapped his hands and sent away the geisha who had been quietly playing Jiuta on her shamisen. The only singing now was the hoarse chant of a water-seller that drifted up from the street below. “Better?”

“I guess.” She looked at him carefully. “Sorry I’ve been so hard to get hold of. How’s your noble quest?”

“Noble quest? Like the kind we used to have back in the Middle Country?” He fought off a moment of panic—did she think he hadn’t changed at all? “You mean about the pregnant woman.”

“Yes.” She made herself smile. “And it is a noble quest, Orlando, because you’re a noble quest kind of guy.”

“Except that apparently I impregnated this poor girl and then deserted her. Not really the kind of thing people usually call noble.”

Sam frowned, but this time because she was irritated with his flippancy. “But you didn’t do it. Just because there’s some evil clone version of you running around . . .”

“Maybe, but I don’t think so. There’s never been any other sign of another version of me, not even a hint. Believe me, I’ve had Beezle combing every record since we started up the network again. I’d know.”

“I thought there wasn’t any main archive or whatever.”

“There isn’t, but there’s the informal one that Kunohara started when he and Sellars got the system running again, and most of the individual worlds have their own records that are part of the simulation. For instance, the Wodehouse place where I met this woman started out pretty much like the real early 20th Century London, so there are birth records and death records and telephone directories and everything. The data is a bit hinky sometimes because it’s sort of a comedy world, but there certainly wasn’t any mention of a Livia Bard in any of those.”

“So you she must come from somewhere else, right? She’s one of those travelers, the ones that can cross from one world to another. I can’t remember—were all the Jongleur girl’s shadows like that?”

He shook his head, felt the topknot bob. “I don’t know. They’ve always been the weirdest of all the shadows because the operating system hacked them around so much.” He sat back, toying with his bowl of tea. It was easy to believe his mystery woman could think she was pregnant—many of the Avialle-shadows thought they were pregnant, because the original had been, at least for a little while. Orlando had gone back and forth through Sellars’ history and Kunohara’s margin notes trying to make sense of it, even though he’d heard some of the story from Paul Jonas’ own mouth—it was a bizarre bit of this simiverse’s history and hard to figure out.

“Orlando?”

“Sorry, Sam. I was thinking about something.”

“I just wanted to ask you . . . are you absolutely sure that . . . that you didn’t do it?”

“Do what . . . ? Fenfen, Fredericks, you mean get her pregnant?” He felt his cheeks reddening in a most un-samurai manner.

Sam looked worried. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

He shook his head, although he definitely was embarrassed. He had been a fourteen-year-old invalid when he died, a boy denied a normal childhood or adolescence. Gifted with a life after death, with health and vigor beyond anything he had ever known, not to mention an almost complete lack of adult supervision, he had of course experimented. At first the knowledge that his partners were in some ways no more real than what you could rent on the crudest kind of interactive pornodes hadn’t bothered him, any more than the literal two-dimensionality of women in girlie magazines disturbed earlier generations, but the novelty had warn off fast, leaving him lonely and more than a little disgusted with the whole situation. Also, because he was uncomfortable with their origins, he had made a personal rule never to get involved with any of the Worldwalker Society’s female members, so he found himself more or less unable to date anyone with actual free will.

Of course, love and sex weren’t things he’d ever been very comfortable talking to Sam Fredericks about, anyway. “Let’s just put it this way,” he said at last. “If I had been in a situation where it could have happened, I’d remember. But, Sam, that doesn’t even matter. This isn’t a real person and it’s not a real pregnancy—she’s a construct!”

“Didn’t all those What’s-her-name Jongleur girls have a pregnancy thing, anyway? They all thought they were, or some of them did, or something?”

“Avialle Jongleur. Yes, and like I said, they aren’t real pregnancies. But that’s not the point. The question is, why does this one know my real name and why does she think it’s my baby?”

Sam slowly nodded. “Yeah, that all barks pretty drastically. So what are you going to do?”

“I wish I knew. I’ve been looking for months, but she’s just vanished. Beezle wants me to authorize a bunch of mini-Beezles so we can search the system more effectively—not just for this one woman, but any time we need to. It’s not a bad idea, really, but I’m not sure I want to be the Napoleon of an army of bugs.”

Sam Fredericks set down her tea and sat back. “You seem . . . I don’t know, a little more cheerful than the last couple of times I saw you.”

He shrugged. “I keep busy. I thought you were the one who was depressed.”

“Scanmaster. I was probably locked off with you for some reason.”

Orlando smiled. “Probably.”

Sam stirred. “I brought you something. Can you import it into the network? It’s on the top level of my system, labeled ‘Orlando.’”

“You brought me something?”

“You don’t think I’d forget your birthday, do you?”

He had half-forgotten, himself. “Actually, it’s tomorrow.” It was strange how little something like a birthday meant when you didn’t go to school and you had hardly any friends—any normal friends, that is.

“I know that, but I won’t see you tomorrow, will I?”

“Seventeen years old. I’m an old man, now.” It wasn’t funny, really—progeria, the disease that had ruined and eventually ended his previous life, was a condition that turned children into doddering ancients and then killed them, mostly before they had even reached their teenage years.

“Old man—hah! You’re younger than me, so six that noise.” A small, gift-wrapped package appeared on the low table. “Good, you found it. Open it.”

He took off the lid and looked at the thing nestled on virtual cotton in the virtual box. “It’s really nice, Sam.”

“Happy birthday, Gardino. Don’t just stare at it—it’s a friendship bracelet, you idiot. You have to read what it says.”

He turned the simple silver bracelet. The inscription said, To Orlando from Sam. Friends Forever. For a moment he didn’t trust his voice. “Thanks.”

“I know there are places you go where you can’t wear it, but I spent a lot of time thinking, like, what can you get someone who can have anything in the whole world—rocket cars, a live pet dinosaur, you name it? All I’ve got to give you that you can’t get in one of these worlds is me. We’re utterly friends, Gardiner, and you remember that. Utterly. No matter what. As long as we both live.”

Orlando was very grateful that this sim was too bushi to cry—the blushing had been bad enough. “Yeah,” he said. “No matter what.” He took a deep breath. “Hey, you want to go for a walk before you have to leave? I’ll show you a little of the Tokaido—that’s kind of the main road. It’s the best place to sightsee. If we’re lucky, a few of the daimyos will still be coming into town. They’re the nobles, and they have to make a pilgrimage here twice a year. Some of them come in with thousands of retainers and soldiers, horses and flags and concubines and all that fen, a big parade. It’s like Samurai Disneyland.”

“You really know this place!”

“I keep busy.”

“You left tonight open, didn’t you?” Beezle asked as Orlando re-animated his Rivendell sim. “Your parents have got plans.”

“Oh, jeez, right, my birthday dinner. That means they’ll want me to wear that tchi seen robot body. Conrad’s probably hooked it up with an air-hose so I can blow out the candles on my cake.” He resented tromping around in that thing so much that he had been avoiding seeing his parents because of it. Still, in just three visits he’d broken a table-leg and several vases, and pulled a door off its hinges by accident. The thing had very delicate hand-responses, but the rest of it was meant for slogging around in mine shafts or in the holds of sunken ships and was about as graceful as an elephant on roller skates. Orlando didn’t want to hurt their feelings, and Conrad was so proud of his idea, but he just hated it.

It’s not as if I didn’t have enough to deal with. Just at the moment, two Society members were stuck in the House simulation in the middle of an armed uprising and unable to escape, there was a programming glitch or something like it causing mutations in the plant life of Bronte World so that Haworth Parsonage was under siege by carnivorous cacti, and he still had no idea of where Livia Bard might be, let alone any explanation for her weird accusation. Yeah, I keep busy.

“Any decision yet on letting me whip up some sub-agents, boss?”

“I’m still thinking about it.”

“Well, don’t hurt yourself—I hear that thinking stuff ain’t for beginners. You ready to go to your folks? ’Cause you got an urgent message from that Elrond guy you gotta deal with first. He needs you downstairs right now.”

“Jeez, it never stops. Make the connection to that locking toy robot at my parents’, will you? After I finish downstairs I’ll duck into a closet or something and go directly.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t want to screw up the continuity.” It sounded suspiciously like sarcasm. “Don’t worry, boss. I’m on it. Just go see Elrond.”

He was halfway down the delicate wooden staircase between the small house that he called his home and the central buildings when the thought occurred to him, Why the hell would Beezle be passing messages for Elrond? Rivendell doesn’t work that way.

All questions were answered when he walked into the main hall and discovered his mother, father, and several score elves, dwarves, and assorted other Middle-Earthers waiting for him.
“Surprise!” most of them shouted. “Happy Birthday!”

Orlando stopped just inside the doorway, dumbfounded. The hall was strung with cloth-of-gold bunting. Candles burned everywhere, and huge trestle tables stood against the walls, covered with food and drink. His mother came up and threw her arms around him, kissed him, and hugged him. When she leaned back she looked at him worriedly, but she was also flushed with excitement. “Is this okay? You said your network can deal with incongruities. This won’t spoil anything, will it?”

“It’s fine, Vivien. I’m just . . . well, surprised.”

She was wearing elven costume, a long dress in shades of butter yellow and pale beige, and had piled her hair up on top of her head where it was held by diamond pins. “Do I look funny?” she asked. “That nice Arwen girl gave me these hair things. I think that’s her name—I don’t remember her from when I read the books, but it was a long time ago.”

“That nice Arwen girl?” Orlando couldn’t help smiling. “Yeah, you look great.”

Conrad came up with a goblet in one hand. “Those dwarves like to drink, don’t they? What do you think? Did we surprise you?”

Orlando could only nod, appalled and touched. The party already seemed in high gear. Someone put a cup of ale in his hands. Elrond came up and bowed to Orlando’s parents. “Regards to you on this festive day, Tharagorn,” the elf said. “You are always an ornament to our house.”

To Orlando’s horror, Vivien actually began to flirt with Elrond, but the master of the house accepted it with good humor. Even more fortunately, Conrad had already wandered off to look more closely at the ceiling joists—he was a hobbyist carpenter—so at least Orlando didn’t have to worry about his father picking a jealous fight with an elven lord.

Arwen Undomiel, Elrond’s daughter—the one his mother had referred to as a “nice girl”—was standing with her love, Aragorn, who was dressed in a tattered cloak and seemed to have come straight in off the road. The man whose name Orlando had more or less borrowed for his incarnation in this world left his betrothed’s side long enough to come and clasp Orlando’s hand. “Good wishes, cousin. We have not met in many a long year. I did not know anyone outside the halfling lands celebrated the day of their birth in this manner.”

“Blame my parents.”

“There is no blame. They are noble folk.” Aragorn embraced him, then returned to Arwen’s side, where her brothers Elladan and Elrohir now also stood, as travel-worn as Aragorn, as though they had all rode fast and far to be here. The elven princess raised her glass toward Orlando in a silent salute. He would have been flattered if he hadn’t known it was all make-believe, just programming.

“I don’t even want to know how you arranged this, Vivien,” he said to his mother.

“Beezle helped.” She pointed to a small, disreputable, and extremely hairy-footed figure on the far side of the room, who was busy out-drinking three dwarves from Dale. “He’s almost human, isn’t he?”

“Who isn’t?” He hugged her again. “Thanks. I really didn’t expect it.”

Vivien was asking Elrond something domestic—he thought he heard her use the phrase “finding kitchen help”—when Orlando’s attention was suddenly drawn to a pale shape moving through the throng at the center of the hall. For a moment he could only stare, wondering which Tolkien character this was, why she looked so familiar.

“Oh my God,” he said. “It’s her!”

He was across the room before Vivien finished asking him where he was going. He caught the woman in white as she stepped into the Hall of Fire. The unsteady light of the flames made her seem a phantom, but if it was not Livia Bard herself who stood before him, it was her exact duplicate.

She looked up at his approach, startled and even a little frightened. “What do you want?”

He realized the look on his face might very well be something that would frighten anyone. After months of searching, to have her simply walk past him . . . ! “Miss Bard. Livia. I’ve been looking for you.”

She turned to face him and he had a second shock. Beneath the flowing white gown, she was very obviously several months pregnant. “Who are you?” She stared, then blinked. “Can it be? Are you truly him . . . ?”

And then she disappeared again.

“Beezle!” he bellowed. “That was her! Right here, then she disappeared! Where did she go?”

“Couldn’t tell you, boss. Hang on, let me just roll Snori here off me, or whatever his name is, and I’ll be right with you.”

By the time his parents and his faithful software agent reached him, Orlando was down on his knees on the floor of the Hall of Fire, pounding on the boards in frustration. Conrad and Vivien suggested calling off the feast, but Orlando knew it was for them as much as himself, so he let himself be led back to the party. Still, despite all the diversions and distractions offered by Rivendell in holiday mode, he hardly noticed what was going on around him. As soon as he could decently manage it he made his excuses and headed for bed, pausing on his way up to his rooms to have a word with Beezle.

“Okay, you have my permission—I’ve run out of ideas. Put together your little army of sub-agents. But do me a favor and don’t make them bugs, huh? I’m going to have to visit Kunohara, and I’ll get enough of the things there to last me for years.”

“Will do, boss.”

Orlando went to bed. Bongo Fluffernutter stayed up late drinking with the dwarves from Dale. He showed them how it was possible to belch several whole stanzas of The Lay of Queen Beruthiel, and also that there was a point at which even dwarves should stop drinking.

Elves don’t complain, but Elrond’s folk had a terrible mess to deal with the next morning.

“Mr. Gardiner, it is always a pleasure to see you, but I hope you will be understanding.” Kunohara gestured for him to sit on one of the chairs that looked out from the balcony across the expanse of forest-high grass and the undergrowth that loomed beyond it like a frozen tsunami wave. He was a small, trim man in a modern-style kimono who appeared to be in early middle-age, or at least his sim always looked that way, his black hair and beard both gray-flecked. “My time is very limited these days. A nephew of mine—barely out of adolescence, or so it seems—is leading a hostile takeover against me. They claim too much of the family company’s money has been spent on what they call ‘the amusements of the chairman.’ Who would be me, and this simulation would be one of the amusements, except they do not know it still exists.” He glowered. “A company built with my patents, and they think to take it away from me. I will crush them, of course, but it is sad for the family and irritating for me. It wastes a great deal of my resources.”

Orlando nodded. “I appreciate you making time for me.” He had never quite warmed to Hideki Kunohara, not having known him as well as some of his other companions had; there were ways in which Kunohara never made himself really available, even when he was sitting right in front of you, chatting in a seemingly amiable, open way. Orlando had always wondered what the man was really thinking, and because of that had never entirely trusted him, but with Sellars gone, Kunohara understood the system’s underlying logic better than anyone alive.

If there is such a thing as logic involved, Orlando thought sourly.

“I’ve reviewed your messages,” Kunohara said, then stopped suddenly to watch a striking black and orange butterfly the size of a small plane flit down into their field of view, almost touch the ground, then lift away again, wings flashing in the sunshine. “A heleconid,” he announced. “Numata, it looks like. Nice to see them so near the station.”

Hideki Kunohara’s house was a recycled building far too large to make a satisfactory dwelling for anything less substantial than a king’s household, or at least it would have been in the real world, where people were limited by various petty annoyances like the laws of physics, but size was not such an issue in a private node where travel could be instantaneous. The house had formerly been a scientific station that Kunohara had leased to governments and the biology departments of universities because all visitors to Kunohara’s world found themselves smaller than most of the insects and other invertebrate fauna. It was a fascinating if occasionally terrifying perspective: The research station had been destroyed by soldier ants and all the human sims in it killed during the upheavals of the network. Kunohara’s own house had also been ruined. The balcony on which he and Orlando sat now had originally been one of the raised viewing stations which ran the length of the southern face of the complex’s main building; as they talked, Orlando could watch all kinds of monstrous animals feeding and being fed upon in the field sloping away below them, including birds the size of passenger jets tugging worms that seemed long as subway trains out of the damp morning ground.

“Anyway, I’ve read your messages and I don’t really have much to say, Mr. Gardiner. Have you considered the possibility she’s someone from outside the network? A real person who discovered your name somewhere, or even someone who knows you and is playing a trick?”

“That would be worse than the mystery we have,” said Orlando. “Because unless it was one of my friends, and I can’t quite picture any of them thinking this was funny, it would mean that our security is compromised. This network is supposed to be a secret.”

“We have a few people on the outside who actively help us maintain it as a distributed network.”

“Yeah, but even those people don’t know about me.”

Kunohara nodded. “The possibility of this being the work of some outsider does not seem likely, I grant you.”

“I think there must be a shadow-Orlando, although I’ve never seen one or heard even a hint of one before now.”

“That raises questions, too, Mr. Gardiner. It is possible that a duplicate of you might exist, and also possible that it could have escaped our notice for almost three years—it is a big network after all. It is even possible that this duplicate uses your real name, still without attracting our attention. But there still remains one question that would have to be answered before we could accept this hypothesis as a valid theory.”

“I know.” Orlando squinted at a pair of what looked like flies chasing each other across the tops of the tree-tall grass, iridescent objects the size of taxis performing a midair pas de deux with their glassy wings sparking light. He wasn’t nuts about bugs in the first place, let alone bugs that were a lot bigger than he was, but there were moments like this when he could almost understand Kunohara’s world, if not Kunohara himself. “The problem with the shadow-Orlando theory is how Livia Bard knew I had something to do with Orlando Gardiner when she found me in the Wodehouse world—and how she found me again in the Tolkien world. How could she track me like that?”

“The copies derived from Felix Jongleur’s daughter really are remarkable, as you know,” said Kunohara. “Some of the Avialle-shadows seem able to move at will from one simulation to another. Others can travel between simulations, but only in the workaday manner that your Worldwalkers employ, using the gateways. And some of the Avialles do not seem to move out of their home simulations at all, although those versions usually end up holding some powerful or unusual position in their worlds.”

“Yeah, like the one we met in the freezer in the cartoon Kitchen world. I guess the original Avialle—the real person—was utterly important to the old operating system, so maybe all her shadows are still kind of important to the system.” Something tugged at him, an idea that would not quite form. “But why? I mean, we’ve got a whole different operating system now, right?”

“In part, but it’s far more complicated than that.” Kunohara clicked his tongue against his teeth. “As you no doubt remember, all the remnants of the old operating system—that poor tortured creature known as the Other—could not be removed from the network. That is one of the reasons we suspected that some of its attempts to create a kind of life, as it did once already with raw materials from Sellars’s own experimentation, might have permeated the entire network—the ‘simiverse’ as Sellars named it—and changed it into another order of thing entirely. A sort of living, evolving entity.”

“But it didn’t turn out to be that way. That’s what you’re always saying.”

“It’s true, there’s been no evidence of it. We’ve seen no other information creatures like the ones it grew before, which are now gone. Neither has there been any sign of the evolutionary process beginning again in some other manner—not a one. You can trust me on that, Mr. Gardiner—the permutations of life, and now of pseudo-life, are my passion, and I have looked long and hard for any evidence of it on the current network. It is a fantastically complex creation, but essentially it has become what any other network is—an unliving artifact. I’m afraid that with the death of the Other and the escape of all its information-creatures into space, the network is now effectively dead.”

Orlando had more or less known this—after all, the flatness of things, the lack of real change, had been troubling him for months—but being told it in such a categorical manner by Kunohara was a bit like being punched in the stomach. “But the sims themselves reproduce within their simworlds. They have babies. The animals have little animals. Look at your bugs here—they lay eggs, don’t they? Make little giant baby bugs?”

“Yes, but only within the matrix of the simulations. It is part of the program for the sims to appear to reproduce, but it is not true life, any more than it would be if you wrote a story in which someone gave birth. New life in this system is a construct. Look at your Avialle-shadows—some of them have perpetual pregnancies, as is probably the case with the one you are seeking. But that is not a real pregnancy, it is a programmed trait, like the color of a sim’s hair or how fast it can run.”

“But the last time I saw her, she looked really pregnant! None of the Avialle-shadows ever get to the point of showing their pregnancy. I read that in your own notes.”

Kunohara shook his head. “Mr. Gardiner, you are a smart young man and a very fine conservator of the network worlds and I’m sure that wherever he now is, Patrick Sellars is proud that he chose you, but you are not a scientist—not yet, anyway. Do you know for certain that she really did have the belly of a woman several months pregnant, or are you basing this entirely on what you think you saw from a distance of several meters for a period of just a few seconds? The simulated people can be nearly as psychologically complex as real people. Perhaps she feels herself to be with child but her belly does not grow—it never will grow, but she does not know this—so she pads herself with a pillow or some similar object, out of anxiety, perhaps. No, Mr. Gardiner, my friend, when you or I can examine her and see that she truly does have an advancing pregnancy, then we can begin to wonder about how she differs from the other Avialle Jongleur shadows. Until that time, I urge you not to jump to conclusions.”

Orlando didn’t particularly like being lectured. “So you’re saying that this whole weird mess is just another hysterical Avialle-clone who’s stumbled on my name somehow—nothing more, nothing less.”

“I am saying nothing about what it is, Mr. Gardiner, because I do not have enough information.” Kunohara steepled his fingers and slowly shook his head. “I am sharing what I suspect, and also what I strongly doubt. People spent trillions of credits on this network to make things appear as real as possible, but please do not confuse appearance with reality, and especially do not mistake the appearance of reproduction and other symptoms of life, however sophisticated, with real reproduction and actual life. Life is a very stubborn phenomenon that uses an astonishing number of strategies to perpetuate itself. What this network does is mimic those processes for the benefit of its human users, to create a realistic environment—an experience not tremendously different from an amusement park ride. But the gap between the simulated thing and the actual process it imitates is vast indeed. Now, forgive me, but I have kept my lawyers waiting for half an hour.”

Orlando thanked him, but Kunohara was already making his call and only nodded. Orlando left him talking to himself, or so it appeared, as he gazed out across his supersized domain. Flowers tall as redwoods creaked and swayed in the freshening breeze.

Beezle Bug was waiting for Orlando back in his bedroom at Rivendell. Out of the elven public eye and with the rules now relaxed, the agent wasn’t even bothering to masquerade as a hobbit, but was back in his usual form, something that could have been a black dustmop with eyes, a cartoon spider, or even a particularly disturbing Rorschach ink blot. Today Beezle had enhanced these natural good looks with a floppy, horizontally-striped top hat. He grinned toothily and did a little hairy-legged dance as Orlando came in.

“You’re in a good mood.”

“You don’t sound like you are, boss. Any luck with Kunohara?”

“Nothing that cleared anything up. I think he thinks I’m overreacting.”

“Well, I know what will cheer you up. You can meet my crew.”

“Your what? Oh, the sub-agents. Look, Beezle, I don’t think I’m up to having a bunch of bugs crawl all over me . . .”

“No bugs—you already told me.” The agent swept off his new hat and a horde of small shapes began to jump out of it. Within seconds they were filling the floor all around him. “I kind of swiped the idea from the Dr. Seuss world. Meet Little Cats A1 through A99, B1 through B99, C1 through C99 . . .”

“I get the drift.” Already Orlando was ankle deep in a lagoon of tiny, hatted cats. “I don’t need to meet all, what, 2600 of them. I suppose I should count my blessings you didn’t steal your idea out of Hop On Pop.” He squinted at the little cats, which were now clambering up the bedclothes and trampolining across his pillow. “How the hell are these things going to get the kind of information we need discreetly? They’re not exactly inconspicuous, are they?”

“Boss, boss.” If Beezle had a neck, he would have been shaking his head. Instead, he was doing a sort of hairy hula. “They’re my subagents. You don’t think I go out looking for information looking like this, do you? Looking like anything, for that matter? I’m gear—good gear. I just interface with the stuff directly at machine level, and so will they. I just thought the reports would be more fun this way.”

“Great.” Beezle was the second person in an hour—second thing, anyway—to tell him that he was making the mistake of judging matters by face value. The network was seductive that way—so much time and money spent to make the worlds seem like real places. Reminded, he looked at his virtual wrist (his Tharagorn wrist since he was in Rivendell) at the virtual friendship bracelet he now wore on it. It seemed like a real bracelet, but it wasn’t; it hadn’t ever been real, but it meant as much as or more than any actual pieces of shaped metal, because the friendship it represented was real.

Chizz, hold on . . . he thought. There was the core of an idea there, something that he needed to think about, but he was distracted as the living cat-carpet abruptly swirled up into a spinning cloud of miniature felines, then vanished back into Beezle’s hat with a loud pop. “Hey, boss, I forgot to tell you. They need you back in that P. G. Wodehouse simulation—someone left a note in your box at the club.”

“But the next meeting’s not for weeks.”

“Emergency get-together of the steering committee, and you’re in the rotation.”

“I don’t have time. Send an excuse for me.”

“Actually, you might want to go. They’re trying to get rid of whatsisname, de Limoux, the chairman.”

“What for?”

“Seems a couple of the women members are going to have babies and they say ol’ Sir Reggie’s the daddy.”

“I had nothing to do with it!” Sir Reginald was almost white with anger. “With either of them! I scarcely even know Edwina Hayes, and I despise that Macapan woman. Everyone knows that.”

Orlando himself only barely recognized the first name: Mrs. Hayes was a quiet, colorless woman who seemed to owe her sim existence to some early equipment tests by one of the Grail Project’s female engineers. The second was a shadow of Ymona Dedoblanco, a gorgon who had been the only woman in the Grail Brotherhood’s inner circle. The real woman could fairly be termed a monster, but Maisie Macapan merely seemed to incorporate some of her less murderous, albeit still irritating, faults, namely self-absorption almost to the point of megalomania. Like her template, she also had a full measure of ambition, which was why she and the Jongleur-shadow, Sir Reginald, often found themselves at cross-purposes.

“Why aren’t the two women here?” Orlando asked. “Shouldn’t de Limoux have a chance to confront his accusers?”

“Bless you, Roland, you are an honorable man,” said Sir Reginald. “Yes, where are they? Why this star-chamber inquisition, based on accusations that are ridiculous on their face? Everyone knows I am a happily married man, with a wife and family in Third Republic Paris.”

“Happily married men may stray,” suggested a mustached traveler named Renzi whom Orlando suspected of being the shadow of another of the network’s early engineers, or possibly even a much-degraded version of his friend Paul Jonas.

“But not with the Macapan!” De Limoux seemed more offended by that idea than by the accusation itself. “I would sooner throw myself into a cage with a hungry lioness.”

“The women are both unwell, Mr. Roland,” Renzi explained to Orlando, “and their stories, it must be admitted, are a bit confusing. But they both swear that their charges are accurate, and although Miss Macapan is known to bear Sir Reginald some ill feeling, Mrs. Hayes does not seem like the type to invent such a thing.”

“Unless the Macapan bitch bribed her,” snarled de Limoux. “She would do anything to steal the chairmanship away.”

“If she could bribe one, she could bribe two,” Orlando said. “If she’s only trying to ruin your reputation, Sir Reginald, it seems strange she should make herself one of the victims, since everyone knows she has a grudge or two against you.”

“Surely you are not suggesting you believe this twaddle, Mr. Roland?”

“I’m not saying I believe or disbelieve anything, Sir Reginald. I don’t have enough information. I’m just thinking out loud.”

After that he let the others talk while the idea began to form. Even in its earliest shape, it was a very strange one.

Orlando had the travel records of the Worldwalkers Society members in hard copy form—leather-bound books handwritten in ink, in keeping with the simulation—spread all over the wooden table that served as his desk in Rivendell. A year earlier, Orlando himself had covertly lobbied for and helped to push through the particular Society rule that mandated all members keep diaries of their travels and make them available in the Society library inside the Drones Club, and just now he was glad that he’d done it.

Orlando had noticed something very interesting about de Limoux and his two accusers and had constructed a small chart to try to make sense out of their comings and goings. He had just confirmed his suspicion and was staring at the chart, chewing the end of his pencil in something like astonishment, when he heard his agent speaking in his ear.

“Boss?”

“Let me guess, Beezle. You’ve got some news for me. There’s another pregnancy at the Society and another denial of responsibility.”

After a moment’s pause, the agent said: “Hey, that’s pretty good, boss. How did you know about the Society thing?”

“I’m just starting to get a few ideas.”

“Do you want to know who’s involved?”

“If the ideas I’m starting to get are right, it doesn’t really matter. Let me go back to what I’m doing, Beezle. I’ll let you know when I need you, and I’ll probably need you soon.”

“Boss?”

“Beezle, I’m really trying to concentrate here. Thanks for bringing me the information, now get lost, okay?”

“It’s important, boss.”

Orlando sighed. “What is it?”

“Well, it’s about Little Cats N42 and N45—two of my sub-agents, remember? I think you might want to see about getting them a little treat—a year’s supply of fish heads or something.”

“Fish heads . . . ? Beezle, you are making me crazy. What the hell are you talking about?”

“Just as a reward, maybe. Because they found your girlfriend.”

“They . . .” He sat up. “Are you sure?”

“Avialle-shadow, dark, curly hair, visibly pregnant. Yeah, pretty much.”

“Fish heads for everyone. No, give ’em the whole fish! Where?”

“Living in an apartment in Old Chicago, of all places. We don’t think she’s been there long. I’ve sent you the address, but it’s easy to find. It’s over a club on 37th Street at Giles.”

“I’m there.”

And he was, a subvocalized command taking him to the heart of the simworld more swiftly and certainly than any magic carpet. Sometimes it was okay being a sort of god.

37th Street was loud and lively. There were no Al-Capone-type gangsters in sight, which was what Orlando usually associated with Old Chicago, but the sidewalks were crowded with quite a lot of ordinary people of a wide array of skin-colors. Everybody seemed to be dressed up to go somewhere important, all the men in ties and the women in dresses. The apartment was above a club called Toothy’s Free-For-All, which had a buzzing neon mouth grinning above the door. A half-dozen black men in handsome, big-shouldered suits stood underneath the overhang, smoking and talking and looking up at the overcast sky, and coincidentally blocking the apartment building’s stairway next to the club’s front door. Orlando wondered if the men might be gangsters. He wasn’t even sure if they had African-American gangsters back in those days, but he didn’t want to waste time on trouble. Unfortunately, he was wearing his only prepared sim for the Chicago world, which was inarguably Caucasian and, although reasonably tall and strong, meant more to be inconspicuous than to scare people into leaving him alone. But the men in front of the doorway seemed much more interested in the cigarette they were sharing, and hardly looked at him as he angled through and started up the narrow staircase.

“Looks like Missy got a gentleman caller,” one said to Orlando’s retreating back.

“He ain’t the first caller for that little girl,” said another and the men laughed quietly.

The corridor smelled faintly of mildew, and the hall carpets were so dark with years of dirt that Orlando couldn’t make out the pattern, although he was pretty sure there was one. He knocked on the door with the number on it that Beezle had given him.

She opened it on the chain. Her eyes widened. She let him in, but almost as if she were sleepwalking: she was clearly frightened and confused. She wore a quilted, pale blue housecoat and her hair was unbound, spilling over her shoulders.

“Who are you?” she asked.

If she was confused, he was even more so. “Who are you?” But he knew who she was, she was an Avialle Jongleur shadow—the dark curly hair, the big eyes, and especially the voice had removed all doubt. And, as Beezle had noticed, she was quite visibly pregnant. The problem was, she wasn’t his Avialle Jongleur shadow, and the differences weren’t subtle. Other than a similarity in the hair and eyes, this was a completely different woman.

“My . . . my name is Violet Jergens.” She seemed on the verge of tears. “What do you want? You look familiar.”

He had no other ideas, so he went for broke. “I’m Orlando Gardiner.”

For a moment her face almost seemed to light up, a child’s Christmas-morning face of wonder and joy, then her smile faltered and was replaced by bafflement and anxiety once more. “I’ve . . . I’ve dreamed of the day Orlando would come back to me, when we would be a family. But I’ve never seen you before.” She backed away, raising her hands. “Please, whoever you are, don’t hurt me.”

Orlando shook his head. He had been working on a theory that seemed very promising, but now he was confused again. “I’m sorry. I mean you no harm.” Perhaps his original idea could still make sense. He decided to ask her the same question he would have put to Livia Bard. “Just tell me one thing. What does Orlando Gardiner look like?”

The question seemed to anger her, but after a moment her face changed. “I . . . it has been such a hard time for me, lately. It is all . . . I would . . . ”

“You don’t remember, do you?”

She was crying now. “I haven’t been well.”

He saw a chance to add another piece of information. “You’re going to have to trust me now. May I . . . may I feel your stomach?”

“What?”

“I swear I won’t harm you or the baby, Miss Jergens. Please. I promise I’ll be gentle.”

She didn’t assent, but she did not back away as he moved closer. He slowly extended his hand and put it on the curve of her belly where it made her housecoat swell like a wind-filled sail. The bump was firm and, as far as he could tell, warmly alive.

He was not at all surprised this time when Violet Jergens abruptly disappeared from her own apartment like a soap bubble popping. He did not bother looking for her on 37th Street or anywhere else. He didn’t need to find her, he was beginning to feel certain, because the chances were he’d be seeing her again, and others just like her.

Kunohara, he thought, you owe me an apology.

“I don’t get it,” Sam said. “So now another of those Avialles thinks you’re the father of her child?” She was talking to him on the phone because she was in the middle of finals and couldn’t leave her studying very long. It was kind of nice, Orlando decided, just talking face to face from different places. It was a bit like being back in the real world, except Sam Fredericks was in West Virginia and he, at the moment, was in Atlantis, or rather hovering above its watery grave, tidying up a wave-motion problem before the city rose out of the ocean and started its cycle again. “What’s going on?”

“I went back to see Kunohara. We think we’ve finally got the whole thing figured out.” He couldn’t help adding: “I figured it out myself, mostly, but he agrees, and he came up with the one part I couldn’t wrap my head around. It was the Worldwalkers Society pregnancies that tipped me off—there’s about a half-dozen of them now, by the way. I haven’t figured out yet how to straighten out that part of the mess. They’re all utterly scanned about it, accusations, denials, meetings falling apart and people threatening legal action. And the thing is, just like with me and the Avialle shadows, everybody’s right.”

“Hang on.” Sam put her book down. “I’ve been in, like, a death-struggle with colligative properties all day for my chemistry final, but this is worse. What do you mean, everybody’s right? You said you never saw her before, let alone played bumper cars with her.”

Orlando shook his head. “I hadn’t and I didn’t. Or with the other one, and there’ll almost certainly be more. And the Society chairman de Limoux didn’t suddenly get sweet on his arch-enemy Maisie Macapan and give her the gift of motherhood, either—except he did, in a way.”

“That’s it—you’ve gone way far scanbark, Gardiner. You are barking all the way to the moon and back, then taking a little side trip to Bark Island. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Kunohara got me thinking about it first. He was telling me off about mistaking appearance for reality, and he said something like, ‘Never underestimate how many strategies Life will use to perpetuate itself, Mr. Gardiner,’ in that kind of irritating way he has. Well, it irritates me, anyway. And that made me think about how this network has always been so complex. The Other, the original operating system, actually bred life from information viruses and antiviruses. And it made imitation children, based on real children. They may not have been alive, but they weren’t just normal sims, either.”

“Not it, him. The Other was a person, Orlando, despite all the horrible things the Grail people did to him. But he’s gone now.”

“Yeah, but the system was built around his brain, so his original impulses have an effect on everything about the network. And especially—and this is where I started to get my idea—his influence is utterly strong in the shadow-people, all those copies that he made and then released into the system.”

“Like your Society folks, the ones who can travel from world to world through the gateways. And the Avialle-shadows.”

“Who don’t need gateways, although they can use them. In fact, other than me, the Avialle shadows are the only sims who can travel freely throughout the network. That makes them the most advanced of all the copies, really, even if a lot of them are a bit mental. So, me and the Avialle shadows are pretty much the most advanced things in the network. Are you starting to get the picture yet?”

Sam frowned. “Don’t be all Professor Mysterioso. I was up practically all night last night studying Chemistry: The Central Science and I have a drastic headache.”

“Well, I’ve been up several nights in a row studying biology, so who’s zoomin’ now?”

“Just explain.”

“How about if I said that instead of ‘most advanced’, you could also call me and the Avialle-shadows the fittest creatures on the network. As in ‘survival of the fittest?’”

“You mean it’s like an evolution thing?”

“Yeah, in a sense, it’s beginning to look that way. Somehow, even without the original operating system, this network still has a tendency toward . . . well, if not actually being alive, then to lifelike behavior. It wants to reproduce. In fact, now that the original brain of the network is gone, it may be more like a true organism. It’s just trying things and if some of them work, it will continue. See, in some ways the people in the network, at least those like me and the society people who are more or less alive, we really are people. We think, we feel, we make plans. But to the network, we’re more like cells in a single organism—or maybe like individuals, but in a hive culture. The network is the hive, and we’re the drones and workers and all that. That’s the example that Kunohara kept using, anyway. He’s utterly excited about all this, by the way, even though it means he was wrong about the network being dead.”

“He would like it, if it’s got hives in it. But I still don’t get this, Orlando. Are you saying that the system wanted you and the Avialle-shadows to reproduce together? But you’d never seen each other and she’s already pregnant. That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if you remember what Kunohara said, that we shouldn’t confuse appearance and reality, that Life has lots of strategies. Just because we look like humans and the women appear to be pregnant in the ordinary, human way doesn’t really mean it has to be anything like the same process. Think about flowers. They reproduce too, but sometimes the genetic information comes from two plants that are miles apart—they certainly don’t ever see each other. But when humans or us humanoid sims think they’re pregnant, the natural assumption is that it happened the old-fashioned way.” He frowned. “Unlike normal human reproduction, I have to say the network’s model is a little lacking in the motivations department—you know, the we-do-it-because-it’s-fun stuff.”

“Slow down, Sherlock. So the system is just . . . throwing together genetic material from you and other people in the system to make new people? But you don’t have any genetic material.” She suddenly looked horrified. “I’m sorry, Orlando, I didn’t mean . . .”

“Don’t worry, I’ve been thinking about this stuff for days. This game is weird and different and even a dead guy like me can play. See, it’s not genetic material in the normal sense, it’s what Kunohara calls the network’s codification of us—the blueprints used for us virtual copies, which is the closest to genes we’re going to have. It’s just found a way to mix them up.” Sam still looked worried, so he smiled. “As far as throwing the stuff together—yes, more or less, but not so random. A good reproductive system usually has some component of winners-get-to-mate in it. That’s why my material showed up first, and it was paired with an Avialle-shadow—the fittest parents, remember?—and why more than one of the Avialles is pregnant by me. We have the most mobility, and in my case I have the most power—I’m not sure the network really factors that in, though—so my material . . . I’m going to need a new word, ‘material’ just doesn’t do it . . . my information is the most attractive. There’s only one me, but there are more than a few Avialle-shadows, and they’ll tend to select for my information if they can get it.”

“How? Does the network just . . . impregnate them with it?”

“No. This is another weird touch. I began to get a hint of it with the Society members. Two women got pregnant, and the Jongleur-shadow said he didn’t do it. After my own experience, I wondered if he might not be telling the truth. So I went through the travel diaries of the three people involved and found out they almost hadn’t ever been in the same worlds at the same time, let alone shacked up. In fact, they were only near each other during Worldwalkers meetings in the Wodehouse version of London, and the Jongleur-shadow had traveled back to his own home world right afterward, which meant there wasn’t much chance for a regular, old-fashioned simulated conception and pregnancy. But they all had traveled through a lot of the same gateways between the network worlds, de Limoux first—he’s the man—and then the women.”

“Gateways? You mean it was the gateways?”

“We think so, yeah. Like the way bees brush up against pollen and then take it to another flower, or even the way some fish or insects sort of go to the same spot to deposit sperm and eggs, but they don’t have to be there at the same time. The system is making male information—from people like me and de Limoux—reproductively active in some way, and then receptive females can pick it up as they pass through the gateways. In fact, me and Kunohara are going to have to turn down the success rate of the connections or the Society women are going to be pregnant all the time.”

Sam was now waggling her hands in the way she did when she was having problems. “You mean you’re going to let it happen? But . . . but what kind of babies are these women going to have? This is far scanny, Orlando! I mean, if these pregnancies are like fish or insects or something, maybe they’ll have . . . uck! . . . swarms of babies.” For the second time in a few minutes, she looked stricken. “Will they even look like human children?”

“We think so. Even if the methodology is more like a hive or something, the network seems to be using a lot of human-type models for the actual pregnancies—it was programmed to simulate things like that already, remember. They seem to be moving along at the right rate, and the doctors in Wodehouse World who’ve checked the Society women only hear one baby heartbeat per mother. Also, there’s a couple of other clues that kind of suggest they’ll be human babies—or as close to it as the system can manage, considering that they’re not working with real humans as parents, but copies, some of them pretty imperfect. One is that it seems like a lot of trouble to use the human sims within the system as information-donors—parents—if you’re going to change the information a whole bunch afterward. It’s easier just to use the human models of parents and children that are already built in, see? But the other reason is the answer to one of the questions that was bothering me even after I started to figure all this out. I couldn’t get it, but Kunohara did.”

“Go ahead. I’m just trying to swallow all this.” Sam really did look as though she had been thumped on the head. “Dozens of women lining up all over the network to have your babies, Gardiner. You must be living on Aren’t I Special Street.”

“It’d be a lot more flattering if it was happening the old-fashioned way. Anyway, while we were putting this all together, I told Kunohara that two questions were still burning up my brain. One was why the Avialle-shadows knew my name even though we’d never actually met. Kunohara figures that’s another proof we’ll have human-type babies. Higher mammals, especially humans, have long childhoods, and they need lots of parental care. It was in the interest of the network’s reproductive strategy to give both donors a chance of bonding together to raise the children, so the females get implanted with not just the male genetic information, but also the knowledge of who the father is and an ability to locate him, even if they don’t really know how the pregnancy itself happened. That’s how the Society women knew de Limoux was the daddy, and how the Avialle-shadows know they’re carrying my children—I guess I have to call them that, even if I didn’t really have anything to do with it.”

“But that doesn’t make sense, Orlando. I mean it does in a sort of way, but if the network really wants you to be involved with these children like a father, why would the mothers keep disappearing every time you hooked up with them?”

“See? Even after hours of rubbing your poor, sore brain against honors chemistry, Frederico, you’re still smarter than you think you are. That was exactly my other question. Kunohara figured that one out, too. It’s kind of embarrassing, really.”

“Chizz. Do tell.”

“Well, among higher mammals, especially the ones like us that need both parents, there’s usually an elaborate courtship strategy that helps to bind the father to the mother and the coming offspring. Since there isn’t anything remotely like courtship before the pregnancy in the network’s reproductive strategy . . . well, the system came up with a substitute. Kind of courtship after the pregnancy. Like a mating dance, or—what did Kunohara call it, bees do it? A nuptial flight.”

“Huh?”

“It only works really well for the Avialle-shadows because they can travel instantaneously—just vanish—but some of the Society women have also dropped out and disappeared in more conventional ways. Post-nuptial flight. This woman named Maisie Macapan has taken off for Imperial Rome, for instance. All this running-away is supposed to keep the father interested. He chases after them, right?” He shook his head. “Boy, did it work on me.”

This was the hardest bit, and Orlando knew he was stalling. He thought about the last thing Sam had said before they disconnected.

“I guess it’s good,” she’d told him, “because you look utterly excited and interested. I was really beginning to worry about you—you seemed so depressed for a while. But what does it mean? How are you going to deal with being a father to all these babies, if that’s how it really turns out? What are you going to do, Orlando?”

And the truth was, he didn’t know—in fact, there were still hundreds of questions to be answered. How had the system arrived at this point, seemingly all at once? Had it been trying things out in some evolutionary laboratory-world hidden in the folds of the network? Was it conscious, as the old operating system had been, or was it simply working out old tendencies left over from the original system? Or was it actually moving toward a new kind of consciousness—would Orlando and the other sims eventually become cells in some greater living thing? Some of the questions were downright scary. The elation of solving the mystery hadn’t entirely faded, but he knew the reality of this wasn’t going to be anywhere near as simple as explaining it to people. Not that explaining it was ever going to be easy—especially the explanation he was about to give, which was why he was stalling.

If there are dozens of children just from me, I can’t be a full-time father, obviously. We may have to turn the process off after this first group, at least as far as my own information—otherwise, what if the network plans to keep doing this all the time, generation after generation? Like I’m the queen bee, the king bee, whatever, and it’s going to make thousands of kids with me as a parent? He had some time to think about that, at least, to discuss the problem with Kunohara, since there were a limited number of potential mothers and the pregnancies seemed to be lasting as long as in the real world. The entomologist was in rapture over all these new developments, and was hurrying to settle his court case so that he could throw himself into investigating the new paradigm.

Easy for him—his information isn’t copied into the system. He’s not going to be a dad to dozens of kids, to have all that responsibility. But if there was ever anyone in a position to protect his children, it was Orlando Gardiner, network ranger. After all, like they used to say about the sheriffs in the Wild West, I’m all the law there is this side of reality.

God, I don’t know. I’ll figure it out. I’ve got friends. It’ll be weird, but I’m dead and I’m on my way to visit my folks, so how much weirder can things get? It’ll be an adventure.

He couldn’t get over it. I’m going to be a father! Me! It was terrifying and exciting. What would the children be like? What would happen to the network as this first generation grew and then reproduced themselves, creating ever more complex patterns of inheritance? No one in the history of humanity had ever experienced anything like this. Unknown country. It’s all unknown country ahead.

“I’m going now, Beezle,” he announced. “I don’t want to be interrupted unless the universe as we know it is actually collapsing, okay? Take messages.”

“No problem, boss. I’ll just hang out here in imaginary space and play with the cats.”

Orlando summoned up the connection for his parents’ house. This time he would even be willing to wear that horrid plasteel scarecrow. After all their work arranging that surreal and touching birthday party at Rivendell, he felt he owed Conrad and Vivien a little something. Even more importantly, he wanted them in a good mood when he told them that against all logic, they were apparently going to be grandparents after all.

Maybe forty or fifty times.

© 2003 by Tad Williams.

Originally published in Legends II, edited by Robert Silverberg.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Former singer, shoe-seller, radio show host, and inventor of interactive sci-fi television, Tad Williams established himself as an international bestselling author with his The Dragonbone Chair epic fantasy series. The books that followed, the Otherland series, are now a multi-million-dollar MMO launching in 2013 from dtp/realU/Gamigo. Tad is also the author of the Shadowmarch books; the stand-alone Faerie epic, The War of the Flowers; two collections of short stories (Rite and A Stark and Wormy Knight); the Shakespearian fantasy Caliban’s Hour; and, with his partner & collaborator Deborah Beale, the children’s/all-ages fantasy series, the Ordinary Farm novels. Recently, with The Dirty Streets of Heaven, Tad has begun publishing the Bobby Dollar novels, noir fantasy thrillers set again the backdrop of the monstrously ancient cold war between Heaven and Hell and following the adventures of a certain maverick angel. Tad is also the author of Tailchaser’s Song: His first novel spawned the subgenre of cats and fantasy that we see widely today. Tailchaser’s Song is in production 2013 as an animated film from Animetropolis/IDA.

The Best of All Possible Worlds (novel excerpt)
Karen Lord

BEFORE

He always set aside twelve days of his annual retreat to finish reports and studies, and that left twelve more for everything else. In earlier times, he had foolishly tried retreats within comm reach of his workplace, and that was not at all helpful. There would always be some crisis, something for which his help would be required. As his salary and sense increased, he took his retreats farther and farther away, until at last he found himself going off-planet to distant temples where the rule of silence and solitude could not be broken by convenient technologies.

This season, he had chosen Gharvi, a place with small wooden buildings scattered around a huge temple of stone, all set within the rain shadow of a mountain range. An endless ocean, both vista and inspiration, ran parallel to the mountains, and a beach between the two offered long walks to nowhere on either side. A place of two deserts, some said, for sea and land were bleak together—one boundless, one narrow, and both thirsty.

There was a place at home very like it, and that had probably influenced his choice, but the sky was unique. The atmosphere was the cloudy bluish lavender of a recently bioformed planet, and the sun was scorching bright. It was so unlike the cool, strong blues and gentle sunlight of his home world that for the first few days he kept his head down and his door closed till nightfall.

On the twelfth day, he took his handheld, replete with work well completed, and put it in the box outside his hermitage door. He cooked and ate his evening lentils, slept soundly through the night, and rose to prepare his morning porridge. There was a little water left over from the day before (he was ever frugal), but to have enough for washing he had to fetch the new day’s supply from the box. The young acolytes of the temple always put sufficient water and food into each hermit’s box before dawn. It was enough to stay clean, to fill the solar pot with porridge or pottage, and to sip and slake the constant thirst that was the natural consequence of dry air and silence. The acolytes would also take away his handheld and safely transmit its contents to his workplace.

But his handheld was still there.

He paused, confused by this disconnect in the seamless order of the temple’s routine. He stared at the untouched box. He looked up and frowned in puzzlement at the squat shape of the temple, vaguely visible through a haze of heat, blown sand, and sea spray.

Then he shrugged and went on with his day, a little dustier, a little thirstier, but convinced that an explanation would eventually be made manifest.

The following morning, well before dawn, the sound of the box lid closing woke him from a sleep made restless by dreams of dryness. He waited a bit, then went to bring in the supplies and drink deeply of the water. His handheld was gone, and a double ration of food sat in its place. He did not even peer into the darkness to catch sight of the tardy acolyte. Order had been restored.

“Dllenahkh, with your level of sensitivity and strength, you must go on retreat regularly.” So he had been told long ago by the guestmaster of his monastery. “You are constantly looking to set things to rights, even within yourself. A retreat will teach you again and again that you are neither indispensable nor self-sufficient.”

Put bluntly, learn to stop meddling. Commitment is important, detachment equally so. He congratulated himself on his developing ability to keep curiosity in check and spent the next few days in undisturbed meditation and reflection.

One day, after a long morning meditation, he felt thirsty and decided to get more water from his supply box. He stepped out with his glass drinking bowl in hand and set it on the edge of the box while he tilted the half lid and reached inside. His hands were steady as he poured water smoothly from the heavy, narrow-necked jug. Moving slowly, he straightened and took a moment of blissful idleness, the jug left uncovered near his feet, to squint at the sun’s glare on the desert beach and the desert ocean and to feel the coolness of the water creeping into his palms as he held the bowl and waited to drink. It was a child’s game, to hold a bowl of water and mark the increase of thirst with masochistic pleasure, but he did it sometimes.

He brought the bowl to his mouth and had a perfect instant of pale blue ocean, bright blue glass, and clear water in his vision before he blinked, sipped, and swallowed.

Many times afterward, when he tried to recall, his mind would stop at that vivid memory—the neatly nested colors, the soothing coolness of the glass—and not wish to go any further. It was not long after that, not very long at all, that the day became horribly disordered.

A man walked out of the ocean, his head darkly bright with seawater and sunlight. He wore a pilot’s suit—iridescent, sleek, and permeable—that would dry as swiftly as bare skin in the hot breeze, but his hair he gathered up in his hands as he approached, wringing water out from the great length of it and wrapping it high on the crown of his head with a band from his wrist.

Recognition came to Dllenahkh gradually. At first, when the figure appeared, it was a pilot; then, as it began to walk, it was a familiar pilot; and finally, with that added movement of hands in hair, it was Naraldi, a man well known to him but not so well known as to excuse the early breaking of a retreat. He opened his mouth to chide him. Six more days, Naraldi! Could anything be so important that you could not wait six more days? That was what he intended to say, but another thought came to him. Even for a small planet with no docking station in orbit, it was highly uncommon for a mindship to splash down so close to land that a pilot could swim to shore. Although he knew Naraldi, they were not so close as to warrant a visit at this time and in this place.

The pilot slowed his step and looked uncertainly at him with eyes that streamed from the irritation of salt water.

“Something terrible has happened,” Dllenahkh said simply. Naraldi wiped at his wet face and gave no reply.

“My mother?” Dllenahkh prompted to break the silence, dread growing cold and heavy in his stomach.

“Yes, your mother,” Naraldi confirmed abruptly. “Your mother, and my mother, and . . . everyone. Our home is no more. Our world is— ”

“No.” Dllenahkh shook his head, incredulous rather than upset at the bitterness and haste of Naraldi’s words. “What are you saying?”

He remembered that he was still thirsty and tried to raise the bowl again, but in the meantime his hands had gone chilled and numb. The bowl slipped. He snatched at it but only deflected it so that it struck hard on the side of the water jug and broke just in time to entangle his chasing fingers.

“Oh,” was all he said. The cut was so clean, he felt nothing.

“I’m sorry. Let me . . .” He crouched and tried to collect the larger fragments but found himself toppling sideways to rest on one knee.

Naraldi rushed forward. He grasped Dllenahkh’s bleeding right hand, yanked the band from his hair, and folded Dllenahkh’s fist around the wad of fabric. “Hold tight,” he ordered, guiding Dllenahkh’s left hand to clamp onto his wrist. “Don’t let go. I’ll get help.”

He ran off down the beach toward the temple. Dllenahkh sat down carefully, away from the broken bits of glass, and obediently held tight. His head was spinning, but there was one small consolation. For at least the length of time it took Naraldi to return, he would remember the words of the guestmaster: he would not be curious, he would not seek to know, and he would not worry about how to right the tumbled world.

From the book, The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord.

Copyright © 2013 by Karen Lord.

Reprinted by arrangement with Del Rey, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

All rights reserved.

To learn more about the book, visit the publisher’s website:

www.randomhouse.com/book/217348

Karen Lord, a writer and research consultant in Barbados, was nominated for the 2012 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her second novel The Best of All Possible Worlds won the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award. Her debut novel Redemption in Indigo won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature, and the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, and was nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

Interview: Steven Erikson
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

Steven Erikson is an archaeologist and anthropologist and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His previous novels in The Malazan Book of the Fallen series, including The Crippled God, Dust of Dreams, Toll the Hounds and Reaper’s Gale, have met with widespread international acclaim and established him as a major voice in the world of fantasy fiction. The first book in the series, Gardens of the Moon, was shortlisted for a World Fantasy Award. The second novel, Deadhouse Gates, was voted one of the ten best fantasy novels of 2000 by SF Site. He previously lived in the United Kingdom, but has recently returned to his hometown of Winnipeg, Canada.

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.

So you recently wrapped up your ten-book epic fantasy series The Malazan Book of the Fallen, and you’ve just written a new book called Forge of Darkness. You want to tell us about that?

Well, I guess by about book eight—or maybe book seven—I was starting to throw in some flashbacks to a very early period in the history of one of my imaginary cultures. And that started to intrigue me, and obviously I was looking past the completion of the series and thinking about what I was going to do next. And so when I finally finished the series, I had a fair idea of wanting to go back to almost the creation myths or the cosmology of the Malazan world.

Some people on the Malazan Empire fan site were sort of saying, why go for something where we know what’s happened? My response would be you only think you know what’s happened. One of the things I’m pushing for is the notion that history is not an accurate portrayal of anything at all. Certainly for characters who are long-lived—and I mean “long-lived” in the sense of hundreds of thousands of years—one has to assume their memories will be distorted by time. I mean, our memories are distorted by time, so I just extend that in an exponential fashion—this sense that how the past seems to these characters may be quite different from the reality, and so I wanted to sort of play those two off each other.

Obviously a large number of readers that pick up Forge of Darkness will have read the previous books, but is it something that you think newcomers could start with as well?

Well, I certainly hope so. I’ve not really heard back from anyone who’s not read the Malazan series, but I would certainly hope that somebody could use this as another gateway into the Malazan world. It was written with both audiences in mind.

This book has a large number of POV characters. How’d you decide which characters to make POV characters?

Well, primarily I wanted to avoid most of the main players in the Malazan series. I wanted voices that were witness to these characters as opposed to the characters themselves. I suspect a lot of people wanted points of view of Anomander Rake and various others, but if I revealed too much about these characters that are viewed quite heroically in the Malazan series, it sort of removes the magic out of them, and I didn’t want to do that.

In interviews, you’ve said that you’re glad that people are talking about your work as an example of postmodernism. What sorts of conversations have been going on around that?

Well, basically I’m having an argument with a scholar who’s studied my stuff. Whereas I’m calling it postmodern, he’s calling it post-structural. We sort of acknowledge each other’s points, but neither of us budge. [laughs]

I mean, there’s a strong postmodern element to a lot of the narrators within the Malazan series. In other words, they’re aware that they’re telling a story, and they’re also aware that they have the option of manipulating that story. Kruppe, I think, is one of the best examples of that. He narrates within the story, including applying the third person viewpoint to himself, and so you can sort of sense that he’s messing with everyone’s heads. And they may be the characters’ heads, but they’re also the readers’ heads. And that’s a reflection of how I’m approaching it as a writer as well, that one is aware that there is manipulation running all the way through this.

So why does that critic think your work is post-structuralist?

You’d have to ask him. [laughs] The thing with scholars is that they don’t really want the authors around. It sounds weird, but it certainly seems to be the case. We’re far better off, as far as the scholars are concerned, if we’ve been dead for twenty years. It makes it easier to build up a thesis without having it contradicted—potentially—by the person whose work it is. And I think there’s also sometimes this assumption that the author is entirely unaware of what they’re up to, and that’s certainly not the case with me.

Are there particular fan sites or message boards that are best for reading analysis of your work?

Not that I’m aware of. I’d love to see a lot more. But with the fantasy genre in general it’s pretty hard to find people who are approaching it in a serious fashion. And then there’s sort of an internal ghettoization where fantasy series are given less regard than fantasy standalones. So, yeah, we’re fighting against a fairly consistent tide.

I heard you were on a panel at ICFA—the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts—with Stephen R. Donaldson, and he was talking about how fantasy is actually the spine of Western literature.

We both were, yeah. He used “spine” and I used “tree” as metaphors. Epic fantasy is the core of literature. You can reach back to Gilgamesh or the Iliad or all these things, and they are all epic fantasies. There’s a tendency to step out on the branches and crawl onto the twigs, and get really excited by innovations you see on those twigs, and the argument that I was making—and I’m sure Steve was as well—is that actually those aren’t innovations at all, if you actually knew what the tree—or the spine—was all about, you’d see that that’s been covered some time ago.

I guess it’s a perfectly natural desire, if you’re going to specialize as a scholar in something, to find something that’s manageable. A six-book series or a ten-book series or whatever is a hefty thing to invest yourself into. But we were speaking very much on behalf of the idea of at least getting somebody looking back at those who never left the trunk of the tree and are continuing to write epic fantasy, which has been going on for three thousand years now, four thousand years.

It seems like the success of HBO’s Game of Thrones has brought a large new group of readers to epic fantasy. Have you witnessed any shift lately in the popularity of the genre?

Well, it’s funny because people sort of predicted that with the Lord of the Rings films, and then with Harry Potter and all the rest. I think what tends to happen is what I’ve called “exceptionalism,” and that is where an individual is sort of extracted from the genre in which they’re writing, and the popularity of the genre itself actually becomes less relevant than the individual.

I think if anything is going to have that kind of effect, it’s probably going to be computer games and console games. And for myself, I’m constantly frustrated by most fantasy computer games, for the simple reason that the stories are just lacking. I’ve dealt with some companies that wanted to do Malazan stuff, and become aware that, from their point of view, they want 80 percent action and 20 percent story, and I guess in many respects I want it the other way around.

Are there any fantasy videogames that you do like and would recommend?

Um . . . no. [laughs] Yeah, I guess that’s just the answer. I did play a bit of Skyrim, and visually it’s fantastic, and it does have a storyline that one follows. But for me it ends up becoming too trope-driven—sort of the medieval, northern European kind of approach to things. Elves, dwarves, all that is stuff I’ve been actively writing against—well, not against, but that I’ve been ignoring, put it that way. And so when I look at the games, they tend to fall back on those tropes and clichés very quickly.

It seems like epic fantasy readers are some of the most outspoken fans, in terms of both loving and hating certain authors—we’ve seen this a lot lately with George R. R. Martin. What do you think it is about epic fantasy that inspires such vehemence?

I don’t know. One of the things I suppose is it’s probably one of the most immersive of fictional forms, where you as the reader are investing over a span of years in a particular fictional world and the characters within it. And I think it’s part of “geek cool” to love something and then hate something else, and then that can sort of be raised up to indicate difference or uniqueness.

I remember talking to George a few times now. Both of us are kind of baffled at the vehemence between our fan bases. We don’t see ourselves in competition . . . which is probably a good thing, since he’s done so well. But I was a reader long before I was a writer, and a reader of fantasy, so as far as I’m concerned it’s almost as if there is no competition, because fantasy readers will read everything. They’re the most voracious readers that I know of. I mean, I’ve been to people’s places—just various people I know who read this stuff—and I’ll look on their bookshelves and there’ll be Martin, there’ll be Erikson, there’ll be Robin Hobb, you name it. They’re all up there on their bookshelves.

I don’t know if you noticed, but on the dust jacket for Forge of Darkness it says this book “should appeal to fans of George R.R. Martin for its characters and intrigue, but goes leaps further in the realm of imagination.” That kind of seems like fighting words. I assume you had nothing to do with that?

[laughs] No, I had nothing to do with it. I think actually when somebody pointed it out to me—that’s the Tor edition, isn’t it?—yeah, I probably sent off an email saying, “Can you pull that comment?”, but it was probably too late.

One of the ideas of yours I really like is the idea that magic swords start screaming the first time you take hold of them. How’d you come up with that?

I’ve often said that fantasy is the one genre where you can take a metaphor and make it real. Well, if you consider the trauma and the horror and the mayhem of battle, then if I were to take that metaphor and place it in a weapon, then of course the weapon will scream. But it would also be driven to madness through repetition of these violent scenes, so the laughter is there as well.

I know there are many novels and stories where swords have a voice—and quite often a seductive one. Or they have a will of their own. I like the notion of the will being completely mysterious and unknowable to the wielder of the weapon. It’s almost more horrifying to not explain the mind that’s in the weapon, and to just sort of have to react to it.

I was reading some discussion of your books online, and I thought it was interesting how a couple people mentioned that a lot of your characters—even commoners—have these long philosophical discussions, and some people were questioning how realistic that was.

Well, some of the smartest, wisest people I’ve met . . . here, I’ll give you an example—there was this guy who was hired with his shotgun to take care of our camp in Belize on an archaeology dig. No education. No teeth. And yet if you would sit and talk with him, this guy thought about everything. He kept himself informed about world events and had read a whole series of books on philosophy. I think the assumption—I’ve been fighting against it for a long time in terms of creating characters—is that one assumes a level of intelligence or lack thereof on the basis of class, and I don’t see it. I’ve never experienced it.

Quite often you won’t get those heavy conversations with somebody who’s struggling to stay alive, but at the same time if you were to somehow sit down on a park bench and start talking, you might be surprised. It’s easy—especially as a fiction writer—to fall into that kind of class-based thinking, where you pigeonhole people and create characters who are minor characters with very little social standing and you give them no brains. I suppose it would be easy to do it that way, but I’m definitely not into that. And I have talked to soldiers—veterans—who think a lot about what they’re up to. So I don’t find it in any respect unusual.

One character in Forge of Darkness is a painter, and I know that you’re a painter yourself. Did your interest in painting inspire that character at all?

To some extent, sure. But also, there are themes that are running through the trilogy which relate to how civilizations destroy themselves, and one of the themes I’m advancing is that the various forms of art have to be destroyed first—the meaning of art, if you will. So this first novel is very much tied into that painter character. And fortunately I had a character who showed up originally in the eighth book, I think, of Malazan Book of the Fallen, that was the ideal character for approaching things as a painter. It did help that I have been a painter and started as an illustrator and all the rest, so it might be more challenging when I move on to some other art forms in the next books. We’ll see.

Could you elaborate a bit on the idea of art being the first step in civilization collapsing? You’re saying that’s the first symptom?

Certainly. I think when art ceases to oppose—or to stand outside—the desires of the power bloc of a particular civilization, it gets into trouble. I’m really generalizing here, but you often see how art in the past is a reflection of the health of a particular civilization. There was a strong period of high propaganda, say, in Roman art, especially the sculptures, elevating the emperors to god-like or demigod status. You have paintings like that of royalty in Europe as well—oversized compared to the horse, and looking fit in their armor, even though they never were. All of these things are basically intended to reinforce the status quo of whatever element is in power at the time.

And then you see the contrast sometimes when art moves in the other direction. There was a Grotesque period for Roman art as well as Greek art that removed the idealization of the human form. And it was probably a reflection of the slow collapse—or quick collapse, if you will—of the civilization at hand. And so art is definitely a reflection of society, and if it gets co-opted—and let’s face it, advertising is the greatest co-opting of art you can think of—it sort of removes the social function, I think, the purpose of art.

I’ve also heard you say that as a result of fencing injuries you have sort of an ever-growing exoskeleton on your arm?

[laughs] Only when I fence. I’ve broken my right index finger—the knuckle—a couple of times, once fencing and another time on a hand-pumped well at a farm. So I’ve picked up a lot of injuries that weakened the vertical strength of my forearm—or my hand, specifically. And in fencing you hold the weapon in such a way that a lot of the weight is actually sitting on your index finger. All another fencer would have to do is basically push down on my weapon and I couldn’t resist it. So I went to a hand clinic, and I got this molded plastic thing that slides over the upper part of my right hand, and that actually allows me to continue fencing. So that’s the only exoskeletal element that I can think of. [laughs]

I recently watched the documentary Reclaiming the Blade, which was about how ancient medieval swordfighting techniques were more effective than modern fencing. What do you think about that?

Here in Victoria many years ago, I was invited to a Society for Creative Anachronism event, and there was period fencing. And I showed up with my épée, and was invited to a number of duels, including people with two weapons, and it may have just been that they weren’t particularly good, but I toasted them all using an Olympic style of fencing. I went away from that and thought, well, I suspect one of the reasons was that Olympic-style fencing is almost a perfection of the form, over centuries now, that moves away from some of the earlier styles of fencing that actually are probably not particularly useful. In Olympic-style fencing, the whole point of your positioning—you’re standing sideways to your target—is to reduce your own target area and also to reduce the amount of movement you need to defend that target area with your weapon.

Now, in fencing in the round—especially with two weapons, at least with people I’ve faced—opponents are mostly facing you head on, which means that their backward and forward movement is severely limited. I could lunge forward—or even step forward—much faster than they could back up, because they don’t have a back leg and a front leg, they have two legs sort of sitting side by side. And so I’m always a bit dubious when people say, “Well, this is the old style and it’s far more practical and efficient than the modern Olympic style.” I’m having trouble being convinced by it.

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

Well, I’m writing Fall of Light, which is the second in the Kharkanas trilogy. And while I was on a book tour these past few months, I did mess around with something that I think is going to show up this week on Tor.com. I did a Q&A for their Reaper’s Gale re-read, and at the end of my answers I added a Chapter 1 of something I’ve been working on. It’s more just having fun. I just had to let off some steam, and I’ll probably continue it. It’s a shorter science fiction novel.

And is there anything you can tell us about the Karsa Orlong trilogy that you’ll be writing after this one?

Not yet. I need to get the next two books out of the way in the Kharkanas trilogy, and then probably toward the end of writing the third one, I’ll start really putting my thoughts into the next trilogy.

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, 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 the World Fantasy Award. Forthcoming anthologies include The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (2013, Tor), Oz Reimagined (2013, 47North), Wastelands 2 (2013, Night Shade Books), and Robot Uprisings (2014, Doubleday). He is also 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: Lois McMaster Bujold
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

Lois McMaster Bujold is one of the most honored writers in the fields of science fiction and fantasy. She has won five Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards, as well as many other accolades. Bujold immediately attracted attention with her first novel, Shards of Honor, which began her soon-to-be-classic Vorkosigan Saga series, and quickly followed it up with The Warrior’s Apprentice, which introduced young Miles Vorkosigan, one of the most popular characters in science fiction. The novels in her recent fantasy series for Harper Collins have been top sellers, and one, Paladin of Souls, took home her latest Hugo and Nebula awards. Ms. Bujold lives in Minneapolis, MN.

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.

So your new book is called Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance. You want to tell us about that?

This is book fourteen—depending on how you count it, or sixteen—in the Vorkosigan Series, and it concerns the adventures of Ivan Vorpatril, the titular character. He’s been a long-running character in the series. He got his start back in The Warrior’s Apprentice, which was published in 1986. The series and the characters have grown pretty much in real time. He’s now 35 in this book. I guess the mode of the book is the easiest to describe—it’s a romantic comedy and caper novel.

This book takes place a little bit before your previous novel Cryoburn. Why did you decide to jump back in time like that?

It was strictly a matter of tone. Cryoburn was a rather dark book, and is really an extended meditation on death, and I wanted to do something lighter. If the story were to fall immediately beyond Cryoburn, it would have to deal with the consequences and fallout of all the events that took place in that book, and that just didn’t belong in this story.

You mentioned that the story is told from Ivan’s point of view, who’s a very different character from Miles, the point-of-view character for most of the series. What was it like switching to Ivan’s point of view?

I’ve actually done Ivan’s POV before. A book called A Civil Campaign, which was published back in 1999, had five viewpoints and Ivan was one of those viewpoints, so I had sort of touched on him before but had not had a chance to develop him at length. A lot of people who’ve been following him through the series as a secondary character who keeps popping up were convinced that he had hidden depths, but I keep saying, “No, no, Ivan has hidden shallows, and let me show them to you.” So that’s part of what this book was about.

And then of course you have the new viewpoint character, Tej, who was a lot of fun to do. She’s from a culture outside of Barrayar, which gives her that extremely useful quality of needing things explained to her. It’s an ongoing problem how to make each of my series books stand alone, because I always thought that readers would pick them up at random, the way I picked up series books at random back in my youth when I was first getting into things like the Hornblower series. But suddenly having a new character gives me a natural way to aid the new reader and explain what’s necessary for them to know.

I heard you say that one of the challenges of writing Ivan’s POV is that he’s the kind of character who actively tries to avoid the plot.

Oh yes. [laughs] What I finally found with him is basically all the plot twists had to be brought to him by someone else and dumped on him, and then he would react and respond pretty amusingly at that point. At one point the book kind of went off in a different direction, and it just got slower and slower and harder and harder to write. I was trying to put Ivan into a Miles plot, and that just didn’t work. I backed up and found the turning point and sent him off in a more Ivan-like story, and everything just fell out swimmingly.

So this is the first book of yours to make the New York Times Best Seller list. Why do you think this book was the one to finally make the list?

I have no idea. I’ve been sort of floating around on the extended list since A Civil Campaign. That was the first time I ever knew there was such a thing as an extended New York Times list. The New York Times list has the first twelve or sixteen places, which is the one you see plastered all over newspapers and in bookstores. And then there turns out to be another list that goes from seventeen to thirty-five, which the booksellers got back in the day, that allowed you to actually call yourself a New York Times Bestseller if you got on the extended list, though I always thought that was cheating. I always wanted to be on the big list. So I think it’s probably just a matter of persistence and finally building my audience up to the point where there were enough of them that would run out and buy the book in one week to pop it up there.

There’s an awful a lot of gaming of the bestseller list that goes on in book promotion, where you try to make everybody aware of your book at the same time, try to get them to buy it, get it noticed, get it visible. Which is kind of the opposite of the way I’ve written. I’ve not written bestsellers, I’ve written evergreens. Every book I’ve ever written is still in print. So that’s twenty-six years now. There aren’t too many writers that can say that. I’ve always had this longitudinal approach, as opposed to the vertical bestseller approach. I guess persistence pays off.

To what extent do you think the future depicted in the Vorkosigan Saga might actually come true?

In bits and pieces, I think it will. The space travel part I think is entirely bogus at this time. There’s no reason to believe that we will ever have cheap, easy interstellar travel. Other parts of it—usually the parts that I concentrate my plots on—are more realistic: the biology, the biotechnology, the genetics, and the genetic engineering, they’re more grounded. And I’m also very interested in the impact of biotechnology on the way people could live. The most obvious ongoing thing being the uterine replicator, the idea of extra-uterine gestation of human beings—and anything else you wanted to do with it—which is a technology that is perfectly possible and will come.

It’s an interesting technology because it totally changes women’s lives, and yet doesn’t make that much difference to guys, which is why I think it doesn’t turn up in science fiction written by men very much. Although the first place I ran across it was in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which was written and published in the early 1930s. Huxley used the idea as a metaphor for the British class system, as near as I remember. It’s been a long time since I reread that book. But my exploration of technologies has always been how many things can I do with it, not what is the most dire thing I can do with it.

I heard you talking about the uterine replicators and saying that a lot of the egalitarian qualities of our society depend on technology.

Yeah, I think so. I think 99% of women’s lib comes from technology making different kinds of lives possible, and then the social adjustment follows the technology, it doesn’t precede it. The complaints may precede it, but the change follows. So I think that women who are anti-technology are not as in touch with reality as they ought to be, because technology makes our lives possible. I certainly wouldn’t want to live in any earlier time, speaking as a woman. I would be dead several times over by now.

You’ve also said you did a lot of research into cryonics for your previous novel Cryoburn. What did you learn about cryonics and what’s your impression of that whole endeavor?

Well, I don’t think they’ve got it yet. They can freeze people but they can’t thaw them, and until they figure out how to thaw them it’s kind of fictional. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they shouldn’t be trying. Thinking back on the history of medicine, there were a lot of things that were tried and which failed many times before people figured out how to do it.

The other aspect of it, of course, is what happens three generations down the line when the company disbands, when people aren’t interested anymore in all these frozen people? Many science fiction stories that involve cryonics involve freezing somebody and sending them to the future and letting them be our view of this future world. But what if it were not one or a few, but an entire population? Where would they find room? Who would want them? Who would want to make all this competition? Who wants to father grandparents when they could be having grandchildren? Cryoburn played a lot with those ideas, kind of questioning the whole idea of cryonics from the other end. We want to live forever, but does anyone want us?

The series is published by Baen Books, and I know you worked with Jim Baen on many of them. He’s someone in the field that I never got a chance to meet, and I was just wondering what he was like and if you had any funny stories about him?

Jim was an interesting person. When I was first picked up by Baen Books, I was a young writer in the boonies of Ohio. I had very vague ideas about New York publishing when I was first called by Jim Baen to buy my three books that I had submitted. I had pretty grandiose visions of what a publisher was like—sort of like the Eye of Sauron up in his tower, with minions down below and the engines of destruction churning out books at the bottom level. I eventually found out that actually a publishing company could be six people and a large bottle of Maalox and a telephone line. Publishing wasn’t actually like that. It’s a series of little disillusionments I think that all writers experience as they learn more about their trade.

And then I actually got to meet Jim. The first time I met him was at an elevator crush in the 1986 Worldcon in Atlanta, GA, which was the first Worldcon I had attended as a published newbie pro. He scared the heck out of me by saying, as we were separated by the crowd heading into the elevators, that if I could write three books a year for seven years he would put me on the map, which horrified me because I’m not a fast writer. It pretty much traumatized me. “Can’t I write one book a year for twenty years instead?” That was my response. I can’t remember if I said that out loud or not. Which in fact is what I eventually ended up doing, pretty much.

He was an interesting character. He supported my books. He kept my books in print. And I think a lot of more corporate publishers would have looked at some of my early returns, my early sales figures, and abandoned the series. They don’t give series nearly as long today as they used to. Jim really developed his writers. He was willing to give them a chance. And when I turned in a book that was 167,000 words long, he said, “We’ll find the paper somewhere,” which sort of warmed my heart.

One interesting thing about Baen as a publisher is that they release a lot of their titles for free in the Baen Free Library. What’s been your experience with that?

It’s almost impossible to tell. People have tapped into it and read books and sometimes gone on to buy others. I can’t tell how many. It can’t hurt. My books are up for free on all kinds of pirate sites all over the place. Whenever I go online and do an ego sweep, it sometimes seems like nine out of ten of the hits are somebody’s pirate site. So if giving the books away for free helps sell books, there are plenty of other people out there who are doing it.

Speaking of libraries, I’ve heard you say that crimes don’t tend to happen in houses with lots of books?

That was an interesting thing I read that struck me very hard. It was a newspaper article that I read from the Columbus Dispatch way back in the early ’90s. I can remember everything about it except the title and author, so I can’t find it again. But it was an interview with a forensic pathologist in Columbus, Ohio, and he made the remark, sort of in passing, that he had never gone into a bad crime scene in anyplace or house where there were a lot of books. These were all book-free zones that he was in.

People who read tend to commit fewer violent crimes, I guess. I think that one of the reasons for that isn’t just that they’re brighter, but I think books give you a place to go. They give you a time-out. They give you a different headspace to be in, rather than getting more and more frustrated or angry or upset or whatever it is that leads people to these outbursts. So I think that books provide a social service that way, for their readers, that isn’t recognized in your basic literature course. Escapist literature gets a bad rap, but I think escape is pretty important for a lot of people in a lot of places.

There have been some news stories I’ve seen recently about studies they’ve done where reading fiction actually increases empathy in a way that nothing else does. I was just wondering if you’ve been following that at all?

I haven’t been following it, but it makes perfect sense. Reading a book is as close as we can get to telepathy, the closest we can get to actually being inside someone else’s head for a little while, which is not something we can get out of movies or television drama or even real life encounters. It just makes all kinds of sense to me. You get the practice of seeing somebody else’s POV, so that when you come back to real life, it becomes an idea that’s apprehensible to you.

Ever since Game of Thrones got really popular, I’ve heard people say that if you like Tyrion Lannister as a character you’ll also like Miles Vorkosigan. And I know a bunch of people that started reading the Vorkosigan Saga for exactly that reason. Do you see similarities between the two characters?

I have not read Game of Thrones yet, so I don’t know. I must point out that Miles came first. I wrote The Warrior’s Apprentice in 1984, so do your math, folks. I think that probably Martin and I were stealing from the same source. I believe that Game of Thrones is explicitly somewhat inspired by Plantagenet history and Miles is sort of ironically inspired by it. So I think it’s a case of similar sources, in this case. Great minds think alike, I don’t know.

I understand that you’ve been involved with a Vorkosigan fan group in Russia?

I’m aware that there is a large Vorkosigan fandom in Russia. They had sent me some pictures, actually, a couple of years ago, of a LARP game—live action role-playing—that they had done over the weekend outside of Moscow, where they had done the Vorkosiverse. All these Russian fans dressed up in costumes playing the various characters and acting out some kind of story. Apparently they’re having a lot of fun with it.

I think Russian fandom has found my books approachable simply because of the Russian ancestry that I gave Barrayar. They were not used to seeing any kind of positive picture of Russia or Russians coming out of Cold War American science fiction, so I think it struck a chord for them. And thank heavens I did not fall into the trap of assuming that the Soviet Union would last forever and ever. I did not get joshed, as they say, by the events of the fall of the Soviet Union.

According to our Facebook page, our podcast actually has more listeners in Zagreb, Croatia than anywhere else on Earth. And I understand that you’ve actually been to Croatia. Could you tell us what the science fiction scene is like there?

Yeah, it was very interesting. Croatia is a very small country, about four million people. Not a large market by any means. They have a couple of publishing companies there that are very active in translating science fiction, and Algoritam, which has been translating mine, helped get me over there for the Croatian National Science Fiction Convention, gosh, almost a decade ago now. It was very fascinating. Of course, as a writer guest of honor you get treated like royalty, get hauled around to all the good stuff. I had a great time there. The fans took excellent care of me.

The fandom, since it has a rather narrow pipeline for translated works, which is also the case in other countries with small populations, does a lot of its reading in English. The Dutch read a lot of English. The Fins, I discovered this year, read most of their science fiction in English, and so do the Croatians. So when I came to do my programs, they didn’t even bother with the simultaneous translation or trying to translate them. They just set me up in front of the room and let people get out of it whatever they could. I hope they were able to get most of it. I was extremely impressed with the level of English literacy among the Croatian fans.

I got to see a lot of touristy things that were just wonderful. Besides Zagreb itself—which I later stole as a town plan for a town in The Hallowed Hunt—they took me down to the shore. We saw the ruins of the Roman coliseum by moonlight and got fed truffles. It was a pretty amazing trip.

Are there any other new or upcoming projects you want to mention?

Not at this time. I’m kind of between projects, or I’ve got things that are not going well enough to make any promises. I’m working on a novella, which I was actually reading from on the book tour, so I guess now I have to finish the darn thing because I’ve given so many people the beginning of it. I have to think of a middle and an end for this. And I have some other things I was working on this spring that died. I’m not sure whether it needs a different approach or what.

I have no contracts at the moment. I’m in an interestingly comfortable place financially. I’ve finally got the retirement savings up to the point to where I don’t actually need another advance to live until I can finish the next book, though it gives me possibly more artistic freedom than I quite know what to do with. I’m having to figure out where I’m at now if I’m not rushing to get paid before the lights get turned off. That will be the next challenge, I guess. What is my next phase as a writer?

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, 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 the World Fantasy Award. Forthcoming anthologies include The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (2013, Tor), Oz Reimagined (2013, 47North), Wastelands 2 (2013, Night Shade Books), and Robot Uprisings (2014, Doubleday). He is also 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: Yannick De Smet (a/k/a Norke)

Artist Spotlight: Yannick De Smet (a/k/a Norke)
Galen Dara

Yannick De Smet (a/k/a Norke) is a Belgian illustrator and concept artist. You can find out more about him at Norke.be and at his deviantART page (http://norke.deviantart.com/).

How did you get your start as an artist and what was it like transitioning into a freelance career?

I’ve always wanted to be an artist and I spent a lot of time drawing and sketching as a kid. At the age of fourteen I went to an art school and learned a lot about the discipline. It takes a lot of effort to learn to draw with little effort. Fortunately, I started with some very good teachers who were able to pass on the love for sketching and painting. At eighteen, one of my teachers gave me the tip to buy a drawing tablet and learn to work with Photoshop. I created some little paintings at school and a classmate urged me to upload them to deviantART. Then I started to learn about other artists and tried to blend in.

Your digital paintings are beautiful and really reflect your initial training with traditional mediums. What was that transition like, from paint to pixels? Do you ever work traditionally nowadays? (Either for professional or personal projects?)

When I bought my first tablet (Graphire 4) I wasn’t a big fan. I kept on using the mouse as I didn’t like how it felt. My teacher told me to hang on, saying it’s something that needs time. It took me a few weeks to finally accept it before I used it on projects. By that time I was proficient in Photoshop, so the technical part was easy. Creating single layer paintings feels natural when you’re traditionally trained. Of course when the project asks for a multilayered way of working, it’s just a click of a button. I must admit that using the computer has almost replaced any traditional work. I just like the fast, nondestructive techniques. It’s not smelly, it doesn’t take ages to put up and doesn’t take a lot of space. Whenever I work traditionally, I’m building something like a maquette or a statue.

Your painting “Let Me Catch a Break Guys” is awesome on so many levels, especially after reading your tutorial on how you created it. I have a special place in my heart for a woman with a sword, and loved the preliminary sketches where you talked about wanting to create this real warrior, one with feelings, human limits, the exhaustion of battle. That really resonated with me. How did the idea for this piece come to you?

I fantasized about war and battle and a good story to paint. The idea was to paint a strong female fighter who knows her limitations, not the type who beats twenty well-trained men, then dusts off her shoulders and walks away—not the Hollywood type of hero. A warrior that has feelings and needs to rest; she could be sad about something while taking a break.

Where do you typically find your inspirations and motivations?

Watching movies is always a great start for new projects. Whenever I see a movie about dinosaurs, I want to paint some dinosaurs. After seeing Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, I want to paint massive sceneries. I’m not a gamer, but my girlfriend is. Watching her play games often gives me inspiration for painting as well.

You're very involved in art education and art community building: creating tutorials and organizing art events. How did you get started doing that and what are your plans for the future?

It would be unfair to have learned so much from other artists and keep everything for myself. When I heard deviantART had a chat room area, I created my own chat room for helping other artists. By talking to them, I learned that most don’t want to learn how to paint a nose—they want to know how their favorite paintings are created. Therefore, I started to make walkthroughs of my paintings. At each step, I take a screenshot and attach that to the previous screenshot. This way people can see how a painting has grown. Whenever explanation is needed it can be easily provided. Apart from that, I wanted artists to meet each other. I started organizing meetings and workshops around the country. Sometimes we did workshops, such as nude model sketching, or an art exhibition with our members’ art. Often we went sketchcrawling: We would meet in a different city each time and start sketching whatever we saw. It has taught me a lot about other artists’ approach to capturing what they see. Each month I organized the Themed Art Challenges where we would give a theme and a one-hour time span to create their vision on that theme.

I loved your tip about flipping the canvas as a way of getting a fresh view and spotting trouble areas. What other things do you do when you hit a lull in a piece, or otherwise run into an artistic roadblock?

As a kid I used to look at the clouds and try to see all kinds of shapes. This could be used to start projects. A tip I got from Scott Robertson was to draw all kinds of different shapes on pieces of paper, scan those in and import them into one document in Photoshop. Playing with the layers, it’s possible to create random shapes. At one point you might see a huge mountain, at other moments you could see a couple walking in the streets. I sometimes grab random photos from the internet and skew, rotate, cut and paste until I start to see a composition that might work. Another tip might be to start scribbling until you see something you might want to expand.

As a freelance illustrator, what does a normal workday look like for you? What are you doing when you are not working on an art piece? (Do you have any non-art related hobbies?)

I love playing basketball and badminton, but apart from those I don’t have any non-art related hobbies. I love goofing around with Sketch-Up. I constantly measure things up and try to recreate them in 3D. Is watching a good movie considered a hobby?

What are some “level-up” phases you can point to in your education/career: things, events, etc. that pushed you to a better (or different) working method?

I could say the Themed Art Challenges (where you take a theme and a one-hour time span to create a vision on that theme) has pushed me to my limits. What I learned from that is the importance of having deadlines. Whenever you’re working on a project, try to use deadlines to push a rush of creativity. It’s not easy to do so, but it will help you in the future. Projects like concept art or backgrounds for games often have a tight deadline and might push you to finish them in a very short time span.

Who are some of the artists that have inspired you?

I’ve always had a weak spot for James Gurney. The way he masters light and shadow is amazing. Often I browse through his work if I need some inspiration. Old masters like Bouguereau and Raphael often inspired me to push details. On the digital level, I like the work of Stanley Lau, Marko Djurdjević, and Yanick Dusseault, three artists I’ve been following since my early years.

What are you working on right now? Anything you are particularly hoping to work on next?

I’m working on a series of concept paintings for a game. I’m also trying to create a printed artbook and building my own scaled Tardis (Doctor Who fans should understand!).

Galen Dara likes to sit in the dark with her sketchbook, but sometimes she emerges to illustrate for books and magazines, dabble in comics, and hatch wild collaborations with friends and associates. Galen has done art for Edge Publishing, Dagan Books, Apex, Scapezine, Tales to Terrify, Peculiar Pages, Sunstone, and The Lovecraft eZine. She is on staff of BookLifeNow, blogs for Inkpunks.com, and writes the Art Nerd column at Functional Nerds. When Galen is not online you can find her on the edge of the Sonoran Desert, climbing mountains, or hanging out with a loving assortment of human and animal companions. Follow her on Twitter @galendara.

Hat Tip to the Masters: Homage in Science Fiction
Jamie Todd Rubin

My first “ah-ha” moment reading science fiction occurred while engrossed in Gregory Benford’s magnificent novel, Timescape. About two-thirds through the book, I encountered the following passage:

Gordon headed for the physics building, perspiring from the effort of carrying his big brown suitcase. Among a knot of students he thought he saw a familiar face.

“David! Hey David!” he called. But the man turned away quickly and walked in the opposite direction. Gordon shrugged. Maybe Selig didn’t want to see an old classmate; he had always been an odd bird.

It seemed to me there could be no mistake. Benford was making a cryptic but deliberate reference to the main character in Robert Silverberg’s remarkable novel, Dying Inside. I nearly burst with glee at the connection. But I was still an uncertain reader in the genre and perhaps I was simply reading too much into the passage. There was only one way to find out: I asked Dr. Benford. He confirmed that it was indeed an homage to Silverberg.

Since then I’ve delighted in the depth and breadth of homage in science fiction literature. It comes in many guises: Pastiche, oblique or recursive reference, parody, and intertextuality are just a few of its masks. It is also nothing new in science fiction and it propagates like a wave through the decades.

It is well known, for instance, that Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series paid tribute to Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In the years since, plenty of writers have paid homage to Asimov’s work in some form or another. Randall Garrett was probably among the earliest, with his story “No Connection” (Astounding, 6/58), an almost identical title to Asimov’s “No Connections” (Astounding, 6/48). Adam-Troy Castro paid homage to Asimov’s robot stories with his wonderful lead story in the debut issue of Science Fiction Age, “The Last Robot” (11/92). More recently still, Cory Doctorow has written stories like “I, Robot” and “I, Row-Boat” which carry this particular thread into the present century.

There is a delicacy and art to homage. It is not something an author necessarily semaphores to readers. The beauty of an homage rests in its subtly, as when a story is working on multiple levels: the story itself, and the tribute it pays to the past. A reader unfamiliar with the work being so honored can still enjoy the story. The added bonus is for those who recognize what the author is doing. Ray Bradbury did this with his classic collection of interrelated stories, The Martian Chronicles, those stories being a science fictional pastiche of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.

I think of these interrelationships between stories as a web. Each strand in the web represents a relationship between stories. Some of those strands are homages. As in any web, there will be hubs around into which many strands convene. And indeed, within science fiction and fantasy, such hubs exist. Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore, particularly in their “Lewis Padgett” guise, seem to be at the center of one such hub. William Tenn’s (Phillip Klass) “Child’s Play” (Astounding, 3/47) is the story of a man who uses a machine intended as a toy for children of the future, clearly a nod in the direction of Padgett’s stories like “Mimsy Were the Borogroves” (Astounding, 2/43). Robert Silverberg’s “The Iron Chancellor” (Galaxy, 5/58) was another pastiche of Padgett.

J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings is another hub on that web. Henry N. Beard and Douglas C. Kenney’s 1969 novel Bored of the Rings was an early parody of Tolkien. In the 1980s, Stephen King’s The Stand also paid homage to Tolkien, an attempt at Tolkien’s grandeur in an American setting. More recently, Pat Murphy in her Max Merriwell guise has produced the science fictional There and Back Again.

Unlike some authors, King admitted his homage to Tolkien, and indeed, some authors do make this clear to their audiences. Harlan Ellison’s “Prowler in the City at the Edge of the World” (Dangerous Visions, 10/67) was not only an homage, but a direct sequel to Robert Bloch’s “A Toy For Juliette” (Dangerous Visions, 10/67). Isaac Asimov reported that his “Azazel” stories of the 1980s were his attempts at homage to a favorite author of his, P. G. Wodehouse. But I think homage is most effective when done subtly, when it becomes an added bonus for the careful reader, the chewy center within layers of story.

The desire to tip our cap to stories of the past continues undiminished today. Some are obvious, like John Scalzi’s hilarious homage to Star Trek, Redshirts. Others are more subtle, like Barry N. Malzberg and Robert Walton’s “The Man Who Murdered Mozart” (F&SF, 3-4/12). We have even experienced it recently in the pages of Lightspeed, with Jake Kerr’s “The Old Equations” (7/11) and Tobias Buckell’s “A Game of Rats and Dragon” (11/12).

Homage, in all of its forms, seems to me to be a sign of respect. Even in parody, an author is giving a wink and nod of acknowledgement to a work that has endured. Whatever form that nod takes, it adds another thread to the intricate web of interrelationships and provides a careful reader with Easter eggs that produce those wonderful “ah-ha” moments.

Author’s Note: I’d like to thank Barry N. Malzberg, Paul Weimer, and Mark Stackpole for their valued input and contributions to this article.

Jamie Todd Rubin is a science fiction writer and blogger with stories appearing in Analog, InterGalactic Medicine Show, Apex Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and 40K Books. He writes the “Wayward Time Traveler” column on science fiction for SF Signal, and occasionally appears on the SF Signal podcast. Jamie also writes book review and interview columns for InterGalactic Medicine Show. His interest in the history of science fiction led him to begin “Vacation in the Golden Age,” a series of biweekly posts reviewing each issue of Astounding Science Fiction from July 1939 through December 1950. He is the Evernote Ambassador for paperless lifestyle, writing frequently about going paperless. Jamie lives in Falls Church, Virginia with his wife and two children. Find him on Twitter at @jamietr.

The Infill Trait
C.C. Finlay

Every time I fall asleep I wake up in a different body.

Every time I wake up I know one thing and one thing only. Everything that follows starts from that one thing, the only thing that matters, and what matters is who we are and who we want to be, because no one else can ever be the we for me.

I snap awake and know one thing.

I am a hero I am a terrorist.

A wrinkled old hand shakes my wrist again. This is what woke me this time, in this new body, this odd body, and because I am disoriented, I slap the hand away, try to jump to my feet to run, but, because it is a new body, a body unfamiliar, I trip and fall.

I hit the carpet, with one arm fortunately flopped under my face. My drool-slicked cheek comes to rest on my wrist. A stuffed toy—a threadbare dog—spills from my fingers. My stomach wants to spill on the floor beside it.

The same wrinkled hand reaches for me again. My head rolls sideways, so I can look up the arm’s bony brown length. At the other end is an old Indian woman in an orange sari, with gray hair braided down to her waist. Worry furrows her brow and a tiny fear is planted in her eyes. She speaks a language I don’t understand.

“I am a hero I am a terrorist,” I whisper.

It’s the one and only thing I know. Everything that follows starts with that one piece of knowledge. Even so, I have enough sense to mumble the final word. Because I’ve been here before, must have been here immediately before, in the body before. So I have an awareness, immediately aware of the something-in-the-airness.

Voices buzz in half a dozen languages. Announcements in English and Spanish sound through an intercom. Feet rush past, fleeing suitcases on tiny wheels down long corridors. Something roars.

The airport.

Right. Definitely not the place to share that I am a hero I am a terrorist. Too many civilians here, but no one clear to know, not even security. Our only real security will come from the IPAE protocol: infiltrate, penetrate, assassinate, extricate.

So I can’t let them find out I have the infill trait.

Only five to ten seconds have passed. I slap my face, pinch my cheek with rough uneven fingernails—who is this person who chews their fingernails?—trying to shift from inert to alert, sickly to quickly, to remember where I am, who I was.

I came to La Guardia Airport in New York with a ticket to London. I want to go to England because the only person who can help me is Dr. Anna Backer, at All Souls College in Oxford. I’ve read her research on identity. She can explicate the infill trait, help me sublimate, eradicate . . .

The old Indian woman snatches the dog and leapfrogs back like I might attack. She can’t know that I won’t harm her because she has no armor. My arm. The one that’s down, it’s thin and brown. I realize I’m a young Indian boy, an age between ten and fourteen. A fresh sheen of sweat forms on my skin.

I roll over, pat my shirt, my pockets—I no longer have a ticket, an ID, any money. It makes me sick; it’s not me, not funny.

The old lady may have them for me, or for the boy who was her grandson, who’s undone, now that he’s me. She steps back, her face still more worry than fury. I could try to reason with her. Or, better, I could ignore her and try to find my prior body—

An emergency cart, red light spinning, alarm beeping.

My heart races, I fumble afoot, stumble apart. The cart parks one gate over, where I notice a superfluity of Transportation Security Administration agents. They are not transporting anything, they aren’t secure, and they don’t have agency. What they have is their hands on their hips, inflated looks of self-importance, and a body lying on the floor.

My prior body, alas, nobody any more.

His name was Konrad Jerzy, and he was a data warehousing expert being sent to England to consult for a client, or so I guessed from the papers I found in his room. He pushed himself too hard, lived constantly on the edge of exhaustion. I was only in his body for nine and a half hours.

They won’t be able to wake him up again.

I’m sorry that he’s dead. Not that he was a particularly good or bad man, but he could have been useful to me. Once I had identified him in the hotel airport last night, I had to move quickly to seduce him with a red-headed call girl that I drugged to fall asleep at the moment I could no longer keep my prior body’s prior body’s prior body.

Sometimes I have to wire the prior so it doesn’t tire.

Konrad Jerzy needed fire. Goddamned Konrad Jerzy. Damned in fact, but no god and no good, and his damned no-good connecting flight to London through Montreal. I knew I should have tried for someone with a direct flight out of JFK. But beggars can’t be choosers, and because I chose poorly I’m about to be a loser.

The old Indian woman is not in my way, but I knock her down just for spite, and stroll casually toward the security checkpoint.

My body is light on its feet, fleet, discreet, and full of energy. It has been a lifetime since I have been a twelve-year-old boy, a boy between ten and fourteen. A lifetime, and that was in my own body, a dozen priors ago, a dozen times asleep, all since my breakout, the fakeout, the takeout that set me free from the training cell at Langley.

The TSA agents glance up as I pass, but for the moment they are more interested in the man who fell asleep in his chair and died. It’s as if they know that airport seats are designed to be so uncomfortable that no one could ever fall asleep in one, and that way no one could ever fall asleep and die in one, and so what they have witnessed, in finding Jerzy’s dead body, is not only unfortunate but ought to have been impossible.

If they want to know impossible, they should walk with, talk with me.

Behind me, the old woman shouts “Anand!”

A small Indian girl, maybe five or six runs after me, shouting the same name. So that is my name now. Anand, Anon, Anonymous, Anandymous. I like it.

Nearing the checkpoint, one of the TSA agents, an overweight black woman with a friendly smile and a clear intent to be helpful, steps in front of me, waving her hands. “Hold on, honey. Hold on. If you go out that gate I can’t let you back in—”

I dodge her and dash through.

I hear the old woman shouting, and now the TSA agent starts shouting, and I could shout too as I weave in and out of the crowd trying to get lost because I know I’m in trouble. I have committed to a course of action with limited options, in a concourse with limited exits and zero hiding places. They have to be designed that way because of terrorists of heroes.

The intercom crackles overhead. “Will Anand Mukherjee please report to the nearest Transportation Security Administration Agent?”

Well fuck me.

I duck when I see heads stretch over the crowds to look for me. I fall in beside a laughing family making their way toward the exit.

A little boy, maybe two years old, in a Mets ball cap, stares over his mother’s shoulder at me. His eyes are wide with fear. He sees. Little children haven’t yet learned to be trapped in their own bodies yet, so they can see someone else who also isn’t trapped.

Don’t fall asleep, I want to tell him in a singsong voice. Don’t ever fall asleep around me. I’ll steal your body and throw your soul away.

“There he is,” a voice shouts behind me.

Three security guards have spotted me. They’re spreading out to surround me.

A large TSA agent speaks into the radio on his shoulder like he’s a real cop. More will be coming so I need to act fast.

They’re treating me like a terrorist like a hero.

Fortunately I have been training to be a hero be a terrorist. They don’t know that I exist, and they don’t know what they don’t know, and so they can’t see I’ve got to go.

I push through the family, pinching the mother with the baby so she almost drops him. Maximum screaming and confusion results. The father is carrying a bunch of bags and has some larger rugrats hanging onto his sleeves. He yells but has no chance to catch me. Instant traffic jam slams the corridor.

Fleet, discreet, light on my feet. Heads are turning toward the commotion, and turning toward me in motion, from every direction but one. A young woman totters along in 4-inch heels and talks too intently on her cellphone to see me coming up behind her.

Even in heels she’s not much taller than I am. I bump into her and grab the phone as I run past.

“Sorry,” I say to the stranger on the phone, just before I hang up. “Jimmy doesn’t live here any more.”

My voice sounds young and strangely accented.

Poor Anand. I’m sure he had such a promising future.

I hop down an escalator and hurry through baggage claim.

An exit opens ahead of me like the promise of a better life, like the chance to make a difference in the world, and I sprint for it.

A massive hand closes on my shoulder. The thumb screws down like a vise in the blade.

“Got him!”

Twisting free doesn’t work, so I scream. “Rape!”

“What? I’m not—”

He’s almost shocked enough to let go, but he doesn’t. It was worth a try. Still is. “He’s trying to molest me! Rape! Rape! Somebody help me! Help!”

A whole crowd responds. A group of corn-fed white boys built like factory-assembled offensive linemen from a major college football team come over to see what the brown-skinned security man is doing to the little brown-skinned boy.

I reach down, grab the guard’s nuts, and twist them like a bottle cap.

He squeals and lets go.

I stagger away from him, shouting, “Oh my god, he touched me, mommy, help me! Did you see him touch me? Help!”

Everyone looks at him.

I slip between them and run out the automatic doors. Down the sidewalk, past a long row of windows.

My reflection keeps pace with me, only the face with me isn’t Anand Mukherjee. It’s the haggard face of another young man, starved for light and fed on speed, a face of need, the babyface of the volunteer who wanted to serve his country in the war on terror. The face of a zero of an error.

I give the other me a little wave, a little grin, a whisper. “Hi, Jimmy.”

Jimmy scowls back. Jimmy never smiles.

Jimmy was a soldier who answered a call and went to Langley to learn the protocol. IPAE: infiltrate, penetrate, assassinate, extricate. It all starts with the I that is not I only, the I that can pass as a we. Jimmy was the prototype for the protocol, the only one of the recruits who could demonstrate the I-into-we, who had the infill trait.

Then it’s bye-bye, Jimmy. I dodge cabs and cars, skip across the road—literally skip across the road, since I’m a 12-year-old Indian boy and Indian boys skip, don’t they?—to the parking garage, where I scurry down a level, crouch low, and zigzag through the maze of SUVs.

Off in a corner, I sag against a tire.

I’m tired, suddenly so tired. Anand shouldn’t be tired. But I am tired, I’ve been on the run for three weeks through a dozen prior bodies, and I don’t dare fall asleep. Every time I fall asleep I wake up in a different body. Every time I fall asleep someone ends up dead.

So far none of the dead have been a target that I was supposed to infiltrate, in a group that I should penetrate so that I could assassinate to make America safer. They’ve just been ordinary Americans, innocent Americans, white and yellow, black and brown, they all fall down, the men and women, young and old, all go cold.

They’re collateral damage. Collateral, which is like what you give to a bank to get a loan. I think they’re the price we pay to the bankers as security to have security . . .

My head hurts. I have to stop thinking when the thinks stop making sense. Sweat drips from my hair and fills my eyes with salty water. It stings and it flows into my eyes and it flows out of my eyes and it stings.

When I wipe my forehead, I notice blood under my fingernails. Where did I get the blood?

Dr. Backer!

Bloody Dr. Backer, think I, in an English accent. English patient, English eager. I still hold the phone I stole. And I know Dr. Backer’s number. I enter it with my sweaty, bloody, nail-chewed finger.

The phone on the other end rings. I don’t know why that surprises me, but it does.

“The Oxford Centre for Neuroethics.”

The woman’s English accent nearly makes me orgasm. I say, “Oh, oh, oh!”

I’m hilarious. I have charm. Charm disarms people, and a soldier, a spy, has to be able to disarm people. That’s one of the reasons why I was chosen to be an infiltrator.

After a pause, probably to laugh, the woman says, “I beg your pardon.”

“Sorry. I need Dr. Anna Backer.”

“May I tell her who’s calling?”

“I need bloody Dr. Backer right now!”

There’s silence on the other end and I’m afraid that she’s hung up, but a moment later comes the familiar voice, the soothing voice, the moving voice.

“James,” she says.

I don’t like that name. When I was James, I was never James, I was Jimmy, I was corporal, I was shit-for-brains. But Jimmy’s gone, he’s gone daddy gone, has been gone ever since the day he woke up I woke up in someone else’s body. James was a good soldier, but he died when he didn’t wake up. He died an error a zero so that I could wake up a hero a terrorist.

“James,” Dr. Backer says, “you frightened our student.”

“Terror reaches, but fear teaches,” I say. “Did the student learn something from being frightened? Tell me what she learned, Dr. Backer.”

“The only reason I’m taking this phone call from you is because I’m worried you may hurt yourself or someone else.”

“It doesn’t hurt. I told you, it never hurts. I fall asleep in one body, I wake up in another. I feel sick when I wake up, and sometimes I even throw up, but—”

“I don’t want you to hurt anyone else, James.”

“It can’t hurt anyone else. They just fall asleep and then they don’t wake up. I told you, it doesn’t hurt.”

There is a pause. Clearly, she is accepting the reason of what I say. I know it’s hard to believe, but the logic is inescapable. “James,” she says finally. “You know that what you’re describing is impossible.”

“Why is it impossible?” I shout. “Consciousness is nothing but data, zeros and ones in a biological wet drive. It’s just like moving the contents from one computer to another over a wireless connection. You know quantum physics, Dr. Backer—we’re all part of a giant wireless connection called the universe.”

“Those are metaphors—”

I don’t blame her for saying that—I know they’re making her say that—but I don’t have time to let her finish. “They’re not just metaphors any more. I have the infill trait. My consciousness can jump from one wet drive to another. Just like you write about in your papers. That’s why I need your help.”

She pauses again. “I agree that you do need help.”

“I can’t control it, except by being close to the next body I want to jump into when we’re both asleep. And that’s no good. The doctors and officers at Langley, they don’t trust me any more. I need to control what I do, so I can show them. I want to be a hero so I can be a terrorist.”

A pause. “I think you’re confused.”

“What? No. Wait. I want to be a terrorist so I can be a hero. A hero a terrorist—they’re the same thing—”

Oh, God, my head hurts. Sweat is pouring into my eyes, my eyes are overflowing with sweat.

“James,” she says. Her voice is a lull in the storm, a warm in the cool, a worm in the skull. She’s worming into my skull. “I don’t think you want to hurt anyone else—”

“I told you it doesn’t hurt!” I punch the car next to me, leaving a huge dent in its side; the car alarm goes off and I have to run, saying “see what you did, see what you made me do, see what you ruined, see,” as I run toward the other end of the garage and up a level.

People stare at me, but I ignore them, I have to run, I run to have, I’m gasping, and I stumble, crying, “Are you still there, Dr. Backer, please don’t leave me Dr. Backer, I’m scared, Dr. Backer, I’m,” it hurts to breathe, “bloody,” it hurts, “Dr. Backer.”

“I’m here, James,” she says. “Where are you right now?”

“Why are you trying to trick me? I ask the questions. If you won’t help me, at least tell me why they are trying to kill me. I did everything they asked me to do—I learned how to become the enemy so even the enemy doesn’t know I’m the good guy. I can infiltrate. I have the infill trait.”

“You cannot project yourself into someone else’s body.”

“It’s not projection. You erase the wet drive when it’s sleeping and then fill it in again with someone new. When you project, you reject, you eject—that’s not it. You empty, then you fill it in.”

“James, there’s no such thing as the infill trait.”

“Then how am I sitting here staring at the brown hand of a 12-year-old Indian boy?” I stare at my own tiny brown hand, my shaking hand. “Hold on, I got an idea, hold on—I’ll take a picture of it with the camera phone and I’ll show you.”

My voice shakes, that I figured this out, that I can kill her doubt with proof.

“Calm down,” she says calmly. “Breathe deeply,” she says, taking a deep breath. “James.”

I hyperventilate and speak emphatically. “Don’t! Call! Me! James! Don’t don’t don’t don’t!”

The phone is a shattered mess of plastic shards and metal scraps on the floor where I smashed it. My palm is sliced and bleeding.

“They just lost the signal,” a voice says from two rows away. Feet pound on the concrete running my direction.

“I thought I heard something down here,” says a second voice.

“Who are we looking for?”

“Somebody Homeland Security wants. But they didn’t give us a picture or even a description.”

“So what’re we supposed to do—arrest everyone?

“Just kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out.”

They both laugh.

I scoot under a van—I’m lucky Anand is so small—and sweep in the phone parts with me just seconds before two pairs of cop shoes trot past. Everyone is looking for me now.

The radio squawks, and I don’t understand the words, but the first voice says, “Somebody thinks they spied him on the upper level,” and then the feet pound up the ramp and are gone.

As soon as they are gone, I climb out from under the van and walk the opposite direction, with my head down. A man in a suit, with a carry-on slung over his shoulder, a phone held up to one ear, and a key fob in the other hand, hurries along the row, clicking to find his car.

The bland sedan beside me beeps.

Things happen to me because they’re meant to be for we.

Suit bounces around the front of the car, saying, “yeah, hey, I finally found the rental, yeah, right where I left it, so I’ll call you back next week—”

“Excuse me, sir,” I say in my most plaintive voice as I approach him, holding up my bloody hand. “I’ve just been attacked and I need help. Can you call 911, please?”

I see all the different reactions people have to me when I’m inside different bodies. If I were a man right now, if I were the soldier who went to Langley to have my ganglia rearranged, then Suit would be nervous to see me approach him. Defensive. He would back away. Instead, he just looks momentarily puzzled.

That moment is all I need to step in and crush his windpipe with a finger strike to his throat.

“It’s for your country,” I whisper to his startled eyes.

In this body, I can’t reach high enough to get him with an elbow strike to the temple, so it’s a heel to his knee instead. I make it look like I’m trying to catch him as he falls, but I smash his head into the door.

A quick glance around shows nobody watching me. I love public spaces—they’re so private.

I grab the key fob and pop open the trunk to roll him in. That’s hard work for my size, but I get it done quickly. I slip on his jacket and sunglasses to hide the fact that I’m twelve years old. His wallet, full of cash, and phone go into my pocket.

This is good. The people looking for Anand won’t expect him to drive away. I pull the seat all the way up so I can reach the pedals. Then I put the key in the ignition.

The Somali woman working in the booth barely looks twice as she takes the ticket and the money.

In moments I’m heading southeast on Grand Central Parkway for J.F.K. Airport. It’s a good time to call bloody Dr. Backer back.

This time she picks up the phone directly and I recognize her voice as soon as she says, “Hello.”

“Is this Dr. Anna Backer?”

“You recognize my voice and I recognize yours.”

It makes me angry, but I control myself. “Is this the Dr. Anna Backer who wrote the article on ‘Thought Insertion and Moral Intention’?”

“James, listen to me. I’m only talking to you because I’m afraid that you might hurt yourself or someone else—”

“I’m asking the questions here. Is this the Dr. Anna Backer who wrote ‘The Alienation of the Self and the Epistemology of Self-Knowledge’?”

“James—”

“Is it?” I scream.

A pause. “James, you know it is.”

“Then how can you tell me that what I’m experiencing is impossible? The CIA trained me to insert my thoughts into others, with the moral intention of penetrating terrorist organizations, so that I could assassinate their leaders and protect freedom, our freedom.”

“You know the authorities in Langley deny that—”

“If they didn’t do this to me, then how could I keep my knowledge of myself every time I hop from one body to the next? I couldn’t. It would be impossible. Therefore, that proves that they did this to me.”

There’s no way she can refute that. Because it’s true.

“Let me tell you exactly what they said when I contacted them about you.” I hear tapping on a keypad. “They said that Jimmy van der Leur came to them from Army Intelligence for specialized training in psych ops, and that he—

“He died. I know that’s what they say.” I put a hand up to cover the side of my face as a patrol car passes me. “Except I didn’t die. I woke up in another body, which is what they were training me to do, only it was the wrong body—he was an analyst who fell asleep at his desk, and they freaked out.”

More taps. “James Ricordi.”

“What about him?” I ask.

“He was the analyst working in psych ops who disappeared.”

“He didn’t disappear. I had to get out, because they were talking about shutting down the program, because they thought I was joking when I said I was Jimmy van der Leur. So I went to get the Chinese takeout, only I didn’t come back.”

“James Ricordi didn’t come back.”

“There was no back for him to come to. He was gone, gone daddy gone, long gone, so long and good night. I fell asleep in his body while I was driving, and the car crashed, which woke up a trucker parked on the berm, only when he woke up it was me waking up for we.”

“The American officials say that never happened. They say they’re still looking for James Ricordi.”

“They’re liars!”

Another long pause.

“Three weeks ago,” I say. “There was a car wreck on I-70, just past Goodland, KS. It was James Ricordi’s car. I was . . . I was going to Vegas. My brother lives there, I thought maybe he could help me. After I woke up in the trucker, a real mother-fucker, I knew I couldn’t get near my brother without possibly killing him too.” I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that. Sweat pours from my head into my eyes, overflows my eyes. It stings. “So I started reading and that’s how I found you.”

More keyboard taps. Taps for Jimmy van der Leur, taps for James Ricordi, taps for the truck driver . . .

“Maybe they are liars,” she says finally. Finally, she says, “Maybe we should meet somewhere to talk.”

And that’s when I know they got to her. I should’ve waited to contact her until I got to England, but someone in the government traced my calls to her, and now it’s too late. They got to her but they won’t get to me.

“Thank you,” I say calmly, “but I changed my mind. I have to take care of this myself.”

I throw the phone out the window and drive until I see the signs pointing to JFK.

I pull into the long-term parking lot and settle down in the back seat. It’ll be a while before anyone comes looking for Mr. Suit or his missing rental car. Plenty long enough for me to take a nap.

A groan emerges from the trunk, like a drunk, in a funk, and I realize I better make sure Mr. Suit can’t ever wake up can’t ever fall asleep again because I don’t want to wake up trapped in the trunk of a rental car. I’ll have to do this quickly while he’s still concussed.

I slip off his jacket, look around to see that no one’s near, and pop the trunk. When he rolls toward the light, I toss the coat over his face and grab his throat. “Go to sleep,” I say. “Just go to sleep.”

But my small hands have a hard time choking him when he struggles, so I grope for the tire iron and smash his head. Struggle stops. I take the pointed end and stab it down through bone where his head is until his legs stop twitching.

“It’s nothing personal,” I whisper. “You’re collateral damage in the war on terror. Collateral, it’s like what you give to a bank to get a loan. You’re just the price we pay as security to have security . . . ”

My head hurts. I have to stop thinking when the thinks stop making sense, so I slam the trunk shut and it doesn’t hurt anymore. I wipe my forehead automatically, but I haven’t even broken a sweat. There is blood on my hand.

One thing and one thing only, that’s all I know. Everything that follows starts from that one thing, the only thing that matters, and what matters is who we are and who we want to be, because no one else can ever be the we for me.

I am a heroist I am a terror.

In the back seat of the car, I settle down to fall asleep. Every time I fall asleep I wake up in a different body. This time, when I wake up again I want to be surprised.

It could be in the body of a pilot on an international flight, and I could crash the plane if I wanted to, blaming some other country, and then we’d have to go to war. It could be the body of a cop or soldier, who empties his weapons into a crowded restaurant or office while quoting some other religion, and that would fan the fires of hate. It could be your baby, the one asleep right now in your stroller, where I hide like a latent disease just as long as it takes to jump to someone else. Maybe you.

Sleep well, when you sleep.

I’ll be out here heroing, looking for a way to fight the terror for you, prototyping the protocol. I will penetrate, assassinate, and extricate. I have to. I have the infill trait.

© 2013 C.C. Finlay

C.C. Finlay is the author of the Traitor to the Crown historical fantasy trilogy, which began with The Patriot Witch (2009), as well as a stand-alone fantasy, The Prodigal Troll. He's published more than forty stories, many of which have been reprinted in volumes of the Year's Best Science Fiction, Year's Best Fantasy, Best New Horror, and other anthologies. His short fiction has been translated into a dozen languages and his stories have been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, Sidewise, and Sturgeon awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife, novelist Rae Carson. Visit his website: ccfinlay.com.

Eight Episodes
Robert Reed

With minimal fanfare and next to no audience, Invasion of a Small World debuted in the summer of 2016, and after a brief and disappointing run, the series was deservedly shelved.

One glaring problem was its production values: Computer animation had reached a plateau where reality was an easy illusion, spectacle was the industry norm, and difficult tricks like flowing water and human faces were beginning to approximate what was real. Yet the show’s standards were barely adequate, even from an upstart Web network operating with limited capital and too many hours of programming to fill. The landscapes and interior shots would have been considered state-of-the-art at the turn of the century, but not in its premiere year. The characters were inflicted with inexpressive faces and stiff-limbed motions, while their voices were equally unconvincing, employing amateur actors or some cut-rate audio-synthesis software. With few exceptions, the dialogue was sloppy, cluttered with pauses and clumsy phrasing, key statements often cut off in midsentence. Most critics decided that the series’ creators were striving for a real-life mood. But that was purely an interpretation. Press kits were never made available, and no interviews were granted with anyone directly involved in the production, leaving industry watchers entirely to their own devices—another problem that served to cripple Invasion.

Other factors contributed to the tiny audience. One issue that couldn’t be discussed openly was the racial makeup of the cast. Success in the lucrative North American market meant using characters of obvious European extraction. Yet the series’ leading man was an Indian astronomer working at a fictional college set in, of all places, South Africa. With an unpronounceable name and thick accent, Dr. Smith—as his few fans dubbed him—was a pudgy, prickly creation with a weakness for loud shirts and deep belches. His wife was a homely apparition who understood nothing about his world-shaking work, while his children, in direct contrast to virtually every other youngster inhabiting popular entertainment, were dimwitted creatures offering nothing that was particularly clever or charming.

A paucity of drama was another obvious weakness. The premiere episode involved a routine day in Dr. Smith’s life. Eighteen hours of unexceptional behavior was compressed to fifty-three minutes of unexceptional behavior. Judging by appearances, the parent network inserted commercial breaks at random points. The series’ pivotal event was barely noticed by the early viewers: One of Dr. Smith’s graduate students was working with Permian-age rock samples, searching for key isotopes deposited by ancient supernovae. The student asked her professor about a difficult piece of lab equipment. As always, the dialogue was dense and graceless, explaining almost nothing to the uninitiated. Genuine scientists—some of the series’ most unapologetic fans—liked to point out that the instruments and principles were genuine, though the nomenclature was shamelessly contrived. Fourteen seconds of broadcast time introduced a young graduate student named Mary—a mixed-race woman who by no measure could be considered attractive. She was shown asking Dr. Smith for help with the problematic instrument, and he responded with a wave of a pudgy hand and a muttered, “Later.” Following ads for tiny cars and a powerful asthma medicine, the astronomer ordered his student to come to his office and lock the door behind her. What happened next was only implied. But afterwards Dr. Smith was seen sitting with his back to his desk and his belt unfastened, and the quick-eyed viewer saw Mary’s tiny breasts vanish under a bra and baggy shirt. Some people have interpreted her expression as pain, emotional or otherwise. Others have argued that her face was so poorly rendered that it was impossible to fix any emotion to her, then or later. And where good writers would have used dialogue to spell out the importance of the moment, bad writers decided to ignore the entire interpersonal plotline. With a casual voice, Mary mentioned to her advisor/lover that she had found something strange in the Permian stone.

“Strange,” he repeated.

With her thumb and finger, she defined a tiny space. “Metal. A ball.”

“Ball?”

“In the rock.”

Smith scratched his fat belly for a moment, saying nothing. (Judging by log tallies, nearly 10 percent of the program’s small audience turned away at that point.) Then he quietly said to her, “I do not understand.”

“What it is . . .”

“What?”

She said, “I don’t know either.”

“In what rock?”

“Mine. The mudstone—”

“You mean it’s artificial . . . ?”

“Looks so,” she answered.

He said, “Huh.”

She finished buttoning her shirt, the back of her left hand wiping at the corner of her mouth.

“Where?” Smith asked.

She gave the parent rock’s identification code.

“No, the metal ball,” he interrupted. “Where is it now?”

“My desk drawer. In a white envelope.”

“And how big?”

“Two grains of rice, about.”

Then, one last time, the main character said, “Huh.” And, finally, without any interest showing in his face, he fastened his belt.

The next three episodes covered not days, but several months. Again, none of the scientific work was explained, and nothing resembling a normal plotline emerged from the routine and the tedious. The increasingly tiny audience watched Dr. Smith and two of his graduate students working with an object almost too small to be resolved on the screen—another significant problem with the series. Wouldn’t a human-sized artifact have made a greater impact? The ball’s metal shell proved to be an unlikely alloy of nickel and aluminum. Cosmic radiation and tiny impacts had left the telltale marks one would expect after a long drifting journey through space. Using tiny lasers, the researchers carefully cut through the metal shell, revealing a diamond interior. Then the diamond heart absorbed a portion of the laser’s energy, and once charged, it powered up its own tiny light show. Fortunately a nanoscopic camera had been inserted into the hole, and the three scientists were able to record what they witnessed—a rush of complex images coupled with an increasingly sophisticated array of symbols.

“What is this?” they kept asking one another.

“Maybe it’s language,” Mary guessed. Correctly, as it happened. “Someone’s teaching us . . . trying to . . . a new language.”

Dr. Smith gave her a shamelessly public hug.

Then the other graduate student—a Brazilian fellow named Carlos—pointed out that, whatever the device was, Mary had found it in rock that was at least a quarter of a billion years old. “And that doesn’t count the time this little machine spent in space, which could be millions more years.”

After the show’s cancellation, at least one former executive admitted to having been fooled. “We were promised a big, loud invasion,” he told an interviewer from Rolling Stone. “I talked to the series’ producer. He said an invasion would begin right after episode four. Yeah, we knew the build-up was going to be slow. But then aliens from the dinosaur days were going to spring to life and start burning cities.”

“Except,” said the interviewer.

“What?”

“That’s not quite true. The Permian happened before there were any dinosaurs.”

With a shrug, the ex-executive brushed aside that mild criticism. “Anyway, the important thing is that bad-ass aliens were supposed to come out of the rock. They were going to grow huge and start kicking us around. At least that’s what the production company—EXL Limited—assured us. A spectacle. And since we didn’t have to pay much for those episodes, we ended up purchasing the first eight shows after seeing only a few minutes of material . . .”

Invasion was cancelled after the fifth episode.

The final broadcast episode was an artless synopsis of the next twenty months of scientific work. Dr. Smith and his students were just a tiny portion of a global effort. Experts on six continents were making a series of tiny, critical breakthroughs. Most of the story involved faceless researchers exchanging dry e-mails about the tiny starship’s text and images. Translations were made; every shred of evidence began to support the obvious but incredible conclusions. The culminating event was a five-minute news conference. Dripping sweat, shaking from nerves, the astronomer explained to reporters that he had found a functioning starship on Earth. After a glancing thanks to unnamed colleagues, he explained how, in the remote past, perhaps long before there was multicellular life on Earth, an alien species had manufactured trillions of tiny ships like this one. The ships were cast off into space, drifting slowly to planetary systems scattered throughout the galaxy. The vessel that he had personally recovered was already ancient when it dropped onto a river bottom near the edge of Gondwanaland. Time had only slightly degraded its onboard texts—a history of the aliens and an explanation into the nature of life in the universe. By all evidence, he warned, human beings were late players to an old drama. And like every other intelligent species in the universe, they would always be small in numbers and limited in reach.

The final scene of that fifth episode was set at Dr. Smith’s home. His oldest son was sitting before a large plasma screen, destroying alien spaceships with extraordinarily loud weapons. In what proved to be the only conversation between those two characters, Smith sat beside his boy, asking, “Did you see me?”

“What?”

“The news conference—”

“Yeah, I watched.”

“So?” he said. And when no response was offered, he asked, “What did you think?”

“About what?”

“The lesson—”

“What? People don’t matter?” The boy froze the battle scene and put down his controls. “I think that’s stupid.”

His father said nothing.

“The universe isn’t empty and poor.” The boy was perhaps fourteen, and his anger was the most vivid emotion in the entire series. “Worlds are everywhere, and a lot of them have to have life.”

“Millions are blessed, yes,” Dr. Smith replied, “but hundreds of billions more are too hot, too cold. They are metal-starved, or married to dangerous suns.”

His son stared at the frozen screen, saying nothing.

“The alien texts only confirm our most recent evidence, you know. The Earth is a latecomer. Stellar births are slowing, in the Milky Way, and everywhere, and the production of terrestrial worlds peaked two or three billion years before our home was created.”

“These texts of yours . . . they say that intelligent life stays at home?”

“Most of the time, yes.”

“Aliens don’t send out real starships?”

“It is far too expensive,” Smith offered.

The boy pushed out his lower lip. “Humans are different,” he maintained.

“No.”

“We’re going to build a working stardrive. Soon, I bet. And then we’ll visit our neighboring stars and colonize those worlds—”

“We can’t.”

“Because they tell us we can’t?”

“Because it is impossible.” His father shook his head, saying with authority, “The texts are explicit. Moving large masses requires prohibitive energies. And terraforming is a difficult, often impossible trick. And that is why almost every world that we have found to date looks as sterile as the day they were born.”

But the teenage boy would accept none of that. “You know, don’t you? That these aliens are just lying to us? They’re afraid of human beings, because they know we’re the toughest, meanest things in the universe. And we’re going to take them on.”

For a long moment, Dr. Smith held silent.

Then the boy continued his game, and into the mayhem of blasters, the father mouthed a single dismissive word: “Children.”

Eighteen months later, the fledging Web network declared bankruptcy, and a small consortium acquired its assets, including Invasion of a Small World. Eager to recoup their investment, the new owners offered all eight episodes as a quick-and-dirty DVD package. When sales proved somewhat better than predicted, a new version was cobbled together, helped along by a genuine ad budget. The strongest initial sales came from the tiny pool of determined fans—young and well-educated, with little preference for nationality or gender. But the scientists in several fields, astronomy and paleontology included, were the ones who created a genuine buzz that eventually put Invasion into the public eye.

The famous sixth episode helped trigger the interest: That weak, rambling tale of Dr. Smith, his family and students, was temporarily suspended. Instead, the full fifty-three minutes were dedicated to watching a barren world spinning silently in deep space. According to corporate memos, the last three episodes arrived via the Web, bundled in a single package. But it was this episode that effectively killed the series. There were no explanations. Nothing showed but the gray world spinning, twenty minutes before the point-of-view gradually pulled away. The world was just a tiny speck of metal lost in the vastness of space. For astronomers, it was a fascinating moment—a vivid illustration that the universe could be an exceedingly boring place. Stars were distant points of light, and there was only silence, and even when millions of years were compressed into a nap-length moment, nothing was produced that could be confused for great theatre.

But what the astronomers liked best—what got the buzz going—were the final few minutes of the episode. Chance brought the tiny starship into the solar system, and chance guided it past a younger Saturn. The giant moon, Titan, swung close before the ship was kicked out to Neptune’s orbit. Then it drifted sunward again, Mars near enough to reveal its face. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, Titan was bathed in a much denser atmosphere, while Mars was a temporarily wet world, heated by a substantial impact event. Experts in those two worlds were impressed. Only in the last year or two, probes had discovered what Invasion predicted on its own, including pinpointing the impact site near the Martian South Pole.

In much the same way, episode seven made the paleontologists crazy.

With its long voyage finished, the tiny starship struck the Earth’s upper atmosphere, quickly losing its momentum as well as a portion of its hull. The great southern continent was rendered accurately enough to make any geologist smile, while the little glimpses of Permian ecosystems were even more impressive. Whoever produced the series (and there was a growing controversy on that matter), they had known much about protomammals and the early reptiles, cycads and tree ferns. One ancient creature—lizard in form, though not directly related to any modern species—was the only important misstep. Yet five months later, a team working in South Africa uncovered a set of bones that perfectly matched what a vanished dramatic series had predicted . . . and what was already a cultish buzz grew into a wild, increasingly public cacophony . . .

At least forty thousand sites—chat rooms and blogs and such—were dedicated to supporting the same inevitable conclusion.

By means unknown, aliens had sent a message to earthlings, and it took the form of Invasion of a Small World.

The eighth episode was a genuine treasure.

Dr. Smith reappeared. Several years older, divorced, and with his belly fat stripped off by liposuction, he was shown wandering happily through a new life of endless celebrity. His days and long evenings were spent with at least three mistresses as well as a parade of world leaders. Accustomed to the praise of others, he was shown grinning confidently while offering his interpretations of the ancient message. The universe was almost certainly sprinkled with life, he explained. But despite that prolificacy, the cosmos remained an enormous, very cold, and exceptionally poor place. The gulfs between living worlds were completely unbridgeable. No combination of raw energy and questing genius could build a worthy stardrive. Moreover, even direct communication between local species was rarely worth its considerable cost, since civilizations rarely if ever offered each other anything with genuine worth.

“Technology has distinct limits,” he warned the starlets and world leaders that he met at cocktail parties. “Humans are already moving into the late stages of scientific endeavor. What matters most, to us and to any wise species, is the careful shepherding of energy and time. That is why we must care for our world and the neighboring planets inside our own little solar system. We must treasure every day while wasting nothing, if only to extend our histories as far as into the future as possible.”

“That strikes me as such depressing news,” said one prime minister—a statuesque woman blessed with a starlet’s beautiful face. “If there really are millions and billions of living worlds, as you claim, and if all the great minds on all of those worlds are thinking hard about this single problem, shouldn’t somebody learn how to cheat the speed of light or create free energy through some clever trick?”

“If that were so,” Dr. Smith replied, “then every world out there would be alive, and the giant starships would arrive at our doorstep every few minutes. But instead, human experience has discovered precisely one starfaring vessel, and it was a grain of metallic dust, and to reach us it had to be exceptionally lucky, and, even then, it had to wait a quarter of a billion years to be noticed.”

The prime minister sipped her virgin mary while chewing on her lower lip. Then with a serious tone, she said, “But to me . . . there seems to be another reasonable explanation waiting for our attention . . .”

“Which would be what, madam?”

“Subterfuge,” she offered. “The aliens are intentionally misleading us about the nature of the universe.”

Bristling, he asked, “And why would they do such a thing?”

“To cripple our future,” she replied. “By convincing us to remain home, they never have to face us between the stars.”

“Perhaps you’re right to think that, madam,” said the old astronomer, nodding without resolve. Then in his final moment in the series’ final episode, he said, “A lie is as good as a pill, if it helps you sleep . . .”

For years, every search to uncover the creative force behind Invasion of a Small World came up empty. And in the public mind, that single mystery remained the final, most compelling part of the story.

Former executives with the doomed network had never directly met with the show’s producers. But they could recount phone conversations and teleconferences and e-mails exchanged with three apparent producers. Of course, by then, it was possible to invent a digital human face and voice while weaving a realistic mix of human gestures. Which led some to believe that slippery forces were plainly at work here—forces that no human eye had ever witnessed.

Tracking down the original production company produced only a dummy corporation leading to dusty mailboxes and several defunct Web addresses. Every name proved fictional, both among the company’s officers and those in the brief credits rolling at the end of each episode. Surviving tax forms lacked any shred of useful information. But where the IRS might have chased down a successful cheat, the plain truth was that whoever was responsible for Invasion had signed away all future rights in exchange for a puddle of cash.

The few skeptics wondered if something considerably more ordinary was at play here. Rumors occasionally surfaced about young geniuses working in the Third World—usually in the Indian tech-cities. Employing pirated software and stolen equipment, they had produced what would eventually become the fifth most successful media event in history. But in the short-term, their genius had led nowhere but to obscurity and financial ruin. Three different candidates were identified—young men with creative minds and most of the necessary skills. Did one of them build Invasion alone? Or was it a group effort? And was the project’s failure the reason why each of them committed suicide shortly after the series’ cancellation?

But if they were the creators, why didn’t any trail lead to them? Perhaps because the consortium that held all rights to Invasion had obscured the existing evidence. And why? Obviously to help feed this infectious and delicious mood of suspicion. To maintain an atmosphere where no doubts could find a toehold, where aliens were conversing with humans, and where the money continued to flow to the consortium like a great green river.

The most durable explanation was told by one of the series’ most devoted fans—a Nobel laureate in physics who was happy to beat the drum for the unthinkable. “Invasion is true everywhere but in the specifics,” he argued. “I think there really was an automated starship. But it was bigger than a couple grains of rice. As big as a fist, or a human head. But still small and unmanned. The ship entered our solar system during the Permian. With the bulk of it in orbit, pieces must have landed on our world. Scouts with the size and legs of small cockroaches, maybe. Maybe. And if you take the time to think it through, you see that it would be a pretty silly strategy, letting yourself become a tiny fossil in some enormous bed of mudstone. What are the odds that you’d survive for 250 million years, much else ever get noticed there?

“No, if you are an automated starship, what would be smart is for that orbiting mothership to take a seat where nothing happens and she can see everything. On the moon, I’d guess. She still has the antennas that she used to hear the scouts’ reports. She sleeps and waits for radio signals from the Earth, and when they arrive, she studies what she hears. She makes herself into a student of language and technology. And when the time is ripe—when she has a product to sell—she expels the last of her fuel, leaving the moon to land someplace useful. Which is pretty much anywhere, these days.

“Looking like a roach, maybe, she connects to the Web and offers her services at a cut-rate price.

“And that is how she delivers her message.

“Paraphrasing my fictional colleague, ‘A lie is as good as a truth, if it leads you to enlightenment.’”

The final scene in the last episode only seemed anticlimactic. The one-time graduate student, Mary, had been left behind by world events. From the beginning, her critical part in the research had been downplayed. But the series’ creator, whoever or whatever it was, saw no useful drama in that treachery. The woman was middle-aged and happy in her obscurity, plain as always and pregnant for at least the second time.

A ten-year-old daughter was sitting beside Mary, sharing a threadbare couch.

The girl asked her mother what she believed. Was the universe really so empty and cold? And was this the way it would always be?

Quietly, her mother said, “I think that’s basically true, yes.”

The girl looked saddened.

But then Mary patted her daughter on the back of a hand, smiling with confidence. “But dear, I also believe this,” she said. “Life is an invasion wherever it shows itself. It is relentless and it is tireless, and it conquers every little place where living is possible. And before the universe ends, all the good homes will know the sounds of wet breathing and the singing of glorious songs.”

© 2006 Robert Reed.

Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Robert Reed is the author of more than 200 short stories, which have been published in magazines such as The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Lightspeed, Strange Horizons, Postscripts, Daily SF, and Tor.com. Much of his short work has been collected in three volumes: The Dragons of Springplace, The Cuckoo’s Boys, and Eater-of-Bone and Other Novellas. Reed is a Hugo Award winner (and an eight-time nominee), and he has also been a finalist for the Nebula, World Fantasy, Theodore Sturgeon, and John W. Campbell awards. His latest novel, The Well of Stars, is part of his Great Ship milieu, in which he is currently writing a new trilogy.

PauseTime
Mary Soon Lee

Twenty minutes into the transatlantic flight, Connor started wailing. Pauline cradled him in her arms. Then she rocked him, she offered him her breast, she sang to him; Connor continued to cry.

The man sitting on her right gave her a thin smile. “Did you forget the baby’s pauser code?”

“No,” Pauline mumbled, wishing she could sink through the floor into the cargo hold. “I’ve never used the pauser.”

Connor quieted just long enough for her words to carry to the neighbouring rows. Indignant heads swivelled to glare at her.

“Unbelievable,” said a woman with a Bronx accent, pretending to talk to her husband, but making sure Pauline heard. “Travelling with an unpaused infant should be illegal.”

Her cheeks burning, Pauline stood up with Connor. She contorted her way along the aisle to the restroom. Inside, she checked Connor’s forehead. He didn’t feel warm, but maybe the pressure change had affected his ears, even though she had inserted AirEase discs before take-off.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay,” she told Connor, trying to sway him from side to side without touching the sink or the toilet. He was eight weeks old, and she’d managed not to pause him once, not even when she was exhausted after the delivery. As soon as she had learned she was pregnant, she had resolved never to use the pauser except in a medical emergency. She knew that most parents used PauseTime without a second thought, but she couldn’t persuade herself to join them. Not after how she had grown up.

But Connor looked so devastated, she couldn’t bear it. She cuddled him a minute longer, then pulled down his blanket, and tapped the four-digit code into the pauser-belt round his waist. He vanished, replaced by a baby-shaped darkness, neither cold nor warm, that she couldn’t press her finger into. His little outfit clung to the edge of the darkness.

Pauline stepped out of the restroom, telling herself she had made the right decision. A stewardess whisked the paused bundle from her before she could say anything, and stowed it in the rack with the other infants.

Pauline found Connor’s third month the hardest yet. She had paid for a nurse to stay with her the first week, and then she had hired a home help to come three hours a day. Unfortunately she couldn’t afford long-term help, so now she and Connor were entirely on their own. Whenever Connor napped, she struggled with chores and a huge backlog of work.

Pauline worked mainly from her two-room flat, designing reactive pictures for people with digital walls. During her pregnancy, she had imagined Connor playing happily in the corner while she sat at the computer. Connor had other ideas. He liked to be held. Unless he was sound asleep, he roused when she laid him in his crib.

On good days, he snoozed in her lap as she programmed. On bad days, he craved motion. She switched to data-shades and a voice interface so that she could walk around as she worked, carrying Connor in a sling. But it took twice as long to design even simple animates, and after she tripped over a trash can—too absorbed by the digital overlay to notice where she was actually walking—she abandoned that idea.

Laundry piled up everywhere: Connor spat up on his clothes, on her clothes, on the sheets, on the sofa; his self-cleaning nappies leaked.

A dozen times a day, Pauline was tempted to use the pauser for the second time. But the nights, which she had dreaded, proved easier. When Connor woke up in his crib, she lifted him into the bed beside her. His mouth would open and close in a blind search for her nipple before he latched on, his body a warm snuggle against hers.

It took her brother’s visit to break Pauline’s resolve. Harold phoned up one afternoon to say he was in London for a business meeting, and planned to drop by for breakfast at nine the next morning.

Pauline panicked. She called every cleaning service in the city, but none could come at such short notice. She carried Connor around the flat while she bagged the dirty laundry. She walked him to the baker’s where she paid a ridiculous sum to have fresh croissants delivered by seven the next day. But when she started vacuuming the floor, Connor howled—and she reached for the pauser-belt and tapped in the code.

Furious with herself, she tidied up in a frenzy, while Connor’s silent silhouette lay motionless on the sofa. She barely saw her brother anymore. All her life, she’d been trying to catch up with Harold, to be even half as witty, half as successful, half as confident as he. But Harold lived in a mansion in an exclusive suburb of Paris with three children, a devoted wife, and a team of top-of-the-line robot servitors. However clean her rented flat, she’d hardly manage to impress him.

She told herself Connor wasn’t suffering, wasn’t feeling anything at all. She remembered being paused herself: the brief dislocation as the world flicked ahead—seeing her father wearing a different suit, or finding the lights on and the curtains drawn instead of morning sunlight—nothing more than that. PauseTime itself hadn’t hurt at all, her body skipping past the intervening minutes without a single breath, heartbeat, thought. And surely Connor was too young to understand or mind that he had been paused.

She had no reason to feel guilty, no reason at all. Many parents used pausers regularly, some of them only unpausing their children at the weekends. Maybe people like that should join a Pauser Help Circle or seek professional counselling, but she had only used the pauser twice. It was ridiculous to fret about it.

Harold phoned at eight thirty in the morning. “I’m so sorry, Paulie, something came up. I promise I’ll see you and . . .” a hesitation while he must have checked his wrist-computer “. . . Connor next time I’m passing through. Must dash.”

He hung up before she could say anything.

Pauline delayed as long as she could before resuming client visits. But the day Connor turned five months old, she got an email from a colleague at Cambridge University. Trinity Hall wanted to commission a coordinated suite of seventy reactive murals: Would she be willing to consider the assignment?

She danced around the flat, a puzzled Connor in her arms. Most of her clients were rich individuals, able to afford one or two personalized murals—but to get a chance to design a suite of seventy? She couldn’t wait. She phoned Trinity Hall and arranged to visit the day after next.

The sprinter train from London to Cambridge ran underground in one perfectly straight tunnel, taking just under twenty minutes. Connor’s stroller followed Pauline closely as she walked up out of the station and west through Market Square, a shopping centre crowded with pedestrians and speeding cyclists.

Puffs of scent billowed at her as she hurried past the shops: roses from a florist, citron from a jeweller, leather from a shoemaker. Advertizing jingles accompanied the scents, most of them self-tuning to match her profile, annoying variants on nursery rhymes being especially popular.

Past Market Square the twenty-second century disappeared. Stone walls and wrought-iron fences replaced the rows of shops, and she noticed several students carrying paper books. A narrow alley called Senate House Passage led down to Trinity Hall. She stepped through a stone archway into the college itself. Before her a grassy courtyard opened, bathed in sunlight.

She still had a few minutes before her appointment, so she took Connor out of the stroller for a quick cuddle.

“Ahem.” A tubby man in a black hat, black jacket, black pants, and crisp white shirt stepped out of a room next to the college entrance. “Can I help you?”

“I’m Pauline Foster, I’ve an appointment to see the bursar at eleven.”

“Ah.” The tubby man waggled his fingers at Connor. “The bursar’s not very keen on children. If you like, I could keep your baby with me in the porter’s lodge.”

“Really? Thank you.” She didn’t want to leave Connor, but she didn’t know how to refuse without offending the man. “It’s very kind of you to offer—”

“No trouble. I’ve a grandson looks about the same age.”

The porter reached over and tickled Connor’s tummy. Connor stared up at the man’s face, then his bottom lip quivered, and he started sobbing.

“I’m sorry. He’s not used to other people. I’d better keep him with me.” Pauline rocked Connor in her arms, trying to quiet him. If Connor fussed during her interview, the bursar might have second thoughts about hiring her. Surely it wouldn’t matter if she paused him this once. She kissed Connor on the forehead, then tapped in the pause code.

The interview with the bursar went very well. Trinity Hall would not only pay generously, they were offering her a great deal of freedom in the design. They had reviewed her earlier work, and trusted her to produce an understated collection of murals in keeping with the ambience of the eight-hundred-year-old college.

After signing the contract, Pauline estimated that she would need to work an average of six hours a day to finish within the eight months the agreement specified. The money from Trinity Hall would enable her to hire babysitters, but she didn’t want someone else to watch Connor, she wanted to do it herself.

For a week, she stopped work every time Connor woke up, trying not to think about how far behind she was falling. Finally she admitted that she either had to get babysitters or to use the pauser on a regular basis.

She hated the idea of pausing Connor every day, but that was her own personal hang-up, a legacy of being paused herself as a child—paused for a total of ten years, during which time her “little” brother had barely been paused at all. She dimly remembered the time when Harold was smaller than herself, a chubby Buddha-baby gurgling and spitting up. After that he rapidly overtook her, growing taller, stronger, starting school before her, treating her as a baby when she should have been his big sister. She used to check the readout on her pauser-belt every morning to see if her parents had paused her overnight. Days, sometimes weeks, disappeared at one gulp.

When she was five, she had asked her parents “Why do you pause me? Don’t you like me?”

“Of course we like you, Paulie,” her mother had said, smiling but somehow still looking sad. Her mother picked her up to give her a rare hug, and Pauline held on tight, so tight to her mother’s shoulder, breathing in traces of honeysuckle perfume. “It’s one of those things you’ll understand when you’re older. We want you and Harold to be very, very happy, but it’s complicated.”

“Explain me why,” Pauline had said.

“Later,” her mother told her, loosening Pauline’s grip and setting her down on the floor.

As Pauline had grown older, her parents had come up with an ingenious flotilla of rationalizations for her mounting PauseTime, anything from the importance of Harold getting piano lessons while Monsieur Hubert was available, to the necessity of pausing Pauline until the boarding school had a vacancy for her. Even as a young child, Pauline had understood on some level that they were only excuses. Whether or not they admitted it to themselves, her parents preferred spending time with Harold. Harold was funny, charming, clever. Pauline was a shy, awkward, resentful child.

But she wasn’t her parents. Pausing Connor for a few hours a day would be easier on him than having to adjust to babysitters.

On the eighth morning after signing the Trinity Hall contract, Pauline paused Connor. She unpaused him each time she made herself a cup of tea. She unpaused him for lunch. She stopped work an hour earlier than she had planned.

The next day she only unpaused him for lunch.

A week later, she paused him for a twelve-hour stretch, caught up in a recreation of Trinity Hall through the centuries. When she unpaused him that night, Connor rolled over and smiled at her, unaware that anything odd had happened.

Pauline tickled his toes, so full of happiness she felt as if it were spilling out of her. She had been such a fool, letting her past distort her objectivity. Connor was too young to know that anything strange had happened. And this way she could give him her undivided attention every waking moment of his infancy. That must surely be the best possible upbringing, whether or not she used the pauser to achieve it.

For Connor’s first birthday, Pauline took him to central London. He crawled over the grass in Hyde Park, spending a minute trying to grasp a twig between his thumb and forefinger, then diving down to bite the stick instead. In Trafalgar Square, he buried his face in Pauline’s sweater when a host of rainbow-colored tourist pigeons lifted into the air beside them.

At lunchtime, the smell of curry lured Pauline into an Indian restaurant.

“Paused or Unpaused section?” asked the hostess, a slim young woman in a sari that sang softly whenever she stopped speaking.

“Unpaused.”

The hostess led her past a couple who were presumably waiting for the Paused section. At the rear of the restaurant, two empty tables with high chairs stood in a dimly lit roped-off area. As Pauline settled Connor into his high chair, a customer at a neighbouring table waved for a waiter. “Have you any other tables available?” he asked loudly, looking over his shoulder at Connor as he spoke.

“Sorry, sir.” The waiter bowed his head regretfully.

“Guh!” Connor said, pulling the silverware onto the floor. He beamed at Pauline as she picked up a spoon and two forks, and set them down further away from him. “Guh!”

“Happy birthday,” said Pauline. She pulled a stuffed bunny out of her pocket, hoping Connor would chew on it quietly.

“Guh-buh!” said Connor at full volume. He dropped the bunny on the floor, and looked over the edge of his high chair at where it had fallen.

Pauline reached for his pauser-belt, and tapped in the code. The readout on the belt said PauseTime: 59 days, 6 hours, 11 minutes. It was Connor’s first birthday by the calendar, but she had paused him for nearly two months of that time.

She ordered chicken tikka masala, and downloaded the Arts News to her digitizer. The food tasted delicious: the chicken tender and succulent; the sauce hot, creamy, and savory. But she couldn’t finish her meal, couldn’t concentrate on the review of the Tate Gallery’s new exhibition.

The black, baby-shaped shadow in the high chair waited in perfect silence, distracting no one in the restaurant except for Pauline.

A few days after Connor’s birthday, Pauline completed the murals for Trinity Hall. Her brother still hadn’t seen Connor, and she had earned a holiday, so she decided to visit him in Paris.

Paris was beautiful in the early summer, the trees and the lawns a vibrant green. Occasional trams hummed along the streets, but otherwise the city sounded like an idyllic country village: birds, the chatter of school children, the chirp of crickets. Within the city limits ads were limited to visuals only, and Pauline relished the quiet.

But the visit to her brother was a disaster.

When Pauline arrived, Annette, Harold’s wife, pecked her on each cheek, and apologized that Harold wouldn’t be back until supper. “But he will be home by seven,” said Annette. “He never fails when he is in town—he is such a good father, so aware of the importance of a family environment.”

Pauline nodded as if she’d known this. She couldn’t work out why Annette grated on her nerves. Was it her fluent, but prettily accented English? Her impeccable appearance?

“And you and Connor?” continued Annette. “You are here alone?”

“Oui,” said Pauline. “I mean, yes.” She couldn’t possibly use her high school French with Annette.

“Such a shame,” said Annette. “I wish I could introduce you to your nephew and nieces immediately, but Nanny has taken them to their gym class.”

“How nice for them,” said Pauline.

Annette led her to one of the many reception rooms. They had a polite conversation, filled with awkward pauses while Pauline chased after Connor as he tried to destroy the elegant furnishings.

Connor’s cousins returned late in the afternoon. They were pretty children, the boy six years old, his twin sisters four. Well-behaved, neat, bilingual, already able to swim, ride ponies, and play the piano, the children smiled almost constantly, but never laughed or shouted.

At dinner that evening, Harold thanked Pauline for coming to see them, then quizzed his children about their day. They answered him seriously, intelligently, respectfully. The boy even joined in a discussion of the coming elections.

Connor threw his food onto the floor, then cried when a robot mole scurried across to clean it up.

“Maybe I should go to bed with him now. He’s probably overexcited,” said Pauline.

“The baby sleeps in the same room as you?” Annette’s pencil-thin eyebrows arched.

“Yes,” said Pauline.

Her brother and his wife said nothing for a long moment, then “I’ll have the crib moved—” said Annette, as Harold chimed in with “Of course, you’re on your own, so it’s different.”

Pauline wanted to say that she liked having Connor close to her at night, but she couldn’t think of a way to do so that didn’t sound critical of other arrangements. And she couldn’t criticize Harold, the textbook-perfect father with his textbook-perfect children. “There’s only one bedroom in our flat, so Connor and I share it,” she mumbled.

“How cosy,” said Annette without conviction.

“Guh-buh!” shouted Connor, leaning forward to tug the edge of the tablecloth. The wine glasses wobbled.

Pauline hoisted him up. “I’m sorry to cut the evening short. But we’re going to bed now.” She waited while Annette gave instructions for moving the crib, too embarrassed to admit that Connor shared her bed.

But even when the two of them were alone in their room, with Connor giggling as Pauline pretended to eat his hat, Harold’s casual “You’re on your own,” still rankled, together with Annette’s earlier remark about the value of a family environment.

How much did it matter that she couldn’t afford riding lessons for Connor, or gym classes, or a garden the size of a football field? How much did it matter that she didn’t have a partner? Long after Connor had fallen asleep beside her, Pauline lay awake, wishing she’d known Connor’s father better, wishing he’d wanted even a little involvement in his son’s life.

Bit by bit, Pauline increased the amount of time she used the pauser. She used it when she worked at home, when she visited clients, when she showered, when she needed to nap. Then she used it when she felt too depressed to play with Connor, then when she felt guilty because he only had the cheapest AI edubot on the market.

She used the pauser for a whole week while she read up on child-rearing, then for another week while she brooded over what she had learned. Children benefited from a warm, caring, stimulus-rich environment. Pauline loved Connor, but her flat was too small, and Connor needed better toys, and he needed a family, not just a mother.

She went to a makeover shop, and the woman there drew up twenty different simulations of Pauline in fashionable new styles, before Pauline settled on the least horrible of the batch.

She had never had much luck with dating. At a scant two months, her affair with Connor’s father had been her longest so far. But she spent an hour on her computer, completing the questionnaire for the Londoners Partner-For-You service.

One night in October, she paused Connor to go on her first date since he was born. The readout on the belt said PauseTime: 124 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes. She had paused Connor for a quarter of his life, most of it in the last few months.

She left the flat, locked the door behind her, unlocked it again, ran back and kissed the solid unyielding blackness of Connor’s paused form, and left the flat for the second time.

Her date was an older man, maybe fifty. He smelled of lime. His skin had a lime-green tint; his contact lenses were lime-green; his hair formed a lime-green cone above his head.

“I love green,” he said. “My favourite color, one hundred percent. But I may have gone overboard tonight, too much of a good thing and all that.”

“I like green too,” said Pauline, though green skin didn’t appeal to her at all. But she could see the man was nervous, maybe even as nervous as she was. He talked rapidly, determinedly, resorting to a discussion of the weather rather than allowing a gap in the conversation.

Over dinner at a pricey Italian restaurant, he assured Pauline that he absolutely loved children, would have liked half-a-dozen, just never found the right woman. But when a family with two noisy toddlers sat down nearby, he shuddered theatrically. “I like children, I said that, and I meant it.”—he bent forward and continued in a low voice—“But to everything there is a season, so they say, and I agree, I absolutely agree. Bringing two brats like that into a restaurant—don’t they know what pausers are for?”

“Ummm,” said Pauline, stirring her linguine round and round on her plate. “I’ll be back in a moment.”

She went to the restroom and splashed her face with water. A printed sign on the mirror said, “Lost count of how long you pause your children? Maybe it’s time to join a Pauser Help Circle. Call 08000-PAUSERS. We’re here twenty-four hours a day.”

At least she wasn’t bad as that. Why, she only paused Connor for a few hours a day. Okay, maybe more than a few hours. Maybe quite a lot more. She rinsed her hands. But she’d only really depended on the pauser for the past few weeks, and that was just because she needed to earn more money and find a partner, so that Connor could be part of a family, and have the same chances as Harold’s children.

The water ran gurgling down the sink, and Pauline started to cry, and couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop, shaking with great gulping sobs.

Her parents had spent a small fortune raising her, buying her every toy under the sun, hiring a couturier to design her wardrobe. But they hadn’t even wanted to have her in the same house. She had begged and begged not to go to boarding school, but they sent her anyway, and kept Harold at home instead.

She turned off the tap. She blew her nose in a handful of toilet paper. She went back to her lime-green date and told him she was leaving.

As soon as Pauline got home, she unpaused Connor. He squirmed in her arms, babbling excitedly, smelling of baby shampoo. They played on the floor together for half an hour, and then she carried Connor over to the phone, a noisy armful, and she placed a call to that number from the restaurant mirror.

© 2000 by Mary Soon Lee.

Originally published in Spectrum SF.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

Mary Soon Lee was born and raised in London, but became a naturalized US citizen in 2003, and now lives in Pittsburgh. Her story collection Ebb Tides and Other Tales was published by Dark Regions Press in 2002. She wrote “PauseTime” when her first child, William, was eleven months old, and time to write was scarce. Now that she has two children, she finds it easier to complete poems than short stories, and her poetry has appeared in American Scholar, Atlanta Review, Cider Press Review, Main Street Rag, and Rosebud.

Harry and Marlowe Escape the Mechanical Siege of Paris
Carrie Vaughn

Harry looked out the window and thought: At least I saw Paris one more time before it was destroyed in the bombardment.

The city was as beautiful, eventful, and astonishing as any young woman who’d read too many novels could wish for. She’d traveled here several years before on her grand tour and had thought herself quite worldly and jaded this time around. But the sight of the Seine, lined with magnificent buildings, palaces, parks, and galleries, with a promise of so many treasures and adventures waiting to be discovered, excited her beyond her expectation. Brought tears to her eyes, even. Eiffel’s new tower from the World’s Fair several years previous stood watch, lurking above the city, an iron skeleton. She understood that one could visit it, ride an elevator to the top and admire the views, perhaps buy a ticket for one of the airship taxis that moored there. She wished she had time and opportunity for such adventures. She hoped the tower would still be standing when the current troubles ended.

Another round of artificial thunder rattled the panes of glass, and she thought perhaps she ought not to stand so close to the window.

Pleasure had never been the purpose of this journey. She was here as part of the entourage of the Crown Prince, her brother. As Maud, Princess of Wales, granddaughter of Her Royal Majesty, Victoria, Harry was meant to be seeking out potential royal suitors. That was the public reason for her presence here. Privately, she was one of the advisors George trusted completely. They’d come to France on matters of diplomacy with wartime allies. Then the war had come to them.

She and George, along with the ambassador, Lord Dufferin, some members of his staff, and a contingent of guardsmen, had gathered in the embassy’s upper-storey parlor to discuss their response to the danger. Harry advocated immediate evacuation. George insisted such an evacuation would be cowardly, causing Britain to lose face before their French allies. Of course, Harry hadn’t wanted George to make the trip in the first place. German aggressions toward the city didn’t surprise anyone; the invasion had been moving steadily across France. The French had so far refused offers of military aid, which had infuriated George. He’d planned this visit to prove the strength and fortitude of the British people in the face of danger.

Well, they’d certainly have their chance to do that, by and by. However much one wanted to prove that the slavering beast posed no threat, sticking one’s hand in said beast’s mouth was perhaps not the ideal way to demonstrate one’s courage. They were firmly within the beast’s jaws now, and could only hope it didn’t decide to snap. And yet, George insisted, he wasn’t afraid. He would inspire the British people with his boldness. Very well, then. Harry had taken it upon herself to make sure the heir to the British Empire got home alive.

George paced, making the whole room nervous. “We have an entire naval fleet waiting in the channel, with airships to spare. We could stop this entire war with an afternoon of aerial bombardment!”

Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, Lord Dufferin, was an elderly man who had been granted this posting as a reward for a lifetime of service in the far-flung colonies, governing both Canada and India. He’d had decades of practice speaking gently and clearly to excitable royals.

“Yes, certainly, Your Highness. But we’re on French soil, and we cannot act without their permission, which they have not granted.”

“But they know very well the city will fall without British assistance!”

Lord Dufferin sighed. “And yet the French foreign minister assures me that the French troops are holding the line very well and we should reserve our forces for maintaining control of the channel.” He repeated the claim because it was his duty, but he sounded as if he had grown tired of duty.

“Clearly he’s lying!” George said.

“And so national pride will surely doom us all,” Harry murmured.

She thought she did not speak the words aloud, but George, the ambassador, and indeed everyone else looked at her. Pressing her lips together, she studied the seams of her gloves, reminding herself that she was supposed to be demure.

A particularly loud crash and rumble shook not just the paintings, but the walls themselves. George went straight to the window to look out, and Harry jumped after him to pull him back. A second rumble shook the glass.

“Get away from there,” she hissed, then tried to make the gesture look as if he had stepped forward to steady her instead of the other way around. She murmured, “That one was different.” George’s brow furrowed as he recalled the sound. It hadn’t been an explosive shell, Harry realized, but something else. An impact, an object falling without an accompanying explosion.

A speaker box sitting on a table near the fireplace rang a signal. One of the secretaries answered, and the young man’s face drained of what little color it had left.

“What is it, Michaels?” Lord Dufferin asked calmly.

“My lord, it’s the lieutenant from the guard post. I . . . I’m not entirely sure . . . what . . .”

“Out with it,” George glowered. Michaels quailed.

“Your Highness. The lieutenant says he’s never seen anything like it.”

Harry risked a look out the window, sheltering behind the heavy velvet of the curtain.

The far edge of the wide lawn leading from the front of the building had acquired a crater, a cloud of dust rising up from it. Soldiers swarmed onto the lawn, making noise but not accomplishing much. What had created the crater: some kind of armored container, the shape of a shell but the size of a carriage. After its flight and impact, the container had split open on a set of hinges. Smoke rose from the opening.

“Lord Dufferin,” Harry said, turning to the ambassador. “Perhaps you might notify Admiral Montgomery of the fleet about our situation?”

“Already done, highness. If you’ll wait just a moment—”

More squawking came through the box, then the disconcerting sound of ray blasts, and a scream from just outside the window on the lawn. All Harry’s fears were come to pass. She kept her breathing still, folded her hands before her, and considered the options. Unfortunately, their options rather depended on what George and Lord Dufferin did next. At times, she was grateful for her corset for keeping her upright and steady.

Another call came in on the speaker box, this time from the firm voice of an officer outside the immediate crisis. Without being close to the earpiece, Harry could only hear an occasional word: evacuate and airship. Good.

She put her arm through the crook of George’s elbow, and he clutched her hand protectively. His jaw was set in a determined frown, and—God help them all—he looked ready to storm down the stairs to face the trouble himself. It would be the brave thing to do. “It isn’t as if there aren’t enough other heirs to take my place,” he’d argue. That wasn’t the point, she’d argue back.

Lord Dufferin seemed distinctly relieved when he turned to them.

“Your Highnesses, the Navy has sent an airship to evacuate you. If you’ll proceed to the roof, we’ll have you to safety soon enough.”

“I still say it’s cowardly, running away,” George muttered.

He was more nervous than he let on, because he didn’t comment on Harry clutching his sleeve and dragging him after the ambassador.

“If you hadn’t insisted on appearing brave in the first place, you wouldn’t have to worry about appearing cowardly now, would you?” she chided.

He shifted her grip on him so that he appeared to be dragging her even though hers was still the guiding pressure.

In the next room—the antechamber to the ambassador’s parlor—a swarm of soldiers and embassy attachés joined them, surrounding them protectively, forming a clump of people trundling up the stairs. All of them tense, fearful.

This wasn’t meant to be happening. Their Crown Prince, in danger, and it could be that every one of them felt some responsibility. Really, however, it was no one’s fault. Though whoever among the General Staff had assured the Prince that Paris was safe would likely have a difficult time of it in the near future.

At the top of the stairs, a clerk threw open the door, revealing the iron struts of the mooring tower, and the crowd spilled through it and onto the roof. Soldiers raised rifles to the air while others blocked the Prince with their bodies, sheltering him against the base of the tower. Harry was caught up in the rush and unsure if their protectors even saw her as anything but an extension of George. As usual, and hardly worth commenting on.

“The rescue ship should be here any moment, Highness,” the ambassador huffed. The climb up the stairs had winded him. Harry was glad to see the secretary, Michaels, at his side, offering support.

Across the slate- and lead-tiled roof appeared open sky, and beyond the embassy’s garden lay the vista of Paris. Harry allowed herself a moment to enjoy the view, glimpses of the Tour Eiffel, Arc de Triomphe, the Seine and its beautiful bridges. All made heartbreaking by being partially shrouded in heavy billows of smoke and the tails of falling shells.

A green ray blast arrowed past the roof, and a swarm of guards pulled George and Harry out of the way.

“Where’s the airship? I don’t see it,” George said, shading his eyes and standing to look. Harry pulled him back down.

Harry also shaded her eyes, looking to the northern sky a bit more discreetly than George had done. “There it is,” she said, her heart sinking.

It wasn’t a proper airship but a scout, the smallest vehicle used by the aerial Navy, meant for courier duties, reconnaissance missions and the like. With only room for a pilot and passenger, it moved quickly and with great stealth—indeed, even when she was looking right it at, it seemed to vanish against the backdrop of the sun and sky. It was, in fact, the ideal craft with which to evacuate George without drawing the attention of enemy spotters. Harry approved.

Except, of course, it meant she’d be staying in Paris a bit longer, didn’t it?

Sinking to approach the embassy roof, the scout ship’s nature became apparent: a simple framework and motor mounted underneath a gas envelope that wasn’t much bigger than a carriage. The pilot and passenger, well bundled and goggled to protect them from the elements, wore harnesses that locked them into rudimentary seats. The arrangement made her think of an aerial tandem bicycle, which might have been a romantic notion under different circumstances.

Before the scout craft set down, the passenger unhooked his harness from the framework and jumped to the roof, carrying an anchor line with him, which he tossed to a pair of soldiers, not even bothering with the mooring tower. The two men braced the craft and kept it from rising again while the pilot pressed a lever that calmed the engine without shutting it off. The Aetherian glow of the humming motor cast a greenish light over the roof, even in daylight.

The craft’s passenger quickly divested himself of his harness, coat and goggles, and approached George.

“I beg your pardon, Your Highness, but will you put these on?”

The prince stood again in preparation of blustering. “I thought you said this was a rescue!”

When he didn’t move, Harry took the gear from the soldier. A lieutenant, by the insignia on his uniform. “Thank you, lieutenant,” she had the presence to say. “George, please put these on.”

She offered the coat, and long-practiced habit caused him to hold out his arms. The coat was on, and the lieutenant helped her secure the harness’s buckles next.

“But what about you?” George said to her.

“This is the most expedient way to get you to safety, George. Don’t concern yourself about me.”

Clear now as to what the arrangement of the craft meant, the prince turned to the soldier, to the ambassador, to anyone who would listen, and shouted, furious, “I’ll not leave my sister behind!”

By the way the lieutenant’s eyes went round, he clearly hadn’t recognized Harry by sight. She hid a smile at his shock. Poor man.

He sputtered, “Your Highness! We . . . we weren’t told of her highness’s presence and only accounted for . . .”

She touched the soldier’s arm. “It’s all right. Help me get him to the scout.”

He overcame his shock quickly and nodded.

“George, you have to leave now,” she said, keeping her voice calm, even as more explosions shook the air.

“If there’s only one spot, you should have it,” he said. “It’s the proper thing. The chivalrous thing.” He was a bulky man, and he let himself go heavy, dragging, even as they tried to pull him to the craft. The pilot’s eyes behind his goggles had gone slightly buggy with panic—he was running out of lift and power to get airborne again.

“George, you’re much too important. England has lost too many heirs of late. We can’t lose you, too. Yes?” Their father, who should have been Edward VII someday. Their older brother, Eddie.

Harry reached up to put the goggles on him. There was a brief, shared moment of grief as their gazes met. He knew she was right. Invoking their family ghosts convinced him.

The lieutenant’s skilled hands secured the harness to its brackets on the craft’s framework.

“Harry, promise me you will take care. Return home safe, do you promise me?” George commanded.

“I promise,” she said, feeling suddenly weak, as if she’d been robbed of her honor. She didn’t say the words out of any thought that she could really keep such a promise, only to calm her brother.

George held the soldier with his gaze. “Lieutenant, you must guard my sister with your life. Protect her, do you hear?”

“Yes, Your Highness, gladly,” he said, very earnestly. Firmly and confidently, even. Harry suddenly felt safer, for no good reason other than she liked this lieutenant’s voice.

The lieutenant retrieved the anchor line and tossed it to the pilot just as the craft shot up. The engine whined to a high pitch, and the scout dashed forward, a racehorse of the air. All that had gathered on the rooftop then sighed as one, because Prince George was now as good as safe.

The next shell hit the corner of the building, sending up a rain of debris, hard stone and burning shrapnel. Harry ducked, throwing up her arm to protect herself. The lieutenant had somehow gotten himself between her and the explosion, which had knocked half the soldiers off their feet. The rest managed to scramble to the jagged remnants of the side of the building and aim rifles outward, though what they thought they could hit at this range, Harry couldn’t say. A few fired off shots, green energy bolts flaring with the sound of an electric shock. They needed airships and heavy guns to mount any kind of offensive. Aetherian weaponry was all well and good, but a conventional bomb dropped in the right spot still trumped all.

“Oh God, what of the rest of us?” Michaels the secretary said, finally out of reserve.

“Get hold of yourself,” Lord Dufferin ordered. “We will make do, as always.”

The ambassador’s gaze landed on Harry and revealed resignation. If the princess, granddaughter of the Queen herself, could not be saved, what of him? She could think of no response. Her hat had slipped a bit, the pin coming loose, a curl of hair falling down to her cheek. But she also felt a rock-like calm, and not a bit of her expression wavered.

The ambassador bowed his head to her and made for the staircase.

This struck Harry as a not terribly wise choice. The building was groaning, bits continuing to crumble off from the hole the bomb left. The structural integrity was perhaps not entirely trustworthy any longer. But the man was one of the old type; he would go down with his ship.

She and the lieutenant stood side by side, watching where the ambassador had retreated, while the commander of the embassy guard, a Captain Smith, looked grim and shouted orders to form his scattered men into some sort of unit. Half headed downstairs, half remained on the roof, standing guard.

“What are we to do with Lord Dufferin?” Harry said, sighing.

“I don’t much care, highness. He isn’t my concern, you are,” said the lieutenant.

She blinked at him, finally able to have a good look at the man. He was average height, with an athletic build under the wool of his uniform. His collar was open, his boots scuffed, and he wore a belt with a pistol and holster strapped low to his thigh. Not regulation, not polished, but imminently comfortable. In his late twenties or early thirties, he’d lost any freshness he might have had as a youth; he was rough, weathered. She imagined he’d carried out daring rooftop rescues or the like quite often.

“Sir, what is your name?”

“Lieutenant James Marlowe, Your Highness.” He started to salute, started to bow, stopped both in the middle and scowled.

She nodded. “Right. We should be moving, Lieutenant Marlowe.” The scream of another bomb, one of the heavy kind like the one that had landed in the garden, approached. She looked up, searching for it, to see where it would fall.

“Your Highness, I hope you will accept my deepest apologies for this inconvenience.”

She gave him a baffled frown. “As if you had any say in the matter. Never mind, we don’t have time for formalities.”

The scream whined upward in pitch, and all of them on the roof ducked, sheltering themselves out of some vague hope that it would do them any good. The targeting on this bomb was off—it struck across the street, punching straight through the roof of the building there and blowing a wall outward. More debris rained down to the streets below.

Marlowe clutched her arm in a protective grip, and his tone was urgent, which made him sound a touch less comforting than he’d probably meant. “I will get us out of this, however terrifying this may seem—”

“Lieutenant Marlowe, I will not wilt, I assure you.”

They exchanged a glance. His startled expression—that one of the fairer sex would speak so confidently—was familiar; Marlowe’s surprise passed more quickly than it did with most people who encountered her.

He lifted his head and gazed out, through the smoke and debris still falling. Towers of smoke could be seen, surrounding the embassy. “Those last few shells weren’t part of a general bombardment,” he said. “They’re targeting the embassy.”

He was right; the damage was localized. “Because of George? They knew he was here?”

“It’s only a thought.”

She felt a cold fury, tempered by the thought that it wouldn’t have been hard to learn of the prince’s presence here. They didn’t make the journey public, certainly, and traveled with a fraction of his usual entourage. But the airship displayed his flag until just before docking at Calais, and anyone watching would have seen it.

“Lieutenant, however much I dislike the idea, there’s really only one way off the roof. I suggest we take advantage of the pause in the attack,” she said.

He nodded. “Indeed. After you, then.” He urged her toward the door leading to the stairs, and she complied.

But at the top of the stairs, she stopped. From three stories down on the ground floor, someone screamed. Then another. The pulsing shots of Aetherian rifles fired in rapid sequence, then fell silent. Another soldier screamed.

“Something’s down there,” Harry said. She stood braced across the doorway, Marlowe peering over her shoulder, into the darkness.

Movement finally drew her attention, telling her exactly where to look.

There were several of them, segmented, undulating bodies slithering along the walls in defiance of gravity. Spikes on their bellies dug into the wallpaper. Bits of powdered plaster rained down as the spikes drove into the wall, a constant spattering of dust, a destructive trail marking their passage.

Each mechanical creature was only a foot long. In themselves, they did not seem dangerous—no more deadly than a child’s clockwork toy. Each was powered by a glowing green pod nestled on its back, the size and shape of an egg. The devices provided power for the machines, but could also be triggered, igniting raw, explosive Aetherian power. A single one could destroy the building, if needed. A dozen of the beasties crawled up the walls of the stairwell.

But the primary mission of these machines seemed rather more direct: They had claws and spikes protruding from their bodies, and many of them were covered with blood. So this was what the capsule had contained, and where the true attack lay.

The bombardment was merely a distraction. The automatons would ensure that no one escaped.

“That’s different,” Marlowe said.

“No,” Harry said, because she’d seen this before, at least in drawings. “The design looks like one of the secondary mechanisms from the Surrey crash—part of a grappling system. It wasn’t developed because most of the research went toward the power source and aerial systems.”

He stared at her. “You’ve seen the Surrey Archives? No one sees the Surrey Archives, not without permission of the highest echelons of the Academy or royal dispensation—ah, just so.”

She blushed. “Which begs the question of how the Germans saw it, as they must have. George has to know this,” she said. “Command must know. We have a spy at the highest levels.”

“All the more imperative we leave. It’ll have to be down the outside, then.” With a great deal of purpose, he marched to Captain Smith, who had organized his men into a line but had no target to point them toward. “Captain, we’ve been invaded. Machines are coming up the stairs.”

“Machines?”

“Siege engines if you like. Aetherian, mechanical, difficult to stop. I must get her highness to safety. You can safeguard our retreat?”

“Yes—of course. Godspeed to you.” The new mission seemed to bestow a solid resolve in him. He shouted commands, and the soldiers shifted into two staggered rows at the doorway leading to the stairs. The ambassador hadn’t reappeared. None of the embassy staff who’d remained inside the building had escaped up the stairs. There was a woman’s scream, probably one of the housemaids.

Harry froze. “We can stay and help. Give me a gun, I can help.”

Marlowe hesitated. The soldiers preparing to hold the stairs were doomed. With only ray-powered rifles and a few Aetherian grenades, they couldn’t hold back the swarm of machines. The building was a loss. “Your highness, think of the promise you made your brother. We must go.”

“I—I’m not comfortable with those men dying so that I have a chance—only a chance, mind you—of escape.”

He gave her a look that might have been pity, or perhaps exasperation. “Good men have died for your family for hundreds of years; you question it now?”

“My family,” she said bitterly. “I am the very least of my family.”

A sudden, crooked smile dawned on his wind-burned face. “Your brother was quite adamant. He must not agree with you.”

“My brother’s a bit mad, you know. Don’t tell anyone.”

Marlowe had already gone off to find a rope. Fortunately, he found a long mooring cable lying near the tower’s scaffold. He hauled coils of it out, checked for snags, found the end. Then, he secured the cable to the base of the tower with a smart nautical knot, ran it out, and threw the end over the edge of the roof.

The gunfire sounding in the stairwell grew fierce. The clicking and buzzing of the enemy mechanisms grew louder.

A familiar whine and descending crash sent them falling flat, arms over heads, praying. The foundations shook and debris rained, but since she was still breathing, Harry had to assume she’d survived. Except that every one of those non-exploding impacts meant more of the creatures would soon be upon them.

Marlowe was reaching for her. His hair had turned gray with dust. “You can climb, I hope? I didn’t think to ask.” His eyes took on a look of concentration, as if he was considering what he would do with her if she said no.

“I can,” she said, and demonstrated, sitting at the edge of the roof, adjusting her gloves and arranging her skirts, and taking hold of the line. Neither leading nor trailing was safer, and this would save him from having to decide which was the more dangerous of two untenable positions. She was already over the side before he could argue.

He grit his teeth and waited until she was well over before starting down himself. At the edge of the roof he kept watch, above and all around, for bombs or airships or any new terror. She couldn’t think about that, only about getting down. Then, they could worry about what came next.

It wasn’t easy, though she’d be the last to complain. Her trim boots braced well enough against the wall, and hanging on to the rope she was able to walk down the building, letting the cable play out, ignoring the strain in her shoulders. But her hands kept slipping, despite the gloves she wore. They were smooth kid gloves, soft and brown, not at all made for heavy work. This would ruin them; she could feel them stretching, close to tearing from the hard use. Small price, truly.

She looked down to see how much farther she had to climb. And was, on reflection, not surprised to see more of the snake-machines crawling up the outside. This was it, then. All their routes cut off. She stopped her progress and had enough presence of mind to call up to Marlowe before he ended up on top of her.

“Lieutenant, look down!”

They hung there, mid-building, too far down to climb back up . . . directly in the path of six of the undulating metallic creatures.

For a moment, Harry gave up. Just for a moment, her eyes stinging with smoke, breathing in soot and grit suspended in the air, ears ringing with the sound of firing rifles, she did not think she had the strength to hold onto the line. George was safe. The realm, too, would be—eventually—and there was nothing she could do about it one way or another. Those worm-like monsters, carapaces gleaming, spiked legs punching holes in the brick wall, didn’t seem inclined to turn away for her. They would crawl over her, punch her full of bloody holes, and she would fall.

No. She did not want to fall.

“Marlowe, give me your gun.” She wrapped one arm around the rope, braced her shoulder, and reached up with her free hand.

He hung on the rope, rooted against the wall. “Are you sure?”

“Trust me.”

She couldn’t tell if he was afraid or not. He might have merely been hiding it very well. He had to know they were trapped, but would he refuse to hand her the weapon on principle? For a moment, she thought he might. She could hear the gears and drive belts of the mechanisms below her turning, crunching.

He took his pistol from his holster, slid down the line a few feet until he was almost on top of her, and reached down to give it to her.

It wasn’t an old-style ballistic pistol, but a powered weapon, emitting a deadly, focused Aetherian beam. No recoil to speak of, but it required a steady aim to be most effective.

Harry’s aim was sure. She straightened her arm, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly as she fired. One bolt, two, three, four . . .

Each green bolt of energy struck, sparked, and suffused a segmented carapace in a crackling shell of lightning. The first one froze, its mechanism stiffening, spikes retracting into its body, and it fell, peeling back from the wall and toppling.

“Excellent,” Marlowe sighed. “Now, climb. Hurry.”

More of the machines were arriving, shuffling on the pavement, reaching the wall, spiking into the brick and beginning their ascent. Harry slid down the rope as quickly as she could, her boots skidding, firing as she went. Unable to keep her aim steady while she moved, she missed several times, snarling at herself every time she did. Marlowe never commented; he urged her on calmly, kept her moving.

The charge on the energy pistol faded, the shots firing more weakly until they sputtered, and the pistol failed entirely. But by then they’d reached the ground.

A line of the monsters was still traveling toward them, gears and drive belts whining, steps cracking along the pavement. “Come on,” he said, and they ran. Harry held her skirt and kept up with him, gratified that he didn’t seem to slow his pace on her account. Their first objective was simply away, and they turned north, away from the river and into the maze of streets in the tenth arrondissement.

After they ran for a spell, Marlowe slowed. They’d left the smoke and sulfur stink of the bombing area. This neighborhood was almost peaceful, though all the storefronts were shut up and not a soul was out on what should have been a busy afternoon. Finally, in a quiet square with a park and overhanging trees, they stopped to catch their breaths.

Now, Harry wished she could abandon the corset. She had to think about drawing breath into her lungs, expanding them as much as she could, which wasn’t much at all. But there was nothing to be done, and as long as she didn’t panic she wouldn’t suffer. Her one concession to the situation was unbuttoning the collar of her gown, giving her a little more freedom to breathe.

She handed Marlowe his pistol, grip first. “Lieutenant, your weapon. The charge is empty. I’m sorry.”

Grinning, he replaced it in its holster. “Nonsense. You’re a very good shot.”

“My father felt that shooting was in fact an appropriate activity for a princess. We shot grouse at Sandringham.”

“I dare say he was right.”

“Well, lieutenant. What’s next?”

“We get out of Paris. Refugees are making their way to Calais. We travel with them and rejoin the fleet.” Deftly, he unpinned rank and unit insignia from his uniform, the chest badge and collar tabs, shoving them in a pocket. They did rather draw attention to him.

If there were a way to disguise her upper class garments, she would have done so. She would have to hope her current state of dishevelment would distract onlookers.

Marlowe said, “You must not fall into German hands. With his highness out of reach, you’d be an attractive prize to them, if they knew you were here.”

An attractive prize—her lot in life. She must have given an audible sigh, because Marlow smiled wryly.

“A bit of old-fashioned medieval hostage taking,” she said. “It’s almost refreshing.”

“Let’s be off, Highness.”

Forget the titles, call me Harry, she almost told him. Propriety stopped her. He was just a soldier, and too much familiarity wouldn’t do. “To Gare du Nord, then?”

They resumed their flight.

Still, bombs fell. Harry might even have been growing used to the thunder, the shaking underfoot, except that every now and then one of the heavier impacts sounded, one of the jarring crashes not accompanied by an explosion. These made her shrink into herself and look over her shoulder for more of the monsters, which she knew must eventually appear.

She glimpsed it down the verdant enclosure of a garden as they hurried by. She might have thought it a stray cat or dog, except for the way the light glinted off its shell of a body. She hesitated a moment to stare, and the thing, incredibly, stopped to stare back, even without eyes. Some kind of apparatus told it she was there, and that she was a target.

“Lieutenant!” she hissed, and they backed away as the creature pressed toward them.

This one had the shape of a spider rather than a centipede. The power source and drive train balanced on eight segmented legs, pulleys and gears working to move them in sequence so that the creature moved easily over cobblestones and stairs alike, as well as contracting and contorting to pull itself through the bars of the garden’s wrought-iron fence after only a moment of scrabbling. An impressive bit of engineering, really.

Much less impressive on this side of the fence, however.

“Have you any other weapons?” Harry asked him, as the lieutenant put himself between her and imminent attack.

“We traveled light to gain speed,” he said, drawing a utility knife from a belt sheath. He might be able to defeat the creature with only a knife, but it would be messy.

She looked around for any makeshift weapons she might use, sticks or rocks or even broken glass. A row of flowerpots, full of soil and geraniums, sat in a window box at a nearby shop front.

Meanwhile, Marlowe and the mechanical spider approached each other like boxers in a ring. The aeronaut took a wide stance, his arms out, and the spider skittered back and forth on wooden-tipped appendages, as if taking the measure of his opponent. The metallic legs had blades protruding at each joint, and a row of spikes projecting from its belly. It would only have to leap at Marlowe to injure him. Which it did, of course, bending all eight limbs on wheezing gears, gathering itself, and springing.

Marlowe shifted out of the creature’s path and shoved away from it, shredding the sleeve of his uniform, but no blood appeared. The metal thing rolled, threw off a few green sparks, and untangled itself to climb back to its feet. Harry threw a flowerpot at it. Marlowe flinched as it sailed past.

As she’d hoped, the pot struck its middle and knocked the thing over. The clay pot broke into several pieces, covering the thing in geranium. Even better, soil sprayed over it and mucked up the gears and pulleys, which groaned and hissed as they worked over the grit, trying to pull the body upright.

Seizing the opportunity, Marlowe rushed the thing, grabbing its limbs and cutting its belts and cables with his knife, immobilizing it so he could reach the central body of the creature, where he dug the blade into a seam and pried open an access panel, exposing the cartridge of the power source: a solid block of green glass, like jade and starlight. Pulling wires, he forced it out of his casing and set the cartridge aside. Quickly, then, he drew a pad of paper out of his breast pocket and studied the spider’s lifeless carapace—then made notes and drawings, sketching the mechanism of the legs, diagramming the inside of the chassis, dissecting the creature, in effect. Harry watched him work, fascinated.

“What do you hope to learn?” she asked finally.

“I don’t know yet,” he said. He put the notebook away and drew out his drained pistol. This time, she thought she knew what he had planned.

“You think you can transfer the charge?”

“I hope so . . . there . . . yes.” He removed the cartridge from the pistol, connected a wire between them, reinserted the pistol’s cartridge, and bound the contraption together with cloth torn from his shirt. He aimed the weapon at the street and pressed the trigger. After a worrying, unhealthy-sounding whine and hiss, a green ray blasted out and left a burned streak on the cobbles. “Awkward, but it’s better than nothing.”

A now familiar clacking, grinding, whining noise approached from several directions, around one corner and down another street. More of the spider creatures, some of the snake machines, all seemingly intent on scouring the city’s streets of living souls.

“These things are overrunning the damned city,” Marlowe grunted, then glanced sheepishly at Harry. “Beg your pardon, highness.”

“Oh, don’t apologize, I was about to say the same thing. Shall we?”

They kept on, Marlowe holding the creatures off with his pistol until they escaped the worst of the swarm, and the clacking sound of the German devices faded into the distance. Before today, the war had been abstract to her, a game played with maps and markers. This, she decided, was what the end of the world must feel like.

“Wait a moment,” he said, gesturing her to the shelter of a brick wall, a three-storey townhouse with balconies overlooking the street. In the pause, a faint thundering sound approached. More artillery, she assumed, the cannons had come closer than ever. But no, this was rhythmic, continuous. “Marching,” she whispered.

“But whose?” he replied.

Best stay out of sight until they knew, so they waited, retreating into the alcove of an arched doorway.

It was a small unit that soon came marching past—in the blue of French uniforms, so technically neither friend nor foe, but they were clearly on the move against the Germans. With them came a wagon drawn by two stout draft horses, guarded by soldiers carrying both conventional and Aetherian rifles. The wagon carried a cannon set on a steel base, with a long barrel and the brass coils and glass fittings of an Aetherian weapon, the green glow of the alien mechanism emerging from within. The procession was a strange hybrid of mechanisms; the British army had Aetherian-powered vehicles to carry its artillery, but the French used what they had on hand. The horses kept flicking ears back to the hum of the Aetherian device.

Harry and Marlowe did not announce themselves, which seemed the only prudent course. The French were ostensibly allies, but they would happily use Harry’s safety as a bargaining chip as much as the Germans would.

They stood very still, waiting in the alcove for the long minutes the train took to pass, and by necessity they had pressed close together. Harry could feel Marlowe’s breath on her hair, and she was very close to resting her head on his shoulder. Perhaps, if he saw it, he would attribute the flush on her cheek to the brisk air.

Finally, silence fell; only then did they move again. Marlowe stepped carefully from the alcove without looking at her. Absently, she tucked her stray locks of hair behind her ears.

They were able to slow their pace to a walk. Thinking aloud, she said, “Our intelligence says the Germans don’t have the numbers or equipment to hold the city. Why are they invading now?”

“Does our intelligence say anything about those machines?”

She didn’t answer, because no, they knew nothing at all about such machines.

“They won’t need soldiers to hold the city, if they can use automated Aetherian guards,” Marlowe said. “I would guess a single officer can control a platoon of those and hold an entire neighborhood himself.”

“Just when we think we’ve seen all that Aetherian mechanisms can offer, someone finds a new terrifying use for them. This was exactly why the archives were kept secret.”

Marlowe said, “It was only a matter of time before nations on the continent stole the secrets of the Surrey crash. That’s what this whole war is about.”

“It’s not so simple as that. The Aetherian secrets may be the excuse. But war would have come eventually, with or without the crash. Dreams of European empire building didn’t end with Napoleon.”

“No, of course not. But now nations have the power to destroy Europe as well as conquer it. I fear those who do not see the difference.”

“Which is why Britain must not lose,” she declared, fearing her own frustration at her inability to do anything about the situation tainted her voice.

“Indeed. The archives hold plenty more secrets to be exploited, I’d say. We must look there.”

“You seem like a man who has ideas on that score.”

“I’m an aerialist, Your Highness. An engineer with the Royal Navy, though I occasionally volunteer for other duties.” He gave a smirk at this, indicating the oddness of an aerial engineer being stuck on the ground in Paris. “We’re all battling for supremacy of the air. Bigger airships, greater armaments. But I believe supremacy lies in altitude. We must go higher. We must conquer beyond.”

Currently, airships regularly reached fifteen to twenty thousand feet in altitude. Many had the capability of flying higher than that, but the safety of the crew prevented regular trips to more extreme altitudes—the air was simply too thin to breathe. But crossing that barrier must have been possible; the Aetherians themselves had done it.

She said, “You want to go where the Aetherians came from.”

“Yes.” After another long stretch of walking, Marlowe said, tentative, “Your highness, may I ask you a question?”

Here—bombs and smoke drenching the air, muscles aching, the embassy destroyed, their own preservation not yet ensured—her royal status seemed somehow irrelevant. Useless, really. If the status leant her any sway at all, she ought to be able to snap her fingers and have this all be done. Make it all stop.

“You may, lieutenant,” she sighed.

“The archives,” he said, then waited.

“That isn’t a question.” She glanced at him in time to see his smile flash. Lovely that he could smile in such circumstances.

“What did you find, when you examined the archives? Did you find anything that might save Britain?”

“Those are very large questions.”

“They’re the only questions.”

“Yes, indeed.” They walked another half a block. Bombs echoed in the distance, and she did not flinch. “Most of the Royal Academy scientists would disagree with me, but I believe the Surrey crash was not the first time an Aetherian craft has visited this planet.”

“That hypothesis has been circulated.”

“There are pieces from the Aetherian ship the purpose of which we haven’t yet discovered. Imagine taking apart a pocket watch, putting it together, and having pieces left over. Consider the civilization that built the Aetherian vessel—what other technologies might they have produced? If all you found was a locomotive, what might you deduce about British civilization? You might not even guess at the pocket watch. We don’t have everything that the Aetherians have. Perhaps, then, the mechanism that will save Britain hasn’t yet been discovered. However, most current research is concentrating on developing technologies we already have.”

“I’ve noticed. I believe the crash archives must contain the secret of reaching the highest part of the atmosphere. The Aetherians traveled in airless spaces, and the autopsy of the pilot suggests that they require some sort of respiration, which means they must have had a way to produce an artificial atmosphere. The technology is there, we simply aren’t recognizing it.”

“Or it was destroyed in the crash. Much was lost, I fear.”

“May I ask another question?”

“Yes,” she sighed, stretching her back to adjust her corset, which was growing damp with sweat. She would have enjoyed this discussion with Marlowe immensely had they been anywhere else—perhaps over tea at Kensington, not tromping around war-torn Paris.

“Why are you so interested in Aetherian mechanisms? It doesn’t seem . . .”

“Becoming for a young lady of royal blood?” she said, because she’d heard it before.

“I would think a princess has more pressing matters occupying her time.”

She said, “I’ve grown up with Aetherian machinery, quite literally. I was born the year of the Surrey crash. I was there with the rest of my family when Dr. Carlisle made his first demonstrations of Aetherian-powered locomotives. The Aetherian revolution has always . . . intimidated me, and I’ve sought to overcome my fears by understanding it completely.”

“Has understanding come to you?”

“I believe that if we do not control the Aetherian technology we’ve wrought upon the Earth, it will come to control us. That is my understanding.”

They were close to Gare du Norde, now. Finally, crowds appeared. All those empty streets and neighborhoods had emptied here: the population of Paris’s north half attempting to escape. No purposeful roadblock could have been more effective than the solid wall of people ahead of them.

Harry stopped and stared, frozen in a moment of unexpected panic. She had very likely never been so close to so many people in her entire life. At least, not without her family and her family’s guards present. She liked to think of herself as a populist royal. This surge in her gut, the jolt of—call it by its right name: fear—running up her spine was odd. Deeply unpleasant. Her mouth had gone dry.

Marlowe shaded his eyes and scanned the crowd. “Nothing for it but to plunge in,” he said. “Highness?”

“You might perhaps not want to call me that here,” she said, after swallowing to find her voice again. “Call me Harry.”

“I heard your brother call you that. A nickname?”

“A silly joke from when I was little, but it’s stuck. It seems to suit.”

“All right, then. Harry. Are you able to continue?”

“Yes, only I wonder if I’ve inherited a royal fear of mobs.”

“In this case, our safety might lie in numbers. This is the only reasonable route to Calais.”

“Indeed. Yes.” She took his arm, capturing the crook of his elbow, and held on. She was fairly certain he flinched back at her status and title rather than her personally. The gesture shouldn’t have made her the least bit disappointed. And yet.

His resistance lasted the barest second before he took firm hold of her arm and side by side, bolstered by one another’s presence, they entered the crowd.

After a long, loud, sweaty three hours, Harry and Marlowe were on an old-fashioned steam-powered train traveling north to Calais, and to the Channel.

Harry had worried about purchasing tickets—she certainly wasn’t carrying any money with her, and she doubted Marlowe had more than loose change with him. But the situation was long past money and tickets. Soldiers were present and loading as many people onto as many trains as they could to evacuate the city. Thanks to Marlowe’s persistence and his ability to force his way through rather than waiting for the crowd to move forward of its own accord, they reached a platform and got themselves aboard the very last carriage of one of the last passenger trains to leave Paris. Harry’s French was good; in the chaos she was able to ask one of the soldiers where the train was going. “Calais!” he called, and her relief felt like blood draining from her limbs.

The seats were filled. More than filled, many of them doubled up, three times as many people crammed into the carriage as should have been. The train seemed to move slowly, overburdened, clacking tiredly on its tracks, but that may have only been her impatience.

Harry and Marlowe did not sit; they stood together in the back, shored up precariously near the door to the next carriage. The clanking of the wheels on the tracks seemed loud here. Too loud for them to speak, especially without revealing themselves as English. Neither wished to draw attention to themselves.

She found she had grown used to leaning close to Marlowe’s body. He had a comforting solidness to him. Oh, the scandal of it. But considering her alternative was being crushed in the destruction of the embassy . . . even her grandmother could not argue with the situation.

Harry happened to look up and saw Marlowe looking back at her, lips pressed in a wry smile. He quickly looked away, though. Awkward, indeed, and she would likely never see him again once they reached the coast. What a sad thought.

“I’m sure George got to the fleet safely,” she said, for no particular reason at all.

“I’m sure he did. You’ll see him very soon.”

And everything would have to go back to the way it was. She sighed.

Night had long since fallen when they finally reached Calais.

“We’ll go to the consulate,” Marlowe said, taking her hand and holding tight as they let the crowd carry them off the train and away. He might not even be aware that he’d done it, but she didn’t argue. In this situation, it was security, nothing more.

The streets here were crowded and harrowing, refugees from Paris arguing with locals, soldiers milling, and everyone shouting for news: What was the word? What had happened? How soon until the Germans reached the coast? Harry bent her head, hunched her shoulders, and ignored it all. She had a job to do, and it was almost done.

At one point, they turned a corner, and Harry looked between buildings to see open space rather than more buildings. Water, glorious sea, lapping waves glinting with the reflected lights of the town, extending as far as she could see in the darkness. And above the water, miles away and barely visible, a row of lights hovered: the half dozen airships of George’s fleet. She might have wept, but she scrubbed her eyes, took another deep breath, and calmed herself. In the pause, she held her breath and listened for the comforting hum of the ships’ Aetherian engines, but they were too far away.

They reached the consulate at last, then spent half an hour arguing with a guard outside the front gate. They were English, they’d fled from Paris, could they please be let in. The flustered young man claimed that with all the day’s madness they couldn’t be letting just anyone in, could they?

Marlowe became a bit angry. “I am Lieutenant Marlowe with the Aerial Navy, this is Her Highness the Princess of Wales, and you will let us in.”

The soldier gaped. “Yes. But. Well sir. How do I know you are who you say?”

Marlowe showed his rank pins and kindly asked him to send for the officer in charge, who arrived shortly, did some gaping of his own, and let them in, escorting them to a comfortable parlor and calling for tea while he notified the fleet via the wireless.

The tea was divine. Harry had not realized how chilled she had become, even after the long, crowded train journey. The chill had come from fear, and she was happy to leave that fear behind. Through the reflections on the parlor window, she could see that a mist had fallen over the Channel, masking even the lights. At least there were no storms. And no bombs.

“I can’t tell anyone about this, can I?” Marlowe said, bemused, lips quirked in a wry smile. They sat across from one another in armchairs, the tea service on a round table between them. Maids hovered, and Marlowe kept his voice low. The real world was settling over them more quickly than Harry imagined it would.

She hadn’t thought as far ahead as to what she’d tell anyone about the day’s adventure. “You can tell them, it’s a matter of whether they’d believe you. I’m the one who can’t tell anyone about this.” Her clothing was not designed to wear while fleeing a city under bombardment. She was sure she’d ripped some seams, and her hair had become tangled, and she very much didn’t want to look in a mirror. Merely stepping inside the consulate in this condition would start rumors that the Home Office would diligently quash. Which meant she had to remain ever so quiet, lest she feed those rumors herself.

“Surely you won’t receive any blame for this,” Marlowe said. “You couldn’t help circumstances.”

“My brother won’t blame me, certainly. My grandmother won’t. She understands duty better than anyone I know, I think. But my mother? My sisters? Polite society in general? No, they will not understand, and so we will not tell them.”

His expression furrowed, as if he was trying to understand a difficult problem. “What will you do next, then, Your Highness?” He’d slipped easily back to the honorific. She smiled sadly, because along with not saying anything else about the day, she could not tell him she’d rather he kept calling her Harry.

“Whatever George and my grandmother need me to do.” She sounded so tired when she said it.

“May I ask you another question, highness? A favor, really.”

His voice had fallen to a whisper. The room had emptied of servants—Marlowe would have checked, before speaking so.

“What favor?” she said.

“Can you arrange for me to see the Surrey Archives?”

“It’s not for me to decide—”

“But you have influence.”

“You overestimate me.”

“This isn’t for me, this is for the realm. For the war. You’re right, you know—the Aetherian mechanisms will be the end of us, if we’re not careful. Those creatures that destroyed the embassy—do our enemies even know what they’re building, or are they mad scientists from a penny dreadful, trusting in machines they don’t understand? I want to understand Aetherian science, and I’m sure I can use it.”

“To do what?”

His gaze turned upward. “Do more than play tin soldiers. We have their ship—if we can piece together the puzzle, we can do what they did. Control the skies. We can reach fifty thousand feet, a hundred thousand, even. And what of this—instead of building a better weapon, what if we had a device that could neutralize Aetherian-based weaponry? Act directly on the power source. Think of how many lives could be saved. We could build generators to power entire cities, fully convert the transportation system to eradicate coal pollution—this machinery could change the world, were we not so distracted by war.”

They were caught in a bubble of soft light from the room’s gas lamps. Old-fashioned gas—what the world would look like without the Aetherian Revolution. This might be anybody’s parlor, and they might be any two people talking. Unless they were the two people who could change the course of the coming war.

Harry watched him wonderingly. His thoughts reflected so many of her own. The Aetherians had come from another world, for God’s sake. Why did the world’s governments insist on limiting their visions to this one? Aetherian technology might not just change the world, but destroy it, if humanity kept to its current course. Affecting that outcome was such a daunting task. But not if she didn’t have to face the effort alone.

“George can give us access,” she said. “Unfettered access, if you can win him over. And I can get you an audience with George. The Crown Prince will be most grateful to you for bringing me back safely, I’m sure. Eager to listen.” She’d convince him herself if she had to. “It occurs to me that all this time Aetherian research has been dominated by established scientists, set in their ways and unable to move forward.”

“Using the new technology for old purposes instead of looking for new purposes,” he said.

“Just so. Lieutenant Marlowe—”

“James.”

She blushed. That was going too far, really, so she didn’t call him anything. “I want to help. Not just by talking to George for you. I can help you directly. I have researched the possibility of other, ancient Aetherian crash sites throughout the world. I’ve read the journals, I’ve seen the archives, and I may not be an engineer like you, but I know what I’m talking about. And I can shoot what I aim at.” He would tell her no. George would tell her no. They’d all tell her no, like always, and she was sick of it. On this, she would not accept no. She glared hard at Marlowe, daring him to deny her.

“Of course you must help,” he said. “I can think of no one better.”

She started when the consulate officer came into the room. Her teacup chimed against its saucer.

“Yes?” Marlowe said flatly, innocently.

“They’re sending a ship for you, it will arrive within the hour. You’ll be away before anyone even knew you were here.”

“That’s ideal. Thank you, sir,” Marlowe told him, and Harry remembered herself, nodding graciously to the man.

“Yes, thank you,” she said as evenly as she could. The man beamed at her. They’d probably put a bloody plaque on the wall, commemorating that she drank tea here.

The officer excused himself, leaving them to tea and assuring them he’d return when it was time to go.

“We’re agreed then?” she said, offering her hand for him to shake. Even her gloves were tattered. Ah well, she’d worry about that later. He did not seem to notice their sad state when he took her hand in his own for a brief touch before anyone noticed.

“Agreed,” he said.

So began the adventure.

© 2013 Carrie Vaughn, LLC.

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series. The eleventh novel, Kitty Rocks the House, is due out in March 2013. She has also written young adult novels, Voices of Dragonsand 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.

Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Chílde Phoenix
Marly Youmans

Perhaps you’ve heard an anecdote about a child named Cresencio who was skipping barefoot between hills of corn when a shallow bowl in the field, long turbulent with mutterings, broke into pieces. Cresencio spied a tongue of smoke, like the mockings of a demon; he bent, staring into the jagged mouth that was about to spatter the nearby trees with sparks and set his childhood on fire. Liquid stone shouldered through streets, plugging everything but the bell tower of a church. In a last indignity, after obliterating the houses of Cresencio’s village with a relentless black confetti, the volcano stole its name: Paricutin, no longer home but a district of hell.

I like that story because it suggests that other children may be acquainted with metamorphosis.

The first memory that I can conjure quite clearly is one of lying on the glass box in the claustral living room, staring at the girl. She seemed to emanate a faint lunar glow, and I was fascinated by her perfection—the fine, long eyelashes, the smear of lavender on the eyelids, the curls that were as cursive and tendrilous as a line of embroidered calligraphy. She wore a white batiste dress, finely ruched, with pearl buttons and handmade buttonholes. The useless slippers had been crafted from tatting, and were tied with ribbons of white grosgrain. Because of those clothes, I know the words for the old-fashioned magics of stitchery and lace.

My mother had designed the gown and the slippers and was a marvelous needlewoman. Careful about how the girl was presented, she showed me at length how to clean and polish the glass so that it would not become marred by scratches. Once she caught me scattering purple violets and the paler ones they call Confederates on the lid of the chest.

“What are you—”

She rushed forward, gown trailing behind her. I saw that she had gone into the garden, something that she did only rarely; the hem of her robe was starred with seedheads. It was a terrible moment, not just because she had left the vicinity of the girl and gone out under the sky—something that felt forbidden to me then—but because of the disorder in her face. Afterward I was haunted by an inability to recapture her expression. Even now I cannot determine: Was it a scream without sound, a blankness of shock, an anger?

My mother dropped to her knees by the case. Her hand stretched out above the glass.

“What a good boy you are.” I heard the whisper before I saw any movement in her face, and I looked around as if to find some other source of judgment.

“Mother.” I could hardly speak. I felt as though violet stems had spired up in the confines of my throat and flowered there.

She covered her face with both hands and cried not as adults commonly cry in front of children, with a few parsimonious tears, but as a young girl might cry—with a cloudburst suddenly springing forth and suddenly ended.

As she dried her face on a sleeve, she repeated that I was “a good boy, the sweetest boy in the world.”

She embraced me, letting her weight fall more and more on my shoulders until I was pushing with all my might against her. As I pressed my cheek against her neck, I felt indignant. A drop of my mother’s perspiration splashed onto my arm. Why was it always kept so warm in the living room? It was stifling; as the minutes fell into—where? where did they go? into what crack in the earth’s crust?—the flowers writhed and shriveled into dark French knots.

When my pretty mother rose and left, my face and arms were damp. I didn’t know what to feel—or, I felt many things but didn’t know how to name them.

In childhood, it is impossible to appreciate the passionate heart and naiad youth of one’s mother. And when we are old enough to do so, she has grown worn and been diminished by the effort of bringing us into some uneasy compromise with the world—that, at the very least—and of helping us to adapt to this kingdom that we do not choose and will be later made to leave, generally in a way and at an hour not of our desiring. My mother’s library once whispered these things to me, and now, some years later, I begin to see their truth.

“Mama! Where are you?”

In this way, I often called and called for her and had no answer.

Mother would pass through the western doors of the chamber, and when I searched, I could not find her. It seemed as if she had access to other realms where I could not go—perhaps translunary orbs where she might be a mother to another boy, where there might be girls who were not sealed into glass cases, where fathers were not obsessive. Even after I was given a key to the courtyard and had the freedom of its walks and the companionship of its cold statues, I could not make out where my mother went in her absences.

“Mama! Are you here? Don’t hide from me—”

I forced open a door to an unfamiliar room, my steps slowing, my voice dying away. The syllables were eaten, I thought, by the plush curtains with heavy tassels, the flocked wallpaper, and the dense, deep carpets.

“Mama—”

My feet moved uncertainly on the carpet; it was like walking on moss. And on the wood in between, my heels made an unexpected tapping noise that frightened me and made me look around in terror.

“Is anybody there?”

With a tin sword lashed to my belt, I wandered room after room, each lined with books, each with ladders spiraling into remote recesses of the ceiling—I simply assumed that there was a ceiling, somewhere past the weather that inhabited the heights and sometimes seemed to be shadows and at other moments, clouds. Once or twice I glimpsed faces peeping down at me: angels, perhaps, or demons. One evening I saw evenly spaced snowflakes twirl from the canopy, to lie unmelting on the antique Persian carpet.

“Mother, I want to show you something! Come here!”

My voice echoed and died. I remembered how my mother had made me promise never to lie down in the snow and go to sleep, though there seemed no danger; I never went outside to play. She had made me promise many things, all of them for my own good and hers. “I can’t bear for anything to happen,” she had said, again and again. Did she mean, to me? Nevertheless, I fell asleep, curled on the rug. When I woke all the crystal stars had vanished, and my toy sword glinted with an edge made of sunlight.

Occasionally I discovered my mother in the shelter of a window seat, reading or musing or embroidering a scene from the woods—ferns and wildflowers and beasts. Once I found her dozing, arm flung across a cushion. “Mama! There you are—”

Her eyes flew open, and she laughed.

Of course I raced to her side, leaning against her warmth and softness. I suppose every child likes to pillow his head against a mother’s breast.

“You found me! You clever boy—”

“Mama, why can’t I always find you?” I slid my fingers along one of her long curls, watching it twist and gleam.

“Can’t you always? You’ll have to look harder.” Her words were teasing, but to my child’s eye, her face appeared sad. “I’m glad that you found my hiding place.”

“Why?” When I persisted, she shrugged, smiling as she cupped my face with her hand.

“Let me read you a story.”

“All right.”

She knew the library well, and it was no trouble for her to fetch me some storybook with entrancing pictures. I pored over the scenes of a boy and girl kneeling on the floor of the Snow Queen’s palace to work a puzzle of ice, Baba Yaga’s hut dashing forward just as the teeth of a magical comb bit earth and became trees, or the just-broken isinglass coffin of Snow White, with dwarves and weeping candles all around and the prince’s kiss hovering above her lips. But I could never kiss and awaken the girl in the case; my mother had told me so, long before.

“This one.” I pointed to a picture of the wild boy, Orson, in his furs and wreath of leaves and berries.

“All right.” She glanced at me and gave a shake of the head. “You’re growing taller, aren’t you? I hadn’t noticed until now.”

I looked down. An inch of skin shone between the cuffs of the velvet pants that she liked me to wear and my socks. I wanted to apologize but did not.

“Never mind. I’ll make you some new ones.” She bent her head and flipped through the book, looking for the start of the story.

We were companionable for an hour, me turning the pages of the storybook while she read aloud. I felt a profound sense of comfort that moved me close to tears. Her attention fastened on me and the book, she took only an occasional stitch. Whenever she did so, the thread dragged at the fabric and made a protracted rushing noise that pleased me; I was happier than I had been in a long time.

“Mama, couldn’t we—”

The sharp clang! of a bell jangled the atmosphere and stopped the needle’s tug and flow: My mother flew up and was gone like an apparition. Perhaps I had glimpsed the train of her garment vanishing through the door; I wasn’t sure.

Where had she gone?

My father, too, had his private quarters, where he ruled his alchemical laboratories and consulted his library of abstruse books. He remained ensconced in his rooms, where I was not often allowed to visit. I vividly remember the first time I was permitted to go in.

“Don’t touch.”

His hand clamped onto my shoulder and turned me from his glass and metal edifice of vials, tubing, and retorts. I craned to look behind me at the towers of scaffolding that bubbled and steamed—with what? Mystery was all I knew. Like a bad castle, its glitter allured me.

“Take the boy away.” He sounded irritable.

I had come alone, and there was no one to make me go. I lingered, creeping as slowly as I dared, scanning the work tables strewn with papers and references. Arcane, unreadable symbols dazzled my eyes whenever I glanced into an open volume. These large, leather-bound entities struck my imagination as a form of curious taxidermy that, when propped open, exhibited a spine and wings and nothing else save for the mystic signs that were their whole reason for being. I expected that, like a golem, they could be brought to life by the correct symbol.

About such things I was well versed. My paternal grandmother lived with us but was seldom seen; when she was well and in good temper, she told me terrible stories about the machinations of demons and the tricks of sprites governed by the damned angel, Baal Zevul.

“Noo, noo,” she would say, lowering her voice. “It’s best to be careful, careful. The works of the little bodgy devils are many, many.” Her fingers twitched as she crossed herself. “Never name them, no.”

Stories and cautions had in turn been inflicted on her at an impressionable age by a nursery maid from Krakow, who had nattered endlessly about the black powers and the kings and queens at Wawel—particularly Prince Krakus, who had ascended the throne in the eighth century after killing a dragon that had an unhappy predilection for devouring virgins. I connected the dangerous creatures of the nursery maid’s tales with the winged books in my father’s laboratory, and wondered if his chemical experiments were related somehow to the study of dragons and demons. When I asked my grandmother, she didn’t tell me.

“It was a different world,” she said, heaving up a sigh that smelled of rot and peppermint. “We had to shovel goat dung all day, or else dig in the mines, even the children. None of this frolicking about the house with weapons, playing.”

“Pish, posh.” My whisper was too low for anyone to hear. I looked at my sword, thinking with indignation that it was not a toy but an essential defense against the unknown. And when did I ever play? Who was there to play with me? No playmates but books. Words were my toys—I clicked and shook them together to hear their music. That was as close to frolic as I ever came. But at least she had given me an answer, even if it was to the wrong question. Most of the time my grandmother was simply an offering to darkness and absence, sunk in a bog of stupor and attended by a nurse, but her tales of the black powers stayed with me.

As I grew older, I ventured more often into my father’s region; he, too, would often perceive me only vaguely, remarking my presence with a syllable of owl-like greeting like a call from a faraway grove. Not wishing to enflame him, I usually observed the state of his researches in silence and tiptoed away without a word. And that despite the fact that, as I grew more familiar with the library, I knew very interesting words indeed! I could have conversed with him well enough. But he was like my playmates, the books, and talked to me but seldom listened.

The speechless girl in glass was my only child companion. She always listened to me, and kept all my words stored in her heart, but never spoke.

Her name was Vesta. I couldn’t recall the time when she had been out of the box, when she had held me, laughed with joy, and called me by my name, Blaise. Later, for a brief time, we were the same age. Then I passed her by, and she dwindled. Yet I still daydreamed above her, polishing the lid with a chamois rag and puffs of my breath.

“When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come Vesta, cradle and all,” I sang. I rubbed the glass until the moonshine of her face blurred into reflected lamplight.

Because the chest had been inset into the floor, I could only view her from above; I wished that it had been otherwise. I would have liked to lie beside her, and to look across at her profile.

In my imaginings, she retained the same force as before. At night when I started awake, hearing raised voices, I thought about her, even prayed to her in a manner surely blasphemous—invoking her protection.

Vesta, remember me, your little Blaise. Be with me, take care of me, don’t forget me. Keep me safe.

I hadn’t yet reached the portion of the library devoted to holy saints and so knew nothing of them. Nevertheless, she was mine.

One morning I filled a blue vase with stems of snowdrops and set it above her crossed hands. From a certain angle, it appeared that she might be holding a bouquet. I had made similar attempts to share my sword, setting it straight down with the hilt at her hands so that, with the proper squint, she dimly resembled something I had seen in a picture book: the image of a Crusader lying on his tomb, pommel gripped in his fingers.

While admiring this arrangement, I noticed a miasma drifting across the nosegay of flowers. Already one or two had begun to wilt.

“Strange, Vesta,” I whispered.

When I knelt close to the glass, I saw that a slate tile had become separated from one of its neighbors. From this narrow cleft proceeded a wisp of smoke. I swept my fingers through it, and the cloudlet dissipated. I pressed my palm against the stones; they felt cool to the touch.

A bowl of earth and one of salt, symbols meaningful to my grandmother, stood near the glass pane; I tried poking crumbs of dirt and crystal through the gap. I couldn’t seal it up and, in fact, made no progress at all with my efforts.

“You thumble-pin fool! You imbecile—” Hearing my father shout angrily in the distance, I set off in search of him—or, rather, to spy on him and his latest assistant. This was a tactical error, as I was excited by what had just happened and unlikely to be hushed in my mission. How well I knew that my father hated “dross and petty stratagems,” as he denoted any attempts at spying. Dross was a favored word of his, as was gold; he loved the space for transformation between them.

Frequently I surprised myself with my own temerity . . .

He was angered by my actions in this instance. Hush! I do not have to tell everything. That much I have learned from the books, which often refuse to tell me the very thing that I want to know the most.

That night I dreamed my bedroom as an alchemical chamber with walls of glass, and I had been thrown alive into its bonfires. I shuddered in the heart of a star but could not die, though I shouted for the Black Man to come and reap me with his sickle.

“Come get me! Take me, take me, take me!” My screams went on, unavailing. My nightmare father strode outside, implacable.

The alchemist’s sun, trapped in a bottle, burned for freedom, its enormous spangled flames shooting up to the ceiling. An emptiness that dwelled inside the hood of night called me: Blaise, Blaise, Blaise . . .

“Vesta! Ves-ta! Vesta—”

I sobbed until the words blurred into nothingness. Eventually, I found myself sitting on the edge of my bed, legs dangling. The fire had receded to a safe distance. I listened hard to steps that echoed down a long hall, until they ended in silence.

I counted the minutes because I knew.

I did not raise my head to look but counted one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, like that. Because I knew the alchemical process was not complete. Such a blaze could not go out so easily. The remains smoldered, occasionally snapped with sparks. A rumor of steps: soon mounting in intensity and becoming slaps and then thunder in the infinite hallway as the fire increased, fed by noise, until it touched not just the glass floor but ceiling and four walls, and I was metamorphosing to gold and shrieking—Mama! Mama, save me!—though my mother was surely in the remotest district of the library and could not hear or help.

Immolation. Burnt sacrifice. I woke, trembling, moist with sweat, my skin smelling like lead. For some time my thoughts were confused; then I remembered the crack between the tiles. Although I wanted the blank of a dreamless sleep, I forced myself to get up and pad down the hall to the living room. Moonlight trickled across the stones. The chink seemed subtly larger than before. I lay on the pane that divided me from the girl and stared at her face, washed by moon glow. A long time had fled since I had been exactly the right size to fit on the case, yet I still pressed against its hard, slick surface.

“Vesta.” I yielded to drowsiness, and in the morning my cheek was stuck to the glass.

The breach in the floor aroused no fresh concern in my parents. They seemed, rather, to be relieved from an old dread and to have expected such an eventuality. By the end of the second day, the irregular slit was about seventeen inches long and nearly four inches wide at the widest point. Another day later, tiles began to shatter and tumble into the hole. I hung over the lip, craning to see bottom, but could detect only fog and flares of ruddy light. Nor could I tell when the fragments of clay struck any remote solidity.

Little by little, the room was tugged apart. Vapors poured from the damaged floor. In less than a month, a canyon some four feet wide and thirteen long gaped before me. The stench seemed to do me no harm, although a line of poetry from the library drifted into my mind and made me wonder if its influence might be subtle, a taint: “Internal difference / Where the meanings are.” Intermittently an edge would give way, collapsing in a shower of shards. Once I glimpsed lizards moving in mazy patterns a few feet below the brink. Though I assumed that their motions were senseless, later on I wondered if they could have had purpose. The sooty, red-eyed creatures inspired an instinctive revulsion.

Out of reluctance, I have failed to mention the most important features of this domestic cataclysm, having to do with the plan of the house and with Vesta. Because it had been designed to narrow down to a single chamber at the living room, the building was soon chopped in twain. This queer state of affairs went unacknowledged by any word from my parents, who resorted first to jumping and later to navigating via ladders laid across the opening and anchored to form bridges. Most of the time, however, they simply stayed in their own preferred regions on either side of the fissure. Although I, too, crawled on the ladders, I never failed to plumb the depths of an intense terror when peering down through the rungs at globes of fire, floating in the smoke.

Vesta was my mantra on these journeys.

My father took a certain professional interest in the gaseous exhalations emanating from the gulf and penetrating the two halves of the living room. Seldom did he make the crossing without collection devices—a jumble of beakers, rubber tubing, glass retorts, and other alchemical-looking paraphernalia. I believe this curiosity of his led to a number of the explosions in his laboratories.

“What’s happening?” I asked, thinking that his scientific knowledge might explain what I could not fathom.

He emitted a sharp laugh. “Don’t bother me.”

My mother looked helpless when I asked her in turn. “Your father and I,” she said hesitantly, but got no further.

A signal event associated with the opening of the chasm was the near-loss of the girl in glass. By the close of the fourth week, she jutted headfirst into the rift. For the first time, I could see her from a fresh angle, but I could no longer stretch out on the box without fear. Neither could I have done so without becoming dizzy and perhaps sickened and confused by the vapors from the pit, for their odor had become more acrid as the days passed. I would crawl as close as possible and lie down, my eyes on her profile. Occasional blossoms of fire rocketed from the depths, falling back harmlessly or landing like a kiss on the glass pane that shielded her face.

“Vesta, what if you fell?”

My whisper surprised me, and I was startled by a wish that the floor would crumble and release her. I imagined the box rocketing through the air. I saw a hurled flower, a red comet with a tail of shattered tiles, a queen bee chased by a swarm: kaleidoscopic flights and freedom. I reproached myself. The swirl of images had the nature of a sin embraced, or a blasphemy uttered while praying.

The days fly, and the years . . . and yet I know nothing but books and the paths in the courtyard. I am a man, so my grandmother says, now that I am fifteen. On my birthday, she gave me a feather of red and gold, presented to her long ago by the nursery maid. Prince Krakus had snatched it from the wing of a firebird. How did a poor girl manage to obtain such a royal favor, I wonder? I’ll never know, unless the answer’s hidden in the library.

Stitching in the window seat, my mother has made me black mourning clothes, and when I look at myself in the mirror I am not displeased. The feather makes a dash of red in a buttonhole. Mama is grieving for the future, I suspect, just as she has done for the past. I close my eyes and picture a child, a boy in velvet pants and a white blouse frothy with lace. Back then I saw; I sensed. Yet I only stored what happened in memory. Perhaps I couldn’t bear to consider what anything meant. Perhaps the strife of attempting such a thing would have led to a spontaneous combustion, the invisible aura around my body catching fire and rendering me down to charred bone and teeth.

Taking up my toy sword, I whip the air.

Yesterday I ran from room to room, and when I found my mother, I told her the news.

“I am leaving home to seek my fortune!”

What else could it be? Long ago she had taught me, reading from the house’s treasure of storybooks, what a man does. He leaves his house and seeks adventure in the wild wideness, with its huts and caves and castles. When Mama laid her head on my shoulder, I could see how small she had grown.

Today my mother is in hiding and cannot be traced, but tomorrow I will take her hands once more before I run room by room through the world. I know that there will be times when I wonder if my story is not already complete, rather than about to begin. Some days I’ll fear—as I do now—that I was consumed entirely by fire, and that what I’m living now is a kind of afterlife. Perhaps I am a human phoenix, who in a dream was scorched to ash, or reduced to a mere egg waiting to hatch. Perhaps this life is not a real life but only a veil, torn asunder but still covering the face of the living world. So close, so close: Perhaps I have touched it with these fingertips that were once melted in flame and now have not so much as a whorl of maze to differentiate them. When I am fully a man, tested by adventure, I hope to know everything. The books I read in our library have told me that the years are worlds, and the lands, and the past is only a place one cannot reach.

I wonder what my father will say when he notices that I have gone.

Will he mutter to my grandmother that they both had a part in my metamorphosis?

I won’t—can’t bear to—consider my mother’s sorrow.

And what of Vesta, the perfect child in the glass box, jutting into the abyss, all that was she drawn inward? Long ago I rocked from side to side, sending forth prayers that were like kisses of fire rising from an abyss. Sybil and sibling, Vesta, my idol: I never felt a final conviction that you were dead to me and unreachable, and I still don’t.

At night when I dream, I see you face to face, though we are severed by a single pane, and I wake to cool drops of grief on my skin. The flame of those dreams is pale as moonshine.

My sister burns, snowy and purified, her lavender eyelids sealed. She may fall, a star, into the breach. The glass may melt in a lake of fire. I don’t know. I’ve never known how it is with Vesta. She may float down as softly as a snowflake sifting from a cloud. The glow from her face may turn the lake to a moonglade and the salamanders to silver.

Is she, too, a phoenix? What then, I wonder, will be the manner of her uprising?

The universe is bigger than anyone ever told me. Sky with its endless manifestations of cloud and spark tells me so. I stand in the courtyard and daydream about the kings and queens and the helping animals and unexpected friends that I will meet along the way. I wonder if I am to go traveling as the prince or as the foolish Hans, and whether gifts will be granted—or will I be chucked like a log into the witch’s fire? Eagles fly overhead, screaming messages from another world. I do not know if their cries spiral from the throats of demons or seraphim.

In sleep, when I stare into my sister’s open eyes, I realize that their blue is the color of mercy.

She is my vestal, and I, Blaise, am her fire.

Daydreaming of my fortune, I hear a voice and am surprised to find it my own, saying, Let Vesta be with me, every furlong and fathom of the way.

© 2007 Marly Youmans.

Originally published in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

In 2012, Marly Youmans published three books: a novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, winner of The Ferrol Sams Award (Mercer University Press); The Foliate Head, a collection of formal poetry with “green man” art by major artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins of Wales (UK: Stanza Press); and Thaliad, her 11th book, a post-apocalyptic epic in blank verse (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing), also with lavish art by Hicks-Jenkins. She was also on the judging panel for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature in 2012. Forthcoming are several books: Glimmerglass, a novel that includes a pursuit of the muse, failure, renewal, and murderous impulse, and Maze of Blood, a tale inspired by the pulpy life and Texas times of Robert Howard. Currently Marly is polishing a long sequence of poems called The Book of the Red King. Find her at thepalaceat2.blogspot.com.

Abyssus Abyssum Invocat
Genevieve Valentine

The Prince

Once, a mermaid fell in love with a prince who fell from his ship in a storm; when he had ceased to struggle, the mermaid took his face in her hands, passed her fingertips over the lids of his closed eyes, pressed her mouth against his mouth. Then she delivered him to the surface, where he was safely found.

But the salt of a man’s lips was sweeter than the salt sea, and the memory of it drove the mermaid nearly mad, until at last she left behind all she knew to find the prince again.

She gave her voice to the hag in the grotto; the hag gave her a knife and said, “Very well.”

She swam until her home waters were far behind her, until the prince’s castle was in sight and she could swim no farther; then she lay at the edge of the water, and cut at her flesh until it was cleaved in two.

She was not allowed to wash her hands clean (she was not allowed to ask anything again, of the sea); when the men found her in the morning, they saw a naked woman holding a knife, up to her elbows in blood.

They hanged her from the first tree they found, so young that it sagged under her weight.

It’s grown crooked ever since; I can see it from my window, as I tell you this.

Miss Warren came to the school the winter the ice broke in filmy crusts across the rocks.

The rain was coming down in sheets, waves trying to devour the shore, and no one saw her arriving; she was just there, waiting for them in the schoolroom the morning after, as if she’d grown overnight from the boards.

She looked them over, one by one, as if searching for something, but she must not have found it, because they just studied geography, and she walked among them carefully, and silent as the grave.

The consensus after class was, it was no wonder young single ladies were now permitted to teach in Cornwall, if they were as plain as Miss Warren.

(Matthew said nothing—he was already sixteen, and would graduate by summer, what did he care if she was plain for a spring?

She had paused by his desk a long time, watching him draw from the map, little strings of islands like a necklace of beads. He could feel her gaze on his neck; it never moved, all the time she stood there. Her hands were thin and white, and she held the fingers together, like a dove’s tail.

There was a hitch when she breathed, as if her lungs were giving out.

He watched her walk back up to the board, watched the line of her arm all the while she wrote the names of cities on the blackboard, her little white wrist sliding in and out of her sleeve, her hair as colorless and fragile as a sheet of ice.)

The first story she writes at the start of spring, when the green is creeping back over the rocks wherever the ice scraped it away, and the ospreys wheel over the courtyard of the school.

She writes it on the ruins of the old stone wall, where she was high above the water and alone but for the ghosts of the oppidum, who had, in the Roman years, looked out onto the ocean and seen serpents in the spray.

(It’s a relief from the press of anxious boys, their little wars and flares of temper.)

She gives it to Matthew, a single sheet of paper pressed into his workbook, where he’ll discover it some time from now, turning a page to start a lesson, frowning at it, touching his left lapel as he always does when something has taken him by surprise.

(She wants him, by then, because he holds very still; because of the way he looks at dead things with an air of sorrow; she wants him because his hair is dark, and gleams like the hair of a drowned man.)

Matthew waited two weeks for some word from her, but nothing came. She gave lessons as though nothing had happened, and spent Saturdays in the schoolroom reading, and Sundays walking the path that led to the sea, stopping from time to time to turn her profile to the water as if she was looking behind her. But she was too far, and from where he stood at the window, he couldn’t see anything for sure.

The next week he stayed behind on Saturday, after service, to get her alone.

(The story wasn’t the sort of thing one brought up to the Schoolmaster.

It was the sort of thing you read over and over as you pretended to study at night, casting looks out the pitch-black window, as if you could peer past the candlelight and all the way down to the sea.)

She was reading from an atlas.

“Sit, if you like,” she said.

Her voice was metallic at the edges, like a rusted bell, and she didn’t look up to greet him, or use any words of kindness.

He thought how strange she was, how little she knew of manners or the customs of the school.

Still, he sat beside her.

“I found this,” he said, and set the story on the open pages.

She looked at it. Then she turned a leaf; the paper vanished.

“Why did you give it to me?”

“I don’t love you,” she said. “You mustn’t think that. You’ll go mad if you do.”

She had unfastened the topmost button of her collar, as if she couldn’t breathe; he could see a sliver of shadow under the line of her dress.

“What did you think of the story?”

He thought about it.

(He had drawn the scene twice in his notebook, then burned the pages. They weren’t the sort of thing you left for others to find.)

“It seems truer than the other stories they tell you,” he said at last.

She raised an eyebrow, turned another page.

He said, “And I pitied her, for losing everything in pursuit of love.”

She looked at him, just for a moment, as if she was surprised. Her eyes were green as glass.

The pages were a map of the West Indies and the sea that surrounded them. Amidst the roiling waves, someone had drawn a ship, splintering to pieces. Sirens circled the drowning sailors, the water beneath them nearly black. Safely at the edge of the tumult slid the legend, Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.

He sucked in a breath.

She looked sad, now; he didn’t know what he had done.

“The deep calls unto the deep,” she said.

The translation wasn’t quite right—Millard and some of the other boys would have called her stupid or romantic, if they’d heard her, said it was the reason she taught geography and not Latin.

But her hair was the color of seafoam, and the lines of her profile were carved out by the last of the daylight, and the words sounded so like a prayer to her that he only nodded yes.

If he reached out a hand and held the edge of her cuff in two fingers, who else was there to see it; if they sat together until it was full dark, who was there to say?

The Ship

Once, a mermaid fell in love with the prow of a ship that fell from a ship in a storm; the mermaid pushed aside the bodies of the dead as she swam, and caught it up in her arms.

It had hair like her own, blown back, and it had arms like her own flexed in fists, and a face like her own set in a mask of triumph, and from the bottom of her gown bloomed two pointed feet, one on top of the other like the suffering Christ.

Within each thing on the land, the mermaid thought, there must be such a spirit waiting to be freed, and kissed the wooden lips.

She gave her voice to the hag in the grotto; the hag gave her a knife and said, “Very well.”

She cut at her flesh until it was cleaved in two. Then she walked along the beach, the sand a hundred thousand little wounds against her feet, until she came to the first tree she saw, and sank down with weariness.

The bark came apart in her bloody hands, and beneath it she saw the grain-wood of her beloved, and she began at once to weep for joy, and to kiss its smoothness. And the tree, from her beauty and from its loneliness, bent its branches down to meet her.

But the mermaid had been careless. Day is ever the enemy of the sea, and as dawn touched the shore, the mermaid was turned into a spray of seafoam; the tree, stained with blood and tears, died of grief, still reaching out for its beloved.

The tree has been crooked ever since; I can see it from my window, as I tell you this.

The second story comes in full spring, when the trees are leafing and the birds are roosting in nests that cling to the rocks.

(She has been back often to the wall, and rested her feet on the bodies of the dead that lie under this ground that is shallow enough to push them through the grass at any moment.

His was a careful sorrow, in a careful heart, and had to be tended as carefully as a grave.

She has let a dozen papers be ripped from her hands, until it was the right story.)

The water at the foot of the cliffs is green, green as the waters of home.

Since the first story, she has seen Matthew go out walking past the shelter of the school and stand along the path that goes down to the sea, holding perfectly still in a way she can’t stop looking at.

She doesn’t know how he can do it, with the wind here the way it is.

Sometimes he frowns; sometimes he closes his eyes.

His eyes are dark, as dark as if no happiness ever reaches them. She had thought it was a sorrow of his own, before he told her he had sorrowed for a mermaid in a fairy tale.

(Some stories have been ripped from her hands against her will; some stories will never be right.)

Matthew had looked for stories a hundred times before the next one came.

He knew it was the day when her hand trembled as she held it out, her fingers resting an instant too long on the cover, as if she was thinking better of it until the very last.

As soon as they were dismissed, he turned and took the long way round to mathematics, just so he could hang back alone and read it as fast as he could, his fingers trembling.

(She never said what the mermaids looked like; for him they all had green eyes and hair the color of seafoam, their white wrists sliding in and out of the waves as they swam.)

He folded the story shut when he had finished, closed his eyes, pressed it to his chest like a talisman.

The paper carried a smell of the salted sea, and he breathed deep, felt his fingers ache as though he had torn at a tree.

He was late to mathematics; all the while the willow switch was stinging across his hands, he was looking out the window, where the tide was coming in.

He grew distracted. He watched the sea when he should have been at study; he looked at little trees until he swore he could see the branches curling in.

He kept the story folded in half inside his jacket pocket. When he was nervous, he touched his lapel until he could feel the paper pressing back.

During science, they looked at anatomies of insects and frogs and fish and birds, the skin peeled back like the skin of a fruit, everything carefully labeled.

He drew seals, bones and muscles and blubber cradling a pocket of organs. Beside them came drawings of men, the groups of muscles that powered the arms and the abdomen.

At night, he cut them each in half and set them side by side.

(Such a thing could be, he thought, if Nature was clever; he tried to determine how high the little mermaid had cleaved herself in two, before she could walk.)

Sometimes he looked out the windows of the library and said the words over and over to the glass, his lips barely moving, watching a figure in a slate-gray dress walk the narrow path that wandered too close to the sea.

But he wasn’t afraid, watching her; if the waves rose and claimed her, he would run down the rocks and dive into the sea, and seek her until he found her.

He imagined pressing his mouth to her mouth until she breathed; he thought, Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.

The atlas sits on her desk, beside her globe.

It’s safe there, of course; none of the boys see much thrill in pilfering a text.

If Matthew wants to study in the room after the others are gone, who cares enough to stay behind? Who cares enough to watch him turning pages, examining the chains of islands to be sure he can recall them?

His notebook fills up with mermaids in ink. He knows more of the true shapes of things than the men who made the maps, and his sirens have a breath of life.

They have marlin tails and seal tails; their hair spreads out across the surface of the water as they gather around the bodies of the drowned.

(He never draws the shipwrecks; the ships don’t matter, the ships are gone.)

All the mermaids have hair like seafoam; their lips are parted.

When she sees them, her hands tremble.

(She wants, for an awful moment, to reach for a knife and cut until she’s cleaved in two.)

You can’t do this, she writes in the margin. She writes, as small as she can, They were warnings; I told you, you would run mad.

The drawings are too close to life; her face is stamped on every one.

He leaves it on her desk two days later.

He’s drawn a page so thick with waves the page is nearly black. Amid the storm, a mermaid—empty and white—has embraced a sailor with dark hair.

His limbs are loose in hers; he’s stopped struggling; it’s too late.

(Outside, when she looks, he’s standing on the path to the sea, watching her window.)

She writes, This is not for you.

(The waves are too dark to write anything on; she writes it across the body of the mermaid, a tattoo that swallows up her torso, her hair, her open mouth.)

The Deep

Once, a mermaid fell in love with death.

Men fell from a ship in a storm. The mermaid caught one up in her arms, pressed her hand to his screaming mouth to feel the warmth of his lips. After he stopped struggling, she swam among them all, closing their eyes with the tips of her fingers, their lids so thick that she could no longer see their eyes.

She kissed their hands; she carried each of them as far down as she dared, watched them sink into the dark water with their legs trailing like seaweed behind them and their faces sleeping, sleeping.

They carried pink halos with them, where her nails had curled into the skin and drawn blood.

The mermaid could not forget the faces of the drowned men; their faces kept sleep at bay, they drove her mad, and she knew she would find no peace until she could release all the suffering of men.

And she said, “Very well.”

She swam until her home was far behind her. She followed storms wherever they touched the water, and gathered the dead gratefully into her arms, and sent them to the depths with her salt kiss on their mouths.

When there are no storms, or when those who die have not grief enough, she swims as close to shore as she dares, and tastes the salt tears on the air, and waves all mourners welcome in the sea.

She has been searching since; I can see her beckoning me from my window, as I tell you this.

The last story is written in haste, in a schoolroom in a moment of quiet, and pressed between the pages of an atlas.

She wants to warn him, Don’t follow, don’t follow, but her hands betray her, and the story stops.

(Nothing she says will keep him away from the water, now. He has an interest in dead things, and his hair gleams like the hair of a drowned man.)

On the beach she strips down to nothing, walks into the waves.

(The tide is going out; the sea is pulling at her with every step.)

Against the rocks, the waves crash and shatter like bodies; hair like seafoam, white as bone, sharp as the water calling you home.

Don’t follow, she thinks, just before the water closes over her head.

Miss Warren’s disappearance caused a little uproar in the school.

She could not be found. There was nothing in her room to suggest she had lived there at all, save the atlas. At first there was some little scandal as if she’d eloped, but then they all remembered she was plain.

Matthew was not surprised to find her missing; he was only surprised she had gone alone.

(He had gone down to the edge of the water. One lace cuff had gotten trapped in the rocks. It lived in the pocket of his jacket, between a story that had warned him and a story that told him what had happened.)

For two days, he counted time. He did not weep. He was not afraid of little partings.

(He knew what she was; he had always liked dead things.)

On the morning of the third day, there was a storm; sheets of rain battered the windows and hid the shore from view.

He woke when it was still dark.

He wrote across the body of the sailor, Abyssus Abyssum Invocat.

He carried the book tucked close at his side, all the way down to the sea.

© 2013 Genevieve Valentine.

Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, Mechanique: a Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, won the Crawford Award; her second novel, Glad Rags, is forthcoming from Atria in 2014. Her short fiction has appeared in Lightspeed, Fantasy Magazine, Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, and Escape Pod, and in anthologies including Armored, Under the Moons of Mars, Running with the Pack, The Living Dead 2, Federations, After, Teeth, and The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, among others. Her appetite for bad movies is insatiable, a tragedy she tracks on her blog at genevievevalentine.com.

The Herons of Mer de l’Ouest
M. Bennardo

NOVEMBER 1761

A loon called this morning, loud and clear in the cold hours before dawn, but it was not that which woke me from my sleep.

As I opened my eyes, the bay and the beach were wrapped in heavy blackness, invisible clouds shutting out any hint of starlight above. For a moment, I lay in my lean-to, breathing heavily under the shaggy bison skin blanket.

The back of my neck still tingled with the touch that had woken me—light and soft, like the caress of my wife when she wanted me to put more logs on the grate. But she has been gone these two years, and in that time there has been no other. I am alone here, and have been for months.

Out on the water, the loon called again—her high, mournful keening sounding like the weary howl of a lost wolf. I had thought the loons had all flown already, south to warmer climes. For here it grows colder every day, and soon winter will pin me to this chilly beach.

I do not know the exact date today, for I have not kept careful count, but it must be November by now. Neither do I know precisely where I am, save that I am far beyond any claims of Nouvelle-France, over the stabbing peaks of the Montagnes de Pierres Brilliantes in the watershed of some west-flowing Missouri of Nueva California, which I take to be the Rio Santa Buenaventura that the Spaniards have long sought.

I call this wide expanse of water Bais des Cedres, but it may yet prove an interior sea. If I do find an outlet, it will not be until spring. And then I will know at last that I have charted the rumored Mer de l’Ouest—that great bulbous basin of the sea which Nolin marked on the map he stole from De l’Isle, and which must be the last leg of my two years’ wanderings, the terminus of what will prove to be a Northwest Passage, which will lead me finally out, to die, on the océan Pacifique.

Moments later, the loon called several times more, rapidly and angrily, her voice sounding strange in the shifting curtains of mist—first near, then far, then near again. I have never heard a loon cry with such alarm, save once when my canoe chanced to separate a mother from her young, so I peered from my lean-to out into the biting air of the night, watching for intruders.

There was nothing save the dim white tops of the low waves as they rolled in from darkness and obscurity. Wave after wave, lapping in regular beats, just as it has always done, in all the months I have stopped on this beach.

But then there was something else.

On the tip of a prominence to the west of my camp, something moved. At first, it was barely visible through the screen of trees that crowded the spit. But soon, it had rounded the point into open view, and was sliding down the near side toward me, following the contour of the beach where it met the waves.

I could see it clearly enough now, but still it had no form or shape. It was simply a glow—simply the glitter of the sand and the mist where some light or energy passed, bright and eerie enough to raise the hairs on my neck as I watched. On and on, the patch of light crept along, cold and quiet, rapidly spilling across the flat beach and up toward the treeline above, until even the sand at the opening of my lean-to began to glitter, a mere arm’s length away.

Then, with swift suddenness, a sharp ray of light pierced my eyes from the inky bosom of the bay, dazzling and half-blinding me.

Dark again, the sharp ray gone—but its echoes still blotting out everything in the darkness. I could not be sure of what I saw, could not be sure of the long black shape that seemed to pass in the water below my lean-to, trailing close after the light. But my ears were not dazzled, and plainly I heard the faint dribble of water as a paddle broke the surface of the water—then the creak of a bowstring, and the soft low hiss of a hunter who spies his prey.

The light had moved some distance down the beach, and had caught the yellow-green glow of a deer’s eyes. There it hung as the animal stood transfixed to the spot, a silhouette in black shadows and red fur above the still-glittering sand.

Then something dark and thin shot through the light, and the animal staggered suddenly as if struck by a blow. Foundering to its knees, it disintegrated into thrashing hooves and arching neck. Splashes followed and something dragged the dying deer out of the lantern glow toward the bay. For I understood everything now—the light was a lantern on a canoe, shined by hunters to dazzle deer and wapiti that strayed close to the shore.

For an instant only, I saw the hunter himself as he bent over the stiffening legs of the deer—a black shadow, hunched and distorted in the dim yellow glow, but the shape plainly, incongruously visible all the same.

And as I watched, I knew—whatever it was, it was not a man.

Instead, my eye followed the lines of the shape, and clearly I saw the head and neck and wings of an enormous prowling heron, seven feet tall at least, towering over the carcass of the deer amidst the flickering lamplight, and glaring down the beach—head and eyes leveled coolly in my direction.

Then the deer was pulled away into the water, and the lantern blinked out, and all was dark again.

In the first light of morning, I followed the waterline and saw none of the splay-toed marks of heron’s feet I expected. But instead, cut sharply into the frosty sand, I found a single smooth oval—unmistakable for what it was, the fresh and clear print of a man’s leather moccasin.

DECEMBER 1761

If my reckoning is true and December has now come, then it is now the second winter since I shook the wretched dust of Lac Supérieur, the canting voyageurs, and the Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson all from the soles of my feet.

For had I not come back from laying the company’s traplines to find my wife, a Salteaux Chippewa, fled into the forest with my infant son? Did I not follow her along the trail that led to her father’s village among the Anishinaabeg until I found her bones strewn among underbrush, where wolves and worse had thrown them?

But enough. That memory does not bring her back. And here, though I have fled far enough from the lying tongues of men, I fear I may have found things even more damned instead.

I made the discovery as I entered a wide clearing, at least two hundred yards across, empty of all trees except a sparse collection of ancient thick-trunked oaks. A carpet of dead, brown ferns as high as my knees covered the ground below, dried leaves bowed under the light falling of snow that dusted them.

The place was charming in its way, or at least different from the endless woods of wrinkled red cedars and lichen-spotted hemlocks that otherwise ringed the bay. Rattling my snares loosely in my hand, I crossed—eyes alert for the million little disturbances that mark the trails of hares, of foxes, of mink.

But only ten yards across, my foot kicked something under the ferns, and it rolled end over end to stop among the roots of an oak. Bending to pick it up, I found myself holding the ribcage of a small deer. Smooth white ribs showed through the accumulated dirt and patches of still-clinging fur. Carelessly, I threw it aside.

The woods are full of such things, and more than once I have squatted on a trail, only to slowly realize that the last remains of some animal are splayed horrifically about me. It all eventually blends with the earth itself—dirty bones, patches of fur, hooves, antlers, teeth.

But there, in that oak clearing, I was not squatting on the remains of one deer. Instead, looking about, I saw there must have been a hundred animals slain there—a thousand—more! I had only to put my foot into any clump of ferns to turn up some grisly remnant of the slaughter.

I kicked up beaver skulls and shattered turtle shells, far from any water. Then disintegrating rabbit skins, the fur falling out in great tufts. The parts of small deer were everywhere—the usual leftovers after the crows and the ants have done their work. And then there was what, with a sudden flash of horror, I realized must be the still-articulated bones of a human child’s arm.

I dropped that with a cry, waves of shock suddenly transforming the place around me. Then I looked up to the sky.

My eyes followed the trunk of one of the oaks up to the bare branches that spread against the white winter sky like cracks in the firmament. And there, silhouetted in black, I could see the loose ovoid webs of nests balanced precariously—herons’ nests, in tree after tree, everywhere surrounding me, two dozen of them in the clearing or more.

But the nests were wrong. They were large—much too large by an inconceivable factor. Where there should have been four or five in each tree, only one or two seemed to fit.

By now, all charm had drained from the clearing. It felt instead like some ceremonial place, with the litter of sacrifices strewn about my ankles. No living bird could have built those nests—they must be the handiwork of depraved men.

I loosened my rifle and unscrewed my powder horn, but nothing stirred in the woods around me. There was no sign of men. Then I saw, at the base of an oak, a huge contorted shape. It was a feathered neck, as thick as my own upper arm, curving up from a crushed riot of feathers and then back down to earth again, where lay the terrible head—the long slashing beak, the hollowed and rotten eye sockets, the obscene bulge of its gullet.

Shivering, I stepped closer, but the bubble of the nightmare refused to burst. With trembling hand, I plucked a feather from the wreckage. It extended the length of my forearm and longer—and this was a baby, some fledgling that had fallen from its nest above before it was able to fly. I stepped back and looked again from tree to tree, then at the remains of the dead animals around me.

Instinctively, I crossed myself—but the evil-feeling chill only deepened.

FEBRUARY 1762

Though I had hoped never to see them again, the hunters of last November have returned. Indeed, I would rather never have thought of them at all—or of that terrible oak clearing. I had hoped to spend the winter minding my traplines in quiet solitude, and then to depart alone again in the spring.

It is February now, I think—not yet spring. And in the past months, even I could not escape noticing what I know is wrong about these woods. It is nothing definitive, and all easily ignored by a pigheaded man who wants to be blind. But there is the profound emptiness and quietness, the absence of so many smaller game animals, and the strange scratchings on stumps that I know are not the work of bears or cougars.

Having seen all that, it should have been no surprise to me that the hunters would return.

They came by canoe, and my first sight of them was out amid the mist of the bay—that same great heron shape, head cocked in hunting stance, standing terribly in the prow of the canoe as it silently glided past the tip of the prominence in the golden glow of sunset. And the unnatural size again—man-sized or more.

My heart turned to ice but still I looked, and I saw the canoe was paddled by four other figures—apparently herons themselves. It was in looking at those four, who moved so much like men, that finally the illusion was broken and I saw that the heron was not any real heron at all, but rather a man in monstrous bird dress, worn for God knew what reason.

How long had it been, before today, since I had seen another man? Six months, at least—but for two full years now I have avoided all as much as possible. That I knew now I had to deal with humans and not some monstrous birds was not, to me, much of an assurance or improvement.

If my rifle had been at my hand and charged, I would have shot over their heads at once. But it was in my lean-to, and I sat on a stony hillock above my camp. All I could do is watch as the canoe came to rest against my beach and the man in the bow leaped nimbly out.

The intruder called up to me, his voice sounding strange after so many months of hearing no talk. He spoke some jargon unknown to me, very different from the Indian languages of Haute-Louisiane. Grudgingly, I called back in Spanish, French, and Chippewa. I tried fragments of other languages I had learned, but by the time we stood face to face at the foot of the hillock, it was clear we could not understand each other.

My relief at this remains immeasurable.

Night has fallen and the canoe has departed, but the man is with me still. Despite all my signs of indifference and even unfriendliness, he insisted on teaching me his name, which is seemingly Ololkolt, and then in interrogating me by signs.

At first, I merely ignored him, and instead stole glances at his strange costume. I am no longer surprised that I was deceived by the night hunters into thinking they were not men, for even in daylight the illusion is very convincing. These men wear gray tunics and cover their arms and faces with streaks of silver mud. They carry heavy capes that they can throw into a remarkable semblance of wings, and affix long wooden carved herons’ heads to their own shaved skulls.

But more than all this, these heron-men also have a curious way of standing that causes them to disappear almost entirely into their costumes. As soon as they strike the correct pose, the human melts away and the monstrous avian appears.

With this evidence before my eyes, I wonder now if the creature I thought I saw in the oak clearing was not really some such fabrication as well. Tomorrow it seems I will have a chance to find out—for Ololkolt insists on my accompanying him to that cursed place. Or so, at least, have I gathered from his signs.

I regret to say that I made the mistake of recognizing a sign he showed me—a circular collection of overlapping sticks that I knew at once must be a heron nest. But no sooner had he noticed my understanding than he began making sign after sign. He had guessed what I had seen, and he inquired about their size, number, distance, and location. Now he will not leave me, staying even after sending the canoe away, and it is clear he means me to take him to see the nests tomorrow.

God preserve me. That dead creature in the clearing is real, and more horrible even than I had thought.

MARCH 1762

I gave my wife all the money I had when I left to lay the company’s lines with the voyageurs. This was two years ago at Lac Supérieur. I want to write this in case I do not have another chance.

As I said, I left her my money, and it should have been enough. But while I was gone, the wild rice turned spotted and feeble, and the knockers could harvest no berries, no matter how they brushed the grass. Then, one of her lying neighbors swindled her out of half the money. Another pressed collection of an old debt. A third refused her credit, even against my salary. A fourth promised to help, then left the village without doing anything. A fifth demanded offensive terms.

I learned that she fled into the forest on the trail back to her father’s village—hungry and friendless as she found herself at the trading post, it had seemed the only course. As soon as I heard, I followed. But all I found were half of her bones, and none of my son’s.

It is a mysterious fact that in any village or settlement, there is always one going hungry, one shivering cold, one dying alone, one rotting in prison. Yet, despite all of this, there is never anyone found to be responsible for any of it.

And so I left and came west, looking for this Northwest Passage and death. Coureur de bois, the woodland runner, no longer having to do with any other man.

It was my wife’s touch that awoke me again this morning. But there was no loon and no night hunters—only the ceaseless lapping of the waves upon the beach. Still, I could not shake the dark premonition that called me from my sleep, and by mid-morning I saw the canoes round the tip of the western prominence.

Ololkolt has brought a dozen canoes with sixty hunters—all dressed in full costumes. Impassively, I watched them land from my hillock, filling up my beach with false heron-men. They could not want me or need me. I had already shown Ololkolt the way to the nests. It was their affair now.

But two hunters dashed up the hillside to me and dragged me down—not roughly, but not allowing any resistance. Ololkolt threw a tunic and a wooden heron head on the ground before me, and insisted by sign that I dress. He is young—or so he seems—but he is not a man to be defied. A moment later, I shivered as two hunters pressed cool silver mud to the exposed skin of my arms and face.

The ancient oak grove is as dark and baleful as I remember. Later in the year, the branches will fill with leaves, hiding the cursed nests from view. But for now they hang heavily above, large and thick enough almost to cast shadows on the clearing floor in the cold spring afternoon.

The march has taken almost half the day, but Ololkolt gives little time to rest—just enough to scribble these few words. And already he is striding actively about, dispatching his men in parties of two or three among the trees. Just as quickly, they begin to climb, ascending the thick trunks with dizzying speed. He has assigned me a tree as well—the same apparently as Ololkolt himself intends to climb.

I have no choice—I will be forced up. The oaks on every side of me are already full of warriors armed to the teeth with bows, axes, spears, and cudgels. If I were to resist or flee, it would be the work of a moment to cut me down, a thicket of arrows sprouting from my back.

All around me, squirrels fling themselves wildly out of branches, fleeing from the climbing warriors, but otherwise the woods are eerily calm. Even the breeze has died in the air, and the ceremonial feeling has returned to the place.

I cannot help but feel that something awful is about to follow.

The climbing was quicker than I expected, but still I found it difficult and was soon outpaced by Ololkolt. Long before, the other warriors had found perches high in the swaying branches near the massive nests, their legs wrapped around slim, springy limbs as they fussed with the weapons they had brought and traded low words with each other. Even so, I felt no special need to hurry myself, and I lingered several yards below the top.

Above, Ololkolt gestured impatiently from near the top. As I looked up for my next hand-hold, my foot suddenly slipped. Instinctively, I clung to the tree, the bark smell thick in my face as I scrabbled over the abyss, feet fighting for purchase. But no sooner had I fixed my place securely again than I felt a shift in the air. Looking around, I saw that the others had all braced their positions and were fitting arrows to their bowstrings.

My heart sank. Was this to be it? Here, helpless in a tree, was I to be shot down—never even to learn what it all meant? Even as I had climbed, I had suspected the whole horror of those woods—the clearing, the dead animals, the nests—must be some human evil, and I felt like a fool that I had not fought them at once, even if it had meant death.

But I was wrong. Ololkolt called low and pointed to the south, and then I saw. The fading afternoon sky was dotted by great terrible shapes, skimming the tops of the distant cedars, but gaining altitude with every second. I knew at once what they were, although they were still little more than spots above the canopy.

They were herons, and they were huge. And they were real.

As the birds closed the distance, they began to take form—their folded necks, long bills, triangular wings, and elegant trailing legs. I tried to count them as they approached, flying in a loose formation, a huge specimen leading the way. Twenty, twenty-five, at least thirty great birds bore down, over the tops of the trees toward the nests where we now clung.

At some silent signal, every bow in those treetops bent and released, and a cloud of arrows rose into the sky. Few found their marks, and the ones that did only caused the birds to falter—not to fall.

It was in watching the arrows descend upon the advancing flock that I at last saw the birds’ true size. They were unbelievable creatures, wings eighteen feet across or more. It was all I could do to keep from trembling.

Meanwhile, the bows bent and released again and again, volley after volley raining upon the oncoming birds with hardly any effect. And at last, the herons were practically upon the trees themselves, the final volley discharged at point blank range.

Until now, everything had happened in complete silence, broken only by whistling of wind through fletching and feather, and the occasional squawks of wounded birds. But now the sickening creaking and pinioning of wings was in the air all around me, and the warriors let out an angry, noisome squawking of their own.

Striking their practiced avian poses, they assumed the shapes of herons themselves, acting as though the nests had already been occupied by a rival colony. At last I understood the purpose of the elaborate costumes—they were neither ceremonial nor decorative. They were simply practical, meant to frighten or confuse these monsters if the hunters should encounter them outside their village.

But there was no time for further thought. They were upon us.

The herons broke and wheeled away at the last sting of the arrows, angrily swerving in and out of the trees and past each other in a confusion of feathers and legs. Stiff feathers bristled against my shoulder as one of the birds dived in its maneuvers—that careless touch almost enough to knock me off my perch.

For a moment, I thought of reversing my climb and dropping out of the tree. After all, I had never invited these hunters to my beach, and had not asked to share their troubles. Simply by virtue of being their neighbor, they had pressed me into their fight. It could hardly be cowardice to go my own way.

But somehow, the sight of Ololkolt stayed me. He clung bravely alone by only his legs five yards above me. We had never—indeed could not—exchange a single intelligible word between us, but I felt that I had somehow given him my promise. Even now I can barely explain why I should have felt any obligation, but I did—and even when dealing with the worst of men, I had never been the one to break faith first.

The herons now made a tight turn, and dropped almost immediately back among us. With no arrows ready to oppose them, the birds grabbed clumsily onto branches near the occupied nests. I ducked my head as a shower of twigs and acorns dropped on my head, then looked up again in time to see the warriors now jousting with spears.

In horror, I watched as one bird impaled a man through his chest with its bill. The sharp point slipped in and out cleanly and easily, like a surgeon’s lance piercing a boil. Then the man’s grip loosened on the tree as the life drained from his body, and soon he was falling heavily through space.

Meanwhile, Ololkolt was engaged with two of the birds. They had landed one on either side of him, and lunged at him from both sides. With deft handling, Ololkolt managed to dodge the attacks, and struck back with the sharp bill affixed to his own head. Whipping around quickly, he brought the point of the bill down like the ball of a hammer, slicing a deep incision into the neck of the heron. But no sooner did one back off a step than I saw the other advancing.

It was then that I found my limbs moving automatically, unslinging the rifle from my back as I straddled a branch above the abyss. I had no thought for myself, though the whole tree now swayed at the push and pull of the two huge herons above. I was like a voyageur again, dumbly paddling with my comrades—my movements a part of the greater machine, hardly controlled by my conscious mind, but necessary enough for all that.

I charged my rifle with powder, then drove the ball home. Pointing skyward, I aimed between the shearing branches and squeezed the trigger.

The explosion almost knocked me from my seat, and for a moment my heart hung in the air as it seemed that either I or my rifle must take the plunge. But grasping the tree in one hand and the gun in the other, I at last came to rest safely prone along the limb, and slowly pushed myself upright again.

Around me, all was confusion. The shot had drawn the startled stare of every man and bird within earshot. And the men, quicker to recover from their surprise, had pressed home what advantage they could on the bewildered herons. Several were forced back into the air, and one or two dropped to the earth below, spiraling down at dangerous speeds on broken wings.

As to Ololkolt, I could at first see nothing of what had happened to him. I peered upward, sick at heart if I should have been too late. But then the gunsmoke parted, and Ololkolt’s face appeared in the gap, eagerly urging me to repeat the shot. One of the herons above now showed a bright red circle oozing blood from its breast, but both were still very much alive.

Tipping my powder horn, I charged and loaded the rifle a second time. Raising the gun again, I braced myself as best I could and aimed straight at the heart of the injured heron.

Again, the deafening report—again, the wild confusion.

From behind the smoke, I watched as the twice-shot bird leapt heavily out, its wings stretched in gliding formation, branches gyrating wildly as its weight was suddenly lifted. It flapped futilely once and twice, and then sank rapidly through the branches below, snapping limbs and plunging with a terrible screech to the clearing floor.

Only then did the smoke blow away from the treetop, and I saw Ololkolt gasping and straining, one entire side of his body covered in blood and gore. I leapt up, a madman now, covering the last several yards to the top of the tree in a careless scramble, where I discovered Ololkolt with a knife plunged elbow deep into the neck of the remaining heron, smiling in vicious satisfaction as gallons of the bird’s blood washed over him.

APRIL 1762

I told no one I was leaving, and no one saw me go.

Not knowing how far it would be to the outlet of the bay, I took enough food from the storehouses of Ololkolt’s village to last for a month or more—camas bulbs, acorns, roots, and a pot of oolichan oil. Fish I can catch as I go, and there are always clams for the digging. But meat I must forgo, for I have left my rifle, powder, and balls behind at the village.

Though the herons were driven off this spring, no one can say how far they went or when they will return. Ololkolt’s village will sleep more soundly this year, but in the future the rifle will do more good for them than it would for me.

From here, I will follow the coastline west, and scout the outlet to the océan Pacifique. After that—what more is there to do?

For the third time, I woke at what seemed to be the touch of my wife. It was dawn, the stars fading fast from the steel-blue sky. It was my first morning alone—the first since that battle with the herons that I had not risen to the sound of children laughing and women singing, or the smell of roasting vegetables in the fires.

I sighed softly, but then the feather touch came again. I rolled over and swatted my neck, and found Ololkolt squatting next to me, laughing as he brushed my cheek with the fletching of the arrow he held.

“Armistead,” he said, calling me by name.

“Ololkolt,” I replied, grinning in spite of myself.

He had seen the rifle I had left in the storehouse, and he had seen that my canoe was gone. All night, he had tracked me alone by lantern light, only to find my canoe overturned on this beach as the sun began to rise.

Even if we spoke the same language, I am not sure how I could have told him that I did not belong in the village—his or any other. Much as I had grown to accept the company of the people there, I could not remain among the cooking pots, the hearth fires, the raising of children, the talk of politics, the annoyances, the bickering, the reconciliations, the thefts, the gossip—in short, among the daily struggle and strife and joy of men and women living close to one another.

So I gave no explanation, and Ololkolt asked for none.

Instead, he placed a fine bow and twenty long arrows into my canoe, clasped my hand warmly in his for the last time, and left me alone to finish my journey.

JUNE 1762

When I found the outlet at last, after following hundreds of miles of westing coastline, I was surprised to see that I hesitated. To be sure, it was no easy road to the Pacific—it was in fact a tumultuous, rock-strewn channel, too narrow for the torrent of water that dropped through it on the way to the ocean.

Mountains towered on either side of the opening, and the water rushed through in a terrible roaring frenzy, twisted and corded into streams of white foam, and framed by dancing jets and sprays that leapt up toward the sky.

A more exhilarating ending I could not have asked for, but I paused a long while on the brink of the maelstrom. The channel was certain death, but it was the only way to finish the Northwest Passage I had begun. I knew that if I paddled but a little ways further, I would find myself pulled inexorably and finally down into the rapids until, some hours later, my body would wash out in the surf of the Pacific along with the fragments of my canoe.

All that was true. But then—why did I still hesitate?

Later that evening, as I sat in my camp still within earshot of the torrent, I took up Ololkolt’s bow and inspected it closely for the first time. I had never used such a thing, and had preferred to live on fish or clams for the past months. But as I turned the bow in my hands, a deer wandered dumbly across the beach, not fifty feet from me. Almost without thinking, I drew an arrow from the quiver.

The deer turned to look at me—a young buck, brazen and strong. He barely flinched as I rose and slotted the arrow’s nock against the string. The bow’s grip was warm, the arrow fletching light against my face.

And the arrow, when it flew, was true.

© 2013 M. Bennardo

M. Bennardo’s short stories appear in such magazines as Asimov’s Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, Stupefying Stories, and others. He is also co-editor of This Is How You Die, a science fiction anthology coming from Grand Central Publishing in July 2013. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio, but people everywhere can find him online at mbennardo.com.

Exogamy
John Crowley

In desperation and black hope he had selected himself for the mission, and now he was to die for his impetuosity, drowned in an amber vinegar sea too thin to swim in. This didn’t matter in any large sense; his comrades had seen him off, and would not see him return the very essence of a hero. In a moment his death wouldn’t matter even to himself. Meanwhile, he kept flailing helplessly, ashamed of his willingness to struggle.

His head broke the surface into the white air. It had done so now three times; it would not do so again. But a small cloud just then covered him, and something was in the air above his head. Before he sank away out of reach for good, something took hold of him, a flying something, a machine or something with sharp pincers or takers-hold, what would he call them, claws.

He was lifted out of the water or fluid or sea. Not his fault the coordinates were off, placing him in liquid and not on dry land instead, these purplish sands; only off by a matter of meters. Far enough to drown or nearly drown him though: He lay for a long time prostrate on the sand where he had been dropped, uncertain which.

He pondered then—when he could ponder again—just what had seized him, borne him up (just barely out of the heaving sea, and laboring mightily at that), and got him to shore. He hadn’t yet raised his head to see if whatever it was had stayed with him, or had gone away; and now he thought maybe it would be best to just lie still and be presumed dead. But he looked up.

She squatted a ways up the beach, not watching him, seeming herself to be absorbed in recovering from effort; her wide bony breast heaved. The great wings now folded, like black plush. Talons (that was the word, he felt them again and began to shudder) the talons spread to support her in the soft sand. When she stepped, waddled, toward him, seeing he was alive, he crawled away across the sand, trying to get to his feet and unable, until he fell flat again and knew nothing.

Night came.

She (she, it was the breasts prominent on the breastplate muscle, the big delicate face, and vast tangled never-dressed hair that made him suppose it) was upon him when he awoke. He had curled himself into a fetal ball, and she had been sheltering him from the night wind, pressing her long belly against him as she might (probably did) against an egg of her own. It was dangerously cold. She smelled like a mildewed sofa.

For three days they stayed together there on the horrid shingle. In the day she sheltered him from the sun with her pinions and at night drew him close to her odorous person, her rough flesh. Sometimes she flew away heavily (her wings seeming unable to bear her up for more than a few meters, and then the clumsy business of taking off again) and returned with some gobbet of scavenge to feed him. Once a human leg he rejected. She seemed unoffended, seemed not to mind if he ate or not; seemed when she stared at him hourlong with her onyx unhuman eyes to be waiting for his own demise. But then why coddle him so, if coddling was what this was?

He tried (dizzy with catastrophe maybe, or sunstroke) to explain himself to her, unable to suppose she couldn’t hear. He had (he said) failed in his quest. He had set out from his sad homeland to find love, a bride, a prize, and bring it back. They had all seen him off, every one of them wishing in his heart that he too had the daring to follow the dream. Love. A woman: a bride of love: a mother of men. Where, in this emptiness?

She listened, cooing now and then (a strange liquid sound, he came to listen for it, it seemed like understanding; he hoped he would hear it last thing before he died, poisoned by her food and this sea of piss). On the third day, he seemed more likely to live. A kind of willingness broke inside him with the dawn. Maybe he could go on. And as though sensing this she ascended with flopping wing beats into the sun, and sailed to a rocky promontory a kilometer off. There she waited for him.

Nothing but aridity, as far as his own sight reached. But he believed—it made him laugh aloud to find he believed it—that she knew what he hoped, and intended to help him.

But oh God what a dreadful crossing, what sufferings to endure. There was the loneliness of the desert, nearly killing him, and the worse loneliness of having such a companion as this to help him. It was she who sought out the path. It was he who found the water-hole. She sickened, and for the length of a moon he nursed her, he could not have lived now without her, none of these other vermin—mice, snakes—were worth talking to; he fed them to her, and ate what she left. She flew again. They were getting someplace. One bright night of giddy certainty he trod her, like a cock.

Then past the summit of the worst sierra, down the last rubbled pass, there was green land. He could see a haze of evaporating water softening the air, maybe towers in the valley.

Down there (she said, somehow, by signs and gestures and his own words in her coos, she made it anyway clear) there is a realm over which a queen rules. No one has yet won her, though she has looked far for one who could.

He rubbed his hands together. His heart was full. Only the brave (he said) deserve the fair.

He left her there, at the frontier (he guessed) of her native wild. He strode down the pass, looking back now and then, ashamed a little of abandoning her but hoping she understood. Once when he looked back she was gone. Flown.

It was a nice country. Pleasant populace easily won over by good manners and an honest heart. That’s the castle, there, that white building under the feet of whose towers you see a strip of sunset sky. That one. Good luck.

Token resistance at the gates, but he gave better than he got. She would be found, of course, in the topmost chamber, surmounting these endless stairs, past these iron-bound henchmen (why always, always so hard? He thought of the boys back home, who had passed on all this). He reached and broached the last door; he stepped out onto the topmost parapet, littered with bones, fetid with pale guano. A vast shabby nest of sticks and nameless stuff.

She alighted just then, in her gracile-clumsy way, and folded up.

Did you guess? she asked.

No, he had not; his heart was black with horror and understanding; he should have guessed, of course, but hadn’t. He felt the talons of her attention close upon him, inescapable; he turned away with a cry and stared down the great height of the tower. Should he jump?

If you do, I will fall after you (she said) and catch you up, and bring you back.

He turned to her to say his heart could never be hers.

You could go on, she said softly.

He looked away again, not down but out, toward the far lands beyond the fields and farms. He could go on.

What’s over there? he asked. Beyond those yellow mountains? What makes that plume of smoke?

I’ve never gone there. Never that far. We could, she said.

Well hell, he said. For sure I can’t go back. Not with—not now.

Come on, she said, and pulled herself to the battlements with grasping talons; she squatted there, lowering herself for him to mount.

It could be worse, he thought, and tiptoed through the midden to her; but before he took his seat upon her, he thought with sudden awful grief: She’ll die without me.

He meant the one he had for so long loved, since boyhood, she for whose sake he had first set out, whoever she was; the bride at the end of his quest, still waiting. And he about to head off in another direction entirely.

You want to drive? she said.

The farms and fields, the malls and highways, mountains and cities, no end in sight that way.

You drive, he said.

© 1993 John Crowley.

Originally published in Omni Best Science Fiction Three, Edited by Ellen Datlow.

Reprinted by permission of the author.

John Crowley’s first published novels were science fiction: The Deep (1975) and Beasts (1976). Engine Summer (1977) was nominated for The American Book Award; it appears in David Pringle’s authoritative 100 Best Science Fiction Novels. Little, Big (1980) won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel; Ursula Le Guin described as a book which “all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy.” In 1980 Crowley embarked on a multi-volume novel called Ægypt—The Solitudes, Love & Sleep, Dæmonomania, and Endless Things. This series and Little, Big were cited when Crowley received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature. His recent novels are The Translator, recipient of the Premio Flaianno (Italy), Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, which contains an entire imaginary novel by the poet; and Four Freedoms. He has also worked in film and television and written scripts for historical documentaries, many for Public Television; his work has received numerous awards and has been shown at the New York Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, and many others. His essays and reviews have appeared in The Boston Review, The Yale Review, Conjunctions, Tin House, Lapham’s Quarterly, and other venues.

Author Spotlight: Tad Williams
Moshe Siegel

In your Otherland novella, “The Happiest Dead Boy in the World,” Otherland has come to lack its formerly-innervating force and its populace has largely become a system of ‘dead’ (though, like Orlando, still perpetuating) algorithms. This touches on a potential roadblock in AI development: self-awareness. Do you think there could exist a true artificial intelligence, a true artificial life, lacking self-awareness? For example: Is Beezle, aware of its own artifice, more ‘alive’ than, say, the sim of Elrond Half-elven? Or less alive than Orlando?

That’s a very good question, actually. I suspect that the line between mechanistic reactions and self-awareness is much thinner at the less complex end of the spectrum—that we are more likely to see the spontaneous evolution of artificial life than full-blown artificial intelligence, which at some point might mimic the same path of organic life, increasing complexity leading to increasingly greater flexibility of response. Somewhere along the line, that probably becomes something like awareness, on the same ladder that invertebrates and other fairly simple animals have. After that, who knows? Depends on what evolutionary pressures the artificial organisms face. I would suggest that Beezle is less complex in some ways than the Elrond sim, but has continued to reprogram itself, to “learn.” I don’t know if that’s true with the Elrond sim, since Otherland’s current state of evolution is not completely known to Orlando or even me. My guess is, similar but got there by different routes. Beezle has probably maxed out. Elrond and the other Otherland sims—who knows?

Young Orlando Gardiner’s existential crisis—regarding his seeming inability to “grow up” in a human, emotional sense—is a chilling glimpse into living a wholly-virtual life. Do you think our modern society is edging towards such inability, the more tethered we become to digital distractions, at younger and younger ages?

I think that anytime something begins to dominate our conscious lives we will not understand its effects for a long time. Beyond that, I really don’t know. I know that post-internet, when my connection to the outside world is down, my computer now feels “dead” in a way that it never used to feel to me when I didn’t expect much or any direct connection to a larger world. Obviously, my children never had that original feeling—a computer not connected to the internet will always seem incomplete to them, like a car that only goes straight ahead. But whether it’s going to be bad or merely different, I couldn’t say. We always fear change, but what we really fear is uncertainty. I think we’d better get used to it. Things are going to change lightning-quick in the future.

Another story featuring Orlando Gardiner, “The Boy Detective of Oz,” is set to appear in the forthcoming anthology Oz Reimagined (co-edited by Lightspeed’s own Editor-in-Chief, John Joseph Adams). Are you as satisfied writing Otherland stories within these shorter formats, versus lengthy novels? Do you plan more Otherland shorts?

Writing a multi-volume epic is a completely different experience, and I don’t know when I’ll have the time or inclination to write another whole series of books about Otherland. But short stories allow me to peck away at issues and subjects that interest me, so I’ll certainly be doing those from time to time. Not ruling out more novels, mind you, just saying there will almost certainly be more shorts.

This month’s republication of “The Happiest Dead Boy in the World” is timely with the much-hyped beginning of The Hobbit motion-picture trilogy (or as Bongo Fluffernutter might call it, The Thobbit). Are you excited about the new trilogy, or otherwise have an opinion about the modern treatment of Tolkien’s classic(s)?

I enjoyed the LOTR movies very much, not so much because I thought they were perfect, but because somebody who loved the books was trying to make a good adaptation. That’s the most important thing for me. I can forgive almost anything from a remake but unconcern or contempt. In fact, I’d rather see someone make a terrible, wrong-headed adaptation of something I love that at least takes risks than a boring vanilla version that goes out of its way not to offend any fans. Why make a movie if you’re trying to recreate a book? It’s a different medium. So I’m interested to see what Jackson does, and I like the idea that he seems to be mining Middle Earth history per Tolkien for some of the storylines not emphasized in the original book. Whether that will sustain so many installments remains to be seen!

In a previous interview (with The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which was also printed in the December 2012 issue of Lightspeed), you mentioned your vision of Otherworld sequels taking place within the Otherworld MMO (which, as of this writing, is in closed beta testing). Have you yet conceived the storylines you would like to weave into the game? Is it likely that players will interact with familiar faces, within the game world?

It’s actually a complicated issue, because it would require a huge amount of cooperation. If the game makes money, then it will probably be a lot easier, so I’m waiting to see. As it is, the tension is between letting the producers make the best game they can and me wanting to shape it to my author’s ends. At the moment, the people doing the creating are doing a good job, but I’d definitely like to make it more of a storytelling vehicle. I’ve been fascinated by non-traditional, interactive storytelling for decades.

Do you have any other in-progress or upcoming projects you would like to share with us?

I’m in the middle of my Bobby Dollar (earthbound angel, struggling with his own bosses and of course the forces of Hell) books. The first one, Dirty Streets of Heaven has come out to very nice reviews—it’s a lot shorter and punchier than my usual novels—and I’ve finished the second, Happy Hour in Hell. I’m just about to begin the third, Sleeping Late on Judgement Day. I might even do a free Bobby D. short story just to share with people. And I have various other projects on the burners, but I never know what’s going to happen to those until they actually happen. And there’s a Tailchaser’s Song (fantasy about cats) animated movie being made.

I’m sure I’m forgetting other stuff. I don’t actually know what all I’m supposed to be doing until I begin something else, then I get an email saying, “Where’s Project A?” or whatever, at which point I say, “Shoot!”, face-palm, and plunge into that.

It’s a living.

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: C.C. Finlay
Earnie Sotirokos

“The Infill Trait” is about a body-swapping, ex-CIA agent. Where did the inspiration for this story come from?

This will sound weird, but I was dreaming that I was a young kid walking through an airport. In the dream, the first line of the story came to me: “Every time I fall asleep I wake up in a different body.” As soon as I dreamed that sentence, I snapped awake and ran to my office to write it down. The story flowed very smoothly from that—it was one of the easiest and quickest stories I’ve ever written. I feel like all the pieces were there, floating around in the gray sea of my brain, and they just needed that one thread to tie them all together.

The line between terrorist and hero is blurred. Do you think James would be considered a hero if his training went off without a hitch?

The line between terrorist and hero is so blurred because James/Jimmy is an unreliable narrator. We only know what he thinks his training was for, but there are a lot of clues that he’s not entirely right in the head. So were people actually training him for something else or was there a breakdown inside him?

The way you sprinkled verse into the narrative gave some insight on James’ mental state. How does this technique strengthen your writing?

The rhymes reveal James/Jimmy’s pattern of free association, where his thoughts are carried along by the logic of the sounds and words instead of a rational sequence of cause and effect. It’s part of what makes him unreliable. Any tool that a writer uses to get more deeply into the head of the character or at the heart of the story—or both!—makes a story stronger.

It’s been more than a decade since 9/11. Does terrorism still strike the same chord in fiction as it did a decade ago?

America is still feeling ripple effects from 9/11 that are only partially related to terrorism. For example, Americans now accept as normal the casual, constant surveillance of our public actions and private lives. We consent to body scanners and pat-downs at the airport and warrantless wiretapping of our cellphones. Think about that: Three thousand people died and then three hundred million people lost their privacy. The result of being constantly told we should be afraid, or that we have to be searched, that we have to be kept safe from each other, creates new levels of distrust in society. That fear has to be constantly renewed so that we keep up our vigilance. I think we’re still trying to understand all of these consequences and their aftereffects, and of course that gets reflected in fiction.

What can we expect from you in the future?

My next story is “The Great Zeppelin Heist of Oz,” which I co-wrote with my wife, Rae Carson. It’ll be in the Oz Reimagined anthology that’s coming out at the end of February.

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: Robert Reed
Robyn Lupo

How did Eight Episodes start for you?

What I recall is imagining a television show that didn’t survive and that slowly, stubbornly revealed its true meanings. When I began work, I probably had only a rough idea of what the mystery was.

What led you to using a TV show as the bones of this story?

When I was a kid, I watched certain series/cartoons again and again. Even the dreariest crap has those moments when you think to yourself, “I never noticed that before.” What if something amazing was hiding in Gilligan’s Island?

What’s a day’s writing like for you? Have any tips or tricks?

Lately, I write all the damn time. I used to fill my morning with words and then feel done, but I have obligations and opportunities of late, and there are deadlines. There are always deadlines. Thankfully, I passed that arbitrary 10,000 hours of practice rule long, long ago, and writing is what I do. Writing is what every writer should do. But that isn’t always the case.

Do you think you’d be a fan of Invasion? Why or why not?

I would watch it once, maybe twice. But I think I have a fair sense of its mysteries and potential already. Or maybe I missed something and it deserves a third look.

What’s next for you?

I have a trilogy to finish that will be published—this surprises me—as a single volume. At this moment, I call it The Memory of Sky. The setting is my Great Ship universe.

I have an e-pub, POD book arriving soon. The Greatship has most of my Great Ship stories strung together in some proper order, rewritten slightly and with new material between.

I continue working on other short fiction, and I occasionally do some contract labor for a small, struggling game company.

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.

Author Spotlight: Mary Soon Lee
Christie Yant

I sympathized deeply with Pauline as she discovered that motherhood is nothing like we imagined it would be. You're a mother yourself—what were some of the things that didn't turn out the way you imagined them? Any particularly nasty shocks, or pleasant surprises?

I hadn't realized how exhausting motherhood would be. My husband, who is an entirely wonderful father by day, left the nighttime parenting to me. Since both my children woke frequently at night, after each of them was born I spent over a year before I had a good night's sleep! As for pleasant surprises, I knew I would love my children, but I didn't realize how strong that emotion would be, nor how much I would enjoy simple activities such as reading to them.

I think any parent can identify with the contempt directed at new parents when they bring their infants out in public. Your story opens with an infant on a transatlantic flight, a nightmare to many passengers. How did this story originate? Did the idea of the pauser occur to you before or after you had children?

I wrote the story when my first child was eleven months old, by which time we had taken him on his first pair of transatlantic flights. My husband and I took turns entertaining William on the flights: We managed to keep him happily occupied, so the other passengers weren't disturbed. But it is an odd thing not only to be worried that your child might be unhappy, but also to be worried that strangers might be annoyed that your child is unhappy . . . I think the idea of the pauser was my husband's.

Your story illustrates the darker side of how technology might replace parenting. Do you think there is potential for technology to make early parenting easier? Are there problems technology could solve for parents without parents relinquishing their roles as mothers and fathers?

Yes, technology can definitely help with some aspects of parenting. Old-fashioned technology provides invaluable help in the form of washing machines, dishwashers, fridges, and vacuum cleaners—not to mention vaccines and other medicines. Newer technologies such as video conferencing mean that you can communicate with your child when you are away from them. In the future, I expect there will be excellent software to entertain and educate children. Instead of a child passively watching a TV program, children could interact with the program.

Pauline is a single mother, but based on her own experience as a child, it's certainly not only single parents who paused their children. Was it an important decision for you to make Pauline a single parent?

I didn't deliberately set out to write about being a single parent, and I rarely make such decisions consciously—instead I come up with a character or a situation that draws me into a story. On the other hand, I can think of at least three more stories that I've written about mothers who are single parents (at least one of them written years before I had my first child), so there may be something in that situation that resonates with me.

Are there any new projects in the works? What's in store for you next?

I am currently writing poetry rather than short stories. Most recently, I have been absorbed by a particular sequence of poems, and I am looking forward to writing more of that sequence. I have poems forthcoming in the Bryant Literary Review, the Evansville Review, the Green Hills Literary Lantern, and Red Rock Review. Thank you for your questions!

Christie Yant is a science fiction and fantasy writer, and Assistant Editor for Lightspeed Magazine. Her fiction has appeared in magazines such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Daily Science Fiction, and in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011, and Armored. She lives on the central coast of California with her two amazing daughters, her husband, and assorted four-legged nuisances. Follow her on Twitter @christieyant.

Author Spotlight: Carrie Vaughn
Kevin McNeil

I was excited to see a new story featuring Harry and Marlowe, especially one exploring how they met and their early relationship. What led you to write “Harry and Marlowe Escape the Mechanical Siege of Paris?”

After writing the first two stories, I knew I was going to end up writing a whole series of stories about this world and these characters, but before I went any further with it, I really needed to figure out how these two met, and how they became partners on their action-packed adventures. I knew they had to meet by chance in the middle of some crisis, preferably full of explosions, and that would set the tone for their relationship moving forward. I had fun dropping them into them middle of that situation and then seeing what happened next. I also very much wanted to include Harry’s brother George, the future King George V, who’s been mentioned in the stories but we hadn’t met yet.

Harry is such a great, complex character. She’s independent and capable, but also restricted by society’s class structure and her role as royalty. How did you develop this character? Is she fun to write?

Harry, aka Princess Maud, was a real person. I’d wanted to write about a Victorian woman adventurer for a long time, and I decided I’d love to make her one of Queen Victoria’s granddaughters. Skimming the history of the period, Maud jumped out. She really did have the nickname Harry as a child, apparently for being rambunctious and tomboyish, which was just perfect for my purposes. The rest of the details for my Harry diverge pretty significantly from the historical one—who eventually married Karl of Denmark and became the first modern queen of Norway. But that’s why they call it alternate history, isn’t it? I do plan on sprinkling my Harry’s life with select details from the historical Maud’s life. Of course this makes her great fun to write. I’ve made her someone who’s living in a world in transition, who respects tradition but at the same time isn’t going to let tradition keep her from her goals.

This story’s setting has something for everyone—Victorian Paris, steampunk, and even science fiction elements. What inspired you to combine all of these ideas when you created this world?

Really, that’s what steampunk is, what the attraction of steampunk is, at least for me. It’s piling together all these disparate aspects and finding a way to make it all work. One way to look at it—this is Jules Verne’s Paris, and the thought of dirigibles mooring to the Eiffel Tower just seems so perfect you wonder why it never happened for real. The flight from the war-torn foreign city is also a familiar trope. I get to do all these venerable, wonderful stories in a way that I hope comes across as natural and seamless. Setting the steampunk elements in such a concrete setting makes it all the better for me.

As I read the story, I thought about how technology is often developed and used for violent purposes before consideration is given to how it might be used to benefit society in other ways. Is this a theme you feel strongly about?

It’s a theme that’s been growing as my conception for the entire series of stories is coming together. In one sense, war is what spurs technological development in the first place, and some people would argue you don’t get technological development without it. But in this world I’m setting up a war that’s happening because of technology. It’s an arms race that’s both a result of the war, and the impetus for the war in the first place. It’s a world that has a brand new technology and has mostly been fighting over it—and can we do anything else? I like to think we can. Personally, I’m essentially a pacifist—but I’m also a military brat and the daughter of a Vietnam vet, so my feelings about the issues are complicated and quite emotional. I came of age in an era where we were all pretty much convinced that our technology was going to destroy the world. With these stories, I’ve introduced an admittedly outlandish technology. But that mindset will end up being the same.

This story ends with a promise of future adventures for Harry and Marlowe, a few of which we’ve already seen. Can we expect more stories set in this world? What’s next for you?

Oh yes. Just this month, even: John Joseph Adam’s anthology The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination includes my story “Harry and Marlowe Meet the Founder of the Aetherian Revolution.” Beyond that I have plans to send Harry and Marlowe to a lost island, and I dearly want Harry to meet H.G. Wells so he can tell her his idea for a cautionary tale about an alien invasion . . . In the meantime, I’m continuing with my urban fantasy series—Kitty Rocks the House will be out in March, and the sequel to my superhero novel, After the Golden Age, should be out later this year as well.

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: Marly Youmans
Christie Yant

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You are a poet, with two new books of poetry out this year. Where and how does your poetry cross into your prose? It’s easy for a reader like myself who is not a poet to identify a vivid and lyrical quality to your prose, but is that the whole of it? Do the two forms cross-pollinate in other ways for you?

Oddly, writing both poetry and fiction made me wish for my poetry to be more like poetry and my prose to be more like prose, as I did not want for the two to resemble each other. At the same time that I moved into fiction, I began using more and more formal tools in my poetry. I threw away most of my prior poetry and became increasingly bored by the writing of free verse (though I still read plenty of it.) I didn’t want my poetry to be mistaken—as so much poetry can be, these days—for what Tom Disch in The Castle of Indolence called prose clipped into pieces and lacking musicality, the mot juste, formal challenges, etc. Likewise, I became more interested in the idea of plot in fiction simply because most poetry has little in the way of plot. That is, I was still chasing the idea of prose being as much like prose as possible and poetry being as much like poetry as possible. My first book was a poet’s fiction that had very little concern for causality and plot and the connective tissue between scenes, but I became more and more interested in the form and shape of fiction as I continued writing novels.

So I would say that at first the two ways of arranging words pulled away from each other. Yet as I progressed, I was drawn to longer form and narrative in poetry. The Throne of Psyche (Mercer, 2011) and The Foliate Head (UK: Stanza Press, 2012) have a good many narrative poems and an interest in character. The blank verse Thaliad (Montreal: Phoenicia Publishing, 2012) is a post-apocalyptic narrative that picks up the epic conventions and uses them for our own day, at the same time pursuing character development and causal chains of events. My 2012 novel, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, used a few blank verse lines as a kind of title for each chapter. And as your question suggests, I am strongly aware of sound and rhythm in whatever I write.

There are so many themes that resonated with me in this story: How we structure our reality around others; about parents as inscrutable beings to whom we don’t often attribute lives and feelings of their own; about letting go and letting the structure come apart and being okay with that. Are these themes that you revisit in your other work? Are there other themes you don’t feel you’ve explored but would like to?

To tell the truth, I never contemplate theme in quite that way, and I’d rather hear what somebody else perceived than to try and answer that set of questions. I could do it, but I don’t want to do it. I’d be especially interested in how somebody else saw that business about letting go and letting the structure fall apart! Last year’s novel certainly focused on a character for whom the world ravels before he runs away . . .

You’ve also been writing both adult and YA novels for many years, most recently A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage from Mercer University Press, just released this year. What else is coming up for you, and what will you work on next?

Last year was a busy one, as three of my books jumped into the world (work in three genres published in three countries), and I was also on the judging panel for the National Book Award in Young People’s Literature, along with chair Gary Schmidt, Susan Cooper, Daniel Ehrenhaft, and Judith Ortiz Cofer (William Alexander won for Goblin Secrets.) I wrote some poems and fiddled with others until December, when I finally started some serious polishing on The Book of the Red King, a collection of about 140 poems revolving around the figures of the Red King and the Fool and their friends. The Fool undergoes transformation in the course of the sequence, and there’s an alchemical structure to events and his changing life. The Red King, on the other hand, appears changeless despite the fact that his meaning is unpinned, and so he is sometimes one thing and sometimes another. He is all the things he is at once, it seems. I’m plotting with artist friend Clive Hicks-Jenkins to do The Book of the Red King as another decorated book like The Foliate Head and Thaliad.

I also began revising a set of three novellas that I wrote for my youngest child, now 15. The Aerenghast Trilogy is a three-in-one fantasy (The Infinite Library, Magna Wildwood, and Wizardry.) At the moment I’m dithering over whether there are too many characters, and how fast-paced it needs to be. My youngest likes shorter books and novels with lots of action; I hope it will be a boy-friendly story when finished.

After that I will probably see if I have enough poems outside the Red King poems for another book, and I’ll start fooling with a new novel. And I should mention that forthcoming from Mercer are two novels, Glimmerglass (a mad tale about a failed artist who begins to glimpse what she thinks is the muse in the woods near her home) and Maze of Blood (the curious outgrowth of a fascination with the deep-South life of Robert E. Howard.) In addition, Mercer will be putting out a paperback edition of A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage and bringing Catherwood (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996) back into print.

Christie Yant is a science fiction and fantasy writer, and Assistant Editor for Lightspeed Magazine. Her fiction has appeared in magazines such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Daily Science Fiction, and in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011, and Armored. She lives on the central coast of California with her two amazing daughters, her husband, and assorted four-legged nuisances. Follow her on Twitter @christieyant.

Author Spotlight: Genevieve Valentine
Christie Yant

“The Little Mermaid” is among my favorite fairy tales, largely because it is so dark and tragic. You’ve brought her—or something like her—back here in an even darker form. How did this story come together for you?

I’ve always thought that at heart “The Little Mermaid” was something of a proof against love. It’s more a story of desperation, and escape, and a sort of casual cruelty no one in the story can really help—it’s a cruel story because it’s just the nature of things to be cruel. I wanted to explore the themes of isolation and terrible transformation, and adjust the vectors of yearning a little.

“It seems truer than the other stories they tell you,” as Matthew says when he reads the story of the Prince. What do you think makes fairy tales such an excellent medium for truth?

I think fairy tales have several different levels of truth, in different levels of intent. “Little Red Riding Hood” is an entertaining adventure story about a wily girl in the woods who outsmarts a wild creature; it’s a story about sexual awakening; it’s a look at family relationships; it’s a catchall warning for girls entering the great and terrible world. As the story developed and a woodsman was added to rob Little Red of her own escape, the story became a new, more unintentional truth about what the world thought the role of girls would be. It’s amazing how much can be found in such a small story; it’s no wonder they’ve endured.

People have been writing about mermaids for at least three thousand years, in almost every culture, and recently there has been a resurgence in interest in them. What do you think draws us back to the myths of the sea and the depths, especially now that our sea-faring days are largely behind us?

Maybe for exactly that reason; the depths of the sea are an immediate mystery. The sea is tangible but treacherous, familiar and unknown, a bountiful source of food and an open road to trade that would nevertheless have zero hesitation swallowing your ship. Beautiful fishwomen who drag you to your death seem like an inevitable personification of the allure and danger of the sea. Any resurgence might be due partly to the idea that as we learn more about space, it trades some of its myth for more clinical interest, making the ocean once again a romantic prospect—though as someone who thinks discovering more about things only increases their appeal, I’m probably not going to fight for that thesis very hard, let’s be honest. It might just be that the wheel of mythical-creature trends has turned, and the mermaid is up, and in a year or two, satyrs will be sweeping pop culture!

The theme of tragic obsession is something that appears in different ways throughout your body of work, including your novel Mechanique and your recent story in Nightmare magazine. What brings you back to that theme, and what other themes do you find yourself wanting to explore?

I think obsession is the kernel of so many stories; for every obvious Moby Dick narrative, there’s a cop who has a case they’re determined to crack, a loner who discovers a social cause. Obsession means that what propels the plot will also, by nature, reveal character, and the fact that it can be used so many ways to reveal both the beautiful and the repulsive makes it endlessly interesting to me. I’m also pretty sure that whatever my inventory of stories about movies, there’s always going to be another one. (Everyone’s shocked, I’m sure.)

This is your fourth appearance in Lightspeed, and I hope that many readers have discovered your work through our pages. Your first novel, Mechanique, was nominated for a Nebula award and won the Crawford award. I heard recently that you have some good news for your fans. Care to let our readers know what’s coming up for you?

Yes! Fittingly in the fairy-tale vein, I suppose, I’ve just sold my most recent novel, a historical mainstream reimagining of the Twelve Dancing Princesses set in 1927 New York, to Atria; it has been a blast to research and write, and I’m very excited. I also have some short fiction coming up at Tor.com, Eclipse Online, The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, and Queen Victoria’s Book of Spells, among others; and as always, my quest to hit the max limit on the Netflix Instant Queue continues.

Christie Yant is a science fiction and fantasy writer, and Assistant Editor for Lightspeed Magazine. Her fiction has appeared in magazines such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Shimmer, and Daily Science Fiction, and in the anthologies The Way of the Wizard, Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011, and Armored. She lives on the central coast of California with her two amazing daughters, her husband, and assorted four-legged nuisances. Follow her on Twitter @christieyant.

Author Spotlight: M. Bennardo
Robyn Lupo

What were the initial germinations for “The Herons of Mer de l’Ouest”?

The first inkling I had of this story came when I was visiting a heron rookery (or, technically, a “heronry”) in my home state of Ohio with my mother. Herons are very nervous, and they often respond to intruders by vomiting down on them—which is both unpleasant for the visitors and very bad for the birds. So we were only allowed to visit because it was winter and the nests were empty.

Up above in the bare trees were these enormous nests—not as big as an eagle’s nest, but still very impressive. And underfoot were bits of small animals the herons had fed to their young. You could actually sift through the leaves on the ground and find small bones. It was a scene that made an impression on me, and I filed it away for future use.

The other spark came was when I read a reference to Mer de l’Ouest in Ken Jennings’s book on maps, Maphead. This so-called “Sea of the West” was a huge imaginary bay that was essentially invented by 18th-century mapmakers (though rumors and wishful thinking had persisted for centuries before that) and which covered the entire Pacific Northwest. In fact, this bay was considered a state secret for decades—France didn’t want any of the other colonial powers to know about this shortcut across the continent that they believed they had found, so they suppressed the news of its existence. It only became widely known when a stolen map was copied—and then, of course, the whole thing turned out to be totally imaginary.

All in all, it seemed like a fantastic place to set a story—this legendary, nonexistent location where presumably anything could happen.

Solitude and themes thereof seem to be the motivating emotion in this story. What was it about loneliness that drew you to write about it?

I’m fascinated by people who live and travel without safety nets. In my life, I’m always walking well-worn paths and always within easy call of other people. The most isolated I’ve ever been in my life was on a canoe trip to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota, and even then I was no farther than fifteen or twenty miles from the outfitter who had rented us our gear. Even if all our gear and food had sunk in a lake, the result would have been mere inconvenience—maybe a cold night, a hungry day, and a long walk.

So the idea that there are places where help is just entirely out of reach is really compelling to me. Reading about early Antarctic expeditions or sea voyages—or even the Apollo flights to the Moon—you realize how much these people were taking their lives in their hands. Their journeys were often based on theories that left little room for errors. There could come a point, as with Scott’s ill-fated trek to the South Pole, when they realized days ahead of time that they miscalculated and they weren’t going to make it. But most of the time, they would still keep going.

This story is not exactly about that. I think it’s more about a guy who wants to be on that kind of journey, but who finds he just can’t get far enough away from civilization. He keeps trying to remove himself from the world, but he finds that there’s always somebody else waiting for him over the horizon. Which I hope is a hopeful message in the end.

Can you tell us more about your choice of setting? In that same vein, one does not typically think of birds as being predators. What led you to this idea? Which came first, the setting or the predator?

The two ideas arose independently. I get lots of half-ideas for stories that just hang out in my head until I find two or three that go together in an interesting way. For this story, the setting and the predators were two separate ideas that clicked together. The third idea behind this story was that I wanted to write a monster story where the characters couldn’t communicate, and had to find other ways besides talking to develop their trust and coordination.

In fact, I’ve used a couple of those ideas more than once in different mixtures. I wrote another story with a heron as the “monster”—but that one was from a frog’s point of view (“The Famous Fabre Fly Caper” from The Journal of Unlikely Entomology). And I used the idea of characters unable to speak to each in another monster story, but that time in a monastery with a partial vow of silence (“After Compline, Silence Falls” from Beneath Ceaseless Skies). But those stories are all very different, and I’m not even sure anybody else would link them together as coming from the same sources of inspiration.

I will say a little more about herons, though, because they really are the apex predators of your local pond. Great blue herons will eat any living thing that fits in their mouth—fish, rodents, insects, snails, crustaceans, amphibians, and even young birds and turtles and snakes.

If we don’t realize herons are predators, it’s because they don’t threaten us. But they definitely have a predator’s eye when they’re stalking the shallows of a pond, stabbing their bill at anything that moves. It wasn’t hard to imagine how frightening they might be if they somehow got as big as the biggest flying birds that ever lived—the South American teratorns of the Miocene that weighed 150 pounds and had wingspans of twenty feet.

What sort of research does one do for a story like this?

I did a lot of varied research for this story, and threw a lot of it away. It would have been easy to stuff this story full with all kinds of facts about the geography and wildlife of the American West, the lives of the French voyageurs and trappers, and the culture of the American Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Earlier, rougher versions of the manuscript included a lot of that.

Most of the research that stayed in were little things. What did the French call the Rocky Mountains in the 18th century? What do forests in the Pacific Northwest look like? How big can a flying bird plausibly get? What did the native people in the Pacific Northwest eat, and how did they hunt?

If possible, I always prefer to answer those kinds of questions with research. The world’s a big place, and there are lots of interesting things to learn about it. If I had to make up a name for the French to call the Rocky Mountains, my invention wouldn’t have been as wonderful as the real name in use at the time—Montagne de Pierre Brillante, or Mountains of the Shining Stone.

What’s next for you?

More short stories, for the most part. The next big thing will be the second volume of the Machine of Death series of anthologies, which I co-edit with Ryan North and David Malki. The new book is called This Is How You Die, and it’s coming out from Grand Central Publishing in July 2013. It’s got more words, more illustrations, and more variety of stories than the first volume. We challenged writers to take us to some new and exciting places, and they really delivered.

For more information about either of the books (and for a free PDF of the first one), visit http://www.machineofdeath.net.

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.

Author Spotlight: John Crowley
Earnie Sotirokos

“Exogamy” tells a complete story in only five pages. Did you plan on using so few words when you started writing it?

The story was the result of a query from Ellen Datlow, then fiction editor at Omni magazine of fond memory, to write a short short story about the war between the sexes. It was published along with brief stories by Ursula Le Guin and Thomas M. Disch. So the remit included brevity.

It seemed that the bond between the characters was strengthened with each sentence. How did you distill those developing emotions into such a small package?

How I did it lies in what I did. It’s not a mystery, really—you’ve distilled it in your first sentence. To know more than that, you just examine the details. Each one takes a step from fear and loathing to acceptance and dependence.

Are there any advantages of telling a love story using speculative elements?

The interest for me was to tell a sort of SF story (it was intended for Omni, after all) that would also embody or entail a romance, a quest story. Of course, most SF stories do entail romances. The tiny SF elements of this story resemble to my mind the SF cast of certain stories from the ’50s or earlier, when SF was the main mode for romance (in the philological or lit-crit sense, certainly not the love-story sense): that is, just enough to flavor it, and announce it as “otherworldly.” As it goes on, those elements drop away, and then so do the fantasy/romance elements, until in the last sentences the story becomes nearly naturalistic or this-worldly, and a human couple drives off into our world. The same movement is in many stories, of course, but I was actually imitating the plan of a wonderful brief novel by Josephine Saxton called The Hieros Gamos of Sam and An Smith. Read it and you’ll see.

Do you have any advice for up-and-coming writers?

Here’s the plan: Read very many standard SF and SF/fantasy novels, so many that you can write one straight off in a quasi-trance state. There will always be a market for these, and if they fit the template well enough, they don’t have to be terribly good in any other way; write many many and you may become a good writer tout court, and if you don’t, you will still likely get published and loved (though not rich). Just kidding. Read great work in all genres and languages; read powerful second-rank work ditto, which will teach you the standard tricks more clearly; dream; think; lastly write, keeping in mind that stories are made out of words and sentences and not out of visions and longings.

What can we expect from you in the future?

I read this first as “what can we expect from the future” and was about to demur, then read it right. I am writing a novel that will not be finished for some time, and if I talk about it and arouse interest in it, that interest will wither away by the time it appears, and it will seem old-hat when newborn.

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.

Coming Attractions

Coming up in March, in Lightspeed . . .

We’ll have original science fiction by Jake Kerr (“Biographical Fragments of the Life of Julian Prince”) and Rich Larson (“Let’s Take This Viral”), along with SF reprints by Holly Phillips (“Three Days of Rain”) and Angélica Gorodischer (“The Sense of the Circle”).

Plus, we’ll have original fantasy by Sarena Ulibarri (“The Bolt Tightener”) and Lisa Tuttle (“The Dream Detective”), and fantasy reprints by Felicity Savage (“Ash Minette”) and Karen Joy Fowler (“Lily Red”).

For our ebook readers, our ebook-exclusive novella will be “Things Undone” by John Barnes, and of course we’ll have our usual assortment of author and artist spotlights, along with feature interviews with bestselling authors Philip Pullman and Angélica Gorodischer.

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!

If You Enjoyed This Issue of Lightspeed . . .

If you enjoyed this issue of Lightspeed, you may also be interested in editor John Joseph Adams’s recent anthologies:

The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination

edited by John Joseph Adams

Tor Books, February 2013

www.johnjosephadams.com/mad-scientists-guide

Mad scientists have never had it so tough. In super-hero comics, graphic novels, films, TV series, video games and even works of what may be fiction, they are besieged by those who stand against them, devoid of sympathy for their irrational, megalomaniacal impulses to rule, destroy or otherwise dominate the world as we know it.

Dr. Frankenstein was the first truly mad scientist of the modern era. And where did it get him? Destroyed by his own creation. And Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, a man ahead of his time as well as out of his head, what did he do to deserve persecution?

Even Lex Luthor, by all counts a genius, has been hindered not once, not twice, but so many times that it has taken hundreds of comic books, a few films and no fewer than ten full seasons of a television series to keep him properly thwarted.

It’s just not fair. So those of us who are so twisted and sick that we love mad scientists have created this guide. Some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty, but you’ll recognize them. But it doesn’t matter. This guide is not for you. It’s for them, the underhanded, over-brained, paranoiacs who so desperately need our help.

What lies behind those unfocused, restless eyes and drooling, wicked grins? Why–and how–do they concoct their nefarious plots? Why are they so set on taking over the world? If you’ve ever asked yourself any of these questions, you’re in luck: Because we are exposing their secrets, aiding and abetting their evil. It all awaits, within.

Watch out, world!

Featuring all original, all nefarious, all conquering tales from the megalomaniacal pens of DIANA GABALDON, AUSTIN GROSSMAN, SEANAN McGUIRE, NAOMI NOVIK, DANIEL H. WILSON and 17 OTHER EVIL GENIUSES.

Oz Reimagined

edited by John Joseph Adams & Douglas Cohen

47North, February 2013

www.johnjosephadams.com/oz-reimagined

When L. Frank Baum introduced Dorothy and friends to the American public in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became an instant, bestselling hit. Today the whimsical tale remains a cultural phenomenon that continues to spawn wildly popular books, movies, and musicals. Now, editors John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen have brought together leading fantasy writers such as Orson Scott Card and Seanan McGuire to create the ultimate anthology for Oz fans—and, really, any reader with an appetite for richly imagined worlds.

Seanan McGuire’s “Emeralds to Emeralds, Dust to Dust” finds Dorothy grown up, bitter, and still living in Oz. And she has a murder to solve—assuming Ozma will stop interfering with her life long enough to let her do her job.

In “Blown Away,” Jane Yolen asks: What if Toto was dead and stuffed, Ozma was a circus freak, and everything you thought you knew as Oz was really right here in Kansas?

“The Cobbler of Oz” by Jonathan Maberry explores a Winged Monkey with wings too small to let her fly. Her only chance to change that rests with the Silver Slippers.

In Tad Williams’s futuristic “The Boy Detective of Oz,” Orlando investigates the corrupt Oz simulation of the Otherland network.

Frank Baum’s son has the real experiences that his father later fictionalized in Orson Scott Card’s “Off to See the Emperor.”

In total, Oz Reimagined presents fifteen wildly-original takes on the world of Oz, plus illustrations for each story by Galen Dara.

Some stories are dystopian . . . Some are dreamlike . . . All are undeniably Oz.

Epic: Legends of Fantasy

edited by John Joseph Adams

Tachyon, November 2012

www.johnjosephadams.com/epic

There is a sickness in the land. Prophets tell of the fall of empires, the rise of champions. Great beasts stir in vaults beneath the hills, beneath the waves. Armies mass. Gods walk. The world will be torn asunder.

Epic fantasy is storytelling at its biggest and best. From the creation myths and quest sagas of ancient times to the mega-popular fantasy novels of today, these are the stories that express our greatest hopes and fears, that create worlds so rich we long to return to them again and again, and that inspire us with their timeless values of courage and friendship in the face of ultimate evil—tales that transport us to the most ancient realms, and show us the most noble sacrifices, the most astonishing wonders.

Now acclaimed editor John Joseph Adams brings you seventeen tales by today’s leading authors of epic fantasy, including George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire), Ursula K. Le Guin (Earthsea), Robin Hobb (Realms of Elderlings), Kate Elliott (Crown of Stars), Tad Williams (Of Memory, Sorrow & Thorn), Patrick Rothfuss (The Kingkiller Chronicle), and more.