TABLE OF CONTENTS

Issue 70, March 2016

FROM THE EDITOR

Editorial, March 2016

SCIENCE FICTION

Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0
Caroline M. Yoachim

The Mars Convention
Timons Esaias

RedKing
Craig DeLancey

The Waiting Stars
Aliette de Bodard

FANTASY

The Premature Burials
Andy Duncan

Sparks Fly
Rich Larson

Rat-Catcher
Seanan McGuire

Michael Doesn’t Hate His Mother
Marie Vibbert

NOVELLA

Miller’s Wife
Mark W. Tiedemann

NOVEL EXCERPTS

Shift
Hugh Howey

NONFICTION

Movie Review: Deadpool
Carrie Vaughn

Book Reviews: March 2016
Amal El-Mohtar

Interview: Chuck Wendig and Alexandra Bracken (Guide to the New Star Wars Canon)
The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHTS

Caroline M. Yoachim

Andy Duncan

Timons Esaias

Rich Larson

Craig DeLancey

Seanan McGuire

Aliette de Bodard

Marie Vibbert

Mark W. Tiedemann

MISCELLANY

Coming Attractions

Stay Connected

Subscriptions and Ebooks

About the Lightspeed Team

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

© 2016 Lightspeed Magazine

Cover by Reiko Murakami

www.lightspeedmagazine.com

Editorial, March 2016

John Joseph Adams | 1403 words

Welcome to issue seventy of Lightspeed!

Our People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! Kickstarter campaign has now concluded, and we’re happy to report that it was extremely successful; we asked for $5,000 and got $51,734 in return, which was 1034% of our funding goal. As a result of all that success, we unlocked several stretch goals, including additional special issues POC Destroy Horror!, which will be published in October as a special issue of Nightmare, and POC Destroy Fantasy!, which will publish in December as a special issue of Fantasy Magazine. Thanks again so much to everyone who supported the campaign, and thanks of course to our regular readers and subscribers!

• • • •

Awards season is officially upon us, and it looks like 2015 was a terrific year for our publications. The first of the major awards have announced their lists of finalists for last year’s work, and we’re pleased to announce that “Madeleine” by Amal El-Mohtar (Lightspeed, June 2015) and “And You Shall Know Her by the Trail of Dead” by Brooke Bolander (Lightspeed, Feb. 2015) are finalists for the Nebula Award this year. Plus, from our sister-magazine, Nightmare, “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong (Nightmare, Oct. 2015) is also a nominee! Congrats to Amal and Brooke and Alyssa and to all of the other Nebula nominees! That brings Lightspeed’s lifetime Nebula nomination total to fourteen since we launched in June 2010 (and Nightmare’s total to one!). We’ve currently lost twelve in a row, so here’s hoping Brooke or Amal breaks the streak! You can find the full slate of nominees at sfwa.org. The Nebulas will be presented at the 2016 Nebula Awards Conference, held this year in Chicago, Illinois, June 12–15.

In other awards news, Nightmare had two stories—the aforementioned “Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong and “Snow” by Dale Bailey—on the preliminary Stoker Awards ballot for best Short Fiction (plus Seanan McGuire’s story, “Resistance,” from my anthology The End Has Come, made it in the Long Fiction category), and we’re pleased to report that Alyssa Wong’s story made the final ballot! That marks Nightmare’s (and Alyssa’s) first Stoker Award nomination. So big congrats to Alyssa, and also to Dale and Seanan for nearly making it. You can find the full slate of what made the final ballot at horror.org. The Stokers will be presented at StokerCon 2016, which is being held in Las Vegas, Nevada, May 12–15.

The Locus Awards are now open for voting [bit.ly/locus2016]. Several stories from Lightspeed, Nightmare, and my anthologies made the recommended reading list, though the Locus Award has a write-in ballot, so you can also disregard the recommendations and vote for whatever you like instead. Voting closes April 15, 2016.

And last but not least: the Hugo Awards! Nominations for the Hugos close March 31, so if you’re planning to participate, you’ve only got a short time left to do so. Anyone who is or was a voting member of the 2015, 2016, or 2017 Worldcons by January 31, 2016 is eligible to nominate. If you need some help remembering which Lightspeed stories fit into which categories, I put together a list of all of the material I worked on that is eligible for this year’s award, which you can find at bit.ly/hugo2016.

• • • •

Several stories from Lightspeed, Nightmare, the Destroy special issues, and my anthologies have also been selected for reprint in several best-of-the-year volumes. They’re listed below, with the original venue and then the best-of-the-year editor(s)’s name following in parenthesis:

“Time Bomb Time” by C.C. Finlay (Lightspeed | Horton)

“The Karen Joy Fowler Book Club” by Nike Sulway (Lightspeed | Horton, Strahan)

“The Smog Society” by Chen Qiufan, translated by Ken Liu and Carmen Yiling Yan (Lightspeed | Clarke)

“Violation of the TrueNet Security Act” by Taiyo Fujii, translated by Jim Hubbert (Lightspeed | Clarke)

“The Astrakhan, the Homberg, and the Red Red Coal” by Chaz Brenchley (Lightspeed | Dozois, Horton)

“Snow” by Dale Bailey (Nightmare | Datlow, Guran)

“Descent” by Carmen Maria Machado (Nightmare | Datlow)

“Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers” by Alyssa Wong (Nightmare | Strahan)

“The Lily and the Horn” by Catherynne M. Valente (Fantasy | Guran, Strahan)

“Kaiju maximus®: ‘So Various, So Beautiful, So New’” by Kai Ashante Wilson (Fantasy | Guran, Strahan)

“Bannerless” by Carrie Vaughn (The End Has Come | Clarke, Dozois)

“The Gods Have Not Died in Vain” by Ken Liu (The End Has Come | Clarke)

“Blood, Ash, Braids” by Genevieve Valentine (Operation Arcana | Strahan)

“The Graphology of Hemmorhage” by Yoon Ha Lee (Operation Arcana | Horton)

“1Up” by Holly Black (Press Start to Play | Guran)

• • • •

And finally, one last thing before we get to this month’s stories: John Joseph Adams Books’ first three releases will all be out and available in bookstores by the end of the month. Our first release, Beacon 23 by Hugh Howey, came out in February, and the final two titles of our “pre-launch” season come out this month: Hugh Howey’s Shift and Dust, both out on March 22. They’re volumes 2 and 3 of Hugh’s bestselling Silo series (which began with the blockbuster Wool). If you’re one of our ebook readers, you can read an excerpt of Shift in this very issue.

In related news, I also acquired my first original title for the line: Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn. It takes place in the same world as her Hugo-nominated story “Amaryllis,” which appeared in the very first issue of Lightspeed. Also more directly-related is her 2015 story “Bannerless” from my anthology The End Has Come (which you can also read online at bit.ly/bannerless). In the official release, we described it as: “a novel in which an investigator must discover the truth behind a mysterious death in a world where small communities struggle to maintain a ravaged civilization decades after environmental and economic collapse.” It’s a two-book deal, with publication of the first slated for Spring 2017.

• • • •

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

We have original science fiction by Caroline M. Yoachim (“Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station”) and Craig DeLancey (“RedKing”), along with SF reprints by Timons Esaias (“The Mars Convention”) and Aliette de Bodard (“The Waiting Stars”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Rich Larson (“Sparks Fly”) and Marie Vibbert (“Michael Doesn’t Hate His Mother”), and fantasy reprints by Andy Duncan (“The Premature Burials”) and Seanan McGuire (“Rat-Catcher”).

All that, and of course we also have our usual assortment of author spotlights, along with our book and media review columns and a roundtable interview on the Star Wars canon.

For our ebook readers, we also have an ebook-exclusive reprint Mark W. Tiedemann’s novella, “Miller’s Wife.” And for our novel excerpt this month, we’re proud to present a snippet of Hugh Howey’s novel, Shift, out now from my new book line for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, John Joseph Adams Books.

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

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0

Caroline M. Yoachim | 2100 words

A. You take a shortcut through the hydroponics bay on your way to work, and notice that the tomato plants are covered in tiny crawling insects that look like miniature beetles. One of the insects skitters up your leg, so you reach down and brush it off. It bites your hand. The area around the bite turns purple and swollen.

You run down a long metal hallway to the Medical Clinic, grateful for the artificially generated gravity that defies the laws of physics and yet is surprisingly common in fictional space stations. The sign on the clinic door says “hours since the last patient death:” The number currently posted on the sign is zero. If you enter the clinic anyway, go to C. If you seek medical care elsewhere, go to B.

B. You are in a relay station in orbit halfway between Saturn and Uranus. There is no other medical care available. Proceed to C.

Why are you still reading this? You’re supposed to go to C. Are you sure you won’t go into the clinic? No? Fine. You return to your quarters and search the station’s database to find a cure for the raised purple scabs that are now spreading up your arm. Most of the database entries recommend amputation. The rash looks pretty serious, and you probably ought to go to C, but if you absolutely refuse to go to the clinic, go to Z and die a horrible, painful death.

C. Inside the clinic, a message plays over the loudspeakers: “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station, please sign your name on the clipboard. Patients will be seen in the order that they arrive. If this is an emergency, we’re sorry—you’re probably screwed. The current wait time is six hours.” The message is on endless repeat, cycling through dozens of different languages.

The clipboard is covered in green mucus, probably from a Saturnian slug-monkey. They are exceedingly rude creatures, always hungry and extremely temperamental. You wipe away the slime with the sleeve of your shirt and enter your information. The clipboard chirps in a cheerful voice, “You are number 283. If you leave the waiting room, you will be moved to the end of the queue. If your physiology is incompatible with long waiting room stays, you may request a mobile tracker and wait in one of our satellite rooms. The current wait for a mobile tracker is four hours.”

If you decide to wait in the waiting room, go to D. If you request a mobile tracker, go to D anyway, because there is no chance you will get one.

D. You hand the clipboard to the patient behind you, a Tarmandian Spacemite from the mining colonies. As you hand it off, you realize the clipboard is printing a receipt. The sound of the printer triggers the spacemite’s predatory response, and it eats the clipboard.

“Attention patients, the clipboard has been lost. Patients will be seen in the order they arrived. Please line up using the number listed on your receipt. If you do not have a receipt, you will need to wait and sign in when a new clipboard is assembled.”

If you wait for the new clipboard, go back to C. If you are smart enough to recognize that going back to C will result in a loop that does not advance the story, proceed to E.

E. Instead of waiting in line, you take advantage of the waiting room chaos to go to the nurses’ station and demand treatment. There are two nurses at the station, a tired-looking human and a Uranian Doodoo. The Doodoo is approximately twice your size, covered in dark brown fur, and speaks a language that only contains the letters, d, t, b, p, and o. If you talk to the human nurse, go to F. If you talk to the big brown Doodoo from Uranus, go to G. Also, stop snickering. The planet is pronounced “urine iss” not “your anus.”

F. The human nurse sees the nasty purple rash on your arm and demands that you quarantine yourself in your quarters. If you accept this advice, go back to B. Have you noticed all the loops in this story? The loops simulate the ultimate futility of attempting to get medical care. What are you still doing here? Go back to B. Next time you get to the nurses’ station, remember to pick the non-human nurse.

G. You approach the Uranian nurse and babble a bunch of words that end in “oo” which is your best approximation of Doodoo language. Honestly, the attempt is kind of offensive. The Doodoos are a civilization older than humankind with a nuanced language steeped in a complex alien culture. Why would you expect a random assortment of words ending in “oo” to communicate something meaningful?

Thankfully, the nurse does not respond to your blatant mockery of its language, so you hold out your arm and point to the purple rash. In a single bite, it eats your entire arm, cauterizing the wound with its highly acidic saliva. The rash is gone. If you consider yourself cured, proceed to Y. If you stay at the clinic in hopes of getting a prosthetic arm, go to H.

H. You approach the human nurse and ask about the availability of prosthetic limbs. He hands you a stack of twenty-four forms to fill out. The Doodoo nurse has eaten the hand you usually write with. If you fill out all the forms with your remaining hand, go to I. If you fill out only the top form and leave the rest blank, hoping that no one will notice, go to I.

I. The nurse takes your paperwork and shoves it into a folder. He leads you down a hallway to an exam room filled with an assortment of syringes and dissection tools. “Take off all your clothes and put on this gown,” the nurse instructs, “and someone will be in to see you soon.” If you do what the nurse says, go to J. If you keep your clothes on, go to K.

J. The exam room is cold and the gown is three sizes too small and paper thin. You sit down, only to notice that the tissue paper that covers the exam table hasn’t been changed and is covered in tiny crawling insects that look like miniature beetles. Sitting down is a decision that has literally come back to bite you in the ass. If you leap up screaming and brush the insects off your bare skin, go to L. If you calmly brush the insects away and then yell for someone to come in and clean the room, go to L.

K. Three hours later, the doctor arrives. You are relieved to see that she is human. You ask her if she can issue you a prosthetic limb. She says no, mumbles something about resource allocation forms, and leaves. If you accept her refusal and decide to consider yourself cured, go to Y. If you scream down the hall at the departing doctor that you must have a new arm, go to L.

L. A security officer comes, attracted by the sound of your screams. Clinic security is handled by a six-foot-tall Tarmandian Spacemite with poisonous venom, sharp teeth, and a fondness for US tax law. If you run, go to M. If you are secretly a trained warrior and decide to kill the Tarmandian Spacemite with your bare hands so you can eat its head, go to N. If you sit very still and hope the Tarmandian Spacemite goes away, go to O.

M. Running triggers the predatory instincts of the Tarmandian Spacemite. Go to Z.

N. You use your completely unforeshadowed (but useful!) fighting skills to overpower the security officer. The head of the Tarmandian Spacemite is a delicious delicacy, salty and crunchy and full of delightful worms that squiggle all the way down your throat. Unfortunately, you forgot to remove the venomous fangs. Go to Z.

O. You sit perfectly still on the exam table, and tiny insects that resemble miniature beetles crawl into your pants and bite you repeatedly, leaving a clump of purple bumps that look suspiciously similar to the scabby rash you had on your arm when you arrived at the clinic. When you’re sure the Tarmandian Spacemite is gone, go to P.

P. You have lost an arm and the lower half of your torso is covered in a purple rash. If you decide to cut your losses and consider yourself cured, go to R. If you rummage through the cabinets in the exam room, go to S.

Q. There is nothing in the story that directs you to this section, so if you are reading this, you have failed to follow instructions. Go directly to Z and die your horrible, painful death. Or skip to somewhere else, since you clearly aren’t playing by the rules anyway.

R. You sneak out of the clinic and return to your quarters. You search the station database for treatments for your beetle-induced purple rash. There is no known cure, although some patients have had luck with amputation of the affected areas. Sadly, you are incapable of amputating your own ass. Even if you go back to the clinic, the rash is now too widespread to be treated. Go to Z. Or, if you want to see what would have happened if you’d opted to search through the exam room cabinets, go to S. But remember, going to S is only to see what hypothetically would have happened. Your true fate is Z.

S. You rummage through the cabinets and find an assortment of ointments and lotions. If you read the instructions on all the bottles, go to T. If you select a few bottles at random and slather them on your rash, go to T. Have you noticed how often you end up in the same place no matter what you chose? In the clinic, as in life, decisions that seem important are often ultimately meaningless. In the end, all of us will die and none of this will matter. Now seriously, go to T.

T. None of the ointments or lotions do anything for your rash. The Uranian nurse comes in to clean the room and discovers you. If you pretend to work at the clinic, go to U. If you ask for help with your rash, go to V. If you run away, go to W.

(There is no U, much as there is no hope for patients of the clinic. The nurse would have recognized you anyway. Go to V.)

V. The Doodoo from Uranus (seriously, are you in third grade? Stop pronouncing the planet as “your anus”) examines your rash and amputates the affected areas by eating them, neatly cauterizing the wound with the acid in its saliva. You are now a head with approximately half a torso. If you consider yourself cured, go to X. Otherwise, go to Z.

W. You flee from the Uranian nurse but slip on a puddle of slimy green mucus excreted by another patient, probably that idiot slug-monkey that slimed the clipboard. You crash into the wall, and before you can get back up, the Uranian nurse amputates the areas affected by the rash by eating them, neatly cauterizing the wound with the acid in its saliva. You are now a head with approximately half a torso. If you consider yourself cured, go to X. Otherwise go to Z.

X. You are not cured. You are a head with half a torso, and missing several internal organs. Go to Z.

Y. Congratulations, you have survived your trip to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station! All you have to do now is fill out your discharge papers. You start filling out the forms with your one remaining hand, but you accidentally drop the pen onto the oozing foot of the Saturnian slug-monkey waiting in line behind you. This is undoubtedly the idiot that slimed the sign-in clipboard. You cuss the slug-monkey out with some choice words in French. Choice words because it was rude to leave slime all over the clipboard. French because you know better than to make a slug-monkey angry. You’ve watched enough education vids to know that slug-monkeys are always hungry, which makes them temperamental.

Unfortunately for you, Saturnian slug-monkeys are far better educated than arrogant humans give them credit for. This one is fluent in several languages, including French. It eats you. Go to Z.

Z. You die a horrible, painful death. But at least you won’t have to deal with your insurance company!

©2016 by Caroline M. Yoachim. Art Copyright 2016 by Reiko Murakami.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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

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

The Mars Convention

Timons Esaias | 5200 words

Gesta waddled through the lobby of the Charenton Hotel Mars, masking his revulsion as best he could. The whole place had that cheesy charm that humans had so adored. Mindless plants grew in containers here and there. A large excavation filled with water, a “swimming pool,” lapped gently at the edge of the registration slab, giving off a faint trace of chlorine. Not enough chlorine to intoxicate, but it did give the air a pleasant tang.

Everywhere—on the balconies; in the bar; in the corridors; even, incredibly, in the pool—were Struvei, Buhrmice, and Gleansians costumed as humans. And this Conference claimed to be a scholarly gathering!

The hotel lobby offered a battlefield of warring sensations. The whole infrared glared with excessive energy, lacking any of the clarity he knew on his reasonably sized ice moon circling a proper gas giant. But what could be expected from this crowded, warm, rocky little planet so close to the star? The star the humans had called Sun.

The personal odors would take, in Gesta’s opinion, considerable adaptation. He did not dislike the other spacefaring species; he found them interesting. But it had to be admitted: They smelled funny.

He asked the desk clerk for a more effective atmosphere filter.

In the elevating cubicle, he tried to relax his inner tentacles. Sixty meripips of gravitation bore down on him. Ten times the Miseran normal. He wondered if humans had been so self-deceptive, so fraudulent, because their lives had been so burdensome under the much greater gravitation of their home planet?

Assuming that the seething, molten third planet of this system really was the fabled Earth.

• • • •

Two fundamentalists, one a Noresht and the other a fellow Miseraph, blocked the corridor to his room.

“Look, the stories in the Chronicles don’t even agree with each other!” the Noresht insisted, branches waving wildly and roots taking firm hold of the flooring. “Some of them have to be forgeries. How can the trees grow so easily in ‘The Green Morning’ but the whole planet be as dry and empty as in ‘The Silent Town’ and the ‘Million Year Picnic’? You’ve got to be able to weed out the obviously false texts.”

“If we start throwing out texts in order to reconcile them, how will you stop? How will you know which are sacred and . . .”

Sensing him, they fell silent. The Imperium’s representative, with the power to ban their publications, shouldn’t hear them bickering.

Not that it mattered, because Gesta’s speech to the Convention, and his report for the Imperium, were both nearly complete. Nothing these foolish humanophiles would decide had any bearing on his decision. This nonsense must be brought to a close, before it poisoned all of history.

The suite seemed narrow, probably meant for Mino-sodni with their practically two-dimensional bodies. The trailing edges of his wings kept dragging on the walls. Even first-class resorts like this found it difficult to accommodate all nine spacefaring species. Laying topsoil on the floor for Noreshtae, then replacing it with ice for the Schra’a’lengi, and swapping atmospheres from oxygen to chlorine to fluorine must cost a fortune.

Gesta scanned the conference program. Just as he expected—one misguided attempt at scholarly rationalization after another. “Lensmen, Stranger, Ylla or Cacciaguida: Are all Martians from the same Mars?”; “Deriving the Geography of Narnia, Avalon, and the Grey Havens”; “Evidence for Identifying Mahasamatman as a Scion of Count Dracula of Transylvania”; “Probable Tralfamadorian Intervention in Orr’s Voluntary Therapeutic Treatment and the Grasshopper Lies Heavy Oracle”; and these so-called studies were supposed to produce a definitive agreement on the history of the human race, by reconciling the apparent differences among the various sacred texts of science fiction.

No two scholars here, of the two thousand invitees to this half-marsyear conference, agreed on any interpretation of the canon. But they expected to send a signed and sealed conventicle, the Mars Convention, to the Imperium. It was, to use a humanism, hogwash!

There’d been fifty days of preliminary lectures before Gesta’s arrival, and he spent the afternoon oozing off landing-lag and running through the summaries. So much effort, so little truth.

Not that Human Studies had much to work with, to be sure. The hard evidence was limited to a few bits of meteor-pelted metal on the surface of this planet, four moons of the sixth planet, and the tenth planet; some “satellites” wandering in cometary orbits; and the remains of two human habitats. In both habitats were found the artifacts that had caught the attention of starfaring culture: books. Thin rectangles with symbols embedded on flexible ceramic leaves. About a hundred codices depending on how you counted them. Several repeats. Almost all bearing the phrase “science fiction” on the cover, along with impressive portraits of this remarkably active and muscular race.

Most of the other artifacts had decayed beyond study. Only the books, some posters, and one phonograph record were intelligible.

The search for the humans had been going full-tilt ever since.

• • • •

Gesta woke from a “dreamless sleep.” As the preening acid warmed in the toilet cubicle, he wondered for the thousandth time just what the humans had meant by “dreaming.” Only three of the nine spacefaring species slept, and they had no experience of these strange events that troubled sleeping humans, and which seemed outside time. If only the work on the subject by human Freud had survived.

Reclining in the public eating rooms, he surveyed the cliques grouped here and there. In the far corner huddled the four fictomathematicians who’d been invited to speak. Two Tafkapalites, one Miseraph, and a Gleans, probably representing the four differing schools of fictomathematic interpretation. Most of their work centered on the two apparently mathematical texts: human Lorentz’s Human Michelson’s Interference Experiment and human Einstein’s The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity. Texts which revealed, according to your preference: that human physics was amusingly flawed; or deeply perceptive in some yet-unknown way; or a symbol system having little to do with physics; or magical formulae.

Gesta himself had no opinion. His report would leave fictomathematics out.

The hotel food was palatable, but lacking in brutality. His attention wandered until Sharia came sliding down an aisle, straight to Gesta’s couch. “Miseraph Gesta of the Imperium! I heard you’d joined us.” Sharia made all the right mudras, with only a couple of pseudohuman touches thrown in.

Gesta reluctantly greeted his major philosophical opponent. This whole Conference had sprung from the proposals of schra’a’leng Sharia, who admittedly had a gift for squeezing funds out of cold gases for scholarly studies. Sharia coiled her long, flexible body around a support post. Gesta never trusted Schra’a’lengi, or their scholarship. A body that can twist in every direction, in his opinion, produced arguments that did the same.

Sharia made a conspiratorial gesture. “Come to tell us we’re all idiots, I presume?”

Gesta had not expected such bluntness. “I have come to see if there has been any critical progress on the canon of science fiction.”

“The sacred canon of science fiction,” corrected Sharia. “It’s been fairly bleak, so far. Last week’s highlight was esprow Kervantz arguing ‘that old head-to-toe scarred Ahab was really Frankenstein’s Monster, offended at the white whale for belittling his non-god-made existence’ or something. I was appalled at the inventiveness of it.”

Sharia uncoiled and began to slither off, but said in parting, “I’ve arranged to give you the last word. Your speech is the day before the negotiating begins on the Convention.”

My report to the Imperium will be the last word, Gesta thought. But the encounter puzzled him. Did Sharia not respect the Reconciliation movement, either? How hypocritical was she?

• • • •

He attended the lecture “Were Bodices Ever Intact?: Human Clothing in Prose and Illustration.” The galleries were packed with humanophiles interested in “costuming.” “Philes” abounded at the Conference, maybe three times the number of the scholars. Parts of Gesta liquefied at the cost of moving all these folks across parsecs of space for this absurd exercise in . . .

He hesitated to express the pointlessness of it all, even to himself. But that was what he’d come for. To declare science fiction utterly, dangerously, and even criminally pointless.

Scanning the gallery, he noted the rich solecisms of attire. Chain mail and ray guns. High Transylvanian capes and deerstalker caps. Hobbit jerkins and red eye caps. The worst was a Struvei in a swallowtail tuxedo, steel-plated bra, spurred boots, and a broadsword dangling unsheathed from a hide belt.

He left.

• • • •

Despite his antipathy to the Conference, Gesta enjoyed the experience of total immersion in the various Human Studies. He knew their books to be misleading and unsound, but that didn’t obliterate the questions their study raised. What had happened to them? Was this really their home system? How did the third planet turn into a molten ball, this late in the system’s age, and without completely slagging its moon? What did all these books really mean? And most of all, what had made humans “tick,” as they once said? What had they wanted?

The philes, of course, seemed entranced by these questions, but not to the point of trying to solve them. The “human experience” interested them more—and they pursued it through costumes, public book readings, art shows, surgical alterations, and the endless playing of the Glass Bead Game.

Gesta was highly suspicious of the clearly dangerous tendencies of the Glass Bead Game. Many a fine mind had been distracted by it, and many a career sidetracked into its all-encompassing complications. Glass Bead Game players and fans lived in self-created worlds of their own, which they claimed had significant connections to the mundane world, but which Gesta found dangerously simplistic or sometimes wholly false.

Even the rules were not as human Hesse had portrayed them. The current rage was collectable playing tiles, which had no textual basis at all. But the artifact arcades were filled with tile vendors.

The annual Imperiate Festival Game had been shifted here to Mars in honor of the Conference; and half the philes were playing in it—and most of the scholars. Those who weren’t probably wished they were.

The theme for this game, appropriately, was the question of Human Destiny. Humans had many gifts unknown to us, and powers we yet do not understand, claimed the Festival Game Audience Guide. They could be invisible, travel in time, and communicate instantly across vast stretches of the galaxy. They could exceed the speed of light without swapping mass from the destination point. They could create matter ex nihilo, and read minds. They could murder without regret, steal without embarrassment, and by the simple mention of a small city’s name could recast events.

“Antwerp,” Gesta muttered, but the universe did not change.

Some even attained immortality by birth, blood consumption or medical wisdom. Humans, with few exceptions, were strong, wise, and unusually lucky. Their sexual attractiveness is the envy of the galaxy.

What fate, what destiny, awaited such a race? This year’s game will follow this question, moving from the tenets of physics and the list of human virtues, and exploring the many ends to which they may have come. The Game Question is: “Where Are They Right Now, and What Are They Doing?”

• • • •

“Honorable Councilor,” said gleans JoNikt, with that disrespectful edge that long association permitted him to use, “what’s a miserable Miseraph like you doing, shaking your head at our Game?” Gesta had been listening to a pointless debate between two players, one insisting that Leibowitz held moral priority over all other revelations, the other holding out for Star Maker. “Really, you should come down off your professional throne and give it a try.”

“I have seen too many promising careers lost when your Game sucked . . .”

The Gleans straightened his Player’s robe with a carelessly extended talon. “True, Councilor, anything as fascinating as this can tempt one into over-indulgence, and over-indulgence in anything, your own taste for efflorescent fluorine for example, is dangerous. But it’s the most challenging intellectual exercise I know.”

“It’s more an addiction than an exercise.”

“The Glass Bead Game is nothing but the association of ideas, presented as a dramatic metaphor. It tempts the players to think, to think in original ways and in new patterns. I would assume you’d find that admirable!”

“I would if I believed in these . . . stories.”

“Perhaps, dear Gesta, if you were to put your disbelief into suspension . . . ?”

“Suspension!? Disbelief is the cornerstone of Science. To give it up is to choose insanity!” Gesta heard his voice squeak embarrassingly with emotion.

Gleans JoNikt’s skull ring incandesced with amusement and affection. “You have always been an intolerable old grump, miseraph Gesta.”

“And you have always been . . . how did the humans say it? . . . a cheeky scoundrel.”

• • • •

Gesta’s own great-great-ancestor, enthralled with the human canon, had led an expedition to search through six other stellar systems hoping to find the real Earth, and there to excavate the ruins of Dotheboys Hall (her dream being to stand where human John Browdie had stood, at the final breaking up of that place; the greatest emblematic moment in human history, in her opinion, and the opinion of many others), before sadly concluding that this was, indeed, the Solar System—and the molten planet, Earth.

It had broken the honorable ancestor’s spirit. Nothing would console her. Her mate had clung to the belief that the humans had gone into another dimension, that they were all there, all still living, retelling the old tales of human heroism. But he could not convince her; she would have none of it.

• • • •

Three bodies, with just one brain between them, Gesta thought. An Esprow whose nametags said “Rewawk.” Its thinking body had just asked his opinion of the human homeland. The eating body was working its way down the buffet table, a large platter in each claw. The reproductive body lounged against the bandstand, assessing the possibilities.

Gesta turned the question back to Rewawk, knowing the Esprow was more interested in spouting his own opinion than in listening to another’s. Esprows experienced too much dialecticism in their own triune lives. In other things, they wanted clear certainties. “I think they’ve retreated,” Rewawk propounded. “I’m convinced they’re living in the center of Earth, possibly waiting for beings as adventurous as themselves to come find them. We must demand funding to create a probe that will go down through all that molten stone and find them. I call it the Nautilus Program, after . . .”

“Yes, of course.” Why did the nitwits always admire Nemo so much? On his cynical days, Gesta felt that their real interest in humans was the human admiration for mass killers who had found a plausible excuse. On those days, Gesta was sure what the meaning of the molten third planet had to be. Very sure.

• • • •

He discussed encountering the esprow Rewawk over late dinner, with gleans JoNikt and two other colleagues from the Imperial War College. “Interesting. I heard from Holubo that this same Rewawk was touting the theory this morning that they had all been sucked into a black hole of their own devising. And that only the day before he had insisted with equal vigor that the humans were now disembodied spirits watching over us and keeping us from harm.”

“He’s been using his feeding brain too much, I fear,” snorted Gesta.

“At least he is willing to consider more than one point of view,” snipped JoNikt, as though he thought that was a virtue.

The two colleagues, both Mino-sodni, hastened to redirect the conversation. “We’ve just come from the ‘Memoirs Found In a Bathtub: History or Forgery’ panel,” said the higher ranked of the two. “Most interesting,” observed his junior.

“So which did they decide?”

“Pardon, Councilor?”

Gesta flipped his disemboweling scoop from side to side to indicate the choices. “History? Forgery?”

“Oh, they veered off the topic almost immediately,” the lesser one explained. “We got onto the Game question. The panelists seem to think that humans are extinct.”

“And what,” asked JoNikt, over a beaker of smoking blood, “do you believe?”

The junior officer gathered his thoughts as though for an exam question. “I persist in believing that humans discovered, or were given, faster-than-light drive. Seeking the Grey Havens, or Arrakis, or perhaps pursuing the Dragon’s Egg, they left.”

The senior Mino-sodni interrupted. “I think F-T-L should be seen as an emblem of the spacelessness of human consciousness . . .”

“Excuse me, sir,” Gesta impatiently quashed the officer’s philosophical speculation. “But your colleague used an interesting expression. ‘Persist’ you said ‘in believing.’ Why, if I may ask, do you ‘persist’?”

“Because,” the officer admitted with foodbeingish candor, “if I believe it, I can still seek them. If I do not believe, I must give up the adventure. I must abandon all hope.”

• • • •

In summary, the very concept of Reconciliation of the so-called “sacred” texts of science fiction is based on a false premise. The books in our possession are not a seamless garment fabricated by a single garmentshrubbery, and scholars could spend infinite amounts of energy, money, and mutual vituperation without ever coming to an honest consensus on how the books fit together into a whole, Gesta dictated to his textwriter. The texts of science fiction are each individual. They do not form a whole, nor are they the same things. Human Darwin’s purposes in composing science fiction, if it is that, are undoubtedly quite different from human Clarke’s. Trying to make them one thing is inherently self-defeating.

But this is not the most dangerous false premise. The idea that these works present an accurate portrayal of human affairs and human history . . . A gentle knock at the door interrupted. How quaintly human, he thought. The inspection scope revealed Sharia and three other members of the Steering Committee furling and unfurling their appendages in the corridor.

“I can’t invite you in,” he said. “There’s no room in here.”

“Could we meet in the executive ice tubs, then?” asked Jivannee. Gesta considered this blithering Struvei to be the worst form of bureaucratic cretin. Gesta had read his papers. Sub-idiotic. Deca-moronic. “In half an hour?”

Even Sharia seemed honestly solicitous. “We would like to discuss the Convention, if you don’t mind. Your attitude is key.”

At least they had that right, Gesta thought.

Fools. Self-deluded fools.

• • • •

Gesta luxuriated in his pool of liquid chloromethane. If they were trying to soften him up, meeting in the ice tubs was good strategy. Sharia lay coiled on a sheet of water ice. The others had cool metallic crystals of their own preference. Billed to their Universities, he assumed.

Sharia cut quickly to the gonads of the issue. “We would like you to tell us the gist of your presentation, so that we can try to persuade you to drop your opposition to the Mars Convention, or at least to the idea. You do intend to oppose it, I assume?”

“I intend to take my cue from a passage in human Melville,” he said. “In chapter nine, where it adjures us ‘To preach the Truth to the face of Falsehood.’ That is what I intend to do.”

Jivannee made a tolerant mudra. “And what Truth do you wish to preach,” he asked, “in the face of which Falsehood?”

Gesta knew these four had their whole lives’ work invested in Human Studies, and as silly as much of their product was, it didn’t please him to puncture their air-sacs. But he would be making the same points in just a few days, and then again before the Imperium, and probably over and over for the rest of his cycles.

He simply summarized. “I think that no archaeological remains have been found of Trantor, or the Empire, not because they are in another galaxy, or time, or dimension, but because there never was an Empire. Or a Culture. I don’t think humans could find new realms on the other side of mirrors, or chifforobes, or windmills, or in computer networks. I do not think any of their gods ever existed. I don’t think the Earth is molten because another planet collided with it. I do not think human King Arthur will come again.

“My premise is that science fiction is not ‘fiction’ in the first sense, as the Galactic Human Dictionary has it: ‘An archetypical historic event, written down to preserve the glory of said event for future generations.’ I think scholars have willfully misled themselves since the books were first discovered. The second sense, ‘A similar story, possibly false,’ covers this case. I actually think the whole first definition is wishful thinking. I think the only definition of ‘fiction’ is ‘falsehood.’”

He expected anger from them. There was none. Sharia flashed the mudra of complete concurrence. “Just so,” she said. “Of course. Well put.”

“Quite,” agreed Jivannee. “Quite,” repeated the others.

Gesta, taken aback by the sudden capitulation, hesitated to continue. What depth of hypocrisy was here? What trap? “And so I think the Convention can serve no purpose. It should be rejected, in any form.”

Riosto, a Noresht, slowly flowered in its tub of crystals and asked, “Do you think Human Studies should be abandoned, Councilor?”

“Not entirely. But the texts should be de-sacralized. And the search for humans abandoned, of course.”

“Why?”

“Because they are all dead.”

Riosto went briefly to seed. “Do you find no value in these texts, beyond their existence as artifacts, Councilor?”

Gesta could not frame a reply, at first, and Sharia spoke. “Look at the stories these humans told themselves, Councilor. We tell stories of slow steady growth, calm maturation, sensible decline. All our stories come to nothing in the end, because we know that we all come to nothing in the end. But humans, these long-dead humans, told stories of a different sort. Most of their stories had happy endings. Their stories are full of choices, conflicts, and individuals making a difference in their own worlds; not in endless generations, but in a single lifetime, or a day, an hour, sometimes an instant.” Sharia uncoiled for emphasis. “In their stories, love sometimes triumphs over hate.”

“But it’s made up,” Gesta protested. “It’s all made up!”

Sharia, forming the mudra of ambiguity, replied, “Councilor, everything is made up, both the false and the true. Every significant part of the nine cultures has been ‘made up.’“

She coiled again. “I will tell you what we think. We think that the humans created these works in order to amuse themselves, clearly; to deceive themselves, possibly; and to think ahead. This was their most important characteristic, an urge to imagine what was not, what might yet be. They met adversity with creativity. The relics of no dead species have caught our imaginations like these humans and their science fiction, because imagination is their hallmark. I would hate to be the one to condemn such a body of work, merely because it was not factual.”

“But they failed,” Gesta insisted, quietly. “Their imagination must have been a gripless blade. Look at their home.”

“Indeed they did fail,” noresht Riosto agreed, dropping early fruit. “Indeed, they came to nothing, as in our stories. No happy ending. Failed as we will fail, leaving a few broken tools and their works of the imagination.”

“And all that makes thinking beings different from foodbeings,” hissed Sharia, “is the works of the imagination.”

Gesta found this assertion confusing, but challenging. “What,” he finally asked, “do you want of me?”

“We want you to give your lecture, taking an entire day if need be. We want you to call gods suspect, the Glass Bead Game unhistorical, and the sacred texts of science fiction to be so much space opera. But then you should be perfectly honest with yourself and your audience. This is great stuff. It has already changed the way we imagine ourselves. Why not admit it?”

• • • •

Gesta felt physically soothed by the bath, but mentally agitated by the blatant attempt to get him to abandon his principles. He waddled through the main lounge, now filled with flirting conventioneers, and past the Space Beagle Bar & Zanzibar Ice-Cream Stand. The only talk scheduled for this late hour was something billed as “The Three Laws in Our Time” that sounded revoltingly moralistic. He chose, instead, to explore the Artifact Arcade.

Artifact Arcades, a universal fixture wherever philes gathered, had neither human artifacts nor arched roofs, but they were legitimately interesting anyway. Hundreds of different editions, in all the known scripts, of the canonical texts; thousands of dramatic renditions in all the standard viewing formats; and tens of thousands of trinkets filled the tables and stalls.

Things, he thought, objects had such significance for them. The instruments and regalia of power were clearly the dynamic center of most of their books. It was reflected here in the swords, the magic wands, the armor, the uniforms, the models and pictures of warships, the cards and yarrow stalks for foretelling the future, the time-machines for exploring the past, the garments that gave their women such overwhelming magnetism, and above all by the guns. Many of the objects were quite beautiful, but power was their essence.

Our material world was bland before we discovered theirs, he admitted.

In the Great Gallery of the arcade hung a pair of magnificent chitonotapestries, huge things that almost filled the largest wall. They weren’t even for sale, the works of gleans Emekel were all commissioned and rarely changed hands. These were being shown off to the public before disappearing into a private collection, never to be seen again.

They embodied everything wrong with the Reconciliation movement. The artist had tried to unite all the varying stories of the human canon into one, both allegorically and historically. The two panels formed a single work, dominated by huge disks of planets hanging like enormous blue aspirin tablets at each end. The Earth of When Worlds Collide hung at the right end, and Bellus hung at the left. Also on the left panel was Troy, with human Priam’s hundred sons manning the ramparts. They looked down on one of the Martian projectiles opening up. Elsewhere the tripods were already deployed and moving in the direction of the right panel.

Just above the disk of Earth on the right were the Achaians, and if one looked carefully you could see human Homer down by the beach, cataloging the ships. News of the Martian invasion spread across this panel, men sweating over hot wireless sets trying to get the message out. Also on this panel were primitive humans, trying to discover fire by striking the first match against the sandpaper side of the matchbox, while others discovered agriculture (as shown by their squeezing what might have been castor oil from some round green seeds.) On the left panel were dinosaurs and dragons and jealous gods just waiting to take these benefits away.

The tapestries were beautifully embellished with a double-helix motif, with different gems indicating the four bases that formed the structural pairs. Informed opinion held that life was impossible with less than six bases, pace human Watson. Had the error originated with Holmes? Gesta wondered, then caught himself.

From the ray-gun in human Hector’s hand it seemed that Emekel accepted the theory that Iliad, When Worlds Collide, and War of the Worlds recorded the same events, and appear different only due to sloppy interpretation.

Hundreds of different stories, intricately interlaced, filled the space of the two panels. Gesta noted that they did effectively portray the most chilling thing about humans, the thing that tied so many of their stories together. They were generally about winning. About two forces in conflict and one annihilating the other.

All his life, he had been disturbed by this recurrent theme. It made for great drama, for gripping narration; but Gesta could not bring himself to admire annihilation.

Standing further back, he spent some minutes taking the work in, knowing that he stood before one of the most beautiful creations of civilization. Why doesn’t our history inspire such creativity? he wondered. Why did we need the human lies?

He asked a docent what the work was entitled.

The Atrocity Exhibition.

• • • •

Near the climax of his address, Gesta was concluding a long list of absurd events in the sacred canon. “All of this is untrue. And I will say so in my report to the Imperium.

“Likewise, I will report that it is foolishness to spend official funds on questions like the probable anatomy of the upright tom cat in human Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, or whether there were ever potatoes of prey.”

The audience had quieted from polite silence to the stillness of a deep subterranean burial chamber. He raised his eyes from the illuminated screen of his textwriter, and surveyed the audience. They had packed the auditorium to hear his remarks, knowing that he had the power not only to eliminate research funding but even to ban their meetings if he so decided.

It occurred to Gesta that this was a profoundly human moment. He held the power to annihilate this misguided nonsense, and the time had come to use it.

The pause grew longer. Sounds of polite retching began here and there. A few small children had to be stifled.

His tentacle tapped gently on the podium, and then, almost by itself, slid the MODE toggle from DISPLAY to RECORD.

“But . . .” Gesta heard himself begin, “while I don’t think we should believe in orcs, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye out for them.” There were chortles of disbelief from the hall. “Nor does it hurt to know, in advance, which side we intend to take should the Dark Lord, or Big Brother, or the Mule ever re-appear.

“Works of the imagination allow us to consider such things, and it would be . . . it would be dishonest to pretend that this has no value. Works of the imagination touch our internal organs, without dangerous surgery; and often do more effective work there than our best physicians.

“I will tell the Imperium that believing these works to be the truth is pernicious. But I will also say that the time spent reading these works is not wasted, far from it.

“I will tell them that books were the greatest instrument of power in the human arsenal, imbued with more meaning than any other of their artifacts. I will tell them that these works were the best gift humanity could have left for us, and should be widely read, greatly enjoyed and lovingly preserved.”

He firmly moved the MODE toggle to OFF.

Moments later there wasn’t a hooked bodice in the house.

©1998 by Timons Esaias. Originally published in Interzone. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Timons Esaias is a satirist, writer and poet living in Pittsburgh. His works, ranging from literary to genre, have been published in nineteen languages. He has also been a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award, and won the Asimov’s Readers Award. His story “Norbert and the System” has appeared in a textbook, and in college curricula. His SF short story “Sadness” was selected for three Year’s Best anthologies in 2015. His News Nots satire column appeared in seven newspapers, and convinced many readers that the Vatican was relocating to St. Louis; that the Pittsburgh Sewer & Water Authority had decided to add Prozac to the water supply (along with sodium pentothal at tax time); and that several cities had chosen to re-zone by residents’ floor-covering preferences only, since that is what truly divides us. He is Adjunct Faculty at Seton Hill University, in the Writing Popular Fiction MFA Program.

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

RedKing

Craig DeLancey | 6,400 words

Tain held a pistol toward me. The black gel of the handle pulsed, waiting to be gripped.

“Better take this,” she said.

I shook my head. “I never use them.”

We sat in an unmarked police cruiser, the steering wheel packed away in the dashboard. Tain’s face was a pale shimmer in the cool blue light of the car’s entertainment system. “Your file says you are weapons trained.”

“Yeah,” I said, “I got one of those cannons at home, locked in my kitchen drawer.”

Tain turned slightly toward me. She still held the gun out, her fingers wrapped around the barrel. “You gonna get me killed, code monkey?”

I considered telling her it was quaint to think that protection could be secured with a gun. But instead I told her, “I start waving that around, I’m more likely to shoot you than the perp. Just get me to the machines. That’s how I’m going to help you.”

She thought for a moment, then nodded. “Well, at least you’re a man who knows his limitations.” She turned the pistol around, held it a second so that the gun locked to her hand print, and then she tucked it under her belt at the small of her back.

She dimmed the dash lights. I was running a naked brain—standard procedure for a raid—and so the building, the sidewalk, and the road reduced down to the hard objects that our paltry senses could latch onto: a world without explanations, ominously obscure.

We both leaned forward and looked up at the building before us, eighteen stories of concrete. The once-bright walls had faded to the color of mold. A half-hearted rain began, streaking the grime on its narrow windows.

The clock on the dash read 2:30 a.m. No one in sight. Most of the lights in the building were out now.

“You know the drill?” Tain asked me.

“I know this kid we’re arresting probably wrote RedKing,” I told her. “That’s all I need to know.”

Unsatisfied with this answer, she repeated the rap. “Twenty-seven-year-old male. Got his name legally changed to his code handle: Legion. Five prior convictions for 909.” Design, manufacture, and distribution of cognition-aversive and intentionally addictive software. “No record of violence. But he’s still a killer, so consider him dangerous. We go in fast, my people take him down, and you save what you can from his machines.”

“I know my job.”

“Right.” She pushed open her door. I followed her into the rain, heaving my backpack on. I tightened its straps and then snapped them across my chest.

A Korean food truck, covered with twisting dim snakes of active graffiti, idled across the street. Its back door swung open, and cops in black, holding rifles, poured out.

We ran as a group for the entrance to the tower.

• • • •

A few kids stood in the lobby, smoking, and they turned pale and ran for the stairs when we parted the front doors. Their untied sneakers slapped at the concrete floor. We ignored them, but two cops took position in the lobby to ensure no one left. Tain had a set of elevator keys and she took command of both lifts. We squeezed into the elevator on the left, shoulder to shoulder with four other cops in full gear, their rifles aimed at the ceiling. The smell of leather and gun oil overwhelmed everything else while the LED counter flicked off sixteen flights.

A chime announced our arrival. We made a short run down a dim hall and stopped before a door with an ancient patina of scratched and flaking green paint. The cops hit it with a ram and we filed in quick and smooth. I broke to the left, following half the cops through a dingy common room with a TV left on mute, the flickering images casting a meager glow over an open pizza box on an empty couch.

A door by the TV led to a dark room. Two cops rousted the suspect out of bed and zip tied him in seconds. Legion was a pale, thin kid with trembling, sticklike arms. He gazed around in shock. A woman leapt out of the bed and stood in the corner, shouting, clutching the sheets over her naked body. Somewhere a baby started screaming.

Tain’s cops were good: They moved quietly, not all hyped on adrenaline, and they stayed out of my way as I ran through the apartment, checking each room for machines. But the only computers were in the bedroom: a stack of gleaming liquid-cooled Unix engines atop a cheap, particle board desk. Not heavy iron, but good machines: the kind rich kids bought if they played deep in the game economies.

Legion began to yell, calling for the woman to bring him clothes while two cops dragged him out. The woman screamed also, demanded a lawyer, demanded her baby. I did my best to tune out all that noise, pulled a cable from the side of my backpack, and jacked my field computer straight into the top deck. Data streamed through my eyeplants—the only augmentation I was allowed to run here—and I tapped at a virtual keyboard. In a few seconds I dug under the main shell and started a series of static disk copies. While in there, I ran a top check to show the processes that threaded across the machines: nothing but low level maintenance. Tain’s crew had got Legion before the kid could trigger a wipe.

I turned, found Tain’s eye, and nodded.

“Okay,” she shouted. “Wrap it up.”

• • • •

It started with the gamers. It wasn’t enough to stare at screens any longer. They wanted to be there, in the scene. They wanted to smell and hear the alien planet where they battled evil robots, to feel the steely resolve of their avatar and enjoy her victories and mourn her losses. They wanted it all.

That meant moving hardware into the skull, bypassing the slow crawl of the senses. Once we’d wired our occipital lobes, you could predict the natural progression of commerce: not just visuals, but smell, and sound, and feel, and taste had to come next. So the wires spread through our neocortexes, like the roots of some cognitive weed. Autonomic functions came after, the wires reaching down into the subcortical regions of pleasure and pain, fear and joy. We gave up all the secrets of our brains, and sank the wires ever deeper.

Then people started to wonder, what other kinds of software could you run on this interface?

Pornography, sure. The first and biggest business: orgies raging through the skulls of overweight teenage boys lying alone in their unmade beds.

But after that, people began to demand more extreme experiences. A black market formed. For the buyer, the problem is one of imagination: What would you want to feel and believe, if you could feel and believe anything? For the coders, the problem is one of demand: How can you make the consumer come back again? The solution was as old as software: Write code that erases itself after a use or two, but leaves you desperate to spend money on another copy.

That code was dangerous, but it wasn’t the worst. The worst was written by the coders who did not want money. They were users themselves, or zealots, and their code might just stick around. It might not want to go.

RedKing was a program like that. RedKing was as permanent as polio. And RedKing made people kill.

• • • •

When we got outside, a dozen press drones hovered over the street.

“Damn,” Tain said. “How do they find us so fast?”

“Hey, code monkey!” a voice called. We turned and saw a short, thin woman, with very short dark hair. Drones buzzed above her, filming her every move as she hurried toward us.

“Ellison,” I said, “what brings you to this side of town?”

She had a big mouth that probably could produce a beautiful smile, but she never smiled. Instead, her voice was sharp and quick. “You got a statement? A statement for Dark Fiber? This have anything to do with RedKing?”

“No statement,” Tain said.

“Come on, code monkey,” Ellison said, ignoring Tain. “You gotta give me something.”

“I’ll catch you later,” I said.

“He will not catch you later,” Tain said. She took my elbow. “No press,” she hissed at me. She slapped a small news drone that flew too close. It smacked into the pavement and shuddered, struggling to lift off again. We stepped over it.

“Ellison has helped me out a few times,” I told Tain as we walked away. “And sometimes I help her out.”

“While you’re working for me, you only help me out. And the only person that helps you out is me.”

We got in the car.

• • • •

At the station, they gave me a desk pressed into a windowless corner by the fire exit, under a noisy vent blowing cold air. The aluminum desk’s surface was scarred as if the prior owner stabbed it whenever police business slowed. I was filling in for their usual code monkey, and I got the impression they didn’t aspire to see me again after this job. I didn’t care. The desk had room for my machine and Legion’s stack of machines, the cold air was good for the processors, and I wouldn’t have time to look out a window anyway.

Within an hour I had scanned Legion’s machines twice over, mapped out every bit and byte, dug through all the personal hopes and dreams of the scrawny guy now shivering in the interrogation room.

I sighed and went looking for Tain. I wandered the halls until I found the observation room with a two-way mirror looking in on the suspect. Tain stood over him.

“She’s been in there a while,” one of the cops standing before the window told me between sips of coffee.

“I want my lawyer,” the kid said. His voice sounded hollow and distant through the speaker. He sat in a metal chair, and I wondered if he knew it measured his autonomic functions while he talked. Some people refused to sit when they got in an interrogation room.

“You made your call. Your lawyer’s on her way.” Tain bent forward. Her strong arms strained at the narrow sleeves of her coat as she laid a tablet on the table. Even from a distance, we could see the tablet displayed the picture the news had been running all week: a teenage kid with brown disheveled hair, smiling with perfect teeth. He looked innocent, and maybe rich.

Legion glanced down. “I’m not saying anything till I get my lawyer.”

Tain pointed at the picture. “Phil Jackson.”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“With what?” Tain asked, with exaggerated innocence.

“I watch the news.”

“I didn’t take you for someone who watches the news, Legion.” Tain tapped the tablet decisively. “Seventeen. Doing fine in school. Lonely, but what high school kid doesn’t think he’s lonely, right? So little Phil Jackson loads a copy of RedKing into his head. Spends a week delirious, happy maybe, thinking he’s king of the world—who knows what it makes him think? Then he cuts his mother’s throat, hits his father with the claw of a hammer, and jumps off the roof.”

Legion looked up at Tain and smirked. Tain became as taut as a spring. She wanted to hit him. And Legion wanted her to hit him. It would provide great fodder for his lawyer.

But she held her fists. Legion waited, then said softly, as if he could barely manage to stay awake, “I told you, I watch the news.”

“What they didn’t tell you on the news, Legion, is that we got the code out of that kid’s implants, and our code monkeys decompiled it, and you know what they found? Big chunks of stuff written by you. Unmistakable provenience. Big heaps of Legion code.” Tain let her voice grow soft and reasonable. “We’ve got fifty-four confirmed casualties for this virus. It’s only going to get worse. And the worse it gets—the more people that commit crimes or hurt themselves—the worse it’s going to be for you, Legion.”

He clamped his jaw and mumbled, “My lawyer.”

“I’ll go get her for you. You sit here and look at the kid that your code killed.”

Tain kicked the door. The cop outside opened it. In a second she was around the corner and when she saw me she walked up close.

“Tell me what you got, code monkey.”

“Nothing,” I told her.

Her heavy black brows drew together over her pale, inset eyes. I held up my hands defensively.

“Hey, no one wants to find the raw code for RedKing more than I do. But I’ve scanned every bit of his machines, and I got next to nothing.”

• • • •

Tain dragged me to her office, her grip tight on my elbow, and closed the door.

“You saying your division made a mistake when they linked this guy to the code?”

I sat down on a hard metal chair by the door. Tain followed my example and flopped back into the chair behind her desk. It squeaked and rolled back.

“No. There’s code on Legion’s machines that is unique and that matches identically big chunks of the RedKing program. But there isn’t a lot there. And it’s . . . general.”

“What do you mean? What kind of code?”

I hesitated. “A toolkit. For running genetic algorithms.”

“What’s that doing in there?”

I frowned. “I’m not sure yet. I have a hunch, and it’s not good news. I’d rather follow up a little, study the code, before I say more.”

“Don’t take too long. So why isn’t this toolkit enough to convict?”

“Hackers tend to give toolkits away, on some user board or other. You can bet he’ll claim he did, first time we ask about the details.”

Tain frowned in disgust. “You see the autonomics on that kid while I was interrogating him? He flatlined everything. Skin response. Heart rate. Temperature and breathing. All unchanging. He fears nothing, he cares about nothing.”

“Oh,” I said, “he cares about one thing. His credibility. That’s what’s driving him.”

“Okay, fair enough. You code types have your whole thing with cred. But what I’m trying to say is, the guy is a classic psychopath.”

I nodded. “He’s a bad guy. But can we prove he’s our bad guy?”

She stared at the image on her active wall: mountains at the edge of a long green prairie. It was surprisingly serene for this nervously energetic woman.

“I got nothing,” she mused. “He’s not gonna talk; psychopaths don’t break under threat. My code monkey can’t link him to RedKing. And we don’t know what RedKing does or why it made a kid kill his own mother. We’ve identified dozens of infected people, and they all acted differently.”

I let that hang a long time before I stated the obvious. “Only one thing to try now. I load it up and see what I can tell from running the copy we got in quarantine.”

Tain leaned her head forward and looked at me through her dark eyebrows. “You know why we called you in? Why you’re here? Our usual code monkey is on extended leave. She fried her head trying just that.”

“Occupational hazard,” I said.

“Don’t tough guy me. My father was a cop, and my grandfather. When they busted a heroin ring, they didn’t go home and shoot smack to try to understand addiction from the inside.”

“It’s not the same,” I said.

“Looks the same to me.”

“All right, maybe it is. But what if, what if there was a new drug every week, all the time, and you couldn’t know what it would do to people—what it would make people do—if you didn’t just try it. Then I bet your grandfather, or your father, would have shot up. Because they wanted to fight it, right? And they needed to know how to fight.”

“Bullshit,” she said. But she didn’t say anything more. She didn’t say no.

• • • •

They put me in a conference room, bare white walls, a table that tipped back and forth if you leaned on it. Tain stared at me, her jaw working, while the tech brought me a memory stick. I slotted it into my field deck immediately, not wanting to give Tain time to change her mind. I’d set up a buffer and then a process echo, so my deck could record everything that was happening.

I plugged straight into my skulljack and in a few seconds I copied the code over into my implants.

“I got an interface,” I said. “Pretty simple.”

A single sentence appeared in my visual field. Do you want to be King? it asked. I looked at the word yes and willed it to click, giving it permission to run on my brain OS.

A rush of colors washed over me. I felt cold, exhilarated, as if I fell down a bright well of light. I think I shouted in something like joy.

Then it was over. There stood Tain, her eyebrows up in an expression of alarm mixed with disapproval.

“How long?” I asked.

“Long? You just plugged in.”

I frowned.

“Well?” Tain asked.

“It’s . . .” I thought about it. “After the initial rush it’s nothing. Nothing yet, anyways. I don’t know.”

I looked around, meeting Tain’s eyes, then the eyes of the cop waiting bored by the door. I did have a slight sense that maybe I felt a little . . . tenuous. But it was nothing definite. It’s hard when you are waiting to hallucinate. You tend to start to work yourself into a psychedelic state if you try too hard to expect one.

“Let me clear the buffer and start it up again.”

I took a deep breath and did it. We waited a while. “Nothing,” I said.

Tain sighed. “Bad batch of code? Maybe they sent you the neutralized compile.”

I shrugged.

“All right,” she said. “Shut it down. Look over your sample again, see if something is wrong with it. I’ll call Code Isolation and see if they sent you the wrong sample.”

We pulled the plugs. Someone knocked at the door. “Stay here,” Tain said. She went out into the hall and the other cop followed her.

I lifted my deck off the table. That’s when I realized my deck’s wireless had been left on.

• • • •

I slipped out of the conference room and walked quickly back to my desk, trying to stay calm. Or at least trying to appear calm. When I set my deck down I looked back. The door to my office was open, showing the long hall that stretched all the way to the center of the building, a corridor that diminished into infinity. And, along the sides of the hall, it seemed every cop in the building stood, hand on holster, looking at me. And down the center of the hall came Tain.

I turned and hit the crash bar to the emergency exit next to my desk. As I passed through, I cracked the red fire alarm crystal by the door. An alarm began to shriek.

“Stop!” Tain shouted. I didn’t look back to see if she aimed a gun at me. I threw the door shut and ran down the steps.

• • • •

I was on the street before they could get word out to stop me. The fire alarm was painfully loud, causing a lot of confusion. A few cops milled by the station’s front steps, wondering if the alarm was a drill or mistake. I walked past them and to the block’s corner. When I turned out of sight, I ran.

By the time I reached the subway steps my chest hurt and a sharp stitch slowed me to a hobble. I’m a code monkey, not a runner. But I made it down inside, hair lifted by the stink of hot air that a coming train pushed out of the dark. I turned all my implants on, wanting to get the full input now. I mustered a last burst of energy and slipped down the next set of steps and onto the train just as its doors shuddered closed.

Only a handful of people sat in the car. No one met my gaze. Still. Someone here could be undercover. Hard to know. I stared around, wondering what I should do next. If the whole department was infected, what would be the right course of action? Report to Code Isolation? That would be procedure. Only, I thought, I should get myself secure first. I needed a place to hide. I needed my gun.

• • • •

It was easy to outsmart them. It would be foolish for me to go home, but then they’d know it was foolish for me to go home, and so they wouldn’t look for me at home.

So I went home. I took the back door, the one that opened onto the parking lot for the few of us with cars. A short elevator ride, a few steps down an empty hall, and I pushed my way into my apartment.

In the kitchen, under the pale LEDs of my undercounter light, I keyed open my safety drawer. My gun sat with my passport and some spare cash. I picked it up and held it. The grip vibrated once to tell me it recognized me. I stuck it into my coat pocket.

Time to go. No sense in pushing my luck. I was smarter than all of them, sure, but even idiots could fall into fortune. So: I reconsidered. Should I report to Code Isolation? As I thought about it, the idea paled. Code Isolation had sent me the program I’d run on my deck. They had to have known my deck would transmit it. They were likely infected already.

I’d have to solve this on my own. And I could. It was just a matter of recognizing that anyone, everyone could be my enemy—and then outsmarting them all. I felt a thrill of excitement, a soaring determination. Because I realized I could do it. I could trick them all.

First step would be to lose myself in a crowd.

• • • •

The Randomist was a noisy bar half a block from my apartment building. I’d walked by it hundreds of times but had never gone in. The boisterous cheerfulness of the crowd, the painful sense that one had to be very hip to fit in, had alienated me immediately the few times I’d considered stopping for a quick drink. But now I went directly in under the electric blue archway.

I got a beer at the bar, something local and artisanal with a silly name. The bartender slid it to me but smiled insincerely. “Hey, buddy, how about turning it down a little?”

“What the hell you talking about?” I asked.

“You’ve got your implants turned all the way out. It’s hard to walk past you, you’re broadcasting so much. And what is it you’re blasting? Some kind of program? That’s not cool.”

“Drop dead,” I told him. I took my drink and turned away, all the hairs on my neck raised. He might work for the cops, I realized. An informant for the infected precinct. I might have to shoot him.

But the crowd swallowed me instantly, and I relaxed. Forget the bartender. He couldn’t see me or get me in this dense mass of people.

Bumping shoulder to shoulder as I pushed through, I felt a great worry lift. The cops would never find me in here. And I loved this crowd, with their implants humming all around me invitingly.

There was a beautiful girl in the back, standing alone, waiting for someone. I decided she was waiting for me.

“You’re a loud one,” she said, as I walked up.

“I like to speak my mind,” I said.

“More like shout it.”

But she didn’t leave. I leaned in close.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Sparrow. What’s that you’re broadcasting, anyway? You an ad? One of those walking ads? Come on, turn down your broadcast. I’m serious. It’s too much.”

I shook my head. “Let me tell you what I do, Sparrow. I’m a cop. But a special kind of cop. I protect people from the only real threat, the threat of their computers and their implants going bad. I’m fantastic at it. I’m the smartest person in the world.”

“Yeah? You don’t look like a cop.”

“I could show you my gun.” I put my hand in my pocket and felt the handle thrum against my palm.

She frowned, not sure if I had intended some dirty joke. She pointed over my shoulder. “Now she, she looks like a cop.”

I turned. Tain stood there, a few steps away, under a red light. She was all shadows and angles in the dim focused glare. Her hand was at her hip.

I scanned the room. People were starting to freeze in place and fall quiet as seven uniforms filed in. I counted them slowly. Then an eighth. Then a ninth, slipping behind the bar.

There were seventeen rounds in my gun. I could shoot all these cops and still have seven rounds left. I pulled my gun from my jacket pocket.

Tain’s hand didn’t move, but Sparrow screamed as a blur shot forward and two darts stuck into my chest. My body went rigid as a current slammed my nerves into overdrive.

I heard my gun clatter on the hard floor. I blacked out.

• • • •

When I came to, someone was sitting on me.

No, that wasn’t it. My hands. My hands were strapped down. And something gripped my head. A hat or helmet. I opened my eyes.

A white room. A hospital room. The sharp stink of disinfectant wafted over me. Every muscle in my body ached. Tain stood nearby, talking to a doc in a white coat. Behind her a big window was black with night, mirroring the white room back at us. A code monkey stood behind Tain, field deck strapped on her back. Stepin, a field agent specializing in brain system wipes. She was short and broad shouldered, with a calm but distracted look that made it seem she was always thinking hard about something distant and slightly sad.

“They got you, too,” I said.

Stepin looked over at me.

“Who got me?” she asked.

I looked at Tain. “Her. The others in the precinct. They’re contaminated with RedKing. You can’t trust them. If you’re not infected, step away from her, Stepin. Get me out of this. I’m the only person who can stop this. I can fix everything.”

Tain took a step forward. “How do you think we got contaminated? You’re the one who loaded up the RedKing.”

“My computer’s transmitter was on,” I said, looking at Stepin because it was useless to appeal to Tain. Tain would be gone now, inhuman. “I thought I was loading the virus but instead I was transmitting it.”

“Put him under,” Stepin said. “I’ve got to do a complete OS replacement. It’ll take me a few hours.”

The doctor stepped forward and adjusted my IV. A huge weight closed down on my eyes. As the darkness fell, I heard Stepin say to me softly, “Field computers don’t have transmitters. You know that.”

• • • •

When I woke, I was alone in the room. The straps lay open, my wrists and legs freed. Sunlight streamed through the window at a nearly vertical angle. I’d been here a long while, asleep on tranqs. I had a bad headache but otherwise felt normal. I opened my brain menus, and found they worked fine, although the arrangement was all factory normal. I logged into my work desktop and began to review my notes.

Some program had detected my waking, because in a few minutes a nurse brought me food, and then an hour after that Tain arrived, wearing new clothes.

We looked at each other. I chewed air, trying to get started on an apology. Tain let me struggle a while, before she nodded once. She pulled up a chair.

“All right, code monkey, just tell me what happened. We knew something was wrong when you left the test room.”

“RedKing is subtle,” I told her, relieved to be talking about code. “First, it convinces you that nothing has changed. And that remains throughout: I literally could not even imagine that I was running the virus in my head. I don’t know how it inhibits such a basic belief, but it does it very well. That’s a breakthrough of some kind. We’ll have to study it very carefully and—”

“Don’t tell me your research plans,” Tain interrupted. “Tell me what it does.”

“Right. It made me paranoid of anyone who might be a threat to the virus. I think my brain tried to make sense of my irrational fear of you and the others, and so I concluded you had the virus. I probably invented the idea that my computer had transmitted it in order to explain my fear to myself. Also, I began to feel . . . smart. Super intelligent. I became convinced that I could solve any problem. That I was smarter than anyone.”

“You were reaching for your pistol when I tazed you.”

I nodded. “I meant to shoot you all. It was . . . bizarre. I didn’t see you as people. I saw you as puzzles. Puzzles to be solved by my brilliant mind.”

Tain leaned back. Her jaw worked a while as she thought it through. Finally, she said, “So, what we have is code that convinces you that you are a genius, and makes you paranoid, and makes you see other human beings as worthless.”

I sighed. “It’s worse than that.”

“How?”

“Two things. First, I think I tried to spread it last night. To transmit it.”

“It’s too much code to transmit implant to implant.”

“I’m not sure. I think there might be a workaround, to make people call it up off of some servers. You have to test everyone in that bar.”

She stood, shoving her chair back. “Damn. We’ll have to act fast.”

“Get me out of here and I can help. We can get a court order to trace the bar charges and track everyone down.”

“Damn,” Tain repeated. She got a faraway look as she started transmitting orders from her implants. “What a mess. We’re back where we started, and things are even worse.”

“Maybe not,” I said. “If I’m right, and the program loads from another server, then that’s a weakness. If we can find someone infected, and can find the address that they downloaded RedKing from, we can find Legion’s hidden servers.”

“All right. That’s something. So what’s your second bit of bad news?”

“I’ve been reviewing the decompile, and I’ve confirmed my hunch. But before I explain that, I want to see Legion. We need to set up a meeting with him.”

“Why?”

Before I could answer, the door to the room banged open. Ellison strode in. “Hey, code monkey, you sick or something?” She looked at Tain, made it clear that she was not impressed by the lieutenant, and looked back at me. “Or you get shot? That’d be newsworthy, if you got shot.”

“You will get out of here right now,” Tain said.

“Hey, is that any way to treat a guest? I was invited.”

Tain glared at me. I held up a hand to urge her to wait a minute.

To Ellison I said, “I got something for that crappy blog of yours.”

“Blog. Yeah, really funny, code monkey. I never heard that one before. But Dark Fiber magazine gets more hits in an hour than there are cops in America. So don’t misunderstand who has the clout in this relationship.”

“I got something about RedKing.”

Ellison immediately looked cagey. She gave Tain a sidelong glance. “Okay. I’m interested.”

“Of course you are. Only: We don’t have the whole story yet. But I can tell some of it. An important part of our investigation, let’s say.”

“You’re asking me to help you get a piece of the story out. All right: Can you promise that I’ll be first to get the whole story when you put it together?”

“Tain,” I said, “set up that meeting we were talking about. Because you and I will be ready in a few hours.”

• • • •

There were four of us now in the small interrogation room. I sat across from Legion, in one of the metal chairs. Both Tain and Legion’s lawyer stood. Everyone eyed me suspiciously.

“My client has already made a statement,” Legion’s lawyer said.

“To me,” Tain said. “But our code security agent would like to ask a few questions.”

“My client does not have to answer any more questions.”

“No. But he can listen to them, can’t he?”

Silence. Legion looked around the room, feigning boredom. Finally his eyes settled on me. I met his gaze and held it.

“RedKing is brilliant code,” I said. “A small packet can be transmitted head to head and make a network call for the rest of the code.”

“That’s been done before,” Legion said.

The lawyer stepped closer. “Mr. Legion, I strongly advise you to say nothing.”

I nodded. “But the way it tricks implants into seeing RedKing as an operating system upgrade—that’s very good. I didn’t know such a thing could be done. But that’s not the special thing.” I glanced at Tain to let her know that this was my second bit of bad news. “The special thing is that it mutates. That code we found on your machines? A genetic algorithm toolkit. You wrote RedKing to mutate. As it spreads itself, it changes a little bit each time it’s copied. That’s why its operational profile is so variable. Eventually, there’ll be a version that probably won’t kill people—after all, dead users can’t transmit the code—but it will just spread and spread. If your program works, it’ll be the most influential, the most important virus ever written. It’s historic.”

Legion smiled. “Why tell me about this?”

“You read Dark Fiber?”

“I read lots of things.”

I set a tablet on the table and turned it around. The cover of Dark Fiber blared a headline in big letters: REDKING CULPRITS FOUND?: POLICE SUSPECT CRIMEAN HACKER GROUP VEE.

Legion flinched. For the first time, his mocking smile faded as he read a few lines of the news story.

I leaned forward. “Here’s what’s before you.” I held up a finger. “Option one. Admit you wrote RedKing. You can plead that you never knew it would be dangerous. The fact that you confessed will count in your favor. You’ll get a few years, and you’ll keep some net privileges. But—here’s the important point—you’ll be immortalized as the creator of the greatest brain hack ever.”

I held up a second finger. “Or, option two. Deny you wrote RedKing. Maybe we can’t convict you, maybe we can—let’s call it fifty-fifty odds. But if you walk free or you go to prison, either way, you lose your chance for the world’s biggest cred upgrade. You’ll have given up immortality for a fifty percent chance of escaping a few years Upstate.”

“I think my client has heard enough,” the lawyer said. She pulled at Legion’s sleeve, but the kid did not move. Tain held her breath.

“Vee can’t hack,” Legion said.

“You and I know they’re just some teenage thugs whose only skill is to steal credit info off old ladies. But this story has been picked up by a dozen other news companies. Reporters can’t tell a real hacker from a kid wearing a mask. And Vee was delighted to claim credit. They’ve already released a confession video.”

“Only I could have written RedKing.”

I nodded.

“Mr. Legion,” the lawyer growled, “I have to advise you that—”

“Only me,” Legion said.

Tain exhaled.

• • • •

“You get everyone from the bar?” I asked Tain. We sat in her office, looking at her wall screen image of mountains.

She nodded. “Only one has proven infected, a young woman. Stepin is working on tracing back the code.”

“I’m sorry I caused so much trouble.”

“Getting Legion to talk has made up for some of it. How did you know he would crack?”

“It’s a coder thing. Once I’d experienced RedKing, I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime hack. No one like Legion would be able to stand someone else taking credit for it.”

“And how is your friend Ellison going to take it when she discovers your story about Vee was bogus?”

“Ellison will be fine as long as she gets to break the story that Legion confessed. She’ll be better than fine: We gave her two good stories, and one of them was even true.”

Tain cracked a smile that broke into a laugh. But it died quickly.

“What will it be like, if thousands of people get this virus? Maybe thousands already have it. It’s the end of goddamn civilization.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just this week’s threat. With any luck we can contain RedKing.”

“And then the next brainvirus will come along.”

I nodded. “It’s a race.”

Tain squinted. “You got kids, code monkey?”

“No.”

“I got a kid. Four years old. A second on the way.”

“Congratulations.”

“Yeah. But I swear, you know what, as soon as I put in my time, earn my pension, I’m going to get the wife and move out to Montana.” She gestured at the wall image. “And there, I’ll never get the implants in my kids. I’ll make sure they live in the real world.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I said. “Me, I’m not much use at anything but coding.”

She grunted. “You wanna stick around awhile? Our old code monkey, she’s moving to a desk job at Code Isolation.”

“All right.”

She reached into a drawer and pulled out a big pistol. It fell on her desk with a heavy thud.

“Only, put your damn gun back in your kitchen drawer and lock it up before you hurt somebody.”

©2016 by Craig DeLancey.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Craig DeLancey is a writer and philosopher. He has published dozens of short stories in magazines like Analog, Cosmos, Shimmer, and Nature Physics. His novel Gods of Earth is available now with 47North Press. He also writes plays, many of which have received staged readings and performances in New York, Los Angeles, Melbourne, and elsewhere. Born in Pittsburgh, PA, he lives now in upstate New York and, in addition to writing, teaches philosophy at Oswego State, part of the State University of New York (SUNY).

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

The Waiting Stars

Aliette de Bodard | 10,000 words

The derelict ship ward was in an isolated section of Outsider space, one of the numerous spots left blank on interstellar maps, no more or no less tantalising than its neighbouring quadrants. To most people, it would be just that: a boring part of a long journey to be avoided—skipped over by Mind-ships as they cut through deep space, passed around at low speeds by Outsider ships while their passengers slept in their hibernation cradles.

Only if anyone got closer would they see the hulking masses of ships: the glint of starlight on metal, the sharp, pristine beauty of their hulls, even though they all lay quiescent and crippled, forever unable to move—living corpses kept as a reminder of how far they had fallen; the Outsiders’ brash statement of their military might, a reminder that their weapons held the means to fell any Mind-ships they chose to hound.

On the sensors of The Cinnabar Mansions, the ships all appeared small and diminished, like toy models or avatars—things Lan Nhen could have held in the palm of her hand and just as easily crushed. As the sensors’ line of sight moved—catching ship after ship in their field of view, wreck after wreck, indistinct masses of burnt and twisted metal, of ripped-out engines, of shattered life pods and crushed shuttles—Lan Nhen felt as if an icy fist were squeezing her heart into shards. To think of the Minds within—dead or crippled, forever unable to move . . .

“She’s not there,” she said, as more and more ships appeared on the screen in front of her, a mass of corpses that all threatened to overwhelm her with sorrow and grief and anger.

“Be patient, child,” The Cinnabar Mansions said. The Mind’s voice was amused, as it always was—after all, she’d lived for five centuries, and would outlive Lan Nhen and Lan Nhen’s own children by so many years that the pronoun “child” seemed small and inappropriate to express the vast gulf of generations between them. “We already knew it was going to take time.”

“She was supposed to be on the outskirts of the wards,” Lan Nhen said, biting her lip. She had to be, or the rescue mission was going to be infinitely more complicated. “According to Cuc . . .”

“Your cousin knows what she’s talking about,” The Cinnabar Mansions said.

“I guess.” Lan Nhen wished Cuc was there with them, and not sleeping in her cabin as peacefully as a baby—but The Cinnabar Mansions had pointed out Cuc needed to be rested for what lay ahead; and Lan Nhen had given in, vastly outranked. Still, Cuc was reliable, for narrow definitions of the term—as long as anything didn’t involve social skills, or deft negotiation. For technical information, though, she didn’t have an equal within the family; and her network of contacts extended deep within Outsider space. That was how they’d found out about the ward in the first place . . .

“There.” The sensors beeped, and the view on the screen pulled into enhanced mode on a ship on the edge of the yard, which seemed even smaller than the hulking masses of her companions. The Turtle’s Citadel had been from the newer generation of ships, its body more compact and more agile than its predecessors: designed for flight and manoeuvres rather than for transport, more elegant and refined than anything to come out of the Imperial Workshops—unlike the other ships, its prow and hull were decorated, painted with numerous designs from old legends and myths, all the way to the Dai Viet of Old Earth. A single gunshot marred the outside of its hull—a burn mark that had transfixed the painted citadel through one of its towers, going all the way into the heartroom and crippling the Mind that animated the ship.

“That’s her,” Lan Nhen said. “I would know her anywhere.”

The Cinnabar Mansions had the grace not to say anything, though of course she could have matched the design to her vast databases in an eyeblink. “It’s time, then. Shall I extrude a pod?”

Lan Nhen found that her hands had gone slippery with sweat, all of a sudden; and her heart was beating a frantic rhythm within her chest, like temple gongs gone mad. “I guess it’s time, yes.” By any standards, what they were planning was madness. To infiltrate Outsider space, no matter how isolated—to repair a ship, no matter how lightly damaged . . .

Lan Nhen watched The Turtle’s Citadel for a while—watched the curve of the hull, the graceful tilt of the engines, away from the living quarters; the burn mark through the hull like a gunshot through a human chest. On the prow was a smaller painting, all but invisible unless one had good eyes: a single sprig of apricot flowers, signifying the New Year’s good luck—calligraphied on the ship more than thirty years ago by Lan Nhen’s own mother, a parting gift to her great-aunt before the ship left for her last, doomed mission.

Of course, Lan Nhen already knew every detail of that shape by heart, every single bend of the corridors within, every little nook and cranny available outside—from the blueprints, and even before that, before the rescue plan had even been the seed of a thought in her mind—when she’d stood before her ancestral altar, watching the rotating holo of a ship who was also her great-aunt, and wondering how a Mind could ever be brought down, or given up for lost.

Now she was older; old enough to have seen enough things to freeze her blood; old enough to plot her own foolishness, and drag her cousin and her great-great-aunt into it.

Older, certainly. Wiser, perhaps; if they were blessed enough to survive.

• • • •

There were tales, at the Institution, of what they were—and, in any case, one only had to look at them, at their squatter, darker shapes, at the way their eyes crinkled when they laughed. There were other clues, too: the memories that made Catherine wake up breathless and disoriented, staring at the white walls of the dormitory until the pulsing, writhing images of something she couldn’t quite identify had gone, and the breath of dozens of her dorm-mates had lulled her back to sleep. The craving for odd food like fish sauce and fermented meat. The dim, distant feeling of not fitting in, of being compressed on all sides by a society that made little sense to her.

It should have, though. She’d been taken as a child, like all her schoolmates—saved from the squalor and danger among the savages and brought forward into the light of civilisation—of white sterile rooms and bland food, of awkward embraces that always felt too informal. Rescued, Matron always said, her entire face transfigured, the bones of her cheeks made sharply visible through the pallor of her skin. Made safe.

Catherine had asked what she was safe from. They all did, in the beginning—all the girls in the Institution, Johanna and Catherine being the most vehement amongst them.

That was until Matron showed them the vid.

They all sat at their tables, watching the screen in the centre of the amphitheatre—silent, for once, not jostling or joking among themselves. Even Johanna, who was always first with a biting remark, had said nothing—had sat, transfixed, watching it.

The first picture was a woman who looked like them—smaller and darker-skinned than the Galactics—except that her belly protruded in front of her, huge and swollen like a tumour from some disaster movie. There was a man next to her, his unfocused eyes suggesting that he was checking something on the network through his implants—until the woman grimaced, putting a hand to her belly and calling out to him. His eyes focused in a heartbeat, and fear replaced the blank expression on his face.

There was a split second before the language overlays kicked in—a moment, frozen in time, when the words, the sounds of the syllables put together, sounded achingly familiar to Catherine, like a memory of the childhood she never could quite manage to piece together—there was a brief flash, of New Year’s Eve firecrackers going off in a confined space, of her fear that they would burn her, damage her body’s ability to heal . . . And then the moment was gone like a popped bubble, because the vid changed in the most horrific manner.

The camera was wobbling, rushing along a pulsing corridor—they could all hear the heavy breath of the woman, the whimpering sounds she made like an animal in pain; the soft, encouraging patter of the physician’s words to her.

“She’s coming,” the woman whispered, over and over, and the physician nodded—keeping one hand on her shoulder, squeezing it so hard his own knuckles had turned the colour of a muddy moon.

“You have to be strong,” he said. “Hanh, please. Be strong for me. It’s all for the good of the Empire, may it live ten thousand years. Be strong.”

The vid cut away, then—and it was wobbling more and more crazily, its field of view showing erratic bits of a cramped room with scrolling letters on the wall, the host of other attendants with similar expressions of fear on their faces; the woman, lying on a flat surface, crying out in pain—blood splattering out of her with every thrust of her hips—the camera moving, shifting between her legs, the physician’s hands reaching into the darker opening—easing out a sleek, glinting shape, even as the woman screamed again—and blood, more blood running out, rivers of blood she couldn’t possibly have in her body, even as the thing within her pulled free, and it became all too clear that, though it had the bare shape of a baby with an oversized head, it had too many cables and sharp angles to be human . . .

Then a quiet fade-to-black, and the same woman being cleaned up by the physician—the thing—the baby being nowhere to be seen. She stared up at the camera; but her gaze was unfocused, and drool was pearling at the corner of her lips, even as her hands spasmed uncontrollably.

Fade to black again; and the lights came up again, on a room that seemed to have grown infinitely colder.

“This, “ Matron said in the growing silence, “is how the Dai Viet birth Minds for their spaceships: by incubating them within the wombs of their women. This is the fate that would have been reserved for all of you. For each of you within this room.” Her gaze raked them all, stopping longer than usual on Catherine and Johanna, the known troublemakers in the class. “This is why we had to take you away, so that you wouldn’t become brood mares for abominations.”

“We,” of course, meant the Board—the religious nuts, as Johanna liked to call them, a redemptionist church with a fortune to throw around, financing the children’s rescues and their education—and who thought every life from humans to insects was sacred (they’d all wondered, of course, where they fitted into the scheme).

After the class had dispersed like a flock of sparrows, Johanna held court in the yard, her eyes bright and feverish. “They faked it. They had to. They came up with some stupid explanation on how to keep us cooped here. I mean, why would anyone still use natural births and not artificial wombs?”

Catherine, still seeing the splatters of blood on the floor, shivered. “Matron said that they wouldn’t. That they thought the birth created a special bond between the Mind and its mother—but that they had to be there, to be awake during the birth.”

“Rubbish.” Johanna shook her head. “As if that’s even remotely plausible. I’m telling you, it has to be fake.”

“It looked real.” Catherine remembered the woman’s screams; the wet sound as the Mind wriggled free from her womb; the fear in the face of all the physicians. “Artificial vids aren’t this . . . messy.” They’d seen the artificial vids; slick, smooth things where the actors were tall and muscular, the actresses pretty and graceful, with only a thin veneer of artificially generated defects to make the entire thing believable. They’d learnt to tell them apart from the rest, because it was a survival skill in the Institution, to sort out the lies from the truth.

“I bet they can fake that, too,” Johanna said. “They can fake everything if they feel like it.” But her face belied her words; even she had been shocked. Even she didn’t believe they would have gone that far.

“I don’t think it’s a lie,” Catherine said, finally. “Not this time.”

And she didn’t need to look at the other girls’ faces to know that they believed the same thing as her—even Johanna, for all her belligerence—and to feel in her gut that this changed everything.

• • • •

Cuc came online when the shuttle pod launched from The Cinnabar Mansions—in the heart-wrenching moment when the gravity of the ship fell away from Lan Nhen, and the cozy darkness of the pod’s cradle was replaced with the distant forms of the derelict ships. “Hey, cousin. Miss me?” Cuc asked.

“As much as I missed a raging fire.” Lan Nhen checked her equipment a last time—the pod was basic and functional, with barely enough space for her to squeeze into the cockpit, and she’d had to stash her various cables and terminals into the nooks and crannies of a structure that hadn’t been meant for more than emergency evacuation. She could have asked The Cinnabar Mansions for a regular transport shuttle, but the pod was smaller and more controllable; and it stood more chances of evading the derelict ward’s defences.

“Hahaha,” Cuc said, though she didn’t sound amused. “The family found out what we were doing, by the way.”

“And?” It would have devastated Lan Nhen, a few years ago; now she didn’t much care. She knew she was doing the right thing. No filial daughter would let a member of the family rust away in a foreign cemetery—if she couldn’t rescue her great-aunt, she’d at least bring the body back, for a proper funeral.

“They think we’re following one of Great-great-aunt’s crazy plans.”

“Ha,” Lan Nhen snorted. Her hands were dancing on the controls, plotting a trajectory that would get her to The Turtle’s Citadel while leaving her the maximum thrust reserve in case of unexpected manoeuvres.

“I’m not the one coming up with crazy plans,” The Cinnabar Mansions pointed out on the comms channel, distractedly. “I leave that to the young. Hang on—” she dropped out of sight. “I have incoming drones, child.”

Of course. It was unlikely the Outsiders would leave their precious war trophies unprotected. “Where?”

A translucent overlay gradually fell over her field of vision through the pod’s windshield; and points lit up all over its surface—a host of fast-moving, small crafts with contextual arrows showing basic kinematics information as well as projected trajectory cones. Lan Nhen repressed a curse. “That many? They really like their wrecked spaceships, don’t they.”

It wasn’t a question, and neither Cuc nor The Cinnabar Mansions bothered to answer. “They’re defence drones patrolling the perimeter. We’ll walk you through,” Cuc said. “Give me just a few moments to link up with Great-great-aunt’s systems . . .”

Lan Nhen could imagine her cousin, lying half-prone on her bed in the lower decks of The Cinnabar Mansions, her face furrowed in that half-puzzled, half-focused expression that was typical of her thought processes—she’d remain that way for entire minutes, or as long as it took to find a solution. On her windshield, the squad of drones was spreading—coming straight at her from all directions, a dazzling ballet of movement meant to overwhelm her. And they would, if she didn’t move fast enough.

Her fingers hovered over the pod’s controls, before she made her decision and launched into a barrel manoeuvre away from the nearest incoming cluster. “Cousin, how about hurrying up?”

There was no answer from Cuc. Demons take her, this wasn’t the moment to overthink the problem! Lan Nhen banked, sharply, narrowly avoiding a squad of drones, who bypassed her—and then turned around, much quicker than she’d anticipated. Ancestors, they moved fast, much too fast for ion-thrust motors. Cuc was going to have to rethink her trajectory. “Cousin, did you see this?”

“I saw.” Cuc’s voice was distant. “Already taken into account. Given the size of the craft, it was likely they were going to use helicoidal thrusters on those.”

“This is all fascinating—” Lan Nhen wove her way through two more waves of drones, cursing wildly as shots made the pod rock around her—as long as her speed held, she’d be fine . . . She’d be fine . . . “—but you’ll have noticed I don’t really much care about technology, especially not now!”

A thin thread of red appeared on her screen—a trajectory that wove and banked like a frightened fish’s trail—all the way to The Turtle’s Citadel and its clusters of pod-cradles. It looked as though it was headed straight into the heart of the cloud of drones, though that wasn’t the most worrying aspect of it. “Cousin,” Lan Nhen said. “I can’t possibly do this—” The margin of error was null—if she slipped in one of the curves, she’d never regain the kinematics necessary to take the next.

“Only way.” Cuc’s voice was emotionless. “I’ll update as we go, if Great-great-aunt sees an opening. But for the moment . . . ”

Lan Nhen closed her eyes, for a brief moment—turned them towards Heaven, though Heaven was all around her—and whispered a prayer to her ancestors, begging them to watch over her. Then she turned her gaze to the screen, and launched into flight—her hands flying and shifting over the controls, automatically adjusting the pod’s path—dancing into the heart of the drones’ swarm—into them, away from them, weaving an erratic path across the section of space that separated her from The Turtle’s Citadel. Her eyes, all the while, remained on the overlay—her fingers speeding across the controls, matching the slightest deviation of her course to the set trajectory—inflecting curves a fraction of a second before the error on her course became perceptible.

“Almost there,” Cuc said—with a hint of encouragement in her voice. “Come on, cousin, you can do it—”

Ahead of her, a few measures away, was The Turtle’s Citadel: Its pod cradles had shrivelled from long atrophy, but the hangar for docking the external shuttles and pods remained, its entrance a thin line of grey across the metallic surface of the ship’s lower half.

“It’s closed,” Lan Nhen said, breathing hard—she was coming fast, much too fast, scattering drones out of her way like scared mice, and if the hangar wasn’t opened . . . “Cousin!”

Cuc’s voice seemed to come from very far away, distant and muted somehow on the comms system. “We’ve discussed this. Normally, the ship went into emergency standby when it was hit, and it should open—”

“But what if it doesn’t?” Lan Nhen asked—the ship was looming over her, spreading to cover her entire windshield, close enough so she could count the pod cradles, could see their pockmarked surfaces—could imagine how much of a messy impact she’d make, if her own pod crashed on an unyielding surface.

Cuc didn’t answer. She didn’t need to; they both knew what would happen if that turned out to be true. Ancestors, watch over me, Lan Nhen thought, over and over, as the hangar doors rushed towards her, still closed—ancestors, watch over me . . .

She was close enough to see the fine layers of engravings on the doors when they opened—the expanse of metal flowing away from the centre, to reveal a gaping hole just large enough to let a small craft through. Her own pod squeezed into the available space: darkness fell over her cockpit as the doors flowed shut, and the pod skidded to a halt, jerking her body like a disarticulated doll.

It was a while before she could stop shaking for long enough to unstrap herself from the pod; and to take her first, tentative steps on the ship.

The small lamp in her suit lit nothing but a vast, roiling mass of shadows: The hangar was huge enough to hold much larger ships. Thirty years ago, it had no doubt been full, but the Outsiders must have removed them all as they dragged the wreck out there.

“I’m in,” she whispered; and set out through the darkness, to find the heartroom and the Mind that was her great-aunt.

• • • •

“I’m sorry,” Jason said to Catherine. “Your first choice of posting was declined by the Board.”

Catherine sat very straight in her chair, trying to ignore how uncomfortable she felt in her suit—it gaped too large over her chest, flared too much at her hips, and she’d had to hastily readjust the trouser-legs after she and Johanna discovered the seamstress had got the length wrong. “I see,” she said, because there was nothing else she could say, really.

Jason looked at his desk, his gaze boring into the metal as if he could summon an assignment out of nothing—she knew he meant well, that he had probably volunteered to tell her this himself, instead of leaving it for some stranger who wouldn’t care a jot for her—but in that moment, she didn’t want to be reminded that he worked for the Board for the Protection of Dai Viet Refugees; that he’d had a hand, no matter how small, in denying her wishes for the future.

At length Jason said, slowly, carefully—reciting a speech he’d no doubt given a dozen times that day, “The government puts the greatest care into choosing postings for the refugees. It was felt that that putting you onboard a space station would be—unproductive.”

Unproductive. Catherine kept smiling; kept her mask plastered on, even though it hurt to turn the corners of her mouth upwards, to crinkle her eyes as if she were pleased. “I see,” she said, again, knowing anything else was useless. “Thanks, Jason.”

Jason coloured. “I tried arguing your case, but . . .”

“I know,” Catherine said. He was a clerk, that was all; a young civil servant at the bottom of the Board’s hierarchy, and he couldn’t possibly get her what she wanted, even if he’d been willing to favour her. And it hadn’t been such a surprise, anyway. After Mary and Olivia and Johanna . . .

“Look,” Jason said. “Let’s see each other tonight, right? I’ll take you someplace you can forget all about this.”

“You know it’s not that simple,” Catherine said. As if a restaurant, or a wild waterfall ride, or whatever delight Jason had in mind could make her forget this.

“No, but I can’t do anything about the Board.” Jason’s voice was firm. “I can, however, make sure that you have a good time tonight.”

Catherine forced a smile she didn’t feel. “I’ll keep it in mind. Thanks.”

As she exited the building, passing under the wide arches, the sun sparkled on the glass windows—and for a brief moment she wasn’t herself—she was staring at starlight reflected in a glass panel, watching an older woman running hands on a wall and smiling at her with gut-wrenching sadness . . . She blinked, and the moment was gone, though the sense of sadness, of unease remained, as if she were missing something essential.

Johanna was waiting for her on the steps, her arms crossed in front of her, and a gaze that looked as though it would bore holes into the lawn.

“What did they tell you?”

Catherine shrugged, wondering how a simple gesture could cost so much. “The same they told you, I’d imagine. Unproductive.”

They’d all applied to the same postings—all asked for something related to space, whether it was one of the observatories, a space station, or, in Johanna’s case, outright asking to board a slow-ship as crew. They’d all been denied, for variations of the same reason.

“What did you get?” Johanna asked. Her own rumpled slip of paper had already been recycled at the nearest terminal; she was heading north, to Steele, where she’d join an archaeological dig.

Catherine shrugged, with a casualness she didn’t feel. They’d always felt at ease under the stars—had always yearned to take to space, felt the same craving to be closer to their home planets—to hang, weightless and without ties, in a place where they wouldn’t be weighed, wouldn’t be judged for falling short of values that ultimately didn’t belong to them. “I got newswriter.”

“At least you’re not moving very far, “ Johanna said, a tad resentfully.

“No.” The offices of the network company were a mere two streets away from the Institution.

“I bet Jason had a hand in your posting,” Johanna said.

“He didn’t say anything about that—”

“Of course he wouldn’t.” Johanna snorted, gently. She didn’t much care for Jason, but she knew how much his company meant to Catherine—how much more it would come to mean, if the weight of an entire continent separated Catherine and her. “Jason broadcasts his failures because they bother him; you’ll hardly ever hear him talk of his successes. He’d feel too much like boasting.” Her face changed, softened. “He cares for you, you know—truly. You have the best luck in the world.”

“I know,” Catherine said—thinking of the touch of his lips on hers; of his arms, holding her close until she felt whole, fulfilled. “I know.”

The best luck in the world—she and Jason and her new flat, and her old haunts, not far away from the Institution— though she wasn’t sure, really, if that last was a blessing—if she wanted to remember the years Matron had spent hammering proper behaviour into them: the deprivations whenever they spoke anything less than perfect Galactic, the hours spent cleaning the dormitory’s toilets for expressing mild revulsion at the food; or the night they’d spent shut outside, naked, in the growing cold, because they couldn’t remember which Galactic president had colonised Longevity Station—how Matron had found them all huddled against each other, in an effort to keep warm and awake, and had sent them to Discipline for a further five hours, scolding them for behaving like wild animals.

Catherine dug her nails into the palms of her hands—letting the pain anchor her back to the present; to where she sat on the steps of the Board’s central offices, away from the Institution and all it meant to them.

“We’re free,” she said, at last. “That’s all that matters.”

“We’ll never be free.” Johanna’s tone was dark, intense. “Your records have a mark that says ‘Institution.’ And even if it didn’t—do you honestly believe we would blend right in?”

There was no one quite like them on Prime, where Dai Viet were unwelcome; not with those eyes, not with that skin colour—not with that demeanour, which even years of Institution hadn’t been enough to erase.

“Do you ever wonder . . .” Johanna’s voice trailed off into silence, as if she were contemplating something too large to put into words.

“Wonder what?” Catherine asked.

Johanna bit her lip. “Do you ever wonder what it would have been like, with our parents? Our real parents.”

The parents they couldn’t remember. They’d done the maths, too—no children at the Institution could remember anything before coming there. Matron had said it was because they were really young when they were taken away—that it had been for the best. Johanna, of course, had blamed something more sinister, some fix-up done by the Institution to its wards to keep them docile.

Catherine thought, for a moment, of a life among the Dai Viet—an idyllic image of a harmonious family like in the holo-movies—a mirage that dashed itself to pieces against the inescapable reality of the birth vid. “They’d have used us like brood mares,” Catherine said. “You saw—”

“I know what I saw,” Johanna snapped. “But maybe . . .” Her face was pale. “Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, in return for the rest.”

For being loved; for being made worthy; for fitting in, being able to stare at the stars without wondering which was their home—without dreaming of when they might go back to their families.

Catherine rubbed her belly, thinking of the vid—and the thing crawling out of the woman’s belly, all metal edges and shining crystal, coated in the blood of its mother—and, for a moment she felt as though she were the woman—floating above her body, detached from her cloak of flesh, watching herself give birth in pain. And then the sensation ended, but she was still feeling spread out, larger than she ought to have been—looking at herself from a distance and watching her own life pass her by, petty and meaningless, and utterly bounded from end to end.

Maybe Johanna was right. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad, after all.

• • • •

The ship was smaller than Lan Nhen had expected—she’d been going by her experience with The Cinnabar Mansions, which was an older generation, but The Turtle’s Citadel was much smaller for the same functionalities.

Lan Nhen went up from the hangar to the living quarters, her equipment slung over her shoulders. She’d expected a sophisticated defence system like the drones, but there was nothing. Just the familiar slimy feeling of a quickened ship on the walls, a sign that the Mind that it hosted was still alive—albeit barely. The walls were bare, instead of the elaborate decoration Lan Nhen was used to from The Cinnabar Mansions—no scrolling calligraphy, no flowing paintings of starscapes or flowers, no ambient sound of zither or anything to enliven the silence.

She didn’t have much time to waste—Cuc had said they had two hours between the moment the perimeter defences kicked in and the moment more hefty safeguards were manually activated—but she couldn’t help herself: She looked into one of the living quarters. It was empty as well, its walls scored with gunfire. The only colour in the room was a few splatters of dried blood on a chair, a reminder of the tragedy of the ship’s fall—the execution of its occupants, the dragging of its wreck to the derelict ward—dried blood, and a single holo of a woman on a table, a beloved mother or grandmother: a bare, abandoned picture with no offerings or incense, all that remained from a wrecked ancestral altar. Lan Nhen spat on the ground, to ward off evil ghosts, and went back to the corridors.

She truly felt as though she were within a mausoleum—like that one time her elder sister had dared her and Cuc to spend the night within the family’s ancestral shrine, and they’d barely slept—not because of monsters or anything, but because of the vast silence that permeated the whole place amidst the smell of incense and funeral offerings, reminding them that they, too, were mortal.

That Minds, too, could die—that rescues were useless—no, she couldn’t afford to think like that. She had Cuc with her, and together they would . . .

She hadn’t heard Cuc for a while.

She stopped, when she realised—that it wasn’t only the silence on the ship, but also the deathly quiet of her own comms system. Since—since she’d entered The Turtle’s Citadel—that was the last time she’d heard her cousin, calmly pointing out about emergency standby and hangar doors and how everything was going to work out, in the end . . .

She checked her comms. There appeared to be nothing wrong, but whichever frequency she selected, she could hear nothing but static. At last, she managed to find one slot that seemed less crowded than others. “Cousin? Can you hear me?”

Noise on the line. “Very—badly.” Cuc’s voice was barely recognisable. “There—is—something—interference—”

“I know,” Lan Nhen said. “Every channel is filled with noise.”

Cuc didn’t answer for a while; and when she did, her voice seemed to have become more distant—a problem had her interest again. “Not—noise. They’re broadcasting—data. Need—to . . .” And then the comms cut. Lan Nhen tried all frequencies, trying to find one that would be less noisy, but there was nothing. She bit down a curse—she had no doubt Cuc would find a way around whatever blockage the Outsiders had put on the ship, but this was downright bizarre. Why broadcast data? Cutting down the comms of prospective attackers somehow didn’t seem significant enough—at least not compared to defence drones or similar mechanisms.

She walked through the corridors, following the spiral path to the heartroom—nothing but the static in her ears, a throbbing song that erased every coherent thought from her mind—at least it was better than the silence, than that feeling of moving underwater in an abandoned city—that feeling that she was too late, that her great-aunt was already dead and past recovery, that all she could do here was kill her once and for all, end her misery . . .

She thought, incongruously, of a vid she’d seen, which showed her great-grandmother ensconced in the heartroom—in the first few years of The Turtle’s Citadel’s life, those crucial moments of childhood when the ship’s mother remained onboard to guide the Mind to adulthood. Great-grandmother was telling stories to the ship—and The Turtle’s Citadel was struggling to mimic the spoken words in scrolling texts on her walls, laughing delightedly whenever she succeeded—all sweet and young, unaware of what her existence would come to, in the end.

Unlike the rest of the ship, the heartroom was crowded—packed with Outsider equipment that crawled over the Mind’s resting place in the centre, covering her from end to end until Lan Nhen could barely see the glint of metal underneath. She gave the entire contraption a wide berth—the spikes and protrusions from the original ship poked at odd angles, glistening with a dark liquid she couldn’t quite identify—and the Outsider equipment piled atop the Mind, a mass of cables and unfamiliar machines, looked as though it was going to take a while to sort out.

There were screens all around, showing dozens of graphs and diagrams, shifting as they tracked variables that Lan Nhen couldn’t guess at—vital signs, it looked like, though she wouldn’t have been able to tell what.

Lan Nhen bowed in the direction of the Mind, from younger to elder—perfunctorily, since she was unsure whether the Mind could see her at all. There was no acknowledgement, either verbal or otherwise.

Her great-aunt was in there. She had to be.

“Cousin.” Cuc’s voice was back in her ears—crisp and clear and uncommonly worried.

“How come I can hear you?” Lan Nhen asked. “Because I’m in the heartroom?”

Cuc snorted. “Hardly. The heartroom is where all the data is streaming from. I’ve merely found a way to filter the transmissions on both ends. Fascinating problem . . .”

“Is this really the moment?” Lan Nhen asked. “I need you to walk me through the reanimation—”

“No you don’t,” Cuc said. “First you need to hear what I have to say.”

• • • •

The call came during the night: A man in the uniform of the Board asked for Catherine George—as if he couldn’t tell that it was her, that she was standing dishevelled and pale in front of her screen at three in the morning. “Yes, it’s me,” Catherine said. She fought off the weight of nightmares—more and more, she was waking in the night with memories of blood splattered across her entire body; of stars collapsing while she watched, powerless—of a crunch, and a moment where she hung alone in darkness, knowing that she had been struck a death blow—

The man’s voice was quiet, emotionless. There had been an accident in Steele; a regrettable occurrence that hadn’t been meant to happen, and the Board would have liked to extend its condolences to her—they apologised for calling so late, but they thought she should know . . .

“I see,” Catherine said. She kept herself uncomfortably straight—aware of the last time she’d faced the Board—when Jason had told her her desire for space would have been unproductive. When they’d told Johanna . . .

Johanna.

After a while, the man’s words slid past her like water on glass—hollow reassurances, empty condolences, whereas she stood as if her heart had been torn away from her, fighting a desire to weep, to retch—she wanted to turn back time, to go back to the previous week and the sprigs of apricot flowers Jason had given her with a shy smile—to breathe in the sharp, tangy flavour of the lemon cake he’d baked for her, see again the carefully blank expression on his face as he waited to see if she’d like it—she wanted to be held tight in his arms and told that it was fine, that everything was going to be fine, that Johanna was going to be fine.

“We’re calling her other friends,” the man was saying, “but since you were close to each other . . .”

“I see,” Catherine said—of course he didn’t understand the irony, that it was the answer she’d given the Board—Jason—the last time.

The man cut off the communication; and she was left alone, standing in her living room and fighting back the feeling that threatened to overwhelm her—a not-entirely unfamiliar sensation of dislocation in her belly, the awareness that she didn’t belong here among the Galactics; that she wasn’t there by choice, and couldn’t leave; that her own life should have been larger, more fulfilling than this slow death by inches, writing copy for feeds without any acknowledgement of her contributions—that Johanna’s life should have been larger . . .

Her screen was still blinking—an earlier message from the Board that she hadn’t seen? But why—

Her hands, fumbling away in the darkness, made the command to retrieve the message—the screen faded briefly to black while the message was decompressed, and then she was staring at Johanna’s face.

For a moment—a timeless, painful moment—Catherine thought with relief that it had been a mistake, that Johanna was alive after all; and then she realised how foolish she’d been—that it wasn’t a call, but merely a message from beyond the grave.

Johanna’s face was pale, so pale Catherine wanted to hug her, to tell her the old lie that things were going to be fine—but she’d never get to say those words now, not ever.

“I’m sorry, Catherine,” she said. Her voice was shaking; and the circles under her eyes took up half of her face, turning her into some pale nightmare from horror movies—a ghost, a restless soul, a ghoul hungry for human flesh. “I can’t do this, not anymore. The Institution was fine; but it’s got worse. I wake up at night, and feel sick—as if everything good has been leeched from the world—as if the food had no taste, as if I drifted like a ghost through my days, as if my entire life held no meaning or truth. Whatever they did to our memories in the Institution—it’s breaking down now. It’s tearing me apart. I’m sorry, but I can’t take any more of this. I—” she looked away from the camera for a brief moment, and then back at Catherine. “I have to go.”

“No,” Catherine whispered, but she couldn’t change it. She couldn’t do anything.

“You were always the strongest of us,” Johanna said. “Please remember this. Please. Catherine.” And then the camera cut, and silence spread through the room, heavy and unbearable, and Catherine felt like weeping, though she had no tears left.

“Catherine?” Jason called in a sleepy voice from the bedroom. “It’s too early to check your work inbox . . .”

Work. Love. Meaningless, Johanna had said. Catherine walked to the huge window pane, and stared at the city spread out below her—the mighty Prime, centre of the Galactic Federation, its buildings shrouded in light, its streets crisscrossed by floaters; with the bulky shape of the Parliament at the centre, a proud statement that the Galactic Federation still controlled most of their home galaxy.

Too many lights to see the stars; but she could still guess; could still feel their pull—could still remember that one of them was her home.

A lie, Johanna had said. A construction to keep us here.

“Catherine?” Jason stood behind her, one hand wrapped around her shoulder—awkwardly tender as always, like that day when he’d offered to share a flat, standing balanced on one foot and not looking at her.

“Johanna is dead. She killed herself.”

She felt rather than saw him freeze—and, after a while, he said in a changed voice, “I’m so sorry. I know how much she meant . . .” His voice trailed off, and he too, fell silent, watching the city underneath.

There was a feeling—the same feeling she’d had when waking up as a child, a diffuse sense that something was not quite right with the world; that the shadows held men watching, waiting for the best time to snatch her; that she was not wholly back in her body—that Jason’s hand on her shoulder was just the touch of a ghost, that even his love wasn’t enough to keep her safe. That the world was fracturing around her, time and time again—she breathed in, hoping to dispel the sensation. Surely it was nothing more than grief, than fatigue—but the sensation wouldn’t go away, leaving her on the verge of nausea.

“You should have killed us,” Catherine said. “It would have been kinder.”

“Killed you?” Jason sounded genuinely shocked.

“When you took us from our parents.”

Jason was silent for a while. Then: “We don’t kill. What do you think we are, monsters from the fairy tales, killing and burning everyone who looks different? Of course we’re not like that.” Jason no longer sounded uncertain or awkward; it was as if she’d touched some wellspring, scratched some skin to find only primal reflexes underneath.

“You erased our memories.” She didn’t make any effort to keep the bitterness from her voice.

“We had to.” Jason shook his head. “They’d have killed you, otherwise. You know this.”

“How can I trust you?” Look at Johanna, she wanted to say. Look at me. How can you say it was all worth it?

“Catherine . . .” Jason’s voice was weary. “We’ve been over this before. You’ve seen the vids from the early days. We didn’t set out to steal your childhood, or anyone’s childhood. But when you were left—intact . . . accidents happened. Carelessness. Like Johanna.”

“Like Johanna.” Her voice was shaking now, but he didn’t move, didn’t do anything to comfort her or hold her close. She turned at last, to stare into his face, and saw him transfixed by light, by faith, his gaze turned away from her and every pore of his being permeated by the utter conviction that he was right, that they were all right and that a stolen childhood was a small price to pay to be a Galactic.

“Anything would do.” Jason’s voice was slow, quiet—explaining life to a child, a script they’d gone over and over in their years together, always coming back to the same enormous, inexcusable choice that had been made for them. “Scissors, knives, broken bottles. You sliced your veins, hanged yourselves, pumped yourselves full of drugs . . . We had to . . . we had to block your memories, to make you blank slates.”

“Had to.” She was shaking now, and still he didn’t see. Still she couldn’t make him see.

“I swear to you, Catherine. It was the only way.”

And she knew, she’d always known he was telling the truth—not because he was right, but because he genuinely could not envision any other future for them.

“I see,” she said. The nausea, the sense of dislocation, wouldn’t leave her—disgust for him, for this life that trapped her, for everything she’d turned into or been turned into. “I see.”

“Do you think I like it?” His voice was bitter. “Do you think it makes me sleep better at night? Every day I hate that choice, even though I wasn’t the one who made it. Every day I wonder if there was something else the Board could have done, some other solution that wouldn’t have robbed you of everything you were.”

“Not everything,” Catherine said—slowly, carefully. “We still look Dai Viet.”

Jason grimaced, looking ill at ease. “That’s your body, Catherine. Of course they weren’t going to steal that.”

Of course; and suddenly, seeing how uneasy he was, it occurred to Catherine that they could have changed that, too, just as easily as they’d tampered with her memories; made her skin clearer, her eyes less distinctive; could have helped her fit into Galactic society. But they hadn’t. Holding the strings to the last, Johanna would have said. “You draw the line at my body, but stealing my memories is fine?”

Jason sighed; he turned towards the window, looking at the streets. “No, it’s not, and I’m sorry. But how else were we supposed to keep you alive?”

“Perhaps we didn’t want to be alive.”

“Don’t say that, please.” His voice had changed, had become fearful, protective. “Catherine. Everyone deserves to live. You especially.”

Perhaps I don’t, she thought, but he was holding her close to him, not letting her go—her anchor to the flat—to the living room, to life. “You’re not Johanna,” he said. “You know that.”

The strongest of us, Johanna had said. She didn’t feel strong; just frail and adrift. “No,” she said, at last. “Of course I’m not.”

“Come on,” Jason said. “Let me make you a tisane. We’ll talk in the kitchen—you look as though you need it.”

“No.” And she looked up—sought out his lips in the darkness, drinking in his breath and his warmth to fill the emptiness within her. “That’s not what I need.”

“Are you sure?” Jason looked uncertain—sweet and innocent and naïve, everything that had drawn her to him. “You’re not in a state to—”

“Shh,” she said, and laid a hand on his lips, where she’d kissed him. “Shh.”

Later, after they’d made love, she lay her head in the hollow of his arm, listening to the slow beat of his heart like a lifeline, and wondered how long she’d be able to keep the emptiness at bay.

• • • •

“It goes to Prime,” Cuc said. “All the data is beamed to Prime, and it’s coming from almost every ship in the ward.”

“I don’t understand,” Lan Nhen said. She’d plugged her own equipment into the ship, carefully shifting the terminals she couldn’t make sense of—hadn’t dared to go closer to the centre, where Outsider technology had crawled all over her great-aunt’s resting place, obscuring the Mind and the mass of connectors that linked her to the ship.

On one of the screens, a screensaver had launched: night on a planet Lan Nhen couldn’t recognise—an Outsider one, with their sleek floaters and their swarms of helper bots, their wide, impersonal streets planted with trees that were too tall and too perfect to be anything but the product of years of breeding.

“She’s not here,” Cuc said.

“I—” Lan Nhen was about to say she didn’t understand, and then the true import of Cuc’s words hit her. “Not here? She’s alive, Cuc. I can see the ship; I can hear her all around me . . .”

“Yes, yes,” Cuc said, a tad impatiently. “But that’s . . . the equivalent of unconscious processes, like breathing in your sleep.”

“She’s dreaming?”

“No,” Cuc said. A pause, then, very carefully: “I think she’s on Prime, Cousin. The data that’s being broadcast—it looks like Mind thought-processes, compressed with a high rate and all mixed together. There’s probably something on the other end that decompresses the data and sends it to . . . Argh, I don’t know! Wherever they think is appropriate.”

Lan Nhen bit back another admission of ignorance, and fell back on the commonplace. “On Prime.” The enormity of the thing; that you could take a Mind—a beloved ship with a family of her own—that you could put her to sleep and cause her to wake up somewhere else, on an unfamiliar planet and an alien culture—that you could just transplant her like a flower or a tree . . . “She’s on Prime.”

“In a terminal or as the power source for something,” Cuc said, darkly.

“Why would they bother?” Lan Nhen asked. “It’s a lot of power expenditure just to get an extra computer.”

“Do I look as though I have insight into Outsiders?” Lan Nhen could imagine Cuc throwing her hands up in the air, in that oft-practised gesture. “I’m just telling you what I have, Cousin.”

Outsiders—the Galactic Federation of United Planets—were barely comprehensible in any case. They were the descendants of an Exodus fleet that had hit an isolated galaxy: Left to themselves and isolated for decades, they had turned on each other in huge ethnic cleansings before emerging from their home planets as relentless competitors for resources and inhabitable planets.

“Fine. Fine.” Lan Nhen breathed in, slowly; tried to focus at the problem at hand. “Can you walk me through cutting the radio broadcast?”

Cuc snorted. “I’d fix the ship, first, if I were you.”

Lan Nhen knelt by the equipment, and stared at a cable that had curled around one of the ship’s spines. “Fine, let’s start with what we came for. Can you see?”

Silence; and then a life-sized holo of Cuc hovered in front of her—even though the avatar was little more than broad strokes, great-great-aunt had still managed to render it in enough details to make it unmistakably Cuc. “Cute,” Lan Nhen said.

“Hahaha,” Cuc said. “No bandwidth for trivialities—gotta save for detail on your end.” She raised a hand, pointed to one of the outermost screens on the edge of the room. “Disconnect this one first.”

It was slow, and painful. Cuc pointed; and Lan Nhen checked before disconnecting and moving. Twice, she jammed her fingers very close to a cable, and felt electricity crackle near her—entirely too close for comfort.

They moved from the outskirts of the room to the centre—tackling the huge mount of equipment last. Cuc’s first attempts resulted in a cable coming loose with an ominous sound; they waited, but nothing happened. “We might have fried something,” Lan Nhen said.

“Too bad. There’s no time for being cautious, as you well know. There’s . . . maybe half an hour left before the other defences go live.” Cuc moved again, pointed to another squat terminal. “This goes off.”

When they were finished, Lan Nhen stepped back, to look at their handiwork.

The heartroom was back to its former glory: instead of Outsider equipment, the familiar protrusions and sharp organic needles of the Mind’s resting place; and they could see the Mind herself—resting snug in her cradle, wrapped around the controls of the ship—her myriad arms each seizing one rack of connectors; her huge head glinting in the light—a vague globe shape covered with glistening cables and veins. The burn mark from the Outsider attack was clearly visible, a dark, elongated shape on the edge of her head that had bruised a couple of veins—it had hit one of the connectors as well, burnt it right down to the colour of ink.

Lan Nhen let out a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. “It scrambled the connector.”

“And scarred her, but didn’t kill her,” Cuc said. “Just like you said.”

“Yes, but—” But it was one thing to run simulations of the attack over and over, always getting the same prognosis; and quite another to see that the simulations held true, and that the damage was repairable.

“There should be another connector rack in your bag,” Cuc said. “I’ll walk you through slotting it in.”

After she was done, Lan Nhen took a step back; and stared at her great-aunt—feeling, in some odd way, as though she were violating the Mind’s privacy. A Mind’s heartroom was their stronghold, a place where they could twist reality as they wished, and appear as they wished to. To see her great-aunt like this, without any kind of appearance change or pretence, was . . . more disturbing than she’d thought.

“And now?” she asked Cuc.

Even without details, Lan Nhen knew her cousin was smiling. “Now we pray to our ancestors that cutting the broadcast is going to be enough to get her back.”

• • • •

Another night on Prime, and Catherine wakes up breathless, in the grip of another nightmare—images of red lights, and scrolling texts, and a feeling of growing cold in her bones, a cold so deep she cannot believe she will ever feel warm no matter how many layers she’s put on.

Johanna is not there; beside her, Jason sleeps, snoring softly; and she’s suddenly seized by nausea, remembering what he said to her—how casually he spoke of blocking her memories, of giving a home to her after stealing her original one from her. She waits for it to pass; waits to settle into her old life as usual. But it doesn’t.

Instead, she rises, walks towards the window, and stands watching Prime—the clean wide streets, the perfect trees, the ballet of floaters at night—the myriad dances that make up the society that constrains her from dawn to dusk and beyond—she wonders what Johanna would say, but of course Johanna won’t ever say anything anymore. Johanna has gone ahead, into the dark.

The feeling of nausea in her belly will not go away: instead it spreads, until her body feels like a cage—at first, she thinks the sensation is in her belly, but it moves upwards, until her limbs, too, feel too heavy and too small—until it’s an effort to move any part of her. She raises her hands, struggling against a feeling of moving appendages that don’t belong to her—and traces the contours of her face, looking for familiar shapes, for anything that will anchor her to reality. The heaviness spreads, compresses her chest until she can hardly breathe—cracks her ribs and pins her legs to the ground. Her head spins, as if she were about to faint; but the mercy of blackness does not come to her.

“Catherine,” she whispers. “My name is Catherine.”

Another name, unbidden, rises to her lips. Mi Chau. A name she gave to herself in the Viet language—in the split instant before the lasers took her apart, before she sank into darkness: Mi Chau, the princess who unwittingly betrayed her father and her people, and whose blood became the pearls at the bottom of the sea. She tastes it on her tongue, and it’s the only thing that seems to belong to her anymore.

She remembers that first time—waking up on Prime in a strange body, struggling to breathe, struggling to make sense of being so small, so far away from the stars that had guided her through space—remembers walking like a ghost through the corridors of the Institution, until the knowledge of what the Galactics had done broke her, and she cut her veins in a bathroom, watching blood lazily pool at her feet and thinking only of escape. She remembers the second time she woke up; the second, oblivious life as Catherine.

Johanna. Johanna didn’t survive her second life; and even now is starting her third, somewhere in the bowels of the Institution—a dark-skinned child indistinguishable from other dark-skinned children, with no memories of anything beyond a confused jumble . . .

Outside, the lights haven’t dimmed, but there are stars—brash and alien, hovering above Prime, in configurations that look wrong; and she remembers, suddenly, how they lay around her, how they showed her the way from planet to planet—how the cold of the deep spaces seized her just as she entered them to travel faster, just like it’s holding her now, seizing her bones—remembers how much larger, how much wider she ought to be . . .

There are stars everywhere, and superimposed on them, the faces of two Dai Viet women, calling her over and over. Calling her back, into the body that belonged to her all along; into the arms of her family.

“Come on, come on,” the women whisper, and their voices are stronger than any other noise; than Jason’s breath in the bedroom; than the motors of the floaters or the vague smell of garlic from the kitchen. “Come on, great-aunt!”

She is more than this body; more than this constrained life—her thoughts spread out, encompassing hangars and living quarters; and the liquid weight of pods held in their cradles—she remembers family reunions, entire generations of children putting their hands on her corridors, remembers the touch of their skin on her metal walls; the sound of their laughter as they raced each other; the quiet chatter of their mothers in the heartroom, keeping her company as the New Year began; and the touch of a brush on her outer hull, drawing the shape of an apricot flower, for good luck . . .

“Catherine?” Jason calls behind her.

She turns, through sheer effort of will; finding, somehow, the strength to maintain her consciousness in a small and crammed body alongside her other, vaster one. He’s standing with one hand on the doorjamb, staring at her—his face pale, leeched of colours in the starlight.

“I remember,” she whispers.

His hands stretch, beseeching. “Catherine, please. Don’t leave.”

He means well, she knows. All the things that he hid from her, he hid out of love; to keep her alive and happy, to hold her close in spite of all that should have separated them; and even now, the thought of his love is a barb in her heart, a last lingering regret, slight and pitiful against the flood of her memories—but not wholly insignificant.

Where she goes, she’ll never be alone—not in the way she was with Jason, feeling that nothing else but her mattered in the entire world. She’ll have a family; a gaggle of children and aunts and uncles waiting on her, but nothing like the sweet, unspoiled privacy where Jason and she could share anything and everything. She won’t have another lover like him—naïve and frank and so terribly sure of what he wants and what he’s ready to do to get it. Dai Viet society has no place for people like Jason—who do not know their place, who do not know how to be humble, how to accept failure or how to bow down to expediency.

Where she goes, she’ll never be alone; and yet she’ll be so terribly lonely.

“Please,” Jason says.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll come back—” a promise made to him, to Johanna, who cannot hear or recognise her anymore. Her entire being spreads out, thins like water thrown on the fire—and, in that last moment, she finds herself reaching out for him, trying to touch him one last time, to catch one last glimpse of his face, even as a heart she didn’t know she had breaks.

“Catherine.”

He whispers her name, weeping, over and over; and it’s that name, that lie that still clings to her with its bittersweet memories, that she takes with her as her entire being unfolds—as she flies away, towards the waiting stars.

©2013 by Aliette de Bodard. Originally published in The Other Half of the Sky, edited by Athena Andreadis. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Aliette de Bodard lives and works in Paris, where she has a day job as a System Engineer. She studied Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, but moonlights as a writer of speculative fiction. She is the author of the critically acclaimed Obsidian and Blood trilogy of Aztec noir fantasies, as well as numerous short stories, which garnered her two Nebula Awards, a Locus Award and a British Science Fiction Association Award. Recent works include The House of Shattered Wings (Roc/Gollancz), a novel set in a turn-of-the-century Paris devastated by a magical war, and The Citadel of Weeping Pearls (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2015), a novella set in the same universe as her Vietnamese space opera On a Red Station Drifting. She lives in Paris with her family, in a flat with more computers than warm bodies, and a set of Lovecraftian tentacled plants intent on taking over the place.

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

The Premature Burials

Andy Duncan | 6,000 words

Looking up, Matthew saw pictures in the ripples and dimples of satin as if they were layers of clouds over Munson’s Hill. There, in the far corner: That drape looked like one of Mr. Venable’s cantankerous swans. And just overhead was the familiar lumpy profile of Mr. Krohn the wheelwright, mouth yawning wide.

Matthew grinned at the thought of fat Mr. Krohn wedged into this narrow space. He slowly, noiselessly slid his arms and legs outward until they met the soft, adamant walls to left and right. Then gradually, in torturous, tense increments, he raised trembling hands and feet until knuckles and bare toes were buried in the satin of the ceiling and could rise no farther.

Not much room even for Matthew, eight years old last Tuesday, but for Mr. Krohn? No standard-sized box for him. Maybe they’d just knock the wheels off one of Mr. Krohn’s own wagons, take down his barn door, and saw him a lid to fit.

Matthew came perilously close to giggling, in this space too small for both a medium-sized boy and a good-sized laugh. He froze, lips pursed and bulging, as murmuring voices approached his sanctuary from the world beyond the lid.

Matthew had noticed, long before his eyes adjusted to the dark, the dust-thin creases of light that outlined the lid on three sides. Matthew, a butcher’s son, had speculated wildly on the effects of this unexpected ventilation. Now shadows crawled the length of the longest seam, filling it. Matthew heard a woman snuffling, and then the deep and placid voice of Mr. Marsh, whose words sounded recited, like Scripture.

“And this is, of course, one of our simpler models, but nonetheless popular, for reasons I’m sure you can discern for yourselves. Simple yet elegant, qualities for which your aunt herself was, if I may say so, quite well known in life.”

A whimper of ladylike assent emerged from the snuffles before being choked off, and another man’s voice said: “Indeed. Might this model, like the mahogany, be fitted with a bell?”

“Yes, of course,” Mr. Marsh said, “or the equally effective speaking tube, which as I have said is a less cumbersome and more frugal option. In either case, your aunt would be guaranteed able to summon assistance in the event of—the unspeakable.” He rushed the last two words in an awestruck mumble.

“Well, that’s a mercy, anyway,” the other man said, just as Matthew gave voice to the unspeakable, and sneezed.

All sounds from without ceased. For a thrilling few moments of darkness and silence, Matthew himself froze—the easiest course of action, really, in a space that so limited a boy’s options. His heart raced. He felt a strange exultation he’d never felt before. He snapped shut his eyes and folded both hands over his chest just as Mr. Marsh seized hold of the lid and lifted.

The sunshine streaming through the front window was hot on Matthew’s cheeks. He opened his eyes to see three faces looking down: the right-side-up face (Mr. Marsh) swollen and agog like a frog forbidden to croak; the first sideways face (the other man) pale and aghast, a deacon’s face; the second sideways face (the woman!) mostly black lace and crepe above red lips and perfect teeth, one row parted from the other in surprise. It was at her lovely half-face that Matthew smiled, and to her that he directed his greeting.

“Hullo. Mr. Marsh is quite right. This is a very comfortable model indeed.”

Matthew sprang over the side of the coffin before the adults quite registered that he even had sat up. He hit the polished floor running. He skidded around a marble angel and set a candelabrum ominously rocking as he dashed for the door. Behind him the two men called for him to stop and denounced him as an ill-bred urchin, a vagabond, a ragamuffin. The woman’s laughter rang out over their futility as clear and as strong as any of Mr. Marsh’s old coffin bells.

Matthew ran out of the shop and into the muddy street and slid unscathed directly across the path of a rearing carriage horse. Heedless beneath flashing hooves, exultant between toe-shaped gushes of mud, Matthew began his lifelong vivid recollection of the veiled woman’s naked astonishment. This private image, tinted and embellished like an illustrated weekly’s engraving of Christ, would be especially dominant a few years later, when Matthew began to take a naturally keener interest in the corseted half of humanity.

• • • •

“I must confess to you, Mr. Preble,” Miss Charity Gorce told Matthew, “that you are not the first man to ask for my hand in marriage.”

“Of that, Miss Gorce, I have no doubt.”

“I must tell you, as well, that when your predecessors heard my conditions of marriage, they rescinded their offers, quit this house with more haste than decorum, and never returned—indeed, severed all relations with me. In short, Mr. Preble, they fled.”

“I could not imagine having the slightest desire to flee your presence, Miss Gorce. I find it most congenial.”

“Yes,” she said, without inflection. “Well, you’re young yet, Mr. Preble—somewhat younger than I am, if I may be so forward, though we need not speak in numeric terms. Perhaps you will be older by the time you leave here. Allow me to examine the evidence for your suit. Oh, you may sit, by the way. I’m sure your knee would be glad of the rest.”

Matthew bowed his head graciously and rose from his position at Miss Gorce’s feet. Three backward steps brought him to the edge of the cushioned window seat, where he reverently settled himself.

Miss Gorce adjusted her pince-nez and leafed silently through Matthew’s papers. Matthew admired the contours of her arms, rather daringly revealed by her stylishly tight sleeves. He admired her face as well. Her high forehead and patrician nose were shared by all the grim ancestors whose surrounding portraits conspired to darken the room. Yet her mouth was comically wide, her eyebrows a single dark swath, her hair asymmetrically askew. Nature had marred her inherited good looks just enough to make her beautiful.

“I remember your father’s butcher shop, Mr. Preble,” Miss Gorce finally said, “for my mother traded there. I confess I have no recollection of you being anywhere near the place, at least during hours in which work might be done. Since leaving Rochester, however, you seem to have been uncharacteristically industrious. Surveying team in the Aroostook Valley . . . Commendations from two governments for your role in settling that border dispute . . . Further surveying, exploring, speculating . . . These are strange times, Mr. Preble, when a man can make a fortune in land transactions without acquiring any land himself. I presume this is where I, and my family’s holdings, come in? No need to protest, Mr. Preble, I’m only joking. Partially. Cultural activities seem in order . . . Founding sponsor of the New York Philharmonic . . . Et cetera, et cetera. Well.”

She plucked off her spectacles and sat back in her chair, layers of fabrics and petticoats crackling and rustling. “Let us set aside these papers for a moment.”

“Let’s,” said Matthew, quivering.

“I admit that the months we have spent strolling and taking tea and visiting the infirm on Sundays have been pleasant for me, Mr. Preble.”

“For me, as well, Miss Gorce.”

“As long as I am being blunt, I should add that you are, in your own unique and disheveled way, quite a well-turned-out young man.” As she said this, she averted her eyes downward so that she no longer met his gaze. “And so,” she said, finally looking up. She was flushed. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “I am inclined to accept your proposition, and grant you my hand in marriage.”

In the next instant, Matthew was on his knees at her feet once more, seizing her hands in his. “Marvelous! You will not regret this, Miss Gorce. I will be yours until death!”

“And beyond?” she asked, smiling down at him.

“Beyond?”

Her smile faded. She sat forward, pallid and drawn, eyes swimming with ghosts, and clutched his hands until his knuckles grated. “I have but one fear, Mr. Preble,” she whispered. “My inheritance has spared me privation and want; my talents and industry have spared me the unreliable mercies of men. But nothing will spare me the chill of the tomb. My one fear, Mr. Preble, is that I will suffer the fate suffered by all my ancestors on the walls around us—that despite my money, and status, and wit, I will die and be buried alone. I have lived alone for years, and thrive upon it; but to lie in my casket alone—Oh! The dread possibility has me choking and gasping in my bed each night, unable to sleep, unable to breathe, unable to bear the thought of the blanketing, solitary doom that awaits. Do you understand now my conditions of marriage, Mr. Preble?”

Matthew opened his mouth, considered, then snapped it shut and rapidly shook his head.

“Should I die first,” Miss Gorce said, “my husband must be buried with me. Immediately. Before another sunset. He must willingly lie, before his time, in an adjoining casket in our mutual plot in the Gorce family cemetery, and sail alongside me into that sea of worms.”

“He must be buried alive?” Matthew croaked.

“Alive or dead, the choice is his. Buried, yes; that is my choice. My choice, my desire, my condition of marriage.” She smiled faintly. “Shall I have Mr. Sterne bring your hat?”

“And if I die before you?”

She smiled more broadly. “Then I will do you the same favor, Mr. Preble. I will not remain above the soil one day more than you do. That very night, I will lie beside you in the adjacent grave.”

Matthew stood, walked to the window, and looked toward fields and sheds that he did not see. He closed his eyes and summoned, as he had countless times before, an elegant mouth beneath black lace and crepe, leaning over a coffin. This time the mouth was Miss Gorce’s. Then, in his vision, he was standing above the coffin looking in, as Miss Gorce’s lips repeatedly formed the word “Yes.”

Surging with tides he could neither name nor deny, he swung round and returned to Miss Gorce’s side, where he fervently and repeatedly kissed her hand.

“May I take this as an acceptance?” Miss Gorce asked, a bit breathlessly.

Matthew made no verbal reply.

Her eyes glistening, her broad forehead cleared of furrows, Miss Gorce groped with her free hand for the bell pull, seized it, and yanked it repeatedly. She left it dancing and reached for Matthew’s hair, tugging absently but fondly at the upswept curls that spilled over his collar in back.

“For if he loves me with all his heart,” she murmured, “of what use will life be to him afterwards?”

The papers had lain for years in a downstairs safe. On many occasions, Miss Gorce’s butler, Sterne, had transferred the papers to a silver salver and sat impassively in the pantry, watching the bell, waiting for a signal that never came. Each time, he had needed no further instructions; without troubling his mistress more, he had returned the papers to their felt-lined vault before the suitor’s horse had galloped past the willow tree on the corner.

On this day, the jangling resurrection of the so-long-dormant bell caused Sterne no visible surprise. After a pause of only a few seconds, he stood, picked up the salver, and strode from the pantry before the bell had finished tinkling.

Sterne walked silently through a series of ever more ornate doorways, through a series of increasingly well-lighted rooms, and ascended a flight of stairs wide enough for a pedestrian race. At the top, he tapped at the door of Miss Gorce’s office.

“Come,” she murmured.

Silently, Sterne watched as Matthew and Miss Gorce signed the documents. Then Sterne signed his own name, added the date, and stamped each of the three copies with the embossed seal of the State of New York.

“So convenient,” Miss Gorce breathed into Mr. Preble’s ear, “having a notary on the premises.”

• • • •

The Prebles were as content in marriage as any couple can be in this fallen world. An early crisis on the question of brunch was defused by the decision to have it each day, only at different times, some days as late as midnight. Over brunch, tea, elevenses, and all other meals (for they were a ravenous pair), they read aloud to each other (and to Sterne, as he shimmered in and out) from Godey’s Lady’s Book, the Southern Literary Messenger, Scientific American, and all other periodicals, including, most thrillingly, the Workingman’s Advocate. They imported a saxophone from Belgium, a harmonium from France, and practiced fruitlessly before an audience of each other, for Sterne scheduled his errands judiciously.

They also devoted many more successful hours to perfecting their marital arts, displaying impromptu skills that astonished and gratified in equal measure. Perhaps sensing that the new marrieds were more than normally preoccupied with matters normally left to a procreative God, the mothers of Rochester began propelling their children past the gates of the Gorce mansion at double speed. The Prebles observed this, as they observed everything else, and were happy. Then Mrs. Preble died.

• • • •

Matthew lay in the dark coffin and sobbed. His cries and moans were close about him. Disgorged from his chest and mouth, they sank into the fabric lining the box and rebounded to nestle, moist, against him. Again and again he choked out his dear wife’s name, careless of the squandered air. What use was air, with Charity in the grave?

Through his spasms of grief, Matthew was dimly aware that he now had far less room to maneuver than he had at age eight, inside Mr. Marsh’s display model. Unable to flail his arms and legs as he wailed, he twisted and rolled from side to side, bruising his shoulders against the coffin lid. He groaned and cursed like an armless flagellant, and his tormented words crowded the box on all sides. He was awash in nightmare jibberings. The clouds of satin over his head shaped a riot of crawling, leaping, writhing things, the pandemonium of a dozen faiths.

And there, in the cloths to the left—was that lump of fabric not the placid death-mask of his poor dead Charity, his wife of barely a twelvemonth, who had looked so rosy and fair even on her bier that she scarce seemed a fit candidate for the grave? No doubt, her sure foreknowledge that her husband was willing to lie beside her even in death had eased her soul’s dark dread, made her dead cheeks and brow bloom in relief.

But where was Matthew’s solace now, as he churned in misery many feet below the heaped earth of the family plot?

The heavy air around him was cotton in a pill-box, holding him fixed and suffocating in the center of his prison. He rolled through this cloying ether of misery as a crated carcass in a ship’s hold rolls stupidly through lard. Had Charity, blessedly insensible, been spared this ordeal? Ah, Charity! Ah, Matthew! Ah, God!

Such were Matthew’s thoughts as he fell, exhausted, into the deepest, most blissful, most untroubled sleep of his life.

Matthew was awakened by a ripping, splintering, grating wail only inches from his face.

More jolts, and something heavy raking along the length of the box.

Twin thumps.

Coughs and murmurs.

A sawing rasp.

A screech.

Then Matthew’s skin prickled as the trapped and clammy air released its grip and rushed upward, a dank gasp exhaled into a rectangle of star-flecked sky. Its escape fluttered the coattails and stirred the mutton chops of a black-clad, lantern-haloed figure who straddled the coffin and looked dourly down into earth, one hand supporting the casket lid.

Matthew lay still and looked up, blinking, uncomprehending.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said.

“Who else?” Sterne asked, extending a hand.

Matthew allowed himself to be hauled from the hole and propped against the fresh mound of earth. He choked on the brandy that Sterne slopped into his mouth.

“Please, sir,” Sterne kept saying. “Please, you must drink.”

“Sterne,” Matthew rasped. “Sterne. What is happening?”

Sterne fumbled in his waistcoat-pocket, drawing forth a sheaf of papers. “If I may explain, sir. I have spent some time studying the agreement that you and my mistress signed before the wedding. I also consulted my cousin, a solicitor in Philadelphia—in strictest confidence, I assure you, sir. He confirmed my interpretation. The document clearly mandates your interment in the event of your wife’s death, but makes no provision for the duration of said interment.” He waved the paper in front of Matthew, jabbing a gloved finger at the pertinent clause.

“You have exhumed me,” Matthew said, ignoring the paper.

“I took that liberty, sir,” Sterne said, dropping his eyes.

“Then my wife . . . lies there still?”

“She does, sir.”

Matthew groaned, flung his forearm across his face, and would have expressed his desire to return to the earth, rather than face the sunlight alone, had all his senses not been galvanized by the faint jingling of a tiny bell, such as a gentlewoman might use to summon a lady-in-waiting.

Matthew sat up, his nose nearly meeting Sterne’s. The men stared at each other. As one, they turned and regarded the adjacent grave. The bell continued to jingle.

“My wife’s coffin—” Matthew began.

“The latest safety features—” Sterne began.

Matthew already was clawing doglike at the dirt with one hand and using the other to yank free squares of freshly laid sod. He flung them over his shoulder, where they puffed into dust on his own yawning casket. A tossed spade thumped into the dirt beside him. As he seized it, he saw Sterne gouge the blade of his own shovel deep into the mound, one grimy spat glimmering white in the glow of the lantern.

Silently, master and servant worked side by side, pelting the landscape with shovelfuls of dirt. As his arms and shoulders pumped like automatons, Matthew’s mind ransacked a lifetime’s lore concerning those strange diseases that seemed to rebuke the advances of modern medicine. Certain maladies mocked the symptoms of death, caused the temporary cessation of all vital functions except, apparently, the fluttering soul, which later awakened in the most dreadful predicament known to suffering humanity. Merciful God! Still the bell kept ringing—ringing—ringing!—until Matthew’s blade jabbed into the casket lid and splintered its tiny belfry at the base. As he and Sterne scrabbled away the remaining layer of earth, the slender, severed bell-pull slithered back into its trap and vanished inside the coffin, as if tugged one last time by an unseen hand falling limp in exhaustion.

“My wife!” cried Matthew, wrenching open the lid.

“My husband!” cried Charity, reaching up to him.

Sterne’s lantern then illumined a tender scene. Husband laved wife with muddy kisses as, with his last strength, he bore her out of the grave and laid her gently upon the mound where Sterne had laid him not an hour before. The two collapsed together like the walls of a tent, and in a heap they cradled each other, murmuring endearments.

Sterne, coughing discreetly, dispensed brandy, then retreated to the wagon for some rope. “No need to waste the caskets,” he muttered as he went.

“I thought the most terrible moment of my life,” Matthew finally said, “was when I entered your bedchamber to find you in the very shape and lineaments of death. But it was nothing compared to the terror I felt here, in this cemetery, when Sterne and I heard your cry for help ring out practically beneath our feet.”

Charity tensed alongside him like a rope pulling taut. She moved back a few inches. Matthew did not care for her gaze; she seemed to see him coolly and see him whole.

“Beneath your feet, my angel?” Charity asked. “How could that be, my dove?”

Charity then turned and regarded the open pit of her husband’s grave. She craned forward and looked down upon the empty coffin. Then she faced her own grave, studied her own empty casket. She silently looked from one pit to another, her appraising glance that of a vaguely interested customer presented with equally uninviting alternatives.

“My dear—” Matthew said.

“How strange,” Charity said, almost to herself, “that Sterne’s initial response, upon hearing my call for help, was to go next door and dig you up. Was your help so necessary? I always fancied Sterne more self-sufficient than that.”

“My love—” Matthew said.

“If he loves me with all his heart,” she said, fully to herself by now, “of what use will life be to him afterwards? What use, indeed?” She picked up a clod of clay and fisted it, raining sediment upon her shoe.

“My heart—” Matthew said.

“I think I would like to go back home, now, Mr. Preble,” Charity said, in the voice she lately had reserved for tradesmen, shopkeepers, and clergy. “I would like to return to my house, to my bedchamber, to my life, which has been so rudely interrupted, and attempt to forget that all this recent unpleasantness ever happened.”

As she spat out the word “unpleasantness,” she looked him squarely in the face, as she was not to do again for a very long time.

• • • •

Many months later, Matthew retreated to the casket.

This time, he did not open his eyes to see what portraits and playlets the satin curtains would unveil. This time, he repaired to the grave only to sleep. He lay still, eyes closed, tried to wedge himself into the sweet, sunny coffin of childhood memory, and willed sweet nepenthe to embrace him.

Night after fitful night, in his new, cold, lonely bedchamber in the servant’s wing of the Gorce mansion, he had sought oblivion with insomniac singlemindedness, and had failed utterly. Partially to blame was the bed—a creaking, swaybacked ruin that had been a malevolent secret of the Gorce family for decades, the lot of generations of unwelcome cousins, unwanted drummers, and unnecessary circuit preachers. Its arthritic joints were trussed with baling wire, and its list to starboard would have been even more noticeable but for the prosthetic use of an overturned chamber pot.

At Matthew’s direction, Sterne and his tool chest did the malformed bed further injury, lowering the canopy to mere inches from the occupant’s nose. Still it did little more than mock the exquisite sleep Matthew had enjoyed in the grave.

Finally, with great reluctance, Sterne heeded his master’s pleas. Sterne helped him wrestle the familiar casket into the patient pit (which Mrs. Preble demanded be left open, as evidence of her husband’s duplicity). Sterne lowered the lid, then raised it seconds later, as an apparent afterthought, and said—

“Eight hours. No more.”

—then closed it again.

At first, Matthew merely fussed and fidgeted. Why had he not brought a decent pillow, rather than rely upon this inadequate felt-covered fist that Mr. Marsh provided all his clients at no extra charge? Furthermore, the intrusive speaking tube that protruded from the lid forced him to hold his head at an unnatural angle, and the cold air that coursed down it all but guaranteed a chill. But Matthew eventually became accustomed to his circumstances, and began to doze. In his half-waking state, he fancied that a beautiful woman reached into his coffin, grasped him by his proudest member, and tugged repeatedly, as if to lift him with one hand alone—succeeding only in producing the most delightful friction, one that sent him smiling into . . . blissful, easeful, soul-repairing sleep!

“Sir.

“Sir, please wake up.

“Your wife, sir—she has need of you.”

The sunshine was hot on Matthew’s cheeks. But this sun was too close above his face. The lantern illumined Sterne’s features from below, doing them no credit; they flickered and danced obscenely.

“What?” Matthew blinked and sat up, slowly. “It’s still night. What time is it?” He groped for his watch.

“Three hours till dawn,” Sterne said. “I am ahead of my time, sir, but my mistress—your wife—demanded that I wake you.”

“My wife?” Matthew was not yet alert enough to envision any scenario in which his wife might desire his presence. “Why, is something wrong? Where is she?”

“She is here, sir,” Sterne said. “Alongside you.”

Even beyond the lantern light, Sterne’s forehead and neck twitched, suggesting a fit of nerves, or an unprecedented display of emotion barely kept in check. He wordlessly helped Matthew clamber out of the pit, then pointed into the adjacent grave.

A closed casket rested there, lightly covered by a shallow layer of earth. Sterne handed Matthew a shovel.

“She wishes for you to dig her up,” Sterne said. He walked away, hunching his shoulders against the breeze, vanishing three paces into the gloom.

Dazed, Matthew moved the lantern to the brink of the grave and vaulted into the hole. After a couple of experimental thrusts, he cast away the shovel, for the earth was only a few inches deep. With his hands, he raked away the clods indifferently spread across the mahogany surface in token burial.

He opened the lid.

Charity, wearing only her shift, looked up at him, smiling, twinkling, cheeks flushed. “Hello, husband,” she said.

He blinked. “Hullo.”

“Mr. Sterne told me what you were up to, you rogue. Embarrassing the poor man like that.”

“Beg pardon?”

She reached up with both hands and twined her long fingers into the frills on the front of his shirt. She tried to imitate Sterne’s familiar rumble. “He’s out there in the cemetery, ma’am. Really and truly in it, I mean. Says life has no meaning for him any more, and he won’t emerge—begging your pardon, ma’am—until you come out there and save him.” Her laugh was like the sweet jingle of a coffin bell, as she raised one bare foot, sidling it along the folds of his trousers. “Matthew, my love, what an enchanting—no, exciting—place to consummate your apology!”

“My dear—”

“Matthew,” Charity said, “come wake me. Come wake the dead.” Tightening her fingers, she hauled violently, throwing him off balance. Matthew fell atop her, and the casket lid thumped down upon his buttocks.

Untended, the lantern burned until nearly dawn.

• • • •

Caskets were henceforth an important feature of the Prebles’ domestic life. Funeral parlors welcomed their lingering visits. Porters and doormen cursed and marveled at the weight of their luggage. Sterne quietly purchased enough digging equipment to exhaust a vein of coal, while the children of Rochester, delighted by rumors, paid each other to run past the Prebles’ house. By spring 1849, when both Mr. and Mrs. Preble set sail on that doomed Hudson steamer, its boiler ticking down the hours until explosion, the faithful Sterne had lost count of how many times he had buried the both of them.

• • • •

For weeks after the double funeral, though the other mourners (mostly out-of-towners) had long departed and resumed their lives, Sterne lingered. Frequent travelers on the turnpike that spring became accustomed to seeing the buggy tethered to the gates of the Gorce family cemetery, the dappled horse cropping wild asparagus in the shadow of the arching wrought-iron legend:

IT IS A HOLY AND WHOLESOME THOUGHT, TO PRAY FOR THE DEAD.

No one looked inside the buggy to remark on the ropes, the brandy, the shovels.

Sterne took most of his noontime meals in that bee-haunted acre, straddling the sandstone wall within hailing distance of the two fresh, bare graves.

The widow Redfield, observing Sterne’s schedule, began visiting her late husband (whose mother was a Gorce) somewhat more frequently than had been her custom. Her appearances became so frequent, in fact, that Sterne no longer could dismiss them as coincidence. In a stoic air of experimentation, he began loading double provisions into his picnic basket each day, and he was not disappointed.

No matter how scintillating the widow Redfield’s company, however, he conversed in a polite but abstracted manner, always with one ear cocked, listening for the chimes, the knocks, the muffled halloos that never came.

On the last day of his vigil, while calmly buttering a roll, he said aloud: “I suppose all amusements must come to an end.”

“Oh, Mr. Sterne,” the widow Redfield said, suddenly pale.

“Eh?” Trained to react to far subtler inflections, he looked up, butter knife poised. “I don’t mean our visits, Mrs. Redfield. You misunderstand me. I was thinking aloud . . . about a private joke, of long standing, between my mistress and master, and me.” He nodded in their direction.

The widow Redfield dimpled anew, smacked a droning yellowjacket with one of Mr. Marsh’s advertising fans, and asked: “Why, Mr. Sterne. Are you a man who appreciates amusements, then?” She threw her shoulders back, emphasizing her already considerable bosom.

“Increasingly so, Mrs. Redfield,” he replied, and popped the entire golden roll into his mouth.

©1998 by Andy Duncan. Originally published in Gothic.Net. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andy Duncan is a winner of the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award and a two-time winner of the World Fantasy Award for his short fiction, much of which is collected into the volumes Beluthahatchie and Other Stories (2000) and The Pottawatomie Giant and Other Stories (2011). Born in Batesburg, South Carolina, he lives in Maryland.

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

Sparks Fly

Rich Larson | 3,500 words

“There’s a dark side to sloths,” she said, using her straw to plumb the ice at the bottom of her glass, flicking red-blonde hair out of blue-blue eyes. “Sometimes they go to grab a branch, but accidentally grab their own arm, and then fall to their deaths.”

“Because of the mossy fur?” I guessed, also guessing at the best way to put my hand onto hers on the bubbled-glass patio table. I could see her suntanned legs underneath and it put sparks under my skin. Fortunately her phone was in her purse, which was beside her chair, and probably far enough away that I wouldn’t fry it.

“Could be,” she said, deadpan serious. “Or maybe it’s no accident at all. They might just be depressed because they’re the slowest animals in the forest, and they’re covered in smelly algae. Suicidal sloths.”

She gave me a squinty look, maybe because the Sugar Bowl patio was soaking up the last of the late-summer sun and we’d both forgotten our sunglasses.

“I don’t believe you,” I said. “I don’t believe that’s a thing. Is there video evidence?”

“Arthur. Come on. Who would watch something like that? That’s just fucking terrible.”

“Sloth snuff,” I said, putting my hand onto hers, consolingly. It looked clumsy there. And sweaty.

She looked down at our hands and smiled a not-quite-even smile that sent a static tingle up and down my spine. I gave the phone sitting on the top of her purse a check-up glance. So far, so good.

“Sluff,” she said. “We created a genre.”

• • • •

The date was going really well so far. Her name was Christina and she was studying Veterinary Sciences, which was how favorite animals came up, and I was sort of crazy about her.

We met by chance, which is the same as fate. She worked at the Sunterra a few doors down the strip from Lendrum Liquor Depot, where I worked in the back, moving boxes and avoiding phone lines and computerized cash registers. The manager, Erik, knew about my condition, and we’d been friends since elementary school in Mill Woods, so he claimed faulty wiring the one time a shoplifter really pissed me off and I accidentally fried the circuit board.

Christina was the reason I went to Sunterra to get lunch most days, and once in a while I actually made a bit of conversation with her without fouling up the debit machine at the till, and then one day she came to the liquor store. I helped her find a bottle of Apothic wine for her mom, proving her mom’s poor taste in wine. Then we stood there and talked, me holding the bottle like a too-obvious phallic symbol. For once it seemed like everything I was saying was the right thing to say. We agreed on drinks after work like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“She’s cute,” Erik said when he came back from break and heard my news, rolling up his plaid sleeves to resentfully don the work shirt. “I know who you mean. That one cashier with the red hair, right?”

Erik had black hipster glasses and a mountain man beard and a line of poetry tattooed on his forearm. His three loves were basketball, scotch, and the girlfriend who packed him Tupperware lunches. I was always jealous of those. And the girlfriend.

“Are you going to tell her right away?” he asked. “You should probably tell her right away.”

“I don’t want to,” I admitted. I wanted to go on a normal date with a normal person who thought I was normal.

“You’re going to have to tell her you’re a sparkhead, buddy. You’re already way into her. You really think you can keep it locked down?”

• • • •

Flash forward to the date: I still hadn’t told her. I concocted some ways to break it to her while she was away in the bathroom, but when she came back she wanted to order beers, and I figured that could only help. We ordered pints of Steamwhistle and toasted to all the dead sloths. The waiter frowned at his phone as he left, jabbing at a frozen-up screen.

Christina told me about growing up in Calgary with four brothers, one of whom nearly shot her left eye out with a Nerf bow and arrow when she was young. After a few weeks it healed up and somehow actually improved her vision in that eye, so now she wore one contact on her right eye instead of wearing one eye patch on her left.

“How about you?” she asked. “How many siblings do you have?”

“One of me was enough for my parents,” I said, not saying that they feared the sparkhead gene would show up again and they would have multiple tots demolishing desktops, laptops, telephones. Setting off the car alarm at three a.m.. Shorting the neighbor’s Christmas lights. Putting the electricity bill on a rollercoaster.

“You were a brat, huh?”

“I broke a lot of stuff as a kid,” I said. “My parents, uh, they shipped me off to this bat-shit survivalist uncle most summers. Had a cabin in Victoria. Only place I couldn’t wreck anything.”

I didn’t tell her how many times my parents had to move, or at least have me switch schools, because whenever my condition came to light, the paperwork followed. When I was a kid I had a really hard time locking it down.

Christina leaned forward, conspiratorial. “Last summer I worked at the animal lab on campus,” she said. “I accidentally killed a whole tank of tiny fishes on my first day. I dropped it and it totally shattered. I even stepped on some of them.” She made a face. “I dream about them coming to get me, sometimes. Like, fish revenge.” She grinned. “That’s my clumsy dumbass story. You know, to make you feel better.”

She looked so earnest and mischievous at the same time that I just wanted to confess. I wanted to tell her everything, even about the time I almost stopped my grandma’s pacemaker.

“For me it’s more just . . . Electronics. I’m bad with technology.”

“Maybe you’re just old school,” Christina said. “That why you don’t have a cell phone?”

I thought about telling her it would be liable to explode due to me being a sparkhead. But then she would either bail, like most girls, or try to turn me into a sideshow friend, like a few girls, or weirdly fetishize it, like that one girl who said she liked her sex anachronistic.

Instead, I squeezed her hand, kind of sly. “I shouldn’t need a cell phone to connect with people, right?”

• • • •

She left her phone in her purse through three beers, which was super impressive, and when they shooed us off the patio we found stupid reasons to keep holding hands in the parking lot. A car pulled in and had to swerve around me.

“I was going to pull you out of the way,” she said, disappointed.

“Save my life?”

“Yeah, it would have been so fucking romantic.”

We made out right there in the parking lot. I was hoping she wouldn’t notice my halfway stiffie, or the fact that the headlights on the car behind us started flashing like crazy when tongue came into play.

“I actually just live two blocks away from the Sunterra,” she admitted when we came up for air. “My life is pretty much my house, campus, Sunterra. Just, like, a tiny triangle.” She gave a small drunk-sounding giggle. “Sad, right?”

We started to wander down the block. An old guy up ahead was panhandling. I felt for change in my pocket, because I wanted everyone in the world to feel as good as I was feeling.

“Not sad,” I said. “I only live three blocks away from the strip. Could even, you know, walk you home.”

She grinned and swung our linked hands in a way that made my stomach flip and probably made the nearby WiFi waver. It was time to tell her. Now.

“Oh.” Christina was suddenly frowning. I followed her gaze. The old guy had baggy blue coveralls with reflective strips, and a Sharpie-on-cardboard sign. Sparky. Can’t Bank Online. Need Change.

My stomach dropped.

“Let’s cross here,” she suggested, nodding her perfect head towards the opposite sidewalk. “It’s not, like, a thing or anything. But I just got this phone two days ago. Really don’t want to risk it. You know?”

I had to swallow a few times before I could answer. “Oh, yeah. Makes sense.”

I squeezed the coins in my pocket as we jaywalked to the other side, and the old guy gave me this accusing kind of look, and I could have sworn he knew what was up, knew about the static swirling around my arm hairs.

• • • •

But by the time we passed Lendrum Place, I had it locked down. We held hands under a whole row of streetlamps and not a single one flickered. Christina and me were laughing at the stupidest things. It all felt too perfect for me to mess up.

We stopped in front of the house she rented with a gaggle of classmates from university. The lawn was overgrown and strangled with dandelions.

“Do you guys share one machete?” I asked. “Or does everyone have their own? You know, to hack a way to the door and back.”

“Don’t judge our burgeoning ecosystem,” she said. “Want to come in for a bit?”

Of course I wanted to come in for a bit. More than pretty much anything. I took another look at the front, debating. It was an older place, fifties construction, and in a nice neighborhood, so hopefully there was no alarm system to set off.

I could keep it locked down. Right?

Christina bit her lip, looking kind of sheepish, thinking I was hesitating for some other reason entirely. That did it.

“Yeah,” I said. “Definitely. Lead on.”

There was an electronic lock on the door, definitely not from the fifties. Those could be finicky, so I hung back and pretended to be concerned about her empty flowerbeds while she skipped up the stairs and punched in her code. I followed her in. She kicked her shoes off into the dark; one banged against an air vent.

“Just a second,” she said, swiping on the lights on her way down the hall. “Bathroom. I’ve been holding it like, whoa.”

That left me in the entry, standing underneath an ornate fixture with an Ikea light bulb. I could feel the whine of the television in the next room. Stereo system under the window. Two refrigerators in the kitchen, one a mini. Microwave. Electric stovetop. Walls with wires everywhere, but well-insulated.

I found it helped if I could take stock of everything right off the bat.

“Um, you okay?” Christina was back, wiping her hands on the backs of her jeans.

“I’m great,” I said. “Just a little drunker. Than I thought.”

She grinned. “Puss puss.”

“Hey.”

It was Wednesday night and her more studious roommates were asleep, so we agreed the responsible thing to do was go to her room to watch a movie. She told me to go snag the Coronas from the fridge while she fired up Netflix. The appliance stuttered when my hand touched the handle, so I got in and out fast.

And now I was thinking about getting in and out. Netflix. I didn’t have it myself, or a television, for that matter, but I knew it was sometimes code for sex.

I stepped into her bedroom, which was not dissimilar to Erik’s college student combo of Ikea, cast-offs, and stuff from home. Christina was busy hunting for the remote but waved me, a little shyly, towards the bed. She had Lion King pillows not quite hidden by the bedspread, and on the wall there was a corkboard plastered with photos of friends and family. She was so normal it hurt.

I got a whiff of her hair’s grapefruit shampoo as I went past to sit down on the edge of the bed. That was a problem. I felt a static shiver and then a jump, and then the plasma screen snapped blank.

Concentrate, motherfucker.

“What the fuck?” Christina muttered, as the screen fizzed back to life. “Okay, Despicable Me 2? I’ll explain the, like, plot intricacies of the first one. So you understand what’s going on. Basically the bad guy is now a good guy.”

“Got it,” I said, trying not to think about all the technology all around me, the wires stretching everywhere like a spider web. Alarm clock, laptop plugged in to charge, one working speaker, one not-working speaker, the television, an iPod or something in her dresser drawer, the phone in her pocket.

I was going to keep it together, because I really liked this girl. I really did. We’d just spent three hours talking about shit all, talking until they kicked us out of the Sugar Bowl. You can’t do that with just anyone.

And at first, I kept it together. We sat on the bed, a little awkwardly now that the buzz had worn off, but then the Corona brought it back and she ended up with her head notched under my chin, in a way that didn’t seem that comfortable. By the time the Despicable Me kid’s birthday party was either saved or ruined, we were kissing again.

The TV lasted another minute, then blanked out, but Christina assumed I rolled onto the remote. She snuck her hand up my shirt. It felt cold, but I was warm, too warm. When our teeth ticked together in a badly angled kiss, her alarm clock went off full volume.

“Oh my fucking god,” she groaned. Not in a sexy way. We both lunged for it at the same time; she got to it first and yanked it out of the wall. It kept blaring, one of the standard bleating noises that you hear in the movies.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Hate. This. Thing.” She slammed it against the bedframe and it went mercifully quiet. “Marisa’s going to kill me. Super light sleeper.” We were sort of tangled together on top of the bed, now, and my fingers were crackling so bad I was sure she’d feel it any second. We lay there, quiet, listening for roommate footsteps. I thought the mood was totally killed, but then she put a finger on my lips and made it this sexy kind of silence, like we didn’t want to get caught.

And it was on again. I kissed up her neck, trying to find my way to her bra clasp with my free hand. She gave me two tries before she unhooked it herself. I was raging hard by this point, and sort of worried about an early exit scenario, when she stuffed her hand down my pants.

Everything went off. The lights flashed on, painfully bright, then off, then on, and her phone started wailing out a ringtone from beside the bed, some hip-hop hook cranked up to eleven, and the top drawer of her dresser started rattling like crazy.

Christina bolted upright, eyes wide, hand still gripping my prick but now in a painful way.

The lights wouldn’t stop strobing like the world’s shittiest rave, no matter how hard I concentrated, and her phone wouldn’t stop ringing, even though nobody was calling, and the shuddering rattling dresser drawer got louder and louder. I buried my head in a Lion King pillow. I shouldn’t have come inside. I should not have fucking come inside. We could have gone on a picnic, or something, somewhere where cell reception was supposed to be shitty anyways, and there weren’t wires everywhere, strangling me, stringing me in all directions.

Her hand let go, and the jig was up. “Arthur, what the fuck is going on?”

“I’m really sorry,” I said. “Really.”

She swung upright, tapping furiously at her phone. I saw her face in stop motion as the light flashed off and on, morphing from confusion to anger to confusion again. She looked over at the dresser drawer with a horrified expression.

Concentrate, motherfucker.

Her phone went silent and the lights settled, on, but the dresser wouldn’t stop rattling. I watched, hypnotized, as she walked, hypnotized, to the shaking drawer and pulled out the culprit. A purple vibrator bucked in her hand.

She stared at me. I stared at the vibrator, because it was easier than meeting her eyes.

“What the fuck, Arthur?” she said, softly now.

Roommate Marisa was hammering at the door, asking if she was okay in English and then cursing in Spanish.

“I’m a sparkhead,” I said. “Surprise?”

A dead silence in which Christina looked pissed. And worse: hurt. She tightened her grip on the shuddering vibrator.

“I can, uh, I can pay you back for that stuff. I mean, not the dildo, that should be fine, but—

The purple vibrator smacked the wall a millimeter off my head and then I was pushing past Marisa and out the door, fumbling for my shoes as the entry’s lights went disco, as the microwave in the kitchen started bleating loud. I ran for it barefoot, holding my shoes under my arm, and every single streetlamp popped and fizzed out as I went.

When I finally stopped, I was in the park, away from lights and wires and humming things. I thumped my head against the wet trunk of an aspen. It made me think of her sloths, and I got it, now, why they grabbed their own arms. It was a hell of a lot easier than stretching for a branch that looked out of reach.

• • • •

I slept in the next morning, or tried to sleep. Mostly I lounged on my bed and stared at the analogue clock hung up on the stucco across from it, dreading one o’clock, when I had to go to work and tell Erik all about last night’s disaster. When I had to walk past Sunterra on the way.

At 12:53, which was the absolute closest I could cut it, I pulled on my jeans and my burgundy work shirt with its cheerful little We ID Under 25 tag. Today I was going to ID anyone who so much as looked at me.

Like a puss puss, I took the long way around to Liquor Depot, slouching through a dumpster-lined alley to the loading door. No chance of seeing a girl with red-blonde hair and blue-blue eyes through the wide Sunterra windows, fake-smiling and bagging groceries with devastating efficiency, or else, if no one was at the till, sneaking a crossword in.

Erik was selling a regular his first mickey of the day when I came in. As soon as the guy shuffled out, clutching his vodka in one hand and scratching at overgrown chest hair with the other, Erik retrieved the Febreze from under the till and made a few generous arcs to clear up the cigarette smell. He had a sly kind of grin on his face.

“Wild night, huh?”

I wondered if my hair was sticking up in back, or if my eyes were still red. “I fucked it up,” I said. “Like, big time.”

“So I hear, buddy.”

“So you hear?” My heart went off like a jackhammer. “From who? From her? From Christina?”

“She came in this morning,” Erik said, stuffing his hand down his pocket and rustling through receipts. “With a list of damages.”

My heart slowed down and my guts flip-flopped. “Oh.”

“Here.” Erik unrumpled a piece of paper and handed it over. “And maybe stand away from the debit while you read it. It’s already being sketchy today.”

I took the paper, mentally kissing my next paycheck goodbye, and started to read the blue ink chicken scratch.

Hey jerk, so my phone is still under warranty and as long as I don’t tell them I was hanging out with Mister Lightning Butt that should be fine. And Marisa says her laptop is now super slow, but it was like that before so whatever. But you did fry my alarm clock and two light bulbs and my printer, which was new, so BASICALLY you owe me a whole lot of lunches. I’m off at three today if you want to get started? PS. Sorry I almost dilcapitated you. Haha.

“Dude!” Erik waved his hand in front of the note. “I said away from the till.”

I looked down and saw my arm hairs all standing on end. “Sorry.”

But I couldn’t wipe off my grin as I headed for the back with about a billion sparks under my skin.

©2016 by Rich Larson.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rich Larson was born in West Africa, has studied in Rhode Island and worked in Spain, and at 23 he now writes from Edmonton, Alberta. His short work has been nominated for the Theodore Sturgeon and appears in multiple Year’s Best anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Asimov’s, Analog, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Interzone, Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, and Apex. Find him at richwlarson.tumblr.com.

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

Rat-Catcher

Seanan McGuire | 10,000 words

Tybalt, you rat-catcher, will you walk?

—William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

London, England, 1666
September

London is burning.

London is burning, and she is dead, and yet I must consider myself victorious, for others yet live. It is a cold comfort. It will have to do. How small a stretch of time stands between here, where all is ashes, and the days when I was innocent and thought myself yet young, and all the world was meant to be my stage . . .

July, 1666

I knew she was there.

Lenet believed she was stealthy, and would perhaps have been correct, had I not been the cat of the Duke’s Theatre for four long years. All the sounds that grand old building could make were known to me . . . including the sound of a barefoot Cait Sidhe girl stalking the rafters like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. The footsteps stopped above my head.

“Rand,” Lenet hissed, voice pitched low to keep it from carrying to the audience below. She scarcely needed to bother. The evening’s performance of Romeo and Juliet was in full swing, and no one in the theatre—including me—was looking at anything but the stage.

“Rand!” She sounded more insistent now, and decidedly more annoyed. I considered my options, and decided that ignoring her would have the most amusing result. Besides, I have always loved the fight scenes. I was still watching the stage when my youngest sister dropped from the rafters to the catwalk. It was easily a nine-foot drop, but she made it seemingly without effort—something she couldn’t have managed even two years prior. My little Lenet was growing up.

That sobering thought made it all the easier to ignore her as she stood there, glaring at me and waiting for me to respond. She hissed under her breath, a habit she’d been trying, and failing, to break since kitten-hood. Even so, I did not guess her intention until she lashed out and slapped me hard across the cheek.

The sound of flesh hitting flesh was drowned out by the applause from below us. The crowd was still applauding as she pulled back her hand for another blow.

I raised a finger. She stopped. “You could do that, beloved sister of mine, and as you’re faster than I am, you would likely strike me at least twice more before I dropped you on the nice mortals gathered below us. Do you think you could abandon your current shape before you hit the stage, or would your appearance be the news of all the finest taverns for the next month or so?” I turned to face her, smiling. “Either way, you’d likely be in more trouble than I would.”

This time Lenet hissed openly before snapping, “You’d be the one who pushed me.”

“Yes, but you would be the one who fell.”

She narrowed her eyes and scowled at me. The light from below us made her look truly lovely, with her milk-pale skin and her fog-colored hair. Darker stripes of gray were banded down the length of her braid, showing her pattern. I have always thought tabby girls were the prettiest kind.

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

She sat on the catwalk with a huff, adopting a cross-legged pose that hiked her layered skirts up past her knees in a way the mortals would call indecent. “I truly, truly hate you.”

“So you do, my darling Lenet, so you do, but you love me none the less for it.” I leaned forward to get a better view of the action on the stage. “I do love the way they perform the duels here.”

“You’ve seen this show a dozen times!”

“Closer to a dozen dozens, more likely, and yet I never tire of it.” I glanced away from the actors long enough to grin at her. “Can’t you relax for one evening, and enjoy a little entertainment?”

“No, I can’t, and neither should you.” Lenet grabbed my chin before I could turn my face away again, forcing me to meet her eyes. Her pupils were open to their fullest, reducing her orange irises to delicate rings. She looked utterly, unrepentantly fae. This high above the mortal crowd, there was no point to masquerading as one of their number. “Father wants you.”

“So he sent you to retrieve me? Did he consider, for a moment, that I might refuse to come?”

“He did, yes,” she released my chin.

“And?”

“And if I fail to retrieve you, I’m to be put to work minding the kittens for a week’s time, to teach me obedience.” Her scowl could have frightened Oberon himself. “I won’t mind kittens for you, Rand. You’re coming with me, whether you like it or not.”

“Am I, then?” I raised an eyebrow. “Will you fight me in order to bring me home? Much as I love you, darling Lenet, I doubt you’d come out the winner in that particular contest.”

“I won’t fight you.”

“Then what?”

“I’ll sit here and cry through your precious performance if you refuse to come. And tomorrow night, when my time in the nursery ends, I’ll do the same. And the night after that, and the night after that, until such time as you apologize to me.” Lenet smiled sweetly. “You can save us both a great deal of time and suffering if you simply come with me now.”

I cast a longing look toward the actors. Mercutio was preparing to die, and was layering curses down on both the warring houses in the process. “Are you quite sure Father can’t wait?”

“Come on.” Lenet flowed to her feet with the boneless grace only Cait Sidhe girls possess, grabbing my arm and tugging as she tried to make me follow. “You know how it ends, Rand. The girl dies. The boy dies. Everyone dies. They’re mortals, that’s what they do.”

“I suppose that’s true enough,” I said wistfully. I climbed to my feet more slowly than she had and followed her along the catwalk to the wall. I only glanced back twice; a personal best for leaving while the stage was in use. “Everyone dies.”

If anyone in the audience looked up, they would have seen only two tabby cats, one black and brown, one white and gray, climbing up the curtains that hung around the highest of the theatre windows and vanishing out into the night. So far as I know, no one looked.

• • • •

Lenet remained in feline form until we were three full rooftops away from the Duke’s Theatre. Then she stopped, the air around her filling with the smell of silver birch and crushed chalk, and was two-legged again. “You must stop running off like this, Rand!” she scolded, planting her hands on her hips. It was intended to make her look stern. In actuality, it made me want to ruffle her ears and tell her she was endearing when angry. “Father is furious, and when he’s furious, it’s us that suffer, not you. It’s unfair, is what it is.”

My own magic rose as I shifted forms, scenting the air with pennyroyal and musk. I stood, looking at her mildly as I stretched. She scowled. With Lenet, it was best to be mild as milk and sweet as honey—she couldn’t stand it, and anything which drove her to distraction couldn’t help delighting me.

“I don’t see why you should suffer for my misbehaviors, sweet sister,” I said, widening my eyes in a parody of sincerity. I saw enough of it in my actors; why shouldn’t I take a lesson or two from them? “I shall tell Father straightaway.”

“And he will put you through a wall just as quickly, leaving us to tend your wounds,” Lenet snapped before turning to stalk away, her skirts swishing around her ankles. I followed at an easy pace.

There were two chimneys at the center of the roof, one hot from the fire it hosted, one long cooled. Lenet stopped at the second, shooting a final glare in my direction before grabbing the edge and hoisting herself up.

“You’re coming this time?” she asked.

“I am right behind you; you have my word.”

“Worth the paper it’s not printed on,” she grumbled, shifting to feline form before disappearing down the flue.

Laughing, I took two steps back, and then ran at the chimney, shifting forms at the last possible moment. Four-legged, I fell through the darkness and out of the realm of mortal London, down into the Court of Cats.

• • • •

The Court of Cats exists in the tenuous membrane between the Summerlands and every other realm of mortal or Faerie. As such, it belongs to none and all of them at the same time. Passage is through the shadows which are the burden and birthright of the Cait Sidhe. In London, those shadows were kept open by the will of the King, Ainmire, who had held dominion over our Court for nigh two centuries.

The shadows were cold. I breathed shallowly as I fell, trying to feel the edges of our route. My efforts were to no avail; the shadows remained as thick and secretive as they always did. I still had much to learn about the Shadow Roads. Lenet was more adept at their manipulation, despite having only sixteen years to my twenty. By the time I fell back into the light and shifted to a more human form, she was nowhere to be seen.

The hall which connected to the chimney we had used for passage was broad, apparently hewn from solid oak. I sniffed one of the walls, curiously. It smelled of wood smoke and pitch. “Viking construction,” I said. “Really, Lenet. Too simple.”

“Unless, of course, the guessing game was a distraction,” said Colleen, stepping out of a shadow to my left. I turned toward my older sister, and was thus entirely unprepared when Lenet slammed into me, her hands going straight for my throat. Colleen yawned. “Really, Rand. Too simple.”

I would have answered her, but was preoccupied with the effort of keeping Lenet from throttling the life out of my body. I managed to catch the back of her neck, scruffing her hard. She struggled to be free, writhing against my confining hand. I obliged her, releasing her neck and giving her a shove with my free hand for good measure. Lenet snarled as she stumbled backward before shifting her weight to her toes and leaping again. I was more prepared this time, and stepped to the side, allowing her to slam into the wall.

Colleen sighed, stepping forward to take Lenet by the shoulder and tug her around to face her. “Must I forever be surrounded by children? Let me see, Lenet.” The impact had mashed our little sister’s lips against her teeth, bloodying them. Colleen studied the injury before turning to smile at me. “Very good, little brother. Maybe we won’t be spending another week by your bedside after all.”

I sighed. “Hello, Colleen, you look lovely this evening, it’s always such a pleasure to share the loving bosom of my family with such a glorious sister. To what do I owe the honor of this ambush?”

“Father is angry,” she replied, letting Lenet go. “I grow tired of covering for you.”

“Yet you do it all the same.”

Colleen rolled her eyes. “A failing in my character.”

I took a moment to smile at her. I had long suspected that she and I came from the same mother, although Father would never discuss something as common as lineage. She was calico-patterned, with blocks of black and orange skin even in her human form, and her eyes were a sweet, clear shade of green. There was a certain similarity to our features, once the differences of gender and coloration were accounted for.

“Sweet sister,” I said. “Such a failing should be rewarded. Shall we?”

“Thank Oberon, you’ve seen sense.” She stepped forward and looped her arm through mine. Lenet did the same on my opposite side. “No more running.”

“Not tonight,” I agreed, affably enough, and allowed my sisters to pull me down the hall toward the inevitable.

• • • •

In my twenty years, I had never seen a Court of Cats outside of mortal London, or the fae Kingdom of Londinium. As such, I did not know whether they were all controlled by fear and rage. What little I’d heard from the cats who passed through with traveling humans caused me to believe some Courts might, in fact, be kinder places for a kit who dreamt of things more fanciful than simple power. Not that it would have mattered if every other Court of Cats was a paradise second only to Tirn Ailil itself. The Court of Fogbound Cats was my home. I, and my sisters, called that Court’s King our Father.

The three of us shifted to our four-legged forms, the better to navigate the rigging connecting the throne room to the rest of the Court. Father’s assemblies were conducted in what was once the hold of a Spanish sailing galleon, before it was sunk in the mortal world and drifted into the Court of Cats, where all lost things go. How it came into Father’s possession was a mystery to me, and likely to remain so. There was much he did not choose to tell me, nor ever would.

Jars filled with witch-light were studded randomly around the room, providing illumination for our changeling cousins while leaving shadows for the rest of us to come and go as we pleased. Father was seated in his throne at the head of the room, as he so often was, with two of his current doxies competing for possession of his lap. One was a pretty calico who looked too much like Colleen for comfort; the other had the dark hands and pale complexion of the Siamese, with the bright blue eyes to match.

Those blue eyes cast a measuring glance in our direction as my sisters and I stood, stretching feline limbs into human lankiness. Her nose wrinkled, and she turned her head to murmur in my father’s ear, the cant of her chin telegraphing her displeasure as plainly as a twitching tail.

Whatever result she’d been hoping for, I doubt it was the one she got. Father raised his head, eyes narrowing to baleful slits. Then he stood, sending the women sprawling as he stalked toward us. I smiled, stepping forward to meet him.

“Hello, Father. My dear sister was kind enough to inform me that you—”

His hand closed around my throat, cutting off most of my air supply. I forced myself to keep smiling as he jerked me toward him, snarling into my face, “You were bid to be present when the sun went down. The sun has been down for some time. How do you answer this?”

I coughed, endeavoring to look piteous. It wasn’t as difficult as it might have been; the lack of oxygen was beginning to make my lungs ache. He dropped me, hissing in disgust.

“I was otherwise engaged,” I said, rubbing my throat and making no effort to rise. To do so too quickly would just result in his slapping me down again. “I apologize for my delinquency. To what do I owe the honor of this summons?”

Father glared. I looked innocently back, the very picture of the faithful Prince awaiting the word of his King. It’s a look I had had great occasion to cultivate, since I desired neither challenge nor exile.

I had two brothers, once. They were not so good as I at playing the foolish son—and until such time as Father found a younger brother to bear home to my sisters and I, he would no more press me to challenge him than I would rush the moment.

“You are to go to the Divided Courts,” spat Father, finally. “An envoy has been requested for the latest of their assemblies. To show respect, I must send a member of the family. To show scorn, I am sending them you.”

“Your faith in me will not go unrewarded, Father!” I caroled, bounding to my feet with as much vigor as I could muster. My throat ached, but I would not show weakness; not here, not with him watching my every move. “When shall I depart?”

His smile was terrible to behold. “That is why I summoned you at sunset, my dear boy. They expect you at any moment. You will have to travel the shadows—and you will have to do so on your own.”

He turned away, walking back to his throne and the waiting arms of his doxies. When I looked back at my sisters, they would not meet my eyes. All too aware of what awaited me, I raised my chin and walked out of the throne room.

• • • •

My first passage through the shadows occurred when I was eight years of age, still a kitten finding my feet. My father, in his infinite wisdom, opened the door to the Shadow Roads, threw me through, and closed the door again. It was the last of the trials intended to prove that I was, indeed, a Prince of Cats, and not merely another mouth for him to trouble himself feeding.

Colleen found me in a London alleyway three hours later, unconscious, half-frozen, and naked. It was a blessing that I’d not been found by the city’s mortal populace as I lay there, clearly inhuman, and just as clearly defenseless. But I had survived; that was what mattered. I was named a potential heir to Father’s Court the very next day, and the torment commenced in earnest. Ah, well; it was better than the alternatives.

The shadows in the hall slid open under my hand and I stepped into the biting cold, trying desperately to command the path to open ahead of me. This was nothing so simple as navigating the comparatively comfortable and well-traveled path between the rooftops of London and the Court of Cats; this was a branch of the Shadow Roads that was little enough walked to be balky, and to make me yearn for Lenet’s advanced skill as I navigated through the dark.

After what seemed an interminable amount of time, the shadows parted in front of me, and I stepped, shivering, onto the polished marble floor of the royal knowe. The air smelled of sweet posies, and windows on every wall afforded a clear view of the starlit Summerlands sky. I walked with as much grace as I could muster to the nearest of those windows, sitting down upon the sill while I waited for the ache in my lungs to abate.

“I am here, and not eternally lost in frozen darkness,” I said, philosophically. “Things can always be worse.”

“True, but can they be more amusing?”

The voice was female and familiar. I smiled despite the ache in my chest as I turned. “My lady. I would bow, but at the moment, I fear it would land me on either my head or my tail, with no way to predict which would suffer greater damage.”

“As your lack of brain will necessitate your trading upon your looks for most of your life, I suggest your tail.” The owner of the voice was a tall, slender Daoine Sidhe with shockingly red hair and eyes yellow enough to have caused me to tease her, on several occasions, about her clear Cait Sidhe ancestry. She had none, more’s the pity; she would have made a fabulous cat.

We met when circumstance caused me to pursue a mouse into her bedchambers. It’s rare that a woman makes her first impression upon me with a broom handle to my skull, but that was September. Rare, indeed, especially for a lady of the Daoine Sidhe. She was the best of them.

“My lady’s will be done.” I stood, offering her my hands. “My sweet September. I have counted the seconds we were apart.”

“Please don’t let my husband hear you say that,” she said, taking my hands in hers and squeezing them lightly. “Come along, Rand. The court has already been called to order, and your tardiness reflects poorly on your father.”

“What a shame,” I said blandly, and allowed her to lead me down the hall to the royal receiving room.

The Court of Cats is made up of the world’s lost things, rooms and halls and narrow spaces stitched together with enchantments too ancient to see. The knowe of the King and Queen of Londinium was something altogether different, a vast palace beyond the wildest dreams of any mortal regent. It was one of the oldest knowes in all of Britain, and it carried a weight of history that was impressive even by the standards of the fae. Being a cat, I strolled along as if I was not impressed in the least.

“What is this about, this summons?” I asked. “Have your brothers been naughty again? I would be pleased to stand witness to their banishment.”

“Nothing so pleasant for you, I’m afraid.” September looked at me, the levity gone from her eyes. “The Undersea has sent an ambassador, but he has refused to present his message to the court until a representative of every fief and household in the city proper was present—including the Court of Cats.”

I frowned. “That’s troublesome, and quite strange, but I do not see the gravity.”

“The ambassador is Merrow. The message is Roane.”

“Ah.” I swallowed, wishing my human form had a tail that I could lash in my dismay. “I suppose we had best hurry, then.”

“Yes,” September agreed. “We had best.”

• • • •

Of the Roane, only three things need be known: that they see the future, but never clearly; that few of them remain among the living; and that the one disaster they did not foretell was the one which killed the greater part of their number. Some believe they saw even that coming and decided to allow it, believing the loss of their lives would balance some greater tragedy ahead. Perhaps I am a selfish man, but I cannot believe they knew what was coming and chose to simply let it happen.

What few Roane remained after the slaughter were taken in by the courts of the Undersea, where they have been cosseted and protected as prophets ever since. For a Roane to be sent to the land was near unprecedented . . . and while I was young, I had yet to encounter anything that was both unprecedented and pleasant.

September raised a finger to her lips, signaling for quiet as we reached the throne room doors. Two pages in royal livery waited there, both Tylwyth Teg. They bowed and opened the doors, allowing us to slip inside and join the crowd already assembled. September had spoken the truth. There were over twenty independent fiefdoms within the city of London alone, and at least twice that many people occupied the room, looking as anxious and unsettled as actors gathered for a first rehearsal. The King and Queen would be the theatre’s patrons, then, sitting on their thrones with the bulk of the assembly before them. That left the director’s role for the shark-eyed Merrow standing in front of the thrones. A slip of a girl with hair the color of a seal’s pelt hung from his hand like a rag, barely supporting her own weight.

The King raised his head when the door swung closed. His lips pressed together in a hard line as he saw me. “The Court of Cats has finally seen fit to grace us with a guest,” he said, and looked to the Merrow. “Might you tell us now why you have come? We are consumed with curiosity.”

From the murmuring of the assembled, it was plain the King did not employ the royal “we” in this instance. Everyone here wanted to know, myself included. I slipped away from September, working my way through the crowd with a cat’s skill. In only a few moments, I was near the front, where I could better see the Merrow and his silver-haired companion.

“We have come at the bidding of King Murtagh, who has long appreciated the relationship between Londinium and his own lands, and who wished to send a warning to you while warnings might still do some good.” The Merrow addressed his words, not to the King and Queen, but to the crowd. Interesting, that.

“And what is this ‘warning’?” asked the King, barely keeping the annoyance from his tone.

“A moment, sire.” The Merrow turned to the waif who dangled from his hand, crouching to look through the curtain of her hair. “Naia? It’s time to speak now, dear heart, and then we can go home. You’d like that, wouldn’t you? To go home?”

The Roane girl nodded, so slightly that it might have been only a tremble. Then she raised her head, turning eyes the blue of a midday sky on the room. She looked as if she only half-saw us. The rest of her gaze was far away, looking at something I was grateful not to see.

“The waves will keep us safe,” she said, in a faltering voice. “The land has no such merciful protection.”

“That’s true, my dear,” he said. “Can you tell the land what they need protection from?”

“Ah.” She stood up a little straighter, brushing the hair from her face with her free hand. Gaze suddenly focusing on the present, she said, “The fires will come, and though many will run, few will survive the burning. In their wake will come sickness such as has never been seen before nor will be seen again, and it will be a second burning, one that kills without concern for fae or mortal bloodlines. Few who call Londinium home will survive those fires, and royal lines will be henceforth shattered into history and dust.”

The room went completely silent as she spoke, all but holding its collective breath. Naia looked from face to face, expression thoughtful.

“I have seen many of you before, in the motion of the water,” she said finally. “Too many have I seen on night-haunt wings. Flee this land while the future can yet be changed. Stay, and may the mercy of the waters be upon you.” The clarity fled her eyes, and she turned back to her companion, whimpering, “Can we go home now? Please? This place is too dry, and too vast, and set too soon by far to burn.”

“Yes, dear one, we can go. You have done well.” The Merrow twisted to look at the King and Queen. “Three seers have brought the same vision to our King. Fires, and sickness, such as will kill whomever remains here. If you would save your people, evacuate and leave your lands. If you will not do so . . . then may Oberon have mercy, for the flames, I fear, will not.”

The crowd parted to let the Merrow and his companion walk from the room, Naia leaning on him like he was the only thing keeping her upright. The silence lasted only until the pair had left the room. Then the gathering erupted, everyone demanding answers, information, reassurance—all things the King and Queen, being as stunned as the rest of us, were hard-pressed to give.

I made my way back through the crowd to September, who was standing frozen beside the doors. “I should carry this news home, and quickly,” I said. “Will you be well?”

September laughed uncomfortably. “I will tell Malcolm it’s time to visit his family in Wales. He’ll be delighted, I’m sure. Don’t worry for me, Sir Cat.” She reached out, grabbing one of my hands in both of hers, and smiled. “I’m a Torquill. No matter what, we survive. We’re frankly annoying in that regard.”

“See to it that you do,” I commanded, and pulled my hand from hers. The room behind me still alive with outraged voices, I slipped out into the hall and began to make my way home.

• • • •

Fear is a great motivator, and urgency a great enhancer of skill. My journey back to the Court of Cats was only half so difficult as the journey outward had been, and I felt barely chilled when I stepped out of the shadows. I was in another of our endlessly interchangeable halls, this one stone-walled, with tattered tapestries adding little warmth. I stopped before I’d taken three full steps, raising my head and sniffing the air. Then I sighed.

“Please come out,” I said. “This is not the time, and my nerves are too frayed by far to be a pleasant opponent in a game of catch-the-mouse.”

“You’re no fun when you’re serious,” declared Lenet, stepping from behind one of the tapestries. Then she frowned, pupils narrowing. “You’re pale. Rand, are you well? What ails you?”

“Is Colleen here?” I looked around the hall again, consumed with the sudden need to see the both of my sisters alive and well. “Colleen, come out. I have no patience for games.”

A calico cat slunk out of the shadows at the base of one wall, and stood, resolving itself into my sister. Her frown melted into a look of concern that mirrored Lenet’s. “Brother?”

I stepped forward, grabbing each of them with one arm and sweeping them into a crushing three-part embrace. Lenet squeaked, sounding almost like a kitten herself. Then they both embraced me back, purring soothingly. I buried my face in their shoulders, breathing in the reassuring scent of them, Lenet’s crushed chalk and silver birch, Colleen’s thistles and juniper. Dimly, I realized that my shoulders were slumped, the sheer terror of the Roane’s prediction pressing down on them like leaden weights.

London, and Londinium, were to burn. Whatever disaster was ahead of the city, the normal delineation between worlds would not protect those of us who lived there.

“Rand, what’s wrong?” asked Colleen.

I pulled away from their embrace, keeping hold of their arms as I studied their faces. They looked back at me, wide-eyed and bewildered.

“If I told you that we had to run, leave this Court and flee as far as legs would carry us, would you go?” I asked, urgently. “Would you trust me, and follow me, and not ask why?”

Colleen raised her hand, rubbing its edge along my cheek. “You know we couldn’t. Father would find us, and the punishment would be worse than whatever fate you had us flee.”

I sighed. “Would that I were half so sure as you.” I stepped back, letting the pair of them go. “I must go meet with Father. Will you attend?”

“Gladly,” said Lenet, offering her hand. Colleen did the same, and hand in hand, the three of us walked down the hall to the room where the King our father was waiting.

• • • •

Luck, of a kind, was with us; after all the importance Father had placed on my going to the Court of Londinium without delay, he had chosen to show his own disdain for their message by disappearing on some errand of his own. The throne room was deserted. I walked to his throne, placing a hand upon the cushion softening it. The fabric was cool. He had been gone for some time; possibly even as long as I had. I bit back a curse, stepping back and turning to face Lenet and Colleen. They hung back some feet away, watching me with wary eyes.

“Where is he?”

“Father no more reports his movements to us than you to him,” said Lenet. “What is this? Why do you fret and not speak of the reasons?”

“Be kind, Lenet. His message may be for his King’s ears only.”

Lenet hissed, cuffing Colleen hard across the face. Colleen hissed back, but didn’t hit her. Lenet raised her hand again, bobbing it in the air like she might strike.

I sighed. “Amusing as this is, this is not the time.”

Now the looks they turned toward me were baffled, like I had suddenly declared my intent to sever all ties with the Court of Cats and join the Cu Sidhe in their baying at the moon. “Brother, are you well?” asked Colleen.

“No.” I shook my head. “I am not well at all. Father bound you to fetch me to him once before; I beg you, do the same again. When he returns, come for me. I must speak to him, and I must do my speaking soon.”

“Where will you be?” asked Colleen.

“Where I always am, when there are things I should rather avoid.” A faint smile tugged at my lips. “I’m going to the theatre.”

• • • •

The night’s performance was long over, the crowd dispersed back into the streets. The sound of voices drifted from the rear of the stage, where some of the cast and crew had doubtless gathered for a laugh before returning to the hovels they called home. Ah, the glamorous life of the theatre. I walked in that direction with my tail held high and my ears pricked forward, confident that my compatriots would sense nothing of my distress in my demeanor. They were only human, after all.

The Cait Sidhe, more than almost any other breed of fae, have always co-existed with humanity. There’s some question as to whether man domesticated the cat, or whether the Cait Sidhe domesticated man and decided to share the spoils of our labor with our little mortal cousins. Whatever the reality, the truth of the matter is that where there are men, there have always been cats, and cream, and Cait Sidhe hiding their true nature behind a purr.

The first to spot me was Dick Allington, the company’s erstwhile director. “Look! Tom’s come to cast approval on our performance!” he roared, saluting my entrance with his flask. “Were we successful, old boy? Did we pack the stalls with feet enough to kick loose some tasty rats for your supper?”

I walked over to him, stopping some three feet distant. There I sat, wrapping my tail about my legs, and miaowed as piteously as I could. The men laughed.

“No rats for Old Tom tonight, Dicky! I told you the second act needed work!” Peter Skelling was a man of all roles and a master of none. He’d played near every part the theatre held title to, and done them all diffidently well, with nothing to either shame or recommend him. There was something to be said for a man who devoted so much time and energy to being unrelentingly average.

“Then it will have to be cream and cold chicken again, eh, Tom?” Dick leaned forward to scratch beneath my chin. I closed my eyes, submitting to the familiarity. After so many years in this theatre, these men were owed at least that much from me.

The thought was almost laughable in its absurdity. A Cait Sidhe, owing anything to a human? It was unthinkable. And yet it was so, and I would have done anything to spare them from what was yet to come.

Anything but break the veil of silence that stood between Faerie and the mortal world. There are things too precious to be broken for the sake of a room full of mortal men.

“Here, sir,” said a voice—young, barely broken, the human equivalent of a half-grown kitten. I turned, opening my eyes. Young Tom, the boy who played the company’s female roles and children, knelt beside me, setting two dishes on the floor. One held the promised chicken; the other, milk, instead of cream. Close enough, considering I had come to say farewell. I moved toward the dishes, bending my head toward the chicken.

Tom dared a scratch behind my ears as I ate. I did not protest, but hunkered down to eat, tail-tip twitching. The men roared laughter once again.

“He’s finally learning to love you as we do, Tommy,” said Peter. “Why, that’s the first time I’ve seen you touch Old Tom without paying blood for the privilege.”

I flattened one ear, making it plain that I was listening. The men continued talking, blissfully unaware that I could understand them.

The chicken was plain but pleasant; the milk, slightly sour, but drinkable all the same. I ate perhaps half of each before rising, stretching my back into an eloquent crescent, and beginning to make my rounds of the room. Half the company was here, at best, but it would have to do, for I could not risk this again.

At each man, I stopped, butted my head against knees or shins, and then miaowed. They laughed and commented on how affectionate I was, none of them knowing that what I said, over and over, was “You must leave London at once. Please, friends, while there is still time.”

When my circuit brought me back to Dick, I leapt into his lap and stood, my rear paws on his knee and my forepaws on his chest. He laughed. I patted his cheek with one paw, claws carefully velveted, and miaowed again.

“Oh, you’re a good lad, Tom. A theatre is only as good as its cat, I say.” Dick’s hand caressed my ears with the ease of long practice. I set up a rumbling purr, dropping back to his lap and folding myself into a loaf. These men, who had never exchanged a word with me and knew nothing of my place or station . . . these men were some of the truest friends I had ever known.

I remained where I was until a burst of laughter from Peter caused me to open my eyes and turn to look at him. “Tom, you old rascal, you didn’t tell us you had such pretty girlfriends!” He was pointing to the door, where two cats—one a delicate tabby, the other a larger, but still lovely, calico—sat, tails wrapped around their legs, looking at us.

Colleen miaowed. Only once, but that was all that I required. I stood, stretching languidly, and butted my head one last time against Dick’s chest before jumping down and walking to my sisters. The men laughed, Dick calling, “Off home to the wives, eh, Tom? Hope you’ve been well-behaved, for I’d hate to see a cat put into the dog’s house!”

The sound of their laughter followed us out of the theatre. They had been my friends; they had been the best of humanity. I had killed a hundred rats to please them; I had viewed near as many performances on that lonely stage. And I would never see any of them again.

• • • •

We made our way back to the rooftops before resuming our human forms, the mingled scents of our magic mixing with the sweet decay of the London summer night. Lenet turned to face me, walking backward along the edge of the roof.

“Father returned in a temper,” she said. “He did not expressly send us to retrieve you and may well be angry over our absence by now. I hope you have reason for what you do tonight, Rand, and are not merely trying to be troublesome.”

“I always have reasons for my actions, dear sister,” I said.

“Then why to the theatre? Why back to your human pets?”

“I had to say goodbye to them.”

Colleen cast me a startled, wide-eyed glance. Lenet looked at me appraisingly before she turned to face our destination, walking normally once more. Neither of them said anything as we walked, and I allowed the silence to hold. There was nothing here for any of us to say.

The shadows seemed to part a trifle easier this time, perhaps because I was too tired to fight against them. We emerged just outside the throne room door, Colleen a few steps before me, Lenet the same distance behind. Neither of them attacked as I straightened, caught my breath, and walked toward the door. They knew as well as I did that this was not the time, even if they were not so clear as to the reasons why.

I hesitated at the doorway, wondering if there was any other way than this. Could I take my sisters and follow September and her husband to his homeland, far from Londinium? I’d played at theatre’s cat, and to play at housecat would not be so great a stretch. We would be safe. We would be in the company of friends.

We would be traitors, and while we might yet be cats, we would no longer be Cait Sidhe. I breathed slowly out, and opened the door.

Father’s doxies were not in evidence; nor were the other members of his Court. The silence was almost palpable as I walked in, my sisters behind me. Our feet made no sound. My oldest brother used to stomp when he walked, more human than feline, no matter how often Father tried to beat it out of him. I had barely thought of Carr in years—not since the day he challenged for the Kingship, and lost. The room had been just this quiet on that day, when it was his turn to walk toward the throne, and five of us stood arrayed behind him.

Cailin paid the price of his transgression, pretty little Cailin, with her black and white fur and her smile like the morning. Would it be Lenet or Colleen who paid the price of mine if I failed?

I could not fail. “Hello, Father.” My words fell into the silence like stones. “I must speak with you. It is a matter of some grave importance.”

He raised his head, expression calculating. “You overreach yourself, kit. I choose what holds importance in this Court.”

“You sent me to hear a message.”

“Is that what I sent you to do? I thought I sent you to silence the whining of the Divided Courts and buy me peace. Peace which you are now disrupting.”

I took a slow breath, silently begging Oberon for strength. Then, carefully, I said, “The Undersea sent an ambassador who tended to their message—tended, not tendered, for she was a Roane girl, and not some simple proclamation.” The first spark of interest came into his eyes. I continued: “She said the city was to burn, and all of Londinium with it. The division of the worlds will not protect us. We must flee, Father. That is what the Roane’s vision told her, and what she carried here, to us. We must flee, or surely we will burn.” And those who did not burn would face a death even less forgiving. He had to see the sense of flight. He had to understand—

There was no warning before he struck. Ainmire had been King too long for that. One moment, he was in his throne and the next, he was slamming me to the ground. I had barely seen him move. He placed a foot against my chest, pinning me down, and roared, more lion than housecat. I struggled to free myself, scrabbling uselessly at his ankle.

“You do not dictate here!” he snarled, and bent, taking his foot away before he grabbed me by my shoulders, claws piercing skin and flesh through the fabric of my shirt and waistcoat. “I am King! I say whether we stand or run! I protect us, and no fire will drive me from my Kingdom!” He shook me, claws digging deeper. “Do you understand?”

I looked into the yellow-ringed darkness of his eyes, and saw that there was no reasoning with him. Still, I had to try. Struggling to keep my voice level despite the pain, I said, “You are King, Father, but the fire will not care. The Roane are never wrong. If we stay, we will burn.”

“As long as I am King, we stay.” He dropped me, hard, like he would discard a piece of garbage. “What do you say to that, kitten?”

I closed my eyes.

Kings and Queens of Cats are made, yes, but Princes and Princesses are born. Only some Cait Sidhe have the power required to take the throne, and much to the annoyance of our rulers, very few of us breed true. So far as I knew, all of the kittens Ainmire had been able to sire had been Cait Sidhe, pure and simple—rare things, to be sure, but not nobility in waiting.

Without challengers to come from within, he left himself open to challenge from without. No roving King would challenge a Court with a Prince who might yet take it. So our father, in his wisdom, spent years purchasing potential heirs. Three boys to challenge for his throne, none trained to win it. Three girls, to hold those boys in check, and remind them of the consequences of their actions.

Cailin died when Carr failed his challenge for the throne. Arles chose exile over battle, leaving me with two hostages to my name: Lenet, and Colleen. For their sake, I had never dared come this close to challenge.

For their sake, I had no other choice.

“I say, Father, that I am no longer a kitten.” I opened my eyes, smiling as blithely as I could while my stomach shriveled to a solid knot of fear. The rules of chivalry and gentle conduct belong to the Divided Courts, and not to the Court of Cats. We respect only blood. “Nor, I am afraid, are you a King.”

I launched myself at him almost before I finished speaking, claws fully extended. He roared, swatting me aside. It was reflex on his part, and reflex which acted in my favor, as I went sprawling but was not cut any deeper. I scrambled to my feet and leapt again—and this time, Father let me hit him, let me dig my claws deep into his chest.

I did not see the trap until it was too late. His hand closed around the back of my neck, yanking me loose and shaking me until my teeth rattled. I kicked at his belly, slicing and tearing until the hot, copper-bright smell of his blood filled the air. He roared again, slamming me to the floor so hard that something snapped in my chest.

“Kitten,” he spat, foot catching me in the belly. “Boy. Weakling. I let you live this long because of that, but you’re as addled as your brothers were.” I hissed weakly, trying to rise. He kicked me again, knocking the last of the wind from my lungs, and I sank back to the floor. “What am I to do with you? Hmm?” He knelt so I could see his face, and smiled. “I know. Sleep well, little prince. You have failed me for the last time.”

His hand caught me in the middle of my chest, and before I realized what he was doing, I was falling into the endless black of the Shadow Roads. A glimmer of light above me exposed the door he had opened to push me through . . . and then that slammed with the finality of an executioner’s axe coming down, and all was dark, and cold.

• • • •

I do not know how long I fell, only that nothing came stop my falling. Holding the faces of my sisters firmly in my mind, I forced myself to stretch a hand into the black and grab the edge of the doorway I told myself was there. My fall continued a few seconds more before my fingers hit something solid, jerking the rest of me to a halt. I hung there, suspended and surprised.

Then I began to climb.

My ribs were aching, and the pain in my stomach was worse. I continued climbing, focusing on getting to someone who could help. The Cait Sidhe harm. We do not heal. Lenet and Colleen needed me to get back to them—needed me to finish challenging Father, before he . . . before . . .

I pulled myself further up, reached out, and opened a door out of darkness, into light.

September looked up from the trunk she was packing as I stumbled out of her wardrobe. Her eyes went wide. I attempted to say something witty to put her mind at ease—anything at all—but the words refused to come. I hit the floor a moment later, and fell into a second, much warmer, darkness.

• • • •

The pain in my ribs was gone when I woke, as were my clothes. I was tucked into a large bed, with a goose feather duvet stretched across me. I sat up, stretched, and rose, heading out in search of my hostess—or, failing that, my clothing.

I met September halfway down the hall, a bundle in her arms. She stopped when she saw me. “You’re awake,” she said, after a moment’s uncomfortable silence.

I bowed. “I am, and feeling much the better. Your gracious hospitality is a true credit to your court. Now, if I might be reunited with my trousers, I truly must be going. Not that modesty moves me, but there is something of a draft within the shadows, and I prefer to be covered.”

Wordlessly, she held her bundle out to me. I took it, unrolling it to reveal my clothes. I was unsurprised to note that my waistcoat was gone. The tears from Father’s claws were doubtless impossible to mend. “You are too kind to a wayward fool,” I said gravely, and bowed again before beginning to dress.

September found her voice as I tied the front of my trousers, saying, “What is going on, Rand? You fell from nowhere.”

“Ah.” I glanced up at her. “I fell from the Shadow Roads, where I was thrown upon failing to kill my father. I’m afraid there’s no choice in the matter now. I must kill him or let the Court of Fogbound Cats burn, and my sisters with it. I do appreciate your hospitality, my lady. You are the best of your kind.”

“Rand—” She took a step forward, one hand out as if to reach for me. Then she stopped, realizing who she was, who I was, and pulled her hand away. “Good luck, my friend.”

I mustered a smile. “There is no luck, lady. But your wishes warm my heart. Now fly before the flames arrive.” I turned, not letting myself look back—looking back has never brought anything but misfortune and pain—as I parted the shadows at the base of the nearest wall and stepped into the dark.

• • • •

For the first time, the shadows did not fight me. I had faced them without fear, fought through them to a chosen destination, and now, at last, they conceded my authority. I ran through darkness, cutting through the space between the Lady Torquill’s halls and the Court of my father. In what seemed like only seconds, I was bursting back out into the world.

I landed on my feet, surrounded by a stunned ring of Cait Sidhe. “Father! Face me!”

The man at the room’s far end turned slowly, revealing the grave face of the man who bought me, raised me, and played the only parent I had ever known. I caught the briefest glimpse of the figure before him as he moved. She was pale and unmoving, and I did not need to see her face; her hair was like the London fog.

My heart died a little in that moment. I had come as swiftly as I could. I had come too late. “She did nothing wrong,” I half-whispered.

“She failed to counsel you to patience,” Ainmire replied. “She was never fit to be a Queen.”

“She was my sister, and I loved her.”

“Then you should have thought before you struck me.” He began to circle, setting the edges of what would be our battleground. The Cait Sidhe fell back, opening space. None would interfere. Not here; not with this. “You knew what you did. You did it all the same.”

“If we stay here, all of us will die.”

“How would you know that? The mortal world has burned before, and the seal-kin are not our kind. Their prophecies do not bind us.” He raised a hand, claws gleaming in the witch-light. “The world can always do with fewer human rats.”

“She was my sister,” I repeated, and leapt. Not toward him—into the darkness. The shadows opened for my passage, closing behind me.

Father’s frustrated roars still echoed through the room when I slipped out of the shadows, now feline-formed and clinging to the beams closest to the ceiling. I kept low as I slunk along, waiting until I was close to the wall before miaowing loudly, and leaping back into the shadows.

I emerged in the room’s furthest corner, and watched as Father transformed himself into a cat and scrambled up the nearest tapestry to the rafters where he stalked, snarling. I straightened on two legs, cupped my mouth, and called, “Hadn’t you best kill me quick, Father? Your subjects will begin to question your command.”

He hissed before he leapt. That was all the warning I needed. I dove back into the darkness.

I expected to tire. I expected him to follow me onto the Shadow Roads, catch me by the throat, and break my body against the dark. Neither happened. My fear and anxiety were gone, replaced by a cold core of anger. He would endanger his subjects for nothing but his pride, and his unwillingness to risk losing his Court. A fair concern, but not worth a single life. He backed me into challenging him, and Lenet—ah, Lenet, my darling girl—paid the cost of his machinations. Nothing I could do this day would bring her back to me.

Navigating him into the desired position took what felt like hours, but was doubtless only minutes. I was a theatre cat. I knew the importance of blocking. When he stepped into the center of the room, below the point where once the sailors hung their nets to dry, I saw my cue, and I took it.

My drop from the rafters caught him off-guard. He snarled and grabbed for me, but my arm was already locked around his neck, and my knees against the sides of his ribcage. He struggled, magic gathering as he prepared to shift forms. I tightened my grip, hissing in his ear, “I will snap your neck if you become smaller than I am. Concede, Father. Do not make me kill you.”

His roar was muffled by the lack of air. Choking, he stumbled forward, one hand outstretched, while the other clawed vainly at my arm. I squeezed tighter, trying to hold the thought of Lenet—pretty Lenet, who was my sister—in my mind. She should not have died. None of them should have died.

“You . . . want . . . to escape . . . a fire?” he wheezed. “Fine . . . then. I hope you . . . freeze.” His magic rose again, this time not to transform, but to open the door onto the Shadow Roads. He tumbled through it, me still on his back, arm still tight around his neck.

When the shadows opened again some small time later, I stepped out alone. The Court looked at me for a long, appraising moment. In the back of the room, one of Father’s doxies began to cry. I watched them impassively.

Then Colleen stepped forward and said, “The King is dead.”

“The Prince has died in slaying him,” I replied.

She nodded, accepting my ritual response. “Who claims the crown?”

I thought of Lenet in the rafters of the Duke’s Theatre, pulling me away before the play could end. I thought of Mercutio, who played the fool, and died for his sins.

Princes die when they become Kings. It is the way of things. But oh, I would miss the foolish Prince I had been.

“Tybalt, King of the Court of Fogbound Cats,” I said.

The Court roared its approval.

• • • •

It was no small task to convince the Court of Cats to leave. Over and over, I repeated the Roane’s message, until I began to understand, at least a little, why Father had been as he was. Cait Sidhe do not respond well to anything but shows of force. So I showed them force, drove them from Londinium with tooth and claw and threats of worse to come if they did not leave me be.

By the end of the first month, the knowes of the Divided Courts were empty shells, drained of everything that once made them so grand. I prowled their halls, watching the shadows creep in and claim them, and wondered how many of them would fall down into the dark, making the Court of the Cats even greater.

By the middle of the second month, only two Cait Sidhe remained in all of Londinium. “Come with me,” said Colleen, grabbing my hand. “Please. I do not wish to see you burn.”

“And I do not wish to see another sister gone to the night-haunts.” I pulled my hand away. “You are all the family I have left, Colleen. You must go. When this city burns, I would know that you were far from here, free and happy and alive.”

“What am I to do?”

I smiled a bit, caressing her cheek. “Find a theatre. Be their cat. Keep the rats from the costumes, and the shadows from the stage.”

She nodded. “I wish you would come.”

“And I wish you would go.”

“Please.”

“If I go, who will hold this Kingdom?” I looked at her solemnly. “Another King will come and establish a Court if I am not here to stop him. It is the nature of cats. And when the city burns, all their deaths will be on my conscience.”

Colleen laughed. “A cat with a conscience. Is there anything more pitiful?”

“A king without a court, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.” She sighed. “Open roads, dear brother.”

“Sweet shadows, and may the world forever run a step behind you.”

“I will miss you,” she said. Darting forward, she kissed my cheek. Then she whirled, pulling the shadows aside like the curtains of a stage. She dove into the darkness and was gone, leaving only me, and my ghosts, behind her.

• • • •

Day by day, I stalked the streets of London, waiting for the flames. And still, when they came, I was not prepared. A mortal bakery caught fire in the night, setting streets and blocks ablaze before anyone realized what was happening. The knowes of the Divided Courts, abandoned by their holders, were not fully sealed; pixies, fleeing for their lives, pried open a door they should have left alone. Their burning wings and hair ignited tapestries and carpets, and Londinium burned alongside her mortal sister.

Prophecies are tricky things. Had the custodians of those knowes not fled, would the doors have held their seals? Would the pixies have been left outside to burn, while all the Divided Courts and Court of Cats remained safely in our bolt holes?

I think not. I think that, once the fire was seen, it had to come, and the only question was who would be left to burn. But perhaps I think that because to do otherwise is to yield to madness. London rests in the hand of the first fire, with the second yet to come. Lenet is dead, and with her, the boy who loved her as a sister and a friend. The night-haunts could not come for that simple Prince. He died in darkness all the same. I had become a King of Cats, and buried the Prince in shadows.

I sat on the edge of the Tower Bridge, watching London burn, and wondered whether the cold would ever leave me—or whether, in the measure of things, I would want it to. London is burning, Lenet is dead. I am Tybalt, King of Cats, and all the rest . . .

All the rest is silence.

—For Alligator

©2012 by Seanan McGuire. Originally published in A Fantasy Medley 2, edited by Yanni Kuznia. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Seanan McGuire was born and raised in Northern California, resulting in a love of rattlesnakes and an absolute terror of weather. She shares a crumbling old farmhouse with a variety of cats, far too many books, and enough horror movies to be considered a problem. Seanan publishes about three books a year, and is widely rumored not to actually sleep. When bored, Seanan tends to wander into swamps and cornfields, which has not yet managed to get her killed (although not for lack of trying). She also writes as Mira Grant, filling the role of her own evil twin, and tends to talk about horrible diseases at the dinner table.

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

Michael Doesn’t Hate His Mother

Marie Vibbert | 3,900 words

At rest, coiled up, Michael’s mother is about the size of a riding mower. Michael’s living room is not much bigger than her.

With a shudder, she rises. Her little piston feet march, pulling her out of her coil. Lifters above the feet kick out like dancers in a line. She snakes into the kitchen. Julie shrieks in horrified delight. Their mother opens the refrigerator.

Julie and Michael watch as she prepares them lunch. She nudges them into chairs at the table. They haven’t eaten at the table in a long time. Maybe she’s getting better. The food isn’t quite right, but they gnaw the uncooked noodles and push the raw meat aside.

Their mother doesn’t want to let them leave the house. When Julie tries to follow Michael out to play, their mother slithers around her, blocking the door. Their mother has struts that elbow out and banks of blades that saw past each other.

Another time, Julie is sitting in the dirt under the tree in the back yard, digging holes with a trowel. Michael wants to see what she’s doing. His mother plucks at his clothes and drags herself outside with him. So he goes back inside. He doesn’t want his mother getting dirty.

He sneaks out the back door while Julie is with it in the front room. He plays with his friends.

It’s late when he comes home. As he passes her, his mother turns suddenly and crushes him against the wall. He is more startled than afraid. His ribs bend against her weight as he gasps. He pushes her back into her place and goes to bed.

In the morning, his mother is still in her spot, but the sawing blades are all swinging. They never stop. At dinnertime, the mother starts breaking dishes. She picks up a dish off the top of the stack in the cupboard. She turns and slams half the dish into the counter, then drops the half in her claw to the floor. Then she picks up the next dish. She keeps going until all the dishes are gone, like it’s a chore or a game. Julie screams and tries to get the unbroken plates away from their mother. She cuts her hand on the broken edges. Michael wraps the cut in toilet paper and masking tape. They don’t have any Band-Aids big enough.

“Mom is mean,” Michael tells child protective services on the phone.

“Everyone thinks their mother is mean,” she says. “You’re just not used to actual, attentive parenting.”

Michael and Julie tend to their mother. Carpet needs to be cleaned out of her teeth. She needs to be oiled and tightened. There are parts that pull loose and parts that seize. Near as Michael can tell, his mother is trying to destroy herself.

She’s loud. She smells funny—like spoiled salad dressing. The whole house carries her reek; even in the hot, pink-fiberglass-lined crawl space, where Michael goes to hide in the comforting heat and dust, he can catch a faint whiff of vinegar and hear her off-rhythm thumps and screeches.

Michael leaves first thing in the morning to get away from her. It’s Saturday. The carpet is all chewed to pieces, rising in a foam of tangled strings around his mother, baring patches of scratched wood floor.

“Can I come with?” Julie asks. She has a hollowness around her eyes, like her skin is getting transparent.

“You’re too little,” Michael says, and feels like a bully. “We’re playing sports. You’ll get in the way.” It’s true, but that’s not why he says it. Their mother might leave the house if no one stays with her.

Michael feels something sharp at the back of his throat, like he has tried to swallow a knife. Julie sits against the wall by the stairs, her knees in front of her, staring at their mother. He wants her to stare at him instead, to stare accusingly. He waits by the door to give her the opportunity, but she doesn’t, so he goes.

Darla lives in the house across the street, and Shaun and Stella live in the house next door to Darla. The four of them play all manner of sports and chasing games in the combined space of the two yards. Sometimes Julie plays, too, but usually when that happens she and Stella sneak off together to do girl-things. Darla isn’t into girl-things. She is into bossing the boys through two-on-two versions of football and baseball with lots of ghost-men on base. Lately, though, Darla has been oddly aloof, not wanting to be center anymore though she used to revel in her unique ability to hike the ball properly.

When Michael gets to her backyard, Darla is waiting for him. Stella stands back a bit, by the oak tree in her own yard, watching like a sentry or sniper.

Darla walks up to Michael, her head down, her hands clasped behind her. She kicks the dirt. She is in her favorite Cleveland Browns jersey.

“Hi,” Michael says, feeling like someone has to say that. “What’s up?”

Darla looks back at Stella, and though Stella does nothing, Darla nods at a silent signal. She breathes in and faces Michael, eyes up and defiant. “You wanna go with me?”

GO. It’s the code word of all code words in their junior high school world, and he wants to “go” with someone. Not right now, but soon. Not before the other boys, and not later than them, either. He’d always imagined he’d “go” with a girl from TV—not the star of the show but the Girl Next Door, or the Quirky Best Friend—not a real girl, and certainly not Darla, who is larger than him in every possible dimension. Michael stares at her strong, square face. If it were a Magic 8 Ball, the answer was “outlook unclear.” He steps back. His eyes involuntarily drop to her small breasts, bumping out the tops of the seven and five on her jersey. He quickly snaps his eyes up. “Uh . . . I . . . don’t know.”

Her lower eyelids frown and he thinks she is about to punch him, but she just nods. “When will you know?”

“I don’t know,” he says, honestly, horrified at his own lack of knowledge. Shouldn’t he know? Painfully and suddenly it’s clear that life will not hand him a ring of hearts or fill his ears with violins to tell him that he has fallen in love. It might happen for normal kids, but not for him, not ever.

“That’s cool,” says Darla, shrugging.

Suddenly the fear of not going with Darla is greater than the fear of going with her. He might never be asked again. “What would we do? Would we . . . would we have to kiss?” He tries not to recoil.

Darla says, “No. I mean, not at first. You have to go together for, like, a year before you kiss.”

“So we would, like, hold hands?”

She nods like they are discussing the infield fly rule. “Yeah. Or just . . . go places together.”

“Like when we ride our bikes to Kmart?”

“Well . . . yes and no. Same stuff, only we’ll be going together.”

“I could do that,” Michael says

Darla’s cheek dimples on one side and Michael knows he’s said the right thing. His chest swells like swallowing too much pop.

“Cool,” Darla says, with another half-shrug. She looks back at Stella, whom Michael had forgotten about, and then leans over and pecks his cheek.

It is the quickest, driest touch, like a thumbprint, and then she squeals—a half afraid, half joyous sound. She runs past Stella, around the corner of Stella and Shaun’s house. Stella pauses a moment, marveling at Michael like he’s become something new, then runs after her friend.

Michael, suddenly alone, worries.

• • • •

His mother’s attempts to cook only destroy what little food is in the house. The only way to stop her from mixing broken glass and green beans is to cook before she decides to try. Michael knows how to make mashed potatoes and steam canned vegetables. They eat mashed potatoes most days. He can also bake potatoes, but that doesn’t feel like cooking. He insists that they sit down and eat at the chipped card table in the kitchen at least once a week. It’s supposed to feel normal, but it doesn’t. The kitchen cabinet doors are mostly gone. There are holes in the walls, too, and though he thinks he’s getting better at it, the potatoes are lumpy. Today there is no milk and they crumble dryly despite being stained yellow with government-issue margarine.

“My peas are touching the potatoes,” Julie says. “I hate when they touch.”

The phone rings.

“Just don’t eat those ones,” Michael says.

The phone rings again. Julie asks him, “Are you going to get that?” It rings again. “We could get in trouble,” Julie reminds him.

Michael slips out of his chair as slowly as he can. He approaches the living room, where the phone sits on a table near the wall. He has to walk around his mother. She jabs and plucks at him, smelling sick. Michael thinks she hates it when they talk on the phone. He cups the phone to his ear and turns away from the noise. “Hello?”

“Hi. Can I come over?” Darla’s voice is higher and breathier on the phone.

The machine behind him undulates, something groans deep inside it, metal warping, near to snapping.

“Hello?” Darla asks.

“We’re eating dinner,” Michael says. “Bye.” He hangs up.

Julie stands at the stove, picking peas off her plate and dropping them back in the steamer. “That was fast,” she says. “Who was it?”

“Darla. She wants to come over.”

Julie considers. “No one said that wasn’t allowed, did they? She’s not a stranger.”

Michael sat back down. “It’s better if I go to her house.”

Their mother howls, a series of metal parts grinding past each other, clanging as they slip free.

“Mom wants us to always stay home,” Julie says. “You’re cheating.”

Michael doesn’t argue that. “Eat your peas,” he says. “They’re good for you.”

• • • •

After dinner, Michael has to oil his mother. Julie is in her habitual spot against the wall by the stairs. “I hate our mother,” Julie says. “I hate her.”

She says “hate” like she enjoys the taste of the word. Michael wishes he could hate his mother. He tries, sometimes, but nothing comes up. It’s just a machine.

Michael wants to sneak out and see if he can find Darla. He needs to apologize.

“I hate her,” Julie repeats.

Michael thinks about telling someone his mother has turned into a malfunctioning machine. The last adult he tried to tell just said, “You are lucky to have a mother who cares about you.” This is about the same thing the school guidance counselor said, too. He wonders what other kids are saying about their mothers that what he says doesn’t sound strange.

Michael knee-walks backward from the niche he entered to pour oil in one of his mother’s many mouths. A whirring blade saws back and forth over his head, but he’s long used to dodging that one. He looks back at Julie. “Can you finish?”

“It’s your turn,” Julie says, staring straight at their mother with her sunken eyes.

“I’ll be right back.” Michael presses the walls to avoid his mother.

He steps over Julie and she grabs his jeans, tries to stop him like their mother does. “Take me with you,” she says.

He yanks out of her grasp easily.

• • • •

Darla’s house is lit up. He can see shadows moving from room to room, hear the sound of a plate being scraped, a voice talking. It sounds normal, like life in a movie. He leans against the oak on the tree lawn, not wanting to step on her grass uninvited at night. He wonders which room is Darla’s and if her room is all pink inside like a girl’s room, or if it’s all sports posters and blue, like a TV boy or a tomboy, which Darla is.

He decides that tomboys are the best kind of girls and hopes his some-day daughter will be one, too.

A light goes off. Michael is getting cold. He crosses the street back to his own house, which never has lights showing on the bottom floor.

Sometimes Michael wakes in the middle of the night to find his mother hanging over him, dripping oil on his face. Sometimes she chopped up the blanket and the end of the mattress with her saw-feet. Sometimes she just reared up over the bed and stared at him until dawn.

Michael wishes he knew how to take her legs off. They tried building a barrier at the bottom of the steps out of the remains of the sofa, but the machine only ate it.

Julie has her own bed on the other side of the room but these days she crawls in next to Michael and they turn back-to-back. They both like having something against their backs at all times. They don’t talk about this; they both just know it, and that’s comforting.

Tonight, Julie asks, “Are you going to marry Darla?”

“No. I don’t know. Maybe.” Michael is looking at the wall, which is cheap fake wood paneling and not like any bedroom on TV. In the dark, he imagines faces in the pixelated knots. He doesn’t like to turn his back on the paneling. His spine is prickly and he presses more firmly against Julie.

“If you marry Darla, take me with you. I’ll be like your kid and you’ll be my mom and dad.”

Michael feels her thinner, smaller back breathing against his, and he’s comforted by this thought. He imagines the three of them in a playhouse. Everything is small and cute and ordinary. He could cook and Darla could . . . Darla could fix everything. “Okay,” he says.

They drift off to sleep, and he knows Julie is imagining the same things he is. His prickly spine relaxes.

• • • •

Michael awakens to a crash. Pre-dawn light seeps into the room like weak tea. At first he doesn’t know why he is awake, but then there is another terrible collision. Michael jumps up, puts his arms on one side of Julie, his legs on the other, making a protective cage of his body. He’s afraid the ceiling will fall on her. He hears explosions and the machine screaming.

Julie curls into the tightest ball under him. “Don’t go,” she says. Michael realizes that he was about to go.

The house shakes. “I have to,” Michael says. He picks up his pillow and puts it in his place, on top of Julie. “Just stay here.”

“I hate you,” Julie says.

His mother is beating herself against the right wall of the living room, blocking the archway to the kitchen. The paneling has fallen, mostly, leaving bare joists and the smell of crumbled cardboard.

Michael jams himself between the wall and his mother and tries to push her out. His hands slide and the edges of metal parts cut his fingers. Michael has never been so sweaty. Julie wriggles in beside him. She puts her back on the wall and her feet on their mother, her stick-legs straining. With a shudder and a crack that Michael fears will bring the whole house down, they get their mother back into the center of the room.

The floor sags in a goofy grin where it meets the wall now, the scraggly remains of the carpet spilling into the dirt below the house like a tongue. Their mother rocks.

Julie is gasping, on hands and knees. She looks up at him. “Are we in trouble?”

“I don’t know,” Michael says.

• • • •

Julie and Michael eat dry cereal for breakfast, seated on the bottom of the stairs. There’s no milk, but Michael still tries to use a spoon. Julie picks hers one flake at a time from her bowl. Their mother is oddly quiet. Maybe she’s satisfied she has destroyed enough for one day.

Someone knocks on the front door. No one knocks on their front door except Jehovah’s witnesses and door-to-door petition people. Yet there is knocking. Julie looks at him. “You should get that.” When he doesn’t move, she says, “We’ll be in more trouble if we don’t open the door, won’t we?”

Michael puts down his bowl.

Darla is at the door. She waves. “Can I come in?”

Michael is relieved for one second. He steps out onto the porch and closes the door quickly behind him. “No.”

“I thought you said you’d go with me.”

Michael feels cheated. There was no contract, no implication that going with a girl meant letting her into your horrible life. “I do. I am. I . . . it’s a mess in there.”

“So? You’ve been in my house when it’s a total mess.”

He’s been in Darla’s living room. It smells like flowers and is decorated with her mother’s collection of porcelain dolls, which are trophies for making sales goals. The dolls are all different but all the same, mounds of ruffles and girlishness, set off against the raspberry-colored walls. It’s like being inside an old-fashioned valentine. It’s not on the same planet as the word “mess.”

Michael holds firmly onto the doorknob behind him. He feels Julie tugging on the door, wanting to come out. “There’s a hole in the floor,” he says, truthfully. “My dad doesn’t want anyone to come in until he finishes fixing it. It’s dangerous.” It’s a big lie and he’s amazed how easily it comes out of him.

“Oh,” says Darla. She looks like she’s planning her next pitch rather than arguing a rule. “Your dad.”

She’s waiting for him to admit the lie. Darla knows their dad has been gone for a long time. “It really is dangerous,” Michael says.

“I get that. I bet it looks cool, though. Can I see it?”

Julie is still tugging hard on the door. Muffled, he hears her calling. “Michael, she’s moving!”

“My dad would get real mad,” Michael says, and that’s good; it’s something a normal person would say.

Darla leans toward the living room window, but the blinds, as always, are drawn.

Julie stops tugging at the door. Michael relaxes a bit, but doesn’t let go; Julie can be clever at tugging games. “Why don’t we go to your house?”

Darla rolls her eyes. “Boring. How about we ride our bikes to the train tracks?”

“Sounds great,” Michael says.

They get on their bikes. Michael doesn’t stop like he should and tell Julie that he’s leaving. He goads Darla into riding further away than they ever have, further than she’s allowed.

They discover a new, magic place: an old depot shed between the railroad tracks. Every surface is decorated with graffiti and teens have left treasured evidence of their presence—beer bottles and pens and lighters. Michael finds a broom and clears the floor. He imagines this will be their new house. He tidies things while Darla breaks bottles on the tracks just to see them explode.

They miss lunch and almost dinner. When they get to Darla’s house, Darla’s mom gives her a talking-to, but it’s like a sitcom mom; there’s no threat of violence. And then Darla’s mom tells them to wash their hands and makes them sandwiches with leftover meatloaf, which they get to eat on paper plates on the back porch.

“I wish your mom was my mom,” Michael says.

“No you don’t,” Darla says. She frowns at her food like she doesn’t want to be there.

“Sit like a lady,” her mom says. “Michael, don’t you think Darla would look beautiful if she let her hair grow out?”

Darla squirms and stares hate at her sandwich and Michael wishes there was a way to agree with Darla’s mom and disagree with her at the same time.

“You’d be so pretty if you just smiled more,” Darla’s mom says, tucking Darla’s hair back behind her ear. Darla’s mom looks at Michael like they have a secret—like Michael can transform Darla into a girly-girl.

“Can we play Madden after dinner?” Michael asks, and Darla straightens with open relief.

• • • •

After one game of Madden, Michael has to go home. It’s late.

He opens the front door and immediately he knows something is wrong. His mother is making a squishy sound, much quieter than usual.

They don’t keep bulbs in the ceiling light in the living room. Their mother breaks them too frequently. “Julie!’ Michael runs into the dark. He trips on something round, soft but firm. His mother jolts and shifts over him. His chest lies in a nest of carpet strings. “JULIE!”

In the buttery light spilling from the kitchen door, Michael sees a fat maggot on the carpet by his eyes. He screams and crawls backward, over the log he tripped on. His eyes are still on the fat maggot, and then he realizes it has a fingernail, painted glitter-pink, and there are two logs, thin and soft, under his knees. His sister’s legs. His sneaker lodges in his mother’s gears; he fights his way free. He wishes he could black out, but he feels each slide of skin under him as he scrambles off his sister’s body.

Julie’s lips compress and open, but he can’t guess what she’s trying to say. He hits hard joints with his forearm, batters himself as he tears Julie out from under their mother. Blood is gushing from her missing finger. Michael tears off his shirt and mashes it up over the wound, tries to tie it.

He scrambles to the phone, knocks it off the table. He picks it up. There is no dial tone.

It takes a lot of effort to slow down, get the flashlight from the kitchen drawer, follow the cable to the wall, unplug and re-plug it, follow it to the phone, unplug and re-plug.

He does everything right; their mother has done something to the phone.

Julie rolls over. “Don’t,” she says.

Michael says, “Sorry. God, I’m sorry—I have to go.”

He runs across the street and beats on Darla’s door.

• • • •

Police lights bathe the living room in swimming red and blue. The cops hold tiny notepads, like waitresses. They put a blanket on Michael even though he isn’t cold. It’s rough and his arms feel like metal against it. He sits against the wall by the stairs, his knees in front of him. The police never look at his mother. They stand too close to her. They don’t fear her. They look at Michael like he’s a problem.

The front door hangs open, a terrible violation—their private sphere bleeding out into the street. Darla stands there, her brown hair gilt with street-light sodium, a halo of frizz, her mouth hanging open a half-circle, the outdoors a backdrop behind her, black and featureless.

Michael wants to run to her, but his mother is between them. His mother and the awful absence of Julie.

Eventually, Darla leaves. His mother collapses down with a sigh. The policemen push the machine out of its coil, ease it through the front door.

“You did the right thing,” a man in hospital clothes says.

The adults talk about temporary housing, about how he’ll get to see Julie soon, very soon. He doesn’t believe them, but he knows they hope what they say is true.

Michael still doesn’t hate his mother.

©2016 by Marie Vibbert.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Marie Vibbert is an IT professional from Cleveland, Ohio.  She is a member of the Cleveland science fiction workshop, The Cajun Sushi Hamsters, attended Clarion in 2013, and joined SFWA in 2014.  Her work has appeared in Asimov’s and Analog.  She has ridden 15% of the roller coasters in the United States and plays for the Cleveland Fusion women’s tackle football team.  Her website is marievibbert.com.

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

Miller’s Wife

Mark W. Tiedemann | 17120 words

Egan Ginter pulled into Saletcroix with a vague sense of accomplishment diluted by a distant anxiety that, having arrived, he now had to do something. For a few moments he considered turning around and leaving the valley. But he had come here to sever himself from complications that threatened to bind him to a life he did not want. Driving over the last ridge, he looked down into a pocket of land that at once offered escape and nothing he could want for very long, the ideal stop along the way.

The town consisted of half a dozen buildings that merged with the dense Ozark scrub. The foundations appeared to be half poured concrete and half vines and lichenous dirt, scaly and leprous. Only the tavern looked solid. The Pumphandle, a wide red and white hand-painted sign declared. It seemed newer than the other structures, though Egan was certain it had been at least the second place built on the side of the two-lane state blacktop. A bright blue and yellow neon advertisement glowed in the window. Egan saw no church and the gas station next door down was identifiable only by the row of pumps standing like sentries before it, their brand names eroded to illegibility. A propane tank truck was parked on the gravel apron of one building across the road and he could only guess at the purpose of the other three.

Egan shut off the RV and stepped into the slightly chilled early spring air. Two older pick-up trucks and a station wagon occupied the cracked pavement before the tavern. He reached across the driver’s seat and drew the sheet of typed instructions toward him. Curt Albright’s A-frame was supposedly a few miles from here, but the directions cautioned him that the turn-off was hard to find. Egan folded up the page and tucked it into his shirt pocket, then went into the tavern.

The dark interior reminded him that he disliked bars. He went through cycles with them. As a child, he once believed they were all lined with a light-absorbing material that made it impossible to illuminate them sufficiently. When he got older he decided it was the regular patrons who sucked the light out of the air, a natural ability to hide and stay hidden. He had liked that idea for a while, especially when he considered himself a regular patron and wanted the anonymity such places allowed.

A row of booths lined the wall to the right; a few tables grew out of the ancient wooden floor that creaked amiably underfoot; the bar stretched to his left, three large men huddled against it at the far end. One booth was occupied by four men bent over tall glasses. An older woman with smoky grey hair sat at a table near the front, a bottle before her. She watched Egan with mild curiosity.

“Help you?”

Egan blinked at the woman behind the bar. Grey streaked her thick, pulled-back hair and her eyes were large and bright. She smelled faintly of tobacco and soap.

“Uh, yes. I’m looking for the Albright place, I wanted to make sure I had the right directions.”

Her eyebrows drew together briefly, then she looked down the length of the bar. “Tommy, you know where the Albright place is?”

One of the three men nodded. “Five miles north, on the left, right past Menlow’s place.”

“He ain’t there,” someone else said.

Egan turned toward the booth. “I know. I’m a friend of his, he’s letting me stay there for a couple weeks.”

The men stared at him for a time, then nodded and returned to their subdued conversation. Egan waited for another question, but the silence continued.

The woman at the table drained her bottle and stood. She came to the bar, dropped a dollar bill on the counter, and looked at Egan.

“Hello,” Egan said.

“Welcome to Saletcroix,” she said. Her voice was sharp and carried a faint New England accent. “Are you married?”

Egan laughed. “Excuse me?”

The woman smiled. “I suppose not. Sorry, don’t mean to pry. Just wondering if you’ll be staying long.”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“Uh huh. Well, folks are nice enough.”

“If a bit nosy?”

She nodded, lips pursed, and left.

“Don’t mind Mrs. McCuthcheon,” the woman was still standing at the bar said. “New folks come through, things take a turn for the exciting.”

Egan looked at her, trying to decide if honesty were a good idea just now. “So are you married?”

The woman laughed quietly. “No, as a matter of fact, and I’m not looking to be.”

“Good. Then we’ll get along.”

“Fair enough. Anything else I can do for you?”

“Where can I buy groceries and things?”

“Right next door,” she pointed. “Lloyd’s. Got about everything you need.”

“I doubt that,” Egan quipped. “He hardly knows me.”

She raised her eyebrows dubiously and for an instant Egan felt foolish. “Welcome to Saletcroix, Mister. Lemme give you one on the house.”

“Thanks. Mind if I take a rain check? I still have to find this place.”

“Long as you promise to come back.”

“Absolutely.”

He watched her walk back toward the cluster at the end of the bar. Her jeans were tight and he enjoyed the shift of buttocks, wondering briefly how she looked in a good light. Then, impatient with himself, he left the tavern.

Leave it alone, he cautioned himself, climbing back into the Cherokee. Don’t start trouble for yourself again.

The older woman sat in the cab of one of the pick-ups, watching him. When he saw her, she smiled thinly, nodded again, and backed out. She drove away unhurriedly, back the way Egan had come.

Maybe I should leave . . .

He started the engine, jammed the gears, and scritched away, up the blacktop, toward Curt’s place.

• • • •

As he drove, he began to notice that his first impression of the valley had been deceptive. Taken at a glance, Saletcroix seemed lushly green, with rich farms and thick forest. But from the road he noticed how dry everything seemed, the grass going brown, crops thin above hard, greyish earth. It looked as though it had not rained here in weeks.

Egan slowed at the sight of black smoke billowing up above the tree line. Two more turns and he saw an open gate and a straight gravel road leading directly to a guttering house in the midst of a collection of farm buildings. A single fire truck was nearly lost in the dense clouds. The lights of a police car flashed.

Egan drove slowly past and less than fifty yards further on he saw another gate and the signpost Curt had told him to look for.

The dirt road climbed steeply and curled sharply into a flat area in front of the A-frame that rose up out of the ground as if grown from seed. Everything smelled musty and thick with spring. The woods seemed nothing but a vast collection of spindly young oak and maple. Egan’s feet sank in the after-winter humus. He stared up at the house, aware of a growing revulsion.

“Tell me again why this is a good idea,” he said, mounting the porch. The spring on the screen door was broken and the thin frame slapped the wall in the breeze. Egan fished the key from his pocket and let himself in.

The air made his nose twitch. Bluish light flooded the high windows and still failed to illuminate the interior. Wicker chairs and an old sofa furnished the main floor. An impressive stone fireplace filled the rear wall. Above, a loft hung like a shelf without evident means of support. Egan did not want to see the bed yet. He unlocked the rear of the RV and started unloading his bags.

When he came out for the second load he stopped. A man stood nearby, a shotgun dangling casually in the crook of his arm, studying the Cherokee. He wore bib overalls under a faded green corduroy coat and a colorless cap with a broken bill.

“Can I help you?” Egan called.

The man looked up. His face was wide and lined, eyes hidden in the shadow of the cap’s bill. He stared at Egan for a few seconds, then nodded once.

“Stayin’ here?” he asked.

“For a couple of weeks.”

“Uh huh. This is Albright’s place.”

“Do you know Curt?”

“Met him. You kin?”

“Just a friend. He’s letting me use it for a while.” When the stranger was silent, Egan added, “My friends thought I needed to get out of the city.”

“Maybe.” He looked at the RV again. “Looks good.” He nodded again as if in approval. Then: “I’m Brice Miller. If you see my wife, Esther, don’t let her in.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m lookin’ for my wife. She comes by, tell her to go home. Don’t let her in.”

Egan bristled, abruptly resentful. “Look—”

The sound of another vehicle coming up the road cut him off. They both looked toward the entrance. A police car pulled up and Egan wondered if it was the same one he had seen across the road by the burning farmhouse.

Engine running, a tall man in a khaki uniform shirt and blue jeans emerged from the car. He placed a campaign hat like state troopers wore on his balding head and came toward the house with a long, slow gait Egan found both amusing and irritating.

“I’m Sheriff Edmunds.”

“Hello, sheriff. My name is Egan Ginter. I’m a friend of Curt Albright.”

“Ginter. That’s the name he said. Curt called me yesterday, said you were comin’. How long you plan to stay?”

“Couple of weeks. Maybe three.”

The sheriff nodded. “Well, all right. I wanted to meet you, let you know I’m around.” He looked at the other man then. “Brice, you found your wife yet?”

“Not yet.”

Sheriff Edmunds’ mouth twisted. “Well, you better. You tell Mr. Ginter here?”

“He knows.”

“Well, all right.”

“Excuse me, sheriff,” Egan interrupted. “I saw a house on fire across the road.”

“Menlow’s,” Sheriff Edmunds said. “Burned to the ground.”

“Was anybody—?”

“Frank Menlow. His boy got out, but we couldn’t do nothin’ for Frank.”

“Oh. Sorry. I, uh . . . ” Egan wanted to walk away, oddly embarrassed about having asked.

Suddenly Sheriff Edmunds stabbed a finger toward Brice. “Find her, Brice. Don’t need more trouble.” He nodded toward Egan. “Good talkin’ to you, Mr. Ginter. Maybe I’ll see you in town.”

Egan only nodded in return and dumbly watched the sheriff fold himself back into his car and back down the hill. When Egan turned to say something to Brice the man was gone.

“Christ,” he muttered. “Deliverance People.” He glanced skyward. “Thanks, Curt.”

• • • •

The place had electricity but no phone. Egan found an enormous steel urn under the sink in the compact kitchen and made a full pot of coffee, then started cleaning. He thought he understood Carl’s insistence that he come out here. After the daily battles with spiderwebs, mouse nests, crickets, and a thick layer of dust, the world receded and by the end of the week he found he liked the isolation.

“I draw the line at doing windows,” he announced. He poured a cup of coffee and went out to sit on the front porch. He sat in a rickety Adirondack chair and stared into the patternless tangle around him.

He fidgeted. He shifted position uncomfortably, cleared his throat, tapped a complex rhythm on the arm of the chair. Nothing worked. Within minutes everything he wanted to forget about—the city, his family, Clair, and the complications—filled his mind.

He gulped the last of his coffee and strode with pronounced exaggeration through the house to refill the mug. Out the kitchen window he saw a mass of firewood, already cut. A few logs lay near a broad stump and a double-headed axe rested just inside the back door. Egan considered chopping more wood, but he had never done it before.

“Hell with it,” he muttered and grabbed his jacket.

For the last three weeks, movement seemed to distract him enough, that going from room to room, place to place, cleaning and straightening, or driving aimlessly gave his problems an impossible target to hit. The idea of coming all the way out into the hinterlands—the Boonies, Curt called it—seemed likely to leave those nearly-sentient problems confused, as if his sudden absence might cause to them to find someone else to pester and free him from their gnawing attention. Unfortunately, reality never matched the plan.

The ruins of the farmhouse made an ugly pile in the midst of the other farm buildings that stood around it like mourners. Menlow, Egan thought, and felt odd knowing the name of the man who had died there, as if he did not really have a right to know that.

He saw movement in the midst of the blackened shards. A man moved slowly through the wreck, searching. Almost immediately, Egan knew it was the man named Brice.

He sped past and hurried into Saletcroix.

He parked between two pickups across the road from the Pumphandle.

“It’s not rainin’,” the bartender said, grinning at him.

“But I’m thirsty,” Egan said. “What do you have on tap?”

She nodded and drew him a glass. “Only got one kind. Road washed out the other day, my delivery couldn’t get through.”

“As long as it isn’t light.”

“Never.”

He took a long pull and set the glass down. “I’m in luck. My favorite.”

“No matter what it is, I expect.”

He laughed. “I’m Egan. Egan Ginter.”

“And you’re stayin’ at Curt Albright’s place for a bit. I’m Bert.” When he raised an eyebrow she shrugged. “Short for Roberta.”

“Hey, Bert’s fine with me. Um, did you say the road washed out? It hasn’t rained since I’ve been here.”

“Other side of the ridge. We thought it might send us some, but it stalled at the crest and poured on the next county. It ain’t rained here since—well, in nearly eight weeks.”

“Oh. I thought it looked dry.”

“This one’s been a bad spell. You hungry, Egan? I make a good cheeseburger.”

“I wasn’t until you mentioned it.”

He watched her walk away again. This time she wore a pair of painter’s pants that hung loose, but Egan still enjoyed it, his imagination supplying detail.

“Did I hear Bert say you was stayin’ out to Albright’s?”

Egan turned from the bar. Four men crammed into the center booth gazed at him from beneath their hats, beer bottles and glasses scattered over the table between them. As far as Egan could remember, they were a different bunch than those who had been here that first day.

“Yes, I am.”

The one on the left, on the end, nodded. “Did you see Menlow’s burn down?”

Egan felt abruptly uneasy. “I drove by it on the way. It looked about finished.”

“You didn’t see nobody around didn’t belong there?”

“Hal,” one of the others said. “Drop it, why don’t you? Lookin’ for trouble won’t solve nothin’.”

“Keep your opinion to yourself,” Hal growled and looked back at Egan. “Did you?”

“How would I know? I’m new here.”

Hal continued to stare at him for a time. Then he took a long drink from his bottle. “Oh. Sorry.”

“The sheriff told me someone survived.”

Hal nodded. “Frank’s boy. He’s stayin’ with me.”

“You’re a relative?”

“Frank was my brother.”

“Oh. My condolences. Does anyone know what started the fire?”

Hal grunted. “Brice Miller’s bitch wife.”

“You got no proof of that, Hal,” one of the others said.

“How much you need? She runs off and Reverend Cady shoots hisself, Drucker’s prize bull gores itself on a combine, and my brother’s dead. It ain’t rained since she took off and every damn one of you’s been havin’ one thing or another bust or go wrong and don’t you say otherwise, you know it’s been like that.”

Egan felt suddenly that he had walked in on the middle of a play in a foreign language. Worse, since what he heard was English.

“Wait,” he said. “Excuse me. Your local minister shot himself? Do you mean he was—?”

The man in the right-hand corner made an impatient gesture. “Cady was a crackpot. All that talk about organizin’ principles and animistic chaos. I’m surprised he hadn’t done that long ago.”

“A crackpot you listened to, Sam,” another said and they all laughed. “Hell, I couldn’t of repeated all that stuff if you’d paid me.”

“It was entertainin’,” Sam admitted. “But he was always a bit tetched. Can’t blame the inevitable on Esther Miller. And as for Drucker’s bull, the damn fool shoulda knew better than to let it run loose in the same field. Damn thing was special but it was still just a stupid cow.”

“And Frank?” Hal challenged.

Sam looked down at his glass. “Well.”

“And all the other stuff?”

“Coincidence.”

“My ass, coincidence.”

“Is everyone looking for this guy’s wife?” Egan asked.

The men all nodded. “’Bout seven weeks now, ain’t it?” Sam asked.

“Seven weeks,” Egan said, chuckling. “Anyone stop to think she’s left the area?”

“No,” Hal said. “She ain’t gone. She’s still lookin’ for a ride out. That’s what she wanted with Frank. She’s got to have a ride out.”

Egan suppressed another laugh. The expressions they all wore were grim, perfectly serious, as if contemplating an unpleasant truth and hoping someone would change the subject.

“Here you go, Egan,” Bert said behind him, setting a plate down on the bar. He turned and she winked at him. “Made this with my special sauce.”

Egan turned back to the bar happily; the food smelled wonderful. “I’m honored.”

“You may well be.”

• • • •

Egan never remembered the course of his seductions. He could not explain later how any of them happened. At best, he sensed the point at which a line was crossed and rest became inevitable. The whole process seemed so automatic, so out of his hands, that he went through periods of guilt and withdrawal. But they never lasted long and soon enough it all started again. One of his friends, when Egan had tried to express his dismay over it, told him that he listened well and people found that very attractive.

“You’re kidding,” he had said.

“No, no. Think about it. Don’t you find it very appealing when someone pays complete attention to what you’re saying, as if every word meant something?”

Bert lived in a four-room house on the other street in Saletcroix, which Egan had completely overlooked on his first drive through the town. She joked that he should not drive after so many beers, and since she did not want to drive all the way out to Curt’s A-frame, he would have to come home with her.

The street opened between two of the buildings on the far side of the road and looked like a narrow driveway to a rear parking lot. But small houses, drawn back from the street, lined both side of the incline, and Bert pulled into the grassy yard of one a quarter mile from the tavern. A single lamp glowed in the front window.

He hesitated on the diminutive concrete slab that acted as a porch. Bert bent forward slightly to unlock the door. Egan wondered how upset she might be if he begged off and went home. She stepped inside and flipped a switch. Light haloed her hair and she turned to give him a quizzical look. Egan let himself enter her living room.

“Make yourself at home,” she said. “I’ll put on coffee. Be right back.”

Away from the deceptive dimness of the tavern, Egan saw that she was older than he had first thought, but that did not bother him. What did was the long-faded bruise on the left side of her face, just below eye level. Bert smiled quickly and disappeared into the back regions of the house. A few moments later he heard water running.

The living room contained a pair of love seats, a recliner, and a stereo system that surprised him. The rack of CDs surprised him more—mostly classical. He chided himself for making assumptions, remembering vividly a lecture from a former lover about that (“When you assume, you make an ass out of U and an ass out of Me.”), and sat down on the loveseat facing the hallway.

“So, Egan Ginter,” she said, coming back in. She had pulled her shirt out of her pants. “Are you married?”

He laughed. “No, Mrs. McCutcheon, I am not.”

“Touché. I forgot about her askin’. Well, fair is fair. You get to ask me a direct question.”

“Okay. If I think of one, I’ll ask.”

“How come you’re not?”

“Married? I can’t—” He stopped and studied her more closely. Sarcasm would end the evening immediately, he realized, which might not be a bad thing. But it would hurt her. Maybe not badly, but Egan did not want to hurt her at all. Then why’d you let her bring you here?

Because it was easy, he answered himself. Easier than going home alone. Because refusing would have hurt her, too, though probably much less than anything that he might say or do now. But he could never quite make that call, ever, choosing between lesser harms, so he followed events and hoped things worked out.

And ended up hurting everyone . . .

“Sorry,” Bert said. “Didn’t mean to hit a nerve.”

“No, it’s . . . I was going to say I’m not married because I never found the right person.”

“But . . . ?”

“But the truth is I always find the right person. I just don’t know what to do next.”

Bert frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“Neither do I.”

“You’ve never asked anyone to marry you?”

“It . . . no. They’ve never asked me. It’s like we meet and everything goes along just right, and things are perfect, couldn’t get any better. And just at the point where I should say or do something to make it last . . . somehow it slides by and it all fades away. I never know.”

She looked skeptical. “You ain’t one of them men who just can’t make a commitment?”

“No, I’m willing to commit. It just never comes up. It just never comes up . . . ”

The next instant Egan found himself holding her, shaking, terrified, his breath shuddering in and out. What? What? he kept thinking, feeling foolish and bitter and embarrassed and angry. Bert patted his back and wrapped an arm around his head and rocked him as if he were a child. Her smell mingled with the sharp sinus tang of his tears and he wanted to run away.

“I’m sorry, hon,” Bert said over and over. “I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

He pulled away and gazed at the rack of CDs. He swallowed thickly, amazed at himself. Just what the hell is this all about, he thought, and, just to break the silence, laughed.

“It’s been crazy around here for weeks,” Bert said. “I shoulda known better. Lemme see about that coffee.”

“Crazy . . . yeah . . . ever since Brice Miller’s wife ran off, I bet.”

“Oh, that’s just local talk,” Bert answered from the kitchen. She came back with two mugs of steaming coffee. “People here have to explain everything. When things go wrong for no good reason, they make one up. But damn if it ain’t a persuasive argument. Seems like everything just started fallin’ apart after she run off.”

“I met Brice. My impression was that she may have had good reason to run off.”

“Oh, that’s a fact. He’s a first-rate asshole. Where’d you meet him?”

“First day, up where I’m staying, he just came out of the woods to tell me not to let his wife in. It seems like everybody is concerned about him getting her back, though.”

“They say if she gets out everything will dry up and blow away.”

Egan wiped his eyes, grateful now for the bizarre conversation. “How is that supposed to work?”

“Esther Miller is supposed to be a spirit. Or the embodiment of one, like the life force of the county. As long as she stays, there’s life. As long as she’s kept in line, there’s prosperity. I know, I know, don’t look at me that way, I’m just tellin’ you what folks around here believe.”

“I take it you’re not from around here?”

“Not originally. I moved here about eight years ago from Topeka.” She frowned, thoughtful. “I came through here on vacation and the place was a shambles. Farms were failin’, there was drought one season, floods the next, people were movin’, some were dyin’. The Pumphandle was up for sale and I won’t tell you the price, you’d think I was a thief. I bought it, ’cause I got a cousin in the highway department. He told me a new interstate was planned to go through.” She smiled ruefully. “Well, that didn’t work out, but I stuck with it. Brice Miller got married the next year—”

“To Esther?”

“To Esther. And damn if things didn’t improve. For about five years everything was as good as you could hope. Then they started havin’ troubles and she run off a couple of times. When she did, people would have accidents, cattle would come down with the damnedest diseases. Stuff those tabloid people would just love, you know? This last time’s been the worst, with Frank Menlow dyin’.”

“Why doesn’t Esther just divorce him and leave?”

Bert shrugged. “People don’t think that way around here.”

“And what do you think?”

“Just stories. But it does have everybody upset. That doesn’t help anything.”

Egan finished his coffee. “I think maybe I should go.”

Bert reached for his hand. “Hey, I am sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” He sighed. “I guess I owe you an explanation.”

“No—”

“I’m here to let someone go. I’d been seeing her for almost a year. Things were . . . good. But that point I told you about came and went and I expected to just drift away. It was obvious I was making her unhappy. I thought it was time to move on, let her get on with her life. I’d even started seeing other women. Last month she tried to commit suicide.”

“Lord . . . ”

“I can’t stand hurting people. If that’s what I’m going to do to her, she doesn’t need me.”

Bert was quiet for a long time. Then she leaned back. “You ever thought maybe you’re just a coward?” She stood and took his mug. “Sorry. I’ll give you a ride back up to the tavern so you can get your truck.”

“That’s all right.” Egan lurched to his feet. He felt suddenly enraged, filled with a panicky energy. “I can find my way back. By the way, you owe me a direct question.”

“Shoot.”

“Who gave you the shiner?”

She looked startled, as if she had expected a different question. “Brice Miller.”

“For what?”

“That’s two questions.”

“Honesty’s cheaper by the bunch.”

She almost smiled. “He blamed me for Esther runnin’ off. She used to come into the tavern and we’d sit and talk. I told her about Topeka. We talked about . . . hell, we talked about everything. I thought I’d seen sheltered people before, but Esther didn’t know anything about the world. Brice said I filled her head with city notions and she ain’t satisfied to be here no more.”

“You’re right. An asshole. You’re a good judge of character, Bert.”

She looked wounded. He felt the impulse to apologize, but ignored it and made himself leave.

• • • •

The wind cut down the street, colder than Egan remembered it as he trudged back up to the state blacktop. By the time he climbed into the Cherokee he was ready to go back home, the simmering anger substituting for sobriety. He sat there for a time, considering it. Drive away now, he thought, just leave everything where it is and go.

Instead, he made a U-turn and headed for the A-frame. He could pack and leave tomorrow.

Run away.

Again.

A coward . . . in other words, he reasoned, he was avoiding something, that it really had nothing to do with an inability to know what to do, but an inability to accept responsibility. A therapist had told him that once. At the next session, Egan had shown her his credit report. He was responsible, look at this. He had known it was an adolescent thing to do, but he had been so offended by the accusation and rejected it so absolutely that he had to refute it somehow. How else do you prove that you are responsible? By staying when all you do is cause pain? Or by rejecting all human contact? Or by doing what he had always done, leaving when the new had worn off and the irritations crept in and the daily rituals annoyed more than delighted . . .

He shook his head as if to throw off the unwelcome thoughts and concentrated on the road. This was the first time he had been away from the house after dark and it disturbed him to find no street lamps. The sky was barely discernible from the land.

Egan slammed on his brakes. His heart raced. A moment or two past the reaction, he realized that something had shot across the road in front of him. He blinked into the swath of asphalt in his headlights, then reached to the glove compartment for the flashlight. He shone the beam into the brush on both sides and saw nothing. A deer, maybe? He had no idea if there were deer in this part of the country. Maybe a dog. It had gone by too fast.

“Shit,” he hissed and tossed the flashlight onto the passenger seat. He drove on, slowly.

He almost missed the turnoff. Once on the dirt road, the world seemed to shrink around him, darker still, and closer.

The headlights fell on the porch as he pulled up. A woman sat on the edge of the bottom step. In the stark glare her skin seemed flat white and her eyes two dark holes. She was barefoot and her dress was dingy and colorless, mud brown.

Egan left the lights on and got out of the RV. “Let me guess. You’re Esther Miller.”

“Can I come in?”

Her face was round and her eyebrows thick, full arches. She looked up at him without blinking. Her arms were wrapped around her knees and showed scratches, like those on her shins.

“Do you know your husband is looking for you?”

She nodded. “I don’t want him to find me. Can I come in?”

He noticed that she spoke with only a faint accent. He sighed. “Sure. Why not? I’m leaving in the morning, though, so you’ll have to make other arrangements.”

She stood and Egan stared, startled. She was a compact woman, but in a way that suggested stressed boundaries, as if too much were contained by too little. Her body pushed against the dress she wore and everything else around her. Egan felt his reaction, an immediate raw desire.

He went back to the RV and turned off the headlights. In the abrupt darkness, vision gone, he relaxed. As he approached her, though, he breathed in deeply a sharp female odor.

He fumbled with the key. A nervous lethargy complicated his movements, as if he were suddenly just too tired to continue with mundane tasks. The key slid noisily into the lock and for a few moments he felt reluctant to turn the knob.

“Sorry,” he muttered, irritated with himself. “Hasn’t been a good night.” He twisted the knob impatiently and pushed the door open. He made an exaggerated gesture for her to precede him.

“You first,” she said.

Egan barked a laugh, flapping his hands against his thighs, and stomped into the house. He left the lights off and made his way through the shadowed maze to the kitchen. He found the coffeepot and sloshed it to see if it contained anything, then went to the sink and turned on the small lamp over the stove.

He heard the front door click shut.

“Come on in,” he called, “pull up a couch, make yourself at home. I’m making coffee. Want any?”

After a long silence, Egan looked back toward the front door. Esther Miller stood just within the threshold, slowly surveying the room. The light from the stove did not reach far, so she was only a blur against a shadow, but Egan still sensed her anxiety, as if at a gesture she would bolt from the house.

“I don’t bite,” Egan said.

When she did not move, Egan shrugged and busied himself with the coffee.

“Is there anything I can do?”

“What—?” He turned and almost struck her. She lurched back a step and he gave a startled laugh. “Please—”

“No, really,” she said, raising her hands, almost as if she intended to cradle his face. Self-consciously, she lowered them and looked away. “I just wondered if there’s something I can do for you.”

“Coffee will be ready soon. Why don’t you sit down . . . are you hungry? I don’t know what I have . . .”

This close, in the pool of harsh light, he saw scratches on her arms and legs. Her clothes were stained and muddied, one sleeve torn, and her hair was a tangle of black. Dark circles shadowed her eyes and her lower lip looked swollen.

“Let me—I think I have some clean clothes you can wear.”

He was surprised at the relief he felt when he broke away from her to scurry up the steps to the loft. It was a familiar reticence, but for a moment he could not place it. Then he knew: He had felt the same way at fourteen when he had first tried to kiss a girl and he did not know if she would allow it.

“What the hell . . .”

He went through the chest of drawers by the bed and found an old pair of jeans and a clean flannel shirt. Shoes . . . he had no spare shoes, nothing that would fit her, anyway . . . he opened the closet and fished out a pair of slippers.

Esther Miller sat on the edge of the sofa that faced the wood-burning stove, her arms wrapped tentatively around herself. Egan switched on the lights. She looked frightened and shuddered briefly. He placed the clothes beside her.

“These are the best I can do right now. Are you hungry?”

She nodded absently while she lifted the shirt. Without a word, she stood and began to strip off her tattered dress. Egan stared at her breasts, their nipples hard.

“Um . . . I’ll make something . . .” He backed away, retreating into the kitchen.

He opened the refrigerator and gazed unseeing at its contents while he waited for his pulse to slow.

“Can I do something?” she asked.

He felt himself flinch, but he controlled it and made himself look over his shoulder calmly. She stood a few feet from him. The clothes were too large and baggy, which made her look much younger. Egan found it easier to look at her now.

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “Anything . . . cleaning . . .”

“No, that’s . . . why is everyone looking for you?”

She chewed her lower lip and tucked her hands into the pants pockets. “Brice Miller wants me back.”

“But you don’t want to go back?”

“No.”

“I don’t get it. You’ve been hiding in the woods? Why don’t you just leave?”

“How?”

“Can’t you drive?”

She shook her head.

“Then get someone to take you.”

“I’m trying to.”

“What’s the problem, then? Don’t tell me everyone is on your husband’s side. Bert would take you.”

“She can’t.”

“Why not? I doubt she’s afraid of Brice. He already hit her, you know.”

Esther Miller’s eyes widened and for a moment her entire face seemed overwhelmed by sudden pain. She looked away from him before he could speak.

“A woman can’t—” she began, then shook her head again. “Would you?”

A flurry of impressions chased each other through Egan’s mind, too fast for any to make sense. He wanted to say yes, though, and he mistrusted the impulse. Getting involved in the marital problems of friends was bad enough, but he could see no way it would turn out acceptably with strangers.

“Let me make us something to eat,” he said. “You could probably stand it if you’ve been hiding in the woods all this time.” He started to move to the stairs. Her eyes tracked him. “How long have you been hiding?”

“It’s been nearly three weeks since I left Brice.”

“You’ve been in the woods for three weeks?”

“No . . . a couple folks took me in . . . but it didn’t turn out good.”

Egan thought of the fire down the road and the talk at the Pumphandle. His scalp crawled coldly for a few seconds, then he descended to the main floor.

“I feel like an omelette,” he said, his voice too loud. He clapped his hands together. “I haven’t cooked one since the last time I cooked for someone.”

Remembering, his appetite died. The last omelette he had made had been for Clair. He made himself go through the motions anyway. He chopped celery, onions, mushrooms, mixed the eggs, heated the pan—moving by habit, expertly, from one task to the next, until the kitchen and then the whole A-frame filled with lush aromas.

He ladled an omelette onto a plate for her just as someone started banging on the door. Esther Miller, who had come down to sit at the small Formica-topped kitchen table, started. Egan set the plate before her and tapped the table with a fork.

“Eat,” he said. She took the fork and he gave her an emphatic nod.

The banging started again and he headed for the door.

Sheriff Edmunds stood on the front porch with a flashlight loose in one hand. His car waited beside Egan’s Cherokee, the engine running, lights on.

“Sheriff—?”

Edmunds aimed his flashlight past Egan. “Is she in there?”

“Who?”

“Esther Miller.”

“Um . . .”

Edmunds’ shoulders slumped and he looked disappointed. “You dumb son-of-a-bitch.”

• • • •

“Usually Bert takes a fella home, he stays till mornin’,” Sheriff Edmunds explained to Egan. He made it sound like an accusation. Egan leaned against the hood of the Sheriff’s car, arms folded against the night chill. Edmunds paced on and off as he spoke. “Don’t make no matter to us, we all know Bert, that’s how she is. I saw your truck parked up to the Pumphandle after closing and figured that’s where you went. Later I drove by and it was gone, so I wanted to make sure it hadn’t been stolen. I asked Bert, she told me you left, so I come out here to make sure, you know, that everything’s all right.”

He stopped pacing and faced Egan squarely. “You let her inside?”

“Did you guess or peek through the window?”

“Don’t be smart. Brice told you not to let her in. I s’pose I should of said somethin’, too.”

Egan sighed. “She was filthy, barefoot, cold, and scared. What was I supposed to do?”

“Well, that’s a fair question. You did a decent thing, you shouldn’t have to pay for it. She’s got to go home, though. You got to send her on back to Brice.”

“Sheriff, why isn’t Brice in jail? The last time I checked, assault was still a felony, unless you go by a different set of laws here.”

“Assault. Who?”

“Bert.”

Edmunds winced. “Can’t do nothin’ she won’t press charges.”

“And mistreating his wife?”

“I ain’t gonna stand here and talk about people you don’t know shit about. Brice never did wrong by Esther. He ain’t a cruel man. She run off and left him.”

“Had to be a reason.”

“Yeah, I s’pose there had to be. That don’t make it a good reason and it sure don’t make it right. Now you listen, son. You’re just visitin’ here and what I hear you’re a decent sort, so you and me ain’t got a problem. There’s a lot of history between people here and you don’t even know the first page of it. It ain’t good to be meddlin’ in what you won’t ever understand well enough to judge.”

“I can only assume that anything that would drive a woman to hide in the woods for weeks on end has to be pretty bad.” Egan looked toward the A-frame. “I won’t send her back to Brice. But I’ll turn her over to you.”

Edmunds frowned. “Me.”

“Take her into custody. Have an inquiry. Find out why she ran off. Maybe Brice isn’t as fine a citizen as you think.”

“It don’t work that way. She has to go back to Brice.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Dammit. We got enough trouble over this.”

Egan remembered then what Bert had told him. “You don’t honestly believe that spirit stuff, do you?”

Edmunds shot him a look. “Bert tell you that?”

“She mentioned—”

“It ain’t that simple and she don’t know as much as she thinks she does.”

Egan straightened. “Enough. Sheriff, I’m not turning her back over to her husband. If you won’t take her into custody, then she stays here until you find a way to handle this.”

“Hell, she don’t want to stay here! That’s half the problem! She wants to go Outside, see the world, go to Topeka or wherever the hell!” He reached out and caught Egan’s arm. “Don’t do this, Mr. Ginter. Esther has to go back.”

“Why? Because if she doesn’t the valley will dry up and blow away? Fuck, Sheriff, give me a break. You find a way for me to turn her over to you or a state agency or a neighbor so that you can look into charges of abuse against Brice Miller and I’ll cooperate. Short of that, neither of us have done anything wrong.”

“She’s got to you already, hasn’t she? You’ll do whatever she wants and think it’s your idea. You’re in over your head and don’t even know it.”

“Thank you for your concerns, Sheriff—”

“All right. All right. You want her turned over to someone other than Brice, I’ll do that. Maybe Mrs. McCutcheon’ll intercede. I can talk to her. But you got to do it. Hear me?”

“We’ll see.”

Edmunds squeezed Egan’s arm, hard. “You got to do it. And for God’s sake, don’t fuck her, you hear me? You keep her out of your pants or there’ll be hell to pay.”

“I don’t fuck other men’s wives, even if they are in the process of divorcing them.”

“You remember you said that. I’ll be back in the morning with Mrs. McCutcheon, we’ll work this out.”

Egan watched Edmunds climb into his squad car and backed down the drive.

“Just how gullible . . .” he murmured aloud, then shivered in a sharp, cold wind, and went back inside.

• • • •

Egan came awake from a dream he had thought banished. The woman stood framed in a bathroom door, bright sunlight silhouetting her, as Egan stood motionless, pleading with her. She cocked her head as if trying to understand what he was saying and he knew by her expression that his language and hers did not translate. Slowly, she pushed the door closed while he begged her urgently not to. The lock snicked to and he stopped talking. He listened intently to every sound that now came from the other side of the door—the slide of glass on metal runners, the shuffle of plastic prescription bottles, water running in the bathtub, and the indefinite sound of an old-fashioned straight razor being opened. He did not speak. Mute, he could only listen to the sound of flesh parting, not even sure how he knew what it was supposed to sound like. After a long, long time, pinkish water flowed beneath the door and over his bare feet.

He blinked in brilliant morning light. His mind, dream-hazed, took in the silhouetted woman above him without surprise or question. The door had opened and the sounds had been phantoms taunting his memory. She was still there and he welcomed her unhesitatingly. Another few seconds, he knew, and the dream would fade completely, leaving him with reality and the possibility of more bad dreams, but for now, caught by the light and warmth of her touch, he doubted nothing.

She worked at his penis with both hands. He wondered about that—he was already erect, she did not need to coax it further—but it felt natural, like an ideal form, irresistible and perfect. The insides of her thighs rubbed against the outsides of his. He could smell her, thick and wet. He felt himself begin to arch, pressing up toward her, and his mind made the last transition from dream to reality.

Too late. She moved up slightly, leaned over him, and slid herself over his cock as if they had been lovers for years. He gasped at the startling heat and jammed against her.

“Jesus—”

He reached up and clasped her upper arms. He thought, throw her off, get her away, but instead he held her and thrust. Her breath puffed with each in and out, small and explosive. He could see her eyes now. She stared at him as if this had been his idea. Egan’s mind crowded with conflicting images—Edmunds’ warning, his own statement about married women, the dream—but none gave him a way out. It was impossible to stop.

When he came, his grip tightened and she whined in pain. Finished, he dropped his hands. Red marks circled her arms where he had held her, like bracelets.

She did not move off of him. Carefully, she lowered her upper body onto his and, one leg at a time, stretched out along his length, somehow keeping him from slipping out. Her skin was dry and warm and his arms went around her, one hand pressing against her buttocks, then other stroking her spine absently. She licked the depression at the base of his throat.

Egan stretched beneath her, enjoying the sensation of the sheets, the friction of skin on skin, the compact weight of her. He was used to fumbling sex the first time with a new woman; he made a game of the process of exploring and discovery. This, though, had been . . . perfect . . .

Her hair tickled his nose.

It would be nice to keep it like this, he thought, just like this, the quiet just after, the only sounds the wavelike rhythm of their overlapped breathing. This was the part quickly lost as a relationship progressed. For a minute or five or ten, depending, everything was all right. If he could find a way to keep this mood instead of letting it fade, then he might find a way to stay.

But at some point you had to move, you had to speak, you had to address . . . everything else.

Esther Miller raised her head and looked at him. Egan felt himself tense, anticipating the first awkward words—an apology or an excuse, an explanation that gave him a chance to be indignant or forgiving or simply silent, unable to give the correct response in a timely manner to make the whole situation something more than physical. That was his usual tack. Say nothing, let the chances slip by one by one.

“Help me,” she said.

Something struck the front door with a sharp crack. Muffled yelling followed, the words unintelligible up in the loft, but their sense was clear.

Esther rolled off of him to perch at the edge of the bed. Egan sat up, pulse hammering. Another round of banging came, followed by more yelling. Egan clearly heard “Esther!”

“Get dressed,” Egan said, standing. He started pulling on his own clothes.

For a giddy moment he almost laughed. This had never happened to him before. He had always stayed away from wives and lovers and girlfriends. Even when he did not know with certainty, he had a sense about it and attached women made him nervous.

Glass shattered.

“Esther! Come out here! You got to come home!”

“Dammit,” Egan hissed. He laced his boots and stood. Esther still knelt on the bed, naked. “I said get dressed!”

“It’s Brice,” she said.

“So what? Put your clothes on.” He looked around the floor and found the oversized pants and shirt he had given her last night. He snatched them up and tossed them at her, “Put these on now!”

“Esther!”

“Leave me be!” she screamed.

Egan’s heart seemed to jump in his chest and he stared at her, dumbstruck. Tears streamed down her face. She climbed off the bed and slowly began putting on the clothes.

“Esther, you got to come home! The soy ain’t comin’ up and the corn’s rottin’ in the husk! Old Man Emory lost half his grain to spoilage and Cy Taylor’s dog run off!”

Esther chewed her lip, buttoning the shirt. She stooped over and rolled the pants legs up.

“Esther!”

“I’m goin’, Brice! I’m leaving the valley!”

“Will you shut up,” Egan said.

“You can’t do that, Esther! You got a commitment!”

“Not my choosin’!”

“Don’t matter! It’s the way it is! You, young fella, you there?”

“Yes.”

“You sleep with my wife?”

Egan hesitated. He rarely lied. He practiced absence so that he would not have to.

“Dammit! Esther, did you fuck him? Was it your idea?”

“Go away!” she cried.

“Young fella, you send her out and we can forget all about this. It ain’t your fault, you don’t know, you don’t understand. You send Esther out to me and it’ll be all right.”

“All right . . .” Egan looked at Esther. “What does that mean?”

“Please. Don’t send me back. I want to leave.”

“Then—”

“Esther!”

Egan descended the stairs. “Mr. Miller, Sheriff Edmunds is supposed to be here this morning with Mrs. McCutcheon to take Esther into protective custody. I’m not going to send her out or let you in until he arrives.”

“Mrs. McCutcheon? What in hell for? Her part’s done.”

“Esther will be in protective custody—”

“Protective—what’s that mean? Will I get my wife?”

“That’s up to Esther.”

“I don’t think so. Listen, you don’t understand—”

“You already punched Bert over this. How do I know you won’t do the same to Esther?”

“I wouldn’t—I never—Esther! Did you tell him I hurt you?”

“No,” Esther called from above.

Egan could see Brice Miller now through the broke glass of the front door. He held his shotgun and was looking around the inside of the A-frame with large eyes.

“You tell him I wouldn’t do that,” he said. “I wouldn’t hurt you. I never hurt you.”

“I didn’t say you hurt me, Brice. You just won’t let me leave.”

Brice’s round, fleshy face contorted almost to the point of open weeping. “You can’t leave, Esther, you know that ain’t possible. What’s gonna happen to us if you leave? Won’t be nothin’ left by the end of the next season. It ain’t me, it’s the way things are.”

“Why don’t we all just wait for Sheriff Edmunds—” Egan said.

At that moment Brice stuck the barrel of his shotgun through the broken window. Egan’s legs went cold. He started to raise his hands, stupidly he knew, what could a couple of inches of flesh and bone do to stop iron. He threw himself to the left and went over the railing. His stomach clutched at the fall, but the chill had left him.

He slammed onto the floor as Brice’s shotgun went off. Splinters of wood from the stairs above briefly rained down on him. He scrambled crabwise toward the back of the house. A second shot shattered glass, and then there was silence, except for the heaving of his lungs.

He got into the kitchen area and pressed up against the stove. Egan swallowed hard around the constriction in his throat and tried to control his frantic breathing.

He heard crackling in the distance. Perhaps Edmunds’ car pulling up the road? No, that was wrong, it was too inconsistent.

What was wrong with these people, he wondered. “When I see Curt . . .” he muttered.

The crackling grew louder and now he smelled smoke. He pushed himself up to peer over the top of the stove. The windows at the front of the house rippled with yellow-red that became black sooty as it rose. As he watched a trickle of flame traced a path through the broken glass in the door.

“Jesus!”

He bolted for the stairs, waiting for the shotgun blast that would cut him down. It never came. He rounded the bannister and took the steps four at a time to the loft.

The bed was empty.

He tore through the small space, searching for Esther. He jerked open the closet doors, pulled clothes out, but she was gone.

The fire sound was very loud now. Egan crawled across the bed to the window. Brice stood leaning against a tree, the shotgun ready.

Egan pulled his boots on and grabbed an extra shirt and ran downstairs. The heat was filling the room now. The whole front of the A-frame seemed engulfed. At the kitchen sink he turned on the water, hoping the pump still worked. Water gushed into the basin and he soaked the shirts. He put one on and wrapped the second across his shoulders, then pulled a bucket from beneath the sink. He kept glancing at the encroaching blaze while the bucket filled. Smoke obscured the upper parts of the A-frame now.

Brice was out back waiting to kill him. There was only one other way out. A last thought made him dig the axe from the utility closet by the back door.

He carried the bucket and axe toward the front door. The heat was terrible this close, but the floor was not burning yet. He set the bucket down and wrapped the extra wet shirt around his head, then stepped quickly forward with the axe and thrust it at the door. It buckled, the frame weakened by fire. Another blow and it popped loose and fell away. Egan hefted the bucket and heaved the water at the doorway, uncertain if it would do anything at all.

He dropped the bucket, ducked his head, held his breath, and ran.

He saw nothing, only felt the impact of heat and a searing wind. His feet lost touch with the collapsing porch and he dropped. When he struck the ground, he staggered, legs flailing, pushing hard to put distance between himself and the fire. The gravel underfoot slithered beneath his tread and he pitched forward. He landed on his elbows and one knee and rolled. Only then did he open his eyes.

He glimpsed orange at the left-hand corner of his vision and a moment after felt the bite of burning on his left arm. He was rolling now, remembering vaguely that that was something you did if you were on fire, and trying to scrape the clinging, damp shirt from his face and off his head.

When he could see—trees all around, broken sky through the canopy—he tried to get to his feet. His legs quivered so badly that he stumbled twice before he could stand.

The left sleeve of the shirt he wore was scorched and smoking. He patted his hair, both shoulders and the back of his pants, but he found nothing burning. He looked back toward the A-frame.

All he could see through the wall of fire was the very peak of the roof. The sound was terrible. Egan stood nearly twenty yards away now and even at this distance he felt a wash of heat. He opened his mouth to call for Esther but his throat caught and he hacked painfully. Picking up his extra shirt, he saw the axe on the ground several feet from the collapsed porch. He sprinted forward and grabbed it, then bolted for the woods.

• • • •

Egan did not remember stopping, much less falling asleep. He came awake fast, startled. The forest was quiet. He could not even hear the crackle of the fire. His heart hammered.

Should’ve taken the RV, he thought. Then he remembered that he had left his keys in the A-frame.

He had left everything in the A-frame. Clothes, toiletries, money.

Esther . . .

He lurched to his feet and looked around him at the alien wood, lost. He glanced toward the sun, but could not tell if it were still early morning or late afternoon. His forearm itched where it had been slightly burned.

The axe lay in the leaves and grass. He hefted it, pondering its usefulness in his present circumstances. It would not be much defense against Brice’s shotgun.

He leaned the axe against the tree behind him and stared up at the sky through the canopy. Many of the branches were stripped of leaves, and of the leaves remaining, it seemed nearly half were turning brown. The air smelled dry and musty.

A sharp, small sound broke the stillness, like birds chirping. Egan turned in a slow circle, staring into the fractal confusion of the woods. Nothing moved. He made the circuit again and his eye stopped on an incongruity. He gazed intently at the shaft of pale cork color that seemed to rise out of the green, tapering slightly, until it moved, falling gracefully, and he recognized it as an arm.

Heart suddenly pounding, he grabbed the axe and approached as quietly as he could, wincing at every leaf and twig that crackled and snapped underfoot. He topped the slight rise, hands flexing on the axe handle, and looked down.

Esther lay in the ground cover, naked. Here and there ugly red and black weals marred her smooth skin and it took Egan a moment to realize that they were burns. Her feet were charred, the ruin stretching up nearly to her knees. Tears ran freely from her eyes, but she made no sound.

Instead, she seemed to be bathing, slowly and indulgently, running her hands along her arms, then over her breasts and stomach, down her hips; she rubbed her legs together, one over the other and then reversed. All the while her entire body twisted an inch or two—more, and it would be a writhe. Her face twitched with each movement.

Egan watched, mute, frightened and fascinated. The memory of her earlier, touching him, absorbing him, aroused him at once. He felt a stab of shame; she was injured and all he could think of was having her again.

Her movements increased. As he watched, the redness faded with each pass of her hands over a wound. The burnt blackness brushed away, like old charcoal. Flesh showed through the scabbing on her feet. She drew deeper lungfuls of air. Her eyes closed and she sighed heavily. Leaves made delicate sounds, disintegrating beneath her.

Egan imagined turning away, moving off, leaving her. He pictured the motions, counted the steps, envisioned retreat, and his pulse accelerated. It needed to be done, he thought, before she saw him, before she opened her eyes and fixed him in place. It was a peculiar sensation, part déjà vu, part self-knowledge, not prophetic so much as expected. He could not look away.

She opened her eyes; Egan felt a cold line trace the outlines of his skull and down his neck.

“Help me,” she said and languidly lifted a hand toward him.

When he clasped her hand, there was no shock. Only flesh. Gently, he tugged her to her feet.

The ground where she had lain was grey and black, dead, like old, wet ash.

• • • •

Egan winced as the window inched up noisily in the old, slightly warped aluminum runners. He glanced up and down the line of houses backing onto the woodland. Seeing no one, he pushed the storm window all the way up and hoisted himself onto the ledge.

The room was small and cluttered. After several seconds, Egan’s eyes adjusted to the gloom and he saw that it was a spare bedroom, barely larger than a closet, crowded with chairs, a bureau, boxes and bags, and what appeared to be an old sewing machine mounted in its own desk.

He listened by the door, but heard nothing until the furnace kicked on, blowing at first chill air from the vents. He stepped into the narrow hallway, licked his lips nervously, and explored Bert’s house. When he was satisfied that she was not home, he went to her bedroom.

Bert was larger than Esther Miller, but not by much. Egan found a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, heavy socks and old sneakers. He bundled the clothes in a plastic bag he found in the kitchen and left the house the same way he had entered.

Esther sat against a tree about fifty yards into the woods. She smiled when she saw him.

“Here,” he said, handing her the bag. “They might be a little large, but . . . ”

There were no traces of burns on her now.

“I thought—” he started to say, then bit back, feeling foolish. Obviously she had gotten out before the fire had consumed the A-frame, that was why he had been unable to find her. But the burns . . .

“I can’t,” she said cryptically, lacing the sneakers. She smiled. “They flop.” She looked up at him. “What now?”

“Let’s go back to Bert’s house and wait for her. We don’t know what’s happened since—we need information.”

“Why didn’t we just go together?”

“Because—” Because you were naked, he was about to say, but immediately realized that made no sense. Why would anyone be any more or less alarmed at a clothed Esther Miller breaking into someone’s house than a naked Esther Miller? The truth was he had not been sure of what to do next. If he had been seen, caught, he had wanted Esther out of reach, safe.

Esther got to her feet. “I’m ready.”

It occurred to him that she was enjoying this. Her face looked eager, eyes bright. Irritated, Egan picked up the axe and led the way back to Bert’s house.

The storm window went up more easily now. He hoisted Esther up to the ledge and she pulled herself through, then accepted the axe from him. He climbed in after and shut the window.

The moment he sat down on the living room sofa he began to tremble. He closed his eyes and tried to control his fear. He had nearly died today. In the panic-driven flight for safety, he had put off confronting that fact. Now, though, there was nothing to distract him.

Esther watched him from the hall doorway.

“Sorry,” he said. “This is my first time being murdered.”

She sat down beside him and touched his thigh. “Can I help?”

“Tell me this is just a bad dream and I’ll wake up in my friend’s house.”

“I can’t.”

He glanced at her. “What is it with your husband? Can’t he take no for an answer?”

“No.” She sighed. “It’s not his fault. He never wanted me to begin with.”

“What?”

“You should sleep.”

“I—sure. I should.” She eased him over on his side and he stretched out on the sofa. “I should have stayed here last night after all. Pride gets a person into the damnedest trouble sometimes.” He tried to laugh.

“Sleep,” she said and put her hand on his face.

“Sleep . . .”

• • • •

“I don’t remember giving you a key.”

Egan jerked up. Bert stood over him, hands on hips, frowning. The lamps were all on, throwing shadows across each other in between pools of bright yellow light. He stared at her until his heart began to slow. He wiped his face and his hand came away sweat-slick.

“Bert . . . I’m sorry, I . . .”

“Is that Esther Miller in my bed?”

“I . . . yeah, I guess.”

Her frown deepened. “You didn’t do anything here, did you?”

“What? We just needed a place to hide till—”

“You didn’t fuck her here, did you?”

The anger in her voice jarred him. “No.”

“Good.” She sighed heavily and suddenly all the suspicion and rage seemed to leave her and she looked only tired. “We all thought you were dead.”

“You heard then.”

“You can’t burn your hand on a stove in this valley without everyone hearing about in less than a day.”

“Where’s Miller? That maniac—”

“In the woods somewhere, looking for Esther. You actually made a good choice coming here. This is probably the last place he’ll think to look.”

“Why isn’t he in jail? He burned the A-frame down, damn near shot me. I’m amazed Esther survived, I thought she’d gotten caught in the fire.”

“She can’t—the Sheriff won’t put Brice Miller in jail till he has Esther back.”

“Why not? He’s a goddamn murderer!”

Bert shook her head. “It’s complicated.”

Egan rubbed his face. “We have to get out of Saletcroix. I lost my car keys in the fire.”

“‘We’?”

“Well, yeah. Esther can’t stay here. Next time she might not be so lucky.”

Bert seemed disappointed in the answer, but she said nothing. She went to the hallway and peered into her bedroom.

“This is as much my fault as anything,” she said.

“How’s that? I didn’t see you stalking my house with a shotgun.”

“Esther wouldn’t have run off if I hadn’t filled her head full of ideas.” She came back into the living room and sat down in her wingback chair. “I’d been running the Pumphandle for about two years before I met her. She came in with her husband for a few minutes—he had to talk to Ralph Stimson about something and Ralph was drinking heavily then, the only place you could find him was my bar—and she acted like she’d never seen such a place before. I mean, everything amazed her. Frightened her. Fascinated her. A few days later she came back. Alone. She asked me what it was I did there. When I told her I owned the Pumphandle, she just stared at me like I was talking Chinese or something. ‘Who’s your husband?’ she asked. Isn’t one. ‘How do you get by like that?’ And it began. About once a week, sometimes twice, Esther Miller came in to learn about . . . things.”

“Things.”

Bert frowned at him. “She didn’t know anything. I mean, nothing, not even what year it was. So I started asking about her. None of the men would say a word. One woman—Mrs. McCutcheon, runs her own farm, she’s a widow—she told me about Esther. Not that I believed a word of it, but—I figured that if everyone else around here believed it, this had to be the saddest case of barefoot-and-pregnant I’d ever seen.”

Bert became silent, staring toward the bedroom. Egan waited until he became sure she had forgotten him.

“So what did this widow say?”

“Hm? Oh. Lot of folklore nonsense.” Bert drew a deep breath. “The short version of it is that Esther is the personification of the valley’s soul. When she’s quiet and happy and cared for, the valley prospers. When she isn’t—”

“Everything goes to hell.”

“Basically.”

“You don’t believe that.”

Bert grunted. “Would you? The point is, these folks here do believe it.”

Egan thought about what he had seen in the woods. “I saw . . .”

“What?”

“Nothing. It’s not important.” He cleared his throat. “What if it’s true? How do you feel about that?”

Bert looked puzzled for a moment, then shrugged. “I’d think how unfair it was that this little pocket of back country should have something that guarantees prosperity and the rest of the country—the world—has to get by on its own. I mean, what did Saletcroix ever do to deserve that kind of special treatment?”

“Yeah. Other than take care not to lose it?”

Bert grunted.

“What do you suggest we do?” Egan asked.

“Once more I ask ‘We’?”

“You just finished telling me how this is so much your fault.”

Bert snorted and shook her head. “I already did too much and it got me a black eye and sore ribs. I’m not in the rescue business anymore.”

She turned her back on him and walked out of the room. A moment later, Egan heard water running from the bathroom. He let his head fall back against the couch and stared at the ceiling, a distant ringing in his ears telling him that he was stressed and anxious and frightened.

I should just walk away . . .

Like every other time.

He crossed to the bedroom door and looked into the grey-on-grey collection of shapes until he made out Esther Miller’s shape beneath the blankets on Bert’s bed. He regretted not staying here last night, not only because of the complications that had developed since.

“What do you want to do?”

Egan turned. Bert stood in the center of her small living room, arms folded, face set in forced calm.

“I don’t know. Do you have a suggestion?”

“You could turn her over to the sheriff.”

“What would he do with her?”

“Give her back to Brice.”

“What would he do to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t get this. What happened to the law? Brice’s responsible for property damage and probably a death.”

“He’s responsible for Esther, first and foremost. He’s the one who was designated, it’s his responsibility. He can’t take care of her if he’s in jail.”

“Designated by who? This is making less and less sense. Everybody here is willing to go along with that?”

Bert shrugged. “What are you willing to go along with for what you believe?”

“I don’t—”

He had been about to say that he believed in nothing. He stopped, though, to wonder if that were true.

“You have to understand,” Bert went on, “that people here don’t think much of abstracts. They’re pretty basic—what affects the community has to be handled first.” She smiled wryly. “Some would say that makes them simple. I don’t think there’s anything simple about these folks.”

“Burning down houses seems like a hell of a community problem.”

Bert raised her finger at him, mouth open to bark in anger, but the sound he heard came from the bedroom behind her. She frowned, as if unsure she had heard anything. It came again, a groan like the distant sound of ice shifting just before it calves and drops into the sea, or the moan of iron in path of a hurricane, but far away and low, so that it moiled with the blood in his ears and he could not for a moment be sure that he heard anything.

Once more and this time he knew it was Esther. He pushed past Bert and leaned into the bedroom.

She lay on the bed in a pose of torment, on her side, back arched and face buried in pillow. One leg quivered.

“Esther . . . ?” Bert called softly.

Esther sat up so suddenly that Egan expected to hear the sound of bones snapping. Her eyes were large and desolate.

“It’s burning,” she whispered.

Egan and Bert exchanged a puzzled glance. Then they heard the sirens, far in the distance.

• • • •

The smoke reminded Egan of the news footage from Kuwait, when the Iraqis had set all the oil wells afire. It poured up as if trying to shove the sky away. Egan knew without question that the center of the blaze was the A-frame. But from the span of horizon that gushed black, tarry clouds, the fire was out of control and eating up one wall of the valley.

They crowded into Bert’s truck and drove up to the main road. Bert squealed to a halt in front of the sheriff’s office across from the Pumphandle.

Edmunds leaned over a desk strewn with paper and phones, his face dirty and sweat-smeared. He glanced up once when Egan, Bert, and Esther came into his office, then looked a second time, harder.

“I’ll call you back,” he said and hung up. He strode toward Egan, his face unreadable under the grime. “What in hell you done, you stupid shit!”

“Carl!” Bert shouted.

People shuffled, Bert trying to block Sheriff Edmunds, Egan trying to push Esther back from harm’s way, Edmunds ducking more deftly than Egan would have thought possible for a man of his bulk around Bert and inside Egan’s guard. Egan did not even see the fist, only felt a sharp pain beneath his right eye and the frenzied groping for a handhold as he fell back through the door.

“You’re goin’ back right now, do you fuckin’ hear me? This’s gotta stop!”

Egan opened his eyes to see Edmunds towering over Esther, her back against the doorjamb, shouting at her. Bert had a grip on his shirt collar and tried to pull him back.

“This ain’t fun no more, Esther! You’re fuckin’ with our lives now!”

“Carl!” Bert screamed again. “Brice set the fire!”

Edmunds shrugged her off. “Wouldn’t be no fire ’less she hadn’t run off like some dopeheaded adolescent!”

Egan got to his feet, surprised at how steady he seemed to be.

“Have you got help coming?” he asked.

Edmunds glared at him. “Don’t press me.”

“You’re going to need professionals to fight this.”

“All we need is her,” he stabbed Esther’s shoulder with a middle finger, “back where she belongs and you,” he jammed the same finger into Egan’s chest, “to get the hell outta Saletcroix before it gets worse than it is!”

“Carl, not even Esther can damp this down,” Bert said. “Egan’s right, we need help.”

Edmunds continued staring hard at Egan, as if the pressure of his anger could somehow cause hurt. Finally, he shook his head.

“I already called in. They’re musterin’ planes over in Fairfield. County seat knows, they’re pullin’ together fire departments and volunteers.” He sniffed loudly and turned away. “Just hope it’s enough.”

Esther stared at him, wordless, her face puzzled. “I didn’t set the fire,” she said quietly. “Why am I to blame?”

Edmunds glared at her. “You ain’t where you belong.”

After a silent span of time Esther went outside. Egan watched her go, felt himself drawn to follow, but he stayed inside the sheriff’s office. I need to leave, he thought, as usual . . .

He cleared his throat. “How can I help?”

• • • •

The small Saletcroix fire department had put out the A-frame within two hours of it going up, but cinders had drifted up the slope behind it, into the trees, out of sight. Most of the embers guttered long before touching anything dry, but a few found beds of leaves and twigs where they sparked into new life, and by midafternoon the slope was on fire. The blaze spread quickly through drought-parched scrub, spores of new sparks travelling the breezes now whipped into frenzied gusts by the heat storm building. Now, close to twilight, the fire was hectares-wide and monstrous.

Egan helped Bert load up her truck with coolers of sandwiches and sodas and three big steel water cans and Styrofoam cups. Esther sat against the wall, staring up at the smoke. He wanted to talk to her, but everything about her made him feel unwelcome, unnecessary. She was concerned with the fire, not him; she seemed to be drawing herself tight, as if preparing for confrontation; she acknowledged nothing outside the blaze, especially not the angry glares of the locals who spotted her. None of them spoke to her and Egan was not sure what he would do if any of them approached her, but he felt protective and frustrated.

“Bert,” Sheriff Edmunds came up to her. “We’re setting up operations on Cavanaugh’s place, so take this up there. It’s closer to the leading edge of the fire and they think they can dig a break and stop it from there.”

“Right. You coming, Esther?”

“Cavanaugh,” she murmured. Then, absently, she nodded and got into the truck.

Reluctantly Egan got in beside her. He felt a shameful exhilaration when he touched her and wished he could remain behind, away from Esther.

Bert drove silently south and turned onto a gravel road heading west. It climbed the ridge that formed the south wall of the valley until it entered a broad shelf of farmland.

“This is Mrs. McCutcheon’s place,” Esther said. She sounded afraid.

“Cavanaugh’s on the other side, Esther,” Bert said. “You know that.”

The Cavanaugh house sat atop a rise that overlooked acres of soy. The opposite side of the field was bordered by forest. From here the fire could be seen beneath the column of smoke.

People stared at Egan as he helped set up a long portable aluminum table and lay out the food and drinks. Not all of them, only the locals. He did not return the stares.

He could feel the fire here. It drew the air from below and sent upslope a dull, pervasive furnace-glow of heat.

Lights were being set up from one of the larger vehicles and hooked to a portable generator. The eastern sky was already the flat cobalt blue of dusk.

An older woman separated from the crowd and came behind the table. Egan smiled at her briefly, then looked again. Her face was composed of delicate lines from decades of hard living, criss-crossing and etching at the still-healthy skin. She was brown with a permanent suntan and her granite-grey hair hung down her back in a long braid.

“Mrs. McCutcheon?” he said.

“Mr. Ginter,” she said, her New England tones clear and sharp. “Where’s Esther?”

“She—”

“Where is she?” a different voice cut the air.

Egan looked around. Bert was moving away from the table, through the small throng of men gathered for sandwiches and drinks.

“Where’s Esther?”

Egan felt a chill run from his scalp to the small of his back as he recognized Brice Miller’s voice.

“Don’t tell me that! Where’s my wife?”

He heard others talking, low and terse, too quietly to make out the words. He looked around and Mrs. McCutcheon was gone. He found her moving firmly through the crowd.

“Dammit!”

People moved aside suddenly, too fast for Egan to react, and Brice leaned on the aluminum table. Cups fells, spilling water. Egan jerked back two steps.

“Where is she?”

Brice’s face was a ruin of torment. There were tears in his deep-set eyes, and for all the anger and fear, he looked almost childish.

“Brice.”

He turned. Mrs. McCutcheon stood a few feet away.

“No!” Brice shouted. He lifted his shotgun, knuckles white, arms trembling. “Where’s Esther? Esther!”

He whirled around and aimed the shotgun at Egan’s face.

For an instant Egan’s entire consciousness was compromised wholly of the black hole before his eyes. He did not think of death—that possibility occurred to him later—but of the overwhelming rage, his and Brice Miller’s, instantly evoked, a freezing anger passed from one down the length of the shotgun and into the other to bind them together, and for a few moments he knew what it meant to hate.

“Brice.”

Egan counted his heartbeats, one by one, until the barrel wavered, then dropped.

A breeze gusted over his face and he could hear the faint sound of crackling. Egan looked around. No one moved, no one spoke, everyone watched Brice.

The big man looked confused and a little frightened. He looked at the old woman as if she had just betrayed him. Beyond, the forest spilled black tar into the sky.

“I did my best,” Brice said. “She changed.”

“It happens,” Mrs. McCutcheon said. “It’s natural. But we have to accept it and move on. You ain’t the one anymore, Brice.”

“I could be. I need learnin’, but I could be.”

“No. It’s too late. Everything’s distorted. The fire’s come early. We need new blood now.”

Brice looked on the verge of weeping. The shotgun hung limply in his right hand. Egan let out a long breath and started to turn away.

Brice bellowed. “You—!”

He threw himself to one side at the moment of the blast and felt something sear across his left shoulder. He slammed face down to the grass and tried to roll away from the shouting and screaming around him. Someone caught him and held him and when he looked up he saw Bert, eyes wide and staring. Egan pushed himself up and she wrapped an arm around his shoulder; it hurt, but he ignored it.

Esther lay on the ground a few feet away, most of her right shoulder pulped and ragged flesh. She blinked skyward in fits. Her body writhed weakly and her breath came in short gulps.

Egan tried to lunge toward her, but Bert held him with surprising strength.

Suddenly she was surrounded by people. Someone brought a gurney, someone else a floodlight. Egan searched for Brice and found him held immobile by four men. His face was bright red and wet with tears.

“Don’t let her die,” Egan hissed and felt Bert’s grip tighten. “Don’t let her die . . . ”

• • • •

He sat just beyond the shore of light pooling around the command center set up in from of Cavanaugh’s house and stared into the flame-torn darkness. High overhead he could hear the planes coming in to make night drops of retardant. A dangerous exercise, but necessary if they wanted to stop the fire before it consumed the whole value.

In spite of the hot wind from the conflagration, he felt cold and hugged a blanket around his shoulders.

He felt her presence before he heard her. The old woman stood beside him. When he looked up, seeing only her silhouette in the wash of light behind them, she extended her hand. He reached out automatically and instinctively accepted the cup of coffee.

“Some places,” she said, “people give rituals to. Other places give rituals to people. Some places are older than others.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?”

“It might. Give it a chance.”

“Who are you?”

“I’m Maude McCutcheon.”

“Bert told me about you. You believe Esther was the spirit of the valley or something like that.”

“Was? She’s not dead yet. Is that really what Bert said?”

“Not exactly. She said you explained to her what the fuss was about Esther and Brice. That’s what people here believe.”

“Well. That’s what the valley gave them.”

“Excuse me?”

“I came here almost fifty years ago. I was going to be a scholar. Anthropology. Margaret Mead was my hero, I wanted to work with her. Instead I came here, to these hills. Here, in Saletcroix, I found these people. They’d been here two and half, nearly three centuries, isolated, insulated, alone. But surprisingly alive. I stayed, I married, I studied. I learned.”

“Isn’t there some prohibition about getting too involved with your subjects?”

“Is that your excuse?” She smiled wryly. “It’s not hard to spot a severed soul. You have the look of someone who hasn’t found something to belong to.”

“Right. Did you divine that in a mess of chicken bones?”

“Don’t mix your metaphysics so indiscriminately. A lot of it’s hogwash, but some of it’s old and true.”

He looked off into the rising smoke. “What’s the truth in that?”

“Regeneration, rebirth. Cycles. Some seeds need the intense heat of a forest fire to make them germinate.”

Egan looked at her, his heart hammering.

“Once,” she said, gesturing, “not too long ago, this all belonged to the Osage. Before them, who knows? The Mississippians? Where did they come from? Who came before them? Someone did. Go back far enough, they all came over the Bering land bridge. At least, that’s the modern view.”

“You have a different view?”

“No. I’m just saying that there’s been someone here for longer than we’ve got calendars and dates to name.”

“I see. Very interesting, Mrs. McCutcheon. Very helpful.”

“Every place lives and dies, Mr. Ginter. Every place goes through the same cycle. Birth, growth, death, rebirth. Might sound like a cliché to someone as sophisticated as yourself, but even you abide by the cycle. Even you yield to necessity when the time comes.”

“Just because something goes on the same way for decades or centuries doesn’t mean it should keep on.”

“Maybe not, but there’s a lot of momentum behind such things.”

“If you’ve got a point to make—”

“Every living thing needs a lover and a protector and a teacher. That’s the only way it can love and protect and teach, if it’s got that to give back. When it loses one or all, it dies, and we have to wait for another to be born so we can try again. It’s the way of it all. Being a bit pompous, humans try to make it more important with ritual and rules, but they only muddy it all up and lose sight of what it means. When that happens, you get hurt. You give hurt. You forget that the way you love and protect and teach isn’t as important as that you do.”

She got to her feet. “Who do you love, Mr. Ginter? Who do you protect and teach?”

Egan had a smartass reply instantly at hand, but when he opened his mouth, his throat caught, as though he had sucked in dust or had gotten a popcorn kernel stuck just past his tongue. He coughed sharply and felt tears well up. When he finished hacking, Mrs. McCutcheon was gone and he was alone with her question.

“No one,” he said to the fire.

• • • •

He opened his eyes to a morning fog. He sniffed and smelled smoke. Blinking, he sat up. The tree line at the edge of the soy field was ablaze.

It got so close . . .

A shadow far to the left caught his attention. He squinted through the pall, but he could not be sure if what he saw was a person or just the fey shapes of fire and shadow. A moment later it vanished, leaving him convinced that it had been a combination of the remnants of sleep and a trick of the light.

He got to his feet and kicked the empty coffee cup. He scooped it up and walked back to the trucks and tables.

Bert’s 4X4 was gone. A couple of EMS techs dozed against the side of their ambulance. The radio operator listened intently to her earphones. The place was still.

Brice Miller sat tied to the porch of Cavanaugh’s house. Egan stared at him until he looked up resentfully.

They had carried Esther into the house and up the stairs, to a spare bedroom. Egan entered the house to the smell of bacon and coffee. He walked quietly up the stairs to Esther’s room.

The bed was empty. Blood stained the sheets and pillows brown.

For a moment Egan thought perhaps she had gone to the bathroom, but then he wondered how she had managed it without help. He was never sure how he knew where she went, only that he ran down the stairs and outside, screaming, and ran toward the soy, screaming, to the fire, knowing that the dreamshadow he had seen was Esther.

• • • •

He could not get close to the fire, much less go into it, but he paced back and forth before it like an animal whose mate has gone where he cannot follow. He had never known such helplessness. He had always wondered at the desolation he had caused in others, never quite believing in it. Now he knew it for himself.

• • • •

By midafternoon the fire guttered. The planes circled, the firemen went in, but all that remained for them to do were small mopping-up jobs, a lone stand of burning trees here and there. Rainclouds gathered through the day and by dusk the storm was imminent.

Egan sat at the edge of the field all through the night, watching and waiting. Bert brought him a poncho and food and asked him to come back, out of the rain, but he refused.

“She’s not dead,” he said. “She’ll come back.”

Bert finally brought her own poncho down and sat beside him.

In the morning he woke to the sight of half a dozen local men standing in a semicircle around Brice Miller. He heard someone—perhaps Sheriff Edmunds—intoning something in a droning monotone that reminded him of church services. Egan nudged Bert and she stirred.

“Hmm?” She peered through the morning mist.

One of the men handed a thick-bladed knife to Brice. After a long silence, he nodded and walked away from them, toward the smoldering forest. His feet made sucking noises in the soggy loam.

“Judgment,” Bert said, then leaned against Egan’s shoulder and fell back to sleep.

One of the semicircle broke away and came toward Egan. Sheriff Edmunds resolved out of the mist and stopped before him.

“She’ll need a new caretaker,” he said. “We thought you might want to . . . I mean, you were the last to be with her . . . she might not accept you anyway, but . . . anyway, you’d be welcome if you choose to.”

He seemed embarrassed. Egan only nodded and presently Edmunds walked away.

“You should leave,” Bert said. “You could be stuck here the rest of your life.”

Egan gazed off into the desolation. “It’s not like I have anything waiting for me anywhere else.” He shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Bert yawned and got to her feet. “Lemme know what you decide.”

• • • •

Saletcroix helped him rebuild the A-frame. Curt Albright gave Egan a lease, which the town paid, and he worked at the Pumphandle for Bert. Insurance replaced his RV and he was able to start doing odd jobs for many of the farmers in the valley.

By winter, Bert moved in with him. It felt natural and for the first time in his life he did not experience the anxiety such a commitment had always brought him. He did not examine his feelings too closely, only enough to know that he would no longer feel compelled to run from anyone who loved him.

The ridge above the house looked as if it had gone bald, but by the following spring he saw green dotted the grey-brown crown. Egan walked up to the top once a week, anxious and expectant, not sure how he could do what he wanted to, whether he had it in him to stand in the way of fierce momentum, not even sure what it was he intended.

Love, protect, and teach, he thought. Of course, yes . . .

And when he saw the woman walking down the slope, through the young saplings, on the first day of spring the fifth year after the fire, he knew, of course, that this is what he had waited for, why he had stayed, and the source of everything new that he felt. She was naked and clean and whole and everything he thought he could aspire to equal.

Love, protect, and teach. Of course, yes, yes . . .

“Do you want me to leave?” Bert asked, watching him.

Egan looked at her, puzzled, then shook his head.

“No.” He held his hand out to her. “Things are going to be done differently this time. I mean, what did Saletcroix ever do to deserve this kind of treatment?”

Bert laughed sharply, took his hand and waited with him. They shared a vague sense of accomplishment, diluted by a distant anxiety that, having come this far, they now had to do something new.

© 2003 by Mark W. Tiedemann. Originally published in Black Gate. Reprinted by permission of the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark W. Tiedemann has been publishing professionally since 1990 and to date has 10 novels, 2 collections, and 60 short stories to his credit. He is a lifelong resident of St. Louis. At various times he has been a photographer, a musician, a delivery driver, lab technician, president of a state organization (the Missouri Center for the Book), public relations representative, retail clerk, lecturer, and workshop coach. Currently, he works at Left Bank Books, St. Louis’s oldest independent bookstore and is at work on new fiction. He is represented by Jennifer Udden of the Barry Goldblatt Literary Agency. He met his partner, Donna, in 1980. They share a house, a dog, a massive library, a taste for good wine, and a fondness for strange stories.

NOVEL EXCERPT: Shift (John Joseph Adams Books / HMH)

Hugh Howey | 4926 words

PROLOGUE
Year 2110
Beneath the hills of Fulton County, Georgia

Troy returned to the living and found himself inside of a tomb. He awoke to a world of confinement, a thick sheet of frosted glass pressed near to his face.

Dark shapes stirred on the other side of the icy murk. He tried to lift his arms, to beat on the glass, but his muscles were too weak. He attempted to scream—but could only cough. The taste in his mouth was foul. His ears rang with the clank of heavy locks opening, the hiss of air, the squeak of hinges long dormant.

The lights overhead were bright, the hands on him warm. They helped him sit while he continued to cough, his breath clouding the chill air. Someone had water. Pills to take. The water was cool, the pills bitter. Troy fought down a few gulps. He was unable to hold the glass without help. His hands trembled as memories flooded back, scenes from long nightmares. The feeling of deep time and yesterdays mingled. He shivered.

A paper gown. The sting of tape removed. A tug on his arm, a tube pulled from his groin. Two men dressed in white helped him out of the coffin. Steam rose all around him, air condensing and dispersing.

Sitting up and blinking against the glare, exercising lids long shut, Troy looked down the rows of coffins full of the living that stretched toward the distant and curved walls. The ceiling felt low; the suffocating press of dirt stacked high above. And the years. So many had passed. Anyone he cared about would be gone.

Everything was gone.

The pills stung his throat. He tried to swallow. Memories faded like dreams upon waking, and he felt his grip loosen on everything he’d known.

He collapsed backwards—but the men in the white overalls saw this coming. They caught him and lowered him to the ground, a paper gown rustling on shivering skin.

Images returned; recollections rained down like bombs and then were gone.

The pills would only do so much. It would take time to destroy the past.

Troy began to sob into his palms, a sympathetic hand resting on his head. The two men in white allowed him this moment. They didn’t rush the process. Here was a courtesy passed from one waking soul to the next, something all the men sleeping in their coffins would one day rise to discover.

And eventually . . . forget.

1
Year 2049
Washington, DC

The tall glass trophy cabinets had once served as bookshelves. There were hints. Hardware on the shelves dated back centuries, while the hinges and the tiny locks on the glass doors went back mere decades. The framing around the glass was cherry, but the cases had been built of oak. Someone had attempted to remedy this with a few coats of stain, but the grain didn’t match. The color wasn’t perfect. To trained eyes, details such as these were glaring.

Congressman Donald Keene gathered these clues without meaning to. He simply saw that long ago there had been a great purge, a making of space. At some point in the past, the Senator’s waiting room had been stripped of its obligatory law books until only a handful remained. These tomes sat silently in the dim corners of the glass cabinets. They were shut in, their spines laced with cracks, old leather flaking off like sunburned skin.

A handful of Keene’s fellow freshmen filled the waiting room, pacing and stirring, their terms of service newly begun. Like Donald, they were young and still hopelessly optimistic. They were bringing change to Capitol Hill. They hoped to deliver where their similarly naive predecessors had not.

While they waited their turns to meet with the great Senator Thurman from their home state of Georgia, they chatted nervously amongst themselves. They were a gaggle of priests, Donald imagined, all lined up to meet the Pope, to kiss his ring. He let out a heavy breath and focused on the contents of the case, lost himself in the treasures behind the glass while a fellow representative from Georgia prattled on about his district’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“—and they have this detailed guide on their website, this response and readiness manual in case of, okay, get this—a zombie invasion. Can you believe that? Fucking zombies. Like even the CDC thinks something could go wrong and suddenly we’d all be eating each other—”

Donald stifled a smile, fearful its reflection would be caught in the glass. He turned and looked over a collection of photographs on the walls, one each of the Senator with the last four presidents. It was the same pose and handshake in each shot, the same background of windless flags and fancy oversized seals. The Senator hardly seemed to change as the presidents came and went. His hair started white and stayed white; he seemed perfectly unfazed by the passing of decades.

Seeing the photographs side by side devalued each of them somehow. They looked staged. Phony. It was as if this collection of the world’s most powerful men had each begged for the opportunity to stand and pose with a cardboard cut-out, a roadside attraction.

Donald laughed, and the congressman from Atlanta joined him.

“I know, right? Zombies. It’s hilarious. But think about it, okay? Why would the CDC even have this field manual unless—”

Donald wanted to correct his fellow congressman, to tell him what he’d really been laughing about. Look at the smiles, he wanted to say. They were on the faces of the presidents. The Senator looked as if he’d rather be anyplace else. It looked as if each in this succession of commanders-in-chief knew who the more powerful man was, who would be there long after they had come and gone.

“—it’s advice like, everyone should have a baseball bat with their flashlights and candles, right? Just in case. You know, for bashing brains.”

Donald pulled out his phone and checked the time. He glanced at the door leading off the waiting room and wondered how much longer he’d have to wait. Putting the phone away, he turned back to the cabinet and studied a shelf where a military uniform had been carefully arranged like a delicate work of origami. The left breast of the jacket featured a wall of medals; the sleeves were folded over and pinned to highlight the gold braids sewn along the cuffs. In front of the uniform, a collection of decorative coins rested in a custom wooden rack, tokens of appreciation from men and women serving overseas.

The two arrangements spoke volumes: the uniform from the past and the coins from those currently deployed, bookends on a pair of wars. One that the Senator had fought in as a youth. The other, a war he had battled to prevent as an older and wiser man.

“—yeah, it sounds crazy, I know, but do you know what rabies does to a dog? I mean, what it really does, the biological—”

Donald leaned in closer to study the decorative coins. The number and slogan on each one represented a deployed group. Or was it a battalion? He couldn’t remember. His sister Charlotte would know. She was over there somewhere, out in the field.

“Hey, aren’t you even a little nervous about this?”

Donald realized the question had been aimed at him. He turned and faced the talkative congressman. He must’ve been in his mid-thirties, around Donald’s age. In him, Donald could see his own thinning hair, his own beginnings of a gut, that uncomfortable slide to middle age.

“Am I nervous about zombies?” Donald laughed. “No. Can’t say that I am.”

The congressman stepped up beside Donald, his eyes drifting toward the imposing uniform that stood propped up as if a warrior’s chest remained inside. “No,” the man said. “About meeting him.”

The door to the reception area opened, bleeps from the phones on the other side leaking out.

“Congressman Keene?”

An elderly receptionist stood in the doorway, her white blouse and black skirt highlighting a thin and athletic frame.

“Senator Thurman will see you now,” she said.

Donald patted the congressman from Atlanta on the shoulder as he stepped past.

“Hey, good luck,” the gentleman stammered after him.

Donald smiled. He fought the temptation to turn and tell the man that he knew the Senator well enough, that he had been bounced on his knee back when he was a child. Only—Donald was too busy hiding his own nerves to bother.

He stepped through the deeply paneled door of rich hardwoods and entered the Senator’s inner sanctum. This wasn’t like passing through a foyer to pick up a man’s daughter for a date. This was different. This was the pressure of meeting as colleagues when Donald still felt like that same young child.

“Through here,” the receptionist said. She guided Donald between pairs of wide and busy desks, a dozen phones chirping in short bursts. Young men and women in suits and crisp blouses double-fisted receivers. Their bored expressions suggested that this was a normal workload for a weekday morning.

Donald reached out a hand as he passed one of the desks, brushing the wood with his fingertips. Mahogany. The aides here had desks nicer than his own. And the decor: the plush carpet, the broad and ancient crown molding, the antique tile ceiling, the dangling light fixtures that may have been actual crystal.

At the end of the buzzing and bleeping room, a paneled door opened and disgorged Congressman Mick Webb, just finished with his meeting. Mick didn’t notice Donald, was too absorbed by the open folder he held in front of him.

Donald stopped and waited for his colleague and old college friend to approach. “So,” he asked, “how’d it go?”

Mick looked up and snapped the folder shut. He tucked it under his arm and nodded. “Yeah, yeah. It went great.” He smiled. “Sorry if we ran long. The old man couldn’t get enough of me.”

Donald laughed. He believed that. Mick had swept into office with ease. He had the charisma and confidence that went along with being tall and handsome. Donald used to joke that if his friend wasn’t so shit with names, he’d be president someday. “No problem,” Donald said. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “I was making new friends.”

Mick grinned. “I bet.”

“Yeah, well, I’ll see you back at the ranch.”

“Sure thing.” Mick slapped him on the arm with the folder and headed for the exit. Donald caught the glare from the Senator’s receptionist and hurried over. She waved him through to the dimly lit office and pulled the door shut behind him.

“Congressman Keene.”

Senator Paul Thurman stood from behind his desk and stretched out a hand. He flashed a familiar smile, one Donald had come to recognize as much from photos and TV as from his childhood. Despite Thurman’s age—he had to be pushing seventy if he wasn’t already there—the Senator was trim and fit. His oxford shirt hugged a military frame; a thick neck bulged out of his knotted tie; his white hair remained as crisp and orderly as an enlisted man’s.

Donald crossed the dark room and shook the Senator’s hand.

“Good to see you, sir.”

“Please, sit.” Thurman released Donald’s hand and gestured to one of the chairs across from his desk. Donald lowered himself into the bright red leather, the gold grommets along the arm like sturdy rivets in a steel beam.

“How’s Helen?”

“Helen?” Donald straightened his tie. “She’s great. She’s back in Savannah. She really enjoyed seeing you at the reception.”

“She’s a beautiful woman, your wife.”

“Thank you, sir.” Donald fought to relax, which didn’t help. The office had the pall of dusk, even with the overhead lights on. The clouds outside had turned nasty—low and dark. If it rained, he would have to take the tunnel back to his office. He hated being down there. They could carpet it and hang those little chandeliers at intervals, but he could still tell he was below ground. The tunnels in Washington made him feel like a rat scurrying through a sewer. It always seemed as if the roof was about to cave in.

“How’s the job treating you so far?”

“The job’s good. Busy, but good.”

He started to ask the Senator how Anna was doing, but the door behind him opened before he could. The receptionist entered and delivered two bottles of water. Donald thanked her, twisted the cap on his and saw that it had been pre-opened.

“I hope you’re not too busy to work on something for me.”

Senator Thurman raised an eyebrow. Donald took a sip of water and wondered if that was a skill one could master, that eyebrow lift. It made him want to jump to attention and salute.

“I’m sure I can make the time,” he said. “After all the stumping you did for me? I doubt I would’ve made it past the primaries.” He fiddled with the water bottle in his lap.

“You and Mick Webb go back, right? Both Bulldogs.”

It took Donald a moment to realize the Senator was referring to their college mascot. He hadn’t spent a lot of time at Georgia following sports. “Yessir. Go Dawgs.”

He hoped that was right.

The Senator smiled. He leaned forward so that his face caught the soft light raining down on his desk. Donald watched as shadows grew in wrinkles otherwise easy to miss. Thurman’s lean face and square chin made him look younger head-on than he did in profile. Here was a man who got places by approaching others directly rather than in ambush.

“You studied architecture at Georgia.”

Donald nodded. It was easy to forget that he knew Thurman better than the Senator knew him. One of them grabbed far more newspaper headlines than the other.

“That’s right. For my undergrad. I went into planning for my master’s. I figured I could do more good governing people than I could drawing boxes to put them in.”

He winced to hear himself deliver the line. It was a pat phrase from grad school, something he should have left behind with crushing beer cans on his forehead and ogling asses in skirts. He wondered for the dozenth time why he and the other congressional newcomers had been summoned. When he first got the invite, he thought it was a social visit. Then Mick had bragged about his own appointment, and Donald figured it was some kind of formality or tradition. But now he wondered if this was a power play, a chance to butter up the representatives from Georgia for those times when Thurman would need a particular vote in the lower and lesser house.

“Tell me, Donny, how good are you at keeping secrets?”

Donald’s blood ran cold. He forced himself to laugh off the sudden flush of nerves.

“I got elected, didn’t I?”

Senator Thurman smiled. “And so you probably learned the best lesson there is about secrets.” He picked up and raised his water bottle in salute. “Denial.”

Donald nodded and took a sip of his own water. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he already felt uneasy. He sensed some of the backroom dealings coming on that he’d promised his constituents he’d root out if elected.

The Senator leaned back in his chair.

“Denial is the secret sauce in this town,” he said. “It’s the flavor that holds all the other ingredients together. Here’s what I tell the newly elected: the truth is going to get out—it always does—but it’s going to blend in with all the lies.” The Senator twirled a hand in the air. “You have to deny each lie and every truth with the same vinegar. Let those websites and blowhards who bitch about cover-ups confuse the public for you.”

“Uh, yessir.” Donald didn’t know what else to say so he drank another mouthful of water instead.

The Senator lifted an eyebrow again. He remained frozen for a pause, and then asked, out of nowhere: “Do you believe in aliens, Donny?”

Donald nearly lost the water out of his nose. He covered his mouth with his hand, coughed, had to wipe his chin. The Senator didn’t budge.

“Aliens?” Donald shook his head and wiped his wet palm on his thigh. “No, sir. I mean, not the abducting kind. Why?”

He wondered if this was some kind of debriefing. Why had the Senator asked him if he could keep a secret? Was this a security initiation? The Senator remained silent.

“They’re not real,” Donald finally said. He watched for any twitch or hint. “Are they?”

The old man cracked a smile. “That’s the thing,” he said. “If they are or they aren’t, the chatter out there would be the same. Would you be surprised if I told you they’re very much real?”

“Hell, yeah, I’d be surprised.”

“Good.” The Senator slid a folder across the desk.

Donald eyed it and held up a hand. “Wait. Are they real or aren’t they? What’re you trying to tell me?”

Senator Thurman laughed. “Of course they’re not real.” He took his hand off the folder and propped his elbows on the desk. “Have you seen how much NASA wants from us so they can fly to Mars and back? We’re not getting to another star. Ever. And nobody’s coming here. Hell, why would they?”

Donald didn’t know what to think, which was a far cry from how he’d felt less than a minute ago. He saw what the Senator meant, how truth and lies seemed black and white, but mixed together, they made everything gray and confusing. He glanced down at the folder. It looked similar to the one Mick had been carrying. It reminded him of the government’s fondness for all things outdated.

“This is denial, right?” He studied the Senator. “That’s what you’re doing right now. You’re trying to throw me off.”

“No. This is me telling you to stop watching so many science fiction flicks. In fact, why do you think those eggheads are always dreaming of colonizing some other planet? You have any idea what would be involved? It’s ludicrous. Not cost-effective.”

Donald shrugged. He didn’t think it was ludicrous. He twisted the cap back onto his water. “It’s in our nature to dream of open space,” he said. “To find room to spread out in. Isn’t that how we ended up here?”

“Here? In America?” The Senator laughed. “We didn’t come here and find open space. We got a bunch of people sick, killed them, and made space.” Thurman pointed at the folder. “Which brings me to this. I’ve got something I’d like you to work on.”

Donald placed his bottle on the leather inlay of the formidable desk and took the folder.

“Is this something coming through committee?”

He tried to temper his hopes. It was alluring to think of coauthoring a bill in his first year in office. He opened the folder and tilted it toward the window. Outside, storms were gathering.

“No, nothing like that. This is about CAD-FAC.”

Donald nodded. Of course. The preamble about secrets and conspiracies suddenly made perfect sense, as did the gathering of Georgia congressmen outside. This was about the Containment and Disposal Facility, nicknamed CAD-FAC, at the heart of the Senator’s new energy bill, the site that would one day house most of the world’s spent nuclear fuel. Or, according to the websites Thurman had alluded to, it was going to be the next Area 51, or the place where a new-and-improved superbomb was being built, or a secure holding facility for libertarians who had purchased one too many guns. Take your pick. There was enough noise out there to hide any truth.

“Yeah,” Donald said, deflated. “I’ve been getting some entertaining calls from my district.” He didn’t dare mention the one about the lizard people. “I want you to know, sir, that privately I’m behind the facility one hundred percent.” He looked up at the Senator. “I’m glad I didn’t have to vote on it publicly, of course, but it was about time someone offered up their backyard, right?”

“Precisely. For the common good.” Senator Thurman took a long pull from his water, leaned back in his chair and cleared his throat. “You’re a sharp young man, Donny. Not everyone sees what a boon to our state this’ll be. A real lifesaver.” He smiled. “I’m sorry, you are still going by Donny, right? Or is it Donald now?”

“Either’s fine,” Donald lied. He no longer enjoyed being called Donny, but changing names in the middle of one’s life was practically impossible. He returned to the folder and flipped the cover letter over. There was a drawing underneath that struck him as being out of place. It was . . . too familiar. Familiar, and yet it didn’t belong there—it was from another life.

“Have you seen the economic reports?” Thurman asked. “Do you know how many jobs this bill created overnight?” He snapped his fingers. “Forty thousand, just like that. And that’s only from Georgia. A lot will be from your district, a lot of shipping, a lot of stevedores. Of course, now that it’s passed, our less nimble colleagues are grumbling that they should’ve had a chance to bid—”

“I drew this,” Donald interrupted, pulling out the sheet of paper. He showed it to Thurman as if the Senator would be surprised to see that it had snuck into the folder. Donald wondered if this was the Senator’s daughter’s doing, some kind of a joke or a hello and a wink from Anna.

Thurman nodded. “Yes, well, it needs more detail, wouldn’t you say?”

Donald studied the architectural illustration and wondered what sort of test this was. He remembered the drawing. It was a last-minute project for his biotecture class in his senior year. There was nothing unusual or amazing about it, just a large cylindrical building a hundred or so stories tall ringed with glass and concrete, balconies burgeoning with gardens, one side cut away to reveal interspersed levels for housing, working and shopping. The structure was spare where he remembered other classmates being bold, utilitarian where he could’ve taken risks. Green tufts jutted up from the flat roof—a horrible cliché, a nod to carbon neutrality.

In sum, it was drab and boring. Donald couldn’t imagine a design so bare rising from the deserts of Dubai alongside the great new breed of self-sustaining skyscrapers. He certainly couldn’t see what the Senator wanted with it.

“More detail,” he murmured, repeating the Senator’s words. He flipped through the rest of the folder, looking for hints, for context.

“Wait.” Donald studied a list of requirements written up as if by a prospective client. “This looks like a design proposal.” Words he had forgotten he’d ever learned caught his eye: interior traffic flow, block plan, HVAC, hydroponics—

“You’ll have to lose the sunlight.” Senator Thurman’s chair squeaked as he leaned over his desk.

“I’m sorry?” Donald held the folder up. “What exactly are you wanting me to do?”

“I would suggest those lights like my wife uses.” He cupped his hand into a tiny circle and pointed at the center. “She gets these tiny seeds to sprout in the winter, uses bulbs that cost me a goddamned fortune.”

“You mean grow lights.”

Thurman snapped his fingers again. “And don’t worry about the cost. Whatever you need. I’m also going to get you some help with the mechanical stuff. An engineer. An entire team.”

Donald flipped through more of the folder. “What is this for? And why me?”

“This is what we call a just-in-case building. Probably’ll never get used, but they won’t let us store the fuel rods out there unless we put this bugger nearby. It’s like this window in my basement I had to lower before our house could pass inspection. It was for . . . what do you call it . . . ?”

“Egress,” Donald said, the word flowing back unaided.

“Yes. Egress.” He pointed to the folder. “This building is like that window, something we’ve gotta build so the rest will pass inspection. This will be where—in the unlikely event of an attack or a leak—facility employees can go. A shelter. And it needs to be perfect or this project will be shut down faster than a tick’s wink. Just because our bill passed and got signed doesn’t mean we’re home free, Donny. There was that project out west that got okayed decades ago, scored funding. Eventually, it fell through.”

Donald knew the one he was talking about. A containment facility buried under a mountain. The buzz on the Hill was that the Georgia project had the same chances of success. The folder suddenly tripled in weight as he considered this. He was being asked to be a part of this future failure. He would be staking his newly won office on it.

“I’ve got Mick Webb working on something related. Logistics and planning. You two will need to collaborate on a few things. And Anna is taking leave from her post at MIT to lend a hand.”

“Anna?” Donald fumbled for his water, his hand shaking.

“Of course. She’ll be your lead engineer on this project. There are details in there on what she’ll need, space-wise.”

Donald took a gulp of water and forced himself to swallow.

“There’s a lot of other people I could call in, sure, but this project can’t fail, you understand? It needs to be like family. That’s why I want to use people I know, people I can trust.” Senator Thurman interlocked his fingers. “If this is the only thing you were elected to do, I want you to do it right. It’s why I stumped for you in the first place.”

“Of course.” Donald bobbed his head to hide his confusion. He had worried during the election that the Senator’s endorsement stemmed from old family ties. This was somehow worse.

Donald hadn’t been using the Senator at all; it was the other way around. Studying the drawing in his lap, the newly elected congressman felt one job he was inadequately trained for melt away—only to be replaced by a different job that seemed equally daunting.

“Wait,” he said, studying the old drawing. “I still don’t get it. Why the grow lights?”

Thurman smiled. “Because,” he said. “This building I want you to design for me—it’s going to go underground.”

Copyright © 2013, 2016 by Hugh Howey. Excerpted from Shift by Hugh Howey. Published by permission of the author and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hugh Howey is the author of the acclaimed post-apocalyptic novel Wool, which became a sudden success in 2011. Originally self-published as a series of novelettes, the Wool omnibus is frequently the #1 bestselling book on Amazon.com and is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller. The book was also optioned for film by Ridley Scott, and is now available in print from major publishers all over the world. The story of Wool’s meteoric success has been reported in major media outlets such as Entertainment Weekly, Variety, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Deadline Hollywood, and elsewhere. Howey lives in Jupiter, Florida with his wife Amber and his dog Bella.

Movie Review: Deadpool

Carrie Vaughn | 1981 words

Subversive—and Safe

Have we reached peak superhero? Are we oversaturated? Might we in fact have too many superhero media adaptations? Given that the four movie posters at the entrance of my local theater right now are for Captain America: Civil War, Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and X-Men: Apocalypse, one can certainly be forgiven for thinking we might just be a wee bit oversaturated.

I for one love this state of affairs. It means I can pick and choose what to watch and still get my superhero fix. I didn’t actually feel a need to see last year’s reviled Fantastic Four reboot, and that was wonderful. You see, I remember the 1990s drought where if we wanted a live-action superhero movie we had to put up with Schumacher’s Batman, plastic nipples and all. We hated those things but we went to see them anyway because if we wanted a big-screen superhero movie we didn’t have a choice. Those were dark days, my children.

So now we have choice. This is good. Moreover, oversaturation invites pushback. It invites variety and experimentation. It means we can have the ultra-dark Jessica Jones and Daredevil at the same time we have the ultra-sunny Supergirl and ebullient Flash. It means superhero-whatever doesn’t have to mean just one thing. I’d also argue that a film like Birdman couldn’t exist without superhero oversaturation. While not itself a superhero movie, it’s steeped in commentary about an entertainment world dominated by superheroes. Plus, it gives us the delightfully meta moment of Michael Keaton declaring that none of this would have been possible without him.

Oversaturation invites commentary and satire. Enter: Deadpool.

Deadpool is a Marvel character created in the 1990s best known for crassness, amorality, and breaking the fourth wall. He’s aware he’s a fictional character, and he wants the audience to know it. This isn’t really summary so much as it is an ethos and an explanation for why the movie is the way it is. In many ways, the film tries to be subversive. Its language is off the rails, a raunchy sexuality is on full display, the sly references fly by too fast to spot them all. However, and oddly enough, in terms of plot there’s nothing here that will surprise anyone. Our protagonist Wade Wilson gets superpowers, angsts about his powers and the price he pays for them, goes after bad guys, rescues his beloved girlfriend, roll credits.

This movie gives fans exactly what it says on the tin, and the fans will be ecstatic about it. But this really is a solidly familiar superhero movie, despite the grown-up trappings that might fool one into thinking otherwise.

The film won me over in its opening credits, as films sometimes do if they’re particularly pretty and thoughtful. Deadpool opens with the heartfelt strains of Juice Newton’s “Angel of the Morning” playing over one of those gorgeous CGI-manipulated montages that we’ve gotten used to seeing at the closing credits of Marvel movies. Only this time instead of showing us details of our heroes’ armor and weapons, the camera plays lovingly over a frozen-in-moment time of that horrific gun battle/car wreck we saw in the previews. A burning cigarette lighter tumbles past. Blood sprays from a henchvillain’s mouth. And the credits appear: Produced by Assholes. Some Douchebag’s Film. The entire string of credits is a self-aware, self-mocking run-down of Hollywood’s pervasive clichés, and maybe a sly acknowledgement that this movie is participating fully in them. Then we get this:

Written By The Real Heroes Here.

Dear Reader, I cheered. Tears streamed down my face. My friends had to hold me down to keep me from doing a little dance right there in the theater.

Okay, maybe I just cheered. Moving on.

Much has been said about the film’s R rating. Whether comic-book inspired movies ought to be rated R at all (coming from people who still aren’t convinced that adults should be into this sort of thing in the first place), and what to tell kids who know and love the character from video games and cosplay who might now be barred from seeing it. The character isn’t necessarily, inherently a rated-R character. But the feeling in fandom seems to be that with the heavier rating, the character could stretch into his full potential without the worry that one more drop of blood or f-bomb might be too much. It’s an interesting discussion, since the whole rating system often seems to be out of whack. I personally thought The Dark Knight should have been rated R — the film is a meditation on senseless violence, but despite its ridiculous body count and impressions of pencils stabbed through skulls, it didn’t actually depict sprays of blood and didn’t have a whole lot of swearing, so it’s somehow instantly okay for thirteen year olds? I’m not sure that follows.

This is what an oversaturation of superhero movies gives us: an opportunity. There are plenty of PG-13 superhero movies for kids to watch. The upcoming Batman v Superman, for example, for all its ultra-gloom and promise of epic beatdowns is still PG-13. Let’s see what one of these babies can do when you open the throttle, and this was a great character to make that choice for.

After all that, Deadpool didn’t earn its R rating just for violence. The violence here is standard Hollywood fare. On the graphic and bloody side for sure, but nowhere near the levels of violence and gore in, say, a Tarantino movie. But you still don’t want to be taking your 8 year old to see this unless you really feel like explaining to them what a strap-on is. I imagine some really uncomfortable conversations—or perhaps some long, uncomfortable silences—are happening in some families who didn’t believe a comic book movie could be that bad. Oh, dear. So violent, yes. But the language and raunchiness top that. I’m sure there’s an innuendo-laden joke I could make here, if I thought about it long enough.

I’m curious now to see if some rated-R floodgate is going to open. Rated R comic book movies aren’t a new thing. The brilliant and underrated Dredd (2012) used its R-rated levels of violence to good effect, determined not to sugar-coat the kind of world that requires the Judges not so much to keep order as to hold back chaos. But now, for the first time, an R-rated comic book movie is making boatloads of money. And I cringe imagining the movies that will come out thinking they have to top Deadpool. I think the question will come down to whether or not filmmakers understand why they’re going after that R rating, or if they’re just throwing blood packs against the wall for effect. Dredd needed its R. So does Deadpool. I hope filmmakers seriously consider why Deadpool would need an R rating, and why a character like Spider-Man really really doesn’t.

Some of the film’s subversions are subtle, which seems like an odd thing to say given its in-your-face nature. But think on this: Wade has a moment of full-frontal nudity. Girlfriend Vanessa does not. She gets close. We actually had to discuss this after the film. (We were at Village Inn eating pie while “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” played on the PA, a moment that made me feel like the movie hadn’t actually ended but had somehow spilled into the real world, and that someone was about to get thrown through that plate glass window in front.) “Wasn’t she naked in that one scene?” “No, there were strategically placed hands. She was wearing Ryan Reynolds.” So, there you go. This is a good place to mention that Vanessa is played by fan favorite Morena Baccarin. Yes, an almost naked Morena Baccarin in a role that I have to call the anti-Inara. Vanessa is just as raunchy as Wade. They’re made for each other, really, in what is strangely one of the sweetest, healthiest romances I’ve ever seen in a superhero movie.

(“It’s like I made you on my computer!” Wade exclaims to her. And I’m thinking, “Holy shit, he just made a Weird Science reference.” This movie, with all its ’80s pop culture references and ’70s and ’80s music made me realize that right now, at this moment, I am the target audience for movies like this and I’d better enjoy it while it lasts. I figure I have another five years before Lady Gaga starts getting played for nostalgia and I don’t know what the hell is going on anymore.)

As usual with male full-frontal nudity in mainstream film and cable TV, this isn’t played for sex appeal but to demonstrate vulnerability and weakness—newly-mutated Wade is in the process of escaping the torture chamber of his captors. He’s injured, on fire, and pretty much at rock bottom. And completely naked. So, while giving us male nudity, the movie still toes the line of how such nudity gets handled in mainstream entertainment. So, as my feeling was throughout, the movie is cosmetically subversive. Structurally, not so much.

Deadpool pushes boundaries in content, language, crassness, and flat-out raunchy sexuality. It does some wonderful work with flashbacks and pacing, successfully spreading a single action sequence across half the movie by interlacing it with other bits of story. But it’s still a superhero movie. Wade Wilson fights for selfish reasons—for revenge and to try to get his old life back—but structurally, the plot and the battles look the same.

When you get right down it, plot-wise Deadpool is a basic, standard superhero movie. It won me over with the opening credits, but it nearly lost me when it became clear that the climactic third act was going to be a bog-standard rescue-the-girlfriend sequence. Like, I’m talking Gwen Stacy dangling off a bridge standard. Fortunately, the film knew what it was doing and overturned that expectation when Vanessa handily rescues herself and then runs the villain Ajax (or Francis if you prefer) through with a sword. That was nice. (Spoiler: this does not actually kill the villain. Protip: if both your villain and your hero have super healing powers, they can spend the whole movie beating the ever-loving shit out of each other. Over and over and over and over and over . . . )

I can’t help but wonder what a subversive structure would look like in a superhero movie. Like, a superhero movie where no one gets kidnapped and needs rescuing, that doesn’t involve an origin story of scientific misadventure, that doesn’t include all the big action set pieces exactly where we expect them. Or if pushing the envelope that far means the movie wouldn’t be a superhero movie anymore. I don’t know if, even with the current oversaturation of these movies, we’ll ever find out. We keep seeing the same formula because the formula is working, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Over and over and over and over . . .

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Carrie Vaughn is the bestselling author of the Kitty Norville series, the most recent of which is the fourteenth installment, Kitty Saves the World. Her superhero novel Dreams of the Golden Age was released in January 2014.  She has also written young adult novels, Voices of Dragons and Steel, and the fantasy novels, Discord’s Apple and After the Golden Age. Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines and anthologies, from Lightspeed to Tor.com and George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards series. She lives in Colorado with a fluffy attack dog. Learn more at carrievaughn.com.

Book Reviews: March 2016

Amal El-Mohtar | 1534 words

Language, Roads, Intersection

This month’s books contain multitudes: worlds built from whole cloth, a cascade of perspectives, multiple languages, and the work of travelling between them. There are, above all, questions: Who are we, how do we approach the world, what does the world make of us? The answers—if answers there are—are songs, and poems, and science.

The Winged Histories
Sofia Samatar
Trade Paperback/Ebook
ISBN 9781618731142
Small Beer Press, March 2016
285 pages

This book. This perfect book.

Set in the same world as her award-winning A Stranger in Olondria, Sofia Samatar’s The Winged Histories weaves together the narratives of four women experiencing upheavals in the Olondrian Empire: Tav, a soldier; Tialon, a scholar; Seren, a poet; and Siski, Tav’s aristocratic sister. Each is a facet on the troubled jewel of Olondria; each breaks the light of narrative into different, fantastic colours.

This is not a sequel to A Stranger in Olondria, but a shift in emphasis and perspective: where Stranger was the Olondrian Empire as experienced by a foreign visitor steeped in its literature and history, rudely awakened and tossed about from faction to faction, The Winged Histories is a broader, deeper exploration. Tensions between ethnicities, religions, nomadic and sedentary peoples, oral and written histories, are experienced and reported by the women who live them. Women confront each other, support each other, fight and love and reconcile with each other, all in the most beautiful, illuminating prose—four voices that are each uniquely, powerfully, magnificently beautiful in their difference and distance from each other. This passage from Tialon’s portion is emblematic:

We thought the message of the Stone, arriving in such spectacular form, would unite us. But perhaps its true message was one of disintegration . . . Or perhaps it spoke a message of unity we could not understand, one that did not unfold in language as my father thought, but rather in the way the lines crossed over one another, cutting across each other, one word into the next. If the message is not in the words, but in the cutting.

Like the passages on the Stone, the narratives of these four women intersect, cut, and complicate each other, and something like Olondria is read between their lines.

I sometimes forget to eat; the hunger becomes a numbness, a dull ache I grow accustomed to until I can’t rightly recognize that I’m hungry—until I take a bite of food. Then I’m overcome by an almost electric ravenousness, as every part of me wakes and grows intensely focused on consuming the food producing this reaction, creating my hunger even as it’s sating it, nourishing me by showing me the extent of my depletion. Reading The Winged Histories was precisely like that, showing me how starved I’ve been for women, women living and thinking and talking and writing, women who aren’t a footnote in the world but who make and unmake worlds between them, in blood, in song, in ink.

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria
Carlos Hernandez
Trade Paperback/Ebook
ISBN 978-1495607394
Rosarium Press, January 2016
234 pages

The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria is both a mouthful and entirely necessary—both the title of the final story and a fitting emblem for the collection. Mixing humour, hurt, wonder, and keen insight, this is a short fiction debut that’s fierce and charming all at once and by turns.

Reading this collection, I was often put in mind of tricksters and their tales: how they vary between sad, wise, funny, grotesque, frightening; how they often inhabit crossroads, mirroring how tragedy and comedy live a hair’s breadth apart. This is a collection of such crossroads: science crosses faith, belonging crosses exclusion, syncretism and assimilation are watchwords. These are stories that interrogate what it means to be Latino in America, but sideways: from a space station, from alternate worlds, from inside and outside communities.

Several of these stories begin as what ifs, uncoiling from the spring of some startling real-world fact—immortal jellyfish, for instance, or how difficult it is to breed pandas—before bouncing around inside one’s head cackling maniacally. What if in order to artificially inseminate giant pandas you had to actually wear a mechanical panda suit to show them how it’s done? “The International Studbook of the Giant Panda”—both a science fiction story and a genuine book—is the result. What if you could upload your brain into the piano you’ve played your whole life? Gabrielle Réal, recurring character and journalist of the bizarre, investigates.

A few stories were brief tweaks on the nose, ended too abruptly for my taste, or left me wanting more from them, but I found the collection as a whole, especially ending with the title story as it does, immensely satisfying. In “The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria,” all the themes and movements of the preceding stories find their fullest, most successful expression: The story of a father, son, and the ghost-mother who haunts them, it beautifully, heart-breakingly explores the gulfs that open up between generations of immigrants and their children and the varied means of bridging them.

Marginalia to Stone Bird
Rose Lemberg
Trade Paperback/Ebook
ISBN 978-1619760998
Aqueduct Press, January 2016
124 pages

Containing over a decade’s worth of poems, Rose Lemberg’s first collection is a beautifully curated jewel of a book full of colour, longing, and heat. Divided into three sections—Finding Voice, Changing Shape, and Making Journeys—and containing nine poems original to the collection, Marginalia to Stone Bird constantly shifts between tactility and evanescence: embroidered cloth and starlight, food and fire, letters and music. In fact, more than anything I’ve read recently, it feels like a book one might find within the world of Samatar’s Olondria, knotting deserts, cities, and language into a beating heart.

Marginalia to Stone Bird embraces a wonderful mixture of genres and techniques: concrete poems that swirl around the page like the sand storm they contain and represent; image fragments as sharp and shining as broken abalone; long, lovely lyrics; refrains that ache and melt and thrill with each transforming repetition. These lines from “Lekoved a Strune” are representative:

I have melted wax into my ears, hid
myself from that music, but the rain finds me
even when the clouds are waterless, the sky
is the color of a worn coat stitched with thunder.

Several of these poems have individual dedications, each of which made me smile in recognition: More than a novel or collection of short stories, a collection of poems can be a bouquet offered back to the people who inspired it, or a map of friendships, connections, gratitudes. So I read the poems dedicated to Shweta Narayan, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Brittany Warman, Dan Campbell, and see them as windows opened between the rooms of Lemberg’s work and theirs.

But, ultimately, to discuss the collection’s contents is to muse on droplets on a windowpane during a lightning storm. The wholeness of it, the movement from voice to shape to journey, is heart-breaking; poems that address immigration, gender, love, language, are of a kind to crack a reader open before offering consolation. In particular the Journeymaker cycle that makes up most of the third section of the book is almost dizzying in its achievement. All I want to do is offer up the collection’s final words as an exhortation to the new reader:

I make for you a journey
across this emptiness, to me,
on stepping stones I’ve laid for you
walk between the stars that lie exuberant and bare,
between the voids step carefully.

Come.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amal El-Mohtar is the Nebula-nominated author of The Honey Month, a collection of poems and very short fiction written to the taste of 28 different kinds of honey. Her poetry has won the Rhysling award three times and the Richard Jefferies Prize once, and her story “The Truth About Owls” is presently a Locus Award finalist. Her fiction has most recently appeared in Uncanny magazine and is forthcoming in The Bestiary, edited by Ann VanderMeer. She writes reviews for NPR, Lightspeed, and Tor.com, narrates fiction and poetry for Uncanny’s podcast, edits Goblin Fruit, and has occasionally been known to deadlift genre professionals. She is also, with Scott Lynch, Liz M. Myles and Michael Damien Thomas, part of Down and Safe, a Blake’s 7 podcast. She divides her time and heart between Ottawa and Glasgow. Find her online at amalelmohtar.com or on Twitter @tithenai.

Interview: Chuck Wendig and Alexandra Bracken (Guide to the New Star Wars Canon)

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy | 11356 words

Star Wars tie-in authors Chuck Wendig and Alexandra Bracken discuss some of the books set in the new Star Wars canon that help pave the way for Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens.

This interview first appeared on Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by David Barr Kirtley and produced by John Joseph Adams. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the interview or other episodes.

David: Today on the show we’ll be discussing some of the books in the new Star Wars canon. I’m joined by two guests: First up, we’ve got Chuck Wendig. As a game designer, he’s contributed over two million words of material to the game industry, and he blogs about writing and pop culture at Terribleminds.com. He also co-wrote the short film Pandemic, and his recent books include Mockingbird and Zer0es. His new Star Wars novel, Aftermath, is the first book in the new Star Wars canon to be set between Return of the Jedi and the upcoming film Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. Chuck, welcome to the show.

Chuck: Hey, thanks for having me.

David: Also joining us today is Alexandra Bracken. She’s a New York Times best-selling author who wrote her first published book, Brightly Woven, as a student at the College of William and Mary. She’s also the author of the Darkest Minds series of near future thrillers, which have been optioned for film by 20th Century Fox. Her new novel, Star Wars: A New Hope: The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy presents a fresh retelling of the original Star Wars film. Alex, welcome to the show.

Alex: Hi, thanks for having me.

David: Let’s start out and have you guys talk a bit about your background as Star Wars fans. Alex, I want to start with you because I know you have an interesting story about that.

Alex: I do. I have actually grown up with Star Wars in a very real way. My dad, right up until he passed away a couple of years ago, was a Star Wars collector. Pretty much from the time I was in first grade, so about age five on through the many decades. So, every weekend it just became kind of a routine of going to the toy store. He was on a first name basis with the store managers at Toys“R”Us. We got to go into the back room to find the new toys that were coming out every week. And this was The Power of the Force era in the ’90s, I should specify. But we were also going to a whole bunch of antique stores and shows trying to find a lot of the older ceramics, the older carded figures, twelve-inch figures, everything. He ended up with an incredible collection, and an especially incredible poster collection, I think. I’ve been going to Star Wars conventions, I mean, pretty much from the time I was . . . I guess 1996 was my first Star Wars convention, and I’ve only missed one Celebration, and it was the one that happened right after he passed away, so I think it was Celebration Six. All I wanted to read growing up were Star Wars expanded universe books, and it’s just been a wonderful thing to come back to Star Wars after losing my dad and kind of reconnect to the story and the characters I love so much.

David: Right, so when you’re a serious Star Wars collector like that, were there any particular items that he was particularly proud of owning, or that you were always on the lookout for?

Alex: He ended up being really, really proud of his poster collection because he started expanding into a lot of the foreign posters, and if you’ve ever looked at them, the film posters for Poland are especially really cool and kind of odd. I mean, he just thought they were wacky and wonderful. He was really proud of the fact that he has what’s I guess kind of colloquially known as the “Mylar Poster,” which is a really rare poster that took him forever to find. But he had sort of the mainstays by the end. He had classic cape Jawa, which is unique, I guess, for those of you who are not in the collecting world, because it was a very limited run of the original Jawa figure that had a plastic, kind of vinyl cape instead of the cloth cape, and they ended up changing it, I heard because it was a choking hazard, but I think it was also because Kenner felt bad about it being a smaller figure and having like a cheap material instead of a nice cloth, so I don’t know which one is true, to be completely honest. But he had Blue Snaggletooth . . . really everything, and he would constantly be going to all of the different shows. He went to the Celebrations basically to go around and meet all of the vendors. He was constantly trading up and having figures graded. Literally anyone we brought over to the house was drawn upstairs into his office/collection room, and they could not escape until they got like a nice tour and walk around. He loved that.

David: Well, Chuck, how about you? Can you compete with that? What was your Star Wars background as a fan like?

Chuck: Oh my god, I can’t compete with that. I want that background. I want that. That’s awesome. I’ve been sort of pickling and brining in the Star Wars universe for my whole life. Not quite to that degree in terms of the parents thing, but my sister actually did take me to my first Star Wars film when I was four, and it was Empire Strikes Back at a drive-in theater, and her boyfriend took her, and her boyfriend also brought his little brother, and she brought her little brother, me, and we watched the movie. I’m not sure what they were doing up front, but we kept our eyes very clearly on the movie. So, that, to me, was my first moment in the Star Wars universe, and then from there, I kind of became my own little collector, even as a kid, because you couldn’t just come home and go to iTunes and pull up the movie. You couldn’t just watch it again. You had to sort of recreate that stuff in your own head. So toys and the costumes and stuff was a part of my childhood in terms of recreating those memories, so Star Wars has always kind of been there. It’s how I learned how to tell stories. It’s one of the things that brought me together with friends, and it brought me together with family, and now my own four-year-old son is getting into Star Wars just at the time there’s a new movie coming out, so it’s kind of this lovely generational thing. And it’s a thing that actually feeds into the book. Aftermath makes a lot of effort to talk about the generational component of Star Wars and the generational component of there being these multiple wars and these multiple iterations of what’s going on in the story worlds.

David: Yeah, Alex was talking about these Star Wars Celebrations and conventions and things, did you ever get drawn into that world?

Chuck: No, I’ve actually never been. I would like to hopefully go this next year to Celebration, that would be awesome.

David: Alex, tell us a little bit more about these conventions and things. Do you have any memorable experiences from attending them?

Alex: Oh my gosh, okay, so I feel like I have a very random memory from each one. So, the first convention I went to was in Arizona. It was put on by a toy store that was then called Empire Toys and is now called Toy Anxiety, which is owned by a man named Ron Lewis, who we jokingly refer to as Uncle Ron because he was the main supplier of Star Wars vintage toys to my dad by the end. He just became a close family friend. The store, and I think like Steve Sansweet was involved with arranging this mini-convention. I dressed up as speeder bike Princess Leia from Endor, and I also made a matching diorama, and I did not win the costume contest, but I won the diorama contest, which is still a point of pride, I’m not going to lie. And that was really memorable because it was the first time I got to have face time with a lot of the stars. So, Kenny Baker was there, Peter Mayhew was there, just, like, so many of these actors who were willing to sit and chat with you and wanted to take photos with you, and that was my first real experience with any sort of convention.

Celebration One was in Denver, and it was at sort of a . . . I’m trying to remember, I think it was the aerospace museum, maybe, I can’t remember the exact name, but that one is memorable because it was so cold and it rained the entire time that all of the outdoor booths basically flooded. All of the vendors were complaining about damaged merchandise. They also had all of the Phantom Menace books on sale early, so you basically knew the entire plot of the movie by the time that you were done with the show.

Then Celebration Two and Three were in Indianapolis, and I really remember being freezing cold at those shows because of the line to get into the Celebration store to get all of the exclusive merchandise, which as a collector, my dad wanted. You would have to wait outside and line up in the morning, and you would spend like an hour or two in the freezing cold. It was, like, April in Indianapolis, and I grew up in Arizona, so anything under fifty degrees is really, really cold for me. And I remember Carrie Fisher came to I think Celebration Three, maybe, and I have this very random memory of her being on the stage for her interview and someone asked, “Oh, what’s in your drink?” And she was like, “It’s a little bit of Coke and a little bit of Diet Coke and that way I can always be a little naughty.” Which is very typically Carrie Fisher.

People are so patient at these conventions because you’re waiting in line for everything, but everyone is deliriously happy to be there. It’s one of my favorite things to do, to go to these shows. And I was at Celebration Seven this year in Anaheim, and it was amazing to be back and to see the new decorations mixed in with the old decorations, and sit in on a lot of panels, and it felt similar to Celebration Two and Three, where you were getting so much excitement about the new films that were coming out, and you were getting kind of fed juicy little tidbits. So, Chuck, I really hope you can go next year. I’m sure they would love to have you.

Chuck: It would be awesome. It would be really cool. Everything I see out of it is just such immense fan love, and I’m like, “Ahh.”

David: Sound like you should wear all your Hoth clothes because it sounds like it’s always cold at these things.

Alex: I think the next one is in Orlando, and I think it’s the second time it’s been there. I think Celebration Five was there. They did something special where they opened up Disney World to the Celebration attendees, and they were kind of retiring the old Star Tours ride, so you got to ride the old ride one last time before they switched it over. So, that was really cool. They are so much fun. Like I said, everyone is so happy and just into it, and you make so many line friends, and you kind of make line allies, so that you’re not necessarily stuck in a long line all day. You can kind of take turns. It’s great. I could not recommend it enough. Even as casual Star Wars fans, everyone should go.

David: Okay, like I said, the main topic for today is we’re going to be talking about the new Star Wars canon, and so Chuck, for people that are a little bit out of the loop, can you just explain what the deal is with this whole new Star Wars canon?

Chuck: Sure. Obviously, anybody who does not live under a rock knows that there is a new Star Wars movie coming out. I’m pretty sure my dog knows that there’s a new Star Wars movie coming out. So, with that in mind, the new Star Wars film generates a new plotline and it takes the post-Return of the Jedi storyline into its own direction, so you’ve got these new stories coming out of that, both starting with Aftermath and then continuing on with various novels and games like Uprising, and I think Battlefront will even touch on a little bit of it. It starts building a bridge, essentially, to Episode VII.

David: Right, and so how did you get involved in this whole deal?

Chuck: Uh, I tweeted about it, which is not really a way I recommend anyone get jobs normally, but it is actually how I got the job. In a puzzling array of numerical magic, I guess some sort of numerological force was going on. On September fourth last year, I tweeted that I wanted to write a Star Wars novel.

Alex: I remember that.

Chuck: Yeah, it was weird, and I was like, “I shake the internet to make a wish fall out, and to see if I can . . .” I was kidding. I didn’t really have any time to write a Star Wars novel, and people behind the scenes started to kind of make that happen. They started to conspire, including like Gary Whitta, who was one of the writers on Rogue One, the anthology film, and Jason Fry, another Star Wars novelist. These people kind of suddenly made that happen for me. It was at New York Comic Con that I met Shelly Shapiro, and she said, “Well, I read one of your novels.” And I said, “Well, it was nice to meet you. I’m sorry I won’t be writing Star Wars.” And she said, “No, no, I read Under the Empyrean Sky.” And I then wiped my brow and said, “Oh, you read the Star Wars-y ones. That’s very good that you didn’t read any of the other ones that are very not Star Wars-y.” And she said it felt like a very good fit, and that my voice would work there, so next thing I know, I was writing a Star Wars novel. I didn’t really know at the time I was going to be writing a very big Star Wars novel, that had not been explained to me, or described to me, so that was pretty exciting once I found out what I was doing.

David: Actually, speaking of Gary Whitta, he was a guest on the show a couple of episodes back.

Chuck: He’s awesome.

David: He’s a really, really fun guy. Yeah.

Chuck: Working on Rebels now, as I understand it.

David: He couldn’t say anything about Rogue One.

Chuck: No, no, because he would literally be beheaded by a lightsaber.

Alex: Yeah, it’s like Pentagon levels of secrecy over at Lucasfilm.

Chuck: Right now there’s probably a red dot on my forehead. Just in case.

David: At least you guys can talk about these books now because they’re out. It must be a relief to finally be able to say things about them.

Chuck: Yeah, it is.

David: Alex, how did you get tapped for this assignment?

Alex: So, I have kind of an interesting way that I came to the project. I guess I should start by explaining that my editor knew that I had this whole Star Wars background because I had been I think a little bit late on a deadline because of a Star Wars convention, so she knew, and knew about my dad and all of that. We have a big convention in publishing ever year in New York called BEA, which is Book Expo America, and the publishers usually have a kind of dinner, and they are presenting authors and titles to booksellers and news people and the whole media crowd.

At this dinner, they were introducing the Tony DiTerlizzi picture book using the Ralph McQuarrie art called The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, and they were kind of talking a little bit about their plans for their publishing program for Star Wars because Disney had recently acquired Star Wars at that point. I kind of turned and looked at her and must have had this maniacal look on my face because she was like, “No, you do not have time to write a Star Wars book right now. You owe me two other books. Like, no.”

So, I actually am sort of like, I guess, a little bit of a pinch hitter, maybe, because originally R. J. Palacio, who’s the author of the wonderful middle-grade book Wonder, was scheduled to write the adaptation of A New Hope, and she had to back out because I think her schedule is absolutely bonkers. I got a call one day from my agent, out of the blue, and she was like, “I am shocked and delighted on your behalf, like do you want to do this project?” I had this very immediate, visceral, panicked moment of almost saying no, like, “I can’t possibly write Star Wars. I love it so much. I could never do it justice.” And obviously my love for it won out in the end. I had the best time writing this, and it was a challenge for me because it was basically the first time I had written a true middle-grade novel, and middle-grade is just a term we use in the industry to describe books that are kind of written for the eight- to twelve-year-old crowd.

David: I understand that you have a background as a Star Wars fan fiction writer, did that play any role?

Alex: No, my Star Wars fan fiction is kind of . . . I don’t want to say it’s my secret shame, because I’m neither ashamed of it, and it’s obviously not a secret anymore, but I don’t like to go into specifics about it because it’s all still on the internet. I lost my password to FanFiction.net, so I’m terrified someone is going to figure out which story I actually wrote, but I wrote most of this between the ages of, like, twelve and sixteen, so you can imagine the quality level, but I made up for it, I think, in passion. But I definitely started out as a Star Wars fan fiction writer.

David: I know that there was already a novelization of the first movie by Alan Dean Foster. Could you say a bit about how yours is different and why they wanted to do this new version?

Alex: Yeah, of course. So my understanding, the way that this project was pitched to me, was that Lucasfilm and Disney Publishing Worldwide felt like a lot of the kids today, who were born decades after the original trilogy came out, are entering the series through Rebels, and through The Clone Wars animated series, and even through the prequels, so I think they felt that, with the reintroduction of the original three characters of Han, Luke, and Leia in the new films, they kind of wanted to go back and have a retelling series of the original trilogy, and we were pretty much given permission to go at it and have fun with it and approach it from any direction we liked.

So, all three of the novelizations are so different from each other, and they reflect kind of our personal style and our priorities as story tellers, so we’re not really messing with the story itself, but we’re finding different ways of retelling it, and in different formats. So, for instance, my retelling is just the straight plot of A New Hope all the way through, but it’s divided between the tight third-person point of view of Leia, who opens the book, and then it switches over to Han in the middle section, pretty much from the Cantina scene all the way until Obi-Wan’s death, and then it ends with Luke. So, the challenges of that were figuring out the priorities of each character and really kind of zooming in on their characterization and mining different elements of their personality, especially with Leia, because she gets so little screen time in the film, and she’s not quite as developed as Luke’s arc or even Han’s arc in the story.

I pitched this to my editor as basically being the Star Wars Breakfast Club, so the title is sort of like a nod to that, and the idea of playing with the simple labels that the characters give themselves and others try to pin on them. So, Leia is really dealing with the fact that she gets dismissed as a pretty princess, sort of like the Kate Middleton effect, where she’s a young senator, and she’s hungry for change, and she gets kind of brushed aside by the HoloNet reporters and their senators, and they’re basically more interested in what she’s wearing. And Han is really focused on the idea of him struggling with wanting to have something to believe in, but also holding firm to his own personal code of ethics.

And Luke was really fun too because Luke is a little bit of a blank slate, so I really focused in on something that was actually sparked by something I read in Brian Daley’s radio adaptation of A New Hope. I think that came out in the early ’80s, maybe? About the idea that Luke was basically raised in poverty and didn’t necessarily have the same opportunities as his friend Biggs did, and sort of casting Luke in that light as someone who is sort of making his own destiny.

David: You mentioned drawing from the radio play. Did you draw from anything else? Like the Foster novel or any other Expanded Universe kind of stuff?

Alex: When I was first talking to my editor, Mike Siglain, he basically said the two scripts, the two sources that we consider canon, and if not, we will tell you when we review the manuscript. The two safe sources to pull from are the radio adaptation and the Star Wars script. So, everything else, he was like, “In theory, as long as it doesn’t contradict something that will happen in the movies later on down the road or something that is sort of established in the films, you can really have fun with it, and you can do the off-camera scenes, and you can kind of play a little bit with their backstory, but not a ton.”

So, with the radio drama, I had the privilege of being able to adapt directly from it, and as someone who grew up reading the expanded universe, I was constantly trying to find ways to slip in little tidbits from the Expanded Universe, sort of as a little mini-rebellion. I guess I should start calling it Legends. I need to get in the habit of calling it that. So, certain elements of Leia’s backstory, I think Expanded Universe fans will recognize.

The only thing that I really was not allowed to include was the traditional backstory of how Han met Chewie, which I guess I did not realize had never actually been depicted in a book series, but it had been sort of generally accepted as to how he met Chewie and set Chewie free and all of that business, and that was really the only clue that I had that they were eventually going to make a Han Solo film, a young Han Solo film, was because they were like, “Nope, nothing about Han’s past. Nothing at all.”

David: Chuck, do you want to talk about this, too? In terms of how much of the idea of the book were you given and what were your constraints in writing it and what were you allowed to play with and make up on your own?

Chuck: The constraints were actually negative constraints, where they came to me and said, “These are the things you can’t do. These are the characters you can’t use.” Obviously we don’t have much of the big three, the holy trinity, in the book, and just as Alexandra said about certain things of no backstory, we had similar restrictions there under things we couldn’t talk about, and then with those negative restrictions in place, then it was a case of, well pitch a story. And so I pitched them a big novel, a big sprawling sort of novel for this thing, and the original idea was we were going to do something that was explicitly World War Z-flavored, that was going to be allowing us to look through various lenses and various interludes across this unfolding war. But to me, the value also in a Star Wars story is to actually still have a Star Wars story, to have that adventure, the swashbuckling, the fun, and have sort of that central theme of a small group of characters being able to change the galaxy. So, I wanted that as well. That’s actually the central A plot, then we do these things where we dip into these interludes that allow you to visit various quadrants and corners inside the galaxy, which sometimes lets us play with preexisting characters who have popped up before. It sometimes lets us look at new characters and lets us look at . . . how are the bounty hunters reacting to this, how is the criminal underworld dealing with this, what’s going on on Tatooine, what’s going on with this character and that character? And so pretty much what I pitched ended up being the book that people got, so I’m pretty excited to have people read it.

David: So when you say World War Z-flavored, you mean in terms of the structure of the story? Not in terms of there being zombies in it?

Chuck: In terms of the structure of the story. No, the zombie Star Wars book is done. I didn’t do that one. But in terms of the structure, in terms of that sort of dipping in and out of . . . creating a larger quilt of a narrative.

David: Did they tell you anything about what was going to happen in The Force Awakens so that you would kind of direct the story a little bit in that direction, or was that kind of a black box?

Chuck: A lot of verboten. I know kind of how we get there. That’s sort of what I know. But a lot of the details for the actual movie are going to be pretty new and exciting for me, too, which is great, actually, because one of the things going into this job . . . I was vaguely worried, like, in an excited way, but worried, because I’ve been avoiding spoilers so religiously and then to suddenly be like, “Well, here’s the whole story.” I felt like I was going to be suddenly spoiled by my own job. But I wasn’t, actually. The movie remains a big question mark for me. I know certain things on a few little tidbits here and there. And I know very much how we sort of get to that point in the galaxy, but I don’t know what happens actually in the film.

David: Was there anything in the book where you pitched it and they said, “No, that contradicts something that you don’t know about yet.”

Chuck: Yes, there were a few things, which I obviously can’t say, but I included a few things and a few characters I liked. They were like, “This is not an option,” and for reasons I don’t know. It doesn’t necessarily have to do with The Force Awakens. It may. But it’s also because this is like a big, organic garden, right? We’re all planting seeds, and certain things may pop up in other properties that they don’t necessarily want to share yet, so I don’t know that it’s necessarily something that happens in The Force Awakens, but it may be something that’s planned further down the line, or something that someone is already working on.

David: Alex, do you want to say anything about working with . . . you mentioned that other people wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi retellings. Did you guys talk at all as you were working to make it consistent at all?

Alex: I mean, I came on to the project so late that I think those two books were already done by the time I’d started it, and my editor, Mike, was very specific about not letting me read the other adaptations because they wanted them to have their own flavor, and I think it ended up working out wonderfully because they do all somehow still sort of work together, so my story is really an in-depth intro to these three main characters and setting up the galaxy, and then you move on to Adam Gidwitz’s Empire retelling called So You Want to Be a Jedi. And it utilizes the second person, so you are Luke Skywalker in this story, and it draws the reader, I think, more firmly into the galaxy. And then Tom Angleberger, who some people might know as the author of the Origami Yoda series, he wrote the Return of the Jedi adaptation, which is called Beware the Power of the Dark Side. And he has such an encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Wars universe that he’s utilized footnotes to cram as much information as possible into it. Mine is sort of an intro, Adam’s draws you more firmly in, and Tom gives you everything you ever want to know about the universe.

David: Is there anything, Alex, in these books that is a really significant addition, or that casts things in a different light than people might have thought from just watching the movies?

Alex: I think it’s true for Tom’s book more than Adam’s book, because Tom really felt like he needed to rehabilitate the Ewoks and the image of the Ewoks, so he made the very valid point that at the end of The Return of the Jedi, what are they feasting on? You just see all of these empty Stormtrooper armors, and they’re the apex predator of Endor. So he sets them up as fierce warriors. It’s really fun.

Chuck: Greg Rucka’s new comic, Shattered Empire, has a little tiny bit to that, too. One of the rebels asks, “What are we eating? It’s delicious.”

Alex: Things you don’t think about when you’re watching the cute bears dancing around. And then in my book, I felt like, so as I was saying before, I personally felt a little precious about Star Wars in terms of wanting to stay as true to canon as possible, or at least the canon that I had grown up with, so I utilized the radio drama to fill in a lot of the off-camera scenes that we don’t see in the film.

Like when they first arrive at the rebel base at the end, at Yavin 4, and getting the Han/Rebel commander interaction. And when Leia sees the Death Star for the first time. But, a lot of these I couldn’t directly adapt because it was written in the ’80s, so certain technology they were talking about, like data tapes, I was like, “I don’t know what that is. Is that like something you made up? Is that like an ’80s sort of technological thing that I missed as a child of the ’90s?” If there was something I really disagreed with, I kind of recast some of the radio drama scenes in a different light, but I did get to insert a lot of my own imaginings. For instance, I really felt strongly that Leia would have tried to escaped on her own at least once, so I got to write a Leia escape attempt.

A lot of my work, though, was fleshing out the emotional arcs, and kind of finally addressing some of those “Oh really?” moments, as I call them. My favorite example is after they get away from the Death Star, you see Leia consoling Luke, like “Oh, I’m so sorry this old man you knew for six hours died. Meanwhile, my whole planet and all of my family and my entire future just got completely blown up.” So, kind of like addressing that in a more sensitive manner, let’s say. And having Luke be more self-aware in moments like that.

David: It’s funny you mentioned the tapes, because that’s one of the big things of science fiction from the pre-digital era, is that computers used magnetic tape, and so science fiction writers imagined in the future we’ll have really advanced tape.

Alex: I was like, “Data tape, what is this?” It was like the Death Star plans were on data tape. So, I’m like, maybe I’ll switch this to disc?

Chuck: It’s one of the things I like about certain retreads of that era of science fiction, like in Alien: Isolation, the video game, kind of plays as a sequel to Alien, it carries this ’70s aesthetic very well, so it’s sort of interesting. They don’t assume that it has evolved any.

David: Chuck, why don’t you tell us just about the plot of Aftermath? What kind of characters and world did you invent for the book?

Chuck: Sure. The book begins with everybody’s favorite pilot who doesn’t get too much screen time in the films, Wedge Antilles. He’s basically trying to suss out the supply lines for the Empire. The Empire is failing, but they still are capable of doing attacks on the fledgling New Republic, and so they’re trying to find these supply lines. But he susses out something far worse than supply lines, in that he discovers a secret meeting of Imperials on this planet, this backwater outer rim planet, this jungle world of Akiva, and there he discovers that these Imperials are a secret cabal looking to figure out how exactly the Empire moves forward, what will the shape of the Empire be, will that have an emperor, how do they survive, or do they surrender? And he stumbles into that and gets captured and has to be rescued by a ragtag group of really, like, miscreants who sort of dial up that broken group of heroes you get from A New Hope. You have a pilot who’s got PTSD, you’ve got a bounty hunter, you’ve got a washed up AWOL Imperial loyalty officer, you have the pilot’s son who has built this maniac bodyguard droid from an old battle droid, so he calls him Mr. Bones, and this group of miscreants have to come together and both save Wedge and interrupt this meeting and discover the truth of what’s going on behind the scenes.

David: The battle droid character is Mr. Bones, right? Do you want to talk about why did you decide to use one of the battle droids in your story?

Chuck: Sure. First of all, one of the values of going forward in this new universe in this canon is that it allows us to acknowledge that the prequels and all of the surrounding worldbuilding around the prequels, like the TV show The Clone Wars, and also Rebels, which comes after, existed. It’s something you don’t necessarily see in the old EU because you couldn’t. It wasn’t the fault of the EU, but those things simply didn’t exist yet. So, to be able to refer back to certain things and certain artifacts that exist is cool.

And then, on the other hand, the battle droids were sort of terrible. Like, they were the most inept fighting force in all of Star Wars history. I mean, stormtroopers are notorious for literally not being able to hit anything, but the battle droids were even worse, but there’s something aesthetically fascinating about the battle droids, they sort of look like a human skeleton with a vulture skull on top. There’s something really cool there. So, I thought, well, okay, here’s a kid, he’s a little bit of a prodigy, and he’s capable of putting parts together very well, and so he engineers this battle droid who everyone will completely underestimate given the nature of battle droids, and he literally decorates the thing in actual bones, and half its head is missing, and there’s, like, a red reticule up there. Its face is sharpened to a point. So, he’s got this sort of terrifying murder droid who’s helping him out because he’s ultimately a black market kid. For as much as he’s a fifteen-year-old kid, he’s firmly ensconced in the criminal underworld of this planet, and so he needs this maniac battle droid to protect him. So it seems to be a character who is very popular with people.

David: I agree with you that the battle droids look really cool. I think you said that you had a battle droid toy before the movies came out, and you just imagined how awesome it was going to be.

Chuck: I did, yeah. They have their little flying jet thing, and I was like, yeah, this is going to be awesome. And then it was like, “Roger, Roger.” Oh boy, they’re basically just cheese to be cut in half by lightsabers. It’s constantly just bwoh, bwoh and dropped in half.

David: Right, so when you’re making up these new characters, do you think about what makes a character feel like it’s a Star Wars character? Just what makes a character feel like a Star Wars character when you’re inventing these all-new characters?

Chuck: Yeah, and that’s a curious thing, because you want to capture that pulp adventure vibe of the movies and the TV show, but obviously the novel allows you to have the . . . I mean, the form of the novel allows you to experience the internal dimensions. You want to get into some of the meatier character bits without losing the adventure and fun intrinsic to Star Wars. Like, obviously war is a big part of this book, and you want to be serious about treating war, and there’s parts of it that do that, obviously looking at PTSD, and examining the political stage across the entire galaxy, but one of the things that people might say was the mistaken part of the prequels was that they focused overmuch on the political side of things. When you start reading a crawl that’s about trade federations, you’re like, “Well, that’s going to be exciting for my son.” The goal is to balance a little bit of that, keep the adventure and the fun part of the characters, and then also give a little bit about what’s the true nature of the galaxy? What does war do to these characters?

David: You mentioned how is your son going to react, and my understanding is that Aftermath is the first “adult” book in the new canon. I was just wondering: Did you write it differently than if it were aimed at fourteen-year-olds or something? Was that something in your mind as you were writing it?

Chuck: It’s hard to say, because a lot of the most mature writing I have read exists in the young adult space. Young adult does not shy from dealing with big stuff, and Star Wars is notoriously accessible; even when it’s in an “adult” film, it’s accessible to kids. I’m not trying to write some vulgar pornfest here. It’s a Star Wars novel. It’s an all-ages book. But it’s adult in the sense that it does deal with these things like war. It does deal with post-traumatic stress. It does deal with family issues, generational issues, issues that I don’t think kids will necessarily shy away from or not understand, but it’s issues that also speak to, I think, people of my generation and even beyond it. It features characters who are older. It doesn’t always necessarily feature characters who are all kids or all young bucks trying to make their way in the galaxy.

David: Alex had mentioned that she had this secret program to try and sneak in as many EU things as she could. Did you have any sort of agenda along those lines?

Chuck: No, no real agenda. The EU for me, my reading of the EU kind of stopped probably with Stackpole. I obviously loved the Zahn books and the Stackpole books are great. Some of that feeds into it a little bit, so there’s some references there to those, but—and part of this was a direction given at the fore of writing this book—trying to keep it very explicitly in what we have already seen in terms of the current canon, meaning the films, the television shows, trying to keep it in that realm. I mainlined all of The Clone Wars. I had seen some of it before, but I hadn’t seen the entire the end to end, including the new Netflix-specific episodes, so I sort of digested all that in my brain, and I was already a fan of Rebels. So bringing Rebels into that, too, that was where my agenda was, connecting it to those things.

David: It’s funny, you mention that the battle droids seem a little silly, and it seems like such a big part of being a Star Wars fan is hating certain things about Star Wars, and I just wonder, now that you have this responsibility of carrying this forward, do you feel like you’re constrained at all in criticizing aspects of Star Wars? What are the dynamics of that?

Chuck: No, I don’t. I think engaging in the critical conversation is important, especially as creators, to figure out what we want to do either differently or what we want to highlight. To be clear, I don’t think hate is any good part of fandom, and there’s no part of Star Wars that I hate. I love kind of all of it. Even the stuff that I think is maybe a misstep is stuff that still exists in my head and I still play with it in its own way, as if it’s all toys in my sandbox. I think there is an aspect to fandom that sometimes goes beyond critical conversation and into that kind of grrr component of it. And I don’t think that’s necessarily healthy, and I think fandom is more about positivity and being a fountain and not a drain, so to speak.

David: Alex, do you want to talk about that at all? Has this changed at all how you talk about Star Wars?

Alex: I have always loved it so much that I’ve always hesitated to be critical of it openly. Because, I mean, I have certain gripes, especially with the prequels in terms of the story telling, but I can always find something that I actually like about the prequel films. We were talking about earlier, the battle droids, how cool they looked before we knew that they were just lightsaber fodder. Like, the designs and the costuming in the prequel films are amazing, as is the music, of course. And there are certainly specific scenes and moments within each of the films that are really cool.

Chuck: The worldbuilding in those prequels is amazing. It’s almost a deeper worldbuilding. Sorry to interrupt.

Alex: Yeah, so I think there’s maybe one character I could do without in the prequel films. He who must not be named. But, I mean, I feel very protective of Star Wars, and I think a lot of people who genuinely love it also feel protective of Star Wars, and that’s a very natural thing, because you’ve invested so much time and energy and love into it.

My reading on the fandom is that everyone is excited about the new film, but some people are more cautiously excited about it because they felt maybe burned in the past, and I know people who are not necessarily thrilled that the EU was sort of being brushed aside when they had invested, again, so much time and energy and love into these books and comics and video games. I think we’re in a really exciting time, and I feel very optimistic about it in terms of just how many new stories we’re going to get.

I’m really excited, especially, about the different anthology films that are branching off. All of these side stories that we’re going to get. Like, how cool to see how the Death Star plans were stolen. That is something I have never even thought to imagine, but it must have been really dramatic and like really, really dangerous. I like that we’re going to be playing with tones. You know the Han Solo movies are going to have a slightly different tone than, say, Rogue One, so I think it’s an exciting time. I can be critical of Star Wars, but I think, as a Star Wars author, I now feel doubly protective of it. I don’t know if that’s the best mind space to be.

David: Alex, speaking of the fandom and stuff, what sort of responses have you gotten from Star Wars fans to your new book?

Alex: Well, initially, I don’t think they were advertised as being for eight- to twelve-year-olds. So I think that people thought we were genuinely rewriting those original movies and were not particularly happy about it, and then once it sort of was explained, “Oh, these are really for young readers as a fun, different way of introducing them to this material,” I think people ended up really digging them, and we’ve gotten great responses from educators and librarians who want to bring them into schools.

I just did the Decatur Book Festival, and I had this little boy who was dressed in a stormtrooper costume, and his mom had done up his stroller to look like an AT-AT, basically. It was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. I just sat there and watched his mom read it to him and how he was riveted by it. I was like, “Oh, that’s exactly what I wanted, because that’s how I felt as a kid when I watched Star Wars.” I’m looking forward to it. The book comes out on the twenty-second and we’re talking a little bit earlier than that, so I’m very curious to see how the books are received, especially since the three of them are so different from one another.

David: And Chuck, your book is really, as we said, the first one venturing into the post-Jedi space in this new canon. I would imagine you must be getting a lot of the brunt of those who were really attached to the EU focused on you. What’s that been like?

Chuck: It’s been interesting. For the most part, it’s been amazing. Fans by and large are an awesome group of people. They are full of love and vigor and excitement and just a massive amount of enthusiasm for everything that we’re doing, and that’s great. We actually launched the book midnight at Dragon Con, and I was also at the Decatur Book Fest.

So, all weekend, I just had people coming up to me, and they were in the middle of reading the book, and they would be like, “Oh, I’m so excited about this part.” And then they would ask me all of these questions: “Who is this person?” “Is this who I think it is?” And then they would run away. I was constantly surrounded by a fog of people just like, “What about this?” It was awesome.

That being said, at the same time that that was happening, literally the moment the book landed at midnight on Amazon, it immediately began to collect a cascading waterfall of one-star reviews. And the reviews cover a wide variety, but there’s a lot of themes present. I don’t know what this is exactly. I haven’t really gotten my hands around it. I don’t know if we’re looking at a Venn diagram of EU fans who are upset that it’s gone. There is some talk that there are some groups organizing “raids” on the book to do these reviews. And there are also groups of people who are upset that I included homosexual characters in the book, one of them being one of the protagonists of the book.

And there’s also that component of the Gamergate/Sad Puppies who kind of, again, related maybe to the other two . . . and it sort of speaks to kind of an issue with certain aspects of fandom, and actually certain aspects of politics and culture in general, that there is kind of this weaponized nostalgia for things, that we assume everything was better back then and nothing can be new, and everything has to be a certain way. Sometimes that purity that you think you want is occasionally related to more toxic ideas, again sort of the anti-homosexuality thing. I’ve gotten some interesting emails too after all of this. So, that campaign seems to be continuing at Amazon, and they’ve gotten a little more venomous at times. But, you know, again, I don’t think that’s actually a dominant mode of fan. I don’t think that’s the dominant reader who’s reading this book, but I do think there is something a little more organized going on there.

Alex: Yeah, Chuck, I’m sorry you’re dealing with that. It just strikes me, as an outsider who didn’t realize that was actually happening, it just seems like such a vocal minority.

Chuck: I think it is a vocal minority. I think that’s usually how it is.

Alex: Spoiling other people’s fun.

Chuck: I know, right? But it’s all right. I think the book became a bestseller this week.

Alex: Yeah, congratulations, both USA Today and The New York Times.

Chuck: Yeah, and both like . . . I wrote that tweet on September fourth, it published on September fourth, so I’ve got the number four on both, so the “fours” is truly with me on that one.

Alex: Oh my god, that’s awesome.

David: I think I only read about maybe ten or so of the EU Star Wars novels, so I don’t know, but have there been gay characters in the Star Wars universe before?

Chuck: Yeah, first of all, I think the first time you actually see it really is in KOTOR, Knights of the Old Republic, the video game from Bioware, but I know there was a Moff in one of Paul Kemp’s books who was a lesbian. I’m not sure if there’s anything beyond that.

Alex: I’m not sure either. I’m trying to wrack my brain here.

Chuck: I don’t think any protagonists.

Alex: Certainly not a character that’s front and center, I would say.

David: You mentioned there’s been all of this hostility, and I didn’t actually get a chance to read your post, but I understand that you made a post in response to this, but do you want to talk about responding to this sort of stuff? And what’s the most constructive way to do that?

Chuck: It’s tricky because writers generally shouldn’t engage with bad reviews, and I specifically agree with that in terms of engaging with specific bad reviews. But, there did seem to be something a little larger going on here, so I thought I’d address the larger thing.

In general, people who have criticisms against the book are obviously welcome to do that, because no book is going to be loved by everybody, and that would be weird to write that book. I have a very explicit style, and I carry that style to the book, so much so that I do think it’s very intrinsically a Star Wars novel, but it can feel, I think, like a Chuck Wendig Star Wars novel, and I think that’s not something unusual going forward in terms of Star Wars. They’re hiring filmmakers who have very strong visual fingerprints: Gareth Edwards, Rian Johnson, even J. J. Abrams, these are characters whose films you can identify both visually and thematically when you watch them, and I think that will carry into the universe.

So, to sort of the general criticism, I have nothing to say except I’m sorry, and I hope you like it. But in terms of the criticism that’s either something driven by these raids by small fan groups who are so strident about bringing back Legends that they are angry at the new material, I don’t think that’s valuable, and I don’t think it’s valuable to their cause, which ultimately I agree with. I think the Legends were . . . I didn’t read super deep, but I think they were a great line of books, and I am sympathetic to them losing storylines. Because, I mean, it’s not that the books don’t still exist. One of the things you can say in response to them wanting these books is, “Well, your book still exists. No one came and stole them from your bookshelf and burned them.” So, they’re still there so you can enjoy them. In fact, a lot of these books are still being printed and published by the publisher, but their point, and it’s a fair point, is, “Well, we were investing in a big storyline, and that storyline kind of just stopped. It didn’t conclude to any satisfaction.” So, I’m sympathetic to that.

Ultimately, if your mission there is to then take that love for the EU and turn it into hate for something else, I don’t think that’s really a valuable way to be a fan, and I certainly don’t think that’s fandom. It’s certainly, in the Star Wars metaphor, you’ve kind of gone to the Dark Side on that one: anger, and fear, and hate, and all that good stuff.

And then the larger message is obviously for people who don’t want to see homosexual characters or any sort of LGBT representation inside a galaxy far, far away is very strange. That they’re comfortable with aliens and lasers and lightsabers, but they can’t really stomach that weird thing. Like, someone on my blog today left a comment where they’re like, “Well, I’m not a homophobe, but,” and of course any time they say the “but” you’re like, well, okay, here it comes, so let’s buckle down for that. He said, “I don’t read Star Wars to read about the real world, so why do you have to have this political intrusion of homosexual characters.” It’s such a puzzling thing because that assumes that straight characters are such a default that they couldn’t possibly be political. It’s just, “Well, that’s just how everything is. That’s the default. That’s normal. And so I don’t have to feel weird about normal.” But that’s a very toxic idea, and it’s troubling to me. So, for me, my message there was, “You are actually the Empire. Congratulations, if you think that Luke Skywalker is sitting around in those films being like, ‘Ugh, god, there’s a gay guy next to me,’ then maybe you really have miswatched those films and maybe you misunderstand kind of the awesomeness of the Light Side and the awesomeness of the Jedi. And what maybe these films are trying to get us to think about.”

David: It seems so strange to me, too, because the inception of Star Wars, as I understand it, is that Lucas wanted to talk about the Vietnam War, so it’s not as if . . . It’s like, “Hey, you’re getting politics into my Star Wars where it doesn’t belong.” I mean, that’s the whole . . .

Chuck: Right, science fiction is notoriously political. Even when it’s not overtly political, it has a great value and advantage to be forward-facing. Star Trek has been very political and very progressive in many ways. I think it’s puzzling to me that there is a sudden urge, sort of represented, too, by that Sad Puppies/Hugo Award controversy, of people who look back to a time of science fiction that actually maybe never existed. Or at least not in as big of a way as they think. They kind of want rocket ships and ray guns, they say, and then it’s like, they kind of don’t really want writers who are women, and they don’t want characters who hearken to political ideas, and they don’t want “agenda”-driven fiction, which is very strange to me when you don’t want that in your science fiction.

David: Yeah, Alex, do you want to add anything here? Just in terms of the passing of the EU and peoples’ feelings about it as a Star Wars fan?

Alex: I remember when they announced the films, and my initial reaction was sort of, “Wow, really?” And also because I felt like I was now going to have to eat a ton of crow because I had spent the last however many years telling people they will never make a seven, eight, and nine because now they have all of this material. It still centered upon the holy trinity of Han, Luke, and Leia. Those actors are so much older now, and Harrison Ford supposedly hates Han Solo, and they would never do it. I just had made the assumption that they would adapt from the material that exists out there, and it somehow never occurred to me that all of a sudden all of these characters that I felt very attached to would suddenly . . . they wouldn’t be gone, like you were saying, Chuck, but they wouldn’t be considered the solid truth, I guess?

Chuck: The real.

Alex: The real. I felt like with the Legends, formerly known as the Expanded Universe, we lost a lot of really strong female characters that were multi-dimensional. When you think about it, in the original trilogy, you really only had, what? Three female named characters: Mon Mothma, Aunt Beru, and Leia. I don’t think any of the other female characters actually have stated names, let alone personalities, really, which is sad.

I think that’s maybe why Zahn created Mara Jade, because he felt like there was a need for a really good, juicy female character that wasn’t just a type. So, I was really sad about losing Mara and I was sad about losing Jaina Solo, but it seems like a lot of these new characters are strong females, so I feel like hopeful and not so sad about it anymore, I guess. I’ve definitely fully gotten on this train going forward, so I do really understand where people are coming from and being upset, but I don’t know that everyone is necessarily making their unhappiness known in a productive way, as you were saying Chuck.

David: So, we’re pretty much out of time. Alex, do you want to tell us, do you think you’ll write any more Star Wars books?

Alex: I’m hoping to. I would be very happy to. I have to tell you, when I wrote this one, I was so nervous about sitting down at the computer every single day that I actually wrote it out by hand and then transferred it over to the computer because somehow that felt like less pressure, so now that I’ve gotten through that mental and emotional hurdle of worrying that it wouldn’t be good enough or it wouldn’t do the story justice, I’m ready to go and write something else, so if they had me back, I would love to. Again, as I was saying, I would really like to expand on Leia’s past a little bit more as a senator, or maybe explore Padme a little bit more. There’s a lot of fun areas to play. I really feel like we’re in an era of possibility with Star Wars, so if they’ll have me back, I would love to.

David: And, Chuck, you have some more Star Wars books on the agenda.

Chuck: Sure, Aftermath is [part of] a trilogy, so this is just the first book, and I’m writing all three of them.

David: Is there anything you can tell us about the other books?

Chuck: They will be book-shaped and filled with words.

Alex: No spoilers.

Chuck: I know, no spoilers.

David: The lightsaber would come and chop your head off, I guess, if you say anything, right?

Chuck: Yeah, my head would roll.

Alex: And then try to read the books.

David: Great, I think we’re going to wrap things up there. We’ve been speaking with Chuck Wendig and Alexandra Bracken. Guys, thank you so much for joining us.

Alex: Thank you.

Chuck: Thank you.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction/fantasy talk show podcast. It is produced by John Joseph Adams and hosted by: David Barr Kirtley, who is the author of thirty short stories, which have appeared in magazines such as Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, and Lightspeed, in books such as Armored, The Living Dead, Other Worlds Than These, and Fantasy: The Best of the Year, and on podcasts such as Escape Pod and Pseudopod. He lives in New York.

Author Spotlight: Caroline M. Yoachim

Christie Yant | 1104 words

Your “choose your own adventure”-style story in this month’s issue is such a fun read. Which came first, the structure or the premise?

A couple years ago, I tried getting allergy shots to treat my seasonal allergies (for many people, this is really effective, but it ended up not working for me). With allergy shots, you go to the clinic on a regular basis (e.g. weekly) and get an injection with a small amount of whatever it is you’re allergic to. Gradually, over time, they increase the amount of allergen in your shot. Because they’re injecting you with a substance you’re allergic to, you’re required to stay in the clinic for thirty minutes after your shot. Therefore, I spent a huge amount of time sitting in the waiting room of a busy medical clinic, often with a giant itchy welt at the injection site on my arm.

One day while I was sitting through the required thirty minutes after my shot, I wrote a few paragraphs about a medical clinic on a space station, but it didn’t really go anywhere. It wasn’t until a month later that I figured out the story should be a CYOA, at which point it pretty much wrote itself.

I love the wink-and-nod relationship you have with your reader throughout the story, starting with the artificial gravity “that defies the laws of physics and yet is surprisingly common in fictional space stations.” Much of science fiction is built on similarly impossible tropes—how do you engage with them, or deliberately avoid them?

I love tropes as a starting point for stories—you can twist them, subvert them, play them for laughs. I poke fun at artificial gravity in this story, but I can see why it’s so common. It’s easier and cheaper to make a movie where the space station has artificial gravity. In short stories, you have to choose what you want to spend your words on. Science fiction often has a lot of weird stuff going on, and, depending on the story, it might make sense to have characters walk around in normal gravity on the space station so that the reader can focus on the alien parasites that are eating the circuitry, or the budding relationship between the captain and the station AI, or whatever it is that the story is really all about.

That said, I do think stories are usually more interesting when they go beyond the standard SF tropes. I love to read stories with truly bizarre aliens, or futuristic technology that is integrated into the world of the story. Artificial gravity, for instance, would be pretty cool if it was used for something beyond just letting people walk around in space stations.

Congratulations on your recent inclusion on the longlist for the British Science Fiction Award! You’ve been previously nominated for the Nebula award, among other accolades—are the stories of yours that the public appreciates most also your favorites? How do you assess your own work vs. the work of others, and do you think the experience of creating a work (whether the experience was good or bad) colors how you see it after publication?

Thank you! It was so cool to see one of my stories on the BSFA longlist alongside stories by a bunch of authors I really admire.

I’m an absolutely terrible judge of my own work. Nearly all of my stories are drafted one of two ways: 1) All the ideas come together in my head and the words flow out onto the page, or 2) I know I’m supposed to be writing, so I slog through the words even though I don’t feel particularly inspired. I don’t think people can tell, reading my stories, which ones were written lightning quick and which ones were grueling, but I definitely tend to like the stories that came together quickly much better than the ones that made me miserable.

Because I’m such a terrible judge of my own work, I usually get feedback from one or two beta readers before I send a story out for submission. A fresh set of eyes will often see things that I can’t—things that were perfectly clear in my head but confusing on the page, or places where the story drags. My betas will also call me out on things that I suspected might not be working in the draft, but that I really hoped no one would notice.

2015 was a huge year for you, with something like twenty new stories published. Do you have any advice for those writers who are working toward their first publication?

Last year was definitely an amazing year for me! I had twenty-three stories out (including three here at Lightspeed). Giving advice is tricky because everyone is different, and there’s no single “correct” way to approach writing. But with that caveat, here is what I’d tell new writers:

Find what works for you. Get lots of advice from lots of people, and disregard the things that don’t fit. Try a bunch of things, and see what works.

Be patient. Some writers start selling stories right away. For many people (including me) it takes a little more time. 2015 was a great year for me, in terms of publications, but I’ve been writing for about ten years now. My first year I didn’t sell a single story, and my second year I sold two.

Join a critique group. One that meets in person, if possible, but online is okay, too. Reading other people’s stories can actually be just as helpful as getting feedback on your own work. I learn a lot from reading stories by writers who are slightly above or below the level I’m currently at. Stronger stories help me see what I should be trying to do, and weaker stories help me recognize things I’m doing wrong.

What else do we have to look forward to from you this year?

My debut short story collection, Seven Wonders of a Once and Future World & Other Stories, is coming out with Fairwood Press in August. I also have stories forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction and Fireside Magazine.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Christie Yant is a science fiction and fantasy writer, Associate Publisher for Lightspeed and Nightmare, and guest editor of Lightspeed’s Women Destroy Science Fiction special issue. Her fiction has appeared in anthologies and magazines including Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 (Horton),  Armored, Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, io9, Wired.com, and China’s Science Fiction World. Her work has received honorable mentions in Year’s Best Science Fiction (Dozois) and Best Horror of the Year (Datlow), and has been long-listed for StorySouth’s Million Writers Award. She lives on the central coast of California with two writers, an editor, and assorted four-legged nuisances. Follow her on Twitter @christieyant.

Author Spotlight: Andy Duncan

Robyn Lupo | 895 words

The “Premature Burials” is a bit different, in that it’s a story that gives us a few protagonists. What drew you to tell a story about playing dead? Was the unconventional aspect of the couples’ domestic life something that sprang up organically, or was it baked in from the outset?

By my count, the story has three protagonists (Matthew, Charity, and Sterne) and three viewpoint characters: Matthew (close third person), Sterne (close third person), and the omniscient narrator who intervenes twice to dryly summarize things. Now that I think about it, though, that omniscient narrator could be read as Sterne, too, keeping himself in the background while his employers occupy center stage. Certainly Sterne is as close to omniscient as anyone about goings-on in the Preble-Gorce household; he misses nothing. I remember deciding against making Charity a viewpoint character, because I thought her unexpected reactions to things were the funniest part of the story, and would be funnier if viewed from outside, as it were.

As for the couple’s “domestic life,” the story was inspired by the Brothers Grimm tale “The Three Snake-Leaves,” in which a beautiful but strange princess makes the outrageous demand of all her suitors that they be buried with her upon her death, whether they’re dead or not. One suitor bravely marries her anyway and dutifully reports to the crypt when the princess abruptly dies, but he brings her back to life with the titular magic leaves. Alas, the princess isn’t the same after that, and brings the prince only grief. The Grimms’ tale could be read as a cautionary story about not wishing people back from the dead—like W.W. Jacobs’s “The Monkey’s Paw” and Stephen King’s Pet Sematary.

I didn’t want my story to be that dark, so I decided my princess wasn’t quite dead after all—which immediately took the story into the realm of comedy—but I knew she wouldn’t readily forgive Matthew’s perceived disloyalty, either. Burying both of them again seemed the obvious way to resolve the plot, or obvious to me, anyway. The Grimms’ princess is pretty kinky to begin with, so to push the kink even further seemed a natural escalation. Couples who can’t stop fighting are stock comic characters, but couples who can’t stop fucking are pretty funny, too.

You’ve worked in a variety of mediums. I’m always curious to know if a multi-genre author like yourself knows whether his material will be a short story or novel. In this case, how aware were you “The Premature Burials” was a short work? Do you have a preference for shorter or longer works?

I knew “The Premature Burials” would be short, in part because my models were short—the Grimms’ “The Three Snake-Leaves,” Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Premature Burial,” and James Thurber’s “Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife”—but also because the guiding conceit would have worn mighty thin even stretched to novelette length, much less novel length. I knew I had only to bury Matthew and then to exhume him, The End. The only reason I added a third character, Sterne, was purely practical: Once Charity and Matthew were both buried, who would dig them up?

My preference, as a writer and a reader, always has been for short forms over long forms, but for whatever reason, my stories keep getting longer. Like all my early stories, this one strikes me now as remarkably concise. But an unknown writer often has to be more concise than a well-known one, because she hasn’t earned the editors’ patience yet, and committing a big chunk of the budget to a newcomer is a big gamble.

The setting is lush for this story; lots of dark-seeming nooks and crannies to be mischievous; lots of potential for intrigue and darkness, but a lot of play as well. I know it was 1998, but do you recall what informed the setting?

Only one setting in the story was inspired by my own experience, and that’s the cemetery. I had firmly in mind the Sauk City, Wisconsin, cemetery where Arkham House founder August Derleth is buried. I believe it’s the St. Aloysius Cemetery. I had visited it with my then-girlfriend, on a sort of pilgrimage. I was struck by the wrought-iron arch and by the hair-raising “holy and wholesome” sign (which is a quote from 2 Maccabees 12:46, by the way). “You have to use that in a story,” my girlfriend said, and she was right. As for the mansion’s interiors, I just imagined the set from the sitcom The Addams Family—which is one of my formative TV influences, easily the equal of Star Trek, and just behind The Twilight Zone.

What’s next for you, Andy Duncan?

My new story “Santa Cruz” will be in the Kickstarter anthology Genius Loci, edited by Jaym Gates, from Ragnarok Publications; and I will teach the third week of the 2016 Clarion writers’ workshop at UC-San Diego. The application deadline is March 1, and here’s the link: clarion.ucsd.edu/workshop.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Robyn Lupo lives in Southwestern Ontario with her not-that-kind-of-doctor partner and three cats. She enjoys tiny things, and has wrangled flash for Women Destroy Science Fiction! as well as selected poetry for Queers Destroy Horror! She aspires to one day write many things.

Author Spotlight: Timons Esaias

Sandra Odell | 1308 words

The opening paragraphs of “The Mars Convention” immediately set the tone for the story, a delicious blend of humor, scholastic fatigue, and cultural relations. When you sit down to write a story, how much thought do you give to the opening, the initial presentation? Are you conscious of attempting to capture a reader’s interest?

Since I often pick books to buy or read next using the First Paragraph Test, I am certainly conscious of the need to get things rolling right away. I tend to admire fiction with immersive first pages, pages that give you ten things to wonder about rather than just one. Also, in science fiction, that kind of approach lets you tell the reader, “Hey, this not only isn’t Kansas, it’s not any part of your world, so buckle up, put down the phone, and pay attention.”

Of course, these days they may be reading it on the phone, so this may need rethinking.

Can you tell us a bit about the inspiration behind this story?

The true origin is very mundane, in an SF-nal way. Confluence, the Pittsburgh-area SF convention, was being held in Mars, PA, one year, and they had a story contest. Mars was the theme. The prize was cash, and publication in the convention program book. I wrote this story for the contest. Providentially, perhaps, the US Postal Service took two weeks to get the story across town (I’m not kidding) so the story not only missed the deadline, it didn’t show up in the Confluence mailbox until after the judging and announcement of the winners. That meant I had to send it elsewhere, and settled for publication in Interzone, which was the most prestigious magazine of that era.

The Mars theme came with the contest, and I decided to add the basic elements of the purpose of the contest to the list: a convention, and science fiction itself. One of my common techniques is to twist the definitions of basic thematic terms, so I used more than one meaning of “convention” and I picked a Universe in which “science fiction” has unexpected extra meanings.

And if you want a good writing challenge, pick a POV character who sees the world in the opposite of your own view; so I picked a guy who was planning to shut SF down, once and for all.

Yeah, it kinda wrote itself.

Oh, and once I came up with the idea of a very small library of human works, I decided to make a list of the works, and refer to every single one at least once in the story. The references are often indirect, but all of the forty-four “sacred texts of Science Fiction” are in there somewhere.

One of the things I most appreciated about “The Mars Convention” was the casual lack of body awareness in the narrative. The characters have no more reason to think of their bodies than humans do to think of their bilateral symmetry. What is it about the challenge of differing perspectives that appeals to you as a writer?

Writing different POVs is one of the seductions of the writing life. Aliens, whether from inside or outside, can be an interesting challenge. The truth is that we are only one of the nearly infinite possibilities for seeing the world, and that we actually only take in a small amount of data from the world, upon which we build our sense of everything. Tweaking that just a little can give you a wildly different experience, and can make for a mind-altering experience.

One of the things that tends to disappoint me in SF is aliens that are really humans in a rubber suit. It’s as though the author doesn’t take their own premise seriously. I’ve paid attention to the tricks of making aliens alien, and one of them is that exactly what you pointed out: They won’t be any more aware of their bodies than we are (probably). The trick (and the fun) is that you can show the reader what they’re like when they interact with something in the environment in a way that is different from how we would do it. Having a Venusian being annoyed at the lack of sulfuric acid in the air, for instance, gets the reader’s attention.

“The Mars Convention” speaks to the lasting power of story, and the ongoing clash between the perceptions of science vs. science fiction. In your years of writing and teaching, how have opinions changed when it comes to the worth of genre stories?

A large part of the academic and literary world are still condescending to genre stories, but there’s actually been a huge shift in my lifetime. Many of our best writers have written what are really genre stories (and sometimes they admit it), and many of our most influential writers have come out of the genres. SF and fantasy have actually conquered the world, and much of the world now admits it.

In my own case, my initial prejudice has just been endlessly confirmed. I started out thinking of all stories as legitimate variations within the world of literature, and of science fiction as probably the richest metaphor-mine possible. You can do anything in SF, which is why it has penetrated the marketplace so thoroughly. I cut my teeth on Verne, Wells, 1984, Brave New World, Stanislaw Lem, and J. G. Ballard. All of those were, I was led to believe, legitimate Literature with the big L.

I should note that I write both “literary” fiction and science fiction, and I often sell what I thought of as one of those categories in the other category’s marketplace. In both directions.

From poetry to fiction to non-fiction, you are a prolific writer. Do you find one facet of your writing influences another? Does being an academic make you a better poet? Do the rhythms of poetry color your fiction?

What I teach, and feel, is that writing is writing, and each of the types of writing one engages in will influence the others. The teaching of writing, both poetry and prose, makes one a better writer, since needing to articulate explanations often makes one understand things that were just instincts before that. And yes, the rhythms of poetry help remind one that the best prose is music, too.

To be technical for a moment: I often deliberately make one facet of my writing influence another, by using the same material in more than one genre. (I’m reminded of William Gibson’s story “The Gernsback Continuum” having been a fictional rewriting of a book review.) I sometimes write a poem based on the story I’m working on, or a story based on a poem, or an essay based on a story idea. After they’re done, I mutate them to the point that they stand alone. I’ve often sold “the same idea” in several guises.

Story, as I tell my students, is a shapeshifter.

What’s next for Timons Esaias? What can readers look forward to in 2016?

My book-length poetry collection will be coming out in January or so, from Concrete Wolf, entitled Why Elephants No Longer Communicate in Greek. I’m working on some flash fictions based on Euclid’s axioms and postulates, and some difficult-to-explain short stories. I’m also, I hope, putting the finishing touches on my instructional work, Warfare for Writers.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Author Spotlight: Rich Larson

Sandra Odell | 669 words

With the intimate sensory detail of the opening of “Sparks Fly,” you set the tone of the story while still allowing the speculative elements to shine through. I found myself as intrigued by the setting as I was by Arthur. When writing, how aware are you of the sensory impression of a story and its effect upon the reader?

I tend to be a visual writer. I picture it as a movie and then describe the movie. The setting for this was just Edmonton—the liquor store was the one I worked at, the neighborhood was the one I lived in, and the cafe was the one I had a great first date at a couple summers ago.

What can you tell us about the inspiration behind “Sparks Fly”?

As you know by now, just my own life. There was this girl I really liked and we seemed to really click, but it never got off the runway. Sometimes I feel like I exude a sort of field that fucks up potential romantic relationships. Arthur in the story has a more literal kind of field. Originally there was going to be a sad ending, but everyone who read it wanted a happy one, so I threw in the second chance that I kind of wished I’d gotten in real life.

The tone of the story is light and engaging. It made me want to keep reading, to know more. As a writer, how conscious are you of creating a particular voice for a story? Has there ever been a time when you’ve played with point-of-view, trying to find the right narrative?

I have a few different styles that I shift between. Depends how much you want people to notice or not notice the prose. For small personal stories like this one, I think first person is the best POV, and the voice is wry and breezy and pretty easy to write.

My favorite element of “Sparks Fly” is how Arthur and Christina are regular, everyday people. They have lives, interests, and, in Arthur’s case, an embarrassing condition he isn’t certain he wants to reveal. If you could have any fantastical ability of your choosing, what would it be? What do you think the downside might be?

Sometimes I wish I could always tell what people are thinking. Some people are hard to read and it makes me anxious. But the downside is finding out stuff you didn’t want to know, I guess.

What writers tickle your light fantastic? To whom do you turn when you want to get your speculative fiction on?

I’m not really a big reader anymore, so I always list off the people I read when I was young, like Megan Whalen Turner, C.S. Lewis, M.T. Anderson, William Nicholson. This year I re-read Kenneth Oppel’s Silverwing when I was back at my parents’ house, which is a really fantastic book and never describes any colors because it’s from the perspective of a bat.

Your work has appeared in such venues as Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and many others. What’s next for Rich Larson? What can readers look forward to in 2016?

Depending on publishing schedules, I’ll have or have already had new stories out in Analog, Asimov’s, Interzone, Clockwork Phoenix 5, Clarkesworld, F&SF, and a few other places. I’m revising a novel and trying to find someone to buy it. It’s kind of a Half-Life 2 / Animorphs / A Series of Unfortunate Events mash-up set in a city post alien invasion. Lots of big action set pieces and some fun characters. It’s good.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Sandra Odell is a 47-year old, happily married mother of two, an avid reader, compulsive writer, and rabid chocoholic. Her work has appeared in such venues as Jim Baen’s UNIVERSE, Daily Science Fiction, Crosssed Genres, Pseudopod, and The Drabblecast. She is hard at work plotting her second novel or world domination. Whichever comes first.

Author Spotlight: Craig DeLancey

Robyn Lupo | 785 words

What inspired you to write “RedKing”? How difficult was it to wrangle the different themes of mad contagion, cyborg bodies, not to mention a police procedural?

The story had two inspirations.

One inspiration was the idea of computer viruses as actual cognitive viruses, invading your skull. And, of course, we know now that there are biological viruses and bacteria that, for their own benefit, alter the behavior of their host organism. So what would get a brain program propagated? What kinds of effects on behavior might make it likely to be spread among host brains? The odd title also comes from biology. Some speculate that sex evolved as a way to slow parasitism. This is called the Red Queen strategy. So with that ringing in my mind, I named the parasite code RedKing.

Another inspiration was the idea of software as a drug. But of course, it would be more than a drug: It could simulate not just experiences, but different ways of being.

Given those themes, a police procedural seemed best to let the idea grow. The story felt easy to write, once the code monkey started talking.

The effects of RedKing are subtle and much more creepy as observed through our code monkey’s eyes. What do you think draws us to stories that have an unreliable narrator? Do you have a favorite unreliable voice?

I felt that it had to be first person. The software changes how the protagonist sees the world, and as a result to some degree changes who he is. So ideally the reader gets to experience that from the inside.

I usually write in the third person, because I like lots of moving parts and perspectives. But I think readers prefer the intimacy of the first person. And a bit of mystery, a surprising discovery, is much more interesting when it is the result of an unreliable narrator, since it reveals character.

Finally, I think that there is something in our zeitgeist that favors the unreliable narrator. We are questioning personal identity and the nature of the self more than we have in the past. An unreliable narrator can make these concerns explicit.

Philip K. Dick was a master of the unreliable narrator, in works like A Scanner Darkly, or (most weirdly) VALIS.

Throughout “RedKing,” we see citizens infected with extreme violence. When you were working on the hacker’s motivation for the virus, was there anything in particular you drew on?

Legion gives the program the ability to defend itself, and to evolve different forms of self-defense. We see in nature that violence is a common tactic of competition. It seems likely that RedKing might use violence to protect and propagate itself.

But there’s another layer to it, of course. Most games are violent, it seems to me. As games become more immersive, more realistic, the violence becomes more and more realistic. I know that we all agree nowadays that violent art does not cause violence. But, then again, are we really so sure? Isn’t there some kind of danger here?

The RedKing program turns the world into a game. If it’s a violent game, then the infected person will bring that violence out into the world.

Do you see the narrator’s choice of profession as being a rejection/response to the cred culture that Legion wants to put his mark on?

Hackers who move from cracking to security are seen as having moved outside hacker culture. After all, there are other ways one can move: Some hackers become white hats, against the black hats, instead of joining the establishment. But, even though he is inside the machine, I think the code monkey might still take pride in being recognized as the person who defeated RedKing. There are different communities, with their own measures of cred. He won’t want the kind of cred that Legion sought, but I bet over at Code Isolation, they have their own sense of who can bring it.

What’s next for you, Craig?

I’m in the revising stage of a near-future SF novel. The novel is called The End of Now and it’s about time and music and interstellar travel and love and revolution. As soon as the revisions of that novel are done, I will write a novel about the code monkey. He’s got an even bigger problem to solve.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Robyn Lupo lives in Southwestern Ontario with her not-that-kind-of-doctor partner and three cats. She enjoys tiny things, and has wrangled flash for Women Destroy Science Fiction! as well as selected poetry for Queers Destroy Horror! She aspires to one day write many things.

Author Spotlight: Seanan McGuire

Robyn Lupo | 377 words

What drew you to tell a story about Cait Sidhe, the Great Fire, and such a hollow victory? I understand we can read more about Rand-later-Tybalt in a few more stories; can you tell us a little more about where we may find him?

There’s only one other story about Rand-later-Tybalt that’s currently available; that’s “Forbid the Sea,” which can be downloaded from my website. And of course, Tybalt himself is the romantic lead in my urban fantasy series, so it’s not like there’s a dearth of him around. As to why I wanted to tell the story I told . . . there are two hollow victories here, one over the King, his father, and one over the plague. I wanted to contrast them. I think I did okay.

The image of a King with no Court was particularly powerful; and what a strange position to be stuck in, to be basically holding the balance of power, alone. What prompted this narrative choice?

Rand is a very young man, with a lot of terrible choices between him and the character most of my readers know. Part of what made him the man he is starts in London, when he found himself alone for so long. I really wanted to drive that home.

Rand seems to be more empathetic and moral than his Cait Sidhe family. Do you think he’d be less sympathetic to mortals and his sisters if he were a Kit Marlowe fan?

Possibly! But that’s part of the beauty of Shakespeare. He may have been an arrogant so-and-so, but oh, that man could break your heart if he felt the need. There was no other choice for Rand’s primary fandom. (And make no mistake: Rand is a huge nerd for Shakespeare.)

What’s next for you, Seanan McGuire?

I have a novella coming out from Tor.com in April, titled Every Heart a Doorway, which I am super excited about. And of course there’s the next book in the October Daye series, Once Broken Faith, which comes out in September.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Robyn Lupo lives in Southwestern Ontario with her not-that-kind-of-doctor partner and three cats. She enjoys tiny things, and has wrangled flash for Women Destroy Science Fiction! as well as selected poetry for Queers Destroy Horror! She aspires to one day write many things.

Author Spotlight: Aliette de Bodard

Jude Griffin | 703 words

How did “The Waiting Stars” come about?

I was writing a story for Athena Andreadis’s and Kay Holt’s The Other Half of the Sky, which had to be mythical space opera focused on a female protagonist. So I naturally turned to Vietnamese myths: There is a particular one, the legend of My Chau and Truong Thi (bit.ly/1SpACPB), that has always resonated with me. In it, a princess betrays her own people to her husband, and has to watch as her city is invaded. I wanted to write something that had that same resonance of unwitting, internalised betrayal, but set in a space opera setting.

The Dai Viet world resonates so much in this one. Do you take your inspiration from any particular struggles of oppressed peoples?

I drew on residential schools, both in Australia and in Canada (for Aboriginals and First Nations), as a model for the institution where Catherine and Johanna are educated—I knew about their existence, but had naïvely assumed they were further in the past than that, and found out this was very much not the case. The way in which the Galactic and Dai Viet rub against each other (and profoundly misunderstand one another) was drawn from real-life interactions in colonial Indochina. Again, I didn’t have to dig very much to find some truly heartwrenching stuff.

The ending was breathtaking—the two storylines came together in such beauty—what were the challenges of making this narrative structure work?

The main challenge was making Jason work, actually! I originally had him much more aware of what he was doing and why, and following some crits from beta readers I realised that what I really wanted was a “benevolent colonial”: He had to seem perfectly reasonable to the reader (I would even say reasonable enough that a Western reader could identify with him), until the moment when you realise what, exactly, he’s been complicit in, which was meant to be a major flip in perspective—of the damage that you can unwittingly do, even as you’re sure you’re in the right (which to me, was a big part of the colonial mindset and one that I feel gets under-explored). The other difficulty in making Jason sympathetic was that Catherine’s love story had to be tragic: I wanted her to genuinely love him, and him to genuinely care for her—but in a way that made it impossible for the relationship to continue, once she was aware of the truth.

How has your vision for the Xuya universe evolved since first building out that world and its stories?

I think it’s not so much evolved as expanded? I thought I would run out of ideas related to this universe quite fast, to be honest, and I’m always rather surprised that I keep coming up with ideas in that setting! Having a Galactic Empire is handy, in the sense that there’s quite a wide range of planets and technologies—and different time periods as well. It’s moved from being merely stories of the birth of mindships to families and how they cope with having AI members—and to solving technological challenges such as epidemics, food supplies, etc., which has had me do a ton of interesting research (and hopefully come up with a few extra ideas, too!).

Any new projects you want to tell us about?

I’m working on The House of Binding Thorns, a sequel to my novel The House of Shattered Wings (post-magical-war Paris with intrigues, backstabbing, entirely too many corpses, and bonus Vietnamese mythology). And I have a story out in Yanni Kuznia’s A Fantasy Medley 3 which is set in the same universe and which I’m inordinately fond of, as it focuses on the actual magical war and its cost for ordinary people, something I didn’t have the time to do in the book.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Jude Griffin is an envirogeek, writer, and photographer. She has trained llamas at the Bronx Zoo; was a volunteer EMT, firefighter, and HAZMAT responder; worked as a guide and translator for journalists covering combat in Central America; lived in a haunted village in Thailand; ran an international frog monitoring network; and loves happy endings. Bonus points for frolicking dogs and kisses backlit by a shimmering full moon.

Author Spotlight: Marie Vibbert

Laurel Amberdine | 648 words

Michael and Julie’s “mother” is so clearly dangerous, and the fact that no one else notices or takes that threat seriously makes this story so creepy, I’m a bit nervous to ask what inspired it! But I do want to know how the story came together for you.

It was the third week of Clarion and our instructor said he would like to see me write something more personal, something that “bled” for me. So I sat down and asked myself, “What scares me? What’s personal?” My mother is schizophrenic, and could not take care of herself, much less children. I remembered trying to explain what it was like growing up with her by saying it was like having a large, malfunctioning machine, one that could harm you at any moment and that you could not turn off.

Yes, I sincerely hope she doesn’t read this story. It’s not her fault she has an illness, and she is much better these days.

I adored the awkward not-quite-romance between Michael and Darla. Were those characters and that subplot part of your original concept? How did you develop them?

As soon as I started writing Michael, I wanted to give him friends outside of his sister. I thought about the kids I grew up with and how we played backyard football and tag. Then it occurred to me that Michael was at the age where playing games segues into the great teenage dating game, so I decided to give him a sort-of-love-interest and I liked the idea of inverting the roles by having the girl chase him.

How do you generally go about writing a short story? Did this one fit your usual pattern?

I start with one-sentence “ideas.” Sometimes I combine two or three. I keep an “idea file” for sentences that don’t become stories and go back to it for inspiration now and then.

I like to work under self-imposed deadlines based on scenes rather than word counts—I’ll try to write a scene a day until I finish a story. I’ll try to let the story lie fallow so I forget enough to be able to read it and revise it with a clean eye, though frequently I’m too excited and send the story straight to one of my first readers.

This story did fit my usual mode, save for being written at Clarion, which meant I had a one-week deadline to finish it. I revised a lot as I went, knowing my class would critique it first thing Monday morning!

I usually suffer from self-doubt and won’t send a story out to markets until it has been critiqued and revised four or five times, but this one I felt pretty strong about immediately after the Clarion class read it. I had kept thinking as I was writing, “This isn’t scary. This is soooo boring and unscary.” Then the class read it and uniformly declared it scary as heck!

Thanks to this unreasonable optimism, this story is my most rejected story ever, with over twenty rejections!

What is up next for you?

I have a story with a much healthier mother/child relationship coming out in Analog this year. In ”Hold the Moment,” Daisy Monroe must juggle being a single parent to a precocious pre-teen with inventing time travel.

I was ill for most of 2015 and didn’t get much writing done. (My diary entries while I was high on morphine are AMAZING.) Now that I’m finally healthy, I’m trying to juggle wasting time on novels I’ll never show anyone with completing more short stories!

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Laurel Amberdine was raised by cats in the suburbs of Chicago. She’s good at naps, begging for food, and turning ordinary objects into toys. She recently moved to San Francisco with her husband, and is enjoying its vastly superior weather. Between naps she’s working on polishing up a few science fiction and fantasy novels, and hopes to send them out into the world soon.

Author Spotlight: Mark W. Tiedemann

Moshe Siegel | 634 words

Was Esther, the “spirit of the county” in your novella “Miller’s Wife,” inspired by any particular folklore or tradition?

She was intended as an aggregate of various traditions, including that of the spring goddess, Eostre. Esther from the Old Testament is used in Hebrew sometimes as a verb meaning “I will hide.” Easter obviously is connected to death and rebirth.

Regarding Curt Albright, Egan’s cabin-lending friend: Do you think he was in the Saletcroix-nurtures-an-Ancient-Earth-spirit loop? Could this have been an elaborate blind date for his relationship-troubled buddy?

Could have been, but truthfully I didn’t think about it that deeply. I intended Saletcroix from the beginning as a setting for a number of stories involving this kind of thing, the idea that there are places where ancient remnants of once-vital mythic forms can go to hide and live out what time they have. Egan himself is disconnected when he arrives, so in that sense he was as much a refugee as anyone or anything else in the valley.

Egan remarks that perhaps Saletcroix has a spiritual benefactor, not because it’s a special place, but because it took care “not to lose it” in the first place. Do you think this statement is just Egan—no stranger to lost love—projecting? Or could he be on to something in thinking that what now seems supernatural was once, in the world of this novella, anything but?

As I remarked above, Saletcroix was intended as just that sort of place. The name is a combination of words meaning, roughly, “armored cross,” in this case meant to suggest a protected crossroads. Things interpreted incorrectly or simply outgrown find refuge here, as he finally does, but Egan is very self-absorbed when he arrives. He recognizes resonances that mirror his own pain, even though he might not realize what those resonances are. Love and commitment are as much magic as any occult power might be, and he’s always avoided the one while being unable to evade the other. And projection permeates myth. We create it as much as we are created by it.

“Miller’s Wife” explores some esoteric subjects, but likewise packs a physical wallop with wildfires, smoldering homes, sexual encounters, and shotgun chases through the woods. In the writing, did you more enjoy drafting either sort of scene, adrenaline vs cerebral? Does one or the other come more easily?

For me, the internal and the external are different points along a continuum. Grappling with them requires the same attention, burns the same calories, and when done well, they are equally gratifying. For the fires and chases to have any meaning, they have to connect to the esoteric and ephemeral.

What do you make of the conclusion? How might Egan and Bert do things differently?

I don’t know. What do you make of it? What would you do differently? It’s spring again, you have a fresh start. Now what?

Do you have any recent or upcoming work you’d like to share with us?

My last published book, Gravity Box and Other Spaces, which leads with “Miller’s Wife,” includes another Saletcroix story, “Along The Grain.” There’s a third one in an anthology called Noir At The Bar II, a story called “Dragons of Memory.” Just in case anyone is interested. Beyond that, I am at work on a YA novel, a novel above interstellar journeys and loss and gain, and the third volume of an alternate history trilogy. At some point I hope to write a couple of new short stories.

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER

Moshe Siegel interviews at Lightspeed, works in the New York State library system, and hatches indie publishing plots from his Hudson Valley home office. Follow tweets of varying relevance @moshesiegel.

Coming Attractions

The Editors | 153 words

Coming up in April, in Lightspeed . . .

We have original science fiction by Carrie Vaughn (“Origin Story”) and Matthew Bailey (“The Birth Will Take Place on a Mutually Acceptable Research Vessel”), along with SF reprints by Patricia Strand (“Cause for a Haunting”) and Peter Watts (“Collateral”).

Plus, we have original fantasy by Nghi Vo (“Dragon Brides”) and Rudy Rucker (“The Knobby Giraffe”), and fantasy reprints by Theodora Goss (“Lily, With Clouds”) and Ken Scholes (“Of Metal Men and Scarlet Thread and Dancing with the Sunrise”).

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

For our ebook readers, we also have our usual ebook-exclusive novella reprint and a novel excerpt.

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

Thanks for reading!

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The Editors

Subscriptions: If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, please consider subscribing. It’s a great way to support the magazine, and you’ll get your issues in the convenient ebook format of your choice. All purchases from the Lightspeed store are provided in epub, mobi, and pdf format. A 12-month subscription to Lightspeed includes 96 stories (about 480,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction). The cost is just $35.88 ($12 off the cover price)—what a bargain! For more information, visit lightspeedmagazine.com/subscribe.

Ebooks & Bundles: We also have individual ebook issues available at a variety of ebook vendors ($3.99 each), and we now have Ebook Bundles available in the Lightspeed ebookstore, where you can buy in bulk and save! We currently have a number of ebook bundles available: Year One (issues 1-12), Year Two (issues 13-24), Year Three (issues 25-36), the Mega Bundle (issues 1-36), and the Supermassive Bundle (issues 1-48). Buying a bundle gets you a copy of every issue published during the named period. So if you need to catch up on Lightspeed, that’s a great way to do so. Visit lightspeedmagazine.com/store for more information.

• • • •

All caught up on Lightspeed? Good news! We also have lots of ebooks available from our sister-publications:

Nightmare Ebooks, Bundles, & Subscriptions: Like Lightspeed, our sister-magazine Nightmare (nightmare-magazine.com) also has ebooks, bundles, and subscriptions available as well. For instance, you can get the complete first year (12 issues) of Nightmare for just $24.99; that’s savings of $11 off buying the issues individually. Or, if you’d like to subscribe, a 12-month subscription to Nightmare includes 48 stories (about 240,000 words of fiction, plus assorted nonfiction), and will cost you just $23.88 ($12 off the cover price).

Fantasy Magazine Ebooks & Bundles: We also have ebook back issues—and ebook back issue bundles—of Lightspeed’s (now dormant) sister-magazine, Fantasy. To check those out, just visit fantasy-magazine.com/store. You can buy each Fantasy bundle for $24.99, or you can buy the complete run of Fantasy Magazine— all 57 issues—for just $114.99 (that’s $10 off buying all the bundles individually, and more than $55 off the cover price!).

About the Lightspeed Team

The Editors

Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

John Joseph Adams

Managing/Associate Editor

Wendy N. Wagner

Associate Publisher/Director of Special Projects

Christie Yant

Assistant Publisher

Robert Barton Bland

Reprint Editor

Rich Horton

Podcast Producer

Stefan Rudnicki

Podcast Editor/Host

Jim Freund

Art Director

Henry Lien

Assistant Editor

Robyn Lupo

Editorial Assistants

Laurel Amberdine

Jude Griffin

Book Reviewers

Andrew Liptak

Sunil Patel

Amal El-Mohtar

Copy Editor

Dana Watson

Proofreaders

Anthony R. Cardno

Devin Marcus

Kevin McNeil

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Galen Dara

Elizabeth Leggett

Reiko Murakami

Webmaster

Jeremiah Tolbert of Clockpunk Studios

Also Edited by John Joseph Adams

The Editors

If you enjoy reading Lightspeed, you might also enjoy these anthologies edited (or co-edited) by John Joseph Adams.

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 1: The End is Nigh (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 2: The End is Now (with Hugh Howey)

THE APOCALYPSE TRIPTYCH, Vol. 3: The End Has Come (with Hugh Howey)

Armored

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2015 (with Joe Hill)

Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy 2016 [forthcoming Oct. 2016]

Brave New Worlds

By Blood We Live

Dead Man’s Hand

Epic: Legends Of Fantasy

Federations

The Improbable Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY!!! and Other Improbable Crowdfunding Projects

Lightspeed: Year One

The Living Dead

The Living Dead 2

Loosed Upon the World

The Mad Scientist’s Guide To World Domination

Operation Arcana

Other Worlds Than These

Oz Reimagined (with Douglas Cohen)

Press Start to Play (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Robot Uprisings (with Daniel H. Wilson)

Seeds of Change

Under the Moons of Mars

Wastelands

Wastelands 2

The Way Of The Wizard

What the #@&% Is That? (with Douglas Cohen) [forthcoming Aug. 2016]

Visit johnjosephadams.com to learn more about all of the above. Each project also has a mini-site devoted to it specifically, where you’ll find free fiction, interviews, and more.